it was like being trapped in the soundbooth at Z100. Nothing much going on at all, he wasn’t doing anything serious with the beats and thsi is a (reportedly) serious guy, but he was an irrelevant time keeper at the LMFAO.
Till I Die – Chris Brown – Featuring WIz and Big Sean and Sean gets the “OK, wow, look at me now…” line. But this song is the best produced pop song I’ve heard all year. There is a distracted, dozy drugginess that barely hides all the malice in the world. It’s like the hot calm before the shoot on in the opening of a Leone movie – Grade: A
Eva capturing lightning in a bottle and the mix going very , very House. In the age of dubstep, Eva is a little old fashioned but if you are more interested in songs than beats, House is a better place for you and the audience agreed as they dance wildly to every song.
Since the second world war the States has been not only the greatest but also the country with the greatest moral centrifugal force. Now, I can see the look on your face so let me add that the word “Greatest” has something of a “Nicest Nazi” edge to it.
Five CDs worth and a DVD but fuck that. Around $80 bucks and that’s a no brainer as well. The only problem is the eagerly anticipated The Kinks At The BBC won’t arrive till August 21st and I CAN’T WAIT THAT LONG.
The beat is very martial and Bebe is accentuating on the beat all the way through, so there is a faint echo of armed conflict buried deep, and the axiomatic “Let freedom ring” – not about slavery, it is a rebuttal to “God save the Queen”) rings like the stirrings from where Gospel would lead the Black Church – Grade: B
rock nyc reporters, Layna Cartegna and Henry Sinnock will be covering the entire event for us from Portugal the Man to the hottest individual in popular music this side of Adele, Skrillex.
Fiona Apple at Randall’s Island wins most improved hands down, playing selections from all four albums, and beaming, smiling, dancing and then singing so intensely. the woman was a joy. # 4 out of the 104 sets I’ve seen in the first half of 2012
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IS AT STAKE. This story is worse than a shaggy dog story it is shag story. Only Woody Allen, who directed it, could get away with this stuff. And, it is harmless and what the hell it is Allen.
Half a year in and lotsa individual achievements and June itself belonged to Fiona Apple, great videos, great album and one of the bests sets of the year
This one is a killer joke that, if you can imagine for a moment that I am Letterman (even if I resemble Paul more closely!), you will laugh uproarously. Ps: This is not verbatim.
If I ever had a band, I’d be like Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn and only release my albums on national holidays. I mean, right or right? Look at it this way: The View are a Scottish Wombats, a pretty clever, fairly witty little rock band who I am sure have a pretty good following in the UK. Do you think if Kanye had released a new album I’d be writing about em?
Vacanze Romane – Gentri Noantri – Italian band who make sweet updates of mainstream Italian pop ballads. This is one is just lovely, it’s like they recruited Samantha Urbani if she sang light opera to front a muzak band – Grade: B+
They were better than I expected, skimming the cream of the cuts, they shuffled their set, opening with “I Party” and building to a full throated very dirty bass “Girls On The Dancefloor” before a shockingly great “Like A G6” -the ghostly hue of the single, was completely transformed on stage
if 2009 was a transitional year both technology and musically (and decade wise), 2010 was more exciting as dance fused with anything that moved, and the technology began to expand. 2011 was about streaming and 2012 is about… nothing so far.
While on his way to New York this morning to celebrate the publication of his long-awaited memoir SoulaCoaster, multi-platinum R&B superstar R. Kelly was taken ill and had to return to Chicago for medical treatment
With their first album, Manifest, out their, and their hip quota out the park, the beat based indie band with the little knock out lead singer Friends is the one to catch this week. AT Bowery Ballroom on Saturday. PS All the bands hang out at the bat before gigs at Bowery Ballroom so you can stalk her… maybe a certain bad boy with only one direction will be there.
Linkin Park are terrible, Maroon 5 aren’t terrible, Ed is still around. The Throne are touring the UK, Flo Rida’s newbie hasn’t dropped here yet, and Rihanna CAN NOT have any more singles off this album.
Not released Stateside yet, they played “This Is Love” at the LMFAO concert after Eva Simons set. Seemed to me like Will I Am may have finally gotten the BEP monkey off his back and join Fergie as a solo artist.
Add Some Music To Your Day A Capella – The Beach Boys – From the excellent Hawthorne, Ca, album, and the best moment on their current 50th anniversary tour, this is the distance between TM hippie hug a tree and the doo wop roots they had come from – Grade: A
The energy isn’t “without end” it is kinetic and bottled up and every song is a singalong. It is an amazing trick, shallow drunken, snatch chasers as sweet unassuming rock and roll stars!
Adam Levine’s high tight voice is well loathed but he can sing his songs very well and yet again his band have collected a steady, not spectacular but consistent collection of pop rock for a dance beat society. Perhaps Adam is overexposed, but when your deep album tracks are dance jazz gems like “Wasted Years”, get used to him – Grade: B+
Say It Loud I’m Black And I’m Proud – James Brown – If the sentiment is a little antiquated, it sure wasn’t at the time. And the sound is anything but old, it is fresh today, it’ll be fresh in ten years time. You can’t rely that heavily on the bass and go out of style – Grade: A+
Watching Fiona Apple on Sunday, got me to think of how much she has changed since her titanic flameout at Roseland where in 2000 a mix of nerves and sound fuck ups had a devastated Fiona begging the journalists there not to write about it and then storming off the stage a coupla songs into her set!
Why buy Verve Records, the greatest Jazz label of all times, to release oldies? What are they thinking of? I went to an Elizabeth And The Catapults party at Verve a couple of years and wasn’t sure why they were on the label either.
Manchester band were too clever for their own good and got slam dunked by punk but man could they arrange a song: like Steely Dan without the jazz on this bank robbery song – Grade: A
The singing wasn’t good, the versions weren’t great, they piped it too loud. The brothers were good together, and the dancing was excellent, but you can only give the Jacksons so much benefit of the doubt before the truth has to be said: they aren’t good enough without Michael.
Really, of all the slow malingering deaths, this one sucks so bad. All you have is memories, how cruelly indifferent can nature be, to rob them from people. Terribly sad, really. Glen, like so many of us, went through the lot on his road to redemption, and Alzheimer doesn’t take it for us, it takes it from him
They are like a stream of consciousness concept of what an indie band should be and their first album, Weathervanes, is a pleasant bore. I like em, naybe I’ll use em for my next tax audit
it was him and Kanye like a pair of 40 year old A&R (record company) men who can’t dance shouting ‘London oh yeah’, whilst an iPod played Otis Redding. I can do that at home.”
Ellie’s song was released May 2011 and it proves that it can take forever for a song to hit the charts but once it does, it takes forever for it to leave. It’s OK, nohing great.
the singles charts are pretty static and the albums flit in and out as only fans or freak hits hit the album charts. Count em up: 5 of the top 5 are new this week.
You, Man? Human??? feat Nick Cave – The Flaming Lips – It kicked in, it’s like a too arty version of Cave crica 2008 and Cave is a sleazy, scary middle man as the music rolls over him in waves of weirdnesss: “You can touch me, if you want” is as I’ve heard – Grade: A
If the powers that be can bring this in at under the $200 mark and release one or two a year, they would be the ultimate last word on every single Beatles album and the last word for a beatles fan. See what Columbia has done with Davis… it is time to centralize things and to complete them. It is time for the BEATLES BOX SET!!!
I think he is a bore and I think he is completely wrong for the venue but from a finger picked solo slice of lo-fi through to a headstrong salsa sounding dance song with a full band at the end, I didn’t dislike him much either. Not my scene but for want of something better, I can now see that I didn’t really get the man before.
The concept: to take Goth and add it to shoegaze is a pretty good one, and when they get the right song, Phantogram no what to do with it. Even when the song is a little inert, their jams are better than, say, Cults who I saw next.
“You can very easily become infected by the minority negative opinion.’I was talking to my dad about Manchester United — the most popular football team in the world — and when they show up at West Ham they get booed. I was thinking, ‘Well, it’s the same for us…
A limited amount of presale tickets are available TODAY, Thursday, June 28 from 10AM to 10PM, before they go on sale to the general public on Friday, June 29 at 10AM
Built To Spill ignore their fans as they trade off rumbling interlocking parts, they aren’t playing loud riffs, they are dissolving liquidy strings bending not bouncing
Byrne is all over the place nowadays that opera he co-wrote about Marcos was not much fun for one, and St. Vincent is boring, but ut them together and they are more than the sum of their oarts on what starts like a Latin American excursion and is pulled by chugging horns – Grade: A-
the band are a cool way to kill some time: they have a firm grasp on melody and on the set highlight “You Know What I Mean”, a pop ballad replete with snaps claps, and double tracking, they find a place in the sun where the audience can respond well. A girl besides me whisper to me, “Do you like this one? It was the song that first turned me on to them”,.
On stage, she reminds me a little of Florence Welch without the Stevie Nicks affectations, there is a deep unsettling brrrness to it all and, also, Cyrk II will be released and I’m kinda bumming over that because it means I missed the second album proper tour.
Lydon was a blabbermouth and the Jude was relatively forbearing until stopping Lydon with a sharp, “Did I disrespect you”. “No”, I chagrined Rotten replied, eyes cast down.
I was surprised to notice two bands I knew very little about but with one thing in common playing at Governor’s Ball. They were bands I disliked solely because of their bands names!
Barlow’s lawyers stoutly deny any wrong doing and claim he pays a fortune in taxes and who is to say otherwise. that isn’t the point. the point iis, surely just the look of impropriety might suggest a holding off till the case developes?
Ruin – Cat Power – The concept of being ruined has never been sexier and set to better purpose than on this incredible new rocker with a blues edge by yet eccentric white woman – Grade: A
From flaming out to sneering in to perfecting her craft, Apple has grown and grown and is now not just a great recording artist but a great live performer as well. Grade: A
The sum was shining though clouds dotted the sky, transportation was easy, with two stages you could see every single set, the VIP is worth every penny and with a little planning you can get front side for every set, the bands were uniformly great, and though I blew off Modest Mouse and Beck, put it down to age not venue.
As the formats have caused both contractions (ITunes is perfect for single song purchases) and expansions (Streaming is great for huge amounts of music listened to cheaply), it hasn’t really beaten the 40 minute album.
Maxwell’s press release was calming enough but hemorrhaging doesn’t just read ominous (that double “r” is a devil) but Adele cancelled a tour at the height of her career last year and John Mayer is still out of action.
