Archive for the ‘Releases’ Category
Album Review: Jimi Hendrix – “Valleys of Neptune”
Jimi Hendrix’s career was an incandescent flash of light that was snuffed out too soon. His life as a guitar god, from the release of his first album in 1967 to his fourth in 1970, lasted a mere four years before his death at the age of 27.
And yet there have been nine studio albums of Hendrix material posthumously released. In an era where musicians can take upwards of four or five years to release a single album, Hendrix was churning out one a year, with enough unreleased material still in the vault to warrant another release in 2010 – forty years after his death. That is astounding to me, and it really highlights the intense work ethic that drove him throughout his life in music.
Valleys of Neptune is billed as a “brand-new, completely unreleased studio album,” which may be technically true, but in reality, versions of many of these songs have appeared elsewhere, though usually of lesser quality and not easily accessible. To most listeners, these tracks will indeed be new. Valleys was assembled by Experience Hendrix, the estate led by Jimi’s stepsister Janie, and the company deserves credit for not toying with the archived material, but rather presenting it more-or-less how it sounded when it was recorded several decades ago.
It’s a shame that Broken Bells had to release their debut album on the same day that Gorillaz dropped their latest, Plastic Beach (which I reviewed yesterday).
That’s because, as I’ve mentioned before, Broken Bells sounds strikingly similar to their cartoon counterparts much of the time, but without the wild eccentricity and excitement. Those comparisons are inevitable since one half of Broken Bells is Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, who produced Gorillaz’ epic album Demon Days. The omnipresent analog synths that are Gorillaz’ trademark are present here as well, which usually leaves the singers as the only major difference between the two groups.
But that’s a significant difference. Whereas Damon Albarn plays off his hushed, melancholic croon in Gorillaz, James Mercer, of the Shins, adds a greater range to the styling of Broken Bells.
But Broken Bells is not a rip-off of Gorillaz and deserves to be judged on its own merits.
Plastic Beach – it’s the new compound for the cartoon characters which make up Gorillaz (and what you see on the album cover). According to a press release, it’s “made up of the detritus, debris and washed up remnants of humanity. This Plastic Beach is the furthest point from any landmass on Earth; the most deserted spot on the planet.”
And that’s an absolutely fitting place for this group of misfits to take up residence since Gorillaz make some of the most genre-melting and unique pop music you’ll hear. They don’t fit in anywhere but on their own unnatural island somewhere in the middle of the ocean.
It’s just too bad that the album starts off like its inspiration, and by that I mean a big pile of garbage.
Plastic Beach starts off harmlessly enough with a minute-long and rather unnecessary orchestral intro before segueing into the second track which is basically another intro track, only this time we get to hear Snoop Dogg phoning in some of the laziest rhymes he’s done as he welcomes everyone to the fictional island. With track three, “White Flag,” we finally get a real song. Unfortunately, it’s downright annoying and easily the worst song on the album. It features two British rappers, Bashy and Kano, who sound like two amateur freestylers struggling to come up with something clever to say over a lousy beat.
That’s over eight minutes of at best useless and at worst annoying music to start off the record. When you dig a hole that deep, it’s damn near impossible to get out. But Damon Albarn finally shows up on track four, and all is well with the world again.
Back in January, fellow writer Dan argued that Dave Grohl is the greatest rock artist of at least the modern era, if not ever. So he should be ecstatic to hear that Grohl’s main band, Foo Fighters, are preparing to record their seventh album.
Grohl announced the news on Friday at the Independent Spirit Awards, saying that Butch Vig would produce the record.
In a change of pace from previous albums, which were recorded in a high-tech studio in California, the new disc will be recorded entirely in analog in Grohl’s garage. No release date has been set, but September has been discussed as a possibility. The album will be accompanied by a documentary on the band’s history and the making of the newest album.
And of course, the news was accompanied by the obligatory, and profusely infuriating insistence that, according to Grohl, “I think this could be our heaviest album yet.” I really need to start keeping track of how often that phrase is used in the run-up to a new album.
-Sam
Here’s a sampling of some interesting stuff going on in the world of metal:
* Mudvayne has debuted their new video for the song “Beautiful and Strange.” It’s the second video in a three part series. And it didn’t take long for the video to be banned from all major outlets. One viewing and you’ll understand why. Censors don’t usually take kindly to buried-alive fallen angels digging up the graves of surprisingly full-chested naked, dead women and then proceeding to mount them and bang them silly all while images of torture and a girl actually getting her lips sewed together flash on screen. But hey, that’s fuckin’ metal! Go watch the necrophiliac’s dream over on VampireFreaks.com.
* Killswitch Engage have a new song, “My Obsession,” on the new God of War video game. Stream it at Noisecreep. (It’s really good.)
* Check out the cover art for Sevendust’s new album, Cold Day Memory, and prepare to be severely underwhelmed. Seriously, that’s the best you could come up with?
* Deftones have released the track list for their new album, Diamond Eyes.
* If anyone (like me) was hoping Limp Bizkit might return to the sound of their first album and/or their last album (aka more emphasis on the band, less on Fred Durst and rapping) this news should dash those hopes: Rappers Raekwon and Paul Wall will both have guest appearances on Gold Cobra.
* Dutch violin player, Karianne Brouwer, has a really cool cover of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”:
http://www.vimeo.com/9758791-Sam
Whenever bands take a long time between records and then come back with a drastically different sound, they take a serious risk in alienating their audience and jeopardizing their career.
That’s exactly what happened with Taproot, who, after a really good debut album (Gift) and a mediocre follow-up two years later (Welcome), took three years before making their next album, Blue-Sky Research, which scrapped nearly all of the band’s chugging riffs and unique screams and instead saw the band trying to reinvent itself as some kind of radio-friendly alternative outfit. The move was a complete disaster. The music was so watered down that it just came across like a puddly mess, and more importantly it angered a lot of the group’s core audience, myself included.
Look, I’m definitely not saying that bands should never change their sound. I don’t think that’s true at all. But bands should at least be able to gauge their own strengths and weaknesses and not seek to make music that they cannot pull off – like Lil’ Wayne’s “rock” album. I mean, “Prom Queen” is one of the most hideous musical abominations I’ve heard in recent years, but I digress.
With only a week before the release of their self-titled debut, Broken Bells are streaming their entire album on NPR untill its March 9th release date. Broken Bells is the latest collaboration between Brian Burton (or Danger Mouse as he is known) and Shin’s frontman James Mercer. You can either listen to specific tracks or stream the entire album from begining to end. This album seems to be a slight continuation of some of the moodier work that was done on the Demon Days album, which one of us seems to have mentioned.
Speaking of Gorillaz, this isn’t the only Danger Mouse related present NPR has up their sleeve. They are also streaming their upcoming album Plastic Beach. Word of warning, Gorillaz rarely stick to the same sound between major albums and this is no diffrent. I will leave it at that. Enjoy
The Black Keys released one of my favorite albums of 2008, Attack & Release. Produced by Danger Mouse, it featured a noticeable progression of the band’s sound and the songs were catchy as hell – just a bunch of really tasty southern psychedelic riffs and anguished crooning.
But after the record came out, the two band members started dabbling in all sorts of side projects like their rap-rock project Blakroc, Dan Auerbach’s solo album, and Patrick Carney’s band Drummer. It seemed like it would be a long time before we heard them together again in The Black Keys.
Thankfully, that’s not the case. And we will actually get to hear new Black Keys music much sooner than I ever anticipated. How soon? Well the band announced that their sixth album, Brothers, will be released on May 18th.
This time, however, Danger Mouse is only producing one track, “Tighten Up.” Carney and Auerbach will be handling most of the other production work themselves. So it will be interesting to see whether they can carry over the same magic from Attack & Release without a heavy Danger Mouse influence. Personally, I think they can.
Perhaps the coolest bit of news about this new album is that there will be a cover of Jerry Butler’s “Never Give You Up” (as opposed to Rick Astley’s more famous “Never Gonna Give You Up”, although a cover of that would be awesome as well.)
They chose a great album cover too:
Full track list after the jump.
Yeah, so Billy Corgan’s promise of releasing a new Smashing Pumpkins song every two weeks turned out to be pure B.S. Who couldn’t see that coming? But you can’t get too mad at the guy since he is giving away three or four albums’ worth of material for free.
And the next song up in his ongoing Teargarden by Kaleidyscope is called “A Stitch In Time.” It’s the third song of the 44 track album released so far. Is it just me, or is this starting to feel like Stephen Colbert’s “Better Know A District” segment?
Anyways, the band will be releasing the songs in groups of four as limited edition EPs. The first EP, titled Volume 1/Songs For A Sailor will be released on April 20th. The track list is:
- A Song for a Son
- Widow Wake My Mind
- A Stitch In Time
- Astral Planes
The first three tracks have already been released for free with the fourth expected in the near future.
The newest song, “A Stitch In Time,” is the weakest of the bunch. It’s got a real psychedelic vibe going on, but it’s listless and boring. It seems like it’s going to build up to something, but that something never comes and the song is over without anything really happening.
You can download all three of the released songs for free at the band’s website.
-Sam
More New She & Him
Whenever I’m about to write the band name “She & Him,” I always have to stop and ask myself whether they use the word “and” or the ampersand symbol (&). It’s the ampersand symbol, but it still gets me every time. Damn you, grammatical symbols!
Anyways, the important news about the band is that they’ve just released another new song from their upcoming album, Volume Two (or is it “II”? Frick!) which is set to be released on March 23.
The song, “Thieves,” is the album’s opening track. It’s got kind of a The Kinks-Roy Orbison mix vibe going on, but it’s not radically different from what you’ve heard on Volume One. Just another solid slab of heartsick folk rock. You gotta love the way Zooey Deschanel emotes on the line: “Two broken hearts don’t beat / any less”
-Sam