FRI 30 JAN 2004
The Vault: Ani, Vanderslice rock with new albums
Floetry: “Floacism Live”
By Jon RossArgonaut Staff
At the heart of Floetry’s music is a solid, steady groove. Unfortunately, the groove is the only thing that remains constant.
The European duo’s latest release, the two-disc “Floacism ‘Live,’ ” documents a performance at the House of Blues in audio and video form. The addition of three unreleased studio tracks provides the listener with an accurate assessment of Floetry’s musical abilities.
Natalie Stewart and Marsha Ambrosius, dubbed the Floacist and the Songstress, mix hip-hop grooves with shatteringly high vocals and spoken word. The vocals are backed by catchy hip-hop grooves that aid the flow of the words. This juxtaposition can either create a tight musical force or a self-indulgent disaster.
The live songs feature extended singing by the Songstress. This would not be a problem, but she insists on pushing the limit of her vocal abilities. As she ascends her range, her normally rich voice gets smaller and shrill.
This reduction of her vocal quality is most clearly evidenced on “Opera,” a song about meeting a guy at an opera, which makes her hit high notes. At the end of the song, the Songstress takes center stage and stuns the audience with a solo that at times sounds a bit painful.
After she wanders around in the stratosphere for a while, she stumbles into the “Inspector Gadget” theme song. “Gadget” moves aside to make way for an exploration in embellishments that finally arrives at the habanera melody from Bizet’s “Carmen.” It’s a unique thought process, but in the end it doesn’t add anything to the song and comes off as misguided screaming.
Floetry’s lyrical stylings, while not exactly Shakespearean sonnets, do have a nice rhythmic drive. Song lyrics center on love and contain flowing poetry like “electromagnetic kisses on your bare skin” and “selected, injected, digested and nurtured.” All of the lyrics are written by the duo, and it is obvious they are investing a lot of personal emotions into the songs.
Overall, the CD comes up short. The bad vocal decisions that litter the album far outweigh the poetic groove of the studio tracks. A retool of their live sound might be in order, or maybe Floetry should just stay in the recording booth.
John Vanderslice: “Cellar Door”
By Chris MartinArgonaut Staff
You know how they say, “You’ll know it when you get there?” or “I can’t describe it, it just is?” The subject of these questions is not love, instinct or any carnal desire. The subject is musical evolution, which must be what I just heard in “Cellar Door” by John Vanderslice.
“Cellar Door,” Vanderslice’s fourth major release under Barsuk Records, is the sum of more than 400 hours of studio time and an ungodly amount of blood, sweat and tears.
Adjectives aside — and hyperbole notwithstanding — “Cellar Door” is a masterful cohesion of convention and experiment. Some of the cameo stars on “Cellar Door” include Death Cab for Cutie, Beulah, Creeper Lagoon, Mark Kozelek/Red House Painters, Stratford 4 and Third Eye Blind. The artists come and go, but the music refuses to leave you once it stops.
Perhaps Vanderslice is the musical equivalent to David Lynch as a movie director, except here it’s not necessary to understand the words to appreciate the music; Vanderslice’s words are narrative, hypnotic and inventive. Vanderslice makes the irregular regular and the visionary visible, and he does it without bogging down the narratives in his lyrics.
“Cellar Door” is comparable to something in the line of Steely Dan, Radiohead or even Coldplay at times, though it manages not to be too much of any of these. He mixes poetic narrative into an emotional flow of sound and rhythm, often using his trademark tape-saturation and distortion to heighten the mood of his songs.
The album starts upbeat with “Pale Horse,” but once you get to “Up above the Sea” you can indeed hear much electronica influence mixed with his pop style — his choruses begins to sound like Nine Inch Nails at times, if you were to put Neil Young as its lead singer.
“They Won’t Let Me Run” is strikingly beautiful, but my favorite has to be the powerful “Heated Pool and Bar.” There’s a story behind each song. To find his deeper meaning will require some digging and is entirely up to the listener. For instance, I listened to the whole album once without comprehending many of Vanderslice’s lyrics, but twice through I began to notice the tiny important details that seized my interest.
Very few pop vocalists/instrumentalists before have constructed such a wonderfully surreal journey of musical ambition as John Vanderslice, but hopefully he will find a place in the CD cases of many listeners. A fantastic pick.
Ani DiFranco: “Educated Guess”
By Brian PasseyEditor in Chief
On Ani DiFranco’s 16th album, “Educated Guess,” she finally masters the jazzy folk fusion she explored on her last few albums, and she does it all by herself. She sings, or speaks, all the parts, plays all the instruments and even handedly did all the recording and mixing.
The jazziness is only in the rhythm and her vocal melodies, while the instrumentation is still the punk/folk acoustic guitar she has employed since her 1990 debut album. Her eclectic voice is just as enticing as ever as she warbles, yelps and smoothly muses her way through 14 tracks.
The lyrical subject matter of “Educated Guess” is pure Ani and some of her best. She explores favorite topics such as feminism (“I am an all-powerful Amazon warrior / not just some sniveling girl” from “Origami”), politics and sometimes both.
Her most powerful song lyrically and musically is a message that could be considered un-American by many, but shows a more open-minded link between patriotism and dissent. “Aggression begets aggression / it’s a very simple lesson,” she sings mid-album in “Animal.”
She continues some of her best lyrical poetry — particularly significant in these days of Rumsfield and Ashcroft — as she sings, “And there’s this brutal imperial power / that my passport says I represent / but it will never represent where my heart lives / only vaguely where it went.”
She combines the topics of feminism and patriotic dissent in the spoken-word “Grand Canyon” (beginning with, “I love my country / by which I mean I am indebted joyfully / to all the people throughout its history / who have fought the government to make right” and later asking, “Why can’t all decent men and women / call themselves feminists?”).
She does stray from her politicizing to embark on some lyrically simpler songs, like “You Each Time,” where the jazz tinges her vocals to truly sparkle alongside the tender guitar meanderings.
The album overall is a perfect blend of quaint melody, rolling rhythms and thought-provoking lyrics, proving DiFranco has finally perfected her newer musical style without losing her distinctive voice.
Schedule for Eastside Cinemas
“The Big Bounce” — PG-13 (12:50) (2:55) 5, 7:05, 9:10 p.m.“You Got Served” — PG-13 (12:40) (2:50) 5, 7:10, 9:20 p.m.
“Mystic River” R (12:25) — (3:20) 6:15, 9:10 p.m.
“The Butterfly Effect” — R (noon) (2:25) 4:50, 7:15, 9:40 p.m.
“Master and Commander” — PG-13 (2:30) 9:30 p.m.
“Cheaper By The Dozen” — PG (12:20) 5:10, 7:20 p.m.
U4 Cinema Schedule
“Return of the King” — PG-13 (2:45) and 7 p.m.“Big Fish” — PG-13 (1), 4, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.
“Torque” — PG-13 (1), (4), 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.
“Along Came Polly” — PG-13 (1), 4, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.
Showtimes in ( ) are for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday only.
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