Two Great Singers: Adele and Darlene Love

Yin and Yang – 

One’s an unlikely superstar, 

the other a legendary heroine

Adele

     Doesn’t everyone love Adele?  Would she have taken off in the U.S. if not for an appearance on Saturday Night Live in late 2008 and a profile on CBS News Sunday Morning in 2009?  That combination is one of the best arbiters of the next big thing and it’s aimed squarely at the middlebrow that will take a chance on something new.  19 quietly built a major audience and 21 (2011) became a phenomenon.  Not only did she possess an instantly identifiable contralto voice with the phrasing of a mature jazz singer, she also wrote her own 

Adele's More
Vulnerable Side

songs.  After people realized she could be simultaneously bawdy and shy, she became a superstar.  If only Sam Smith had a sense of humor, the hype about him would make a little more sense.  

Adele's 2015 NBC Special

     Adele’s pre-eminence was evidenced in her Holiday special from Radio City Music Hall this past December, which backed up 25, the biggest selling album of the year and the fastest selling since electronic tracking began in 1991.  That special lived up to its name; she held an audience in her palm by remaining almost completely still.  It was also the perfect length – one hour – for presenting her strengths.  It’s obvious from that show and from her liner notes that Adele loves her fans.  25 provides just what her many fans want:  mid-tempo ballads about break-ups, getting over break-ups, hoping for another guy that are delivered by a big voice with scrupulous production, whether it’s in a symphonic pop setting or in a grittier R&B one.  She’s sort of our contemporary Dusty Springfield.  It’s a shame that the famously insecure and generous Springfield couldn’t have had a major popular success like one of Adele’s.  

     When I first saw the video “Hello,” I thought it was amazing there were still the traditional scarlet phone boxes in England.  If there aren’t, then perhaps Adele is so big a star they found her one.  She sounded great, though the song is a little mopey.  Even though SNL did a funny “Thanks, Adele” skit, I had to agree with the woman working at the BMV who said, when the song came on the radio, “this is the song you hear as you’re jumping off a bridge,” then immediately apologized because she hadn’t meant to say it aloud.  

Adele 25

     Perusing the album’s song titles made me wonder if Adele needs to talk with someone because things don’t sound good for her (“I Miss You,” “When We Were Young,” “Water Under The Bridge,” “Can’t Let Go,” “Why Do You Love Me”).  The gorgeous “Million Years Ago,” reminded me of Charles Aznavour’s “Yesterday When I Was Young,” in terms of its theme and lyrics and the time signature.  She sings it with ferocious regret, however, which is nothing like Aznavour, but does recall Shirley Bassey’s cover.  Okay, I realize for Americans Aznavour and Bassey are – at best – footnotes, but they’re enormous in Britain.  In some ways, Bassey is to the British what Aretha is to Americans as a representative cultural icon, though their repertoire and styles of singing have little in common.  I’m certain either Adele or her intriguing mother are acquainted with Bassey’s work, though she doesn’t list her as an influence.

     Adele will continue with a great career, there’s no doubt about it.  That voice is still maturing and she has developed an even richer tone since recuperating from surgery.  Her songwriting has also grown over the past eight years.  However, I wish she’d try different types of songs in terms of tempo and lightness; there’s never a throwaway track on her albums, which means there’s never a moment for a listener to catch a breath.  Fourteen tracks on the Target version of 25 is generous, but three could have been cut.  There were a number of producers and it amazes me that they were able to maintain such a consistent tone.  Did they have to subsume their individual artistic personalities to the juggernaut that is That Voice?   Perhaps, but the album would have been stronger if someone had said, “No, let’s keep this for the next album or let’s not use it.”   

     The most exhilarating album I heard this year was Introducing Darlene Love, which covers a range of genres in American pop since the late ‘50s by one of the great voices of the last sixty years in an electrifying collaboration with producer Steven Van Zandt (yes, the guitarist of the E Street Band and Silvio Dante from The Sopranos).  To anyone that 

Christmas on Letterman

loved the girl groups produced by Phil Spector in the early ‘60s or Letterman’s Christmas shows from 1986 on, Love needs no introduction.  But radio, streaming, iTunes, and media publicists aren’t too interested in a 74 year old with a clear mezzo chest voice, which is a shameful indictment of American popular culture.  “Still Too Soon To Know,” a duet with The Righteous Brothers’ Bill Medley should be a new standard if those running the music business had any memory or sense of excellence. 

     Love’s career has been about resilience and an optimistic attitude.  She could have settled many scores (especially with Spector), but has refrained from doing so and has always taken the higher road.  Most tellingly, she first thanks her backup singers in the liner notes.  On disc and on screen, she emanates warmth and genuine humanity. There’s a smoky tone to Love’s singing that’s reminiscent of Etta James, but without the baroque phrasing that James employed in her later career.  Rather than calling her a soul singer, I’d say she’s of the Spirit – her roots in the church as a minister’s daughter played into the call and response that Spector was the first white guy to turn into top 40 pop in the late ‘50s in New York while Berry Gordy was doing the same thing at the same time in Detroit.  

     Van Zandt’s three decade long friendship with Love has resulted in a work that moves from gospel tinged pop to an evocation of Spector’s Wall of Sound, R&B, ‘80s rock, contemporary rock, contemporary covers of some Brill era songs (where most famously Otis Blackwell, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Jerry Goffin and Carole King, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill, composed) and closes with traditional Gospel.  I’m not certain how Van Zandt did it, but he’s somehow reproduced the Wall of Sound, which involved recording all the musicians and singers on mono because recording technology did not involve multiple tracks until the mid-60s.  However, the clarity on that Mount Everest of Brill Building songs “River Deep, Mountain High” indicates that he must have employed multiple tracks; I’m just not certain how many.  

Darlene Love

     The list of great songwriters on this collection beside some of the Brill geniuses includes Springsteen, Joan Jett & Desmond Child, Elvis Costello, Jimmy Webb, and Van Zandt himself.  Love does justice to all of them especially the generation that came of age after Glam Rock.  She has the power and emotional range to actually find what Costello writes, but cannot quite sing himself and on Springsteen’s songs she sounds like the older sister who taught that scrawny white boy teenager from the Jersey shore what he needed to know about women. 

     I felt the natural ending point for the album was “Last Time,” a passionate and elegiac maybe farewell to a friend or lover or even life itself.  However, as Neil said, “they’ll pull this full circle.” They do and it’s by emphasizing the importance to Gospel both to Love and, more broadly, to American music.  I realize that the electronic chatterers are obsessed with the semi-talented, the pre-pubescent, the badly behaved, and some performers that combine all these qualities.  Therefore, whatever else happens with Introducing Darlene Love, I’m grateful that it was released at all.  And I hope that this review influences someone to try out something new that’s simply GREAT.

The Lone Bellow Live

The Lone Bellow

Wow!  We saw The Lone Bellow in concert at the 20th Century in Oakley and their sound is as pure and grand in a hall as it is recorded.  Although louder live (there’s no volume control, after all), their intensity remains the same.  This integrity rarely carries over for most groups – country sounds like rock live, rock sounds like heavy metal, heavy metal sounds like a monster truck rally.  We’ve reviewed their latest album Then Came The Morning, but hadn’t heard their earlier The Lone Bellow (2013).  The best place we heard them was on the main floor of the venue, rather than the balcony because the sound was distorted and the lighting threw the performers into garish shadows.

Brian Elmquist, Zach Williams and Kanene Donehey Pipkin

     The group is basically a trio of Zach Williams as principal front man and acoustic guitarist, Brian Elmquist on electric guitar, and Kanene Donehey Pipkin on mandolin and bass.  Though Williams handles most of the lead singing, they also trade off on some songs.  Their first album focused more on acoustic and some alt-country arrangements, which Elmquist handles with sincerity and grace, while Pipkin displays a powerhouse keening quality on those with a Celtic feel about them.  However, Williams has the star voice because it’s big, impassioned, and has that nasal note redolent of contemporary groups.  The blend of styles results in alchemy.  They may be the closest group we have today to The Band in the late ‘60s.  They marry country, alternative rock, and roots into a complex sound that’s inimitable; Alabama Shakes creates a similar idiosyncratic stew from blues, psychedelic rock, and jazz.

After the Show

       The Lone Bellow performed an almost two hour set after Anderson East, which was a good, though chameleonic, cover band and an earlier singer opened for them.  They brought Anderson East on stage for the final encore, which was a loose, wondrous take on Prince’s “Purple Rain” (they’d toyed with Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” a half hour earlier).  They and East were charming, though tired, while greeting fans after the show.  Thanks to the forward thinking WNKU as a major sponsor of the show, but must the yakky guy with the signed guitar show up at every show and hog the artists’ attention when they’re trying to connect with their fans?

Pop Evaporation: Walk the Moon, fun., and Foster the People

     Walk the Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance” played during the spring on our major Contemporary Hit radio station, Q102, and the extraordinary WNKU, which is Adult Album Alternative, though they’re trying to mix in more mainstream material.  It’s a catchy, cute number that wasn’t too distinguished until I saw them play it in a concert on Palladia.  Their energy and attractiveness were more appealing on TV than in their pictures on the CD or in the recorded performances of their songs.  What set them apart was that they were from Cincinnati and they were gaining national attention.

     Their album Talking Is Hard (2014) has some strong singles, especially “Different Colors” and “We Are The Kids.”  With their focus on youth and what it craves, Walk the Moon both celebrates and subversively critiques its largest listening demographic.  What surprised me about my students was they knew the songs, but didn’t realize the band was local, and they were mixed in how they felt about them.  I don’t know if that was because they picked up on the ambivalent thematic undertones of the album’s lyrics or if they just didn’t like some of the songs.

     Walk the Moon has a similar sound to two other recent groups that hit it big:  fun. and Foster the People.  fun. started around the same time (2008) as Walk the Moon, though the members had been in other bands and had a few years on the Kenyon College students inspired by The Police’s “Walking on the Moon” (1983).  Some Nights (2012) vaulted fun. into major stars and lots of Grammys, which are awards somewhat indicative of little that lasts.  Foster the People formed in 2009 and leapt out of the commercial and critical gates almost immediately with Torches (2010) and its first single “Pumped Up Kicks.”

     Nate Ruess, lead singer and songwriter for fun., possesses a signature voice that’s nasally and feels sharp.  He’s been a proponent of auto-tune, which was pragmatic, but it surprised me.  He’s also working on a solo album, which concerns me.  Some band lead singers – Grace Potter, most recently, and Mick Jagger – need the interplay with the rest of the group to generate the greater excitement.  Others have gone solo to success (Paul McCartney, John Lennon) or a far greater profile, such as Michael Jackson or Chaka Khan.  Pete Townshend and Stevie Nicks were able to do both, but they’re still better known for their group work over their solo careers.  Will Ruess’s career take off and will he keep fun. going?

     Foster the People, led by former jingles writer Mark Foster, hit its peak with “Pumped Up Kicks” because the subject matter of a school shooter was off-set by the bright, cheery melody.  The moment I first heard them on Saturday Night Live, I wanted the album.  However, I didn’t give their second album much more than a cursory listen in a record shop.  That sense of moving on to the next thing, which doesn’t sound any different from the last, big thing, is the downfall for pop.  Country, hip-hop, Americana, and rock generally thrive because fans are attracted to the artists and the genre sound, rather than the beat and a specific single.

When a Solo May Be a No-Go: Grace Potter

     Grace Potter recently released a solo album Midnight.  She has been the lead singer and multi-instrumentalist for Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, who’ve been around since 2002.  After a decade of touring and releasing independent records, they hit it big commercially and critically with Grace Potter and the Nocturnals (2010).  It featured two killer singles, which were “Paris (Ooh La La)” and “Oasis.”  They returned two years later with The Lion the Beast the Beat, which had “Stars,” but held together probably better as an album, rather than as a collection of singles.

Grace Potter On Her Own

     Potter was responsible for most of the songwriting and the press focused almost exclusively on her because she’s physically very attractive and she exudes a positive, almost relentless energy.  There was controversy because she changed her look from jeans to dresses, but like Sheryl Crow pointed out years ago, John Lennon changed his look constantly and that never seemed to be such a big deal.  Although Potter has been compared to Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt and other blue eyed blues rock singers, her most apt forebears are Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart.  VH1 shrewdly put them together for Divas Salute the Troops in late 2010.  

     The Wilson sisters, while stars, have always placed themselves within the context of a band.  That give and take musically has been a primary reason that they’ve moved between the rock, blues, and pop genres.  Grace Potter and the Nocturnals have also covered these styles.  Here’s the rub:  Potter collaborates with Eric Valentine as a songwriter and producer on this solo album, but it doesn’t possess any sense of interplay. While bands record their albums through a series of tracks in the studio, they still generate a collective energy.  This has been true for Potter’s work with the Nocturnals, but the back-up players on this album sound generic; they might as well be computer generated.  

     The songs are catchy and “Hot to the Touch,” “Your Girl,” and “Let You Go” have a late ‘70s early ‘80s rock vibe, which is attractive in a retro sense until I remembered that it was also the high point of ‘corporate rock’:  the period when most major rock-pop bands sounded almost interchangeable as they battled in the Top 40.  I felt I knew where each song was going in the first twenty seconds and found myself singing along.  Neil said everything sounded like something he’d heard before.

Grace with The Noctournals

     In conclusion, it’s a salve to Potter’s artistic ego to try something on her own, but she comes alive when she’s the front woman for a band, rather than with a solo spotlight. 

Alabama Shakes May Be the Weirdest Jazz-Rock-Fusion Band Out There

Brittany Howard on SNL

     We saw Alabama Shakes the first time on Saturday Night Live right as their first album Boys and Girls was hitting nationally.  Brittany Howard, lead singer, guitarist, and co-songwriter, was so obstinately idiosyncratic that it was hard to watch her without getting the giggles even though she and the rest of her band mates are earnestly serious musicians.  Her facial contortions and peculiar upper body movement belied the beauty of her singing voice.  We didn’t give them much of a thought, while other reviewers were falling all over themselves to praise them.  Australian Courtney Barnett, the latest critical darling, sounds to me like an indolent barista on a smoke break talk/singing the first thing that comes into her head.  I guess I’m missing something.

     I heard “Don’t Wanna Fight,” the lead single from Alabama Shakes’ latest CD Sounds and Color and I was intrigued by what Howard was doing with her voice.  It’s the epitome of an instrument that she treats variously as if it’s woodwind, string, or brass.  The song comments indirectly on the current political unrest in American society, but that doesn’t seem to be the band’s actual intention.  Instead, the theme needs to be taken at face value that the speaker just doesn’t want any conflict; it’s the strength of Howard’s vocal and its relation to the setting in which the rest of the band places it that is the real story.  “Sound and Color,” the first song, salutes the more abstract jazz singers like Betty Carter and Sarah Vaughan.  I love Dinah Washington and Ella Fitzgerald, but I find Vaughan intimidating because it’s impossible to know where she might go with a song and those are classics from the American Songbook.  On a number of other tracks, Howard sounds like Etta James, as Kaylee pointed out.  Howard could probably sing both the Jagger and the Merry Clayton parts of “Gimme Shelter” as a solo, rather than a duet.

Alabama Shakes Performing Live*

     Howard and Alabama Shakes go all over the place on original songs that aren’t any more familiar or approachable even after multiple hearings.  I mean that as a compliment.  They leap from rock to blues to soul (sometimes on one track like “Miss You”) to jazz and even some of The Temptations orchestral pop on “Guess Who.”  They then turn around on “The Greatest” and knock off a song that kicks as if it’s the first take and something that John Lennon might have recorded and decided not to release but play live.  They are a band that enjoys recording live and that comes across even on some tracks that have a monolithic beat such as “Dunes.”  

Electric and Eclectic

     “Future People” epitomizes the strong beat and ensemble work of the band while Howard plays along as a literal and metaphorical siren; it’s the essence of what jazz from bebop to fusion did, but with electric instruments.  It’s a wild ride and there are a couple of times when it doesn’t quite work such as the soundscape setting of “Gemini” that really gets into the trance state of both harder rock like Led Zeppelin and the down the rabbit hole funk of Parliament/Funkadelic.  The last cut “Over My Head” acts as both a lovely elegy to what’s come before, but also an expression of real fear about what they’re doing.  Yes, Alabama Shakes may be the poster child for eclectic and, yes, after three years, I get them. 

*Photo by Philip Cosores

72 hours in Nashville: Days Three and Four

Exploring some of the best 

of Nashville's Southern appeal

DAY THREE

     Franklin was our first destination of the day.  It's a Civil War town that has exploded since the '80s becoming one of the largest cities in the state.  There's a reason for that.  Franklin is one of the most charming towns one can find in the USA and exemplifies everyone's picture of the perfect American 

Landmark Booksellers

village.  Our first stop was Landmark Booksellers on the northern edge of Main Street.  It's like walking into someone's home to visit long lost friends.  The books are showcased in different rooms both upstairs and down.  Sometimes conversations are happening around the "living room" coffee table with locals chatting about almost anything.  It's a fascinating place that's full of rare and unusual literature.  The staff is so knowledgeable it will leave you shaking your head.

Downtown Franklin, TN

     In the middle of town is Pucketts Restaurant & Grocery
known more as a restaurant serving local food fare to the rich and famous, as well as people just like us.  It's worth a visit for some of the best food you'll find in the area.  From there, we took a walk around the block checking out some of the garden and gift shops.  One could spend several hours exploring the entire town and there are some Civil War sites around also, if that's of interest.  We were there on a Sunday, which limits some of the shop openings.

Relaxing at Arrington Vineyards

     Traveling with six people, it becomes difficult to put together an itinerary that will appeal to everyone.  I found a winery in the area and thought that would hit a positive spot with some of our group.  It was a pretty drive to Arrington Vineyards about twenty minutes from Franklin.  It was the perfect spot to recoup on their wrap-around porch where one can purchase a bottle of wine and snacks.  We would have lingered a bit longer if a storm had not been brewing.  Luckily, we made it to our car just in time.

The View from the Vineyard

     Dinner was at the Loveless Cafe after a rest at the hotel.  Lines can be long, but we hit it just right on a Sunday night around 6:30.  It's an old stop on the route to Nashville from the south that was once a motel and diner.  Closed for a short period, it now serves many of the original recipes (fried chicken for one) and traditional southern fare that packs in the locals and travelers.  

Station Inn on a Sunday Night

     From there, we traveled to the near south side of Nashville to The Station Inn for an authentic jam session.  It's a place where any musician can show up and join in with others to form one large band that sounds like they've been playing together for years.  It's a pure Nashville scene that everyone visiting the area should experience.

DAY FOUR

     Our morning started with breakfast at Pancake Pantry near the Vanderbilt campus.  It's a mainstay in Nashville and one of those places where you'll understand why once you've eaten there.  They offer unusual combination pancakes as well as the tried and true.  It was the fabulous ending to our 72 hours in Nashville.

"The Waterfall" by My Morning Jacket Disappoints

My Morning Jacket

     My Morning Jacket, a Louisville band with a deserved national reputation, has become a major independent neo-psychedelic rock band.  If they’d formed in 1992 instead of 1998, they would probably have become mainstream stars.  Instead, they’ve charted a more intriguing course by not selling out.  They’re almost legendary as a live band because they’ll play one of their entire albums and then cover five or more songs by various other artists that wouldn’t seem to fit them at all.  We haven’t seen them live, but know them from Evil Urges (2008) and Circuital (2011).  These are two great albums that are almost symphonic in their ambitions to collect songs into a greater whole and to refer to a range of ‘60s through millennial styles.  

Lead Singer and
Songwriter Jim James

     Their latest album The Waterfall fuses ‘70s progressive rock with ‘70s southern rock (Deep Purple meets Lynyrd Skynyrd) and refashions it with their mumblecore sensibility.  What I mean is that they’re low-key, type B personalities who put the music first and chat, but don’t really speak.  Lead singer and songwriter Jim James feels like Mark Duplass’s character in Your Sister’s Sister (2011) if he were a musician.  On Palladia’s Storytellers series, James talked interminably with a sweet sincerity that was both refreshing and excruciating.  

     The Waterfall acts as a stop gap between more major works and may not be the best jumping off point for new listeners.  It takes forever to take off with its fourth track “Waterfalls.”  As a band, they’re generous to a fault and want to play all night long in the tradition of The Grateful Dead or Phish.  Good for them!  Unfortunately, jammin’ along on an album can become too much of a good thing, especially if it’s a cut that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.  Things get really interesting around the eighth and ninth cuts (“Big Decisions,” “Tropics (Erase Traces)”) that utilize some musical phrasing from Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here (1975), thereby uniting English and American baroque arena rock of the ‘70s before bogging down again with “Only Memories Remain.”  Those memories are from the first three tracks, which I didn’t want to remember.  They sing an abbreviated version at the end, thereby informing the listener how tough it is to get over a break-up.  Yup, it’s sad all right.  I can’t wait for their next album.

Nellie McKay's "My Weekly Reader" Delights

Pop Singer Nellie McKay

     Nellie McKay is a wonderful, complicated idiosyncrasy:  a pop singer who isn’t a fawned over superstar, a multi-instrumentalist in an era when singers can barely play “Chopsticks,” and a historian of popular music who puts the song before her ‘interpretation’ of it.  In short, she’s extraordinarily talented and unique.  Geoff Emerick, who engineered a number of The Beatles’ albums, has been a key collaborator as her producer from her debut Get Away from Me (2004).  She can also sing in any genre:  Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop, Country, Jazz, Great American Songbook.  She feels like the granddaughter heir apparent to Dinah Washington and Rosemary Clooney.

     Whether singing her own compositions or covering other composers (her 2009 album Normal As Blueberry Pie – A Tribute to Doris Day), she is neither cynical nor self-serving.  Her songs, however, generally touch upon contemporary and/or continuing social issues, which used to be a primary root of American popular song.  Unfortunately, the music corporations place little value in that so McKay moved from Columbia to Verve – a better fit for her in the long run.  She wanted to rediscover an era that was artistically and politically sincere for her latest album so she turned to the Vietnam War, concentrating on songs from 1965 – 1973.  Though she hasn’t written the songs on her latest, she plays about eighteen different instruments on it.  

     From the title My Weekly Reader, recalling the urban underground press’ heyday, to the production that initially sounds like the move from mono to stereo, this sounds like the late ‘60s.  However, she presents further nuance especially in Moby Grape’s “Murder In My Heart For the Judge,” which speaks to urban unrest in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin killing and the Ferguson, MO riots and Crosby, Stills, and Kantner’s “Wooden Ships,” a haunting, wistful note on which to end the album.  She sounds like she could be Mary Hopkin’s younger sister on Steve Miller’s “Quicksilver Girl” or Small Faces’ “Itchycoo Park,” and even channels the profound sadness of Sandy Denny on Ray Davies’ “Sunny Afternoon.”  It’s a treat to hear Paul Simon’s “Red Rubber Ball,” and Frank Zappa’s “Hungry Freaks, Daddy.”  I didn’t love Richard Fariña’s  “Bold Marauder,” mainly because it seemed musically monotonous and her straight ahead version of”Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying” is respectful, but it doesn’t reveal her in the way of Rickie Lee Jones’s 1989 version.

Nellie McKay appears at the 20th Century Theatre in Oakley on September 17, 2015.

the20thcenturytheatre.com

Could The Lone Bellow be Americana’s first Superstars?

Then Came The Morning

The Lone Bellows Performing on
The Late Show with David Letterman

     Neil heard The Lone Bellow a couple of times on WNKU – yes, the region’s coolest radio station – and then checked them out singing “Then Came The Morning” on a YouTube clip from David Letterman’s show.   It’s a joyous sounding break-up song that’s tempered by the dialectic of Zach Williams’ nasal tenor, Kanene Donehey Pipkin’s enveloping soprano, and Brian Elmquist’s steadying baritone.  Both have

Award Shows Round Up

Snow between the Grammys 

and the Oscars (with our predictions)

30s Hollywood Glamour

Bette Midler's
45 rpm Hat at the
1975 Grammys
with Stevie Wonder

     What to do on a snowy day?  How about write up the biggie award shows?  The Grammys were set up to get people to buy LPs (yes, it was that long ago) and the Oscars were set up so that Hollywood moguls could try to class up a glamorous factory system (yes, it was even longer ago).

Rosanne Cash, the Big Americana Winner

     The Grammys are now about promoting current and upcoming A-list tours because it’s the only way to guarantee a big income, thanks to downloading. The show is about who wins the night, i.e. the performer who makes the biggest

Miranda Lambert: Platinum

Yet again, Lambert delivers 

tough vulnerability with exquisite precision

     Miranda Lambert’s latest solo album Platinum was released five months ago, which was when I picked it up and I’ve played it about a dozen or so times since then.  It’s an easy collection to hear a number of times because it sums up the past of country and western music, while also placing Lambert in the forefront of where C & W may go next.  Along with Beck on Morning Phase (Alternative Rock/Rock) and Pharrell Williams on Girl (R&B/Pop), Lambert has taken stock of a musical genre and stated why it is and has been important to American culture.  For me, those are the three most significant albums released this year.

     Lambert wrote/co-wrote about half of the songs on this album and performed works by some other top C & W songwriters.  She comes across as Western because of the

Rosanne Cash: The River & the Thread

Exploring the south and her roots – 

a lovely record, but magisterial in concert

Our Seats at Clowes Hall

     We were in Indianapolis last month and Neil happened to see that Rosanne Cash was going to perform at Butler University’s Clowes Memorial Hall.  Since we were able to get seats that guaranteed no one would be standing in front of us,

Chrissie Hynde

A really good album  by an icon    

    Chrissie Hynde has been one of the coolest performers in popular music for over three decades.  She possesses an intriguing alto voice that wrings a subtle, supple sound from a limited range.  It can also forcibly attack such as on The

So Retro They’re Current

Echosmith, The Temples, 
Hamilton Leithauser

     Some of the recent bands sound like chestnuts of yesteryear, whether or not on purpose.  There’s pleasure in rehearing the sound of a favorite period or musical group in a new artist, though it begs the question of whether that artist can make the sound its own and whether they can maintain a long-term career in the mainstream.

Echosmith Siblings

      Echosmith is probably the least like an earlier sound in its instrumentation.  Formed by the Sierta siblings (Jamie, Sydney, Noah, and Graham) when were just out of the womb, Neil first heard them on WNKU being expounded as a band

Beck: Morning Phase

Beck brings it on with an album 

that leaves Pop/Rock/Alternative in its wake

     I was a fan of Beck from the first time I heard “Loser,” though to paraphrase Entertainment Weekly, part of the reason I liked it was because I knew Kathie Lee Gifford would never cover it.  Odelay (1996) and Midnite Vultures (1999) were a lot of fun since they took on Hip-hop and Disco, respectively, but Sea Change (2002) sounded sort of drab

New York in the ‘70s: Will Hermes, Martin Gottfried, & Sam Wasson

During an economic free fall, the city 
crumbled, but the performing arts electrified

     When Howard Cosell said, during the 1977 World Series, “The Bronx is burning,” it really was.  Fires in the Bronx and bombings in Manhattan were commonplace in the ‘70s, an era that Will Hermes resurrects with extraordinary detail and an encyclopedic knowledge of the music scenes in Love Goes to Buildings on Fire:  Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever (2011).  Hermes is a senior critic for Rolling Stone, but he writes in the exciting, all-encompassing style of

Pharrell Williams: Girl

Charming Disco Redux

Pharrell Williams Performing "Happy" on the Oscars

     Pharrell Williams blew into the mainstream consciousness last month with his darling performance of “Happy” on the Oscars and his album Girl hitting number one the following week on the charts.  Though he was one of The Neptunes, a

John Denver and The Carpenters Remembered

Back to the ‘70s with tributes from today’s and ‘90s artists

Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett Teamed for The Lady Is A Tramp

   The tribute album depends on two factors:  the music of a past singer/musician the listener wants to hear again, and a new generation of performers revitalizing it.  Where tribute

Some Recent Milestones

Talent exploding through a multitude 
of works = Genius in retrospect

   Two milestones this week were reminders of watershed eras in American and world popular – Shirley Temple Black’s death and the 50th anniversary of the Beatles first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.  

Shirley Temple

   Shirley Temple was the most famous American child at the age of six, driven by a stage mother desperate that her little girl would be a movie star.  There were a number of women with this psychological need in that generation, the most

Cincinnati Thanks!

It’s livable, mostly affordable, and a combination of Northern Tough and Southern Charm

     It’s that time of year to show our gratitude, especially in the great region of Cincinnati and northern Kentucky.  We hate hearing people knock Porkopolis and its environs because