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By Christopher Bussmann - Bop and Beyond - 06/07/2005

Jo Ann Daugherty's debut album Range of Motion is a stunning surprise from a tiny jazz label out of Chicago called BluJazz. Chicago once was, and still is, one hell of a jazz town. The Chicago scene is one of the few old bastions of jazz still thriving in North America. From venerable elders like Von Freeman to upstarts like young Ms. Daugherty here, the jazz currently coming out of Chicago is well worth checking out.

As for Range of Motion, it is an exquisite little gem of original compositions ranging from more traditional bop and post-bop tunes to more experimental ECM style arrangements in the vein of the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago. This is a very diverse record and the playing throughout is uniformly excellent.

Jo Ann Daugherty is the most exciting pianist to come down the pike in awhile. Her style is akin to Monk in its deft manipulation of melody and in the eccentricities of her tone, and yet it is also wholly accessible and would be welcome to the ears of any Oscar Peterson fan. That's heavy praise, but Jo Ann Daugherty deserves it - and not just only for being an accomplished pianist, but one hell of a song writer too.

Very few jazz artists now or ever manage to write a whole album's worth of tunes. There's always the occasional standard or cover thrown in to demonstrate their chops on someone else's tune. While these interpretations can be great, do we really need another version of "Stella By Starlight" or "A Child Is Born"? Jo Ann Daugherty has written tunes that could be standards in their own right and she's not afraid, like such truly inventive forebearers as Mingus, Roach, and Haden to get political with her jazz. "WMD" is an excellent example of this. Speaking on her the motives of her songwriting, Daugherty says that you can "make references to how you feel at a particular moment or what you're thinking about." (Truman Index, 16/09/04) "WMD" makes those feeling and references clear and is the highlight of album.

Jo Ann Daugherty - Range of Motion

Jo Ann Daugherty - piano
Ryan Bennett - drums
Larry Kohut and Lorin Cohen - bass
Neal Alger - guitar
Tito Carillo - trumpet
Mitch Paliga - saxophones
Tom Garling - trombone

And did I mention she's a fox?

By Lisa Weatherby - 05/18/05

While sold-out theatres around town were screening illuminated battles of the light sabre kind, another well-lit spectacle was taking place at the equally sold-out Kasabian concert last Wednesday night. Beams of purple, green and blue flooded the dark space, creating an ambiance that puts the UFO landing from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind to shame. As the shadowy figures took to the stage amid a cloudy purple haze, the crowd roared and cheered in anticipation of something grand, something of a higher power.

Uh, excuse me? This sort of opening is reserved solely for seminal bands like Pink Floyd, where a light show this pretentious is acceptable.

The first song, "I.D.", is quite catchy with its trippy beat fused with soaring guitars. I found myself unable to control my tapping foot and swaying head. I remember an equally powerful reaction to Kasabian’s music. While watching television, I was unable to switch the channel during a Chevy car commercial that featured the band’s single "Club Foot". Normally I channel-surf during the breaks, but my eyes were fixated to the rather ugly black bubble vehicle on the screen. Their music resonates in your ear to a point where their high octave vocals put you in a hypnotic state. This can’t be good, I tell myself, and quickly pull it together. As I look around at the audience, I notice most of them have come under the Kasabian spell. Some have their eyes closed, others their hands raised. Where am I? Are the Raëliens in the house? Of course, I know exactly where I am: a concert filled with washed-up candy ravers who’ve graduated to a more sophisticated, lyrical soundscape in the form of Kasabian. Influenced by everyone and anyone who is original in their own musical genres (Brian Eno, Eminem, Blackalicious, DJ Shadow, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles), Kasabian manages to put out songs that are solid and catchy, but unique they are not. Honestly, they don’t sound a thing like their comparisons Primal Scream, Happy Mondays or Boards Of Canada. The only band whose music I can compare them to is the late 1990’s groovy acid pop band Kula Shaker. Kasabian failed to mention this band as key influencers and frankly I’m quite hurt!

Lead singer Tim Meighan does a lousy Jim Morrison lizard dance and does not do justice to the Jagger swaying and jimmy leggin’ that Pelle Almquvist of The Hives painstakingly perfected. Lead guitarist/vocalist Sergio Pizzorno, looking like an unhealthy version of Sam Roberts on shrooms (of course), has the energy and demeanour of a rock star; confident in his assumed role, he slurs gibberish to the audience between songs as girls gush. Interaction with the fans was the constant acknowledgment of what city they are in and thanking the crowd for their support ("Alright Montreal", "Yeah Montreal", "Hello Montreal", "Thank you Montreal"). After about the 12th shout-out, I was ready to throw a beer bottle at the stage, something a fan in Glasgow did about a month ago.

Clearly this band needs more time to perfect audience interaction, stage presence and musical identity. Living up to these expectations shouldn’t be too hard if they truly follow the same fate of the woman the band was named after. Linda Kasabian, Charles Manson’s getaway driver, was given not one but two dismissal charges for having redeemed herself from incidences that would have surely led her into a downward spiral.

By DCU - No Sleep Til Bedtime - 04/27/2005

I am always incredibly excited to see one of my favorite and challenging grind bands Cephalic Carnage, and even though I had just seen them days before, it was my pleasure to trek out to El Salon to see them again. El Salon is certainly not the best locale for a metal show, not only is it way up on St-Laurent, where us metal kids do not like to travel, but the whole atmosphere of the venue just isn’t conducive to that kind of show. But like always you make the best of a bad situation on an ugly rainy night, and you get ready thrash out to frenzied blistering music.

Opening up the show for me were locals Beneath the Massacre, a band recently signed to Galy Records. This is a band that shows so much promise, mixing extreme death metal brutality with technical riffs and hardcore breakdowns. The band seemed disappointed with the activity of the crowd, which was in no way their fault, as their set was intense and gripping. My one problem with the band is the echo effect used on the vocals. The singer already has such a brutal and heavy voice, perfect for this style of metal, that the echo just seems like overkill.

Next up was Dead to Fall, with their American metal-core style similar to that of Darkest Hour. There set was extremely high energy (except for some technical difficulties) and the hardcore crowd reacted rather well to songs off the most recent Villainy & Virtue as well as older material. They even threw in an At The Gates cover song which was flawlessly performed. Although Dead to Fall don’t push the envelope with their music, they put on a great live show and never cease to impress. (Disclaimer: I may or may not have been part of a hardcore pile-up on the front of the stage during "Bastard Set of Dreams".)

Sadly when Cephalic Carnage took the stage the venue was more than half empty, with not more than 40 people in attendance. You could tell the band was disappointed with the turnout, but they still grinded the night away with enthusiasm. The majority of their set came from their new album Anomalies with tracks "Counting the Days", "Kill For Weed", "Dying Will be the Death of Me", and others. From Lucid Interval only the title track was played, with the concert wrapping up with their patented "King of the Hill/Observer to the Obliteration of Planet Earth" medley. An amazing set, the band has never sounded this good, it was only disappointing that not as many people were there to check them out, but it was there loss.

By David Marriott - Rocks In Your Head - 05/01/2005

Ryan Adams’ new double album, Cold Roses, much in keeping with the rest of his recent studio output, is uneven with brief flirtations with brilliance. This record only furthers my belief that Adams is incapable of controlling the double-edged sword that is his bottomless repository of material. In addition to this double album, there are two more LPs slated for release this year. It seems no one has told Adams that the reason it worked so well for early Dylan is because all of his songs were worth recording. During his live show, however, this complex manifested itself with Adams sharing and performing as much material as possible before Spectrum would have to close for the evening.

The three-hour-plus show -- two sets with a ten-minute intermission -- opened with Adams, hidden under his patented mop of unwashed hair, and his new backing band The Cardinals taking the stage with no greeting. They quickly jumped into five country-tinged songs from the new record. The Cardinals played an accomplished brand of alt-country, which wasn’t surprising as they share members with Austin’s Asleep At The Wheel. Adams himself was sloppy but his energy, as expected, was contagious. Having kept mostly silent outside of the customary thank you here and there, Adams’ first audience address was in the form of a threat to a spectator who, apparently having escaped an elementary school outing to St-Catherine East earlier that day, decided that it would be funny to cap off his heckling of the performers with a Bryan Adams joke. The mood was now decidedly uneasy. Things lightened up later with a spirited performance of “To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High)” off 2001’s Heartbreaker. It showcased an artist who has clearly been playing a song live so long that he’s decided to have some fun with it. The set ended with some of the live audience banter for which Adams’ shows are famous (favorite example: while discussing an old bandmate’s break-up, he proclaimed it to be “so much drama, man. Matlock times twenty. Fuckin’ Rocklock”).

The second set began with Adams alone on stage, performing several numbers with only piano and half a pack of smokes for company. It perfectly captured a sense of intimacy that the previous set only hinted at. New songs were mixed with old stand-bys (“Sylvia Plath”), ending with an audience-requested piano version of the Rolling Stones’ staple “Brown Sugar”, which was oddly engaging once he found the right keys (this took about four minutes of trial and error). The solo portion of the show was extended to an acoustic guitar stretch in which favorites ranging from “Winding Wheel” to the famed cover of Oasis’ “Wonderwall” were performed with, as was the custom of the evening, a subtle grace hidden beneath a seemingly aloof exterior. The show closed with the Cardinals returning to the stage to assist Adams’ in a fifteen-minute jammy version of “Magnolia Mountain”, the first track off Cold Roses. Following this, they immediately exited the stage with a simple goodnight and no encore. Nobody really needed one after three hours of Ryan Adams, after years of media hysterics and a string of varyingly successful LPs that remind an audience why he is still a distinct and interesting musician.

[Tune in to Rocks In Your Head Mondays 6pm – 8pm]