Fleet Foxes, “White Winter Hymnal” (from Fleet Foxes, Sub Pop): This sort of rustic, open-throated harmonizing could only be made by guys with unmanicured beards. I could’ve picked practically anything off the young Seattle group’s self-titled album or Sun Giant EP, both out this year, but this one adds a lovely seasonal angle.
Vampire Weekend, “A-Punk” (from Vampire Weekend, XL): A short, sharp blast of bratty exuberance from the Ivy League upstarts, part Talking Heads, part Ramones, part Paul Simon.
Pictures and Sound, “100 Directions” (from Pictures and Sound, Vanguard): My fave track of 2008—from my fave album of 2008—mounts a wonderfully big-hearted lyric opening into a captivating hook atop a groove that jumps with the visceral momentum of Spoon. A totally inspired take on a perfectly written song.
Kings of Leon, “Use Somebody” (from Only by the Night, RCA): I still don’t understand why 2007’s fully awesome, wildly inventive Because of the Times wasn’t the commercial breakthrough the Followills were destined to pull off as the most exciting young rock & roll band on the planet. Not only that, but it’s ironic that KOL’s first U.S. hit track was the pumping but thematically knuckleheaded “Sex on Fire,” which Caleb had to be talked into finishing by his bandmates. This one, the follow-up single, is far more satisfying, applying the muscular backing vocals of the previous album’s thrilling “Knocked Up” to an Arcade Fire-style anthem. Only by the Night also boasts a ferocious Stones-meet-Zeppelin rocker “Crawl” and the sleeper “I Want You,” a classic summertime lazy groover.
TV on the Radio, “Halfway Home” (from Dear Science, Interscope): With its Beach Boys-derived Bah-bah-bahs and thrilling payoff in which Tunde Adibimpe slides upward into falsetto, the rousing opener from Dear Science, the New York band’s artistic triumph and mega-hookfest, churns through genre distinctions as if they were dead-set on obliterating them. The first time I heard it was on the iPod of Scott Cresto, my friend from Chrysalis, the band’s publisher, just before Radiohead took the stage at the Hollywood Bowl, providing me with the perfect lead-in for the show of the year.
Coldplay, “Strawberry Swing” (from Viva La Vida, Capitol): For me, Viva La Vida is missing something. It doesn’t pack the punch of X&Y or roll out the parade of hooks that made A Rushj of Blood to the Head so endlessly playable. But this Beatlesque beauty stands with the band’s grabbiest, most tuneful cuts; the secret weapon is the squad of cellos that thickens the chords in the chorus.
Lindsey Buckingham, “The Right Place to Fade” (From Gift of Screws, Reprise): Think of this cut as “Son of Secondhand News,” topped off with a “Take that, Jack White” rawk solo from the great eccentric. Yup, that’s Mick Fleetwood hammering away on the drums; Mick and John McVie reunite with Lindsey on the shredding title track and the crunchy rocker Wait for You”; neither plays on the sparkly “Love Runs Deeper,” according to the credits, but it sure sounds like they do. Actually, as I listen to these tracks again, I’m leaning toward “Love Runs Deeper” on my year-end compilation.
The Raconteurs, “Old Enough” (from Consolers of the Lonely, Third Man/WB): Jack and Brendan find the perfect balance between Gram Parsons, Blind Faith and Crosby, Stills & Nash on this delightful roots romp.
My Morning Jacket, “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream Pt. 1” (from Evil Urges, ATO): The Louisville band’s second terrific album in a row, Evil Urges was produced by the veteran Joe Chiccarelli, who did a similarly killer job engineering the Raconteurs’ Consoler of the Lonely. With its elegant groove and dusky atmosphere, this one is as close as MMJ gets to Radiohead.
TV on the Radio, “Golden Age” (from Dear Science, Interscope): Inspirational lines from Kip Malone: “The age of miracles. The age of sound. Well there’s a Golden Age. Comin’ round, comin’ round, comin’ round!” And what a groove they’ve cooked up to go with it.
Beck, “Youthless” (from Modern Guilt, Geffen): Here, Beck and Danger Mouse seem to take TVOTR’s groove and strip it down to the bone, so that it’s as dry as the desert. But there’s real power in the austerity they’ve created, and that goes for the album as a whole.
Elbow, “Grounds for Divorce” (from The Seldom Seen Kid, Fiction/Geffen): Utterly spot-on classic-rock-throwback track reinvents the power ballad for the ’00s.
Aimee Mann, “Freeway” (from @#%&*! Smilers, SuperEgo): I sold this album a bit short in my three-star review, resisting the synth-focused, guitar-less musical premise, but man, this track grooves, setting up a classic Aimee pop hook. The song I singled out in the review, sounds even more epic now than it did at the time.
Matthew Sweet, “Byrdgirl” (from Sunshine Lies, Shout! Factory): Delivers on the promise of the title with maximum jangle and the implied poignancy that’s a Matthew trademark.
Lucinda Williams, “Real Love” (from Little Honey, Lost Highway): I had the honor of hooking up Lucinda Williams with Matthew, who did the vocal arrangement on this track as well as “Little Rock Star,” and sang the harmonies with Susanna Hoffs, the other half of Sid and Susie.
Bob Dylan, “Everything Is Broken” (from The Bootleg Series Vol. 8, Tell Tale Signs, Columbia Legacy): This finger-snapping alternate take from 1989’s Oh Mercy anticipates the more recent chuggers “Things Have Changed” and “Someday Baby” (both of which appear on this collection in radically altered form). It also anticipates the mess the world is in two decades later, but that prescience is what we’ve come to expect from Bob.
John Mellencamp, “Troubled Land” (from Life Death Love and Freedom, Hear Music): T Bone Burnett has yet to produce his old pal Dylan, but on this Mellencamp LP, he hints at what such a collaboration might sound like. In feel as well as theme, this is very much a companion piece to “Everything Is Broken.”
Mudcrutch, “Scare Easy” (from Mudcrutch, Reprise): Here’s one of Tom Petty’s signature credo anthems, right up there with “I Won’t Back Down” and “Refugee.” How interesting that it took the odd notion of cutting the album Petty’s pre-Heartbreakers band didn’t last long enough to make to re-inspire him to do his best work since Wildflowers in 1994.
Teddy Thompson, “In My Arms” (from A Piece of What You Need, Verve): In which Richard Thompson’s talented kid locates his inner Roy Orbison. Think of the rollicking electric keyboard solo as a bonus hit.
Explorers Club, “Safe Distance” (from Freedom Wind, Dead Oceans): Lil Wayne and Kanye West weren’t the only artists to mess around with zeroed-out Auto-Tune. You wouldn’t expect to find the tonal trickery in a Beach Boys-style ballad, but Jason Brewer pulls it off, turning incongruity into intrigue. From one of the year’s most fully realized albums—who knew a bunch of obsessed kids from Charleston, South Carolina, would possess the arcane skills to pick up where Holland left off?
Robin Danar w/Jesca Hoop, “Yell” (from Altered States, Shanachie): Here’s my 2008 pick for an absolute smash in a perfect world. Producer Danar mixed and matched familiar songs with a variety of vocalists, who do their thing over beats he’s created. This one departs from the concept in that writer/singer Hoop came up with the lyric and melody on the spot, and the resulting piece is as seductive as anything I heard this year. Also worth checking out from the same album: the Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan putting his romantic stamp on Chrissie Hynde’s “Message of Love.”
Death Cab for Cutie, “I Will Possess Your Heart” (from Narrow Stairs, Atlantic): The five-minute instrumental buildup to the meat of the song is somewhere between dancing about architecture and wordless poetry; it’s the sort of thing the Beatles might’ve done.
Randy Newman, “Losing You” (from Harps and Angels, Nonesuch): A string-drenched ballad from the old master as gorgeous as it is sad, this song is right up there with “Marie” from Good Ol’ Boys—meaning as good as it gets.
Ray LaMontagne, “I Still Care for You” (from Gossip in the Grain, RCA): The bearded one carries along the existential emptiness of “Losing You” as if Newman had handed off to him during a pickup football game. The track’s dark beauty is deepened by the arrangement and drumming of producer/collaborator Ethan Johns that culminates in a synth wash as hopeless as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
Radiohead, “House of Cards” (from the live-in-studio DVD From the Basement, TBD/ATO): Practically a singer/songwriter-ish solo perf by Thom Yorke, who coaxes a ton of mood out of his acoustic. The very definition of haunting.
Pictures and Sound, “It’s You” (from Pictures and Sound, Vanguard): I first heard this in the car as I was turning onto my street on the way back from buying my wife’s birthday present, and its clear-eyed tenderness captivated me. When Luke Reynolds sings the hook, “It’s you I love, not just the thought of you,” I can’t help but sing along every time while pondering the implications of the notion at the same time. This is something rare—a truly original love song.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
AHEAD OF THE CURVE: TWEEDY ON OBAMA, 9/05
I first posted the following in February, but the occasion demands that I pull it out of the archives and put it up again. What an amazing moment this is.
This is shaping up to be one of those memorable years—and I’m not just referring to how brilliantly the Lakers have been playing since the trade for Pau Gasol. What I’m referring to is the Barack Obama phenomenon, which is unlike anything in my experience since the decade of the Kennedys, Beatles, Dylan and Muhammad Ali; it’s enough to restore hope to a nation of hardened cynics.
That got me to thinking about the first individual I came across who was aglow with the Barack effect—Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. The following is an unpublished exchange from a phone conversation that took place in September of 2005:
We’re living in an age where it’s hard not to be cynical. It’s insane not to be cynical, actually.
I kind of disagree with that. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and it certainly does feel like it’s hard not to be cynical. But I think what we’re experiencing is the worst kind of fucking cynicism that there is. You could not have a more cynical philosophy than the people that are running this country. And what’s so cynical about it is they’re asking everybody to give up completely on the notion that the future could be better. And because of that, everybody is scared to death, trying to do everything they possibly can to hang on to the way things were. I just don’t think you can motivate people to do anything other than destroy when they’re terrified of the future. If there was a lack of cynicism; if you could combat that cynicism with something like… At one point, we were all kind of working towards helping feed the poor, for example. I know I’m sounding totally naïve, but this is a mass movement that we’re witnessing, and it’s a mass movement of people that are fucking scared to death about the future being worse than it is now. Other movements in our time have been based on thinking that the future could be fucking great, and generally those movements have done a lot more good, even though they could definitely use some perspective as well.
I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to start lecturing. But if people could find something that could give them some kind of hope that you could make it better, if you really ask people to start thinking in a really concerted way about conservation and [the idea] that the children’s future could actually be really bright, I think you’d have a lot more people willing to vote for people like…you know, Obama. I got to meet him not too long ago; he introduced us at Farm Aid. It’s pretty hard not to wanna hang on desperately to someone like that as a life raft. Please save us [laughs].
He definitely has a lot of character, and it comes across as impeccable.
He was great. He was really kind of normal and fun to hang out with, and at the same time very, very sharp.
We need somebody very sharp at this point.
Like a razor.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
IT'S THAT TIME OF THE YEAR
Uncut magazine put out the call to contributors for our top 10s of 2008. Here's what my lists of best (or favorite) albums, singles and reissues look like as of early October. I fudged on certain really good albums I haven't yet spent enough time with (like Lindsey Buckingham's latest) by putting key tracks in my singles list. Below those lists are a pair of top 10 LP lists from 1972, which I just discovered in a trunk in my garage.ALBUMS
1. Pictures and Sound, Pictures and Sound (Vanguard)
2. Kings of Leon, Only by the Night (RCA)
3. Teddy Thompson, A Piece of What You Need (Decca)
4. Mudcrutch, Mudcrutch (Reprise)
5. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges (ATO)
6. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels (Nonesuch)
7. Explorers Club, Freedom Wind (Dead Oceans)
8. Beck, Modern Guilt (DGC)
9. Ray LaMontagne, Gossip in the Grain (RCA)
10. TV on the Radio, Dear Science (Interscope)
TRACKS (listed alphabetically)
Lindsey Buckingham, “The Right Place to Fade” (Reprise)
Robin Danar w/Jesca Hoop, “Yell” (Shanachie)
Death Cab for Cutie, “I Will Possess Your Heart” (Atlantic)
Elbow, “Grounds for Divorce” (Fiction/Geffen)
Fleet Foxes, “Ragged Wood” (Sub Pop)
Aimee Mann, “Freeway” (SuperEgo)
Pictures and Sound, “100 Directions” (Vanguard)
The Raconteurs, “Old Enough” (Third Man/WB)
Matthew Sweet, “Byrdgirl” (Shout! Factory)
Lucinda Williams, “Real Love” (Lost Highway)
REISSUES (listed alphabetically)
Blue Ash, No More, No Less (Collectors Choice/UMe)
Creedence Clearwater Revival, 40th Anniversary reissues (Fantasy/Concord)
The Doors, Live in Pittsburgh 1970 (DMC/Bright Midnight/Rhino)
Elton John, Tumbleweed Connection (UMe)
Little Richard, The Very Best Of… (Specialty/Concord)
Nick Lowe, Jesus of Cool (Yep Roc)
Old Records Never Die: The Mott the Hoople/Ian Hunter Anthology (Shout! Factory)
Otis Redding, Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul (ATCO/Rhino)
Ike & Tina Turner, Sing the Blues (Acrobat Music)
Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue (Columbia/Legacy)
The 1972 Top 10 I submitted to Fusion mag:
Jackson Browne, Jackson Browne
1. Pictures and Sound, Pictures and Sound (Vanguard)
2. Kings of Leon, Only by the Night (RCA)
3. Teddy Thompson, A Piece of What You Need (Decca)
4. Mudcrutch, Mudcrutch (Reprise)
5. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges (ATO)
6. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels (Nonesuch)
7. Explorers Club, Freedom Wind (Dead Oceans)
8. Beck, Modern Guilt (DGC)
9. Ray LaMontagne, Gossip in the Grain (RCA)
10. TV on the Radio, Dear Science (Interscope)
TRACKS (listed alphabetically)
Lindsey Buckingham, “The Right Place to Fade” (Reprise)
Robin Danar w/Jesca Hoop, “Yell” (Shanachie)
Death Cab for Cutie, “I Will Possess Your Heart” (Atlantic)
Elbow, “Grounds for Divorce” (Fiction/Geffen)
Fleet Foxes, “Ragged Wood” (Sub Pop)
Aimee Mann, “Freeway” (SuperEgo)
Pictures and Sound, “100 Directions” (Vanguard)
The Raconteurs, “Old Enough” (Third Man/WB)
Matthew Sweet, “Byrdgirl” (Shout! Factory)
Lucinda Williams, “Real Love” (Lost Highway)
REISSUES (listed alphabetically)
Blue Ash, No More, No Less (Collectors Choice/UMe)
Creedence Clearwater Revival, 40th Anniversary reissues (Fantasy/Concord)
The Doors, Live in Pittsburgh 1970 (DMC/Bright Midnight/Rhino)
Elton John, Tumbleweed Connection (UMe)
Little Richard, The Very Best Of… (Specialty/Concord)
Nick Lowe, Jesus of Cool (Yep Roc)
Old Records Never Die: The Mott the Hoople/Ian Hunter Anthology (Shout! Factory)
Otis Redding, Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul (ATCO/Rhino)
Ike & Tina Turner, Sing the Blues (Acrobat Music)
Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue (Columbia/Legacy)
The 1972 Top 10 I submitted to Fusion mag:
Jackson Browne, Jackson Browne
Rod Stewart, Never a Dull Moment
Mott The Hoople, All theYoung Dudes
Little Feat, Sailin’ Shoes
Jesse Winchester, Jesse Winchester
The Eagles, The Eagles
David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
Jesse Winchester, Jesse Winchester
The Eagles, The Eagles
David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
Flying Burrito Brothers, The Last of the Red Hot Burritos
Brinsley Schwarz, Silver Pistol/Nervous on the Road
The 1972 top 10 of the late, great Paul Nelson:
The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
Jackson Browne, Jackson Browne
Rod Stewart, Never a Dull Moment
Mott The Hoople, All theYoung Dudes
Randy Newman, Sail Away
Steve Young, Seven Bridges Road
John Fahey, Of Rivers and Religion
David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
The Kinks, Everybody’s in Showbiz
Wilderness Road, Wilderness Road
Brinsley Schwarz, Silver Pistol/Nervous on the Road
The 1972 top 10 of the late, great Paul Nelson:
The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
Jackson Browne, Jackson Browne
Rod Stewart, Never a Dull Moment
Mott The Hoople, All theYoung Dudes
Randy Newman, Sail Away
Steve Young, Seven Bridges Road
John Fahey, Of Rivers and Religion
David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
The Kinks, Everybody’s in Showbiz
Wilderness Road, Wilderness Road
Sunday, September 14, 2008
BECK STOPS KIDDING AROUND
Beck
Modern Guilt
DGC
Modern Guilt is Beck Hansen’s fourth album of this decade, following his exquisite 2002 breakup album Sea Change, 2005’s scintillating, hook- and groove-packed Guero—my nominee for the quintessential modern-day SoCal album—and the spotty The Information in 2006. Although the most recent LP yielded a pair of grabbers in “I Think I’m in Love” and “Cellphone’s Dead,” even hard-core fans were forced to acknowledge that it just wasn’t “sticky,” like Beck’s best work, which has always hit above the neck and below the waist with equal force.
If The Information failed to stick, the new album is even more resistant to an easy embrace—but the fact that it plays hard to get doesn’t mean it isn’t beguiling in its rhythmic, textural and time-traveling adventurousness. Modern Guilt is Beck’s first collaboration with Danger Mouse (a.k.a. Brian Burton), a restless, iconoclastic sonic architect who somehow managed to sculpt two of the stickiest smashes of the ’00s in the Gorillaz’ “Feel Good Inc.” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” While you’ll find nothing that accessible here, there’s a universe of intriguing detail—though grasping it at any given moment proves to be as tricky as catching a hummingbird with your bare hands.
One way of looking at the album is as a postmillennial, postmodern refraction of ’60s acid rock, in which the sounds have been so radically treated that there’s no longer more than a fleeting hint of discernible instrumentation. The psychedelic flavor extends to the elliptically metaphysical lyrics, buried deep in Danger Mouse’s mixes so that Beck’s vocals are part of the wash rather than central features (this is one album for which the printed lyrics are essential). This record is a sort of Zen riddle in that the harder you try to absorb it, the more it resists. Better to follow the lead of the original acid-rock crowd—get your consciousness into a more receptive space and let it seep in through the pores.
These 10 tracks are sci-fi soundscapes disguised as retro pop songs…or the other way around…or both at the same time. It’s like Bowie’s Major Tom took them into space with him 40 years ago and has just transmitted them back to earth, now barely recognizable artifacts after being warped by the space-time continuum.
From the first line of the opening “Orphans”—“I think I’m stranded but I don’t know where”—punctuated by a mutation of the Phil Spector Wall-of-Sound drum beat, it’s apparent that Beck has something weighing heavily on him, as a Byrds-y guitar and Beach Boys-style oohs shimmer in the distance, like memories of better times. “Gamma Ray” harnesses a vintage go-go beat and surf guitar to a futuristic fable in which icecaps are melting, “the heatwave’s calling your name” and the Chevrolet terraplane is the preferred form of conveyance. The eerie “Chemtrails” sets off teeming post-apocalyptic imagery against symphonic-rock pomp on the order of the Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed, exploding at midpoint into hallucinatory grandeur a la Revolver’s “Tomorrow Never Knows,” complete with a burbling, McCartney-esque bass pattern from Jason Falkner and Ringo-style drum fills from Joey Waronker, as Beck envisions climbing “in a hole in the sky.” “Modern Guilt,” in which he confesses hopelessly, “I don’t know what I’ve done but I feel ashamed,” appropriates and soups up the shuffle beat of the Turtles’ “Happy Together” and the descending bass pattern of the Doors’ “People Are Strange,” before giving way to the punchy “Youthless,” with Larry Corbett’s cello doubling Matt Mahaffey’s bass line while Danger Mouse’s synth bleeps like C3-PO.
This is an elusive, rigorously avant-garde piece of work that seems to exist in constant flux, like an aural kaleidoscope, its rhythmic, melodic and harmonic elements seeming to move independently of each other—so much so that when a conventional rock backbeat and overdriven guitar riff finally appear on the next-to-last track “Profanity Prayers,” it’s a relief—even more so when a strummed acoustic and a George Harrison-style slide guitar make a brief appearance near the song’s end.
The closing “Volcano” returns to the panoramic balladry of Sea Change, offering what passes for a coherent summing up of the album’s accumulated unease, as Beck, whose vocal for the first time is placed front and center, muses: “I don’t know if it’s my illusions that keep me alive… I’m tired of evil and all that it feeds, but I don’t know / I’ve been drifting on this wave so long / I don’t know if it’s already crashed on the shore…” In all, he utters the words “I don’t know” seven times, along with an “I can’t tell,” before turning his questioning mind to “the Japanese girl who jumped into the volcano / Was she trying to make it back to the womb of the world?” For him, the volcano beckons only because he wants “to warm my bones on that fire a while,” as the album cycles from capturing the zeitgeist with unsettling vividness to pondering the universal imponderables.
A master of Dylanesque free association, Beck has never been more purposeful or theme-serving in his expression, as if the verbal playfulness of his past writing is no longer enough. On Modern Guilt, he’s getting at the grinding sense of uncertainty that we all carry with us in these freaky times—frequently through the prism of freaky times past—as what we believed to be the most permanent of edifices crumble around us, one after another, along with the protections and reassurances they offered. Modern Guilt is the sound of life being lived as things fall apart.
Modern Guilt
DGC
Modern Guilt is Beck Hansen’s fourth album of this decade, following his exquisite 2002 breakup album Sea Change, 2005’s scintillating, hook- and groove-packed Guero—my nominee for the quintessential modern-day SoCal album—and the spotty The Information in 2006. Although the most recent LP yielded a pair of grabbers in “I Think I’m in Love” and “Cellphone’s Dead,” even hard-core fans were forced to acknowledge that it just wasn’t “sticky,” like Beck’s best work, which has always hit above the neck and below the waist with equal force.
If The Information failed to stick, the new album is even more resistant to an easy embrace—but the fact that it plays hard to get doesn’t mean it isn’t beguiling in its rhythmic, textural and time-traveling adventurousness. Modern Guilt is Beck’s first collaboration with Danger Mouse (a.k.a. Brian Burton), a restless, iconoclastic sonic architect who somehow managed to sculpt two of the stickiest smashes of the ’00s in the Gorillaz’ “Feel Good Inc.” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” While you’ll find nothing that accessible here, there’s a universe of intriguing detail—though grasping it at any given moment proves to be as tricky as catching a hummingbird with your bare hands.
One way of looking at the album is as a postmillennial, postmodern refraction of ’60s acid rock, in which the sounds have been so radically treated that there’s no longer more than a fleeting hint of discernible instrumentation. The psychedelic flavor extends to the elliptically metaphysical lyrics, buried deep in Danger Mouse’s mixes so that Beck’s vocals are part of the wash rather than central features (this is one album for which the printed lyrics are essential). This record is a sort of Zen riddle in that the harder you try to absorb it, the more it resists. Better to follow the lead of the original acid-rock crowd—get your consciousness into a more receptive space and let it seep in through the pores.
These 10 tracks are sci-fi soundscapes disguised as retro pop songs…or the other way around…or both at the same time. It’s like Bowie’s Major Tom took them into space with him 40 years ago and has just transmitted them back to earth, now barely recognizable artifacts after being warped by the space-time continuum.
From the first line of the opening “Orphans”—“I think I’m stranded but I don’t know where”—punctuated by a mutation of the Phil Spector Wall-of-Sound drum beat, it’s apparent that Beck has something weighing heavily on him, as a Byrds-y guitar and Beach Boys-style oohs shimmer in the distance, like memories of better times. “Gamma Ray” harnesses a vintage go-go beat and surf guitar to a futuristic fable in which icecaps are melting, “the heatwave’s calling your name” and the Chevrolet terraplane is the preferred form of conveyance. The eerie “Chemtrails” sets off teeming post-apocalyptic imagery against symphonic-rock pomp on the order of the Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed, exploding at midpoint into hallucinatory grandeur a la Revolver’s “Tomorrow Never Knows,” complete with a burbling, McCartney-esque bass pattern from Jason Falkner and Ringo-style drum fills from Joey Waronker, as Beck envisions climbing “in a hole in the sky.” “Modern Guilt,” in which he confesses hopelessly, “I don’t know what I’ve done but I feel ashamed,” appropriates and soups up the shuffle beat of the Turtles’ “Happy Together” and the descending bass pattern of the Doors’ “People Are Strange,” before giving way to the punchy “Youthless,” with Larry Corbett’s cello doubling Matt Mahaffey’s bass line while Danger Mouse’s synth bleeps like C3-PO.
This is an elusive, rigorously avant-garde piece of work that seems to exist in constant flux, like an aural kaleidoscope, its rhythmic, melodic and harmonic elements seeming to move independently of each other—so much so that when a conventional rock backbeat and overdriven guitar riff finally appear on the next-to-last track “Profanity Prayers,” it’s a relief—even more so when a strummed acoustic and a George Harrison-style slide guitar make a brief appearance near the song’s end.
The closing “Volcano” returns to the panoramic balladry of Sea Change, offering what passes for a coherent summing up of the album’s accumulated unease, as Beck, whose vocal for the first time is placed front and center, muses: “I don’t know if it’s my illusions that keep me alive… I’m tired of evil and all that it feeds, but I don’t know / I’ve been drifting on this wave so long / I don’t know if it’s already crashed on the shore…” In all, he utters the words “I don’t know” seven times, along with an “I can’t tell,” before turning his questioning mind to “the Japanese girl who jumped into the volcano / Was she trying to make it back to the womb of the world?” For him, the volcano beckons only because he wants “to warm my bones on that fire a while,” as the album cycles from capturing the zeitgeist with unsettling vividness to pondering the universal imponderables.
A master of Dylanesque free association, Beck has never been more purposeful or theme-serving in his expression, as if the verbal playfulness of his past writing is no longer enough. On Modern Guilt, he’s getting at the grinding sense of uncertainty that we all carry with us in these freaky times—frequently through the prism of freaky times past—as what we believed to be the most permanent of edifices crumble around us, one after another, along with the protections and reassurances they offered. Modern Guilt is the sound of life being lived as things fall apart.
(This review originally appeared on http://www.sonicboomers.com/.)
Friday, September 12, 2008
SHE WENT THATAWAY
Two weeks ago, our fave spinning instructor Essie Shure (see posts from 9/28/07 and 5/26/08 below) made the move to Blacksburg, Va. While we wish her the best, it's a major drag for us regular spinners at the Sports Center in Toluca Lake, because no other trainer played better music or maintained a more infectious sense of groove. Because I'd been putting together spin compilations for her to use since 2003, it seemed fitting to make one for her crosscountry drive. Here's what I came up with...
AUTUMN SWEATER
For Essie, August 31, 2008
1. "Free Fallin'," John Mayer (4:24)
2. "Big Screen," Pictures And Sound (4:10)
3. "Strange Overtones," David Byrne & Brian Eno (4:18)
4. "Chicago," Sufjan Stevens (6:05)
5. "House of Cards," Radiohead (5:28)
6. "All I Got Is Me," Spoon (3:26)
7. "Message to My Girl," Split Enz (4:02)
8. "Real Love," Lucinda Williams (3:45)
9. "You Are the Best Thing," Ray Lamontagne (3:55)
10. "Two Ways Out," Darker My Love (3:23)
11. "The Youth," Pictures And Sound (4:12)
12. "Via Chicago," Wilco (5:34)
13. "Float On," Ben Lee (4:08)
14. "Safe Distance," The Explorers Club (2:07)
15. "Everything in Its Right Place," Radiohead (4:11)
16. "We Can Work It Out," The Beatles (2:16)
17. "A Falling Through," Ray LaMontagne (4:28)
18. "Autumn Sweater," Yo La Tengo (5:18)
19. "Surf's Up," The Beach Boys (4:12)
Just got this Facebook Wall to Wall note, which is precisely the sort of response that has made the day of mixtape compilers since the invention of the audiocassette basck in the previous century:
BUUUUD!!
Firstly, I really can't thank you enough for the travel cd you made for me. I'm kinda embarrassed to admit this, but I got teary-eyed on a couple of them ("Free Fallin'" got me good)... & that little inconspicuous "we'll keep a seat warm for you, Ess" note on the cover was quite nice. Pictures And Sound, awesome!...
thank you, thank you :D
I really do miss you guys. I'm gonna miss showing up to teach, greeted w/a fresh new set of tunes placed on my handlebars... (sigh) <: \ Please tell Peg "hello" from me."
Recommended reading: Rob Sheffield, Love Is a Mix Tape (Three Rivers Press, 2007)
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
KINGS OF LEON/PICTURES AND SOUND
Hey kids, you've gotta grab this: http://www.kingsofleon.com/spin_crawlfreedownload/...and watch this two-part, artist-made EPK on imeem
(http://www.imeem.com/picturesandsound/video/) or YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/PicsAndSound).Interestingly, both Pictures And Sound (8/19, Vanguard) and the Followill boys' new Only by the Night (9/23, RCA) were co-produced, engineered and mixed by Jacquire King. These two records are gonna look real good on his discography.
Friday, July 11, 2008
REVIEWS OF GOOD 2008 ALBUMS
All but one of these reviews ran in Uncut, some of them in slightly different (read: more compressed) form. The one exception is The Bridges, from Paste.
THE EXPLORERS CLUB
Freedom Wind
Dead Oceans
Surf’s up again on a fully tubular Wilsonian tour de force
Hailing from the wrong coast, the Charleston, S.C.-based Explorers Club have done the near-impossible, turning an obsession with everything Beach Boys into an uncannily nuanced and utterly beguiling smart-pop album. The band’s sweet spot is the Sunflower-Holland era, meaning there’s as much Carl and Dennis as Brian. The LP opens with a reverb-drenched wall-of-sound beat, introducing the instant classic “Forever”, with its creamy four-part harmonies swaying like palm trees. The following “Honey, I Don’t Know Why” filters Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue through Big Star’s #1 Record, while “Lost My Head” sails right into Holland’s harbor. It’s a toss-up whether Jason Brewer’s classically crafted songs or the spot-on arrangements are more irresistible, as the group recasts these magical sounds for the 21st century.
ROBIN DANAR
Altered States
Shanachie
Tasty arrangements, inspired pairings make for an inviting covers record
Taking a cue from Mark Ronson, producer Robin Danar has matched a bunch of indie-pedigreed vocalists with a dozen classic songs of his choosing, frequently finding something fresh in the familiar. The long-time CBGB soundman has more recently been involved with influential L.A. public radio station KCRW, the only local outlet for singers like Rachael Yamagata, who does a shimmering take on the Stones’ “10,000 Light Years From Home”; Inara George, who channels Patsy Cline on the Johnny Mathis standard “Chances Are”; and Jim Bianco (who chillingly updates Talking Heads’ “Life During Wartime”). The buoyant centerpiece pairs the Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan with the Pretenders’ “Message of Love”, and it’s a kick to hear him croon lines like “Oh, it’s good, good, good, like Brigitte Bardot.” But the most infectious track is the lone original, “Yell,” as newcomer Jesca Hoop unfurls layers of sensual vocals over Danar’s loping laptop groove.
DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
Narrow Stairs
Atlantic
Indie stalwarts set the controls for the heart of the sun
Like the Shins with 2007’s sonically elaborate Wincing The Night Away, their Pacific Northwest neighbors in Death Cab are raising the stakes and leaving the limiting indie aesthetic – and quite possibly their indier-than-thou core fans – behind. The Seattle band’s sixth LP, and second recorded for a major label, extends the soundscape to IMAX proportions and tamps down Death Cab’s vaunted pop formalism, introducing open-structured pieces and unorthodox tonalities. “Bixby Canyon Bridge” unfolds with outright grandeur, sectioned out like a pocket symphony, and “I Will Possess Your Heart” rides a swelling, keyboard-driven groove for nearly five bracing minutes before the entrance of Ben Gibbard’s troubled angel’s voice, while the raga feel of “Pity and Fear” resolves with brutal power chords. This is the sound of a band surprising itself.
THE BRIDGES
Limits of the Sky
Verve
Southeast meets SoCal on family band’s delightful debut
Like Kings of Leon, Alabama’s Bridges are a family band — four siblings and a cousin — whose upbringing was dominated by music and religion. But four of these kids, aged 18 to 24, are female, with cousin Brittany Painter providing the lyrics, which are filled with natural imagery, and impactful lead vocals, Natalie Byrd sharing the foreground with her piano and the three Byrd sisters providing the ever-present three-part harmonies. Surprisingly, given their rural southern origins, the Bridges have cooked up a sound that’s rooted in the balmy West Coast folk rock of the Mamas & the Papas, Fleetwood Mac and the Bangles (nonetheless, they obviously couldn’t call themselves the Byrds). Their blend of emotional innocence and musical sophistication is underscored by the production of bona fide West Coast folk rocker Matthew Sweet and the evocative pedal steel and guitar lines of the brilliant L.A.-based sideman Greg Leisz. The chiming instrumental work spotlights the Byrd girls’ billowing harmonies as they alternately surround and counterpoint Painter’s accomplished leads. Lilting opener “All the Words” hits the choruses like a wave breaking against the rocks of Big Sur, “Pieces” climbs to an emphatic chorus payoff, only to rise to an even bigger crescendo and “Echo” features stunningly sophisticated multipart vocal interplay buoyed by Leisz’s pillowy pedal steel while “Under the Sun” goes for—and attains—a symphonic grandeur. Throughout, the group’s melodiousness is matched by something just as disarming—the complete absence of irony or cynicism.
RON SEXSMITH
Exit Strategy of the Soul
Yep Roc
Without warning, the veteran artist breaks out what he calls “shadow gospel”
Tracked in London by Swedish producer Martin Terefe, with horns and percussion overbubbed in Havana, Canadian Sexsmith’s ninth album sounds like it was made in Memphis. While not as immediate a grabber as the Beatlesque, Terefe-produced Retriever from 2004, the new LP gradually casts a powerful spell, as the previously introspective songsmith reaches for the metaphysical, his piano playing bringing a gospel-like fervor to the humanistic material while providing a gritty contrast to his silky, sliding vocals. “This Is How I Know” is as close as Sexsmith is likely to get to “Let It Be,” and on the gliding groove of “Brighter Still,” his subtle soulfulness evokes no less than Bill Withers.
GREG LASWELL
Three Flights From Alto Nido
Vanguard
Modern-day studio hermit fashions a digital Something/Anything?
As a multi-instrumentalist with a command of the digital studio, SoCal singer-songwriter Laswell has a limitless palate to work with. He puts it to full use on the follow-up to his 2006 breakup album Through Toledo, whose withering anguish was offset by elegant soundscapes. The new LP is even more expansive – and upbeat – with settings that sometimes seem to emanate from a full orchestra rather than one guy tinkering in a garage. “I’d Be Lying” sports a celestial choir of multitracked contrapuntal vocals a la Elbow, and “Days Go On” fires up a high-revving digi-groove worthy of Hot Chip, putting Laswell in the thick of today’s high-tech version of knob twiddling.
FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS
Flight of the Conchords
Sub Pop
Kiwi duo’s debut LP sports filled-out versions of songs from their HBO series
It’s safe to say that this is the most endlessly playable comedy album of the millennium. Multi-instrumentalist Bret McKenzie possesses a musical gift commensurate with his comedic talent, while he and Jemaine Clement may be the best blue-eyed soul singers since Hall & Oates – no kidding. The third team member is producer/programmer Mickey Petralia (Beck, Ladytron), whose command of ’80s synth-pop kitsch enables the Conchords to satirize in minute detail everything from the Pet Shop Boys (the sublime “Inner City Pressure”) and What’s Goin’ On (“Think About It”) to Bowie (“Bowie”). The LP serves as a reminder that “funny” and “funky” are only one character apart.
JAKOB DYLAN
Seeing Things
Columbia
At 38, the younger Dylan dares to enter the acoustic folk realm once ruled by his father
Stepping out from the protection of the Wallflowers, Dylan has turned to producer Rick Rubin, and together they’ve made an austere acoustic album that could’ve been titled American Recordings VI. The source material for these newly penned songs appears to be Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, which once inspired Dad. The themes are traditional – the working man’s lot (“All Day And All Night”), conjugal devotion (“Up on the Mountain”), the sense of belonging to a place (“Will It Grow”) and, inevitably, life during wartime (“Evil Is Alive And Well,” “I Told You I Couldn’t Stop,” “War Is Kind”). The tone turns revealingly personal on the closing “Other End of the Telescope,” an overtly autobiographical contemplation in which the younger Dylan for the first time addresses his unique place in the universe. It ends with these provocative lines: “I see clear at last, I love, I loathe/On this end of the telescope.”
OLD 97’S
Blame It on Gravity
New West
A literate, unpretentious and rockin’ outing from first-gen alt-country survivors
Over 14 years and now seven studio albums, the Dallas-based Old 97’s have made a strong case for themselves as the latter-day American equivalent of Rockpile. Their latest is a stylistic grab bag of revved-up folk rock (“The Fool” sounds like the Byrds with Keith Moon on drums), Crazy Horse-style excursions (the galloping “Ride”), and country (the Dylan-meets-Cash hot-rod two-step “No Baby I,” the powerful and beautiful “Color of a Lonely Heart Is Blue”). The tracks explode with immediacy, as Rhett Miller’s detail-rich narratives mesh with the knowingness of his singing and the players’ tight grip on the material to reveal a first-rate band in peak form.
STEVE WINWOOD
Nine Lives
Columbia
Have Faith! Stevie reaches back for the real nitty-gritty
At 60, Steve Winwood remains one of Ray Charles’ most skillful disciples, his innate soulfulness bleeding into every note he sings and plays – as long as he’s feeling it, that is. Happily, the spirit is within Winwood for much of the 10th album bearing his name. Nine Lives revisits the jam-based work of Traffic rather than his refined ’80s synth-o-ramas, and that’s good news, because Winwood remains at his most compelling in immediate settings, while his primal presence tends to be tamped down within rigid structures.
After the palate-cleansing opener, “I’m Not Drowning,” a sprightly country blues solo piece consisting of little more than a circular guitar figure and that unmistakable, tree-bark-textured voice set against clicking drumsticks, the album proceeds to introduce its elemental extremes of air (the chilled-out excursion “Fly”) and earth (“Raging Sea,” with its British-blues-rooted chunkiness).
The Moment We’ve Been Waiting For Arrives with the spine-tingling snarl of an overdriven guitar, signaling the presence of the Lord – a.k.a. Eric Clapton. Right from the top, the master’s riffage cascades like molten lava, and Winwood rises up to meet his old mate’s fire with the churning of a massive, force-of-nature organ and a ferocious vocal, as the track reaches for, and achieves, Blind Faith godhead in its roiling payoff. It’s safe to say that neither of these guys has sounded so fully in the moment for at least a couple of decades.
The second half is lifted by the elegantly funky “We’re All Looking” (think AWB) and the vibe-y, Traffic-meets-Santana groover “Secrets,” as Winwood leans on the keys of his trusty Hammond B3 and pumps the keyboard bass while Paul Booth trills the Chris Wood-like flute embellishments. By contrast, the world-beat-flavored “Hungry Man” and “At Times We Do Forget” feel earnest but overly considered. The closing “Other Shore” is a more satisfying expression of spiritual yearning that resembles the less cranky side of latter-day Van Morrison, right down to Booth’s contemplative sax solo.
As reassuring as Nine Lives will be to longtime Winwood fans, it’s bound to leave them wanting more – like a full album of Winwood-Clapton interplay.
THE DOORS
Live in Pittsburgh 1970
Bright Midnight/Rhino
Turn on, tune in, play loud
The Doors camp has long held that the band’s May 2, 1970, show at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena was the tightest performance of its extensively recorded final tour, as the wildly erratic Jim Morrison showed up that night neither remote nor out of it but clear and focused. Following the replacement of a pair of long-missing sections by original engineer Bruce Botnick, this storied set can finally be heard, and absorbing it purely as an aural experience is, as they used to say, a trip.
This is music intended inspire a trance-like state – though it helps if the audience is already zoned-out to begin with (a given in this case) – and right from the opening “Back Door Man,” the three players cast their spell. The extended vamps unfurl in strikingly stark and eerie patterns, bringing to mind the otherworldly churn of Portishead, albeit with a human pulse; sometimes minutes go by with little more happening than a relentlessly regular drum-and-keyboard-bass groove from John Densmore and Ray Manzarek. These narcotic grooves propel surreal excursions like “Roadhouse Blues,” “Mystery Train” and “When the Music’s Over,” full of subtle variations in mood, rhythmic emphasis and dynamic intensity, as the band moves seamlessly between arranged and improvised sections.
In a committed performance as shaman/ringmaster, Morrison shape-shifts between a theatricality that’s practically Shakespearean in its declamation and his version of method acting. He speaks in tongues in the breakdown of “Roadhouse Blues,” while spontaneously working in bits of other songs during the stretched-out segments, keeping the bandmembers on their toes – but then, going with the flow is their strength. Morrison’s acuity allows guitarist Robbie Krieger to shine in his role as the echo in a call-and-response dialogue with the singer, using his trusty Gibson SG to capture the cadences and tonalities of the sounds Morrison emits, with Manzarek’s organ underscoring the interaction in the intoxicating payoffs. Throughout the set, the band masterfully conjures up the dusky atmospheres that enable the frontman to beguile and intimidate.
It’s safe to say that Live in Pittsburgh is the first Doors live album that captures the band at its spellbinding peak. From this point forward, no longer will Boomer need to explain, “You had to be there.”
THE EXPLORERS CLUB
Freedom Wind
Dead Oceans
Surf’s up again on a fully tubular Wilsonian tour de force
Hailing from the wrong coast, the Charleston, S.C.-based Explorers Club have done the near-impossible, turning an obsession with everything Beach Boys into an uncannily nuanced and utterly beguiling smart-pop album. The band’s sweet spot is the Sunflower-Holland era, meaning there’s as much Carl and Dennis as Brian. The LP opens with a reverb-drenched wall-of-sound beat, introducing the instant classic “Forever”, with its creamy four-part harmonies swaying like palm trees. The following “Honey, I Don’t Know Why” filters Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue through Big Star’s #1 Record, while “Lost My Head” sails right into Holland’s harbor. It’s a toss-up whether Jason Brewer’s classically crafted songs or the spot-on arrangements are more irresistible, as the group recasts these magical sounds for the 21st century.
ROBIN DANAR
Altered States
Shanachie
Tasty arrangements, inspired pairings make for an inviting covers record
Taking a cue from Mark Ronson, producer Robin Danar has matched a bunch of indie-pedigreed vocalists with a dozen classic songs of his choosing, frequently finding something fresh in the familiar. The long-time CBGB soundman has more recently been involved with influential L.A. public radio station KCRW, the only local outlet for singers like Rachael Yamagata, who does a shimmering take on the Stones’ “10,000 Light Years From Home”; Inara George, who channels Patsy Cline on the Johnny Mathis standard “Chances Are”; and Jim Bianco (who chillingly updates Talking Heads’ “Life During Wartime”). The buoyant centerpiece pairs the Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan with the Pretenders’ “Message of Love”, and it’s a kick to hear him croon lines like “Oh, it’s good, good, good, like Brigitte Bardot.” But the most infectious track is the lone original, “Yell,” as newcomer Jesca Hoop unfurls layers of sensual vocals over Danar’s loping laptop groove.
DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
Narrow Stairs
Atlantic
Indie stalwarts set the controls for the heart of the sun
Like the Shins with 2007’s sonically elaborate Wincing The Night Away, their Pacific Northwest neighbors in Death Cab are raising the stakes and leaving the limiting indie aesthetic – and quite possibly their indier-than-thou core fans – behind. The Seattle band’s sixth LP, and second recorded for a major label, extends the soundscape to IMAX proportions and tamps down Death Cab’s vaunted pop formalism, introducing open-structured pieces and unorthodox tonalities. “Bixby Canyon Bridge” unfolds with outright grandeur, sectioned out like a pocket symphony, and “I Will Possess Your Heart” rides a swelling, keyboard-driven groove for nearly five bracing minutes before the entrance of Ben Gibbard’s troubled angel’s voice, while the raga feel of “Pity and Fear” resolves with brutal power chords. This is the sound of a band surprising itself.
THE BRIDGES
Limits of the Sky
Verve
Southeast meets SoCal on family band’s delightful debut
Like Kings of Leon, Alabama’s Bridges are a family band — four siblings and a cousin — whose upbringing was dominated by music and religion. But four of these kids, aged 18 to 24, are female, with cousin Brittany Painter providing the lyrics, which are filled with natural imagery, and impactful lead vocals, Natalie Byrd sharing the foreground with her piano and the three Byrd sisters providing the ever-present three-part harmonies. Surprisingly, given their rural southern origins, the Bridges have cooked up a sound that’s rooted in the balmy West Coast folk rock of the Mamas & the Papas, Fleetwood Mac and the Bangles (nonetheless, they obviously couldn’t call themselves the Byrds). Their blend of emotional innocence and musical sophistication is underscored by the production of bona fide West Coast folk rocker Matthew Sweet and the evocative pedal steel and guitar lines of the brilliant L.A.-based sideman Greg Leisz. The chiming instrumental work spotlights the Byrd girls’ billowing harmonies as they alternately surround and counterpoint Painter’s accomplished leads. Lilting opener “All the Words” hits the choruses like a wave breaking against the rocks of Big Sur, “Pieces” climbs to an emphatic chorus payoff, only to rise to an even bigger crescendo and “Echo” features stunningly sophisticated multipart vocal interplay buoyed by Leisz’s pillowy pedal steel while “Under the Sun” goes for—and attains—a symphonic grandeur. Throughout, the group’s melodiousness is matched by something just as disarming—the complete absence of irony or cynicism.
RON SEXSMITH
Exit Strategy of the Soul
Yep Roc
Without warning, the veteran artist breaks out what he calls “shadow gospel”
Tracked in London by Swedish producer Martin Terefe, with horns and percussion overbubbed in Havana, Canadian Sexsmith’s ninth album sounds like it was made in Memphis. While not as immediate a grabber as the Beatlesque, Terefe-produced Retriever from 2004, the new LP gradually casts a powerful spell, as the previously introspective songsmith reaches for the metaphysical, his piano playing bringing a gospel-like fervor to the humanistic material while providing a gritty contrast to his silky, sliding vocals. “This Is How I Know” is as close as Sexsmith is likely to get to “Let It Be,” and on the gliding groove of “Brighter Still,” his subtle soulfulness evokes no less than Bill Withers.
GREG LASWELL
Three Flights From Alto Nido
Vanguard
Modern-day studio hermit fashions a digital Something/Anything?
As a multi-instrumentalist with a command of the digital studio, SoCal singer-songwriter Laswell has a limitless palate to work with. He puts it to full use on the follow-up to his 2006 breakup album Through Toledo, whose withering anguish was offset by elegant soundscapes. The new LP is even more expansive – and upbeat – with settings that sometimes seem to emanate from a full orchestra rather than one guy tinkering in a garage. “I’d Be Lying” sports a celestial choir of multitracked contrapuntal vocals a la Elbow, and “Days Go On” fires up a high-revving digi-groove worthy of Hot Chip, putting Laswell in the thick of today’s high-tech version of knob twiddling.
FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS
Flight of the Conchords
Sub Pop
Kiwi duo’s debut LP sports filled-out versions of songs from their HBO series
It’s safe to say that this is the most endlessly playable comedy album of the millennium. Multi-instrumentalist Bret McKenzie possesses a musical gift commensurate with his comedic talent, while he and Jemaine Clement may be the best blue-eyed soul singers since Hall & Oates – no kidding. The third team member is producer/programmer Mickey Petralia (Beck, Ladytron), whose command of ’80s synth-pop kitsch enables the Conchords to satirize in minute detail everything from the Pet Shop Boys (the sublime “Inner City Pressure”) and What’s Goin’ On (“Think About It”) to Bowie (“Bowie”). The LP serves as a reminder that “funny” and “funky” are only one character apart.
JAKOB DYLAN
Seeing Things
Columbia
At 38, the younger Dylan dares to enter the acoustic folk realm once ruled by his father
Stepping out from the protection of the Wallflowers, Dylan has turned to producer Rick Rubin, and together they’ve made an austere acoustic album that could’ve been titled American Recordings VI. The source material for these newly penned songs appears to be Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, which once inspired Dad. The themes are traditional – the working man’s lot (“All Day And All Night”), conjugal devotion (“Up on the Mountain”), the sense of belonging to a place (“Will It Grow”) and, inevitably, life during wartime (“Evil Is Alive And Well,” “I Told You I Couldn’t Stop,” “War Is Kind”). The tone turns revealingly personal on the closing “Other End of the Telescope,” an overtly autobiographical contemplation in which the younger Dylan for the first time addresses his unique place in the universe. It ends with these provocative lines: “I see clear at last, I love, I loathe/On this end of the telescope.”
OLD 97’S
Blame It on Gravity
New West
A literate, unpretentious and rockin’ outing from first-gen alt-country survivors
Over 14 years and now seven studio albums, the Dallas-based Old 97’s have made a strong case for themselves as the latter-day American equivalent of Rockpile. Their latest is a stylistic grab bag of revved-up folk rock (“The Fool” sounds like the Byrds with Keith Moon on drums), Crazy Horse-style excursions (the galloping “Ride”), and country (the Dylan-meets-Cash hot-rod two-step “No Baby I,” the powerful and beautiful “Color of a Lonely Heart Is Blue”). The tracks explode with immediacy, as Rhett Miller’s detail-rich narratives mesh with the knowingness of his singing and the players’ tight grip on the material to reveal a first-rate band in peak form.
STEVE WINWOOD
Nine Lives
Columbia
Have Faith! Stevie reaches back for the real nitty-gritty
At 60, Steve Winwood remains one of Ray Charles’ most skillful disciples, his innate soulfulness bleeding into every note he sings and plays – as long as he’s feeling it, that is. Happily, the spirit is within Winwood for much of the 10th album bearing his name. Nine Lives revisits the jam-based work of Traffic rather than his refined ’80s synth-o-ramas, and that’s good news, because Winwood remains at his most compelling in immediate settings, while his primal presence tends to be tamped down within rigid structures.
After the palate-cleansing opener, “I’m Not Drowning,” a sprightly country blues solo piece consisting of little more than a circular guitar figure and that unmistakable, tree-bark-textured voice set against clicking drumsticks, the album proceeds to introduce its elemental extremes of air (the chilled-out excursion “Fly”) and earth (“Raging Sea,” with its British-blues-rooted chunkiness).
The Moment We’ve Been Waiting For Arrives with the spine-tingling snarl of an overdriven guitar, signaling the presence of the Lord – a.k.a. Eric Clapton. Right from the top, the master’s riffage cascades like molten lava, and Winwood rises up to meet his old mate’s fire with the churning of a massive, force-of-nature organ and a ferocious vocal, as the track reaches for, and achieves, Blind Faith godhead in its roiling payoff. It’s safe to say that neither of these guys has sounded so fully in the moment for at least a couple of decades.
The second half is lifted by the elegantly funky “We’re All Looking” (think AWB) and the vibe-y, Traffic-meets-Santana groover “Secrets,” as Winwood leans on the keys of his trusty Hammond B3 and pumps the keyboard bass while Paul Booth trills the Chris Wood-like flute embellishments. By contrast, the world-beat-flavored “Hungry Man” and “At Times We Do Forget” feel earnest but overly considered. The closing “Other Shore” is a more satisfying expression of spiritual yearning that resembles the less cranky side of latter-day Van Morrison, right down to Booth’s contemplative sax solo.
As reassuring as Nine Lives will be to longtime Winwood fans, it’s bound to leave them wanting more – like a full album of Winwood-Clapton interplay.
THE DOORS
Live in Pittsburgh 1970
Bright Midnight/Rhino
Turn on, tune in, play loud
The Doors camp has long held that the band’s May 2, 1970, show at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena was the tightest performance of its extensively recorded final tour, as the wildly erratic Jim Morrison showed up that night neither remote nor out of it but clear and focused. Following the replacement of a pair of long-missing sections by original engineer Bruce Botnick, this storied set can finally be heard, and absorbing it purely as an aural experience is, as they used to say, a trip.
This is music intended inspire a trance-like state – though it helps if the audience is already zoned-out to begin with (a given in this case) – and right from the opening “Back Door Man,” the three players cast their spell. The extended vamps unfurl in strikingly stark and eerie patterns, bringing to mind the otherworldly churn of Portishead, albeit with a human pulse; sometimes minutes go by with little more happening than a relentlessly regular drum-and-keyboard-bass groove from John Densmore and Ray Manzarek. These narcotic grooves propel surreal excursions like “Roadhouse Blues,” “Mystery Train” and “When the Music’s Over,” full of subtle variations in mood, rhythmic emphasis and dynamic intensity, as the band moves seamlessly between arranged and improvised sections.
In a committed performance as shaman/ringmaster, Morrison shape-shifts between a theatricality that’s practically Shakespearean in its declamation and his version of method acting. He speaks in tongues in the breakdown of “Roadhouse Blues,” while spontaneously working in bits of other songs during the stretched-out segments, keeping the bandmembers on their toes – but then, going with the flow is their strength. Morrison’s acuity allows guitarist Robbie Krieger to shine in his role as the echo in a call-and-response dialogue with the singer, using his trusty Gibson SG to capture the cadences and tonalities of the sounds Morrison emits, with Manzarek’s organ underscoring the interaction in the intoxicating payoffs. Throughout the set, the band masterfully conjures up the dusky atmospheres that enable the frontman to beguile and intimidate.
It’s safe to say that Live in Pittsburgh is the first Doors live album that captures the band at its spellbinding peak. From this point forward, no longer will Boomer need to explain, “You had to be there.”
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
PICTURES AND SOUND: MY FIND OF THE HALF-YEAR
I typically bang out two or three bios a month, and most of my subjects turn out to have interesting stories, which I treat little differently than magazine profiles. But rarely do I fall totally in love with a record that comes to me through a bio assignment. That's what happened last month with Pictures And Sound (bandleader Luke Reynolds insists on calitalizing the "A" in "And"), so much so that I wrote the most personal bio ever, and did do under my own name, which is something I almost never do. Here it is.
As a music journalist, you live for that moment when you put on a record by some group you never heard of and it blows you away before Track One hits the first chorus. That’s what happened to me the other day with the self-titled first album from Pictures And Sound. The first cut, “Everything Leaves A Mark,” hooked me from the opening riff, and the aerodynamic groove of the next one, “The Last Ocean,” lifted me right out of my chair. Before I knew it, I’d zipped through the whole damn album, and I never do that anymore—not with 15,000 tracks a click away in my iTunes library.
Not only have I been playing Pictures And Sound compulsively ever since, I’ve been waking up every morning with one or another of these songs in my head. The closest parallel I can come up with is the feeling of excitement that coursed through me the first time I heard Spoon’s Kill the Moonlight, Arcade Fire’s Funeral and Kings of Leon’s Because of the Times, in each case realizing, as soon as I’d gotten over my initial shock, that I’d happened upon an record destined for my year-end top 10.
The spaces are as important as the sounds on Pictures And Sound, which is almost binary in its focus—you won’t hear a syllable, note or drum hit that isn’t purposeful, that doesn’t bring something to the whole. That applies to both subject matter and groove because, like the best rock, these tracks engage the mind and body all at once. The vocals convey rhythm and as well as melody and lyrics, and certain lines seem emblazoned in neon. Lines like: “I’ve thought of you from a hundred different directions/And none of them are right” (“100 Directions”), “It feels like everything’s about to change” (“Big Screen”) and “It’s you I love, not just the thought of you” (“It’s You”). Then there’s “Every War,” as powerful a topical song as this tumultuous decade has produced; the fact that the great Willie Nelson duets and plays a signature guitar solo on it doesn’t hurt, either. This record is smart, visceral and immediate, and every moment of it rings true.
Eager for info, I did the drill, Googling the band name, which took me to Pictures And Sound’s MySpace page. There I discovered that the band is the brainchild of writer/singer/multi-instrumentalist Luke Reynolds, the former leader of Blue Merle, who put out one intriguing album on Island in 2005. I was further intrigued when I read his list of influences: “A collective love of art, painting, dub, the woods, deep winter, vintage hoodies, old keyboards, pedal steel, snowboarding, coffee, Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rainer Maria Rilke, Neruda, Barry Lopez, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Abbey, Blind Willie Johnson, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Steve Reich, James Gadson.” Now, how particular is that?
I also discovered the band is a trio, with bassist Dave Wilder (Liz Phair, Ghostface Killah, Macy Gray) and drummer Pete McNeal (Jem, Cake, Rickie Lee Jones), both based in L.A. Jacquire King (Modest Mouse, Tom Waits, Kings of Leon) produced, engineered and mixed the album at various studios in Nashville, where he (as well as Reynolds, sporadically throughout the year) reside.
Then I got Luke on the phone from Vermont, where he was visiting his mom and dad. Up front, he described himself as “a real high-energy person,” and the lively ensuing conversation bore that out and then some. Turns out the 29-year-old artist is a fifth-generation Vermonter, and the 10 songs that wound up on the album have been culled from an outpouring of 115 pieces written in a sustained run of inspiration over the course of two and a half years.
A chunk of it went down during the summer and fall of 2006, following the breakup of Blue Merle. Seeking the most inspiring environment he could think of as the setting for his creative process, Reynolds left Nashville and headed north into the Vermont woods with a truckload of instruments, recording gear and a bunch of “visual records” for inspiration, including Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. For five months, he slept in a tent on a mountainside above a 19th century grain mill, turning the basement into a makeshift studio—essentially doing a modern-day version of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond retreat (Reynolds is big on the New England Pantheists). Out of that initial woodshedding came two keepers, “Every War” and “Big Screen,” along with an exponential increase in focus and discipline.
“Big Screen,” featuring his mystic pedal steel over a rolling-gaited groove, considers the parallels this artist and filmmaker finds between sounds and visuals. “I often watch snow, skate and surf films for inspiration,” he says, “just as I listen to music when I’m snowboarding. Or when I’d take breaks from the grain mill to go to the skateboard park and listen to music to see how it affected my moods. I watch for inspiration; this music is very visual.”
Which leads us to the name of the band or, more precisely, the concept. “I wanted the opportunity to reinvent myself over and over again, and it was freeing to work under a different name,” Reynolds explains.
When it got too cold to live in the tent, Reynolds went on the road, opening for the North Mississippi Allstars. He spent the winter near the Canadian border, teaching music and painting to kids with learning disabilities. He continued the writing process while traveling around the U.S. and Europe, heading to L.A. every six months to work up new material with McNeal and Wilder, whom he describes as “my tight, tight, tight friends, who made the music richer and wider.”
Reynolds conceived “100 Directions” in Barcelona after visiting the Picasso Museum and having an epiphany while gazing at the works of one of his favorite artists. “It all came together for me in the Cubist exhibit,” he recalls. “I was hit over the head by the realization that there are ways, at least on canvas, to simultaneously view a subject from multiple perspectives in order to get a more accurate read on it. And in order to make sense of anything, really, we have to look at it from all angles, because to look at just one doesn’t do justice to it at all. This song came out of that insight.”
Of “Everything Leaves a Mark,” which came to him in Austin, Reynolds says, “One recurring sentiment throughout the album is how everything we choose to touch, ingest, taste and do leaves its mark on us. The people we choose to surround ourselves with are an example of that.”
“The Last Ocean,” inspired in Seattle, “poses the question, would knowing that something were the very first or very last of its kind change the way we choose to interact with it,” says Reynolds, “and what obligation comes with that knowledge?” The track clocks in at a blistering 2:16. “I wanted to play this groove for a really long time,” he adds. “After we recorded it, the vocal felt really off the cuff when I first listened back to it, just kind of spit out, and I’m really glad we kept it. The attitude reminds me of a lot of records I love that have left their mark on me.”
Reynolds had earmarked the gospel-tinged “Forever to Reach,” written in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as “the centerpiece of the album before we started recording. But now I see it as a part of the whole. It fits in with ‘The Last Ocean,’ ‘Every War’ and ‘The Youth.’ Pete and Dave’s grooves had a huge impact on this track. The final rewrite I brought with me into these sessions had a lot of drum machines on it and was very mechanical and rigid-sounding, which I liked. But we ended up tearing all of that out, because we actually found it limiting.”
“It’s You,” which has a lilting, summery feel, came out of one of Reynolds’ L.A. trips. He says it took him a week of writing to nail the payoff line, “You’re the proof I use to measure what is true.” “We all have truths that we put to use as anchors when things get drifty,” he says. “For example, I use my feelings towards Vermont as a reminder that there are places out there where I feel rooted, and that’s what I set my crosshairs on to keep me cool when I feel all over the place. I love the fact that a place like that exists and the people there exist—and furthermore, to know without a moment’s hesitation that it’s the actual place, and not some romantic notion of the place, which is important to me.”
The band and King tracked the album over two weeks in the big room at Nashville’s House of David, with Reynolds hewing to the process of intensive rewriting throughout the sessions. “Everyone has their path,” he says “and for me this time, it just took how long it did in order to get things right leading up to recording. I feel like I’ve grown a lot and will be able to execute ideas better and faster in the future. As we were recording and working through the songs, some sections which I'd previously thought of as being been the strongest part of the lyric, had to be rewritten in order to better serve the overall intent. Nothing was precious to me because I think of myself not as a singer/songwriter, but as a team player, collaborator, bandleader and bandmate all in one. So I had no problem if cutting something out made a track hotter.”
Each day during those two weeks was spent one a particular song, as the band entered the studio with no preconceived parts, trying various approaches until they hit a collective breakthrough. “There’s real energy to the tracks because they were so new,” Reynolds points out. “We were going for a sound that I call ‘raw’ and Jacquire calls ‘white hot,’ and every night there was a 40-minute window when the band was hot and on it. So what you’re hearing is the first time we got it right.”
Considering the album as a whole, Reynolds says, “I’ve been trying to write songs that are wider and looser up close but coming more into focus at different times and in different ways for different people. I love paintings like that—the Impressionist painters who left space for you to have your own relationship with the piece.”
I have my own relationship with this piece of sound painting, so for me at least, I can confirm that Reynolds and his three talented and tuned-in collaborators did their jobs. Maybe this record won’t hit you as hard as it hit me. But then again, what if it does?
Bud Scoppa
June 2008
As a music journalist, you live for that moment when you put on a record by some group you never heard of and it blows you away before Track One hits the first chorus. That’s what happened to me the other day with the self-titled first album from Pictures And Sound. The first cut, “Everything Leaves A Mark,” hooked me from the opening riff, and the aerodynamic groove of the next one, “The Last Ocean,” lifted me right out of my chair. Before I knew it, I’d zipped through the whole damn album, and I never do that anymore—not with 15,000 tracks a click away in my iTunes library.
Not only have I been playing Pictures And Sound compulsively ever since, I’ve been waking up every morning with one or another of these songs in my head. The closest parallel I can come up with is the feeling of excitement that coursed through me the first time I heard Spoon’s Kill the Moonlight, Arcade Fire’s Funeral and Kings of Leon’s Because of the Times, in each case realizing, as soon as I’d gotten over my initial shock, that I’d happened upon an record destined for my year-end top 10.
The spaces are as important as the sounds on Pictures And Sound, which is almost binary in its focus—you won’t hear a syllable, note or drum hit that isn’t purposeful, that doesn’t bring something to the whole. That applies to both subject matter and groove because, like the best rock, these tracks engage the mind and body all at once. The vocals convey rhythm and as well as melody and lyrics, and certain lines seem emblazoned in neon. Lines like: “I’ve thought of you from a hundred different directions/And none of them are right” (“100 Directions”), “It feels like everything’s about to change” (“Big Screen”) and “It’s you I love, not just the thought of you” (“It’s You”). Then there’s “Every War,” as powerful a topical song as this tumultuous decade has produced; the fact that the great Willie Nelson duets and plays a signature guitar solo on it doesn’t hurt, either. This record is smart, visceral and immediate, and every moment of it rings true.
Eager for info, I did the drill, Googling the band name, which took me to Pictures And Sound’s MySpace page. There I discovered that the band is the brainchild of writer/singer/multi-instrumentalist Luke Reynolds, the former leader of Blue Merle, who put out one intriguing album on Island in 2005. I was further intrigued when I read his list of influences: “A collective love of art, painting, dub, the woods, deep winter, vintage hoodies, old keyboards, pedal steel, snowboarding, coffee, Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rainer Maria Rilke, Neruda, Barry Lopez, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Abbey, Blind Willie Johnson, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Steve Reich, James Gadson.” Now, how particular is that?
I also discovered the band is a trio, with bassist Dave Wilder (Liz Phair, Ghostface Killah, Macy Gray) and drummer Pete McNeal (Jem, Cake, Rickie Lee Jones), both based in L.A. Jacquire King (Modest Mouse, Tom Waits, Kings of Leon) produced, engineered and mixed the album at various studios in Nashville, where he (as well as Reynolds, sporadically throughout the year) reside.
Then I got Luke on the phone from Vermont, where he was visiting his mom and dad. Up front, he described himself as “a real high-energy person,” and the lively ensuing conversation bore that out and then some. Turns out the 29-year-old artist is a fifth-generation Vermonter, and the 10 songs that wound up on the album have been culled from an outpouring of 115 pieces written in a sustained run of inspiration over the course of two and a half years.
A chunk of it went down during the summer and fall of 2006, following the breakup of Blue Merle. Seeking the most inspiring environment he could think of as the setting for his creative process, Reynolds left Nashville and headed north into the Vermont woods with a truckload of instruments, recording gear and a bunch of “visual records” for inspiration, including Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. For five months, he slept in a tent on a mountainside above a 19th century grain mill, turning the basement into a makeshift studio—essentially doing a modern-day version of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond retreat (Reynolds is big on the New England Pantheists). Out of that initial woodshedding came two keepers, “Every War” and “Big Screen,” along with an exponential increase in focus and discipline.
“Big Screen,” featuring his mystic pedal steel over a rolling-gaited groove, considers the parallels this artist and filmmaker finds between sounds and visuals. “I often watch snow, skate and surf films for inspiration,” he says, “just as I listen to music when I’m snowboarding. Or when I’d take breaks from the grain mill to go to the skateboard park and listen to music to see how it affected my moods. I watch for inspiration; this music is very visual.”
Which leads us to the name of the band or, more precisely, the concept. “I wanted the opportunity to reinvent myself over and over again, and it was freeing to work under a different name,” Reynolds explains.
When it got too cold to live in the tent, Reynolds went on the road, opening for the North Mississippi Allstars. He spent the winter near the Canadian border, teaching music and painting to kids with learning disabilities. He continued the writing process while traveling around the U.S. and Europe, heading to L.A. every six months to work up new material with McNeal and Wilder, whom he describes as “my tight, tight, tight friends, who made the music richer and wider.”
Reynolds conceived “100 Directions” in Barcelona after visiting the Picasso Museum and having an epiphany while gazing at the works of one of his favorite artists. “It all came together for me in the Cubist exhibit,” he recalls. “I was hit over the head by the realization that there are ways, at least on canvas, to simultaneously view a subject from multiple perspectives in order to get a more accurate read on it. And in order to make sense of anything, really, we have to look at it from all angles, because to look at just one doesn’t do justice to it at all. This song came out of that insight.”
Of “Everything Leaves a Mark,” which came to him in Austin, Reynolds says, “One recurring sentiment throughout the album is how everything we choose to touch, ingest, taste and do leaves its mark on us. The people we choose to surround ourselves with are an example of that.”
“The Last Ocean,” inspired in Seattle, “poses the question, would knowing that something were the very first or very last of its kind change the way we choose to interact with it,” says Reynolds, “and what obligation comes with that knowledge?” The track clocks in at a blistering 2:16. “I wanted to play this groove for a really long time,” he adds. “After we recorded it, the vocal felt really off the cuff when I first listened back to it, just kind of spit out, and I’m really glad we kept it. The attitude reminds me of a lot of records I love that have left their mark on me.”
Reynolds had earmarked the gospel-tinged “Forever to Reach,” written in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as “the centerpiece of the album before we started recording. But now I see it as a part of the whole. It fits in with ‘The Last Ocean,’ ‘Every War’ and ‘The Youth.’ Pete and Dave’s grooves had a huge impact on this track. The final rewrite I brought with me into these sessions had a lot of drum machines on it and was very mechanical and rigid-sounding, which I liked. But we ended up tearing all of that out, because we actually found it limiting.”
“It’s You,” which has a lilting, summery feel, came out of one of Reynolds’ L.A. trips. He says it took him a week of writing to nail the payoff line, “You’re the proof I use to measure what is true.” “We all have truths that we put to use as anchors when things get drifty,” he says. “For example, I use my feelings towards Vermont as a reminder that there are places out there where I feel rooted, and that’s what I set my crosshairs on to keep me cool when I feel all over the place. I love the fact that a place like that exists and the people there exist—and furthermore, to know without a moment’s hesitation that it’s the actual place, and not some romantic notion of the place, which is important to me.”
The band and King tracked the album over two weeks in the big room at Nashville’s House of David, with Reynolds hewing to the process of intensive rewriting throughout the sessions. “Everyone has their path,” he says “and for me this time, it just took how long it did in order to get things right leading up to recording. I feel like I’ve grown a lot and will be able to execute ideas better and faster in the future. As we were recording and working through the songs, some sections which I'd previously thought of as being been the strongest part of the lyric, had to be rewritten in order to better serve the overall intent. Nothing was precious to me because I think of myself not as a singer/songwriter, but as a team player, collaborator, bandleader and bandmate all in one. So I had no problem if cutting something out made a track hotter.”
Each day during those two weeks was spent one a particular song, as the band entered the studio with no preconceived parts, trying various approaches until they hit a collective breakthrough. “There’s real energy to the tracks because they were so new,” Reynolds points out. “We were going for a sound that I call ‘raw’ and Jacquire calls ‘white hot,’ and every night there was a 40-minute window when the band was hot and on it. So what you’re hearing is the first time we got it right.”
Considering the album as a whole, Reynolds says, “I’ve been trying to write songs that are wider and looser up close but coming more into focus at different times and in different ways for different people. I love paintings like that—the Impressionist painters who left space for you to have your own relationship with the piece.”
I have my own relationship with this piece of sound painting, so for me at least, I can confirm that Reynolds and his three talented and tuned-in collaborators did their jobs. Maybe this record won’t hit you as hard as it hit me. But then again, what if it does?
Bud Scoppa
June 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
HALFWAY & HALF-ASSED
Some of the following LPs haven’t come out yet, there’s a bunch of highly touted records I haven’t heard, like Fleet Foxes, and I haven’t spent enough time with several of these to feel confident that they’ll be on my year-end list. So this is an inherently flawed midyear Top 12, but it’s the best I can do right now.
Coldplay, Viva La Vida
Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs
Robin Danar, Altered States
Duffy, Rockferry
The Explorer's Club, Freedom Wind
John Mellencamp, Life, Death, Love and Freedom
Mudcrutch, Mudcrutch
My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
Pictures And Sound, Pictures And Sound
The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely
Matthew Sweet, Sunshine Lies
Teddy Thompson, A Piece of What You Need
Coldplay, Viva La Vida
Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs
Robin Danar, Altered States
Duffy, Rockferry
The Explorer's Club, Freedom Wind
John Mellencamp, Life, Death, Love and Freedom
Mudcrutch, Mudcrutch
My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
Pictures And Sound, Pictures And Sound
The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely
Matthew Sweet, Sunshine Lies
Teddy Thompson, A Piece of What You Need
Saturday, July 5, 2008
THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY
Damn, 2008's half over already, and that means it's list time. Here are 50 tracks I keep coming back to, arranged not in a sequence (I'm working on it) but alphabetically by artist name. Some of them are recent arrivals, like Mellencamp, Teddy Thompson and Pictures and Sound (a sensational new band started by ex-Blue Merle leader Luke Reynolds). The tracks that have been road-tested during spinning sessions are in red.
Freeway, Aimee Mann (@#%&*! Smilers) 3:50Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love, Coldplay (Viva La Vida) 6:51
Yes, Coldplay (Viva La Vida) 7:07
I Will Possess Your Heart, Death Cab for Cutie (Narrow Stairs) 8:26
I Will Possess Your Heart, Death Cab for Cutie (Narrow Stairs) 8:26
No Sunlight, Death Cab for Cutie (Narrow Stairs) 2:40
Mercy, Duffy (Rockferry) 3:57
Grounds for Divorce, Elbow (The Seldom Seen Kid) 3:39
Forever, The Explorers Club (Freedom Wind) 2:33
Don’t Forget the Sun, The Explorers Club (Freedom Wind) 3:12
Lost My Head, The Explorer's Club (Freedom Wind) 2:07
Mykonos, Fleet Foxes (Sun Giant [EP]) 4:35
Inner City Pressure, Flight of the Conchords (Flight of the Conchords) 3:27
Who's Gonna Save My Soul, Gnarls Barkley (The Odd Couple) 3:18
Days Go On, Greg Laswell (Three Flights From Alto Nido) 3:15
Troubled Land, John Mellencamp (Life, Death, Love and Freedom) 3:25
Byrdgirl, Matthew Sweet (Sunshine Lies) 3:20
Sunshine Lies, Matthew Sweet (Sunshine Lies) 3:23
Electric Feel, MGMT (Oracular Spectacular) 3:50
Scare Easy, Mudcrutch (Mudcrutch) 4:36
The Wrong Thing to Do, Mudcrutch (Mudcrutch) 4:10
Evil Urges, My Morning Jacket (Evil Urges) 5:14Forever, The Explorers Club (Freedom Wind) 2:33
Don’t Forget the Sun, The Explorers Club (Freedom Wind) 3:12
Lost My Head, The Explorer's Club (Freedom Wind) 2:07
Mykonos, Fleet Foxes (Sun Giant [EP]) 4:35
Inner City Pressure, Flight of the Conchords (Flight of the Conchords) 3:27
Who's Gonna Save My Soul, Gnarls Barkley (The Odd Couple) 3:18
Days Go On, Greg Laswell (Three Flights From Alto Nido) 3:15
Troubled Land, John Mellencamp (Life, Death, Love and Freedom) 3:25
Byrdgirl, Matthew Sweet (Sunshine Lies) 3:20
Sunshine Lies, Matthew Sweet (Sunshine Lies) 3:23
Electric Feel, MGMT (Oracular Spectacular) 3:50
Scare Easy, Mudcrutch (Mudcrutch) 4:36
The Wrong Thing to Do, Mudcrutch (Mudcrutch) 4:10
Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Pt. 1, My Morning Jacket (Evil Urges) 3:51
Highly Suspicious, My Morning Jacket (Evil Urges) 3:07
I'm Amazed, My Morning Jacket (Evil Urges) 4:35
See These Bones, Nada Surf (Lucky) 5:10
Whose Authority, Nada Surf (Lucky) 3:01
Everything Leaves a Mark, Pictures And Sound (Pictures And Sound) 3:10
The Last Ocean, Pictures And Sound (Pictures And Sound) 2:16
It's You, Pictures And Sound (Pictures And Sound) 3:40
100 Directions, Pictures And Sound (Pictures And Sound) 4:01
Every War, Pictures And Sound feat. Willie Nelson (Pictures And Sound) 3:27
Supernatural Superserious, R.E.M. (Accelerate) 3:24
Salute Your Solution, The Raconteurs (Consolers of the Lonely) 3:00
Old Enough, The Raconteurs (Consolers of the Lonely) 3:57
These Stones Will Shout, The Raconteurs (Consolers of the Lonely) 3:54
Yell, Robin Danar feat. Jesca Hoop (Altered States) 5:12
Message of Love, Robin Danar feat. Paul Buchanan (Altered States) 4:48
Spiritude, Ron Sexsmith (Exit Strategy of the Soul) 1:30
This Is How I Know, Ron Sexsmith (Exit Strategy of the Soul) 3:50
Brighter Still, Ron Sexsmith (Exit Strategy of the Soul) 3:41
You Don't Have To Say You Love Me, Shelby Lynne (Just a Little Lovin') 4:13
I'm Not Drowning, Steve Winwood (Nine Lives) 3:32
Raging Sea, Steve Winwood (Nine Lives) 6:18
In My Arms, Teddy Thompson (A Piece of What You Need) 3:14
Can't Sing Straight, Teddy Thompson (A Piece of What You Need) 3:43
Atoms for Peace (Four Tet Remix), Thom Yorke 5:57
Shut Up and Let Me Go, The Ting Tings (We Started Nothing) 2:52
A-Punk, Vampire Weekend (Vampire Weekend) 2:18
Pork and Beans, Weezer (Weezer, a.k.a Red Album) 3:09
Monday, May 26, 2008
ENDORPHIN STIMULANTS
Essie Shure, my spin trainer, pal and fellow playlist collaborator (see earlier entry), just put together the beginning of a master list of spinning songs, complete with how she uses each track. “My friend, a fellow spin instructor, requested some new music,” she Essie tells me. “She's on the East Coast...bringing the West Coast sound east :)” What's interesting is that 95% of these tracks are from 2007, which is shaping up as an unusually good year for music as I look in the rearview mirror. Essie not only has impeccable taste (if I do say so myself), she’s also conscientious—she actually put each song in quotes.
"Arizona"/Kings Of Leon - climb
"Dreamworld"/Riley Kiley - warm up
"Business Time"/Flight Of The Concords - steady climb (funny)
"Rehab"/Amy Winehouse - fast jog
"Time To Get Away"/LCD Soundsystem - cool down
"North American Scum"/LCD Soundsystem - warm up
"Sea Legs"/The Shins - climb
"Keep The Car Running"/Arcade Fire - climb/jog
"Knocked Up"/Kings Of Leon - steady climb
"Young Folks"/Peter Bjorn & John - fast jog
"Traffic & Weather"/Fountains Of Wayne - jog
"California"/Mates Of State - climb
(songs by Sergio Mendes)
"End Of The Line"/Traveling Wilburys - fast jog/cool down
"Remind Me"/Royksopp - fast rounds
"If I Ever Feel Better"/Phoenix - rounds
"Everything In Its Right Place (Paul Oakenfeld remix)"/Radiohead - warm up
"Inner City Pressure"/Flight Of The Conchords - steady climb (funny)
"Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)"/Robert Pl... - fast
"Get Innocuous!"/LCD Soundsystem - rounds
"15 Step"/Radiohead - jog
"Timebomb"/Beck - jog w/resistance
"A-Punk"/Vampire Weekend - quick jog
"Weird Fishes/Arpeggi “/Radiohead - very fast in the saddle
"Reckoner"/Radiohead - climb/sprint
"Help Me"/k.d. lang - cool down/stretch
"Mushaboom" (Postal Service remix)/Feist - fast
"New Shoes"/Paolo Nutini - jog
"Waiting On The World To Change"/John Mayer - climb
"Show You How"/Lindsey Buckingham - fast/climb
"Arizona"/Kings Of Leon - climb
"Dreamworld"/Riley Kiley - warm up
"Business Time"/Flight Of The Concords - steady climb (funny)
"Rehab"/Amy Winehouse - fast jog
"Time To Get Away"/LCD Soundsystem - cool down
"North American Scum"/LCD Soundsystem - warm up
"Sea Legs"/The Shins - climb
"Keep The Car Running"/Arcade Fire - climb/jog
"Knocked Up"/Kings Of Leon - steady climb
"Young Folks"/Peter Bjorn & John - fast jog
"Traffic & Weather"/Fountains Of Wayne - jog
"California"/Mates Of State - climb
(songs by Sergio Mendes)
"End Of The Line"/Traveling Wilburys - fast jog/cool down
"Remind Me"/Royksopp - fast rounds
"If I Ever Feel Better"/Phoenix - rounds
"Everything In Its Right Place (Paul Oakenfeld remix)"/Radiohead - warm up
"Inner City Pressure"/Flight Of The Conchords - steady climb (funny)
"Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)"/Robert Pl... - fast
"Get Innocuous!"/LCD Soundsystem - rounds
"15 Step"/Radiohead - jog
"Timebomb"/Beck - jog w/resistance
"A-Punk"/Vampire Weekend - quick jog
"Weird Fishes/Arpeggi “/Radiohead - very fast in the saddle
"Reckoner"/Radiohead - climb/sprint
"Help Me"/k.d. lang - cool down/stretch
"Mushaboom" (Postal Service remix)/Feist - fast
"New Shoes"/Paolo Nutini - jog
"Waiting On The World To Change"/John Mayer - climb
"Show You How"/Lindsey Buckingham - fast/climb
Saturday, April 26, 2008
My First Review on the Brand-New SonicBoomers.com
Eli “Paperboy” Reed & the True Loves
Roll With You
If somebody played you “Stake Your Claim,” the perfectly titled opening cut on Eli “Paperboy” Reed’s new album Roll With You without any context, and you heard a gritty voiced singer testifying in front of a pile-driving rhythm section and a bodaciously wailing horn section, you’d automatically assume this steamy soul stew was cut in Memphis or Muscle Shoals 40 years ago. There’s no way it could be the work of a 24-year-old, baby-faced Jewish kid from Boston and his equally young and white seven-piece soul revue, the True Loves, could it? But then, you probably had the same reaction the first time you heard the uncannily soulful English singer Amy Winehouse fronting Brooklyn funkateers the Dap-Kings last year, or more recently, when encountering by chance the 21-year-old Welsh newcomer Duffy riding the “Gimme Some Lovin’”-style groove of her song “Mercy.” If Winehouse opened the door, Reed and his finger-lickin’-good combo kick it wide open, channeling their collective obsessiveness of southern... [To read the rest, Go to SonicBoomers.com.]
Roll With You
If somebody played you “Stake Your Claim,” the perfectly titled opening cut on Eli “Paperboy” Reed’s new album Roll With You without any context, and you heard a gritty voiced singer testifying in front of a pile-driving rhythm section and a bodaciously wailing horn section, you’d automatically assume this steamy soul stew was cut in Memphis or Muscle Shoals 40 years ago. There’s no way it could be the work of a 24-year-old, baby-faced Jewish kid from Boston and his equally young and white seven-piece soul revue, the True Loves, could it? But then, you probably had the same reaction the first time you heard the uncannily soulful English singer Amy Winehouse fronting Brooklyn funkateers the Dap-Kings last year, or more recently, when encountering by chance the 21-year-old Welsh newcomer Duffy riding the “Gimme Some Lovin’”-style groove of her song “Mercy.” If Winehouse opened the door, Reed and his finger-lickin’-good combo kick it wide open, channeling their collective obsessiveness of southern... [To read the rest, Go to SonicBoomers.com.]
Thursday, February 21, 2008
TWEEDY ON OBAMA, 9/05
This is shaping up to be one of those memorable years—and I’m not just referring to how brilliantly the Lakers have been playing since the trade for Pau Gasol. What I’m referring to is the Barack Obama phenomenon, which is unlike anything in my experience since the decade of the Kennedys, Beatles, Dylan and Muhammad Ali; it’s enough to restore hope to a nation of hardened cynics.That got me to thinking about the first individual I came across who was aglow with the Barack effect—Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. The following is an unpublished exchange from a phone conversation that took place in September of 2005:
We’re living in an age where it’s hard not to be cynical. It’s insane not to be cynical, actually.
I kind of disagree with that. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and it certainly does feel like it’s hard not to be cynical. But I think what we’re experiencing is the worst kind of fucking cynicism that there is. You could not have a more cynical philosophy than the people that are running this country. And what’s so cynical about it is they’re asking everybody to give up completely on the notion that the future could be better. And because of that, everybody is scared to death, trying to do everything they possibly can to hang on to the way things were. I just don’t think you can motivate people to do anything other than destroy when they’re terrified of the future. If there was a lack of cynicism; if you could combat that cynicism with something like… At one point, we were all kind of working towards helping feed the poor, for example. I know I’m sounding totally naïve, but this is a mass movement that we’re witnessing, and it’s a mass movement of people that are fucking scared to death about the future being worse than it is now. Other movements in our time have been based on thinking that the future could be fucking great, and generally those movements have done a lot more good, even though they could definitely use some perspective as well.
I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to start lecturing. But if people could find something that could give them some kind of hope that you could make it better, if you really ask people to start thinking in a really concerted way about conservation and [the idea] that the children’s future could actually be really bright, I think you’d have a lot more people willing to vote for people like…you know, Obama. I got to meet him not too long ago; he introduced us at Farm Aid. It’s pretty hard not to wanna hang on desperately to someone like that as a life raft. Please save us [laughs].
He definitely has a lot of character, and it comes across as impeccable.
He was great. He was really kind of normal and fun to hang out with, and at the same time very, very sharp.
We need somebody very sharp at this point.
Like a razor.
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