CD Reviews: Feb. 23-March 1

By: JIM TRAGESER - Staff Writer | Wednesday, February 22, 2006 1:05 PM PST ∞

LOCAL

A "This Golden Era"

The Wild Truth

Pseudocool Records

Those wanting to support local musicians but not inclined toward either Top 40 cover bands or folk music might do well to give a listen to The Wild Truth.

A power-pop band with enough melodic hooks and ear candy to please those weaned on bands ranging from Split Enz to the Little River Band to Ben Harper, the Wild Truth's latest CD, "This Golden Era," has as polished a sound as any band on a major national label.

This is undoubtedly due in no small part to the fact that lead singer Sven-Erik Seaholm is better known for his production work on CDs by major local acts such as the Farmers and Crash Carter. But he's also a very pleasant vocalist and wrote or co-wrote every radio-friendly track on the disc.

The sound is also underpinned by the outstanding work of former Playground Slap bassist David Ybarra and drummer Bill Ray. And guitarist Charlie Loach provides just the right punch on his solos to give the band's sound some real heft.

Mostly it comes down to those songs, though ---- if the rest of us can find a way to get radio back to a time when disc jockeys picked the songs they played, the Wild Truth will be all over the airwaves with unforgettable little gems such as "Yeah," "This Golden Era" and "Down in the Dirt."

CLASSICAL

A+ "Rhapsody in Blue"

Michel Camilo with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra

Telarc

Breathing new life into a work that has been co-opted as a television commercial jingle is no easy task ---- as anyone who has recorded Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" in the past few years can attest.

So how to record Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" without sounding like an airline commercial?

Perhaps the way a new recording from Telarc does ---- by going with non-American artists for this most American of all orchestral works. Dominican powerhouse pianist Michel Camilo and Spain's Barcelona Symphony Orchestra have created a reading of Gershwin that is bold, tender, powerful and sentimental all at once ---- in other words, unmistakably American!

Camilo's grounding in the jazz idiom is what makes this work so well. His piano playing shades the theme, rediscovers it with a freshness and vitality that remind us why this piece has been recorded and performed so many times since Gershwin wrote it in 1924.

Still, this is a classical version of what Gershwin wrote as a classical work. Camilo does not improvise here ---- his personalization of the piece is one of nuance and subtlety.

The approach to Gershwin's three-movement Concerto in F is in a similar vein. More classically symphonic than "Rhapsody," the concerto is not nearly so well-known as Gershwin's more popular Tin Pan Alley material but shows an equally American approach to orchestral music: It is loud, at times garish, inhabiting a space somewhere between Aaron Copland and the Broadway musical.

Again, Camilo's jazz sensibilities provide a keen insight into the music, bringing out details and colorings a lesser artist might have missed. And the orchestra provides a thick-pile plush version of the overture that plays perfectly against Camilo's more spare piano.

The final work on this release, "Prelude No. 2," is the closest to an actual jazz arrangement; it is a quiet, introspective work, presented for solo piano. It is the one time here that Camilo improvises, riffing off the theme ---- but slowly, surely, not going too far astray, but decidedly more jazzlike than classical.

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