From Daily Hampshire Gazette
Music weekend
Thursday, May 30, 2002
By LARRY PARNASS, Staff Writer
http://www.gazettenet.com/05302002/entertai/15014.htm
The little sticker on Alix Olson's CD says a lot about music today, if only I could figure out what that is. The pasted-on label specifies which of the CD's 22 tracks are "FCC compliant." The reasons the other are not have to do with those words that you apparently still can't say on the radio. In Olson's politico-erotic world, many of them refer to body parts.
While Olson has her angry side (though she's businesslike enough about FCC conventions), she hits her targets with grace and humor. Mainly, she takes aim at heterosexual hegemony, in songs and spoken-word pieces that she's performed at poetry slams. In "Daughter," on her CD "Built Like That" (Feed Fire), she offers a stream of consciousness tale about a child's future that reaches for feminist and lesbian victories.
She's pointed, but not dogmatic, which opens her work to a wider audience than it might otherwise attract. In "Daughter," she lists all the things that might come her character's way, or not. "She'll do all of this and she'll do none of this." That feeling of liberty and individual choice marks a difference between the powerful sisterhood expressed here and the sort of consensus gender pride I recall from records that Cris Williamson used to put out, more than 20 years ago.
In an overpackaged world, Olson's is a call for liberty. "Built Like That" is loaded not just with words that make the censors blush but with buckets of ideas and observations. The presence of so many musings warps the politics here very nicely, making this CD a compendium of thoughts and doubts as much as it is a prescription for the way things ought to be.
The track that shares the CD's title slyly delivers its politics, without posturing. It manages to sum up the hard road this sort of music must ride in America.
On that score, Olson delivers her broad-brushed "America's On Sale" with a perfectly mocking tone. These are tracks that defy summarization. Speaking of snide, if you want to hear the most perfectly insincere laugh, listen to Olson's response, when a DJ compliments her work and then notes that "The Compliment," as it is reproduced on the disc, comes from a white man. I suspect Olson liked the sound of her laugh more than the guy's remark.
While her fast, light voice is plenty on many of the tracks, I also like it when she brings musicians to her aid; she's joined here on some tracks by Catie Curtis. "Checking My Pulse" is vigorous, alluring and appealing, using the oomph of a band to double up on what a track can deliver.
She's compelling because she has something to say and the wisdom not to make too much of it. She makes fun of her own cursing. Her preoccupation isn't with her own sexuality, though she takes us through epic encounters. She likes people. "I believe people are see-through if you hold them up to the light," she recites at one point in "I Believe."
That's one of her isms, and a humane one at that.
With Pazza Ragazza, 10 p.m., 20 Center St., Northampton, $8.