Other Ways of Speaking

Barnes & Noble

Despite all best intentions, this Aussie crew have come to be known as Russell Crowe plus five -- a state of affairs that TOFOG seems to have resigned itself to, given the decision to plaster a close-up of the actor's mug on the album's cover. Even so, Other Ways of Speaking doesn't have the tenor of a vanity project. Crowe's not a bad singer -- his cool baritone suggests a less nuanced Chris Isaak -- but he's out of his depth on ballads like "Unfaithful Man." Things perk up a bit when Chrissie Hynde drops in for the love-hate duet "Never Be Alone Again," but Other Ways of Speaking is best when the band kicks into higher gear. On tracks like the polyrhythmic "Mission Beat" and the high desert–tinged "Painted Veil," there's a choogling confidence that outstrips the band's last release, Bastard Life or Clarity. Nothing fancy leaps out of the grooves here: The music is solid, no-frills pub rock, and Crowe's lyrics, while sometimes a bit too wordy for his own good, seldom sink into self-importance. The disc concludes with a hooting version of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues," further proof that the outcast spirit is alive and well Down Under. David Sprague

All Music Guide

Perhaps it was inevitable that 30 Odd Foot of Grunts would always be seen through the prism of Russell Crowe, since anytime celebrities (particularly ones that famous) front a rock band, it is forever seen as their band. In Crowe's case, he is the group's lead singer and chief songwriter, but calling the band simply his implies that they are a vanity project, when the group had been active for a decade prior to the 2003 release of their third album, Other Ways of Speaking, and Crowe had been recording for even longer. If anything, his status as a superstar and Oscar-winning actor hurts the band, because it makes it much harder for the group to be taken seriously, which is something they do deserve. They're an interesting band with big ambitions in the vein of U2, but tethered to the ground by the Aussie pub-rock tradition, something that produces music that pushes and pulls between two extremes. As a result, Other Ways of Speaking can often sound like an album about 10-15 years out of time, as if the group were contemporaries with Paul Kelly and shooting for serious global domination in the time when Amnesty International was holding charity concerts. This might hurt their chances of widespread recognition in 2003, but it does make for a record that is at once admirable and infuriating -- admirable because it has ambitions, infuriating because it's hard not to wish those ambitions were focused. But even with its flaws, Other Ways of Speaking is a worthy affair, not least because Crowe is a hell of a frontman, with a good husky voice, and a sturdy songwriter as well. This kind of proudly unfashionable music is much like the man himself, and if it's hard to imagine too many punters for this kind of big, sweeping music in 2003, this easily holds its own against any purveyors of "big music" from 1988-1991. Stephen Thomas Erlewine