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"Life is unfair/Kill yourself or get over it," crooned precious-voiced
Brit Sarah Nixey on Black Box Recorder's 1998 debut, England
Made Me, and that quiet, dangerous challenge summed up the album's
dark irony. But Nixey and composers Luke Haines and John Moore play
a different game with her innocent act on The Facts of Life
(Jetset). The title's no
tease--the first half of the album focuses on the precoital stages
of sexual development, including first kisses and not going "too
fast." The fulcrum is the title track, where Nixey plays a mother
watching her two sons undergo the agonies of teen experimentation
in a sweet, dry, dead-accurate rundown every bit as as classic for
its time as Leader of the Pack and Jack and Diane were
for theirs. That doesn't mean you'll soon hear it on the radio--or warm to
The Deverell Twins, in which Nixey joins two drowned children in the
Thames. But this band is the latest proof that, as usual, reports
of songwriting's death have been greatly exaggerated.
In 2000, almost-famous alt-rock heroes Pavement quit while they
were ahead, leaving their feckless leader to pursue his muse.
Stephen Malkmus (Matador) is a tunefully off-kilter collection
bolstered by backing musicians rather than stretched out of shape
by a band. The lyrics are more direct too. My favorite is the
three-verse autobiography of a pirate.
Two contrasting examples of jazzy Jewish wedding music: Frank
London's clarinet-led Klezmer Brass Allstars' Di Shikere Kapelye
(Piranha) translates as "band of drunks," and they earn the sobriquet;
Khevrisa's European Klezmer Music
(Smithsonian Folkways) has just as evocative a
title--violin-based, it's almost classical in its sense of decorum.
Playboy, Feb. 2001
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Jan. 2001 |
Mar. 2001 |
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