Category: Music

On the strength of a slick sampler download from iTunes, I bought Moby’s new album “Hotel”. Oh dear. (British understatement, that.) Kelefa Sanneh wrote an unsparing review of the album in today’s New York Times: This music isn’t just dull, though. Like much of what Moby has produced since “Play,” it’s condescending, too. Much of it sounds like the work of a producer who thinks pop music is supposed to be kind of idiotic, and who thinks pop audiences should be glad that he deigns to give us what we want. Do we like sex? O.K., here’s “I Like It,” four singularly unpleasant minutes of heavy breathing. Do we like songs about how the world is happy and sad and good and bad? O.K., here’s “Slipping Away,” with a wispy beat and Moby crooning, “Open to everything, happy and sad/Seeing the good when it’s all going . . .” – you can finish the couplets yourself. And, knowing that we like familiarity, Moby has his collaborator, Laura Dawn, sing a slowed-down version of the New Order hit “Temptation.”

Fortunately, my car has a 6-disc CD changer, so it was a matter of a click of a button to get away from this stuff to music with real soul – Final Straw by Snow Patrol, or Sunday 8 PM by Faithless. And now Chris tells me I should pay attention to The Futureheads, and from the videos on the website he’s right. And the Pickle thinks I should dive into the Avenue Q Soundtrack and accept that It Sucks To Be Me and Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist. So much music, so little time.

Steve turned me on to the massive BitTorrent download of new music sponsored by the south by southwest festival. Although I’m not a regular BT user, I cranked it up and downloaded all 2.75GB. It took three days. (And yes, I left BT running to share nicely.)
This morning I dragged it all into iTunes. 714 songs, 1.9 days playing time! Who’s got time to listen to all of that? However, over (extended) breakfast and (several cups of) coffee, I managed to scan most of it. (I know it can be unfair to judge on the basis of the first few seconds, but when you also consider the artist’s name, the song title, and genre….) I kept a window open to the SXSW Showcase page so I could follow up on particularly interesting artists.
From that vast collection, here are the 20 songs that caught my attention. If it looks as if I was biased… well, yes: the women singer-songwriters in this collection were very strong; the “pop”, “rock”, and “punk” offerings (though frequently mis-classified) were less distinctive. But there’s all sorts of music here – you might be surprised. Enjoy:
“Betty” by The Lascivious Biddies
“Moving Pictures, Silent Films” by the Great Lake Swimmers
“I Do Dream You” by Jennifer Gentle
“Silver Screen Demos” by Jesca Hoop
“Move On” by Jessie and Layla
“Old Fashion Morphine” by Jolie Holland
“Not Going Anywhere” by Keren Ann
“Nutopia” by Meg Lee Chin
“mudpies and gasoline” by Patricia Vonne
“Take the Long Way” by Po’ Girl
“Into My Heart” by Rachel Fuller
“Television” by Robyn Hitchcock
“Anonyme” by Samadha
“hard road” by The Shore
“Building a Road” by Spottiswoode and His Enemies
“I’m On My Way” by Theresa Andersson
“lie in the sound” by Trespassers William
“Beautiful Dawn” by The Wailin’ Jennys
“The Ghost of the Girl in the Well” by the Willard Grant Conspiracy
“Mannequin” by The Witnesses
(You can also stream or download individual tracks from SXSW.)

Oh joy, oh bliss.
From the News section of the Porcupine Tree website:
The new Porcupine Tree album Deadwing is released on 28th March by Warner Music in Europe, and on 19th April by Lava in the US. […] There are guest appearances by Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth, and Adrian Belew of King Crimson.
The track listing of the album is:
1. Deadwing (9.46)
2. Shallow (4.17)
3. Lazarus (4.18)
4. Halo (4.38)
5. Arriving Somewhere But Not Here (12.02)
6. Mellotron Scratch (6.57)
7. Open Car (3.46)
8. The Start of Something Beautiful (7.39)
9. Glass Arm Shattering (6.12)
deadwing.com is a microsite dedicated to the album, with audio, video and other media relating to the album and the film screenplay on which it is based.
The European tour starts at the end of March, and a US tour will commence in mid May.
You can download a 19MB QT video mashup of some of the tracks from the album here; the single Shallow is on iTunes. And I just received email from Ticketmaster:
Porcupine Tree
Somerville Theatre, Somerville
Wed, 05/18/05 8:00pm
On Sale Fri, 03/11/05 10:00am
(Thanks for the corrections from the men from the ministry….)

A quiet evening… sitting here waiting for the Australian Grand Prix TV coverage to start in about 20 minutes.

• Reading: “I, Lucifer” by Glen Duncan (author of Death of an Ordinary Man)
• Listening to: “No Roots” by Faithless. I love the way Maxi Jazz’s quietly insistent raps cut through Sister Bliss’s solid groove, how Dido adds ethereal gracenotes to the songs
• Drinking: a couple of fingers of 10 year old Talisker, a single malt that captures some of the qualities of my two favourite – but radically different – Scotches: Macallan and Laphroaig

A couple of days ago I was checking out late night TV shows in England when I came across a video of a concert with a really exciting and energetic band. I didn’t know who it was, but the singers (a soulful woman and a stunning rapper) had the crowd in their hands, and one of the keyboard players would occasionally step out front to play trombone. I watched, mesmerized. At the end of the program, I saw that the name of the group was Groove Armada. For some reason I’d never heard of them before, even though they’ve been around for at least six years. (The official web site is a little spartan; try the BBC profile instead – at least unless and until the Beeb’s web goes away.)
Anyway I picked up a copy of their “Best of” CD at Heathrow this afternoon, ripped it into iTunes and transferred it to my iPod so I could listen to it on the flight home. Very tasty. Recommended.

I was hunting through the bazillion tracks on my iPod looking for something, and I stumbled on Magic Bus by The Who. One thing led to another… I found myself with a long drive through holiday traffic, and I had a new iTrip which allowed me to listen to the iPod though the car radio, so I cued up the incomparable deluxe edition of Live at Leeds and let it rip.

I bought the original, single LP version of the album many moons ago when I was still a student. Of course the new version includes a complete live performance of Tommy, as well as several additional classic Who tracks. Definitely one of the great live albums, right up there with Live/Dead, disc 1 of Umma-Gumma, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!, and Wheels of Fire.

I finally got a chance to watch the politically-charged video for Eminem’s “Mosh”. I’m not a big rap fan, although I really like Maxie Jazz and Faithless, and I’ve never gone for Eminem (even if Elton John has exonerated him). However Mosh really worked for me. It’s powerful, and absolutely spot-on. A precision-guided musical weapon headed for the White House. Crank up the volume, check it out, get angry, and VOTE.

Starting in the late 1960s, John Peel introduced a generation of British radio listeners – including me – to wondrous and strange “underground” music: Captain Beefheart, the Incredible String Band, Country Joe and the Fish, and many, many more. (Who can forget the Purple Gang’s “Granny Takes A Trip”, an innocent little ditty whose title was guaranteed to get a rise out of BBC management?) He even started his own record label, Dandelion, to give a chance to college bands like Principal Edwards’ Magic Theatre. And the wonderful thing was that he wasn’t stuck in one era: he was always looking ahead, introducing listeners to the unexpected, for nearly 40 years.
On my last trip to England, I was driving down the M40 and tuned in to a talk radio show which seemed to defy all the rules for the genre. It juxtaposed topics in a head-spinning way: the silly, the sad, the ecstatic, and the profound. The host’s voice seemed familiar, but I was concentrating on my driving, and so…. And then at the end I learned that it was John Peel, in a non-musical role, and I realised why the program had challenged conventions. Because he always did. Thanks, John. And goodbye.
Update: Chris just posted a nice piece with a link to John Peel’s favourite song, Teenage Kicks by the Undertones.
Update: The radio show was Home Truths. You can listen to a tribute issue of this wonderful program at the BBC Radio 4 website.

It’s like waiting for a bus… you hang around for ages, and then along come several. Well, in this case the waiting has been for the mail from England, which finally delivered two very special CDs with one thing in common: Steven Wilson.
In the USA, Steven Wilson is best known as the leader of Porcupine Tree, the progressive and increasingly heavy rock band that began with some home produced tracks with a fictitious back-story and has now become a major force, with albums such as The Sky Moves Sideways, Signify and In Absentia. But in Europe, he was always better known for a variety of collaborations with different artists using different names. Which leads us to today’s crop.
First up is Blackfield, a new project by Steven and Aviv Geffen. The songs are simple, short, direct, and beautiful; the sound is that of Lightbulb Sun-era Porcupine Tree, with full, sensual arrangements. Deeply satisfying. The album is short – ten songs, just over 30 minutes – and there’s a bonus CD with two new tracks plus a live version of Cloudy Now and an MPEG video of the title track.
The second album is Speak by No-Man. Tim Bowness and Steven Wilson have been No-Man since the late 1980s, and this material first appeared on cassette back in 1989, long before they had a recording contract or a sense of where they were going! Although unmistakably by the same artists who gave us the rich soundscapes and tone poems of Flower Mouth and Returning Jesus, Speak is more eclectic, less structured. Fragments of melodies, rhythms, and “found sounds” of indefinite provenance sweep in and disappear as if dissipated by a sudden breeze, while Tim’s quietly insistent words pull you in. I have all of No-Man‘s later work; it’s good to be able to hear their roots.
Blackfield has been released in the USA, but No-Man recordings are hard to find. The best source is Burning Shed Records in England.

What a perfect end to a lousy week! I’ve been sick since Monday (probably a bug I picked up at the offsite in Washington DC), and not until Friday afternoon did I finally start to feel human. This morning, I woke with a feeling of pent-up energy and anticipation: I was going to see October Project. And I just did.
You may remember October Project from the two wonderful albums that they released on Epic Records back in 1993 and 1995. The combination of magical songs by Julie Flanders and Emile Adler and the ethereal yet powerful vocals of Mary Fahl and Marina Belica wowed many fans: their live performances were pure dynamite, and the albums still keep selling. I saw them twice, once in an acoustic set and once in high-octane electric, with guitarist Julian Coryell blasting them into orbit. Inexplicably (at least to someone not in the music biz) they were dropped by Epic, and went through a turbulent time. Mary Fahl left, eventually producing a solo album that was OK, but nothing like as good as OP. Marina (decembergirl) made a nice solo EP and an intriguing instrumental album. Julie and Emile worked with several lead vocalists and backing musicians under the name November Project, and released one promising EP, A Thousand Days, which is almost like an October Project album, but…. I saw one of these line-ups at Johnny D’s in Somerville, and wondered whether or not it was going to work out. It didn’t.
At last, what many fans had hoped for came to pass: Julie, Emile and Marina got back together to re-form October Project. In the new line-up, Marina handles lead vocals with Julie singing harmony. Is it the same as Mary and Marina? No. Does it matter? Not really. The key to OP has always been the combination of the singers and the songs: the magic is holistic – forget reductionism. I can’t imagine anyone covering an OP song, and I can’t imagine OP singing anyone else’s material.
The new OP has released one excellent 6-song EP, Different Eyes, and is working on a new album, albeit without a recording contract. (I wish that they’d try the approach that Marillion used to finance their last two albums: getting fans to “pre-buy” the album over the Internet. But I digress.) Meanwhile they continue to play live with a variety of instrumentalists, mostly around their home base of New York City.
Which brings us to tonight’s concert at Capo’s in Lowell, Mass. It was the first time I’d been there, and from a look at their calendar I suspect I’ll be back. The opening act was an interesting singer/songwriter from Vermont, Gregory Douglass. The friends I was with really liked him, but he wasn’t quite my cup of tea. Never mind, I was glad of the chance to hear him.
The core trio of OP – Marina, Julie, and Emil – was augmented by three instrumentalists; I got the impression that this was the first time they’d all performed together. Martha Colby played cello. That probably gives the wrong impression; let me try again. Martha Colby played LEAD CELLO. HEAVY METAL CELLO. Think J.J.Cale’s viola on the Velvet Underground. I could imagine Martha jamming with Porcupine Tree. Don’t mess with Martha. (Plus it was her birthday.) Craig Benelly was on guitar. And a Boston-area friend of the band, Joey G., handled percussion. [If I’ve got any details wrong I hope Marina will correct me.] As usual, Emil played keyboards and added vocal harmony.
The concert was wonderful. I didn’t write down the setlist, but they did at least a dozen numbers, followed by a three-song encore. They did all of the “greatest hits”: Ariel, Falling Farther In, Take Me As I Am, Sunday Morning Yellow Sky, and Bury My Lovely. They did five of the songs from the recent EP, including See With Different Eyes and If I Turn Away. And they introduced a number of new songs. When I see a group for the first time in years, I always have a slight feeling of trepidation about new songs. “Do they still have the touch? Will they be up to the standard of the songs I’ve loved for so many years?” Well, as an Australian would say, “No worries, mate!” The new songs are OP at their finest. Two stood out in particular. The first was a moving story of a woman who finds that she was adopted, and who travels to meet her birth mother. The second was what I hope will be the title track of the new album: This Is For You. It contains some of Julie’s most compelling and poignant words, in a deceptively simple and quite beautiful setting. Marina sang it perfectly, effortlessly. It brought forth a standing ovation from the wildly enthusiastic audience.
Thanks, OP, for one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. And thank you Marina for our conversation afterwards. I can’t wait for the album.
Morning-after update: Some particularly memorable moments:
– Emil explaining how the Sesame Street theme evolved into the music for Bury My Lovely.
– The special gleam in Julie’s eyes as she sang Always.
– Martha’s solo at the end of Sunday Morning Yellow Sky.
– Everybody singing Hey Jude to celebrate John Lennon’s 64th birthday.
– Ariel. ‘Nuff said.