Gigolo Aunts Back From Dead;

Mia Boyle Not M.I.A.

CD review briefs, 2/24/99

Gigolo Aunts

Minor Chords and Major Themes (E Pluribus Unum) ****

The Posies may or may not be once-and-for-all broken up, but their main cohorts in way-melodic, way-sardonic power pop, Boston’s Gigolo Aunts, have suddenly and unexpectedly returned to life after almost five years of hiatusing, thanks to the Counting Crows’ E Pluribus Unum label. The power of positive negativity never sounded so sweet.

Actually, the negativity part’s toned down here, counterpointed with reassurances such as “Everyone can fly (you just have to try)” and “Blue sky hopes and horoscopes agree in the end/that timing is your real friend, your only friend.” Even in the most hopeless of situations, singer Dave Gibbs’s characters keep on a-pushin’ for renewal, cranking out new personal ads and urging friends to “get yourself together baby.”

But the positivity parts are always kept from saccarinity by the quiet acknowledgements of realistic disillusion, such as in “Everything Is Wrong” and “Residue.” Yet even in the lyrics’ saddest moments, the smart, level-headed vocals and the plaintive guitars keep things from getting too mopey. What we have here, as in the best smart-pop from Big Star on down, is intelligent assessments of the personal condition set to hoppin’ guitar chords and drum fills that keep the vocals’ messages in a context of continual striving for, and demanding that, things be better.

I could listen to this for days. In fact, I probably will.

Mia Boyle

I Am a Diver (Kitchen Whore) ***

Onetime Stranger music editor Mia Boyle, who’s performed around Seattle in such bands as Bullet Train, Moxie, and Radialarmsaw, delivers a moody suite of slow and sultry ballads, performed on multitracked guitars and vocals with ample echo effects. One or two of the tracks sound sort of like what Hole’s “Doll Parts” might have sounded if it had been sung by a more human-scale personage. Other tracks drift into a hypnotic dreamstate somewhere between subtle awareness, erotic afterglow, and the quiet not-really-depression of staring outside on a rainy, overcast March day as the diffused light fades into diffused twilight. Utterly beautiful.

(One might also note that Boyle only includes a few, quite small, photos of herself on the inside flaps of the gorgeously-designed Digipak. In the age of Lilithmania, it’s refreshing to know there’s one female acoustic-singer-songwriter type who’d rather be known for her work than for her image.)

Whale

All Disco Dance Must End In Broken Bones (Virgin) ***

You like Pizzicato 5? You’ll surely like this. Bouncy electronic mixes and samples, wistful voices, a total swingin’ fun time. Easily the most Japan-O-Rama sound to have ever come from Sweden.