Arizona Daily Wildcat
Thursday January 23, 2003
Tim Easton
Break Your Mother's Heart
Oh please! Oh please! Can we please have some more modern singer/songwriters? John Mayer, Norah Jones, Michelle Branch, Ryan Adams, David Gray and the new Beck are not enough. Consumers need more, more, more!
Well what about Tim Easton? Easton? Like the aluminum baseball bats? No, Easton like a wandering Ohioan whose voice sounds like Bob Dylan if he were a struggling street vagrant playing generic, quasi-Dylanesque acoustic cover tunes at a lonesome subway stop. Go on: Toss him a dollar. You know you want to.
Sing! Sing, Mr. Easton, about heartbreak, alcohol, desperation and that woman who done got up and left. Make sure you deliver these topics while you strum those slow, gentle chords and firmly walk the line between country and blues.
Gun! Get the gun! No! Wait. Listen to what Mr. Easton is singing. It's circling desperation and redemption. That piano/organ has some salvation qualities to it. That's right! It's life affirming.
For collectors of hole-in-the-wall barroom blues, Easton might be a welcome and sought-after item at the next convention.
For everyone else, Easton's rambling verses and unfocused, ambiguous lyrics should breeze over the general consciousness quite briskly. Note to Easton: If you're going to ape one of the greatest singer/songwriters of all time (Dyan), make sure he sounds like an influence and not a potential ticket to Creed-dom.
-Kevin Smith
Erasure
Other People's Songs
All that was old is new ÷ wave, that is. Erasure, the British new wave/pop duo, put together an entire album of covers. The result is far from what might be expected. The duo not only succeed in covering the classics, but they excel.
Songs starts out on a strong note, with a cover of Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill." Two later songs in particular also stand out. The first is Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love." Erasure puts a new wave stamp on it that makes you believe the song could have been first recorded in 1988. On first listen, you could almost compare its sound to A-Ha's great '80s hit "Take on Me." The King would be proud.
The second highlight of the album is a song that seems to be tailor-made for the two artists: "Video Killed the Radio Star," by the Buggles, the song that ushered in the MTV revolution.
Although Erasure didn't release its first album until 1986, this very well could have been one of their original tracks. Instead of having Andy Bell sing the lyrics, the duo synthesized a computer voice to achieve the high-pitched intonations of the original. The version is quite possibly better than the original.
The only down note on the album is "You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin'." It seems as if Bell is trying too hard to sound like one of the Righteous Brothers. The song is passable, but on an album with such strong entries, it lags behind.
Every artist that wants to do a cover should take their cue from Songs. It doesn't butcher the originals, and in some cases it makes them even better. Are you listening, Puffy?
÷Paul Iiams
Nas
God's Son
Out of tremendous pain can come gigantic achievements. On God's Son, Nas proves he is able to translate the death of his mother last year into one of the most powerful rap albums since then.
"Your mother's the closest thing to God that you'll ever have," Nas laments. The climax of the grieving process is "Dance," in which he yearns to (you guessed it) dance with his mom one last time.
The second half of this LP is probably not going to get a party started, unless you're at a wake. The other half, however, shows that Nas wasn't just staring at his sneakers the whole time.
The first batch of tracks are more upbeat than the others, featuring James Brown samples; Shady production; pinpoint reminiscence on B.I.G., Wu-Tang, Puffy and Jay-Z before they hit it big; and one of the most refreshing hip-hop songs in a while: "Made You Look." This tune is what a simple and pure rap song is supposed to sound like.
If this body of work represents Nas after a catastrophe, other MCs need to take notes on crisis management. Despite its sullen themes, this album is better than both discs of Jay's Blueprint 2 album put together because it is not tainted by plasticity. This is real hip-hop without the bubble gum shine, the way it's supposed to be.
-Kevin Smith
Garrison Starr
Songs From Take Off...
As more and more country singers attempt to make the move to pop, a new genre has emerged. It's not a bad thing, either. The new genre ÷ we'll call it popabilly ÷ opens up artists to a much wider audience.
It has worked for Garth, Shania, Faith and Tim, and will eventually work for many others. But something strange is happening to the genre, something unexpected: Artists from the pop side are moving into it too.
This arrival into a not-quite-pop, not-quite-country area is a risky one to do from the pop side, but Garrison Starr has taken this risky maneuver.
The songs that comprise Landing are all cut from the same cloth, all emotional ballads that would be at home on an adult contemporary station or in Nashville. Well, maybe Branson, Mo.
Starr accomplishes what she is aiming for with this album. That being said, the album can be best described as boring. Every song is the same. Oh sure, there are subtle differences like lyrics, but that is about it. If you hear one song, you have heard them all.
The songs seem to drag on after a while, also. The shortest song comes in at just over three minutes, while the longest lasts upwards of three weeks, or so it seems.
What Starr needs to do is change things up a little. In this society of the short attention span, having 13 songs that sound very similar is akin to career suicide. Variety is the spice of life, and it is also the life of music.
÷Paul Iiams
Solsbury Hill
