Chuck E. Weiss: Extremely Cool : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Perhaps best known as the title character in Rickie Lee Jones' "Chuck E.'s in Love" two decades ago, Chuck E. Weiss has been a fixture on the L.A. bohemian scene for longer than that. Extremely Cool, his first album in eighteen years, was co-produced by his crony Tom Waits, and, predictably, it is impervious to all trends. Instead, it serves up an anthology of hipster tastes -- noir jazz, spoken word, blues, Cajun, New Orleans R&B -- with Weiss groaning, growling, moaning and wailing in a style that blends reverence, skill and parody in equal parts.

The playing is uniformly fiery and committed; the lyrics, ironic and humorous -- titles like "Pygmy Fund," "Rocking in the Kibbitz Room" and "Do You Know What I Idi Amin" capture the flavor. A tolerance for cleverness is required -- in love or not, Chuck E. has no doubt that he's exactly what his album title says, and much smarter than you, to boot. Still, the general air of freshness and fun convinces you to overlook the pretensions.(RS 806)

ANTHONY DECURTIS