THE MAKERS

Rock Star God

(Sup Pop)****

Whereas we last found our superheroes the Makers inna rough 'n' tumble transition, Rock Star God sees their new suit fittin'... TIGHT, like a fo' button dandy! But unlike last year's Psycho Sexualis, THIS time they tell youse first... "play this 'un start to finish"... okay? RSG is a "concept" record, like the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, but there's also an explicit narrative, too... um, sorta -- but NOT really -- like the Who's Tommy.

Kick ass... so the Makers done wrote a (ahem) rock... opera? Sure, I reckon... however, alla you diehards is just gonna DIE. The "garage punk" has gone bye-bye, replaced with full on R-O-C-K, willfully laced with the '70s' glam! This is big, commercial ROCK... they gots backup singers, cellos (Strings? Oh my!), horns, some Hammond, 'course there's the "punk"-pretense '70s glam hinted at... oh, I even heard flavors o' gothic 'n' indie! CHRIST... that's a lot to manage, and at points RSG almost bogs down, as the dynamics do NOT bob buoyant as Sexualis' did. Forgivable, as there is a narrative to support, duh.

Now, ye o' wittle faith, fear not, for every NOTE is executed with the Makers' marked rage 'n' frustration. Which, in context, I found to be an engaging exchange. Whether YOU know it or not, there's quite a local infatuation with the... er, "a bit off the mark" Velvet Goldminded undercurrents o' glam 'n' '80s bubbly gum metal, and RSG is nearly complete in its reflection and assimilation of that very culture! Uh... so? Well, the Makers didn't just bow to local chokeholds... their transition took place without cumbersome, embarrassing evolution. C'mon, "Shout On" ain't THAT long gone, and RSG is NOT some weak-assed ironic joke! The Makers seem to have plasticized style... using style as it oughta be used, rather than "style" as misrepresented for "trend." The plasticity is like theatrical invention of character, which the Makers've created while maintaining, steadfastly, their knowing presentation. Hell, they could still sit down and write rave-ups a hundred times over to prove their SOUL, but reaching as they have speaks volumes on their depth of understanding YOUR manipulation... uh, maybe even their understanding of pop art! You know, this is something I'd expect of bands long gone... most contemporary bands will NEVER be capable of such expansion. MIKE NIPPER

THE PIN-UPS

Backseat Memoirs

(Good-Ink Records)**

The word for this is nifty. Nothing that will change the world, or even the half hour you spend listening to the CD, but it's entirely enjoyable while it's on. The presence of Goodness vocalist Carrie Akre on backing vocals, and the logo of Good-Ink Records, tells my secret detective sense there's some connection to Goodness here, on whose frequency this band works. Dejha Clayton is a solid pop songwriter, and this is pop, even if it does growl and show its teeth on occasion. Jason Finn plays the drums, so you know basically what this is going to be like. GRANT COGSWELL

THE FOR CARNATION

The for Carnation

(Touch and Go)***

The for Carnation share traits and talents with weirdo-rock bands Tortoise and Slint, and experiencing this full-length, six-song album is like watching plants grow. Which sounds like a dumb idea, and if you sit down to do it, you think, "Wow, this is slow." But soon the stillness takes you over and expresses its singular, silent voice that had been speaking out of the range of hearing all your life -- and will stop only in the minute of your death. GRANT COGSWELL

REVEREND HORTON HEAT

Spend a Night in the Box

(Time Bomb)**

With every new release, longtime fans of the Reverend Horton Heat's "psychobilly" -- traditional rockabilly mixed with high-speed punk -- have come to expect more of the same "whoo-hoo"-inspiring blend of frenetic drum beats, surf-metal guitars, and Texas-tinged vocals crooning white-trash jokes and sexual innuendoes. The Rev's songs are meant to inspire joy and laughter, and these days, a band who's just plain fun is a much-welcomed rarity. But sadly, even with Butthole Surfers guitarist Paul Leary as producer, Spend a Night is merely overproduced, bland rockabilly, minus those endearing belches and drunken cackles that prefaced or ended many a song on previous Horton Heat albums. Gone are those tongue-in-cheek odes to beer, cocaine, steak, big women, female masturbation, foreplay, and even an "interracial-cowboy, homo kind of love."

Some fans claim that 1998's Space Heater ventured too far away from the Rev's rockabilly core, with grunge-infused bits like "Goin' Manic." But that album still offered classic yet updated surf/rockabilly songs like "Couch Surfin'" and "Baby I'm Drunk." The youthful exuberance of the band's previous six albums has been replaced in Spend a Night by the formulaic, reformed-alcoholic drones of "Sue Jack Daniels" and "Hand It to Me," and reproaches against juvenile hipsters ("It Hurts Your Daddy Bad") and dumb druggies ("The Party in Your Head").

The title track has the Rev empathizing with Paul Newman's imprisoned character in Cool Hand Luke, but it seems the good reverend could use a lesson here on the benefits of misbehavin'. Don't bother wading fruitlessly through this album for the usual Horton Heat gems, because sadly, they just aren't there. There's still an occasional humorous note, as with the nostalgia fuck of a divorced couple ("The Bedroom Again") or the La-Z-Boy domesticity of a household god ("King"). But you're probably better off sticking with the Rev's legendary, spectacularly energetic live shows, which occur with dependable regularity. MELODY MOSS

SUBA

São Paulo Confessions

(Six Degrees Records)****

There hasn't been a CD like this since Alpha's 1997 Come from Heaven: a CD whose commitment to beauty, to crepuscular and vaporous pleasures, is total and shameless; a CD that has figured out another way to be an aesthete in the age of information. Come from Heaven was the first CD to offer the world a blueprint for the 21st-century flâneur (a dandy fitted not for the age of mass production, but for the age of replication, cybernetic technologies, decentered cities, and night skies where the sliding lights of satellites and commercial planes have replaced the stars). São Paulo Confessions is the second CD to offer us the mood, mode, and gaze of the digital flâneur -- that lonely soul who pauses for a moment on the bridge to appreciate the "impossible towering beauty" of sprawling urban space.

Like Alpha's debut, Suba accomplishes this flâneur effect by retrofitting an old and acoustic form -- in this case bossa nova (for Alpha it was the jazz song) -- and bringing it back to life with electric energy, so that what we have before us is a beautiful monster, a handsome and melancholy Frankenstein with a martini in hand. In a word, these songs fuse the passion of an age that was not ironic, fatigued, or schizophrenic, an age that sang, "O' Dindi/if I only had words I would say/all of the beautiful things that I see/when you're with me/O' my Dindi," and really meant it.

"São Paulo, Brazil. The world's fourth-largest megalopolis with over 18 million souls, and more arriving everyday. A stressful maze of massive skyscrapers, kilometric avenues, and relentless chaos. Think Blade Runner of the tropics," writes Suba on the sleeve of the CD, and it's appropriate that he mentions Blade Runner, because it is a movie about "a future built upon the detritus of a retrofitted past" (as Scott Bukatman wrote in Terminal Identity), and not marked by the "pristinely gleaming" architecture of our prosperous late city, Seattle. "Tantos Desejos" ("So Many Desires"), "Ne Neblina" ("In the fog"), "Pecadis da Madrugada" ("Sins before Dawn"), "A Noite Sem Fim" ("The Endless Night") -- all of these songs are as enchanting, as erotic, as hopeless as their titles. Sadly, Suba (a Yugoslavian expat) died in a fire last October, thus depriving us of future confessions from his last world. CHARLES MUDEDE

RADIO NATIONALS

(Self-Released)***

This six-song EP sits right up in its chair, built of 1986 late X/Dave Alvin rock-and-holler, and hits harder -- even in the spots where its predecessors tended to let up or fall back into stale blues jamming. The singer has one hell of a diaphragm and isn't afraid to use it; these guys could start a firestorm live. This is what Uncle Tupelo and their spinoffs should have sounded like: "100 Miles to Go" has an essential quality reminiscent of some early Meat Puppets single or a lost, punked-out Skynyrd song. The production here is clear, muscular, and perfectly balanced. If these songs had more to say over their exhilarating bass-and-guitar plunging and soaring, the National's sensitivity and killer guitar chops would put them at the front of the local pack. With such a powerful presence in the instrumentals, one wishes there were a little heart's blood on their embroidered sleeve. The last song, "Next Door," a fierce hybrid of strains from the Screaming Trees and Hank Williams, says absolutely nothing, but shows the most promise. Great bands have grown from lesser beginnings. Radio Nationals are one to watch. GRANT COGSWELL

NEVADA BACHELORS

Hello Jupiter

(PopLlama)***

I fully expected to hate this. The hard pop that starts this CD off is right in the wretched middle -- middlebrow, middling ambition. But the second song is the first of many that have sharper hooks than my grandpa's old fishing pole. The Fountains of Wayne come to mind, but the approach here is more idiosyncratic and personal. Robb Benson's smart-alecky vocals skate around lyrics with a swinging dexterity (on "Matador": "I really like your label/But I really dig the one we're on, thanks so much"). The perfection of the pop song is both sweet and inevitably sad; plenty of these songs would be worthy of a more cheerful, less erratic Robert Pollard. If the Nevada Bachelors abandon what they admit, in song, is the middle of the road ("too radio-friendly"), they could make a resonant and lasting work. They certainly have the talent; they've got the songs, more or less. They just need to arrange them in some order that has an engaging unity and direction. As is, they have produced maybe the chewiest disc of bubblegum I can remember rising from these parts since the Model Rockets' Hi-Lux, too damn many years ago. GRANT COGSWELL

IN STORES 4/11

NO DOUBT, The Return of the Saturn (Interscope) Pink-haired singer and her band seek to exorcise demons of bad boyfriends/girlfriends.

DA BRAT, Unrestricted (So So Def/Columbia) Lady rapper from Chicago seeks respect, success, and pleasure, and you're gonna help her.

THE FLYS, Outta My Way (Delicious Vinyl/Trauma) Three-piece rock outfit seeks recognition even though nobody likes flies.

JOHN LENNON, Imagine (Capitol) Record company leeches seek large profits by remastering and re-releasing classic Lennon material.

ON, Shifting Skin (Epic) Ex-Failure member Ken Andrews seeks cherry 1970 Nova, settles for recording a shiny new album.

DEL THA FUNKEE HOMOSAPIEN, Both Sides of the Brain (Hieroglyphics Imperium) Rhymer with superfine skills seeks human companionship and understanding while he confuses his rivals with gyroscopic raps.

IN STORES 4/18

PINK FLOYD, Is There Anybody out There? The Wall Live (Columbia) Recorded live in 1980-81, in England, during The Wall tour.

KISS, Alive IV (Mercury/Def Jam/Island) Release coincides with "Farewell Tour" -- just in case you don't know every KISS song already.

ELLIOTT SMITH, Figure 8 (DreamWorks) Another swell album by dreamy Elliott.

TRACY BONHAM, Down Here (Island/Def Jam) She told her mom she was losing her mind; now she's back with another violin-charged musical extravaganza.

SAUCE MONEY, Middle Finger U (Priority) He's got the sauce; he's got the money; he's got the name that's totally funny!

JILL SOBULE, Pink Pearl (Beyond Music) She's reunited with Fabio and cheerier than ever. No more kissing girls for this happy housewife.

NASH KATO, Debutante (Will Records/Loosegroove) Fashion landmark Nash Kato spoons out more smooth rock.

THE MAKERS, Rock Star God (Sub Pop) See review above.

GUS GUS, Vs. T World EP (4AD/Beggars Banquet) Heavy beats; few words; same three producers as the last two albums.

BUILT TO SPILL, Live (Warner Brothers) Killer live output from a seminal Northwest band.

MACEO PARKER, Dial Maceo (W.A.R.) King of funk bestows a jewel upon unworthy subjects.

CAMEO, Sweet Sexy Thing (Private Eye) Word up! Word up! Word up!