Thelonious Monk, Misterioso

By Jemiah Jefferson

It must have been a thrill for audiences in 1958 to imagine that the performances they witnessed in smoky nightclubs could be recorded and released as brilliant record albums to be savored and studied at home by those less lucky than they. I doubt that many of them could have imagined that more than fifty years later, those same performances would be captured on a shiny silver disk, played back by a laser beam, and savored and studied just as avidly. It’s also possible that the audience listening to what would be titled Misteriso, the live performance by the Thelonious Monk Quartet at the Five Spot Café in New York had no idea of future audiences or listening technologies at all, being entirely too occupied in experiencing the delights of a genius at the peak of his abilities.
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Portland Cello Project, Homage

By Jemiah Jefferson

While the sparkly and joyous “Hey Ya!” has long been a part of Portland Cello Project‘s live repertoire, Homage is their first full-length release of cover versions of hip-hop songs (they have done hip-hop covers before, but never a full album). In every case, PCP’s arrangement and performance of the melodies and rhythms found in these chart-smashing hits brings new delight to the listener, both in the chuckle-inducing recognition of the original and in admiration for how smoothly these tracks have been adapted.
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Whitejacket, Hollows And Rounds

By Jemiah Jefferson

The debut solo album from former Apples in stereo member Chris McDuffie has a proud “no synths” rule. Instead of Moog, it offers up plenty of jaunty piano, tambourines, and an earnest guitar that wouldn’t find itself out of place on Let It Be. The Beatles comparisons are not only obvious, but apparently welcome; but rather than shooting for the McCartney wink-and-nod, this album hews closer to the thoughtfulness of All Things Must Pass-era George Harrison. And yet there’s a silly love song, because there must be.

McDuffie clearly loves his early ’70s AM radio sound, more hand claps than anthems, and more lyrically sophisticated than the Bay City Rollers. Would it be out of place to say that this album sounds a lot like Canadian party-rock pastiche masters Sloan? I don’t think Sloan would think so . . . and notable track “Medinah” (click to playclick to play) features densely layered vocal tracks, McDuffie singing along hypnotically with a chorus of himself.

Hollows and Rounds sounds brainy and measured, but comfortable; it breaks no new ground, but encourages the listener to find the new in the same familiar sound.

Hollows and Rounds was released on April 3 and is available to download from Amazon and in physical format and download from CDBaby. For more information check out the Whitejacket website.

Paul Weller, Sonik Kicks

By Jemiah Jefferson

This is Paul Weller’s eleventh solo album and “The Modfather” shows no signs of becoming complacent, stymied, or anything less than a phenomenal songwriter and musician. Sonik Kicks contains almost too much variety in style and approach, and while it doesn’t necessarily smoothly flow from track to track, there is excellence aplenty to admire.
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New Video: Cake, “Mustache Man (Wasted)”

By Jemiah Jefferson

If only all videos by beloved indie-rock stalwarts could be directed by Portland, OR-based Alicia J. Rose, MTV would never have stopped showing videos.

Reminiscent of the good old days of hilarious mini-movies like “Hot for Teacher,” “Christmas in Hollis,” “Jeopardy,” and any “Weird Al” video ever, Cake’s new track “Mustache Man (Wasted)” features the story of a heavyweight schlub with no luck with the ladies going up against a mysterious stranger with a sex van, bell-bottoms, aviator sunglasses, and luxurious pornstache who effortlessly pulls all the girls (even the ladyboys shopping at Portland mainstay Wig Land). The war escalates to a lighted-floor disco dance-off for the ages.

Chock full of Portland landmarks, amazing Portland women, and vintage fashion, and accompanying a song custom-made for ironically-funky party dancing, “Mustache Man (Wasted)” is a must-see, must-hear.

“Mustache Man (Wasted)” is the latest from Cake’s most recent album, Showroom of Compassion, which is available on iTunes and Amazon.

Thomas Dolby, A Map Of The Floating City

By Jemiah Jefferson

It’s somewhat startling to realize that this is Thomas Dolby’s first album in twenty years. Since the 1992 non-success of Astronauts & Heretics, his last album of originals, Dolby busied himself in Silicon Valley, inventing and patenting applications involved in ring tone technology. This is the sort of thing that the cerebral, nay—pointy-headed—Dolby would do when the music industry started to bore him. But what happened after the man created his patents, got rich, got bored (again), and went home?

Once a musician, always a musician. Dolby began touring again, solo, several years ago, and to his audiences, dropped teasing hints that he was working on new music. A Map of the Floating City, in all its forms, is the result of that lengthy process, revealing painstaking perfectionism that occasionally gets in the way, but mostly creates a multilayered experience that develops in complexity with every revisit.
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Rob Crow, He Thinks He’s People

By Jemiah Jefferson

Once in a while a full-length album comes out that is nearly flawless; every track is worthy and exciting, the songs get stuck in your head and you don’t mind, and it demands regular re-listenings. Sometimes this is the culmination of an artist’s career, or maybe the opening salvo. With his latest solo record, part of the excitement comes from knowing that this is just another mile post in Rob Crow‘s journey. If his songwriting, vocals, and musicianship continues growing exponentially as they seem to have done over the course of his 18-years-and-counting history of making music, there will be even more joys to discover in the future.
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Mixtape For The Apocalypse: An Interview With Author Jemiah Jefferson

By Lisa Anderson

With electronic books pulling ahead of paper books in popularity, self-publishing is getting easier and easier. One of the pioneers on this new frontier is Dark Horse comics editor and Popshifter contributor Jemiah Jefferson. Jemiah and I met up over IM to discuss her recently self-published novel, Mixtape for the Apocalypse, as well as her previous work.
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A Brief History Of Black Sci-Fi Music

By Jemiah Jefferson

The earliest and greatest of them all was jazz bandleader Sun Ra. Best known these days for the extremely strange movie Space is the Place, released in 1974, a unique combination of concert film, parable, “blaxploitation,” and a lot of other just plain confusing stuff.
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Sloan, The Double Cross

By Jemiah Jefferson

Canadian four-piece Sloan is one of the world’s most enduring cult-item bands (for everyone living outside Canada, that is; in the wily north, Sloan has been a ubiquitous source of pride for a large part of their twenty-year history). There’s a reason for this continued affection, slavishly on display at any of their raucous, friendly live shows: Sloan is a known quantity, and all ten of their albums lie on the spectrum between pretty damn good and iconically brilliant.
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