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Dylan Explores His Roots, American Music History
By Michael Abernethy
and Brooks Firth
Staff Writers
Four decades of experience bringing
life to music -and vice versa - has not
changed Bob Dylan very much.
He is still the Everyman of
singer/songwriters, a troubadour for
numerous genera
tions. He is the
loner, the man in
love, the drifter -
both a casual
observer and a
passionate partici
pant
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Bob Dylan
Love and Theft
Love and Theft, the latest addition to
Dylan’s lengthy discography, traverses
through an entire century of musical
styles to critique music’s current state.
The album’s 12 tracks hold to the high
standards we would expect from Dylan.
But things have changed since last we
heard from him on Time Out of Mind -
Remy Zero Continues to Rock Smarter, Not Harder; Amos Gives Birth to Strange Little Girls
Remy Zero
The Golden Hum
★★★★☆
Remy Zero’s new album, The Golden
Hum, marks the return of smart-rock.
Since Radiohead departed the world of
rock for the artsier prospects of navel-gaz
ing electronica, anyone who has yearned
for guitar-based rock has had to suffer
through Creed’s latest album or submit to
the sugary fluff of Matchbox 20.
But Remy Zero, a five-piece band
from Birmingham, Ala., is rescuing the
concept of smart guitar-based rock from
the inept but pious hands of Scott Stapp.
The Golden Hum is the sound of a
band coming into its own. After a slow
start involving two well-intentioned and
occasionally brilliant albums, Remy
Zero is proving that music can be bom
bastic and smart without being preachy
or self-absorbed.
From the opening clatter of
“Glorious #1” to the final suspended
chord of “Impossibility,” the album is
an exercise in the destruction and
rebirth of the human spirit.
Songs like the soaring “Save Me"
and the album’s highlight, “Bitter,” are
drenched in images of fire and dark
ness. While elsewhere, “Out/In” and
“Smile” affirm the idea that turmoil
and strife breed strength and charac
ter.
But there are breaks in the dramatic
chaos. “Perfect Memory” is perfect pop
- it combines a killer lyric about nostal
gia with a simple melody. The result is
like the sun breaking through a cold
November sky.
The colorful guitar work of Shelby
Tate dances edgily around melodic cor
ners, providing the music with unex
pected shifts and turns in color. If you
could imagine the grind of Stone
Temple Pilots’ best work set to the pret
tiness of David Bowie’s Aladin Sane,
you’d come up with something close to
the sound of The Golden Hum.
But the real star of Remy Zero is
lead-singer and chief-songwriter Cinjun
Tate.
Much like Bono of U 2, his searing
voice has the ability to lift the most
simple line from merely filling space,
to possessing universal emotional
appeal. Raspy in its lower range, and
powerfully raw in its upper ranges,
Tate’s voice provides an alluring front
for Remy Zero’s passionate perfor
mance.
While The Golden Hum might not
change the history of music in die way
that Radiohead so desperately want to,
it’s refreshing enough to hear a great
guitar-based band play songs that mean
something without being overly self
conscious about it.
So if Remy Zero saves rock, it will do
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Dylan has been listening to the blues.
With each listen, something striking
about this album becomes more obvi
ous. Dylan, an artist who pushed music
forward, has taken American music
back to its roots with the blues, rocka
billy, bluegrass and jazz.
The album grooves, flows, ducks and
reels through its variety of styles. With
the exception of the grating first track,
“Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum,” each
track masterfully borrows from the
annals of American music history.
For all of its dynamics, however, the
album possesses a relatively good bal
ance.
Its simple instrumentation is well
mastered and very well-played. The
musicality of the players and the
strength of the music itself are what
makes this mix of musical styles a plau
sible and effective one.
Dabbling with bluegrass in “High
Water,” experimenting with rockabilly
in “Summer Days,” each equally well
so by accident.
By Michael Abernethy
Jay Farrar
Sebastopol
Sebastopol might be Jay Farrar’s first
solo album, but its style doesn’t stray far
from what defined the work of his pre
vious bands.
As he did in Uncle Tupelo and Son
Volt, Farrar keeps his music’s roots intact
- firmly-grounded country and folk pep
pered with an alternative flair -and
combines interesting instrumentation
and tempo changes with the process.
The themes of Farrar’s songs vary lit
tle during the course of Sebastopol and
are reminiscent of his older work. His
primary subject is and has always been
down-on-its-luck America, the blue col
lar people who still contend with hard
times and rural wastelands.
“Feel Free,” the opening track, intro
duces their situation with the ironic
lines, “Breathin’ all the diesel fumes that
mar the concrete landscaping/Doesn’t it
feel free?”
This subject ties the songs together
into a true collection of similar sounds
and themes. None of the album’s 14
tracks are particularly catchy individu
ally but become subtly powerful when
combined as a whole. While this feeling
of sameness is the album’s only real
flaw, what’s here is beautiful.
Many of the melodies soar, even as
Farrar sings his familiar, moody subject
matter. Stripped down in its use of
acoustic and slide guitars, “Outside the
Door” alludes to past, rarely-mentioned
events that took a toll on the average
American, such as Prohibition and the
Great Depression.
Such songs are made all the more
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DIVERSIONS
crafted track is presented in a different
style but introduced by a familiar voice.
Even the improvement of this famil
iar voice is well-documented throughout
the album. Dylan, a notoriously rocky
vocalist, now commands a voice on this
album that has grown noticeably less
harsh with age, something even the most
avid Dylan fans can appreciate.
But make no mistake about Love and
Theft. While his voice might have mel
lowed, this is not an album to be played
softly in the background.
Deserving, if not requiring, the care
of its listeners, the album is an involving
survey course in American music from
its most influential renegade.
By the sound of things, the infamous
rebel spirit that has characterized Dylan
throughout his career is still alive and
well.
Who but Dylan would dare to record
“Bye and Bye,” a pop ballad in the style
of 19405-era Frank Sinatra, and have it
play into a raunchy blues-based jam like
powerful thanks to the exemplary pro
duction (by Farrar and John Agnello)
and musicianship. And his various guest
stars - Gillian Welch and Superchunk
drummer Jon Wurster among them -
certainly don’t hurt.
But Farrar himself, of course, defines
the album; his unique voice and complex
lyrics are always at the forefront. He has
n’t really changed his sound and song
writing, but then he doesn’t need to.
Sebastopol performs admirably by just dri
ving familiar points a little closer to home.
By Elliott Dube
Tori Amos
Strange Little Girls
When people discuss feminism or
sexual politics, one thing often gets
overlooked: If women’s identity needs
redefinition, the identity of men is in
need of a drastic makeover as well.
This point is sorely overlooked in
popular music’s “feminist” leanings, and
until Strange Little Girls, Tori Amos was
the worst of them all. Her music was all
femme, all the time, and men’s place in
Amos’ numerous critiques was fuzzy at
best.
On the fiery and often polarizing
singer/songwriter’s sixth solo album,
men and their relationship with women
(as opposed to the other way around) is
the central focus. The result is one of the
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“Lonesome Day Blues”?
But that is what Dylan has always rev
eled in: the confounding of all expecta
tions. It is his game, and he makes the
rules.
As he says in “Floater," “Old, young/
Age don’t carry weight/ It doesn’t matter
in the end.” With a voice that sounds like
dirt being shoveled into an open grave,
he is delivering a message to the younger
generation that his time isn’t up yet
From the easygoing shuffle of
“Mississippi” to the jazz flavors of
“Moonlight,” Dylan is affirming his
timeless ability to lay his hands upon
any genre and make magic from it
Love and Theft isn’t quite the black
magic of Time Out of Mind, but it more
than announces another victory for a
man with a gravel voice, a guitar pick
and an unmatched skill for sewing a
musical tapestry four decades strong.
The Arts & Entertainment Editor can
be reached at artsdesk@unc.edu.
most unnerving and damning critiques
of masculinity ever released on record.
Taking the 12 songs away from some
of the most renown male songwriters in
recent memory (Neil Young, the
Beatles, Lou Reed and even Slayer and
Eminem) Amos rewrites the men out of
their own songs without changing a
word. Amos sings each track from the
perspective of the women who haunted
each song in their original versions but
who were denied a voice.
By changing the perspective of these
songs, Amos reveals the violence and
immorality inherent in them, and in the
process raises two questions - why did
these men write these songs in the first
place, and why did the public adore and
applaud so many of these works that are
so intrinsically violent?
In other words, as Amos wonders
aloud in the last track, “What’s a man
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Bob Dylan mixes all manner of American music into his style on Love
and Theft, the follow-up to the award-winning Time Out of Mind.
now/What’s a man mean?”
Make no mistake - Strangle Little
Girls is Amos’ most demanding work
and her gothic, delicate and sparse
arrangements don’t make the songs any
easier to digest. She’s backed by all
manner of instruments, but the polish of
From the Choirgirl Hotel and To Venus and
Back is gone. Compared to her past
efforts, each song sounds raw, wounded
and very, very angry.
It’s the anger of someone with no
answers but many questions. The most
extreme of which is Amos’ reading of
“’97 Bonnie & Clyde.”
The Eminem track about the murder
of his wife and kidnapping of his daugh
ter has garnered the most attention, and
deservedly so.
While Amos’ vocal delivery is
removed and shocked, as she is “acting”
the part of the song’s victim, underneath
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the muted horns, string ensemble and
whispered lyrics is Amos’ undeniable
rage that a song such as this would be
written in the first place.
In the process of recasting the Eminem
rap in anew light, the basic inhumanity of
the song is both devastating and over
whelming. You’ll never listen to Slim
Shady quite the same way again.
The album’s intensity and dark subject
have few breathers placed in - the lilting
melody of “Rattlesnakes” and the classic
Amos balladry of her reading of Tom
Wait’s “Time” provide the only breaks.
But Amos doesn’t want her audience
to catch their breath while listening to
this album. This isn’t the album to make
you feel good after a bad breakup. This
isn’t background music. These Strange
Little Girls demand nothing less than
your full attention.
By Russ Lane
7