I guess I’m a feminist in as much as I have never hit a woman once, even when she kind of deserved it, but Liz just knocked it out of the park on that album. A strong statement that just stuck a finger into the eye of every flannel clad prick in Chicago who decided he was going to start a grunge band
I have to accept that his greatness hasn’t managed to survive the decades intact. So maybe he is very much of his time, maybe he was such a cusp superstar, such a harbinger of the new century, he hasn’t quite managed to move forward. But songs as great as “All Apologies”, “Heart Shape Box” “Negative Creep” “About A Girl”… maybe they are ripe for re-discovery for the voice of a generation, beyond it all
All You Had To Do Was Stay – Taylor Swift – An electronic masterwork, all 808s and multi layered and falsetto underlining, but as catchy as hell and for a deep track, Taylor recently claimed 1989 was an album during which she had no romance, but the edges of romance are all over it – A
In 2015, when, if Prince chose to, he could write, record and release a song in an hour, we are still wauiting for his response to the civil unrest in Baltimore. And when we get it, he is releasing the song via Tidal to absolutely insure that 99.9% of the people who hear his great moment of protest HAS TO STEAL IT.
I prefer new Mariah to new U2, so what do I know. I may be the only person in the world to adore last years Me. I Am Mariah, a fine album marred by a crap name and way way way too many songs. But I loved it any way and regret blowing off the Beacon Theatre Christmas run (the bad taste from a lousy New Year’s Eve 2010 gig lingered), if it had been the show that just opened at the Coliseum in Ceasar’s Palace, I’d have found a way to catch it
“This event celebrates the world’s longest running science fiction TV series, features award-winning music written by Murray Gold and features well over 100 musicians, singers, and monsters live on stage”
Whipkey’s strong lyrical command and virtuoso guitar work is equally mesmerizing. He’s currently touring his much- anticipated follow up “Underwater”, a collection Rock NYC raved as a, “Purists dream of electrified awesomeness.”
Feeling Good – Avicii – The DJ-Producer continues on his electronic way into the middle of the road with this big brassy record reworking of Nina Simone’s epic track. Produced in league with Volvo, and I bet the commercial is a killer. Still, the entire enterprise is a little heartless, a brassy but minimalist. That’s Audra Mae from “Addicted To You” taking you out – B-
T Wayne is a sticky mo fu from the Lone Star State, “Money Freestyle’ was a pretty good earlier song, but ‘Nasty Freestyle is even better: a Texan accent and a slur weed voca with a sing songy braggard deluxe. The first line, “First lemme hop out the motherfuckin’ Porsche, I dont want her if that ass don’t sit like a horse” was so good, Vine users had a competition as to who could lip synch to it best.
They were announcing the FYF fest lineup this morning on KCRW, just when I was driving to work, and I have heard the big news which will probably please half of Los Angeles and beyond: Morrissey is headlining!! Good luck with that Sean Carlson! Have you been thinking about a plan B, because Morrissey may cancel at the last minute. But seriously, are you ready for a vegan FYF fest? Because he will demand it, right?
Hot Chocolate had the distinction of performing truly soulful UK disco, they sounded like nobody else as they stretched their way through 15 hits in the 1970s and while I never saw them live on stage, Hot Chocolate exuded a more knowing egotism then either the white disco of the Bee Gees, or the more universal black disco of Tavares. They were like the last line of defense before Chic changed the landscape
I hope there never comes a time I my life, even if I am no longer writing about music, but merely a civilian buying tickets to Taylor Swift concerts like all you plebs (actually, I am a civilian buying Taylor tickets like all you plebs), when I can look at the names Zac Brown and Josh Groban at the top of the charts and not throw up in my mouth.
This year looks pretty damn good as well. Another West Coast superstar, Mikal Cronin, headlining among the first list of names, and undoubtedly we will be getting some names as we get closer. July 11th, right after Independence Day, so there is an added plus.
Prior to anyone seeing this film, the ‘Holocaust deniers,’ as I like to refer to them, started writing conspiracy theories about my movie,’ he said. ‘Now this is before anyone’s seen a frame
So I say this is great when a simple tune makes you aware of somebody who may have been otherwise forgotten, because Nellie was a totally badass riot grrrl. a true feminist a century before it was trendy, or not!
Heartbreak Hotel – Elvis Presley – # 1 in the charts the year I was born, this stark, grown up blues, is stunted in despair and stark as a threadbare transient hotel, everything about this is nightmare and horrifying, including the solo – A+
I have a feeling that Mr. 5 x 5 and I will see each other again…for he is truly a remarkable singer and talent and one can really never know if he’s coming or going. Folks, get into some Rushing, y’all can thank me later, and you will… so try jumpin’ with the fat man
I am happy to hear New York represented upfront, “New Romantics” is a little odd for the second song, and “Blank Space maybe a touch early? Since Taylor isn’t given to encores, I guess there was no reason to leave it for a late sock in the jaw. “Love Story” didn’t get a bigger than anything else reception, as much to do with the mammoth success of the newbie no doubt. All five from Jingle Ball 2014 are represented…
Hollis Brown are really local local kids, they are from Queens, my ‘hood, and like Bayside, another local team, I don’t give em nearly enough love and listening to their more than solid new album 3 Shots. Which I haven’t even written about yet, though I sure do plan to
Why We Live Here – Tyler Farr – Not as bad as you thought it was, I find it hard to agree with a man who has a gun and a bible near his bed -neither of which I would touch with a ten foot pole but some stuff works conceptually and this does. Plus it sounds good… ps I knew he’d get to the beer eventually – B+
Cold Stares (feat Chance The Rapper And Maceo Haymes ) – Nosaj Thing – Knockout modern blues song full of trepidation and moment, it stifles its own power in a throbbing discretion of sound; the vocal is lovely and the concerns are threatening: it is like Chance nervous and upset – A
Traveller – Chris Stapleton – Country songwriter Chris sure can write em, this is the real deal country balladeering that needs no excuse at all and no time no annouce itself. Two drinking song, a devil song, travelling tracks and lots and lots of heartache, superb playing (the best harp since David Barnes) and songs, songs and songs. George Strait should cover every song – ALBUM OF THE WEEK – A-
I really had no clue when this mysterious band was opening for Lightning Bolt at the Echoplex on Sunday night, and they turned out to be a very experimental electronic duo, using a giant harp and a table full of electronics, and making a sort of lugubrious horror-movie soundtrack.
I am not claiming she had to perform if she wasn’t well enough to perform, I am claiming she needed to give an account of herself. I wish Prass a long and healthy career, but if she ever isn’t healthy, I wish her the good manners to explain herself properly.
For one thing, as The Monitor producer Kevin McMahon, once told me, Stickles makes every decision about the sound: it will be his new testament. For another thing, the new single, “Dimed Out” is great, a melodic anthem, a myth of Patrick specialty, as Alyson noted a couple of days. It doesn’t feel like a move forward, but if it is treading water, it is standing on the shoulders of giant songs and maintaining its balance
The Waterfall – My Morning jacket – When they say it is MMJ’s best work in years, what they mean is it is better than Circuital… which it is, but so are more things. A lovely, low key, very melodic break up album that will come to life on stage – B
Naturally, the reason for “After The Dance” is money. But also, and I say this without benefit of reading the book, maybe something else: “That I lost myself in someone else — someone as remarkable as Marvin Gaye — is no longer cause for self-condemnation.” Can’t we all claim the same?
The album barely peaks and never dips, unlike the first two albums weed isn’t an essential character in the stories; she seems a little less dependent on artificial paranoia. Instead, there’s a snapshot of a woman nearing her thirties and running in place in the California days and California nights as her youth slips by and that is as close to be precisely what Best Coast want it to be.
‘I feel enormously privileged to have been born in 1943 and not 1983,’ said Waters. ‘To have been around when there was a music business and the takeover by Silicon Valley hadn’t happened, and in consequence, you could still make a living writing and recording songs and playing them to people.’
If this doesn’t end the world of boxing, at least as football type supersport for the masses, nothing will. Not only was the Floyd Mayweather Manny Pacquiao over hyped, over priced on Pay Per View, but Time Warner crashed and burned, and the fight itself was a drag. A really really big job poorly done.
Two Of A Crime – Miranda Lambert – I kinda liked this without going bonkers over it, but the horns are wonderful and the ending is psychedelic, and Miranda’s country tinge just makes it bigger. Great song – A-
The first hour is lousy, till they get to Hawkeye’s (Jeremy Renner) hideout where his wife claims Hawkeye is the only Avenger without a superpower (apparently she hasn’t met Tony Stark), is a boring whirl, the rest of the movie is better but I can’t stand the witticism. Everybody sounds like they didn’t make the cut in “Pulp Fiction”.
How did Tay get back to # 2 five months after 1989 dropped? No new song on the charts, sure she has three dates in June but that is three dates and it is in June. No surprise to see Blur at # 1… every album since Parklife has done the exact same thing. Ps: remember how they didn’t put “Popscene” on the UK version of Modern Life Is Rubbish because they were pissed it didn’t chart? They are doing the exact same thing with the US.
The only excuse for “I Really Like You” is if it is a hit, then you forgive it for being irritating before you finish it once. Really, really, really… The Iggy is a goodie that improved off the other, and Alesso? A talented fellow going nowhere with this one.
‘My mum came to me in a dream when she’d died years previously. I was in a bit of a state – it was the Sixties and I was overdoing it. In the dream she said, ‘Don’t worry it’s all going to be fine, just let it be.’ And I woke up and thought, ‘Woah’ and wrote the song.’ And this moving story really inspired Kanye, who said, ‘I’m going to write a song with my mum.’ Macca sat at the piano and they wrote ‘Only One’.
If the $400 Million profits for HBO and SHO prove anything, it is they will have a hard time repeating. Floyd kept Manny at arms length and clinching when he couldn’t for the evening, while taking solid pot shots from time to time, to mass up the rounds in the dreary, boring, scientific, defensive masterpiece of meh.
I suppose old people just don’t care for Ed or Sam when they have better in store. But I suppose this is probably very different for Avicii and Wiz Khalifa (also high ranked on Echo Nest hotness list). I am way above 33 and I can’t stand EDM, so it would certainly be interesting to know if we are really refractory to new sounds and rhythms after a certain age, as I presume.
(If Paradise Is) Half As Nice – Amen Corner – Based on an Italian hoit and turned down by the Tremeloes, it was a huge hit in this Shel Talmy arrangement. The calling card was Andy Fairweather Low’s raspy vocals which seemed to belong to another form of sound than teen pop – A-
“24 Frames” is a think of extreme beauty, it is a gorgeous clicked in jigsaw puzzle about how one relationship is mirrored in a later one, both major, both central for the man Jason is singing to, watching the girl is like watching his father in a movie: they are doing the same destructive things.Isbell (last writer, mostly because the story has ended) is William Faulkner as a pop star
Natalie Prass may be just another Twenty Feet from Stardom overeaching back up singer, her debut album hasn’t stuck and her voice is a little light and a little strange. but the uniqueness works to her favor, and the reason why she hasn’t stuck is because her songs are lush and quirky and lush at the same. The verdict is out till Monday at the Bowery Ballroom.
My buddy Phil Tanner, a great musician in his own right, was at yesterday’s Blur concert, the one I couldn’t get a ticket too for love nor money, and claims they murdered it. I believe him though by reckoning only three songs are oldies and I am not a big enough fan of the new one to be certain they can pull it off a Thirteen.
‘[The album of home recordings] ‘will feel like you’re kind of hanging out with Kurt Cobain on a hot summer day in Olympia, Washington as he fiddles about. It’s going to really surprise people. Just to be clear, it’s not a Nirvana album, it’s just Kurt and you’re going to hear him do things you never expected to come out of him.’
Trotting out the same set he was been playing for the past year, last night at Madison Square Garden, in celebration of his 70th birthday, when playing God Clapton still had godlike tendencies, but when going rural on our ass he sure wasn’t
This looks difficult but it is a no brainer. Everything I’ve heard off the new Mumford And Sons and My Morning Jacket albums has been pretty damn second rate and both look like disasters. Sure I like Palma Violets, youngsters and with talent, and I like Todd, an olderster with talent. The Metz album will be a goodie, basically definitely and Boney James… wait a second BONEY JAMES??? The most anticipated is Best Coast
If it was just me, well, fine. But Blur’s heyday was in the 1990s, so really anybody with a job was gonna find it ifficult and to add insult to injury, if they could get a ticket and then could risk it, they still couldn’t get in. If you work in the City, you might not get there till 4pm by which time you’ll be at the end of a line starring 4000 college kids.
Letterman is still making the Late Night world roll over and play dead. The Prez leading the pack, with Tina Fey in the middle, and Mumford And Sons and the Dave Matthews Band bringing up the rear, it is all just another reason to tear your eyes away from Fallon for the last two weeks of history. Meanwhile, though, following Blur (and puppy races) this week, look for Noel Gallagher next week. I wonder if Noel will play a gig?
Morrissey has had security patting down the paying guests at other shops he has played for contraband, like the Odd Couple where the roomies went to a fat farm. The though is just so funny: Roast beef smugglers will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law…
In the beginning of March, 2010, I sat down with Titus Andronicus leader Patrick Stickles for would be my only interview with the indie rock superstar. One more than I’ve had with Kurt Vile, of course, so there is that. I was never very happy with the resulting story, and yes, absolutely blame me.
it is 2015, if you’ve recorded a song, what earthly good is a press release? Release the damn song. Also, check out the art work above. Who but Prince would release a song in solidarity with Freddie Gray and the protesters (though, one assumes, not the looters) in Baltimore, and stick a picture of themselves on the record cover. The mind truly boggles at this half wit.
‘Dimed Out’ is a punch in your face, a punk explosion that will make you either jump of joy till you reach the moon, or climb the Mount Everest while yelling at the top of your lungs – and it’s gonna be difficult when the oxygen becomes rare…but when I hear such a song everything becomes possible
