Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

When my sons were younger and would misbehave, I would make them kneel down with their hands folded in an attitude of prayer and listen to a Gregorian chant CD. It only took a few “Angus Dei’s” before I had two of the best-behaved lads on the street. This stopped when they began listening to heavy metal, but while it lasted, it worked. I think if I had tried this behavior modification program with THAT*S RITE by Rew* they would have run away from home. I almost did myself and I own the place. after a time or two through this self-released, self-produced disc.

THAT*S*RITE consists of ten tracks, all of which have the warmth and charm that would come from being composed, performed and recorded off the cuff while standing on a sewer grate in the East Village while nervous parents try to herd their children quietly away. The arrangements, which sound as if they written by Rew*’s makeup consultant (the overly friendly chap standing in the corner with the extra large trowel), consist of her “band” gamely trying to keep up with the proceedings, even as they were no doubt wishing they were somewhere else, doing something else. Rew*’s vocals? Like the hyperlinks on her website, most of the time they don't work. She’s somewhere between David Peel and Yoko Ono on this one, kiddies, and the result had dogs (and me) howling within a half-mile radius of wherever I had the misfortune to be playing this disc. The titles pretty much describe the CD, better than I could, actually, bearing names such as “U Suck,” “U Annoy Me,” “Skeletons” (oops, that one most definitely does not apply), and the closing track, “Gotta Go.” You bet. Faux affectation and ego are the order of the day, from the asterisk which Rew* ever so annoyingly affixes to the end of her name everywhere she puts it, to her myspace page which looks as if it was assembled in a closet by a group of Ritalin kindergartners. Rew*’s ego…what? Oh; since it’s a woman we‘re talking about, she doesn't have an over-inflated ego, just a great deal of self-confidence! That’s right…--- anyway, Rew*’s ego causes her to list an arms length of artists to whom she claims to have been compared --- Wild Man Fischer, the most appropriate, didn't make the cut --- undoubtedly by a list of East Village harpies whose brooms came unstrung after repeatedly listening to THAT*S*RITE.

THAT*S*RITE is so bad that I'd be embarrassed for REW* if I wasn't performing irrigation with a hot water bottle to flush the sound out of my ears. As Peter Griffin would say: “BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! BLAH!”