October 30, 2002

It's fitting in a fuck-you sorta way that a year after being 86'd from the Grand Ole Opry for taking off her shirt to avoid heatstroke, Chicago singer-songwriter Neko Case has released her least C&W-sounding album to date. On her third solo effort the alt-country chanteuse has begun to abandon the traditional twang of The Virginian (1997) and the career-defining Furnace Room Lullaby (2000) in favor of a torchier style of barnyard noir. Full of haunted AM-radio atmospherics and breathtaking blues, Blacklisted can be so mesmerizing that only Case's most change-resistant fans will insist that she'd be better off catering to the Opry with the rather conventional country of her past.

Still, as stunning a departure as it often is, Blacklisted feels more like a transition than a fully conceived artistic statement. There are moments, as on "I Wish I Was the Moon," where Case's gut-busting howl sounds more assured and her music more defiantly genreless than ever.

While Case is in the midst of an artistic overhaul, her better half in the now-and-again duo the Corn Sisters, Carolyn Mark, has hit her stride. On her superb second album, Terrible Hostess, the underappreciated Canadian vocalist has perfected her knack for writing old, Patsy-style country songs that poignantly and humorously capture the travails of dead-end lives – her own included. Witty, wry, and with more personality than anyone in alt-country, Mark claims she's a terrible hostess, but her second album may be the best tear-in-your-beer bash of the year. Neko Case performs Nov. 12, Bimbo's 365 Club, S.F. (415) 474-0365. (Jimmy Draper)

Mr. Scruff
Trouser Jazz (Ninja Tune)

Four years in the making, Trouser Jazz is something of a sequel to U.K. producer Andy "Mr. Scruff" Carthy's amazing 1999 Ninja Tune debut, Keep It Unreal, and its Lincoln car ad classic, "Get a Move On." On "Sweet Smoke" and "Come On Grandad," Mr. Scruff replicates the graceful girth of "Get a Move On" 's swing-era melody by chopping up jazz loops like Fatboy Slim, albeit with far more class. The results are toe-tapping tracks that, while not as mind-blowing as the originals, are guaranteed to elicit a smile from your face.

Mr. Scruff's "Shrimp," an homage to fusion groups such as Return to Forever, is a gas – it's just predictable. He even plots a sequel to Keep It Unreal's hilarious, self-explanatory tall tale "Whale Fish" with "Ahoy There!," cutting and splicing vocal snippets from films and recordings to create a synchronous, humorous adventure set on the high seas.

Neophytes to Mr. Scruff's discography will undoubtedly make comparisons to US3, who recorded "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)," and the brief yet memorable love affair between hip-hop and jazz musicians in the early '90s. Alternately, Mr. Scruff's jazz samples make Trouser Jazz more accessible than most house albums, even though, like all dance recordings, everything is laid over industrial-strength grooves strong enough to support even the most inept dancer. But unlike, say, Jazzanova, Mr. Scruff doesn't use sampling as a means of creating a sound as textured as a live band and keeps his beats minimalist and raw – sometimes to a fault. Trouser Jazz is likable enough, if not very innovative. At the very least, he proves he has a knack for sampling mean bass lines. (Mosi Reeves)

Cynthia Dall
Sound Restores Young Men (Drag City)

Cynthia Dall returns after a six-year slumber, although officially it's her first go-around. Her first album was the mysterious Drag City release referred to only as Untitled, even though Dall, a former Smog collaborator, was the mastermind behind it. The parenthetically smoggy one himself, Bill Callahan, dropped some guitar and vocals on that austere and haunting debut. It was undoubtedly Dall's show, though – a sneak attack that hit pressure points instead of the worked-over head.

This time around, Dall ditches the ice queen act, and the orchestral frost of Untitled thaws into a fertile plain of electric guitar fuzz. Sound Restores Young Men is a family affair, with brother Aaron on guitar and Untitled producer Jim O'Rourke sharing recording duties with Tim Green. Though still claustrophobic in spots, it's shockingly pretty, with lush acoustic guitars over bass and drum machinery. Dall's storytelling becomes the focus, dissecting the wanderings of a midlife crisis on "The Party" in halting breaths or struggling with syllables and pacing on "Be Safe with Me."

In the mid '90s, part of Dall's appeal may have had to do with the politics of indie rock's hetero male makeup and the manipulation of hot-button images (the orientalist album artwork for Untitled, Dall's topless photo inside), which makes it no less a story than that of Peaches or, at the time, Liz Phair – girls acting like boys to fuck with the boys. While writerly libidos are fickle, the return of Dall to the scene is a welcome, ambiguity-laden reprieve from calls to "fuck the pain away." Her chastisements on "I Played with Boys" remind her (or a second party), "If I don't have dinner with you all tonight society will survive.... If I don't have dinner with you tonight the race will survive." It's her vulnerability and obliqueness that's really a strength – Dall calls out her demons without having to name them. Cynthia Dall plays Wed/30, Bottom of the Hill, S.F. (415) 621-4455. (George Chen)

Scarface
The Fix (Def Jam South)

Contrary to The Fix's clever packaging (the lyric booklet has a faux-tinfoil cover and is enclosed in a Ziploc dime bag), God seems to be Scarface's high of choice these days. It's a paradox of rap maturity: doom-laden thoughts of mortality replaced by visions of eternity. The Method Man of the Geto Boys -- the gruff storyteller, once lodged between Bushwick Bill's suicidal thoughts and Willie D's loose-cannon hilarious truths -- still allows echoes of his old group's swan songs into his solo sound; "In Cold Blood" 's vibraphone bad vibes would fit on 1996's The Resurrection, and "What Can I Do?" 's confessional cadence recalls that album's "Blind Leading the Blind." But they're part of a 2002 blueprint: humility dressed in up-to-date designer studio sounds.

Scarface's move to his own subdivision of Russell Simmons's label adds a New York gloss to a roots-of-dirty South image. "Guess Who's Back" begins with "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" producer Kanye West melting '70s soul gold into platinum tinsel – when Scarface arrives, he's like a supporting player who momentarily steals the movie (then Beanie Sigel takes the track back down to Jay-Z's level, minus the charisma). The collaboration with Nas, "In Between Us," comes out swinging, with Nas's flow over pizzicato string samples, but the female-sung chorus's whiny shades of Pink kill the momentum. In contrast, the lead single "On My Block" succeeds through simplicity, tying hood pride to a strong, stark beat and a piano sample from Donny Hathaway and Robert Flack's "Be Real Black for Me."