New release roundup + Chuck E. Weiss + The Roots + The Avengers + Kristin Hersh + Chavez   A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Mummy's boy: Maury Povich, live from inside a pyramid, on Fox's "Opening the Lost Tombs"   Let barnesandnoble.com entertain you -- find hot titles on film, TV and more Search by:  Keyword Title Author     Y E S T E R D A Y Home Movies By Charles Taylor Boris Karloff mesmerizes in "The Mummy," Karl Freund's eerie, hypnotic tale of a love that wouldn't die (03/01/99)   R E C E N T_. M U S I C Musical chairs By Jonathan Cohen R.E.M., Shawn Colvin, Cibo Matto, Philip Glass and others mix it up at the Tibet House benefit concert (02/25/99) Hail, Sony! By Cintra Wilson Amazingly, somehow, all the top sellers won Grammys (brought to you by Sony) again this year (02/25/99) Sharps & Flats Reviews of new CDs by Sleater-Kinney, the Meat Puppets, Lone Justice, Lisa Germano and the Jimmy Rogers All-Stars " (02/23/99) Neighborhood girl By David Bowman Suzanne Vega talks about folk music, coveting a cruel streak and her new book, "The Passionate Eye" (02/17/99) Sharps & Flats Reviews of new CDs by Beth Orton, the Del McCoury Band, the Damnations TX and Bad Livers (02/17/99)   BROWSE THE MUSIC ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Chuck E. Weiss EXTREMELY COOL | RYKODISC/SLOW RIVER RECORDS BY SETH MNOOKIN | Equal parts Captain Beefheart, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Tom Waits and Taj Mahal, Chuck E. Weiss is a boon to all those demented blues aficionados who prefer their music served up with equal parts gibberish and attitude. Weiss himself describes the album as "twisted jungle music," which is as good a description as any. For those of you who don't possess an encyclopedic musical memory, Weiss is not a total newcomer. He made a brief foray onto pop's landscape with a highly lauded, if difficult to obtain, 1981 demo. And before that, Weiss, along with Waits and Rickie Lee Jones, formed the nexus of a much-heralded Hollywood songwriter's scene. (Weiss was the subject of Jones' 1979 breakout-hit, "Chuck E's in Love.") Since the 1980s, Weiss has performed sporadically in and around Hollywood, mainly at what is now the Viper Room, which he helped Johnny Depp start. "Extremely Cool" is all over the alt-roots map: From the gutbucket swagger of "Deeply Sorry," which Weiss concludes with a maudlin round of crocodile tears, to the zydeco swing of "Oh Marcy" to the bop stream-of-consciousness cool of "Sonny Could Lick All Them Cats," Weiss explores every blues nook firmly to the left of G. Love's antiseptic swagger. Most satisfyingly, there is a specific sardonic, postmodern vein that Weiss taps as well as anyone. On the title track, Weiss lampoons the type of patron who frequents his beloved Viper Room: "Well I got a very large bank account/And a little small pee pee," he purrs before outlining his counterculture cred: "My sister she's a punk in New York City/She's a junkie who is rebellious ... If you want to find me it's not very hard to do/You just dial information and ask the operator for extremely cool." And "Do You Know What I Idi Amin," a gibberish poem backed by haunting sax lines, shimmering organ shadings and a throbbing percussive base, is one of the more viscerally satisfying songs I've heard in a while. After listening to it, I walked around chanting "Do you know what I Idi Amin Amin, do you know what I Idi Amin" for almost an entire day. "Extremely Cool" will not be a breakout hit; indeed, Weiss'll be lucky if he even garners a handful of magazine reviews, and those will be a result of Waits' association. Which is too bad: Weiss, unlike so many cultural icons dusted off in a naked search for some quick cash, is the real deal ... or as real a deal as a middle-aged white guy with a shoddy voice and a major case of the fuck-yous can be. Which is good enough for me. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Roots THINGS FALL APART | MCA BY ADAM HEIMLICH | The gorgeous rap ballad "You Got Me," with guest vocals by Erykah Badu, is one of four breakthrough songs on this, the Roots' fourth album. Every track on "Things Fall Apart" boasts considerable sonic depth and sophistication, but "You Got Me" -- along with "The Next Movement," "Dynamite" and "Adrenaline" -- strikes that richness and warmth against a simple, undeniable pop melody to ignite a powerful groove. This is the same technique that made Lauryn Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)" the grown-up hip-hop single of 1998, and it's no less winning here. But the Roots' experimental inclinations and undying reverence for hardcore rap survivors such as Gang Starr and Pete Rock make "Things Fall Apart" much heavier than the music of the winsome Hill. "Step Into the Realm," "The Spark," "Double Trouble" (featuring Mos Def from Black Star) and "Act Too (The Love of My Life)" (featuring Common) are beat-and-rhyme workouts showcasing the formidable talents of rapper Black Thought and drummer ?uestlove, who've been the core of the Roots since they met at Philadelphia's High School for the Performing Arts in the late '80s. The group has spent the better part of the last seven years on tour, and it shows. Standouts in a genre where effort is often perceived as a sign of weakness, the Roots hark back to when acclaim, for black musicians, was earned through sweat. Their choice of a road less traveled is paying big-time dividends. Black Thought and ?uestlove demonstrate a rare professional polish -- a command of nuances in voice and rhythm that only come with ardent dedication. "Things Fall Apart" frames the journeymen's mastery in a delicately engineered package that, contrary to its title, holds together uncannily well. N E X T_P A G E _| The Avengers died for your sins