Consumer Guide for April/May 2007

By Robert Christgau
Special to MSN Music

Life is change. Having promised 10 to 12 A records per bimonthly Consumer Guide, I can't resist taking it up to 13 here because, well, mostly because they were there, including three 2006 CDs by a Norwegian trumpeter of disgracefully limited U.S. repute. In Honorable Mentionand also, naturally, Duds, I catch up with the collective wisdom of a critics' poll I used to oversee -- without which I might never have broken through to that punky little Thermals album.

Arcade Fire
"Neon Bible"
(Merge)

To remind us that anxiety is in his bones, Win Butler refurbishes the 2003 plaint "No Cars Go" as a football cheer about the safe place just before sleep. But everywhere else he emerges from his precious privacy and names the things he has to be afraid of, things he shares with all of us -- religions run amok, rising tides, the surveillance state, a cowboy-in-chief with so little to lose he could start World War III on a dare. He doesn't tame his fears by naming them, or hint that they can be overcome, although in "The Well and the Lighthouse," he advises the lighthouse: "If you leave, them ships are gonna wreck." But he and his large band of unarty art-rockers rock so hard and so beautiful they can propel anyone who listens past the end of the record. They thud rather than thunder. But what a loud and joyous thud it is.

Saban Bajramovic
"Gypsy Legend"
(Times Square)

Because Marshall Tito's Yugoslavia encouraged more recording than madman Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania, this Serbian icon has a catalogue that awaits compilation. But just in case his master recordings proved casualties of war, in 1999 some culturally enlightened Dutchmen had him reprise a few hits. Roughened by 63 years of hard living, Bajramovic's voice has lost glide and thrust here, but even in his wild youth he was no breast-beater -- his persona was unruly, his manner suave. Balancing Balkan accordion-violin-clarinet and Gypsy swing is Bosnia's Mostar Sevdah Reunion band. "Sevdah" is an Arabic word said to mean "love, desire or ecstasy." Those feelings do get around.

Beck
"The Information"
(Interscope)

Because he's also the poster child of '90s irony, which morphed so neatly into the passivity '00s alt-rockers pit against evil, the poster child of information overload doesn't quite get down to cases here. But unlike "Guero" this one really has some war in it -- makes "a kick drum sound like an SOS" and turns a homeless woman into a soldier in Iraq. The best song addresses a chronic problem clearly for once: "I think I'm in love and it makes me kind of nervous to say so." "Dark Star" despairs so resolutely it could make a dead man grateful.

Golem
"Fresh Off Boat"
(JDub)

Easy-Klezmer as Gypsy brass. Yet the only wind instrument is a trombone, and it's quieter than the violin this tradition-bending ensemble puts on clarinet duty. In Yiddish or English, of which there's just enough, it's the singers who pump up the party: Eugene Hutz fan Aaron Diskin growling as if he's given up musical comedy for Purim, the incendiary Annette Ezekiel -- an Ethel Merman for our time.

Various Artists
"Jewface"
(Reboot Stereophonic)

Though these 16 dialect songs from 1905 to 1922 are generally performed by Jewish comics, gramophone megastar Billy Murray "goils" and "vys" through his only known Hebrew number, and jill-of-all-accents, Ada Jones, trills "Under the Matsos Tree." Like Irving Berlin's "Cohen Owes Me 97 Dollars," they're usually written by Jewish tunesmiths, but to the best of my knowledge neither Bert Fitzgibbon nor Al Piantadosi qualify. In other words, they're not only minstrelsy but on occasion blatantly exploitative minstrelsy, just as compiler Jody Rosen's album title implies. Nevertheless, they're good for many yocks on the order of "I'm a good Yiddisher/Buttonhole finisher" and often truly sharp, as in "He was sentimental/Not Jewish, but gentle" (that's a toreador) or "All Cohens look alike to me" (substitute the pet name of a masked, ring-tailed carnivore). They're catchy and well-sung -- try Fanny Brice's "Becky Is Back in the Ballet" or Rhoda Bernard's "Nat'an" -- and orchestrated with some variety. They're history; they make you think about the compulsion to racial stereotype in American humor. But mostly they're just a delight -- talent enjoying itself without inhibition. If you disapprove, consult a proctologist.

Nils Petter Molvær
"An American Compilation"
(Thirsty Ear)

Molvær is a Norwegian trumpeter formerly on ECM who during the past decade has proven himself a sonic hipster as unflappable as Miles Davis himself. Peter Gordon's electronica-friendly nu-jazz label, Thirsty Ear, introduces its new prize to his natural audience by bearing down on Molvær's Europe-only 2002 "NP3" and front-loading the title tune of ECM's 2001 release "Solid Ether." This overplays Molvær's interest in power funk and pretty solos, but what the hell -- he's always shifting tactics anyway, and there's still atmospheric ambience aplenty.

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