The Hush Sound - "Like Vines"(Decaydance / Fueled By Ramen, 2006)

Hear The Music
The Hush Sound - "We Intertwined" (96 kbps, mp3)

I've got to hand it to the boys from Fall Out Boy -- they know a good sound when they hear it. The first band signed to Decaydance last year was Panic! At the Disco, which spawned the addictively fun track "I Write Sins, Not Tragedies." Now they bring us Like Vines by The Hush Sound, a Chicago band not afraid to blend the likes of the Shins with the most addictive piano rock since Ben Folds Five debuted eleven years ago. "We Intertwined" deserves to be a #1 summer hit, with its hook-filled chorus that rises in the end to the kind of raucous conclusion that I wish I could hear more often.

And from there it gets better! "A Dark Congregation" features the same upbeat piano-pop sound, but with a female vocalist who reminds me a lot of Caedmon's Call vocalist Danielle Young. As it turns out, The Hush Sound features four members who share vocal duties, something that is rarely done in pop music, since finding that singular voice to catapult a band to stardom is often deemed more important than ingenuity -- think Hootie and the Blowfish, for example. Equally impressive is the fact that the band keeps up the momentum throughout the length of this stellar sophomore album. "Sweet Tangerine," "Lighthouse" and "Magnolia" all deserve to be successful singles. This is the kind of music that's putting the midwest on the map and making Chicago into one of the hottest scenes in the nation. If you let this album go unnoticed, you deserve every ounce of the Hoobastank ilk you get.

The band is now touring as Panic! At the Disco's opening act, and will be playing several dates in the midwest during July:

July 6: Columbus OH (PromoWest Pavillion)
July 7: Chicago IL (House of Blues)
July 11: Cincinnati OH (Bogart's)
July 12: Cleveland OH (Plain Dealer Pavillon)
July 19: Indianapolis IN (Murat Egyptian Room)

Katie Melua - "Piece By Piece"(Dramatico Entertainment, 2006)

Like Norah Jones before her, Katie Melua blends jazz, blues and pop to create ear-catching melodies which have captured the world's attention. And like for Jones, following up a successful first album that broke genre barriers proved difficult. Should an artist change up the sound, continue to evolve after a creative breakthrough? Or should the sophomore slump be avoided by simply sticking to what worked before? Melua chose the latter path, filling her largely forgettable second effort with songs like "Shy Boy," which retreads the ground her cover of John Mayall's "Crawling Up A Hill" did on her debut, or "Nine Million Bicycles," saccharine numbers that mask in cuteness the fact that the songs are dull as dishwater. "There are nine million bicycles in Beijing," she sings. "That's a fact, it's a thing we can't deny ..." Like the fact that this is yet another suprisingly boring follow-up to an exceptionally original debut. But you can bet it'll sell millions.

The Mystery Jets - "Flotsam and Jetsam"(679 Recordings, 2006)

If you're a fan of the Violent Femmes, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah or, to a lesser extent, bands such as the Arctic Monkeys, you might find something to enjoy about Flotsam and Jetsam, the debut EP from experimental UK rockers The Mystery Jets ... if you have the patience to sort out what the band's trying to do, since every song sounds as though it's been recorded by a different band for a different album. From the opening moments of "You Can't Fool Me, Dennis!" which introduces its sound with a catchy, yet off-kilter alt-pop number, it's clear this isn't your everday UK "let's cash in on Oasis's sound" outfit. But the band's sound is overly eclectic for such an EP to develop a cohesive hook. "Zoo Time" sounds like an extended jazz rock jam session, which isn't a terrible thing in itself. But "Lizzie's Lion" leads the band into indie lo-fi territory, with indecipherable vocals, off-kilter percussion and fuzzy keyboards that drown any chance for the song to latch on. And though this sounds like a solid live recording, we're halfway through the EP and I still can't tell where the band's going with Flotsam and Jetsam. As the rest of the EP equally fails to grab my attention, I expect The Mystery Jets will burn out in America too quickly for anyone to seriously miss them, or notice they released an EP in the first place.

Live - "Songs From Black Mountain"(Epic, 2006)

With Songs From Black Mountain, Live commits the Ultimate Deadly Sin of music-making, by creating what may be the most boring rock album in years. It depresses me to say that, because Live was one of my favorites during the mid-1990s, with their album Throwing Copper standing tall among the best of the decade in that regard. But the band's been remarkably inconsistent since then, much of the blame for which has to lie on vocalist Ed Kowalczyk's constant need to insert religious cliches into the picture. Secret Samadhi swam in middle-eastern rhythms and symbolic lyricism that dragged miserably, and no album since Throwing Copper has managed to succeed as an album.

Sure, the band's had occasional hits, including 1999's "The Dolphin's Cry" and "Runaway" (perhaps the most addictive song of 2003, off the band's album Birds of Prey). But through it all Ed K. figures he has to hit us over the head with theology, which ends up creating songs that are dull and unmoving. "Heaven," from Birds of Prey proved it -- though it became a hit despite everything working against it. And instead of correcting the flaws, the band has reveled in them, creating an album that ranges from the mediocre ("The River" and "Wings") to the downright embarassing ("Love Shines (A Song For My Daughters About God)") As much as I'd like to give the band the benefit of the doubt again, I've decided to wash my hands of them. Even as a Contemporary Christian album, which it is not, Songs From Black Mountain fails miserably -- the the band's didactic lyricism merely insults its audience.

Dixie Chicks - "Taking The Long Way"(Open Wide / Columbia, 2006)

Right from the start, Taking The Long Way shows the Dixie Chicks as a band wanting to show just how non-conformist they are. "My friends from high school married their high school boyfriends, moved into houses in the same zip code where their parents lived," Natalie Maines sings on the album's title track. "But I could never follow ... I hit the highway." And with that, country's most antagonistic trio flies the coop. Already banished by the country industry for what amounted to treason in a genre known for support of outright lyrical jingoism, the Chicks claim that they don't need country music anymore. They've evolved.

But have they? The band built its reputation on layers of neo-traditionalist country, bluegrass and acoustic Americana, producing slick slices of life that appealed to a wide audience. Since their debut in 1998 they've continued to evolve musically with each effort, even dabbling in turning bluegrass into pop country. But their sound, as much as it has evolved, is still a country sound. And by elminating that core segment of their audience, the Chicks have isolated themselves in a genre known for lack of support for veteran acts. This begs the question: if Taking The Long Way isn't aimed at a country audience, who is it aimed at?

The album's full of catchy heartfelt music, something that’s become a trademark of the Chicks. But by releasing "Not Ready To Make Nice" as their first single, the band has re-opened their war wounds and poured peroxide in. And though the album itself opened with sales of 526,000, netting the band a third straight #1 album on Billboard's 200, the single has been incredibly disappointing, peaking at #36 on Hot Country Songs and #32 on the Adult Contemporary chart, two places the band has been unbeatable in the past. "Lullabye," the album's second single, hasn't even cracked the country chart, peaking at #76 on the Hot 100 only because it had a Hurricane Katrina tie-in, and "Everybody Knows" peaked at #48 on the country chart. Yet Natalie Maines has said the band is poised to cross over to pop, country be damned.

Yet at its core, this is an album of country, or at least Americana, music regardless of how the band sees it. And without the country audience, and with it highly unlikely to spawn any crossover hits, Taking The Long Way will almost surely lack the impact of the band's previous efforts. Is this fair? Certainly not. The album's as earcatching as ever, and "Lullabye," "Everybody Knows" and "Lubbock or Leave It" would have been surefire #1s for the band had they not decided to pour salt in the wounds they incurred after bashing Bush.

By releasing "Not Ready To Make Nice" as the first statement from this album, they (in the eyes of country fans and station programmers) made a clear statement. The band saw the song as a defiant answer to the people who said they should "shut up and sing" ... but instead it was received by the fans, and many in the industry, as a complete slap in the face to country music's fans. And while the band's free to say what they feel, and as a listener I choose to fully support that, they've surely got to be aware that they can't poison their water supply and then expect to drink from it.

Taking The Long Way is indeed a confident album from the Dixie Chicks that artistically lives up to the best they've produced. But the way the tide's turning, if the band doesn't find a way to sonically evolve beyond pure country music, they're never going to live up to their past successes. It's time to leave the past behind and make decisions that support the future, if the band doesn't want this to be its swan song.