A Slight Delay

You very nearly have to feel sorry for one-hit wonders. In some rare cases, that single shot of fame eclipses the rest of a damn fine album, and in others, it’s viewed — very wrongly, as it turns out — as a high point in an artist’s, or a band’s, career.

The Flaming Lips fall into the latter category, having hit it small with “She Don’t Use Jelly” in the aftermath of Nirvana.¹ While Transmissions from the Sattelite Heart had its moments, it wasn’t ’til a couple of albums later, with the experimental Zaireeka (a four-disc opus that could be enjoyed in its component parts, or on four CD players simultaneously) that the band would really start to hit its stride. When 1997’s The Soft Bulletin dropped, it was apparent that the Flaming Lips’ sound had come to full bloom, in all its hallucinatory grandeur. Half the fun of the band’s evolution from Zaireeka through The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, At War with the Mystics, and finally their latest effort, Embryonic, has been listening to a handful of musicians setting out to do something different and startling on each successive release and generally succeeding. The other half of the fun, at least ’til Mystics, was often as not in the songs themselves, finely constructed miniatures with lyrics that would’ve done Syd Barrett proud married to music that sounded like Brian Wilson had recorded Pet Sounds while listening to Brian Eno’s Another Green World.

Embryonic is a logical progression from what’s come before. It’s also their most challenging album since Zaireeka. This is not, as it turns out, a bad thing.

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 It can be hard writing about music, all the “dancing about architecture” stuff aside. You want to say something that will evoke what’s coming through the speakers sometimes, what it makes you feel other times. Actually, forget writing about music; the hard thing sometimes is just listening to it in the first place. Music is all about context. First of all, there’s the pile of emotional baggage that some artists’ work carries with it. Then you also have to deal with a web of connections and connotations that comes with a lifetime of listening to music. Sometimes this is a good thing, especially when that past experience reminds you of something—a throwaway line or bit of phrasing, lyrical or otherwise—that somehow deepens and enriches the experience.

Sometimes, though, it’s just frustrating. I’m reminded of the more frustrating aspect listening to Wale’s debut effort, Attention Deficit.

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A couple of months ago in this space, I reviewed Gustavo Cerati’s “Deja Vu” as a teaser of sorts to his new album, Fuerza Natural. At the time, I included the disclaimer that it’s pretty difficult to extrapolate the sound of an entire album on the basis of one track, and speculated that this album, like its predecessor Ahi Vamos, was likely to be a more straightforward rock effort. I turned out to be more right on the first point than the second since, as so often happens with Cerati, this disc is anything but straightforward.

A lot of the usual influences are here, including Charly Garcia, Luis Alberto Spinetta, and the ever-present shade of Cerati’s former band, Soda Stereo. There are also surprises here in the echoes of George Harrison and Todd Rundgren. There’s a stopover (”Magia”) in the same ZIP code previously occupied by ELO, and a riff on “Amor Sin Rodeos” that would do a certain Mr. Petty* proud.

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It’s been a long, strange trip for Gustavo Cerati. The guitarist and vocalist, who turned fifty yesterday, started out as the front man for the ridiculously popular¹ Argentine band Soda Stereo. In 1993, while Soda Stereo was still active, he released his first solo effort, Amor Amarillo, which contained elements that would be blended–in various proportions–ever since; cryptic lyrics², gentle ambience, hot shit guitar playing, and radio-friendly songcraft played off against a slightly skewed sonic and melodic sensibility.

In 1999, scarcely two years after Soda Stereo broke up, Cerati released Bocanada, which sounded like a continuation of the more ambient bits of Soda’s last studio disc, Sueño Stereo. As albums go, it’s a staid, downtempo affair that manages to sound like the better bits of the Cure in places (only Cerati is a better vocalist and guitarist than Robert Smith, and doesn’t have Smith’s dry white whine). When it was followed, a few years later, by Siempre es Hoy, some fans (present company included) enjoyed the techno shadings and electronic squiggles while others wondered where in the hell the guitar had gone, and whether Cerati had lost the plot.³

And then, with Ahi Vamos, Cerati found the guitar, and the plot, again. Tracks like “Dios nos Libre” and “Bomba de Tiempo” were mostly-unadulterated straightforward rock, suggesting that the musician had come to a kind of uneasy peace with the Soda Stereo days, and marking a return to form. Which brings us–in typically roundabout fashion–to the upcoming Fuerza Natural. (more…)

The following is an honest-to-god email received from Amazon some days back. It’s too good not to share. I haven’t changed a word, since you don’t mess with perfection. Apologies for the sloppy formatting…

Dear Amazon.com Customer,We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Video Anthology, Vol. 1: 2000s have also purchased Eyes Wide Open on DVD. For this reason, you might like to know that Eyes Wide Open will be released on May 19, 2009.  You can pre-order yours by following the link below. Eyes Wide Open King Crimson List Price: $24.97 Price: $22.49 You Save: $2.48 (10%) Release Date: May 19, 2009 Eyes Wide Open is a fantastic eye cream that lifts and highlights the temples and is uniquely applied OVER your mineral makeup to give you that just jumped-out-of-the-shower fresh look! For breathtaking results, use in combination with ColoreScience’s Eye Serum, and ColoreScience’s My Favorite Eyes cream. The trio of eye products are available individually, or as a group (ColoreScience’s Eye Candy Kit). When used together, they rejuvinates the eye area and take the years off just by hydrating, highlighting and concealing problem eye areas.

It certainly sounds like a great idea: bring together two DJ’s, one from North America and one from South America, along with about forty guests. Simmer for four years, and then unleash upon an eager public. In practice… well, that’s something else again. The Spirit of Apollo sounds, and feels, like a frustrating relic of what might have been, but wasn’t quite.

For the most part, the results smolder, but never fully come alight. It’s not for lack of talent. Producers/DJ’s Squeak E. Clean and Zegon are competent, and on those occasions that things click, it’s because of collaborations that work precisely because they’re counterintuitive; if putting David Byrne and Seu Jorge alongside Gift of Gab and Chali 2na (as on “The People Tree” and “Money”) is cool, pairing Tom Waits with Kool Keith on “Spacious Thoughts” is downright inspired. However, some of the disc’s other combinations come off as a form of musical stunt casting, as with the ubiquitous Kanye West and Wu Tang cameos (the fact that O.D.B. appears here gives you an idea of about how long this disc has been in the works). There are some gems here, but you’ve got to pan through an awful lot of averageness to find them. (more…)

Ozomatli in a nutshell: in 2007, the Bush State Department sent the L.A.-based combo on the road to locations as diverse as Jordan, Peru, and Nepal as cultural ambassadors. Yes, that Ozomatli, with its soundclash aesthetic, liberal politics, and antiwar stance; they followed in the footsteps of Ellington and Armstrong, acting for a short time as America’s musical ambassadors to the world. Even the guy who first said that politics made for strange bedfellows probably never saw that one coming.

But it’s appropriate that it should have happened. For nearly fifteen years, this L.A.-based crew has refined a style that’s embraced rap, reggae, rock, rai, bhangra, and anything else it’s come across. Unlike many of their contemporaries who can be found clogging Putamayo compilations and Starbucks counters, it’s not timid stuff and the blending is seamless, unlike much of the rest of what’s routinely described as “fusion.” Indeed, their closest kin would be the off-kilter ethnopunk of Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros or Manu Chao, cross-bred with a Los Lobos party vibe. They’ve managed to blend an almost bewildering diversity of personalities and styles into a pretty cohesive and formidable whole.

While their studio albums have been well-written, well-performed affairs that’ve earned them Grammy nods, critical acclaim, decent sales and a small but devoted following, their live shows are the stuff of legend. So, naturally, having listened to the band since the first album dropped, I was pretty excited (to put it mildly) to put the rumors to the test. Since even the best bands have off nights, and I’m naturally suspicious when anybody–even a band that I love–is the subject of that much hype, I was also maybe a bit apprehensive.
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Years back, I remember reading an article in Musician magazine where they asked a couple dozen musicians what they hoped the music of the ’90’s would sound like (this would’ve been in late ‘89 or early ‘90). I don’t remember most of the responses, save for one: Vernon Reid said something to the effect that he’d love to see something that’d be a fusion of rap, metal, and world music; I read that, and thought to myself, “Okay, interesting, but what would it sound like?”

It’d take almost ten years, but I’d eventually find out, almost purely by accident. I was working in a chain record store, and one morning before opening had slipped the then-new compilation Red Hot + Rio into the player, proceeding then to go absentmindedly about my morning, half-working, half-listening. At least until “Maracatu Atomico” came thudding through the speakers and stopped me dead in my tracks. For the next fifteen or so minutes, through repeated plays, I couldn’t pay attention to anything else. All of a sudden, what Vernon Reid had said made perfect, crystalline sense. This–in the form of a performance by Chico Science and Nação Zumbi–was it.

So what’s that got to do with O Rappa? Hold on, I’m getting there. Science’s death in 1997 spelled the end of CSNZ, and left me wondering where I might find something with that same spark and originality. A chance conversation with a customer in the aforementioned record shop clued me in to O Rappa. While the sound isn’t apples-to-apples alike (which is a good thing; if they’d been too close, I’d have been more disappointed than thrilled), I think the spirit in which O Rappa operates would’ve done Chico Science proud. That said, now let’s get down to their latest offering, Sete Vezes. (more…)

When an artist you don’t particularly like releases an album you don’t particularly like, it’s not exactly a big deal because the bar was set pretty low to start with. But when you generally like what someone’s done up to a certain point–when you’ve even seen flashes of unmitigated brilliance in their work before–and they release a stinker, it hurts.

So it’s not an easy task sitting down to Carlinhos Brown’s latest disc. I’d like to say something nice about A Gente Ainda Não Sonhou, and I’m having a hard time. It’s not because Brown is a bad musician, writer, arranger, or producer; when he’s on, he does any of the above as well as anybody else working in Brazil right now, and could teach any number of his contemporaries a thing or two while he’s at it. Problem is, his career trajectory has been a series of peaks and valleys since he first arrived on the scene with his solo debut, and this isn’t one of the peaks. (more…)

You could call Lenine a late bloomer; although his first album (with Lula Queiroga) dropped in 1983, when he was 24, there was a break of nearly ten years before his collaboration with Marcos Suzano, Olho de Peixe, would appear; another five before his first proper “solo” album, O Dia em que Faremos Contato. At 38, in other words, he finally hit his stride. And now, some years on–he’s celebrating his fiftieth birthday somewhere as I write this–he shows no signs of slowing down.

Lenine’s sound is instantaneously identifiable. There’s the comfortably worn voice, a guitar style that sounds like Michael Hedges channelling João Gilberto, and a sense of rhythm and texture that’s as forward-looking as anything Chico Science managed. On one hand, the sound is so identifiable that even someone covering Lenine ends up sounding more than a bit like him (like Daude’s take on “Hoje Eu Quiero Sair So,” from her debut album); but then, even songs he’s written for other artists–try just a chorus from Fernanda Abreu’s “Urbano Canibal”–bear his stamp. As if that weren’t enough, even his takes on others’ music end up sounding as though he wrote them, as was the case with the excellent “O Atirador,” from his 2005 acoustic release. On his latest disc, Labiata, he sounds like none other. (more…)