This is as far away from the livingness of “Kooks” as you can imagine. It is a drift that can barely lift its head into a oblivion. And oblivion is less inviting and more inevitable, Bowie is not laid back he is dulled out, he is a dull turned off inanimate blue.
It is all very studio driven and also all very deeply and quietly felt but unlike a little too much alt r&b it sounds very good as well, it isn’t flimsy and the songs have sticking power. At some point, SZA has to go further along than this chill jazz r&b sound. But not right now.
In 2014 he bristles so much he seems to made of tinder, his eager is so fragile it is constantly as display, his super-ego has taken a snooze, and his quality control has snapped. Springsteen is such a self-proclaimed genius he writes his own reviews now… and he likes his work very much.
“The Solipsist Awards” is so pointed it almost mocks its very reason for being and so accurate somebody should show it to the E Street Band. Awards are gratifying but there are too many of them. They are a barrage of feelgood.
I’ll say two things about NEEDTOBREATH, I keep forgetting they are born again Christians and I am still listening to their album with various degrees of pleasure. I’ll see this about Iggy -I underestimated the album earlier this week. I’ll say this about SZA, I overestimated the album when it was first released.
Hong Kong Gardens – Siouxsie And The Banshees – The purely disparaging colors Siouxsie is painted in Moz’s autobiography at least leaves some musical room to maneuver. Well, I’ll give her this one – A-
The nature of coming out about anything is fraught with dangers unknown. Whether it is real or not, whether you are the same person or someone else, simply expressing a truth about yourself is scary and it is one thing to come out to your friends, family, business colleagues.
Yeah, some guy right? Well, good enough for the Public Theater to honor him where the cheapest ticket is, er, $650…!!! Though if you got some real bucks to spend on this benefit for the Public theater? $100,000 a ticket for the Shakespeare table… Man, some people have money, don’t they? Not me, of course, I’m broke.
I would have recommended “Spring Awakening” though I understand the problems with the censor and the lack of family might make that unacceptable. But how about something huge and smashing like “Showboat”? Or the adaption of a movie, say “Singing In The Rain”?
The Wonder Years – Best Buy Theater – April 17th, 2014 – The sound of Young America trying to make sense of a world of diminished expectations and social desperation, sung by 20 somethings just a little bit wiser than their teenage fans.
Circle Of Life (Matt Zo Remix) – Carmen Twillie, Lebo M – Mind Bending remix which accentuates the African nature of both the vocals and the best to the exclusion of all else and is prove as to what electronic music can do with a master remixer – A
Don’t let the numbers, 240 songs and counting, fool ya, I decided not to update my much smaller in order of preference post because there weren’t enough killer tracks. Still, enough reall really good songs any rate.
Z – SZA – New r&b gets it right for once; temperate but crazed, sexual mood music by SZA,with the obligato rap added by the likes of Chance The Rapper who exactly captures the mood of hazed out sex; pure seduction and she doesn’t even know if she wants you.
Again, not the worst singles chart I’ve ever seen. The Azalea song is a real keeper and one I’d have missed if it wasn’t on the charts, proof positive that our fate lies not in the charts but in ourselves. I bet you wish you’d thought it up. Me? I wish it meant something.
Sheezus – Lily Allen – I think Lily is starting the wrong fight here, surely anything you can say about Lily Vs Katy you can say about DeRulo Vs Flo Rida –they’re all being exploited. Still, anybody who makes their hook “I’ve got my period” knows from post-pomo feminism – A-
“I’m really excited, because even though I’ve had seven Top 30 successes in America, only three of them are in the Top 10, so I’m kind of unknown there, and have no identity there. So for me it’s fantastic. I shall always be grateful to him for getting me a chance in New York, of all places, to be able to sing to 12,000 or more people.”
I hate it, and don’t do it, for all those reasons and more: I just despoise the unfairness of hitting people who are weaker than you are. Mental torture? Sure, it is part of being in love? But physical torture? That’s the worst way to leave your lover.
The couple who tours together gets to sell 70,000 seats together goes the old adage. Or rather doesn’t go the old adage, and it doesn’t rhyme either,. But it sure
damn Upton is a little knock out but don’t worry, she will grow old and wrinkled, but she looks as though she can’t follow the lyric which is kinda scary when you think about it, right? Still, you can’t have everything, hell I saw J Lo at Jingle Ball and she can’t dance or sing so how far back is Upton?
Cuando Nos Valvamos a Encontrar – Carlos Vives – My problem with Vives is he is too middlebrow, having said that here is a salsa exception with Marc Anthony joining in a rousing upbeat ballad – B
The Beauty Of Destruction – Devil You Know – Metalcore is easily my fave metal idiom and this debut album has quite a lot going for it, great singer, spanking bad ass drummer, and melodies that seem to be lurking inside the songs. I love things that do what they are built for – ALBUM OF THE WEEK – B+
Which means they will be missing the 20th anniversary of “Definitely Maybe” though the last thing I heard was they are reforming for Glastonbury and the fighting brothers in the Kinks might join em as well!
Like all of us, rock stars go through highs and lows, peaks and valley, just when you have the world you lose it all and just when things can’t go get any worse, everything clicks into place… for awhile. Here are some career peaks!
Colorful, musical (that’s Bruno Mars, and that’s Will I Am, and that’s Janelle Monae), it is a fun ride and even lovelier in 3D -every time you’ve got a lot of flying going on it will look nice in 3D
when I was young, I mean really young, maybe three years old, I dreamt I was an RAF pilot during the Second world war and shot down over the North Sea. I remember dreaming the plane was on fire and I was spiralling downwards. When I opened my eyes I was above my body looking down at me dead and then I was a child again safe in bed. I hadn’t even heard of WW2 at the time. Make of it what you will – A
This is a terrific, smart hard, fun… maybe the best album of the year, certainly a glorious surprise to hear the band still able to crank it up and out. They are gonna have a blast playing it live. A couple of months ago I was planning a “the decline and fall of Rhett Miller” article. He ain’t done yet.
It’s not just the superb bass lick finger picked all the way through through that makes it sound like a boxer bobbing on the toes of his feet, it is the waving Costello delivery till the knocked out “You can feel” at the end of the song.
While I kinda feel bad for the band, the other half of the equation is that KoL are such dicks they kinda have it coming. Anyway for four more days get tickets heavily discounted to their Bethel Woods gig as they put the group into Groupon.
Heavy duty dance chart, every song except maybe Legend. Like most things, the quality is all over the place though I will say Cash Cash and DJ Cassidy are well well well on top of their game
I’m surprised to see Eels on the UK charts, I didn’t realize he had a following in the UK and kicking myself for forgetting Paolo Nutini tickets were going on sale for his June 12th gig at Webster Hall. I did the same thing with Amy Winehouse years ago and didn’t scalp a ticket… maybe this time?
Avant Gardener – Courtney Barnett – Quite a year for chick singer songwriter with, how you say, forth right attitudes. This has been around since last summer and she sounds like Violent Femmes meets Lou Reed -(I know, I know) – B+
I saw em at the magical 2012 Jingle Ball and then a year ago at the IZOD Center though I decided to give the Metlife gig this August a miss. If it had been a weekend I might have made it there but it isn’t worth that late at a night.
After the dreadful Everyday Robots, I am loath to give props to any 1990s icon without hearing it first but the first single “Longer Than You’ve Been Alive” is so great, I gotta feeling this is Rhett Miller and the rest of Old 97’s return to greatness..
I really love the new Peter Stampfel album and I am kicking myself for the opportunity to catch the great man at Mercury Lounge last week. Better Than Expected might not have lived up to its name but that’s mostly because expectations are so high.
The King of the six string guitar Bucky Pizzarelli is bringing two of the top swing guitarists Frank Vignola and Vinny Raniolo along for a full on jazz party at the Cutting Room this Friday. Expect American Standards aplenty as well as deeper stuff like Gypsy swing and three guitar finger picking battles.
Fever On The Bayou – Rodney Crowell – What a tinglingly wonderful singalong country swamp song, it rolls off the tongue and snaps like a frog at a flea – A
In what seems to be something like a vanity project, do you do it at all? Plus, will Elton deal with sobriety robbing him of so much of his creative gifts on Rocketman? And when, in what part of his life exactly, did John resemble Hardy?
The Kooks artistic decline continues unabated and it is really a pity because somewhere or the other they have that something that can lead to real rock success stories. . Lay off the birds, Luke, write better songs.
Thanks to the wonderful invention of moving pictures, The Last Night of Monty Python is coming to a cinema near you. Get your knotted handkerchiefs out and warm your brains one last time at any one of 450 cinemas across the UK, and 1,500 across the world.
Whether simulating fellatio (time after time and after time), warbling 70s MOR hits, breaking down when the man she loves leaves her, leading her band through rough house rocker songs, or lap dancing with audience members, Harris gives it a lot of stick, but he can’t save a misguided show.
The great WW2 English songwriters Art Noel and Don Pelos (they did “Kiss Me Goodnight, Sergeant Major”) find a way too make the conceit on this singalong stick in your throat along with the childlike rhymes because whenever you’re singing “nursie nursie imma getting worsie” maybe you’re not thinking high concept but you are thinking danger. Where there is a nursie there is an injury – A
Damon ties nostalgia to luddite wisdom to romantic disillussionment and comes to the conclusion that modern technology is turning us into robots of sorts. We suffer from a form of emotional malaise. we are forgetting how to feel. The problem with that is it isn’t true. This is a bad album of torturous songs
There are simple rules to this world and one is that every time an idea because an organization, the idea dies and the organization fulfils its reason for being. RSD sucks, because it isn’t what it might once have been, a free spirited get together of likeminded folks, it is a big business collectors degeneracy
Everything cools down to room temperature and therefore we are all gonna freeze to death when that happens to the sun. And the axiom is actually true of rock stars. Take a look at Pharrell Williams.
I realize I am not the target audience for this stuff but there is no excuse for the tuneless “Let It Go” -a huge lumbering behemoth of belch. As for “Do you Want to Build A Snowman”, “For the First time In Forever”, there are reasons why kids love em, they don’t have to be able to sing in tune to sing em because THEY HAVE NO TUNE.
Rodney Crowell makes an appearance with a hat in the ring country song of the year, as do the bluegrass Seldom Scene, the Stampfel album is a real treasure and Bruce releases a fair EP. I guess Bruce got the memo: keep your name out there.
From The Underworld – The Herd – The first time I can remember seeing a stripper was either Rita Hayworth in “Gilda” or some women dancing along to this excellent full wall of sound symphonic pop song from the mid 1960s. Waiting for the horns – A
. While it doesn’t fit together as a theme or even as a presentiment of country, it does as a collection of strong songs from the same pen; a vision of a sound that will always have an audience.
This would make a fun on going column, right? Helen Bach wrote one about Chrissie Hynde yesterday Some big time rock star gives a big interview but not to rock nyc? The list is almost endless
What Arcade Fire did was prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. They showed how, indeed, Daft Punk could be and are and would be and might be anybody. It is the opposite of anybody can be a star, the new punk ethos appears to be nobody at all can be a star.
