Last night, Sharon Van Etten played the song “Serpents” on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (video below), debuting a new band featuring a guest appearance by Aaron Dessner (the National). The song is from Van Etten’s forthcoming 3rd LP, Tramp, which is slated for release on 2/7/12 via Jagjaguwar. It’s also been released as a single b/w non-album track “Mike McDermott.”
The performance featured a more amplified sound palette than her previous work, adding tinges of indie rock to Van Etten’s alt-folk style, with the songwriter inhabiting a bolder demeanor fronting the proceedings. Add the key ingredient of stardom’s formula – a memorable lead-off single like “Serpents” – andTramp appears poised to be Van Etten’s breakout release. Congratulations on a very successful network TV debut!
One of our favorite indie-folk songstresses, Sharon Van Etten, performs tonight (1/5/12) on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Sharon recently announced that her forthcoming record,Tramp, will be released on 2/7 viaJagjaguwar.
Hear and download “Serpents,” a track from the album, on the label’s website.
NoiseTrade is a terrific site to search for new music. They offer thousands of free downloads by emerging artists and indie labels.
Today, they announced a label sampler by Nettwerk, which features pop and electronica acts such as Submarines, Ivy, Ladytron, and Sarah Mclachlan. Sound eclectic? Sure, but Nettwerk’s byline is “releasing music we love,” not “releasing music according to a tightly wound marketing strategy.” Got to respect that.
Here’s another Nettwerk artist you’ll likely love: Morgan Page, in a new video with a passel of guest artists.
Bad as Me, his first studio album in over seven years (the last was 2004′s Real Gone), is a musical homecoming of sorts for Tom Waits. While there are certainly plenty of songs that share affinity with various releases from throughout his body of work, from Frank’s Wild Years to Mule Variations to Alice, there’s also a conscious embrace of what one of my friends called “Hollywood Tom Waits.” By that, he meant the early years of Waits’s career, when he was both a Beatnik bard and aspiring film composer (and actor); one who’d duet with Crystal Gayle and collaborate with Bette Midler. The years before Waits’s persona became larger than life. And before he began to work with longtime partner and collaborator Kathleen Brennan. Brennan, a playwright, would urge and enable Waits to plumb the dramatic depths of his songwriting craft. So, pre-1983; pre-Swordfishtrombones.Brennan is still listed as coauthor on all the songs on Bad as Me, and the lyric narratives remain taut and clever. But she seems willing to take this stroll down memory lane with her partner.
And while calling Bad as Me “Hollywood Tom Waits” could have been leveled as a criticism, connoting a step backwards or a more superficial creative process, one needn’t – indeed shouldn’t – take it that way. Instead, it can be reckoned as a rapprochement between Waits’s latter day experimentation and some of the features of his earlier work: supple melodic writing, a penchant for good hooks and compact structures, and an ambiguous approach toward emoting: one that often leaves the audience unsure of whether he’s being satirical or on the level.
Thus it often is on Bad as Me as well. Waits can sing the refrain from Auld Lang Syne on “New Year’s Eve,” the album closer, without it seeming bathetic or mawkish. He can croon an ostensibly sentimental ballad like “Last Leaf” in a duet with Keith Richards (a longtime collaborator if a larger than life legend in his own right). But the sandpaper swoops of their combined voices make the performance’s bald emoting seem earnest, hardworn, andearned; a careworn moment of vulnerability rather than two old hands blubbering into their beers.
There’s plenty of edge and ebullient polystylistic experimentation on the CD too. While Waits recruits new band members to the fold – his son Casey Waits plays drums and Red Hot Chili Peppers’s bassist Flea plays bass on couple of tracks, a number of others are longtime collaborators. Marc Ribot and Larry Taylor create an angular backdrop for the barnstorming blues of “Raised Right Man.” David Hidalgo joins Ribot, Taylor, the younger Waits, and a horn section in the rollicking rockabilly of “Get Lost.” The title cut finds Waits channeling Screaming Jay Hawkins, abetted by saucy baritone sax and Ribot outlining an off kilter yet catchy tango rhythm. Things get stranger still on “Face to the Highway, ” a song that recreates the blurred edges of many a cut on 2002′s beguiling Waits record Alice. And “Hell Broke Luce” is a Harry Partch percussion-enabled howling and rap with motoric pulsations that ultimately devolves into skronk cum circus music. It’s easily the track on Bad as Me that displays the most avant attitude.
One is not only impressed with the suavely chameleon character of the CD’s supporting cast, but with a similar vocal suppleness from Waits himself. Not only can he still inhabit all sorts of characters, but the dynamic range he brings to bear, from delicate falsetto and hushed whispers to infernal rasping, bellowed sprechstimme and screams that, for less durable singers, would likely be polyp inducing. All in the service of a baker’s dozen of songs of equally durable quality; ones that can stand beside some of the best material in his catalog to date. Long live Tom Waits.
Kate Bush releases 50 Words for Snow, a new CD, today via the Anti imprint. Below is an animated video accompanying one of the album tracks from her official YouTube channel.
Björk’s latest release is more than just a studio album. For her Biophilia project, the artist has embraced both 21st century technology and espoused an aesthetic that reconnects music-making with the natural world. In the latter quest she’s in good – and venerable – company: Hildegard von Bingen promulgated a similar agenda through her own writings and musical works back in the 12th Century! Of course, Björk’s vantage point is decidedly more secularly ecumenical than Hildegard’s. But the notion of embracing the life force, being aware of (wo)man’s interaction with the environment and the cosmos, and the joy in eliciting the listener’s participation in the creation of music, are all affinities that resonate between them. Indeed, it’s in this participatory spirit that Björk has also released the album as a set of apps, encouraging listeners to dig in to some of the concepts behind the record’s creation and to explore some of the music in a more hands-on fashion. Those who prefer a less tech-fancy product can get a deluxe boxed set, limited edition vinyl, or one of several CD/digital formats.
All of these organizing principals and methods of distribution create high hopes: are the expectations and aesthetic pronouncements that surround Biophilia outsized when compared to its actual songs? No, the music remains central to the album’s design. It is ambitious in spirit and carefully crafted. Björk incorporates some of the classical music signatures she has incorporated on previous efforts – brass ensemble, vocal choirs, strings, etc. Beats and electronics are liberally added as well. Throughout, there’s a particular emphasis on plucked and percussive timbres – harps and dulcimers create a delicately clangorous soundscape that serves as a frequent through line on Biophilia.
This is still nominally a pop album, and as such the song designation is retained. But Björk is really creating compositions which stretch the boundaries of the song form, filled with digressions, changes in texture, demeanor, and even style. While the tendency towards the atmospheric has been abundantly present in her work (at least) since 2001′s Vespertine,Biophilia embraces a wide swath of sonic profiles. Some are quirky and endearing, like the organ-driven “Hollow.” Others are more beat-driven, like the astonishingly variated “Crystalline.” Electronica presents itself here n a glitchy fashion rather than embracing a standard dancehall-ready beat template. And then there is “Dark Matter,” a thoughtful, deliciously dissonant piece of chamber music: a piece that will likely prove polarizing: enervating to Björk’s detractors and riveting to kindred spirits.
The one constant amidst all of this musical diversity is Björk’s voice, which remains a singular, expressive, and powerful instrument, capable of great dynamic range and innumerable timbral adjustments. And while Biophilia demands much from its listeners, even by the standards set by the increasingly adventurous approach found in each successive Björk release, it’s likely that her voice alone is sufficient enough a beacon to light the pathway for listeners. Those who persist will find many sonic revelations and cherished musical moments therein.
Here is a video of a recent live performance of album cut “Thunderbolt.”
Here’s a video taster course for the Biophilia app suite
The members of the London band S.C.U.M. wear their New Wave/New Romantic influences on their sleeves proudly. The video below demonstrates this penchant amply. It features the title cut from their forthcoming EP (out 1/13/12 via Mute).
Peter Gabriel has recently turned his attention to covering songs by other artists. He now returns to his own body of work, reinterpreting earlier material with a 46-piece classical ensemble, dubbed the New Blood Orchestra and conducted by Ben Foster.
For some pop stars and rockers, the later career symphonic album is a black eye in an otherwise distinguished discography. But throughout his career, Gabriel has strived to create music with an epic sweep and richly hued soundscape, and his recordings have long incorporated a diverse palette of instruments to enflesh the material. Thus, adding the symphonic treatment to many of his songs is an apt, indeed well nigh inevitable, next step in their evolution. John Metcalfe has collaborated with Gabriel in the past, and his arrangements never jar with the spirit of the originals. Thankfully, that doesn’t mean that they treat the original recordings as holy writ either. In fact, New Blood is often at its best when songs are deconstructed a bit to reveal new facets. “In Your Eyes” is given a spirited string introduction which then serves as an accompaniment figure, replacing the syncopated drumbeat one heard on its So iteration;imparting a post-minimalist vibe to the song.
I’ve long thought of “San Jacinto” as a late prog epic that yearned to be a symphonic tone poem: and so it is here. Meanwhile, “Solisbury Hill” has its guitar riffs taken over with jaunty flair by strings, remaining an effervescent popsong with, in typical fashion for Gabriel, a far more weighty and autobiographical backstory submerged in the lyrics.
Even more “groove-oriented” songs like “Digging in the Dirt” are dealt with deftly by Metcalfe, with ricocheting lines between brass and winds giving toes ample opportunity to tap. Perhaps only “Downside Up” strikes one as a bit too familiarly adorned with patterns from symphonic rock albums past. Of course, effective arrangements mean little if a singer isn’t up to the task of tackling the songs. A few of the keys of songs have been lowered in deference to the intervening decades, but Gabriel is still in fine voice: an expressive interpreter with excellent control of his instrument.
While one eagerly awaits the next serving of brand new material from Peter Gabriel, New Blood is no mere stopgap, but an interesting recasting of his catalog that’s well worth exploring.
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