Also this issue:

Critical Mass
Local MC Kenneth Masters makes a declaration of independence.
-Ainé Ardron-Doley

Back to the Future
Cracker hasn't crumbled, but David Lowery says Camper Van Beethoven makes sense right now.
-Collin Keefe

Going Somewhere
Intercultural Journeys finds harmony in the music of enemies.
-Mary Armstrong

Watching It Happen
-Patrick Rapa

Cherrywine
-A.D. Amorosi

Eighth Blackbird
-Peter Burwasser

Greater Philadelphia Hip Hop Alliance Showcase
-Ainé Ardron-Doley

Sticks and Stones
-A.D. Amorosi

January 23-29, 2003

musicpicks

The Caribbean

It's not surprising that The Caribbean's music is hard to pin down. So are its members. Ostensibly based in Washington, D.C., the quartet boasts members calling Baltimore and Naples, Fla., home, and is as likely to trade sound files over the Internet as to actually get together and rehearse. It's not surprising, then, that some of the songs on History's First Know-It-All (Endearing) sound as if they might have been assembled by a mad scientist with access to ProTools; clattering and swooshing sounds pop through the melody with the regularity of a whack-a-mole game. (Listening to the album on headphones is like being stalked by a particularly inventive ghost.) The piano ballads and falsetto vocals give it up, though -- these mad scientists are romantics at heart, trying to cobble together their ideal mates out of debris and bric-a-brac, and never quite making the pieces fit.

Fri., Jan. 24, 10 p.m., $7, with King of Prussia and Method and Result, Doc Watson's, 216 S. 11th St., 215-922-3427.

—Sam Adams