Featured attraction
Supergroups seldom live up to expectations, and the music they make usually adds up to less than the egos involved. (Remember Blind Faith?) Here, however, is a happy exception featuring six country rockers on moonlighting breaks from their own bands: Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, the Jay-hawks' Gary Louris and Marc Perlman, Soul Asylum's Dan Murphy, Big Star's Jody Stephens, and Kraig Johnson of Run Westy Run. While such partnerships are usually short-lived, the Smogs are now on their third album. And as they did on 1992's On Golden Smog and Down by the Old Mainstream in 1996, they fill this CD with loads of good-time twang and harmony-rich tales of wounded spirits and romantic salvation. Despite the album's title, the only thing weird about these tunes is that they're so uniformly catchy with an easygoing, after-hours honky-tonk appeal.
Bottom Line: Endearing back-porch country rock
Cher (Warner Bros.)
Look out. The return of roller disco must be right around the corner. Cher is back with a new dance album, and it hearkens back to that epoch when prerecorded rhythms were known not as drum programs but, more aptly, as drum machines—unvarying, pounding, bloodless, mindless. Once again the numbing disco beat is a siren song to club kids everywhere—and a form of water torture to anyone else. But a change has come over Cher. Always of the Flat Earthers school of vocalists, she seems to have dropped a register or two. Although still boyish, Cher has now, apparently, hit puberty. When she adds histrionics and bombast to her wall of synthesized sound, as she does throughout on tunes like "Runaway" and the nicely titled anthem of middle-aged despair, "We All Sleep Alone," she sounds like Tom Jones on estrogen.
Bottom Line: If you like disco, she's got you, babe
Billy Ray Cyrus (Mercury)
Clint Eastwood eventually lived down all those spaghetti westerns, and Michael Jordan has overcome his baseball misadventure. No reason why Billy Ray shouldn't at last be forgiven for "Achy Breaky Heart," the 1992 novelty hit that Nashville mostly scorned. This solid, meat-and-potatoes country album should earn him redemption. (Its most distinctive cut is "Busy Man," a look at modern priorities written by Nashville veterans Bob Regan and George Teren: "Have you ever seen a headstone with these words, 'If only I had spent more time at work'?") Billy Ray is not the most gifted of country singers. But he proves himself an affable, hearty performer here, and more than just another smirky face.
Bottom Line: Country enough for any Nashville jukebox
Robert Palmer (Metro Blue)
Sonorous steel drums rumble in. A calypso rhythm marks time, hoping—perhaps—for Harry Belafonte to show up. Two versions of the title song, inspired by Zimbabwe's mbira rhythms, blend together. Dogs bark. Palmer seems to imitate bossa nova pioneer João Gilberto. A string section materializes. Stray melodies peek through. A woman's voice announces, with no context, "Two heads are better than one."
Those are just a few of the events packed into this chaotic, over-intellectualized album. Yes, this is the Palmer of such pop hits as "Addicted to Love" and "Simply Irresistible." It is also the Palmer who was born in England, raised on Malta, lived in the Bahamas for 12 years and seems determined to flaunt his familiarity with Brazilian samba, Nigerian juju, South African mbaqanga and 70 or 80 varieties of reggae. Unfortunately, he seems more intent on creating a one-man world music festival than on entertaining.
Bottom Line: Self-indulgent hodgepodge
>THE NEW YORKER OUT LOUD VOLUME II Various artists (Mouth Almighty/Mercury) Lit gets hip as rapper Chuck D, actress Suzy Amis and others read what is writ.
NO SECURITY The Rolling Stones (Virgin) Hoary but moss-free, the Stones get their ya-ya's out on this live album, with nice assists from Dave Matthews and Taj Mahal.
SOUL'S CORE Shawn Mullins (SMG/Columbia) The Atlanta troubadour joins the hit parade with his gem "Lullaby" now filling the radio airwaves.
- Contributors:
- Steve Dougherty,
- Ralph Novak.
VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE
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After Jaycee Dugard's rescue, a look at the cases of six young people who went missing in 2009
