BRAND NEW BY TOMORROW - MONEY MARK
Money Mark Ramos-Nishita helped orchestrate the renaissance of the Beastie Boys in 1992 with “Check Your Head,” outfitting the group’s evolving rhyme schemes with dirty funk, trashy garage sounds, Cuban twists and whatever else happened to be lying around. This solo disc, however, finds him taking the singer/songwriter road, with decidedly less adventurous results. The well-chilled “Brand New by Tomorrow,” released appropriately on surfmeister Jack Johnson’s Brushfire label, finds Mark indulging his inner Beatle (”Color of Your Blues”), revisiting the funk lounge (”Pick Up the Pieces”) and resorting to piano-laden balladry (”Pretend to Sleep”). Mark’s sound here is cohesive and unified, though a pervasive midtempo vibe and downer subject matter (it’s mostly a breakup album) tend to blur together. Not quite the reinvention he might have been aspiring to, but it has its moments.(Brushfire Records) Billboard
