Listen hear

In Salon's roundup of recent CD releases, Eminem bores, the Hives reinvent garage and Paul Westerberg charges back to mono.

May 30, 2002 | Eminem
"The Eminem Show"
(Interscope)

Nothing in popular music gets older quicker than carefully engineered outrage -- just ask Marilyn Manson -- and we're unlikely to hear another platinum-selling album in 2002 that sounds as tired and thoroughly played out as the fourth offering from the troubled young Marshall Mathers.

"[You're] acting like I'm the first rapper to smack a bitch or say 'faggot,'" Mathers raps in that famously laid-back drawl on "White America," his latest bid to simultaneously stake his claim as the voice of his generation (or at least the young, fucked-up, white-male portion of it) and reject the burdens of that title. Me, I vote for his Michigan neighbor, Kid Rock, simply because there's more joy and good humor in his vision of cock-rock rap. While no more original, his pop recycling is somehow more tasteful than the way Eminem apes the misogyny and homophobia of the "real" "streets," an act that wasn't very shocking when Mathers/Eminem's mentor, Dr. Dre, reveled in it on N.W.A's "Niggaz4Life" 12 years ago.

But wait -- I'm falling into the exact trap that Em has laid for us critics, placing undue emphasis on his words at the expense of his music. "I'm just a jokester, saying things to get a rise, and y'all fall for it every time!" he says (I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of his argument), and so he once again gives us foul-mouthed insults of easy/obvious or marginal/irrelevant targets (Lynne Cheney and Tipper Gore, Joel Siegel and Moby); violent revenge fantasies about his poor, long-suffering missus, Kim, and bitter spew directed at his lousy, litigious mom ("Cleaning Out My Closet"), in addition to the aforementioned bitch- and fag-baiting.

Yawn. Em is still the rap version of the self-obsessed, solipsistic, angst-ridden-for-no-good-reason 20-something boors fronting all of those Gen Y nü-metal/rape-rock bands, beating their chests during hoary power ballads and growling "Mom and dad divorced! Rarrrggghhh!" like Cookie Monster on 'roids.

So let's do as Emimem asks and forget about the words, shall we? What then are we left with? Well, that celebrated "flow," for one thing, but we've heard it plenty before. Mathers' tongue isn't growing any more nimble with age, and whatever slight pleasure exists in hearing him wrap it around a steady ooze of scatological syllables fades after a track or two. And there are 20 songs on this album, and no Dido to add tuneful relief.

Meanwhile, percolating under our verbose word poet, run the repetitive, transparent hooks of our ol' friend Dre, whose reputation as a masterly producer is one of the greatest cons rock critics have ever perpetrated on their readers. Those cheap synth licks and unimaginative drum-machine grooves have always been nothing more than bad bubblegum. Dre wishes he had a tenth of the creativity of a Max Martin, much less the enduring genius of a Kasenetz/Katz (Ohio Express, 1910 Fruitgum Co., etc.).

Of course, up until now, the kids have been buying this crap by the bushelful, so like his head geek, Mr. Mathers, Dre's been laughing all the way to the bank. But the best tune that either of these guys come up with this time is an extended sample of Aerosmith's "Dream On," and that trick seemed obvious when Run-D.M.C. pulled it in 1986 -- approximately a century ago in pop-music time.

The sophomores who gleefully embraced "The Marshall Mathers LP" are about to graduate from high school now, and they're either heading to college, or bound for the harsh realities of a drudgery-laden minimum-wage workforce. In either case, pumping up the volume as a guy insults "bitches" and "faggots" over kiddie-pop isn't likely to pack the illicit punch it once did. This audience is growing up and moving on, even if Eminem isn't, and recruiting daughter Hailie (or some imitation thereof) for a cameo on the penultimate track, "My Dad's Gone Crazy," doesn't qualify as a sign of maturity. It's just the most obvious example of sheer desperation on an album that pretty much reeks of it.

-- Jim DeRogatis

Consonant
(Fenway Recordings)

Nineteen years is a long time to wait for parole, much less a record, but Consonant don't disappoint. This nominal debut marks a belated return to recording by Clint Conley, bassist for Boston's quasi-legendary and long-defunct Mission of Burma. (Defunct, that is, until this year's first-ever reunion shows.) From 1979 to 1983, Burma combined harmonic sophistication then rare for the underground with sonic chaos comparable to their loudest contemporaries (Black Flag, Hüsker Dü). Since then, drummer Peter Prescott has fronted several like-minded outfits (Volcano Suns, Kustomized), while guitarist Roger Miller veered into experimental composition and silent-movie accompaniment. But beyond appearances on Yo La Tengo's first album and one mid-'90s 7-inch with Miller, Conley has kept his own counsel.

Conley's best-known songs with Burma ("Academy Fight Song," "That's When I Reach For My Revolver") were full of stirring, if ill-defined, political portent. These new songs are resolutely personal, focussing on romantic entanglements and suffused with decidedly un-punk longing and regret. Largely derived from poems by Holly Anderson (who co-wrote Burma's "Mica"), they're closer to the sensuous particularity of Janet Frame or Elizabeth Smart than to run-of-the-mill of rock lyrics: "Flocks of birds rose out of the heat in my pelvis and flushed chest." The album's power depends on Conley's success in fashioning memorable melodies from potentially unsingable material; its single strongest hook is built on the unlikely line, "John Coltrane's 'My Favorite Things,' over and over." Conley's own lyrics are drier, but equally vivid: "Walk me through your catalogue of love/Couplings, triplings, underthings, and toys."

The music itself is rarely as jarring as vintage Burma, but the performances are raw and dense enough to appease the faithful. Conley's well-chosen sidemen (Come's Chris Brokaw, former Bedhead and current New Year guitarist Matt Kadane, Boston-area bassist Winston Braman) are a big help, as is the uncluttered production by Shellac's Bob Weston; the collective storm that caps "What A Body Could Do" should satisfy anyone who doesn't hate electric guitars on principle. Wisely balancing instantly hummable material ("Blissful," or "The Kiss," a variant on "Mother's Little Helper") with slower-to-register numbers ("Details of Attraction"), this would be a terrific album whether it had been made by the unknowns down the block, Julian Casablancas' press agent or (as it happens) an unexpectedly re-energized cult hero.

-- Franklin Bruno

Next page: The Hives, Paul Westerberg