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Riffs: New Sounds Making Waves
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S O U N D S | Riffs New Sounds Making Waves
by Adam Baer BareNaked
Back in the ’90s, Jennifer Love Hewitt was so consistently intoxicating as the hot-big-eyed-brunette-next-door-du-jour that my love for her almost even extended into what I now call the “Messianic Katie Holmes Epoch.” But that didn’t mean I had to like her TV show, Party of Five, or her subsequent foray into C-level cinema, for that matter. And it doesn’t mean now that I have to like her music (if you can call it that). BareNaked’s best feature is its cover shot which features JLH, well, barely naked. The music is so ripe, I can’t say I’d even talk to her if she sauntered up to me after a show. It’s got “wanna-be has-been” painted all over it: dumb-slow love songs, sadly forced attempts at hip-hop, and even some hippie-chick Alana improv. But its most problematic effect is that it could really affect JLH’s rep. I’m now afraid to buy Neutrogena products. How could they make me clean?
Bounce Just because The Sopranos has had us hot on New Jersey the past few years, it isn’t enough to OK the release of another Bon Jovi record. And yet that’s not what the bigwigs at Universal were thinking when they let Jon Bo-Jo reassemble his motley crue for this latest shot to our hearts. This time the Jersey hair-banders stole a page from countryman Bruce Springsteen and devoted some of Bounce’s songs to post 9/11 sentiments, such as what it feels like to be a Palestinian in a world that doesn’t love you. Oy, as my Jewish grandmother would say. Arena rock — and that’s all this new record really is, once you remove the sheen — is over. And the sooner these jokers learn their lesson, the better off we’ll all be. Sea Change
There’s nothing like a feature in The New Yorker magazine to kick-start a rocker’s career into the realm of the “worthwhile artist” (that is, if you’ve decided you’ll appeal to the kids or you won’t, but it’s the litwits who matter). And that’s exactly what the chameleonic anti-popster Beck got this past week for his latest release. The problem is I still don’t know what this guy’s about and being about nothing and somehow about everything at the same time went out with departure of Seinfeld. The most pervasive concept here is gloom and doom: The musical style is basically symphony orchestra meets new-age meets “ambient.” With the right marketing cats, Beck could even parlay this score into something worthy of Yanni. Buy it if you want to be hip; listen to it in an elevator. Twisted Angel
One girl most American red-blooded males wouldn’t mind being stuck in an elevator with is the new and improved LeAnn Rimes (sidebar: her clothes are painted on in this month’s Blender if country bumpkin skin-shots are what you’re into). Unfortunately “new and improved” doesn’t quite cut it as a description of her latest disc, which tries harder than anyone on the scene to steal the “bad girl label” off Christina A. It’s an age-old dilemma: You can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl. All Twisted Angel’s faux-sexy singles prove is that LeAnn’s getting absolutely nowhere without her hoot-a-nanny yelps and Justin-boot kicks. It Had to be You:
The only thing creepier than a new batch of Rod Stewart songs — “Have I told you lately that I loathe you?” — is perhaps a new batch of standards from the ’30s sung in his “Forever Young” rasp. Yet that’s where Stewart’s taking us on this CD with songs like “It Had to Be You” and “The Way You Look Tonight” arranged Catskills-style with a soupy orchestral background and lethargic vocal lines. Listening to this record, you start to think Stewart’s trying to be satirical; he sounds so insincere, so laughingly disconnected. I think this one may seal the deal on whether we ever want to hear his plodding tunes again. Adam Baer is PopPolitics” music editor. He is a music critic for the New York Sun and contributes to the New York Times Book Review, Travel & Leisure and other publications. |
