Reviews

The Deal: Two "shows" in one night at the Muse offers a look at some of the variety of Charlotte's music scene.

The Good: I'll start at the beginning. Nicolette Emanuelle opened up the early show with a fantastic piano-driven set. She often draws comparisons to Tori Amos, though her themes may come across a little darker. With only a drummer to back her, Emanuelle delighted with her talents on the keyboard, vocals and in songwriting. She'd even go back out to perform a few songs on cello with the next act.

The Hot House Hefftones were the second act of the early bill and hit the stage swinging with their combo of jazz and swing with some New Orleans flavor added by the trio of horns.

Singer Emily Estrella has one helluva stage presence on her as she sang and swayed, made faces and gestures to go with the lyrics and just appeared to be having a great time. A group I hadn't seen before, but one that I'm hoping to catch again soon.

Thief was the middle act on the third bill and got things a little more charged up with a full band, indie-rock sound as players even found time to change up instruments. Seeing as how the group drew a decent crowd to the Muse that required chairs to be moved out, I'd keep your eyes out for these guys.

The final band of the night was S.O. Stereo. Frontman Bradley C. Davis sank himself into the lyrics and let his emotions pour out through the band's brand of straight-forward rock. Having seen the band more than a year ago at Tremont, I can easily say they've come a long way since them and appear a lot more comfortable on stage.

About halfway through a Robert Randolph concert, the slide wunderkind kicks his chair back, throws his feet in the air, and starts spinning on it. This is the cue for the rest of the band to go into double time, and--if it's 12:01 a.m. on New Year's day--it's the cue for three million females to teeter onstage for the dubious privilege of having champagne sprayed at them. For a brief moment, the 9:30 Club feels like Cancun in mid-March: the jam disintegrates, replaced by awkward, arrhythmic dancing.

Then the ladies evacuate and the Randolphs get back to putting on the best live show in the country.

No matter how hard we might try, family gatherings and holiday season don't always add up to joyous -- or even peaceful -- experiences. But when the Trucks clan joined forces for their Soul Stew Revival bash at Tampa Theatre on Monday, a near capacity crowd of around 1,400 witnessed domestic bliss at its finest. The jubilant vibe, marked by expert musicianship, permeated the ancient venue. If the rumors are true about the historic movie house being haunted, even the ghosts must have been grinning.

The gnat's-ass-tight gang of musicians mesmerized with gorgeous executions of the timeworn tension-and-release dynamic. It's a God-send rooted in the churches of the Deep South, one that was sold with aplomb to the secular world by the likes of Ray Charles, James Brown and Aretha Franklin. The Allman Brothers Band, Derek Trucks' chief employer, then expanded the sonic presentation with Kind of Blue-indebted jazz elements in the late 1960s. Decades later, the holy tradition thrives, coming together wonderfully Monday night at Tampa Theatre.

Philip Frobos pauses when asked if Carnivores, the band in which he sings and plays bass, is a punk band. "You could say we're a punk band," he offers, "but we're a punk band in the way that the Pixies were a punk band, or the way the Replacements, the Minutemen and Pavement were punk bands. The roots are there but we're going somewhere else with them."

To get a handle on where Carnivores (formerly Chainstereo) takes these roots, it requires a psychedelic trek into lo-fi tropicalia, lounge and death-afflicted sound collages that defy easy categorization. Frobos - along with Nathaniel Higgins (guitar), Caitlin Lang (keyboard/vocals) and Tauseef Anam (drums) - splatters songs with a clutter of fuzz and musical inflections that come off busy at first. But every rhythm, melody and yearning voice is placed exactly where it's needed. The spirit of punk is undeniable in its presence, but the experimental bend of the songs is on par with the likes of Animal Collective, Faust and even the harmonic complexities of early Beach Boys records.

From the sad, ethereal pace of "For Griffin" to the bouncy, Brazilian flare of "Heart of Copper" on the band's debut, All Night Dead U.S.A., (due in March on Double Phantom), Carnivores shows genuine enthusiasm for exploring the fringes of fun, exotic music. Drummer Anam studies music at Emory University where he dabbles in everything from Samba to classical. The rest of the group springs from the traditions of homespun DIY. Their strengths and weaknesses provide a counter-balance of chaos and considered songwriting.

Sometimes Atlanta's new wave of underground hip-hop seems like a motherless child. Or an alien that lost contact with the mothership.

In a galaxy far away from the finger snaps that made Bankhead go pop and the traps that turned T.I. and Young Jeezy into hot commodities, there exists an alternate universe where beats are measured by the blogosphere instead of the bump produced in your trunk.

Over the past year, an emerging underworld (filled with hipster-leaning hoppers, second-generation ATLiens, and otherwise unidentifiable but fly MCs) seemed poised to forsake an authentic Dirty South sound for more of the same cocaine-laced synth lines and recycled computer love à la Kanye West. It became a desperate state of affairs.

But the new compilation The 808 Experiment, Vol. 1 from SMKA Productions proves there's still hope. By bridging the city's slicker, hipster derivative and its indigenous red clay swagger, the album may bring Atlanta's rap legacy back to the future. And a burgeoning scene could get the chance to redefine itself before some random blogger does.

The 808 Experiment features more than 25 MCs, including Gripplyaz, one of the artists on the standout track "Caddys." Once he says with a laugh, "I am not a fucking hipster" for the umpteenth time during a recent telephone interview, it becomes clear not only how frustrated he is with the label but also how much he embodies the sentiment behind the compilation. Grip, like a growing class of local acts, occupies that rare, hard-to-define space within Atlanta's underground between straight-up hood and hipster-hop.

When otherwise respectable bands cash-in on the holiday season with a Christmas album, nine times out of 10, it's a travesty of forced sentiment and seasonal classics ripped to shreds. The Fleshtones' Stocking Stuffer rises above the typical schmaltz with a fun Christmas album that's tacky in its own right.

The Deal: Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, releases latest mash-up creation featuring more than 300 samples/"snippets."

The Good: It's amazing this guy hasn't been sued - he uses more than 300 other songs to create his songs that generally blend from one into the next. It's a walk through just about everyone's CD collection - Nirvana, Kelly Clarkson, Pearl Jam, Jay-Z, Spencer Davis Group, Twisted Sister, Sly and the Family Stone, Public Enemy, Steve Miller Band, Jimi Hendrix, Flo-Rida, Metallica, LL Cool J and the list goes on. The "fun" part is listening to the disc and trying to recognize the lyrics, beats and sounds.

Raphael Saadiq and Dr. John are both on tour at present, peddling different brands of regressively delightful music to packed, loyal audiences. The Doctor (Mac Rebennack, to get technical) and Saadiq (né Wiggins) wear their influences on their sleeves and dress in full-on vintage: Rebennack in voodoo regalia, Saadiq in a chickadee-yellow suit and oversize horn-rims.

The distinction, of course, is that the Saadiq's throwback pose is provisional; the Doctor's is dynastic.

Friday night Common was in town to play a secret show at an MCA-owned loft in River West. It was sponsored by NBC 5, but despite the hella expensive-looking lighting rig, the catering, and the Hennessy open bar, it actually felt something like a real loft party--the crowd was fairly small and, since tickets were only available through a Common-themed trivia quiz, extremely pumped. In the rare moments when Com wasn't bouncing around, he was big-upping Chicago's racial diversity, bringing a south-side girl up onstage and asking her if she knew a chick who broke his guy's heart, and freestyling what might be hip-hop's first joke about the Blago scandal.

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Last night I was ready to announce "last call" when I put on Letterman to check out the music guest. There loomed Jamey Johnson, this truck-driving fella with a rich, burly voice. He recounted a conversation with his WWII-vet granddaddy ... and I nearly had to wipe a manly tear from my eye. Titled "In Color," the song is moving without being maudlin, and Johnson, who co-wrote the number, delivers the touching lyric with old-school, outlaw authority -- and charm. Fatherly charm. Big brother charm. Two old pals with lots of battle scars sharing a bear-hug charm.

But "In Color" is not the most gripping song on Johnson's breakthrough disc That Lonesome Song. That honor goes to the nearly six-minute long "High Cost of Living (Ain't Nothing Like the Cost of Living High)," another original. Here's this mainstream country singer -- Johnson's on Mercury -- candidly singing about his past struggles with cocaine. The lived-in lyrics and the shackled-but-ever-present demons in his voice place the song on par with the best by fellow and former Nashville rebels Waylon, Willie, Hag and Cash.