The line between "brilliantly simple" and "dully trite" is a thin one (just ask Adam Sandler). Australia's Powderfinger attempts to walk this line on its latest, Odyssey Number Five, and, for the most part, is successful doing so. The engaging pop-rock love-ditty "My Happiness," is a prime example. Feeling at once familiar and strange, a wobbly guitar melody leads into frontman Bernard Fanning's yearning verse - "Waiting for a knock coming way too late / It seems an age since I've seen you / Count down as the weeks trickle into days." The music builds as acoustic gives way to electric guitar in the bridge, exploding into a soaring chorus as he realizes his happiness only exists when she's at home. The song's earnestness and deceptively simple lyrics keep the formulaic song from becoming stale - something that cannot be said of the album as a whole. Some of the songs on Odyssey are hampered by predictable musical patterns and pedestrian lyrics. Then again, even Powderfinger's most "dully trite" song is better than the majority of what's on the radio today.

Like the calm before a storm that never forms, PJ Harvey's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea possesses an eerie peacefulness heretofore unseen in the artist's work. While some have bemoaned the lack of the usual open wounds and erupting rage, Stories should instead be heralded as a masterpiece of growth and maturity, the pinnacle of an accomplished career. Instead of simply exploding, Harvey's songs smolder with a controlled intensity that intoxicates and mystifies. On "Good Fortune," layers of guitar melody and vocal harmony swirl into a climactic finale that is both effortless and powerful. The graceful yet unrelenting "This Mess We're In," a duet of sorts with Radiohead's Thom Yorke, burns with sexual desire and torment. Stories conjures memories of rock's yesteryears, when the likes of Patti Smith, Dylan and the Stones ruled. It's this sort of timeless creation that is sorely missing from today's dying rock world.

John Digweed
Global Underground 019:
Los Angeles (Boxed)
Released: February 27, 2001
3.5 stars

Want to know the recipe for a successful, booty-bustin' mix-album? Combine the Global Underground series with John Digweed, add any major city of choice and serve preferably loud and intense.

Based on the DJ's relentless four-hour-plus set spun late last year at the Mayan, Global Underground 019: Los Angeles continues the slow-burn excellence of Digweed's first two GU releases (1992's GU 006: Sydney and 1998's GU 014: Hong Kong, respectively). The two-disc mix finds Digweed at his sinister best - the DJ has taken beats and melodies normally found in a harder Euro-techno and molded them into a smooth dark-house, ass-movin' opus. The resulting mix, with its wicked transitions and unrelenting drive, can only be described as pure, enjoyable evil.

The painful part, however, is the realization that while the album does provide the essence of a Digweed set, it can never replace the feeling of actually being there, on the dance floor, sweaty and breathless, under the spell of the devil himself. How evil indeed.

1. Michael Jackson - Invinsible - Sept.
2. Radiohead - Amnesiac - June 4
3. Basement Jaxx - Untitled - Fall
4. Air - 10,000 Hz Legend - May 29th
5. Remy Zero - TheGoldenHum - Sept. 18

1. PJ Harvey - Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea
2. Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour of Bewilderbeast
3. Coldplay - Parachutes
4. Kruder and Dorfmeister - the K&D Sessions
5. Wheat - Hope and Adams (Reissued from 1999)
   

1. Menudo Dos - The Return of Ricky Martin
2. Untitled Backstreet Boys Concept Album
3. The A-Team Soundtrack featuring Limp Bizkit w/ Wayne Newton
4. Linda Ronstadt: The Marilyn Manson Cover Album
5. The Best of Vanilla Ice