It's littered with lines reflecting her assumption of maturity: "My life has been so over-protected"; "I know I may be young, but I've got feelings, too"; "There is no need to protect me; it's time that I learnt to face up to this on my own"; and, so the lads don't feel left out, a reassuring: "I'm so glad we're at the same place at the same time." Even the arrangements reflect the change, with hot dance names such as Rodney Jerkins and the Neptunes taking over more of the production duties from the Swedish technicians who originally fashioned the Britney sound – though not always successfully: Jerkins makes as much of a hash of the old Joan Jett hit "I Love Rock'n'Roll" as he did of the Stones' "Satisfaction" on Britney's last album. Mind you, even that's better than the Swedes' "Bombastic Love", titled thus simply to rhyme with "fantastic" – although, checking my dictionary, I note that "bombast" is defined as "padding", so maybe it's more appropriate than it appears.. Everyone knows that Canadians make the best roots-rockers, and Ottawan native Jim Bryson and his band The Occasionals are no exception. Bryson's voice has the slightly road-ravaged, careworn tone we demand from our country-rockers, and though his melodies aren't quite as instant as those of, say, Ryan Adams, they're not without their own subtle charms, worming their way into one's affections over several listens. His lyrics, meanwhile, self-deprecatingly depict Bryson as something of a schlemiel, "not necessarily very smart", and especially clumsy when it comes to romance. "I'm not very clever with the matters of the heart/Guys like me, we don't get too far," he claims in "26 Miles By Car", though one suspects that, being smart enough to come up with a couplet as charged as "My tired mouth is wired open/It's better that it's left unspoken" ("Lately"), he's probably fibbing about his prowess as lover, too. His band brings depth and character to his songs; the interplay between his and Ian Lefeuve's guitars and the pedal steel of Tom Thompson propelling them in several different directions.
The punky arpeggios and downbeat vocals of "February" resemble early REM, while elsewhere the guitar work has the spiky, troubling quality of Richard Thompson, or Steve Fellows of the late and underrated Comsat Angels; and by the time "26 Miles By Car" draws to a close, it's on the verge of turning into Neil Young's "Cowgirl In The Sand". The most dramatic transformation, however, has to be on "Impaler", a tough rocker reminiscent of The Pixies.. I'm one of those oddballs who prefers Radiohead's Kid A and Amnesiac to their earlier indie-guitar-band albums – though even so, I still regarded with some scepticism a friend's ecstatic acclaim of their summer concert in Oxford. But listening to I Might Be Wrong, an eight-track live album culled from shows in Oxford, Berlin, Oslo and Vaison La Romaine, I have to say he might be right.
Where playing live is for most bands simply a matter of trotting out the same old numbers the same old way night after night, denuding them of whatever power they once possessed, Radiohead here are clearly performing at the peak of their powers, stretching and moulding their more recent, exploratory songs into bold new shapes. The album opens with a brief burst of foreign radio transmission which suddenly dives into the psychedelic swirl of "The National Anthem", the band sounding not unlike Pink Floyd in a desperate hurry. Its big, broad guitar strokes lead by turn into "I Might Be Wrong" itself, the song blossoming through Buckley-esque melodic twists and vocal flourishes. "Morning Bell" is the strongest melody here, though; its terse, martial drumming in piquant contrast to the reflective electric piano and Thom Yorke's haunting vocal. He's on particularly good form throughout, sounding variously like a disgusted chorister on the stately processional of "Like Spinning Plates" and all but disappearing in the hubbub of helium voices adrift in the tense dub entropy of "Everything In Its Right Place". The result is one of the few live albums featuring music that's still palpably alive.. The latest in a steadily lengthening line of fair-to-middling McCartney albums, Driving Rain does at least serve to focus attention on the part played in his work by his muses, with his fianc?Heather assuming the role once played by Linda – though mercifully, not the keyboards once played by her.
