DENNIS COFFEY – Dennis Coffey

(Strut)

Possibly one of the most eagerly anticipated releases of the year is the long-awaited new album from legendary funk guitarist and charter member of Motown’s legendary Funk Brothers studio band, Dennis Coffey. Notable for his fiery licks on hits for The Temptations (“Cloud Nine”, “Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World Is Today)” and “Psychedelic Shack”), Edwin Starr (“War”), Diana Ross & The Supremes (“Someday We’ll Be Together”), and Freda Payne (“Band of Gold”) among many others, Coffey wielded his searing funk guitar steadily during the ’70’s and into the ’80’s before slowing down his prolific studio schedule by the beginning of the ’90’s. Since then the one-time instrumental hitmaker (his song “Scorpio” hit the charts in a big way in 1971) and background riff-creator has only released solo work sporadically and on tiny labels mostly under the public’s radar, leaving crate-diggers and funk fans to scrounge for his hard-to-find ’70’s solo discs on Westbound and pour over his session work, while smart beatmakers took his best licks and turned them into crucial samples on hit rap songs like Young MC’s “Bust A Move” and LL Cool J’s “Jinglin’ Baby” which both used licks from “Scorpio”.

Coffey in his prime had been pegged as akin to a latter-day Duane Eddy, as his distinctive guitar tone not only made him a first-call session legend, but also a viable hit-making artist in his own right. Fans and newcomers to the funk will be reminded of Coffey’s singular artistry on his new album, which has been constructed with half new compositions and half with remakes of songs which originally featured Coffey’s guitar work, serving not only as an excellent introduction to Coffey’s formidable oeurvre but also as a starting point for hopefully more new Coffey albums down the line. While it may be facetious to hope that a guitar slinger in his 70’s still has a few more albums in him, one only need listen to this CD to hear Coffey can still make a wah-wah pedal handle it’s business and can farm out a fuzztone just the same as he did forty years ago.

Opening the album is a funk fuzz-fest by the name of 7th Galaxy which sets the tone for the entire set, which is to say it highlights Coffey’s guitar work and is funky as hell! His other new instrumentals, Plutonius, Knockabout and Space Traveller are also winners and one can close their eyes and almost visulise Coffey and his band resplendent in some weird collection of multi-colored three piece suits knocking off these jams on Soul Train while Don Cornelius and the dancers shake their asses mightily while he plays. Another instrumental, Miss Millie, features soul group Kings Go Forth to help Coffey sink his fingers into the guitar groove pie! As far as re-inventions of Coffey’s past work, this album includes a re-working of Rodriguez’s Only Good for Conversation featuring young soul singer Paolo Nutini, Parliament’s All Your Goodies Are Gone sung by up-and-coming neo-soulster Mayer Hawthorne, and a version of Funkadelic’s I Bet You featuring Mick Collins of The Dirtbombs and Rachel Nagy of The Detroit Cobras that should have been a hit single if radio knew what the fuck it was doing. Other great revists include 100 Proof (Aged in Soul)’s Somebody’s Been Sleeping, featuring Lisa Kekaula of The Bellrays, and a version of Wilson Pickett’s Don’t Knock My Love on which Fanny Franklin of LA’s Orgone kicks the hell out of the muthafucka!!. Take that Wicked!

Though this album’s songlist contains only about half new material, the bells and whistles and side attractions on the other songs don’t detract one iota from what brought Coffey to the dance, so to speak: his fantastic guitar playing. In fact, despite the guest stars and the lack of new material, the producers and Coffey himself have made sure everything revolves around his incendiary playing, as it should. Unlike a lot of musical “stunt casting”, what is done here builds up Coffey and his performance, instead of distracting from it. Coffey’s licks have never sounded more terse, lean and aggressive than they do on this new disc, a testament to Coffey’s enduring, seemingly ageless artistry. As an interesting sidelight, check out Youtube for a promo video for Coffey’s unreleased version of Cee-Lo Green’s “Fuck You” that simply SMOKES.

Urge Overkill – Rock and Roll Submarine

(OU Records)  

Most will remember this band from their Smithereens-like hit Sister Havana in the very early ’90’s. Though the band dutifully followed up that hit with a small but respectable run of solidly tuneful rock albums, the band never again reached that height despite scoring a monster hit off of a remake of Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon” from the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction. The band’s last original album trickled out sixteen years ago to little fanfare. Soon after, the band packed it in. At least, temporarily. The band first reunited and began touring again in 2004.

The long gestation period of this new album seems to have served the band well. Despite original guitarist Blackie Onassis not coming along for the ride, original members Nash Kato and Eddie “King” Roeser (along with newcomers to the band Gaza Strippers guitarist Mike “Hadji” Hodgkiss and Cherry Valence drummer Brian “Bonn” Quast) more than make up for it by handing in a worthy successor to the band’s last album, Exit The Dragon. One miught even suggest it is worthy enough to sidle up favorably to the band’s best, Saturation. Bollocks, you say? One need only listen to this bristling bunch of tunes to realize not only are Urge Overkill back, but they are brandishing some of the most vital rock and roll of their previously brief careers.

The song Effigy is the album’s first single and is a great rocker in the Urge Overkill signature style, as is the song Little Vice. It’s amazing how much this band still sound like…..well, themselves, sixteen years after their breakup. While it is often said many bands (take your pick) sound like they haven’t lost a step after a long layoff, the only thing that can be said about Urge Overkill relating to their hiatus is how much they sound as if they never took a day off. The sound is exactly the same, except with more studio gloss than any of their previous efforts. The album opener, Mason/Dixon, brings back a wash of memories, as it immediately distills both the promise and rock and roll excess of UO. Great kick-ass song, though. As the album rolls on, there a few mid-tempo numbers to balance the rockers, but it all comes out sounding like the same swaggering whip-smart rock band from the ’90’s, no matter how they switch up the tempos. The one song UO could have left off ther album is the ghastly Poison Flower which doesn’t even sound like UO at all, but something akin to what a hippie jamband might think sounds like Urge Overkill playing rock music.

While not a home-run out of the park, Urge Overkill has definitely come back swinging for the fences. There’s quite a bit to like here and the band’s core fans are sure to flock to this, elated the band is back and kicking ass in such a convincing manner. The band may have squandered their chances to have a few more big hits and really get the attention they deserved by slowly petering out at the end of their first run, but there’s something to be said about realizing there was some unfinished business and getting back together to get it done. This is the band’s first step in righting that wrong though it’s obvious the band needs to definitely bring it if they plan on doing another. Rock and Roll Submarine is a good enough record to make their fans happy, but next time the band has to up their game just a bit more in the catchy riff department. Hoppefully there won’t be another sixteen year wait to find out if they can do it.

Sloan – The Double Cross

(Yep Roc)

One of modern rock’s most consistant yet criminally underrated bands has thankfully released another disc, this new one to celebrate and commemorate the band’s 20th year of existence, an allusion to which the band has included in the title – which refers to the two X’s used in the Roman Numeral system to notate twenty. It’s hard to believe it’s been twenty years since the four talented members of Sloan (bassist Chris Murphy, guitarist Patrick Pentland, drummer Andrew Scott and guitarist Jay Ferguson) met in Halifax, Nova Scotia and gave the world a taste of what was to come with their first release, the EP Peppermint way back in 1992. That Sloan has been able to over the past twenty years with no major bustups or defections is remarkable in itself. Sloan has always seemed to be the ultimate rock democracy. Each member usually gets an equal number of songs on an album (for the most part) and each gets to sing their own songs. For most bands this would lead to albums full of dross. After all, how many rock drummers are able to write melodically cohesive songs? In other words, would YOU want to hear songs written by the drummers of, say, Aerosmith or Foreigner? But, in the case of Sloan like the Beatles before them, the members of the band are all multi-instrumentalists and all relatively equally skilled in songwriting which has led them to immediately stick out as something unique compared to their alternative rock brethren.

Immediately impressing several major labels with their debut EP, the band signed to Geffen for it’s first release, Smeared. The relationship soured quickly, with their second album Twice Removed being released and ignored by their label due to “artistic differences”. The band took a break afterwards, the pressure of being dropped almost causing the band to break up. Thankfullly, the band rallied and put out what many feel is their best album, One Chord To Another on The Enclave label in 1996. Though label issues served to scuttle that album as well, the album served as a triumph for the band in many respects beyond the transcendent musicality and maturity of the songs. The band revived their Murderercords imprint used for their first EP and decided to release the record on their own label in Canada and license the masters to the highest bidder in other territories. They have followed this method ever since, allowing them to keep total control of their output and eschew major label meddling.

The band’s newest disc is Sloan at it’s melodic and rocking best, starting out with the rocking and Beatle-y Follow The Leader and moving quickly through the uptempo The Answer Was You to get to the album’s first single, Unkind. The song is as perfect a single as the band’s ever had, even besting Everything Youi’ve Done Wrong from the band’s classic One Chord to Another album. Unkind is poppy, upbeat and everything you would look for in a Summer radio hit. Catchy too! The next two songs (I’ve Gotta Know and Beverly Terrace) show off exactly why Sloan is in a class by itself. The former is a punky romp showing boundless energy and rock and roll attack while the latter is built from some quiet, muted guitar and striking piano work. That the band can work both ends of the musical spectrum so effortlessly speaks highly of the four (count ’em) songwriters and their talents. The band shows well-deep depth on another great song, Green Gardens, Cold Montreal which brings to mind 60’s acoustic folk akin to Simon and Grafunkel of all things. Traces finishes up the album with a driving rock feel. A perfect way to close and another fantastic album from Sloan, if an amazingly brief one.

Once again, Sloan manages to give their fans the kind of top notch rock and roll their fans expect. Not only are the songs top notch, but the album is filled with an incredible energy. It would be easy to say they sound rejuvenated, but the band has always delivered albums with plenty of energy, so it’s not like they’re overcoming a slump or anything like that. While this album doesn’t quite match the arguable perfection of 1996’s One Chord to Another or 2006’s Never Hear The End of It, the band comes amazingly close on this disc and proves that even twenty years on, they can still crank out the same great rock and roll they’ve brought since the very beginning with no signs of a slowdown in quality or energy.

Cars – Move Like This

(Hear Music)

Of all the albums to be released in the first six months of this year, this is the one most music fans seemingly had been looking forward to the most according to Internet buzz. Ever since their classic hit “Just What I Needed” blasted out of car stereos in 1978, the Cars have always been one of the most influential rock bands to emerge after the arrival of punk. Their penchant for taking their ballsy Boston-bred rock attitude and running it through a New Wave, synth-friendly filter to create some of the most interesting and innovative rock ever has since been the marker used to determine exactly when corporate rock bands like Foreigner, Journey and the like became obsolete and the game was finally raised in the melodic rock arena. Though the band eventually hit a brief mid-period rough patch – the spotty Panorama and Shake It Up – the band became a fixture at the forefront of rock music. Even after the band lost a bit of their rock cred as they became MTV staples and scored some sappy ballad hits, their fans haven’t wavered – making the band’s first two albums constants on “best-of” lists ever since their release.

On this new effort, the band’s first new album since 1987, the original five member band is unfortunately whittled down to a foursome due to bassist/vocalist Ben Orr’s untimely death in 2000 from pancreatic cancer. The co-producer of this set, Jacknife Lee, takes over the bass chores on some songs while keyboardist Greg Hawkes handles the bottom end on the rest, even using a bass Orr had given him shortly before he passed away. Sadly, it turns out Orr’s presence is just what the band really needed, pun intended, as listening to Ocasek singing all the songs just leads to ear fatigue. Not that hearing Ocasek backed up by his old bandmates again isn’t welcome, it’s just that Orr served as the perfect balance. It was no fluke Orr and Ocasek each wound up singing lead on several of the band’s hits – the two balanced each other perfectly. Ocasek’s oblique, often humorous lyrics and detached vocals contrasted perfectly with Orr’s more down-to-earth, relationship-oriented songwriting to create a perfect blend, a blend missing from this album. While the band does manage to rev it up a couple of times, sounding like the Cars of yore, the set is heaped with too many ballads in an era where the power ballad is a thing of the past. Not only does it date the set, it puts the album clearly into the Cars who went out with the barely listenable Door To Door when Ocasek and crew should have given us the Cars circa Candy-O and proven they could still rock. The MTV era is over – Cars fans want as band that can rock and while they show flashes of their old selves, it is simply not enough.

Despite really wanting to like this, the Cars never really get out of second gear with their reunion album and I must warn fans this is a tepid affair at best. Whether it’s a case of not knowing what their fans really want or just the comfort of returning to the same framework and synth patches they left when they broke up towards the end of the ’80’s, this version of the Cars sound like they are just glad the vehicle is running again and are content not to soup it up in any way. Personally, I am hoping they shake off the rust and take it even more retro, back to the Candy-O sound I was really hoping for when I first heard about their reunion. I can say one thing: it’s ten times better than the horrible album the band (minus Ocasek) recorded with Todd Rundgren as the New Cars and Door To Door was worse than that so maybe this reunion album can be used as a stepping stone to better things. Here’s hoping we don;t have to wait twenty-five more years to find out.

Scott Homewood is a nationally recognized music journalist (geek) who has had his various scribblings, musings, natterings, and ravings published in many magazines, newspapers, and websites (variously alive and long-dead) for the past twenty years. His musical passions are (in no particular order) power-pop, psyche, alt-country, old school country, jazz, blues, and whatever you call the kind of rock and roll The Rolling Stones and Tom Petty make. He is mostly regarded as a cantankerous bastard who will argue to his last breath and possibly engage in fistfighting about anything musical, and therefore probably should just be left alone, unless of course you are wanting to send him music to review, thereby instantly making you one of his very best friends. Under no conditions should you lend him money.