dot_fennel | [music] GRAHAM SMITH - Final Battle (March)

Graham Smith clings so tightly to his immaturities that I forget how adult they are -- from the age of 15 he's been embittered and unrepentant in a fashion which, while not all that healthy or insightful, remind me more of set-in-ways folks my age than of maladjusted people I knew in college.

And so at 23, he's made the middling album most musicians don't get around to until much later: trying to find a new direction because it seems like the old one might not cut it anymore, but not wanting to risk too much deviation from the old formula in the process. He tinkers with different instruments and styles, but only once is the tinkering a "hey, look at me!" thing (an arrhythmic breakdown at the end of the first song). He's actually trying to grow!

Kind of a bummer, then, that he doesn't discover much. The long "2 Guitars" shows surprising compositional deftness, and then, uh...

See, when a 40-something Robyn Hitchcock makes a record like this, critics and front-line fans can say, "Nothing here will make new fans, but long-time listeners will find it diverting and in some places even very enjoyable," and we KNOW WHAT IT MEANS. After twenty Hitchcock records listeners know which nooks he, despite their mundanity, hasn't explored, and can judge how curious they are. With Smith's 6 or 7 Kleenex Girl Wonder albums as evidence, on the other hand, one still can't tell exactly what the core Graham Smith experience is like because Smith doesn't know, and doesn't have the clarity of inspiration to get at it without knowing.

Also, where did all the rapping go? He never made the brilliant hip-hop album he had in him, etc etc.