Music for the Masses   

Girls
Album
True Panther Sounds

Rarely does music this full-throated and joyous cross my desk and not immediately turn my stomach. It's in the way that the second verse of "Lust for Life" (NOT the Iggy Pop song) explodes to full technicolor life with humming organ, handclaps, harmonica, and doo-do-do-doos like the Jam's cover of "Heatwave." 

All the while, Christopher Owens expresses the simplest, sweetest lyrics wanting all the little things that the obliviously happy take for granted ("I wish I had a pizza/I wish I had a bottle of wine") over a chiming one-chord guitar riff. (Owens's lyrical sensibility and...Read More

I just happened upon MOJO magazine's review of Island Records' new reggae retrospective, War Ina Babylon (101 Distribution, May 2009). It seems the savvy compilers of this three-disc set decided to omit Bob Marley and the Wailers entirely, on the basis that this would allow lesser-known but more influential acts to shine on their own merits without being steamrolled over by the Marley hit machine. Per MOJO:

"Leaving Bob Marley off an anthology of Island reggae was a bold decision, and one that immediately proves its creative worth by allowing the likes of Derrick Morgan, The Paragons, Ernest Ranglin, Max Romeo, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jimmy Cliff, Aswad, an...Read More

It's a pretty safe bet that one of the earliest uses of what would become music was cavemen and cavewomen singing one another to sleep, warding off the unknown dangers of a foreboding and uncertain night. The Japanese-American couple that make up Lullatone have dedicated themselves to continuing that tradition, cloaking a primitive impulse in a very modern sonic vocabulary. The music of Lullatone was born out of necessity: keyboardist and soundscaper Shawn James Seymour needed to work on his music, and future vocalist and partner Yoshimi needed to sleep, so the songs and synth loops he was workshopping on his rudimentary synths were hushed and spare. Soon enough, Yoshimi was joining in on very understated vocals, and Lullatone was born. Through five albums, Lullatone have created consistently ...Read More

Sunn 0)))
Monoliths & Dimensions
Southern Lord Records [May 2009]

And finally.... full potential is reached. Even the most ardent doom-fiend would be forgiven for occasionally wondering how much of drone doom band Sunn 0)))'s music is self-replicating or accidental. Flowers of evil blooming from molten feedback, the liberating powers of the infinite chord, or just leaving a guitar too close to an amp for about an hour? In Monoliths & Dimensions, Sunn 0)))'s seventh studio album, Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley shut every doubter up, concisely and lyrically pairing their brutalist approach to music ...Read More

Little Richard: Live at the Toronto Peace Festival 1969. D.A. Pennebakker, dist. by Shout! Factory. Mar. 24, 2009. MUSIC DVD $13.98.

Little Richard had everything to prove. Accepting an invitation in 1969 to play at the Toronto Peace Festival alongside John Lennon, the Doors, and Alice Cooper, he had to show, amid acid rock and psychedelia, that HE, who had been their since the very beginning, was still the uncrowned king of rock 'n' roll, and that good, basic, dirty rock 'n' roll c...Read More

Various Artists

Black Rio 2: Original Samba Soul 1971–1979

Compiled by DJ Cliffy

Strut Records

As improbable as it may seem, especially given the Tropicalia movement's well-documented 1960s struggles with the Brazilian power elites, Black Rio soul and funk musicians were given just as hard a time of it by the authorities. Considered "too black" and not Brazilian enough by the public at large, and given Br...Read More

The bright young things in England's The Horrors burst out of the crypt in 2006, armed with a capeful of garage bleakness that was like the Cramos-via-the-Mighty-Caesars, unfeasibly frightwigged hair, and confrontational performance antics that saw a New York CMJ show end with a rumble. They gained a pretty rabid fanbase on the basis of early singles like “Death in the Chapel” and “Sheena Is a Parasite,” constant live work, a ...Read More

Speaking of the hipping of the mainstream (see my last post, on NPR's recent programming), David Letterman sure has some savvy music bookers working on his dime. They've got to be ex-college radio staffers or somesuch. Last week Animal Collective (pictured at left) was the musical guest.
  
Animal Collective performed "Summertime Clothes" (video clip below) from their new album, Merriweather Post Pavillion—an album that, in addition to shovelling in the hip critical plaudits, seems to to be turning on an entirely new audience. Apocryphal tales abound of gigs selling out in ...Read More