Various Artists

Blade II Soundtrack

Immortal Records

Spiderman has a big unitard to fill. Soundtracks for movies featuring Marvel characters have been clever, innovative and satisfying to date. Blade II succeeds in continuing the tradition of matching mutant-related subject matter with a recombinant-genre soundtrack. The album delivers an impressive list of strange bedfellows: Hip-hop heavyweights including Eve, Cypress Hill and the Roots overlay samples from Fatboy Slim, Moby, Groove Armada and others. The result is bound to entice and entertain both curious and skeptical listeners.

Although most songs on the soundtrack, by virtue of the talent of the contributors alone, conform to a base level of excellence, some tracks still manage to stand out. Redman and Gorrilaz put forth “Gorillaz On My Mind,” a playful track melding ape noises, Damon Albarn’s self-mocking “La-la-la-la”s off Blur’s “Charmless Man” and Redman’s charming lyrics like “Full of whiskey/ Looking for Lewinsky/ So I can get head.” Ever-captivating spastic Busta Rhymes joins Silkk the Shocker and a catchy bass riff courtesy of the Dub Pistols on “The One.” Groove Aramada delivers a silent nod to the Beastie Boys’ “Flute Loop” with their woodwind sample on “Gangsta Queens,” skilfully overlaid by Versace-lauding girl-rappers Trina and Rah-Diggah.

Blade II is not without its shortcomings—some tracks, such as the Eve and Fatboy Slim collaborative, “Cowboy,” and Cypress Hill and Roni Size’s “Child of the Wild West” suffer from painfully annoying choruses that are repeated far too many times. Mos Def’s angry nasal rantings run incongruous to the downbeat trip-hop of Massive Attack on “I Against I,” and Danny Saber and Marco Beltrami’s “Theme From Blade” sounds suspiciously like the Mission: Impossible theme song.

Still, the overall product is satisfying, and the album’s success as a genre-bending collaborative effort is bound to spawn similar cooperative compilations in the future. Look out, Spidey.

—Thalia S. Field

Ed Harcourt

Here Be Monsters

Capitol Records

Ed Harcourt’s full-length debut album, Here Be Monsters, is stunning. It’s the best alternative-pop release of the year so far, and although this album is too left-field to make a big mark on the commercial charts, for those who discover it, it will surely remain a favorite for years. Simple, emotional piano ballads, with a depth of feeling that is palpable, seem to flow naturally from the pen of this 23-year-old British ex-chef. He’s like a more emotional version of David Gray and the whole zoo of Brit-pop balladeers.

Here Be Monsters is the result of a collaboration between Ed Harcourt, who wrote all the songs, and Tim Holmes, producer of Mercury Rev. The producer’s influence shows immediately, in the richly textured sonic language, with lush string orchestrations and jazzy saxophone accompaniments. The opening song is typical, in this respect, of the whole album. It begins softly, with the strumming of an acoustic guitar and Harcourt’s velvety voice. As the song progresses, the instrumentation fills out, blossoming at the chorus in a climax of strings and guitar accompaniment reminiscent of Radiohead’s ballads.

The whole album is very classical in its sensibility, giving the music a timeless quality. The singles, “She Fell Into My Arms,” “Apple of my Eye” and “Those Crimson Tears” are immediately appealing. Yet it is the album as a whole and its centerpiece, the seven-and-a-half-minute-long “Beneath the Heart of Darkness,” that linger longest. Projecting a mood of muted, melancholy hope, there is something subtly uplifting in these beautiful songs.

—Daniel M. S. Raper

The Baldwin Brothers

Cooking With Lasers

TVT Records

Acid jazz, the supple combination of electronic derived grooves with a hip soft-jazz sentiment has blossomed recently into a full fledged genre of its own, led by high-octane performers like Karl Denson and Soulive. The Baldwin Brothers bring a broad streak of funk and mischief to their sound, courtesy of some wicked turntable action which keeps the goofy samples flowing. The record begins with a nerdy interviewer asking, “What are the instruments in your group? I better write them down.”

The Baldwins are proud to display the rampant eclecticism that is widely accepted as the hallmark of talent. They wind between genres with sinuous ease, never entirely shedding the lithe upright bass lines and high-hat/scratch duels that are their signature sound. “The Bionic Jam” verges on techno, with its driving samples and “Better, faster, stronger/ We have the technology” sloganeering. The Baldwins then swerve into the appropriately kitschily titled “Lava lamp,” which playfully flirts with the sound of elevator muzak in its psychedelic haze, as does “Somebody Else’s Favorite Song.”

The turntable use on “Viva Knievel” is breathtaking and breathless, riding a fat, reptilian bass. The Baldwins show they’re down with scratching’s hip hop origins with the only-slightly-contrived sounding “Urban Tumbleweed,” with guest MC Barron Ricks. Female guest vocalists also give the album a couple of more radio-friendly tracks. The woozy, shuffling “Dream Girl,” featuring Cibo Matto’s Miho Hatori, is appropriately odd, but it is “Deep Down” that seduces with its lush vocals and easy backbeat: “What’s the matter/ You seem so low down?/ But that’s OK.”

The Baldwins are almost too careful not to miss a single base in their meandering debut, but the good news is that they’re just funky and oddball enough to make it hang together. Wish we could say the same about their lesser relatives Steven, Alec et al....

––Andrew R. Iliff