THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 28, 1995 TAG: 9507270135
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E8 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Bruce Hornsby, ``Hot House'' (RCA) - ``It's us against them tonight,'' sings Bruce Hornsby on ``The Changes,'' the highlight of ``Hot House,'' his fifth album. Narrated by a rebellious lounge-band member, the song can be taken both as a remembrance of Hornsby's own hotel-bar days and a neat summation of his post-``Way It Is'' career.
``Hot House'' finds the Williamsburg singer/songwriter/pianist stretching even further than he did on 1993's ``Harbor Lights.'' That disc found him ditching most of the Range - only drummer John Molo remains - and the increasingly formulaic approach that marred ``A Night on the Town'' (1990). On the new record, Hornsby delves ever deeper into his Keith Jarrett/Bill Evans influences and gets friendly with his most diverse group of guests yet. Not only do Jerry Garcia and Pat Metheny show up, but Chaka Khan and two members of Teddy Riley's Blackstreet are in the mix as well.
The result is among Hornsby's warmest recordings, and an album that celebrates music making both in lyric and sound. The hip-hop beats on ``Big Rumble'' make the song's title an apt one, while Molo spikes the murder tale of ``Country Doctor'' with a tribal stomp. And if the sweet, Sam Cooke-inspired ``Walk in the Sun'' and ``The Longest Night'' don't steal the lite-pop banner back from Hootie and the Blowfish, it's hard to imagine what will.
- Rickey Wright
``The Best of Sister Lucille Pope & The Pearly Gates'' (Nashboro) - The years between 1964 and 1975 were huge for all kinds of music, yet sad in one respect - Sister Lucille Pope and The Pearly Gates weren't in the studio. After releasing a few singles on Vee Jay and Chess Records, the Concord, Ga.-born Pope stopped recording. But in the mid-'70s she and her group signed with Nashboro Records, and she returned to singing her own strolling, soulful country gospel.
This new compilation starts with the group's 1964 ``Jesus Tore My Heart to Pieces,'' a song as simple, earthy and beautiful as the red clay country it comes from. Pope's tremulous singing is backed by a vocal group with an impossibly high falsetto. In the later material, her voice is lower and breathier, and her testimonials are even more powerful. ``Leave Them Alone'' is a moving plea for treating people humanely.
These songs are almost all at the same slow speed, and their messages are uniformly simple: ``Don't Be Mean'' is one title, ``Let's go back to the way things used to be'' is a lyric line. But Pope's sincerity and the hauntingly spare arrangements make her sentimentsunforgettable.
- Mark Mobley
Blondie, ``Remixed Remade Remodeled: The Remix Project'' (Chrysalis/EMI). The dance-floor success of recent new-style versions of Blondie hits made this full-length set a commercial necessity, no doubt. Trouble is, if you own the previously released K-klassic Mix of ``Rapture'' and Diddy's version of ``Atomic,'' you've already got the best ``Remodeled'' has to offer. The tempo-shifting of this ``Rapture'' makes it one of the finest-ever arguments in favor of remixing old favorites, while ``Atomic'' works because its mechanized sheen isn't far from the Moroder-style disco Debbie Harry and Chris Stein were digging in '79.
Elsewhere, there are interesting ideas but little to drag the listener out of his seat. The slightly sped-up ``Fade Away and Radiate'' is a nice mood piece, but Robert Fripp's spacey guitar solo is unwisely dropped. ``Heart of Glass,'' ``Dreaming'' and ``One Way or Another'' suffer much more for the loss of original arrangement elements that supplied a needed tug between Harry's breathy vocals and the work of the band. And think of the possibilities that were left out here: Why not an updated ``(Se)X Offender''? Still, it's good to see this supposedly ephemeral act's hits appreciated 15 years later.
- Rickey Wright ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
by CNB