September 25 2002

Not retching over electroclash yet? Don't worry, there's still time to lose your lunch this fall: Ed DMX finds his inner David Gahan on his upcoming Touch Me! EP, Ladytron return with their icy-cool Light and Magic, and Peaches' Teaches gets reissued just in time for the Electroclash 2002 tour, which hits town in Larry Tee-minus 30 days. If that's not enough, skinny ties, sideways ponytails, and asymmetrical hairdo(n't)s refuse to go the way of Corey Feldman's music career. It's enough nauseatingly overdone new wave nostalgia to make you long for the days when ska-punk was still the genre to ape.

Los Angeles's Mount Sims (a.k.a. Matt Sims) is the latest big-buzz electro offender to induce vomiting with a vocoder and a synthesizer. After getting signed to DJ Hell's Dee Jay Gigolo, the one-time model made big waves during the label's showcase this year at Miami's Winter Music Conference. Now he's hoping to make good on that hype with his first domestic release, the ultra stylee Ultra Sex. Unfortunately, these days Sims's robo vox, squiggly synths, and obvious '80s-isms are a dime a dozen: mixed and produced by Mickey Petralia (Beck, Ladytron), the album is the sort of numbingly by-numbers electroclash rehash that's got '80s addicts' leg warmers all in a bunch.

Which means that, despite being (or because it is) infinitely less musically remarkable than it is marketable, the album will undoubtedly find an audience ready, willing, and waiting to throw on some headbands and do the robot. And while Ultra Sex's 13 too-typical trax won't disappoint anyone looking for a romanticized return to Reagan-era nightlife, it is two-plus years into the retro revival, and we've already got more than enough faux '80s anthems to fill Rhino's inevitable electroclash box set. Everything old is new is old again, so please pass the barf bag and let's move on. (Jimmy Draper)

ballboy
Club Anthems (Manifesto)

How annoying are lowercased names? ballboy's handle references all those pretentious, brainy high schoolers who thought far too highly of themselves and their level of originality, while simultaneously proclaiming to the world (in lowercase, natch): I'm a modest, unassuming mouse – disregard my early acceptance letters and stellar GPA. Hear me squeak – I'm a geek. In the same sense, the Scottish quartet happily embraces – nay, foregrounds – a tremulous nerd sensibility with tender folk-pop that could pass for club anthems – if your club of choice revolved around, say, chess or math. Songs such as John Peel fave "Olympic Cyclist (acoustic version)" and "Dumpster Truck Racing" are laid out with plenty of accepting empty spaces, furnished with acoustic fingerpicking, and decorated with faraway piano notes that reverberate with nostalgia.

But that's not to say ballboy lacks any, well, balls, because everyone knows the meek are far from weak when it comes to a war of wits. That's the arena where ballboy rocks, as songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist Gordon McIntyre sweetly grouses about nationalist bullies, beefy football players, and futile relationships on such barbed numbers as "Sex Is Boring," "Donald in the Bushes with a Bag of Glue," and "I've Got Pictures of You in Your Underwear." He sets the tone on Club Anthems, ballboy's debut, with "I Hate Scotland," railing, "I hate the way punishment is at the heart of everything.... / I hate the way we expect to fail and then we fail and then we get bitter because we failed."

Of course, his needs are few: a springboard, a pair of shorts, a plain white T-shirt, and the ability to do a perfect back flip would make up for all the frustrations. And that's what saves these ambitious, wary, 90-pound weaklings from sounding like simply another, less accomplished Belle and Sebastian. They try to take everything personally. ballboy plays Sat/28, Great American Music Hall, S.F. (415) 885-0750. (Kimberly Chun)

Hair Police
Blow Out Your Blood (Freedom From)

I don't know when I stopped referring to bands by their names and started referring to them by the label their records come out on. It's a disturbing change, really, and it makes me think maybe it's time to just give up and become one of those rock climber-windsurfer types. Anyway, Hair Police is a Freedom From band. Free From is a tiny Minneapolis label that started out with cassette releases, then put out a couple records, and at some point is gonna do some kind of reel-to-reel thing, although who knows; the guy who runs the label is nuts.

Anyway, Hair Police is the rowdy rock band of the electro-noise art-wave, this weirdo scene that includes Wolf Eyes at one end, has-been Andrew WK at the other, and Lightning Bolt soaring somewhere up above it all. Sonically, Hair Police is an extension of what Royal Trux started, with songs like "No Fixed Address" and "Steal Your Face" – a painful track that combines classic rock and noise into a squalling semi-electro rock that can only be labeled as the future of panic. Each song on the 20-minute Blow Out Your Blood piles homemade electronic spasms on top of careening rock riffs and barreling drums to create a sort of antimusic groove. Then they drop a distorted howler-vocalist in the mix who delivers such lyrical chestnuts as "Do you love hop hop?"

This shit is not for the weak. High-pitched freak-outs barge in all over the place as everything rages seemingly out of control, with the songs buckling under their own ineptitude only to come back stronger than before. Blow Out Your Blood isn't Detroit enough for the fuck-face elite in New York, and if you try to dance to it, you're probably gonna end up scaring somebody. But that's what happened with Elvis in the beginning, too. This record would be best put to use as a mood-setter at high school sporting events and military cotillions. (Mike McGuirk)

Brad Mehldau
Largo (Warner Bros.)

Pianist Brad Mehldau has trad-jazz cred to spare, including a Berklee School of Music pedigree, but his biker-worthy tattoo, vintage chic, and habit of sprinkling alt-rock covers into his act betray him as a hepster entirely of his generation. Call him a keystroking, millennial Chet Baker, a cerebral crossover dreamer with a predilection for pop. Nonetheless, things were obviously getting too comfortable for Mehldau. So after dabbling in Nick Drake and Radiohead on earlier trio albums – and gathering critical comparisons to pianist Bill Evans – Mehldau stretches his fingers a bit further with Largo, aided by producer and Aimee Mann collaborator Jon Brion.

An extension of his admiration for Brion's genre-bending evenings at the West Hollywood club Largo, Mehldau's 10th album demands some large ears from his listeners and has already inspired its share of controversy. Oh, the hand-wringing wrought by such Mehldau originals as "Sabbath," which finds the keyboardist playing the lower notes of a "distorto-piano" through a whammy pedal. But jarring moments are the risks inherent in what some describe as one of the most challenging jazz releases of the year. Mehldau and Brion ushered in session players such as Jim Keltner, as well as Beck sidemen Justin Meldal-Johnsen and Victor Indrizzo, introduced horns into the mix, toyed with mic placement, and fiddled with the piano sound. Mehldau even picked up the vibes for a spastic joint cover of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Wave" and the Beatles' "Mother Nature's Son."