> June 19, 2003 > Arts > Disc Reviews

PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH
BEARD OF LIGHTNING
** 1/2
Off

Phantom Tollbooth lived and died in the late 1980s, playing stop-on-a-dime changes borrowed from both the Minutemen and speed metal, throwing them in a blender with psychedelic rock, a little bit of prog and cutup poetry. Too heady to be appreciated by more than a few people in their lifetime -- guitarist Dave Rick is better known for his work with Bongwater and King Missile -- they recorded two albums and a few EPs for Homestead Records before disbanding in 1988. Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard is apparently one of their biggest fans, and he received permission from the band to erase the vocal tracks from their Power Toy album and create new lyrics and melodies. All the songs, minus their frantic reading of Heart's "Barracuda," plus the non-LP single "Valley of the Gwangi," have new names and lyrics. The pairing sounds great on paper: Vocals were always the band's stumbling block, so they could use Pollard's gift for melody. But the results are mixed since all the quick, noisy changes don't always lend themselves to vocal melodies anyway. This often leaves Pollard sounding like he's randomly spewing non-sequiturs, looking for an opening. Things click during the Meat Puppets-on-prog of "Mascara Snakes" -- the former "Gwangi" single -- as does noisy "Iceland Continuations." Tollbooth fans should enjoy playing compare-and-contrast with the original album, and the folks who scoop up Pollard's myriad side project releases should dig it. Otherwise Beard of Lightning might be too hard to penetrate.

-- MIKE SHANLEY

CRUCIAL UNIT
THESE COLORS GET THE RUNS
***
Six Weeks

Any metalhead worth his salt back in 1988 wouldn't dare have been lacking records by Anthrax, Exodus and Metallica in a collection. But times have changed since the heyday of the comparatively short-lived thrash metal movement, with many seminal acts degenerating from innovation to imitation in the wake of alternative rock and so-called "nu-metal." Crucial Unit never let their thrash records collect much dust over the past 10 years or so, based on These Colors Get the Runs. Over 11 tracks, the fivesome belch out frenzied tributes to their cold beverage of choice -- "Communitea," "The Quest for Certaintea" -- wax scatalogic about the U.S.'s post-September 11 carpet-bomb diplomacy in the title track and rail against the incompatibility of Dickies work trousers with pocket change in "Bruce Springsteen Needs the Workers But the Workers Don't Need Bruce Springsteen." The record also finds the band infusing their familiar hybrid of high-velocity crusty punk and retro-thrash riffage with allusions to pop-punk in "Crucial Unit's Friendship Picnic" and power metal via the aforementioned "Certaintea," which features guitarists Dan Wyrostek and Ian Ryan on a soaring twin lead right out of the Iron Maiden lexicon. Vocalist Justin Cummings takes the overblown-larynx approach to its natural extremes. His raspy, whistling shriek and warbling growl sounds more Muppet than menace and is well suited to the sentiments of songs like "Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness, Too Bad We're All Atheists."

-- ADAM MACGREGOR

CD Release party kicks off a national tour on Fri., June 20 with Io and He Taught Me Lies. 8 p.m. Project 1877, Garfield. 412.363.1877

THE CRAMPS
FIENDS OF DOPE ISLAND
**
Vengeance

Cramps singer Lux Interior has been groaning and screaming and humping the floorboards of stages around the world for nearly 30 years now. Poison Ivy has been standing next to him, playing the same Link Wray-inspired guitar riffs and wearing the same world-weary sneer the entire time. Earlier in their career, they were more faithful to their rockabilly roots, covering a wide variety of classic and obscure songs. As time went by, they wrote more and more of their own material and began to camp it up. These days, their image isn't the rebel greaser so much as it is creatures from a bad 1950s B-movie. Kitsch is the keyword as they serenade the listener with adolescent sexuality, cross-dressing, cuss words, drug use, aliens and voodoo. Tongues are firmly in cheek throughout. The sad reality is that no Cramps album -- including the live one -- comes close to capturing the intensity of their live performance. Their CDs become artifacts of a certain time in their career, serving as a pale reminder of the real thing. As an example, Dope Island ends with "Wrong Way Ticket," an extended jam tune that attempts to mimic the apocalyptic close of their concerts. Without being able to see Ivy's hip grinds, or Lux fellating the microphone, it just doesn't quite hold up. Dope Island is a good Cramps album -- as good as any of them, really. And, like the others, it leaves the listener wanting more.

-- WAYNE WISE