At his most complex he is in the working place where, as Jarvis Cocker once noted, common people watch their lives slip out of view. You don’t have to guess with Seger, you don’t have to interpret, he is the poet of desperation and he is the poet laureate of the simple need to be someone
You must have heard, it’s Christmas,… again! And here they are again, these eternal songs that come back every year with the same boring arrangements and inanity. Is it that difficult to write new Christmas songs? I guess, because we have been playing the same old clichés for over a century.
According to Pitchfork, two copies of The Upholsters’ second single, ‘Your Furniture Was Always Dead… I Was Just Afraid to Tell You’ were found by two different individuals, hidden in a piece of furniture!
At nearly an hour the album has a few cliffs and sometimes it falls off but it always land somewhere cool, it is like a computer game with the sound different levels and the tracks seem to repeat till they are right on the edge and then fall. But we told you that years ago.
“In 2014, we’ve seen serious growth in revenues to artists from sources like publishing and YouTube. It’s exciting for us to help artists connect with revenue that previously wasn’t easily accessible to them. In 2015, we expect that trend to continue in a big way.”
Rita X Wolf is a writer, critic, art aficionado and my facebook friend who answered the call for five songs she was listening to right the moment I requested it. “I just attended a Gene Clark (70th birthday) Byrds (50th anniversary show) so…”
The battle here isn’t internal, it is against forces outside Mike Hadreas, perhaps the social bulling for those out of step, or perceived out of steppedness with the world, the otherness of sound and vision reckoning sideways into the Low-Fi of Bowie and Eno except in 2014 it sounds commercial
What do you want to give up? A mid concert “Honky Tonk Heroes” with Shaver yodeling like Slim Whitman? A last song “You Just Can’t Beat Jesus”? The story leading up to “Ragged Old Truck” which culminates in Shaver lying in bed and trying to kill himself?
She is really unleashing a fierce emotion in ‘Short Movie’, with rage and passion, then eventually a lot is going on at the same time on this track, before everything culminates into a duel between Laura’s voice, strumming electric guitars and ascending strings
Or how would he manage to assemble lines like these ones: ‘Hear a man preaching in a language that’s completely new, yea/Making the hot cocks in the flophouse bleed/While the cleaning ladies sob into their mops/And a bellhop hops and bops/A shot rings out to a spiritual groove/Everybody bleeding to that Higgs Boson Blues’
If they had called it Beautiful and cut it to 40 minutes it would have hit big time, as it is it keeps on delivering the goods to people who don’t want to hear it. Take off Mariah’s name and put in Beyonce’s name. What would happen then?
A huge problem that doesn’t dwarf Sam having sold a million copies (platinum!) of In The Lonely Hour, to go along with his (gasp) six grammy nominations. One of only three albums to reach the plateau in 2014, but what can he do with it if he can’t project it on stage?
What I am claiming, about all three songs, is they are death songs. It dreams of something that doesn’t exist and then ties the dream to our death. Good? More. Brilliant because it is instant nostalgia, we are missing what we are hearing, and dreaming of it happening as it happens.
Joe Steinhardt’s best song is a strange, very melodic song, sung spoke with a loner, alienated, white blues feel to it, and lyrics that seem to be in the process of discovering themselves, though the truth is they are well studied articulation of emotional inertia – A+
Typed up on my manual typewriter and born and delivered from a simple riff we found on his i phone. Johnny is a real songwriter and one of the deepest guitar players out there. Thats us singing and playing and playing all the parts ourselves with just our pal Marshal Vore on drums.
Plus she sat on a bed of hay, surrounded by backing dancers dressed as a Christmas cracker, a gift and a donkey, recreating a sort of nativity scene… I don’t get it, is she Mary or baby Jesus, or both? Well she called her last album Sheezus, so she had to act on it, after all Kanye West has brought the real Yeezus on stage.
“Madonna’s new (and thirteenth) album, apparently called Iconic, has been leaked in full – long before it’s even officially announced. It features eleven tracks and is thought to be unfinished.
The Eye – Brandi Carlisle – A real beaut this with a great metaphor: “You can dance in a hurricane only if you’re standing in the eye” and her double tracked vocal is perfect Americana – B+
The sounds are deep, beautiful, haunting and rough, violent images and the stories are working class stories of horror and faith, “Everywhere is monsters. Tits out, wet-mouthed, heads back. Shouting and screaming just to prove they exist” is how the story of Becky opens, she meets a guy in bar, he goes off to a bad drug deal, she becomes a sex worker and the happy ending isn’t at all.
I was disappointed by the J. Cole album, it needed a little more discipline,it needed a couple of killer songs, a “Power trip” or a “Work Out” to beckon us in. The album isn’t bad, it’s good, but it needed to be great.
Wow, the last singles chart of the year is a great one one A+, four as, 5 B=s, this is the best chart since I satarted keeping track in 2009, every song here is a doozy and the top and the bottom are magnificent star turns. Both of Meghans hit home and the Ed Sheeran is his greatest moment ever. What a Christmas.
Steel And Feathers (Don’t Ever) – Nikki Jean – I don’t know how I ever missed this, it is better than the entire New Basement Tapes Band album combined, half completed, it didn’t make it onto “Shot Of Love” and Nikki polished it off in 2011 – A+
I spent another Sunday night at the Echo, and this brought me right back in the middle of last summer, with a ‘Part Time Punks’ soiree featuring Feels, Burnt Ones, Corners and Cosmonauts… another sleep-depraved 24 hours in perspective to start the week, but it was all worth it
Panda Bear is a mystery to me, and this is the beauty of him and his music. Noah Lennox has dropped a second single off his upcoming ‘Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper’, and the song ‘Boys Latin’ even comes with a very poetic animation video.
This would be my 28th year in a row. They never told me not to, but it was an unspoken thing. They couldn’t ask me not to sing ‘Christmas (Baby)’ on another show, but after 10 years, then 15 years, of doing this one song on this one show, I felt I had an obligation to be true to them
Marla is a central presence beckoning you forward till you are in the middle of her world and yet you don’t know where you are. It could be 1974, it could be the day after tomorrow, but you are experience something, not half but a life entire
Don’t those beats sound manufactured? They’re like doubled up and then some tom toms are added, and just before that and during that a sonic boom and a lot of vocal “uhs” and a rapper who sounds an awful lot like a kiddie Snoop. Not bad at all – B+
if the Temptations still has Otis and Duke Fakir is the only name I recognize in the Four Tops, but then again after Levi Stubbs it’s a little hard to care and since Levi has left the building, here we are now with two original member between two groups who are playing a week at the Palace on Broadway
Betray My Heart – D’Angelo, The vanguard – The question here is, is he being intentionally obtuse or
is his soul ear failing him. Sounds great either way – B+
The “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” is one of the most glorious things you’ll hear this year and the entire three hour manifestation of jam meets Pink Floyd (live) is exceptionally great, channeling the late Richard Wright before the entire band and especially Haynes whose opening solo will ring on long after it’s over, blasts it to the edges. – ALBUM OF THE WEEK – A
San Francisco record label Black Horizons has released a new cassette compilation of music by artists L’Acephale, Spettro Family, German Army, Micromelancolié, Night Worship, and Head Dress, and all the music was composed in order to be played in time with the films of Ingmar Bergman
In Doncker’s hands, it is a warning and a prayer. It says, we better stop shooting and stop looting,w e better raise our kids and teach the cops, or we will discover exactly what is so unfunny about peace, love and understanding.
when you don’t have songs you make art. Hard to deny, and for sure Black Messiah is no Voodoo –the songs aren’t there, they are all multi layered vocals on top (and inside) funk grooves where another beat replaces the melody line time after time.
In 1989, during the heat and height of the Satanic Verses controversy, I was silly enough to accept appearing on . . . Hypotheticals, which posed imaginary scenarios by a well-versed (what if . . . ?) barrister, Geoffrey Robertson. . . . I foolishly made light of certain provocative questions.
A psychology professor at the University of Washington who ‘used rhythmic light and sound therapy on his students and discovered that their grades improved’. Other studies have even used the same method on middle school boys with ADD, with successful results!
Pass on Haim, pass on Best Coast, but leave yourself open to this terrific L.A. band, a weird proto feminism about railing at diminished romantic and other expectations.
Chris doesn’t believe his own concept, and definitely without the easy mix of memory, fantasy and future shock. there is something about it just almost not quite good enough, like the title riff on best five rappers, or like the hellbent on happening pseudo romance or even the entire alcoholism subtext.
Comfort Ye My People – Choir Of King’s College – Handel’s Messiah is one of the great oratorios and the soloist here, singing the words of the King James Bible, is a beautiful tenor of hope and salvation. Belief, even faith, has little to do with this, you don’t have to believe the composition, you just have to listen – A+
This was a night of summation, of triumph, of lessons perfected after endless years of road testing. In 2014, it appears that the Old 97’s are commercially and artistically exactly where they want to be. I hope to see their four decade victory lap in 2034
It’s simple, my car radio has been stuck to 88.5 KCSN forever and even Macca occasionally gives them a phone call to show his support when he is in town.
A tough sell and nobody bothered to sell it, so it seems to be as deep and strong and blue as a classical take on black music phenoms can be but also unheard of and hiding in plain sight of the world. released around the end of 2013, it is a lovely coda to a great career
Scott Stapp believes he is a CIA agent whose task is to kill President Obama! His estranged wife Jaclyn Stapp and her sister called 911 after Stapp fled home shirtless on a bike with a backpack full of tools and about 400-600 pages of documents he had found online
I was actually thinking the Medium Cool Best Talk Show Guest Of The Week coveted award should have gone to Bob Seger, who I am seeing on Friday but finally decided upon Billy Joe Shaver, who I am seeing on Wednesday, performing “Hard To Be An Outlaw”on Letterman with Willie Nelson.
Great list, nothing that makes me throw up and two A’s, and lots of B’s and of the two A’s, how great is the new AC/DC? In rock we trust indeed, this sounds like the sound of going home and wait for it, I bet they play MSG by the end of the summer.
I know it says Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson but let’s be clear here, what it is is James Brown being ripped off yet again, this time by the Little Richard of pop. In other news, I believe they finally decided where to bury the man though the fight over his estate is going on and on. Somebody should slip em a copy of Dicken’s “Bleak House”
Sound Of Da Police – KRS One – Born again KRS, here handles a problem that has gone spiralling out of control but with a chorus so strong it sounds like a threat coming home to roar: “woot woot that’s the sound of the beat” – A+
The top five of the title is a game in which the characters name the best five rappers of all time. Ridiculously, they only sneak Biggie in when obviously he is the greatest of all time. Still, I am happy they remebered KRS One even if I didn’t include him
Why would he do that? The item very probably disappeared because eBay doesn’t authorized the sale of body parts, but Grisham had told the Weekly: ‘I thought it might be a fun Christmas gift for someone. It’s also illegal (or so I’ve heard).’
The problem is that there is so much stuff out there that there is no way some company can judge all the albums, plus there is always the delicate and weird idea of censorship,… and who wants to be accused of being a censor?
Chief Keef, Charlie XCX (I’ve had this one in heavy rotation and it is absolutely among the best of the year) and Nicki Minaj are all possibilities but… D’ANGELO!!! his first album of new material since 2000 (is this the one Questlove was working on?) and anticipation doesn’t quite do my feelings justice
