Category: Rock (Page 40 of 241)

Me, Myself, and iPod 6/16/10: Rock chalk Jayhawk

June 16, 2010 /

esd ipod

Mark Olson – Little Bird of Freedom
As a longtime fan of the Jayhawks’ 1995 gem Tomorrow the Green Grass, I’ll do anything for Mark Olson, Gary Louris and Marc Perlman. The three are occasionally moonlighting as the Jayhawks – this after Louris personally told me when he was promoting his last solo album that the Jayhawks were done; thank goodness he was wrong – but this is from Olson’s upcoming solo album Many Colored Kite, due in late July.

The Silver Seas – Another Bad Night’s Sleep
Here’s the amazing thing about Chateau Revenge, the forthcoming sophomore effort from the Silver Seas: we’ve posted two great songs from the album for download (you can find the other one here), and we still haven’t touched my favorites from the album. Singer Daniel Tashian sounds a bit more like Rufus Wainwright on this one than his usual Jackson Browne baritone. It’s all good to me.

Hey Champ – Neverest
There are a lot of bands making valuable contributions to the new synth pop wave – the tricky part is finding them. For every band like Hey Champ, there are 20 shit bands who play vintage synthesizers and sneer a lot. That’s not synth pop; that’s just posing. These guys get it; their songs are based on songs, not attitude. And if you really want to get freaked out, check out the video for this song. Dolphin boobies!

Everything Everything – Schoolin’
Not to be confused with shit ’90s band Everything, who had that lame-ass song about seeing better days. This is a UK band that sounds like they’ve been spinning a lot of Neptunes productions. Funny that I keep comparing bands to other artists who haven’t sold any records, but the first person I thought of when I heard this was Kenna.

Crocodiles – Sleep Forever
I’m just going to assume that the band name came from the Echo & the Bunnymen song of the same name, because these guys have clearly heard a few Echo records. Big, jangly, quasi-psychedelic ’60s guitar rock song. Here’s hoping the full-length is just as good.

Olafur Arnalds – Tunglio (Moon)
Because even download columns need a come-down song. This string-kissed instrumental is heartbreakingly beautiful. Don’t be surprised if it winds up serving as the score to a “Grey’s Anatomy” montage in the fall.

'60s, Adult Contemporary, Alternative, Ambient, Americana, Artists, CD Reviews, Dance, Downloads, Instrumental, Me Myself and iPod, New Age, Pop, Psychedelic, Rock

The Gaslight Anthem: American Slang

June 16, 2010 /


RIYL: The Clash, Bruce Springsteen, Green Day

For a band that’s been recording for five years, the Gaslight Anthem sounds amazingly seasoned on their second full release, American Slang.  The beauty of this album is hearing a band in transition.  They’ve always been rooted in a kind of Clash-like punkish pop, and Brian Fallon’s love of Bruce Springsteen has been evident since their nascence.  If you like the game of “Name That Influence” you’ll certainly hear both the Clash and Springsteen in American Slang, but the band is more than that.  The first three songs on the album just blaze as wonderful anthems, but songs like “Diamond Church Street Choir” show the band stretching out with musical choices that alternate the tempo with a kind of soulful and breezy verse and a soaring chorus. It’s flourishes like that (and the intro to “Boxer”) that illustrate that this band is maturing leaps and bounds ahead of their peers.

American Slang is tight – clocking in at under 35 minutes – and the songs vary just enough that the album never sounds like the band are a bunch of Johnny One Notes.  Often with the pre-release hype of new albums from the “New hot thing” it’s more sizzle than steak, but with American Slang, the Gaslight Anthem has crafted a substantial collection of songs that will be among the best albums of 2010. (SideOneDummy 2010)

Gaslight Anthem MySpace Page
Click to buy American Slang from Amazon

Alternative, CD Reviews, Pop, Rock

Ozzy Osbourne: Scream

June 16, 2010 /


RIYL: Dio, Motorhead, Judas Priest

It’s sad that when Ozzy’s popularity in the public consciousness was probably at an all-time peak with the success of “The Osbournes” in the early ’00s his music was at a creative nadir. His 2001 effort, Down to Earth, was absolutely forgettable and his 2007 album Black Rain was a boring mess. Metal heads had to wonder, did life as a TV dad mellow out everyone’s favorite prince of darkness?

Not anymore. Ozzy is back with a vengeance on Scream, his first consistent, energetic and flat-out great release since No More Tears. With Gus G. from Firewind replacing the stalwart Zakk Wylde on guitars, Ozzy sounds more energized and ready to rock than he has in decades. Whether he’s calling for you to pound your fist and scream your brains out in the aptly titled “Let Me Hear You Scream” or proclaiming his own epic awesomeness in “Fearless” or “I Want It More,” Ozzy’s trademark howl and delivery sound as good (if a little lower in key) than ever. He’s even managed to bring back some of his sinister creepiness on tracks like “I Want It More” and “Crucify,” a shocking feat considering that most Americans’ iconic image of Ozzy is no longer him biting the head off a bat but instead having a hard time getting his TV’s remote control to properly work.

The fact that Scream is so damn metal is even more impressive when you stop and listen to the lyrics to some of the tracks. For every tailor-made for stadium moshing track like “Let Me Hear You Scream,” there seems to be another that takes the time to be a bit more introspective and insular. “Latimer’s Mercy” is another in a long line of Ozzy songs about the dangers of drug addiction, while others like “Time” and “Life Won’t Wait,” the sole ballad on the album, show that Ozzy’s beginning to ponder his own mortality, a topic sadly made all the more relevant with Ronnie James Dio’s passing earlier this year. It’s not a somber sobfest though, because even at the album’s most serious, Gus G. is still there shredding out one excellent riff after another. It’s like a spoonful of metal to help the medicine go down. It also doesn’t hurt that he gives a couple of excellent solos throughout the album as well.

There’s a brief one-minute coda on Scream entitled “I Love You All” where Ozzy thanks the listener for all their years of support. It sounds like the 61-year-old god of all things evil, epic and metal is about the hang up the devil horns for good soon. Hopefully he can crank out a few more albums like this before he goes, but it would be a hell of a way to go out. (Epic 2010)

Ozzy Osbourne’s MySpace Page

CD Reviews, Metal, Rock

Seen Your Video: OK Go, “End Love”

June 15, 2010 /

Sweet Jesus. OK Go has done it again.

What I love about “End Love” is that the stop motion photography reminds me of Zbigniew Rybczyński’s groundbreaking videos in the early ’80s, particularly the Art of Noise’s “Close (To the Edit)” and Lou Reed’s “Original Wrapper.” Only, of course, OK Go takes the concept into outer space by turning the clip into an all-nighter and, in the end, a giant group production. Along with a few very curious geese.

Tim is clearly the best dancer of the bunch here, but that’s almost become an in-joke of sorts. If Dan and Andy suddenly learned how to be as fluid as Tim, it wouldn’t look right. The occasional inclusion of super slo-mo shots was a nice touch too, but nothing touches that human cyclone at song’s end. And now that they have gained control of the album and released it on their own label, we don’t have to worry about any of that ‘no embedding’ nonsense. Get comfy. You’re going to need to watch this one a couple times to catch everything.

Alternative, Artists, CD Reviews, Dance, Pop, Rock, Seen Your Video, Videos

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers: Mojo

June 14, 2010 /


RIYL: Lucinda Williams, Jackson Browne, aging white dudes who like to toke up

Mojo is the strongest set of songs from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in over a decade and a half. Ever since “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” the singer and the band have tried time and again to come up with a classic album that meets the standards of their earlier work. As the band has aged into one of the stalwarts of rock and roll, they have produced music that may be biting in the lyrics, but musically and production-wise lacked a certain edge.

During the Heartbreakers rise to success in the ’70s and ’80s, there was a danger in their music, perhaps because the band members were constantly at each other’s throats. Hostility brewed beneath the surface, from the fights between Petty and former drummer Stan Lynch, to the drugs and alcohol that affected the lives of bassist Howie Epstein and keyboardist Benmont Tench. At one point, Petty punched his fist through a wall, breaking his hand because he couldn’t get a song right. That kind of passion either cause a band to implode, or the members find a way to compromise and mellow with age. For the Heartbreakers, both kind of happened. Lynch quit the band and Epstein was asked to leave; he eventually OD’d on heroin. Meanwhile, Petty achieved nova-like success and decided that it was good to be king and that he didn’t want to fight all of the time.

Tom_Petty_15

The past fifteen years have seen some good Petty songs, but not necessarily good Petty albums. From the sound of it, Petty and the band set out to really change that with Mojo.

“Jefferson Jericho Blues” shares some of the same looseness of early Heartbreakers deep cuts, while Mojo’s first single, “I Should Have Known It,” is the cousin of “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” and “You Don’t Know How It Feels” (from 1995’s Wildflowers). Elsewhere, there are some tender ballads, which Petty never gets enough credit for, like the country-tinged “No Reason to Cry” and “Something Good Coming.” The latter holds up with some of Petty’s best heartbreakers.

Petty once claimed that he didn’t like repeating himself and the band continues to explore other genres besides the Americana rock they are famous for playing. “First Flash of Freedom” is an extended jam featuring fine guitar interplay between Mike Campbell and Scott Thurston. It feels like it may have been inspired in a haze of second-hand smoke during some of the Heartbreakers gigs with the Allman Brothers Band. “U.S. 41” is a swampy blues stomp; “Takin’ My Time” is embedded deep in the blues; and “Don’t Pull Me Over” has a reggae groove that will likely go over well in concert.

Throughout the album, Campbell and Thurston trade guitar licks with relish and Tench displays some of his finest organ playing and piano textures in all of the Heartbreakers long history. As usual, Ron Blair (the band’s original bassist who came back to the fold after Epstein was canned) holds things down with sturdy, unobtrusive bass playing.

Still, there is a sameness to this lot of songs that, unfortunately, must be attributed to drummer Steve Ferrone. The longtime session player plays with such precision and technical prowess that it lacks any personality. If the Heartbreakers are one thing, it’s a band full of personalities, from Blair’s dyed black hair to Campbell’s dreads to Petty’s entire personality. There are some tracks on Mojo in which Ferrone seems to find that Heartbreaker groove, but these are only moments. Frankly, it just doesn’t sound like the Heartbreakers, at least, not the Heartbreakers we’ve all come to love. Alas, it’s not our band but Petty’s; and if he’s happy with a human metronome behind the drum kit, then fans will have to live with it (seriously, the drums on “Let Yourself Go” and “Running Man’s Bible” could have been programmed in Tench’s organ, they’re that lifeless).

For this reason, despite the strong number of songs (there are a couple fillers- the curse of the CD age) repeated listens of Mojo may breed familiarity of the songs, but none of them really scream “classic.” (2010, Reprise)

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers official site
Click to buy Mojo from Amazon

Americana, CD Reviews, Jam Band, Rock

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