Mostrar mensagens com a etiqueta 2005. Mostrar todas as mensagens
Mostrar mensagens com a etiqueta 2005. Mostrar todas as mensagens

segunda-feira, 25 de maio de 2020

BETH HART: "Leave The Light On" (+ bonus)

Original released on CD KOCH 8241
(US 2003, October 21)

Welcome to the sounds and poetry of recovery and redemption. On Beth Hart's third album in six years, the singer/songwriter has taken her already lean, rootsy approach to writing, scaled it back to skillfully reflect what is essential in a song, and then, as is her trademark, poured the very grain of her being into each performance. On "Leave the Light On", Hart speaks through unapologetically classic, mainstream rock music so gritty, edgy, and true (informed by the gospels according to the Rolling Stones, the Faces, and Janis Joplin), it's virtually unlike anything out there at the moment - the White Stripes not withstanding. "Lifts You Up," the opener, uses one of the finest anthemic R-A-W-K hooks in a chorus since Delaney & Bonnie, employing muddy ringing buzzsaw guitars, upright piano, bass, drums, and hand percussion to celebrate the notion of life on life's terms: «It lifts you up it puts you down / Then it feeds you life, then it lets you drown / While it holds your heart then it slowly tears you / And you know life is what I mean.» The title track is the first real power ballad of the new century. It is the most searing cut on the set. Virtually every word is loaded with dark confession and emotion, but unlike some of her peers who also explore the sewers and gutters of human ruination and soul death, Hart is far from content to remain there. Buoyed by her own piano, assorted keyboards emulating strings, Greg Leisz's pedals, strummed guitars, and a rhythm section, Hart's words seek the edges of the cage and bust forth, counting on the possibility of change inherent in every moment. The lyrics, centered around the fear of being alone after a life of pain - absorbed and meted out - are scalding in their indomitable hope.


These two tracks become the first turns of the wheel of pop culture dharma - rock & roll is the means to convey the fact that these small truths have become self-evident: that a woman can survive, sometimes in spite of her best efforts. Where more "contemporary" architectures are used, on "Lay Your Hands on Me" with its drum loops, "World Without You" with its beautifully textured keyboards, or the stunning acoustic piano majesty of "Lifetime" backed by a whispering Hammond organ, the effect is the same. Songs that take no prisoners, such as "Bottle of Jesus" or "Broken & Ugly," with fierce melodies and burning guitar crunchiness, are welcome alternatives to the tuneless radio drivel of Limp Bizkit or Korn. Ultimately, "Leave the Light On" is indeed Hart's crowning achievement thus far. Not many can string three fine albums together, let alone make each better than the last. This too is part of a rock & roll heritage that Hart, one suspects, is proudly a part of: the process of artistic growth realized over time, one that seeks the long road rather than short gain. Ultimately, as Beth Hart continues to allow her muse to inform and transform the ashes of her past, the listener benefits mightily from her journey. No matter what happens commercially or critically, this album will sound necessary and vital a decade from now. Classic rock indeed. (Thom Jurek in AllMusic)

NOTE: In this CD tracks 6 to 16 correspond to the original album

terça-feira, 19 de maio de 2020

The MAGIC NUMBERS Debut Album

Original released on CD Heavenly HVN LP 53 CD
(UK 2005, June 6)


Every three years or so, the British music press touts another band as the Next Big Thing, or at least the antidote to the trend the press kick-started a couple years back. Some of these bands - whether they're Suede, the Strokes, or Franz Ferdinand - are quite good, even excellent, and sometimes they're merely average; it all depends on what trend the band's supposed to bring to end and what fad they're supposed to kick-start, since the quality of the music almost always takes a back seat to the demands of fashion. This kind of hyped-up transience is one of the great things about pop music - not only is it supposed to exist in the moment, sometimes great pop music only sounds great within its given moment, whether it's Whigfield or Crazy Frog - but that doesn't mean that the trends are always fun, and one of the more inexplicable British-driven fads of the 2000s is the Magic Numbers, whose eponymous debut album was hailed as an instant classic in many quarters upon its early-summer release in the U.K. in 2005. Comprised of two sets of brothers and sisters, the quartet sings soft, gentle sunshine pop with vaguely rootsy underpinnings. Because of this slightly folky bent and clear reverence for '60s pop, they were positioned as the return of the real as compared to the new wave of new wave, which encompassed anyone from Interpol to Franz, and even the neo-garage rock revival of the beginning of the decade - after all, by the summer of 2005, it was clear that the White Stripes were too arty and obstinate to qualify as a roots band.


While The Magic Numbers is as dippy as any number of harmony-laden folk-rock groups that arrived in the wake of the Mamas & the Papas, their cutsey navel-gazing is most decidedly a product of its time. So are the simpering schoolboy vocals of lead singer Romeo Stodart, whose thin, squeaky earnest mewling makes Coldplay's Chris Martin sound macho and distracts from whatever pleasures that can be gleaned from the harmonies of his sister Michele and their colleague Angela Gannon. Romeo Stodart's voice and his mopey lovelorn lyrics are clear outgrowths of late-'90s indie pop, picking up on the tweeness of Belle & Sebastian but discarding their clever literary bent, not to mention their songcraft, in favor of simple-minded confessionals spiked by the occasional naughty word ("I'm a no-good used-up bruised-up fucked-up boy," he unconvincingly croons), alternating between singalong happy tunes and slow, sleepy crawls. It's all pleasant enough on the surface and since it self-consciously recalls classic rock - not only in sound but in titles that recall songs of the past ("Wheel's on Fire" is a riff on Bob Dylan & the Band's "This Wheel's on Fire," "Hymn for Her" is close to the Pretenders' "Hymn to Her" and it also shares a name with an Ides of March song, but that's probably not a deliberate move) - some listeners will be inclined to give them a pass, since it's kind of familiar in feel while sounding different than a lot of guitar-based rock and pop in 2005.


Yet if The Magic Numbers is judged against the standards of second-tier '60s folk-pop - forget the Beatles and Beach Boys or even the Mamas & the Papas or Donovan or Lovin' Spoonful, but against legions of soundalikes like Rose Garden - the group's music is not as well written or melodic or as interesting, nor does it hold up well to late-'90s indie pop from Belle & Sebastian to Elliott Smith, and it lacks the conviction of freak folk, since their aw-shucks, lovey-dovey pose feels contrived. Nevetheless, the quartet is much easier to listen to than Devendra Banhart - sunny tunes and smooth surfaces do indeed help - and they have a certain veneer of mature, classy respectability that means this can appeal to everyone from baby boomers to echo boomers. It all glides by easily enough on its surface, but dig a little deeper and The Magic Numbers reveals itself to be not just a crashing bore, but an irritating one since it not only lacks one song with an undeniable, memorable hook, but the self-satsified vibe of the band combined with Stodart's reedy whine makes the Magic Numbers feel not just less real than the groups they're allegedly an antidote to, but more disingenuous as well. (Stephen Erlewine in AllMusic)


Honestly, this album makes me want to give up on songwriting, it's so perfect. It takes an awful lot of talent to take such simple, basic sentiments as The Magic Numbers do here, yet make them sound fresh and genuine. 'She don't love me like you do', on "Love Me Like You". 'I would die for you', on "Morning's Eleven". 'I never thought I'd fall in love again', on the heartbreaking "I See You, You See Me". You'd think it would sound uninspired and repetitive. It's exactly the opposite. But, of course, it's all about the harmonies. It's not their 'secret weapon' by any means (that'll be Romeo's surprisingly elegant guitar playing), as I've heard some call it - no more than it was for The Zombies or The Beatles. But they do it so well. So unbelievably well. As a testament to the power of vocal harmonies, "Odessey & Oracle" is the only album I'd compare this to. Nothing else comes close. I'll be the first to admit that there's a formula at work here.  Almost every song boils down in the middle, before building up again slowly and bursting back to life with another world-beating chorus. That might get a little annoying if they didn't pull it off perfectly every time. The crucial thing, though? The Magic Numbers is just packed with great songs, start to finish. Especially "I See You, You See Me" - I have to choke back the tears when the female vocals come in. It's simply the most beautiful thing I've heard this year. "The Mule", "Forever Lost" and "Morning's Eleven" are all incredible, too, and there's not a single bad track to be found elsewhere. In fact, there's a couple of real masterworks stuck at the back end of the album - the bonus track "Hymn For Her" (bonus track?! I'd be screaming it from the mountaintops if I wrote a song this good!) and latest single "Love's A Game". It seems incredible now, but "Love's A Game" has, in my estimation, gone all the way from the worst song on the album to probably the best. Not just the best album of 2005, it's also one of the best albums of the decade so far. How this is struggling to make even the top 200 of the year on this site right now baffles me; there hasn't been a band that makes me feel this way since Pixies. When I hear this album, I'm a child again, and life is immediately perfect - how could anything possibly be wrong in a world capable of creating music like this? The Magic Numbers means so much to me that it almost hurts to listen to it; but it hurts so, so good. I can't be the only one that feels that, surely? (in RateYourMusic)

domingo, 17 de maio de 2020

LES TRÈS BIEN ENSEMBLE: "Doux-amer"

Original released on CD Elefant ER-1117
(EU, April 2005)

Les Très Bien Ensemble est un groupe de pop espagnol, originaire de Barcelone, en Catalogne. Son style musical, dont les paroles sont entièrement interprétées en français, s'inspire de la musique pop, du folk et du yé-yé des années 1960 ; en particulier Serge Gainsbourg, France Gall, Françoise Hardy et Philippe Katerine, entre autres. Le nom du groupe fait référence à Michelle, une chanson des Beatles qui a des strophes en français: «Michelle, ma belle, sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble». Leur premier EP est publié sur CD et vinyle en juillet 1997 ; il comprend quatre morceaux, dont l'un, "La Fille la Plus Douce du Monde", est choisi en 1999 comme l'une des meilleures chansons de l'année par les auditeurs de Radio 32. Un autre EP, "Chanson d'Amour", suit en 2001, et comprend une reprise de Brigitte Bardot. Enfin, en 2005, ils publient leur premier album, "Doux-amer" ; L'un des morceaux, "À Hélène", est choisi par la chaîne de magasins El Corte Inglés, pour sa campagne Blancolor. En septembre 2008, ils publient leur deuxième et dernier album en date, "Rougeole", un album qui reflète l'influence d'artistes tels que Johnny Cash, Brian Wilson, The Byrds, The Zombies ou Love. Le groupe se sépare en 2010.

segunda-feira, 17 de fevereiro de 2020

quarta-feira, 5 de dezembro de 2018

BRIAN WILSON's Xmas Album

Original released on CD Arista 82876.71809.2
(US 2005, October 18)


"What I Really Want For Christmas" consists mostly of Brian and Wondermints' renditions of US perspective Xmas classics. Even though they are sometimes wonderfully arranged (especially the a cappella "Auld Lang Syne" sounds almost heavenly), I wouldn't care much for such a package. However, there are exceptions among the material – songs composed by Brian Wilson himself. Of those five, "The Man With All the Toys" and "Little Saint Nick" are new versions of Beach Boy originals, with lyrics by Mike Love. The new stuff includes the superb "What I Really Want for Christmas" and "Christmasey." I have the idea that "On Christmas Day" is also 'new', but it isn't that special; it is mostly Brian repeating the Xmas clichés, and one surely remembers Brian has composed both of his masterpieces ("Smile" and "Pet Sounds") with help from an 'outsider' lyricist (Van Dyke Parks and Tony Asher). This time the project has brought the famous Jimmy Webb and Bernie Taupin together with Brian, and the result is a complete success. (in RateYourMusic)

quarta-feira, 20 de dezembro de 2017

Eric Is Back Home, To His Family


Original released on CD Reprise 49395-2
(US 2005, August 30)     


Eric Clapton claimed in the press release for "Back Home", his 14th album of original material, that «One of the earliest statements I made about myself was back in the late '80s, with "Journeyman". This album completes that cycle in terms of talking about my whole journey as an itinerant musician and where I find myself now, starting a new family. That's why I chose the title. It's about coming home and staying home.» With that in mind, it becomes clearer that the studio albums Clapton released during the '90s did indeed follow some sort of thematic logic. 1989's "Journeyman" did find Clapton regrouping after a muddled '80s, returning to the bluesy arena rock and smooth pop that had been his signature sound as a solo artist. He followed that with 1994's "From the Cradle", where he explicitly returned to the roots of his music by recording an album of blues standards. Four years later, he released "Pilgrim", a slick album that had Clapton strengthening his collaboration with producer/co-writer Simon Climie (who first worked with EC on his electronica side project T.D.F.). If "Pilgrim" touched on father issues, 2001's "Reptile" loosely returned Clapton to his childhood (complete with a smiling boyhood shot of him on the cover) and found the guitarist struggling with a seemingly diverse selection of material, ranking from '50s R&B to James Taylor. After a brief blues detour on 2004's "Me and Mr. Johnson", Clapton returns to the sound and feel of "Reptile" for "Back Home", but he doesn't seem to be as tentative or forced as he did there. Instead, he eases comfortably into the domesticity that isn't just the concept for the album, it's reason for being. In fact, the album doesn't need "back" in its title - ultimately, the album is just about being home (which, if the center photo of Clapton at home with his three young daughters and wife is to be believed, looks alarmingly similar to the set of Thomas the Tank Engine, complete with a painted rainbow shining through the window).


While it's hard to begrudge the 60-year-old guitarist for finding a happy home after all these years, what is puzzling about this calm, comfortable album is that Clapton is equating domestic bliss with a glossy, consciously classy sound that's swept clean of dirt and grit, or even the blues. Consequently, "Back Home" is pitched halfway between the lite contemporary soul of "Pilgrim" and Clapton's time as a Michelob spokesman in the late '80s. Each track rides a tight, professional groove - sometimes a bluesy vamp, sometimes a reggae jam, usually something soulful but relaxed - and while instruments sometimes bubble up from the mix (sometimes it's Clapton's guitar, but just as often it's Billy Preston's organ, or occasionally a synth straight out of 1987), the emphasis is always on the smooth, shiny surface. Unlike such peers as Bob Dylan, Elton John, and the Rolling Stones who revitalized their recording careers with back-to-basics moves that stripped their music down to its essence, Clapton seems to harbor an aversion to what he built his reputation on, whether it was the lean, sinewy blues of the Yardbirds and Bluesbreakers or the psychedelic freak-outs of Cream, or even the rootsy rock he learned from Delaney & Bonnie in the '70s. Based on "Back Home", it really does seem like he considers "Journeyman" ground zero for his solo career, but instead of replicating the well-balanced mix of rock, pop, and blues that made that record one of his best solo efforts, he settles into a tasteful adult pop sound that makes this record the ideal soundtrack to a pleasant Sunday afternoon at home with the family. (Stephen Erlewine in AllMusic)

quarta-feira, 23 de novembro de 2016

ROBERT PLANT & STRANGE SENSATION: "Mighty Rearranger"

Original released on CD Sanctuary 06076-84747-2
(2005, April 25)






























   
On "Mighty Rearranger", the core of the band Robert Plant showcased on 2002's "Dreamland" - and named the Strange Sensation - is a full-blown expanded lineup that shares the bill with him. Guitarists Justin Adams and Skin Tyson, drummer Clive Deamer, keyboardist John Baggot, and bassist Billy Fuller help Plant give listeners his most musically satisfying and diverse recording since, well, Led Zeppelin's "Physical Grafitti". The reference is not a mere platitude to Plant's pedigree. The songs, production, and sequencing of the album overtly incorporates those sounds as well as those of Eastern modalism, Malian folk, guitar rock, R&B, and others, for inspiration - and why shouldn't they? "Mighty Rearranger" opens with "Another Tribe," a sociopolitical ballad that touches upon the textural string backdrops from Zep's "Kashmir" and is fueled by Moroccan bendir drums. Adams' guitar shifts it over to rock in the middle, but never crowds the crystalline lilting vocal. The single, "Shine It All Around," sports Deamer's crunch and crack drums, while Adams' canny emulation of Jimmy Page's Les Paul toneography fills Plant's sung and moaned lines with ferocity. But it is "Freedom Fries," with its startling percussive syncopation and juxtaposition of roots rockabilly blues and hard rock - à la "Black Dog" - that breaks the record wide open and shatters the sensual tension with pure Dionysian RAWK swagger. On "Tin Pan Valley," Baggot's whispering keyboard lines under Plant's nocturnal moan set a mood - slippery, sexy, undulating - before Deamer cracks through with cymbal and snare work that not only emulates John Bonham, but evokes his power, unfurling the Zep talons deeper into the core of the album. 


The beautiful balladry of "All the King's Horses" offers solid proof of Plant's ability to reference the English folk tradition with elegance and taste, and his continued acumen for fine lyric writing. The acoustic guitars purposely kiss the same space that Page did on "Over the Hills and Far Away" and "Goin' to California," but are balanced by Adams' pastoral electric country fills. But here's the important part: the Zeppelin spirit that is seemingly ever present here takes nothing away from the startling imagination and creativity on "Mighty Rearranger" - it actually serves, rather than houses, the songs it adorns. And it's the songs, like the sultry slow stroll of "The Enchanter" and the North African-flavored rocker "Takamba," that matter. Plant and Strange Sensation have painstakingly and energetically crafted an album that takes his full history into account, yet offers something living, breathing, and actually new. This is big rock music making an appearance on the scene agian. It's music that is full of itself, sneers at the competition, and pushes forward by acknowledging the full breadth of the music's tarted-up history. The dramatic "Let the Four Winds Blow" touches everything from early rock & roll to droning Delta blues to biker soundtrack music in a dramatic and utterly serious song. The title track uses the Malian guitar plank and turns it back on itself, pointing its gaze toward John Lee Hooker, Skip James, and the piano blues of Otis Spann. The album closes with Baggot's barroom blues piano that propels Plant to pay a brief barrelhouse tribute to Ray Charles on "Brother Ray." "Mighty Rearranger" is a literate, ambitious, and sublimely vulgar exercise in how to make a mature yet utterly unfettered rock & roll album that takes chances, not prisoners, and apologizes for nothing. (Thom Jurek in AllMusic)

sábado, 19 de novembro de 2016

MELUA's SECOND ALBUM

Original released on CD Dramatico DRAMCD0007
(2005, September 26)

Georgia-born (as in the country, not the state) singer/songwriter Katie Melua found herself atop the British charts in 2003 with her breezy debut, "Call Off the Search", which sold over three million copies in Europe alone. Her laid-back blend of blues, jazz, and pop with a kiss of worldbeat drew comparisons to Norah Jones, and rightfully so. She sticks to the formula on her lush, ultimately safe follow-up, "Piece by Piece". This is Coldplay for the Diana Krall crowd, a perfectly rendered slice of adult contemporary pie for a lazy summer day delivered by an artist whose beautiful voice is almost striking in how unremarkable it is. Her longtime collaborator, producer/songwriter Mike Batt, provides the catchiest number, an odd and endearing little confection called "Nine Million Bicycles." It's both silly and sweet, two things that work in Melua's favor. Sure, she can vamp it up with the best of them on bluesy asides like "Shy Boy" and the dreadful "Blues in the Night," but there's a whole lot of innocence in that voice that just shrivels in the midst of all that bravado. Only in her early twenties, Melua's got plenty of time to decide on a persona, and "Piece by Piece" has enough quality material on it to placate fans until she does, but there's some tension here, and it doesn't sound intentional. Besides, anyone who covers Canned Heat and the Cure on the same record is still trying to figure it all out. (James Christopher Monger in AllMusic)

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