Music: Mi Ami
Casey McKinney05.04.10
Speaking of disco (in light of Francia’s Imelda Marcos piece) music was supra-fun for a while there, not long ago, as bands were rediscovering the…
Music: Super Furry Animals: Dark Days/Light Years
Casey McKinney05.04.10
Welshmen Super Furry Animals never cease to delight. They first had me with an infectious ode to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in Rings Around The…
When Disco Was the Soundtrack to Martial Law: David Byrne, Fatboy Slim and Imelda Marcos
Luis H. Francia05.04.10
During the 1970s, disco was wildly popular in the Philipines. Imelda Marcos had a dance floor complete with mirror ball built on the roof of the presidential palace and when visiting New York made appearances at Studio 54. Fittingly David Byrne’s double album musical biography of Imelda is backed by the clubby beats of Norman Cook/Fatboy Slim. While Luis Francia finds much to like in the music, he asks whether the project called for a darker edge. Is Here Lies Love an epitaph for Imelda’s tombstone or for those of the unknown numbers killed by the Marcos regime?
Music: Bobby Conn
Casey McKinney04.30.10
So I keep harping on ‘old news’ here in some music recommends… hell Jack Hanley keeps putting Grateful Dead videos up still on Facebook so… and…
And Now for Something Less Funky: A Fan in Search of Joanna Newsom’s Elusive New Epic
Brian Howe04.23.10
Brian Howe finds Joanna Newsom’s latest, expansive offering most generous and yet somewhat unusual to digest. In fact, Howe believes her two-plus hour and three-disc album may not be completely digestible at all. That’s not to say Newsom isn’t providing tasty musical numbers to gorge upon. Rather, sometimes one’s final say may require a readjustment that only a personal viewing can do.
Music: The Necks: The Boys
Casey McKinney04.07.10
Okay (don’t ask why, well you can but) forgot what I’ve hastily said times before about no belief in genius – that it’s all just masked…
RIP – Alex Chilton
Casey McKinney03.18.10
Man… that was way too soon. Anyway, here’s one of my favorite songs by Big Star, performed just a few months ago live in Brooklyn….
Josiah Wolf: Jet Lag (Anticon)
Chelsea Martin03.10.10
On the most recent WHY? album frontman Yoni Wolf sings, "I know saying all this in public oughta make me feel funny/but you gotta yell something out you’d never tell nobody." After five years as a backing multi-instrumentalist in his brother’s band, Josiah Wolf, a classically trained drummer capable of some incredible riffs, is speaking his mind in his first solo album. Through a multitude of overdubs, Josiah played all of instruments on this sonic exploration of the dissolution of his 11-year marriage. Chelsea Martin, author of Everything Was Fine Until Whatever, interviewed Wolf and finds much to praise in the album but wonders whether the anxiety over the novel being supplanted by the memoir has its parallel in music.
Music: Four Tet: There is Love in You
Casey McKinney03.04.10
Ah Four Tet, king of the click, or pop click, clique, off the beaten blip of a tick…tock…dock? or sundry sampled warble, or what can I say? tough…
