First things first.For those whose hearts are with the protesters in Iran tonight, there’s a new recording by Iranian-Canadian band Blurred Focus of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.”Check it out here.
! Abdullah Ibrahim – Bombella (jazz)
Ibrahim is the most important jazz musician you’ve never heard of.A South African talent who found a patron in Duke Ellington, his musical style rolled with the changes in jazz through the 1960’s and 70’s.Now back with a big band, his clear sense of melody and skillful use of a huge horn section would do Ellington proud.Ibrahim’s compositions are joyous, and the band really swings.
No city has given more to the evolution of funk than New Orleans – Professor Longhair, Dr. John, The Meters, and now Galactic.Freely mixing jazz, hip hop, soul, and Mardi Gras brass band music, the group’s sound is downright stanky.A who’s who of Big Easy players in all those styles fills out the album.New Orleans is celebrating this week – join the party.
Listen to Galactic “Boe Money” featuring Rebirth Brass Band
* My Name is Khan – Original Soundtrack (world)
Judging from the previews, this movie is a powerful statement about post-9/11 America; judging from the soundtrack, we’re looking at a Bollywood music sensation that’s about to infect two continents.Some of the best voices and arrangers in the industry are here, and the Islamic themes give deep spiritual overtones to several of the songs.
Listen to Rashid Khan “Allah Hi Rahim” from My Name is Khan
* Tecupae – Tiempo (Latin)
Tecupae is driving a new sound that incorporates the groovy accordion of Venezuelan Vallenato music into Latin pop and rock-en-español stylings.It’s a potent mix that earns the band a place alongside other Latin rock crowdpleasers like Los Lonely Boys.
Seriously heavy, and seriously listenable.Power chords and a driving double-kick-drum serve as musical lifelines that carry you through the volcanic fury.Some slower passages give emotional contrast.Shouted vocals provide energy without stealing focus, even if the lyrics are unintelligible.
While the Grammy voters are notorious for choosing star power over musical integrity, the down-ballot categories tend to be a reasonable benchmark for how much quality and diversity of music you can find on Casual Listening.The following grammy winners had garnered a starred review or better here when they were first released:
Best Regional Mexican Album: Vicente Fernandez – Necesito de Ti
Best Americana Album: Levon Helm – Electric Dirt
Best Bluegrass Album: Steve Martin – The Crow
Best Contemporary World Music Album: Bela Fleck – Throw Down Your Heart
Best Musical Album for Children: Ziggy Marley – Family Time
Anyone can turn you on to Beyonce, but Vicente Fernandez?That’s what we’re here for.
! Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba – I Speak Fula (world)
How do you say “guitar god” in Fula?The ngoni is an ancestor of the banjo native to Mali, and Kouyate leads a band full of them.The rhythms are devastating, and multiple vocalists give elegant contrast to the furious strings.This album will be 2010’s must-hear world music album.
! Bela Fleck – Throw Down Your Heart: Africa Sessions Part 2 (world)
A welcome companion to last year’s must-hear world music album.This and the first should be considered a complete set, with volume 2 containing more music from the movie, more field recordings, and more studio tracks from the African voyage of the world’s most versatile banjoist.More mind-opening, world-shrinking, jaw-dropping musical collaborations.
Listen to Bela Fleck “Salam Aleikum” available only at his website here.
* Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, & Itzhak Perlman – Mendelssohn Piano Trios (classical)
While I’m not expert enough on Mendelssohn to do this recording justice, it’s worth checking out just to hear three of the most accomplished musicians of our age playing together.The second trio in particular has some exquisite moments.
Wicked jazz-funk that’d be at home on the shelf next to Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters.Electric organ, sax, guitar, drums, and smoky female vocals put the band in the shades-at-midnight coolness league.
Listen to Kasper Fredhom Groove Syndrome “Naked Brunch”
Akai – The Coldest Hour (Is Just Before Dawn) (rock)
Sprinkle your ipod with fairy dust.Gossamer pop-rock with piano, glockenspiel, and reverb-heavy harmonies.Tight, sweet tunes hold the package together.
Writing a convincing love song is almost as hard as love itself.Corinne Bailey Ray makes it sound impossibly easy.She lends a perfectly bittersweet delivery to this collection of pop-soul beauties.Impressionistic guitars and tasteful use of strings makes this feel already like a classic.
This is electronic artistry designed for headphones, not the dance floor.Four Tet employs a warm, clean palate of slowly shifting sounds reminiscent of bells, chimes, cymbals, and voices.Four Tet’s music is utilitarian in the best sense, a slow-turning kaleidoscope that gently agitates your mind.
For a bluesman, having a chance to touch the strings of the guitar of a musical ancestor like Booker (Bukka) White is a fairy tale come true.Eric Bibb was inspired enough by the experience to write an album’s worth of fables.He channels ancient spirits into new blues, and the emotional power is palpable.
Metheny ups the instrumental ante in wiring an orchestra like a player piano.His jazz fusion guitar riffs still cascade over the top, but the breadth of sound possibilities available make these recordings stand out.
Youssou N’Dour – Music From The Motion Picture “I Bring What I Love” (world)
One of the most famous voices in world music finally gets his close-up on the silver screen.The soundtrack puts his Senegalese pop in a more deliberately global setting, which N’Dour takes in stride.
A reminder of the power of a simple voice and guitar.Aimee has tremendous vocal control, and Figueiredo’s guitar is powerful yet understated.Cabaret, Bossa Nova, and jazz standards all rub elbows comfortably here.
Listen to Cyrille Aimee & Diego Figueiredo “La Vie En Rose”
Citay – Dream Get Together (rock)
I’m risking my critic’s credibility in admitting that I love a good jam band.Citay is one of the best I’ve heard in a long while.Acoustically based with vocal harmonies and a swirl of psychedelic classic rock.This band deserves their own Ben & Jerry’s flavor.
It’s an amazing week for music, and I’ve just scratched the surface.Great stuff also out by Patty Griffin, Magnetic Fields, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Fredrik, Lady Antebellum, Never Shout Never, Basement Jaxx, Brooklyn Rider, Gorevette.
Heaven help us if the end of the world sounds this beautiful.The songwriting sparkles like diamonds intentionally left in the rough.Simple guitar on some tracks, pedal steel and electronics fill in behind the band on others.The apocalyptic theme that runs through this song cycle works to intensify a sense of nostalgia and isolation.Above all, these are songs that will bear a hundred listens without getting old.
* Makoto Ozone featuring No Name Horses – Jungle (jazz)
Listening to a great big band is one of the true pleasures of jazz.Ozone’s manages to do it all – heavy swing, sizzling mambo, and several modern compositions that show the potential of the form to cover new ground.Big brass, lots of percussion, and fluid piano work from Ozone.
Sunny Jamaican roots music with a heavy dose of Rastafarian devotion.Electric organ and saxes bounce along with Sizzla’s rubberband voice, along with a couple of tracks with more experimental settings.
Carnival time is coming, and in Trinidad, that means steel drum bands playing in the streets.This is a representative set of Calypso and other party music that’ll help melt away the snow.
* La Otrabanda – Pueblo Vivo/Vibrant People (world)
Two impressive releases with a cosmopolitan vibe bode well for new directions in global fusion.Vampire Weekend combines pop instincts and bouncy energy with southern African rhythms and guitar styles.La Otrabanda combines Venezuelan, American, and a smattering of other musical traditions to create a sound with mellower, dreamier grooves.Vampire Weekend’s production is expansive, including tasteful electronics alongside xylophones, assorted percussion, occasional strings and a core of guitar/bass/drums.La Ortrabanda isn’t far behind, with a rock band augmented by acoustic guitar, cuatro, percussion, and even bagpipes on one tune.Both of these represent the possibility of adventurous sounds infiltrating unsuspecting American ears.
* Ray Wylie Hubbard – A. EnlightenmentB. Endarkenment (Hint: There Is No C) (country)
Hubbard’s is the Americana of fallen angels.He’s drawn to the redemption of old gospel hymns, but is more at home with hard-living blues and honky-tonk.His sound digs deep in the gutbucket with bottleneck slide, blue harmonica, and a voice with edges like a chainsaw.His lyrics reveal a literary mind and a barroom brawler’s fists.
Louisiana-style keyboard funk that’d give Dr. John himself a mischevious grin.Horns and backup singers build a thick sound over a rhythm section that cooks.
T-Model is one of the last of the backwoods bluesmen, and on this album delivers a stripped-down acoustic set that’s miles deep.If Lightnin’ Hopkins were still around, he’d be making albums like this one.
One new review, and a new year’s treat.The website is almost ready – I’ll let you know when the grand opening is happening.
! The Real Sound of Chicago: Underground Disco From The WindyCity (dance)
Stop me if you’ve heard this one…an underground musical movement emerges in the 1970’s in response to the banality of what rock music had become.Kids everywhere responded to the new do-it-yourself ethic by picking up guitars and putting music on wax, if for no one else than their friends and the few die-hard fans who’d show up at a club and listen.
This is disco???More than you’d imagine, and this collection brings together the best of the forgotten disco bands of one city in that era.Four-on-the-floor beats, slap-and-pop bass, big orchestral arrangements, and a surprising amount of artistry.At its best, disco is the progressive evolution of funk, and this is disco at its best.
Listen to samples from The Real Sound of Chicagohere, including “Too Far Gone” and “Open Soul”
Casual Listening 2009 playlist
People will argue whether these songs are the best of the year, but these are the songs that I’ll remember the year by.
Here’s what’s left of the end-of-the-year calendar:
Dec 18: The best of the decade
Dec 25 & Jan 1: No reviews, possibly some special features
Jan 8: Launch of the new casuallistening.com
Best of the Decade (2K-D1)
1. Kanye West – Late Registration (rap)
If the story of music in the last 10 years was the switch from the "we culture" of radio and record stores to the iCulture of the digital download, the moral is that we've lost any sort of common musical reference point. Except one: Kanye West. I dare you to find someone other than your grandmother who escaped hearing "Gold Digger" this decade (your grandma may surprise you, too), and I dare you to find any other song this decade that would pass that test.
Beyond this, Kanye's music represents a renaissance in hip hop. Aesthetically, it raised the bar for production, introducing a new "wall of sound" that drew heavily on classic soul as well as electronic music. Lyrically, it broke the stranglehold of gangsta rap, unmasking and embracing the music as the province of nerdy Black kids far more than actual thugs. Kanye is responsible for defining the ChicagoSchool of hip hop, which inspired artists such as Lupe Fiasco and Rhymefest as well as rejuvenating older heads like Common through brilliant production work. All this in addition to Kanye's production work on several definitive albums by Jay-Z.
Kanye has given us some of the most enduring pop music of the decade, with indelible hooks set against exquisite sonic backdrops. There's a musical complexity to much of his work that will be rewarding listeners for decades more.
Honorable Mention: Common – Be; Lupe Fiasco –Food & Liquor; Jay-Z – The Black Album; Q-Tip – The Renaissance, Outkast – Stankonia
2. Green Day - American Idiot (rock)
By the middle of the decade, the absurdity of the Bush years was beginning to collapse on itself: two failed wars, torture scandals, and a hurricane made worse by government ineptitude. All this the result of an administration that was democratically elected. Twice.
There was only one possible response, and although the album wasn't explicitly a political rallying cry, young America embraced it as such. American Idiot became a giant upturned middle finger to the Bush administration and all those who blindly supported it. That it came from a punk band was fitting, although in 30 years punk has only turned out a handful of pop anthems of this magnitude.
American Idiot is driving energy, tuneful melodies, and tight vocal harmonies.Green Day manages to create a more penetrating sound than seems possible for a 3-piece guitar band.Slower pieces like “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends” take the same core thread of alienation and pull it inward.This album will be remembered as the one that captured the zeitgeist of the Bush years, tied it to a tree, and drove a stake through its heart.
Honorable Mention: Radiohead – In Rainbows; Bruce Springsteen – The Rising; The White Stripes –Red Blood Cells; TV on the Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain; Gnarls Barkley – St. Elsewhere
3. Bela Fleck – Throw Down Your Heart (world)
Barack Obama won the Nobel peace prize because people around the world heard him – and America by extension – speaking in their own languages, whether quoting from the Qur'an, Chinese proverbs, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.Bela Fleck is our musical Obama, one of the few musicians with the musicianship and the desire to have a dialogue with nearly anyone on the globe.
Throw Down Your Heart may be the strongest statement of American engagement with the world community since Paul Simon's Graceland. It's a banjo travelogue to the land where the instrument was born, notable because most of the songs here are not a fusion of east and west, but rather Fleck playing fundamentally African music with African musicians. He navigates about a dozen distinct styles in five countries brilliantly and with minimal rehearsal time. Even more than the virtuosity of Fleck's playing, we are witness to the depth of his listening.
As with Obama's Nobel, Fleck represents the possibility of a new relationship with the world, if not yet its full realization. This is still cause for celebration. We have on our hands the kind of global cultural ambassador America hasn’t seen since Dizzy Gillespie, with the talent and grace to take a seat at the global jam session.
The surprise of the decade in folk music was who was playing it – namely young musicians, including a lot of barefoot guys with big beards. The generational shift is as profound as the folk revival of the 1960's, when the Greenwich Village kids reconfigured old American music for an urban scene. The stylistic shift in this decade has been equally profound, with the new music sounding as different from Bob Dylan as Dylan sounded from Blind Willie McTell.
Stevens is of this group, but brings a classical sensibility to his art. He's drawn to paint grand orchestral narratives of The American People, shot through with populist, pastoral aspirations, tempered with the post-modern self-consciousness that such grandiosity is drastically out-of-vogue. He is Aaron Copland for a new Millennium.
"Illinois" is a pastiche of culture and kitsch, a wax museum where Carl Sandburg stands beside the Superman statue from downstate Metropolis. Woven through this landscape are intensely personal narratives. "Casimir Pulaski Day" is representative: known to Illinois schoolchildren less as a Polish heritage celebration than a gift of state-sanctioned hookey, it becomes a song about the day Stevens must come to grips with the death of a lover. With grief and memory tightly spun over a simple melody, the effect is breathtaking.
Honorable Mention: Various Artists – O Brother Where Art Thou (soundtrack); Iron & Wine – Around the Well; Nickel Creek – This Time; Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
5. Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around (country)
At a time of growing Balkanization in the world of country music, Johnny Cash was the one figure that inspired everybody. His late recordings are a remarkable document of man dealing with the reality of his own death. Under the guiding hand of producer Rick Rubin, Cash began putting on tape as much music as he could manage. He sang folk standards and church hymns, pop chestnuts, murder ballads, and a handful of songs made popular by much younger musicians.
The Man Comes Around shows both the range and depth of Cash’s late work. From the apocalyptic prophesy of the title track to the unexpected tenderness of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" to the devastating honesty of "Hurt," he holds nothing back.The deep tremor of his voice – pained, hopeful, determined – turns every song to gold.
These recordings are a hope chest for the ages. In preparing it, Cash became an American Folk Hero. He played to beat the steam drill, and victorious, he laid down his guitar and he died.
Honorable Mention: Chuck Ragan & Austin Lucas – Bristle Ridge; Lucinda Williams – World Without Tears; Loretta Lynn – Van Lear Rose; Steve Earle – Jerusalem
6.Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble – Black Unstoppable (jazz)
While many jazz veterans are still making innovative music, the untold story of this decade is that many of the most important young lions are women. The best-selling new jazz artist of the decade is Norah Jones, while the most critically acclaimed new voice is Esperanza Spaulding. Both have real talent that has yet to find full expression. Nicole Mitchell is the rising star of this decade that actually produced a masterpiece.
Black Unstoppable acknowledges the broad inheritance that is Black music, with aural nods to blues, gospel, Motown, and classic jazz, as well as the avant-garde with which Mitchell is most closely identified. Her vision is a profoundly feminist one, a rarity in a field where even the most talented female musicians rely on conventional love ballads.
She has the confidence of a lion, with muscular themes that become the basis for free improvisation. Alongside the most challenging pieces are passages haunting in their simplicity – the final riff of “Thanking the Universe” seems to linger in your ears for hours after the final note has gone silent. Mitchell's is a bold and beautiful vision, the new shape of jazz to come.
Honorable Mention: Herbie Hancock – River: The Joni Letters , Dave Holland – What Goes Around; Dianne Reeves – Good Night and Good Luck (soundtrack); Ornette Coleman – Sound Grammar
7. Mavis Staples – Live: Hope at the Hideout (gospel)
It's a matter of cosmic symbolism that this album was released on election day, 2008. The spirituals that gave courage to the civil rights movement seemed to be finding their fulfillment that day. While Mavis Sings "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" and adds "We're going to get that prize!" election returns showed Americans turning over at least a piece of that prize to a Black President. One can't help but feel goosebumps all through this record.
Staples had developed this project a year earlier with guitarist and producer Ry Cooder for the album "We'll Never Turn Back." Although the Cooder arrangements have stayed, the sound is exponentially better without him, trading the pristine studio for a flesh-and-blood audience. The call-and-response, as well as Mavis' storytelling, is as captivating as the songs themselves.
One election can't fix the world. We're going to need the courage of these songs for years to come.
Honorable Mention: Mike Farris – Salvation in Lights
8. The Silk Road Ensemble – New Impossibilities (classical)
Twentieth-century classical music broke down nearly every remaining aesthetic barrier attached to the art form. What distinguishes the 21st century so far is the breaking of cultural barriers. From the recognition of composers such as Osvaldo Golijov and Tan Dun to the buzz over Gustavo Dudamel's premiere with the L.A. Symphony, it's clear that the classical idiom is no longer exclusively Western art.
The Silk Road Ensemble exemplifies this trend, breaking cultural barriers through most of the decade. Led by renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the ensemble features virtuoso players on a number of Eastern instruments - Sheng, Pi-pa, Koto, Tabla and others. While each of the ensemble's recordings break new ground, the collaboration with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra covers the broadest stylistic range, as well as showing the creative possibilities of this music in conventional classical performance.
The Silk Road is itself a powerful symbol of what this music represents, the name referring to the legendary trade route across Asia connecting Europe and the Far East. It speaks of pan-Asian continuity, relations built on exchange rather than colonialism, and a metaphorical crossroads of history, wealth, and culture. The Silk Road journey is the artistic paradigm of the new millennium.
Honorable Mention: John Adams – On the Transmigration of Souls; Osvaldo Golijov – La Pasion Segun San Marcos; John Williams – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (soundtrack)
9. Daddy Yankee – Barrio Fino (Latin)
It's a rare treat to watch an entire new style of music emerge. The mix of dancehall reggae and North American rap known as Reggaeton had its passport stamped in Panama, Puerto Rico, and the United States (among other places) on its way to becoming a hemispheric if not global phenomenon. Reggaeton blew up mid-decade to the point where there were entire radio stations playing nothing but. That fever has subsided, but the influence of the music is still strong in rap and rap-en-espanol, while the most prominent Reggaeton artists are still making records and touring.
Daddy Yankee was the first artist to go Big with a capital B, and this was the album that did it. You'll hear the quintessential stutter-step beat, hyper-masculine boasting, and wickedly addictive hooks on “Gasolina.” Yankee's convincing bad-boy personality and biting delivery help distinguish him from the crowd of performers who drove this sound throughout the decade.
10. Bruce Springsteen – We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (kids)
The last ten years saw a proliferation of kids albums, often by alternative rockers who now have young kids of their own. The vast majority of this music will be forgotten. To get a sense of what may endure, strip away all the clever cookies-and-naptime lyrics. If the raw music can hold the kids' (and parents') attention, you've got a keeper. By this test, much of the best music for kids you'll find in other categories in the virtual record store.
Springsteen's Seeger Sessions succeeds for the same reason that Seeger's music has succeeded for going-on-70 years: time-tested songs delivered with a palpable sense of joy. In Springsteen's case, a fifteen-piece band gives this recording the feel of an old-time hootenanny. There's also the satisfaction of exposing kids to several American classics, including "O Mary Don't You Weep'' and "We Shall Overcome." Pete Seeger's music made the generational leap, as I'm now playing my childhood records for my own kids; I'm hoping Springsteen makes the leap for my kids’ kids thirty years from now.
This list will give you a sense of where I'm coming from:
1. Radiohead - In Rainbows (rock) 2. Herbie Hancock - River: The Joni Letters (jazz) 3. Galactic - From the Corner to the Block (rap) 4. Chaka Khan - Funk This (R&B) 5. I'm Not There: Original Soundtrack - (folk) 6. The Silk Road Ensemble - New Impossibilities (classical) 7. Make Farris - Salvation in Lights (gospel) 8. Kenny Wayne Shepherd - Ten Days Out (blues) 9. M.I.A. - Kala (world) 10. Steve Earle - Washington Square Serenade (country)
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