Category: Pop (Page 28 of 216)

Matt White: It’s the Good Crazy

September 17, 2010 /


RIYL: John Mayer, Jason Mraz, Maroon 5

Thanks to the success of guys like John Mayer, a new crop of “sensitive” singer-songwriters has flourished in the music world. The dawn of the 21st century brought along the resurgence of musical guys with “feelings,” and Matt White is one of the latest artists to attempt to stake his claim in that crowded scene. In a perfect blend of an old archetype with new-school technology, White (who uses piano as his primary instrument but also plays guitar) was discovered by record execs after amassing over 50,000 friends and fans on MySpace.

Matt_White_01

It’s the Good Crazy, White’s second full-length album, is exactly what you’d expect a modern-day singer-songwriter album to be. Many songs on the album turn out to be reminiscent of songs or artists that have been omnipresent on Adult Top 40 radio these last few years. You hear echoes of Coldplay (right down to the falsetto) on the spare piano ballad “When I Fall,” a sound White might want to explore further, as it’s the best track on the album. The funky “On My Wall” conjures up Adam Levine’s many Prince impressions, and “Colorblind” (at least instrumentally) is reminiscent of Mayer’s “Your Body is a Wonderland.” They’re all pleasant enough, but the fact that they recall other artists makes one wonder if White will be able to carve out his own niche – it’s the only thing that’s going to make him stand out amongst the legions of young male songwriters.

I definitely dig the guy’s voice. While his normal range is relatively anonymous, White has a soaring falsetto that impresses even though he occasionally veers into screechy territory. Lyrically, there’s definitely a sense that he suffers from that borderline annoying smart-assery that plagues guys like Jason Mraz. Ultimately, It’s the Good Crazy turns out to be fairly standard singer-songwriter fare, but there’s enough promise shown to suggest that a really good album might be within his reach. (Rykodisc 2010)

Matt White on MySpace

CD Reviews, Pop

Herra Terra: Quiet Geist

September 16, 2010 /


RIYL: Kenna, Muse, The Killers

The press release for Quiet Geist, the new album from Northeastern electronic pop quartet Herra Terra, dared to name-check two big D’s that will get us to instinctively request a review copy like a Pavlovian dog: Depeche, and Duran. Silly us. We’ve seen this before, it’s almost never accurate, and as it turns out, it wasn’t accurate here, either. But in their defense, that’s probably because they knew that comparing it to Kenna’s New Sacred Cow would just leave people scratching their heads.

The funny thing is, we’ve heard quite a few artists lately who have taken inspiration from Kenna’s first album, the joke being that no one bought the record, but everyone seems to have heard it. And we’d bet dollars to donuts that Herra Terra could play the album start to finish at their next Halloween show, if leadoff track “Ejection Seats” is any indication. The songs are better arranged than they are written, which is not to say the songs are poor; it’s just that the music doesn’t stand above the nifty shifts in tempo or the slow builds, both of which anchor “You Were the Accelerator.” There is also the matter of singer John Paul Tonelli’s voice; It’s too muscular for the kind of music the band plays. That might sound like quibbling, but show us the last synth-driven band with a butch singer. Still, there is potential here. When the songwriting catches up with the band’s sense of atmospherics, they could be dangerous. (The Mylene Sheath 2010)

Herra Terra MySpace page
Click to buy Quiet Geist from Amazon

Alternative, Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Dance, Pop, Rock

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

Junip: Fields

September 9, 2010 /


RIYL: The Radio Dept, Elbow, Kings of Convenience

José González is best known for his Nick Drake-inspired brand of hushed folk. His haunting and ethereal vocal presence has garnered the Swedish singer-songwriter a sizable following throughout the indie world. Despite a steady flow of EPs and two studio albums for Mute Records, González has still found time to work with Junip – the trio he helped form in the late ‘90s. Where his solo material is often sparse in everything from instrumentation to its production, Junip offers González a broader sonic palette to work from.

Junip’s first two releases, Black Refugee EP (2005) and this year’s Rope and Summit EP, showcased the Swedes backing González’s sweetened melodies and delicate vocal delivery with a fuller, much richer arrangement style. Fields delivers on the promise of Junip’s prior studio offerings, with one hypnotizing track after the other. The band weaves the kinds of subtle melodic nuances that seep into your head without you even knowing it. There are several of these little hooks in every song, and new ones often reveal themselves with each repeated listen.

Produced by the band and Don Alsterberg, Fields has some of the better keyboard tones (courtesy of Tobias Winterkorn) in recent memory. The warmth and chameleon-like way of fitting its surroundings make the keyboards one of the highlights on an album with many. Songs like “Always” and “Faded to the Grain” find a group that proves that genuine song craft is not a dead art form. Fields might be too sophisticated for modern rock radio, but in a perfect world, Junip would be playing stadiums along with Coldplay. (Mute 2010)

Junip MySpace page

Adult Contemporary, Artists, CD Reviews, Folk, Pop

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