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CD Reviews

Kitty Little: Nice Noise
Peterwalkee Records, 2002

Pop punk took a wrong turn in the late ‘90s as radio and mtv started to poach the buzz of melodic rock. But pop product doesn't have to sound disposable—check the extensive catalogues of Bad Religion, Pennywise, NOFX, and Samiam, to name a few.

Thankfully, a new breed of aggressive melody has been popping up like bubblegum all over the Hudson Valley scene, including bands like Ana Devine, The Kiss Ups, Joey's Throwin' Elbows, and Autopilot Off.

Albany-based Kitty Little fills a niche in the genre with their self-proclaimed "candy-fisted pop violence," a sugar-sweet blend of indie rock and taking-it-personally punk. The high-fructose frequencies ring true with heart-throbbing rhythms and high-register vocal dynamite. Their five-song ep Nice Noise will fit all of your car's stereo-blasting needs this summer.

We can thank our lucky punky stars that Kitty Little has come to grab the wheel of upbeat melodic rock and steer it in the right direction at dangerously high speeds. www.kittylittle.com.

—Zac Shaw

Jim Donnelly: Mischevious Jim
our records!, 2002

The Kingston meter man and former founding member of Public Employee is back with more poems, songs, and general effusiveness. Jim Donnelly crams his second album with 41 quick tracks featuring jangly alt-folk anthems, recorded city sounds, and Donnelly’s famous drive-by poetry (“Third day, same underwear. / No one knows except in small close rooms”). There’s also one cover, “My Blue Heaven,” sung and whistled in happy bounce-time.

Donnelly has always been a poet of place, drawing heavily on the iconography of the Mid-Hudson Valley and especially Kingston. There’s plenty of universal themes as well—"Squeak Boom" is about walking in on your parents and the psychological scarring that results; "City Esteem" is about that peculiar self-scrutiny that happens in a world full of mirrors and ad campaigns; and "Faster" addresses the acceleration of modernity.

If there's a disappointment to this album, it's the brevity that has become Donnelly's trademark. His clipped verses work well with his childlike voice, but some of the songs are cut so short one barely has time to get into the groove before being booted out of it. www.mischievousjim.com.

—Todd Paul

Trio Loco: Live at Deep Listening Space
geoff mayer/the pauline oliveros foundation, 2003

Trio Loco performs what its self-described “jazz maniac” members call “jazz unstandards”. As such, Stratocaster master Mark Dziuba, washtub wizard Studio Stu Chernoff and percussionist Dean Sharp improv upon, so to speak, both classics and Dziuba’s originals. Chernoff calls the trio "one in-tune, out-of-tune, offbeat outfit" that strives to "go beyond the music’s intent". But Trio Loco’s music is neither unrecognizable nor ungroovable. It makes you think, even as its rhythms flow through your solar plexus, hitting that joy spot for which all jazz aims but only the best targets.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Trio Loco’s debut is the way the each composition’s rhythms merge and diverge within itself and with each other. In Dizzy Gillespie’s "A Night in Tunisia" Dziuba’s picking beckons Chernoff’s licks. Next, Dziuba’s intensifying "Nitro Vision" leads into a wonderful melding of old standard "Fly Me to the Moon" and J. Henderson’s "Inner Urge". Four at times eerie, at times exotic Thelonious Monk pieces ("Crepiscule with Nellie", "Baya", "Blue Monk" and "Monk’s Dream") follow, with Dziuba’s "On Probation", a piece composed solely of nuance, placed in the middle. These guys are having some serious fun. Like Fats Waller, Trio Loco obviously believes "jazz isn’t what you do, it’s how you do it."

—Susan Piperato