BRETT MILANO

The Dresden Dolls

BRETT MILANO — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:12:30 GMT

No, Virginia | Roadrunner
No, Virginia ranks with Elvis Costello’s Taking Liberties as a B-sides/leftovers album that turns out to be more fun and more revealing than a thought-out official release.

No bull

BRETT MILANO — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:50:01 GMT

Herb Alpert at Scullers
There was nothing campy or kitschy about Herb Alpert’s local appearance this week, and in a way that’s a shame.

Muck and the Mires

BRETT MILANO — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:26:35 GMT

Dorren EP | Dirty Water
If Phil Spector could produce the Ramones, then Kim Fowley can produce Muck and the Mires, local faves whose sound has always been two parts Ramones to five parts British Invasion.

Joe Jackson

BRETT MILANO — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:46:59 GMT

Rain | Rykodisc
Joe Jackson always sounds best when at least some of his original quartet are on board.

Here and now

BRETT MILANO — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:49:02 GMT

R.E.M.’s ‘back-to-basics’ disguise
No band ever made a late-career statement of purpose just by quoting “Louie Louie” — but it never hurts.

VIDEO: R.E.M., "Supernatural Superserious"

When “Supernatural Superserious” — the advance single from R.E.M.’s first studio album in four years, Accelerate (Warner Bros.) — was released on-line last month, the song got pegged in various reviews: it was a Velvet Underground cop, it was Michael Stipe getting sensitive again, it was a conscious throwback to early R.E.M. You could make a case for all three. But “Supernatural Superserious” is something else as well, something far more profound, something that announces itself from the opening chords: it’s “Louie Louie.” True, no band ever made a late-career statement of purpose just by quoting “Louie Louie” — but it never hurts.

And Accelerate is very much a statement of purpose — an inspiring, open-hearted record disguised as a bunch of back-to-basics rock songs. In both mood and sound, it harks back to Lifes Rich Pageant (1986) — the first R.E.M. album to include political songs, and the first to abandon jangle for a fuzzier guitar sound. (Certain Accelerate songs recall Lifes Rich Pageant — particularly “Until the Day Is Done,” which could be “Swan Swan H” and “Flowers of Guatelama” mashed together.) The comeback buzz on Accelerate began before the album was even recorded, much less released — just as it had with R.E.M.’s previous album, the false-alarm Aroundthe Sun. Sure enough, Rolling Stone just gave the new album a comeback-type review, and Spin slapped the word “resurrected” on its current R.E.M. cover story.

There really wasn’t anything to resurrect, however: R.E.M.’s only real crime in the past decade has been to make albums that don’t sound great at first listen — or even the fifth — but reveal themselves over time. And that’s enough to lose an audience in the era of single-track downloads and iPod shuffles. It’s been years (eight, to be precise) since a major band (Radiohead) have gotten away with an audience-confounding album (Kid A). R.E.M. made two in a row with Up (1998) and Reveal (2001) — releases whose slow tempos and oblique structures alienated the mass following the band had garnered a decade earlier. It took the Rhino/Warner reissue series three years ago to compel a re-evaluation of those albums — especially the lovely Reveal, which now sounds like an homage both to prog-rock and to the Southern Gothic tinge R.E.M. had explored in the past. (The tired-sounding Around the Sun remains a full-fledged dud.)

Low and slow

BRETT MILANO — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:44:15 GMT

Van Morrison at the Wang Theatre, March 14, 2008
Van Morrison has joined the ranks of ridiculously expensive artists.

Van Morrison

BRETT MILANO — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:30:38 GMT

Keep It Simple | Lost Highway
You might call this the Van Morrison equivalent of Bob Dylan’s Modern Times .

Back in print

BRETT MILANO — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:04:07 GMT

The return of Big Dipper
In a quiet basement in suburban Concord, singers/guitarists Gary Waleik and Bill Goffrier and drummer Jeff Oliphant are about to turn back into Big Dipper.

SUPER AGAIN? Roger Miller told the Dipper to “rock hard” and forget about being a “mature older band.”

In a quiet basement in suburban Concord, singers/guitarists Gary Waleik and Bill Goffrier and drummer Jeff Oliphant (with stand-in bassist Jeff Moxley) are about to turn back into Big Dipper. Twenty years ago, this was one of the most celebrated outfits in Boston: a band with guitar noise for the post-Burma crowd, cerebral lyrics for the thinkers, and mile-wide hooks for everybody. They’ve turned down a few reunion offers since their ’93 break-up. But with the release of the three-CD Supercluster: The Big Dipper Anthology (Merge) this week, they’re back — at least for a few reunion shows, starting April 26 at the Middle East.

At their first rehearsal, the members are all business. Both Waleik and Goffrier have their heads down as they reacquaint themselves with their distortion pedals. Only Oliphant allows himself a few wide grins behind the drum kit. (Founding bassist Steve Michener, now living in Washington state, will rejoin the line-up next month.) Goffrier hits the intro and they slam into a couple of their punkier blasts, “Faith Healer” and “You’re Not Patsy.” The Dipper sound is still there, if a little tentative. And then with the slower and subtler “Lunar Module,” it clicks into place. The pop exuberance of “She’s Fetching” clicks as well, and from there they’re ready to try the trickier “Meet the Witch,” their local hit from 1988. “If you can’t handle the ‘Witch,’ you probably shouldn’t be here,” Oliphant ventures.

“I’m terrified and excited,” Waleik (who now produces Only a Game for NPR) admits when we sit down. “We could step onto the stage and people could say, ‘See, they really did suck all along.’ But I’m hoping there’ll be more excitement and less terror as we go along.”

The idea of a reunion has been kicking around since they played a short informal set at Oliphant’s wedding four years ago. It hasn’t hurt that there have been a bunch of high-profile reunions, including Mission of Burma, the Pixies, and Volcano Suns, the former band of both Waleik and Michener. “I saw Mission of Burma’s reunion in 2002,” Waleik recalls, “and they were so astoundingly good, setting the bar so high, that I decided I never wanted to do a reunion with Big Dipper. But I thought about it again after the initial shock wore off. And I recently got an e-mail from Roger Miller with his advice about this. He said that you’ve got to rock hard, you can’t go out and be a mature older band.”

The Fleshtones

BRETT MILANO — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:11:11 GMT

Have a Good Look | Yep Roc
It’s not enough for a great live band to create a strong, sweaty groove in the studio: they’ve gotta write the songs, too.

The Figgs

BRETT MILANO — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:07:48 GMT

Continue To Enjoy the Figgs, Volume 2 | Stomper
It makes sense that one of the Figgs’ best recent songs, “Regional Hits” (included here), celebrates those pop gems that are known only to a select few.

Bowin' away

BRETT MILANO — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:17:28 GMT

Cello Chix at the Lizard Lounge, February 8, 2008
Of all the CD-release parties ever thrown by Boston bands, the Cello Chix’ show for their new, self-released Under the Covers featured the best Jethro Tull medley.

Ringo Starr

BRETT MILANO — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:43:37 GMT

Liverpool 8 | Capitol
Ringo Starr has never made an album that’s less than entertaining, and there aren’t many Beatles you can say that about.

Twang and burn

BRETT MILANO — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:47:28 GMT

Sarah Borges lights a roots-rock fire
When Sarah Borges performs in roots-music hot spots like Nashville and Austin, they don’t ask about her country credentials or her alt-rock background.

COUNTRY ROCK: Borges covers X and Dolly Parton, and she serves up a few originals that could’ve been done by either.

Sarah Borges, "The Day We Met" (mp3)

When Sarah Borges performs in roots-music hot spots like Nashville and Austin, they don’t ask about her country credentials or her alt-rock background. They just know a great voice when they hear one.

For Bostonians familiar with her history, however, it’s notable that a former indie-pop singer should have become one of the city’s leading country voices. And if you’ve seen Borges perform, you know that’s even more surprising given how shy and self-effacing she used to be on stage. As the singer/guitarist of Kipper Tin — who played no-glory gigs around town for a good six years — Borges was charming and waifish but gave no clue to the brassy frontwoman she’s become.

You could waste time wondering whether Diamonds in the Dark, her sophomore disc on Sugar Hill, is a country or a rock-and-roll set — suffice to say that it has covers of both X and Dolly Parton plus a few originals that could’ve been done by either. (The radio track, a cover of the Reigning Sound’s “Stop and Think It Over,” is straight-up power pop.) Whatever you call it, this is vital, flesh-and-blood music steeped in barroom sweat and love/sex undercurrents, and a good antidote to the current drony, angst-ridden school of alt-country. Borges’s band — formerly the Confidence Men, now the Broken Singles — are as adept at straight-up twang as Crazy Horse guitar demolitions. Her voice is powerful throughout, but she never shows off her pipes at the expense of a lyric. Making a quick home-town stop between a run of tour dates, she and the Singles hit the Lizard Lounge this Friday and Saturday.

Over coffee at Carberry’s in Cambridge a week ago last Monday, Borges pondered her transformation. “I don’t feel any differently about myself; but I’ve gotten better at telling people about myself. I used to be afraid I’d make too many mistakes. Now I make tons of mistakes, but I know how to make them work. I learned a lot with Kipper Tin — I learned how not to talk between songs; I learned not to drink too much beer beforehand.” And the change in musical styles? “The crux of indie rock is that you’re supposed to be witty, you’re supposed to use metaphor. Not that I don’t love that kind of music, but my voice is a little better for what I’m doing now. It’s a thin line anyhow — I’ve always loved X, and they were partly a country band. And Chuck Berry has enough twang that he’d probably get considered country.”

Terry Adams

BRETT MILANO — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:38:21 GMT

Rhythm Spell | Clang!
NRBQ are still on hiatus, maybe for good, but leader Terry Adams’s latest solo set has the sound and the style of a vintage Q album.

Born again

BRETT MILANO — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:23:03 GMT

The return of Scarce
When fondly remembered bands get back together, they usually say they’re just playing a couple of shows and not thinking about the future.

IN THE NOW: Propatier, Graning, and Raskin are ready to pick up where they left off.

"Days like this: A rock n' roll story gets a new chapter." By Andrea Feldman.

When fondly remembered bands get back together, they usually say they’re just playing a couple of shows and not thinking about the future. Not the case with Scarce, who play their first show in 11 years at T.T. the Bear’s Place this Saturday. The band were close to a national breakthrough when they broke up in 1996, and they have every intention of getting there again.

“We feel it’s unfinished business,” explains singer/bassist Joyce Raskin. Adds singer/guitarist Chick Graning, “This band deserves to put out a great record and to do some great shows, and we’re going to make that happen. Why not? I’m never going to have another band like this one, and if we’re going to get back together and do it, then we’re going to really do it.”

The pair are talking to me in the back yard of Raskin’s home in Braintree, where Graning — who recently moved back to his birthplace of Knoxville — has been crashing for the past few days. Joined by drummer Joe Propatier (the last of five drummers Scarce had in the ’90s), they’ve had their first rehearsal the previous night, and Graning reports, “It went a lot easier than it should have, and the harmonies were better than they used to be.”

Scarce had everything going for them in the early ’90s. Radio was opening up to punk-inspired rock with raw nerves and good hooks, and Scarce did it better than most. Graning brought a disheveled rock-star charisma and an underground following from his previous band, Anastasia Screamed. But what made Scarce was the palpable chemistry between Graning and Raskin. Only 20 when she joined, and a little in awe of her bandmate, Raskin threw herself into the live shows so hard that she had to put foam rubber on the underside of her bass to keep from throttling herself with it. On a lesser night Scare were a fine rock band; on a good night it they were a force of nature.

Still rockin'

BRETT MILANO — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:03:57 GMT

The Middle East Celebrates 20
“You remember what happened — I threw a fuckin’ party that got too fuckin’ big.”

The band time forgot

BRETT MILANO — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:24:11 GMT

The shocking truth about the Outlets
The Outlets’ Rock 1980 really wasn’t recorded 27 years ago. It only should have been.

THAT WAS THEN: They heard the Ramones and said, “We could do that!”

The Outlets’ Rock 1980 really wasn’t recorded 27 years ago. It only should have been. You can easily get fooled into thinking that the new disc is a vintage reissue, since the cover shows a teenage Dave Barton on stage (wearing Boston Rock magazine’s original, long-gone T-shirt, no less), and the songs are all Outlets oldies. In fact, the original line-up reunited to record the disc just last year. And their hooky punk-pop songs have worn just fine after 27 years, even if their T-shirts haven’t.

You can hardly blame Barton for waxing nostalgic about the early ’80s: if you were known for throwing the wildest backstage parties at the Rat before you were out of high school, you’d probably miss it too. “Those were good days, my friend,” he said over a draft at the Middle East recently. Now going by the more formal name David Alex-Barton, he sports a slightly more conservative look that bears out his other life as a real-estate agent. “It amazes me to think that I was only 16. We went in and played the Club in 1980; next thing we knew, we were opening for Mission of Burma at the Rat. Everything happened for us almost instantly, and we were thinking, ‘Why us?’ But you know, when I listen back, we really had something.”

The Outlets’ youth made them an anomaly on the 1980 scene — even the era’s youngish bands, like the Neighborhoods, were hovering around 20. But in most ways they fit right in. The mix of punk drive and pop hooks made them spiritual cousins to the ’hoods, the Thrills, and the Real Kids, but Barton’s songwriting was surprisingly polished. (Note the new disc’s “I’m a Mess,” whose unusual three-part structure takes it out of Ramones-homage territory.) And they already had a sense of history, covering the Monkees’ “You Told Me” on their first single — a less fashionable move then than it would be now — and the Standells’ “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White” on stage. “We had no idea we were even any good,” says Barton. “But you know, I heard the Ramones, and said, ‘I could do that! There was such an anti-corporate rock, ‘us versus them’ mentality going on.”

Garage-rock heaven

BRETT MILANO — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:07:52 GMT

The Sonics, Cavestomp! at Warsaw, Brooklyn, November 3, 2007
Of all the rock bands who have ever reunited, the Sonics waited the longest.

Heart

BRETT MILANO — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:54:47 GMT

Dreamboat Annie Live | Shout! Factory
Heart are fast becoming the world’s best classic-rock cover band.

Bunny Ranch

BRETT MILANO — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:34:45 GMT

Luna Dance | Transformadores
These garage-rockers from Coimbra, Portugal, get the music exactly right, and the quirks of language only make them more endearing.