Music Reviews by Glenn Ricci

May 1, 1995

In Love / Jazz Passengers / Windham Hill

Yes, it's another jazz "crossover album," a crossbred genre that seems to exist to anger jazz purists, frighten pop listeners, and attract the rest of us who want to believe that jazz/pop is possible, but are still skeptical. Creating this sort of music raises several practical issues of musical arrangement: How long should the solos last? How many melodic hooks do we need? How dissonant should we get? The Passengers seem to navigate their way through these problems as if they never existed. The result is a set of songs that sound so fresh and natural that only careful planning and years of experience could have produced them. The Passengers clearly have both, as well as a throng of guest vocalists who turn out some stirring performances.

This Is Fort Apache / Various Artists / MCA

A number of familiar "alternative" artists (Belly, The Lemonheads, Dinosaur Jr., Buffalo Tom, Throwing Muses, Juliana Hatfield, Billy Bragg and others) place their re-heated offerings on this platter in honor of the legendary studio, Fort Apache, and a time when they weren't crazy, stinkin' rich. It's an enjoyable collection and it's relatively cheap. And there are a couple of pretty good new, or as-of-yet-unreleased, songs on it by The Walkabouts and Cold Water Flat. But be warned: many of these songs already appear on each of the artists' respective albums, so check to make sure you don't have them already. Or, if you have one of those friends who is obsessively making and sending you mix tapes of alternative music, you may be better off listening to those.

Second Coming / Stone Roses / Geffen

Now high on the college charts, the Roses are sounding slightly reminiscent of Pink Floyd during their Syd Barrett era, but with a far more modern bag of tricks. The 12 songs on this effort (plus bonus CD tracks) are surprisingly eclectic, yet fit together so well that it would be difficult to imagine hacking one off for a single. Something in their consistently full, grassroots guitar sound unites high-energy raves like "Begging You" with the ambiently acoustic "Your Star Will Shine" and the mellow grooves of "Straight To The Man." With their extended (albeit not constantly challenging) instrumental jams and Iam Brown's trippy vocals, Second Coming creates instant texture for any party or get-together. That is to say, keep it playing in the background and you will probably not even notice that is sounds as if they are not trying very hard.

The Long Black Veil / The Chieftains / RCA Victor

What could better: the quintessential Irish band, a cast of popular music's most respected vocalists, and a mug full of Irish standards. Maybe producer/arranger Paddy Maloney tries a little too hard to feature the guest vocalists, often keeping the instruments out of the way entirely. Maybe the arrangements come off sounding at times just a little too tight and tasteful. Maybe at other times, instruments and vocalists sound just a tad off key. Maybe this is nitpicking (I do try to remain sober for these reviews, which may not be the ideal listening condition in this case). And maybe, just maybe, this will be the album of the year as other critics have been racing to proclaim.

- Glenn Ricci