Don’t send me no doctor to fill me up with all those pills…

Just discovered this Swedish TV special of Aretha live in 1968. Not much to say here but damn.

Spent the weekend obsessively listening to Ambling Alp by Yeasayer and discovered Bettye Lavette. HAve a great deal to think/write about both of them. But for now, there’s end-of-year Jukeboxery to deal with.

And everything is going to the beat…

For nigh on a year, I’ve been plagued by a repeated loop of musical magic running through my head: Passion Pit’s Sleepyhead – or more specifically, that otherworldly sample that forms its core. Somehow I never managed to figure out where it came from and now I know why. The sample is from the Gaelic recording Oro Mo Bhaidin by Mary O’Hara, a fairly famous Irish harpist whose pinnacle of musical output was in the 50s and 60s. Perhaps it’s just my soft spot for Gaelic tunesmithery due to family vacations in Nova Scotia and overexposure to The Rankins as a child, but the original recording seems almost as magical as the Kanye-fied chipmunk soul loop Michael Angelakos sings over top of in Sleepyhead.

Unfortunately, while Gaelic is on the list of languages-to-learn, right after Arabic, Yiddish and Hindi, I haven’t gotten around to it yet, and thus have no idea what Ms. O’Hara is going on about. Anyone care to take a crack at it?

Oro Mo Bhaidin – Mary O’Hara

After all that we’ve been through…

Solange (yes, Beyonce’s sister) put out one of the best albums of last year: Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams, a groovy Motown/Brill Building throwback laced with Boards of Canada samples and electronica. Dirty Projectors put out what might be the best album of this year: Bitte Orca. The collision of these two awesome things into one super awesome thing is something pretty damn awesome. Solange covers Stillness is the Move, flipping the same sample Erykah used in Bag Lady.

While I’m loathe to call this a better version (for one thing, it’s missing the totally mesmerizing trilled guitar work of Dave Longstreth), it’s a damn good take on Stillness.

Stillness is the Move – Solange [MP3], courtesy of Pitchfork

The Month in Jukebox

Donkeyboy – Ambitions [7]
Black Eyed Peas – Meet Me Halfway [7]
Death Cab for Cutie – Meet Me on the Equinox [4]
Reigning Sound – Stick Up for Me [8]
The-Dream – Sweat It Out [10]
T-Pain – Take Your Shirt Off [6]
Alien Beat Club – My Way [6]
Girls – Laura [8]
Vampire Weekend – Horchata [8]
Shakira – Did It Again [7]
Ellie Goulding – Under the Sheets [8]
Melody Gardot – Baby I’m a Fool [9]
Joss Stone ft. NaS – Governmentalist [6]
Egypt – In the Morning [4]
Karen O & the Kids – All Is Love [7]
Rihanna – Russian Roulette [5]

The Week in Jukebox

Julian Casablancas – 11th Dimension [6]
Jordin Sparks – SOS (Let the Music Play) [5]
Kid Cudi ft. MGMT & Ratatat – Pursuit of Happiness [3]
Gucci Mane ft. Plies – Wasted [8]
Dizzee Rascal – Dirtee Cash [8]
Eve & Benga – Me N My [8]

Have been in Chicago since Tuesday. Argh. Remember when I used to write?

Let’s shake hands and reach across those party lines…

Revolution - Miranda Lambert

To get this out of the way first: I adore Miranda Lambert. Kerosene and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend are both incredible albums and Revolution clears the bar set by her catalogue thus far. It’s slightly more “mature” – fewer barn-burners, fewer bar fights, and while the guns are still all over the place, they’re less in-your-face. A gloopy love song or two aside, she acquits herself well on the slow stuff. ‘Me & Your Cigarettes’ is a great little extended metaphor between a destructive relationship and a smoking habit, with Miranda as cancer stick. (“It ain’t love but it’s just like nicotine / You’re addicted to a feeling you can only get from me and your cigarettes / Light us up and then throw us down / Walk away when we hit the ground”). ‘Airstream Song’ does the wistful wandering thing of ‘New Strings’ but less triumphant and more conflicted. “Unbridled or tethered and tied / the safety of the fence or the danger of the ride / I’ll always be unsatisfied,” is the most eloquent expression of the passive/active, risk vs. adventure dilemma I’ve heard in a while. Miranda plays hopscotch with the different waves of feminism…carries a gun, looks out for herself and her own, wants freedom and the prerogative to seek out daytime boys and nighttime boys, but keenly aware of her emotions, vulnerability and desire to put down the burden of constantly having her back up. It’s all very werewolf/vampire boyfriend. Anyway, the point is, I like this album. A great deal. And the uncomfortable ways in which a few songs push my buttons shouldn’t detract from that.

BUT…first, there’s the cover of Fred Eaglesmith’s ‘Time to Get a Gun’, which is a funny little number about the need to protect yourself and your Second Amendment rights etc. Except that it’s scattered with lines about how “when the talking is over / it’s time to get a gun.” And uses the spectre of cars stolen from driveways and rising crime rates and locking the doors to explain the need for firearms. Then it suggests that guns are needed to protect yourself from government men who come to your door “because even while we were talking right here where we stand / they’re making plans for a four lane highway and a big old overpass.” And while on prior albums, I would have written it off as playing a role, or expressing a legitimate viewpoint, in the current climate of guns at Obama rallies and Orson Scott Card calling for revolution over gay marriage, the guns against the government line is a dog-whistle that I can’t really avoid hearing. As people will point out, politics and art are independent of one another, and the song is still good art…great art, even, given the response it elicits from me, and it’s certainly a viewpoint that I don’t necessarily oppose on principle, but it makes me feel funny. Especially when digested at the same time as “Only Prettier” (youtube embedded below).

‘Only Prettier’ is great. A ‘fuck you’ to people too uptight to have fun. A thumb in the eye of elitists. Proud to “have a mouth like a sailor” while “yours is just like a Hallmark card,” but imbued with enough Southern charm to just say “Bless your heart!” (and mean “Fuck you very much!”), Miranda gives us a live and let live anthem. She doesn’t belong with you and your high life friends, but she’ll pretend to like you anyway. She’ll get to know her enemies, especially when they’re 5″3 and 100 lbs and “get skinnier” instead of having fun and drinking. Basically, it’s an anthem for girls who know how to have fun vs. the skinny, rich, ‘classy’ crowd. Which is all well and good…clashing social classes are a time-honoured tradition in most genres, from Ella’s ‘The Lady is a Tramp’ on down (I get too hungry for dinner at eight / I like the theatre but never come late / I never bother with people I hate). But that CHORUS. That chorus. “So let’s shake hands and reach across those party lines / You’ve got your friends, just like I’ve got mine / We might think a little differently / But we got a lot in common, you will see / We’re just like you / Only prettier.” For the first time since I’ve gotten into country music, American Ride aside, I feel like I’m exluded from being part of the audience – pointedly so. The party lines in an American country song in 2009, metaphorical or not, conjure up Democrats and Republicans, the “we” and “you” no longer vague and open to interpretation, no longer simply broad social categories, no longer earthy red-dirt girls vs. image-conscious high society wives, but Left vs. Right, Urban vs. Rural, etc. My brain might be doing the gestalt thing here, and filling in the blanks with things not necessarily implied, but those two words transform a track that I’ve been blasting out my window and drunkenly singing along with into Sarah Palin’s personal theme song. And again, maybe that’s what makes it good art. Or maybe I’m reading too much into something that was never intended to be so weighty. But for 3 minutes, Miranda’s no longer singing for me, but at me, and it doesn’t feel good.

EDIT: Just to collect all my Miranda stuff in one place, we reviewed her new single, White Liar over at Jukebox a few weeks back.

I gave it a [9]:

As she chastises him for cheating with red-headed Bernice, and warns him that she “wouldn’t want to be in [his] shoes,” it’s easy to assume this is a country cliche. Then, with a minute left, Miranda flips the script. Confronted with his cheating and lying, she needs to grapple with her own. Her “why“s are as perplexed by her motivations as by his, and her ultimate bombshell is part apology, part gloating and part absolution. It’s an effective trick, changing the song’s entire context and adding emotional heft in less than 10 seconds. Not as hungry or detailed or conflicted as the best of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (”Guilty in Here”, “Famous in a Small Town”), but Lambert’s latest is textured and warm, with a story to tell.

TSJ, cont.

LSATs and laziness have distracted me from regular writing. Mea culpa. Been snagging too many albums that I *should* listen to but don’t have time to. Considering restricting myself to not acquiring an album until I’ve heard the last one I got in its entirety. Does this work?

Anyway, Jukebox:

Nneka – Heartbeat (Chase & Status Remix) [7]
This is great, but the original is 10x better.
Ryan Leslie – You’re Not My Girl [9]
Natalie Imbruglia – Want [5]
Boys Like Girls ft. Taylor Swift – Two Is Better Than One [3]
Trey Songz ft. Drake – I Invented Sex [6]

Poor showing from me this fortnight at the Jukebox. Need to get back on my grind.

Further Jukeboxery

Miranda Lambert – White Liar [9]
Miss Li – Dancing the Whole Way Home [6]
Nicki Minaj ft. Lil’ Wayne – I Get Crazy [8]
Plies – Becky [5]
Alice in Chains – Check My Brain [7]
Raekwon ft. Most of The Wu-Tang Clan – House of Flying Daggers [10]
Michelle Branch – Sooner or Later [5]
Future of the Left – Arming Eritrea [7]
Cheryl Cole – Fight for This Love [6]
Jason DeRule – Whatcha Say [7]
Mumford and Sons – Little Lion Man [7]
Taylor Swift – Fifteen [9]
Delphic – This Momentary [5]
Los Campesinos! – The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future [9]

The Week in Jukebox

Florence and the Machine – Drumming Song [8]
Ellie Goulding – Starry Eyed [10]
Miley Cyrus – Party in the USA [7]
Alexandra Burke ft. Flo Rida – Bad Boys [7]
Owl City – Fireflies [7]
Martin Solveig & Dragonette – Boys & Girls [8]
Jay Reatard – It Ain’t Gonna Save Me [9]
Morandi – Colors [4]
An answer to a question nobody asked. Namely, what would happen if mid-90s boy band vocals were paired with sub-par techno?
Jesse McCartney ft. T-Pain – Body Language (Remix) [7]
VV Brown – Game Over [8]
Cascada – Dangerous [5]
3OH!3 – Starstrukk [2]

Charles-Valentin Alkan

I’m still absorbing Marc-André Hamelin’s three albums of Alkan, but as soon as I’ve wrapped my head around them, a more substantive post will be written. For now, marvel in the virtuosity of both Hamelin as a performer and Alkan as a composer.

Contemporary of Chopin and Liszt, who praised him as the finest pianist he’d seen play. Child prodigy, passed over for the head of the Conservatoire, he went into seclusion for 25 years to compose and translate the entire Old Testament from Hebrew into French. Apocryphal story says he passed away at 74, crushed by a bookshelf while reaching for a volume of the Talmud off the top shelf. Whether that’s actually true or not, I want it to be. His undeserved obscurity baffles me – possibly due to the immense complexity of his works.