Category: Pop (Page 20 of 216)

Shakespears Sister: Songs from the Red Room

November 18, 2010 / David Medsker

RIYL: early Roxy Music, Blondie, Goldfrapp

It had to sting Siobhan Fahey a little that the band that she began as a solo project only saw commercial success when someone else was singing lead. She was Dave Stewart’s wife. She was in Bananarama, goddamnit. Why was it that the world only paid attention to her when some high-pitched American was on the mic?

Because that high-pitched American (Marcella Detroit, for those keeping score at home) had a dynamic voice, and when it crawled out of the speakers begging listeners to staaaaaaaay wiiiiiiith her, you stayed. Fahey, on the other hand, had to settle for playing the supporting role once again, even though it was her own band, and she was the lead singer. Ow.

Having said that, Fahey kind of forced the label’s hand in some regards. After playing the role of tarted-up hottie for years, Fahey was understandably bored with being a slice of cheesecake and adopted a look that resembled thrift store Gothic. Combine that with the fact that she had the second-best voice in her own band – or at least the second most striking voice – and it’s easy to see why the label chose to promote them as a duo, rather than as a Fahey solo project. You can imagine the label’s horror when Detroit left the band in 1993; now we just have the low-voiced Goth girl? What the hell do we do with her?

Bury her, it appears. Fahey made one more album in 1996 under the Shakespears Sister name, but it took eight years and some nasty dealings with her label to get it released. Plans for a Fahey solo album were scrapped…twice. So Fahey resurrects Shakespears Sister for the sake of artistic collateral in order to get her solo material out, 18 years removed from her biggest (and in the US, only) hit. How has time treated her?

Pretty well, actually. Songs from the Red Room is an odd blend of glam, dance beats and sass. There isn’t anything here that will tear up the charts, but the whole album is strangely compelling, begging repeat spins despite the lack of a killer hook. She ropes in Terry Hall to duet with her again (the two sang “It Ain’t What You Do” together with Bananarama and Fun Boy Three in 1982) on “Was It Worth It?,” and taunts Marc Bolan on opening track “Pulsatron,” a song that Bolan would have killed for solely for the title. It will shock the daylights out of anyone who’s only familiar with the the band’s chart successes, but that appears to be the point. At long last, Fahey sounds like she’s making the music she meant to make all along. Better late than never, we suppose. (SF Records 2010)

Shakespears Sister MySpace page
Click to buy Songs from the Red Room from Amazon

Artists, CD Reviews, Dance, Electronica, Pop

Bananarama Headlines Marcella Detroit Shakespears Sister Siobhan Fahey Songs from the Red Room CD review Stay

Norah Jones: …Featuring Norah Jones

November 16, 2010 / Jeff Giles

RIYL: Diana Krall, Eva Cassidy, Bonnie Raitt

Since beginning with the smash hit Come Away With Me in 2002, Norah Jones’ recording career has been a study in slow, carefully measured decline. Clearly not willing to pigeonhole herself as a crooner of piano ballads, Jones has tugged away from the dulcet tones of her debut – but because she has label bosses to answer to (or maybe just because she’s smart enough to stay the course), she hasn’t totally broken with the sound that made her famous, and the result has been a string of lukewarm records that hint at the artist Jones wishes she could be, if only the stakes weren’t so high.

The shame of it all is that Jones’ kitten’s purr of a voice, while perfect for selling lattes, sounds just as fine – if not finer – out of its established context. Over the years, Jones has built a reputation for herself as a terrific guest vocalist with a wonderful sense of humor, popping up on recordings by everyone from Outkast to Ray Charles, and singing about everything from Chex Mix (on the Lonely Island song “Dreamgirl”) to motherfuckers (Peeping Tom’s “Sucker”). Sadly, neither of those songs made the cut for this collection, but you get the idea: …Featuring Norah Jones might bear the unmistakable stink of a contract-fulfillment release, but by bundling up 18 noteworthy collaborations, it does an arguably better job of highlighting her strengths than anything since Come Away With Me.

If there’s a real quibble here, it’s that the really left-field stuff (like the Lonely Island and Peeping Tom songs) was left off, and while you do get to hear Jones doing stuff she can’t do as a solo artist (like playing hook girl for Q-Tip and Talib Kweli on “Life Is Better” and “Soon the New Day,” respectively), much of …Featuring‘s charms are more subtle, like hearing her slip inside Joni Mitchell’s “Court & Spark” alongside Herbie Hancock, or her lovely vocals for Charlie Hunter’s “More Than This” cover. Taken as a whole, it doesn’t reinvent Jones’ sound the way she often seems halfway inclined to do, but it’s a damn sight more interesting than, say, 2009’s The Fall. Here’s hoping she listens to this compilation often while composing her next full-length set. (Blue Note 2010)

Norah Jones MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop

Belle and Sebastian Herbie Hancock Joni Mitchell M Ward Norah Jones Q-Tip Ryan Adams Talib Kweli

Mt. Desolation: Mt. Desolation

November 11, 2010 / David Medsker

RIYL: The Thrills, The Pogues, The Lilac Time

If you had asked us what we expected the next move to be from Keane after they released their fourth album Night Train in May of this year, our gut response would have been “lengthy hiatus, followed by announcement of signing with new, smaller label.” Don’t get us wrong, we love the boys from Battle, but the release of Night Train, coming so quickly on the heels of the band’s 2008 album Perfect Symmetry, looked for all intents and purposes like they were trying to fulfill their contractual obligations to Interscope and move on. Consider this: Night Train was designated EP status in their native England. Here, it’s a full-fledged long-player. Hmmm.

Keane may very well be going on a lengthy hiatus, but two of its members have already cranked out their first side project, which makes it their third album in two years: Mt. Desolation, a collection of, wait for it, country songs, filtered through their English sensibilities. It’s country in the same way that the Thrills are West Coast pop, but Mt. Desolation is a charming album just the same. Rice-Oxley and Quin don’t have the booming voice of their bandmate Tom Chaplin, but their voices actually suit these songs better, though it would be nice to hear Chaplin take a whack at the Keane-ish “Bitter Pill” somewhere down the road. The album has its share of drinking songs (“My My My”) and shit-kickers (“Annie Ford,” “Platform 7”), and while it’s clear that country music is more of a hobby than a lifestyle for those involved, it’s also clear that these songs come from the heart, making this a more honest country record than most country records. Writing a song that could pass for a B-side to Beck’s Sea Change (“Another Night”) doesn’t hurt, either. This is one side project that we’d like to see grow some legs. (Cherry Tree/Interscope 2010)

Mt. Desolation MySpace page
Click to buy Mt. Desolation from Amazon

Adult Contemporary, Artists, CD Reviews, Country, Folk, Pop

Headlines Jesse Quin Keane Mt. Desolation Mt. Desolation CD review Tim Rice-Oxley

Mini-Mansions: Mini-Mansions

November 9, 2010 / James B. Eldred

RIYL: The Beatles 1967-1969, Donovan, Fountains of Wayne

Mini-Mansions is the side-project of Michael Shuman, the latest bass player in the revolving door line-up that makes up Queens of the Stone Age. But don’t pick up his side-project group’s self-titled debut expecting stoner metal from the school of Josh Homme. Instead, expect some Sgt. Pepper/White Album-era Beatles tunes – and nothing else.

Mini-Mansions have a very psychedelic and ethereal sound, about as far away from the metal Shuman is known for as you can get. The only reminder of his main group’s genre is the slight creepy and menacing sound that occasionally sneaks its way in, thanks to the oddly threatening yet still appealing vocals of Shuman.

Its hard to say that much else about Mini Mansions. They sound so much like the Beatles that if you tried to pass off some of the tracks, such as the brilliantly-titled “Crime of the Season,” as long-lost Beatles tunes, some people would probably believe you. They’re not trying to show they’re influenced by the Beatles, nor are they even trying to do a pastiche of the fab four – these guys are straight-up mimicking the Beatles. They get credit for being ballsy, that’s for sure. But when I literally mistook a portion of album standout “Kiddie Hypnogogia” for the chorus of “She’s So Heavy,” I realized that perhaps they’re taking the whole thing a little bit too far. Does it sound good? Sure. It sounds like the Beatles after all, but there’s not much to it, especially since every track not only sounds just like the Beatles, but a very specific era of the Beatles. It wouldn’t have hurt for them to throw some Revolver or Rubber Soul in there for variety’s sake. (Ipecac Recordings 2010)

Mini-Mansions MySpace Page

Alternative, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop, Psychedelic, Rock

Headlines Michael Shuman Mini-Mansions Mini-Mansions CD review Queens of the Stone Age

Bleu: Four

November 8, 2010 / David Medsker

RIYL: Jellyfish, Dan Wilson, Mike Viola

For a man as talented as Bleu (William James McAuley III to his mother) is, his solo albums were downright exasperating to listen to. For every sky-high pop classic like “Get Up” or “We’ll Do It All Again,” there were three songs that sounded like they were written to be a hit at that very moment, all post-nu metal ballad-y bluster (think Staind’s “It’s Been Awhile”) and no soul. His label refused to even release his second major album A Watched Pot, and once it finally dropped last year, we could see why – the damn thing was stuffed to the gills with more of those silly ballads. Between the songs mentioned above and Bleu’s efforts as ringleader of Alpacas Orgling, the Jeff Lynne tribute album from one-off indie pop supergroup L.E.O., it’s clear Bleu knows how to turn things up a notch. So why hasn’t he?

Amazing what a little creative freedom and a bunch of Kickstarter cash will do (dude raised over $30K in fan contributions), because Four, Bleu’s latest album and the first to be released on his own label, is decidedly more upbeat than its predecessors. Nothing here matches the dizzy heights of “Get Up” or “We’ll Do It All Again,” but it’s the most consistent and versatile album he’s released to date.

Four also has its share of ballads, but they feel less forced than the ones that clogged his previous two albums. He still can’t help his profane ways, though, taking a lovely Smokey Robinson-ish groove and calling it “When the Shit Hits the Fan.” (Note to aspiring songwriters everywhere: do not ever sing about whether or not someone’s shit does or doesn’t stink. Ever.) “How Blue,” however, could pass for a lost L.E.O. B-side, and “Everything Is Fine” is absulutely gorgeous, a pastoral acoustic ballad filled with strings and what has to be Roger Joseph Manning Jr. on backing vocals (our review copy was a download, therefore no liner notes).

The two songs from Four that will remain standards in Bleu’s live set for time immemorial are “Dead in the Mornin’,” a gospel rave-up where he bequeaths his possessions, and “B.O.S.T.O.N.,” a love song to his adopted home town. The best thing to be said about the album, though, is the absence of that trendy crunch that weighed down Redhead and A Watched Pot – that sound never fit his songs. The production on Four may not be as slick, but it’s more honest. It’s unclear if the solo career is still Bleu’s #1 priority or just something to play with in his downtime – and who would blame him if it weren’t, after penning songs with Hanson, the Jonas Brothers, and Selena Gomez – but better to see Four arrive two albums late than not at all. (The Major Label 2010)

Bleu MySpace page
Click to buy Four from Amazon

Artists, CD Reviews, Pop, Power Pop, Rock

Bleu Bleu CD review Four Four CD review Headlines Redhead