Category: Music

Because I am woefully behind in my posting, and because it is Friday, and because I am listening to music:

1. Jeff Buckley, “Calling You” (Live at Sin-é)
2. Low, “Silver Rider” (The Great Destroyer)
3. David Byrne, “Don’t Fence Me In” (Red Hot + Blue)
4. U2, “Party Girl” (Under a Blood Red Sky)
5. Sonny Rollins, “Blue 7” (Saxophone Colossus)
6. Roy Orbison, “It’s Too Late” (Sun Recordings)
7. Peaches ‘n‘ Cream, “112”
8. Nirvana, “Serve the Servants” (In Utero)
9. The Tallis Scholars, “Requiem 5. Sanctus – Benedictus” (Cardoso: Requiem)
10. Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach, “I Still Have That Other Girl” (Painted from Memory)

How much buzz must there be about an artist before she is an overnight sensation?

I’m not in the habit of raving about musicians after hearing one performance—there have been too many about whom I’ve obsessed for weeks or months only to have them disappear—but I cautiously think that Marissa Nadler might be the real thing. The Stereogum crowd appears to agree, as they invited her to participate in OKX (she covers “No Surprises”), but the real thing is in her songs and her voice. I was working down the podcasts on my iPod and decided to play her in-studio appearance on KEXP in my car on the way in this morning. Wow, what a sound. Just lifted the hair on the back of my neck. The vocal quality bridges Jeff Buckley and classic 60s folks like Joan Baez, and the songwriting recalls 80s psychedelic folk revival (in fact, there are moments listening to her when I hear strains of Mazzy Star loud and clear—if Hope Sandoval were a high soprano).

She’s kind of a local, too, having grown up in Needham; though, since she makes a reference to being from a “plastic place” in her KEXP interview, I’m guessing that she doesn’t harbor a lot of love for the Bay State. Looks like she’ll be at the Middle East on September 11; I might have to check it out.

New mix up at Art of the Mix: a young escape to find you. Been working on this one for a while, finally got it put together tonight. Copies out soon to the usual suspects.

Two or three superb cuts on this—the return of Black Francis on “Threshold Apprehension,” Sonic Youth’s “Do You Believe in Rapture?,” Gillian Welch’s take on Radiohead’s “Black Star,” and three tunes that have been waiting their turn on one of my mixes since high school, “Fixing a Hole,” ”Yer So Bad,” and “Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires.”

While on vacation, I borrowed Björk’s Homogenic from my sister Esta. Listening to it reminds me of nothing so much as the conversation between Björk and Diddy, as imagined by Milkfat.com. “Sometimes… I climb into a laundry basket and tickle my ears!”

Then of course there’s the sequel, featuring the conversation between Diddy and Snoop: “Yo yo, you know that Japanese lookin’ white girl from Europe?” “Bjizzle?”

OK, I’m easily amused, but it does stick in the head. Even after it was posted, like, a lifetime ago.

Ten years ago, I was in North Carolina—specifically, in a small town outside Camp Lejeune—on a consulting assignment. I was bored stiff. The dialup at the hotel was awful—and yes, there was dialup; this was before wifi, before Ethernet in every room, and at least in this hotel before reliable plain old telephone service to every room. Even then I was an Internet addict, so this was like a virtual guarantee of death by boredom that night. So I got out and walked down the street from one strip mall to the other, ending up at a Wal-Mart. In the music section. Where I decided that it was the right sort of night to take a risk on an artist I had listened a little to but didn’t know that much about, and pick up OK Computer by Radiohead.

And something, even as I played the album through my computer’s crummy speakers, exploded in my head.

Ten years on, and I am writing a blog post at my parents’ retirement house in western North Carolina, over wifi while I download OKX, a tribute to OK Computer. While I haven’t heard of most of the artists on the album, those I have—Doveman and the inimitable John Vanderslice—make me think that this is going to be pretty darn good.

A lot has changed in the intervening ten years, but the basic message of impersonal alienation has more relevance than ever before.

Because really, that’s the only possible explanation for their pulling out of their iTunes Store contract. For once, Cory at BoingBoing nailed all the snidery that I wanted to drop onto this announcement in his opening sentence: “Universal Music Group, the largest record label on Earth (an accomplishment akin to being the world’s largest corset-buttoner, horse-shoer, or gutta-percha cable-insulator)”…

Heh.

Following up on Monday’s post, I should report that I decided against joining the tour. Its obvious attractions aside, family and work come first, and I’ll be quite busy with the latter the few weeks around Labor Day.

Not to say I’m not disappointed. I haven’t been to Europe on a non-business trip in a few years. But right now this has to be the right decision.

Until this afternoon, I had the summer figured out. Push like heck to get a software release out and the sales team solid for June; take a week in July to visit family; then get back on the treadmill, with the exception of a single Tanglewood weekend (in monastic compensation for last summer’s excesses). And that would be enough, really.

Until this afternoon. When I got a call from Symphony Hall. One of the tenors in the chorus dropped out, the woman at the other end said. Could I do the European Tour?

Could I? That’s the question. We are, after all, talking about four additional evening rehearsals, more than ten days on the road, and two additional Tanglewood residencies. Of course, we’re also talking about singing with the BSO in Europe; specifically, in Lucerne for the Lucerne Festival, Essen, Mosel, Paris, and London. Even better, in the Royal Albert Hall.

So: what to do? I am fatigued from the year and just want to spend time with my family. But I haven’t sung much lately either (though this would surely cure me of that). I’ll have to decide soon: I have until 5 pm tomorrow.

Via Mandy, a UVA friend, I found this YouTube video of Paul Potts, a broken-toothed contestant on “Britain’s Got Talent” who murmurs when asked why he’s in the competition, “To sing opera.” And then proceeds to tear the house down:

I mean, and please excuse my French, but: holy shit.

This is the dream, if you are an amateur musician; for a vocalist, this is the prototypical origin story. It’s how you decide you are going to pursue this for the rest of your life. (As I confessed a while ago.) And he does it. Makes the female presenter take heavy sighing breaths and cry, makes the audience jump to their feet, makes Simon gush like a schoolgirl.

And not only does he pull off this performance, which would have been cool enough; he goes on to win the whole shebang. And: sing for the Queen, record contract with Simon Cowell, get money to pay off his debts. Even get his teeth fixed.

Sometimes the good guys win. But apparently only in Britain. Lucky bastards.

(And, um, it’s OK to be just a little jealous of him, right?)

For a more reasoned response to the whole thing, SJ Reidhead has a good piece on Blogcritics.

Updated 9/26/2007: Had to update the YouTube link. You’d think that the rightsholder would treat this amazingly successful clip as promotion rather than yank it, but no…

Nice crop of reviews and other music related pieces today:

• Blogcritics has an appreciation of John McLaughlin that suggests that the British guitarist should be accorded a prime mover place in the formation of jazz fusion.
• The New Yorker profiles Spoon, placing it within a tradition of doing more with less.
• Pitchfork has an article on Bill Evans that puts him at the center of all 20th century piano work, both jazz and classical.

iTunes Plus, the DRM-free version of the iTunes Store, launched yesterday with kind of a big bang—Paul McCartney’s full catalog. The promised Upgrade My Music feature launched too. I didn’t really know what to expect there, so I was kind of astonished to see that the list of my purchases that were eligible for upgrade included twelve albums worth of music. I decided to go ahead and make the move to the high resolution downloads.

Now I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t—or at least that I had waited until a few days after the service launched. That’s a lot of 10 MB downloads, and they have a tendency of taking a really long time. Three of the downloads stalled the entire queue last night, so it looks like I will have to babysit the downloads for a few days. Fortunately restarting iTunes appears to have cleared whatever blockage was causing the problem.

One interesting unanticipated feature of the upgrade was spotlighted by CNet, who point out that the upgrade feature provides a way to retrieve a previously purchased but lost song for only 30 cents.

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of Jeff Buckley into the Mississippi River, and into legend. At the time, the death of the 30-year-old singer felt like a body blow, and ten years haven’t dulled the impact; if anything, the feeling of cosmic unfairness has deepened over the years. So the new anthology So Real: Songs from Jeff Buckley comes at a time where many of us were pondering Jeff’s legacy anyway, and it is that rarest of things, a greatest hits that illuminates and surprises rather than simply summing up. There is no way that I can write a review that does justice to this in a linear way; there are too many connections striving to be made. I will include these as asides throughout the review.

• Number of Jeff Buckley albums and EPs released in his lifetime: 2
• Number of albums, EPs, live albums, DVDs, greatest hits compilations, box sets, and deluxe editions released after his death: 7

The compilers of the collection, Mary Guibert (Jeff’s mother) and Tom Burleigh, had a challenge: How do you do a greatest hits album for an artist who only had one album before his untimely death? They chose an unconventional path: include half the debut album, Grace, together with selected b-sides, studio work released posthumously, and released and unreleased live recordings. It could have sounded like a shambles; it’s a testament to Jeff’s artistic brilliance and consistency that it sounds like a coherent whole.

• Number of tribute songs to Jeff Buckley listed on Wikipedia: 51

In one form or another, eight of the ten songs that formed Grace are on this disc, four in their studio version (“Last Goodbye,” “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over,” “Grace,” “Hallelujah”). The compilers chose alternate versions (that previously appeared on the Grace Legacy Edition of a few years ago) for “Eternal Life” and “Dream Brother,” a live version of “So Real” that was previously only available on a promo single, and the hypnotic version of “Mojo Pin” from Live at Sin-É. From Buckley’s posthumous Sketches for My Sweetheart, the Drunk, we get “The Sky is a Landfill” and the sultry “Everybody Here Wants You,” and the driving “Vancouver.” The delicate “Je N’en Connais Pas La Fin” (also from Sin-É) also appears as a bridge to the closing three songs.

• Brilliant collaborations left off the album: “Fireflies” and “Southern Cross” with Patti Smith, “Faith Salons” with Brenda Kahn, “All Flowers (in Time Bend Toward the Sun)” with Elizabeth Fraser, “I Want Someone Badly” with Shudder to Think
• Never-heard collaborations and covers mentioned in the liner notes: “Kashmir,” “Shombalor,” “Cobra” (John Zorn cover with Mike Doughty)

The remaining two songs are where this collection sets itself apart from a “greatest hits” mentality into the realm of the fan compilation. “Forget Her,” a Grace-era b-side that also appeared on the Legacy Edition, has long been one of my favorite Jeff Buckley songs. A straight-driving impassioned blues with little of the Middle Eastern meets Zeppelin flavor of his debut, it has the dual distinction of being more singable and more direct than most of his early output, presaging the slow jam of “Everybody Here Wants You” and other late tracks.

• Age of Jeff Buckley on May 29, 1997 when he drowned: 30
• Age of Tim Buckley, Jeff’s father, when he died of a drug overdose on June 28, 1975: 28

The final track, a never-before-heard live performance of the Smiths’ “I Know It’s Over,” wraps the compilation in the mystery of Jeff Buckley’s passing, what Mike Doughty calls in the liner notes his “effortless ability to become a myth, a legend.” Where the Mystery White Boy live recording included “I Know It’s Over” in medley with “Hallelujah,” here that striking first lyric, the finest line that Morrissey ever wrote for Jeff Buckley, stands on its own and makes you catch your breath with the unfairness of it. Because the rest of the collection is a testament to his brilliance and range as an artist, performer, and songwriter, the ending hurts all the more ten years on. At least we have more to remember him by now than we did then.

Lyrics in Jeff Buckley originals and covers that presage his death by drowning:

• “This body will never be safe from harm” (“Mojo Pin”)
• “As their shoes fill up with water” (“Lover, You Should Have Come Over”
• “Asleep in the sand with the ocean rushing over” (“Dream Brother”)
• “Just like the ocean, always in love with the moon/It’s overflowing” (“Opened Once”)
• “Stay with me under these waves tonight” (“Nightmares by the Sea”)
• “Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head” (“I Know It’s Over”)

Buckley fans are nothing if not opinionated. So Real comes close to meeting my high standards for a single-disc compilation, though there are a few changes I’d make–as a fan, I’ll always want more rarities. What would your greatest hits of Jeff Buckley look like?

At Art of the Mix, a new one somewhat in honor of my sister’s graduation this weekend from seminary: empty as a pocket with nothing to lose. Somewhat in honor because it didn’t start out that way, but between the gospel and devotional music in the first half and the general promise at the end it seems like a good fit. Congrats, sis.

Bebel Gilberto, whose music hovers the blurred boundaries between bossa nova, salsa, and trance music, has come a long way from her first album. Tanto Tempo came out of nowhere to establish Gilberto as a fresh voice in the global musical culture, with its catchy blend of traditional Brazilian sounds and global dance music. The subsequent remix album positioned her within the electronica tradition alongside such vocal muses as Beth Orton.

Subsequent albums, though, have backed away from that dance focus somewhat. The second, self-titled album, was less cool and perhaps more approachable, with greater focus on songcraft and more memorable songs. The third album, Momento, continues to seek a different path. At the end it finds, not masterpiece territory, but a very pleasant place to relax for a while.

My perspective on Momento is summed up rather neatly by a positive Amazon review of the album, which begins, “I discovered Bebel’s music at the coffee shop…” For background mood music, the album is darn near perfect: impeccably produced, constantly keeping dynamics and tempi just under the liminal threshold. But if you’re looking for something world-changing, move along; this is no Radiohead album. Instead, it’s music for a pleasant afternoon. Which, frankly, there is not enough of in the world at present.

I find it difficult to disengage my critical faculties even when an album is so precisely targeted, though, so I must share the bad news: Bebel’s performance is not so much cool as sleepy. On her self-titled second album there were moments alternately playful (“Baby”) and dramatic (“Aganju”) that showcased the interpretive range of her vocal instrument. Only “Caçada” steps above an emotional mezzoforte, and that largely on the strength of the superb backing band. The other performances are pleasant enough, but curiously affectless.

Where an artist like Sadé might build a career out of flat vocals, it is frustrating coming from Bebel. Thanks to her superb first two albums, we know she can give more. Here’s hoping that she digs a little deeper next time around and gives us a release that is not just pleasant, but essential.

Also posted at BlogCritics.

Oy indeed. If I have too many more weeks like this, I’ll plotz.

1. Dave Brubeck, “Her Name is Nancy” (So What’s New?)
2. Little Milton, “Grits Ain’t Groceries” (Oxford American Southern Music CD 2003)
3. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, “In This Home on Ice” (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah)
4. Tori Amos, “Angie” (Crucify EP)
5. Rob Wasserman, “Freedom Bass Dance” (Trilogy)
6. Justin Rosolino, “Sweet Day” (Music (The Live Recordings))
7. Moby, “The Sky is Broken” (Play)
8. Sleater-Kinney, “Living in Exile” (The Hot Rock)
9. Sting, “We Work the Black Seam” (The Dream of the Blue Turtles)
10. They Might Be Giants, “Hypnotist of Ladies” (Apollo 18)