The house at carousel corner. (The Music).

Chapter XCI. IN WHICH Pooh and Piglet discover that treacly power ballads, pseudo hip-hop posturing, and cheesy dance music are international phenomena; Pooh finds solace in his hunny addiction, and Piglet goes hungry.

CDs. This ish we once again cast an adoringly skeptical eye at the ladies. They're all beautiful, sexy, and have lovely voices--and are inordinately preoccupied with worthless men. Regardless of the message, the modern airwaves are genuinely international. We have a bunch of Yanks, a Bolivian, two Canadians, three Aussies, and an Icelander. They are just as musically diverse. Unfortunately, there's more trendy pop as not, and as Dorothy Parker once wrote about Milne's originals, "Tonstant weader fwowed up."

Tori Amos, StrangeLittleGirls (Atlantic)

When Amos isn't communing with Irish spirits, splitting decibels with her recording engineers, or banging away at her Bosendorfer, she explores ideas so novel and fresh that one is compelled to take notice and equally compelled to pass on the quirks that adorn her oeuvre. Strange Little Girls takes a basketful of male anthems, or at least guys' songs about "guyness", and recasts them in her own voice with alternate satire and traces of irony. Starting with Lou Reed's "New Age," through Bob Geldof's "I Don't Like Mondays," 10CC's "I'm Not in Love," Lennon's "Happiness is a Warm Gun," and a host of others, Amos recasts the songs' sensibilities through a feminine voice. The effect is a curious mixture of direct hits and near misses.

The lethal narrative of Eminem's "'97 Bonnie and Clyde" is transformed into a marrow-chilling monstrosity as Amos' gentle whisper coos with beguiling delicacy. "I'm Not in Love" takes a self-doubting protest and turns it into feckless manipulation: "I've got your picture/Up on the wall/But it's just to hide a nasty stain/That's lying there." Lennon's ode to "bullet-headed Saxon mothers' sons" is ratcheted up several notches as Amos updates the political rhetoric that eddies around gun-related violence. Oddly, the song is virtually lost in and among the pro-NRA sound clips. Strange Little Girls culminates with Joe Jackson's "Real Men," a cultural indictment of macho swagger that Amos reads without irony. Strange Little Girls doesn't so much take on male icons as hold them up for a different viewing, and despite that achieves little toward resolving the once and always elusive communications between the sexes. For all of this, one marvels that boys and girls actually do talk and eventually get on to other things.

Jonatha Brooke, Steady Pull (Bad Dog Records)

When Jonatha Brooke and Jennifer Kimball were The Story, they produced CDs of marvelous diversity, replete with rhythmic innovations, vocal gyrations, and the exploration of multiple musical styles--like their last, the marvelous Angel in the House. It no doubt dawned on Brooke that since she wrote and arranged all the songs, she needed Kimball as much as George Michael needed Andrew Ridgely, and she struck out on her own. As a solo act, her recordings seemed to retreat from The Story's adventurous track, treading the singer/songwriter vein of compacted, stripped down arrangements--for some (notably KWN) a product not up to The Story's standards. Steady Pull, while not quite attaining The Story's eclectic stylistic mix, is a solid effort of innovative, up-tempo songs made attractive by Bob Clearmountain's production, a good studio band, and guest contributions from Mitchell Froom, Joe Sample, Marcus Miller, and Neil Finn. In fact, Brooke's lovely duet with Finn, "New Dress," is a small reminder of Brooke's effectiveness with a singing partner a la Kimball.

Lyrically, Brooke could use a detour from Cliche Lane. While the songs ring familiar notes of dizzy li'l girls wanting and afraid of love ("Linger") and love is really raiment ("New Dress"), the language is oft' used, musty, and frequently confuddled. Dig "Digging": "I am digging deep, I am digging wide/Looking for clues in the grand design" or "Out of Your Mind": "It's nothing new--you're one of a kind you take the cake/And miss the boat all the time ..."--which wins this month's Mixed Metaphor Trophy. It seems that the trend these days is toward lyric insipidity, and not being inclined to brook the tide, Brooke embraces it with earnestness if not relish. Forget the lyrics; the arrangements and singing are worth the trip.

Bjork, Vespertine (Elektra)

It's not difficult to imagine that Bjork's quixotic auralscapes are spawned from the icy blue Atlantic that relentlessly engirds her native Iceland. Spare, ethereal, like her heavily accented voice, Bjork's arrangements seem to hover in the background, Muzak for the mystic. Vespertine, like Debut, Post, and Homogenic, only serves to deepen the mystery of Bjork Goodmundsdottir. Her poetry, written in a foreign tongue, is stripped to bare essentials: "He's the beautifullest, fragilest, still strong/ Dark and divine/And the littleness of his movements/Hides himself/He invents a charm that makes him invisible/Hides in the hair/Can I hide there too?" ("Hidden Place"). Indeed, Bjork revels in her men, swathing them in word-spun cocoons. The revulsion that seems to characterize Tori Amos and the drooling slavishness that typifies too many pop chanteuses are simply foreign to Bjork's world.

The surprise in Vespertine is her bow to the minutest of pop sensibilities. The verses in "It's Not Up To You" swirl with synthesizers and a harp before cresting in a chorus of stunning beauty. Again her lyrics reveal only shades: "If you wake up/And your day feels broken/Just lean into the crack/And it will tremble ever so nicely/Notice how it sparkles down there". And "Frosti" is perhaps the first pop song written for and recorded by ... a music box. From the Aries-like cornucopia in Rolling Stone to Homogenic's top-heavy Ubangi geisha, Bjork's personas spill out in a stream of visual consciousness, just as her music cascades in effortless shards. Vespertine is another self-portrait, or better still another portion of the self-portrait that will continue to emerge.

Blu Cantrell, So Blu (Arista)

It would be too easy to dismiss Blu Cantrell as just another hip-hop wannabe. So Blu is full of the requisite, misty-eyed ballads and cheesy dance pop that so plagues single female performers these days. And like all of her consoeurs, Cantrell has quite a set of pipes, so one wonders what separates her from the packette? Is there anything distinctive that will recommend So Blu out of the rafts of similar material? First, there's the blues inflected "U Must B Crazy," or the Stevie Wonder-ment of "The One," and the infectious retro-romp "Swing." As for the rest, So Blu is a metaphor for everything that is good and everything that is so very wrong with 21st century pop. It has impeccable arrangements, pristine production values, and an excellent frontwoman. It also has cookie-cutter genres, shameless trend du jour pandering, and an artistic ethos apparently driven by marketing demographics: is it really true that more CDs are bought by teenage girls than any other market segment? Regardless, there is just enough to recommend So Blu, or at least Blu Cantrell. One hopes that either her artistic vision broadens or she tells her handlers to stuff it and tackles some muscular material that would challenge and ultimately vindicate her vocal gifts.

Kasey Chambers, Barricades & Brickwalls (Warner Bros.)

Okay, American country/roots music from Oz is not exactly a novelty, but it is most certainly a rarity, especially if it manages to rise above parody or mimicry. Although Kasey Chambers's lyrics sneak in the occasional outback reference ("... dingoes howl just to break the silence"--"Nullarbor Song"), seem to be preoccupied with American mythmaking--three songs are about trains, an astonishing eight about crying, as in tears--and trade in Aussie authenticity for hackneyed Nashville metaphors, the music is amazingly robust. From the gentle acoustics of "On A Bad Day" to the Patsy Cline inspired honky tonk of "A Little Bit Lonesome" to the out-and-out rock of "Crossfire," Barricades & Brickwalls, if not original, is at least fresh. The predominance of "my man done me wrong" songs guarantees the album substantial airplay, especially in America's kitchens.

Nelly Furtado, Whoa, Nelly! (Dreamworks)

Straight from the mean streets of Vancouver, B.C., Nelly Furtado's tribute to Keith Jackson opens with a string quartet churning alongside drums and sampled percussion. "Hey, Man!" is an impressively offbeat introduction to a singer who is as impressive as she is lyrically immature. "Hey, Man!" for all of its textural density is full of youthful assertiveness, open-ended metaphors, and delicious non-sequiturs: "It's like a mobius strip, and it goes round and round until it loses a link." Unfortunately, that's the highlight of the disc--it's pretty much downhill from there. Nelly sings mightily in macha overtones, "I got what you need, baby" ("I Will Make U Cry"), strutting youthful bootie, resisting submission to a host of questionable male companions. It's the voice of a young woman still finding her own voice, much less her own person.

What separates Whoa, Nelly! from a broad phalanx of hip-hop vocalists is Furtado's arrangements, which embrace meager instrumentation, frequently featuring only an acoustic guitar and various percussion, including the omnipresent turntable. The Latin tinge of "Legend" is contrasted with the loping cadence of "Turn Off the Light" and James McCollum's tasty acoustic guitar solo. Furtado is the daughter of Portuguese emigres, and indulges in an extended native tongue rap in the samba-esque "I Will Make U Cry." I'll recommend Whoa, Nelly! on its musical merits with the vague hope that her lyrics may someday catch up.

Alicia Keys, Songs in A Minor (j records)

What's remarkable about Keys's debut disc is not her prowess at the piano, the stunning vocal arrangements, or even how she's tamed hip-hop's coarser instincts in the service of her songwriting. No, Songs in A Minor is a down home, chicken scratchin', come to Sunday meeting soul record. Not since Aretha herself, girl, have you witnessed--because we are indeed bearing witness--a sister at the keys simply screaming away her soul's scars, never more evident than on her astonishing cover of Prince's "How Come You Don't Call Me." Keys's history lesson continues with "Rock Wit U," an Isaac Hayes (who arranged the string section) rave-up reminiscent of his '70s production work--and slightly reminiscent of Michael Jackson's "Rock With You." The elegant duet with Jimmy Cozier, "Mr. Man," resonates with sprinkles of Stevie Wonder's late '70s burst of creativity.

It's one thing to have a golden gullet; it's quite another for one's songwriting to achieve the maturity and depth on display in Songs in A Minor. If this column's theme is "women and their men," each artist's point of view is an open item. Tori Amos is the intellectual surgeon. Jonatha Brooke, Kasey Chambers, Natalie Imbruglia, and Blu Cantrell are victims. Alanis the angry, defiant feminist. Bjork the winking mystic. Nelly Furtado the macha vixen. Kylie Minogue and Shakira the hot numbers. In a sense they are all reflected selves, "I am what I am in relationship to you." What differentiates Keys from all of them is her absolute sense of inner self, that she is in control of her own destiny; and while men are important, they're not by any stretch the whole magilla--even if a significant portion. Joe Jackson and Tori Amos asked the question, "... now and then we wonder who the real men are?" Keys answers it simply, "A real man cannot deny a woman's worth" ("A Woman's Worth").

Songs in A Minor concludes with "Lovin U", another homage to Aretha, Keys's spiritual godmother, and an apt coda to a debut of formidable power and grace. And not since Aretha--save perhaps Mavis Staples--has a female singer/songwriter/keyboardist showcased the prodigious talent and savvy on this disc. Yeah, she won a Grammy. Sometimes they get it right. Don't pass this one by.

Jewel, This Way (Atlantic)

With her third release Jewel Kilcher has finally cast off the neo-folkie tag, rightfully earned and shed only with great difficulty. This Way finds her with a full band and in full command of her vocal range. From the opener, "Standing Still" to the marvelous "Everybody Needs Someone Sometime" to the effervescent "Cleveland," Jewel whispers, growls, snarls, and torches each song, each vocal performance almost perfectly complementing the song's sense. The songs still edge to the side of love's getting and losing, but they betray Jewel's burgeoning sell whose view is slyer, less wide-eyed, and more accepting of the world around her, a sharp contrast to the "change the world," well, neo-folkie intonations of Pieces of You and Spirit's deadly earnest poetry.

Jewel dives into her characters with sharply drawn imagery, "Spivey Leeks was a drip of a man/He looked like a potato shoved into jeans ..." ("Everybody Needs Someone Sometime") and "... you're a real cool show/ With your meat hooks and barbed wire carnival/You got gold dust in your pocket/You got moth holes in your soul ..." ("Grey Matter"). She jabs playfully at pretension, "Two ships sailing on a neon sea/Eat the flesh, spit out the seeds/Feathered hair and lame heels/What turns me on is so surreal" ("Serve the Ego"). And while her social instincts are intact, she turns on her objects with irony in lieu of Pieces of You's blunt trauma, "They say abortion will send you straight to a fiery hell/That is if the fanatics don't beat Satan to the kill/It's not what I can do for anybody/It's what their body can do for me" ("Jesus Loves You").

This Way is Jewel's coming out party. Not only has her songwriting ascended several rungs, but her singing, haunted by shadows of Janis and Nashville, is entering a potentially classic phase, where she's realized its promise as a musical instrument as well as an instrument for edification.

Alanis Morisette, under rug swept (Maverick)

Each boy and each man in this musically energizing and lyrically enervating opus is either a callow, self-centric youth, a manipulative creep, a "mamma's boy" ("I know you've had your butt licked by your mother"--"Narcissus"), a benign jailer, or a thoroughly unrelenting bastard. Although Alanis declaims, "I know I won't keep on playing the victim" ("Precious Illusions"), each narrator is victimhood canonized. The difference between her and the legions of broken-hearted pretenders (e.g., Natalie, Kasey, Blu, Jonatha) is that her victims' self-analysis is deadly straightforward, unadorned by simile or metaphor. They are frosty portraits, whose honesty and brutality are designed to make the next guy in line squirm uneasily. In that they succeed.

Alanis has assembled a fierce, supportive band for under rug swept: Nick Lashley and Joel Shearer (guitars), Chris Chaney (bass), and Gary Novak (drums). Flea and Meshell Ndgeocello guest. Each arrangement, successively more gorgeous than the last, underscores Alanis's bare, verbal sword thrusts. Perhaps with unintended irony, she switches personas in "A Man": "I am a man who has grown from a son/Been crucified by enraged women/I am a son who was raised by such men/I'm often reminded of the fools I'm among." Okay, I'm running for cover. Under rug swept is not for the faint of soul, and Nelly's boys are well advised to steer very, very clear. For them under rug swept is better on shelf left.

Lucinda Williams, Essence (Lost Highway)

The bare, hardscrabble lives that populated Williams's hugely successful Car Wheels on a Gravel Road have dissipated into the background. Essence is a U-turn into Williams's own life--a full ashtray and coffee-stain rings on a Formica tabletop. Essence's tempo and intellect is plainly set out on the opener "Lonely Girls": "... heavy blankets/Cover lonely girls ... sweet, sad songs/Sung by lonely girls." Williams then zones in on her men with fiendish delight, "You ain't about to give it up for no one/I'm gonna have to steal your love/ I don't need a knife, I don't need a gun/I know how to steal your love" ("Steal Your Love"). Enveloping love ("I Envy the Wind", "Essence"), abject loss ("Blue", "Out of Touch"), and the unbridgeable chasm ("Are You Down," "Reason to Cry") are treated gently almost reverentially.

Like Alicia Keys, Williams approaches each song without self pity or sentimentality, yet unlike Keys, she looks outward for her strength in the energetic "Get Right with God": "I would burn soles of my feet/Burn the palms of both my hands/If I could learn and be complete/If I could walk righteously again." Fans of the gritty, uncompromising Car Wheels will feel a bit cheated by the relatively frugal Essence. But one listen to the fractured mother/daughter pleas of "Broken Butterflies" will heal that small, insignificant hurt: "Will you ever learn to just forgive/Will you open your beautiful eyes/And bleed the way Christ did/And fix the broken butterflies."

Natalie Imbruglia, White Lilies Island (RCA)

I take it all back. On Left of the Middle (No. 79) I praised Natalie Imbruglia's musical inventiveness and trashed her lyrics. What I didn't know then was that Natalie didn't write the lyrics. White Lilies Island remedies that issue- unfortunately to little effect. Island opens with "That Day" and "That day. That day/ What a mess, what a marvel/We're all the same/And no thinks so/And it's okay/And I'm small and I'm divine/And it's beautiful/ And it's coming/And it's already here/And it's absolutely perfect." Okay, at some point she tripped over a lava lamp and tumbled headlong into an immense paisley beanbag chair, popped through a time warp into 1967, and returned flower-laden and slightly dazed with "That Day." It's a fair presumption, because the idea that a sentient being could actually serve up this kind of crap the second time around is simply too horrifying to entertain.

The music is still good, the arrangements solid, and the ear candy as delicious as ever. And she's still cute as a pixie, has a body to die for, and sings like a cherub. But whatever she's ingesting before settling down to write has got to be illegal. If not, it should be: "Swallow purple candy/Don't forget to breathe/ Sickened by the wanting/And drowning from the need/This dichromatic vision/Of one who does not care/To sipping cocktail sedatives/ Two months to hide somewhere" ("Butterflies). Last time I checked purple was one color, and one color was monochromatic. White Lilies Island will be a hit, which means there will be a third disc. Fear this.

Kylie Minogue, Fever (Capitol)

It's been a decade since Kylie Minogue, fresh from the outback, graced us with her last Aussie take on universal dance pop. Fever is either a jump on the disco revival bandwagon or a black joke. I guess it's the former. Sadly, even this meat market movement had legions of fans whose lust for cocaine days and boogie nights has never quite been sated. Have no fear: just pop in Fever and hustle your bootie down. From first to last, this is the great lost dance album of the '70s, one that would do Donna Summer or The Bee Gees proud. But unless you're in that fevered state, you can pass. I will.

Shakira, Laundry Service (Epic)

Shakira's first English language release opens with a tango, "Objection," and "It's not her fault that she's so irresistible/But all the damage she's caused isn't fixable/Every twenty seconds you repeat her name/But when it comes to me you don't care/If I'm alive or dead." But instead of just dumping this lamebrain--either a Britney double posed for the album cover or the guy's blind--she fires off this paean to the hopeless triangle. If he's managed to hang around for a bit, he'd hear "Underneath your clothes/There's an endless story/There's the man I chose/There's my territory" ("Underneath Your Clothes"). So, what's a nice Catholic Colombian girl like Shakira doing in a Laundromat? Washing his clothes, no doubt.

The balance of Laundry Service is light dance pop ("Whenever, Wherever"--co-penned by Gloria Estefan, "Ready for the Good Times," "Te Dejo Madrid"), Buddy Holly-ish retro-rock ("Rules"), and sappy ballads ("The One," "Fools"). Shakira is nothing if not honest. "One" starts "So I find a reason to shave my legs/Each single morning." Probably more information than you ever wanted. To her credit, tho', the Colombian troubles have elicited "Poem to a Horse": "Feed your empty brain/With your hydroponic pot/I bet you'll find someone like you/ 'Cause there's a foot for every shoe/I wish you luck but I've other things to do." Shakira's voice is pleasant enough, and she's a visual treat, but aside from the Colombian angle, Laundry Service will fade before the rinse-and-spin cycle.

DVDs. Oldies and goodies.

Peter Frampton, Live in Detroit (Image Entertainment)

Arguably the penultimate rock poster boy of the '70s, Peter Frampton soared mightily with Frampton Comes Alive! and crashed miserably--along with the brothers-in-crime Gibb--in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, perhaps the very worst rock movie ever made. Yet, those of us on this side of The Pond don't really appreciate Peter Frampton's amazing fall from grace. He surfaced in Britain as a teen idol with Humble Pie and, after one of many defections from cohort Steve Marriott, Frampton's Camel. His stunning success with Comes Alive! was expected there and a huge shocker here. I mean, who was this guy? Starring in a very, very bad movie coupled with a string of mediocre albums labeled Frampton the perennial flash-in-the-pan, and he was soon consigned to the classic rock circuit.

The equally amazing factoids about Peter Frampton are: (1) he never stopped making music--his production from the "fall" to the present day has continued unabated; (2) his head is screwed on absolutely straight--no illusions about the differences between teen fandom and middle age; and (3) this skinny white dude can play one, mean, bad-ass guitar. Live in Detroit finds Frampton with his band of many years: John Regan (bass), Bob Mayo (keys), with relative newbie Chad Cromwell on skins. And while he pleases the crowd with a flurry of oldies, he sneaks in a couple of new numbers written conjointly by the new band, all with a self-deprecating, "Let's get this over with ..."

Indeed, "self-deprecating" seems to describe the old and new Frampton. The video interview included on the DVD doesn't do half the justice to the extended treatment on VH1's "Behind the Music" episode. As Cameron Crowe noted in the liner notes to Comes Alive!, "He is a quietly good-natured man whom [sic] in his own words, lives for the stage." And what comes through on this DVD is indeed that Peter Frampton lives to perform, and that his performance each and every night is utterly devoted to the folks who've laid down their hard-earned green to simply be there, to witness an older man ply his exceptional trade. This is one of the very few DVDs I've auditioned so far that demands purchase, if not for the pristine 5.1 sound engineering--I took it to a local hi-fi emporium to road-test its mettle--then for the joy of attesting to the statement of a genuine artist, unfairly portrayed as one of rock's many "golden oldie" survivors. He lives, he plays, and he is as good as it gets.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Live in New York City (CMV)

This version of the E Street Band includes both "rhythm" guitarists, Nils Lofgren and "Miami" Steve Van Zandt, Patti Scialfa, the original New Jersey bad girl turned Bruce consort, along with Max Weinberg (drums), Gary Tallent (bass), Clarence Clemmons (sax/ percussion), and the eternal twin keys of Roy Bittan and Danny Federici, in one man's judgment the hippest dude ever in a rock'n'roll band. The two-DVD set, an HBO production first aired in 2000, tracks the double CD set issued last year. Indeed, the first DVD is the HBO-filmed concert footage, the kick-ass, all out variety that cemented the band's legend in the '70s and '80s. The second makes up in precision for what it lacks in energy. Bruce in concert can be a transcendent experience with each and every song/high surpassing its forebear, and Bruce in concert can be an antediluvian yawner--each song ground out with numbing efficiency. The good news is that the DVD set includes songs not on the CDs, notably "Back, streets," "Darkness on the Edge of Town," and "Thunder Road." My recommendation is to get this DVD set, watch/ listen to the first disc with rapt wonder, and skip the second. Trust me on this.

Earth, Wind & Fire, In Concert (Pioneer Artists)

If there is one word that can describe funk/ soul bands from the late '70s and early '80s, it may be "show," because the show was what it was all about. And there was probably no better place to stage the show of shows, the funk of funks than New Year's Eve at the Oakland Coliseum. As if on their last stand as a galactic force, EWF--with the White brothers and Philip Bailey in front--erupts with a non-stop blast of high energy funk'n'circumstance, 58 minutes of impeccable choreography, high-octane vocals, and pluperfect timing, the soul show for all time. The video transfer is old and murky; the opening scene seems to swim in dither and dross. But the sound is excellent, and this DVD, if nothing else, memorializes a great band at its creative and performing peak. Highest recommendation.

Paul McCartney, Live at the Cavern Club (Image Entertainment)

Dig it. You're a guest in the owner's box at Yankee Stadium, World Series game, and the packed throng sings you your defining song ("I Saw Her Standing There") during an inning break. If that experience, event, phenomenon didn't cement your legacy, your giant's stature, nay, your life, you're hopeless. Oh, dear me, I so want to embrace Sir Paul--love him. The problem is ... so does Sir Paul, who suffers from too many public and cinematic afflictions, the aging rock icon still desperately, sadly unsure of his place in history. So, this return to the Cavern Club with a vintage rockabilly set straight out of Run, Devil, Run, made for history and the camera, rings with a subtle hollowness. It's not so much that Sir Paul's voice runs out of gas--on a number of songs, he's flat (not flabby or flaccid, but a semitone shy; "Lonesome Town" is embarrassing)--it's that the public McCartney, the one who still craves approval and affection, can't measure up to the rocker whose candid moments reveal so much more of his nature, his genuine empathy and love for the music.

The band is first-rate: a glowering David Gilmour and clam-happy Ian Paice are abetted by graybeard session men, Mick Green and Pete Wingfield. They and Sir Paul march through standards like "Blue Jean Bop," "Brown Eyed Handsome Man," and "Twenty Flight Rock" with unerring precision if not passionate virtuosity. And for all the strain it shows by the end of the show, McCartney's voice, like vintage Sinatra, has worn well, exhibiting odd flashes of the smoky, Elvis-like undertones that once astonished. The venue is not the same Cavern Club--the original was wrecking balled into dust years ago, which Sir Paul notes with some irony--and it's not the same McCartney who honed his chops within its sweaty walls. Both are modernized, slightly sanitized versions. It may or may not be enough, but it's about what we've come to expect.

E-mail: [e-mail]. R.I.P. (alarming that this is becoming a regular feature ...) Waylon Jennings and Peggy Lee. Dunno about you, but she gave me fever. Take two aspirin, and call me in the morning.--KE