If you judge an album by its cover, Little Beirut’s High Dive would seem unpromising. With its crazy black-and-white photo of a towel-clad older woman with cigarette and martini, Little Beirut seem like one of those kitschy, hopelessly hip indie bands that sell themselves on the fact that they’re different from the rest, even if they’re the same.
Press Play – Album Reviews
Little BeirutHigh Dive***1/2
If you judge an album by its cover, Little Beirut’s High Dive would seem unpromising. With its crazy black-and-white photo of a towel-clad older woman with cigarette and martini, Little Beirut seem like one of those kitschy, hopelessly hip indie bands that sell themselves on the fact that they’re different from the rest, even if they’re the same.
But if you make that assumption, you’d be wrong. Sounding somewhere between catchier contemporary indie music and older U2-ish rock, Little Beirut brings to mind a more sensibly underground Strokes, or maybe an ambitious Jack White with a bit more polish. Needless to say, the band is hard to pigeonhole into a single category. While not revolutionary, the songs work well enough, with dirty, twangy guitars, upbeat tempos and a nice variety of song structures. The retro-lite sound works too.
Little Beirut will play a record release show on March 7 at Berbati’s Pan. Entry is $7. Ages 21-plus.
–Steve Haske
Sheryl CrowDetours**1/2
What? Sheryl Crow is still alive? Didn’t she go out with, I dunno, the turn of the century?
This must be a mistake or something. For those who don’t remember “All I Wanna Do” and “Every Day is a Winding Road,” Crow plays pretty standard (if a little down-home) pop rock. She was a big deal in the mid-90s.
On Detours she pulls her best Bob Dylan impression (structurally, some of the time) and hopes no one notices. The problem with Detours isn’t that it’s a bad album, per se, but that after the first six surprisingly catchy tracks, Sheryl seems to have fallen asleep at her guitar. It’s a guilty admission that there’s anything worth listening to here, but still, after awhile you just kind of feel dirty and want to turn the music off.
–Steve Haske
The WagonMatch Made In Hellno stars
If an unwritten album is like a blank musical canvas, then The Wagon’s process for Match Made In Hell went something like this: First, douse the entire thing in a wash of tired, utterly uninspired lyrics, feel and structure. Then cover it in shit. Then light it on fire.
Aside from the expensive dry-cleaning bills to get the bloodstains from your damaged ears out of your clothes, this is more or less a description of the greatness of The Wagon. The tracks on their unbelievably terrible album Match Made In Hell run the gamut from 50s Beach-Boys rock (with a hard edge! Rawk!!) to country and yes, even Reznor-inspired industrial music.
Seriously, this music will make you want to put a gun in your mouth. Though the idea of switching genres isn’t really that interesting to begin with, I’m inclined to say that in the case of The Wagon, it’s because these boys just aren’t talented enough to find a real sound. It’s the equivalent of a bunch of guitar-playing frat boys trying to really “get into” the music, complete with high-school-English-class-caliber lyrics.
-Steve Haske
