LEONARD COHEN

The gospel according to Leonard Cohen

by Matt Ashare

Leonard Cohen, Old Ideas (Columbia)

Leonard Cohen is unquestionably — and unabashedly — one of the stranger dudes to ever have sustained a musical career in the modern era. Sure, Dylan's eccentric, at times aggressively so. And there are plenty of oddballs who have gotten their 15 minutes over the past half-century. But Cohen has single-mindedly taken unconventional to a whole new level in his five-plus decades as a recording artist and performer.

       He alludes to as much in the opening verse of the portentous "Going Home," the first song on Old Ideas, his 12th proper studio album since he was first signed by the legendary Columbia A&R talent scout and producer John Hammond amid the flurry of the ’60s folk revival. "I Love to speak with Leonard/He's a sportsman and a shepherd/He's a lazy bastard/Living in a suit," he half-sings/half-whispers in that immediately recognizable cracked baritone that remains one of his many distinctive, if somewhat difficult, qualities — a sagacious voice that paradoxically manages to convey a sense of both genuine intimacy and cool detachment. Buoyed by little more than a few quiet organ chords, a choir of women's voices, and intermittent string embellishments, he continues what amounts to an internal monologue, intoning, "He will speak these words of wisdom/Like a sage, a man of vision/Though he knows he's really nothing/But the brief elaboration of a tube."

       That's Leonard Cohen in a nutshell: a suit-and-tied prophet of verse, confronting mortality, contemplating the dark depths of the soul, straining against the vicissitudes of life, embracing with wry wit his own unorthodoxy, finding humor and a kind of agnostic salvation in deceptively simple rhymes. It's what he's been, and it's what he remains on Old Ideas, a title that may indeed reflect his own realization that, to a large degree, he's still tackling many of the same themes — love, sex, religion, obsession, depression — that have marked his songwriting since his first album, 1967's Songs of Leonard Cohen.

       Perhaps it was merely an accident of timing that Cohen has typically been cast among the folk luminaries who came of age in the turbulent ’60s. But Cohen was already an anomaly when he joined Dylan, Joan Baez, and their cohort in NYC. For starters, the now 77-year old Cohen grew up in the pre-rock and roll days of big-band jazz, beat poets, and Sinatra crooners. And he'd already established himself as a promising young writer of fiction and poetry before he embarked as a singer-songwriter. So it's not entirely surprising that he took a somewhat skewed approach to folk, or that, despite his many accolades (a Grammy lifetime achievement award, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, etc. . .), he’s always been a commercial outsider.

       But, if success can be measured by the number of other artists who have covered your songs, Cohen's career has been a triumph. From Judy Collins' 1966 version of "Suzanne," to the late Jeff Buckley's hymnotic reinterpretation of "Hallelujah," the Cohen songbook has been cherry picked by dozens upon dozens of performers from nearly every corner of the musical map. There are three Leonard Cohen tribute albums, featuring performers as diverse as R.E.M., U2, Nick Cave, the Pixies, Suzanne Vega, and Peter Gabriel. And, if you listen closely to Nirvana's "Pennyroyal Tea," you'll hear Kurt Cobain make this reference: "Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld, so I can sigh eternally.”

       The cult of Cohen simply endures. As does his timeless talent. There are echoes on Old Ideas of his folksinger days, most notably the fingerpicked acoustic tune "Crazy to Love You," a meditation on lost love that reaches the level of spiritual allegory when Cohen gently rasps, "I'm tired of choosing desire/Been saved by a sweet fatigue/The gates of commitment unwired/And nobody's trying to leave."

       Elsewhere, Old Ideas is shot through with gospel inflections, both in the musical arrangements and lyrics. The pitch-perfect female background harmonies that play call-and-response with Cohen’s gruff pronouncements on "Amen"; lines like "Show me the place where the Word became a man"; and the blues structure that underpins the aptly titled "Darkness," with its smooth groove, organ soloing, and, again, those gorgeous background vocals, all conjure images of the church — the Church of Leonard Cohen.

       And yet, Cohen is uniquely adept at sermonizing without resorting to the dogma of preaching. “Oh let the heavens hear it/The penitential hymn,” he proclaims in “Come Healing,” one of the sparest and most affecting tracks on the album, “Come healing of the spirit/Come healing of the limb/Behold the gates of mercy/In arbitrary space/And none of us deserving/The cruelty or the grace.” It’s one of those quiet, reflective moments with the power to make you stop and listen beyond the strangeness of Cohen’s voice. And then, as with so many of the songs here, you just might want to go back and hear it again. 

http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2012/feb/01/gospel-according-leonard-cohen-ar-1656036/ 

KATHLEEN EDWARDS

BEYOND AMERICANA
Kathleen Edwards expands her vistas with Bon Iver

By Matt Ashare

Kathleen Edwards, Voyageur (Zoe/Rounder)

AFFAIRS OF THE SMART: Edwards deals deftly with romantic crises

“Out of the cameras and out of the lights/I’m a chameleon, I hide behind the songs I write,” sings Canadian songstress Kathleen Edwards with stoic resignation midway through “Chameleon/Comedian,” the slowly surging second track on her new Voyageur. In the context of a song that artfully navigates the give-and-take of an imperfectly perfect relationship on an album — her fourth since 2003’s Faller — that fearlessly confronts the mixed emotions, the highs and lows, and the naked vicissitudes of falling in and out of love, it’s a telling rhyme, particularly since she recorded it with musical and production support from her current beau, Bon Iver mastermind Justin Vernon. Buoyed by a lush rush of strummed acoustic guitars, bathed in the kind of soft-focus reverb that are a Bon Iver calling card, she makes a sweet concession to her lover’s “darker side”: she’ll “smile,” she promises in the chorus, but “not for a funny joke.” Because, at least for this brief respite, she’s willing to concede, “I don’t need a punch line every time. . .”

         When Edwards first emerged in the early 2000s, she was hailed as Americana’s next great hopeful, a Lucinda Williams in waiting, crafting empathetic characters with an economy of words and a natural gift for finding that sweet spot between spare, confessional folk and rocky country roots. Working with Canadian producer Colin Cripps (Sarah McLachlan, Bryan Adams, Blue Rodeo), to whom she was married to until last year, Edwards quietly delivered on that promise, growing into the role of the kind of critic’s darling who might also be asked to, say, do a few dates opening for the likes of Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. But, with Voyageur, she’s taken a major leap forward (or, perhaps, it’s more akin to an intensely appealing left-hand turn), joining the ranks of the Wilcos of the world in redefining what constitutes Americana. Indeed, if Jeff Tweedy has led his band in the direction of avant experimentalism, then Edwards appears to be using a similar strategy to bring airy dream-pop ambience to her down-to-earth character studies and countrified constructions.

         It’s a shift that manifests itself subtly on Voyageur. The opening track, “Empty Threat,” begins with a very Bon Iver touch — an indeterminate drone coupled with what might be a backwards-running loop of murmuring voices. But Edwards’ bright acoustic guitar strumming quickly emerges from the sonic mist as an easygoing backbeat kicks in and lines like, “This cold heart’s getting warmer/Maybe come September I’ll feel brand new” cast a hopeful light on the singer’s plans to get on with her life. “I’m moving to America/Moving to America/Moving to America,” Edwards intones with veiled anticipation of better things to come, before taking the wind out of her own sails with the admission that “It’s an empty threat.” Piano and a trio of electric guitars emerge in the mix to paint melancholy colors around poetic promises and poignant imagery (“In a city I once said never/I’m learning to say never never never ever/Cuz now I’m its favorite flower/I’m blooming through the concrete cracks of this condo tower”). By the end of the track, Edwards has made her move from one kind of country to another, yet it feels nothing if not entirely natural.

         So, this is the point at which Vernon visionary’s role in elevating Edwards above the pack of perfectly solid singer-songwriters is meant to be celebrated. And there’s ample evidence of his handiwork on Voyageur, from the bleating synths that pulse behind Edwards as she reaches for the sky and cries, “Change this feeling under my feet/Change the sheets and then change me,” to the fragile vibraphone that underpins the mixed emotions of the gently turbulent “A Soft Place Land,” to the Omnichord touches that blend into the twangy backdrop of the desperately bittersweet blues rocker “Mint.”

         But there’s an equally strong, if not stronger, case to be made here for Edwards bringing out the best in Vernon, whose penchant for studio wizardry as Bon Iver has, in spite of four major Grammy nominations this year, often led him into the more-is-more deep end. There’s no question he’s proven himself to be a master sonic sculptor, but there are times, even on his most recent Bon Iver disc, Bon Iver, Bon Iver, when you have to wonder if there’s really a song being served beneath all those layers of vocals and instrumentation. In Edwards, he seems to have found a muse whose songcraft provides solid grounding in clearly defined hooks and melodies for his pillowy wall-of-sound approach.

         One thing’s for sure: there’s some serious synergy happening on Voyageur. And given the subjects Edwards elicits so strikingly in the songs here — from the failing romance of the plaintive “House Full of Empty Rooms,” to the snapshots of a broken marriage in the simply sad “Pink Champagne,” to the guarded rush of romance rediscovered in the rocking “Sidecars” — there are bound to be plenty of questions about the autobiographical nature of the album. Indeed, you get the sense that Edwards anticipated that, and you can find her answer in “For the Record,” the seven-minute track that closes out the disc. With tense electric guitar chords hanging on a modest, deliberate beat, organ tones filling in the gaps between verses, and Norah Jones lending harmonies, Edward conjures an hypnotic hymn from just a couple of loaded lines: “Hang me up on your cross/For the record I only wanted to sing songs/Hang me out to die in the sun/For the record I only wanted to sing songs.” She is, after all, a chameleon. . .

http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2012/jan/25/kathleen-edwards-vividly-reimagines-americana-litt-ar-1638765/ 

           

MATTHEW PAUL BUTLER

Mathew Paul Butler finds beauty in darkness

By Matt Ashare

Who: Matthew Paul Butler and Thee Vandal Choir

When: Friday, January 27

Where: Rivermont Pizza, 2496 Rivermont Avenue, Lynchburg

It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m headed to meet up with locally based singer/songwriter Matthew Paul Butler at the Cavalier when it hits me that, unless he’s the burly Viking guy pictured on the cover of his new EP Hard Headed, I may have trouble picking him out of the lunchtime crowd. “Don’t worry,” he reassures me over the phone, “I’m the little guy with the big beard.” Problem solved.

       Butler, who’ll be playing Rivermont Pizza with his band Thee Vandal Choir on January 27, is immediately recognizable as, well, the little guy with the big beard, a look that’s part mountain man, part Middle Earth. Indeed, if there were an elven dwarf hybrid in Tolkien’s writings, Butler would be a perfect fit. Instead, he’s found a kind of solace and inner satisfaction playing a very different role — that of the uncannily charismatic, accessibly eccentric fingerpicking indie-folk troubadour.

       It’s not exactly the part he was born to play. As the son of Christian missionaries, he spent his formative years in Africa — specifically Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). By the age of 15, he was Stateside, in Baltimore, attending high school and worship leading in his father’s church. He seemed destined to follow in mom and dad’s footsteps when he enrolled in their alma mater, a Pentecostal/Charismatic seminary in upstate New York called Elim Bible School back in 2000. But he only lasted one semester there before, guitar in hand, he embarked on an itinerant life that took him to New Jersey, North Carolina, and Kansas City, with a few stops back in Baltimore before landing in Lynchburg, home of Vandal Choir singer Kaitlyn Rose, who’s also now Butler’s fiancée.

       “We got engaged on New Year's Day,” the soft-spoken Butler recounts. “It’s been amazing, to find someone I could gel with so well and who I can also sing together with so well. It's difficult sometimes. With the dudes in my band, if I don't like what they're playing I can tell them it sucks. But you can’t really do that with your fiancée.”

       Over the past year, Thee Vandal Choir has grown to include drummer Drew Fontaine, bassist Benjamin Leon Henry, and lap steel specialist Matt Gulletti. But “Hard Headed” is a spare affair, recorded by Butler and Rose at the Charlotte home of producer Daniel Hodges, who also played bass and “some guitar.” (Hodges brought in Tim Cossor to lay down the drum tracks, a feat Bulter says was accomplished in a matter of hours.)

       Wasted notes and excess verbiage aren’t part of Butler’s lexicon. And, while turbulent emotions surface throughout the six songs on “Hard Headed” — a disc that ends with the ambient sound of a rainstorm framing the melancholy of the last two tracks — Butler doesn’t quite fit the mold of the confessional songwriter. It wasn’t until he revealed that Rose’s younger brother committed suicide a year ago, that the true power of “Older Brother,” a song sung from the point of view of the deceased that concludes somewhat optimistically “I had no regrets,” really sank in.

       Over a couple of afternoon beers, Butler opened up about his approach to writing and recording, the genesis of “Hard Headed” (which is available as a free download on Butler’s bandcamp page through January 27), and, of course, the beard. Here’s some of what he had to say. . .

Q: To what degree have your experiences leading church services carried over to what you do now?

       It’s what taught me performing. My parents would probably be horrified to hear this, but one of the things you learn as a worship leader is a kind of manipulation of people. I'm up there and other people might claim that it's the holy ghost, but really it's just like putting chords together in a proper form and building dynamics in a song in a way that everyone gets really excited and starts raising their hands and crying and god knows what else.

Q: You do put a lot of yourself into your songs, but they really not autobiographical, are they?

       They're not. I've seen a lot. So there are minor references to my life in damn near every song. In "Too Old," there's the "Who knows/maybe we'll get married" line. And that came out of me thinking, "oh shit, do I really want to be with this person for the rest of my life." It was definitely a thought in my mind, even if I wasn't aware of it at the time. It just came out. Generally, I write and then, for the bulk of it, I don't really realize what I was writing about until afterwards.

Q: That sermon in the background of “Oh Dear, Your Bad Luck” — is that you or is that something you found?

       Actually, I didn't put that in there. My friend Daniel Hodges, who produced the album, got it in his head when he was mixing the song, that he should put some radio noise in there. He has this old AM radio and he found randomly this Christian religious broadcast. I think it might be Pat Robertson. I'm not really sure. I thought it was great. I don't know what it is, but it just works in that song.

Q: There’s a bare-bones, homespun quality to the recordings. Was that a happy accident or was that your intention?

       It's weird for me because I'm very much a fan of digital media and the opportunities that it's provided me. At the same time, I'm a huge fan of old recordings. Like, you look at photographs of old Dylan sessions and they're all in a room together recording at the same time. I feel like that's part of the reason why those recordings, at least to me, sound so much better than damn near anything.

Q: Other than Dylan, are there other artists who have inspired you?

       It may not make sense when you listen to this record, but years ago, when I was living in Jersey, I picked up Jeff Buckley's "Grace" and I listened to it for six months straight. I just really honed in on Jeff's voice, and I was like damn. . . I don't really play that style of music, but that album had a big impact on me. And then, as much as I hate to say it right now, the early Kings of Leon albums just kicked up something inside of me. I couldn't get enough of it. When I heard them and read about what they had to say, I liked that they came from the same vein of Christianity that I was raised in — you know, falling on the ground, speaking in tongues, and all that crazy stuff.

Q: Hard Headed obviously comes from a dark place. Is that your preferred mode of writing?

       I feel like a lot of what I do, without being overly dramatic, is exorcizing a lot of stuff from growing up. It's not like my parents beat me or were terrible or anything. A lot of it is that I missed out on releasing a lot of stuff when I was growing up, so I'm doing it now in my songs. I've had discussions with my father about my songs, and he thinks some them seem heretical. But if I reference god in a song, I don't necessarily mean the god of the bible. That's the only language I have to talk about anything. I was brought up that for 20 years. That's just the language I have.

Q: Okay, the beard?

       I dunno. I get a lot of weird frat boys who come up and want to touch the beard. It's kind of funny. If I shaved my beard off right now, I would look like I was 18. So one reason I have it is that it helps me not get carded at bars. I also hate shaving. And, if you want some deeper reason, it's just that I don't really care and I like it. I'm the guy who's short and has a big beard. I grow it and I cut it back, but lately I decided that I'm just going to let it grow. . . 

http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2012/jan/18/mathew-paul-butler-finds-beauty-darkness-ar-1620923/

                                                                       

SNOW PATROL

Snow Patrol overreach on the grandiose Fallen Empires

by Matt Ashare

Snow Patrol, Fallen Empires (Universal)

UNSOUND EFFECTS: Snow Patrol add electronics to their bag of tricks

Before I stick a metaphorical shovel into the sprawling mess that is Fallen Empires, the sixth album by the Belfast-by-way-of-Glasgow fivesome Snow Patrol, I do want to point out that I'm not an avowed hater when it comes to grandiose, slickly produced, arena-reaching rock from the British Isles. For example, I remain a loyal U2 fan (when they're good), and retain an abiding respect for both Bono's good works and his band's willingness, from time to time, to break with formula, as they did to fairly stunning effect just over twenty years ago with Achtung Baby. And, as annoying as I tend to find the bleeding heart-on-my-sleeve ruminations of Chris Martin, every now and again there's a Coldplay single that catches my ear, even if Parachutes, their 2000 debut, is still the only album by that particular band I can manage to sit through from beginning to end. Oh, and just last summer, I dug out a "Singles" collection by the Verve, a self-important ‘90s Brit-rock band with a frontman, Richard Ashcroft, who has a Mick Jagger-sized ego and the lips to go with it. That disc — This Is Music (yeah, that's actually the title) — was in fairly heavy rotation for a good month or two around my house.

       So I come at Fallen Empires with a reasonably high tolerance for dudes with charming accents from dreary climates who feel empowered to wrestle dramatically with the human condition in the context of a three- to four-minute pop song. If it's got a solid stadium-ready guitar hook or a wistful enough chorus, I'm fully willing to pull out the Bic lighter app on the iPhone and wave my hands in the air with the best of them. (Well, maybe that's going a bit too far for a cynical romantic like me, but you get the point.)

       Snow Patrol are big little band who aspire to reach such heights and appear willing to do whatever it takes to get there, even if it means standing in the shadow of Coldplay, a position they occupied with some degree of dignity beginning in 2003 with Final Straw. That was the band's big, international breakthrough, and it came after nearly a decade of toiling rather charmingly in the Scottish indie underground with such ’90s luminaries as Belle & Sebastian. (Seriously: Go back and listen to 1998's Songs for Polarbears.). "Final Straw," an aptly named album if ever there were one, sounded like the successful last ditch effort to take a proven, if borrowed, formula straight to the bank that it was. And it established Snow Patrol as the next best thing to Coldplay — a semi-sweet pill for anyone for whom one Chris Martin just wasn't enough.

       But frontman Gary Lightbody and guitarist Nathan Connolly — Snow Patrol's two main mouthpieces — have apparently been harboring loftier ambitions. After all, they've been handpicked to open for U2 on not just one, but two world tours. When it comes to lofty apprenticeships, it doesn't get much better than that. Indeed, if you've been following the Snow Patrol saga on Lightbody's blog (it's not something I recommend, but you can get the basic gist of it from a mercifully condensed rundown of the basics on the band's Wikipedia entry), the band set out to break with their own conventions on Fallen Empires — to deliver, in Lightbody's words, "twenty songs" that Connelly promised were "very different from each other."

       Sounds like a recipe for success, right? Of the many obstacles that stood in the way was a nasty bout with writer's block that Lightbody confessed to suffering through last September in the British magazine NME. Of the several "cures" Lightbody reportedly subjected himself to, the two most effective (or is "amusing" the word I'm looking for?) were a trip to the California desert U2 made famous (that would be Joshua Tree), and Michael Stipe, who apparently played an indeterminate inspirational role as, I dunno, the band's wartime consigliere or something. When it was all said and done, Snow Patrol had their longest album to date (14 tracks clocking in at 50-plus minutes) in the bag.

       Fallen Empires absolutely delivers on Lightbody's promise to throw a few bold new wrinkles in the thickening Snow Patrol plot. And, as anybody who's read this column before knows, I admire any artist who's willing to push the boundaries, work outside of his or her comfort zone, and/or take the kind of left-hand turn that may leave some fans scratching their heads. I also happen, for the most part, to be a firm believer in the less-is-more aesthetic, which, paradoxically perhaps, often comes into direct conflict with boundary pushing.

       And so it is with Fallen Empires. Working with producer Jacknife Lee (the dude who manned the board for R.E.M.'s "Collapse Into Now" last year), Snow Patrol have added a heavy dose of electronics to their previously guitar-centric approach to rock in a hard place. If I'm not mistaken, Coldplay did much the same on their 2011 album Mylo Xyloto, but that's probably just a coincidence. Besides, the more obvious touchstone for "I'll Never Let Go," the emotionally wrought epic track that opens an album of emotionally wrought epics, is Achtung Baby-era U2. Lightbody sings like a wounded warrior lost on a street with no name, as he navigates his way through undulating sequencers, icy synth tones, and dark-toned industrial guitar riffs.

       While the album's title suggests that Lightbody may have had geopolitics on his mind when he finally overcame his writer's block, he hasn't really changed his tune all that much when it comes to subject matter. "I'll Never Let Go" is right in line with the kind of romantic torment and earnest outrospection that have been his stock in trade all along. "Your words shook me right out of a daydream/I was lost somewhere cold and it looked haunted/I was asking strangers but no one understood me/I was drenched in sweat when your words came to me," he croons to someone whose "house" has literally or metaphorically "burned to the ground" in "I'll Never Let Go." The disc's title track, another synth-heavy concoction, is a slow build through a relationship in ruins ("Harm me most when it's light/The thought of you don't sit right/I need the darkness, a death grip embrace") that leads to a chaotic climax with Lightbody repeating the line, "We are the light," over and over again.

       There are echoes of the old, uncomplicated Snow Patrol here — "Called Out In the Dark" opens with a nice little acoustic guitar riff before the synths arrive and take it to a mournful place somewhere in the neighborhood of that oh-so-’80s film The Breakfast Club, and "This Isn't Everything You Are" is a hope-filled ode to a broken friend centered around chiming guitars that explode into full-blown powerchords on a suitably anthemic chorus, with string embellishments thrown in for a little extra touch of melancholy. But in (over)reaching for something boldly universal, Snow Patrol mostly end up in the general area of the generic, a place where style trumps substance and nobody really goes home happy. Perhaps that's the point.

       I'd leave it at that if it weren't for a modest little acoustic tune, "Lifening," that nails the best of what Snow Patrol are capable of midway through Fallen Empires. Against a backdrop of fingerpicked guitar, spare piano chords, and a nice string arrangement, Lightbody finally gets personal and reveals all he's ever wanted from life: "waking up in your arms"; "Ireland in the World Cup"; "words of reassurance"; "to share what I've been given/Some kids eventually/And be for them what I've had/A father like my dad." The list goes on. Come to think of it, kind of reminds me of something the Verve might have done.
http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2012/jan/18/snow-patrol-overreach-grandiose-fallen-empires-ar-1620557/ 

BEST OF 2011

Going “underground”: A year end top ten

By Matt Ashare
Published: December 28, 2011 

A GREAT ESCAPE: Jane's Addiction took cues from TV on the Radio

It didn't take long for Perry Farrell to make a clear declaration of intention earlier this year on The Great Escape Artist, the first new Jane's Addiction studio album since 2003 and the best disc they've recorded in a good twenty years. "I've replanted my feet back in the underground," he declaims in the opening verse of "Underground," the disc's first track, before going on to admit, "I'm a hustler/I'll never give up on the underground," when the chorus rolls around.

       For Farrell, a trip back to the "underground" meant bringing David Sitek of the mercurial Brooklyn band TV On the Radio on board to help write, record, and produce The Great Escape Artist. And Sitek's talent for artfully deploying futuristic digital embellishments in a hard-rock context turned out to be just the right medicine for Farrell and co.

       But that wasn't the only strategy for mounting a comeback in 2011. R.E.M. and Beastie Boys returned to what they do best on two of the better albums I heard this year, as did former Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus, who delivered his best solo album yet. And, with Colin Meloy at the helm, the Decemberists borrowed a couple of riffs (as well as guitarist Peter Buck) from the R.E.M. playbook for The King Is Dead, a folk-rocking tour de force that also featured backing newgrass songstress Gillian Welch and her partner David Rawlings.

       Along with Sitek's TV On the Radio, there were other artists who, to varying degrees, continued pushing boundaries without falling off the rockist map — Radiohead and Wilco were two of the more notable bands who fit that description. And yet, Danger Mouse, the DJ/producer who did more than anyone else to popularize the futuristic mash-up when he combined the vocal tracks from Jay-Z's The Black Album with samples stolen from the Beatles' "White Album" on 2004's "The Grey Album," was all about analog this year, bringing a certain epic pop grandeur to the dirty garage blooze of the Black Keys and creating swooning spaghetti western soundscapes for the voices of Norah Jones and Jack White on the faux soundtrack Rome.

       Which brings me, somewhat inelegantly, back to the "underground," that increasingly mythical place/space where all the cool kids hang creating art and stuff — a state of mind Patti Smith (who guested on and was an inspiration for R.E.M.'s Collapse Into Now) poetically evokes in her memoir Just Kids. In a year that saw a Toronto-based band of outsiders called the Arcade Fire surprise everyone by taking home top honors at the Grammys for an album, The Suburbs, that came out on an indie label based in Durham, NC (a Grammy first), it's worth asking if perhaps there is no longer an underground. Maybe what we're moving toward is an ever-shifting multiverse of undergrounds that encompass everything except the most blatantly commercial pop artists, the Lady Gagas of the world. Or maybe we're already there. In any case, here are my picks for the ten best albums whose gravitation fields I found myself caught up in this year. . .

1) TV on the Radio, Nine Types of Light (Interscope).

       I’ve heard Wilco referred to as America’s answer to Radiohead. And I get it. They’ve got a charismatic frontman who’s not afraid to mess with the formula in sometimes surprising ways that verge on the experimental without tossing hooks and melodies into the ambient abyss. But, for my money, these Brooklynites have done more to redefine the sound, feel, and texture of accessible rock than anyone on this side of the Atlantic over the past decade. “Nine Types of Light” delves deep into the realm of unrequited love and finds, well, all kinds of light at the end of a dark tunnel. They may lack a Thom Yorke-ian focal point, but they’ve got two soulful singers and, in multi-instrumentalist David Sitek, a player/producer who’s beginning to look more and more like an Enoesque visionary.

2) The Decemberists, The King Is Dead (Capitol).

       Perhaps it was only a matter of time before Colin Meloy, the brains behind the band who are the Decemberists, set aside some of his loftier concept-album ambitions and simply wrote an album of concise songs that aren’t based around some grand scheme involving Japanese folk tales or obscure British folk singers. “The King Is Dead” is that album. Meloy’s literary smarts serve him well here, but they don’t overshadow the simple joy of the jangling surge of the very R.E.M.-ish “Calamity Song” or the Neil Youngian power of the anthemic “This Is Why We Fight.” Finally, a Decemberists album that doesn’t require footnotes.

3) The Black Keys, El Camino (Nonesuch).

       Having resettled in Nashville, this Akron-bred duo haven’t so much left their garage-rock roots behind as built a multi-leveled mansion of their own peculiar devising around it. At heart, they remain gritty, meat-and-potatoes rockers. But, with Danger Mouse’s help (producing and playing keys), they’ve taken the concept of the stripped-down duo to places that even the White Stripes never quite found.

4) R.E.M., Collapse Into Now (Warner Bros.).

       Now that R.E.M. have officially called it quits after three decades together, this disc has taken on a meaning that transcends the music. Still, it’s great to hear Michael Stipe, Pete Buck, and Mike Mills finding their way back to the kind of jangle-and-drone riffs they patented on their way up, and proclaiming “Let’s sing it and rhyme/Let’s do it one last time/Let’s show the kids how to do it/Fine, fine, fine. . .” Mission accomplished.

5) Jane's Addiction, The Great Escape Artist (Capitol).

       Don’t want to give David Sitek, who not only helped write and produce but also played on much of this album, too much credit. But something shocked this once tired LA band into bringing it on in 2011. Jane’s have always struck me as being more about riffs and attitude than hooks and melodies. Here they’ve got all four. . . Some things are still shocking. . .

6) Wilco, The Whole Love (Anti).

       I’ll keep this one short and sweet: basically, if this is the future of Americana then I’m buying into it big time. Moody and melodic, rootsy and resonant, ambient and alluring, The Whole Love is the product of a band who aren’t afraid to try anything in the name of making a song stick.

7) Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, Mirror Traffic (Matador).

       By the time Pavement broke up in 2000, they were something of an indie-rock jamband, as Malkmus’ skewed guitar tones began to overshadow his provocative lyrics. As a solo artist, he continued down that road, but Mirror Traffic is a return to what he did best with his old band: great lyrics, great guitars, and more than enough slanted slacker enchantments to keep things interesting from beginning to end.

8) Jolie Holland, Pint of Blood (Anti).

       Holland, a Texas grrrl, has a captivatingly quirky voice and sideways delivery that sets her apart from your average roots-folk artist. And, on Pint of Blood, she’s come through with the kind of album I wish Lucinda Williams were still making. At times poignant, at others defiant, it brings an edgy attitude to the realm of artsy Americana.

9) Beastie Boys, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (Capitol).

       If you’d told me even just a couple of years ago that the Beasties would be rapping well into their forties, I’d have laughed and said, “I hope not.” Been wrong before. And I’m happy to say I am again. Maybe it’s that the Beasties function more like a band than a trio of MCs, but they continue to hang together with all the fast-rhyming wit and production smarts that have always kept them one step ahead of the game.

10) Arctic Monkeys, Suck It and See (Domino).

       My Brit pick of the year, and not because they did an internship of sorts with desert-rock magus Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age. No, the track he plays on here is album’s only real clunker. The rest of the disc is all about singer/guitarist Alex Smith’s sneeringly smart songwriting, and the tuneful bash-and-churn of the band.

RUNNERS UP:

• Tom Waits, Bad As Me (Anti)

• Radiohead, The King of Limbs (TBD)

• Maria Taylor, Overlook (Saddle Creek)

• Patti Smith, Outside Society (Sony Legacy)

• Fountains of Wayne, Sky Full of Holes (Yep-Roc) 
http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2011/dec/28/best-music-2011-ar-1572984/ 

Xmas list

Happy holidaze: a Christmas playlist

By: MATT ASHARE |
Published: December 21, 2011 

'Tis the season to be, well, lots of things. Overwhelmed by family obligations, annoyed by numbing doses of holiday muzak streaming from the speakers at just about every big-box chain (I'm not naming names here), and let's just say "bemused" by the presence of so many jolly, white-bearded Santas in so, so many car commercials (a particular pet peeve of mine). Don't worry, I'm not going to go off on a dated rant about the commodification of Christmas or get all scrooged up about the long lines at Target or the alarming abundance of subpar, made-for-tv holiday movies that have been cutting into my obsessive viewing of "Criminal Minds" reruns (Patinkin or Montegna?: sometimes I just can't decide. . .). Instead, I've been hunkered down in my music bunker (it's a virtual space: I haven't gotten around to building the actual one just yet), putting together a nostalgic little playlist for my holidaze.

       No, I haven't uploaded it to Spotify just yet. Maybe next year. Until then, here are my ten picks for an admittedly old-school, punk rock-leaning Chrismukkah that I might actually foist on my friends if I'm feeling particularly fiendish this weekend. . .

1) The Sex Pistols, "Holidays In the Sun" (1977).

       I realize that Johnny Rotten wasn't thinking mistletoe or candy canes or silent nights when he laid down the sneering vocals for the Pistols fourth incendiary single and what would be the opening track on the band's only proper studio album, Never Mind the Bullocks. No, he was contemplating a "cheap holiday in other people's misery," channeling nuclear anxieties ("I didn't ask for sunshine and I got World War III"), and, if I'm not mistaken, commenting on the boom/bust cycles of economic bubbles ("I wanna see some history/'cuz now I've got a reasonable economy"). Any of that sound familiar?

      

2) Dead Kennedys, "Holiday In Cambodia" (1980).

       Not sure if this was intended as an answer to the Sex Pistols, but how could it not have been? Against an eerie surf-punk guitar riff, DKs singer Jello Biafra works himself into a characteristically caustic frenzy over the unintended consequences of a protracted overseas war that caused a lot of consternation here on the homefront and didn't necessarily accomplish what it was meant to. Again, sound familiar?

3) The Ramones, "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)" (1989).

       Okay, so the Ramones were well past their prime by the time they recorded this little holiday nugget for Brain Drain (a/k/a the "Pet Cemetery" album). But they were still more than capable of cranking up the distortion and putting their own stamp on the holidays with the late Joey doing his best to croon couplets like, "All the children are tucked in their beds/Sugar-plum fairies dancing in the heads/Snowball fighting, it's so exciting baby/Yeah, yeah, yeah. . ." Plus, the title really is so perfectly Ramones.

4) The Pogues, "Fairytale of New York" (1987).

       Original Pogues frontman Shane McGowan still had most of his teeth when he sparred with Brit-pop singer Kirsty MacColl in this epic holiday duet by this Irish rock group who artfully split the difference between punk attitude and traditional Celtic folk. "You were handsome/You were pretty/Queen of New York City/When the band finished playing/They yelled out for more," goes the back and forth between the two young lovers, before bittersweet memories lead the two to conclude, "Happy christmas your arse/I pray god it's our last." But there's a kind of redemption in the end as McGowan proudly declares, "And the boys of the NYPD choir still singing Galway Bay/And the bells are ringing out for Christmas day."

5) The Kinks, "Father Christmas" (1977).

       Ray and Dave Davies must have been plugged into the same juice the class of ’77 punks were powered by when they delivered this angry yet melodic salvo written from the point of view of a couple of beggar boys. "Father Christmas/Give us some money/Don't mess around with those silly toys/We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over/We don't want your bread so don't make us annoyed," goes the chorus. And in the last verse, the singer comes right out and asks Father Christmas (that's what they call Santa over in England, or so I've been told) to give his "daddy a job." Kinda rings true this holiday season.

6) Keith Richards, "Run Rudolph Run" (1978).

       Long before he convened the X-pensive Winos, Keith took a break from the Stones to deliver his first solo recording as a Christmas present of sorts. It's just a straight-up version of the oft-covered Johnny Marks/Marvin Brodie novelty hit first popularized by Chuck Berry in ’58. Keith doesn't do anything fancy with the tune: he just sticks to the Berry blueprint and has an infectiously good time with it.

7) The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "This Time of Year" (2007).

      The Bosstones may best be remembered for helping to ignite the ska-punk revival that, for better or worse, flashed and burned in the early-’90s. But they had a lesser-known talent for penning straightforwardly catchy, revved-up, melodic punk tunes like this seasonal salutation to being home for the holidays, hanging with old friends, and making the best out of the Christmas season. "There's crap, it's true," admits raspy voiced Dicky Barrett, "What can you do?/It's simply spending it with you/That keeps me looking forward to/Forward to this time of year." Exactly.

8) Frickin' A, "Merry Merry Merry Frickin' Christmas" (2004).

       They may be from Cincinnati, Ohio, but when the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in like a hundred years back in 2004 after coming back from three games down to beat the Yankees in the ALCS, Frickin' A rose to the challenge and revised this already amusing Christmas send-up into a holiday gift to Red Sox Nation. So, after the Sox historic collapse in the final month of the 2011 season, I'll be consoling myself with lines like, "School's out/Christmas break/Back to Boston/The Red Sox in four straight." Next year. . .

9) The Raveonettes, "The Christmas Song" (2003).

       Almost embarrassed to admit that I found this little treasure on Music from The O.C.: Mix 3 — Have a Very Merry Chrismukkah. And I do wish that the Danish duo had opted for a less generic title for this moody little number — something like "I Wish that I Could Stay," as in "All the lights are coming on now/How I wish that it would snow now/I don't feel like going home now/I wish that I could stay." But it's a nice, bittersweet, slow-dance treat for the end of the night. . . or, of course, the early morning hours.

10) Lady Gaga, "Christmas Tree" (2009).

       Yes, I know the good Lady Gaga made headlines a few weeks back when she released her version of the Irving Berlin classic "White Christmas," replete with an extra verse she wrote herself because the original felt "too short." And maybe the new A Very Gaga Christmas would be a good way to close things out. But even with the extra rhymes, she plays "White Christmas" too straight. I much prefer the old, bad-grrrl Gaga, fa-la-la-la-la-laing about her own, ah, Christmas tree to the tune of a thumping techno-funk beat.

http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2011/dec/21/happy-holidaze-christmas-playlist-ar-1560323/ 

SPOTIFY

Spotify streams into America's digital clouds

By MATT ASHARE |
Published: December 13, 2011 

FUTURE TENSE: Is Spotify more than just another cloud?

Last week Rolling Stone published – and posted — its picks for the top 50 albums of 2011. Nothing new about that: the 44 year-old music magazine has been putting together an annual best-of list since as far back as I can remember. But this year, the on-line version includes a new feature — one that may portend a major change in the digital landscape. Underneath each of the 50 entries there's a little green tab that reads, "Listen on Spotify." A quick click on that link takes the user to the latest great hype in the realm of music, the Swedish-born, UK-based on-line service that conquered Europe, has partnered with Facebook, and is now making inroads here in the US. With deals in place with all four American major labels (EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros.), Spotify offers instant access to an enormous catalog of albums, along with a number of other features that are making it an appealing alternative/adjunct to Apple's dominant iTunes, as well as so-called "cloud-based" services like Pandora, Rhapsody, MOG, and Rdio.

       As is usually the case, the Rolling Stone top 50 includes a number of albums that I've had on heavy rotation since their release: the Decemberists' The King Is Dead; Radiohead's The King of Limbs; and Wilco's The Whole Love. But the top three finishers — Adele's 21, the Jay-Z/Kanye West collab Watch the Throne, and Paul Simon's So Beautiful or So What — are discs that I never really got around to checking out. No surprise there, given my particular tastes, the sheer amount of music that comes out every year, and the woefully finite number of hours any one person can devote to listening to, much less sorting through, incoming downloads and stacks of CDs. In past years, I might have scrambled to find copies of those discs, looked for an on-line stream of a track or two, or dialed up some YouTube videos. Not this time: a simple click on the Spotify logo and all three albums were, well, right there at my fingertips. No muss, no fuss, and, more importantly, no fees.

       As Crispen Stanbach, a 20 year-old Randolph College junior who serves as chief engineer for the school's internet radio station (WWRM) and hosts a weekly Wednesday night music and talk show called "Cogito Ergo Voro" (Latin for "I think therefore I devour"), explains, "I like music reviews. They're my favorite thing to read on the internet. And now, with Spotify, I can read a review, type that album into Spotify, and be listening to it in seconds. I don't have to pirate that album. I don't have to look around online to see if it's streaming somewhere. It's just all in one place. It's just this amazing thing, where as soon as your hear about an album, you can be listening to it, deciding whether or not you want to buy it, deciding whether or not you want to find out more about that artist. . . it's just so easy."

       You do need a Facebook account to sign up for Spotify. But, as long as you don't mind that, the service offers some rather appealing assets. For example, if, like Stanbach, you enjoy sharing your musical finds with friends, Spotify allows users to send an album, or any personalized playlist one might concoct, to Facebook contacts. It's a bit like iTunes' "ping" function, only it's automatically hard-wired into your Facebook account. "Being able to just click on a song and then click on my Facebook friend list and hit share so that it will show up in their Spotify inbox is a nice feature," says Stanbach. "I can send an entire album directly to a friend's inbox and he can listen to it without having to go to another place to discover it. I don't have to send him a message that says 'link to this album.' It's just there on his computer in two seconds."

       So, what's the catch? And, how could it possibly be legal, not to mention profitable, for an internet site to offer streams of streams of entire albums at no cost? The answer lies in the clouds — that is, the not-so-new business model exemplified by websites that allow subscribers to stream music and even create and save personalized playlists that they don't technically own because the tracks aren't downloaded. These services – SoundCloud, Pandora, and Rhapsody are three of the more popular and successful ones – generate income either with ads that pop up from time to time, or through monthly fees that generate the revenue necessary both to sustain the site and to pay the artist and label royalties. In that sense, they're something of a hybrid between traditional radio stations and satellite newcomers like Sirius XM, only they offer every user the option of customizing a virtual playlist. And all the major internet players, from iTunes to Amazon to Google, are getting into the cloud game. Even MySpace, which looked to be headed for the dustbin of digital history, may be poised for a comeback, with Justin Timberlake on board as a major investor determined to move the outdated social networking site in the direction of the clouds.

       Going up against iTunes here in the States is a tall order for anyone, even Google. But Spotify has the advantage of already having established its dominance in Europe, where it has something in the neighborhood of 10 million users. Better yet, those users already appear to be buying into another aspect of Spotify that makes it both appealing and unique — a multi-tiered subscription option. Basically, Spotify is available as a free service. But, for just $4.99 a month, you can get all the music you want without any of those annoying ads. And if you upgrade to $9.99 a month, Spotify offers an app that allows streaming to any mobile device. In addition, like many of the other clouds competing for market share, Spotify sells MP3 downloads, just like iTunes. And, thanks to the clout the company already has in Europe, Spotify hasn't had much trouble getting American labels to hop on board.

       "I go on Pitchfork a lot," Stanbach explains, referring to the on-line music review site. "Even though I don't always trust their music criticism, they do make good recommendations. And albums that have just come out and are from bands I wouldn't think that Spotify would have in their catalog are on there. There are very few things I haven't been able to find."

       There are, however, a few artists who haven't been so quick to warm to Spotify, and whose music you won't find there. As "Digital News" reported last week, the Black Keys refused Spotify, as well as Rhapsody and Rdio, access to their new "El Camino." Coldplay and Mac Miller are two other artists who have said no to the clouds. And therein may lie the rub: if iTunes has downloads to offer that other sites can't stream, it could relegate Spotify to the secondary status that most of the other cloud-based services now occupy.

       "The problem with Spotify comes down to royalties," explains Walter McDonough, a Boston-based lawyer who is the general counsel and one of the founders of the Future of Music Coalition, a DC think tank that studies music and technology issues. McDonough, who's also on the board of the Sound Exchange, an organization that collects royalties from webcasts and satellite broadcasting, believes that artists, labels, and songwriters will grow increasingly disenchanted with Spotify and similar services because the revenue just isn't there. "It would take a substantial amount of activity with Spotify to equal the same types of royalties that you get from the sale of CDs," he explains. "It's not like I make a dollar over here, I make a dollar over there. It's more like, I make a dollar over here and I make ten cents over there. You'd have to have a lot of Spotify subscribers to make up that kind of difference. I just think that artists and labels are going to get to a point where it's really not in their interest to be part of this."

       It's hard to imagine on-line streaming going away any time soon. The cat, so to speak, is way, way out of the bag on that one. But that might not be the disaster that some labels and artists believe it to be. "I think services like Spotify might actually help the music industry," Stanbach muses. "I mean, you're never going to be able to stop certain people from trying to get music for free. People have been pirating music since they had tape recorders. It's just never going to go away. But, I think Spotify can help the music industry by presenting the music to people in a way that they're allowed to listen to it on their own terms and then they can decide what they want to purchase."

       The ultimate fate of Spotify and similar online services may come down to how willing people are to pay subscription fees. It's something Stanbach has already been pondering. "I was arguing with my friend the other day about that," he admits. "And I think that I would pay the five dollars a month to get rid of the ads. If I could afford it, I'd also pay more to get it on my phone and be able to listen to music off-line. One of the reasons is that I really want to make sure that Spotify is going to be around. If they get the financial support, I think that would help make sure they survive."
http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2011/dec/13/spotify-streams-americas-digital-clouds-ar-1541753/