skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Color me impressed. The weather division has finally caught up to the kind of yellow journalism that the rest of the news media operates by and managed to turn every climate variation into an invitation for social panic. What started with the schoolyard simplicity of Snowmageddon has evolved into the exquisitely named and more apocalyptic sounding villain known as the Polar Vortex. What will become of us once we enter this vortex? Will we ever shake its icy grip? For this week's bit of weather porn, I can't help but think of Stereolab and how they could/should easily have titled a song along similar lines. But for real, it's damn cold, so everyone huddle up next to this cozy little number.
Some days are made for staying home and digging back into an artist's deep catalog. And many thanks to holiday staycations for supplying such days. Not to reduce a life's work into a few hours of concentrated listening, but there's great pleasure in letting a full personality unfold as the hours pass. Hard bop heavyweight Horace Silver had no shortage of memorable tunes, but this one caught my ear and help tight with the grip of a crying newborn.
Happy New Year! Really, it is a very happy one. It's amazing how eventful a span of twelve months can be. If you had told me a year ago that there'd be fundamental change in nearly all aspects of my life by now, I would be hard-pressed to envision that new world. And yet, here it is. And I'm as optimistic about living it in it as I could hope to be. So here's a toast of gratitude to the universe for that. And here are a couple tunes to kick off a year of forward momentum. Or at least one that does that and then another one that pulls over after a long day of driving through an Arizona highway and decides to throw a couple back at a dusty roadside bar and watch the beautiful evening light dissolve.
I'm never sure if Christmas is the year's most unplugged day or a time to get lazily lost in digital places when "the most wonderful time of the year" becomes simply too much to bear (probably by early afternoon or so). In either case, if the 'blague is on your Christmas agenda, consider this tune your humble present. And let its groovy sunset vibes (or is that a marimba?) carry you gently to the threshold of 2014. This could be end-titles music to almost any cut of your cinematic year.
There's something gentlemanly about giving a longtime backup singer her moment in the sun. Say what you will about the power dynamics of patriarchal largess, but David Bowie did sidewoman Robin Clark a pretty nice solid when he put some celebrity muscle behind her effort as a frontwoman. As you might expect, the results are mixed, but then again her moment happened to fall in the mid-'80s. And it doesn't get much more 1985 than this. Not very healthy, but full of addictive additives.
I like to think of myself as a pretty eclectic listener. And yet I could never squeeze much enjoyment out of Abba. If there's a variety of cheese I can't gobble up, it's them. So imagine my happy surprise when I recently stumbled on singer Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad's post-Abba solo album, produced by Phil Collins, and bearing nearly all of his early-'80s hallmarks that I enjoy entirely without reservation. The album is a mixed bag of pop approaches, most of which are weirdly flawed. But as batches of half-successes go, it's a pretty addictive listen. Especially this tasty niblet of regatta de blanc, with groovy guitar/organ call and response and Collins's very airdrum-worthy turn at the kit. God bless that man's left foot.
Sometimes it takes a dive into the rabbithole of the blogosphere to remind yourself how vast the musical universe is and how many shining treasures are buried in relative obscurity. Happening upon this band of funky jazzers trying their hand at the pop styles of their day has given me a most unexpected shot of happiness. So much that I can't help but share a pair of tunes from their All In Fun record of 1979, though you really don't need to be told the year to know when these snappy tunes were hatched.
Comes a time when you need to sweep the chimes across your earspace, sit back luxuriously in a bed of strings, let the bongos percolate, and let Mr. Upchurch's guitar be a feather all over your body, as your mind ascends into dream dimensions. Now, if only I could get my 3-week old into that groove, all would be perfect.
Hey Can fans — ever wonder what Damo Suzuki would've sounded like fronting an '80s pop band? It kinda happened. Here's proof.
That stare, once reserved for zoning out before TV screens, now annexes a feeling somewhere at the intersection of waiting and not waiting. When will the baby cries come? How hard will it press on my nerves? Should I move or not move a muscle? That effort of fortification, knowing that you have to pass through storms to get back to the blinding sun. That feeling, transmuted into a lovely pop song.
Being in the baby bubble means blurring the line between sleep and wakefulness, deliberate movements and falling back on muscle memory. Makes me appreciate the soft, surprisingly near-hallucinatory brushstrokes of Satie. Here's a classic one, nicely rendered by old progster Steve Hackett, and his brother John, fully in charge on flute.
Spent a good bit of last week on long daily journeys between home and the birth hospital. It made for an disorienting juxtaposition of environments, with the subway portions acting as a nice interstitial, offering generous portions of solitary book and headphone pleasures. Music-wise, I ended up curling into a couple unexpected synthy earworms, courtesy of a duo who have made their way into this space before. While having nothing to do with babies, births, or journeys full of anticipation, I suppose this will soon take its place in the audio portion of early baby memories, which is a bit of randomness I can't complain about.
I'm a week into fatherhood, and I only feel slightly less disembodied than I did the moment it became real (last Monday, for those keeping score at home). It's a dizzying transition, and I'm amazed at how naturally this whole new set of reflexes kicks in. Sometimes, it's so easy to just be guided by what we're evolved to do. Like dig for baby theme songs based simply on the kid's name! In my case, there's a rich heritage of tracks, some of which I've already covered, not knowing there'd be new meaning attached someday. Here's one that feels like it hits all the right notes. And it doesn't hurt that it feels like a kind of lullaby. I'm not sure why so many Emily songs are about sad, lonely, or lost girls, but those melancholy notes seem a lot more effervescent when accompanied by the sea breezes that Cale has going here.
Anxiously waiting for the baby's arrival leads to fidgety Spotify trolling, which leads to a Byrds rabbithole, which leads to some surprising enjoyment of their transition to country styles, which leads to more surprising enjoyment of this groovy, serpentine deep cut, which leads to cherry-on-top surprise at their ability to navigate a 5/4 meter. Now back to that anxious waiting...
Another one from college/post-college days. I haven't kept up with the continuing adventures of Tara Jane O'Neil, but I'm right pleased to have fresh ears for her haunted, strummed ditties of yore. I keep putting this album on and commence to tasks that don't compel me to restlessly change up the music. Which means I'm enjoying it in an attention span-preserving way. Which is therapeutic.
Alright, Polvo! I'm been in total rock-out for days listening to their second reunion album. I'm equal parts glad that they've still got it and that they're getting their snaky, mathy ya-yas out with the hooks proudly out front. This one may meander a bit, but the energy doesn't let up, and neither does my steady, dumb head bobbin'.
I wonder if there's some astronomical, Halley's Comet-esque formula that decides when I get into a Kate Bush obsession. When it comes around, there's really no substitute. Oftentimes the deep album cuts are the most pleasing. Like this little interlude on Never For Ever that seems to reference English composer Frederick Delius (whom I know almost nothing about) and floats past a couple eerie moments at 0:50 and 1:50 to maintain an uncharacteristically placid atmosphere. Good on her for knowing that wild Kate bits are all the more powerful when she holds them in reserve.
How cool was Tony Williams? When he was 17, he was a prodigy behind the drums, propelling Miles Davis's legendary mid-'60s quintet, which was probably the best aggregation of talent Davis ever had. He was also a budding jazz composer in his own right, creating sophisticated pieces like this one here. (And he had the tastefulness to not even pick up his sticks for it!) His Life Time album is just as essential as any other '60s Blue Note classic. Which makes it unfortunate that Williams spent his adult career being a whole lot less cool with a bunch of dubious Fusion albums, and staining the luster of that record by using it as the band name for those dubious albums. Like the proverbial high school football star, Williams never bested his teenage self. So it goes. At least we can enjoy the high water mark now.
While we're dealing in French decadence, here's one from another end of the spectrum. I recently gave the cult sci-fi classic Fantastic Planet a whirl on the DVD player. Having long regarded it as one of those movies meant to be watched under the influence of whatever psych drugs you fancy, I realized it's pretty damn freaky/psychedelic/disturbing all on its own. Maybe my mind is just apt to get deep inside a story of cosmic genocide in a crazy weird organic alien landscape, but I found it affecting in more ways than I probably should. And in no small part due to the very baked and desolately minimal soundtrack.
Well, sorry but it's true. If you're beautiful, stylish, and charismatic, you can have a crap voice and still be a pop star. What's more, you might even convince good songwriters to create vehicles upon which to build your mystique. And years later, many might look back fondly at the era you accidentally helped define. C'est la vie.
Ladies and gentleman...welcome to High Rollers skating rink, where it's always Saturday night and always a cosmic roller disco adventure! I'll be your host for the evening, or at least until I pass out from taking hits from my nitrous tank. Meanwhile, lace up those skates, get out on the floors, and lose yourself in our magic lights. Also, don't forget to visit the snack bar. And now, take it away, Mr. Leon Lowman...
Though their heyday predates my birth by a couple decades, I feel a weird kinship with the charmingly rosy-lensed dudes who tried to intermingle jazz and classical threads in the late '50s. Imagine the vibe at those sessions led by the likes of George Russell and Gunther Schuller in their tweedy best. I picture big smiles and arms wildly gesticulating as the whole big gang tries to will a colorful utopia into being. It petered like all those movements end up doing, but not without leaving behind some choice cuts like this one.
Is this a monstrosity? Cheer-Accident's longstanding commitment to signature mathy/proggy styles crashes headlong into a tender-hearted love of '70s AOR piano progressions. It's a strange, twitchy beast that results, and you wonder if this new species should have an island all its own to play out its possible destiny. Maybe one day...
Just as actually getting a Halloween costume together got away from me, so did posting a song specific to the holiday. I'll try to catch up. While a Nick Cave-type creeper might've been more obvious, I find the pretty/slinky/spooky vibe of this one more in line with that queasy feeling as evening light gives away to more sinister possibilities in the night. Courtesy of Wayne Horvitz and his erstwhile gang of sonic sorcerers.
I guess it was musical destiny for '60s free jazz heavyweights to get lost in the '70s, figuring out how to be funky and create a future that might be more plausible than the crushed hopes of the previous decade. And how many of those albums were only released in Japan? Which must have made for a different perspective on the state of jazz to come over there. So it was with Marion Brown. Here are a couple rare treats — one a pleasant Latin-tinged workout, the other a double saxophone duet that I find rather lyrical and with a well-considered sense for when things should get all skronky-like.
.jpg)
