vain, selfish & lazy.

Thursday, November 30, 2000

JENNIFER LOPEZ - "LOVE DON'T COST A THING"
the biggest misnomer of 1999 was "latin-pop." sure, the artists who made the music were of latin descent, but that's akin to saying that all music made by teens is teen-pop. the king and queen of latin-pop in 1999 were ricky martin and jennifer lopez, and both have returned in 2000 with new product. martin's "livin' la vida loca," credited with kicking off the "explosion," has more in common with smashmouth's retro-pop than with, say, jose feliciano. however, he recovered this year and released "she bangs" and the curiously good sound loaded album, suggesting that his last album -- his first in english -- was just his way of getting his foot in the door so he could do what he did with his spanish-language albums: namely, making people shake their bon-bons to his spicy, salsa-fied beats. now that lopez has released a single, perhaps she too has atoned for her the sin that was her on the 6 album. after all, even though she says she started out singing, she's best known as an actress so, who knows, maybe she went the easy route with the last album so she could get a large audience to accept her as a singer. stranger things have happened, right?

well, you probably won't be surprised to learn that this isn't the case. jennifer seems more interested in the fame that singing brings rather than in taking this opportunity to celebrate the music of her ancestral home, puerto rico. (i mean, at least you could spot latin influences, no matter how small in martin's singles; lopez merely had a salsa break in the video version of "if you had my love," and it basically served as an excuse for her to shake that ass of hers.) "love don't cost a thing" sounds like "if you had my love" produced to sound like a destiny's child song, with a hint of toni braxton's "he wasn't man enough": simply put, staid r&b. if it's not the work of rodney jerkins, then he can breathe a sigh of relief because there's someone worse than him out there. at the very least, jennifer not only sings these songs but she lives them: the track's message of loving someone despite their lack of material things is mirrored in lopez's own life as she dates the poor but devastatingly handsome sean combs. if it's possible to be less infectious than "if you had my love," this song achieves it, and it will very likely be the most inexplicable hit since that song. AND THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT.
-fred solinger | steal this link! | discuss

solinger: the band: FACE POUNDING ROCK FROM DALLAS, TEXAS! WOO!! that's right, the band that has taken my last name as its own, and it delights me to no end that they make face pounding rock. rock on, fellas. rock on.
-fred solinger | steal this link! | discuss

LAMBCHOP - NIXON
nixon: don't let the name confuse you. when i first tried to review this album months and months ago, i tried to come up with an angle that would draw parallels between it and the shamed-then-redeemed president the album is named after. now, at the end of the year with the inevitable lists making their way around, i decided that, title be damned, it's time to talk about what may very well be the album of the year as far as i'm concerned.

on opener "the old gold shoe," the listener's immersed in a soothing, string-laden ballad, setting the tone for most of this album, one that simmers but never boils. as one can quite literally hear the outside world being drowned out, lead singer kurt wagner turns up the voice in his head, his thoughts providing the most striking element of this album: the contrast between the smooth soul grooves of the music and the rather alienated and depressed tone of the lyrics. "i wish i could hear your radio tonight," he sings in the last line of the song, telling you all you need to know about where his head's at on this album.

on the surface, the album is warm and inviting, faultlessly arranged, calling to mind curtis mayfield's mellow moods, from the full-bodied sounds of his solo work to the relatively sparser music he made as a member of the impressions. the majority of this album makes for the year's most luxuriant listening, utterly disarming the listener and annihilating any thoughts of digging deeper before they're even formed in the mind. wagner does his best to discourage you as well, singing a great deal of the album in a swooping, incomprehensible falsetto that's all his own. despite all of this, the presence of lyrics in the album sleeve suggests that he wants to be heard, and what you find are lyrics that are as elliptical, fractured and inscrutable as the random thoughts one has running through their mind. one can make out enough fragments of them, however, to interpret what goes on his mind: crickets crying, folks dying, people doing each other harm, and that girl who's always just out of reach (of his two open arms).

it's hard to single out standout tracks on an album like this where the songs are meant to contribute to a mood, rather than work as self-contained pieces, but lead single "up with people" does its best to distinguish itself without troubling the album's flow. on this velvets-inspired two-chord romp, wagner sounds like the least likely singer to be backed by a gospel choir since damon albarn, but what he creates is a spirited, if confused (and confusing) anthem. the other tracks are very pleasing and, again, deceptively depressing silky soul workouts with fulsome horn and string sections and pips-styled backing vocals.

you may have noticed by now that the words "much of" and "mostly" and "the majority of" have made frequent appearances in this review, and there is, i assure you, good reason for that. nixon ends with two tracks that are fiercely different than anything else on the album. during my initial listenings of the album, i thought that the transition from sumptuous soul sounds to wintry landscapes was very abrupt, but now i find that there are hints of what's to come littered throughout the entire album: these tracks represent the album's bleak sentiments, stripped of their comforting backing. both "the petrified florist" and "the butcher boy" sound as if they'd be more at home on a nick cave album, but at the same time manage to make sense here. in these two songs, we uncover a mind stripped of its dreamy fantasies, stretched to its breaking point and forced to confront harsh realities, albeit in the melodramatic way we all are in our minds.

ultimately, nixon gives us a glance into a mind that teeters on the edge but finally seems to lose its balance, as the world around it goes from sweet to brutal. despite myself, it seems i've uncovered a parallel, just try not to think too hard about it for it may impede your enjoyment of this album: give it a leisurely listen and it's seemingly built for pleasure, a dinner-party album of the highest order, but if one listens carefully, they may find themselves unsettled. nixon warns us that it can all come crashing down at any second, a lesson the real nixon had to learn the hard way.
-fred solinger | steal this link! | discuss

Wednesday, November 29, 2000

backstreet's back at no. 1: but, with 1.6 million sales, they didn't top 'nsync. in fact, their album has only the third best opening this year, falling behind eminem as well. insert jokes about recounts here.
-fred solinger | steal this link! | discuss

Monday, November 27, 2000

blogvoices: i have to give it up to the folks who put together this pretty damn cool utility. if you look at the end of this post, next to "steal this link!", you'll see a text link that says "discuss." if you click on that link, you'll be able to (a) post a comment about a particular post and (b) check out other people's comments. (how do you know if others have commented? you'll see a number next to "discuss" and that's the number of replies.) pretty cool, eh?
-fred solinger | steal this link! | discuss

crouching tiger hidden dragon: this is the official website for the film of the same name. watching roger ebert last night, i saw clips from this film and what i saw was mind-blowing. it's a martial-arts film starring chow yun-fat and michelle yeoh and directed by ang lee. the fight scenes are choreographed by the same person who did the matrix. do yourself a favor and check out the trailer and then go see it on december 8 in theatres.
-fred solinger | steal this link! | discuss

albums reviews in twenty words or less: if you're getting paid to write reviews, it doesn't pay to be pithy. so, thankfully (?), i'm not getting paid for these.

ricky martin, sound loaded: sound? loaded. dense production more than compensates for skimpy tunes. hate the lyrics? then listen to them in spanish instead!

backstreet boys, black & blue: uptempo tracks form the missing link between bon jovi and expose'. abundance of "mature" ballads make this a disappointment, ultimately.

wu-tang clan, the w: spare production? more like production was spared on this album. a few good singles but too many tossed-off beats.

blur, the best of blur: oxymoron? no: one of the best compliations i've heard in a while; it's also the only blur album you need.

wilco, being there: the replacements cover exile on main street. add a dollop of psychedelia. your mileage may vary.
-fred solinger | steal this link! | discuss