Category: Pop (Page 69 of 216)

Vinyl Life: Vinyl Life

September 17, 2009 /


RIYL: Kraftwerk, Afrika Bambaata, Jungle Brothers

New York trio Vinyl Life is about to make a bunch of former DJs very happy. Their self-titled debut is the most authentic tribute to ’80s dance music that we’ve heard, well, since the ’80s. “Hi Tops” is a miniature Name That Riff, using the keyboard lines from Inner City’s “Big Fun” and Maurice’s “This Is Acid” and merging them into a freestyle freak-out. “Electric Symphony” sounds like a sunnier Dubnobasswithmyheadman-era Underworld, and “Like This” will have Mantronik fans popping in their seats. The rapping is old-school in both delivery (it’s actually on the beat) and subject matter (sex, sex, sex), and most refreshingly, it’s almost entirely profanity-free. The guest rappers on the album’s final two tracks are not as accomodating, but just try not to laugh when one of them pulls an “Instant Club Hit”-type rant at the end of the don’t-be-a-douchebag smackdown “Take It Off.” Bonus points for “Future Beat,” which takes the signature Stock, Aitken & Waterman drum sound – think the opening to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” – and restores its inherent coolness.

The album is even available for download on a donate-what-you-want basis (but unlike Radiohead, you have to pay at least a dollar) at Tape Theory Records’ site. Best dollar you’ll ever spend. (Tape Theory Records 2009)

Vinyl Life MySpace page

Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Dance, Hip Hop, Pop

Various Artists: New Tales to Tell: A Tribute to Love & Rockets

September 16, 2009 /

Say this for New Tales to Tell: A Tribute to Love & Rockets: at 18 tracks, it is one of the most thorough tribute albums we’ve seen come down the pipe in a while, possibly ever. While this makes for a longer listen than is probably necessary, it stands as a testament to Love & Rockets that so many bands – and so many different kinds of bands, at that – were eager to contribute. Black Francis does his Black Francis thing on “All in My Mind” – it should come as no surprise that the band’s 1986 breakthrough Express is the most covered album, with every song but two appearing here – and the Flaming Lips flip “Kundalini Express” inside out, downplaying the drum track and guitar while running the vocals though what sounds like an old ELO-era voice processor. Better Than Ezra, of all bands, does a straight but effective version of “So Alive,” and Chantal Claret teams up with No Doubt drummer Adrian Young to turn “Lazy” into a frisky striptease. Funny, then, that a tribute album featuring 18 songs would not include some of the band’s best-known tunes; “Haunted When the Minutes Drag,” “Yin and Yang the Flower Pot Men,” “Sweet Lover Hangover” and “Redbird” were all skipped over in favor of deep cuts, and while that’s a diehard fan’s wet dream, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher from a label standpoint. Still, it’s hard to argue with the results, which hit a lot more often than they miss. (Justice Records 2009)

New Tales to Tell MySpace page

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

Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers: Levitate

September 16, 2009 /

His last two releases were a bluegrass record with Ricky Skaggs and a jazz trio album with Christian McBride and Jack DeJohnette, and a few songs from his latest are already earmarked for a stage musical – but Bruce Hornsby hasn’t forgotten about pop music, as evidenced by the strong, eclectic batch of tunes he lined up for his 11th studio album (and the first co-credited to his longtime backing band, the Noisemakers), Levitate. These dozen tracks tie together a handful of Hornsby’s multitudinous pop personae – piano balladeer, funk-loving programmer, raucous bandleader – without any one element overshadowing the rest. Where Levitate deviates from previous efforts is in its lack of piano solos. Hornsby and the Noisemakers aren’t afraid to lay back and blow – “Continents Drift,” for example, clocks in at almost seven and a half minutes – but the focus here is on the songs, which Hornsby pares down to their most essential parts without robbing the arrangements of any of their robust vitality. He continues his streak of cockeyed lyrical musings, too, weighing in on the role of disease in colonial American history (“The Black Rats of London”), Teddy Roosevelt (“Prairie Dog Town”), and the beloved eccentricities of Southern living (“In the Low Country”). Hornsby’s audience might have lost quite a bit of its heft since his “The Way It Is” days, but his music is better than ever. (Verve Forecast 2009)

Bruce Hornsby MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop, Rock

Joe Pernice: It Feels So Good When I Stop

September 16, 2009 /

Keeping tabs on Joe Pernice’s career has occasionally proven something of a challenge. His first band, an Americana outfit dubbed the Scud Mountain Boys, eventually morphed into the more pop-pronounced Pernice Brothers. Still, Pernice’s ambitions didn’t stop there, and a solo outing released under the moniker of Big Tobacco found him spinning off his surplus material and garnering good reviews in the process. While the Pernice Brothers have remained an ongoing entity, Joe’s recently expanded into the literary world, penning an autobiographical novel titled “It Feels So Good When I Stop” and recording an accompanying “novel soundtrack” that takes the same backward glance.

Although it’s not formally billed as such, the new effort is strictly a covers album featuring songs that helped shape Pernice’s musical palette. “I always thought Del Shannon was right down there with Pat Boone,” he remarks during a spoken word segment that precedes a harmonious “I Fall to Pieces.” “Why? Because I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.” He’s less critical in his approach to the material itself, rendering Steve Wynn’s “Tell Me When It’s Over” with a chiming Byrds-like shimmer, “I’m Your Puppet” as a lush serenade, and a surprise pick, the Mary Poppins lynchpin “Chim Cheree,” with delicate but purposeful grace. The only time the mood turns melancholy is when he prefaces a darkly confessional take on “Hello It’s Me” with a tirade against Todd for stirring up his teenage emotions. It’s then, and only then, that the album title offers truth in advertising. (Ashmont Records 2009)

Joe Pernice website

Americana, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Folk, Melodramatic, Pop, Rock

The Noisettes: Wild Young Hearts

September 16, 2009 /

noisettesIn an age where people equate melisma with talent, Shingai Shoniwa is a godsend. Of course, she’d be a godsend at any point in time, but she’s particularly welcome now. The lead singer for the UK indie rock group the Noisettes is a force of nature, but she’s no showoff; she does what’s best for the song (a lost art, to be sure), and the batch of songs she and her bandmates have brewed up for Wild Young Hearts, the band’s sophomore effort, are exceptional. (“Saturday Night Live” will surely come a-calling soon.) The label is shrewdly playing the Amy Winehouse card by releasing the Motown-ish “Never Forget You” as the first single – and that’s a good call, as it’s one of the album’s finest moments – but don’t write the Noisettes off as Back to Black imitators. They’re a guitar-driven pop band at their core, as the title track and “Beat of My Heart” will attest, but if we’re being honest, the ballads rule the roost. “24 Hours” is a wistful tale about a very recent fling, “Every Now and Then” has one of those unforgettable descending chord sequences in the chorus, and the Bacharach-cribbing album closer “Cheap Kicks” is an instant classic. All bands should be blessed to have a singer with the versatility that Shoniwa shows here. (Mercury 2009)

The Noisettes MySpace page

Alternative, Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Dance, Pop, R&B, Rock

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2026 Eat Sleep Drink Music

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑