Now Downloading: New Releases 11.17.09

We're headlong into gift-giving season, so feel free to make your year-end list, as it's no mans land as far as quality releases. That being said, there are a couple albums that provide more than stocking fodder. The Led Zep/Queens of the Stone Age/Foo Fighters supergroup Them Crooked Vultures doesn't disappoint, and Macca's got a live album that aims to please. Elsewhere, it's mostly meh in new releases -- tis the season for reissues.

Playlist: New Releases 11.17.09

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Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures
Stream / Purchase [mp3]

The debut from this heavy metal supergroup is a near perfect sum of it's parts. Featuring a dream team rhythm section of Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones TCV builds the songs on fat bass & drum grooves, and while some of Josh Hommes' guitar work is pulled out of a LedZep trick bag, thankfully nobody is going to confuse him with Robert Plant. That's what keeps this effort from sounding like a tired tribute and instead something inspired by the real thing. Essentially, it's in the same vein as Homme's Queens of the Stone Age classic Songs for the Deaf (which featured Grohl on the drums), but with a bit more Zep worship - especially the atmospherics of In Through the Out Door, which contains some of John Paul Jones' best work. At its core, Them Crooked Vultures is really just cheap thrills, but sometimes that's all you need.

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Paul McCartney - Good Evening New York City
Stream / Purchase [mp3]

In someone else's hands, the set list for Paul McCartney's concert in New York (CitiField) might seem like pandering. Ok, there is a bit of pandering, but there's a time and a place for it, and we're all kind of Beatles hungry again, right? Macca only performs a couple songs from this decade (23 of the 33 are from Beatles era), sprinkling them in the first disc w/ songs from both Wings and Beatles, leaving the second disc entirely to Beatles faves. His enthusiasm for the material is such that they all feel like new songs again. For a bit, anyway.

Free AOL album stream

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More on the radar (and in the mp3 player) this week:
Tape Deck Mountain - Ghost / "Ghost Colony" [mp3]
Real Estate - Real Estate / "Beach Comber" [mp3]
SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Remixes! / Xiu Xiu - "Volcana (I Hope You Hear the Train Crashes remix)" [mp3]
tUnE-yArDs - BiRd-BrAiNs / Free AOL album stream
Lovvers - Think EP
Dan Zanes & Friends - 76 Trombones
Alexandre Desplat - The Twilight Saga: New Moon (The Score)

REISSUES
David Bowie - Space Oddity: 40th Anniversary Edition
The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour: Deluxe Edition
The Blood Brothers - Burn, Piano Island, Burn [Bonus Track Version]
The Blood Brothers - Crimes [Bonus Track Version]
The Blood Brothers - Young Machetes [Bonus Track Version]
The Blood Brothers - March On Electric
Children
RJD2 - Since We Last Spoke: Deluxe Edition / Free AOL album stream
RJD2 - The Horror: Deluxe Edition / Free AOL album stream
John Entwistle - Rigor Mortis Sets In

tags: music, album review, them crooked vultures, macca, indie rock, new releases, rhapsody

Now Downloading: New Releases 06.05.07

This week sees the much anticipated coffee-house-marketed release from Macca, as well as great debuts from The Long Blondes and the Mark E. Smith/Mouse On Mars project Von Südenfed.

Playlist: New Releases 06.05.07

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Album: Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full

If you walked into a Starbucks anytime today, you've already heard Macca's latest, as they're conducting a nationwide listening party, putting Memory Almost Full on repeat throughout the day. Macca's the first artist signed to Starbucks' Hear Music label, but oddly enough, it may just be the least coffee house-friendly album that Macca has ever released. Mostly written prior to 2005's Chaos & Creation In The Backyard, Memory is Macca's most personal recordings since the death of his wife Linda (in particular the suite of songs that starts with "Vintage Clothes" bleeding into each other ala Abbey Road. ) Meanwhile, the songs "Only Mama Knows" and "Nod Your Head" have Macca on full throttle, rocking harder then he has since Wings. The digital release has three extra so-so songs, but also has an album commentary from Macca that's nearly a half-hour, giving some background on all the songs.

Back to the subject of leaving EMI, Macca tells the NY Times:

The major record labels are having major problems. They’re a little puzzled as to what’s happening. And I sympathize with them. But as [producer] David Kahne said to me about a year ago, the major labels these days are like the dinosaurs sitting around discussing the asteroid.

An asteroid that's already hit, one might add. While Memory can't hold a candle to his best in Wings and his first couple solo releases (or anything obviously prior to that,) it might just be his most interesting work since that time.

Free album stream from AOL

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Album: The Long Blondes - Someone to Drive You Home

Holy post-punk candy, Batman! The Long Blondes deliver on the promise of their singles with this debut, and lead singer Kate Jackson might just be a superstar in the making. Pulling from classic post-punk acts like Au Pairs, Gang of Four, Mekons, and early Blondie, Someone to Drive You Home is the kind of revelation that Art Brut already drove home with Bang Bang Rock & Roll. The difference here is Kate Jackson's driving sexuality and moral ambivalence, when she's a)cheating on you. b)stealing you're boyfriend. c)stealing your girlfriend(?) They could be the female-fronted answer to Pulp (both are from Sheffield, and Pulp bass player Steve Mackey produces this album.) Regardless, it's an intoxicating blend of guitars and attitude that demands repeated play.

Free album stream from AOL

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Album: Von Südenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions

Mouse On Mars + Mark E. Smith =
LCD Mumblesystem

Mark E. Smith has an issue with James Murphy's homage to The Fall on the first LCD Soundsystem album, and the opening song "Fledermaus Can't Get It" seems to be direct challenge to Murphy, turning "Losing My Edge" on it's ear, with the help of the Germany's Mouse On Mars. It's a delicious beginning to a noisy but fun album. You still can't understand a word Smith says (except in the song "Duckrog" where he spits out succinctly "I wanna hear the words. And. Not. Any. Mumbling" and then falls back into his indecipherable smatterings. Thankfully, the music brings you back for repeat listenings... I think I'll be able to understand what he's saying one day.

Free album stream from AOL

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More going (or already in) the Sansa
Dizzee Rascal - Maths + English
Matthew Dear - Asa Breed (Free album stream from AOL)
The Cinematic Orchestra, Ma Fleur (Free album stream from AOL)
The Pipettes - Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me (Single)
Architecture in Helsinki - Heart it Races (Single)
Moviola - Dead Knowledge
Pelican - City of Echoes
Chris Cornell - Carry On
Bonde Do Role - With Lasers
They Shoot Horses Don't They - Pick Up Sticks
Dappled Cities - Grandance
Matt Pond PA - If You Want Blood
Dappled Cities - Grandance

tags: music, album review, paul mccartney, macca, the long blondes, von sudenfed, dizzee rascal, indie rock, new releases, rhapsody

Macca the knife

By now, you already know the back catalogue for Paul McCartney (or 'Macca,' as he's affectionately known,) has finally made it into digital distribution circles (just in time for the buzziest Macca release in ages, Memory Almost Full.) It adds a lot of great music to the library, but it also unfortunately adds some real waste as well. Wild Life (1971,) Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976,) Back to the Egg (1979,) Pipes of Peace (1983) and that dogs of all dogs, Give My Regards To Broad Street (1984,) all need some desperate cutting.

I am, however, excited to have his first two solo releases, as both them, while critically panned at the time, feel ahead of their time in scope and feel. The minimal/nearly lo-fi approach of Paul McCartney (1970) and Ram (1971) seemed like a reaction to the wall-of-sound treatment that Phil Spector gave Let it Be's "The Long and Winding Road." In fact McCartney started his first recording in his home-built studio at the same time Spector was bringing in his opulence to those fated Let it Be mixes. The lack of production turned a lot of people off at the time, but the intimacy of the songs help close Macca's emotional distance, and, more importantly, they don't sound dated like some of his later fuller production with Wings (and moreso with his solo reboot in the 80s.)

Macca's self-titled debut was also the perfect reaction to being in a band for so long, as he plays every frackin' instrument. While there's little emotional impact from the songs (as his often the chink in Macca's armor,) the melodies are all there. "Junk" is recorded like a throwaway track (indeed it wasn't deemed worthy for The White Album or Abbey Road) but contains one of his most memorable melodies, and "Maybe I'm Amazed" might very well be the best song he's ever written.

His second album, Ram, was recorded in a real studio with some help, but still retained much of the minimalist production that Macca was toying with at the time. "Too Many People" and "Smile Away" are two of the most underheard Macca gems. "The Back Seat of My Car" signaled a move back to higher production value, and "Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey" was a precursor a lot of the work he'd do with Wings. The reviews continued to be poor, and forming Wings helped served as a way to not have to take the brunt of the critics anymore. That's too bad, 'cause while Band on the Run was truly great, the rest of McCartney's work in that period is a mixed bag. It's fun to imagine what a solo McCartney would've sounded like through the rest of the 70's... without sheltering himself behind the Wings moniker, would he have been so willing to go so sickingly sentimental? Or was he just Linda-whipped and the rest was inevitable.

There's something to the Linda angle, as it took her tragic death to get him to back on track with the post-Linda trilogy (Flaming Pie, Run Devil Run, and Driving Rain.) Chaos and Creation in the Backyard furthered a necessary maturation in Macca, as he finally let go and let someone besides himself behind the board to co-produce (Nigel Godrich.) Now he's given up the reigns (almost) entirely with the forthcoming Memory in Full, which works very well.

The lead single ("Dance Tonight") is probably the simplist track on the album, but having Michel Gondry direct and Mackenzie Crook in your video more than makes up for it.

Here's the EPK for Memory in Full.

tags: music, album review, macca, paul mccartney, wings, beatles, classic rock, rhapsody