Summer is traditionally a popular time of the year to release big albums, and this summer is no exception. While you’re basking in the sunshine, check out some of the Badger Herald’s picks for this summer’s best releases.
Metallica, St. Anger (June 10)
Imagine the scenario: your second bass player in 15 years has up and left, your drummer has successfully pissed off every college student with a computer and a broadband internet connection, and now middle-age soccer moms are starting to like your music after a stint with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
If your name is James Hetfield and your band is named Metallica, you realize that presently the odds are vehemently against you.
With a new bass player in tow and three years of hype fueling the fire, Metallica will drop its eighth original studio album, St. Anger, June 10, knowing full well that now is the time to either put out or get out of the heavy metal realm the band helped to popularize since its inception in the early 1980s.
Prematurely dubbed as the group’s heaviest album since the ominous “Black Album” that has served as a gateway for the digression for adolescent males since 1991, the boys of ‘tallica hope to rekindle the loyalty and trust of their disillusioned fans.
Summer 2003 could become the resurrection of this fallen metal band, that is, as long as nobody mentions a word about KaZaA to Lars Ulrich.
— Alexander Larson, ArtsEtc. writer
Eels, Shootenanny (June 3)
The Eels have been around for quite awhile, but scored only one mainstream radio hit with “Novocaine for the Soul” in the mid-1990s. The group has continued on to bigger and better things since then, and the June 22 release of Shootenanny! will prove a treat for avid fans and newcomers alike. Combining the blues element of 2001’s ElectroShock Blues with lead singer E’s slightly off sense of humor (one track is entitled “Restraining Order Blues,” for example) and an undeniable ability to produce catchy pop tunes, Shootenanny! takes all the best parts of past Eels efforts and combines them into one kickin’ album. Pick this one up if you’re in the mood for something a little different from the mainstream.
–Molly Webb, ArtsEtc. editor
Matt Sharp, Puckett’s Versus the Country Boy EP (June 17)
When Matt Sharp left alternative favorite Weezer after the release of 1996’s Pinkerton, he kept fans satisfied by pursuing more seriously his side project, The Rentals. Although The Rentals released two albums to a decent amount of critical acclaim, the band broke up in the late 1990s, leaving Sharp fans wondering what was next. The answer came in late 2002, when Sharp embarked on a solo acoustic tour. Fans will be even more satisfied come mid-June, when Sharp’s first official solo effort, Puckett’s Versus the Country Boy EP, is released. While Sharp’s solo work has been markedly different from Weezer- and Rentals-era music, he is undoubtedly a talented musician and songwriter, and the world should anxiously look forward to his solo debut.
–Molly Webb, ArtsEtc. editor
Revis, Places For Breathing (May 20)
There are few bands that can take a lifeless formula and inject so much energy into it that they redefine what you thought is possible. Revis, a quintet from Carbondale, Ill., may play from formula but their music is nothing short of astounding. It’s hard hitting, knock-you-upside-the-head rock with delicate understatements. Originally slated for an April release, Places For Breathing will be released May 20. Radio hit “Caught In The Rain” is only a niblet of what can be expected. Songs like “Seven,” “City Beneath” and “Living Rooms” exude an intangible element that makes this group a special hybrid of unbridled enthusiasm and gooey melodicism. They’ll eat up and spit out the posturing poseurs as they draw you into a world of straight-up rock that’s got the glossies talking and reminding the haters that full-flavored rock is still a vital fixture in today’s music scene.
–Nathan Lichtman, ArtsEtc. writer
Warren Zevon, My Dirty Life and Times (unknown release date)
When last we left Warren Zevon, he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and his life expectancy was being measured in weeks. Thankfully, he’s hung on since then, and he’s been hard at work on what will very likely be his final album. Along the way, this highly respected and admired singer/songwriter has accepted offers of service from artists as prominent as Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Dwight Yoakam and Ry Cooder.
The album, tentatively titled My Dirty Life And Times, is due sometime this summer, and Zevon has promised a set of songs that deal with his confrontation with mortality in typically wry and affecting fashion. Promising to be an emotional journey of intelligence, heart and painful reality, My Dirty Life And Times has the potential to be a fitting and moving conclusion to the journey of a vastly underappreciated greatness of modern American music.
–Charles Hughes, ArtsEtc. writer
Macy Gray, The Trouble with Being Myself (July 15)
Like her or hate her, no one can honestly say that Macy Gray is run-of-the-mill. In possession of one of the most unique voices in modern music, a dusty warble that falls somewhere between Billie Holiday and Tom Waits, Gray has released two albums of idiosyncratic, yet ultimately rewarding, modern soul music, the best of which (“I Just Can’t Wait To Meetchu,” “Relating To A Psychopath” and the truly rapturous “I Try”) is among the best in contemporary R&B, grounded in a rich musical legacy while being unmistakably Macy. With The Trouble With Being Myself, she once again ventures back into her individual artistic territory. Good or bad, it promises to be interesting.
–Charles Hughes, ArtsEtc. writer