Family Trip to Atlanta, continued from page one...

Above: Sloth's adorable and spunky Grandma Loeffler.

The party turned out to be an afternoon and evening of food, games, and general frivolity. Several of Sloth's uncles provided the manpower behind a live lobster boil; steak and plenty of appetizers were also served. Grandma Loeffler whipped up a huge plate of her famous chocolate chip cookies for her guests and distributed prizes for a coin drop game, hula hoop contest, and lemon race. The evening ended with a family photo shoot outside in the back yard. Whew!

While we were in the area, Sloth's Aunt Ginny and Uncle Carlos provided overnight accommodations that put four-star hotels to shame. Sloth got to re-connect with his cousins (something that doesn't happen very often), hang out with his sister from Maryland, and even re-string and fiddle with his uncle's guitar. Meanwhile, the kids enjoyed visiting the neighborhood pool and jumping on Aunt Ginny's trampoline. Check out videos and photos on our online gallery!

The Swell Season... LIVE
The Kalamazoo State Theatre, May 15th 2010

Above: Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová are the poster children of heartache and romance.

Sloth and Steph took advantage of a small-venue national tour and visited Kalamazoo, Michigan for a performance by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, the duo known as The Swell Season. Even after the runaway popularity of the indie film Once (which resulted in a Grammy for the duo's soundtrack work), the two currently enjoy a fair amount of anonymity here in the United States. We spotted Glen and his bandmates checking out the local fare prior to the show; during the gig, Glen brought onto the stage a local female singer-songwriter and asked her to perform one of her own compositions. As one may imagine, the atmosphere was more like a giant pub than an assigned-seating theater. Glen amused us throughout the show with stories and amusing anecdotes; he was later joined on-stage by childhood friend and show opener Mark Dignam. The show overall was surprisingly balanced between the Irish folk-rocker and the younger, far quieter Ms. Irglová: the two took turns between piano and guitar as they launched into cuts from their most recent album, Strict Joy (see review in NEW MUSIC), as well as their debut album and the soundtrack to Once. Glen even attempted to reprise his tortured "Say It To Me Now" sans microphone or accompaniment at the corner of the stage - until the strings broke on his guitar. Between the intensity of the musicians and the devotion of the good-natured crowd, this was one show that could have gone on for far longer. Needless to say, if The Swell Season is in your neck of the woods, you owe it to yourself to snag a pint and a pair of tickets. Cheers, indeed!

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Garden Update...

Above: James attains enlightenment in our newly installed front garden.

Delaying the inevitable replacement of damaged and clogged eavestroughs on the rear of his home, Sloth instead tackled some "fun", miniature projects this year in the garden. He added a hosta arrangement in the front yard, cleaned up the plantbed around our attractive clematis, and gutted the front brick planter in an effort to grow tulips (at last!). In October, Sloth tackled a spur-of-the-moment project and transformed a section of the front yard into a full garden sitting area. We will see how these projects fare into the spring of 2011!

He Might Be a Giant...

James is definitely the Big Man on Campus. Between his height and his appointed status as Most Valuable Player, Goalkeeper, and Captain of the Ottawa Hills Soccer Team, James has achieved a celebrity status unparalleled in the high school world. So popular is our young son that Sloth legally changed his name to simply "James' Dad." But what are his plans post-high school? Ace Reporter Sloth Silius managed to squeeze in an interview with Mr. Veenstra after he returned home briefly from a gig with ESPN.

SLOTH SILIUS: All right; this is Sloth Silius and we are back at the Underground for an interview with the big man on campus, Mr. James Veenstra. He is aged 17, and... how tall are you now?

JAMES: Six-Four.

S: Six foot four. So... do you tower over most of the other kids in your school?

J: I'm the tallest kid in my class.

S: Really?

J: Second tallest student at City.

S: Wow. What are three advantages of your height that you can think of - the top three?

J: Let's see... I can reach the cookie jar. I am allowed to get on the cool rides at amusement parks. And... I'm good looking.

S: And there you are. And people can see your good-lookingness better!

J: Yeah.

S: What are three disadvantages of your height?

Continued on page four...

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Interview with James Veenstra, continued from page three...

J: Finding clothes... being noticed when I'm trying to be sneaky... and people relying on me to do specific things just because I am tall.

S: Examples of that?

J: Getting things for them... picking them up to get to higher places...

S: Does this happen at school often? People ask you to hold them aloft?

J: Yeah.

S: Heh... well, it's good for building muscles and character. Interesting... so, we also understand that you played soccer this past season. And explain to our audience what your position was?

J: I play goalkeeper as I did last year. Last year I played goalkeeper and forward for parts of the games, but this year it was mostly goalkeeper. We wanted to develop my skills, and we had nobody else who was tall enough to handle covering the entire goalie box. So I was the best choice: I had already learned things in the past and I was really good at being goalie.

S: So your height was a factor. Now, how did your team and you compare with other teams that you played?

J: Well, all of my teammates are Hispanic except for one of them and pretty short. So... the teams we usually played were Forest Hills and Caledonia and such places that all have very tall Dutch guys like me, except they're all pretty well filled out... soccer is their main event at those other schools whereas in the city of Grand Rapids it's not that big of a sport. So: not very enthusiastic but very naturally talented kids on our team - and pretty small - and then these huge giants that are strong, fit, have great technique on the other team... none of this was really helping.

S: Well, I believe we have some video of you playing soccer on our SlothWerks gallery, so I'll have to put a little plug for that in audio fashion right here. So I'm curious... after all this time, you're now 17... I'm going to have to ask you by popular demand something our audience asked me to ask you because it's so hard to pin you down for an interview. This is going back a little bit, but the audience is curious if you have a new and updated version of your classic hit "Hin Jin Ho Hey".

J: Sorry; I've lost the lyrics to that song, so I probably won't be re-recording that song until I can re-discover the lyrics.

S: Re-discover the lyrics? So no re-write in sight at present?

J: No; there might be a remix, but no re-recordings.

S: Maybe one of those nifty YouTube pitch-altered ones?

J: Yeah!

S: We'll look for that on YouTube. All right! Mr. Veenstra, thank you for taking time to speak to us!

J: Yes, sir!

Internet Special: take a blast into the past and listen to our interview with James from 1999!

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Above: Heather valiantly defends the basket in the Hoop City Basketball League.

Heather Returns to Hoop City's Biddyball Program

After a year-long hiatus, Heather decided to tackle the wild world of basketball with the autumn Hoop City program. She was deemed worthy of joining the 3rd and 4th grade girls' team and is now finding herself in the thick of competitive team play for the first time. It was a bit of a jolt going from shooting baskets with her brother and dad to being shoved around on the court, but the princess is weathering it bravely. Watch for photos and videos on our online gallery as the season comes to a close in January!

James LIVE...
Royal Oak Theatre, October 1st 2010

The British band James had its heyday in the United States for a brief moment in the early 90's and would to most people seem a one-hit wonder. They were played mostly on college or alternative radio stations and would run out of steam in this country by the end of the decade (their 1999 album Millionaires had to be purchased as an import). Finally, after their 2001 release Pleased to Meet You, the band broke up with 20 years of music under its belt. And that, we thought, was the end of the story.

But it was not. The band re-formed after lead singer Tim Booth released a solo record; Booth brought his producer and multi-instrumentalist Lee Muddy Baker along with him to assist with a new album. The result was Hey Ma (reviewed in our last newsletter), which sounded more like a band's debut album than an attempt at re-igniting the past. And this year, James fans received yet another post-retirement treat: two extended-play records and a tour. Needless to say, Sloth was not about to let his old love slip through his fingers a second time.

So it was that Sloth and Steph arrived at the Royal Oak Theatre to thrill in the presence of Booth and the boys. They could not have been prepared for what was to come next. As Booth would say during the performance, "At a James concert, the line between the performer and audience becomes blurred." And blurred it was indeed, as Sloth and Steph moved their way to the front of a general admission (!!!) audience to bask in the wild whirling of Tim Booth, the preening punctuations of Andy Diagram's trumpet, the reflective refrains of guitarist Saul Davies, and the thundering torrent of David Baynton-Power's drums. Lead guitarist Larry Gott could not have sounded better and crunched out the heavy riffs from the surprise encore "Jam J" as if 1994 were yesterday. Fans of all ages and all stripes mentally synched with the band as they tackled both older numbers from Seven and Goldmine to new material from their post-reunion albums. Members of a local Buddhist temple materialized on-stage to dance with Tim on several occasions; during the encore "Sometimes (Lester Piggott)", he invited the entire assembled crowd to clamber up and join him. And join him they did in a frenzied refrain that was one step away from a religious experience.

For us, the best part of the show was not merely seeing these veteran musicians face-to-face; it was not merely having Tim Booth wander through the crowd as he and the audience sang "Sit Down" together: it was also watching these men play as a single unit and seeing the joy and satisfaction on their faces as they did what they do best... and still, to this day, do better than most.

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Above: Taylor and King end the evening with an acoustic ballad at The Palace of Auburn Hills.

Carole King and James Taylor... LIVE
Palace of Auburn Hills, May 27th 2010

We had already seen Mr. James Taylor perform at the Van Andel Arena (Newsletter #27), but Sloth was more than willing to shell out additional cash to see Mr. Taylor perform with singer-songwriter Carole King. The show was billed as the "Troubadour Reunion" tour, referring to the famous Californian club where King and Taylor played a series of gigs in November 1970. These shows featured music which would eventually be released on their subsequent (and now classic) albums Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon and Tapestry. Their more recent tour, which collected together some of the original band featured on those albums (Danny Kortchmar on guitar, Russ Kunkel on drums, and Lee Sklar on bass), was intended to bring an intimate club feel to an arena setting. The set designers built a slowly rotating center stage surrounded by tables, chairs, and subtle lighting; in this way, the performers could connect with the immediate audience but also allow for thousands of others to view the concert via massive video monitors placed just above the stage. This being a James Taylor concert, the monitors also displayed photo montages during several of the songs, most of which were pulled from that classic early 70's era.

Several things were surprising about this concert. First and foremost was the appearance of King herself, a famous recluse known for her stage shyness and quiet "out of the spotlight" lifestyle. But here she was, rockin' it out at age 68 (!!!) both on the piano and guitar, struttin' her stuff on the stage and working the crowd in "I Feel the Earth Move". Secondly, the performers in general sounded fantastic, making it clear that 40 years had not dulled their abilities in the least bit. Kortchmar performed several searing guitar solos that would leave kids a quarter his age gasping. Taylor was, as usual, spot-on both vocally and with his finger-picking gymnastics, and King's voice, while not quite as smooth as it was in 1970, was powerful and easily held up during a performance that stretched for two hours.

Yes, the tour was without question an exercise in nostalgia. But the affection that King and Taylor held for each other was genuine and palpable, and the two shared the stage as equals as they performed much of Tapestry and Mudslide Slim as well as their biggest hits from that era ("Sweet Seasons", "Fire and Rain", et cetera). The two also collaborated on some re-tooled versions of their old gems: for example, merging together their very different takes on "Up on the Roof" and creating a medley of King's "Song of Long Ago" and Taylor's "Long Ago and Far Away".

Overall, a "feel good" evening filled with good tunes, big smiles, and plenty of warmth. If this is the last time we see this particular group together on stage, one can certainly say they went out on a high note. Well done!

INSERT

Sloth and Steph Go Further Down the GRPS Rabbit Hole...

Lots of changes and an uncertain financial future resulted in a heightened interest in the fate of the Grand Rapids Public Schools this past year. Sloth and Steph visited many a meeting and forum in an attempt to understand the social and economic woes facing the third largest school district in the state; meanwhile, both took on PTA/PTO duties at Mulick Park Elementary and City High-Middle School in the fall of 2010. Steph has assisted with several fundraising events at City High as a Fundraising Committee Co-Chair; Sloth updates the City High PTSA website and helps out with events at City and at Mulick Park whenever possible. The long-term plan, of course, is to have Heather walk the halls of City High-Middle School from 7th through 12th grades, but to make that happen we need robust programs in our public school system and adequate state funding from Lansing. The rabbit hole keeps getting deeper, with no end in sight. What's next: Sloth running for public office? Just imagine the televised debates...

Website Updates...

Between monetary budgeting and personal time management, Sloth had to make some tough decisions with his various online projects. This included removing websites that he knew would probably not be updated anytime this millennium, including Xenarthra.Org (his website about sloths and rainforests), Sloth.Biz (the kids-oriented site with videos and photos of the "Sleepy Sloth" puppet), and Operation: Snow Weasel (a tongue-in-cheek world domination scheme). Sloth also ended his tenure with SpiralScouts International and removed MichiganSpiralScouts.Org from the internet as well.

The good news is a major coding upgrade to both TeamN3kk1d.Com and SlothWerks.Com, as well as a solid overhaul of the Sloth-Ford Family Image Gallery. The gallery was physically moved to the Sloth.Biz domain, although one may still use the previous address at SlothWerks to access it. Hundreds of pictures and photos were added just this past year; check 'em out! (Need instructions as to how to access the gallery? Email us at newsletter@slothwerks.com.)

NEW MUSIC NEW MUSIC NEW MUSIC

Four Star Rating System Explanation

1 ... I'm embarrassed I paid money for this album.
2 ... Some highlights to the disc, but I doubt I'll play the full-length album very often.
3 ... A solid release that requires several listens.
4 ... I play this album over and over!

Sade Soldier of Love - Ms. Adu and the boys came out of the woodwork this year to deliver their first studio album since Lovers Rock in 2000 (reviewed in Newsletter #26). This time, the wait was well worth it: Soldier of Love gives us glimpses of Sade's past work with some new twists. The title cut delivers a driving beat and punctuating guitars tamed only by Adu's subdued croon of longing, while the understated "Babyfather" weaves a touch of Jamaica into a love song that just won't get out of your head. For long-time fans of Sade, the slow ballad "In Another Time", is a step right back to the days of Promise, while "Skin" would sound right at home on 1992's Love Deluxe. Overall, an improvement on Lovers Rock and proof that you don't need to be young and scantily-clad to be truly sexy... and yet classy, both at the same time! Three out of four stars.

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The Swell Season Strict Joy - Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová return for a second studio album, the follow-up to their haunting self-titled collaboration from 2006. This album has quite a different feel than their first; 2006's The Swell Season was recorded in Irglová's native Czech Republic with classically-trained Czech musicians; Strict Joy was recorded in America with members of Hansard's Irish folk-rock band The Frames. While The Swell Season was quiet and haunting, Strict Joy is far more upbeat and immediately accessible. Hansard's yearning croon opens the album with "Slow Rising"; this begins an emotional rollercoaster which rises to the driving "High Horses" and lulls to the longing ballad "In These Arms". As we would expect of Mr. Hansard's lyrics, there is rarely a happy moment as he explores the tortured portions of a man's soul, but he does so within the context of a talented group of musicians who add a pulsing energy to Hansard's plaintive guitar riffs. Irglová is also given time to shine as lead vocalist on her compositions "Fantasy Man" and the gorgeous "I Have Loved You Wrong". This set is the perfect introduction for those unfamiliar with The Swell Season and easily contains some of their best work; we look forward to seeing where - and what - this duo is led to next. Three out of four stars.

Above: James lead singer Tim Booth enters a higher plane as he performs on stage with his devoted fans in Royal Oak, Michigan.

James The Night Before / The Morning After - This double EP release is the second post-breakup project for James, once again produced by Tim Booth collaborator Lee Muddy Baker. As with its predecessor Hey Ma (reviewed in Newsletter #38), one is simply stunned that a group now almost 30 years old can continue to crank out quality tunes like this. Booth's lyrics are as powerful as ever, and the band rips through the frenetic set on The Night Before as if their lives depended on it. The second EP is much quieter, with touches of acoustic and slide guitar, piano, and textured keyboards. Andy Diagram's trumpet work (which gave Hey Ma a classic James feel) is mostly missing from these EP's, but can be heard on "Crazy" and "Ten Below", both of which could be easily added to a list of all-time favorite James songs. While the driving energy of The Night Before is missing from The Morning After, the latter still contains excellent cuts such as the piano-driven "Dust Motes" (which fans of the haunting Laid album will enjoy) and the heavily-layered closer "Fear". How long these gents will continue to produce music together we will never know, but for the moment we are enjoying the wild ride, hoping it will never end. Three out of four stars.

Alicia Keys The Element of Freedom - Ms. Keys redeems herself somewhat with her 2010 offering The Element of Freedom. Some cuts on this album (such as "Doesn't Mean Anything") remind one of the threadbare production as found on As I Am (which we reviewed in Newsletter #36), but on other cuts Keys experiments with old school synths ("Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart" and "Wait 'Til They See My Smile") and returns to her roots with beautiful piano-driven ballads ("That's How Strong My Love Is"). But the real gems of this album are the smooth and sultry "Un-Thinkable (I'm Ready)" and the soaring closer "Empire State of Mind" which remind us why we love this very talented young woman so much. Keep on pushin' on, Alicia! Three out of four stars.

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Above: The insanely talented Janelle Monae has crafted a style that is wholly her own.

Janelle Monae The ArchAndroid - What happens when a young, insanely talented woman from the mid-west fails to make a splash in New York's rough-and-tumble theater world? She moves to Atlanta, hooks up with like-minded artists, and begins producing her own brand of music that is one part hip-hop, one part dance, and one part orchestral, all placed into an architecture taken straight out of Fritz Lang's classic Metropolis or Ridley Scott's gritty Bladerunner. That's right: The ArchAndroid continues to explore the storyline begun in The Chase Suite EP, where Janelle plays the part of Cindi Mayweather, an android from the future on the run from bounty hunters after she commits a crime worthy of dismantlement: she falls in love with a human. Now, Cindi (model #57821) is stuck in a present-day asylum (The Palace of the Dogs) where her quirky artistic musings are her only escape. Does this sound like a scenario that would warrant the attention of Outkast's Big Boi and Bad Boy Records' Sean Combs? Probably not, but both played a part in the release of the epic ArchAndroid, which features parts II and III of the Cindi Mayweather story. The scope of musical genres on this release is both a strength and weakness: over the space of an hour, Janelle jumps from a full orchestral overture to dance to 60's psychedelica to hip hop to contemporary R&B to Broadway to even an attempt at punk rock. Not everyone will find this breadth of styles palatable; however, few will be able to resist the energy and contagious dancability of the single "Tightrope" featuring Big Boi. The length and depth of The ArchAndroid requires multiple listens to digest, but with each listen one can dig into different facets of this ambitious project: the Broadway-worthy "BabopbyeYa", the disco-infused "Wondaland", the moody longing of "Oh, Maker" or the smooth soul of "Say You'll Go". At the tender age of 25, Ms. Monae has not only tackled the musical world on her own terms but she has also developed a style and sound that is uniquely hers. Watch out, world! Four out of four stars.

Karen Elson The Ghost Who Walks - It would be tempting to market Elson's debut album as "music by an internationally-known model" (such as Milla's The Divine Comedy) or "a CD by the wife of Jack White" (of The White Stripes), but any of these would belittle one of the best independently-released records of 2010. Yes, we certainly can hear the distinct, out-of-the-box drumming technique of Jack White (which I frankly enjoy more than his guitar work with The White Stripes or The Raconteurs), but this album is all Elson: a marriage of psychedelic English and Appalachian folk-rock with a modern twist. Elson's work has been described as "gothic folk" (possibly due to the heavy effects on the title track), but this effort is far more alternative country than it is gothic - after all, Elson and White now reside in Nashville. The range of styles is far and wide, from the folk-rock of "The Truth is In the Dirt" to the psychedelic swing of "Pretty Babies" to the simple acoustic ditty "Lunusa" to the wild cabaret of "100 Years From Now". However, what is truly striking throughout these cuts are the clarity of Elson's sliding vocal style - which perfectly meshes with her chosen genre - and the strength of her songwriting. There is no denying the talent of this flame-haired, sharp-featured beauty who easily rivals her husband's own substantial musical prowess. Three out of four stars.

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Sarah McLachlan Laws of Illusion
Tracey Thorn Love and Its Opposite

The newest offerings of these two talented women are similar in background but an ocean apart: both physically (McLachlan is from Canada; Thorn from the U.K.) and in execution. "Laws of Illusion" is the first album since McLachlan's debut album which lacks the fine drumming of Ash Sood - the reason being the separation of Sood from Ms. McLachlan, leaving a family of four in dissolution. Now adrift in the conflicting emotions that divorce inevitably brings, Sarah explores the full range of their intensity in Laws of Illusion. The album plays out similarly to Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend: we hear the yearning of enduring love in "Loving You Is Easy", the protective cocoon of a lover's embrace in "Out of Tune", the dark thoughts as one looks back on an ended relationship in "Forgiveness", and seconds thoughts as one enters yet again into the wild world of love in Illusions of Bliss. In short, there is something for everyone here, wrapped in the smooth, silky, radio-friendly package that is Sarah McLachlan. But as with her previous effort Afterglow, nothing from this album really sticks with me after repeated listens - even Pierre Marchland's excellent production value cannot add veritable edginess to a collection which is, for the most part, comfortably "adult contemporary".

Above: Tracey Thorn is not quite sure about her new role as the wife of long-time partner Ben Watt.

Contrast McLachlan's mostly positive, post-breakup album with Tracey Thorn's opus of exactly why marriage is so dangerous... and why Thorn for so long resisted marrying her long-time musical and life partner, Ben Watt (the other half of Everything But the Girl). In Love and Its Opposite, Thorn brutally attacks marriage as a fragile, futile construct in "Oh, the Divorces" and shows us just how easy it is to shed a wedding ring - and one's monogamy - in "Singles Bar". As with her other recent solo effort Out of the Woods from 2007, one cannot shake the feeling that much of this album specifically speaks of Thorn's own relationships with her family: "Hormones" examines the dichotomy of a pre-teen daughter hitting puberty versus a mom's creeping menopause; "Why Does the Wind?" explores mending an emotional rift between two lovers; "Kentish Town" is a trip to one's past tinged with regret and longing. Luckily, through this mostly downbeat and melancholy record, Thorn leaves us a bit of hope in the layered closer "Swimming", but this is only a glimpse of light within a project that is surprisingly dark, brooding, and sometimes very difficult to listen to. In the end, these two ladies' very different explorations of their relationships leaves one left a little empty. Two out of four stars.

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Katy Perry Teenage Dream - Ms. Perry's follow-up to One of the Boys is a bit more uneven than its predecessor. While "One of the Boys" is a fantastic mish-mash of rock, pop, and dance music, Teenage Dream relies more heavily on the slick production of contemporary dance and hip hop, giving it a less organic feel. There are no real surprises here: we have a potpourri of fun and frivolous party anthems ("California Gurls" and "Last Friday Night"), painful pushing-the-envelope innuendo ("Peacock"), bombastic bass-driven club music ("ET"), and a classic guitar-driven rock number ("Hummingbird Heartbeat"). But given the increasingly adult content in her songs, risqué album cover, and the industry-standard hip-hop guest appearance (Snoop Dogg on "California Gurls"), this album seems to lean more toward popular consumption than artistic expression. Luckily, the title track with its addictively descending chorus and the quiet closer "Not Like the Movies" are wonderful listens, and Perry admittedly stretches her vocal range with cuts such as "Firework" and "Who Am I Living For?". The question is: will Perry move forward from here with the creative ability that we know she possesses, or will she end up as merely another pop princess? Only time will tell. Two out of four stars.

Kings of Leon Come Around Sundown - To any person who is a fan of "wall of sound" production, riveting bass lines, or the imperfections of a raw, emotional lead singer, the Kings of Leon are a godsend to contemporary rock music. That said, the Kings are not for everyone: Anthony Caleb's vocals are admittedly an acquired taste. But on this album, his gritty, aching drawl effortlessly rides the eddies, currents, and waves generated by Ivan Nathan's crashing drums, Michael Jared's brooding bass, and Cameron Matthew's soaring guitar. The boys also offer us some diversions from their arena-sized sound throughout the album: the (relatively) acoustic and simple ditty "Back Down South" is a trip back to the Kings' earliest work and the swinging "Mary" and "Mi Amigo" even have sprinklings of horn work within the mix. But it's on cuts such as "The Face", "The End", and "Pickup Truck" where everything all comes together: somehow, this band of brothers from Tennessee channel everything from The Verve to The Cure to Journey into a package that is uniquely theirs. It's no wonder these guys were wildly successful in the United Kingdom before picking up steam here in their native country. May they rock on for many more years! Three out of four stars.

Black Dub Black Dub - Daniel Lanois is back with a side project including the usual suspects (the incredible Rev. Brian Blade on drums and the talented Daryl Johnson on bass) and newcomer Trixie Whitley on lead vocals. The three gentlemen, all veteran musicians, look ancient compared to the tiny and very young Whitley, but this girl has pipes and the fiery blues passed down to her from her father, guitarist-singer-songwriter Chris Whitley. Fans of Lanois' The Beauty of Winona will love the distortion-heavy ensemble sound of this production, especially instrumental tracks such as "Slow Baby". Those familiar with Lanois' album Here Is What Is (reviewed in Newsletter #37) are also treated to a radically different take on "This May Be the Last Time". Overall, the album is fairly experimental; while the cuts themselves sound like single studio takes, there is quite a bit of post-production knob-fiddling on the part of Lanois - something that may turn off some listeners. Lanois' grinding guitar work may also be a little too much for some, and Trixie's unbridled, gutsy Joss Stone-like delivery occasionally sounds somewhat forced. But the group shines on more the more conventional "Nomad" and the Jamaican-tinged "Silverado"; it's also hard not to join in on the soul-stirring praise song "Sing". Ultimately, Black Dub is a worthy addition to the Daniel Lanois catalogue and a new way-stop in the continuing evolution of this versatile and talented musician. Three out of four stars.

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