For many who’ve seen Cat Power gigs over the years, calmness is not a word that immediately springs to mind when trying to describe Chan Marshall. Neither has she been, for large tracts of her confounding and exceptional career, much of a populist, exactly. Her distrait otherness might have been part of the appeal to some of us, but it would hardly work as a mainstream draw.Since last year’s â
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“Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!†is one of those curious records that initially appear immediate, but which only become genuinely compelling after multiple listens. It’s bony, dispassionate, far from the confessional intensity of, say, “The Boatman’s Callâ€, and, in spite of the title, with less religious brow-furrowing than usual. Two things stand out. One, it’s really funny. Two, it’s reall
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In recent years, I think Ghostface Killah has been the most consistently interesting and exciting rapper in America, and it’s been fascinating to see how his career has evolved from being one of the Wu Tang Clan’s most unpredictable footsoldiers, a spluttering maverick with a penchant for richly overloaded imagery and detuned sing-songs, to the Clan’s most bankable solo star.I’m about half
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Rare candour from a musician in a press release. This is Stephin Merritt talking about the Magnetic Fields album, “Distortionâ€. The goal, he says, was “to sound more like Jesus And Mary Chain than Jesus And Mary Chain.â€I always think that Merritt’s most interesting when he’s grappling with a sonic concept rather than an intellectual one, which is why my favourite Magnetic Fields album
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For many who’ve seen Cat Power gigs over the years, calmness is not a word that immediately springs to mind when trying to describe Chan Marshall. Neither has she been, for large tracts of her confounding and exceptional career, much of a populist, exactly. Her distrait otherness might have been part of the appeal to some of us, but it would hardly work as a mainstream draw.Since last year’s â
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It’d be overstating things a bit to make out that “American Gangster†is a bona fide classic to rank alongside “The Blueprintâ€, “Life And Times Of S. Carterâ€, “Reasonable Doubt†et al. But after a couple of listens, it seems like Jay-Z's recent pattern of ropey album followed by a good one has been continued.So while last year’s comeback “Kingdom Come†(after a brief, Sinat
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I remember the first time I listened to the new Robert Plant album, it struck me: why would he bother going back to Led Zeppelin, when he's making records as good as this right now?Here's "Rich Woman", the first track on "Raising Sand": heavy freight train rhythm section, a glassy, twanging guitar line that I think is the work of Marc Ribot, and Plant and Alison Krauss locked together in a very di
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Up at six this morning, as usual, though the Radiohead album didn't arrive to download until, I think, about ten to seven. I played "In Rainbows" for the first time on the bus coming in to the office, and it was one of those records that seems dramatically suited to sitting in traffic on the A10, watching the commuters. Oh, the alienation!Funny, then, that I found this quote by Thom Yorke about th
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There's a lot of static in the ether, as you may have detected, about the likelihood of a Led Zeppelin reunion sometime this autumn. That'd be nice, of course. But as I was listening to the new Robert Plant album for the first time this morning, it struck me: why would he bother going back there, when he's making records as good as this right now?As I write I'm going to put the Plant album on a...
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I’ve heard “Chrome Dreams II†now, and I’m broadly struggling to see its connection to the first mythical set. In some ways, it’s a kind of reverse: if “Chrome Dreams†was a collection of great Neil songs that were subsequently dispersed across various disparate albums, “Chrome Dreams II†in part seems to be a collection of disparate, mainly great Neil songs that have been gather
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