INTERVIEW

AUGUST, 1999

Various Artists

The Shanti Project Collection (Badman)

Putting together a benefit album is often like building a bonfire: Pile enough on and hope it ignites. The Shanti Project Collection, which benefits the San Francisco-based AIDS organization it’s named for, breaks with tradition by collecting tracks from five like-minded mope-pop masterminds (Red House Painters, Low, Idaho, Hayden, and Misc), creating a somber soundtrack that matches the gravity of the cause. Fortunately, from the Painters’ nervy, heart-in-throat reworking of Genesis’s “Follow You, Follow Me” to Low’s almost-cheery “Venus,” the album is not the dreary aural barbiturate it could have been; instead it invites listeners to take comfort in all its gentle noise.

DAVID PEISNER