By Daniel Garrett Vampire Weekend (featuring “Mansard Roof” and “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”) Produced by Rostam Batmanglij XL Recordings, 2008 The Beatles, Rubber Soul Produced by George Martin EMI, 1965 (for Paul Zakrzewski, Rebecca Terner, Keith Hudson and Alfredo Garcia)…
Tag: music
A review of 3rd I (CD Version) by Basil Eliades
For a lover of the kind of complex poetry that Eliades writes, there will never be a substitute for the slow, repeated reading of words on a page. But listening to this CD is indeed a completely different experience – one where you can chant along, or allow lines to permeate directly into you while driving. Listening to Basil Eliades deliver his exquisite lines with breathless excitement, sincerity and elan, is indeed, delicious.
A review of Clare Bowditch and The Feeding Set – The Moon Looked On
The Moon Looked On shows Bowditch’s continued growth as a musician and vocalist, showcasing her superb songwriting skills, and the terrific collaboration she’s developed with The Feeding Set. She continues to grow in both the innovative quality of her work, and in the risks she’s prepared to take artistically.
Against the Fable of One True World: Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters
Sometimes after walking in Manhattan late at night, a bit melancholy, though enjoying the faces, the buildings, the lights, I would stroll into a downtown music store and put on head phones at one of the listening stations and hear some of the songs on pianist Herbie Hancock’s 2005 album Possibilities: I liked the songs on it featuring Christina Aguilera (“A Song for You”), Annie Lennox (“Hush, Hush, Hush”), and Jonny Lang with Joss Stone (“When Love Comes to Town”). Herbie Hancock, who began playing the piano when he was seven, has long found ways of combining his own musical sophistication with popular taste.
A Musical Statement of Significance: Lucinda Williams, West
West is a significant musical statement; and it is more impressive for arriving at its significance by unusual directions, such as in the songs “Mama You Sweet” and “Unsuffer Me” and “What If” and “Wrap My Head Around That.”
Reclaiming Tradition: Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Dona Got A Ramblin’ Mind and Colored Aristocracy
Although it has been said that early black string bands influenced country music performers such as the Carter Family and Hank Williams, there are still few available historical recordings of black string band music—possibly as few as fifty pre-second world war recordings; recordings by respected performers such as the Mississippi Sheiks, who recorded for the Okeh label (a history documented by writers Charles K. Wolfe and David C. Morton and sometimes presented by institutions such as PBS)—and thus, the youthful Carolina Chocolate Drops are performing a service as much as producing quite distinctive entertainment.
Rahim Alhaj, When the Soul is Settled: Music of Iraq
Music heard often brings to mind other music—it is the echo of the human, the similarity of imaginative play in different parts of the globe; and some of the rhythms Rahim Alhaj with Lebanese percussionist Souhail Kaspar perform recall Spanish music to me (“Taqsim Maqam Bayyat-Husayni”). The music has the rigor of an old tradition, and the energy of a particular musician and moment (“Taqsim Maqam Hijaz”), with some of it sounding like the forming and explosion of bubbles.
What One Young Man Made of His Freedom: Liam Finn, I’ll Be Lightning
Finn achieves what seems a personal voice—not the voice one speaks in but the voice one thinks with, the voice that is changed when one feels, the voice others usually do not hear: a voice of sensitivity and serenity, a voice of imagination and investigation. What “once was fun will later be boring,” he sings, with a cello-like throbbing nearby.
Energy, Honesty, Intelligence, Tradition and Possibility: The Clash, London Calling
It was an effect both real and illusionary: expectations were challenged, a new model constituted, but traditions—though modified—continued. London Calling, then two albums of shiny vinyl, nineteen songs of changing moods and distinct musical movements, was their breakthrough recording, produced by Guy Stevens.
Goin’ Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, featuring B.B. King, Robbie Robertson, Robert Plant, Olu Dara, Corinne Bailey Rae, Norah Jones, and Ben Harper
Harper’s singing is exuberant and pleading nearly at the same time; and the Skatalites, a Jamaican band that often perform reggae and ska, give the song a subtle Caribbean rhythm. Yet, it is Toots and the Maytals in the Domino-Bartholomew seduction song “Let the Four Winds Blow,” produced by Toots Hibbert, that is quite full of soul. With Dean Frasier’s hot saxophone playing and the doo-woppish background singing, and a very clean uptempo production, the song “Four Winds” really lives.