Category: Pop (Page 37 of 216)

Scissor Sisters: Night Work

June 28, 2010 /


RIYL: The Bee Gees, Hercules and Love Affair, Giorgio Moroder

The Scissor Sisters were putting the finishing touches on their third album when a funny thing happened – they realized they hated it. So they scrapped it and started from scratch. The Beatles did this once; the end result was Abbey Road. Then again, Duran Duran did this too, and the end result was Red Carpet Massacre. Results, as you can see, may vary.

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Thankfully, this is no massacre. Night Work contains all of the band’s trademarks – the discotastic bass lines, the finest falsetto work since the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack – but it comes with an extra dose of sleaze. This is easily the randiest album the Sisters have made to date (“Take me in front of my parents,” singer Ana Matronic begs at one point), yet strangely it also contains some of their most conservative songs. It’s as if the band has recognized that they will not achieve the superstar status in the States that they enjoy in the UK and Australia and decided to let their freak flag fly – for all the advancements we’ve made as a society in terms of gay rights, the Hot 100 is downright hostile to openly gay acts, certain American Idol winners excepted – but still gave it one last shot by writing a couple songs that sounded “less gay.” It should surprise no one that those are the album’s weakest moments.

That’s right, anthemic Killers wannabe “Fire with Fire,” we’re looking in your direction. Besides containing one of the laziest choruses singer Jake Shears has ever written (it basically repeats ‘fire’ and ‘desire’ over again), the song is like a rented tux, with the band getting dressed up for an event they’d rather not attend. Even odder is the title track, which sounds like a standard Scissor Sisters song but tries a little too hard to sound like a standard Scissor Sisters song. With those two songs out of the way by track three, the album takes off from there, from the ultra-funky “Any Which Way” to the Kraftwerk-riffing “Something Like This.” Shears even does a remarkably effective Chris Difford impression on the rockin’ “Harder You Get,” but the album’s final two tracks are its finest. “Nightlife” is fast but moody and sports the album’s best chorus, while “Invisible Light,” which features a spoken-word interlude from Sir Ian McKellen, builds into a dizzying, Trevor Horn-style climax like a next-gen “Welcome to the Pleasuredome.”

Night Work is a lean, mean dancing machine of an album, eschewing the theatrical element from their earlier work in favor of full-on disco bliss. All bands should be required by law to nearly implode if it results in more albums like this. (Downtown 2010)

Scissor Sisters MySpace page
Click to buy Night Work from Amazon

Artists, CD Reviews, Dance, Funk, Pop

The Dixie Chicks: Playlist: The Very Best of the Dixie Chicks

June 28, 2010 /


RIYL: Keith Urban, Faith Hill, Sheryl Crow, The Eagles

A cynic might say that this best-of collection by the Dixie Chicks was thrown together so that the group (which consists of sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, and lead singer Natalie Maines) would have something to sell fans during their tour with the Eagles this summer. However, the press release assures us that these songs were handpicked by the Chicks, implying that they were deeply involved with the collection.

I suppose. I get the feeling that by “handpicked,” the record label means that the ladies used their hands to text “yes” when the list of songs popped up in their email boxes from their record company reps. Despite the green packaging (liner notes and song credits only appear in PDF form as extras on the CD), Playlist (which is actually a line of “best of” collections that Sony BMG releases for veteran artists) is more or less the same as one of those cheap cassette collections you find at every truck strop across our great nation.  Still, as this is the first major collection of hits by the Dixie Chicks, it’s worth looking at.

Playlist is arranged chronologically, pulling tracks from the Dixie Chicks’ four studio albums featuring Maines at the front of the band (there were two earlier incarnations of the band before her).  Two tracks from Wide Open Spaces, including the lovely “You Were Mine;” three songs from their excellent sophomore album, Fly, including  Patty Griffin’s painful “Let Him Fly;” three songs from the multi-platinum Home, including the superb, shuffling “Truth No. 2” (also penned by Griffin); and four from the 2007 Grammy-winning Album of the Year, Taking the Long Way, most notably “Not Ready to Make Nice,” their angry response to the backlash they received for comments made at the build-up of the Iraq invasion.

Each track is crisp, clean and slickly produced. Each production is so flawless, it’s difficult to distinguish which album any of these tracks come from. Whatever growth these ladies display comes through in their lyrics rather than fiery studio performances. Nonetheless, all of the songs are excellent, except maybe their rather bland cover of Fleetwood Mac’s classic “Landslide,” however, that just may be my personal preference for the sparse Buckingham/Nicks version.

At 12 songs, the only surprises here are the omissions of several of their top ten country hits like “I Can Love You Better,” the group’s first top ten hit from 1997, “Without You,” which was a number one hit, and “Travelin’ Soldier,” also a number one hit song, and perhaps one of their finest recordings.

Still, the casual Dixie Chicks fan uninterested in downloading individual tracks can get the entire MP3 album for just $5 at Amazon, leaving plenty of money left over to round out the collection of missing songs. Playlist definitely offers a taste of the impeccably played and sung music of the Dixie Chicks, a reminder of why they’re one of the best country acts around. Hopefully a new album is coming soon. If not, one would hope  a more genuine greatest hits collection, one that includes all of their hits, as well as some samples of their wildly popular live act. (2010 Sony/BMG)

Official Dixie Chicks webpage
Click to buy Playlist: The Very Best of the Dixie Chicks from Amazon

CD Reviews, Country, Pop

The Divine Comedy: Bang Goes the Knighthood

June 24, 2010 /


RIYL: Scott Walker, Pulp, Belle & Sebastian

After a three-year silence, Neil Hannon has suddenly reached Jack White levels of productivity. He and fellow Irishman Thomas Walsh made last year’s dead-brilliant, ELO-riffing Duckworth Lewis Method (the only concept album about cricket you’ll ever need), and a mere ten months later, Hannon has returned with yet another album, this one under his day job the Divine Comedy. It should surprise no one familiar with Hannon’s work that he has once again made a superb record.

Bang Goes the Knighthood boasts the same chipper tone as his last album, 2006’s Victory for the Comic Muse, though the first step out of the gate is a measured one. “Down in the Street Below” is half-ballad, half-baroque pop, exploring people’s tendencies to lose themselves in the hustle and bustle. Walsh delivers his trademark honey-dipped backing vocals on the scathing “Complete Banker” (“Maybe this recession is a blessing in disguise / We can build a much much bigger bubble the next time”), but the song that will have Gen X alt-rockers chuckling is “At the Indie Disco,” Hannon’s love letter to the Stone Roses and Wannadies, which finishes with one of his best couplets ever: “She makes my heart beat the same way / As at the start of ‘Blue Monday’ / Always the last song that they play.”

The one song that might have people scratching their heads – and will give Anglophobes a scrorching case of hives – is “Can You Stand on One Leg,” which is what “Mack the Knife” might have sounded like had it been written by Monty Python, and ends with Hannon holding an obscenely high falsetto note for 28 seconds. (You read that right.) It’s a tough one to swallow, trying just a bit to hard to be silly. He redeems himself on the next, and final track “I Like,” a driving love letter to his wife about the things he, yes, likes about her. It’s all just another day at the office for Hannon; pristine ork pop with smarts for days. Even better are the extra tracks that come with the download version, where Hannon engages in some oddball electronic experimentation and Kraftwerk sampling clearly borne from the Duckworth Lewis Method sessions. He’s great the way he is, but if Hannon chose to go in that direction next time around, he would get no argument here. (101 Distribution 2010)

Divine Comedy MySpace page
Click to buy Bang Goes the Knighthood from Amazon

Adult Contemporary, Artists, CD Reviews, Melodramatic, Pop

Rooney: Eureka

June 23, 2010 /


RIYL: Weezer, Butch Walker, Fountains of Wayne

It’s pretty rare these days that a band on a major label or an offshoot of a major has free reign to make the record they want. But that’s just what we have on our hands with Los Angeles-based rock band Rooney on their third album, Eureka. They wrote the material and produced it, and the result is a stunning set that is as catchy as anything out there today. The arrangements and production on Eureka are such that the melodies jump out of speakers – and while there is a distinct resemblance to Weezer, for the most part there are no formulaic songs on this album.

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You know how they used to call Budweiser a good drinking beer? Eureka is a good listening album. Seriously. And Rooney shines equally on upbeat pop numbers like “Holdin’ On” or “All or Nothing;” on funky ear candy like “I Can’t Get Enough;” or even darker, melodic, piano-driven tracks such as “Only Friend” and “Stars and Stripes.” In fact, try to find a bad track on Eureka. It makes you wonder why bands are forced to write with the Kara DioGuardis of the world or to be produced by label hires that make everything sound the same. It’s sometimes best to just let them be a band, just like Rooney. (California Dreaming/Warner Bros.)

Rooney MySpace Page

Alternative, Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, News, Pop, Power Pop, Rock

Me, Myself, and iPod 6/23/10: A literal animal collective

June 23, 2010 /

esd ipod

!!! – AM/FM
I am admittedly late to the !!! party, as I spent a good year trying to figure out how to even say the band’s name (Jason Thompson finally set me straight by going “Ch-ch-ch”), but after hearing this Frankie Goes to Hollywood-sampling number – and if it’s not Frankie, it’s gotta be something produced by Trevor Horn – you can bet I’ll be keeping an eye on them going forward.

Joemca – Big Dreams
It’s like a glitchy Bruce Springsteen song. That’s a good thing, by the way.

Brock Enright – Maybe
Blissed out Jesus and Mary Chain? Sounds good to me.

Marco Benevento – Greenpoint
There are few things that make me roll my eyes faster than seeing “sound sculptor” in quotes in a press release. Having said that, this is a neat little instrumental.

Unicycle Loves You – Mirror, Mirror
I wrote a piece a while back about how band names have gone to shit. I cited Unicycle Loves You as an example of this. Their fans let me have it, though in a playful way, unlike the unfiltered hostility that one normally finds on the web. A few weeks later, the band sent me a friend request on MySpace. Had to give them points for that. Now they have a new album, and wouldn’t you know it, I like the first single. Still hate the band name, though.

The Rattles – Wavy Lane
These guys are animals. Literally. The album cover shows a cat, a hippo, a lizard and a goat. Not sure if this is just another Wiggles act or a really meta joke, but the song will have Nuggets fans dancing in their seats.

'60s, Alternative, Ambient, Americana, Artists, CD Reviews, Downloads, Me Myself and iPod, Pop, Power Pop, Psychedelic, Rock

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