And in "Shift," which begins with buzzing, Incubus-like electric guitar-playing and loud drums, Nettles shifts gears and warns you to "look out 'cause I'm about to shift your paradigm." At times, she sounds like she is rapping, no doubt a strange combination with the angry-woman identity that she asserts. Nettles was probably aiming for a likening to Janis Joplin or Alanis Morissette rather than Missy Elliott or Lil' Kim.
While tracks like "Shift" provide variation, too often their combinations of sharply opposing musical styles become overpowering. Such cases of revolving identities cause the listener to spend too much time trying to figure out what the artist is all about, rather than focusing on the music itself.
But underneath all of this melee is Nettles' striking voice, which in time is bound to find direction to make phenomenal music.
By Caroline Lindsey
Billy Bragg and The Blokes
England, Half English
3 Stars
All is not so merry in olde England. That's how veteran Brit folkster Billy Bragg sees it, anyway.
England, Half English, the album Bragg has created with his band The Blokes, has a handful of songs about love and one about a sorely missed record collection. But most of the album deals with the state and decline of the English nation over the past 20 years.
As Bragg puts it, "the Great and the Good gave way to the greedy and the mean" sometime during the 1980s.
In the quietly stunning tune "Some Days I See the Point," Bragg bleakly sings, "I want to help to make the world better/ But I can't do it on my own/ Try to keep the lid on my disappointment/ 'Cos cynicism's such a cop-out I know." Meanwhile, sparse yet effective instrumentation lurks gently underneath.
But not all the songs on the album are as dreary and downbeat as this one. The call to action called "NPWA" (Bragg's acronym for "no power without accountability") is a bluesy storm. Bragg and The Blokes turn to pop, reggae and familiar folk territory on such songs as "St. Monday" and "Dreadbelly." The diversity of sounds is uplifting and refreshing.
Yet, ironically, what makes England, Half English fairly remarkable is also what holds it back from greatness.
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Credit is due to Bragg for embracing different musical genres. However, the constant leapfrogging from style to style and tone to tone is jarring to say the least.
More focus would have been warranted during the album's production. England, Half English has quite a few individually notable tunes, but the pieces don't fit together well to create a truly satisfying whole, essentially ruining the overall gestalt of the album.
For example, "Distant Shore," a song full of subtle power and gloom, is one of the best of the lot. But it awkwardly segues into the whimsical and good-humored title track, in which Bragg employs a sharp British accent to poke a little fun at his country.
Though each piece of music is interesting in its own right, the combination of tunes isn't as suitable as, say, milk and cookies.
The jumbled nature of the album undermines its message. While its thematic structure manages to stay strong thanks to Bragg's insightful songwriting and The Blokes' cohesiveness as a unit, England, Half English could have been even more powerful.
In the end, the album bears some memorable music that will drive home the fact that maybe England isn't all it's cracked up to be.
By Elliott Dube
Asie Payton
Just Do Me Right
4 Stars
Asie Payton played his blues in bait shops and old-time grocery stores where his rural audience would pass lazy, orange-glazed afternoons playing checkers or discussing their planting woes.
They knew the musician playing from a wooden stool in the corner as Asie, not a soon-to-be critically acclaimed blues artist.
Payton played only for himself and possibly a few friends in his home of Washington County, Miss. Change came when Payton was coerced -- dragged might be a better description -- into a recording studio to record what would become his debut album, Worried.
Payton never saw the results, as it was finally released in 1999, two years after his death.
Bouncing to 2002, Fat Possum Records discovered a whole new album's worth of amateur recordings and studio extras and compiled them to form Just Do Me Right.
In the album, Asie Payton posthumously delivers sparklingly raw, soulful blues that, above all, display this man's love for his art and an innate understanding of the genre.
Because the album's tracks were scraped together from a handful of sources, the range of music is wide. Several rootsy tracks exist on Just Do Me Right, woven with ultra-produced creations containing Payton's vocals behind a whole band of instruments. This alternation marks a stark contrast but is not unpleasant.
Imagine taking five tracks from Bob Dylan's first album and interchanging them on a disc with five of his most recent songs -- the noted variation of each track's feel would be much like what's heard on Payton's Just Do Me Right.
But, as with the Dylan comparison, the diverse Asie Payton album is still solid.
Straight out of the blocks, Payton coerces the listeners' collective shoes off with "Back to the Bridge" and "Do Me Right." These two lively songs could conceivably be listed by Webster's Collegiate Dictionary as the definition of soulful blues.
With these tracks, like most of the CD, Payton is not using the microphone as a tissue for his sobs but celebrating his joy and spreading it like a cold in a kindergarten class.
Payton's slower, more traditional blues tracks also embody his closeness to his art. "Livin' in So Much Pain" preserves the front-porch feel that defines Asie Payton's character.
Payton takes his traditional blues a step further later in the album, namely in "You Don't Need Me." The addition of a synth organ adds a soft touch to an already strong track.
This more complex sound is very evident in his weaker, studio-backed songs like "Need My Help" and "1000 Years" as the heavy use of electric guitars, synths, and horns make an attempt to add another dimension to the album. These extraneous instruments only make Payton's untamed voice stand out like a white rose in an oil slick. Such highly overdone tracks, however, might admittedly need to be skipped.
Even in Payton's absence, lovers of blues and music alike are strumming right along with Asie Payton -- a sight he might have never imagined from his battered stool in a Washington County bait shop.
Also something he might have never imagined is the feeling of loss his music would eventually bring, but the listeners of his album will know it all too well.
By Aaron Freeman
