Forest Whitlow & the Crash
Land of X
ERM Records
KC favs Forest Whitlow & the Crash
have been playing gigs around Midtown for years and produced several
fine albums chock full of their special blend of alt-country-folk-rock
stuff (go to www.ForrestWhitlow.com for more info).
With (count em!) 16 new original tracks, Land of X
continues that tradition in spades. Forest has always
shown an ear for clever lyrics and catchy melodies in his
song writing, and if anything his skills have improved.
Backed by his faithful Crash members D.J. Clem, John
Bersuch and Sam Hughes, Forest again delivers his
whimsical pathos with a tongue in cheek attitude and some
fast fingers on his guitar, proving that X does indeed
mark the spot. —Brandon Whitehead
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Annie Lennox
Bare
BMG Music UK and Ireland Ltd.
Still think of Annie
Lennox only in terms of her Eurythmics days? Well think
again. The girl who once walked on broken glass released
two solo albums in the first five years after the band
split in 1990 and Bare, her third solo album has
been in the making since then. Without a doubt, the wait
was worth it.
Lennox has created a feast for the ears, combining rich
layers of melody with deeply introspective lyrics, which
come together perfectly to form the most soothing,
harmonious songs. Bare presents a mixture of
musical styles and tones, from the jazzy seven minutes of
“The Hurting Time” and the restrained
whisperings of “Oh God (Prayer),” to the upbeat
“Bitter Pill,” which could almost be mistaken
for modern pop.
“Wonderful” stands out from the rest of the
songs with its aggressively percussive chorus, which
speaks of a love for someone who doesn’t return
affection. Lennox makes it impossible for the listener to
not feel her emotion. —Jessica Chapman
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S.T.U.N.
Evolution of Energy
Geffen
With the sudden and unexpected (and potentially profitable) reemergence
of punk music, studios across the country have started rushing out
new pre-labeled-punk bands with all the skill of a hung-over hamster
hunting hummingbirds with hand-grenades. L.A.’s own S.T.U.N.
(which stands for — hold your breath now —”Scream Toward
the Uprising of Non-Conformity” (which would actually be STUNC)
has jumped on this already-packed-like-a-Train-to-Bombay bandwagon
with their debut Evolution of Energy, with rather mixed results.
There is a disturbingly high level of “social conscience”
spread across these twelve tracks (once again: political activism
and punk go together like beer and church, kids), but tracks like
“Annihilation of the Generations” pull off enough of the
old-school sound to make up for all of that crap. Now they just need
to realize that their dreams are dead, they’ll never make a difference
and nobody loves them, and THEN they can up-rise in non-conformity
towards anything they want. —Brandon Whitehead
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Marilyn Manson
The Golden Age of Grotesque
Nothing/Interscope RecordsShock-slocker Marilyn Manson has teetered on the
edge of becoming a Goth-metal version of Michael Jackson
for years now, starting somewhere between the time he was
dating the fashionably slutty Rose McGowan and when he
got a boob-job.
The Golden Age of Grotesque shows he’s still
comfortably perched up there in the thin air of “an
artist whose life itself is art”, meaning of course
that the music is only a small part of the package here.
Most of the tracks are so heavily engineered it’s
hard to tell where the songs are in all the digital
samples and overlaid vocals (Manson says most of the
album was produced while under the influence of
Absinthe). Still, there’s plenty of MM here for his
fans to enjoy, and after an admirable defense of his
music in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine,
you got to give it up for a former high school loser-geek
who grew up and made a fortune selling songs aimed at
exactly the same type of kid! —Brandon Whitehead
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