This Interruption in Our Regular Programming brought you by AC/DC

I am far behind in writing about discs I am listening to and tonight I had every intention of writing about a new viola d'amore-oriented-disc (I am such a tease!).  However, I got distracted by Alllison Stewart's Washington Post review of the new AC/DC album Black Ice. That is right AC/DC has a  new album out!

This is not a promotion for the new effort--I haven't heard a single track--and in some ways I am a little hesitant to talk about any album that is only being sold at "Wal-we will close a store before we give employees any voice by allowing a union here-Mart."  Still, this review just cracked me up and made me want to share.  

For those who can't be bothered with hopping over to the WaPo site to read the whole review, here are some highlights (which like the previews to a bad movie are really all you need to see), but I really should start by pointing out that Stewart assesses this album as the "best record the band has made in decades, and not only because all the other ones were pretty terrible."

Frontman Brian Johnson and guitarist Angus Young carry "Black Ice" on their backs: Johnson, now 61 (!), sings more and hollers less; Young, who seems more engaged than usual throughout, occasionally plays slide guitar. These might not seem like noteworthy developments, but for a band as resistant to innovation as this one, baby steps matter. [snip]

Its lyrics aren't worth mentioning, except to note that there are some, and they're the usual mix of cheerful incomprehensibility and innuendo-laden buffoonery. [snip]But mostly, "Black Ice" contains songs about rocking. Specifically, about how much AC/DC rocks, how much it's rocked in the past and how, if given the opportunity, it plans to rock some more in the future. Even the song about a wartime something or other ("War Machine") seems to be about a really rocking war machine. [snip]

The band's now de rigueur sex songs (forget "You Shook Me All Night Long"; AC/DC long ago stopped writing about women unless it had to) sound increasingly like Mad Libs: haphazard assemblages of a noun, a verb, the word "she" and a euphemism for "penis." [snip]

These, um, love songs are increasingly self-parodic, detailing amorous encounters so improbably hazardous ("She wanna shake you/No way to save you/She's got me shot/I'm fallin' ") you'll be tempted to wonder if anyone in the band has actually ever met a woman. They contribute to the dragginess of the disc's last half, as does "Decibel," the most generic AC/DC song of all time. "Black Ice" has 15 songs, which is about five too many: After its pulverizingly pleasurable first half, it's all filler and very little killer.

Someday I hope to write this entertaining of a piece about an album.

Catching Up With Kasey Chambers

It is probably safe to say that I don't own very many albums that would be clearly categorized as "country" with some exception and when you say Australian artist, I tend to think of INXS or AC/DC (yes, I am of that generation), so this post is a bit out of my usual focus. However, both Payton and Nelson have both been writing about Kasey Chambers lately, in part because of her new album Rattlin' Bones (with hubby Shane Nicholson). Given that I like both of their sensibilities (Payton's and Nelson's that is), I decided it would be good to check this Australian alt-country rocker out. Of course, as is my way, I went back to one of the earlier efforts that boys gave high praise.

So let's just cut to the chase, Barricades and Brickwalls is a great album (do I get to say that having started by saying I don't have a lot of country?). It is all country from tough blues driven rock-oriented blues to honky-tonk to bluegrass. KC's vocals are wonderful ranging from a twangy country girl fresh of the mountain to a gritty-you-ain't-gonna-mess with me guitar playing woman. If you haven't heard any KC as I hadn't, I would recommend starting where I (and probably many others have) with this album. And I will definitely be looking into her new album and others.

Here I am going to give you three tracks from B&B that show her stylistic range. First, the great bluesy opening and title track of the disc followed by a slow country song about the, um, country (that might be the only song I have that includes a reference to "dingoes") and finally a great bluegrass feeling country tune with all the classic instrumentation and harmonies.

Barricades and Brickwalls
Nullarbor Song
Still Feeling Blue

Those Pale Young Gents

I first heard a track from the Pale Young Gentlemen's second disc Black Forest (tra la la) all of two weeks ago and since that time, the number of reviews has exploded. This is of course not exceptional for a new album, but as I am new to PYG, I have been reading a lot of them and trying to glean some common threads in the reviews. Here are a few.

Lots of comparisons to The Decemberists (although I find the D's to be much more rock-oriented) and also to Beirut--a band I need to learn more about. Not sure these hold, but the basic point here is that you have in PYG a group of classically influenced artists playing indie music--or a group of indie musicians striving for a classical sound. I am not sure which. Part of the result is a lot of descriptions of their music as having a gypsy, eastern-European sound. Yeah, I guess--sort of. I hear it more as a string quartet who met an acoustic punk/folk rock guitar player and they decided to form a band.

The general sense is that this second album is solid with the real highlights being the upbeat tunes which strike most as more similar to their first self-released album which I read described in more than one place as "rollicking." As a result, the most common complaint is that this album has a few too many mid-tempo pieces that blend together. I agree that the up-tempo pieces are the highlights, but in part because they pop out among the others. Perhaps a couple more would create a more balanced album, but I quite like how tra la la holds together as the slower tempo tunes have their own distinct nature that you get with listening to the album a number of time. (Have I said that I like albums that change/improve with listening and that too often I find reviews feeling like someone listened once and sat down to write? I do.)

And finally, while many seem a bit fraught about this album, they all want so badly to like it as part of PYG's growing and rich oeuvre--and they want readers to like this band and hope that this is a band that has a long future. Me too. But one way or the other I suspect that however these musicians go forward, whether together for a long while or spreading out and spawning other groups, they will be playing fine music for years to come.

I am going to give you two cuts here that appear next to each other on the album. The first, a slower introspective piece that characterizes much of the album followed by the cut that seems to be the agreed upon "hit" of the album which is hard to disagree with--in fact, I don't. Enjoy.

Goldenface, Morninglight
The Crook of My Good Arm

Parental Warnings

This weekend will be spent with my parents who are visiting to help put some finishing touches on the will-it-ever-be-finished basement-refinish project, so blogging here in The Room will be on hiatus until next week. But speaking of parents, I will leave you parents, grandparents or anyone else who will have any children in their house this weekend with this challenge.

1. Get all the children you have in the house (the more the better) around the computer.
2. Turn the volume on your computer up as loud as it will go--trust me, this is a requirement.
3. Play the title track from Kimya Dawson's latest kid CD.
4. See if you make it all the way through the not-quite-a-minute-long song before the laughter is too loud to hear the end.
5. Please record how you did in the comments (but please don't blame me for any embarrassing singing about farts, butts or other silly words in public by those who chose to play this for--children or adults!).
   

Alphabutt

Autumn with the Nuttree

The weather is turning. The track of the sun is getting southerly and creating those great slanted shadows. The air is starting to have that crisp feeling and the hint of leaves turning has begun. It is the time of year that turns my musical interests to listening to jazz and thinking about wandering through the streets of the city to a jazz club to hear some swinging music while sipping on something in a tall, cool glass--or these days at least trying to create that atmosphere even while the boys are running around like maniacs at home. And here is a nice new disc to help create that atmosphere.

The Nuttree Quartet is John Abercrombie (g) Jerry Bergonzi (ts) Adam Nussbaum (d) and Gary Versace (B3) and the new(ish) disc is Standards which is a solid disc of (mostly), well, standards with a few more jazz-fan oriented pieces (by standards writers) thrown in. The majority of tunes are played by the full quartet although there are a couple trio settings as well that mixes things up nicely. The musicians are all proven performers in their own right. In fact, in one sense, it is tempting to see the disc as too straightforward and too standard--what's new about four veterans playing standards afterall. But that is a mistake.

As Ken Micallef notesin the Downbeat review: "Playing standards may be as old as Job, but what better way for modern-day masters to weigh in on the state of the art?" And they weigh in nicely.

For the most part the arrangements are upbeat and free-flowing with Bergonzi’s tenor often taking the lead pass. His sound is big but not overbearing at all. The solos are fluid and a nice mix between lyrically driven riffs and a bit more free-ranging takes—although this is always pretty straight-forward jazz. Abercrombie’s smooth guitar, both as part of the rhythm section and in his solos, serves as a nice counterbalance to the bigger sax sound and Nussbaum is on the mark throughout whether on brushes or driving the more upbeat pieces where I think he really excels.

If I have one reservation it is the B3 parts—not because I don’t like the B3 (I. in fact, love it) or even because I don’t think Versace does some nice work here. When I saw the line-up for this album, I was imagining the album being a bit more driven by the B3 and since Versace is in more of a traditional rhythm section role here (with some notable solo exceptions) I almost wish they went all acousitic here, but that is a minor note in an otherwise perfectly enjoyable effort.

I am going to give you three real standards here to sample. Although keep in mind that there are a some more chilled out pieces mixed in with tunes like these.

Our Love Is Here To Stay
All Or Nothing At All
Naima

Who’s Left?

Add the Foo Fighters to the list of bands who have told the McCain campaign to quit using their music—actually I think they said stop “perverting” and “tarnishing” their music.

“It’s frustrating and infuriating that someone who claims to speak for the American people would repeatedly show such little respect for creativity and intellectual property. The saddest thing about this is that ‘My Hero’ was written as a celebration of the common man and his extraordinary potential,” the Foo Fighters said in a statement. “To have it appropriated without our knowledge and used in a manner that perverts the original sentiment of the lyric just tarnishes the song. We hope that the McCain campaign will do the right thing and stop using our song — and start asking artists’ permission in general!”

Ouch.

What Say Ye? Ben Folds Open Thread

Okay, so I got no pony in this race, but there seems to be a bit of a debate about the new Ben Folds album, Way to Normal. Lets start with the very positive Paste review which provides this heavy duty artistic comparison.

[T]hese 12 songs are more of an anthropological study of aberrant human behavior, idiosyncratic news stories and bizarre chapters of the musician’s own autobiography, all observed with the same unstinting absurdist eye as J.D. Salinger when he penned Nine Stories more than 50 years ago.

Piling on, PopMatters suggests that Folds “is writing and performing music as if he has something to prove again” and that he “has given us something to talk about again with an album that works, front to back, on both musical and lyrical levels.”

But the discussion out there isn’t all positive. Spin weighs in noting that “Folds is incapable of mediocrity, but Way to Normal comes way too close.” And David over at IndieMuse goes even further by suggesting that Folds’ new album is “not worth your time.” And while he hypothesizes that one reason might be that Folds is old (hey! says this 44-year old) he also notes that Folds can still write a great pop song. As evidence, he highlights “You Don’t Know Me” from the new album which features Regina Spektor—a tune Lisa B. has been displaying in her sidebar for a while, although I don’t know if that has to do with Folds, Spektor or both.

Still there is no doubting that Folds can write a great pop tune. Below I give you the 1999 hit “Army” which makes me smile (and pause) every time I hear it and a live version of “Smoke” which is based on a wonderful conceit. But hey, as I said at the start, no pony in this race: what say ye?

Army
Smoke