Scroll down for Greg Trooper, Patti Rothberg and Amanda Thorpe

Scott Miller & the Commonwealth
Thus Always to Tyrants

(Sugar Hill)

Being from the Knoxville, TN area, it's always pretty big news whenever a local band gets a major label deal. And so it was with much anticipation that the local crowds held their breath when such bands as the Judybats, Superdrag, and the V-Roys sallied forth into the Big Time. Since then, the Judybats have come and gone and come back again, Superdrag recently released their second major label album, and the V-Roys finally called it quits after three albums on New Year's Eve 2000. Personally, I liked the V-Roys the best out of these bands, and saw them rock the house down when they opened for Cheap Trick at Moose's Music Lounge in Knoxville. It was standing room only and both bands came out and kicked the shit out of everyone.

So it is with much pleasure that I can announce former V-Roy Scott Miller's solo career. His latest disc with new band the Commonwealth, Thus Always to Tyrants is being released on June 12, 2001 on the Sugar Hill imprint, a label that houses such greats as Chet Atkins, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Dolly Parton, and Doc Watson to name a few. For both new fans and old V-Roys stalwarts, Scott Miller's new album is pure bliss.

When I first got this disc, I kind of put in blindly, having pulled it out of the giant stack of CDs that comes my way for review every so often. As soon as the first song "Across the Line" kicked in I thought to myself, "Damn this sounds like the V-Roys!" So when I finally took the time to look at the sleeve and see Miller's name emblazoned across the front of it, I smacked myself in the head and a great sense of duhsville enveloped me. Needless to say, I was happy to hear Miller again, having been not quite sure what he had been up to after the big break. So I am happy to report that Scott is still kicking up the same great patch of dirt with his unique brand of rootsy rockabilly that he's been treating us to all these years.

There's twelve tracks here, and each of them sparkle with a great raw sensibility that is clearly Miller's own. Whether he's rocking it up religiously on "I Made a Mess of This Town", or turning in a folk/country/bluegrass hybrid in "Dear Sarah", each tune shines throughout. Scott's familiar biting wit also crops up in "I Won't Go With You" (which supports one of those great Miller riffs that will get stuck in your head long after) and "Goddamn the Sun", an under two minute piece of crunchy rock perfection with solid harmonies and fantastic guitar that could have gone on for another four minutes and not become tiresome.

Miller's southern heritage rears its head in "Highland County Boy" and "Daddy Raised a Boy". But where this kind of territory often dips into corny nostalgia when handled by the pop confectioners in Nashville, Scott pushes these tunes across as sure and earnest as someone with this much genuine talent can. Whether singing the plaintive and simple "Is There Room on the Cross for Me" or locking down the swamp grooves of "Miracle Man", Miller has all his bases covered with nary a note unchecked. This music is good and loose as it should be, but tight enough to convert the unbelievers.

That being said, Scott Miller should very well indeed have a bright future on the great musical horizon to look forward to. Keeping true to his own vision has always been part of the process, and he faithfully continues that practice here on Thus Always to Tyrants. So if you're a fan of that old V-Roys sound, or just need something new and different to listen to that rocks just as good as it rolls, then please be sure to give this one a spin. Scott Miller & the Commonwealth are just getting started, after all. It's surely going to be interesting to see what they have in store for the future if the present is already sounding this good.

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Greg Trooper
Straight Down Rain

(Eminent)

The cover photo of Straight Down Rain shows Greg Trooper in a moment of anguish, sitting at his kitchen table with face hidden behind his hand. Throughout the disc's booklet, there's a set of similar sepia-toned shots with Trooper looking pensive. In one photo, he looks like a scared cat backed into a corner, wary of your presence and perhaps ready to strike. I suppose you could say the same thing about his music. It's laden with folksy despair, a good amount of angst, and a bit of bitter humor.

"I've got more fear than wisdom/I've got fences to mend/You've got an ocean of reasons/To let this chapter end" sings Trooper on the opening cut "Nothin' But You". That sense of loss creeps over a lot of this album. "I shot the moon to reach the sun/Thought I was the only one/Found a deeper shade of blue/Nothing out here compares to you". Poignant to the point of being able to feel Trooper's pain, the song ends with "I thought I had to take it alone/Now I'm racing back to find you/With every reason to believe I'll find you gone".

Elsewhere, Trooper tries to mend a damaged relationship in "You Love Your Broken Heart" and conjures up his own brand of folklore in "Damaged Eyes", a song about "poor misguided Annabelle". Consider it this year's "Marie Provost" with slightly less bite. But Trooper does have a lighter side, as he knocks himself in "Once And For All": "Once and for all/Please don't look at me/Like you're appalled/At my shiverin' and shakin' knees". "Doghouse" has a similar feel to it, albeit one that has been researched time and time again by other artists who have hit the occasional corny note. "I'm in the dog house now/She says don't make me call the cops, this is where your love boat stops/Your gravy train's run out of grease, the love we had is now deceased". Take that for what you will, but I have to admit it incited more than one groan.

And while Trooper continues to picture himself as a "criminal" in such tunes as "Staring Down The Night", he celebrates love when he has found it with equal aplomb in such numbers as "Real Like That" and "Over The Moon". Greg also paints the familiar pictures of how hard it is to keep a love going strong in "Lovin' Never Came That Easy", and stops to offer social commentary on crime and abuse in "Sometimes It Takes A Hurricane". Trooper is an Everyman storyteller, one who covers a wide range of topics and subtleties that the working man can relate to.

While it does hit the occasional moon/June/spoon snag in the lyrics, Trooper does a fine job of handling his songs and subject matter. Basically, he is a bright light shining out of what can often be a most turgid Nashville scene, one filled with prefabricated good lookin' cowboys and songs that could have been conceived by a three year old. Such is not the case here on Straight Down Rain, an album filled with straight shooting, from the heart sentiments that feel genuine through and through. Greg Trooper certainly is an artist with style and enough talent to back up his vivid lyrics and down to earth playing. A sure breath of fresh air in an increasingly stagnant climate.

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Patti Rothberg
Candelabra Cadabra

(Cropduster)

Once in a blue moon, an album arrives on the shelves that literally defies all categorization. I genuinely prize such works when they come my way. Most often I have found that these albums are usually products of the female persuasion. Such items that come to mind are Area's fragments of the morning and Milla's The Divine Comedy. Well it's time to add another spectacular addition to the list. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Patti Rothberg's Candelabra Cadabra.

You may recall that Rothberg had a debut on the EMI America label back in 1996 called Between the 1 and 9 that received numerous raves. Unfortunately, Patti's big label folded shortly after her release leaving her to her own devices for a short time. Now she's back on Cropduster with a new set of material that for all intents and purposes is strictly magical. And that's not really an adjective that I'd ever dreamed of using in a record review before now.

Hearing Rothberg's music is like opening a giant story book filled with enormous and colorful illustrations and diving in head first. Or maybe it's like an old lost book of spells that is at once both enchanting and ominous. Either way, this is the stuff dreams are made of. The dreams you have when you're deep asleep in the dark late at night. The dreams that sparkle and fade, gently pulling you awake in the morning. With Patti, everything is very grand. She paints minutiae with wide brush strokes that color your own imagination and keep you seeking more within her melodies.

Opening with the outstanding "Nothing I Can Say" with its powerful and crunchy guitars and hand claps, Candelabra Cadabra begins its journey on a somewhat familiar love-inspired tale. But from there, things turn a bit strange. The title track is downright spellbinding with its other-worldly flavors and heightened sense of drama, and in "Delicate Matters" Rothberg pays tribute to the Doors via "The End". But where Jim Morrison always had to push things over with his bravado and ultimately send his band into faux and often embarrassing noir territory, Patti's chorus for the song manages to scale even higher mountains than the ones created by the already lofty verses. It's intense and strangely beautiful.

Eastern influences paint the travelogue from the pillow "Shadows Of Me", and in "You Killed My Time" Rothberg sits quietly with her guitar, finally bringing the larger than life atmosphere of the album down to earth. But just as she does that, she splits the sky wide open with her coda that sends shimmering waves of electric guitars over the listener, bathing the eardrums once again with her stylized psychedelia. Where does this stuff come from? How can mere words do it justice?

"Preyed Upon" is so adamantly intense that its grandeur almost swallows it up. "Eggshells" defies lyrical convention with its odd array of story telling and details. I get images of the movie Blow-Up in my head when I hear it, if that tells you anything. But the most precious gem Rothberg offers here is undoubtedly "To A Muse". If ever there was a great lost power pop/new wave tune, then this is it. Filled with ungodly amazing hooks, Patti's beautiful voice and even some funky Moog lines, "To A Muse" is worth the price of admission alone. You miss out on this one song, I guarantee you've missed out on one of the best songs that are going to be released this year. And if that's not enough, then dig the funky pumps of "Dish It Out" which sounds more than radio ready.

I can't give all of the fantastic tales of Candelabra Cadabra away. So I will leave it up to you to seek Patti Rothberg out and immerse yourself in the final tracks of the album (the cover of Bowie's "Moonage Daydream", "Suffocator", "The Late Late Show", and "The Wry It Girl"). This album is already tagged for inclusion on my Best of 2001 list, so great it is that I am often rendered speechless after hearing it. Amazing that I managed to get this much out about it already. Thank Cropduster for giving us another amazing album. Thank Patti Rothberg for being so amazingly talented. Forget Tori Amos and her faerie land. Rothberg is the real deal.

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Amanda Thorpe
Mass

(Cropduster)

Please note: AMANDA THORPE IS NOT A FOLKIE. She would like you to know that. She would like you to know that she is a rocker. Or course, she bent my ear about this fact after my review for Mass had already been submitted to PopMatters. But at the time I wrote it, I didn't know that. I mean, I loved her music but her bio and other stuff I read about her said this and that about trip hop and that and this about folk. So when you haven't heard from the person yourself and you have their disc playing in your stereo and seeking additional information that may or may not be true, you do your best.

Well, Amanda did like the review ("Even though you labeled me as a folkie!" she cried.) Oh I didn't label her that at all. I said the folk ties were strong, and called Mass the Hejira for my generation. I still think that suits it well, but I admit she is more rock and roll than anything folkie I've ever known. So over the course of conducting a long and still on-going interview as of this writing, I have got to know Amanda from a person to person point of view and not a press kit to critic angle. It's been lovely and Amanda has a great sense of humor and is wonderful to chat with.

So if you want to know about her great album Mass, I could just redirect you to my former review and say have a look at that. But at the same time, perhaps I'd like to add more to that. More to the fact that her version of "Them There Eyes" is something you just have to hear. More about how "Splinters" still gives me goosebumps and how "This Dear City" is perfect through and through. Basically kids, I just want you to go out and get this album and really listen to it. Before I name-dropped Aimee Mann and Fiona Apple when discussing Amanda. If you like them, you'll love this. And if you're familiar with the group The Wirebirds, then you're one step ahead of the game already as Amanda cut her chops with them not so long ago.

She'd like you to know that she doesn't play "Frances" or "Hymn" live. She'd like to say that she was once from the UK but took a visit to our shores and found them so pleasing that she decided to stay in New York and be the rock and roll girl that she is. She'd like to let you know more, but for that you'll have to wait for our conversation to actually wind down and then actually appear online. Which it will. In the meantime, you can listen to "High & Dry" and curse the FM or get swept away with "By You" and "Always". You do recall that I mentioned trip hop? Amanda would like you to know that that isn't necessarily the case either. ("Laced with would be correct.") Well you know biographers and their need to describe.

Amanda Thorpe is Amanda Thorpe. She makes her own sounds and says that her friends tell her her music's great but that she doesn't have an obvious single. In an album like Mass, that hardly matters. Works like these do not require the hit single to propel them. This is a complete album that begs of you to sit down and listen to it. If you need the single, then perhaps you should look elsewhere. But if you do, then you chose to miss out. You chose to walk away from a beautiful piece of music that you're not going to find anywhere else. So that's all I have to say. Amanda Thorpe on Cropduster with her beautiful new album Mass. It's that simple. And Amanda really is rock and roll. Bless her soul.

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