eMusic » Lists

Moby’s eMusic Picks

Michelangelo Matos — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 12:49:08 +0000

[To celebrate the release of his 11th studio album, Innocents, we invited Moby to take control of eMusic's editorial for a week. You can read our exclusive interview with him here. Moby asked us to interview Cold Specks as part of his takeover — you can read that here — and we also resurrected Ryan Reed's interview with the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, who sings on Innocents. And below, he reveals his 10 favorite albums on eMusic. — Ed.]

The Best Of John Lee Hooker: Vol.1

John Lee Hooker
2004 | Tribute Sounds / Entertainment One Distribution

My mom is my biggest influence — which, in print, is probably the least cool thing anyone has ever said. When I was bored I would take her records and go through them. I must've been 13 or so when I first heard John Lee Hooker. There's some music that, when I first heard it, didn't make sense to me and years later made sense to me, but the first thing I... heard was "Boom Boom," and the immediate visceral appeal even made sense to me when I was 12 years old. Later, I started hearing blues in different circumstances and contexts, [and] I started appreciating the austerity of it.
more »
Greatest Hits

Neil Young
2004 | Reprise

I picked Greatest Hits because it would be really hard to pick one individual Neil Young album. Harvest, or — where would you even start? I read an interview with Neil Young, and he said that when he was compiling his Greatest Hits he didn't let his ego get in the way. He actually picked the songs that people wanted to hear. Some greatest-hits — and I'm guilty of this — you... tack on a few records that you hope people will listen to, even though they technically aren't hits. Whereas Neil Young's Greatest Hits, it really is just the most phenomenal collection of iconic, remarkable songs. His comfort with simplicity I find really inspiring; also that he writes very emotional music that almost always stops short of being too autobiographical. The songs are personal, but enigmatic at the same time.
more »
Bryter Layter

Nick Drake
2003 | ISLAND RECORDS

My first real good job was working in a record store called Johnny's — the counterculture store of Darien, Conneticut. One day I was working and [the owner] was playing Nick Drake. I fell in love, and he almost forced me to buy it — to take six dollars out of my paycheck and get my discount version of Bryter Layter. I became a Nick Drake evangelist, because at the time I... didn't know anyone who knew Nick Drake. It took quite a while — it wasn't until "Pink Moon" got used in that Volkswagen commercial that people became more aware of him. It made me happy, because he made so much remarkable music and it always was baffling to me [he] languished in obscurity. I like that he had a posthumous career.
more »
Greatest Hits: Donna Summer

Donna Summer
1998 | Island Def Jam

When I was nine or 10 years old I'd listen to Casey Kasem's Top 40 religiously. One of the highlights of my life professionally when I was on a panel and he was the moderator. Hearing my name said by Casey Kasem was just amazing. From nine, ten, I'd listen to Casey Kasem's [American] Top 40 — this would've been 1974-75, so it was Donna Summer and Kiss and Abba and Queen.... You couldn't turn on a radio in the mid 70's without hearing Donna Summer. "I Feel Love" is the greatest piece of electronic dance music ever made, hands down, bar none.

At [the L.A. restaurant] Soho House, I was having dinner, and someone I knew was at the table next to me. They said, "By the way Moby, this is Giorgio Moroder." I was like, "Really? How is this possible?" It's probably one of the best things about being a quasi-public figure — getting to meet your heroes.
more »
Suicide

Suicide
2013 | Mute

I bought it in 1980 as a cut-out — you remember cut-outs? — at Johnny's, the record store. At the time I was cutting lawns. The big ones would drive you insane, because it would take three or four hours; it's 90 degrees and you're getting stung by bugs. The whole time I was thinking, "When this woman gives me the $10, I'm going to go to Johnny's and by the cut-out... version of the Suicide album."

I used to go to CBGB all the time. New York in the late '70s and early '80s, checking IDs never happened. The drinking age was 18, and New York was just an amazing disaster. It never even dawned on us we were 15 and 16 going to clubs. I went to go see Depeche Mode at the Ritz, and that's the only time anyone ever checked my ID. I was 16 and the guy just looked at my ID and let me in. It was just such a lawless time. We'd go to CBs and get really drunk and see Bad Brains and whoever was playing.
more »
The Man-Machine (2009 Digital Remaster)

Kraftwerk
2009 | Astralwerks

Electronic music in the early and mid '70s — the phenomena of it meant that you were exposed to it more than you would imagine. Especially audiophiles, the guys who have these $5,000 stereos, loved Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre, and Kraftwerk fit into that. If you would go over to someone's house and their dad would have this amazing stereo, so they'd buy electronic music just to showcase the stereo. I... would go to stereo stores and salivate over the Macintosh pre amps. But I was broke.

"Neon Lights" — the fact that it lets itself be so drawn out and pastoral and pretty, that really inspired me. Also, there was this recurring criticism of electronic music that it was cold and unemotional. I remember just being generally nonplussed because I would listen to something like "Neon Lights" that was so warm, so melodic, and so emotional, that when people would say that electronic music is cold, I was just baffled. I've never understood that criticism of it, that it lacks warmth or humanity.
more »
Miami

The Gun Club
2012 | Sympathy for the Record Industry / The Orchard

The way I heard albums back then was, my friends and I had this understanding about who was going to buy which album. One person would buy it and the rest of us would tape it. It was piracy based on necessity, because we were all broke. My friend Dave bought Miami. I remember when I heard early Gun Club I thought it was really fun, and then I heard Miami and... it had this emotional depth and breadth to it that the first album didn't have.
more »
Power, Corruption & Lies [Collector's Edition]

New Order
2008 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

It was one of those records where you'd look at the Peter Saville cover and listen to it and just knowing their history — not just the music was perfect, but the presentation, the history, the context. It's just perfect.

This [was] when I first started DJing. You couldn't DJ in 1984 and not have every [New Order] 12-inch: "Blue Monday" and "Confusion" and "Ceremony" and "Temptation." Most nights I'd play both of... those records at least twice, [at] a nightclub called the Beat in Port Chester, New York, that held 50 people. My first job was on a Monday night DJing from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., getting paid $25. New Order was one of those bands — almost everything they did was guaranteed to make people dance.
more »
Floating Into The Night

Julee Cruise
1989 | Reprise

What a perfect record — beautiful and non-ironic and disconcerting and strange and conventional all at the same time. I'd been an obsessive David Lynch fan since I first saw Eraserhead. I can't think of a filmmaker even remotely similar to him in terms of creativity and the uniqueness of his output. You didn't go to see a David Lynch movie because of the subject matter; you went because it was a... David Lynch movie. The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet are strong narrative movies, but you went because you wanted to spend time with David Lynch's creative vision. And when Twin Peaks came out of course every single person in the western world became justifiably obsessed with it.
more »
No Protection

Massive Attack
2004 | CAROLINE ASTRALWERKS - CAT

One of the things that I loved about dance music in the '80s into the '90s was its femininity and multiculturalism. I'd go out to nightclubs in '88 and '89 and listen to DJs like Larry Levan playing very feminine gay disco. As a straight white guy from the suburbs I found it really compelling and emancipating, in a way. Then, in the early '90s dance music became whiter and less feminine... and tougher. Sometimes that was great; sometimes tough-white-guy dance music sounded really cool. But I really missed disco femininity. What I really loved about Massive Attack was that they really channeled that early R&B, feminine, disco sensibility, those first two albums, especially. Massive Attack made really thoughtful, atmospheric, interesting, dance-inspired music. Especially the song "Protection," with Tracey Thorn — part of my criteria for evaluating a lot of music is what the musician has excluded. That song "Protection," there's no bass line. By not including that, it actually plays up the sparseness and vulnerability of the song.
more »

10 Hidden Gems from the Jimmy Webb Songbook

Peter Blackstock — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 13:00:49 +0000

If you know the songs of Jimmy Webb, chances are it’s because of Glen Campbell, whose string of city-titled Webb tunes in the late 1960s — “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” — became American country-pop crossover classics. That’s just the tip of the iceberg among Webb-penned tracks that can be found in eMusic’s vaults, though. Beyond the dozens of versions of those three songs is a fascinating range of material that testifies to Webb’s status as one of popular music’s greatest living songwriters. On his new star-studded-duets album Still Within the Sound of My Voice, Webb went deep into his catalog to rescue a few forgotten numbers. Inspired by his efforts, we’ve gathered some others you may not have heard.

Zumpano, “Rosecrans Boulevard”

Look What the Rookie Did

Zumpano
Sub Pop Records

A.C. Newman's pre-New Pornographers band reached way back into the Webb archives on their 1995 Sub Pop debut. Originally done in 1967 by Johnny Rivers (who played a major role in Webb's early career), "Rosecrans Boulevard" is classic Webb unrequited romanticism, with a melody awash in catch-you-off-guard key changes and dramatic crescendos — clearly an influence on Newman's subsequent work.

Waylon Jennings, “If You See Me Getting Smaller”

Ol' Waylon

Waylon Jennings
2003 | RLG/BMG Heritage

It's largely unknown or forgotten that Waylon is the only artist who won a Grammy for recording Webb's polarizing magnum opus "MacArthur Park" (in 1969 with the Kimberlys). More lasting, though, is his take on this mid-'70s Webb confessional about retreating from the spotlight, which Jennings recorded at the peak of his career. It's telling that Webb drafted Waylon's best pal Willie Nelson for the version on Just Across the River, his... 2010 duets disc.
more »

Renee Fleming, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”

Haunted Heart

Renée Fleming
2005 | Decca

Though no one ever charted a hit version of this exquisite ballad, it tends to summon major-league vocalists: Joe Cocker did it first in 1974, Linda Ronstadt revived it in 1982 and it turned up on a mega-selling Celtic Woman collection in 2010. But there's no topping operatic chanteuse Fleming for vocal star power, even if the crowning touch here is actually the presence of jazz greats Bill Frisell and Fred Hersch... on guitar and piano, respectively. (Webb and Cocker sing it together on Webb's Still Within The Sound Of My Voice duet album.)
more »

Iain Matthews, “Met Her on a Plane”

Journeys From Gospel Oak

Iain Matthews
Its About Music.com / The Orchard

Iain Matthews remained relevant to pop music after leaving legendary folk-rock ensemble Fairport Convention in part through applying the sweet clarity of his voice to songs by such rising early-'70s tunesmiths such as Tom Waits, Jesse Winchester and Mickey Newbury. He tuned in to Webb, too, plucking this obscure cut from Jimmy's 1971 album And So: On for his 1972 LP Journeys From Gospel Oak. If Webb's material hadn't already found a... perfect-for-AM-radio vocalist in Glen Campbell, Matthews might have produced a similar run of Webb-penned hits.
more »

Scud Mountain Boys, “Where’s the Playground, Susie”

The Early Year (Reissue)

Scud Mountain Boys
2007 | Ashmont Records / Redeye

Though this song reached No. 26 on the pop charts for Glen Campbell in 1969, it didn't imprint on the American consciousness like "Wichita Lineman" and "Galveston." It got a fresh airing in 1995 when Joe Pernice's band the Scud Mountain Boys recorded a haunting lo-fi version of the tune for their sophomore LP. Sub Pop later packaged that record with the band's debut into this twofer reissue, which also includes their... take on "Wichita Lineman."
more »

Richard Harris, “Paper Chase”

A Tramp Shining

Richard Harris
1993 | Geffen

It was, of course, British actor Richard Harris who immortalized Webb's "MacArthur Park," taking it to No. 2 on the charts in 1968. It was the highlight of Harris's LP A Tramp Shining, but Webb also wrote every other track on the album, and some of the lesser-known numbers are quite appealing without the bombast. "Paper Chase" may be the best, an instantly hummable little pop ditty (once you get past the... grandiose string intro).
more »

Fifth Dimension, “Pattern People”

Up, Up And Away

Fifth Dimension
2009 | Arista/Legacy

The title track to this album, "Up, Up And Away," was Webb's first big breakthrough, literally taking his music all the way to the moon (it was played in space by astronauts on the Apollo missions). But it's far from the only Webb song the Fifth Dimension recorded. Many of them were dripping with a late-'60s groovy hippie vibe, such as this counterculture barb tossed at cookie-cutter "Pattern People." The lyrics are... a gas in hindsight, yet it's pretty sophisticated stuff musically, with vocal layers, horn accents and a sharply delineated chorus.
more »

Alice Clark, “I Keep It Hid”

Alice Clark

Alice Clark
1972 | Mainstream Records / Audio Bee

R&B/soul renditions of this early-career Webb tune were recorded by Ray Charles, Margie Day and the (Diana Ross-less) Supremes, but it's the more obscure Alice Clark who knocks it out of the park on her self-titled 1972 debut. Producer Bob Shad had worked with the likes of Sarah Vaughan and Janis Joplin before issuing Clark's debut on his Mainstream Records label; how she never caught fire seems a mystery, especially given the... power and emotion of this recording.
more »

Declan, “The Last Unicorn”

Thank You

Declan
2007 | Lama Ani Records / BFM DIGITAL

A child singer was a good fit for this theme song from a children's movie, even if Irish sensation Declan Galbraith's 2005 version came more than two decades after The Last Unicorn was in theaters. Folk-rockers America did the film version, but Declan brings just the right touch of wide-eyed innocence to the yearning lyrics. And if he was a teen idol, well, he had a voice that warranted the attention.

Amy Grant, “If These Walls Could Speak”

Lead Me On 20th Anniversary Edition

Amy Grant
2008 | AMY GRANT / SPARROW

Shawn Colvin also recorded this song on her 1994 collection Cover Girl, but its finest reading came a few years earlier from Amy Grant on her 1987 album Lead Me On, as Grant was crossing over from contemporary Christian audiences to the pop mainstream. Her voice is ideally suited to the song's heartfelt message; Webb acknowledged that compatibility when he enlisted her to join him on his song "Adios" from his Still... Within The Sound Of My Voice duet album.
more »

10 Bands That Formed in High School

Adam Rathe — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 16:24:33 +0000

High-school musicians haven’t got it easy. Most never make it out of their parents’ garage or, even worse, out of marching band. But for a chosen few, the music they started making in high school has lead to staggering success and a place on the world stage. Somehow, in the midst of science projects, book reports and seemingly lethal games of dodge ball, some of the most notable musicians around found one another and formed groups that went on to become bigger than anyone could have imagined. So, forget geometry and diagramming sentences, a few chords and a steady beat might be the only skills worth picking up this year — they’ve worked well for these bands that formed during high school.

Genesis

Selling England By The Pound

Genesis
2007 | Rhino Atlantic

Formed in: 1967
The school:: Charterhouse School, Goldaming, U.K.
What they've said: "I hated it," Peter Gabriel has said of high school. "I think people that flourish in public schools are either good at sports, work, the arts or gregarious, and I was none of these. So I didn't feel I fit in."
High school clique: Above-it-all art students preparing elaborate conceptual pieces instead of studying for trig.

The Cure

Faith

The Cure
2004 | Rhino/Elektra

Formed in: 1976
The school:: St. Wilfrid's Catholic School, West Sussex, UK
What they've said: Cure frontman Robert Smith reportedly explained that an early incarnation of his band was called simply "the group," because "it was the only one at school so we didn't need a name." Later on, the band would be called Brat's Club, Malice and Easy Cure.
High school clique: Goth kids smoking cloves, discovering "Just Like Heaven," blue-black hair dye, unisex... eyeliner
more »

The Germs

GI

Germs
2008 | Rhino/Slash

Formed in: 1977
The school:: University High, Los Angeles, California
What they've said: "Mainly my reputation started in 10th or 11th grade. I just dyed my hair blue and lost all my friends in one day," late Germs front man Darby Crash is quoted as having said in the biography Lexicon Devil.
High school clique: Germs burns, acid-happy punks, smart-ass fake names

INXS

Full Moon, Dirty Hearts

INXS
2011 | Rhino Atlantic

Formed in: 1977
The school:: Davidson High School, New South Wales, Australia
What they've said: "I'm pleased that we've been able to build a career for ourselves, and not just have one big album out of the blue," Michael Hutchence said in 1991. "There's something intrinsically Australian about a bunch of brothers and school friends getting together as a band at a very young age."
High school clique: The long-hair-and-leather-jacket look, "New Sensation" as... a pep rally anthem
more »

Melvins

Everybody Loves Sausages

Melvins
2013 | Ipecac Recordings / The Orchard

Formed in: 1983
The school:: Montesano Jr.-Sr. High School, Montesano, Washington
What they've said: "I think everybody who goes to high school pretty much wants to burn the place down," frontman Buzz Osborne said.
High school clique: Wildly good musicians who play sludgier music than they have to and are morally opposed to haircuts

Radiohead

OK Computer

Radiohead
1997 | CAPITOL

Formed in: 1985
The school:: Abingdon School, Oxfordshire, UK
What they've said: "At Abingdon we'd rehearse, tape the rehearsal, listen to the tape of the rehearsal, [and] rehearse some more," guitarist Ed O'Brien has said. "Nobody liked us except us."
High school clique: Serious-beyond-their-years kids who might just be on to something

Green Day

Dookie

Green Day
1994 | Rhino

Formed in: 1987
The school:: Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt met in junior high, but it was Pinole Valley High School in Pinole, California, that Armstrong famously dropped out of to become a musician.
What they've said: "School is practice for the future, and practice makes perfect and nobody's perfect so why bother," Green Day drummer Tre Cool reportedly once quipped.
High school clique: Masturbation jokers

The Donnas

Spend The Night

The Donnas
2002 | Atlantic Records

Formed in: 1993
The school:: Jordan Middle School and Palo Alto High, Palo Alto, California
What they've said: "No more science, history/ English is just Greek to me/ I don't wanna know my score/ I don't wanna go to school no more," go the lyrics to "I Don't Wanna," off the band's 1997 self-titled debut album.
High school clique: Tough-as-nails all-girl bands, prom groups inspired by the Donnas' semiformal turn in the 1999 cult classic... Jawbreaker
more »

Screaming Females

Ugly

Screaming Females
2012 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

Formed in: 2005
The school:: Roselle Catholic, Roselle, New Jersey
What they've said: "Was I going to sob like this every morning? Would I have a nervous breakdown before I had even gotten my period? I had run out of options and the reality of my situation was agonizing," Marissa Paternoster has written of leaving public school for a uniform-happy Catholic academy.
High school clique: Bad-asses in uniform, Garden State DIY... types
more »

Iceage

New Brigade

Iceage
2011 | What's Your Rupture?

Formed in: 2008
The school: Various
What they've said: Singer-guitarist Elias Bender Rønnenfelt has said the band planned early tours around high school breaks and was once forced to cancel shows due to the possibility he wouldn't graduate. "I took some of my exams," he said of tests he'd failed, "but I hadn't been there, so I wasn't ready."
High school clique: Hooligans, the next gang of drop-outs to sell out... your local DIY venue
more »

Billy Bragg Picks His Favorite Albums

Andrew Perry — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 13:00:31 +0000

To celebrate Billy Bragg’s being honored for his Outstanding Contribution to Music at the Association of Independent Music awards 2013, we invited him to burrow through eMusic’s vast catalog and pick out some of his own favorites. What follows are Billy Bragg’s favorite records on eMusic, with some commentary from the man himself. He also nominated the soulful Tennessee singer/songwriter Valerie June for an interview and sat down with Andrew Perry for a long interview himself.

Pushin' Against A Stone

Valerie June
2013 | Concord Records

Snakily be-dreadlocked chanteuse raised in Memphis, Tennessee, brings the gospel/country/blues roots for 2013.

What an incredible record. I've been listening to it every day for the last two weeks. I bored the band with it on the way to Belgium. My understanding is, she's from Tennessee. I heard her playing the first track live on "Woman's Hour" [on BBC Radio 4] in the car, would you believe, and I was just like, I... must remember — Valerie June. They didn't have it in the local store, so when I got home — I don't often just download things immediately, but I did, 'cos I liked the bits I heard.

I think the playing's amazing, the singing is great, the songwriting is just impeccable — great hooks, with echoes of all sorts of different styles. I don't even know if she wrote all the songs herself, or if someone else helped her write them. But a really great record, my favorite record of the year so far! I'm hoping I'm gonna get the chance to see her play at the Electric Picnic in Ireland in a couple of weeks, because she's on the bill. Just amazing.
more »
The Show Goes On: Songs Of Ronnie Lane

Slim Chance
2012 | Fishpool Records / The Orchard

Erstwhile backing combo for Faces/Small Faces legend Ronnie Lane keep his memory alive with a brand-new, barnstorming live set of his tunes.

I was a huge Ronnie Lane fan. I still am. He's probably the only artist whose CD never left my car, and that's saying something — I had this best-of under the dashboard. I was a big fan of the Faces, but when he left I thought they lost something that... they never found again. He just managed to bring together something really special ¬— he takes me to that sweet place somewhere between English music and American country music.

His old band Slim Chance have just got back together recently, I saw them at Glastonbury, and they've put an album out. Obviously Ronnie had an iconic voice, which is kind of irreplaceable, but keeping those songs alive, they're doing us all a favor by doing that, so more power to them.

So this is something contemporary, they're still out there doing it, and the fact that it harks back to the famous travelling show that Ronnie did, the picture on the cover, no-one's ever really done that thing — taking rock 'n' roll round in a tent, just setting up and playing — without permission! It's a crazy hippie type thing to do, but I'd love to do it. They did it in some old diesel van — there's great stories in that Faces biography about him doing it in the '70s — totally crazy, but you have to do those kind of things.
more »
One True Vine

Mavis Staples
2013 | Anti/Epitaph

This year's second hook-up with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy for gospel-soul icon and sometime Staples Singer.

Since Mavis signed up with Anti-, she's made some great records. I'm a huge fan of The Staples Singers. Their album Soul Folk in Action — I mean, talk about folk-punk [as Bragg himself has been categorized], what a record that is. So to see her be reborn, initially working with Ry Cooder, now with Jeff Tweedy, I... think they've both been really sympathetic to what she does well. I did some shows with her in 2011, and she's still got the spark. She let me get up and sing [The Band's song] "The Weight" with her, in Los Angeles — how incredible is that? It blew my mind.
more »
Zoom

Rachid Taha
2013 | naïve / Naive

54-year-old Franco-Algerian maverick, this year blending North African raï with Western rock, funk and blues with typical garrulousness.

Rachid did an Arabic cover of "Rock the Casbah" [by the Clash], didn't he? I think I may have played with him at Glastonbury one time, when I was doing [Damon Albarn's] Africa Express. That thing tends to be a whole lot of people onstage all playing together, so we didn't hang out as such,... but he was a dude, an amazing guy. For someone from Algeria, he seemed to be pretty rock 'n' roll to me.
more »
Barbed Wire Blues

Wilko Johnson
1989 | Jungle Records / The Orchard

Proto-punk R&B guitar-mangler from Canvey Island, in mid-'80s, post-Dr Feelgood solo majesty.

He was down here [in Dorset] a couple of years ago; I took my son along to see him. It just blew his mind. Wilko was very important, coming from Essex, as I do. Much more important than that even, the Feelgoods were the British Ramones, in the sense that they woke everybody up to the possibility of going back to... basics. Wilko is our Johnny Ramone. He's the guy who says, "You can look like a dork, and still be cool." And for those of us that already looked like dorks, that was visionary!

I remember seeing him on the television, and it just did my head in, as a guitar player who at the time was being fed images of Peter Frampton as a guitar hero. You know? Wilko Johnson invented punk just by doing up the top button of his shirt — that's all he had to do, to invent it. He pointed us the way. I didn't ever see him in Canvey back in the day, sadly, but I did see him in Bridgeport last year. That was pretty good.
more »
Satan Is Real

Louvin Brothers
1996 | CAPITOL NASHVILLE

Ira Lonnie Loudermilk and Charlie Elzer Loudermilk, aka the Louvins, were one of country music's finest old-time duos — here, in fine, god-fearing mood in '59.

One of the greatest country records ever made, if only for the cover — it's a picture of them standing in front of the flaming coals of hell. I love the Louvins for their pure harmony style. They were very influential on the Everly Brothers, and Simon... & Garfunkel. Their songs are just so sad. Someone usually dies in the first verse, or the second, or sometimes they save it right until the end.

But for me it's that high lonesome sound that they've got, which still resonates. If you ever spend any time driving round Appalachia in the United States of America, the Louvin Brothers provide the ideal soundtrack. And there's some crazy Christian songs, too, like "I Love the Christian Life," as covered by the Byrds in Sweetheart Of The Rodeo — that's on here.
more »
Wassaic Way

Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion
2013 | Rte.8 Records / Redeye

Scion of the Guthrie folk dynasty strikes out in more alt-rockin' direction for 2013, in team-up with her hubby Johnny.

Sarah Lee I know, obviously, from working with the Guthrie family [on Bragg & Wilco's 1997 collection of unrecorded Woody songs, Mermaid Avenue]. She's a great songwriter as well, and this record, I think, really speaks for her talent as herself. She's moving away from being Woody Guthrie's granddaughter, and coming into her... own now, and I think that's really great to hear. Broadly, I guess it's Americana, and Woody's almost like the father of that, but she's getting her own spin on that now, getting an edge on it, moving out of the shadow of her parents' generation, which includes Arlo Guthrie of course, and into something altogether her own.
more »
Imidiwan: Companions

Tinariwen
2009 | World Village / The Orchard

Malian Afro-blues troupe, who wield electric guitars with the same defiance as they do AK-47s, in their sideline as political freedom fighters.

They're great. The rhythmic aspect to what they do is so hypnotic, I really, really like that. There's a tiny little bit of that griot playing in the first track on that Valerie June record — she does this weird little rhythm that made me think I must go back and... rediscover some of that stuff, like Tinariwen.
more »
Big Smash

Wreckless Eric
2007 | Stiff Records / The Orchard

The irrepressible Eric Goulden, wildcat songsmith of New Wave-era proto-indie Stiff Records, as-was in 1980.

A great album, one of my favorite releases on the old Stiff label. Wreckless Eric, again, is almost forgotten now in the pantheon of punk songwriters, and if remembered at all, it's usually for his first album, rather than this, which is his second. But this has got some great songs on it: "Broken Doll" is an amazing... song — I've always wanted to do a cover of it. In fact, Cliff Richard did a version once, I read somewhere. I don't think my flabber could be more ghasted than by the idea of Cliff covering Wreckless.

He's maybe best known for "Whole Wide World," off the first record — I hear my son playing that some nights on his guitar. I saw him play a few times, he was in vogue at Go! Discs [Bragg's old label] for a while, under his real name, Eric Goulden, so I knew him in that period. He was pretty hairy — pretty out there. He didn't have the same self-control, that knotted, chip-on-his-shoulder sensibility that early Elvis Costello had. He kind of let it go. He started out like that, but then he had a few too many drinks, and slept in his clothes. But we've all done that — I certainly have! He's still out there somewhere, still gigging.
more »
Electric Landlady

Kirsty MacColl
2012 | Union Square Music / The Orchard

Bawdy Anglo-Irish chanteuse, whose cover of Bragg's "A New England" charted high in '85. Tragically, she died at sea in 2000.

A brilliant, brilliant record. You have to understand, Kirsty was the real deal. She was an incredible songwriter, but also an amazing singer. When she makes a record that has both "Walking Down Madison" with Johnny [Marr] on it, and "My Affair," which sounds like something Bette Midler would record — there's... an amazing mind at work there. I know she wasn't a confident performer, she didn't like going out on the road, but when she did, it was amazing.

By the look of things here, it also has me and her dueting on a song called "Darling, Let's Have Another Baby." Hang onto your hat here — it was the B-side of a Johnny Moped single on Chiswick, back in the '70s. Kirsty and I both had our first records out on Chiswick, at the same time — me with Riff Raff [Billy's punk combo], and she was part of a group called the Drug Addix. Chiswick put three EPs out at the same time, and called it Suburban Rock 'n' Roll, all people from outside London. It was the Duke, Riff Raff and the Drug Addix.

Because she'd been on Chiswick, she was familiar with Johny Moped. We were on the Nicky Campbell Show, and we decided to have a go at "Darling Let's Have Another Baby," which is a great song. [Quoting lyric] "Let's make one soon, on our second honeymoon." [Calls it up on computer, song plays in background] Yeah, this is the stuff! [Quoting again] "Darling, if you ever leave me, I'll cry a million tears/ I'll go to the nearest boozer, and drink 10 pints of beer."

There's a Johnny Moped movie? A biopic, with Johnny Depp playing Johnny Moped? That would be so fucking great. Oh, it's a documentary. [A little disappointed.] Oh, OK.
more »
New Boots And Panties (Deluxe Edition)

Ian Dury
2007 | Demon / The Orchard

Utterly classic, none-more-English album of New Wave-era observations of East London, set to visionary, Clash-influencing blend of jazz/funk/reggae/blues.

Again, the "Essex man" thing. That really came totally out of leftfield. I'd always locked into Stiff via Elvis Costello, who was a hero of mine. But when you're coming out with stuff like "Billericay Dickie" and "Plaistow Patricia" and "Clever Trevor"…Yeah, it was a world I knew.

That's what punk was all about. It... brought rock 'n' roll home. It was away from the stadiums and the glitter. That shop he's standing outside of on the cover, we had shops like that in Barking — big shop fronts, with loads of hand-written signs. His love of place, I found that really inspirational. That's something I tried to connect with, both in my songwriting, but also in my book, The Progressive Patriot.

Are you familiar with the song, "England's Glory," that's on this Deluxe Edition? He originally wrote it for Max Wall [slapstick comedian]. It's a great song, amazing. It should be our national anthem, really.
more »

The 10 Best Replacement Songs (Not by the Replacements)

Michael Tedder — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 17:52:16 +0000

Later this month, the legendary underground rock icons/heart-rending poets/drunken screw-ups the Replacements will play their first shows since breaking up onstage in Chicago 22 years ago. (Well, Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson and some other dudes will play some Replacements songs, if you want to get technical about it.) Though the Replacements have not been an active recording or touring unit for more than two decades, their influence has never waned. Paul Westerberg was perhaps one of the most openhearted, emotionally fluent songwriters working in the 1980s college-rock scene, and this embarrassed him so much that he overcompensated by acting like a drunken lout. Plenty of artists have been inspired by the push and pull of Westerberg’s sensitive-brat worldview, and to celebrate the Replacements’ return, eMusic has gathered 10 of the best songs from their acolytes. All of these songs seem tough on the outside, even the ballads, but look closer and you’ll hear a strain of compassion, yearning and understated wit worthy of Saint Paul.

Against Me!, “Thrash Unreal”

New Wave

Against Me!
2007 | Sire/Warner Bros.

Against Me! singer/guitarist Laura Jane Grace has never been shy about her love for Minneapolis's finest. Against Me! has previously covered both "Bastards Of Young" and "Here Comes A Regular", and during their first New York set after Grace came out as transgendered, Against Me! brought Joan Jett on stage to cover "Androgynous." That's an impressive hat trick, but perhaps an even more impressive tribute is the New Wave single... "Thrash Unreal," which basically combines the wasted life chronicle of "Here Comes a Regular" with the ode to outsiders "Achin' to Be." The song tells the story of a lifelong alcoholic who misses the days of the "rebel yell," and in classic Westerberg fashion it finds empathy for its subject's problems without condescending or moralizing.
more »

Wilco, “Misunderstood”

Being There

Wilco
1996 | Reprise

During the tour for their double-album opus Being There, Wilco regularly covered early Replacements classic "Color Me Impressed," and it's obvious from one listen to "Misunderstood" that Jeff Tweedy had spent serious time studying his Hootenanny. It's all there: a winding, detailed narrative of a lost young man who feels stuck in his hometown, losing himself in booze, bad parties and self-pity, culminating in a cathartic, mocking outro that finds him... repeating "I want to thank you all/ for nothing at all" until he finally finds a moment of peace. Ever the A-plus student, Tweedy also slyly alludes to a few Replacement classics with the line "Take the guitar player for a ride/ 'cause he ain't never been satisfied."
more »

Jessica Lea Mayfield, “Our Hearts Are Wrong”

Tell Me

Jessica Lea Mayfield
2011 | Nonesuch

Paul Westerberg's songs are filled with characters who want the wrong things, even though they should know better. Ohio singer/songwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield can relate. On this standout song from her sophomore album Tell Me, Mayfield does her best to figure out if she is in love, or if she hates someone so passionately that she can't tell the difference. Over an ominous, twangy shuffle, she eventually realizes that it's a bit... of both, and she needs to leave well enough alone.
more »

Justin Townes Earle, “Someday I’ll Be Forgiven for This”

Midnight at the Movies

Justin Townes Earle
Bloodshot Records

Justin Townes Earle is the rebellious country outsider Steve Earle's kid, and his middle name is a tribute to the legendary Townes Van Zandt, but there's plenty of Westerberg in his songwriting DNA. On this piano-led barroom waltz from 2009's Midnight at the Movies (which, natch, also includes a cover of "Can't Hardly Wait"), Earle is a lovesick bastard who is mired in regret for breaking someone's heart, but he's able... to take the long view and realize that one day it won't hurt so much. Well, he hopes so, at least. And like Paul at his best, he's able to extend some sympathy for someone other than himself. It takes two people to ruin a good thing sometimes, but someday she'll be forgiven as well.
more »

Art Brut, “The Replacements”

Art Brut vs. Satan

Art Brut
2011 | Downtown Records / The Orchard

With "Alex Chilton," the Replacements both introduced and perfected the songwriting sub genre of "Tribute to a Songwriting Genius Most of the World Wasn't Fortunate Enough to Get." So clearly, they required their own tribute, and Art Brut were only happy to comply. On the English band's third album, Art Brut vs Satan, lead ranter Eddie Argos talks about always being let down by the bands he loves, and then beats himself... up that in his late 20s he's "only just found out about the Replacements." While it most have been agonizing for Eddie to realize how much better his teenage years would have been if he had a copy of Let It Be, it's better to come late to "Swingin' Party" than never arrive at all.
more »

Lucinda Williams, “Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings”

World Without Tears

Lucinda Williams
2003 | Lost Highway Records

Lucinda Williams has called Westerberg an influence on this song, telling Billboard, "He's just really good at combining literary lyrics — really good lyrics — set against a really cool, rock 'n' roll musical bed." This track from 2003's World Without Tears proves that she's really good at that as well, saluting some wannabe rebel with the Westerberg-worthy quip, "You've got a sense of humor/ You're a mystery/ I heard a... rumor/ You're making history."
more »

Green Day, “Why Do You Want Him?”

1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours

Green Day
2006 | Reprise

What made Paul Westerberg a cut above was his ability to occasionally walk away from the pity party and write about the troubles that other people were going through with as much care and detail as the lyrics about his own heartaches. This is a lesson that longtime fan Billie Joe Armstrong got right away. One of the first songs he ever wrote, "Why Do You Want Him?" (found on the compilation... 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours) is a plea for his mother to break up with a man Armstrong thought was unworthy of her. He sings his shockingly-insightful-for-a-teenager lyrics with enough youthful passion that it sounds like he's trying to make her value herself more through sheer force of will.
more »

Ryan Adams, “To Be Young (Is to Be Sad Is to Be High)”

Heartbreaker

Ryan Adams
2000 | Pax Am Records / TuneCore

Adams is such a 'Mats fan that he even got Tommy Stinson to play on Pneumonia, the final album by his band Whiskeytown. The lead off song from his classic solo debut Heartbreaker sees him channeling Westerberg's cocky swagger and big-brother humanity, telling a character (probably himself) that the best way to get over heartbreak is get back out there and live it up. Which will inevitably lead to even more heartbreak,... but Adams makes it sound like it's the only path worth taking.
more »

Swearin’, “Here to Hear”

Swearin'

Swearin'
2012 | Salinas Records / Believe Digital

This Philadelphia- and Brooklyn-based group features two songwriters, Allison Crutchfield and Kyle Gilbride, both of whom have a knack for documenting youthful confusion while still sounding like a prime mixtape of '80s and '90s left-of-the-dial favorites. This highlight from last year's self-titled debut finds Gilbride back home and utterly lost, unable to fit in anymore or convince himself that this is where he belongs. When he sings, "I second-guess it all the... time/ I'm losing my capacity to lie," it seems clear that he wishes he could make himself believe things will be OK, but he's gottten old enough to know better.
more »

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Into the Great Wide Open”

Into The Great Wide Open

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
1991 | Geffen

The Replacements were infamous for stepping one foot into the mainstream, and then promptly shooting directly at said foot. So when they accepted an opening spot for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, they promptly did everything they could to antagonize Petty and the crowd. But no matter how bratty they acted, Petty seemed to be listening, and the line "rebel without a clue" from their 1989 single "I'll Be You" popped... up in Petty's 1992 single "Into The Great Wide Open." We're not saying that Petty ripped anyone off — just that he knew a great put down when he heard it, and knew it would fit right in with his tale of a young star who overdoses on his own hype.
more »

10 Essential Damaged Goods Albums

Stuart Turnbull — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 13:22:37 +0000

“Trends come and go, but we just get on with what we do and what we like,” says Ian Ballard, who founded Damaged Goods Records in 1988 and still runs the label from his East London home. To celebrate the label’s 25th anniversary, we asked its most prolific signing, Billy Childish, to pick his favorite 10 albums from its vaults.

Stuart Turnbull interviews Billy Childish about his own drive for music-making — read that here.

A Flame From The Fen - The Complete Fire Dept.

Fire Dept.
2010 | Damaged Goods / state51

Everything you need by this straight-up punk rock band formed in Cambridge, England in 1987.

"Absolute pop clarity, I'd call this. Fire Department were often on the same bill as my band Thee Headcoats, and they were one of the best groups I've ever seen. And nobody got them. They had a very unlikely fellow on the lead vocals, Neil Palmer, who looked like he'd stepped from behind a bank till. People didn't... get it because he was not 'cool'. But the world's version of cool isn't cool. It's shit. Neil was absolutely on-the-money — a fantastic vocalist and performer."
more »
All Our Forts Are With You

Wild Billy Chyldish & CTMF
2013 | Damaged Goods / state51

2013 album from Billy Childish, featuring his American wife, Julie Hamper, and friends including Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond of The KLF.

"This fulfils everything that I want in a group. The songs are written in the studio, they're basically one-takes; they sound like they've been made by a bunch of 15 year olds, and it's nice and effortless and carefree."
The Complete Bootlegs Vol I & II

Johnny Moped
2007 | Damaged Goods / state51

A hard-hitting 26-track mid-'70s monster by the band from Croydon, England, featuring Ray Burns (aka Captain Sensible).

"Johnny Moped were doing stuff with Captain Sensible pre-punk and this is effortless, proper rock 'n' roll. The Damned and the Mopeds were punks from a strictly rock 'n' roll background, without the glam bit. Which is where I come from. It's got free spirit and a lack of worry that I like."
In Blood

Billy Childish
2008 | Damaged Goods / state51

On which Mr Childish duets with East London's horse ridin', rockin' chanteuse. Billy and Holly strip the blues down to its raw bones.

"I wanted to include something with Holly here. In Blood was an idea I had to do an LP with one chord — E — and no add-ons. We recorded it over a couple of days. In Blood reflects a lot of my interest in blues music and the straightforwardness... of people like John Lee Hooker."
more »
Takin' The Piss

Armitage Shanks
1993 | Damaged Goods / state51

Debut LP from the punk enthusiasts named after a brand of lavatory pans. Produced by Billy Childish.

"Dick Scum, the guitarist of Armitage Shanks, drove for my band Thee Headcoats. He had a group, and wanted to do some recordings so I went along and produced an album with them. They were really big fans of early punk although they're quite a lot younger than me. They really had a feeling for... it and I wanted to help with that; they were such aficionados of the real thing that I wanted to be involved."
more »
Dreggredation

Wild Billy Childish
2012 | Damaged Goods Records / state51

Raw garage rock with a primeval edge as Billy hooks up with Neil Palmer of The Fire Dept., Nurse Julie and Wolf Howard.

"I'm a massive fan of Neil Palmer. We recorded three albums because we decided the world didn't need one, so let's do three. The songs are about pre-history and are a celebration of that Troggs pop ethic. It's what prog rock could have been if it was prog pop. We... invented prog pop."
more »
Beware the Ides of March

Thee Mighty Caesars
2013 | Damaged Goods / state51

British garage rock at its best: raw, immediate and unpolished. The band features Billy Childish, Bruce Brand and John Agnew.

"I like refining things ridiculously, and refining influences down to particular tracks. Thee Mighty Caesars are based on the tracks "From Home" and "Come Now" by The Troggs. I love three-piece bands, because you can't hide behind another guitarist. And that means you are continually vulnerable and it's always funny when someone makes... a mistake. That's why we don't rehearse as well — to increase the levity."
more »
In Tweed We Trust

Thee Headcoats
1996 | Damaged Goods / state51

The best album from the deerstalker wearing three-piece comprising of Billy Childish (guitar and vocals), Bruce Brand (drums) and Johnny Johnson (bass).

"Bruce, our drummer, did the graphic on that sleeve. I'd say Thee Headcoats are based on "Why Don't You Smile Now" by '60s band Downliners Sect, one of the greatest rock 'n' roll groups of all time. My god, the Downliners Sect's first few LPs — now that was British beat... music at its height. They had that Bo Diddley quality of being able to laugh about themselves while doing something seriously."
more »
Walking off the Map

Pete Molinari
2006 | Damaged Goods / state51

Debut album by the Chatham-born singer-songwriter that takes in soul, country, blues and rockabilly. Neat, uplifting pop from the Medway Delta.

"Pete was a local kid who was in some sort of Oasis band called Slipstream and then he started doing his own thing, standalone acoustic pieces. He wanted to do some recording and had already done some in a studio that was bit studio-ey. So I said, 'You should record it 'round... my house on the old Revox G36 in the kitchen, and I'll get the performances out of you. It'll be a performance-led record.' With the G36 there's no hiding and no hiding is the way that we work when we record, without a mixing desk in the way."
more »
The Complete and Utter

Singing Loins
2000 | Damaged Goods / state51

In their own words: "The Loins' songwriting is steeped in the British and European traditions of punk, folk, music hall, character, cabaret, melodrama and buffoonery. Singing tales of underdogs, suicides, circus freaks, the bereaved, frustrated and heart-broken, the washed up and mentally ill."

"My mate Chris Broderick was writing some poetry and I run a small press, Hangman Books. He came to me and asked me to help him publish his poetry. Then... he got a group together doing English folk and asked if I could record it, and The Complete & Utter was recorded in my old bathroom on a tape recorder. If people need to know how to get a record out, they know who to come to. But they don't necessarily return. Let it be noted. They don't necessarily return. Once they've stood squarely on my face, then they move on."
more »

15 Modern Jazz Covers of Modern Pop Tunes

Dave Sumner — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 17:22:21 +0000

Despite popular belief, jazz and pop music aren’t at odds. In the past — and still to this day — jazz musicians have been both contributing to and tackling compositions from the Great American Songbook: Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing” and “Take the A Train” remain in the realm of pop culture reference and John Coltrane, who is generally associated with an avant-garde approach to jazz, is also remembered for his lovely rendition of The Sound of Music‘s “My Favorite Things.”

That tradition continues to this day, with modern jazz musicians discovering little compositional diamonds in modern pop. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. While honoring the past and communicating in a shared, established language is a defining quality of jazz, so is the tendency to adopt a forward-thinking approach to music, seeking to expand that shared language in ways that are both experimental and innovative. Considering how many modern jazz artists have grown up listening to a variety of genres, it’s only natural that they’d turn to these influences as they develop their own personal sound. The songs in this list are just a few examples of that enduring phenomenon, and offer a glimpse of modern jazz musicians as they compile a new edition of standards — a new songbook for a new era.

Todd Clouser’s A Love Electric Covers Pearl Jam’s “Release”

Very few albums symbolized grunge’s revolt against the ’80s more than Pearl Jam’s Ten. Though the album is known for its boiling disillusionment, it’s also home to the ham-handed power ballad “Release,” which is on par with Journey at their most emotive, albeit shifted down a few octaves. On his excellent 20th Century Folk Selections, guitarist Todd Clouser burnishes this tune into a sonic diamond. Clouser and mates develop the original song’s melody into something more intricate, allowing trumpet, piano and guitar to intertwine, while giving ample room for a textured harmonization that makes the song seem so much bigger than the original — and likely closer to the raw emotional punch that Eddie Vedder envisioned.

Brad Mehldau Covers Sufjan Stevens’s “Holland”

On 2003′s Greetings From Michigan, indie-folk artist Sufjan Stevens gives an audio tour of his home state of Michigan, delivering melancholy ballads in a wispy voice and displaying his penchant for painting softly with a big brush. On his 2012 release Where Do You Start, pianist Brad Mehldau pinpoints the underlying tension in the song. With his longtime trio of bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard, he develops that song to dramatic effect without sacrificing the essential frailty that made the original so winning.

Taylor Haskins Covers Neil Young’s “Theme from Dead Man”

The soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s post-modern western Dead Man featured the guitar work of Neil Young, which highlighted both the movie’s bleakness as well as its surreal overtones. On the film’s theme song, Young served up incisively melodic lines, giving the music a sharp bite to go with its undeniable tunefulness. On Taylor Haskins’s 2010 release American Dream, he scoops up the melody on trumpet and lets it soar. Guitarist Ben Monder adds sharp edges along the periphery, while the rhythm section of bassist Ben Street and Jeff Hirshfield on drums fuses the trumpet and guitar into one singular force.

Vijay Iyer Covers Flying Lotus’s “Mmmhmm”

On 2010′s Cosmogramma, Flying Lotus and Thundercat’s “Mmmhmm” is a laid-back bit of electronic serenity, the kind of music that William Gibson’s robotic A.I.s would listen to after dropping synthetic ecstasy — soothing vocals, bright notes and a cadence that chugs along with the hypnotic stagger of a washing machine cycle. On 2012′s Accelerando, pianist Vijay Iyer’s trio imbues it with dark tones and an unsettling rhythmic patter. This is nothing new from Iyer, who is able to recognize, deconstruct and then rebuild melodies with a surgical precision. What makes his rendition of the Flying Lotus song so damn frightening is how close it is to the original. It’s like viewing its reflection on a clear but shimmering lake surface: The slight differences give the unnerving sense that “all is not as it should be.” At the outset, Iyer states the melody directly, then sets about tweaking it. His trio doesn’t abandon the circular motion of the original’s percussive approach, but the circles get tighter, bringing a palpable sense of urgency to the affair. Add to that Iyer’s frenetic bursts on piano, and the original’s mesmerizing presence becomes something far more wide-eyed.

Accelerando

Vijay Iyer Trio
2012 | ACT Music
Cosmogramma

Flying Lotus
Warp Records

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey Covers The Flaming Lips’ “The Spark That Bled”

There are a lot of comparisons that could be drawn between The Flaming Lips and Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. Both hail from Oklahoma but, more essentially, both outfits have blurred the lines between genres and discovered little crevices in between to incubate their music and allow it to grow. The Soft Bulletin was a new peak for the Lips, bringing woozy strings and rapturous melodies to their warped, psych-rock sound. The JFJO have been blending folk, rock and avant-garde with jazz for years, amassing an impressive discography that offers proof of their inventiveness. It seems natural that they’d be drawn to the Lips’ music. The Lips’ version of “The Spark That Bled” takes several thrilling changes in direction, going from a quiet bit of crooning to dramatic orchestration to some chipper alt-rock twang. It’s a massive song. JFJO strips it all down to a piano tune, showing the tiny beating heart at its center. They mirror the tempo changes and melodic developments of the original with accuracy, but where the original was rife with theatrical flair, JFJO susses out the blues from the composition, and lets that serve as the main course. Restrained when compared to the original, but no less evocative, and displays JFJO’s ability to reverse engineer a thickly produced song and reveal its essential parts.

The Bad Plus Covers Wilco’s “Radio Cure”

Wilco’s experimental mix of rock and country might seem like a difficult source of inspiration for a jazz artist, but the Bad Plus have made a name for themselves by tackling the songbooks of a disparate group of rockers, including Yes, Rush, Blondie and Nirvana. On Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco strayed from their alt-country roots, developing a singular voice that showcased their inventive nature and sense of experimentalism. On “Radio Cure,” Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy is accompanied by sporadic percussion, the gentle patter of guitar and slow-burning electronic effects. The Bad Plus pulls that combination apart, using the individual elements as bookends for their rendition. The trio of pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, drummer Dave King and guest vocalist Wendy Lewis provide two views of this song. There are moments cloaked in bleakness and despair greater than the original, and then there are the moments where the sun breaks through and the band rises up, in rejuvenation and hopefulness. And where Wilco never lets on whether the story has a happy ending or a sad one, The Bad Plus’s rendition implies that both are true, and that one doesn’t preclude the other. It’s a nifty bit of emotional reconstruction.

For All I Care

The Bad Plus
2009 | Heads Up
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Wilco
2002 | Nonesuch/WBR

Dr. Lonnie Smith Covers Beck’s “Paper Tiger”

Previously known for magnetic tunes that combined stoned grooves with catchy melodies, Beck changed course on 2002′s Sea Change, favoring mostly arid acoustic guitar. On the profoundly moving “Paper Tiger,” Beck’s evocative vocals, and the song’s dramatic orchestral accompaniment, are the perfect expression of brokenhearted blues. The duo of veteran organist Dr. Lonnie Smith and guitarist Doug Munro turn the song on its head, offering up a soulful groove which is far more likely to elicit smiles and good cheer than the original. And it also displays that jazz musician’s knack for taking a strong melody in unexpected new directions.

Boogaloo To Beck - A Tribute

Lonnie Smith
2003 | Scufflin’ Records / The Orchard
Sea Change

Beck
2002 | Geffen

Donny McCaslin Covers Boards of Canada’s “Alpha & Omega”

On “Alpha & Omega,” from their 2007 record Geogaddi, the electronic outfit Boards of Canada knit a gentle blanket of shimmering harmonies. On his 2012 release Casting For Gravity, saxophonist Donny McCaslin stretched out in a number of directions, bulldozing genre walls along the way. Joined by Jason Lindner, Tim Lefebvre and Mark Guiliana, McCaslin uses the original’s electronics as the foundation from which to expand its rhythmic dynamics.

Casting For Gravity

Donny McCaslin
2012 | eOne Music / Entertainment One Distribution
Geogaddi

Boards Of Canada
2007 | Warp Records

Robert Glasper Covers Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place”

Perhaps the gold standard in modern renditions, pianist Robert Glasper exploded onto the scene with his exemplary mash-up of Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage” and Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place,” balancing the joyfulness of the one with the tempered melancholia of the other. The seamless transitions between the two created all sorts of lovely tension and intrigue, and opened up the possibilities held within the Radiohead songbook. Found on Glasper’s 2007 release In My Element,, it’s just one highlight on an excellent album.

In My Element

Robert Glasper
2007 | BLUE NOTE
Kid A

Radiohead
2008 | CAPITOL

Brad Mehldau Covers Radiohead’s “Knives Out”

Yes, a second Brad Mehldau selection and, yes, another Radiohead song. This is not due to a lack of choices, but to represent two different trends. The first: aside from The Bad Plus, very few musicians have been as proactive in adapting modern rock tunes to a Jazz construct than Mehldau. The second: to illustrate that the Radiohead songbook has been adopted by modern jazz musicians with the same zeal as that of the Beatles. Jazz musicians are endlessly finding aspects of Radiohead tunes that they can sink their teeth into and transform into something even new and exciting. On Mehldau’s rendition of “Knives Out,” he adopts Radiohead’s shuffling cadence and bubbly persona as the starting point, but from there, begins exploring the possibilities expressed by the original statement of melody, and imbues the tune with a thrilling aspect not evidenced in the original’s moody disposition.

Day Is Done

Brad Mehldau Trio
2005 | Nonesuch
Amnesiac

Radiohead
2003 | CAPITOL

Next Collective Covers Drake’s “Marvin’s Room”

On “Marvin’s Room,” rapper Drake delivers a mix of heartbreak and hedonism. Explaining to an ex how badly he needs her by bemoaning his overindulgence in drink, women and parties since she left him shows a side of loneliness that’s characterized by a kind of fumbling vulnerability. Trumpeter Christian Scott evokes that same vulnerability with a restrained tone, reflecting the song’s fragile nature. The Next Collective’s Cover Art imbues that same spirit into a variety of tunes, from artists including Jay-Z, Pearl Jam, Frank Ocean and Bon Iver.

Cover Art

NEXT Collective
2013 | Concord Jazz
Take Care

Drake
2012 | Cash Money Records/Young Money Ent./Universal Rec.

Peggy Lee Band Covers Mary Margaret O’Hara’s “You Will Be Loved Again”

As a solo performer, the recording career of Mary Margaret O’Hara never quite took off, though her distinct vocal delivery earned her invitations to collaborate with a disparate group of artists, including Neko Case, Bruce Cockburn, Morrissey and the Tindersticks. Her songwriting skills also drew plenty of attention. On her debut Miss America, O’Hara offers up a lilting, sparse rendition of her song “You Will Be Loved Again,” made famous later by the Cowboy Junkies on their 1991 album The Caution Horses, and later ending up in the lap of avant-garde cellist Peggy Lee, on her band’s outstanding 2012 release Invitation. Lee, who has a wonderful talent for transitioning between statements of sharp dissonance and those of enthralling melodicism, sticks mostly to the latter on this rendition, her Band providing a depth of harmonies and an ebullience not found on previous versions.

Invitation

The Peggy Lee Band
2012 | Drip Audio / The Orchard
Miss America

Mary Margaret O'Hara
2010 | Mary Margaret O'Hara / CD Baby

Alex Guilbert Trio Covers The Shins’ “New Slang”

With their almost supernatural talent for crafting catchy melodies, the Shins routinely deliver upbeat, cheerful-sounding music that’s equally sweet and sardonic. On their rendition of 2001′s “New Slang,” the Alex Guilbert Trio doesn’t do much to change the formula, but they do ramp up the cheerfulness. Aside from it simply being a nifty cover of a nifty song, Guilbert’s trio illuminates just how much the music of the Shins and Vince Guaraldi have in common, if you just add a jaunty rhythm and some jazz piano. I dare you to listen to Guilbert’s version and not imagine Snoopy dancing joyfully while Schroeder hunches over his piano.

Marcin Wasilewski Trio Covers Prince’s “Diamond and Pearls”

Marcin Wasilewski Trio’s 2008 release January fit right in with the quiet serenity of a typical ECM Records release, except for the fact that it was anything but typical. Pianist Wasilewski had an illusionist’s touch on the melody, giving wispy hints at it like fragmentary visions within a thick drifting fog, resulting in quiet music that gently rouses the listener from a state of wakefulness rather than drives them to it. On the title track to Prince’s New Power Generation’s 1991 release, Wasilewski eschews the brightly polished notes and shiny embellishments of Prince’s original, and instead uses the melody to coax the listener to follow along as he develops it into something more complex, presented with the patience of a slowly moving river.

January

Marcin Wasilewski Trio
2008 | ECM
Diamonds And Pearls

Prince & The New Power Generation
2009 | Warner Bros.

Madeleine Peyroux Covers Elliott Smith’s “Between the Bars”

On her 2004 release Careless Love, vocalist Madeleine Peyroux takes Elliot Smith’s Either/Or song “Between the Bars” and transmutes it from a light tune thick with depression and forewarning into a lullaby meant to soothe and comfort and make all the worries disappear. Smith’s vocals have always been compelling, with his voice soothing in its own right, kept up at a higher register and delivered in the gentlest way. Peyroux keeps things gentle, but by utilizing a more expansive vocal range, is able to break through the predisposition to sadness of the original and instill a more hopeful kind of blues, the kind one can drift off to, into a night of sweet dreams.

Careless Love

Madeleine Peyroux
2010 | New Rounder
Either/Or

Elliott Smith
2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

The 10 Best Big Star Songs You Don’t Know

Joe Gross — Fri, 05 Jul 2013 15:03:41 +0000

2013 is a better time to be a Big Star fan than any time since the band was actually around. For years, their three albums — #1 Record, Radio City and Third/Sister Lovers — drifted in and out of print (to this day, nobody can completely agree on the correct running order for Third). These days, all three are consistently available, along with a fascinating box set, several live collections and the brand new compilation Nothing Can Hurt Me, which contains a set of alternate takes and mixes of Big Star classics to go along with the excellent new documentary of the same name.

Given their relatively slim output, it is tough to find Big Star songs you literally don’t know; rather, there are plenty of weird alternate takes and live versions that are worth exploring.

“In the Street (Movie Mix)”

Nothing Can Hurt Me

Big Star
2013 | OMNIVORE RECORDINGS (OMN)

It sounds anathema, but it is kind of cool to hear this power-pop staple given a big, slick, modern-sounding mix, especially given its prominence as The Big Star Song Everyone Knows thanks to Cheap Trick's cover of it, which served as the theme song to That '70s Show." Here, it sound more than ever like a radio hit that never was.

“Thank you Friends (Demo)”

Keep An Eye On The Sky

Big Star
2009 | Rhino

It is possible to wander around the Big Star rarities vault and piece together a pretty fantastic acoustic album of their skeletal demos. The studio version from Third/Sister Lovers is best known for a bright electric riff and its gospel-ish background singers. This one is just Alex and guitar, turning the celebration into a spare, thoughtful elegy.

“The Letter”

Nobody Can Dance

Big Star
2006 | Norton Records / The Orchard

Alex Chilton had essentially three careers: one belting blue-eyed R&B with the Box Tops using a soulful voice that did not sound like it belonged to a teenager; for Big Star, he used a more Beatle-ish singing voice, while in his erratic-yet-oft-brilliant solo career, his vocals sometimes had a just-fell-outta-bed-quality. This cover manages to sound like all three — his most famous Box Tops song, covered by Big Star, but sounding rough... enough that it could pass for "Like Flies..."-era Alex. Seriously odd.
more »

“September Gurls”

Live

Big Star
2006 | Ryko/WEA

This, the first track from a 1974 radio set, finds the band sounding faintly exhausted. Dreams have not panned out, the band is coming apart. Hummell, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, has returned to college, replaced by John Lightman. There is something very smiling-through-the-pain about this performance — the end is very effin' neigh.

“Holocaust demo”

Keep An Eye On The Sky

Big Star
2009 | Rhino

Like "Thank You Friends," the original version of this song is one of the hide-the-knives classics on Third/Sister Lovers, bolstered by piano and cello. Here, it's piano and voice only; the results are both stately and almost as dark for their formality.

“My Life is Right”

#1 Record/Radio City

Big Star
2009 | Stax

A Chris Bell song from #1 Record and one that is both one of the most flagrantly Beatles-ish tunes on the album (those harmonies! those drum rolls!), one that sounds completely of a piece with the '70s' more baroque pop artists (hello, Todd Rundgren). Not to be confused with East River Pipe's equally gorgeous, equally jangle-driven "My Life is Wrong."

“O My Soul alternate version”

Keep An Eye On The Sky

Big Star
2009 | Rhino

One of the things that's proven so inspiring about Big Star is how well constructed the songs are, even if their recorded versions can often sound like a stick has been shoved rather far up the various players' behinds, if you will. This take on "O My Soul" starts with a solid minute and 20 seconds of pure garage rock before crashing into the oddly proggy guitar pop we know and love.

“All We Ever Got from Them was Pain”

Nothing Can Hurt Me

Big Star
2013 | OMNIVORE RECORDINGS (OMN)

Technically a Chilton solo song, this demo hails from the 1969/70 era, when Chilton had left the Box Tops and was finding his voice as a songwriter (a version is on the compilation Free Again: The 1970 Sessions) before Big Star came together. Traffic sounds in the background lend this heartbreaker a very man-alone-in-his-apartment feel. Gorgeous stuff — impossibly sad and lonely.

“Baby Strange”

Keep An Eye On The Sky

Big Star
2009 | Rhino

Speaking of covers, T-Rex's bubblegum glam rock sounds pretty much perfect when hacked out by these guys, a trio of Chilton, Hummell and Stephens playing in front of a crowd waiting for Archie Bell and the Drells in 1973. (No, really.) Chilton kept this cover in his set over the year, and it's no wonder.

“I’m In Love With a Girl”

#1 Record/Radio City

Big Star
2009 | Stax

"I'm in love with a girl/ the finest girl in the world." Chilton boils it down in 1:48. One of the all-time great mixtape starter or enders. Maybe the girl knows he exists and maybe she doesn't. Either way, he has, as the kids say, all of the feels.

What’s Up Down Under? The 12 Australian Bands Reshaping Indie Rock

Doug Wallen — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 21:28:08 +0000

You must have noticed it lately: the constant influx of Australian music into other parts of the world. Beneath the global breakout success of Tame Impala and Gotye in the last couple years, is a teeming, constantly-multiplying Australian music scene. Every genre is represented, whether it’s backpack rap, soul revival, minimal techno or murder-ballad folk.

A lot of the attention has been trained on the raw, off-the-cuff bands parading out of the southern hemisphere in the wake of Eddy Current Suppression Ring half a decade ago, and given that so many Aussie bands share members with each other, it’s no shock that ECSR guitarist Mikey Young juggles other projects (Total Control, Lace Curtain, Oooga Boogas) while producing records for more great bands. But even that’s just a small fragment of the vibrant Aussie music scene.

Below is just a tiny segment of the country’s fruitful yield: a dozen bands to be sure you know, followed by a list of runners-up that could almost go on forever.

Royal Headache

Royal Headache

Royal Headache
2012 | What's Your Rupture?

Where they're from: Sydney
What they're like: Royal Headache's frantic guitar-pop is beyond rough, but there's a casual timelessness to the mix of lo-fi hooks (think Guided By Voices) and soul-damaged punk (think The Jam). Somehow, their self-titled 2012 debut bottled the frayed adrenaline of their dynamite live shows. The singer, known simply as Shogun, often goes shirtless on stage, breaking into Sam Cooke vocal curlicues with a weird anti-showmanship. Like the whole... band, he comes off like an average guy who stumbled onto a winning combination.
more »

Total Control

Henge Beat

Total Control
2012 | Iron Lung Records / Believe Digital

Where they're from: Melbourne
What they're like: A sort of post-punk vacation for members of Eddy Current Suppression Ring, UV Race and Straightjacket Nation, Total Control nail not just the genre's steady rhythmic pulse but also splintered electronics and dead-eyed vocals. They're as capable of raw power as they are of skin-crawling tension, and their 2011 debut Henge Beat is split equally between both approaches. The spectre of sweaty hardcore looms large, always... there to offset the strictly mechanical with a dose of the unpredictable.
more »

Bitch Prefect

Big Time

Bitch Prefect
2012 | Bedroom Suck Records / The Orchard

Where they're from: Adelaide/Melbourne
What they're like: Bitch Prefect write pop songs, but they're so dodgy and unpolished that they're almost punk. The Adelaide-via-Melbourne trio rack up awkward choruses and shoestring-thin melodies on their 2012 debut Bad Decisions, an album-length ode to doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Recorded with Jack Farley (Beaches), it plays like a slacker in-joke on first listen but develops unexpected staying power with repeated visits. Self-deprecation... has rarely been so charismatic — or catchy.
more »

Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys

Ready For Boredom

Bed Wettin' Bad Boys
R.I.P. SOCIETY

Where they're from: Sydney
What they're like: Sister band to Royal Headache, Bed Wettin' Bad Boys burst with a similar rough-hewn tunefulness. Here, the touchstones are Slade and the Replacements, and the anthems are beery and robust. This year's Ready for Boredom is a feast of layered guitars and neurotic lyrics, sung with an urgency that can border on panic. It's a pub record of a different sort: It's more introspective — an... all-night drink-a-thon for one.
more »

Super Wild Horses

Crosswords

Super Wild Horses
2013 | Dot Dash Recordings

Where they're from: Melbourne
What they're like: Much has been made about the fact that Hayley McKee and Amy Franz formed Super Wild Horses before they really knew how to play their instruments — guitar and drums, respectively. But their call-and-response shouts and essential rawness struck a chord. Where 2010's Fifteen piled scrappy garage-pop with enthusiastic vocal harmonies, this year's Crosswords introduces a mellower current and some classic country melancholy. The duo are... still noisy when they want to be, but it's all the more effective coming after the quieter bits.
more »

Scott & Charlene’s Wedding

Para Vista Social Club (Deluxe Edition)

Scott & Charlene's Wedding
2012 | Critical Heights / The Orchard

Where they're from: Melbourne/New York
What they're like: Named for the mid '80s TV nuptials of Kylie Minogue's character on the Aussie soap Neighbours, Scott & Charlene's Wedding is the outlet for New York-based expat Craig Dermody. His tiny-run debut Para Vista Social Club was an instant cult hit, and soon earned a proper release through Queensland label Bedroom Suck. Spiking slacker guitar-pop with autobiographical tunes about dead-end jobs, Dermody found a global... audience mostly via word-of-mouth gushing. The upcoming second LP Any Port in a Storm is less jangly but just as down-to-earth, with Dermody's singing as rough and convincing as ever.
more »

Woollen Kits

Four Girls

Woollen Kits
2012 | Trouble In Mind Records / TuneCore

Where they're from: Melbourne
What they're like: Woollen Kits started off sounding pretty much just like mid-period Beat Happening, full of froggy baritone and primitive romance. But with the two albums Woollen Kits and Four Girls — released as bookends of 2012 — the trio graduated to something more universal. They embraced power-pop and Burger Records garage, with songs about falling asleep during class and (of course) pining hopelessly for that certain someone.... They even signed to Chicago label Trouble in Mind — launchpad for Mikal Cronin and Jacco Gardner — proof that their balance of lyrical naiveté and abundant hooks was just right.
more »

Milk Teddy

Zingers

Milk Teddy
2012 | Lost and Lonesome / The Orchard

Where they're from: Melbourne
What they're like: Taking cues from early Flying Nun, Milk Teddy fit right into Melbourne's growing jangle revival. 2012's long-gestating debut Zingers spun off on its own course, upping the flange effect and layering instruments into a gorgeous collage. Frontman Thomas Mendelovits shrugs off lyrics that feel like stream-of-consciousness ramblings, and the music follows a similar sort of dream logic. It's underground pop twisted and made unreliable, spiraling off... toward the horizon.
more »

Blank Realm

Go Easy

Blank Realm
2013 | Fire Records / The Orchard

Where they're from: Brisbane
What they're like: The fact that they've got ties to labels like Siltbreeze, Fire and Bedroom Suck should confirm Blank Realm's indie cred. They're not cool in the traditional sense, but their weirdo pop songs are catnip for vinyl-thumbing misfits the world over. Take the single "Cleaning Up My Mess" from their third album Go Easy: It's romantic yet bratty ("Love, will you clean up my mess again"?) and... sloshes along for seven minutes, punctuated by casually brilliant guitar lines. Fans of Royal Trux and Dinosaur Jr. will feel right at home.
more »

The Laurels

Plains

The Laurels
2013 | Rice Is Nice / Redeye

Where they're from: Sydney
What they're like: Committed students of shoegaze, The Laurels apply those lessons to psychedelic rock. Needless to say, their 2012 debut Plains is texturally mesmerising. But it's also packed with sneakily strong songwriting, to the point where you would relish the tunes even with all the surrealism stripped away. The real secret weapon is the Krautrock-y rhythm section. No wonder The Black Angels have taken them under their wing,... touring with them in Australia and booking them for Austin Psych Fest.
more »

Taco Leg

Taco Leg

Taco Leg
2012 | Fan Death Records / TuneCore

Where they're from: Perth
What they're like: Taco Leg play a shabby strain of post-punk that's custom-made for a cult audience. But for all of the trio's wobbly uncertainty, their songs are oddly infectious and share the same knack for simple vocal repetition as Eddy Current Suppression Ring, to whom they're often compared. The songs on their self-titled debut LP peter out after a minute or two, but not before a few choice... Indiana Jones references ("Raiders") and moral quandaries ("I Can't Decide"). Their songs often feel like a race to determine what will fall apart first: the vocals, the words or the music.
more »

Beaches

Eternal Sphere

Beaches
2010 | Mexican Summer

Where they're from: Melbourne
What they're like: Beaches began as a social outlet for five women who kept finding themselves at the same shows. Anchored by three guitarists, they dabble in an assortment of genres at their leisure: jangle, surf, Krautrock, drone or psych. Five years passed between their self-titled debut and this year's She Beats, giving the band plenty of time to deepen their unique interplay. They still excel at instrumentals, yet... now their pop songs kill too. When Michael Rother (Neu!) asks to play guitar on your record, you know you're doing something right.
more »

And also check out…

Heavy Flow

Absolute Boys
2013 | Bedroom Suck Records / The Orchard
Hard Rubbish

Lower Plenty
2013 | Fire Records / The Orchard
Another Trick

Circle Pit
2010 | Major Label / Musicadium
Twerps

Twerps
2011 | Chapter Music / The Orchard
Racism

UV Race
2012 | In The Red / Revolver
Calendar Days

Dick Diver
2013 | Chapter Music / The Orchard
Gala Mill

The Drones
ATP Recordings
Jubelklänge - Beliebte Märsche

Algunder Musikkapelle
2006 | Algunder Musikkapelle / TuneCore
Eyes Like The Sky

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
2013 | Flightless / The Orchard
Listen Closelier

The Frowning Clouds
2010 | Independent / Musicadium
2

Ned Collette & Wirewalker
2012 | Fire Records / The Orchard
All Gone

Pop Singles
Night-People
Horses and Human Hands

Hoodlum Shouts
2013 | Poison City Records / The Orchard
Old Life

Mere Women
2012 | tenzenmen
Post Ending//Pre Completion

Useless Children
2012 | Iron Lung Records / Believe Digital
Dire Dish

Angel Eyes
2011 | EP/SINGLE
Ways of Being

Rites Wild
2012 | Not Not Fun / Revolver
Josie

Go Violets
2013 | Go Violets / TuneCore
Solarium Down The Causeway

Witch Hats
2010 | Z-Man Records / CD Baby
Look Forward to Nothing

Kitchen's Floor
2011 | Siltbreeze / Revolver
Playin' In Time With the Deadbeat

Slug Guts
2012 | Sacred Bones Records / S.C. Distribution
Split With Wet Hair EP

Naked on the Vague
Night-People
It's You

Holy Balm
2012 | Not Not Fun / Revolver
Ex Tropical

Lost Animal
2013 | Hardly Art / Sub Pop Records
Comfort

Splashh
2013 | Kanine Records

The Spawn of Sabbath: 10 Bands That Followed Black Sabbath’s Unholy Template

Ryan Reed — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:00:18 +0000

Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut, 1970′s Black Sabbath, set the unholy blueprint: Tony Iommi’s blood-curling riffs, Ozzy Osbourne’s demonic howl, and the versatile rhythms of bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward. Even still, few could have predicted just how influential that particular sound would be: More than 40 years later, even as metal has splintered into a dizzying array of sub-genres (doom-metal, post-metal, sludge-metal, prog-metal), Sabbath’s black-magic mojo looms larger than ever. Fortunately, the classic line-up (minus Ward) reunited for this year’s 13, returning to the epic, occult-conjuring sound of their ’70s prime. In honor of this return to form, we’ve traced Sabbath’s sonic lineage through 10 modern albums — starting with the iconic source.

Black Sabbath

13

Black Sabbath
2013 | Republic Records

Who they are: Formed in Birmingham, England in 1968, Black Sabbath assaulted rock's flower-power landscape like a kamikaze. Their demonic, riff-heavy style was an instant commercial success, despite scathing reviews — and when "metal" became a critical adjective, Sabbath defined it. Throughout endless line-up shifts (including the underrated '80s era with vocalist Ronnie James Dio) and occasional duds (1995's Forbidden, with its regrettable Ice-T cameo), guitarist Tommy Iommi has remained at the... forefront, steering the ship toward blackest possible waters.

How they sound: The Sabbath Sound is monolithic in scope: distorted, dissonant and bluesy, with a grim low-end and a theatrical demon wail up front.

Sabbath moment: The band's 1970 classic Paranoid remains the cornerstone of the Sabbath sound — all newcomers should start there. But 13 is Sabbath at their most classically Sabbath-y. The peak is "God is Dead?," a lurching slow build from trippy atmospherics to a classic, full-frontal stomp, topped off by a vintage Iommi solo.
more »

Electric Wizard

Dopethrone

Electric Wizard
2001 | The Music Cartel / The Orchard

Who they are: This Dorset, England quartet was born in 1993, quickly rising to the forefront of the blossoming doom-metal movement. Fun Fact: Their band's name is formed from blending the titles of two Sabbath songs: "Electric Funeral" and "The Wizard."

How they sound: Electric Wizard specialize in a particularly sludgy brand of stoner-metal, with lead vocalist and guitarist Jus Oborn romanticizing the thrills of Satan, science fiction and weed.

Sabbath moment: These guys... clearly worship at the Altar of Sabbath. "Vinum Sabbathi" is a riveting example: lurching tempos, devilish vocals and de-tuned storm clouds of distortion. It sounds like prime Sabbath — if they got stoned and tried to soundtrack a B-level horror flick.
more »

Mastodon

The Hunter

Mastodon
2011 | Reprise

Who they are: These Southern prog-metal warriors formed in Atlanta in 2000. Thirteen years later, they're unpredictable critic darlings — and a metal institution.

How they sound: Their early albums (like 2001's Remission) were sludgy and relentless, built on Brann Dailor's explosive, snare-heavy drumming and Brent Hinds's virtuosic guitar. Taking major influence from '70s prog, they've gradually evolved into a weirder, wilder band — best exemplified by the dizzying sprawl of 2012's The... Hunter.

Sabbath moment: "Curl of the Burl" is a lost Sabbath epic, built on a swampy, winding guitar groove and Hinds's gothic, Ozzy-esque lyrical imagery. Hellishly heavy.
more »

Royal Thunder

CVI

Royal Thunder
2012 | Relapse Records / The Orchard

Who they are: Guitarist Josh Weaver formed this alt-metal outfit in 2006, finding a unique niche in Atlanta's impressive metal scene. Their debut full-length, CVI, was released in 2012 by Relapse Records.

How they sound: Too heavy to be alt-rock (with Weaver's menacing guitar drama), too pretty and melody-driven to be pure metal (with MIny Parsonz's soulful alto), Royal Thunder are the best of both sonic worlds.

Sabbath moment: "Snake and Shift" is their... Sabbath Moment (and their finest moment, period). Opening in a black hole of feedback, this nine-minute behemoth builds to a brooding, trippy groove, Parsonz channeling her spookiest Ozzy inflections.
more »

Blood Ceremony

The Eldritch Dark

Blood Ceremony
2013 | Metal Blade Records / The Orchard

Who they are: This Toronto quintet formed in 2006, making an immediate impression throughout Europe with their witchy, folky brand of metal. Three studio albums aside, they've made their name on the road, touring with other Sabbath spawn like Ghost and Electric Wizard.

How they sound: Guitarist Sean Kennedy once labelled the band's sound as a "folkier Sabbath," which is a fairly accurate description. With their proggy interplay (not to mention Alia O'Brien's... elegant flute lines), Blood Ceremony mix their Sabbath-y heaviness with the eccentricity of Jethro Tull.

Sabbath moment: "Witchwood," from 2013's The Eldritch Dark, is the band's Sabbath-y show-stopper: a funky blues riff, mystical organ drone, O'Brien channeling Ozzy's black-magic howl.
more »

Opeth

Heritage

Opeth
2011 | Roadrunner Records

Who they are: Opeth is the brainchild of Swedish metal icon Mikael Åkerfeldt, who founded the band in 1990, building an almost-mythic legacy over the course of ten studio albums.

How they sound: Opeth have one of the most distinctive styles in metal history, blending full-on death-metal with pastoral folk, jazz-fusion and prog. Åkerfeldt is a vocal chameleon, jumping from guttural growls to angelic croons in the course of a single song.

Sabbath moment:... "The Devil's Orchard," a standout from 2011's Heritage, is a Sabbath dead-ringer. "God is dead!," Åkerfeldt cries over spook-house B3 organ and a metallic crunchy snake-coil riff.
more »

Pallbearer

Sorrow And Extinction

Pallbearer
2012 | Profound Lore / Revolver

Who they are: Pallbearer's exquisite doom-metal was born in 2008 — in the unlikely metal hub of Little Rock, Arkansas. Their hugely hyped debut album, Sorrow and Extinction, was released in 2012.

How they sound: The band's majestic, psychedelic metal conjures images of foggy swamps and corroding gothic castles. It's a transfixing sound, built on creeping rhythms, sludgy guitar harmonies and Brett Campbell's Ozzy-inflected cries.

Sabbath moment: Look no further than "Foreigner," the 12-minute... opening opus from Sorrow and Extinction. Over murky, earth-shattering distortion, Campbell moans masterfully — like the high-priest of hell.
more »

The Sword

Apocryphon

The Sword
2012 | Razor & Tie Label

Who they are: This excellent Austin quartet formed in 2003, drawing major influence from Sabbath, among other metal icons like Deep Purple and Iron Maiden. Their fourth LP, 2012's Apocryphon, managed to crash the Billboard Top 20.

How they sound: The Sword specialize in vintage, Dungeons and Dragons-style metal, defined by the harmonized dual guitar work-outs of John D. Cronise and Kyle Shutt.

Sabbath moment: A propulsive highlight from 2008's Gods of... the Earth, "Maiden, Mother & Crone" is the band's quintessential Sabbath homage: razor-sharp blues-metal riffage, deceptively funky drumming, and Cronise's vampiric moan.
more »

Isis

Panopticon

Isis
2004 | Ipecac Recordings / The Orchard

Who they are: Post-metal icons Isis formed in 1997, starting out in Boston before relocating to L.A. They released five full-length albums before their 2010 break-up. Fun Fact: The band covered Sabbath's "Hand of Doom" on their 1996 EP, Sawblade.

How they sound: Isis is not a conventional "metal" band in any way: Their songs veer jarringly from effects-driven post-rock to doom-driven atmospherics to psychedelic ambience, never pausing long enough to be pigeonholed.

Sabbath... moment: "Grinning Mouths," the unholy closer from 2004's Panopticon is mammoth close to a mammoth album. Jeff Caxide's bass and Aaron Harris's kit build a funky, tribal groove, as the guitars weave dramatically over top. Half-angelic, half-demonic — completely absorbing.
more »

Ghost B.C.

Infestissumam

Ghost B.C.
2013 | Seven Four Entertainment / Republic

Who they are: These mysterious metal-heads formed in Linköping, Sweden in 2008, raising eyebrows with their "Nameless Ghoul" personas and doom-laden epics.

How they sound: In keeping with their sacrilegious visuals, Ghost B.C. Conjure an epic brand of demonic metal, blending choral vocal arrangements with primal distortion and proggy atmospherics.

Sabbath moment: Ghost B.C.'s Sabbath Moment is "Con Clavi Con Dio," a blend of guttural riffage, spastic bass chug, and frontman Papa Emeritus's... eerie harmonies.
more »

Five Essential Roscoe Mitchell Recordings

Seth Colter Walls — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 14:24:06 +0000

Saxophonist and composer Roscoe Mitchell has been at the forefront of innovation in jazz — hell, in music in general — ever since his landmark 1966 recording Sound. With that debut, he helped usher in a less constantly frenetic avant-garde. Though Mitchell and his cohorts from Chicago’s South Side revolutionaries in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) could bust reeds and pound with the best experimental screamers, they also thrilled to the spare, austerely gentle classical modernism of Anton Webern (for example).

Sound, along with subsequent titles from the “Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble,” issued by the Delmark label, would the proving ground for a band that would eventually take on a different, better-known name: The Art Ensemble of Chicago. While serving a year as the toasts of France in 1969-70, the band cut more than a dozen records. By the time they rotated back to the U.S., the Chicago scene that had influenced Mitchell in his post-Army days had already made significant inroads in New York. Mitchell hasn’t looked back since, whether as a teacher at Mills College (where he currently has the Darius Milhaud chair in composition) or as a gigging and recording musician. This year has already seen two fantastic new albums from Mitchell: the classically-oriented Not Yet, on Mutable Music, and a record of duets with drummer-pianist Tyshawn Sorey. (Trumpeter Hugh Ragin appears on a few cuts, too.)

Here are five of Mitchell’s essential recordings.

A Jackson in Your House / Message to Our Folks / Reese and the Smooth Ones

Art Ensemble Of Chicago
2013 | Charly / The Orchard

Three hugely important 1969 albums — some of them infrequently available digitally — by Roscoe Mitchell's breakout project, the Art Ensemble of Chicago are collected here in a high-value, no-duh purchase. (Look at that price point!) The title track of Jackson reveals the band's postmodern mashup strategy: after the opening, jump-cut switches between free playing and modern composition, the band transitions to a New Orleans-flavored outro (one that is sincerely soulful, not... mocking). Message is even better, and somehow more varied: "Old Time Religion" blends gospel and drone textures; "Dexterity" underlines the band's connection to Bird; while "Rock Out," as an abstraction of popular song-form, feels like avant-jazz's answer to White Heat-era Velvet Underground. Reese is one long improvisation, split into two tracks, that is particularly worthy for the noise-guitar freakout on the second side of the original LP.
more »
Roscoe Mitchell And The Sound & Space Ensembles

Roscoe Mitchell
1984 | Black Saint / CAM

In which the polymath Mitchell embraces the emergent sounds of hip-hop as well as those of late 20th-century chamber music styles — on the same album. Four of the six tracks here are austere, small ensemble compositions (some of them featuring modern-opera singer Tom Buckner). But two uptempo groovers, "You Wastin' My Tyme" and "Linefine Lyon Seven" show that, some 15 years after the Art Ensemble created R&B-inflected avant-jazz jams like "Rock... Out" and "Theme De Yoyo," our hero can still return to the wellspring of pop inspiration. The former even offers a chance for Mitchell to try his hand at appropriating the good-humor cadences of early NYC rap. He works it!
more »
Solo [3]

Roscoe Mitchell
2004 | Mutable Music / The Orchard

This is a late-period tour de force: three different "solo" albums, packaged together. The opening "album," subtitled Tech Ritter and the Megabytes, opens with a multi-tracked Mitchell (on different horns), blasting through a staccato composition called "The Little Big Horn 2." Two long, proper solo improvisations follow (featuring various extended techniques, circular breathing, the works); while the "Tech Ritter"-titled pieces bring the multi-tracked intensity back. The more familiar, purely alto-saxophone album starts... with the lovely "Nemus." The final album, a percussion-heavy suite that harkens back to some of the Art Ensemble's "little instrument" pieces, isn't as dynamic — but the set as a whole brings welcome evidence of Mitchell's conceptual, performative and compositional power in a new century.
more »
Far Side

Roscoe Mitchell
2010 | ECM

How influential and well-respected is Roscoe Mitchell, at this point? Well, on this live date for ECM, the two pianists in his octet are Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn (arguably the two biggest names in contemporary jazz piano). The rumbling, droning opening suite of three pieces takes its time winding up — but explodes in a gratifying way at the midway point. (Hearing Taborn going nuts behind Mitchell's soprano playing is a... singular highlight of modern jazz.) The "Quintet" and "Trio" pieces are shorter, and more consistently driven by pulse, while "Ex Flower Five" is driven by the stellar piano power on offer.
more »
Not Yet

Roscoe Mitchell
2013 | Mutable Music / The Orchard

This is Roscoe Mitchell's finest classical album yet. And, interestingly, it's one on which his own horn playing is absent; he's intent on fully inhabiting the role of composer. It's no secret how a modern conceptualist gets good performances of fiercely difficult, experimental works: you get a chair in composition at a major music school, draw interested students to your side, and present concerts. Mitchell has done that as a chair of... composition studies at Mills College. And his student Jacob Zimmerman does the teacher proud in the skittering, sheets-of-sound atonality of the title track (for saxophone and piano), as well as in the sax-quartet arrangement of the infamous Mitchell piece "Nonaah." Some more senior eminences drop by to tackle a chamber orchestra version of "Nonaah," also. When paired with the finest recorded example we have of Mitchell's writing for string quartet ("9/9/99 with Cards"), this album becomes an essential document of a portion of the composer's legacy.
more »

20 Acts to See at Bonnaroo 2013

eMusic Editorial Staff — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 17:11:31 +0000

Headed to Tennessee but still not sure who you want to see? Fear not: We’ve boiled the brain-busting Bonnaroo schedule down to 20 essential sets.

Paul McCartney

RAM

Paul McCartney
2012 | Hear Music

It's easy to be skeptical about the notion of seeing Paul McCartney live. For one thing, he's the Beatle most prone to cheese (even if he's more experimental than he's typically given credit for), he has a history of being excruciatingly on-the-nose, and on top of all that, he wrote "Rocky Raccoon." Here's the thing, though: Paul McCartney is fantastic live. His shows generally run about three hours with no... breaks, he expertly weaves in lesser-known tracks to keep things interesting and he keeps hokey banter to a minimum. Oh, also, he has so many hits. How many hits? So many hits that he played "Your Mother Should Know" and "Lovely Rita" for the first time last month. So many hits that he could skip playing "Let it Be" and "Sgt. Pepper" and you'd still be like, "He played a lot of hits!" His band is astonishingly tight, they don't overplay, the delivery is tasteful and toothy and even charmingly ragged in spots. Oh, and also: he's Paul McCartney. — J. Edward Keyes
more »

Bjork

Biophilia

Björk
2011 | Nonesuch

Twenty-seven years into her career, Bjork is running the risk of becoming a pop music Alexander the Great, weeping for there are no more worlds to conquer. She has reconfigured her sound in nearly every conceivable way, moving from adventurous electro on the still-classic Post through skewed orch-pop (Vespertine), voice-only compositions (Medulla) and globe-gobbling world music (Volta). She is one of a very few musicians — there are maybe three of them... worldwide — whose rare failures are even interesting, because they at least display evidence of ambition and novel ideas. That ambition extends to her staging. A run of shows at the Hall of Science in Queens, New York featured specially-constructed instruments and a loose theme (including voiceover narration) about the destructive power of nature. How much of that she'll carry into her festival performances remains to be seen, but if history is any indication, an equal won’t be found all weekend. — JEK
more »

Wilco

The Whole Love

Wilco
2011 | Anti/Epitaph

Wilco are a perennial music-fest favorite: sunny sing-alongs, lengthy Nels Cline guitar solos, and witty banter from frontman Jeff Tweedy. There hasn't been any word of new music on the Chicago group's horizon (Tweedy's been busy producing sets from the likes of Low and Mavis Staples), but that just means fans can expect a wide-ranging mix of crowd faves and deep cuts alike. — Laura Leebove

R. Kelly

Write Me Back (Deluxe Version)

R. Kelly
2012 | RCA Records Label

When R. Kelly toured in 2007, he first appeared in silhouette, wearing a top hat, standing at the top of a giant staircase, underneath a neon sign that read "Mr. Showbiz." When he toured in 2010, his first appearance was in a five-minute black-and-white, note-perfect Casablanca-style short film. When he toured in 2012, he had two lackeys bring out an oversized white throne halfway through the show just so he could... sit and relax for a number. Simply put: R. Kelly is a showman, and the live setting is where he gets to indulge the frustrated musical theatre director within. Songs become set pieces (In '07, he performed "Feelin' On Yo Booty" as an aria, tongue firmly in cheek), the banter is tautly-scripted and generally hilarious, and Kells visibly relishes every indulgent flourish. To say nothing of the fact that he remains one of our greatest living male vocalists, that he sings live every time, and that even thirty seconds of hearing him reinforces the notion that he is the heir to greats like Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye — even if those two never used an extended jungle metaphor to sing about doin' it. — JEK
more »

Weird Al Yankovic

Alpocalypse

Weird Al Yankovic
2011 | Volcano

Here's a thing that you might not know about legendary song parodist and cultural icon Weird Al: He puts on a spectacular live show. Like, "It's Star Time" spectacular, with breathlessly executed transitions and peak-to-peak setlists and jokes and polka medleys all lined up one after the other. Weird Al is an entertainer, goddamnit, and if you've ever owned a single tape or Weird Al CD in your life, (and what portion... of the music-listening populace hasn't forked over cash for at least one Weird Al tape or CD?), standing in front of this man's live extravaganza is an easy way to feel good about the decisions you've made in life, for at least 45 minutes. — Jayson Greene
more »

Solange

True

Solange
2012 | Terrible Records / The Orchard

Solange Knowles released her first album in 2011, but it was last year that she truly broke out as more than just Bey's little sister. Her EP True is all dancefloor hits, from the funky, giggly start of "Losing You," to the nostalgic heartbreaker "Some Things Never Seem to Fucking Work," to the Daydream-era-Mariah Carey-channeling "Don't Let Me Down." — LL

Tom Petty

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
1991 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

Tom Petty occupies a curious place in the corridors of classic rock. He doesn't have the Weight of Legacy of the Stones or Dylan, nor the charisma or sense of purpose of Springsteen. He doesn't slot easily into any one format — he was initially marketed as a New Wave artist — even though his songs are staples of FM radio. And there's always been something smart-alecky about his demeanor and delivery... — he's the cut-up in the canon. All of this makes him surprisingly tricky to characterize; there's a clear cause/effect between his rootsier work and, say, Being There-era Wilco, but there's even more in the oft-cited similarity between "American Girl" and "Last Nite" by the Strokes. Which ends up making Tom Petty more like a rock 'n' roll Zelig — he's nearly everywhere you look, even if you don't notice until later, and he's logged more certifiable classics with a shrug and a smirk than some of his peers have done with gallons of sweat and overwork. You get the sense he'll still be here 60 years from now, looking approximately the same, just as consistent and just as rewarding. — JEK
more »

Kendrick Lamar

good kid, m.A.A.d city

Kendrick Lamar
2013 | Top Dawg / Aftermath / Interscope

Kendrick Lamar is a tiny stub of a man — standing onstage, he doesn't seem to come much past 5'4". But his quiet charisma widens out around him like a crop circle, and with his triumphant 2012 masterpiece good kid, m.A.A.d city still resonating in the air, he will likely arrive trailing clouds of rap-savior glory. Liquid, languorous songs like "Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe" and "A.D.H.D." transform into shout-alongs when he's... onstage, and come prepared to rap along to every tongue-twisting verse: He usually gets heavy with the crowd participation. — JG
more »

Glen Hansard

Rhythm And Repose

Glen Hansard
2012 | Anti/Epitaph

Glen Hansard might come off as a total sad-sack on Rhythm and Repose, his brooding-but-gorgeous 2012 solo effort, but don't be fooled: The Irish singer/songwriter best known for his work in Once and The Frames is actually an incredibly charming and exciting performer. He's likely to perform with his band The Frames, and you never know who else he might bring on stage. — LL

A$AP Rocky

LONG.LIVE.A$AP

A$AP Rocky
2013 | A$AP Worldwide/Polo Grounds Music/RCA Records

The cocky grinning, gold-tooth French-braid Harlem 24-year-old A$AP Rocky might not have the poetic, old-soul flow of Rakim, for whom his parents named him, but he has something else entirely: a blinding flash, charm, and a perfectly calibrated sound that pours Houston syrup and high-fashion glitz onto NY rap's sturdy concrete bedrock. Live, he's usually surrounded by other A$APs, who help amp up the energy, and he is guaranteed to be wearing... something that makes him resemble a cross between a Fruit Roll-Up, a fashion model, and a Power Ranger. — JG
more »

Wu-Tang Clan

Enter The Wu-Tang Clan - 36 Chambers (Deluxe Version)

Wu Tang Clan
2007 | RCA Records Label

While everyone was busy crowing about Blur and Phoenix and the Stone Roses, the Wu-Tang Clan slipped in through the side virtually unannounced and walked away with Coachella 2013 in their back pocket. By all accounts their show in Indio Valley was one of the weekend's best — if not the best — all eight surviving members taking the stage, backed by a full orchestra and performing letter-perfect versions of their classics.... The group always had a sense of vision, even if it was sometimes overruled by their more anarchic impulses. But enough time has passed — a full two decades since game-changing debut Enter the Wu-Tang — that they've managed to make live perfectionism feel almost punk — instructional and justifiably haughty at the same time. These days, it's more surprising when all of the Clan members don't show up. — JEK
more »

Royal Thunder

Killer Mike

R.A.P. Music

Killer Mike
2012 | Williams Street Records

Killer Mike hasn't made a career habit of taking prisoners: Whether you're a Forbes list millionaire ("a whore's list," as far as he's concerned), a rapper like himself who is an "advertisement for agony and pain," or, god help you, Ronald Reagan ("I'll leave you with four words: I'm glad Reagan dead"), Mike has choice words for you. And the emphasis is on "choice": his bellowing, burly voice and big gut might... give the impression of someone heavy-footed and lumbering, but Mike can rap as nimbly as he does forcefully. Live, he will leave you feeling like the slab of meat in Rocky's freezer: tenderized, worked over. But in a good way. Also, if the gods are kind, his new confidante and best friend El-P will show up. — JG
more »

Tame Impala

Kacey Musgraves

Same Trailer Different Park

Kacey Musgraves
2013 | Mercury Nashville

Rising star Kacey Musgraves writes songs for folks who don't fit into the stereotypical right-leaning country-listening mold. In her biggest hit "Merry Go 'Round," she says it's OK to eschew small-town tradition by not being married with kids by 21, while "Follow Your Arrow" implores folks to "make lots of noise/ kiss lots of boys/ or kiss lots of girls, if that's something you're into." — LL

Mac DeMarco

2

Mac Demarco
2012 | Captured Tracks / SC Distribution

Mac DeMarco's grubby, Pigpen-Eagles version of yacht-pop might not prepare you for the full-blown, indie-rock-Andy-Kaufman hilarity of his live set; Mac is one of few humans on this planet who can make smirking assholery seem downright endearing and infectious. It helps that his bandmates are in on the fun, that they crack each other up, and that they play their often-shoddy instruments like gangbusters: in previous sets, I've seen them cover both... Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" and a Rammstein/Rob Zombie mash-up of "Du Hast Mich" and "Dragula." — JG
more »

Lucius

EP

Lucius
2013 | Mom & Pop Music / The Orchard

Lucius have only got an EP under their belts for now, but the group of folks dying to hear more from the Brooklyn outfit is growing quickly. They've got girl-group flare, strong harmonies, and a tight, polished band, fronted by vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig. And with the ladies' matching outfits, poufy updo's and soulful sass, their live shows are mesmerizing. — LL

Death Grips

The Money Store

Death Grips
2012 | Epic

It seemed for a moment like Death Grips was going to self-immolate almost as suddenly as they'd appeared. They cancelled a slew of live dates in the rush of adulation that followed their debut, they were dropped from their label after giving away its follow-up — which, incidentally, had a picture of a dick on the cover — for free, and force-of-nature drummer Zach Hill performed the group's SXSW set via Skype... (and apparently played his drum tracks on a laptop at this year's Sasquatch festival.) The thing is, though: They're still here, and MC Ride is still one of the most gripping and charismatic frontmen in hip-hop, delivering his verses with the ferocity of early hardcore. Every Death Grips show feels like a last gasp — all the more reason to see them while you still have the chance. — JEK
more »

Daniel Romano

Come Cry With Me

Daniel Romano
2013 | Normal Town Records

Singer/songwriter Daniel Romano hails from Canada but sounds like he's from America's Deep South as he writes old-school country ballads sung in a deep, Man-in-Black drawl. On his latest record, this year's aptly titled Come Cry With Me, there's a dirge about unrequited love, reflections on being a rejected middle child, and a rambling saga about getting a ride with a guy who calls himself Chicken Bill. — LL

White Lung

sorry

White Lung
2012 | Deranged Records / The Orchard

White Lung vocalist Mish Way is a human tornado, a blinding corkscrew of motion and sound ripping up the center of her songs like the Tasmanian Devil turned loose in the middle of a Safeway. It's the musical equivalent of being grabbed by the shoulders and throttled repeatedly. Which is a great thing. White Lung's second full-length Sorry inflicts more damage than a runaway rotary blade, and their live show is just... as devastating. It's a blast of fire and fury, an endless barrage of megaton cannonballs aimed directly at your throat. — JEK
more »

Garage Rock’s Next Generation: 10 Bands to Watch

Lenny Kaye — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:26:02 +0000

I’m at Psychfest in Austin, levitating around the fairgrounds, waiting for the Black Angels to come on between Roky Erikson of the 13th Floor Elevators and the long-awaited reunion of the Moving Sidewalks (featuring Billy Gibbons of Z.Z. Top), when someone asks me the what-if question: What if there was no album named Nuggets 40 years ago, in that interregnum before garage-rock had a name and place to park the guitar? I can only reply that its spirit is eternal and elemental, and I was lucky to ride its moment; but it’s hardly confined to the Then (good band name). Many are the new bands who renew themselves in Nuggets‘ wellspring, who sift and take the music into the present tense and often, though nodding to the psychic energies of what came before, propel it ever further into the next dimension. When spirit guide J. Edward Keyes asked me to test-drive the current hybrid vehicles, all new names on my horizon, without the GPS of where they come from or why, I got behind the wheel, opened the garage door and went for a spin.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Jacco Gardner
2013 | Trouble In Mind Records / TuneCore

Lithe and airy, this evokes West Coast psychedelia at its most pastoral, mingled with some of the whimsy of early Pink Floyd. Gardner's emphasis on gentle melody, harmonic confluence and invitation-to-waltz time ("Watching The Moon") makes for a pleasurable woodland romp that evokes a child-like sense of wonder. Acoustic guitars and keyboard textures that run the gamut from wheezy to mellotron add to the feel of fantasia.
Sonic Forefather: Sagittarius, Gentle Soul
Dreams in the Rat House

Shannon and the Clams
2013 | Hardly Art / Sub Pop Records

Splitting the difference between primitivo-snarl ("Bed Rock") and the doo-wop ("Ozma" and "Into A Dream"), Shannon and her Clams straddle the line between fore-and-aft '60s musical genres. The arrangements are tuneful, the guitar lines crisp ("In The River"), and Shannon's rough-hewn voice ("In The Rat House") adds an askew note to the band's bomp-and-stomp. Closing the album with a version of Del Shannon's "Runaway" seems a perfect historical marker.
Sonic Forefather: Goldie and... the Gingerbreads, Chocolate Watch Band
more »
Leaving Atlanta

Gentleman Jesse
2012 | Douchemaster / Revolver

With the jangle of hard-strummed electric guitars and an irresistible forward motion, Gentleman Jesse has as much Eddie and the Hot Rods and even the Jam in their gig bag as overt '60s references. "You Give Me Shivers" is straight ahead and pure of heart; "We Gotta Get Out Of Here" is a sing-a-long worthy of continuing long past the chorus fade. "Frostbite" has the most garage-rock overtones, but this is more... a matter of texture than direct reference. Songs like these feel timeless in any era.
Sonic Forefather: The Leaves, Standells
more »
More For The Masses

The People's Temple
2012 | Hozac / Revolver

Awash in reverb and mood enhancers, the People's Temple create an atmosphere truly "Texas Revisited," embracing trippy International Artists like the Red Krayola and Bubble Puppy, bone-shaking a tambourine ("Nevermore," "Looter's Game"), and mumbo-jumboing poetics (House of Fools"). Alternately soaring, dislocating, unsettling and uplifting, the album culminates in the phantasmagoria of "(Dark Dreams) Distant Memories," a hymn to the glories found in a millisecond's delay by way of Jane's Addiction. Pass the... Kool-Aid.
Sonic Forefather: 13th Floor Elevators
more »
Love Visions

Nobunny
2012 | Almost Ready Records / TuneCore

A cwazy wabbit plays wock 'n' woll. Opening with the familiar Human Beinz' riffage of "Nobunny Loves You," this wackoid group is in it for the wild card. Goofing on themselves as well as you, it's easy to overlook the songcraft and clever repartee in "I Am A Girlfriend," the Ramoniac "Tina Goes To Work," and the most perfect of shredding guitar solos in "I Know, I Know." Counting backwards... from '70s punk — as in "Somewhere New (The Yolks)" — ace cut honors are shared by "Boneyard," with its precision chopper chords, and the plaintive cry of "Mess Me Up."
Sonic Forefather: The Music Explosion, the Third Rail
more »
Peach Kelli Pop

Peach Kelli Pop
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

A winning combination of gal-group sassiness and chirping vocals, Peach Kelli Pop's shake-it-up shimmy couldn't be more infectious. It's as if the Angels of "My Boyfriend's Back" took up surfing ("True Blue") and then got dolled up for a night at the local punk emporium ("Red Leather") dancing to the Go-Go's. Garage more in spirit than specific homage, there is an unleashed joy in these tracks, the trinity of three rotating chords... and the way they infinitely fit together.
Sonic Foremother: The Kingsmen, Strawberry Alarm Clock
more »
4: Into Unknown

Human Eye
2013 | Goner / Revolver

As amplifiers got larger and garage got heavier as the '60s progressed, heralding the coming reign of '70s metal, the soundscape turned primordial, heading toward psychic overload. In tracks like "Faces In The Shadows" and "Gettin' Mean," Human Eye show no fear in the face of speakers crying for mercy and vocals strangulating ("Buzzin' Flies"). There is a moment that lulls you into thinking they might let up their audio assault in... "Surface of Pluto," but then a fuzz-wave kicks in and the stun returns in all its orbital glory. Turn up the sludge.
Sonic Forefather: Blue Cheer
more »
LP

Acid Baby Jesus
2011 | Slovenly Recordings / CD Baby

Big and brutal, the feedback sustains and pound-for-pounding percussion and distorto vocals signal that this is a group no stranger to audio hallucination. "Tyrannosaurus Rex" has a jurassic joy in breaking through its sedimentary layers, "Homo Sapiens" is positively Neanderthal, while even an "Old Fart" – to crib an ABJ song title -- like myself can appreciate the fountain of youth that their take on classic lysergic haze signifies. "Mesmerized" has a... dizzying revolve that is not far from Velvet Underground territory, while "Horse" quotes from the Brit Invasion before the inevitable rave-up.
Sonic Forefather: The Sonics
more »
Pagan Hiss

The Hussy
2013 | Southpaw / Revolver

Clattery and amphetamine-amped, this garage-on-speed ("Hate This Town," "Right Quick," "Far Removed") is similar to what transpired in the '70s when punk took its inspiration from the garage vernacular and hot-rodded it. The Hussy are a headlong rush, and "Woodland Creature," with its indelible guitar hook, shows they full well know to where they're hurtling. There are a couple of songs about mortality, "Dying" and "Dead To Me," but this band's sense... of resurrection shows that this music has afterlife to spare.
Sonic Forefather: Gonn, Amboy Dukes
more »
Radar Eyes

Radar Eyes
2012 | Hozac / Revolver

Brandishing a 12-string ("Miracle"), a thick Farfisa-esque underlay ("Disconnection"), and a melodic flair ("I Am"), Radar Eyes covers all the elements of what made the garage sound so universal, able to be taken in any direction. "Side of the Road" even moves into Suicide territory with its hypnotic synths and ominous vocal, while "Prairie Puppies" takes it even further with the feel of the Jesus and Mary Chain.
Sonic Forefather: Clefs of Lavender... Hill,Third Bardo
more »

15 Essential Box Sets

Douglas Wolk — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:48:36 +0000

Sometimes a simple sampling won’t do — you want to dive in deep and explore every last corner of an artist’s discography, or every forgotten single in a major musical movement. That’s what the box set is made for: It’s a mini-musical history lesson in one compact package. We asked Douglas Wolk to comb through our digital crates, and he emerged with 15 of the best. — eMusic Editorial Staff

The Chess Box

Etta James
2000 | Geffen

When Etta James came to Chess Records in 1960, she'd already had a couple of hit singles, but the music she recorded over the next decade and a half makes up the core of her legacy: torchy, sexy rhythm and blues with elegant arrangements that counterpoint the grit and burn of her voice. James was a fixture on black radio for most of the '60s, although her hits scarcely crossed over to... a pop audience until decades later. The '70s material surveyed on the third disc finds her reaching out to a rock and country repertoire — a trio of Randy Newman songs are exactly dark and bitter enough for her — and showing off a vocal mastery that had only deepened with time.
more »
What It Is! Funky Soul And Rare Grooves [1967-1977]

Various Artists
2006 | Rhino

Besides their artist-based compilations, Rhino Records has released a series of boxes that neatly define musical moments, and this is a thrilling one. What It Is! isn't a collection of R&B hits, as such, although it includes a handful of very big hits. It's a collection of grooves that still sound amazing 35-45 years after they were recorded — the sort of thing DJs spend their lives digging through bins to find.... Some of them are familiar from hip-hop samples; some are local bands' covers of national hits; some are major artists' minor marvels. And all of them are hard not to dance to.
more »
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band Live 1975-85 (Display Box)

Bruce Springsteen
2002 | Columbia

At a moment when live albums had become the province of bands trying to fill out their contracts in a hurry, Springsteen set a high-water mark for them with this five-LP set. It's an epic retrospective of one of the great American rock bands in its element, scattered with original songs and covers that the Boss had never recorded before. If Springsteen's specialty as a songwriter is turning working-class experience into mythology,... his specialty as a performer is projecting intimate storytelling to a stadium, and Live/1975-85 tells a story too: the rise of the E Street Band's presence over the course of a decade, from a 500-seat club to the L.A. Coliseum.
more »
Biograph

Bob Dylan
1997 | Columbia

As brilliant and perverse as Dylan's best records, Biograph ditches every pre-existing judgment about the first 20 years of his recorded career, reaches into his songbag to grab fistfuls of hits and album tracks and bootleg classics and then-unknown oddities, and re-assembles them according to their lyrical themes. Even the most familiar songs sound fresh again in the context of their neighbors; the slightest throwaways suddenly reveal their aspects of grace. It's... an argument for understanding Dylan's whole body of work as a unit, and a riveting assessment of his obsessions and ingenious, mercurial songwriting.
more »
Fire In My Bones : Raw + Rare + Otherworldly African-American Gospel, 1944-2007

Various Artists
Tompkins Square

Assembled by gospel expert (and eMusic contributor) Mike McGonigal, Fire In My Bones documents an entire world of music that had become lost to time: the post-war black gospel records that mostly came out on tiny independent labels and were sold strictly to the faithful. The sound of African American sacred music, it turns out, intersects with secular pop of many kinds, from blues to funk to country and beyond; even... more than that, though, it's got its own immensely powerful traditions of singing and playing, and a lot of these songs sound like nothing else, even the canonical gospel classics of the '50s and '60s. The box's subtitle is right on about how raw these recordings are, but there's something extraordinary about every one of them.
more »
Star Time

James Brown
2009 | Polydor

The greatest rhythmic innovator of the 20th century had a career that's almost impossible to summarize — there wouldn't be enough room to include all his hits if this box were twice as long — but Star Time is the definitive portrait of his best work, from his scalding 1956 debut "Please, Please, Please" to his 1984 salute to the hip-hop world that idolized him, "Unity." It traces the evolution of Brown's... genius, pulling together the strands that went into his invention of funk, displaying the creative process behind a few of his biggest hits, and letting his deepest late '60s and early '70s jams stretch out to their full length.
more »
Hot Fives And Sevens

Louis Armstrong
2001 | JSP Records / The Orchard

Jazz as we know it starts here, not with a history lesson but with a celebration. Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven were studio bands with shifting membership; between 1925 and 1928, they recorded a pile of tracks that were built around Armstrong's improvisational genius, refining New Orleans-style jazz into thrilling three-minute inventions. Armstrong plays trumpet and cornet, and occasionally unleashes his candy-gravel voice — "Heebie Jeebies" might be the first... recorded example of scat singing. This box is filled out by 1928-30 recordings that built on the success of the Hot Fives and Sevens and are just about as much fun.
more »
With The Lights Out - Box Set

Nirvana
2011 | Geffen

For most bands who only recorded three studio albums, a three-disc retrospective of demos, covers and outtakes would be excessive. For this one, it's revelatory. With the Lights Out traces Nirvana's blazing path from ravenous punks covering Led Zep at their first show to really loud Leadbelly fans boggling at their sudden success to their final months as tense, jittery rock heroes grappling with more raw power than they knew what to... do with. All that power, as it turns out, meant that even their throwaways and unfinished sketches pretty much blow the walls down. If this set were the only recorded evidence that Nirvana had existed, they'd still be an important band — although maybe just the cult act they kind of wanted to be.
more »
Honky Tonk Girl: The Loretta Lynn Collection

Loretta Lynn
1994 | Geffen

She's not kidding about the title: The First Lady of Country Music has stuck so closely to the honky-tonk musical template that 62 of these 70 tracks, spanning 1960-88, are under three minutes long. (The first time she crosses the 180-second barrier is halfway through the box: 1970's epochal, autobiographical "Coal Miner's Daughter.") Even so, she's also one of country's great innovators, on the strength of the sharp, funny, overtly feminist lyrics... in her own songs and the songs she's covered. Pretty much all of Lynn's substantial solo hits are here, as well as a handful of her duets with Ernest Tubb and Conway Twitty.
more »
Def Jam Music Group Tenth Year Anniversary Box Set

Various Artists
1995 | Def Jam/RAL

Def Jam was to the late '80s what Motown was to the mid '60s: the label that turned the cutting edge of black pop into the sound of young America. This box came out when Def Jam was 12 years old or so, its sequencing's not quite chronological, and the Anthrax/Public Enemy remake of "Bring the Noise" is the only sign that Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons's label ever reached out beyond... hip-hop and R&B. And so what? For hip-hop heads, this stuff is holy writ, the document of an era when every rapper had a chance to reinvent the music with every single. For everyone else, it's a four-hour party.
more »
The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings

John Coltrane
1997 | Impulse! Records

This four-disc monument might be the most narrowly focused of great boxed sets — recorded over the course of four nights in early November, 1961, just as Coltrane entered a period of incredible creative fertility. He was experimenting with the sound of his group (the core quartet is supplemented with appearances by wild-card Eric Dolphy and a handful of other musicians); "Chasin' the Trane" has only the hint of a theme, and... the exquisite ballad "Naima" gets its melody turned inside out. Producer Bob Thiele's recordings of these shows were excerpted for an album and a half in the '60s, but every track here displays Coltrane and company pushing at the boundaries of what jazz could be.
more »
Hitsville USA, The Motown Collection 1972-1992

Various Artists
2013 | Motown

Motown's '60s hits may be the Boomer classics, but after Berry Gordy relocated the great Detroit pop-soul label to Los Angeles, it stayed as musically adventurous as ever, and rode the next few decades' R&B waves with aplomb. Artists like Stevie Wonder and the Temptations stayed with Motown for decades and got the latitude to branch out and take risks; Marvin Gaye, the Commodores and Diana Ross recast disco in their own... personal forms. And the label had a particular gift for identifying gifted artists at a very young age, from Michael Jackson to DeBarge and Teena Marie. The '90s hits by Shanice and Boyz II Men that close this set are just a newer version of Motown doing what it had always done: figuring out how to frame the sound of the urban underground to give it a much wider audience.
more »
The Legend

Johnny Cash
2005 | Columbia/Legacy

Spanning nearly 50 years, this overview of a singer who was more or less a one-man genre gets the hits out of the way in a hurry: the first disc is a boom-chicka-boom stampede through pretty much all of his best-remembered songs through the '70s. Disc 2 is more of the Cash cognoscenti's favorites, going from his early rockabilly wonders to later songs that were written for him (or might as well... have been) by songwriters like Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello, who looked to him as an ancestor. The final two discs are the really clever reframings of Cash's immense canon: a set of the traditional songs and country standards that were the spine of his repertoire, and a collection of the playful duets and collaborations that were this solitary man in black's hidden specialty.
more »

Names Without a Face: Our Favorite Anonymous Musicians

Arye Dworken — Tue, 21 May 2013 12:23:29 +0000

In a year when three of the most talked-about releases were made by musicians who are notoriously camera shy, it stands to reason that the easiest path to overexposure is stubborn anonymity. Electronic legends Daft Punk, avant-pop duo the Knife and newcomer metal band Ghost B.C. all have anticipated releases to promote, yet all of them refuse to appear unmasked in public. They each have their reasons — be it shyness, myth-making or deliberate detachment from celebrity-obsessed culture — and around them debate rages over whether the whole maneuver is a cleverly-conceived art piece or just a cheap gimmick. But the truth is that these three are just the latest in a long line of masked and anonymous hitmakers who found great success by staying hidden.

Daft Punk

Random Access Memories

Daft Punk
2013 | Columbia

Real names: Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, Thomas Bangalter
Backstory:: Even though, in retrospect, the futuristic android aesthetic seems inseparable from the Daft Punk identity, it was actually only upon the release of the duo's second album, Discovery, that they became "the Robots." Before that, Homem-Christo and Bangalter wore a variety of analog masks because, as they told reporters, they were shy.
Success level:: The Parisian electro-funksters have achieved the impossible, maintaining relevance so adroitly throughout... their 20-year career that everyone from Kanye to Disney to Saint Lauren wants to be associated with them.
more »

Ghost B.C.

Infestissumam

Ghost B.C.
2013 | Seven Four Entertainment / Republic

Real names: The frontman identifies as Papa Emeritus II, and his backing band is simply known as a Group of Nameless Ghouls.
Backstory:: Not much is known about the origin of the Swedish metal band, aside from the fact that Emeritus's supporting quintet represents the five elements: water, fire, wind, earth and ether. One Nameless Ghoul, however, admitted during an interview that the decision to maintain anonymity was simply inspired by the desire... to live day-to-day as regular people, and not as "rock stars."
Success level:: So far, no one knows who the Ghouls are or what they look like, but after some Internet sleuthing, Ghost B.C.'s frontman has been identified as Tobias Forge, a Swedish musician who's played in the bands Subvision and Repugnant. On stage, Forge transforms into Papa Emeritus — which is really all that matters.
more »

The Knife

Shaking the Habitual

The Knife
2013 | Mute US Corporation

Real names: Sister and brother Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer
Backstory:: According to the duo's official bio, "We feel like that if we had been there with our plain faces that would destroy the illusion of music. So we tried to dress up as the music. Occult and dark but at the same time, funny." While the Knife was known for wearing black Venetian carnival masks with long bird beaks, recently they... asked young children to represent them in photo shoots wearing masks the duo produced based on portraits of themselves from 2003.
Success level:: The Knife netted considerable critical acclaim with its sophomore release Silent Shout, which landed near the top of multiple 2007 year-end lists. Its current provocation/art piece Shaking the Habitual is already outpacing its predecessor in effusive hosannas.
more »

SBTRKT

Step In Shadows - EP

SBTRKT
2010 | Young Turks / AWAL

Real name: Aaron Jerome
Backstory:: The London DJ who has remixed Radiohead and M.I.A. hides behind tribal masks because, as he believes, wearing a mask during a celebration evokes the spirit of an ancestor or animal. Or it could just be, as he told Clash magazine, he just isn't very social.
Success level:: With only one critically-acclaimed album under his belt, and despite a coveted Drake endorsement, it's still too early to tell... if Jerome is conjuring up the kind of ancestors who can shepherd him to a successful career.
more »

The Residents

The Residents - Fingerprince (Tourniquet Of Roses)

The Residents
2012 | CRYPTIC CORP / MVD Entertainment Group

Real names: Admirably unknown. The art-rock collective has existed in anonymity for more than 40 years.
Backstory:: With more than 60 albums to their name, the Residents have retained the mystery by performing in giant eyeball helmets and by refusing to participate in interviews (although its management team known as Cryptic Corporation speaks on the Residents' behalf). Why eyeballs? That's just one of the many mysteries surrounding this avant-garde rock collective.
Success level::... Maintaining cult fandom for nearly half a century is no small feat. And, as if to offer proof of its rabid following, the band recently offered an "Ultimate Box Set," which included a first pressing of its complete catalog along with rarities like an eyeball mask all stored in a functioning refrigerator for $100,000. There are only 10 in existence yet — shockingly — it's unknown whether even a single one was sold.
more »

Deadmau5

MF Doom

OPERATION: DOOMSDAY (Complete)

MF DOOM
2011 | Metalface Records / Now Again Records

Real name: Daniel Dumile
Backstory:: According to graffiti artist Blake "KEO" Lethem, in the early days Dumile wore a Darth Maul mask which Lethem painted aluminum, cut out square eyes and made room for a rapper's mouth to flow with ease. Eventually, the pair bought a replica gladiator helmet and removed the faceplate. The influential rapper sought anonymity so he could walk freely, even in a venue he would later that night perform... in, without being recognized. Although, as recent as two years back, the mask inspired controversy, as many suspected that the Doom on stage for some live performances was not Dumile himself, but an imposter lip-syncing to a recording.
Success level:: Nike devoted a pair of Dunks to him, and Kid Robot made an MF Doom vinyl collectible. Both fetch some pretty impressive numbers on the resale market, indicating the fanbase is there, and it is rabid.
more »

Xasthur

Nightmares At Dawn

Xasthur
2012 | Metalhit.com / The Orchard

Real name: The now-defunct black metal act revolved around core member Scott Conner, who went by the pseudonym Malefic.
Backstory:: Malefic wore black-and-white corpse paint with a hooded Grim Reaper cowl, which he said is intended as "an expression of hatred, death or a transformation into another spirit." The black-metal musician also didn't perform live, nor did he conduct interviews in person, so it's no surprise that demand was so high for rabid... fans to see his true appearance — so much so that a YouTube video which repurposes still photos from a magazine shoot with self-titled magazine currently has 22,000 views.
Success level:: An avant-garde black metal band that has never toured will have a limited audience, but that audience was passionate and devoted.
more »

The Locust

You'll Be Safe Forever

The Locust
2013 | Editions Mego / Kudos Records Limited

Real names: Justin Pearson, Gabe Serbian, Bobby Bray, Joey Karam
Backstory:: It's only appropriate that a band attributed with creating the genre known as "powerviolence" wear insect costumes complete with netted eyes, featureless masks and uniforms that aren't distinct from one another.
Success level:: In a recent interview, Pearson said, "I tend to not give a shit about where marketable culture is heading. Maybe I should, but I'll leave that to the fools.... Anyone can polish a turd and sell it to the masses if you have the conglomerates backing you." However, it should also be noted that Dave Lombardo of Slayer is a fan — which in most quarters qualifies as a success.
more »

Sally Shapiro

Somewhere Else

Sally Shapiro
2013 | Paper Bag Records / The Orchard

Real names: Johan Agebjörn is the producer behind the Italian disco revivalist duo called Sally Shapiro, yet the woman who also performs vocals as "Sally Shapiro" has yet to reveal her real name.
Backstory:: It's a strange thing to cooperate with the press by doing photo shoots and interviews, and all the while withholding any or all personal information. But, the blonde Swedish vocalist suffers from shyness so crippling it prevents her from... even considering touring. Oh, and in case you think this is just a gimmick: Agebjörn himself is banned from the studio whenever "Shapiro" records her vocals. When asked about this in an interview with Vice magazine, she said, "It's a character. I enhance certain aspects of my personality and leave a lot behind. As Sally Shapiro, I dance all night long in small disco clubs and walk in the moonshine thinking about my love affairs. As myself I'm also free to do other stuff." Such as…?
Success level:: It's an incredible thing — perhaps this is one instance in which I admire the Internet for its restraint — but no matter how many times Shapiro insists on anonymity, no one from a little village in Sweden says, "Oh yeah. That girl. I went to high school with her. Her name is…"
more »

10 Iconic Album Covers and the Imitators They Inspired

Michael Tedder — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:06:17 +0000

Inscrutable and defiant, the cover image of David Bowie’s 12th album “Heroes” is one of the most iconic images in all of rock ‘n’ roll. So you can hardly blame Bowie for thinking it was too good to only be used once. The cover of his latest album, The Next Day, is a direct homage to one of the most cherished albums in his lengthy discography. But while Bowie is an innovator in many fields, in this instance he’s actually part of a long tradition of artists using their album art to nod to the past.

Before the Clash, Ween and the X-Ecutioners became restless, boundary-pushing artists, they were devoted music fans. That spirit never left them, and they used the covers of some of their most beloved albums to pay tribute to those that inspired them to keep pushing forward. In an effort to pay tribute to other people’s tributes, we’ve gathered together 10 of our favorite album cover homages. As these picks prove, everyone gets inspired by someone else, but what matters most is where you take it next.

David Bowie and David Bowie

From Joni Mitchell to David Lynch to TV on the Radio, David Bowie has always been a vocal fan of the artists that excite him, and he’s nearly always shown great taste. So it makes sense that David Bowie would be a big David Bowie fan — because what right-thinking person isn’t? On The Next Day, Bowie and his trusted producer Tony Visconti revisit some of the sounds and lyrical themes from his most classic albums (single “Where Are We Now” even checks back in on Berlin), but always keeps an eye toward the future. As such, the cover of The Next Day makes sense: It acknowledges the past, but makes it clear that Bowie has no interest in staying there.

"Heroes"

David Bowie
1999 | VIRGIN
The Next Day

David Bowie
2013 | Iso/Columbia

Elvis Presley and The Clash

The Clash famously sang “No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones” on their single “1977,” but don’t believe a word of it. One listen to their magnum opus London Calling reveals that Joe Strummer and co. had an encyclopedic knowledge of rock ‘n’ roll, rocksteady reggae and R&B. Just to prove these guys knew their roots, the cover of London is a spot-on reference to Elvis Presley’s self-titled debut album. The font and color scheme is the same, with a picture of bassist Paul Simonon wrecking his guitar subbed in for Presley playing his. It’s often read as an announcement that The Clash had officially arrived to tear down the past, but perhaps it was just a way for rock’s then newest vanguards to show sly respect to the king they knew they were replacing.

Simon & Garfunkel and Kruder & Dorfmeister

Austrian downtempo duo Kruder & Dorfmeister released this EP in 1993, well before Francis McDormand’s character in Almost Famous called Simon & Garfunkel “the poetry of drugs and promiscuous sex.” But they had likely already heard the rumors about how the New York folkies stayed so mellow and introspective. Their debut EP G-Stoned paid tribute to a previous generation’s chill-out soundtrack, while demonstrating the perennial ability of the black turtleneck to make anyone look sophisticated and intellectual.

G-Stoned

Kruder & Dorfmeister
1994 | EP/SINGLE

Lifetime and The Ergs

New Jersey jokers The Ergs named their first album Dorkrockcorkrod and never let you forget that they were three obsessed music geeks, as quick to praise (lest you get it twisted, The Ben Kweller EP was truly a labor of love) as they were to condemn (all time greatest Ergs song title: “Johnny Rzeznik Needs His Ass Kicked”). Their 2005 EP Jersey’s Best Prancers paid tribute to Garden State Punk O.G.’s Lifetime’s seminal Jersey’s Best Dancers, an album best known for the scene anthem “Theme Song for a New Brunswick Basement Show.” Sure, The Ergs actually repped nearby South Amboy, but the sentiment crossed county lines.

Jersey's Best Dancers

Lifetime
Jade Tree
Jersey's Best Prancers

The Ergs
Don Giovanni Records

Andrew Hill and Atmosphere

Atmosphere is best known for MC Slug’s tales of bad love and hard luck, but producer/DJ Anthony “Ant” Davis has always demonstrated a keen ear for 1960′s soul, pop and jazz samples. Though Atmosphere’s debut album has bits of Bee Gees and Stevie Wonder in the mix, the album cover pays tribute to Andrew Hill’s 1964 bop classic Judgment. Perhaps Ant already had it in his collection (the man knows a good horn riff when he hears it), or perhaps Slug could relate to the title.

Judgment (Rudy Van Gelder Edition)

Andrew Hill
2005 | BLUE NOTE
Overcast!

Atmosphere
2007 | Rhymesayers

Leonard Cohen and Ween

During their long, glorious existence, Ween were simultaneously the most irreverent and respectful group of music aficionados around. Sure, they might write a Jimmy Buffet pisstake called “Bananas and Blow,” but they still cared enough to totally nail the steel drum. The duo’s second album The Pod is perhaps the “brownest” album in their catalog, so dank and weird that it still gives a contact high two decades later. For reasons known only to The Boognish, these weirdos decided that this was the best possible moment to pay tribute to The Best Of Leonard Cohen, with the cover picture of Canada’s Greatest Poet swapped out for a shot of bassist Mean Ween enjoying some of Home Depot’s Finest. Hey, perhaps the authors of “She Fucks Me” wanted to make sure we knew that they knew that Leonard Cohen is some of the best getting-laid music around.

The Best Of Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen
1988 | Columbia
The Pod

Ween
2010 | New Rounder

Public Enemy and The X-Ecutioners

Sure, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back gets all the attention, but Public Enemy’s debut Yo! Bum Rush the Show introduced the world to the prowess of DJ Terminator X and producer Hank Shocklee. This album finished the argument that Run-D.M.C. started, re: the ability of two turntables relative to the ability to rock a crowd. A nation of DJs owe this album an eternal debt, and New York scratch collective The X-Ecutioners paid tribute with the cover of their 2002 breakthrough Built From Scratch, which shoved turntabilism in to the mainstream for a few minutes via the Linkin Park collaboration “It’s Goin’ Down.”

Yo! Bum Rush The Show

Public Enemy
1995 | Def Jam/RAL
Built From Scratch

The X-ecutioners
2002 | LOUD Records

Michael Jackson and Tech N9ne

Michael Jackson is arguably the most popular musician who ever lived, and Thriller is his world-conquering masterpiece. Tech N9ne, for his part, is really, really popular in Kansas City. Killer is another fine entry in a discography devoted to helping Midwestern rap fans blow off some steam and ruin their speakers. As the straitjacket cover and song titles like “Get The F**k Outta Here,” make clear, Tech isn’t really interested in making a four-quadrant audience pleaser in the mold of Thriller, though even MJ could get down with the message of “Hope For A Higher Power.” Though he probably would have preferred it came with less gunshot samples.

Thriller

Michael Jackson
2007 | Epic
Killer

Tech N9ne
Strange Music

2 Live Crew and Spank Rock & Benny Blanco

Miami booty-bass mob 2 Live Crew were called all kinds of things during the run as lords of the low rider in the late ’80s — usually various synonyms for “juvenile” and “gross.” One thing they were hardly ever called was “inspiring,” but Luke Skywalker’s ass anthems must have touched the – let’s say “hearts” — of young Virginia smart alecks Spank Rock & Benny Blanco. The music often gets as cheeky as the cover, with tracks like “B-O-O-T-A-Y” serving double duty as paeans to both derrieres and sticky nostalgia for misspent youth.

Kiss and The Melvins

Before King Buzzo and company became the most pitiless riff monsters to ever emerge from the Northeast, The Melvins were just a bunch of teenage arena rock fans. And during the height of 1990′s cred-auditing, the group went out of their way to display their good standing in the Kiss Army by patterning a series of three Eps after Kiss’ infamous four solo album deluge. Gene Simmons recruited guests like Cher, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and even a pre-fame Katy Segal for his opus, while Buzzo got his friend Dave Grohl, then at the height of Nirvanamania, to take care of the drum skins. Because the early ’90s were unfathomably strange, a year later The Melvins, whom often strived to sound like a black hole swallowing a whale, signed to a major label, toured arenas with Nine Inch Nails and even got Simmons to jam with them onstage.

Gene Simmons

Gene Simmons
1997 | Island Def Jam
King Buzzo

Melvins
EP/SINGLE

eMusic’s Alternate-Universe Eurovision

Laura Studarus — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:04:55 +0000

The Eurovision Song Contest was established as way to bring European countries together after World War II. The first competition was held in the town of Lugano, Switzerland, on May 24, 1956. Since then, it’s become a sprawling behemoth that makes American Idol, The Voice and X-Factor look downright quaint. The first year, seven countries entered. Now in its 58th year, 39 countries are competing for the top prize.

To participate, musicians must submit an original, unpublished song. Since residents of their home country can’t vote for them, the goal is to woo an international audience. As a result, language, content and staging is all up for interpretation. Read: This is a contest of big, bigger biggest.

eMusic’s Laura Studarus complied a fantasy Eurovision Song Contest lineup. How would artists and songs stack up against each other if the laws of time, space, and competition were suspended in favor of good taste and outstanding musicality?

Denmark: Mew

Mew And The Glass Handed Kites

Mew
2012 | Columbia

Song submitted: "Zookeeper's Boy"
Odds of winning: 4:1

Mew may be the most likely to catch viewers off-guard with their sneaky combination of ethereal hooks and grinding guitars. "Zookeeper's Boy," from the band's 2005 album And the Glass handed Kites, mixes prog with just the right amount of whimsy, making it perfect for mass consumption. (Sample lyric: "If there's a glitch, you're an ostrich.") Add to that the band's propensity for Edward Gorey-style visuals... and frontman Jonas Bjerre's doe-eyed charisma, and right out of the gate you've got a band to beat.
more »

England: Chad Valley

Young Hunger

Chad Valley
2012 | Cascine / Redeye

Song submitted: "Fall 4 U (feat. Glasser)"
Odds of winning: 20:1

For his debut full-length Young Hunger, producer Hugo Manuel (aka Chad Valley) brought quite a collection of friends with him, including Twin Shadow, El Perro Del Mar, Active Child and Glasser. And what does a gathering of pals plus music equal? A party. Which is completely in line with Eurovision's reconciliatory nature. While any song on the album could be a competition-worthy single,... Manuel will bring along Glasser to perform restrained electro love duet, "Fall 4 U." Will top awards to go the ghost of 1980s film soundtracks past? With a coupling this chemistry-heavy, it's not impossible.
more »

Estonia: Maria Minerva

Will Happiness Find Me?

Maria Minerva
2012 | Not Not Fun / Revolver

Song submitted: "Sweet Synergy"
Odds of winning: 600:1

Estonian sound-collage artist Maria Minerva isn't your standard Eurovision song competitor. But if Belgium can enter Telex — a band whose idea of a chorus is chanting "Eurovision Eurovision Eurovision" — surely there's a room to think outside of the box. Minerva's debut album Will Happiness Find Me? is a series of atonal experiments, woozy minimal disco, and cascades of samples. Underneath it all beats a... spooky, fractured-pop heart. Let's be honest: Minerva's chances of winning are slim. But she won't go down without a fight.
more »

France: Daft Punk

Get Lucky

Daft Punk
2013 | EP/SINGLE

Song submitted: "Get Lucky"
Odds of winning: even

There's a subgenre in music known as "schlager." In German, it means "a hit." But loosely translated in Eurovision Song Contest speak it means, "A pop song with a hint of cheese you gladly overlook because it's so damn catchy." No song in this year's fantasy field comes close to Daft Punk's recently-released single "Get Lucky." The helmeted Frenchmen have combined 1970s disco funk, handclaps, Pharrell... glitter-glam vocals, and just a whiff of vocoder to create the kind of tune you can imagine kids little kids getting down to and adults, er, "getting down" to. You might want to start engraving the winner's trophy now.
more »

Italy: Porcelain Raft

Strange Weekend

Porcelain Raft
2012 | Secretly Canadian / SC Dist.

Song submitted: "Unless You Speak From Your Heart"
Odds of winning: 100:1

Eurovision is Porcelain Raft's (Mauro Remiddi) chance to show the world that he's about more than hazy pop choruses constructed from drum loops, gently strummed guitars, whispered vocals, and tape hiss. Strange Weekend single "Unless You Speak From Your Heart" combines the dream pop hallmarks with a hip-hop beat, and crisp pace that splits the difference between Beach House atmospherics and Jam-style... posturing. Bedroom recording wimp? Hardly. Here's hoping the one-man-band brings a few friends to help him fill the big stage.
more »

Norway: Sondre Lerche

Two Way Monologue

Sondre Lerche
2004 | CAROLINE ASTRALWERKS - CAT

Song submitted: "Two Way Monologue"
Odds of winning: 7:1

A Norwegian scene stalwart, Sondre Lerche's eight albums have covered a lot of ground: from pop to garage rock to film scores to bossa nova. Which pretty much means Lerche can be anything we want him to be — including a Eurovision champion. Single "Two Way Monologue" (taken from the 2004 album of the same name) is his greatest chance to take home the title.... Striking a happy medium between singing and crooning, Lerche isn't just out to perform for the audience, but seduce them. And you know what? It just might work.
more »

Poland: KAMP!

Melt

Kamp
2013 | Discotexas / GoodToGo

Song submitted: "Melt"
Odds of winning: 70:1

Eastern Europe's answer to Friendly Fires, Polish dance trio KAMP! gravitate towards slick production, bouncy Balearic beats, and lush beds of electronics. It might be a hard sell, since generally the competition favors more straight up pop-driven fare. (Just don't tell the 2006 winner, Finnish death metal band Lordi, that.) But if anyone can sweep viewers up in their undeniable wave of ready-for-primetime dance club energy, it's... a band so vibrant they had to include an exclamation point in their name.
more »

Scotland: CHVRCHES

The Mother We Share

CHVRCHES
2012 | EP/SINGLE

Song submitted: "The Mother We Share"
Odds of winning: 16:1

Eurovision favors the over-the-top statement. Backup dancers, feathers, light shows — these are people who are likely to laugh at the suggestion that you merely "put a bird on it." No one's music lends itself to embellishment quite like electro-pop outfit, CHVRCHES. Like The Knife rendered in primary colors, the Scottish trio favor icy electronics and ambitious musical gestures. CHVRCHES lean towards the emotional... though, their tales of love and hate framed by frontwoman Lauren Mayberry's fairytale-worthy vocals. Sure they've been known to stand still when performing, but that just makes it easier to frame them with rings of fire and chorus girls.
more »

Spain: Devendra Banhart

Mala

Devendra Banhart
2013 | Nonesuch

Song submitted: "Mi Negrita"
Odds of winning: 150:1

Fun fact: There's no rule that an artist has to actually hail from the country they represent in Eurovision Song Contest. Which is why, in 1988, Céline Dion won on behalf of Switzerland — despite being Canadian. With multi-genre provocateur El Guincho in perpetual hiding, the nation will tap Spanish-influenced Devendra Banhart to fill in. The laid-back folkie may not have the razzle dazzle factor of... other acts, but Tropicália-accented balled "Mi Negrita" won't go completely unappreciated.
more »

Sweden: Jens Lekman

Night Falls Over Kortedala

Jens Lekman
Secretly Canadian / SC Dist.

Song submitted: "The World Moves On"
Odds of winning: 2:1

In 1974, ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with their rendition of "Waterloo," which went on to appear on the band's second album of the same name. Who better to carry on the tradition than Jens Lekman? The closing track of his 2007 album Night Falls Over Kortedala "Friday Night at the Drive in Bingo" contains the same simple syrup-laced pop that saw Benny... Andersson and the gang to victory — right down to a horn-filled chorus and nostalgic location name-checking. Bonus: Lekman squeezes in an offhanded mention of rabbit sex. Let's see the dancing queens try to do that.
more »

Joe Lovano’s Top Six Saxophonists

Ken Micallef — Fri, 03 May 2013 17:34:35 +0000

Joe Lovano’s output is voluminous and encompasses an array of jazz styles. He blew an immaculate, straight-ahead tenor saxophone on 52nd Street Themes, honored Charlie Parker on Bird Songs and revisited the ’50s-era school of cool on Streams of Expression. And then there’s his blustery, innovative work as a member of the Paul Motian Trio with the late, master drummer and guitarist Bill Frisell. Throughout, Lovano’s tenor is as flexible as the material he pursues, a burly, angular, shimmering, even romantic instrument that’s grounded in jazz but is ultimately not chained to it.

Perhaps more than with his other groups, Us Five gives Lovano a lab in which to try out new ideas, new configurations, and new sounds. The group’s latest release, Cross Currents (Blue Note), takes the group forward while Lovano looks back. Over the course of its running time, Lovano plays an assortment of horns and percussion, from Hungarian tarogato and Belgian aulochrome to Nigerian log drum and gongs; the group group includes Grammy Award winning bassist Esperanza Spalding and drummers Otis Brown III and Francisco Mela. This amalgam of unusual instruments, and the group’s dual drummer configuration, recalls the boundary-stretching ’60s recordings of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman.

“Some of the instruments I play on the album I have collected through the years,” Lovano says. “They’re ancient sounds, they go back in time in the history of the world of music, from Asia, North Africa, Nigeria. These sounds feel like the earth, like having it come from your soul. It’s not just a technical thing. When you vibrate on the tonalities of these instruments and don’t try to play any specific kind of music, you feel the soul of the music in a different kind of way.”

A similar philosophy extends to the makeup of Lovano’s group. “To have a quintet with double drummers, a lot of points of reference can happen,” he says. “Anything can happen if everyone is paying attention and sharing a space together. That’s the idea. The double drummer configuration was inspired by Art Blakey, Max Roach, Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell with Ornette, and Rashid Ali and Elvin Jones with Coltrane.”

As the masters have influenced Lovano, he has in turn influenced the new guard of younger jazz musicians.

“I realize what a deep relationship I have with all of these cats.” Lovano says. “It’s a beautiful scene today. As a musician, for a long time you’re in people’s audiences. Then all of a sudden, they’re in your audience. I was in Joe Henderson’s audience a lot,” he continues. “And the audiences of Dexter Gordon, George Coleman and Clifford Jordan. Once when I was playing the Berkhausen festival in Germany, Dexter was in the audience. That night I somehow held my notes just a little longer. I got up the next morning and Dexter was just coming in and we hung in the hotel lobby. I got the chills. That happens for all of us and it’s happening for these cats now. It’s a continuum. That’s how these things are handed down: in real time.”

eMusic’s Ken Micallef asked Lovano to listen and comment on new recordings from his favorite current saxophonists.

Novela - arr. by Kris Davis

Tony Malaby
2011 | Clean Feed / The Orchard

Tony has a very hip, contemporary approach. He's a New York cat, playing in a lot of ensembles exploring different ways of playing. He reminds me of when I first came into town in the '70s and early '80s and the different loft situations I was involved with, which really carried me into today. He is experiencing a lot of stuff in those directions. And also he's had a chance to play... with Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, which I joined in 1986. And he's been experiencing playing Carla Bley's great music, and he is putting together ideas and assembling his personal history. All of these cats are doing that. Novela is really reminiscent of Liberation Orchestra: the energy, the way he feels the music from within the ensemble and steps forward within it. Tony plays with a beautiful organic approach. To improvise and create music within the music is where I want to live.
more »
Gamak

Rudresh Mahanthappa
2013 | ACT Music + Vision / The Orchard

Rudresh really is developing a way of playing [that's drawn] from his roots and his personal explorations and the people he has been with. His sound on the instrument has a vocal quality that is really beautiful. I've known him since we met at the Gunther Schuller workshop in the early '90s. Then, he was coming from a certain alto approach influenced by Steve Coleman and cats from Chicago like Bunky Green.... On this recording, a lot of stuff is coming together for him: his lines, his story. He's got multi-dimensional roots. Some cats have deep roots, some have shallow roots, some have no roots. You can hear it in every phrase they play. The way you can make records today, there are no Bruce Lundvalls or Michael Cuscunas, it's easy to make your own CD now. It's good in one way. But in another way it stamps you if you're not ready. Maybe you only have 15 minutes in you and you have to record 70. That makes the listener want to hit the fast forward button instead of the repeat button. Not that these recordings were like that. But Rudresh is playing from very deep roots.
more »
Casting For Gravity

Donny McCaslin
2012 | eOne Music / Entertainment One Distribution

I heard Donny with Gary Burton when he first played in New York years ago in the '90s. He immediately impresses you, because he is very serious on his horn. He has more of a straight-eights feeling, an up-and-down approach in his rhythm that puts you in a certain direction. But he can play, man. The band on this record is strong and it's well-rehearsed and the execution is amazing. I think... they achieved their goal of trying to play perfect. It has that polished feeling to it. Donny is an incredible saxophonist, though this recording left me a little cold. It's about playing the layers, and I'm not sure if they played as a band or with a performance attitude in the studio as opposed to laying tracks. But everybody played their part incredible, like they were following a score, like it was already laid down on a computer. That is a way of recording, and that has its challenge. But it's not about interpretation as much as trying to play with perfection.
more »
The Sirens

Chris Potter
2013 | ECM

Chris has a lot of ideas. He plays beautiful bass clarinet and a number of horns. I've heard him through the years tackle a lot of different avenues and ways of playing with cats. He has a real special maturity all his own. He plays with a lot of trust and he really explores his dynamics within the music. He has beautiful rhythm and flowing ideas. The tunes on this recording have... a soulful expressive feeling to them. I first heard Chris playing with Red Rodney and he was playing alto. He didn't really start on tenor until he began playing with Paul Motian. He's real versatile and he has a strong presence in his tone and articulation and he can fit in a lot of settings because he's very free rhythmically on his horn. That's why you hear him with everyone from Steely Dan to Pat Metheny. He is definitely a disciple of Michael Brecker in a certain way, and he's gone in a direction that has led to those gigs. When Joshua Redman and Chris Potter and Eric Alexander played the 1991 Thelonious Monk competition, Alexander came in second. Eric was one of my students. Eric has great jazz roots in his playing, his study of Sonny Stitt and George Coleman, they taught him how to play. When I taught Eric at William Patterson College, he played a Sonny Stiff solo right off the bat. A lot is coming together for him now. He can play and he knows a lot of music. He's involved in the rich history of the music more than the others actually. Eric has a deep repertoire of his own. That's the depth of your soul and roots in the music, and Eric has a deep repertoire.
more »
Triumph of the Heavy, Vol. 1

Marcus Strickland
2011 | Strick Muzik / TuneCore

I've known Marcus for a while, he's got a real nice feeling. He plays relaxed and clear. He really needs to experience playing in a lot of situations. I've heard him with Roy Haynes's groups. But to put out a double CD like this, that's challenging and ambitious. I give him a lot of credit. He's playing tenor and alto and soprano and he's searching and discovering things all the time. He's... developing a sound of his own on those different horns. Beautiful. The people he's playing with on the record, they're like a family and you can really hear that comfort and flow; it's beautiful.
more »
Year Of The Snake

Fly Trio
2012 | ECM

Fly is a beautiful trio, they play with a wonderful clarity. And Mark plays with a brilliant execution on his horn. But he plays with more of a classical feeling in nature on the horn. He has a beautiful sound and there are soulful moments that appear, but his approach on the instrument is really a classical approach in a way. I mean his rhythm and execution, the way he plays up... and down the horn. He plays with an amazing range on his instrument. That trio has a classical approach in the way the music is written and the way they come off it in the rhythm and in the attitude they're playing. They're improvising but their dialogue is more classical in nature, the way it feels. They have soulful moments, but what is swing? That's expression, the waves, the life forms, the wind. Fly sounds lovely and beautiful and their music has a real presence, it captures you.
more »

Blood on the Dancefloor: 12 Essential Avant-Dance Albums

Andrew Parks — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:09:20 +0000

“I don’t think of music as cathartic or a release,” Dominick Fernow once told me in a cover story about his former band Cold Cave. “A release implies that something is leaving you. It’s not that so much as a transformation.”

Whether he’s whipping up whirlpools of noise as Prurient or delving into the darkest corners of dance music as Vatican Shadow, Fernow has always followed that path — music as a purification process, only instead of the poison being drawn out of his productions, it’s harnessed in the form of distorted tape decks, chain-linked synths and rust-encrusted samples.

He’s not alone either; while house producers have been revisiting their rave cave roots as of late, underground techno has turned 50 shades of grey. Literally and figuratively, as melodies get maimed, tempos get turned on, and rhythms embrace the very notion of electronic body music.

In the following guide, eMusic breaks down 12 essential avant-dance albums that will flood your endorphin levels (or plunge you into a pit of despair) faster than a midnight screening of Spring Breakers. Think of it as EDM’s evil twin, music that makes you move without resorting to crowd-pleasing power chords or answering the question that seems to be on everyone’s minds these days: “Where’s the drop?”

And as a bonus, we’ve also included a secondary set of recommendations and a “Panic Room” collection of deviant downtempo tracks…

Suckfish

Audion
2005 | Spectral Sound / The Orchard

Matthew Dear was way ahead of the current deviant-techno curve with the debut album from this dearly missed alias. In case you couldn't tell from oh-so-subtle song titles like "Titty Fuck," "Just Fucking" and "Your Place or Mine," Suckfish funnels Dear's darkest fantasies through hardcore techno tropes, ravenous rhythms and hypnotist hooks that are the polar opposite of "you're getting sleepy, very sleepy." If anything, you'll be wired as hell after hearing... this record.
more »
Liber Dogma

The Black Dog
2011 | Soma / PIAS Digital

A cursory look at the Black Dog's mixes page (especially the aptly-titled "Dark Wave" series) is all it takes to understand how one of Warp's earliest (accidental) IDM adopters has only gotten more ashen with age. Sometimes that approach reveals itself in ambient stunners like the Eno nod Music For Real Airports — arguably an improvement on the original — and sometimes it lands directly on the dancefloor, as is... the case on this masterclass in metallic, muscular techno.
more »
Transverse

Carter Tutti Void
2012 | Mute Artists

A student of Throbbing Gristle's "industrial music for industrial people" teaching — Factory Floor's Nik Void -- meets two of its founders — Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, also of the incredibly influential Chris & Cosey — in a one-night-only collision of bowed guitar chords, metronomic melodies, HAM radio harmonies, and rhythms that won't let go. No wonder why the capacity crowd — part of Mute's celebratory Short... Circuit festival in 2011 — couldn't help but responding with resounding cheers at the end.
more »
LP

Container
2012 | Spectrum Spools / Kudos Records Limited

Ren Schofield is not as well-known as his fellow noise defectors — people like Prurient, Nate Young and Pete Swanson — but in a perfect world, he would be. Maybe even more so. Both of his Spectrum Spools albums are simply called LP, which makes them sound more vanilla than they really are. If there's any dance full-length worth a floor-punch or slamdance, it's this one, from the bendable basslines of... "Paralyzed" to the loony vocal lines of "Perforate," which might as well be considered the terrifying, long-lost twin of Cajmere's house classic "Coffee Pot (It's Time for the Percolator)."
more »
Faint Hearted

the miles
2013 | Modern Love / Revolver

As in "Not for the...," Miles Whittaker's first solo album under his own name is a three-car pileup of the highest order. Not quite as noisy as his Suum Cuique alias or witchy as his work with Demdike Stare, but demented dance music nonetheless. Even the most serene moments (the galaxy-hopping ambient loops of "Loran Dreams," the deep listening drones of "Sense Data") sound like they're seconds away from veering... off the tracks, and everything else is increasingly erratic and engrossing, as if Whittaker is trying to break on through to the other side — or at the very least, your living room wall — with his skittish samples.
more »
Man With Potential

Pete Swanson
2011 | Type Vinyl / Morr Music GBR

A couple of strange things happened after Yellow Swans broke up. On one side of the aisle, Gabriel Saloman went the cobweb-y neo-classical route with his Adherealbum. Pete Swanson swung to the other extreme, expressing his basement punk roots through mangled techno opuses like Man With Potential. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to blast at 1 a.m. when you're landlord lives right across the hall, but when... you need a reality check that's fallen from the same rotten apple tree as Surgeon and the Sandwell District fam, this is a decent start.
more »
Complete Works 1997 - 1998

Regis
2012 | Downwards

Minimal techno doesn't get any more murderous than Karl O'Connor's flawless run as Regis. Maybe that's why he formed BMB (a.k.a. British Murder Boys, a recently reactivated project with Surgeon) a little over a decade after delivering the steely slabs of sound that hammer away at the core of this chaotic compilation. Definitely one of the godfathers of gloom — cool, calculated and calm like a bomb.
Feed Forward

Sandwell District
2011 | Sandwell District

When Sandwell District — an audio/visual collective that counted Function, Silent Servant and Regis among its ranks — "repressed" this limited double LP in digital form a few years ago, its growing cult following interpreted it as a mission statement. Turned out it was more of a death knell. For the label at least; the group continues to tour and work together, from Regis's executive production credits on Silent... Servant's first solo album to the sprawling mix Function and Regis recently cut for Fabric under the now-familiar Sandwell District name. Witness the origins of it all right here, as truly underground techno takes on the form of tractor beams and centrifugal forces.
more »
Crossed Paths

Shifted
2012 | Mote Evolver / N.E.W.S. NV

Let's say you're really excited about finally getting into a secretive dance spot like Berlin's epicenter of underground techno, Berghain. The night's going great, but then this Shifted guy goes on, starting with nearly seven minutes of mood-manipulating drone tones, then dropping into a black hole of clouded chords and beats that murmur and moan like a heart in desperate need of a transplant. Maybe you should head home before things get... too bleak? Why does the door appear to be locked? Looks like you'll have to wait until the storm passes.
more »
Force+Form

Surgeon
2010 | Tresor / N.E.W.S. NV

Four songs, 40 minutes — zero bullshit. Bow down to the one of the undisputed bibles of club music that literally makes you want to club things. (Please don't; we're just making a point here.)
Ornamented Walls

Vatican Shadow
2012 | Modern Love / Revolver

So this is why Dominick Fernow suddenly left Cold Cave last year — so he could perfect the tranced-out Muslimgauze tributes with the project that was quickly eclipsing his endless stream of Prurient releases. In many ways, Ornamented Walls is a transitional record, using Side A to hint at the next direction of Fernow's infamous live show (with frenzied rehearsal footage of "Operation Neptune Spear") and showing us what's up his... sleeve studio-wise throughout the chemtrail cuts on Side B. That the record came out on Modern Love — the same label as Miles, Demdike Stare and Andy Stott — sealed the deal even further for Fernow's emerging role in the sadomasochistic techno scene.
more »
Luxury Problems

Andy Stott
2012 | Modern Love / Revolver

Considering he's been doing the whole shadow boxer thing since 2006's Merciless LP, the recent attention foisted upon Andy Stott is long overdue. That, and understandable considering how far he's raised the bar with Luxury Problems, a gorgeous exploration of electronic music's Darth Vader side, complete with melancholic melodies (from Stott's old piano teacher!), an endless supply of murky fog machines, and beats that'll make you break into a cold sweat.... Think of this as the blissful breather you're gonna need after having your head bashed in by the rest of these records.
more »

Further Dancefloor Destruction

15 Best Late-Career Bowie Songs

J. Edward Keyes — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:13:24 +0000

The history of rock music is full of artists with catalogs so vast and sprawling it can be difficult to know where to start. David Bowie is not one of those artists. Repeat after me: Ziggy, Berlin Trilogy, half of Let’s Dance, pause, repeat. What you don’t often hear about are the many high points that arrived later in Bowie’s career. After the travesty that was 1987′s Never Let Me Down — a record Bowie has mostly disowned — and his weird dalliance with the hard-rock group Tin Machine, Bowie began an on-again/off-again relationship with his muse, one that yielded a healthy number of high points that are routinely, unjustly overlooked.

“The Heart’s Filthy Lesson”

Outside

David Bowie
2004 | Iso/Columbia

One of the infinite upsides of Bowie's oft-heralded chameleonic musical personality is that he can rightly claim to be the godfather of just about anything — glam, goth, garage, you name it. So in 1995, when Trent Reznor started talking incessantly about Bowie's influence on his own music, Bowie did what came naturally and cannily ret-conned himself into being an early pioneer of industrial music as well. The result was Outside, the... first in a planned-but-scrapped trilogy about a dystopic future in which something called "Art Crime" — the murder, mutilation and display of human corpses — has become a sensation in the underground art world. The album is creepier and more skin-crawling than it typically gets credit for (particularly the spoken interludes, for which Bowie eerily altered his own voice in order to portray both the story's host of malevolent characters and trembling, helpless victims). "The Heart's Filthy Lesson" is the album's grimy, stomach-churning aesthetic at its most fully-realized, drums pounding and wheezing like a turbine and guitars corkscrewing like a trepanning pole.
more »

“Little Wonder”

Earthling

David Bowie
2004 | Iso/Columbia

Outside may have found Bowie asserting his place as a genre inventor, but he was candidly a follower on 1997's Earthling. Expressing enthusiasm for the burgeoning drum and bass scene, Bowie set about crafting his own version of the movement. The results were mixed: Some of the experiments crackled with life and vitality; the others felt leaden and, 16 years after its release, sound woefully dated. "Little Wonder," though, falls firmly into... the first camp. A bright, jittery number, it felt like throwing open the shutters after the gloomy Outside. The drum machine clatters like a tin can full of pop rocks, and Bowie's vocal melody is strangely graceful — gliding beatifically through the song, a benevolent ghost in the center of a hiccupping machine.
more »

“Sunday”

Heathen

David Bowie
2002 | Iso/Columbia

"Nothing remains." Those were the first words on Bowie's 2001 reteaming with producer Tony Visconti. The album, Heathen, was an ethereal affair, as if someone had put lyrics to the ominous instrumental B-Side of Low. "Sunday," its opening track, handily sets the tone for the album that followed. Synths glow and expand like bands of sun in early morning, and Bowie — never sounding more like his hero Scott Walker than he... does here — surveys a desolate landscape, looking for "cars or signs of life." Though the album was mostly recorded before September 11, the album's — and particularly this song's — lyrics about a vanished humanity and deep-seated existential dread rang eerily true.
more »

“New Killer Star”

Reality

David Bowie
2003 | Iso/Columbia

"See the great white scar over Battery Park" goes the first line of this song. If Heathen was the accidental meditation on the events of September 11, Reality, released two years later, starts with that tragedy (quite literally) and then pushes forward, trying to make sense of an increasingly puzzling world. And while the title of this song is ominous, its contents feel triumphant; if Bowie often struggled to write memorable choruses... in his later period, "New Killer Star" compensates by having two — one gently gliding, the other charging and euphoric ("I've got a better way!"). In between are odd, impressionist lyrics that imagine Jesus on Dateline and look out at a world where gleaming buildings and verdant trees compete for real estate.
more »

“The Next Day”

The Next Day

David Bowie
2013 | Iso/Columbia

As it turned out, Bowie's choice to use a modified version of the artwork from his 1977 masterpiece "Heroes" as the cover for The Next Day was no coincidence. The title track, which opens the album, plays like a garish bizarre-world version of "Heroes"-opener "Beauty and the Beast," right down to its sproinging, rusty-coil guitar and seething Bowie vocal. After a 10-year absence, which was preceded by a pair of albums that... were respectable but hardly adventurous, "The Next Day" braces like an ice water bath. Its chorus snarls and chomps, Bowie grunting about bodies rotting in hollow trees before diving into the maddening monotony of "And the next day, and the next, and another day." In it, you can hear Bowie regarding his much younger self in the mirror and announcing, "You're still here — so now what?"
more »

“I’m Afraid of Americans”

Best Of Bowie

David Bowie
2002 | VIRGIN

At first pass, David Bowie's collaboration with Nine Inch Nails for 1995's dual-headlining Outside tour seemed like a passing fad — another of Bowie's canny alignments with a young disciple as a way to gin up his legacy. In truth, though, the pairing was a lot more earnest. As it turned out, Bowie and Trent Reznor were truly simpatico, a fact proven by Reznor's nervy remix of Bowie's 1997 Earthling track "I'm... Afraid of Americans." The song, and its brilliant accompanying video, perfectly captures late-'90s pre-millenial panic, Bowie's sly lyrics about globalization perfectly undermined by Reznor's nervous reworking of its jittery digital backdrop. When it finally heaves into the pissed-off bug-eyed humanoid chorus, the terror is almost palpable.
more »

“The Loneliest Guy”

Reality

David Bowie
2003 | Iso/Columbia

Anchored by a mournful, rising-and-falling piano line by Mike Garson, "The Loneliest Guy" feels like an extract from the moody Heathen rather than the mostly uptempo Reality. Bowie's voice teeters at the upper reaches of his register, sounding reflective and despondent. The title is a misdirection: Bowie declares himself the exact opposite in the song as he takes candid stock of his life reviewing, as he puts it, "pictures on my hard... drive," and concluding still, after "all the errors left unlearned," that his life has been full of good fortune.
more »

“Seven”

Hours

David Bowie
2004 | Iso/Columbia

After the dual attack of Outside and Earthling — both, in their own way, attempts to bolster Bowie's cultural currency — 1999's hours… felt like an exhale, a measured, mostly downtempo offering, the album was easily Bowie's most reflective, taking stock of his career and stripping away most of his legendary artifice in favor of open contemplation. All of this comes through in "Seven," a beautifully moody number based on simple acoustic... guitar strumming and Bowie's restrained delivery. Its chorus also feels like a callback to one of Bowie's most indelible numbers, Ziggy Stardust's "Five Years." In that song, Bowie proclaimed "Five years — that's all we've got." Twenty-seven years later, he sang, "I've got seven days to live my life and seven days to die."
more »

“Strangers When We Meet”

Outside

David Bowie
2004 | Iso/Columbia

Proof that Bowie is still capable of absolute loveliness — even in the context of an album about ritual murder — "Strangers" is as gorgeous a song as Bowie has ever penned. Its graceful melody and high-arcing chorus recalls the optimism and determination of "Heroes," and its muted instrumentation, guitars and keyboards fading in and out with no fixed end or beginning, adds to the song's dreamlike feel, and Mike Garson's cascading... piano is elegiac and deeply moving. And beneath it all, a trace of sorrow: "All your regrets ride roughshod over me," Bowie sighs. "I'm so glad that we're strangers when we meet."
more »

“Dirty Boys”

The Next Day

David Bowie
2013 | Iso/Columbia

The most encouraging thing about The Next Day is hearing Bowie wake with a tremor from his trance of benign respectability. "Dirty Boys" is the most wickedly sleazy he's sounded since Outside, its fat saxophone and nauseous, staggering tempo feeling like 4 a.m. at the world's creepiest old-man bar. For his part, Bowie plays the part of the weird Lothario perfectly, injecting the chorus with a bleak determinism ("When the die is... cast, you have no choice") and croaking out the rest of the lyrics in between a guitar that quacks like a poisoned duck.
more »

“Slip Away”

Heathen

David Bowie
2002 | Iso/Columbia

Originally recorded for Bowie's scrapped 2001 album Toy, "Slip Away" was mercifully rescued and re-recorded for the next year's Heathen. The song, which contains strangely unsettling allusions to bonkers 1970s children's program The Uncle Floyd Show, drifts along spectrally, Bowie's voice sounding melancholy and reflective, as if he's observing his own life dispassionately from some capsule out in space. The invoking of Floyd's puppets Bones and Oogie make the song sound like... a lament for lost childhood, except that Bowie was already a grown-up pop star by the time the show debuted in 1974. Instead, it feels surreal and disjointed, its minor-key melody and lines like "down in space it's always 1982" making it feel like the unacknowledged third act in the Major Tom trilogy.
more »

“I’m Deranged”

Lost Highway

Various Artists
2010 | Interscope

Fittingly used to score the opening credits to David Lynch's 1997 homicidal fairy tale Lost Highway¸ "I'm Deranged" is a song full of dark portent. Its opening line — "Funny how secrets travel" — is instantly unsettling (even more so when heard in the context of a film about a man who saws his wife in half and then scrubs his memory of the act), and Bowie's word choice in the chorus... — not "insane," but "deranged" — only accents the overarching mood of malice. It's the sound of a man who's losing his grip but is helpless to stop it, and can only observe in panic.
more »

“You Feel So Lonely You Could Die”

The Next Day

David Bowie
2013 | Iso/Columbia

In 1972 Bowie wrote "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide," a song that turned '50s doo-wop inside out and put it in service of lyrics about teenage alienation. Forty-one years later, "You Feel So Lonely You Could Die" accomplishes the same thing with what feels like the saccharine balladry from the same decade. Bearing a passing similarity to the Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" — now unendurable thanks to countless covers — Bowie belts out a... dewy-eyed Exquisite Corpse crooner where each line feeds seamlessly into the next but adds up to a particularly puzzling whole. It's a song that projects "emotion" more than emotion — proof that this deep into his career, Bowie is still the master of meta.
more »

“Hallo Spaceboy”

Outside

David Bowie
2004 | Iso/Columbia

When David Bowie decided to throw himself a 50th-birthday party at New York's Madison Square Garden, he invited a host of friends — among them Sonic Youth, Frank Black, Billy Corgan and the Cure's Robert Smith — to join him in performances from songs across his catalog. For "Hallo Spaceboy" he recruited Foo Fighters, and the casting makes perfect sense. The song is a piledriver, a nonstop avalanche of pulverizing percussion... and a vicious Bowie vocal that glancingly references his past ("Do you like girls or boys?") before diving full-bore into empty-eyed nihilism ("So bye bye, love"). It's the nastiest Bowie has ever sounded, the sound of someone cackling as they shove you down a well.
more »

“Slow Burn”

Heathen

David Bowie
2002 | Iso/Columbia

Opening like an odd inversion of "Heroes," "Slow Burn," replaces that song's determination and optimism with the long shadow of doubt. Bowie walks us through a house haunted not by ghosts but by memories, singing in a cracking, panicked voice as Pete Townshend's guitar claws and howls around him. The lyrics are deliberately opaque (and have generated incredible internet speculation), but as with many of Bowie's best songs, "Slow Burn" is... more about mood than meaning. The song feels fraught with uncertainty, somber and foreboding.
more »

Top 10 Non-Smiths Johnny Marr Moments

Annie Zaleski — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:47:25 +0000

Johnny Marr is best known as the guitarist of ’80s icons the Smiths, but in the quarter-century-plus since he left the group, the 49-year-old Manchester, England, native has carved out a diverse career as a trusted sidearm. Besides joining several other bands as a touring and/or recording member (The The, Modest Mouse and, most recently, the Cribs), he’s worked with an impressive roster of British and American musicians—including Talking Heads, the Pretenders, Beth Orton, the Cult, and even Girls Aloud. To celebrate the release of his first solo album, The Messenger — and honor his colorful catalog — here are 10 of his best collaborations.

The Pretenders, “Windows Of The World”

Pirate Radio [Digital Version]

The Pretenders
2006 | EP/SINGLE

This collaboration was likely quite an honor for Marr, as he's cited late Pretenders guitarist James Honeyman-Scott as a formative influence. A Nick Lowe-produced cover of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David chestnut, "Windows Of The World" boasts very Smiths-like chiming strums from Marr. Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde matches the feathery 12-string guitar and weepy orchestral touches with a stunning, glamorous vocal performance. A one-off single, "Windows Of The World" also appeared on... the soundtrack to the Winona Ryder/Kiefer Sutherland flick 1969.
more »

Talking Heads, “(Nothing But) Flowers”

Naked [w/Bonus Track]

Talking Heads
2006 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

Marr actually played on four songs on Talking Heads' final studio album, Naked, although his contributions are most prominent on "(Nothing But) Flowers." More breezy jangle reminiscent of you-know-who (which Marr himself admitted to Guitarist in 2009: "I pulled out the biggest sound I could — which was my Sunburst 335 12-string — and came up with this really big, kinda Smithsy part"), his riffing blends in nicely with the track's... pleasant rhythms and tropical feel.
more »

Billy Bragg, “Sexuality”

Beck, “Milk + Honey”

Midnite Vultures

Beck
2004 | Geffen

You have be patient to hear Marr on this screwball highlight of Beck's Midnite Vultures, but the wait is worth it. After the tune's sped through cosmic electrofunk, classic rock swoons and robotic R&B ecstasy, it winds down into a spacey coda featuring Marr on electric guitar. "Beck reminded me of David Byrne in the best possible way," Marr once told Magnet. "He can get on pretty much anyone's sense of... humor and sense of the absurd…I think he's the real thing because he's not afraid to go down some necessary sideroads rather than just take the main highway."
more »

Oasis, “(Probably) All In The Mind”

Heathen Chemistry

Oasis
2008 | Reprise

Britpop hooligans Oasis wouldn't have a career if it weren't for the Smiths, so it makes sense Marr would one day turn up on an album to show the band how it's done. On this rustic, psych-tinged sprawl from 2002's Heathen Chemistry, Marr contributes a solo that sticks to the tune's bleary-eyed spirit. Smudged with bar-band charm, faint twang and just the vaguest hint of psychedelia, his appearance is brief but memorable.

Electronic, “Tighten Up”

Electronic

Electronic
1991 | Warner Bros.

In the late '80s, Marr teamed up with New Order's Bernard Sumner and formed Electronic, a group whose guitar/keyboard hybrids teased out the nuances of each man's talents. Case in point: The needling, catchy "Tighten Up." The song's lightning-strike synths and blooming keyboards meld with Sumner's conspiratorial vocals and Marr's insistent acoustic strumming, which adds the perfect amount of bite and urgency.

The The, “Slow Emotion Replay”

Dusk

The The
2002 | Epic

Besides being an ace guitar player, Marr plays a pretty mean harmonica. As a member of The The from 1988-94, he had the chance to display both of these skills in spades — especially on "Slow Emotion Replay." As if the tune's bereft protagonist wasn't morose enough (lyrics: "I'm just a slow emotion replay of somebody I used to be"), Marr underscores the melancholy by adding watery riffs and weary harmonica.

7 Worlds Collide, “Learn To Crawl”

The Sun Came Out

7 Worlds Collide
2009 | SIN/UK

One of the Marr's underrated endeavors is the 7 Worlds Collide project, a loose collective formed by Crowded House's Neil Finn to raise money for charity. The Sun Came Out, the group's second album, features hefty contributions from Radiohead and Wilco. However, the understated "Learn To Crawl," a Marr co-write, boasts anguished vocals from Neil and son Liam, Radiohead-like ghostly rhythms and uneasy guitar arpeggios. Impossibly lovely, even though it aches with... longing.
more »

Modest Mouse, “Dashboard”

We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

Modest Mouse
2007 | Epic

Initially, Marr was unclear whether jamming with Modest Mouse would amount to anything. That changed — fast. "On the first night, I came up with the riff and music to 'Dashboard,' then straight away we did another song called 'We've Got Everything,' and then at the end of the 10 days I changed my plane ticket," he told The Quietus. "Dashboard" indeed is one of Modest Mouse's boldest statements, a horn-... and string-peppered whirling dervish with stomping beats and square-dance riffs.
more »

Johnny Marr, “Lockdown”

The Messenger

Johnny Marr
2013 | Sire Records

The Messenger delivers exactly what you would expect from a Marr solo album: aggressive guitars — touching on glam, blues, psych-rock and jangle-pop — mixed in with moments of acoustic delicacy. Still, the album's not predictable — or pedestrian. For proof, start with "Lockdown," a soaring '90s Britpop throwback with yearning vocals and expansive hooks; in fact, the song feels very much like Marr tipping a cap to his pals in Oasis.

March Music Days: The Crucial 100

J. Edward Keyes — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 12:45:00 +0000

Enter for a chance to win $500 in eMusic Credit!

I’m going to be candid about the inspiration for this list: In 1995, Alternative Press published a list of the 99 best records to be released since they began publication 10 years prior. As an amateur student of rock music, by that point I’d consumed dozens of lists like this, all of them in established, respectable music publications, and all of them bearing an eerie similarity to one another. So you can imagine my surprise when I scanned the Alternative Press list and came across not familiar glorified workhorses, but names like The Dwarves and PJ Harvey and the Fastbacks.

That list was revolutionary for me. It was the first list that dared to say the canon was wrong. It was the first list that redefined which records mattered and why, and the first list to present popular music through a decidedly defiant perspective. Most importantly, it was the first list to suggest that maybe you don’t really need to own all those James Taylor records. It is in the spirit of that list that we present eMusic’s Crucial 100: 100 albums that we think it’s important you own. These are the albums that rearranged our brains, and influenced the music that we care about. And for you lucky winners of our $500 credit contest: This is where we think you should start spending.

Songs of Unrest & Revolution

There's A Riot Goin' On

Sly and the Family Stone
2007 | Epic/Legacy

No one — not Bob Dylan sneering at Mr. Jones, not Roxanne Shanté tearing other female rappers to ribbons, not U-Roy sending up "gal-boy I Roy"— has put so vicious a mockery on record as Sly Stone did with There's a Riot Goin' On. Only he wasn't attacking a straw man or the competition: as his band disintegrated around him (Sly did much of the instrumental work himself, with few full-band performances... and a handful of guitar parts handled by Bobby Womack), Stone was side-eyeing his impossibly hopeful earlier records. Riot turns everything he'd ever done inside out — and, as the ultimate proof of his genius, made it even stronger. Here, the affirmations of old turn queasy, and set up withering denouements: The brave and strong survive . . . But you're crying anyway 'cause you're all broke down. When I'm lost, I know I will be found . . . Look at you fooling you. That extended to the music, too, most clearly on "Thank You For Talkin' to Me, Africa," in which the audaciously celebratory 1970 single "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" is sent back on the road covered in soot and at a third of its previous gear, but it's equally easy to hear the stuttering horns of "Brave & Strong" and the jagged guitar vamp of "Africa Talks to You 'The Asphalt Jungle'" as Bizarro World versions of "Dance to the Music" and its kin. It's the longest, darkest night of the soul ever put on record; it's also the deepest, most compulsively listenable album Sly — or anybody else — ever made.
more »

Things Fall Apart

The Roots
2004 | Geffen

In February 2000, the Roots won their first and only Grammy for "You Got Me," the lead single from fourth studio effort Things Fall Apart. In its chorus, Erykah Badu sings as if she's already lost hope in her tour-diary romance; remorse breaks her words into two. But Things' Grammy-winning single barely indicates just how much the Roots had learned to illustrate the hip-hop stories they'd grown so adept in telling —... tales of a pained, conscious existence rather than a drugged-up one, orchestrated by mellowed-out arrangements far more nuanced than even Badu's masterful aching. In "Table of Contents (Parts 1 & 2)," ?uestlove's cymbals whirr as if being sucked into a vacuum cleaner as Black Thought ricochets across his retelling of the band's origins in South Philadelphia. A playful tit-for-tat with Mos Def ("Double Trouble") simmers and pops around gently pulsing chimes. Scott Storch's fingers listlessly drag their way through a keyboard melody over which a fraught Black Thought cries: "Building his fifth foundation in the wilderness/ thoughtless, trespassing into the Thought's fortress." "You Got Me" helped the Roots sell more than 900,000 copies of Things Fall Apart — more commercial attention than the Philadelphia band's ever received before. But as soon as the Grammy-winning single thrust the Roots into mainstream airwaves, the band decided to stray as far from Top 40 territory as possible. The result? The genre-bending Phrenology.
more »

Radio Ethiopia

Patti Smith Group
1996 | Arista
New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)

Erykah Badu
2008 | Motown

The C.D. Version Of The First Two Records

Bikini Kill
1994 | Bikini Kill Records

"We're Bikini Kill, and we want revolution girl style noooooow!" On this album's first song, nestled between shards of feedback, lead singer Kathleen Hanna howled the battle cry that lit riot grrrl afire. But it wasn't a double dare, it was a promise: for an instigative seven years, Bikini Kill dealt fierce blows to punk rock's misogynist "White Boy" (as one song is titled) through abrasive guitar blasts and lyrics that combined... feminist polemic with the distinct intellectual valley-girl patois of their progressive hometown — teeny-tiny Olympia, WA. Encouraged by the DIY dictum that playing music sloppily was better than not playing music at all, Bikini Kill tore through their riffs with punk-rock vehemence and vision — but it was Hanna's exceptionally raw singing style that really got the band motoring. Sounding like the final hour of an exorcism, she growls, grunts, sasses, snarls, whines and screams this mother out; witness the snotty, possessed energy of "Suck My Left One" (a song congruous with X-Ray Spex's "Oh Bondage Up Yours"); the bloody shrieks and feedback tilt-a-whirl of "Thurston Hearts the Who"; and the self-determined anthem "Feels Blind," where Hanna spits, "I eat your hate like love!" Though their best album, Pussywhipped, arrived two years later, these tapes (half-produced by Fugazi's Ian MacKaye) seethe with untamed, eruptive energy and the thrilling first spark of ideation.
more »

Money Jungle

Duke Ellington
2002 | BLUE NOTE

Legalize It

Peter Tosh
1999 | Columbia/Legacy

The token communal house/dorm room/juice bar/island resort's reggae album (second only Bob Marley and the Wailers' Catch A Fire), Peter Tosh's solo debut Legalize It remains a stone classic, even if most of its fans rarely explore beyond the dense foliage of the front cover and title track to the treasures within. As a teen in the early '60s, Tosh befriended Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer and the trio became... a vocal group before eventually evolving into the Wailers. After two smash successes (Catch A Fire and Burnin') as well as a car accident that fractured Tosh's skull, Island refused to release a Tosh solo album and he left the fold to pursue his own rebel path to stardom.

While "Legalize It" has remained a rallying cry for decades (most recently in California), it's actually his least politically-charged album, though it is his most emotionally-fraught. Aside from the lilt of "Ketchy Shuby," Tosh grapples with darker moods. The heave of "No Sympathy" has Tosh match his aching guitar line: "Only me feel the pain/ not one good word of advice/ from any of my so-called friends" and "Why Must I Cry" — despite its bright synth line and island meter — finds him isolated by his heartache. On the roiling piano of "Igziabeher (Let Jah Be Praised)," Tosh conjures up biblical disasters to scatter non-believers and his enemies "as the smoke was driven away." And he doesn't mean that kind of smoke.
more »

Fear Of A Black Planet

Public Enemy
1994 | Def Jam/RAL

Repeater (Plus 3 Songs)

Fugazi
Dischord Records

If 13 Songs was a soup of dubbed-out Stooges songs, Repeater boiled it all down to screeches and thuds, welding shards of feedback, bass thrum and tom rolls — a sound as stark as the album's blue-and-white cover, and as dynamic as the interior photos. Lyrical impressionism mixes with guilt and rage. At one end: "What a difference/ a little difference would make." At the other: "We are all bigots/so filled... with hatred /we release our poisons." The title track bellows at D.C.'s crack crisis; "Merchandise" reminds you of what they don't sell on tour. "Provisional" from Margin Walker gets a two-guitar reboot as "Reprovisional," hinting at power that was once only implied. "Shut the Door," a compassionate, furious look at a heroin overdose, is almost haiku-like in its simplicity and all the more powerful for it.

The CD pressing of Repeater was appended to include the 3 Songs 7-inch. "Joe #1" is a thudding instrumental, "Break-In" an older song about assault, but "Song #1" is a almost a post-hardcore manifesto: "Fighting for a haircut?/ Then grow your hair/ Crying for the music?/ I doubt you really care/ Looking for an answer?/ You can find it anywhere/ It's nothing."

Dig the new breed.
more »

Pink Flag

Wire
2009 | CAROLINE WORLD SERVICE
Lyte As A Rock

MC Lyte
2010 | Rhino/Elektra

Dark Nights of the Soul

Exile in Guyville

Liz Phair
ATO Records

In 1991 — at least five years before the first blog was identified as such — Oberlin art history grad Liz Phair quietly sent around a series of home-recorded cassettes she'd made under the moniker Girly Sound. The recordings were crudely rendered, rudely conceived (covering such post-feminist subjects as "Black Market White Baby Dealers" and "Willie the Six-Dicked Pimp") and immediately caught the ear of alt-nation's underground cognoscenti, who recognized an art-damaged... rebel without a cause when they heard one. Those recordings quickly went down in rock history as one of the finest albums of its era, maybe even of all time: she released 1993's Exile in Guyville, which for all intents and purposes reads today as an eighteen-track, album-length blog, replete with all the technologically-enabled oversharing and snarktastic, hit-and-run gender politics this description implies.

Phair was living at home with her parents in Winnetka, Illinois (suburbia being the best locale from which to wage war on an unsuspecting, male-dominated rock hierarchy) when she began re-recording some of her early Girly Sound demos with producer Brad Wood. What took shape was originally touted as a song-by-song response to Pussy Galore's noisy assassination of the Rolling Stones classic Exile on Main Street — a claim that no longer seems plausible (is "Girls! Girls! Girls!" really Phair's answer to "Turd on the Run?"); the record helped paint her as something of a pop-culture pirate princess from the get-go. The album quickly established its no-holds-barred M.O. with "Glory," an ode to cunnilingus ostensibly meant to "empower" but equally intended to shock, to determine which people were paying attention (and most certainly, the little girls understood, championing Phair as their tough-talking older sister almost immediately). This was followed in rapid succession by rough-and-ready autobiography that portrayed Phair as little but "a cunt in spring, you can rent me by the hour" ("Dance of the Seven Veils"), a scheming pleasure addict who "jumps when you circle the cherry" ("Canary"), a commitment-phobic tramp who secretly wishes for a boyfriend who "makes love 'cuz he's in it... and all that stupid old shit" ("Fuck and Run"), employs devastatingly personal self-critique ("How sleazy it is, messing with these guys") on "Shatter" and showcases her signature Girly Sound tune "Flower," a multi-Liz madrigal promising some anonymous indie rock dude she'll be his "blowjob queen" and "fuck you and your minions too" (unfortunately changing the "and your girlfriend too" lyric from her original tapes). All of this devastation was delivered in a voice so deadpan and emotion-free it was described by Rob Sheffield as "Peppermint Patty on a bad caffeine jag" and came across like the alt-nation's musical answer to another Liz, Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel, whose self-skewering pseudo-confessional narratives also oddly prefigured the stylistic norms of the blogosphere by a number of years.

How an album so prescient and influential — one can argue that Alanis Morrissette owes the entirety of her career to the firewalk first traveled on Guyville — ever disappeared from Matador's catalog is beyond me, particularly when you consider that in this post-digital, file-sharing age, nothing should ever truly go "out of print." But the album's re-release, while not offering anything particularly revealing in the way of extras save for Phair's interpolation of "Wild Thing" as something of a Mean Girls rewrite, does underscore its importance by stripping away the pretend-porn veneer that originally defined it and revealing the core of what it was, is, and always shall remain: the document of a generation of women in transition, preparing the way for what the New York Times recently described as the lingua franca of the internet, a dialogue that, by turn, has emerged as "smart yet conversational, funny in a merciless way, righteously indignant but comically defeated, where every man [cheats] on his partner and all the women are slutty." Welcome, boys and grrls, to the 21st Century.
more »

De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas

Mayhem
1997 | Century Media / The Orchard
Blood On The Tracks

Bob Dylan
1984 | Columbia

Low

David Bowie
1999 | VIRGIN

"One day I blew my nose and half my brains came out." That was David Bowie in 1976, nearing the end of a years-long coke binge that had burned through the better part of his nasal passages and rendered him so clammy and paranoid he was diving into black magic to escape, drawing pentagrams on the floor of his L.A. apartment, keeping his own urine in jars in the refrigerator and burning... black candles as protection from evil spirits. He was seeing ghosts, giving loopy interviews heavy on Hitler-praising pull-quotes and his marriage to Angie was on the verge of collapse.

And so Bowie, with Iggy Pop in tow, went to Berlin to get clean (an aim at which he only fitfully succeeded) and, as he put it, "[to discover] a new musical language." Low, the first part of his celebrated Berlin Trilogy and the first stage in a full sonic reinvention. Unlike the plastic soul of Young Americans or Station to Station's manic panic, Low revels in total existential blankness. Bowie was openly in the thrall of bands like Neu! and Kraftwerk, and Low clearly reflects the influence of the former's stentorian, motorik rhythms and the latter's subzero synthesizers.

The album is famously divided into two halves, with a batch of Bowie-sung "song fragments" counterbalanced by a suite of gorgeous but deeply unsettling ambient-instrumentals; what's most notable is that, spiritually, Bowie feels as ice-cold and absent on the songs where he sings as on the ones where he doesn't. Herky-jerk "Breaking Glass," with its hectoring Carlos Alomar guitar line finds Bowie as self-referential as he'd ever been, darkly warning "don't look at the carpet — I drew something awful on it," before snidely declaring: "you're such a wonderful person — but you've got problems." De facto pop single "Sound And Vision" — if only because no other song on the album features an immediate hook — finds him distrusting his own senses, cooing "Don't you wonder, sometimes, 'bout sound and vision?" over the kind of chilly cascading synths that typically turn up on Joy Division albums.

As solid and striking as the vocals are, though, Low's back half is where it moves from experiment to masterpiece. Using layer upon layer of unholy synthesizer, Bowie — with the help of producer Brian Eno, himself no stranger to the power of ambiance — create an entire, flickering nighttime urban cityscape, where hustle and busyness ("A New Career in a New Town") slowly give way to the awful eeriness of nighttime ("Subterraneans"). Bowie's voice appears in fits and starts, mostly chanting strange, monosyllabic nonsense words — a thin, pale warlock looking glumly into his cauldron, drawn and spent. Taken together, the two halves of Low offer a picture of an artist at a crossroads, unsure of where to go next, but knowing all roads lead to darkness.
more »

Children of God/World of Skin

Swans
2003 | Young God / Revolver

Up until 1987, the last place in the world you might have expected to hear an acoustic guitar was on a Swans album. But with Children of God, the band augmented its brute physicality with a "New Mind," as the opening track put it, and a new palette to match. ("I will be there/ With my eyes wide open/ I will be there/ I will be ready/ To receive/ The new mind.")... From the cover alone, with its puce-and-fuchsia color scheme, its swirls and crosses, you could guess that Swans had entered a new phase, and the album's first three tracks made that abundantly clear. "New Mind" sounded more or less like the Swans of yore — more cleanly produced, perhaps, but still displaying the same doomy riffs, the same war-dance drums, the same call-and-response vocals — but the "In My Garden" came from a different universe entirely, with a high-necked bass melody inspired by Joy Division, limpid pianos reminiscent of Harold Budd, and a wraithlike Jarboe intoning, "In my garden/ We'll never die." "Our Love Lies" completed their transmutation with strummed acoustic guitars and tambourine and Michael Gira not just growling but singing, his baritone sinking to the lower limit of his register like a body weighted by stones. The rest of the album alternates between slow-motion head-bangers, like "Our Love Lies" and "Like a Drug," and deathly folk songs judiciously touched up with synthesizers and effects, like "Blood and Honey" and "You're Not Real, Girl." On the hypnotic title song, Jarboe's ecstatic mantra ("We are children/ Children of God") swirls above see-sawing guitars and stark, metallic drum beats; there's little doubt that, whatever their previously nihilistic outlook, Swans finally see the light of redemption, however fleetingly.

A few months before Children of God, Gira and Jarboe explored even more gentle textures on a pair of albums recorded under the name of Skin. Jarboe's voice carried Blood, Women, Roses, while Gira assumed center stage on Shame, Humility, Revenge, but both albums shared the same downy textures, forsaking Swans' usual sturm und drang in favor of strings, acoustic guitars, hushed synthesizers, and echoing electronic drums — a mixture that could almost have been mistaken for This Mortal Coil. Both records were repackaged in 1988 as the double LP, The World of Skin, and 14 songs were selected for 1997's Children of God / World of Skin reissue.
more »

Sister

Sonic Youth
1987 | Squeaky Squawk / TuneCore
American IV: The Man Comes Around

Johnny Cash
2013 | American Recordings

Bone Machine

Tom Waits
1992 | ISLAND RECORDS

Released after a five-year break between albums — then the longest in his career — Bone Machine marks the beginning of a era in which Waits's records are isolated and self-contained, as if he goes dormant after each session and reemerges only after he's come up with something to say. The marionette march of "Earth Died Screaming" recalls the clatter of Rain Dogs' "Singapore," but Waits strips the songs bare as he... goes, paring away the excess; "Jesus Gonna Be Here" is just upright bass, dobro, and Waits's voice echoing in what sounds like an empty warehouse. On "In the Colosseum," he sounds as if he's been to hell and back and might just consider repeating the journey, the clanking percussion forging a concrete link to the album's title. Like the contemporaneous The Black Rider, Bone Machine risks falling into a fire-and-brimstone rut, but "Black Wings" shifts the album into a slightly less apocalyptic register. "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" could be a demented Disney theme, and "That Feel" closes with a dash of ghostly gospel harmony. It's hardly Waits's most approachable album, but its skeletal embrace is surprisingly welcoming.
more »

Enter The Wu-Tang

Wu Tang Clan
1993 | RCA Records Label
Pornography

The Cure
2004 | Rhino/Elektra

Funhouse [Deluxe Edition]

The Stooges
2005 | Rhino/Elektra
The Queen Is Dead

The Smiths
2001 | Rhino

Rid Of Me

P.J. Harvey
1993 | ISLAND RECORDS

The cover of PJ Harvey's second album shows her in the shower — a typical setting for a male fantasy, but one that she upends by being depicted mid-hair-flip, creating an arc of wet hair and water that frames her gently grinning face. That upending of traditional tropes of desire was all over her debut, Dry, but it becomes even more in-your-face on Rid of Me, which is littered with body parts... and fluids and the emotions brought forth by their deployment. Engineered by Steve Albini in such a way that it brought the essential tensions of Harvey's music — masculine/feminine, beautiful/ugly, ecstatic/unfulfilled — right to the forefront, Rid of Me contains some of the most iconic songs of Harvey's career — the ode to swagger "50ft Queenie," the low-end-plumbing depiction of female frustration "Dry," the take-the-reins cover of Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited." There's also "Yuri-G," a depiction of romantic madness that might be one of the most-overlooked songs in her catalog, despite its garage-borne chorus and fearless troop toward its endpoint.

But it's the differing treatments of the gender-flipping "Man-Size," which are presented as both a straightforward, slow-build rock song and as a piece arranged for strings and voice (called "Man-Size Sextet"), that perhaps best encapsulate the tension that's all over the album; while the Albini-engineered "Man-Size" has at least a bit of foreplay involved before Harvey breaks into a caterwaul on the song's final chorus, on the string-assisted version (which was arranged by Harvey's percussionist Robert Ellis) nerves crackle and snap against each other thanks to the strings clashing against each other in an icy, dissonant way as Harvey declares her dominance — at times, though, she does it in such a controlled way that it sounds like she's communicating through a jaw wired shut from repressed desire. The beauty brought forth by the strings only serves to underscore the jitters brought on by the idea of possibly possessing what is desired; that fear isn't brought on by the idea of possible transcendence as much as it is borne by the idea of losing that always-desired feeling, and subsequently having to root around the ugly, unfulfilling world of debasement and thwarted intentions explored elsewhere on the album.
more »

Sonic Terrorists

The Cold Vein

Cannibal Ox
2001 | Definitive Jux / The Orchard

The enduring idea of a hip-hop underground relies on our faith in the entrepreneurial spirit. Nobody wants a boss, and this is part of what compelled El-P to leave Rawkus in the late 1990s and form his own label, Definitive Jux, future home of Aesop Rock, Cage, Mr. Lif, Murs and others. He poured himself into the label's first album, the debut from Harlem rappers Vast Aire and Vordul Mega. The Cold... Vein remains an outlier classic, El-P channeling his inner Eno, and Vast and Vordul looking up from their comic books and imagining their escape from the present might come in the form of teleportation.
more »

Richard D. James Album

Aphex Twin
2005 | Rhino/London-Sire

Arguably Aphex Twin's definitive album — and not only because it bears his birth name — 1996's Richard D. James Album keeps you guessing. How can something feel at once so slight and so substantial? Whimsical melodies play out like music-box fantasias against forbiddingly complex drum programming; James has never seemed more like a trickster, with his self-evident sense of humor running from goofy ("Milkman") to deranged (the strange outro to "Girl/Boy... (Redruth Mix)"), but tracks like "Boy/Girl Song" and even the quadruple-time "4" hide an unmistakable sense of melancholy beneath their cartoonish folds. Many of the tracks here run to a measly two or three minutes — a blink of the eye, compared to the epic inclinations of so much electronic music. But with tempos racing to 180 BPM or so, and with chopped and rearranged breakbeats sprayed in a kind of hyperrhythmic slurry, James squeezes more action in his short-form sketches than many producers manage in an entire album. Hyperactive and/or mischievous listeners will get their fix in the brazenly kinetic antics of "Corn Mouth" or "Inkey$"; sensitive types are advised to start with the coy "To Cure a Weakling Child" or the plangent "Figerbib."
more »

Dummy

Portishead
1994 | Island Def Jam
Screamadelica

Primal Scream
1991 | Sire/Warner Bros.

Untrue

Burial
Hyperdub / The Orchard

We all know about the "Difficult Second Album" — the oft-rushed record made amid suffocating expectations and incessant touring. But some follow-ups not only make good on a promising debut but also retroactively imbue the entire enterprise with more intrigue than could have been recognized at the start. In 2007, M.I.A.'s Kala and LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver entered the ranks of this special kind of second album, and so did Burial's... Untrue.

Part of the allure of dubstep, the sound that Burial — an anonymous London musician — helped establish, is that it's so sparse and elemental that it eludes description almost by design: To formally address the qualities of dubstep is to paradoxically do damage to its most evocative parts — the parts that aren't there, the haunted parts, the spectral spaces that surround the tangible sounds and make it all happen through the force of their very absence. It's complicated, but it's also extremely compelling — and more immediately so on Untrue than it was on the self-titled 2006 debut that made Burial's name.

Untrue benefits from the conspicuous presence of vocals that prove newly forceful and free. Whereas voices served as atmospheric agents on the debut, here they drive tracks into the space of certifiable songs. "Archangel" announces the change at the start, with a mercury-mouthed male diva singing about "kissing you" and "holding you" in desperate, unsettling tones. A similar strategy plays out in "Near Dark," in which the vocal sentiment in the refrain "I can't take my eyes off you" applies just as much to ears.

The way that Burial foregrounds vocals as melody-makers veers back toward 2-step garage, the poppy post-jungle sound that ultimately evolved into grime and then into dubstep. The formal lures of dubstep proper remain here, but they also sound more kinetic and progressive. Even when the voices fade and drift like mist in the background, there are moods to be gleaned from the beats — the ticks and trips that toggle like drum 'n'bass risen from the grave as something irretrievably decayed but also irresistibly angelic.
more »

Homework

Daft Punk
1997 | VIRGIN

The mid-1990s was a prosperous time for aspiring dance artists, as big beats graced TV commercials and briefly invaded the charts. But the album-length statement of genius remained an elusive quest. That's what made Homework, the debut album from the mysterious French duo of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, so absorbing. Rather than a collection of singles — massive though they were — Homework managed to capture a feeling of discovery... and exploration.

So there were the era-defining hits "Around the World" and "Da Funk," as well as throbbing club wonders like "Phoenix," "Revolution 909" and "Indo Silver Club." But there were also occasions for reflection and nostalgic pauses, like the ethereal, cresting "Fresh" and the noisome funk of "Oh Yeah," or skits like "Daftendirekt" and "WDPK 83.7 FM," a tribute to the teachers broadcasting daily along the FM dial. As the name suggested, Homework resulted from years of careful study of the finest house, techno, electro and hip-hop records. Perhaps this appreciation for musical history is what compelled Daft Punk to even greater heights in the years to follow. Despite the mystery around their true identities, this is a debt they were never above repaying, from the elaborate, reference-filled Homework album sleeve to "Teachers," a roll call of the duo's personal heroes.
more »

The Raincoats

The Raincoats
1979 | We ThRee / The Orchard
The Shape Of Jazz To Come

Ornette Coleman
2005 | Rhino Atlantic

Short Films & Diary Entries

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Lauryn Hill
1998 | Ruffhouse

Wanting to shed the sexist perception that fellow Fugee and ex-boyfriend Wyclef Jean had shaped her, Lauryn Hill retaliated by creating one of the best albums of the 90s. "Music is supposed to inspire," she sings on "Superstar" — perhaps to Jean, her failed svengali, perhaps to her label bosses, perhaps to her own demanding audience. "So how come we ain't getting no higher?" She then sets out to answer the... question for herself.

Like Marvin Gaye's epic albums of the 1970s, "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" is an emotionally raw set of performances. Hill's voices proliferate, sometimes moving in unison or harmony, sometimes commenting on or responding to one another, sometimes pleading, preaching, declaring and doubting all at once.

The incendiary, hard-rocking "Lost Ones," the witty, winning "Doo Wop (That Thing)," the angry, avenging "Final Hour," and the sweetly remembered "Every Ghetto, Every City" are her moments of clarity. But for the rest of the record, she works through the confusion and ambivalence wrought by love and betrayal — never more intensely than on "Ex-Factor" and "I Used To Love Him." Even the songs about uplift, like "Tell Him," "Everything Is Everything" and "Forgive Them Father," are rooted in the possibility things truly might not improve.

"The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" reached its commanding heights only by ruthlessly plumbing the depths. It remains a searingly honest, deeply wrung portrait of a great artist at the peak of her powers.
more »

Mama Tried

Merle Haggard & The Strangers
2001 | CAPITOL
What's Going On

Marvin Gaye
2003 | Motown

Court And Spark

Joni Mitchell
1975 | Rhino

At a time when the lyrics "ro-ma, ro-ma-mah/ ga-ga, ooh-la-la" can land a singer a spot high up on the Billboard charts, it's fun to play an album like Court & Spark, if only to remember the range of feeling that the English language can express when one knows how to use it. A quintessential Joni Mitchell record, Court & Spark looks at loneliness, solitude and love from many sides, and... concludes that no matter whom you're with or what good times you may be having, the sad, gray days will soon come calling.

At least it's not a bummer to listen to. Far from it, in fact. Mitchell's voice is clear and lovely, as fresh and flawless as spring. And her music is a wild, beautiful tangle of jazz and folk that gives audible form to love's crazy contradictions. (Not surprisingly, it's the best-selling album of Mitchell's career). Listen to Court & Spark, and you might imagine that, instead of giving her lover a clutch of pretty flowers to show how she feels, Mitchell would take him by the hand and run with him through a fragrant garden labyrinth. A simple woman she is not.

Court & Spark yielded her highest-ranking single: "Help Me," which reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1973. It also features a cover of the Wardell Gray bebop composition "Twisted," which jazz singer Annie Ross popularized with her swinging 1952 rendition. But for me, its telltale track is "Down to You." Mitchell sings, "Everything comes and goes/ Marked by lovers and styles of clothes/ Things that you held high/ And told yourself were true/ Lost or changing as the days come down to you." It's practically a Joni Mitchell manifesto: feeling love fully yet expecting — no, knowing — that it will end and that we are all ultimately alone. Oh, Joni.
more »

It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You The Best

Karen Dalton
2006 | CAPITOL
Illmatic

Nas
Columbia

My Life

Mary J. Blige
1994 | Geffen

Both singer and sound were more confident on this second album from Mary J. Blige, the first she co-wrote, and considered by many fans her best. Out went the chilly New Jack Swing echo and synth deco of her debut; in came an extended heart-to-heart with fans by the fire over a beat that meant business.

Let it be admitted that the sound is more conventional: The '70s soul samples of... the title track and "Be Happy" are seamlessly blended or recreated rather than recontextualized in a rap way — the direction executive producer Sean "Puffy" Combs and frequent studio guest the Notorious B.I.G. were taking hip hop in general. But if D.C.-hired producer Carl "Chucky" Thompson was brought in to make Blige sound like a true soul singer at home in her mother's music, he did his job: Blige makes Rose Royce's "I'm Goin' Down" her own, in part because down was exactly where she was going.

Or as she would sing 11 years later, "'94 was My Life, and my life wasn't right, so I reached out to you and told you what I been through." She also told you what she was still going through: "I'm satisfied even when I cry," she sings on "No One Else," presumably to the track's co-producer K-Ci Hailey, whom she later described as the inspiration for much of My Life's blueness. "Mary's Joint," with its longing melody later borrowed for Janet Jackson's "I Get Lonely," sounds like hopelessness kidding itself, while the No. 1 dance hit "You Bring Me Joy" seems unconvinced. Most double-edged of all is "I Love You," with its repurposed Isaac Hayes piano line and dog-whistle synth (a nod to Dr. Dre), as funky and resigned as Marvin Gaye at his most autumnal. Has the title sentiment ever sounded more doomed?

Blige put the question to herself squarely on "Be Happy": "How can I love somebody else, if I can't love myself enough to know when it's time, time to let go?" The album sold 2.8 million copies in the U.S. and was nominated for a Grammy in the R&B album category. But it marked the twilight of Uptown Records and a parting of ways with Puffy.
more »

The Belle Album

Al Green
Hi Records / Fat Possum
Car Wheels On A Gravel Road

Lucinda Williams
1998 | Island Def Jam

Coat Of Many Colors

Dolly Parton
2007 | RLG/Legacy

Coat of Many Colors is the moment when Dolly Parton became a star. Its title track a Top Ten narrative of Dolly's humble origins a story that follows her still Coat brought her out from Porter Wagoner's shadow and cast her as country's Self-Made Woman No. 1. It also wonderfully encapsulates every element of the nearly 40 years of Dolly's career that have passed since its release: it dabbles in bluegrass and... roots music, features triumphant, Memphis-style R&B, and winks at the majesty of pure pop, all in a tidy 27 minutes. It's a killer. The best song by a long shot is "Here I Am," a song so stupendous it's a miracle it was never an enormous, career-defining hit. Written by Dolly (as is almost every song here), "Here I Am" is a big, '70s-style power ballad, a finger-wag to any man that might underestimate how great even a little bit of Dolly would be in your life. "I can help you find what you've been searching for," she brags with stunning boldness. No bashful lady, she. It's hard to call Coat of Many Colors a country record; it's so much more than that. But every song has its roots in Americana, in the humble hollows of the Appalachians and the songs and tunes passed down through God, through love and through sorrow. Dolly knows all of these. She sings from experience "Traveling Man" and "My Blue Tears" (which can make you weep from its beauty) and it's one she boldly shares. Dolly's career has been incredible in its longevity and its sincerity. And even amidst all of her success, this is her best moment.
more »

Different Class

Pulp
1996 | ISLAND RECORDS
Ready To Die The Remaster

The Notorious B.I.G.
1994 | Bad Boy Records

Bakesale

Sebadoh
Sub Pop Records
Being There

Wilco
1996 | Reprise

Innervisions

Stevie Wonder
2000 | Motown

Early '70s protest soul had as much silliness and bandwagon jumping as any other musical era. But it can't be a coincidence that Stevie Wonder's greatest album is also his most deeply pessimistic — not only because there was so much to rail against in 1973, and that the government's and society's crimes against humanity had a special sting that would dissipate the more frequently they occurred (familiarity breeds disinterest at least... as much as contempt), but Stevie has always been at his sharpest when he has a direct target to aim for.

On Innervisions, Wonder took stock of the world around him and found a good deal of it wanting — yet he refused to give in to despair, even when sneering at drug abuse on "Too High," cutting a flim-flam man to pieces on "He's Misstra Know-It-All," or, most unforgettably, turning his voice to gravel to warn against damnation on "Living for the City." There's an inherent optimism that lights the darkest passages of this very dark album; that fits with Stevie the activist. But surely the amount of wrong to lament in the early '70s did its share to spur Wonder to his peak.

Rather than a soothing, instantly iconic rolling electric-keyboard melody of the sort that opened Talking Book ("You Are the Sunshine of My Life"), "Too High" worms in at a daunting angle, heavily informed by jazz (Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters was released only two months after Innervisions) as well as funk, and sounds as slippery as the song's subject. The falsetto doo-doo-doo refrain is a little shticky the first time it appears and mournful the last, after the woman who lets drugs take her life over dies: "What did her friends say?/ They said she's too high." "Misstra Know-It-All" and parts of "Jesus Children of America" dig at false preachers. "Living For the City" ends on a sermon. Stevie was a scold, all right, but he picked his targets perfectly.

The mammoth Songs in the Key of Life is rightly seen as Wonder's I-can-do-it-all culmination, but Innervisions ranges more confidently across nearly as much terrain. "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing" goes to Cuba and brings back a great spoken intro: "I speak very, very, um, fluent Spanish." "Visions" is a spiderweb of guitars (and Stevie's Fender Rhodes) that could have been on any number of the period's folk albums. The moony synths of "Golden Lady" turned prog heads around; "All in Love Is Fair" will surely end the first act when Broadway finally gets around to a Stevie jukebox musical (step on it).

And "Higher Ground" is classic rock, flat out: the rhythm swinging and jittery, pounded along by Wonder's sinewy drumming, the twining synthesizers and clavinet tangling like guitars, and Stevie at his most call-the-troops. It's like a totally sober version of John Lennon in "Tomorrow Never Knows": "Believers, keep on believing/ Sleepers, just stop sleeping." Yet listen close to the song's fade-out. There's an ad-lib, just barely audible: "Don't you let nobody bring you down — and they'll sho' nuff try." Brrr.
more »

Mystic Visions

Judee Sill

Judee Sill
2005 | Rhino/Elektra

With her tender, imperfect vocals, lank brown locks and low-slung acoustic guitar, the singer and songwriter Judee Sill embodied the earnest, folksy spirit of California's Laurel Canyon in the 1970s. Sadly, Sill also embraced the era's excesses, and her dark biography is befitting of a martyred cult idol: After running away from home as a teenager, she married an aspiring gangster, was arrested for armed robbery and hauled off to reform school,... picked up a heroin habit, and hustled for cash as a petty thief. But with help from Graham Nash, David Crosby and David Geffen, Sill channeled her personal lapses — and the gospel hooks she collected in reform school — into two stunning folk records before dying of a drug overdose in 1979.

Judee Sill was released in 1971, and — unsurprisingly — it's lyrically preoccupied with grand notions of redemption and hope. "Sweet silver angels over the sea, please come down flyin' low for me," Sill begs on the impeccable "Jesus Was A Crossmaker," over building piano and eventual percussion. On opener "Crayon Angels," Sill lodges another plea for rescue: "Nothin's happened but I think it will soon, so I sit here waitin' for God and a train — to the Astral plane," she sings. Like Nick Drake, Sill's records weren't particularly appreciated in her lifetime, and her posthumous canonization feels almost cruel, but Judee Sill remains a haunting, evocative portrait of a singer using her voice to seek salvation.
more »

Ah Um

Charles Mingus
1999 | Columbia/Legacy

If you're looking for a first serious jazz album to listen to, this might be the one. Charles Mingus occupied a unique place in jazz, one foot planted squarely in tradition — particularly the composer's tradition of Duke Ellington — and the other in the new thing which, in 1959, when this was recorded, was in the process of coming into existence. Both tendencies are in full display here, with one... of Mingus's finest bands (although he referred to it as a "workshop," which is quite accurate) running through a brace of originals that pay tribute to the past ("Open Letter to Duke," "Jelly Roll") and express the present ("Fables of Faubus" refers to the governor of Arkansas 'bitter opposition to racial integration).

There are first recordings of two of Mingus 'immortal classics here. "Better Git It In Your Soul" is infused with a gospel feeling, with Mingus yelling encouragement in the background, and was a shout-out to the "soul" movement in jazz, which stood in opposition to some of the more hyper-intellectual stuff on the scene. "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" was Mingus 'obituary for the great tenor saxophonist Lester Young, who had just died. The overwhelming sadness of the melody disguises the fact that it's absolutely of its moment in structure and harmony.

Mingus, as a bassist, relied heavily on his reedmen, and three of his best, John Handy (alto sax, clarinet), Booker Ervin (tenor sax), and Shafi Hadi (alto and tenor sax), are on board. The trombone underlying the ensemble is Jimmy Knepper on some tracks, Willie Dennis on others, piano is by the incredibly underrated Horace Parlan, and Mingus 'long-time rhythm partner, Dannie Richmond, sits at the drums.

It doesn't get much better than this: I've been listening to this album for over 30 years, and I hear something new every time I sit down with it.
more »

Fables Of The Reconstruction

R.E.M.
1998 | IRS CATALOG
Sign 'O' The Times

Prince
2007 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

Manos

The Spinanes
Sub Pop Records

The first indie-label album ever to hit No. 1 on the college radio charts was an unlikely one: this debut by the peculiar, wonderful duo of singer/guitarist Rebecca Gates and drummer Scott Plouf. The Spinanes had initially been very much a part of the early-'90s "international pop underground" scene ("Entire" mentions a cassette by Olympia, Washington, band the Go Team), but they quickly became as interested in precision and complexity as in... soft, fragrant melodies. Gates's lyrics here are impressionistic and emotive, but the duo plays so crisply that they sound absolutely specific. It helped that half of their hooks were rhythmic: "Spitfire" is built around Plouf's snare cracks, "Noel, Jonah and Me" around variations on a stop-time lurch. And they had a sense of negative space that's rare for a rock band — Gates's dreamy murmur and resonant, open-tuned riffs up top, Plouf's inexorable attack at the bottom, and nothing but air between them.
more »

Psychedelic Soul

The Temptations
2003 | Motown

When Dennis Edwards replaced David Ruffin in the Temptations in 1968, producer/songwriter Norman Whitfield gave a brand new bag to Motown's most popular male group. Introduced to the psychedelic sounds of Sly and the Family Stone via Temp's member Otis Williams, Whitfield took Stone's fusion grooves and made them cinematic. Starting with "Cloud Nine," Whitfield de-emphasized Ruffin's departure by distributing the vocal line across the Temptations' widely differing voices á la... Sly and Family, while white session guitarist Dennis Coffey brought the wah-wah of Jimi Hendrix. "Cloud Nine" won Motown its first Grammy, and it established the label's new sophisticated, yet streetwise style soon embraced by all of its stars. For its 1969 sequel "Runaway Child, Running Wild," Whitfield expanded the track's length to nearly 10 minutes, and the prototype for disco's extended mixes was born.

What distinguished Whitfield's sprawling productions from lengthy acid-rock tracks was that they weren't mere jams. Based on verses and choruses just like the group's early hits, "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" and the others are paced as miniature symphonies with multiple peaks and valleys. The same strings that gave Motown its density during the mid '60 were now isolated over the beat. Instead of a constant blare, instrumentation came and went, swelled and subsided. The constant fluctuations made the listening experience more like a journey — a key disco metaphor. Rather than encouraging dancers to sprint, Whitfield paced his records to suspend them in rapture.
more »

All-Night Dance Party

Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-6

Soundway
2013 | Soundway Records / Believe Digital

Some compilations that highlight a particular sound during a particular time follow a straight line. But when that time and place is as relatively under-documented as early '70s Nigerian pop, such tidiness isn't so necessary — it's enough to just crack the door and to keep it open for an enticing while. That's why Nigeria Special, a brilliant two-hour tour through a musical world that ranged far more widely than even a... serious fan of this era and place might have been aware, is such a triumph. Covering the period just after the Biafran War (1967-70) had ended, Nigeria Special concentrates on the region's late highlife and the post-Fela Kuti fallout of Afrobeat — Kuti was an exemplar of the style, but by no means the sole model of success. If that means the collection's focus blurs a little, that's more than made up for the sheer breadth, range and intrigue on display here.

Many of Nigeria Special's cuts are so juicy it's impossible to believe they've never been made available outside of Nigeria before. The Funkees'"Akula Owu Onyeara" — originally released in two parts, and edited together here for the first time — works like Fela at his most rhythmically sinuous; the simple keyboard figures could be Morse Code signal for uncut funk, and it has one of the most perfect endings you'll ever hear. George Akaeze & His Augmented Hits'"Business Before Pleasure" is delectably light-footed Afrobeat with laconic chants and jazzy horns so friendly they belie the title: this is business as pleasure. The nonstop forward motion of the Semi Colon's "Nekwaha Semi Colon" is formally disco — the hi-hat/kick-drum pattern points right at it — but it's so hypnotic it seems rooted in something far older (and more intrinsically Nigerian). The highlife tracks are equally hot: St. Augustine & His Rovers Dance Band's "Onwu Ama Dike" is made even lovelier by its slightly messy rhythmic feel, not to mention the semi-sweet horn line.

Compiler Miles Cleret claims that there are thousands more such goodies that have just been sitting in Nigeria waiting to be rediscovered. The 26 included here are such a pleasure to listen to that, for anyone who loves them, they could inspire fantasies of booking a flight to Lagos and starting a treasure hunt of one's own.
more »

New York Dolls

New York Dolls
1987 | Island Def Jam
In the Jungle Groove

James Brown
2003 | Polydor

Get Happy

Elvis Costello & The Attractions
2007 | Hip-O Records

After a drunken quarrel on the Armed Forces tour turned into a disaster that left Costello looking like a dick at best and a racist at worst (in retrospect, it was definitely "dick"), he took solace in old soul records — the deep Southern soul of Stax most of all — and somehow ended up cranking out even more amazing songs than he had been over the previous few years. The album... that subsequently came out of a frantic recording session in Holland speeds through 20 songs in 48 minutes, and it's the Attractions' most impressive work as a group: flexible, powerful, psychically synched-up, and above all fast. They effortlessly pull off one soul groove after another (keyboardist Steve Nieve cops licks from Booker T. and the M.G.s all over the place), as well as tear-in-my-beer country ("Motel Matches"), ska ("Human Touch") and garage rock ("Beaten to the Punch"). Those last three, by the way, all happen in a seven-minute span.

If some of these songs are formal exercises, they're fantastically entertaining formal exercises: The opener "Love for Tender," for instance, is the riff from "You Can't Hurry Love" taken at bottle-of-amphetamines speed, wrapped around approximately five thousand puns about money ("I pay you a compliment/ You think I am inno-cent"), and executed in less than two minutes. The first single, oddly, was a cover — Sam & Dave's downtempo soul duet "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down," reworked as crazed new wave — but Costello's original songs reward ungnarling their tightly-knotted wordplay, especially "New Amsterdam," a little waltz about portable exile that he recorded on his own. The big lyrical picture of Get Happy!! is a bitter young man measuring himself against the guys that the girls he likes seem to be more interested in, and figuring out reasons to despise them all; by the end, though, he's figured out that he's kind of a dick, too.
more »

Naturally

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
2006 | Daptone Records / The Orchard

Rocks The House

Etta James
1992 | Geffen

This 1963 show from Nashville's New Era Club is a candidate for best live album ever, and you need only hear her version of Jimmy Reed's "Baby What You Want Me to Do" to realize that. It's one of the sexiest things ever recorded, with Etta wailing and moaning before making erotic nonverbal sounds — you can't even call it scat-singing — that bring the house down. The raunchy band, featuring David... T. Walker on guitar, is torrid; the audience, which roars out call and response with Etta, is fevered. "Tell Mama," indeed. Or else.
more »

Gold

Buddy Holly
2005 | Geffen
Aquemini

Outkast
1998 | Arista/LaFace Records

One Night Stand - Sam Cooke Live At The Harlem Square Club, 1963

Sam Cooke
2005 | RCA/Legacy

1963, Miami, Florida — below the Mason Dixon line. Jim Crow was still law, Martin Luther King was just about to march on Washington, and the bluntly named Chitlin Circuit (the collection of clubs where black artists played and sang for black audiences) was still in full operation. Sam Cooke had been a star for most of his life by the time of this now-legendary gig at the Harlem Square Club. At... 32, the singer already had a best-selling Greatest Hits album, and had entranced legions of church-goers as a certified gospel sex symbol through the fifties (including a very young Aretha Franklin, who has always admitted her melismatic signing style was a straight-up tribute to her friend's liquid vocals). Cooke had been working his audience members, especially those of the female persuasion, into bosom-heaving frenzies for years — and not just because of his movie-star good looks. The plain truth: Cooke could sing like no other man before or since.

This live recording shows off all of Cooke's gifts. "It's All Right," is the gospel classic "Touch the Hem of His Garment" (which, not coincidentally, Cooke had already made into a hit with the Soul Stirrers), secularized. Except instead of praying to Jesus for mercy, Cooke advises each man in the audience to "shake and wake" his woman up when he comes home at night, wait until she "wipes all the sleep from her eyes," and tell her "Believe me baby, it's all right." A perfect lullaby.

Songs such as "Cupid" or "Twistin 'the Night Away" may sound retro now, even corny at times, especially to ears used to the tough funk of James Brown or George Clinton. But that's because it's almost impossible, in our current Yes We Did era, to imagine what it must have been like back then for a soul singer whose rough edges were so easy to smooth. Cooke could charm with such ease, it would have been a piece of cake for him to go the Sammy Davis route. But he didn't. And JB and Dr. Funkenstein, not to mention Prince and (early, fantastic) Michael Jackson, wouldn't have been the same if he had. Live At the Harlem Square Club does have a bit of a preserved-in-amber quality. That's not the record's fault, however. By 1964, Cooke was dead, shot to death in a motel under circumstances that were never clear (his last masterpiece, the introspective, heartbreaking, "A Change is Gonna Come," was not released until after his death). It's wonderful to be able to hear his voice here, so relaxed and true, and with the audience he knew and loved the best. As Cooke tells the ladies in the crowd, and they ecstatically croon back, "I think of you every morning, and dream of you every night."
more »

Off the Wall

Michael Jackson
1983 | Epic
Absolute Belter

Various
2010 | FINDERS KEEPERS

Bruised Knuckle Bottle-Breakers

Dig Me Out

Sleater-Kinney
2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

t the end of the decade of "women in rock" (yes, Virginia, we only get one), this trio born of the Northwest "riot grrrl" scene defined feminist punk by ingraining the lessons they'd learned in their Women Studies classes as deeply into their music as phallocentrism is etched into the sound of Led Zep or Snoop Dog. Go beyond the lyrics (which do read like a punk Sisterhood Is Powerful) to revel... in the non-linear dialogue of awesome yowler Corin Tucker and chatterbox Carrie Brownstein, the taut-yet-flexible song structures rising up from Janet Weiss's Amazonian drums and Brownstein's guitar heroism, which sparkles in circles instead of hammering for the gods. Dig Me Out has the anthems any grassroots movement needs, but the band can also do lovestruck ("One More Hour"), funny ("Little Babies") and spooky ("Jenny") —` thus proving conclusively, for any doubters, that grrrls are people, too.
more »

Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous

Big L
1995 | Columbia
New Day Rising

Hüsker Dü
1985 | SST Records / The Orchard

Exile On Main Street

The Rolling Stones
2010 | UME Direct

The re-release of a treasured cultural touchstone is occasion for seeing how the work in question has telescoped the years, and, more to the point, how your own perceptions and persona have evolved and grown along with it. With the second coming of Exile On Main Street, the Rolling Stones' controversial and iconic masterwork, the looking-back not only encompasses myself, but the glimmering binary stars of the Stones, Mick and Keith; and,... in some ways, these responses overshadow the album itself.

I have particular reason to welcome a chance for reappraisal, since two weeks after Exile's original release in the late spring of 1972, I reviewed the album for Rolling Stone, giving it a medium-cool analysis I've had some cause to regret over the years. It was a classic case, as the cliché goes, of not seeing the forest for the trees. Song by song, even over the kitchen sink of a double album set, individual highlights seemed hard to come by, though the thrill of hearing "Happy," "Rip This Joint," and "Shine A Light" has been burnished on this reissue by their many sing-alongs over the years, and "Tumbling Dice" is a undeniable classic. But to my then rock-critical ears, thinking with head instead of heart, this was a comedown from the Stones scaling the peaks of some of the most cataclysmic music of their career, an arc that seemed to ascend around Beggar's Banquet, continue through Let It Bleed and burst into fireworks with Sticky Fingers, when, not so coincidentally, they were at their apex of creativity and influence. I was spoiled, and my disappointment showed, especially given the first long form double album of the Stones' career.

But Exile, as the title implies, is more about time and place, a mood and atmosphere, and its sprawling, ramshackle track listing, trying on blues forms and extending heightened jams, stretching out for long solos from Stones' sidemen like sax player Bobby Keys and pianist Nicky Hopkins, with an especial nod to the group's slide guitarist at the time, Mick Taylor, gives the album a documentary in-the-making feel, enhanced by a remastering, which seems to clear up some of the tube-driven haze of the original vinyl edition (whether this is a good or bad thing I will leave to your speaker system).

The tale has oft been told of the Stones setting up a mobile recording studio in Keith Richards's basement in the south of France, inside a mansion called Nellcote, though the album was later pieced together in sessions that transported tapes from London to Los Angeles; and it is within this compressed, hothouse atmosphere, a heart of darkness on the verge of tropic (see the claustrophobic "Ventilator Blues," and the booklet photos of sprawled bodies on the floor of the makeshift studio, not to mention Charlie's striped jacket being used as a bass drum muffler!), that the Stones put together the loosest, most freewheeling album of their career.

That's the way Keith wanted it, and his current view of Exile is that it is a sacred text, allowing no tampering within its concentric circles of recorded groove. Mick, however, couldn't resist and in the bonus disc, gathered with the help of Don Was, adds new lyrics to four songs that are a call-and-response to his younger self: "You always brought out the best in me," he lays his heart on the line in the frankly beautiful "Following The River," and I wonder if he's talking about Keith. The alternate takes and "bonus" material don't change Exile so much as show its process, the tracks that didn't make the official release holding their own: "I'm Not Signifying" is lascivious in its cakewalk, and "Plundered My Soul" is all impassioned romp, galvanized by Charlie Watts' archetypal loping drums, affectionate regret coloring the remembrance.

Beyond bonus, however, it is Exile's remarkable resilience as an album that pushes play in this decade. Much of its myth is just that — a celebration of lifestyle and rock stardom that took root in a fecund, overheated basement as the hours ticked till dawn. It was Mick who gathered the tapes of the Nellcote sessions and overdubbed the gospel-ish feel that imbues Exile with its sense of redemption amidst decadence. The duality of the Stones' was never more manifest than here, with Keith's voice entwining harmonies with Mick, Mick slightly back in the mix, and the force of the band carrying them forward. It's interesting to compare the two versions of "Soul Survivor" with each fronting the song, just as it is fascinating — now almost four decades later — to contemplate the roads not taken: In the opening "Rocks Off," one of the Stones' many nigh-trademark barrelhouse stompers, a bridge appears out of nowhere, and the song slows, turns psychedelic as tremolo phasers wash over the guitars and vocal. It seems almost contrary to the festive mood, a malevolence and an intimation of gathering storm clouds, and I find myself wishing they would have followed its tangent.

But then, I'm not so different than I was when I first took a stroll down Main Street. Neither is Exile.
more »

Walk Among Us

Misfits
1982 | Rhino/Slash
Songs For The Deaf

Queens of the Stone Age
2007 | Interscope

The Black Album

Jay-Z
2010 | Roc-a-fella Records

The song that has always enchanted me on The Black Album is the last song, which is called "My 1st Song," which is meant to be the last song of Jay-Z's career. Got that? It is a beautiful, bedeviling denouement; Jay has rarely rapped better, more intricately, and with such purpose. It's because he knew exactly what he was meant to be doing: Saying goodbye. "Goodbye, this is my second major breakup/... My first was, with a pager/ With a hooptie, a cookpot, and the game/ This one's with the stool, with the stage, with the fortune/ Maybe not the fortune, but certainly the fame."

Knowing what we know now — Jay-Z would be back to full-time recording artist status in three years — makes examining the self-flagellation of The Black Album something of a fool's errand. Elizabeth Mendez Berry wrote for The Village Voice that he'd become "bored by the alter ego he'd outgrown." So how seriously do we take the musings on a half-hearted retirement? Well, maybe without that specter hanging, we can hear it for the achievement it is: a great Jay-Z album.

Originally conceived as a single-producer venture in 1998 with DJ Premier, The Black Album wouldn't come together until years later. It was later advertised with a one-producer, one-song plan, which also never panned out. Finally, it became a typical sort of Jay-Z project, featuring contributions from trusted collaborators, in-house Roc-A-Fella super-producers, Kanye West and Just Blaze, sensing the moment as much as Jay, and crucial additions from a murderer's row of sound men (Timbaland, Eminem, DJ Quik, The Neptunes twice, Rick Rubin, out of rap retirement for a spell) and a handful of then-unknowns and never-heard-from-agains (9th Wonder, The Buchanans, Aqua). Together, there are canonical songs: "Public Service Announcement (Interlude)," initially just a tossed-off one verse proclamation of pride that became a defining document for the MC, with lyrics — from "got the hottest chick in the game wearing my chain" to "like Che Guevara with bling on, I'm complex" — that became rallying cries. Rubin's stomping "99 Problems" still sounds like a tank full of cowbells taking a 40-foot drop onto the pavement. Kanye's "Encore" is a convivial farewell song, though it comes early in the mix. Eminem's "Moment of Clarity" is tightly wound, but never tight-lipped, as Jay raps, "I've dumbed down for my audience and doubled my dollars/ They criticize me for it yet they all yell holler." Even "Threat," the then-ascendant 9th Wonder's contribution, returns Jay to the creeping majesty of his debut, Reasonable Doubt.. And what would a pro forma Jay-Z album be without a Neptunes trifle? At the time of release, "Change Clothes" seemed a grievous error, a cold calculating move designed to ensure record sales. So many years on, it is what it was supposed to be: a palate cleanser.

"My 1st Song" still kills me. It's that "maybe not the fortune" line. Jay-Z has long been a dramatist, a self-styled orchestrator of his own mythology. And nothing could be more grand than a ceremonial retirement. Except, maybe, for the even grander comeback. But then, there is one more Easter egg worth parsing on The Black Album. From "Encore": "When I come back like Jordan, wearin' the 4-5/ It ain't to play games with you/ It's to aim at you, probably maim you." Considering said comeback, he was more right than he knew.
more »

The Score

Fugees (Refugee Camp)
2008 | Columbia
Let It Be [Expanded Edition]

The Replacements
2008 | Ryko/Rhino

Moody and Beautiful

Post

Björk
1995 | 143/Lava/Atlantic

Having established herself on the pop stage with Debut, follow-up Post (1995) saw Björk's ambitions go widescreen.With everyone from Tricky to Howie B to 808 State's Graham Massey fighting over the producer's chair and a musical palette ranging from ambient dub ("Possibly Me") to strident techno-pop ("Army of Me") Post boasts a musical vision to match Cecil B. DeMille.

And then there's the lyrics. Bizarre, brazen and remorselessly tongue-in cheek,... songs like "Enjoy" and "You've Been Flirting Again" are dark, delirious examinations of the mating game whilst "Hyperballad" is euphoric — "We live on a mountain/ Right at the top/ There's a beautiful view" — but only to disguise a damning rejection of consumerism. It was smash hit "It's Oh So Quiet" which kept the accountants happy, however. A reworking of Betty Hutton's Hollywood showtune "Blow a Fuse" delivered with a kindergarten cutesiness, confirming her role as indie-rock's reigning queen of weird. From this point on, Björk was in the big league.
more »

Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul [Collector's Edition]

Otis Redding
2008 | Rhino Atlantic
Tapestry

Carole King
1999 | Ode/Epic/Legacy

Sketches Of Spain

Miles Davis
Columbia/Legacy

Arranger Gil Evans was one of Miles Davis's key allies throughout his career. Starting in 1957 they collaborated on four projects for trumpet and orchestra, beginning with the fine Miles Ahead and ending with the problematic but still rewarding Quiet Nights. The series 'middle volumes are Porgy and Bess, where Gershwin's music inspires some of Miles's most poignant trumpeting, and the exquisite Sketches of Spain. Its long flagship number recasts a... slow movement from a 1939 guitar concerto by Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo; it's enlivened by Evans 'gorgeous dissonances for flutes and massed brass, and flamenco echoes from rattling castanets. But the album's real marvels are a pair of shorter pieces derived from field recordings, which push Miles into previously uncharted territory. "The Pied Piper" is based on a Peruvian Indian pennywhistle melody, played by a pig castrator to advertise his services as he makes his rounds. Miles imbues it with such deep feeling, it's as if he empathizes with the pigs. "Saeta" draws on music for a Spanish Holy Week procession, right down to the sound of a brass band advancing from and then retreating into the distance, like something out of Charles Ives; the dire, wounded sound of Davis's trumpet is unforgettably stark.
more »

Bandwagonesque

Teenage Fanclub
1997 | Geffen
My Favorite Things

John Coltrane
1998 | Rhino Atlantic

Voodoo

D'Angelo
2000 | NOO TRYBE

The success of his 1995 debut Brown Sugar left D'Angelo in a minor funk, irked by the music industry and suffering from a bout of writer's block. The unease that accumulated during his sabbatical surfaced with his 1998 single, "Devil's Pie." Built on a paranoid, tail-chasing DJ Premier bass loop, D'Angelo turned away from the earthly delights of Brown Sugar and crooned about the spiritual crisis in hip-hop and beyond: "Drugs and... thugs, women and wine/ Three or four at a time/ Watch them all stand in line/For a slice of the devil's pie." From its very title to its dark aesthetic, Voodoo fixed on the possibility of purpose and redemption beyond the material world — this was an album that explored the meaning of "soul" as something more than a musical classification. There were still crushing moments of conventional beauty, like "Untitled (How Does it Feel)" or the charming "Send it On," and Method Man and Redman lend their intimate chemistry to the muscular "Left and Right." But on moments like "Chicken Grease," with its sketches of a bygone Southern simplicity, and the captivating "Africa," Voodoo felt ghostly and haunted, as though D'Angelo and Soulquarians were trying to conjure a portal to the past during their marathon jam sessions.
more »

The Bends

Radiohead
1995 | CAPITOL
Nina Simone Sings The Blues

Nina Simone
RCA/Legacy

Lady Soul [w/bonus selections]

Aretha Franklin
1987 | Rhino Atlantic

The first four songs here, including the gigantic hit "Chain of Fools," are Aretha the newly minted superstar stepping out from behind the gospel pulpit to address the secular world. The rest, from the "I Never Loved a Man" outtake (!) "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" to her sister (and backup singer) Carolyn Franklin's deep ballad "Ain't No Way," are all about the pulse and ache of sex —... they're not come-ons, exactly, but meditations on what happens behind the bedroom door, and what that means to everything outside it. And the all-star band, featuring Bobby Womack, Spooner Oldham, and (briefly) Eric Clapton, rolls toward the blues right alongside her.
more »

Veronica Falls’ Favorite Sophomore Albums

Michael Tedder — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:19:00 +0000

One listen to Veronica Falls’ sophomore album Waiting For Something To Happen and it’s clear that the band knows both their reference points — Johnny Marr jangle, Lush reverb — and what to do with them. Like any indie-pop group worth their rare colored vinyl, Veronica Falls are as much a coalition of amateur underground rock academics as they are a music-making entity. We decided to celebrate the release of Waiting by asking them to talk about their favorite follow-up records of all time.

Patrick Doyle, drummer

Underwater Moonlight

The Soft Boys
2010 | Yep Roc Records / Redeye

I first heard The Soft Boys in a club in Glasgow, where the DJ blasted "I Wanna Destroy You." They sounded like a pissed-off Beach Boys. Needless to say, I bought the album the next day. Making an album in 1980 that sounds like an angst-ridden incarnation of the Byrds might not have been the coolest thing at the time, but Underwater Moonlight's wit and effortless use of its influences still seems... like the last word in cool. The great thing about collecting records is that just when you think you've heard it all, an album like this comes along and you wonder how you ever got by without it. If Roger McGuinn and Brian Jones had a son, his name would be Robyn Hitchcock and Underwater Moonlight would be their favorite grandchild.
more »

Marion Herbain, bassist

Modern Life Is Rubbish

Blur
2012 | VIRGIN

I think the quintessential Englishness of this album appealed to me a lot at the time. I also like how different it sounds from the two albums that immediately surround it — which I think shows how tricky second albums can be for a band.

Roxanne Clifford, singer-guitarist

The Good Earth

The Feelies
Bar/None Records

I felt like this album found me when I came across it in a record shop as a teenager. I had no idea who The Feelies were or what they would sound like, but the sleeve stood out as something I might like. After listening to "On the Roof" for 30 seconds, I fell in love and bought it. I like how primal and bold their debut album, Crazy Rhythms, is, but... The Good Earth will always have a special place in my heart for its subtlety and relaxed brilliance. The vocals sound like whispers from a distant conversation that draw you in, and the guitars and percussion feel like they're playing from the corner of the room. The Feelies had less to prove on this record, and it's all the better for it.
more »

James Hoare, singer-guitarist

Odessey and Oracle

The Zombies
2003 | Marquis Enterprises / AWAL

By the time the Zombies' second album was released they'd split up, and with virtually no money behind it, Odessey sold very poorly. It seems almost impossible now to listen to the record and not hear a classic album with huge potential, both critically and financially.

Why the record label didn't realize this at the time is a mystery — although the incredibly high standard of rock and pop music at that time... could explain why it would go unnoticed. The band had a surprise US hit single with "Time of the Season," but initially the album wasn't available and [by the time it was], it was too little too late. It's clear, timeless production, interesting arrangements and, above all, brilliant songwriting, have thankfully earned it a place in history, and these days, it's regarded as a masterpiece.
more »

Stand-Alone Soundtracks

eMusic Editorial Staff — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 21:27:19 +0000

Though it’s often taken for granted, scoring a film is no easy task. Go too minimal and you risk killing dramatic tension. Too grandiose, and an entire film can become ham-handed. Striking the perfect balance is a feat few have truly mastered. Even harder, though, is constructing a soundtrack that stands on its own — creating a work that’s less a companion piece, more a bona fide, start-to-finish album. The 11 soundtracks in this list, remarkably, do just that. These soundtracks are full of music that’s compelling, engaging and entertaining, whether or not you’ve seen the movie it was designed to accompany.

The Point!

Harry Nilsson
2006 | RCA/BMG Heritage

Inspired by an acid trip in which singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson realized that trees and houses and more or less everything in some form or another has a point, this soundtrack to ABC Television's 1971 animated movie is presented as a children's bedtime story. Although the narrator-father's voice was originally supplied on TV by Dustin Hoffman (and Ringo Starr for home video), Nilsson here tells his own story about how even apparent outsiders... all fit into nature's plan: At one point, you can even hear him turning a page. Despite the running, punning theme, there are few hard edges to be heard: Whether speaking or singing, Nilsson is as gentle as any dad could be with his child, and the music – deftly arranged by early Nilsson collaborator George Tipton and executed by such studio session greats as Carol Kaye – ranks among his most melodious. That's a high standard indeed. — Barry Walters
more »
Trouble Man

Marvin Gaye
1998 | Motown

As a movie, Trouble Man is mediocre at best, but it'd have to be a stone-cold film noir classic to live up to Marvin Gaye's haunting, moody score. Gaye took the creative clout he earned from What's Going On and poured it into Trouble Man, giving a fittingly cinematic blues-tinged soul-jazz cast to compositions that incorporated sumptuous orchestral strings and cutting-edge synthesizers alike. While his voice is scarce on the LP, Marvin... makes it count: the title theme is one of his most moving performances, showcasing both his smooth falsetto and his raw power. — Nate Patrin
more »
The Master: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Jonny Greenwood
2012 | Nonesuch

As long as PT Anderson is making movies about uber-driven weirdos, Jonny Greenwood's piercing, experimental classical compositions are going to fit the bill. And though Greenwood brings some of the same, eerie glissando effects to this film that he also contributed to There Will Be Blood, the sonic palette is a little broader this time around — as in the chamber lyricism of "Time Hole," or else "Alethia," where the gorgeously woozy... arrangement recalls some of Anderson's own attractive-yet-unsettling vistas. — Seth Colter Walls
more »
Paris, Texas - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Paris, Texas Soundtrack/Ry Cooder
2001 | Warner Bros.

The soundtrack for Wim Wenders's 1984 Palme d'Or-winning existential desert noir Paris, Texas is as sparse and mysterious as the South Texas landscape from which Harry Dean Stanton arises in the film's opening shot. Composed by hired-gun guitarist and chameleonic solo artist turned soundtrack master Ry Cooder, his mesmeric bottleneck lines slither in the arid ambient space provided by accompanists David Lindley and Jim Dickinson, touching upon blues, folk, and rancheras. Evocative... with just a handful of notes, this is a stark, dustbitten classic. — Andy Beta
more »
Rushmore

Various
2011 | ISLAND RECORDS

Few directors define their characters through music as succinctly as Wes Anderson, never more so than when he pegged the Creation's "Making Time" to afterschool overachiever Max Fischer. Although it's heavy on the British invasion, Rushmore's soundtrack is as peripatetic as the film's beret-sporting protagonist, ranging from Yves Montand's Francophone croon to the mock-baroque contraptions of Mark Mothersbaugh's score. And yet it all hangs together splendidly, telling a story all of its... own. — Sam Adams
more »
Anatomy Of A Murder

Duke Ellington
1999 | Columbia/Legacy

This soundtrack for Otto Preminger's classic legal thriller isn't often placed in the front-rank of the Duke's output, which is natural for an album that features some cues meant to serve purely as background. But as moody, noir-ish accompaniment goes, this is hardly anonymous work: The band's swagger in "Flirtbird" and "Grace Valse" is unmistakable. The main title theme snarls with intrigue; when it swings into action, you'll perk your head up... (just like those who were in the film's first audiences probably did). Look for Ellington's cameo in the film, too, in the role of Pie-Eye: a character that inspired the pianist's catchy-as-hell "Pie-Eye's Blues." An early run-through (titled "More Blues") is now included in Columbia's remastered edition of the album. — Seth Colter Walls
more »
Moog

Various Artists
2004 | Hollywood Records

Synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog had an extraordinary connection with machines: "I can feel what's going on inside a piece of electronic equipment," he says in this 2004 documentary. This soundtrack brings out the human side of his creation. The space-oddity freakouts in Bootsy Collins's "When Bernie Speaks" play like unfettered stoner comedy, while the muted bell tones in the Album Leaf's "Micro Melodies" evoke late-night isolation. A second disc showcases the Moog's... place in rock history, from prog (Yes's "Close to the Edge") to new wave (New Order's "Blue Monday"), from cheesy (Gary Numan's "Cars") to sublimely deranged (Devo's "Mongoloid"). — Karen Schoemer
more »
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Various Artists
2006 | Fantasy Records

While this 1975 film from Milos Forman swept every category save Best Soundtrack (that went to Jaws), the score from Phil Spector and Neil Young associate Jack Nitzsche is a masterpiece in its own right. Nitzsche enacts musical mood swings that match the film's subjects. There are gentle orchestral strings that act as medicated haze, bits of sprightly Hawaiian guitar licks and marimba, and for the theme itself, a gorgeous amalgam of... orchestra with Indian tom toms and singing saw. Freak-folky, elegant and stunning. — Andy Beta
more »
The Fountain OST

Clint Mansell / Kronos Quartet
2006 | Nonesuch

It may be Darren Aronofsky's most (wrongly) maligned movie, but even those who flinched from his cosmic fairy tale can luxuriate in its score. Availing himself of the Kronos Quartet and Mogwai, composer Clint Mansell, who also penned the much-recycled theme for Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, moves from melancholy strings through Tibetan chant and feedback storms, climaxing with the stellar sweep of "Death Is the Road to Awe." Both epic and... intimate, The Fountain's soundtrack goes around the galaxy only to find its way back home. —Sam Adams
more »
La Planète Sauvage (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Alain Goraguer
2011 | Master Classics Records / The Orchard

This strange and wonderful album didn't single-handedly invent trip-hop, but it could've: Air, Portishead and DJ Shadow all sound like it, while Madlib, Big Pun and many others simply sampled it. The soundtrack for a supremely trippy 1973 French-Czechoslovakian animated sci-fi flick, it's comprised of small but buttery-smooth and nearly seamless pieces by Alain Goraguer, former arranger for Serge Gainsbourg, France Gall, Juliette Gréco and other Gallic pop titans. His ability to... combine rock instrumentation, orchestral strings, horns, woodwinds, jazz-funk percussion, wordless choirs and avant-garde experiments with layers of audio trickery is so advanced that even now, 40 years later, the whole thing still sounds as though it seeped out of some fantastical symphonic synthesizer of the future. — Barry Walters
more »
Suspiria

Goblin
2010 | Cine Vox / Believe Digital

A creepy hybrid of up-to-the-'70s electric prog rocking and acoustic medieval evil, Italian group Goblin's expressionist score to Dario Argento's gory 1977 giallo masterpiece is as startling as the film itself. In addition to the film's memorable fourteen-note theme, keyboardist Claudio Simonetti (on Mellotron, Moogs and celesta) and company explore "Sighs" (acoustic guitars and heavy breathing), the mechanically motivated "Markos," and more orthodox jazz-rocking evocations of Argento's characters ("Black Forest") as... they are variously sliced, diced, and covered with maggots. — Richard Gehr
more »