THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 28, 1995 TAG: 9501270112
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: MUSIC REVIEWS
SOURCE: BY RICKEY WRIGHT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
SINCE DAVID LEE ROTH'S departure in 1985, Van Halen has been an uninteresting rock band with a pretty good guitar player. ``Balance'' (Warner Bros.), the band's fifth post-Roth album, provides more proof that the group's glory days as a sonically and attitudinally audacious outfit are far behind it.
Pre-release hype has pegged ``Balance'' as a serious work conceived in the wake of VH manager Ed Leffler's death. In a word: Nah. The record simply melds Eddie Van Halen's predictable, pseudo-arty playing with singer Sammy Hagar's feel-goodisms. Hagar shows off his two vocal styles, shrieking and urgently lower-register, and that's about as deep as this thing goes.
On ``Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do),'' Hagar does make a stab at Soundgarden-style angst, complete with a Jesus reference, before concluding, ``I ain't gonna tell you what's right for you.'' Business continues as usual elsewhere, with three (!) instrumentals, some lite metal and the sure-thing big-hit ballad ``Not Enough.'' They've done it all before; you've heard it all before.
Veruca Salt, ``American Thighs'' (Minty Fresh/DGC).
Veruca Salt's first album delivers a cohesive statement about the search for warmth and companionship by the products of broken homes. Fronted by singer/songwriters Louise Post and Nina Gordon, the band has already scored with its ambivalent ode to female rage, the ubiquitous single ``Seether.'' The song's crunchy popcraft is echoed elsewhere on tracks like ``Victrola.''
Veruca is even more memorable when pursuing the quieter Beatles/ Velvets meld of ``25'' and ``Get Back'' (not the Lennon/McCartney tune). By the end of the album, when Gordon declares that she's ``Sleeping Where I Want,'' it's enough to make you feel you've witnessed the kind of winning struggle for happiness the so-called Generation X can aspire to.
Portishead, ``Dummy'' (Go! Discs/London). On this British act's debut, Beth Gibbons channels Billie Holiday via Sinead O'Connor's portable phone. Somewhere between late-late-night club music and '60s mood and soundtrack LPs, ``Dummy'' pivots on seductive emotional darkness.
Not for Gibbons and partner Geoff Barrow the emotional distance of other UK-based hip-hop-influenced acts like Pop Will Eat Itself. This outfit is more interested in such bleary soundscapes as ``Wandering Star,'' an arresting synthesis of torch song, jazzy pulse and a War sample. Lady Day herself might nod knowingly at the closing ``Glory Box,'' where Gibbons archly ``gives her heart away . . . for the other girls'' before launching into a timeless blues.
Various artists, ``Music From the Motion Picture `Higher Learning' '' (550 Music/Epic Soundtrax). The soundtrack album for John Singleton's third picture provides more fodder for the Tori Amos cult. The piano-bench-grinding siren intones R.E.M.'s ``Losing My Religion'' with her usual wispiness. She also contributes a new original, ``Butterfly,'' to this 13-song mix.
Elsewhere, alternative rock and the various faces of mainstream black pop vie for attention. Liz Phair's ``Don't Have Time'' is an OK representation of her style, Ice Cube's ``Higher'' a not-bad opener. But Tony! Toni! Tone! singer Raphael Saadiq runs the disc up onto the shoals of tiresomeness with his lengthy ballad ``Ask of You.'' And Rage Against the Machine's rap-metal ``Year of the Boomerang'' competes with Amos for most-irritating-track honors. But Tori wins. ILLUSTRATION: Veruca Salt includes, from left, Louise Post, Jim Shapiro, Nina
Gordon and Steve Lack. Their new album is ``American Thighs.''
by CNB