Dixie Chicks ready to move on from countryCDs due Tuesday:
Taylor Hicks, "Do I Make You Proud" / "Takin' It To The Streets" (CD-single); Billy Joel, "12 Gardens Live"; Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band, "The Phat Pack"; Allison Moorer, "Getting Somewhere"; Three Days Grace, "One X"; Busta Rhymes, "The Big Bang"; Keb' Mo', "Suitcase," The Replacements, "Bastards of Young: The Best of the Replacements"; Sam Bush, "Laps in Seven"; Sonic Youth, "Rather Ripped"; The Futureheads, "News and Tributes"; Widespread Panic, "Earth to America"
Dixie Chicks
"Taking the Long Way"; Columbia
4 stars out of 4
"It's been two long years now since the top of the world came crashing down," they sing on the first track, and, of course, they're "Not Ready to Make Nice" with the yahoos who threatened their lives over an offhanded comment. So give the Chicks credit for sticking to their guns, and give them more for getting on with life. Rick Rubin produced the album, with guests including Sheryl Crow, Neil Finn and Keb' Mo', yielding a much poppier sound than ever, as they touchingly sing about infertility ("So Hard") maternal instincts ("Lullaby") and second thoughts ("Voice Inside My Head.") Those are just three out of the album's 14 reasons to still love this group or, at the very least, to still find them incredibly impressive.
Recommended if you like: Indigo Girls; Sheryl Crow; Fleetwood Mac
-- Brian Mansfield, USA Today
AFI
"Decemberunderground"; Interscope
2 ½ stars out of 4
Over 15 years and seven albums, the California band shrewdly evolved from hardcore punk to melodic Goth-metal, luring mainstream fans without alienating its cult base. In a bid to expand that audience, AFI pumps up the synths used in 2003 breakthrough "Sing the Sorrow" while clinging to a productive formula of oversized hooks, riff-o-rama drama and roaring choruses. Results range from salient to generic, with such occasionally sublime surprises as a swing motif in "Miss Murder" spiking interest. AFI still stokes a fire inside sonically, but beware of the chill factor in those bleak lyrics, a self-helpless manual on clinical depression.
RIYL: early Cure; Thursday; Chevelle
-- Edna Gundersen, USA Today
Rainer Maria
"Catastrophe Keeps Us Together"; Grunion Records
3 stars out of 4
If the indie trio has given up any amount of edge on this disc, it's gained more in pop craftsmanship. Which isn't to say there's no edge. It's just a bit softer, lighter, perhaps less pent-up than, say, 2003's "Long Knives Drawn." The band's fine, straightforward rock takes on more lush atmospherics and studio embellishments, which provide a rich milieu for bassist-singer Caithlin De Marrais' forceful, graceful and often heartbreaking lyrics of love set askew and misplaced devotion. De Marrais' ardent bellow puts conviction in lines like "I can tame all the tigers in your bloodstream/can you lay all my ghosts in their graves?" The title track might be about love, or it might be about America in the world. And the final track, a cover of the Bob Dylan-penned "I'll Keep It With Mine," is rumbling, ringing and ethereal.
RIYL: Sleater-Kinney, Cat Power, Neko Case
-- Jeff Gifford, Reno Gazette-Journal
Elefant
"The Black Magic Show"; Kemado/Hollywood
2 ½ stars out of 4
From false Brit accents to strained attempts to be suave and romantic while also dark and dangerous, "The Black Magic Show" languishes lyrically in a stifling haze of affectation that renders it unconvincing and somewhat tedious. What seemed interesting on Elefant's 2003 debut seems self-consciously exaggerated today.
This is too bad, because the band rocks well enough, on par with some the best goth and '80s new wave. Shadowy and energetic, the smoldering electronics and ravaging guitar make a fine pair, and they're even better on this disc than the last. Songs like "Uh Oh Hello" and "Don't Wait" are pop delights.
If we just didn't have to listen to so many of deep-voiced frontman Diego Garcia's studied enunciations on how fashionably underground and freaky his world is or how hard it is to shun that which harms him. Nothing wrong with those themes, but here it's simply too full of itself.
RIYL: Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, Morrissey.
-- Jeff Gifford, Reno Gazette-Journal
