From: owner-navy-soup-digest@smoe.org (navy-soup-digest) To: navy-soup-digest@smoe.org Subject: navy-soup-digest V3 #195 Reply-To: navy-soup@smoe.org Sender: owner-navy-soup-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-navy-soup-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk navy-soup-digest Friday, December 22 2000 Volume 03 : Number 195 In This Digest: ----------------- in honor of Valentino (long) ["W. L. Estes" ] Re: in honor of Valentino (long) [Starfall18@aol.com] Sarah Slean interview (w/ info on new album!) [Elizabeth Subject: in honor of Valentino (long) Hi folks, Some time ago, when I was initially trying to figure out who that Sarah Harmer chick was, I came across the below reviews. There's a review of _Under These Rocks and Stones_ and _Valentino_. The original essay contained a review of a 3rd album. I've cut off the 3rd review in his essay, but if you're interested, go grab his url for yourself. As Chantal Kreviazuk is probably of interest to the readership here, I've left that part in (and it's fun too, besides). Enjoy, - --Will From: http://www.furia.com/twas/twas0167.html Chantal Kreviazuk: Under These Rocks and Stones 'Tis all too easy to imagine the script of the meeting in which Columbia decided to sign Chantal Kreviazuk: ```Chantal'. That's a great name. `Chantal'. Perfect, simple, exotic. Sounds like a perfume.'' ``It's `Chantal Kreviazuk', sir.'' ``Eh?'' ```Chantal Kreviazuk'.'' ``I can't understand you.'' ```Kreviazuk'. It's her last name.'' ``Christ, that's the worst last name I've ever heard. From now on, she's just `Chantal'. Like `Jewel'. I mean, who the hell knows Jewel's last name? Does she even have one?'' ``Yes, sir. Kilcher.'' ``Kilcher?'' ``Yes, sir.'' ``Well, that's my point, isn't it? Anyway, let's see that picture. Ah, cute. She looks like, um, you know the one I'm thinking of, from Canada?'' ``Celine Dion?'' ``No, no, not her. Ugh. She looks like her head got wedged in something. I mean the cute one, with the short hair. Ran that whole Lily Fair thing?'' ``Lilith Fair? Sarah McLachlan.'' ``Right, right. Whatever.'' ``Shall I play you a song, sir?'' ``Eh? Oh, yes, go ahead. A short one, if possible.'' And then, halfway through it: ``Perfect. The rest of them sound like this?'' ``Well, they show various sides of her musical personality, sir, I wouldn't--'' ``Yes, yes, whatever. Listen, I tell you quite frankly, we've been getting our asses kicked. Every damn label in the country has one of these Canadians, and it's about time we got one of our own.'' ``How did you know she's Canadian?'' ``Aren't they all?'' ``Aren't who?'' ``The short-haired one, Jewel, Alanis Mor-- whatever, and now the one with the armpits. All of them.'' ``Jewel isn't from Canada, she grew up in Alaska.'' ``Alaska's just the part of Canada we already own.'' ``Paula Cole is from Massachusetts!'' ``Listen, Mr. Map, to a sixteen-year-old in a K-Mart in St. Louis, Massachusetts is as Canadian as Greenland.'' ``Greenland isn't Canadian!'' ``Exactly. Now, call legal and have one of those `emerging artist' contracts drawn up; we'll cut the wholesale to cost, get stores to sell her for $7.99 each, and make up eight points of market share by Christmas.'' I expect things proceeded quickly from there. Somehow, in the ensuing negotiations, Chantal Kreviazuk managed to extract a concession that she could keep her last name, but that's the most exotic detail of the album's meticulous packaging. The front-cover photo could be a rotation of the picture of Sarah on the cover of Surfacing, and I suspect that if you panned down from the grainy black-and-white picture on the back you'd find the boots from the back cover of Paula Cole's Harbinger. The lettering, of course, is done by hand, as on Surfacing and This Fire. The lead single,``God Made Me'', seems carefully selected to echo Joan Osborne's``What if God was one of us?'', Tori Amos'``God'', Jewel's``Who Will Save Your Soul''and a host of similar spiritual invocations. The album opens with jagged guitars, a scratchy drum loop, smooth fretless-bass pulses and Chantal's emotive singing and eerie piano, like a lab hybrid of Paula and Alanis, defiant enough to be part of the fashionable search for self-awareness and self-esteem, but safely encased in enough production gloss to not disrupt the workplace, if played quietly, in between Shawn Colvin and Lisa Loeb. And what you thought of Paula Cole is probably a pretty reliable predictor of what you'll think of Chantal, at least initially. Theirs aren't the only two albums like this, and there will be plenty more before their eddy is swallowed back up in the mainstream current -- music made by earnest young women with enough lyrical barbs to talk about but a friendly studio shimmer like an aural gelcap, to insure that the ingredients don't reach your bloodstream until long after you've swallowed the pill -- but they would comprise a set even if they had no other company. I don't think, however, that it's any fault of Chantal's that her music happens to fit a current stereotype. Nothing about it strikes me as cynically calculated, and I'm willing to believe that this record would not sound materially different if Paula's albums were still languishing in a vault at Imago, Sarah were playing coffeehouses in Halifax, and Alanis were studying anthropology at Carleton. The sad truth is that behind every unexpected breakthrough there are probably thirty complete unknowns who've been writing songs just like that in their studio apartments for years. (Actually, the sadder truth is that there are probably thirty deserving unknowns for every failed breakthrough, as well.) I don't resent Chantal for the ways she sounds like Paula or Alanis any more than I resent Everclear for the ways they remind me of Nirvana, or Jolene for how they remind me of Grant Lee Buffalo. I like the sense that artists are connected, that the universe of styles and personalities lends itself better to fabric analogies than to those interminable blinking-screen programs that my friend Keith would type into my tenth-grade geometry teacher's Commodore PET at the beginning of every class (though, in Keith's defense, it should be noted that the PET did not have any form of permanent storage attached to it, and there aren't very many better PET programs simple enough to type in from scratch during the last two minutes of passing period). It's easy to be nauseated by the inevitable binges major labels go through in response to every perceived twitch of public tastes, but if you adjust the scale, that's more or less how I react to finding a new thing I like, too. Yes, this means that there are plenty of CDs on my shelves that I bought as the fourth and fifth examples of something that I no longer feel merits more than two or three, but if letting four and five drift out of my awareness is the price of finding two and three, then I will happily be a machine for forgetting. The similarities between Chantal and the others are substantive, as well as superficial, but easily itemized. Her voice is strong and clear, touching Alanis and Abra Moore's galvanizing wails as she turns sharp corners, and Sarah and Paula's prettier sopranos when she switches registers. She plays piano and keyboards herself, fluently and fluidly, and although the one song where the piano is left alone,``Imaginary Friend'', sounds more like Everything but the Girl to me than Tori Amos, several of the others have short piano intros that do remind me of Tori, particularly the wintery opening phrase of``Co-Dependent''. Writing collaborator Christopher Burke-Gaffney provides the warm, Glen Ballard-like guitars, and bassist Davey Faragher and drummer Michael Urbano supply lithe rhythm parts that with only minor changes in production idiom could have come from one of Joan Armatrading or Julia Fordham's shinier albums. Ed Stasium plays organ on one song, and three others have dramatic, swelling string sections. Chantal hurries through words like she's struggling to understand the subject even while the song is going on, and the lyrics are an alternately rousing and collapsing swirl of resilience and self-doubt, and prone to only a few token forced phrases like``When I go swimming / In your intellect / The water's so shallow / And the dialect / Is so phony / But I eat it up / Like bologna''to be regretted later (especially putting``bologna''in the booklet where she sings``baloney''). If it were possible to distill production out of an album as a coherent substance, I'm convinced that what you'd get from Under These Rocks and Stones and the first Marry Me Jane album would be microscopically identical; ``Surrounded''even has some of Amanda Kravat's rueful melancholy. ``Believer''and``Co-Dependent''ride on twangy bluster,``Grace''is smoky and elegant,``Hands''and``Boat''dense and surging, the gospel,``People Get Ready''-like``Green Apples''glassy and worn. And``Disagree''is close enough to some of Cyndi Lauper's ballads that I keep waiting for Chantal's voice to squeak like Cyndi's. But there are also more than enough details that either strike me as singular, or pull me in no matter how many times I've heard them before: the dozen syllables over which the word``lose''is stretched, in the chorus of``Surrounded'', and the insistent chant of``I still hear/fight/fear/hate the bomb''that leads into it, fighting against the song's meter; the moment when the diffident, springy bass slides of``Don't Be Good''give way to a heartbreakingly simple propulsive quarter-note run; the way``Believer''slams to a halt and then leaps into motion again, enthusiasm overcoming deliberation, the line``It's hard to believe that God made you and me with the same hands''running brokenly over the transition; the gorgeous, soaring choruses of``Wayne'', which I thought were just a charming lover's plea (``Wait, wait for me, / And take me up in your hot air balloon / And feed me cotton candy'') until I realized that the first word is``Wayne'', not``Wait'', and seems to be addressed to an older brother, although I can't decide whether he has died or simply gone off to college; the circling guitar arpeggios and rumbling bass and metallic snare drum of``Hands'', and the half-swallowed bits at the ends of the verse lines; the prayerful phrasing of``Green Apples'', which renders the words indistinct but leaves the devotion unmistakable; and the unhurried, graceful``Imaginary Friend'', which you couldn't calculate from anything. Weeping Tile: Valentino Weeping Tile are what happens when the convenient wave of stylistically coincident popularity fails to arrive. Under These Rocks and Stones ended up on impulse-buy display-racks, while Weeping Tile's second album, Valentino, despite being released on Warner in Canada, has yet to appear in the US at all. I only discovered their first, 1995's Cold Snap, two years belatedly, but it ended up as the third slot in a rotation with Slingbacks' All Pop, No Star and fellow Canadians the Leslie Spit Treeo's Chocolate Chip Cookies, and held its own remarkably well, considering that those were my first and fourth favorite albums of last year. The genre these three bands belong to is harder to define, having not been illuminated by any particular commercial success. I keep thinking of it as country-rock, but none of the three bands have very much overt country flavor to them. What I believe I'm responding to is less a musical style than a personal, plain-spoken intimacy that I identify most strongly with a few bands like Lone Justice, American Music Club, Grant Lee Buffalo and Son Volt, who do have country leanings. Or perhaps this is what country turns into, after a few winters in a quiet, snow-locked, Canadian small town, its chaps and denim buried under thermal underwear and parkas, wolves traded for owls, the crackle of a fire moved off of the prairie inside thick cabin walls. The thing that caught my attention about Cold Snap, originally, was a single line. The song it occurs in,``Westray'', is about a coal-mining disaster and the cover-ups and denial that encircle it, and something about the tired, grim way the narrator sings the chorus,``You'll know in a little while / If this was meant to be'', makes it sound, to me, like one of those messages the character who knows the hideous secret leaves behind in an envelope, or on an answering machine,``in case I don't return'', when they go off to either bring the evildoers to justice or get their skull staved in. As I listened, striking peculiarities emerged from many of the other songs, as well. Songwriter Sarah Harmer has a folk-singer's ear for regional identity and rural detail; you will have a hard time finding another album that uses the words``arable''and``moil''. Valentino grabs me the same way, with just one line at first. This time it's in``Chicken'', a song about a village party that aspires to more glamour than it achieves, when Harmer, on the way to it, sings, matter-of-factly,``Checking your toes for leeches / Checking your hair for lice'', revealing how much artifice there is to the glamour, but also how desperately the attendees need the illusion. And it's later in the same song that I suddenly discover how Valentino fits into the gigantic jigsaw puzzle that all of art and film and literature and music sometimes (especially when a piece snaps into place like this) seems to me to constitute. ``Playing under the tent at the point'', goes part of the chorus, and it hits me that this album is the musical translation, for me, of the movie The Sweet Hereafter, which opens with Nicole's band rehearsing under a tent at exactly the sort of faded fairground where the party in the song would take place. It cannot be the film's actual soundtrack, the music that Nicole's band would have played, for precisely the same reason that All Pop, No Star could not be the music that Alyssa sings in Chasing Amy; these albums speak with the author's voice, and their lines would be as thuddingly inappropriate coming out of an individual character's mouth as it would if Meryl Streep sang Billy Bragg's``There Is Power in a Union''at the end of Silkwood, instead of``Amazing Grace'', or Renee Zellweger launched into``So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star''on the roof of Empire Records. Nicole's songs come before the bus-wreck, before guilt and shock wear through her denial; the claustrophobia, ambiguity and directionless, paralyzing urgency that Weeping Tile capture become clear to her only afterwards. Even Cold Snap wouldn't have been quite right: the silence of the townspeople who know the truth in``Westray''is too simple, as if truth were a single thing you could hide; the point of The Sweet Hereafter (as best I can tell, but I only saw it once and haven't read Russell Banks' novel) is that in a town so small, truth is not an independent force, it's a product of the interconnections of the affected lives. Valentino seems more cognizant of the gracelessness of jumping to conclusions, and more willing to let its stories tell themselves. Nothing here comes as close, literally, to the plot of The Sweet Hereafter as``Westray'', but these stories have their own ways of circling back to the same themes. ``What's a few days of denial for me?'', asks the narrator of``South of Me'', as if after a few days she'll have forgotten that she doesn't really love the man. ``We fought for an hour on the phone. / I wish I was there with you'', starts``Through Yr Radio'', and there's menace in her voice, as well as longing. ``Judy G.''turns on a plaintive``He mailed a postcard / Sent from the same city / To her only permanent place'', like a Del Amitri lament that's found a way to unravel a little further still. ``Take a picture on this miracle mile, / You could be anywhere in the country'', goes the disgusted anti-road-anthem``I'm Late''. ``Our art titillates the scene, / But it's shy of what it's seeing'', contends``I Repeat''. ``She watches the clock like a sickness'', says``Can't Get Off''. The darkest moment, lyrically, is the imbalanced-relationship evisceration``Tom's Shoe Repair'', set in an apartment``where you live and I stay''. The final song,``Goin' Out'', extends only a small consolation,``There's a bed made upstairs if you get tired'', but at least it's an honest, earnest offer. But I would also have loved both Cold Snap and Valentino even if the lyrics had been gibberish. Harmer writes small, tight, timeless rock songs that lever up my spirit far more effectively than their mass would seem to permit. ``South of Me'''s guitars buzz as choppily as Linoleum's, but the song breaks into a ringing refrain over spare, galloping drums. ``Through Yr Radio'''s verses have some Throwing Muses-ish hesitation, but the choruses haul out power chords and tense harmony vocals. The surging``Unshaven''bristles with feedback and jagged lead hooks. ``Judy G.''is a mournful waltz, with the band's normally-subliminal country influences making a rare appearance in the form of some muted volume-pedal guitar. Drums rumble and pound stolidly through ``2''. ``I'm Late''is frisky and elastic, with a careening hook that reminds me oddly of Tribe. The guitar-and-voice intermission``Old Perfume''is a little like Stina Nordenstam singing Cole Porter. ``I Repeat''modulates between Throwing Muses obliquity and a Sleater-Kinney-ish caterwaul. ``Can't Get Off''is delirious and chiming, like Tommy Keene backed by Magnapop. ``Every Good Story'', conversely, is reedy and sedate, with a whirring Farfisa and a shuffling drum gait, like Lone Justice (or, for the more obscurely minded, Rubber Rodeo or Map of the World) in one of their quiet moods. ``Chicken''crashes back into gear, Harmer and second guitarist Luther Wright slashing at each other across the stereo spectrum. ``Tom's Shoe Repair''is as close to a Slingbacks song as you'll get without tracking down an import copy of their album (and, appropriately, swings into motion with the line``I was across the street in the record shop / When I heard I had to go'', which I could imagine Shireen Liane writing). And``Goin' Out'', the second acoustic waltz, makes a halting entrance, but eventually drifts into a pretty duet between Harmer and Wright, with a gentle flute fluttering around the voices like the air shimmering above their heads as their thoughts escape, despite their best attempts to keep them in. Copyright (c) 1998, glenn mcdonald Encouragement, carping to: twasfeedback@furia.com www.furia.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 19:19:16 EST From: Starfall18@aol.com Subject: Re: in honor of Valentino (long) HI. Someone mentioned how Valentino is out again or something,....could someone point me in the direction to order it online or something? please? I want to get a late Chanukah present for my mom-she loves Sarah Harmer as much as i do. Thank you:) Emily ------------------------------ Date: 21 Dec 00 22:57:23 EST From: Elizabeth Subject: Sarah Slean interview (w/ info on new album!) Sarah talks about her new album in an interview up at umbrellamusic.com. Surprisingly informative for three minutes. :-) Expected release date early summer/May. elizabeth ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 00:02:10 EST From: Piggio@aol.com Subject: Fwd: Bar/None Records mourns the passing of Robert Buck I am saddened at the unexpected passing of one of my favorite guitarists and all around musicians. what a loss... Return-Path: Received: from rly-yg05.mx.aol.com (rly-yg05.mail.aol.com [172.18.147.5]) by air-yg01.mail.aol.com (v77.31) with ESMTP; Thu, 21 Dec 2000 15:37:16 -0500 Received: from ponyexpress.wpunj.edu (ponyexpress.wpunj.edu [149.151.192.20]) by rly-yg05.mx.aol.com (v77.27) with ESMTP; Thu, 21 Dec 2000 15:36:43 -0500 Received: from localhost (modems-030.wpunj.edu [149.151.199.80]) by ponyexpress.wpunj.edu with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2650.21) id Y9SS8CSH; Thu, 21 Dec 2000 15:16:21 -0500 X-Sender: news@bar-none.com X-Sybari-Space: 00000000 00000000 00000000 From: Bar/None Records To: "B/N Newsletter" Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 15:23:39 -0500 Subject: Bar/None Records mourns the passing of Robert Buck MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-ID: <200012211536.TRAa05111@rly-yg05.mx.aol.com> X-Mailer: Unknown Bar None Records joins the members of 10,000 Maniacs, their families, friends, and fans in mourning the loss of guitarist and songwriter Robert Norman Buck, who died on December 19, 2000 at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Presbyterian Hospital, Pittsburgh, PA, due to complications from liver disease. From the very outset of 10,000 Maniacs career, Robs innovative approach to guitar playing gave the group a unique and sophisticated sound. He combined elements of progressive rock, folk, and jazz to create ethereal instrumental tracks that worked in striking counterpoint to Natalie Merchants down-to-earth lyrics and vocals. His extraordinary performances on the groups first album, the independently released Secrets of the I-Ching, helped attract the major label interest that lead to a deal with Elektra Records. He wrote the music for two of the groups most popular songs, "Whats the Matter Here" and "Hey Jack Kerouac," from their breakthrough album, In My Tribe, as well as "Please Forgive Us" from Blind Mans Zoo and "These Are Days" from Our Time In Eden. Rob was born on August 1, 1958 in Jamestown, New York, and he started playing the guitar at the age of six. When he was 16, he was inspired to perform professionally after he saw the documentary The Jimi Hendrix Story on Christmas Eve 74 in Florida. In 1981, Rob joined Dennis Drew, Steve Gustafon, John Lombardo, and Natalie Merchant to form 10,000 Maniacs. They played their first public show on Labor Day weekend that year. Jerome Augustyniak joined the lineup two years later. 10,000 Maniacs released its Elektra Records debut, The Wishing Chair, in 1985. Though the album was critically well-received, a fan base was growing, and the group had found supporters among better known fellow musicians like R.E.M., 10,000 Maniacs didnt hit its commercial stride until 1987, when Elektra released In My Tribe and it became an alternative rock sensation, spending 77 weeks on the Billboard album chart. The bands tenure at Elektra culminated in 1993 with the MTV Unplugged live album, which included the Maniacs hit rendition of Patti Smiths "Because the Night." After Natalie left the group to pursue a solo career, the Maniacs continued to record and perform, with Mary Ramsey, another Western New York musician, taking over as lead vocalist. They released one album, Love Among the Ruins, with Geffen, then went to Bar None to put out the critically acclaimed Earth Pressed Flat. The revamped Maniacs toured throughout the world and had most recently performed a series of U.S. dates in October. The band capped the year with a band-and-orchestra performance on November 3rd with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. Band members have made no statement regarding their future plans. Funeral arrangements are pending at Lind Funeral Home, Jamestown, NY. Rob is survived by his parents, Kenneth Buck and Ray and Carol Ciper. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& This electronic newsletter is brought to you by Bar/None Records (news@bar-none.com). If you wish to be removed from our mailing list, reply to this message with "remove subscriber" in the subject line. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& ------------------------------ End of navy-soup-digest V3 #195 *******************************