Creative Loafing's "Get the Silver" Review

Madfly
Get the Silver
Killing Floor Records

Although Madfly frontman William DuVall is certainly a very talented fellow, the guy seems to have an ego the size of the Georgia Dome. You have to wonder about a man who lists his own name 38 separate times in the credits on his CD's packaging, who poaches song titles from Lou Reed and Joan Jett, who writes lyrics like, "Fabulous/I'm so fabulous/I feel fabulous/Aren't I fabulous?" and who then has the crowning audacity to name his publishing company Beautiful Genius Music. I mean, this cat makes Ru Paul look downright bashful! Once past the annoying shout-a-long of "Fire in the Hole," however, Madfly's Get the Silver offers some extremely polished tracks that harken back to the arena-rock anthems of the '70s and '80s. "Chains Around My Heart" sounds like Let's Dance-era Bowie, "Venus Fly Trap" recalls Bon Jovi's chest-thumping histrionics, and you can almost picture DuVall affecting a Freddie Mercury prance on the Queen-ly "I Hate Myself for Loving You the Way I Do." "Jealous Baker" could pass for a Led Zeppelin B-side, and "Honeydripper" suggests Robert Plant chasing an underage Liz Phair around a Motor City motel room. This CD was cut at Atlanta's Casino Studios where Mick Jagger recorded last year, and not coincidentally Madfly are at their strongest when mimicking the Rolling Stones. Tracks such as "Vicious" with its lurching twin guitars and "Queen Bee" with its darkside lyrics ("She ain't no stranger to abuse/She got a needle for a noose/She buys her coke with a table dance/She likes to fuck with no romance") could be Mick & Keith's leftovers from the years between Some Girls and Tattoo You. "Keep Driving Me Away" is a power ballad a la "Wild Horses," with a protracted instrumental jam that might work well in live performance (when the catalyst of onstage chemistry justifies it) but which overstays its welcome here on disc. "Soul's Got Wings" is one of several "unplugged" tracks on which DuVall goes acoustic; produced with the same eerie, hollow sterility of one of those ironically named 99X "Live X" shows, it's a fair indication of why Madfly won the recent local Grammy showcase. This CD is redolent with just the sort of slick, clean, heavily processed sounds that make Grammy voters salivate in their seed pods.