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 Eat
This
Gay Tastee
Gayest
Hits [Volumes One and Two]
(Hoex)
Gay Tastee is the stage and
studio name of the artist still sometimes known as Stephen
Gaylord, longtime purveyor of fine scabrous rock in these
parts, both as a solo artist and with such outfits as the
Wasted (his current band), Beef, the Paraquat Earth Band and
MacArthur Parker. Gayest Hits [Volumes One and Two] provides
a devastatingly intense overview of his output from 1990 to
1999, with 15 slices of 4-track woodshed wonders strung out
over two long-players. While many of the songs on Gayest
Hits may be familiar to followers of Gaylord’s various
bands (all of them, except for “Webcor” and “Seeds and Stems”
have seen some glimmers of the light of day on earlier recordings,
and the latter of those two numbers was a Beef live staple),
they’ve not been readily available in such stripped down,
austere versions before.
The lean and (sorta) clean production ethos on Gayest Hits
puts heavy emphasis squarely on Gaylord’s guitar, vocals
and (most of all) songwriting, as there’s not a lot of room
to hide behind the occasional bass, drums, cello and sundries
offered by Gaylord’s anonymous collaborators (all of them
“protected” in the credits by their properly designated “gay
names,” Bee Tastee, Gay Richie, X Tastee, Gay Semen, etc.).
No surprise, if you’ve ever paid attention to Gaylord’s work,
that this lo-fi, song-based approach reveals all sorts of
marvels and miracles and mayhem and madness, as biblical martyrs
juke it out with Hitler wannabes and cirrhotic wife beaters,
and a whole damned community of life-impaired tragic heroes
and endearing villains sink ever closer to oblivion in a slurry
of ditchweed and serotonin and bathtub gin.
It ain’t easy to write lyrics like Gaylord’s, and it’s especially
difficult to write such short-form American tragedies well,
but Mister Tastee is a master at this sort of stuff, revealing
the last dying cinders of pathos beneath his characters’ bluster
and bluff, reviling their unfortunate and seemingly preordained
circumstances, even as he lovingly details the squalor in
which they churn—delivering it all in a raw and ragged voice
that oscillates between wail and croak, nailing the sweet
points between ’em just often enough to keep you listening.
Toss some surprisingly spry guitar work into the mix, and
you’ve got yourself one stunning, strong, sometimes shocking,
often sublime record from an artist with a unique vision—and
an equally unique talent for presenting it to the public,
whether it’s capable of digesting it or not.
—J.
Eric Smith
The
Pretenders
Loose Screw
(Artemis)
Even at their most accessible, the Pretenders have never been
easy. Akron, Ohio, native Chrissie Hynde’s lyrics can be cutting,
even bitchy, and the range of styles the Pretenders have tried
on in its 25-year career can be diffuse. There’s been pop,
hard rock, reggae, even techno—a versatility that doesn’t
always add up to cohesiveness. Even though most of the seven
albums the Pretenders released on Warner Bros. in their 19-year
career were winners, Hynde, guitarist Adam Seymour, bassist
Andy Hobson and drummer Martin Chambers haven’t notched a
hit since the mid-’90s (when the configuration was different,
too: The incendiary Pretenders No. 1, with James Honeyman-Scott
on guitar and Pete Farndon on bass, lasted a little more than
a year, and since then, rhythm-guitarist-vocalist Hynde and
her most regular mate, Chambers, have gone through several
guitarists and bassists). Their commercial success likely
won’t change with Loose Screw, the band’s debut on
the Artemis label, particularly since they aren’t doing much
to publicize their seven-week U.S. tour. That’s radio’s loss:
Loose Screw, a kind of suite of songs alternating laceration
of self with laceration of significant others, is one of the
best Pretenders albums. Crafted taut and shiny by British
dance producers Kevin Bacon and Jonathan Quarmby, it’s packed
with sharp tunes spanning the slash-and-burn “Fools Must Die,”
the pretty pop of “I Should Of,” the languid reggae of “Cleaning
Woman,” and a claw-and-purr cover of All Seeing I’s U.K. trip-hop
hit “Walk Like a Panther” (which evokes Steve Miller’s “Fly
Like an Eagle,” much as “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart” soundchecks
Zep’s “D’Yer Mak’er”). At 52, Hynde is singing beautifully,
her messages of paranoia and passion eloquent proof of her
ability to get us to fuck off and pay attention at the same
time.
—Carlo
Wolff
Jane
Bunnett
Cuban
Odyssey (Blue Note)
Canadian saxophonist and flautist Jane Bunnett has been exploring
Cuban music since first visiting the island in the early ’80s.
During the ’70s, the classically trained pianist and clarinet
player was deeply affected by a range of jazz musicians who
straddled genres with ease and verve (such as Charles Mingus,
Don Pullen and Randy Weston). Cuban Odyssey is the
fifth album that she and her husband, trumpet player and producer
Larry Cramer, have created with the Spirits of Havana ensemble.
This set marks the first time Bunnett and Cramer have used
Cuban musicians from outside of Havana. It is therefore broadened
with a range of styles found beyond those urban environs:
Folkish sons mingle with traditional danzons
and boleros as well as straight-ahead jazz. On the
gorgeous opening to “Suite Mantanzas,” Bunnett’s playing embraces
the island’s melodic characteristics, a lyricism with underpinnings
of rhythmic flair. A pair of originals recorded back home
in Toronto frame the set, and they serve to effectively open
and close an album that is both a celebration and an homage.
—David
Greenberger
Holland
Hopson/ James Keepnews
Hunting
and Gathering (Metaharmonic)
Improvisation is one of the most challenging musical tightrope
acts imaginable, the performance place where artists totter
above an abyss of sonic possibilities, trying to find a balance
between experimental flights of fancy on one hand and stock
comfort vamps on the other, without veering so far in either
direction that their work becomes unlistenably knotted or
tediously familiar. On Hunting and Gathering, Capital
Region expats Holland Hopson (soprano sax and electronics)
and James Keepnews (guitar and electronics) prove their mettle
as consummate musical high-wire artists, forging 11 challenging
improvisational works that touch standard Western musical
verities just often enough to make this record one with appeal
for dreamscape devotees and structure junkies alike.
Fully improvised direct to ADAT in the studio, Hunting
and Gathering sets its own stage with the dramatic, overturelike
“Lunchpails” before careening into one of the album’s best
cuts, “Iron Wet Paper Money,” which blends Robert Fripp-
flavored guitar spirals and spatters with a freeform Henry
Cow-styled sax excursion, all atop a morphing, synthetic rhythm
pattern that wouldn’t sound out of place on an Aphex Twin
record. “Our Double E D” evokes Fripp comparisons, too, sounding
like a great lost sequel to the beautiful “Trio” from King
Crimson’s Starless and Bible Black.
“Substation”
bubbles with tension and menace and explosive potential energy,
while the dramatic “Sephardic” evokes the Middle East in its
opening moments, then drifts into peaceful Coltrane territory,
then dissolves in a mist of charged electron pops and scalpel
scrapings. Album closer “Gyroscopes for Nader” also plows
a powerful path from electronic percolation to searing shriekout
to total systemic meltdown to silence.
This is how it’s done, children. Take heed and explore.
—J.E.S.
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