This Cheer-Accident album is TOTALLY Worth It!!!

Exactly how many of them ARE there?

At the world-famous PopMatters, I reviewed Cheer-Accident's new album (on Cuneiform Records) and said things like this:

It’s tempting, but possibly meaningless, to say that Cheer-Accident’s gonzo synth-horn prog rock couldn’t have happened anywhere but the Midwest. In one sense, sure—they come from Chicago and its suburbs, and they’ve worked with a whole host of Chicago musicians, including Steve Albini and more than one Flying Luttenbacher. But in the musical sense? Well, maybe some coastal band would’ve eventually hit upon Cheer-Accident’s blend of ‘70s AOR hooks, unfussy chops, stone-faced humor, math-rock time signatures, overdubbed horn lines, collective humility and patient willingness to chase musical ideas to their inevitable conclusions. But probably not. In fact, on their 17th album No Ifs, Ands or Dogs—no highfalutin’ Oxford comma for them!—Cheer-Accident’s music often seems like the inevitable nexus of half a century’s worth of Chicago music, Styx meets the AACM meets SKiN GRAFT noize. I suppose you could call them “post-rock” if they didn’t, in fact, rock.

This Sergent Garcia album is NOT Worth It.

Bluffin' with his -muffin?

O Sergent Garcia, why you disappoint me so? Here's my review of his/their new album, Una y Otra Vez, at PopMatters. And here is a tantalizing tidbit:


The rest of the songs, though, are basically well-executed genre exercises with exactly zero surprises. The exceptionally detailed CD booklet lists 12 regular members of the band, all of whom sound like they’ve planned their music to within an inch of its life. Whether playing reggae, salsa, bolero, rap, or one of their invented offshoot genres, they are chivalrous, polite, and well-heeled. Solos and fills fall neatly between cracks in the melodies, most of which sound like uninspired first drafts. Even the rhythms, which you’d figure would kick, tend to simply pick one thing and do it over and over.

This is disappointing, because Garcia the lyricist obviously sees himself as anything but polite. He’s an outsider, a rebel. In fact, he is… salsamuffin. This is helpfully explained in the song “Yo Soy Salsamuffin”, where Spanish toaster Supa Bassie sums up the salsamuffin genre: “CUMbia, RAGga, DANCEHALL con SON!” And since he is salsamuffin, Garcia continues, he lives on the corner, he is Tomorrow, and he is Culture. In the French rock song “Chacun Son Combat” (“Everybody Has Their Battles”), he’s a freedom-fighter, hunting “Nazis nostalgiques” and railing against the multinationales that confuse art and money. In other songs he dreams of better tomorrows, where everyone loves and sees beyond the horizon and dances like it’s their last dance. Imagine if Theodor Adorno wrote Disney princess songs.

Recent (ahem) Jukeboxing

Raiders of the X-Crossed Ark

Here are some of my recent blurbs from The Singles Jukebox, which continues to inform and delight. Click on over there and read what other people wrote, too!


Bon Iver - "Holocene": Nice drumming, I guess. Justin Vernon seems like an upstanding Wisconsin homesteader, but his fans speak a different language, or are ruled by different physical laws, or something. I learn from Pitchfork that “Holocene” is a “virtuosic vocal performance”, when in fact Vernon sounds like Peter Gabriel trapped in a cistern. Christianity Today loves his “rich soundscapes” and impressionist poetry, his “palpable vulnerability and reliance on love’s redemptive power”, but I’m pretty sure they hear that stuff everywhere, and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t move me even if Vernon suddenly learned to enunciate. “Hydroponics lifestyle” mag Rosebud says the Bon Iver album makes you “stop what you’re doing and just let your jaw hang” — well, that makes sense. Teen Vogue says the album’s “incredible”, if you can believe it. Most endearing is my wife’s fraternal magazine Pan Pipes, which called the album “a recommended listen if you’re looking for something new and relaxing”, but did complain that the song “Wash” is “a bit too much at times”, with “many things going on at once”. I eagerly await their feature on K-Pop.
[3]

Rihanna - "Cheers (Drink to That)": It’s about time somebody captured the depressing slog that is obsessive barhopping. Your mind’s always on your money, everybody just sits around complaining about the bastards at work, and some idiot keeps singing the same line from that stupid Avril song OVER AND OVER. Cheers to the freakin’ weekend.

[9] (CONTROVERSY!)

X-Cross - "Crazy": During my first hapless attempt to transcribe “Crazy” I became convinced I’d uncovered a murder, John Travolta Blow Out style. Coming out of the first verse I heard Mr. X-Cross say, “Hey girl, sexy girl! Dehdehdehdeh deh- deh- DEAD girl!”, and suddenly everything became clear. THAT’S why people are getting shot in the prechorus, and why that damn Crazy Frog voice keeps mocking X-Cross’s lovelorn entreaties as “CRAZY!” It especially explains why X-Cross hit their lovelorn peak singing, “We can make it out, baby, you and I” — the only way they escape this song together is in a closed casket. The lovely pop!gasa website informs me my transcription’s a little off, but even the pop!gasa translation features eyes getting wider, legs shaking, hearts exploding, people turning into dynamite. In 1981 movie terms, it’s the next-to-last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. So, yeah, bom-bas-tic.

[9]

Pitbull ft. Marc Anthony - "Rain Over Me": So many good lines! Not in this particular Pitbull song, mind you, but in Mikael Wood’s wonderfully droll Pitbull article in June 17th’s Billboard. He really takes you behind the sausage. “‘We wanted somebody to embody our brand who’s one of a kind — who’s a real pioneer,’ Dr. Pepper director of multicultural marketing Olivia Vela says,” right before Wood lists Pit’s other partnerships with Kodak, Zumba, Sheets Energy Strips (??), and “Voli, a line of low-calorie vodkas” prominently name-checked in “Rain Over Me”. Says one DJ of Pit, “This guy is printing money.” But lest you get too cynical about the music, Pit’s manager assures you, “This was never about calling up RedOne and scheduling an appointment to hook into the RedOne sound.” Yeah — that’s why RedOne’s track for “Rain Over Me” sounds so LATIN. On the other hand, it’s sort of impressive that this inevitable smash, featured on The Today Show, is the bilingual tale of a diet-vodka pitchman who has a threesome with his buddy, recently separated and desperate, and some anonymous but classy broad. It’s the kind of surreal scuzz Warren Zevon might’ve gotten away with. How far we’ve come.

[5]

Ke$ha - "Shots On the Hood of My Car": This starts as standard-issue, if pretty, transgre$$ion — K goes joyriding with her friends and jumps the fence to the Hollywood sign, just like when she snuck into the Stones concert with Harold. Only this time — what else? — she’s consumed with a vision of Garveyite apocalypse. She’s 10 miles (or wherever) from the city, watching (Hollywood) Babylon burn, just like Louie Culture and Capleton and U-Roy before her, only with no hint of judgment; she’ll be blown into oblivion with everybody else. All the burbling polyphonic euphoria at the end sounds so communitarian, it’s easy to forget all those suffocating suckers downtown who aren’t blessed with friends and Scotch. But that’s OK — this is the apocalypse from inside the Scotch-haze, and as such, it chokes me up. And here’s the other me-choker: How long can she keep this up? Where “this” equals “exploring wildly different facets and implications of a coherent persona”? I suppose the end-times imagery might be a portent that she’s running out of ideas, because where can you go from there, but at this point point I’m holding my breath with every new Ke$ha song, and “Shots” makes it feel really good to exhale.

[10] (ALSO CONTROVERSY!)

HyunA - "Bubble Pop": The beat is hard and severe like a row of brick walls, and HyunA’s job is either to squeeze between each pair of walls or, if she’s on a roll, to soar over the top of the walls and contain them, as though she’s being unfurled by Christo. Also there’s a dubstep interlude. None of this adds to the beat’s forward momentum, but all of it adds to the song’s energy, by turns invigorating and herky-jerkily frustrating, not unlike a real game of Bubble Pop! with a child who INSISTS on always being the bubble-blower and never the bubble-chaser. You know the contortions you gotta put yourself through to contend with one of those bubble guns? “OOH! AHH! OOH-ah-ooh-AH! ooh-AH! OOOOOOOHHHH” sounds pretty close.

[7]

Blake Shelton - "Honey Bee": I’d say he misunderstands the particulars of honeysuckle fertilization, but he backs off: “That came out a little Country / But every word was right on the money.” Of course, that contradiction flies in the face of the recent Corbin-Paisley hypothesis that Country Must Always Speak Truth About True Things. My sensible and, it turns out, eight-months-pregnant wife is now explaining to me about poetic license. Herself no stranger to lies about bees, she once suffered a debilitating sting WHILE HOLDING STILL.

[5]

The comments thread for Blake's nothing of a song erupts into a conversation about country music and The Voice, largely between Anthony and Brad and Katherine, that is one of the most entertaining things I've read this year.

Sheep & Goats: CDs by Thi'sl, Richard Smallwood, Brad Paisley and others are WORTH IT...

Hometown!

My latest Sheep & Goats column at the legendary Burnside Writers' Collective raves on Christian rapper Thi'sl, Henri Pousseur, Rev. Richard Smallwood, the Drive-By Truckers, Brad Paisley, and Ke$ha's Ke$chatology. They would all make for a very strange mixtape. Since I dig it so much, here's the Thi'sl review in full:

Thi’sl
Beautiful Monster
(X Hustler)

Besides all the Jesus talk, there are two basic differences between Thi’sl’s stupendous slap of ghetto noise and comparable epics from Jeezy or Gucci: 1) no cussing, and 2)-count-’em-two Momma songs. Good call — Momma songs sound even better amid a bunch of music that Momma would HATE. There’s a lot of ugliness here, especially in the first half, more ugliness than the bigger-name Christian rappers on Reach Records allow themselves — beats built from gunshots and guttural “HUNH!”s, layers of synth screams offset by chimes and theremins and all sorts of melodramatic hokum. Even Thi’sl’s chorus hooks revel in his worldly trappings: “Let them guns go POW!” “Money! Money! Money! Mo’… / Trynna stack that paper from the ceiling to the flo’!” This is radical stuff for holy hip-hop, but it’s also loose and refreshing, not at all concerned with toeing somebody else’s imaginary line of acceptability.

Over all this noise, X-hustler Thi’sl rasps out gritty details, bloody bodies in the streets and babies searching through rubble for their Moms. His mission is letting brothers and sisters know he’s legit — a tactic that gets old pretty quickly when Rick Ross uses it — and then showing them that Jesus is the way out. And here’s the great thing: that contrast actually helps him aesthetically. It mixes up the light and shadow in his songs, lets them breathe. When the martyrs in his crime stories proclaim, “I signed up to DIE,” their freedom speaks louder than their bravado.

This is Christian music that comes out of the trenches, like Holy Soldier: “We born in the ghetto, we raised in the ghetto / They call us rock stars ‘cause we wave heavy metal.” Thi’sl speaks to the unchurched first, and if the choir wants to listen — well, he won’t wave his heavy metal at them, at least. He might even make them rethink the value of those nihilistic Jeezy and Gucci epics. Like, maybe those secular guys aren’t merely reveling in their hustler tales. Maybe they’re showing us how the hopelessness of the hustle is wrapped up with the revelry, depicting why it’s so easy to get sucked into the game. At its best, gangsta rap is nihilism that lays bare a nihilistic real-world system. It sounds exhilarating, and it can make you feel like some sort of amoral superhero. And Thi’sl’s music is ultimately different for one reason: he found a Way Out.

This CD by When Saints Go Machine is probably Worth It!

Dulcet tones.

They are Danish electro-pop and I reviewed their album Konkylie at PopMatters; here's an excerpt:

Fortunately, there’s plenty of life to go around. Though the songs are deliberate and midtempo—no ravers, and only one boring slog near the end—their synth parts are built to pop and lock together, with all the inescapable momentum of a game of Mousetrap. The Saints build their two best songs around keyboard hooks of dreamlike clarity: “Chestnut” sounds like dripping water echoing through hungover ears, and the severe nine-note fanfare of “Church and Law” slices the song’s texture like a guillotine. Other songs’ textures find cool ways to use handclaps, lasers, weird laundromat churgles, and Vonsild’s manipulated voice. When the faire folk ballad “Konkylie” erupts into a geyser of cascading falsettos, it’s a euphoric moment. “Add Ends” ends the album with dripsodies of pleasure.

These two sorta-Latin albums are NOT worth it.

Beware: Mediocre Music

I won't deny enjoying Pitbull's license to print money Planet Pit, but I'm not sure I'll ever need to hear it again either. Maybe it'll serve as an amusing time capsule of this moment in pop-radio history, when obnoxious club beats and naked capitalism ruled all. From my PopMatters review:

I’ve got similar reservations with Pitbull’s popular, Eurocentric new album Planet Pit. The title Planet Pit sounds like some hellish vision of our eco-disastrous paint-soaked future, Wall-E meets the Morlocks on The Road, but it’s actually an opportunity for Sr. Armando Christian “Pitbull” Pérez to introduce his brand new slogan: “Mr. Worldwide”! He used to be “Mr. 305”, see, but now he’s got hoes in different area codes. “International Love” (first promotional single, feat. Chris Brown) mentions at least nine locales, plus “countries and cities I can’t pronounce / And places on the globe I didn’t know existed.” (Kyrgyzstan?) So in the interest of increasing his market share and his genetic footprint, Pitbull has decided to grow his brand and sink it deep into virgin territory. He positions himself for action, feels out the strategic gaps, and fills them with his acumen, forever keeping his eye on the back end. The guy’s a rainmaker.


(I should note that the string of puns at the end there totally rips off Chuck Eddy's review of Sir Mix-a-Lot for SPIN, Al Shipley's review of Chris Brown over at Singles Jukebox, and Ethan Padgett's review of Birdman/Lil'Wayne for Baltimore City Paper. Shoulders of giants and whatnot.)


Next up, a completely underwhelming Fania Records remix CD by Joe Claussell. The rhythm may be gonna get ya; the Sacred Rhythm, on the other hand, will not. Also from PopMatters:

Claussell has long been prominent in NYC’s house music scene, but he has strange notions of what the kids are listening to these days. “How many kids… now even know what Fania was?” he asks in the liner notes. “Maybe some of them might hear this and get turned on.” I dunno; at times Hammock House resembles one of those Grammy-winning Herbie Hancock tribute albums, or deep house night at Body&SOUL, or even the suede-chested tones of Chuck Mangione, but how many kids are getting turned on by that stuff? (Besides all the Destroyer fans, I mean.) Straight-up Fania albums are crisper, noisier, and way more exciting, and they have cooler album covers too.

Not that Claussell should have released a bunch of straight-up Fania songs. But that’s what I’d rather listen to, and I know plenty of kids who’d agree.


(Yes, I will take ANY opportunity to make fun of Destroyer.)

This Drive-By Truckers best-of is Worth It.

It's not what I'd choose for a Drive-By Truckers best-of, but judging by the comments at PopMatters, I may have idiosyncratic Drive-By Truckers taste. For instance, I do not like their slow songs. But fewer than half these songs are slow, so there you go. From my review:

On Ugly Buildings, Whores & Politicians, an overview of their career up ‘til 2009, Drive-By Truckers are a big floppy mess, a wad of hair soaked in Sterling Bigmouth and meat juice. The rhythm section bashes out backbeat after backbeat, and the guitar riffs tend to be what other bands call “chord progressions”. There’s always some stray guitar or pedal steel wheedling over the top of everything else, a little lost stream of consciousness. Singer/songwriter/guitarists Cooley, Patterson Hood, and Jason Isbell sound like they’re discovering their songs as they go, and often as not they neglect to include a chorus. Despite their claim that Lynyrd Skynyrd is “America’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band”, the Truckers are way more Neil than Ronnie.

This Henri Pousseur album is TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!

Gorgeous, essential electronic noise from a pioneering Belgian dude. Or so sez my review of Parbolique d'Enfer ("something about parabolas in hell") at PopMatters. Here's some of what I also sez:

If you’re at all interested in electronic art music from the ‘50s on, you should hear this piece of music. For one thing, you’ve read about a similar mix, based on the same raw materials, in that dogeared copy of Björn Heile’s The Modernist Legacy on your nightstand. For another, Parabolique beautifully illustrates one solution to the problem of making old electronic works say new things. And it does so in a way that obviously parallels the contributions of reggae and rap producers, who make old recordings say new things all the time.

If you’re not interested in all that theoretical mumbo jumbo and you’re inexplicably still reading this, the 13 tracks of Parabolique are worth hearing for their sonic splendor alone. This mix is deep and layered, varied and surprising. It’s atonal and certainly nobody’s idea of easy-listening, but it’s no monolithic wall of noise either. Pure electronic squealing gives way to Ethiopian choirs, who are interrupted by angry blasts of squall, which melt into flitting synthetic insects and chimes. The music crescendos and morphs in gestures that are unpredictable but obviously intentional. At times it even settles into regular rhythms that are sort of catchy and bouncy. It’s arresting and devoid of cliché.

This ChuCha Santamaria y Usted album is WORTH IT.

Here's my PopMatters review in full:

Reportedly there’s a concept buried inside the self-titled debut ChuCha Santamaria y Usted, something about the complex historical relationship between Caribbean people and the U.S., and how that parallels the complex relationship between hi-hats and synth arpeggios in all your favorite disco genres -- I count freestyle, Italo, motorik, the hard-charging Pitbull stomp, and maybe more. The album may also describe how Puerto Rico’s “Fiebre Tropical” equals a tropical fever on the dance floor. Since I don’t speak Spanish, I’m not sure. Thankfully, as with all good concept albums, ChuCha Santamaria y Usted’s music doesn’t need its concept. Matthew Kirkland’s synths play a thinned-out version of early ‘80s hi-NRG, only without the 4x4 thumps. He’s got bass churgles and he’s not afraid to drop ‘em, but the focus is on the treble sounds -- mallet percussion and lush Moroder-esque ostinatos that suck you into their rippling propulsion like a wave pool. Singer/wordsmith Sofía Córdova sings in inglés, español, y Vocoder, carefully unfolding her melodies with stately restraint. She never sounds like she’s reaching for the high notes, and her low notes just sort of drift into the heat haze. You’ve been here in your dreams.

These two CCM albums are WORTH IT!!

They are treating us well here.

The Blind Boys of Alabama and Burlap to Cashmere both have new albums out, and I reviewed both at PopMatters (hence the links), and both are very good but Burlap to Cashmere's is a little more surprising and less like other stuff I've heard before so I will give top marks to it. But yeah, I could listen to both for a while. Here's an excerpt from the BtoC review:

If there’s room in your pop heaven for Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, the Indigo Girls, and Fleet Foxes, you oughta make room for Burlap to Cashmere, mostly-acoustic choogaloogers with a thing for lyrics both inscrutable and sincere. Their self-titled second album even OPENS by emulating the Foxes’ wide-eyed wonder: chiming guitars and tenor voices advise, “Keep your eyes on the new day / You and me, we are the same / Shout it out at the horizon / And don’t forget to change your name.” (No idea what that means, though it reminds me of the end of The NeverEnding Story, when Bastian shouts the Empress’s new name out the window.) From there the music gets fleeter and foxier, as the hard-strumming trio builds into a weird-time-signatured ode to… vacation? Singer/songwriter Steven Delopoulos is at ease, the ocean’s near, and the sun is sinking; he keeps telling his baby, “Don’t forget to write”, even though he keeps seeing said baby in the sun and the wind. Oh, and Delopoulos also tells us he’s the ocean, which might make him Neil Young. In any case he’s a hippie who’s one with nature. I keep trying to dislike him for this, but he and his band sound terrific.


For some reason that's my second NeverEnding Story reference in as many weeks. Maybe I need to watch that again. The first was at Singles Jukebox, talking about some song that I liked a lot less than everyone else:


Is it just me, or does the blaring trumpet-y synth running through the ‘chorus’ remind anyone else of some theme from The NeverEnding Story? And is it just me, or is The NeverEnding Story the SEXIEST GOTH MOVIE EVER??? I mean, you’ve got the hero riding around with a Luck Dragon between his legs, Teeny Weeny sliding around on his snail, that sublime scene where the hero’s stallion sinks into the Swamps of Sadness, the freakin’ ROCK BITER tooling around on his massive rock-hard bike or whatever — I mean, everybody in that movie is always RIDING something. Way sexier than this song, anyway.
[1]


Speaking of Luck Dragons, here's an excerpt from the Blind Boys review:


At center stage, the Boys themselves sound as great as ever. Founding member Jimmy Carter and his mates have perfected a blend of passion, good humor, gentleness, shouting, rhythmic acuity, and mile-wide vibrato that seems to deliver songs as naturally as plain speech or breathing. Somehow all the vast enormity of the Christian walk resides in their voices.

This Limp Bizkit album is TOTALLY WORTH IT!!! (watch out for cussing)

Polar Bear or Silver Fox?

Having never really cared about them one way or another, I never thought I'd love one of their albums, but Durst moves in mysterious ways. I requested Gold Cobra from PopMatters (my review's here) thinking I'd be able to quickly turn around a review comprised of insults and douchebag jokes. You can see I have uncompromising professional standards. But no: Gold Cobra is really good, and it's quickly threatening to turn into a Security Blanket album for me, the kind of CD I need to keep in the car or in the backpack at all times, just in case. Sort of like Cathedral, Ke$ha, and Jamey Johnson were last year. Which, if you're connecting the dots, probably means I'll end up voting for Limp Bizkit in any year-end critics' poll that comes my way. I love life.

From the pretentious Proust-quoting review, which is already garnering articulate and constructive reader comments:

Bizkit’s music, played here by their original lineup, clarifies and specifies Durst’s rage. As plenty of reviews last decade sheepishly pointed out, Limp Bizkit are actually a Good Band. They’ll nod your head. Guitarist Wes Borland pulls off one huge catchy riff after another, and he and DJ Lethal add sound effects that alter their songs subtly and not-so-subtly. (“Shotgun” ends with an Andes flute playing “There’s a Place in France” over a beat made entirely of shotgun sounds. Badass.) The rhythm section’s bottom end is fatter than your girlfriend.

That reminds me! Limp Bizkit have some unreasonable expectations of women. Specifically, if Limp Bizkit attend a party, they expect that there will be nine women for every one of them, and that these women will undress, enter a swimming pool together, and kiss one another. I think they request this stuff in their tour rider. Frankly, with Odd Future innovating the field of female objectification every day, Bizkit’s imaginations seem a little quaint.

This Arrington de Dionyso album may or may not be Worth It.

He even kind of LOOKS like he's in the Magic Band.

Really it depends on how much you like to hear Indonesian throat singing and bass clarinets. If that's something you want every once in a while, Suara Naga is an album for you! Here's part of what I said at PopMatters:

Arrington de Dionyso sings like Diamanda Galás if she had the range of Johnny Cash and spoke Indonesian. With his band Malaikat dan Singa (“Angels and Lions”), he sounds kind of like Captain Beefheart, if the Magic Band had a less interesting rhythm section—and if Beefheart, God rest his soul, sang in Indonesian. De Dionyso is sort of like a throat-singing Chris D. of the Flesh Eaters… Whatever, did I mention this guy sings in Indonesian? It’s not his native language. He learned it to impress a girl. He’s like some art-freak version of Eat, Pray, Love.

This Locussolus Album is WORTH IT!!!

I like his beard.

Forthwith, an excerpt from my PopMatters review of Locussolus by Locussolus, aka DJ Harvey, aka Harvey Bassett, a bearded hound dog of a man who admires thickums:

“I Want It” is the grooviest song on the Locussolus album, which collects three of Harvey’s recent 12” singles, along with the new tune “Bloodbath” and four remixes. Actually, the Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas remix of “I Want It” out-grooves the original. It pretty much out-grooves anything you might hear this year, sounding as it does like the Chemical Brothers’ “Galaxy Bounce”, which everybody knows was the grooviest song on the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider soundtrack. Now, Harvey’s original “I Want It” is a fine piece of work. It’s got dramatic clouds of synthy portent bursting over a pop-locking electro groove. It recalls Material’s 1981 “Bustin’ Out”. But the remix swirls the original into inspired realms of bouncy lunacy. It adds three minutes of running time, honky-tonk piano, cheesy organ, and a hilarious climax that includes a horn section playing Shocking Blue’s “Venus”, of all things. Essential.

Group Doueh is WORTH IT!!!

Here's an excerpt from my Group Doueh review at PopMatters:

Group Doueh plays noisy and exultant music, designed to pitch listeners into throes of bewildered ecstasy. This makes sense—they’re a wedding band. Remember how bewildered and ecstatic everybody was in the first third of The Deer Hunter? Or rather, recall how ecstatic the filmmaking was, with its leisurely voyeurism and its willingness to simply observe all the dancing and drinking in something approaching real time. That filmed observation, almost an hour-long, was itself virtuosic, itself a celebration. Yet it wasn’t real time. The Deer Hunter achieved its ecstasy by masterfully confounding viewers’ expectations of movie time. Doueh’s songs aren’t that long, actually—only one song on their new album tops six minutes—but they capture the same spirit of staggering along in search of joy, unmoored from time’s tyranny. Sometimes Group Doueh struggles for that joy, and sometimes joy seems handed to them by a happy confluence of design and fortune.


Then I go on to call Doueh "traditional griot music", which may be inaccurate, and I describe their rhythmic approach, specifically their method of displacing beats and unsettling listeners to presumably ecstatic ends.


Things I'd ask myself if I wanted to dwell longer on this album, which I may:


Is it fair to compare a Western Saharan band's manipulation of musical time to an American director's manipulation of movie time? Or is my comparison the worst kind of chauvinism? Or even any kind of chauvinism? Or does chauvinism have its uses?


Does Doueh's recorded output represent what they do as a wedding band? Or are the playing styles and repertoires different? 


What is it about weddings that suggests ecstatic unmoorings from time? Promises of eternity? And does that have anything at all to do with this particular Group Doueh album?


Anyway, good CD. If you know more about this stuff than I do, I'd love to hear from you.

New Lady Gaga is (almost) TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!

Where Unicorn meets Highway.

If you haven't read enough really long articles about Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen, Lifehouse, and fake theologians, this one's for you! (If you HAVE, I can't say I blame you.) Here's an excerpt from my Gaga review at the Burnside Writers' Collective:

And then there’s all the religious talk. Please tell me you don’t turn to Lady Gaga for theology. I doubt even her most ardent monsters do, except to feel flattered by some fancy Bible-talk. That’s fine; that’s also what people get from Bob Dylan. I’d guess that 90% of your record collection flatters you in some way, even the “challenging” stuff.

But yeah, “theology.” The lyrics of “Judas” use a wild phantasmagoria of Gospel images to express a timeless girl-group message: “He’s a bad boy, but I don’t care.” Actually, “wild phantasmagoria” is generous; you could also say “random-ass freewrite.” In the first verse Gaga’s boyfriend “Judas” betrays her three times, and that’s after she’s washed his feet with her hair, which seems to indicate that both Gaga and her boyfriend are Jesus. May we all so honor our loved ones.

New Quintron is WORTH IT!!!

I keep using words like "charming", "delightful", and "wonderful" to describe Sucre du Sauvage, maybe because Quintron has a reputation for being a frothing basement scuzzmeister. He's really a pussycat. Not unlike his wife.

An excerpt from my PopMatters review:

Quintron songs have more dirty organ parts than the basement of a Moldovan youth hostel, but despite his reputation for low-fi scuzz, the guy can write some polished pop tunes. One such tune totally rips off “99 Luftballons”, but still. The first eight songs on Sauvage are supremely catchy and not at all low-fi—they sound rich and deep, as the songs’ textures morph through multiple organ sounds and plinking mallet percussion lines.

Quintron’s beats are canned, but over the years he’s learned techniques for playing with drum machines so the songs don’t sound stiff. His wild organ fills have something to do with it, but he’s also got a good feeling for sonic space. The Drum Buddy squelches along merrily, and every once in a while Quintron inserts some found sounds from the museum’s grounds—burbling water, quacking ducks, whatnot. In “Kicked Out of Zolar X”, he corrals “all [his] friends” (read: random people passing through the museum) into shouting “SO WHAT! SO WHAT! SO WHAT! SO WHAT!” There’s no one-man-band claustrophobia in this music, and those touches really open up the songs. (It’s worth noting that Paul Simon cops to the same production technique in his recent Rolling Stone interview: “I put the wildebeest in just to change the sound.”)

David Bazan's new album is NOT Worth It.

No slouch.

In a disappointing discovery, recording an album with a post-punk power trio and minimal overdubs does not yield much sonic variety. If you go less for sonic variety and more for good lyrics than I do, your opinion may differ. From my PopMatters review:

Unfortunately, the album’s sound is sometimes so constricted that the songs can’t breathe. Gone are the thick synths and pedal steel of Bazan’s last album, Curse Your Branches; Strange Negotiations’ only sonic advantage is that Bazan isn’t drumming anymore. (He’s a little stiff.) Occasionally the band warms up their sound with a synth line, as on “Messes”; more often they simply sit back and play the songs. When they hit a locomotive groove like “Wolves at the Door”, they sound unstoppable. But when their groove sounds more like Aimee Mann, as on the colorless title track, they seem to be grinding to a halt.

New Thurston Moore and Dennis Coffey are NOT Worth It.

Hey, I know that hymnal!

First up, my review of Thurston's Demolished Thoughts at PopMatters, excerpted below:


My word, this is a long, slow, dull, boring album. And not even in a good way. It’s not dull and boring in a way that’s theoretically cool, like whatever the most recent SYR release is. (Sonic Youth Play the Aleatoric Bell Music of Giacinto Scelsi, I think.) Nor is it long and slow in a way that invites ruminative longing for transcendence, like Alexi Murdoch’s recent folk stunner Towards the Sun.


No, Thurston Moore’s acoustic solo album, Demolished Thoughts, is just long, slow, dull, and boring like a Thurston Moore acoustic album. Thurston comes up with some pretty chords but then he strums ‘em into the ground. His guitar rhythms are stiff and repetitive—chop chop chop chop. He repeats his modestly attractive tunes in extremely square multiples of two. He and violinist Samara Lubelski trade off lines with exquisite tact and politeness—they might be Emily Post and Miss Manners sharing tea breads.


Ahem. Next up, my review of Dennis Coffey's Dennis Coffey, also at PopMatters, also excerpted below:


If you haven’t heard it in a while, put on Freda Payne’s 1970 hit “Band of Gold”—the one where she and her husband stay in separate rooms on their honeymoon—and listen to that opening guitar riff. THAT’s Dennis Coffey, and his riff’s steely wah-wah and flatted final note set the scene for all the shit that’s about to go down. That riff is the rising curtain, the operatic overture, the Bernard Herrmann title music to Payne’s horrific sex-deprived nightmare. It’s the darkness of a lonely room, filled with sadness, filled with gloom. Of course, it’s also a killer rock hook on an AM-radio soul hit; hence Coffey’s historical importance as a session guitarist...


So it’s a little disappointing when Dennis Coffey opens with… a pretty good bar-band funk workout. It’s got horns, congas, the works, but it’s all very polite. The guitar solo even stops to make room for the hackneyed horn fills, and everything just chugs along smoothly and competently. The band sure sounds well-rehearsed. They practically tell you to tip your waitress. Said opener is the spacily-titled “7th Galaxy”, which does very little to evoke astronomical netherworlds—Coffey could have named it “Motion Lotion” or “Crimestoppers are GO!!!” (these are just suggestions) and it would’ve had the same effect.

I'm silently judging you.

This Emanuele Errante album is Worth It.

There's a song on here called "Counterclockwise".

Since it's short I'll post my review here in full, but if you like flashier graphix and linx you can also read this review of Emanuele Errante's Time Elapsing Handheld at PopMatters.

Emanuele Errante is one chill Italian and he makes soundscapes that some (read: press release) would describe as “experimental”, though the exact hypotheses and methods governing his experiments remain obscure. “Obscure”, fortunately, is a descriptor that doesn’t apply to Errante’s gentle electro-acoustic music, structured as it is with familiar meters and chords that slake a subliminal and probably universal human thirst for normalcy, relaxation and spa treatments; complex major and minor sonorities suspended over the unusual, but not outlandish, duration of early rap singles; and static swatches of ambience that threaten constantly to deteriorate into rainstorm sound effects. Wisely, they never do. Lovely. Tangerine Dreamy.

Albums and Singles that are WORTH IT!!! (The 2011 T1 Report)

Before we get to the main event, a couple miscellaneous categories:

Best Pre-2011 Album I've Heard for the First Time in 2011 (aside from Neil Diamond):
Franco & Rochereau -- Omona Wapi ('85, from Zaire, gorgeous)

Best Thing I've Written This Year (I Think):
"More Than Words: Three Ways of Making Christian Hair Metal in 1990" ft. Holy Soldier, Stryper, and Extreme (at Burnside Writers' Collective)


Best Thing I've Actually Played This Year:
Charles-Marie Widor's Toccata from his 5th Organ Symphony
(Easter postlude! Play as you peruse. I was competent, but not this good:)




And now, here's the buyer's guide. Or at least a checker-outer's guide. These are all the albums I've heard that've been Worth It on the patented Worth It/Not Worth It grading scale. It's very similar to the patented Sheep & Goats grading scale: Worth Its don't seem like a chore to listen to again, whereas Not Worth Its do. Not all Not Worth Its are bad, per se; I wouldn't hate you for liking them or anything. But when I think of sitting through them again I feel apathy at best, revulsion at worst. So... the following albums don't create feelings of apathy or revulsion in my sick soul. High praise! (My reviews, or sometimes the Singles Jukebox's reviews, are linked where available.)

Just a brief statistical note -- There's 22 albums on this Worth It list, and I've heard 68 new albums this year. 68 is a drop in the overall bucket, of course, but we'll assume that this .324 average is statistically relevant as a baseline. The genre I've heard most of is CCM (13 albums), which is sitting at a .308 average, .016 below baseline. Not terrible. (Actually, I've probably heard more than 13 indie rock albums, but I don't feel like agonizing over what counts as indie rock right now.) Genres I feel guilty about neglecting so far this year: metal, regional Mexican, rap, and jazz. Much to do!

Albums
Neil Diamond--The Bang Years: 1966-1968 (Legacy) (major, reissue)
Monotonix--Not Yet (Drag City) (indie)
Steel Magnolia--Steel Magnolia (Big Machine) (major?, country)
Thompson Square--Thompson Square (Stoney Creek '10) (indie, country)
Various Artists--Fania Records 1964-1980: The Original Sound of Latin New York (Strut) (indie, reissue, Latin)
Charlotte Martin--Dancing on Needles (Test-Drive) (indie)
Various Artists--Nigeria 70 -- Sweet Times: Afro-Funk, Highlife & Juju from 1970s Lagos (Strut) (indie, reissue)
The Gun Show--Discontentment (Static Age) (indie, CCM, metal)
David Banner & 9th Wonder--Death of a Pop Star (b.i.G.f.a.c.e./eOne ‘10) (indie, rap, CCM)
Iron and Wine--Kiss Each Other Clean (4AD/Warner Bros.) (major)
Those Darlins--Screws Get Loose (Oh Wow Dang) (indie, country)
PJ Harvey--Let England Shake (Vagrant/Island) (major)
R. Kelly--Love Letter (Jive ‘10) (major, R&B)
Bright Eyes -- The People’s Key (Saddle Creek) (indie)
Simone Dinnerstein--Bach: A Strange Beauty (Sony Classical) (major, classical)
Alexi Murdoch--Towards the Sun (Zero Summer) (indie, folk)
Overcome--The Great Campaign of Sabotage (Facedown) (indie, metal, CCM)
Heavy Winged -- Sunspotted (Type ‘10) (indie, metal)
Radiohead -- The King of Limbs (no label?) (indie)
Weasel Walter, Mary Halvorson, Peter Evans -- Electric Fruit (Thirsty Ear) (indie, jazz)
Asphalt Orchestra -- Asphalt Orchestra (Cantaloupe) (indie, jazz, classical)
Mary Mary -- Something Big (Columbia) (major, CCM, R&B)

And My Usual Scattershot Take On Singles
Brett Dennen--”Sydney I'll Come Running”
The Ark--”Breaking Up With God”
Miranda Cosgrove--”Dancing Crazy”
Diddy--”Ass on the Floor”
Toby Keith--”Somewhere Else”
R Kelly--”Love Letter”
Eric Church--”Homeboy”
La Banda San Jose de Mesillas-- “Te Amo y Te Amo”

Mary Mary-- “Walking”
Lupe Fiasco--”Words I Never Said”
The Strokes--”Under Cover of Darkness”
Martina McBride-- “Teenage Daughters”
Mary Mary--”Something Bigger”
PJ Harvey--”The Words that Maketh Murder”
Wanda Jackson--”Shakin’ All Over”
Brad Paisley -- “This Is Country Music”
Brad Paisley -- “Old Alabama”