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© St. Petersburg Times, published January 6, 2002
KID ROCK, COCKY (LAVA/ATLANTIC) Cocky barely begins to describe Kid Rock's fourth CD.
The Detroit rap-rocker doesn't acknowledge that anyone other than himself exists until the sixth track, not surprisingly named I'm Wrong, But You Ain't Right. He argues in the title number, "It ain't cocky (expletive), if you back it up."
The Kid "backs it up" by boasting on song after foul-mouthed song how he has sold millions of records, made millions of dollars, hung out with stars, even met the president while stoned (apparently a true story). As a special treat, Kid Rock brags about his sexual proclivities in a truly tasteless duet with Snoop Dogg.
This might be a horny teenager's idea of cool, but please.
It's really too bad, because Kid Rock and his Twisted Brown Trucker band have real talent. Their fusion of country, punk, '70s Southern-fried rock and hip-hop easily could be a top-down, speakers-blaring guilty pleasure on a breezy weekend afternoon.
Unfortunately, on this CD at least, you can't have one without the other. D
-- JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK, Times staff writer
FAITH EVANS, FAITHFULLY (BAD BOY) When hip-hop exploded in the mid-'90s, many crews signed a first lady to bring glamor and hot licks to their players' clubs and dog pounds. Their first solo records sometimes packed the marquee with masculine talent, pushing skilled artists like Eve to the margins of their own material. Their subsequent, stronger albums have introduced exciting new feminine angles on the old rap game, keeping the boys at bay or pushing them to the boards altogether (see, no, experience Missy Elliot's Miss E . . . So Addictive). Faith Evans, who holds the double-X chrome throne at Sean Combs' Bad Boy Records, sings straight up hip-hop soul on Faithfully, her third disc, and she really takes off this time.
Evans has never sounded more her own woman than she does here. Faithfully keeps references to her late husband Biggie Smalls strictly between the lines, the sampling of Mtume's Juicy Fruit on the title track betraying the clearest Biggie connection. She rides the undulating waves of the love pulse, coasting safely between serenity and disdain. On the disdain tip, Evans dishes out, "You can't come running back to me with all those "baby, baby pleases no more," on Can't Believe, a perfect done-me-wrong duet with Carl Thomas.
The bump and boom You Gets No Love warns all prospective fools, "Play with my emotions/you gets no devotion." But the independent diva enjoys getting what she wants, not just sloughing off what she doesn't, which she makes evident by getting down to an irresistible disco throb in Back to Love. Evans' honey-sweet vocals are best suited to the disc's ballads.
She promises fidelity to her man while he's in lockdown on Do Your Time, one of the more romantic four-page letters committed to DAT. The dreamy groove of Heaven Only Knows is a glittering song about (what else?) faith. I Love You lets Evans distill its subject to its essence through its simple chorus of "I love you" and "I need you." She makes it feel as irrational and intoxicating as the real thing. A-
-- SCOTT CHRABAS, Times staff writer
ROB ZOMBIE, THE SINISTER URGE (GEFFEN) Prepare the flashpots and crank up the lasers, dim the lights and cue the go-go girls, because this isn't just the old horror-movie metal show. Oh, the bass thunders and the drum pounds and the guitar crunches, but somebody has been listening to his own remix albums and apparently decided: Hey, synths and strings can, like, work.
Demon Speeding signals that right off. That's where the flashpots blind you and fire singes the backdrop and just when you're into that reliable Zombie groove, a synth wails and strings sound like an orchestra tune-up gone sadly sick, and you wonder: Rob Zombie?
Sure, the old cast is back. This time the dead girl is Dead Girl Superstar, and every horror movie your older brother ever saw in the next room plays in the background, but there are also (Go to) California (who knew that he knew anything about geography but Transylvania?) and Never Gonna Stop (the Red, Red Kroovy) and somehow, you don't expect an A Clockwork Orange reference, especially set to such a sinuous, loping, catchy tune (nice touch with the backup singers, Rob).
He has never growled better. The music has never entranced like this. The chaos has never raised you so long, so high, so hard. A
-- DANIEL PUCKETT, Times staff writer
SHELBY LYNNE, LOVE, SHELBY (ISLAND RECORDS) Judging by the cover of her new album, Love, Shelby, Shelby Lynne is a long way from Nashville. If the cut-off jeans or the title, scrawled in lipstick, are not convincing, consider the music. With its sleek production, Love, Shelby plays on Lynne's trumped-up sexpot image, oh yeah, and her bluesy voice.
Despite the Hollywood makeover, Lynne hasn't altogether abandoned her country roots. On Jesus on a Greyhound, Lynne tackles her past with punchy guitars and a wailing chorus. Granted, slick producer Glen Ballard probably toned it down with his radio-friendly sensibilities, but the track still surges with energy. On it, Lynne sounds like a modern Dusty Springfield. Lynne also flexes on the horn-tinged Ain't It the Truth, which smacks of the best of gospel and blues.
Speaking of her soap opera past -- her father murdered her mother and then killed himself -- Lynne's inspired version of John Lennon's Mother has greater significance. On Trust Me, Lynne purrs over an acid piano groove, "We're going to go places/I'll take you there."
With the bravado of a hypersexual creature, Lynne spouts lyrics like "Babe, let go of all your troubles/let me hold you like no other." Yeow! If Lynne weren't as talented a vocalist the material would reek of kitsch, but the earnestness in her delivery proves that Lynne is serious about her music. B
-- BRIAN ORLOFF, Times correspondent
SCRIABIN; POEMS, WALTZES AND OTHER WORKS; BORIS BEKHTEREV, PIANO (PHOENIX)
Among the brighter stars of the late 19th- and early 20th-century musical cosmos, Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915) may well have been the most luminous. Fiercely independent, Scriabin established a new harmonic hierarchy that drew its inspiration from any number of sources, including ancient Orthodox liturgical chant.
Scriabin's youthful compositions reflect the influenceof Chopin. He appropriated the forms and even the names of that composer's most famous works, writing dozens of preludes, mazurkas, scherzos and waltzes. But as time passed, he moved into a highly specific genre, the musical poem and the single movement sonata, whichgave voice to his fascination with mystical symbolism.
Only a handful of pianists have ever mastered the full compliment of his music's innumerable complexities. Margarita Fyodorova, Walter Gieseking, Roberto Szidon, Sviatoslav Richter and Vladimir Horowitz can each claim membership in that exclusive club. Now enter Boris Bekhterev, a middle-aged Russian pianist living in Japan. Judging from the magnificent, thoroughly informed and deliciously idiomatic performances recorded here, Bekhterev emerges as one of the greatest Scriabin interpreters of all. Witness his reading of the exquisitely diaphanous Poeme-Nocturne, a work that defines Scriabin's aesthetic disposition. He illuminates every contrapuntal corner and motivic arabesque. Bekhterev understands Scriabin's now volatile, nowfragile rhythm that relies, especially in the late works, on the formal organization and registration of motivic material.
Elsewhere, Bekhterev dispatches with eloquence the fin-de-siecle charms and suave lyricism of the early Waltz Op. 38; redeems the poetic charms of the TwoPoems Op 32; engages the impossible difficulties of the bellicose Poeme Tragique for its bold rhetoric;makes magic of the polyrhythmic bipolarities of the Etrangete, Op. 63 no. 2; and extrapolates the strands of counterpoint in Vers la Flammes. Bekhterev seems acutely aware, too, of Scriabin's advice to Rachmaninoff, who was performing Scriabin's Prometheus: "You must walk around myharmony!"
For the interpreter who grasps that, as Bekhterev does with such pristine aforethought, Scriabin's music is child's play. Grade: A+
-- JOHN BELL YOUNG, Times correspondent