Lovelorn vampire Spike gets his spotlight in "Rest in Peace," a jilted romance number with Billy Idol flair that's immediately memorable. The ensemble joins for the rousing "Walk Through the Fire," and the song easily rivals Broadway's current output.
What worked so well with the episode was that, despite the outrageousness of its premise and presentation, it still made sense within the series's story, advancing ongoing plotlines effortlessly. For fans of the show, approaching the soundtrack album is just as easy -- but for the uninitiated, it might be a daunting assignment.
But the songs are strong enough and the story simple and self-contained enough that following along shouldn't be a problem for non-fans.
No, the problem is getting the uninitiated to listen at all.
By Brian Millikin
Gabe Dixon Band
On a Rolling Ball
3 Stars
Twenty seconds into the first track, you would think you had bought a Ben Folds Five album by mistake, but 20 minutes into On a Rolling Ball, the jazzy, R&B flavor of the Gabe Dixon Band has blanketed any angsty white-boy comparisons.
Using songs it had previously recorded on an indie album gave the band an opportunity to experiment on its strong live style with studio equipment. Much of the album still sounds as though it were recorded live in a jazz club. Improvised interludes and saxophone wails weave throughout the tracks, but a major label's money appears in splashes of multi-tracking and dubbing in several songs.
The resultant record possesses an intimate ambiance augmented with studio experimentation.
"Sitting at the Station" most firmly displays this somewhat paradoxical aural fusion of the organic with the electronic. The track consists of one lyric, "Sitting at the station/Waiting for the train to come," spat out quickly by lead vocalist Gabe Dixon. Its tempo accelerates and decelerates like the motion of a train as the instruments' synthesized sound narrows like that train rushing through a tunnel.
In "Expiration Date," the experimentation continues to manifest itself. The studio synthesizer mix found on "Sitting at the Station" expands here to include Dixon's voice blending into one fuzzy note held through the chorus.
Backup vocals relieve the predominance of Dixon's solos elsewhere, and the metaphorical introduction contains some of the best lyrics of the album.
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Dixon's vocals and prowess on the keys dominate the tracks as Ben Folds' do on Whatever and Ever Amen, but Dixon's voice resembles Folds' only in its tenor key. Unlike Folds' vocals, Dixon's are filled with R&B ripples. At times, Stevie Wonder springs to mind as Dixon trembles above and below the melody, and at other times he even attempts some scat, like in "Bird Dancer."
"Bird dancer you be taking 'em off and showing your stuff/To every guy and his brother," Dixon sings.
His scat and instrumental train-rides are only two elements of the creative musicianship of On a Rolling Ball, but the lyrics from "Bird Dancer" and "Expiration Date" are almost the only creative writing.
Songwriter Dixon concentrates on relationships with little originality, and his lyrics' lack of luster bars the album from perennial greatness. Listeners must simply enjoy the record's merits while dreaming of future improvements.
By Diane Eikenberry
Doug Martsch
Now You Know
4 Stars
Built to Spill frontman Doug Martsch sounds like he got part of the inspiration for his debut solo album, Now You Know, from drinking Jack Daniels in a parking lot with the late, great bluesman Muddy Waters.
This heavy blues influence and the dense texture of many of the tunes make this a cerebral, well-informed and innovative collection of good rock songs.
Martsch's guitar work is splendid. His brilliance on the instrument manifests itself not in scorching solos but in his ability to combine many simple lines to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. "Offer" and "Dream," the first two tunes on the record, are the best examples. In both of these numbers, two guitars play with two distinctly different rhythmic feels at once.
This technique of superimposing one rhythm on top of another unrelated one is reminiscent of jazz and modern classical music -- but Martsch adapts it well to the rock idiom.
He induces the same effect with melody instead of rhythm elsewhere on the album. The eighth tune, an instrumental, has too many guitar and keyboard layers to count. Its climax is a blissfully complex counterpoint of different melodies.
Martsch's voice sounds much more characteristic of Built of Spill's droning indie rock than does his creative guitar work -- he is not, technically, a good singer. His high-pitched voice is untrained and sometimes out of tune. Still, his simple vocal lines have a certain charm and charisma.
Lyrically, he is cryptic and sometimes nonsensical but often profound in his simplicity. "Open up your window to the world if you want the world to bring you happiness," he asserts in "Window."
"Woke Up This Morning" has a religious theme, while "Dream" includes a possible Sept. 11 reference: "Passenger jet planes stopping in midair/Fall and crash right in front of me/Being surprised that this time it's for real."
There is little that isn't impressive on Now You Know. Strong hints of the blues, unfathomably thick, rich textures and sincere, convincing vocals create a supple, dreamy soundscape. Listening is a brief and welcome escape into Martsch's personal fantasy world.
By Grey Huddleston
