CD reviews

Count Bass D
L7 (Mid-Life Crisis)
*8.3*
(1320 Records)

Goes well with: MF Doom, GZA on cough syrup

Victimized by an industry that cares less about artistry than dollar signs, Dwight Farrell (aka Count Bass D) has been bouncing around like a pinball from label to label since his 1995 debut. As a result, he’s perennially ignored, even as he surpasses his peers in musical and lyrical ingenuity. In addition to producing, rapping, singing and playing all instruments on each of his seven albums, he’s also a devoted husband and father of five, supporting his family on the meager profits made from music. It’s a true story of hip-hop struggle that’s infused in every song he writes.

L7 isn’t Farrell’s best album (see 2002’s Dwight Spitz), but it’s another confident chapter in his life story, the smoothest front-to-back ride in a career filled with detours and road blocks. Count Bass swerves effortlessly around any potholes with the sublime party sing-along “Can We Hang Out Tonight” while pleasing hardcore hip-hop heads with slow-ride bangers like “Gio Any (I Cold Just Came In).”

But the real winner here is “What I Do,” a sincere thank-you note to his fans. Bearing his soul, Farrell claims, “You help me loads with my family woes / When I come to your city and you show up at the shows.” If “keeping it real” is the gauge of an MC’s vitality, then this is the realest shit out there, even if it’s more concerned with putting food on the table than copping a milli.
—Todd Kroviak

Manuok
No End to Limitations
*7.9*

(500/Three Ring Records)

Goes well with: Sunny Day Real Estate, The Black Heart Procession, Bright Eyes’ Digital Ash
Those Via Satellite boys always impressed me. Back in 2001, they were already a local trifecta of troubadours, and even then I could see they were going places. As much as I could’ve predicted frontman Drew Andrews’ transition into ethereal folk and drummer Tim Reece’s work with The Album Leaf, I could never have guessed that the reserved Scott Mercado had Manuok in him.

But it’s always the quiet ones we need to watch out for. Manuok’s second album is his best yet, a musical pastiche that jumps from one corner of Mercado’s id to the next. One minute he’s folksy and focused (“Serves You Right,” “Hold Still”), the next he’s dabbling in electro soundscapes (“Warship”). With its glooming trip-hop beat and nearly whispered vocals, “Almost Home” is downright sexy, as if Mercado couldn’t wait ’til the lady got home for some indie-rock lovin’.

Some might see No End to Limitation’s musical eclecticism as a weakness, as if Mercado can’t keep focus or just doesn’t know what kind of music he wants to make. But if there’s an ADD nature to the whole thing, it’s because, converse to the title, there are no limits to the music ringing around in his head. Focus is for the unimaginative.
—Seth Combs

Lucinda Williams
Little Honey
(Lost Highway)
*8.2*

Goes well with: Fireplaces, firecrackers, absinthe

Williams and her long-suffering, too-talented band, Buick 6, pull the old false start at the opening of Little Honey. In the hands of a less prodigious group, the clichéd, we’re-so-off-the-cuff device would seem precious. To those who’ve experienced Williams & Co. live, however, it’s no parlor trick.

Williams has made a stellar career of walking the fine line between honesty and stagecraft, between intimacy and bombast. Her voice, for starters, is an unearthly mix of quirky reedy-ness and cornbread blues, like a nuanced Janis Joplin channeling an opiated Patsy Cline. Like her best songs, it speaks across canyons of timeless Americana with living-room intimacy.

Here she’s backed by a swirling mix of eclectic vocalists (Matthew Sweet, Susanna Hoffs, Carrie Rodriguez), country accompaniments (electric, steel, slide-guitars, organ, accordion) and even duets with another troubadour legend, Elvis Costello. But from the arena-filling riffs of the album opener to the dirge-like, rawk-fame twins, “Little Rock Star” and “Rarity,” to the heartbreak country-blues of “Tears of Joy” and “Heaven Blues,” Williams never loses her gorgeous compass.

Covering AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top” closes the record with an ironic nod to just how this unappreciated American treasure continues to blissfully plod along. Rustic genius and down-home talent alternate with shimmering brilliance on Little Honey, and it’s oh-so becoming.
—Will K. Shilling