Amy Winehouse
Back to Black
Republic
originally published July 18, 2007
Like the Strokes or the Black Lips - bands offering up paint-by-numbers re-inventions of once-exciting genres - Amy Winehouse's take on vintage '60s soul works on paper but ultimately fades due to forgettable songwriting. All the elements are there, ticked off on a checklist and (supposedly) updated with a tabloid-era brashness, but the album Back to Black is a hollow and clumsy aping supported by the passing appeal of the peppy tune "Rehab." It's The Simpsons Sing the Blues, though without the contextual entertainment factor.
What keeps Winehouse's album above water? Her backing band the Dap-Kings, though even so they're frequently buried in the mix and not allowed equal prominence to her vocals; the drums are minimalized and the band lacks the punch it has on the recordings for its regular gig, backing legit soul/funk powerhouse Sharon Jones.
Producer Mark Ronson gives the classic soul sound a bass-heavy update on the handful of tracks he handles, but more often than not it's the production of Salaam Remi, who worked Winehouse's 2003 debut album Frank, that pulls Back to Black down into leaden, dull mood music. Vintage '60s? No, no, it's similar to the sort of stuff that was coming out in the early '70s when soul was fading into schmaltzy R&B.
It's not that reinvention has no place; maybe seeing Amy Winehouse perform with a backing band is close (enough) to seeing artists who no longer tour. But when you're browsing in the record store, why settle for a stand-in like Back in Black when you can just move over a couple of feet and pick up any release by Etta James, Aretha Franklin or the Ronettes? Or hell, get anything by Sharon Jones; she's perpetually underappreciated and the only contemporary soul artist who knows her way around a timeless sound.
Long Legged Woman
Newtown Nights
Thor's Rubber Hammer/Pollen Season
originally published July 18, 2007
What little I'd heard from recent Flagpole Athens Music Award-winning (for Experimental Band) duo Long Legged Woman was the blues-oozing noise debauchery of last year's debut EP 1. While I enjoyed the reverb-drenched pounding of that set, I never saw the band achieving anything on the level of Newtown Nights, especially so soon. But the record makes perfect sense as a follow-up, and in hindsight I probably should've expected it, given their unpredictably shifting live shows. Long Legged Woman's BFF is still reverb, but largely gone are the pummeling sheets of feedback. Instead Gabe Vodicka and Justin Flowers have withdrawn into a spectral haze, skipping stones on a lunar lake and letting the ripples fill the silence. The result is pretty damned awesome, kinda like a one-night stand between Grouper and Spacemen 3.
"What Comes After, Pt. 1" uses clean strums and Vodicka's ghostly echoed vocals to paint the calmest picture of the duo's new sense of restraint. The final two parts come later and complete what is collectively an amazing four minutes. "Won't Get It Right" finds Flowers taking the mic, and with the delayed singing and distortion-soaked guitar, there's definitely an echo of Deerhunter. But this is a young band that is clearly already comfortable and settling into its own niche, albeit restlessly. "Rerevolve" utilizes tape noise, grumbling low end and detached vocal samples all echoing into oblivion.
Every smear of lo-fi hiss and crackle, each snippet of found sound anchors the 13 tracks with the perfect amount of grainy texture. The minimal instrumentation therefore scratches all the right itches. The only flaw on Newtown Nights is its brevity - 13 tracks in only 28 minutes. As on early Guided By Voices records, many of the pieces are just that - pieces - ending just as they begin to fully draw the listener in. If the two feel inclined in the future to drift further, there could be some serious interest beyond the Georgia pines. As it stands, though, Long Legged Woman has created an incredible cocoon, and I hope they choose to tread these waters for a while before moving on.
Long Legged Woman is playing at the Go Bar on Friday, July 20.
Moorish Idols
Moorish Idols EP
Independent Release
originally published July 18, 2007
Atlanta three-piece Moorish Idols is either exceedingly talented or suffers from multiple personality disorders. Although ostensibly a four-song EP, this release is much more like a demo that showcases different styles of music without really giving a clear picture of the band. As a showcase this works fine, but it fails as a proper release.
Opener "Clouds Forming" is a ghostly track; it sounds more conjured than played. Each member performs his part in complicated, rhythmic ways that give a sense of anxiety to the otherwise perfectly nice melody. It's easily the best track here, but sets you up for confusion as the EP downshifts to its other songs. For example, after such an original sounding opening, the band shifts into straight power-pop mode with the faceless "Arrows Army" which features predictable verse melodies, useless bridges and a chorus that comes straight from The Police. As their own lyrics say: "I need your laughter / I am an actor / I won an Oscar / I'm an imposter."
Following this is a decent enough track called "Why Are We Whispering" but, again, it leans too far into latter-period, easy-listening Police territory. An influence should be just that, and not a blueprint.
The most frustrating thing about this whole experience is that Moorish Idols has a great sense of melody, song structure and timing. But the band, as represented here, has embraced the generic to the point of denying itself the opportunity to show listeners what I suspect they're capable of.
Moorish Idols are playing at the 40 Watt Club on Thursday, July 19.
We Versus The Shark
We Wanted a New Government Not Odd Time Signatures DVD / EP of Bees EP
Hello Sir
originally published July 18, 2007
This dual disc package combines the two-feature DVD We Wanted a New Government Not Odd Time Signatures - which contains a full live show from We Versus The Shark along with a home-movie style documentary of the band recording its debut album in 2004 - with a four-song EP. The live show is beautifully lit and shot from three camera angles, showcasing the band's live presence succinctly and accurately. We Versus the Shark is an explosive and dynamic live act that never falls into the trap of being merely bombastic or gimmicky. If one watches both videos together the growth of the band is obvious and rewarding.
The music on the EP of Bees EP is, at first listen, expected We Versus the Shark; contrary to the title of the DVD, it's full of odd time signatures and a very real next step from the album Ruin Everything!.
(It's at this time we should declare a moratorium on the act of referring to We Versus the Shark as a math-rock band, at least in the way that term is traditionally meant. Math rock is a supremely macho, emotionally cold form of rock that has more to do with musical calisthenics than redefining rock and roll. We Versus the Shark has much more in common, philosophically and musically, with bands like The Minutemen or The Big Boys than, say, Don Caballero.)
Below the sharp guitar attacks on EP of Bees is a deeply soulful sense of rhythm particularly on "We Versus the Inevitability of Death." Having guitarist Sam Paulsen take the lead vocals on "The Lament of Sue Richards" serves to illustrate what's always been lovable about We Versus the Shark: the band has a clear understanding of the dynamics of tension and release. It'll build a song up to a fever pitch and then have a melody that washes over the listener. The incorporation of more funk and R&B rhythms in these tunes than on previous records is a welcome change. And that's really the gist of it. We Versus the Shark may play rock and roll and incorporate a million-and-one chords and notes, but it's essentially a soul band. And a damn good one, too.
Most of the time packages like this are a stopgap measure to tide listeners over until the next album. If that's the case here, it's a hell of a great place to take a breather.
We Versus the Shark is playing at the Caledonia Lounge on Tuesday, July 24.
R. Kelly
Double Up
Jive
originally published July 18, 2007
Sometimes I think Robert Kelly's real inspiration is the "Saturday Night Live" fake ad for Taco Town, which serves a product that consists of a taco wrapped in multiple tortillas, then a gordita shell, a corn husk, a crepe, a pizza and finally a pancake, with elaborate fillings crammed between each layer. If you haven't seen the sketch, you could get the same impression from paging through the liner notes for Double Up, which feature photograph after photograph of Kelly, each increasing the amount of diamonds pictured until he ends up seated with two women at a fully set table containing not only bowls of diamonds, but also champagne glasses filled with diamonds. It's a religion of excess, in other words, that's driven the man to make his own version of Frank Sinatra's Duets, a 19-song explosion of delight that works approximately like the fireworks display at Lenox Mall - "Oh, you think that's impressive? Well, look at this!"
If you go searching for reviews of the album, most of them end up discussing Kelly's reliably ridiculous lyrics, especially on songs like "The Zoo" and "Sex Planet," both of which follow his favored tactic of extending a metaphor to the point of and then beyond absurdity, and it's not that those lyrics aren't worth analysis (what drives someone consistently to provide much much more than too much information?), but the real joys of Double Up are musical. The opener, "The Champ," makes one wonder if he's been listening to Sparks, as it frosts the standard "I'm back and I'm the best" boast with a Robert Shaw-style choir working in concert with a steadily building aortic beat before cutting off abruptly with a "Now we got that out the way" and moving straight into the titular track, which turns the choir into a smaller chorus of Kellys fed through a mild vocoder.
The guest spots are fairly fun, including Snoop's appearance on this song, but when you hear Kelly outdo everyone with ease, not only as a producer and lyricist, but also as a vocalist, you see that the point of including them at all may be less a gesture of camaraderie and more one of noblesse oblige. This becomes clearer when one reaches "Leave Your Name," the first song on which he appears sans guest, in the form of an outgoing answering machine message that explains he's not picking up the phone because he drank too much Hennessy last night and passed out on the stairs to his bedroom - for a throwaway track without much seeming complexity, the kind of thing Kelly can indeed do in his sleep (and this may be the hidden metaphor), it's also amazingly lovely and gentle, characteristics that hold strong for almost the entire record. TP-3: Reloaded certainly had these moments of virtuosity, but most of it was saved for the five songs of "Trapped in the Closet" at its end, while Double Up spreads them throughout its 73 minutes. Even a song like "Hook It Up," featuring Huey, which could have been filler, merely a fast-paced tune for the club with a guest spot by a current chart-topper, is generous to the listener, spinning around a piano line in which bass and treble notes play around with one another.
"I'm a Flirt," the first single from the album, on which Kelly goofs around with T.I. and T. Pain, has lost nothing since February when it first appeared, and even though it's the most well-known song of all these, it might also be the one that encapsulates the appeal of the whole thing best. It doesn't matter if you can break it apart and look at the pieces, because they're more when they're put together. It doesn't matter if you believe a thing Kelly's saying or if you react to "Sex Planet" being followed by "Rise Up" (Kelly's inspirational Katrina song) with a mix of amusement and slight nausea. It doesn't really matter what anyone says because Kelly's music elicits involuntary reaction, like a dog's thumping leg when you scratch it in the right spot. Even if beauty's not truth, sometimes it's all you need to know.
Valet
Blood is Clean
Kranky
originally published July 18, 2007
"My blood is clean, but the devil's in me." This haunting lyric revs up the most stunning moment on a stunning record. A flash-fried guitar solo with a bad stutter wails out of nowhere, followed on its heels by plodding drums. It's a fascinating chain of events and one of many treasures on Blood is Clean, the debut release by Honey Owens under the name Valet. The Portland-based experimental wunderkind has participated in a smattering of projects over recent years, most notably Nudge and as guitarist for Jackie-O Motherfucker. But Valet threatens to outshine both.
It seems that a new genre-mashing is becoming prevalent, and I'm going to take the liberty of naming it: jambient. I don't want to paint a picture of Widespread Panic on stage with Stars of the Lid or Phish reuniting and adding Brian Eno, but there has been an interesting crossroads between the two sounds lately. The group White Rainbow is set to widen its umbrella this fall with a Kranky album, and, as of the moment, it is the standard bearer when it comes to jambient. Tangentially connected with White Rainbow, Honey Owens hypnotizes with a more slow-burning brand of freaky beauty. The nine tracks on Blood is Clean make me think of snakes, for some reason, but somehow that's a good thing. Owens moans, hums and whispers into delay boxes, strums her molasses guitar and generally follows her muse all over the place, dipping liberally into blues and abstract freeform. If you've heard Grouper, subtract the bulk of the tape hiss, add jambience and you've got the general idea. Owens is certainly a kindred spirit, but she remains her own trippy creature.
And then there's that title track "Blood is Clean," with its softly ringing guitar and hushed clean vocals creeping into that line and solo. Once you hear it, you might wonder if Honey Owens pulled a Robert Johnson.
Leyode
Fascinating Tininess
Eastern Developments
originally published July 18, 2007
Leyode's Fascinating Tininess does not work in increments; it gauges the sounds on display in broad strokes and sweeps. Producer Yusuke Hama orchestrates an overtly melodious affair that can be likened to blissful hip-hop psychedelia or post-instrumental downtempo if shelved with a tag of some sort. Hama, a friend of Guillermo Scott Herren of Prefuse 73 / Savath & Savalas fame, does not stray too far from the hip-hop blueprint of instrumental clicks and cuts that Herren has set forth over the years, so the innovation of Hama's sound is somewhat limiting to begin with. In fact, Herren shows up on one track here.
The skeletal, bobbing beats create a background for other swelling textures, including former Athenian Laurel Wells' harmonious vocals to play upon in the foreground, replacing the sliced-and-diced Nas samples that had once decorated a typical Prefuse 73 track. Yet Hama's approach is still riveting and cinematic as ever, where drunken trumpet squalls and buoyant piano melodies build a bridge to more universal textured pop. The mood that Leyode creates is like after-hour talk of luscious subject matter that never really materializes into something substantial and concrete, yet we still fixate on every syllable.
Though the rushes of vocal gymnastics at times can be overwhelming, it's ultimately "hush-hush" music, lulling the baby to sleep in a poorly lit room with paper-thin lampshades. Hama exerts a certain quietude that seems to tiptoe around bigger ideas. It's early CocoRosie without the flimsy pretension, and a lot more head-nodding. It is the tame exhale of downtempo in fine form.
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