50% of these songs I heard at Friday’s Diana Krall gig, 50% of these songs I heard while writing my album round up. I said the Art Brut album would be great and it most certainly is terrific, and as for Tom Waits, I saw him sing this at the Beacon in 1999 and the verse Diana gave us was much lovelier!
In some ways, Shell Shag are a folkie indie DIY iteration of Yo La Tengo, an exciting exploration of love and monogamy, strength through love and friendship. A clear eyed view of love and how love can bring you through to the other side.
My expectations are sky high for 2013 and with days to go, who they will get is anybody’s guess. RZA, I bet he is a real possibility, Pharrel has been busy, Black Hippies? But they just played here so maybe not. Freddie Gibbs? Public Enemy played the other day so not so fast this year.
The graphic designer whose Hipgnosis design house, was behind all those Pink Floyd album covers, Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, the whole lot. As well as Led Zeppelin and Peter Gabriel album covers. Something of a lost art form in the digital age, or at least not really necessary, Storm, a childhood friend of David Gilmore, was the vision of Pink Floyd. Cancer took him to the great gig in the sky at the age of 69.
Cafe Nights Comes Alive!!! Before Jack Phillips changes genre’s yet again, his eagerly anticipated new album will be all blues and boogie, here is an opportunity to hear his last album, a personal favorite of mine, Cafe Nights In New York, performed live.
Senseless murders, senseless murders, all we ever get is senseless murders. So there are many reactions and most of them are various degrees of bewilderment. This one would be much better if it wasn’t just two stupid assholes but whatever. Unless it was your 8 year old son blow to bits, life carries on one way or the other. Still, the Metal fest would have been entirely within their rights to let down thousands of teenage boys (and Helen Bach) by cancelling the show in Worcester. It is too their credit that they decided the show must go on. Our reviews are forthcoming.
There is one known plus to getting your name in our obie column “Golden Slumbers”, you are dead but your music is being listened to, and #7 thru #10 are all reflective of recent deaths. The recently departed Dean Drummond played with Harry Partch and is represented with two songs here, the vocals hurt Drummons goth creaking horrorshow. Oh, and the new Daft Punk is a very very good slce of modern disco (not so much modern electronica)
A video series of reviews featuring rock nyc writer Mary Magpie giving you her reviews in person (here she is in her bedroom -note the 45s on the wall!). May and her Mommy, editor Helen Bach, have been at rock nyc nearly since its inception and my admiration for both women has grown and grown.
If 1939 was Holly wood movies greatest year, was 1959 televisions highlight. Did we never get better than Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Lucille, George And Gracie… it really is an age that resonate with me much more than 2013
Essentially, songs are banned for only sex and politics, sometimes drug references are thrown in for good measure. And back in the day? No flippant references to God, indeed, no references at all if you please.
Lo-fi hi-fi, digitized art damage spoken word, all that neat stuff is doing fine except rents are so extortionate in the city they are either moving to Brooklyn (like the Knitting Factory) or closing down.
Charlie XCX has been opening for Ellie Goulding and singing with Icona Pop and for good reason, the 20 year olds electro pop debut album is a humdinger. In a very good week for music, Fall Out Boys, Kid Cudi, and most of all ShellShag jave just released good albums and in Shellshag’s case, career defining records.
A swirling soundscape like an acoustic Phish in pop mode, interrupted by subtle pauses and one note segues and somewhere near the middle of the beginning of the end, this: hidden behind all the logic one finds without the truth
With their new album, Random Access Memories, after the up to nothing much 2010 Tron: Legacy soundtrack , Daft Punk are back to trying to prove they are human after all
“Its absurd that the squeaky voiced songstress with the absurd accent has been around that long.”. Absurd and exhilarating
Demi is back after the toweringly crappy “Skyscraper”, she kisses and makes upwith a halfway decent and sure it is product but rather good dance product than overcooked emotional vacuums. I’ve always liked demi, she plays her role as the all too human bff with panache. So i am happy to like a song by her as well.
Under normal circumstances I would be uniformly baffled by the success of Paramore, but this isn’t that. This is their best album to date and a complete triumph for Hayley. She deserves.
#1 – #5 all new releases with the Fkaming Lips taken pride of place just because it is such an uncompromising piece of pop, # 6 is a tp of the hat to Biffy Clyro for such a terrific opening set on Monday, and the last four are in immense admiration of the Monkee with the wooly hat.
Of the Brit rock supergroups to invade and remain in the States, only three matter, and of the three Muse are the least popular and the best. But what does that say? That Matt Bellamy abstains from Chris martin’s mewling egotism and Bono’s Messianic braggadocio for a plainspeak rock star singlemindedness?
The band are pros, neither in awe or nor indifferent to their surroundings, the set is a jet propelled wonder so good live, you have to wonder if it’s the producer who is botching the job on record.
Chi Chi Cheng – The Deftones first bassist, Chi Chi played with them from beginning and on their first five albums, including their breakthrough 2000’s White Pony. The loud/soft metal grunge coming of age party happened here, moving metal past both. In 2008, Cheng was in a car crash and never fully recovered. He was 42.
“Chicken Heads” is a blues classic I had never heard of, “my mama told me on her dying day, give up tour heart but never lose your head, you come along girl what did i do? lost my heart and my head too”. Hyper Crush are an electronic hip hop dance band who have opened for Far East Movement. OMD have a good new album Lavigne a good new single and I dreamt I was listening to Browne’s first album last night.
When I was a wee pup of, well not that wee, of 19, I flipped out over Wings Over America, McCartney’s triple detailing the Wings US concert to sold out arenas in private jets with mullet haircuts and kids in the luggage.
“Mama” is haunting the kids, a chimp has super intelligence, and the answer is somewhere in a cabin in the woods. It all ends very well for everyone but Mama and Sheen and Lohan.
Guy played in Howling Wolf’s band, he played with Muddy Waters, BB King,al of them, in the finishing end, the 1960s, just before that generation of blues greats who began electric guitar Chicago blues, before they died, he played with them. That isn’t credentials, that’s life experience.
Some week right? Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I am not convinced, I’ll have to listen to a little more, Fall Out Boys, Meat Puppets, Kid Cudi, an album considered to be their big break through for Shell Shag, Meat Puppets, a hugely buzzed Iron & Wine, Flaming Lips. This could be a year defining week. But best of all. An Art Brut greatest hits, one of my fave bands, the UK rockers are ready for prime time and this might do it.
Obviously, a lot of this chart reflects what I’m writing about., 70% of this chart is a direct reflection of writing about new singles and Wings. I guess that is part of the search for sound, what comes first the post or the song?
a perfect rap pop hook on a great production, certainly one of Pusha’s great moments, behind the Kanye masterpiece and the Tyler featuring track. Even Jay-Z is real good here, a small but a powerfil verse that blows away “Open Letter” There is something very unbecoming about a man as powerful and rich as Hova non-stop fucking whining.
If you have are an opening band with one hit you must play the one hit. If you have three hits, play all three. People don’t really know who you are, it is up to you to sell the product and hard. If the audience recognizes a song, so much the better.
Peter Yarrow at a Sunday 1pm show at the Highline Ballroom and for a great charity, the Gift Of Life Bone Marrow Association? How can you miss it?
In a small country, like minded citizens can come together to make a political statement on the charts like right here, where one of the most divisive figures in UK modern political history has her death celebrated by the Unions and lower middle class constituents she did so much to disenfranchise respond with a sneer and a whoop. BBC Radio won’t play it on the Top 10 Countdown.
The Paramore album is a biggie for me right now, but otherwise I would be interested to heard how O
80s craze? Martha and OMD, one oldie, one newbie, both 80s, and to my mind, OMD is better than Depeche Mode so there. Both Psy and Paramore are working there way into my top 10 tracks of 2013. As for Brad Paisley, if only the song was good maybe I could care less.
Not up to G-Dragon levels but G-Dragon may well be too clever for a world audience. “Gentleman” isn’t just clever enough, completely clever enough, but not so it suffers from culture shock for the masses
He doesn’t lack heart, he lacks soul. There is something facile about Wings and that’s coming from a fan at least some of the time. And a huge McCartney fan because Macca is probably the greatest melodist of the 20th century
Terrific last December with the Monkees, but he was leaning hard on his Monkee hits and Michael Nesmith isn’t even leaning hard on, or at all except for “Different Drum” on his And The Hits Just Keep On Coming album on his current solo tour. But this Tuesday at Town Hall, who really cares. It is one of the great relatively unsung songwriters on our times. So go
Paramore – Paramore – The shake up did the band a world of good, gave Hayley a sense of mortality, mostly romantic mortality but still, tightened up their song craft, weeded out the lesser songs, cleared the mind, She still thinks too much with her hose and plimsoles, and at the bands worse they come across like a poor man’s No Doubt, but at their best, maybe half he tracks here, they are a full power rock pop band with an ear for a hook. ALBUM OF THE WEEK – A-
The thing about Lou Reed is that while he may well be a raging misanthrope, he can write great songs, like this one off Legendary Hearts. Meanwhile, with the exception of a smashing Paramore and Alkaline track, this is all Blues all the time, where a self-avowed non Blues fan is wowed by the late Albert King and the current Buddy Guy and BB King, magically revived Friday night.
In the end, this was about BB King and Buddy Guy and Chicago Blues, at least that’s my story!
On the strength of the first commercial, somebody somewhere must be awful damn pleased with themselves. It is a doozy. Spliced with Taylor writing the cheerful party song “22” in her bedroom behind the stage at a concert, at a diner drinking diet coke.
City Parks Foundation are having their annual Fundraising Gala on June 11th and the concert part of it will be produced by Michael Dorf. He will be performing his best trick, getting performers to cover material by a single artist.And this year it will be the greatest singer of the 20th century being tributed
Who knows who believes what, but me? I do know that Bieber is a plank and this is being said right now for publicity purposes. The Pastor was interviewed by E! News: in the words of the poet OMG!
Yes, I am officially a Hayley fan , at least till Paramore’s Hammerstein gig in May, but also, and this is a shocker, an Avril Lavigne fan, though really, why is she playing RADIOHEAD loud, cmon at least Atoms For Peace. As weeks go, this is the best in a month or so.
I’ve been working on that personalities in rock post and of course, Van The Man won the award as the meanest man in rock and roll. Fair enough is my feeling, when you can write songs like this ode to a glamor model, you can be as ornery as you like and then some.
The Data Lounge aka the daily fix of gay gossip, news and pointless bitchery made a thread of brushese with greatness aka meet a famous musician, the good, the bad and the buggered
It is a little too early to go to town on “The Talkhouse” too nastily, but I better hurry up because you can bet a paywall is in the works. The websiteit just stinks of obsequious star fucking, it is too “Artists May Log In Here”
Muse are an old fashioned band with all the trappings, Matt can sing falsetto, he can get way way up there, and so, of course, Led Zep come into play. And their lyrics are like an XBox 360 come to life: resistance is futile but we will fight them in the trenches.
No longer lead guitarist on the Bon Jovi tour, rumors surround his leaving. 1. Bon booted Richie because he was always drunk. 2. Richie quit over money. 3. Richie quit though no one knows why. Me? I think Sambora woke up with a odawful hangover and couldn’t do it and couldn’t think up an excuse. Stories of Jon’s wife wanting an alcohol free environment while Sambora was drinking and bimboing heavily sounds kinda true but enough to fire him? I don’t see how? And rumors of CEO Jon Bon Jovi cheaping Sambora (Van Halen share their bucks just about as much as Bruce does with the E Street Band) sounds self-defeating.
50% of this is new, and the real keeper is the great new song by Avril. The other half? Pissed Jeans headliner at the Bowery Ballroom is tonight. The National, Paramore and Yeah x 3 are all prime oldies.
It’s been nearly fifteen years since Brad broke through, eight years since “The World” and the man needs a rest. Enough of these too clever by half albums
