Eric Hutchinson - Sounds Like This (2008)
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Nine times out of 10, I’ve got to believe that a singer/songwriter who got a crucial career break from Perez Hilton would rank at or near the bottom of the list of things I’m interested in hearing — but even a broken clock is right twice a day, and as I rinse the taste of crow out of my mouth, I’m forced to admit that Hilton was on to something with Eric Hutchinson’s Sounds Like This.

Sounds Like This has been out for awhile now — a long while, if you count its original incarnation as a self-released title — but to their immense credit, Warner Bros. has taken the slow-build approach to Hutchinson, staggering its pitches to AAA radio and media outlets, the upshot being that I’m just now spinning the shit out of an album that’s been out since April.

Better late than never, because Hutchinson is a songwriter worth hearing. Yes, he’s just another dude with a guitar — and yes, he does bear a passing, superficial resemblance to the similar-sounding artists you love to hate. But where the great majority of Hutchinson’s peers imitate classic pop’s form without getting close to its function, Sounds Like This offers 10 punchy, effortlessly memorable tracks that cover all the bases, from tearstained ballads to handclaps-and-horns uptempo tracks.

Best of all, by sticking to his 10 best cuts, Hutchinson avoids getting stale; Sounds Like This comes and goes in a hair under 38 minutes — just enough time, in other words, for you to decide you want to hear the whole thing over again. I wouldn’t exactly call the album eclectic, but the songs are varied enough to keep things interesting, and the production carries a classic pop vibe that’s damn near impossible to resist — loads of electric piano, touches of brass, and the requisite stacks of harmony vocals abound. (Special kudos are due producer Will Golden and mixer Neal H. Pogue for delivering an album that doesn’t sound like it’s had its dynamic range squeezed out by a sausage press.)

I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say Eric Hutchinson is one for the ages, but what I can tell you is that I’ve listened to what feels like nine dozen albums by young singer/songwriters this year, and Sounds Like This is easily the best of the bunch. Give “You Don’t Have to Believe Me” (download) a try, and see what you think.

Get Smart (2008)
Starring: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin
Director: Peter Segal
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In the ’90s, the direct-to-video market was the realm of ex-stars like Corey Feldman, making indirect sequels to forgotten franchises like License to Drive and Meatballs, but the increasing affordability of kickass home-theater systems, and the seemingly infinite possibilities of hi-def formats — not to mention a widening gulf between movie ticket prices and what they actually deliver — have helped level the playing field between the box office and the rumpus room. This year, more than one studio has announced plans to ramp up their direct-to-video output; in the short term, this means you can expect to see sequels to horrible movies like Without a Paddle on the shelves at Best Buy, but in the long run, it just might lead to more stars making moderate-to-big-budget movies for the home market.

Which brings us to Get Smart, which was released to theaters over the summer — and did well, grossing over $100 million — but is a perfect rental if there ever was one.

This isn’t to say Get Smart is a bad movie; actually, I enjoyed it quite a bit more than I thought I would, and laughed often. It’s an endearingly stupid film, which makes perfect sense, given that Steve Carell has built a career out of playing endearingly stupid men, and it’s an update on a television series based on the premise that even an incompetent blowhard can be a superspy. Basically, what it does is take Michael Scott from The Office, give him the skills of an assassin, and set him loose in the Russian countryside with Anne Hathaway. More often than not, it’s a lot of fun. (more…)

Ry Cooder - The UFO Has Landed (2008)
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It’s a hundred degrees in the shade, easy, and you’ve been hiding from the worst of the heat in this tiny bordertown cantina for most of the afternoon. Full of cervezas, you ask the bartender where the bathroom is; he laughs at you and gestures toward the alley out back. Stumbling outside, you steady yourself against the wall with one hand while doing your business, and as you close your eyes, enjoying the sweet release, you catch a few distant, gentle strains of the most beautiful music you’ve ever heard. It’s only when you’ve finished and zipped up, intent on finding the source of the magical sound, that you notice the stranger. He’s slumped against the wall, maybe ten feet away, draped in a poncho, with a bottle-shaped brown paper bag for company.

“Hey,” you say, shuffling unsteadily over to him. “Where’s that music coming from?”

He’s on his feet before you know it, grabbing you by your shirt collar and slamming you against the alley. His fedora is jammed so low you can barely make out his eyes, and he’s either smiling or grimacing at you — you can’t tell which. He smells like the worm in an empty bottle of tequila.

“You want music?” he growls. “I’ve got some music for you…”

And that’s what Ry Cooder’s albums are like — a forced march from the alley behind Pedro’s Cantina to the Dust Bowl and back again. As a young recording artist, he was blinding in his restlessness; but unlike many eclectic artists, who come across as showy dilettantes, Cooder gives you the impression that he’s bouncing around like this not because he wants to show you how much he knows, or because he wants to expose you to as much as possible, but because he makes no distinction between these genres. It isn’t that simple, naturally; an ardent musicologist, Cooder is simply incredibly adept at drawing lines between, to give just one example, Hawaiian and American folk music. So adept, in fact, that you can’t even hear the lines — only a walking musical encyclopedia could make it through these records and really understand what Cooder’s doing the whole time. But it doesn’t matter; that’s the beauty of it. (more…)

Marvin Gaye - My Love Is Growing from Let’s Get It On (Deluxe Edition) (2001)
Mavis Staples - This Little Light from We’ll Never Turn Back (2007)
B.B. King - See That My Grave Is Kept Clean from One Kind Favor (2008)
Babyface - Whip Appeal from A Collection (2000)
Bettye LaVette - Down To Zero from I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise (2005)
Maynard Ferguson - Over The Rainbow from The Essential (2007)
Me First and The Gimme-Gimmes - Coming to America from Have Another Ball (2008)
Michael Bloomfield - When I Need You from Blues, Gospel and Ragtime Guitar Instrumentals (1993)
Big Country - See You from Driving to Damascus (1999)
Blackbyrds - Walking In Rhythm from Happy Music (2007)
Michael Brecker - When Can I Kiss You Again? from Pilgrimage (2007)
Milton Nascimento - Me Deixa Em Paz from Cluba de Esquina (1972)
Buddy Guy - When My Left Eye Jumps from I Left My Blues in San Francisco (1967)
Charlie Haden - Is This America (Katrina 2005) from Charlie Haden Family & Friends: Rambling Boy (2008)
NRBQ - Just Ain’t Fair from At Yankee Stadium (1978)
Chatham County Line - Whipping Boy from IV (2007)

The Brighton Port Authority - Toe Jam (feat. David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal) from Unreleased (2008)
Yo-Yo Ma - Here Comes The Sun (featuring James Taylor) from Songs of Joy & Peace (2008)
Bruce Willis - Soul Shake (featuring Merry Clayton) from If It Don’t Kill You, It Just Makes You Stronger (1989)
Steve Lukather - I Am from Ever Changing Times (2008)
Steve Cropper - Rattlesnake from With a Little Help from My Friends (1971)
Jimmy Durante - Try A Little Tenderness from As Time Goes By: The Best Of (1993)
James - Hey Ma from Hey Ma (2008)
The Spring Heeled Jacks Original Swinging Jass Band - Mr. & Mrs. Bones (Feat. Leah Matthews) from The Dicky Comstock Show (2007)
The Deighton Family - Under The Boardwalk from Rolling Home (1991)
The Holmes Brothers - God Will from State of Grace (2007)
The Mavericks - Dance The Night Away from Trampoline (1998)
Harry Nilsson - Bright Side of Life from Flash Harry (1980)
The Push Stars - Drunk Is Better Than Dead from After the Party (1999)
Elvin Bishop - Struttin’ My Stuff from The Blues Rolls On (2008)
D-Nice - Call Me D-Nice from Call Me D-Nice (1990)
Vampire Weekend - Everywhere from Unreleased (2008)

Howdy, gang! Have you missed reading Cutouts Gone Wild!? You have? Good, ’cause I’ve missed writing it — and even though I’m still of the belief that the rising tide of digital reissues has eliminated the need for a column about cutouts, there are still plenty of flops to talk about, so as of right this moment, I’m starting a new column devoted to that very subject — specifically, flops that followed hits, and enjoyed all the high expectations and large promotional budgets that every album hopes for…and still managed to brick it.

To kick things off, how about we take a look back at the second release from one of my all-time favorite bands, the Georgia Satellites?

To most people, the Satellites — or, as their mamas named ‘em, Dan Baird, Rick Richards, Rick Price, and Mauro Magellan — were just the stupid rednecks responsible for 1986’s left-field hit, “Keep Your Hands to Yourself,” but trust me, y’all, they were so much more. Rising like a phoenix from the pile of ashes that was honest rock & roll in the mid ’80s, they took equal parts Stones, Faces, and NRBQ, added a fifth of SoCo and some ice, and downed the whole thing in a single gulp. And goddamn was it delicious. In ‘86, they were out-Stoning the Stones (admittedly not the hardest thing in the world, but still) and for a young twit like me, for whom the Faces didn’t yet exist and Rod Stewart’s career might as well have started with “Infatuation,” the Sats were basically the only game in town for good old-fashioned rock music.

And I mean really old-fashioned: Either by dint of their homely bar-band looks or by virtue of a belief in focusing strictly on the music, the Georgia Satellites gave no apparent thought to image. They must have known that rock bands only got by in the ’80s if they looked like Bret Michaels and packed a power ballad in each album, but they took Elektra’s money and churned out track after track of 4/4 boogie-woogie rock & roll, pausing between songs only long enough to crush the empties and stub out the butts.

They never had a prayer, in other words, and if there’s a morning that Dan Baird doesn’t wake up and thank his personal deity for sending him the constant stream of mailbox money that is “Keep Your Hands to Yourself,” then I don’t want to know about it. But even having established the fact that the Satellites were a band out of time, I submit that they still could have — should have — carved out a niche for themselves at AOR stations; after all, those playlists still had room for non-power ballad fare from Aerosmith and Van Halen. The Sats’ second release, 1988’s Open All Night, should have been the second chapter in a long career, not a death knell. And yet. (more…)

I’ve been waiting for this to show up on YouTube since the night it aired. Hallelujah:

Taj Mahal - Maestro (Heads Up, 2008)
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Maestro celebrates Taj Mahal’s 40th anniversary as a recording artist, and true to contrarian form, Mr. Mahal has elected not to follow the traditional route for this sort of release — best-of, re-recordings, etc. — and opted instead to head into the studio with a few special guests to cut some new sides and prove he hasn’t been around too long to kick a little ass. The dozen-song album follows a protracted layoff between recordings for Mahal, which is unfortunately nothing new; since alienating his label in the ’70s — and filing a precedent-setting lawsuit against Bill Graham to boot — he’s flitted in and out of the periphery here in America, often recording for rinky-dink outfits or labels without U.S. distribution.

In Heads Up, Mahal has found a label that isn’t a household name, but boasts a pipeline to the deep pockets of the Concord Music Group, as well as an eclectic, jazz-tilted roster that includes Fourplay, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masakela, and George Duke. A label comfortable dealing with artists who don’t fall squarely into a single genre, in other words, which is exactly what Mahal needs to give Maestro an outside shot at selling a healthy number of units. Well, that and the famous names attached to the songs — Taj enlisted the aid of some trendy guests this time around, including Ziggy Marley, Ben Harper, and Jack Johnson. (more…)

Ben Folds - Way to Normal (Epic, 2008)
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Ben Folds has always been an artist I’ve appreciated more in theory than in practice. I’ve appreciated the theory enough to continue buying his albums for almost 15 years now, so I suppose the distinction is almost too fine to matter, but still — I can’t remember a time when my purchase of a Folds album didn’t result in a rush of immediate gratification (example: hearing “Jackson Cannery” in 1995 and thinking “Jesus, yes! Someone remembers how to play a piano”) followed by a vague but persistent sense of disappointment (example: the way I felt after hearing “Rockin’ the Suburbs” for the fifth or sixth time).

Folds’ last album, Songs for Silverman, has been a bone of contention among his fans since it was released in 2005; for some, its largely placid soundscapes signaled a leap forward in maturity for the fortysomething father, while for others, it was a cold hash of MOR ballads and self-conscious attempts at humor. But even at his most awkwardly divisive, Folds always manages to get in a solid punch or two — I confess to getting a little choked up the first time I heard Silverman’s daddy-daughter track, “Gracie,” and even if it was mostly just because my wife and I had our first child that year, you get the point: He may not always be able to get out of his own way, but Ben Folds has sharp pop instincts, which is why his fans expect so much from him.

I may not be a hardcore fan, but I was more than mildly intrigued by the prospect of Folds’ latest, Way to Normal — enough so that I ponied up the $30 for the “deluxe edition” version that comes bound in book-style binding and includes a DVD (which I will almost certainly never watch). I could have harassed a publicist for a free copy — probably even a free advance copy — but I was so sure Folds was going to bounce back from Silverman that I was willing to lay my money on the line.

Folds, you fucker. You’ve scammed me again. (more…)

It’s long been claimed as the official dessert of Boston, but it was created by a French chef — so even if you’ve never actually eaten one, you know the Boston cream pie has more to do with an appreciation for the sinfully decadent than, say, providing a sensible after-dinner complement for corned beef. It’s a circular monument to gluttony, a layered celebration of all things lacking in serious nutritional value. It’s irresponsibility on a plate, and it’s all kinds of awesome.

If you’ve ever tried to make a Boston cream pie, you know they’re also a pain in the ass to put together. I looked up a random recipe at AllRecipes, and counted over 20 ingredients and seven steps; unless you’ve got an afternoon to kill, or are specifically seeking out a dessert so labor-intensive that you earn it by making it, you’re liable to seek out something simpler.

For instance, a Boston cream pie you make in your toaster.

Ah, yes, the Toaster Strudel. For kids of my generation, who thought Cookie Crisp was the apex of the dessert-as-breakfast food subgenre, Toaster Strudels represented a new frontier. Of course, Toaster Strudels aren’t really strudels at all — they’re more like flakier, even less nutritious Pop-Tarts — but only the most annoying 10-year-old on the planet cares about stuff like that. The bottom line is that Toaster Strudels are stupidly delicious, even if you don’t squirt the pack of crack-laced icing that Pillsbury thoughtfully includes for each Strudel. (more…)