The Ladybug Transistor

Beverley Atonale (Merge)

Spring is the time for love, and this is perfect music for anticipating the onset of the great thaw. Cool keyboard intermingled with warm trumpet on band two, "Rushes of Pure Spring," conjure images of new life pushing through the frost and brand new love sprouting eternal. This New York quartet plays solid, small-hook pop music, layering tinkling keyboards, soft guitar and creative percussion beneath pensive lyrics to create a rich musical palate deceptively more complex than the sum of parts. Like an indie rock music box, The Ladybug Transistor's finely crafted pop melodies progress cautiously, spinning into tinges of wary resign, peaking in flourishes of blissful euphony where warmth wins over cold, and love overcomes all. Like the repeating chorus of "eventually" on "The Occasional," Beverley Atonale lends promise that, in time, frigid March will yield to dreams of the May sun.

-Brian Howard

Portastatic

The Nature of Sap (Merge)

This is Mac McCaughan's most ambitious outing to date by bounds. It's no secret that Portastatic's main man is a fan of the Magnetic Fields, Stephen Merritt's dour New England synth-pop outfit. Mac has covered several Merritt-penned tunes in the past. Merritt's influence and a host of other new sounds have seeped into McCaughan's own work, here relying more heavily than ever on electronics. Included is a handful of his trademark eclectically lyrical, troubled-muse pop songs set primarily to organ and piano ("Hurricane Warning (Ignored)," "Spying on the Spys"). What's left is a collection of more experimental, instrumentally driven numbers, drawing on influences including transcendental-era Beatles, complete with back-masked drums ("Bjjt," "Jonathan's Organ"). The addition of Matthew McCaughan on drums allows for more complex rhythm on the samba-tinged "If You Could Sing" and the recruitment of woodwind/organ guy Jonathan Marx adds depth. As a whole, the work is uneven, but its broadened scope is promising.

-Brian Howard

Spearhead

Chocolate Supa Highway (Capitol)

Spearhead's sophomore outing, Chocolate Supa Highway, is supposed to have been born from "the idea of information and the power" of the information age. It's ironic, then, that the Bay Area collective's album ends up sounding so much like hip-hop's recent past - circa 1993 - when Cypress Hill made marijuana the drug, and the topic, of lyrical choice. Supa Highway is cluttered with the most facile weed references of recent years, as on "Keep Me Lifted," and "Ganja Babe." Even more disconcertingly, chief MC Michael Franti, once among hip-hop's most articulate voices, really doesn't say much on this one; it's as if he was too baked to come up with anything. Though Franti's production is solid enough (think Digital Underground meets the Fugees), it's not enough to redeem the album's profound lack of substance and creativity. As a whole, this Highway is four years late and a dime bag short.

- Ben Dietz

Cecil Taylor

Nefertiti... (Revenant)

John Fahey's Nashville-based label has reissued pianist Cecil Taylor's legendary recording Nefertiti, The Beautiful One Has Come: Live At the Cafe Monmartre, 1962. The two-CD release marks the first domestic appearance of the material on compact disc and also includes a half hour of previously unreleased music.

In 1962, Taylor - a then-obscure New York iconoclast - took his trio overseas. At Copenhagen's Cafe Monmartre, alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons and drummer Sunny Murray helped Taylor launch a mature sound. Before that, the bandleader had favored a cluster-fraught tonal ambiguity that wedded Euro-academic, spiky abstruseness with a high-energy, bluesy funk. Despite the complexity of the mix, Taylor's musical statements were usually clamped down hard with steady drum meters. Sidemen contribute rhythmic flexibility with lithe horn work. Lyons' masterful, soaring Birdisms work well inside this pattern. But it is Murray who carries things a leap further on this date. His dazzling cymbals and snare, always played with unmatched fleetness and finesse, hearken to Roy Haynes at first, until his hi-hat accentuations overtake the snare and he drops time and assumes the role of a colorist. These sections free Taylor's explorations of shapes, textures and colors from bar-line rigidity.

- Todd Margasak

Thee Headcoatees

Bozstick Haze ('Scuze Me While I Kiss This Guy) (Vinyl Japan)

The psychedelically potent freneticisms and Vox-enhanced production on Bozstick Haze sound like a party thrown down tape, and attests to the positive side of the indignities Billy Childish thrusts upon advances in modern recording. Thee Headcoatees are the most successful of Childish's garage rock mutations, and he gives the girls his best - literally. The songs he writes for Thee Headcoatees tend to be less predictable than those for their prolific male counterparts, Thee Headcoats.

With their fourth album, these belligerent coquettes from hellsville offer Standells-flavored mod-pop with a Kinksy-twist, creating indelible bubble gum bits of pure listening pleasure. The Booker T-ish Hammond B3 organ and backwards leads on "I Need Loving" lend a diabolical undertone, especially in conjunction with the B-movie shrieks and vaudevillian vocals of Kyra La Rubia on "Name Your Own Poison." "Just Like A Dog" is a white-knuckled distorto-pop punch in the stomach, while "You Ruined My Night" could pass for an old Julie London nightclub number. The closest thing to a klunker on this album is the cover of "I Want Candy": it sounds just like the original, but with flat vocals.

Sadly, the hitch is that the girls don't play their own instruments. But the measure of their talent, regardless, ensures them a place in a scene dominated by testosterone-fueled testimonials. Thee Headcoatees demand to be more than just bumps on the road on the quest for tits and ass.

- Geeta Dalal

 

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