Music Guide Feb 2009

Calle 13
"Los de Atras Vienen Conmigo"
(Norte)
Grade: B+

You don't have to speak Spanish to conclude that this arty, political San Juan rap duo deserve their rocketing reputation -- I sure can't, though when I squint at the booklet my puny recognition vocabulary helps. But you do have to immerse and concentrate -- and accept that you'll miss most of what's going on even then. They're reggaeton only by association, a lot further from Daddy Yankee's hey-mami dancehall than the Roots were from Dr. Dre's jeep-pimping funk. By all accounts and the little I can work out, their lyrics are playfully associative and outrageously filthy. But for gringos, their humor resides almost entirely in Visitante's out-there arrangements and Residente's overt vocal comedy, as on the Balkanized "Fiesta de Locos." If some promotional visionary were to provide trots, that might change. But as it is, big guests Café Tacuba and Ruben Blades are too mainstream to launch Calle's 2008 model into the surrealist stratosphere.


Calle 13
"Residente o Visitante"
(Norte)
Grade: A-

Start here, partly to benefit from the online discussion this album has inspired over two years -- cf. allthelyrics.com's takeout on the Rabelaisian "Uiyi Guaye" -- but mostly to delve into sardonic sonics that hint at what Tom Zé might have gone for if he'd come up on OutKast and Eminem instead of the Beatles and the Stones. From mock-operatic intro to mock-rock finale, the music is disruptive fun throughout. Latin-flavored yet light on salsa clavé and reggaeton dembow, it sharpens the lyrics so that sometimes a single word can make you nod or smile while its context remains a mystery.


Glasvegas
"Glasvegas"
(Columbia)
Grade: A

Not a brother band -- a cousin band, possibly inbred. For sure there's something hillbilly insular about their ties to Glasgow's Dalmarnock hood. But like Dolly Parton bringing her mountain home to Nashville, they churn out big, corny, mass-appeal heart songs, with subjects including knife fights, fatherless children, and -- really -- how your social worker won't let you down. Where you'd think ex-footballer James Allan would propel this material with Mick Hucknall soul or maybe Proclaimers purism, his musical ideal is elegiac Jesus and Mary Chain noise-punk, which cleansed of the Reid brothers' junkie dissolution approaches Righteous Brothers grandeur. Innocent and confident, this is one of those bands that could fall on its face or take over the world. They're too good to be true and plain as the nose on your face.


Guns N' Roses
"Chinese Democracy"
(Geffen)
Grade: B+

Hopeless eccentric spends most of his adult life and a large chunk of his ill-gotten fortune trying to make the perfect album. Succeeds, kind of, on his own totally irrelevant terms. Nobody cares. Since he's no longer capable of leading young white males astray, this effort isn't just pleasurable artistically. It's touching on a human level. Noble, even. I didn't think he had it in him.