Word: balladic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...music and language do not quite fit together. Occasionally, the lyrics get a little caught up in exorbitant verbosity and leave the music stumbling behind. "St. Louise is Listening" (a song as close to garage rock as Soul Coughing gets) and "Maybe I'll Come Down" (a bland ballad that strains Doughty's voice and listener's patience) are two songs that should have remained poems. In both, a surplus of syllables obviously constrains the music--Doughty is overly intellectual and whiny, the instrumentation is weak, and the beat sounds like it was churned from a cheap drum-machine...
...what was left out: vicious self-promotion. The new album was only mentioned once, and Griffin briefly revealed that the next single would be "At the Star,s, which was then performed with a simple, yet effective string arrangement and piano accompaniment. The steam-up-the-car-windows ballad climaxed with the lamenting lyrics "I've finally found that/Everybody loves to love you when you're far away...
Jazz musicians are also beginning to grapple with the wealth of potential standards written after 1960, an off-and-on trend renewed in earnest a few years ago when vocalist Cassandra Wilson turned the Monkees' Last Train to Clarksville into a torchy, caramelized ballad nearly worthy of Billie Holiday. Herbie Hancock followed with The New Standard, an entire album of rock-era tunes in which he improvised on changes derived from the Beatles, Sade and Kurt Cobain, among others. Joshua Redman's forthcoming Timeless Tales (for Changing Times) (Warner Bros.) covers similar ground, with songs by Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder...
...reflective artist anxiety, the music becomes a gigantic toybasket of styles. "Monkey-doll" is a Beatles-esque, upbeat true story of Fuck's tours with a stuffed monkey (rumour has it that Fuck never performs without a pile of stuffed animals covering the stage). "Italy" is a beautiful love ballad evoking images of the Coliseum and sky as Prodhumme--with a surprisingly sexy voice that moves effortlessly between innocence, vulnerability and purposeful passion--pushes the music to one of the few full climaxes of the album. "My melting snowman" is a short and eerie instrumental piece featuring slow, distorted carousel...
...soft ballad "A Search for Peace" hushed the room in the first set, allowing the sax to whisper melodies in the silence. Next came "Giant Steps," one of the most difficult compositions in all of jazz. "Giant Steps" began slowly--as a tribute to the original 'Trane. The audience could not believe the rapid chords that blazed through the air. As the song ended, bodies that sat at the edges of their seats languidly slouched back, fatigued and in awe. A buzz of recuperation and conversation filled intermission, as a humble figure in black began mixing with the crowd...