Performance: WinningAn interesting album, like love, is where you find it, and these days that's often on a small independent label. Case in point: the Waterdog Records debut of the Bad Examples, a youngish, Chicago-based rock-and-roll outfit with the traditional lineup of two guitars, bass, and drums and a stylistic range extending from blues-based rave-ups (Rubber Cement Man) to Squeeze-style pop rock (Ashes in My Heart).
Recording: Good
What the Examples are doing obviously isn't blindingly original, but what raises them above the level of a superior bar band is frontman Ralph Covert, as authentic a rock-and-roll natural as you are likely to hear anytime soon. Covert writes like a dream - terrific tunes with funny, intelligent, occasionally even heartbreaking lyrics about life as it is actually lived by normal human beings rather than rock stars - and he sings in a classic ravaged-but-sweet (that is, real) rock voice that gets under your skin about two minutes into the disc. Imagine a less dissolute Alex Chilton at the top of his form, and you'll have an idea what a marvelous racket Covert and his colleagues are making all over "Bad Is Beautiful." In short, get it immediately. Pick hits: Stranger Than Fiction, ridiculously catchy power pop, and She Smiles Like Richard Nixon, which actually lives up to what is clearly the neatest song title of the Nineties so far.