We interrupt our slow-moving series covering our most interesting albums of 2008 to bring you some breaking news: four years after serious artery and heart problems almost felled our hero, David Bowie is back in the studio in Berlin working on a new album (no release date scheduled). ::SQUEEE::
Now I am as happy as a little girl!
Here’s a recent picture from 2008, and as you can see he’s lost the puffiness that he'd gained after the heart attack circa 2006 and is now once again looking every inch the James Bond/Doctor Who villain that he truly is.
In other Bowie news, I am much amused by this article’s attempt to blame Bowie for the credit crunch -- yes, Bowie -- by claiming he had the idea first! Genius!
Let’s carry on looking at some of the 10 albums* that caught my ear, held my attention or in some rare cases actually thrilled me, shall we?
*Cheating a bit -- I’m also including a “sidebar” of good Canadian bands, since I’m living here, because Canada actually has a thriving and diverse musical scene, and because they are often overlooked south of the border. So those bands are extras.
Panic at the Disco Pretty. Odd.
Atlantic Records
Here’s one that going to raise an eyebrow or two, but Las Vegas’ Panic at the Disco took the occasion of 2008 to grow the fuck up and become a truly wonderful band. Their previous album, 2005’s A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out held some seeds of greatness (WAY above-average lyrics and a Queen-like intermission), mostly in their titles (“I Write Sins Not Tragedies” and “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is the Press Coverage” for examples) -- but they were trapped in an emo wrapper and stuffed with radio-friendly “alternative”-ness.
And it worked. They were a huge hit, album went platinum, world tour, got laid about 800 times each, toast of MTV, etc. The only thing wrong with it all was that it was as soul-filling as a soap bubble.
Then, at some point while working on their sophomore album, they looked into the abyss of where emo-pop bands end up, and had an epiphany. They abandoned that work, crawled back to their childhood rooms and got their Sweet, Queen, ELO and Beatles records off the shelf and gave them a listen.
Well, I’m here to report that they escaped their prison. The resulting rewritten album, Pretty. Odd., has driven half their former fan base batshit insane with hatred. They feel betrayed, I feel like they saved their souls. The album has a joyousness, a happiness, a glamtastic whimsy that you could never ever get from the dead-end backalley that is emo.
Jellyfish fans, glam hags and 70s UK rockers will latch onto this record like barnacles on a merry old pirate ship (in fact, the only thing missing here is a right old sea shanty). If it was any more happy-go-lucky, the CD would sprout legs, kick up its heels, and go on glorious Bowie bender.
You may have heard “Nine in the Afternoon,” as it became something of a hit just on the band’s previous rep -- and it’s great, maybe it will open a few teenybop eyes -- but in committing radio suicide, they may have heard their true voice. Here’s a non-single example called “That Green Gentleman.”
Beach House Devotion
Carpark Records
So we go from a band that sounds like an entire genre to one that just sounds like a very specific sub-genre: rock from ghosts in the dead of night. If you haven’t given your Cowboy Junkies and Mazzy Star albums a spin for a while, this is essentially the same stuff, only this time from Baltimore. I suspect they made this album solely in hopes of scoring some soundtrack work from John Waters, but if you’re in the mood for that “dream pop” thing, you’re in the mood for it, and this complements it to a “T.”
Next up, our Canadian “sidebar,” and this might be considered a cheat-within-a-cheat because the band didn’t actually put out a full album -- just an EP -- this past year. But I only found out about the Montreal-based Stars this year, and I’m giving you some of the ‘08 material, so I say it counts.
I’ve already shared a little about Stars before -- a video for their last hit “Your Ex-Lover is Dead” -- and I’m still loving them, though I’m quite hard-pressed to describe them. The closest I think I’ve come is “The Beautiful South fused with the Trash Can Sinatras laying on Morrissey’s grave” and that should hold you long enough for me to whip out their new Sad Robot EP and show the obligatory -- oh wait, no video for YOU! We only have audio -- like that’s a bad thing:
“A Thread Cut with a Carving Knife” by Stars from Sad Robot EP
Another episode of my award-winnable podcast, Chas’ Crusty Old Wave, is now available for download either via iTunes or straight from my website . To make up for the fact that I have, for the second time, failed to produce one of these for the month of December, I’m pursuing the notion of a special episode to appear later in the year.
In the meantime, enjoy this new one, which features a little arts chat as well as our usual mix of popular and obscure 80s tunes. It’s all free and easy to subscribe to so you never miss an episode.
I didn’t want to fall too far behind in getting a “Best of 2008” list out, but I haven't kept up quite as fully with releases this past year as I did in my “radio days.” Luckily, I still listen to indie and college stations both locally and on the web, and so over the course of the next two (possibly three) installments I’ll pass on some albums that really spoke to me, acts that grabbed my attention, and a few old friends who are still making good.
As for trends, my friends the 70s are officially back -- we’re re-working that Glam-Rock mine with acts like Of Montreal and Panic at the Disco and the “pre-disco funk” of TV on the Radio, and we’re already alarmingly heavy on the rejiggered Disco in Top 40 land, so I’m guessing 2009 will (I pray) be the year of the next “punk.”
That’s not to say that there wasn’t some good music coming out of these camps, far from it -- but I would have to say that those of us who lived through the 70s are feeling a lot of deja vu coming out of the radio, particularly if you listened to what would have been the “college radio” acts of that era – yer Queens, yer Roxy Musics, yer Bowie and T. Rex stuff.
My main disappointment is that I’m still not hearing much that belongs fully and completely to today, you know? Songs and bands that could only have existed now, the way the Buggles or the Human League could have only possibly been creatures of the early 80s. There’s too much relying on what’s gone before and not enough blazing new trails, in my view -- though perhaps that’s every middle-aged rocker’s regret.
But let’s not dwell on pessimism, and instead let’s dig out the good stuff, shall we?
Sam Phillips Don’t Do Anything
Nonesuch Records
I think I’ve been following Sam’s career since at least The Indescribable Wow in 1989, and what else can I say -- she’s still got it. File her in the “Woman with a distinct voice, I’ll listen to her sing pretty much anything” file alongside Anna Domino and Kate Bush . This is her first full album since her divorce from longtime producer/collaboration T-Bone Burnett, but even though the sound is sparser (and makes too much use of distorted electric guitar, a gimmick I’m seeing way to much of lately), her voice and songwriting are as strong as ever.
There are no “official” videos from the album (she’s following Aimee Mann ’s low-budget but successful model, I guess), but here's a live performance from NPR’s All Songs Considered:
The Decemberists Always the Bridesmaid: A Single Series
Capitol Records
I’ve written about the Decemberists before so I won’t belabour the point: they’re great (IMHO), and this year they released three “singles” which together constitute six new songs (and the promise of a full album in 2009). They delight me mostly by remaining who they are and yet constantly stretching (in small increments) what exactly that means.
The first song of the first single, “Valerie Plame,” isn’t much like anything they’ve done before -- breaking as it does into our reality instead of the quasi-Amphigorey-Lemony-Snicket netherworld of literate gloom they usually inhabit -- yet it’s instantly recognisable. The video below is a (very) live solo appearance when the song was not yet quite fully-baked -- and all the more charming for it:
Let’s end this installment with a sidebar of Canadian music, since that’s my new home, and I want to help get the word about the thriving music scene in the Great White North. What do you suppose you would get if you crossed U2 with James? I’ll tell you -- you’d get The Stills . I haven’t heard the entire album, but they are coming to town soon, so perhaps I’ll get the chance to check ’em out:
This site was never intended as just an album-review-by-Chas site, and incorporating video has always been a part of the plan and will continue to add variety as time goes on (though I do admit that the “12 Songs of Christmas” idea was originally planned as a audio-only feature).
Thanks to services like YouTube and sites like it, however, video can easily be incorporated and shared on a scale undreamed of even quite recently, and of course YouTube (with some help from Comedy Central and Comedy Network) made this last few weeks' worth of entries way more interesting than it would have otherwise been. So I offer my unabashed appreciation to services like YouTube for existing, being free, and helping make my blog(s) more interesting.
YouTube sometimes gets a bad rap, or is at best taken for granted, but what I love most about it is the same thing I wax on about viz. podcasting -- it creates a level playing field and bypasses corporate control. Sure, a lot of what’s on YouTube comes from corporate sources, but a guy playing the Mario theme in Django Reinhart style in his bedroom has an equal chance at being seen by millions as does the finale of last season’s American Idol.
And while we're on that topic, another great facet of YouTube et al is that it has allowed television broadcasting of all sorts to become truly global. I can dip into clips from almost any country, see shows/acts/people/events I would have otherwise never witnessed. Without YouTube, I doubt that I would know -- as I now do -- that the Japanese are a very, very strange and disturbed people. :)
For example, today’s little video gem from the BBC: the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain performing “The Theme From Shaft.” This is not only a marvelous bit that few of us would otherwise have ever seen, but it’s also a perfect example of the British humour I find so enchanting. Particularly after the first minute, when the vocals (!) kick in, I think you’ll see a lot of my view of the world represented there. If nothing else, it’s a great reminder that we live in a post-surrealist, post-ironic world where this sort of behaviour is not only funny, but common. Enjoy.
We interrupt our slow-moving series covering our most interesting albums of 2008 to bring you some breaking news: four years after serious artery and heart problems almost felled our hero, David Bowie is back in the studio in Berlin working on a new album (no release date scheduled). ::SQUEEE::
