“I never had as much fun as I had with the original seven… and it ain’t over yet,” Morris Day says wistfully on the spoken intro to his old band’s comeback record, Condensate. Morris Day and The Time – here renamed The Original 7ven because, well, mentor Prince’s copyright-related peccadilloes have gotten the better of him in recent years – may not have released an album together in 21 years, but you wouldn’t know that from listening to Condensate. Not only […]
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Spin Cycle: Murs’ “Love & Rockets, Vol. 1”
“Dope beats, dope rhymes, what more do y’all want?” Phonte once asked, and the question remains a potent one: hip-hop, particularly of the underground variety, turned a more experimental corner around the time of the millennium, and for many, the art of the simply-constructed, plainspoken hip-hop LP fell by the wayside. The loose-limbed, live-band feel of the Roots; the lush soundscapes and penetrating self-excavation of Kanye West; these are the things that we’ve been conditioned to value in hip-hop. Some […]
The Jukebox From Hell 05: “Follow Me”
It’s important, when postulating about songs that may deserve placement on the Jukebox From Hell, to generally avoid easy targets. Let’s take my personal favorite whipping boys, Nickelback, for example: everybody knows that Nickelback is a blight on the musical landscape, the product of a horrid curse that a gypsy woman placed on rock n’ roll years ago, that their lead singer is an insufferable tool, and that encountering one of their songs on the radio is something akin to […]
Spin Cycle: Meat Loaf’s “Hell in a Handbasket”
Are we at a place, culturally, where we can unanimously agree that Meat Loaf’s 1977 debut, Bat Out Of Hell, is unequivocally awesome? Sure, it’s theatrical. It’s bombastic. And, perhaps most damningly, it’s awfully cheesy; Meat oversings every ballad, Jim Steinman writes pretentious multi-song suites about his inability to get girls as a teenager, and at first listen, Meat and Steinman seem to be taking everything really, really seriously. But it’s cheese of the most glorious variety; its sincerity (tempered, […]
Spin Cycle: Bjork’s “Biophilia”
By way of a disclaimer, this review doesn’t come from the point of view of a Bjork fan. That’s important to note, as it seems that the Icelandic pixie’s records are uniquely suited for those familiar with her style, those attuned to her peccadilloes. Unlike most Bjork records, however, Biophilia has been anticipated more for its incorporation of multimedia and technology than for the direction of its music. Its song suites are, supposedly, enhanced by their interactions with corresponding iPad apps, […]
Spin Cycle: Erasure’s “Tomorrow’s World”
To dismiss Erasure as mere “synthpop pioneers” seems like it’d be erroneous; it’s true, the duo of Vince Clark and Andy Bell built a career from the ground up, dolling up their sound with more canned drumbeats and squelching keyboards than you could shake a Yaz at. But any pop connoisseur knows the real deal: peel away the layers, and what remained under that distinctly-80’s veneer were, simply, a series of excellent pop songs. Melodically, next to nothing can compete with […]
Spin Cycle: Jack’s Mannequin’s “People and Things”
Fans hooked by the first Jack’s Mannequin record, 2005’s Everything In Transit, can collectively rejoice: after a shift from effervescent, sun-kissed piano-pop to artful, introspective songwriting on the group’s second album, The Glass Passenger, Jack’s are back with a new record and a new outlook. Of course, Jack’s Mannequin figurehead and Something Corporate ex-pat Andrew McMahon was well within his rights to craft a weighty, introspective album: The Glass Passenger chronicled his much-publicized battle with leukemia, which allows any singer-songwriter at […]
Spin Cycle: The Knux’s “Eraser”
The merger of rap and rock is a notoriously dubious proposition: sure, sometimes you get surefire party-rockers like Run-DMC and Aerosmith’s legendary “Walk This Way” team up, Anthrax and Public Enemy’s raucous “Bring the Noise”, or the entire righteous-anger-fueled career of Rage Against the Machine. But more often than not you get Crazy Town. You get Quarashi. You get Limp Bizkit. You get Lil’ Wayne’s Rebirth album, the sound of leaping headfirst into a blender and turning it on. Enter The […]
Spin Cycle: Phonte’s “Charity Starts At Home” // 9th Wonder’s “The Wonder Years”
In the reasonably notable absence of the classic line-up of North Carolina hip-hop trio Little Brother, we’ve been fortunate enough to hear from the individual parts; frontman Phonte made waves as one half of the critically-acclaimed Foreign Exchange, and producer 9th Wonder’s been nothing short of prolific behind the boards. And, of course, there’s Big Pooh, who’s been… well, Pooh’s been doing something, probably. There were even a couple of 9th-less Little Brother albums that totally don’t count because they’re […]
Spin Cycle: Wilco’s “The Whole Love”
It’s interesting, really, that Wilco’s latest album begins with the dissonant, twitchy, seven-and-a-half minute “The Art of Almost”. Not that it’s weird for Wilco to record long, strange songs that culminate in discordant, cacophonous jam sessions – “‘Spiders (Kidsmoke)’!,” everyone who’s ever heard the alt-country pioneers’ A Ghost Is Born record just yelped in unison – but because, once you get past the opening track’s mind-melting uniqueness, The Whole Love is really quite accessible. Lots of people have followed Wilco’s career trajectory, after […]