Burning Airlines Give You So Much More – Brian Eno – One of his greatest achievements, this strange tale about a girl who leaves him for China tracks a triumphant synth motif that is choice Oriental and yet nothing like it.Grade: A+
Sitek is a talented fellow, for his sins he produced the Scarlett Johansen album and Foals album, but both of them are kinda mood albums, and while TVOTR can rock, they can’t rock the same way young Liam can. They aren’t roar of rock and roll Limey style guys
On the day before Thanksgiving, our Mary Magpie will be joining me for a Conor Oberst solo acoustic concert at Carnegie Hall. Expect screaming, shouting, tears, stomping and yells of “Conor, let’s marry! ” And that’s just from me, I don’t know what Mary will be doing…
Two fun bands rule the new releases, Dos isn’t as good as Uno but it isn’t bad and madness 2012 are not Madness 1986, but they aren’t bad either. The G-Dragon song might end up in my top ten 2012.
Joplin, Mo,bad boy Chris Drew is a Conor badboy showing his range if not his tats, on this mess of an album. It has been three years since “Trouble” and while he has worked hard the drug haze that settles over the band leads to albums like this; where ths songs are heartfelt alt pop songs where he does his best to subvert his talents as they are. Acoustic, whiney, draggy and its hearfelk nature isn’t helping him – Grade: C
The Money Will Roll Right In – Fang – Nirvana killed this years ago but I always thought it was a Mudhoney track. Apparently, it is a Fang song and they ignore the melody in a sea of feedback – Grade: B+
At their heart Madness are as much a Brit comic combo as the Goons, they are personalities playing at being pop stars and so good that they are also pop stars playing at being a knees up mother brown comedy team
Twilight starts heavy and becomes bloated: it is PMS as a movie, constantly irritated and nibbiling at your insides. And the soundtracks are just the same
The 38 year old superstar proved that OBEs and ignorant ageism notwithstanding, Robbie is still the English superstar to beat and both single and album are at the top of the UK charts.
We Nah Tek Bad Up Raw – Elephant Man And Beenie Man – Two titans of dancehall do it clean, with no backing track, they spit it like they mean it like it is a bent out of shape rap and not a reggae rub-a-dub. The two voices rub against each other and the rhythm is in the voice inflections – Grade: A-
With his shoulder length hair and pale beauty, Owens is never a commanding figure, tall and lanky he is ethereal, like he is clinging to life by a thread and a pizza, but the craziness of the first two Girls album has changed into a studious, more careful sound. And I prefer it.
From a Universe of choices, the Gimbal App (or some variant –that isn’t what is happening now, it is what will happen tomorrow) will track your tastes and your lifestyles into a perfect emersion into the sounds you want to hear and don’t even know you want to hear.
A politicians job is to get re-elected. That’s it. That’s all It isn’t even the weilding of power that matters any more, it is just the doing of the job and the job is to be reelected. And that’s slimey but fine even when politicians lead nations into war for the sole purpose of being reelected
M5 have spent 9 weeks at the top now but what is more interesting is how M5. K. BM, NY and FR all seem to be drinking from the same well, using the same producers , the same writers. And while they don’t sound the same on all levels, the production and the drums are very similar
The Hot 100 seems mostly centered on electro pop and its variants but he album charts have no center at all. Two guys hitting 70, English folk, Christian rock, two up and coming rappers, a country fella, an R&B guy and the Queen of Pop. Wild, eh?
YOUNGBLOOD – 3OH3 – “My First Kiss” boys are back with a winner, the electropop duo are burning up fun. territory with a vengeance but they are more youthful, less serious and more fun. Catchy, and should hit – Grade: A-
It’s an excuse to write about the Great Rock and Roll band of all time. What’s not to like? Up to “Mixed Emotions. I know the lot, after that I needed to look up whwere they were from. Is it worth mentioning it gets worse as it goes on? OK, another pointless exercise..
He changed U2’s Fanclub into a cash machine, making presales available to fanclub members,w hich is OK business as usual, but also making the live from their 360 degree tour available only thru the Fanclub. It is easy to do the math her
Frost is part of this lessening of hostility and getting a Beatle to speak to the network is some coup. Unless nobody knows about it, of course.
Madonna’s fans are for the most part not 20 somethings, they are 30, 40, and 50 somethings. Pity the poor sucker with a General Admission ticket who got to MSG at 7pm on Monday evening, it would be five hours before she saw her Madge
Fuck Time – Green day – Rock band mistakes desire for deliverance but goes nowhere with the concept, a pit because it’s a smart concept. Plus Billie Joe doesn’t say “fuck” very well at all. Let’s hope # 2 improves on this, though if memory serves the first song off # 1 was a dog as well – Grade: B-
G-Dragon is a widely eccentric man, who looks like a tween in a gay bar looking for some rough stuff. He dresses flamboyantly has an eccentric persona that makes mincemeat of my earlier claim of regimental. But is he fun? On “Crayon” he is
The myth of Bruce was bigger than party politics. The son of a blue collar worker who took his Daddy issues and placed it on the biggest stage of all, who spoke not just for him and his people but for all of us, everyone born to, as Chuck D recently put it, run till its dark
“Lights” hit the US Charts and Ellie was dating, ta dag Skrillex of all people. Then came a sold out gig at T6 last July and finally an excellent single, “Anything Can Help” which didn’t break here and an album, Halycon
I passed on the Paul McCartney featuring “Concert For Heroes” celebrating and raising money for victims of 9-11 in 10-01 at MSG. Why? I could have afforded it if I had to, so why pass? Because I don’t like benefit concerts, I don’t like having a civics lesson added to my lunch pail.
Listening to her today there is an overwhelming fragility about her. She is like China porcelain, so close to the breaking point and I believe that in the end that is what we see in her of ourselves. We may think we’re tough and important but we are very very fragile things, ephemeral, and soon gone. Judy reflects and surpasses our limited mortality.
So on a very very busy week (Neil Young will be the Tuesday, Justin Bieber the Wednesday) I had to fit one more show in before they carry me home in a bodybag.
The Boxer – Mumford And Sons – Not a bad version, the back up harmonies are an original idea and the banjo break very pretty but still, fundamentally redundant – Grade: B
if you didn’t catch Van Halen on tour this year, you might question why they are so high on my list. Same goes for Paul Weller and Ian Hunter. As for the Beach Boys, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen, if you did catch them live you may understand one reason they aren’t here. The Dylan was 60% great, but “Duquesne Whistle” does not a great album make… Lambchop is that old!!
In 1957 Rolf wrote “Tie Me Kangaroo Down”, the story of a dying man in the Australian outback, telling his friends how to take care of the animals he leaves behind. The rhymes are really clever and for a depressing concept, the rhymes come at you with a smile that lessons the bite. In 1963 he covered “Stairway To Heaven” and it became a hit in the UK!
The first single “I Will Wait” of the current smash hit album Babel, was inauthentic in a good way, it was pop-folk but pop-folk that sounded like an English equivalent of Paul Simon. The cover of “The Boxer” cemented to the concept. And Marcus Mumford’s barely concealed contempt for bedwetters Coldplay was a Bruce Springsteen hugging Chris Christi moment between us.
The story is the Brian Eno ambient album, I have heard it and repays close attention with nothing much but as background music it is a lovely thing. The new One Direction will be very very big. And that is a true prediction! Soundgarden might be good, or it might be old, and just what the world needed, another Stones Greatest hits.
Kiss Me Honey – Shirley Bassey – Ah yes, the early 1960s, before Shirley Bassey was a Dame, and before she was the voice to beat all Bond voices, here she took an earlier generations Rami Yacoub, Michael Julien, too the top of the UK charts. Bassey doesn’t belt it, she is all clear eyed seduction – Grade: A
Anyway, a sell out goes with the territory, and while I am pretty sure I’m gonna keep with Govt Mule, I might try and get a tix and see what happens… to put it another way, I won’t go to a ticketbroker.
The album is filled with potential hits and minimal filler, all electro pop, ballads and tween bopping faux-rock. But 1D is not the star of the album, Rami Yacoub is. He produces half of the album and is now officially the name to drop.
Watching the terrifyingly morbid coming attractions for “Iron Man 3”, I couldn’t help but wonder, when did action movies stop being fun? There are more thrills in the Switzerland scenes with Blofeld in “Majesty” then in “Quantum Of Solace” and the latest Bond movie “Skyfall” combined.
Rockers, Ron Wood, go on stage and between the music and the audiences reaction, are transmitted on to another level, away from the lives of quiet desperation that inflicts most people. The problem, once he gets off the stage, he is Ron Wood again
The last two here aren’t released yet and the first, well it is its first first time on an album, and the rest suggests it as a quiet week for good new releases.
Oh, now I get it. 18 Months is a warehouse for a lot of the stuff Harris has been putting out with other people. Not bad,… I guess. Matt Cardle is another X Factor guy and Emeli is this years Adele but not in the States.
I have only one question here folks, why is “Candy” not released in the States yet? What the hell is Robbie waiting for. Wait, another question, why didn’t he hang loose and try and release it fin time to be their 2012 Christmas single?
Boom Boom – John Lee Hooker – How big is the song? That riff has fueled so many songs, if all the people who used it paid Hooker he would have been buried in a gold casket on a gold mountain.- Grade: A+
We used to have a word for folks like Rollins when I was a tot: secular humanists. in talking about two strangers who both lost a brother in Iraq, he just about brought me to tears. I like Rollins a whole lot, and if he ever stuck his hand out and said :Hi” to me, I’d be proud to shake it.
Christopher Owens at Le Poisson Rouge, Wednesday night. Alyson Camus, eat your heart out! Alyson is a Girls fanatic, though I am pretty sure even she would consider leader Christopher Owens decision to break up the band is a little bit stupid. How do you break up a one man band?
Sure, Chuck D got it wrong and the US reelected Obama, but otherwise Most Of My Heroes Still Don’t Appear On No Stamps is write on. I wil write up my best albums by musicians over 50 in 2012 one of these days, till then here is a list rock’s backpages suggested I crib from to make my choice and it should come as no shocker to anybody who reads rock nyc that Public Enemy will be number one in that chart.
History Mob Music And Function – E-40 and Too Short – The Versed called these West Coasts journeymen “upbeat but laid back” and that explains the dynamic pretty damn well. Too $horts been a semi-underground rapper since 1988, E-40 since the 1990s, including years on Lil Jon’s Atlanta label . Together they are prolific, the tracks are really interesting, and they rap together very well. Stuff like “One Foot” is funny and pretty well done. But lyrically, neither of these guys have much to say – Grade: B-
Stupid Liar – BIGBANG – Their best if not their biggest song, is a plain out love pop song gussied up with a rap and internal movements and conflicting voices, one of who howls, and always returning to an undeniable hook, “I’m so stupid liar liar liar”. A highlight on Thursday night sounds pretty good days later – Grade: B+
BIGBAND never bored, but they never enchanted either. They were a generic genre that never jumped to a place where what it means to be Korean informed what it means to be in a boy band. They were not overawed by playing for an American audience. But they lacked heart.
According to Future of Music co-authors David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard, who I guess know this kinda stuff, here are the top ten truths of the music biz. After running a blog for nearly four years, all I have to add isI am fucking exhuasted… However, here is the top ten and here is my opinion of them
After his disastrous cheerleading for John Kerry, Springsteen has called it twice in a row. Both for Barack Obama, and this time round bruce is so deep in bed with the President it is embarrassing. Words fail to express how much credibility Bruce has lost this century.
The folks from MellowHype and the folks from Trash Talk are throwing a party at one of the best clubs in the city, Gramercy Theater on Saturday night and it should be a hugely enjoyable show. Trash Talk will be loud and rigous, Mellow Hype the child of Kid Cudi we can find on the new album and a wonderful time will be had by all
