The latest entry in the post-grunge guitar-rock sweepstakes, Machinery Hall is a passably functional, if thoroughly mediocre, band who can't seem to crystallize their ambitions into anything especially memorable.
"Inness" chugs along for more than an hour, all the while seemingly grasping for emotions they never quite reach. These guys are obviously competent musicians, but the dark, fuzz-box jangle that dominates "Inness" drones on and on, with little attention to memorable hooks or effective dynamics; most of the tracks are barely discernible from each other. The grim musical vision Machinery Hall is going for is obvious, but the poor execution renders it almost wholly ineffective.
This basis doesn't cut a lot of slack to lead vocalist and lyricist Mark Nelson to salvage "Inness," a burden he's clearly unable to bear. His vocals are a hopelessly generic grumble, lost somewhere between the faux-soul of Darius Rucker and the tossed-off snarl of Mark Lanegan; yet, the vague, throw-away depression of the lyrics make Nelson's lazy mumble an unlikely blessing.
The lyric sheet reveals rough attempts at some sort of world-encompassing angst, too impersonal to feel sincere and too sloppy to connect with even the rawest of nerves. On the uninspired textbook rocker "Myth," Nelson roars, "Waiting for your will to fall / dragging you under / welcome to our world today!"; this sort of retread musing is par for "Inness."
The disc's attempt at a epic closer, "Suffer and Live", is graced with the chorus "I just want to be known / I just want to be known for once / we're the joke of the century." This pretty well sums up "Inness." You can telegraph Machinery Hall's blind stabs at grandeur and meaning, and just as easily notice how very short they fall.
- Dave Snyder
Songs about isolation and love gone wrong is what this is. But not like country albums are, no sirree, jack. These individuals have that loud Epitaph sound of straight ahead rockitude and a whole lot of bad attitude. Fourteen songs of the stuff in about 30 minutes, in fact.
The album opens with "Hate," a ditty about hating everyone around you and wishing it would all go away. The second track is about wanting to live alone, and the irony of still wanting the married life. The next is about obsessive love, and so on.
"Static" is a bunch of sturdily constructed songs that are comfortably familiar musically, and amusingly down in thematics. There's even a beautifully illustrated love meter in the jacket, with categories such as wicked, hateful and vengeful, and those are the three nicest ones on it. It's really almost a concept band. You wouldn't want to be living their songs, but it's fun to listen to.
- Ted Watts
It's no surprise that most movie soundtracks are mediocre collections of "rare" or "previously unreleased" tracks mushed together to squeeze the last bit of cash from hapless music fans. However, considering the people involved with the music for the Kids in the Hall's movie"Brain Candy," it's also no surprise that the soundtrack is one of the best in recent memory.
Artists like Pavement, Stereolab and Pell Mell, Matador Records and the Kids themselves combine to make "Brain Candy" a more than palatable combination of music and movies. Death Lurks, (Bruce McCulloch and his band) performs the songs by the movie's gloomy rockers The Suicide Club, turn in the hilarious "Some Days It's Dark" and "Happiness Pie." "Some Days It's Dark" reflects the bone-crushing, angry music The Suicide Club makes before they take the antidepressant Gleemonex, while "Happiness Pie" is the kind of music they make after: A musical smiley-face sticker - mindlessly, stupidly happy. Along with Scott Thompson's parody of ridiculously theatrical musical numbers, "I'm Gay," these songs show that the Kids are just as capable of making you laugh while listening to your CD player as they are while you're watching them on TV.
The rest of the songs on "Brain Candy" are for the most part just as good as those by the Kids, if not as funny. Pavement's excellent "Painted Soldiers" and Matthew Sweet's "Happiness" provide a back-to-back blast of jangly, catchy pop, while Pell Mell's "Swoon," the Tragically Hip's "Butts Wigglin" and Yo La Tengo's "Pablo and Andrea" lend a moody air to the soundtrack. Guided By Voices, Cibo Matto and Pizzicato Five all turn in winners, and They Might Be Giants' "Spiralling Shape" is the best song they've written in years. Stereolab's "How to Play Your Internal Organs Overnight," "Brain Candy"'s love theme, is perhaps the best song on the album, managing to be beautiful, sentimental and goofy all at once.
While "Brain Candy" has almost no mediocre songs on it, the ones that do exist stand out even more from being surrounded by quality. Liz Phair's limp "Six Dick Pimp" continues the slump she's been in since 1994's "Whip-Smart," and the Odds' "Eat My Brain" and Paul Bellini's "Long Dark Twenties" are nothing more than by-the-book college rock, despite the interesting titles. Even so, "Brain Candy" is considerably tastier than most other soundtracks. And, it won't rot your teeth or your mind.
- Heather Phares
What we have here is an interesting mix of knock-you-on-your-butt covers performed the way the new songs on this comp are.
Would you believe Devo covering Nine Inch Nails' "Head Like a Hole" as if they were partaking of a "Weird" Al medley? That's right, Virginia, it is one of the signs of the apocalypse, especially when combined with Warren G covering Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to do With It?", Tom Jones and Ruby teaming up to make a smoothed out version of "Kung Fu Fighting," and some sorta fem techno version of the Bee Gee's "Stayin' Alive." Are you bleeding from your eyes and nose with glee yet? This has to be the single most bizarre soundtrack ever assembled.
Adding to this is the new (or newish) music. Black Grape performs a hiccuppy beaten track of their post-'80s dance pop two tracks before 2Pac offers a mellow paced bitter rap, which itself is one track before a track by the Sepultura-ish Dimebag Darrell. The rest of the songs are more of the same sort of thing.
All this and a new song by Devo, too. Even after the novelty of the bizarre covers has worn off some, it's still a very listenable five-inch disc of plastic. But it would still probably be best if you liked someone on it before just buying it.
- Ted Watts