Earlier this year, Lady Sovereign found herself on the threshold of extensive stateside notoriety. Her Def Jam signing gave her the opportunity to coast atop tossed-off Timbaland beats and pander to the Courvoisier-and-rims crowd. With Jay-Z’s glowing endorsement, the subsequent wave of hype would all but guarantee commercial success. Instead of taking the easy way out, however, she delivered a record as diverse and idiosyncratic as it is convincingly brash.
You have to hand it to The Who for staying true to form, twenty-four years after their last release. Endless Wire finds the oldest punks in rock right were they should be, cranking out songs that do no less than pleasantly surprise—for the most part. Okay okay, I’ll cut’em some slack: they’re OLD.
And who’s to blame some old guys for making music? Especially if they’re a seminal singer and songwriting duo that has broken more ground than the Public Works Administration. Sure, Endless Wire conspicuously lacks memorable, anthemic numbers, but that’s not so bad. That’s already been done. Where the composer Townsend does recover some of that fleeting panache is on the pared down songs, the ones without looming, trademarked drum and bass: “God Speaks of Marty Robbins” is a pure and pretty acoustic guitar song, with songwriter singing; “Man In a Purple Dress” is equally pretty, if not for it’s acerbic subject matter, and Roger Daltrey on vocals.
For all you …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead-heads who considered 2005’s World’s Apart a gigantic harsh to your mellow, well I’ve got some news for you….their new one, So Divided, is a tiny bit better. So shake off those bad pop vibes and get ready to rock out, kind of but not really, with the new and confused Trail of Dead!
To put things in drastically simple terms: …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead slapped the sleepy masses with 2002’s Source Tags and Codes. The album put them on the radar, and in doing so, animated their most tucked away dreams. They wanted Top 20 airplay, and why not…if people were sheep then well why couldn’t the sheep at least get good music pumped into their fields? A couple years and tours passed and the band released World’s Apart, which was their application for the mainstream. The mainstream phoned back and left a message: “Um, this message is for that band with that really long name….we’d really love to have you but there’s like a couple hundred, er, thousand….a couple hundred-thousand rock bands, you know, that are like younger and um more impressionable and stuff. Happy trails.” Shaken up about the whole thing, in 2006 AYWKUBTTOD chopped off some words from their title, leaving TOD and doing for band name’s what Metallica did for hair-styles, ready to show the world that they haven’t disappeared….they’ve just changed form. Their release, So Divided, isn’t their Golden Ticket, and they don’t expect it to be anymore.
Greetings friends, associates, and well-wishers from around the globe! It is I, Terrance, American Buddhist, back with another musical review for your mind’s pleasure.
As I have told you many times, life is suffering, and thus I do not need to take refuge in the soothing tasts and smells of THC-packed, purple haired nodules of fine cannabis buds– except of course those given to me as a gift, or grown for me in the fields near my retreat in the foothills.
The other day a Zen koan I am quite fond of quite literally “came to life,” which was both enlightening and disconcerting.
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Beck can be a difficult guy to figure out.
Up until 2005, much of his career was spent making drastically divergent albums. That year’s release, Guero, caught many off guard by uncharacteristically hearkening back to some of his earlier work. The Information continues in a similar vein, cramming a fruitful career of exploration into rapidly shifting yet easily digestible chunks.
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The concept of ambiguity in music is a strange thing. When used properly it is capable of providing an intended audience with a sense of profundity simply by offering concise, generalized sentiments. There even seems to be some sort of magic to this concept. It’s as if for a moment your logical mind just decides to turn itself off as an awful breakup cliché almost makes you feel like balling your eyes out. However, banking on this ambiguity as lyrical genius idea doesn’t always leave you on the steadiest ground. Most songs that traffic in ambiguity end up feeling just that, ambiguous.
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I just love the name of this album: And the Glass Handed Kites. I don’t see its resemblance in the music, but it’s vague and darkly suggestive enough to win me over. Most of the albums actual songs achieve a stickily pleasant dark quality. Some just seem to need a kick in the ass.
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