“Little Radio” Stephen Clair
BMI
Stephen Clair’s musical formula is simple enough. He throws
together an album’s worth of tracks that are straight ahead
rock ‘n’ roll. His sound references country,
rockabilly, blues, pop, but the songs don’t have any
disparity of sound. It’s an uncluttered mixture that allows
for the casual appearance of a kazoo or unobtrusive female backing
vocals. “Little Radio” is held together by a
repetitiveness of sound, a familiarity that each track has with the
last that makes the entire album feel like a sort of mantra. The
problem is the chant of “Little Radio” isn’t an
immediate one. Instead it raises a question that has plagued recent
rock music in general. Where has all the sexy music gone? Rock
‘n’ roll used to have primal sex-driven bent to it.
Whether glam rock, hard rock or punk rock, there was an urgency of
sexual energy that drove bands like Led Zeppelin, T. Rex, the
Beatles and Stones and the Experience to create music that a guy
could play when he was making it with some girl in the back of his
pickup. Rock groups and singer-songwriters have gotten lazy. Sex is
more explicitly in lyrics than ever, but it’s not in the
music. Stephen Clair titles songs “Jen in her
Underwear” and “Dancing in New York” and
they’re completely devoid of sensuality. They’re breezy
songs. And despite some questionably tongue-in-cheek lyrics
(especially on the album’s latter half) they’re not bad
songs. Not bad in a bad way, or bad in the way that makes you
breathe hard. These songs are easy to sing along to. They
wouldn’t be bad background music for a night out in a loud
bar, but you won’t be getting any when this album is on. Rock
‘n’ roll is apparently, for the most part, satisfied to
let hip hop, rhythm and blues, and electronic music dominate the
makeout scenes of the future. -Anthony
Bromberg
“Happy 2b Hardcore ““ Chapter Seven”
Various Artists Moonshine Music
The drums beats explode with imperceptible detail crammed into
faster and faster tempos, and soon your eardrums pop; the music has
forced itself into some primitively reactionary part of your brain.
If played at the right volume (deafeningly loud), this anvil-like
music will have you dancing in no time. If any image represents
this compilation of hypnotic hyperness, it is the album’s
cover, which features unending rows of shiny smiley happy faces.
This music is as unrelenting and unproblematic as the cover’s
barrage of unreal hallucinogenic ecstasy. Every track sounds the
same. Instead of threatening a hangover, this musical drug
threatens something even worse: to leave you in a mindlessly
unmeditative state that just won’t end. It’s an
unironic trip into a deranged psyche, and once in a while, that can
be good. -Howard Ho