Top 10 Albums of 2010: American Slang - The Galight Anthem

Best Song: The Diamond Church Street Choir

Track List
1. American Slang
2. Stay Lucky
3. Bring It On
4. The Diamond Church Street Choir
5. The Queen of Lower Chelsea
6. Orphans
7. Boxer
8. Old Haunts
9. The Spirit of Jazz
10. We Did It When We Were Young


Before this album I was never a big fan of The Gaslight Anthem. Their influence from Bruce Springsteen is pretty obvious but on The ’59 Sound they end up sounding like the middle point between The Hold Steady and The Killers, two other Springsteen disciples. There is nothing wrong with this sound (“Here’s Looking at You, Kid” was a great song) its just that I would rather listen to the bands that make up their sound.

American Slang works to forge a new identity for the band. The decide to leave the harder punkish sound to The Hold Steady and the spacey echoing sound to The Killers and instead pick the middle speed semi loud rock that Springsteen really excelled at. Turns out The Gaslight Anthem excels at them too. The title track sets the quality of all that follow a great anthem that I could here working in an arena better then any other venue. It just feels so big. The best song here is “The Diamond Church Street Choir”. It feels extremely old school with a pure Rock ‘n Roll pattern and sure enough a Choir in the middle of the song hidden for those who want to notice.

There is really only one downside to this album. Just like most albums by their idol; diversity is not the spice of life. It is hard to talk about each song because they all meld together. But as a cohesive whole or taken individually each track is worth something. Try playing it while driving to get the best effect from the songs.

Now we talked about a sound track and a very traditional rock album. But next we will start to get into more experimental and unusual sounds when we continue our list in 2011, Happy New Years everyone!

Top 10 Albums of 2010: #10 Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Best Song Soundtrack: Garbage Truck
Best Song Score : Katayanagi Twins vs. Sex Bob-Omb

Soundtrack Track List:

1. We Are Sex Bob-Omb
2. Scott Pilgrim
3. I Heard Ramona Sing
4. By Your Side
5. O Katrina!
6. I'm So Sad, So Very, Very Sad
7. We Hate You Please Die
8. Garbage Truck
9. Teenage Dream
10. Sleazy Bed Track
11. It's Getting Boring by the Sea
12. Black Sheep
13. Threshold
14. Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl
15. Under My Thumb
16. Ramona (Acoustic Version)
17. Ramona
18. Summertime
19. Threshold (8 Bit)

Score Track List: Oh, just go check Wikipedia before this gets ridiculous

Technically this is two albums but who cares. Scott Pilgrim was a fantastic and fun movie, and a large part of that had to do the movie’s score and soundtrack. Both fit perfectly in context but the test of a good soundtrack is how well it works out of the frames of the movie. This is a test that both pass exemplary.

Now lets take a quick look at the score first. It was primarily written and arranged by Nigel Godrich, an extremely talented producer/engineer who has worked with Radiohead, Pavement, Paul McCartney, and R.E.M. Each piece is a complete composition, a strength that many movie scores fall short on. But each track here portrays a mood that flows into the next. My favorite in this department are “Love Me Some Walking” “The Vegan” and “Bass Battle”. But even if you don’t like scores there are a couple of essentials even for you. “Slick (Patel’s Song)” is complete fun combining a Middle Eastern style of sitars and strings with some great 16-bit video game runs sprinkled through out. Another essential is the great electronica vs. punk “Katayanagi Twins vs. Sex Bob-Omb”, which is the best version of the song “Threshold” on both albums (and trust me there are a LOT of different versions).

The Soundtrack while having even more highlights does also have the misfortune of having some songs that just don’t work out of the movie. Both versions of “Ramona” just aren’t worth my time and bore me without the visuals to help them along. It also doesn’t help that they have the song Beck was emulating earlier on the album. “Teenage Dream” is one of T. Rex’s best with the mid-tempo and light tone with a slight reverb to everything to make this fantastic echo. And I hate to break it to Beck but he is no Marc Bolan and “Ramona” just plods along with an acoustic tone you have heard a thousand times before.

So Beck may have fallen short on his performance on the album, but his writing is extremely strong. If you see the name Sex Bob-Omb listed as the artist it is a must listen. Every one of them is a dirty, riff driven, garage rock standouts. Out of all of them “Garbage Truck” is my personal favorite followed by “Summertime”. “Threshold” is great in any form but I feel the “original” is actually the weakest (as I said the best version is on the score, but the soundtrack also has an 8-bit version).

As for none Sex-Bob-Omb songs we get the fantastic New Wave song “Black Sheep” from Metric. Then there are the two classic rock interruptions (the aforementioned “Teenage Dream” and the Rolling Stones “Under My Thumb”) that break the flow just as I am getting sick of the very hipster feel.

The fact that such great albums as these merely take the number 10 spot just shows what a great year for music 2010 has been. So tune in next time as we climb the ladder towards #1.

2010 In Review: Top 10 Covers

As you may well know I am a huge fan of covers. I think they are a perfect way to get into new acts and to be introduced to new songs/band through your favorite artists. These are the covers that I think are the absolute best of the year. You will notice a lack of ironic indie acts covering pop songs on this list. That is because sincerity is what catches my eye more often then not. Plus how many solo acoustic covers of “Bad Romance” do we really need?

1.) Summertime – Brian Wilson

 Janis Joplin version

Now I will be talking about the album this is off of a little later, but this song is something special. It is a pretty commonly covered song that has been preformed by Ella Fitzgerald, Sam Cooke and perhaps most famously by Janis Joplin. But you can take all those versions and throw them to the wayside. This is the definitive version of the song, the well placed orchestra, light jazz piano and restrained vocal delivery really drive it home.

2.) My Body is a Cage – Peter Gabriel

Original

I actually heard this version before hearing the Arcade Fire original, and a result of that is I hate the original. It just sounds so weak and distant when compared to this monster. Most artist who use a string section bring them in to play a simple and basic part. Peter Gabriel lets them be a symphony, slowly building tension before bursting out in all its fury. This cover could work as a classical piece and that is where its real strength lies.

3.) In Germany Before The War – The Extra Lens

Original

The last thing I expected to find on this John Darnielle side project was a cover of a Randy Newman Song. What I expected even less was for this cover to be the best song on the album, Undercard is a good album but certainly isn’t excellent. The accordion is what makes the song, accentuating the distant sadness of the song. It just feels my mind with an image of the story teller gazing off with glazed grey eyes absentmindedly play the insurment. Just beautiful.

4.) Let’s Call the whole thing off – Brian Wilson

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong

This one is just fun. Most people have heard some version of this Gershwin song before, even if only the time Christopher Walken did it on SNL. Again this is probably my favorite version; it is just a rollicking good time that puts a smile on your face.

5.) Fuck You – William Shatner

Original

Once again this is just fun. It is live and delivered with that usual later life Shatner vocal delivery. If you like Has Been you will love this cover. It is played up and over the top which makes it all the better.

6.) Power of the Heart – Peter Gabriel

Original

Now after that little fun interlude we get another powerful orchestral cover by Peter Gabriel, this time of one of my favorite Lou Reed songs. Again the strings are excellent, and the vocal delivery just breaks my heart.

7.) Bulletproof – Steel Train

Original

When you hear an indie band cover a dance song you expect it to be an ironic cover. Well Steel Train is special. They take this excellent La Roux song and make a version that isn’t poking fun at it, or pointing out some flaw in the lyrics or melody. The are covering it to pay homage/put there own spin on a song the love. The focus on acoustic instruments with spare electric lines throughout is a brilliant stroke

.8.) Turnpike Ghost – Tegan and Sara

Original

Speaking of Steel Train, they came out with an album this year. And (more importantly to this post) came out with a companion album which had every song from the album covered by a female artist. Now all the covers are good, but only one is as good if not better then the original song. They slow it down a little and using an electronic backing that is catchy beyond belief.

9.) Solsbury Hill- Lou Reed

Original

In return for Peter Gabriel covering my favorite Lou Reed song, Lou Reed covers my favorite Peter Gabriel song. But unlike Gabriel, Reed’s cover doesn’t equal the original. It is still an interesting listen. It has been completely transformed into a Lou Reed song full of distortion and feedback that plods along at a hypnotizing pace.

10.) You’ve Got a Friend in Me –Gipsy Kings

Original

Another Randy Newman cover. The Gipsy Kings covered this song for Toy Story 3 (which is my favorite film of the year). It is quick catchy and done in that flamenco style that the Gipsy Kings do so well.

2010 in Review: Disappointments

Well we talked about some of the good now lets hit the bad. There isn’t really a whole lot to go here most albums that came out this year have been good to amazing, even still there are a few that just didn’t hit the mark.

Recovery – Eminem

As much as I talked about how much rap has finally penetrated my listening habits, I still don’t like Eminem. Sure he has a couple of good track but the rest of his stuff is just bad. Now that means that this album wouldn’t really be a disappointment, except that everyone was raving about how great it was. I heard everything from “his best album ever” to “finally got me into Eminem/rap”. So I figured what the hell…what a bad idea on my part. There is only one good song on the entire album “Love the Way You Lie” and that has more to do with producer Alex da Kid then Eminem. Every other song either bores me or grates my ears.

Lady Killer – Celo Green

How did he mess up so badly? The internet favorite “Fuck You” is a brilliant song that sounds like it belongs on Stevie Wonders Songs in the Key of Life (except for the lyrics content of course). The rest of the album is taken up with mediocre to awful faux Motown sensibilities. And since most people would argue that Motown was mostly made of false sentiment when I call this fake Motown you know we are in deep shit. When any song comes up besides “Fuck You” I have to wonder to myself; why am I not just listening to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye or the Temptations.

Lawrence of Euphoria – Beck

The last two were bad albums with one good song on it. This is a good album with one song that disappoints me so much that it almost ruins the entire thing. This is from Beck’s Record Club where Beck got together with Wilco, Fiest, and Jamie Lidell and covered every track from one of my favorite albums, OAR by Alexander “Skip” Spence. They do a pretty good job on every song except for one, one that happens to be my personal favorite. The original “Lawrence of Euphoria” is only 1:31 and is a manic acoustic tune barely in tune with a jangle that captivates. So Beck and Co. extend it to 5:18 and make it a stripped down dance tune that doesn’t succeed at being a good tribute or a good dance song.



Contra – Vampire Weekend


Out of all the albums in this post this one isn’t actually bad, but it still ends up being the most disappointing. The main problem is Vampire Weekend’s debut was nothing short of brilliant, and Contra is just good. I talked about this album before but what it really boils down to it the song writing has taken a hit. They feel like they just tried to use an electronic sound to mask the fact that these songs just didn’t hit the level they did on their debut. They even do it on songs when without the digital sound they would be amazing. I like the song “California English” but with out the autotune it would be brilliant. Once again this album isn’t bad, but it certainly doesn’t have me excited to see what they do next like Vampire Weekend did.

2010 in Review: Surprises

The year is coming to a close and all the albums that are on my radar are out. So it is time to look back at the gold and shit from 2010. Now going into this year there were several acts that I knew where coming out with albums that I was excited for and expected to be excellent, but even with all these treats waiting I managed to stumble onto somethings that surprised me. These are artists or albums that I had never heard of or albums that I thought were going to suck that were actually good or maybe even great.

I won’t be going into great detail here on most albums since some of them will be included in my Best albums of the Year list and others I have little more to say then “It is worth a listen/skip it”

Rap/hip-hop

This year is the first to convince me that rap albums are worth owning. Let me elaborate. For a long time I hated rap, there was nothing you could do to get me to listen to this shit people were passing for music. In fact until this year I could count the rap albums I owned on one hand (Nerdcore Rising, Secret from the Future, Fight with Tools, 3Feet High and Rising, Demon Days). As my opinion started to soften I began to consider rap artist as single based acts, a fact that is basically true for many acts. There just weren’t any hip-hop acts that I wanted a full album from unless you were MC Frontalot, The Flobots, or Gorillaz.

2010 has changed all that. Sure I got good albums from both MC Frontalot and The Flobots, and an excellent one from Gorillaz, but that wasn’t the defining moment that started my new hip-hop awakening. That came from B.o.B.‘s debut “B.o.B Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray”. Now I don’t want to talk too much about this album here, but it caught my attention. It was a great example of how close the line between those who consider themselves “street” and geeks has been blurred. And it was through this album that I discovered another breakout artist of 2010.

Janelle Monáe probably shouldn’t be in the hip-hop section because she is so much bigger than that. Again I don’t want to get to deep into it here but she is and artist who gives me hope for the artistry of album making and the ambition of concepts.

Now after talking about two artist that I can’t really get into yet lets talk about the biggest surprise of the year Kanye West. With all the stupid build ups and stunts to it, “My Dark Twisted Fantasy” should have sucked. And the first taste of it certainly didn’t help. Runaway was the first song people heard, along with a 30min mini movie music video for it. I will link to neither since they are both abysmal. So when the album came out I got it with plans of tearing it a new one…too bad it is an amazing album. Not a single song is truly bad except for “Runaway”. In fact “All of the Lights” is one of my favorite songs of the year.

Another established rap act that I just discovered is Sage Francis. His new album “Li(f)e” is a marriage between rap and indie rock in a way that will turn off the more hardcore fans of either genre, but for me this is like peanut butter and chocolate together at last. The best track of this is “Best of Times”, it made me cry the first time I listened to it. It is just a very powerful songs for someone who grew up as kind of an outsider in school.

Collaborations

Another aspect of this year’s music is how many artists have collaborated with good results. Now one would think when two great acts get together they should be able to spin straw into gold, but more often it just doesn’t happen. Every hear Eric Clapton’s album with B.B. King? But this year gave us a great set of collaborations.

There is Danger Mouse and James Mercer of the Strokes form Broken Bells, Jim Bryson And The Weakerthans release “Falcon Lake Incident”, David Bryne and Fatboy Slim come out with “Here Lies Love” with a plethora of guest vocalists, Ben Folds and Nick Hornby’s “Lonely Avenue”, John Darnielle and Franklin Bruno putting out an Extra Lens album “Undercard”, and Elton John and Leon Russell give us “The Union”. Every album one of these albums is at least good and several of them are amazing.

Veterans

The acts that people consider musical dinosaurs seem to all either fall into a pattern or fall to banality and never escape. But there has been some truly amazing music from some so called Dinosaurs. Both Peter Gabriel and Brian Wilson came out with one of the best albums of the year. We also got a very interesting statement from Devo, who, after years of preaching DIY mentality release a completely market tested album, with fans choosing everything from the songs on the album to the color of their hats. It is a really fascinating move and I suggest anyone who is interested in the music industry look into it. Other old acts with good albums this year include Iron Madien, Joe Satriani, Santana, and Peter Wolf.

They're still around?

So what about the bands that seem to have disappeared from the main public view? Well this year say releases from Barenaked Ladies, Shonen Knife, James, Jakob Dylan, and The Crash Test Dummies. The Crash Test Dummies album “Oooh La La” is especially interesting, the album is based around old analog toy synthesizers. You would think a gimmick like that would overpower and album, but listen to the opener “Songbird” and tell me if you spot a gimmick.

So over all this has been a really great year for music that is both accessible and ambitious. I will go into this more once I get to talking about specific albums, but before we get there we have one more stop. Like I said overall 2010 has been a great year for music fans full of more good then bad…which doesn’t mean the bad doesn’t exist. Next time I will take you through my biggest disappointments of 2010, which albums just didn’t meet expectations.

Before Art and After Science: Generative Music

My Updates have really be taking a hit recently as I am wrapping up the semester at school. So in place of an album review I am posting a paper I wrote on the topic of Generative Music. Hopefully you find it interesting. I will be done with finals on the 17th so once those are over I will start reflecting on the past year of music.

Before Art and After Science: Generative Music

-William Leetch

            Music has always been set in stone. Even a live performance, something most would consider the most pliable form of the art, is limited in scope by the way the song was written, but what if that didn’t need to be the case? Through the innovations of composers and musicians, such as Terry Riley and Brian Eno, the ever changing art of Generative (also known as procedural) Music has been formed. Generative Music is the next step in the evolution of music and will be a crucial tool for pushing the boundaries of the art-form.
            What exactly is Generative Music? It is the idea that a piece of music can go on eternally changing all the time. It is an idea that has been around for quite a while. Terry Riley is considered one of the most influential and innovative minimalist composers of all time, and his piece In C is one of the first showcases of the idea of Generative Music, before it was called Generative Music. The piece consists of fifty-two bars of music; now on a normal piece the musician would just play those bars and then be done, but not on In C. Each musician is supposed to play each bar until they feel like moving on to the next one. For example the musician might like playing bar one a lot and proceed to play it thirty times, but once they move on to bar two they might find they hate it so they will only play it three times (Eno). With each individual performer or conductor choosing a different number of times to go through each bar the songs will never be performed exactly the same way twice, and that, in a nut shell, is the idea behind generative music. In C is also one of the few non-digital examples of procedural music.
            Another example of analog generative music is Steve Reich’s It’s Gonna Rain. The piece consists of two identical recordings of a preacher repeating the phrase “it’s gonna rain” played on two different tape machines. Due to the inconsistencies present in the analog equipment the recordings begin to fall out of sync. This process changes the way the songs are perceived; as the sounds change. In Brian Eno’s words, “They start to sound like an echo. Then they sound like a cannon, and gradually they start to sound like all sorts of things.” (Eno)
            It is hard not to immediately think ‘computer’ when the word procedural is uttered; which makes it very fortunate that the roots of modern generative music lay in screen savers. Musician and famed producer Brian Eno, the man who is the crux of all things ambient in music, had discovered this screensaver called Stained Glass. What the screen saver did was take an image and “then it sucks them out, multiplies them, chops them about, collages them together in different ways” (Eno). Eno then realized that if he placed another screensaver into Stained Glass as the source image he could create very basic, but fascinating, generative paintings. Eno saw this as a realization of one of his own goals, creating art that never ended. (“B.E. In Con”)
            Eno has stated on multiple occasions that the fact that a record never changes (and has drastic jumps in mood) started to irk him. He solved the latter with his innovation in ambient music which he discovered when someone put a record on to softly during a rainstorm when he was bed ridden (Amirkhanian). Now to fix the former he needed to turn to more computer literate people. Most innovations have two parts: the idea, the shoe maker, and the execution, the elves. Eno is the shoe maker and he just needed his elves. He found them in the British company Sseyo. Sseyo developed procedural software that allowed the user to make a generative song with the preinstalled instruments. The user adjusts the delay and the scale that they wish to use and then the program creates it for the artist. (Eno)
            One of the greatest innovations of procedural music is the way it allows those without musical talent to produce for their own amusement and pleasure. On the iPad there is an app called Bloom. Bloom allows the user to create songs using different moods, simply by touching the screen in different places. A higher point in the screen produces a higher pitch. This creates an interesting bridge in the divide between creator and consumer in the world of ambient music, which has been the goal of that type of music all along.
            So the next question is, what does all this mean to those not interested music creation as an art? In comes Lauri Gröhn, a physicist behind the program Synestesia. The purpose of this program is to generate, using some very complex math, a piece of music for a painting or photo. This allows an artist to exhibit their art with a musical backing without the need for licensing music. Like Bloom, Synestesia is a way for amateurs to work at the same level as pros.
            The most interesting question, one that seems to be on the horizon but has not become fully articulated is, when does this cease to be a form of art? If this progresses further will there be any need for musicians or will mathematicians fill the role just fine? Both are valid questions, and both are curmudgeonly conservative. Anyone who wants to look to the future needs to find a way to adapt to, instead of denounce, new technology. The truly great will always find a way to place their personality in their work; they will find a way to make this new form of music, as Brian Eno put it, “Familiar and new […] like watching a river” (“B.E. In Con”).

Works Cited

Amirkhanian, Charles. “Brian Eno Part 1.” Latest Speaking of Music Rewind podcast from the Exploratorium. 18 Dec. 2009. Web. 27 July 2010.

“Brian Eno In Conversation.” Artscape. ABC, 21 July 2009. Web. 28 July 2010.

Eno, Brian. “Generative Music.” Imagination Conference. San Francisco. 8 June 1996 Web. 27 July 2010

Gröhn, Lauri. "Lauri Gröhn: Translation of the Text "Musiikkia Kuvista 2003", 12.12.2003." Synestesia Software Music: Copyright 2001-2007 by Lauri Gröhn; Synestesia Music Generated from Pictures. 12 Dec. 2003. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. .

Mitts, Håkan. "Interview with Lauri Gröhn – Listen to Your Images!
The 3 Inch Canvas." The 3 Inch Canvas
Dedicated to Promoting Art on Mobiles. 9 Sept. 2010. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. .