SOUNDCHECK

Lily Allen, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Good, The Bad and The Queen, Kristin Hersh, Deerhoof, Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Lily Allen


Alright, Still (4 stars)

2006 was a very good year for this British teenpop/skabeat sensation: three Top 40 singles ("LDN," "Smile," "Littlest Things"), a boatload of press attention and (as of this writing) 33,063 more MySpace friends than Arctic Monkeys. As with the Monkeys and the UK's other notable '06 export, Lady Sovereign, Allen's music taunts North American ears with an almost self-mocking limey-ness. She emphasizes, rather than masks, the Cockney (and the cocky) in her accent, and the occasional lyrical reference (to "Tesco" for instance) will send some listeners in these parts straight to Wikipedia for a crash course.

Those who've been exposed to Allen's tunes through her MySpace page may well harp that Alright, Still is little more than a "quickie," slapped together to capitalize on the aformentioned (smashingly brilliant, in fact) singles. They won't be entirely wrong. There are some throwaways here, for sure: a couple of the genre-hopping experiments don't gel as they should ("Everything's Just Wonderful" wears its '60s bouffant campiness a little too proudly), and over the long haul, the rusty reggae grooves do wear a bit thin.

That said, there's no lack of nerve or verve on display here, and the small missteps are more the mark of a restless imagination than the talentless poseur dimwits are already labeling her. She's no musical genius or anything like that—merely a will-be pop star farting around while she figures out what she's good at. Her caustic wit, and hopefully her grooves, will sharpen with age, but chances are she'll never sound this casual again. So get it now, while it's still messy.



Scott Woods



CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH


SOME LOUD THUNDER (2 1/2 stars)

A theory: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are the musical counterpart of Snakes on a Plane. Both were the subject of much online frenzy; neither took themselves too seriously (CYHSY still rebuff record-label offers). Even Alec Ounsworth's David-Byrne-atop-the-Alps vocals don't so much walk a straight melodic pathway as slither about in tonal crevices.

Snakes ultimately failed to live up to its Internet hype, and with its second album, the Brooklyn five-piece appears to follow suit. Whereas its 2005 debut was chock full of indie fervor and devil-may-care whimsy, Some Loud Thunder plays like a defanged version of its predecessor. There are some high points: "Satan Said Dance" is a blippy, trippy hoot, while "Mama, Won't You Keep Them Castles in the Air and Burning?" and "Yankee Go Home" are as fresh and catchy as anything off the band's previous effort.

Yet the title track's Strokes-inspired no-fi is downright confounding, the majority of the tracks are subdued and unmemorable, and a general wooziness pervades that nearly calls for a motion-sickness bag. Worse, Ounsworth's alley-cat yowlings have turned more smug than joyous, and not even producer David Fridmann (The Flaming Lips) can pull a sense of deeper meaning from the heady chaos.

A shedding of the skin was inevitable, but when the phenomenon happens in nature, there's a brighter layer underneath. Disappointingly, Thunder seems dull and simply discarded in comparison.



Julie Seabaugh



The Good, The Bad and The Queen


THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE QUEEN (2 1/2 stars)

The team: Blur/Gorillaz mastermind Damon Albarn, pretty-boy Clash bassist Paul Simonon, Verve guitarist Simon Tong and Afrobeat legend/Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen. Oh, and producer Danger Mouse, too, fresh off this project you might have heard of called Gnarls Barkley.

The mission: Have everybody hold back more than a little and make a dour, spare, antiwar Damon Albarn solo album.

Well, that's what this debut often sounds like, at least. Many of these songs are quite lovely, actually, but they won't make you want to dance, fall in love or change the world. And given the crew involved, this is pretty disappointing. This is like having a refrigerator full of gourmet ingredients and opting to serve macaroni and cheese at your dinner party.

"A Soldier's Tale" has shades of Blur's recent masterpiece ballad "Out of Time," but most of the album's other highlights (including "History Song" and "Kingdom of Doom") just aren't rousing enough. Albarn probably wants and expects us to slow down and think about the state of the world, but what about what we want and expect from him?



Andy Wang



KRISTIN HERSH


LEARN TO SING LIKE A STAR (4 stars)

One wonders what the American Idol panel would make of Kristin Hersh if the former Throwing Muses singer and guitarist were getting her start today. Randy would blanch, Simon would compare her to a small woodland animal and Paula would ask, entre nous, if Hersh was packing any cough syrup. Everything about Hersh is commercial suicide: Her scratchy vocals, her autumnal melodies and her clever lyrics all add up to a performer who isn't "going to Hollywood"—not today, not ever. Thank God.

Delivering her first solo record in four years, Hersh comes on strong with a densely-crafted, beautifully-produced set of songs that stand among her best work. You can drop the figurative needle anywhere and hit a vein, but I'd recommend beginning with the gently insistent "Vertigo," whose chorus—"Isn't this a lousy drug? Isn't this a pretty fall?"—will haunt you long after the iPod's jumped forward to Joanna Newsom. If that song doesn't motivate you to become a rock star, try the jagged epic "The Thin Man," in which Hersh paints another one of her perfectly dystopian worlds: "You rub your hands together/sparks fly." To hell with false idols—Kristin Hersh is back, and she's been touched by the divine.



Geoff Carter



DEERHOOF


FRIEND OPPORTUNITY (4 stars)

As hinted by the title, the latest long-player from San Francisco avant-rockers Deerhoof provides a rare chance to buddy up to a band that has kept all but the most adventurous listeners at arm's length for more than a dozen years. Not that Friend Opportunity will make a foray onto Area 108 anytime soon, but its tunes surely would have resulted in fewer perturbed and bewildered faces when the group opened for Radiohead at six West Coast tour dates last summer.

Deerhoof's first album since the departure of guitarist Chris Cohen finds the remaining trio embracing more conventional rock precepts, even if they're still presented non-traditionally. "Believe E.S.P." slinks atop a bed of glam-funk before detouring into a field of blip electronics; "+81" melds a toe-tapping blues stomp with tropical horns ripped from Os Mutantes; "The Galaxist" somehow marries blithe prog-folk with Black Sabbathian slabs of heavy sludge.

Despite that compositional allure, Satomi Matsuzaki's vocals, thin and high-pitched—detractors might say shrill and cartoonish—will still deter plenty of would-be fans, as should the album's closing track, 12-minute sonic experiment "Look Away," a reminder that while palling around might be easier this time around, it's still a tall order to count Deerhoof among your best friends.



Spencer Patterson



Kenny Wayne Shepherd


10 Days Out (Blues from the Backroads) (3 stars)

Maybe Kenny Wayne Shepherd is trying to atone for his last album, 2004's The Place You're In, which found the onetime blues-guitar prodigy distancing himself from his roots with a fairly straightforward hard-rock sound and handling most of the singing duties himself. Place was a decent enough rock record, but it got away from what made Shepherd interesting in the first place, when he was shredding old-school blues at age 18.

10 Days Out could not possibly be more different: As its title implies, the music is pure traditional blues and Shepherd himself doesn't sing a note. Although he plays on every track, his presence is as more of a sideman and bandleader than a soloist, as the album finds Shepherd and his backing band literally trekking across the American South, seeking out old blues musicians, both legendary and obscure, in their homes, and recording collaborations on versions of their signature tunes.

As a Kenny Wayne Shepherd album, 10 Days is largely a failure, as his distinctive guitar-playing only surfaces on a handful of tunes, and only Bryan Lee's slick "Tina Marie" sounds anything like Shepherd's past work. But as a document of a quickly fading generation of musicians (six of whom have died since the album was recorded two and a half years ago), it's valuable and illuminating. Even if the thrill is largely gone from B.B. King's umpteenth rendition of "The Thrill is Gone," Shepherd deserves thanks for introducing his audience to the rest of what's here.



Josh Bell



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