New release roundup Billy Bragg and Wilco The Ellis Marsalis Trio Robert Pollard Neil Finn Spinanes Genesis A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Attack of the bad Fox TV movie: "Killer Ants!" The A-Team By Jonathan Curiel A tour of Africa's biggest pop stars becomes the biggest musical bargain in America Y E S T E R D A Y Home Movies By Charles Taylor L.A. transcendental: The dark side of Hollywood's New Age (06/23/98) R E C E N T_. M U S I C Confessions of a Box-Set Sucker By Eric Alterman A music collector thanks Rhino for repackaging his awful adolescence (06/22/98) Sharps and Flats Reviews of new CDs from Brian Wilson, Grant Lee Buffalo, Rod Stewart, John Fogerty and more (06/17/98) Big trouble in Little Tibet By Gavin McNett Lightning strikes fans, but the bands play on (06/17/98) American Squirm By Sarah Vowell Uneasy rider (06/15/98) Back in the U.S.S.R. By Julia Barton After a brush with American fame, perestroika poster boy Boris Grebenshikov has returned to his Russian roots (06/10/98) BROWSE THE MUSIC ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS

[ A SALON REVIEWS SECTION SPONSORED BY BORDERS.COM ] Billy Bragg and Wilco MERMAID AVENUE | ELEKTRA HEAR IT | BY JOE HEIM | Though Woody Guthrie is revered as the most important and influential of American folk singers, most of his stripped down songs-of-the-people are actually not that well known. Second graders bring remarkable gusto to his rousing anthem "This Land Is Your Land." But like all good things, second grade, too, must pass, and that first dose of Guthrie is unfortunately often the last. The familiar iconic image of the legendary folk singer is as a rabble-rousing, fascist-fighting union man who wore his politics on his guitar strap and opened the door for any lefty who could carry a tune. Forgotten is Guthrie the lover, drinker, doting father and genuinely funny man. Billy Bragg and Wilco aim to change that. The British political singer-songwriter and the American alternative country band have teamed up to arrange and record songs that Guthrie wrote but never released. "Mermaid Avenue," their 15-song portrait, includes more than just songs borne of Guthrie's people-power politics. The earthy beauty of "California Stars" and the hurry-up-and-marry-me charm of "Hesitating Beauty" reveal the singer's tender, personal side, while the strange and beatlike "Walt Whitman's Niece" and the nonsensical sing-a-long "Hoodoo Voodoo" are the inspired works of a wonderfully free and innovative spirit. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Ellis Marsalis Trio, Introducing Jason Marsalis TWELVE'S IT | COLUMBIA --> BY TONY SCHERMAN | This isn't really Jason Marsalis' introduction; the youngest of New Orleans' six Marsalis brothers is a recording veteran at 21. But it is the first album in which he fully shares the spotlight with the leader, in this case his father, the veteran beboppper and dynasty founder. Ellis and Jason have spent much of the last half-decade gigging at the Crescent City nitery Snug Harbor (where eight of these 12 tracks were cut), and the club has been Jason's academy. Five years ago the kid was audibly a novice; today he's a far-better-than-average drummer, brimming with ideas, swinging hard and only rarely guilty of his old stiffness. The nice thing about "Twelve's It" is that it's Jason, with his adolescent energy, who is clearly the spark, prodding his dad out of the latter's occasional tendency toward dryness. Ellis is a wonderful pianist -- everything he plays is lapidary, even when it's flying by at 100 mph (check out his lickety-split fingerwork on "Tell Me" and "Zee Blues"). The irony, of course, is that Ellis has been a killer for 40 years; in this jazzophobic, celebrity-struck culture, it took the fame of Jason's older brothers to put Dad in the public eye. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Robert Pollard WAVED OUT | MATADOR HEAR IT | BY MARK ATHITAKIS | And now, for his next trick, the infamous Guided by Voices frontman will yet again prove his irritatingly scattershot pop genius with a handful of gorgeous art-punk hymns that he tosses off like so many crumbs ... and then dilute their impact with about a dozen half-finished sketches he hardly has the energy to toss off in the first place. There is some proof here that Pollard's matured, though. After 10 years of scribbling inscrutable Cheap Trick tributes and knockoffs, his sense of vocal phrasing has become more studied (read: less drunken), and his songcraft edges ever closer to the gloomy majesty of his declared favorite album, Wire's "154." But Wire's "154" mattered because its clinical precision made its off-kilter hooks more magnetic, more majestic, scarier. All "Waved Out" has is the precision (at least more than usual), and a few good hooks: the distant, lovely melody of "Wrinkled Ghost," a solemn, waltzing prayer for the dead on "People Are Leaving" and a raving prayer to the next generation of indie rockers on "Make Use" -- which is the same generation who'll listen to the distanced, empty ditties that fill up the rest of the record and go back again to Guided by Voices' "Bee Thousand." There they'll find perhaps the greatest fluke of genius in indie-rock history, and happily stay there. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Neil Finn TRY WHISTLING THIS | WORK HEAR IT --> BY JOE SILVA | Even though Neil Finn was essentially running the game throughout Crowded House's 12-year lifespan, their divorce two years ago signaled the true beginning of his solo career. With his superb melodies being put through all sorts of off-kilter paces during the band's final LP, "Together Alone," there was no telling what direction his songcraft would go. After a brief stint of painting and striking up some new musical acquaintances, "Try Whistling This" arrives as the free-ranging document of a soul newly liberated. Neil conjures up tidy pop scenarios ("Last One Standing," "She Will Have Her Way") and a few wide-open soundscapes ("Twisty Bass," "Try Whistling This") dilated by fresh instrumentation. There's even a brisk rocker thrown in ("Loose Tongue"), with Neil's son Liam adding some slamming John Bonham-like drumming. Woven throughout is Finn's semi-obscure lyricism, where words are often used for their sonic quality as they are for effectiveness in conveying a sentiment. But it's not until all these newly untethered perspectives converge, as they do on tracks like "Truth," that Finn appears to get close to this record's intent. Being obviously bent on stretching his creativity (and his ear for a good tune) in as many directions as is simultaneously possible, his first brush with musical autonomy is at once cluttered, imaginative and fearless. And all of this is blatantly hammered into the title, "Try Whistling This" -- a challenge issued from a man moving into the later stages of his work, where being faced with freedom is an invigorating summons as well as a fragile proposition. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Spinanes ARCHES AND AISLES | SUB POP HEAR IT | BY CYNTHIA JOYCE | Spinanes fans who were blown away by the former duo's big sound may have assumed their artistry depended on a powerful personal dynamic between them. But if drummer Scott Plouf (who left the band two years ago to play with Built to Spill) was the driving pulse behind the band's impressive 1993 debut "Manos" and 1996's excellent "Strand," "Arches and Aisles" proves that singer/guitarist Rebecca Gates is still behind the wheel -- and quite capable of riding solo. Gates' come-hither alto and hold-it-right-there lyrics lend "Arches and Aisles" an air of cautious confidence that was still in its formative stages on "Strand." But where that album seemed inspired alternately by late-night mania and early-morning regret, here frantic energy gives way to measured forcefulness ("Kid in Candy," "72-74"), and on the slow songs ("Slide Your Ass," "Den Trawler," "Eleganza"), melancholia makes room for mellow acceptance: "God grant me the patience to just make it," Gates sings on "Den Trawler." Like anyone who's ever been disappointed, she's simultaneously suspicious and hopeful, as when she sings the lines from "Heisman Stance": "Still swimming towards your hands when all is said and done/locked in a Heisman stance, when I don't trust a thing/Why don't you prove me wrong." Throughout the album, Gates sings with the voice of someone who is just discovering that taking the middle ground isn't always a compromise, but a sign of maturity. She may be going it alone for now, but as "Arches and Aisles" shows, sometimes that's what it takes to grow up gracefully. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Genesis GENESIS ARCHIVES VOL.1 | ATLANTIC --> BY ANDREW HAMLIN | For those who don't remember Genesis prior to, say, "ABACAB" (and I think we've got people who don't remember Phil Collins anymore, let alone remember him with hair), one early band photo may be beyond words: four genteel British geezers (one of them Phil Collins with hair) -- and then, kneeling just under Phil's chin, an abomination in clown white and moose mascara, obsidian mane shaved lopsidedly to the crown but spilling over its shoulders, glazed eyes and burbling half-grin suggesting nothing so much as a mutated wildebeest bagged by the four genteel geezers on the road back from Yorkshire. Its name is Peter Gabriel. As an ace prog-rock ensemble, Genesis cut six albums, Gabriel up front all the way with makeup, costumes, lyrics as awe-inspiring in their scope as they were cringe-inducing in their emotional earnestness, and the vocal swoops and full-stops that nourished his solo work. "Supper's Ready" moves from afternoon television to the rebirth of the human race in just 22 minutes, but the real treat for many will be a live version of the band's rock opera, "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway," which, although it just might be about a man whose penis is stolen by a raven, doesn't forget to namecheck Evel Knievel. In a word, encylopedic. SALON | June 24, 1998