If you wrote the Dave Matthews Band off as indulgent frat fare before Everyday, you might be tempted to call Ballard a miracle worker. After all, he takes a Hoover to that jazzbo clutter and gives saxman Leroi Moore and violinist Boyd Tinsley about as much props as the dude who played trombone on the last No Doubt album (which Ballard also produced).
Sure enough, pre-Ballard Dave Matthews Band might be all about movin' bodies in rhythm to an organic, fusion-tinged groove, but this svengali is all about movin' units, baby, and so he's slapped on coat after coat of pop sheen so that Everyday is about as authentic as the ID you used on Spring Break.
You might think that since Moore and Tinsley get stuck with cameos, Everyday must be a star vehicle for our reluctant hero, Dave.
However, even the man who needs no last name ("Dude, did you hear the new Dave?") becomes a bit player at times in deference to the almighty Ballard/Matthews collaborations.
Granted, some of their compositions stand out regardless of how much you feel like a sucker. Ballard and Matthews deliver a surefire moneymaker in "The Space Between" that still manages to tug at your heartstrings (while its guaranteed incessant radio action promises to tug at your purse strings when you give in and buy the whole damn album like everyone else).
Yep, Dave's a populist at heart, but that's harder to pull off than it sounds.
It's a thin line between Everyman crowd-pleaser and self-satisfied glad-hander, but Matthews treads it with easy grace, so that his shrug-shoulder anthems ("If I Had It All") never slip into bombast, and his party invitations ("So Right") never require knowledge of a secret handshake.
So give Matthews credit, because he never allows Ballard to turn Everyday into his own version of "Making the (Jam) Band."
But Ballard does manage to rob the rest of the band of its greatest asset -- personality -- and something vital gets lost in between all those treated vocals and well-placed overdubs.
Josh Love
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Ashley Stove
All Summer Long
2 1/2 Stars
With a nine-year history that resembles a rock music soap opera, the Ashley Stove has found itself without one crucial ingredient to its patented indie power-pop formula -- co-founder Matt Brown.
All Summer Long, although technically this Raleigh four-piece's fourth full-length album, is the first release from the new lineup, which features guitarist Mike Kenlan, formerly of Pipe and Small.
Aside from a few selected highlights, All Summer Long lacks many of the attributes that boosted the 1999 success of New Scars.
The opening track, "Amen Grasshopper," begins with a catchy guitar riff followed by a well-written chorus melody (and for those of you following along, note William Alphin's clever drumming around the one-minute mark).
By the second verse that same riff --lacking variation and any sort of dynamic shifts -- has been milked, but it lingers like a bad cold.
Maybe it's not even that the riff gets old, but the energy level (especially when compared to the band's older material) is a clue that this pop melody might have been left on the stove a bit too long.
Take "A Secret Secret," the disc's best song, for example. The opening riff is a clever and original blend of complementing guitar and Farfisa organ leads. But the lack of dynamics, even when the drums enter, leaves me feeling like I'm more excited about this song than the band is.
When vocalist/guitarist Ben Barwick's love for the music he is playing finally shines through on tracks like "Devo Freak," it is a beautiful thing.
Make no mistake, the lackluster guitar sounds and riffs on this already borderline album are its fatal flaw. The leads lack the originality and presence of those found in the band's older material. The rhythm guitars are deliberate and fall short of capturing the spontaneity of the first-cut sound.
And then there are the little things, like the chorus/delay effect on the rhythm guitar that rears its ugly, cliched head on nearly every track. A small detail, yes, but a sure sign of an attempt to add some spice to flavorless guitars.
Overall, All Summer Long is a step backward for the Stove. But the solid songwriting hints at better things to come for the new lineup.
Jason Arthurs
Hefner
We Love the City
4 Stars
These days it seems that Britain has once again pulled the rug out from under American musicians.
As music from the States becomes more violent or vapid, British artists continually turn out more beautiful, sincere and amusing work. From Travis to Coldplay to Belle and Sebastian, the mantle of beautiful pop songs rests pretty firmly with the Queen's subjects.
Such is the case with Hefner, one of the more recent intelligent pop groups to find success in Britain. Like most British indie pop bands, it's found a way to be sarcastic and sincere at the same time, and manages to consistently tap into a spring of endearing melodies.
The Hefner quartet gained great success with its 1999 The Fidelity Wars, a sly snapshot of lovers breaking-up masquerading as a pop album. The new release, We Love the City, covers the same territory, but the group uses a bigger brush. The break-up songs are still here ("Good Fruit," "The Cure for Evil"), but more importantly, so are the indelible tunes.
There's hardly a song in the set that isn't beautifully melodic and sweetly memorable. "Good Fruit" is a miniature moment of perfection, and "The Greedy Ugly People" soars with its wilting, sad tune.
Darren Hayman sings with a sort of gentle sneer, sounding something like a choirboy singing his favorite Built to Spill choruses. Hayman's voice suits the folk rock here, and with the accompanying vocals of Amelia Fletcher, the edge that his delivery might have had is rubbed soft. When the music swells and they both approach the mic, Hefner becomes much more than the sum of its parts.
The group shows a refreshing hint of variety as well. "She Can't Sleep No More" has a stein-raising barroom chorus, and "Hold Me Closer" has cutesy, trade-off boy-girl lyrics. "The Day That Thatcher Dies" ends rather sarcastically with a gang of children chiming in to wish "wicked witch" Margaret Thatcher death.
Songs like that and "We Love the City," a confession about a flailing relationship in unforgiving London, give the impression of a more socially conscious group mindful of the decay of the metropolis and its institutions. But it's just a gimmick; this is the lovelorn pop in which Hefner specializes.
Hefner's music is easy to like. For all its faux-maturity, We Love the City is really just the sort of youthful love songs about wanting someone and not getting them that music listeners on both sides of the Atlantic gravitate towards. It's just that Hefner and its British contemporaries do it so much better and more effortlessly.
Brian Millikin
