Forget all about equality: this is one of the greatest productions of the 1980s.
I mentioned in my review for Nouvelle Vague’s 3 that I found the French pop group’s cover of the 1984 Depeche Mode single “Master and Servant” lacking. Now, I don’t really want to rag on Nouvelle Vague (I do like the group’s music), but there’s simply no way that anemic faux-blues version could ever stand up to the source material. The original “Master and Servant” features the members of Depeche Mode in their musical prime,…]]>El Ten Eleven + Controlled Storms: 18 November 2009 - The Khyber, Philadelphia / Words and Pictures by Sachyn Mital
The question of the night for El Ten Eleven was “Why aren’t you playing bigger venues?” The groovy electro-funk duo made their first ever Philadelphia tour stop at the Khyber Bar in front of a very appreciative but small crowd. The bar itself was cozy and, as hinted, a small place--making it a great place to see bands up close while downing dollar PBR's.]]>Baroness: 18 November 2009 - Rock and Roll Hotel, Washington DC / Words and Pictures by Mehan Jayasuriya
On Wednesday night, Savannah, Georgia metal act Baroness kicked off its fall tour at the Rock and Roll Hotel in Washington D.C. Living up to their reputation for outstanding live shows, the four-piece brought to the stage nearly every quality that makes Blue Record one of the year's best metal albums: bone-crunching riffs, anthemic vocals, hushed interludes, driving rhythms, and guitar acrobatics galore. But it was the band's delivery and onstage chemistry, rather than their…]]>This AC/DC grab bag is expensive, but you know you want it.
With gross earnings topping an astronomical $105 million, to say that it's been a good year for AC/DC is a bit of an understatement. With a third generation discovering the band's music, they're now more popular than they've ever been, there's no venue too small for them to play, exorbitantly-priced shows are selling out left and right, and to top it off, their spirited fifteenth album Black Ice did not disappoint when it came out…]]>Two wonderfully orchestral, conceptual albums: Osso re-arranging Sufjan, the other Sufjan re-arranging the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Caution: May require ritlin.
Grab your layperson's guide to orchestral music terminology. It's time for a couple of non-folk conceptual albums from arty wunderkind Sufjan Stevens -- actually, one is rearranged by Osso. Both of these albums will alienate some fans of Stevens' virtuosic lyrical-orchestral songsmithing in Illinois. However, if you can muster the attention in contemporary zap-saturated A.D.D. society, your adventures into the Sufjan orchestral realm should hold plenty of surprises. Stevens' 2001 album Enjoy Your Rabbit was…]]>A long-awaited survey of the life and times of a cultural icon.
Given Joan Baez’s centrality to American cultural and political life over the past five decades, the greatest surprise about this documentary is that it wasn’t made much sooner. While Bob Dylan’s career has been the subject of a multitude of docs and bios, essays and retrospectives, Baez’s work -- both as artist and activist -- has received comparably little scrutiny or contextualization. While her classic Vanguard albums have been carefully and conscientiously re-issued and re-mastered…]]>Good performances of great songs, but there's nothing to see here, people.
Not too long ago, I reviewed the new Flight of the Conchords album, and among my complaints was the charge that some of the songs didn't work without their accompanying visuals. Well, feel free to haul out your Emerson and find something about foolish consistency, because I'm about to say that Robyn Hitchcock's concert DVD I Often Dream of Trains in New York would be a lot stronger without the whole "DVD" part. Takes all…]]>Lowlights may operate on a well-worn country road, but they cut their own route there.
Dark End Road, the title of the last Lowlights record, was a perfect name for the band's sound. Their lush country music has the deep feel of being isolated out in the vast, wide-open parts of America. And that stark, beautiful sound continues with Further/Free. Singer Dameon Waggoner and his band guide us down long stretches of forgotten road, each bittersweet melody coated with desert dust, each song echoing with the empty space around it.…]]>Jupiter One's second album has some great songs, but it also gets mired in mediocre '70s-style pop here and there.
Jupiter One's self-titled album was an unexpected surprise. Full of pop gems yet stylistically diverse, it was one of 2008's stronger debuts. Except that it was actually a reissue; the band originally self-released the album all the way back in 2005. So it's not a shock that the follow-up, Sunshower, is hitting shelves a short 12 months later. Sunshower shows that the band continues to have a knack for a catchy melody, but it's a…]]>The radio plays on and on. The heartbeat flat-lines.
The Norwegian transplant Sondre Lerche, a music industry veteran at only 27, possesses considerable talent, but his new album Heartbeat Radio finds him working too hard toward no discernible end. The album is about love in its most mundane forms -- passing the morning paper back and forth over tea, squabbling, driving, chatting. It’s a minor work for minor moods, but it mostly fails to achieve even its modest intentions. There's a sort of ill-fitting…]]>One of the best live bands in American metal finally starts to live up to its potential on record.
When a band is on the cusp of something really good, sometimes all it takes is a great producer to provide that one last push over the top. Athens, Ohio's Skeletonwitch has built a steady following over the past few years thanks to a phenomenal live show and such promising releases as 2006's Worship the Witch EP and 2007's full-length debut Beyond the Permafrost, but the band's combination of vintage thrash metal and icy black…]]>A compilation of varied but smartly integrated tracks.
The PR for the Footsteps in Africa documentary is so Noble-Savage awestruck ("The viewer witnesses the Tuaregs [sic] mode of life, a survival from the soul.") that one might wonder if the soundtrack is worth a listen. The short answer is yes. It's a compilation of varied but smartly integrated tracks, some field recordings ("Tuareg Girls in the Village Jam", "Tuareg Dance Jam"); some written by the film's composer, Jamshied Sharifi, who introduces a 1970s…]]>The 1995 album by the Depeche Mode-esque German act who brought you "The Great Commandment" gets remastered and reissued with a bonus disc.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, record companies found some success by signing moody synth-pop acts and dropping an album in the space between Depeche Mode releases. Thus, bands like Celebrate the Nun, Red Flag, and Cause & Effect were given brief moments in the sun. The best and longest-lasting of these, though, is the German band Camouflage, who had a big club/college radio hit with "The Great Commandment" in 1988, then swiftly retreated…]]>The neverending trove of dusty psychedelic treasures continues to be dug out. That's not to say we don't encounter cobwebs along the way.
Between Nuggets, Pebbles, Back From the Grave, and the cottage industry they’ve spawned, one would think all of the obscure psychedelic chestnuts would have been salvaged from history’s dustbin. (Has there been a Chestnuts compilation yet?) If anything, the wealth of material disproves the long-thought empirical truth of 70’s punk as the incipient moment of D.I.Y. autonomy. Mind Expanders Volume 2 and Past & Present records continues to catalogue and excavate this explosive outpouring of…]]>A growing list of bands unpopular with critics, but genre-defining nevertheless, is impatiently awaiting their admittance into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
As the years progress, the process of getting into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is beginning to look a lot like the process of earning a letter for a high school letter jacket: The superstars (Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Aerosmith) are awarded just for showing up, as are the academic overachievers who are still social enough to get a seat on student council (U2, The Police, Talking Heads). However, the nerds who create the science…]]>Words and Pictures by Caroline Shadood
Everything about singer-songwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield is both incredibly practiced yet incredibly sincere--a binary that becomes only more compelling in consideration of her 1989 birthday. The maturity of it all would indicate a serious age discrepancy, yet here she is at 19, kicking ass on multiple best-of lists and touring the country well outside her home base of Kent, Ohio. Taken under the wing of fellow Ohio native Dan Auerbach for this current tour (and…]]>Cynics be damned: however the hype machine happens to play this one out, Real Estate have overcome the critics and released one of the most refreshing, satisfying and richly rewarding albums of 2009.
In today's culture, the blogosphere moves with such spitting tenacity, and wields such a ruly force over independent music, that once-loved darlings of the self-appointed press become enemies of the state before their first scrap of music is ever officially turned out for public consumption. While the whole issue of today's scene vs. yesterday's scene is, of course, one of subjectivity, the issue over the immediacy of release and influence -- and the rapidly diminishing…]]>A disappointing and ultimately average display from one of hip-hop's greatest artists. And, even worse, it's Rakim who is mostly to blame.
Rakim Allah (who I'll refer to in a number of ways throughout this review) will always be known as one of the best to ever do it. His legacy can withstand even the most deadly blows to an artist, from album delays, of which he has suffered many, to a less-than-dynamic stage presence. Although he's never done it, the God MC could even make an ass of himself in a slew of interviews. And, depending…]]>All through the record, David Wingo succeeds at creating affecting, gauzy rooms of sound. Although once in a while, a song gets lost in them.
David Wingo, the man behind Ola Podrida, has clearly learned a thing or two from his past, back when he used to score films for his pal David Gordon Green. Slipping in the subtle evocative sound, establishing a sonic landscape, expanding out into swells of emotion or coiling into near silence -- Belly of the Lion gives us Wingo in complete control of all these effective moves. He's built on the hushed tension of the…]]>For all the talk of it as experimental, Kamaal the Abstract satisfies and soothes more than it challenges or questions.
The first song on Kamaal the Abstract is titled “Feelin’”. That seems about right. So much of what A Tribe Called Quest was up to in their 10-year career was trying to capture a feeling, a vibe. When they proclaimed “We got the jazz”, it wasn’t just about the music, but the feeling. Their whole approach to jazz had a lot to do with the cool attitude and live energy of jazz. During “Feelin’”, Q-Tip…]]>Stars' new record is a departure -- into U2 and Coldplay territory
There’s a rule of thumb among the music industry’s more professionally-minded producers and songwriters that three minutes and 30 seconds is the ideal length for a pop song. It’s long enough for the rousing refrains to get repeated a few times, structurally it allows the inclusion of most major elements of a song (bridge, breakdown, perhaps a guitar motif), and, last but far from least, it’s the length that radio stations and late-night talk shows…]]>There’s some Drive-By Truckers, Little Feat, and Flying Burrito Brothers, but what’s interesting is how the band so effortlessly take these influences and twist them to their advantages.
There’s a certain charm to the Band of Heathens that sets them apart from many of their Texas Americana counterparts. Perhaps it’s the recklessness of their craft, or the genuine Texas charm they sell so easily, or perhaps it’s their back story that (given the band’s name) should map out like some type of typical outlaw legend, only to be much more simpler than the mythos of Willie or Waylon. Three songwriters team up one…]]>Fed Through the Teeth Machine is well executed, mature, and utterly mosh-worthy, a great example of how to remain true to metal roots without becoming trapped inside them.
The Red Chord has been plowing through the metal scene since its 2002 debut Fused Together in Revolving Doors. Representing Worcester, Massachusetts aggressively with punishing rhythms, stop-start dynamics, and a grinding version of the metalcore sound, the band focuses more on the seedier side of humanity with stark pessimistic insight that operates as a musical sociocultural commentary. Fed Through the Teeth Machine, the band's fourth full-length release, showcases its recklessly unpredictable intensity that crushes as…]]>The former pianist for Antony & the Johnsons "awakens" with his most elaborate solo work yet.... and it features a plastic bag! Here's the story behind Reuben Butchart's boundless creativity.
"Make a left onto Head of Pond Road. You will pass over a small bridge. Follow Head of Pond Road, after about a mile and a half, you will see a miniature windmill. Go left at the fork in the road at the windmill and the center will be on your left -- #39 Watermill Town Road." Tacking on a two-and-a-half hour drive from Manhattan, these are the directions that lead to the Watermill Center,…]]>Veteran folk-rock songstress brings in a team of bluegrass heavyweights for a smooth-sounding, hit-and-miss hodgepodge of covers and a handful of her own old originals.
As of this writing, there have been 46,837 rootsy singer-songwriter album releases in 2009. So what is veteran folk-rocker Catie Curtis to do to stand out among the overwhelming glut of strumming and emoting? Not by going back to the drawing board for a new set of originals, which she has done nine other times, but by recruiting an all-star group of bluegrass superpickers and reinventing some of her old songs as well as some…]]>Submitted for Red State disapproval, it’s L.A.-based Internet spectacle Jeffree Star, whose full-length debut CD rages, primps, and pumps as if the future of drag terrorism depended on it.
To paraphrase George Clinton: Who is this young, ink-and-stage-blood-saturated, self-styled bitch who wishes to be "Queen of the Club Scene"? Submitted for Red State disapproval, it’s L.A.-based Internet spectacle Jeffree Star, whose full-length debut CD rages, primps, and pumps as if the future of drag terrorism depended on it. When one strains to listen beyond the applied Auto-Tuned vocals, Star’s not untalented. His vocals convey the required melodrama, smut, and wit, especially wit. Star’s awareness…]]>Former Men at Work frontman's doing just fine as a solo artist.
American Sunshine marks the tenth record and twenty-second year of Colin Hay's solo career, far outstripping his Men at Work output. Granted, it's the Men at Work hits he's best known for, but that doesn't seem to bother Hay (he seems to have looked back only once, with 2003's Man at Work, where he re-recorded some of his former band's hits). Throughout his solo career, Hay has specialized in agreeable, comfortable pop rock in the…]]>German indie-pop chanteuse Masha Qrella creates a quiet storm from Broadway bombast on her excellent tribute to two titans of musical theater.
Broadway songs are generally big, brassy, and bombastic productions with rousing orchestras and full-blown choirs of actors and actresses dancing and prancing across massive stages in full regalia. German indie-pop songstress Masha Qrella (Contriva, Mina, NMfarner), at the behest of Berlin’s House of World Cultures (or Haus der Kulturen der Welt), was commissioned to create a performance of songs by Broadway giants Kurt Weill and Frederick Loewe in conjunction with the theatre’s 50th anniversary celebration…]]>Highlights from the Voodoo Experience: 30 October - 1 November 2009 - New Orleans / In its 11th year the festival welcomed a plethora of musical greats to help embrace New Orleans under Halloween's spell.
It has been two weeks since the Voodoo Experience and I finally feel that my life is back in order. As New Orleans’ premiere fall music festival, it's geared to worship music and showcase New Orleans all while embracing the Halloween spirit. In its 11th year the festival welcomed a plethora of musical greats including, but not limited to: Ween, the Flaming Lips, Parliament Funkadelic, the Black Keys, KISS, Jane’s Addictions and more.]]>Some artists are more than merely great. There are some artists that for a period of years, a period that is finite, consistently produced music that, it can be argued, far exceeded the work of their peers. For that brief period of time they were definitely Masters of the Form.
"Yeah people come up." -- Rage Against the Machine, "People of the Sun" It's an unlikely invitation from an unlikely source. In 1992, Rage Against the Machine had stormed onto the music scene with the finesse of a class five hurricane. Their self-titled debut album played like a musical version of blunt head trauma, and displayed so much honest anger in its fusion of rap and metal that it clearly wasn't the work of an…]]>Don't Stop exudes polish, depth, and the sense that Annie is moving confidently forward as a pop artist of the first order.
Originally scheduled for a 2007 release, Annie's follow-up to 2004's Annimal finally hits shelves and desktops in late 2009. The period in between saw the nearly inevitable leak of an album that resembles, but is ultimately inferior to, the finished product. After all the delays, the wait was worth it: Don't Stop exudes polish, depth, and the sense that Annie is moving confidently forward as a pop artist of the first order. The confidence isn't…]]>The Austrian producer pulls out all the stops and has a truly worldwide party. Cheers!
There are few pop music embarrassments more humiliating than trying too hard to sound fresh and falling flat. Likewise, mashing sounds and styles together with little apparent focus may earn you elite status with certain blogs and websites, but it rarely produces music anyone wants to hear more than twice. The line between eclectic and pathetic is often a thin one, which is why you've probably heard of Vampire Weekend and Gorillaz, while the Stills…]]>This, the second three-disc set in a series, features recordings from the Mother's Best radio programs.
In the early 1950s, Hank Williams could be heard performing every weekday morning on radio stations all across the southern United States. These 15-minute "morning shows" were pre-recorded in Nashville, initially broadcast on WSM (also home to the Grand Ole Opry radio programs) and sponsored by Mother's Best Flour and Feed. 143 of the songs Williams recorded for these broadcasts survive, and last year, Time Life Entertainment released 54 of those songs in the first…]]>Fun-loving hip-hop is rarely as good as People Under the Stairs' seventh album, Carried Away.
Fun-loving hip-hop is rarely this good. California's People Under the Stairs have this subgenre of hip-hop on lock. Sure, this duo makes the occasional serious cut and these guys, in the words of Rakim, ain't no joke. There are, of course, exceptions, such as the absolutely phenomenal "Acid Raindrops", which embodies the sometimes-necessary escapism associated with drug use. But Thes One and Double K, who have now crafted a total of seven albums in 11…]]>France's clown prince of the disco continues to make hard left turns into the darker realms of his love for outsider rock on his finest album to date.
House music has certainly come a long, long way since its origins in the legendary Chicago nightclub The Warehouse back in the late 70s/early 80s with DJ Frankie Knuckles speeding up disco 12-inches to keep the people dancing into the morning light. In its purest form, its sound never really strayed too far from the core rhythms generated by the arsenal of synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines, even when elements of other genres like reggae,…]]>What started out a back-to-basics project has turned into one of the coolest, most forward-thinking American metal bands of this decade.
Considering the other musical projects of Mick Barr and Colin Marston, it's not much of a surprise that the guitarists are taken aback by all the attention their band Krallice has received over the last year and a half. After all, these guys have never, ever specialized in any kind of music that would remotely fall under the description, "accessible". You've got avant-garde noodler Barr, who has lent his fleet-fingered shredding and tremolo picking to…]]>Aim and Ignite lands somewhere between Queen, the Mars Volta, and the soundtrack from Hairspray, and so is pretty original to say the least. Unfortunately, it drowns under its own weight.
Listen to “Be Calm” on fun.’s Aim and Ignite, and you will be forgiven for thinking it was written for Zach Efron by Gerald Way in a jester’s suit. The album marks a (fun) sojourn for Nate Ruess, former frontman/vocalist of the Format, currently lying dormant if not dead. For Aim and Ignite picks up where the Format’s Dog Problems (2006) left off -- the latter a feel-good carnivalesque sing-along that knowingly put the kibosh…]]>The transition into Thai has given the Anglo-American music a penetrating note, as if high-pitched percussive instruments are being quickly struck and pieces of metal are being clashed.
Americans, says the American in the room next to the one in which I'm sitting, have not heard of Cliff Richard, so if you're American I'm not sure how useful it will be to learn that the 1960s Thai pop genre known as wong shadow, or shadow music, takes its name from Richard's sometime band, the Shadows. Cliff Richard was a British teen teddy boy who came along a little before the Beatles. He performed…]]>The ever-prolific producer/songwriter Butch Walker notes how live shows lack a genuine mystique these days, his secret for surviving a tour, and why he'll probably never see Third Eye Blind in concert again ...
See also "The Gospel According to Butch: Part 1—The Producer" It's often noted that the very act of performing -- be it in the realm of acting, music, dance, or any other artform -- can be an extremely cathartic experience. If this is truly the case, then, Butch Walker is in for one hell of a night tonight. Tonight, Butch Walker continues his run of shows at the Hotel Café in Los Angeles, where he's…]]>It's hard to imagine a better album for a dimly lit December evening indoors with eggnog and a roaring fire.
Really, Ray Charles can do no wrong. It's a truism that holds for this, his first ever Christmas album. Released in 1985, The Spirit of Christmas arrived at a surprisingly late date in Charles' career for a first anything -- he was 55 at the time -- but it demonstrates a man who still knew how to control his voice and his fingers like few other performers ever could, even if it's not the perfect…]]>