Tag Archives: music

Goat With a Thousand Record Reviews

Posted on by

This first ran in Madeloud way, way back in 2009. So out of date, but hopefully still entertaining.
_________

800px-Aquarius_Records_Store_front_sign

 
The Aquarius Records website is just about the most mind-bogglingly erudite font of esoteric music I could ever even imagine, much less witness. Every other week the store releases a massive 25,000-word-plus new arrivals list. They’ve published more than 300 of these monsters, and all are archived and accessible through their impressive search function. The result is a gargantuan, thorough, hysterical, learned, thoughtful mountain of obsessively cross-referenced prose about every kind of obscure metal, noise, psych, roots, electronica, funk, krautrock, shoegaze, and more. Store owner Andrew Connors (better known as aNDEE to AQ customers) spoke to me by email about the store and the list.

When did you start doing your reviews of new releases?

Not sure exactly. 10 years ago? We decided to start spreading the word about the store via short emails, original reviews were more like one sentence. If we were SUPER psyched about something maybe one paragraph, it was mostly for locals, to see what was new and come down and buy stuff. Eventually, people all over started signing up for our email list, and as it grew into a proper mailorder, the list sort of took on a life of its own, and the reviews blossomed into ESSAYS haha. I sometimes long for those one sentence days for sure. But folks love the list, and we do actually love writing it. And a lot of the stuff we sell and carry, is obscure enough that people might not check it out or give it a listen without the reviews. And in the store, we take those reviews and print them out and affix them to the cds, so people can come in, and it’s like a bookstore, with the little tags on each record, which hopefully makes browsing through all this crazy stuff, easier, and more interesting and fun.

How exactly do you compile these lists?

By the seat of our pants unfortunately. It just depends on what comes in, what gets released. Stuff we’ve been able to track down direct from bands and labels. We write about the stuff we have been most excited about. Sometimes we include old stuff we’ve always wanted to review, sometimes there’s some new release that folks are dying for, and maybe we’re not insanely psyched about it, but folks want to know what we think…

Everyone here writes reviews, regular readers of the list can usually discern who reviewed what, although it’s written in a collective voice, a very eclectic, weirdly varied voice, some folks write more than others. I tend to write about 40-50 reviews for each list, which comes out every other Friday. We all try to write them regularly, a few every day, bit more often than not, it gets right down to the deadline, and we’re scrambling to finish.

Do you review everything that comes into the store?

We get so much stuff, that would never be possible. New release wise, there are probably 100-200 every week, then cd-r’s and lps and 7″s submitted for review direct from bands and labels, another 50 or so every week? Just not enough time in the day. As it is, I try to listen to every single thing we get in, but it’s gotten harder and harder. As for how we decide, it really comes down to stuff we dig. The things we find ourselves listening to over and over and over. It’s very subjective, but it’s meant to be, we try to find the records we love and then champion them. I usually compare it to making a mixtape, the new arrivals list for me is like a massive mixtape we make for our friends every two weeks, stuff so good you want other people to hear it and love it, and hopefully buy it.

Do you feel that the lists are worth the effort in terms of sales?

Absolutely. It’s one of the things that defines our store. And unlike most stores, we have this list that people who live thousands of miles away can read, and feel like they’re a part of. We try to make it fun and friendly and interesting to read, our regular mailorder customers generally become friends of ours, when they visit here we hang out, when we’re traveling we end up meeting and sometimes staying with mailorder customer. It functions the way record stores have traditionally functioned, building a sense of community, cuz sure this is a business, but there’s not much money to be made, if we wanted to get rich, we sure as hell would be doing something else, but we LOVE music, as do the people who read the list, which for me, DOES make it good business, even just on that level, music nerds obsessing about new records and new bands and crazy sounds, and because of that, it does in fact generate much of our business, people anxiously await friday night to see what new stuff showed up and to order a bunch of cool crazy music.

It is a lot of work, and of course sometimes we wish, we didn’t have a list to send out, it certainly affects how we live our lives, when we can go away, how long we can go away, our days off, the way we feel about music, knowing that if we like something, we’re also gonna have to review it, but I definitely think it’s something super special, and I hope other folks feel the same way.

Looking at these lists online, you sort of get the feeling that the store itself must be gigantic. How big is the store? How many records do you have in stock at one time?

That’s funny. It really does. And I sometimes feel bad when someone finally gets to visit, having come all the way from Japan or the UK, I feel like we should apologize for how small the store is, but almost always, people dig it. It’s small-ISH, but there’s tons of records, cds, plants in the windows, posters and flyers, and crap all over the walls, doors and posts and windows have been painted by artists, there are video games (a Tron, a Rastan and a Joust, and we usually have a Ghosts And Goblins, but that one’s broken), there’s good music playing, it’s just really comfortable and worn and home-y, the way a record store should be.

As for how many records we have in the store, only a fraction of what’s on the website. we’re usually full to capacity, but the cool thing about visiting is, there’s always plenty of stuff that is NOT on the site, maybe stuff we haven’t reviewed yet, stuff that we were only able to get a few copies, not enough to post on the site, some stuff that just won’t make it on the site, for whatever reason, not to mention TONS of awesome used stuff, and new arrivals and more…..

What would you say is your favorite review on the site?

One of my favorites is probably for the M83 record, when we first heard them, mostly for the last couple sentences:

“Now imagine [the album] as the soundtrack to the love scene in some super bizarre Anime. You know, the part where the girl is going into space because she can’t live on earth because her tentacles keep killing cute little pandas, and her boyfriend is a giant panda, but they love each other so much her tears turn into jewels that the pandas can eat to make them invincible. It’s that heartbreakingly good.”

What releases are you looking forward to in the next few months?

Definitely excited about the new Velvet Cacoon, long time aQ faves, a band from Portland who do a super blissed out fuzz drenched eco black metal. REALLY PSYCHED on the forthcoming Teenage Filmstars reissues, one of THE best heavy druggy shoegaze bands EVER. Some of us think WAY better than My Bloody Valentine (I know, blasphemy! haha), the new Bunkur, killer crushing slow motion ultra doom from Holland, the new Yoga, super tripped out murky droney sort-of-black metal, and also pretty excited for the new Arctic Monkeys…. and sure there will be more more more!!

Best Music of the Year So Far

Posted on by

What have you all been listening to so far this year? Here’s a couple things I’ve liked:
&nbsp
“Valis” — Mastery: avant noise black metal.

 
“Sundial” — Jonny Faith: zoned out trippy electronica; you can hear a bit at the link.
 
“A Rush”— Jordannah Elizabeth: psychedlic soul: again, you can hear it at the link.
 
“Blackheart” — Dawn Richard: electric rock soul R&B

 
So let me know what you’ve liked from this year in comments, if you’re so moved.
 

Dawn-Richards-Meteors1-600x450-600x450

The 15 Best Albums of the Year

Posted on by

You can find several of my best of picks at the Splice music poll…but I thought I’d list all the top 15 here. From best to not as best:

1. Jordannah Elizabeth — Bring to the Table
2. Open Mike Eagle — Dark Comedy
3. A Sunny Day in Glasgow —Sea When Absent
4. Jason Eady — Daylight & Dark
5. Akkord — Akkord
6. Katy B — Little Red
7. Artificial Brain —Labyrinth Constellation
8. clipping. — Clppng
9. Smetana Trio — Ravel, Shostakovich: Piano Trios
10. SZA — Z
11. Abjo — Soulection White Label
12. Tinariwan— Emaar
13. Hurray for the Riff Raff — Small Town Heroes
14. Mirel Wagner — When the Cellar Children See the Light of Day
15. Teitanblood — Death

List your best albums of the year in comments, if you’re so moved.
 

401235

Best Music of the Year…So Far

Posted on by

SZA_08-15-2013

I asked what folks were listening to way back towards the beginning of the year. We’re 6 or 7 months further on…so what do you all think are the best albums of the year?

Here’s a couple of my picks:

I’m really into this awesome twisted space death metal by Artificial Brains.

 
SZA’s alt R&B floaty psych soul is great:

 
I’m just now falling in love with this Open Mike Eagle track:

 
Jason Eady is the best country album I’ve heard this year:

 
And I really do love the new Sunny Day in Glasgow album, Sea When Absent

So what about you all? What’s your best album of the year so far?

The Most Covered Songs Ever

Posted on by

This originally ran on Salon. They dropped out most of the links, unfortunately, and though I asked they never got around to putting them back…and I think the piece is much better with the links. So I decided I’d put it here so people could follow through and listen to all the music if they wanted.
__________

What’s the most covered song of all time? You only have to think about it for a minute to realize that it’s not an easy question to answer. In some sense, the most covered song ever (at least in the English speaking world) is probably “Happy Birthday To You” — sung by me, you, Marilyn Monroe, and everybody else. No doubt “The Star-Spangled Banner” would be up there as well. Below are some other tunes that could maybe be in the running for most covered song ever, depending on who you ask, what criteria your using, and how many times you hum through the tune yourself before you get to the end of the list.

“Goldberg Variations”
 

 
Can a performance of a classical composition count as a cover? It seems like technically it should; Glen Gould here is playing someone else’s song after all. If it does count, you’d have to figure that the big gun canonical repertoire would have to be more covered than just about any popular composition; people have been playing the Goldberg Variations for well over 250 years at this point. Gould’s performance is probably the most famous, but there are innumerable others, including this lovely harpsichord take from 1985 by Gustav Leonhardt.
 
“Amazing Grace”
 

 
This is just a scarce forty years or so more recent than the “Goldberg Variations”. Published by English poet and clergyman John Newton in 1779 to commemorate his decision to abandon the slave trade, the poem “Amazing Grace” eventually became paired with a tune called “New Britain.” It was sung extensively during the 19th century, and it’s remained a favorite in both black and white gospel traditions. The a cappella Sacred Harp version here from 1922 is thought to be the first recorded performance. Since then there have been more than 7000, by everyone from Mahalia Jackson to Paul Robeson to Destiny’s Child to Rod Stewart.
 
St. Louis Blues “
 

 
W.C. Handy’s 1914 song remains a standard in the jazz repertoire, and has been covered by numerous blues and country performers as well. The most famous version is the spectacular collaboration between Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong from 1925, though the nonchalantly dazzling performance by Django Reinhardt here seems every bit as good. You should also check out the jovially unhinged Western swing performance by Bob Wills, the boogie woogie rendition by Earl Hines, the smooth quasi-classical high-falutin take by the John Kirby Orchestra, and the down home blues by Big Bill Broonzy.
 
“Summertime”
 

 
George Gershwin’s famous aria from the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess is one of the all-time great examples of cross-cultural American music. Inspired by African-American spirituals and based on a Ukrainian Yiddish lullaby, it’s been covered by more than 33,000 performers in a range of genres and idioms. Janis Joplin’s version is probably the best know — though to my ears it sounds strained and clumsy. Not horrible maybe, but certainly no match for Sarah Vaughan’s 1953 recording, nor for performances by Sidney Bechet, Billie Holiday, and the wonderful country guitar version by Doc Watson.
 
“Sweet Home Chicago”
 

 
“Sweet Home Chicago” is generally attributed to Robert Johnson, who recorded it in 1936, though it seems to have been based on earlier songs by Kokomo Arnold and others. Over time it picked up more Chicago-specific lyrics and became a kind of anthem for the city. These days it mostly serves to tell tourists they’re in the right place and make longtime residents wish they weren’t, but in its time it’s been covered by just about every major blues and/or rock artist who ever picked up an ax: Freddie King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, and of course the Blues Brothers version which I won’t link to because come on. HoneyBoy Edwards acoustic slide version is a particularly lovely take, harking back nicely to Johnson’s original.
 
White Christmas
 

Irving Berlin wrote this in 1941 and supposedly told his secretary, “Grab your pen and take down this song. I just wrote the best song I’ve ever written — heck, I just wrote the best song that anybody’s ever written!” Bing Crosby’s version may well be the best selling single of all time (more than 50 million copies sold,) but lots and lots of other acts have performed it as well, from Elvis to Frank Sinatra, to Doris Day to Taylor Swift to innumerable high school Christmas pageants. My favorite may be this famous 1954 effort with Bill Pinkney on bass vocals and Clyde McPhatter singing tenor. The Beach Boys also did a lovely version…and I’d be remiss if I left out that notable crooner, Iggy Pop.
 
Unchained Melody
 

 
Originally the theme for the little known 1955 prison film “Unchained”, Hy Jaret and Alex North’s soaring emota-thon went on to be a massive hit, with more than 500 cover versions. The best known version is the 1965 #4 smash by the Righteous Brothers, and there are great versions by Sam Cooke and Willie Nelson. Nobody does towering pop melodrama better than Roy Orbison though.
 
“Louie Louie”
 

 
Originally written in 1955 by rock and roll doo wop performer Richard Berry, the song is supposed to have more than 1600 cover versions. The most famous is the garbled primitive frat rock performance by the Kingsmen from 1963. I also love the startlingly effective torch song performance by Julie London, the great goof by the Fat Boys, Toots and the Maytalls reggae version, and of course Motorhead. But Berry’s much-neglected 1957 version may still be the best.
 
“Yesterday”
 

 
Paul McCartney’s nostalgic pop smash has had between 2 and 3000 cover versions — none of which are any good. No, not even the ones by Marvin Gaye and En Vogue. Best to just embrace the schlock, then, and go with Neil Diamond.
 
“Change the Beat”
 

 
Fab Five Fready’s 1982 experimental electropop single is often cited as the most sampled song ever. Hundreds of other songs sample the track, especially the phrase “Ahhh, this stuff is real fresh,” spoken through a vocoder. Herbie Hancock used it in 1983 for his song “Rockit“, and from there it featured in a dizzying array of hip-hop landmarks, including Eazy-E’s “Boyz in the Hood,” Slick Rick’s “The Show,” Eric B. and Rakim’s “Paid in Full,” and Schooly D’s “PSK, What Does It Mean?” It still shows up in tracks like Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop” (not to mention Justin Bieber.)

 

10 More Most Underrated Albums Ever

Posted on by

At Salon I have a list of most underrated albums,, but it was cut for space. So here’s what got left off.
 
Jeri Southern, “You Better Go Now” 1956

 
Forget icons recognizable by a single name like Billie, Sarah, or Ella; Jeri Southern is little known compared to relatively obscure torch singers like June Christy, Julie London, Peggy Lee and Anita O’Day. But Miles Davis was a fan, and you can hear why on this album. Southern’s voice is pure, bright, and sensual, perfect for the flirtatious vulnerability of songs like “You Better Go Now” and “Remind Me”, or for the tortured lost love pie-in-the-sky hopes of “Something I Dreamed Last Night.” Southern doesn’t waste any tracks on uptempo; the pace throughout is slow, giving her careful phrasing and restrained emotion room to take on weight and depth. “Give me time/I’ll give you love/Give me time/I’ll give you rapture, dear,” she sings, and it’s a promise she keeps.
 
Bill Harris, “Bill Harris and Friends”, 1957

 
Jazz trombonist Bill Harris was a longtime sideman for Woody Herman, but as far as I know this record, featuring Ben Webster on tenor sax, is his only outing as a leader. It’s a true gem, though. Harris’ broken, hesitant squonk gives “It Might As Well Be Spring” a plaintively delicate vulnerability, and Webster’s huge tone and vibrating reed are sensuous as ever on “Crazy Rhythm.” It’s the juxtaposition of the two on “I Surrender Dear” that’s truly transcendent though; smooth and broken, hesitant and suave, one of the greatest forgotten “good old good ones,” as Dick Buckley used to say.
 
Chuck Berry, “St. Louis to Liverpool”, 1964

 
This was released in 1964, after Berry had spent 20 months in prison. It’s a conscious effort to engage with the wave of bands that had been inspired by his music, from the use of overdubbed vocals on “Little Marie” to name-dropping the Beatles on “Go Bobby Soxer.” “St. Louis to Liverpool” also tends to make all those bands look a little puerile, Certainly, the Beach Boys weren’t singing about child custody struggles, and John Lennon wasn’t writing lyrics to match “It’s a bobby soxer beat
/And you can rock it any way you wish/Work out, bobby soxer,/you can
Wiggle like a whimsical fish.” Nor did the Stones ever have a guitar solo as hot or cool as Berry’s in “Promised Land,” which manages to evoke both tough electric blues and blazing Nashville picking (Berry was a country music fan of long standing.) And that doesn’t even get to the still-funny-after-100-listens “No Particular Place to Go,” and the fierce instrumental “Liverpool Drive”. Berry is usually thought of as a singles artist; partially as a result, “St. Louis to Liverpool” is rarely considered in the pantheon of the top rock albums. It should be though.
 
Doors, “The Soft Parade” 1969

 
As rock, the Door’s were always strained, pompous and lumbering. This is the one album where they turned that to their advantage. Inevitably, fans hated it — Rolling Stone said the band was “in the final stages of musical constipation.” (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/the-soft-parade-19690823). That comparison seems particularly inapt; the Doors here are anything but tight. Instead, the album lurches from track to track, strings and brass spurting seemingly at random, blues riffs flailing, Morrison staggering from odd, vaguely offensive tribute to Otis Redding to hippie enthusiasm to portentous declamation (“You cannot petititon the Lord with prayer!”) to outright doggerel (“The monk. Bought. Lunch!”) The result is something like the Shaggs meet Shatner; a miracle of trashy incoherence. “The Soft Parade” is both humiliating self-parody and the only time Jim Morrison ever made good on his claims to genius.
 
Sadistic Mika Band, “Hot Menu”, 1975

 
Sadistic Mika Band was an influential Japanese band, but this particular album doesn’t seem to have been much heralded over here. Nonetheless, it’s my favorite of theirs — a quintessential 70s fizz of lounge fuzak. If Steely Dan composed a blaxploitation soundtrack, it might have turned out something like this.
 
Sonny & Linda Sharrock, “Paradise” 1975

 
Guitarist Sonny Sharrock played with Miles Davis, but he’s still relatively unknown, perhaps because he refused to fit neatly into the “jazz” label. Certainly, his second album with his then wife Linda is uncategorizable. There are repetitive spiky “On the Corner” style funk riffs, cheesy keyboard grooves, dissonant free jazz interpolations, blues licks, and through it all Linda’s Yoko-Ono-goes-to-church garbled combination of moans, shrieks, and speaking in tongues. All the nuttiness is held together by an undeniable strain of soul. Many folks have draped themselves in the mantle of Mingus, but “Paradise” may be one of his truest children, not least because it sounds so completely unlike him, or anything else.
 
Marty Stuart, “Busy Bee Café”, 1982

 
Stuart had some success on country radio later in the 1980s and 1990s, but this, his second album, was mostly ignored at the time and since. You can see how folks overlooked it; it’s a gloriously relaxed affair, with Stuart’s lightning bluegrass picking sliding into one easy groove after another. The album is a tribute to Stuart’s influences and friends, and so Johnny Cash shows up on a number of tracks, just to remind you that he wasn’t as aesthetically lost during the 80s as Rick Rubin would like you to believe, while the wonderful Doc Watson trades vocals on the twin guitar “Blue Railroad Train”. “Boogie for Clarence” is a virtuoso tribute to the bluegrass guitarist. “Busy Bee Café” is a quiet masterpiece, filled with love.
 
Womack and Womack, “Love Wars” 1983

 
Womack and Womack make moderate soul for middle-aged folks who want to bob their heads rather than shake it on the dance floor. The lack of urgency probably explains their relative obscurity — and it’s also why “Love Wars” is such a great album. The tracks sway and insinuate, as Cecil and (especially) Linda’s vocals dripping with longing, knowledge, and vulnerability. It’s a similar psychic space to Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks,” and I’m not always sure which album I like better.
 
Doughnuts, “Age of the Circle” 1995

 
The Doughnuts were apparently marketed as a straight edge band, but those thick, brutal guitars, the grinding tempos, and even the strained, half-shrieked vocals seem less akin to punk than to the death metal scene in their native Sweden. Similarly, the lyrics aren’t about hardcore snottiness and political engagement; they’re about filth and impurity and despair —songs like “Who’s Bleeding?” are a riot grrrl take on metal’s traditional body loathing. Maybe the Doughnuts are unknown because of the punk/metal genre confusion, or maybe the U.S. just wasn’t ready for an all-female Swedish band that sounded like it pulverized multiple grunge acts before breakfast. Either way, “Age of the Circle” is a lost classic.
 
Michio Kurihara, “Sunset Notes” 2007

 
Best known for his work with Japanese collective Ghost, Kurihara’s solo album has a lot of that band’s psychedelic fire. It’s also a showcase for his range as a guitarist, though; not just the high volume Hendrix lilt of “A Boat of Courage,” but the gentle acoustic backing of “The Wind’s Twelve Quarters” or the crunchy guitar pop-hook worthy riff in “Pendulum On A G-String” and the oddball high-volume March of “Do Deep-Sea Fish Dream of Electric Moles?” One of the most sublime records of the 2000s that didn’t show up on anyone’s best-of lists.

Best Music So Far This Year

Posted on by

We’re almost three months into the new year…so what have folks been listening to from 2014?
 
Just heard this; Tinariwen,drony groove from Mali
 

 
I wrote about Akkord on Splice Today; electronica for sun death.
 

 
Also really like Be Forest; Italian fey folk.
 

 
And the Domains; Spanish death metal the way death metal should be.
 

 
Hubba Bubba, where the Thee Oh Sees’ frontman does slowed-down cough-syrup doped electropop:
 

 
Katy B, empty-headed shallow British dance pop.
 

 
Here’s left field-R&B performer Kelela. I wasn’t that into her album from last year, but this track is pretty great.
 

 
There’s this EP by Zikomo which is really nice zoned-out trippy fractured easy-listening hip hop.
 

 
Free download available here
 
Marissa Nadler, folksy shoegaze in a Mazzy Star meets Civil Wars vein.
 

 
And finally Don Williams new album; just started listening to it but it’s pretty great. He’s definitely an artist who makes more sense the older he gets.
 

So what about you all? What should I be listening to from 2014?