Audio Files

By BRIAN ORLOFF, SCOTT PALMER and JOHN BELL YOUNG

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 6, 2001

STEVIE NICKS, TROUBLE IN SHANGRI-LA (REPRISE) Trouble in Shangri-La is not an album to win over new fans. It's dark, brooding, mysterious -- and dense.

There are some pop beauties, including Bombay Sapphires, a funky tune with guest vocals by Macy Gray. Another favorite is the sentimental, yet sharp, I Miss You, complete with guest Fleetwood Mac guitarist, and Nicks' former flame, Lindsey Buckingham. Also rocking is Fall From Grace.

Some songs, though, I have not quite figured out. For instance, Too Far From Texas is a country whine-fest. Even the beautiful harmonies by Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines cannot improve the sour taste it creates. What were you thinking, Stevie?

Sometimes Nicks' lyrics are a little too pretentious for their own good -- as in the supernatural sounding jumble called Sorcerer. "All around black ink darkness/ and who found lady from the mountains," she sings. Does anybody care to translate?

When Nicks gets it right, it's great. And on a collection of 13 songs, to have only a few stinkers is an achievement, especially since this is her first new album since 1994. But when Shangri-La falters, it's an utter mess. Grade: B-.

-- BRIAN ORLOFF, Times correspondent

OLD 97s, SATELLITE RIDES (ELEKTRA) This Austin-based group first broke into the mainstream with 1997's remarkable Too Far to Care and followed that with 1999's Fight Songs.

Led by singer-guitarist-chief songwriter Rhett Miller, the alt-country rockers have delivered their fifth disc. Satellite Rides is equal parts shiny Brit-pop, Texas twang and hard-driving energy, combining the band's love of honky tonk with vintage country rhythms and rockabilly power pop.

Evocative storytelling, excellent musicianship and a high regard for tradition resonate. The single King of the World sets the tone on the 13-song disc. Highlights include: Ken Bethea's guitar playing on Rollerskate Skinny, the moody Buick City Complex, the punk riffs of Book of Poems and Weightless, featuring the bass work of Murry Hammond. The irresistible Designs on You is another standout track. Grade: B+

-- SCOTT PALMER, Times correspondent

SHAWN COLVIN, WHOLE NEW YOU (COLUMBIA) From the bouncy rock of Bound to You to the dreamlike Another Plane Went Down, Shawn Colvin shows she's in full control of her creative powers with Whole New You, her first album of originals since 1996's bleak A Few Small Repairs. Her moody, almost breathless voice, folksy melodies and multilayered arrangements provide an interesting counterpoint to her heartfelt lyrical insights. Colvin's sweet and delicate voice makes Whole New You a compelling album about family, taking chances and new beginnings. Grade: B.

-- S.P.

BEN HARPER & THE INNOCENT CRIMINALS, LIVE FROM MARS (VIRGIN) Ben Harper's well-oiled backing band, the Innocent Criminals, joins him on the first disc of Live From Mars, culled from dates on an extensive U.S. tour.

Highlights from that disc include the raucous opener Glory & Consequence and the audience sing-along Burn One Down. Harper's cover of Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing, converted into a smoky jam, is blissful and pleasing.

On disc two, Harper struts his stuff solo. Most of the songs are intimate exercises in Harper's slide guitar playing. Interestingly, a cover of The Drugs Don't Work, by the now defunct the Verve, is earnest and beautiful, as is the subtle Please Bleed. The only gripe? Some songs on the second disc go on a bit too long, but who says Harper can't indulge himself? Grade: A-.

-- B.O.

BOLET REDISCOVERED: LISZT RECITAL, JORGE BOLET, PIANO (RCA) Jorge Bolet, a Cuban-born pianist who died of AIDS in 1990, was something of a maverick. For years, this great pianist languished in obscurity, making a few recordings as he gained the attention of cognoscenti who knew he deserved a wider audience.

It was not until RCA's release of his 1974 Carnegie Hall recital that the rest of the world began to grasp what all the fuss was about. At 60, Bolet had blossomed into an artist of immeasurable finesse and authority, whose playing carried all the elements of artistic vision at its highest and holiest.

Here was an artist who put technique to work exclusively in the service of musical expression, embracing articulation and nuance, phrasing and balance, rhythm and line. All of these Bolet commanded with abundance, but also with subtlety, prismatic intelligence and a largesse of spirit that was never less than magisterial.

This magnificent recording emerged only recently, thanks to devotees who rescued it from an RCA vault where it had been since 1972. In one performance after another, Bolet opens his heart onto this assortment of Lisztian evergreens, which, in lesser hands, can become so much bluster.

In his lifetime detractors accused him of distorting the score, and thus the composer's intentions. On the contrary, Bolet is at once interpretively meticulous and as respectful of a work's letter as he is of its spirit, compromising neither the poetry nor the compelling dramas so artfully drawn by Liszt at his most romantic.

There is an operatic quality to his playing, too, not only for its opulence and knowing evocation of bel canto, but for its dramatic intensity.

Witness his suavely tailored readings of the popular Un Sospiro and Liebestraum, in which he never takes so much as a scale for granted, investing every intonational step with expressive nuance. There is nothing in the least busy about these readings, in spite of all the notes. That's because he knows what is important and what isn't.

Confronted with the bravura demands of the evocative Rhapsodie espagnole (new to his discography) and the sartorial noblesse of Funerailles, he always keeps his eyes on the prize: musical poetry. The bucolic, woodwind-inspired breezes of Waldesrauschen shimmer seductively in a wash of colors and without losing an iota of their rhythmic tension. Liszt's noble transcription of Wagner's Tannhauser Overture, never played better, takes the breath away with its soaring radiance, unimpeded rhythmic sweep and uncompromising intensity.

They don't make pianists like Bolet anymore, and it certainly doesn't get better than this. Grade: A+

-- JOHN BELL YOUNG, Times correspondent

BERNHARD HENRICK CRUSELL, NEW YORK SCANDIA SYMPHONY CONDUCTED BY DORRIT MATSON (CENTAUR) Sweden's musical history is not exactly replete with great composers. Who, then, was Bernhard Henrik Crusell? Well, in fact, Crusell (1775-1838) was a Finn who immigrated to Stockholm in 1791, remaining there for the rest of his life. A clarinetist employed by the royal family, he spent 32 years holding down the principal chair in the court's private orchestra. His compositional legacy is minor and his catalog tiny; for the most part it is limited to music for the clarinet, virtually all of which he wrote between 1803 and 1812.

The three concerti featured on this pristinely engineered disc provide a glimpse into the musical mind of one whose hero and principal inspiration was undoubtedly Mozart, with a bit of Carl Maria von Weber thrown in for good measure. Indeed, each of these works, while availing itself of the motivic cliches of the classical era, is expertly crafted. The Concerto Op. 11, for example, purrs along pleasantly, its abundance of lilting themes and vivacious rhythms culminating in a festive quasi polonaise. The earlier concerto, Op. 1, is no less appealing, its myriad lyrical asides fashioned for musical consumers who had few if any opportunities to hear the great composers of their own day.

In the New York Scandia Symphony, and the soloists with whom it collaborates on this occasion, Crusell has found ideal interpreters. Steven D. Hartman, a veteran clarinetist with many established orchestras and ensembles, is a musician whose lean, jewellike tone, judicious breath control and elegant phrasing spin forth effortlessly.

But the real surprise is the New York Scandia Symphony, a gem of an ensemble that delivers one suave, spirited and technically irreproachable performance after another.

Much of the credit for that has to go to its Danish-born conductor, Dorrit Matson, who runs a tight musical ship. Not one to leave any interpretive stone unturned, Matson, who has a fine ear for instrumental and registrational balance, draws a sterling sound from her colleagues. With musicmaking as informed as this, there is always a danger that the quality of the performances will exceed that of the music itself. In this case, Matson makes a most persuasive case for both. Grade: A

-- J.B.Y.

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