RUSH
Released September 1, 1977
LIVING COLOUR
Released May 3, 1988
A PERFECT CIRCLE
Released April 20, 2018
NEW 2018 MUSIC: First things first...this is the very sort of album cover that I would have given a wide berth in my childhood record store visits as its pure malevolence feels threatening enough to break free from mere image not horrifying three dimensional life. It is grotesque and then some, but given the subject matter the music is wrestling with, the image becomes more and more relevant, fitting and downright honest than it may first seem.
The return of A Perfect Circle has been long awaited and then some as their fourth album, "Eat The Elephant" now arrives a full 14 years after the band's third album "Emotive" (released November 1, 2004), a collection of politically themed protest cover songs. In essence, and despite the decade plus distance apart from each other, "Eat The Elephant," from its title to its cover image and of course, the songs themselves, strongly feels like the sequel to "Emotive." But this time instead of transforming the lyrics and songs from other artists into the APC aesthetic, the band is now providing their own furiously idiosyncratic words to speak to our terrifying times.
Written and performed (almost) entirely singer/lyricist Maynard James Keenan and multi-instrumentalist Billy Howerdel, A Perfect Circle's "Eat The Elephant" dials down the flamethrower alt-metal riffs of the band's earlier works but the overall sound and effect is no less voluminous as we are enveloped in the band's trademark post-prog rock theatrics and especially, Howerdel's waterfall guitar heroics. Even so, and most appropriately, the album is considerably mournful, contemplative, and heavy hearted as if we, and the band, are sitting at our front row seats to the end of existence...and all at our own hands.
The tale of the tunes are all there in the song titles. "Disillusioned," "The Contrarian," "The Doomed," and the considerably sorrowful "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish" front load the album, setting the plate for the Last Supper. While tracks like "Delicious," "Feathers," "By And Down The River," the booming atmospherics of "Get The Lead Out," and the human vs. machine hybrid of "Hourglass" provide some sense of spiritual deliverance...or perhaps an acceptance of the inevitable but not without one hell of a fight.
As grim as the album is, it cannot go without notice that you will hear an elegantly arranged, produced and performed work that showcases the band's evolution and maturity starring Maynard James Keenen delivering what may be his finest vocals to date singing his most compassionate, humane set of lyrics.
And if the world is burning itself up into ashes, then please allow this especially empathetic yet ferocious music surround us along the way.
JANELLE MONAE
Released April 27, 2018
NEW 2018 MUSIC: As with the latest album from A Perfect Circle, if there has been anything remotely positive about the most recent Presidential election is that much of our art has become more galvanized and overt in its sense of protest. Joining in the music of resistance is Janelle Monae's dynamic third full length release, "Dirty Computer."
While I have always have been intrigued by this particular artist, I had never really been terribly compelled to pick up one of her albums. Not for any reason, I have to tell you. But, after having seen two of her striking recent music videos, including the proudly vagina themed "PYNK," I just knew that NOW was the time to check her out!
Eschewing with her on-going album conceptual themes starring her symbolic android alter-ego, Janelle Monae drives "Dirty Computer" with the tale of her personal evolution which has culminated with a newfound sense of social, political, racial and sexual awakening in an America whose level of prejudice, racism, sexism and intolerance has been unleashed and emboldened by a certain #45. Thankfully, Monae delivers a powerful pushback copiously filled beyond the brim with an arsenal of couplets so quotable that I could easily see her lyrics written across a sea of protest signs within the most revolutionary marches.
Take this set from the track "Screwed":
"See, if everything is sex
Except sex, which is power
You know, power is just sex
You screw me and I'll screw you too"
Or this one moment from the explosive "Django Jane":
"We gon' start a motherfuckin' pussy riot
Or we gon' have to put 'em on a pussy diet..."
Or this portion from the album's roof raising finale "Americans";
"Seventy-nine cent to your dollar
All that bullshit from white-collars
You see my color before my vision
Sometimes I wonder if you were blind
Would it help you make a better decision?
Over and again, Monae conceives of stanzas upon stanzas that you will instantly hit "rewind" to hear them all over again, for they are all that forceful and as militant in their feminist (and for that matter...humanist) presentation. Yet, instead of what could have been an album filled with nothing but proselytizing slogans, Monae has ensured that "Dirty Computer" is over-flowing in melodies so rich you can bathe within them and a variety of grooves and beats propulsive enough to dare you to stop moving, all the while being held together by the crystalline clarity of Janelle Monae's spectacular singing and rapping.
While the album contains superb support from the likes of Jon Brion and Brian Wilson (yes...that Brian Wilson) and certainly is largely influenced by Stevie Wonder (who makes a cameo appearance) and the late, great, artist 4ever known as Prince (who befriended Monae and advised her during the writing and making of the album before his passing, "Dirty Computer" is unquestionably, entirely and uncompromisingly the artistic vision of Janelle Monae from end to end. Returning to the Prince comparisons, it is an album that feels as if she has adopted Prince's party under the mushroom cloud aesthetic of "1999," merged that with the unrepentant female empowerment messages of "P. Control" and fused it all into a vibrantly personal and beautifully seamless song suite like Prince's "Lovesexy" (released May 10, 1988) and magically, created a singular work that exists as her personal manifesto upon her journey towards self-acceptance and ascension.
"I'm NOT America's nightmare. I am the American dream!!!!" Monae sings early in the album and it is truly impossible to proclaim otherwise as you experience her outstanding album.
TRACEY THORN
Released March 2, 2018
NEW 2018 MUSIC: One of my favorite singers of all time hands down.
As one half of the classic British alt-pop duo Everything But The Girl, Tracy Thorn has long rapturously graced my ears and heart through the deep, rich soul of her voice which has the glorious ability to convey oceans of emotions even when she may sound as if she is not necessarily "doing" very much vocally. But that is precisely the gift of a GREAT singer. Not everyone can (or should) be Aretha Franklin or Mary J. Blige, for instance, as too many singers in the 21st century feel this incessant need to essentially invent syllables and stretch their vocal chords to stratospheric ranges in order to sing a song--all the while never attaining any sense of truth, even while glass is shattering all around them and us
Yet, Ms. Thorn is a rarity, so eternally beloved by me, but admittedly after EBTG's unofficial fade out in 2000, I lost track of her (as well as her husband and former bandmate Ben Watt). So, it is with great thanks to the NPR series "Fresh Air With Terry Gross" which featured a terrific recent interview with Ms. Thorn that I am happily able to rekindle this particular flame via her fifth solo album entitled "Record."
Now, as I am unaware of what the bulk of her solo material actually sounds like, I am able to say that "Record" either continues or returns Tracey Thorn to the dance floor, where she blissfully morphed into a disco queen during EBTG's final years. Now, at the age of 55, Thorn triumphantly places herself under the mirrorball once more with 9 stellar tracks that conceptually flow between a variety of uniquely female insights regarding the romance vs. reality of Motherhood ("Babies"), a nostalgic look at when she first began to rock ("Guitar"), an ode to leaving the nest ("Go"), a rallying cry against misogynistic ideals in the music industry ("Air"), the superior soul contained within female solidarity ("Sister"), plus even more self-described "feminist bangers."
With her songwriting pen as sharply empathetic and perceptive as ever, and armed with a singing voice now deepened after menopause, Tracey Thorn's latest is a celebratory affair with the chronicles of her life, making "Record" exist as nothing less than a vibrant audio diary.
KHRUANGBIN
Released
NEW 2018 MUSIC: Once again...sometimes MUSIC CHOOSES YOU!!!
In the case of the band Khruangbin, the Houston, Texas based trio made up of guitarist Mark Speer, bassist Laura Lee and drummer Donald Ray "DJ" Johnson Jr. , I never knew even one solitary thing about the band--let alone their existence-- until I finally clicked upon this one insistent link that keep appearing persistently in the side of my You Tube feed, a full, nearly 60 minute live performance presented by Pitchfork. It was as if the music knew something that I did not but once I did click upon the link, I was just blown away and I KNEW that I had to get their album.
And so, here we are with "Con Todo El Mundo," (which I have read translates as "With All The World") the band's second full length release and for me, it is already safely snug upon my favorite album releases of 2018. Despite possessing a musical aesthetic the band has adopted being described as "Thai funk," Khruangbin completely defies genre descriptions as their specialized, and mostly instrumental, brand contains elements of psychedelia, hip-hop, soul, surf and what one might find upon a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack merged with Middle Eastern flourishes.
Running a seamless 10 tracks, "Con Todo El Mundo" is a fully intoxicating, immersive and often downright sexy experience that simultaneously makes you want to get up and groove while blissfully spacing out. Propelled by Laura Lee's stellar deep bass and "DJ" Johnson Jr.s' richly subtle drum rhythms, which suggest an especially relaxed Questlove, Mark Speer's stunning, shape shifting, luxuriously liquid guitar heroics will unquestionably caress you all over while also conjuring up rightful comparisons to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Peter Green, Carlos Santana, David Gilmour and Stevie Ray Vaughan as his playing is indeed that confident, versatile, inventive and imaginative.
Trust me...even if you have difficulty pronouncing the band's name, you can now spell it, therefore being able to easily find it for you will indeed want this one in your collection as it is a work that you can easily place upon repeat and lose yourself inside of it endlessly.
ARCTIC MONKEYS
Released May 11, 2018
NEW 2018 MUSIC: I think I was getting this band confused with Vampire Weekend, but for whatever reasons, I had also not heard one song or note by Arctic Monkeys, perhaps feeling that maybe this band would not necessarily be for me. Yet recently, I became intrigued...
From articles I have read in the music press, band leader/singer/songwriter/guitarist Alex Turner, struggling with a bout of writer's block, began trying to compose upon a piano he received for his 30th birthday--an avenue in which he had not tried to write songs before. The result opened up a floodgate, which initially confused his bandmates but was soon embraced and has now been fully revealed in a head spinning science fiction concept album in which Turner stars as some sort of sleazy interstellar lounge singer at the titular locale of the album performing a luxurious song cycle that openly evokes the sound and vision of the late, eternally great David Bowie.
An odd album to be sure, of course and featuring a sonic palate that suggests an equally odd hybrid of Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane merged with Bowie's late period gem "Bring Me The Disco King," Arctic Monkeys' latest release may not be the best place for new listeners to begin with to introduce themselves to the band. Yet even so, this is indeed what has happened to me. Without question, I am having a tremendous time drowning in the ocean of melodies, while hanging on for dear life with the cavalcade of lyrics, and let me tell you, the mid-album track "Four Out Of Five" is an unquestionable grand slam.
Whether this excursion makes sense of not, or if the concept is successful or not feels somehow irrelevant when the songs themselves are as strong as these, making for an album experience that is fun to dig deeply into.
You know, it may even be another one of the year's best releases...
NEW ORDER
Released August 27, 2001
VAN HALEN
Released March 24, 1986
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