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Music

Folk/Roots, Punk

Rating: NNNNN


Folk/Roots

DAVID BAERWALD Here Comes The New Folk Underground (Lost Highway) Rating: NNN

Judging from David Baerwald’s first record in almost a decade, the so-called New Folk Underground looks promising — less humourless acoustic guitar didacticism than a rootsy fusion of musical storytelling and multiple genres with soul. Baerwald’s been honing his urban troubadour craft while backing up other more conventional popsters (like Sheryl Crow) to pay the bills, and he shows off his skills on this shuffling, fedora-sporting smoky café confessional of an album with a mix of blues, roots-folk, jazz and a smattering of funk. At his best, Baerwald’s a literate, world-weary Dylan or Waits. At his worst, he’s too precious in his gritty faux-prophet intonations.SL

IL CANtO DI MALAVITA La Musica Della Mafia (Pias) Rating: NNNNN

From prison songs and Nino Rota’s Godfather theme to the crack-dealing exploits of Biggie Smalls, crime and music go hand in hand. Rarely has this been clearer than in this collection of the music of the Italian Mafia. They’ve collected folk songs from the southern Calabrian region that are actually banned in Italy for promoting Mafia culture, and now folk quintet Il Canto di Malavita bring the vibrant stories of those in the family business to life in these Old World gangsta raps. Charming folk tunes about traitors, informants and eye-for-an-eye-style retribution are interspersed with odes to mobsters and a hair-raising jailhouse ballad by someone serving life. More chilling than the Sopranos.MG

Ralph Stanley The Very Best Of Ralph Stanley (Audium) Rating: NNNN

A slight misnomer here, this sampling of Ralph Stanley’s recordings cut for the Rebel label during the 70s is really the very best of Roy Lee Centers, the singer/guitarist who joined Stanley’s Clinch Mountain posse when Carter Stanley passed in 66. Ralph, the archetypal support player, generously gives the spotlight to the soulful-voiced Centers, who becomes the focal point of these rootsy traditional selections that seem like they could’ve been laid down in the mid-50s. O Brother fans will be pleased to know that Ralph takes lead on Man Of Constant Sorrow and O Death, and his gruff voice sounds almost exactly like it does now.TP

MetalDeride First Round Knockout (TMC) Rating: N

Oh, my goodness! Somebody give me another nickel. Norwegian guys all full of hate. Yeah yeah yeah, murder and death and killing and darkness and Jesus sucks and the Devil is within, growl, snarl, kill yourself and your vocal cords. Deride have been kicking around for almost a decade, and sonically their grinding, galloping metal is pretty tight. But the vocals, if you can call them that, and lyrics are painful. And frankly, I’m sick to fucking death of metal guys shouting about suicide. Talk is cheap.EB

PIG Genuine American Monster (Metropolis) Rating: NN

On Genuine American Monster, Raymond “Pig” Watts begins by drawing on all the best bits of KMFDM, layering them onto boss beats and playing with samples. Prayer Praise And Profit kicks in like a boot to the arse, and the danceability factor remains high through Salambo, on which Watts lays his nasty-ass vocals atop Latin rhythms. The contrast makes for a full-on wicked track. But soon afterwards, the sturm-und-drang of it all becomes a little grating. And what’s with those schizoid moments like Black Brothel, when Watts suddenly decides he wants to be Vangelis? There goes the momentum. A great beginning leads to raw disappointment.EB

Tribe of Judah Exit Elvis (Spitfire) Rating: NN

There’s something eerie about the image of Gary Cherone holding a gun to his own chin on the cover of Exit Elvis that makes you really hope he’s kidding. Those who recall Cherone’s success with Extreme, then his one record with Van Halen, may take an interest in his latest band, the Tribe of Judah, and their debut release, a majorly overproduced techno-metal-rock melodrama. Lacking substance but heavy on the emoting, what comes across here smacks of nothing short of desperation. Snaky metal guitar lines coil around Rez-noresque bass beats on these self-pitying tunes about love and time lost. Lyrics are darkly poetic — too poetic. And the cover photo feels like nothing short of a cheap ploy to get good reviews from those of us afraid he might really blow his head off. Hope that thing isn’t loaded. EB

Punk

Boy sets fire Live For Today (Wind Up) Rating: NN

Apparently punk but cosmetically injected with nu metal and that now ubiquitous earnestness, this EP from Boy Sets Fire starts out with ferocious enough energy and one of those dime-a-dozen Zack de la Rocha-style agendas. But it soon folds back in on itself with a series of polished yet ultimately tired melodic metal chichés. The live tracks sound like Boy Sets Fire can get a junior mosh pit roiling, but the others are generic, interjecting thrash with slower sections that build into, you guessed it, all-encompassing righteous rage.EB

MXPX Ten Years And Running (Tooth & Nail) Rating: NNN

As much as another delivery off the pop-punk assembly line would normally make me want to mainline cleaning fluid and go rob a laundromat out of sheer allegiance to the old skool, I can’t help but love MXPX. They create another bright, happy power-punk package conjuring images of cheerful green-haired kids thrashing harmoniously while drinking responsibly. Nothing here is new or groundbreaking. It’s still catchy, straight-ahead poppy punk about which there’s nothing new to say on any level, but they are better than many of their contemporaries. MXPX might want to actually think of exploring new turf soon, so when the inevitable (and we hope impending) implosion of pop-punk occurs, they don’t get left in the dust. That would be a shame.EB

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