On Black Sunday (2) Cypress Hill tell us that they like to get high (hinted at in “I Wanna Get High”). Some people say smoking pot makes them really creative. | doubt it. Repetitious, monotonous and redundant. Fishbone’s Give A Mon- key A Brain And He’ll Swear He’s The Centre Of The Universe (2) displays glimmers of genuine talent, espe- cially on the ska inflected stuff, like “Unyielding Conditioning.” Over- all, however, the album is numbing, irritatingly strange and politically obvious. Billy Joel’s River of Dreams (2) is bad taste itself. The Peace Together compilation (2), a benefit for the youth of Ireland, is a collec- tion of truly clueless renditions of songs like “Oliver’s Army,” “Games Without Frontiers” and “Invisible Sun” by the likes of Pop Will Eat Itself, Curve and Carter blah-blah- blah. Bludgeoning, mechanical and talentless, the album only accentu- ates how miserable the UK music sceneis. U2’s version of Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love,” a duet with a recordinga la Natalie Cole, is clum- sily executed but Bono’s falsetto delivery is gorgeous. The Waterboys’ Dream Harder (1.5) is remarkably bland. Moxy Fruvous’s Bargainville (1) is a waste of bullets.

modern world

An increasingly common theme in modern rock is the concept of the media’s bombardment of sex, violenceand propaganda, as brought up by U2’s Zoo TY tour. From

Zooropa (4), U2’s “Numb” sounds like an anthem for a generation. The album itself is fairly up-beat, quirky and tuneful, somewhat remi- niscent of Remain in Light T.Heads. The band’s new, lighter tone isn’t SO pompous as in the past and their melodic instincts remain perfect. The lone dud is the Johnny Cash Sung “The Wanderer,” which ends the album on a positively surreal

ote. Of all people, Billy Idol jumped n board the Zoo train with yberpunk (2.5), a vie for artistic ntegrity in which he steals ideas from ten-year-old sci-fi paperbacks. t’s the kind of dumb rock star stuff critics just love to bully. Me, | find Cyberpunk’s high-tech decor not hateable; he does a decent job Spiffing up what otherwise would be just another batch of crappy Billy Idol songs. Easily his best al- bum ever -- and if that impresses you, you've wandered into the Wrong music section. ~ Almost as unexpectedly, Pete [Townshend tackled the computer age with the ludicrous Psychoderelict (2.5), not merely an album, heav- ens no, a dramatic work! ownshend’s rock-drama preten- Sions are strictly middle-brow, at best, and Psychoderelict is depress- ng navel-gazing (and it’s a navel e’ve seen many times). The non- Stop chatter reduces the actual songs to sound-bites, but a couple of them do stand out, capturing hat epic Who sound: “English Boy” and “Let’s Get Pretentious” (Pete’s heme song, methinks). The Zoo nfluence is strictly decorative, not extending past the booklet design and the industrial guitar riff and erky-jerkrhythms of “English Boy.” ownshend remains one of the ew of his class who seems capable of creating new and exciting music, but his conceptual affliction is be- ginning to look terminal.

ES God {| 7] During the summer | also ame to the conclusion that Van orrison is God -- or at least a genre. Ya got jazz, ya got classical, ya got r&b, andya got Van Morrison, ore powerful than any of ‘em. But it wasn’t Van's boring new album hat brought on this revelation, ather it was You Gotta Sin to Get

Saved (4), the second solo album from former Lone Justice belter, Maria McKee. Try as it might, Sin is a little contrived and derivative, truer to the sound of Morrison‘ than his spirit, but McKee isa solid songwriter whose surging compo- sitions recall the powerful yearning of Morrison’s best work, and she’s probably the best singer on the planet. McKee even tackles two of Morrison’s songs: quite bravely, “The Way Young Lovers Do” from Astral Weeks (my goodness!) and Them’s “Sad Lonely Eyes.” The former trades in the mystery and searching of the original fora stand- ardarrangement but still gets across on the window-rattling force of McKee’s vocal; the latter, how- ever, is a soulful improvement on Them’s primitive original. Sin’s main

Robert Plant’s music, as adventur- ous and forward looking as it is, is forgettable.

Sweet Relief (4.5) is a benefit album for Victoria Williams, a vir- tually unknown singer/songwriter who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1992. Her songs are extraordinarily resonant, Dylan- esque, andthe interpretations here are vastly diverse but united in their ragged earthiness and some- times haunting, sometimes inspir- ing tones. The best tracks include Pearl Jam’s surprisingly restrained (and all the more powerful for it) rendition of “Crazy Mary,” Maria McKee’s “Opelousas (Sweet Re-

flaw is its backward-gazing, but when fie

the worst thing you can say about an album is that it’s not St. Dominic’s Preview, you must be doing some- thing very right.

The man himself’s Too Long in Exile (2.5) is a minor Hymns to the Silence, another tour de force of Van’s current styles of lite jazz, r&b, country and some minorly searching stuff that reminds us of where he came from. A little live- lier than usual, Van still seems de- termined to keep his music firmly planted in the background, where he’s been for over a decade. For those who still believe, Too Long in Exile is absolute proof that Van is gone and he ain’t never coming

Van Morrison *« d random —_ takes

Anthrax’s The Sound of White Noise (3) is their most melodic and focused work ever. Tempos are reduced, tunes offset the aggres- sion and new guy John Bush can only be described as a soul singer. Still, the compositions often sound more like an impressively arranged series of segues than actual songs.

Robert Plant is always depend- able for a solid, but never spectacu- lar, outing. His latest, Fate Of Na- tions (3), is his most Zeppelin- esqueyet. The Zep-ish stuff is what really works (“Calling To You,” “Promised Land”); the rest is con- fident, lushly produced and evoca- tive (especially “29 Palms,” one of the best songs of his solo career), but somehow unaffecting. With- out the muscle of Jimmy Page,

lief),” Matthew Sweet’s “This Mo- ment,” which makes the best of Sweet’s vocal limitations with its modest melody, and Soul Asylum’s rousing “Summer of Drugs.” The only misfire is Michelle Shocked’s predictably awkward gospel read- ing of “Holy Spirit.” Understated, poetic and both mournful and joy- ous, the unheralded Sweet Relief was the summer’s best album. Janet Jackson discovered the wild thing this summer and traded in “Someday is Tonight” (or whatever the hell that was) for “I want you to make me wet.” Jackson’s take on sex is less self- exploitive than Madonna, less creepy than most soul man agoniz- ingand less psychotic than P| Harvey or Liz Phair. janet. [sic] (3.5) is one of pop’s few realistic albums about sex (along with Let’s Get It On). Never before has such an assertive view of sex come froma woman -- and gone to number one. Anyway, this horny li'l platter is also punchy -- the woman is a hit-making ma- chine. But keeping the album from pop Valhalla is a gooey mass of balladry occupying about the last _ third of the disc. Still, with about half as much talent as her brother, Janet Jackson, a genuine pop artist, puts out music that’s about twice as good.