Tag: album

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Music Record Reviews

For Radiohead’s latest: hit “play” and repeat.

In October, Radiohead made headlines by releasing their new album, In Rainbows, online only and with no set price. Buyers were asked to pay what they felt like doling out, on top of a nominal (45 pence) credit card fee. The distribution method for the Brit rock group, which had no record-deal obligations and thus was free to release as they saw fit, caused a great deal of hand-wringing by music-industry establishment types.

Naturally, none of that really matters to most fans. The bottom line: Is the album any good? Answer: Lord, yes.

Taken in a gulp, In Rainbows is more soulful musically and more soul-searching lyrically than any album Radiohead has assembled to date. That’s not to say it’s their best album, but in a career with three certified masterpieces — 1995’s The Bends, 1997’s OK Computer, 2000’s Kid A — calling In Rainbows second-tier isn’t exactly a slap in the face.

Radiohead’s last effort, 2003’s solid but flawed Hail to the Thief, suffered for its political overtones, which were hardly subtle and instantly dated the album to the times, making it an artifact rather than an elastic, living work. Thief, the band’s longest album, was also hamstrung by its kitchen-sink inclusion of songs that were, quite frankly, B-side material at best.

But In Rainbows rights the ship. Ten songs long, Rainbows is lean and manages to improve with repeated listens. Lead singer/lyric writer Thom Yorke makes amorphous the threats and angst he feels, and In Rainbows perfects the premillennial, disembodied dread of OK Computer with a post-millennial realization that all the fears were founded.

Nowhere is that more evident than in “Bodysnatchers,” the album’s standout track. In the song, Yorke warns, “It is the 21st century, you can fight it like a dog,” before building to a frenzy, where he pleads and spits like a futurist hellfire and brimstone preacher, shouting, “I’ve seen it coming!”

Yorke’s bandmates have never sounded this cohesive, especially in songs such as “Reckoner” and “House of Cards.” And the gorgeous “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” is one of those songs that gets better as each second transpires — until it ends percussively, possibly disintegrating under the weight of all those geniuses working together in a room.

Not to get all fanboy on you. — Greg Akers

Grade: A-

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Music Record Reviews

Two Weeks Notice

Most modern electric blues these days sounds like it comes from Chicago, but apparently Crash Kole & the Bluesouls come by it honestly. A Chicago native, Kole leads his Memphis band through a set of accomplished, stomping, growling, City of Big Shoulders blues on Two Weeks Notice.

The album doesn’t exactly break new ground or put novel twists on a time-tested (or some might say time-worn) formula, but the result is certainly as convincing as any of the army of similar bands you can hear on Beale Street every year at the Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge.

Outside of some slide guitar on “Blues Ain’t No Trouble” and a little bit of Elvis echo trailing some of his phrasing, Kole is not a terribly distinctive singer/guitarist, but as long as they keep the tempos up, he and his band produce the kind of workmanlike blues groove that can keep a club hoppin’. The slow ones ­— such as “Tupelo” and the aforementioned “Blues Ain’t No Trouble” — don’t quite sink in as deeply as they need to. — CH

Grade: B

Crash Kole & the Bluesouls play a CD release party for Two Weeks Notice on Thursday, August 23rd, at Pearl’s Oyster House (299 S. Main Street). Showtime is 7:30 p.m.

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Music Record Reviews

Makeshift benefits the Church Health Center with its most consistent local music sampler.

For seven years now, local label/collective Makeshift has been documenting the city’s indie-rock scene with a series of compilations. The label’s focus now may be on putting out full-length records from individual artists, but Makeshift began as a compilation label (2000’s The First Broadcast), and this series is still central to the label’s identity.

The 22-track, roughly 75-minute Makeshift 5 is a benefit for the Church Health Center, which provides health-care to uninsured Memphians, many of them musicians, presumably many of them on this compilation.

Makeshift 5 doesn’t stray as far afield of the label’s Midtown indie-rock foundation as some past compilations and, as a result, might be the most consistent Makeshift sampler: It doesn’t peak as high as past mixes but also generally doesn’t bottom out as low.

One perhaps accidental feature here is that, despite Makeshift’s status as a vehicle for developing or introducing new artists, many of the standout tracks here come from musicians whose local bona fides predate Makeshift’s existence by many years.

The forcefully grimy indie rock of “Excuses” comes from Dragoon, which is made up of members of classic regional ’90s bands the Grifters (Memphis, natch) and Trusty (a Little Rock outfit I saw at the old Antenna club as a high-schooler in the early ’90s). Nineties-born comeback band the Subteens offer the rousing rocker “Never Gonna Happen.” Reformed local punk institution Pezz (another bunch of Antenna vets) is back with “Pimp Caesar.” Susan Marshall, whose major-label break with Mother Station dates a decade-and-a-half ago, contributes the sharp alt-country torch song “Arkabutla.” Even the Secret Service, which kicks things off with the typically ripping, roaring rocker “Outsiders,” could count, seeing as how the band is in part a vehicle for the guitar fireworks of former Big Ass Trucker Steve Selvidge.

Which doesn’t mean the young spate of more Makeshift-identified acts don’t make their mark. Excellent Makeshift acts the Coach & Four and Third Man are sadly M.I.A., but the Snowglobe family makes an appearance in three forms — with the full band “Blue,” with Makeshift founder Brad Postlethwaite’s melodic new-wave, acoustic-built gem “Particles Locked in a Chain,” and with Tim Regan’s Antenna Shoes’ “Singer.” Other highlights include Cory Branan’s playful “Muhammed Ali (and Me)” and the debut of Paul Taylor and Amy LaVere as a credited duo on the trippy yet rootsy “Embrace the Cosmos.” — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

Makeshift will be sponsoring an in-store appearance at Goner Records Saturday, August 11th, to promote Makeshift 5. Brad Postlethwaite, J.D. Reager & the Cold-Blooded Three, Dragoon, and Blair Combest are set to perform. The show is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. and is free.

(Makeshift)

“Just a regular feller singing songs for fun/Trying to have a good time without hurting anyone.” That’s how local musical prankster Muck Sticky describes himself on “Because I Can,” the album-opening declaration of principles from Bobolink Cove. But “I like to hit the bong and party all night long,” from “My Song,” is probably more to the point.

Muck Sticky’s high-pitched, half-rapped drawl is as acquired a taste as his semi-utopian, smoked-out, NC-17-rated worldview, but he’s never sounded more convincing than he does on this fourth album, something that can probably be credited in part to the work of ace producer/engineer Scott Bomar.

On most songs, Muck Sticky comes across as a backwoods midpoint between Beck and Mungo Jerry, except when he gets gangsta, where he’s more like somewhere between Slim Shady and Weird Al, though Muck’s total, gonzo dedication usually wins out.

The sex-rap “This N’ That” isn’t exactly Too Short, but it definitely holds your attention with a comic payoff. However, the torpid weed paean “High Times” only proves that, like so many limited artists before him, slow is not Muck Sticky’s friend.

Ultimately, Muck Sticky’s execution still doesn’t quite live up to his concept, but the gap is definitely closing. — CH

Grade: B

Muck Sticky will celebrate the release of Bobolink Cove on Friday, August 10th,

at Newby’s.

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Music Record Reviews

Fancy Footwork

Chromeo’s second album begins with a sample of “The Oompa-Loompa Song,” which would have been a better trick if Da Backwudz hadn’t used it on “I Don’t Like the Look of It” two years ago. Dave 1 and Pee Thug, the duo behind Chromeo, are certainly no trailblazers: Fancy Footwork borrows processed vocals from Daft Punk, cowbell from LCD Soundsystem, cheesy synth sounds from your pick of ’80s pop duos (Nu Shooz? Linear?), and, on “Momma’s Boy,” yacht-rock chops from Hall & Oates. But the album’s genial, low-key vibe forgives a lot, and while dance music typically doesn’t benefit from modesty, these songs have no other goals than catchiness and danceability, which they handily achieve. (“Opening Up (Ce Soir on Danse),” “Momma’s Boy”) — SD

Grade: B

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Music Record Reviews

Zion Crossroads

This full-on roots-reggae disc from ostensible blues musician/cultural anthropologist Corey Harris is a natural step in his apparent mission to forge a style of African diaspora pop. The album delves deeper into the Caribbean leanings Harris explored on Daily Bread, which itself followed 2003’s cross-continental Mississippi to Mali. The rhythmic insistence here does justice to the genre but not to the extent of Harris’ talent. The lyrical content is as circular as the music, with plenty of familiar reggae tropes, but there’s no question about the decadent empire “Babylon” in this scenario. The closing testament, though, defines the primary message of all Harris’ work: “Keep Your Culture.” (“In the Morning,” “Walter Rodney,” “Keep Your Culture”)

— Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

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Music Record Reviews

Onetime indie underdogs continue an unlikely ascent.

In 2001, when Spoon’s Girls Can Tell placed just outside the top 40 in the Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll, music writer Robert Christgau described it in his accompanying essay as “Spoon’s career album if you call that a career.” It was a dig not only at the band and its low-level career but also at the legions of indie groups with small, loyal audiences and not much chance for popular acceptance.

The past five years could be Spoon’s rebuttal to Christgau’s remark, with each subsequent album — Kill the Moonlight and Gimme Fiction — more challenging yet more popular than the previous. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga continues this upward trend. It may not be as immediately accessible as Fiction or as endlessly inventive as Moonlight, but the band builds on previous successes by crafting rhythmically intricate songs.

Ga also finds Spoon further entrenched in the studio, which is obvious on songs such as the dub-wise “The Ghost of You Lingers” and the gloriously messy “Eddie’s Raga.” But every song and sound is precisely calibrated, from the layers of instruments on “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” to the half-buried horns on “The Underdog,” courtesy of Jon Brion.

The soul elements may be new, but the subject matter is not: Singer-songwriter Britt Daniel is one of the most carefully self-positioning musicians around, constantly considering and reconsidering his place in the field. Just as previous albums began with screeds about the industry, so too does Ga: “Don’t Make Me a Target” sounds more defensive, as if Daniel is shooing away potential detractors.

Songs like “Rhythm & Soul” and “The Underdog” continue to bristle at both the mainstream and the margins: Spoon is too ambitious for indie, too complicated for radio play (although a Top 10 debut for this album might push them toward the latter). Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga ends with the one-two punch of “Finer Feelings” and “Black Like Me,” which extend Daniel’s musical musings while winding the album down. The former is even a fever dream of local loneliness: “Memphis comes creeping down my back,” Daniel begins, then: “They told me to stop scouting the field/They told me have a look in The Commercial Appeal.” — Stephen Deusner

Grade: A-

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Music Music Features

Black and Wyte

With their much anticipated post-Oscar follow-up album Last 2 Walk delayed until December, Three 6 Mafia masterminds DJ Paul and Juicy J are keeping their Hypnotize Minds empire afloat with a couple of recent satellite releases: Lil Wyte’s The One and Only and Crunchy Black’s From Me to You, both produced by the Three 6 duo.

The One and Only is the third studio album from Wyte, the group’s pale-skinned, Frayser-bred protégé, and the first since 2004’s Phinally Phamous.

Wyte is actually Hypnotize Minds’ most polished MC, if not its most thoughtful lyricist. (That title would go to fellow “Bay Area” product Frayser Boy.) Lil Wyte spits with a sure, rapid flow, best heard here on “That’s What’s Up,” where he explodes at the outset: “I was born a good ole Southern boy with money up on my mind/Took a thought turned it into a rhyme/And now I do this shit all the time/Purple lean in my cup, I go with a blunt and dro up in my mouth/And I feel Pimp C. and Bun B. when say y’all need to quit hatin’ on the South.”

The regionalism on that verse locates Wyte’s anger and defiance in something specific and identifiable, but the rest of The One and Only doesn’t fare as well. It showcases an MC almost completely devoid of humor. Wyte’s celebrated patrons have been lightening up of late, but their charge seems to be overcompensating for his skin color by constantly proving how hard he is. By contrast, Houston rap honky Paul Wall gets to crack jokes, and a sense of humor was always one of Eminem’s greatest gifts.

The single “I Got Dat Candy” is a transparent attempt at piggy-backing on Wall-style auto anthems like “Drive Slow” and “Sittin’ Sideways.” Where Wall delights in his candy-coated conspicuous consumption, however, Wyte is compelled to turn even a boast about a Life Saver-colored car into a growling act of menace.

This relentless aggression wears you down when it never seems to be about anything except the artist’s (perceived) personal aggrievement. The production is solid but doesn’t exhibit the growth Three 6 has shown on their own recent releases. Paul and J are presumably saving any new “Stay Fly”s for their own forthcoming album. And though the vocal flow is more than solid, the sameness — in tone and content — gets tiresome.

If Lil Wyte is seemingly a valued member of the Hypnotize Minds camp — one whom Paul and J are grooming for a breakthrough — the same can’t be said for Crunchy Black. Long a sinister, mysterious sidekick in Three 6 proper, Crunchy Black was the first casualty of the group’s post-Oscar success, parting ways with the group due to a disagreement over finances and the direction of Crunchy’s solo career.

As such, Crunchy Black had little say over the release of From Me to You, which was apparently pulled together by Paul and J from recordings Crunchy made while still in the duo’s good graces. Crunchy’s own self-directed solo effort is expected in the coming year.

From Me to You is, like all Hypnotize Minds product, produced by Paul and J, its 11 new tracks filled out with five “screwed” remixes, which slow down tracks already on the album.

As an MC, Crunchy is either incompetent or an acquired-taste original, depending on your perspective, and I find myself coming around to the latter. Though long a Three 6 bit player, he’s responsible for the most artfully frightening moment in the Three 6 catalog with his unnervingly amoral sing-songy essay on “the money and power” to close out Project Pat’s single “Don’t Save Her.” If nothing else, Crunchy’s flow is, like Lil Wyte’s quick-lipped aggression, a worthy aural change of pace from the typical Three 6-style chanted vocals.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing on From Me to You that matches the gravity of Crunchy’s “Don’t Save Her” verse or even the colorfulness of his persona.

The opening “Do Da Crunchy Black” is, sadly, not really the gangsta-walk instructional the title suggests. I had visions of a local counterpart to “The Humpty Dance” until the song opened with a humorless call-and-response where groups of men and women hector each other. (“You can have that bitch/I don’t love that bitch,” etc. Not exactly as fun as getting busy in a Burger King bathroom.)

On the other hand, Crunchy Black does use the song as a vehicle to promise to “act a fool” on behalf of his hometown. Unfortunately, most of the city’s political class has beat him to it. Quit slipping in the game, Crunchy!

Nor is “Black on Black” the daring, envelope-pushing, critical self-examination the title suggests. It’s just a description — I think — of his ride. No candy colors for Crunchy, unless black licorice counts. At least he’s more original than Lil Wyte in this regard.

Elsewhere, From Me to You amounts to a depressingly limited vision of the boundaries of the artist’s self-described lifestyle, detailing his drug habits (“Three Different Kinds of Weed”), sexual proclivities (“Suck on the Straw”), relationships with women (“I play bitches for these riches/I’m tryin’ get whatever I can out these bitches,” from “I Play Bitches,” which seems to be a heartwarming tale of turning an abused woman into a prostitute), and other extracurricular activities (lashing out at “Snitchin’ Azz Bitches,” potentially with his “Twin 45s”).

Judging by these releases, maybe Three 6 really does need some new artists, as they themselves suggest on the “Outro” to The One and Only, or at least to hurry up with Last 2 Walk.

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Music Music Features

Back to Black

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Formed nearly 40 years ago in the small Arkansas town of Black Oak and now based in Memphis, the story of Black Oak Arkansas stands as one of the most compelling tales in regional rock history.

This year, the band’s profile is on the rise, spurred in part by the recent release of The Complete Raunch ‘N’ Roll Live on the Rhino Handmade label. The reissue of the band’s perfectly titled 1973 live set Raunch ‘N’ Roll Live has been expanded to a double CD to include a similar live set from Seattle to go with the original Portland show.

During the first part of the ’70s, Black Oak Arkansas was a wildly popular touring band and Southern-rock entity with no immediate sonic contemporaries. Some fans of the genre view them as an acquired taste, and there are a couple of reasons why. First, the fluid grooves of the Allman Brothers or the Marshall Tucker Band are not the building blocks of the Black Oak Arkansas sound (though many of the extended three-guitar excursions on R ‘N’ R can hold their own). Rather, Black Oak Arkansas was a feral, stomping, unhinged animal in the developing world of early-’70s Southern rock, owing as much to ragged Delta blues and primal mid-’60s garage rock as they did any jam-oriented contemporaries.

Black Oak Arkansas was also an anomaly among successful ’70s bands for another reason. Other than a minor hit with a cover of Laverne Baker’s “Jim Dandy to the Rescue,” the band made no impact on the charts. Black Oak Arkansas’ large discography (13 albums between 1971 and 1980) and their hundreds of thousands of fans were made possible through incessant touring. A reliably heavy draw, bands like Black Sabbath and Emerson, Lake, & Palmer used to open for Black Oak. The live footage that dominates the fascinating documentary Black Oak Arkansas: The First 30 Years (2003, Rhino/Warners) shows stadium after stadium full of dedicated fans (including Bill and Justin Fox Burks

Hillary Clinton at a mid-’70s concert!) held rapt by kit-destroying drum solos, harmonious guitar jams, and the wild-ass washboard-abusing antics of frontman Jim Dandy.

The band fractured in the late ’70s for myriad reasons, including some shady management dealings. Dandy put together several lineups of the band throughout the ’80s, released some solo material, and, well, kept at it. Based in Memphis for some years now, Dandy’s current right-hand man is original guitarist and co-founder Rickie Reynolds, and the drums are being handled by Johnny Bolin, brother of late guitar legend Tommy Bolin.

When I recently spoke with Dandy, he was preparing to depart for Sweden, where Black Oak Arkansas were prominently featured in the Sweden Rock Festival alongside Motörhead, Ted Nugent, and the Scorpions. But he took time to discuss a new studio album and growing up in rural Arkansas.

Flyer: So, Black Oak Arkansas has a new studio album coming out?

Jim Dandy: Yeah, I recently finished recording it myself. It’s supposed to come out in August, and it will probably be on the SPV label. If there’s one thing I can do better than what I do on stage, it’s campaign for record deals.

Black Oak Arkansas was a massively popular touring act in the early-to-mid ’70s. How did you achieve this without radio airplay?

During our first three years of existence, we toured 300 days out of 365, and we thrived in Europe because of how music journalism is so different over there. Everywhere, the word spread. Kids heard about us. We were sort of a mythical thing, this being before the days of music videos and such.

In that day and age, nobody really moved around much [on stage], and we had an unforgettable show. I felt like the people deserved a sight more than a sound, and I was built for the big stage.

You built a solid and huge fan base.

Yeah, they freaked me out at first. Music writers were calling us “amphetamine buffalos,” but I looked out in the audience and saw these wide-eyed Manson eyes. I looked out in that audience and saw things I’d never seen. I mean, I came from Black Oak, Arkansas!

What were the early days in Arkansas like?

We were the first people in Black Oak to have long hair. We were all high school friends, and people looked at us like we were communists. I was sick of getting beaten up after school every day and asked Ricky Lee [Reynolds], “Hey, can you play three chords?” Then we went to New Orleans for a while. That’s where we did the first album, as Knowbody Else. We were terrible on that record.

How did the Rhino Handmade reissue come about?

Ha, not sure exactly. Raunch ‘N’ Roll was our first gold record. We had definitely hit our stride as a live band, and we had songs on there that had never been on other albums. That’s why I had raps before a lot of the songs, because they were new.

“Heaven” was the name of the compound, back in Black Oak, that housed the band at the height of your popularity. Ads were placed in the back of Creem magazine in which readers could purchase a square foot of the land for a dollar.

We weren’t there all that much, due to touring. And it was basically just a converted fishing resort. That was one of our manager’s bad ideas, another way to have control over us, and the Creem thing was just another moneymaking scheme.

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Music Record Reviews

Release the Stars

Rufus Wainwright cheekily kicks off his fifth album, Release the Stars, with “Do I Disappoint You?,” a bombastically symphonic song that recalls his previous albums, Want One from 2003 and Want Two from 2004. That title question is ostensibly directed toward a lover, but it might as well be posed to fans and critics frustrated by his departure from post-SoCal folk rock and the increasingly dreamy indulgences of his operatic leanings. Like those two previous albums, “Do I Disappoint You?” replaces guitars with rococo orchestrations and catchy choruses with soaring Valkyries, exaggerating pop emotions to operatic proportions.

What might have seemed like a restless artist’s diversion turns out to be a sea change for Wainwright, as Release the Stars makes abundantly clear with that immediate rhetorical question. Release the Stars, which was produced by Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant, retains the overreaching sweep of its predecessors. These songs lumber instead of glide. “Between My Legs” begins as a yearning ode to a faraway lover, but Wainwright piles on the music, ending the song with a “Thriller”-style narration and the central theme from Phantom of the Opera.

This is an unfortunate turn. On his early releases, Wainwright’s openly gay sensibilities threatened to upend many of the clichés of the singer-songwriter genre he was born into. (His father is Loudon Wainwright III; his mother is Kate McGarrigle.) He was never a natural fit in that field, but the awkwardness gave his laments extra gravity. Lately, fronting an orchestra instead of a band, he trades his barbed wit for indulgent camp, which is a surefire recipe for disappointment. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: C

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Music Record Reviews

Unique Brit band Art Brut aces its sophomore exam.

Britain’s Art Brut have to be one of the most interesting rock bands to emerge this decade. On their 2005 debut album Bang Bang Rock & Roll and even more in concert, every signifier suggested standard-issue hipster sarcasm and diffidence, but closer listening and watching revealed that frontman Eddie Argos meant every word he sang.

The band’s obvious comparison was to the Modern Lovers, where Jonathan Richman morphed Velvet Underground cool into guileless romper-room pop. But Richman was (and is) touched in some way. The optimism and sincerity of his music feels involuntary.

With Everyman Argos, clarity and good humor feel strived for — hard won — and more heroic for it. The band’s follow-up to Bang Bang Rock & Roll, It’s a Bit Complicated, doesn’t score as direct as its predecessor. Led by rousing instant anthems such as “Formed a Band” (the group’s autobiographical debut single), “Modern Art” (“Modern art makes me want to rock out!”) and “Good Weekend” (on the subject of a new girlfriend: “I’ve seen her naked! TWICE!”), Bang Bang Rock & Roll opened up a whole world. It’s a Bit Complicated is more limited — or focused — with doomed relationships and pop fandom the core of the band’s concerns.

Argos remains as sharp a wordsmith — conversational, funny, and perceptive — as rock music has right now. He shines on the sardonic, resigned break-up ode “People in Love”: “People in love lie around and get fat/I didn’t want us to end up like that,” he assures his ex. And on the nostalgic “Sounds of Summer,” memories of making a mix tape — consumed “under the cover of headphones/In the privacy of bedrooms” — are littered with telling details such as the “play and record button held down together.”

But It’s a Bit Complicated is at its best when these dual concerns collide. “Direct Hit” is a tale of a bloke who loves dancing with a new crush because he doesn’t have to come up with anything to say. “Post Soothing Out” is a break-up non-lament that muses on the function of pop songs to overdramatize romantic splits (“‘River Deep and Mountain High’/Those are words that will never apply/Cause I don’t lie awake at night/With thoughts of river depth or mountain height”). And “Pump Up the Volume” is the band’s new classic. Argos captures a fumbling make-out session in deft strokes — “We’re taking our clothes off in the wrong order/And you’re leaving your shoes on to make you look taller” — before a comic payoff that has him distracted from his paramour by the urge to turn up the radio to better hear the song that’s just come on. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-