Jeff McCord on the month’s new releases
Kathy McCarty
Rexy Rex
(Listen)
Buy this at Available at cdbaby.com
In the eighties KATHY MCCARTY was co-leader of Glass Eye, a peerless Austin band that attracted a cultish national following. Her songs were awash in mysterious imagery and old-world melodies, and no one expected her music to stop along with her band. Yet McCarty delivered her acclaimed 1994 Daniel Johnston tribute, DEAD DOG’S EYEBALL (Bar/None, recently reissued), and then…nothing. Another Day in the Sun (Rexy Rex, available at cdbaby.com) makes up for lost time. Some songs recall Glass Eye’s art-rock explosives (the creepy “Basement” is a holdover), and McCarty’s lyrical acuity remains intact (light “paler than champagne and colder than the moon”). But there’s an open, folkish quality too, as on the wistful title track, where friends “pass around the truth like a worn dollar bill,” that lends her work uncommon depth and staying power.
Mike Jones
SwishaHouse/Asylum/Warner Bros.
Who? MIKE JONES. Who? Mike Jones. It’s a mantra repeated on almost every song of this aptly named Houston rapper’s major-label debut, WHO IS MIKE JONES? (SwishaHouse/Asylum/Warner Bros.) None too shy about self-promotion, Jones even works his cell phone number into his music. Such incessant hype has earned Jones his share of fans and detractors (“a lot of haters and a lot of homies,” as he puts it), but they all know his name. By hooking up with Warner Bros., Jones becomes the first of the protégés of DJ Screw—the late pioneer of the screwed (slowed down) mix tapes that now distinguish the city’s burgeoning hip-hop scene—to go national. “Still Tippin’,” the album’s first single, typifies his sludgy, smirking, and playful drawl, with a hometown charm that can come only from the slow-crawl highways of Houston.
Janis Joplin
Columbia/Legacy
Thanks to movies like The Rose and, okay, to JANIS JOPLIN herself, the Port Arthur native is remembered as a drug-addled mess. But as one of the great white blues singers of her generation, Joplin left significant work behind. What’s illuminating about PEARL: LEGACY EDITION (Columbia/Legacy) are the demos and live tracks (some previously unreleased) that augment this two-CD reissue of her 1971 classic. They display a singer with her demons largely behind her, controlling her voice with newfound maturity and clarity. Even moments like the wordless sing-along to “Me and Bobby McGee” seem meticulously thought out, while her live performances are physical triumphs. Had she not succumbed, during the last phases of recording, to boredom and, subsequently, bad heroin, Pearl could have marked a career milestone instead of a poignant finale.
