Campbell: Tuned In: Il Divo, Ola Podrida, The Cribs

High-brow boy band Il Divo belts on ‘Barcelona’

“AN EVENING WITH IL DIVO: LIVE IN BARCELONA,” Il Divo (Sony)

What happens to girls who grow up listening to the likes of ’N Sync, Menudo and New Kids on the Block?

Simon Cowell figured out they could be suckers for an act like Il Divo, a pop-operatic, multi-national “boy band” featuring four men ages 36-41. Cowell’s instincts were right: The act he assembled — David Miller, Carlos Marin, Sebastien Izambard and Urs Buhler — has had grown women swooning all over the world since 2004.

“An Evening With Il Divo: Live in Barcelona,” packaged as a CD and DVD, captures the stylish quartet this past April performing to an adoring crowd of 20,000; the DVD often cuts away to hopelessly enraptured women in the audience.

Il Divo’s act is no less formulaic than that of a regular boy band. The men remake classic pop and rock hits (usually, but not always, translated from English into a romance language). Songs such as “Unbreak My Heart,” “Nights in White Satin,” “Unchained Melody,” “My Way” and “Without You” are initially presented in low-key, one-vocalist fashion. The spotlight then rotates as each singer gets an individual crack at the lines. Then the operatic angle filters in as their voices are paired off in various combinations until inevitably all four sing at once in an aural orgy.

Baritone Marin tends to be the most histrionic in the group. Izambard, the only one not classically trained, is the most accessible of the four. Tenors Miller and Buher cover a lot of ground between them, with Buher sounding a bit like Kermit the Frog. The arrangements are all discreetly orchestrated, and there’s even a bagpipe to accompany the Il Divo rendition of “Amazing Grace.”

Individually, the singers’ deliveries are impressive — astonishing, in fact, for a live performance. However, when they all dovetail, their cornucopia voices and styles are overbearing to the point of bullying.

Yet those women in the audience are constantly whipped up with appreciation, so apparently the method is working.

Rating (five possible): 3-1/2

Ola Podrida’s ‘Belly’ flops, recovers

“BELLY OF THE LION,” Ola Podrida (Western Vinyl)

David Wingo is like one of those friends who knows how to be endearing but also insists on being annoying, apparently just for the sake of being annoying.

The film composer for several recent indie movies also operates the “band” Ola Podrida — which in the case of the new “Belly of the Lion” means he has drummer Matthew Frank sitting in on a few tracks in what would otherwise be a solo effort.

Also the lone Ola Podrida songwriter, Wingo recorded “Belly of the Lion” at home, presumably without much honest feedback from friends or family (or Frank). Otherwise someone surely would have flagged his dreadfully addled and craggy voice and the clanging abrasion of the music that conspire on the first half of the release. Listeners will likely feel enervated and irritated by the off-putting sonic assault, even when Wingo’s on solid lyrical ground, as he is on a “Your Father’s Basement” that drolly recalls his youthful antics of spying on girls and looking for hidden beer.

Wingo eventually eases out of his austere arrangements, and on the final four cuts of the nine-track release he softens the sound to fit the open-hearted/beaten-down persona at the core of “Belly of the Lion.”

Mellow guitars and gentle vocals create an indie folk foundation for tender reflections and nostalgic memories — some of them off-kilter, but nonetheless inviting. And he saves his most poignant line for the end of closing track “This Old World,’ where he effectively pleads, “Don’t leave me alone, not tonight/No not tonight, baby/Please don’t go.”

He’d have made a stronger case if he hadn’t seemed so hellbent on driving everyone away in the beginning.

Rating: 3

Cribs’ addition doesn’t mar mix-and-match sound

“IGNORE THE IGNORANT,” The Cribs (Warner Bros.)

Fans of the U.K. post-punk trio The Cribs need not be alarmed by the recent addition of Johnny Marr to the all-brother lineup of Gary, Ryan and Ross Jarman: The ex-Smiths guitarist simply adds another layer of electricity, augmenting the raw vivacity of the band on its new “Ignore the Ignorant.”

The Cribs’ follow-up to 2007’s “Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever” is a hard-fused exercise in contrasts. Gary Jarman’s voice may be cracking as he shouts, “Your virility makes me forget empathy” against the ragged energy of “We Were Aborted,” but on the smoldering epic “City of Bugs” he channels an ironic croon, a la Lloyd Cole, to lend a different kind of drama to the doom.

Meanwhile, a hard rhythm section will over-punctuate a smooth arrangement one minute and then struggle to keep up with the discord the next.

The Cribs may flaunt their versatility, but “Ignore the Ignorant” is thoughtfully managed chaos, not the random and gratuitous maneuvers of a band desperate to prove itself. The unrestricted release consistently feels like polished corrosion — with the tarnish shifting from one fixture (instrument) to another, from passage to passage, song to song.

Sometimes the haze and smudge are too much to penetrate: Witness the quicksand effect of the slushy “Last Year’s Snow.” But ultimately, “Ignore the Ignorant” hangs together in a furious, yet alluring, package where a rollicking “Victim of Mass Production” sounds both sing-songy and snide, where an earnest “Nothing” beautifies bleakness, and where the mayhem of “Emasculate Me” can’t outrun a driving beat.

Gary Jarman’s hoarse melody spells it out clearly on “Cheat on Me,” a focused jangle set off by a tattered frame as he sings, “Things go together better than others/Like manic depression and hyper sexuality.”

The Cribs know how to find such mismatched “things” and make them work.

Rating: 4

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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