Star Tribune: May 13, 1995
By Jim Meyer
Romantic rocker Jeff Buckley and funk-rap foursome Soul Coughing tested the boundaries of modern rock in their own distinct fashions Friday night at First Avenue. The new acts from New York amazed a near capacity crowd in very different ways, pitting pomposity against the ultramodern in an action-packed double bill.
In the end, it was clearly Jeff Buckley who had the greater reach in his 90-minute journey, but many patrons who left after Soul Coughing's opening set of rockin' rap may disagree.
It's understandable that Soul Coughing (the name is a more colorful term for vomiting) would have the popular edge, because they have the look and sound of a commercial trend-spotter's dream band. They take a fat, jazzy upright bass groove and strengthen it with a tough kick-drum beat for added snap. They throw in an inscrutable social commentary by a geeky rapper who steals his delivery straight from the how-to book of basic hip-hop style. Once you add a keyboard player/sample manipulator for that modern edge, you've got a band with loads of hipster credibility.
Unfortunately, you don't have a whole lot more. Though the group has cooked up something intriguing, the frustrations are many.
Leader M. Doughty uses a monotonous whiny style to deliver fragmented lyrics that make almost no sense. Take "Casiotone Nation," a safe, snide, anticorporate mockery in which Doughty coaxes the audience to count to 100 by five. Absurd theater indeed, but like much of their material, it lacks for overpowering conviction. Further infuriating is that the bass-heavy groove on their album "Ruby Vroom" just doesn't move live. Instead, the rhythm section lays out for Doughty's limited and unilluminating rambles.
Perhaps Soul Coughing doesn't need to comment explicitly. The group's existence and growing popularity is its own ingenious statement on hiw a soul-starved mass audience will gravitate and even devour reconstituted funk, if it's in a language it can understand, or at least comfortably ignore.
If Friday's audience was looking for more genuine soulfulness, they could find it in the classic rock reinventions of the Jeff Buckley quartet, which brings back visions of such innovators as Led Zeppelin and the Doors. They even performed the MC5's anthem "Kick out the Jams," and Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" in their spiraling set.
Buckley carries a heavy burden as the son of jazz-folk legend Tim Buckley. Whether he accepts it or not, he has inherited a few of his father's traits: a clear, soaring voice and expansive, uncompromising musical vision. That helped make Buckkey's debut album "Grace" a critics' delight.
In soothing contrast to Soul Coughing's jerky jams, Buckley opened his show by calmly strumming the opening chords of the Indian-influenced "Dream Brother." It's the last song on Buckley's album full of mini-epics-a collection unlike anything else among the current crop of new acts.
Buckley may have overstayed his welcome by encoring with a new instrumental and "Kanga Roo" by Big Star, but it is apparent that he doesn't do anything halfway. And whereas Soul Coughing may have trouble withstanding the next trend, Buckley looks like an artist who won't be leaving the scene anytime soon.
Jim Meyer is a music columnist for City Pages.
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