// Category Archive for: Current Faves

SXSW 2013: Alt Latino Showcase with Café Tacvba, Bajofondo, Molotov

By Chelsea Spear

Café Tacvba

Are you in Austin for South By Southwest? Are you a fan of Latin alternative? If so, you’re in for a treat. The NPR podcast Alt Latino is sponsoring a showcase on March 14 at Auditorium Shores. Three of the brightest bands in the rock en español firmament will be playing—the experimental rock quartet Café Tacvba, politically-informed rap/rock ragers Molotov, and dance-pop supergroup Bajofondo.

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Game Review: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

By Luke Shaw

Image from http://daxgamer.com/

If you sliced the code open, you’d realize that there is a singular philosophy running through Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and that the entire game is a slave to it. Every piece of extraneous flab has been cut off with reckless abandon. It is not so much Occam’s Razor as Raiden’s Razor, a shimmering blade, crackling with electricity, held at the player’s throat, paralyzing you, unblinking and sweaty-palmed whilst you’re gruffly asked one question over and over as the sweat runs down your neck and fizzles to nothing at the touch of the sword: “Cut or be cut, cut or be cut, cut or be cut . . .”

Platinum Games have a long history of producing high-octane action games like the arcade bombast of Vanquish and the current benchmark for all things over the top, Bayonetta, directed and produced by Capcom veterans such as Hideki Kamiya and Shinji Mikami. Now, teaming up with Konami and tasked with reinvigorating one of gaming’s most incorrectly maligned characters, Raiden, Revengeance sees Platinum not so much reinventing the wheel, as filing it down to a single, elegant edge.

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Music Review: Alasdair Roberts & Friends, A Wonder Working Stone

By Hanna

A Wonder Working Stone is being hailed as Alasdair Roberts‘s best work so far. Though he can sum it up in one word per song himself, it’s not that easy to capture in a short review. This is partly because it is so varied, and partly because it’s so complex that description becomes difficult.

In a way it’s a definitive album, combining characteristic elements of Alasdair Roberts’s style with new influences, and a cast of highly skilled musicians. There is an atmosphere of creative friendship in the album, especially in the extended sequences of various songs played together.

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Music Review: Girls Names, The New Life

By Less Lee Moore

I’m running out of ways to describe new bands as deft reinterpreters of the legacy of post-punk music. Belfast’s Girls Names is no exception, but The New Life, their new album, is still exceptionally good.

Those who try to recreate the sound of the late ’70s/early ’80s goldmine of great music often fall victim to throwing in everything that defined the era in an attempt to be as on-the-nose as possible: synths, drum machines, hand claps, samples, gospel choirs, and horn sections. Less is more, and Girls Names know how to do a lot with a little.

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Music Review: David Bowie, The Next Day

By Cait Brennan

It takes a giant set of stones to deface, obliterate really, the cover to “Heroes”, the 1977 album that is often regarded as David Bowie’s masterpiece. You wouldn’t do it for a remix record, let alone a new album that heralds your return to music after a decade as far away from the music world as you can get, on this side of the dirt at least. You wouldn’t pay some guy a ton of money to just scratch out the album title and paper over the face with some words on a blank slate.

But then David Bowie has always been that blank slate. The Next Day equals “The Next Thing,” the tantalizing, elusive thing Bowie has restlessly, relentlessly pursued since the day he first imagined his pilfered name in lights. New sounds, new poses, new ideas, borrowed and digested and inhabited and discarded, with the artificial cool and sublimated panic of a man trying desperately to stay one step ahead of the law, sick inside with the feeling that any second, he’ll be exposed as a fraud, a con man, a cut-rate Tabarin in a rented clown suit that’s four days past due and damaged beyond hope of getting back the deposit. We mustn’t ever tell him that it’s all in his head, that he’s real and he’s good and that he’s saved us, the ones that he’s saved.

But now, no new pose, no fashion, no fame, just a blank slate, a screen on which to project your own version of the dream. Is this the end of The Prisoner then, where Bowie rips the monkey mask off the madman he’s chased, only to find his own true face underneath?

Oops, should have said “spoiler alert.”

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Music Review: Otis Redding, Lonely & Blue: The Deepest Soul of Otis Redding

By Emily Carney

Sadly, Otis Redding‘s music seems to have limped off into the sunset, despite having a posthumous number one hit with “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” in 1967. Redding’s one hit was relegated to “classic rock” stations and was associated with MOR entertainment; his name was tainted with the voices of countless awful disc jockeys. However, a new disc should change his image: Lonely & Blue: The Deepest Soul of Otis Redding showcases his absolutely heart-wrenching soul songs.

The disc opens with “I Love You More Than Words Can Say,” which should, by rights, be the only love song ever written—it pretty much says it all and Redding’s voice is heartbreaking. It can be argued that great singers are actors; they tend to “act out” the songs they perform. Otis pours his heart out into every note—and no note is performed wrong.

“Gone Again” and the eerie “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember”—which references an airplane flying across the sky, his particular manner of death—are highlights of this disc, although each cut is an emotional tour de force. This is not easy listening if you’re feeling sad, beaten-down, and lonely, hence the name of Lonely & Blue. One becomes sad recalling that soon, Redding wouldn’t have dreams to remember.

“. . . You are the one that loved me,” Redding sings in another choice tune, “Everybody Makes a Mistake.” Redding deserves to have his due, even at the late date of 2013; he deserves to be loved. His pleading, emotional voice almost echoes a more contemporary star of R&B, the equally doomed Amy Winehouse. This is essential listening for those obsessed with soul, R&B, and music in general.

Lonely & Blue: The Deepest Soul of Otis Redding was released March 5 on Stax Records through Concord Music Group. It is available to order from the Concord Music website.

Music Review: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Push The Sky Away

By J Howell

Speaking about Push The Sky Away out of the context of Nick Cave‘s impressive and prolific body of work thus far is a bit difficult, but the Bad Seeds’ 15th album deserves to be taken on its own terms.

When a longtime friend posted a Cave-related link on Facebook, I mentioned that I’d received a review copy and was listening to it just then. This started (another) discussion about vintage versus newer Bad Seeds albums, a not-infrequent topic of conversation between myself and said friend, who holds Henry’s Dream-era Cave as the Seeds at the height of their powers.

A couple of songs in, I commented that, while the record was pleasant so far, it felt subdued—my exact words at the time were, “It’s good, but it’s like Abbatoir Blues took its antidepressants, which were just enough to make it not angry.” Especially coming off the heels of Cave’s recent, ferocious Grinderman records, Push The Sky Away, at least initially, comes across as perhaps just a bit soft. Which is, as it turns out, ultimately complete bullshit.

Or not, depending on one’s perspective and expectations. I’m of the mind that, while it takes a few listens for its full impact to be felt, Push The Sky Away is a beautiful record that holds up against any of Cave and the Bad Seeds’ other work, or anyone else’s.

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Music Review: Bajofondo, Presente

By Chelsea Spear

A few weeks ago, Bajofondo released their latest single, “Pide Piso,” on iTunes with little fanfare. As an admirer of musical polymath and Bajofondo member Juan Campodonico, I picked it up with little hesitation. Campo’s self-titled 2012 album caught my attention when it was nominated for the best Latin Alternative Grammy, and its ethereal songs and playful aesthetic made it a worthy competitor in that category.

Though Bajofondo takes a more restless approach to their chosen genre and musical tradition than did Campodonico’s solo project, his approach to music made me curious about how he’d work in a more collaborative setting. The 99-cent risk paid off, and the cascading melodies, shuffling electronic percussion, widescreen string section, and deft use of samples frequently made it into daily play.

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Music Review: Helado Negro, Invisible Life

By Chelsea Spear

The phrase “Helado Negro” translates into English as “black ice cream,” a seeming non sequitur that makes sense, in a strange way, for this studio project. Invisible Life features songs that carry a hint of comfort and refreshment, the way that sweet frozen treats do. However, the use of unexpected sonic textures brings with it an unexpected tang—like licorice ice cream—and the lush melodies and arrangements have an intoxicating aftertaste, like a scoop of vanilla in a pint of stout.

On his second LP, Invisible Life, Roberto Carlos Lange—the man behind Helado Negro—has written a series of lush melodies, which he stretches languorously over slow tempos and unusual time signatures. This makes his work sound as though it could form the soundtrack to a color-saturated character study inspired by the French New Wave or Wong Kar-Wai. He sings in a scratchy-sounding chest voice, sometimes allowing himself to lapse into a reedy, vulnerable falsetto. The conversational rhythms of his singing suggest Let’s Dance-era David Bowie, a comparison extended by Lange’s embrace and non-ironic use of obsolete musical technologies.

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Blu-Ray Review: Skyfall

By Less Lee Moore

Photo ©2012 Danjaq, LLC, United Artists Corporation, Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved.

Oh, James Bond fans. For everyone who was electrified by Daniel Craig’s debut in Casino Royale, there were at least two who loathed the follow up, Quantum of Solace. For all Bond fans, Skyfall should be a revelation. It fulfills the promise that Casino Royale made: that Craig’s Bond is one of (if not) the best, and that the character has finally arrived in the new millennium.

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