Reviews

Auto-Tune? You may know it by its previous incarnations as a Vocoder or Talkbox. It's an audio processor developed by Antares Technologies that corrects vocal pitch, but its trademark effect is the robotic sound it can add to singing.

The main perpetrator of the scourge is T-Pain, a hack who sings, near as I can tell, everything through Auto-Tune. He's been highly rewarded for this gimmickry with several hit albums and a bevy of guest vocal appearances on hip-hop singles. In fact, Diddy reportedly paid T-Pain a royalty to work Auto-Tune "magic" on his new recording.

 Long-distance duo SUN CIRCLE--former Chicagoan and "laptronica" artist Greg Davis, who's now in Vermont, and Montana-based Zach Wallace, who also plays bass in Memorize the Sky with another former Chicagoan, reedist Matt Bauder--stick to sustained drones on every track of theirs I've heard so far. One piece on their self-titled debut CD-R is built around intersecting vocal chants--low, guttural notes, drawn out Tibetan-monk style and amplified till they're strident and grainy, a la Tony Conrad--but most of their material is purely instrumental, combining organ, bowed strings, and gongs in slowly shifting epics that sometimes hover and sometimes pulsate vigorously. Beneath its surface each drone swarms with microscopic activity--tiny changes in texture, density, and pitch that keep your ears busy once you surrender to the sumptuous sound.

The Deal: Teen country sensation releases sophomore album, follow up to triple-platinum self-titled debut, one month before her 19th birthday.

The Good: First off, credit has to be given to the fact Swift wrote or co-wrote all the tunes on her album. The album's tone sticks to the pop side of the country road. She's got a solid voice with strength at the right times and enough of a breezy tilt when needed. The album gives Swift a second building block in a strong foundation that is sure to lead to a lengthy career. Cliches are never good, but I'm sure the best is yet to come from the young singer. Part of Swift's appeal is that she teeters on the country fence - "White Horse" would do well on just about any pop station that plays ballads. Other songs use violins or other instrumentation to give it more of a country than pop feel, but it's definitely a fine line - see "You Belong With Me" and "Change."

I've been pretty amazed by the variety and quality that the loose group of New York musicians affiliated with the Desco/Daptone Records juggernaut has maintained over the past decade, combining funk, Afrobeat, and hard soul. Flagship band the Dap-Kings have enhanced the already considerable appeal of singer Sharon Jones to the point that they're headlining the Vic with her on Thursday (it wasn't so long ago that they were playing the Double Door), and their members have also turned up in various combinations backing Amy Winehouse, Al Green, and Lily Allen, among others. Other label-affiliated groups, some of which predate the Dap-Kings, include the Daktaris, Antibalas, the Soul Providers, the Sugarman 3, and the Budos Band.

James McMurtry might not be a name on par with, say, fellow Texans Lyle Lovett or Steve Earle, but the singer/songwriter and bad-ass guitarist is still a revered act in the Americana world. McCurtry's latest album, the outstandingly incendiary, darkly humorous, wonderfully emotive and rustically rocking Just Us Kids, has garnered glowing write-ups in glossies such as Blender, Mojo and Entertainment Weekly, the latter of which showered the disc with superlatives like "brilliant," "hilarious" and "poignant" in giving it an A- grade. Just Us Kids is selling, too. It has reached a very respectable No. 18 on Billboard's Top Independent Albums chart.

So it's surprising when I'm given McMurtry's mobile phone number and instructed to ring him in the afternoon. Any afternoon. Easy as that, the PR person says. But I'm skeptical. Usually when dealing with an artist of McMurtry's status there's a set time, date and minute count to which, you, the interviewer, are supposed to stick. Twenty minutes is the norm.

I dial the digits and hear a gruff "hello" that could only be James McMurtry's. "Give me a moment to pull over," he says. "I've got a manual transmission." He steers his automobile into a nearby parking lot to grant an interview on a recent Tuesday afternoon. McMurtry has been driving around his hometown of Austin, running the same mundane errands you or I might conduct on an off day. He good-naturedly refers to the interview as just another duty after I apologize for interrupting his daily routine.

The Americana music icon speaks slowly. His voice is deep. His answers are straightforward and marked by an economy of words - and a drawl that reflects both his native Virginia and decades spent in the Lone Star State. You get the sense he's incapable of feeding you bullshit, and it's the same way with his music. Whether recounting the machinations of a crystal meth cooker in the fan favorite "Choctaw Bingo," or telling me how his world-famous father Larry McMurtry's one shortcoming as a novelist/screenwriter is that "he always gets firearms wrong," the younger McMurtry's words smack of integrity.

Nashville singer Raul Malo, who first made his name as front man for Music City outcats the Mavericks, rolls into town Wednesday for a gig at Joe's. On his solo records Malo has consistently nailed a retro feel, and unlike many artists treading similar turf, he doesn't come off as a creatively bankrupt hack exploiting other people's nostalgia to make a buck. With a voice like his--a gorgeous blend of keening Roy Orbison pathos and cool Frank Sinatra swagger--"retro" is the only path it'd make any sense for him to follow. It's not his fault he was born in the wrong decade.

The Deal: "Reigning King of Afrobeat," son of Fela, releases first studio album in seven years.

The Good: Afro-beat's closest sonic relative may be reggae, but on Kuti's latest release, he does what he can to infuse a jazz influence and bring the music to its Nigerian roots. His 17-piece band may be in full-force, but Kuti spent some of his time off from recording learning to play piano and reintroducing himself to the trumpet. Themes of peace flow throughout the disc's 12 tracks. The album is definitely music with a message, but the influence is as much on the music. There's plenty of instrumentation on the seven-and-a-half minute "Demo Crazy." A mostly instrumental track, "Do You Know," calls out a number of jazz greats, Billie Holiday and Miles Davis among them.

  The most hyped record in rock history begins with a big noise -- but it's ultimately more of a whimper than a bang. The opening title-track amounting to a Pro Tools mess of guitar processing that pours out of the speakers loud and hard but never rocks, never swings, never grabs you the way, say, the entire first side of Appetite for Destruction did. Axl Rose's voice, though, remains an awesomely sadistic growl, a reminder that, yes, it has truly been missed during the past 15 years.

Chinese Democracy improves with the industrial-informed freak out "Shackler's Revenge" and again with the muscular guitar kiss-off "Better" - because no one delivers bitter quite like Axl. The same theme is explored on the power ballad "Street of Dreams" (previously leaked as "The Blues"). Keyboards, strings, face-melting guitar solos (courtesy of both Buckethead and Robin Finkck), it's Axl, the music mad man genius at his post-modern Wall of Sound best. The only bummer is when the singer dips into his lower register. I can't help but hear Forgetting Sarah Marshall's "Dracula's Lament."

Every note, sound and lyric of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is so indelibly imprinted in people's heads that the thought of performing it live must be a little daunting. If that was the case last night at Ruth Eckerd Hall, Cheap Trick did not let on.

They nailed it.

The band had help. A keyboardist and second guitarist augmented the group. Behind them on a riser, 24 members of the Florida Orchestra filled out the sound, playing the string and horn parts with accuracy and feeling. Just for good measure, an Indian sitarist and tabla player came in from Miami specifically for the George Harrison-penned raga "Within You Without You."

The evening opened with some instrumental versions of Beatles songs by the orchestra, which was followed by a brief set by Donovan. The 62-year old Irishman brandished a kelly green acoustic guitar and performed "Catch the Wind," "Sunshine Superman" and "Lalena," followed by heartfelt turns at the Beatles "Dear Prudence" and "Blackbird."

I thought "Hurdy Gurdy Man" would've been a nice choice; it's Donovan's most psychedelic tune, and he could've employed the orchestra for interesting effect.

After an intermission, Cheap Trick and company took the stage and launched into "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with exuberance and just the right measure of rock ferocity.

From the outset of SMKA Productions' newly released compilation, The 808 Experiment Vol. 1, it's clear that Atlanta has finally arrived.

Surely, you say, the hip-hop capital of the world is no newbie to rap's all-encompassing map. And you're right. But among Atlanta's emerging rap underworld -- filled with hipster-leaning hoppers, 2nd generation ATLiens, and otherwise unidentifiable but objectively fly MCs -- that original, Dirty South sound had been all but bleached out and forsaken. Until now.

With The 808 Experiment, SMKA accomplishes the seemingly impossible: It bridges Atlanta's slick, hipster-hop derivative with the indigenous, red clay swagger for which the A has always been known.

Beats simultaneously swim in bass-drunk, 808 kicks while dancing between melodic, pastel-colored keys. Even when SMKA dares to sample esoteric pop songs like Sting's "Englishman in New York," the resulting track ["Alien (When in Rome) feat. Jay West, Savage and Gilles] is certifiably stamped "ATL."

Their secret weapon? SMKA producers Blake "808 Blake" German and Kyle "7King" King, along with in-house "hustler" Mike Walberg, are all Atlanta natives. Damn near unheard of in this day and age, right? Meanwhile, the compilation features plenty among the city's rising crop of natives and transplants alike, including Gripplyaz, A. Leon Craft, and Young Trimm ("Caddy"), trio Supreeme ("I'm On Fire"), Wil May ("Sweet Confusion"), and o8o of T!Katz ("Fire in the Hole"). But some of the biggest surprises come from lesser known cats who turn in equally stellar performances, including Double R of Miami, Nuff Sed, J Beans, Dee Rail, Fat Tony, Niko Villamor, Jay West, Rome Fortune, J Young, Radcliff Hyphen, Crysis, Brandon Michael, Toussaint, Alexandria Lushington and Tom P of Decatur. El da Sensei of New Jersey-based Artifacts is also featured.

With only 48 hours since it's release it's impossible to say just yet, but here's hoping The 808 Experiment represents a truly formative moment in what's already proven to be a watershed year for Atlanta's slightly off-the-radar hip-hop movement.