Archive for the 'Music Reviews' Category

Short Cuts: Jon Connor’s Season 2

Jeff Laughlin, January 31, 2012 in Music Reviews. 2 Comments Tags: jon connor, season 2 mixtape, short cuts.

The whole format of mixtapes is certifiably insane. In preparation for an album or to announce their presence “in the game”, rappers release 25-song extended teasers for free. Rappers record albums to celebrate albums and arrivals. In Jon Connor’s case, this is his 2nd arrival. Apparently, this matters more than we know. He’s angry at labels for wanting him to be different, critics because they don’t like how different he is, and the world for being terrible to him. Connor is an outstanding rapper with an insane flow who does not get enough credit. On some other shit, we have to ban together and stop him from rapping until he picks better beats. To be critical is to hate, so here it is: I hate these beats.

Let’s put it this way: if you use Jon Connor in a mashup, you’d have to make a new, good beat and start from scratch. He’s basically rapping over mashup material, like, it’s a pre-mashup. “Inside of You” is possibly the creepiest hook ever. “Place on Earth” is literally– and I mean the literal interpretation of literally– The Bangles’ song “Heaven is a Place on Earth” with him rapping over it. Seriously. And Connor goes in. He’s killing every song even though some of these songs are killing him. It’s not only that he’s too good for this, not only that he suffers from “every song gets released” diseases, it’s that I feel like I can hear him wincing his way through these watercolor producers. Dude’s an artist, he needs a proper canvas. This shit is parchment, my man needs some walls for murals.

There would be no bad if it weren’t for the good, obviously. “No Apologies,” “No Thrillz,” “The Boom Bap Symphony,” “Gonna Make It” (f/ Freeway) and others show how good Connor is when he gets proper production work. It’s few and far between, but when Connor clicks, it’s magic. Busta says it after the opening track “Someone Like Me”: ‘Ya’ll better get ya’ll bars right.” Busta is wise and Busta is right. If Connor figures out the balance, he will crush the game. He’s hungry, angry and good. That’s a big deal. The best combination of soulful, talented and conditioned to destroy beats, Connor could stand out, but he may have to stand on a pile of rejected beats to get there. I’m waiting impatiently for the time to come.

Sharon Van Etten: Tramp

Joe O'Brien, January 30, 2012 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: Sharon Van Etten, Tramp.

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Sharon Van Etten’s voice is one of the loveliest things in music right now, a bright October sunset with a teaspoon of grit. (It’s even better when she does harmonies too.) Her voice would feel right at home on a wobbly stool in an East Village cafe, or on stage at the Grand Ole Opry, or sprawled atop a grand piano like Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys.

One thing Van Etten’s voice does really well is sigh, and I love that about it. I sigh a lot myself, mostly out of fist-clenching frustration, but also, of course, from fatigue, satisfaction, melancholy, and bemusement. Yet Van Etten’s latest album Tramp sighs way too much, even for me.

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Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas

Joe O'Brien, January 29, 2012 in Music Reviews. 2 Comments Tags: Leonard Cohen, Old Ideas.

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Every lyric’s a gruff whisper, like he’s uttering dying words. “I’ve got no future/ I know my days are few/ the present’s not that pleasant/ just a lot of things to do.” He carries each tune fine enough, though he needs his shooby-doop backup singers to show just how sublime those tunes really are. Like so many old men he can be happily stubborn, but unlike so many old men, he sounds legitimately virile. He lounges amid the kind of shamelessly artificial, occasionally cheap-sounding synth-pop and lite jazz backdrops that sounded dated even in the ’80s, and he instills them with dignity simply by being Leonard Fucking Cohen. “Old Ideas” indeed, but they still work wonders.

They work their wonders mostly because Cohen’s at the top of his game poetically, his words embodying every adjective we should all hope to be should we live that long: tender, crabby, romantic, dirty, mournful, grateful, spiritual, irreverent, humble, rugged, needy, ready-to-die, and willing-to-live. Wouldn’t be shocking if Old Ideas wins Cohen his “Time Out Of Mind” Grammy for Album Of The Year.

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First Aid Kit: The Lion’s Roar

Joe O'Brien, January 23, 2012 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: First Aid Kit, Mike Mogis, The Lion's Roar.

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There’s something uncanny about The Lion’s Roar from the very beginning, when there’s nothing more than minor-key acoustic guitar and a will-o’-the-wisp flickering between the trees. A tender yet hardened young woman sets the scene (”The pale morning sings/ of forgotten things”), and the air’s already thick with mythology. It’s the feeling you get when you look to the west- so beautiful it’s profoundly unsettling, and so profoundly unsettling it’s beautiful. There’s witchery afoot, and slavery, and plagues. Can’t blame us too much for being such goddamn cowards and fools, but God damn us anyway. And while God’s at it, God can damn itself for taking so much of our innocence before we could muster enough courage and wisdom to fill the void.

* * *

“Swedish Americana” makes a lot of sense. Sweden totally gets America when it comes to pop, at least more so than other countries where English is a second language. America may not always get what Swedish pop has to offer us, like Robyn for instance, but Swedish pop sure gets us, all right.

First Aid Kit (sisters Johanna and Klara Soderberg) highlights just how kindred our nation’s Country Western & Southern Gothic spirits are to the land of ABBA. It’s not surprising that Flannery O’Connor’s friends thought she’d enjoy the films of Ingmar Bergman. So how great would it be if Loretta Lynn covered “Knowing Me, Knowing You”? And wouldn’t it be cool if Linda Ronstadt did an album of Jens Lekman songs? “Swedish Americana” ought to be a slightly bigger sub-genre than it currently is, and The Lion’s Roar ought to be a cornerstone of that sub-genre.

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Of Bathgate and Buckner and I: Transitions from Personal to Impossible

Jeff Laughlin, January 12, 2012 in Essays and Criticism and Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: Chris Batgate, Our Blood, Richard Buckner, Salt Year.

During my break from 10L, I didn’t stop listening to music. I didn’t stop caring. I just stopped writing about it. I laid in bed and ate fried chicken (more like friend chicken, youknowhatImean?) and read stories from the NBA Lockout. I tried to care more about college basketball. I drank some and didn’t drink a lot at the same time. Hell, I’m not sure that I did much of anything else. Milk and vegetables spoiled a lot more than I wanted them to because I overshot my mornings by a mile and spent the days lamenting.

If anything actually offered me solace, it was the occasional jam with Chris Bathgate’s Salt Year and trying to figure out if I really liked Richard Buckner’s Our Blood. My relationship with music isn’t always as complicated as it is with Buckner, as Bathgate’s catalog can attest. I am drawn to every Richard Buckner album with delirious haste. Listening and re-listening, I’m hooked by the opening riff. Then, I lose something each time I finish the record. Is Our Blood to be appreciated in small doses? Is the listener really to dismiss the catalog each time he/she hears a new song? The challenge of ignoring an artist’s past is really on trial here*. There’s nothing really different about this record as compared to the last few releases, but is that such a bad thing?

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Why My Opinion Doesn’t Matter: The Best Three Records I Heard in 2011

Jeff Laughlin, January 10, 2012 in Best of, Essays and Criticism and Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: cymbals eat guitars, grails, Storms.

I’m not a genius by any means. I’m an average bro with a slanted opinion. I’m a half-wit, a writer’s writer, a stylist without a popular canvas. I know Girls and Watch the Throne and Wavves. I know Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. I know Kanye and Cudi. I know all the cool jamz people gravitate toward. I know them and I often like them. It’s just that, and I know I am not entirely alone, I tend to allay my hopes on the forgotten, misunderstood albums that receive little fanfare. For example, one of my favorite albums of all time, Jets To Brazil’s Orange Rhyming Dictionary is an audible eyesore– a series of strange canvases and literary intentionality. My love of later Superchunk albums (and early ones for that matter) isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s just doesn’t matter. Problem is, the unintentional consequence of seeking the destitute and unloved albums in American music drives away readers as quickly as it allows self-satisfaction.

So what was different about 2011? The music was, but that’s to be expected. My attitude toward life? Not really. I changed locales, came to grips with some personal issues, etc. I didn’t change tastes, though. There wasn’t even a subtle shift. I like the same records now as I did then, just more of them. That said, I really do believe that three records absolutely stood out for me in 2011 for their styles, their movements, their irrepressible charisma, their difference engines in creating artistic masterworks. These albums bent genres, created new walls and unburdened a strange year for music as a whole. Think about it, 2011s most popular rap album may well have been made by one of the best producers in the world and he didn’t make the beats. Skrillex is nominated for grammys. Tom Waits put out an at-best mediocre album. Bon Iver became Bonnie Raitt (not a knock, that album rips in spots). All the while, Storms, Grails and Cymbals Eat Guitars created intimidating, challenging, beautiful records to little response.

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Guided By Voices: Let’s Go Eat The Factory

Joe O'Brien, December 27, 2011 in Music Reviews. 4 Comments Tags: Guided By Voices, Let's Go Eat The Factory.

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Music writers keep referring to the current Guided By Voices reboot as the “classic” lineup, almost always with that word “classic” in quotation marks, like they need to remind us that “classic” is just publicist-speak. I prefer to distance myself from that “classic” label as well, if only because “classic” feels like such a mundane way to put it. “Classic” is for blue jeans and Coca Cola and Treasure Island and radio stations that play “Whole Lotta Love.” Not that those things can’t be cool, but the 1993 – 1996 lineup of Guided By Voices is a peculiar animal, and therefore it needs its own adjective. I think John Wenzel is on the right track when he talks about GBV’s 1994 album Bee Thousand:

It is perfect, in the same subjective and tautological way that all great works of art are perfect. Its quality cannot be overstated, but it can certainly be overanalyzed, and that I usually try to avoid. Let its mystery lie, like the alien corpses rumored to exist in Wright-Patterson Air Force Base’s Hangar 18. Perhaps that’s where the album’s magic came from, some toxic alien blood infiltrating the water table of Northridge, somehow birthing a modern classic in the mind of a beer-fueled ex-jock schoolteacher.

from Marc Woodworth’s 33¹ ⁄ ³ book on Bee Thousand

John can’t avoid using that “classic” word near the end, but the “toxic alien blood” phrase is what I’m talking about. From here on, I’ll refer to the recently reunited version of Guided By Voices as the “Toxic Alien Blood” lineup (that’s lead singer/songwriter Robert Pollard; assistant captain Tobin Sprout on guitar, piano, and occasional lead vocals; guitarist Mitch Mitchell; bassist Greg Demos; and drummer Kevin Fennell).

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The Black Keys: El Camino

Joe O'Brien, December 1, 2011 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: Black Keys, Danger Mouse, El Camino.

…a broken heart is blind.

The Black Keys, “Little Black Submarines”

When it comes to love and music, I’m a big, gooey romantic. The only difference is that in love, I’ve basically been a serial monogamist, rarely hesitant to jump into a new committed relationship even if I just had my heart wrecked by an old committed relationship. With music, of course, I’m free to swing. Radiohead won’t get jealous if I also fall in love with Clinic, just like I won’t get jealous sharing my love of The Fiery Furnaces with some of my bros.

When I fell in love with The White Stripes though, it was something extra-extra-special. I was hearing them for the very first time through a pair of puffy listening-station headphones in the 4th Street & Broadway Tower Records, and as “Fell In Love With A Girl” finished whupping my ass and screeched to a halt, I felt like I had found The One. I had loved many other bands before then, but the first 4 tracks of White Blood Cells felt like practically everything I loved about American music rolled into one ultra-wonderful Voltron that I never realized I always wanted. Jack & Meg continued to be my main musical squeeze from that moment on, and when they called it quits last Groundhog Day, it crushed my tender music-loving heart.

It’s not fair, perhaps, yet unavoidable, far as I’m concerned, for me to talk about The White Stripes so much when I should be reviewing the new Black Keys album. Thing is, I never got into The Black Keys before precisely because of The White Stripes. I’d hear The Black Keys now and then, watch them play a tune on a late night talk show, and I’d think, These guys rock all right, but I guess I only have room in my heart for one duo that stands in the shadows of Motown with warped blues guitars and cave-stomp drums. But now that The White Stripes are gone (at least until the inevitable reunion), it’s The Black Keys that have done the most special thing a band has done for me in a very long time. Maybe not extra-extra-special, but special enough. But first, back to The White Stripes.

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Urge Overkill: Rock&Roll Submarine

Joe O'Brien, May 9, 2011 in Music Reviews. 8 Comments Tags: Rock&Roll Submarine, Urge Overkill.

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The rock n’ roll was perfect. The rock n’ roll was excellent.

- Wesley Willis, “Urge Overkill”

What the heck happened to Urge Overkill? I mean, aside from the drugging and the feuding? More specifically, what the heck happened to public opinion of Urge Overkill? Their fingerprints are all over some of the biggest rock bands of the past 15 years, whether those bands meant it that way or not: Queens Of The Stone Age, Foo Fighters, Guided By Voices (after they went hi-fi) and The White Stripes to name a few. All these bands made huge, arena-ready, Camaro-friendly rock that was as fun as ’80s party metal but not nearly as dumb, and as cool as early-’90s grunge but not nearly as suicidal. Urge Overkill nailed that formula on 1993’s Saturation, which boasted a couple of buzz-worthy tracks (”Sister Havana” & “Positive Bleeding”) at a time when humorless mope rock was all the rage. Then came ‘94, when Kurt Cobain shot himself and the kids decided maybe fun wasn’t so lame after all. Urge hit the Billboard Hot 100 by covering Neil freaking Diamond in Pulp freaking Fiction, and by the end of the year the kids had officially anointed the mud-flinging jesters of Green Day as rock’s Next Big Thing. In ‘95, Urge released Exit The Dragon, a slightly darker, more emotional follow-up to Saturation that nevertheless brought more than enough sharply-written songs with kick-ass riffs and brilliant hooks but bombed anyway. The kids ultimately decided that Urge Overkill wasn’t for them. Perhaps the band wasn’t pogo enough for the punk revivalists, wasn’t heavy enough for the metalheads, wasn’t gloomy enough for the grunge holdovers, wasn’t hard enough for the industrial goths, wasn’t lovably dorky enough for the Weezer geeks, wasn’t scrawny enough for the Matador Records collectors, wasn’t mellow enough for the H.O.R.D.E. festival circuit, wasn’t beige enough for whoever was patronizing The Gin Blossoms and Collective Soul, was too American for the Britpop buffs, was too mainstream-sounding for the art-school junkies, was too cheeky for the Classic Rock purists. Who knows? But for whatever reasons, Urge Overkill fell through the cracks and hasn’t been a significant part of the conversation for more than a decade and a half now.

Only time will tell if Rock&Roll Submarine will correct this injustice, but it damn well should.

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