September
M ake Y r L ife
The Butchies • Yep Roc Records
B
ack in
1996,
guitarist
Kaia Wilson
and drummer
Melissa York
left the prized
pioneering
Northwest alt
hand Team
Dresch and
eventually
formed their own righteous dyke hand. With
the smart addition of (fine-looking) bassist A li
son Martlew, they gave birth to T he Butchies,
a North Carolina-based political trio seriously
treasured by many queer youth in and out of
Portland.
Their albums— Are We Not Femme (1998),
Population 1975 (1999) and 3 (2 0 0 1 )— are now
a living growth chart of the independent trio’s
skills and musicianship.
Luckily, M ake Yr Life, the punk-rockers’
new and far-away best record, shows another
much-needed leap up that chart. It also marks
the change from feminist, queer label Mr. Lady
(founded by Wilson and ex Tammy Rae Car-
land and recently packed up) to the similar Yep
Roc.
M ake Yr Life sports a promising air of un
sullied, high-energy, fresh maturity and long-
overdue professionalism. Moving away from a
specific queer politics theme, songs find new
ground in self-reflection and the depths of the
lesbian tortured heart.
This is no douht rich soil, hut to mirror the
ups and downs of roller coaster lesbian drama,
the hand feels the need to play an endless
crank-up/mute-again game. Yes, we get it: The
typhixm of tense, scathing guitar riffs and
spiked-up drums eternally flows hack to a seem
ingly relaxed yet loaded pericxl of calm and
hack again. Overkill never satisfies.
Also scraping the album’s edge is Wilson’s
whiny, honeyed and utterly soulless lead vocal.
It is plain wrong to let such unskilled sounds
accompany the intoxicating first-class drum
and guitar work.
It’s time for The Butchies
to polish their act all the way
and bestow their fans more
than a limp “almost.” There is
nothing more frustrating than
premature loss of momentum.
— ELs Debbaut
George, who plays it safe with ballads that are
maudlin (“A Different Com er”) and drippy
(“One More Try”). Not my style.
The multiple personality disorder is even
more pronounced on Patience, Michael’s first
album of original material since 1996’s Older.
At one moment he’s embracing his queer
ness prouder than ever on “Flawless (G o to the
C ity),” an instant dance classic that samples
liberally from The Ones’ 2001 hit of the same
name and includes gay-positive lyrics like
“You’re beautiful...and you know it/You’re
wasted here...in this small town in hand-me-
downs...! think you know that you are more
than just some fucked-up piece of ass.”
He also sticks up for his brothers on “Cars
&. Trains”: "Johnny’s gone and got himself a
new man/He gets laid, every day...Take care of
yourself/Because you won’t find ‘daddy’/When
you’re popping those pills.”
But wait: Here comes Straight George,
trapped in the ’80s closet with dated ditties like
“John &. Elvis Are Dead” and “My Mother
Had a Brother.” Although these slow songs are
somewhat moving, they disrupt the flow of an
otherwise progressive album— which is a
shame, because some of us just don’t have the
Patience.
—Jim Radosta
Cha Cha
/
/
/
Rumba
Country
Swing
•
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H ymns of the 4 9 th P arallel
k.d. long • Nonesuch Records
I support GALA choruses!
f you ever
are in a
rcx)m dur
ing a k.d. lang
performance,
you are affect
ed for life by
that entranc
ing voice. Not
a soul before
kncxrked out
an audience as instantly and intimately as lang
dtxis. The quintessential lesbian diva’s very own
records fail to do justice to the presence of her
range of voice, her velvet charisma.
Still, a fraction of this phenomenal power
can he found on lang’s captivating new disc,
Hymns o f the 49th
Parallel. Lang infallibly
recasts, and at times
outd<x_‘s, 11 hand-picked
Canadian songs, includ
ing timeless hreathtakers
like Leonard Cohen’s
“Hallelujah,” Joni
M itchell’s “A Case of
P atience
You" and Neil Young’s
“Helpless."
George Michael • Aegean Records
For lang, each song
hears a hereditary effect so
hroughout George Michael's
strong that she views them
career— even before he was
as spiritual choral rather
outed in 1998 for his in
than simple, secular
famous cop cmising— the
songs. And as a Bud
cnxiner has struggled with
dhist and Canadian,
two conflicting personalities.
mirroring a stance
Sometimes he’s Gay
against the war, lang
George, swishing all over
intends to gracefully
the place with numbers
spread compassion
that are celebratory
and a reverence for
(“Freedom ’90”) and
all living things.
energetic (“Tot)
Be pre
Funky”). This is the
pared to he
George I love.
magnetized
But in between
and scream:
this peppy music
"lang for
emerges, for
president!”
lack of a better
— ED
term, Straight
George Michael lives a double life on Patience
C o n g ratu latio n s Newlyw eds!
B ry a n t
Realty
( 541) 758-1234 x 21 1
CLARK HOUSE
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e -m a il: c la r k s h o u s e s @ a o l.c o m
1575 MW 9th Street • Corvallis. OR 97330
KING LEAR
‘■’ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
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www .P C S org
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amecP
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OCT 5-31. 2004
PORTLAND
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