Dollars for Discs

Time to wake up, dear reader, we're trying something new. This article that you're reading, the one with the "Sound Check" logo at its top, is a roundup of more-or-less current CD releases. This won't replace the regular "Rotation" column that you may or may not read; that will continue about its standard business the rest of the month, while this, if plans pan out, will wrap up each month with a broader overview of what's out there. The hope is that this will let us increase our coverage of contemporary musical recordings, and in a handy narrative format no less.

As for the boundaries of this column, there are none, other than how much I can hear. Major release, independent, national act, local, it's all grist for the disc changer. And in the spirit of consumer awareness -- this is a shopping guide, and I know you have only so much of the folding stuff to spread around -- I'll even rate the brave little discs according to my perception of the merits of ownership. That is to say: five stars (*****) means Òthis disc deserves, by virtue of its absolute genius and purity, a place in the collection of any person capable of appreciating musical beauty." Four stars (****) means "damned good stuff, worth the cash for fans and the open-minded." Three stars (***) tells you that you're buying flawed but not necessarily fucked material, that this is a mixed bag or that the artist in question has done better work, and if you've got that, you needn't bother with this. Two stars (**) indicates the sort of mediocrity that no one but a masochist or obsessive collector would consider paying for. Unless you're friends with the band. One star (*) suggests absolute dreck, artistic bankruptcy in vision and/or execution, and indicates the probable presence of true evil somewhere along the production line. One-half star (1/2) indicates an unnecessarily picky method of minute differentiation.

That brings us to our first item of consideration, which happens to be the CD I'm listening to now -- R.E.M.'s Monster (Warner Brothers). The music press loves R.E.M. for Michael Stipe's well-mannered activism, and they bit when the publicists sent out the notice that Monster was to be R.E.M.'s guitar-heavy return to rock, because that's exactly what everybody wanted to hear after two albums in which Stipe's once-mumbling moodiness threatened to float off into an ether of synth washes and strings. Yeah, well, okay. So if Monster is R.E.M.'s return to rock, that only points out that R.E.M. never really, you know, rocked. They chugged, yeah, and they popped up and bounced around now and then, but the significant appeal of R.E.M. has been texture, not brute force. What happens when R.E.M. hands the reins to Peter Buck and his guitar is a mess that dribbles from the half-baked "Let Me In" to the boneheaded clunk of "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" -- surely the most dismal R.E.M. single ever to clot radio. But Monster is also Stipe's sex album, which seems to dictate that he distort his voice into something that sounds tough while expressing articulately confused conclusions. One example, "King of Comedy," makes me wince like I haven't winced since Neil Young sold me Trans. Not very interesting, I'm afraid. (***). Much more interesting, though it's had plenty of time to age, is Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (Bar/None), a liberal sample of the wares of Juan Garcia Esquivel, the last of the Mexican big band leaders. Esquivel recorded for RCA from 1957 to 1968 -- about the time that stereo was replacing mono in the singles lairs of Playboy-reading America -- and his LPs were favorites for test driving the new system. By now, though, they've been out of print for half of forever, and it wasn't until Re/Search Publications included Esquivel in its Incredibly Strange Music issue that word started to filter out beyond record collectors. The word is good. Esquivel used his big band -- which included everything from a blaring horn section to slide guitar to Chinese bells to gourds to female voices singing "Pow!" -- to fill the dynamic envelope with an off-kilter blend of originals ("Mucha Muchacha" is a standout) and standards ("Sentimental Journey" being the most whacked). It's loungy. It's camp (it was camp even then). It's hi-fi. It's the time-warped product of a very narrow slice of American history, and at its best it sounds like the soundtrack to a swanky uptown cartoon about single guys with big stereos. That's a good thing. (****)