M83

M83
Before the Dawn Heals Us
(Mute)

Rock bands working within traditional pop structures have it easy: They can get away with making the same good album over and over. That strategy won't produce the sort of oeuvre that makes a 20-year career, but new hooks and a fresh batch of choruses can guarantee an audience's loyalty across a handful of albums if a band maintains consistent quality. Atmospheric music makes that tougher. Much as you might like a certain pretty, airy album, how badly do you need to purchase its follow-up when you're likely only to play it while falling asleep or as background din at a dinner party? M83's Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts was a 2003 sleeper hit in the U.S., so 2005 should find no shortage of fans awaiting a sequel to the somnambulant, effects-heavy opus. Next to its synth-processed guitars, Before the Dawn Heals Us is almost redundant but, on its own, it's a fine album, perhaps even better than its predecessor. The new album's dreamy bits ("Don't Save Us From the Flames," "Farewell/Goodbye") are even dreamier, and the album is more diverse sonically and emotionally. The cinematic horror of "Car Chase Terror!" is a low point, but "*," with its superb take on the ever popular loud/quiet/loud gimmick, more than makes up for it, just as the fireworks at the beginning of "Let Men Burn Stars" justify the overwrought piano playing that follows. The comparative rave-up of "Fields, Shorelines and Hunters" and the prog tendencies apparent in "Can't Stop" and "Save" reveal potentially interesting new directions, but whether you'll be desperate for another, different dose of M83 in 2006 will be the real measure of this album's powers of attraction. KRISTAL HAWKINS

M83 play Chop Suey with Ulrich Schnauss and Hypatia Lake at 9 p.m. Tues., April 26. $12 adv.

SCRITTI POLITTI
Early
(Rough Trade)

Squat romance ain't all it's cracked up to be. My pal Tom once described the evolution of Scritti Politti from rangy, spluttering punk to avert-your-eyes glossy pop as the sound of singer Green Gartside getting better in bed. It's an assessment Green himself would probably agree with; in the terse, dismissive sleeve note to Early, a collection of Scritti's first recordings, he describes the music as "cringeworthy." It's certainly raw, poorly recorded, and sometimes obliquely played. But Early also crackles with Green's astounding guitar mangling, a puppy-dog-eager rhythm section, and the energy of a late-night speed session debating both Derrida and dub. Debut single "Skank Block Bologna" follows a doleful five-note bass line around town, as Green's rusty rhythm playing imitates drizzle. Later songs like "Opec-Imac" are barely there at all, bass pulses and scattered drums hardly anchoring Green's high, plaintive, haunting voice against the depthless murk of the nothing production. By the time of the 4 A-Sides EP, elements of pop were smoothing out the disintegrating skank. "Confidence" is grainy hand claps and gray-eyed soul, with Green hinting at his later marzipan sweetness. Then it was, depending on how you looked at it, either all over or just beginning. The group underwent an ideological revamp following an on-tour breakdown: Question-the-answers post-punk was out, and hide-the-medicine new pop was in. The first fruit was the gorgeous, lapidary "The 'Sweetest Girl'" single, inverted commas hiding not just another lover's discourse but also honeyed keyboards and a pop-reggae backbeat, while the B-side, "Lions After Slumber," pushes us ever closer to Culture Club (nice leg warmers, guys) with the faintly sour aftertaste of the old Ladbroke Grove rigor. JESS HARVELL

JASON MORAN
Same Mother
(Blue Note)

Long before Blue Note, powered by Norah Jones cash flow, started making "eclectic" signings such as Al Green and Van Morrison, the label was noted for left-of-center jazz artists. Pianist Jason Moran hardly challenges Thelonious Monk for inventiveness, but his playful vision has made for entertaining records that recall another previous Noter: Javon Jackson, a saxophonist whose 1996 masterwork A Look Within ranged from Muddy Waters to Serge Gainsbourg. Moran has similarly interpolated everything from hard-bop classics (2000's New Directions summit with Greg Osby and Stefon Harris) to hip-hop while steadily building his profile, which even Playboy has recognized, giving him its newly minted Jazz Artist of the Year award. Same Mother opens with "Gangsterism on the Rise," a New Orleans second-line rhythm kept surprising by a continual rumble from drummer Nasheet Waits, who along with guitarist Marvin Sewell takes the similar traditionalisms of "Jump Up" out back and roughs them up. Even Mal Waldron's sweet "Fire Waltz" is given a threatening twirl via a nonstop series of tempo changes. From there, Moran reaches into Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky for a roiling "Field of the Dead" that makes way for the album's pensive triumphs—his own "Restin'" and wife Alicia's "The Field." The only time all this recontextualization doesn't work, interestingly, is on a listless read of the Albert King touchstone "I'll Play the Blues for You." The drowsy "Gangsterism" reprise at CD's end is more artfully draggy—a perfect soundtrack for Starbucks' Media Bar, anyone? RICKEY WRIGHT

PETRA HADEN AND BILL FRISELL
Petra Haden and Bill Frisell
(Sovereign Artists)