10.20.07

Four in the Must-Have Category

Posted in Music at 9:46 pm by Moody

The following four albums — however different from each other they may be — should be considered indispensable for your music library. Each proves itself on its own terms, building on the merits of those that preceded it. While any one of them might not be your cup of tea, there is not any doubt that all of them are top shelf in terms of quality. All are worth at least sampling, regardless of your usual tastes; who knows when a new favorite might emerge? Goûtez la différence. Apprenez la différence. Vive la différence!

(Just click the album covers to go to the band/album page.)

Radiohead, In Rainbows

Longtime fans of Radiohead have, over the years since Pablo Honey, come to expect surprises, innovation, and the surpassing of all previous efforts with each new release. Although Hail to the Thief felt, to some extent, like a subtle return to elements found in OK Computer and The Bends, it was still different, still another animal. But while In Rainbows builds on the sound of previous albums, it seems to finally realize a true and full synthesis (not distillation) of and balance between all that preceded it. It seems the title suggests as much; all the colors of the band’s music are represented in one overarching work.

If synthesizing and finding the balance point of the band’s distinctive sound on a new album was what they sought to do, the members of Radiohead succeeded admirably. In committing songs to an album that were previously reserved for live audiences (the best test subjects for new material, I’d think), and then reworking them for the sake of the whole, Radiohead have produced an album at least as solid as The Bends and perhaps more accessible than any previous album. It is a work spangled with the sort of highlights and great moments that fans of Radiohead long ago came to expect, but it never brings about the kind of nostalgia one gets — the kind that sends you back to old favorites — when a band is passing their prime. Radiohead have the kind of staying power one hopes for, like a promise delivered in rainbows.

For a longer, more in-depth review, see Pitchfork.

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Listening to: Radiohead - Nude via FoxyTunes

Meshell Ndegeocello, The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams

On her seventh full-length recording, Meshell has brought the inebriating subtleties of Comfort Woman and the algebraic jazz complexities of The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel together with the fierce incisiveness of Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape to produce a truly innovative, hard-hitting, world challenging work of art that speaks with a blunt, poetic elegance to the life we have been given, the life we have made, the life we wish we had, the life we continue to fool ourselves about. If you are not confronted by the fearless questions Meshell is asking, then you simply have not heard her.

The world has made me the man of my dreams is consistently brilliant. It is a hard brilliance, like that of a diamond, polished by Meshell’s wide range of vocal emotions and amazing lyrical prowess, not to mention her astonishing (one could arguably call it “unsurpassed”) bass guitar work. Musically (by which I mean to include what is sung and how it is sung), the album reaches for and attains a level of pristine artistry; its complex constructions come off as mathematical simplicity, its simplicity unfolds into a rich tapestry of poetry as worthy as Rumi’s and Audre Lorde’s. Her themes are as diverse as ever, yet this album has seen their potency and temperament strengthened still further, as if she has somehow managed to squeeze into them the understanding of even more life lessons.

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Listening to: Me’Shell Ndegéocello - Michelle Johnson via FoxyTunes

Iron & Wine, Shepherd’s Dog

“Southern gothic indie folk” would be one label you could stamp Sam Beam’s (Iron & Wine’s) work with, … with a side of Tex-Mex. However, it would be easier instead to say that Shepherd’s Dog is a singularly haunting album buoyed up by a smiling spirit and love of life (despite or because of the odds). To be sure, there is something so easy-going about Beam’s stoner vocals that you may, in fact, overlook what he singing:

Here’s a prayer for the body buried by the interstate / Murder of a soldier, a tree in a forest up in flames / Black valley, peace beneath the city / Where the women hear the washboard rhythm in their bosom when they say, / “Give me good legs and a Japanese car and show me a road” \ (from “Peace Beneath the City”)

With guests musicians from the band Calexico (with whom Beam did an EP called In the Reins in 2005), Shepherd’s Dog varies between southern and south-western regions of Americana in terms of style, but this only lends to the strength of the album because they mix so well in Beam’s hands. The fact is, the music is beautiful as farewell kisses, the lyrics are poetry as pretty as autumn’s favorite dresses, and together they create songs that it would be awfully hard to tire of in one long, worthwhile lifetime. Shepherd’s Dog plays to the part of me that yet hopes for a good ending without having to look the other way from what’s sad or hurtful in life.

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Listening to: Iron & Wine - Peace Beneath The City via FoxyTunes

Angels of Light, We Are Him

This release by Angels of Light (with Akron/Family and the assistance of several great musicians) should be considered a music library necessity in the same way Modest Mouse’s The Moon & Antarctica and Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are, with the understanding that We Are Him hails from ultimate Thule in comparison. Featuring guests like Christoph Hahn (electric guitar; open-tuned lap steel), Bill Rieflin (”Hammond B3 organ, Moog synthesizer, electric guitar, bass guitar, drums/percussion, piano, casio, and backing vocals and probably 3 or 4 things I can’t remember at the moment…”, according to Gira), Eszter Balint (fiddle and violin), and several other really talented musicians, We Are Him sounds full, rich, and otherwise instrumentally resplendent; it sounds, in short, like nothing you’ve heard before.

By turns hypnotic, dark, intricate, touching, creepy; We Are Him does not let up, even in its quieter moments, for its 55.7 minute duration. In his fifties now, Michael Gira — creator/frontman of the seminal avant-rock band, Swans — has spent his career honing a particularly sharp style of music nearly unparalleled in the (generally) non-commercial music industry. On this new album, Los Angeles native Gira sometimes recalls Johnny Cash and sometimes Nick Cave, but throughout the album’s length he maintains his signature style, a style tempered in the same fires — set by New York’s “no wave” scene — that gave us Sonic Youth and Glenn Branca. But, lest this be misinterpreted, let it be said that Angels of Light are the heirs of a certain attitude born in the late ’70s - early ’80s, but the music is contemporary; previous decades are not here revised or revisited. We Are Him is truly a work of this era. While others try to revive or recreate their heydays, Gira proves beyond doubt that his education has not stopped and that his development has been true.

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Listening to: Angels of Light - The Visitor via FoxyTunes

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