Music

CD Review Revue

***
First off, what's with the crotch fixation? Every time we see these genre-humping surrealist hotties they've either got their paws down their pants (see promotional photos for their Jack White-produced 2003 debut, Do Rabbits Wonder?) or they're modestly hiding their nether regions behind big pink dots. Could those really be displaced Easter Bunny tails?

But that preoccupation doesn't separate these coy boys from the rest of the sexy, artfully tousled neu-rocker pack. What really does the trick is the freewheeling, spastic, short-attention-span theatrics of Flamingo Honey, an approximately 10-and-a-half-minute pleasure packet of noise spasms, rock blurt, groove dismemberment, and Moog torture. At 10 songs strong, Flamingo can't help but conjure up memories of the Minutemen--in addition to acid-damaged wildcards like Flaming Lips and restless yucksters such as Ween--especially when David Swanson jumps his hapless keyboard like a prowler and cackles: "The Meat Packer is all worked up. He's got his gun and he's got his love!" This disc may be brief--and Whirlwind Heat are definitely into briefs--but it's far from low energy. And where the Heat-misers skimp on length, they make it up with versatility and their willingness to please. They hit their stride on "H Is O" with Peaches-style bump-and-grind, "A Worms Coat" is dissonant late-'70s art punk, and "Ice-Nine" has a funky drummer frenzy. A scratch pad of ideas enticing enough to make you feel somewhat bereft at the abrupt end of "Lazy Morning," Flamingo Honey suggests that Whirlwind Heat's brand of bumptious Midwestern experimentation is best ingested in small doses. Bigger isn't always better. KIMBERLY CHUN

THE FEATURES

Exhibit A

(Universal)

****
Remember when magazines would refer to Nirvana as "Black Sabbath meets Black Flag" or something equally retarded and/or inaccurate? In that school of cultural criticism, the Features would be described as "the Murder City Devils meet Murder by Death"--only without the neck tattoos, whiskey, or Iron Maiden cellos. Like the Nirvana comparison, it's a gross oversimplification that gets you psyched without being totally erroneous (or getting the point across). Admittedly, the organ accents (courtesy of Features key-wizard Parrish Yaw) provide much of the atmosphere on Exhibit A--especially jams like "Exorcising Demons," "Circus," and "Some Way Some How"--bringing to mind a kinder, gentler version of MCD, and it's some catchy shit. The gothic-country timbre ("don't come 'round here no more," etc.) that permeates almost every track finds its origins, perhaps, in the Features' own--a small town called Sparta, Tennessee, we're told. But the Features aren't male models (Kings of Leon)--or backwoods buzzards (Molly Hatchet); Exhibit A is breezy pop rock written by guys who just happen to live down South. The super hits/deepest cuts come via "Blow It Out" (the best song Carl Newman never wrote), the aforementioned "Exorcising Demons" and "The Idea of Growing Old" (think L.A. power-pop kings Arlo doing an Elvis Costello song). But, really, over the course of the album's dozen songs and 33 minutes, there's not a clunker in the bunch. J. BENNETT

ZOLAR X

Timeless

(Alternative Tentacles)

***
My novelty obsession of the year is Zolar X, who celebrate their first official release just 25 years after they broke up. The deal is that they were this very glammy, proto-punk band in L.A. in the early '70s who used to elaborately dress, talk, and act like shiny space aliens, all the time--even when they went to the corner store! So, you immediately have to love them. Unsurprisingly, Ace Frehley and Redd Kross were huge fans. The press release swears they are the missing link between the Stooges and Chrome, but their music is a lot more cartoonish and poppy. Besides, we all know that Simply Saucer were the missing link between the Stooges and Chrome (press dudes, c'mon!). If the idea of the Sweet and T. Rex backing Geddy Lee (in outer space) gives you a boner, you absolutely need this. MIKE McGONIGAL

SIR RICHARD BISHOP

Improvika

(Locust)

****
Sir Richard Bishop is Sun City Girls' master guitarist, supplying that Seattle institution with shape-shifting tones and soul-searing leads. (For his Venusian resonances in "Radar 1941" off the band's classic Torch of the Mystics alone, he deserves immortality.) On Improvika, his solo follow-up to 1998's Salvador Kali, Bishop coaxes a wooden acoustic guitar to speak in many familiar and exotic tongues, forming eloquent sentences and wondrously convoluted utterances. This clear-eyed player is conversant with ragas, flamenco, Appalachian folk, the mystical improv of John Fahey/Robbie Basho/Sandy Bull, gypsy arabesques, and the sort of friction-burn strumming that would give Jimmy Page string envy. If you boiled all these plangent, twangy, translucent chordings and pickings into one word, it would be "transcendence." Improvika's a polymorphous American classic. DAVE SEGAL

**** Rock Me Like a Hurricane *** Hurricane Charley ** Hurricane Francis * Hurricane Jeanne

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