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N*E*R*D

Fly or Die

VIRGIN

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With a series of judicious guest spots and duets helping Pharrell Williams's solo career toward lift-off velocity, this second album from his band with fellow Neptune Chad Hugo should make more impact than their debut, In Search of.... That album was initially released in August 2001, in a version recorded in The Neptunes' signature style, with sparse digital beats and techno twitches; but it was instantly deleted and rerecorded with the heavy-rock band Spymob for release the following March. The rationale, apparently, was that they needed to differentiate the new band from the projects they routinely undertook as The Neptunes.

Although Spymob have been discharged for Fly or Die, the rock manner persists in the trio's (the third member is their old schoolfriend Shay) guitar-heavy backings. Not that they've abandoned dancefloor imperatives: with their lumpy funk grooves and slightly stodgy guitar and keyboard parts, tracks such as "She Wants to Move" and "Jump" resemble the prog- funk workouts of Funkadelic and Talking Heads, respectively, while the predatory, blues-based guitar parts and drum avalanches of the slower "Backseat Love" recall the saucy early style of The Jimi Hendrix Experience. "So we street-walkin' and holdin' hands," Williams oozes sexily, "but she don't know that daddy got plans."

A loose concept of adolescence holds the album together. The title track captures the as-yet-undirected surge of teenage ambition ("Fly or die, sink or swim/ Which way shall I choose?"), and "Jump" offers a runaway teen's explanation of why he had to leave home: "I'm not perfumed or facetious,/ But at home I felt seedless/ You were so completely heedless:/ 'Turn to BBC: you should see this.' " Further strains of angst and disaffection characterise "Breakout" and "Thrasher", while "Waiting for You" offers a brief mid-album respite from the heaviness by using acoustic guitar, hand percussion and pizzicato strings to support a tale of a near-drowning experience.

There are moments when things come perilously close to the epic pomp- rock bluster of Queen or Jeff Wayne, but Williams's lyrical imagination usually salvages matters, whether through the reference to Orson Welles in the bizarre but catchy "Drill Sergeant", or the hallucinatory imagery that follows the whistled intro of the jazzy "Wonderful Place": "The wallpaper's moving/ My arms and my legs leave a blur when I swipe/ Sap is just oozing/ The trees say smoke blocks the sun so for them it's just right." By the penultimate track, "Chariots of Fire", he has all but abandoned rational continuity, calling out: "Mildred! Mildred!" before diving head-first into utterly baffling mid-song switches of lyrical and musical direction.

Confused? You should be. But also relieved that such idiosyncratic talents as N*E*R*D are prepared to cross genres and bring a fresh impetus to rock music.

Eric Clapton

Me and Mr Johnson

DUCK/REPRISE

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Eric Clapton has never stinted in his admiration for the blues virtuoso Robert Johnson, whose music and single-minded dedication to his craft have remained touchstones throughout EC's career. What first struck him about Johnson's music, he explains in the sleevenote to this album of Johnson covers, was its emotional directness. "At first, it scared me in its intensity," he confides, "and I could only take it in small doses." Odd, then, that his own versions should sound so amenable, even fun, by comparison. Indeed, there are few things in Clapton's entire catalogue as enjoyable as "They're Red Hot", which prances gaily along on the back of Billy Preston's sprightly piano; his "Love In Vain", meanwhile, is arguably less faithful to the original than the Stones' version. Perhaps advisedly, Clapton only affects Johnson's haunted falsetto on a couple of tracks; instead, his vocals display the assurance of maturity (he's lived more than twice as long as Johnson), while his guitar-playing is as meticulous as ever. His band, too, is on top form, equally at home with the rolling groove of "When You've Got a Good Friend" and the assertive "If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day", with Preston, and Jerry Portnoy on harmonica offering sterling foils to Clapton's guitar. All told, a highly entertaining set, albeit lacking the soul- chilling character of Johnson's recordings.

The Vines

Winning Days

EMI/HEAVENLY

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Great things were expected of The Vines after their Highly Evolved debut, which duly repaid the widespread faith with a million and a half sales and a year and a half's touring. Which may explain the comparative lack of evolution evident on this follow-up. It's a virtually identical blend of brittle grunge riffs, West Coast harmonies and sun-kissed psychedelia, though sadly never in the same song. Instead, the constituent elements remain separate, giving Winning Days a schizophrenic aspect. That will doubtless do just fine for singer-songwriter Craig Nicholls, the kind of angst-tortured frontman desperate to establish his mental instability. Like the bar bore repeating "I'm mad, me", song after song eventually returns to Craig's favourite topic: himself. "I cannot remember/ My own sanity" he claims in "Amnesia", while a continuation of the blissful "Autumn Shade" advises us to "Look through me because I am a transparent", Nicholls concluding "I'm beginning to speak like I'm fucking mad".

But there's a difference between speaking like you're mad and actually being mad, just as there is between staged rebellion and real resistance. The Vines are often compared to Nirvana; a more accurate comparison would be The Foo Fighters.

Interview, page 16

Joy Zipper

American Whip

13 AMP/VERTIGO

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Finally released after a year in limbo, Joy Zipper's American Whip brings a haze of summer sunlight to the last days of winter. Since getting lost in 13 Amp's business shuffles, Zipper duo Vincent Cafiso and Tabitha Tindale have already recorded and released last November's delightful EP The Stereo and God, but this is by no means overshadowed by developments, featuring as it does the same kind of narcotised drone-pop, in a Galaxie 500/Mazzy Star vein. Drugs, love and ageing are the main themes: there's the hymn- like "Drugs" itself, followed by the dream-state of "Dozed and Became Invisible", featuring the duo's admission that "Psilocybin every day/ Blew my mind in every way". It's probably not coincidental that it should be followed in turn by the sluggish but beautiful "Alzheimer's", whose protagonist wonders, "What is this terrible thing coming over me?". They deserve credit for tackling such a difficult subject, although their use of old-folk vocal samples seem more intrusive than necessary. The same groggy disorientation laps around much of the album, with Tindale claiming "I'm getting tired of life - that's 33 times I climbed up the same tree" in "33x", and the duo wondering "What's the use in time, if time is lost?"

in "In the Never Ending Search for a Suitable Enemy". The musical equivalent of a waking dream.

Bonnie "Prince" Billy

Greatest Palace Music

DOMINO

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Part of the appeal of Will Oldham's early work under his Palace guises - as, variously, Palace Brothers, Palace Music and just plain Palace - was the ramshackle quality of the recordings, which gave them a patina of rootsy authenticity and encouraged the perception of him as some inbred hillbilly. Of course, the intimations of violence and incest in songs such as "West Palm Beach" didn't exactly help dissuade that supposition; but it's debatable whether these re- recorded "proper" country arrangements don't actually add an extra frisson of transgressive anxiety to the songs, as of a sociopath set free in the community. After all, lines such as "There is absence, there is lack, there are wolves hereabouts" don't really sound as if they should be riding atop sleek settings of fiddle, piano and pedal steel, so much as clawed from a badly tuned guitar. Which is not to say that their guns are all completely spiked: the creepy smears of violin on "Riding" and "More Brother Rides" add to the songs' haunted manner. By contrast, "Ohio River Boat Song" and "Agnes, Queen of Sorrow" seem fully at home in the conservative country settings. Indeed, with its honky-tonk hillbilly backing, "I Send My Love" has a genuine air of innocent rusticity.

Interview, page 14

Johnny Cash

Life

COLUMBIA

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