Author: David Medsker (Page 29 of 96)

Codeine Velvet Club: Codeine Velvet Club

March 30, 2010 / David Medsker

RIYL: The New Pornographers, Nancy Sinatra, John Barry

Here’s the awful truth about life as a musician: when they’re not recording, touring, shooting a video, or doing press – in other words, when they’re not acting like a musician – they get bored, really quickly. It only took Jon Fratelli, lead singer and guitarist from Scottish trio the Fratellis, a couple days of down time after a lengthy tour commitment to get the itch, and before he knew it, we was recording an entire album of ’60s-styled boy/girl pop with a friend of his wife.

All people should be so productive at the brink of exhaustion; the resulting collaboration, Codeine Velvet Club, is a swinging collection of soundtrack music for an imaginary film. (Think Madonna’s I’m Breathless, only cooler, and ballsier.) Fratelli’s partner, chanteuse-in-the-making Lou Hickey, is like a poor man’s Neko Case, but the imperfections of her voice work in her favor more often than not. (Contrary to what the suits would have you believe, personality matters just as much as technique, if not more.) The vampy “Vanity Kills” slinks like a film noir femme fatale, and the charging “I Would Send You Roses” has an unforgettable, if breathless, chorus. Two showstopping ballads anchor the album’s middle, as “Nevada” and “Reste Avec Moi” could both pass for lost Bacharach compositions. The cheeky bastards even did a period-piece cover of the Stone Roses’ “I Am the Resurrection”; amazingly, that works, too.

Codeine Velvet Club is a most pleasant surprise, especially considering it comes hot on the heels of Fratelli’s underwhelming sophomore effort. There’s a statement in here somewhere about how it took a couple Scots to make a good old-fashioned American pop record, but we’re not really in the mood to point fingers – we’re just glad someone still remembers how it’s done. (Dangerbird 2010)

Codeine Celvet Club MySpace page
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'60s, Alternative, Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop

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What do Beck and his friends do when they have 12 hours to kill?

March 25, 2010 / David Medsker

Cover INXS albums, apparently.

Here is the formal explanation of Beck’s Record Club:

Record Club is an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. The album chosen to be reinterpreted is used as a framework. Nothing is rehearsed or arranged ahead of time. A track is put up here once a week. The songs are rough renditions, often first takes that document what happened over the course of a day as opposed to a polished rendering. There is no intention to ‘add to’ the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens.

Past coverees have included the Velvet Underground and Nico, Skip Pence and Leonard Cohen. This time around, it’s INXS’s Kick. Check out Beck with members of Liars, St. Vincent, and Os Mutantes covering “Guns in the Sky.” Check back here for more updates, which will be released in the same sequence as the album.

Record Club: INXS “Guns In The Sky” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Alternative, Artists, Pop, Rock, Songs, Videos

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Muse: Under Review

March 19, 2010 / David Medsker

Sexy Intellectual temporarily abandons mining rock’s storied past to put one of the biggest bands in the world under the microscope for their latest “Under Review” title, and goodness knows they picked a good subject. “Muse: Under Review” contains some raw early footage of a group of bored teenagers from Devon who had to travel to America to get the press in their own country to take notice, only to have their second album refused by their initial champions. (It has since been reissued.) The band’s former manager explains the initial business dealings involving the hiring of John Leckie to produce their debut Showbiz (with Leckie himself appearing to talk at length about the album), while writers and biographers break down the evolution of the band’s sound. Since this is an unauthorized biography, the band does not contribute except in the form of a couple interviews with a third party early in their career, so the piece is fleshed out with the help of music videos by the band and artists like the Strokes. It’s all perfectly nice, but you can only hear someone call someone “fantastic” so many times before it loses all meaning, and with a running time of 106 minutes, it tends to wear out its welcome right when they get to discussing the band’s biggest album, 2006’s Black Holes and Revelations. Still, this DVD contains some interesting stories about the band’s early years that even their biggest fans may not know. (Sexy Intellectual 2010)

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Alternative, Artists, CD Reviews, DVD Quicktakes, External Music, Melodramatic, Rock

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Andrew W.K.: Close Calls with Brick Walls/Mother of Mankind

March 18, 2010 / David Medsker

RIYL: Billy Idol, Meat Loaf, Muse

If Andrew W.K. was a bit of an anomaly when he dropped I Get Wet in 2001, he’s an unfrozen caveman today. His trademark high-energy anthems about partying, partying hard and partying ’til you puke struck a chord with those unable to suffer the self-absorbed nu-metal bands that dominated the early 2000s landscape, but after his 2003 album The Wolf failed to set the world similarly ablaze, his third album Close Calls with Brick Walls only saw the light of day in Japan and Korea. Four years later, Close Calls is finally getting a US release…but is there an audience for beer-soaked rockers in a climate where many rock bands make their mark writing songs for strippers (see: “Crazy Bitch,” “Addicted”)?

You have to assume that Andrew W.K. knew that his time in the spotlight had come and gone when he recorded Close Calls with Brick Walls back in 2004 and 2005, which is what makes the album such a fascinating listen today. It has the standard breakneck party anthems in “Not Going to Bed,” “I Wanna See You Go Wild” and “Las Vegas, Nevada,” but you can also see the frustrated musician lurking beneath. “You Will Remember Tonight” begins as a straightforward rocker, but the outro is galloping spaghtetti western craziness, like a beta test version of Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia.” “Dr. Dumont” is a gorgeous piano solo (something he would explore in greater depth on his 2009 album 55 Cadillac), and “Pushing Drugs” bears strong resemblance to, of all things, Devo’s “Girl U Want.” It’s all a rather careful, and smart, blend of old and new, but Andrew isn’t taking any chances on its success, packaging the album with Mother of Mankind, a rarities disc spanning Andrew’s entire career. The end result will surprise a lot of people. (Steev Mike 2010)

Andrew W.K. MySpace page
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Alternative, Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Rock

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X: THC: X: The Human Condition

March 17, 2010 / David Medsker

RIYL: early Nine Inch Nails, Massive Attack, Portishead

This is one branch in the music tree that we didn’t see coming: adult contemporary trip-hop. X: The Human Condition, the brainchild of Michael Nova, is a giant multimedia experience. There is a film, which tells the story of two people driven to change the world through art. The soundtrack of that film sounds like the kind of thing Trent Reznor might assemble if he were feeling vulnerable. The songs slink, bloop and bleep along like the soundtrack for an alt-spa (we’re not sure if alt-spas actually exist, but they should), and possess an ache that Massive Attack’s last album lacked. It doesn’t always work: “Mr. Happy” with its falsetto chorus is more corny than heartfelt, and anyone willing to name a song “The Creature from the Blackened Room” better prepare for some sniggers, even if the music for the track isn’t half bad. When the album’s on, though, it’s on; “The Human Flood” is just begging to be used in a movie trailer, and “Tag You’re It” explores funkier territory. Nova’s not the best singer in the world, and X: The Human Condition will not rewrite the music history books, but for anyone looking to come down from an already chill party, this will do the trick. (Hypnotical Entertainment 2010)

X: The Human Condition MySpace page
Click to buy X: The Human Condition from Amazon

Adult Contemporary, Alternative, Ambient, Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Electronica, Melodramatic

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