Bernell DorroughNellie McKay
Get Away From Me
Columbia Records
Grade: C-
Final Word: Trash-mouthed teen borders on novelty act.
The dirty little secret of novelty records is that they grow real old. Fast. I’m no more likely to purchase a new “Weird Al” Yankovic album than I am, well, to pull out one of the ones I bought as a kid, because they all end up in the same muddled area-somewhere between irritating and wholly intolerable.ÿWith her widely acclaimed debut album, “Get Away From Me,” nineteen-year-old pop ingenue Nellie McKay has crafted an impeccable, vitriolic little work of big band production that, upon cursory examination, teeters precipitously on the edge of that very annoying no-man’s land.ÿ”Look at you, you’re young/Havin’ so much fun/Gonna be a star/Blah blah blah,” she coos at album’s outset, her sarcasm only a mild arbiter of more bitter things to come.ÿ”Get Away From Me” brims with such cynical lyrical missile assaults, with McKay taking aim at anyone from liberals to conservatives to “yuppie fucks” to “fuckin’ bureaucrats.” Yes, the pretty little lady on the cover talks dirty, but rarely does it grime up to anything memorable.ÿ
With legendary engineer Geoff Emerick at the helm, the album’s arrangements are industrious, at times delightful. Lounge-style band music, however, is hardly the ideal setting for cheeky sentiments such as “Give me head or you’ll be dead/Salute the flag or I’ll call you a fag.”ÿ McKay is a clever lass, to be sure, even rather funny at times-all the more impressive given her age.ÿ She might be better off coating her statements in a little sugar next time, however, or at least saddling them in a style not quite so attuned to earnestness. – Tyler Weaver
The Von Bondies
Pawn Shoppe Heart
Sire Records
Grade: B
Final Word: Think twice before pawning this one.
It was hard to take the Von Bondies seriously at first. When Jack White beat the bejesus out of lead singer Jason Stollsteimer last December, the latter’s pacifist tendencies seemed to fly in the face of all his rough-n-ready influences, from Iggy Pop to the MC5. Would Iggy have let a pasty little Yoko Ono-looking imp like White lay a hand on him? Doubtful. But after listening to “Pawn Shoppe Heart,” one realizes that as long as the band can rock hard, who cares about their freshly scrubbed faces? This album has enough glam riffs, huge drums and singalong choruses to punch right back at any naysayers.
Like fellow garage rock revivalists Jet and the Datsuns, the Von Bondies aren’t doing anything new. Mix catchy guitar lines, tough, bluesy vocals, and more than a few musical nods to the Stooges and the Sonics, and you’ve got a good idea of what these bands are all about. But whereas most of their brethren sound like cheap imitations with a 21st century sheen, the Von Bondies know how to rock with enthusiasm. Stollsteimer’s got a fine set of pipes, and he uses them to sneer and howl his way through the album’s twelve songs. The rest of the band is similarly powerful, particularly drummer Don Blum, who hammers out the kind of fill-heavy grooves that indie bands tend to shy away from.
As for the songs themselves, “No Regrets” is a slow-moving opener about reckless youth, “Broken Man” refuses to let up on its monstrous riff, and the single “C’Mon C’Mon” will be stuck in your head for days. Bassist Carrie Smith gets a few songs in as well, particularly “Not That Social,” a Sleater-Kinney soundalike contest winner if I’ve ever heard one. Not to say the album isn’t without its low points, even inexcusably bad ones. “Maireed” is a boring blues number about a groupie that goes nowhere, “Been Swank” suffers from garage rock homogeneity (and a stupid name), and “The Fever” is a corny “spell out the chorus” throwaway. For the better part of its 40 minutes, though, “Pawn Shoppe Heart” delivers the goods. – Matt Simonton
The Hold Steady
The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me
French Kiss Records
Grade: B-
Final Word: Loud, literate bar band in a world of 80s throwbacks.
The Hold Steady are an anti-New York New York band. They’re-get this-a bar band, a beer-guzzling, fist-in-the-air, jukebox-worshipping bar band in a sea of electroclash parties and artsy raveups, who would probably rather spin some Thin Lizzy before putting on a Rapture 12″. The band lays down chugging three-chord vamps while lead singer Craig Finn spouts witty lyrics full of pop culture references and classic rock name-checks. It sounds like a winning formula, but their debut sometimes falters under the weight of Finn’s self-aware lyrics and the band’s musical shortcomings.
Finn is the indisputable centerpiece of the Hold Steady. His vocals are gruff and slightly nasal, and his lyrics are, for the most part, great. “My name’s Rick Danko but people call me one hour photo, / I’ve got some hazardous chemicals, drive around to the window,” he proclaims in “The Swish” in a typical bit of clever nonsense. Most of the other songs spin tales of rowdy bars, brushes with death, drugs and one of Finn’s favorite targets, “sniffling indie kids” who “ain’t that clever.” At times, however, his “bon mots” are just too much. At one particularly awkward point the music drops out and Finn rambles, “I’ve been trying to get people to call me Sunny D / ‘Cuz I’m the good stuff kids go for.” There’s something too nerdy about it, too Harvey Danger, if you remember those precocious alterna-rockers.
The rest of the band has its ups and downs as well. On the one hand, guitarist Tad Kubler ain’t afraid to unleash a solo or two, as on “Most People Are DJs.” There’s also some saxophone (!), such as in “Hostile, Mass.,” a weird combination of Bruce Springsteen escapism and Mark E. Smith stream-of-consciousness. On the downside, the songs are mostly hookless, with power chords instead of catchy riffs. Many times its simply bass, drums and Finn’s rants with no melody to hold everything together. Still, if you don’t mind your rock ‘n’ roll loud, loose and literate, the Hold Steady might strike your fancy. They didn’t almost kill me, but they definitely roughed me up a bit. – Matt Simonton