My Amazon Reviews: Various Artists "I'll Scratch Yours - A Tribute to Peter Gabriel"

Mutual Scratching Society
3 Out Of 5 Stars

Although it took him three years to pull it together, Peter Gabriel at last put his "Scratch My Back - And I'll Scratch Yours" out as a whole piece. Initially designed to be a collaborative project, Gabriel gets 10 of his "Scratch My Back" artists to add their voices to a select Gabriel song, with varying results. (You may also quibble about Bryan Eno subbing for David Bowie, but it does up the collabs; the missing links are Neil Young and Radiohead.) If you don't already have "Scratch My Back," I highly recommend getting the limited edition two CD issue.

One of the things that held my rating back of the initial album was that Gabriel had set all his choices to orchestral arrangements (he did the same to himslef on "New Blood"), which kept the album's pace to a crawl. Fortunately for "I'll Scratch Yours," the collaborators had no such imposition. It varies the album considerably and offers a few surprises. For starters is the realization that anything Randy Newman touches sounds like Randy Newman, from the dry wit of the vocals to the piano playing, and he turns "Big Time" from the ironically pop MTV hit into the biting commentary that the lyrics had posited all along.

My other favorite here is Lou Reed turning "Solisbury Hill" from Gabriel's gathering of courage in a pastoral setting into a dingy echo laden guitar look into the mean streets of New York City (and may be one of Reed's last recordings). The criminally underrated Elbow take one of my all-time favorite Gabriel songs, "Mercy Street," and do an uncanny sound-alike version. Stephin Merrit (Magnetic Fields) stamps the paranoia out from underneath "Not One Of Us" and makes it sound like a bubbly synth-pop record from the 80's. And finally, Paul Simon turns "Biko," a song I thought I was tired of, into an acoustic folk anthem.

Those are the hits. There are a couple of misses; Brian Eno doesn't do anything to make "Mother Of Violence" interesting. Bon Iver tries as hard as he can to sound interesting, but remains a bore to listen to. David Byrne uses his falsetto on "I Don't Remember" to make you remember what nails on chalkboard sounds like. But that's only three real duds. The remainder of the songs, from the likes of Feist, Arcade Fire and Regina Spektor at least show that Gabriel hasn't lost his taste for new artists and that his songwriting transcends formats. Taken together, "Scratch My Back and I'll Scratch Yours" is a good pair of bookends and a fine tribute to Gabriel's multi-decade career.

     

My Amazon Reviews: A Fine Frenzy "Bomb In A Birdcage"

Short Fuse
3 Out Of 5 Stars

I picked up on A Fine Frenzy after seeing her open a Rufus Wainwright concert a few years back. "Bomb In a Birdcage" is their (or her, since the band is basically a backdrop for Alison Sudol's piano musings) second album, and a bit of a shock after seeing her perform warm, meandering piano pop onstage. "Bomb In A Birdcage" is a band album, with electronic drumming, gleeful Regina Spektor pop, and a few of those moments that won me over in concert.

Sudol likes to mix her happiest music to her saddest moments, which make a song like "Happier" such an exquisite break-up song. She also keeps some of her folksier elements in place for "What I Wouldn't Do" and "Bird of Summer." Some of these songs not just reflect Spektor, but also make one wonder if there were a bunch of Tori Amos CD's on her bedstand. Sudol has that knack for fairy tale poetry in her music, as found in the tale of the lonely lighthouse keeper residing in "The Beacon," which also happens to be "Bomb In A Birdcage's" most beautiful songs. What's lacking here are memorable songs, even at most of them being in the pop range of three and a half minutes, little sticks. The only song with a real kick to it is "Electric Twist," which has a slippery bass line and a vocal that sounds less affected than most of the bulk of "Bomb In A Birdcage."

If you count the couple of songs I've mentioned and the fact that, when she's not trying too hard, Sudol has an expressive voice, "Bomb In a Birdcage" is an OK album. But I can't get past the fact that the sweetness of the voice I heard in concert is trying to rock ("We Stood Up") or just sounds like she's over-singing the material. What I saw and heard A Fine Frenzy do on stage suggests better is possible.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Regina Spektor "What We Saw From The Cheap Seats"

Not Cheap, and Not Easy
4 Out Of 5 Stars

"The piano isn't firewood yet," declares Regina Spektor on the melancholy "Firewood," and like so many singers of her ilk, she finds many ways to make you beg her to stay at the keyboards. "What We Saw From The Cheap Seats" is an album filled full with optimistic despair, desires quenchless, and Spektor's own unique take on the world of pop tunes. There's a finesse to her songwriting that is now taking on the likes of Randy Newman for elegance in the darkness of the human condition, from the aforementioned "Firewood" to the poignant ballad "How."

I think it should be noted that her producer this time is Mike Elizondo, the man who helped Fiona Apple rescue "Extraordinary Machine." Unlike the multi-producer helmed "Far," "Cheap Seats" maintains a consistent feel and sound. Be it the guttural rasps that she uses to punctuate "Open" or the longing she drives out from "All The Rowboats" ("...keep trying to row away"), she's pulling no emotional punches. Yet, even with the album's cohesiveness and dour lining, there are moments of childlike glee. She pulls the chorus of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" into "Oh Marcello" with such cheer that you'd think she was the original writer, or the warm calypso feel of "Don't Leave Me," which bounces along chipperly.

Don't kid yourself, however. Spektor buries the cruelest cuts in her poppiest moments, like "The Party." "You're like a big parade through town, you leave a mess but you're so much fun." "What We Saw From The Cheap Seats" is on a par with "Far" and her acknowledged masterpiece "Begin to Hope," and is the type of CD that rewards you the more you listen it it. Her track record continues unbroken.

   

My Amazon Reviews: Thomas Dolby "A Map Of the Floating City"

Mapping Dolby's World
3 Out Of 5 Stars

The Blinded by Science guy returns after a near 20 year absence with a studio album that, frankly, I doubt many were hotly anticipating. That said, I'm pleasantly surprised by Dolby's three part trip around the globe (as he describes in the liner notes: Urbanioa, Amerikana, and Oceana) that brings Dolby back with some old cohorts. Kevin Armstrong, Edie Reader, Bruce Wooley and Mark Knopfler appear, along with a guest vocal from Regina Spektor. Regina drops in on the album's most humorous cut, "My Evil Twin Brother."

The humor is something fans of Dolby would expect, but so are the strong melodies, odd keyboard textures ("Spice Train"), stories of the down, out and eccentric ("Road to Reno") or the romantic looking for a safe place to call home ("Oceana"). There's an oddity here that borders on roots music, the dippy "Toad Lickers," which I dig, along with songs that are little more than Dolby and a piano, like the gorgeous "Love is a Loaded Pistol." That song (along with Knopfler's turn on "17 Hills") will take some fans back to the brilliant "The Flat Earth," even if the sum total of "Map of The Floating City" doesn't stay at that high level of quality.

Still, you can't help but to be reminded of the quirky synth-master that gave us such disparate albums as "The Flat Earth" or the unevenness of "Astronauts and Heretics," an album I still enjoy. Dolby, in a recent interview, did not realize that "She Blinded Me With Science" was thirty years old this year as he was being interviewed in support of "Floating." He even expressed surprise, as he put it, because he tends not to look back at a career he sees as a continuation, even as he commented on just how that song opened all his doors to the present. "A Map Of The Floating City" is a pretty good addition to that journey.