All right — let’s just get the Rufus Wainwright comparisons out of the way.
Matt Alber and Wainwright do share a certain timbral similarities in their voices — rich and crooning. Both are grounded in classical training — Alber probably moreso than Wainwright — and neither is afraid to employ it. And they’re both gay.
But the differences in the details are more striking than the similarities.
Wainwright makes no bones about his fabulousness. (Check out the minor role he plays in the movie Heights.) His music reflects that flamboyance. Alber, on the other hand, comes across as more rustic, even when his music dives deep into the ethereal.
And as convenient as comparing the two may be, it is ultimately an exercise in inaccuracy. The most important commonality they share is a distinct sound.
When I was in high school, sampling was still fairly new technology, and its use in pop music was crude even back then. You need look no further than MC Hammer — his commandeering of Rick James’ "Superfreak" conned a lot of unschooled listeners into thinking wholesale theft of a hook was creatively OK.
I didn’t buy it. I rolled my eyes at my classmates who would light up when someone would play that hook. They would answer, "You can’t touch this". I would answer, "She’s a superfreak, superfreak".
A few years later, Public Enemy and N.W.A. would break samples down further, pasting together aural collages that inched toward something with its own identity. But Hammer and Chuck D and Dr. Dre probably would have never imagined the power of software today or the mashup culture that would emerge.
DJ Greg Gilles, who also goes by the moniker Girl Talk, uses more than 300 samples on his latest album, Feed the Animals. He’s chopped up, sliced and layered the most unlikely sources to create the ultimate conundrum — new music that’s instantly familiar.
One of the highlights of Nico Muhly’s Mothertongue was the simultaneously unhinged and unflappable performance of Sam Amidon. Amidon’s cool delivery of a traditional murder ballad integrated seamlessly with Muhly’s fractured score. It was enough for me to seek out Amidon’s most recent album, All Is Well, which features orchestrations by Muhly.
As much as I liked Mothertongue, I loved what Muhly did for All Is Well.
Amidon’s previous album, But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted, established a template by which traditional material could be warped and re-rendered. All Is Well takes that aesthetic to a whole new level.
When news first broke that Spangle call Lilli line were recording a "Gothic classical album" of "salon music", my first reaction was, "What the hell is ‘Gothic classical music’?"
That’s my classical training getting in the way — there is no such thing as "Gothic classical". There’s Romantic, modern, Baroque, Medieval and Classical (as in 18th century), but Gothic? And "salon music" is just as meaningless, unless "salon" is supposed to be "chamber".
I had to listen to this album when it was released just to figure out what the band meant. As it turns out, "Gothic classical" is actually French impressionist music from the early 20th Century, and ISOLATION does a beautiful job weaving the hazy harmonic language of Erik Satie and Claude Debussy into the band’s usual dreamy pop.
This album will probably be filed in the classical section, and it should not be.
Nico Muhly has written works for orchestras and chamber ensembles, and while his previous album, Speaks Volume, could be considered a classical album indie rock fans could love, Mothertongue is pretty much a full-blown indie rock album.
Of course, my definition of classical music is pretty narrow. Most classical recordings are recorded live, in a hall or in a studio. The recording process is not part of the composition or performance of a piece.
Mothertongue is a creation of the studio. Perhaps it can be performed live, but the multi-layered vocals, close-miked instruments and compressed synthetic effects are woven too deeply into the fabric of the music.
Sure, but Bang on the Can and Kronos Quartet do something similar. How is Mothertongue an indie album? In context of my current Winamp playlist, it shares more in common with Samamidon and Spangle call Lilli line than with Huang Ruo and Morton Feldman.
As spellbinding as Hajime Chitose’s voice can be, the contribution of late-producer Ueda Gen cannot be overlooked. Hajime’s debut album, Hainumikaze, housed the singer’s traditionally-trained voice in a pop sound that referenced Japanese folk, dub and rock all at once.
Ueda’s presence was sorely missed on Hajime’s previous album, Hanadairo, and on her latest, Cassini, his work on the opening title track casts a long shadow over the rest of the album.
"Cassini", the song, has a rich arrangement, starting out with ethereal textures that are eventually grounded by a dub bass and reggae horns. Hajime’s voice soars at the end, and the entire performance poses a tough challenge for the rest of the album to follow.
Let me get the fanboy stuff out of the way. For a better listening experience of the first disc of Shiina Ringo’s b-side collection Watashi to Houden, rearrange the track listing in the following order.
Σ
Tokyo no Hito (The kanji spells onna, but the furigana says hito. Confusing.)
Unconditional Love
Remote Controller
Suberidai
Memai
17
Rinne Highlight
Aozora
Kimi no Hitomi ni Koishiteru
Toki ga Bousou Suru
Jitsuroku ni Shinjuku (optional since it’s not even in the collection)
EMI Japan took a chronological order for the first disc of this two-disc collection, which doesn’t quite highlight the strength of the material on the whole. As Shiina got more sophisticated with programming her releases, the material on the second disc could not lend itself to such a chronology.
So that brings up my main criticism of an otherwise good retrospective: why not apply the same kind of sequencing of the second disc to the first? Of course, the order listed above is my personal choice on how to sequence the tracks. YMMV. Still, any effort would have made the collection feel less miscellaneous.
First off, no one in this band is named Karen. Yes, there’s a woman singer, but her name is Achiko. Why did the band name use a single first name? I don’t know. And yet, the name kind of fits.
KAREN consists of ART-SCHOOL guitarists Kinoshita Riki and Todaka Masafumi, ex-downy rhythm section of bassist Nakamata Kazuhiro and drummer Akiyama Takahiko, plus Achiko. It’s something of an indie supergroup that, not surprisingly, sounds nothing like the bands from which the members came.
A bit of ART-SCHOOL’s emo bluster can be heard in the guitar work, but it’s held in check by a more pop sound. The syncopated madness of downy, however, is nowhere to be found, although Akiyama and Nakamata do a fine job of playing around the beat.
Rather, KAREN is what happens when a ’90s indie band gets transported to the late ’80s. If the band’s debut album MAGGOT IN TEARS is any indication, the arm of Johnny Marr stretches long yet again.
Well here’s a Musicwhore.org first — a review of what could conceivably called a bunch of demo tracks. No album at all.
About the only thing Jonathan Mendelsohn has released commercially is a contribution to the compilation Revolutions, released by the gay-friendly label Music with a Twist, and that track, "Forgiveness", was one of the better ones in the collection.
When Sony was directly involved with Music with a Twist, Mendelsohn’s Myspace page indicated he had major label backing. As Music with a Twist disappeared from consciousness — after really big announcements at the start of 2006 — so it seemed with Mendelsohn’s deal. His label description reverted back to "None".
Instead, he launched a SNOCAP store and posted 10 recordings, which will be referred here as the SNOCAP tracks, since they aren’t really part of any specific album.
One of the problems with Revolutions was a broad brush approach to its selection. The commercially-minded tracks just didn’t sound distinctive even for commercial music. Mendelsohn was one of the few exceptions.
As much as I love Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball — you really didn’t want to be hanging around me in 1995 if I were anywhere near a CD player — two additional albums in the same vein started to feel … familiar. And Harris isn’t one to dwell on the familiar for very long.
To bastardize Sir Isaac Newton, every zig has an equal and opposite zag. With All I Intended to Be, Harris returns to her role as interpreter, and she works with her very first producer, Brian Ahrens, for the first time in two decades. It’s not a complete return to the past, however — a few of her own songs are thrown into the mix.
What results is a wonderfully organic and rustic work, a culmination of Harris’ storied career as performer and songwriter.