Sound Bites

David Gray “White Ladder” ATO
Records

The windows are open and the rumbling trucks roll past the small
house in London where David Gray is recording his fourth,
self-financed album. It’s another tearful, bittersweet swoon
from the ludicrously underrated musician. “Who is David
Gray?” is an advantageous question because his relative
anonymity will dismiss any expectations and force us to consider
his music on somewhat different terms. This departure is exactly
what he needs to avoid being trapped by the audience’s
well-meaning but ultimately limiting expectations. The results are
compelling and the album’s richness and melancholia grow on
the listener quickly. Gray entwines an unlikely alliance of genres
with a mixture of crafty, techno-like beats, piano and acoustic
guitar. His dramatic tinkering of sounds and unique wind-swept
refrains kept his album in the Irish Top 30 for five weeks. Yes
indeed, it helps to have friends with an independent label, ATO
Records. Dave Matthews signed Gray to fix a bedrock in America for
the Irish musician. Dave Matthews called Gray “beautiful in
the purest and most honest way” after touring together in the
U.S. We’ll just have to wait and see whether Matthew’s
attempt at bringing Gray commercial eureka in the States will
succeed. The enhanced CD includes the nine original album tracks
with two bonus tracks, “Night Blindness” and
“Babylon II,” as well as a 12 minute video showing
photos, interviews and concert footage. Gray’s
consciousness-soaked voice is supported by everything from violin
to piano. But at times, the drum machine is soundless, the piano is
hushed, and Gray’s incorporeal guitar faintly and lastingly
makes its ear-stinging impression. In songs like “My Oh
My,” blighted hope and immoderation is expressed through
balance of Gray’s raspy, pleading voice and the
guitar’s confident swing. “Silver Lining” emits a
sense of assurance and proves that love isn’t the only
emotion that can make an impassioned song. The most outstanding
song is “Sail Away,” a lavish ballad where the deep,
reverberating drums and alp-like chord climb really reflect images
of boats bolting off into a glassy sea. “White Ladder”
is best experienced under a summer sky with a group of friends
dancing around in circles, stomping your feet, and holding your
sweetie tight. Letting the sunroof of your Jetta open and taking
three pals along for the ride is close enough, however. Judy Pak
Rating: 7

 

 

Pink Floyd “Is There Anybody Out There?: The Wall
Live” Columbia

Although bigwig music periodicals have dissed Pink Floyd’s
most recent release as being old hat ““ a cheap rehash of the
original ““ you cannot help but think that the reviewers in
question failed to listen to the album completely, if at all. It
might be easy to skip past the lesser-known material to radio
favorites such as the career-highlight “Another Brick in the
Wall,” the soaring “Comfortably Numb” or the
paranoid anthem “Run Like Hell,” but the magic of the
album is found in its whole. In a live release of its 1979 album
“The Wall,” from which all tracks are culled out of a
handful of performances, Pink Floyd proves the magic is abound.
From the ominous Prussian waltz of “In the Flesh?” to a
spine-tingling guitar solo in “Comfortably Numb” to the
ego-crumbling a cappella rendition of “Outside the
Wall,” the band puts everything it’s got into its live
performance to produce a live version of “The Wall” the
only way it should be: mind-blowing. The band might have been at
the beginning of a long, downward spiral that would lead it into
new-wave metal and mockumentaries, but the set of performances the
double-disc album entails represents the dinosaurs of classic rock
at their very peak, right before the meteor hit. Having been
together for roughly 15 years, the Floyd demonstrates the maturity
of its tightness in such pieces as “Another Brick in the Wall
part II,” which features extended soloing by guitarist David
Gilmour as well as keyboardist Rick Wright. While transitional
moments such as “Vera” and “Bring the Boys Back
Home” might be lackluster and uninteresting, the band makes
up with some powerful new editions: the limit-pushing “What
Shall We Do Now?” and some improv lines added to “The
Show Must Go On.” Gilmour has what he calls one of his
career-defining moments during his two-minute guitar solo in
“Comfortably Numb,” in which he makes his guitar sound
like an instrument of hell, and Wright adds some seriously furious
organ work on “Run Like Hell.” During the Teutonic
march of “Waiting For the Worms,” lyricist and
mastermind Roger Waters screams out the words, “Are you with
me?” to legions of helplessly enraptured fans like the
supreme dictator of rock “˜n’ roll, signifying his
blatant championship over reality. Even if “Is There Anybody
Out There” has little to offer in the way of surprises, the
audience still claps at the beginning of each song, cheering and
screaming, like each one was a smash hit ““ something which
probably hasn’t been duplicated since the last time Pink
Floyd hit the stage in 1996. With all the subtle differences in
lyrics, background noises and instrumentation, Pink Floyd offers
the listener not simply another listen of “The Wall”
but almost a totally new listening experience altogether, as if the
original album had been rebuilt from the ground up. While
“The Wall” captures the essence of alienation and
de-personalization, “Is There Anybody Out There”
captures one of the most well-organized, well-orchestrated, and
well-received concert experiences of all time. Cyrus McNally
Rating: 9

 

 

Jeff Foxworthy “Big Funny” Scream
Music

You might be a redneck if you buy this CD and actually laugh out
loud. Your mother always told you not to judge a book by its cover.
After you listen to “Big Funny,” you’ll wish that
your mother would have extended her advice to “Don’t
judge a CD by its case.” When you see Jeff Foxworthy’s
head pasted on to a body builder’s body wearing boxers with
hearts all over them and a cow and monkey cracking-up on the back
cover, you might assume that the CD was going to be some serious
pee-in-your-pants comedy. Wrong! Listeners of Foxworthy’s
live taped show might be lucky enough to let out a soft chuckle
once or twice during the entire performance. The first eight tracks
will really make the audience wonder about the lives of some of
America’s people. Some occurrences Foxworthy states are more
scary than funny. During the third track, “I’d Thought
I’d Heard Every Redneck Thing,” he talks about this man
who got his nipple bitten off by a beaver. This will make the
listener wonder about what kinds of intimate relationships some
people have with their wildlife friends rather than laugh.
Hopefully, Foxworthy’s family does not mind his using their
daily lives in his act because his wife and children are really the
only funny part of his entire act. Even Foxworthy states that he
only has to wait for something to happen in his home to come up
with some material. He’s right. Kids do say the darndest
things. The best part of his act is track nine, “House Full
of Girls,” when Foxworthy’s daughter asks if he wants
to know how she made the peanut sandwich he had just eaten. She
chewed up peanuts and crackers and spit the saliva covered crumbs
into the bread. Ewwww! Ha! Ha! The rest of the jokes told about
women such as track 12, “You are Being Trained,” and
track 13, “Women Want to Talk,” lack originality.
Foxworthy makes fun of situations between men and women that have
already been done, except now he’s told them with a Southern
accent. During Foxworthy’s closing thanks, he announces his
show on NBC will not be returning for another season. After
listening to “Big Funny,” you’ll know why. LiLi
Tan Rating: 2