Note to self: never go away for the weekend. Had 160 emails waiting for me when I got back. Ugh.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. – Vocal Chords
Fans of Robin Williams comedy album Reality, What a Concept surely laughed out loud when they saw the name of this Detroit band (“Oh no, Sammy Davis Jr. Jr.!”). For a city known for its no-nonsense rockers, this tune is remarkably sunny and airy, a lot like many were expecting the most recent Vampire Weekend album to sound like.
SAADI – Bad City
Sounds like an unfinished Curve track. That’s not a bad thing, in our book.
Here We Go Magic – Casual
Ooh, dreamy. Perfect post-rave chill music. I bet the Magic Numbers like these guys.
New Collisions – Dying Alone
After my beloved Tribe stalled on their way to world domination, I never miss the chance to pimp a Boston band, especially if it’s a female-fronted five-piece, just like Tribe. Oddly enough, this group may be coming 20 years after Tribe, but this song sounds like it was recorded roughly five years before them. (Read: it’s new wave-y.)
Lower Dens – Hospice Gates
Bravely venturing into Mazzy Star-ish ambient guitar pop territory without boring me to tears. Well done, gents. That’s a compliment, seriously.
S. Carey – In the Dirt
Bon Iver percussionist makes solo album. Pitchfork wets themselves. And while I live for resisting anything that can be remotely classified as hipster, this is pretty. Very pretty, in fact.
Neil Finn titled his first post-Crowded House solo album Try Whistling This, and that may as well have been a manifesto for everything he’s done since. Once a dispenser of instantly memorable hooks, Finn spent his solo years burrowing into an increasingly insular (and ethereally lovely) melodic world, and where albums like One Nil were arguably more meaningful than his earlier work, it often felt like he was engaging in a bit of passive resistance against the pop fame he achieved – and inexplicably lost. Fine, he seemed to be saying. You didn’t buy brilliantly catchy Crowded House records like Woodface and Together Alone? I won’t bother with the mainstream stuff.
Fans who’d been frustrated with Finn’s drift away from stuff they could whistle were doubtless cheered when he unexpectedly decided to reconvene Crowded House in 2007, after a more than ten-year hiatus – but anyone who thought the reunion meant Finn was sitting on another “Don’t Dream It’s Over” must have been crushingly disappointed in their first album back, Time on Earth. For all intents and purposes, it sounded like another Finn solo record – which made sense, given that the sessions started out that way, but the band’s trademark energy was noticeably lacking.
So was Time on Earth just a case of Finn cleaning out the pipes before he got back to business? Yes and no. It’s true that Intriguer sounds like more of a band effort than Time on Earth, but what this album really establishes is how Finn has evolved as a songwriter. He’s always addressed unusual themes – this is a band that recorded a song titled “Pineapple Head” and once fantasized about Andrew Lloyd Webber’s pants falling down in front of the Queen of England — but as the years have worn on, Finn has found the confidence (or maybe just the means) to probe deeper, and with deceptively unrestrained emotion, into the things we worry about in middle age and onward. Family, aging, commitment, the bonds of friendship, the struggle to square one’s dreams with who and where they really are – these are the places Finn’s muse has led him, and as topics for pop songs go, they’re briar patches.
They beg for connections, though, and that’s the crux of the reunited Crowded House – it’s a musical fraternity, and not the kind that wears togas and slips roofies to undergrads. If you can listen past the lack of an obvious hit here (leadoff single “Saturday Sun” is about as straight up as the album gets), you can hear bonds being built; in three-minute increments, you can hear Finn discovering who he is as a husband, a father, a musician, and a friend. (Alternately, you can just let it sort of wash over you; aside from a few forays into spiky dissonance, Intriguer is as gauzily lovely as it is thoroughly mid-tempo.)
Songs like these clearly aren’t for everyone. Finn’s late-period work has a tendency to flit away if you try to get a grip on it, and Intriguer is cut from the same cloth. You need to slow down and let these songs come to you. It might take some effort, but it’s worth the wait. “These are times that come only once in your life,” Finn sings at one point, “Or twice if you’re lucky.” It sounds like an allusion to the band’s history, but he’s speaking for all of us. (Fantasy 2010)
A trio of well-coiffed lookers who scored a worldwide #1 smash in 1985 thanks in large part to a revolutionary, eye-popping video. For an entirely different generation, though, a-ha is this:
The one-hit wonder is now distilled down to a “Family Guy” cutaway. A very funny cutaway, but a marginalization of the band’s legacy just the same. But here’s the thing about a-ha that most people don’t know:
They were one of the most underrated pop bands of their time.
Underneath those drum machines, Fairlight samples, rubber bracelets and gel – it’s no coincidence that their 1986 US tour was sponsored by Agree shampoo – was a damn smart band, with a dark side to boot. That they came to prominence in the mid-’80s is both the best and worst thing that could have happened to them. Best in that they were able to capitalize on the video medium and reach the hearts of teenage girls everywhere; worst in that many of their songs were crippled by dated production that prevented the band from reaching a larger audience. Still, that dated production didn’t stop a new generation of bands from finding inspiration in their songs, and with a couple FOA (Friends of a-ha) currently dominating the charts, our friends at Rhino decided the time was right for a little revisionist history. Please bear in mind that star ratings are for the overall package. Subtract half a star for the rating of the albums themselves.
Hunting High and Low (1985)
With all due respect to Tony Mansfield – his work on that first Naked Eyes album forever puts him in our cool book – we can see why the band chose to go with Alan Tarney for their sophomore album. Mansfield’s production does not feature much in the way of sonic experimentation, despite the fact that sampling and drum programming were still very much in their infancies and the ones who went for broke (Art of Noise, Shannon’s “Let the Music Play”) reaped the biggest rewards. All the same, you can hear the births of both Keane (“Love Is Reason”) and Coldplay (the title track, which Chris Martin has performed live) in these songs, and “The Blue Sky” wouldn’t have sounded out of place on an OMD record from that period. Still, the Tarney productions “Take on Me” and “The Sun Always Shines on TV” are playing a different sport than the rest of the album on a number of levels. They even sound like an honest to goodness band on the latter song, and its fast but melancholy tone would serve as the perfect springboard for the band’s follow-up album, which came a little over a year later. Even better, the success of the Tarney singles encouraged the brass to pony up for an orchestra on the remix to the title track, a genius move by all accounts.
Extras: Sweet Jesus. This set is absolutely packed. Remixes of three of the album’s four singles are tacked on to Disc 1, including an incredibly rare extended version of “The Sun Always Shines on TV” and the original single issue of “Take on Me” that was issued a year before Tarney’s version became a smash. We can see why they didn’t include the Dead or Alive-ish remix of “The Sun Always Shines on TV” that was issued on 12″ in the States (it just doesn’t fit in with everything else), but the exclusion of the promo-only 12″ mix of “Take on Me” is unfortunate. Still, the demo versions of every song that made the album, along with 13 others that didn’t, atone for this oversight. The original version of the title track sounds nothing like the final version, and one wonders why songs like “The Love Goodbye” were not considered for the album. Better yet are “Lesson One” and “Never Never,” which would ultimately evolve into “Take on Me” and “The Sun Always Shines on TV.”
Scoundrel Days (1986)
Chart success (or lack thereof) be damned, Scoundrel Days is actually better than its predecessor. It may not have, as the Warner suits were quick to observe, a clear hit single, but it boasts a far stronger overall set of songs – and despite none of them achieving worldwide hit status, the three singles released from the album were still damned good – and the production, handled by Tarney this time around with additional help from a-ha guitarist Paul Waaktaar and keyboardist Magne Furoholmen, eschews Hunting High and Low‘s bedroom pop aesthetic for a more muscular approach. Embracing the darker aspect of their songwriting, a-ha is like a more pinup-friendly Ultravox here, skillfully blending full-blown melodrama with vaguely danceable beats and the occasional burst of guitar. “Manhattan Skyline” is still the band’s oddest and finest song, with waltz-driven verses and a slamming, guitar-laden chorus. The more rock-driven “I’ve Been Losing You,” meanwhile, shows that the band could come up with a good lyric as well. “I can still hear our screams competing / You’re hissing your s’s like a snake / Now in the mirror stands half a man / I thought no one could break.” If Ben Gibbard had written that, it would be called poetry.
Extras: Like the Hunting High and Low issue, Disc 2 contains demo versions of each Scoundrel song, some better preserved than others (“The Swing of Things” and “Cry Wolf,” to name a couple, are pretty rough). Most of the songs are pretty faithful to their final counterparts, though the version here of “I’ve Been Losing You” sounds like The Hurting-era Tears for Fears and “Maybe Maybe” sounds like a lost Jimmy Jam/Terry Lewis track. B-side “This Alone Is Love” is here, along with the ultra-rare “Days on End.” The rest of the disc is fleshed out with live performances from a show in Croydon, where the trio takes full advantage of their backing band and fleshes the songs out (i.e. each track is over five minutes long). They don’t best the original versions, but they’re not without their charms. Rhino (2010)
On the surface, one might conclude that Herbie Hancock’s current release, The Imaging Project, is a Johnny-come-lately effort that builds on the model Carlos Santana rode to great success on Supernatural and Shaman. That is to say, call in a diverse group of popular artists and have them record songs that infuse their styles with the dominant musical character of bandleader. Hancock and company certainly attempt that, but Mr. Hancock has grander designs other than just creating a hit record. The Imagine Project is, according to Hancock, part of a global outreach strategy featuring musicians from various corners of the world to foster a kind of globalization that emphasizes mutual respect rather than a top-down cultural dominance emanating from U.S. to the rest of the world. Does Hancock succeed in his ambitions? At times he does, but at other times the record sounds like bland smooth jazz that never rises above level of innocuous background music for worker bees in office buildings.
The most interesting tracks (and ones that reach Hancock’s ambitions on this album) are tucked in the middle and end of the CD. “The Song Goes On” featuring Chaka Khan and Wayne Shorter – and some blistering sitar playing by Anoushka Shankar – demonstrates what I think Hancock had in mind for this album (the same goes for “Tempo De Amor,” “La Tierra,” and “Tamatant Tilay/Exodus”). Alas, there are some real duds that take away from the potential grandness of the project. “Tomorrow Never Knows” featuring Dave Matthews is as pointless of a cover as it is boring. “Imagine” gets bogged down in pomposity and relegates Jeff Beck to playing a solo that could have been done by any good musician with about a year’s worth of guitar lessons. And only Pink saves “Don’t Give Up” from becoming a milquetoast cover of the Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush original.
The Imagine Project is not a horrible record by any stretch, but it continually falls short on both fusing various musical styles and finding new wine from the old wineskins of classic songs. However, when it shines (as it does at times), the music does transcend geographic boarders to create a fusion that lives up to Hancock’s stated goal for this record. (Hancock Records 2010)
RIYL: Eric Clapton, The Allman Brothers Band, Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses
The Derek Trucks Band is finally giving way to the overdue and inevitable Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi Band (the pair married in 2001), which perhaps means the end of the road for this phase of Trucks’ career. Trucks is an amazing slide guitar talent and this is a top-rate band, but the highlights are here and there, whereas just about every song with the new Trucks/Tedeschi band is pure magic. But the foundation for the greatness of the Trucks and Tedeschi group comes from what the DTB has been laying down for the past decade. If this is it for the DTB, Roadsongs is a great swan song – it documents what a hot band this has been, while also whetting the appetite for the new band.
A top highlight is a sweet 14-minute jam on jazz standard “Afro Blue,” which serves notice on how Trucks is not just a blues master but quite the jazzman as well. There’s great flute work from keyboardist Kofi Burbridge and fantastic jazzy blues riffing from Trucks. Tunes like “Already Free” and “Down in the Flood” from the DTB’s most recent studio album crackle with energy and sweet licks on that slide guitar. Another major highlight is the sensational pairing of “Get Out My Life Woman/Who Knows,” which opens with a fabulously dirty funk groove and deeply soulful vocals from Mike Mattison before segueing into a sick jam on the Band of Gypsys classic. This track has it all – deep electric piano/organ from Burbridge in a Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters style, strong harmony vocals, a monster groove from bassist Todd Smallie and drummer Y’Onrico Scott, and Trucks tearing it up as he blends Duane Allman with Jimi Hendrix.
“Down Don’t Bother Me No More” and “Get What You Deserve” also feature hot bluesy jams, as do most of the tracks. Eric Clapton/Derek & the Dominoes covers of “Anyday” and “Key to the Highway” display the band’s love for and skill with the early ’70s classic rock for which Trucks was named, but they also highlight the DTB’s ceiling. Once you’ve witnessed the uplifting “Anyday” performed with Tedeschi and Mattison sharing the vocals, hearing it without Tedeschi just isn’t the same. It still rocks for sure, but you want more. And that sums up this album – the DTB is dishing out some of the best blues rock available these days, but adding Tedeschi just takes the whole sound to a higher dimension. Still, this is high quality stuff. (Sony Legacy 2010)
Scoundrel Days (1986)
