Record companies, artists and publicists are invited to submit CDs to be considered for review. Send to: Jerry Bowles, Editor, Sequenza 21, 340 W. 57th Street, 12B, New York, NY 10019
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Granny Rehearses the Choir
I haven't bought a new pop album in years; somewhere around Michael Jackson's "Killer" days and Mariah Carey's $20 million buyout I lost interest. Too silly, as the Monty Python lads used to say. Pop music had reached a deadend...or so I thought.
I subscribe to the Rhapsody music service and lately I've been listening some of the indie groups like Death Cab for Cutie and Sigur R�s and the wonderful art songs of Anthony and the Johnsons and have been amazed at how much the new indie crowd has absorbed from "serious" composers like Steve Reich and Michael Gordon and Meredith Monk and Eve Beglarian and Phil Kline and, yes, even Philip Glass. These folks have clearly spent a lot of time listening to Kyle Gann's Postclassic Radio. I'm sure the closing gap between pop and serious music is no surprise to most of you whippersnappers but I'm a bit slower on the uptake these days.
Which brings me to a point...finally. There was a terrific article in the New York Times today about a couple of nice Jewish kids from Brooklyn by way of Chicago named Matthew and Eleanor Friedburger who call themselves The Fiery Furnaces. For their brand new release (Amazon doesn't even have it up yet), Rehearsing the Choir, Matthew Friedburger gathered a family oral history from their 83-year-old grandmother and set it to music--using grandma as narrator and Eleanor to sing her younger parts. Naturally--since granny seems like my kind of gal--I rushed over to Rhapsody and fired it up. It's pretty darn brilliant stuff although I found it far too exhausting to listen to the whole thing in one sitting. Honky Tonk Woman, this is not. The lyrics are dense and difficult; the rhythms multi-layered and complex. Matthew Friedburger has remembered--and used--every sound and musical style he has heard from the last ten years which is both the album's strength and its weakness. When this kid learns what to leave out, he's going to be a major.
By the way, we have in development (as they say in H-wood), a new Sequenza21 blog that will cover the indie pop/postclassical scene. Watch for Blackdogred's Indie Beat, coming soon to a computer screen near you.
posted by Jerry Bowles
10/26/2005
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
