Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (2012)

Muchos son los artistas de los noventas que están teniendo sus retornos este año, R. Kelly, D'Angelo, Neneh Cherry, Garbage, No Doubt, Smashing Pumpkins, pero de todos quien regresa con mayor vitalidad es Fiona Apple. Ya los fanáticos de Fiona están acostumbrados a los largos períodos creativos que la artista se toma de un disco a otro. Además polémica generada por Extraordinary Machine con el movimiento Free Fiona demostró lo fuerte que puede llegar a ser la gente en la artista y la industria. Fiona es ahora una artista que se puede dar el lujo de esperar 7 años para sacar un disco y no ser una artista nostálgica pues tanto los que la conocimos en los noventas como las generaciones que la desconocen se interesan por ver de qué va esta artista.

7 años después de Extraordinary Machine Fiona retoma lo básico, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do tiene todos los elementos esperados por un disco de Fiona, pero también tiene una actitud desenfadada de una Fiona que no está apurada por hacer un producto que sorprenda a todos y que sea un fenómeno comercial. El disco da espacios calmados que se parece los discos anteriores pero que experimenta nuevas fronteras.

"Periphery", por ejemplo, cuenta con el clásico contenido lírico y percusión acostumbrada a un disco de Fiona pero juega con sonidos de palas contra tierra y piedras, sonando además como pasos de marcha militar. Desde el punto de vista sonoro Fiona experimenta con aplausos, objetos y la voz alcanza nuevos tonos, como en el single "Every Single Night" donde la voz brinca por encima de lo calmado de la música y semeja cantos de guerra tribales.

Igual las mejores canciones son las que muestran que la composición de Fiona sigue intacta, siempre refiriéndose a amores fallidos, fracasos emocionales y una que otra simplemente romántica; respetando además sus influencias de blues, jazz y rock. "Werewolf" cuenta la historia de una relación en donde ella contribuía a que el mounstro saliera, ya no es la victimaria de "Fast As You Can" sino se ha convertido en víctima de un monstruo al que ella misma contribuía a sacar.

"Hot Knife" es un ejemplo de lo contrario, una Fiona que desea una relación con un hombre e insiste de forma casi obsesiva. La música en esta canción también es bastante aventurera, sólo percusión y voz haciendo juego de voces al estilo showgirls de bandas de oro al estilo Chordettes o Andrew Sisters pero sin sonar antigua o nostálgica.

El genio de Fiona no necesita de un disco cada dos años para mantenerse vigente, éste es uno de los discos con mayor vitalidad del año.

Tracklist:


1. Every Single Night
2. Daredevil
3. Valentine
4. Jonathan
5. Left Alone
6. Werewolf
7. Periphery
8. Regret
9. Anything We Want
10. Hot Knife

Rate 9,6/10

Neneh Cherry & The Thing - The Cherry Thing (2012)

Cualquiera podría pensar en Latinoamérica que Neneh Cherry es el resultado de un one hit wonder con el hit histórico de 7 Secunds que hizo junto a Youssou N'Dour, pero lo cierto es que desde el ochenta y nueve  Neneh Cherry ya había ganado un Mercury Prize antes de ese hit y su música siempre tuvo una frontera diferente, experimental, innovadora y con éxito en el mainstream. Hoy, a más de 20 años de su origen, Neneh Cherry es una leyenda de la música británica que demuestra que todavía puede empujar ciertas fronteras y sorprender al público.

Desde 1996 con el éxito de MAN, Cherry ha desaparecido de la música, se asoció a la banda Trip-Hop cirKus desde el 2005 y no ha vuelto a sacar material solista, pero The Cherry Thing tiene una presencia muchos más frontal y renovada de Cherry. El proyecto es junto a The Thing, una banda de jazz con integrantes noruegos y suecos que no conocía hasta ahora, pero el proyecto está lleno de influencias de ambas partes; Neneh Cherry aporta su voz impecable y su historia en el mundo del Hip-Hop, Trip-Hop, Pop, y The Thing coloca la parte de Jazz y su improvisación controlada y a la vez caótica. El resultado es un espectáculo que nadie se puede perder.

El estilo general del disco no representa a ninguno de los géneros de los artistas de forma pura, es extremadamente experimental y refrescante; canciones como "Cashback" y "Too Tough To Die" aportan el lado fuerte del disco, el bajo cambiando junto con la voz a tonos incómodos pero coherentes, la trompeta jugando a hacer sonidos fuertes como de guitarra y la batería pasando del silencio al frenetismo en típicas progresiones caóticas del jazz de la calle. Otras canciones como "Dram Baby Dream" entran en un loop que podría ser similar a los del ritmo del Trip-Hop, se van adicionando instrumentos con cada vuelta, pero con una influencia de la crudeza del Jazz, sin un solo sintetizador en la mezcla. Esta novedad se repite en varias canciones y podría afectar la paciencia de aquel que quiere que la canción comience de forma más directa.

El álbum también cuenta con las canciones románticas y vulnerables con canciones como "What Reason Could I Give", una balada de jazz experimental, si al leer jazz te imaginas a Ella Fitzgerald o Chet Baker y no estás abierto a otra posibilidad, entonces quizá este no es el tipo de baladas que te llegarán ni el tipo de jazz que te puede mover algún tipo de fibra.

Ahora, sin duda la mejor canción del álbum es el cover de 6 minutos que le hicieron a la canción de 2 minutos de MF DOOM y Madvillain "Accordion" (para el vídeo redujeron algunas partes improvisadas que alargan la canción), la inteligibilidad de la voz de Cherry junto con la progresión que va haciendo agresiva la trama de la historia van haciendo de la canción  una experiencia completamente diferente al clásico Hip-Hop acostumbrado en la original, de hecho la cadencia con la que van cayendo las rimas hacen de la canción uno de los mejores covers que jamás haya escuchado.

The Cherry Thing combina elementos que no son completamente innovadores en sentido estricto, esto ya se ha hecho antes, pero es extremadamente interesante escuchar el resultado con el que vinieron estos dos artistas diferentes, y es mucho más interesante ver cómo los horizontes conocidos de mezcla de géneros cada vez van creando cosas nuevas.

Tracklist:

1. Cashback
2. Dream Baby Dream
3. Too Tough to Die
4. Sudden Moment
5. Accordion
6. Golden Heart
7. Dirt
8. What Reason Could I Give


Rate: 8.3/10

BADBADNOTGOOD - BBNG2 (2012)

Una de las cosas más interesantes que tiene la disquera de OFWGKTA es su habilidad para agrupar muchísimos artistas DIY que conserven la historia del género hip hop y nadie recuerda mejor sus orígenes que BADBADNOTGOOD. Desde sus colaboraciones con Tyler, The Creator y otros miembros de la disquera, los discos de BADBADNOTGOOD cuentan con todo aquello que el hip hop instrumental debe contar, sobre todo las claras reseñas al origen. Funk, Soul, Blues, Jazz, todas las influencias caben en el género que se centró en tomar de todos los géneros existentes y crear algo que sonara diferente.

Lo más interesante que tiene BBNG2 es que es una banda compuesta por muchachos adolescentes, todos por debajo de los 21 años, esto como bofetada para aquellos que creen que la juventud de hoy en día se ha perdido en referencias efímeras de la música pop y en bombardeos de los medios de comunicación, no sabría decir si esto es un triunfo para padres que siguen criando bien a sus hijos o si mas bien es una bandera infravalorada para la juventud que cada vez se aísla más en el consumo masivo de algún producto musical sin trascendencia.

Otro dato curioso es que BBNG2 fue grabado en una sola sesión, durante un Jam Session de 10 horas. Son adolescentes, son talentosos y se reúnen a tocar música y disfrutar del encuentro y terminan grabando un disco sólo porque fue divertido hacerlo.

Un puñado de canciones fue escrita por la banda y el resto son covers y arreglos de otros artistas; se alza la notable influencia de James Blake, de quien toman el cover que hizo a Feist "Limit To Your Love" y su canción de su hit como DJ "CMYK", la cual además es una de las mejores canciones del álbum, pues traducen toda la experiencia sonora que puede causar un artista como James Blake y lo llevan a instrumentos reales y el sentimiento de jam que la banda imprime a lo largo del disco.

Además otros artistas influyentes son Odd Future, por supuesto, y una reinterpretación de "You Made Me Realise" de My Bloody Valentine, independientemente del origen de la canción que versionan, el jam los lleva a meterse dentro de la canción y extraer de ella una esencia que se mezcla con su instrumentación que, más allá de alternar protagonismo en cada instrumento, llena el espacio con música corriendo en todas las direcciones. A pesar de que la banda está haciendo jazz los orígenes de cada canción llevan a resultados diferentes, fórmulas de jazz que, más allá de irrespetar la forma clásica en la que se ha desarrollado el género, dan vida nueva al género, lo llenan de mayor oscuridad, diversidad y lo actualizan.

Sin una sola palabra en el disco, BADBADNOTGOOD logra rescatar a una generación del abandono a ritmos clásicos sin dejar de ser cool. Y lo mejor de todo, está disponible para descargar de forma gratuita en su página web.

¡Descarga!

Tracklist:

1. Earl (Feat. Leland Whitty)
2. Vices
3. Rotten Decay
4. Limit To Your Love
5. Bastard / Lemonade
6. CHSTR
7. UWM (Feat. Leland Whitty)
8. DMZ
9. CMYK
10. Flashing Lights
11. You Made Me Realise (Feat. Luan Phung)

Rate: 9/10

#FlashBackSunday #Oscars2011 Scarlett Johansson - Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008)

Tonight is Oscar night, so I decided to post actors who have music projects and also acted on a movie nominated on anything this year, being Scarlett Johansson one of these actors. In 2008 Scarlett made a record called “Anywhere I Lay My Head”, containing Tom Waits cover songs, it was amazing to listen how a beauty of the proportions and fame of Scarlett didn’t turn to music to become even more famous, doing a crossover with blond bimbo quality like Mandy Moore.

The album is full of references of the tom waits sound but in moments she makes them darker and add instrumentation making them a little bit more epic sounding than the original songs, also the sentiment she uses when singing shock a lot of people, singing her songs almost like she didn’t care how they were sounding, just needed them to come out; it was that feeling of unawareness of the voice just putting the emphasis in the sentiment.

Another beautiful side of this LP was the echo and Shoegaze that she created in every track; it was really a smart way to not wanting to be better than Tom Waits, but to update the songs and the sounds with a smart approach to some other music genre, something that a cover is all about. This was a smart album and is not a milestone in the history of music but adds to Scarlett’s mystery and charm as an Icon, no mater if is for the fashion, indie or movie industry.

She explored the blues and the jazz and mixed it with Shoegaze and synths getting close to Dream Pop in some songs, she later got out the album she made with Pete Yorn, but this was her first solo music project, might not be a successful one, but it was a good one.

For 2011 she acted on Iron Man 2, big blockbuster that landed nominations of Visual Effects, today I’m not celebrating her as an actress but taking the opportunity to talk about her music. Hope you like it.

Tracklist:

1. Fawn
2. Town with no cheer
3. Falling down
4. Anywhere I lay my head
5. Fannin' street
6. Song for Jo
7. Green grass
8. I wish I was in New Orleans
9. I don't want to grow up
10. No one knows I'm gone
11. Who are you?

Rate: 7.6/10

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#FlashBackSunday Tom Waits - Alice / Blood Money (2002)

Tom Waits has a very interesting story and persona surrounding him; in love with a woman with a successful marriage of more than a decade, artistic personality, talent, and a persona that can be both, enchanting and deeply mysterious. In concerns of his music career, it has had commercial ups and downs, but always a vision, always a sound, always a direction, always a commitment that only true artists have. Not to count points that he has one of the most expressive voices out there. He recently entered to the Hall of Fame, so I don’t have to spend a lot of words talking about him, for he is a true living legend, but I decided to do my tribute talking a little bit about him.

The power of his expression comes from he’s existential search of how to portray his feelings, since early on he had poetic and acting sensibility, read and was involved in the beat movement and had a passion for Jazz, blues and naked emotions, so it was only a matter of time for him to explore these sounds to express himself. It starts with a waits sounding like someone else and finding his true self along the way, and that’s the amazing thing of listening to his records, you can actually know this journey of self discovery without knowing anything about his life, in time he became a success as a Broadway and off Broadway actor, published author, monologue writer, and a true artistic reference of the music history of US of A, but with that also a great inspiration of global recognition in being someone with a unique sound in music.

But lets talk about 2002, he did something very bold and fantastic, he had material to make a new record, but he saw that he had two different visions, a romantic and fatal melancholy side on one hand, and an ironic, strong minded and political side on the other, and before putting out a set of songs that had nothing to do with one another he decided to take one at a time, so he published two albums, “Alice” and “Blood Money”, both with songs that have find a cult following and was the introduction of Tom Waits talent to a younger generation. Don’t forget even Scarlett Johansson’s first LP that was a cover ode to Tom Waits, some covers of this LP’s.

The fist one in alphabetical order, “Alice” is a heartbreaker that has a lot of sentiment, talks about love, suicide, death, and the adventures of "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Caroll, music like has just little polka characteristic sounds of Waits, you find the his vulnerable side, the soft side, the side that you can fall in love with, the waits of the whisky bar, the late night Waits with the original mystery edge in songs like Lost In Harbor or Watch her as she Disappears, and the killer (and I mean Killer) theme song Alice, a song so good that I don’t see anyone on earth not liking it somewhere along the way, one of those songs that in life you’ll get to like at some point.

Blood Money on the other hand has a different nature, more animalistic, more messy, dark in a more playful kind or way, also more political messages since the open track “Misery Is the River Of The World”, a stronger voice, from the whisper of Alice that speaks to your ears to the Waits that screams to your chest that gives vertigo and frightens you, don’t forget fantastic songs also in this LP like “God’s Away On Business”, “Everything Goes To Hell” and the softer side that remember the early years with a higher tone like “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, every song hidden behind drunk trumpets and smell of cigars and alcohol.

These are two really great albums of the past decade that introduces one of the great ones of history of music (for me and for a lot of people), I’m sure there will be some other tom waits flashback in the future.

Alice Tracklist:

1. Alice
2. Everything You Can Think
3. Flowers Grave
4. No One Knows I'm Gone
5. Poor Edward
6. Table Top Joe
8. Lost In The Harbor
9. We're All Mad Here
10. Watch Her Disappear
11. Reeperbahn
12. I'm Still Here
13. Fish & Bird
14. Barcarolle
15. Fawn

Rate: 10/10

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Blood Money Tracklist:

1. Misery Is the River of the World
2. Everything Goes to Hell
3. Coney Island Baby
4. All the World Is Green
5. God's Away on Business
6. Another Man's Vine
7. Knife Chase [Instrumental]
8. Lullaby
9. Starving In The Belly Of A Whale
10. The Part You Throw Away
11. Woe
12. Calliope
13. A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Rate 10/10

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Destroyer - Kaputt (2011)

If I tell you that there’s an album with chilly airy guitars, saxophones, sexy girls chorus, an occasional flout and 80’s light rock vibe and on top of it that it’s good I’m sure that pretty much everyone would look at my like I finally snapped. The worst part that that’s what I’m about to tell you.

There’s a band called Destroyer, known for 60’s inspired songs of indie rock and a notorious influence of Pavement and Bowie, this band has been around since the 90’s and a lot of times has been a one member band fronted by Dan Bejar, also part of The New Pornographers, part of indie super group Swan Lake, collaborator of Bonaparte, and other half of Hello, Blue Roses. This guy is true royalty and has made an album called Kaputt with his band Destroyer…and Kaputt it’s about a very accurate title for the album because is a very calmed explosion that will take over my music year.

Bejar has passed through a lot of genres (Folk, Chamber Pop, Shoegaze, Glam Rock), but Kaputt is kind of a really new twist because it takes things that in time just haven’t been part of the “good music” scene, or the “indie” scene, or the “hipster” scene or really any scene for the last years, adding very kitsch instrumentation but ambitioning a sincerely good effect, of course I’m talking about the distinctive 80’s saxophone light rock, the flout, and the watery guitars sticking to a very classic serious light rock, it seems like saxophone, 80’s and good music could only be together if the intention of the music is going to be “C0heese and Corn”, if not then we have to fear failure, and that’s kind of the fear I have when mixing seriousness with 80’s and saxophones.

Sure, we all can love a little bit of that era, and enjoy it, but it’s sort of something that didn’t necessarily had to come back until Destroyer got this LP out, it’s weird how it touches very well known areas of adult 80’s rock trying to gimmick jazz in the 80’s and still sound fresh, new, calmed and not nostalgic at all, you can’t mistake this LP with a time different than now, because the process of making it sounds like that it can only be possible after the 90’s, if one of the main influences of Destroyer is Pavement, in this LP I swear I hear Sade (or something like that), and I swear I love it.

The songs in here have very strange lyrics, about struggling with freedom and American, also girls, sensuality more than sex and drugs. It starts with Chinatown that really captures the sentiment of the album and all goes building until the middle with the truly amazing song Suicide Demo for Kara Walker and every now and then talks about songs for America until at last it gets to the actual Songs for America song and raps up with Bay of Pigs (kid of political but also kind of disguised).

This is an Album that is not worth reviewing per se, I just recommend it really hard because not one of this nine songs are out of place, and they are calmed and long and patient but also very entertaining, it’s really a quality album.

Tracklist:

1. Chinatown
2. Blue Eyes
3. Savage Night At The Opera
4. Suicide Demo For Kara Walker
5. Poor In Love
6. Kaputt
7. Downtown
8. Song For America
9. Bay Of Pigs

Rate: 9.6/10

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Flying Lotys - Cosmogramma (2010)

Steven Ellison A.K.A Flying Lotus has done it all, when it comes to genres he's been all over the place and it's hard to stick with one particular style in witch he's more comfortable. But if one thing we can agree on, he sees this era as a computerized Nintendo one, that's why not only his music is made on a computer, but he also does experimentation all the time with 8-bit sounds. He's considered a hip hop producer and a hip hop artist but really he's not what a pre conceived notion of an artist of this genre should be, there is always a little bit more to look in him.

This LP is no exception of this point of view, but he doesn't stick with the hip hop beats as much as he did before, he's sound is progressing to a more forward perspective, he nails the fusion of jazz, hip hop, intelligent dance music and Nintendo sounds, there are a lot of ethereal moments in here and its mostly instrumental but the playing with voices is precise and opportune. This sort of ambient sound was not usual in Flying Lotus creations until now and he nails it beautifully.

There is not a song structure in any of the tracks, its all about sound, experimentation with a lot of rhythms and playing with strange territory transforming it into brilliant ideas that can become into a more traditional way of making music when used by other artists. It’s an album for people that make albums, there are interesting collaborations like Thom Yorke or Laura Darlington (from The Long Lost).

This Album gives you a little bit of everything and its perfect for people that like sound sampling and just enjoy sitting down and listening to sound trying to figure out where all of it came of.

Tracklist:

1. Clock Catcher
2. Pickled!
3. Nose Art
4. Intro//a Cosmic Drama
5. Zodiac Shit
6. Computer Face//pure Being
7. ...and The World Laughs With You Ft. Thom Yorke
8. Arkestry
9. Mmmhmm Ft.thundercat
10. Do The Astral Plane
11. Satelllliiiiiiiteee
12. German Haircut
13. Recoiled
14. Dance Of The Pseudo Nymph
15. Drips//auntie's Harp
16. Table Tennis Ft. Laura Darlington
17. Galaxy In Janaki

Rate: 8/10

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