Patti Griffin wages battle on new CD

Editor’s Note: In Sound Advice, the first Saturday of every month, veteran NEWS entertainment writer Dale McGarrigle, former British music-press writer Adam Corrigan and a revolving stable of NEWS writers review new albums from across the musical spectrum.

“Trampin’ ” (Columbia) – Patti Smith

For the past 30 years, Smith has been as much poet as musician, following in the footsteps of her longtime source of inspiration, Arthur Rimbaud. She’s old-school enough that she wants to make listeners think by singing and speaking about what’s on her mind.

Like many from her generation, what’s troubling her is the warrior mentality in Bush’s America. Smith sees little to be gained by bombing Iraq, which she refers to as “the cradle of civilization,” back to the Stone Age, to borrow a phrase from America’s last mire of a war, Vietnam.

Smith vents her rage in the 10-minute, largely spoken-word epic “Radio Baghdad”(which brings to mind her classic “Rock ‘n’ Roll Nigger”). But she more subtly gauges war’s effect on America in songs such as “Jubilee,” “Cartwheels” and “Peaceable Kingdom.”

On this, her first release for Columbia, Smith realizes that she may be a lone voice in the wilderness, but that doesn’t seem to matter to her. Instead, she’s content to wage a battle … for peace. – Dale McGarrigle

“Final Straw” (Polydor) – Snow Patrol

Final Straw may be Snow Patrol’s third album, but the band seems as far from a destination as ever.

Gary Lightbody may now touch on the Iraq war in his lyrics, but this expansion of horizons has failed to rid the band of a second-division feel. Their itinerant ramblings gently circle, and they repeatedly stumble upon their own footsteps, generating music that, despite obvious heartfelt effort, fails to inspire.

Having jettisoned some of their edgier influences, and been picked up by Polydor in the process, Lightbody and crew may have ambled onto mainstream radio playlists but have polished away any edges that can be grabbed on to.

The single “Spitting Games” chugs merrily on its way, sounding like one of Elliott Smith’s afterthoughts, and its companion “Run” tempers yearning with tedium, nearly bludgeoning us with Lightbody’s breathy, lovelorn vocals. Adequacy is what Snow Patrol bring with them, and they seem so gaspingly earnest that giving them a bad grade feels like slapping a puppy, but “Final Straw” fails to distinguish itself. – Adam Corrigan

Franz Ferdinand (Epic) – Franz Ferdinand

This is quite possibly the sexiest Scottish rock ever. Certainly it’s the sexiest rock to come from a band named after a European leader whose assassination sparked a world war, but I digress.

And no, there isn’t a bagpipe, fiddle or squeezebox to be found on this Glasgow quartet’s self-titled debut. Instead, the boys de Ferdinand have cut an album’s worth of highly danceable destructo funk rock with jangling guitars reminiscent of “Entertainment”-era Gang of Four. Sure, it’s a sound that has been mined before, most recently by the likes of The Rapture, Radio 4 and even the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

But Franz is the very first band to nail it completely, wrapping up the angular rock sound in a bit o’ Brit-pop polish and brooding lyrics about lust and longing. Each of the album’s 11 tracks perfectly straddle this line between post-punk bliss and dance-floor perfection, although “Take Me Out,” “Michael,” and “40′” are standouts.

But for this critic, after many repeated spins in the CD player, the surprising pleasure of Franz Ferdinand is the voice of singer Alex Kaparanos. In these days of rock radio still dominated by perpetually grumpy-sounding acts, it is so rare to hear a rock band with a singer whose voice is so smooth and, well, hot. So hot in fact that by the time he croons “I want this fantastic passion/we’ll have fantastic passion” on “Darts of Pleasure,” you darn well believe he does – but only in that coolly disaffected European way. – George Bragdon