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On Dan’s Turntable: Umbilical Moonrise / Lotus

Aug 082012

In our fast-paced narrow-focused technological time, everyday screens everywhere suck our attention spans to the last drop. The very computer screen, cell phone display, computercellphone aka iphone-pod-touch on which you read this, can be harmful to your health. Late-night glows grow into insomnia, and doctors say depression symptoms ensue. Daydreaming is being substituted with digital addiction. Next year for the first time the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will include “Internet use disorder” in its appendix.

Let the batteries run out, tap out, unplug. Got a second? Fifteen minutes? Sure you do, it’s summer. Let your mind sit a spell – let Lotus take over. Make sure there is room for movement: dancing should develop, however tentative at first. Let your mind drift time, throw it by the wayside, where waves reside and the umbilical moon doth rise.

Such a warm song, Umbilical Moonrise is the first from the electronic jam band’s live album, Germination, recorded in 2003. My first time seeing Lotus was more recent – this year’s All Good music festival, being held in Ohio for its first time. From funky to freaky, electric to effervescent, Lotus moves airwaves in a way that can free your mind from time, your feet from the street. If you can’t swing seeing them in person sometime soon, sustain yourself with the 2007 album Escaping Sargasso Sea.

Such a solid hour-fourty-five live, this show runs a single glimpse of the gamut these guys can deliver. Check out the end of the album: from It’s All Clear to Me Now, a fourteen-minute gem whose many angles reflect several songs in one, at once refracting and absorbing rainbows, minerals flowing into Sunrain, giving way to a Flower Sermon of such sincerity that the solar skyliquid reprises. And you probably smile, having a time.

On Dan’s Turntable: Don’t Do Me Like That / Tom Petty & The Hearthbreakers

Posted by Dan Kipp No Responses »

Jul 092012

Don’t Do Me Like That, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

It was summer and I was ten and twiggy and on a baseball team, the Cardinals, with my friend and neighbor. His dad, Jay, coached. Every practice, every game, Jay drove us in his black truck. Heavy catcher’s equipment and bats tossed in the bed like stones. This was around the time I was being weaned off of Weird Al Yankovic, and instead beginning to hum Michael Jackson and Jimmy Cliff tunes out in right field, a dandelion held under-chin.

The youth baseball season seems endless to a kid generally uninterested. It begins even before the snow has fully melted, when you can still see your breath blow through your glove, and is bestowed no mercy later in mid-summer’s swelter. Shifting weight in the hungry backseat’s heat, black leather on the way to practice, I slowly picked up on a sound that season with the Cardinals. It came from the truck speakers in all different forms: at times defiant, dreamy at others. Mostly, it made baseball enjoyable – out in right field, my lips mirrored the nasally lyrics and the twanging guitar’s gritty smile.

One night on the way back from practice at Page Field, the buggiest of the ballparks, I worked up the courage to ask Jay what it was we always listened to, whose words were making so much sense in my ears. I leaned into the front cabin from the back, asked, and waited for deliverance.

Jay told me, but his answer was drowned out by the very voice he named. I nodded as if I knew and slunk into the heat again. Then popped my head back up. “Who?” Again, Jay told me: nothing but a driving guitar keeping time with the temperature. We were at my house now, and I was supposed to get out. Door open, harmonica rippling like humidity out the sidespeakers, I slunk from the truck. My glove drug like a slug on my hand in the heat.

Walking away, a voice lolled from behind, “You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down.” Turning, I stuck my head into Jay’s driver-side window and asked him one more time. He told me, and I finally heard Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. They’ve been one of my favorite bands ever since – good ‘ol American classic rock. Here’s a short but sweet one, “Don’t Do Me Like That.” Hope you enjoy.

On Dan’s Turntable: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge) / Jay Electronica

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Jul 082012

Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge), Jay Electronica

Jay Electronica is a Louisiana-born rapper now signed to Jay Z’s label Roc Nation, though in a former life he lived as a rolling stone traveling America through periods of homelessness. He has flack with funky-fresh artists Just Blaze, as well as Erykah Badu, with whom he also has a kid. As a Five-Percenter intrigued by mixing movies into his music, Jay Electronica is an enigmatic genius.

All with no full-length albums to prove it. Which is why I start with Act I: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge). Though Exhibit C is a better banger, Eternal Sunshine typifies Jay’s creativity.

If Jay is anything, he is atypical. Always, whether lyrically, or in lacing it all over the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack, Jay refuses to conform. With a flow like free verse, Jay resists the temptation of “the rewards that all come along with making nigga songs,” and instead raps religious refreshments: “Being a mortal is the portal to the true nature of growth / The Christ like Buddha, man.” His confidence is matter-of-fact: “Ask Flex, ask Slay, ask Whoo Kid / Just Blaze said Jay is the new kid / I took Eternal Sunshine and I looped it / No drums, no hook, just new shit.” Bookends of blissful composition, violin and underwater harp.

All this in just the first (of four) movements.

The nine minute song would be better called a concerto, an epic, a fever dream… filled as it is with dialogue from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Prestige, UFO sightings over the evening news, bickering siblings, tales of love and lives lost, and a muffled speech about Man and the Universe. In form: four sets of lyrics, set to four songs from ESSM OST. In quality: numinous. So I’ll stop my tongue’s lolloping and let you listen.

On John’s Turntable: North Side Gal / JD McPherson

Posted by John Boudreau No Responses »

Jul 072012

North Side Gal, JD McPherson

When I first heard this song on my favorite local radio station, I expected the DJ to say: “That was a deep cut from Big Joe Turners’ 1956 album Boss of the Blues.”

Imagine my surprise when he said it was a new track from JD McPherson’s album Signs & Signifiers. JD McPherson? What record vault did they dig him out of? I thought. The sound of “North Side Gal” so successfully channels the late ‘50s sound that I bought into McPherson then and there.

The most immediately arresting thing about the record is McPherson’s voice. His timbre, right from the first line, is spot-on. It’s warm and brassy but at the same time brittle and ragged—reminiscent of a tenor sax. He sounds like a man on the edge, the way Ray Charles, Joe Turner, and a host of forgotten greats from the late ‘50’s sounded. Until McPherson, I’ve never heard a modern singer who has been able to so perfectly replicate—consciously or not—the tone of those recordings, and I suspect that McPherson isn’t disguising his singing voice in any way. It’s simply how he sounds, and he sounds great.

Everything else is spot on for a fantastic early rock & roll/rhythm & blues track. Great tenor sax solo? Check. Horn hits? Got ‘em. Sparse, Ringo-esque drumming? Also there. Although the instrumental performances are repetitive, they have an undeniable motion that propels the song from the opening drum roll. It’s a seriously fun song that immediately evokes images of tailfins, soda fountains, and those weird poodle skirts.

In some ways, McPherson reminds me a lot of Pokey LaFarge—both channel a vintage sensibility in music, dress, and stage persona, which I enjoy but occasionally find troublesome (is it more about playing dress-up than making music?).

Nevertheless, McPherson has taken all of the best elements of a single decade of American music and wrapped them up into a 2:31 package that’s one of the most authentic and most fun performances you’ll hear this summer.

On John’s Turntable: The Great Filling Station Holdup / Jimmy Buffett

Posted by John Boudreau No Responses »

Jun 162012

Jimmy Buffett, The Great Filling Station Holdup

Say what you will about country music in general, and rant away about Jimmy Buffett in particular, but please concede this point: a certain tribe of country singer-songwriter (of which Buffett, Lyle Lovett, and Guy Clark are members) can tell a damn good story without reverting to the “dog died and/or my truck broke down before/after my woman left me” stereotype.

“The Great Filling Station Holdup,” the first track on the 1973 album A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean (the title is a send-up of Marty Robbin’s 1957 hit “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation”) tells the story of two dumb-as-life criminals who rob a gas station and then quickly repair to a nearby bar to celebrate: “We’re wanted men/we’ll strike again/but first let’s have a beer.” Buffett apparently wrote the song after reading a news item in the local police blotter, again proving that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

The entire story feels appropriately drawn from life, with humor and tragedy side-by-side, something that my favorite lyricists have always been able to do. You can see that contrast right in the chorus, where Buffett sings: “That Great Filling Station Holdup/It cost me two good years.” There’s the inherent humor of referring to the failed petty crime as “great” right next to the bitterness of losing two years of his life in jail. This is essentially a fable: entertainment and a nugget of morality.

Buffett’s lyrics take precedence, but let’s not neglect the ensemble. Doyle Greshamn’s pedal steel guitar is the standout here, as it can whine and chuckle right along with Buffett’s lyrics. The classic “huck-a-puck” harmonica part in the intro is also great.

Look past “Margaritaville,” everyone, and dig one of America’s best storytellers.

On Dan’s Turntable: Lovely Rita / Easy Star All-Stars

Posted by Dan Kipp No Responses »

Jun 052012

Lovely Rita, Easy Star All-Stars

As a disclaimer, from the start I am susceptible to Beatles covers. I thoroughly enjoyed the soundtrack to Across the Universe, the Beatles-based rock-opera film that some Beatles purists (and general movie critics) hated on pretty hard. Perhaps it’s because I never grew up listening to The Beatles, a band many consider the greatest ever… and maybe duly so. I just don’t know the guys well enough, haven’t learned a deep appreciation for them, and so, in my mind, they’re malleable.

All that being said, the Easy Star All-Stars deserve some credit. A lot of it. The reggae band has tackled covers by other great artists such as Radiohead, Pink Floyd (with albums Radiodread and Dub Side of the Moon, respectively), as well as three original albums (which I have not yet heard). (I can, however, personally attest to Dub Side’s dopeness.) With sweet, beating bass and creative reimagining’s, Easy Star is always somewhere between mellow and Mars.

For example, the Rita from Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band doesn’t take tea, she smokes it. Herein lies the reason why Easy Star’s version is being posted in place of The Beatles. Where The Beatle’s rendition of Rita is bouncy, limp with kazoo, and boring, Easy Star grooves the song into an underwater funk fest, full of energetic saxophone. Reverb turns Bunny Rugs’ catcalls into interstellar invitations; an anchor of buoyant baseline ensures a highly sensual experience. I’m sure Lovely Rita fits Sgt. Pepper’s ascetic perfectly, but as a song standing alone, Easy Star easily wins the day.

On Dan’s Turntable: Think About It / Flight of the Conchords

Posted by Dan Kipp 2 Responses »

May 292012

Think About It, Flight of the Conchords

Always entertaining but often forgotten, this post presents to your turntable the glory that is Flight of the Conchords. I’ll let them, in characteristic Australian accents and self-effacing style, introduce themselves: “We are Flight of the Conchords, formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk parody duo… Unfortunately another folk parody duo’s just slipped above us in the charts… Like of the Conchords, a tribute band. They do our songs just slightly more popular than us.”

The guitar-playing lyric-geniuses are as hilarious as they are humble. An instant classic of a contemporary comic duo, Bret and Jermaine make up Flight of the Conchords. The smaller of the two, Brett, a scruffy, high-pitched, baaaad mutha ucker, plays seven instruments: guitar, bass, piano, omnichord, xylophone, ukulele, and drums. Jermaine is more of a buck-toothed burlesque baritone with big beautiful black bushy eyebrows, which he tends to bounce around. Their songs are often situated in every day situations gone absurd, and the targets of their parody range from the hip-hop game to David Bowie.

In Think About it, the duo assumes a groovy style of smooth concern for serious societal issues similar to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” but instead ask trivial questions that derail all consequence. Like Woody Allen interrogating, “Why does man kill?” and expounding, “He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage,” Bret and Jermaine lament, “They’re turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers. But what’s the real cost? Cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper. Why are we still paying so much for sneakers when you got them made by little slave kids? What are your overheads?”

Despite asking the tough questions, Flight of the Conchords never forgets to break it down and keep it light. Indeed, it is in their unique ability to put heartwarming wit to catchy melodies that makes this band worth a turn on your table.

On Dan’s Turntable: GOLDBRICK / andrew dunham

Posted by Dan Kipp No Responses »

May 232012

Rise of the Half Moon [512x212], andrew dunham

The Black Cat x The Illest, andrew dunham

Coming at you from the collaborative craniums of two Kenyon kids, the album is GOLDBRICK, a five-song space package sent just in time for summer. While you were studying for finals, Andrew Firestone and Win Dunham were capturing in song the weightless feeling of interstellar travel, or simply a stellar chill sesh. The lunar-laced tunage has a professional, compelling sound that’ll grip you like a tractor beam. So here we go: zip up your moon suit, and don’t forget your freeze-dried ‘dro!

I first heard the duo perform at Kenyon this past year, when they opened for Danny Brown (and kinda stole the whole show), but both members have been on their music-making game for some time now. Firestone’s musical history can be gleaned if you ever see his endless treasure chest of funky instrumentals, which supplied GOLDBRICK with the space synth and bongo drum-driven tracks. Moreover, Firestone’s freestyle flow is longer than the Nile – I’ve seen the kid kick it straight for over five minutes without one misstep. (Some of this talent can be found on the album he put out last summer under the name Styrofoam.) On GOLDBRICK, Firestone is at his best as a confident, creative rhymesmith: “On some Santa Maria shit, delirious and squeamish, ocean sick, screaming… but I’m gleaming.”

Meanwhile, Win is a master of the hook. His inflection can’t be reproduced – believe me, I’ve tried – and his pitch is always on-point. All this is clear on his EP released last year, but even more so from the first soulful seconds of “Rise of the Half Moon [512x212],” the first track on GOLDBRICK. Always cool, only Win could combine “psychoactive broccoli” and “supernova shimmying” into a dancing anthem that makes you say “Damn son” every single time you hear “The Black Cat x The Illest.”

Beyond the music, GOLDBRICK is a comprehensive unit, tied together with a palpable ascetic aided by samples from Easy Rider. You can (and should) get the whole thing here. I really hope there’s more to come from these two, but until then, spark up, space out, and lift off.

On John’s Turntable: Somebody That I Used To Know/Gotye

Posted by John Boudreau No Responses »

Apr 072012

Gotye, Somebody That I Used To Know

After I listened to Walk off the Earth’s innovative cover of this song with a guitar-playing friend of mine, we both decided to check out Belgian-Australian* artist Gotye’s original version. Turns out it’s just as good as Walk off the Earth’s cover, which is a testament to both the original and the cover.

This track is off his 2011 album Making Mirrors, and I think I mostly dig it for the same reasons I like Zero 7’s “In the Waiting Line”: it’s got a solid acoustic guitar background coupled with some electronic flourishes that meld together the organic and the synthetic pretty successfully. Gotye’s voice is raw and emotive enough to inject a real current of longing into the lyrics, which contrasts very nicely with New Zealand singer Kimbra’s detached vocal delivery. The most hear-wrenching line? “No you didn’t have to stoop so low/have your friends pick up your records and then change your number.” Images of John Cusack in High Fidelity can’t help but leap to mind.

“Somebody That I Used To Know” succeeds with a great mix of varied instrumentation (acoustic guitar, xylophone, synths, etc.) and an expansive production that makes the track sound like it was recorded in some weird aquarium. My buddy and I decided there’s kind of a Peter Gabriel vibe at work, which Wikipedia seems to agree with, though I like this a lot better than Peter Gabriel.

This is gonna be a hot song this summer—look for it.

*On a side note, can anyone name me another Belgian-Australian musician? Preferably a famous one? This guy’s got quite niche carved out.

On Dan’s Turntable: Don’t Think Twice (Dylan Tribute) / J.Period & K’naan

Posted by Dan Kipp No Responses »

Mar 142012

Don’t Think Twice (Dylan Tribute), J.Period & K’naan

A spectacular collaboration between Brooklyn-based producer J.Period and Somali rapper K’naan, here is Don’t Think Twice. The song is one of the duo’s best off their trilogy of albums, a series called The Messengers, tributes to Fela Kuti, Bob Marley, and, in this case, Bob Dylan. All interspliced up with personality and interviews from the man in question, this amiable recreation of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” uses the original chorus, and includes original verses by K’naan, as well. Purty verses, at that.

Lyrically and stylistically, K’naan’s contribution to the song is sizable. Both stanzas start with a sizzling couplet, such as, “Daybreak elevates the fear of heartbreaks / Embrace with the chase we all got to taste,” and “He spoke like the poets, Baldwin and Byron / And all his woman heard was a siren.” K’naan’s flow is unmistakable, as is his accent. Distinct in the way he draws out certain words to fit the verse, K’naan is, in a way, is very much like Dylan. Like if you tried to sing it yourself, it wouldn’t work. In terms of the song, it sounds less like irony than harmony.

They both sing about lost love with a certain knowing. Dylan, confident in rhythm: “It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe, / If ’in you don’t know by now / An’ it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe, / It’ll never do some how.” K’naan, sad but matter of fact: “It’s no one’s fault, sometimes love falters, / Alters the state and you feel mortars / Exploding inside your hardened heart / And you thought you’d be fine apart.”

With its rich, soothing sound, this song is the balm. J.Period inflates the song with even more fullness in the single version, but his tracks are clear here. From the guitar that pops almost synthetically but wholly soulful, to the humming bass, to the snappy drum rolling the song along – actually a sample of Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” which Kid Cudi also kinda covered.

This song represents one of the most holistic collaborations between K’naan’s spittin, the trubte artist’s participation, and J.Period’s manipulation amongst The Messengers trilogy. Don’t think twice, and download the rest of it fo free!