April 27, 2011
This week, we're listening in on music from Scala and Kolacny Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Maná, Caifanes, and Tim McGraw.
Possessed of a voice so clear and pure it can reduce the toughest roughneck to willing, simpering submission long before the chorus kicks in, Emmylou Harris is one of country's most distinctive, original and enduring artists. After the slow start of her debut album Gliding Bird (1970), released round the time she first became a mother, she joined the late Gram Parsons on his quest to deliver "cosmic American music" to the world, only to see that alliance derailed by tragedy. Guided by a survivor's instinct as strong and unwavering as her voice, Harris pressed on, and began to assemble an incredibly bold and eclectic body of work: some of her tunes were drawn directly from country tradition ("Sweet Dreams," "Together Again" etc.), others she positioned left of left field.
Her cover of the Chordettes' "Mr. Sandman" belongs to that fascinating and wide-ranging set of Emmylou Harris tracks with immense appeal beyond the borders of country. Not only does it reveal a certain delight at operating outside her comfort zone, it also dilutes some of the novelty value instilled in the original, which has become a sonic signpost for '50s nostalgia. The Harris version was first recorded in 1978 alongside Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt, but her collaborators were hamstrung by record label red tape, so Emmylou returned to the studio, sang all the harmonies herself, and wound up with a single that dented both pop (Top Ten) and country (Top 40) charts.
The Parton/Ronstadt/Harris triumvirate would successfully reconvene for the 1987 album Trio, featuring a truly gorgeous cover of the Phil Spector-penned classic, "To Know Him Is to Love Him" -- while the Teddy Bears' original radiates teenage infatuation, the Harris collaboration stirs experience into the mix, and the result is intoxicating. Finally, we'd like to recommend her cover of the Lennon/McCarney song "Here, There and Everywhere." Early on, Harris had revealed a fondness for Beatles material -- "For No One" was included on her major label debut Pieces of the Sky (1975) -- and this often overlooked Revolver composition benefitted from the exquisite Harris touch on Elite Hotel (also released in '75).
April 19, 2011
This week, we're listening in on music from Hanna, Paul Simon, Big Audio Dynamite, and The Judds.
We can't outright assume that Paul Simon derives a warm frisson of satisfaction from the fact that his commercially disappointing 1983 album Hearts and Bones is now held up as a classic, one of his finest, most ambitious and most personal pieces of work . . . but it's nice to imagine that he allows himself a self-congratulatory chuckle from time to time. The years have revealed the album to be a hugely rewarding, massively underrated achievement, with its mid-life perspective and mediations on love and relationships, notably the title track, part-inspired by his early '80s romantic involvement with future wife Carrie Fisher. Initially, the album was supposed to mark a Simon & Garfunkel reunion, but creative differences put paid to that, and it became Simon's final rock/pop-rooted LP before his shift in focus to world music (on 1986's Graceland).
Every track holds up really well, but we can especially recommend the wistful ballad, "Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War" -- an affecting lyrical blend of innocence and experience set to a gorgeous melody. Inspired by an actual photograph of the surrealist painter and his wife, Simon imagines the pair dancing naked, in a hotel suite, by moonlight, to '50s doo-wop groups "the Penguins, the Moonglows, the Orioles, the Five Satins," so that the track becomes a two-sided tribute, to great art and great music. Set against a feeling of lightness and childlike wonder are references to loss and pain -- the war, "decades gliding by," "the cabinet cold of their hearts" -- and it's in the delicate tension between those elements that the song finds its heart and soul.
"The Late Great Johnny Ace" is a truly outstanding reflection on pop mythology, tracing a timeline from the death of R&B singer Johnny Ace in 1954 (in a game of Russian roulette, if some accounts are to be believed), through the assassinations of JFK and John Lennon. The song is thought-provoking, musically complex, not nearly as morbid as that brief description implies, and it rolls towards its conclusion on a coda composed by Philip Glass. Finally, if you ever want to communicate the gap between imagined, idealized love and the disappointing reality of real-life relationships, just cue up "Train in the Distance" -- that track says it all.
April 11, 2011
This week, we're listening in on music from Treme, LL Cool J, and the ukulele.
Here at iTunes Weekly Rewind, we like to take you beyond the classics and highlight great tunes you may have overlooked. But we also believe that "new" music should be defined as anything you haven't yet heard, to account for any well-known sounds that may somehow have evaded your radar. With that in mind, and inspired by HBO's Treme, we decided to pick out a fistful of tunes that best represent New Orleans -- so apologies in advance if some of the following songs can already be found among your own personal Essentials.
Professor Longhair (aka Roy Byrd, aka Fess) never shifted the same kind of units as fellow ivory-tickling Crescent City natives Fats Domino and Huey "Piano" Smith, but his "Tipitina" remains the definitive New Orleans piano track -- an incredible showcase for the eminent Prof.'s unique, influential fusion of rhumba rhythms with blues and boogie-woogie. He died in 1980, and one of several legends to have carried his torch is Dr. John (aka Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack, Jr.) whose version of Cajun standard "Iko Iko" on Dr. John's Gumbo (1972) is right up there with the best of them -- it follows in the spirit of the original by James "Sugar Boy' Crawford and possess enough razz, rattle and roll to fuel a lifetime of Fat Tuesdays.
We can't possibly honor New Orleans' finest without mentioning the Neville Brothers: for Aaron at his angelically soulful best we have to recommend his 1966 hit "Tell It Like It Is," while "Fire on the Bayou" showcases the funked-up '70s overhaul of New Orleans R&B by siblings Art, Charles and Ivan. Finally, there's that sweet shower of early '60s R&B from Irma Thomas, "It's Raining," which is all the proof you'll ever need that she's the rightful Soul Queen of New Orleans.
April 5, 2011
This week, we're listening in on music from Grey's Anatomy, Elton John, Little Big Town, and the history of "I Want Candy".
A dedicated theme week on American Idol; a hosting slot on Saturday Night Live -- Sir Elton Hercules John is on everyone's radar at the moment, and that can only be a good thing . . . not least because it gives us a great excuse to revisit his back catalog, which includes Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973) -- the magnificent double album that towered over the pop landscape of the early '70s with colossal authority, gigantic ambition and stylistic abandon. An expansive work that delivered three hits on both sides of the Atlantic (for some reason, "Bennie and the Jets" went to Number One here in the U.S., but only scraped into the Top 40 in the U.K.) the record dared to push the boat out with challenging material, and confirmed once and for all that Elton was a talent of two halves, creatively joined at the hip with lyricist Bernie Taupin.
"The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909-1934)" is a small masterpiece that plays out like a big screen drama, echoing the fascination with Americana pursued earlier by John/Taupin on Tumbleweed Connection (1970). The eponymous anti-hero, evidently cut down in his prime, is a fictional depression-era gangster, but the tragic romance saturating every line -- "I guess the cops won again" -- takes us into that cinematic dream-space of righteous gallantry on the wrong side of the law. The phrase that seals the deal, and gives the tale its permanence, is as simple as it is brilliant: "The harvest is in" -- it's all over for Danny Bailey, but his tragic arc is going to be traced time and time again, sure as fall follows summer.
There's also a stiff shot of tragedy running through "All the Girls Love Alice" a meaty, beaty, deceptively cheery tune about a young lesbian. The song's emotional heart is reserved for the chorus, which drops the tempo by more than half, and plays games with the word "tender" to mean to both emotionally vulnerable and sexually supple. Again, the John/Taupin synergy is extraordinary. Further exploration of the album will reveal a rare excursion into reggae ("Jamaica Jerk Off"), epic prog -- the 11 minutes of "Funeral for a Friend (Love Lies Bleeding)" -- and a torch song or two. And that's just scratching the surface.
