Author: David Medsker (Page 36 of 96)

Yo Gabba Gabba: Music Is…Awesome!


RIYL: Old school hip hop, hipster bands, your children

Anyone who was lucky enough to snap up a copy of 2008’s here-today-gone-yesterday Yo Gabba Gabba! CD will likely be disappointed with Music Is…Awesome!, the newest release of songs from the TV show that’s a hit with both kids and stoners. Eight of the 13 tracks from the previous release are here, along with songs from the Shins, Chromeo, Of Montreal, I’m from Barcelona, and Money Mark. That’s a whole lotta hipster, right there, and the decision to include the hipster bands over acts that actually had our kids singing along – there is no excuse, for example, for the exclusion of the Aggrolites’ “Banana” or GOGO13’s fantastic ska tribute “Pick It Up” – is a curious one, to say the least. Then again, the soundtrack supervisors had positively tons of bands to choose from (The Bird and the Bee, the Ting Tings, Mates of State, Jason Falkner, MGMT, Jimmy Eat World, Datarock, the Clientele, etc.), not to mention original songs (“Hold Still,” “Please, Thank You”), so it stands to reason that they were going to leave some essential YGG moments out. Be that as it may, Music Is…Awesome! is good, but not quite as awesome as it could have been. (Filter/Fontana 2009)

Yo Gabba Gabba MySpace page
Click to buy Music Is…Awesome! from Amazon

Steal This Song: General Elektriks, “Take Back the Instant”

Somewhere in California, Beck is throwing stuff across the room, pissed that he didn’t come up with this first.

The project of French expatriate Hervé “RV” Salters, General Elektriks is minimalist blue-eyed funk filtered through a microphone and a bevy of vintage synthesizers. RV seems particularly fond of the Clavinet (think “Superstition,” “Trampled Underfoot”), which makes sense considering it’s arguably the funkiest instrument ever created. Adding the horns for the last verse is a nice touch, too.

general elektriks

Wow, look at that shirt and tie combo. All right, so the guy might be color blind. But when it comes to music, color blindness is never a bad thing. It-it’s time to get, it-it’s time to get funky, kids.

General Elektriks – Take Back the Instant

General Elektriks MySpace page

Sufjan Stevens: The BQE


RIYL: Danielson Famile, Andrew Bird, Broken Social Scene

While Sufjan Stevens’ latest opus, entitled The BQE (which stands for The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) is equal parts charming and epic, it’s misleading and inaccurate with regards to its subject matter. After listening to The BQE many times, it’s clear that Mr. Stevens has never had the pleasure of living in an apartment bordering the elevated parts of the aforementioned expressway. Come on, Sufjan! Study your subject matter! Where are the car horns, the gun shots, the cursing motorists and that asshole cabbie that just cut me off again, goddammit…sorry. Flashed back for a second there.

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Air: Love 2


RIYL: Gary Wright, Tangerine Dream, Phoenix

The French electronic duo’s first album since 2007’s Pocket Symphony – and the first to be recorded in the band’s brand-new recording studio – Love 2 is a back-to-basics effort of sorts, dusting off several of the keyboards they used on their genre-busting 1998 album Moon Safari. But don’t think of Love 2 as a Moon Safari sequel; it shares a little bit of that album’s spacey loungey cool (hey, it’s Air, how can it not), but the goings here are much lighter and peppier. “Love” is the bounciest song the band’s done in years, and “Be a Bee” is a far better foray into rock than pretty much everything on 10,000 Hz Legend.

Air_Love2

Granted, it’s a bit slighter than their best work (we’ll pause while you crack your best ‘slighter than air’ joke), but as long as they give us something like “Heaven’s Light” every couple of years, you will get no complaints from us. (Astralwerks 2009)

Air MySpace page
Click to buy Love 2 from Amazon

Bill Engvall: Aged and Confused


RIYL: Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Blue Collar TV

Bill Engvall aoppears to be an all-around good guy, and as one of the few clean comics working today, we take no pleasure from saying anything less than flattering about the man or his work. But it must be said; Aged and Confused, Engvall’s new album, is just…fine. It isn’t particularly bad or good – it just moseys along in that safe zone of zip lines, annoying kids, embarrassing naked stories and, something that will definitely appeal to his core demographic, colonoscopies. It’s all harmless enough, and the crowd at Chicago’s Vic Theatre lapped it up. (It is also, thankfully, free of Engvall’s catch phrase ‘Here’s your sign’ bits.) But the painful truth is that it’s just not terribly funny. Borrow it from the library, listen once, return it, and your Engvall fix will be complete. (Warner Bros. Nashville 2009)

Bill Engvall MySpace page
Click to buy Aged and Confused from Amazon

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