Soundcheck

Various Artists


A Life Less Lived (3 1/2 stars)

Aptly for a genre celebrating death, sex, technology and all the inversions of those you can imagine, goth was born a Frankenstein creature, rising in black, but quickly adding bruised purple and red from the increasingly rote, blah ashes of punk. Stitched together by new digital technology—the trademark too-lush chorused guitars; strident Linn-drum tribal beats; and monster-sized digitally reverberated snare drums—it naturally incorporated an understanding/anxiety regarding the way AIDS had made death and sex interchangeable, how Reagan's Cold War brinksmanship and safety-net destruction made every day very possibly one's last.

Rhino's 53-song A Life Less Lived is valuable in all sorts of ways, especially to those who only know goth from Evanescence. The packaging is a hoot—a tome-like disc-holder bound in laced black leather—and the enclosed booklet highlighted by a Mick Mercer essay offers a terrific overview. But the other, fluffy essays and a section about "The Lighter Side of Goth" display both a continuing discomfort with and need to defend the genre (by contrast, few seem compelled to defend the silliness of assorted '60s ventures).

Anyway: the music. The first impression is one of near-awe at the sheer aesthetic span of the genre (mainly mined here from its early-to-late-'80s heyday). Cuts by Joy Division, Siouxie & The Banshees and Bauhaus highlight an any-time-but-now sensibility that looked back to Soviet-style frostiness, Weimar Cabaret-isms and neo-expressionist chiaroscuro for their catchy frissons.

The Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance mine Victorian atmosphere for their ethereal beauties, while Miranda Sex Garden gets downright medieval for its chorales and drones. Germany, once the epicenter of everything horrific, represents with Berlin's Xmal Deutschland and Einstürzende Neubauten's clanging, cacophonous rave-ups of post-industrial terror that find more streamlined variants in tracks by rote aggro-merchants such as Ministry and Skinny Puppy.

Great stuff, and tracks by lesser-lauded gloom-pop bands such as The March Violets and Rubicon offer discovery value even for the initiated. Still, with all the care lavished here, one wishes for some indication why—beyond what we've suggested—so many people felt so compelled during one particular time to find their release in such relentless creative despair. After all, goths love to complain, yet the central, fascinating issue of what they may have been complaining about is frustratingly kept in the shrouds of this otherwise excellent overview.

Keith Urban


Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing (4 stars)

Keith Urban's dirty blond scruffiness is the perfect picture for Top 40 country-pop radio. His backstory has Entertainment Tonight written all over it: Australian-born country-and-western star makes upbeat, nonedgy, radio-friendly songs, marries Nicole Kidman, goes to rehab to struggle with alcohol abuse. Now forget the People magazine stuff and listen to the music.

Urban obviously grew up listening to and falling in love with Dire Straits and Fleetwood Mac. Urban is an amazing lead guitar player and at times, you can hear the influence of Mark Knopfler and Lindsey Buckingham. On his newest CD, subtle hints of his boyhood heroes creep up here and there. Check out the Knopfler-esque guitar fluidity in "Used to the Pain" or the Buckingham-like acoustic picking in "Tu Compania."

The melodic melodramatics of "I Told You So" and "Everybody" sound like they could be leftovers from Fleetwood Mac's Say You Will. The guitar solo on "God Made Woman" shines, and steals the show here.

On the surface, Urban sounds like everybody else on country radio. But a closer listen will reward those nostalgic for the classic rock sounds of the '70s.

It's often said that The Who died with Keith Moon. Strange how a second casualty finally brought the band back to life.

Integral as John Entwistle's booming bass might have been to The Who's power-rock prescription, his fatal 2002 heart attack has meant just as much to the continued musical efforts of surviving mates Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey. After years spent extracting every cent from their group's once-worshipped name, the duo seems imbued with a worthy purpose for the first time since Moon's tragic 1978 overdose: silencing the chorus of loud voices questioning whether The Two really should have carried on as The Who.

Las Vegas got an early taste of the svelter Who's renewed potency barely 11 weeks after Entwistle's death, at an emotionally charged gig in the very Hard Rock Hotel where the "Ox" drew his last breath. Now, some four years later, we find the band channeling the same restless spirit on Endless Wire, The Who's first studio album since, amazingly, 1982's It's Hard.

Rekindled passion alone does not a successful record make, however, and emerging from a 24-year recording hibernation—interim solo projects or not—cannot be easy, even for a writer and producer as innately gifted as Townshend. Primo cuts like anti-zealotry anthem "A Man in a Purple Dress" and folky spiritual "Two Thousand Years" are counterbalanced by such misplaced buffoonery as the faux-"Baba O'Riley" intro to "Fragments" and Townshend's Tom Waits vocal parody on "In the Ether." The disc's second half, 10-part mini-opera "Wire & Glass," plays much the same way, steamrolling like The Who of old behind Daltrey's robust vocals on "Sound Round" and "Mirror Door," but detouring into awkward mushiness with "Unholy Trinity" and "Trilby's Piano."

Still, despite its uneven makeup, Endless Wire ultimately feels like something no Who album since Quadrophenia can boast: a statement, that The Who are back, at last, and worthy of our attention, for the first time in a long time.

Lindstrom


IT'S A FEEDELITY AFFAIR (3 1/2 stars)

electronic The first CD release proper from Norwegian dance architect and remixer extraordinaire Lindstrom is a collection of tracks dating back to 2003—a "greatest hits," as it were. The songs clock in at an average of six minutes apiece, and 10 of the 11 tracks are instrumentals (too bad; "Music in My Mind," the one with vocals, is a highlight). This music is often referred to as "space disco," which I initially just assumed was short form for "psychedelic," and though it sometimes is freaky and Floyd-like, I think "space" here also implies "spacious"; the sound is wide open, vast. The music breathes.

And yet, I wouldn't say it's exactly sparse or minimalist. There are echoes of other things all over the place, many of which happen concurrently. A noncomprehensive grocery list would include: bluesy guitar breaks, dub percussion, funk keyboard stabs, "I Feel Love" arpeggios, "Also Sprach Zarathustra" riffs, classic house piano hoedowns. There's nothing remarkable about this, of course, but for the fact that I hardly noticed any of these individual elements until the sixth or seventh listen. Lindstrom's music is so seamless, his "influences" so thoroughly absorbed into the mix, all this stuff just passed me right by.

Nellie McKay


PRETTY LITTLE HEAD (4 stars)

The 24-year-old New Yorker stunned critics and music fans two years ago with her acclaimed debut, Get Away From Me. Her follow-up sat in record-label limbo for more than a year before McKay left Columbia/Sony over creative differences—namely, she wanted to release a second double-disc set, and the label didn't. A tad self-indulgent, perhaps, but this precocious talent has the chops to back it up.

Pretty Little Head picks up where its predecessor left off, synthesizing pop, jazz, folk, rock and a even a touch of rap into a confounding, adventurous and often brilliant tour de force. McKay's still crooning and cooing like a Gen-Y Doris Day, but she has sharpened her caustic lyrical stylings, skewering pop culture and championing social activism as she positions herself as a younger, much more female version of Randy Newman.

The 23 cuts include catchy duets with Cyndi Lauper and k.d. lang, but she shines brightest on the languid, soulful "Long and Lazy River," the icy and powerful "There You Are in Me," and "Columbia is Bleeding," a dizzying rant on animal rights. With all she's taken on at such a young age (including starring in a Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera and producing Pretty Little Head after taking on—and defeating—the titans of the corporate music industry), you have to wonder if McKay's in over her head. But no matter how high she sets the bar, she keeps clearing it with room to spare.