All Entries in the "Album Reviews" Category
Miley Cyrus – Can’t Be Tamed – 6/18/10
Miley Cyrus releases “Can’t Be Tamed” on June 18th and assures the world that she totally doesn’t have a bedtime okay!? Read more about the surprising direction that Hannah Montana has taken on this new release.
Danger Danger! Dinosaur Feathers Go on Display This Friday!
After expressing my fan-boy appreciation for the band, I asked something that I couldn’t really get an answer for by the band’s Myspace or Facebook. In case you don’t follow indie rock as religiously as I do, in the last couple of years or so, there has been an amazing scene growing in Brooklyn. There’s really no better place to be right now if you’re a musician. Also, there are a lot of incredibly interesting musical trends going on in Brooklyn-based music right now – which include tendencies for African rhythms, noodly guitars, and Beach Boy-like harmonies. However, Dinosaur Feathers seems to put all of these elements together into a summery rock context that hasn’t really been done before.
Copyright Controversy Over Gorillaz’ New Single “Stylo”
At the end of the day, music is just a series of notes that are thrown together in random combinations with the hopes of sounding good. The possibilities aren’t exactly endless, if you think about it. As a musician myself, I know that I’ve drawn inspiration from other songs. I’ve studied and applied certain chord progressions here and there but I’ve always made a song my own. Also, as copyright holder of “Time Warp,” Grant, by law, only owns the melody and lyrics of the song. However, “Time Warp” lacks lyrics and so the only component of the song he really ‘owns’ is the synth melody, which he is accusing the Gorillaz of stealing. I’ll admit, the resemblance to “Time Warp” and the synth at the 39 second mark of “Stylo” makes for a convincing argument that the Gorillaz plagiarized – even if they do drop the riff about two octaves. However, I’ll also say that the Gorillaz have proven time and time again that they can be successful through their own originality. Why stop trying now?
Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
“Stylo,” the first single off the new LP, is reminiscent of the 1980s with its synth sounds and bass-heavy beats. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City fans, this is your track. “To Binge” meshes elevator music, dreamy vocals, and hints of the old Gorillaz sound with catchy lyrics about love that sing, “My heart is in economy due to this autonomy.” The album’s namesake track, “Plastic Beach,” is a great example of how the band’s sound is expanding and changing into something that sounds like music from the future (think back to the innovative, technological feel of Radiohead’s In Rainbows or the repertoire of Daft Punk). Mix in songs like “White Flag” which rely on theatrical orchestral melodies to propel them, and you have the Gorillaz third and most recent release.
Alkaline Trio – This Addiction
Yesterday’s This Addiction, the seventh studio album from the trio, finds the band longing to recreate the appealing, straightforward punk rock songs that earned them their fan base in the beginning. The album is following their last two releases, Crimson and Agony & Irony, which were less punk rock sounding and more pop. Although This Addiction is a step forward from the, in my opinion, dull Agony & Irony, it still lacks the magic that the earlier records possessed.
Toro y Moi – Causers of This
These bands together comprise the new indie genre phenomenon know as Chillwave. For those of you not familiar with the genre asking “WTF is Chillwave?” – Wikipedia describes it as being “characterized by heavy use of synthesizers, downtempo disco beats, looping, sampling, and heavily filtered vocals with simple melodic lines.” Honestly, I couldn’t give a much better description myself – the genre uses mainly synthetic instruments and stresses melody and complex arrangements. However, the overall vibe is one of relaxation. Essentially, Chillwave feels like one is sunbathing in the hallucinogenic sun-rays of a star in some distant and deranged galaxy.
Music Headlines – February 5th, 2010
Aside from being full of me acting like this snow storm is the apocalypse (I insisted on going to North and spending $20 to “make it through the weekend”), today was full of some really cool music news. On my old blog, which can be found at www.nclrmusic.blogspot.com, when I had days where there was just a lot of this really cool music news, I used to post it in bullet-point form for my readers to get through quickly. I think that’s the easiest way to share these things. So here it is, you’re music headlines for 2/5/10:
