Tragic Magic

TRAGIC MAGIC, the third album from archetypal 30-something ex-No Wavers Madder Rose, originally only got a release in the US and Japan in 1997, hence this European version's three new tracks, plus a selection of remixes.

These Manhattanites' portfolio is perfect: film-school backgrounds, heroin habits, stints at the Andy Warhol silk-screen factory - all that's missing is a history of drinking jags with Jean Michel Basquiat. But like Sonic Youth, Blondie and countless other NY acts, Madder Rose are living proof that post-post-Velvets druggy middle-aged bohemianism needn't necessarily be anomalous in a hip-hop literate climate.

Okay, the opening new songs are a return to the Reid/Reed bros' brand of shades-on-indoors laconic toxicity, replete with jagged yet luminous guitar figures, defiantly suburban fuck-up rhythms and the unhistrionic but engaged vocals of Mary B. Lorson. But once 'Narco' (shocking title that!) and 'Jailbird' are out of the way, the band begin searching for ways to incorporate black beats into a traditionally Caucasian blueprint.

But then, let's not forget that Richard Hell's Voidoids had the jazz in Robert Quine and the funk in Ivan Julian (even in the face of Nazi skinhead protest), or that Talking Heads brandished vast batteries of Afro-Carribean riddim sticks, or that ol' Uncle Lou still retains the slippery expertise of muso mofos like Fernando Saunders and Tony Smith.

So it follows that the hip-trot trip-hop shapes of 'My Star' make a lotta sense in this context, as does 'Real Feel', which skips between uptight white urban funk and Luscious Jackson's knowingly retro disco, via some smooth Moog and Hawaiian (whammy) bar guitar tactics.

However, from the astral balladry of 'Hung Up In You' (another new tune) on in, the album takes another twist, exploring the spoken word/acoustic experimentalism of Patti Smith's 'Wave' or REM's 'E-Bow The Letter' ('Peter ... Victor'), Elizabeth Wurtzel-endorsable female teenage balladry ('Best Friend') and the rather gorgeously opiated 'Delight's Pool'. Also, the bone-tired 'Don Greene' exhibits the class of real-life ruined romanticism that Drugstore do so well.

Five years ago, Madder Rose were jostling with acts like Belly, The Breeders and the aforementioned Luscious Jackson for a place on the post-grunge rostrum. Now, that competition has mostly fallen away, and while the perfectly titled Tragic Magic might lack the shock of the new that distinguished the group's 1993 debut Bring It Down, it's still a pretty enticing proposition.