Arts & Entertainment
'The Balancing Act’ walks tightrope
The Balancing Act, “Three
Squares and a Roof,” IRS Records.
Maturity sometimes wins over the
fiery-eyed angst of adolescence. You
know those musicians. Crir z and
howl on stage. Power of the spoken
word to change the world.
But maturity, nothing more than
simple understanding, is when you
sit on the porch on a late-autumn
Saturday evening, cozy with your
acoustic guitar, cheering on the
whirlwind youth in their pursuit of
anarchic reform.
He stayed at home last night, to do
some soul searching/We hope he
found one/Nothing' sever certain!it’s
not easy being human but it’s hard to
be cement! so he’s just another genius
who can't pay the rent
“The Ballad of Art Snyder”
The Balancing Act, with shades of
Simon and Garfunkel and the Grate
ful Dead, don’t harp on and on about
social reform. On this album they
seem to care more for writing well
metered prose and merge the words
with progressive instrumentals —
reacting to the words only as a matter
of conversation.
The four in the group — Jeff
Davis, Robert Blackmon, Willie
Aron and Steve Wagner — seem to
grasp the tightwire act of a road
musician’s life. Nights spent on a
bunk bed in the back room of some
corroded tavern, barkceps trying to
pay you with cocaine; nights to frame
on the wall and nights destined for
that Siberian archipelago of dead
memory.
But then to settle down, knowl
edge of the world and the road
calloused in your eyes, and harmo
nize about the road gone by and the
road ahead. A circular kind of thing.
“Red Umbrella”sporLstight,reso
nant harmony that you get from
V
wandering the New York subway
tunnels when you don’t have enc jgh
money to ride the train, singing for all
you ’re worth and rolling steady to the
bridge.
The album moves along at a
steady pace; some songs, like
“Whiskered Wife,” are a little too
slow, a bog in the overall works,
though most carry their tempo with
aural aesthetic quality.
—Kevin Cowan
The Flaming Lips, “Aw, God!
It’s The Flaming Lips,” Restless
Records.
Used to be that bands who made
“drug music” did so pretty obviously
and unsclf-consciously. Song length
conveniently matched the ebbs and
zeniths of your average hallucino
genic excursion into the Vedanta,
usually vacillating between slither
ing, coiling trance music and sonic
explosions that popped those little
lysergic soap bubbles your cerebral
cortex was blowing frantically. Lyr
ics skirted Ihe outskirtsof coherence,
occasionally frolicking nimbly inio
the glib meadows of absurdist in
jokes: Your head w as melting, a giant
day-glocrab was opening your box of
Frcakics cereal in search of the prize,
and your skin fell like sh-1 * nrpet.
The album covers u didn’t
brag “drug music,” i. .nslead
graphically simulated ihe hallucino
gen experience with amorphous or
ganic shapes that, if you’d never been
on a blotter binge, would probably
make you avoid the album because
someone had done his fecal duly on
u.
The Flaming Lips’ second album,
“Aw God! It’s . . .” is classic acid
rix k,a virtual festivalofdrug-soaked
influences from the Hieronymous
Bosch-mccts-Jackson-Pollock-in
thc-blacklight-room-at-Spencer’s
Gifts LP cover, to the lava-lamp
volcanic eruptions that splatter from
your speakers and evaporate slowly
on the walls.
In case you might be doubting the
necessity of an acid-rock resurgence
in the high-tech, pasta-to-go, deco
1980s, the Lips respond with punk
declamation in “Everything’s Ex
ploding”:
“When I look in the mirror/and my
brains are falling/out of my head./
Well, there’s nothing wrong it’s just
the way I feel/if you don’t like it/write
your own song...” This witch’s brew
of punk, Butthole Surfers revisionist
new wave and rctrometal comes on so
self-assured that it’s hard to write it off
as a part of alternative music’s search
for vicarious, and for the most part,
vestigial nostalgia. This Lips may
have borrowed lustfully from a ’60s
musical genre, but their power is
undeniable. They careen through this
genre like the Replacements careened
through the grunge-blues of the
Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” on
“Let itBe”and especially “Tim,’’until
the influences become mere trace
elements.
“Aw God! It’s.. .’’is a thundering
scries of aural waves, ebbing spo
radically just so the listener realizes
just how monstrous the power chords
arc when they come roaring back into
the mix.
Great vinyl and highly, highly
recommended. Probably real effec
tive on acid, too.
—Charles Lieurance
Fields of Nephilim, “Dawnra
zor,” Beggar's Banquet.
The Fields of Nephilim is one of
England’s fastest-growing cull
bands. They imported a cowboy
image from American western mov
ies, and their first American release,
“Dawnrazor,” is a combination of
dark, moody, English pop-angst
music and these Hollywood western
themes.
One of the interesting things about
this album is that the band has created
a musical niche of its own and runs
around terrorizing it like a group of
small-town villains. The band mem
bers arc self-proclaimed bad guys,
and try to appear and sound as evil as
they can.
Will) songs like “Dust,” “Power”
and “Preacher Man” (now a video on
MTV), they utilize train whistles,
far-off harmonicas and the desert
w ind to distinguish themselves from
just any English art band.
The fact is that half the charm of
this album is the synthesis of English
modern pop music with American
western music and themes. It is a
unique souad. Other bands have
worked the wild west into their mu
sic, such as Wall of Voodoo and Gun
Club, but not from the point of view
of the Fields of Nephilim. The over
all effect achieved by the band is
music created by cowboys with fancy
haircuts wearing a little bit of mas
cara.
Actually, most of the songs on the
album arc quite danccable. The vo
calist has a remarkable voice, rich
and resonant, capable of directing the
power of the music. The bass and
guitars drive each song relentlessly.
The drums punctuate the mood.
The only problematic song on the
album is “The Sequel,” which ends
with unconvincing shrieks from a
woman followed by a chain saw.
Other titan that it is a fairly inoffen
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