CD Reviews by Geoff Parkes
Artist: Bis                         No Stars Title: Return to Central           Label: Tilt	When the big green uber-aliens finally decide to make contact with us mere mortals, I'm sure there will be one thing their superior minds ill never be able to comprehend. Sure they'll put George W and Johnny H down to mere stupidity, an electorate getting what they deserve. They'll look at Australians believing they have a hope at the World Cup next year and laugh at our sense of ironic detachment. But they will never, never be able to appreciate just why some humans decided to make music to yawn to. Yes, I'm talking about Bis, and yes, Return to Central is one of the most utterly banal and unimaginative releases of this year. Threaded together with beats ripped from the Mel & Kim songbook, keyboard riffs that Stock, Aitken and Waterman would be jealous of, and the sheer gall necessary to rhyme "anyway" with "me" suggests that it should be these "musicians' who would serve as sufficient warning to the Taliban were they dropped on Afghanistan. In fact, when Osama Bin Laden preaches of the evils of the west, this is what he's on about. Boredom reigns supreme, the designer cool detachment that seeps from the lead vocalist Amanda's mouth is like puss from an open, infected wound. Eighties irony pop was perfected years ago by the Pet Shop Boys, and is in no need of a revival, just because the drugs from an Ibiza weekend are wearing off. Hand me my noose if this is "a return to the center of the body in essence", because this post-structuralist prefers the empty void rather than a space made of this.
Artists: Various                Stars: 1/2 Title: A Shot in the Dark from Osaka Sucker. Label: Bar Mitos/Sunflower	Somewhere out there is a bar where 1993 never happened, where synths and loops are banished from existence and loud guitars, screeching vocals and feedback deluxe reign supreme. Once upon a time (92 perhaps?) I would've loved this bar, spending my waking hours drenched in sweat, writhing with the perspiring pit, and doing interminable damage to my ever-suffering organs. Now though I'm not so sure. Maybe it's the oversaturation of boy-bangers, pseudo-punk/pop wankers who insult humanity by their existence. Or maybe I'm just a jaded cynic, seen one, heard 'em all. Enough of the introspection, but it's this CD's fault, From the liner notes it appears the 20 tracks of thump und strung were recorded in the Bar Sunflower and Bar Mito's, somewhere in Japan from the looks of things. The highlights are where the bands somehow escape from their boundaries, as is the case with Yet, whose "Right from Wrong" sees sweet female vocals tear it up in time with an overarching thrash singer, the mix and match suggesting new possibilities. The 3d's "The Young and the Restless" takes the softest approach, and their breezy pop always verging on explosion is a supple oasis in this desert of drool.  But they're the rarity on an album overloaded with sludge. Regurgitator, who appear here with "Bubble Boy", have a lot to answer for - merely alternating times does not a master make, and funk thrash is so 98 it's beyond belief. The worst offenders here are Minx, their hair-rock triggering a flashback to Roxus, and we'll leave it at that. This is a release that could have, should have stretched further if they'd really wanted to capture the "awesome music" the liner notes writes of. Instead, it's puerile, a toxic quicksand for your stereo speakers.
Artist: Bohjass              Stars: **** Title: An Ex. in P.M. Tort   Label:Self-Released	Somewhere out on the edge, unhindered by margins, are musicians blasting away at the possibilities of sound and structure, Since the days of the NYC-based groups led by John Cage, and their ventures into the dynamics of repetition, artists as varied as Sonic Youth, The Velvet Underground, Neil Young, and the (sometimes-produced by Fugazi) Allscars have to varying degrees and extents taken the concept of rhythm and melody and mutated it through amps, angst, and sonic squalls. Here, on the debut release from  Melbourne-based Bohjass, we have a prime example of the often-underlooked examples of post-modern jazz, a generic form that takes on the instrumentations familiar to us from the days of the big band and bebop and pushes them to the extreme capabilities. Surprisingly, its refreshing material to these jaded ears, and you can audibly sense the ten years-plus that Bohjass have been together from the ability not just to hold the material together, but also their willingness to let if fall apart, in the process creating new visions of harmonising and also discordant instrumental play. With openly 6 people, they manage to fill the air with enough diversity and polymorphous intrigue to sound like a full orchestra. Led by Timothy Pledger on guitar and sax, the group, obviously informed by theoretical positions, plow through tracks enigmatically titled “orphee’s Dream Juice” and “The God Gorgeous and Me” with great aplomb, rising and turning like a rip tide gone mad, a sea out of control yet ever-so softly brought back into focus at the most unexpected moments. This is not dinner party music, nor is it the jazz so disappointingly featured in mum and dad-friendly festivals on a Sunday afternoon. It's challenging, it's dangerous, and it's about bloody time.
Artist: V/A                         No Stars Title: Carmen: A Hip Hopera   Label: Sony/MTV	Baz Lurhman unleashes a dangerous force upon us with his 1996 reworking of Romeo and Juliet, though he at least was able to utilise the original text, using the force of contemporary images to make relevant the famous tale. In terms of Carmen, Bizet’s famous opera, the 1950s reworking of the ancient tale of gypsy lust into a black musical of New York’s projects called Carmen Jones rates alongside the eighties cinematic vision of Carlos Saura’s Carmen as the most successful. The merits or otherwise of MTV and some of TRL’s most featured “updating” the operatic thrust of jealousy and love are to be debated elsewhere, when the film finally reaches our barren shores. In the meantime, all we have is the soundtrack, where a who’s who of 21st C hip-hop-pop strut their best stuff for the world's eager ears. Well, that was probably the intention, but this CD has more in common with Carmen Elektra than it's supposed classic source. Like Elektra, it’s glitzy - Destiny’s Child, Wyclef Jean and Missy Misdemeanour Elliot are just some of the folks who lend their voices to the tracks, but like Elektra’s marriage to Dennis Rodman, it’s a largely futile affair, empty of sentiment, ironically devoid of the soul so many of these artists claim to have. There's little standout material here, the “talents” wasted on inane rhymes and traditional beats, and maybe Destiny’s Child should've thought about their christian message’s appropriateness considering the way the christian countries have treated gypsies over the years. More mistakes are made by not including the lyrics in the liner notes - surely one of the central features to this hip-hopera are the words, but maybe they're that bad - after all, I could've sworn I heard Beyonce Knowles rap “My thighs never lie” on track 6, “Cards Never Lie” And let me choke on a cheeseburger if Wyclef Jean isn’t becoming the Benny Hinns of contemporary rap, all populist philosophy wrapped up in meaningless rhetoric. On the same track, Wyclef warns that “you could wake up in the morning and it could be over”. Thankfully the stop button on my stereo makes it so much more easier.
Artist: ryandavid {sic}                    Stars: ** Title: Volume 2001: Through the Sound Portal Label: Portas/MGM	Every so often an album sneaks through that makes reviewers question their positions, their assumptions and their bizarre methods of deciding how to rate the quantity of crap that comes across our stereos. One is forced to question how exactly do you compare a crap punk record that attempts to fuse funk with rock and, for example, a crap pop record by Mariah Carey? Do you go for the essentialist outlook, that all records are products in a market economy and therefore should be rated accordingly on their merits? Or do you maintain a binary, almost-Marxist sense of oppositional forces, establishing the record by the local artist on an independent label as more worthy than that of an international star on a multinational? Is there a third way, a path through which reviewers can avoid minefields like this and, free from contextualitities of markets and advertisers, lipsynchers and losers, the music could stand on its own? Nah, probably not, so let's cut to it. Two stars for David's attempts - there are echoes here of the once-great Jane's Addiction, David's voice reaching peaks like Farrell’s, especially in “Vision Song.” Lose one star for lyrics such as “sutured mentally as seasons carry on”, again from “Vision Song” - please don't drown me in your high-school attempts at mystic depth. Add half a star for writing all songs and playing them - some might call it egomaniacal, but here it adds a sense of unity to the work, and it's a brave move for someone used to working within the constraints of a group. Add one more star for the title of track nine, “the fine line between perfection and disorder”, but take back that half a star for 6 and a half minutes of wandering guitar wank. I wanted to like this album, more than Mariah, but it's a difficult, underpaid and never-appreciated job being a cd reviewer and just occasionally, you have to take a stand.
Artist: Dynamite Boy              Stars: 1/2 a star Title: Somewhere in America   Label: Shock/Fearless	Somewhere in America there are millions of young, white and angry men growing up thinking Green Day are the fore-fathers of the punk. Somewhere in America there are young dudes, hats twisted backwards in a rebellious sense of identity perversion, who believe that Blink 182 speak to their souls, touch on the precarious balance of self and group that inhabit these young un’s lives, torn asunder by the ending of another season of Baywatch. And, somewhere in America, there are money-hungry record executives who think that, like lemmings to a cliff, these youngsters will buy music that consists of little more than 3-chord progressions, basic harmonies and lyrics like “I wanna drive away on a better road.”. They may well be right, but that's not the point. The point here is market saturation, and the last thing I needed to here was another excretorial pop-punk band that wants to emulate Green Day. Corporate consumerism via marketed rebellion is not OK, and neither are the lyrics of “Hook, Line & Sinker”, where “I have to shout, there is no doubt that everything was simpler in the past.” suggests a 19-something year old’s nostalgia of life actually meaning something. My haggard, nicotine-stained heart bleeds for such angst, but fuck it - get out of your head, go buy a Fugazi or a DK’s album, and get a fucking life. There is no need for this.
Artist: Grandview                  Stars: **** Title: Grandview                 Label: Limited Edition	Once upon a time in the early nineties, you couldn't avoid Brisbane band The Melniks, and warm memories of a wanton night that included them launching the If I Were A Carpenter album still haunt me to this day. Though The Melnicks are no more, lead singer Trent McNamara has joined up with Dearhunter Tim Oxley to release this delicious collection of lo-fi acoustic country pop. Punk may indeed be dead, but the harmonies and strumming live on forever. Influences are easier to spot - these guys sound as if they've been drowning their sorrows with a case of Gram Parsons, a few lines of Evan Dando at his sweetest and I’ll be strung up at the Alamo if “High On Life” wasn't brought partly to life by a Kinky Friedman tune.  “Canvas Boy” is four minutes of delicate love, with Oxley and McNamara’s harmonisations at the forefront.  Notes are left dangling, a harmonica is drawled through with the energy of a sloth and you're left with a sense of mystery and loss, love and longing - in short, the four essential keys to great alternative country. These songs are so low key they sneak in under the radar. “By Your Side” revels in lines like, “If the airplane doesn't crash, I’ll be looking at your eyes”, whilst the acoustic strumming sounds like the distant cousin of MASH’s “Suicide is Painless” theme.  Remarkably simple yet simply remarkable, Grandview strike a delicate pose in a world dominated by nu-metal and bubblegum pop, but it's a pose of sincerity, of faith in the song Eight tracks of honey-drenched heartache, this is serious cigarette and coffee kinda music.
Artist: Gorgeous                     Stars: ***1/2 Title: Gorgeous                        Label: Gorgeous (?) (Disclosure: Gorgeous is managed by Craig New, Revolver's editor. He had nothing to do with the views expressed in this review, and I wasn't even paid for it!)	Brisbane duo Fi Claus and Emma Heeney have been establishing an impressive presence around this country as the two women who make up Gorgeous convincingly win over audiences with their harmonic melodies, soft guitar strumming and winsome tunes that evoke enough stages of sadness to make even the roughened cynic (like moi) sigh wistfully. On their eponymous release, Claus and Heeney play all instruments, including cello, piano accordion and the under-rated glockenspiel. It's a strong debut, a sign of things to come, and a welcome relief from the Brissie boy band wanktics of Powderfinger and the like. Harkening back to days where the tender Club Hoy and the should've-been-huge Isis worked the local clubs and bars, Gorgeous straddle the border lands of acoustic folk and pop. Where lesser talents might, and indeed have, wallowed in the generic mud, Claus and Heeney seem more than willing to stretch themselves, to take risks on tracks like the assertive opener, “In Terms Of Me”. Their voices lead well, catching the glints of sunlight as well as the slivers of snow that drift through their songs, and over 11 tracks the listener is given an insight into control, as the instrumentation rises and drops, like a lover's breath, just beneath the surface. This is music to listen to on rooftops, the stars glowing as bright as your cigarettes, letting the dulcet tones wash over you. “Evaporate” lingers, two minutes of subtlety that last so much longer, and as such, it's the stand out track on a strong selection. If this is Gorgeous at the beginning, I can't wait to see them mid-stride, atop a world that should open up its ears when quality music approaches.

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