Tag: Pop

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Music Music Blog

McKenna Bray Celebrates New Album

McKenna Bray

Yes, there are many Americana singers in Tennessee. It almost seems unfair to put an artist in that box. In the case of Memphis native McKenna Bray, it almost does her a disservice. Sure, there are touches of folk all over her new album, Once in a Blue Moon (Madjack Records), and even a banjo on a couple of tracks. But there are so many surprises in the songwriting, it defies any label that might suggest the Carter Family or simple folk strumming.

As you may have read, Bray’s voice evokes classic Linda Ronstadt, and that’s a better point of reference. It almost sounds as if Ronstadt released a tribute album of Richard Thompson songs. The lyrics are simple and direct, perhaps lacking some of the darker allusions that Thompson is prone to, yet still with plenty of shadows. There are elements of classic pop here, mingled with earthy instrumentation and atmospheric touches, presumably courtesy of Susan Marshall, Bray’s producer and manager.

The band is a veritable Bluff City Wrecking Crew, featuring the core personnel of David Cousar on guitar, Ken Coomer on drums, Dave Smith on bass, and Richard Alan Ford on pedal steel and/or banjo. Other talents are sprinkled throughout, including Marshall on vocal harmonies. Al Gamble, Peewee Jackson, Jeff Powell, Matt Ross-Spang, Mark Edgar Stuart also make appearances. And Will Tucker sings a lovely duet with Bray on the ambivalent relationship song “Dive,” adding some of his trademark blues guitar for good measure.

The playing is tasteful and restrained, but what really sets the album apart is Bray’s voice. It is no small feat to evoke the rich alto of Ronstadt, with the same unaffected, straightforward delivery that can enliven lyrics with a disarming edge. It’s understandable that she auditioned for American Idol. But really, she was too good for them. She avoids all the clichés of that game. And their loss is our gain.

McKenna Bray’s Once in a Blue Moon comes out on June 29. Check out her album release party tonight, June 19, at Lafayette’s Music Room, 8:00 pm.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Stephen Chopek

The first official Music Video Monday is our second offering from Stephen Chopek. 

“Staying” from the EP On Their Own is a about exploring a new city. Chopek relocated to Memphis from New Jersey last year.  “A few places in Midtown caught my eye that I thought would work well for a music video. My goal was to capture moments as they presented themselves in order to express the spontaneity of exploration,” he says. “I collected a lot of footage without knowing which song I would would be using it for. When I decided that ‘Staying’ was going to be the single, everything fell into place. The video serves as both a visual accompaniment to music, and a love letter to my new home.”

Prominently featured in the video is Alex Warble’s giant mural on the west wall of the Hi-Tone’s former location on Poplar Avenue. Can we have that declared a landmark?

Music Video Monday: Stephen Chopek

This is Chopek’s second Music Video Monday. How did he get featured twice? He emailed cmccoy@memphisflyer.com! 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Clay Otis and the Dream Shieks

Memphis musical chameleon Clay Otis gets serious on this week’s Music Video Monday. 

Ever record Otis releases is an exploration of a different corner of pop, R&B, and rock history. He can croon love songs and spit out soul shouts with equal aplomb. In this video for “Moral Untold” from last year’s album Citizen Clay, which he directed under his given name Clay Hardee, he combines compelling archival footage of armed conflict with footage of the band in the studio and some trippy transparencies. The best part is the unreal footage Otis uncovered of a young girl standing up to, the in the words of the song, “Big, big men with big, big guns”.   The video was shot by Chris Owen and edited by frequent Otis collaborator Jake Vest. 

Music Video Monday: Clay Otis and the Dream Shieks

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email a link to cmccoy@memphisflyer.com

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Juicy J and Justin Bieber in Maejor Ali Video

Memphis rapper Juicy J teams up with The Bieb on the new video “Lolly” for Maejor Ali, who produced two songs for Beiber’s Believe album. Juicy J also helped Katy Perry on her latest track “Dark Horse.”

Between Juicy J and Elliot Ives, the stars of pop can’t do it without their Memphis.

Video Bonanza:

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Music Record Reviews

Living With the Living–Ted Leo + The Pharmacists

Ted Leo doesn’t have a voice naturally suited to the brand of politicized pop-punk he’s been playing for more than a decade now. It’s thin and untextured, too studied in its enunciation and too weak in its falsetto to sound threatening or powerful. And yet, like many angry singers before him, Leo has turned what might be perceived as a shortcoming into an asset, writing lyrics that emphasize the cerebral over the physical and expanding his musical vocabulary to include tatters of reggae, new wave, and folk — whatever gets his point made. As a result, he comes across as an intelligent everyman who has reluctantly accepted a calling and steeled himself to succeed despite his limitations. As he remarks on “The Sons of Cain,” the galvanizing opener on his new album, Living with the Living, “I’ve got to sing just to exist… and to resist.”

“The Sons of Cain” showcases everything Leo does well: It rings out loud and fast, an adrenaline rush of pop-punk guitars whose double-time tempo and impassioned, imperfect delivery alone make it catchy. However, his political frustrations over the Iraq war and the brutal, militarized culture it has created seem to be getting the better of him on Living with the Living, with very few tracks living up to the promise of “The Sons of Cain.” “Army Bound” stalls continuously, even when it nabs the Kinks’ “Victoria” melody for its bridge, and “Colleen” never gets moving, thanks largely to its overly simplistic structure that tries to rhyme every single line with its title. Curiously, many of the album’s passages, like the half-rapped delivery on “Bomb. Repeat. Bomb” or the lengthy coda of “The Lost Brigade,” sound telegraphed and flat — like ideas that never panned out.

The album’s most damning flaw isn’t the uninspired and uninspiring music but Leo’s tone. Where he once sounded outraged but relentlessly hopeful, now he sounds outraged and bitter, his usually incisive lyrics turned blunt and accusatory. He sounds like he’s no longer trying to change the world and instead is just complaining. War is hell indeed. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: C+

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News The Fly-By

Pops Goes …

Shortly after the Elvis birthday pops concert in January, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra (MSO) marketing department received an ominous anonymous note: “We have Robert. Be very afraid.”

But the Robert who had been kidnapped wasn’t Robert Moody, one of the three potential pops conductor candidates to succeed Vincent Danner but a cardboard cutout of him.

Cutouts of the three candidates, Moody, Matt Catingub, and Michael Krajewski, had been placed in the lobby of the Cannon Center as part of an ongoing, audience-guided selection process. The Moody cutout, worth about $200, was stolen from a Cannon Center storage room; the other two cutouts remain in the symphony’s possession and unharmed.

The symphony has been searching for a new principal pops conductor for more than a year and wants to take the pops series in a new direction.

“Not all orchestras who play pops have that natural talent for making the music bubble in a pops setting, but the MSO can do that, and our audiences sense it,” says Jackie Flaum, public relations manager for the symphony. “A good symphony can play Mozart and John Williams [film-score composer for Jaws, the Indiana Jones trilogy, and Superman] with equal skill. How can we do all that? The best way is to find a leader who loves and understands pop music in a symphonic setting.”

The MSO charged each candidate to program two concerts. Catingub’s background in big band inspired his September performance of “Misbehavin’ Nightly with Byron Stripling,” in which he featured his own music from the film Good Night, and Good Luck. Moody, meanwhile, wowed audiences with his “Star Wars and More,” a tribute to John Williams’ cinema scores, in which he tore open his shirt and turned dramatically to reveal that he was the Man of Steel at the climax of the Superman theme.

Krajewski’s “Hollywood Spectacular” debuted March 10th and featured music from blockbusters across the decades, including Ben-Hur and Gone With the Wind. His rendition of the “Colonel Bogey March” from The Bridge on the River Kwai even included a segment for audience participation. “I know you’ll want to whistle to this,” Krajewski said, and proceeded to divide them into “Group 1” and “Group B” to perform their respective parts.

Audience reaction has been positive across the board. “So far, they seem to like the candidates equally well but for different reasons,” says Flaum.

However, in a letter from the marketing department to the kidnapper or kidnappers, the symphony cautions that the cutout’s disappearance may adversely affect Moody’s chances.

“We do not negotiate with terrorists,” the letter says, and concludes with the bold affirmation, “WE ARE NOT AFRAID!”

Flaum, however, remains cautious. “We have no leads in the disappearance of the cutout of Robert Moody and no idea who would do such a thing. We have heard nothing from the cutout or the kidnapper since, and we greatly fear for the cutout’s safety.”