Also this issue:

Flash Forward
Costumed lip-synchers Fischerspooner are not out to shock you.
-Sean O’Neal

Dirty Three
-Paul Burress

Gabriel Yacoub
-Mary Armstrong

VERSIONsound
-Sean O’Neal

Brentano String Quartet
-Peter Burwasser

Vir Unis/James Johnson
-A.D. Amorosi

The Funk Brothers
-Nicole Pensiero

CD Reviews
-Sam Adams, A.D. Amorosi and Collin Keefe

April 10-16, 2003

musicpicks

Jayhawks

Roots-rock fans got their flannels in a bunch over the Jayhawks' Smile, which traded their campfire harmonies for a sunnier sheen that was more pop than prairie. If Rainy Day Music (Lost Highway) isn't quite a reversal, it's a compromise, falling somewhere perfectly between the airbrush and the hurricane fence. On their seventh album, the band -- stripped down to the trio of Gary Louris, Tim O'Reagan and Marc Perlman -- evokes the vocal rhapsodies of The Mamas & the Papas and Buffalo Springfield (not to mention the fact that Louris' voice is occasionally a dead ringer for Graham Nash's). The 'hawks are even thoughtful enough to include "Stumbling Through the Dark" in two versions, one accompanied by chiming electric 12-string, the other as plain as a pine board. The homespun approach makes a song like "Come to the River" seem overwrought, where it might have fit in just fine on Smile. But making music is one of the few times when tying one arm behind your back actually makes sense, even if it means some things have to be left behind.

Fri., April 11, 10 p.m., $14-$16, North by Northwest, 7165 Germantown Ave., 215-248-1000. The Jayhawks will also perform the same day at 6 p.m. at Tower Records, 100 S. Broad St., 215-568-8001.

—Sam Adams