The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 45

NEW RECORDINGS Thursday, April 14, 1988 The Philadelphia Inquirer 5-D Roundup of area rockers; string quartets; a sax man's latest Top jazz albums Top compact discs Pop Reviewed by Ken Tucker 1, TALKING HEADS Naked 1. DIANE SCHURR, COUNT BASIE Diane Schurr -Count Bam (25 weeks at No. 1) 2. DIRTY DANCING Sound track 2. JOE WILLIAMS Every Night 2.

ROBERT PLANT Now and Zen with an inevitability of direction and momentum. The piano studies, written for the composer himself, are lighthearted but sophisticated evocations of '20s jazz in New York and Berlin. Pianist James Tocco plays them superbly. The works on both discs were culled from Lockenhaus performances in 1985 and 1986. Jazz Reviewed by Francis Davis 3.

WYNTON MAR8ALI8 Standard Time 4. BRANFORD MARSAUS Renaissance 4.MXS Kick B. THE BEATLES Paat Masters, Vol. 2 B. BILL WATROU8 Raflections 6.

GEORGE MICHAEL Faith B. MIKE METHENV Kaleidoscope i aUi: 7. GENE HARRIS Tribute to Count Basie 7. TERENCE TRENT D'ARBY The Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby 8. MORE DIRTY DANCING Soundtrack S.

HENRY JOHNSON Future Excuraiona i flash in the pan, Charlie Sexton, comes up with a far better major-label debut than his sibling. As produced by Texas country-rocker Joe Ely, Will and the Kill is a fine showcase for Will Sexton's guitar playing and raspy voice, with "Teach the Teacher" an obvious hit single. THE CHILLS Brave Words (Homestead A New Zealand band wildly popular in their homeland offers its first American release. Producer Mayo Thompson has overseen a set of songs that are challenging and pleasurable at the same time. The quartet makes prickly, fast-paced music on songs such as "Push," "Rain" and "Look for the Good in Others and They'll See the Good in You." ROBIN AND LINDA WILLIAMS AH Broken Hearts Are the Same (Sugar Hill This country-folk duo, which came to prominence on radio's A Prairie Home Companion, play tough, spare music dealing with delicate romances and hurt feelings.

Sometimes, as on "Annie," the results can turn sentimental, but most of the time and especially on "Rollin" and Ramblin' (The Death of Hank Williams)" and the title song the Williams are subtly powerful music makers. VARIOUS ARTISTS 8. THE BEATLES Paat Masters, Vol. 1 B. GERRY MULLIGAN Symphonic Dreama 10.

MICHAEL JACKSON Bad 10. DAVID GRISMAN Svmgm' With Svend Threadgill, trumpeter Rasul Sid-dik and trombonist Frank Lacy on "Award the Squadctte" and others inspire delirium, and the unsung Deidre Murray continues to provide the best justification ever offered for cello in a jazz setting with every note she plucks or bows with this paccsetting group. STEVE LACY QUARTET One Fell Swoop (Silkheart Yet another excellent album by Lacy, the expatriate soprano saxophonist who seems to release an album this good or better every other month. What makes this one special is the participation of Charles Tyler, a former squealer who has become a formidable Ira- proviser on both alto and baritone saxophones, but who limits himself to baritone here a wise decision, since baritone and soprano make for such a dellgbtully quarrelsome blend, and since baritone soloists as brawny and graceful as Tyler now are almost as rare as soprano saxophonists were when Lacy first took up the long, straight horn three decades I ago. The album's other pluses in- elude Oliver Johnson's flash drumming and Jean-Jacques Avenel's high-pitched bass solos.

CARMEN MCRAE Fine and Mellow (Concord Jazz Although McRae is a rewarding 1 singer in any setting, the combi-; nation of chitlins-circuit accom-1 paniment by saxophonist Red Holloway, organist Jack McDuff and guitarist Phil Upchurch, among others and an audience of city slickers trying too hard to act down-home forces her Into crowd-pleasing overstatement on this new LP recorded at Birdland West in Long Beach, Calif. It pales next to last year's glorious Body and Soul (Denon compact disc), with Clifford Jordan and John Collins. Another problem Is that while the blues are not exactly McRae's forte, blues (and standards treated as blues, for no good reason make up a good deal of the program. RATINGS: Eceent Good fe eer Clastic! albums rated en performance atf sound. you "re Soaking In It! (ApexSkyclad This roundup of mostly new, mostly young bands from Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York will make any listener optimistic about the state of rock.

From the hard- edged pop of the wonderful Electric Love Muffin to the dense moodiness of Dr. Bombay both local acts, folks these are smart musicians. The Gus Cordovox Quintet, a spinoff from the exemplary Jersey outfit the Ben Vaughn Combo, gets funky on "Trashpickin'." Other high points: Wacky Mags' "Baby, Baby, Baby" and The Things That Creeped-N-Crawled Right Out-0 the Ground's "We're the Things That Creeped-N-Crawled Right Out-0 the Ground." THE RESIDENTS God in Three Persons (Rykodisc CD Anyone reading the album title Classical Reviewed by Lesley Valdes Dtar2 1 Helnrich Bibeir From Billboard Magazine 41688 1988 Kremer's summer festival fn Locken-. haus, Austria, where music of the highest caliber often For Shostakovich's "Quartet No. 14," violinist Kremer is joined by Yuzuko Horigome, violin; Kim Kashkashian, viola, and David Geringas, cello, and the results are pointed and at times luminous with emotion.

Kremer leads a different group in the darker, more terse "Quartet No. 13," where the playing is equally skilled as the score veers toward the edge of terror. The twcKlisc set includes Shostakovich's "Adagio, Op. 29," an arrangement of Katarina's revised aria from the third scene of Lady Macbeth (softened to satisfy Soviet censors who balked at what they considered sexual explicitness) and "Allegretto, Op. 22," an arrangement of the polka from the composer's ballet The Golden Age.

Of special interest are three relatively unknown chamber pieces by Erwin Schulhoff, a prolific Soviet composer (originally from Prague) who was highly thought of by Shostakovich. Active in European new-music circles in the 1920s and '30s, Schulhoff died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1941. He is represented here by a "Sextet" for strings, and the "Violin and Cello Duo" and "Jazz Studies" for solo piano. The string works reveal rich ideas cast in an engrossing atonal and polytonal idiom, and these ideas move forward From Billboard Magazine 41688 1988 violin school, Biber (1644-1704) initiated the practice of scordatura, or mistuning, to facilitate special performance effects. Composer for a number of German courts, Biber joined the kapeUe at Salzburg in 1670, where he was eventually named Kapellmeister.

These mystery sonatas were completed in Salzburg around 1676 and were meant to accompany Catholic rosary services. Each sonata represents one of the mysteries (joyful, sorrowful or glorious) to be reflected upon while using the prayer beads. Most make use of scordatura, which, by raising or lowering the pitch and tension of the strings, intensifies the music's programmatic intentions. Five baroque violins are alternated to match the character of the individual sonatas, and the resulting timbres contribute to the two discs' odd charm. The playing is accomplished but occasionally overly aggressive.

The similarities of Biber's early baroque idiom would prove tiresome if the discs were heard straight through to their completion. This is an impressive achievement, though likely of more interest to the scholar or musician than the casual listener. GIDON KREMER: EDITION LOCKENHAUS, VOL. 4S Shostakovich String Quartets Nos. 13 14 (ECM New Series 134748 LP and CD Another striking compilation from The FSftcen Sonatas lit VtettO and expecting sarcasm or irreligic- Hilt TiiirMMGuiito HENRY THREADGILL Easily Slip info Another World (Novus Ironic, isn't it, that it took the jazz avant-garde to put modern jazz back in touch with its pre-bop roots? The key figure in this is alto saxophonist Henry Thread-gill, who first gained notice for his Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll I Morton arrangements for the group Air in 1979.

The albums that Threadgill has recorded since then with the seven-member ensemble he insists on calling his Sextet demonstrate his success in bringing the structural experimentation of ragtime and the contrapuntal gaiety of early New Orleans jazz into his own music. This new album isn't as dazzling from beginning to end as 1983's Just the Facts and Pass the Bucket, nor does it boast one track as memorable as "Silver and Gold, Baby, Silver and Gold," a tempo-less ballad with a wrenching Threadgill solo from last year's You Know the Number. But this new album's "My Rock," with Indian pop singer Aisha Putli, qualifies as the most successful of Threadgill's many attempts to incorporate voice. The solos by and exchanges among lilt sny win oe surprised, mis veteran San Francisco act as much an avant-garde troupe as a rock band 'has constructed a sort of concept album around the trials and tribulations of an Everyman-narrator with a cowboy drawl. The music is based on variations on the Swingin" Medallions' 1966 hit "Double Shot of My Baby's Love." Sound peculiar? It is, but it's also moving, in its peculiar way.

WILL SEXTON Will and the Kill (MCA The younger brother of last year's HEDVRJCH BIBER: THE FIFTEEN MYSTERY SONATAS Evan Johnson, baroque violins; Loret-ta CSullivan, baroque cello; Eric Milnes, harpsichord and organ (Newport Classics 600352 One of the founders of the modern The many artistic faces of the Talking Heads TALKING HEADS, from 1-D directed to kids who are a few years older." ative control not to mention the profit potential the Heads have ways financed their own videos. "We iuu far thpm nnrl Irasp them, to Warners for a short period of time," explains Chris Frantz. "They'd prefer to pay for It, take it out of our royalties and then own it But the other reason was that we were all trained in art school and figured that this was something we could do ourselves." Byrne directed or collaborated on the direction of six of the 10 videos on Storytelling Giant, although various Heads contributed to the different concepts. His intense interest in the process propelled him into the director's seat for last year's True Stories, film that opened to wildly mixed reviews and that is now available on video. "Ill direct videos only when I can of something that's different than what I've done before," explains Byrne "What I look for is a way of paralleling the song with images that Besides the obvious, Paris appealed for two reasons: It let the band escape a New York social scene that tends to pull them in different directions, and it offered access to the many international musicians who work in the French capital The Heads play on all the tracks, but the total players range from six to 16 and include layers of AfroCuban percussion and some very saucy horns.

The compact disc of Naked Includes not only an extra song an atmospheric tune that fits into the LP's more laconic second side), but also a visual component that can only be seen when played on advanced CD players that can be attached to a television set as well as to an audio amplifier. Warners New Media, which devised the visual accompaniment with input from Byrne, sees the project as a prototype of a new generation of CDs known as CD Graphics. Not to be confused with CDV, a digital audio and visual system that delivers video images, the Naked CD often information as the music plays: lyrics, guitar chords and a graphic representation that highlights the various instruments in the audio mix. While Talking Heads test the limits of both technology and pop music's ability to absorb a world of musical influences, it's no secret that the group Is faring less well on the personal front Independent projects keep ev-f erybody busy 'Harrison is touring behind his second solo album. Casual Gods (Sire), and Frantz and Weymouth are completing a new Tom Tom Club aon I reauy interpret uie auiig a literal way but that add a whole For Storytelling Giant, Byrne Interlocked the clips with more than two dozen people telling real stories.

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CHERRY Hiu. Rt 38 bY Cherry Hill Mall I 1 Q-J viaeotaping aooui ou aucuuons, ju people were called back and filmed for 10 minutes each. Byrne then searched for links between the true-life witnesses and the group's songs. The concluding "Road to Nowhere" is introduced by a moving segment of an emotionally constricted older man pledging his undying love to his late wife. "Most people love to talk about themselves," says Byrne, who zealously guards his own privacy.

"And in a way, it's easier for them to do it in public than to their friends, which is the opposite of what you'd think. It's a kind of testimony for people, and a way for them to leave their legacy." The recorded history of Talking Heads is that of a band not afraid to stretch. Following early albums that put artful songs above punkish attitude, the group employed more elastic album after producing Ziggy Mar leys Conscious Party but all three are anxious for the Heads to hit the road. "We'll tour as soon as David gets over his Hollywood infatuation," says Frantz, "which will hopefully be by the time we finish the next album." Talking Heads' last concert tour was immortalized in the excellent Jonathan Demme film Stop Making Sense. Having produced a deft mix of performance art and joyful rock and roll, Byrne subsequently said that he didn't want to tour until have we heard this before? the concert presentation was completely different.

"I enjoyed the last tour," says Byrne, five years after the fact, "but it was very much an uphill fight I wasn't exactly supported in it, and I can find support elsewhere. I don't need to get into that situation." Frantz acknowledges that the latter day Heads sometime resemble too many chiefs and not enough Indians, and knows that Byrne has long worked on projects that dont naturally intersect with pop music. (Monday night, Byrne shared in winning the Oscar for the score of The Last Emperor.) But the interlocking rhythms of Naked's up-tempo tunes speak to a unity that belies the idea of the musicians' responding to different drummers. "People have a recurring impulse to look for something real," says Byrne. "There's an assumption that our cul-" ture has lost a lot of its reality and depth and meaning, and you've got to kind of dig back to the roots and find something that really gets down into your guts." Byrne might resist the notion, but the complementary sensibilities of Talking Heads, chattering like the talking drums of Africa, remain the vital subtext of his best art song structures on 1980's Remain in light that accommodated both advanced electronics and rhythmic touches drawn from black funk and its African antecedents.

More recently, on Little Creatures and True Stories, the Heads worked in more familiar styles, with a particularly surprising nod to country music. With Naked, they've returned to a more experimental stance and have made one of their best records. Like Remain in Light, the songs on Naked srew out of improvisational jam sessions. But where the former was constructed by splicing together various independent grooves, the new tunes were molded into live performances first The quartet would meet in a Manhattan rehearsal studio and work virtually all day. "We'd let it play," says Frantz of sessions that would most often start with a drum rhythm, "and more or less jam on it until it fell apart Then we'd start a new one until it fell apart Over and over.

"By the end of 10 days, we had quite a few musical ideas that when we got to Paris, we'd fuse together into a verse, a chorus and a bridge.".