EW review: Johnson's meaty 'Dreams'
By David Browne
Entertainment Weekly
(Entertainment Weekly) -- Jack Johnson projects a rugged masculinity, yet his sunscreened folk, reggae and blues doesn't kick sand in anyone's face.
"In Between Dreams" follows the mellow drift of its predecessors. The melodies are sweetly casual, the lyrics alternating between beach-comber seductions (''Banana Pancakes'') and mild-mannered commentary on malevolent TV pundits (''Good People'').
Johnson never lets his emotions boil over; he's so laid-back it's hard to tell when he's worked up.
In more encouraging news, his tunes are meatier. He's channeling Steve Miller with the cream-puff harmonies and hooks of Miller-lite tunes like ''Crying Shame'' and the folk-rapping ''Staple It Together.''
You just want Johnson to vent a little. In ''Sitting, Waiting, Wishing,'' he's not happy about acquiescing to his lover's lifestyle and accepting her friends. But ''putting up with them wasn't worth never having you'' is the politest gibe you'll ever hear.
EW Grade: B
More from Entertainment Weekly: All about Jack Johnson
'Back to Me,' Kathleen Edwards
All across the cultural map, women are kicking men's butts.
On "Saturday Night Live," the assertive, acerbic voices of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler put to shame their male counterparts, who mostly stand around timidly. (The same holds true for the Democrats; the outspoken Barbara Boxer is their Fey.)
The balance also has shifted in the land of singer-songwriters, judging by the latest from Canada's answer to Lucinda Williams. Kathleen Edwards deals with a similar topic on "Back to Me," her follow-up to 2003's "Failer."
''Copied Keys'' addresses the ways one person's life subsumes another's. She yearns to be the center of his universe, but there's dignity and strength in her stoic voice and the song's country-folk churn.
Nobody's pushover, Edwards snaps, ''You say you like me in your memory/You've got to be f---ing kidding me,'' in ''What Are You Waiting For?'' -- one of several songs in which love is a bloody battlefield.
In the sly title track, she decides to exact revenge on her ex by, among other things, drugging him and hauling him back to her place.
The album offers up the same taut honky-tonk, high-lonesome balladry and electric-rock snarls as "Failer." But the production is more direct, and her songs are more rueful.
Edwards is clearly drawn to shady men who leave her with bittersweet memories; yet, in the last song, she finally consoles herself with ''Good things come when you stop looking.''
No doubt she'll keep looking anyway -- and write a resonant song about the experience. This tough alt-country cookie deserves a booking on "SNL."
EW Grade: A
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'Frances the Mute,' Mars Volta
Reviewed by Tom Sinclair
Not long ago, the notion of progressive punk seemed oxymoronic.
Punk is all about brevity and simplicity, while prog can be drawn out and pretentious. They'd vehemently deny it, but the Mars Volta (led by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala, formerly of the post-hardcore experimentalists At the Drive-In) are arguably the first credible punk-prog unit.
Their sophomore album, "Frances the Mute," is a 77-minute song cycle that hopscotches between electro-salsa, Zeppelin-style gut punches, 20-minute fandangos and free jazz (imagine a mash-up of King Crimson, Tito Puente, Pharoah Sanders, and Fugazi).
As if the music weren't challenging enough, there's the ''concept'': "Frances" is based on a diary that a late bandmate found in the back of a car.
Though the songs (sample title: ''Umbilical Syllables'') are in Spanish and English, exactly what's happening will remain opaque even to the bilingual. Yet the CD has moments of undeniable beauty and power; it may prove to be one of those ''difficult'' records that repays with repeat listens.
These days, though, who has the time? We figure the grade's gotta be somewhere between A (for Ambitious) and D (for Daunting); let's call it a ...
EW Grade: B-
More from Entertainment Weekly: All about the Mars Volta
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