M.I.A.'s ARULAR marks the arrival of an explosive new voice in popular music. The brainchild of Sri Lankan MC Maya Arulpragasam, the music of M.I.A. ("Missing in Action") reflects her harried, transient upbringing. The daughter of a revolutionary member of the controversial Tamil Tigers, Arulpragasam settled in London as a teenager, where she went on to study fine art and film at the Central Saint Martin's School of Art. After being hired by Justin Frischmann to document an Elastica tour, Frischmann inspired Arulpragasam to write songs of her very own.
Kurt Cobain About A Son is a rock and roll film like no other -- an intimate and moving portrait of the late musician and artist Kurt Cobain told entirely in his own voice -- without celebrity soundbites, news clips, sensational tabloid angles or attempts to mimic a grunge aesthetic. Based on more than 25 hours of never-before-heard audiotaped interviews conducted by noted journalist Michael Azerrad for his book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, the film offers audiences a compelling re-introduction to one of the most interesting and important cultural figures of the late 20th century. For this unique film, director AJ Schnack assembled selections from the Azerrad interviews and merged them with newly filmed, evocative imagery of the three cities in Washington state that played a major role in Cobain's life: Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle. Shot entirely on 35mm film, Schnack brings the Northwest to life in vivid detail: the logging industry where Cobain's father worked, the small bars where local bands played their first shows, the endlessly overcast sky.
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals: Ryan Adams (vocals, guitar, banjo, piano); Neal Casal (vocals, guitar); Jon Graboff (vocals, pedal steel guitar); Jamie Candiloro (piano, keyboards); Chris Feinstein (bass instrument); Brad Pemberton (drums, percussion).
Though Tom Waits had spent most of the '70s establishing himself as one of America's most distinctive singer-songwriters, Swordfishtrombones found him reinventing himself and creating one of the most original sounds in popular music. Leaving behind his Kerouac-influenced lyrics and lounge-lizard piano-bar stylings for an unprecedented eclecticism that merged Brecht-Weill artsong, Captain Beefheart-style avant blues, Harry Partch-inspired junkyard percussion, along with a healthy dose of everything else but the kitchen sink.
"Bullet With Butterfly Wings" won a 1997 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. Smashing Pumpkins were nominated for five additional 1997 Grammys for Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness. The album was nominated for Album Of The Year and Best Alternative Music Performance; "1979" was nominated for Record Of The Year and Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal; and the title track was nominated for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.
Another of these is Mickey Newbury's "I Came to Hear the Music," which opens the set and is one of the songwriter's best-known tunes. In a version that stays faithful to the melody, Weeks adds some of the soft touches inherent in the original production, and collaborative tune "I've Seen It All" could have been a Oldham is suddenly very old, looking back on a lifetime of regret. It's pretty, tender, and drenched in both love and grief. Baird's sweet, out-of-time backing vocal underscores the lines with the sense of time's passage. Glenn Danzig's "Am I Demon?" feels like it belongs right where it is and seems more like Oldham's tune than its author's. The male-centered darkness in the Björk/Thom YorkePalace Brothers tune, but Weeks keeps that from happening by texturing the space and separation between lead and backing vocal and some spidery reverbed electric guitars. The Phil Ochs tune "My Life" seems to fall a bit flat here -- not much is added, but its real power seems diminished despite that it is obviously the hinge on which the entire EP turns. The lone original here, "I'm Loving the Street," is upbeat by comparison. Its folksy old-time jaunt offers no regrets for anything or anyone who has passed into history. There is only the present. The R. Kelly tune "The World's Greatest" is a different song here, as one might expect, designed as an Appalachian ballad that could have come from anytime, anywhere, but is rooted in the present only by the presence of a ghostly electric guitar. The melody is stretched but recognizable -- barely -- and the true poetry in Kelly's words comes falling out of the mouth of Oldham like clear water from a fountain. This is a solid, less dramatic, but no less interesting -- and in places even compelling -- momentary stopgap for Oldham. To be sure, his fans will certainly want to check this out, but so will anyone interested in the interpretive possibilities of song as a living entity independent of performance.
Despite his status as one of the most iconic and enduring figures in alternative rock, Morrissey's solo output has been somewhat uneven, artistically speaking. But from its faux-classical album cover to its churning musical surfaces to its array of both bleak and celebratory themes, the artist's 2006 release, Ringleader of the Tormentors, shows that the subversive spirit driving Morrissey's unique perspective, arch posturing, and witty, literate lyrics is still alive and kicking.
New York indie rockers Les Savy Fav returned from a couple of years of self-imposed exile with their fourth full-length, Lets Stay Friends, which pretty much picks up right where they left off. Their invigorating, visceral-yet-cerebral brand of Wire-influenced art-punk-cum-modern-rock is still full of left-field lyrical sensibilities, hellbent rhythms, and knotty guitar riffs. If anything, their attack is more refined and focused here, serving both the head and the body in equal measure.
The third full-length from contemporary R&B diva Alicia Keys is called As I Am, a title that adequately reflects the album's straightforward, confessional soul-pop. Keys built her popularity making stylish, reflective, voice-&-piano music; As I Am continues that trend, albeit in a poppier vein that balances neatly between neo-soul and adult contemporary. This is reflected in the mid-tempo grooves, songs of empowerment ("Superwoman"), and stirring ballads ("The Thing About Love").
Made up mainly of simple and repetitive guitar and a drum machine, Aidan Moffat and David Gow's Elephant Shoe is a beautifully stark and intimate masterpiece. Very few musicians can come across as being completely honest and personal in their music. However, like Smog, Songs: Ohia (whose last album Moffat and Gow played on), and very few others, Arab Strap make you feel like you can see their most personal thoughts, fears, and weaknesses. They let you see their biggest mistakes, darkest secrets, weakest moments, and insecurities. "One Four Seven One" (I assume the equivalent to *69 in the US) expresses, to the backdrop of a minimally picked guitar and a drum machine, insecurities about a lover's faithfulness (or unfaithfulness). "You said it yourself, you can't help but flirt...I know it was just once, but isn't once enough?" You can actually hear the pain in his voice, and it is completely heart wrenching.
For those music fans who worry that an album with only guitar and drum machine might not be enough for them, don't worry. Not all of the music on Elephant Shoe is as basic as it sounds, the duo also use cello, keyboards, real drums, and a mix of electric and acoustic guitars to round out the sound of the album. Moffat and Gow have made an unforgettable album full of engaging and poignant stories and beautifully simplistic music that is so real and honest that you can't help but be emotionally effected.
Granted, Ian Browns solo albums have all been rather patchy hit followed by miss affairs, but this collection smashingly rectifies that, creaming off the best of the harvested crop, mining carefully for the diamonds. And boy has there been some diamonds, "My Star" and "Corpses" make for an astonsihing opening barrage guitarist, co-writer and fast friend Aziz Ibrahim magnificently poignant on both. "Dolphins were Monkeys", "Be there" and the anthemnic "FEAR" are other high points reminding the listener just how good IB solo work can be. Unfortunately the forgettable plodfest of a collabaration with Noel Gallagher, "Keep what ya Got" snuck in through the back door but hey, at least the CD format spares us the embaressing video!
On 23, Blonde Redhead's second full-length outing for 4AD, the New York City-based indie-rock trio, fronted by reedy-voiced singer/multi-instrumentalists Amedeo Pace and Kazu Makino (Simone Pace rounds out the line-up on drums), continues to refine the intense, artfully eccentric sound that it crafted on Misery Is A Butterfly. Although there are nods to the band's guitar-driven formative aesthetic (see the majestic title track and the searing "Spring and By Summer Fall"), even these more energetic moments carry a fascinating, dream-like quality, recalling the mesmerizing atmosphere of the Cure's Disintegration, while other tunes mix goth splendor with Beatlesque flourishes (as on the disarming "SW"). Easily one of the most intriguing indie albums of early '07, 23 is required listening for aficionados of intelligent, expansive rock.
The Decemberists' third full-length release takes the fanciful lyrical subjects and defiantly non-rock musical tendencies of Castaways And Cut-Outs and Her Majesty The Decemberists and infuses them with the more muscular and electric sound of the 2003 mini-concept album, The Tain. The combination provides singer/songwriter Colin Meloy and crew with their first true masterpiece, an album that not only fulfills, but exceeds, the promise of their earlier records.
The first solo album from the former frontman of Mano Negra is an enchanting trip through Latin-flavored world-beat rock, reliant on a potpourri of musical styles from traditional Latin & salsa to dub to rock & roll to French pop to experimental rock to techno.
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