Pitchfork confirms this with their lambasting of Weezer’s new LP Raditude.  The album ”doesn’t have that stench of minimal calculation on it; if anything, it’s as earnest as the famously confessional Pinkerton, just written by someone whose age doesn’t match his POV. But the record’s teen-boy empowerment message doesn’t have much to offer anyone over 13 years old. Perhaps the proper fictional character to reference isn’t Peter Pan, but Matthew McConaughey’s Wooderson from Dazed and Confused– we all get older, Rivers Cuomo stays the same age.”  Ouch!

And it’s not necessarily Pitchfork’s 9.0 review (out of 10) that has me excited, as much as it is this passage: “There’s a raw directness to Embryonic that’s been largely absent from Lips records since the mid-90s. For the first time in years, they’ve made an album that actually sounds like a band playing live together in a small room. In light of Mystics‘ overly processed, grab-bag quality, the holistic, audio-vérité approach on display here is remarkable– the record is extremely dense, initially overwhelming, but unusually rewarding upon repeat listens. Like the double-disc, high-concept rock epics of yore (think Physical Graffiti or Bitches Brew), it captures them at their most sprawling and ambitious, boldly pushing themselves towards more adventurous horizons.” 

Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala

Releasing the Big Star set in the same week as the long-awaited Beatles remasters was a bold move. It appealed to me, since the massive pre-press for the Beatles was driving me crazy. I love it – but I know those stories! While most went to Let It Be, I went to “Don’t Lie To Me” from Big Star’s #1 Record (Stax Records, 1972) – the title, not chart position.

“Don’t Lie To Me” is a Big Star classic, Led Zeppelinish in it’s use of pop music and perfect in it’s distorted backing track. It follows “In the Street” that you know as the theme of That 70’s Show as redone by Cheap Trick. Big Star is one of those bands where the cliche line that REM’s Pete Buck likes to use from time to time: “Only 1000 people bought the first Big Star record but every one of them went out and started a band. (…apologies to the Velvet Underground).

That was certainly true in my case. My 14 year-old opinion of music, before Big Star, had previously been influenced by only British bands plus the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and Creedence Clearwaer Revival. Playing in cover bands in the early & mid seventies, we slid in the occasional Big Star number – and people danced. I am quite sure I bought the Big Star album because it was the lead singer of the Boxtops. What I heard was altogether different. It was pop music that actually spoke to me as a listener and fan.

When I heard there was going to be a box set of the band that literally changed my life, I was a bit skeptical. I have purchased every version of every one of their albums, singles, demos and bootlegs that are available, or were at one time.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cheryl Pawelski, VP of A&R at Rhino (and compiler of the definitive boxset w/ book of The Band), was in charge of gathering material that would matter to the diehards but also appeal as a broad look at Big Star to younger people now searching out eclectic music of the 70s and 80s. Cheryl, along with director of A&R, Andrew Sandoval, sought out the assistance of John Fry, owner of Ardent Studio and the only person that may actually remember the events that produced the music in this box set. Instead of the usual presentation of LPs that were rereleased and in multiple remastered versions, Cheryl and her cohorts at Rhino chose to present the set as a series of demos, outtakes and issued tracks but in a focused and consistent order.

The early tracks from Alex Chilton and Chris Bell, before Big Star, are used sparingly, and only to set up the timeline in which they were written & recorded as the demos for the 3 officially released LPs. The rest follow through with presentations of the 3 Big Star confessionals – rare and unreleased. Most of these have been circulated but it is great to hear them in no hissy sound. It is almost like Alex was advising the compilers, though that could not have happened.

We all know that would never happen.

In the early 80s, I was one of the people who tried to revive Alex Chilton’s career at a time when he most needed it. He really was washing dishes at the Marie Antoinette Hotel…and refused any door back to the music business. As per usual, the timing was not right for Alex. Trying to talk to Alex then, and as well as these days, about his Boxtops and Big Star years and even his few albums that forayed between raw punk, pristine pop and deliberate fuck-ups, is difficult since he prefers to let sleeping dogs lie and his most recent released material pays homage to the jazz/torch song period of his parents days.

The 4th disc is the biggest surprise and will bring at least a few thousand to Amazon.com or their local record store – if one exists. Disc 4 is a compilation of several sets played by the trio of Alex Chilton, Andy Hummel and Jody Stephens at Lafayette’s Music Room in Memphis shortly after Chris Bell left the band and before they finished “Radio City”, their most commercial LP.

Due to Stax, Ardent Records and management problems, Big Star never got proper distribution or got exposure to the public. The raw sound of Alex’s guitar with the solid bass and drums show how this band, if they had reached a larger audience could be the oft-predicted American Beatles, American Led Zeppelin, etc. This may have happened if Chris Bell had lived and stayed with the band. From the “CD extra” portion of Keep Your Eye On the Sky, you can see the band as they prepare to record and rehearse to the track of “Thirteen”. They look happy, not stoned, just glad to be making a record they actually heard in their heads.

OK, I may not be the best neutral judge of this set but the music on this collection is for the bases of Big Star/Chilton fans. While the real clinchers in this set are the 4th CD, the packaging and liner notes, the rare photos and in-depth interviews with almost everyone involved, except Alex or Chris, help true to piece together a story that is not just musical but personal – like the feelings Chris and Alex brought to their tracks.

In this day and age of throw away hits, autotune and the public ignoring radio in droves, this box set stands as a historical statement. That so many people offered comments – not Alex of course, but everyone else who could remember those days, says a lot. At least Alex is making the kind of money from film and commercial licenses to probably live a comfortable, not rich, life.

He deserves it.

[via Cracked]

Pitchfork pays homage by bestowing  a 10.0 on the record. I was always a Check Your Head guy, but Paul’s Boutique is pretty nasty.  It was around these albums though, that I began to wonder if the Beastie Boys (as great as they are) would ever mix up their rhyming pattern or style. The answer was sadly no.

Twenty years later, nobody’s asking that question. Paul’s Boutique is a landmark in the art of sampling, a reinvention of a group that looked like it was heading for a gimmicky, early dead-end, and a harbinger of the pop-culture obsessions and referential touchstones that would come to define the ensuing decades’ postmodern identity as sure as “The Simpsons” and Quentin Tarantino did. It’s an album so packed with lyrical and musical asides, namedrops, and quotations that you could lose an entire day going through its Wikipedia page and looking up all the references; “The Sounds of Science” alone redirects you to the entries for Cheech Wizard, Shea Stadium, condoms, Robotron: 2084, Galileo, and Jesus Christ. That density, sprawl, and information-overload structure was one of the reasons some fans were reluctant to climb on board. But by extending Steinski’s rapid-fire sound-bite hip-hop aesthetic over the course of an entire album, the Beastie Boys and the Dust Brothers more than assured that a generally positive first impression would eventually lead to a listener’s dedicated, zealous headlong dive into the record’s endlessly-quotable deep end.

There’s lots to love about this record.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Buy it from Insound | Download it from eMusic

Mostly, I think because Lewis is interested in a southern musical stew throwing country, blues, gospel and rock into a pot and seeing what works. It’s obvious these are the genres of music that have influenced and moved her musical outlook.  As a solo artist she is allowed to pursue what interests her the most, with Rilo Kiley it’s almost like she is forced to reign it in for the sake of everyone else in the band.

The album has plenty of highlights and stretches what we have come to expect from Lewis.  If before this album I thought she was a capable front woman for a band or need the soulfulness of The Watson Twins as a crutch, I’m now more than curious about what her future holds.  In many ways this album has raised her ceiling – she’s like a poor woman’s Neko Case.  And I don’t mean that as an insult, but rather the highest compliment I could give a female country artist.

There are a few throw away songs on this album, not that the songs are bad per say, but that I just don’t care for them because they are uninteresting in a pedantic way (”Pretty Bird,” “Bad Man’s World” and “Black Sand” come to mind).

The best songs here have those awkward phrasings and lyrics, that while on her last album seemed to be a detriment, here it works in her favor.  It gives the album personality and a certain quirky charm.  It also helps that several songs shift genres over the course of their duration – “Jack Killed Mom,” and “Acid Tongue” are the best examples of the wildly shifting sounds at work.

Anyway, this wasn’t meant to be a fullblown review of Jenny’s new album.  I came to praise her duet with Elvis Costello on “Carpetbagger.”

Though I don’t think she’ll ever want to be a prototypical Nashville country star, the child-actress raised in Hollywood could be considered something of a country music carpetbagger.  Which is not to say her love of southern musical culture isn’t genuine, I think she combines those tropes better and in a more cohesive sound than many who try.

“Carpetbaggers” is an uptempo rocker and stolen from Elvis Costello.  Even at his age his voice is one for the ages – smoothed out but still nasally. It’s like he’s not even trying in this song and yet, I don’t think it would nearly work as well without him.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Knowledge bomb alert: Carpetbagger, while now considered a derisive term for any politician running for office in a district other than their own, i.e. Hillary Clinton running for Senator of New York, the term was originally given to Northerners who moved south during Reconstruction (1865-1877).  Southerners were worried that white republicans from the north (who came with their belongings in travel carpetbags) were going to loot and plunder their defeated lands.  Which is probably true, since with a coalition of freed slaves and scalawags (southerns who supporter reconstruction) they attempted to politically control confederate states.

Mp3: Jenny Lewis – “Carpetbaggers”

Kaufman wrote the films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Human Nature, Confessions of a Dangerous mind and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A.O. Scott liked it at Cannes. The film will be out in limited release (NY & LA?) on Oct 24.

Initially riding to the mainstream on the wave that carried fellow alternative country acts like Wilco and Bright Eyes to the public�s ears, My Morning Jacket have, through their past couple albums, deftly eluded sonic type casting.

Front man and chief songwriter Jim James is amusingly agile at connecting weird imagery to lyrical snippets meditating on love, innocence, and the other usual suspects of the country canon. And it is this very adept sense of juxtaposition that shines brilliantly on MMJ�s newest album, Evil Urges.

But let’s back up a bit.

Their 2003 major label debut It Still Moves culled the best of what garnered their acclaim both at home and abroad from their first two albums, The Tennessee Fire and At Dawn (introspective tunes sung to a quiet, starry summer night cast across a subdued wash of traditional southern instruments: swells of lap steel washing over finger-picked guitar with the occasional harmonica wail) and took the country mouse sound and brought it charging to the city.

James still drowned his voice in reverb (notably recorded in a empty grain silo), but the band itself took it upon themselves to bolster the well crafted songs with classic rock bombast, igniting tunes such as �Magheeta� and �Run Thru� to incendiary levels.

Z followed in 2006, leaving those that had been weaned on their southern stylings a little nervous. Much of the acoustic honesty of the band�s core sound was left adrift on tunes built around synthesizers or drum loops. Surely James had lost none of his craft, but Z found him playing with in a new sonic sandbox and evidently having a blast. Consider �Off the Record,� a upbeat song bolstered by a reggae influenced groove that would crash into spaced out jam before ebbing into the demented calliope sound of �Into the Woods� which contains perhaps one of James�s stylistically telling lyrics: �A kitten on fire/ a baby in a blender/ Both sound sweet/ as a night of surrender.�

All of these elements are present in one form or another on their latest album, but MMJ aren’t looking to the past. Instead, they are pushing ahead.

The title track opens Evil Urges with a tight (live) drum groove and synth riff, but any fears the listener might have of the band�s southern sounds being overgrown by the wires of a studio are quickly allayed as the guitars gradually enter over subtle string swells.

Then perhaps the newest character to the My Morning Jacket sound enters which could be the biggest shock of the whole album: Jim James voice wails into the first verse, riding high and out front. Gone is the trademark echo chamber sound of the vocals, replaced instead by a bold assertion of falsetto singing. Let the Prince comparisons run wild. Over the course of the song, James�s voice trades places back and forth with the pinched, Grateful Dead-esque twin guitar lines as the loftiest element of the music. The band again asserts its staple sound midway through the song, dropping into a double time break for the guitars to stage a two barreled galloping riff that�ll leave concert-goers sorely missing the long haired locks of the newly groomed band.

Mp3: My Morning Jacket – “Evil Urges”

The follow-up second track finds Jim James�s raising his freak flag a little higher up the poll. Comparisons to Wayne Coyne lung-full-of-pot-smoke voice has always dogged James�s vocal delivery among critics, but here we see the band following suit with �Touch Me I�m Going to Scream Pt.1,� operating fiercely within the Flaming Lips vein. Live drums continue to mimic programmed beats while synth-keys and processed bass provide the digital slurps of electronica during the chorus, but we never venture too far from the roots planted back in the band�s earliest records; twangy finger picked guitar still remains at the center of the harmony.

The third song, �Highly Suspicious� will surely be the most polarizing of songs to longtime fans. Thick distorted guitar hits and falsetto lyrics repeating �Peanut butter pudding surprise� punctuated by Tigger-esque giggles might sound like capsule description of the new Ween single, but rather it defines the moment at which the listener will either dismiss or embrace this album. It is surely the furthest away from the group�s core sound, but this writer personally digs the song (while hoping the band remains vigilant against taking this type of song as the singular direction for its follow-up album. After all, there is a reason why Ween only includes one or two twisted rockers like this on each of their albums�).

To those who could swallow �Highly Suspicious� and even keep chewing, the remainder of the album is their oyster, packed with pearls of songs that revel in the new wave southern nostalgia sound cultivated since the band�s inception. What�s most striking is that, after the triple fisted bizarre assault of the first three tracks, how comfortably the remainder of the album would fit with the band�s older material. Jangling guitars ride assertive bass and synth lines before crashing into classically structured country choruses. The album� first single, �I�m Amazed,� could very well have been pulled from the It Still Moves sessions.

James even douses his voice in reverb (though never cocooning himself in a silo as before). Vocal harmonies and strings recall the transcendent country laid down during Neil Young�s Harvest sessions on �Thank You Too!�. �Librarian,� the minor keyed rumination on a beautiful librarian ensconced within the halls of books, might have even fit on At Dawn with its stripped down arrangement.

It should also be noted how well the tracks on this album are sequenced. While their past two albums were similarly conducive to the �Just push play� approach, given the breadth of style hops they make, its impressive how well this album flows from beginning to end. The two most straight-ahead rocking tunes (minus the anomaly of �Highly Suspicious�) in the set (�Aluminum Park� and �Remnants�) are reserved until the final third of the album. Their past two albums have put the heavier tunes towards the middle (�Run Thru� and �Off the Record� from It Still Moves and Z respectively) to keep the listener rolling through to the second side, but here, it seems to just work.

Mostly low-key songs inhabit the midsection of the album. It is truly indicative of James�s songwriting chops how well the quieter songs like �Sec Walkin� and the aforementioned �Librarian� keep the listeners attention. But it is this general lull that makes the resurgence of electric rocking most effective as the band bears down on the closing jam and bookend track �Touch Me I�m Going to Scream Pt. 2,� an eight minute tune that recalls the epic �Cobra� from the Chocolate and Ice EP.

The band has said repeatedly in interviews that they have little interest in making the same album with the same songs over and over. And yet it is a testament to their craft that they can retain their country stylings while transplanting them to places Neil Young could never have dreamed of. While the songs (and the bandmates themselves) might be leaving their shaggier aesthetics to their wake as the continue to record in the major label system, the discerning listener should be grateful that a band of this caliber can continue to make music true to themselves while stretching well beyond boundaries that might be imposed by their humble shoe/star gazing origins.

Download:
ZIP: My Morning Jacket-�Bonnaroo 2008, 6-13-08) (Left-Click)

Set I: Evil Urges, Off the Record, Gideon, Hot Fun (Sly & the Family Stone)* , Highly Suspicious, What a Wonderful Man, I�m Amazed, Thank You Too, Touch Me Pt 1, Sec Walkin, Golden, Two Halves, Laylow, Hit it and Quit it (Funkadelic), Tyrone (Erykah Badu), Steam Engine – with drum solo, Anytime, Aluminum Park, Easy Morning Rebel*, Dancefloors*, One Big Holiday**

Set II: Cold Sweat (James Brown)*, Get Down On It (Kool and the Gang)* , Across 110th Street (Bobby Womack & Peace)*, Phone Went West, Mahgeetah, Oh Sweet Nuthin (Velvet Underground), Librarian, Bermuda Highway#, Dondante, Run Thru, Smokin from Shootin, Touch Me Pt 2, Home Sweet Home (M�tley Cr�e)$

[via]