// Category Archive for: Music

Music Review: Gary Clark Jr., Blak and Blu

By Danny R. Phillips

It shines like a signal flare in the midnight sky for me when hipsters and “tastemakers” love an artist. I do not know why. Maybe it’s my lifelong need to be difficult, to go against the flow. It’s kind of like my urge to see a movie that Siskel and Ebert panned; it’s going against the grain. Moreover, my feelings for Gary Clark Jr.‘s long awaited debut Blak and Blu are no different.

First I must state: I love the blues. From Skip James to Little Walter, on down to Hendrix, The White Stripes, and The Black Keys, I like that sense of longing, the feeling of loss, of desperation, coupled with a mastery of their instruments that seems, forgive me, supernatural. While Clark Jr. is an exceptional player that is a borderline virtuoso, his debut feels a bit flat to me. Blak and Blu is a record with only slightly more balls than John Mayer at his most ballsy; there are good moments of brilliance and wonder, and I will discuss them next, but for the most part, this debut is a typical major label debut cloaked in pseudo-Hendrix flamethrower work.

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Music Review: Elton Duck

By Cait Brennan

In the modern history of popular music, the “great lost album” is a mythology that looms large. Whether it was the brilliant lost fourth Verve/MGM Velvet Underground record (pieces of which surfaced in the mid ’80s on VU and Another VU), the Beach Boys’ Smile, Prince’s Black Album, Eno’s My Squelchy Life, or even Danger Mouse’s Grey Album, pop music is littered with tantalizing projects that were abandoned, lost, or suppressed by hostile label execs.

But all those artists, at least, got to release something, sometime. Sadly, one of the finest “lost” albums came from a band whose promising career, like their self-titled debut, got stopped in its tracks. Now, an extremely limited pressing of Elton Duck‘s long-thought-lost debut album has finally made its way through the wilderness, and it more than lives up to the legend. If you like power pop you need to own this record, period.

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Music Review: Peggy Sue Play The Songs Of Scorpio Rising

By J Howell

Following Peggy Sue‘s brilliant first two records, listeners may be a bit surprised by the band’s choice to (mostly) recreate the soundtrack from Kenneth Anger’s 1963 film Scorpio Rising as a next move. Somewhat predictably, though, the record is flat-out brilliant.

Modern music fans with a Phil Spector bent should take especial heed: Peggy Sue recreates, perhaps most importantly, the spirit of the original tracks while finding a sonic space for them to exist in that feels a bit more like alternate-universe versions of familiar songs than slavish imitation or heavy-handed “updating”. The band deftly walks the fine line between reproducing the original songs and making them their own, somehow managing to treat the “teenage drama” factor of many of the tracks with a respectful empathy that feels less melodramatic than urgent. Elsewhere, Scorpio Rising is just plain fun.

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Music Review: Merchandise, Children Of Desire

By Less Lee Moore

As much as I loathe music reviews featuring lazy equations like, “take one part [name of band] plus one part [name of other band] . . . ” in the case of Merchandise‘s Children of Desire, it does make for a good jumping off point. What separates Children of Desire from bands that are just a formulaic rehashing of previous, and far superior bands, is how they merge these styles and sounds to create something unique and bracing that doesn’t actually sound like anything else.

The album opens with “Thin Air,” a short, yet yearning piece that feels like an introduction for what’s to come. “Time” is longer, but still somewhat freeform in that it doesn’t rely on shopworn riffs or rhyming couplets. Singer Carson Cox has a rather idiosyncratic voice and delivery, ranging from falsetto to a deeper baritone; no matter how he’s singing, what registers is a sincerity and frankness that is offset by a combination of feedback, synths, processed drums, and subtle basslines that give these songs an oddly retro yet completely modern feeling.

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Music Review: Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs, Sunday Run Me Over

By Danny R. Phillips

Country music—as a genre—has been a crapshoot for the last decade or so. For every Wayne Hancock or Justin Townes Earle that wade into the deep end of true country song craft, there’s a Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood, or Sugarland that claim the country mantle but are merely pop acts with lap steel.

That’s why I find a group like Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs to be such a kick in the pants; they embrace instrumentation as if they were recording with the Carter Family, and give bear hugs to tradition. Holly, an Englishwoman by birth, delivers more twang than Loretta Lynn. Two songs in, you’d swear she just walked down from The Blue Ridge Mountains with her flour sack dress on, well-worn Bible tightly in her hand. It is a respite from the everyday, manufactured “country” backwash.

Sunday Run Me Over is the perfect companion to last year’s fantastic (and my #2 album of the year behind Foo Fighters’ Wasting Light) No Help Coming (reviewed here).

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Music Review: Ty Segall, Twins

By Less Lee Moore

Despite being astonishingly prolific, I’ve only gotten wise to Ty Segall‘s musical output recently; my album intro was June’s Slaughterhouse, performed with Segall’s touring band (reviewed here). Hearing Twins, recorded almost entirely by Segall himself, has proved he’s not a one trick pony. Twins hits the sweet spot between heavy guitar fuzz and pretty melodies and is immediately, deliriously enjoyable.

That’s not to say Twins is full of disposable pop songs. In these post-post-ironic times, it’s not uncommon for music fans to feel distrustful of something they like immediately, concerned about being manipulated by both our nostalgia and the desire for something that’s not a rip-off.

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Expanding Circuits: Q&A with David Dacks, Artistic Director at The Music Gallery

By Ricky Lima

I think that some of the most interesting and forward thinking stuff is being done in the electronic scene. There is something about having the ability to literally craft every instrument and sound an artist uses that encourages a high level of creativity. From October 12 to the 21, The Music Gallery presents X Avant New Music Festival VII: Expanding Circuits, a music festival dedicated to electronic music. The festival will take place in Toronto, Ontario at The Music Gallery. I had a chance to talk to David Dacks, the artistic director at The Music Gallery, to discuss this year’s X Avant festival.

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Music Review: Dark Dark Dark, Who Needs Who

By Chelsea Spear

If Who Needs Who dropped in the early 1990s, Dark Dark Dark would have appeared in Sassy magazine’s “One to Watch” column. This band is the real deal. Frontwoman Nona Marie Imrie has a striking voice, their songs are catchy and insightful, and their arrangements and the spare production cast a spell over the listener. This Minneapolis-based quintet has a great album in them. The band’s third long-player isn’t quite that album.

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Music Review: John Cale, Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood

By Emily Carney

John Cale turned 70 in March; however, his music proves to be age-proof with his new album, Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood. Don’t ask; I have no idea about the title, either. Cale does have typically inscrutable album titles.

Usually when musical artists of any sort turn 70, they do endless “farewell” or “greatest hits” tours, or they engage in embarrassing collaborations with a very 1990s-sounding Metallica (I’m looking at you, Lou Reed. Yeah, I said it). Cale is doing neither, refuses to give into age, and is turning out impressive original compositions that aren’t at all dated or misguided. He’s only gotten better and more experimental as he’s gotten older.

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Music Review: Timi Yuro, The Complete Liberty Singles

By Emily Carney

American singer Timi Yuro was described as “the little girl with the big voice,” lending her legacy nicely to future blue-eyed soul singers such as the late Amy Winehouse, Duffy, and Adele. However, Yuro’s influence spread like tree roots on both sides of the ocean; artists as disparate as Elvis and Morrissey considered themselves Timi Yuro fans. Her voice was also heard all over Northern Soul dance floors during the 1970s. Her career ended in the late 1960s with her marriage, but she had some impressive celebrity fans. Excellence never goes away, though.

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