Tag: Headlines (Page 31 of 76)

Sheryl Crow: 100 Miles from Memphis

July 29, 2010 /


RIYL: Shelby Lynne, Citizen Cope, Adele

To call 100 Miles from Memphis Sheryl Crow’s “soul” album would be a little misleading. It isn’t like the songwriter/songstress/Grammy favorite hasn’t always had something of a soulful streak running through her music. This latest effort just emphasizes that streak more explicitly than any of her previous albums. More importantly, it catches Crow (most of the time) in a playful, lighthearted mood. It’s a sharp turn from the heavy-handedness that’s made much of her last couple of albums a bit of a challenge to listen to, and it results in her best album in at least a decade.

Working with guitarist/producer Doyle Bramhall II, 100 Miles is a loose affair. In spirit and vibe, it’s the closest Crow has come to matching her charming 1993 debut, Tuesday Night Music Club. After focusing much of her material on personal and political issues for the past few years, it’s nice to hear her lighten up. The fact that she has lightened up a bit also makes the songs where she does turn serious (like the political “Say What You Want”) a lot easier to take.

The Hammond B-3 organ gets a major workout on 100 Miles. Not surprising, given that the instrument was a hallmark of the Memphis soul that Crow references in the album’s title. “Eye to Eye,” a standout track, matches an Al Green-type sound with a reggae beat. “Stop” is Crow’s most affecting ballad in quite some time, and she scores with big-name collaborators like Citizen Cope (on a cover of his “Sideways”) and Memphis native Justin Timberlake (on the album’s most surprising track – an effective cover of Terence Trent D’Arby’s “Sign Your Name”). As a tip of the cap to one of the people who gave her a start in the music industry, she adds a faithful cover of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” to the end of the album. It’s casual, and Sheryl sounds like she had fun doing it – an apt way to close a record that’s one of the loosest (and best) of Crow’s career. (A&M Records 2010)

Sheryl Crow MySpace page

CD Reviews, Rock, Rock Babes

Me, Myself, and iPod 7/28/10: Bayside High stole my record collection

July 28, 2010 /

esd ipod

Have a ton of stuff to do before heading off to Lolla next week, so this will be a short one.

Pete Yorn – Precious Stone
New track from Pete’s upcoming, Frank Black-produced album Self Titled. Sounds like Pete, but rawer, which is just what I was expecting.

Ex Norwegian – Jet Lag
Having reached out to me on MySpace a while back, these guys are quickly becoming a favorite around these parts. At the risk of tagging them as a throwback band – to the ’90s, no less – their sound is definitely not of this time. Big, ringing choruses, slightly dirty bass lines, horn-kissed verses…this would have been a #1 modern rock hit in 1995.

White Car – No Better
Holy Wax Trax, Batman. This Chicago industrial outfit has just made a track that will have fans of “Everyday Is Halloween” running for their Doc Martens.

Team Bayside High – No Sleeves Attached DJ Mix
In truth, this is not the most mind-blowing DJ mix you’ve ever heard. In fact, it’s pretty raw and basic, and when the drums kick in at the end of “Song 2,” I couldn’t help but wince a little. But I like their choice of songs, since they spend most of the time mixing rock songs, and I like the melding of rock and dance. Putting “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in here was a stretch (they had to speed it up to the point where it sounds unnatural), but we’ll still check out their DJ set at Lolla, schedule permitting.

Alternative, Artists, CD Reviews, Dance, Downloads, Electronica, Industrial, Me Myself and iPod, Rock

Amanda Palmer: Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead 0n Her Magical Ukulele

July 26, 2010 /


RIYL: The Dresden Dolls, Radiohead, Hawaiian music

A lot of bands have cribbed the “pay what you want” album release method from Radiohead since the release of In Rainbows. But Amanda Palmer has to be the first to do it with a Radiohead covers album.

Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele is just that, Amanda Palmer performing six of Radiohead’s most well-known songs on her ukulele, with the occasional piano and string accompaniment. Oddly enough, the songs of Radiohead lend themselves well to to these sparse renditions. On the openers “Fake Plastic Trees” and “High and Dry,” Palmer’s powerful voice add punch to the bleak lyrics, even when they’re accompanied by the naturally upbeat sound of ukulele plucking. Other times she doesn’t really have to do much the source material; nothing could make “No Surprises” bleaker, and the piano and ukulele arrangement here is nearly identical to the original. And “Exit Music (For a Film)” is straight cover of the original with piano and strings (not one of which sounds like a ukulele). “Idioteque” also captures the feel of the original well, with the manic breakbeats of the original transformed into lightning-fast finger-picking. The only time this goofy concept actually sounds goofy is during both versions of “Creep,” which just sound like novelty cover tracks.

If you like Amanda Palmer, or Radiohead, and want to see what a mad woman with a ukulele is capable of, then there are definitely worse ways to spend 84 cents (the minimal cost for buying the record). (AFP 2010)

Amanda Palmer website

Alternative, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Rock

The Roots: How I Got Over

July 26, 2010 /


RIYL: Common, Mos Def, De La Soul

The most surprising aspect of the Roots’ excellent ninth studio album How I Got Over is not that it’s something of a downer. Looking at the band’s discography going all the way back to 2004’s The Tipping Point shows a group of guys in a bit of a bad mood, which continued through their next two albums, Game Theory and Rising Down. Their gig on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show, while presumably providing a steady paycheck, has not lightened them up, at least in terms of lyrics and message.

No, what hits you first on the new album is how laid-back and confident they sound while delivering the bad news. The Roots have always drawn on soul and other strands of black music to inform their brand of live instrument-based hip-hop, but this could almost be thought of as their folk album. Guest stars include not just fellow rappers such as Dice Raw, Truck North and P.O.R.N. (none of whom outshine the perpetually slept-on Black Thought), but artists decidedly outside hip-hop circles including Monsters of Folk, Joanna Newsom and the Dirty Projectors. How I Got Over may strike some listeners as a little too mellow at first, but on repeated listens this album is almost guaranteed to grow on you. Black Thought again lives up to his name, relying less on spitting “live rounds that will penetrate a vest” and more on insights that penetrate the mind. And while many of the songs seem like an attempt to catalog as many social ills as possible in rhymes, as the album goes on it picks up in terms of energy and mood. Things culminate with the almost feel-good anthem “The Fire,” an “Eye of the Tiger” for hip-hop heads. (In one of the album’s clever twists, “The Fire” is a collaboration with John Legend, and it follows “Doin’ It Again,” built on a John Legend sample.)

That’s followed up by the straight up ass-kicker “Web 20/20,” a welcome throwback to old-school Roots, and then the album ends with the slow-rolling “Hustla,” which breaks the world down into hustlers and customers. Not the most cheery thought in the world, but what do you want? These are the Roots. They only play happy on TV. (Def Jam 2010)

The Roots MySpace page

CD Reviews, Funk, Hip Hop, Rap, Soul

Kevin Hart: Seriously Funny

July 22, 2010 /


RIYL: “Def Comedy Jam”, Mo’Nique, “Soul Plane”

If you’re a fan of stand-up comedy, you’d probably be right not to expect comedic gold from someone who starred in “Soul Plane” alongside Snoop Dogg and Tom Arnold. However, low expectations can actually be beneficial, and Hart’s latest CD, Seriously Funny, manages to be reasonably funny – certainly funnier than any sober viewing of “Soul Plane” or just about anything else in the diminutive comic’s film catalog.

Over the course of an hour-long show taped at the Allen theater in Cleveland (aired as a special on Comedy Central and also available on DVD), Hart spins fairly standard but still moderately amusing yarns about married life (the sex gets boring), having children (parenting is hard), relationships and coming to terms with his own lack of toughness. The biggest laughs come from a bit in which he watches his father get beaten up and an extended sequence in which he explains how to storm out of a domestic argument correctly. His style of comedy isn’t especially original – stand-ups have been mining these topics since the dawn of creation, but Hart strikes a decent balance between the familiar and the slightly racy. His jokes are mildly profane on occasion, but won’t cause jaws to drop like much of the stand-up work of legends ranging from George Carlin to Eddie Murphy or even new jacks like Aziz Ansari. If you’ve watched a couple episodes of “Def Comedy Jam,” it’s very likely that you’ve heard some permutation of these jokes before.

The issue with comedy albums is always the fact that some of the jokes are inevitably visual, and thus fall flat in recorded audio form. That’s occasionally the case here. However, despite the hindrance of not actually being able to see Hart, it’s a credit to him that a good chunk of his jokes still fly. Seriously Funny doesn’t totally live up to its title, but it’s good enough that we can easily picture him starring in a family sitcom a la D.L. Hughley or Damon Wayans someday. (Comedy Central 2010)

Kevin Hart MySpace page

CD Reviews, Comedy

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