Foo Fighters "Wasting Light"

Music review: Foo Fighters Move Forward with Wasting Light

By The Burg Staff on Apr. 13, 2011
By Matt Ashare
Is it finally time to stop referring to Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl as that guy who played drums in Nirvana? Sure, his powerhouse backbeats were integral to the explosive drive of 1991’s landmark Nevermind — you might say, Grohl put the hard in Kurt Cobain’s rock.
But that was 20 years ago. And it’s not like he’s been even the least bit idle since Cobain’s 1994 suicide: The Foos emerged as a fully-formed modern-rock entity in the spring of ‘95 and, with the release of Wasting Light this week, they’ve now got seven studio albums to their credit. Indeed, given the number of lineup changes the Foos have endured, they’ve shown a remarkable consistency, artistically and commercially, over the past decade and a half. (Unless you count the acoustic side of 2005’s 2-CD In Your Honor as some kind of major deviation, which I don’t.)
     And in his spare time, Grohl has found time to team up with guitarist Josh Homme, returning to the drums for Queens of the Stone Age’s metal epic “Songs for the Deaf” in 2001 and then partnering with Homme and former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones as Them Crooked Vultures. (The super-trio’s self-titled debut came out in 2009 and they’ve reportedly got another one on the way.)
     Wasting Light is already being hailed by some — Rolling Stone comes to mind — as the best FF disc since The Colour and the Shape (1997), and it very well might be. But it’s definitely not simply a return to the form of that disc — to the tightly wound pop-punk of “Monkey Wrench” or the brooding power-balladry of “My Hero.” That much is apparent from the muscular guitar riff that introduces the disc’s first single, “Rope”: It certainly owes more to the retro-alloys Homme mines in Queens of the Stone Age than anything Grohl’s done on his own before, and probably more still to the “Black Dog” wizardry of John Paul Jones. There’s even a drum solo refrain leading into an heroic guitar solo that’s just so early-’70s arena rawk, if you know what I mean.
     Grohl hasn’t completely gone over to the dark side. No, he’s simply put together what stands as the Foos’ most musically ambitious album to date, an amalgam of grunge, punk, metal and power-pop that’s never too fractious. “Rope,” for example, wouldn’t be a single if it weren’t for its sugary — yet never quite syrupy — chorus, which builds to a nice melodic climax before those serrated guitars return.
     Unrequited love mixes with ambivalence, bitterness even, in “Dear Rosemary,” a kiss-off of sorts bolstered by a wall of anthemic guitars and the kind of clever-enough refrain (“Truth ain’t gonna change the way lie/Youth ain’t gonna change the way you die”) that’s been Grohl’s stock-in-trade since the first FF disc.  But “White Limo,” with its screamed vocals and dark, churning guitars is twisted metal through and through. It really wouldn’t seem out of place on one of Homme’s Queens discs.
     And, yet, the ghosts of Nirvanas past can’t help but haunt Wasting Light. Not only did Grohl bring Butch Vig, the engineer who helped mastermind the alt-rock breakthrough of Nevermind, back to produce the disc, but Nirvana adjunct guitarist (and former Foo Fighter) Pat Smear has rejoined the band. As if that weren’t enough to make the connection, that’s Kirst Novoselic’s anchoring the angst of the wistful “I Should Have Known,” which rises to a screaming crescendo with Grohl repeating the pained, “No, I cannot forgive you yet…” He may be talking about Kurt, but I kinda doubt it. . .
Ashare is a freelance writer based in Lynchburg and former music editor for The Boston Phoenix.

Liam Gallagher Beats Brother Noel to the Punch with Beady Eye

Music review: Beady Eye Look Back Toward the Beatles

By The Burg Staff on Mar. 09, 2011
By Matt Ashare

Every couple or three years, it seems, another English band steams across the Atlantic, their bags stuffed with the kind of hyperbolic press that's a Brit-crit staple, promising a nostalgic new twist on the sounds of swinging ’60s London or class of ’77 punk. In 1994, it was Oasis, a brother fronted group who were said to have one foot defiantly planted in both eras. Singer Liam Gallagher's fuck-all sneer was definitely — no, maybe — a third cousin twice removed from Johnny Rotten's spiteful delivery; guitarist Noel Gallagher wrote hard, indelible riffs that carried more than faint echoes of the Lennon/McCartney songbook; and Oasis were saddled by over-eager scribes with the unfortunate moniker "The Sex Beatles."

       All's well that ends well, I suppose: After years of brotherly squabbling, bad behavior, and big hits, Liam and Noel went out with a bang that erupted into a fist fight on stage in France two years ago. Since then, it's been Liam, not Noel, who's been working his way back to the USA babe, with three Oasis regulars, guitarists Andy Bell and Gem Archer, and drummer Chris Sharrock, in tow. This new band of non-brothers, strapped with the rather unsavory sobriquet Beady Eye (false modesty, or was "The Liam Gallagher Project" already taken?), aren't looking to make a break with the past so much as perpetuate the brand: "Different Gear, Still Speeding," as the title of their debut suggests, makes a few minor modifications to the machinery, but Liam's not shy about steering this trusty old chasis up and down the same long and winding road Noel's always favored.

       Ok. I'll stop with the Beatles allusions. There are simply far too many Lennonesque moments on "Different Gear" to enumerate here, not to mention direct cops from "Revolver," "Imagine," etc. . . There’s even “Beatles and Stones,” a retro Faces rocker that loudly proclaims “I’m going to stand the test of time/Like Beatles and Stones.” But first, Liam lets Noel have it, with a big, banging, wall-of-guitars monolith cheekily titled "Four Letter Word," as in "I don't really know what I'm feeling/A four letter word really gets my meaning." It's 1994's Definitely, Maybe all over again, only now we know exactly who rhymes like "It's about time your mind took a holiday/You're all grown up and you don't want to play" are aimed at.

If there's a revelation here, it's that Liam and co. manage to find plenty of fine, familiar melodies without Noel's guru-like guidance. Their several stabs at “Wonderwall” grandeur culminate with Liam earnestly crooning “it’s not the end of the world, oh no/It’s not even the end of the day.” But it’s not even end of the album: “Different Gear” fades to blue with “The Morning Son,” tempting tedium with a six-minute neo-psychedelic opus that ends in a mess of drums Noel might have nixed. 
http://www.the-burg.com/blogit/entry/music_review_beady_eye_look_toward_the_beatles 

To Be or Not to Be a Radiohead Fan

http://www.the-burg.com/blogit/entry/music_review_radiohead_get_back_to_business_on_king_of_limbs

Music review: Radiohead Get Back to Business on “King of Limbs”

The Burg Staff on Mar. 02, 2011
By Matt Ashare
When we last heard from them, Radiohead — that enigmatic big little band from England — seemed bent on shaking up a business model that had stood since the dawn of vinyl. With no label support, the group invited fans to pay what they wished in 2007 for a download of “In Rainbows.” The strategy also served as an effective marketing campaign, as cultural pundits scrambled to grasp the meaning of it all. Inevitably, perhaps, the music was overshadowed by media static.
  Sitting here now, with an actual CD of “In Rainbows” nestled on a shelf next to the band’s 1993 debut, “Pablo Honey” (“Creep” anyone?) and “OK Computer,” the bold, guitar-driven 1997 album that established Radiohead as a major musical force — a subtler but no less cerebral Pink Floyd, or maybe a less overtly political heir to U2’s grand guitarscapes, with singer Thom Yorke cast as the digital age’s reigning king of pain — two thoughts come to mind. For all its airy synth textures, electro-beats, and disembodied vocals, “In Rainbows” is far more accessible, and enjoyable, than I remember. More importantly, while its original mode of distribution seemed to challenge conventional notions of what music is worth, in the end Radiohead profited from an old-school paradigm: the download, like the bygone vinyl single, was simply a loss leader — a tease — for an $80 “In Rainbows” deluxe edition, and that handsome CD on my shelf. Radiohead simply put a new twist on the tried and true.
  They’re at it again. After abruptly announcing on Valentine’s Day that a new Radiohead album, “King of Limbs,” would be available as a download the following Saturday, the band created a bigger stir by delivering the “disc” a day early. “Limbs” didn’t benefit from the big build-up to “Rainbows,” but it created a stir nonetheless. Forthcoming, in late April or early May: Vinyl and CD, as well as a deluxe “newspaper” version featuring two 10-inch vinyl disc, a CD, and over 600 pieces of “artwork.”
  With eight tracks that fly by in under 40 minutes, “Limbs” feels even more like a loss leader than “Rainbows.” Longer than most EPs, but shorter than an LP, perhaps it’s meant to suggest that, in the age of downloads and digital media services like Pandora, those analog-era designations are no longer useful. And, yet, “Limbs” does have something akin to the ebb and flow of an “album.” The first half — yes, I’m finally going to mention the music — is flush with du-jour dubstep rhythms.
  The fluttering piano the introduces the first track, “Bloom,” quickly gives way to a rushed beat that feels like it’s tripping over itself and Colin Greenwood’s nearly subsonic bass (no guitars in sight). Yorke’s apparitional voice is front and center, but the only lyric I can make out is “Open your mouth wide/Universal sigh.”
  Typical Yorke: at once inscrutable and evocative.
  Guitarists Johnny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien arrive with an insistent scratch of a riff on “Morning Mr. Magpie,” and insinuate “Little By Little” with a bit of melodic interplay.
But it’s back to scattershot drums ‘n’ bass for the wordless exercise “Feral.” And then, viola!, the white lab coats come off and we’re back on quasi-familiar ground: the piano chords of “Codex” carry faint echoes of “Karma Police”; “Lotus Flower” has the verse/chorus structure of a potential single; acoustic guitars ground “Give Up the Ghost”; and for all his mumbling, Yorke doesn’t stumble over the key line of the final track, “Separator.” With guitars swarming like pixies around his spectral falsetto, he warns, or promises, “If you think this is over, then you’re wrong.”
  The album as unending project: a business model for the 21st century. 

Blast from the Past: Michael Jackson and Ozzy Osbourne

Here's a little blast from Pop Rocks past. Obviously it wasn't written in 2009. . . Don't remember the original pub date, but the Phoenix republished it in July of 2009. Guess someone there liked it. . .

Send in the clowns

The wacky worlds of Michael Jackson and Ozzy Osbourne

By MATT ASHARE  |  July 2, 2009

Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/85906-send-in-the-clowns/#ixzz1FNgbDNbi

TWO OF A KIND

The New York Post got to resurrect its priceless "Wacko Jacko" headline. Barbara Walters scored Super Bowl-level ratings without having to lift a pretty little finger. And Michael Jackson, well, no matter how you slice it, he got screwed royally. That's how they do it in Britain. His first mistake was to give journalist Martin Bashir access to his inner sancta – to his playground-style home, to the floor of a Las Vegas hotel that he'd rented out, to a day out with the kids (three of them) at the zoo. After all these years as a celebrity, Michael Jackson still hasn't picked up the most basic aspects of dealing with the public. He's clueless when it comes to gauging how his smallest actions will be interpreted once they've been writ large across the headlines of the world. And he seems unaware that behind the masses of adoring kids who scream for hugs and autographs wherever he turns up, there's a much larger mass of people who are repelled by him and everything he's come to represent.
  If Jackson hoped to find allies by submitting to a lengthy televised interview, he failed utterly. There will be a few people – myself among them – who feel sorrier for him than they did a few weeks ago. But as soon as someone mentions the millions of dollars he's got in the bank, that pity melts away, and you're left no longer caring what happens to Señor Wacko – especially when he's put in the context of Iraq and North Korea.
  His attorneys are, of course, claiming that it was all – the entire two hours of it – taken out of context. And maybe some of it was. But no amount of backtracking is going to undo the harm the Walters special did to his image. The shot of Michael nervously feeding his youngest kid, fumbling around in front of the camera as if not quite sure where the nipple goes. The hyperactive swing through his "favorite store" – that swanky and heroically tacky Vegas boutique full of million-dollar art objects that Michael apparently owns half of already. That moment at the zoo when he complained to his handlers that his daughter was holding his hand too tightly. The open admission that he spends a large amount of time playing and even napping with school-age children. And the straight-faced denials that he's had any kind of cosmetic surgery except, when he was pressed, two rhinoplasties that were "necessary" to improve his vocal range. Yeah, and I bought that penis enlarger so my underwear would fit better.
  The controversies have only just begun. There will be court battles and countersuits, and tonight (February 20) at 8 p.m., Fox will air Jackson's two-hour rebuttal to Bashir, Michael Jackson Take 2: The Interview They Wouldn't Show You. But the damage has already been done. We all now know what many of us had already suspected: there's something very, very wrong with Michael Jackson. And I'm not sure he'll ever be able to sing and dance his way out of this one.

  Yet there is one issue that's been overlooked in the wake of his public humiliation, and that's the allegation that he's slowly been changing his appearance over the years in order to look more "white." Given the evidence – lighter skin tone, a cleft chin, and that once broad Afro-American nose cut down to the kind of dainty, diminutive, upturned little nugget all those pretty little Lacoste-wearing WASPy girls seemed to have in junior high – it made a certain sense. But white-envy isn't Jacko's pathology – as he enters his fifth decade, it's clear that he's no race traitor. After all, he grew up in an era when white-music moguls had lost their hold on African-American stars who'd been their bread and butter since the jazz age. Black stars were coming into their own in the 70s, and there were just as many white as black performers getting screwed by the man.
  No, Jackson's surgical procedures seem to have been aimed at allowing him to maintain the face of a child. Because what he had to deal with was not overt racism but allegations of questionable dealings among his own family and his parents when it came to managing his money. Add to that the wall of yes-men and yes-women that was erected around the Jackson Five and then the solo Michael Jackson and you have the makings of an adult who's always been treated like a child, and who'd rather spend his free time with the only people he can trust – children.
  Most psychologists will hold that as wacko as Jacko may be, he doesn't fit the profile of a pedophile. No, his is a Peter Pan complex, and it's getting harder and harder to watch as he gets older and older and that facial stubble looks more and more fungal. Those children he invited over to romp around the playground he's built in his backyard are his friends, and that's sad. It's also potentially damaging, because children do need positive adult role models to foster healthy development, and Jackson doesn't qualify. If I had kids, I wouldn't want them spending their afternoons at the Jackson compound – not for fear of molestation but because he's a severe casualty of childhood pop stardom, with all the attending pathologies.
  The pop universe is full of such victims, some of whom didn't even hit the big time until they were at least young adults. Two weekends ago, MTV gave us an amusing, in-depth look at one of the more notorious and successful rock-and-roll casualties currently working the system: Ozzy Osbourne. After spending a couple decades playing Antichrist, first as the leader of Black Sabbath and then as a successful solo artist in the '80s, Osbourne has ingested enough drugs and alcohol to make even simple acts like forming two- and three-syllable words difficult. It also appears he appears he can't construct a sentence without dropping half a dozen f-bombs. But that's all part of what makes The Osbournes, a reality based-based sitcom that takes you inside the home of Ozzy and his family, such a guilty pleasure. It amounts to a sort of a live-action Simpsons, with Ozzy as Homer in the role of the dumb but ultimately well-meaning dad; Sharon as Marge, in the role of the stern, well-bred, clear-spoken authority figure; the pair's older, goofy prodigal son with the questionable A&R job as Bart; and Kelly, the ambitious, amusing daughter with a budding musical career, as Lisa.

  The best thing about The Osbournes – unlike The Jacksons – is that nobody gets hurt. Shron's the brains of the operation, and she seems aware that most of the world – not counting the people who line up to buy front-row seats for the yearly OzzFest – see her husband as a walking joke. Yeah, and she's laughing all the way to the bank. If Ozzy's even half aware of what all those cameras are doing in his house, he doesn't show it. This is a guy who appeared befuddled last season as he sat and watched himself perform on television. And after being mystified by an episode of the Food Network's Two Fat Ladies, all he could muster by way of explanation was, "They're bakin' fooking bread on the television."
  Yet Ozzy too has been embroiled in controversy. In his case, however, it was Pepsi, the multinational soft-drink corporation, that stepped in it. It all started when Pepsi decided not to use a commercial featuring the aggressive and potentially controversial rapper Ludacris. Since it's likely Pepsi had an escape clause in its contract with the rapper, that decision didn't cause any flak. But when Pepsi subsequently opted to make Ozzy the star of a high-profile ad, the Johnnie Cochrans of the world cried foul. After all, if a former antichrist who once bit the head off a bat can be a legit Pepsi spokesperson, then what the hell is wrong with Ludacris? Ozzy may have cleaned up his act in recent years, but every sentence he says on TV still sounds like a bus backing up – and he knows the cameras are rolling. So when a group called the Hip-Hop Action Summit threatened to organize a boycott, the corporation made nice and agreed to pay reparations to the Ludacris Foundation.
  Which is all well and good except for one uncomfortable question that I can't shake: was there really any racism involved in Pepsi's decision to go with Ozzy instead of Ludacris? Was race any more of an issue here than it is in the case of Michael Jackson's surgery? Or was it just an example of the racial card-sharps playing their hand before they had all the facts? Let's face it: Ozzy Osbourne got the Pepsi gig because nobody takes him seriously anymore. He's as harmless as a dotty old uncle. He's Benny Hill with a sketchy past. And he doesn't have anything controversial to say. Ludacris, on the other hand, is a serious rapper with a message that might make some folks – okay, mostly white folks – uncomfortable. And the Pepsi people have evry right to pick spokespeople they feel will offend the fewest cola drinkers. It doesn't take a marketing genius to figure that Ozzy is the more suitable salesman.
The beauty of it all is that there probably wasn't a single Pepsi executive who could have picked Ludacris or Osbourne out of a line-up before this controversy went down. In fact, they'd probably have assumed a guy named Ludacris was a Satanic rocker. This is one case where skin color turned out to be incidental. White or black, Ludacris was never going to make the Pepsi cut, because he's a man with a message. After all, Pepsi didn't have any trouble hiring Michael Jackson back when he looked black. The sad truth is that in today's content-free television, a message is more dangerous than the color of person's skin. Now if the NFL could only hire a few more African-American head coaches. I wonder whether Ludacris is looking for a new gig?

Corin Tucker Band

http://krs5rc.com/krs/bands/corintuckerband/audio/Doubt.mp3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwU7idFy2Ro

Corin Tucker Graduates From Riot Grrrl To Riot Woman
By Matt Ashare

It’s so very tempting to read between the lines of 1,000 years, the emotionally turbulent and often devastatingly poignant Kill Rock Stars debut by the newly minted Corin Tucker Band. Tucker, an early convert to the riot grrrl cause, got her start in the Olympia punk band Heavens To Betsy twenty years ago. But she really came into her own co-fronting the grrrl-powered trio Sleater-Kinney with fellow singer/guitarist Carrie Brownstein, a perfect rock-and-roll pairing that sadly dissolved when the band went on hiatus in 2006 after seven albums in eleven years. So when, for example, she opens the disc’s haunted yet insistent title track with the hyperbolic “About 1,000 years ago, you left/I felt nothing for centuries” and follows up with a chorus that begins “And when it hit that you were gone/I stood frozen for so long,” it’s hard not to assume she’s got Brownstein in mind — especially since she ends the last verse with the defiant “With each song I get closer/With each note I return.” Then again, back in October she told the Village Voice she’d written “1,000 Years” for possible inclusion in the film Twilight: New Moon.
    1,000 Years is peppered with could-be snippets of autobiography. In “Half A World Away,” against a slinky guitar riff that rises to a pleasing roar, Tucker sings with forlorn dignity about an absent partner who’s making a “film” while “the phone in the hotel room never rings.” In fact, she’s been married to filmmaker Lance Bangs since 2000. And is “Break up with the boogie/Break up with the beat/Did you let us down, or was it me” a reference to lingering doubts about her decision to move on from Sleater-Kinney? It is a line from the disc’s most overtly Sleater-Kinneyish track, the pounding rocker “Doubt,” with Tucker’s gorgeous ambulance siren of a voice reaching an anguished peak on every noisy, discordant chorus.
    It’s the gift of great songwriters — and storytellers — to exploit real-life experiences. But that’s only part of what gives 1,000 Years its emotional power and weight. Tucker has emerged from the shadow of her former band with 11 tightly knit, poetic vignettes that conflate the vividly real with the equally vivid imagined. The timely “Thrift Store Coats,” one of the disc’s most affecting tunes, captures the desperation of a family on the brink of financial ruin without falling prey to the all too common desire to find something ennobling in poverty and hardship. “If this is a test/Can we make it through?,” she asks without answering, as the gentle caress of piano makes way for the pleasant bite of growling guitars. I’d be lying if I said Brownstein’s sinewy guitar and vocal counterpoints are missed. But with 1,000 Years, Tucker has expanded her musical vistas, with strings and keyboards laced throughout, and sharpened her lyrical vision in ways that will surely come in handy when Sleater-Kinney (hopefully) reunite.
   

Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams Revisits his Cardinal Past on III/IV
by Matt Ashare

Ryan Adams has never been a particular good source for accurate information regarding Ryan Adams — at least, not unless you're really good at reading between the proverbial lines. So when the former Whiskeytown frontman began touting III/IV as a "double-album concept rock opera about the ’80s," prior to its mid-December release on his own Pax Am label (also the home of the vinyl-only sci-fi metal disc Orion, which became available by mail-order in early November), there was good reason to be skeptical. The product of six months spent sequestered at New York's Electric Ladyland studio with the Cardinals (drummer Brad Pemberton, bassist Catherine Popper, guitarist Neal Casal, and multi-instrumentalist Jamie Candiloro) in 2007, the disc collects 21 tracks that apparently didn't fit the alt-country bent of Easy Tiger, his second to last for Lost Highway, a label he famously feuded with over the number of albums he wanted to release. (In 2005, there were three, one solo and two with the Cardinals: oddly enough, although the Cardinals were present for the Easy Tiger sessions, it doesn't bear their name. All clear?)
    Actually, assuming Easy Tiger was essentially I, it's not at all clear why Adams skipped over II to get to III and IV. But, then, he's always enjoyed being a "difficult" artist and, since Adams has referred to the new pair of discs as "Cardinology III and IV," perhaps they're meant as a follow-up to 2008's Cardinology, which, come to think of it, doesn't actually clear anything up. Even "Cardinals III/IV," which is how Wikipedia has it listed, confuses matters because Easy Tiger was released as a Ryan Adams solo album. Oh well.
    Fortunately, there doesn't appear to be much of a rock-opera concept behind III/IV — it's, as you might have already guessed, simply the best of what was left when the Cardinals closed up shop after half a year at Electric Ladyland. And that's not a bad thing at all. The disc opens in the same rockist vein of 2003's aptly titled Rock N Roll, with Adams alluding his struggles with addiction ("I get my dreams confused with wishes and bad ideas") and rehab ("So you probably heard I went away/Where do we start?) against solidly churning guitars coalesce into respectably anthemic hook on "Breakdown Into the Resolve." Elsewhere, Adams puts his crooner cap on for a swing through the organ-laced "Dear Candy," veers into Killers territory with the bold synth-rock of "Users," returns to the familiar folky alt-rock ground of the plaintive and sweet "Death and Rats," has a little arena rock fun on the just-short-of-metallic first few minutes of the 7-plus "Kill the Lights" before he and the Cardinals close things out with their best Allman Brothers imitation. It's a tribute to Adams' penchant for bad choices that he neglected to include the winning romantic ballad "Typecast," a duet with Nora Jones, on Easy Tiger. As Adams himself admits it in "Users," as hard as he may "try to be good," he's forever haunted by "bad ideas."

http://paxamrecords.com/downloads/

   
   
   

New Year's Daze

Keefing it Real
A New Year's Eve playlist

"Happy," The Rolling Stones (from Exile On Main Street Deluxe Edition) — Thanks to Life, a memoir as bold, brash, and rakishly charming as his best riffs, it's been the season, if not the year, of Keith. When he took over the mic to proclaim, "I need a love to keep me happy" back in ’72, nobody thought he'd live to see the end of the decade. A full 38 years later, he's still going strong, and this signature song rings as true as ever.

"Help Me Mary," Liz Phair (from Exile In Guyville) — If Phair's Exile really were a song-by-song answer to the Stones' Exile then the match for "Happy" would be "Fuck and Run" — probably not the best strategy for a successful new year.  Better to celebrate tempering "hatred with peace" and weaving "disgust into fame," especially since Phair impressively channels Keith's loose yet propulsive chordings on this ultimately uplifting track.

"P.S.," Ryan Adams and the Cardinals (from III/IVI) — It's almost always worth looking to the past before moving forward into new year/decade. This rousing glam kiss-off came out of ’07’s Easy Tiger sessions. Why it's taken so long for alt-country's allegedly reformed king of dramedy to unburden himself of it is anybody's guess. Just glad to finally have it. 

"Ready to Start," The Arcade Fire (from The Suburbs) — The Grammy-bound Arcade Fire made a bit of history in 2010 by hitting #1 with an indie release. Win Butler never quite sounds like he's ready to bust a move — he's far to cerebral for that. But this instructive, upbeat ode to new beginnings rocks most of the moodiness out of him until he indeed resolves that he's "ready to start." 

"Not Afraid," Eminem (from Recovery) — Anyone who can go from Relapse to Recovery in the span of a year deserves props. Poised to overshadow The Arcade Fire and just about everyone else at the Grammys, the new Eminem made some major New Year's resolutions when last the the ball dropped. He may sound angry and defiant at the start of "Not Afraid," but before long he's apologizing (!!) and urging us all to take his hand and move into the future. Redemption, not to mention recovery, is, as Martha Stewart would say, a good thing.

"Just Dance," Lady Gaga feat. Colby O'Donis (from The Fame Monster) — Just because — because she brought spectacle to a new level and had a fashionably great time doing it. So just shut up and dance. It's New Year's eve. . .

"Wake Up Everybody," John Legend feat. the Roots (from Wake Up!) — Sure, the video plays a bit too much like a big-budget PSA and Legend's channeling of What's Going On-era Marvin Gaye comes off slightly stilted. But the Roots come to the rescue, grabbing the groove and then the mic to take this socio-political wake-up call places Gaye never had the chance to dream of.

"Daft Punk Is Playing At My House Tonight," LCD Soundsystem (from LCD Soundsystem) — With Daft Punk busy deflecting lukewarm reviews of their Tron Legacy soundtrack, it's not likely they'll be playing any house parties over the holidays. LCD Soundsystem's electrofunk homage/send-up "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House Tonight" isn't just the next best thing, it's better. For best results, press play and repeat.

The Invisible Hand, "The Future of Music" (from The Invisible Hand) — It just wouldn't be right not to celebrate something Charlottesville as we ring in the new year, and The Invisible Hand have all the makings of the future of the local scene, if not quite the future of music. Angular melodies, hyperkinetic drums, gloriously noisy guitars, and a frontman who sings with the kind of passionate intensity Yeats would approve of. Give it a shot.

"Fake Empire," The National (from Boxer) — Until something better comes along, every New Year's Eve should end with "Fake Empire," an epic ode to staying out "super late" that begins as a slow dance and gradually gains a glorious kind of momentum. By the time the lights go out, Matt Berninger is crooning "No thinking for a little while" as the horns kick in and the drummer drives off into the rising sun.

The Return of POP ROCKS

For those of you who don't know, Pop Rocks is a column I first wrote for Stuff Magazine, a Boston monthly that later morphed into the bi-weekly Stuff@Nite. When I took over as music editor at the Boston Phoenix (it's an alternative weekly in, yes, Boston), I felt we needed to be more aggressive about engaging our readers and touting the high quality of the content we published. So I set out to recruit the best writers/thinkers I could find, and gave them each a forum — a bi-weekly column in which each could address any anything he or she felt was relevant, as long as it had some connection to music culture. Josh Kun had his "Frequencies" column; Douglas Wolk, "Smallmouth"; Jon Caramanica, "Slanguistics." As for myself, I adapted "Pop Rocks" to the Phoenix format and we were off and running. Eventually, even our initially wary jazz writer, Jon Garelick, got into the game with a column I dubbed "Giant Steps" after the Coltrane tune. Those columns helped create a unique identity for the Phoenix music section and, within a couple of years, the section was broken out of the "Arts" section as a stand-alone magazine within a magazine. Sadly, that came ended shortly before my tenure at the Phoenix came to an end. But the idea lives on, at least in my own mind.

Now I'm in Virginia, a State that most artists assiduously avoid when touring. But I'm writing a weekly column for the paper here and doing features for a Charlottesville weekly (C-ville). In an effort to revive the spirit, if not the form of "Pop Rocks," I'm going to begin this blogging experiment by posting my scribblings, beginning with a New Year's Eve playlist I contributed to C-ville. Too many hours were spent whittling that list down to ten songs that do not include the words "New Year's Day" or "New Year's Eve." And then we'll just see where that leads. . . In the words of Yeats, "The best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with a passion and intensity." Or, as Paul Westerberg once lovingly put it, "I hate music: it's got too many notes."