New music releases are coming out at a frightening speed. In the continuing

effort to clear my desk of them, here are the good, the bad and the ugly of

this month’s CD stack.

KIDS LOVE IT!

On Yakko’s World, the Animaniacs (Yakko, Wakko and

Dot) sing about an assortment of geographical fun spots. They also manage

to turn the names of all the countries of the world into rhymed verse.

The best tracks on this CD, “Yakko’s World” and “Wakko’s America,” are also

on the Animaniacs’ first CD. The repeats are worth it, though. More fun

tracks include “Lake Titicaca” (“Cause we really like saying its name”) and

“U.N. Me,” their ode to the United Nations. This latter song includes the

brilliant stanza “Boutros Boutros-Ghali-gee/ Down by the East Riverside/

Leads the General Assembly.”

This is a great CD for kids or anyone else who loves silly songs.

AND THEN SHE SAID:

Juliana Hatfield proves her sturdy pop sensibilities on Only

Everything, her third album. She opens the show with a couple of

upbeat rockers before jumping into her latest single, “Universal

Heartbeat,” which rings with pop-rock dynamics.

The rest of the album is marked by Hatfield’s distinctive girl/woman voice.

Unfortunately, this spotlights the extremely limit quality of Hatfield’s

vocals. The lyrics are the standard “you-me-heart-heart-so alone-so

together” affair. You know– pop music.

MOVIE MUSIC:

Soundtrack compilations are tricky to judge. If you haven’t seen the

movie, there’s no way to know how the songs relate. The producers of

Amateur, a film by Hal Hartley, solved this problem by

assembling a collection of damn fine songs, strong enough to go

anywhere.

The mood is set by My Bloody Valentine’s “Only Shallow,” moody,

noisy song that eminates foreboding. The movie stills that make up the

album cover are foreboding, also, so it seems to work.

Other great songs like Liz Phair’s “Girls! Girls! Girls!” and the

Jesus Lizard’s “Here Comes Dudley” echo this tension. “Dudley”

begins with the great lines “That woman’s crazy/ She’s the mistress of a

man who’s crazy, too.” Again, from the photos on the cover, this looks to

be the theme of the film.

The second half of the CD offers the film’s original score. This is a

series of mood pieces that sound very similar until the last one, which

breaks into a jazzy outro for the whole thing.

On the flip side, Courtney Love-Cobain assembled an odd assortment

of hits and misses for the Tank Girl soundtrack. The definite

hits are the songs written and performed specifically for this project.

Björk Gudmundsdottir sings a very cool vocal on “Army of Me,” which

is indeed used effectively in the film. Also, “Big Gun,” Ice-T’s

homage to the comic book hero, is right on target. Stomp’s “Ripper

Sole” is a funky percussion number which, if stretched in length, could be

a dance-club hit.

Other bright spots include L7’s “Shove,” Bush’s “Bomb,”

Portishead’s “Roads” and Veruca Salt’s “Aurora.”

On the “miss” side, Devo’s “Girl U Want” seems anachronistic with

its early ’80s sound. Hole’s token song “Drown Soda” is whiny and

Hole-ish.

The inspired duet on Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It,” between Joan Jett

and Paul Westerberg, is lots of fun, but the CD would have benefited

from the version of the song actually performed in the movie. Björk’s “Big

Time Sensuality,” also featured in the film, is notably missing from the CD

release.

From the WHAT THE HELL IS THIS CRAP? Department:

Malcolm McLaren, inventor of the Sex Pistols, now offers

Paris, a jazzy mix of dance beats and spoken word that is

almost, but not quite, entirely incomprehensible.

“This is an album about Paris,” says McLaren, “but it is more an album

about me.”

McLaren goes on to sing,”I grabbed her sweet arse, I always get a kick out

of Paris.” You know the themes: Paris, love, sex, “I was thinking about a

girl,” and so on.

The CD booklet features photos of McLaren in various poses, thoughtfully

smoking a skinny cigarette, sitting around Paris trying to look

introspective or just meaningfully wearing black.

The best part of the CD is the second disk, which contains instrumental

versions of all the songs. This half of the release benefits greatly from

the lack of McLaren’s self-indulgence.