The first and last items here are new releases (out 6/27). The rest of the list mostly takes off on the theme of commercials, and the two new albums are shoehorned into that theme.
Compilation albums are like commercials for the included songs. With this one, the DJ-Kicks series, where electronica icons program a CD as if it were a great mix set, has produced another winner. Four Tet, AKA Kieran Hebden, spins an amazingly eclectic set that ranges from artsy early electronica (David Behrman), classic jazz-funk fusion (Julian Priester), ethnic recordings (Shona People of Rhodesia), soul (Curtis Mayfield), prog-rock (Heldon), industrial techno (Cabaret Voltaire), Detroit techno (Juan Atkins’s Model 500), avant-garde jazz (Heiner Stadler) and eccentric vintage obscurity Gary Davis to current talents Animal Collective, Madvillain, Autechre, So Solid Crew, Group Home, Syclops, Akufen, Quickspace Supersport, and – yes – Four Tet (“Pockets,” exclusive to this album) – 20 tracks of goodness in all. Hebden manages to make it all make sense together, even such starkly disjunct segues as proggers Gong into hip-hoppers Showbiz & A.G. A scintillating listening experience and a music history lesson rolled into one – consider it a public service announcement.
I have a serious dislike for licensed music in commercials (discussed in #9), but I admire clever use of original music written specifically for the commercial, which is what’s going on here. These guys have such a quirky sense of humor, such a great way with wordplay, and such a brilliant talent for hooks, that I enjoy them in any context, even a commercial. “This distance is an ocean / And time has taken my boat away” – brilliant!
Toyota 4Runner commercial
The mountain man/valley girl take on “Dueling Banjos,” with the latter “playing” her cellphone, still has me smiling every time it comes on. And as often as that commercial is played on Mets games, that’s once or twice a day six days a week.
So-called because each of the 40 songs here is one minute long. What really matters is that the songs are great. I called TMBG quirky up at #2, but these guys make TMBG seem like Wayne Brady in comparison.
Okay, this is “commercial” in a different way. Just a reminder that “mersh” is Mike Watt’s coinage for “commercial” as in “saleable.” For my favorite hardcore band, that meant writing longer songs, with hooks, and adding trumpet to the arrangements. Works for me!
I like this album – who doesn’t? – but it always struck me as basically a commercial for their TV show. How could I think otherwise when the first song is ”(Theme from) The Monkees”?
The PSA’s of the guy with throat cancer
Music’s not involved, but damn these are some powerful, hard-hitting spots.
This makes the list not because I like it, but because the first time I heard it, I correctly predicted (my ex-roommate Amanda’s my witness) that it would get used in a car commercial. At least I got to form that relationship with the song on my own instead of having it forced down my throat. I really hate the trend of using songs in commercials to sell the artist more than the product supposedly being pitched. I want the song to have a personal meaning for me. When it comes to me first in a commercial, it’s basically ruined for me. I hated U2’s “Vertigo” before How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (an otherwise superb disc) had even been released because of that damn iPod commercial. Moby and Sting are two of the worst in this regard, but Crow’s not far behind. I’m not fond of old songs getting used in commercials, but I’ve lived with them so long that it doesn’t matter as much: “Search and Destroy” will never seem like a song about sneakers to me.
I have a conflict of interest here: I wrote the liner notes. Before that, I was already on record on multiple occasions praising pianist Jenny Lin, most recently citing her “refulgent and refined tone, with absolute command of notes and dynamics” and “intelligently constructed” programming (here’s my review of her previous album). This time out, she’s emphasizing virtuosic contemporary music with a program of pieces that extend pianistic technique in a variety of ways, not least by requiring a healthy dose of good old-fashioned manual dexterity. Composers include Arthur Kampela, György Ligeti, Stefano Gervasoni, Randy Nordschow, James Tenney, Elliott Sharp, and Claude Vivier. All but Vivier were alive when the album was recorded, though alas, Ligeti passed a few weeks ago. A fair number of the pieces were written or adapted specifically for Lin, and all but the Ligeti and Vivier pieces are first recordings. Anybody interested in contemporary classical piano music should check it out. And that’s my commercial.
