What does it mean when you don’t hear great music because it was never written? It is like me, childless, all the wonderful kids I never had and all the wonderful songs I never heard because they weren’t written or because I couldn’t find them and that is the great sorrow of this maybe great moment in pop music. We can’t hear it.
I love Maria Taylor any way but add one of the best albums of 2013 and her shouting me out as a “real sweet guy” at one of her concerts and I am, needless to say, am putty in her hands. This show at the Knitting Factory on Thursday, with a full band should be excellent as this review off “Lazy-I” would appears to prove
Chicks, Man – The Del Lords – This might not be the best song of 2013 (I think I put it at # 3) but it is my absolute fave and it goes to the heart of what I was writing earlier about happy-sad songs, here you get a perfect pattern song that ends with death! – A+
She builds an artistic house of seasons and times passing and love and hope and than she surrounds it with melodic to care for it and take care of it, and as she studies these feelings, and shares them, they have the permanence of true love.
Santa is looking over my shoulder and tutting or nodding his head in appreciation because, just before he flys off to give all the good girls and boys gifts, he is picking up our list to help with some of the more famous among us and rock nyc is here to help…
Home For The Holidays – Perry Como – This one takes me back some eight years where a good friend used to sing this for me every Christmas, it is a sweet song isn’t it? – A
The melody is gorgeous, and Taylor sings it with a voice that sounds fragile at first but then you catch the strong undertow, as though gentle emotions can have just as much strength as the most ferocious; the joy in that sort of lyricism should need no explanation here
Love Is Gonna Come At Last – Bobby Womack And Patti Labelle – Womack is on the record as hating rap but the way he uses the chorus like a hook on this song, opening and closing the track with it, is an ancestor of rap for sure – A
So with new son and husband in tow, and just before Maria’s US “Up All Night” Tour (actually, the tour doesn’t have a name, I named it for her), she is performing a half show with her family live from her kitchen
The “and I’m sticking to it” has more stickiness than the rest of the album combined, which is why it was a minor hit, though it doesn’t explain why Black Panties, is Kelly’s bestselling album in years. Maybe the album cover does that – B+
What Bright Eyes understands absolute these timeless songs is that they bring with them their own memories and 12 years after they are recorded, they bring with them the memories of memories; like the memories of childhood and lost loves.
Life Round Here – James Blake And Chance The Rapper – Haunting and beautiful, but of course that comes on the James Blake label, what doesb’t is Chance The Rapper, atonal rap so weird and in place – A-
Gammage should cover Bowie by the way, including this terrific remix. Springsteen? I haven’t felt this strongly about a Springsteen song in years. One more thing, if I had the time I would love to give Luscious Jackson a long listen.
Winchester Cathedral – New Vaudeville Band – In the mid 1960s appropriating sounds from the 1920s was all the rage and here NVB sound like a time machine band with a foghorn, blaming an ancient building for the singer being stoof up at the alter – A-
The rock and roll world reeled from the death of one of the all time greats Lou Reed and I wrote “this outpouring of affection for Lou Reed: it is like mourning Scrooge if Scrooge had died before he was visited by the ghosts.” though I was pretty upset myself.
Arcade Fire, Maria Taylor, Linda Thompson ruled this week, I could have filled every position with their songs. AF, maybe I’m being difficult but I really do like it, and Maria and Linda are both on my top 10 albums list of 2013.
6. Something About Knowing – Maria Taylor – One of the top indie Queens finds a truth within the truth, a truer truth in true love, marriage and childbirth, then she tells us how it feels to be a mother and how it feels to know what she didn’t know. A miraculous album.
A Lullaby For You – Maria Taylor – Sleep deprived Maria wrote this as a melody she sang to her infant son every night that slowly became a full song and lead her all the way to her current album, Something About Knowing, it is like a deep dream of infancy and hope and protection – A
Lord I Hope This Day Is Good – Lee Ann Womack – A showstopper at Carnegie Hall on Monday, this is off her 2000 country hit album I Hope You dance and in under three minutes it yearns with faith and hope – A
And, well, Amber Crisci of Big Picture had told me to watch for Quiet Company, that they were gonna be big and Jahn raved about them. A lively, exciting thriller of a band that Jahn said “Made my week for me.”
In The City – Caveman – Haunted mood indie with a baritone lead singer and fairly good songs, they sound like an early version of the National and should do well – B
“It was kind of difficult also to write because in the past I would always write when I was sad, it was just therapy for me. Sometimes I would even put myself in a position to get hurt so that I could write…”
Nothing Gets Crossed Out – Bright Eyes – The Conor Oberst hits an unbelievable height here, but since I just interviewed Maria, I am listening to her play Emmylou to Conor’s GP. A perfect lyric, lovely melody, and a brilliant bridge. Simply one of his greatest – A+
Every Single Night – Fiona Apple – This is the other half of Fiona. Fiona as nursery rhyme singer, skipping merrily down the path of weirdness before losing it again – A
The Walt Disney Dumbo song “Baby Of Mine” is sung by Betty Noyes and is a rarity of sorts, Thom Yorke’s song for his son “Sail to The Moon” (“maybe you’ll be President but know right from wrong”) though I’m sure if my dad had sung it to me I would have been terrified all night.
Goodbye Don’t Mean I’m Gone – Carole King – Off her Tapestry album follow up, Carole took to the mountains in California and tended to her daughter. But she was still a round – A
Song Beneath The Song – Maria Taylor – The Saddle Creek stalwart has her best album to date coming out soon, till then here is an early solo song that will keep you going; that’s Conor singing back up – A
