OK, so maybe it's old news, but what can I say, I've already established my partiality for tots with musical moves. This one's a Brazilian dance prodigy with a taste for samba music.
Know of more hilarious (real) dancing babies? Drop a comment!
--Jason Kirk
Local writer Travis Hay and photographer Dave Lichterman covered Sasquatch! on behalf of ChordStrike this year. Wish you were there... (Heck, we wish we were there!)
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FRIDAYBrad, fronted by the soulful Shawn Smith (far left) and featuring Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard, morphed into the darker and heavier Satchel for two songs after Gossard left the stage. OK Go played a high-energy and hit-laden set. Power poppers Posies played a blissful set of unreleased songs, and Portugal. The Man’s psychedelic rock (left) and the excellent Afro-pop of Fool's Gold were two distinct styles of music that stood out.
Check out all of Dave's Friday photos.
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SATURDAY Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band played a fantastic set of math rock with progressive leaning while filling in for City & Colour, which had to cancel due to singer Dallas Green's pneumonia. Tegan & Sara almost humorously introduced “Alligator” by beat-boxing. The Long Winters (right) played unreleased material and ended their set with a cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Grey.” And the humor of They Might Be Giants had thousands of people getting their geek on while singing and dancing along to “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).”
Check out all of Dave's Saturday photos.
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SUNDAYThroughout the day patches of light rain combined with spots of bright sunshine to create an interesting combination on what was the festival’s strongest day. The rainbow appeared during the summery sounds of the Zooey Deschanel / M. Ward combo, known as She & Him. It was the perfect accompaniment to Deschanel’s voice, which were the main attraction, but M. Ward nearly stole the show during a cover of “Rollover Beethoven.”
The Heavy (right) opened the main stage off with a mix of inspired British
neo-soul, funk, and rock, engaging the Sasquatch! early risers with
hits off of their latest album, The House the Dirt Built, closing off
the set with "How You Like Me Now?". Having seen their performance
earlier in the year before their explosive set on Late Night with David
Letterman sent the quartet's careers into high gear, the addition of
live horns added new dimensions to a fantastic set.
If Ben Bridwell’s constant smile was any indication, Band of Horses was the main stage act that had the most fun performing. His toothy grin was almost as enjoyable as the songs performed from Infinite Arms. Another band that was clearly having a blast was the Canadian indie supergroup New Pornographers, which features Neko Case, A.C. Newman, Dan Bejar, and others. It was impossible to not smile and sing along to the group’s catchy, upbeat songs.
By the time the 2010 incarnation of Sasquatch! was over, it was clear that the taste-making festival is a force to be reckoned with in the destination festival circuit. Excellent music was happening around every corner at one of the most beautiful concert settings in the country. Sasquatch! is well worth the trip, and if this year’s lineup of more than 80 bands was any indication of what’s to come in 2011, you’ll want to be there next year.
Check out all of Dave's Sunday photos.
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Dave Lichterman is a programmer by day and photographer by night. "Concert photography bridges the gap between my love of music and my love of photography," he explains, "whilst making up for my complete and utter lack of musical talent. Nothing compares to the thrill of seeing and capturing musicians performing their art." Check out more of Dave's photos @ http://www.flickr.com/lavid/.
Travis Hay is a Seattle-based writer who has been covering music in the Northwest for the past decade. He was a music critic at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and started the award-winning blog and website Ear Candy. His work has appeared in Sound Magazine, The Seattle Weekly, Crosscut.com, Three Imaginary Girls, and other print and online publications.
For a limited time, we've got four free MP3 jazz samplers available:
3. Mack Avenue: The Road to Great Music
4. Original Jazz Classics Remasters
The samplers are part of our annual jazz event, which also includes a set of four hand-picked jazz playlists:
1. Classic Cuts: A mix of well-loved standards and modern classic jazz
2. The New Standards: Jazzy takes on popular rock and pop songs from the 1980s through today
3. Jazz Dance Classics: Classic dance tracks from the annals of jazz
4. Instrumental Smooth Jazz Favorites: Soothing sounds, sensuous saxes, mellow guitars, tickling ivories
Get your jazz fix today...
--Jason Kirk
Few things go as well together as hip-hop and science. The lexicon of bleeding-edge theoretical physics is practically overflowing with rhyme-ready particles (real, virtual, anti-, and otherwise), and from Dr. Octagon to The Sounds of Science, the rap canon abounds with more-or-less learned verses.
So if you're like me and have trouble finding enough to time in your life to nurture your twin loves of hip-hop and quantum cosmology, let Alpine Kat grab the mic for a minute. Science writer by day and science rapper in her spare time, Alpine Kat has recorded a number of "science raps," the most notorious of which serves as a primer on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an immense subterranean machine on the Franco-Swiss border designed to slam protons together at near-light speeds in order to see what happens.
If you like what you hear, check out more of Alpine Kat's science raps.
Either way, let us know about the best science-based hip-hop we might have missed...
--Jason Kirk
Looking for the perfect soundtrack to your Dharma party? Need something to spin for your final-season soirée? Now you can have all the songs featured in *Seasons 1-5 of Lost with just one click.
The producers of Lost have some pretty diverse tastes, and the 71 songs included here include cuts by Patsy Cline, Perry Como, Petula Clark, the Pixies, and Puccini, just to name a few.
So check it out. Sample tracks 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42, or download the whole MP3 playlist in one click. (We'll update the playlist with the songs from Season 6 after the finale on May 23.)
--Jason Kirk
I'm totally addicted to OK Go's brilliant video for "This Too Shall Pass." Every time I watch it, I discover a handful of new reasons to love it. Perhaps the most satisfying part of this video is the sheer number of times that the on-screen action coincides with the rhythms of the song, but let me not color your experience too much. Just watch it:
--Jason Kirk
Leave it to Rhymesayers to lead the charge in putting off the obsolescence of physical music. Last year, we made a bit of adoring noise about the very cool packaging of P.O.S.'s Never Better (in additional to naming it one of the Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2009, So Far and the 49th Best Album of the Year.. So Far), but this year, whoever's running design over at Rhymesayers has absolutely outdone her- or himself.
Freeway & Jake One's The Stimulus Package is a marvel. The music itself is definitely worth a listen if you're into hip-hop, but the design is a straight-up object lesson in concept art for music. That plastic card you see in the video below? It's got a code to download the whole album's instrumentals for free.
Back to school, designers:
--Jason Kirk
In a few days, the wait is over for fans of Stile Antico, the phenomenal vocal ensemble who specialize in Tudor and Renaissance choral music (and high-profile side projects with Sting.) They release "Media Vita," a selection of works by the sixteenth century composer John Sheppard.
Less well-known than Thomas Tallis, Sheppard's fame has spread slowly, because his compositions only made it to the twentieth century in manuscript form and many of them are incomplete. What survives bears all the hallmarks of greatness. This recording provides ample evidence of his bold, rich and individual harmony, as well as an inspired knack for compositional passion, while still adhering to Archbishop Cranmer's protestant tastes for concise word setting.
The performance captured here is at the same lofty standard that Stile Antico's earlier recordings attained - almost perfect. This group engages the listener like no other, with the purpose of soloists, the tonal evenness of an ensemble, and with a clarity that is ground-breaking. On a few listenings, though, this perfection is itself the disc's undoing. I don't expect my thoughts to be received well, but I'm left willing the performance to move me more than it does.
If I'm honest, I miss children in this music. Children don't sing as well as the sopranos in Stile Antico, plain and simple. They are slavishly subservient to the choir director in front of them, the absence of which is one of the inspired features of this group. They also think about football while they sing and who might get the carol service solo instead of them, but when they get it right, for me, there is an experience beyond the finesse on this album.
If you doubt me, and live within a reasonable distance of New York, duck into St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, during a sung service and judge for yourself. Profound utterances, from the young, barely conscious of what they say, have a power that was understood by Britten, Walton, Boyce, Greene, Purcell, by all the great composers of liturgical choral music, all the way back to Sheppard. In the hands of a child, these notes and words come from a different sphere, literally. A sphere that the rest of us have had to leave behind. -- Hugo Munday
Criticizing an album before anyone's ever heard it would be a bizarre thing to do. Bizarrely, I think I'm going do just that.
Y'see, I'm just a little concerned about one of my favorite artists.
Joanna Newsom's Ys was one of my favorite albums of the last ten years, but she's announced her follow up, Have One On Me, is going to be a triple. There's no track listing yet, but whatever it is will be released on 3xCDs, or 3xLPs.
Is
there actually such a thing as a great triple album? Serious question,
I'd like to know. There must be a few, but even still - wouldn't they be improved by having a few
lesser tracks chopped off to make it a more manageable double album? In
fact, wouldn't the vast majority of double albums be improved by being
edited down to a single?
I tend to feel that 35-50 minutes is the best length for an album, because shorter than that feels a little too short, but longer is kinda tiring. But how tiring a record is depends on what kind of music it is, too.
Aphex Twin's triple LP (or double CD) Selected Ambient Works II is over two-and-a-half hours of featureless ambiance. Even though that's a long time to do anything (a long time to have headphones on, say), it's easy to let it wash through you and only pick up on the broad movements of mood. On the other hand, Tupac's double-disc All Eyez On Me is 132 minutes -- nearly two-and-a-quarter hours -- and it's exhausting, because you have to listen much closer to hip-hop, to follow the lyrics. That kind of concentration is tough to keep up!
Joanna Newsom is not exactly easy to listen to in the first place. Her voice is polarizing, but even for those of us who like it, Ys, at 55 minutes long, was quite long enough, because her lyrics are so densely arranged that you really have to focus to keep up with them. We don't yet know how long Have One On Me will be, but if it's roughly three hours then that's surely too long to digest in one sitting. And if it's not meant for one sitting, why release it at all together under one name?
Joanna Newsom's music always seems very deliberate: every syllable is carefully measured, every flourish and flair under complete control. You can be sure that there's an explanation for the placing of every antique and animal figure on that cover, above, so the length of the album itself is no half-thought or accident. I imagine she must have some complex conceptual justification, I just can't imagine what it is!
Do you agree that triple albums are a bad idea? Or are you happier to get more songs from longer albums?
Have One On Me will be released on February 23rd. A new song, "Good Intentions Paving Company," is already streaming from her label Drag City's website.
I recently had the mixed pleasure of reading the newest biography of the great Satchmo, entitled Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, by Terry Teachout. Having previously read Teachout's The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, I'd expected a reasonably satisfying read, fueled by extensive research and delivered in rather pedestrian prose. As it turns out, that's exactly what the book offers.
My fellow blogger Dave Callanan named it one of the "Best Books of December" and had the following to say by way of justification:
"Crafted with a musician's ear and an historian's eye, Pops is a vibrant biography of the iconic Louis Armstrong that resonates with the same warmth as ol' Satchmo’s distinctive voice. Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout draws from a wealth of previously unavailable material – including over 650 reels of Armstrong's own personal tape recordings – to create an engaging profile that slips behind the jazz legend's megawatt smile. Teachout reveals that the beaming visage of 'Reverend Satchelmouth' was not a mark of racial subservience, but a clear symbol of Louis's refusal to let anything cloud the joy he derived from blowing his horn. 'Faced with the terrible realities of the time and place into which he had been born,' explains Teachout, 'he didn't repine, but returned love for hatred and sought salvation in work.' Armstrong was hardly impervious to the injustices of his era, but in his mind, nothing was more sacred than the music."
Frankly, I think that's rather higher praise than the book deserves, and Teachout himself all but recommends Armstrong's own Satchmo over the book at hand. Nevertheless, there's a lot on offer here for the trumpet enthusiast, the armchair jazz scholar, or the lover of musical Americana.
Among the most interesting sub-plots is the fluctuating opinions of Armstrong held by his fellow black musicians in the States. Dizzy Gillespie, for one, for years publicly declared Armstrong as just this side of Uncle Tom before eventually recognizing his trailblazing predecessor for the inarguable giant that he remains today.
Most surprising to me, though, was the fact that Armstrong was a life-long user and advocate of marijuana, to the extent that, in his early days, he even pushed it on a number of his sidemen before going into the studio. Teachout returns again and again to Pops' marijuana use, ladeling an almost disproportionate amount of ink on the topic. To wit:
"The word muggles was one of many synonyms for marijuana used by jazz musicians in the twenties. It was also called 'tea' and 'sh[*]t,' and those who smoked it were 'vipers'... [A]ll that is known for sure is that [Armstrong] started smoking it on a regular basis in 1928 and continued to do so for the rest of his life. He would later explain to an acquaintance that it 'makes you feel good, man. It relaxes you, makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro. It makes you feel wanted, and when you're with another tea smoker it makes you feel a special kinship.' It was also, unlike alcohol, legal, though by 1931 twenty-nine states had outlawed its sale and use."
Those looking to pursue overt references in Armstrong's music should start with "Muggles"...
-- Jason Kirk
By the time the European avant garde had advanced to breaking china and blowing train whistles, Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck was deemed "too accessible." Their loss, as "Notturno," op. 47, (1931-1933) is a post-romantic chamber gem. Poems by Nikolaus Lenau, scored for string quartet and baritone are given a new reading on an ECM recording featuring the rock-solid, Rosamunde Quartet, with Christian Gerhaher. This is attractive, meaty, but agile musicianship, showing a wonderful dynamic range. Extra props go to Herr Gerhaher for his beautiful tone, and impeccable diction. – Hugo Munday
Thanks for the first-hand
account of unfolding tragedy, Jason. It's good to have you back.
I've spent the weekend in
Nashville for the 2010 Stellar Awards, as gospel celebrated their big night.
Lots of inspirational,
empathetic speeches and prayers as the show began and throughout the evening
for the victims of the tragedy unfolding in Haiti. Underpinning the
words, one of the evening's presenters, Kirk Franklin put the call out
earlier last week to singers assembling for the awards, to join him in
recording a relief record.
Past midnight on Friday, the
night before the Stellars, I packed into an overflowing, nondescript studio off
Music Row, while Kirk directed a classic, wailing Mary Mary overlay. I
didn't hear the whole song, but did get a preview of some of the chorus /
backup work, which was really uplifting. I bailed just before CeCe Winans
came to contribute, but they went well past 2:00 that morning.
I don't have many details,
but I know the working title is "Song for Pain," it's in
post-production and Kirk and others are working all hours to get their contribution out soon. I will post more about the project and how they plan to funnel
contributions, when I get firm details. – Hugo Munday
Sosúa, Dominican Republic (Tuesday, January 12) -- I was on the balcony, three floors up, when suddenly I felt a powerful urge to throw up. Then my chair began to sway. When I looked across the alley and saw the laundry lines in full swing, I knew we were in trouble.
As we all fled out into the street, the air of general panic was palpable. Over the next few hours, via spotty cell phone connections, those of us huddled together in the street, half a mile from the beach, realized that the entire island had shaken. Tsunami warnings were issued for Hispaniola and Cuba.
As time passed, power was restored, and news crept in, we realized that Port-au-Prince had borne the brunt of the earthquake. The significant Haitian population in Sosúa took to weeping openly in the streets, though in the scramble to pack and gas up vehicles for a possible sprint inland, none of us yet knew how bad things really were.
Tuesday night passed in a slow haze of fatigue and disbelief. One of the lucky ones by far, I got out the next morning, leaving Santiago airport as originally planned. It wasn't until the plane landed in Miami Wednesday afternoon that I saw televised footage of the immediate aftermath in Port-au-Prince.
Back in Seattle, it was heartening to see Amazon making it easy for customers to donate directly to Mercy Corp, and I was lucky to attend a Thursday-night fundraiser at Waid's, a great local Haitian joint.
Musicians, of course, have been quick to lend their voices to the call for mass generosity in service of the nascent relief efforts. In a written public statement, Maxwell made an important point: "[S]ending cash is the best way to help right now. The easiest way to do it is through text messaging, but other ways to help include donating to organizations such as the Clinton foundation, Unicef, [and] Red Cross ... There are links to those charities here: http://www.musze.com/."
Wyclef Jean's Yéle Haiti Foundation moved with laudable speed, offering regular updates on its own efforts, three ways to donate--the easiest is to text "YELE" to 501501 (a $5 donation)--and beneficiary status for a series of emergency benefit concerts featuring Patti Smith, Living Colour, and many more at Manhattan's City Winery (January 20-25).
I recommend Catholic Relief Services, and here's why.
However you can, please give.
--Jason Kirk
This week brought the sad news that Montreal-based singer-songwriter Lhasa De Sela passed away on New Year's Day, after a 21-month battle with breast cancer. The American-born artist had a one-of-a-kind upbringing with her Mexican father and American mother, spending most of her childhood traveling between the two countries, developing her unique and decidedly pan-cultural artistic skills that led her to sing in English, Spanish, and French. From her official site:
"Lhasa's unusual childhood was marked by long periods of nomadic wandering through Mexico and the U.S., with her parents and sisters in the school bus which was their home. During this period the children improvised, both theatrically and musically, performing for their parents on a nightly basis. Lhasa grew up in a world imbued with artistic discovery, far from conventional culture."
Lhasa released three albums in her short life, La Llorona, The Living Road, and one of my favorite albums of last year, and her first in English, the beautiful, simply titled, Lhasa. If you've never heard her stunning voice, do yourself a favor and watch the video for "Rising" below. Rest In Peace, Lhasa.
--Alan Wiley
This album was released in February, so we had almost a full year containing some excellent recordings in which to check our judgment and yes, this is the best disc in the classical canon for 2009.
Bernarda Fink as contralto soloist with Petra Müllejans directing her and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, offer three Bach cantatas "Geist und Seele wird verwirret," BWV 35, "Gott soll allein mein Herze haben," BWV 169, and "Vernugte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust" BWV 170. All are from a minor fault-line in Bach's output, coming after three years of composing, rehearsing and performing a cantata a week, they focus less on the chorale as a musical and textual pivot and more on the solo voice. Bach also elevates the organ from the traditional meat and potatoes continuo role, to full concertante instrument.
The Freiburg ensemble kept up an impressive recording schedule in 2009, what with the recent release of an exceptional "Die Schöpfung," (Haydn) under Rene Jacobs, and there is ample evidence on this record, to show why they have become the 'go to' band for authentic instruments. Freiburg's ensemble work is the best of all worlds, giving us the hearty soul of a classical orchestra, but from the authentic texture of original instruments, with breath-taking individual contributions (I'm thinking of the woodwinds, especially.) Unlike the Haydn box set, Petra Müllejans serves a unique role within the orchestra as both a Musical Director and principle violinist, so the result is light years away from a "what the conductor wants" mindset.
Seminal works, like these cantatas, don't fare well if they're loaded up with superstar brilliance. Quite often the path to the center of the work is subtractive in that the interpreter removes any and all obstacles between the author and the lucky audience. On this recording, Bernarda Fink personifies this stripping away of the unnecessary. Soaring above fine tone and consummate musicianship, she renders some of the most introspective, uncomfortable texts with utter humility and simplicity. No raised pinky, no chewed scenery, just you, Bach and words that leave you nowhere to hide. -- Hugo Munday.
Seems hard to believe, but The Wall by Pink Floyd was released 30 years ago today, November 30, 1979.
And, even harder to believe, the WTO protests in Seattle, also known fondly as The Battle in Seattle or N30, started 10 years ago today, November 30, 1999.
Both of these N30 anti-establishment zeitgeists featured elements of rioting, burning rubbish, and gas masks. Coincidence? I think not.
Seattle, 1999:
--Lucas Hilbert
No question: Look-alikes make for really cheap humor. But after ten years of enduring an almost daily barrage of strangers telling me I'm a dead ringer for a certain fictional British wizard, I like to think I've earned it. So here we go with a few favorites from the world of music...
Vicente Fernández ("The King of Ranchera") and Burt Reynolds
Enya and Winona Ryder
Meatloaf and operatic bass-baritone Bryn Terfel
Leonard Cohen and Leonard Nimoy
Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker
Susan Boyle and Julia Child
Lady Gaga and Hazel O'Connor
Keith Richards and J.P. Patches
Selena Gomez and Clarice Starling
Michael Stipe and Gollum
Brad Paisley and my brother Sam
And finally, a recent favorite from the music archives at TotallyLooksLike.com...
Adam Lambert and Liza Minnelli
Thanks to my fellow bloggers Robert Arambel, Jon Foro, and Hugo Munday for suggestions...
--Jason Kirk
This just in: Pitchfork has given the new Animal Collective song "What Would I Want? Sky," releasing on December 15 on the Fall Be Kind [EP], a perfect 10 rating. We wanted to mark the occasion since the music blog is stingy with its perfect rating (rightly so). And even though we at Chordstrike fawned all over the band and included them in our Best of the Year list, we're not quite sure if the favorable comments in the review fully justify the rarefied rating. Sure, "consistently different," and sounding like "new age or yoga or the 1990s" (things that make you go hmm), and the ability to "take a sound and turn it inside out to make something new, but something recognizable, even familiar" are all admirable if not altogether coherent qualities in a song. But are those really the things that merit a perfect 10? Indie bands take notice -- there's your new playbook for success.
--Lucas HIlbert
It's not quite Christina Aguilera debuting the "Dirrty" video, since we knew all along that Adam wasn't of the safe and sweet school of pop thought, but I'd say he did manage to pull out a bit of a shocker - particularly when he grabbed the keyboard player and somewhat forcibly made out with him (talk about band members going above and beyond the call of duty).
Unfortunately the video has already been yanked from YouTube, but The Huffington Post has close-ups of all the highlights (or worst offenses, depending on your perspective). Here's one:
What do you think -- next Madonna or next has-been?
-- Courtney Powell
