August 4th, 2008
After listening to the godawful hyphy-tinged, “Dreadlocks” that leaked earlier this year, my expectations were severely lowered for Murs for President, the ex-Def Jukie’s major-label debut. But after hearing official first single, “Can It Be,” consider those odds reversed. I’ve been a Murs fan for a long time and this is an instant contender for one of his finest songs, with the hometown native delivering a scathing three minute indictment of everything from the stalled economy, fickle indie-rap fans, to the fact that he lost $50 k on the Paid Dues Tour. Then again, I suppose that’s what you get for booking Sage Francis.
Download: (Via Nah Right)
MP3: Murs-”Can It Be”
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July 30th, 2008
The first fifteen seconds of “Council Estate,” the lead single off of Knowle West Boy neatly recapitulate the past decade of Tricky’s maddening, mystifying career. For those few seconds, the eccentric strings and clattering home-baked percussion out of which Tricky constructed his most enduring work fumble out of the speakers, but before tension takes hold, a phalanx of guitardrumbass arrives and tramples any trace of oddity. The lockstep two-note turnaround, Tricky’s strict adherence to the flat meter, the sheer naked exposure of his feral-tom growl leaves nothing to the imagination, and not much else at all besides. The song is not bad; it’s just unsurprising, which from someone as obdurate, cranky and strange as Tricky is an exquisite form of disappointment.
Tricky got tenure as the reluctant Chair of Trip Hop with an impossibly strong string of albums running from his debut Maxinquaye through Angels With Dirty Faces, whose unremitting grit-beneath-the-fingernails gloom was like digging a coffin out of a sandpit with bare hands, scratchy grains skittering across varnished wood. After dramatizing his departure from major labels in confrontational, Princely fashion on “Divine Comedy,” Tricky was diagnosed with candida – a kind of yeast allergy with serious effects on mood.
Adjusting his diet accordingly, the exorcised Tricky started trying to make records that appealed to people, in the process alienating almost all of the people that cared about his music in the first place. When Blowback came out, marking his return and newfound amiability in a fit of ill-advised media accessibility, Tricky went on the mercifully short-lived Doritos Sessions to be interviewed by a SoCal wannabe toothpaste model. The interview was fantastic entertainment, a muddling of accents and universes seldom surpassed; the album, with guest slots by various Red Hot Chili Peppers, Cyndi Lauper, Ed Kowalczyk and, ahem, Alanis Morissette, paled in comparison.
Tricky Spotted in North Kilt Town
So, without turning a yeast allergy into Samson’s hair, there are some bona fide circumstantial reasons for Tricky’s tendency to color within the lines. Tricky will never find an alter-ego as supple, as sphinx-like as Martina Topley-Bird: fey where he was witchy, melodic where he was gruff, coy where he was, sort of, coy. His Bristol peers went and turned trip hop into the name to drop while Tricky maintained he didn’t know what they were talking about. No one should hold a bid for the music-purchasing viewership of the Doritos Sessions against the guy. But three albums into Tricky’s pop period, it’s sometimes hard to remember why the rest of us once cared, and still do, about his particular species of whimsical, bespoke paranoia, which suggests not so much that they are out to get you as that you are.
Knowle West Boy’s popism is not without its perks: the cover of a certain Miss Kylie Minogue’s “Slow” is sleazily arch, Tricky slurring his come-ons like a well-hung drunkard. “Veronika” nails a Rihanna-esque curve of melody to a gated, fractured rhythm with all the tenderness of blades in a meat-processing plant; it sounds like the soundtrack to a GTA snuff film easter egg. But picking those cherries requires wading through a daunting quantity of bombast that never quite comes down on the side of tongue-in-cheek nor genuine threat. When Tricky traced the span of his glowering whisper to a ragged roar on Blowback’s “Bury The Evidence,” it was as though he’d decided, for once, to screw together all the disparate elements he used to scatter around songs into a cohesive whole, one turn at a time. By comparison, “C’mon Baby” is weak sauce, a knock-kneed knockoff stuck in third gear.
The lurking question in all late-period Tricky albums is whether he’s lost – or abandoned – the sonic curiosity that made for legitimate comparisons to Tom Waits, another gravelly-voiced auteur. And Knowle West Boy – whose cover obscures the glowering headshot which adorned Angels with mask that is part carnival, part blank white mime – does little to compete with the genderbending meta-games of his peak. Contrived rather than composed, a clutch of songs held together by little more than the idea that they refer to Tricky’s childhood in a Bristol slum, the gestures are depressingly empty – the pathos of the “Council Estate” refrain “Remember, boy, you’re a superstar” seemingly unintended – Knowle West Boy slides worryingly close to rote, something Tricky seemed incapable of only a couple of albums ago.
So forgive me if I invest rather a lot in “Coalition,” the unassuming best track nestled obscurely at the heart of the album. The lyrics are flat-out silly – “Would you go on and on like… Duracell? / Durex? NoFX? Yeah, sex on sale” – but Tricky’s lyrics are simply a means to an end. The seamless grunt at the song’s base has the same DNA as the undistinguished rawk on the rest of the album, but this time Tricky layers on a swell of increasingly panicked strings, blending and swooping like a school of cornered fish that finally turn carnivorous. Tricky stumbles and fidgets with his words, never quite fitting the cast of the simpleminded groove. In the end the song sort of peters out, Tricky unable to finish his lines, as though he’d reached the edge of a cliff. What happens next depends on where his curiosity takes him.
Written By Andrew Iliff
Download:
MP3: Tricky-”Council Estate”
MP3: Tricky-”Coalition”
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July 24th, 2008
Things I am a sucker for.
1. Stoner prog-rock.
2. Cool animated music videos.
3. The Besnard Lakes.
Henceforth, I really like the video for “Devastation” from their sorely-slept on, 2007 LP, The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse. Plus, it features an actual animated dark horse, one ostensibly named Buttercup who likes funions.
Spotted via Surfing on Steam
Download:
MP3: The Besnard Lakes-”Devastation”
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July 16th, 2008
I probably shouldn’t find this funny and yet somehow I can’t stop laughing.
via Nialler 9.
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July 9th, 2008
New track from the Abstract, swiped via Clap Cowards. Supposedly, this is an early leak from Tip’s Universal/Motown release, The Renaissance. As it stands, the project’s website has a “coming soon” banner, so who knows if it’ll actually see the light of day. Mark Ronson did the beat and I have to say that between this and the Nas/Busta cut, “Fried Chicken,” he’s emerging as of the best producers in hip-hop right now. And yes, in case you were wondering, it was extremely difficult to write that last sentence.
Download:
MP3: Q-Tip-”Gettin‘ Up”
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June 26th, 2008
Were I not going to be suffering under the deliriously hot Van Nuys sun playing baseball all Saturday, chances are I’d be at the Where the Action Was Rock Tour hosted by the very fine rock writer, Kim Cooper. Yeah, I get nerdy like that. What’s it to you? The moral of this ramble is simple (for once): free ticket to anyone who can tell me what 33 1/3 book that Kim Cooper wrote? Leave the answer in the comments section. More information about the tour is below.
Where the Action Was is Esotouric’s Hollywood and West Hollywood rock and roll history tour, co-hosted by pop music historians Kim Cooper and Gene Sculatti, and departing from Amoeba Music. Every passenger goes home with an Amoeba swag bag (including stickers, buttons, music, special promo items and more).
In the mid-1960s, the Sunset Strip and Hollywood were ground zero for musical teen youth culture, with scores of great clubs, music shops, recording studios, boutiques, hipster hangouts, radio stations, record stores, and film and TV studios. On the Esotouric bus, you’ll travel back in time to map the musical history of Hollywood and West Hollywood, from Beatlemania and folk rock, glitter rock through punk. Along the way you’ll follow the career highs and lows of a selection of fascinating LA artists: Bobby Fuller (was it murder or suicide?), Phil Spector, Arthur Lee & Love and the Byrds.
From the teen riots over the closing of Pandora’s Box (inspiration for the Buffalo Springfield hit “For What It’s Worth”) to the late night Canter’s Deli scene, from adolescent groupies holding court at Rodney’s English Disco to the wild dances invented at Ciro’s, and so much between, Where The Action Was is a high-energy voyage to a time when music was thrilling, immediate and deeply rooted to the city of LA.
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June 23rd, 2008
At the expense of launching into a repetitive and long-winded intro, allow me to get right to it. Here is Day 1 of Summer Jamz 08, a feature which will appear daily over the next two weeks here at the Passion and the very fine sites mentioned below. With that I present to you a more fitting intro from Jonathan Bradley and the first mix from the illustrious Dan Weiss and Alfred Soto.
Summer Jamz ‘08
The irony is, we’re in the thick of winter here in Australia. It’s cold, wet, and, as I type these words, I’m trying to prevent little icicles from forming on the tips of my fingers. Maybe that’s why I’ve always enjoyed the series of annual summer-inspired mixtapes the sadly defunct Stylus Magazine would present at this time of year, starting in 2002 and continuing right until it closed its doors in 2007. These playlists, which would encompass a variety of styles and perspectives on the season never failed to warm my short winter days.
Although Stylus no longer publishes, summer continues to shine, and so this year, as June approached, I called up some of the old Stylus writers and asked them to contribute a mix of songs to soundtrack their summer. Amazingly, they agreed, even the ones who are getting married, hate summer or live in places like Miami and Los Angeles, and, by all rights should be too busy picking up models and partying to be constructing mix tapes.
Starting today, the first day of summer, and continuing each day for the next two weeks or so, Screw Rock ‘n’ Roll, The Passion of the Weiss and What Was It Anyway (along with a few other locations across the Internets) will be posting these Summer-inspired mixes for your listening pleasure. Working or partying, relaxing or vacationing, these are the sounds of our summer. Join us and enjoy.
– Jonathan Bradley
And while you do so, check out Stylus’s archived Summer Jamz:
Stylus Summer Jamz ‘02
Stylus Summer Jamz ‘03
Stylus Summer Jamz ‘04
Stylus Summer Jamz ‘05
Stylus Summer Jamz ‘06
Stylus Summer Jamz ‘07
***
Summer Jamz ‘08 #1: Dan Weiss and Alfred Soto
1. The Reputation - Face It
2. Arthur Russell - That’s Us/Wild Combination
3. Cut Copy - So Haunted
4. Yo La Tengo - Today is the Day
5. The Cure - A Japanese Dream
6. Be Your Own Pet - Super Soaked
7. Lil’ Wayne - I Feel Like Dying
8. Belinda Carlisle - Heaven is a Place on Earth (Heavenly Version)
9. Mike Doughty - Like a Luminous Girl
10. Hercules & Love Affair - Shadows
11. Pet Shop Boys - Minimal
12. Katy Perry - Waking Up in Vegas
13. Wussy - Soak It Up
14. Kathleen Edwards - The Cheapest Key
15. Jens Lekman - A Sweet Summer’s Night on Hammer Hill
16. Bryan Ferry - The In Crowd
17. Weezer - Everybody Get Dangerous
18. Al Green feat. John Legend - Stay With Me (By the Sea)
19. Duran Duran - Meet El Presidente (7″ Remix)
20. The B-52s - Eyes Wide Open
21. We are Scientists - After Hours
22. Liz Phair - Lazy Dreamer
23. Rosanne Cash - Hold On
24. Bob Dylan - Clean-Cut Kid
Mixing this was a necessary challenge. I’m in constant worry that the constant tide of new sounds to parse will eventually swallow my instinct for putting music together or catching the hairpin logic of a loop in potentia. I’m really proud of these results, though. Alfred is a natural collaborator for me because he’s one of the few critics of my time who zeroes in on melody, rhythm, songwriting…the boring essentials that some people will go as far as SunnO)))) records to avoid. I can count on him to present me with a new way to hear E-A-B-C# again (Kathleen Edwards’ brilliant Amy Rigby stunt “The Cheapest Key”) or discern visceral arguments of longevity from inscrutable favorite-band-ism (Pet Shop Boys’ “Minimal,” as exciting as they’ve ever been in 20+ years). I was delighted by his picks, nearly all of them unknown to me. In fact, his choices set the bar so high I went back and redacted a few of mine that I fear relied too much on my weakness: classic alt-rock comforts. Even still, no summer can jam without Weezer, Weezy or Belinda Carlisle. Thanks for luring me out of the cheapest key.
–Dan Weiss
After studying our mix, I noticed that we were most concerned with space — how artists and shrewd remixes suggest vastness. In the context of summer, vastness suggests the abrogation of responsibility: school and relationships, mostly, and the moral sinecures they provide by necessity, against which we strain with some success, and towards which we return as the days start to shorten, and bank balances begin to shrink. These songs are guideposts: towards danger and release.
–Alfred Soto
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June 17th, 2008
Granted, the retina-ravaging neon nightmare of Long Beach-based buzz band Crystal Antlers’ fashion scheme can send you to the hipster handbook faster than you can say LBC, but it’s tough not to love a band whose percussionist’s name is Sexual Chocolate. I’ll let you guess which one he is. (Hint: not hipster Derek Zoolander on your left).
Besides, as Ian Cohen points out in his ‘Fork rave, the Antlers brilliantly “merge psych, garage, lo-fi, prog, and countless other influences [on their debut EP], maintaining consistency despite a complete inability to be pinned to any specific movement or trend (so long as you’re not counting the increasingly frustrating trend of unimaginative bandnames).”
About to embark on their first big X-country trek along with similarly impressive Tweak Bird, if you’re into noisy, psychedelic, Comets on Fire-like rock, this is the show to attend. Just bring sunglasses or something.
Also, while I’m in the habit of name-checking Ian, I may as well give some pub for the next installment of the Comedy Coalition that he’s co-promoting tonight. Line-up includes, Matt Champagne (MC), Adam Hastings, Lauri Roggenkamp, Ali Waller, Jordan Rubin, Clinton Pickens, Jacob Sirof, and Harris Wittels. More info can be found at www.myspace.com/comedycoalitionlosangeles. FREE parking lot in front! $3 beers! $4 well drinks! Karaoke after the show! Good times had by all.
Download:
MP3: Crystal Antlers-”A Thousand Eyes”
MP3: Crystal Antlers-”Owl”
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April 2nd, 2008
I’m aware that it’s reductive to be like, “yo, Slug, why don’t you come out with that Overcast-type shit.” It’s not 1997 anymore and artists need to evolve. I get it. But “Guarantee” is not good. Sure, it’s a noble failure, but c’mon dude, emo rap-rock is not the future, despite what Wentz and Durst might tell you. I’ve scrawled some mean-spirited thoughts at Idolator about the new Atmosphere video. If you need me I’m going to be bumping “1597,” and wallowing in nostalgia.
Idolator-New Atmosphere Video Reveals Slug to Be Long-Lost Member of Soul Asylum
MP3: Atmosphere-”1597″
Posted in Idolator, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
