It's hard to imagine how an album that sounds as if it were recorded on an active airport runway could be captivating, but that's what this disc loudly achieves. Chief Nail Trent Reznor, who wrote and sings all the material, manages to hammer enough melody into the wall of techno-pop he has erected to produce a surprisingly palatable album. And while Reznor hasn't written a track on Spiral that will ever see a Billboard Top 40 chart, he has accomplished something far more impressive—composing a body of songs that is fresh, innovative and mercifully unlike most of the recycled '70s tunes cramming our radios. (Nothing/TVT/Interscope)
Katey Sagal
Though television and music careers don't often mix (see Don Johnson or Bruce Willis), that's not the case with the debut album by Katey Sagal, who plays Peg Bundy on Fox's Married...with Children. Sounding like Rita Coolidge's soul sister, Sagal, who cowrote nine of the 12 songs on Well...and performed as a backup singer for heavy hitters including Bette Midler, Bob Dylan and Etta James before becoming an actress, might be that rare TV star turned recording artist not to wind up in punch-line oblivion.
Though Well...is not all smooth sailing—a few songs drown in middle-of-the-road hokum—Sagal delivers cuts like "Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid" and "That's How Love Goes" with the soulful verve of a seasoned songbird. (The cliché police should have arrested those titles, though.) (Virgin)
Wild Colonials
Scottish singer Angela McCluskey has a husky voice that's made her a star at L.A.'s hippest nightspots. The debut album by her folk-rock quartet is likely to expand her fame.
McCluskey's earthy vocals enhance her group's Celtic-tinged original tunes. She trades melodies with her musicians as if their instruments were voices. On "Rainbow," violinist Paul Cantelon plays a bluegrass version of a love theme from Bizet's Carmen. McCluskey cuts him off with a rollicking chorus about a victim of midlife crisis "who forgot the need to kiss."
McCluskey writes most of the lively lyrics, including "Philadelphia Story," which honors a lover who's as suave as Cary Grant. This singer's multiple talents create a rare commodity—an album that is entertaining from beginning to end. (Geffen)
Morrissey
Someone forgot to tell Morrissey that sly, literate pop songs went out of vogue after the Cole Porter era. On his fifth solo album, the former front man for the Smiths delivers such treats as "Billy Budd," a love song that seems to be inspired by the similarly titled Melville novella, and "Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning," a passionately whispered morality tale about apathy.
As always, this British antihero's severely glum pose is full of ambiguity. It's unclear whether Morrissey is making an earnest confession or mocking himself when, on "Why Don't You Find Out for Yourself," he moans, "I've been stabbed in the back/So many times/ I don't have any skin."
Vauxhall and I sounds a little bland in comparison with the blasts of electric guitar and punchy rockabilly tunes on Morrissey's 1992 album, Your Arsenal. But the quieter folk-rock accompaniment and flowing melodies help achieve intended irony as Morrissey sings about his overwrought emotions. (Sire)
Booker T. and the MG's
Critics say soul music is dead, but not if Booker T. and the MG's have their way. As the house band at Stax Records, Booker T. and the MG's played on "Knock on Wood," "Soul Man" and dozens of other classics. On their own, they were the coolest, scoring hits like "Time Is Tight" and "Green Onions." Booker T. Jones's warm, panoramic organ, Steve Cropper's gut-bucket guitar and the rock-steady bass of Duck Dunn are the personification of soul. That's the Way It Should Be is the group's first album in 17 years, and the quartet slicks to the basics: solid, no-frills R&B. Their version of Ann Peebles's classic "I Can't Stand the Rain" smolders as the rhythm section creates a grinding groove that burrows under your skin. The good news is that the funk outweighs the duds, but the duds are doozies. "Camel Ride" is a leaden excursion to nowheresville, while a cover of Janet Jackson's ballad "Let's Wail Awhile" comes off like lite-jazz Muzak. But soul is a rare commodity, so even with the goofs, if That's the Way It Should Be ain't vintage Booker T. and the MG's, it still sounds mighty sweet. (Columbia)
- Contributors:
- Peter Castro,
- Jeremy Helligar,
- Michael Small,
- Amy Linden.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
