Comedian Patton Oswalt has appeared in plenty of movies and on television shows from “Late Night” to “The Man Show,” but his first full-length recording contains material more akin to his HBO specials. Feelin' Kinda Patton runs the rather broad comedic gamut between dick jokes and high-brow analyses of the impending apocalypse. Oswalt handles all of his material with the same verve and panache as comedy's current Golden Boy, David Cross, but he's got his own brand of edginess. This one's a screamer by any standard, and specifically geared toward Bill Hicks' fans.
Slipknot Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses (Roadrunner)
I have to believe that Rick Rubin's production has much to do not only with the fact that I can tolerate the new Slipknot album, but that I genuinely like it. Vol. 3 sounds like it could have been put together using Helmet and Filter outtakes. And what could have been a muddy sounding record is, in the capable hands of Rubin, clear, crisp and able to coax gray matter out of your earholes without any trouble. The one-two punch of “Duality” and “Opium of the People” is worth the purchase price alone.
David Mead Indiana (Nettwerk)
David Mead sings like a girl, which is kind of cool in that Smiths/Cure sort of way. The songs on his thrid album aren't much different from those on his previous two: simple, gentle, pretty. The most remarkable thing about Indiana is Mead's sweet, angelic, Ron Sexsmith-like voice. He writes solid pop melodies and above-par lyrics, but none of the 11 songs that compose Mead's most recent effort screams “unforgettable” or “hit.” Even so, Indiana is pleasant like a breezy afternoon drive through the middle of nowhere without a destination in mind.
