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Meshell Ndegeocello, Cookie: The Anthropological Mix Tape (Maverick Records)
Meshell Ndegeocello's Cookie: The Anthropological Mix Tape is part self-portrait, part landscape, part love poem. Whereas her last album, Bitter, was almost unbearably heavy-hearted, hung up on a painful breakup, Cookie finds Meshell exploring her (r)evolution as an emphatic political funkstress and the world that nurtured the process. Sex, life, death, racism, crime, and love are all subject to Meshell's interpretation.
But like any good mix tape, Meshell varies musical styles and features more than one speaker/singer. Cookie deftly combines song with spoken word — the majority of the album is thick on thump, pulse, and loungey rhythms, tempting you to kick back, smoke up, and reevaluate your philosophy of life. That can be a good thing, sure, but at almost 70 minutes long, it can also be a monotonous thing. Yet, the standouts will remind you how Meshell can set it off like no other.
On the opener, "Dead Nigga Blvd. (Pt. 1)," she spits thugged-out rhymes that are angry, probing, and astute. "Hot Night" kicks a bluesy, hip-hop groove, and provides an ideal canvas for the revolutionary soul singer. Although the thick funk groove of "God.Fear.Money" (lyrics: "make the world go round and round") is a danceable track, the song ends in gunshots. The free-spirited jazz horns and drums of "Criterion" grab you off-guard, just like the shrieking electric guitar solos in "Dead Nigga Blvd. (Pt. 2)."
Cookie is a multi-layered album that tries to tackle an abstract concept through song and poetry. I know people who have written dissertations like this album. Don't let that discourage you, though. While it's not as thrilling as her Plantation Lullabies or Peace Beyond Passion releases, it'll move you, but not in a throw-yo-hands-in-tha-air kinda way.
Related Artists: Erykah Badu, Joni Mitchell
Mary Lou Lord, Live City Sounds (Rubric Records)
This CD should have been titled "Live from Starbucks at Three in the Afternoon When Nobody's Here" by That Girl With a Guitar. Actually, the album of mostly solo cover songs was recorded in a Boston subway station by indie-gone-major-gone-indie-again Mary Lou Lord. Either Boston has the quietest subway station in the world or Lord nixed all the background noise. Someone please tell me the point of a live album that doesn't sound live.
Lord is a veteran of playing in subways and on sidewalks, so I guess it's
natural for the album to sound as relaxed and refined as it does. If Lord didn't have three albums (well, two EPs and one full-length album) of original material under her belt or an established fan base, she'd be selling this CD out of the trunk of her car. She picked some good songs to cover, though: "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen, "I Don't Want to Get Over You" by Magnetic Fields, and "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" by Bob Dylan. But there's no interpretive spin on the songs, except the fact that,
well, they're covered by Mary Lou Lord, and frankly, that's nothing outstanding.
If you're a fan of straight-up folksingers, Lord's acoustic guitar playing, or her mediocre singing, this album is just for you and no one else. It's almost as if the record was to keep Lord's name alive since she's releasing another full length later in the year. She should have laid low.
More Mary Lou Lord
Related Artists: Ani DiFranco, Lisa Loeb, Fiona Apple, Alanis Morissette, Elliott Smith, Guided By Voices
Lisa Loeb, Cake and Pie (A&M)
Never say one-hit-wonders featured in Winona Ryder movies don't pay off. Cake and Pie is Lisa Loeb's third album. Most likely, Loeb is still around because people like predictability more than innovation. Her songs aren't bad, they're just nothing great. Cake and Pie is a formulated album — verse-chorus-verse with frequent, simple hooks. Combine her bird-like voice with some electric guitars and drums, add some Ally McBeal-introspective pop psychology and there you have it. The songs are about strained relationships, something you can tell just by reading their titles: "Underdog," "We Could Still Belong Together," "You Don't Know Me," and "She's Falling Apart." Cake and Pie has its moments, but even those aren't memorable. Skip dessert.
More Lisa Loeb
Related Artists: Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, Fiona Apple, Mary Lou Lord
February 2002
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