JACKPOT! HAPPY MONDAYS SURGERY Pills 'N' Thrills and Bellyaches Nationwide (Elektra) (Amphetamine Reptile)
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245 Great Neck Road, 3rd Fl. Great Neck, NY 11021 Established 1978 NEW MUSIC REPORT Vol. 24 No. 12, Issue #215 December 7, 1990 JACKPOT! HAPPY MONDAYS SURGERY Pills 'N' Thrills And Bellyaches Nationwide (Elektra) (Amphetamine Reptile) SURGERY 1. qe NATIONWItE t. -101e EITHER/ ORCIIESTRA T h e II a If- Life o f esi re RUN-D.M.C. EITHER/ORCHESTRA Back From Hell The Half Life Of Desire (Profile) (Accurate) • Charlatans UK still #1 in US 4> Happy Mondays #1 Radio Breakthrough 4> Buffalo Tom, Connells Break Top 10 e Cure Remixes Top Retail SURE THING! • Slayer #1 Louc Rock FUTURES RENEGADE 985 reports SUDDENLY TAMMY SOUNDWAVE Office 516-466-6000 0 • Reports 516-466-7111 • Fax 516-466-7159 N THE COVER t A 11) 0 • Essential new music as chosen by CMJ's editorial staff HAPPY MONDAYS SURGERY Pills 'N' Thrills And Bellyaches Nationwide (Elektra, 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New (Amphetamine Reptile, 2541 Nicollet York, NY 10019) Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN The most significant quality of a band that's trying 554041919-932-5256) to establish itself is the ability to progress from NY fave Surgery has improved their ways and album to album, building on its original themes their means most considerably since their 7" debut and musical ideas. Well, the pill-poppin' papas of a year ago, and since the 12" they've brought the overexposed, overabused Manchester scene, forth as well. Originally the four had little pa- the Happy Mondays, have shown themselves tience for anything but ultra-loud, ultra-distorted here, on their third LP foray, to be more forward- hate vibrations—hearty, but not drastically dif- thinking, diverse and downright interesting than ferent from what slews of guitar-toting New most would have imagined from previous dour ef- Yorkers had in mind. They haven't entirely ditched forts. With the producing, arranging and mixing basic scowling, mid-tempo, two-minute guitar- help of super Brit DJ Paul Oakenfold and Steve grime, but it's the deviations thereof that make Osbourne, the Mondays have pushed their Surgery noticeable from their pals. To be more musical base from simple looping rhythms 'n specific, when they slow down and drone out guitar to include hip-hop, clip-clop beats and ("Drive-In Fever"), or trot out the slide guitar, the more melodic, catchy riffs from guitarist Mark surliness and malingering tendencies of the band Day. A strike many had against the ensemble was turn more genuine, Sean McDonnell's Novocaine a lack of focus in songwriting, but on Pills, lead growl the very depiction of sullen, Scott Kleber's warbler/writer Shaun Ryder brings a host of guitar spittin' the blues whenever it's allowed disparate and enticing images to play—"Someone room. When Surgery lets itself ramble on for a somewhere swam between your knees" comes bit, it does more to ratify a Blue-ish constitution from his trumped-up persona of "God's Cop"; "I for urban pseudo-intellectual trash than would a had to crucify some brother today" from the more conventional combo—Nrationwide's just enigmatic, hooky "Kinky Afro" ; and the "I smell as full of ferocious fed-upedness as has been dope/I smell dope/I smell dope" chant weaves espoused before, but with its own dialect. King through the "Holiday" bust. Perhaps the most crawlers: "Breeding," "Drive In Fever," "Bron - ironic part of the LP is the similar playfulness of to" and "Caveman." both "Grandbag's Funeral" and "Holiday"—a band that can connect the morbid with the cheer- ful with such ease deserves either drug rehab or hearty kudos (or both). RUN-D.M.C. EITHER/ORCHESTRA Back From Hell The Half Life Of Desire (Profile, 740 Broadway, New York, NY (Accurate, P.O. Box 390115, Cambridge, 10003/212-529-2600) MA, 021391617-354-4309) Few fields of entertainment (except maybe Take the brainy, bright, Knitting Factory-esque prizefighting) rival the lot of the rapper in terms of jazz of this large Bostonian ensemble, a few astute sheer career brevity—a year or two in the lights, original tunes, a hybrid arrangement of two near- a few hits, money, fame, fortune, notoriety, and standards, a left-field art-rock cover tune, and the then suddenly, you're over and out, thrown out odd pioneering fusionary chart, and imbue all the like an empty bottle of Brass Monkey or last above with the undeniably magic resonances of year's pair of Filas. Still, the fact that these guys the confines of Rudy Van Gelder's studio, and the hung out way back with Mike Tyson during his results are bound to be intriguing. Pardon our seemingly unstoppable heyday, and contributed to divergent metaphors, but it's truly difficult to the soundtrack of—eeeeuw—the last Ghostbusters describe such varied and undeniable music without epic shouldn't necessarily damn these guys to has- pointing out how effortlessly the twain of their in- been status or, at the worst, utter irrelevance. Just fluences and sounds meet up: From the word go, one quick listen through side one of Back From the Either/Orchestra can be slinking Mancini-esque Hell ("The Ave.," "What's It All About" and through slow, seductive passages full of intrigue "Faces" stand out) shows that the Kings Of Rock and Ellingtonian poise, and then next they're may be older and wiser, but that older and wiser blowing full tilt like they're trying to get the roof don't necessarily mean slower, less relevant or of the bandstand to collapse on their very heads. hard-hitting. Two years is (ahem) a hell of a long Sometimes it's almost as if, musically speaking, time to go in rap without releasing a record, but if two roads diverged in the woods and half the anybody could pull off the near-impossible, it band took the path straight ahead, while the other would be al' Run, D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay. players forked to the far left, and their music is Comeback? It's like they've never even been somewhere further down where the two trails sud- away—face it, these guys were making records denly cross again—better, richer, both reverential when most of today's rappers were still in diapers. and delightfully unpredictable all at the same time. Either try "Strange Meridian," "He Who Hesitates" or "Circle In The Round/I Got It Bad," or their innovative arrangement of Robert Fripp's "Red." CMJ NEW MUSIC REPORT DEC. 7,1990 1,1990 the darling buds it makes no difference alittle grit, alittle glom, ane alot of guitar. from the albLm Wye ".rawdaddy " oyais producec by stephen street. it mak9s no difference ...or does it? U S Representation . Siddons & Associates Worldwide Management: Richard Hermitage on colunibia. "Columbia" Reg. US Pat & Tm. Off Marca Registrada 1990 Sony Music Entertainment Inc 411( -ineee JACKPOT! simple, lamp-lit lyrics lament the passing of time and reflect upon life without ever fall- ing for pitfalls of the '90s—no corny tooth- less Pogues-isms or pointless, quirky RUM Camper Van Eclecticisms hiding in here— Wilk just a cellarfull of celebratory rogue melodies. Songs like "No One's Illegal," "Angel From Montgomery," or "Laughin Babies" are as sweet as butter from a REPORTING DATES churn, and swing as low as anything Shane and his men ever brewed. RADIO AND SPECIALTY (Hard RocklNew World/Retail/ Beat BoxlJazz) (Monday-Tuesday) Dec. 3-4 Dec. 17-18 Dec. 10-11 Jan. 7-8 DUSTDEVILS Struggling, Electric + Chemical (Teenbeat, do Matador, 611 Broadway, Suite 712, New DIALOGUE York, NY 100121212-995-5882)— (By fax or mail) At a time when a lot of NY rock-types are (Monday, 6 p.m. EDT) busy making music that's idiosyncratic or confrontational or completely personal or Dec. 3 Dec. 31 experimental, none of it's really new. Since Dec. 10 Jan. 7 we don't remember the Dustdevils them- Reporting Line: 516-466-71 11 selves claiming use of unprecendented Fax: 516-466-7159 methods, we'll start off by saying that they Reporting Hours: 12:00 p.m. -6:00 p.m. EDT get further at bringing pure poetics out of intense noise than anyone else whose will- to-power stems from outer tunings and ex- ADVERTISING DEADLINES cess amping. After seven years moaning DANIELLE DAX Blast The Human and blaring both in England and NYC, the Flower (Sire, do Warner Bros., (Camera-ready) Dustdevils plumb masterful extremes, from 3300 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA #217 (Dec. 21 issue): Dec. 6 heart-catching little details to mountainous 91505)—Brit denizen Danielle Dax is a lot ranges of acrobatic pickings and pedal- more than she seems on the surface. Dance pushing, guitars and vocals colliding like music is her style, but her background as a CERTAIN DAMAGE meteorites all over the record. With the performance artist helps to add a more Dustdevils, timing is everything, as the band dramatic and provocative touch to these #32: Masters due Dec. 11 breaks into isolated rhythms of torment, beat-heavy songs—her second domestic col- Street Date: Jan, 7 then comes together in a unified rage, each lection utilizes real guitars and strings for a instrument clearly audible in its atonal and sound that's purer than most artists in this alienated fury. Struggling perfectly genre. Produced by Stephen Street (Smiths), simulates that feeling of one's brain cells Dax defies expectations, her trippy cover fizzing like Pop Rocks, and then your minds of the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows," STAFF split open to: "Hip Priest," "Love You Like complete with Talking Heads samples, set- A Rock" and "Slope." ting the quick pace and edgy mood early.