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Saturday, January 01, 2011 ( 1/01/2011 07:02:00 AM ) Bill S.  “THAT’S WHEN I LEAP FROM THE CASKET, SCREAM AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS!” Midway into Bleu’s fourth disc, the mundanely titled Four (The Major Label), as I listened to the sweetly poppy “When the Shit Hits the Fan,” I found myself thinking back to the first time I heard Nilsson Shmilsson and “The Moonbeam Song.” I remembered my double-take back in the early seventies when the song’s lyrics first sliced through its gorgeously crooned and orchestrated sound and I went, “Did he just sing ‘bits of crap’ in that song?” Having put the Bleu disc into my car’s CD player without checking the track titles, I had a similar reaction: “Didn’t he just sing ‘It’ll bite you in the ass’?”The Nilsson comparison proves apt in more ways than one: like Harry, Bleu (a.k.a. William James McAuley III) has written tunes for teenybopper idols (with the former, it was the Monkees; with the mutton-chopped one, it’s the Jonas Brothers) and displayed an affinity on his own discs for addictively hooky tunes carrying bruised and occasionally philosophical lyrics. Both pop-rockers have a love for early r-&-b: with Shmilsson it was Ray Charles and the Crescent City; for Bleu, it’s horn-y Memphis soul. Neither artist is afraid to dip into schmaltz -- Four contains a track (“How Blue”) that sounds like it could’ve been pulled off a Bread album -- though, thankfully, that predilection has been kept to a minimum on this release. To these ears “Blue” is the only skippable track on Four. The rest proves poppishly addictive. “Dead in the Mornin’” is a compelling gospel track where the singer imagines skipping out on his credit card bills and willing all his possessions to friends and listeners; “In Love with My Lover” is a soulful horn-backed ballad that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Otis Blue; “I’ll Know It When I See It” is a power poppy expression of cautious optimism, while “Everything Is Fine” (co-written with Jellyfish alum Roger Joseph Manning Jr. -- make up your own lineage joke, if you must) has the lo-fi melodiousness of pre-Wings McCartney. Could do without having to wait four frigging minutes before getting to hear the bonus track, “My Own Personal Jesus,” another gripping horn-drenched number -- in part because its lyrical consideration of faith and the difficulty holding onto same ties so much of the album together. There are regular reflections on the transience of life on this disc -- even the anthemic “B.O.S.T.O.N.” contains a spoken break with a eulogy for our hero -- which could be reflective of Bleu’s prior too-brief experiences with major label-dom (see 2003’s Redhead). Reportedly, the singer raised the money for this release on his own label by soliciting money from fans on the Internet. A testament to pop willfulness: Everything Is Fine, indeed. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: pop-n-roll # |Friday, December 31, 2010 ( 12/31/2010 09:56:00 PM ) Bill S. WEEKEND PET PIC: Dusty venturing out into the backyard during the chilly S.E. AZ. winter. (Note Kyan Pup in the bckgnd.)  THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark." # | Thursday, December 30, 2010 ( 12/30/2010 06:57:00 AM ) Bill S.  HECK’S LOOGIE: The third reissued collection of assertively disturbed comics featuring Roman Dirge’s Little Dead Girl and her pals, Lenore: Cooties (Titan Books) reprints the final issues in the series’ original black-and-white Slave Labor run with suitably washed out (lots of earth tones) color added. Good news for lovers of Dirge’s sweetly psychotic blend of Harvey Comics and Dawn of the Dead -- and a decent intro to the character for newcomers, too.For those unfamiliar with our girl, Lenore is a dead and playful moppet who at the start of the third volume has risen from the depths of Heck because she was bored in the underworld. (“It was itchy and smelled like Fritos there, so I left,” she explains to the vampire turned rag doll Ragamuffin.) The Dark Overlord, pissed off at her escape, sends a bounty hunter after her: bucket-headed Pooty Applewater, who curses Ragamuffin with every disease that begins with the letter “S,” (scabies, shingles, schizophrenia, etc.), which the poor doll proceeds to experience one at a time. In between attacks by giant tentacled loogies and Nazi zombies, literal-minded Lenore and her pal engage in loopy arguments about metaphor and the nutritional value of bananas. As imagined by Dirge, for all her hair-raising experiences (it’s not every girl who can escape the Bowels of Heck, after all), Lenore retains a blissful lack of awareness. When she’s pulled out of the grave by Ragamuffin, for instance, and told that she has a worm gnawing on one of her extra-large eyeballs, she wants to make it a pet. “I wonder how much of your brain has been eaten by the worms,” Ragamuffin asks at one point. “’Bout 39.4 percent,” Lenore nonchalantly replies. “It feels kinda funny.” Dirge illustrates this bloody (lots of red in the zombie attack scenes) nonsense with vigorous cartoony innocence that makes even some of his grosser conceits (like Mr. Gosh, the rotting corpse who’s in love with Lenore) almost sweet at times. No surprise then that this volume contains a lauding intro by Neil Gaiman; the man knows his kid-like goth. In addition to the Lenore stories, this volume also includes the side strips featured in each original b-and-w comics: brief autobiographical snippets and a gory interpretation of “Pop Goes the Weasel” provide the highlights here. I guarantee you’ve never hear that kids’ song quite the same again after you see Dirge’s two-page strip. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Sunday, December 26, 2010 ( 12/26/2010 08:08:00 AM ) Bill S.  ”THAT’S RIGHT . . . YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE! A BLACK MAN WITH GUNS . . .” Radical Comics’ three-ish mini-series, Time Bomb, shot to its explosive finale this month: as in the first two issues, scripters Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray slather on the r-rated violence and language, even providing a phallic joke that caught this reader off guard. The violent sci-fi war actioner concerns a quarrelsome quartet (is there any other kind in these stories?) that is sent back in time to prevent the unintentional launching of a Nazi missile loaded with a particularly virulent bio-weapon. The still experimental time traveling procedure is intended to send our heroes to a day before the missile is discovered, but instead they go all the way back to Nazi Germany where, naturally, they decide to try and nip the whole project in the bud.As the third issue opens, part of our group has been captured by the Nazis alongside a shapely British agent, while the rest of the crew try and figure out a way to break into the underground city where both the missile and their imprisoned comrade are housed. There’s an inevitable interrogation sequence, a scene where one of the group has to hold off an army all by himself, a guest appearance by Der Fuhrer hisself plus a bit where the distaff member of the group becomes a knife-wielding naked super-being for all of fifteen seconds. Artist Paul Gulacy pulls the latter sequence off with his usual slick élan, even if the gimmick does seem to have come out of nowhere. That insufficiently set-up credulity strainer aside, Time Bomb proves an agreeable read. If I don’t see it being turned into a moviehouse feature, I bet it’d make for a pleasurable Syfy Channel teleflick. They’ll have to ratchet down some of the language, of course. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: fifteen-minute comic # |( 12/26/2010 01:49:00 AM ) Bill S. WEEKEND PET PIC: As taken by Becky, a show of Willow Cat napping on a holiday-themed pillow:  THE USUAL NOTE: # | |
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