Category: Dance (Page 11 of 26)

Kylie Minogue: Aphrodite

July 2, 2010 /

RIYL: Madonna, Donna Summer, Scissor Sisters

God love Astralwerks for taking on the thankless chore of releasing a Kylie Minogue album in the United States. Mind you, her output over the last ten years has been just as good as Madonna’s, and she’s a megastar everywhere else in the world. But for whatever reason, the girl just cannot gain a strong foothold on the American charts, which makes being her American distributor a bit of a fool’s errand.

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You can’t blame them for thinking that each record will be the one to break her, though. Her last album X came armed with the insanely catchy “Wow,” and her latest, Aphrodite, is practically the Supernatural of dance pop, boasting contributions and production from Stuart Price, Keane’s Tim Rice-Oxley, lead Scissor Sister Jake Shears, Calvin Harris, and a small army of UK hitmakers (Kish Mauve and Starsmith, to name a couple). The majority of the album is admittedly more Euro-friendly – the Shears/Harris track, “Too Much,” seems destined for the UK Top Ten – but “Get Outta My Way” can hold its own with anything Rihanna’s released since “Umbrella,” while “Closer” is as epic a three-minute dance track as you’re likely to find. (Muse needs to cover this, stat.) The title track is one of her best singles in years, a drumline-laden declaration of girl power that will make Gwen Stefani weep with envy.

The back half of the album can’t quite keep up with the fast and furious front half, but there are no truly duff tracks, either. Aphrodite may not make anyone throw out their copy of Like a Prayer, but at least three of these songs will end up ruling the world. Well, everywhere except the US, likely. Pity. (Astralwerks 2010)

Kylie Minogue MySpace page
Click to buy Aphrodite from Amazon

Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Dance, Pop

Me, Myself, and iPod 6/30/10: Katy Perry’s giant breasts finally put to good use

June 30, 2010 /

esd ipod

With the long weekend ahead, we have an extra-long list of songs for you to play at your next party/intervention/funeral. Mostly party. And we start by shamelessly using the success of the biggest phony in pop music in order to drive some extra traffic to the site. Given the way she’s made us suffer, she owes us this, at the very least.

Katy Perry – California Gurls (Hyper Crush Remix)
I was willing to give Ms. Everybody Look at Me Why Isn’t Everyone Looking at Me Come On I Have Big Tits Please For God’s Sake Look at Me the benefit of the doubt when EW claimed this was the song of the summer, but I’m sorry, I’m still not convinced. She bends over backwards to be lyrically controversial because she knows that if she doesn’t, everyone will realize how utterly ordinary her songs really are. This one is no exception. Um, I mean, come on and download this killer remix of the summer’s best song by Hype Machine regulars Hyper Crush! Katy RULZ! \nn/

Ugh, that hurt.

The Henry Clay People – Your Famous Friends
It’s like Wilco, back when they used to have fun. Actually, I’m not sure Wilco ever made a record this fun.

Apples in Stereo – Hey Elevator
I’m loving the ELO renaissance that’s sprouting among the indie poppers. First this, and the Silver Seas give them a nice name check (with matching string riff) in their song “What’s the Drawback.” Any fan of Jeff Lynne should check out the Apples’ new one, Travellers in Space and Time. ‘sGood.

Violens – Acid Reign
This is a tune I’ve wanted to share for a while, but only recently got the green light to do so. This is right in my alt-rock-dance wheelhouse, with a driving rhythm section and vaguely Manchester-ish sound. There’s a bit too much swearing (nothing will turn you into a prude faster than having children), but it’s a damn good track. Looking forward to the full-length album Amoral, due in October.

Trances Arc – Boom City
You mean there are white people in Atlanta making music, too? Can’t say I’m crazy about their band name, but I like the Airborne Toxic Event-style slow build-and-explode that the song possesses, and minus the melodrama, to boot.

Steel Train – Bullets
Gotta say, this band is carving out quite a unique niche for themselves. Scarlett Johannson has covered them. They have an undeniable reach-for-the-rafters grandeur to them. And then sometimes, they want to be MGMT. Not on this song (that would be “Turnpike Ghost”), but still, for a band with such an unrevealing name, they’re quite versatile.

Jukebox the Ghost – Empire
Good to see this band back after their impressive debut a couple years ago. This song, from their upcoming album Everything Under the Sun, is a bit more mannered than their debut, but it’s no less catchy. Think Ben Folds, back when he allowed himself to have fun.

Halsted – Walking Shoes
Their name matches a Chicago street I used to live near, so I was predetermined to like these guys before I heard them. But then when I discovered that they play smoothed out guitar pop, well, that’s when they had me.

Isaac Russell – Lighthouse
The love child of Jakob Dylan and Jason Mraz? Sure, that’ll work.

Carl Broemel – Heaven Knows
Taking time from his day job in My Morning Jacket to do a solo record, Broemel gets downright rootsy, at least on this song. Haven’t heard the rest to know if it’s like this or MMJ.

Adult Contemporary, Alternative, Americana, Artists, CD Reviews, Dance, Downloads, Me Myself and iPod, Pop, Power Pop, Rock

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 Chemical Brothers: Further

June 17, 2010 /


RIYL: Fatboy Slim, 808 State, Crystal Method

After briefly flirting with the mainstream in 2005 thanks to their Indian-riffing rump shaker “Galvanize,” one would forgive the Chemical Brothers if they liked the look of the spotlight and decided to spend some more time there. It’s to their immense credit, then, that their post-“Galvanize” efforts have been the most noncommercial work of their career, and their latest album, Further, is the most insular album they’ve made to date, not to mention their most fitting album title.

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If they recorded for anyone other than Astralwerks, one of the last artist-friendly labels left standing, the A&R man would surely be telling them “I don’t hear a single,” because Further, well, doesn’t have one. In fact, the album has a lot of “silhouette” tracks, a trick that electronic acts use where they start with an existing song and keep adding bits to it while slowly removing everything from the original track until they have something brand new. The 12-minute “Escape Velocity” is a direct descendant of “It Began in Afrika” and “The Sunshine Underground” (but not as catchy as either), while “Another World” is a slower version of “Star Guitar” and “Horse Power” sounds as if it were built from the bones of “Break Shake Bounce” and “Hey Boy Hey Girl.” The closest the album comes to a pop song is the blissed-out psychedelia of “Dissolve.” Not coincidentally, this is also the album’s finest moment.

Further is both admirable and damned frustrating. Rowlands and Simons only make music for themselves, and that is how it should be (they refrained from using guest performers this time around, which is a nice change of pace), but we’re beginning to see the limits of their range as songwriters. They’re also trying just a bit too hard to avoid anything that could be classified as Big Beat, even though those records were some of the best things they’ve ever done. It’s good to be true to yourself, but there are times when it’s not such a bad thing to give the people what they want. (Astralwerks 2010)

Chemical Brothers MySpace page
Click to buy Further from Amazon

Alternative, Ambient, Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Dance, Electronica, Psychedelic

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

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