Daft Punk unleash their inner disco auteurs and release a colossal, self-indulgent mess as their comeback album. And make it work. Like PopMatters on Facebook and Twitter to double and triple your chances to win.
a Rafflecopter giveaway]]>This album is that rarity of a gem, it’s an instant classic, and it is utterly flawless.
Jerry Miller is a guy who will turn 70 years old this year and a dude who certainly has learned his way around the guitar during his long lifetime. He was a founding member of the critically acclaimed ‘60s band Moby Grape, and Rolling Stone lists him at No. 68 on their countdown of the 100 greatest guitarists ... of all time. So while he may not exactly be a household name, Miller is certainly…]]>Here's another song for your summer 2013 soundtrack. "Sure Stuck" by Honeymoon has that laid-back groove of '60s and '70s psych pop without being stuck in the past, which is always a fine line.
This catchy tune begins with a buzz of synths that weaves throughout vocal harmonies and a percussive swagger. It luxuriates to almost seven minutes, enough to lounge outside and get a sunburn. Honeymoon is a new musical project by two Australian LA-based producers, Aaron Shanahan and Benjamin Plant. After years producing and writing electronic music, they decided to indulge in their love of lo-fi psychedelia. The full length debut album is due later this year,…]]>There isn't a moment here that isn't danceably, head-bangingly fun, but it's also a kind of fun you've probably had before.
New York's Dirty Fences are a rock 'n roll band in the most timeless sense of the world. They chug through power chords at breakneck speed, but this isn't about a punk sneer, a galvanizing against, but instead a gathering around. Too High to Kross is a series of heavy-hitting but party-light rock tunes that will get you banging your head and, sometimes, humming along. Songs such as "Heaven is Tonight" or "Under Your Leather"…]]>Silver Arm are a new British band specializing in hard-hitting, post-punky psychedelia.
"Dead Tongues" is one of the group's demos that FatCat is showing off at present. This ravaging two-minute blast is a jolt of kinetic energy that highlights a bright future for Silver Arm.]]>Guitar troubadour wants you to laugh along with his pain
Phil Lee is a Nashville-based singer and guitarist who feels that humor has its place in the blues—preferably front and center. On tunes like the jaunty "Blues In Reverse" or the vicious "Every Time", he uses his vocals to presumed comic effect; album opener "I Hated to See You Go" opens with the lines "When you left, I said at last / And gave you twenty bucks for gas". If you're fond of such Dylan-esque…]]>Another anthem for this summer's soundtrack.
Here come the summer anthems -- Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" and Empire of the Sun's "Alive" are already getting plenty of airplay, and now there's "Dumb Disco Ideas" by DFA artist Holy Ghost! Check out the recent Red Bull Academy film, "12 Years of DFA Too Old to Be New, Too New to Be Classic", about the label (home of LCD Soundsystem, YACHT and Holy Ghost!) Their credo is basically that all music is dance…]]>With the subtlety of an air raid siren blaring positive vibes, this Dutch rapper’s ambitious new record should be classified as a WMD.
The sort of competent rapper that would have stayed well-fed in the late '90s, when scores of big beat also-rans strived to be the next Apollo 440 or Lo Fidelity Allstars, Skiggy Rapz has undeniable ambition. Tragically, the Dutchman’s zeal and pulsating positivity yields exponentially more cringes than cheers on Satellites. Something this strategically commercial and unreservedly saccharine shouldn’t sound so downright dreadful in the execution. An abominable amalgamation of rap cliches with outright gibberish,…]]>Why do modern adaptations of Shakespeare work? Yet Baz Luhrmann's adaptations of period pieces don't?
PopMatters seeks feature essays (min. 1,200 words - no max. limit) arguing the pros and cons of anachronism in film, literature, video games, music and other products of pop culture.]]>These diverse songs allow Natalie Maines to showcase her uncanny knack for delivering a wealth of emotional information without over-playing her hand. Like PopMatters on Facebook and Twitter to double and triple your chances of winning.
a Rafflecopter giveaway]]>Despite its rich tradition, the future of gospel music in various parts of the world has been an issue of contention and heartbreak in recent years, but the Electrifying Crown Seekers make a case that the genre is still going strong.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly when and where gospel music began. Common wisdom would suggest that it's been around for centuries, originating far before a recording button even existed, thus making a precise date, time and place for its genesis an impossibility to distinguish. And because it is most associated with religion, an idiom with a timeline that itself has generated hundreds of years of debate, attempting to pinpoint the single moment that gospel music…]]>Having established himself at the forefront of global progressive music, Steven Wilson won't rest on the success of Porcupine Tree if sonic borders remain to be breached. But first he has to find a way to signal past the noise, in a world where too many choices often send listeners screaming for the exits.
Steven Wilson remains, as ever, a busy man. Having established himself at the forefront of global progressive music over the past 20 years, Wilson -- whose diverse career spans microambient to pop -- has earned the right to explore whatever musical tangent he chooses. Even with the massive success of his most popular band, Porcupine Tree, he has never ceased exploring the non-prog aspects of his oeuvre. Whether it’s the computer drones of Bass Communion’s…]]>Shining have followed up its career-defining masterwork, Blackjazz, with the exuberant One One One, which takes its unparalleled sonic and places it within the framework of the pop album.
With 2010's career-defining Blackjazz, Norwegian band Shining (not to be confused with the Swedish depressive black metal outfit of the same name) held back from polishing the roughness that was always present around its sonic edges. Despite moving away from its origins as an acoustic jazz ensemble and into the realm of extreme metal over the latter part of the '00s, even when it went all-out crazy, there was a surprising restraint on the part…]]>Mark E. Smith's production reveals a band determined to explore its denser, edgy, introverted character. The songs burrow down and hunker close. You approach them; they do not reach out to you. As with nearly all of the Fall, this album does what it wants to do, forcing the listener to submit to its terms.
Re-Mit sustains the claustrophobic ambiance and subterranean moods of the Fall's recent releases. Produced by Mark E. Smith, it captures the spookier, isolated feel of the latest incarnation of the long-lived group, on its 30th studio record since 1977. With attention to depth, the mix combines murk with menace. While trumpeted by Smith as far superior to the previous record, Ersatz GB (reviewed by me in 2011), I did not find Re-Mit drastically diverging from…]]>The latest from Amidon succeeds in its unhurried easiness.
Sam Amidon's strength lies in his interpretive imagination, typically revisiting traditional roots and folk music but occasionally digging up, say, an R. Kelly nugget. His reinventions have ranged from spare and stripped-down to more complex and fuller, as developed on 2010's I See the Sign. His latest work, Bright Sunny South, ostensibly works as a return to a simpler sound, but it's simpler only through the lens of a greater maturity, with Amidon's ability to…]]>Conceptual and ambitious, Love Lust Faith + Dreams has finer moments as well as moments that are overwrought, overextended, and overproduced.
Alternative rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars return with their fourth studio album and first album in four years, Love Lust Faith + Dreams, following 2009’s This Is War. Conceptual and ambitious, Love Lust Faith + Dreams has its finer moments as well as moments that are overwrought, overextended, and overproduced. The best material graces the front of the album while the middle and back-half are less triumphant. “Birth” establishes the tone, with magnificent production…]]>It might not rank with the best of the 1990s, but Blind Melon's debut holds up as a solid rock record that also happens to contain one of the best pop songs of the past two decades.
It starts with ringing guitar tones that glide through the air like ripples in a pond. Then comes a breezy, shuffling beat, propelled by finger-snap percussion and jaunty strums of an acoustic guitar. The vocals enter last — earnest, plaintive, a bit of distortion hinting at some inner darkness. There you have the first few seconds of “No Rain”, the breakout hit by Blind Melon from the group’s 1992 self-titled debut. The song’s sunny groove…]]>Justin Ancheta can come off at times as a San Francisco-flavored Jack Johnson, but he and his band definitely have a promising start here.
Justin Ancheta's Plant is a fine, unassuming full-length album. His website refers to his music as reggae flavored funk and jazz -- this fits most of the time, with reggae featuring most prominently in the mix. At times he sounds like a San Francisco flavored Jack Johnson - albeit a more permanently relaxed Jack Johnson. Opening "Forever" paints a slow-burning blues-pop groove with just the lightest touch of reggae hints -- a fine song to…]]>Mark de Clive-Lowe doesn't turn big band music on its head so much as he injects it with new blood.
The title for this project can work as a piece of foreshadowing. There is a Duke Ellington cover inside, but it's not the Strayhorn original "Take the 'A' Train". This is big band music, but it is not firmly rooted in the earth. This is big band jazz that can swing just as well as it can hover in the atmosphere, thanks to some electronically enhanced performances. Take the Space Trane is one of those…]]>One of the finest American musical interpreters hits us where it counts with spirityouall ... the heart.
No one should ever dismiss Bobby McFerrin. It's easy to forever associate him with the theme from The Cosby Show and "Don't Worry, Be Happy", but that disservices the listener far more than it does McFerrin. Yes, his innovation in the realm of a cappella is what he is best known for, but beyond the rhythmic body lies a voice so incredibly emotive. spirityouall is by all means a departure from jazz, and jazz in…]]>Lenny White releases a funky diamond from his archive.
Lenny White taps into his vault of live recordings and comes up with an explosive performance from a tour of Japan in 1997. Lenny White Live is more for the completist or the aspiring jazz student than it is for the casual listener, but those who prefer the power and spontanaeity of live over studio will be thoroughly satisfied. The overall technical quality of the recording is passable at best, but the performances from White,…]]>Barwick gives us another angle in her exploration of sound and instrumentation, of the connection between the player and their instrument, whatever that instrument may be.
Julianna Barwick is known for her looped-vocal compositions -- see 2011's great The Magic Place -- but for this new 7-inch single, she has taken a different path. On "Pacing", she meshes those ethereal vocals with piano, and yet it doesn't present itself as typical singer-songwriter fodder. In fact, her voice has never sounded so much like an instrument, a piece played with the piano, not over the top of it. It's another twist in…]]>A fantastic folk-pop record with its biggest fault being it’s only five songs.
Sometimes, the finest things are right under your nose. I was given a link to a Wake Owl track with a casual, “Hey -- you might dig this.” I checked it out and moments after I heard the first maple-sweet refrain of, “If I wanna leave I will / Stand on my feet, I do / Only takes these words, you / Never believe are true” I pressed stop and went and paid cash for…]]>Some fans may prefer the slow-baked emotional trouncing of the band's early years, while others may prefer the fuzz and buzz of its rockier mid-era riots. Either way, Cathedral was a hugely influential band then, and will remain so long into the future. Here are five formidable (and ear-splitting) reasons to mourn Cathedral's passing.
When singer Lee Dorrian exited UK-based grindcore pioneer Napalm Death in the late '80s, few would have predicted his next musical venture would so drastically reduce the tempo and ramp up the theatrics. Dorrian, who had grown disillusioned with punk and death metal at the time, formed doom legend Cathedral in 1989 with bassist Mark Griffiths and guitarist Gary 'Gaz' Jennings. The band members' love of bands such as Black Sabbath, Candlemass and Pentagram, as well…]]>Ray Manzarek left his handiwork all over several of the more resilient and extraordinary songs from one of the enduring American bands.
When it comes to this great American band’s legacy, the best thing about the Doors is also the worst thing about the Doors: Jim Morrison. Blessed with one of the more charismatic and literate frontmen of their -- or any -- era, it seems inevitable, in hindsight, that the Doors would become icons. Morrison, as leather-legged Lizard King, cut a figure that adorns posters and t-shirts four decades after his death. Morrison also endures as…]]>All things Wu Tang!
In commemoration of the 20-year anniversary of the release of ‘Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)’, PopMatters is inviting submissions for a special section devoted to all things Wu. Essays run 1,200-3000 words on any aspect of the album, on the individual MCs, the RZA’s production techniques, Wu culture, the Wu-Tang as a business model, the legacy of 36 chambers, and anything else that fits.]]>While Broadway gets Motown and Daft Punk gets lucky, more than 25 artists and producers explore why Diana Ross and Nile Rodgers still turn us "inside out".
Read Parts 1 - 4 Read Parts 5 - 6 Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards began the 1980s on top. diana was a cross-format smash, an international sensation that delivered hits in major territories around the globe and would eventually sell upwards of ten million copies worldwide. Though the producers were initially distraught over Motown's remix, they couldn't deny the album was doing exactly what it was supposed to do: bring Diana Ross back to…]]>Canadian electro-minimalists Majical Cloudz’ debut for Matador, Impersonator, is the confessional album for the age of austerity.
Impersonator is at once an odd name for the debut by the Montreal-based Majical Cloudz. (To get the obvious out of the way, yes, the spelling is silly.) If one resorted to the same economy of words that so defines this LP, this duo would be best described as "direct". Lead singer Devon Welsh -- whose resemblance to Mark Strong is a little more than passing -- has become well known for his on-stage presence,…]]>Matthew Cooper finishes a once-abandoned album and in the process offers a guide to all the sides of Eluvium's music and a wonderful banquet for fans.
For an artist who has stuck resolutely to a particular sound and genre, Matthew Cooper's work as Eluvium shows a commendably broad range. Within the triangulation points of ambient warmth, steady drone, and pointillist, emotive piano playing Cooper has touched on everything from Fennesz-style fuzz to sci-fi tinged string arrangements to even, on 2010's fine Similes, a little bit of singing. It's a credit to Cooper's gifts as a performer, arranger, and composer that his…]]>Those clever Swedes know a good pop tune when they hear one.
Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård's last album, 2010's The People's Record, was a mini masterpiece of "We're all doomed....aah screw it LET'S PARTY!" cocktails n' calypso, end-of-the-universe conga abandon. So perhaps fittingly "Kill! Kill! Kill!" opens Club 8's eighth with a funeral. A ruby red, bleak house hybrid of the Smiths' "Meat Is Murder" and Julee Cruise's "Falling". "You lick your fingers and enjoy the sight," drawls Komstedt. It's a hypnotic, harrowing and admirably unnerving…]]>Continuing on with a hunger to constantly challenge both themselves and their audience, this version of Os Mutantes upholds the band’s legacy and legendary status.
Os Mutantes were always schizophrenic. Born of brothers Arnaldo and Sérgio Dias Baptista and lead singer Rita Lee, their first two records from the late ‘60s were eclectic intoxicating journeys, seamlessly combining tropicalia, bossa nova, and samba music with the psychedelic rock of the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix into their own warped style of songwriting. This was psychedelic music completely distinct from anything else in its time. Their 1968 self-titled debut album is a masterwork…]]>The foremost virtue on each of these albums -- musically, lyrically, and especially vocally -- is Forbert’s exuberance, the unabashed joy of discovery he makes palpable on nearly every one of the tracks here.
The 'new Dylan' mantle is probably the most damning comparison in pop music. It inspires almost immediate skepticism, and it saddles the anointed with an impossible burden. After all, Dylan never went away and he hasn’t yet (and the way things have been going lately, he never will -- have you heard Tempest?). To boot, it’s a lazy signifier. When critics or publicists break it out, they invariably mean only that the so-called “new Dylan”…]]>Cheech & Chong have made a great career out of hilarious drug-fueled comedy. However their "comeback" release to coincide with their their new animated film shows that the best of their more complex comedy may well be behind them.
In a 1997 episode of Nash Bridges, starring Don Johnson and Cheech Marin, the latter's former comedy partner Tommy Chong guest starred and asked Cheech's character, “What's your drug of choice now, man?” The now-balding Cheech gave the now-grey Chong a serious look and responded “Uh, Rogaine.” It was a subtle and appropriately funny jab at the duo's aging and their former career. Since rising to the national scene in 1971 with their first album…]]>Old punk musicians playing new punk songs. Ah, the circle of life.
Good For You are a hard-charging, gravel-voiced band of punks led by former Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn, and the band's debut album Life's Too Short to Not Hold a Grudge contains eleven hammer-fisted anthems of disenfranchisement and bitterness. There aren't a lot of guitar solos or harmony vocals here -- there usually aren't with punk -- but there is a range of tempo and surprising melodiousness that makes listening to this record rewarding, and…]]>The incomparable New Orleans trumpeter and BBQ master, Kermit Ruffins, returns next week with a brand new album perfectly entitled 'We Partyin' Traditional Style'.
You may recognize Ruffins from his recurring role on HBO's Treme, but you should really know him first for his trumpet. Ruffins plays the brassy, sing-songey, "play it from the bottom of your heart" style that is the trademark of NOLA's great trumpeters, including most obviously Louis Armstrong and Louis Prima. And like the many great New Orleans musicians before him, Ruffins celebrates the city's heritage in every note he blows and word he sings.…]]>The new song from hip-hop odd couple El-P and Killer Mike continues the synergy found on their outstanding 2012 solo efforts, finding the duo sliding into a masterful, sinister comfort zone that's the equivalent of two super villains doing battle over the world right before they decide to conquer it together.
Don’t let anyone steer you wrong. Despite the fact that it’s an excellent album, Kendrick Lamar’s breakout LP good kid, m.A.A.d city was not the best rap record released last year. That distinction goes to the unexpected and sublime team-up between Dungeon Family-associated rapper Killer Mike and rapper/producer/former Def Jux label head El-P, the El-P produced Killer Mike album R.A.P. Music. Though they only rapped on one track together on that record, the project was…]]>Suffering Mind, Poland's finest (and most prolific) grindcore export, continue their blastbeat fury with a speed-shifting chunk from their upcoming split 7" with Archagathus.
It seems like Polish grindcore lifers Suffering Mind are releasing something as often as other bands practice, whether it be a split, EP, or the occasional LP (the band love odd formats, as they have currently released a record in every size from two to eight inches). What makes this acceptable is that virtually everything they release is of such a high quality that the chance to get new Suffering Mind is tough to pass…]]>This week's new releases available for streaming are highlighted by the National, Beth Hart, Townes Van Zandt and more.
This week's new releases available for streaming are highlighted by the National, Beth Hart, Townes Van Zandt and more. Powered By New Releasess Now]]>While Broadway gets Motown and Daft Punk gets lucky, more than 25 artists and producers explore why Diana Ross and Nile Rodgers still turn us "inside out". Stay tuned tomorrow for the rest of the chapters in this story.
Read Parts 1 - 4 Read Parts 7 - 9 "In the 1960s, Berry Gordy found a way to take R&B music, which had been kind of a niche music, and make it be popular music at a time that transcended race and geography," says Don Was. "I think Nile and Bernard came up with a way of doing the same thing in their time. It's as original and as distinctive." Perhaps it was inevitable…]]>The National keeps on growing older gracefully with the impeccably executed Trouble Will Find Me, but it might just be that the venerable group has reached the point of no-longer-increasing returns.
The National is one of the rare indie bands that has grown more respected and beloved the bigger it has gotten, as if the true measure of integrity and cred wasn't what you did to make it, but rather what you've done after you've arrived. And that's for good reason: Whether you're talking specifically about the music industry or generally about any walk of life, the National has done things the right way, working hard…]]>Access All Arenas, a vivid and vivacious capture of Justice's 2012 Arena of Nîmes show, proves once and for all that the progression that occurred between Cross and Audio, Video, Disco hadn't changed them as a band. It, in fact, made them better.
Audio, Video, Disco, Justice's sophomore EP, was released in 2011 to a public that wasn't quite sure what to do with it. Undoubtedly, many were hoping for something like a Cross 2.0, and not without good reason. When it dropped in 2007, Cross was a revelation, and proof for many that house music, despite what Daft Punk's Human After All may have indicated two years prior, was not only alive and well but fully revitalized.…]]>This vinyl and digital only “album” feels more like a DJ's tool than a pure record, but it works best when the experimental nature of the music is unfurled and the artist just lets loose.
Poisonous Relationship is the moniker for a 26-year-old from Sheffield, England, named Jamie Crewe. And that’s pretty much all his publicity bio has to say about him, aside from listing that he’s a “singer, songwriter, producer, designer, artist, and writer.” So all you really have to go by is the music, which comes in the form of a debut full-length “album” called Garden of Problems (how’s that for setting yourself up for critical barbs?). I…]]>Patron saints of doom bid farewell to their stony parishioners with their riff heavy swan song.
Lee Dorrian has had a charmed musical career! As a young lad, he first cut his punk teeth editing a fanzine called Committed Suicide. Covering mostly anarchist (crust) punk bands at the time, the horizons of the fanzine’s field of coverage would later expand to include metal bands. This genre convergence would later prove to be prophetically allegorical of Lee joining the legendary Napalm Death, one out of a handful of bands that pioneered the…]]>Odonis Odonis' Better EP is louder, darker, and uglier than its predecessor, the noisy, surf-minded Hollandaze. But the hooks are still there, buried mile-deep in feedback and sludge.
There's not a lot of surfing going on in Ontario. When intrepid surfers do grab a wave, the muddy froth of the province's titular Great Lake is a far cry from Maui. Fittingly, even though Toronto-based thrashers Odonis Odonis call themselves a surf-rock band, they seem to have forgotten what the ocean looks like. There’s no sunshine or California charm on their latest Better EP—by the sound of whatever beaches their screeching about, the waves…]]>I don't hear Young Dreams in any of these songs, I hear their favorite bands, and I find that kind of frustrating.
Will there ever be a time when clean-cut, well-meaning young people do not feel it necessary to beat the dead horse that is Brian Wilson? Hard to say… but that day has certainly not come yet. One thing is for sure: the perky, apple-cheeked Norwegian kids that comprise Young Dreams see no reason to stop popping their ancient copy of Pet Sounds into the microwave in order to see what warmed-over melodies and harmonies might…]]>Essential recordings from the history of the blues -- oh hell, from the history of American popular music, period
Universal Music continues its release of the entire Muddy Waters library as recorded by legendary blues label Chess Records with Volume 3 of its archival series. You Shook Me is a two-disc set that chronicles the years 1958 to 1963, a critical period in the evolution of Muddy's sound, one reflected in the recording industry as a whole: the shift away from the single to the album as the basic unit of musical recording. The…]]>Brandon Biondo, the supremely talented and perpetually underrated mastermind behind Coolrunnings, Walsh and the Dracula Horse label teams up with bassist/co-vocalist Nichole McMinn in his newest project, Shy Boys.
Brandon Biondo has been making superb new wave and art pop-indebted indie rock for years with Coolrunnings to little fanfare, but his newest band, Shy Boys (with co-vocalist and bassist Nicole McMinn) might be enough to break him out to a larger audience. The latest original to be leaked from the project, "Something" is a pristine slow-burner that follows the formula of much of Coolrunnings' mid-paced material. What sets it apart, however, is McMinn and…]]>Jazz pianist Romain Collin explores the haunted terrains of his inner world on "The Calling".
A graduate of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, New York-based Romain Collin has had the great fortune of working with the likes of jazz legends Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. While Shorter and Hancock are some of the giants of fusion and crossover jazz, Collin opts for a much more distilled purity in his work and his dexterity with the piano showcases an erudite skill matched only by the discerning emotions that forge the…]]>From knocking indie music scene bad boys, to riffing on the tales of Salome and John the Baptist, to re-appropriating the most taboo of anatomical vulgarities, “Dance of the Seven Veils” is a testament to the cunning complexities of Liz Phair’s composer mind.
“I only ask because I’m a real cunt in Spring / You can rent me by the hour." And then there was “Dance of the Seven Veils”, the gobsmacking fourth track on Exile in Guyville, and our first taste of Liz Phair’s unparalleled ability to be haughty, naughty, playful, and pernicious all in the same breath. It is also serves as our introduction to Phair’s more abstract tendencies, stringing together erotic and vaguely menacing imagery…]]>Chicago rapper/producer Tree flips a sample of the Elvis classic "Can't Help Falling in Love" and makes the track his own with his gruff, elastic vocal delivery and alternately tough and clever lyricism.
An Elvis song, let alone the schmaltzy classic "Can't Help Falling in Love", seems an odd choice at best for a rap sample (at worst, we're talking Dipset "Built This City" territory). But Chicago rapper/producer Tree manages to flip the sample into a soul-trap hybrid that, I don't know, just works. He spits gruff, elastic, occasionally pinch-voiced tough-talk and hippie street guru bars, slipping in affecting lyrics like "Drunk as hell, man / I probably…]]>In a Kickstarter world where consumers can basically will anything they want into existence, and everything is interactive, it makes sense that we should want to control our concerts, too
In Back to the Future Doc Brown’s DeLorean had to accelerate to exactly 88 miles per hour in order to travel back in time. During a recent Wednesday evening commute, my carpool companion appeared to activate his Subaru’s flux capacitor while crawling along at less than 10mpg. All it took was turning on the radio. “Yeah, can you play ‘Shakedown Street’?" He was on his cell, talking to someone at the radio station we were…]]>While Broadway gets Motown and Daft Punk gets lucky, more than 25 artists and producers explore why Diana Ross and Nile Rodgers still turn us "inside out". Stay tuned tomorrow and Wednesday for the rest of the chapters in this story.
Read Parts 5 - 6 Read Parts 7 - 9 Diana Ross truly reigned supreme on 21 July 1983. That was the day she stood before an audience of 400,000 New Yorkers in Central Park and emerged as a formidable force against thunder, lightning, wind gales, and sheets of rain. When she resumed the concert less than 24 hours later, the only elements soaking the stage were rays of sun. Only one song could herald…]]>PopMatters presents the North American premiere of Vs. Head Vs. Heart, the debut album by fast-rising Australian songwriter Emma Louise.
There are two biographical notes that inevitably get cited when Emma Louise is mentioned: how young she is -- 21-- and how successful she is in her home country of Australia, where she has already won numerous awards and has a hit single "Jungle" on her resumé. But these factoids matter only because of the precocious musical intuition on full display on her debut full-length Vs. Head Vs. Heart, which makes its North American…]]>Daft Punk unleash their inner disco auteurs and release a colossal, self-indulgent mess as their comeback album. And make it work.
It’s bizarre to realise, but even a quick glance towards Wikipedia is enough to point out that Daft Punk have released barely anything of real importance for over a decade. The last time they felt as big as their reputation was back when Discovery ruled the world’s airwaves in the early '00s. Ever since then it’s been a serious of diminishing returns and largely forgotten releases: the deeply flawed though rather underrated Human After All…]]>On MCII, Mikal Cronin isn't so much spearheading the current garage-rock revival, but rather redefining what the genre means altogether.
Mikal Cronin's reputation as one of the leading lights of the current neo-garage-rock craze precedes itself, but you might start rethinking any assumptions about his music and the genre he's associated with when you hear the solitary piano chords intro'ing "Weight", the opening number on his latest effort MCII. That's because, before any expectations for MCII can fully set in, Cronin is already breaking all preconceptions, coming out of the gate with the album's most…]]>A guitar and a banjo walk into New Jersey...
Maybe it's just me, but I always thought that the musical style known as American Primitive wasn't really all that primitive. Even when legendary guitarists like John Fahey were dragging slides around to commemorate steamboats gwine round dem bends, there were many progressively-minded winks and smiles hidden between the notes. There was an undercurrent to this kind of folk guitar music that suggested "hey, it's only primitive if you say it is". And by the…]]>Life on a Rock ultimately seems less like a beach party album than Chesney stretching out with his ghosts.
Though much of Kenny Chesney’s career has been built on songs about beach life, his last two albums, 2012's Welcome to the Fishbowl and 2010's Hemingway’s Whiskey, did a fair amount of veering slightly away from that, if never completely, carving out both anthemic and moody places not as connected to the sun and sand. Those albums might be good proof that he’s not a one-note artist. Then again, he more often seems perfectly happy…]]>Kids Raising Kids is both commendably varied and sonically of a piece, which is no easy feat. It’s clear that the Kopecky Family Band has ambition, and while its reach exceeds its grasp more often than not here, this is definitely a group worth keeping an eye on.
Kids Raising Kids, the Kopecky Family Band’s debut LP, is a ponderous affair, given on the one hand to soaring, anthemic rock and on the other to atmospheric, glassy-eyed navelgazing. Had Phil Spector been high on Dilaudid, the Wall of Sound might very well have come out sounding like this. That may seem like a pejorative assessment, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. On this album’s better moments, the effect is both fresh and…]]>Six Feet Under is back in an attempt to reclaim the glory of the band's early years. Will veteran Chris Barnes succeed, or is this death metal dog too old to learn new tricks?
Some artists evolve and garner praise, while others mutate in the wrong way and take flack for it. Some artists get hammered for remaining what could euphemistically be called consistent, and others rehash the same four chords for decades and the masses lap it up. Which category do Six Feet Under fall into? Well, it probably depends on which of the two distinct camps, one of many metal subdivisions I might add, that you fall…]]>