The Sydney Morning Herald du lieu suivant : Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • 54

sounds it rains you're here in my head like the sun coming out I just know that something good is going to I don't know when but just saying it could even make it happen VunrAur UOUuDUSfflg U2 make the mistake of some of their rock counterparts by trying to slap a traditional bottomend on top of a metronomic beat and calling it dance At the same time tracks such as the next single Staring At the Sun will reassure all those cradling their Joshua Tree and Unforgettable Fire albums though the approach is smarter than that would suggest In lesser hands Staring At The Sun would be a stock standard lighters-in-the-air ballad but instead of power chords The Edge opts (as he does throughout the album) for simplicity for a single strand guitar line a muted distortion pedal flavouring it While Discotheque is just what it says a slightly kinky groover (the Village People dress-ups in the film clip made that clear) Mofo is the most adventurous track on the album a sample-filled headfirst beast by Chemical Brothers out of Depeche Mode that plays as many vocal tricks as lyrical ones dune spacejunk cornin' in for the splash mother mother-sucking But again what separates the album is not the headline numbers but understated tracks such as Miami (a clanking rattle and slumber piece) and The Playboy Mansion (half half MLK) where the influence of Howie who shares some of the production duties on the album with Rood is most evident These are tracks where you should dig out those headphones and listen for the undertones the noises Howie filters through In The Playboy Mansion Bono sings Coke is a mystery and Michael Jackson history if beauty is truth and surgery the fountain of youth what am I to dohave I got the gifts to get me through the gates of that mansion" While Pop the album to change the world it does allow you to answer question with a probably BERNARD ZUEL BLOODHOUND GANG One Fierce Beer Coaster (GeffenUMA) irki2 This is like having a bunch of 15-year-old boys hanging around the house farting scratching and smirking your ass is like a Chinese restaurant I'll have the poo poo platter" wish I was queer so I could get chicks" There are times here when you find yourself settling into a groove a burst of metal guitar slamming the slab of beats Then the boys return You have to laugh but most of the time stupid in 57 varieties Anticipating this kind of old fart reaction The Gang say: you find the content of these lyrics offensive you're not And they have a point Like Mad magazine Michael Tunn on JJJ and wedgies One Fierce Beer Coaster is going to be understood and appreciated only by those with more hormones than is safe BZ A TRIBE CALLED QUEST Beats Rhymes and Life (Liberation) Their debut of 1990 with People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm followed by Low End Theory (recorded with jazz bassist Ron Carter) and two years later Midnight Marauders prove A Tribe Called Quest to be one of few to withstand the disposability imposed by record companies A Tribe Called Quest produce hip-hop rhythms peppered with jazz breaks and shot full of holes with irreverent humour -as Q-Tip explains on Beats Rhymes and opening track: for me make things happen talk about the world in a form of Rhodes pianos stand-up bass and drum kits snapping and popping between kick and snare set up warm aural scenarios for Q-Tip Phife and DJproducer Ali Shaheed Mohammad to generate most accessible inviting and substantial tunes This is hip-hop packing sophistication that moved jazzbos such as Quincy Jones and Dizzy Gillespie to proclaim this the new jazz miss out MIGUEL ROLLERSKATE SKINNY Horsed rawn Wishes Warner Bros) Nobody ever told me that this sort of thing could come alive Hey hang on sure I taken any drugs today It must have something to do with this music This pop music Two Griffins (Ken and Ger) and Stevie are all credited with guitar keyboard and orchestration They also do vocals drum programming and bass respectively As far as I can tell there is no orchestra but when you hear Horsedrawn Wishes you will understand that the orchestration credits do apply Often they also rope in a real live drummer Soaring memorable melodies are a consistent feature of these tracks The disc shimmers and rumbles roars with the excess stimuli of the late 20th century or creates atmospheres that suggest that claustrophobia can be comfortable are the century's ghosts these guys from Dublin proclaim in one chorus Another song describes jagged day in life for the lighthouse parasites" hard not to use the word psychedelic here although this disc is in no way retro Wherever Rollerskate Skinny is drawing this stuff from the view is twisted and magnificent JOHN ENCARNACAO U2 Pop (IslandMercury) The Chemical Brothers Propeller Heads and even The Prodigy -who garnered a lot of next-big-thing attention in Britain last year and in Australia in January are entitled to feel hard done by They have been creating often brilliant marriages at the fast-blurring line between rock and electronic dance for the past few years with little mainstream attention Yet U2 take a further step into the same territory they began to explore on Achtung Baby and Zooropa and all of a sudden we have mega-hype of the type Pop the future of But it is a genuine snapshot of its present by a band bright enough to keep exploring smart enough not to abandon its past and big enough to make it palatable to radio progammers who play a hard dance track if their lives depended on it That U2 understand the territory is seen more in what is missing than whatever baubles may flash before us In the more throbbing numbers Adam bass is little more than subliminal at times often it is a mere burbling presence Unlike funk contemporary dance almost completely abandons a forceful bass seeking its propulsion elsewhere and TOP 5 1 Romeo and Juliet The Soundtrack 2 Tragic Kingdom No Doubt 3 Forgiven Not Forgotten The Cons 4 Travelling Without Moving 5 SecreSamadhi Uve Source: Spit Music Mosmsn udging by record sales and Grammys the only country music fan on Earth who think that 14-year-old LeAnn Rimes is the greatest thing since Kentucty whisky Of course you argue with her voice Rimes has a great big country holler with its glottal stops in all the right places The kind of voice that could call in the hogs right across the Blue Ridge Mountains an extraordinary sound to come out of a 14year-old thorax but not a voice ever going to make you cry And when country music making you snort with post-modern ironic laughter crying the whole point of it? Boo hoo hoo catharsis The white blues Listen to Dolly quiet sadness on Lonely Coming Down Then go check out LeAnn belting out her hit single Bluooo-oo-o-ooo and see if a tear of any sort comes to your eye spooky how much she sounds like dear dead Patsy Cline but generally her rendition is about as emotional as a non-stick pan It bother her fans the album has gone double platinum in Australia and last week Rimes won two Grammys for best new artist and for best female Tammy Wynette has been married five times She picked cotton and worked as a hairdresser before she made it Rimes has never even waited on tables A singing dancing child star who made her professional stage debut aged seven playing Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol she was taken by her parents from Mississippi to Dallas when she was six specifically to further her career But Rimes is not at all afraid of child star syndrome The ghoulish histories of Michael Jackson Judy Garland and Drew Barrymore perturb her just trying to keep my head on straight and take it day by day and just make sure I stay the person I always have Well it sounds sensible but if going to be a Country Music Queen LeAnn Rimes needs to go and get herself an education When a graduate of the University of Life School of Hard Knocks have us all crying in our beers MAGGIE ALDERSON Who LeAnn Rimes Where Enmore Theatre When March 22 How much $4290 country vocal performance But look at who else won Celine Dion Which is I rather appropriate as LeAnn Rimes is the I Celine Dion of country music with a style as contrived as her riame yet enormous I popular appeal While it seems rather mean to have a go at such a youngster she is also I somewhat one-dimensional in person snapping back replies with no pause for thought and very little expression I What great country stars has she met? Wynona Reba Dolly Parton I is a very sweet Next She has already achieved the great I Nashville dream yet she still has I personal goals dream as a normal person of having a family having I children part of my life I want to fulfil and still have my Funnily enough those are just the kind of experiences Rimes needs to add depth to her hollow vocals She lacks a quality no amount of technique can create suffering Like the legends of blues the Queens of Country have lived Loretta Lynn married at 13 and had her first child at age Dolly Parton was one of 12 children of painfully poor farmers SMH METRO MAR 7-13.