David Medsker:
As a rule, music lovers begin their journey square in the middle of the mainstream, and once they’ve gotten a taste for more adventurous fare, they take off for the fringes, often never to return. Over time, I’ve slowly found myself coming back to the middle. I have to say, I never thought this would happen. But then again, I never thought I’d move back to Ohio after over a decade in Boston and Chicago, but that’s life for ya: it changes you in ways you can’t anticipate.
This is all a roundabout way of saying that my list, much like last year’s list, isn’t exactly hip, or edgy, but that’s mainly because I’m not hip or edgy. I like what I like, whether it’s Massive Attack or Mandy Moore. And here are five albums from this year that I really, really like.
Metric: Fantasies
I am admittedly late to the Emily Haines Show – a friend of mine persuaded me to download Live It Out a few years ago, but it never hooked me – but their latest is a monster blast of New Wave-tinged DOR that Garbage would kill for. Metric – “Stadium Love”
Epic, sky-high pop that recalls the best of the Verve, Keane and even the Wonder Stuff in singer Antony Genn’s delivery. The title track is a “Common People”-style slow burner and one of the finest pieces of British pop I’ve heard in years. The Hours – “Big Black Hole” (more…)
When I first heard that the new Doves album, Kingdom Of Rust, hearkened more toward their first album, Lost Souls (2000), than their most recent, Some Cities, even though that album is now four years old and strains the definition of “recent,” I worried a bit. I liked Lost Souls, but was very impressed by the directness of Some Cities, both in the songwriting and in the band’s seemingly newfound restraint in the fields of reverb and feedback. The latter seemed to find new ground for the group, versus the by-now-rote Radiohead-meets-shoegazing sound. Four years is a long time to retreat.
It is with great relief, then, that I say that not only is Kingdom Of Rust its own creature, but that the band has found a comfortable common ground between both their phases. The opener, “Jetstream,” finds the band adopting an electro-chug and guitarist/vocalist Andy Williams slipping into a vocal sound easily mistaken for Tears for Fears’ Curt Smith. It’s a shocking start, but a good one because it absolutely indicates you’re not getting old wolves in new sheepskin. The title cut has a country ramble feel that builds into the guitar and string majesty we’ve come to expect from Doves, yet the framing device gives it all a freshness, and a killer melody is hook enough for repeated listening. This all leads to track three, “The Outsiders,” which deceptively begins with Pink Floydian psychedelic washes, segues into a Coldplay-like rocker, only to jump into a nicely head-thrashing chorus.
The 3/4 shuffle of “Spellbound,” while at complete odds with the track that follows it (”Compulsion” sounding like a mutant of Human League brit-funk, Adrian Belew-era Talking Heads and those barely restrained atmospherics) really catches up all this album is in a neat five and a half minutes. Jimi Goodwin’s vocals drive the song right up front, the rhythm suggests decades of pop ancestry and, all the while, the waves of sound that in the past swallowed the band whole is at complete service to the tune.
Some Cities made me rethink Doves, and became one of the most compulsively enjoyed CDs of 2005 for me. With its variety and willingness to try almost everything, while not abandoning the core of their sound, Kingdom of Rust continues that trend and may very well surpass it.
Do not be alarmed! Do not adjust your set! Chartburn hasn’t gone away — it’s just sharing space with some more Friday features, including the the New Radio Roundtable, in which your intrepid Chartburn panel discusses some of the songs going for adds at various formats. And away we go!
Adult Contemporary: Airborne Toxic Event, “Sometime Around Midnight”
Zack Dennis: This song takes itself way too seriously. The band has some terrific buzz, and aside from an excess of gloss, they seem to be pushing the right buttons on the alternative pop machine. But after listening to it a couple of times the excess of emotion starts to wear thin for me.
Beau Dure: In the beginning, I figured this was a bad Explosions in the Sky impression. By the end, I thought it was a pretty good Joy Division impression. I’d tone down the chiming guitar at the beginning, but beyond that, it’s an impressive track. The jealousy builds over the course of the song and boils over at the end, and the singer handles the material far better than most of the fifth-rate Eddie Vedder clones in rock these days.
Dw. Dunphy: I wouldn’t turn this off if I heard it on the radio. It’s equal parts Explosions In The Sky and Arcade Fire, but I kept waiting for the sky to open up on this and only got shouting. Still, with a name like Airborne Toxic Event, I was expecting something much…crappier. We’ll call this a pleasant surprise, if nothing more.
David Medsker: You could usually tell the crappy bands from the good ones by their names alone, but the line is getting blurrier by the day. I wrote off ATE by their name too, and then I heard the album and thought, “Shit, these guys are good.” What am I going to use as a benchmark now? Does this mean I actually have to listen to everyone first before making a judgment on their talent? Fuck.
Jeff Giles: Californian singers who try to sound like they’re British always piss me off; in fact, I still haven’t forgiven Billie Joe of Green Day. But I’ve always been a sucker for rock ‘n’ roll that at least makes the effort to try and sound majestic, and this track gets pretty huge (definitely in an Explosions in the Sky-type way — good call, Beau). Also, Pitchfork gave their album 1.6 out of 10, so I’m inclined to give the band the benefit of the doubt.
Zack: I take umbrage to this song being compared to anything Explosions in the Sky. Their songs go through a variety of changes (tempo, volume, chord structure, atmosphere) while all the Airborne Toxic Event song does is build some tension and get a bit louder. (more…)
One morning, Joe Satriani woke up to 40 text messages on his cell phone. After scrolling through 40 variations of “holy schet u got ripped off,” Joe texted back his good friend (whose Internet name is Fuzzyslippers621) the following reply: “wot d feck R U talkin bout?” This went back and forth for about 15 minutes until Joe realized his cell phone was actually a phone. So he called Fuzzyslippers621 and asked in regular English, “What the fuck are you talking about?” To which his friend replied, “Haven’t you heard the new Coldplay song?” He had not, but after launching his Limewire program, he downloaded an illegal copy, waited for his iTunes player to play it, and lathered up his head for his morning shave.
The opening strains of the song were interesting, but he had no idea what all this “ripping off” business was, until …
He was stunned. There it was. An unabashedly plagiarized portion of a song he wrote years before. “How could this be?” He wondered as he carefully glided the Gillete “Fusion” razor over his grizzled pate. The more his listened to “Viva La Vida,” the angrier he got. Beads of shaving cream-infused sweat started rolling off his head. Furiously, he texted his lawyer the following message: “I wnt 2 sue.”
And so began the story of one artist’s quest to right the wrongs that had, uh, wronged … him. Right.
Joe Satriani’s claim may have merit, but if he does win in court, lawyers for artists whose work has been the inspiration for other songs that sound uncannily like the original are going to have work after listening to this mix.
My Popdose colleague Matthew Bolin started a back and forth about Satriani’s lawsuit against Coldplay, and me being the opportunist I am, decided to float a Mix Six idea I had been thinking about for a few weeks. Jeff Giles, Scott Malchus and Michael Fortes all contributed suggestions to this mix, so with that, let’s get started! (more…)
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to see David Byrne live in concert. It was purported to be a celebration of the work he did with Brian Eno, famed producer and musical renegade, encompassing Eno’s production on classic Talking Heads albums as well as their collaborations like My Life In The Bush of Ghosts and a new, currently digital-only release Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. The show was composed of Byrne, a backing band, a trio of backup singers and a trio of interpretive dancers, and while that sounds like a bad, pretentious idea the whole thing came off very entertaining and ended up being a fine night of live music.
Another big plus was the lack of squirrels in the road. Come on, if you go to see bands with an extensive and memorable back-catalog you know about the squirrels. A pace is building, the classics are rolling out and the audience is having a grand old time, then suddenly the performer announces, “We’d like to play something from our new album” and suddenly it’s all screeching brakes and momentum sliding to a halt. Damn squirrels, they’ll do it every time.
That’s what’s so great about the new collaboration: nary a squirrel to be found. All the songs, even if they’re not immediate attention-getters, are very good and surprisingly song-like. I hesitate to use the word ‘conventional’ because it would tend to paint Everything That Happens… as by-the-numbers, which it definitely isn’t. These songs sat side by side with tunes like “I, Zimbra,” “Once In A Lifetime,” and even “Help Me Somebody” and never interrupted the flow, never incurred massive pee-breaks and beer raids. The album is an album, and not an excuse to tour based around weak product, thank God.
The story goes like this: Byrne found himself in the company of Eno unexpectedly, as both hadn’t co-created in awhile. Eno, over the years, made his bones by becoming an ambient artist as well as the big-time producer of several classic albums, including U2’s The Joshua Tree. Byrne mixed his sound with massive multiculturalism and founded the Luaka Bop label. Now here they were in the company of each other and the inevitable happened: one asked the other if they were up for doing something. The result? Eno sent Byrne some instrumentals he had worked up, yet these frames were distinctively song-based. (more…)
…It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or heard of by any Earthman.
Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.
In fact it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor – of which no Earthman had ever heard either.
Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one – more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?
In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words Don’t Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
Which of Douglas Adams’ words do you choose to live by?
—
Last week, Zack pulled off a surprise upset against DwDunphy, as Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom” took home 55% of the vote against David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Next week, we’ll do a recap of how the various matchups have turned out, as well as taking a look at what’s in store for the future.
That is the mantra I repeated to myself in times of exhaustion when I was training for my first two marathons back in 2003 and 2004.The early morning runs, the aching joints, the self doubt, all of these things played a factor in wearing me down and making me want to quit.But then I would repeat those six words to myself and I would find some buried reservoir of energy and continue moving forward.
I am running for my son.
The reason behind my sudden urge to run a marathon was raising money to find a cure for cystic fibrosis, the deadly disease that Jacob was diagnosed with when he was barely a month old. Cystic fibrosis is an inherited chronic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system of about 30,000 children and adults in the United States (70,000 worldwide). A defective gene causes the body to produce thick, sticky mucus that clogs the lungs and leads to life-threatening lung infections, and obstructs the pancreas and stops natural enzymes from helping the body break down and absorb food.To combat the disease, Jacob must do daily breathing treatment with a nebulizer and a machine called “The Vest,” which vibrates his chest to break up any mucus build up in his lungs.
Additionally, he must take enzyme supplements to help him digest food.Jacob takes a total of 13 different medications daily to keep him a healthy little boy who loves to play with his older sister, Sophie.
After a two-year hiatus, a simple jog through a rain-soaked parking lot last Thanksgiving lit a spark in me to begin running again.Between 2003 and 2006, over $20,000 was raised for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation through the marathon fundraisers I ran.The time felt right to make another go at it.New shoes were bought, a slow steady regime was adopted, and on November 16, I will participate in the Pasadena half marathon, just two days after Jacob’s 7th birthday.
This past summer, we visited family in Ohio and I stuck with my training as best as possible.The very first morning, as I cut a path through the memories of my childhood jogging through the neighborhoods where I grew up, an epiphany hit me.I vividly recall a Coldplay song chiming through my headphones and I had a clear vision of the future.Jacob and his loving sister, Sophie, were sitting together on a swing, reading, he with his head on her shoulder.They were older, in their teens, and the sun was setting behind them.In this vision, I stood, observing, feeling blessed for the wonderful life I have and the beautiful family I love.And it occurred to me, suddenly, that I am not just running for my son.
Chicago – Stone of Sisyphus (Rhino)
Fifteen years after Warner Bros. rejected Stone of Sisyphus, leading to Chicago’s departure from the label and kicking off over a decade of crass, fan-bilking compilations, the band’s “legendary lost” album finally sees the light of day…on Warner-owned Rhino! Hey, why is the record industry in the tank again?
Coldplay – Viva La Vida (Capitol/EMI)
Speaking of “in the tank,” here comes EMI’s great white hope for the second quarter of 2008! Are garish artwork and echoes of U2 enough to keep the label’s top shareholders from having to sell off their third chateaus? Judging from the second single (and title track), the answer is an unqualified “yes.” Judging from most of the rest of the record, on the other hand…
Jason Falkner – Bedtime With The Beatles 2 (Adrenaline)
In which the terminally underrated power-pop superhero follows up his wonderful (and stupidly out of print) Bedtime With the Beatles, offering nine more lullaby renditions of classic tracks from the Fab Four, including “Norwegian Wood,” “Penny Lane,” and — oddly — “Here Comes the Sun.” My daughter can’t wait! (more…)
Happy Monday, folks! What says “starting off the work week” like counting down the Top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100? Nothing, that’s what, so let’s get to counting!
1. Lil Wayne featuring Static Major, “Lollipop” (Universal Motown/Cash Money)
The last time we visited the Hot 100, this damn song was on it, and here it is, still hanging around. Previously, I said I loved it because it represents — it has to represent — the ludicrous end of the road for the Auto Tune plague that has smothered Top 40 radio like a smallpox-infected blanket for the last year and change. Admittedly, that really doesn’t fit the standard definition of love, but it’s more than I can say about “Lollipop” this week.
I don’t hate Lil Wayne, and I don’t even really hate “Lollipop,” but I can’t hear past that damn vocal gimmick — which is probably the point; take it away, and there isn’t much of a song left over. Of course technology has been masking artistic weaknesses for decades; from a certain point of view, this little dung heap is to the ’00s what, say, Rick Springfield’s “Celebrate Youth” was to the ’80s. Does this mean Lil Wayne is five years away from playing casinos and state fairs? Cross your fingers. (more…)
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Metric: Fantasies
When I first heard that the new Doves album, Kingdom Of Rust, hearkened more toward their first album, 
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A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to see David Byrne live in concert. It was purported to be a celebration of the work he did with Brian Eno, famed producer and musical renegade, encompassing Eno’s production on classic Talking Heads albums as well as their collaborations like My Life In The Bush of Ghosts and a new, currently digital-only release 
I am running for my son.
