Heard Here


The Incredible Moses Leroy
Electric Pocket Radio


“Small songs are good,” proclaims the Incredible Moses Leroy in his liner notes, and if any album can be said to have a thesis inherent in its construction, “small songs are good” would have to be the point that Electric Pocket Radio is trying to prove. 
And it does. The Incredible Moses Leroy is a Los Angeles-based self-proclaimed “pop music archivist” who also seems to be an intense analog synthesizer collector. The collection of rare, vintage keyboards appearing on this album is enough to make any collector drool: vocoder, mini moog, juno 106, mellotron, Wurlitzer electric piano, casiotone mt68, orcoa organ, fun machine, Roland groove box, etc. He intersperses the analog with a formidable collection of traditional instrumentation, from glockenspiel to a kids’ chorus.
Equal parts Money Mark, Plastilina Mosh, Rufus Wainwright and Beck (whose drummer, Joey Waronker, produces and plays drums on three tracks here), Leroy doesn’t have much of a voice, sounding a little too Sean Lennon when he seems to want to sound like Elliot Smith –– a little bit indistinct, bordering on contrived.
The music itself starts with the Electro-Stomp of the opener, “Beep Beep Love,” in which even the beats seem insanely enthusiastic. The mellow “Fuzzy,” which builds from a la-la-la-da-da loop lifted from the Sandpipers’ “Enamorado” and features one of Leroy’s best lines; “Let’s paint the town red/Like Carrie/Because I am your I am your/Toy foxy lady.” 
The album seems to go through every poppy genre that Leroy can think of trying to fit himself into, from the Weezer/Rentals inspired pop-crunchy “Anthem” and “My Best Friend” through the strictly Money Mark/instrumental Beastie Boys funky, slick chillout territory of “Roscoe” and “Tomato Soup” and the modulating, spazzy drum and bass of “Our One Millionth Customer” to the spare lo-fi pump organ and scratchy vocals of the torch song “Don’t Say To Me It’s Over.”
A fun album, these small songs certainly won’t amuse everyone, but if you loved Money Mark’s last album, then this would be a fine choice for spring/summer listening, at the beach or at the lake or on the way to an all-night diner.
-Christopher DeWeese

Soulive 
Doin’ Something


Here are things one can imagine listeners doing to this CD: 
Rollerblading three blocks while holding on to a plastic container of cold fruit salad (on a hot day). Chopping bell peppers and/or mushrooms in a co-op kitchen (on a hot day). Taking bong hits in a 3rd floor dorm room at 3 p.m. (on a warm day). Wearing a headband while you teach your little sister how to use the microwave. Checking a bid on e-Bay on a Saturday afternoon with BOTH WINDOWS OPEN. Nodding your head while slapping out rhythms on your thighs.
This is all to say that the new album Doin’ Something from the organ trio Soulive on Blue Note Records is a breezy, funky, summery and mildly lame affair. Soulive has built up a jam-band following, and have opened for artists like Maceo Parker and Medeski, Martin & Wood. 
The drummer was in Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe and the Greyboy All-Stars. The keyboard player is related to someone famous. They got the horn arranger from James Brown’s old band to play trombone and write some arrangements for the album. Doin’ Something sounds kind of overproduced at places, especially when the horn section gets too thick and unwieldly. 
Soulive sounds best when they’re evoking their older albums, when they have a sparser, more desperately groovy sound. When they get “experimental” or “out” on this record, it’s kind of embarrassing how badly it fails.
The fourth and eleventh songs, “One in Seven” and “Joe Sample,” respectively, are simple and fun enough to soak your bandana clean through. “Shaheed,” a tribute to A Tribe Called Quest’s producer, sounds like a Tribe beat passed through Modeski, Martin & Wood’s industrial juicer, with the froth skimmed off. 
The only song with vocals, “Romantic,” is aggressively sexual, and includes the classically forgettable line, “Wake me up from my dream/To bring me French toast and tea.” Luckily the narrative of the song descends into repetition, where the band takes over and the vocoder solo ultimately changes the color of your pants. 

-Andrew Leland 

John Frusciante
To Record Only Water for Ten Days

John Frusciante has become somewhat of a mythic figure in rock n’ roll, especially among Red Hot Chili Peppers fans. As the band’s only guitarist, Frusciante has been responsible for the group’s two most commercially, and arguably artistically, successful albums — 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and their latest, 1999’s Californication. Between those efforts, Frusciante spent time away from the band making three eccentric and quite disturbing solo records, and wallowing in the heroin addiction that almost cost him his life. Now, after helping his fellow Peppers reclaim their platinum-selling status, Frusciante has returned to the studio alone to record the honest, but rarely satisfying, To Record Only Water for Ten Days.
Frusciante’s biggest selling point has always been his fascinatingly unique guitar style. Opting for sharp attack over sustain in his playing, Frusciante’s minimalist solos sound more like drum beats then wailing guitars, and his ability with the acoustic guitar is also impressive. But in his latest effort, built entirely on synthesized drum tracks and keyboards with layered guitars, he too often allows these amateurish effects to overshadow his six-strings. And his voice frequently fails to find the happy medium between its normal range and a screeching falsetto. 
This could all be forgiven if Frusciante could provide us with lyrics that weren’t so emotionally vague, like “And I’m so happy and sad/Cuz they both connect me with when I’d never been a body.” Disappointingly, the spontaneity that made his earlier work interesting has been left out of the mix, and we’re left instead with fuzzy production, run-of-the-mill song structures and frustrating lyrics.
The songs that rise above this milieu are able to let the frail beauty of Frusciante’s voice and persona become most apparent. On “The First Season,” Frusciante moans, “Even holding on/ My cell of space that holds me,” and the Bjork-like beats of “Wind Up Space” and “Remain” flow nicely with Frusciante’s bouncy guitar. But “Ramparts,” a minute-long instrumental with five layered guitars, displays Frusciante’s fret talent like nothing else. Effortlessly picked acoustics lie underneath thick and weepy electric guitar solos in this undeniably pretty tune. If his ability to wield his axe wasn’t readily apparent in his work with the Chili Peppers, it most assuredly is with this record. Unfortunately, though, this instrumental serves only as a breath of fresh air amid the muddle of much of the rest of the album. 
Frusciante would do well to trade in his drum machines for a real kit. Not that he needs a full band, but just that the intimacy Frusciante seeks to create with his sound would be improved by more organic instrumentation. Other than the keyboard effects reminiscent of early Cure or Depeche Mode, which add an interesting sense of nostalgia, the guitarist seems too reliant on the beep and bops of his drum machines. Despite this, there is a true beauty that permeates through all the muddy recesses of Frusciante’s record. His almost pitiable fragility gives his music a sense of immediacy and desperation that is oddly alluring. When he mumbles at the end of “Remain,” how “it means so much to me when the pretend becomes real,” one can’t help but believe him. 

-John MacDonald