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Dizzee Rascal Boy in da Corner (Matador)
Nineteen-year-old Londoner Dizzee Rascal rhymes like a gangsta from another planet, with a high, wound-up and desperate voice that sometimes sounds like Eazy-E, Shabba Ranks and Gary Numan, all stuck inside the same body. He thinks of hip-hop as a medium instead of a formula, backing his lyrics with jungle and techno drones, and his flow is sharp, harsh and very British. It's tough to say which part of "Stop Dat" is more brutal to your ears: the bleak, growling bass-and-bleeps or Dizzee's yelping rhymes about housing-estate life, which slice like box cutters. The signature tracks on Boy in Da Corner are "I Luv U" and "Wot U On": Dizzee used a PlayStation 2 to make some of the martial beats in the former, and the slutbot vocals, 2D melodies and hardcore techno pound of "Wot" sound like nothing so much as the inside of a bloody video game. Just as N.W.A once captured the realities of the hood, Dizzee evokes twenty-first-century street life -- the real, the virtual and the violent. If you want to hear where hip-hop is at, step up and be the 9 millionth satisfied Eminem customer. But if you want a vision of the future of hip-hop and techno, get this record. (PAT BLASHILL)
Ani DiFranco Educated Guess (Righteous Babe)
After she explored working with a band and the intricacies of jazz on recent albums, Buffalo DIY heroine Ani DiFranco returns to her roots on her twenty-first album, Educated Guess. It's not just the fact that DiFranco played all the instruments, produced and mixed the record herself that hearkens back to her early work; it's the songs themselves. Though DiFranco doesn't completely abandon the experimentation of the last few albums, delving into a funked-up jazz sound on "Bliss Like This," much of the album is dedicated to the vintage DiFranco mix of musically naked and lyrically raw songs like "You Each Time" and political spoken-word pieces. Educated Guess is at its best when DiFranco combines the two elements, as on the haunting "Origami." Under an achingly tender riff, DiFranco sings, "I am tired of being your savior and I am tired of telling you why." Maybe, but it's a role DiFranco is meant for. (STEVE BALTIN)
Amel Larrieux Bravebird (Bliss Life)
On a jazzy strut in the middle of this mesmerizing album, Amel Larrieux laments that people are always "Givin' Something Up." But not Larrieux. On her second solo effort since she sang with Groove Theory, Larrieux refuses to settle for one of those patchy R&B records that are too retro- or chart-minded to deliver sustained pleasure. From the title song, with its strobe-y keyboards, to the piano testimony of "Beyond," Larrieux brings together the grit of the Roots and the elegance of Sade. Bravebird sounds like some brilliant rare-groove thing you'd find in a used-record store. Except it's really one of the most off-the-hook new soul albums in years. (JAMES HUNTER)
Lisa Gerrard and Patrick Cassidy Immortal Memory (4AD)
After a chance meeting while working on the Gladiator soundtrack, Lisa Gerrard, formerly the ethereal chanteuse in Dead Can Dance, decided to join forces with celebrated Irish composer Patrick Cassidy. After two months in Gerrard's home studio, the unlikely duo took a trip into the mystic and came up with Immortal Memory, an album of uncommon beauty, grace and profundity that takes the listener on a sacred and historical journey both to Ireland's Druid past and to an even earlier antediluvian time where they excavate the very foundations of faith and consciousness. Alternately singing in Gaelic and Aramaic (the vernacular Arabic language that Jesus Christ is said to have conversed in), Gerrard's voice transcends language and urges you follow her spiritual thrust into these uncharted territories, both primeval, unsettling, with only her flinty alto and Cassidy's anxious score as a guide. Cassidy and Gerrard's sparse and chilly arrangements possess a luminous gravity and a deep resonance that is a fitting and arcane frame for this shape-shifting excursion of creation, death and eventual rebirth. (JAAN UHELSZKI)
The Special Goodness Land Air Sea (Epitaph)
Respect to drummers who turn their downtime into guitar slinging and songwriting, belying cliches about dopey skinsmen. The Special Goodness were just Weezer's Pat Wilson's side project when they released a self-titled album in Weezer-crazy Japan in 1998. Now with a lineup of ex-Rocket from the Crypt drummer Atom Willard and Seattle-ite Jeb Lewis on bass, SG are acting like a full-time band. Wilson's singing style is suited for the emo-tinged power pop of Superchunky tunes like "N.F.A.," though his emotional level comes off static song to song. "Whatever's Going On" combines Rivers Cuomo's woe-is-me mentality with Wilson's moping ("I don't belong in this world," he sings). But between verses are special moments, like the fret-dancing guitar solo in "Day in the Autumn," the head-banging passages in "Inside Your Heart" and plenty of Wings-y choruses. Land Air Sea demonstrates an impressive mastery of power pop, but it never rises above the limitations of a genre that hasn't gone anywhere too special in years. (JOHN DUGAN)
Camera Obscura Underachievers Please Try Harder (Merge)
Scotland must be chronically dreary. Like Belle and Sebastian before them, the country's latest export, Camera Obscura, play sweeping pop songs full of gloom, mood and irony. On Underachievers Please Try Harder -- the group's second and first stateside -- the sardonic sextet enriches these carefully quiet and bitingly sweet tunes with pianos, keyboards, horns and harmonies. The tasteful arrangements offer the music an understated Motown boogie, while pedestrian details of suspended school children, birthday rituals and idiosyncratic dances add a pointed wryness. Sung mostly by Tracyanne Cambell's unaffected soprano (although sometimes by percussionist John Henderson), the songs speak to the underdog. "You got to toughen up for him/He's the kind that'll do you in/I should know that it's no fun/You'll never be number one, number one son," goes the rainy, piano-led "Number One Son." Camera Obscura's pop is catchy and droopy, propelled by a punchy crassness -- these underachievers should feel just fine. (BENJAMIN FRIEDLAND)
The Mekons Punk Rock (Quarterstick)
Since their inception some twenty-seven years ago, the Mekons have transformed themselves from snarky Leeds-based art punkers to American bar rockers. That this album's title plainly tips its hat to the former incarnation is no surprise, as the Mekons' "newest" is actually a collection of previously unrecorded songs written nearly three decades ago. Tracks including "Trevira Trousers" and "32 Weeks" are some standout examples of why it's a good thing they waited: The anthems are treated with the present-day Mekons' older-and-more-sophisticated take on bombastic punk rock & roll, and the marriage of past and present is urgent, distressed vitriol-fueled. This isn't completely a homecoming to ghosts of Mekons past, however. The twangy backwoods glaze on post-punk spirited sounds in "Corporal Chalkie" and "Roseanne" showcase fresher, more diverse methods of execution for the band, even if the core of their songwriting has both feet planted firmly in the past. (JOAN HILLER)
(January 20, 2004)