CD REVIEWS
Southpaw Jones, Unified Tribe, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
Jones' 'Bedroom Demos' blanketed with wit
Monday, June 12, 2006
Southpaw Jones
'Bedroom Demos Vol. 1: Zero Demand'
(self-released)
A little wit goes a long way in folk music, but more goes even further. Southpaw Jones understands. Austinites have been laughing with Jones' smart, funny songs each Wednesday at Cafe Mundi, enjoying his juxtapositions of the wry and the moving. They have good taste — "Bedroom Demos" is the most nakedly enjoyable folk album Austin has produced this year.
Over spare, occasional drum-machine rhythms and guitar, Jones muses on the cons of uncontrollable "X-Ray Vision," using the power as a metaphor for the constant mental wheel-turning with which artists make art: "I long to look at your skin/ I'm tired of worshiping what's within" and "I'd rather see wrinkles than another lost soul." But he can close with, "There's a bone in your fried fish/I'd leave that bite there," and pull it off.
Elsewhere, he puts in a good word for politically progressive Grandmas, spins odes to a legendary Bruce and "Good Enough" love and discusses being the personal assistant to a sniper ("He taught me chess./ I won't confess/ and I won't rat him out if it comes to that").
Some critics have compared his tunes to They Might Be Giants, and Jones' vocal similarities to that band's John Linnell don't help, but his songs never come off as nerd-goofy as the Giants'. One day, Jones' brain may sit on the same shelf with country-folk wits such as Shel Silverstein, Uncle Dave Macon or Billy Bragg. With luck, there won't be "zero demand" for this dude that much longer.
(Southpaw Jones plays the Cactus Cafe Saturday.) —Joe Gross
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
'According to Plan' EP
(Secretly Canadian)
Man, I love a good EP. Between three and seven songs, they're more than the flash of a song, less than the slog of an album. The British have always been great at them, which fits with Anglophilia of these Austin stars. Now that I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness' dark-wave neo-New Wave has hit the serious underground-buzz stage, here's an EP of the first single from this year's album, "Fear Is On Our Side." The title track really does sound straight out of Manchester circa 1980 — rumbling bass line crucial to the tune's melody, synths that could be guitars and vice versa, ethereal vocals mumbling about a perfect world that sounds just out of reach and a driving-yet-funkless beat. A collection of cold, Teutonic dot-dashes coalesces into a juggernaut whole — perfect.
In fact, distance, space and an unobtainable sublime were crucial components of this sort of icy British post-punk. "Close to Here" (not to be confused with Joy Division's "Closer," the Cure's "Close to Me" or New Order's "Here to Stay") slows down for an old-school, rain-slicked plod, building to a cathartic crescendo, while "Better Strangers" weaves in acoustic guitar and synth washes. Music to wear black trenchcoats by, if it weren't so bloody hot around here.
(Chosen Darkness plays Elysium on Friday.)
— J.G.
Unified Tribe
'Funktional Family'
(IAM)
When I heard my first Unified Tribe single, I was astonished by the lustrous production qualities and the deft combination of front singers, decorative instrumentals and finely meshed back-ups. Produced, arranged and engineered by Magic — who contributes some of the lead vocals — of Magic Musik Productions Inc., the Austin funk group's latest CD builds on that early excitement but also betrays a few annoying weaknesses.
Throughout the album, the 12-member act, derived from Los Angeles and New York, sustains an intoxicating big-band sound. The tempo is crisp, locomotive, especially in the Stevie Wonder-esque "Happy Go Lucky." Pop-jazz and R&B embellishments round the edges of the basic funk lines, with muted horns expanding the sound. The love songs — "I'll Do Anything," "Don't Wanna Be," "Love's on My Mind," "Back in Love" — clasp the listener in a warm, romantic, almost too-ardent embrace.
What of the aforementioned weaknesses? The verbal interjections, stray lyrics ("expectations of a chocolate-covered you"), and comic novelty songs, such as "Get the Funk," feel a little strained. Also, despite the general excellence of "Funktional Family," there's not one song that insists on hit status. The songwriting is just that close, but doesn't quite cut it for the biggest time.
— Michael Barnes
