At first listen, Gardener Darren Hayes sounds like an escapee from the boy zone. His sweet, high-range vocals and partner Daniel Jones's easy-listening, synth-built pop arrangements give this Australian duo a sound that could blend right in with the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync and the rest of the R&B teen bands that dominate the Top 40 with catchy but generic songs. Yet Hayes and Jones stand apart from the prepackaged crowd by the mere fact that they write and perform their own material—songs that actually appeal to grown-ups. On this sophomore album (the follow-up to their self-titled 1997 debut, with the smash single "Truly Madly Deeply"), the duo display a knowledge of good and evil ("Tonight I'm finding it hard to be your man," Hayes sings on "Hold Me") that would get them banished from some gardens.
Bottom Line: Smart pop that's not for teens only
Guns N' Roses (Geffen)
Had it not been for a few missing flannel shirts, roots in Hollywood instead of rain-soaked Seattle and an utter lack of self-righteousness, the Gunners might be remembered today as the first great grunge group. Like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the other up-coast rockers who came after them, Axl Rose, Slash and the boys mixed heavy metal, punk and crowd-pleasing power-pop hooks into an ear-blistering sonic blast. Topped by Axl's frantic, bleating vocals, Guns' best album, 1987's Appetite for Destruction, became one of the bestselling debut albums of all time. But self-Destruction was more like it, and the band ran out of ammo after only four studio albums of original material. Rose, who could compose songs of surpassing pop beauty ("Sweet Child o' Mine") and unsurpassed ugliness (the misogynist "Used to Love Her" is included here, along with hits like "Paradise City"; the racist "One in a Million," thankfully, is not), may have been a jerk. But he and his band could rock, as this two-hour-plus, 22-track double CD attests.
Bottom Line: Locked and loaded to rock
Aimee Mann (Reprise)
Album of the week
It was a demo copy of Mann's song "Deathly" ("Now that I've met you, would you object to never seeing each other again?") that inspired her friend, director Paul Thomas Anderson, to make Magnolia, the angst-laden, three-hour-plus film about interconnected lives in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley that's now playing in theaters. And while the soundtrack also includes a handful of songs performed by other artists, the star of this unorthodox but engaging collection is the underappreciated Mann, once of the '80s band out of Boston, 'Til Tuesday. Here, Mann sings—in her intense, Cher-meets-Gloria-Estefan style—eight of her own brooding compositions, as well as a haunting version of Harry Nilsson's "One." The exposure she gleans from this CD—and the movie—should help her attain a level of success more commensurate with her considerable talent.
Bottom Line: Music that blooms long after the film it inspired fades from memory
Larry Cordle and Lonesome Standard Time (Shell Point)
Most of this album is sprightly bluegrass material picked and sung by Nashville veteran Cordle and his nimble-fingered band. "Jesus and Bartenders" is a clever country tune—"They both know a man in trouble when they see one." And "Long Enough to Make Me Blue" is an appealingly lively lament. But the album's highlight is the title song, a bit of family criticism—rare in Nashville—in which Cordle mourns that "drums and rock and roll guitars" have killed good ol' country music. Cordle stops short of naming country stars who have crossed over to pop and rock; instead he chalks up the stampede to the lure of "the almighty dollar" and the "lust for worldwide fame. "Nobody saw him running from 16th Avenue," Cordle sings of the titular killer, alluding ironically to Nashville's famed Music Row, home to the record companies he accuses of abetting the sellout. Biting the hands that feed? Maybe, but it beats feeding greedily at the trough.
Bottom Line: Bluegrass band with a big-city sense of satire
>Kenny Chesney
Kenny Chesney built his career the old-fashioned way: mile by mile. Country music's latest singing cowboy has added to his fan base by crisscrossing the country a dozen times in the past six years with his four-piece band. The result? Each of his five albums, from his 1993 debut In My Wildest Dreams to his newest platinum-selling disc Everywhere We Go, has mustered ever-larger sales. "I really love that," says Chesney, 31, who has already booked more than 120 gigs for this year, "because it means people are getting into the music."
And buying it. The Luttrell, Tenn., native, who used to park cars when guitar-picking wouldn't pay the rent, struck musical gold earlier this year with the first two singles from Everywhere. Both "How Forever Feels"—only the third single in 22 years to stay atop Billboard's country music chart for six weeks—and "You Had Me at Hello," were No. 1 hits. The latter was written on a tour bus while Chesney was watching Jerry Maguire. "When Renée Zellweger said that line," he says, "I thought, 'That could be a great song.' "
Chesney, who is single and lives in Nashville, is learning about fame's perils. When officials put up road signs throughout his hometown that said, Home of the Country Star Kenny Chesney: Luttrell, Tenn., the signs were stolen the same day. His mother and grandmother weren't pleased. Says Chesney: "I told 'em, 'Don't worry, because somebody will appear with it in an autograph line and ask, 'Hey, can you sign this?' "
- Contributors:
- Steve Dougherty,
- Ralph Novak,
- Joseph V. Tirella.
