Madcon is a hip-hop group with a huge dose of soul production. If the Roots went all out with the funk soul music, you'd pretty much have Madcon. There are keys, horns, and soulful choruses. Beggin' is an immediate hit that you may have already heard. The question is will these guys be the next Black Eyed Peas, the next Outkast, or more tragically, the next Pharcyde?
I also like Wholehearted, Liar, and Shine.
Admittedly, this video is not so great with the respecting of the women, but what can I say, I like the song.
Amanda Blank is on a bandwagon, but she's on a pretty good bandwagon. Blank follows in the steps of M.I.A. and Santigold as a female singer/rapper with an eclectic, electronic sound. In light of some of the explicit nature of her lyrics and her riot grrrrrl delivery, she also owes a huge debt to Peaches. That being said, she reminds me most of the great female hip-hop trio from the late 90s, Luscious Jackson (whom you should of course check out if you're unfamiliar with them).
My three favorite tracks are Make It Take It, Something Bigger, Something Better, and Shame On Me.
Eclectic hip-hop from Orlando. As innovative and creative as Outkast and Black Eyed Peas (well, at least BEP's early stuff was innovative and creative). Also remind me of Public Enemy at times. You won't hear so many different styles on most hip-hop albums. On top of that, No More Heroes is a concept album. How quaint. SOS feature a female vocalist, grinding guitars, hard beats and acrobatic flow. How many groups would name drop Cab Calloway? Not too many, I tell you.
Standout tracks are:
Marvel, New Sheriff in Town, Gotham City Chase Scene and Dolla Dolla
Sounds like Prefuse 73 with a strong folk flavor. Hip-hop with melody and soul. Badly Drawn Boy finds Pro Tools. Most of the songs feel like their made up of found sounds, or a guy in his underwear sitting around in his sparsely furnished flat upstairs with a computer and a guitar. My favorite is Lovers' Carvings, which relegates the computer to merely a beat machine in the background, while Bibio's voice and guitar take center stage. Unfortunately, the intro to the song is about 90 seconds long and not as good, so fast forward past it to get to the good part.
Standout tracks: Ambivalence Avenue, Fire Ant, Lovers' Carvings, S'Vive, Dwrcan
Unfortunately, you can't get the full tracks on Lala this time, so listen to it on YouTube or just preview it.
Hip-hop may have started off as a distinctly American style of music, but some of its most innovative practitioners are coming out of Europe. Witness the French DJ Wax Tailor's latest album, In the Mood for Life, a classic hip-hop album chock full of excellent tracks from beginning to end. It has all the elements of the best of hip-hop: skits, obscure jazz and funk samples, expert cutting and scratching, tricky MC flows, sultry female vocals, and most importantly, dope beats.
Wax Tailor has put out some good tracks before, but with no qualifications, I can recommend this entire album. If you like Cut Chemist, RJD2, DJ Shadow or the Herbaliser, this album is not one to miss.
Dragon Chasers is an eerie slow jam featuring vocalist Charlotte Savary. B-Boy on Wax is an old-school track featuring MC Speech Defect, who channels Fatlip and The Pharcyde. No Pity evokes Play-era Moby, with what sounds like a gospel vocal track, masterfully mixed with a slamming beat, strings, horns and subtle cuts and scratches. Until Heaven Stops the Rain is composed of the classic story-telling lyrics set over evocative strings. This track in particular reminds me of Soul Position, RJD2's project with the rapper Blueprint. Wax Tailor showcases his amazing range on Leave It, essentially a neo-soul track a la Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, interlacing Dionne Charles funky vocals with a honking baritone sax. This Train features MC Ali Harter, who reminds me of the rapper Jean Grae, and I think it includes an uncredited Beth Orton singing vocals in the background. On Sit & Listen, Wax Tailor shows off his DJ chops with an instrumental track overflowing with samples and beats that compete comfortably with Cut Chemist's best. Near the end of the album, I Own You takes the whole album to another level, serving as a sort of Wax Tailor anthem. It's a soaring soul track with vocals by Charlie Winston.
Rarely does an artist produce a great album in these days of the disposable single, but Wax Tailor comes pretty darn close. Check it out.
Loving a band that hails from Australia ain't easy. On the plus side, they can rhyme Karma with Armor, which an American band can't get away with. After being a huge fan of these guys for a couple years now, I finally had the opportunity to see them on this North American Tour, but NYC was the closest they came to DC, so I made the trip up. I convinced Alex and Jon to go with me. The venue is right in Times Square, which is pretty amazing on a Saturday night. It's not much bigger than 9:30 in terms of the floor, but then they have a huge back area with seats. I'm not good at estimating seats, but I'd guess a couple thousand were packed in there. It was sold out. Oddly, they ran out of room in the coat checks, which just seems like bad planning for a venue in Northeast after all.
The show took a little while to get going, but around the fourth or fifth song, they did a Middle Eastern flavored song called The Darkness, where they just killed it for what seemed like ten minutes. After that, each song was better than the last, and the sweaty intensity of the show just went through the roof. Even though they don't have a guitarist, they make up for it in terms of rhythm with a DJ scratching around and one of their lead vocalists plays percussion. As for solos, the keyboardist is pretty damn good, but their trumpet players are outta sight. The lead trumpet also sings lead vocals and he blazed on both.
In terms of comparisons, they most reminded my of Ozomatli in terms of their sound and their live show experience. There was a lot of jumping up and down, hand waving, clapping and singing along. The energy was fantastic and no one wanted the show to end. It was good times.
If you're into latin jazzy, reggae, hip-hop influenced, high energy jam band-ish music, definitely check out the Cat Empire. Two Shoes is the albums to start with.
I have not been the most dependable blogger. I'll try to catch up by listing some of my favorite tracks from September and October with a few brief comments.
In alphabetical by Artist:
Anuhea - Barista - pop jem from Hawaii.
As Tall As Lions - Circles, Sixes and Sevens - Soaring guitar-pop. A little like Death Cab (when they rock out) or Helio Sequence. They sound like they must be from the Northwest.
David Guetta - When Love Takes Over, Sound of Letting Go - Hit the dance floor with these techno thumping anthems.
Jack Peñate - Be The One, Tonight's Today - - really good worldy/folky/dancy/tracks. Reminds me of Vampire Weekend a little bit.
KRS-One and Buckshot - The Way I Live, Clean Up Crew - dope rhymes and old-school beats. KRS-One is one of the all-time great MCs.
Mika - Blue Eyes, Good Gone Girl, Touches You, We Are Golden - If you like Scissor Scistors or similar throwback disco-pop, you'd like this guy.
Miss Li - Bourgeois Shangri-La, Dancing the Whole Way Home - Now that's some good English girl-pop right there. Or at least she sounds English to me. Lily Allen would be proud.
Nickodemus - Sun Children, 2 Sips & Magic - Great trip-hop, jazz, acid-jazz, latin-y stuff.
Phish - Joy - A solid album if you're a Phish fan. If you're not a fan, don't worry about it.
Slavic Soul Party! - Taketron, Baltika, Get It How You Live, Canaan Land - Best Slavic/Mexican/Latin Jazz/New Orleans style-brass band ever! Nothing like it anywhere.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll (James Iha Remix) - Rockin'.
Yo La Tengo - Here To Fall - Guitar goodness.
Remember that you can listen to most of these tracks all the way through at least once on Lala.com. It's worth getting an account.
Mindless consumer that I am, I buy most of my clothes in one or two shopping frenzies each year at the outlet stores in Manchester, VT near my parent's house.
This summer, while in the midst of my lust to be liked by virtue of buying the right clothes, I was in the J Crew store and heard two great tunes playing in the store. I used my handy-dandy Midomi iPhone app to figure out what they were and later bought the songs. In my mind they're linked by J Crew, but they happen to be similar musically as well, so that's why I'm giving you a twofer here.
Michael Franti and Spearhead have a new album out called All Rebel Rockers, and this one is heavier on the reggae than their previous albums by far. The J Crew track on the album is Say Hey (I Love You) featuring Cherine Anderson. Anderson's island accent serves as a call-and-response partner to Franti's growling, earnest rap-singing. They trade turns at the mic over a reggaefied version of the Not Fade Away beat. As with the best Spearhead songs, the chorus is a catchy sing-a-long that sticks with you.
The second track is Think (About It) by The Lions, another reggae soul outfit, who hail from LA. Once again, the song features a female vocalist. In this case she's a neo-soul singer named Noelle Scaggs whose voice is a dead ringer for Beyoncé's. I kept wondering why Beyoncé would be singing on this small band's album with no credit. Finally I did some actual research and figured out that Mrs. Jay-Z was not slumming. I was pretty clueless about the origins of the song as well until a friend heard it and started singing along even though she'd never heard of it. You'd think when Scaggs sings, "It takes two to make a thing go right," something would have clicked in my head. As it turns out, it's a cover of a James Brown produced song performed by Lyn Collins in 1972. The original is one of the most sampled songs of all time, most famously in the dance-floor staple, "It Takes Two", by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock. The "woo! yeah! da-na-na!" is instantly recognizable.
The Lions' version is looser and jazzier, featuring the horns more prominently, and adds some reggae flavor while Scaggs belts out the classic soul diva's lament about the no-goodnik men she's forced to deal with. The original is tighter than tight as you'd expect from James Brown, and Collins' vocals sound subdued and prim compared to Scaggs' full-on attack.
PS - Jungle Struttin', the title track, is also a funk flex-fest that's worth a spin.
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