Ministry

Cover Up

(13^th Planet)

Being a bit of a conspiracy (i.e. sad but true reality) buff myself, I was disappointed to learn that Al Jourgensen may be permanently abandoning his 28-year-long, New-World-Order-exposing pet project, Ministry, for the greener pastures of producing, collaborating, and running his “13^th Planet” record label. If this is true, and he doesn’t decide to go on one of those permanent “farewell” tours, then Cover Up, a collection of cover tunes spanning the 8-track and vinyl era, may end up being Ministry’s swan song. Kind of a sour note to go out on, in my humble opinion – banging out a series of cramped and muddled tracks like a monkey on a gong. If this were the final exam on in a rudimentary music production course it might, might be excusable, but for someone pretending to be a rock star, it’s pretty sorry .

            I must admit that I’ve never been much of a fan of industrial music, mainly because I actually like the sound of real people playing a set of skins over some sampler that throws kick drums at an inhuman, hundred-thousand beats-per-minute, and I know what compression is for, and I understand the importance of an interesting bassline that doesn’t just blubber over the track to fill space, but even by that standard, I can safely say that for my money there is almost nothing redeemable about this collection other than track 69, a novelty cover of “What a Wonderful World,” which signals the end of the CD. Too bad this is his last album, Jourgensen can’t redeem himself. –Brad Linzy

Rating:5

Amelia

A Long, Lovely List of Repairs

(Slow Down)

Amelia is a Portland-based quartet whose third offering, A Long, Lovely List of Repairs, is a breath of fresh air in the dim, smoky speakeasy of contemporary music. One of the first indications for me that this might be a record worth more than a passing listen is the short list of instruments played. Besides all the usual suspects, guitar, bass, and drums, this stunning record also features bass harmonica, glockenspiel, marxaphone, upright bass, autoharp, pump organ, celeste, timpani, violin, trumpet violin, and clarinet. With languid, lumbering tempos, a moody sense of melody, and blues/jazz ruminations that bind the ears with a soft spell of Americana, Amelia drag the limbless listener by the collar through cabaret corridors and dingy country saloons to a place where the wood of acoustic instruments resonates with stunning realness and beauty, and the resulting aural portrait cannot be pasted with labels like “jazz,” “blues,” or “country” without the simple but enlightened townsfolk scoffing at them as completely meaningless.

            Much like the sultry-voiced Norah Jones, the vocals of Teisha Helgerson are warm and angelic, vaguely sensual, but wholly innocent and longing. The instrumentation is tasteful and in-the-pocket. No unnecessary solos or gaudy, show-off vocals on this record, just pure, soulful tunes that sound like distilled poetry. In closing, this is an album to be absorbed and digested while you long for a simpler time when a good song still meant something. One of the best of 2008 so far.  – Brad Linzy

Rating: 5

Rachel Taylor Brown

Half Hours with the Lower Creatures

(Cutthroat Pop)

The album opens with the ringing of telephones and the sparse sound of humming female voices. Wind chimes and a lonely oboe softly converse in the background. The track drones on and on for an almost unbearable 7 minutes, anesthetizing the mind, prepping it for a surgical assault of the senses that is to come. Shards of song hurdle toward us like soft shrapnel as we take a Beatlesque mystery tour into a highly creative musical mind. Snarling guitars snake atop billowy beds of piano and orchestration in a labyrinth of shape-shifting musical parcels that circulate in search of a home. Recalling the experimental cut-and-paste style of Brian Wilson’s Smiley Smile the album bobs and weaves about like a kite in a stiff breeze, alternately diving and soaring before building into an explosive orgy of sound. Who says a verse or a chorus is necessary in songwriting? Certainly not Rachel Taylor Brown. Many of the songs on Lower Creatures are stream of consciousness, moseying along in this direction or that upon a whim. It is as if Brown says to herself, “I wonder what’s over here…” and then records the discovery on tape for posterity.

            Much of the lyrical content pokes sardonic fun at the absurdity of human logic, particularly our penchant for hurting the things we most love. In “Abraham and Issac” Brown wonders if Abraham must have told Issac, “I couldn’t have a better son. I love you, so I‘m killing you today. You always hurt the one you love, and I love you, so I’m killing you today.”

            Less of a political statement than a sorrowful lament on the cyclic stupidity of the human animal, “Another Dead Soldier in Fallujah” paints a heartbreaking portrait of a mother whose son has been lost in battle. With just a solo piano and vocal Brown gives us a voyeur’s glimpse of how empty it must make a mother feel deep down to lose her boy in this way.

            In “Vireo,” a 6+ minute xanax pill of a song, the album starts to lumber toward its obscure conclusion. Like a child who discovers a sound she likes, Brown immerses herself and the listener in a seemingly unending loop of chords and melody as if to create a musical cocoon in which to hide away from a world too ugly to bear. This record will definitely see more spins in my CD player. – Brad Linzy