6
Thursday, September 14, 2000
New Amsterdams Keeps It Simple; Rigsby Makes a Bluegrass Hit
Hie New Amsterdams
Never You Mind
★★★
With every technological advance in
rock music, purists inevitably seize the
opportunity to decry the dearth of inti
macy and humanity in music.
When technology diverts the focus of
rock from songcraft and emotional
expression, the classicists contend, the
soul of the music gets lost
Somewhere along the line, the rise of
these forward-thinkers gave birth to a
counter-movement of backward
glancers in rock, artists whom the
romanticized figure of the solo acoustic
troubadour continues to inspire.
With the mantle passed between
greats like Hank Williams, Nick Drake
and Neil Young, neo-purists have a
wealth of influences from which to draw.
Get Up Kids frontman Matthew
Pryor’s offshoot project, the New
Amsterdams, mines that same vein of
introspection on the heartfelt Never You
Mind.
Though Pryor occasionally fleshes
out his songs with a full-band accompa
niment, the New Amsterdams feels like
a band in name only. With his voice and
acoustic guitar always at the fore, Pryor
makes Never You Mind his own album.
Fortunately, Pryor boasts a pleasant
ly ragged voice (somewhere between
the sweetness of Sean Lennon and the
edge of Whiskeytown’s Ryan Adams)
and the smarts to avoid the self-pity
common to would-be troubadours.
Instead, Pryor extends a hand of
compassion to his troubled muses in
songs like “Lonely Hearts” and “Drama
Queen.” Love and heartbreak fill
Pryor’s lyrics, but Pryor makes sure to
suffuse these lamentations with faith,
hope and an appreciation of beauty,
traits absent from the “complaint rock”
that most sad-eyed indie boys prefer.
Such unadorned music seems simple
to replicate, but with his occasional mis
steps, Pryor proves that acoustic bal
ladry remains a deceptively easy ven
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ture fraught with potential pratfalls.
The genius of a solo artist like Nick
Drake rested in his ability to suggest
depths of meaning with just a few words
and a fingerpicked acoustic guitar. Pryor
seeks that resonance but too often
resorts to lyrics that trail off into cliches
or never manage to say anything at all.
And, his arrangements often lack the
complexity of Drake or Young, as Pryor
essentially cuts-and-pastes the three
chord aesthetic of the Get Up Kids onto
the acoustic guitar.
On “When We Two Parted,” Pryor
perfectly aligns lyrical conflict with his
musical backdrop. Unfortunately, it’s a
cover of the Afghan Whigs and not
Pryor’s own composition.
However, with his impassioned voice
and the heartfelt, redemptive bent of his
songs, Pryor seems on the brink of
something far richer than just another
side project.
By Josh Love
The Gourds
Bolsa deAgua
•kick
The Gourds are an American band.
That is about as precise as it gets.
Bolsa de Agua, the Austin-based quin
tet’s fourth release, sounds like a moon
shine-fueled bluegrass jam at an
Appalachian farm house on the Texas
plains; cowboys dancing mountain jigs
in the middle of Bourbon Street; Minnie
Pearl gettin’ freak - you get the picture.
8015a ..., released on Durham’s Sugar
Hill Records, is an ecclectic, if uneven,
romp through the Gourds’ varied influ
ences. Country, bluegrass, zydeco, rock
and even a little Irish music vie for con
trol of the band’s soul, creating a unique
but not quite cohesive sound. The last
track’s name, “High Highs & Low
Lows,” pretty much sums it up.
The band is at their best when they
lean more towards the bluegrass. They
reach the perfect middle ground some
where between Deadhead hippy crap
and three-toothed, shotgun-toting Hee
DIVERSIONS Music
Haw music. Uncle
Tupelo/Wilco/Freakwater veteran Max
Johnston’s banjo and mandolin picking,
and Claude Bernard’s accordian, shine
on bouncy tracks like “Pickles,” “O
Rings” and the Celtic-folky “Bugs.”
But it’s with the standard, straight-up
country or rock times that the Gourds
falter. In fact, the meat of Boba ... is
sandwiched between two hefty slices of
mediocrity.
The album’s opener, “El Paso,” is just
weak. A tired, cliched country tune
about “goin to El Paso,” it sounds like it
was written in a few minutes. And
according to the press kit it was. Huh.
The closing “High Highs & Low
Lows," a mid-paced, low-intensity, high
' ly uninteresting rocker, isn’t much bet
ter.
But even if 80ba ... is musically incon
sistent, the packaging is great. Autumn
colored covers, and the paintings inside,
reflect the record’s general tone.
Even better, the Gourds aren’t too
cool to include lyrics in the liner notes.
With singer Kev Russell’s cryptic war
blings any hints help. Did he just say
“Down in the lucky dung and ashes/
Down where the lovers gamble and
vomit?” Why yes, he did.
And if an artsy booklet weren’t
enough, Boba ... is a video-enhanced
CD as well. It’s supposed to include a
video for one of the album’s songs. Too
bad it didn’t work on my computer.
Computer glitches aside, the Gourds
deliver a decent record. This bag of
water doesn’t have too many holes.
By Brian Bedsworth
Debelah Morgan
Dance with Me
kk 1/2
Maybe it’s musical snobbery, but I
generally assume that the talent of a
chanteuse is inversely proportional to
the pains she takes to look beautiful on
her album cover.
So from the moment I saw Debelah
Morgan staring at me from the cover of
her new CD, Dance With Me, with ele
gantly windblown hair, perfect lipgloss
and silver eye make-up, I had a pretty
good idea of what I was in for.
As it turns out, however, Morgan isn’t
half bad if you take her for what she’s
worth - R&B/pop in the grand tradition
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of such divas as Mariah Carey and
Whitney Houston.
That’s Morgan’s thing, and she’s
clearly studied the reigning masters and
learned her lesson well. So well, in fact,
that she completes this album like the
star pupil eagerly finishing a workbook.
The only problem is that Carey and
Houston wrote the workbook. As in
most exercises, no matter how perfect
ly one completes them, there’s little
room for originality.
From the happy-pop melodies to the
way Morgan manipulates her voice, it
all sounds like something we’ve heard
before. Even those little high-pitched
squeal things she does are just sooooo
Mariah.
For this reason, Morgan will likely
remain in the shadows for the time
being -but this is not to say that her
album isn’t well-crafted and pleasant.
In her press release, Morgan
describes her songs with words like
“rhythmic,” “sexy,” and “romp.” All
these are true. Dance With Me is just the
groove music that Morgan intends.
The title track, already on the
Billboard Top 100, is just as good as any
other song playing at a frat party near
you. The rest of the songs, appropriate
ly themed on the interchangeable topics
of love and “getting it on,” are likewise
up to par.
Morgan also does have an impressive
vocal range. Her voice slip-slides up and
down to highs and lows most mortals
can only imagine.
Further to her credit, Debelah keeps
it clean, fun, and mosdy up-tempo.
So while you might mistake her songs
for someone else with a better-known
name, Morgan’s album might make
good party music for your next rhyth
mic sexy romp.
By Joanna Pearson
Don Rigsby
Empty Old Mailbox
kkkk
Rollicking traditional bluegrass joins
contemporary country on Don Rigsby’s
latest album, Empty Old Mailbox. Rigsby
successfully straddles the fence between
the two genres, creating an album of
close-knit harmonies, folk tales and
exceptional musicianship.
While many artists would have diffi-
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Debelah Morgan does the diva thing, ala Mariah and Whitney, on her
debut release Dance With Me.
culty producing a coherent album that
delves into two different styles, Empty
Old Mailbox embraces both equally.
Rigsby, who co-produced the album
with Jimmie Lee Sloas, expertly bal
ances vocal harmonization and the LP’s
acoustic guitar, banjo and mandolin.
Like many country and bluegrass
artists, Rigsby sings about religion, cov
ering the traditional eastern Kentucky
and West Virginia hymn “I am a Little
Scholar.” A few contemporary religious
tunes are included on the album as well,
sometimes slowing the energy but never
endangering the album as a whole.
“Dust to Dust” provides the most
clear-cut contemporary country track. It
not only has a religious tone but comes
perilously close to bogging down the
album. Rigsby recovers, though, by
placing one of the two all-out, vehement
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bluegrass tracks afterward, “Louise.”
“Louise” and “These Ole’ Blues,”
the two best songs on the album, are fre
netic foot-stomping tracks. It’s unfortu
nate that Rigsby doesn’t include other
quick-paced tracks, which would allevi
ate the album’s ballad-heaviness.
Empty Old Mailbox lyrically spins
interesting stories and tales of hard luck.
There is the honky-tonk bar that brews
trouble, a mysterious spirit haunting a
cove and a son begging his mother to
not sell the land.
The switch to bluegrass exclusively
during the last seven tracks is one of the
album’s best features. With the slower
country ballads gone, Rigsby and his
band showcase their incredible ability to
have fun and play some music, while
creating one of the best albums this year.
By Karen Whichard