NEWMUSIC

Educated Guess

(Righteous Babe)

Depending on how you count them, Educated Guess is Ani Difranco’s twentieth album in less than 15 years. This is her first entirely solo record and the result is an album that takes Difranco’s trenchant, self-revelatory style and folds it over onto itself, producing music so intimate it would be uncomfortable, were it not for Difranco’s wry delivery. Spoken word poetry is woven into the album, giving it the feel of an open-mic coffeeshop after everyone else has gone home. Politics is unsurprisingly omnipresent, ranging from the subtle (“Behold breathlessly the sight, how a raging river of tears cut a grand canyon of light”) to the not-so subtle (“Why can’t all decent men and women call themselves feminists…out of respect… for those who fought for this?”).

But the album’s most striking element is its dense, chromatic musical textures. Guess may be some of Difranco’s most opaque work yet, full of tense, unsettling suspended chords that never quite resolve. There are no ballads like “32 Flavors” or angry acoustic diatribes. The prevailing mood is desolate and intensely introspective, as only Difranco can be. On the standout track “Bliss Like This,” Difranco chills out long enough for a jazzy quasi-love song in which she is as concerned with herself as she is with her lover: “Besides every time I see you it just forces me to look at myself.” Many of Difranco’s other albums are more accesible, but for those who like seeing where her mind wanders to when she’s alone, Educated Guess may be the closest one can get to the Sphinx-like Ani.

—Andrew R. Iliff

John Vanderslice

Cellar Door

(Barsuk)

John Vanderslice sums up his musical range in just the first three songs of his latest full-length, and it goes something like this: melodramatically driven fuzzed-out faux-blues, electronic melodramatic pounding and piano ballads (melodramatic). On Cellar Door, Vanderslice combines and recombines these elements to find distinct directions for his sad-sack male songwriter’s backing band to explore. The result is meticulously beautiful. But over each unique instrumental backdrop comes that same mono-stylistic voice that Vanderslice can’t seem to outgrow. His intensely sincere, melodic moan pushes already overwrought lyrics to a point that will have many a cooler-than-thou music snob reaching for the volume knob. But truth is, Vanderslice cannot be faulted for over-dramatizing his material. With topics that include ground-level narratives from the War on Terror, the convoluted nightmare plot of Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and the singer’s own endless reserve of personal tragedies, it’s hard to sound low-key.

Cellar Door’s not-quite-emo won’t be a problem for everyone—Vanderslice is the kind of guy who makes every mopey English concentrator’s day by adapting Shelley for his lyrics, rediscovering British Romantics as proto-Obersts. But as perfectly-crafted as each individual song is, listening to the full album makes you want to remind Vanderslice not to forget to be cool, in that distant, disaffected sense of the word. Sometimes caring too much is a bad thing.

—Simon W. Vozick-Levinson

Juvenile

Juve the Great

(Cash Money/Universal)

When Juvenile departed Cash Money Records, the label he single-handedly brought to prominence, his career seemed all but over. While Cash Money artists like the Big Tymers and Boo & Gotti cranked out a series of hits, he was stuck promoting no-name rappers via his UTP Playas collective. But like the Prodigal Son of the New Orleans rap scene, Juvenile has returned to Cash Money—and Juve the Great just might be the record that saves his career.

Fans who lost track of Juvenile after his 1998 breakout album 400 Degreez may have trouble believing that Juve the Great is a product of the same man and the same record label. Gone are the flashy Cash Money album covers of yore. Gone, too, is the creative monopoly normally afforded to producer Mannie Fresh. Even Juvenile’s voice has changed, sounding surprisingly polished for a man whose first hit consisted of grunting “ha” at the end of each line. In fact, the only constant is Juvenile’s uncanny flair for flowing over the agile bounce beats characteristic of Crescent City rap. The title track is the album’s hidden gem, a series of compelling verses with a tense, dramatic instrumental.

Juve the Great’s weakness isn’t the quality of the music—it’s that Juvenile doesn’t seem to be having as much fun as one would expect from the author of “Back That Azz Up.” Nevertheless, Juve the Great bodes well for the man who put the Magnolia Projects on the map—it may not be a classic, but it sure proves his ability to remain relevant.

—Thomas J. Clarke

The Microphones

Live in Japan, February 19th, 21st, and 22nd, 2003

(K Records)

Japan, as seen on the big screen, seems like as good a place as any to put the Microphones to rest, or at least their name. The anesthetized neon hotel rooms of Sofia Coppola’s Tokyo are the 21st century analogue to the lonesome Washingtonian shores from whence comes the music of Phil Elvrum, elfish folk matador behind the Microphones.

The ponderous nature of Mt. Eerie is absent on Live in Japan, a sober collection of new songs culled from the bare-bones shows Elvrum performed before retiring the Microphones’ moniker for good. All the ingredients of vintage Microphones are present: droopy guitars, moan-singing and months spent in isolation. But the magic of the spacious soundscapes that Elvrum dreams up so well in basement studios is missing, save standout tracks like the break-up tune “The Blow, Pt. 2” and “Universe Conclusion,” a bone-shaking campfire call-and-response that features an appearance by K Records founder Calvin Johnson.

Airy harmonies and quiet build-ups continue throughout the album in a slightly exhausting downhill amble that includes the regrettably-titled “I Have Been Told That My Skin Is Exceptionally Smooth,” as well as the gothic-esque “My Favorite Things” and “Silent Night.” But these songs are in every way inferior to the album’s opener and apex, “Great Ghosts,” a guitar lullaby about exile, return and surrender that should be the Microphone’s swan song. Typically, tentatively, Elvrum howls: “As you can see / having descended the hill / I still look like me / I still wallow like Phil, and forever will.” The luminous ghosts of the Microphones past are haunting Elvrum and us, but in this live setting they’re lost in translation.

—Alex L. Pasternack