Specs & Pricing

Music
Rock etc.
record—it’s actually quite a good one—but it
requires fresh perspective.
Modern Times is a safe album. It’s very well
performed, and Dylan’s singing is in good
form. His now dry-as-the-desert voice is
articulate and engaged, and his current road
band backs him beautifully, with a remarkably
relaxed cohesion. But the whole affair is just
a little too relaxed. Side One gets off to a
great start with “Thunder on the Mountain,”
a playful, shuffling rockabilly tune on which
Dylan describes our not-particularly-easy
world with apocalyptic turns of phrase.
“Spirit on the Water” is a retro-sounding love
song backed by a gentle country waltz, while
the band rips it up on a re-worked version
of Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ and Tumblin’.”
The tunes gently sway to and fro between
ballads and country-flavored, and, perhaps in
a deliberate bit of irony, Modern Times sounds
anything but modern. “Workingman Blues
#2” is an altogether too schmaltzy plea for
the plight of today’s wage-stagnant workers,
while “Beyond the Horizon” is reminiscent
of something from an old Roy Rogers
western.
As he did on Love and Theft,
Dylan produced and the sound is very
good—warm, expansive, and like the tunes,
easy on the ears. Everything, except for his
voice, is a bit distant, but crystal clear in a way
that’s more natural than analytical.
The album ends with three powerful
songs, including “Aint Talkin’,” which creates
a surrealistic landscape for Dylan to stroll
through while observing a world gone wrong.
“My eyes are filled with tears/My mouth is
dry” he sings on the album’s final and best
tune. WG
Further Listening: Various: Anthology
of American Folk Music; Emmylou
Harris: Wrecking Ball
Good God! A Gospel
Funk Hymnal.
Tom Lunt, Rob Sevier, and Ken
Shipley, producers. Numero Group 10
(two-LP and CD).
Good God! A Gospel Funk Hymnal, the latest
surprise nugget unearthed by Numero
Group, provides a snapshot of a minor
musical movement most don’t even know
exists—specifically, the embrace by gospel
ensembles in the 70s of that era’s progressive
soul flavors. Painstakingly assembled
via long-forgotten, sometimes-lost, and
limited-batch 45s issued on tiny labels,
this ain’t your momma’s gospel.
Strutting with urban sass, sticky
rhythms, and drumming might, most
of the 18 tracks here could legitimately
pass as full-on R&B sides intended to
complement the work of James Brown
and George Clinton. At heart, they remain
the service to the Lord—the savory lyrics
praising Jesus, the emotions kicking with
adoration, the choruses imbued with
robe-swishing dedication. Nonetheless,
the classic grooves on which they glide are
undeniably funky, more fancy dress-code
nightclub cool than storefront church
safe.
Preacher & the Saints’ “Jesus Rhapsody,
Part I” makes no attempt to stifle its
rocking ways, the familiar refrain predating
the Black Crowes’ hit “Remedy” by 18
years. There’s the Masonic Wonders’
reassuring “I Call Him,” subtly referencing
Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour”
as it sweeps the floor with a slick chord
progression that makes dancing shoes
move. The Mighty Voices of Wonder ride
The Mars Volta: Amputechture.
Jonathan Debaun, Robert Carranza, and Paul Fig, producers.
Gold Standard Labs 126 (two-LP and CD).
Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, the principles behind the Mars Volta, have
never been much for compromise. Just witness the duo’s late-90s split from At the Drive-In,
which occurred just as the group was beginning to crack the mainstream. While their running
mates formed Sparta, a more conventional rock band, Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez
opted to record a pair of ambitious, death-inspired prog-rock concept albums: De-Loused in
the Comatorium, which was borne of a close friend’s suicide, and Frances the Mute (review, Issue
154), a song-cycle loosely based on a diary discovered in the back seat of a repossessed car by
the band’s audio artist, Jeremy Ward, who died of heroin overdose just a month before the
album’s 2003 release.
Volta’s third effort, Amputechture doesn’t share a similar, unifying thread, though references
to the afterlife and zombification are prevalent: “It
lacks a human pulse”; “Unwrap my corpse and let it
thaw”; “We snuffed ourselves an angel and cut her
by the wings.” Musically, the pair is as inventive as
ever, delivering a chaotic mash-up of heavy-prog,
jazz fusion, and Latin rock that, while sometimes
impenetrable, reveals a mastery of tension and
release. “Vicarious Atonement” drifts in like a
dense mist over the river Styx before giving way to
“Tetragrammaton,” a 17-minute six-string workout
where the dueling guitars of Rodriguez-Lopez
and guest John Frusciante ride the line between
space exploration and intergalactic warfare. “Asilos
Magdalena” is an acoustic wonder, Bixler-Zavala
singing like a weary gaucho over sparse acoustic
picking before the tape begins to deteriorate, melting
and distorting under a white-hot Frusciante riff. “Meccamputechture” merges Bixler-Zavala’s
keening death wail with finger-numbing fretwork and a coda that sounds like a jazz quartet
being mangled by robots.
The sonics are fairly exceptional, with the vinyl pressing exhibiting a wide soundstage that
allows space for each instrument to unwind in the sometimes dense tapestries. Witness “Day
of the Baphomets,” where asphalt-crushing bass, spider web guitar, and a tropical rainstorm
of percussion create a cyclone that sounds like it could tear the listener’s living room asunder.
“Give me a plague,” Bixler-Zavala squeals, zeroing in on the sonic devastation. “Nothing you
own is safe.” AD
Further Listening: At the Drive-In: Relationship of Command; Ornette
Coleman: Dancing In Your Head
162 December 2006 The Absolute Sound