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Ugly Kid Joe's first full-length album reprises the hit "Everything About You" from their debut EP, As Ugly as They Wanna Be, and delivers a set of similar rockers and a handful of power ballads, including a revamped version of Harry Chapin's "Cats in the Cradle." Listeners who are too far removed from their adolescence to remember the joys of spitballs and Saturday schools won't find America's Least Wanted engaging in the least, but it wasn't designed for them. Ugly Kid Joe rocks for the average high-school kid, the one who doesn't think about anything except girls, partying, and metal. On the whole, the band's mixture of fizzy, fuzzy riffs, sing-song melodies, and calculated obnoxiousness isn't that offensive, but it will certainly try the patience of anyone who doesn't find the band's cutesy vulgarity fun. For fans of the band, America's Least Wanted delivers the thrills. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Cat Power: 'I wanted to die'
Chan Marshall says a fierce battle with alcoholism and depression forced her to cancel tour earlier this year, but she's much better now.
To anyone who has followed the career of Cat Power, the cancellation of her US tour last February wasn't much of a surprise.
Cat Power
The much-acclaimed singer (real name Chan Marshall), had made a habit over the years of canceling gigs, aborting them midway through, and often delivering shows that were less than focused, to put it mildly.
Now the singer has come clean about her behavior, telling The New York Times that she has been battling alcoholism and substance abuse for years and that the February cancellations came at a moment when she was suicidal.
"I was looking at death," Marshall told the paper. "I wanted to die. I asked God, I said, 'I'm tired, I can't do this.' I was asking him to just take me."
The breakdown came just two weeks before the January release of The Greatest, her now critically lauded album backed by a band of veteran Memphis soul session musicians. Marshall holed up in her Miami apartment for a week, turned off the phone, played Miles Davis on repeat, and stopped eating and sleeping.
"She drank to oblivion and prayed to die," the paper wrote.
A friend discovered her condition and took her to a nearby hospital, where she was admitted for psychiatric treatment. Matador Records, Marshall's label, was forced to cancel the tour and took a $100,000 financial hit for doing so.
She was released from the hospital after a week and has been relatively sober ever since, consuming only seven drinks over a seven-month period. Marshall said she still takes antidepressant medication.
Marshall resumed her tour in April, playing the Coachella festival, and Marshall said she slowly but surely has recovered and gained her confidence on stage. She played 11 US dates this month and will tour Europe in November.
Marshall said that her next album, Sun, is already written, and she is contemplating a follow-up to 2000's The Covers Record, possibly covering songs by the likes of James Brown and Billie Holiday.
And in the most unexpected admission in the Times story, Marshall said that she had been invited to play Jude Law's ex-lover in a movie being filmed by director Wong Kar-wai and that she is thinking about auditioning to join the cast of Saturday Night Live next summer.
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