The Weather is alive

ALBUM REVIEW

by Shardae Jobson

(released on May 11, 2010 in the U.S.)

The Dead Weather is the best rock band in America right now, and while founder Jack White already lives a comfortable life as one of limited modern day musical geniuses, this band should be bigger than they are. Their first outing Horehound definitely had some of the greatest cuts in rock from the recent decade that's ended ("Treat Me Like Your Mother"--fantastic). The fearlessly titled Sea of Cowards is honorable and true to the rock and roll magnetism of the 1970s ("Blue Blood Blues", "Gasoline"), accented with the adroit confidence expected of today's most talented of bands (heard expertly on "I'm Mad"). Their influences are clear without superfluous cheesy odes to the iconic albums that helped to shape Sea of Cowards from the inside out so many years later.

As the growling lead vocalist (and fellow guitarist) of The Dead Weather, to say that Allison Mosshart is indeed the heart of the band's greatness would be an understatement. She doesn't add a feminine touch to the band, she adds an enigmatic, eminent quality to the lyrics she sings that go hand in hand with her Leigh Lezark "Princess Coldstare" demeanor that is more fascinating than alienating. Mosshart and White are great together, and just like her (terrific) work with James Hince of The Kills, she always sounds in defiance towards the voice of her male counterpart--but like Hince, White welcomes the challenge. She continues to be the rock patron goddess of music in 2010.

Unlike Horehound, Sea of Cowards is seemingly less constructed which in return makes way for their sophomore album to have a more fluid connection from one song to the next than the debut. Interestingly, each individual's dexterity, including Dean Fertita (of Queens of the Stone Age) and Jack Lawrence (of The Raconteurs) is grandly spotlighted on Cowards, as especially showcased on "Hustle and Cuss".

The Difference Between Us" is brilliant with its "I'm not the way that you found me" tranquil beginnings, and "Die by the Drop" (the first single) is furiously more defining than whiny as classic rock should be. It is the most boss record on the album. "I Can't Hear You" is snarky, with a puzzling, muffled Mosshart who sounds more fed up and submissive than authoritative which is a noticeable change from a majority of the band's past and present discography.

It is a wonder on the album exactly which cowards the band used as inspiration, as the music reveals their stoic sympathy that is more easily expressed through their impulsive nature as storytellers. The most salient feature of Cowards is that maintained in every song are certain words or sentences that White and Mosshart repeat, and not just for melody purposes, but for sending a message of the overall theme of all eleven tracks essentially being karma.

The finale continues the motif in the particularly obtrusive "Old Mary" with its repeated lyrics of "now on to the moment of your last breath" against a highly ominous beat. If this album was released back in 1971, ol' "Mary" could have been the background music for the aberrant tunnel scene of the four criminals in the film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange.

Sea of Cowards is not as angry as Horehound, but is instead slyer in its presentation of confrontation. The Dead Weather are sincere to making rock music that is both shrewd and lively. "I wanna leave a trace" are the second best of the album's effective lyrics, from "Blue Blood Blues", and the band certainly will, as they've created (already) the rock album of the year. Sea of Cowards is nary of shortcomings.

THE BEST: "Blue Blood Blues", "The Differences Between Us", "Die By the Drop", "I Can't Hear You", "Jawbreaker", "Old Mary"

The Bells are overtly ringing

ALBUM REVIEW
by Shardae Jobson
(released on May 11, 2010 in the U.S.)

Sleigh Bells are a duo completely under the radar, yet their debut album Treats received much praise from music critics, including the always austere elitists Pitchfork Media. They're on a joint contract with M.I.A.'s N.E.E.T. Recordings which is not only pretty supreme in their range of connections, will also guarantee them more attention than the average independent artists, as they've also performed at SXWS and CMJ music festivals. Treats is utterly overwrought in its lofty level of sound, but is very representative of what today's music will be remembered for, making the record likable enough--if you're into soundtracks for an ADD generation.

Bells first official single "Tell 'Em" is incredibly infectious and slightly '80s arena pop rock, and it hypnotizes the listener even as you can barely comprehend a sentence Alexis Krauss is saying. The thrusts of guitar riffs by Derek Miller are transformed into sonic lasers, giving the track an urgency that lets future fans in the know that more anxiety is on the way, and we're thankful for the warning because Treats does not quit until its very last note.

It's hard to define Sleigh Bells as anything other known than straight up noise (maybe "post dance-punk", but this specific noise has an odd artistic touch to it that enables Treats to be considered somewhat stimulating. The music take the approach of cut and paste craft and recreates into something of their own at its most original finest. At times, the music seems to only make sense to Krauss and Miller, but its hard to cover your ears because you find yourself wildly charmed by their boisterous behavior.

"Run the Heart" was made for imagined galaxy adventures with the soothing but knowingly flirtatious voice of Krauss, and is a love story in disguise, that has a part two continued in "Rachel". "Rill Rill" is the one song that is the most unlike the rest, with a country music resonance and is nice break from the brash tunes, but Bells don't stray for long. "Crown on the Ground" takes the award for being the most obnoxiously hurtful to the ears, and Krauss' lovely inflections are again a bit passed over by the beats. "Kids" teases with its moments of resistance, going back and forth against thick bounces and clattering shrills.

The album is only 32 minutes, and throughout their record, Sleigh Bells bring to mind another rowdy duo of cacophonous proportions, Crystal Castles. The major discrepancy that keeps Bells from being a facsimile is that they're surprisingly stalwart, while Castles is unforgivably melodic, though both duos trade off from song to song on their respective works.

Treats was adored by critics because Sleigh Bells didn't act on being loud just to be musically pseudo shocking, or to thrive as irritable young things just looking to create a raucous. They've made an interesting record that sparks effortlessly through speakers like a kaleidoscope of sound waves which is an accomplishment considering its mostly patterns of colossal distortions. You want some bleeding ears within seconds of pushing play in the name of music? You asked for it.

THE BEST: "Tell 'Em", "Kids", "Riot Rhythm", "Run the Heart", "A/B Machines", "Treats"

Courtney Emancipates Herself

ALBUM REVIEW

by Shardae Jobson

As the fourth full-length album of original material under the name Hole, Courtney Love remains as the only founding member in the group, as while Nobody's Daughter contains some decent tracks worthy of her comeback in the field that made her one of the most polemic figures in music history; it's taken quite a while to get us to hear her officially declare emancipation of personal and professional tribulations.

For any real fan of Hole's music throughout the years, the return of Love (musically) is one that will again titillate, once they push play on Nobody's Daughter, they'll also find themselves wishing that Melissa Auf der Maur would come back as the band's greatest replacement member, and Eric Erlandson, the quieter founding member of the band--though nonetheless sonically vital--would've returned and help create the kind of material that made Hole an underrated band of the '90s that always delivered landmark albums in rock music.

This latest record in the Hole discography, after the laudable gritty realism of Live Through This and glittery coolness that was Celebrity Skin (a fantastic follow up in which it's only main difference to the former was a more refined finish), Nobody’s Daughter is a slight mixture of both, but doesn’t really find its footing as another spectrum of the band’s progress. As a whole, it kind of just feels like a record of songs with no theme to each other. From first listen, you'll probably like it immediately, but you’ll only get to loving it with future listens after random decisions to give another chance one day.

Courtney’s voice sounds like it’s been through more hell on Nobody's Daughter than it did on Live Through This, but what she didn’t have in 1994 that she does in 2010 is a kind of resilience and acceptance in that she is the mess she proclaims, but she can still play the guitar. In 1994, she was searching for meaning as an emotionally discombobulated young widow—with a potty mouth. In 1998, she was a reborn glamour puss--with a potty mouth. In 2010, her feelings are up for grabs in the song “For Once in My Life”, just as she intended with the many outbursts of over-shared personal details of her life that seemed to come out the woodwork non-intermittently. Among her many publicized issues (especially when she released her iffy solo album America's Sweetheart, and a she recently referred to as "the Letterman years), it was a wonder if she would be able to rise again as a musician. It is evident she's still got it, but the weary of her woes has taken a toll as the luster she had as such a infamously eccentric figure seems to have rusted a bit. The album has some highlights of the old Courtney, and so reassuredly, yes, she was and always will be a ragamuffin talent.

The song "Pacific Coast Highway" positively gleams of “Malibu” from Celebrity Skin with a more stripped, acoustic sound, and bounces off what was left of the song before it,“Honey”, almost like an expansive look into the previous. "Letter to God" might as well be titled "Letter to Frances" in regards to her current torn relationship with her only child, and the first single (with no music video) "Skinny Little Bitch" is a classic loud, post-modern rock song for Hole but doesn't match their previous work. It's the kind of song that sounds better live, which is not exactly a bad thing. The last track, "Never Go Hungry" has got to be inspired by the character Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind when in the scene she swears on her life "she'll never go hungry again". In Courtney's world and in this time of her storied life, she'll never hit rock bottom (once more) again.

Nobody's Daughter wins when it stays along a sedate sound and perturbed lyrics of love and life gone wrong, such as the lucidly brash (bridge) lyrics of "People like you, fuck people like me" on the excellent "Samantha". The harder songs like "Loser Dust" are good, but sound a bit forced and just aren't the same without the chemistry she had with Erlandson and someone as swift as Auf der Maur who is like the Lita Ford of today's music.

With virtually new, unknown members in Hole, Courtney Love is more center stage than ever in the band, and has become a kind of Patti Smith rock icon in the microcosm of female rock stars. Yet, unlike Smith, Love yearns to be in the spotlight and be recognized as a student and purveyor of the music she creates. Love is still one of the most sincere artists in the genre. Her feminine growls have a twinge of ache in them now, but she's not going anywhere. At this point, she has nothing to lose, because she belongs to no one. The album as a whole doesn't really have a direction, but considering the facts, it's not so bad, and her vengeance is more melancholic and subservient than expected. You'll be alright, Ms. Love.

THE BEST: "Samantha", "Pacific Coast Highway", "Honey"

VIDEO: Hole performing "Violet" in 1995, and "Celebrity Skin" in 1998, (both) at the MTV Video Music Awards

"Music Makes the People Come Together...Yeah..."

In honor of this past Saturday's Record Store Day and the Boston Marathon (good luck all you abominatedly good at running people!), below is a extended list of the most accomplished full-length albums of the past decade. A lot of these lists, chronicling the best of the best in singles and albums were released during the first half of last year, and often clogged their lists with songs and artists based on overt popularity than both popularity and cultural relevance, but these lists are nothing more than opinion. It's not really and shouldn't be about what was blasted through everyone's speakers and what wasn't. The music chosen are the ones that years from now will sound as fantastic as the first time your ear drums understood what heaven was in their version of audible wasteland. Some may to quick to say that music sucks nowadays, but some us choose to still believe.

So here's to the short list of albums full of unequivocal paeans for days to come in our already complicated lives. Maybe you'll "re-discover" an album you hadn't given a chance, or realize you weren't the only one you thought that album was worth every blood, sweat, and tears it took to make it. Yes, a majority of the list is from "mainstream" acts, but don't let that sway you, there's a little something here for everyone. You may even see an album that you listened to endlessly back in high school, and there's nothing like those albums that were there for you during the hard times and the good days. No paragraph reasoning underneath each listed album; once you hear them (if you haven't already), they'll certainly sing or beat-box for themselves. Let it be, my friends, let it be.

"I've got my 45 on so I...can rock on..." -"Soak Up the Sun" by Sheryl Crow

Some of the albums that mattered most from 2000-2009 (otherwise known as The Aughts)

• She Wolf by Shakira
• Extraordinary Machine by Fiona Apple
• Stankonia by OutKast
• La Roux by La Roux
• Ultraviolet by Kid Sister

• Come Home With Me by Cam'ron
• Rock Steady by No Doubt
• Gold Medal by The Donnas
• Crystal Castles by Crystal Castles
• Get Rich or Die Tryin' by 50 Cent
• In Rainbows by Radiohead
• Bleed Like Me by Garbage

• Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel by Mariah Carey
• The College Graduate by Kanye West
• The Marshall Mathers LP by Eminem
• Rated R by Rihanna
• Toxicity by System of a Down
• Music by Madonna

• White Blood Cells by The White Stripes
• Elan Vital by Pretty Girls Make Graves
• Funeral by The Arcade Fire

• The Information by Beck
• Stories from the City, Stories From the Sea by PJ Harvey
• Whoa, Nelly! by Nelly Furtado

• Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape by Me'shell Ndegeocello
• Blackout by Britney Spears
• Fallen by Evanescence
• Midnight Boom by The Kills

• X by Kylie Minogue
• Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park
• The Woods by Sleater-Kinney

• Change It All by Goapele
• In Search Of... by N.E.R.D.
• Food & Liquor by Lupe Fiasco

• Rooty by Basement Jaxx
• Intimacy by Bloc Party
• Afrodiasic by Brandy

• A Fever You Can't Sweat Out by Panic! At the Disco
• Annimal by Annie
• Robyn by Robyn

• BLACKsummer's night by Maxwell
• It's Not You, It's Me by Lily Allen
• Kala by M.I.A.

• Back to Black by Amy Winehouse
• Fever to Tell by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Under the Blacklight by Rilo Kiley

• Two Suns by Bat for Lashes
• We Are The Pipettes by The Pipettes
• Cross by Justice

• Hell Hath No Fury by The Clipse
• New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War by Erykah Badu
• The Fame Monster by Lady Gaga

• Oracular Spectacular by MGMT
• Tha Carter III by Lil Wayne
• Santogold by Santigold

• Words and Sounds, Vol.1 by Jill Scott
• Fantasies by Metric
• Little Voice by Sara Bareilles
• 19 by Adele

• I Am...Sasha Fierce by Beyonce
• Colour Me Free! by Joss Stone
• Breakaway by Kelly Clarkson
• Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear
• In Love & War by Amerie
• In Ghost Colours by Cut Copy

• Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix by Phoenix
• Is This It? by The Strokes
• Night Ripper by Girl Talk
• Consolers of the Lonely by The Raconteurs

Bravo for MGMT (new album review) + Janelle Monae

Clap Your Hands and Say..."Congratulations" to MGMT

reviewed by Shardae Jobson

The sophomore album Congratulations from MGMT is inexplicably loud, clunky and uber confident; almost nothing like the laid-back and congenial feel of their massively adored debut Oracular Spectacular. The most recognizable influence is the sound of the late ‘60s which immediately introduces itself from the first track, “It’s Working”. A majority of the songs sounds like the kind of music the Beach Boys would've create in 2010, like the way some reviewers saw the work of Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere as the voice of Marvin Gaye in a different time and technology. Many renown publications praised the album, as it looks like MGMT have now entered the immune music club of bands including Coldplay, U2, Radiohead, and anything Jack White does, in that no matter if the (last) album wasn’t up to par, it’s still one of the best of the year its released. MGMT is on its way to such a status.

The major difference between Congratulations and Oracular Spectacular is the overall sentiment. Even the titles alone suggest a metamorphosis of being comfortably peculiar to becoming a more stylized avant-garde act. There is a chaotic spiritually that is greatly executed on the second album, instead of the more linear, melancholy bliss of Spectacular. The songs are indeed great and adventurous, definitely a bit more artistic as without a doubt, MGMT were trying different ways of singing along against a myriad of high charging go-go beats and reverbs. Interestingy, though there is something about the songs on their debut that in a few years to come, will be a part of the new classics in music like the beautifully sensual "Electric Feel" that has yet to lose its sonic luster; but it’s not to say that Congratulations disappoints. The thing with debuts is that because new artists at that point have nothing to prove quite yet, they have no idea where their work might lead them, which is the genius of debuts in general, and explains the comforting, timeless element of Oracular Spectacular.

On the track listing of nine songs, some of them based on first listening, will matter eventually with enough time passed. “Flash Delirium” is the first single, and along with “Someone’s Missing” sound the most like the first album, but still distinct in its strong choir affect, suggesting that maybe during the progress of this clearly extensively made record, they made a pit stop at a local church somewhere. Sweet. "I Found a Whistle” is ridiculously serene, and is the pinnacle of the album, as the band seems to be more at ease in this song, like it was recorded in one session and they left the song as is. It is the high point because of its calm post-Psychedelic (the most overused word in describing anything about this band) impression that is also non-disenchanting.

While "It's Working" is the archetype for MGMT's expansion into the land of sanguine and stubborn hippie-dom, "Siberian Breaks" is a two in one song at the classic epic length of twelve minutes and some seconds. The singing sounds nothing like MGMT's sublime whiny, and is actually a bit of blue-eyed soul. The track is very hypnotic and it somewhat continues without you completely noticing, but you catch on that the band was attempting some Zeppelin esque tune for the nostalgia rock set, as they again experimented with on the purely instrumental "Lady Dada's Nightmare" (yes, that is a quip on Ms. "Paparazzi", but no commentary for you to chew upon).

MGMT purposedly did not create anything that would be akin to some of their most celebrated songs like "Time to Pretend" or "Kids" (the latter song they omitted from their Coachella Music Festival performance, and is borderline ominous to do). It can be appreciated that the Brooklyn duo was overtly conscious of their previous work and sought to make the kind of music that essentially sound like MGMT maturing for the best, it's just that possibly fans and critics alike didn't expect them to sound so self-assuring so soon, but then again, that is also pretty common on the material of second albums. The sophomore project is the coming out party in terms of what you think you should be reprimanded and praised for; somehow trying to encourage the public to look at you once again with brand new eyes.

Congratulations isn't an arrogant record, but is presumptuous; even the artwork is super cumbersome with a tasmanian looking cartoon going nuts. This second album of theirs will likely be on every other best of list for 2010, and is one of the most provocative sophomore albums in years for its deliberate distance from the debut. What is missing most on is the punch of the lyrics, and they are bit muffled beats. The lyrics though, when audible, are similar to Spectacular in that the words are looking for you to explain it all to them while at the same time, planning to move ahead with or without your approval. The major difference is that on the aforementioned tracks two years ago, they were self-serving lyrics for a quarter-life crisis generation. MGMT are still figuring many complicated things out as displayed, but it sounds like they rather be on their own this time for their journey, and are just sharing their frustrations, not venting tehm politely like on "Time to Pretend".

In a recent BlackBook magazine interview, their co-producer Peter Kember revealed that, "They appear to be laissez-faire about things, but they care deeply. I can promise you that. They will tell you until they’re blue in the face that they don’t care about how the album is received, but I know for a fact they do.” The duo does sings on the last title track, "I can't see what's really there . And all I need's a great big congratulations. I'll keep your dreams, you pay attention for me. As strange as it seems. I'd rather dissolve than have you ignore me", which if anything reminds us that the title is ironic because they'll give themselves the shining stars first, but if you find yourself also enjoying what they've done, but all means...everyone loves a compliment...they're just beating you to it just in case. You did good, MGMT.

VIDEO: Janelle Monae's new single and video, "Tightrope" featuring Big Boi of OutKast