If you are a pop music fan circa 2014 there should be no second guessing this list, half of the songs are in my best of 2014 list already and another three might slip their way in. This feels like a golden age of pop music, and while I know my peers will laugh themselves sick at the prospect, still you show me a playlist with Tay, Sam, Minaj and Jessie J and I will show you some very strong state of the pop art stuff.
Paisley is growing on me though I don’t expert that will last. Kem deserves the position though a ton more sales, and Wiz gives pot a bad name. He is Cheech and Chong without the sense of humor. So, yeah, this isn’t a thrilla and sales are bottoming out.
Clear – Christopher Willits – Wall of synths like your stuck in hotel room while the sound of the ocean created on protools is piped in and you can’t figure whether to complain or request they up the dolphin singing a touch – B
It is a triumph of meh and let me state here that my problem with Adele (though it has sometimes been her phrasing) has never been her singing. My problem has been her material, which is such moldy heavy emoting it drives me up the wall. The proof is these two songs, where this great singer is only ever as good as her songs.
If I wanted to start a fight I might claim it isn’t so ambitious, it is just what it is and no more. But my heart wouldn’t be in it, not when what Singles Mothers is is one perfect song after another. Justin is a musical genius, one of our greatest living songwriters and this is a great achievement.
A song about a song about being in love, the melody written in 1927 by Hoagy Carmichael, the lyric by the sublime Tin Pan Alley lyricist Michael Parrish, Hoagy was 28 at the time! Covered and covered and covered, this is the version to find with Armstrong half mumbling, half emoting the sweet dream of a dream of a memory lyric “Sometimes I wonder why I spend the lonely nights dreaming of a song, the melody haunts my reverie and I am once again with you.”
In a nation of 317 Million people less than 4 million buy a record album on average, Around 1% of the population, according to Billboard. what does this mean? It means the album is no longer functioning as the music currency of choice.
River Bank” is much better than I thought it was, it isn’t “The Word” but it is pretty clever and catchy, most of the rest of this isn’t real songs: YOB and Lily Taylor specifically but also, how about Half Japanese? With Fair’s sing speak voice?It is not quite songs, is it?
Happy Idiot – TV On The Radio – If I hadn’t seen the band in June at Governors Ball, and if I hadn’t streamed a couple of tracks during the mid-summer, this would constitute a major bummer, a less than thrilling piece of electronic rock – B+
Forget I Brought It Up – Grey Gordon – If your thing is pop-punk I may well have the album of the year for you. This Fort Wayne, Indiana native has pulled off a melodic hard rocking fuzz from time to time, on the money always. The first song, “Barstools And Haricuts”sets the tone, nice back beat for a song you are whistling before it’s over -ALBUM OF THE WEEK – B+
Caroline Kole – The Bitter End – August 13th, 2014 – An almost perfect hour of modern country pop by the finest young singer to mine the much ignored genre since, well, since Taylor Swift. who she resembles in attitude and who she could could replace for a certain section of the audience, her peers and a little younger, who Taylor is slowly leaving behind or never quite had.
Nobody handles his age with the intelligence that Leonard does in this song, because as terrible as the world is, and it is pretty horrifying stuff, but it is nowhere as blue as his own mortality and mine of course, nothing smarter this year that’s for sure.
if I was in London I’d have been checking out art rocker turned hofstra Kate Bush, a singer I like much more in theory than in practice. Still, who first gig in more than decades was a theatrical event alright. Kate’s problem is the same as it ever was, she isn’t as good as I think she is.
Carousel Ride – Rubblebucket – This indie band have been around for years waiting for their dance pop to hit, and this track off the new one is a smart addictive roundabout of a track and it just might do the job; Annakalmia Traver has the voice for the job – B+
It wasn’t that extreme and nobody says it was. Two hours of flash flooding is not enough to excuse cancelling the entire proceedings and, I might add, two deaths wasn’t enough to cancel last year. if two people die in an accident on the highway, can no one use it for two days? If you knew them, it is a tragedy, if you didn’t it’s an incident.
The playing is clean, immaculate, perfect, very controlled, very at service to the song and where Dan gets his hands dirty is on the vocal tour de force, amazing blues singing that barrels down on song after song and reaches its, and Angels n Devils, zenith with “Wade County Jail”
Tahliah Debrett Barnett aka Formerly Known As twigs, is the most exciting thing to happen to UK soundscape soul pop since Lana del Rey and like Lana she doesn’t sound like anything else: a deeply arranged indie soul hybrid. Imagine if Massive Attack had been so big 1D and a girl in Gloucestershire, England, became completely obsessed with them…something like that.
Two songs, released the same day, Taylor’s “Shake It Off” and and Leonard Cohen’s “Almost Like The Blues”, a third, around for awhile but finally hitting home FKA twigs brilliant “Lights On”, and a fourth, rock ny’s band Je’June’d excellent “picotement” ran away with the month.
“Rariworkout” is awesome, Grime meets EDM, the raps are very English, very Brixton or wormwood scrubs but the beats are international and very dance steadying, very House, not dub at all, nothing deep more like a chattering mail biter. Excellent song, hope it hits the US charts.
A not untypical UK chart, made whole by the two Kate Bush albums, an obvious relection of her return to performing after a 35 year absence. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive but what on earth does that prove, right? Otherwise, Royal Blood are like a lively Black keys or a Jack white not tripping over his ego, But not as good as that sounds.
South Georgia Sugar Babe – Justin Townes Earle – “My baby, she’s half as crazy as me, and like I said it’s been a long time…”. The genes coming through, the flex of the writing muscle, and the long instrumental bridge, all comes together on an early minor classic – A
I am not sure if he is singing, but if he is singing Mandy Patinkin is an absolute riot in full blown cabaret mode and must be seen at least once. Letterman has the New Pornographers, Fallon has Maroon 5, Anything else: oh yeah, the name of the column, people have been stopping me in the streets to inquire. James Wolcott had a Village Voice column called Media Cool, playing on the name of the 1960s fictional-documentary “Medium Cool” which I went back to here.
Don’t get too excited over the James Taylor album, it is not just a 2004 album, it is also just a covers album, and that leaves you with the Kooks on one hand and Jeezy on the other fighting it out for most anticipated album of the week but neither of em have particularly good singles spun off and Maroon 5 have two out of three (“Animals” is too generic), plus Adam Levine is the one pop star who can bring it live. So yup, Maroon 5 by a bottled blonde.
My love battery wants to charge you…I haven’t seen the Buzzcocks on stage in the better part of thirty years though I remember catching em at the Palladium on the Different Kind Of Tension tour, the Fall opened if memory serves… Man, they were great. Titus Andronicus are opening, I haven’t seen them in a couple of years after catching em around once a month at the turn of he decade. Saturday at Webster Hall
I’ve been consistently rough on Paisley. The first time I saw him, Brad’s first album had yet to be released and he was opening for Loretta Lynn at the Town Hall. I haunted Tower records waiting for that album to be released. This song puns prettily on the bank portion of the title – A-
The singer stood by while two men discussed the sale of cocaine and examined 20 kilos of the narcotic. Two days later, Banton and two other men were arrested and charged with conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute cocain
In 2012, and despite a lousy live show, I called Justin Townes Earle’s Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now the album of the year and though
Poor wee Calum (I haven’t seen the vid so I am assuming the wee portion of that statement) has learnt what children understand, and what all of us understand in this post-everything moment where the only privacy that remains lies somewhere in the wrinkles of you brain and are activated through thought
ITunes gave away $125,000 for no reason whatsoever. Publicity? I guess you can consider it a kind of advertising, right? I mean, all the people who bought it plus all the people who wrote about it and all the people who are writing about it? It can’t be to drum up interest,
I sat with Robert Plant for a talk and when I say sat with Robert Plant for a talk what I mean nu sat for a talk is cut and pasted an interview he conducted with Lane Brown of New York Magazine and tilled it for any interest, but no stabbing Page in the back, no chariots of the gods, not a sausage
I Can’t Pretend – The Drums – Quirky where the Drums used to swing, this is a strange soundscape version of one of my favorite bands and while it still has the voice, it lacks the surfness and sensibility – B
When Bruce wrote Outlaw Pete he didn’t just write a great song, he created a great character. The first time I heard the song this book played out in my head. Like Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Dorothy Gale and, for me, even Popeye, Outlaw Pete cuts deep into the folklore of our country and weaves its way into the fabric of great American literary characters.”
I won’t go to a music festival without a VIP pass and I am not the slightest bit elitist I promise you, I just can’t see any percentage in checking out a band from a million miles away. It is all downside and if you won’t or can’t pay the freight, you won’t or can’t get close, well, what you are getting is what you paid.
You know why time flies when you run a music website? Because you are always planning three months in advance and so, already, it is time to thank about CMJ’s
Nothing is gonna get you too close to Bowie because Bowie has never wanted you to get too close to him. Perhaps his greatest gift was to be so much to so many people while maintaining a mystery, a mystery “Is” doesn’t come close to mastering.
I don’t believe the Kinks without Dave is the Kinks, it is something else. Ray might as well get an orchestra again: “Yes, it would. I think it’s all down to the music. If somebody can’t or won’t play, there are other players out there. Mick and I want to do it.”
Now is your chance to vote but don’t bother with a Taylor Swift or something (though Tay doing a Diana Ross would be a blast) because then you’d never get in. I would actually love True Groove Records to get their own day. Anyway vote as you choose: here is the info.
Nearly 600K units moved in the first week, tops in streaming without any streaming services having it, and the fourth most popular first week if akk time AND Taylor already owns another one of them (“Never Ever, etc…”) and, her 60th (yes you read that right, right. It looks like a typo!) Top 100 song. Man, our girl can bring it.
Ancient Ways – Interpol – A nice stirring of the pot roiling and reeling sound by a band I have never liked in the slightest but have pulled off a pretty good little ambient rocker – B
To quote the great man to the great man, I’d see him in anything, I’d stand in line. But even by those standards, four nights at the Beacon Theater? Wow!! Friday November 28th, Saturday, November 29th, Monday, December 1st and Tuesday December 2nd, 2014.
This was a man who had found his place in the pop world and knew how to perform it. Playing Vegas was not playing Haight Ashbury and although Presley was only 35 years old, he was not embraced the way it should’ve been by the the generation he spawned.
So, Helen Bach, our editor cum PR maven, sent me a link from Warner Brothers announcing the release of two new albums. I thought about writing about it, but it hardly seemed worth interrupting the days flow to rush it out. I mean, so what? Nothing personal but it is hardly the most exciting story I’ve ever heard
The major labels steal lesser luminaries material as a rule of thumb. The artists don’t pay em, don’t give em props, the labels screw em over, and they never break through and never get credit for their music. It has always been a rough business but right now it is rougher than rough. Man it is a deadly business.
I hope that song at the top grows off me because the last thing I wanna be doing for the next month is typing out. Meanwhile, everything here is quite good and the Black Keys is a little better than quite good. An ordinary week but not without its pleasures.
Guts Over Fear – Eminem And Sia – Sia was born to sing the hook on hip hop songs, she drags royal over her own stuff, “Chandelier” eas a true bore, but her voice adds gravity, here she has more power then Rihanna ever does, to rap songs – B+
They missed it by this much when indie rock hit it big at the turn of the decade, but they are really pretty smart and pretty sound indie rockers who like, actually, rock hard enough. Early on “XR” sounds like Dropkick Murphys, impressive at any time, more so when you realize how deadly earnest John D’Agostino’s story songs are – ALBUM OF THE WEEK- – B+
In “September Grass”, Taylor is lying in the grass with a woman, and he feels secure and so small, so far away, like tiny, he compares him and his girl to ants on a leaf of grass and the huge world is surrounding them but they are ignoring it. Their smallness and their togetherness protecting them from the world, their insignificance is their freedom and that is exactly how I felt
For all the daring do of switching the young Smith with the 26 years older Capaldi, the problem isn’t age, the problem is charm offensive and weirdness -when you don’t like the Doctor or his companion, maybe it is time to take a break from the series? Next week is a Daleks story, so the week after that should tell the story.
I’ve held off writing too much about Robin Williams suicide because there isn’t that much to add except, look it was his life, his kids are grown up, he left them money, he had problems, he was a manic depressive and if he wanted to kill himself, what business is it of the vastly overrated Henry Rollins. who got it wrong. Again.
Carolina – Kimbra – A kitchen sink approach to indie pop with sounds layered upon sounds, a funky back beat, shimmering stuff shimmering and is that birds chirping at the end? A fun ride but not her best song – B-
