Archive by Author

Metric at Fox Theatre (18/4/2013)

6 May

For those who have never heard of them, Metric are a wonderful indie rock group headed by Emily Haines and James Shaw, who also perform as part of Broken Social Scene. They are one of those bands which justify indie rock as a whole by releasing album after album of solid, intelligent music. Versatile and honest, their music is a pleasure to hear. Seeing them live though was a whole different experience. It was without doubt one of the two best concerts that I have ever been to.

Mona

The opening act was a Nashville-based rock act known as Mona. I had never heard them before and their performance made it abundantly clear why exactly that was. About the only thing that can be said to their credit is that they did have a very eclectic set list. Unfortunately, they could not even manage a jack-of-all-trades performance, coming off more as a four-to-six-of-all-trades performance. These things are regrettable, but they do happen. Let us pass on.

Metric

Metric live is a very different beast from Metric recorded. Their albums are often quite soft, but their concert rocked hard from can to can’t. There was improvisation a-plenty, there were guitar solos and distortions, they were almost an entirely new band, but in a really good way. We don’t go to concerts just to sing along to what we already know. We go to see the performers put on a show, and that should always result in something new.

Live shows are where many bands fail as their music just is not suited to the setting, but Metric put enough rock into their music to assuage any such worries. Emily Haines is an excellent front to the band, displaying enough energy to electrify a theater full of people nearly made catatonic by the opening act. This was an incredible performance in every way. It was mostly hits, but there were a few songs in there that I had never heard before. Their encore was also quite noteworthy. They started with the ever-fun Black Sheep from the Scott Pilgrim movie and also dropped in a really good version of Gold Guns Girls and a very intimate acoustic two-man Gimme Sympathy. Also, the lighting were incredible and it does make a difference.

All told, this was a great concert and I will definitely see them again when they next come to San Francisco. They may be very different in their shows when compared to their recordings, but it makes for a much better live experience. I enjoyed myself, and it seems inconceivable that anyone there did not.

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Snoop Dogg: “No Guns Allowed”

29 Apr

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There is a lot to talk about when reviewing “No Guns Allowed” from Snoop Lion’s latest album Reincarnated. The transformation from Dogg to Lion, the messages of peace, the imagery of the video and the news clips littering the song. This album is more than a new reggae release, this is a watershed moment.

More important though is whether it is good music. It’s okay. Diplo provides a solid background and Snoop, whose voice was always one of the most mellow in rap, sings quite decently throughout. His daughter Cori B provides a solid chorus and while Drake is nothing special, he does well enough. The song is quite listenable, just not outstanding.

The message though comes through quite strongly. The music video may be a tad overblown, but it says what it intends to. While his singing is not quite Bob Marley’s, it is certainly earnest. It feels good to see quite so positive a message from someone as large as Snoop Dogg and his past makes the statement stronger.

All told, this is a pleasant listen and made much more so due to the message. It may not revitalize reggae but it puts Snoop back on the map and not in a bad way.

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David Bowie: The Next Day

7 Apr

David Bowie shocked everyone by releasing The Next Day, his first album after a decade of retirement with no advance publicity. What further shocked us was how incredible his return is. A decade has allowed us to forget just how good David Bowie can be and his latest album serves as a stronger reminder than any perusal of his old work ever could.

Every song in the album is strong, often verging on spectacular, and despite the album being filled to the brim with references to his old work each song feels entirely new. Much has been said of how easily Bowie adapts to the times, and the meme-like adaptation of Heroes that serves as this album’s cover is no exception, but what is often lost in the noise is how good his music can be. There doesn’t seem to be a wrong note in this album and songs like The Stars (Are Out Tonight), How Does The Grass Grow and especially Valentine’s Day are exceptional. Bowie has left behind a music legacy that very few others can match and with The Next Day, not only does he evoke the masterpieces that have come before, but adds another work of art to stand alongside them.

Excellent thought the music is, the content of the album is also worth bringing up. Topical in places like Valentine’s Day, How Does the Grass Grow and even the sixties-referencing I’d Rather Be High and more inward-looking on The Stars (Are Out Tonight) and The Next Day, Bowie reminds us why he is respected not only as a musician, but as an intellectual force. Diverse and witty, Bowie walks across us across a fascinating landscape.

Although The Next Day is not quite of the standard of say, Ziggy Stardust, this is nevertheless a triumphant return for David Bowie and hopefully a long-lived one.

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Wayne Shorter: Without A Net

18 Mar

Iconic jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter has returned to Blue Note Records this year to release Without A Net. His first album with the label as bandleader in 43 years shows no trace of age and he is as dextrous and intelligent as ever.

The album is mostly from the Wayne Shorter Quartet’s 2011 Europe tour and as a result is a bit minimalistic. Only rarely are more than two instruments noticeable at once, but that merely gives each one space to shine. Wayne Shorter himself burns through the entire album. His lyricism is unparallelled here and his virtuosity is as undeniable as it ever was. The saxophone has had its fair share of masters and at eighty, Wayne Shorter can still stand with pride amongst them.

The album itself is consistently excellent. Plaza Real, for instance, is simply incredible. It goes all over the place and takes you along emotionally. However, although the album is extremely listenable, it is also quite complex. Unless you have some familiarity with jazz, I am afraid that this album may seem to mostly be noise. It is far from being John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space or Sun Ra’s Space Is The Place, but nevertheless is not for beginners (who should however check out our earlier article on albums to start jazz with). This is an extremely rewarding album though, and no matter your level of jazz knowledge, you cannot help but admire the technical proficiency of the quartet.

Wayne Shorter has delivered an album here that in every way lives up to the ones that came before. Hearing this, one can almost forget that it is no longer 1969. This may not be quite up to the true jazz classics, of which Wayne Shorter certainly has his fair share, this is still a great jazz album by the standard of any time.

– Nikhil

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Making Us Wonder: Interviewing Lily Holbrook

3 Mar

A couple of months ago, I checked out a show by the alternative rock musician Lily Holbrook. She killed it there, absoulutely blowing away every other act of that day. After the show, she agreed to be interviewed by Top Five Records, and the result is below.

Top 5 Records: Thank you for such a great show. That was a lot of fun. Did you enjoy it?

I did yeah

T5: Do you feel there is a large difference between a concert setting and busking?

Well that was a really cool experience because that was a great venue and I don’t play venues that nice all the time, so that was really fun. Busking has its advantages too. It is really connected to the people, very intimate, there’s a lot of interaction because people, especially when I do it right around here in the Castro there’s a lot of really unique people, and they’ll say funny things and they get very emotional sometimes because there are a lot of music fans in this neighborhood and people who connect with things that happened in their lives, so there’s some really interesting experiences that happened around here, just people get very involved with it and they’re walking right by you and they can stop and talk to you, and so it is really interactive. So that part is really cool. It is sometimes overwhelming, but it is really cool and a really unique experience.

Concerts are fun because of almost the opposite reason. Sometimes you want to just not have to interact as much. Even though actually I love interacting, sometimes there are times when I want to just perform and they be able to go backstage and just decompress. So it is kind of interesting because they are very different and I like both for their differences.

T5: You still busk, don’t you?

I do, I do. I probably will tonight, right around there.

T5: So, how does it feel performing with a band. That’s a newer thing for you.

It is. I have had bands in the past, usually for various reasons, it didn’t last very long. In this one, we seem to have a great connection so I’m hoping we last a long time and I love playing with them. There’s a lot of awesome things that come with playing with a band, but we are still working through technical stuff, because it’s harder for me to hear myself and so it’s a little harder for me to sing, because we get pretty loud and it’s different having to keep in time with them because I’m playing alone I really vary my timing which sometimes work really well because my vocals can then get really slow at times and speed up at times and I can do whatever I want. So with them, I can’t do that as much so there’s just some compromises that have to be made.

T5: Do you feel it’s less improvisational?

It is less improvisational, Yeah that’s true. I think that the more we practice, because we are a pretty new band, I think over time that we will be able to capture that improvisational feel, but right now we are still getting to know each other musically and figuring it all out but ultimately I enjoy it more, playing with a band.

T5: What about the name though? The Shivering Lilies, do you want to talk about that?

*Laughs a little* Sure, we had trouble coming up with a name no one could really agree on anything. I’m not sure why, but they really wanted to keep Lily in the name and I really didn’t care about it. It was really them, that wanted to and we kept just coming up with name and somebody said The Shivers, but there was a band already called that, and then I forget who, but one of the other band members said The Shivering Lilies, and we all really liked it, we thought it had a good ring, so we said Hey, we’ll go with that.

T5: Speaking of that, how does it feel to lead a band rather than just being yourself? Is there a difference?

There’s a big difference. It’s really cool to have a group of people to share things with. It takes a little bit of the pressure off, because it’s not just you. If you make a mistake, it’s all of you and not just me, but at the same time, it does take effort and working through differences and I really wanted to be like a band, and more than a backing band I like to think of us as equals, so at the same time, I have a strong personality when it comes to my music, I have strong opinions, so it takes a little letting go on my part and on their’s too. It’s just a lot of compromise. I think for any band, there’s a lot of compromise, so getting used to that is challenging, but it’s good.

T5: Do you view this as an evolution of your musical style. When I compare your first album to your later two, there’s a large difference over there. Is this part of that evolution, or is this it’s own separate offshoot?

This is. I always wanted to play with a band, but for various reasons I could never keep one together. I moved around a lot and I had record deals that fell through and all these crazy things were happening that made all of the bands that I was with dissolve quickly, but when I write music, most of the time I’m envisioning it with other instrumentation like on those later two albums. I never really wanted to be an acoustic artist although I still love acoustic music and I still want to do that to a degree, but I think that this was always a part of wanted to do.

T5: Coming back to your first album, I’ve read that you created that album after your brother died. Would you like to talk about that a little bit?

I can, yeah sure. It was a few years after my brother died. Some of the songs were written not long after he died, but it wasn’t recorded until four or five years later, but that was a very impactful event in my life, so five years wasn’t much time at all, even now it is the most critical event in my life really. Those songs really came from an interesting place, I don’t think I could ever recapture that. There was a lot of pain, but also a lot of beauty and kind of fairy-tale imagery that is somewhat connected to him because he had a big influence on me in that I have loved mythology and fantasy and he did as well, he was seven years older than me, so I got a lot of my appreciation for that from him. So, I connected those into the songs and used those as metaphors for how I was feeling and most of the album is about his passing and also the pains of letting go of childhood.

T5: Was it cathartic?

Yeah, definitely it was.

T5: You must have heard of Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven, did you know that he doesn’t perform that song anymore? He sang that about his son dying and feels that he has come to terms with his son’s passing and so he can’t summon the emotions needed to sing that anymore. Do you see a parallel?

Wow, that’s interesting. Well, some of those songs I don’t do anymore but actually, that’s more because they don’t translate as well without the strings and some of the other stuff that goes on. I still do some of the stuff though, but honestly I don’t know that I will ever fully come to terms. I have improved over time, but I don’t know if I ever see a time in my life when I couldn’t summon the emotion because it’s always going to be just something very painful. A lot of learning came out of it, I can live with it, but I think the emotion will always be there. But I understand that, and I think that’s good. I mean, closure is good.

T5: And to be fair, he’s had a lot more time to come to terms. But this brings us to an interesting point, you said that both your brother and you really enjoy mythology, and of course much of your music has a dark fantasy element running through it. Would you like to that about that?

It started when I was very young and I don’t really know why. It’s very common in little girls to like fairies and mermaids, so that’s pretty standard, I think I just took it to a higher level. I had a really vivid imagination, I was a really shy child and I wasn’t good at sports and things like that and that was very important in my school and sports were a big thing, so I kind of became very introverted and turned to art and music and my imagination. So, in my imagination, I was always creating these fantasies with dragons and princesses and castles and then I would also read literature and also my brother would play D&D, and so I would read the manuals and I was really fascinated by all the creatures. So, it just stuck with me, I never lost it and as I got older, I just continued my interest. I always loved the lighter side, but I also got interested in the darker side, like vampires and pretty much everything in fantasy I have an appreciation for. I think a lot of it just has to do with having that strong imagination and just being shy, so turning to that for some sort of comfort.

T5: So which is your favorite? Creature, setting or whatever.

I have a lot. I definitely really love the legends of King Arthur and the Round Table, and I love kind of that British huge castles and Celtic kind of feel, so that is one of my favorites.

T5: On that topic, did you like The Holy Grail?

Yeah, it’s really funny.

T5: It’s a very light-hearted take though and when I hear your music, it all seems much darker than you do in person. Do you feel that there is a separate part of you that is the creator?

Well, I do kind of have dual personalities going on and it’s a little bit sad. Before my brother died, I was always a dramatic person, who felt things very deeply but I also did have a very light-hearted, very silly side, which I still have, but it became somewhat diminished after that. Before he died, I used to listen to a lot of music that was dark, but I also listened to a lot of music that was more silly and playful, but it changed after that. For some reason my connection to music became a more serious, darker thing. So, I guess that event just changed a lot, but I still have that lighter side to me and I guess that I just project that to people. And also I don’t want to be all dark and brooding and bringing people down. I try not to. *laughs*

T5: So, what are you listening to these days?

Well, I listen to a whole bunch of different stuff and I listen to a lot of the stuff I’ve always loved like classic rock. Some of my favorites are the cure and Tori Amos, but some of the stuff that I’ve been listening to more recently . Over the past few years, I’ve started really liking this band called the Birthday Massacre. They’re kind of like a dark fairy tale kind of band. They’re a lot heavier than my music, but they still have some quite pretty, beautiful parts and the words are really kind of like a dark fairy tale. I love that and I really like a singer that a lot of people hate, Lana Del Ray.

T5: I think people love to hate her. I think the reason a lot of people hate her,is that they feel she is manufactured. I think people don’t complain as much about the music as about the fear that they’re being taken in.

I think if you listen to her body of music, it becomes really obvious that it couldn’t be manufactured. But you really have to listen to a lot of it. I think that if you just listen to one song here or there, some of the songs are not as good as others. I think that it’s just something you need to invest a little more time in to get what she’s trying to say Once you listen to a lot of her songs, you hear these similar things happening over and over that you can tell could only come from her, they couldn’t come from some guy in a suit somewhere in a record label. I think she really is an artist, but people don’t want to believe that for some reason. I know she can’t sing live very well, but I do think she is a great writer and writes great lyrics and melodies, Some people are just really great at one or two facets, and just don’t have the whole thing and I think that’s okay.

T5: I enjoy her music very much, but I can understand why people feel that she is manufactured because she is one image, and a very stereotypical image, one which has been done before and which has been known to sell. Do you feel that there is any image you embody? Because your music always seems to be very personal, but when you create is there someone you visualize saying these things.

I do just try to be very real and authentic and just say whatever is trying to come out. I think some people would say that is a strength and other people would say that it’s a weakness, because I really don’t have that instinct to brand myself and think “Oh, I’m going to dress like this and be this” because I really like a whole bunch of different fashions and imagery and different types of music and I’ve had problems with people on the business side of music because they do want you to kind of narrow yourself to one thing and that really leaves a bad taste in my mouth because that’s not me. So, I don’t really, I just kind of let it come out whoever it comes out, or I try to.

T5: So, as an extension of all of this, what are the next steps for you as an artist. We all love seeing you in these small halls, but everyone expects more from you because you have the talent to be on the same stage as say Tori Amos or Fiona Apple. Especially considering how weak Fiona Apple’s last album felt. So, this is still a small area, and we would like to see more and more people grow, so what are your plans over the next five or ten years.

So, I’m really hoping that the band’s going to get stronger and I’m hoping that we’re going to stay together for a long time and start creating new music together. We’re starting with that a little bit, but I’m hoping we’re going to start doing that a lot. I’m really hoping to put out a new album this year. My plan is that we’re going to do a Kickstarter because I wouldn’t be able to finance it on my own and also I never really actively pursued record deals, I kind of fell into then, but at this point, I think that I’d like to keep a record company out of it because I don’t really feel they help all that much. Especially my experience, because both my record deals ended because the companies went out of business and they didn’t treat me that decently.

So, to do the Kickstarter and could do well independently, I think that could be really awesome. That would be my first album since my first album that would be completely without any interference from record label people. So, it would be interesting to see what would happen with that.

T5: Do you have a name for that album?

I don’t have a name yet, but I do want to get it done before the year is over. We’ll see what the name ends up being.

T5: Can’t blame a guy for trying

And I’d love playing bigger venues like Great American and developing a bigger audience. My problem has always been that I’m kind of shy and I’m not a very aggressive person when it comes to the business side of things. I like to think I’m a friendly, nice person and I like to connect with the fans but I’m not really someone who aggressively pursues things maybe the way I should, but it doesn’t quite come natural to me and I think it’s kind of something about me that’s actually a good thing, but it’s kind of also a bad thing at the same time. Maybe with my band I can balance that out somehow.

T5: That’s where Kickstarter works very well for you, right? Because it gives you direct contact with your fans.

Definitely, yeah. So hopefully, maybe by Spring we’d like to start going through Kickstarter.

T5: Musically, are you aiming anywhere new with this album?

The band, all the members are going to bring their own feel to it. That will definitely color some of it. I want to bring some more electronic elements, but I still want it to be rooted in rock and roll and keep the organicness about it, but I would definitely like to add some more electronic influence on some of the tracks. Probably not all of it, but I’m not sure of a specific direction or theme. I think it would be leaning towards the same direction as Wicked Ways but maybe just a little bit more dynamic with some really big rocking parts and some really quiet pretty parts and maybe some more electronic mixed into it.

T5: Do you have any covers planned? You’ve had some really fun covers in the past, like It’s A Sin and interestingly Mama I’m Coming Home. How does it feel performing a cover as compared to your own song?

I love doing covers, I always have really loved doing covers. I think I’m a lot more relaxed with covers because I guess I have some deep-rooted insecurities, so with a cover I have all the faith that it’s a great song because someone else wrote it. So that frees me up a little maybe in the performance when it’s someone else’s song and I’m 100% sure it’s awesome.

T5: Over the past couple of days I’ve been addicted to a Freelance Whales cover of the Devo song Girl U Love. So, when Devo does it, it’s got a very inhuman feel, sort of as if it were robots laughing at human emotions and when The Freelance Whales do it, it’s very soppy and emotional. Do you feel when you take a song and cover it, do you feel that you add a lot of your own flavor to it?

A lot of times, yeah. I try to do that with most of my covers. Some of them are not that different from the original, but some of them, yeah. It’s A Sin, which is on Wicked Ways is an 80s dance song and its very uptempo and my version is very slow and dark. So, yeah I do like to do that, especially if I’m actually going to record it. I like to make it as different as possible and maybe bring out different qualities which are there, but not as obvious to the listener.

T5: Is there anything you would like to tell your audience here?

Well, my audience has kept me going. I’ve had a rough road and there have been times when I was really discouraged and felt really beaten up and didn’t think I could keep doing music, at least not as a full-time profession, because it is so hard. Even though I don’t have the biggest audience, they are very loyal and have given me constant positive feedback and kind, kind comments and really personal things that are amazing, things that I still can’t believe, “This song changed my life” or “This song helped me through my mother’s death”. Things like that. Those kinds of comments keep me going.

T5: Do you have a story like that that you would like to share?

Well, just the other day someone told me that the song Mermaids, their mom passed away and they said that song helped me get through her death and every time I hear it I think of her flying with the fairies and dancing with the mermaids. So, that really touched me, especially since that album is about my own brother’s death.

T5: I’m sure that felt very satisfying. That’s awesome.

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Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP

24 Feb

Only once in a while do we come across greatness, whether it is in the form of movies, art, literature or music. Greatness which doesn’t present itself to us in the form of a fluke, but sheer talent. Greatness which can be spoken about, even a hundred years after the particular event/form of art has been created. I’m going to talk about one such masterpiece that I was lucky enough to observe at its inception.

This particular art is none other than Eminem’s 2nd major label album- The Marshall Mathers LP. The album is one of the most aggressive and important music albums to release during a time when the frustrated, directionless and angry youth was trying desperately to find someone they could relate themselves to. A time when hypocrites and fakes were rampant in the music industry. This time was during the late 90’s & the year 2000.

Just when people got used to calling Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys as the greatest artists of all time, Marshall Mathers aka Eminem aka Slim Shady stepped onto the scene.

Eminem changed the face of hip-hop & rap, particularly with his album, The Marshall Mathers LP, which came out on May 23, 2000. This album, apart from being extremely controversial, it eventually sold 10,598,000 copies, becoming one of the most commercially successful rap albums of all time. It has been ranked as one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time by Rolling Stone, Time, and XXL. It is also one of the only albums to be acclaimed by critics, as well as the mainstream-pop loving- audience. It influenced us all.

Every song on the album was a classic; even the skits were worth listening to. The album starts off with the satirical “Public Service Announcement 2000” where Eminem reminds us in under a minute that he doesn’t mind being sued over what he raps about. It smoothly merges into one of the most shocking diss songs – “Kill You”. Eminem aggressively takes shots at his ex-wife, Kim, the mainstream radio shows and yes, his own mother.

The next song on the album is the famous “Stan”, where Em talks about obsession from a deranged fan’s point of view. It is a brilliant song- right from Eminem’s solid storyline verses, to Dido’s haunting hook. After this song, we have a skit called “Paul”, where Eminem’s attorney, Paul Rosenberg seems dejected after listening to this album.

The next song is “Who Knew”. This is an extremely raw song, which reminds me of the songs on the Slim Shady LP, Eminem’s first mainstream album. Eminem is at his most honest and straightforward self in this song, where he questions parent’s upbringing of their children. For instance, pay close attention to the lines- “Told them that my tape taught them, to swear/ What about the makeup you allow your 12 year old daughter to wear?”

The end of this song marks the beginning of a skit called “Steve Berman”, where Steve gives Eminem a piece of his mind because he hates the album’s themes and he compares his album to Dr. Dre’s Chronic 2001 explaining why the latter was so successful. Next on the list is “The Way I Am” where Eminem reminds the world why he doesn’t give a f*** and warns us to leave him alone in peace. This is followed by “The Real Slim Shady” where Em tells us how despite millions of people imitating him, there will be only one Eminem.

The next song is “Remember Me” featuring RBX and Sticky Fingaz. All 3 rappers produce solid verses which soothe as much as they sting. This song has one of the best Dr. Dre beats in it. After this, “I’m Back” commences, which is one of the most aggressive songs Eminem has done, even without his trademark screaming. He reminds us that he is back with a vengeance and is here to stay. This sparks the next song which is “Marshall Mathers” where Em tells us that he’s just a normal human being like the rest of us, and how his fame & fortune paved way for even the most hostile people to embrace him.

Now, the next song is a skit called “Ken Kaniff”. I’d rather not give a description of what exactly happens in the skit, but it’s basically where Em makes fun of Shaggy 2 Dope & Violent Jay, two other artists who Em had a beef going on with for many years even after the album was out. The next song is “Drug Ballad”, where Em talks about the ill effects of drugs, in his own twisted, satirical way.

This is followed by “Amityville” which features ex-D-12 member, Bizarre. Eminem raps about how he’ll kill you if he’s pushed too far, especially in Detroit. Bizarre gives us one of the craziest verses in rap history. You better hear it to believe it. The next song is “Bitch Please” which has a star studded guest feature- Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, and Xzibit. All the artists show off their rapping skills, where as usual, Eminem outshines the rest.

The next song is the brutal “Kim” where Eminem kills his wife after catching her cheating with him. After this, Eminem gives us another hard hitting, vulgar song “Under The Influence” which features his group D-12, of which he’s a part.

The final song is “Criminal”, which, personally is one of my all time favourite Eminem songs. He is crazy, funny, brutal and serious at the same time. The song also includes a funny skit where he and Dr. Dre pull off a bank heist without getting caught.

So there you have it. I actually reviewed the entire album tracklist in the correct order without even looking at the album back-cover. Yes, such fans do exist, and there is a REASON why such fans exist. I hope whoever reads this gives this album a listen. Especially those who think rap & hip-hop is comprised of only people like Nicki Minaj, Soulja Boy etc.

– Faisal

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The Long Blondes: Someone To Drive You Home

26 Dec

Someone To Drive You Home, the debut album by the Long Blondes is a deep cut into a certain type of mind and age and proves fascinatingly unique for being so. It may be first world problems, but so was writing the words for a sermon that no one will hear. It is about being smart enough to understand your problems, but too smart to do anything about them. It is an album about knowing that the better world that you have been promised is a lie, but wanting it more than anything anyway. It is an album that is about being a person. It is glorious.

Or it would be glorious, were it only better music. For all that the Long Blondes are fresh and interesting, their music is merely passable, not great. While the backing is solid, and the singer’s voice is quite good, the music lacks the spark of inspiration. The music serves, Giddy Stratospheres is quite good, the guitar framing of You Could Have Both helps the song no end and there are plenty of strong moments through the album. Taken as a whole however, the album is at best merely good if considered musically.

All told, this is quite a good album, and one that given the right listener will strike all the right chords. The music is an integral part of the album, and is far from shabby, but at the end of the day, this feels like an album more intended for quoting than listening to.

-Nikhil

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Top Five Jazz Records For Beginners

25 Nov

So, let’s imagine you have a friend who loves jazz, and just to make this vision a little more believable, let us make said friend 6’2″ and a little bit on the thin side. Now, you want to impress this fascinating young man with your knowledge of his loved genre of music, but you do not know where to start. I mean, you know what an untamed jungle jazz is when compared to your safe pop and rock, and yet, you know that you want to explore a little. You dream of running your fingers up and down a long, brass saxophone, or possibly putting your lips to a trumpet and giving it a blow and suddenly your guitar feels awfully small compared to the double bass next to it. Well, then my friend, you need help. Instead, because the world is not fair, what you will get is the Top Five Music Top Five Jazz Records For Beginners.

These five records are all not only jazz classics, but are also extremely accessible. These ones have been picked so that no matter what your background is, you can pick them up and most likely enjoy them. Jazz is an extremely rewarding genre of music if often a little challenging and getting a good start is essentially to enjoying it.

Ella and Louis – Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong is undoubtedly the biggest star jazz has ever produced. He alone is the most responsible for bringing jazz to the public ear and pretty much every jazz musician after him has been directly influenced by his music. He is to jazz what The Beatles is to rock. Not content with mastery of the trumpet, he went on to invent the art of scat from which we have his best known hit, What A Wonderful World.

Ella Fitzgerald is the greatest singer there has ever been. You may prop up people like Aretha Franklin and Billy Holiday, or even modern day singers like Janelle Monae, and undoubtedly all their voices are certainly outstanding, but there has never been anyone to touch Ella Fitzgerald.

Together, the two of them make an excellent team in this album. There are touches of Satchmo’s trumpet, but the centerpiece is the two of them singing jazz standards. All in all, this is deservedly a jazz classic.

Try Moonlight in Vermont and They Can’t Take That Away From Me to get a feel of this album. Of the two, I prefer Moonlight in Vermont, even without the lyrics being entirely in haiku.

Takin’ Off – Herbie Hancock

Herbie Hancock is one of the more interesting people in jazz. Despite groundings in hard bop and a long stint under Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock has been about as much funk as jazz and a little bit of everything else on the side. He’s ranged all the way from the proto-industrial rockit to the Grammy award winning jazz take on Joni Mitchell River: The Joni Letters. Takin’ Off is his debut as a bandleader and contains what is possibly his signature tune, Watermelon Man. Try Three Bags Full and see if you like it.

Getz/Gilberto – Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto

This is one of only two jazz albums ever to win the Grammy for best album, one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time and nothing at all like any of the other albums on this list. This album brought together guitarist/singer João Gilberto and composer/pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim with American Saxophonist Stan Getz to result in the finest moment Bossa Nova, the Brazilian mixture of jazz and samba, has ever seen. This is the rare album that is not only critically acclaimed but is popular enough to spark its own craze. Doralice alone is of the class of music that will never leave your head, but The Girl From Ipanema is just perfect.

Time Out – Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck took a trip through Eurasia, and decided to make this album as an experiment in the musical style he saw there. His publisher gave it the green light on the condition that he would first record a more conventional album, Gone With The Wind. While the latter is now considered one of his lesser efforts, Time Out is one of the definitive Cool Jazz albums. Blue Rondo a La Turk‘s shifting time signatures are amusing enough to carry an entire album, but the top forty hit Take Five is very hard to beat.

Kind of Blue – Miles Davis

Miles Davis is one of the giants of music, one of those people who stand so tall over an art form that no one who follows can help but be influenced in some way by his work. For Kind of Blue, he had with him his ensemble sextet of Bill Evans on piano, Jimmy Cobb on drums, Paul Chambers on bass and both Cannonball Adderley and the incomparable John Coltrane on saxophone. This is the kind of album you define music by.

-Nikhil

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Marina and the Diamonds: Electra Heart

4 Nov

Marina dropped her second album and debuted all the way at number one on the UK chart with it. However far she may be from the sophomore slump commercially though, Electra Heart fails to live up to standard of intelligence The Family Jewels set down. To mitigate that though, this is undoubtedly better pop than her previous album. It is not surprising that her mental swings would take her to a place like this, but it does make it hard to form a set opinion.

My first thought is that she sounds a lot happier on this album. There are still glimpses of her suicidal tendencies, but nowhere near the bleak acceptance of depression that was The Family Jewels. Good for her. I will admit to not caring how Thom Yorke feels when he gets up in the morning and that much of my appreciation for The Holy Bible and Everything Must Go is due to Richey’s killing himself, but the Family Jewels painted such an intensely personal picture of Marina that her beginning to feel better about herself is something that even I can be happy about. Once again, good for her.

This leads us though to the major problem of this album, that it barely manages to hit the same personal notes that made The Family Jewels as interesting as it still is. Teen Idle is the only piece in this that actually holds her voice. While many of her other songs, like Power and Control and Primadonna speak about her, they are so caught up in a single, slightly shallow statement that they seem as though they could have been sung by any mildly intelligent female pop singer. The fact that there are so few mildly intelligent female pop singers does not excuse her aiming lower than she is capable of. Where her first album had moments of Elvis Costello lyricism, this plays far too close to pseudo-intellectualism.

This is an album that embraces pop much more wholeheartedly than its predecessor. You can feel the touch of its all-star production team all over the album. It is still a Marina album, and her voice is always at the center, but it is certainly helped by the beats behind it. It sounds better than its predecessor for it as well. When fully three quarters of the songs on the album have catchier choruses than anything else out there, something is going very right. The more popstar songs, like Bubblegum Bitch, Sex Yeah, Homewrecker, How To Be A Heartbreaker and Radioactive all work out to great pop and even the darker songs, like Power and Control or Teen Idle all sound great.

Where The Family Jewels felt fresh, Electra Heart takes maybe half a step backward intellectually but pushes a little better pop in return. While this may not be The Family Jewels, this is still Marina, and worth picking up for all its flaws.

Nikhil

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