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Tag: Bon Iver

  • 2012 Grammy Awards Live Blog

    Whitney Houston
    It’s the 54th edition of the Grammy Awards. And with the sad passing yesterday of Whitney Houston, I imagine it’s a much more somber celebration than usual. Our own Paul Lorentz wrote a nice piece on Houston earlier this morning. I participated in Popblerd’s appreciation piece earlier today as well.

    They always say the show must go on. And it will, though I’m not sure I’m ready to remember Houston yet.

    LL Cool J is the host for the show. Yes, a guy who was one of the first hip hop stars is hosting the music industry’s most celebratory day. I don’t imagine many would’ve predicted that when DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince won the first ever Rap Grammy in 1989, that 23 years later, a hip hop star would be hosting this show.

    (While this show has already happened since it started 3 hours ago and I get the West Coast tape-delayed version, I’m going to pretend this thing is live.)

    7:59 – How many times will LL lick his lips tonight? I think the over/under is 100. I’m going over.

    8:00 – The Boss opens up this show. I count three earrings. I once had an earring too … when I was 18. Come on Bruce, the gray hair, receding hairline, and earrings together aren’t a good look. Plus, you don’t need them bruh.

    8:04 – In a matter of seconds after the Boss finished his song, the cameras cut to Katy Perry with blue FU Russell Brand colored hair, Lady Gaga wearing a veil, and before I could anticipate it, Fergie’s face popped up out of nowhere. I could take Perry and Gaga, but I haven’t been that scared after seeing Fergie’s butter-face since watching The Poltergeist.

    8:08 – LL just gave a classy speech about “his sister” Whitney. Who says hip hop can’t be classy?

    (I’m not sure how I’m going to make it through this show with all these Whitney clips.)

    8:15 – Holy ****! Bruno Mars just sold a whole lotta albums tonight with his performance.

    8:16 – And can we just be clear about one thing? Mars’ pompadour is nothing more than the Brandon Walsh/Dylan McKay hairdo from 1992. I may have to bust that out too. It’s coming back.

    8:23 – The first Grammy Award is for Best Pop Solo Performance and it goes to Adele. I think Miss Adele is going to have a big night tonight.

    8:25 – I go away to check on my dinner and I miss Chris Brown’s performance. Oh the horror. Chris Brown has a very special talent. His talent is to do some pretty impressive and athletic dance numbers and make them seem so unimportant. I don’t remember any MJ performance ever being so insignificant.

    8:36 – Kanye West and Jay-Z win for Best Rap Performance and you’re telling me Kanye isn’t there? Well, he did get screwed by not being nominated for Album Of The Year. I guess I’d skip too.

    8:58 – I could say that Rihanna’s wig is very Tina Turner-esque, but I’m going with Farrah Fawcett’s dry perm. I think I just dated myself twice. By the way, if you didn’t know based on the hook that was repeated about 75 times, “We found love in a hopeless place.”

    9:14 – The Foo Fighters win for Best Rock Performance. New York Giants wide receivers Victor Cruz and Mario Manningham presented them with the award. I wish they had numbers on their suits so I could tell who was who.

    9:19 – From my friend @freemaneric:

    The Grammys, where Maroon 5 does “Surfer Girl” and everyone dies a little inside.

    9:37 – From Paul McCartney to Common shouting out Gil-Scott Herron? This must be 2012.

    9:37 – Chris Brown wins R&B Album Of The Year and shouts out Team Breezy. Yawn. El DeBarge was robbed.

    9:45 – Give out more awards, give us less Taylor Swift performances.

    9:51 – Adele and producer Paul Epworth win Song Of The Year. Epworth says that he couldn’t have done it without Adele. Really Paul? You mean you couldn’t have won this without Adele’s star power and voice?

    9:59 – Lady A won for Country Album Of The Year and I’m happy just so that we don’t have to see Hillbilly Taylor come up with her banjo again.

    10:10 – So Adele performed and she put boots to asses on everyone. It’s her night. She better win the whole damn thing.

    10:24 – Talk about catchy. “Like a rhinestone cowboy…” From @IAMJericho:

    Watching McCartney clapping along to Glenn Campbell is true class. #rocknrollisfamily

    10:31 – Carrie Underwood is on stage singing “It Had To Be You” with Tony Bennett. Another Tony, Tony Romo just pointed at the TV and said, “Me?”

    10:33 – That’s how you pronounce Bon Iver? And I’m so confused how they are a new artist, but oh well.

    10:45 – I really wanted to like Jennifer Hudson’s performance and I’m sure it came straight from the heart. But I don’t think it was very good and it was the wrong song to sing. Also, Melanie Amaro channels Whitney better than Jennifer does.

    11:04 – Common presented earlier and now it’s Drake’s turn. Sweet. I mean, um, yeah.

    11:08 – I think Nicki Minaj thinks this is her Lady Gaga moment. Sadly, it’s not.

    11:11 – This is Adele’s year. You can’t stop Adele. You can only hope to contain her. She also wins Record Of The Year.

    11:21 – And she wins Album Of The Year. She gives a raw reaction and not something preconceived or prepared, unlike a lot of what’s wrong with music in 2012.

    11:25 – Sir Paul McCartney goes HAM to end the show. See you next year.

    Whitney Houston photo is in the public domain.

  • Chart Chat 2/1/09: Taylor Swift, Kelly Clarkson, Mariah & More!!

    kellyIt’s been a while since we’ve done one of these: enough for the usually slow-moving charts to change appreciably, thank goodness. Anyway, here’s the latest action on the singles and albums chart, with the charts (as usual) used courtesy of the good folks at Billboard magazine.

    Top 20 Albums:
    1) “Fearless” Taylor Swift
    2) “I Am…Sasha Fierce” Beyonce
    3) “Dark Horse” Nickelback
    4) “808s & Heartbreak” Kanye West
    5) “Twilight Soundtrack” Various Artists
    6) “A Different Me” Keyshia Cole
    7) “Circus” Britney Spears
    8) “Intuition” Jamie Foxx
    9) “Notorious Soundtrack” Various Artists
    10) “The Ballads” Mariah Carey
    11) “Now That’s What I Call Music 29” Various Artists
    12) “Noble Beast” Andrew Bird
    13) “Merriweather Post Pavillion” Animal Collective
    14) “David Cook” David Cook
    15) “Funhouse” P!nk
    16) “Blood Bank (EP)” Bon Iver
    17) “Freedom” Akon
    18) “Paper Trail” T.I.
    19) “Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack” Various Artists
    20) “The Fame” Lady GaGa

    Top 20 Singles

    1) “My Life Would Suck Without You” Kelly Clarkson
    2) “Just Dance” Lady GaGa feat. Colby O’ Donis
    3) “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” Beyonce
    4) “Heartless” Kanye West
    5) “Love Story” Taylor Swift
    6) “Gives You Hell” The All-American Rejects
    7) “Live Your Life” T.I. feat. Rihanna
    8) “You Found Me” The Fray
    9) “Circus” Britney Spears
    10) “I’m Yours” Jason Mraz
    11) “I Hate This Part” The Pussycat Dolls
    12) “Let it Rock” Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne
    13) “Hot ‘n Cold” Katy Perry
    14) “Dead & Gone” T.I. feat. Justin Timberlake
    15) “Womanizer” Britney Spears
    16) “Sober” P!nk
    17) “Untouched” The Veronicas
    18) “Whatever You Like” T.I.
    19) “Mad” Ne-Yo
    20) “Gotta Be Somebody” Nickelback

    *First thing I notice is that the amount of artists who repeat themselves on the singles chart has decreased significantly. Only T.I. (three songs) and Britney Spears (two songs) have more than one song in the Top 20.

    *Taylor Swift spends a seventh consecutive week at the summit of the Albums chart, the longest run in quite a few years (I think the last album to spend that much time at the top was Usher’s “Confessions”). Springsteen’s debut next week will end that run, but either way that’s Pretty impressive.

    *Check out Andrew Bird, Animal Collective and Bon Iver in the Top 20…making a great showing for indie music and artists.

    *Kelly Clarkson zooms to the top with “My Life Would Suck Without You”. Jumping from 97-1, it’s the largest move to the top in history. It’s also Kelly’s first #1 single since her debut, “A Moment Like This”. It also means Clive Davis is in an office somewhere, smiling smugly.

    *Who are The Veronicas?

    *Well, I was right in assuming that they were an all-female band. Let’s hear it for educated guesses. They’re not very good, though.

    *Mariah makes an impressive showing at #10 with a collection of older ballads. Only one track on this compilation dates from this decade, proving in the light of the blah chart showing of “E=MC2” that folks still love Mariah, they just love her more when she’s making good music.

    *Err…I got nothing left. Enjoy the charts,the videos,and the Super Bowl! No titties this year!!

  • SonicClash Best of 2008: Greg’s Turn

    Happy New Year’s Eve, everyone. Our own Greg Harrell has passed on his own indie-tastic list of his favorites of 2008. Have a look-see, won’t you?

    20.) Atmosphere – When Life Gives You Lemons You Paint That Shit Gold

    19.) The Verve – Forth

    18.) Raphael Saadiq – The Way I See it

    17.) Ra Ra Riot – The Rhumb Line

    16.) Coldplay – Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends

    15.) Robyn – Robyn

    14.) Bloc Party – Intimacy

    13.) The Streets – Everything Is Borrowed

    12.) Shearwater – Rook

    11.) ohGr – Devils in my Details

    10.) The Mars Volta – The Bedlam In Goliath

    Were it not for a handful of shitty songs, this would easily be album of the year. “Metatron” is the greatest thing anybody recorded in 2008, and when this record’s on, it’ll give you seizures. Seriously, Curtis Mayfield could’ve written “Goliath” after a weekend of dropping acid in the desert. Occultist prog-rock doesn’t get any better.

    9.) Sigur Ros – Med Sud I Eryum Vid Spilium Endalaust

    This record is every bit as “Sigur Ros” as anything these crazy Icelandic bastards have done in the past: meaning it sounds very much like pop music from some beautiful alien civilization. Still, the band decided to throw in a few curveballs, and it definitely sounds much…earthier than anything else they’ve done, probably because the sweeping electric guitars of yore have been replaced with acoustics. Surprisingly, they pull the folky direction off beautifully. The sweet ballad “Illgresi” has made it onto just about every mixtape I’ve burned this year, “Gobbledigook” is a gleeful sprint through the woods, and the angelic explosion of “Ara batur” is just paralyzingly beautiful. I don’t know what the hell world these guys inhabit, but I’d sure like to visit it someday.

    8.) TV on the Radio – Dear Science

    Depending on whose reading this, you either have no idea who the fuck TV on the Radio is or you’ve had the brilliance of this record shoved down your throat so many times that you’re completely sick of it. So yeah, TV on the Radio experiments with dance / disco / afro-beat / new wave, everybody loves it and I’m already sick of talking about it.

    7.) Kanye West – 808s & Heartbreak

    I wasn’t as scared of this record as a lot of people were. I dug “Love Lockdown” from the get go, and figured if anyone could make a great record out of the autotune it would be Kanye. Sure enough, he proved me right. If for whatever reason you haven’t heard this yet, “808s & Heartbreak” finds Mr. West going a more somber route. Yeah, there’s singing; yeah, there’s heartbreak; yeah, there are 808s too incidentally enough. I don’t know if this as radical as some people have made it out to be, seeing as there are at least four great singles on this album, but whether you love the man or hate him, you’ve gotta respect his artistic daring. I mean, how many times has Kanye reinvented his style now? Exactly. I don’t really know where to place the sound of this record: somewhere between the “walking through the streets at night contemplating what an utter failure your life has become” sound of Burial’s last record, the catchier side of Depeche Mode and the more Eurocentric songs from “Graduation.” It’s a hell of a statement, and nobody other than Kanye West could’ve possibly made it.

    6.) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!

    Imagine “Highway 61 Revisited” plowed into the Doors’ self-titled record. “Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!” is the result.

    5.) Beck – Modern Guilt

    Beck writes a bunch of apocalyptic songs and gets Dangermouse to provide some colorful and vaguely psychedelic beats. Naturally, the result is brilliance.

    4.) Q-Tip – The Renaissance

    The only legitimately great hip-hop record released this year (“808s” is a little too leftfield to qualify as hip-hop exclusively). Q-Tip does something that not too many pioneers of the genre are willing to do: he looks forward instead of trying to plagiarize himself. The result is an excellent hip-hop medley, sometimes jazzy, sometimes soulful, always electrifying. Tip puts everybody doing this to shame so astoundingly, and so effortlessly, it’s almost humbling.

    3.) Portishead – Third
    Speaking of leftfield comebacks, holy shit this record is amazing. Considering that trip-hop (which isn’t really a genre but let’s pretend it is for a sentence) has essentially been left to fester in a ditch, I can’t say I was expecting Portishead to pull off a masterpiece. But lo and behold they did. Beth Gibbons sounds as lovely as ever, and the other two guys still know how to convert dank and despair into beauty. From the shimmering “Hunter” to the bubbling “Rip” to the foggy “Small,” there’s not a bad song here. Proof that your musical idols aren’t always content to just sit on their asses and exploit their legacies.

    2.) Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago

    The sound of a white wolf pawing at the moon. Music don’t get much sadder and wintry than this.

    1.) Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid

    How the hell have these guys not blown up yet? Seriously, “Grounds for Divorce” alone should have made them a household name. Well, unless Judd Apatow decides to use one of their songs to promote his next movie, I guess these guys are gonna have to remain a secret. “The Seldom Seen Kid” goes everywhere: one track you’re soaring through space, the next you’re getting stretched through a funhouse mirror. One minute you’re sitting on top of a skyscraper, the next you’re walking past a friend’s grave. And so on. Guy Garvey is an absolutely brilliant songwriter, and the lyrics wash through you as if the feelings were your own. As a singer, he’s capable of evoking both the tenderness of Chris Martin and the swagger of Peter Gabriel (who I guess could be tender too but…um…). If you’ve yet to hear this, then look up the dazzling “Mirrorball.” If that song doesn’t move you then I don’t want to share the same…planet as you. Get out.