Sound bites

By Times staff, correspondents

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 7, 2000

SINEAD O' CONNOR, FAITH AND COURAGE, (ATLANTIC) Sinead O'Connor is the perfect pop star for the tabloid talk show age. "Notice me, Oprah, I think the pope is the enemy. Listen to me, Jerry, I've had abortions. Hello? Maury, I just tried to kill myself."

"I'm a priest, Montel, a priest."

"Did I mention, Sally Jessy, I'm a lesbian?"

"No -- wait, gang, it's three o'clock now, I'm not."

Anyway, O'Connor, clearly at odds with herself and the world around her, always makes interesting music. This time 'round, Faith and Courage, her first full-length album in six years, finds the Irish chanteuse high on God and investigating the dark avenues of love. One minute she's defiantly woman, hear her roar. The next, she confesses she wants to sleep with every man she sees.

Prickly and provocative, Faith and Courage offers the feminist anthem No Man's Woman, the reggae/Irish folk hybrid The Lamb's Book of Life, and so much introspection you may want to hit pause after several songs and exhale. O'Connor has never been shy about facing life's toughest issues.

More importantly, Faith and Courage is some of the finest songwriting O'Connor's done in years. The disc, too, is her slickest-sounding album, produced by the team of Wyclef Jean, sometime-Eurythmic Dave Stewart, Brian Eno and R&B guru Kevin "She'kspere" Briggs. Grade: B+ -- GINA VIVINETTO, Times pop music critic

BT, MOVEMENT IN STILL LIFE (NETTWERK) Club wizard BT, an early 1990s pioneer of dance and trance music, shows he's still got the goods on Movement in Still Life. If most club music leaves you cold, check out BT, whose secret identity is American disc jockey/composer Brian Transeau. (He also scored the soundtrack for Go.)

From Movement's bouncy title track, with the too-dope sample of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's The Message, to the nutty Never Gonna Come Back Down, a dance music/hard rock collaboration with ex-Soul Coughing vocalist M. Doughty, the disc stays crisp and smart.

Movement also includes BT's own vocals on two cuts and the first album appearance of the club classic Godspeed. Grade: B+ -G.V.

DEL THE FUNKY HOMOSAPIEN, BOTH SIDES OF THE BRAIN (HEIROGLYPHICS) I admit it: I was predisposed to like this record, partly because of my fondness for this long-missing Oakland rapper's gloriously stoopid early-'90s hits, partly because of his membership in the Handsome Boy Modeling School, whose So ... How's Your Girl? was perhaps my most-played record of 1999.

It's even better than I'd hoped. Del's a grown-up now, yet no rapper is more childlike; the teenager who named his debut I Wish My Brother George Was Here is still that sly, prodigiously goofy kid surrounded by his synthesizers and programmers, dropping dictionary words ("I eviscerate your mental state," "A hundred microdots wreck your equinox"), obsessing over video games, cataloging Pet Peeves, chortling without a hint of malice at the way people dress, smell and pose.

The music, mostly produced by Del himself, may seem a little quaint; it's pretty much straight mid- to up-tempo funk, dominated by keyboards and brassy accents. (The "George" of the debut title was, of course, Clinton.) But it's squishy, kinetic funk, sometimes abrasive, usually catchy and a winning complement to the merry wordplay.

Since Del's comedy comes from everyday details, it's not surprising that when the subject matter turns dark, he has the skills to take it home. He vilifies neighborhood junkies in Soopa Feen, his put-downs falling on the deaf ears of a memorably deranged crackhead (an uncredited cameo by someone who sounds very much like Cee-Lo from Goodie Mob).

But the stroke is Skull & Crossbones, whose first-person account of a DWI wreck is made more chilling by the almost jovial tone. You could call it a cautionary tale, if only that didn't make it sound like the work of some weedy acoustic balladeer. As Del proves, rap MCs are the real poets. Grade: A- -ALAN RITTNER, Times staff writer

WEEN, WHITE PEPPER (ELEKTRA) Dean and Gene Ween, the Farrelly brothers of indie rock, play it straighter than ever on White Pepper.

The anarchic lo-fi fragments of Ween's early efforts have disappeared, replaced by fully formed songs, some of which (including Exactly Where I'm At and Stay Forever) are downright pretty, even -- dare we say it? -- sweet.

Or maybe I just don't get the joke this time around. In any case, Ween still is a lot stranger and more eclectic than your average band. There's the Steely Dannish Pandy Fackler and the Spinal Tappish Stroker Ace, and even a picaresque tropical number, Bananas and Blow, that comes perilously close to sounding like a Jimmy Buffett song.

As with Beck, Ween's promiscuous genre-hopping always teeters between parody and homage. But like Rich Little, Ween never sounds less authentic than when it tries to speak with its own voice. GRADE: B -ROBERT FRIEDMAN, Times staff writer

KATHY MATTEA, THE INNOCENT YEARS (MERCURY) -- At Nashville's Fan Fair last month, Kathy Mattea neither looked nor acted like her Mercury label mates who were performing on a sweltering Tuesday afternoon.

Terri Clark stomped around the stage in blue jeans and ever-present cowboy hat. Newcomer Eric Heatherly (known for his remake of the Statler Brothers' Flowers on the Wall) favored '50s garb. Naomi Judd showed up in a polka-dotted party dress.

So, in her khaki shorts, belt, sleeveless shirt and leather sandals, Mattea looked like a shopper straight out of Tampa's Old Hyde Park Village.

Clothing isn't the only thing about Mattea that stands apart from the country mainstream, as you'll discover from The Innocent Years.

Mattea has been away from the music scene for three years, spending much of that time tending to her ailing parents. What came out of that emotional period in her life are mostly contemplative, slow songs.

But a few fast ones made it through, too.

The album's first single, the stand out Trouble With Angels, is an upbeat, hopeful, get-up-and-dance song. "I've got a feeling it's gonna be okay, 'cause whatever happens is gonna happen anyway," she sings.

Mattea is borderline country (not that there's anything wrong with that), and if it weren't for the fiddles on (Love Is) My Last Word, one of the stronger songs on the album, it would be at home on any pop album.

In country music, a genre in which many of the songs are not written by the performer, Mattea stands out for her songwriting credits. She co-wrote two songs on The Innocent Years: the introspective title track and the piano-laden, swiftly moving Callin' My Name.

I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that this isn't really a country album at all. I want to be honest about that, and I feel better for saying it.

Except for the record stores that need to know what bin to toss the CDs in, who cares what label is slapped on this? If it's good, listen to it. And this one isn't bad. Grade: B -PAMELA DAVIS, Times Staff Writer