record reviews

January 8, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

FRANK ZAPPA & THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION

Album: “Carnegie Hall” (Vaulternative)

Grade: B

In the lifetime of a floating band constantly shifting personnel, more than a few Mothers did their inventive best for the late Frank Zappa — master guitarist, enigmatic composer, satirical lyricist — since that band’s 1965 start. Arguably, though, this never-before-released 1971 event (two shows, one October night) at the venerated classical music hall featured Zappa’s finest, if not weirdest, assemblage of adventuresome musicians and vocalists to have embraced Motherhood.

A British session giant (drummer Aynsley Dunbar), an improvisational woodwind/keyboard player (Ian Underwood), the jazziest of original Mothers (keyboardist Don Preston), and two pop-singing Turtles (Flo & Eddie) aided Zappa in some of his most cleverly complex compositions of the period.

Although these Mothers cover Zappa’s most impish psychedelic tracks (“Call Any Vegetable”), oddball doo-wop numbers (“Any Way the Wind Blows”), linear instrumental workouts (“Peaches en Regalia”), and avant-classical epics (a 30-minute take on “King Kong”), it’s the childishly comic mini-opera “Billy the Mountain” and its blues-inspired brother, “The Mud Shark,” that are Carnegie Hall’s highlights.

On these tunes, Flo & Eddie show off their highest voices and silliest soliloquies. Still, as with every Zappa concert recording, it’s Frank’s magnetically adroit guitar playing (truly rivaling Hendrix, Beck and Page) and dippy dramaturgy that you’ll remember most.

— A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia Inquirer

GUIDED BY VOICES

Album: “Let’s Eat the Factory” (GBV, Inc.)

Grade: A

Robert Pollard broke up Guided by Voices at the end of 2004, vowing that was it for the band he started in Dayton, Ohio, in 1986 and of which he was the sole constant member. The demise of GBV didn’t slow Pollard’s output: He continued releasing a prodigious flood of recordings, solo and in various band configurations. But 2010 saw him reunite the “classic” GBV lineup of 1993-96, and it’s that lineup of Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Greg Demos and Kevin Fennell that made “Let’s Eat the Factory,” the first new GBV album in eight years.

It’s a self-conscious return to the days of “Bee Thousand” and “Alien Lanes,” two records that helped invent indie rock. Full of brief, fragmented songs that bristle with guitar hooks, cryptic lyrics, and melodies that can soar, rock out, or be the calm declamatory center of stormy distortion, “Let’s Eat the Factory” is a throwback, but it’s everything one could hope for from a new GBV album.

— Steve Klinge, Philadelpia Inquirer

ETTA JAMES

Album: “The Dreamer” (Verve Forecast)

Grade: A

By all indications, this will be Etta James’ last album — the 73-year-old R&B great is reported to be in the last stages of leukemia. If it is, then the singer of such immortals as “Tell Mama,” “At Last,” and “I’d Rather Go Blind” is going out on a high note.

“The Dreamer” presents James’ trademark blend of sophistication and sass. She can still display some grit, as she does on the jump-blues chestnut “Too Tired” and a groove-heavy reworking of Guns ’N Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle.” She sounds just as at home, however, with the elegant balladry of Ray Charles’ “In the Evening” and Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s “That’s the Chance You Take.” And her versions of two Otis Redding slow-burners — “Champagne and Wine” and “Cigarettes and Coffee — are about as deep as soul gets.

— Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer

SKRILLEX

Album: “Bangarang” (EP) (Big Beat)

Grade: B

There’s a recurring section in “Right In,” the opening cut on Skrillex’s third and final EP of a banner year, that keeps sounding like it will break into 2 Unlimited’s “Get Ready for This.” Then it dawns on you that Sonny Moore’s much-derided brand of dubstep (“bro-step,” technocrats sneer) is a spiritual update of ’90s “jock jams.” Not only should this stuff be accepted as popular time and again, but it should be welcomed: 2011 was astonishingly short on rock ’n’ roll.

With tracks such as “Rock and Roll Will Take You to the Mountain,” Moore at least attempts to fill that gap, and Bangarang — which is as thought-out (Arabian Nights synth, human beat-box battle) as it is crass and head-banging — will satisfy any open nonbeliever. Y’all ready for this?

— Dan Weiss, Philadelphia Inquirer