| August 31, 1998 |
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by Ellen McDermott, Anicee Gaddis, and Ben Williams |
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 Liz Phair
"Whitechocolatespaceegg"
(Matador)
If
you listen to Liz Phair's latest album expecting the kind
of self-revelatory "Exile from Guyville" sex songs that made
her famous, you may be disappointed. Like the latest from
that other bad-girl-turned-mommy (Madonna), "Whitechocolatespaceegg"
has a couple paeans to her recent motherhood (and marriage),
but only a very few references to her fuck-and-run past. Fair
enough; it's hard for most people to sustain much interest
in that kind of random life after their twenties are over.
But does domesticity make for interesting songs?
Sometimes. The title track starts out with a Stereolab-y dreaminess that makes way for Phair's low, gravelly voice sliding lazily around the scale. "Perfect World," is beautiful and catchy; it's a pop single in a good way as Phair pleads to be "cool, tall, vulnerable, and luscious," but then simple harmonizing vocals kick in, and the song veers perilously close to Indigo Girls territory. Fortunately on the next track, "Johnny Feelgood," she growls about the pleasures of being with a man who will knock her down and drag her around, and we catch a glimpse of the Liz that we love--the one who understands when we're a little crazy and obsessed.
Songs written about characters other than herself--"Big Tall Man," "Uncle Alvarez"--seem to interest her most, though, and she really takes off when she sings in a man's voice on the rollicking "Baby Got Going," about getting it on a fast moving train. When she's singing about herself, though, the results are mixed. The foolishly narcissistic "Polyester Bride" is a throwaway, but the whimsical, complex junior high sentiments of "Girls' Room" are bitchy and sweet within the same sentence. The private "Go on Ahead," sounds like it was written at 3am, after the baby finally stopped crying and she's watching her husband sleep. It's painful, it's personal, and it's also a little boring--not so much the subject matter, but the execution, which is half-hearted at best.
"Whitechocolatespaceegg" is nice; less angry than "Guyville," tuneful, catchy, but not entirely memorable. Who could forget, even after hearing it only once, that record's "I want to be your blow-job queen"? The closest this album comes to that is on "Shitloads of Money," when Phair sings "It's nice to be liked/But it's better by far to get paid." A pale comparison at best, and what is it that Phair has sold out for? A handful of well-produced singer-songwriter vignettes in the same vein as Natalie, Sarah, and Paula that leave me wondering what she's holding back. --Ellen McDermott
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Liz Phair
"Whitechocolatespaceegg"
DJ Vadim
"USSR Reconstruction"
UNKLE
"Psyence Fiction"
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August 3
Deftones, Mary J. Blige, Neotropic
August 3
Chocolate Genius, The Fieldstones, Dimtri from Paris
July 20
MC Lyte, Fastball, Marc Ribot
July 6
Amon Tobin, Pullman, Jesus and Mary Chain
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 DJ Vadim
"USSR Reconstruction"
(Ninja Tune)
If ever experimental hip hop needed a crown prince, St. Petersburg-born DJ Vadim is the boy wonder poised to accept such a loaded title. Even though he's a new kid on the block, DJ Vadim (a.k.a. Vadim Peare) has already gotten the width and breadth of respect due a prodigy. His approach to music making is multifaceted and farsighted. He effectively creates layers, textures, and complex atmospheres--all within a somewhat looser definition of hip hop. Vadim's latest album, "USSR Reconstruction," is fortified with authentic old school beats skillfully bounced over oftentimes unidentifiable sounds (hard to tell whether it's a door creaking or a needle scratching vinyl). "I'm into obscure and timeless music, analog, and somewhat lo-fi," Vadim has said.
"Reconstruction" works nicely as a kind of unusual set-piece, a sort of cross-cultural collage--Vadim has lived in London since age three--where a voice-over in Russian bumps into the exquisitely Anglified rhymes of the Starving Artists and culminates with the gut-centered rhythm of French rapper supreme Jupiter Jam. Vadim also got fellow Ninjas Kid Koala, the Herbaliser, and Animals on Wheels to invest their talent in his project. It's common enough for Ninja DJs to work together, but Vadim managed to excise uncommonly good tracks this go ‘round.
"Conquest of the Irrational" has an anthemesque quality that makes you tingle inside. Hard beats, sweeping strings, and a sort of overriding timelessness make it the most atmospheric track on "Reconstruction." "Variations in USSR" is similarly moody in a pretty sort of way. Recognizing its appeal, Vad (as his friends call him) offers four different remixes to choose from, including one by DJ Krush and the Silent Poets. "Abstractions" has some of the best rapping to come out of Europe (Starving Artists and Jupiter Jam) since the now disbanded Young Disciples, hands down. It's clear that Vadim is a true "head," which is why he has a decent shot at making hip hop history--he's conquering new territory using his own set of rules. --Anicee Gaddis
UNKLE
"Psyence Fiction"
(Island)
This seems to
be the year when dance music over-extends itself. Goldie kicked
it off in January with "Saturnz Return," a bloated double
set featuring half-baked cameos from KRS-1 and Noel Gallagher.
And now here comes UNKLE, whose "Psyence Fiction" album you
will no doubt be hearing a lot about when it's finally released
on September 22nd. With DJ Shadow and James Lavelle as the
prime movers, the album has been assembled by an ad hoc all-star
committee that reads like a checklist of '90s cred: the Verve's
Richard Ashcroft, Radiohead's Thom Yorke, and Beastie Boy
Mike D contribute vocals; Massive Attack arranger Will Malone
scored string sections; Kool G Rap rhymes; graffiti veteran
Futura 2000 is responsible for the sleeve (which gives me
an excuse to link to his amazing
website); Talk Talk singer Mark Hollis is in there somewhere;
the bassist from Metallica evens turns up, alongside lesser-known
vocalists Atlantique Khanh, Alice Temple, and Badly Drawn
Boy.
Lavelle, who would be the Puff Daddy of trip hop if only he had half Sean Combs' business or pop smarts (Lavelle's label, Mo' Wax, practically invented the genre), has been working on this album for three years, through various personnel changes, debauched meanderings, and much windy talk of making a great record for the ages. He's the epitome of the '90s musician, in that he has little actual musical talent, and vast networking and tastemaking abilities--but then, with DJ Shadow behind the mixing desk, that shouldn't matter. But if you found parts of "Entroducing" portentiously baroque, beware: Shadow's beats are more often ponderous than funky, and his dubious taste in guitar lines has been indulged to a much greater degree here, in pursuit of the same rock-dance fusion that everybody seems to be mistaking for the future these days.
There's some logic to the idea: after all, the Verve's one decent song ("Bittersweet Symphony") was inspired by Massive Attack's sweeping "Unfinished Sympathy"; Radiohead engage explicitly, if ponderously, with technology, and crunchy guitar riffs have been turning up everywhere in dance music, from the Prodigy to Fatboy Slim. And quite a few of the tracks range from not bad to pretty good, though none of them ever quite cohere into something really special: "Drums of Death Part 1" is thundering hip hop, though Kool G Rap's lyrics are utterly stale; Ashcroft's "Lonely Soul" is epically bleak, if also pretentiously maudlin; Atlantique Khanh's "Chaos" is delicately moving; Badly Drawn Boy's "Nursery Rhyme," featuring a biting serrated-edge guitar riff, is the best thing on the album, and I can easily imagine it receiving heavy rotation on MTV in the near future.
But much of "Psyence Fiction" is a truly horrible mixture of cheesy LA sleaze rock and smug hipsterism--witness the heroin chic lyric of "Bloodstain," the self-pitying wailing of Thom Yorke on "Rabbit in Your Headlights," and the highly disappointing DJ Shadow instrumentals, which don't even match up to the one excellent UNKLE 12" ("The Time Has Come") that came out three years ago. When someone samples Francis Ford Coppola bullshitting about how "Apocalypse Now" was his own personal Vietnam (from "Hearts of Darkness"), and wants you to think it's cool, you know they have ego problems. Dance music has been heading into prog rock territory for some time now; this is the kind of record that makes me yearn for its own punk to come around.
--Ben Williams
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