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.
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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”

The recent Bob Marley live album MAY be Worth It.

 
Oddly enough, Surfing in Babylon has never really considered Mr. Marley, even though he's a cornerstone of the Babylon Symbol Repertory. This PopMatters review does little to correct that, but it may provide food for future thought, if indeed Surfing in Babylon ever gets back to studying Babylon songs. Sample paragraphs:

And for those who’d complain that Marley sings everything the same way—well, that’s sort of the point. He delivers the tender “No Woman No Cry” with the same stern deliberation he gives the militant rhetoric in “War”. “No Woman” is maybe a little more legato, but the briskly enunciated “cornmeal porridge” line and the chanted “everything is gonna be alright” belong to the same worldview as H.I.M. Haile Selassie’s powerful “War” speech. You buy Marley’s messages of hope because they don’t turn him all lovey-dovey. He remains a clear-eyed revolutionary, a powerful dude you don’t wanna mess with even when his lyrics and band are giving you a musical hug.

Marley’s straightforward messages gain depth through juxtaposition in the setlist. “Everywhere is war” is one thing, but it becomes something else butted up against “we don’t need no trouble; what we need is love”. And that medley becomes something else again as a prelude to “Zimbabwe”, a call for armed revolution in the African nation. Six months before this show, the revolutionary leader Robert Mugabe had been elected prime minister of Zimbabwe, and the song sounds like a thoughtful celebration. 30 years later, Mugabe has a reputation for incompetence and brutality, but Marley’s songs sound as true as ever. The lesson for you kids: write songs, protest, but don’t go into politics. Seriously, have you looked at the news lately? EVERYWHERE is war.

This new Fania Records comp is almost Totally Worth It!

If you're ever stuck trying to buy me a gift, I'll cheerfully accept Fania album cover t-shirts! I'm pretty sure they're all great.

Fania Records had it all: salsa, soul, jazz, grooves, horns, Chopin, subway imitations, and a seemingly inexhaustible appetite for urban America. Read more about it -- "it" being Strut's compilation Fania Records 1964-1980: The Original Sound of Latin New York -- in my PopMatters review. Here's the beginning:

Music geeks like to call New York’s Fania Records the Motown of salsa music. That’s not completely accurate, because Fania wasn’t exactly Hitsville, but you can boil the comparison down to three factors:

1. Like Motown, Fania created a sound all its own.

The genre of salsa music didn’t exist before Fania invented it in mid-’60s NYC. Fania’s bands were happily mixing up exotically named Afro-Cuban styles—son, charanga, guaracha, bomba—that sounded intimidating to gringo audiences without access to Wikipedia. Fania co-founders Johnny Pacheco and Jerry Masucci created “salsa” as a catch-all marketing term.

Last Month (sheesh) in Jukeboxing

There's a couple controversial, discussion-garnering songs currently up at Singles Jukebox, and chances are they'll occupy places of prominence all weekend. Brad Paisley: could be a racist! Katy Perry: definitely sux, and probably a racist! EMA: still need to listen, but she may be the best thing ever or she may suck. I don't THINK anyone's calling her a racist, though. Anyhow...

Le bien:
2Pac ft. Nate Dogg and others: All About U 
Hearing Pac next to weaker MCs from the same milieu, you realize his greatness was a matter of focus and command. Those Outlawz guys go crazy, stringing assonances together, referring back to Nate’s hook, and in their desperation they end up rushing the beat. Pac, on the other hand, is in charge from the start. His swinging syncopations fit well on Death Row, but he doesn’t lay back here. He places every syllable precisely on its (off)beat, and the resulting verses flow with nonstop good humor and rhythmic interest. During Verse 1 he cracks open his flow at two key spots. On the word “TIPsy”, Pac packs a whole evening into a hesitation; whatever happened “last night”, its memory is the only thing that can break his concentration. And the pause in “life’s hell for a black… celebrity” shows that the pressure of speaking for his audience still weighs on his mind. Also, now I’m gonna go around singing Nate’s hook for a week.
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...le mal:
Katy Perry ft. Kanye: E.T.
Wife: “I bet you think this is too monochromatic.” Me, staring skeptically at the TV: “Kind of — it’s more just dumb.” Wife: “I was talking about my outfit.” Me: “Oh, I meant the song. Yeah, that’s a little monochromatic.” She turns a scarf into a belt; fantastic. Katy: “EX. TRAterrestrial.” Wife, mocking: “EX. TRAterrestrial!” Me: “She’s like Alanis.” Kanye talks some shit about Mars, cars, bars, jars, alien sex, disrobing, and probing; I destroy my copy of College Dropout. Wife: “See, he turns into an alien at the end.” AS MUST WE ALL. To sum up, somewhere in this mess there’s a melodic line she likes, so I acknowledge that it is possible to derive pleasure from “E.T.” Some things transcend human understanding.
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...et le mot juste:
Justin Bieber ft. Jaden Smith: Never Say Never 
Bieber walks through fire and climbs towers and runs across the sea! I must have missed something — did he turn into some kind of cross between Jesus and KITT? That’d make for a bitchin’ 3-D movie. However inspiring his meteoric rise to overworked child laborer, this song is so obviously about said rise that it has absolutely no pretensions of speaking to regular kids’ regular powers and frustrations. Whatever; kids are scrappy, they’ll figure out how to use it. And anyway, I will never change the radio on this song until I hear Jaden say “push comes to shove” over nothing but a big old handclap beat.
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Brad Paisley: Old Alabama [7]
Ronnie Dunn: Bleed Red [2]
Young the Giant: My Body [4]
Oh Land: Sun of a Gun [6]
Jamie Foxx ft. Drake: Fall For Your Type [6]
Gorilla Zoe ft. Lil' Jon: Twisted [2]
Foo Fighters: Rope [6]
Willow Smith: 21st Century Girl [5]
Dr. Dre ft. Snoop Dogg, Kurupt, & Nate Dogg: The Next Episode [8]
Dr. Dre ft. Nate, Snoop, & Daz: Deeez Nuuuuuuts [7]
Gil Scott-Heron ft. Jamie xx: I'll Take Care of You [7]
New Boyz ft. Cataracs & Dev: Back Seat [6]
Talay Riley: Sgt. Smash [6]

New Glasvegas: NOT /// WORTH IT \\\

Look at that - Geraldine's real!

Beware: there are no social workers on Euphoric /// Heartbreak \\\, the second album from Scottish romantics Glasvegas. No obnoxious boozy fathers encourage their kids to fight, the Baltic fleet is not up anyone’s arse, and singer-songwriter James Allan no longer feels guilty about all the things he said to his Mum when he was ten years old. Pretty much anything that was unique or charming about Allan’s lyrics on 2008’s Glasvegas is gone. There’s even a troubling dearth of f-words.

In place of all that, we get big sweeping generalities, as though Allan is standing on top of a mountain, singing to the back row of THE WORLD. He stretches out his anthemic nothings to their breaking points: “The world is youuuuuuuuurs!” “Shine like staaaaaaaaars!” “Youuuuu! Youuuuu! Youuuuuuuuuuu!” (That last one’s an entire chorus.) These aren’t lyrics so much as marketing slogans for God knows what. Mountains, maybe, or the World Cup. The lead single, “Euphoria, Take My Hand”, seems to be selling an actual emotion.

Read the rest of my illustrious review, which uses the phrase "charming as fook", at PopMatters!

Live ELP is NOT Worth It.

 

Geez Louise, the show really NEVER ENDS.

Everyday mediocrities may be swept away by time, but great atrocities must never be forgotten. So in the spirit of the Shoah Foundation, Shout! Factory has unearthed this two-disc 1978 ELP concert, that its horror may live afresh. The sound, “meticulously mastered from the original analog tapes”, is terrible—thin and watery with a murky low end. These songs simply didn’t transfer well to a stage free of overdubs. The song selection is hit or miss (“Pirates” = ARRRRGGGGHHHHH). Indeed, the only thing that’s truly exceptional here is keyboardist Keith Emerson’s ego. From his liner notes: “This particular performance proves what a defining influence ELP had over classical, jazz and folk musicians all over the world.” Please. If you want your local jazz musician to quit in disgust, tell him he plays like Keith Emerson. A few lessons of Emersonian self-reliance: Pitch bend and laser fire effects sound awesome, no matter which song they interrupt; quoting the Close Encounters theme is even funnier right after you’ve quoted the Star Wars theme; and punchy Aaron Copland tunes are in no way derailed by a bunch of aimless diatonic noodling. To be fair, the cheering crowd seems to lap it all up; but as my friend Kyle points out, they were probably enjoying a light show on acid.

(All of the above ran at PopMatters. Hateful comments about church musicians may start appearing in their comments field at any time.)

The Asphalt Orchestra is Worth It!

Their faces have literally stopped traffic.

Asphalt Orchestra is a giddy band camp fantasy brought to life: What if the section leaders formed a marching band that was actually cool? They’d play only the music they listened to in the parking lot between rehearsals. Stuff like Frank Zappa, Bjork, and Swedish metal band Meshuggah would be in; showtunes and “The Horse” would disappear completely. Well, thanks to a Rockefeller Foundation grant and the Bang On a Can new music organization, the dream is realized. And the result is… a little geeky.

That is what I said in this review at PopMatters. Read more there! Here's one more paragraph:

Don’t get me wrong, the Asphalt Orchestra can blow. Listening to the insane repeated notes of their take on Meshuggah’s “Electric Red”, my band director wife was impressed: “They really know how to use their tongues”. They also know how to count. Zappa and Meshuggah belong to an elite musical club: they’re widely known for writing songs with shifting meters, or with different instruments playing in different meters at the same time. “Electric Red” has passages in 23/16 or something. If you’re tempted to figure it out, you’re probably one of those maniacs who likes to complete Sudokus in your head.

Sheep/Goats 3/11: Featuring Some Stuff I'm Surprised I Liked

Unless it's the evil orphan-master asking where you're hiding the orphans, or something...

"I never imagined you could
Blow my theory apart
But now you're running away with my heart."
--Wilson Phillips

I've never been real interested in Nick Drake, but this new Alexi Murdoch is a slow still ringer for the guy, and it sounds really good. Similarly, a year ago I'd've never believed I'd end up digging a Chris Tomlin CD. It's all discussed over at the Burnside Writers Collective, along with Neil Diamond, Monotonix, Steel Magnolia, Weasel Walter/Mary Halvorson/Peter Evans, and Danielson. Here's the Murdoch review:

Alexi Murdoch
Towards the Sun
(Zero Summer)
The first two times I listened to Towards the Sun, I was doing other things: first folding laundry, then reading a bunch of Nick Drake reviews. It’s a testament to Murdoch’s solemn folkie power that both times I felt guilty about my fast-paced modern lifestyle. Next to Murdoch’s contemplative stillness, puttering around the house feels like day trading or being Lady Gaga. True, his songwriting skill rewards even background listeners. The beautiful guitar chord he plays to confess his fear of dying; the pointed puns that open up the language of “Slow Revolution”; the epiphanal phrase “And all around the light” — all these things stop me. But sit still and devote 40 minutes of your life to hearing this music unfold, and it’s like watching some patient natural phenomenon — a spider building a web, maybe, or rainwater rivulets subtly altering the contours of a ditch. When you take Murdoch’s pace as your own, his slow revelations are even more arresting.

Oh! and here's the Best Thing I've Heard All Year:




Brett Dennen
“Sydney (I’ll Come Running)”
Love overwhelms Law through sheer exuberance. The facts, ma’am: Brett’s friend Sydney has been accused of a crime, evidently something pretty serious, and Brett promises to stand by Sydney no matter what. As soon as Brett makes that promise he realizes, maybe for the first time, how blessed and lucky he is to have Sydney for a friend. Eureka! Suddenly Brett finds himself driven to discourteous musical joy, a glorious groove he never dreamed he could hit, and he soars away with the song — insulting the gossipy soccer moms at the dog park, cutting through the airport customs line, patching together “allegations made in the schoolyard” from two different Paul Simon songs, offering to help shop for lawyers (“There’s a lotta good people livin’ in L.A.”), but above all testifying testifying TESTIFYING.

Mary Mary's new one is Probably Worth It, I think.

Mary Mary make state-of-the-art inspirational R&B, and they have mixed feelings about losers. Here's the PopMatters review of Something Big. First two paragraphs:

“Sitting With Me”, a lovely lilting number from Mary Mary’s sixth album Something Big, portrays the R&B duo as total Christian schooldorks. Mean kids call them “holy roller”, “Jesus freak”, and “geek”; they’re picked last for the team; they’re basically Taylor Swift in the “You Belong to Me” video. Like plenty of schooldorks, Mary Mary console themselves by remembering that Jesus was also unpopular—the last week of his life, anyway—and drive the point home by singing powerfully, “I’ll sit on the sidelines as long as he’s sitting with me!” Christian rocker Steve Taylor once memorably sang “Jesus is for losers”, and Mary Mary would surely agree.

But in the album’s best stomper “Something Bigger”, they hilariously sing, “Nobody plans to be a loser!” “Something Bigger”, like the rest of the album, is all about doing “great things ‘cause of God in me”. Mary Mary are determined to survive; they’ll never raise their white flag; when they see the haters standing around, they get ready for war. The album even opens with a quasi-military call-and-response cadence. Erica and Tina, the two beautiful and non-dorky sisters who make up Mary Mary, clearly have no desire to hang around in Loserville.