L.A. Times

It seems this band can't make up its mind: is Medicine a divining rod or a lightening rod? "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" or "I Am The Walrus?", Noisy pop or poppy... (you get the idea).

From the likes of their last two LPs The Buried Life and Shot Forth Self Living, it seems, regarding latest release Her Highness (American), they don't know, and don't care, either. Or, so says hand-on frontman Brad Laner.

"I think we're more real (than) so called 'alternative' music. It all sounds contrived like there's this major agenda: music to fit peoples' lifestyles. We're making it for ourselves and having a good time, and I think people can hear that. Everyone's trying to make music they think KROQ will play. But by complaining, it almost makes us sound like reactionaries, which is not the case. We make music without any concern for being timely or fitting into whatever movement...if people dig it, that's cool, if not, then at least we pleased ourselves."

Beth Thompson (angelic vocals, songwriting, collector of toads), Brad Laner (noise necromancer, mellow vocals, songwriting, producing, guitar/keys), and Jim Goodall (entrancing drums/noise support) are Medicine's three main hypnotists, and have been for well into four years, having sprouted out of L.A.'s 80s art rock scene. Beth from the saintly sweet Four Way Cross, Jim and Brad from every trash art project imaginable.

That's the thing about Her Highness. As with The Buried Life, its first few "notes" are really no such thing: it's pure, blinding static electricity that first accosts you. Past sonic misadventures transpired with the help of shortwave radios, cigarette lighters, and amplified, croaking toads in the mix. But the new LP, unlike the last two, flips. Sweet blisspop's in the forefront, with noise in the layers underneath.

"It's just a natural occurrence," Brad muses. "More subtle. There's still plenty of noise on the new album, it's just the focus is more on the songs this time. Beth and I pretty much write everything. We try to have the record tell us what it should do. This record was telling us not to bury it too much in noise. It's not enough of a shift for people to go, 'oh my God, they've completely changed.' It's a different character."

Luckily, Laner's got an outlet for all that fuzzy stuff: his completely whacked out, mesostic/ wordplay prone band The Electric Company has two releases out: A Pert Cyclic Omen (Onion/ American) and a bizarre, unlabeled double vinyl single that, says Laner, "Looks like a TOY or something," on Krown Pocket, with a CD due presently.

As house and for the movie 'The Crow', Medicine's song "Time Baby 3" also graces that soundtrack, and their EP, Sounds of Medicine -- Stripped and Reformed Sounds includes remixes from the Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthr (who adorns it with Liz Fraser's overlain vocals), and the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan.

"I haven't really talked to them (Smashing Pumpkins) too much since they became huge," Laner ruminates. "Billy's hard to get along with. He's just really insecure."

It's these interpersonal foibles and awkward moments that peek out through each one of Medicine's apprehension-smothered hymns.

"It's not always/ such a drag/ when you're around" (from "Wash Me Out") exemplified the reluctance, reticence, even agoraphobia teeming through the album's lyrics. "I'll be quiet and try/ to hide/ that you're killing me," the co-dependent "Farther Down" wails.

Medicine's aural antidotes have spiritually cleansing, psychadelic side effects. Electroshock therapy, Edenic, sultry, fearful imagery...Laner's unsure how it'll all come across.

"We refuse to label ourselves," he goes on. "We're good at what we do, and if the mountain wants to come to us--the 'commercial mountain'--and if we're standing on top of it at the right time, fine. But it could come to us and we could be miles away. It really doesn't matter."

Rubbery walls of sound, lag-time/ groovy drumbeats circa 1960-something, ideas and harmonies flit by dear Beth's suffocative vocals, jangly, polychromatic riffs... "I Feel Nothing At All" has all the Cocteau's babytalk phrasing: interchangeable words, sentiments made almost plain, sans committal...but aside from the "hee hees" Beth and Brad let loose in the homesick lament "Seen The Light Alone", Medicine's comparisons end here, especially with each new listen to their songs. You're bound to find a nuance you'd first missed, and to realize this domainÕs distinctly Medicinal.

"Not to 'dis," continues Laner, "but I'm really not interested in bands that are trying to sound English. Actually I really like Verve and all that, but people factionalize themselves so much, they barricade themselves off from so much good music (saying) 'I only listen to punk rock. I only listen to techno', you know. I'll listen to anything if it's good, and 95 percent of music out there is crap, regardless of genre. There's really not a lot of L.A. stuff that I like a lot. I like Lutefisk...the Polar Goldie-Cats--they're from another planet!--that's the stuff I like. Maybe on the first album thereÕs are pretty obvious My Bloody Valentine influence," Laner says, casual. "But I think since then, we're kind of in our own perverse little world."

Medicine will play at the Whiskey Oct. 20th.

--jiji johnson


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