Little Blue World Recommends
Below you'll find a selection of excerpts from LBW reviews
Jude: No One is Really Beautiful by Cheryl LaFountain Jude's body of work is not very large, but his sublime 1999 release, No One is Really Beautiful cemented him in my mind as a "desert island" favorite. With tracks that discuss everything from Rick James and the horrors of living in southern California to the impending wedding of an ex-lover, Jude skillfully manages to embed each track wtih memorable turns of phrase. A personal favorite of mine occurs in the jazzy "Out of L.A.," where Judge discusses meeting a girl "who was going for a ride, and I don't mean in a car. She had a brain about the size of a frozen pea, and on a scale of 1 to 10 she was a 23...." Jude can be downright mean in his songs,...but he sings with such sincerity and intensity that it's hard to fault him. There's a stark honesty in Jude's best-written songs, and I can't think of anyone who can end a line with as much punch as he can.... His new album, The King of Yesterday, was released Sept. 11.
Poe: Haunted One of Poe's most distinctive traits is her plaintive, powerful voice. That voice is even more powerful on her latest release, 2000's Haunted. This mesmerizing CD features Poe ambitiously attempting a wide variety of musical styles. Probably more experimental than Tori..., Poe litters this release with noises and sounds that are weird, spooky, and memorable. This album is part dedication, part scary movie, with the "ghost" being Poe's father, Tad Danielewski, who passed away in 1993. Danielewski was an award-winning documentary filmmaker, best known for 1962's "No Exit." This album is an intensely personal look at Poe's relationship with her father and could be considered a concept album...both challenging and beautiful to the ear.
Alicia Keys: "Songs in A Minor"
Another girl with a piano For fans of Tori who also dig R&B and hip-hop, [Alicia] Keys offers a soulful and beautiful alternative to much of the poppy sound popular now. Like Amos, Keys has been called a prodigy, having displayed her musical gifts since the tender age of 5. On Songs in A Minor, Keys mixes rap, soul and simple melodies into a touching and sophisticated work. While other instrumentation complements the piano on this album, Keys can be firmly placed in the "girl and a piano" tradition that draws many to Tori Amos.
Jeanette Winterson: The Passion
Whatever she touches, she reveals
"Not tonight, Josephine..." If you are a hopeless romantic, this book is for you. If you love poetry, this is also a book for you. The images are so creative, you feel as though you are walking along the Parisian countryside with Henri or riding down the canals of Venice in a gondola with Villanelle. Winterson paints a dark, but beautiful, picture with The Passion.
Matt Chamberlain: self-titled
Moving Picture Show Reviewing instrumental albums such as Matt Chamberlain's self-titled experiment is not easy for someone like me who relies heavily on vocals and lyrics to get into the emotion of music. But perhaps that is the wrong way to go with a work of this nature. This album is not one to inspire tears of joy or sadness. It is a provoker of imagination, randomly conjuring images from late-night B-movies into a fever dream in which they almost seem to make sense. This is music that continually throws surprises at the listener, as if Matt purposely sought to use every instrument and trick at his disposal. For instance, opening track "Cheeky" starts frantically with a barrage of sharp percussion and electronic blips. Then the deep drone of an electric guitar kicks in. There is a feeling of running arcade mazes to escape some futuristic prison. Suddenly, everything falls away before the woody sound of a strummed acoustic guitar. An airy pause…and the chase begins again. "Monday" sounds more straightforward in its movie provenance, due to twangy Spaghetti Western guitar. It is the steadfast swagger into a gunfight…somewhere in space. Gongs provide a bit of an Asian flair. The next track, "Eel," reminds me of something by the (previously reviewed) band Mogwai. Heavy on reverb, the song has a viscous underwater feel to it. (It also contains a strange digression into alarm bells.) Though it starts off sounding as if played on a child's xylophone, "Abstretch" soon reveals more of a noir quality, venturing into spooky alleys (a theremin-like whistle) and seedy clubs (a synth trumpet?). The next song, ironically titled "Tsunami," elicits a romantic island getaway with its reverberating guitar and swelling strings, and warbles like the call of birds. In contrast, "Haaa!" is a headlong march to war, and as such is probably the song most completely driven by percussion. "Cagey" is just…hard to describe. "Pole Glitch" is sci-fi again, though its frequent repetition of a throbbing bass may give some headaches. And "Moomoo" is electronica pure and simple. Finally, "Give Me Some Water"--with disembodied Oriental vocals, and drums borrowed from Matt's work with Fiona Apple--just screams to be a jam song…though it is the shortest track on the album. Trust me, this album is best listened to while lying back on the couch, in a receptive state of semi-consciousness. Or perhaps while stoned.
Kate Bush: Aerial
The Return of the Queen In the beginning, there was Kate…. Okay, maybe not. Except, according to some critics, with regards to certain adventurous female musicians. And perhaps it is true for me, in that it was through the work of Kate Bush that I finally came to love music and to develop my musical tastes--and to first hear about Tori. She was the portal to many worlds (and the gateway drug to many addictions). So it was with much anticipation, as well as trepidation, that I placed into my CD player the new double album Aerial, her first release in a dozen years. (After The Red Shoes in 1993, Kate took some time off to live a more normal private life, to have a son, and to raise that son normally.) Would the goddess still be relevant, revelatory? I never did understand those comparisons between Kate and Tori. I love them both, but for different reasons. I have always found Kate's lyrics to be more extroverted than Tori's. Kate was romantic and theatrical, inspired as often by books and movies as by her own feelings. Her words were not as often poetically beautiful or ambiguous, but were usually grounded and with purpose, to tell a story.... Though she started with the piano, Kate strove to perfect her compositions by incorporating other sounds, ranging from indigenous Australian instruments to her own creations via nascent sampling technologies. So it is interesting that the first disc of Aerial, dubbed "A Sea of Honey," contains some of the most obscure and personal lyrics that Kate has written and sounds less produced than previous albums. Though ostensibly about Elvis and dated rumors that he still lives, first single "King of the Mountain" works better knowing of Kate's own struggle to balance celebrity with private life. "Bertie," written for and about her young son, is certainly close to Kate's heart. (Too close. The lyrics are dreadful: sickly sweet and surprisingly uninspired. But the formal Renaissance arrangement is rather lovely.) Much debate can be had over "Mrs. Bartolozzi": is it just a celebration of the domesticity Kate has enjoyed these past years, or is there an inherent sadness to this solo piano piece which tells another story, perhaps of a woman left to reminisce of her dead husband while doing the wash? And "How To Be Invisible," with its spooky groove and apparent witchcraft, might seem obviously to be about Kate's retreat from fame, though it can also be read as concerning those who are already invisible--the wallflowers of the world. Finally, "A Coral Room"--with simple vocals-over-piano and drowned land imagery evoking Peter Gabriel's "Here Comes the Flood"--was almost too personal to include on the album: it is about the death and memory of her mother.... For me disc 2—"A Sky of Honey"—outshines [Disc 1].... Here is a true concept piece, a suite, following the course of a mid-summer afternoon, through the night, to the rise of the sun the next day. It is about cycles of change and light and beauty and artistic inspiration…and is linked together by bird song. Really. The first real song, "Prologue," is a beautiful classical pastoral piece, a slow build that, alas, is cut off just as it is peaking by progression into the next track. "An Architect's Dream" is a languid, sensual song about a painter's "best mistake he could make." Then the sky darkens to "Sunset," a lightly jazzy tune that ends in a burst of celebratory flamenco and features some of the most evocative lyrics. ("Where sands sing in crimson, red and rust/Then climb into bed and turn to dust") The last moment of twilight before the night fully emerges is elicited in "Somewhere in Between." And in the stand-out track, "Nocturn," Kate's most soothing voice ever leads us into the sea (or perhaps the creative consciousness), where "we become panoramic." It is a song made for night driving. Climactically, the title track "Aerial" is a rousing anthem reminiscent of Kate's own "Big Sky" (pausing this time for her to literally laugh with the birds). Overall, this album is not really the kind of music I listen to anymore…but I cannot help feeling joy when I do. Visit http://gaffa.org, the most complete compendium of all things Kate.
|
