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It’s
(Not) Instrumental
Vitamin
W
The
Love Drug (Xnet2)
Buried in the technical specifications printed on the back
cover of Lou Reed’s infamous Metal Machine Music was
a provocative line reading “No instruments?” Reed gave himself
some creative wiggle room by putting a question mark at the
end of that potentially explosive two-word manifesto, but
Memphis, Tenn.-based Vitamin W embraces it without reservation:
The back cover of the remade-remodeled-reissued The Love
Drug (which originally saw limited release in Austin,
Texas, in 1999) says “No instruments.” Period.
While one might expect an unlistenable experimental horror
show from an instrument-free record that features a knowing
Metal Machine Music nod on its cover, Vitamin W actually
manages to steer well clear of the noise-for-noise’s-sake
aesthetic on The Love Drug, instead producing a surprisingly
accessible collection of sounds and songs from his battery
of blasted and reconstructed loops, samples, snippets, fragments,
bits and bytes.
An electronic symphony of sorts, The Love Drug features
two major movements (“Prog Slaughter” and “Nightmare in the
Morrison Hotel”), each subdivided into smaller component elements.
“Prog Slaughter” lives up to its name, with four tracks that
thresh King Crimson (’80s version)- flavored licks through
filters of punk-rock noise, college guitar rock, ’60s folk
and primitive Kraftwerkian electropop, carving the prog out
altogether and dropping it on the studio floor, leaving nothing
but lean muscle to glisten on its musical meathooks. “Nightmare
in the Morrison Hotel” is also pretty much exactly what it
says it is: three tracks from the Doors’ greatest album, sampled,
blown up, and rebuilt from the few pieces that could be scraped
off the floor, some of them with bits of wet and matted prog
stuck to them. If you like the Residents’ Third Reich and
Roll, then you’re likely to love this piece.
One track on The Love Drug merits particular mention:
The beautiful and resonant “Cybercreep” (part three of “Prog
Slaughter”) plays like the theme to a film that doesn’t exist
(yet), with dread, longing, fear, flight, loneliness and the
comfort that connection brings all perfectly, heartbreakingly
conveyed through music—all in under five minutes. No instruments,
indeed, but a whole lotta musical power, and who cares how
it’s made when that’s the end result?
—J.
Eric Smith
 The
Raveonettes
Whip
It On (Columbia)
What is it about Danes and rules? The Danish film movement
Dogme 95 has myriad self-imposed strictures about how to make
a film. The Danish garage band the Raveonettes created a set
of songs specifically written in the key of B-flat minor for
their debut disc, and worked with rules about what percussion
sounds would be permitted. Whatever works—Dogme 95 has produced
half a dozen classic films, and the Raveonettes have made
one of the more entertaining avant-garage discs since the
days of the Jesus and Mary Chain.
The guitar-based sound is, as one would expect, layer upon
layer of noise: Band mastermind Sune Rose Wagner mixes together
crunching, buzzing, slashing and twanging effects. But while
this is, on its face, oh-so-arty, the sound is put in service
of songs that are propulsive and, more often than not, catchy.
While the dirgelike “Bowels of the Beast” is a nod to Black
Sabbath (with sleigh bells thrown in for absurd contrast),
most of the tunes move. The fast-and-even-faster tracks
“Cops on Our Tail” and “Beat City” glamorize a highway death
trip as a cool fashion turn. (They’re not about looking for
help; they’re about looking good.) “My Tornado” is a slinky
welcome-to-my-fucked-up-world statement of purpose. Wagner
and his bandmate Sharin Foo—a student of world music who seems
to have contributed some of the more exotic accents to the
album—are upfront about the band’s various put-ons. It’s shallow,
but appealingly shallow.
The Raveonettes are also concise: The disc is less than half
an hour long. They promise that their next album will be recorded
in “Booming B-flat Major.” I can’t wait.
—Shawn
Stone
Dan
Jones
One Man Submarine
(Leisure King)
Dan Jones didn’t start performing live until he was almost
30. Now, a half-dozen years later, comes his debut album,
sporting a breadth and depth of someone, well, in their mid-’30s.
His experience playing covers by everyone from Hüsker Dü to
Roger Miller has led Jones to a sound and songs that land
somewhere betwixt those two pillars. Lyrically, he’s got an
eye for detail that makes a song like “Death’s Head Bar” a
wistful reverie of lost youth, as he describes the sort of
club we all remember having been in at some time. Most of
the more rocking songs feature his band, the Squids, who play
with fury and flair. Elsewhere, quieter numbers sport inventive
arrangements that owe their resilience to pop rather than
folk. Two other things warrant mention, one musical the other
trivia: 1) Dustin Lanker’s piano on “Phogna Bologna,” and
2) the Leisure King label is owned by Jerry Garcia’s daughter.
—David
Greenberger
 The
Jayhawks
Rainy Day Music (American/Lost
Highway)
Rainy Day Music has been heralded as a return to the Jayhawks’
more rootsy foundations, but that’s not altogether accurate.
Certainly the album finds the group pulling back from the
grandiose popcraft of 2000’s Smile. But Rainy Day
Music locates its muse in featherweight ‘70s rock—a disturbing
trend, if this album and the recent release by almost-supergroup
the Thorns (Matthew Sweet plus quick-burn has-beens Shawn
Mullins and Pete Droge) are any indication. In terms of influence,
it seems Crosby, Stills and Nash are to 2003 what Brian Wilson
was to the late ‘90s. Not a good thing, particularly since
Jayhawk Gary Louris been turning out tunes that CSN can only
dream of for well over a decade.
The Jayhawks certainly aren’t shying away from the above comparison;
in fact, the vocal meld often seems aimed point-blank in that
direction, with Chris Stills (yes, son of Stills) and Matthew
Sweet often sugaring up the multi-tiered harmonies. “Madman”
in particular will bring a tear to the eye of those pot-addled
baby-boomers who see CSN(Y), Poco, and the early Eagles as
a cultural benchmark. (True to form, Bernie Leadon, from Eagles
version 1.0, makes an appearance.)
Louris’ songwriting brilliance still shines, though, even
if this album finds him somewhat more pastoral and elegiac
than usual. “Save It for a Rainy Day” and the stunning “Angelyne”
are pure bolts of Louris’ incredible melodic sensibilities,
while Jayhawk drummer Tim O’Reagan and longtime bass-player
Marc Perlman also chip in with some strong tracks. (O’Reagan’s
“Tampa to Tulsa” and Perlman’s “Will I See You in Heaven”
particularly glow.) Nevertheless, money is better spent on
the recent deluxe reissue of the Jayhawks’ debut, 1989’s Blue
Earth, which documents some of the magic made before co-leader
Mark Olson split for an idyllic Americana existence in the
Joshua Tree desert. And while 2000’s Smile may have
been spotty, its many high points are well above anything
achieved here.
—Erik
Hage
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