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Pop Rock Nation

Category: Reviews

music-and-concert-reviews-you-wont-see-anywhere-else

  • Best of ’08 Vol. 1: Vampire Weekend

    Take four Ivy League-educated preppies. Dress ’em up in Izod polo shirts and khakis. Feed ’em a steady diet of King Sunny Ade & Fela Kuti, and run it through the average young person’s pop sensibility. Flourish it with a bit of a classical element, and you’ve got the debut album by New York foursome Vampire Weekend.
    These guys have made a pretty big splash on the music scene in a very short time. Within weeks of the release of their first record, they’ve already earned the prestigious musical guest spot on “Saturday Night Live” as well as the cover of “Spin” magazine. I personally found out about the band through a cubemate of mine who went to New York’s Columbia University with the guys and was raving about the album weeks before it came out. After a few scattered listens, I was convinced that this was something I needed to own, and I wasn’t disappointed.

    Clocking in at a lightning-fast 34 minutes, Vampire Weekend’s album is a fast, fun listen. The band fuses together several musical elements that are quite different and somehow makes it work.

    I was hooked from the second I heard the album’s opener, Mansard Roof. I don’t know what the hell a mansard roof is (actually I do now, I googled it), and the lyrics don’t amount to much (for me, anyway), but the second I heard the African-inspired drumbeat kick in, my *ss was moving and sometimes that’s all that matters. The band members are obviously inspired by Afrobeat (or they raided their parents’ record collections for old Talking Heads and Paul Simon albums), and they kind of take the p*ss out of the juxtaposition between their blueblood upbringing and the sound of their music with tongue-in-cheek song titles like Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.

    Current single A-Punk is another winner, with a breakneck beat (featuring flute interludes!) that suggests The Ramones as played by the New York Philharmonic, complete with staccato “Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay!” choruses. Meanwhile, M79 (named after one of the buses that runs from one side of Central Park to the other) has a jaunty rhythm that’s goosed along by a pretty impressive-sounding string section…well, certainly more impressive than any strings I’ve heard on a rock record in recent memory.

    Being young Ivy Leaguers (or maybe just being young New Yorkers…ha!), the band is lyrically on the obtuse/pretentious side. Your enjoyment of this record will probably be from an instrumental or a melodic standpoint more than it’ll be from a lyrical standpoint. That’s not to say the band doesn’t come up with some interesting things to say. I’m not sure what the hell Oxford Comma is about, but any rock band who can get away with quoting the King of Crunk (“First the window, then it’s to the wall/Li’l Jon, he always tells the truth”) is fine by me. The clearest narrative here is Walcott, which tells the story of the title character as he escapes vampires in Massachusetts and escapes to New Jersey. The lyrics originally popped up in a screenplay co-written by lead vocalist Ezra Koenig, titled…you guessed it, “Vampire Weekend”.

    I guess the best way to describe the music on this album is “sophisticated lo-fi”. It’s certainly not overproduced, with a tossed-off quality that’s completely endearing. You’ve also gotta love the varied elements of ear-candy, from the Coldplay-esque rolling piano (at about 11X Coldplay’s usual speed) featured in the aforementioned Walcott to The Kids Don’t Stand A Chance, which sounds like dub reggae meets “Turn Turn Turn” by The Byrds. The thing is, despite sounding underproduced (in the best possible way), you can also tell that these kids have some serious chops. The album is bare-bones but not amateurish.

    It’s also loads of fun, and I recommend Vampire Weekend for that factor alone. There’s a lot of manufactured hype and buzz from everyone-industry insiders, critics, bloggers-but these dudes are the real deal. It’s indie pop (in the truest sense…this album is actually independently distributed) that you don’t have to be a hipster douchebag to enjoy.

     


  • R&B’s Best Kept Secret Makes His “Point”: Anthony Hamilton

    Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what to make of the current R&B landscape. The R&B band has all but disappeared, the divas of yesteryear still exist in a radically faded state with no ladies in waiting to replace them, and as for the guys? Well, most male R&B singers either spend their time trying to be rappers or trying to be Michael Jackson. Nothing against rappers or MJ, but you’ve gotta wonder what happened to what they call “grown folks” R&B. Stick-to-your-ribs soul music. A man who sounds like an adult instead of a perpetually horny teenager, someone with real-life perspective. An artist capable of filling the void created when Gerald LeVert and Luther Vandross passed away. Well, if Anthony Hamilton hasn’t found his way into your music collection yet, I strongly suggest you check him out right now.

    North Carolina-born, Harlem-based Anthony Hamilton is still pretty much under the radar. Despite selling a combined 1.5 million copies of his first two albums, the majority of music listeners-even fans of R&B- music fans would be hard-pressed to name three songs from the guy. That anonymity has prevented him from getting his props, because 37-year old Hamilton is easily one of the best-if not THE best- singer in his genre. His raspy tone has drawn comparisons to everyone from Bill Withers to Bobby Womack, and he’s proven himself to be one of the few current artists capable of sounding like an authentic throwback (as opposed to a pale facsimile) and completely contemporary at the same time. He appeals equally to men and women, although the (formerly) scruffy, diminutive Hamilton is not the traditional R&B sex symbol. His music has a strong spiritual element to it (the song “Pass Me Over”, from his last album, literally got me through a very trying period several years ago), and the guy throws down live. Believe me, y’all. Anthony Hamilton is the whole package.

    Rumors of his third album, The Point of it All, being a more “uptempo” affair caught me off-guard and had me thinking the worst. After all, Hamilton certainly wouldn’t be the first favorite artist of mine to make a sellout move after showing promise. My fears were compounded when I realized the first single, Cool, featured a guest spot from rapper David Banner. Again, I love my hip-hop just like I love my R&B, but there are definite times when the two don’t need to mix, and although Hamilton has made guest appearances on a couple of popular rap singles, I felt like the addition of a guest emcee on a Hamilton album was a compromise of sorts.

    Thank goodness, my fears turned out to be unnecessary. While The Point of it All has added a few elements to make Hamilton sound a little more contemporary, it’s basically still an Anthony Hamilton album. Fans of his first two albums will find much to enjoy here.

    Cool actually turns out to be a pretty decent song, a mellow midtempo track with a fairly unobtrusive (and witty) rap section from Banner, but it’s far from the best song on the album (actually, it‘s one of the weakest).  The News opens the album and immediately sets the tone for everything that follows with a groove and socially conscious lyrics that recall both Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield. Listen to a song like this and it’s no wonder that the guys who put together the music for American Gangster (which was set in the early Seventies) picked Hamilton to perform two original songs on the soundtrack . Prayin’ for You/Superman is a two-part song that stretches Hamilton out with a little bit of country twang followed by some piano blues. It’s pretty ballsy for an R&B artist and shows why musicians as diverse as country star Josh Turner and blues-rocker Jonny Lang have sought him out to work with. Hamilton even proves that he can handle adult contemporary balladry. He pulls off a song like Her Heart beautifully when it would be mush in any other artist’s hands.

    Hamilton’s more spiritually inclined work hits me the hardest, and to me, this album’s centerpiece is Fine Again. It’s got a hopeful message and  pleading vocals that put it head and shoulders above the rest of the album.

    One good album can be a fluke. Two good albums suggest potential greatness. Three great albums seals the deal. With The Point of it All, Hamilton has sewn up his position as one of the most talented R&B artists around. Hopefully, this will be the time that the world-at-large realizes this.

    See the video for “Cool” here.

  • Christmas Music That Won’t Kill You – Part II: Christmas Past

    The other day I told you about some of the new Christmas CDs this year.  Now we are going to revisit some recommended holiday albums you may have missed in the past.

    Ray Charles – Spirit of Christmas
    Sounds awesome, right?  Nope, it’s merely very good.  It was recorded in the 80s, so it doesn’t have the immediacy of Ray’s recordings for Atlantic.  Pick this up if you’re looking for a big band romp through Christmas classics.  Ray is in great voice and the arrangements are strong.  Really strong if you consider when this was recorded.

    Ringo Starr – Christmas Collection
    This charming CD is pretty rocking in spots.  What record collection is complete without the world’s most famous drummer singing “The Little Drummer Boy?”  With bagpipes!  (Think about it; it makes sense.)

    Christmas Jug Band – Uncorked
    Christmas Jug Band is a collective of SF-area roots musicians.  Although they have released a number of CDs, this is their best because of the strength of the originals.  It’s perfect for people who dig folk, western swing, or skiffle and appreciate a certain kind of humor.  Many of the songs are supposed to remind one of older jazz or string band music, but the humor is modern.  Most humorous music is for kids, and because it talks down to them, it’s toxic to adults.  Christmas Jug Band is more like Peanuts.  The humor really functions at an adult level without excluding children.  If this sounds appealing to you, head over to www.globerecords.com and check out the audio samples.

    Kings College Choir – pretty much anything
    The Mormon Tabernacle Choir might be seen as THE Christmas choir, but Kings College Choir is way better.  Why?  Because the treble parts are sung by pre-pubescent boys instead of women.  You need a bunch of powerful women singers to do Wagner, but that’s just a little too Mall of the Americas for me.  Boys sound like bells or (I almost hate to say it) angels which seems much more appropriate if you are going for a religious experience.  They are all great so pick the one with the carols you like best.  Just be aware that anything subtitled “a lesson and carol service” will be half Bible readings.

    Various Artists – Midwinter
    This amazing 4-CD collection was released by Free Reed, who are known for their comprehensive British folk-rock box sets.  It contains the artist one might expect: Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, The Watersons, Martin Carthy, The Strawbs, Maddy Prior, Shirly Collins, Jethro Tull, etc.  With this bunch, you’re going to get a bunch of really old English songs with possibly pre-Christian roots.  The set also includes some Americans incuding Loudon Wainwright III, Blind Boy Grunt (Bob Dylan, but you knew that right?), Joan Baez, John Fahey, and even Mahalia Jackson.  The few spoken word pieces range from Robert Frost reciting “Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening” to an excerpt of The Grinch featuring Vincent Price.

    I could go on but Rock Dad has some crafting responsibilities.  Let’s open this up to comments.  What favorites or guilty pleasures do you have?

    I’ll be back soon with Christmas future.  What the heck could that be?  No idea.