1) There is an undercurrent of j-hova in this list. For example, some number of weeks ago, she drew our attention to "Tambourine," the latest from Eve and her ol' pal Swizz. Given that ee-vee-ee hasn't really brought a quality solo track this millennium, which is a millennium in hip-hop years, there was not much reason to expect any such material forthcoming. And yet, huzzah! Bang bang bang!
2) Further, the tunicorn in the same column pointed out , against all odds, Amerie. "One Thing" seemed destined to be as much a self-fulfilling prophecy as a perfect song: so fresh and so clean, but so dependent on an unrepeatably perfect Ziggy Modeliste sample that it practically screamed that it would be her one thing. Well, you gotta work to get out of that trap, and lo, here comes Amerie with another fine song called "Gotta Work," not really as good, which is like saying here come the Verve with another fine song, not really as good as "Bittersweet Symphony" — except the Verve didn't do it and Amerie did.
3) There is no reason you would know about Philippe Katerine, who is either a band or a person, and has a series of various very very good songs mostly in French, which seem to borrow a but from filter-disco Frenchy style, a bit more from homo-disco a la M (not the "Pop Music" guy, the "Machistador" mec), and a bit from some punkrock tradition that France mostly missed out on, giving them a chance to really develop after the fact some droll discopunk, which is very different from the surfeit of dancy neo-new wave choking the clean streets of Williamsburg, do not repeat not get it twisted. Note especially the track "Marine Le Pen," which concerns the campaign manager/daughter of French xenophobe fascist politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. P. Katerine does not seem to care for her, but generously takes time out in the middle for a discussion of grammar, particularly rare verb conjugations. But his finest moment is "Borderline," not the Madonna song but one which, in pissed voice, discusses the beginnings and ends of things: the subway closes at one in the morning, the subway opens at six in the morning, Monoprix opens at eight, Monoprix closes at eight in the evening...and on it goes, getting exactly at the awful quantitative factuality of daily life in the managed world, on it goes...the green light goes on at midnight, the red light goes an at 12:02, the green light returns at 12:02, the red light at 12:04...just a hint of panic creeping into the voice...okay, d'accord, tres bien, okay...
4) Not exactly a Black September for Miranda July: her "playlist" for the Gray Goose makes Stephin Merritt seem funky, and, however one feels about her art projects (of which Hopz has been one of the most poignant, eloquent supporters), her fave raves do clarify the confines and contours of her sensibility, and the way that it big-ups inclusion while working from an aggressively insular position, albeit the aggressively insular position that takes itself to be universal: extreme whiteness. Everyone gets to love the music they love, and maybe there's no explaining it — but that doesn't mean it doesn't explain anything. This explains the wherefores of our longstanding aversion to this indie auteur.
5) Twentyfour months back we noted that both Ciara and Miranda Lambert had first showed up with all the marks of the mayfly, four minutes of fun and done...and then stuck around cranking out hot singles: three for Ciara, five for Lambert on an album that ran deep as Rubber Soul. Well, we have seen Ciara 2007, and much to our amazement and possible shame, she is Fergie. Single #3, "Glamorous," was sort of foul, but the scrapey marketization of "Galang" that was "London Bridge" was sort of genius, and "Fergalicious" was even better. Now comes "Big Girls Don't Cry," which is some messed-up mix of vocal scraps left behind from an unreleased Joni Mitchell jazz-lite ballad, the acoustic guitar from "More Than Words," and then suddenly some semi-soaring up-with-people shit, all of which turns out to make a totally compelling song, even as it retains the sense that Fergie is a bit woozy but invisibly bulletproof, wrapped up in her silky veils of armor.
6) And perhaps we have seen the new Miranda Lambert as well: are you up to speed on Little Big Town? "Boondocks" sort of took folks by surprise in 2005, showing a reach beyond the conventional confines of contemporary country. But the final two singles from that album,The Road to Here, — "Good as Gone" and "A Little More You" — were even better, and each better than the last, with a delicate mix of back country changes and co-ed Nashville harmonies. Their latest single, "I'm With The Band," the lead from new album A Place to Land, is the best one yet, a song that the Elton John of Tumbleweed Connection, and the Skynrd of "Ballad of Curtis Loew," would have been delighted to have cowritten.
7) George Strait's cover of Kelly Willis's "Wrapped" is about as easy-goingly charming as you'd expect from country's leading brand of easy-going charmer. But it would be a hard song to fuck up, like almost every other track on What I Deserve (1999). There, the profoundly underappreciated Willis covered Nick Drake; the album itself is near-Drakean in its unbroken melancholy loveliness, and like a Drake album, as rich a source of cover material as one could hope for; folks will be remaking those songs for decades. For those keeping up, Willis has a new album, Translated From Love, which is her best since '99. Choice cuts: a rollicking, sharply-written "Nobody Wants to Go to the Moon Anymore," and the heart-rendering "Stone's Throw Away."
Posted by jane at September 6, 2007 10:43 AM | TrackBack