Terrell's Tune-UP Pop CD Reviews
By: Steve Terrell, Music Critic - The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 6th 2002 1:25am
Are you ready for the rumble? There's a rumble out there, a roar arising from the calcified
caverns of rock 'n' roll. Whispers of a coming musical insurrection led by bands such as
The Hives, The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Mooney Suzuki, The
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and And You Will Know Us By The Trail
of Dead ... A rumble that's growing louder ... Us graybeards, we've heard it before. A few times. We know what's
in store. First come the bands - guitars full of fire, singers in the guise
of hopped-up oracles or carnival barkers bound for glory or prancing
joy-boy freshmen from the Mick Jagger Rock Star Finishing School -
all of them springing forth as if by spontaneous combustion. Refreshing insanity. Rock 'n' roll! Can you hear the rumble? Again the music has been pulled out of the abyss. And even
against the odds of a monopolistic record industry, intolerable
radio and an indifferent populace, the wounded creature is still
alive! Quoth Huey Lewis: "The heart of rock 'n' roll is still
beating!" And then comes the inevitable. The bands fizzle and sink back
into the muck. Or even worse - they catch on. And soon it's a scene.
Maybe even a fashion. Radio loosens up a little. Record labels go
nuts and sign anything that resembles those bands that caused the
commotion. A second wave of lesser talents follows. Maybe even a
third wave of no-talents. Hype explodes. Shallow trendies and
undeserving, uncool louts invade. For a few minutes a lot of folks
seem to be making a lot of money. And then comes the bad personal stuff, the Grecian-urn tragedies.
I don't want to even go into that here. Those ugly cautionary tales
always go unheeded. Things sink back into grim normality. Radio sucks worse than
ever. Record companies consolidate and gain so much mass they turn
into black holes. Twisted old rock critics amuse themselves with
gratuitous Huey Lewis references ... But for a while, a few inspired musicians and a lot of their fans
have a great time, creating precious memories and myths to live by. So far there's no convenient name, no neat little umbrella to
shove them all under. (Sometimes you'll run across a label like
"garage-band revival" or "neo-garage," but somehow I don't think
these are going to stick like "punk" or "grunge" or "British
Invasion.") There's no geographic center, no "new Seattle." And actually
these groups don't sound all that much alike beyond the fact that
they are guitar-driven and punk-rooted. This time around there's a defensive skepticism among potential
fans. Witness the backlash against The Strokes, the major charges
being that their daddies are rich and their mammas good-lookin'. (My favorite inane rap against The Strokes, as related by a young
friend who lives in New York: The Strokes sound great, but the only
reason they do is because they're all rich kids who don't have to
work day jobs. So all they do is practice all day. If they weren't
so damned rich, they wouldn't be so good.) Maybe some of these groups can pull it off without all the
attendant B.S. My advice, meanwhile, is to forget about all the hype
and enjoy the rumble. Here are a couple of recent albums by a couple of bands involved
in this loose-knit phenomenon.
Veni Vedi Vicious by The Hives
Sweden never has been known as
a hotbed of rock 'n' roll. As far as popular music, Sweden's main
contribution has been ABBA. But The Hives are whole different story. These five nonblondes
rock with unabashed intensity and a healthy humor. Led by a singer who calls himself "Howlin' Pelle Almqvist," The
Hives laugh at themselves with such self-referential song titles as
"The Hives Declare Guerre Nuclear," "The Hives Introduce the Metric
System in Time" and "The Hives Are Law, You Are Crime" (from a
previous album). The relentless guitar attack and back-to-Stooge-basics approach
indeed sounds fresh, if not terribly original. Give The Hives a sax
player and they'd sound a lot like Rocket from the Crypt, a '90s San
Diego band. An interesting little tune here - which might be a clue that The
Hives are capable of some true weirdness - is "Find Another Girl,"
the album's only slow number and the only cover (originally by The
Impressions). With dreamy guitar riffs suggesting Asian pop, it
sounds like something that the house band at a Philippine whorehouse
might play.
Source Tags & Codes by And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead
This is a Texas band known mostly
for destroying its instruments (a moment of silence, please, for
John Entwistle ...). That's a timeworn old gimmick. But this album,
the third for the group, shows there is musical substance here. The sound is thicker and denser than most of the "neo-garage"
bands. I hear a lot of late-'80s/early-'90s indie rock - traces of
Jane's Addiction, Sonic Youth, Afghan Whigs, and Hsker D. There are even a couple of spots with orchestral flourishes. But
don't worry. Nobody's going to mistake these guys for The Moody
Blues. As their name suggests, the songs and the lyrics are darker.
Ponder these words from the anthemic "Monsoon": "Rain drops fall
like blood from your hands/Pray to God/But I doubt He's listening/
This world is a gutter that He likes to piss in ..." Like the best of the grunge-era bands, Trail of Dead makes gloom
sound kinda fun. t Betty Dylan live at the Cowgirl from 9:30 p.m. to 1 a.m.
Saturday with a $3 cover.
 (C) 2002 The Santa Fe New Mexican. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
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