Compared to the band’s debut two years ago, there’s more focus: Yuki Chikudate dominates the vocals (perfectly winsome at times, perfectly ethereal at others, recalling Cocteau Twins’ Liz Fraser), the shoegazer sound is much stronger and more dominant, the songwriting’s better, and Chikudate’s keyboards are usually warmer and more submerged in the overall texture. There’s still a fair amount of variety, though, and more fast tempos and aggression than the obvious comparisons might suggest – the vocals may often recall dreampop, but the drumming usually doesn’t. If you long for a Slowdive reunion, or ever wanted Liz Fraser to front My Bloody Valentine, you’re so gonna love this album.
“Guitar Trio” (1977) is where Sonic Youth learned how to make guitars sound like lethal weapons. The nearly 22-minute title track offers wave after wave of minimalist ecstasy.
More guitar goodness: a 42-minute-plus, five-movement suite “for 100 electric guitars, electric bass, and drums.” Maybe there aren’t really 100 guitars, but the sound is magically rich and textured.
Suffice it to say that though the peaks of Sonic Nurse are higher, I think this is their most consistently good album since Daydream Nation. For more details, read my review:
The U.S. soccer team got its first-ever point in European World Cup competition by tying Italy, thanks almost entirely to Keller. The goalkeeper made several tough saves while the team was down a player most of the second half.
A quietly brilliant masterpiece by this duo of Sierra Casady (CocoRosie) and Matteah Baim. Guests Antony, Jana Hunter, Devendra Banhart, Greg Rogrove, (Tarantula A.D.), and Christina Chalmers add special flavors.
Hebden is the mind behind electronica’s Four Tet and Fridge. Reid is a free jazz drum legend who also has such disparate entries on his resume as Motown session drummer, student of John Coltrane, and collaborator with Miles Davis, Fela Kuti, Sun Ra, and James Brown. Electronic music and free jazz are rarely mixed, so this may sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before. On this album’s three extended (16 to 20 minutes) tracks, all freely improvised with no edits or overdubs, Hebden bends his style to Reid’s, using his laptop to improvise like a horn player or keyboardist as Reid spins his unpredictable pulses over, under, and around Hebden’s highly varied array of tones. The results are unflinchingly adventurous and unceasingly stimulating. Kudos to Domino Records for putting this out; this won’t sell a hundredth as many copies as Franz Ferdinand, but (for me at least) it has more lasting value.
The samba master celebrated his 60th birthday in 1987 by going into the studio and reworking 24 of his most famous songs. It wasn’t released until 1995, a year after his death, in a limited edition, when it was titled Tom Jobim Inedito; this is its first appearance in North America and initiates a new series of Jobim rarities. The seemingly fragile beauty of Jobim’s songs conceals a tensile strength; whether the listener is familiar with the original versions of these tunes or is hearing them for the first time (or most of them – it’s hard to imagine anybody not knowing “The Girl from Ipanema” or “Desafinado”), this album is a joy to hear. Jobim, nearly always on piano, collaborates in these fine-sounding home-studio recordings with his wife Ana, singer/flutist Danilo Caymmi, singer Paula Morelenbaum and her husband, cellist Jaques; drummer Paulo Braga, a string orchestra, and more. This is a first-class production.
I really enjoyed their debut two years ago, but this takes them to a higher level. Yeah, they still sound at times like a Jam tribute band, but there’s more variety here, the songwriting is both superior and more complex, and I love the harmonies. The last track is kinda dancey electronic, so much so that I thought the next disc in the changer had come up already, and doesn’t really fit in here, but at least its position at the end keeps it from breaking up the flow.
I played this at the store Friday afternoon and a customer hung out to hear the entire album. Yeah, it’s that classic. On his second LP’s title track, perhaps the single finest song from his sentimental period, Waits drops the smart-ass part of his persona to affectionately romanticize the eternal optimism of the little man searching for love and purpose, or at least action and a way to pass the time. His characters on most of the album are certainly not winners, but neither are they losers as long as they stay in the game; as he puts it in the bluesy “New Coat of Paint,” “fishin’ for a good time starts with throwin’ in your line.” The pretty “San Diego Serenade” is a wry lesson in hard-earned perspective. This 1974 release found Waits really hitting his stride both as a writer and an icon.
