Category: Funk (Page 3 of 10)

Michael Franti & Spearhead: The Sound of Sunshine

September 20, 2010 /


RIYL: String Cheese Incident, Keller Williams, Ziggy Marley

This is an aptly titled album, as practically every track beams out a catchy upbeat vibe to the listener. Franti has long specialized in feel-good grooves with a message, while also dabbling in bluesier and hard rocking flavors. But his bread and butter has always been the melodic, uplifting stuff. This album maybe overdoes it a bit, and lacks in the diversity that made for such strong albums with 2001’s Stay Human and 2008’s All Rebel Rockers. The latter yielded the band’s first Top 20 hit with the catchy “Say Hey (I Love You)” though, so it’s not a shock to see Franti and company looking to mine that vein further. Franti has been speaking truth to power for years with little financial reward, so you can’t begrudge him a thing.

There’s no call-to-arms, revolution-oriented track like “Rock the Nation,” “Yell Fire” or or “A Little Bit of Riddim,” which may disappoint some listeners. But Franti is still wheeling and dealing with the cathartic rhymes and beats as an antidote to dark times, including his own death-defying bout with a ruptured appendix last year. There’s more of an emphasis on the acoustic guitars, as well as a continuation of the reggae vibe that was a strong flavor on the last album.

The title track kicks off the album and sets the catchy, uplifting tone for the album with lyrics like “they can take away my job but not my friends.” “Shake It” pumps up the energy with an upbeat romantic number that receives vocal assistance from the dynamic Cherine Anderson, a previous collaborator. “Hey Hey Hey” remains upbeat but also features some of the cathartic, reflective vibe that Franti is so good at. “Anytime You Need Me” emphasizes a cheery reggae vibe.

One of the best tracks is “I’ll Be Waiting,” which bites the guitar parts from U2’s “Bad” with great effect on a tune about loyalty. The most rocking track on the album is “The Thing That Helps Me Get Through,” a high-energy tune with a steady beat and lyrics about getting down with that special someone as a remedy to a crazy, mixed up world. “Headphones” dabbles in some sonic ambiance to create a laid-back atmospheric effect.

The album doesn’t have the musical diversity of Franti’s past work, but it’s got plenty of the feel-good grooves that are his trademark, and this chaotic world can certainly use more of that. (Capitol Records 2010)

Michael Franti & Spearhead MySpace page

CD Reviews, Funk, Hip Hop, Pop, Reggae, Rock, Soul

Seen Your Video: Starsmith, “Give Me a Break”

September 16, 2010 /

Four words: Daft Punk does disco, as in ’70s disco. Some might think ’70s disco is redundant, since that’s when disco was big, but the hip club kiddies know that there bands making disco music today. Hell, what’s Hercules and Love Affair if they’re not a disco band? (Answer: they’re totally a disco band.) Love the stop-motion photography. It reminds us of that video for Hilly Michaels’ “Calling All Girls,” and we can’t help but be happy whenever that song comes to mind.

Artists, CD Reviews, Dance, Funk, Seen Your Video, Videos

Chromeo: Business Casual

September 14, 2010 /


RIYL: Cameo, Zapp, Hall & Oates

If you’ve ever flipped the collar on an Izod shirt, owned a pair of Bugle Boy jeans, or purchased Hall & Oates’ Rock ‘n’ Soul, Part One on cassette or vinyl, Chromeo is your custom-built funky time machine – a synthy, vocoder-soaked trip to a parallel reality where musical history stopped in 1984. It was a pretty nifty trick the first couple of times around – and their last release, 2007’s Fancy Footwork, earned them a Daryl Hall endorsement and the ironic love of an audience too young to remember Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down – but most tributes to dead genres wear thin pretty quickly (see: Darkness, The). So it would be a mistake to expect similar results from their next album, right?

Chromeo_01

Maybe not. Business Casual doesn’t really add anything new to the Chromeo formula, but it doesn’t really need to – whether or not you believe P-Thugg and Dave 1 are serious, they’re really good at recreating that early ’80s vibe, to the point where you might find yourself wondering if you requested “The Right Type” on your local Top 40 station 25 years ago. Everything, from the buzzy synths to the soulful-but-not-too-soulful vocals, sounds like it’s being beamed in from a giant boom box on the planet Atari – and more importantly, the songs are as clever as they are catchy. It’s ultimately a fairly empty exercise, and if you’re old enough to remember when this sort of stuff was originally being made, it probably seems more than a little ridiculous to be witnessing a revival of something that was regarded as inherently disposable even when it was popular. What’s sillier, though: the idea of a band intentionally mimicking yacht soul, or the fact that Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop” spent five weeks at Number One?

In the long run, it’ll be interesting to see where Chromeo takes this; even the artists they’re imitating moved on eventually, never to return. But hey, if they can deliver three albums that do this much with such a paper-thin gimmick, there might not be anything they can’t do. Break out the velour and pass the cocaine. (Atlantic 2010)

Chromeo MySpace page

Alternative, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Funk, Hipster, Pop, R&B, Songs

Soulive: Rubber Soulive

September 9, 2010 /


RIYL: The Beatles, G Love & Special Sauce

There is a reason why so many artists have taken a whack at the Beatles’ catalog – it quite literally has something for everyone, which is why everyone from Aretha Franklin to Motley Crue have covered them. Curiously, despite the fact that they were a driving force behind a million pop acts, it’s the soul singers that have gotten the most mileage out of their material. This makes perfect sense, really; before Brian Wilson came along, Paul McCartney wanted to be Little Richard.

Enter New York jazz funk hounds Soulive, who have tackled songs from both ends of the Beatles spectrum (the soul singers tended to stick to the earlier material) for Rubber Soulive, finding the funk in even the more white-bread songs in the Fab Four’s catalog. One wonders if the band heard the Beastie Boys’ cover of the Jam’s “Start!,” because the goings here are very similar in nature, though Soulive clearly have musicianship on their side. Their version of “In My Life” is surprisingly soulful, and Eric Krasno does as good an impression of George Harrison (on guitar, that is) as you’re likely to hear. Sometimes the band seems to be trying harder than the song deserves (“Eleanor Rigby,” “Revolution”), and as nifty as their arrangements are, they don’t exactly make any of these songs their own, as a certain “American Idol” judge is fond of saying. Still, it’s a perfectly enjoyable trip through the finest catalog in music, and the kind of thing that will likely land as backing music in movies for years to come. (Royal Family Recordings 2010)

Soulive MySpace page
Click to buy Rubber Soulive from Amazon

'60s, Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Funk, Jam Band, Jazz, Pop

The Best of Soul Train (3 DVD)

August 26, 2010 /


RIYL: ’70s soul, really bad fashion, Afro-Sheen

Prior to MTV (to say nothing of the network’s lack of acceptance for soul and rap music for half a decade or so) and BET, or for those of us who just didn’t have cable for a long time, “Soul Train” was the primary destination for soul music lovers looking to check out their favorite artists. Running for over three decades, just about everyone who was ever anyone in R&B or hip-hop stood on the hallowed “Soul Train” stage and performed as dozens of young, stylish dancers showed off their latest moves.

Time-Life has recently opened the “Soul Train” vaults and unleashed a nine-DVD set containing hours of performances, interviews and legendary routines, and even more recently, some of the all-time classic performances have been compiled onto the “Best of Soul Train” DVD.

This 3-disc set contains performances from some of the all-time greats of soul music, and almost all of them come from the show’s first few years, 1971-1979. (Stevie Wonder provides the only content coming from a later date, with a 1991 medley of his hits.) Although many of “Soul Train’s” guests lip-synched, this set is heavy on the rare live performances. They include a sweaty run through “That Lady” by the Isley Brothers, riveting performances of “Use Me” and “Lean On Me” by Bill Withers, an impromptu duet of “Ooh Baby Baby” by Aretha Franklin and Smokey Robinson, and a performance by Barry White and a huge orchestra that must have required Don Cornelius’s production company to expand the Soul Train stage.

In addition to those performances, you get mimed but still incredible performances by the Jackson 5, the Commodores and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes (featuring a frighteningly dressed Teddy Pendergrass). There’s also interview footage from those shows (worth the cost for the Marvin Gaye segment alone) as well as several dance routines that show how ahead of their time the Soul Train dancers were (in addition to how horrendous some of the fashions of the time were). You also get to see some of the groundbreaking commercials that ran during the Soul Train episodes, among the first ads to feature products geared exclusively towards a black audience. Bonus footage includes interviews with Soul Train creator/host Don Cornelius, the legendary Smokey Robinson, and Soul Train dancer-turned-Grammy winning singer Jody Watley.

As an admitted “Soul Train”-aholic, I’m hoping that eventually the highlights from every episode (up until the mid-Nineties, when I pretty much stopped watching) gets released. However, if you are a fan of soul music in any one of its incarnations, you need to have this DVD in your collection. So throw on your tightest bell-bottoms, pick your afro, and take a ride on the funkiest train in music history. As Don famously stated at the end of each episode, “you can bet your last money that it’s gonna be a stone gas, honey!”
(Time-Life 2010)

CD Reviews, Funk, Hip Hop, Music DVDs, Pop, R&B, Soul

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