Sunday, March 25, 2007

RICKY SKAGGS & BRUCE HORNSBY

Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby

YouTube was made for this: a glimpse of Ricky Skaggs, Bruce Hornsby and John Anderson performing Rick James's "Super Freak" in concert. The video clip, drawn from a recent episode of CMT's "Crossroads," has already attracted some 20,000 hits on YouTube and is bound to draw a lot more now that Skaggs and Hornsby have released a self-titled CD that concludes with a similarly surreal rendition of James's signature song.

When it comes to putting the fun in the funkgrass, nothing on the album comes close to rivaling the James tribute, which also features an Anderson cameo. But the pairing of Skaggs and Hornsby -- they've been friends for 15 years and previously collaborated on a Bill Monroe tribute CD -- consistently pays off in other ways. Evidence of Skaggs's virtuosity (on mandolin, guitar and banjo, for starters) and guitarist Cody Kilby's remarkably fluid flat-picking is abundant, while fiddler Andy Leftwich brings some Celtic kick or soul to several tunes, including "The Dreaded Spoon," a spirited, Hornsby-penned novelty, and "Stubb," an instrumental romp composed by Skaggs. For all his pop success and jazz piano-grounding, Hornsby not only sounds comfortable in this string-band setting, he's chiefly responsible for two of the album's freshly arranged highlights: "Mandolin Rain" and "A Night on the Town."

Like old and still chummy band mates, Skaggs and Hornsby casually trade vocals and share harmonies throughout much of this session before inviting Anderson to add his honky-tonk baritone to the genre-mashing finale.

-- Mike Joyce

DOWNLOAD THESE:"Super Freak," "Mandolin Rain"

LIVING WITH THE LIVING

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

"Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy": It's too bad the Who swiped that title for its 1971 best-of set, because that string of modifiers describes the visceral, sprawling, anthemic new album by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists to a T.

Much of the meat is in the social and political issues that Leo bites off, notably those pertaining to injustice, hypocrisy and aggression. Titles such as "C.I.A.," "Fourth World War" and "Bomb, Repeat, Bomb" abound, but happily the pathos with which the leather-lunged belter laces his outrage keeps his dissent from degenerating into strident leftist agitprop. On "The Unwanted Things," in a soulful falsetto over a spongy ska beat, he mourns, "I'm crying for the warring dead / And I'm crying because there's more ahead." His choice of a Third World rhythm here conveys as much as his tears. Just as tonic is the way that Leo leavens the program with songs about romance and friendship, "Colleen" and "A Bottle of Buckie" being particularly affecting.

Rooted in first-generation punk, Leo and the Pharmacists' big, jagged, careening riff-rock owes debts to everyone from the Clash, Elvis Costello and Bill Bragg to the Mekons, the Jam and U2. Nods to British invasion bands like the Kinks and heartland roots-rockers like Bruce Springsteen are evident as well, but all of these allusions are less derivative than inspired. Thoroughly internalized, these touchstones add ballast to the sound of a band expanding upon the urgent vernacular of their forebears to create a language of musical protest for today.

-- Bill Friskics-Warren

DOWNLOAD THESE:"Colleen," "The Unwanted Things, "Who Do You Love?"