Album Reviews: Maps, Flight of the Conchords, Sufjan Stevens
»Album Reviews For Release Date: 10.20.09
by Joshua Krage
Looks like release season is slowing down a bit in anticipation of upcoming surefire X-Mas retail sellers, but this week still has some juggernaut-sized new music for your ears to feast upon. I even found a Christmas album that’s not ear-splitting and even manages to make profanity enjoyable. Observe:
Jello Biafra
Cartel
The Christmas Jug Band – this is a real band. Huzzah!
Leonard Cohen – live at Isle of Wight 1970
The Dan Band, Ho: A Dan Band Christmas- yes, the name says it all, but rather than a no-brainer re-rendering of holiday classics with random expletives thrown in, this is actually a deftly-composed set of ten originals that aren’t half bad, even if you won’t be singing them around the piano at the family party. “Have a very, merry, mutha-f*ckin’ Christmas,” indeed.
Joey DeFrancesco
Electric Six
Jay Farrar / Ben Gibbard, One Fast Move or I’m Gone – a modestly successful collab between two low-key indie rock greats, springing from Farrar’s appropriation of lyrics from the Jack Kerouac novel Big Sur. Rather folky (obv.) but well arranged and fleshed out with the right instruments at the right moments. Gibbard is the saving grace, trading lead vox with Farrar and lending compositional aid, even providing the above-average title track to sum up the whole endeavor. The musical framing is decent, and the words still possess their original jaded, restless fire, dangerous only to those afraid of danger. Consider this a companion to Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue collabs with Billy Bragg over Woody Guthrie’s writings.
Fashawn
Flight of the Conchords, I Told You I Was Freaky – second helping of New Zealand’s fourth-most-popular folk-parody duo feels a bit rushed, and admittedly so as they didn’t have years to hone these 13 tracks in front of audiences. Still semi-solid, with forays into dance-club, R. Kelly freak’n'B, sad bastard music, and the tongue-in-cheek come-on’s they’re best on. “You Don’t Have to Be A Prostitute” is the best song I’ve heard about not having to be a prostitute since Roxanne by the Police!
Robert Francis
Aretha Franklin Christmas
Fu Manchu
Michael Jackson – remix suites
Juvenile
Kutless
Little Dragon
Lyle Lovett
Maps, Turning the Mind – gorgeous electronic compositions are James Chapman’s specialty. I honestly have no idea how he hears all the different layers of blips and beats he manages to weave together. The vocals and lyrics might be another story, but he covers everything with deft layers of strings, reverb, and echo so it all sounds like a distant lunar symphony or a chemical-induced haze. Chemicals are indeed the subject of many of these songs, but not in abusive, glamorous fashion, and therapy plays into the songcraft as well, making this a rather superb overall work, cohesive in content both musically and conceptually.
Tim McGraw
Naam
Nouvelle Vague
Old Canes, Feral Harmonic – solo project from Chris Crisci out of superb woodsy/atmo-rockers The Appleseed Cast, focusing more on his acoustic side, for better or worse.
OOIOO
Alec Ounsworth
Elvis Perkins
Pylon
Rakim
Rammstein
Otis Redding best of
Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
Royce da 5’9″
Timothy B. Schmit
Silver Starling
The Slits
Snow Patrol, LateNightTales – not an album of their music, but rather the latest in the superb LateNightTales series, with Gary Lightbody and co. choosing their favorite chillout tuneage, with an exclusive track of their own for good measure.
Spiral Stairs
Sufjan Stevens, The BQE – if you’re even remotely familiar with Sufjan Stevens, you know that “ambitious” is far too small a descriptor for what he does. This album is the recorded end-result of the music commissioned for symphonic performance by the Brooklyn Academy of Music some two years ago. Celebrating the ramshackle Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Stevens and his posse of course also undertook the creation of an expansive film project, comic book, booklet, and Viewmaster (remember those?) reel for the whole project.
Theory of a Deadman
Kristina Train, Spilt Milk – smooth and subtle with just a hint of grit on the soft end, huge and soulful on the loud end, Blue Note Records has found another amazing voice with this artist. Penning songs with veteran masters Jimmy Hogarth and Eg White, the singer owes a definite debt to the resurgence of ’70s soul, and reminds me of Aretha Franklin from a Carole King shell. For fans of Duffy, Adele, Elizabeth & the Catapult, and any music that moves you like a rainy day.
Tina Turner – live CD/DVD
White Denim
Not sure what’s waiting next week, but that’s when I’ll see you…
P.S. As if reading about them weren’t enough, you can enjoy a playlist featuring most of these fine artists on my MySpace Page. Enjoy.
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