Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 20

C2 CALGARY HERALD Sunday, June 25, 1 995 BEAT RECENT RELEASES Step out with PJ HARVEY Menacing, measured tales in a stunning new blues-fired collection Bonepony: Stomp Revival (EMI). A little bit country. A little bit rock. A little front porch jammin', some blues, Chicksaw Mud Puppies without the Bennies and Led Zeppelin when they By Dan DeLuca Knight-Ridder Newspapers If Polly Jean Harvey had her way, she wouldn't be calling from Vancouver to talk about herself. She could think of better ways to use the two-day respite from touring that she spent recently in that city.

Maybe she'd go to the aquarium or zoo. in dire need of seeing some Perhaps check the museum of anthropology or lounge on the nudist beach or just take a leisurely stroll in the park. But this is rock 'n' roll. And though Harvey is uncomfortable with serial public self-examination "I don't talk to people about the way I'm feeling," she has said, "I wouldn't be writing music if I could" she views chatting herself up as a necessary evil. "I see it as a means to an end, really," says the 25-year-old Englishwoman, who as PJ Harvey is touring with her brand-new five-piece band.

"Obviously, I'd rather not do it, but I don't let it bother me. Maybe in the future I can wind down doing interviews. But I'm very aware that with this album, this is the time to reach as many people as possible. Then I can disappear and go away by myself again." The album she refers to is To Bring You My Love, the stunning blues-fired collection of menacing, measured tales that marks Harvey's emergence as a mature solo artist and realizes the promise of Dry and Rid Of Me, each of which were recorded with a power trio that went by the name of PJ Harvey. To Bring You My Love's tightly coiled songs play out parables of feminine rage, rapture, hunger and deliverance on a mythical landscape, strewn with biblical imagery.

Co-produced by Harvey, multi-instrumentalist John Parish and Flood, the British knob-twiddler who's worked with U2, Nine Inch Nails, Tom Jones and Harvey favorite Nick Cave, this work is free of her stop-start auditory assault tactics. It's a work that the former art-school sculptor forged in isolation. She composed its songs in her seaside house three hours from London on Britain's southwest coast, not 15 minutes from Yeovil, the village where she was raised by a quarryman father and sculptor mother. "I have no neighbors. When I look out the window, all I see are fields.

And I think you can hear that when you listen to the album. There's a lot of space there." Harvey grew up on a small farm with cows and sheep. When she was younger, Harvey says, she felt "extremely trapped." "I wondered how I was ever going to get out," she says. "I felt starved of input. I didn't know what people were doing creatively." And Harvey says she grew up as a "very shy child," but she always felt hauled out the acoustic instruments.

But mostly a whole lotta stomp, a lotta bomp that makes you wanna romp pill' 'lflw! through the swamp as guitars, man dolin, shakers, dulcimer, harmonica, organ, piano and plenty o' foot slammin' ilspiliitllifi6 i combine to create a heady brew. Lively down-home music that makes you want to shake your booty and clap your their tracks on the path from their stereo to their rehearsal room. It's modernist mod, years of '70s radio hits compacted and distilled into potent droplets of poptastic combustion. Most of all, Supergrass sounds hungry and scrappy. Record track 1304 (B.B.) Rating: Kendra Smith: Five Ways Of Disappearing (4AD).

In the world of indie credibility, Kendra Smith has been there and done that. She rooted the raucous drone of early '80s critical faves The Dream Syndicate with her bass. She was a founding member of Opal, which evolved into Mazzy Star after her departure. Smith gave up on the vagaries of the music industry for several years, preferring to grow an "organic garden" in remote Northern California. Aside from an obscure 1992 EP, this is her first release in eight years.

It's sleepy. Lacking the force of The Dream Syndicate and the tension of Opal, it's split between shambling, limpid pop and goofy attempts at pairing mystic lyrics with exotic musical weaves. At her worst, Smith sounds like a ufologist interpreting The Incredible String Band. Record Track 1305 (B.B.) Rating: C- Gary Moore: Biues For Greeny (Virgin). Just when it seemed that Gary Moore had gone to the well once too often, the ex-Thin Lizzy guitarist-vocalist shows that there are still hot blues licks in his bag of tricks with an album MKHyil.llMEl Ut Kate Gamer, Island Records Ltd.

HARVEY: Parables of feminine rage, rapture, hunger, deliverance hands while the Nashville-based trio spins simple stories or wring bittersweet imagery from everyday life like: "Sometimes he thinks back to the times he had before his kids moved away and his wife went mad." If country music was as cool as it thinks it is, this would be the Nashville album of the year. As it is, it's up to the sons and daughters of Skynyrd and Zeppelin to herald Bonepony. Stomp on this. Record track 1301 (J.M.) Rating: Natalie Merchant: Tigerlily (Elektra). With the 10,000 Maniacs committed to her past, Natalie Merchant sets out for solo pastures on Tigerlily.

Her brand of bare essentials folk-rock is downright unadventurous: Sunday morning tinkering, simplistic, hackneyed narrative (see River, her tribute to River Phoenix) and that love-it-or-hate-it voice. What Tc hear Harvey, press 1309. from seeing the artists that her mother promoted in town and from the punk-rock bands playing the Electric Broom Cupboard, the local club. She toured Europe for two years with the band Automatic Dlamini, playing saxophone and guitar, and studied sculpting in London in 1991. That was long enough to form PJ Harvey and to return to Dorsetshire with her musical career under way.

compelled to perform. "It's a very great need," she says. "Long before I started writing songs, when I was four or five years old, I would read poems or perform with marionette puppets in front of whoever came over to the house. It's just a desire to show people what I can do." She received a musical education from her parents' Bob Dylan, Howlin' Wolf and Captain Beefheart albums, Merchant's voice lacks in soul, she RECORD RATINGS ARE DEFINED AS FOLLOWS: is a superb, enduring recording. of songs by one of England's legendary blues-rockers of the '60s: Peter Green.

True, Eric Clapton may have been called "God" but Green was another divine axeman of the time, first with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and then with Fleetwood Mac when it was still a ballsy blues-rock band. Using the guitar that Green gave Toronto's 13 Engines roars into high gear is a good effort that fans of the style or artist will enjoy. is a professional but over-compensates with her stylized, quivering croon that wears thin after a few listens. Tigerlily wholeheartedly tries to recreate the '70s golden-era of easy-listening rock with Fender Rhodes piano, a connect-the-dots rhythm section and melodies that bring back memories of Pet Rocks. While the over-rated fgggg uninspired effort.

means you woutf need your head examined to buy this album. a record often cited as proof that God does not exist. (ram Christgau's record guide) Formed in 1986, 13 Engines remain a mystery to many Canadians, despite sales of close to 30,000 for Perpetual Motion Machine. Critchley recalls a conversation with Neil Young, who had just released his: album Ragged Glory, while the band; was recording A Blur To Me Now at the Canadian singer's California' ranch. 1 "I said: 'Neil, great and he! said: Yeah it's another album.

People phone me up and tell me nice things once in a And shrugged his shoulders." ed it in Hallamusic, a studio located in a Toronto building that houses fur companies. The soundboard was a vintage piece of equipment from the production company run by veteran producers Bob Ezrin and Jack Richardson, who worked with the likes of Alice Cooper and Aerosmith in their prime. "A lot of the equipment that was in the studio is old equipment that in a state-of-the-art studio would probably be considered junk unless they had an esoteric engineer that wanted it," says Critchley. The Canadian Press Vinyl's a sign of life, not death, for the Toronto group 13 Engines. The band's last album, 1993's Perpetual Motion Machine, sold enough for EMI Music Canada to give into the request that their new disc Conquistador be released on CD, cassette and, yes, a limited-edition vinyl.

"Bigger is better," says drummer Grant Ethier. "Older, heavier, fatter," adds guitarist-singer John Critchley. The band used that retro approach in making Conquistador. They record him, Moore reach es deep to deliver full-of-feeling rendi Maniacs could at least deliver an interesting melody, Merchant seems too intent on capturing a bit of 1973 on this limpid, dreary effort. Record track 1302 (B.B.) Rating: C- The Forbidden Dimension: Somebody Down There Likes Me (Cargo).

It's the all-night party of the living dead and it's ghoulishly good as garage rock and hangman hooks collide with mar-tians, undertakers and graverobbers banging out a deadly beat on vacated coffins. Calgary's Forbidden Dimension has been shovelling these kind of songs for seven years but tions of Green tracks like the slow and soulful I Loved Another Woman and Driftin'. It recaptures much of his guitar glory, though Moore is smart enough not to tackle Green's masterpiece: Man Of The World. Only the inimitable Peter Green could do that fragile blues ballad justice. Record track 1 306 (J.M.) Rating: Nicky Hopkins Jamming With Edward! (Virgin).

What do you get when you take the rhythm section from the self-proclaimed world's greatest rock 'n' roll band, throw in their singer Supergrass surfs the wave An eclectic blend of music with a high-energy beat along with two of the most never has the trio of Jackson Phibes, Lars Bonfire and Carl Pagan sound inspired session men in the business AK. I and shake it up with all- night jam session? You ed so haunting. This time they just don't rev up the hearse to fifth gear while howling at the moon. Instead, they veer all over the rock get Jamming With Edward being the pseudonym for the late Nicky Hopkins whose psyche- delic-boogie piano helped road, varying their rhythmic attack while telling tall tales that would have the Addams Family roar define the Stones' work in the late '60s and '70s. These six, better- ing its approval.

So sav late-than-never, just-released tracks By Neil Davidson The Canadian Press The lead singer is still in his teens and he's already a cover boy, complete with mutton-chop sideburns and a light dusting of fuzz on his chin. Gaz Coombes, 19, and his two band-mates in Supergrass are riding high in Britain, where critics are raving about their debut album I Should Coco. "A beautifully honest album of, and about, its time," said New Musical Express. "If Green Day can conquer America, Supergrass should take on the world," said Vox magazine. Guitarist Coombes is joined in the trio from Oxford by drummer Danny Goffey, 21, and bass player Micky Quinn, 24.

Coombes and Goffey used to be a band called the Jennifers, who signed with Nude Records, Suede's label, but called it quits after one single. Two months later they were jamming with Quinn and Supergrass was born. The first single Caught By The Fuzz made it as far as No. 42 in the British charts, but was voted one of the Top 10 singles of 1994 by New Musical Express. It's the true story of Coombes being caught by the police with a marijuana joint.

"They searched them, found Gaz had some stuff on him, took him down to the station and because he was 15, had to call up his mom, get his mom to come down to the station," Quinn said during a recent stop in Toronto. "It's like your parents don't know you smoke blow but now they do." There was nothing fancy about constructing the tune, Quinn said. "Basically it was like doing dictation or something, just writing out line for line what happened, just making them from way back feature Mick Jagger, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts killing time while waiting for Keith Richards to show up. In his absence, in stepped Ry Cooder. The tracks here are proficient, spontaneous blues jams with an Elmore James cover thrown in.

Fun not brilliant. Timely not historical. Yet they show the occasional flash of passion that made all five icons. Record track 1307 (M.L.M.) Canadian Press Gaz Coombes and Micky Quinn smoke a fag, put it out, see our friends, see the sights, feel alright." While the band has been burned by some media coverage, specifically a Melody Maker cover story that focused almost exclusively on their sex lives after a drunken evening with a reporter, Quinn is philosophical. "It's all publicity," he said.

"Don't read it, weigh it." agely sinister it would make Reverend Horton Heat repent. It's sinners take all in this Forbidden Dimension. Record track 1303 (J.M.) Rating: Supergrass: I Should Coco (Par-lophone). They're meaty, beaty, big and bouncy, have got singles going steady and are on The Beatles original label. England's Supergrass, a motley trio of fuzzy-lipped young 'uns, have obviously been privy to one heck of a record collection.

Imagine the drum battery of The Who's Keith Moon behind The Buzz-cocks, the upstanding anglophilia of The Kinks and a pasty-faced, garage-rock ELO singing Motown with Elton John. Supergrass rolls it all up and the smoke is fine. Unlike the English band of the moment, Blur, whose Parklife merely regurgitated The Kinks' Arthur, Supergrass is smart enough to obscure Rating: (Reviews by James Muretich, Brooker SUPERGRASS: Danny Goffey (left) rhyme and you've got a song on your hands." Simple or not, Supergrass' eclectic blend of music has critics struggling for comparisons (see review on this page). New Musical Express cites The Who, Pink Floyd, Beatles and Small Faces among others. magazine even throws in the Rutles and Fleetwood Mac.

Part of the problem is that Supergrass sounds different on almost every song. The constants are a high energy level and a sense of fun. "We are young, we run free, keep our teeth nice and clean, see our friends, see the sights, feel alright," Coombes sings on Alright. "We wake up, we go out, Buckingham and Mary-Lynn McEwen.) IT 4 I To hear music samples, press the four-digit codes after each review. To hear Supergrass, press 1304..