LANTERNA 11/13, Gunther murphy’s Guitarist Henry Frayne, a veteran of Area, was obviously the kind of kid who daydreamed a lot in class–“never his mind on what he was doing,” as Yoda would say. His current trance-rock project, Lanterna, soars high into the ether but is never quite as firmly rooted in a concrete sense of place as, say, Calexico. As a result, he and drummer Brendan Gamble (of the Poster Children, and one of Frayne’s cohorts in the Moon Seven Times) wander off in imaginary landscapes that don’t quite connect to any recognizable place on earth, despite a few token attempts at grounding with train and seagull noises. The accompanying booklet, with its misty, evocative photos of the British Isles by Kevin Salemme, lends it all a vaguely Celtic feel, making the album’s harder-rocking moments, as when Gamble’s big drums come to the fore, remind me vaguely of mid-period epic-sweep U2, or perhaps an updated Big Country minus the populist pop fire.
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SAM BUSH BAND, BARRY and HOLLY TASHIAN 11/13, OLD TOWN SCHOOL The mandolin is a sort of devil’s instrument, rather like harpsichord–for the first few minutes, its tinkling, bubbling gaiety sounds like the music of the heavens, but soon you want to smash the thing. Sam Bush drips that silver-spring sound a little too long on his 1996 Sugar Hill release, Glamour & Grits–the title and the leopard-print beret he sports on the cover should tell you where he ranks in terms of taste. But his mandolin jangling and fiddle sawing hit the mark when he breaks loose of laid-back country pop (or makes some surprising turns with it–his take on Tim Krekel’s “All Night Radio” is one of the better what-hath-Van-Morrison-wrought moments I’ve heard in a while); it’s worth the price of admission for his jam with Bela Fleck, “(One Night in Old) Galway,” alone. The Nashville duo Barry and Holly Tashian, both vocalist/guitarists, stick close to old-time rural song traditions–most of the tunes on their latest, Harmony (Rounder), are actually originals, but you’d never suspect it. The Tashians also play Saturday at David Adler Cultural Center.
WOLFIE 11/14, EMPTY BOTTLE None of the 13 garage-pop tunes on this Champaign quartet’s debut reaches the three-minute mark, yet they still manage to wear out their welcome. Maybe it’s the relentless sameness of Amanda Lyons’s basket-weaver keyboard lines, maybe it’s guitarist/vocalist Michael S. Downey’s affected new-wave brat nyah-nyah, maybe it’s the sense that this band is punch-drunk on its own sheer cuteness–or maybe it’s the fact that this kind of pop was always meant for one- or two-hit wonders. No matter–engineer Rick Valentin acquires another small territory for the Poster Children empire.
