Music

CD Review Revue

****
When was the last time 31 excellent bands came sardined together on one comp like this? Dirtnap Records, Seattle's killer punk label, recently released its collection of Northwest greats, together with a 12-page booklet about the bands. There are so many favorites (with very different styles) to choose from, but here's a small fraction of the breakdown: a new-wave Ramones buzz from the Exploding Hearts, a Cripples noise-pop freakout, the Intelligence's dark no wave, a threat from the Briefs to "Piss On the Youth," my favorite Popular Shapes song ("Here Come the Pancakes"), and on and on and on. The selection runs the gamut from the garage rock of the Midnight Thunder Express to the Rotten Apples' instant hard-pop hit "Outta Mind," shining an impressively wide spotlight on some of the most exciting new bands making music in this area; most of the material is previously unreleased. Of course, taking the piss out of everyone are the Spits, who finish out the lineup by creating a silly junk-hop techno rap, shit-talking the other artists represented here for fun. Whether or not you're looking to expand your Northwest band knowledge, Dirtnap Across the Northwest is one of those future collectors' items you should pick up right now. JENNIFER MAERZ

THE DELGADOS

Hate

(Mantra/Beggars Group)

****
The very best show I've seen in Seattle was the Delgados' Crocodile appearance in 2000. Ten musicians packed the stage, and the performance was the sonic equivalent of a roller-coaster ride. The band was touring on the heels of their awesome, breathtaking album The Great Eastern, which uses symphonic pop and singers Emma Pollock and Alun Woodward to tell stories inspired by the residents of the rehab clinic that lent the album its name. It's almost impossible to top that, but Hate is a fine album, full of beautiful misery, with several elegant moments--especially on the melancholic "Child Killers," a song not about murder but the death of innocence ("Goodbye wonder/Goodbye brain/This life is insane/No one here gets out alive/Not for a life you'd like"). Hate is gloomy, despondent and wistfully lachrymose. The Delgados have done it again. KATHLEEN WILSON

ELECTRIC SIX

Danger! High Voltage

(XL/Beggars Group)

****
This four-song EP, like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' eponymous debut, is a short, gleaming inkling of greatness to come. The Detroit band Electric Six (formerly known as the Wild Bunch) punks out disco in a crazed Village People-meets-cock-rock-dressed-in-glittery-scarves style. You can almost see the mustaches and tight jeans writhing against the asymmetrical haircut on this one: Frontman Dick Valentine pours the histrionics on thick, while guest vocalist Jack White does his own signature theatrics in the background. The obvious hit on this EP is the title track, which uses over-the-top synthesized disco beats, screaming sax, and a chorus about fires burning through a disco and a Taco Bell to signal dangers to come. To these Six, desire is something to be worked out on the dance floor, where high-voltage shocks illuminate strangers' dark embraces. The other songs on the record are total tongue-in-cheek, played out with great musical flair as the faux machismo of a Ted Nugent record collides with a sound made for polyester and pumps. With an EP this instantaneously catchy, the full-length is sure to carry the same high-voltage charge. JENNIFER MAERZ

NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS

Nocturama

(Anti/Mute)

***
Nocturama is an album to be taken lying down. From the get-go, Nick Cave lays you out with "Wonderful Life," a song informing you that life is worthless no matter what you do to spice it up. "Still in Love" is just fucking sad ("Call me up, baby, and I will answer/Call me up but remember I am no use to you at all"). "Bring It On" rocks, but the desolation is almost menacing in its sentiment, like a dare. The passionate devotion of "Rock of Gibraltar" might make you rise on one elbow for a second, but by the song's end you're flat again, fooled by Cave's fake happiness. Then, he and the Bad Seeds hit you with the 15-minute "Babe, I'm on Fire," and there go your knees to your chest; you turn over in the fetal position while Cave rants and rhymes with abandon--sometimes ridiculously, sometimes cannily right on--only to shout "'CAUSE I LOVE YOU" at the end of it all. Nocturama kicks ass and terrifies at the same time, sounding both familiar and very dissimilar to anything else in Cave and the Bad Seeds' canon. KATHLEEN WILSON

**** Jay-Z *** J. Mascis ** J.P. Morgan * J. Lo

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