DECLAN NERNEY 9/11, ABBEY PUB I suppose it’s only fitting that while Americans are stuffing the coffers of Michael Flatley and weeping like premenstrual maidens over bagpipes on movie soundtracks, at least one son of Erin is digging Del Shannon and Dolly Parton. On Declan Nerney’s Let’s Dance (Hooley/Universal), the Dublin native might have explored the hybridizations that link traditional Irish music to American country to early rock ‘n’ roll–but he didn’t, instead applying layers of schmaltzy pedal steel and vaguely Cajun accordion to the Shannon title track, Parton’s “I Love You Still,” Bob Wills’s “Don’t Be Ashamed of Your Age,” and even originals like “The Kingdom of Kerry.” I guess good-time music is good-time music in any accent, but be warned that when Nerney calls out “let’s dance,” he probably means in a line.
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YOU AM I 9/11, DOUBLE DOOR Australia’s You Am I seem an unlikely pop sensation by any current American yardstick, but in their native country their latest, #4 Record (Warner Brothers), became their third in a row to debut at number one on the charts. I have to admit this was all news to me: the last I’d heard by them was their 1994 debut, Sound as Ever, some fine apocryphal scripture from the church of feedback worship, produced by Lee Ranaldo. But #4 Record is far-traveling, road-eating stuff, classic rock in the true sense that just in the first three songs you can hear Johnny Thunders, the Small Faces, T. Rex, and XTC, as well as a few current modern-rock generics. Keyboardist Benmont Tench of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers guests–tastefully–as do Memphis Horns Andrew Love and Wayne Jackson.
TRANSGLOBAL UNDERGROUND 9/17, DOUBLE DOOR This big collective of British electronica veterans gives one-world techno a good name, thanks in large part to vocalist Natacha Atlas, a traditional Middle Eastern singer who got her start with Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart. Atlas lends the band’s Arabic-inflected swoop and groove a natural elegance and lack of affectation–though tunes like “Delta Disco” and “Rude Buddah,” from TGU’s new Rejoice, Rejoice (MCA), still indicate a healthy irreverent reverence for the universal mind.
