MUSIC BOX |
Martin Stein |
Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac (4 stars)
Rumours (4.5 stars)
Tusk (3.5 stars)
These reissues of the first three albums by the classic Fleetwood Mac lineup of Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, remastered with loads of bonus material, capture the band at its commercial and creative peak, and represent some of the best mainstream rock of the late '70s. The sound, especially Fleetwood's powerful drumming, is crisp and clear, and the bonus tracks, while not necessarily of great listening value, will prove fascinating to dedicated fans and the musically curious.
The middle album of the three, 1977's Rumours, is still the best, and it benefits perhaps the most from the reissue treatment, with greatly improved sound and the inclusion of Nicks' "Silver Springs," an album outtake that became a big hit on the band's 1997 reunion album, The Dance, in the standard track listing. The bonus tracks are mostly rough versions or radio edits of the album tracks, so they don't offer much truly new material. The messy, sprawling Tusk (20 tracks) has a messy and sprawling 21 bonus tracks, which only die-hards probably will want to slog through. But these are worth buying for the core albums on their own, classics dressed up with the care they deserve.
Josh Bell
Ben Kweller
On My Way (3 stars)
Ben Kweller is a veteran musician who has been through the major-label wringer, but he remains a hopeful romantic with a sense of humor. Maybe it's because the dude's still just 22.
More than a decade ago, when Kweller was just a kid in a nondescript Dallas suburb, he formed Radish, a hotly tipped alt-rock band which eventually signed with Mercury. After that project failed, he went his own way, signing a solo major-label deal before he was even 20.
He's now a Brooklyn fella putting out records on RCA, and this latest disc bubbles over with money moments which sound like the Violent Femmes and the Beatles. Yes, there are times when Kweller treads dangerously close to Billy Joel territory, but that's overshadowed by all the killer hooks and touches of Beck-like wit.
Title track "On My Way" begins thusly: "I want to kill this man / But he turned around and ran / I'll kill him with karate / That I learned in Japan / He wouldn't see my face / I wouldn't leave a trace / I wouldn't use a bullet / 'cause a bullet's a disgrace."
But overall, Kweller is a lover, not a fighter, and with "My Apartment," he's written perhaps his best love song. It's an ode not to a gal, but to his tiny home "away from the darkness outside." It's a glorious song about making do, as best you can, in a city where "the sidewalks know my face." It's a happy reminder that as ruthless as things can be in New York, $4 can still buy you a subway pass which takes you anywhere in the city and then back to your bed.
Andy Wang
Gary Jules
Trading Snake Oil for Wolf Tickets (2.5 stars)
Remaking the Tears for Fears song "Mad World" was an inspired choice. By stripping it down to a winsome piano ballad and singing it his quavering tenor, Jules finds a more supple song beneath the original's Euro-pop sheen, which now sounds like a glorified cell-phone ring tone. Jules' version lends an effortless poignance to the song's conventionally mopey lyrics ("I think it's kind of funny / I think it's kind of sad / the dreams in which I'm dying / are the best I've ever had"), and the spare melody sticks with you for days.
Is it against the rules to award an entire disc two and a half stars for one song? Normally a question best left to the think tank at Rolling Stone, it's germane here because the rest of the album is, um, so-so. Most of it—"No Poetry," "Lucky," "Something Else"—sounds like guitar-tinkle filler from an old Cat Stevens record, and I don't mean that in a good way. Even when he plugs in, as on "DTLA (Downtown Los Angeles)," it doesn't inject much juice into the music. The disc's listlessness is a shame, because "Mad World"—originally recorded for the Donnie Darko sound track and sounding here like a clumsy limb graft onto the rest of the album—suggests better possibilities.
Scott Dickensheets