Six of these albums are new to this week and of the old ones it certainly hits me as though Ross and Pharell might not have much staying power. Meanwhile, Frozen -which sucks by the way, has taken the world by storm and I can’t let it go.
Unable to decide whether to go with the original or the Bootleg Volume One version, Lucius mash em up and then take the throttled back up band and play it as a series of unfinished licks. And it works – B+
But in the end, it really is a consistently pretty good album. It doesn’t sound like there has ever been a time when it would be a huge hit but it also isn’t a drunken mess, it is a real thing.
So if you are in the market for four takes on “Candle In The Wind” and, astoundingly enough, four versions of “Grey Seal” on and on and only the non-LP B Sides worth your while and not many of them , this is the album for you. A stupendous horrendous bore
Berlin, featuring the stunning Terri Nunn, are going back on the road decades after “Take My Breath Away” lead New Wave mainstream and opened the floodgates. Hot on the heels of last year’s Animal, which is nothing if not rowdy dance crank stuff.
An elderly gentleman (Stellan Skarsgård as Seligman) finds a woman (Joe, Charlotte Gainsbourg) badly beaten in an alleyway. Joe refuses to go to the hospital because “she deserves” it and instead goes to his home where she lies in bed and tells the story of her nymphomania in flashbacks.
Baby Ride Easy – Johnny And Jane Carter Cash – So now we know where Dave Edmunds and Carlene Carter heard it, Johnny and June covering the song for one Billy Sherrill back in the 80s. Not bad, and the fiddle break is more than that, but Dave and Carlene jumped for joy all the way through their version – B+
A later generations Sly Stone releases a full set from circa Brown Sugar, twenty years after its expiration date and it is still better than just about anything else you might consider funk. There is no way to overstate the case for this album and if we are never getting another album and if he can’t release the Radio City Music Hall gig from 2000, this will do very nicely. ALBUM OF THE WEEK – A
Less of the ol’ personal jesus stuff and more thrills and chills and starring Ricky Gervais as the Muppet World Tour manager Dominic Badguy (“It means guy who is good”) and a most wanted frog in the world Constantin as the Kermit doppelganger
Really? This piece of bland out keyboard blues “Fever”? You are joking on me right. What do you think Peggy Lee makes of it? She must be laughing hysterically at this. Why didn’t the call it something else? How about head cold?
Easy to miss, because maybe Perrett was missing it himself (though on a song not on this album he would note “drugs are one thing we have in common”) , love drugs and death make a triumvirate and Peter moves from one to the other .
Does anybody in rock and roll have a better voice for a greater length of time than Chrissie Hynde? On her latest song, off the June 9 Stockholm, “Dark Sunglasses” even a drum machine can’t harm her.
I’ve Seen It All – Bjork – Off her Lar Von Trier movie, this is a spectacular nursery rhyme set to the chugachug of a train with smart aphorisms like “All walls are great if the roof doesn’t fall” while enhancing the strange sad “pennies from heaven” storyline – A
That means it will be a complete bitch to get one if you don’t have one and I don’t have one because I already saw the band without Gregg. And while I absolutely don’t regret having seen em now I’m obsessing about seeing the band with Gregg for the last last last stand!!
In one rehearsal hall babies were playing, in another hall three kids were playing keyboards and in yet another a makeshift rock band, the lead singer couldn’t have been 12 years old, would rehearsing Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re An American Band”.
I am excited for the new Hold Steady and always to hear from Barry Manilow. From what I’ve heard of Shakira I can’t claim to be thrilled at the concept of her newbie but I could be wrong. Yokyo Police Club? Sure, let’s rock. And to top it off Grieves all important sophomore effort and a great lost Johnny Cash album.
Sleeper Agent released the sleeper album of the year, a fine sophomore effort overflowing with hooks, melodies and potential hits. Followed by a surfeit of albums which can only sustain it with a song or two
This is pretty damn lame, second lame chart from the UK, the singles was better though very EDM heavy, meanwhile the albums chart is moldy MOR headed by the Westlife guy Kian Egan.
In other news, I bet Larry Blackmon is a happy man, not only is there a cover of his biggest hit working its way up the charts, it is the sort of cover which can only make him look good!
Fire Away – Skrillex – Very laid back for dance, rather than fire away it moves around a skittish drum pattern into waves of moogie distraughtness and straight up notes on a piano. We had a word for this when I was growing up, dubstep – C+
Seth doesn’t play off Fred at all well, and Seth uses the fifth man, the audience, very very poorly. During a frankly bizarre “Celebrity Spelling Bee”, whose main joke, they give two audience members difficult celebrity names and the third easy names, doesn’t remotely work, he fails to connect with a single one of the three.
Saturday saw the grand opening of School Of Rock -quite literally what it claims to be, a music school for children under the age of 18, on Douglass Street in Brooklyn. Owned by Mike Addesso, there was literally a line to sign up when I dropped by
Sure, you know Sam Smith through Disclosure’s “Latch” but if that’s not enough? The man has soul to burn and if you don’t believe me listen to the Londoner’s Nirvana EP or ask Taylor Swift who invited him to sing at her O2 gig ir best of all, check out Monday’s gig at Webster Hall. Sold out, of course.
Franklin’s Tower – Grateful Dead – Less a Dave Mason soundalike on this version, and less a dance marathon than the Allman Brother’s superb version of Friday, but not bad at all – B+
When is an Allman Brothers performance not an Allman Brothers performance? When the last remaining original Allman Brother calls in sick and for one night only it to the Haynes-Trucks Band.
From its shipshape construction, to its astounding feat of historical research, through its through the rabbit hole searching out of the USA from 1985 – 1963, “11-22-63” makes us believe the unbelievable.
In the mid-1990s I went back to the Bob Dylan of the 1980s and revised my opinion of his work that decade. At the time I thought it was a disaster, but with five years between myself and the end of the decade, I found myself returning and reappraising
I remember a time when word of a new Conor Obert album would have filled my heart with joy, but five years is a long time between masterpieces, isn’t it? I might say the same about Damon Albarn come to think about it. Nothing here makes my heart aflutter like a little schoolgirl except maybe the new Prefab Sproat
The Miss Piggy song is very fun and very funny, but except for the Sleeper Agent this is a song per album type deal. Freddie, The Floacist, Perfect Pussy, Black Lips: not one of them has worked through an entire album.
Spinners – The Hold Steady – For a band I like so much, these guys are sure hit and miss, either it is the same old riff up hook up with speak sing vocals or they nail it down like it is the only song that matters. This is the former except the guitar is tastier than it was, ringing and chiming like never before – B
With Billie she sends you into a free floating sort of vertiginous sinking to nowhere, like swimming in mud, but it is also a life raft, something real to cling to
Adly Syairi Ramly is an artist and music fan and apparently a lego who, in a surfeit of everything is awesome good vibes, has chosen to make lego figures of his favorite rock bands –which includes, for some obscure reason, the dreaded Foo Fighters
While I might shrug at the likes of an Adam Levine here or a Blake Shelton there sitting in chairs and trying not to sneer, isn’t Chris Martin meant to be the new Bono or something?
While the standard of living has dropped through the floor since 2009, concerts continue to price themselves through the roof. And for $70 you will get two assholes posing themselves to heroic extents. One of whom is a great rappe
Sleeper Agent have what early Rilo had and Paramore circled but didn’t quite nail down; melodic pop rock melodies by the bushel; they have so many they’d don’t seem to need deep album cuts, or the arty ones, or the prolonged jams.
Colored Spade – Lamont Washington – The President of the United States of love takes racial slurs and embraces them with more power than raps pre-empting of “nigga” some 20 years after “Hair” came out of the Public Theater – A
Yet, there is no fun in writing mean things about Rosanne. You kinda remember who she is, who her dad is, and I at least, am keenly aware of her humanity, that my zings hit someone I kinda like. Loved in the 80s before she got too serious for her own good
So any way the “Cold As Ice” and “Mr. Roboto” bands are playing a twofer at Prudential Center on June 26 and I swear I’m thinking about going. It is like part of the Middle America experience, as much a part as, say, going to see George Strait. It is a cultural identity even if it isn’t your cultural identity.
With a minimum of guest stars, basically just the Juke Horns and Robert Randolph and a catalog of blues magic, they seem to be rifling through their collective consciousness. Far blusier than boogier
I don’t think much of the brooding Soko’s sound, the French chanteuse has a brooding presence but not musch more. But the vdeo? A collaboration between Soko and Wren “a women’s wear brand” called “First Kiss” is awesome and sexy even if it is manufactured.
The album charts are so volatile it is like an earthquake. Yet again, six of these albums are new to the charts, it is like they just explode into outer space of sound. Whooomp. all all the charts, whooomp gone again. I have never seen the charts like this before.
The episode of “New Girl” featuring Prince was like Pixie and Dixie as they outshone each other in whimsy and twerk and the song itself is one of the worst Prince has put his name to. It is so cutesy you wanna scream and, surely Prince’s calling card, the beat is flat – D+
From the over textured drums that open the EP and “She gets me high, she gets me low” level of lyrics, to the generic anemic “The Sand I Brought To The Beach” plodder which finds Luke high and dry and lonely with his pals at Panama City, and the four songs in the middle, this is painful.
So, yeah Kid Cudi has this one brooding, introspective blue note synth deep bass sound and whether he is searching for life on the moon or sex on terra firma, he plays it over and over again and the ten song sudden release newbie does what he does and he does it well but he doesn’t do it exactly memorably.
Roving Eye – James Chance – Not only does Chance blow like a dream that is emerging out of a nightmare, he sings like a white boy coked out yelping twitching basket case channeling James Brown in the best way and this is a Ze Records peak from the early years.
Coming Of Age – Foster The People – This song makes a promise the album couldn’t keep, but this heavy textured beat and strong melodic mood seemed as though the band could move forward from “Pumpked Up Kicks” into a post-modern indie hybrid sound – A-
About Last Night – Sleeper Agent – Everything you wanted Paramore to be, everything Cage The Elephant claim to be, Sleeper Agent. This sophomore effort is astoundingly catchy power pop; one sure shot after another. Imagine Gwen Stefani leading Paramore, with a remarkable hit to misses count, if this doesn’t smash em through I’d demand a recount – ALBUM OF THE WEEK – A
I mentioned Spalding Gray, whose mother also committed suicide, earlier and this superb performance had the feel of a “Monster In A Box” played out in a comedy mode, Titus aim is deadly, his precision a laser and he has just about always on the money.
To claim “Nonstop” beggars the imagination is to damn it with faint praise. I will go along with Hitchcock’s damning of those reviewers obsessed with plausibility but as far as flying epics are concerned “Peter Pan” is more believable.
“Right away Louis Armstrong’s voice! It’s so sweet and smooth and inviting and deep. Then a white guy starts singing and it just doesn’t compare, it’s just so normal and Louie’s voice is like and angel and a puppy and a grandpa all rolled into one. It’s pretty euphoric”
