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.
Posts
All Comments
