7 Worlds Collide, spearheaded by Crowded House’s Neil Finn, is a loose collective formed with friends, acquaintances and contemporaries coming together in a studio to hash out some songs. It’s a nice concept, though not an entirely unique one, the most recent comparison (relatively speaking, considering its decades-long gestation) being Peter Gabriel’s Big Blue Ball. Not coincidentally, Tim Finn is a member in good standing of both, but The Sun Came Out trumps Big Blue Ball in one important aspect: consistency. Because of Gabriel, and his Real World label’s world music emphasis, the tracks bounced wildly from a pop tune to a chant, to an African tribal rhythm and back to a pop tune, all good in their own right but incoherent in the record’s preset context.
The Sun Came Out has a rock & roll through-line and, therefore, is an easier listen. The pedigree is outstanding as well, since you’re not just getting more Finns than you can shake a stick at, but you’re getting a chunk of Radiohead, a large part of Wilco, and some Johnny Marr for good measure. One of the early standouts is “Run in the Dust,” a Marr contribution with some nice, moody guitar textures, but the set spans two CDs or four full vinyl sides. By the sheer weight of the thing, the listener instinctively begins to cherry-pick tracks. For the CD or iTunes set, that’s fine. For the vinyl collector, not so much. (more…)
With the season finale of Mad Men a couple of weeks ago, I lamented to my wife about the fact that many of my favorite shows — shows I would essentially make appointment to watch — either have extremely short seasons, or they are off the air. It’s odd, but shows like Big Love, Lost, Mad Men, and a whole host of others aren’t on the air for very long. It seems I’m just getting into a groove with these shows, and then … it’s over. Or, like Lost, the season is truncated in such a weird way that I have to wonder if the programming geniuses at ABC are playing some meta-programming game with the viewers by making the show, like the island, disappear and reappear at odd times. Or maybe the demise of good TV programming is all because of that creature from Hell: the reality show.
Well, let’s bracket my gripes for a moment and concentrate on the music for six shows that have pretty cool theme songs, shall we? As I was assembling these songs, I realized that, like the soundtrack scores I tend to gravitate toward, these theme songs are much more atmospheric and less symphonic. Also, as standalone pieces of music, they’re pretty frickin’ awesome! (more…)
When Norah Jones wafted onto the airwaves in 2002, her smoky, jazz-tinged piano pop was a startling breath of fresh air; after four years of Americanized Europop, the idea that the Top 40 still had room for someone singing and playing without artifice almost felt revolutionary. Which is a joke, really, because there’s nothing the slightest bit revolutionary about Jones’ debut, Come Away with Me — but it did herald a macchiato-scented tsunami of exquisitely tasteful artists whose ubiquity threatened to turn Jones into a joke before she really got started.
This would be a lot to deal with for any artist, but it seemed like even more of an annoyance for Jones; she had bigger ambitions than a lifetime of “Come Away with Me” clones, but she looked and sounded like a girl who belonged behind a piano, crooning tasteful ballads. It didn’t help that her first tour seemed to find her in a perpetual state of stage fright, or that her voice wouldn’t let her get away with sounding anything but beautiful.
She’s certainly been willing to try, however, both on her own albums — 2004’s Feels Like Home and 2007’s Not Too Late represented subtle variations on the theme of her gazillion-selling debut — and in a series of increasingly bizarro side projects and cameo appearances. The past few years have found Jones singing (occasionally profane) hooks for a wide variety of artists, including Q-Tip, the Lonely Island, and Mike Patton’s Peeping Tom, as well as recording with country/folk hooligans the Little Willies and her punk band, El Madmo. When word got out that Jones had mostly abandoned her piano and taken up guitar for her fourth release, The Fall — and worked with a cast of characters including Ryan Adams, Will Sheff, Marc Ribot, and producer Jacquire King — it was pegged as her “rock album,” and maybe even the full-on gonzo record she seemed to be hinting at. (more…)
MAXIMUM THREE GUESSES between updates of the list, to give everyone a chance to play. An update of the list is when I post the entire list of correct guesses with the words “OFFICIAL UPDATE.” “Guess” is officially defined as “attempting to identify any one song.” Therefore, one comment that lists three songs counts as three guesses.
While I’m not going to be a stickler for spelling and punctuation, you must guess the correct musician and song title to a close approximation.
How the game is played: I have uploaded twenty-five very brief song clips. Please bear in mind that both my record collection and knowledge of music are probably 5% of that of Scraps’, so these quizzes won’t be nearly as comprehensive – or even hit-based – as his were. I will use mostly well-known songs, but I reserve the right to use something obscure if it suits my needs, like it does this week. Live versions and covers are also fair game, though I will stay away from remixes, because that’s just mean.
There is a puzzle this week, and the songs in the game will offer a (painfully obvious) clue as to the puzzle song’s identity.
I suggest subscribing to the comments on the post to more easily follow the progress of the game. Remember — please! — NO MORE THAN THREE GUESSES between updates of the list. Have fun!
She’s released six studio albums in the last 16 years, and none of them have sold fewer than half a million copies. Regardless of how you feel about Sheryl Crow’s music — and my own feelings aren’t terribly warm — in purely commercial terms, she’s one of the most important artists of the last decade and change, and whatever her own artistic merits might be, her success helped open the floodgates for other female singer/songwriters during a time when the pop landscape was more male-dominated than ever. It all started with 1993’s Tuesday Night Music Club, which receives the deluxe reissue treatment from Universal this week, adding a disc of non-album tracks, B-sides, and unreleased material to the original album, plus a DVD containing every TNMC video and a new documentary.
She’s pop/rock royalty now, but in the early ’90s, Sheryl Crow was teetering on the edge of becoming a music business casualty; her greatest claim to fame was her stint as a backup vocalist on Michael Jackson’s Bad tour, and her intended debut album had been rejected by her label. Add all this to pop music’s generally jaded vibe at the time, and it isn’t hard to see how Crow could fall in with a group of ferociously talented burnouts looking for a little low-stakes jamming between dispiriting corporate gigs. Thus was born the Tuesday Night Music Club, a loose confederacy consisting of David Baerwald, Bill Bottrell, Dan Schwartz, Brian MacLeod, and Crow’s then-boyfriend (and future cult legend), Kevin Gilbert. Crow wasn’t the best songwriter in the bunch, but she was the best singer, and by far the most easily marketable, so it also isn’t hard to see how the sessions quickly turned into woodshedding for Crow’s second pass at her solo debut. (more…)
You’ve heard of West Coast, East Coast, Detroit, and Dirty South rap — and now, if Wale earns the kind of success he seems poised for, you can count on the next platinum wave in hip-hop coming out of Washington, D.C.
He’s been around for a few years, putting out mixtapes and making cameo appearances on other artists’ albums, and has been a fixture on the D.C. scene since he scored a local hit with 2006’s “Dig Dug (Shake It).” For the national audience, though — particularly casual mainstream listeners — Attention Deficit is Wale’s coming out party. Like a lot of parties, it has its dead spots, but not many — it’s a lot more like House Party than House Party 4: Down to the Last Minute.
Wale’s part of the go-go subgenre, which blends hip-hop with elements of the workout funk pioneered by Chuck Brown, expanded by artists like E.U., and pulled into the sampling era by DJ Kool, whose “Let Me Clear My Throat” gave the genre its last real breakout hit. Anyone who’s been paying attention to artists like Wale will probably bristle at the word, but go-go has been making a sort of limited comeback over the last few years, popping up in the work of artists as diverse as Gym Class Heroes and the Roots (whose “Rising Up” features a guest spot from Wale). Through singles like “Dig Dug” and “Breakdown,” Wale has identified himself with go-go, but don’t go into Attention Deficit expecting it to sound like Trouble Funk — or even DJ Kool; he’s always had more on his mind than one style of hip-hop, and as alluded to by this album’s title, he does a fair amount of hopscotching through Deficit’s 14 tracks. (more…)
Have you ever played that game with your friends where you cherry-pick musicians from various bands to create your own hypothetical supergroup? Them Crooked Vultures come right out of those rock and roll fantasies to knock you on your ass, teabag you into submission, and leave you begging for more. The combination of Josh Homme, Dave Grohl, and John Paul Jones sounds just like you’d expect, if what you expect is the sound of those blurry moments between last call and first orgasm. It’s dark, dirty, tastes like sweat, and smells like cigarettes. It’s sex you know you shouldn’t be having, somewhere you shouldn’t be having it.
Them Crooked Vultures is all about the rhythm, which makes the 13 tracks on their debut perfect for those late night after-bar booty calls, cruising with the windows down and the subwoofer cranked, or even just a night at home with bong rips and headphones. Homme has always been at his best working in riffs, and with this dream team rhythm section behind him, the trio locks into a groove and dares you to try to hang on. I wish I was a rapper, because I’d be sampling the shit out of this album, especially the beginning of “Elephants” or the moment in album opener “Nobody Loves Me & Neither Do I” when it seems like they kick everything up to 11 and march the song into a different realm for the second half before turning things over to Grohl to finish it all off with an insane John Bonham-esque finale. The Hammer of the Gods references are inevitable with Jones on board, but T.C.V. isn’t your momma’s Led Zeppelin, unless your momma likes to mix shrooms with her 8 balls and whiskey, take off her top, and dance way too fast to “No Quarter.” (more…)
Please read to the end for information about how you can win a copy of this album.
The Village in question is Greenwich, and 429 Records has gathered together an accomplished cast to celebrate the music that shook the world from that corner of New York City in the Sixties. Lest you think my use of phrase “shook the world” is an overstatement, I offer the first three songs on the album as evidence. Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” finds Rickie Lee Jones putting a pin in the balloon of pretension that surrounds Dylan these days. Though not of his making, it marks his every movement. Jones jabs at it with, of all things, a slide whistle, returning the humor inherent in the song.
Songs two and three are Dylan covers too, albeit more serious in tone. There’s nothing funny about “It’s Alright Ma I’m Only Bleeding,” and Winnipeg band the Duhks perform it with requisite intensity and respect. Lucinda Williams makes Dylan’s bitter rant “Positively 4th Street” her own by bringing it from a less angry, more heartbroken place, and very few people do heartbreak like Lucinda Williams.
Sixpence None the Richer contribute a wonderfully inventive take on the traditional “Wayfaring Stranger,” and John Oates’ retelling of another traditional song, “He Was A Friend of Mine,” is something of a revelation. The extremely underrated Philadelphia singer/songwriter Amos Lee closes out side one with a typically understated, soulful version of Fred Neil’s “Little Bit of Rain.” (more…)
This holiday season will offer you 7 Wishes. But what will you wish for first?
Will it be the Jack Blades posable action figure? Dressed in authentic Midnight Madness-era stage attire, this incredibly lifelike replica of Night Ranger®’s bassist-vocalist comes preloaded with seven Jack Blades catchphrases. Pull his string and you’ll hear these unforgettable classics:
“You can stiiiiiilllll ROCK in Amer-i-caaaaaa!”
“DON’T tell me you love meeeeeee!”
“Looks like what you need right now is a TOUCH of mad-ness!”
“You still got some more RAWK left in you to-night?”
Plus three more exciting Blade-isms, all delivered by the unstoppable Jack Blades! (Requires two AA batteries to start. Batteries not included.)
But wait — there’s more!
New for the holidays, Dawn Patrol Toys is pleased to unveil the first-ever Alan “Fitz” Fitzgerald action figure. Modeled after Night Ranger®’s legendary keyboard player, often referred to as ”the original Silent Bob,” Fitz comes with his own miniature synthesizer, shades, and beret.
And you’ll be lookin’ extra cool wearing the bonus pair of signature Alan “Fitz” Fitzgerald aviator sunglasses. These super boss blockers are a replica reproduction of the snazzy specs Fitz wore onstage at every single Night Ranger® gig as well as when he played keyboards behind the curtain for Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen. Finally, your chance to look mysteriously cool without having to say a single word!
If you’ve been following the Parlour to Parlour series here at Popdose, you may remember the featured artist from a few weeks back, the Spring Heeled Jacks Original Swinging Jass Band, as that rare indie band that doesn’t play live. Not only are they the one strictly “studio” act in the series so far, they’re the lone representatives of the great state of Texas. Furthermore, they’re the only band to pass along a mix CD of artists and songs that have inspired their work.
The following 16 tunes were cherry-picked by Parlour to Parlour’s Michael Fortes from a two-disc, 39-track collection given to him by Jacks bassist-arranger-programmer extraordinaire Josh Morrow. Those discs served as a soundtrack for road trips to San Antonio and Austin, a jumping-off point for many a conversation about music of all kinds, not just the artists on the discs themselves, and now a chunk of it is here for you to enjoy.
7 Worlds Collide, spearheaded by Crowded House’s Neil Finn, is a loose collective formed with friends, acquaintances and contemporaries coming together in a studio to hash out some songs. It’s a nice concept, though not an entirely unique one, the most recent comparison (relatively speaking, considering its decades-long gestation) being Peter Gabriel’s Big Blue Ball
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Please read to the end for information about how you can win a copy of this album.
Plus three more exciting Blade-isms, all delivered by the unstoppable Jack Blades! (Requires two AA batteries to start. Batteries not included.)
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