PEEP 1/5, METRO On this combo’s debut EP, Ghost Circus (Mockingbird), vocalist Jeff Rawwin’s quavery, melodramatic lump of sensitive-guy pretension is so irritating that the bland backing behind his tortured crooning becomes even more innocuous. From the 4AD-knockoff artwork on their album’s cover to the cringe-inducing grandeur of their plodding music, Peep make clear they’re a decade too late.
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PAUL CEBAR & THE MILWAUKEEANS, MARLEE MacLEOD 1/6, SCHUBAS Paul Cebar has excellent taste. On the back of his new album, Upstroke for the Downfolk (Don’t), he gleefully leaps in front of a wall plastered with rare albums by, one would assume, his favorite performers: Dizzy Gillespie, Otis Redding, the Meters, Lee Dorsey, Ray Charles, Professor Longhair, Celia Cruz, Freddie King, Miriam Makeba, you get the idea. Cebar’s reverential appropriations of these pioneers are usually accurate, and the guy can sing, but there ain’t much going on here. Like Van Morrison, Cebar is a musical dilettante. But Morrison brought something original to his pan-stylistic dabbling; Cebar just creates pretty imitations. The Milwaukeeans are a fun white-boy-soul bar band, perhaps, but not much more. On her recent Favorite Ball & Chain (Medium Cool/Restless) Minneapolis’s Marlee MacLeod tempers clean heartland rock with lofty singer-songwriter ambitions, but in the end she’s just a less aggravated Jennifer Trynin.
NOISE ADDICT 1/11, FI
