Sarah McLachlan: Mirrorball (Arista)

Various Artists
Lilith Fair: A Celebration of Women in Music, Vol. 2
Arista, 1999

Various Artists
Lilith Fair, Vol. 3
Arista

In 1995, sometime folkie and fellow Canadian Neil Young released an album also titled Mirror Ball; Sarah McLachlan's version could use some of Young's sharpness. Even when she sings of vampires and voodoo, McLachlan's candlelit aesthetic renders everything toothless on this live foray.

Beginning with the admittedly pretty "Building a Mystery" through "Adia," Mirrorball's first half-dozen songs sound stultifyingly the same. Hanging tough to track nine ("Fear") yields some interesting experimental jaunts into Seal-like landscapes of shimmering synths and ominous echoes, but without the chops of a backup group like Wendy and Lisa, it's unconvincing. On the Lilith Fair discs, McLachlan is tempered by some real rockers and braver artists: Emmylou Harris, Me'Shell Ndegéocello, Indigo Girls, N'Dea Davenport and the truly regal Bonnie Raitt. Still, there's some filler (Sixpence None the Richer's "Kiss Me") and downright travesty (Lisa Loeb's "I Do"). The sum of these three discs reveals that the Fair may have run its course. (RS 816-817)

Kandia Crazy Horse - Rolling Stone

Hellacopters: Grande Rock (Sub Pop/Psychout)

The Hellacopters come to us from Sweden -- via '69 guitar-boogie Detroit, '73 lipstick-punk New York and '76 avant-garage Cleveland. The holy sites and great saints of American metallic garage rock -- including, but not limited to, the MC5, the Ramones, Kiss, the Dead Boys, the New York Dolls and the original Alice Cooper group -- are deeply embedded in the manic panic of Grande Rock, the Copters' third album. Singer-guitarist Nick Royale, keyboard dude Boba Fett and bass-drum boys Kenny and Robban Hellacopter kick out their jams with such bruised-knuckle, shredded-amp fervor that you can't help but forgive, and celebrate, their idolatry.

The cumulative effect of the Copters' crunch and velocity is like a mid-Seventies issue of Creem magazine come to life; even the song titles read like old Ted Nugent and Iggy Pop headlines ("Action De Grace," "Venus in Force," "Alright Already Now"). The Copters needn't have bothered writing a song called "Paul Stanley"; there's enough self-aggrandizement in the Kiss songbook already. Much better, and more to the point, is "The Devil Stole the Beat From the Lord," in which the Copters -- by virtue of spirit, riff and muscle -- show why he ain't getting it back anytime soon. (RS 818)

David Fricke - Rolling Stone

Red Hot Chili Peppers: Californication (Warner Bros.)

Let's keep it real: white boys do not have to be funky; they only have to rock, and that the Red Hot Chili Peppers do quite wickedly, thank you. Historically, though, RHCP albums have been long on sock-it-to-me passion but short on the songcraft that made their hero George Clinton's most acid-addled experiments lyrically haunting and melodically infectious. Up until this new Peppers joint, Californication, that is. For Lord knows what reasons -- age, sobriety, Blonde on Blonde ambitions or worship at the altar of Billy Corgan -- they've settled down and written a whole album's worth of tunes that tickle the ear, romance the booty, swell the heart, moisten the tear ducts and dilate the third eye. All this inside of song forms and production that reveal sublime new facets upon each hearing.

Back in the revolving-guitar saddle is John Frusciante, of Blood Sugar Sex Magik fame, who replaces the outgoing Dave Navarro (who, of course, replaced Frusciante himself not so long ago) and proves once again why he's the only ax slinger God ever wanted to be a Pepper, too. As in days of yore, Frusciante continually hits the mark with slithery chicken licks, ingenious power chording, Axis: Bold as Love grace notes and sublimely syncopated noises that allow the nimble Flea to freely bounce back and forth between bombastic lead and architectonic rhythm parts on the bass. If there were a Most Valuable Bass Player award given out in rock, Flea could have laid claim to that bitch ten years running.

The real star turn on this disc, though, is by Anthony Kiedis, whose vocal cords have apparently been down to some crossroads and over the rehab, and returned with heretofore unheard-of range, body, pitch, soulfulness and melodic sensibility. On "Scar Tissue" he laces out a falsetto purple enough to have made Jeff Buckley swoon with envy; on "Savior'' he croons and belts with enough chest-thumping pride to suggest that Vegas is just a kiss away, sustaining supple, buoyant tones with such ease, you know he must be amazing himself, too. (As a friend observed, if she didn't know it was Kiedis, she would have thought the vocalist a Kiedis clone who could actually sing.) The point being that until you hear Californication, you haven't ever heard Kiedis truly sang, as they say in the church, nor prove himself so adept and moving in the lyrics department, either. Just in time for Matrix fever, "Parallel Universe" speaks of an "underwater where thoughts can breathe easily/Far away you were made in a sea, just like me" to the beat of a track that hybridinally splits the difference between the Yardbirds and Eurodisco. (Flea and Frusciante's remarkable handheld trillings on that one are more than a little technically impressive, we should add.)

The band treads more-familiar funk-rap ground on cuts like "Get on Top'' and "Right on Time,'' and on this album's "Under the Bridge" reduxes - the title track and the aforementioned "Scar Tissue," a dreamy Venice Beach pimp stroll with lullaby-lovely slide guitar. But songs like "Otherside'' and "Porcelain'' are delicate, vulnerable and volatile enough to earn the rubric Pumpkins-esque, while the baroque progressions and contrapuntal maneuvers heard on the hook-drunk "Easily'' could have one thinking that the Chili Peppers car-jacked Elvis Costello and made off like musical bandits. The poetry found on "Easily'' is no joke: "The story of a woman on the morning of a war/Remind me, if you will, exactly what we're fighting for/Throw me to the wolves, because there's order in the pack/Throw me to the sky, because I know I'm coming back.'' As dope as all of the above are, however, they're only the setup for the glistening simplicity and serenity displayed on the disc's denouement, "Road Trippin'," a finger-picked Olde English stylee number that ties the album up in a bow while gently inferring that Californication is the recovering singer's way of reminding himself to wake up and live and be "a mirror for the sun."

While all previous Chili Peppers projects have been highly spirited, Californication dares to be spiritual and epiphanal, proposing that these evolved RHCP furthermuckers are now moving toward funk's real Holy Grail: that salty marriage of esoteric mythology and insatiable musicality that salvages souls, binds communities and heals the sick. Not exactly your average white band. (RS 815)

Greg Tate -Rolling Stone

Widespread Panic: Til The Medicine Takes (Capricorn)

It seems like only yesterday, but Widespread Panic now ranks as one of the elder statesman (along with Phish) of the still-burgeoning jam band movement. Founded in the early '80s (a generation or two in rock music years) in Athens, Ga., the band has set standards that have proven tough to match. Sure, they're long-winded--but this sextet plays better and rocks harder (and longer) than virtually all of their younger peers.

If the group was aiming to put some distance between itself and the pack of Rusted-Matthews droners, Til The Medicine Takes succeeds with the most concise musical statement since 1994's Ain't Life Grand. "Surprise Valley" opens with a solid (and, at five minutes, comparatively short) tune that showcases everyone's strong chops. A loose, rhythmic intro features guitar lines that are a seamless blend of Garcia and Allman. Unfortunately, no matter how earnest (or monotonous) John Bell's lyrics and delivery are, they still come off as a disposable afterthought.

Changing the pace, both "Blue Indian" and "Christmas Katie" have a lazy retro feel, the former sounding like electrified Leon Redbone. Adding a banjo, the rolling "The Waker" sounds like Simon & Garfunkel meets John Hartford with a tasty Ventures guitar lead. In terms of writing, "You'll Be Fine" makes for the best cut, a Gram Parsons-styled tune with sweet harmonies that out-countrys any of the Wilco crew.

Like WP's version of "Happy Trails," "Nobody's Loss" closes with the band drifting slowly into the sunset on an acoustic-based country ballad. Who knows, perhaps Widespread Panic will light a fire under the depressed "No Depression" genre.

- Launch

The Artist Formerly Known as Prince: The Vault...OId Friends 4 Sale (Warner Bros.)
by: Daniel Durchholz

Not everything he does is touched by genius.

While it's true that Prince has without question made some of the most inspired and exhilarating music of the past two decades, he's also made plenty that's simply average. And either by virtue of the enigmatic and relentlessly prolific Artist himself — those three and four CD sets of new and archival material are beginning to wear on the patience and the pocketbook — or at the behest of his former record label, Warner Bros. — whose insistence on Prince's satisfying all his contractual obligations has brought us the set in question — we're destined to sift through piles and piles of the stuff in search of a diamond here, a few pearls there.

The Vault's chintzy packaging is the first tip-off this is little more than a quick cash grab. The minimal liner notes peg the material in the set as being recorded between 1985 and 1994, commenting that it was "originally intended 4 private use only."

Better it had stayed that way. Clocking in a less than 40 minutes, The Vault contains a mishmash of styles — jazz, blues, rock, and pop, which prove that, yes, Prince can pretty much do whatever he pleases stylistically. But the tunes are hardly his best of the period and would have each been only minor tracks on any of his albums had they seen the light of day before now.

Dyed in the wool Symbolmaniacs have probably heard this material already on the numerous Prince bootlegs that are available (the Purple One's Paisley Park Studios are notoriously leaky), while the rest of us are left to shake our heads in disgust as the little guy's legacy gets watered down even further.

- Wall of Sound

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