MARK KNOPFLER AND EMMYLOU HARRIS
All the Roadrunning (4 stars)
In my comic book-hooked adolescence, one of my treasured titles, Marvel Team-Up, paired Spider Man and a randomly chosen crime-fighting partner, exploring a fresh character dynamic for a single issue and then moving on. The forced mix-and-match concept intrigued me, so much so that I've often wondered if a similar exercise might make for some fascinating musical dialogues.
Well, if All the Roadrunning were Vol. 1 of this mythical series, count me in for the rest. What may seem a strange union between ex-Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler and country queen Emmylou Harris comes off as if the two were put on this Earth for the purpose of collaborating, and in a sense they were. Though born 4,000 miles apart, the British rocker and Southern belle come from the same place musically—an unpretentious, organic footing that recalls a far less complicated era.
Knopfler and Harris spent seven years crafting these 12 tracks, but it sounds more like two old friends sat down for a back-porch session on a dusty Sunday afternoon. Naturally, the disc is loaded with elegant vocal harmonies and mature lyrical content, but the sonic mix is more varied than one might expect. Sometimes resulting in a twanged-up Dire Straits tune steered by Knopfler's distinct guitar tone ("This Is Us"), sometimes in a full-on hillbilly stomp ("Red Staggerwing"), All the Roadrunning soars highest when the participants' styles truly mesh, as on the fiddle-aided, Scotland-meets-Carolina title track.
Now, onto Vol. 2 ... Elizabeth Fraser and Jay Farrar, anyone?
Goo Goo Dolls
Let Love In (2 stars)
The Goo Goo Dolls have forgotten how to rock. If you're only familiar with the Buffalo, New York, trio from their radio singles, then you may not realize that they knew how to rock in the first place, but the Goos started out as a raw, hard-rock band in debt to the Replacements, and even on their 1995 breakthrough, A Boy Named Goo, which featured the hit ballad "Name," they balanced their burgeoning pop instincts with a solid rock 'n' roll sensibility.
No longer. There is no song on the band's latest album that couldn't be categorized as some sort of ballad, and most of those sound like pale retreads of "Name" or "Iris," the string-drenched hit from the City of Angels soundtrack. The saddest part is that raspy-voiced bassist Robby Takac still gets to sing his requisite two songs, and he sounds beyond pathetic trying to fit into the bland, saccharine sound that producer Glen Ballard has crafted. Leader John Rzeznik has clearly run out of songwriting ideas; the only time the band sounds remotely inspired is on a cover of Supertramp's "Give a Little Bit."
Tiesto
In Search of Sunrise 5: Los Angeles (2 stars)
The Celine Dion of dance music is back with the fifth in what looks to be a never-ending series of double-disc sets, each set in a different locale. This time around, it's the City of Angels, and Tiesto attempts to invest it with a romantic beauty that only partly exists, much as Raymond Chandler did in his tales of Philip Marlowe.
He succeeds, of course, because like Chandler, Tiesto is a master of his craft. The first disc is all vocal tracks—excluding the opener of Conil's "Malibu Beach"—starting with Mark Norman's "Colour My Eyes," the Dutch duo signed to Tiesto's Blackhole Recordings. From there, it's one warm mix and smooth transition after another.
The second disc is all music, and starts with a decidedly darker tone in Alex Stealthy's "Something is Wrong," an exciting track that feels out of place from Tiesto's previous 15 mixes. Perhaps this is the gritty underbelly of LA, the flip side to the warm sunshine of the first disc. While the tone never gets as light as that on Disc One, it never stays somber, either, and soon returns to Tiestoland, where the weather is temperate, the people warm and the sun is on the horizon.
It sounds like a nice enough place, until an eternity or two has gone by.