Entrance

Prayer of Death
(Tee Pee)

Young, middle-class whites have been taking the music of their darker-skinned favorites and selling it back to other young, middle-class whites for many years. From Led Zeppelin to the White Stripes, we keep falling for it. This week, they call themselves Entrance.
"Prayer of Death" tries too hard to utilize the heavy sounds of Led Zeppelin without repeating the cliches that have ruined many metal bands. From Zeppelin, Entrance (primarily singer-songwriter Guy Blakeslee) also derive third-hand inspiration from authentic, exotic music such as Indian ragas. Indeed, songs like "Requiem for Sandy Bull (R.I.P.)" seem to exist primarily to prove how awesome his obscure record collection is.

Blakeslee's reluctance to just sing - without cracking his voice to prove how "real" he is - is unfortunate. The most captivating song on this record, the title song, works exceedingly well when he's singing but less so when he's wavering. Someone should tell dude that we're not going to believe that you're an 82-year-old sharecropper, so maybe just relax and play it right.

Karling Abbeygate

Karling Abbeygate
(Dionysus Records)

When someone tells a joke at a party and it falls flat, it's a painful experience for the joker and for their audience. When someone makes a joke of an album but gets to avoid seeing the discomfort and annoyance on the face of the audience, it's even sadder.
English lass Karling Abbeygate fancies herself to be a honkey tonk singer tucked conveniently between the saucy sass of Wanda Jackson and the silky sadness of Patsy Cline. A former model who isn't much to look at, but poses in her album photos as undressed as Tara Reid in Ibiza, Abbeygate might fool the casual listener but wouldn't last very long at Robert's Western Wear in Nashville. Her singing reminds one of Tammy Faye Messner's speaking voice.



Most disappointing is that her L.A.-based band, led by veteran lounge bandleader Joey Altruda, is crisp and adept. While laying down the foundation for a torch singer in a Best Western in Boise isn't the worst gig a band could get, they deserve a singer who doesn't sound like Betty Boop at karaoke, too tired from her office job to offer a performance worth paying attention to for more than ten seconds.