|
|
|
Color Of Noize
Derrick Hodge is a contemporary musical renaissance man. A top-flight bassist known for his core membership in the Robert Glasper Experiment, he is also a producer, multi-instrumentalist, and composer who has worked with everyone from Common and Terence Blanchard to Maxwell, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Gretchen Parlato. Color of Noize is at once the title of his third album and the name of his band, comprised of pianist/organist Jahari Stampley, keyboardist and synth player Michael Aaberg, drummers Mike Michell and Justin Tyson, and DJ Jahi Sundance on turntables. Hodge plays bass, guitar, keys, and sings. He co-produced the set with Don Was.
Color of Noize is the first time Hodge has worked with an outside producer. Cut live in studio, his musicians encountered the music only when they were about to record it; improvised moments are abundant here. Hodge doesn't meld genres, he blurs them in an exotic, resonant, uplifting music of his own. Groove and flow become multivalent expressions of a single creative voice through instrumental hip-hop, contemporary jazz, indie rock, and soul; they emerge to offer emotional depth and spiritual heft. AllMusic Review by Thom Jurek
|
|
|
Pick Me Up Off the Floor
Once she came to the end of the promotional cycle for 2016's Day Breaks, Norah Jones decided to challenge herself by recording a series of swift sessions with a rotating cast of collaborators. The intention was to release the results quickly, issuing them as a digital single at a time, and Jones followed through on this plan, releasing a new song every few months throughout 2018. These tunes were rounded up on 2019's Begin Again, but that wasn't the end of the project. Jones cut a number of songs during these sessions that were unreleased but not forgotten by the singer/songwriter. She kept listening to the rough mixes, eventually coming to the conclusion that these tracks would make a strong album of their own accord. Pick Me Up Off the Floor proves her instincts were correct. Lacking the purposeful digressions of Begin Again -- an album where the digressions were the entire point -- Pick Me Up Off the Floor is a tighter affair than its companion record, firmly rooted in the after-hours jazz-folk-pop hybrid that's Jones' calling card. Some of the cohesion may be due to how a good chunk of the album is anchored by her standby drummer Brian Blade, but it's also true that this record's collaboration with Jeff Tweedy is the amiably rambling "I'm Alive," a number that is firmly stationed within Jones' wheelhouse. The same could be said about Pick Me Up Off the Floor in general. There are accents and flourishes that distinguish the tunes -- "Flame Twin" is charged by curlicues of guitars and smears of organ, "To Live" is graced by muted horns straight out of the Big Easy -- but as a collection of songs, Pick Me Up Off the Floor winds up emphasizing how Jones slyly and elegantly synthesizes a pop sensibility with a jazz execution, a fusion that is comforting yet relies on her idiosyncratic twists. This blend of warmth and invention is what's so appealing about Pick Me Up Off the Floor: the shape may seem familiar, but the construction of the songs and the inventiveness of the performance keeps it fresh and surprising even after the first listen.
AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
|
|
|
Giant Steps
History will undoubtedly enshrine this disc as a watershed the likes of which may never truly be appreciated. Giant Steps bore the double-edged sword of furthering the cause of the music as well as delivering it to an increasingly mainstream audience. Although this was John Coltrane's debut for Atlantic, he was concurrently performing and recording with Miles Davis. Within the space of less than three weeks, Coltrane would complete his work with Davis and company on another genre-defining disc, Kind of Blue, before commencing his efforts on this one. Coltrane (tenor sax) is flanked by essentially two different trios. Recording commenced in early May of 1959 with a pair of sessions that featured Tommy Flanagan (piano) and Art Taylor (drums), as well as Paul Chambers -- who was the only bandmember other than Coltrane to have performed on every date. When recording resumed in December of that year, Wynton Kelly (piano) and Jimmy Cobb (drums) were instated -- replicating the lineup featured on Kind of Blue, sans Miles Davis of course. At the heart of these recordings, however, is the laser-beam focus of Coltrane's tenor solos. All seven pieces issued on the original Giant Steps are likewise Coltrane compositions. He was, in essence, beginning to rewrite the jazz canon with material that would be centered on solos -- the 180-degree antithesis of the art form up to that point. These arrangements would create a place for the solo to become infinitely more compelling. This would culminate in a frenetic performance style that noted jazz journalist Ira Gitler accurately dubbed "sheets of sound." Coltrane's polytonal torrents extricate the amicable and otherwise cordial solos that had begun decaying the very exigency of the genre -- turning it into the equivalent of easy listening. He wastes no time as the disc's title track immediately indicates a progression from which there would be no looking back. Line upon line of highly cerebral improvisation snake between the melody and solos, practically fusing the two. The resolute intensity of "Countdown" does more to modernize jazz in 141 seconds than many artists do in their entire careers. Tellingly, the contrasting and ultimately pastoral "Naima" was the last tune to be recorded, and is the only track on the original long-player to feature the Kind of Blue quartet. What is lost in tempo is more than recouped in intrinsic melodic beauty. Both Giant Steps [Deluxe Edition] and the seven-disc Heavyweight Champion: The Complete Atlantic Recordings offer more comprehensive presentations of these sessions. AllMusic Review by Lindsay Planer
|
|
|
Bach: Well Tempered Clavier Book 1
Since returning to harpsichord playing full-time, Trevor Pinnock has released some superb Bach recordings. He may have outdone himself with this traversal of Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846-869. At the very least, the recording is worth close attention, even in an environment of strong competition around these keyboard classics. The hallmark of Pinnock's approach in this systematic work is variety. He catches, as few others do, how the emphasis in each pair is sometimes on the prelude, sometimes on the fugue, how the relationship between the two is different in almost every case, and how the fugue themes are almost infinite in their implications. What's really remarkable, though, is that Pinnock does this all within a fairly strict rhythmic framework. Pinnock sometimes portrays himself as avoiding strictness, but that's by the standards of the early historical-performance movement that he did so much to pioneer. Pinnock's slight alterations of tempo in the preludes are not obvious, but they draw the listener into the flow of the work, and the fugues are beautifully shaped. With intimate but not over-close sound, this is the beginning of a Well-Tempered Clavier for the ages.
AllMusic Review by James Manheim
|
|
|
Daugherty: This Land Sings – Inspired by the Life and Times of Woody Guthrie
Folk songs, by Woody Guthrie and others, have been adapted to the world of concert music before, but in Guthrie's case, the partnership is an uneasy one; the simplicity and the absolute populism of Guthrie's music is at odds with the individualist ethos of classical composition. So how does composer Michael Daugherty manage his Woody Guthrie song cycle? His solution is bold and perhaps ingenious: for the most part, he doesn't set Guthrie's tunes at all, although This Land Is Your Land turns up in a couple of numbers. Instead, he writes words of his own and draws on texts from elsewhere in the progressive strain of thought, dating back to Mark Twain, that animated Guthrie's production. He matches these to two types of musical setting: elaborated traditional American songs and music in his own peppy, often satirical vein. Guthrie wouldn't have minded the humor a bit. Think of it as songs that Guthrie might have liked, were he alive today, and you'll get the idea. This Land Sings also marks a new departure for Daugherty, whose motoric, Stravinsky-meets-pop style doesn't completely disappear but is greatly toned down in the few numbers where it does appear. In the work's premiere, Daugherty introduced the songs himself, talking about their closer or more distant connections to Guthrie. Here, those explanations are relegated to the booklet/online notes. One might feel that "Silver Bullet" (No. 11), where the singer takes on the persona of the oppressor rather than the underdog, doesn't quite fit, and that it might have been eliminated and the spoken introductions restored, but it all adds up to something quite unlike anything anybody else has done before. Listeners are going to have their own reactions, but this is original stuff, ideally and flexibly performed.
AllMusic Review by James Manheim
|
|
|
Homegrown
Back in the spring of 1975, Neil Young planned to release Homegrown, an album he completed at the start of the year, but he also had Tonight's the Night -- a rambling, heavy record cut back in 1973 -- ready to go. After playing the two albums back to back for a small circle of friends, Young opted for Tonight's the Night and shelved Homegrown for the better part of 45 years. Unlike other scrapped Neil projects, Homegrown never circulated in full on bootleg, but it was stripped for parts: "Star of Bethlehem" wound up on American Stars 'n Bars alongside a re-recorded version of Homegrown's title track, "Love Is a Rose" popped up on Decade, "Little Wing" was unveiled on Hawks & Doves, and "White Line" got a loud, lumbering makeover by Crazy Horse on Ragged Glory, released a full 15 years after this original version. Recycling songs isn't uncommon for Young, but the dismantling of Homegrown can also be seen as an extension of the real reason why he chose to release Tonight's the Night instead of this shambling, homespun affair: some of the album cut a little too close to the bone, revealing a little too much of the dissolution of his romance with Carrie Snodgress, so he pushed it away.
Like all heartaches, this pain diminished over the years, and by 2020, Young was ready to unveil Homegrown as part of his ongoing Archives series. Heard as its own distinct work, Homegrown is indeed emotionally candid, but it's also warm, funny, stoned, and spooky, considerably lighter than either Tonight's the Night or On the Beach yet more cohesive in its weirdness than American Stars 'n Bars and not as cozy as Comes a Time. Oddly, the album is front-loaded with its explicit breakup songs, starting as the country-rock ramble "Separate Ways" is underway. "Separate Ways" is paired with the loping "Try" and spacy solo sketch "Mexico" before the album settles into familiar territory with "Love Is a Rose" and "Homegrown." From this point forward, Homegrown will take the occasional detour into melancholy and strangeness (the spoken-word "Florida" vibrates on a different wavelength from the rest of the record), but it also finds time for the rowdy doper blues "We Don't Smoke It No More," the restless twilight rocker "Vacancy," and the delicate closing pair of "Little Wing" and "Star of Bethlehem," which end the album a tentatively hopeful note. Hearing these (sometimes very familiar) songs in this particular sequence is a journey, one that winds along a twisted road yet provides an experience as complete as its mid-'70s companion LPs. It's not a footnote but an essential part of Neil Young's catalog. AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
|
|
|
Not Our First Goat Rodeo
With 2011's Goat Rodeo Sessions, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, mandolinist Chris Thile, bassist Edgar Meyer, and fiddler Stuart Duncan introduced their ambitiously playful, genre-bending mix of classical, folk, bluegrass, and global music textures. It was a hit, earning them critical acclaim and a Grammy Award for Best Folk Album. With 2020's Not Our First Goat Rodeo, the quartet reunites for another stylistically far-reaching outing that matches the heights of their first. On their own, each of the group members have distinguished themselves as musical mavericks, known for their ability to straddle multiple genres with ease. Together, they bring all of their varied experiences to bear, crafting original songs that showcase their technical virtuosity and ear for melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic invention. The opening "Your Coffee Is a Disaster" is a kinetic piece built around a swooning, middle eastern-tinged riff doubled by Ma and Duncan, as Thile and Meyer offer a roiling underpinning of articulated arpeggios that evoke the circular work of Steve Reich. Conversely, the languid and wryly named "Waltz Whitman" sounds like a traditional Appalachian folk song married to an impressionistic composition by Claude Debussey. Yet more expansive is "Not for Lack of Trying," a brooding and angular work featuring minimalist piano, bowed bass, and an architectural melody; all of which bring to mind the 20th century modernism of Bela Bartok. Warmer in tone, if no less ambitious, are the group tracks with singer/songwriter Aoife O'Donovan, who again offers her own delicate and nuanced vocal skills as she did on the original Goat Rodeo Sessions. She and Thile duet with sparkling richness on the driving "The Trappings," their voices shimmering like bird wings over Meyer's diving whale bassline. Equally engaging is "Every Note a Pearl," where she and Thile sing wordless harmonies while the rest of the ensemble skitters around them in a frenetic, barnyard twang. Not Our First Goat Rodeo is a deeply engaging, often rapturous album that balances keen and studied musicality with an almost chaotic passion for group interplay.
AllMusic Review by Matt Collar
|
|
|
Rough and Rowdy Ways
Bob Dylan released the dark, unruly Time Out of Mind in 1997 following two albums of folk and blues covers. It was his first original material in a decade and summed up his 20th century. Rough and Rowdy Ways is his first new material since 2012's Tempest and arrives during a global pandemic and the righteous struggle for racial and economic justice. These ten songs revel in forms that have been Dylan's métier since the '60s: blues, country, folk, rockabilly, gospel, etc. Its three pre-release singles -- "Murder Most Foul," "I Contain Multitudes," and "False Prophet" -- are showcases for a songwriter who speaks directly yet remains elusive.
"I Contain Multitudes" is a meditation on a life yet unfolding; historic figures -- Anne Frank, William Blake, the Rolling Stones, etc. -- jostle against archetypes of gunslingers: "…What can I tell ya? I sleep with life and death in the same bed…." "False Prophet" is a jeremiad disguised as blues house rocker. The protagonist testifies; he's a witness who confronts evil in history and real time. "Goodbye Jimmy Reed" celebrates the bluesman in his own house-rocking style to equate religion, sin, and redemption with romantic obsession and sex. "Crossing the Rubicon" is a roadhouse blues with the afterlife riding shotgun: "Three miles north of purgatory/One step from the great beyond/I pray to the cross/I kiss the girls/and I cross the Rubicon…." Dylan's band are loose and joyful; their raucousness carries his swagger and joy. The suspenseful, loungey "My Own Version of You" features grave robbing as it employs the inspiration of the Bride of Frankenstein to seek truth in taboo. "I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You," caressed by marimbas, and brushed snares, finds Dylan blurring distinctions between carnal and spiritual love. Conversely, "Black Rider" whistles past the graveyard, with a nasty caution: "… Don’t hug me, don’t turn on the charm/I'll take a sword and hack off your arm…." In the Celtic gospel of "Mother of Muses," he's a grateful supplicant, a servant who humbly requests transformation knowing full well he may not be entitled: "… wherever you are/I've already outlived my life by far…."
The album's final half-hour contains only two songs. The nine-plus-minute "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)" is a rambling dirge guided by a soft accordion in a stripped-down journey of longing and weariness; an acknowledgment of mortality with the ghosts of the Beats, Buddy Holly, and Jimi Hendrix alongside him. It stands with his best work from the '70s. That gentle sojourn prepares listeners for "Murder Most Foul," a sprawling, 17-minute lyrical, labyrinthian closer that moves through history, metaphor, and culture with JFK's assassination as its hub. It will be decoded for generations. Rough and Rowdy Ways is akin to transformational albums such as Love and Theft, and Slow Train Coming. It's a portrait of the artist in winter who remains vital and enigmatic. At nearly 80, Dylan's pen and guitar case still hold plenty of magic.
|
|
|
Born Here Live Here Die Here
Luke Bryan will be releasing his latest album on August 7th. `Born Here Live Here Die Here' features the #1 hit "Knockin' Boots" and his current hit single "Whatever She Wants Tonight". Bryan is known for his catchy, chart-topping tracks like ""Country Girl Shake It For Me" which was included in Billboard Magazine's "100 Songs that Defined a Decade" list out last month. CD includes decal sticker in package. Reviewed by Amazon
|
|
|
CeeLo Green is Thomas Callaway
CeeLo Green keeps moving through a quarter-century career full of unforeseeable twists and turns. Between scaling heights with the Dungeon Family, Goodie Mob, and Gnarls Barkley, and minor and major roles in hits by TLC, the Pussycat Dolls, and Bruno Mars, he has grown a solo discography showcasing divergent creative impulses as much as his undervalued vocals and songwriting. Going most recently by isolated moments on The Lady Killer ("Old Fashioned" more so than "Fuck You") and Heart Blanche ("Mother May I"), it was apparent that the Atlanta-born son of ministers could make a whole LP of organic soul evoking an era predating his birth -- if only he had the will, means, and a lack of major-label commercial expectations. That notion is essentially made manifest with CeeLo Green Is Thomas Callaway. The title imparts an intent to humanize an artist whose outsized persona, displayed boldly as ever in 2020 on the British version of The Masked Singer, has sometimes overshadowed his music. Indeed, CeeLo resembles an everyman here more than ever before, welcomed into the extended family of Easy Eye Sound, the authenticity-upholding studio and label operated by Dan Auerbach (whose Black Keys have recorded extensively with Danger Mouse, CeeLo's Gnarls Barkley partner). Producer Auerbach and his crew of mostly elder Nashville and Memphis session pros, some of whom assist CeeLo and Auerbach with songwriting, foster a straightforward set that, on the surface, is fine Southern soul -- late-'60s in spirit -- with a stronger country flavor than expected from CeeLo. In a way, the connection to the CeeLo catalog is a little looser than it is to Easy Eye offspring like Yola's Walk Through Fire and Marcus King's El Dorado, and even John Anderson's Years, as "Slow Down" -- the one song here that CeeLo didn't co-write, a mismatch -- was first heard on that latter LP. As suggested on "People Watching," one of a few feel-good numbers, this is made for summertime porch listening, and it's chock-full of wafting grooves and lingering ballads that are ornamented with strings, horns, bells, and background voices, but are never overdone. Other uplifted and upbeat songs, such as "Lead Me" and "Doing It All Together," are natural picks for singles, but they're outclassed by the Philly-style weeper "Thinking Out Loud," where CeeLo makes like the Stylistics' Russell Thompkins, Jr. with his bittersweet upper register. Everything is direct, whether CeeLo is communicating with a lover, reflecting upon parenthood and mortality, or beset with romantic instability. Moreover, it's thoroughly earnest with a high level of musical detail and a seemingly untreated result attained only by master craftsmen working with a schedule that precludes fuss. (It was recorded in two days, the first of which CeeLo assumed would be spent on writing.) When placed in the context of the singer's previous albums, its clarity, focus, and uniformly wholesome nature are almost stupefying. The restrictions have a liberating effect. AllMusic Review by Andy Kellman
|
|
Freegal MusicGet three free mp3 downloads per week and listen to 3 hours of streaming per day with your library card. Available via the Freegal Music app or the Freegal website.
|
hooplaSet-up a hoopla account with your library card to use the hoopla app and website to stream music. You can borrow full albums for one week, up to five per month.
|
|
Mercer County Library System 2751 Brunswick Pike Lawrenceville, NJ 08648 Phone: (609) 882-9246 E-mail: nrsupprt@mcl.org |
|
|