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A Beginner’s Guide to Donald Byrd

Hua Hsu — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:18:46 +0000

“I knew damn near everybody,” the late trumpeter and bandleader Donald Byrd joked during a 1987 Pacifica Radio interview, reeling off names like Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis. What’s striking is that, at this point in the interview, he’s still talking about his high school years. When the Detroit-born and bred Byrd passed away in February at the age of 80, it was a reminder that “damn near everybody” was, at some point, touched by the trumpeter, bandleader, producer and teacher. Few artists’ careers so neatly embody the various stylistic turns of postwar music, from jazz to soul to funk to disco and beyond. It’s a tribute to Byrd’s eternally open mind that when the British DJ and jazz hound Gilles Peterson paid tribute to Byrd’s life, he did so with two distinct mixes: “The Acoustic Years” and “The Electric Years.”

And few artists were so comfortable with such constant change — a true rarity in the world of jazz, where form is virtue. While his creativity and dexterity as a trumpeter never quite paralleled the talents of Clifford Brown (who he replaced in Art Blakey’s band) or Miles Davis (a fellow early convert to a more electric, fusion-driven jazz sound), few figures can claim an influence as diverse or longstanding as Byrd’s. He played with Nat King Cole, Eric Dolphy, Monk and Coltrane. He appeared on over a hundred albums as a bandleader and sideman, and his 1973 breakthrough Black Byrd remains one of Blue Note’s all-time best sellers. He was a mentor to Herbie Hancock, giving the young pianist one of his first big breaks, and, as a college professor, his protégés would form bands like Blackbyrds and N.C.C.U. (“Super Trick”). He collaborated with Isaac Hayes on a disco classic (“Love Has Come Around”) and appeared on the first installment of Gang Starr rapper Guru’s Jazzmatazz series.

What follows are some of the defining moments of Byrd’s career, during which he was unafraid to try damn near anything.

Donald Byrd, “Jeannine”

At The Half Note Cafe: Vols 1 & 2 (The Rudy Van Gelder Edition)

Donald Byrd
2004 | BLUE NOTE

Donald Byrd assembled a great band in the late 1950s, and At the Half Note Cafe captures them in sizzling form. There's a vigor and energy to this live recording that's lacking in some of Byrd's early Blue Note studio sessions. On the joyous "Jeannine," Byrd is economical and restrained, willing as always to give ground to those around him. In this case that includes Pepper Adams's nervy, wild sax and Duke... Pearson's spritely piano.
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Donald Byrd, “Hush”

Royal Flush

Donald Byrd
2006 | BLUE NOTE

By 1961, the 29-year-old Byrd had established himself as a hard-bop cornerstone, recording five studio albums for Blue Note and guesting on many more. Few listeners who dropped the needle on Royal Flush could have guessed they were witnessing the debut of a legend. The breezy, bluesy gem "Chant" introduced the world to Herbie Hancock, who Byrd had mentored throughout the early 1960s. Years later, Hancock would remain grateful for Byrd's belief... in him, as well as this piece of advice from Byrd that the young, struggling pianist wouldn't understand until years later: never give away your publishing rights.
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Donald Byrd, “French Spice”

Free Form (The Rudy Van Gelder Edition)

Donald Byrd
2004 | BLUE NOTE

By 1962's excellent Free Form, Byrd was beginning to stray from the bop-derived formulas that had long defined mainstream jazz. His band was evolving, thanks to an increasingly confident Hancock, and here they're joined by Wayne Shorter, in one of his last freelance gigs before signing on with Miles Davis. Byrd's role as a connector of ideas is particularly evident here on the moody, abstract title cut, the funky "Pentecostal Feelin'" and... the playful, elegant "French Spice."
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Donald Byrd, “Christo Redentor”

A New Perspective (The Rudy Van Gelder Edition)

Donald Byrd
1999 | BLUE NOTE

Byrd was entering a fruitful, adventurous phase of his career by the time of 1963's A New Perspective. But if the album cover suggested a turn toward the modern — Byrd leans against the door of a curvy sports car — his experiments would have to plumb the distant past first. This was one of Byrd's best "spiritual" records, essentially a hard bop record featuring a gospel choir. Fantastic and life-affirming from... start to finish, the choir's textures and exhortations perfectly complement the band's rhythms and effervescent solos. It's highlighted by "Christo Redentor," Byrd's mournful trumpet rising above a chanting din.
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Donald Byrd, “Fancy Free” and “The Dude”

After cutting a few solid, if straightforward, Blue Note sides in the mid ’60s, Byrd began moving away from acoustic jazz in the later part of that decade. Miles Davis had gone “electric,” and soon others were following suit. For Byrd, it began with Duke Pearson’s electric keys, which radically shaped the texture of 1969′s Fancy Free, lending everything a freer, more felicitous feel. In 1970, he released Electric Byrd and there was no going back. In retrospect, plugging in suited Byrd’s accommodating style. “The Dude” isn’t radically different from some of his more rhythm-driven numbers from the early 1960s, only the groove is front and center. Fusion remains a dirty word among some jazz devotees, but it was more than a tweaking of the jazz sound. It was also a new approach to composition and recording. Electric Byrd‘s “Xibaba,” for example, is an absorbing, almost shapeless piece that finds Byrd and his new band — featuring Brazilians Hermeto Pascoal and Airto Moreira — concerned more with ambience and energy than structure.

Fancy Free

Donald Byrd
1993 | Blue Note Records
Electric Byrd

Donald Byrd
1996 | BLUE NOTE

Donald Byrd, “Black Byrd”

Black Byrd

Donald Byrd
1992 | BLUE NOTE

Electric Byrd and 1971's Ethiopian Knights had formalized Byrd's turn toward the funkier, fusion sound then sweeping the jazz community. It was 1973's Black Byrd that turned jazz's civil war into a popular phenomenon. Thanks largely to production from Larry and Fonce Mizell — a member of the Corporation, Motown's hit-making production squad — Black Byrd didn't sound like anything else around. "Black Byrd" was a groove, but one you could sing... along to. While Miles was flirting with avant-garde classical composition and psychedelic chaos, Byrd and the Mizells were turning toward radio-friendly rhythm and blues. To the horror of traditionalists, Black Byrd — with its attention-grabbing synths, funky percussion and vocals — was one of Blue Note's best-selling albums of the decade.
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Blackbyrds, “Blackbyrds’ Theme”

The Blackbyrds

The Blackbyrds
2007 | Fantasy Records

Byrd held a series of university teaching posts throughout the 1970s, and at least two bands formed out of his classes: North Carolina Central University's N.C.C.U. (which later became his backing band in the late 1970s) and Howard University's Blackbyrds. Byrd and the Mizells produced the first few Blackbyrds records, but they were never just a Byrd vanity project. They always seemed like a very creative funk band with jazz chops, especially... on their trio of classic early albums — 1974's self-titled debut ("Funky Junkie," "Summer Love"), Flying Start ("Walking in Rhythm," "Blackbyrds' Theme") and 1975's City Life (featuring the B-boy classic "Rock Creek Park").
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Donald Byrd, “Think Twice” and “Wind Parade”

The partnership between Byrd and the Mizells peaked on these two albums from the mid ’70s, Stepping into Tomorrow and Places and Spaces. It was on tracks like the sensual “Think Twice” or the genial funk of “Dominoes” that they began distinguishing their sound as more than just jazz with R&B characteristics. The compositions are sophisticated and atmospheric, as indebted to the instrumental interplay of Byrd’s past as to the technology of their present. There’s an open, spacey feel to the albums, a sign of Byrd and the Mizells’ growing confidence within this new jazz idiom. Occasionally, the songs from this era are also ridiculously catchy, as on the adventurous, frequently sampled classic “Wind Parade.”

Stepping Into Tomorrow

Donald Byrd
2000 | BLUE NOTE
Places and Spaces

Donald Byrd
1997 | BLUE NOTE

Donald Byrd and 125th St. N.Y.C., “Love Has Come Around”

Love Byrd

Donald Byrd And 125th Street, N.Y.C.
2008 | Rhino/Elektra

By 1981, Byrd could safely claim some kind of connection to every significant jazz musician of the previous 30 years. The only thing left, obviously, was to record an album with soul man Isaac Hayes. Backed by 125th St, N.Y.C. (previously known as N.C.C.U.), Love Byrd is a fairly snoozy effort highlighted by an unlikely gem: "Love Has Come Around," a dancefloor scorcher (and playlist staple of legendary DJ Larry Levan).

Black Moon, “Buck em Down (remix)” and Guru and Donald Byrd, “Loungin’”

Hip-hop and dance music made jazz relevant to kids in the early ’90s. Not everyone cared for the repurposing of their old sounds, but Byrd embraced it. After all, Byrd’s jazz-funk had been divisive in the ’70s, but decades later it was these intrepid works that producers like DJ Premier of Gang Starr or the Beatminerz gravitated toward. Byrd was sampled countless times, but I’ve always loved how the Beatminerz’s Evil Dee rearranged “Wind Parade” for Black Moon’s “Buck ‘em Down” remix, lending the steely original a bit of grace. For Guru, Gang Starr’s other half, his Jazzmatazz series was essentially a way to give back. “Donald Byrd — word/ On the track, quite exact,” Guru hails, and Byrd matches the rapper’s gruff monotone with some playful, old school riffing.

Diggin' In Dah Vaults

Black Moon
2005 | Nervous Records
Jazzmatazz Volume 1

Guru
1993 | NOO TRYBE

J Dilla, “Think Twice”

Welcome To Detroit

Jay Dee aka J Dilla
2003 | BBE Music / !K7 Records

Jay Dee made a name for himself as one-third of A Tribe Called Quest's beat-making faction (the Ummah). Thanks to his work on Common's critically acclaimed Like Water for Chocolate and Q-Tip's post-Quest endeavor Amplified, Dee has also established himself as a hip-hop super-producer. While Dee's stock continues to rise (working with Janet Jackson, Erykah Badu, and Macy Gray), his underground projects have been less fruitful. Reason being, when it comes to... enlisting new MCs to collaborate with, Dee has yet to locate a lyricist capable of augmenting his sublime production. This fact became apparent during Dee's short-lived stint as a member of Slum Village, and the trend continues with his first solo outing, Welcome 2 Detroit. Here, Dee continues to showcase a diverse assortment of sensuous melodies and booming funk samples. The Detroit-bred MCs who Dee chooses to highlight -- Phat Kat on "Rico Suave Bossa Nova" and Beej on "Beej-N-Dem, Pt. 2" prove to be very mediocre lyricists. Yet Dee did manage to round up a few hometown prospects, as Frank N Dank liven up "Pause" and Elzhi rips a few furious verses on "Come Get It." Though Dee flips a few clumsy bars as well, Welcome 2 Detroit really takes off when he sticks solely to an instrumental script, retouching trumpeter Donald Byrd's "Think Twice" and transforming Kraftwerk's indelible "Trans-Europe Express" into the strippers'-anthem-in-waiting "B.B.E. (Big Booty Express)."
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Discover: Vampisoul

Richard Gehr — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:44 +0000

For Vampisoul founder Iñigo Pastor, it all began as a fanzine that mutated into a label with global aspirations. At age 15, Pastor began publishing La Herencia de los Munster (The Legend of the Munsters) from his home in Spain’s Basque region. Following flexidisks featuring Spanish garage bands, Pastor’s first vinyl release on his Munster label was an EP containing one track by Spacemen 3 and “two Spanish bands nobody outside of Spain knows.” Although it was essentially a label devoted to singles and albums from the fringes of punk, DIY and psych-rock culture, Munster’s most successful release turned out to be what Pastor believes to be the world’s first compilation of tracks by mildly raunchy R&B diva — and short-term Miles spouse — Betty Davis.

By 2002, Iñigo had traveled and listened widely enough to realize the need for a parallel label for his new international enthusiasms. “My musical friends made me listen to stuff and enlarged my spectrum. I got into Latin music, black American music, African music, everywhere’s music.” Assisted by his widening network of contacts, “We built up a nice catalog in a short period of time,” he says. Vampisoul’s first release was Back to Peru, a mixture of underground rock and tropical tracks from the 1960s and ’70s. Vampi slipped under the wire and managed to cut a deal to reissue classic albums by Joe Bataan, Joe Cuba, Pete Rodriguez and Ray Barretto shortly before the legendary Fania salsa label was sold again (and then once again). “It was kind of a dodgy label,” he recalls, “but you could somehow get a license from someone in New York City.” Releases of Nigerian afrobeat and highlife, Italian library music, vintage jazz from the Czech Republic, and Iranian underground rock soon followed.

Hits from the Vampisoul catalog include afrobeat co-founder Tony Allen’s albums with Nigeria ’70 and Latin boogaloo star Joe Bataan’s 2003 comeback, Call My Name. The latter, written and produced by the Phenomenal Handclap Band’s Daniel Collas, was one of the first Daptone studio projects and has the 1967 vibe to prove it. Other reissues include Peruvian cumbia from the Amazon, aka chicha, reconstituted from labels that haven’t existed for more than thirty years (which makes royalty payments difficult). Vampisoul has even spawned its own protégé label, Light in the Attic. Matt Sullivan, its founder, interned with Pastor while studying in Spain. “We became very good friends,” Pastor says. “He took the concept back to the United States, where he has surpassed us in many ways because his releases are so fantastic. Now he handles the Betty Davis stuff.”

Here’s Iñigo Pastor on some of his favorite, and odder, Vampisoul and Munster releases.

Los Pirañas,Toma Tu Jabón Kapax

Toma Tu Jabón Kapax

Los Pirañas
2012 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

These three young guys from Bogotá had the same backround as I did in rock, punk and DIY, and they decided to bring back cumbia in their own manner. They recorded this live studio album in a very free, experimental way. When their recordings came into the office, we had to figure out how to tag them for distributors: Basically, it sounds like Krautrockers playing experimental cumbia on bass, guitar, and drums... with no overdubs. Their main sound is cumbia, but it's a natural sort of fusion that really works. Their other bands are Frente Cumbiero and the Meridian Brothers.
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Cumbia Beat, volumes 1 & 2

We did this in collaboration with a good Peruvian friend who turned me on to his country’s music. He brought all his records to Europe and played me stuff every time I was at his place. This Amazonic psychedelic stuff was totally unheard and really vibrant. He said, “Let’s put them out. No one else is and I know the labels and musicians. I saw some of these bands with my father as a kid. On Sundays we’d go to a park and drink beer, eat food, and dance.”

Cumbia Beat Vol. 1

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard
Cumbia Beat Vol. 2

Various Artists
2012 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

Back to Peru, volumes 1 & 2

When you open a music book in the occident, it says things like, “In the ’60s, rock ‘n’ roll turned into the British invasion, then psychedelia, then progressive and then blah blah blah.” Peru has a similar progression but it’s not so clearly defined: It’s very mellow and mixed and special. Back to Peru is provides a general introduction to Peruvian music of the ’60s and ’70s. There’s some dance music, like the Gozalo compilations, but there’s a lot that’s moodier, midtempo and more psychedelic, like good Badfinger or late Beatles. They’re also good with melodies, like the Brazilians; maybe it has to do with their weather, food and education. Most of them are self-taught but were serious about making it sound good in the studio. You can find stuff like We All Together or Telegraph Avenue, who make a terrific sound comparable to any American band of the time.

Back To Peru Vol 1

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard
Back To Peru Vol 2

Various Artists
2009 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

¡Gózalo!, volumes 1 & 2

Gozalo means “enjoy” in Spanish, and these compilations focus on tropical dance music for partying and good times. Like Colombia, Peru is like a little continent unto itself. So much was happening there in the ’50s, ’60s and early ’80s, before the military took over in South America and everything turned a bit grayer. Listening to this music makes me jealous of anyone who lived there during that time because it was very open.

¡Gózalo! Vol 1

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard
¡Gózalo! Vol 2

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

¡Saoco! The Bomba and Plena Explosion in Puerto Rico 1954-1966

¡Saoco! The Bomba and Plena Explosion in Puerto Rico 1954-1966

Various Artists
2012 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

We got in touch with Yannis Ruel, a French journalist. His wife is Puerto Rican, so he spent a lot of time there and found out about all this music. It was like when we started reissuing Fania stuff: You could find it in markets on cheaply done CDs with no liner notes. He thought it should be done right, and very few albums in Puerto Rico are like it. He wrote... an incredible essay that reads like a sociological and musicological dissertation. We're at work on volumes two and three.
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Rangarang: Pre-Revolutionary Iranian Pop

Rangarang

Various Artists
2011 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

A guy based in Washington, D.C., claimed to be the grandson of the guy who recorded these tracks. His grandfather was killed by the Iranian revolutionaries. He sent us a bunch of material to select and compile. It was very difficult. We couldn't find much information about some of the artists. We went by the music rather than by famous names or big hits. It's fascinating to think about this music in... the context of where it was being made and what came before it — a musical explosion in a strange social moment.
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Bola Johnson, Man No Die

Man No Die

Bola Johnson
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

The guy representing Nigeria's Premiere label sent us a batch of 1960s and '70s material this trumpeter and bandleader recorded for Phillips. We learned that Bola has even more recordings out, but we don't know how many because even though he's on Facebook, he never replied to us for information or pictures or anything. He's still playing but doesn't seem to care. The world may seem much smaller these days, but there... are still big holes everywhere. Bola's a complete performer who can play all kinds of African music. This compilation has everything from soft highlife to hard funk like Fela Kuti's, who influenced him.
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Flipper Psychout

Flipper Psychout

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

This was compiled by Alessandro Casella, a record collector and DJ who runs Rome's Micca Club. He got deep into Italian library music and was hired by Flipper to go into its vaults and find material to offer to labels. Mainly, it's music done for publicity, films and television in the early '70s, and the number of different moods and styles was endless. Alessandro came to us with tracks that are psychedelic,... sexy and quite incredible. That kind of music was being produced in Britain, of course, but it was also being done in southern Europe — France, Italy and even Spain. There's a lot more on the way. We're working on a project with the Spanish library music of Warner Chappell, which has something like 15,000 recordings. But it's too much. You need an expert or else you'll spend half your life on it.
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Los Saicos, ¡Demolición! The Complete Recordings

¡Demolición! The Complete Recordings

Los Saicos
2010 | Munster / The Orchard

This is the most significant Munster release at the moment for me. Los Saicos recorded six singles in 1964 and '65, but no albums at all. It was very mysterious. I used to play them for all my friends. I'd put the needle down and they'd say, "What is this?!" The band only played its own stuff, no covers. Their themes were a bit sinister: cemeteries, jails, executions, bombings and demolition. They... even had their own Peruvian TV show. They were stars, and then they split up, quit and didn't play any more music. The bandmember we got in touch with lives a very wealthy life in Washington, D.C., where he works for NASA. He became an engineer. We've gotten many licensing requests for them. I'm very proud of this because we may never see anything as unique as Los Saicos again.
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Lyres, Lyres, Lyres

Lyres Lyres

Lyres
2012 | Munster / The Orchard

I really worshipped the Lyres during my formative years when I was doing the fanzine, and I saw them live a few times. A gap opened between the punk explosion and grunge, and the Lyres were one of the more interesting bands to appear. It was not easy to deal with Jeff Connolly; he's a bit of a perfectionist [laughs]. But it's very good music and I'm glad we did it. No... one else had reissued them except for Matador more than 15 years ago. I'm happy we've made them wider-known.
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Re-Documenting the Blues

John Morthland — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:06:45 +0000

Austrian collector Johnny Parth launched Document Records in 1986 in order to reissue the complete works of early 20th-century American roots musicians, mostly blues artists. Document’s modus operandi was simple: Pick an artist and reissue the total output on however many albums — or, later, CDs — it took. Less-recorded artists — Geechie Wiley, say — shared a single album with other names; the more prolific — like Peetie Wheatstraw — got considerably more (seven CDs, in his case). Document, which currently boasts some 900 titles, hasn’t issued a new LP in 20 years, but now Jack White’s all-vinyl Third Man Records is getting into the act with a series of reissues taken from the Document catalog. The first volumes are out on three artists, and they say plenty about our perceptions of the blues, and about the artist-versus-entertainer conundrum so knowingly explored by Elijah Wald in his 2004 book Escaping the Delta.

Those three blues artists are the Mississippi Sheiks, Blind Willie McTell and Charley Patton. The first two have a lighter, simpler and more melodic approach than Patton, but all three are exemplary entertainers. Across the whole spectrum of blues, which is much more diverse than it’s ever given credit for, some artists are just like that, no matter how harsh the sound of their music — Robert Johnson, for example, put out deeply emotional music with an undeniably rough sound, but he also wrote irresistible hooks and formalized the verse-chorus pattern of American popular music in the blues. He went that distance to make his music, however searing, more accessible to more people; that’s (along with mystique) a big part of the reason he’s by far the most popular early artist of the blues revival that been off and on since the 1950s. With that in mind, let’s look at the three new Third Man reissues.

The Mississippi Sheiks: The Complete Recorded Works Presented in Chronological Order, Volume 1 documents the Delta string band built around members of the Chatmon Family, most prominently Armenter Chatmon, known professionally as Bo Carter. Drawing on white as well as black rural traditions including blues, pop, hokum, country and folk, their guitar-fiddle sound made them one of the most popular acts of the 1930s, even though they only recorded for the first half of that decade. The interplay between Carter’s oily voice and Lonnie Chatmon’s scratchy fiddle is as otherworldly when sweet as when severe. Their 1930 “Sitting on Top of the World,” written by Sheiks guitarist Lonnie Chatmon the morning after a triumphant gig at a white dance, was a crossover even back then — it’s since been revived by Bob Wills, Bill Monroe, Ray Charles, Howlin’ Wolf, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Les Paul, White and countless others — and the group’s influence on American music is everywhere. You can hear it in the stateliness of “The Sheik Waltz,” the skittering heat of “The Jazz Fiddler,” the carefree country of “We Are Both Feeling Good Right Now,” the hoodoo of “Stop and Listen Blues,” the down-and-out moan of “Winter Time Blues” or the wit of “Grinding Old Fool.”

As an Atlanta bluesman, Blind Willie McTell also made music lighter, bouncier and less dark than the most tortured Delta blues; this ragtimey sound is usually called Piedmont blues and McTell was perhaps its greatest master, picking his 12-string guitar with both agility and elegance. His nasal warble had a touch of country in it, and his repertoire included blues and ragtime, spirituals, ballads, pop, folk, hillbilly and story-songs that sometimes had vaudeville and/or medicine show overtones. Like the Sheiks, Willie cut his calling-card number, the brilliantly-constructed “Statesboro Blues,” which the Allman Brothers popularized more than four decades later, at his first sessions (in ’27). But he never ran out of melodies, licks or ideas. Listen on his Volume 1 to the way his guitar fills alternate between high and low strings on “Mamma ‘Taint Long Fo’ Day,” or his carousing slide on “Three Women Blues,” for a display of his nimbleness as a picker; it’s as if there were two different guitarists on these songs. Or to the stunning lyrics of “Dark Night Blues” (“Drink so much whiskey/ I’m stagger when I sleep/ My brains are dark and cloudy/ My mind’s gone to my feet”). Or the happy-go-lucky way he acts out “Atlanta Strut” with his guitar and the percussive effects he gets from it on “Drive Away Blues.” McTell’s reach was arguably the broadest of anyone of his era who called himself a bluesman, and he presumably seduced a wide range of listeners on the street corners where he did most of his singing.

You might think the whole entertainer analogy among these three breaks down with Charley Patton. After all, his growling, gravelly voice is forceful enough to unnerve a Howlin’ Wolf fan, and his layered, impossibly intricate rhythms effortlessly conjure up West Africa. It’s the kind of stuff people are talking about when they refer to “authentic” blues. Yet “intricate” shouldn’t be confused with “driving” or “aggressive.” On “Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues,” his playing exploits hesitations, shifting accents and rhythmic variations to garrote what is generally a laid-back piece with relaxed vocals. On the astonishing “Down the Dirt Road Blues,” he gets three rhythms going simultaneously — one with his voice, one with his guitar lines and one by tapping his guitar.

So yes, Charley Patton was a ferocious Delta bluesman, perhaps the form’s true father. But only about half his 50-plus sides are even blues; as the oldest Delta bluesman to record, he worked in all the other forms that his audience would expect of a pre-blues rural entertainer. His Volume 1 embraces religious songs (“Lord I’m Discouraged”) and folk ballads (“Mississippi Boweavil Blues”), ragtime novelties (“Shake It and Break It”) and familiar slide guitar standards (“Spoonful”), even “composed folk” topical songs like “Tom Rushen Blues” (or his opus “High Water Everywhere” about the 1927 Mississippi River flood, which will appear on a subsequent album). So when Patton turns out something like “Pony Blues,” doubtless his most influential blues, he’s showing just a fraction of what he can do. Plus, live he was unabashedly show biz, playing guitar behind his head or between his legs, peppering songs with vaudevillian asides and the like. Fellow Delta bluesmen who only saw him live considered him a clown; they were then shocked to hear his records in all their fierceness and complexity.

Ultimately, the “performer” designation unites these three artists when their sounds are so different. At a segregated time when record companies confined “race music” to a particular market these guys worked hard to get around the limitations being imposed on them. Today, they face a different kind of segregation, that imposed by the “purist.” But they all, each in his own way, rise above it…again.

Discover: Finders Keepers

Sharon O'Connell — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 21:23:59 +0000

An enthusiasm for sounds lost, unknown, ignored or brain-meltingly weird is the principle behind Finders Keepers, the reissue label Andy Votel founded in 2005 with Doug Shipton. A mainstay of Manchester’s music scene, Votel made his name as an electronic musician, respected DJ and the man behind the Twisted Nerve label, which first brought Badly Drawn Boy to the public’s ears. Votel is a long-term enthusiastic crate-digger and his early love of hip-hop taught him to be interested in — and to buy — records wherever they came from, irrespective of the strictures of “youth culture.”

Finders Keepers is a horizon-broadening enterprise, the success of which relies not only on the interests of a curious record-buying public, but also on the passion, in-depth knowledge and deep love of its curators. The catalogue ranges far and wide — from Welsh folk music and ’70s horror-film scores to ’60s Turkish psych-punk and “Lollywood” (from Lahore, Pakistan) movie soundtracks. “Making global sound local” is the label’s motto, and Finders Keepers, which Votel describes as “pretty much genre-less” is supported in its aim by various sibling labels, each with their own focus: the on-going Twisted Nerve (contemporary releases only), Bird (music by female artists), Cache Cache (punk, new wave, ’80s electronic music), Battered Ornaments (Shipton’s own label) and a new imprint called Cacophonic (jazz — “but it’s almost like a noise label”). Votel is clearly committed to pressing forward — however much time he necessarily spends looking back.

Sharon O’Connell spoke with Andy Votel about running a true label of love.

What was the initial spur to launching Finders Keepers?

Working within the mainstream music industry got me down. It became very stringent. A lot of the records we put out on FK are 35-40 years past their sell-by date, so a desperate, four-week promotional campaign is not going to make any difference to sales. Most of the artists on FK now are — and I mean this in the most positive way possible — failed pop musicians, whether for political reasons, through a miscarriage of justice, the failure of the music industry or because they were ahead of their time, so you’re already creating a new music industry. When we set up FK, that’s exactly what it was. It was starting anew, so there was pretty much no rulebook. It was very, very refreshing.

What does the FK motto, “Making global sound local,” mean?

It’s making old records feel young, I suppose. These records were so ahead of their time that they’ve not dated, even after 40 years or so. They were never middle-of-the-road, so they still feel as fresh as the day they were created. It’s virtually impossible to be really experimental nowadays, because everybody knows you can make any sound you could possibly want, no problem. So it’s hard to experiment without restrictions. A lot of the records we’re releasing now are from the ’70s or ’80s, which was the heyday of experimental pop music.

Does a lot of the archive work you do involve playing detective?

For me, the most exciting thing about it all is meeting these artists and going round to their houses, spending time with them and meeting their families; the records are just the by product. But two things are insulting from the outset: one is when people say, “What are these weird records?” A lot of the time, they only think they’re weird because they’re sung in a foreign language, so that’s…almost racist. The other is people think that these records are from primitive industries, so you get a lot of bootlegging by various companies. And you can’t think like that. Everything that we do is on a very human level, and a lot of it is personal hero worship. Luckily, because I’d been working with Twisted Nerve when the internet was still in its infancy, I was able to contact people quite quickly and find a lot of my heroes. The question was what do you do from that point? So, we decided to reissue old records together.

What’s coming up next for FK?

Recently, I’ve been working with a tape engineer from Manchester called Andy Popplewell. He worked for the BBC for a short time, and has been baking [restoring] tapes for people in Manchester and London and all over the world, for a very long time. But it seems like I’m the only person to ever have asked him if he made music himself — and it turns out he did. He built his own synthesizer when he was 17. He has this unreleased album, TRASE and it’s the best thing I’ve heard in about five years. It’s amazing.

Andy Votel Shares 5 Treasures from the Finders Keepers Trove

L'enfant Assassin Des Mouches

Jean Claude Vannier
2007 | B-MUSIC

Orchestral, psych-rock concept album by Gainsbourg's right-hand man, and FK's first release.

When we set up Finders Keepers, I'd already had this record for about four years. There was a rumour going around that there was a sequel to Histoire de Melody Nelson by Serge Gainsbourg, who I'm a big fan of, but it soon became evident that I was more a fan of his arranger, Jean-Claude Vannier, as most of the stuff... I like was between 1968-73 — their years together. Nobody could find this album because there's nothing written on the sleeve — no title or name — but after years and years, I just found a copy in a shop. Everybody in France put me off speaking to Vannier — they told me he was arrogant and that he couldn't speak English — but it was like they were protecting him, really. When I finally met him I discovered he was a polite, encouraging and influential man who has since become a good friend — and he can speak English better than I can. No one dared release this record in France, but I just thought, it has to be out there.
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Minor White

Emma Tricca
2010 | B-MUSIC

Spare and timeless, finger-picked folk-blues from John Renbourn-approved singer-songwriter.

One of the key attractions of music for me is its femininity and sadly, you don't get that much in Manchester. All I ever talk to Emma about is Italian horror films, because she's Italian. I never talk to her about music, because I'm really not qualified; she's almost like a genius. Jane [Weaver, recording artist and Votel's wife] and I saw her at... the Green Man Festival in 2006 and couldn't believe how brilliant she was, but you could put her up a tree and she'd be amazing. Emma could have existed 300 years ago and she could exist in 300 years time. What she does is 100 per cent honest.
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Possession

Andrzej Korzyñski
2012 | FINDERS KEEPERS

Polish composer's previously unreleased, experi-chestral OST for the 1981 horror classic.

Korzynski was a mainstay in my record collection for years, but I didn't know anything about him. It's hard to find out about anything Polish, really, but I've been collecting Polish records since I was about 18, when I went to there on an art-school trip. Soundtracks were never released as records in their own right in Poland, and as Korzynski was... primarily a soundtrack artist, he wasn't a household name. But he did go to Paris in the late '60s and that explains everything about Korzynski's sound — people always say he's like the Polish Jean-Claude Vannier.
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Selda

Selda
2007 | B-MUSIC

Debut Anatolian folk/psych-rock album from acclaimed Turkish singer/ songwriter and musician.

Selda's a folk heroine, but super-militant; she'll wear Gucci sunglasses and a Fendi handbag, with a parka and a bullet-belt. I discovered Turkish music when I was in Germany and there was a really heavy, fuzz guitar sound on this record that blew my mind. Then I realized it was actually a saz, put through a fuzz pedal. People say The Beatles... are the most influential band in the world, but they're not. The Shadows are, because they're instrumental, so language isn't an issue. That's how the Andalou rock scene started and Selda was one of its earliest female musicians. She has this incredible voice, full of pain that's just unrivaled.
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Man Chest Hair

Various Artists
2012 | FINDERS KEEPERS

Compilation of hirsute and avowedly male '70s rock from the Mancunian underground.

Manchester has got a habit of approaching music with its elbows out, pushing to the front of the queue; it's very male-oriented. But the stuff that didn't force its way to the front got forgotten. It sickens me that people think music in Manchester just went straight from The Hollies to The Smiths, like the '70s didn't exist. In the '60s... when all the clubs in the city centre got shut down, the music went to satellite towns like Bolton and Stockport. There was a German record I'd been after for years and years, and then I found out the band were from Stockport and that blew my mind.
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eMusic Editors’ Finders Keepers Picks

Pomegranates: Persian Pop, Funk, Folk and Psych of the 60s and 70s

Various Artists
2010 | B-MUSIC
Sarolta Zalatnay

Sarolta Zalatnay
2009 | B-MUSIC
Paint a Lady

Susan Christie
2007 | B-MUSIC
Well Hung

Various Aritsts
2009 | B-MUSIC
Selda

Selda
2007 | B-MUSIC
Absolute Belter

Various
2010 | FINDERS KEEPERS
Solla Solla

Ilaiyaraaja
2011 | FINDERS KEEPERS
The B-Music of Jean Rollin

Various Artists
2012 | FINDERS KEEPERS

Discover: Don Giovanni Records

Douglas Wolk — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:53:44 +0000

[Introduce yourself to Don Giovanni's roster with a free 11-track sampler, featuring Screaming Females, Waxahatchee, Shellshag and more.]

A handful of the most impressive labels in the history of American independent rock have focused very closely on a single local scene: Dischord in Washington, D.C., Dangerhouse in Los Angeles, Sub Pop (for a while, at least) in Seattle. That list has a new contender: Don Giovanni Records, which, for the past decade, has been the voice of the underground rock scene of deeply unglamorous New Brunswick, New Jersey. Founded in 2003 by Joseph Steinhardt and Zach Gajewski to release a single by their own band Talk Hard, Don Giovanni has built itself up, slowly and steadily, into an indie-rock powerhouse, releasing records by bands like Screaming Females, The Ergs! and Waxahatchee, and building a national following for the scene Steinhardt and Gajewski grew up in.

“We never planned on being a label,” Steinhardt laughs. “But as soon as we put out our own 7-inch, some other friends of ours in a local band wanted to put one out, and we said, ‘If we sell ours and get our money back, we’ll put out yours.’ And it still kind of works that way, even though we’re bigger in scale. When we put out the Ergs!’ record” — their 2005 album dorkrockcorkrod — “we thought it was the end of the label. It was our first full-length album, and we figured if our money goes down to zero, we’ll just stop. We did it on vinyl. At first it didn’t really sell. And slowly, after a while, it blew up.”

The label’s founders both have day jobs that have nothing to do with music — Gajewski works in publishing, Steinhardt is a graduate student — which allows them to put the label’s profits back into releasing more projects. “I think, honestly, Zach and I believe in the New Brunswick scene more than anything,” Steinhardt says. “A lot of the Don Giovanni bands might have been bad financial decisions at first, but in the long run, that focus has paid off. We don’t think of what’s going to make us money, we think of what’s going on right now in our scene, and how we can document that.”

Don Giovanni’s roster is very much a community — the bands have mostly known one another for many years, and wave the flag for one another. (“Everyone on the label is a little obsessed with Brick Mower and Black Wine,” Steinhardt says.) Both of the founders are still in Don Giovanni-associated bands: Gajewski plays bass in the headbanging punk band Nuclear Santa Claust, and Steinhardt occasionally plays under the name Modern Hut. “It’s a really a solo project,” he notes, “but there’s a lot of people who keep it going, because I’m honestly not very talented. My friend Marissa from Screaming Females is really what made it happen — I’ve actually been working on a Modern Hut record with her for, like, six years.”

Since 2008, Don Giovanni has also put together a big concert for its bands every February. The annual showcase has expanded to increasingly large venues; this year’s showcase was a three-day, 15-band blowout. “I always liked the idea of really big shows,” Steinhardt says, “and when I started it, none of our bands had ever played places like Maxwell’s. I thought if we could do a show there that was successful, those bands could get on the radar at those venues. We did, and it sold out, and it’s just kept growing — every year we try to push the limit.”

We asked Steinhardt to tell us a bit about the history of Don Giovanni’s relationship with half a dozen of its most significant artists.

Waxahatchee

Cerulean Salt

Waxahatchee
2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

I was a huge, huge fan of [Waxahatchee singer/songwriter Katie Crutchfield's former band] P.S. Eliot — they were an incredible band. They were from Alabama, but they were a Don Giovanni band that wasn't on Don Giovanni. We just didn't do their records, because they weren't local. Katie and her sister moved to Brooklyn, and they did this project called Bad Banana. I e-mailed Katie and told her I wanted to do... a Bad Banana record. By that time, they were barely around, but she told me, "But I'm doing this new thing, Waxahatchee." We put out their first album [American Weekend] in January of last year, and no one cared — and by the end of the year, it was like the biggest record ever. You don't know what's going to happen, sometimes. We would do records like that if they never picked up, but it's always really nice when they do.
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Hilly Eye

Reasons to Live

Hilly Eye
2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

They're one of the most recent bands to join the label, and a band that sort of came into the scene through the label. They played with Shellshag and Screaming Females a lot; I bought their demo at one of their shows, and I just really liked it. Until this year, we really only worked with local bands. But I booked them on shows, and at some point I told them, "Just... so you know, we would do your record if you want — I like your band." They got back to me when they were doing a record, and it was just a natural fit: They fit with all our ideals, they fit with all our bands. They're great people.
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California X

California X

California X
2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

I'm working on a Ph.D. right now, and I live in Ithaca, but before I was in Ithaca I was in Syracuse. And in Syracuse, I met this guy Josh who moved to Amherst and was in California X, and was going to put out their record. I heard them and I thought, "I love that band." I booked them for shows — I usually book bands I like, it's not, like,... a label thing. Josh left the band on really friendly terms, but he wasn't putting out their record, and they were kind of in a quandary. I talked to Zach about it. We'd kind of cemented our "only doing local bands" thing, but we thought, "Fuck it, the record's awesome, it's the kind of thing we'd do anyway, we can help the band, let's do it." And then it was easy. They're part of the scene anyway — Waxahatchee played the first California X show.
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Shellshag

Rumors In Disguise

Shellshag
2011 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

They're my favorite band. They're a really important band, not just to me but to the world, and I hope someday the world realizes that. I remember when they moved from California to Brooklyn — they were famous to me and my 10 friends. I don't like playing favorites, but Shellshag are probably my favorite band on the label, and I don't think any of the others would be upset to hear... that. Any label that was thinking about the bottom line would never do some of the things we do for Shellshag, but I think it's really important that their records exist and get noticed. The lyrics they write — they're old but they're young. The fact that they just keep doing what they're doing, and damn the music industry, is really inspirational to me. I got married in August, and we only had two bands play: a Misfits tribute band, and Shellshag.
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Big Eyes

Hard Life

Big Eyes
2011 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

Big Eyes have just been around our scene forever. I met Kate when she was 14, and when she was 18 she started a band called Cheeky, who were maybe the best band ever when they were around. We were supposed to do their album — there's even a feature on YouTube about the making of the album for our label — and then they broke up and didn't finish it. I... said, "Kate, let me do your next band," and that was Big Eyes. They relocated to Seattle at a certain point, which is partially why we're not doing their records any more. But there's no bad blood. I love them. I'm booking a Don Giovanni show for them right now.
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Screaming Females

Ugly

Screaming Females
2012 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

They were one of my favorite bands in New Brunswick, and we didn't work with them until their third album because they were doing their own records. I thought that was really cool — I love it when bands put out their own records. Then, one day, a mutual friend of ours played matchmaker: "You know, Screaming Females really like your label, Joe, they want you to put out their records…" And... he told them, "You know, Joe really likes you guys…" So we talked, and I think I said something like that I was going to kill myself if they didn't let me put out the next record, and thankfully they didn't call my bluff on that. At the time, for all I knew, that would be all we ever did: Most of our bands, at that point, did one record and broke up and that was that. But I can go back and see that that was a huge thing — we've ended up working with them for six years. A lot of the way Don Giovanni functions is because of working with Screaming Females and figuring out how to do new things: licensing, royalties, booking agents, all these things we didn't know about and they didn't know about, and we've figured everything out together. I don't think Marissa realizes her own talent sometimes. There are things she can do so effortlessly that she's so modest about. Everyone thinks she's really serious and scary, but people don't know that she's really silly and funny.
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25 Must-See Bands at SXSW 2013

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:25:16 +0000

Do we even need the preamble? You know what next week is and, like any right-thinking person, you’ve probably put off working out a schedule until the very last second. So as you start to hammer out your crazymaking week — probably on the plane, probably an hour or so before touching down — here are our picks for the 25 must-sees in Austin next week.

Free SXSW Sampler

Pissed Jeans

Honeys

Pissed Jeans
2013 | Sub Pop Records

Snarling and spitting, growling and kicking, Honeys won't surprise those who love the Allentown, Pennsylvania-based Jesus (Lizard) freaks Pissed Jeans, nor is it likely to attract those that deplore the band. "Write what you know," as they say, and Pissed Jeans knows pummeling, antisocial punk. When lead yeller Matt Korvette isn't "in the hallway screaming" (that's from riotous opener "Bathroom Laughter"), he can often be found smirking. You'd think four dudes who... all recently became fathers would be tamer than this. — Austin L. Ray
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Marnie Stern

Marnie Stern

Marnie Stern
2010 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

In years past, Marnie Stern's shorthand description usually involved the words "guitar" and "shredding," but the New Yorker has grown equally adept over her career at revealing just how big her heart is. Stern's frenetic fingertapping and the bonkers drumming of Kid Millions illustrate the way that the best response to bone-crushing sadness is, sometimes, a pealing laugh. Confidence and the lack thereof are also common lyrical themes, although the bravado with... which Stern wields both her guitar and her anguished voice masks those facts on first listen. — Maura Johnston
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Waxahatchee

Cerulean Salt

Waxahatchee
2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

As Waxahatchee, Katie Crutchfield uses her brief tracks to paint a very specific but familiar portrait of 20-something American youth, first on the deeply personal, lo-fi acoustic guitar-filled American Weekend, and now on the plugged-in Cerulean Salt, in which her subtle gut-punches translate just as powerfully once the volume's been dialed up. — Carrie Battan

Charles Bradley

No Time for Dreaming

Charles Bradley
2011 | Daptone Records / The Orchard

It's time to put to bed, once and for all, Charles Bradley's oft-repeated origin story as a James Brown impersonator. The Screaming Eagle of Soul, The Original Black Swan and, most recently, The Victim of Love, Bradley is at this point a performer fully his own, possessing boundless charisma, gallons of passion and the kind of unstudied, unadulterated joy that SXSW — a week fully fucking lousy with marketing and branding and... consumer-facing outreach opportunities — desperately needs. To stand in the presence of Charles Bradley is to be basked in 100 percent pure love — so completely unsullied and unpolluted you feel yourself choking up before the first song ever hits the chorus. To put it another way: if James Brown were alive today, he'd be impersonating Charles. — J. Edward Keyes
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METZ

METZ

METZ
2012 | Sub Pop Records

On their debut album, Canadian trio METZ has delivered a sound that's reasonably scarce in 2012: post-hardcore, pre-grunge, noise-addled punk rock. You can hear the influence of the Jesus Lizard in particular everywhere: in Alex Edkins's strained screams; in Hayden Menzies's crashing drum assault; in their relentless wave of screeching guitars, in the frenzied pace of "Wet Blanket," in the sludgy industrial instrumental "Nausea," and in their grim, dour lyrics. But the... sheer volume and force of the music don't take away from their musicianship. — Evan Minsker
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Torres

TORRES

TORRES
2013 | TORRES / TuneCore

Torres's songs feel as if they were bound to come crawling out of singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott's body no matter what she did or where she was. Dominated by the wavery tones of her Gibson 355 electric, the songs explore the fragile architecture of human relationships, often finding Scott standing amid a steaming pile of rubble, wondering not about what caused the house to fall but what to do, now, with all the... shattered pieces left behind. — Rachael Maddux
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Parquet Courts

Light Up Gold

Parquet Courts
2013 | What's Your Rupture?

On Light Up Gold, the irresistible debut from Brooklyn band Parquet Courts, the principal songwriters Andrew Savage and Austin Brown cast a jaundiced eye on our troubled times with a series of infinitely quotable bon mots: On regional cuisine? "As for Texas: Donuts Only. You cannot find bagels here." On the value of wisdom? "Socrates died in the fucking gutter." These nuggets are dropped between jagged guitar lines that sound like they... were lifted from Wire's 154 — bent-coathanger leads that teeter on the steep incline between punk and post-punk. — J. Edward Keyes
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Matthew E. White

Roc Marciano

Reloaded (Deluxe Edition)

Roc Marciano
Decon

Roc Marciano's music exists to remind you what NYC rap sounds like in the idealized bubble of your memory, and he's frighteningly good at it. He's so good, in fact, that after awhile you forget that his music is a kind of Civil War reenactment, one in which Swizz Beatz plays General Sherman and the Battle of Five Forks is the moment he started fooling with a Casio. Marciano's rap world exists... before all of that, a vanished kingdom of urban despair, gnarled street slang, and unglamorous night shifts conducted out in front of public housing. — Jayson Greene
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Mac DeMarco

Solange

True

Solange
2012 | Terrible Records / The Orchard

Sure, Solange is the sister of R&B/pop princess Beyoncé — a fact that will probably never be omitted from her CV. But while her musical means (a soaring soprano; wisely chosen collaborators) are similar to the elder Knowles, the ends are significantly different. For her 2012 EP True, she enlisted production help from Blood Orange's Dev Hynes and ended up with a candy-coated, left-of-center R&B playground. — Laura Studarus

The Coup

Sorry To Bother You

The Coup
2012 | Anti/Epitaph

Boots Riley has had a few other things to do than rap for Oakland collective the Coup as of late — appearing at the forefront of the Occupy movement, for one. But for their seventh album in 20 years, Riley's loose sense of humor remains intact in much the way as his taste for lyrics that spell out rebellion. — Michaelangelo Matos

Samantha Crain

Kid Face

Samantha Crain
2013 | Ramseur Records / The Orchard

Oklahoma singer-songwriter Samantha Crain has always sounded like an old soul, her dusty alto worn down by restless thoughts and free-floating anxiety. On her latest LP Kid Face, she comes into her own as a lyricist, using the songs to examine her place in the world. — Annie Zaleski

Autre Ne Veut

Anxiety

Autre Ne Veut
2013 | Software

Arthur Ashin typically spends the duration of his performances as Autre Ne Veut curled up on the ground like a potato bug. So if you go to see him at SXSW, you should kind of prepare for the fact that you might not actually see him. That's OK, though: His music is more about feeling than seeing. If Terence Trent D'Arby returned from self-imposed exile and pulled off the perfect comeback record,... it might sound a lot like Ashin's recently-released Anxiety: supple, R&B-informed vocal lines glide over stormy-sea synthesizers, the tensions perfectly mirroring the existential unease in his lyrics. Case in point? His most beautiful song, the slinky "Counting," is about his terror that his grandmother was going to die. How can you expect a man to have the strength to stand upright while singing about things like that? — J. Edward Keyes
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Maria Minerva

Will Happiness Find Me?

Maria Minerva
2012 | Not Not Fun / Revolver

Maria Minerva, a somewhat mysterious artist from Estonia, has a playfulness that's alternately cerebral and coy, and a lightness of touch at the controls. She sings too, with a voice that stretches out and rises up from deep pools of echo. On her latest effort, Will Happiness Finds Me?, she plays with different sounds and different tempos, with a mind toward both vintage club music and futuristic pop at once. — Andy... Battaglia
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My Gold Mask

Leave Me Midnight

My Gold Mask
2013 | Goldy Tapes / CD Baby

Chicago duo My Gold Mask amplify the effects of a breakup album on their debut, Leave Me At Mightnight. They don't skimp on dramatics, with Gretta Rochelle's pleading vocals, Jack Armondo's spiraling guitar riffs, and lyrics that grapple with psychosis and reference Gothic literature and Italo horror flicks. The result achieves a spellbinding emotional intensity that's easy to inhabit. — Marissa G. Muller

Skeletonwitch

Forever Abomination

Skeletonwitch
Prosthetic / The Orchard

Hands-down the most fun you will ever have a metal show, period, Skeletonwitch combine blasphemous guitar firepower with a self-aware sense of humor without ever tipping once into icky archness or loathsome, smirking heavy meta. It helps that they're an astonishingly tight band, whipping from one burst of split-second riffery to the next with all the frenzy and fury of a speed-of-sound rollercoaster car desperately hugging the curves. Who knew unabashed Satanism... could be so uplifting? — J. Edward Keyes
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Icona Pop

Iconic EP

Icona Pop
2012 | Big Beat Records/Atlantic

Here is Swedish duo Icona Pop summed up in six words: "I don't care! I love it!" That refrain — cribbed from last year's giddiest breakup song — perfectly captures Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo's exuberance and reckless abandon. Their songs are straight-up sugar shots, firework synths and hollered vocals and drum machines that wallop and squelch like medicine balls full of purple Kool-Aid. It's the sound of pure joy — a... nonstop barrage of leaping neon exclamation points. — J. Edward Keyes
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Pearl and the Beard

Killing the Darlings

Pearl And The Beard
2011 | Family Records / The Orchard

Pearl and the Beard are a trio of loud and goofy Brooklyn songwriters, their songs a mix of acoustic folk and jazzy cabaret via a soft-voiced guitarist (Jeremy Styles) and a cellist and percussionist (Emily Hope Price and Jocelyn Mackenzie) who seamlessly switch between brassy wails and Disney-princess croons. — Laura Leebove

Chelle Rose

Ghost of Browder Holler

Chelle Rose
2012 | Lil' Damsel Records / TuneCore

Even Satan knows better than to fuck with Chelle Rose. That's the truism she lays out in the center of the slow-moseying, creepy-as-hell "Leona Barrett," seething, "I don't know who I trouble more: The mean ol' devil or the good ol' Lord." Need further proof? It's all over the brooding, beautiful Ghost of Browder Holler, a record that takes the same sinister spirit found in bands like Nick Cave & the Bad... Seeds and transplants it to ragged booze-bucket country music. Rose's voice is a wonder, a smartass sneer that jabs like a hundred middle fingers. Her pronunciation drips with delicious contempt: she shrugs off a louse of a lover by drawling, "My skin ain't sowft enuff, my kisses would not douww." She dispenses with him like she's flecking a fly from the lip of her MGD. — J. Edward Keyes
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Night Beats

Night Beats

Night Beats
2011 | Trouble In Mind Records / TuneCore

Here's the ideal environment for enjoying the music of gloomy garage ghouls Night Beats: It's 4 a.m. and you've ended up, after a long night of boozing and carousing, at some sparsely-attended party in a barely-furnished loft apartment in some remote part of the city, and a band is bashing out sneering numbers that sound like Nuggets with an upset stomach while a movie projector beams lava-lamp-like images on to their swaying... bodies. Also, it's 1967 and you're in an instructional film about the hazards of LSD. Failing that, a stage in the sunlight in Austin, Texas, is the next best thing. — J. Edward Keyes
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Dana Falconberry

Leelanau

Dana Falconberry
2012 | Antenna Farm Records / The Orchard

Dana Falconberry writes delicate orchestral-folk songs; her airy mezzo accompanied by plucked strings, fingerpicked guitar and gentle rim clicks. Though she's now based in Austin, her debut LP is an ode to her childhood spent in northern Michigan's lush Leelanau peninsula. — Laura Leebove

Royal Thunder

CVI

Royal Thunder
2012 | Relapse Records

One of last year's best new bands by a long sight, Royal Thunder's greatest asset is the unsettling, purple-blue bellow of frontwoman Mini Parsonz. Over a bevy of murky, churning chordage, she serenades the undead, sings of ancient family curses and groans out the very kind of infernal incantations those old Christian anti-rock 'n' roll videos used to warn against. That the songs are so tuneful is a sly infernal trick: the... best way to get people to sing the praises of the devil is to make that praise hooky as hell. — J. Edward Keyes
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Holydrug Couple

Noctuary

The Holydrug Couple
2013 | Sacred Bones Records / S.C. Distribution

In case the name didn't clue you in: This is heavy-lidded, slow-moving, psyched-out, pinwheel-eyed bliss. The Chilean duo Holydrug Couple imagines what might happen if you put a brick on the turntable while you were playing old Byrds records. A loose netting of guitars drifts down slowly, drums thud and shudder and vocal lines — keening and melodic — expand like echoes in the Grand Canyon. In the midst of the hyperactive... Austin chaos, Holydrug Couple provide a grinning, dreamy respite. — J. Edward Keyes
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Jacco Gardner

Cabinet of Curiosities

Jacco Gardner
2013 | Trouble In Mind Records / TuneCore

Indie rock's own Little Prince, Jacco Gardner's music is magic and precious, sumptuous orchestral pop that summons the spirits of The Zombies and The Left Banke while sounding openly derivative of neither. In fact, it's Gardner's own assured gift for melody that makes Cabinet of Curiosities such a wonder — even more than the swirling, meringue-like strings. His vocal lines dart off at odd acute angles, poking rude holes in the tissue-paper... orchestration. Witness opener "Clear the Air": xylophones and mellotrons and violins pirouette like tiny ceramic music box ballerinas; but then Gardner's weirdo trapezoidal voice spirals in, making what was once simply soothing seem suddenly ominous and mysterious. It's like the unadulterated versions of Aesop's Fables, where childlike fantasy often gives way to moments of genuine, thrilling danger. — J. Edward Keyes
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Free eMusic Samplers

eMusic Editorial Staff — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 19:42:35 +0000

It’s easy to get stuck in a musical rut. The amount of new music that’s released, at this point, on a daily basis can feel overwhelming, and the deluge can cause you to run panicked to old favorites instead of looking for something new. That’s where we come in. We’ve assembled this page of samplers — all of them free — as a way to help you find your next favorite band without burning through your precious balance or making you spend hour after hour digging through the stacks. Just grab a bunch, load them on to your music player of choice, and let the discovery begin.

New This Week: Autre Ne Veut, Sally Shapiro, Emmylou Harris & More!

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:53:53 +0000

Autre Ne Veut, Anxiety: A new one from Arthur Ashin aka Autre Ne Veut. eMusic’s Andrew Parks says:

So while Anxiety features more than its fair share of Timbaland-vis-Timberlake tropes and unironic Top 40 nods, the shuffle and sheen of the singer/producer’s muscular studio mix can’t hide the confessionals that are exorcised across 10 mildly creepy tracks. It’s as if we were all invited to Ashin’s American Idol audition, only to watch in horror as he writhes around the floor to a rubberized Rihanna beat like a freshly-killed eel.

Sally Shapiro, Somewhere Else: The third set from the mysterious Sally Shapiro and producer Johan Agebjörn. Laura Studarus says:

An unabashedly romantic head rush, the third effort by the Swedish duo (consisting of Shapiro and producer Johan Agebjörn) contains a world of candy heart-worthy sweet nothings, rendered irresistible by Shapiro’s coquettish whisper. No longer simply contented to fall lockstep with Italo Disco, Somewhere Else lets elements of acid house, dance and good ol’ fashioned electro pop bleed around the edges of each track.

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, Old Yellow Moon: A long-awaited collaboration between country greats. Holly George-Warren says:

Old Yellow Moon, with its rough-hewn, live-in-a-room ambience, offers what Harris refers to as “living room music.” “This project — like Rodney’s and my relationship — started with sitting around on the floor with two acoustic guitars and finding songs that we love,” according to Harris. “This record represents that.”

The Mavericks, In Time: A triumphant turn after a decade-long hiatus. Says Peter Blackstock:

In Time is awash in Latin rhythms and horn flourishes that suggest The Mavericks would be a better fit for the Buena Vista Social Club, and that’s as it should be: Leader Raul Malo’s powerful, distinctive voice is at its best when freed from boundaries of market or genre.

Charles Lloyd & Jason Moran, Hagar’s Song: These two are generations apart but make a perfect musical pair. Peter Margasak says:

Jason Moran, one of the most visionary composers, improvisers and conceptualists of his generation, has appeared on three of Charles Lloyd’s albums since 2008, and with Hagar’s Song, they not only share equal billing for the first time, but they demonstrate that their artistic partnership has never been more simpatico and sublime.

Various Artists, Change the Beat: The Celluloid Records Story 1979-1987 - Stunning compilation highlighting Celluloid Records, an imprint that can boast post-punk bands like Killing Time as well as the earliest hip-hop releases. An overview of some of the most fertile of late-1970s to 1980s downtown NYC cross-genre experiments.

Doldrums, Lesser Evil – Maxed-out, overload electronic pop from a mischievous experimenter. Stevie Chick says:

Montreal-based fractured-pop auteur Airick Woodhead is a sonic collagist who clearly isn’t happy until he’s saturated his track with untold layers of noise and fragmented melody. “She Is The Wave,” a collaboration with Canadian electronic artist Guy Dallas, is a case in point. It’s a cyclone of elements that, at first, seems random, but on closer inspection, has a beautifully choreographed tunefulness deep in the chaos. On “Egypt,” Woodhead weaves industrial noises, blips and crashes into ever-changing, sweetly discombobulated pop — it could be Art Of Noise for the GarageBand generation.

Johnny Marr, The Messenger – Marr’s back, this time not as a sideman but with a breezy, agreeable solo record.

Nadia Sirota, Baroque - The violist Nadia Sirota’s follow-up to her vital disc of new classical works First Things First. New works by Judd Greenstein, Missy Mazzoli (of former eMusic Selects alums Victoire), Nico Muhly, and more.

Olafur Arnalds, The Winter EP - Patient, glowing miniatures from this composer who works in a soundtrack-friendly ambient-classical mode.

Bilal, A Love Surreal - Liquid, languorous and understatedly funky and weird neo-soul record from Bilal, whose career has never been paid the attention of his contemporaries. This record is excellent, shades of Shuggie and Frank Ocean.

Mogwai, Les Revenants – New EP from post-punk legends is a soundtrack to a French television show, and it sounds like it suits their alluringly dour mood just fine.

Ed Harcourt, Back In The Woods - Latest effort from the singer/songwriter finds him in fine, dependable, apple-wry form.

Kutt Calhoun, Black Gold – Hard-bitten raps from the Midwest rapper Kutt Calhoun, from Tech-9 Strange Music imprint.

Ill Bill, The Grimy Awards - Former Non Phixion member releases another brutal, hardcore testament to his roots.

Gensu Dean, Abrasions - Low-key street erudition, shades of GZA, from Gensu Dean, who makes crisp, cold DJ Premier-style classic rap out of Texas.

10,000 Maniacs, Music From the Motion Picture - The return of 10,000 Maniacs! The band’s first studio LP in 13 years.

Darkthrone, The Underground Resistance - The black metal progenitors continue blazing down their late-period operatic path, confounding early fans and discovering new territory along the way.

Kavinsky, OutRun – The debut from the French house artist, out today.

Girls Names, The New Life - Indie-poppers from Belfast go darker and more cinematic on their excellent-sounding Slumberland second LP.

Popstrangers, Antipodes -Britpop-influenced New Zealanders ready their first missive.

Golden Grrls, Golden Grrls - More cuddly indie-pop, with guitar tones fuzzier than a baby chick and boy/girl vocals. Great songwriting and perfect production help this one stand out.

Vietnam, an A.merican D.ream - New record on Mexican Summer, slightly bent and drunk-sounding jangle-pop.

Various Artists, FatCat Records Winter Sampler 2013 – FREE SAMPLER, everyone, with new material by Frightened Rabbit, Twilight Sad, U.S. Girls, Mice Parade, and many more flagship Fatcat acts! Your “no reason not to click this button” of the day.

SINGLES

David Bowie, The Stars (Are Out Tonight) - The second inkling of what to expect from David Bowie’s new record A New Day,. This one snarls and scrapes where “Where Are We Now” sighed and moaned. This record is going to be interesting.

Ducktails, Letter of Intent - Latest single!

A 10-Point Plan For Getting Into Zappa

Richard Gehr — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 19:20:37 +0000

In 2012, the Zappa Family Trust reissued Frank Zappa’s original 58-album catalog through Universal Music, with nearly two dozen early-ish titles benefiting from a significant audio upgrade. So what better time to introduce yourself to the peculiar and prolific genius of Frank Zappa — composer, bandleader and guitarist extraordinaire? We’ll even make it easy for you: Simply follow this handy 10-step introduction to the 20th century’s most daring and wickedly satiric rock-classical crossover genius. It starts off easy and becomes less so. Save his Synclavier experiments and confrontational mid-eighties sampler sallies against the Parents Musical Resource Center (aka the “Washington Wives”) for later. This is what you need to consume right now!

“Peaches En Regalia”

Hot Rats

Frank Zappa
2012 | Zappa Records

Begin here. The opening track of 1969's Hot Rats, with which Frank Zappa pretty much invented jazz-rock fusion, is a regal distillation of Zappa's musical personality at its most slyly inviting. With Ian Underwood's keyboards and winds simulating an entire orchestra, an immaculately concise FZ guitar solo, and a teenaged Shuggie Otis on bass, "Peaches" blends pomp, wit, rock, jazz and classical flavors into a rich, palate-cleansing overture for the extended jams... that follow.
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Over-Nite Sensation and Apostrophe’

Zappa’s two most commercially successful albums, recorded mostly during the same 1973 sessions, tantalize with psychedelic scatology and catchy comedy-rock tracks. Initiate yourself into the mysteries of yellow snow, dental floss and Sears ponchos, but don’t miss the subtly akimbo arrangements, rocking set pieces, and stellar guitar playing. Fun fact: Tina Turner and the Ikettes sang uncredited backing vocals for $25 per track.

Over-Nite Sensation

Frank Zappa
2012 | Zappa Records
Apostrophe (')

Frank Zappa
2012 | Zappa Records

Waka/Jawaka

Waka/Jawaka

Frank Zappa
2012 | Zappa Records

Zappa's thoroughly entertaining 1972 sequel to Hot Rats recalls the sort of sophisticated big-band jazz played by Don Ellis and Bob Brookmeyer. Bookended by the 17-minute "Big Swifty" and the 11-minute title track, W/J makes 7/8 and 11/8 time signatures sound as normal as 4/4. Also, "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow plays one of the finest pedal-steel solos ever on the hallucinatory "It Just Might Be a One-Shot Deal."

Roxy & Elsewhere

Roxy & Elsewhere

Frank Zappa
2012 | Zappa Records

Percussionist Ruth Underwood earns MVP honors on this 1974 live album that balances Zappa's compulsive perfectionism with gleeful improvisation and infinite hooks. The original double-vinyl's side-long sequence of "Village of the Sun," "Echidna's Arf (Of You)," and "Don't You Ever Wash That Thing" contains as much heart as humor thanks to George Duke's vocals, Chester Thompson's ridonkulous drumming, and the ringmaster's obvious delight at the fleet-footed mischief he hath wrought.

“The Adventures of Gregory Peccary”

Studio Tan

Frank Zappa
2012 | Zappa Records

Zappa considered himself first and foremost a modern classical composer, and often complained about needing to tour with a rock band to subsidize his serious stuff. Somewhere between three-chord rock and Webern-ian dodecophony, however, he sometimes hit a sweet spot of semi-serious rock operatics, most notably in this 20-minute orchestral work from 1978's Studio Tan. Zappa's subtlest social satire, "Gregory Peccary" mocks consumerism, mechanization, religious exploitation, and the very nature of time... itself with blithe melodic pastiches.
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Burnt Weeny Sandwich

Burnt Weeny Sandwich

Frank Zappa
2012 | Zappa Records

After disbanding the original Mothers of Invention in 1969, Zappa released both this album of (mostly) studio leftovers and the (mostly) live collection Weasels Ripped My Flesh the following year. Weeny is a grand gateway into the Mothers' peculiar mix of high and low styles. Doo-wop gems "WPLJ" and "Valarie" bookend a classically inclined set whose nineteen-minute multipart centerpiece "The Little House I Used to Live In" features a fiery Don "Sugarcane"... Harris blues-violin solo.
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“Inca Roads”

One Size Fits All

Frank Zappa
2012 | Zappa Records

Considered Zappa's quintessential composition by many, the rhythmically treacherous One Size Fits All (1975) opener pokes fun at progressive-rock pretension even as it inspired some of FZ's most beautifully composed guitar solos. This version's solo, played originally onstage in Helsinki, exemplifies Zappa's notion of xenechrony, a recontextualizing of material between stage and studio. Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar's title track, for example, snags a particularly stunning "Inca Roads" solo from a... 1979 tour.
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Make a Jazz Noise Here

Make A Jazz Noise Here

Frank Zappa
2012 | Zappa Records

Zappa's final tour, in 1988, featured an ultratight 12-piece band with a hard-swinging five-man horn section. The third of three live albums documenting the excursion, Jazz Noise mixes artfully arranged Mothers classics like "Cruisin' for Burgers," extended sample-driven improvisations such as "When Yuppies Go to Hell," and jazz-inflected instrumentals like "Black Napkins." The whole affair runs more than two hours, contains numerous quotes from the classical canon, and has a valedictory maturity... reminiscent of Dutch jazz oddballs like the Willem Breuker Kollektief.
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We’re Only in It for the Money

We're Only In It For The Money

Frank Zappa
2012 | Zappa Records

Beginning with Cal Schenkel's Sgt. Pepper's-spoofing cover art, the Mothers of Invention's 1968 conceptual masterpiece satirized the hippie "flower punk" subculture even more venomously than Zappa had skewered their parents a year earlier on Absolutely Free. Short, sharp melodies, musique concrète, analog electronics, astounding tape-speed manipulation, orchestral leftovers from Lumpy Gravy, and both broad and laser-sharp parodies of contemporary hits (e.g., "Hey Joe") add up to a brain-scorching album of singular collagic... velocity.
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Uncle Meat

Uncle Meat

Frank Zappa
2012 | Zappa Records

Notoriously gnarly but endlessly rewarding, Zappa's often-conflicting pop and "serious" sides come to a jittery and often transcendent resolution in the grooves of this double album containing "most of the music from the Mothers' movie of the same name which we haven't got enough money to finish yet." The title track and Zappa ür-theme "King Kong" emerge and dissolve throughout the album like Wagnerian motives performed by a Darmstradt serial composer conducting... Arkham Asylum's institutional orchestra — only funnier.
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Discover: New York Hip-Hop

eMusic Editorial Staff — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:23:36 +0000

Photo: Jay-Z

While we’re usually cruising down 8th Street in a cab, not an off-white Lexus, we know exactly where Jay-Z’s coming from in his new-school anthem, “Empire State of Mind.” From Brooklyn to the Bronx, and every borough in between, there’s no city like New York City when it comes to classic hip-hop records.

Here’s a quick, album-guided tour of the Big Apple…

Brooklyn

Reasonable Doubt

Jay-Z
1996 | Roc-a-fella / TuneCore

Every rapper needs a creation myth — Illmatic opened with Nas and A.Z. counting money over snippets from Wild Style, the devil's sons redeemed by hip-hop. Biggie opened Ready to Die with a gripping audio collage of his first twenty-odd years, as though his rag-to-riches tale was one you needed to learn. Jay opened Reasonable Doubt with a heartbeat, but its quickening pace suggested it was the sound of fear —... of moving your first package; of holding your first gun; of seeing a man die; of the moment when you realize you have grown up too fast. This wasn't an album deeply concerned with where Jay had been, since he had already built his name as a rather successful drug dealer. This album was about one man's rebirth, and as soon as that ticking heart gave way to the gloss and floss of "Can't Knock the Hustle," it was clear that Jay, too, had arrived.

"My pops knew exactly what he did when he made me/ Tried to get a nut and he got a nut," he bragged on that opening cut, as Mary J. Blige bellowed an achingly hopeful chorus borrowed from Mel'isa Morgan's "Fool's Paradise." But was Jay really a "nut," our "worst fear confirmed"? There is something cool and composed about Reasonable Doubt, as he plays straight man to Biggie's true nut on "Brooklyn's Finest" or earns his stripes on the icy "Dead Presidents II" — two of the finest songs of Jay's career. "We used to fight for building blocks/ Now we fight for blocks with buildings that make a killin'," he raps on the truly disturbing "D'evils." But even there he sounds chillingly assured against DJ Premier's spooked Allen Toussaint sample.

History recognizes Reasonable Doubt as evidence of Jay's genius, but it all could have ended up very differently. Reasonable Doubt arrived during a tumultuous turn in the history of hip-hop. Nas'disappointing It Was Written would come out a week later, and hip-hop's obsession with the Mafioso lifestyle would soon bloat to cartoonish extremes. The Wu-Tang Clan would spool out of control, and within the next year, Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. would ascend to martyrdom. Yet the culture's growth was still exceeding all expectations, and hip-hop would need new, larger, flashier heroes. And in Jay-Z, it found its pinnacle.
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Daily Operation

Gang Starr
1992 | NOO TRYBE

Straddling the very fissures where the old school gave way to the new, Gang Starr's 1992 masterpiece Step in the Arena was the sound that took rappers 15 years to perfect. In the few months that followed, New York would be scrambling to reinvent itself in the year Los Angeles broke, but Daily Operation was coolly classic-sounding; like Led Zep's Physical Graffiti, it's an unstoppable summary of everything that makes its genre... great — the most rollicking breaks, the silkiest rhyme patterns, the most nimble cutwork, the most head-knocking snares.

For being the greatest MC/DJ duo in rap history, Gang Starr were never flashy, gaudy or showy. Guru and DJ Premier are jazz heads at heart, and they understand the idea of "being in the pocket" — note how Guru brags that his vocals "complement the slow phat groove" in "Stay Tuned." But don't mistake their smoothness for soft: The production (handled by the duo) cycles through some of the most harried samples around, always hiccupping with hums and tics and audience noise and hummingbird strings — peaking with a manic one-second loop of hard-funk footnote Sugar Billy Garner in "B.Y.S."

The magic is in the details — how Premier gently stretches and bends KRS-One's voice in "Ex Girl to the Next Girl"; the way Guru can makes something as devilishly simple as "You see the mic in my hand? Now watch me wreck it now" seem like liquid perfection; how "Take It Personal" adds extra bass drums hits to the iconic "Skull Snap" break to make it even more skull-snappy. Daily Operation is an uncluttered masterpiece by a group with a catalog full of them.
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Life After Death

The Notorious B.I.G.
1997 | Bad Boy Records

Released just 16 days after his March 9 death by drive-by shooting, there's an eerie prescience to the Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death. Several things — that title, the hearse-featuring album cover, the crushing closing track, "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)" — gave Life After Death a bizarre resonance. But this is much more than paperwork from the morgue. In fact, rap stardom gave The Notorious B.I.G. a new lease; he... attacks with testosterone-filled glee. The album's title is about second chances at money, fame and sex after a tumultuous youth; a true second life. The result, worth every second of its expansive double-LP running time, is actually more about light and wealth than its predecessor, which was defined by a grim fatalism. The hits say as much. Consider that old speedboat-riding chestnut of hip-hop opulence, "Hypnotize" or the Diana Ross-lifting exuberance of "Mo Money Mo Problems." The giddy, quite funny "I Got A Story To Tell" finds Biggie creeping with the lady friend of a New York Knicks player and then retelling the tale to his boys, embellishing like a grandfather serenading some awestruck tots. Biggie's desire to croon — really, croon — crops up repeatedly here, as on the goofy extended "Playa Hater" or the thudding Miami bass of "Another." Even "Ten Crack Commandments," a steely DJ Premier production and drug-dealing manifesto has a delightful service-y quality — memorable and useful! So many of his lyrics became sampled and repeated hip-hop aphorisms — "If you don't know, now you know"; "It was all a dream..."; "Went from ashy to classy"; and so on. This is a crucial part of the Biggie mythology, the stickiness of his writing.

After the success of Ready To Die Biggie used his follow-up to indulge his fantasies. Working mostly with Puff Daddy's in-house production crew, The Hitmen (Carlos "July Six" Broady, Nashiem Myrick, Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie, Stevie J, Ron "Amen-Ra" Lawrence), it's surprising how many of the songs here are about sexual conquest; at times you may yearn for his debut's brutality. But over time, Life After Death reveals itself as a sensual work — the lyrics to the R. Kelly-featuring "Fuck You Tonight" are specific, attentive, lascivious in ways that might make Luther Campbell blush. Biggie is less rapid-fire throughout, whether rapping or singing, letting that charismatic, jowly burr traipse into Isaac Hayes territory. His reach is longer, too, featuring paeans to his beloved '80s R&B, production from distinguished contemporaries like Mobb Deep's Havoc and Wu-Tang Clan's RZA, and guest shots from stars old (DMC, Too $hort) and new (onetime paramour and protégé Lil' Kim, a young friend named Jay-Z, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony).

That collaboration with Bone Thugs, the whirring "Notorious Thugs," forced a flood light on rap's ever-expanding regional purview. Exposing — and paying homage by emulating their distinctive half-sung double-time flow — to Cleveland's own was just one more example of Biggie's almost perverse palm-reading — he simply knew where the genre needed to go. The song's reference to "So-called beef with you know who" anchors the album's more serious undertones. Biggie, of course, was feuding with ex-friend 2Pac for some time as he began recording the album. Pac was gunned down in Las Vegas six months before its release, but that didn't stop Big from including "Going Back To Cali," a perhaps too-braggadocious act of defiance in the service of an insatiable ego.

The backend of the second disc is the most tremulous and grandiose. The underrated single "Sky's The Limit," a defiant turn on "My Downfall," and RZA's "Long Kiss Goodnight" are all mythmaking songs that ultimately sting in light of Big's fate. And the closing track, "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)," is the hazy epilogue to a cinematic reconfiguration. That it all doesn't end in death is its own sort of optimism, tragically inaccurate though it was.
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Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star

Black Star
2002 | Rawkus Entertainment

While Puff Daddy and his followers continued to dictate the direction hip-hop would take into the millennium, Mos Def and Talib Kweli surfaced from the underground to pull the sounds in the opposite direction. Their 13 rhyme fests on this superior, self-titled debut as Black Star show that old-school rap still sounds surprisingly fresh in the sea of overblown vanity productions. There's no slack evident in the tight wordplays of Def and... Kweli as they twist and turn through sparse, jazz-rooted rhythms calling out for awareness and freedom of the mind. Their viewpoints stem directly from the teachings of Marcus Garvey, the legendary activist who fought for the rights of blacks all around the world in the first half of the 20th century. Def and Kweli's ideals are sure lofty; not only are they out to preach Garvey's words, but they also hope to purge rap music of its negativity and violence. For the most part, it works. Their wisdom-first philosophy hits hard when played off their lyrical intensity, a bass-first production, and stellar scratching. While these MCs don't have all of the vocal pizzazz of A Tribe Called Quest's Phife and Q-Tip at their best, flawless tracks like the cool bop of "K.O.S. (Determination)" and "Definition" hint that Black Star is only the first of many brilliantly executed positive statements for these two street poets.
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Queens

Paid In Full

Eric B. & Rakim
2005 | ISLAND RECORDS

One of the most influential rap albums of all time, Eric B. & Rakim's Paid in Full only continues to grow in stature as the record that ushered in hip-hop's modern era. The stripped-down production might seem a little bare to modern ears, but Rakim's technique on the mic still sounds utterly contemporary, even state-of-the-art -- and that from a record released in 1987, just one year after Run-D.M.C. hit the mainstream.... Rakim basically invents modern lyrical technique over the course of Paid in Full, with his complex internal rhymes, literate imagery, velvet-smooth flow, and unpredictable, off-the-beat rhythms. The key cuts here are some of the most legendary rap singles ever released, starting with the duo's debut sides, "Eric B. Is President" and "My Melody." "I Know You Got Soul" single-handedly kicked off hip-hop's infatuation with James Brown samples, and Eric B. & Rakim topped it with the similarly inclined "I Ain't No Joke," a stunning display of lyrical virtuosity. The title cut, meanwhile, planted the seeds of hip-hop's material obsessions over a monumental beat. There are also three DJ showcases for Eric B., who like Rakim was among the technical leaders in his field. If sampling is the sincerest form of admiration in hip-hop, Paid in Full is positively worshipped. Just to name a few: Rakim's tossed-off "pump up the volume," from "I Know You Got Soul," became the basis for M/A/R/R/S' groundbreaking dance track; Eminem, a devoted Rakim student, lifted lines from "As the Rhyme Goes On" for the chorus of his own "The Way I Am"; and the percussion track of "Paid in Full" has been sampled so many times it's almost impossible to believe it had a point of origin. Paid in Full is essential listening for anyone even remotely interested in the basic musical foundations of hip-hop -- this is the form in its purest essence.
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Raising Hell

Run DMC
2005 | Arista

There's no mistaking Run-DMC's loud-and-proud staccato flows for today's crop of mumbly-even-when-they-shout rappers; if one thing dates the trio's rhymes, it's that they sound like they're having fun lobbing lines back-and-forth, rather than monomaniacally droning through gangsta clichés. (Just listen to the way Run shouts "Ronald's!" to DMC's "Those burgers are..." set-up on the 27-second personal history lesson "Son of Byford.") It's no surprise why Raising Hell became one of the first... hip-hop albums to truly break through to Middle America after a few years of post-"Rapper's Delight" woodshedding for the genre: that sense of play between the two MC's is infectious. With one of the best opening four-song runs of any old-school hip-hop album, these Hollis boys may not have expected to change pop, but they sure knew how to put their best foot forward.

That quartet is the core of Run-DMC's legacy: "Peter Piper" introduced many a non-New York resident to the sampled drum break, with its effervescent scratched-in segue from a terse, monochromatic drum machine beat to the funky, full-color bells of Bob James' "Take Me to the Mardi Gras." Future auctioneer-shaming fast-rappers may have made "It's Tricky" sound slow, but even if it's no longer the tongue-twister to beat, Russell Simmons' and Rick Rubin's cut-up of "My Sharona" makes it the funkiest, fuzziest rock-rap this side of Tone Loc's Delicious Vinyl classics. With some of Jam Master Jay's most vicious scratching and zilch in the way of ear-friendliness, "My Adidas" is one of the most counter-intuitive, and perversely catchy, examples of corporate name-dropping in rap history. And "Walk This Way," the culturally ingrained collab with a brink-of-extinction Aerosmith, is the model of raunchy, no-sell-out selling-out. Perhaps nothing, even near-numbing familiarity, can fully clean up Joe Perry's riff.

But that's only four songs out of 12. The rest of Raising Hell may lack the first quarter's immediacy, but it's a reminder that, even as one of the groups that put hip-hop over the top from a pop standpoint, Run-DMC were first-and-foremost servicing a hardcore audience of rap fiends who'd stuck with the genre through its commercially lean years. "Is It Live" is as much a percussion workout as a flow showcase, the backing track little more than an agitated duet for drums and scratching. And "Hit It Run" subsists on just a steady thwacking rhythm, frenetic beat-boxing, and more amelodic turntable interjections. What sells the album's minimalist excursions into almost pure rhythm is that aforementioned vocal enthusiasm. Like those millions of fairweather pop fans tricked into picking up Raising Hell on the basis of its MTV-monopolizing hit, the rappers 'glee sells the album as "pop" even if it resembles the modern-day version even less than 1986's crop of Billboard hitmakers.
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Illmatic

Nas
Columbia

The very first thing you hear on Illmatic is the lonely sound of a subway train rolling over the tracks and disappearing into the distance. It's followed by the faint sound of young Nasir Jones's very first on-record appearance, on Main Source's "Live at the Barbeque." The "Barbeque" verse made clear that this kid was A) excitable, and B) very eager to make an impression: before his 32 bars are over, he... has dubbed himself a "police murderer"; kidnapped the president's wife "without a plan,"; compared himself to the Ku Klux Klan; and confessed that he "went to hell for snuffing Jesus" (when he was twelve). As far as ear-grabbing first appearances go, it's pretty serious stuff, right up there with Busta Rhymes's jack-in-the-box verse on "Scenario."

But here it's just background music, prelude. Only two years have passed since "Live At the Barbeque," but from the first moments Nas's voice enters on "The Genesis," it's clear that it might as well have been a thousand. "Niggas don't listen, man," he sighs wearily while his crowing buddies count cash behind him. At 23, he had already become the oldest soul in the room, and Illmatic is a document of every single thing that soul has seen. In one long, deep breath, Nas unfolds all of 1980s New York City — "The ghetto is like a maze, full of black rats, trapped" — with himself rattling around inside, neither the hero nor the anti-hero, just the observer. Illmatic is a life's work — a life — in eleven songs, and it's no wonder Nas will never top it. It can't be topped. He can title his late-period albums as many controversial things that he wants, but Illmatic will reverberate forever beyond him, for it is a reinvention of New York rap, an unimpeachable poetic document, a timeless bildungsroman, and a source of more ill rhymes than almost all other rap albums ever recorded combined. You may recoil at gangsta rap's nihilism, it's zero-sum view of life, it's anger and darkness, but if you have any desire to know anything about hip-hop, than you must own this.
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The Infamous

Mobb Deep
1995 | RCA Records Label

An album featuring "Shook Ones Pt. II" repeated 16 times probably would have been enough to secure Mobb Deep's legend. Their signature song — one of the 1990s' signature songs — remains haunting both musically and lyrically, a collection of moments wherein the listener is awestruck by how Prodigy and Havoc wrote, arranged or said that.

Luckily, The Infamous, the diminutive Queensbridge duo's 1995 follow-up to the patchy Juvenile Hell, is one of... the greatest albums ever made. It feels as desperate, claustrophobic and exhausting as Havoc and Prodigy's rhymes, from the somber "Survival of the Fittest" or the nightmarish "Trife Life" to the depressingly upbeat "Drink Away the Pain" and the Queens anthem "Give Up the Goods." Even the carefree Crystal Johnson hook of "Temperature's Rising," their radio lunge, is neutralized by their weed-pushing lyrics and a bed of face-smack drums. It's a punishing, relentless hour of music — the sound of two kids who've grown up too fast, not wanting to forget a second of it. A personal favorite is "Right Back At You," a funeral march of a posse cut that features plucky Mobb disciple Big Noyd, Raekwon and Ghostface, back when they together ruled the food chain and took no orders, every stereo "bangin' Nas, Mobb Deep and Wu."
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4,5,6

Kool G Rap
1995 | Cold Chillin'
The Low End Theory

A Tribe Called Quest
1991 | Jive
The Best Of Organized Konfusion

Organized Konfusion
2008 | Nasty Habits Music / The Orchard
Legal Hustle

Cormega
eOne Music / Entertainment One Distribution

Manhattan

Licensed To Ill

Beastie Boys
1995 | Def Jam/RAL

Wherein being a dickhead is an asset. Adam Horowitz, Mike Diamond, and Adam Yauch — three punk-y, pissant Jewish kids from New York's Lower East Side — took rap in its nascent years and predicted the future: lying. Or, at least, kidding. Before the Beasties came along rap had certainly been fun, and clever, too, but rarely this funny. And their debut, a colossal success that eventually sold 9 million copies, bridged... a social gap with producer Rick Rubin's chest-caving classic-rock refixes that nicked Sabbath and Zeppelin and Steve Miller. Rubin's perfunctory drum programming and keen ear for mega-riffs makes these songs as pumped as ever. But it's the kids who kicked it.

What has traveled through the cycle of examination in the 20-plus years since its release, are the relative merits of cultural appropriation. When Licensed was released, many rap allegiants rejected the caustic and puerile punchlines of these three white boys. It's not hard to see why — rhyming about robbing, drinking, drugging, and girls. And the hits — particularly "Fight For Your Right" and "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" — have developed a kind of mustiness, used in one too many movies, championed by too many dunderheads. What early critics missed was the skill the Beasties brought with them. On songs like "The New Style" and fan favorite "Paul Revere," we hear three hip-hop loyalists doing their best Run DMC impression, rapping furiously, dropping their shrill voices hard on the one, and doing the mic-sharing routine as well as any of their contemporaries. That sort of lyric-writing, from line-to-line, rather than verse-to-verse is a complex process, but it sounds seamless here. And when it really sings, as on the booze-binge ode, "Brass Monkey," you can hear these nice boys completely redefining party music.
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No Way Out

Puff Daddy & The Family
2005 | Bad Boy Records

Before releasing his first solo album, Puff Daddy (aka Sean "Puffy" Combs) was famous as the producer of the Notorious B.I.G., Junior Mafia, Craig Mack, Lil' Kim, and many other rappers. As he was making his solo debut, the Notorious B.I.G. was murdered, and that loss weighs heavily on Puff's mind throughout No Way Out. Even though the album has some funky party jams scattered throughout, the bulk of the album is... filled with fear, sorrow, and anger, and it's not only evident on the tribute "I'll Be Missing You" (a duet with Faith Evans and 112 that is based on the Police's "Every Breath You Take") but also on gangsta anthems like "It's All About the Benjamins." That sense of loss makes No Way Out a more substantial album than most mid-'90s hip-hop releases, and even if it has flaws -- there's a bit too much filler and it runs a little long -- it is nevertheless a compelling, harrowing album that establishes Puff Daddy as a vital rapper in his own right.
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Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous

Big L
1995 | Columbia
Best Of / 20th Century

Kurtis Blow
2003 | ISLAND MERCURY
The Message

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
Rhino
6 Feet Deep

Gravediggaz
IndieBlu Music / Entertainment One Distribution

The Bronx

By All Means Necessary

Boogie Down Productions
1988 | Jive

The murder of DJ Scott La Rock had a profound effect on KRS-One, resulting in a drastic rethinking of his on-record persona. He re-emerged the following year with By All Means Necessary, calling himself the Teacher and rapping mostly about issues facing the black community. His reality rhymes were no longer morally ambiguous, and this time when he posed on the cover with a gun, he was mimicking a photo of Malcolm... X. As a social commentator, this is arguably KRS-One's finest moment. His observations are sharp, lucid, and confident, yet he doesn't fall prey to the preachiness that would mar some of his later work, and he isn't afraid to be playful or personal. The latter is especially true on the subject of La Rock, whose memory hangs over By All Means Necessary -- not just in the frequent name-checks, but in the minimalist production and hard-hitting 808 drum beats that were his stock-in-trade on Criminal Minded. La Rock figures heavily in the album opener, "My Philosophy," which explains BDP's transition and serves as a manifesto for socially conscious hip-hop. The high point is the impassioned "Stop the Violence," a plea for peace on the hip-hop scene that still hasn't been heeded. Even as KRS-One denounces black-on-black crime, he refuses to allow the community to be stereotyped, criticizing the system that scoffs at that violence on the spoken recitation "Necessary." "Illegal Business" is a startlingly perceptive look at how the drug trade corrupts the police and government, appearing not long before the CIA's drug-running activities in the Iran-Contra Affair came to light. There are also some lighter moments in the battle-rhyme tracks, and a witty safe-sex rap in "Jimmy," a close cousin to the Jungle Brothers' "Jimbrowski." Lyrics from this album have been sampled by everyone from Prince Paul to N.W.A, and it ranks not only as KRS-One's most cohesive, fully realized statement, but a landmark of political rap that's unfairly lost in the shadow of Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions.
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Return Of The Boom Bap

KRS-One
2007 | Jive

Released in 1993, KRS-One's first official solo album opens with "KRS-One Attacks," a DJ Premier-hatched collage of the legendary rapper's most famous moments with his previous group, Boogie Down Productions. It was a bold gesture, especially for someone who had spent the previous seven years redefining the sound of hip-hop — but by the end of Return of the Boom Bap, KRS-One's old credentials no longer mattered. This was a fantastic, hard-hitting... record, its creator's preexisting legacy notwithstanding.

It was important that KRS' solo debut didn't merely feel like another B.D.P. record, and his collaboration with producers like DJ Premier, Showbiz and Kid Capri helped move him toward a new, more stripped-down style. "Outta Here" is hip-hop history in less than five minutes, as KRS runs down his autobiography over a hammering Premier beat. The blunted escapades of "I Can't Wake Up" is a rare moment of levity, while the title track is exactly what you imagine "boom bap" should sound like. The most memorable moments are shout-outs to law enforcement: the furious "Black Cop" and the still-thrilling "Sound of Da Police." Return of the Boom Bap is a milestone in two regards: while it's a bracing update of the B.D.P. sound, it's also the beginning of a wholly new legend.
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Those Other Two Islands

It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

Public Enemy
1995 | Def Jam/RAL

There are no words too hyperbolic, no expressions too excited to describe the tectonic impact Public Enemy's second album had on the world. It is that vital and that infecting. Nominally a rap album, It Takes A Nation... is more like a sound grenade, thanks to the Bomb Squad's quadruple-stacked sampling, hypeman par excellence Flavor Flav's sonorous squeal, and leader Chuck D's stentorian flow — dependent not so much on meter, like... most rappers, but instead a kind of confident, formless roar.

"Chuck's a powerful rapper. We wanted to make something that could sonically stand up to him," The Bomb Squad's Hank Shocklee told the Daily News when the album was released. So drum maniacs Hank and his brother, Keith, along with the musical heart of P.E., Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, seized the challenge, creating songs, if you can call them that, that whinny and snarl and ping and clash, incorporating screeching saxophones, cross-cutting vocal samples, hissing teapots, hard-nosed breakbeats, and empty hallway pianos lines. It's a fast and new kind of electric blues — or, in places, a broken, discordant jazz — they stumbled upon. Chuck takes the music and uses its harshness to deliver unrepentant political jeremiads. "The follower of Farrakhan/ Don't tell me that you understand/ Until you hear the man/ The book of the new school rap game," he raps on "Don't Believe The Hype," the totemic single. Chuck's politics are confusing beyond calls for righteous Black Panther and Nation of Islam-inspired unity. But as The New York Times' Jon Pareles wrote at the time of the album's release, P.E. refracted the notion of "individualism" in rap, demanding a new "community," encouraging activism and cynicism in equal measure. Whether denouncing a rotting, rotten prison system and governmental authority on "Black Steel In The Hour of Chaos," or the locally debilitating crack epidemic on "Night Of the Living Baseheads," Chuck's fury is so persuasive, you may find yourself punching the sky during these songs without regret. It Takes A Nation... has aged remarkably well, as sonically arresting, and socially unforgiving as any album you're likely to hear. No one made being uncompromising so inspiring.
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Enter The Wu-Tang

Wu Tang Clan
1993 | RCA Records Label

Along with Dr. Dre's The Chronic, the Wu-Tang Clan's debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), was one of the most influential rap albums of the '90s. Its spare yet atmospheric production -- courtesy of RZA -- mapped out the sonic blueprint that countless other hardcore rappers would follow for years to come. It laid the groundwork for the rebirth of New York hip-hop in the hardcore age, paving the way for everybody... from Biggie and Jay-Z to Nas and Mobb Deep. Moreover, it introduced a colorful cast of hugely talented MCs, some of whom ranked among the best and most unique individual rappers of the decade. Some were outsized, theatrical personalities, others were cerebral storytellers and lyrical technicians, but each had his own distinctive style, which made for an album of tremendous variety and consistency. Every track on Enter the Wu-Tang is packed with fresh, inventive rhymes, which are filled with martial arts metaphors, pop culture references (everything from Voltron to Lucky Charms cereal commercials to Barbra Streisand's "The Way We Were"), bizarre threats of violence, and a truly twisted sense of humor. Their off-kilter menace is really brought to life, however, by the eerie, lo-fi production, which helped bring the raw sound of the underground into mainstream hip-hop. Starting with a foundation of hard, gritty beats and dialogue samples from kung fu movies, RZA kept things minimalistic, but added just enough minor-key piano, strings, or muted horns to create a background ambience that works like the soundtrack to a surreal nightmare. There was nothing like it in the hip-hop world at the time, and even after years of imitation, Enter the Wu-Tang still sounds fresh and original. Subsequent group and solo projects would refine and deepen this template, but collectively, the Wu have never been quite this tight again.
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Discover: ATO Records

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 14:02:01 +0000

It can be difficult keeping up with the weekly avalanche of new music, but if you’ve missed out on the recent crop of releases from ATO Records, you’re doing yourself a serious injustice. There’s the rollicking update on classic rock from 2012 breakouts (and recent Best New Artist Grammy nominees) Alabama Shakes, more warm-and-friendly country from Old Crow Medicine Show, Patterson Hood delivered songs that felt like gritty novellas and Alberta Cross infused roots music with epic grandeur. This is your chance to discover what you missed, with ATO’s recent releases and this this free sampler.

Boys & Girls

Alabama Shakes
2012 | ATO Records

The chatter that southern blues-rockers Alabama Shakes have generated in the months leading up to their debut is usually reserved for legends twice their age, or at least groups with more than a couple of songs to their name. There have been Janis Joplin and Otis Redding comparisons, endorsements from the likes of Jack White and Adele, and fans talking about their raucous live shows like they're enough... to convert you to a new religion. And — if you can believe it — the Athens, Alabama quartet's full length debut Boys & Girls lives up to the hype.

The first thing that will bowl you over is that voice. "Bless my heart, bless my soul/ I didn't think I'd make it to 22 years old," howls singer/guitarist Brittany Howard in the opening moments of stellar single "Hold On," showing off her gritty, soulful pipes and making those Joplin comparisons feel earned. But they're not the whole story, either: Boys & Girls finds the Alabama Shakes pulling from the greats of rock and blues (catch the Bo Diddley reference in the opening lyric?) into a distinctive, and occasionally downright personal, sound. ("Come on Brittany!" she hollers to herself. "You gotta come on up!")

From the barroom piano stomp of "Hang Loose" to the Stones swagger of "Be Mine," Boys & Girls sounds like the work of a group of weary, wizened road warriors who've been playing together for decades, rather than a group who formed a couple of years ago when its principle players were still in their teens. With all this talent and confidence already on full display on their debut, imagine all they can do with the years ahead.
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Seeds (Deluxe Edition)

Hey Rosetta!
2012 | ATO Records
Traveler

Trey Anastasio
2012 | ATO Records

Carry Me Back

Old Crow Medicine Show
2012 | ATO Records

Folk music purists might argue that Old Crow Medicine Show don't actually play traditional bluegrass, old-time country, or any of the other Americana labels they routinely get slapped with. There's a certain punkish disregard to the band's frenzied acoustic tangle — which nods to the last hundred years of American vernacular music, from the Carter Family through Black Flag — and spirit trumps nearly everything else. Carry Me Back, the band's latest... LP, follows a substantial personnel change (Willie Watson, once a lead vocalist and guitar player, was officially replaced by founding member Critter Fuqua, who'd been notably M.I.A. for the last several years), but the band's heart is still intact: Carry Me Back is full of hometown longing (the album's title track), harmonica-honking odes to once-in-a-lifetime love ("Ain't It Enough"), and hard-time, pass-the-jug stompers ("Mississippi Saturday Night"). It confirms somewhat definitively that Americana is, in fact, more a feeling than a sound — and that feeling is something like joy.
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Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance

Patterson Hood
2012 | ATO Records
The Bloom and the Blight

Two Gallants
2012 | ATO Records

The North

Stars
2012 | ATO Records

The wistful Canadian indie-pop band Stars built its fanbase smushing dance music and indie pop into an endearingly awkward embrace. Set Yourself On Fire, their 2005 high mark, found the perfect midpoint between the squirm and the hip-shake. The North, the band's sixth full-length studio album, carries right along in this tradition. Beats range from pitter-pattering to hammering, while jangling guitars share space with synths. And the band's two singers, Torquil Campbell... and Amy Millan, take turns singing lead when they're not delivering lyrics in conversational rounds.

The album on the whole has a vaguely retro bent. Awash in reverb and shot through gently with Millan's cooing vocals, the hazy "Through the Mines" sounds like vintage Mazzy Star. "Lights Changing Colour" could've been an old Cocteau Twins demo, while a rave-up called "Hold On When You Get Love And Let Go When You Get It" has the soaring, synthetic thrill of Cut Copy at its best.

And yet it's the kicker, "Walls," that takes fullest advantage of Campbell and Millan's boy-girl interplay. Campbell has the kind of delightfully fey accent that turns "party" into "pahty," and Millan sings in a breathy coo that can melt a record clerk's heart, and together they come off as an indie-rock answer to Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, singing back and forth. Him: "I had a secret." Her: "Yeah but I knew it, love." Him: "And we were children." Her: "We danced to 'Hand in Glove.'" On it goes, with a chirping keyboard and a beat that won't sit still and a relationship drama unfolding before your ears.
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You, Anniversary

Lindsay Fuller
2012 | ATO Records
Women & Work

Lucero
2012 | ATO Records

Songs of Patience

Alberta Cross
2012 | ATO Records

As a Swedish-English duo who met in East London and have now relocated to Brooklyn via an unsuccessful spell in L.A., it's no wonder that Alberta Cross sound a little like a lot of things. The Southern-rock twang of their 2009 debut Broken Side Of Time has been side-lined here, and there's a craning toward big, booming stadium epics of the kind once routinely delivered by Oasis (with whom they toured) or... Kings Of Leon. Yet they're also adept at the more soulful strain of non-boring boogie mastered by Tom Petty, so the album avoids plodding and achieves plaintive liftoff.

Petter Ericson Stakee, who says that between the two albums he hit "rock bottom" in L.A., sings with sandpapery desire in his voice, elevating rote numbers (influenced by the Gallaghers' songbook) to something more affecting. Although Songs Of Patience involved a glut of producers and (post-L.A.) had to be re-addressed inNew York, it hangs together dramatically, from the opening percussion-led drive of "Magnolia" to the stripped-down, intimate "Bonfires," which boasts a dash of Neil Young. "Crate of Gold" crunches in on fuzzy, serrated guitar riffs and makes a belligerent, bruised blues motif of the Occupy movement, while the more leisurely "Lay Down" — again sounding oddly Mancunian — surges toward its sing-along chorus of self-betterment.

"Wasteland" is perhaps the best track, a well-crafted anthem blending falsetto and dynamics to tether the clichÃ©s and unleash genuine passion. In taking their time on the "difficult" second album, Alberta Cross has honed a new, subtly Anglicised direction.
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Allen Stone

Allen Stone
2012 | ATO Records
Strength to Survive

SOJA
2012 | ATO Records

Area 52

Rodrigo y Gabriela
2012 | ATO Records

Rodrigo y Gabriela have become unlikely stars, a pair of Mexican metal guitarists who reinvented themselves as wild flamenco players after moving to Ireland. They've carved an admirable niche for themselves, with fiery playing and adventurous ideas that draw heavily on their rock past. Area 52 takes that basic formula one step further, teaming the duo with a 13-piece Cuban orchestra for a fresh look at some of their older material that... offers a vibrant, unusual union of Latin cultures, an imagined place where Mexico, Cuba and the sense of old Spanish culture swirl effortlessly together.

Opener "Santa Domingo" sets the tone for much of the album; beginning with a heart-pounding riff, the duo crank up the tension until there's an explosion of brass, all of the elements powered by the punch of the wah-wah pedal - almost a trademark of the couple these days - before sprinting to a breathless finish. The album is deliberately brash, laced with incendiary guitar work (listen to the electric playing on "Hanuman," for example), and Cuban rhythms making a loud, colourful wrapper around the songs.

But it's not all relentless; the group injects plenty of light and shade, as on "Diablo Rojo," where flute and guitar breathe softly together before spiralling through some intense, slick picking to a satisfying climax. Or "Logos," with its delicate interplay between guitars and piano, the calm before the whirlwind of the two final cuts. Area 52 roars with Latin fire throughout, full of passion and sweat, a workout for all the senses. Yet at the same time, this re-imagination of old material, not matter how adventurously it's done, feels like the end of a chapter. It's as if Rodrigo and Gabriela had one final statement to make with these pieces before moving on to something fresh and different, a new phase in their career. And they've done it in spectacular fashion.
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Discover: Kill Rock Stars

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:14:41 +0000

In an interview conducted in 2009, Kill Rock Stars founder Slim Moon described the label’s roster as being comprised of “outsiders,” saying, “[They were] doing things differently. I worked with a lot of bands who broke the rules of what was supposed to be a ‘rock band.’” A simple glance at the label’s roster supports his point. Whether they’re epoch-making albums by artists like Sleater-Kinney, Elliott Smith and The Decemberists or defiant boundary-pushers by Quix*O*Tic and OOIOO, the constant through every Kill Rock Stars release has been a rebellious spirit. That attitude remained intact after Portia Sabin assumed ownership of the label in 2006 and oversaw the release of instant classics by Thao, Grass Widow and Marnie Stern. Need help getting started? We asked the KRS staff to share their picks, and we added a few of our personal favorites to the list as well. And if all that’s not enough, you can get acquainted with the label’s rich history for free with this sampler.

Portia Sabin, Label Dude

Two Ton Boa EP

Two Ton Boa
2009 | EP/SINGLE

Super dark and heavy, bass-driven album with Sherry Fraser at the helm. One of the great voices in rock that almost no one has heard.
Thao & Mirah

Thao & Mirah
2011 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

Two very different singer/songwriters who manage to compliment and even elevate each other on this album. Terrific, unique songs that make people happy and make people think.

James Squeaky, Media Manager

Young People

Young People
2009 | 5RC / Redeye

Criminally underrated weird-folk album from 2002 that might have been huge if it had come out a few years later. This album has been on heavy rotation in my life the last decade; "Rich Bitch" is one of my favorite songs of the '00s.

Benjamin P. Parrish, Complaint Department

Marnie Stern

Marnie Stern
2010 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

The third Marnie Stern studio album and also the best one (until Chronicles of Marnia is released in February). More mature songwriting, crazier shredding and insane drumming from Zach Hill. Includes the power ballad "Transparency is the New Mystery." I'm guessing everybody with good taste already owns this album, but buy it again anyway!
26 Monster Songs for Children (Sing Your Babies to Sleep)

Jad And David Fair
1998 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

Jad and David fair of DIY institution Half Japanese sing 26 songs about monsters. One for each letter of the alphabet! A is for Abominable Snowman, B is for Bigfoot, and so on. I guess the X song is kind of cheating because it's about the "Man With X-Ray Eyes." Something for everybody on this one!

Gray G., Bad Cop

Glowing Mouth

Milagres
2011 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

Beautiful, somewhat dark debut album from this Brooklyn quintet. The songs are introspective and atmospheric without being dreary. Every tune exhibits great songwriting, but the album amounts to more than the sum of its parts. It's best taken all in one sitting.
Her Majesty The Decemberists

The Decemberists
2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

By far my favorite album from this band. I feel like this is the one that solidified and perfected their super-distinctive sound. "The Gymnast, High Above The Ground" may be my favorite song in the entire Kill Rock Stars catalog.

Melissa Stars, Social Media Manager / Avid Indoorsman

Dig Me Out

Sleater-Kinney
2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

The album has everything that people love about this band: Blistering riffs, incredible harmonizing, dance-along beats and unforgettable songs. If you're looking for an introduction to the incredible all-out rockness of Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss, you only need to give this album one listen to know you're in the company of greatness.
Quilts - EP

Explode Into Colors
2011 | EP/SINGLE

Proving once again that female drummers seriously kick ass, Explode Into Colors' Lisa Schonberg delivers thumping beats that create a volatile foundation for the band's soaring post-rock. The unapologetic rhythms paired with ethereal vocals and driving guitar make for intense grooves that get your feet moving and your head bobbing.

John Lamm, Secret Weapon

Thistled Spring

Horse Feathers
2010 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

The second release from Horse Feathers opens a window and fills your room with hope and bittersweetness. Justin Ringle's pained vocals, layered with beautifully-nuanced strings, banjo, and acoustic guitar, has that wonderful ability to transport you from being in your life into feeling like you're in a movie, complete with soundtrack. One of the more subtly powerful records in the KRS catalog.
Either/Or

Elliott Smith
2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

I don't know if it's possible for a legendary record to still be under the radar, but Either/Or feels that way. With Elliott's guitar and his heartbreaking whispered lyrics over minimal drums and bass, it's Elliott's first prolonged forays into full-band instrumentation. To me, it's the record where Elliott knocks down the door between him and all the pantheon songwriters before him, and says he belongs. A truly great record that deserves... to be listened to all the way through.
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eMusic Picks

Standing in the Way of Control

Gossip
2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

The Gossip's lead singer Beth Ditto, a milky-white mound of charisma and sass, topped the likes of Jack White and Thom Yorke on the NME's "Cool List" this year. The triumph may seem trite, but not for legions of punks who have been waiting for Ditto to get her due. And coolness effectively made Standing in the Way of Control what it is: groovy garage-punk shimmied upon a more refined dance floor,... thanks to the crisp percussion of new drummer Hannah Billie. Meanwhile, Ditto worked off guitarist Brace Paine's attitude-laden riffs and delivered her southern goods with fierce aplomb. The result is crazy-sexy and yes, cool.
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Singles and Sessions 1979-1981

Delta 5
2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

Delta 5 emerged from the same Leeds, England, post-punk scene as Gang of Four and the Mekons. All three bands clustered around the university's Fine Art department, which goes some way to explaining the almost conceptual starkness of Delta 5's sound and their unusual format (two basses, three female voices, one guitar, one drum kit).

Stern and clenched, Delta 5's minimalist punk-funk has obvious debts to Gang of Four. "Mind Your Own... Business," their debut single, is a sister-song to "At Home He Feels Like a Tourist." Both tunes resemble diagrams of disco, bearing the same relationship to Chic and Earth Wind & Fire that an architect's blueprint bears to the finished building, or a skeleton has vis-á-vis a fully-fleshed body. The person-is-political lyric explores the tension between intimacy and autonomy, oscillating from bleakness ("listen to the distance between us") to the simultaneously absurd and disturbing chorus, "Can I have a taste of your ice cream?/ Can I lick the crumbs from your table?/ Can I interfere in your crisis?/ NO, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!" The sense of alienation is intensified by the way the unison vocals of Julz Sale, Bethan Peters and Ros Allen alternately mesh and slip out of alignment.

If "Mind" is one of UK post-punk's all-time most thrilling singles, the follow-up, "Anticipation" b/w "You," is close on its heels. "Anticipation" evokes the nervous excitement of sexual longing prior to consummation; "You" flashes forward to the getting-stale-and-slightly-sour stage of the settled, long-term relationship. Sales hurls out hilariously mundane accusations like, "Who left me behind at the bakers?/ Who likes sex only on Sunday?" "Try," their third single, also depicts a relationship in terms of friction and miscommunication, but is more poignant than recriminatory.

After these three brilliant singles for the legendary independent label Rough Trade, Delta 5 signed to a major label and cluttered up their sound with embellishments in a misguided bid for pop color. This compilation shrewdly bypasses that phase of failed crossover in favor of more spartan-sounding BBC Radio sessions and live performances from a 1980 Berkeley, California, gig, capturing the group's paradoxical vibe of dour exuberance and grim glee in its absolute prime.
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Apple O' LP

Deerhoof
2010 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye
Realistes

Comet Gain
2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

Now We Can See

The Thermals
2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

There aren't many punk rock bands more straightforward, in some ways, than the Thermals; there also aren't many more smart and ambitious. One way to hear the Portland band's fourth album is as their toughest, sturdiest punk record yet, a fusillade of wired, hammering, fist-in-the-air anthems. Listen to it that way, and it's built around its title track, a declaration of victory ("Our enemies lie dead on the ground, and still we... kick") with an irresistible "oh-way-oh" hook. But it's also a precisely crafted, despairing concept album that sets up its central conceit with its opening salvo, "When I Died," in which a man tries in vain to save himself by becoming a fish and returning to the ocean.

Recorded as a duo of core members Hutch Harris (singing and guitar) and Kathy Foster (bass and drums) — the same lineup that made an album as Hutch and Kathy before the Thermals began — Now We Can See is packed stem-to-stern with images of reverse evolution: too much water, disintegrating bodies, collective transformation and collective delusion. Harris's lyrics are often in the first-person plural, in the past tense, or both; they're more about the human condition than about a particular persona. They're also as punchy and bitter as a triple espresso, and you can almost smell the caffeine through the speakers as he declaims them.

As always, every Thermals song crams in as many foursquare, head-banging riffs as they can get away with, although this time they've augmented the basement-practice-space arrangements with a few subtle touches, like somebody walloping the bejesus out of a piano in the background of "You Dissolve." The album's even punctuated in the middle by the longest and most restrained Thermals song yet — nearly six minutes of "At the Bottom of the Sea," a slowly respiring variation on the Velvet Underground's "Ocean." That "restrained" is relative, of course: by the end, they've stomped on their fuzzboxes again, and Harris is yowling a repudiation of the air itself. You can hurl yourself around to Now We Can See, but it also rewards sitting very quietly and thinking about it.
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The Shapes We Make

Mary Timony
2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

Fanfare in the Garden

Essential Logic
2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

As the sax-playing part of the two-woman frontline in X-Ray Spex, Lora Logic quickly became a name to drop during 1977. By the end of the year, though, she was out of the band and seemingly destined for obscurity. Happily, Logic realised there was more to punk than three-chord cliché and bounced back with her own band, Essential Logic. A one-off 45, "Aerosol Burns," notable for its two-sax front-line, and Logic's shrill,... scat-style vocal peculiarities, confirmed that things were changing fast on the newly constituted 'Independent' scene. An album, Beat Rhythm News, followed a year later, refining the jazz-punk collision and wrapping it up in an odd but pleasingly treble-heavy production. It was offbeat, it was a mini-masterpiece, and it was largely ignored. Logic's 1982 solo set, Pedigree Charm, was similarly idiosyncratic — and the best of both, together with single cuts and more recent (though admittedly less stunning) recordings are gathered here.
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Mortal Mirror

Quix*o*tic
2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye
3

Slumber Party
2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

Here's To Another 21 Years! - SAMPLER

Various Artists
2012 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

eMusic’s Holiday Crowd-Pleasers

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:30:07 +0000

Looking for holiday music to appeal to everyone from grandma to your youngest cousin? Look no further than this batch of holiday crowd-pleasers, featuring roasted chestnuts by everyone from Rod Stewart to Richard Marx.

Merry Christmas, Baby

Rod Stewart
2012 | Verve
Christmas

Michael Buble
2011 | 143/Reprise

Elvis Presley Christmas Duets

Elvis Presley
2008 | RLG/Legacy

We've all had that moment, sitting around the Christmas tree alight with our extended family, when Elvis's Christmas album comes up on the sound-reproducing machine. You can be sure, if the nog is egging everyone on, that by the second chorus of "Blue Christmas," your aunt or uncle or even your red nose reindeer'd self will get up and sing along, perhaps adding a few swivel hip rolls and well-placed Presleyisms that... allude to the hound dog in all of us.

Christmas Duets — in space, through the miracle of modern overdubbing, if not in time — reprises Elvis's classic Christmas canon and places him in flagrante delicto with several jingle belles from the modern pop-country manger that is Nashville. The pairings seem particularly gift-wrapped, with Elvis's eye for the ladies winked in kind by such pearful partridges as Carrie Underwood, Amy Grant, Martina McBride, and Olivia Newton-John. The results are respectful and sweetly shy, with each gal perched on Elvis's knee and letting him know that what she really wants for Christmas is to hit a harmony note with him. The call-and-response is most effective when the given femme matches Elvis's sense of faith and believing — after all, many of these Christmas chestnuts are yuletide gospel — and I have a fondness for Sara Evans's coupling on "Silent Night" and Gretchen Wilson trading blues-fours on "Merry Christmas Baby." For that silk stocking placed on the chimney with care.
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Christmas with Scotty McCreery

Scotty McCreery
2012 | Interscope (American Idol)
Christmas Spirit

Richard Marx
2012 | TourDForce
NOW That's What I Call Christmas Volume 3

Various
2006 | SBME Strategic Marketing Group
Home For Christmas

Amy Grant
2007 | AMY GRANT / SPARROW
All Is Well - Songs For Christmas

Clay Aiken
EP/SINGLE
James Taylor At Christmas

James Taylor
2012 | UMe
Christmas Dreaming

Susie Arioli
2012 | Jazzheads
Tennessee Christmas - EP

Lindi Ortega
2012 | EP/SINGLE

Merry Christmas

Mariah Carey
2008 | Columbia

Merry Christmas, Mariah Carey's fourth full-length, at last gave the schmaltziness that defined the diva's early career a suitable venue. 'Tis the season to be broad and sentimental, and Carey happily unleashes her then-superhuman voice on a smattering of holiday favorites and new tracks. Not only is this a document of the woman's pipes in top form, Merry Christmas is also the perfect snapshot of the genre balancing pre-hip-hop Carey (along with... former writing/producing partner Walter Afanasieff) struck. These tracks chime, ring and twinkle at every turn, whether it's a poppy piano, soulful church organ or, in the case of "Joy to the World," stiff pop-house beats doing the driving. There's a strong preference for the Phil Spector side of musical cheer — Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby Please Come)" is covered, "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" is in the style of the Crystals', and Carey's own "All I Want for Christmas Is You," is the greatest Spector track he had no hand in. This contemporary classic is worth the price of admission. As it's often mistaken for a cover, Carey loves to point out that she wrote it, seemingly oblivious to the compliment inherent in mistook nostalgia. Carey has become such a grande diva that it's hard to believe that a concept exists that's bigger than her persona; with Christmas, though, she met her match.
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The Andy Williams Christmas Album

Andy Williams
2004 | Columbia/Legacy
Cheers, it's Christmas.

Blake Shelton
2012 | Warner Bros.
A Very Special Christmas 25th Anniversary

Various Artists
2012 | Big Machine Records, LLC
Elvis' Christmas Album

Elvis Presley
1985 | RCA Records Label
NOW That's What I Call A Country Christmas

Various
2009 | Legacy Recordings
A Laurie Berkner Christmas

The Laurie Berkner Band
2012 | Two Tomatoes Records
A Twisted Christmas

Twisted Sister
2006 | Razor & Tie
Irving Berlin's White Christmas

Irving Berlin
2006 | Razor & Tie
KIDZ BOP Christmas!

Kidz Bop Kids
2012 | Kidz Bop
Vintage Christmas

David Ian
Prescott Records

Christmas Album

Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
2008 | Shout! Factory

The year was 1968, and superstar trumpeter Herb Alpert rode higher than ever with his chart-topping rendition of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's devastatingly shy "This Guy's in Love With You." So Alpert, a Jew, donned a fake Santa beard and applied the equally ersatz Latin sparkle of his Tijuana Brass to a campy collection of Christmas classics where nearly every song sounds like his hit "Spanish Flea." This is a good... thing! West Coast jazz pioneer Shorty Rogers swings by with a studio choir to hang some vocal tinsel on Alpert's delightfully garish tree: Check how his serene choral interludes in "My Favorite Things" contrast with Alpert's holiday shopper bustle. The very year, the horn man couldn't get a hit, and wouldn't for another decade. Who says ol 'Saint Nick doesn't have a vindictive streak?
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Bing Crosby - Christmas Classics

Bing Crosby
2006 | CAPITOL

This collection of holiday favorites remains a good representation of Bing Crosby's many seasonal recordings. Among the highlights are a Nelson Riddle arrangement of Crosby's biggest hit, the perennial "White Christmas," as well as "Winter Wonderland," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," and "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" Any fan of Crosby, as well as good Christmas music in general, will want to hunt this down.

A Skeptic’s Guide to Deftones

Ian Cohen — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:03:08 +0000

If you haven’t given the Deftones a minute of your time in the past 15 years, that’s understandable. Their name is a tremendous liability, still invoking the bored and angsty nu-metal of their debut Adrenaline. That “nu” misspelling does them as much a disservice as the “Def” one – Deftones are truly a new metal band, one that’s always sought to grow with their fanbase, maintaining their brutality while incorporating the influence of shoegaze, electronic pop and IDM into a heady and heavy whole. White Pony is their clear pinnacle, and the latest in the collection is Koi No Yokan, but every one of their records is worth a listen and their discography boasts more than enough examples of a band being at the forefront of artful and melodic metal in the 21st century. These are 10 of them – our Skeptic’s Guide to Deftones.

“Digital Bath”

White Pony

Deftones
2000 | Rhino

Deftones were awfully fond of namedropping the Cure as an influence and this is perhaps the one time they really nailed it. The chord clusters of the verse recall the inky despondence of Faith or Seventeen Seconds before a typically pummeling chorus conveys a sensuality and lust that was as foreign to rock radio then as it is now.

“U, U, D, D, L, R, L, R, A, B, Select, Start”

Saturday Night Wrist

Deftones
2006 | Maverick

One of the many instances of the Deftones' impeccable taste in song titles, "Contra Code" bisects Saturday Night Wrist with dubbed-out ambience and jazzy interplay that invokes Tortoise's TNT. It's the only instrumental in their discography and one that makes you wish they made more.

“You’ve Seen The Butcher”

Diamond Eyes

Deftones
2010 | Reprise

Diamond Eyes was the first Deftones record made without Chi Cheng and while his presence is clearly missed, it forced the band to relearn their approach to rhythm. "You've Seen The Butcher" is an example of this, a total outlier that resembles the fractured jazz-punk of Jawbox's "Cruel Swing," the title of which is an apt descriptor of what Deftones do here.

“Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away)”

Around The Fur

Deftones
1997 | Maverick

The first true sign of greatness from Deftones comes courtesy of the second single from Around The Fur. They'd attempt to emphasize its prettiness with acoustic versions and a post-OK Computer remix, but this is the definitive one, essentially "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" for alt-metal kids.

“Change (In The House Of Flies)”

White Pony

Deftones
2000 | Rhino

A debauched Sophie Muller video underlined the narcotic bliss that courses through throughout Deftones' finest song, whether in the pulverizing wall of guitars or Chino Moreno's striking harmonies during the transcendent bridge. Hands down one of the greatest singles of the 2000's, and the embodiment of White Pony's merging of sex, drugs and metal without devolving into Sunset Strip parody or groupie-bating mythology.

“Minerva”

Deftones

Deftones
2003 | Maverick

Deftones followed up their commercial and critical breakthrough by making a logical sequel to "Change," distilling the loud/soft dynamics of the former into a consuming tidal wave of slow-motion, churning distortion somewhere between the obliterating metal-gaze of Jesu and Hum's saturated alt-rock.

“Hole In The Earth”

Saturday Night Wrist

Deftones
2006 | Maverick

Saturday Night Wrist is Deftones' murkiest and most difficult record, one that anticipated a much-needed break that would span nearly four years. "Hole In The Earth" is reflective of their state of mind, the single that exaggerates both the Cocteau Twins influence on their guitars (check that chorus riff) and the abrasiveness.

“Sextape”

Diamond Eyes

Deftones
2010 | Reprise

There's always been a bit of Bono's emotive stridency in Chino Moreno's voice, but Deftones never aspired to retrace U2's steps until this intriguing experiment in unapologetic prettiness. The guitars glisten and peal without slamming on the distortion pedals, the tempo remains elegiac throughout and when Moreno belts "the sound of the waves collide tonight," the last word is cooed in a feminized harmony.

“Knife Party”

White Pony

Deftones
2000 | Rhino

If you needed any more proof of Deftones making their own lane in a time where "Nookie" and Puddle of Mudd's "Control" were what passed for sexualized rock, here's their alluring and rhythmically daring tribute to complicit bloodsport in the bedroom. If you listened to any Jane's Addiction record after Ritual De Lo Habitual, this is what you were looking for.

“Poltergeist”

Koi No Yokan

Deftones
2012 | Reprise

Typically, the most "ambitious" Deftones songs are signified by longer song lengths or softer textures. "Poltergeist" is an exception, three and a half minutes of coil-and-strike math-rock dynamics punctuated by drum machine claps that suggest the Sacramento band might just be keeping their ear titled north towards the Bay Area's hip-hop scene.

Discover: Polyvinyl Records

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:55:10 +0000

Though they’re probably best known for of Montreal’s high-gloss psych-pop and Mates of State’s irresistible choruses, Polyvinyl Records have been responsible for some of the more singular and engaging records in all of indie rock. From Braid’s groundbreaking Frame and Canvas to the bounding bash-and-shout of Japandroids, Polyvinyl has always had a clear instinct for the Instant Classic. Now, you can catch up on what you missed: We’ve put 30+ titles from across the Polyvinyl catalog, and it’s the perfect time to get familiar.

Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?

of Montreal
Polyvinyl Records

Hissing Fauna is the third fantastic album in a row from Athens, GA, pop band Of Montreal, but this time the band departs from the previous formula of '60s psychedelic storytelling for more confessional lyrics set with a DayGlo new wave flare. Bandleader Kevin Barnes sings of his sad-sack adventures in a breathy, eager voice with falsetto used liberally for faux-sassy ironic commentary. Find him telling tales of Norway as an electronics-only... Talking Heads ("A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger"), rejecting a suitor who lacks "soul power" in an indie pop monologue ("Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider") and looking for a guru in the church of DFA Records ("Gronlandic Edit"). Put on the 12-minute "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal," a goth-tinged and psychosexually-charged dance track, and let Barnes take over the room with his unique, head-trip approach to stereo production.
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Hey Girl, Hey

Various Artists
2012 | Polyvinyl Records
Longtime Companion

Sonny & The Sunsets
2012 | Polyvinyl Records

Celebration Rock

Japandroids
2012 | Polyvinyl Records

Japandroids' Celebration Rock begins and ends with fireworks — not the county-fair variety, but the cheap, barely legal kind you set off in the woods with friends and then run away, giggling uncontrollably. The sound sets the tone for a sizzling, incandescent burst of a record, one that conjoins punk-rock fist-aloft solidarity and weepy heartland-rock sentimentality in one 35-minute-long bro-hug. Expect a lot of sloppy back-patting, acres of generous sentiment and a... surplus of the sorts of lines perfectly calibrated to shout joyously in the face of your closest friends. "We're lashing out at evil's sway tonight," for example. Or "Don't we have anything to live for?/ Well, of course we do, but until they come true/ We're drinking." It's a record that demands to be heard, and loved, in groups.

Which doesn't make it mindless. As is usually the case with especially fierce good cheer, Celebration Rock is borne of desperation: The two-man Japandroids were minutes away from breaking apart, wilting under a lack of momentum, when they recorded its eight gasping, suitcase-compact anthems. Lead singer Brian King nearly died (perforated ulcer, an ailment about as far from "carefree rock 'n' roll" as you can get). A scan of the lyrics, excised from endorphins, unearths some fairly dark thoughts: "It's a lifeless life/ With no fixed address to give/ But you're not mine to die for anywhere, so I must live," King screams on "The House That Heaven Built." With just a guitar and a drum kit, meanwhile, the lifelong friends generate enough heat and momentum for an entire E Street band. Songs surge forward recklessly, explode, and then plow forward again. The relentless hurtling mirrors the philosophy expressed in the lyrics: Embrace life with the energy of an over-eager Labrador Retriever, no matter what it throws your way.
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Post-Nothing

Japandroids
Polyvinyl Records

A sad and funny and moving account of what it means to have a quarterlife crisis. Two twenty-something Canucks careen around Vancouver in the rain, missing ex-girlfriends, worrying about the rent, getting nostalgic for the old days when just getting drunk was enough. "You can keep tomorrow / After tonight we're not gonna need it," they insist, and they play like they're telling the truth: Brian King strikes his guitar like he's... burning through matches, David Prowse fist-fights his drum kit, distortion crackles with pent-up energy. Somewhere in all that noise is the sound of growing up — restlessly, reluctantly. "We used to dream," they sing, "Now we worry about dying."
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Heart Like A River

Ida
Polyvinyl Records
Hall Music

Loney Dear
2011 | Polyvinyl Records

Some Racing, Some Stopping

Headlights
Polyvinyl Records

Some Racing, Some Stopping opens with a steady humming organ, a twinkle of guitars and — shooting upward from the darkness — a soaring, pleading vocal. It's dramatic and it's perfect, the kind of prologue bigger bands break their backs trying to create. The second record from Illinois trio Headlights is full of casual beauty, moments of pop elegance that arrive with natural grace rather than with blunt force and blaring fanfare.

Some... Racing was recorded in a farmhouse outside Champaign, IL, and the songs it contains are, appropriately, airy and utterly cloudless. Vocalists Tristan Wraight and Erin Fein sing like they're sharing secrets: their voices are low and cottony, gliding gently over lacy guitars and blinking vibraphone. Even when the tempo escalates — "April 2" is shoved along by a walloping backbeat — the voices remain subdued.

The songs themselves are shimmering marvels; they don't hurtle so much as hydroplane, speeding forward a few inches above the ground. Fein's voice is light and cherry-flavored, and she drizzles it slowly across the length of each composition. Some Racing is the perfect tonic for fans of the small statement, a record for people who wished the world was full of more groups like The Field Mice. It's music that's meek but gorgeous.
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American Football

American Football
2003 | EP/SINGLE
Aabenbaringen Over Aaskammen

Casiokids
2011 | Polyvinyl Records

Two Thousand and Ten Injuries

Love Is All
2010 | Polyvinyl Records

Love Is All are at their most charming when they transform nerve-wracking anxiety into perky post-punk rave-ups. They've calmed down a bit on their third full-length, Two Thousand And Ten Injuries, but their songs still burst with manic, joyful noise. The album, written and recorded while the Swedish quintet had no label, is their most playful to date. Left to their own devices, the group have expanded their artistic range, yielding both... sunny Turtles-esque psychedelia (on "Kungen") and Slits-like punk-reggae (on "False Pretense").

As always, the band's songs showcase the unique voice of Josephine Olausson, whose trebly yelp conveys as much self-deprecating humor as jittery angst. She can sound vulnerable and delicate, but most often she comes across like a tiny person standing up with determination against something rather enormous — even if it's just the anxieties percolating in her head. The band's lyrics and music are small in scale, giving voice to brief moments of panic without losing perspective or blowing them too far out of proportion. Even when the tracks get especially uptight and antsy, as on "Less Than Thrilled" and the bold single "Repetition", the band never get bleak or overbearing. Instead, the combination of Olausson's oddball wit and the band's bright guitar tones and springy beats maintain a tone of world-weary levity throughout the record.

Whereas many of the band's older songs leaned hard on the rhythm section for hooks, they've become more confident with melody, resulting in particularly hummable tunes in the rowdy opener "Bigger Bolder" and the lilting album highlight "Never Now." They also sound more assured on relatively relaxed cuts like "A Side In A Bed" and "Take Your Time", allowing for moments of prettiness without losing too much momentum. Love Is All have evolved into a more well-rounded band without sacrificing a trace of their distinct identity — they've loosened up, but thankfully, they're still tightly wound.
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Skeletal Lamping

of Montreal
2008 | Polyvinyl Records

Any good concept album has a compelling character at its core, and Skeletal Lamping is no exception. Protagonist Georgie Fruit isn't just any transgender middle-aged black man — he has undergone multiple sex changes, making him the perfect alter ego for charismatic and chameleonic Of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes, whose musical persona is capricious, unsettled and over-the-top. And also very horny.

Skeletal Lamping is packed with blush-worthy come-ons draped in imitation-Prince squeals. Georgie,... throughout the album, comes across alternately as a savvy bedroom connoisseur and a disposable plaything for the sexually curious. He's a product of the disco era, and his after-bar stories are set to limber bass lines and a driving beat. But the quieter moments reveal his insecurity, his damaged self-esteem and contemplation of yet another surgery.

Despite the personal crisis that shapes the album's narrative, Barnes, perhaps unsurprisingly, never loses his playful side. In "For Our Elegant Caste," for instance, he refers to Georgie's transformation as "a freaky permutation, something like Voltron," making clear that Georgie's stints under the knife didn't sacrifice his sense of humor.

As they have graduated and mutated from modest indie pop to extravagant, massive glam-pop, Of Montreal's vision has become grander, and their approach more intricate. An album like Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? with its kaleidoscopic sound palette (and album cover) piled sounds and ideas and moods and approaches in elegant layers. Skeletal Lamping takes it even farther, with results that require patience. But with its majestic three-part falsetto harmonies and engrossing narrative, it's patience well spent.
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Life Like

Joan Of Arc
2011 | Polyvinyl Records
Team Boo

Mates Of State
2003 | Polyvinyl Records

The Sunlandic Twins

of Montreal
Polyvinyl Records

Coming off their highly praised seventh album, the 2004 psych-pop masterpiece Satanic Panic in the Attic, Of Montreal was confronted with a (not unwelcome) problem: how to follow-up? The surprising solution: synths and cheeky dance smarts. Unapologetic Elephant 6 harmonies and kooky conceptualism remain, but The Sunlandic Twins is less Brian Wilson, more Afrobeat boogie and Can propulsion smacked wacky by a post-Eno David Byrne. "The Party's Crashing Us" is the essence... of this: leader Kevin Barnes 'too-smart-for-pop verbosity turns sincere for love while a dozen disco melodies vie for space around the bass. They all end up winning.
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The Nature Of Maps

Matt Pond PA
2002 | Polyvinyl Records
At Home With Owen

Owen
Polyvinyl Records

Places Like This

Architecture In Helsinki
Polyvinyl Records

Architecture in Helsinki went for a different mood on their third studio album, and you can hear it from the moment Cameron Bird starts spitting lyrics (rather than singing them in his usual sweet, wavering falsetto) on the cowbell-driven banger "Red Turned White." The Australian twee-poppers have grown a little less adorable, but they're also a lot more fun.

2005's In Case We Die theatrically wandered, like an epic saga performed on... a children's stage. The instrumentation was grand-scale — as if the teacher had insisted that everyone get a chance to play the trumpet and harp and violin. It sure was fun, but it's tough to call yourself a rock band when your highest decibel levels are reserved for the Sesame Street shout-along of "It's 5!"

With Places Like This, Architecture radiates a block party vibe — their songs are both less complicated and a little more wild. They've even tossed their usual strings and instead funk things up with steel drums and congas, sounding as if they've taken their dancefloor cues from Talking Heads and the B-52's. (Bird and the band's female members even conjure a decent Fred Schneider-and-the girls impression for the "hey-ya-ya" refrains on "Hold Music.") That's a pretty good way to get people to stop calling you precious and start shaking their stuff.
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Ghost Town

Owen
2011 | Polyvinyl Records
Long Knives Drawn

Rainer Maria
2002 | Polyvinyl Records

Share the Joy

Vivian Girls
2011 | Polyvinyl Records

After releasing two albums and multiple singles equally in love with girl-group harmonies and cassette-tape fidelities, the Vivian Girls decided it was time for a change. On Share The Joy, producer and Woods member Jarvis Taveniere turns down the static and sharpens the focus. As if that wasn't enough of a transformation, the record kicks opens with a six-minute tune ("The Other Girls") that has little in common with the loose,... punchy pop people have come to expect. Despite these cosmetic changes, though, the Girls haven't forgotten their roots — the one-two punch of "Sixteen Ways" and "Take It As It Comes" are on-point homages to the girl groups they strive to emulate, while "Lake House" shows they haven't forgotten how to make an enjoyable ruckus — they're just seeing what else they're capable of. It's not as radical as, say, changing their name to the Vivian Women, but it's clear from Share The Joy that these girls are growing up.
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Let It Sway

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
2010 | Polyvinyl Records

Surviving the hype-mongering early stages for a buzz band can be a treacherous thing. Fortunately, the Missouri quartet Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin have the chops, and the wherewithal, to withstand the buzz's fading light. Their third full-length, Let It Sway, is a power-pop crowd-pleaser, rippling with shout-alongs and hand-clap revivals. "Banned (By The Man)" is as straightforward and charming as they get — give some credit goes to production guru... and Death Cab For Cutie guitarist Chris Walla, whose sharp and steady hand gives this album the same gleeful, exploding joy as so many of the other indie pop bands (Ra Ra Riot, The Thermals, Tegan and Sara) he's helped shepherd in recent years. Someone Loves You Boris Yeltsin are lucky and good. Sometimes you need both.
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Deerhoof vs. Evil

Deerhoof
2011 | Polyvinyl Records

After 16 years, 11 albums and numerous personnel changes, San Francisco's Deerhoof are coming of age. Far from slowing down, on Deerhoof Vs. Evil their itchy, primary-colored avant-rock is fuelled on compressed energy. Their ball-of-lightning sound fizzles with disorienting production tics — flashes of dub, electronic percussion and dropped-in abstract interludes, which throw weird angular shapes beneath bassist Satomi Matsuzaki's ludicrously catchy stream-of-consciousness vocal hooks.

Twin guitarists John Dieterich and Ed Rodriguez dominate... the mix, equally comfortable with delicate Spanish guitar trills ("No One Asked To Dance"), kora-like repetitions ("Must Fight Current"), overdriven Keith Richards licks ("Secret Mobilization") and thick, dueling power chords. Greg Saunier's drums — informed by both house and hip-hop — clatter and worry the music along. "The Merry Barracks" — written, according to Satomi, to overcome her fear of low bass frequencies from cars — riffs on a glam rock bass line stomp; instrumental "Let's Dance the Jet" with its pungent, soupy electric organ, seems lifted from the soundtrack for a Greek film; Brazilian Tropicalia lurks behind the stream-of-consciousness "Must Fight Current." Rapturous closer "Almost Everyone, Almost Always" points to a parallel universe in which the band is a more synth-dominated outfit. The huge-sounding Deerhoof Vs. Evil was entirely self-recorded and produced in a variety of practice spaces and basements. Evildoers of the world, be very afraid.
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Pershing

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
Polyvinyl Records
Reptilians

STRFKR
2011 | Polyvinyl Records

Frame & Canvas

Braid
2003 | Polyvinyl Records

If Braid hadn't split in 1999, there's no telling the millions they would be counting in the mainstremo era. Frame and Canvas is a near-perfect distillation of late-'90s emo, a mass of fist pumps, slow kisses and deep sighs. "Never Will Come For Us," in which Chris Broach and Bob Nanna trade heart-sick barbs, and "A Dozen Roses," a too-fast ballad (or too-slow rave-up) about — what else? — rejection set to... a Polaroid-perfect guitar progression, were both tailor-made for crushed-out mix-tapes. Your sister loves this album, and so should you.
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Always

Xiu Xiu
2012 | Polyvinyl Records
Home Acres

Aloha
2010 | Polyvinyl Records

False Priest

of Montreal
2010 | Polyvinyl Records

Right — the Prince stuff. Let's start there. "Our Riotous Defects," track two of False Priest, Kevin Barnes's 11th album either with or as Of Montreal, channels Prince in a way that's even more direct than usual. Over the last few Of Montreal albums, Barnes hasn't been shy about his desire to come as close as possible to that sound and standard while still remaining his weirdo, hyperkinetic, Athens, Georgia-bred indie-pop self.... But he's seldom imitated him so directly as he does on "Defects" — specifically, the verses are done in an exacting, precise imitation of the spoken coda of "If I Was Your Girlfriend," from Sign 'O' the Times.

Especially on Sign, Prince was entirely comfortable tweaking his own persona — playing it up here, undercutting it slightly there. Nothing about the "Girlfriend" coda, in which Prince's voice is slightly sped up, is un-self-aware. But Barnes's use of that nattering tone is utilized in the service of a bunch of lines that up the self-awareness factor a few notches: "I know it's fucked, but just before we got together, I even hooked up with one of your cousins just to feel somehow closer to you. 'Cause I knew, like, you guys were best friends and you talked every day, and it was thrilling to touch something that had touched you." Sure, he's singing to the "crazy girl" of the chorus ("I supported your stupid little blog, got a Bowflex," he recounts, bewildered), but he's also singing, as a listener, to Prince himself, about hearing yourself in another person's song — or of wanting to get inside that song and make it your own.

Jon Brion helped produce False Priest; two songs feature Janelle Monáe; one has Solange Knowles. "Thick R&B influence" were Barnes's words to Pitchfork. It's not a surprise to see Brion in that company — his work with Fiona Apple got the attention of a lot of R&B fans even before he worked with Kanye West on Late Registration in 2005. But Brion brings a buffeting style that meshes well with Barnes's hyperkineticism. The last Of Montreal album, 2008's Skeletal Lamping, was dense and jagged and sharp-edged; False Priest goes down smoothly without diluting any of what makes Of Montreal it billowing, weird self.

But what Brion really brings out — and I now feel foolish for not hearing it earlier — is how very high-school-musical Of Montreal is. That makes sense: The band was spawned from Elephant 6's collectivist ethos, which Stars and Arcade Fire seem to have picked up, and those groups have a similar gang-putting-on-a-show aspect as well. Of course, the reason I feel foolish noticing this now is that Of Montreal are always in costume and makeup. They use stage props, for Christ's sake. Their last album was narrative about Georgie Fruit, a black transsexual character that hybridizes earlier, more unaffectedly heroic rock archetypes from Bowie on out.

Archetypes and icons are Barnes's lyrical preoccupation. (The False Priest itself is an archetype — think of Jimmy Swaggart begging forgiveness of his sins.) "I thought she was my Annie Hall, or at least Ali MacGraw," he sings on "Famine Affair," which despite its Sly Stone-tweaking title could have been on a Blondie record. "How can I trust my fractious heart/ When I know I have the enemy gene?" he and Monáe ask together on "Enemy Gene." (Rather than showing off, Monáe slips easily and well into a helpmate role both here and on "Defects.") There's always something askew in his universe, though he's happy to dance around it — and indeed, the music sounds spryer than it has since 2005's The Sunlandic Twins.

"Enemy Gene" is lovely, almost Christmassy pop in early Todd Rundgren mode — and Barnes has a lot in common with Rundgren. Both are smart, and smart-alecky, multi-instrumentalist studio rats with a taste for R&B and the off-kilter. Bringing Brion into the mix just makes it more apparent. The squee-sliding synths that climax "Hydra Fancies" are the kind of touch you'd expect from Something/Anything?; on an earlier Of Montreal album they might seem harsher. Here they fizz with delight.

Martin may sound a bit silly singing, "You look like a playground to me, playa," on "Sex Karma," his duet with Knowles the younger. But his weirdo take on R&B really does groove when that's what he's aiming for. "Girl Named Hello" is a bustling disco track — it could have come out on P&P around 1980 — that features Barnes doing a few voices (curling falsetto, absent-minded rasp) to make it sound all the more offhanded. Then there's "Like a Tourist," the album's other big Prince swipe — the wide-swinging drum track effectively channels Graffiti Bridge while the haughty, throaty spoken stuff is closer to the snide parts of "Sexuality." I almost expect Barnes to say, "What? No flash again?" But on this album, that wouldn't be the case at all.
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Fluorescence

Asobi Seksu
2011 | Polyvinyl Records

Brooklyn-based nu-gaze quartet Asobi Seksu have, on their fifth album, worked out both what they're best at, and when to stretch. Long-recognized as being in thrall to the sonic textures of My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins (and proudly displaying album artwork by legendary 4AD in-house designer Vaughan Oliver), on Flourescence they purvey those textures beautifully while simultaneously leavening them with a host of outside influences — from '60s girl-group pop to... unabashed tempo-mangling Prog. If they've occasionally stuttered since their 2006 breakthrough Citrus, they're now in thrilling voice again. "Fluorescence" flickers with florid genius.

Yuki Chikudate's high-pitched coos assert themselves over busy, blistering arrangements that are loaded with treated guitars and squalling keyboards, while the rhythm section rustles up energy to match Animal Collective or the Flaming Lips. "Trails" imagines Karen O and Kevin Shields competing for dominance, but Chikudate's blend of stridency and innocence is a beacon through the layers, and something that could have been cacophonous ends up mighty catchy. "My Baby" skips along on stop-start beats and shivering sonic sidebars before exploding into euphoria; "Perfectly Crystal" reboots classic shoegazing tropes until they gleam with new life. The album's centerpiece is "Leave the Drummer Out There" which glides from hectic to frenetic, then shape-shifts into contrasting phases and moods with gravitas that wouldn't shame early Genesis. It's perhaps as a counterbalance that "Sighs" is as sweet as Blondie's chirpier side, but by "Pink Light" the band is reaffirming their trippier, endlessly echoing motifs.

Dream-pop isn't in short supply these days, but Asobi Seksu (colloquial Japanese for "playful sex") thrive through a mix of exuberance and guile. Their fusion of charm and chaos isn't easy to achieve but always sounds fluid and sparkling. Everything they've absorbed from their idols pours out as bright light.
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A Skeptic’s Guide to Aerosmith

Maura Johnston — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:34:38 +0000

In recent years, Aerosmith’s fondness for big ballads and endless reprises of “Walk This Way” might have turned the band into something of a caricature. But make no mistake: The Boston outfit has been pumping out outstanding rock songs during its nearly 40 years of existence. From its raunchy, bluesy first album to the sludgy Rocks to its electric live albums, Aerosmith has consistently been one of America’s finest, the pairing of Steven Tyler and Joe Perry causing fireworks both on record and in arenas. Here are 10 gems from the vault guaranteed to convince any skeptic, and don’t forget to check out the band’s new record, Music from Another Dimension, available now.

“Mama Kin”

Aerosmith

Aerosmith
2011 | Columbia

This rave-up about the gypsy life and the lost innocence that results has a simple riff, coy lyrics, and just enough horns to make it boogie; Joe Perry's guitar solo shows off his chops but doesn't sacrifice melody to the gods of virtuosity. Two decades after its release on Aerosmith's debut, it was – appropriately – covered by the '80s heirs to Aerosmith's rock-hedonist throne: Guns N' Roses.

“S.O.S. (Too Bad)”

Get Your Wings

Aerosmith
2011 | Columbia

This taut rocker about Tyler getting in trouble with the ladies has an almost power-pop-like pep, though its propulsive low end is firmly rooted in the blues. The "Toxic Twins" pairing of Steven Tyler and Perry is in peak form here, with Tyler's wail and Perry's slide down the fretboard in perfect unison on the chorus.

“Round And Round”

Toys In The Attic

Aerosmith
2011 | Columbia

Offering a hint of the bleary-eyed dankness that would come on Aerosmith's next album, "Round and Round" is a bleak, circular grind, the band powering through an increasingly urgent endless-loop riff while Tyler pleads his romantic case to a less-than-forthcoming lover. That the music sounds better suited to soundtracking an apocalypse than a breakup is probably a large part of the point.

“Nobody’s Fault”

Rocks

Aerosmith
2011 | Columbia

Rocks is the pinnacle of Aerosmith's early years – a dark, swampy album dredged up from the blues' deepest abyss. On "Nobody's Fault," Tyler is in street-corner preacher mode, warning of fire and brimstone and dark days because, "Man has known and now he's blown it/ upside-down and hell's the owner sound"; behind him, the band chugs away through a dazed and confused elegy for the now-dimmed world around them.

“Bright Light Fright”

Draw The Line

Aerosmith
2011 | Columbia

Joe Perry handles lead vocals on this speedy track, which has a squealing sax and a pumping beat that recalls a hangover-borne rush of blood to the head. Which is appropriate, given that it's about the horror that can only be experienced during a Morning After.

“Lord Of The Thighs”

Live! Bootleg

Aerosmith
2011 | Columbia

Tyler is operating at peak levels of lasciviousness on this dogged cut from Get Your Wings; the version on the '70s concert compilation Live! Bootleg, recorded during a Chicago concert in 1978, stretches "Thighs" to its breaking point, turning its ending into a sweaty, extended tug-of-war. (The Breeders' cover is also worth checking; bassist Josephine Wiggs took over vocal duties, offering an almost-blasÃ© reading of the lyrics as the band pummels its... instruments behind her.)
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“No More No More”

Toys In The Attic

Aerosmith
2011 | Columbia

As Aerosmith got bigger, the travails of fame began to creep further into their lyrics – though it's a credit to the band's self-aware swagger that those tales rarely dip into self-pity. "No More No More" opens with a riff that could almost be called airy, then adds some back-of-the-barroom piano; both provide a fever-dream counterpoint to Tyler's stories about the road's less glamorous aspects.

“Draw The Line”

Classics Live II

Aerosmith
2011 | Columbia

The chiming title cut of Aerosmith's second album possesses even more energy in this live version, taken from a 1978 show in southern California. (It appears on a live compilation celebrating Perry's mid '80s return to the Aerosmith fold.) The interplay between the riffs, Perry's squawking lead, and Tyler's matter-of-fact delivery is at peak form, and even though this version doesn't have the down-from-heaven backing vocals of the take committed to wax... it does pack a nice left hook.
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“Jaded”

Just Push Play

Aerosmith
2001 | Columbia

This 1999 track has a chunky riff that could have easily been lifted from one of the indie-rock darlings dominating college radio at the time – but Aerosmith turn it into just one segment of a grand look back at caddishness gone by, with Tyler lamenting his assistance in innocence lost and buried-in-the-mix strings underscoring his guilt.

“Lick & A Promise”

Rocks

Aerosmith
2011 | Columbia

The intro of "Lick & A Promise" – Joey Kramer's frenetic drumming fading in, growing louder as it gets more intense – sets up the lyrical conceit of this jumpy tune, which follows an up-from-the-depths rock star who's trying to juggle as many women as he can while also pleasing crowds night after night. It's a testament to the "na-na-na-na-na" pre-chorus's sublimity that the love-'em-and-leave-'em conceit doesn't seem too troubling.

Discover: Sacred Bones Records

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:03:39 +0000

It took a mere two releases for the fledgling Sacred Bones Records to establish their identity. The label’s first record, a 7-inch from Denver-area band the Hunt (friends of Sacred Bones founder Caleb Braaten), looks like a run-of-the-mill single. But when the label put out Blank Dogs’ Diana (The Herald) EP, the look and feel of a Sacred Bones release was cast in stone. Their mysterious logo depicted a black triangle encircled by a snake eating its own tail, with the label’s name printed below in a decaying typeset font. Beneath it, a tasteful, right-justified, serif-styled text detailed the basics about the album in question. Not since Vaughan Oliver and v23′s work with 4AD has a label boasted a visual aesthetic so complementary to the music it accompanied.

When one thinks of Sacred Bones, one thinks of Zola Jesus, but the label’s musical identity was well established before she came on board: The label’s home to out-there garage rock outfits (Timmy’s Organism), expansive psychedelic combos (Moon Duo) and good-old-fashioned kick-your-teeth-in punk rock (the Men). And just as Zola Jesus’s music has matured beyond the hiss and static that typified her earlier work, Sacred Bones has grown as well. Taylor Brode, a former Touch & Go employee, came on board in 2009, and now runs day-to-day affairs at the label with Braaten and other staffers.

To celebrate the label’s fifth anniversary, we’ve got a free sampler to help you figure out where to start, and we asked founder Caleb Braaten to tell us what drew him to some of the label’s core artists.

Now’s your chance to step into the shadows.

Stridulum

Zola Jesus
2010 | EP/SINGLE

Nika has been on the label since she was a teenager. She is our daughter, our sister and our best friend. Watching her raw talent grow over the last four years into an unstoppable global takeover is awe-inspiring. Every time she hands in an album she outdoes herself, refusing to stay stagnant or create the same work and over again. Conatus is no exception; it is the sound of her crystallizing her... ideas into a totally uncharted sonic landscape. We could not be more proud of her and are delighted that the rest of the world is finally catching on.
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Open Your Heart

The Men
2012 | Sacred Bones Records / S.C. Distribution

The Men are a true punk band in the classic D.I.Y. sense of the word. These are the dudes we call when we need to borrow a drum kit at 2 a.m., or when we need 300 LPs screened in 24 hours. There is no “wave” that can contain them, and they intend to keep it that way. To support their first record, they embarked on a U.S. tour -- self-booked —... that found them playing 47 shows in 39 days. Open Your Heart was one of the most gripping releases we've ever listened to.
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Horribles Parade

Gary War
2009 | Sacred Bones Records / S.C. Distribution

New Raytheonport absolutely blew our minds the first time we heard it. We were thrilled to have the opportunity to work with him on his follow-up LP, Horribles Parade, which exponentially exceeded our expectations. Gary War's singular vision is absolutely inspiring; he is one of the most forward-thinking, psychedelic minds out there. Genius is an understatement.

Cult of Youth

Cult of Youth
2011 | Sacred Bones Records / S.C. Distribution

Sean Ragon has been a friend for some time, and in the early days, Cult of Youth was his solo project. Rooted largely in neo-folk tradition, Sean made some amazing records on his own and worked with some labels we really respect. It wasn't really until the first time we saw them as a full band that we realized what their potential could be. They delivered one of the finest records we... have ever heard, and they have absolutely no counterpart in the current “indie” climate.
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Rise of the Green Gorilla

Timmy's Organism
2010 | Sacred Bones Records / S.C. Distribution

Timmy Vulgar is the last bastion of authentic, weird punk. Timmy is a true artist; he makes his own videos, designs his own albums and posters, and creates perfect other worlds where aliens and humans co-exist in a psychedelic punk utopia. He is a kind and wonderful asset to our family, and truly supports his local Detroit scene and the punk scene at large. The world would be a terribly boring place... without him.
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Discover: Warner Music Classics

eMusic Editorial Staff — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 13:18:08 +0000

For years, Warner Brothers Records has been home to musicians who want to pursue a particular artistic vision. The albums in this collection may cover a multitude of genres, but they all have one thing in common: Each of them defined a particular sound and created a path for younger bands to go forward.

Discover: Yep Roc Records

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:22:03 +0000

Some indie labels are started by naÃ¯ve upstarts with wide eyes and big dreams, anxious to either make their mark or flame out trying. The North Carolina label Yep Roc, which celebrates its 15th birthday this year, was different. Founders Glenn Dicker and Tor Hansen were more or less industry vets by the time Yep Roc released its first record. In a way, though, that almost makes their effort that more admirable – though they were already established, both of them felt they could be doing more. “Starting Yep Roc was our way to be super connected to some of the amazing talent that was around here in North Carolina,” explains Hansen. “It just allowed us to be attached to some of the local artists that we loved and that we felt like we could help.” From the get-go, the aim of the label was to capture the staggering sonic diversity the two witnessed throughout the local scene. “It was just a vibrant music community that embraced tons of different kinds of stuff,” explains Dicker. “You could go see a honky-tonk-style country band one night and an indiepop band like the Mayflies the next night, and it would be the same people at both shows.”

Accordingly, the label’s roster incorporates both extremes – and adds a little of everything in between. There’s the glimmering power pop of bands like Sloan, the dirt-heel, root-kicking country of Dave Alvin and the spiraling instrumental rock of Los Straitjackets. That all of it feels like it belongs together is a testament to the label’s strong vision and identity, and has been rewarded with fierce audience devotion.

“There was one point where we went down to Local 506, which holds 250 people, and there were 300 people trying to get in to see Two Dollar Pistols,” says Dicker. “That, to us, felt like ‘Holy shit!’ It’s not us that created this, but we’re involved with a band that has fans, and we’re helping to make that connection.”

Of course, a label doesn’t make it 15 years without a few bizarre detours – one of which came courtesy of guitarist C.C. Adcock. “There was this one time when C.C. was playing the Continental Club,” Hansen laughingly recalls, “and it’s completely full – it was our label showcase. And CC’s set was close to the end. All of a sudden, he sort of disappeared. Then, the next thing you know, I just saw this chicken flying through the air. He just basically threw it into the audience. He went behind the amp and pulled out a live chicken. I remember someone from PETA was there and sort of backed me into a corner because they were convinced we’d put him up to it.”

Such moments of winged unpredictability aside, the label’s focus has remained constant throughout its lifespan: put out records Hansen and Dicker believe in, and let the rest take care of itself.

“Our business isn’t based on having hit records,” explains Dicker. “It’s based on putting good records that we can find an audience for. There’s a sense of satisfaction that comes from having a place where people can put out records that they feel really strongly about, and hopefully find some success through that process.”

We asked Dicker and Hansen to select 16 records that have stood out the most to them over the label’s 15-year history and share with us a bit of backstory about each of them. And if that’s not enough, you can listen to the label’s legacy with this free Yep Roc sampler.

Summertown

The Mayflies USA
1998 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Dicker: I think we have to give [the dB's'] Chris Stamey some credit for this. We had an awareness of the band, and we'd worked with them on an EP before this record, but Chris was really pushing them to us. We thought this was just a perfect indiepop record. Going back and listening to it, I still feel the same way. I think that there's tons of energy in this band... – there's three different singers, they knew how to write great songs at a young age, and they had a lot of attitude, which was something that was difficult to harness. They were basically a rock 'n' roll band playing pop songs.
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Jet Set

Los Straitjackets
2012 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Hansen: You never know, with this band, what their big idea is going to be from one record to the next. Whether it's Sing Along with Los Straitjackets, or with this, their most recent record, where they pulled in this amazing producer and took it to the next level in terms of of sonic production. It's fun to work with a band that's really open to a lot of ideas.
Dicker: They... totally get it. They're an instrumental band, and you can only put out so many records like that. So they really do try to come up with a different concept every time. Everything they do is very funny, and from the get-go, they wanted to be where they have no business being. The silliest possible thing you could come up with? That's what they want to do.
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Down With Wilco

The Minus 5
2004 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Dicker: Scott [McCaughey] called us one day and was excited about the fact that we had Nick Lowe on the label. He basically said, "I'd love to be on the same label as Nick Lowe." [Laughs.] That made things pretty easy. And then he was like, "It just so happens that I've just finished this record. The band on the record is Wilco. Jeff [Tweedy] sings a couple of songs, but I... do most of the singing. It's called Down With Wilco. Do you think that would be something that would interest you?" We were like, "Fuck yeah!" Scott's just got this bottomless energy for music. It never stops. When he was on the road touring with R.E.M., he'd be recording in his hotel room after the shows.
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While You Weren't Looking

Caitlin Cary
2002 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Dicker: We put out this compilation early on called Revival, and it had a Whiskeytown song on it. So there was this connection with Caitlin already from there. Add to that the fact that we were based locally, and that she was just getting started on her own without Ryan [Adams], and it seemed like it was the perfect fit. Essentially, nobody knew who she was in terms of her solo stuff... – it was brand new. We were just proud of where we were able to take this. It was a big record for us, because we were heavily involved in getting her on the road, getting her overseas. Our success with her definitely attracted other artists. People would be like, "I saw that record everywhere."
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Sonik Kicks

Paul Weller
2012 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Dicker: This kid in our office knew we were fans of Paul Weller, and he came up and mentioned one day that he saw that Paul Weller had a new record coming out in the UK, but there was no US street date. We had learned early on is that the worst that can happen is that someone says no, so we basically cold-called his UK label and asked to put this... out in the US. Our timing was great – though we didn't get to put it out until six months after [it came out overseas], we still managed to sell more than his last record did. We don't have a ton to work with – he doesn't tour in the States as much as we would like him to because it doesn't make financial sense. But this record is just ambitious – it's definitely more on the psych side of things, that sort of English psych that Paul grew up loving. It's a very creative record – he's just constantly stretching the borders of what he's done.
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¡Let Freedom Ring!

Chuck Prophet
2009 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Hansen: Working with Chuck is more than a pleasure. What was great about this record is that when we heard it, it was like, "Man, I think this might be Chuck's best record." In terms of songwriting, there's full, memorable songs on there. I think Chuck feels really strongly about this record, and it clearly matched up with everybody's feelings here. When that happens, it's a magic moment. It's a record that... will continue to leave a lasting impression.
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Conductor

The Comas
2004 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Dicker: They're a band we always did fun stuff with. The record before this, we did the record release show at a roller rink. We rented out a roller rink, and all the mass media from Chapel Hill – all three people! – plus all the record stores were there. We had a ton of people, and it was just a fun thing to do – we had a big keg in... the middle of the floor. For this record, we filmed this movie, and did a party at the local theatre. We really feel like this band should have been a huge success.
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I Can See The Future

Eleni Mandell
2012 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Dicker: When we heard this record, we just thought it was something special. There was a maturity about her songwriting – she has this attitude about what she does, I wouldn't say it's dark, but there's something slightly off about it.
Ashgrove

Dave Alvin
2004 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Hansen: Dave's songwriting and his records are really great, but what really holds this guy is his constant interaction on the road. When you go to a Dave Alvin shows, you're seeing some of the best roadhouse guitar playing you could possibly see, along with the gritty, road-worn history that he's been delivering his whole life. It's a real pleasure to work with someone who has a lifetime of playing on the... road.
Dicker: We've just always been fans of Dave's. We didn't have a pre-existing relationship or anything – we just liked him a lot, and were always talking to him. Dave's just one of the best. He plays every night, he drives the van himself – he's in the same lineage as the classic blues guys.
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KEEPER

John Doe
2011 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Dicker: John is probably best known for leading the L.A.-based band X, but as a songwriter, he has matured into a very special force. His songs still have the ability to rock you, and an edginess that it seems like he invented. There are some truly soft moments on this that suck you in completely. In contrast to his other records, when he wrote Keeper, he was truly in a good place.... Which I think was challenging to him as a songwriter, but he obviously found a way to deliver, and then some.
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Take a Good Look

Fleshtones
2008 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Hansen: I honestly think this is the best Fleshtones album. Not many people would think of this band as "classic American songwriters," but I think this album shows how well they've mastered a variety of rock songwriting styles. It all comes together quite well. I remember reading a book about the Brill Building called Always Magic in the Air shortly before I heard Take A Good Look, and it really struck me... that, on this record, these guys have put together songs that could be from that classic era of American songwriting. They aren't just doing what they have done for the past 35 or so years – they're continuing to improve as songwriters.
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Wildwood

Chatham County Line
2010 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Dicker: Yep Roc has worked with Chatham County Line from the get go. They used to open for Tift Merritt's band the Carbines, so we saw them early on. They were never really a traditional bluegrass band, but they had all the elements of one: banjo, fiddle, no drums. They stood for something that really engaged young people as well. They had an energy and an attitude that spoke to the kids,... but the maturity of their songwriting appealed to people of all ages. This is their most country record probably, but it leans on a West Coast vibe more than it does, say, popular country. And the songwriting just soars.
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Never Hear the End of It

Sloan
Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Hansen: We were always fans of Sloan, but when we heard this album, we were blown away. Creatively, this was a big step forward for the band. It's 30 songs that mostly run into each other – kind of a "B-Side of Abbey Road" vibe. It just flowed amazingly. It's very ambitious, but each song delivers individually.
Sky Full of Holes

Fountains of Wayne
2011 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Dicker: This is the first album we'd done together, and it was a great start. It's probably pretty obvious we're big fans of power pop, and the band really nailed it on this record. They're super well-known for "Stacy's Mom," but to their hardcore fans it was always about their consistently great songs. Chris and Adam deliver some of the best of their career here.
More Bad Habits

Ronnie Dawson
2000 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Hansen: Ronnie Dawson was a force of nature, plain and simple. He made his records in the only way he knew how: completely raw, honest and bare bones rockin' without any extra padding. He'd always take time to get to know and talk to people on the road. He was a truly caring individual, and was also quick to make sure you were taking care of yourself. He used to jog laps... around the van when he was gassing up to keep himself as fit as possible. He was a big runner. Best of all, he could kill you on stage with his smile or his fierce-but-hypnotic guitar attack. He is missed. If you need to hear the best of what rockabilly music is all about, and you like your songs about food and good times, this is the album for you.
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The Convincer

Nick Lowe
2001 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Dicker: I had known Nick Lowe from before we started Yep Roc. When he came around to wanting to do a new record, we just kept in touch with him. We were fortunate enough to build up our infrastructure here to be able to do a good job with it. That still is one of our proudest moments – we took that record and sold more than any of his previous independent... releases. It was a really great thing. We were just able to connect to his fans.
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Also On Sale

I Often Dream of Trains

Robyn Hitchcock
2007 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye
Body Of Song

Bob Mould
Yep Roc Records / Redeye
New Seasons

The Sadies
2007 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye
V.O.T.E.

Chris Stamey
Yep Roc Records / Redeye
Learn to Sing Like a Star

Kristin Hersh
Yep Roc Records / Redeye
Oceans Apart

The Go-Betweens
Yep Roc Records / Redeye
Once Around

The Autumn Defense
2010 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye
Honey In The Hive

The Bigger Lovers
2004 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye
I'll Be Lightning

Liam Finn
2008 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye
Little Moon

Grant - Lee Phillips
2009 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye
Acrobats

Peggy Sue
2011 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye
Underwater Moonlight

The Soft Boys
2010 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

Discover: Thrill Jockey Records

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:16:58 +0000

After 20 years, Thrill Jockey is still nearly synonymous with the Chicago mid-’90s post-rock scene – an avant-garde crew that in broad terms includes Tortoise, Trans Am and the Sea And Cake. The imprint has also been home to a variety of artists whose output tends toward challenging, unconventional and sometimes experimental sounds. And so it’s somewhat surprising when label owner Bettina Richards mentions the uniting factor among her stable of artists.

“The commonality among the artists, to me, is a love of melody – no matter how obtuse,” she says. “It is always there.”

Richards has been unearthing melody, innovation and noise since the late ’80s, when she worked as an A&R rep at major labels; she helped sign the Meat Puppets to London Records, and brought the Lemonheads and Eleventh Dream Day to Atlantic. Frustrated by the inflexibility of large corporations, Richards jumped ship and started her own label in 1992 while working at a Hoboken record store. But she remained smitten with Eleventh Dream Day, and Thrill Jockey would eventually release (and even re-release) the band’s music.

“Eleventh Dream Day, at the time that I first encountered them (circa 1988 debut Prairie School Freakout), had this great tension between their guitars – a love of the crispy, burnt guitar tones that are also beloved by Neil Young,” says Richards. “They had an urgency and an ability to tell a story. They are a band that is all in live, even after all these years.”

In 1995, Richards’s move to Chicago brought not only a change of environment and cheaper rent, it positioned Thrill Jockey to be the conduit for a cadre of mostly instrumental, jazz-influenced bands that would be labeled “post-rock.” (For the record, Richards does not comprehend the term as a musical descriptor, but doesn’t mind the attention it brought to the bands and label.) The historic moment arrived with Tortoise’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die. Richards recalls hearing the album for the first time in Tortoise’s loft studio.

“My memory is really of sitting behind John McEntire listening to ‘The Taut And Tame’ and letting the mind melt begin. I recognized the greatness and the innovation at once. I was giddy.”

Although Thrill Jockey holds tight to the identity it formed in the ’90s – Richards’s favorite office totem is a photo behind her desk of Gaunt singer/guitarist Jerry Wick, who was killed by a drunk driver while riding his bicycle in 2001 – the last decade or so has been characterized by decidedly unprovincial decisions. Working with artists from Kenya, Sweden, Mali, Japan, Austria and Germany has expanded not only Thrill Jockey’s horizons, but those of indie rock at large. Not surprisingly, Thrill Jockey’s breadth – the baker’s dozen releases below ranges from minimalist electronica to Kenyan benga music, and still excludes large stylistic swaths of the catalog – is symptomatic of Richards’s own affliction.

“I am a hopeless record addict,” says Richards. “I buy new or used records every week. I am sure one day I will be on the news: ‘Lady found in an apartment so filled with records she could not find her stereo.’”

Millions Now Living Will Never Die

Tortoise
2004 | Thrill Jockey

Beautiful, imposing, complex and impossible to understand – Millions Now Living is like Ulysses or Tree of Life or a French exchange student. The album reflects Chicago's obsession with modernism, the appropriation of old and sometimes obscure forms (krautrock, minimalism, dub, musique concrete) bent into new shapes. It's symptomatic of a citywide aesthetic: If you can't see that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot stood on the shoulders of Millions Now Living, may Ditka... have mercy on your soul. Critics were extolling this album's importance almost upon its release in 1997, and they were mostly correct about its mathematical elegance, sonic detail, and how 21-minute opener "Djed" might be the best album side of the decade. What's less well-documented is how many stoner epiphanies will alight from your speakers, as angels from Heaven or Humboldt Park.
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Red Line

Trans Am
2004 | Thrill Jockey

Pioneers of the ironic mustache and cheeky proponents of retro-futurism, Trans Am tend to get snickered off the post-rock dais. Truth be told, there can be a Sprockets-like element to the krautrocking sounds put forth by this Washington, D.C., trio – a vocoder-filled vein that Stereolab never touched. But the very notion that humor would have no place in the millennial indie-rock landscape is a pretty bleak situation. 2000 double album... Red Line represents the full range of Trans Am's power, from Queens of the Stone Age-style rock with vocals ("Play In The Summer") to primetime '70s prog ("Lunar Landing"). Few bands in history have simultaneously been this weird, arty and heavy.
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Directions In Music

Directions
2004 | Thrill Jockey

This is what a lost weekend in Chicago, circa 1996, sounded like. Former Tortoise member Bundy K. Brown summoned drummer Doug Scharin (Rex, June of 44, HIM, Codeine) and guitarist James Warden to Idful Studios to cut eight untitled instrumentals over two days and release them into the world under a Miles Davis-styled moniker. Directions in Music is a little-known gem in the catalog and the dark horse on this list, a... testament to the raw creativity and collaboration among these musicians. The album seems to consist of three movements, with the pair of opening numbers ("Untitled 1" and "Untitled 2") focused on Scharin's master-class percussion; tracks 3-5 bringing in rolling, pastoral guitar melodies; and tracks 6-8 providing long tonal stretches and psychedelic space-outs. Even listeners who are uninterested in post-rock or instrumental music will be engaged by this album's guitar hooks and generally brisk pace.
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Scope

Nobukazu Takemura
2004 | Thrill Jockey

Japanese composer Nobukazu Takemura made his name in American indie-rock circles as a remixer, deconstructor and collaborator with the likes of Tortoise, Yo La Tengo and DJ Spooky. When left to his own devices, as on 1999's Scope, he can still be heard dealing in pastiche, arranging discrete sounds – speaker-panning blips, buzzes and clicks – that are sometimes connected by melody and sometimes just left to bask in the wide-open spaces... of musique concrete. Scope is an appropriate title; the album ranges from the soft, bell-choir "Kepler" to the queasy, subsonic electronics of "Taw" to the ping-ponging, melting-Casio lullaby "Tiddler." For a supposedly minimalist composer, that's quite a maximalist thing to do.
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In Evening Air

Future Islands
Thrill Jockey

As any practiced insomniac will tell you, the human body can go for about 30 hours straight before things start getting weird. At that point, your ears get choosy, your voice drops to a slurred cackle, and your brain pops with the sort of deep-moored emotions that'll keep you awake for another half-day or so. It's a sensation both euphoric and disorienting, and it's evoked frequently on this Baltimore trio's gorgeously murky... third effort.

Led by frontman Sam Herring, a troubled-mind wordsmith with a soulful growl, Future Islands merge synth-rock bombast with post-punk jitter. "Long Flight" and "Inch of Dust" are both hazy colossuses, pile-ons of drum-machine tick-tocks, airy keyboards and Herring's sinuous vocals, which switch from effete to engorged and back again. But the stand-out here is "Tin Man," a post-breakup gut-pour that finds Herring pleading over twinkling steel drums and blurry power chords: "You couldn't possibly know how much you mean to me," Herring sings in a gnarled choke. "You couldn't possibly look inside my tarot." Like much of In Evening Air, it's bleak and beautiful, the sort of track that inspires dreams or nightmares — assuming you can get to sleep in the first place.
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Widow City

The Fiery Furnaces
Thrill Jockey

"No longer a slave of ambition,
I laugh at the world and its shams,
And I think of my happy condition,
Surrounded by acres of clams."
– Francis D. Henry, 1874

The Fiery Furnaces spent their early career trying to go over the goldheart mountaintops built by the Who, the Sparks and Guided By Voices, to varying degrees of survival. In songwriter and lyricist Matthew Friedberger's zeal to fire every musical synapse, there have been rock... operatics, overstuffed concepts, a few genius lessons and at least one plain old terrible choice (2005's mostly spoken-word grandmother album Rehearsing My Choir). Your safest point of entry into the Fiery Furnaces' bulimic file cabinet of musical vignettes and quick-change songwriting is 2007's Widow City. Comfortable in the riffage and rancor of '70s rock, Matthew Friedberger has laid out his most playful set of songs for his unflappable sister Eleanor to sing; finely detailed narratives about escaping cults ("Ex-Guru"), making moonshine ("Navy Nurse") and so many loose-thread hallucinations that a coherent theme is thankfully, mercifully out of the question.
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Prairie School Freakout/Wayne EP

Eleventh Dream Day
Thrill Jockey

Thrill Jockey's roster was practically populated by the Eleventh Dream Day diaspora, even though it's sometimes difficult to hear the resemblance among the various offspring. EDD drummer Janet Beveridge Bean begat the folky Freakwater, bassist Doug McCombs begat Tortoise, and singer/guitarist Rick Rizzo laid down some albums with Antietam's Tara Key. When Thrill Jockey reissued 1988 full-length debut Prairie School Freakout, it offered a visceral look at indie rock's predawn. These 10... breakneck songs – recorded in just six hours – sound like a mythical meeting of Peter Buck's brittle rhythm playing and J Mascis's searing leads, churning out slightly countrified, road-worn punk. When the voices of Rizzo and Bean collide, they produce a John Doe/Exene Cervenka skewed harmony that can blow the hipped roof off a Frank Lloyd Wright house. This 2003 reissue appends the follow-up Wayne EP, which imbues a Neil Young song with even more ragged glory.
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Radical Connector

Mouse On Mars
2004 | Thrill Jockey

Uh-oh. Here come the real Germans. The likes of Tortoise and Trans Am may dabble in Germany's musical history when they lock into the motorik rhythms of krautrock, but Dusseldorf's Mouse On Mars always seems to be a decade or so ahead of everyone else. The duo of Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner are often found exploring the far corners of electronic music, effectively moving the map toward some glitchy new... frontier or another. This constant quest for original-sounding clicks, hisses and tones can be android's work, but 2004's Radical Connector is positively alive and definitively human. Joined by drummer Dodo NKishi and female vocalist Niobe, Mouse On Mars finally reports to the dancefloor; standout "Wipe That Sound" is a pop hit on a mechanical production line (shades of Herbie Hancock's "Rockit"), a benchmark in German engineering.
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Sun on Sun

Pontiak
Thrill Jockey

Thrill Jockey's foray into spooky psychedelia couldn't ask for better spirit guides than these three brothers from the Blue Ridge Mountains. Jennings, Van and Lain Carney recorded Sun On Sun in a log cabin, and from the sound of it, Jim Morrison is alive and well inside the Black Lodge, and the Bookhouse Boys just haven't got a clue. When Pontiak isn't evoking the Misfits in a K hole ("Shell Skull") or... filling a track with ghost-ship sounds ("Swell"), they're doing an excellent job of resurrecting the Doors, burning any dashikis that may still be clinging to the skeletons, and making them walk the Earth as a sinister stoner-rock outfit adept at both blacklight riffing and country death songs.
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Thank You Very Quickly

Extra Golden
Thrill Jockey

How Thrill Jockey came to release albums by a Kenyan-American band playing a hybrid of African benga music and rock is less a tale of globetrotting discovery than a consequence of the pocket-sized indie-rock Rolodex. There was a band called Golden, featuring members of Weird War and Trans Am, whose frontman (Ian Eagleson) happened to be an ethnomusicologist; that group morphed into Extra Golden, shedding a couple American members and adding two... Kenyan musicians. Naturally, it took a few albums for the formula to gel. On third album Thank You Very Quickly, the mixture of percussion and guitars, and English and Swahili vocals, had set. There are grooves galore, but none deeper than those on the honey-toned ballad "Ukimwi."
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Luck In The Valley

Jack Rose
Thrill Jockey

John Fahey is a lot like Jesus because both men had beards and left behind a lot of disciples. But only Fahey really liked Chinese food and can claim responsibility for a 21st-century uptick in instrumental guitar music by artists such as Glenn Jones, Sir Richard Bishop, James Blackshaw and Jack Rose. Rose died of a heart attack at age 38 in December 2009, mere months before the release of Luck In... The Valley, his Thrill Jockey debut. It is an album filled with country raga drones, barnstorming fiddles, old blues songs and an entirely original, finely crafted reconstruction of the cradle of American music.
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Liars and Prayers

Thalia Zedek Band
2008 | Thrill Jockey

Sleater-Kinney used to sing about wanting to be your Joey Ramone – allow us to nominate Thalia Zedek as your Patti Smith. For label proprietor Bettina Richards, Zedek already has the job. One of Richards' dreams at the outset was to release albums by Come, Zedek's '90s band with drummer Chris Brokaw. Zedek has showcased her weather-beaten vocals in front of a variety of musical backdrops, ranging from avant-punk to cabaret, but... the gritty folk-rock and plush viola of Liars And Prayers best suits her desolation-row lyrics. An album whose themes are equally applicable to love and war, Zedek proves she's not exactly an optimist or a romantic ("I just never imagined I'd still be forgiving you for so long," she sings on "Circa The End"). When she unleashes a meandering, Silkworm-style guitar solo in the middle of "Wind," however, it's obvious there are still some things worth believing in.
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The Sea And Cake

The Sea And Cake
2004 | Thrill Jockey

A true novelty in 1994, The Sea And Cake's self-titled debut arrived on a breeze of bubbly vibraphone, skittering jazz rhythms and lightly flecked Caribbean melodies. It didn't so much fly in the face of the '90s grunge movement – not that old trope again – as offer a fizzy, chilled drink in the shade. Among the grown-ups. At dinner parties and on Sunday mornings. The Chicago outfit is closer to a... supergroup than any other band in the Thrill Jockey stable, boasting Tortoise's John McEntire, Shrimp Boat's Eric Claridge and Sam Prekop, and the Coctails' Archer Prewitt. Three of the four band members are accomplished visual artists, and the fourth (McEntire) would be a wizard at needlepoint if he weren't so busy producing albums for every other band in the city. The Sea And Cake is merely ginger on the palate; arguments can be made for 2000's Oui as the group's finest moment, and Prekop's solo albums are outstanding variations on the Sea And Cake's pastel-colored mood.
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Ovalprocess

Oval
2004 | Thrill Jockey
From the River to the Ocean

Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake
Thrill Jockey
Rites of Uncovering

Arbouretum
Thrill Jockey
Sahel Folk

Sidi Toure
2011 | Thrill Jockey
Feels Like The Third Time

Freakwater
2004 | Thrill Jockey
I Can See Your Mom From Here

Gaunt
2004 | Thrill Jockey
Juxtaposition

Radian
2004 | Thrill Jockey
High Places

High Places
Thrill Jockey
Looks At The Bird

Brokeback
2004 | Thrill Jockey
Gimme Trouble

Adult.
Thrill Jockey
Around

Tom Verlaine
Thrill Jockey
White Hills

White Hills
Thrill Jockey
Choral

Mountains
Thrill Jockey

The Weird World of One-String Blues

John Morthland — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:29:12 +0000

I saw my first diddley bows in 1996, at the rural Delta home outside Lexington, Mississippi, of bluesman Lonnie Pitchford. Pitchford, who died two years later at the age of 43, took me around the side of his house and there, on the wall, was his “guitar,” consisting of one thin wire wrapped tautly around two nails pounded into the side of the wooden building, two to three feet apart. At either end he’d slipped something (I forget what) under the wire. He plucked it a few times running a quarter up and down the strings to create a slide effect, then led me back to his porch, where he had another one-string guitar built on a piece of wood. Again using a coin as the slide, he proceeded to pick out, if memory serves, Robert Johnson’s “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day.” Pitchford, a protégé of Johnson’s son Robert Lockwood Jr., was known as the foremost Johnson interpreter in the Delta, and he gave this song a buzzing staccato hum that sounded like it must have involved more than one string. It was somewhat like the tone he gets on “Johnny Stole an Apple,” available here on eMusic. Lonnie had been playing diddley bow since the age of five; he’d first appeared at the Smithsonian Folk Festival when he was 17 and in concert, mostly at festivals, his act involved building a diddley bow onstage and then playing his set with it.

The diddley bow (also known sometimes as a jitterbug) is a one-string guitar once commonly played by Delta children; more formally, ethnomusicologists call it a “monochord zither.” Its origins are probably in central Africa, though West Coast African cultures also used one-string fiddles or lutes. The leaf stalk of the raffia palm was stretched over a hole in the ground, a tub or a pot; then, a sliver of its fiber was raised slightly on two bridges, but still attached to the stalk at both ends. One child would rhythmically tap this “string” with two sticks as a second slid a cup or something similar along it to alter the pitch and create percussive effects. As the instrument persevered among African Americans in the United States into the 20th century, it became a one-person instrument, usually made from broom or baling wire with bottles serving as bridges at either end. The child played with a stick or his finger, using another bottle or similar object as the slide. If the child played very well, he usually switched to the more complicated six-string guitar as he aged, often using a pocketknife instead of a glass bottle as his slide. The diddley bow thus had a significant effect on the shape and style of the blues; even when no slide is involved and the artist is playing a six-string guitar, the menacing one-string runs of John Lee Hooker (whose “Boogie Chillun” is performed by Pitchford here) or the dazzling one-string solos of B.B. King make that clear. Elmore James is just one major bluesman who professed to have first learned music on a diddley bow as a child.

But almost certainly because the diddley bow was a children’s instrument, the recording industry ignored it even in the 1930s, when folklorists first began noting its use in the South. Though nearly all diddley-bow recordings available on eMusic are by tradition-minded musicians prominent on the latter-day folk and festival circuits, there are exceptions. In 1956, one Willie Joe Duncan, listed as Willie Joe and His Unitar, accompanied Bob “Froggy” Landers on the Specialty single “Cherokee Dance.” The unitar, an electric one-string that judging from photos was about twice as big as Duncan, provided explosive, distorted contrast to Landers’s croaking voice on the dance novelty; the flip side, credited solely to Willie Joe and His Unitar, was a spare instrumental called “Unitar Rock” on which the ax sounded at times more like a Jew’s harp. (Duncan later re-cut a more ornate version of the song with guitarist Rene Hall’s Orchestra under the title “Twitchy.”) But alas, these attempts to make the unitar a “commercial” instrument fell on deaf (or weirded-out) ears. Also in 1956, Detroit street musician One-String Sam (Wilson) recorded “I Need a Hundred Dollars” and “My Baby Ooo” in a Hastings Street record store. Sam used a baby-food jar as his slide, holding it so close to his vocal mike that he created his own echo chamber, which made his sproinging (augmented by scraping) country blues sound even stranger.

More recently, Jesse Mae Hemphill, Compton Jones, Glen Faulkner, Napoleon Jones, Super Chikan, Watermelon Slim and others have recorded with diddley bow (while the Reverend KM Williams features the closely-related cigar-box guitar on his two eMusic albums). Hemphill, whose 1983 stroke ended her playing days, showcases the delicate picking of Jones on “Little Rooster Reel” and the sizzling stylings of Faulkner on “Get Right Church,” but no tracks of her playing a one-string are available here. Faulkner’s banjo-like “One-String Blues” appears on Africa and the Blues, as does Strickland’s droning “Key to the Blues (Jitterbug Version).” But the most hair-raising use of diddley bow in recent years is “Diddley-Bo Jam,” from Okiessippi Blues by Watermelon Slim and Super Chikan. For nearly eight minutes, the two men have it like a pair of fighting cocks, jabbing, dodging and twisting around each other, or one providing a steady backdrop as the other gets further and further gone. You gotta hear it.

And just because I know you’re wondering, Bo Diddley never recorded with a diddley bow. A notoriously wily interview subject, the late Ellas Otha Bates (aka Ellas McDaniel) gave several explanations for the origins of his stage name, and none of them mentioned the one-string guitar. But judging from the design of his own box-shaped guitar as well as his raucous, African-derived single-string excursions, I think it is safe to say that Bo Diddley definitely knew the diddley bow.

Discover: Nacional Records

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 14:22:05 +0000

Over the last eight years, Nacional Records has made a name for themselves as the home for contemporary Latin Alternative music. Their roster spans the spectrum — from ragged rock, to soothing electronic and rollicking hip-hop, all of it hailing from South of the Border and beyond. They’re home to multiple Grammy-nominated artists — among them, Manu Chao, Nortec Collective, Los Amigos Invisibles, Ana Tijoux and Kinky — as well as buzz-heavy newcomers like Diego Garcia, Mexican Institute of Sound and The Pinker Tones. Not sure where to start? Take a spin through this free sampler and see what strikes your fancy.

Going Through Changes

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 13:15:29 +0000

One of the great, long-running mythologies in popular music is the one surrounding the integrity of the Original Lineup. There’s a long-held belief that, the instant a member leaves a band, that band’s work is somehow diminished, or can exist only as a pale imitation of what came before. And while that’s certainly true in some cases, it disregards dozens of instances in which bands not only survived lineup changes but, in some cases, actually surpassed the commercial and artistic successes of their first iterations. Bands respond to roster changes differently: some are able to simply move forward as if nothing had happened, others use the opportunity to completely redirect, creating a new sound, a new image, and a new identity. All of the bands here have weathered lineup changes and emerged intact. See how the two lineups compare to each other – and work out which you prefer.

Joy Division / New Order

Joy Division was on the eve of their very first American tour when sullen lead vocalist Ian Curtis took his own life in May, 1980. It was a crushing blow: the group’s popularity had surged in their native Britain — overseas success seemed almost inevitable. They first attempted, on Movement, to continue with a slightly synthier version of their doomy post-punk, with guitarist Bernard Sumner assuming vocal duties and attempting to sing in the same low register as Curtis. But they quickly wised up, instead emerging as a propulsive electropop outfit that would go on, with songs like “Blue Monday” and “Bizarre Love Triangle,” to score chart-topping hits on both sides of the Atlantic.

Unknown Pleasures

Joy Division
2012 | Rhino
Closer

Joy Division
2012 | Rhino
Brotherhood

New Order
2008 | Rhino/Warner Bros.
Movement [Collector's Edition]

New Order
2008 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

Genesis

With his heady lyrical concepts and elaborate stage outfits — some of which included a fox-headed creature and an oversized flower — Genesis were the very definition of ’70s art rock. Their albums were sprawling and moody — The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway containing vivid lyrics like, “The wall of death is lowered in Times Square” as synths flutter in the distance. So Gabriel’s departure in 1975 was thought to be a death blow, robbing the band of its entire animus. But history had other ideas: drummer Phil Collins stepped up to the microphone, the band dropped their arty pretensions and they went on to become worldwide arena-filling superstars.

Selling England By The Pound

Genesis
2007 | Rhino Atlantic
Abacab [2007 Remaster]

Genesis
1981 | Rhino Atlantic
Genesis

Genesis
1983 | Rhino Atlantic

Destiny’s Child

Destiny’s Child emerged in the late ’90s — after years of false-starts and name-changes — as a four-piece, dishing out nervous-sounding R&B songs topped with steely, assertive lyrics. Both “Bills, Bills, Bills,” and “Jumpin’ Jumpin’” projected an image of tough women with limited patience for shiftless men. And then came one of the uglier splits in pop music history, with LaTavia Roberson and LeToya Luckett, depending on who you ask, either leaving or being forced out due to contractual disputes and the increasing control of Beyonce Knowles’ father Matthew. The streamlining turned out to be a good thing. The trio of Beyonce, Kelly Rowland and new member Michelle Williams pushed the group’s image of clenched-fist determination, even casting sly shots at the gossipy Roberson and Luckett in the brawling “Survivor.”

Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode made just one record with Vince Clarke before he departed to form the moody dancepop group Yaz, and Speak & Spell stands in pointed contrast to the records that followed. Bright, blippy and thumping, it sounds like the Texas Instrument toy that gives the record its name. Once the songwriting chores were fully assumed by Martin Gore and frontman David Gahan, things got noticeably chillier: throbbing odes to S&M, sneering denials of God and icky underage come-ons (“You’re only 15/ but you look good,” from Black Celebration‘s “A Question of Time”) took the place of pie-eyed boy-bandy love ditties like “Just Can’t Get Enough,” and the group embraced their roles as the dark lords of the seedy electro underbelly.

The Doobie Brothers

When lead vocalist Tom Johnston was diagnosed with stomach ulcers after the tour in support of their 1975 album Stampede, the time came for the group to reassess not only its lineup, but its overall direction. Toulouse Street and What Once Were Vicesâ€¦ are pleasing slices of rollicking FM rock and roll, certain segments of which could even be mistaken for good ol’ boy outfits like Alabama. But when Michael MacDonald joined the band in 1976, there was a noticeable change. The highway-roving harmonies and rangy guitars were swapped out for arrangements that owed more to soul and R&B — all the better to showcase MacDonald’s smoky voice. Their career trajectory continued upward, with hits like “What A Fool Believes” becoming instant radio staples.

Band of Horses

In “Factory,” the first track on 2010′s Infinite Arms, Band of Horses frontman Ben Bridwell sings, “It’s temporary/ This place I’m in/ I permanently won’t do this again.” That line could just as easily be applied to his band’s history: The South Carolina-via-Seattle group’s Wikipedia page lists twice as many past members as it does current, Bridwell being the only constant since he formed the group in 2004. Oddly enough, most of the personnel changes happened throughout the band’s first two albums, which are the most similar sounding in their catalog. Compared to the reverb-soaked guitars and racing sonic buildups of those first two sets, Infinite Arms finds the group a bit more toned down and at ease.

Wilco

Since Jeff Tweedy founded Wilco in 1994, the Chicago band has endured countless personnel changes, though the lineup has been the same for the past eight years. The most significant turning point came right after recording their experimental Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which famously got the band dropped by Reprise and eventually picked up by Nonesuch, another subsidiary of Warner Bros. (You can watch how it played out in the film I Am Trying To Break Your Heart). Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was the first set recorded with current drummer Glenn Kotche and the last with the late Jay Bennett. In the time between its 2002 release and the 2004 follow-up, the Grammy Award-winning A Ghost Is Born, Wilco lost multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach and gained Mikael Jorgensen, Pat Sansone and Nels Cline to round out their current, airtight setup.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Wilco
2002 | Nonesuch/WBR

Pearl Jam

For such a long-running, band-of-brothers outfit, Pearl Jam sure had a hard time settling on a drummer. Dave Abbruzzese, the band’s timekeeper through its earliest days, bashed and flailed with puppy-dog enthusiasm that you can still hear on the rocking, cymbal-heavy coda to “Alive.” Unfortunately, their meteoric grunge-superstar ascent created rifts: Abbruzzese saw nothing wrong with the band’s newfound fame and evidently savored the magazine-cover posing and arena-touring that came with it. Vedder, meanwhile, was grasping with increasing desperation to hit the brakes. After the strained, queasy Vitalogy, Abbruzzese was out, ushering Pearl Jam from their first career stage as Reluctant Grunge Martyrs to their current, happy status as durable road warriors. After a brief dalliance with Jack Irons, they settled down with Matt Cameron, formerly of Soundgarden, who has been happily bashing the skins ever since.

Van Halen

Perhaps the most famous rock-band brand reboot in history, and certainly the most controversial, Van Halen vs. Van Hagar is one of those pop-culture lines in the sand — Beatles or Stones? Yankees or Red Sox? Biggie or 2Pac? — that defines who you are. Van Halen were the quintessential hard-rock party band whose peacocking, lion-maned lead singer David Lee Roth eventually grew too rambunctious to contain within Van Halen’s confines: he had drunken-uncle solo albums and weird Tin Pan Alley covers to record. Thus ended the first era of a band who would have more eras than most: Roth, whose vocal abilities were limited to a sleazy speak-sing and a chihuahua yip, was replaced by a belting, scatting, barrel-chested and spaghetti-haired Sammy Hagar. Under Hagar, the band became corporate-rock superstars, selling more albums than ever and knocking out hits for the next two decades.

Diver Down

Van Halen
1982 | Warner Bros.
5150

Van Halen
1986 | Warner Bros.
OU812

Van Halen
2009 | Warner Bros.

Foo Fighters

Foo Fighters began as a bunch of Nirvana demos that Kurt Cobain deemed not good enough to pass muster for Nirvana; when Nirvana ended, Grohl put them out himself, playing every instrument himself. It was a shock for Nirvana fans to hear the sweetly yearning McCartney melodies pouring out of the whip-haired, Animal-like blur that grounded the rhythm section for the Most Important Band of the 90′s. After that self-titled record, Foo Fighters ceased to be a bedroom-recording project and became a band. Grohl, who quickly discovered that you can’t drum, sing, and play guitar simultaneously, installed William Goldsmith, drummer for emo legends Sunny Day Real Estate, in the drummer’s stool. But filling in for one of the greatest drummers of all time is not easy work, and Goldsmith found himself recording takes nearly one hundred times to meet Grohl’s standards during the recording of sophomore album The Colour and the Shape. After Grohl went ahead and replaced all the takes anyway, Goldsmith, nursing hurt feelings and early carpal tunnel, parted ways with the Foos, and Taylor Hawkins, who eerily resembles a Nordic version of Grohl, took over and has been the band’s mainstay ever since.

Faith No More

With its original vocalist Chuck Mosley, Faith No More were sneering, competent alternative rock band. When Mosley departed, Mike Patton stepped in, and things got a whole lot weirder — ersatz-funk slap bass, videos full of flopping fish, acid-reflux yowling, legions of keyboards, instrumentals called “Woodpeckers From Mars,” and something that sounded a whole lot like (gasp) rapping. For ninety percent of the band’s fans, Faith No More 2.0, under Mike Patton, is the only Faith No More, the band that thrashed through the pre-alternative rock netherlands with more bizarre ideas and weird sounds than half the bands in late-80s L.A. and Seattle combined. Patton’s subversive streak and love of Frank Zappa would power them through several increasingly challenging albums and make them cult heroes forever.

Introduce Yourself

Faith No More
2005 | Rhino/London-Sire
The Real Thing

Faith No More
1997 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

Blood, Sweat & Tears

The studio wizard and virtuoso keyboardist/Hammond organ player Al Kooper was a founding member of the 1960s brassy soul-rock powerhouse Blood, Sweat, & Tears. Kooper, with his ambitious jazz-rock fusion visions, helped the early BS&T record their critically acclaimed, masterful first album Child Is Father To the Man. But Kooper was forced out of the band afterward, and as so often happens, the early departure of a creative visionary paved the way for much greater chart success. The reconstituted BS&T, with David Clayton-Thomas on vocals, scored almost all of the Blood, Sweat, and Tears hits you already know, from the jazzy, key-shifting “Spinning Wheel” to “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” to a cover of folkie Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die.”

Child Is Father To The Man

Blood, Sweat & Tears
2000 | Columbia/Legacy
Blood, Sweat & Tears

Blood, Sweat & Tears
1986 | Columbia

Discover: Asphalt Tango Records

eMusic Editorial Staff — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:52:22 +0000

Take a trip around the world with the bright, simmering sounds of the Asphalt Tango label. Dive into burbling Balkan disco, hypnotic traditional music, Gypsy guitar and spaced-out psych rock. Not sure where to start? Take a spin through this label sampler to see which artists quicken your pulse. We’ve picked a dozen of our favorites below to help you get started.