Archive for the ‘Music Review’ Category

Jesca Hoop – Tom Waits’ Prodigal Nanny Releases 2nd Album

You never think about it, but some kid in Beverley Hills must have Harrison Ford on their paper round. In fact, Han Solo himself got his first big acting break through building some shelves for George Lucas. As day-jobs go, being Tom Waits’ nanny has got to be pretty cool. You look after the kids for a while, watch a movie, and then get to hang out with one of the most fertile minds in modern music just as he comes back feeling all groovy from a few beers and a nice dinner with the wife. How much would people pay for an hour with Tom Waits in contemplative mood?

Jesca Hoop was the lucky young lady who got paid to do so – and there are places in her music where you can hear TW’s influence, the kind of beautiful musical mess that he stitched together on albums like Rain Dogs and Swordfish Trombones, where strange chord shifts drop out from under the music and odd dissonances suddenly fall in together and turn out to have been harmonies all along.

There are similarities to Feist and Cat Power in her music too, her sometimes sweet, sometimes piercing, sometimes sultry and seductive voice ties together simple acoustic guitar tracks with complicated, swaggering electronic ones, and there are nice little touches of production like whispers turned up to overpower the rest of the track. Definitely worth a listen if you like any of the artists used for comparison, and interesting enough to be worth investigating if you have any kind of indie sensibility. If the big man backs her she can’t be bad…

Simian Mobile Disco Mix @ FACT + New Album

The Fact Magazine has been publishing a series of mixes from famous artists and DJ’s, the most recent of which comes from Electronic superstars Simian Mobile Disco. If you haven’t heard of them, think of a slightly harder edged Chemical Brothers, and you’re almost there. Their rise to fame hasn’t been so much meteoric as steady, and their new album Temporary Pleasure [Spotify link] is bound to be big in 2010, building on the solid success of their previous effort ‘Attack Decay Sustain Release’. Fact has this to say about the mix:

Recorded live in Ireland a couple of weeks back, it’s a big, brash unwaveringly banging selection of lysergic acid house, mind-melting techno and neo-electro that intensity-wise makes the Chemical Brothers sound like Robson & Jerome.

You can see and hear some of their new tracks on their YouTube channel here.

The Beatles Never Broke Up

Ignore the bizarre cover story on this site, amusing though it is to imagine falling down a rabbit hole to a universe in which the Beatles were still together and gigging, nicking a tape of their latest album (CD’s haven’t been invented in the parallel world) and , and just go straight ahead and have a listen to the mashup/remix that the guy perpetrating the myth has produced (you can download a .zip). Essentially a throwing together of late Beatles stuff, with samples from Wings and the ex-Beatles solo stuff, it’s a pretty well put together imagination of how the fab 4 might sound if they’d been time-ported to the 00’s before they split. There might be some copyright issues waiting to kill this off, but it’s a substantially different product to it’s constituent original bits of Beatles, so it may well scrape through. Daft though the website may be, it has done it’s intended job of generating amused interest from the media – publicising your music by making it stand out from the crowd is difficult to do, and this is a novel approach.

The Self Indulgent Friday Playlist – Every Christmas No.1 Since 1950

A kind of halfway house here between the Billboard Hot 100 post we did a while back and a Christmas playlist (since it’s still a bit too early): this is everything that was at number one in the UK charts on the 25th of December every year since 1950, which is pretty much (-+ 2) when the charts began. Interesting for the changing styles and for freakish little things like the fact that the Spice Girls had 3 consecutive number ones, the last 4 years have all had an X-Factor winner take the Christmas cake, Queen have had two wins with the same song (Bohemian Rhapsody)… Here’s the Spotify playlist [with some replacements where things aren't live].

1950 Gene Autry • Bing Crosby - Rudoph The Red-Nosed Reindeer

1951 Teddy Johnson • Teresa Brewer - Longing For You

1952 Al Martino - Here In My Heart

1953 Frankie Laine - Answer Me

1954 Winifred Atwell - Let’s Have Another Party

1955 Dickie Valentine - Christmas Alphabet

1956 Johnnie Ray - Just Walkin’ In The Rain

1957 Harry Belafonte - Mary’s Boy Child

1958 Conway Twitty - It’s Only Make Believe

1959 Emile Ford & The Checkmates - What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For

1960 Cliff Richard & The Shadows - I Love You

1961 Danny Williams - Moon River

1962 Elvis Presley - Return To Sender

1963 The Beatles - I Want To Hold Your Hand

1964 The Beatles - I Feel Fine

1965 The Beatles - Day Tripper / We Can Work It Out

1966 Tom Jones - The Green Grass Of Home

1967 The Beatles - Hello Goodbye

1968 Scaffold - Lily The Pink

1969 Rolf Harris - Two Little Boys

1970 Dave Edmunds - I Hear You Knockin’

1971 Benny Hill - Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)

1972 Little Jimmy Osmond - Long Haired Lover From Liverpool

1973 Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody

1974 Mud - Lonely This Christmas

1975 Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

1976 Johnny Mathis - When A Child Is Born (Soleado)

1977 Wings - Mull Of Kintyre / Girls’ School

1978 Boney M - Mary’s Boy Child-Oh My Lord

1979 Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall

1980 St Winifred’s School Choir - There’s No One Quite Like Grandma

1981 The Human League - Don’t You Want Me

1982 Renee & Renato - Save Your Love

1983 The Flying Pickets - Only You

1984 Band Aid - Do They Know It’s Christmas?

1985 Shakin’ Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone

1986 Jackie Wilson - Reet Petite

1987 The Pet Shop Boys - Always On My Mind

1988 Cliff Richard - Mistletoe & Wine

1989 Band Aid II - Do They Know It’s Christmas?

1990 Cliff Richard - Saviours’ Day

1991 Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody / These Are The Days Of Our Lives

1992 Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You

1993 Mr Blobby - Mr Blobby

1994 East 17 - Stay Another Day

1995 Michael Jackson - Earth Song

1996 Spice Girls - 2 Become 1

1997 Spice Girls - Too Much

1998 Spice Girls - Goodbye

1999 Westlife - I Have A Dream / Seasons In The Sun

2000 Bob The Builder - Can We Fix It?

2001 Robbie Williams & Nicole Kidman - Somethin’ Stupid

2002 Girls Aloud - Sound Of The Underground

2003 Michael Andrews feat Gary Jules - Mad World

2004 Band Aid 20 - Do They Know It’s Christmas?

2005 Shayne Ward - That’s My Goal

2006 Leona Lewis - A Moment Like This

2007 Leon Jackson - When You Believe

2008 Alexandra Burke - Hallelujah

Fat Freddy’s Drop return to the UK

I’ve blogged about my love for Fat Freddy’s Drop before, and lucky for you, they’re back in the UK later this month for two dates: the Hammersmith Apollo in London on the 30th, in Manchester on the 1st of Oct.

Tickets are available here:

http://www.gigantic.com/gigantic/home_fat_freddys_drop.html

…you should also remind yourself of their live brilliance with this video below. I was at this gig, and it kicked a whole lot of butt.

Bob Dylan – Blonde on Blonde Wig

If it wasn’t for the clear brilliance of his intellect on his Theme Time Radio Hour, I would think Mr. Zimmerman was losing the plot. He’s released a Wierd-Al-like polka Christmas song, in aid of the charity Feeding America.

“As Rolling Stone previously reported, all of Dylan’s royalties from the album benefit Feeding America and other international charities. “It’s a tragedy that more than 35 million people in this country alone — 12 million of those children — often go to bed hungry and wake up each morning unsure of where their next meal is coming from,” Dylan wrote on his official Website. “I join the good people of Feeding America in the hope that our efforts can bring some food security to people in need during this holiday season.”

New Album From Gil Scott-Heron

Godfather of Hip-Hop, civil rights protester, black icon – Gil Scott-Heron was instrumental in shaping the culture of New York in the 1970’s, but disappeared during the 80’s, only to surface amidst allegations of cocaine use in the early 00’s. He seems to have put this behind him though, and has been coaxed back into the studio to produce another album:

“Gil Scott-Heron was doing rhyming and spoken word over a back-beat as long ago as 1970,” Russell explains. “The music that became hip hop and rap – that’s what he was doing. He is undisputedly one of the people who invented that type of music. And it’s gone on to be incredibly important, and affect the culture in an enormous way.”

Rumours of a “new” Gil Scott-Heron album, like the reunion of the Friends cast, have circulated for as long as anyone can remember.

But Russell has guided the poet into the studio at last, and a long-player waggishly entitled I’m New Here will be released in February – Scott-Heron’s first for 15 years.

‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ – this was recorded when Barbara Streisand was singing ‘The Way We Were’ on the radio.

The Changing Face of Pop – The Billboard Hot 100 since 1950

Here it is – every top song from the Billboard Hot 100 for every year since 1950. A few unexpected little gems in there, some stuff you won’t have heard before, some stuff you have, and some stuff you’ll cringe at. Like it or not it’s quite an interesting trip through evolution of pop. One of the amazing things that I discovered while researching this is that ‘Billie Jean’, ‘Sexual Healing’ and ‘Every Breath You Take’ were all released with a year of each other, and all of them frighteningly close to ‘Faith’ by George Michael. Surely something has gone wrong with the space/time continuum. Also, if you bought the Macarena, hang your head in shame.

It all started to go wrong for me about 1982, which is ironic, because that’s about the time I was learning to talk.

Here’s the link:

http://open.spotify.com/user/d45hiel/playlist/7zN7mXKas6PcKH7zC9fCrk

and here’s the listing:

Bad Romance – Lady Gaga’s New Video

Whether you like her or not, she’s a show stopper; like Lily Allen, she’s got the knack of maintaining notoriety and exploiting the ink, electronic and otherwise that comes from being headline news. I have a feeling that the rumours about her sexual ambiguity and her ‘outrageous’ onstage antics are part of a calculated Cowellesque marketing plan. Soon, the lesbian relationship, then the pregnancy, the 3rd world adoption, the breakdown and the clean comeback…  

Simon Cowell’s Yearly Earnings

Even if Sting doesn’t like it, the X Factor is a phenomenal success. Some people watch it for the cringe value, some for the singing, and some (like me)  just to shout at the telly whenever Simon rolls his eyes at the incompetence of the people his researchers have invited along specifically for their lack of talent and capacity for self delusion. If you invite them along for the audience to laugh at, don’t pretend that they’re wasting your time… especially if they’re part of the formula that’s netting you an eight figure takehome!

Forbes published their rich list, and Music News have plucked out the top ten earning TV stars:

Prime Time TV’s Top Earning ten according to Forbes magazine:

1. Simon Cowell – $75 million
2. Donald Trump – $50 million
3. Ryan Seacrest – $38 million
4. Charlie Sheen – $21 million
5. Steve Carell – $20 million
(the rest of the list on Music News)

Cowell’s vast income is based not just on his salary as a judge on the show, but also on his ownership of the production company that owns and licenses the format worldwide, and on the exploitation of contracts with the various winners. Similarly to my take  on the inimitable Mr. Williams, I don’t like Cowell’s modus operandi, but there’s no denying that he’s achieved more than enough success to warrant his smug self-righteousness.