Daily Staff Writer

“Visual Audio Sensory Theater”

VAST

The latest addition to musical greatness comes from the strangely appealing — and almost hypnotizing — musical escapade known as VAST.

The group’s album is an organically sensual journey that peeks at human existence and explores inner faith.

It begins with a string orchestration more haunting than the “Batman” movie score and darker than Gotham City itself. But before the darkness of “Here” blackens anything else, an explosion of guitars shifts the song into an overload that mimics the metal monsters Tool.

On “Touched,” an acoustic opening carries all the weight before molding into a distorted convolution of guitars and looping tracks of spiritual chanting. Jon Crosby, the mastermind behind all of this, propels his voice forward like an almighty prophet of yore.

“Dirty Hole” has an almost U2 quality about it and yearns for unrelenting guitar power. The song is an exasperating eulogy to the men who have died from a rendezvous with a mysterious woman that Crosby’s subject is about to copulate with.

“I’m Dying” opens with the chanting of meditating monks, like so many of the other songs to follow, when a sudden blast of guitars rips through the serenity and takes the song to a whole other level.

In this song, Crosby explores the inescapable thoughts of impending death. He finds solace with the closing lines, “Not one day goes by that I don’t know that I’m dying. I want to say you all are too.”

One more mentionable song is “Flames,” a tune that burns with desire. It tells a story of passion between two lovers set against a backdrop of a quiet acoustic guitar and a serene cello solo.

“Visual Audio Sensory Theater” is a studio masterpiece ranking right up there with the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Adore.” Crosby’s lyricism and song-writing capabilities are ingenious, and the album is quite simply an aesthetic creation of gothic darkness.

4 1/2 stars out of five

—Kevin Hosbond

“Perennial Favorites”

Squirrel Nut Zippers

The current revival of the swing trend couldn’t be more heartily welcomed by anyone other than me.

There is something cool to the tenth power about getting off on music that even the over-sixty crowd could dig. There is definitely a generation gap being closed here and I, for one, am glad.

The Squirrel Nut Zippers, who have long been one of the favorites to revive this ancient musical form, deliver once again on its latest release, “Perennial Favorites.”

The uninitiated should know that this band jams in a fashion which is truly old school. It is a style of World War II-era Southern jazz/blues that your grandparents might have liked if they had been cool back in the day.

Some of the songs sound like Cab Calloway, Cotton Club standards. Others are like the soundtracks to those funky, old black and white cartoons where the banjos are strumming and the spoons are slapping and the energy level is so high that it makes you wonder if the animator could have passed a urine test!

The music is simultaneously light-hearted and deliciously wicked. Yet, it also has a strange innocence about it. Not because it is G-rated, because it isn’t.

It just isn’t jaded like so much else that fits the current mold of what is cool with leather-clad models strutting around like they are deep, belting out lyrics from inside a somatic haze.

The first track, “Suits Are Picking Up The Bill,” is a gay tune with more than a little Dixieland jive to it. The song is about walking into a restaurant broke and being treated by some suits. The entire aesthetic is about 50 years old, but it is still so fresh you could serve it at any gathering.

The next song, “Low Down Man,” is a sweet ballad reminiscent of a drunk, husky-voiced Betty Boop if she had just gotten divorced. The slide guitar gives it a slight country twang, which is just enough to heighten the plaintive quality of the vocals while not over-powering them.

This blends seamlessly into “Ghost of Stephen Foster,” a tale of ribaldry with little-to-no-meaning, just good linguistic fun with lyrics like “met the ghost of Stephen Foster at the Hotel paradise/this is what I told him as I gazed into his eyes/ships were made for sinking, whiskey made for drinking/if we were made of cellophane, we’d all get stinking drunk much faster/going to run all night, going to run all day/the camptown ladies never sang all the do da day!”

For those looking for the same thrill they got from previous efforts like “Hell” and “Put A Lid On It,” that is here in the form of “Trou Macacq,” a soulful croon about each new bend in the “monkey track” of evolution.

Other tracks to note are “My Drag,” “Evening At Lafitte’s,” “That Fascinating Thing,” and “It’s Over.”

If you are tired of rocking, try swinging. As Squirrel Nut Zippers prove, it’s the cat’s pajamas.

4 1/2 Stars out of five

—Greg Jerrett

“Car Wheels On A Gravel Road”

Lucinda Williams

I’ve never been a big fan of country music. I can’t help it. I was force-fed the stuff by sadistic relatives who hated everything the world has become since the late ’50s.

As a result, I choked up quite a bit of music that I might actually have been able to enjoy otherwise.

And now revenge is mine.

There is actually such a thing in the world as Alternative Country and I like it … a lot!

No more country songs about some hick’s wife leaving him and taking the dog with her (and boy, is he gonna miss that dog!). Oh, good one Cletus, didn’t see that one coming at all! How unoriginal.

But along comes Lucinda Williams to change all of that. If you are disinclined toward country, you should rethink your position. Williams is a musician’s musician. Hell, even Tom Petty and Emmylou Harris have both covered her songs.

There is something deep and distinctly unique about Williams. She has a voice like the title of one of her songs, “Drunken Angel.”

Listening to her sing is like washing down sweet potato pie with tequila: sweet with a kick like a mule. In other words, she has a singular voice.

The music she writes is older and more folksy than your average, modern country performers’ attempts to sound like some sort of hip, half-assed rock and rollers.

That stuff ultimately satisfies no one but the Top 40 country stations. It satisfies deep down inside where you keep your guilty pleasures, like Creedence Clearwater Revival or Lone Justice.

William’s latest offering, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” is a true work of art and a satisfying listening experience.

She comes as close to perfection as a performer can while not moving on to the next plane of Platonic Idealism. This album hasn’t even got one crack in its facade. Front to back, we’re talking high quality.

The opening track, “Right In Time,” is a great draw. If you popped this one on in the listening booth, you would be hard pressed to not buy the CD straight away. It’s sexy, but not in a tired trailer park sort of way.

It’s also got some incredible lyrics: “think about you and that long ride/ I bite my nails, I get weak inside/ reach over and turn off the light/ oh my baby … the way you move, it’s right in time/ it’s right in time with me.”

Most of the tracks act as a sort of road atlas of places across the South — Lafayette, Slidell, Greenville, West Memphis, Jackson, Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Vicksburg.

Each place has a unique feel and a story about people the artist has known. She sings about unresolved feelings, unrequited love, the loss of a loved one, and the death of friends.

“Car Wheels On A Gravel Road” is a sweetly reminiscent, noteworthy album. It is a must have for any music lover’s collection.

4 1/2 stars out of five

—Greg Jerrett

“Urbal Beats 2”

Various Artists

At face value, “Urbal Beats 2” is just another compilation CD that is hawked on late night television commercials.

Most of these made-for-TV compilations are garbage (think Oliver Humperdink or the vast majority of the “Sounds of …” series). But this CD easily stands out from the rest of the pack. It’s actually really good.

This two-disc compilation features 16 tracks by some of today’s best techno acts, and 10 tracks that are supposedly “classics.”

But while the CDs do feature a long list of rave superstars (more on that later) who are supposed to represent different facets of electronica, there are some pretty conspicuous absences (The Dust Brothers, The Chemical Brothers, Atari Teenage Riot, Kraftwerk and Ben Neill, to name a few).

But group choices aside, this compilation does offer a lot of great material. Fatboy Slim donates “Going Out Of My Head” and also adds his signature sound to his remix of Wild Child’s “Renegade Master.”

Goldie offers a complex jungle piece that is rather amazing (“Temper, Temper”), and DJ Shadow joins DJ Die to deliver the soon-to-be-classic “What Does Your Soul Look Like?”

Other great tracks are contributed by Crystal Method (whose “Keep Hope Alive” is remixed to a frantic boil by AK 1200), Orbital, Uberzone, and David Holmes (whose “My Mate Paul” shows why he is easily one of the most talented of the techno bunch).

Yet there are some songs by great musicians that just fall flat. Portishead’s “Over” isn’t nearly one of the group’s best songs, and the same goes for “Rabbit In The Moon.”

Prodigy manages to fail twice (“Smack My Bitch Up” is remixed into a boring drone by DJ Hype, and the group’s remix of Method Man’s “Release Yo’ Delf” fails to achieve anything other than adding a different musical backdrop to the Wu Tang Clan star’s ranting).

The “classic” material on this compilation is completely predictable. Prodigy’s “Charly” (why is this group on the compilation three times, anyway?), Utah Saints’ “Something Good,” Moby’s “Go,” and Dubtribe’s “Mother Earth?” Gee, who would have thought?

And while most of the material on this compilation is great, some of the musicians should have been dumped in favor of somebody better (Natural Born Chillers, Rest Assured, DJ Icey, Hive, and Cybotron immediately come to mind).

Where were Roni Size, Plug, Tricky, Underworld, and Howie B when this compilation was being put together?

3 1/2 Stars out of five

—Ben Jones

“A Series Of Sneaks”

Spoon

Spoon, a threesome from Austin, Texas, would best be served on a dish that no one will eat from.

The “faux punx,” as they call themselves, are Britt Daniel, Jim Eno and Joshua Zarbo. The faux pas is that the band has been allowed to release an album.

Spoon’s “A Series Of Sneaks” is, in reality, a series of stinks. The group sounds like a trashy garage band who couldn’t afford to buy a garage to play in, so they took a trip to the local garbage dump.

Daniel’s strange accent, combined with the fact that he has no linguistic grasp of the English language, makes for one antagonistic bother to the ears.

Songs like “Utilitarian” and “Car Radio” are feeding grounds for Daniel’s whiny vocals, while “Reservations,” with its echoing, distant vocals, leaves one to wonder if he has a John Lennon complex. Well, he certainly isn’t John Lennon. Hell, he isn’t even close to being Julian or Sean Lennon.

Other annoying tunes include “30 Gallon Tank” with its unending string of “Bop Bop Boo Bop,” and “Staring At The Board,” where Daniel sounds like a slobbering drunkard reaching for stardom at a local bar’s karaoke night.

The band also needs to learn how to write songs. “Chloroform” is 70 seconds of useless drivel that could eventually have been a song had the band decided to finish it before burning off thousands of CDs.

Then there is the tune “Metal Detektor.” The only interesting thing about this song is its unique spelling. Without even a catchy hook, this song is less captivating than watching toenails grow or observing paint dry.

Perhaps the best song on the album is “The Guest List/The Execution,” in which Daniel proudly sings, “I’m on the guestlist to execution.” The song also includes an odd revelry of clapping and a whistle solo.

Spoon would be lucky to sell 100 copies of “A Series Of Sneaks” as beer coasters to friends of the band. The lead singer’s guttural utterances are disturbing, and third graders could probably produce a better musical sound with their armpits.

1/2 star out of five

-Kevin Hosbond