Sounds

S O U N D S  | Riffs

New Sounds Making Waves:
9.02

Well, it could be worse: Someone like Sting could have a done the 9/11 elegy album — all full of prep-school summer reading references, archly raised eyebrows and consciousness, and square-jawed English gravitas. If these things have to happen, they’re best left to the Boss — all full of workingman’s ruminations, actual if nudging humility, and square-jawed New Jersey gravitas.

These songs are sympathy cards — some more articulate and on-target than others, some obliging and stiff, and none that you can bring yourself to throw out because it’s the thought that counts. If the sympathy’s not addressed to you, don’t worry. Turning "The Rising" up in your car and getting misty and patriotic won’t make you a Republican. But it might make you a vulture. Springsteen really has let the event do all the work; it’s not the music that brings the goosebumps, it’s our obligation to feel them.

His reliance on old formulas veers toward the nondescript filler of John Mellencamp and Tom Petty and, well, Bruce Springsteen — songwriters who at their best are so harmonically economical that they ration chords like a precious resource, and at their worst squander it. Had these generically rousing songs been intended to score the slow-motion previews of headline-ripped NBC prime-time dramas, they’d be perfect, but Bruce clearly wanted more. Maybe he should have just released "My City of Ruins" with a B-side song-length moment of silence, and left it at that.

So maybe they should start calling themselves Roasted Red Peppers With Herbs or something — not because it’s, like, totally a drug reference, but because they seem to have gone officially gourmet. This follow-up to the hugely successful Californication has plenty of artisanal ingredients, deceptive simplicity, a little harmonic adventure, and a lot of prettiness.

Sure, the punk/funk roots remain (on occasion, they go out of their way to prove it), including the best thing this band ever had: that Chili Peppers way of seeming utterly, even naively, unguarded. Without fear of slow movement, open spaces or poppy vocal harmonies, and with the tender loving care of Rick Rubin’s production, they press on. The songs get better with familiarity, and they’re so catchy that familiarity comes easily. One problem: If we throw away our television, how will we see the videos?

Rush’s first batch of songs in five years is fat, happy and hopelessly square. That used to work for Canada’s premier power trio, who at the top of their game gave us great rocking think-pieces like "The Spirit of Radio," "Limelight" and, of course, "Tom Sawyer." We can’t be modern day warriors forever.

It’s always impressive to hear such a big sound, such rich, inky textures, from only three guys; less impressive is the iffy musicality. The whole tonal/metrical pastiche thing hasn’t held up, and good ideas seem truncated here to make room for bad ones. One senses words written first, melody be damned, and wedged into the crannies of variously compelling riffs and hooks. At least Neil Peart (who suffered enough personal tragedy in recent years to be forgiven for retirement) has retreated from groansome politically correct lyrics back to groansome meta-poetical, nonsensical abstractions.

Peart and Geddy Lee still command their instruments better than many, and Alex Lifeson still commands signal processing like it’s an instrument in itself, but, um, so what? If this album gets a few 14-year-olds to open a pack of tarot cards, great –  that’s the heady, parent-spooking stuff that Rush became famous for. But only when they set it to ballsy, brooding riffs and truly declarative hard rock.

Here, on the other hand, is a band with seven guys (plus guests) who sound like three. Not to say that’s a bad thing. The playing on Hard Candy, though not technically dazzling, is perceptibly collaborative and expressive, and the melancholy surety of its arrangements and loping melodies should please fans. It’s music to get girls and lose them by.

Adam Duritz still does the postmodern-Byronic-singer-dude-with-cool-dreads-who-will-really-listen-and-maybe-get-you-some-good-pot thing better than anyone. (Who else is there?) Having perfected his angsty, sheeny whine, he sounds good, even if he seems to spend most of this album jabbering about how late it is and what the weather’s like in some city or other.

The title track, a fairly decent pop number, is alas more forgettable than resonant, but maybe more airplay will bully people into thinking otherwise. Other songs seem vaguely derivative, but one or two are almost perfectly realized, like the slow-burning shuffle "Good Time," so true to itself and its self-involvement. "Goodnight L.A.," another brooder-ballad, does the job, though the odd resemblance of its verse to "Send in the Clowns" taints the whole experience. Then again, maybe more oddities like that are just what this often humorless album needs.

Public Enemy, called one of the most important groups of all time by Bruce Springsteen, celebrates 15 wonderful years of pissed-off protest music, swinging as wild and hitting as hard as expected, and scorching some new ground. Revolverlution hammers out the usual m.o.: It’s critical, political and in your face; some of these rants are in the same key (none), but they all bring the beat back.

Without seeming nostalgic, "Fight the Power" (live) still evokes the historical flashpoint of its creation, ever-bound to the vivid, simmering imagery of "Do the Right Thing." "Gotta Give The Peeps What They Need" and "Put It Up" take on the state of the rap/hip-hop scene as ferociously as "Son of a Bush" takes on the state of the nation. (Imagine the possibilities: Chuck D. and George W. in a town-hall debate. Supporters on both sides asking, "Was that English?")

This album, only two-fifths of which is new material, does feel a bit bloated with fan-made re-mixes and live tracks — democratic and dynamic though they are, respectively. From a posse of iconoclasts, such inclusions are strangely conciliatory. It must be the secret to seeming marginal and mainstream at once.

Jonathan Kiefer lives in Berkeley, Calif. He has written for San Francisco magazine, Gadfly and the New York Times Book Review, among other publications.