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review to come shortly…
review to come shortly…
but i will say briefly that i am a huge fan of the songs “lifeboats” because of its mellow, gentle tones. and i really like “take back the city,” but my lovely younger sister says it sounds like “something you’d hear on a country station.” hahaha that made me laugh! we love similar music (e.g. travis, keane, peter griffin’s rendition of a-well-a-bird bird bird) but not identical, i guess!
give the album a try; it’s reminds me of their great ‘final straw’ album that i used to listen to a lot of back in 2003-ish. their music isn’t terribly experimental or artistic, but still, they maintain a good sense of down to earthness despite the commercial success they achieved on last album. at times, it’s a bit too slow and boring, but i do like their some of their harder, edgier songs.
poor lily allen – a cute young british pop star with lots of cool sounds and lots of potential, brought down to the dumps thanks to pressure to sell, sell, sell and make it big in the other side of the atlantic (read: win a grammy like her predecessor amy winehouse did). oh yeah, and to stay thin, sober, and even more cute. i don’t know if is a bad girl by nature or if she was just too young to know how to handle the many pressures of stardom. but my intent is not to focus on the state of her mess right now, but just on the fun album that is ‘alright, still.’
this is where my unabashed bias towards british music becomes very obvious. if it was any kind of pop junk they market here in the u.s. would have instantly been snubbed by me, but it’s british, so i’ll even give bubble gum pop a try (not that lily allen is bubble gum pop…she’s too explicit and perverse for that).
there is always a hot artist of the moment in the u.k. i probably miss a good number of them since wedding-related savings has kept me from freely dishing out $10/month on Q magazine. a lot of them never make it to this side of the pond, but the ones who do, i have always been impressed by them (amy winehouse, joss stone, coldplay).
‘alright, still’ is a fun album, but it’s not for the faint of heart or the super-conservative. it’s an oxymoron of sorts; an early 20-something girl on a bicycle the cover with a parental advisory explicit content sticker smack right in the middle of it. nonetheless, lily allen mixes up the album with reggae-like beats, rap, and a bunch of random beats-infused rant about pretty juvenile and crass things. not juvenile as in getting the new video game, but as in telling off a guy at a bar. but there is something likeable about this myspace-made songstress: perhaps it’s a combination of her nice voice and her mockney. nah, who am i kidding? it’s because i love london and british music. 
just listen to ‘everything’s just wonderful’ and tell me you don’t love it.
here are my recommendations…fun tunes to enjoy when you’re on the road or when the last one at work on your floor:
- LDN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfD6jAoJrJg
- everything is just wonderful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPmH1fzZ-zk
- littlest things
- smile
- knock ‘em out
last word (another one of my obnoxious remarks): mark ronson is overrated.
This is my first real post-migration post on musicbybeans. As I read over my old blog posts, I am reminded of many things: I used to be much more reflective. I used to be a mildly entertaining writer (regardless of the fact that the only person being entertained was yours truly). And I used to love writing more – it was a real hobby. I took a year-long hiatus from blogging and since then, my desire for writing has gone through multiple iterations of hot-and-cold ups and downs; I’d read a nice piece by Munro or Updike on New Yorker or I’d come across my lonesome Moleskine wanting some bit of my attention – or at least my pen’s. Then I’d get all inspired to write again.
Then the busyness of life hits and then I catch myself thinking ‘who has time for all this?” as if I have an infant to care for or something. I think over the past year, I just grew too busy for self-reflection…and that’s a shame, indeed. A few friends of mine who know me quite well ask if I still journal regularly. That’s another moment when I think, “No, but I really ought because I really want to.” Not just writing, but I also took a mini break from ravenous consumption of music. I used to cough up $10 on Q magazine every month when I was 23 and just spend an entire night reading through the darn thing, filling my world with thoughts about rock stars of today and the legendary songwriters of yesterday. I remembering having no qualms about spending a Friday evening alone: picking up a mini cheesecake from Junior’s, enduring the commute home, cooking myself a simple meal, and cuddling up with the newest Q and, finally, savoring my chocolate swirl cheesecake. In between bites of my cheesecake, I sincerely wondered what it’d be like to go to Glastonbury Festival or to go to a concert in one of the many Carling Academies.
But none of these have anything to do with ’24 hour party people,’ do they? It does, though, really. Besides the fact that a revisit to this ‘rockumentary,’ the first one I watched, really, after my return from my 2-year Asia stint, albeit a year later, this film is all about my favorite genre of music: Madchester. The film was informative, entertaining, and absolutely chock full of good Madchester tunes by The Buzzcocks, Joy Division/ New Order, Happy Mondays, The Durutti Column, and Jefferson Marshall, to name a few. It literally goes deep into the history of the explosion of the post-punk music scene that gave birth to new wave, house, and eventually into ‘Britpop.’ It chronicles the fascinating, slowly-but-surely ways in which a Manchester club called Hacienda, financed and run by a reporter-turned-club manager Tony Wilson, was served as a concert venue and an outlet for musical creativity that resulted in not only commercial success of dozens of bands of the Factory Records label, but turn the attention of the music world to this town. The film mentioned that by early to mid-90s, University of Manchester was the most popular university in the UK, drawing the most number of college entrance applications. How’s that for influence?
Most readers may think ‘so what? I don’t really care for all that old 80s British stuff anyway.’ But what they may not realize that this burst of creativity that spanned a decade or so played such an influential role in the lives of musicians that they may know and love today; Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins is known to have worshipped New Order and have repeatedly named them as their biggest musical influence, eventually collaborating with New Order (‘New Dawn Fades’ and ‘Turn This Way’). Oasis, whose influence bred the grounds of expansion for mega-Britpop bands like Coldplay and Blur, is a direct Manchester export who grew up on punk and post-punk music. Radiohead touts The Smiths as a huge source of influence and yet another band that grew up listening, imitating, fantasizing about Johnny Marr’s guitar lines and Morrissey’s crooning tunes. Their song ‘Knives Out’ is a direct homage to The Smiths, yet another Mancunian royalty. Even Kenny Chesney said…nah, just kidding.
In other words, Madchester rocked the world in the 80s and 90s. And New Order will always matter.
Ever since Bloc Party burst into the UK music scene, they have been met with great hype and praise. ‘Silent Alarm’ (2005) is such an exciting album; though not for everyone, for those who dig it, they REALLY dig it. Their jagged, loud, booming sounds are all too addicting and exciting. You really feel the energy in their singing, drumming, and beats. Dubbed as ‘art-rockers,’ whatever that may mean exactly, they are definitely different from your usual American rock, be it emo rock, hard rock, alternative rock. Not that I have anything against American alternative scene, I love it, in fact, but hey, it’s no secret that I have a penchant for British music.
I was in Asia when ‘Weekend in the City’ came out; I remember spending the first weekend I downloaded the album on itunes watching videoclips from NME and Later…with Jools Holland. It was a show they did just after releasing their new album. After that, I was even more hooked on BP, so when they released random releases like ‘Two More Years,’ I was all over it.
The album, again, is filled with tons of energy and force, it’s great. Songs like “Halo” and “Mercury” are just the kind that I love to listen to when I’m in the mood for some loud, powerful music with great beats. My morning commute and a random moment of inspiration (to write, to clean, to get fit, etc.) come to mind. There are slower songs like “Biko” that really shows off Kele’s voice, which is great, but not excellent. In my opinion, some vocalists are just built for loud, shouting-type singing (Kele) and some are just built for long, drawn out ballad-like singing (Jeff Buckley). In the album, there are very pleasant songs, like ‘Signs’ that just make you want to turn up the volume and contemplate on the words – no matter how shallow or silly they are. (Let’s face it, sometimes Bloc Party lyrics are really stupid…either they’re really stupid or I am just a dumb American who does not understand the ways of the really intellectual British people). Either way, I am not a huge fan of blatant lyrics about getting drunk, getting laid, getting high. But I digress…
Back to ‘Signs,’ I mean, how beautiful is that song? And not just beautiful in a Rufus Wainwright kind of a way, but in a sophisticated and modern way that only the Europeans seem to pull off? It’s just my observation and I know that I do not know everything there is to know about independent and alternative music, but, as drugged and messed up they are, they’ve got powerhouse singers like Amy Winehouse/Joss Stone and those that sound original like Lily Allen (or at least it sounds original to me) and we have that girl who sings about kissing a girl (and liked it?) As much as I do not like pop music and as much as artists like Estelle had to network her way through to the hip-hop megaproducers this side of the Atlantic in order to find international recognition and commercial success, there is always something different and innovative about musical artists from that side of the Atlantic.
Boy, I’ll never get to talking about ‘Signs.’ Never mind; let me just say it’s a HIT and you should listen to it.
Franz Ferdinand ONCE AGAIN confirms my suspicion that something in the water that they drink in the United Kingdom gives musicians an extraordinary knack for producing beautiful, energetic, soulful, and quality-filled music. Is it the bleak grey skies? The cold dampness in the Scottish air? Smell of fish and chips? Is it Bass? haha! Time and time again, my favorite bands have always come out of the UK – Radiohead, the Beatles, the Smiths, Seal, Travis, Coldplay, Sterephonics, Elton John, even the Verve (though just one song)… My favorite track on Franz Ferdinand’s debut, eponymous album is track 3 : Take Me Out. It is oh so very absolutely addictive!
Is This It by The Strokes. I bought into the hype and I actually really like this album. It’s a blessing and a curse – what can you do? Whatever the case, it served the boys well and the album went on its way to being critically acclaimed. It’s different, it’s catchy, it’s a lot of fun and it gets a lot of playtime on my ipod. It’s actually a more fun when you see these trust fund baby, Upper East Side, private school-bred, sons of modeling agency moguls and musicians rocker guys live, even if you end up feeling dizzy from all the second-hand marijuana smoke on upper deck of MSG. It’s also a big challenge trying to guess whether Julian Casablancas is drunk or if he reinventing an 80s dance move.
This album, released in 1991, and incidentally on the same day at Nirvana’s Nevermind LP, remains as one of the greatest works of art that emerged from the 1990s. It’s not the bland rock and roll, nor is it the typical sounds of grunge that represented every Generation Y’er of the 1990s, or every band out of Seattle, for that matter. If anything, this is a funk-based album (yes, as in George Clinton) that mixes unforgettable, nearly-impossible-to-replicate sounds of bass the perfectly accompanied by the sometimes obnoxious guitar hooks. Flea and Frusciante — perfect match, like Sonny & Cher, Bonnie & Clyde, Lucy & Ricky. Not only that, the drum sounds, as well as Anthony’s vocals, are extremely precise. In a nutshell, it’s a pretty awesome band. I know some of you may think that I’m too partial to LA-based bands, but if you listen to this one, you’ll see why I like it (trust me, my list of LA bands are dwindling…I’m just glad that I still have Beck). They’ve obviously regained some level of fame and commercial success later on in the 90s and even early this decade, but this punk/funk-based album will absolutely remain as their defining work, though not their most mature one. I like bands that are perfectionists – those that take their music as seriously anyone else would in any other profession. Paying attention to details, doing the due diligence, making things better. They’re like that. Given the creative cast of characters, one thing that I will mention, though, is they do not always have the best choice of song names. I’d expect better from a UCLA dropout. 
Oh well, minor detail… Highlights from album include: Breaking The Girl (part of my 6-stars compilation), Funky Monk, Mellowship Slinky in B Major (title? go figure), Greeting Song, Under The Bridge, and the powerful opening song – Power of Equality.
