Break Your Mother's Heart
(New West)
An unmistakable straightforwardness of style permeates Tim Easton's new album, \Break Your Mother's Heart."" With pared-down instrumentation and lyrics suggestive of old highwaymen's tales, the 10 tracks roll off the disc in an easy, alt-country manner. With acoustic guitars and relaxed rhythms, the album lets itself unwind in well-written moments and undisturbed chords.
Break Your Mother's Heart has Easton running through a half dozen instruments. His backing band has drummer Jim Keltner, Jai Winding on keyboards and Hutch Hutchinson on bass. These three men have played with everyone from John Lennon to Bonnie Raitt to Jackson Browne. Playing with the band ""was really easy as pie. It was very smooth. They've been doing it so much and they're very easy to get along with. It was about as relaxing as can be,"" Easton said in a recent interview with The Daily Cardinal.
For the most part, this combination lets Easton do what he wants lyrically. Offering nothing but his wishes for something in return for his affection, he tends to drift into moments of unrequited love, saying, ""People enjoy music about that and also I happen to write and eavesdrop on that a lot.""
From the opening track, ""Poor, Poor LA,"" he lets out a line about the sorry state of music with, ""A pack of dull monkeys/ Could write circles around the fourth grade/ Stream of consciousness jive/ That you call a song."" Easton said, ""It's like the reaction some people get when they look at a painting and they say that a kid could do it."" Not to be all that serious, he offered, ""It's probably not even a pack of monkeys. It might be like a gang of monkeys or maybe a school of monkeys.""
While this wry observation may seem like a quick and forgettable remark, the lyrics often have a tendency to stick. The last track, ""True Ways"" comes in with ""Humor so sharp, quick and clever/ Fingers a dark bruise for the pleasure/ These off-hand remarks are so blunt and casual/ Then she slides from the bed with claws and perfect lips."" The imagery of a lost evening surfaces quickly but dissolves, setting up Easton as a man more lonely than he should be, and not always by his own choice.
He tends to present his material as the product of just a man, his guitar and his talent. Citing that combination, he thinks that playing by himself ""is getting easier to do actually. I'm more concerned about just making something I'm happy with so I'm working more toward that every time. I think the times come and go and people's tastes change a lot. I've never changed. I think it's a lot easier today than it was back in the '90s.""
While the album has a distinct feeling of carefully wrought loneliness, Easton never slips into alienation, knowing that Break Your Mother's Heart will turn him from a solo guitarist to the centerpiece of a road-honed band. Easton is ""just anticipating having a really good time playing with them and learning to make the next record with them.""
Though he is just emerging as a singer, Easton's album offers plenty of distinct tracks and impressive arrangements. Never showing off, but always satisfying, it possesses subtle charm. The near-perfect balance between attention paid to instrumentation and songwriting makes Break Your Mother's Heart a comfortable offering that may indicate someone who may be the next big thing.
God's Son
(Columbia)
Nas' newest CD greets you with a James Brown hook and a reference to basketball great ""Pistol"" Pete Maravich. The disc continues with Nas' master storytelling in the forefront as he flawlessly meshes his words with hypnotizing beats. Nas has two types of songs, ones which tell a story, and ones which consist of boasts and observations. Because Nas is a master of both, his album is filled with fascinating tales of intrigue.
Throughout the 14 songs on God's Son, Nas conveys the unabashed insights of a kid from the projects who grew up to be a millionaire. He spits out lines like, ""So Puff drove his new Range through Queensbridge Projects/ He let me drive it, before Ready to Die hit/ BIG and I hit blunts performing at the Arc/ Next thing you knew, BIG blew and all the balling starts."" Apparently a movie about Nas' start in rap would be much more captivating than Eminem's ""8 Mile.""
Many elements of God's Son make it a classic album. There's ""I Can"" with Beethoven's ""Fur Elise"" in the background while kids sing the antithesis of Pink Floyd's ""Brick in the Wall part 3."" When Nas trades raps with Tupac over an acoustic guitar, in ""Thug Mansion,"" hip hop does not get much better. It's too bad God's Son is plagued with skippable tracks containing unoriginal and boring beats such as ""Hey Nas,"" ""Master Mind"" and the annoying ""Zone Out."" While his nonstop rhyming remains engaging, these disturbing rhythms beg you to press skip and look for the next great track.
