For my birthday a little while ago, my buddy Kyle and I took a hike at Rodeo Breach right over the Marin Headlands. It's crazy it only takes a handful of miles to get outside the city for views like this. The hike is about 5 miles, goes from rolling greens to views of the water and even the city. I highly recommend it!
Hello, Kyle.
Happy Monday all!
I haven't thrown a single up for a while, so I thought I'd share this new guy I started listening to, Anderson East. He's got that retro soul sound that St. Paul and the Broken Bones have brought back as well - in fact the start of "Satisfy Me" sounds just like "Like a Mighty River":
His raspiness reminds me a bit of Ray LaMontagne and other times he sounds like the male version of Brittany Howard from Alabama Shakes.
If you dig any of those bands, I'd say his album is worth a listen. I'm not enamored with it, but "Find 'Em, Fool 'Em and Forget 'Em" is another great track.
Read More"Yes, I'm changing," Kevin Parker sweetly serenades the critics, haters, and trolls, "Yes, I'm gone / Yes, I'm older / Yes, I'm moving on / And if you don't think it's a crime / you can come along with me / Life is moving / can't you see?"
The most talented musicians in the world adapt. They don't find one sound and stick to it. They become restless, striving to create something that makes their ears ring anew.
Vampire Weekend completely departed from its upbeat and poppy sound and made their best album to date centered on death and dark subjects. Arctic Monkeys did something similar. Kendrick Lamar's release this year sounded almost nothing like his prior classic album, but it was Lamar adapting to his life, circumstances, and influences, and responding in his own way. Bon Iver's Justin Vernon recently said in an interview (I'm somewhat paraphrasing) that the hardest thing about becoming a famous musician is losing sight that creating music should be for you. When you lose sight of that, you begin to create for others and lose a bit of identity and ownership as a creative. "It has to be real," Vernon said.
Luckily, Tame Impala's mastermind Kevin Parker keeps it real. Tame Impala's third album, Currents, is a wonderfully freeing musical expression and acknowledgement of adaptation for the sake of Parker and no others.
Read MoreIn lieu of putting any tracks from Tame Impala's album, here's a mix of all sorts of genres: we got folky pop (Civil Twilight), FUNK (Thundercat), indie rock (EZTV), electronic (Jamie xx), R&B (Miguel), electro-pop (Cannons), singer/songwriter (Dave Monks from Tokyo Police Club!), and whatever the hell TiRon & Ayomari are creating (which is at the very least awesome and interesting).
I'm hoping to get my Tame Impala review up this week, I've been listening to the album relentlessly for the past week or so, and I feel like there's so much to say about it. Stay tuned!
Tame Impala's third album, Currents, has been released today! I've been streaming the album all week through NPR and will be writing up a glowing review shortly.
Stop reading this and get listening!!
As with all things, the Internet has helped to flatten hip-hop — more artists and styles are available to more people, obscurity is a relic, subcultural allegiance can quickly become pop fandom.
- Jon Caramanica, "Vince Staples and J. Cole, Outsiders in the Middle of Hip-Hop," New York Times, July 9, 2015.
Years ago, there were severe categorizations of rap that artists rarely overcame - Talib Kweli and Common preached conscious rap, Dilated Peoples' and People Under the Stairs worked the underground, Nas, Biggie, and Jay-Z as the kings of gangsta rap on the East Coast, and Tupac, Dr. Dre, and Snoop sat on their throne out West. No one really veered outside of their lane. But now, Caramanica interestingly argues, the highway of rap has no lanes, and artists take whichever route they want. Drake, for example, is "an omnivore and a chameleon who never met a target demographic he couldn’t appease, or an Instagram post for which a lyric of his wouldn’t make the perfect caption. He’s post-region, post-era, post-ideology, post-genre." It's the post-label era of rap.
In this post-label era, we have a mix of musicians, such as Kendrick Lamar, Vince Staples, and J. Cole, who despite selling a lot of albums "have been largely shut out of hip-hop's celebrity class" because they don't particularly cater to the ostentatious and moneyed. But by creating music their own way, these guys are being rewarded financially and critically for it. "Their staunch commitment to traditionally underground sentiment has turned out to be lucrative," Caramanica writes, "and also necessitates a rethinking of where hip-hop’s current center of power and influence actually resides."
Kendrick Lamar is one of the highest selling artists in rap, selling upwards of 2 million records from his last two albums, yet he has never had a single in the Billboard Top 10. He's come nowhere close to that with any track on his new album. This is a plus for those like me that devalue singles and hits and place more emphasis on the originality and genuineness of an album and artist. Listen to Vince Staples arresting and ominous debut album, Summetime '06, and you will not hear one hit single; instead, you'll hear an album delicately prepared and exquisitely rapped. You'll hear a story and picture life in the eyes of a man expressing himself for himself and not the money or fame.
Although Caramanica's article speaks only of rap, the Internet has helped to flatten all music to provide more artists and styles to more people. Obscurity is a relic across all genres and the underground can become pop within days. The ubiquitous presence of music in our lives is a fortunate byproduct of technology. I can listen to a teenager in Ireland writing somber melodies, an artist from Atlanta creating strange and incomparable rap, a singer/songwriter composing orchestral anomalies, and any other millions of songs, some terrible, some inspiring, all from my couch. If it wasn't for Spotify, I would never have started this blog and certainly could not have listened to 101,976 minutes of music in 2014.
This democratization of music, the ability to hear almost anything in the world with the stroke of a few buttons, has eliminated anonymity. Even more important, the ability to create music is easier than ever. If someone is truly an amazing talent, he or she won't die undiscovered. That's not possible anymore. It's refreshing to know that brilliance will be discovered but also odd that our unknown musical geniuses are fossils buried in plots around the world.
The majority of music is now out there for consumption, silent and undiscovered for hours, days or months, instead of years or lifetimes. Technology, for all its pro and cons, has brought music and artists to our doorstep.
Knock, knock.
In my first playlist of this series, I worried that rock had died the day of Kurt Cobain's suicide. Fortunately, there's been a wave of new bands bringing rock back to the forefront. These bands continue to pop up and rock out.
Almost every band on this playlist has only released one album (and the Wavves/Cloud Nothings collaboration technically counts as their first album!), so it's primarily brand new stuff!
I apologize for being MIA since Tuesday, but my Macbook died. I was traveling to DC as well, so I wasn't able to work on the blog! I'm sure you survived.
I heard a version of "Bros" by Wolf Alice - (**TANGENT ALERT ** which is a more raw-sounding version of the song than the one on their debut album. The track on their album sounds much more produced and less emotive. I can't stand when producers or record labels (or maybe the band thought they could record a better version) put their influence on a song and mess it up.
This is the original song:
This is the song on their album:
You be the judge. ** TANGENT OVER **) - a couple years ago which reminded me of The Zombies (remember "Linger," ahhhhhh such a beauty!) and Chvrches, but their subsequent releases have sounded edgier and even more distorted, a welcome evolution for me. The first track of this mixtape showcases this sound, and the buildup on "Giant Peach" would be a great opening track for their live shows while Ellie Roswell purrs and screams like Joan Jett (who, by the way, gave a kick ass speech at her Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction).
The comparisons to Twin Peaks span decades and sounds. There's dirt in their amps, feedback in their mics, Mick Jagger in their vocals, and sixties and seventies in their sound. They also remind me of bands these days like Parquet Courts and Broncho, but these guys have a better roadmap for melody and songwriting. The whole album is worth a listen.
I compared Alpine to Trails and Ways a couple weeks ago in my mixtape because both have beautiful female vocals. Alpine is ahead of Trails and Ways in my book because of their upbeat and unique album from 2014 (my #15 Album of 2013!), A is for Alpine. If you like the two tracks on here from their new album, Yuck, definitely check out their last album before the new one!
That's it, have a good week!
Father John Misty released one of my favorite albums this year, one that I lovingly reviewed some months back. He's taken his talents to perform a somber cover of the first track of Arcade Fire's great album, The Suburbs. The cover is a stripped down version of the song, a simple four chords strumming throughout.
I am always inspired when I hear songs so good with so few chords. Ryan Adams is a virtuoso at this, and I was shocked to realize that this original song, amongst the guitars, pianos, and strings, breaks down to just four chords. As you watch FJM play, notice how he progresses chords four times and repeats the process pretty much throughout the whole song. Simplicity wins while the darkness of the lyrics sing.
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