If ‘Morning Phase’ was dreamy folk, ‘Dreams’ has vigorous beats installing a hot and funky dance floor from the beginning, which let you hear a bit of new influences, MGMT, Foster the People, Tame Impala, and old influences, Nil Rodgers or even Bowie’s 80’s dance period.
Dreams – Beck – This is OK when you concentrate on it, it isn’t Midnight Vultures but the beat is sure steady enough, and it is lively, But it irritates as background and then you realize he needs to find the middle ground he wasn’t had – B
‘It started out as a heavy garage rock thing and became much more of a dance — some kind of hybrid,’ he said to the radio station. He also said he had been working on it for a few years so that the material is ‘pretty diverse,’ but ‘it’s a group of songs that fit together.’
Masterson thinks the documentary ‘interviewed eight people who hate Scientology’, and he ponders ‘I wonder if Sundance would allow a documentary of, like, eight people who hate Judaism’… Is it such an unfair and stupid comparison, does he know there are entire organizations which mobilize against Scientology in order to denounce the abuse and the isolation in which members of the church are maintain?
Interviewed by US magazine, he reacted so politely it was a bit disarming: ‘I was just so excited he was coming up. He deserves to be on stage as much as anybody. How many great records has he put out in the last five years, right?’… ‘You can’t please everybody, man. I still love him and think he’s genius. I aspire to do what he does.’
Beck’s ‘come back’ album ‘Morning Phase’ won a Grammy for Best Rock Album Award and another Grammy for Album of the Year. Prince presented the last Grammy — that was so Midnight Vultures — and Beck was in competition with Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Pharrell and Beyoncé!
Eric Clapton And Friends – The Breeze (An Appreciation Of JJ Cale) After the dire Old Socks, this coulda have been a disaster, but it isn’t, what it does is place Cale out of the “Cocaine” one hit wonder category and into the basic blues canon with some of Clapton’s greatest acoustic warm glow performances since Ocean boulevard rising to the occasion – ALBUM OF THE WEEK – A
Sure, you think it is either Petty or Lewis for album of the week but I’ve heard em both and they both are, not terrible, but certainly not great. So I’m gonna put my money on Eric Clapton and his JJ Cale covers album. Is that a mistake? I will have to live with it.
If you don’t appreciate modern art, you obviously will have a hard time to appreciate anything over there, and I was quite confused about a lot of things (if not everything) presented in the exhibit. Beck’s brother makes hand-knitted constructions, stretched on wood frames, like the one you can admire above, and he builds them from scratch
we patiently await the inevitable passing of time so we can get our hands on, er, the Beck Song Reader? well, certainly Van Dyke Parks who we can assume will not be streaming his next album on Spotify, Spider Bags out August 5th (can’t wait for that one, their last was my fave album of 2012), Jenny Lewis and Blake Mills (though not together) and Jerry Lee Lewis
According to the Future Heart, it seems that this is almost done, as the album can already be pre-ordered on Amazon, and will be issued via Capitol on July 29th. This means that Beck fans will have had three Beck albums this year, ‘Morning Phase’ released last February, this ‘Song Reader’ and another one that Beck always mentions, probably set to be released this fall.
if you are going to see Mike Love’s version, don’t expect transcendence, expect old guys thinking young guys songs so old couples can singalong and maybe their kids can join. On July 4th, at Jones Beach, maybe that’s what we want, memories of when we could have fun all summer long instead of working every summer for the past 40 odd years
Full disclosure: in the mid-90s I did a tropical Latin music show on WPFW-FM so I wasn’t paying attention in those years to Anglo-American music, and in the late nineties I had a kid and was too exhausted to keep up, but in the mid-00s, I did go back to fill the gaping lacunae. I’m sure I missed some major tunes, so feel free to let me know what they are.
166 songs so project out and you are looking at 700 700ish mark for the year, down from last year but not by much. The month itself found two albums just filled with great songs, GIRLS and ABout Last Night, plus the awesome art rocker by Elbow.
Heart Is A Drum – Beck – Elegant folk ambient mood music includes the sweetest melody he has written in many years and a mix of string instruments that has some of the airiness of Laurel Canyon in its DNA and the rhythm of life flowing through it – A
After moving over a million units the first week, and half a million the second week, Beyonce has been on the charts for the entire year and counting. 11 weeks? Which makes it the album of the year so far. Meanwhile… the Schoolboy Q and the Kid Cudi have their moments FYI.
Imagine if you will, Oasis meets Primal Scream and you’ll have Reverend And The Makers, whose third album is really good and who have continued the gradation from opening for Oasis on their final tour to becoming a phenom in their own rights.
It is like grunge without the loud/soft stuff and with much more sonic pounce in its step, but also without the sense of a scene to make sense of it, unless you consider former members of Male Bonding a scene – B+
The least weird song on the album is still pretty weird, a dance number but it sounds like Robyn on a jittery caffeine high but suffering a fit of manic depression and she just can’t shake it until in a wild rhythmic breakdown she pauses and regroups none the better – A
Everything we’ve heard from Beck’s Morning Phase (his self professed follow up to Sea Change) have been excellent; there is nothing to choose between “Wave”, “Waking Light” and “Blue Moon”, they are first rate return to forms. Otherwise, Schoolboy Q, St. Vincent, Neneh Cherry, maybe Wild Beasts.
Anything interesting? Lesse here: new Beck, Dierks Bentley, St Vincent, The Fray (THE FRAY NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO), St. Vincent, Drive By Truckers, Cloud Nothings, and apparently D’Angelo has completely given up and is releasing a live album.
‘I tried to make this record a few times. I went to Nashville a few years ago and I was gonna make a Nashville record. I did a lot of recording there, and it was one of those things where it didn’t quite come together. That’s really the beginning of the record, is going to Nashville. But there was something about bringing it back here
The solos that intro and outro the 20s masterpiece written by the great man himself are there for dancing but once the vocal kicks in the song changes tempo and Louis growls an entreaty and a promise “If you just listen to me honey, I’ll tell you something you don’t know…” – A+
just listening to this warm melancholic chorus brings me back years ago, these ooooooos are definitively very Sea Change, the tone is just a bit more upbeat. And if this had escaped you, the rainbow in Beck’s face is there to remind you about the cover art of ‘Sea Change’
Rockstar – A Great Big World – Written before they hit it big, this is a very good song about tempting to daydream about a future yet to be realized, a self-portrait waiting to come true and the meaning of success if there is one: “Take a ticket and get on the line..” Which they did – B+
The Golden Age – Beck – The lethargy is deathlike, the thing about death in a body is its lack of animation, it simply stops the body and then the body decays to dust. This decay, this rotting of the self, the inertness of life is the hidden subject matter of Beck’s masterpiece.
These shows are heavy and too serious and they have a strict no picture policy by the way! But this didn’t stop someone to shoot the footage below, which proves that this type of policy never works and that Beck wasn’t kidding when he said his next album would be a follow-up of ‘Sea Change’.
Beck has just announced a new album entitled ‘Morning Phase’ for February. Beck has in fact just signed with Capitol Records to release his 12th album, and fans are probably already salivating at the idea, since the famous musician hasn’t had a proper release since his 2008 ‘Modern Guilt’
