// Category Archive for: Music

Music Review: The Very Best of Vince Guaraldi and The Very Best of The Bill Evans Trio

By Emily Carney

In the last six months, Fantasy Records and Riverside Records (through Concord Music Group) released compilations detailing the best selections of jazz behemoths, including Vince Guaraldi (on Fantasy) and The Bill Evans Trio (on Riverside). Both compilations are great primers for those interested in getting a feel for both artists.

Vince Guaraldi was a jazz pianist and immortally associated with “Linus and Lucy,” otherwise known as the music from the Charlie Brown TV specials. This disc, featuring 14 of his best cuts, reflects that fame and has the iconic songs from those shows (“Linus…” as well as “Charlie Brown Theme,” “Christmas is Coming,” and “Christmas Time is Here”).

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Music Review: Gemma Ray, Island Fire

By Julie Finley

I stumbled upon Gemma Ray a few years ago by taking a listen to her album, Lights Out Zoltar!. It was actually her second full-length album, but the first I ever heard of her. That album was rock-solid, and mighty impressive.

So, its only natural that I’ve followed her career somewhat. I am no expert on Ms. Ray, but I do know this: She writes and performs her own music. She isn’t some pretty face template with a producer and bankroll. Granted, Gemma does have a pretty face, but there is clearly more going on with her creatively, compared to the many other current female performers she has been compared to. Her skills are even impressing fellow musicians who actually have some taste and skills themselves.

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Assemblog: September 21, 2012

Grease 2: “Friday night . . . talent show!”

New this week on Popshifter: Danny calls Bob Mould’s Silver Age “flawless;” Cait thinks Coal Porters’ Find The One is “gorgeous;” Elizabeth Keathley introduces a new series on “linear television” I look at the art of Frankenweenie; chat with Andrea and Paul of horror lecture series The Black Museum; give you the goods on Fantastic Fest 2012; and review Jason Lapeyre’s great new film Cold Blooded.

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Coal Porters, Find The One

By Cait Brennan

Sid Griffin is one of the great, unheralded musicians of the last 30 years.

How unheralded? Wikipedia, that self-styled arbiter of “notability,” doesn’t even have a page for him. If it did, it would do well to start by calling him one of the most important founding fathers of alternative country.

In the early ’80s, Griffin’s outfit the Long Ryders was a good decade ahead of the alt-country movement. Combining Gram Parsons-style Cosmic American Music with hard-edged, punk-influenced rock, Griffin, with guitarist Stephen McCarthy, drummer Greg Sowders, and a succession of bass players (notably Tom Stevens) brought a much-needed boot-kick in the pants to L.A.’s Paisley Underground scene, and influenced a generation of bands that followed.

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The Spinning Special: Mary Edwards, Eastern/Central & Mountain/Pacific

By John Lane

To understand the title of this review and to enter into the spirit of the occasion, one needs to watch this first; it’s mandatory.

Such is the momentous arrival of Mary Edwards‘s new album Eastern/Central & Mountain/Pacific! Her album title harkens back to a time during the 1970s when television networks would announce the scheduled show times applying to those specific time zones; the casual spectator was always given a dual sense of sweeping national geography and a sense of union, that we were all bound together by what was coming across the channel.

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France Gall, Made in France: France Gall’s Baby Pop

By Emily Carney

France Gall’s mid-1960s “baby pop” was engineered in part by one Serge Gainsbourg, the dirty old man of French music who took Jane Birkin’s English accent to new, filthy heights with their duet “Je T’aime . . . Moi Non Plus” in 1969.

That being said, Old Serge gave the then-teenage Gall a ditty called “Les Sucettes,” a lovely paean to sucking on lollipops that doubled as a song about oral sex. Gall allegedly was mortified to discover what she was actually singing about (Gainsbourg later recorded his own perverted, “wink wink” version, not surprisingly—this guy did a song once called “Suck Baby Suck”).

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20/20, 20/20 and Look Out! Reissues

By Cait Brennan

Before Pete Townshend even coined the term, power pop has been competing for oxygen—airplay, respect, dollars, a place in history—with bloaty classic rock. Virtually every interminable flatulent hour of every ponderous wanking jam-band guitar solo on every tiresome, self-indulgent, derivative, larcenous, mystic-hokum junkie 1960s blues-rock “gods” album has been catalogued, compiled, reissued, remixed, remastered, etched into 180 gram virgin vinyl, and shoved into soul-deadening collectible box sets like the rigor mortis museum pieces they are. Meanwhile, some of the most vital music of the rock era, made by great power pop, New Wave and American hard-pop bands, sits forgotten in zombie record label vaults, as the iron oxide tape slowly peels away to dust.

Thankfully, there are still some boutique record labels, run by actual music lovers instead of actuaries, willing to raid those vaults and bring forth musical treasure. So it is with Real Gone Music’s lovingly assembled reissue of 20/20’s acclaimed Portrait albums, 20/20 and Look Out!, two records that helped redefine American rock music at the turn of the 1980s. And they sound as vital as ever.

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Blind Benny, No Honor EP

By Less Lee Moore

If you’re looking for a new band to get into, you should check out Blind Benny. The duo of Jade <3 and Jonathan Carmelli hails from Brooklyn and their music is enthralling. Their EP, No Honor, features six songs, each bursting with talent in both songcraft and performance. Best of all, there’s a yearning quality that belies the band’s obvious pop hooks.

Right away, “Chewjitsu” feels like a hit single. It’s positively anthemic, but the sweetness is cut with some dark undertones. Although you can easily imagine this song in the soundtrack to your favorite ’90s indie romcom, it’s still fresh and modern. Jade’s voice is a big reason why: it’s cute but not cutesy; plaintive but not cloying; tiny and huge at the same time.

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Weep, Alate

By Less Lee Moore

An alate is a winged reproductive of a social insect (especially ants or termites, but the term can also be applied to aphids and some thrips). Alate females are typically those destined to become queens (also referred to as gynes), whereas alate males are occasionally referred to as “drones” (or “kings”, in the case of termites). However, the existence of reproductives that do not have wings necessitates a term to distinguish the winged from the wingless reproductive forms. This is an example of polymorphism associated with eusociality.
—Wikipedia entry on “alate”

On Weep‘s latest album, Alate, vocalist and guitarist Doc Hammer stretches his musical and vocal capacities into heretofore unexplored territories, with mixed results. Although not as immediately gratifying as the band’s previous release, Worn Thin, the expansive nature of Alate still brings considerable pleasures.

Opening track “It’s So Late” seems to shrug and say, “Oh hey, remember us? We’re Weep and this is what we sound like,” featuring all the hallmarks that we’ve come to associate with the band: ringing guitars, New Romantic synths, vaguely Goth basslines, and memorable melodies. Yet immediately we sense a change in Weep’s sound. Hammer’s voice is still gravelly, but there is a sprightly nature that we have not heard before. It’s startling and charming all at once.

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Micah Sheveloff, Exhibitionist

By Chelsea Spear

Listening to Micah Sheveloff‘s solo debut brings to mind a variant on everyone’s favorite movie trailer voiceover: “IN A WORLD. Where smug, solipsistic bros have taken over the airwaves. ONE MAN. Can save the ‘singer/songwriter’ genre from navel-gazing boredom.”

While Micah Sheveloff easily fits into this niche, his work lacks the snoozy self-absorption that has given it a bad name. His music, with its rich melodies, rolling bar chords, quotable lyrics, and that lived-in marvel of a voice, elevates his material from the closing credits of Grey’s Anatomy to something more transporting and otherworldly.

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