'Home Is Bentley's Return to Radio- Ready Sonics, but Bentley Inhabits

DECEMBER 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM REVIEWS HOLE DNobody’sIERKS BENTLEY Daughter [Universal] Home [Capitol Nashville] The first album released under the Hole moniker since 1998’s Celebrity Skin is really frontwoman Courtney Love’sContemporary country success is often about establishing a persona and second solo album—co-founder,then reiterating it at every turn. Become the “I’m from the country” guy, the songwriter and lead guitarist Eric Erlandson isn’t involved,“I love America” guy, the “I love to party” guy or the “I’m free to party in the nor is any other previous Hole member. So it’s Love andcountry three ’cause I live in America” guy and hammer that home. Dierks Bentley ringers on 11 new songs—10 of which Love wroteis with a big-tent, big-idea exception to all that. He’s comfortable on stages with collaborators like Billy Corgan,bluegrass Linda legends Perry and Delnew McCoury and Sam Bush or rock luminaries like the guitarist Micko Larkin. (Perry gets full credit on one tune, “Letter to God.”) Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, and he knowingly knocked himself off country Much of the riveting intensity of the group’s 1990s heyday appears to haveradio left alongplaylists with with her former 2010’s Daniel Jackson rootsy, acoustic-based Up on the Ridge. Home bandmates, but there are fl ashes here of the snarling Too often, though, the slower songs trip her up. While once fury Love deployed to suchis Bentley’sdevastating effectreturn back to in radio-ready the day. they sonics, were showcases but Bentley for harrowing inhabits displays that of nakedterritory emotion, She spits out her vocals withoutwith vengeful pandering disdain on or“Skinny dumbing Little down.Love sounds It opens more withdispassionate the uptempo these days. romp The “Amproduction I Bitch,” overdriven guitars roiling atop an elastic bassline that doesn’t help—the songs have an airless, sanded-down feel that speeds up as the song theraces Only toward One” a climatic and pile-upis back-loaded at the doesn’t with fi t delightswith her visceral including persona. “When Courtney You Love’s Gonna tumultuous end. She shifts tempos and attitude on the more contemplative history suggests that she has a compelling story to tell, and “Pacifi c Coast Highway,”Come taking stock Around” as layers (a of lovely acoustic duet and withperhaps Little she Big does. Town’s It’s just notKaren the one Fairchild) she’s telling and on Nobody’s the electric guitars chug along behind her. Daughter. –Eric R. Danton haunting closer “Thinking of You.” –Peter Cooper

COURT YARD HOUNDS A side project of new offering suggested that its creator was a few strides closer to Dixie Chicks’ Martie crafting something truly monumental in both musical and social terms. Court Yard Hounds Maguire and Emily This cold and private set isn’t it, although that’s probably due more to [Columbia] Robison, Court Yard personal circumstances than anything related to talent. Wainwright Hounds delivers wrote All Days Are Nights while his mother, Kate McGarrigle, was much-anticipated dying of cancer, and there is a quiet, complex sadness even in its insight—both musical and personal—into the sisters who have less autobiographical material. There’s nothing here except piano for so long ceded center stage to Chicks singer Natalie Maines. and vocal, and Wainwright doesn’t project his words in the way Though steeped in familiar instrumentation, the album offers little we’ve come to expect from him. Instead of serenading the person of the barn-burning brashness that made the Chicks famous (save in the farthest corner of a packed theater, he’s singing to himself in perhaps the gutsy “Ain’t No Son”). Instead, its delicate folk-pop an otherwise empty room. –David Styburski prettiness perfectly suits Robison’s more-than-capable voice and the jumble of emotions, sunny and melancholy, that emerge in a song Ozomatli’s music has been called a collision cycle inspired by her 2008 divorce. Maguire’s weeping fi ddle and OZOMATLI of styles, a cultural mash-up, and a 20-car seamless harmonies are welcome as always, and her one turn on pileup of genres. It’s also some of the most ‘Homelead vocals (“Gracefully”)is Bentley’s is so warmly affecting thatreturn listeners may to radio-joyfully energetic music you’ll ever hear. On wish she stepped to the mic more often. Court Yard Hounds ably its fi fth album, the L.A.-based band stirs its demonstrates that, whether with their fellow Dixie Chick or without, blend of salsa, ska, samba, funk, and hip-hop these ladies’ talent runs deep. –Katie Dodd in ways few groups could conceive. Imagine ready sonics, but Bentley inhabitsFire Away tossing the English Beat, Herb Alpert and the For a dozen years, the [Mercer Street/Downtown] Tijuana Brass, Caetano Veloso, and Sly and RUFUS arrangements on Rufus the Family Stone into a magical blender and Wainwright’s albums got you get some sense of Ozomatli’s eclectic approach. High points that territoryWAINWRIGHT withoutbusier and his sometimespandering on their latest, Fire or Away , include “Are You Ready?,” a horn-and- All Days Are Nights: Songs naughty, occasionally percussion-driven blast of salsa-fl avored ska; “Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah,” for Lulu angry declarations of gay an exultant Latin pop anthem fi tted with shrieking sax; and “Gay Vatos [Decca] dumbingpride gotdown.’ louder. Each in Love,” a rockabilly-tinged tune with a soaring chorus. Even when

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