We’re still patiently waiting on new arrivals from the mighty Honest Jon’s label (Surely there must be some kind of deal we can strike, Damon, to prioritize the arrival of the London is the Place For Me series?) but I wanted to take a few moments to call out an exceptional new HJ comp that’s well worth your time: The World is Shaking: Cubanismo from the Congo, 1954 – 1955. This collection fulfills all my Awesome Comp Rules: it focuses on an unbelievably obscure strand of music. It is particular to a region. It has more than two titles, one of which is a date. One day I am going to develop a random-comp-title-generator website to accommodate this fetish. Let it End in Ecstasy: Expat French New Wave from Belgium, 1978 – 1984. But I digress.

What’s important here is the music, and The World is Shaking is as close to perfect as any recent comp I’ve heard. The songs are fantastically scratchy, clearly mastered from old vinyl or cracking tape reels. Like many of the other recent Honest Jon’s comps, these songs come from the ancient archives of EMI, which HJ recently acquired.

The Honest Jon’s site does a better job of laying out the historical context than I ever could but, in brief: in the mid 50s, African workers began flocking to the city of Leopoldville (what today is called Kinshasa) in search of factory jobs. Slowly, a metropolitan nightlife scene began developing, with clubs devoted to performing traditional African music with a hip flair. Add to this the easy access to 78s of Latin American music, and what you’ve got is an irresistible mix of styles and sounds.

Listen to “Matete Paris,” that sawing violin, the ululating vocal, that weird stalking guitar part in the background — its about six different genres at once, all battling for supremacy. The song right after it sounds like highlife, but with the swagger and sway of tango. The vocal on “Bengela Ngai Bosele” could have been lifted from the Ethiopiques series. Cubanismo is full of moments like this, making for a fascinating, essential listen.

So… any good new releases today?

Obviously, today is Sony day, which sees a slew of popular — and not-so-popular — titles hit the site. There is a kind of giddy rush that comes from seeing, say, Bitches Brew or the first Stone Roses record turn up, and I’m already figuring my personal Save for Later list is going to grow exponentially in the days to come.

I don’t want to dwell too long on specific titles. Instead, I thought I’d point out a few of the broader features we assigned as a part of this label rollout.

Our coverage of the Sony catalog breaks out a couple of different ways. First, there’s our Six Degrees series, which explores the often unlikely connections between popular records and indie favorites.

The first batch of eMusic Six Degrees includes:

The Clash, London Calling
Sly & the Family Stone, There’s a Riot Goin’ On
Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska
Glenn Gould, The Goldberg Variations
Arcade Fire, Funeral
Carole King, Tapestry
Jeff Buckley, Grace
Miles Davis, Nefertiti
Kings of Leon, Aha Shake Heartbreak
Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors
Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Nas, Illmatic
Panda Bear, Person Pitch
Michael Jackson, Off the Wall

We’ve also launched a series called eMusic Icons — guided, curated discographies of musical giants. On this tip, I have to make special mention of Douglas Wolk’s exhaustive, unblinking look at the career of Bob Dylan. Douglas reviewed every Bob Dylan album — the good, the bad and the embarrassing — and broke the catalog out into a guide sure to be valuable to Dylan newcomers and long-timers alike.

Kevin Whitehead gives similar insight to the Miles Davis catalog — records I, for one, have long wanted to check out but have been stymied on where to start. In the coming weeks, you’ll be seeing Icon hubs from longtime favorites like Pavement and the Pixies. Our Icon series right now is as follows:

Bob Dylan
The Clash
Miles Davis
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Bernstein
A Tribe Called Quest
Bruce Springsteen
Michael Jackson
Simon & Garfunkel
Elvis Presley
Harry Nilsson

Just yesterday afternoon, all of us here in the editorial department were talking about Michael Jackson’s upcoming shows at the O2 Arena in London. The tone of the conversation skewed exactly as you may have guessed — rife with skepticism that the shows would actually come off, or wondering what they might look like if they did.

Just a few short hours later came the news from LA that Jackson — undeniably one of the only pop stars of the last 20 years as big, if not bigger, than the Beatles — had died. It’s weird, head-splitting news, and every media outlet in the world is scrambling to come up with a different spin on Jackson’s life and legacy.

While we don’t want to add to the torrent, we do want to take a minute to give you an advance look at something we had assigned as part of our upcoming Sony coverage: NY Daily News pop critic Jim Farber’s guide to the music of Michael Jackson — both the successes and the missteps. Bear in mind that he wrote this before Michael’s passing, so some of the language will be changed before it appears next week. But it seemed appropriate to post it now, and to take a look back on Jackson’s music and legacy.

Also, on a personal note, I’ve been kind of marveling all over again at the pop majesty of songs like “Billie Jean” or the lovely, haunting “Human Nature.” I’ve listened to both over the last 24 hours, and both still stand to me as masterpieces of pop construction, every tiny piece perfectly in-place.

Hope you enjoy Jim’s piece.

The Music of Michael Jackson

Before the trials and the tabloids, Michael Jackson made music more worthy of chatter and awe than all of his scandals put combined. The music Jackson recorded as an adult – starting with his first, grown-up solo effort on 1979’s “Off The Wall” – made him the most beloved, visionary and musically comprehensive African-American pop idol of the last half-century. At his peak – during the 1982-4 juggernaut of Thriller – he enjoyed a popularity, and cultural impact, exceeded only by Elvis and The Beatles.

Unlike The Beatles, however, Jackson didn’t sustain an untarnished record of musical excellence. More like Elvis, he has swung wildly from genius to punchline and back again – sometimes over the course of the same CD. For that reason, it’s especially important to rate Jackson’s solo output from “most essential” to “least.” But to do so, one has to navigating the swells and dips of his talent with a surfer’s care. Ultimately, following the story of Jackson’s musical works reads as a cautionary tale, with most of his greatest efforts arriving at the start.

“Off The Wall” (1979)

Jackson’s Off The Wall had the brashness of the truest debut. Released at the close of the ‘70s when he was just 21 years old, “Wall” not only established Jackson as a man – instead of the boy he’d been with his brothers – it set the bar high for all of his solo albums to come.

Though the album arrived at the pinnacle of disco — and so incorporated its swirling strings and club-driven beats — the sound Jackson and producer Quincy Jones devised seems in no way tied to its time. Opening cut, “Don’t Stop ‘Till You Get Enough,” sets the tone, starting with Jackson lost to his passion in a half-stuttered speech that spews over a bass line punching with funk. From there, strings swing in, a guitar begins its sexy sway and the bass takes flight, Jackson topping them with an orgasmic cry.

There’s a low-down quality to the needs expressed here, tempered by an elegance in both Jones’ production and Jackson’s fleet falsetto. It’s forceful and beautiful at once, a balance that enlivened all ten tracks on “Wall.” Jones brought a jazz sophistication to the arrangements, especially in the liquid keyboards of “I Can’t Help It” and the sneaky tune of “Rock With You.”

Given the album’s rare unification of pop, jazz, funk and disco, it’s no wonder it sold over 5 million copies and nabbed an armload of Grammys. It also established the pattern and style most observers felt Jackson perfected on Thriller. To me, however, the freshness of the sound, and the surprise of its maturity, makes “Wall” even more cherishable than the deservedly worshipped work that followed.

“Thriller” (1982)

Buoyed by the mega-success of Off The Wall, Jackson and producer Jones sought to up the stakes in every way with “Thriller.” The songs stretched on longer, the beats hit harder, and the melodies swung for the rafters.

While all those elements may have aligned in perfect harmony, there’s no way Thriller would have had the history-altering impact it had without a host of other factors, chief among them Jackson’s groundbreaking videos for “Billie Jean” and “Beat It,” along with Jackson’s performance of the moonwalk on the Motown 25th Anniversary Special — a feat that made him seem not only to defy gravity but to transcend the bounds of humanity.

Just as “Don’t Stop” did for “Off The Wall,” the new disc’s “Wanna Be Starting Something” kicked things off decisively, declaring its fortitude and durability right in its title. The bass line’s rhythm had both dance-floor resonance and pop panache. But for an album with just ten tracks, there’s a bit of filler here as well. “The Girl Is Mine” repeats the trick on “Wall” of bringing Paul McCartney in to contribute to a track (as well as to bolster Jackson’s attempt to equate himself with a Beatle). And while the title track may be propulsive, the use of Vincent Price as a narrator smacks of kitsch.

Still, not since the Stones scored a one/two punch with the singles “Bitch” and “Brown Sugar” in 1971 has a pop act had the back-to-back brilliance of “Billie Jean” and “Beat It.” The former boasted rhythms and hooks like nothing else, while “Beat It” brought rock ‘n roll into Jackson’s realm with an organic power he has never equaled. Popularity isn’t necessarily a measure of excellence (I call to the stand “Frampton Comes Alive”), but in the case of Thriller, the disc’s commercial dominance equals its role as peerless pop.

“Bad” (1987)

Michael Jackson had already started to look strikingly different in a video for the song “Bad” that preceded the album’s release. His nose had been thinned to achieve a regal refinement, his chin seemed more chiseled and his eyes widened into a scared, doe-in-the-headlights stare. But if all those alterations signaled the start of a long, and increasingly alarming, series of self-mutilations, those acts had yet to seriously mar his art. Perhaps hobbled by the impossibility of following up Thriller, Jackson and producer Jones did choke on the opening of Bad. It begins awkwardly, with the repetitive title track. But the quality of the melodies ticks up sharply from there; Jackson stressed melodic pop this time over the more daring dance rhythms or jazzier twists of the disc’s predecessors. There’s a lighter sound to songs like “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Liberian Girl,” or the sweet ballad “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.”

On the other hand, “Another Part of Me” hits the dance floor hard and recalls the more undulating parts of Off The Wall, while “Smooth Criminal” expands on the dynamics and tension of “Billie Jean” with a riffing texture all its own.

Still, one song (“Man in the Mirror”) indicates the megalomania to come. Like many compositions that aim to shed light on the travails of the world, the song in fact amounts to an overheated reach for “importance,” a needy bid for the star to be seen as both a “serious artist” and a “good person.” The lyrics also seem ironic in the extreme, given Jackson’s new look: at this point, the star wasn’t trying to spiritually elevate what he saw in the mirror, but to physically erase it. But, at least for now, he still had a hold on his creative soul.

“Dangerous” (1991)

Jackson made one truly dangerous move on this album: He broke with collaborator Quincy Jones to hook up with “new jack swing” producer-of-that moment Teddy Riley. No wonder many sounds on the CD seem stuck in their time – especially those on the percussive end, including the ‘90s slapping rhythm of “Why You Wanna Trip On Me,” or the hollow, popping beat of “In The Closet.” What saves the albums are the melodic hooks in its more fluid tracks. “Remember The Time” has the swank of the hits off Wall, along with a bass line that demands movement.

Unfortunately, by this time in Jackson’s career we have to deal with too many songs about saving humanity (“Jam,” “Planet Earth” or “Heal The World”), not to mention a racial harmony number (“Black And White”) so over-stated, even the subtext of Jackson’s own crossover career can’t lend it nuance. Worse still is the tear-jerker “Gone Too Soon” which, if played at a funeral, would more likely inspire eye-rolls than tears.

Even with some of the album being unlistenable, Dangerous shows Jackson’s continued brio as a singer, not to mention his power as a rhythmic force – one that deserves better than Riley’s gimmicky beats.

“Blood on the Dance Floor” (1997)

Michael Jackson made an interesting move one year after looking back on his HIStory hits-and-more-set: He decided to let a group of star DJs have their way with six of his less celebrated songs, lending them each a trace of hip. Deconstruction specialists like Tony Moran, David Morales, Todd Terry and Wyclef Jean fiddled with with fairly recent Jackson tracks like “This Time Around,” “Stranger In Moscow” and “Earth Song.” It wasn’t his best material, but the added rhythms gave them at least a bit more verve. “Money” gets a spacey new sheen from Farley and Heller. Terry goosed “Stranger In Moscow” with a deep house beat. And even the icky “Earth Song” gained something from Hani’s trance-like new beat. To this, Jackson added five fresh songs, all of which only show a further ebbing of his originality.

“HIStory: Past Present & Future” (1995)

Michael Jackson didn’t do himself any favors by configuring HIStory as a double CD. Its first disc unfurls a hugely impressive collection of greatest hits. The second offers 15 new songs that don’t fare at all well by comparison. Jackson produced a lot of the new work himself, and since self-awareness and self-criticism have never been his strong points, it’s small wonder many tracks stumble into self-indulgence.

The new music’s main draw came in “Scream,” a tete-a-tete between Michael and sister Janet (then a bigger, and far hipper, star). Unfortunately, their union sounded shrill and overblown, even as produced by Janet’s normally on-point sonic sculptors, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. From there, things go downhill fast. Much of the music plays either to Jackson’s cornier or more self-righteous sides. For the former, we have “Earth Song” (a condescending environmentalist tome). For the latter, there’s “Tabloid Junkie” (about his problems, not ours), plus a swipe at an old business manager who allegedly did him wrong: “D.S.”

The cover of “Come Together” once again represents a strained attempt for Jackson to sell himself as a one man Fab Four, while “You Are Not Alone” (penned by R. Kelly) and “Childhood” (from the movie “Free Willie”) break the bank on kitsch. It all skids to a sad close in “Smile,” a cover of the song associated with Charlie Chaplin. Jackson cries through the piece in a way so self-pitying and solipsistic he seems almost entirely lost to us by now.

“Invincible” (2001)

Quick: name one song from this album. Even the most ardent pop fans would have trouble – and for good reason. Nothing on Invincible sticks. One sign of trouble from the start: You’ll find the most crowded songwriting credits on any Jackson disc of his adult career, indicating its over-thought, over-worked nature. The beats on the disc – many of which were created by Rodney Jerkins – seem even more mechanical than the ones Teddy Riley devised for Dangerous. On top of that, the songs that Jerkins and so many others penned seem like flat re-workings of pieces we’ve heard from the star before. At one point, (the finale, “Threatened”) Jackson drags in an old Rod Serling voice-over to try and revive the commercial ka-ching of Vincent Price’s turn on “Thriller.”

Even Jackson’s voice seems to have diminished. He sounds uncomfortably pinched, perhaps as a result of his apparent nose and facial work. The result brings to mind an actress who has pulled her face so tight she’s incapable of her greatest and most necessary asset: expression.

My music listening has been split between three artists the past month: the Neil Young Archives set (incredible; find the Riverboat performance of “Expecting to Fly” ASAP), Let’s Wrestle’s new one, coming next week (awesome awesome awesome); and Nite Jewel’s “Lover,” from her Good Evening record. The album kinda blows, but “Lover,” the album’s closer, is spectacular, an echo of the Motels (trainspotted by my gf Kali) and this beautiful, reverbed thing that’s nothing but nonstop ’80s melancholy and oodles of kisses. Unfortunately the video — embedded above — sucks (watching it for the first time this morning worrying that it might ruin the song for me; it came close) so just listen but don’t watch. And then cherrypick from the album itself.

PS: Side note on Nite Jewel. Joe saw her — it is just one woman — perform at Other Music earlier this year and compared it to the Deep House Dish performances on SNL. If you’re a regular SNL watcher, you understand exactly what he means. Still, this song is perfecto.

I was listening to this Turkish psych comp on the subway this morning (like ya do), thinking about recent obsessions (the comp is called Obsession) and how I’d fallen woefully out of the loop these past few weeks away from the eMusic hivemind. I’d been spending most of my downtime doing crosswords, eating exotic/borderline gross snacks and weeping over my dead laptop. When I got back into my trusty cube, I didn’t even know where to start.

Somehow, though, within two days I’ve already been sucked wholesale into a few fierce musical obsessions. And I couldn’t be happier.

Continue reading ‘obsessions’

Last month in honor of Mothers Day we took a look at some of the meanest moms in literature. Now it’s dad’s turn. Among this crop of nasty paternal figures is one extreme example of an overly-involved parent, a father who sells his wife and daughter off to the highest bidder, and, last but certainly not least, there’s the dad who rapes and impregnates his own daughter. Bleak. Check out the full list of evil dads here.

Of course, there are a bunch of dads missing from this list of six. I think vast chunks of works by writers from Charles Dickens to Pat Conroy feature an array of sinister father figures. And then there’s the puritanical title character of Christina Stead’s forgotten 1940s masterpiece, The Man Who Loved Children. And who can forget about Jack Torrance from The Shining? I certainly can’t. I still have nightmares…

If nothing else, a foray into these books will certainly help you appreciate how great your own dad is. Love you, Dad! Happy Fathers Day to all.

So it would be disingenuous for me to write a post about the awesome Tic Tac Totally label without first mentioning that it was Alex who first brought it to my attention. I’ve been really, really, really into the return-to-garbage aesthetic that’s been creeping back across indie rock lately, and almost every album on Tic Tac hews to that principle with ferocity.

The big buzzy record on TTT right now is So Cow, and it’s clear why. The group couples a delightfully shambling aesthetic with endlessly hooky compositions, sounding like some weird hybrid of The Lucksmiths and Kleenex Girl Wonder.

I’d also set some time aside for the terrifically trashy Bare Wires: spindly punk guitars, sloppy rhythms and reverb-drenched vocals. Just lovely.

Matt K. Shrugg’s “We Can Just Lie” is big and brawling, lots of yelling over 12-ton guitars and Test Patterns are a straight punk sugar rush. Check ‘em out!

Nothin but good things to say about this – via Peter Eavis

Just wanted to give a shoutout to one of my favorite new favorite tumblrs, Little Deaths. It’s basically structured like an old-fashioned mp3 blog: post one song, gab about it a little. As the owner of the tumblr writes:

“A good song is like a good lay; it stands alone, bears repeating, and often plays out in an automobile.

This here nook of the internet aims to celebrate the majesty, tragedy and devastating beauty of the well-written song.

One song, a bunch of words and a pretty picture. Every day.

Really, I should just let the site speak for itself, but my favorite part is how genuinely offbeat and goofy the musings that accompany the songs often are. Some examples:

On a calypso song called “Jack Palance”:
“Acting is like singing, but with your face.”

On a Jane Birkin song:
“This song, “Jane B.” is taken from Birkin’s 1969 debut album Jane Birkin Serge Gainsbourg. My french is a little rusty, but as best I can tell Birkin sings about how awesome she is, how blue her eyes are, how much she loves me, and basically how much everyone wants to nail her in general.”

On a Lalo Schifrin song:
“Lean, mean Argentine Lalo Schifrin is best known for composing the theme for Mission: Impossible, which, perhaps like you, I love to play really loud as I take off my pants while raising my eyebrows.”

Silly, funny, off-the-cuff, great. Small pleasures abound.

That’s all for now!

Via Royal Scourge

Nothing big today, but as always there’s good stuff to be had…

Hatcham Social, You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hid the Soil – These guys’ Orange Juicy EP was a big hit with us last year, and this is their full-length. I haven’t listened to this before right this minute.  This guy still sounds like Edwyn Collins, to the point of absurdity. Songs are just right, though; brittle emotions sweetly sung, diffidently shuffling tempos, and earwormy bass lines.

Big Star, #1 Record/Radio City – We already have this album on the site! We have it! Again! Now it’s unnecessarily on one disc! Except, it already was (?) I don’t get this reissue at all! “Thirteen” is still on this album, though! It’s still good!

Move Merchants, Move Merchants – Very throwbacky (like 1988 throwback, not 1994) hip hop, with good rhyming and GREAT scratching. Fun stuff.

Juicy J, Hustle Till I Die – Socially irresponsible Southern rap from Three 6 Mafia that assuredly no one here will like except me.

Spinal Tap, Back From the Dead The version of “Short and Sweet” here ft. John Mayer and Steve Vai. Is it “ironic” guitar soloing? A cursory listen proves impossible to discern. These are weird,  Sunday-morning-NPR-blues rerecords of the originals, apparently to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original. It’s WTF Rerelease Day on eMusic!

Andre Previn, Joe Pass, Ray Brown, After Hours – Though this cover surely wins some sad award for sheer awfulness, the record itself is breezy, classy, and fun. Not necessarily my thing, but worth it for the intrigued.

Oscar Peterson,  Last Call At the Blue Note – One of a bunch of classic Oscar Peterson records we got in today.

Anything else catch people’s ears?

As we come to the close of another week, we wanted to shine the light on a few records that may have fallen through the cracks — lovely, small albums that deserve a bit of spotlighting. They pretty much range across all genres, and the only thing they really share is that we like them all lots.

We’ll start with Joe’s picks after the jump.

Continue reading ‘The Friday Round-Up’

Hey guys. So Monday morning from 10am – 11am, 17dots will be down for routine maintenance. We know that the timing on this is not the greatest, so we thought we’d warn you about it now.

There’s a reason: As you’ve probably noticed, the site has been running more slowly due to the increased traffic. This upgrade will make the site more stable, and will update certain features of WordPress. We just wanted to let all of you know that this was going to be happening in advance, and we are hoping to have the site back up after maintenance as quickly as possible.

You might recognize Haven Kimmel from her ridiculously adorable baby photo, which became the cover of her mega-bestselling memoir, A Girl Named Zippy. She’s also written some incredible novels (The Solace of Leaving Early changed my life, truly) that reveal her wonderful contradictions. Haven is girlishly charming, but her writing is both worldly and thought-provoking. She’s hilarious and bubbly and fun, but her intensity is undeniable. Haven recently spoke to eMusic’s Elizabeth Gold in what has to be one of my favorite interviews ever.

You can find the full Q&A here, but see below for a few choice Havenisms.

On the process of writing fiction:

At a critical moment in The Solace of Leaving Early I realized, after probably an hour of writing, that I’d been sitting on the very edge of my desk chair, and I’d been frantically bouncing my knees against the bottom of my desk, which is just crazy behavior. Of course I continued to do it until I finished the chapter, and then I laid face down in the dirt and wept until the authorities arrived. Naturally, I would choose to do this sort of thing over the joy of non-fiction, every day, no doubt about it.

On researching (or over-researching):

How heavily do I research my fiction? I’m imagining what would happen if I tried answering, “Just, you know, the normal amount.” Everyone who knows me would riot. Augusten Burroughs is my partially-absorbed fetal twin, and has known my comings and goings every day for the past eight years. We recently did an event together, and he was trying to explain to the audience that I might appear to be a normal person but actually I’m freakish and terrifying — I think those were the adjectives he used. He said, “Take this for instance. She decides to write a book about pool, you know, green felt, balls, a stick — anyone with a penis can play it. So she learned string theory.”

I don’t know how it took me almost two weeks to stumble across this but, man, am I glad I did. In this awesomely artless video, Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison takes a breathless spin through Neutral Milk Hotel’s awesome and underrated “Song Against Sex.” FRabbit have their own “song against sex,” of course, and its name is “Keep Yourself Warm.” The way Hutchison handles this one, though, makes me think they should consider adding it to their live repertoire.

Orca, please

So the biggest news in today’s new arrivals is undoubtedly the Dirty Projectors’ latest. Message board nerds have been hailing it as a major achievement ever since it leaked (two months ago). Of course, said message board nerds are now retreating on their claims, just in time for the other 98 percent of the world to hear it — on its release date. Brave new world we live in. (Side note: just checked Pitchfork, and whaddya know.)

Anyway, since I am clearly one of those message board nerds, here’s the opinion you didn’t ask for: pretty much exactly like Merriweather Post Pavilion, another record that hit the world with an enormous critical buzz trailing it, this record has exactly three mind-blowingly awesome songs. They are the first, the second, and the fourth. The rest of this just sounds suffocatingly overwrought to me — and I don’t mean that at all in the emotional sense of that word. More layers, more sections, more filigree doesn”t (necessarily) mean better. Also, when Dave Longstreth starts trilling, I kind of want to duck and hide from my speakers.

Bullshit rumination: it seems to me that overhyped records these days are either 1) over-embroidered to the point of claustrophobia (see: this one, Grizzly Bear’s latest, which I like a LOT more than this one) or 2) the exact opposite; forcedly lo-fi and slapdash to the point of protesting too much — hello, Wavves! Thoughts?

Other stuff today:

Mos Def, The Ecstatic – I haven’t listened to this yet. Joe played me a track where Mos Def was actually rapping, and it sounded like actual rapping, not “hoogity boogity” sub-Cab Calloway bullshit or bad singing or awkward reggae toasting. I also didn’t hear any Mudvayne guitars or meandering horn solos. So, plus on that one. Maybe there are some actual beats on this one!

………..Maybe I’ll just go listen to Black On Both Sides again.

Andy Milne, Where Is Pannonica? – This sounds nice — cocktail-piano jazz turned into modernist paint splashes. Rob? Little help??

British Sea Power, Man of Aran – I have never listened to this band. I have never been able to get over A) their name and B) the fact that they actually called a record Do You Like Rock Music? These seem like solid reasons to me. Anyone wanna tell me why I’m being an idiot??

DJ Quik & Kurupt, BlaQKout – This album is so, so, so, SO much better than that other record called with Blackout that also featured rappers whose fame peaked before the second Clinton Administration. DJ Quik just refuses to stop. “Ohh” is my pick of the day — just a headspinning break. Kurupt sounds better than he has since I don’t know. But a long time. If you have even the slightest affinity for West Coast rap, download.

The Beets, Spit In The Face of People Who Don’t Want to Be Cool – Have seen these dudes live twice, and both times they have annoyed me. Will give the record a chance, though — “Happy But On My Way” is a jam.

What else did we find?

A deeply weird and haunting clusterfuck of an avant-garde record came into eMusic on Friday. It is filed under Jazz, but the only distant relation it bears to Jazz is the fact that it is completely improvised. Otherwise, it lays about thirty miles safely outside of any genre borders. It is called The Songs, and it sounds sort of like standing outside of a row of adjacent practice rooms in a conservatory: in one, a drummer is working on his fills; in the next, a couple of wobbly-voiced female singers attempt to nail the harmonies on their English madrigal, and in next two rooms, a fidgety nine-year-old restlessly plucks his violin and a high-schooler learns how to make a sound on a trumpet. Oh, and then the hippie dude wanders in from the campus green and starts hitting his damn bongoes.

What The Songs is: a collaboration recorded in 1967 by the poet Alan Sondheim and the improvisatory free-jazz collective Ritual All 770. Nurse With Wound, the freaky Krautrock/free-jazz/industrial/whatever project of Steven Stapleton, cited this album in its “list of seminal experimental recordings” in the sleeve of their first album, which solidified its status as a cult collector’s item. And, 40 years later, like a piece of recently unearthed, rotting hominid skull, here it is: a group of 60s hippies sitting around attempting to “reject the notion the notion that avant garde music was solely the realm of isolated academia” — via one long, loooong completely improvised jam session.

Sound completely excruciating? It might be, if these guys weren’t fabulous musicians on top of being stoned out of their minds. But the fact that free of the haze of psychotropics, they were probably top-shelf players gives this session a weird, appealing, loose-tightness. Everything is always falling apart, but it never does so completely — they are listening to each other, and you can tell. The session is broken up into ten digestible chunks, but I recommend putting the whole thing and, in the words of Officer Lou, proud member of the Springfield Police Dept., let the mellow yellow get you by the brain banana.

Rabbit fencing

I had the somewhat disconcerting realization, when entering in my playlist for this week’s show, that basically all of my shows are the same, at least in shape. Start punky, get broody, dip into rap but segue away before I panic about losing anybody, than expand into utterly incomprehensible, “eh-whatever-let’s-play-this” randomness in the last twenty minutes. I have a formula, apparently, and it includes Kurt Vile and Guided By Voices.

As usual, you can stream the show directly here.

Note: The first song on this show, by White Denim, is something Yancey IMed me the other week, saying, “Listen to this song and tell me that this band couldn’t be as famous as they want to be.” Agreed — “Heart From Us All” is a building, cresting, joyfully sloppy, cockily strutting breeze of a song that peaks in the last minute with the appearance of vocals. You should feel your joy-meter slowly rising throughout.

Note Again: The minute-and-a-half Tom Waits song that I played here is fucking devastating. Devastating.

White Denim – Heart From Us All
Let’s Wrestle – I Won’t Lie To You
Dinosaur, Jr. – Little Fury Things
Nobunny – Motorhead With Me!
Jay Reatard – Oh, It’s Such A Shame
Liechtenstein – Postcard
Elvis Costello – Two Little Hitlers
The Kinks – Too Much On My Mind
Kris Kristofferson – The Junkie and The Juicehead, Minus Me
Cass McCombs – Meet Me Here At Dawn
Merle Haggard – Are the Good Times Really Over? (Live)
Tom Waits – I’m Still Here
Lightning Head – Ilu Baje (Sick State)
Orlando Julius All-Stars – My Girl
Bill Withers – Everybody’s Talkin
Main Source – Live At the Barbecue
Playboy Tre – Sideways
Elzhi – Motown 25 (Ft. Royce Da 5′9)
Tiye Phoenix – TIYETanium
Z-Ro – It’s A Shame
Nancy Sinatra – In Our Time
Joya Landis – Angel of The Morning
Dusty Springfield – Needle In The Haystack
Staple Singers – People, My People
J Dilla – People
Aceyalone, RJD2 – Angelina Valentina
Ghostface Killah – Child’s Play
Skream – Rottan
Lindstrom and Prins Thomas – Cisco
Sonic Youth – Do You Believe in Rapture?
Guided By Voices – The Best of Jill Hives
Bill Callahan – Jim McCain
Grizzly Bear – Dory
Codeine – Pea
Nadja – Pea (Codeine cover)
Kurt Vile – My Sympathy

There are few things I love more than Kiwipop, especially Kiwipop of a certain vintage (I’m already scheming ways I can get to New Zealand for the one-off Chills reunion). Two years ago the Flying Nun Box Set was a constant on my iPod, and I generally scour record stores for the odd album by Look Blue Go Purple or the Pin Group.

So you can imagine my ecstasy when, into my inbox this morning, came the brand new single by the Clean. Awesomely titled “In a Dreamlife, You Need a Rubber Soul,” the song is vintage Clean from the get-go. The album is out September 8 on Merge. You can hear the new song here. Get super psyched!

Quite the week for a lot of different reasons. There are some great new records to talk about this week, and I’m going to discuss them below. For Sony, note that both Cathy, head of communications here, and myself posted responses in this thread (mine is here). If we can direct conversation there and keep this about records, that would be cool. I don’t want these albums to get overlooked.

Elvis Costello, Secret Profane and Sugarcane: If there were ever a Music Dork Bingo (a la Hipster Bingo, etc), a tile would have to be: “Having a Favorite Late-Period Elvis Costello Record That You Like to Declare an Overlooked Treasure.” I think almost every Elvis record post-Armed Forces has at least some following along those lines. And certainly with a voice as iconic and moving as Elvis’, it’s an understandable reaction.

Me, I don’t have one. Though I consider myself a big Costello fan, I stick very much with My Aim Is True, This Year’s Model, Live at the Hollywood Bowl and Get Happy. I’ve dabbled with others (and have probably made declarations about a few), but when push comes to shove, this is what I listen to.

Will Secret Profane and Sugarcane make the cut? Probably not. It sounds pleasant and fine — nothing offensive in the least — but my heart is already kinda set on what Elvis Costello I like.

PS: And a big PS at that. Joe interviewed Elvis Costello last week in what was for sure the most nerve-wracking jukebox jury ever. Joe played Elvis some Loretta Lynn and Carter Family and things of that ilk, but he also played him Girls. The eMusic Selects Girls. And he liked it! Compared it to Spiritualized! Yay Elvis! Read it all here.

Eels, Hombre Lobo: I’ve tried with the Eels. Swear. I’ve tried as much as I can knowing that this is not music for me. I don’t even like Beck, so why would I like this? I can definitely hear the melancholy charm of “That Look You Gave That Guy” from the new album – and listening again, maybe I do like the Eels, or that song anyway. But overall, their popularity has always befuddled me.

Deastro, Moondagger: I’m very interested to hear reactions to this record, because I have a feeling we might disagree. I responded very much to the rough edges of Keeper’s — I liked the bleeding levels and the homegrown feel — whereas a lot of folks specifically disliked that part of the record. This album is way more pro — he signed to Ghostly International from eMusic Selects! — and for me it loses just a tiny bit of charm as a result. There are definitely songs that I really like (and I really do like the record), and I’m going to be watching with interest to see how much this record takes off. As you might guess, I’m rooting very hard for our dear Randy. The sweetest boy.

J Dilla, Jay Stay Paid: More Dilla beats. Not sure of the origin of these, but they sound great. Which surprises me 0.0%.

Lee Fields, My World: Oh hell yes. Do you like ’70s R&B that sounds like the greatest love you ever had wrote an album for you about how much they miss and love you, how the loss of your love would be the greatest pain they have ever felt, and they sing and play it like… I don’t even know what. Sexy wizards? Benevolent demons? Something AWESOME.

Thee Oh Sees, Help: Missed posting this one before as it came in late. West Coast psych-rock that’s all weed and nihilism. Very good.

The Intelligence, Fake Surfers: Always loved this band. I always refer to them as A Frames offshoots (because I love the A Frames unconditionally) but at this point they’re probably big enough on their own. It’s really messy pop-punk garage stuff, pre-Wavving Wavves and all of that shit. Unbelievably I haven’t listened to this record yet.

When Sony’s catalogue hits the site later this summer, what will you see? That’s the question the 17 Dots team has been working on, and I wanted to give everyone a peek at how we’re approaching this.

The first thing to note is that, for better or worse, eMusic’s taste is the same. We’re finicky, we get excited about weird records, we like to dork out over awesome songs and we do our best to ignore the hype, focusing on things that either: a) we think are great, b) you think are great or c) we think that you think are great. Got that?

What this does mean is that we just got a whole lot more to choose from. There are tons of classic records in the Sony catalogue, and we’ve been drooling over the idea of having, say, Highway 61 Revisited as a Review of the Day or building a feature around the deep, spiritual connections between Arcade Fire’s Funeral, Mahler’s Second Symphony and Journey’s Escape. (That is, believe it or not, a real feature that Jayson is writing.) The spectrum gets widened considerably.

We’re very focused on drawing (or creating) connections between the small indie records that we live and die by and the big classic records that got us so into music in the first place. Musically, socially and spiritually there are tons of links to explore between the big boys and the little guys, and we’re doing our best to find them with a series called Six Degrees, where we take a classic record (and we’re defining “classic” as everything from London Calling to Miles’ Nefertiti to Tribe’s Low End Theory to Panda Bear’s Person Pitch) and examine five albums that echo it in some way across all genres, eras and styles.

Here’s an example: Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. Obviously an amazing record, and a clear outlier in Bruce’s career. Our Six Degrees of Nebraska connects that album to the Johnny Cash Sun singles, Woody Guthrie’s Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Suicide’s first record, the complete Robert Johnson recordings and Kurt Vile’s Constant Hitmaker. Some of those are super obvious; some of those are not. The idea is that if you are into Nebraska but aren’t sure what else to check out, you’d consult one of these. We should have about twenty Six Degrees pieces ready for launch.

You could also take two features we’ve built called Mainstream Goes Indie, and Indie Goes Mainstream. The former chronicles big name artists making weird records (Springsteen’s Nebraska, Lou Reed’s Berlin, the Johnny Cash American Recordings series, the Clash’s Sandinista), while the latter lists indie artists who made it big (Modest Mouse, Interpol, the Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, etc). Again, emphasizing how close musically a lot of these records are.

There are a lot of permutations and riffs on this approach that you will see encompassing almost every genre and style. We feel pretty confident that there will be something for everyone. And so with this enormous, ridiculous catalogue and our shared musical philosophy (listen to the good stuff, ignore the rest), it’ll be that much easier and more fun to find records, to get inspired, to get into some phase that you never expected. That’s what being a fan is all about.

Yancey Strickler
Editor in Chief

eMusic’s customers are rabid, smart and adventurous consumers of music. For 10 years, we’ve been proud to help you explore the best music from independent labels throughout the world and present it with the curatorial excellence that you value. We’ve worked hard to create a corner music store experience where you can get knowledgeable recommendations on the latest releases as well as dig through the stacks to find hidden gems you didn’t know about.

Today, we want to let our U.S. subscribers know that soon we’ll be adding even more of the music you want from the catalogues of labels like Arista, Columbia, Epic and RCA – that means artists including the Strokes, Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen and The Clash to name a few. True to eMusic’s standards, we’ll put this body of work in the right context with helpful insight and recommendations from our expert editorial staff with a pronounced emphasis on the places where the legends and our favorite indie artists intersect.

The addition of these bold-face names doesn’t change our mission. eMusic will always be an alternative to mass market digital music stores — a deeper, richer music shopping experience. Over the past year, we’ve added a host of new features to re-create the experience of the corner music store using the technological advantages of the web to supplement our tried and true human touch.

As you already know, musical context today doesn’t exclusively come from an LP cover or liner notes, but rather from many sources throughout the web. eMusic album and artists pages give you the ability to form a deeper understanding of artists you’re interested in by checking out reviews written by the eMusic community of members, writers and editors, as well as related content on sites like YouTube, Wikipedia and Flickr.

We also know that word-of-mouth doesn’t only happen in your local record store anymore; it happens when people introduce their friends to their favorite artists by sharing their experiences throughout a range of social networking sites, so we’ve made it easy to do so by integrating those links on our site.

Finally, we’ve added a powerful new recommendation engine that functions like your friendly music store clerk, absorbing your preferences with every action you take and offering recommendations tailored to your personal tastes.

We’re excited to bring all of these advantages together to help you discover and, in some cases, rediscover, this amazing music.

Independent labels and artists will continue to be eMusic’s core. But now more than ever, the distinction between indie and mainstream music simply does not matter – people love all sorts of music and our goal is to present all of it in a way that creates a community not only of music buyers, but of music lovers.

We do have a question though for our customers. We’ve been requested to carry major label titles for years, but we always have gone back and forth on whether it would change the fabric of eMusic. We don’t think it makes sense to exclude great artists simply because their label partner is one of four specific companies. We look to some of our favorite music — The Sex Pistols, The Clash — and we certainly never think to ourselves “Major Label.” What do you think? Do “major” and “indie” mean anything to you or is this just industry jargon?

Danny Stein
eMusic CEO and Chairman