Written eight years ago, Black Messiah would’ve been everything people say it is if the rest of the album was as great as “Really Love” and with D’Angelo’s gorgeous falsetto and a Spanish groove r&b love song of the first order at his disposal, the r&b man got all of it. A superb first vision of the post-Black Messiah star, apparently the Sly Stone comparisons are gonna have to wait some
White keeps on claiming a luddite’s worship of the analog but really he just swaps one set of tools for another. He is a complete 21st century weirdo. A creeped out. cold as ice, asshole. How can’t you love a show like that?
The entire show is so good natured it feels like he could say anything and get away with it although he doesn’t and there is a lack of aggressiveness about Oliver, he seems to have neither US textual rage nor UK subtextual rage. He doesn’t seethe underneath it al
D’Angelo’s first post- Black Messiah concert, and at the legendary Apollo, is the event of the winter season. Pound for pound, the greatest r&b singer of his generation, D’Angelo ended fourteen years of self-imposed silence with the difficult, universally acclaimed (almost, I was less keen) Black Messiah and here we get to see it live on stage
It would probably Bob Dylan’s to lose in the best of weeks, but the two songs I’ve heard are terrific, the reviews are insane, the Diana Krall album is a disaster, Kid Ink is not a fave of mine and nether is Butch Waker, and anyway it is Bob Dylan, right?
Yes, I am sick of the Great American Songbook, there is nothing left to them; younger people should embrace it because I’ve heard it too often and can’t any more. With exceptions and anything Ella sings is an exception by definition. Creamy, gorgeous voice caresses every inch of the lyric with both innocence and also with sophistication. Incomparable genius – A+
This is part of the Rosanne cash Perspective series and it is his country swing out The Time Jumpers, who re fine, but they aren’t what I want plus, inanely I might add, it is a late night show. Who wants a late night at Carnegie Hall? Will I go? Even after the Alan Jackson snoozer (here)?
17 albums isn’t bad for January, last year there where only 13 albums on my best of list at this point. Also, the rate of excellence is through the roof. Especially hip hop where from Lupe Fiasco to Joey BadA$$ and beyond it is on. Top of the heep i a huge album by David Bronson. A deal changer.
People don’t drop her name often enough but something about the clink clank mied with the heaviest of beats (not dub step, trip hop) reminds me of Portishead meets M.I.A. I really like FKA twigs, she isn’t like most people
For a live album, Sno-Mule feels a little aimless, it doesn’t really build though the last composition feels like a last composition, it feels as though this evening the only place left for them might be “Mountain Jam”. But nothing quite builds momentum
Really Love – D’Angelo – As anticipation mounts for D’Angelo at the Apollo a week today, this is samba track is about as mainstream, as D gets nowadays and it is really pretty good, maybe as close to a complete song as we are ever gonna get. Definitely a pleaser, a soft clicking shuffle with, can it be? a melody – B+
I wouldn’t have bothered a full review at all but… when punk happened in 1976 it was God and the rest of pop was Sodom And Gomorrah and everything it wiped out is on this this album only much, much worse than you remember it.
Perhaps it’s the aging punk in me but there is something so overwhelmingly pseud about these guys that I just can’t take em at any price whatsoever. Or maybe it’s Geddy Lee’s voice. Or those terrible histrionic guitar solos… I guess “Tom Sawyer” isn’t completely terrible, right?
This is shaping up into the best January this decade. Both FOB songs are masterful, Imagine Dragons released the only song they’ve ever written I’ve ever enjoyed, AWOLNATION is a revelation and Prass is a complete shocker. As for Bettye, well, listen to it yourself. And Kate Tempest is better than all of them.
First the Grammys were cool, then they missed the bus on rock and roll and missed it again with the British invasion, and then, sometime in the 1990s, about the time Dylan received the lifetime achievement award, they got cool, up till the moment they realized duets would give them cachet and now…
It is great entertainment and the sheer wealth of glittering pop rock is a thrill in itself. The setlist is a joy and Billy ain’t a welcher, he is willing to give the hits supreme versions and though they are more or less the same as every supreme version he has performed of them, he really does nail em down
This is a spectacularly terrible song to lead off last year’s disastrous divorce album Turn Blue, an album which effectively derailed their career. Slow, depressing, atmospheric and the very definition of a pointless downer, Dan has suffered for his art, now it’s our turn – D+
First the Grammys were cool, then they missed the bus on rock and roll and missed it again with the British invasion, and then, sometime in the 1990s, about the time Dylan received the lifetime achievement award, they got cool, up till the moment they realized duets would give them cachet and now…
I wouldn’t have bothered a full review at all but… when punk happened in 1976 it was God and the rest of pop was Sodom And Gomorrah and everything it wiped out is on this this album only much, much worse than you remember it.
Now I the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by Fall Out Boy, who have at least two more WHOMPING SMASH HIT SONGS awaiting for you are “Centuries.” It is amazing how big they are gonna get.
MY GENERATION (1965), A QUICK ONE (1966), THE WHO SELL OUT (1967), TOMMY (double) (1969), WHO’S NEXT (1971), QUADROPHENIA (double) (1973), THE WHO BY NUMBERS (1975), WHO ARE YOU (1978), FACE DANCES (1981), IT’S HARD (1982), ENDLESS WIRE (double) (2006)
MY GENERATION (1965), A QUICK ONE (1966), THE WHO SELL OUT (1967), TOMMY (double) (1969), WHO’S NEXT (1971), QUADROPHENIA (double) (1973), THE WHO BY NUMBERS (1975), WHO ARE YOU (1978), FACE DANCES (1981), IT’S HARD (1982), ENDLESS WIRE (double) (2006)
This is a spectacularly terrible song to lead off last year’s disastrous divorce album Turn Blue, an album which effectively derailed their career. Slow, depressing, atmospheric and the very definition of a pointless downer, Dan has suffered for his art, now it’s our turn – D+
That’s a turbo charged top three pop album, indeed the top Five is very good indeed. In a reversal of 2014, 2015 is one of the best January’s in living memory. It is like everyone I s saying, hey we don’t buy your dog deads of January (no, froze days…). Which works for me, fine. A good month so far.
That’s a turbo charged top three pop album, indeed the top Five is very good indeed. In a reversal of 2014, 2015 is one of the best January’s in living memory. It is like everyone I s saying, hey we don’t buy your dog deads of January (no, froze days…). Which works for me, fine. A good month so far.
Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by Fall Out Boy, who have at least two more WHOMPING SMASH HIT SONGS awaiting for you after “Centuries.” It is amazing how big they are gonna get.
When I was discussing modern reggae with Hollie Cook earlier this month I completely forgot about Shaggy, though this terrific song does what it is so difficult: it takes reggae and adds it to r&b and the reggae, which s the milk to black coffee, it chnges its complexion, doesn’t manage to – A
For a Beach Boy fanatic, both albums might not add much to the story but what they add you’ll want to hear. And to hear Dennis, Carl and Brian performing together on stage can’t help but make you Smiley Smile.
Our Alyson is trying to get over for at least a day and I don’t know what she plans but if I only had one day I could go, my eyes would be on Off! followed by Bad Religion. Though Rancid? Yelawolf? Blink 182? See what I mean?
5 songs from the excellent Blunderbuss but only 4 off Lazaretto, which suggest he realizes he dogged it proper, 8 White Stripes tracks, rwo from the Raconteurs (the best two as well) and nothing from Dead Weather
Bad Place For A Good Time – Kate Tempest – This is how you rap to a metronome, like dancing between raindrops, and this is what you rap about not just “be like a tree” but more importantly “find something sacred in all of this silence”. That’s the sort of truth we can all use – A
After reading Pitchfork’s ” She crafts slow-burning soul music indebted to singers like Dolly Parton, Dusty Springfield, and Jenny Lewis…” I was gagging to unload on this sucker but the songs are excellent and her voice is beautiful. It is like indie country plus odd instruments and her falsetto
Watching her finest moments of her filmed career, the woman jumps off the screen in a manner perfect for the hyper reality of the Hollywood dream factory whether throwing a cream pie at Gene Kelly in “Rain.” or kicking up her feet on a long bar in “Molly,” she was the personification of the rounded entertainer
Let’s hand it to rap, two terrific albums to start the new year. Joey Bada$$ , Bed Stuyvesant liviest one co-founder of the rap collective Pro Era, and who would be big time indeed if he widened his interests on debut album B4.DA.$$ . Or narrowed them as Lupe Fiasco did on his superb Tetsuo And Beyond.
Here in New York it is Tuesday afternoon, that is a State of Emergency and I am rushing like crazy to hit the road and get home… just like Mark Knopfler (well, we are both hitting the road. So this cut and paste from Sacks and Co PR firm should be forgiven because if I die…? Right?
At eleven minutes on length you’d think this awesome rock drone push and punish finishing “The End” would slacken somewhere but it never relents and its unyielding, ugly power changes a good album to a great one – A
Wake Shake Bake – Fidlar – The popular pop punk band’s ode to intoxicants like Wavves never realized the limitations of being young and dumb. Like the man said, you’re never too old to enjoy dumb entertainment… so enjoy – B+
“We’re all about love. We are always love, its just its just its just about music man.If you’ve got fans it means youre doing something right. If we can come over for you its a good look for us.”
I swear, at first glance I thought they’d misposted last weeks charts by mistake but no, the Avicii, which I quite like, is a new track from an old album. Otherwise, everything is where it was only you are there for your sins
Finally, 2015 hits the charts and while I am not crazy about #1, I am crazy about # 2, FOB’s best album ever and if it did this well in the UK, I wonder if it can take over from Meghan in the US? No, I don’t really like the new Belle & Sebastian but I approve of them as a concept.
One More – Ne-Yo And T.I. – This is better than average by both of them, Ne-Yo ha his usual buttery voice but the song is a beauty and T.I, underplays it nicely (it is obviously Ne-Yo’s song), the lyric sucks but it’s a goodie – B+
I laughed and laughed hard, sometimes. Sometimes I didn’t laugh at all. This is one man’s life and I’m happy, or maybe, sorry for him. He has everything,we are the schmucks who are paying to hear him deny his great good fortune (and genius) brings him happiness.
Yep, this is the song of the winter. With a slice of Pulp Fiction and a dash of “The Munsters” and, here, for the piece de resistance, boy of Zummer buddy Wiz Khalifa adding a verse of chronic, the one track that will put the band back at the top of the heap
The last time I saw Billy Idol on stage was 2001 at the Bottom Line. How long ago was 2001? You couldn’t not only not buy a tix for the show online, you also couldn’t buy a ticket to the show with a credit card. Solo acoustic (just Billy and Steve) and he was pretty superb
It sure seems to me as a little late to be pushing the product, plus, except for “Whiskey And Pills” none of it is all that hot. So yeah, serious problem for me. But the hits just keep on coming and just think of this, how many hits does this damn guy have? I lost interest at eight. So, yeah I’m psyched and here is the spotify list…
Napalm Death, Young Ejecta (I loved that song from earlier this year), the Lone Bellow, Papa Roach, Gov’t Mule??? Ne-Yo is closer but is albums are so inconsistent… I’m gonna go with I’m gonna go with Supergrass leader Gaz Coombes second solo album, I’ve heard none of it but that’s why I’m anticipating.
That’s weird, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers in reruns the same week? Why would that be? Surely they should keep new Myers if Fallon is off. So not much but at least there is Ellen Degeneres with Kanye West and Sam Smith on the same show! I would love Smith on a West track, maybe this can’t be the start.
It isn’t Joni’s fault this became a huge fucking cliche, it is everybody else’s faults. Including “moody quirky” Alva, and Jenny Lewis back up I’m ready for my close up Mr. DeMille Natalie Prass. Sure, a cliche and a half. Still, the voices are pretty amazing – B+
The riddle of Hendrix is not a riddle, all great musicians have a hole somewhere. We have glimpses of his youth, of what he left behind, and what he was doing, his nonchalent coolness to everyone, but we don’t have the image of what he was. Perhaps there is no way to find Jimi, where his love lives in, outside the music.
So does this mean when he said was scared for his life it was less that Swift would have him killed and more her fans would kill him? Well, that sounds much more likely. Swifties might certainly loath Diplp enough, and they didn’t even have to sit through his New year’s Eve show with Skrillex.
