March 7, 2010
Country Women Do Covers
Here’s 4 songs you may or may not know well, re-done by four of the best acts in Country music.
Dolly Parton | “Stairway to Heaven”
Great: it’s a bluegrass version of Led Zeppelin’s inescapable, nonsensical anthem about buying heavenly stairways and bustling hedgerows. Did the world really need this? Well, actually, I’d be inclined to argue yes. Dolly Parton is in good voice (frequently multi-tracked) on this cover version, from her 2002 album Halos & Horns, and she delivers one of her most passionate performances. Plus, it helps that she is backed by an intricate band arrangement that never explodes into Zep-ish bombast, but builds and climaxes satisfyingly, with a choir providing the intensity previously provided by loud rock guitar. And, as this track makes clear, Dolly’s high notes beat Robert Plant’s any day.
Rosanne Cash | “I’m Movin’ On”
For her newest album, Rosanne Cash has done a covers record that comes with an interesting backstory. Her father, Johnny Cash, made up a list of 100 Essential Country Songs for her in the ‘70s, to make up for gaps in her music education, and she has taken 12 of those songs and re-done them on the album, titled appropriately The List. There’s a lot of good tracks on The List, but her cover of Hank Snow’s “I’m Movin’ On” stands out for its atmosphere. Sounding like a less-clanky Tom Waits ballad, the band shuffles casually, while the slide-y lead guitar part evokes movie images of desolate highways and diner jukeboxes. Cash sounds laid back, sometimes breathy, and full of swagger in her vocal delivery, a chanteuse-y approach that folds nicely into the recording.
February 24, 2010
Hidden Gems: Second Golden Age of Movie Soundtracks
HIDDEN GEMS
From wholly original soundtracks like Curtis Mayfield’s work for Super Fly to iconic oldies compilations like American Grafitti, the 1970s was the first golden age for the movie soundtrack.
After a glut of ’80s crap, the art form of the movie soundtrack bounced back in the ’90s. Pulp Fiction is the key example of a soundtrack that was not only essential to the movie it supported, but became essential listening on its own (although the soundtrack to Tarantino’s follow-up, Jackie Brown, gets my vote for soundtrack of the decade). Other soundtracks were so popular (Lost Highway, Empire Records) that more people had them in their CD collections than had ever bought a ticket to see the movie. The following 4 selections were not so popular, but they remain worthwhile listening experiences whether you’ve seen the movie or not.
Out of Sight | Music From the Motion Picture
1998 was the moment when DJs were making their biggest impact as solo artists in mainstream music, thanks partially to Fatboy Slim’s “Rockafeller Skank.” One DJ who got a leg up in this climate was David Holmes, whose first 2 albums were more often groovy than glitchy. Hired to do the music for Steven Soderbergh’s French New Wave-style take on an Elmore Leonard novel, Out of Sight, Holmes delivered a super-cool score that’s funky without being hectic and is ambient without being somnambulant. The soundtrack album seamlessly blends Holmes’s music cues with dialogue from the film and classic hits by The Isley Brothers, Dean Martin, and more. Twelve years later, it still sounds fresh and unembarassing in a way that those Fatboy Slim records sadly don’t.
February 21, 2010
Hidden Gems: Banjo Pickers
No, you won’t find anything about Sufjan Stevens here.
Loudon Wainwright III | High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project 
Maybe this gem isn’t quite so hidden—it did just win the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album—but I doubt you’ve heard it yet. Loudon Wainwright and some of his famous family (son Rufus, daughters Martha and Lucy, plus the ex-wife’s kin, The Roches) create an odd sort of tribute album to Charlie Poole, who was an old-time banjo player from the 1920s. You see, Poole wasn’t a songwriter, so Wainwright and Co. instead perform old-timey-sounding original songs inspired by Poole’s life, along with various other songs that Poole made famous with his recordings. The tales of boozing and hard living contained within wouldn’t seem out of place on an average Loudon Wainwright album, making the resemblance between the old-time picker and the modern-day musician who is paying him tribute a bit uncanny..
February 7, 2010
Bizarre Follow-ups
Sometimes musicians return to the studio after big hit albums by trying to top that album commercially. However, here are 4 albums where the artists instead went in a memorably weirder, less-commercial direction.
Todd Rundgren | A Wizard, A True Star
After the seeming fluke success of his 1972 double-album Something/Anything? — which was full of soft-rock staples yo
u’re sure to hear now and again in your friendly neighborhood grocery or at the dentist’s office — Todd Rundgren responded by making his weirdest, least accessible album to that point. To call this album “schizo” is an understatement. The first half is dominated by oddball 60-to-90-second songs, typified by the track “Dogfight Giggle,” where the sounds of dogs barking and someone giggling are sped-up and played over and over. Even when the album relaxes into more conventional songs, the choices are odd: Rundgren (who, it should be pointed out, is one of the whitest people in the world) does a 10-minute medley of R&B hits including “Ooh Baby Baby” and “La La Means I Love You.” If you have the right sense of humor or sense of adventure, you will find this album greatly rewarding.
January 14, 2010
Hidden Gems
Orchestre Stukas | L’Afrique Danse Presents Orchestre Stukas
Yesterday was a sad day in the music world, and devastating for the world at large. I was once the wallowing type, but I’m instating a rule for myself this winter: NO DOWNER MUSIC. So I’m glad that I just found Orchestre Stukas, (also sometimes known as The Stukas Boys?), a 1970s soukous/rumba-esque band from the former Zaire. The Stukas Boys were fronted by Lita Bembo, the Congolese version of James Brown, who you can see in action here. Fast-paced, with a psych guitar and fun, deft rhythm, this four-song record is a good way to keep your mood afloat for around forty minutes. Then just watch some more of their videos, I guess. Well, I guess the rest of the week is going to be Orchestre Stukas and Jay Reatard on repeat for me. Try to feel better, world.
by Erin Sheehy
Willie Nelson | Willie Nelson Sings Kristofferson
Willie Nelson always seems to be putting out a new album, whether he’s taken the time to get good material together (2006’s Songbird, 2009’s American Classic) or not (the other twelve albums he’s made in the past decade). This album, one of three that Willie put out in 1979, is a gold nugget with a modest concept that seems to have gotten lost in the expanse of Willie’s discography. It doesn’t get much simpler than this: find a good country-rock backing band and cover a bunch of top-notch songs written by Kris Kristofferson, including “Me and Bobby McGee” (a prior hit for Janis Joplin), “Sunday Morning Coming Down” (a hit for Johnny Cash), and “Help Me Make It Through The Night” (an unjustly forgotten hit for Sammi Smith). The resulting album is a low-key pleasure.
by Justin Remer
December 18, 2009
Hidden Gems
HIDDEN GEMS
John Lurie | Fishing With John: Original Music From The Series
John Lurie, leader of the avant-jazz group The Lounge Lizards and star of Jim Jarmusch’s early movies, created and directed a six-episode TV series in 1992 where he took various indie celebs (Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Dennis Hopper) to various far-flung locales and fished with them. The end result is funnier and more absurd than you would expect. This soundtrack is appropriately peppered with funny non sequiturs, but most of the tracks are short pieces of score that merge Lurie’s jazz sound with more distinctly world-music elements. Both the DVD of the series and the soundtrack are must-owns.
by Justin Remer
The Frogs | It’s Only Right And Natural
It’s no wonder you don’t remember The Frogs, though they had their share of fervent supporters (Beck, Smashing Pumpkins, etc.): brothers Jimmy and Dennis Flemion seemed hell bent on alienating absolutely everyone. Those of us who got it, though, were…rewarded…with some of the most gloriously offensive records ever released. It’s Only Right and Natural, the Frogs’ gay concept record, is at least their second best (“best” being a relative term). Songs about homosexual relations in the locker room, homosexual relations combined with drug abuse, and homosexual relations with no strings attached abound, all wrapped up in music played barely more capably than on The Shaggs’ Philosophy of the World. Totally NSFW, but fuck it. Go ahead and get fired.
by Brook Pridemore
More on Hidden Gems
December 11, 2009
Talk Normal | Sugarland
FRESH BAKED
in NYC
Talk Normal
Sugarland
2009 | Rare Book Room
A-
The first word that pops into my head listening to Sugarland, the first full-length from Brooklyn duo Talk Normal, is “industrial.” I’m hesitant to use the word, because I think it dredges up sonic images of the band Ministry and early Nine Inch Nails, and Sugarland definitely has none of the amped-up speed of those folks. (Yet, despite its ambient leanings, Sugarland isn’t a snooze either.) The “industrial” sound I’m referring to above most closely resembles the sonic landscape of the film Eraserhead by David Lynch.
The second and possibly strongest track of the album, “In a Strange Land,” features a start-stop guitar crunch punctuated by percussive crashes that sound like being stuck in a stylized assembly line or a particularly antiquated elevator. Layered on top of this foundation is a frantic, almost tribal drumbeat, and intermingling vocals by guitarist Sarah Register and drummer Andrya Ambro that shriek, pant and float serenely, delivering lyrics like “Help me/ I’m a stranger/ In a strange land/ Don’t push me away.”
The band’s Downtown New York/No Wave influences are pretty apparent (they’re even named after a Laurie Anderson song, for gosh sakes), and the comparisons to Lydia Lunch and Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O that are frequently lobbed at them seem fair enough, but the band is far from hamstrung by their predecessors. Register and Ambro are equally inventive as performers and writers, easily distinguishing themselves and defining their sounds as their own. Ambro’s drumming is primal without being primitive, and it maintains much of the forward momentum of many of the tracks. Register, for her part, very rarely gets into conventional guitar heroics, instead preferring dirge-y guitar squalls, which, on most of the tracks, are layered into soundscapes of fuzzed-out tones.
More on Talk Normal | Sugarland
December 10, 2009
Hidden Gems
HIDDEN GEMS
Fats Domino | Sweet Patootie: The Complete Reprise Recordings
In the late 60s, producer Richard Perry tried to rescue boogie woogie piano man Fats Domino’s career from the oldies dustbin with the modern-sounding (for the time) Fats Is Back, which makes up the first half of this 2-disc collection. Fats doesn’t play much of the piano parts here, but his voice is in great shape and Perry gets him top-notch material and backing musicians. There are 3 Beatles covers on the album, including a jaw-dropping version of “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey.” The album tanked at the time, and the follow-up Fats, which takes up the second half of this compilation disc is a little less fussed over and unfortunately less engaging. It’s all still worth a listen.
by Justin Remer
Joe Tex | “Fresh Out of Tears”
I was fresh out of ideas for Hidden Gems till I got a copy of “Fresh Out of Tears” last night. No doubt you’ve heard the Joe Tex crossover hit “Hold What You’ve Got,” but I think the B-side is underappreciated and way more fun. Tex’s legacy is his proto-rap style of speaking over music, but here he employs his killer raspy voice in a straight-up soulful wail. (Doesn’t he sound so old here, even though it’s one of his earlier numbers?) The song isn’t groundbreaking; it’s just a great dance number with subtle accents and pauses that cue the rhythmically inclined to mix up their moves on the dance floor.
by Erin Sheehy
