ShareThisBy CHUCK CAMPBELL
Monday, March 12, 2007
"BACK NUMBERS," Dean & Britta (Zoe/Rounder)
The sun may have set on Luna, but Dean & Britta are still high on the horizon.
The romantically linked Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips were bandmates in the enduring indie group Luna when it broke up in 2005 _ he was frontman and she played bass. But Dean & Britta had already tested the waters as a duo in 2003 with the Tony Visconti-produced arty pop album "L'avventura."
Visconti is back on the boards for the duo's new post-Luna effort, "Back Numbers," a studied show of sophistication and seduction that's too contrived at times and overly languid, but crafty all the same.
Phillips is irresistible as a subtle siren when she beckons, "Run your hands through my hair" on the undersea fantasy "Wait for Me," and she's enchanting as she seeks escape from "a sad and very lonely day" on the vibraphone-saddled "White Horses." For his part, Wareham's a successful romantic on the closer "Our Love Will Still Be There" as he mostly talks over marching drums and Phillips' ghostly background vocals.
Whether singing solo, backing each other or singing duets, Wareham and Phillips are both unconventional vocalists: He's uneven bordering on weak, and she's prone to disconnect into methodical girlishness. Yet both styles of delivery mesh relatively well with the dreamlike arrangements, from the fuzzy electronic-lullaby opener "Singer Sing" to the surreal, Western-flavored "Say Goodnight" to the foreboding waltz "The Sun Is Still Sunny."
Still, it's hard to make a profound connection with singers who seem bent on hypnotizing their audience, especially when their cold calculations are plainly evident, as with Wareham's enervating stand on "Teen Angel."
"Back Numbers" has a richly distinct sound, but it is best taken in carefully measured doses _ a listening approach even Dean & Britta might appreciate.
Rating (five possible): 3-1/2
"WIDE AWAKE," Canon (Mercy)
California's Canon adds its own bit of progress to progressive rock.
The Los Angeles quartet (three of them transplants from Florida) follows enough prog-rock signatures on "Wide Awake" to pique the interest of fans of Pink Floyd and/or Jethro Tull. Canon plays with textures and time signatures, dabbles in avant-garde form, follows high-minded concepts, pits noisy stretches and dissonance against quiet interludes and blends classical and jazz motifs into the mix.
But in a twist, Canon dispatches its songs in quick, ADD-friendly packages for the 21st century, most tracks clocking in from about 2 minutes to about 4 minutes in length.
In doing so, Canon eliminates the tedium of classic prog-rock, though its conciseness more acutely exposes the hokum inherent in the form. "Wide Awake" is like CliffsNotes Shakespeare: It's graciously less taxing than the original but inescapably less effective.
That's not to say it doesn't work on some level.
Singer/keyboardist Jason Turbin adds a stirringly emotional voice to "Wide Awake," his delivery akin to Radiohead's Thom Yorke shaded with a little Morrissey croon and some Gothic punch. (Yeah, it's a bit cheesy.)
Turbin is at his best adding just enough drama to the sometimes-funereal "Euromatic" and the delicate closer, "Master."
Meanwhile, "Wide Awake," is stately and subversive, baroque orchestrations sliding around and bouncing off old-school electronica and heavy rock. Bass lines tend to be thick, beats are prone to get chunky and the layers pile on and peel away with regularity.
So with all the juggling and switching, it's something of a surprise that the most rewarding song on "Wide Awake" is the shortest, most conventional cut, "SOS." Here Turbin is draped in the warm energy of a focused cadence as he sings repetitions of "Who will save us all?"
The track ends in just under two minutes, which begs the question: Should Canon's short songs be abbreviated even more?
Rating: 3-1/2
"RESURRECTION," Chimaira (Ferret Music)
For Chimaira, Mark Hunter is the elephant in the room. The big, bellowing elephant in the room. And he's dominating the microphone.
That metal bands like Chimaira marry themselves to vocal-chord-shredding "singers" like Hunter is no surprise _ there's money to be made off the adolescent males who relate to the prefab fury. But the band members must feel like they're making the same novelty song over and over when they create music and then attach Hunter's ridiculous, cartoon-like monster affectations.
Yet the group dutifully follows formula on its fourth release, "Resurrection," which features songs with titles like "Worthless," "No Reason to Live," "End It All" and "Black Heart." And Hunter follows the prototype, roaring through lines like "Don't you know that everyone hates you?/It would be simple for me to kill you!" on "Killing the Beast" and spewing something tedious about angels losing their wings and the devil being inside on "The Flame."
Credit guitarists Rob Arnold and Matt DeVries for turning in what amounts to nuanced performances, adding flourish to the thrash of "Pleasure in Pain" and butchering riffs to "The Flame" as well as turning the voiceless bridge of "Six" into the most riveting stretch on "Resurrection."
And in truth, there is some value in this release, even with screechmeister Hunter at the helm. After all, a gut-wrenching overload of sound is a great soundtrack for a good vent.
For a song or two.
The problem is that Chimaira is compelled to drag its blustery bleakness out for the duration, and sometimes even the band seems spent by its numbing excess.
So unless you're an eternally irritated boy, you don't have a chance.
Rating: 2
(Contact Chuck Campbell of The Knoxville News-Sentinel in Tennessee at www.knoxnews.com.)
