#recording their arty little masterpiece

[likeamadonnau2]

A new chapter of You Wanted Me Alone, titled "The Moon," is here!

7300 words of mostly Edge POV, set in May 1984.

[doustadig]

OLYMPIAN AESTHETICS.

APHRODITE.     laughter-loving.   sweet smiles.   dressed in silk and satin.   flower in their hair.   sees the world as a runway.   unapologetically sexual.   the sea washing their ankles.   in love with love.   stirrer of passion.   cunning concealed by painted lips.   secret daggers.   doves.   revolution in their kiss.   delighting in the waves.   flirtatious winks.   strolling along the beach.   staring wistfully from a balcony.   this is how to be a heartbreaker.  wants to be adored.   gets turned on by danger.

APOLLO.     glitz and glamour.   art galleries.   turning the volume up.   being made of gold.   neatly organized music sheets.   notebooks filled with poetry.   bathing in the sunlight.   the powerful urge to create.   collecting vinyl records.   beautiful cover of wonderwall.   playing multiple instruments.   tasting like sunshine.   healing touch.   speaking in prophecies.   smile mingled with wrath.   shunning lies.   sporting shades.   hanging out at music festivals with their friends.   sleeps naked.   arrow to the heart.   paintbrushes.   probably has a tinder account.

ARES.     armed for battle.   wants to raise a dog with their significant other.   soft spot for children.   gives piggyback rides [ to children ].   scarred body.   blood on their hands and face.   willing to fight the world for the ones they love.  fights against injustice.   warm hugs.   well worn combat boots.   boxing gloves.   bandages wrapped around bruised knuckles.   fist raised in protest.   ignites revolutions.   fear is a prison.   more sensitive than what their tough shell would have you think.   exhausted.   damaged goods.   force to be reckoned with.   red roses.   curses under their breath.

ARTEMIS.     keen sense of a hunter.   freckles like constellations on their skin.   piercing eyes.    dishevelled braid.   moonlight peeking through the shadows.   the calm of the forest at night.   lying on the grass and staring at the stars.   mother doe and her fawn.   protecting their kin.    the moon shimmering on a still lake.   quiver full of arrows resting against the bark of a tree.   running with wolves.    bonding while circled around a campfire.   not being much of a people person.   arrow hitting a target.   popping egos.   patience on 3%.   touches heaven and returns howling.

ATHENA.     discerning gaze.   unreadable face.   quiet museums.  owl perched on their finger.   armour that intimidates.   eye for architecture.   plays the sims for the sole purpose of building houses.   studied the blade while everyone else was busy getting laid.   big fan of logic. loves brain teasers. ancient buildings.  sweaters in neutrals and cool colours.  hair done up. can kill you with their brain.   heads to the library often to research.  sharpened pencils.   abs that can cut steel.   stoic statues.   pottery classes.

DEMETER.     soil-covered hands.   smile that can bloom flowers.   skin loved by the sun.   being the mom friend.   can lift you and your friends.   flowers kept in the pockets of overalls.   takes pride in their beautiful garden.    speaks to their plants.    leaves rustling in the wind.   stalks of wheat.  picking fruit.   greenhouses.   heart as strong as a mountain.   values simplicity.   daisies dotted across a collarbone.   curls crowned with flowers.   folded pile of sweaters in warm hues.   pulling out fresh-baked bread out of the oven and the smell wafting through the air.

DIONYSUS.     drunk shitposter.   on their sixth glass of wine before you’ve even finished your second.   seductive smirks.   untamed curls.   rich fabrics on dark skin.   sleek furred panthers.   theatre masks.   stage productions.   receiving a standing ovation.   rose caught between their teeth.   being the baby of the bunch.   wild parties that last from sundown to sunup.   creeping vines.  inspiring loyalty.  grand opera houses.   masquerade balls.   rolls of film.   shattered chandeliers with broken glass scattered across the wine spilled floor.   pouring champagne into flutes.   lives for the applause.

HEPHAESTUS.     the calloused hands of someone who knows labor.   sweaty brow.   flame burning in their eyes.   inventive mind.   broad shoulders.   steampunk goggles.   nuts and bolts stored away in little boxes.   ashes.   striking a match.   blueprints for future projects.   fixing up a busted-up car and giving it cool upgrades.   wrestles with bitterness.   work boots have seen better years.   wrinkled plaid shirts.   iron melted in blazing fire.   huge jackets.   crafting masterpieces.   greased stained overalls.   fascination with robotics.   pain is fuel.   stack of weaponry.    even their muscles have muscles.

HERA.     resting bitch face.   dressed to the nines.   cows grazing on a pasture.   cool rain.   loving and hating fiercely.   hand clutching a string of pearls.   large chandelier with glittering crystals.   plays the sims for the sole purpose of killing off their sims.   romance to realism.   pictures of the sky while flying on a plane.   files that under fuck it.   downs glasses of wine as they relax with a scented bubble bath and netflix.   like their selfie or you’re grounded.    knows 57 convenient ways to murder a man.   dark eyes that penetrate your soul.   marble and gold.

HERMES.     devil - may - care smile.   always up - to - date on the latest technology.   will steal your french fries.   does it for the vine.   shitposter.   puts googly eyes on everything.   meme hoarder.   long drives on the highway.   ma and pop diners.    spontaneous road trips.   folded maps.   fingers dancing across the keyboard of a laptop.   shooting hoops on the basketball court.   chatting up strangers as you all journey to your own destinations.   goes jogging in the morning.   mixes redbull with coffee.   menace on april fool’s.   hoodies and sneakers.

POSEIDON.     storm with skin.   colourful coral reefs.    waves crashing against the shore.    stroking the soft fur of a cat.   their heart pounding as their horse’s gentle trot speeds into a gallop.   tousled locks.   clothes smeared with paint.   owns several sketchbooks yet always yearns to own more.   leather jackets.   fondness for diy projects.   handwriting that flows across the page.   nimble fingers playing the strings of a violin.    velvety singing voice that haunts your dreams.   mood as ever-changing as the sea.   the roar of a motorcycle.   compass with a spinning arrow.

HADES.     walking home alone in the early morning.   back alleys.   drinking alone in a graveyard.   crippling loneliness hidden by sarcasm and cynicism.   crows picking a carcass.   untended dead flowers.   the black sheep of the family.   black coffee.   money can’t buy you happiness.   murder mystery dinner parties.   blood on your shirt collar.   dust illuminated by sunlight.   classical music.   dogs are better than people.   a quiet wrath.   shady business deals.   taking what you are owed.   paint it black.   seasonal affective disorder.   popping the suit collar.   grey rain on a cityscape.

ZEUS.     thunder in their heart.   running on coffee.   flash of lightning.   unnatural charisma.   eloquence.    badass in a nice suit.   an aficionado of history.   force of nature.   lennyface.   nightmare - filled nights.   proud arm around their lover’s waist.   high - rise buildings.   planes soaring through a cloudless sky.   technician on the piano.   maintains order.   strong handshake.   juggling multiple events on their busy schedule with ease.   expensive watch.

tagged by.  snatched it from my other blog tagging. 8 >

@lazhadeg | @andurinn [ do ur memes artie |8 ] - @lcvcillcur​ - @schildblood - @referentblood - @drachenblood - @fourfolded - @irerow - @seenstars - @susurratiion - @ofvesper - @oasisbow - @alphadrg - @fatefuture - @dayofazure​ - @daintycure​ - [ and whoever wants to! ]

[tw-koreanhistory]

“The Murmuring” (1995), “The Murmuring 2” (1997), “The Murmuring 3” (1999), “My Heart Is Not Broken Yet” (2007), “The Big Picture” (2013), “The Last Comfort Women” (2014), “Tuning Fork” (2014), “Snowy Road” (2015), “Spirits’ Homecoming” (2016), “Spirits’ Homecoming, Unfinished Story” (2017), “I Can Speak” (2017). . .

Another film is being screened that carries on the unending effort to record and bear witness to the history of the former comfort women for the Japanese imperial army. “Herstory,” which is being released in theaters on June 27, tells the story of a little-known legal battle that the former comfort women fought in the Japanese courts. This film is a masterpiece that will leave an impact and warm the hearts of filmgoers this summer, thanks to its power as a true story and the acting chops of its accomplished actresses.

The film’s plot follows the basic historical facts. After Kim Hak-sun became the first former comfort woman to testify of her experience in the summer of 1991, historical facts that had hitherto been forgotten created a sensation in Korean society. Mun Jeong-suk (played by Kim Hee-ae), who is raising a daughter by herself while running a travel agency in Busan, South Korea, takes it upon herself to set up a phone line to take the names of former comfort women. During this process, Mun hears the story of Bae Jeong-gil (played by Kim Hae-sook), who had been working as Mun’s housekeeper while hiding the pain of her time as a comfort woman. ...

[lifejustgotawkward]

365 Day Movie Challenge (2017) - #391: The Shape of Water (2017) - dir. Guillermo del Toro

(Warning: some spoilers ahead!)

The Shape of Water is a film that pulls me in several directions. It contains themes and storytelling choices that I love immensely, but there are also aspects of the narrative that I believe could have been improved. From the reviews I have read so far, reactions are extremely polarized; moviegoers either worship Shape as a masterpiece beyond reproach or, on the other end of the spectrum, they throw around “D” words like disappointed and disgusted. I want to point out again that I enjoyed Del Toro’s production a lot - I would put it at #9 or 10 in my top ten for 2017, out of the thirty features I have seen so far - so I hope that my criticisms are tempered by my admiration for all that the film gets right, whether technically or ideologically.

All things considered, I’m probably the ideal viewer for The Shape of Water. In the Venn diagram of intersecting genres that the film explores, I’m right in the middle as a lover of romance, science fiction and fantasy, horror, thrillers, period pieces, studies of “the grotesque” and portraits of outsiders who challenge societal expectations of normalcy. I have a ton of respect for Guillermo del Toro’s ambitions as a filmmaker (I definitely dug Hellboy back in the day and I remember getting a kick out of Pacific Rim too) and I applaud his commitment to telling a socially conscious story in which historically marginalized people are our heroes and the clean-cut, stereotypical authority figures are the villains. I also adore Del Toro’s irrepressible cinephilia, which is evident throughout Shape via constant references to the films, actors and genres that have inspired him. In that regard, The Shape of Water is successful just as a celebration of the power that the silver screen has to change our lives.

The story is almost painfully simple: in Baltimore circa 1962, mute janitor Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) discovers a fantastical new world of love when an Amazonian fish-god (Doug Jones), referred to in the film’s credits as “Amphibian Man,” is brought to the government facility that she cleans at night. Elisa and her best friend at work, Zelda Fuller (Octavia Spencer), are assigned to take care of the Amphibian Man’s private room by high-ranking security official Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), who brought to the creature to America and, in his words, they “didn’t get to like each other much” during the trip. This much is obvious at the beginning of the film, when we see the aftermath of an attack on Strickland by the captured fish-god, who has bitten off two of Strickland’s fingers.

Elisa quickly forms an attachment to the Amphibian Man, with whom she learns to communicate by teaching him sign language, feeding him hard boiled eggs and playing him Benny Goodman records on a portable hi-fi. (I’m amazed that more critics haven’t noted the connection to Annie Hall’s famous ending monologue about how human beings continue to look for love after failed relationships because we “need the eggs.”) It soon becomes apparent to Elisa that Strickland and his boss, General Hoyt (Nick Searcy), plan on killing the imprisoned creature, so Elisa devises a plan to steal the Amphibian Man from the facility with help from her neighbor, Giles (Richard Jenkins), an older gay man who has worked as an advertising artist but was fired from his job, in part because of his alcoholism but presumably also because of his sexual orientation. Giles and Zelda stand since they are the only two people in Elisa’s life who have bothered to learn ASL. They understand that she is disabled, but she is not “lesser than” in their eyes because they have adapted themselves to the language she uses.

It’s wonderful that Guillermo del Toro gave space to main characters who are a non-speaking woman, a black woman and a gay man, all of whom are over forty years old. Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer and Richard Jenkins do beautiful work in the film, particularly Hawkins, who has finally broken through in American cinema thanks to this film. I have been a tremendous fan of Hawkins ever since she starred in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky nine years ago, so it has been glorious to see her shine in Maudie and The Shape of Water this year. She radiates tenderness, humor, curiosity and compassion as Elisa, a performance that absolutely deserves the Best Actress Oscar nomination it will certainly receive next month. Jenkins also gives a remarkable performance as Giles, making his friendship with Elisa plausible and heartwarming. Spencer has less to work with as Zelda since the character often comes across as a collection of cinematic stereotypes (both as a black woman and as a best friend/sidekick), but Spencer elevates the role to something special, occasionally with a mere glance or a roll of her eyes.

More complex and difficult to pin down is the film’s antagonist, Richard Strickland. I almost snorted at the ominous horn sounds that accompanied the character’s entrance in the film, which I suppose many viewers accept as de rigueur since Michael Shannon is synonymous with malefaction on the big and small screens. Some viewers see Strickland as a textbook villain, evil for evil’s sake (is that the inverse of Ars gratia artis?), but I would argue that the character's motivations are explained to a greater extent than those of anyone else in the film. Strickland is the definition of toxic masculinity, a white man who abuses his position of power by mocking, harassing and sadistically torturing the people (and fish-god) he identifies as inferior to him. Strickland strives for the American Dream - the suburban home, the wife and two kids, a brand new Cadillac - but underneath the exterior of perfection is a man who doubts himself. (For my money, one of the funniest moments in the film is the shot of Strickland sitting in his office, solemnly poring over a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking.) It’s not by accident that one of the digits that the Amphibian Man tore off of Strickland was his ring finger, or that this racist man can’t handle the fact that his body rejects fingers whose skin has turned black.

There is also significance in Del Toro’s disparate approaches to sexuality involving Strickland and his wife versus Elisa and the Amphibian Man (or Elisa by herself). Elisa’s desire is never ignored because of her inability to speak; she is a sexual being and her strong connection to that aspect of her life is viewed with delicacy and respect. The film incorporates two brief scenes showing her masturbating as part of a daily routine, but they don’t feel exploitative; Del Toro went out of his way to create intimacy that wasn’t designed for the male gaze. This is why I’m glad that he didn’t go all the way and show Elisa and the Amphibian Man having sex, contrary to the grumblings of many frustrated viewers who feel cheated out of hot fish-on-human action. What little we see of Elisa and her beau’s encounters glows with eroticism because the characters’ most private moments are withheld from us.

In response to other complaints voiced by moviegoers, the sex scene with Strickland and his wife Elaine (Lauren Lee Smith) was disturbing yet necessary. It’s mechanical, heartless and, as it progresses, turns into marital rape. It was one of the moments that seemed to freak out the audience I was in the most, leading the woman sitting directly behind me to loudly say “blecch” when Strickland placed his hand over his wife’s mouth. (Isn’t it interesting how obsessed Strickland is silent women, whether it’s Elaine or Elisa?) Leave it to Guillermo del Toro to make an interspecial romance inviting and arousing, while sex between two humans is the true act of monstrosity.

All this happens, and politics too. Yes, The Shape of Water covers the topics of human/fish-god courtship, sexism, racism, homophobia and American exceptionalism, but the Cold War also plays a big part in the story. The one expert working at the Baltimore facility who cares about the Amphibian Man’s well-being is Dr. Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), who aids in the creature’s escape. I won’t go into detail about Hoffstetler’s various complicated allegiances, but suffice it to say he comes through as a dedicated scientist and a decent person who recognizes the supreme value of love over country. Del Toro infuses Hoffstetler with a number of fascinating characteristics, even when they’re as seemingly minor as him baking a butter cake in his apartment.

There are a lot of cooks in Shape’s kitchen. With so many compelling characters, plot lines and images, the film is an aesthetic feast for the senses. On the other hand, Del Toro never satisfactorily answers the question of whether the Amphibian Man is an entity of high intelligence. Elisa is smart, funny, creative and resourceful; is her water-bound lover capable of those same feelings and abilities? He is more than the “wild animal” that Giles sees him as - the Amphibian Man’s first face-to-face experience with Giles’ cats ends bloodily, but we later see the fish-god petting the remaining felines sweetly - but I’m not convinced that the Amphibian Man is on Elisa’s level emotionally. Doesn’t it strike anyone as odd that the love song featured in the film’s gorgeous, black-and-white dream sequence, was “You’ll Never Know”? Wasn’t Elisa implying that her lover either didn’t or couldn’t comprehend the depths of her affection?

(Incidentally, that dream sequence, which is modeled on Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” scene from the 1936 film Follow the Fleet, is reminiscent of another musical that copied the same number, 1981′s Pennies from Heaven. There, Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters dance and lipsync to Astaire and Rogers; the entire film is a cinephile’s dream, paying homage to old Hollywood while simultaneously maintaining a dark, tragic tone amidst the colorful song-and-dance confections.)

The Shape of Water hurtles towards its finale with intense speed, perhaps too much. The conclusion involves a number of coincidences and a lot of good fortune on Strickland’s part. He’s able to do a bunch of dastardly deeds due to characters who tell him what he needs to know or because he’s lucky enough to have information fall in his lap. The exact nature of the ending is also telegraphed from the beginning (at least that’s what I thought), so if you’re expecting a brilliant revelation regarding one or more characters, your hopes will be dashed. I was touched by the final scene, but I also longed for more of a resolution to the story at large, especially for Giles and Zelda.

Del Toro’s film succeeds thanks to the astonishing acting done by Hawkins, Shannon, Jenkins, Spencer and Stuhlbarg. Doug Jones’s performance can’t be gauged in terms of conventional acting, but his commitment to the role and the way that he physically brought the Amphibian Man to life (along with the services of the film’s makeup/special effects artists) is indeed worthy of praise. Visually, the cinematography, sets and costumes are stunning, while the score by Alexandre Desplat and the song selections (including a Madeleine Peyroux cover of one of my favorite Serge Gainsbourg tunes, “La Javanaise”) are charming. Despite the weaknesses, The Shape of Water is a beautiful film that encourages love, diversity and the importance of taking risks. In today’s political climate, we could all benefit from more of those attributes.

[aphroditelion]

17 for 2017 - The Lions Share’s Albums of the Year

FOMO. I have a real bad case of new music FOMO. So much so that my enabler, Spotify, has told me that I listened to nearly 2,000 different artists during 2017. In trying to put this list of my 17 top albums of 2017 together I had to wade through nearly 600 album playlists. Thankfully the need to listen to many of these again, over the last few weeks, has been as enjoyable as listening to them when they were released throughout the year. Conscious that we are probably the last blog in the world to publish its Album of The Year list (which includes 2 EPs) I’ll just get on with it. Here they are in alphabetical order with an 11 hour playlist at the end:

A Giant Dog - Toy First up is Toy, the 4th album from Texas rockers A Giant Dog. Building on the ebullient brilliance of their Merge Records debut Pile, this is 39 minutes of prurient pounding good time rock’n’roll. Sex and drugs are defintely on thje menu along with escaping the small town ennui. It must be the angst in their pants.

Alex Lahey - I Love You Like a Brother I’ve said in previous years and I’ll say it again, our antipodean cousins have this indie rock thing figured out. Twenty-something Melbourne native Alex Lahey takes a route-one approach on her debut album proper with big melodies and big guitars. Nowhere this does this work better than on the snappy title track which matches an almost Andrew WK-like simplicity with lyrics loaded with subtle dualities, a trick she repeats throughout.

Alvvays - Antisocialites After making us wait over 3 years for the follow to their precocious self-titled debut, Canadian five piece Alvvays didn’t disappoint on their sophomore effort Antisocialites. There are no gimmicks here, just 10 brilliant pop songs delivered in an array of the key indie styles: wall-of-sound guitar – In Undertow; subtle electronics – Dreams Tonite; jangly guitars: Plimsoll Punk.You get the idea.

Allison Crutchfield - Tourist in This Town It is arguable that Allison Crutchfield has somewhat been overshadowed by her twin sister’s Katie’s phenomenal output as Waxahatchee. If that was the case heretofore then it is no more. Tourist in This Town is astonishing from the subtle opener Broad Daylight to the nostalgic ennui of closer Chopsticks on Pots and Pans. On songs like I Don’t Ever Wanna Leave California the melodies are strong enough to rip the emotional hinges off even the most cynically bolted heart locker.

Big Thief - Capacity Worth the entry fee alone for the achingly incomparable Mythological Beauty, the other 10 tracks on Capacity are in the same league. No emotion goes untouched here while singer Adrianne Lenker pours out dark tails inspired by her youth in a religious cult in Indianapolis. The rest of the band do a fine job matching her intensity with apt and accomplished guitar-flavoured musical arrangements.

Craig Finn - We All Want The Same Things I really didn’t want to put this one on my list. Not because it isn’t brilliant but just because it is such an obvious choice for a Hold Steady fan. While Craig’s previous two solo albums have fallen a little short of the Hold Steady’s soaring efforts, he has upped his game here somehow with songs like the gorgeously-riffed Preludes and the brass-heavy Tracking Shots as good as anything in their canon. If you were in any doubt of Craig’s status as a supreme story-teller check out God in Chicago, a novel of loss, poverty, music, drug deals and fleeting love, with a road trip thrown in for good measure, all in 4 minutes and 45 seconds.

Dion Lunadon - Dion Lunadon Having tasted some success as the frontman of The D4 and more recently served his time as the bassist in A Place To Bury Strangers, New Zealander Dion Lunadon’s solo debut is 29 minutes of angry and noisy punk flavoured alt-rock. From the squalling opener Insurance, Rent & Taxes to the murky and malevolent closer No Control everything is distorted and contorted as fuck, but with the melodies and energy to match. Bring the noise.

Jane Weaver - Modern Kosmology Having hit on a magic musical formula with her 2014 album The Silver Globe, Jane Weaver returned this year to top that with even more motorik mayhem, bubbling synths and tasteful tunes. Nowhere does this work better than on single Slow Motion that makes me want to weep tears of joy every time I hear Jane’s yearning vocals over the simple machine beats and drones.

Kane Strang - Two Hearts and No Brain We head down under one more time to the unofficial capital of antipodean indie, Dunedin, to check out the sophomore effort from Kane Strang. With more hooks than Peter Hook playing bass with Dr. Hook at Captain Hook’s daughter wedding, the songs on Two Hearts and No Brain will be in your head long after the last strummed indie guitar chord has faded.

Kelly Lee Owens - Kelly Lee Owens To call Londoner Kelly Lee Owens’ self-titled debut album electro-pop would be to do a disservice to the breadth of ambition and talent on display across its 10 tracks. Her own Bandinstown bio hits the bulleye when it describes it as a blend of techno, spectral pop, and krautrock inspired mechanical pulses. While you are not going to be humming many of the songs here in the shower, the 46 minutes you spend listening to the album will immerse you in amniotic aural experience you will not want to leave.

LCD Soundsystem - American Dream Another album I didn’t wanted to include on the list: there was something about the hyped split of LCD Soundsystem back in 2011 and their subsequent return a few year later that seemed contrived. But it worked, the band are more popular than ever selling out their run of Dublin shows in seconds. But what about the new music? It is fucking fantastic and easily on par with anything they had done previously. With only one song clocking in at less than 5 minutes, it is certainly sprawling. However this gives time for the arpeggioed synths and motorik beats to swell under Jame Murphy’s anxious keening.

Priests - Nothing Feels Natural Undoubtedly the best gig I saw all year was Priests Sunday night soiree in the Workman’s Club back in October. The hyperactive howling frontwoman, Katie Alice Greer, and her three colleagues brought every sinewy note of their long-awaited debut album to life. On Nothing Feels Natural the songs skirt the edges of funk, post-punk, riot grrrl and alt rock while all times staying close to the DC Dischord spirit of righteous protest. . Sälen - Zebedy’s Cult Sälen first grabbed my attention back in 2016 with their deliciously filthy Diseasey. All their subsequent singles (The Drwg, Copper Kiss, Hearthbreak Diet, Pretty Fake, So Rude) and their most recent EP Zebedy’s Cult are cut from the same cloth: delightful, sparse electro-pop with Ellie Kamio’s knowing, bittersweet vocals telling tales of sex, drugs and candy.

Strange U - #LP4080 I’ll have to admit I don’t know a whole lot about Strange U other than they are Dr. Zygote & Kashmere and inhabit a world of UK hip-hop that is a lot closer to MF Doom than it is to grime. With plenty of guest spots this is 16 tracks of the most amusing and surreal reference-heavy hip-hop you’ll ever want to hear. And if you don’t want to grow a Bullet Proof Moustache after listening to it then there is no hope for you.

This Is The Kit - Moonshine Freezes I was a bit late to the part on Kate Sable’s last masterpiece Bashed Out, so I’ve made no such mistake this time. And don’t think I’m exaggerating either – Moonshine Freeze maybe subtle but it is stunning in its simplicity. Whether it is over finger picked guitars and folky banjos like on opener Bullet Proof and Easy on the Thieves, or more the more percussion driven numbers like Hotter Colder and Moonshine Freeze, throughout it is Kate’s melodious vocals and enigmatic lyrics which gel this folky fantasia together.

Tr One - A Month Has Passed Carlow is not a part of Ireland that springs to mind much when thinking about music, or anything else for that matter. Yet Dean Feeney and Eddie Reynolds have been steadily challenging that perception which each release over the last 10 years. The title track of this A Month Has Passed EP is over 7 minutes of delicious arps and drum machines but The Boutique of Neverending Dreams that steals the show here adding gentle layers of pads and melody onto the gradually morphing rhythmic mix. Food for your head, heart and feet.

Weaves - Wide Open With the paint hardly dry on the scuzzy self-titled debut Toronto four piece Weaves returned with a more refined follow-up in the form of the appropriately expansive Wide Open. This is poppy indie-rock with an arty edge. While they are not afraid to take risks, like adding Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq into the noisy mix on Scream, elsewhere like on singles Walkaway & #53 it is the catchy melodies that win out.

[paulisded]

Live Ledge #406: Best Albums of 2019

This was another great year in music. So great, in fact, that many hours were spent narrowing down the year's release into the standard Ledge format of the 40 best albums of the year. In particular, it was a year that really saw a resurgence in anthemic power pop. It was also a year that saw a number of psych-rock bands so widely expand their sound and songwriting that a two-record set was necessary. Here's my list, and look for another similar post featuring the great reissue and box sets of the year.

1. Mikal Cronin, Seeker. Every year there is a record or two that deserves to find an audience outside of its typical subgenre. This year it’s the latest by Mikal Cronin, a stunning record that retains the psych-rock template of his past yet showcases a giant leap in songwriting. This record should be all over mainstream rock radio.

2. Bob Mould, Sunshine Rock. After a handful of records featuring dark, ferocious rock closer to his Husker Du days than his more poppy records with Sugar, Mould’s latest finds him possibly as close to happy as we’ve ever seen him. Ok, maybe happy is too strong of a word. Whatever it is the attitude is different, although still accompanied by his trademark buzzsaw guitars.

3. Pernice Brothers, Spread the Feeling. The most welcome comeback of the year. Every band featuring Joe Pernice seemed to acknowledge one major influence missing from most Americana bands and that’s his love of ‘80’s college rock. Just imagine a country-tinged power pop band that clearly loves Echo & The Bunnymen, The Smiths, and Lloyd Cole.

4. The Muffs, No Holiday. Such a tragedy. Two years ago, Muffs leader Kim Shattuck suddenly found herself unable to grip a guitar. It turned out to be ALS. Determined to finish one last album she gave all she could even as she quickly deteriorated from the disease. Eventually she was leading recording sessions while connected to a breathing tube. Sadly, she died less than two weeks before the release of one of the band’s best albums.

5. Purple Mountains, Purple Mountains. Purple Mountains was David Berman’s first project since the demise of Silver Jews in 2019, and it was a stunning display of his quirky songwriting skills. Unfortunately, the personal demons that had always been present in his art turned his big comeback into a tragedy, as he took his life just weeks after the record was released to glowing reviews.

6. The Resonars, No Exit. In a year that saw power pop rediscover its balls, The Resonars proved they always had their share of testicular fortitude. And it’s all the work of one man, Matt Rendon, who has over the last two decades created six albums of this sort of catchy but raucous power pop.

7. Kiwi Jr., Football Money. Power pop’s closest relative just has to be jangle pop, and both genres are at its best when the songwriting is as catchy as a late ‘70’s Nick Lowe single. There’s hooks galore on this Toronto band’s debut release.

8. Wand, Laughing Matter. There’s always been a bit of a fine line between psych and prog, and those lines have definitely narrowed in today’s crop of prog-rockers. One proof is the return of the double album, which every psych band seemed to release in 2019. The strongest record of that sort may have to be Wand’s fifth record, which succeeds by actually stripping back their sound a bit.

9. Wreckless Eric, Transience. It’s been a real treat to see the resurgence of Eric Goulden in the last few years, as album after album have ranked as his best ever. The latest sort of comes closest to his solo performances, as he lays tracks and tracks of both clean and enhanced acoustic and electric guitars over backing tracks laid down by Amy Rigby, Cheap Trick’s Tom Petersson, jazz horn player Artie Barbato, and The Rumour’s Steve Goulding.

10. Tim Presley’s White Fence, I Have To Feed Larry’s Hawk. Presley reportedly spent four years recording what may be the masterpiece of his career. How to describe the finished product is not easy, though, as various influences and sounds flow in and out of each and every track, yet there is an intimacy here that makes it feel like Presley just whipped up this musical cocktail in one long, intense evening.

11. The Cowboys, The Bottom Of A Rotten Flower. Good old punk-influenced straight up rock and roll. Nothing more, nothing less. And when it’s as good and as catchy as this it doesn’t need to be anything else.

12. Twin Peaks, Lookout Low. Five years ago, this Chicago-based band’s fabulous record Wild Onion was described by one of the band members as heavily influenced by Exile On Main Street. This record’s classic rock influence appears to be the first two records by The Band. That’s not to say they sound anything like either the Stones or The Band. No, in this case there is a laid back feel to their guitar-based indie rock that feels as if it’s straight out of a Woodstock basement.

13. The Dates, Ask Again Later. Garrett Goddard has been a member of a number of bands over the years, including King Tuff, Personal and the Pizzas, and The Cuts. His first record heading The Dates may have just topped anything else he’s ever worked on in the past. The melodies and hooks just melt in your ears, and the musical accompaniment throws The Byrds, Big Star, Shoes, Smithereens and seemingly a dozen other bands into the greatest blender ever invented.

14. Wilco, Ode To Joy. After Tweedy’s pair of solo acoustic records, I think I was ready for a full blown rock and roll Wilco album. It has been a while, right? Unfortunately, Ode To Joy comes off as a full band version of those solo records. Don’t get me wrong. It’s good. It’s very good. It just wasn’t what I needed from a 2019 Wilco album.

15. Guided By Voices, Zeppelin Over China. Another year, another trio of Guided By Voices records. Their second wind as a band has been nothing but stunning, as evidenced by this double album of almost nothing but anthems.

16. Tijuana Panthers, Carpet Denim. Every year there seems to be a new band that showcases elements of surf rock in their punk-influenced lo-fi garage sounds. What a shocker to find out that this is their sixth album! What sets them apart from others like them, besides the strength of their songwriting, is the ocassional elements of doo wop harmonies. Who knew that The Buzzcocks and Dion could co-exist in the same song?

17. Peter Perrett, Humanworld. After no new tunes for over 25 years, we now have two records in three years by the former leader of The Only Ones! Like 2017’s How The West Was One this record succeeds simply because Perrett isn’t trying to recreate the glory days, nor is he attempting to jump on current trends. Instead he accomplishes what real artists do, which is to create a sound that fits the song.

18. Frankie and the Witch Fingers, ZAM. Another great psych rock double album that incorporates and combines all sorts of atypical influences, including kraut, prog, and even a little funk.

19. Sweet Things, In Borrowed Shoes, On Borrowed Time. It may be hard to find a more varied rock and roll album than this debut record, as it jumps around from blues to soul to country to glam rock. There’s cameos by Alejandro Escovedo and members of The Uptown Horns. It’s the most ambitious trashy garage rock record I’ve heard in quite some time.

20. Cherry Pickles, Will Harden Your Nipples. As their bandcamp states, “one guitar, two drums, the basement band you always wanted to start”. This trio proudly combines all sorts of “outsider art” into a minimalistic sound that would certainly impress the namesake of the record’s best song “I Still Miss Lux”.

21. Ty Segall, First Taste. The prolific singer/guitarist was a bit quiet this year, actually. Well, for Segall a quiet year is one that only features a studio album, a live album, and a box set of outtakes. What makes his only new record of the year stand out is that there reportedly is not a guitar to be found on it! No, it’s not a synth-pop record. In fact, it ultimately isn’t that much different than what we’re used to hearing.

22. Pale Lips, After Dark. Gotta love snotty, hook-driven garage-punk that’s clearly inspired by major doses of The Muffs and The Ramones mixed with spoonfuls of surf and Spector-era girl groups.

23. The Darts, I Like You But Not Like That. This record was not what I expected. At all. Who would have predicted that Alternative Tentacles would put out such a sexy collection of horror-punk?

24. CTMF, Last Punk Standing. Nobody has so proudly hosted the flag of ‘60’s garage-punk as Wild Billy Childish. Well, “proud” is probably not the correct word to use, as Childish is as cantankerous as The Fall’s Mark E. Smith. Yet he consistently puts out records full of simple yet catchy guitar anthems, and this one is no exception.

25. Jordan Jones, Jordan Jones. What happens when you take the pop/rock highlights of ‘70’s AM radio and ramp it up a bit with power pop energy? You get this wonderful debut record.

26. The Mystery Lights, Too Much Tension! A melting pot of different styles rarely mesh well, but this New York band’s second album somehow manages to roll in and out of genres. A synth track leads into a homage to the Stooges which is then followed by a ‘60’ dance party. How do they get away with it?

27. Juliana Hatfield, Weird. It’s only fitting that an album dominated by a theme of being a lonely introvert would be created by one artist playing almost every instrument. That’s the case of the latest Hatfield collection of originals, and it’s one of the best of her career.

28. Kevin Morby, Oh My God. Rolling Stone recently described the Kansas City native as a “secular guy with a spiritual side”, and that’s never been more evident than on his fifth album. RS goes on to compare this record to Dylan’s gospel years but it’s actually more similar to a record like New Morning, where Biblical imagery is referenced but not necessarily the main topic.

29. Drahla, Useless Coordinates. Post-punk also made a comeback this year, and one of the best purveyors of that sound is this trio of Wire fanatics. And like Wire there’s a bit of a ferocity in this record that’s missing in much of their post-punk cohorts.

30. Gino and the Goons, Do The Get Around. Take Chuck Berry, The Sonics, Motorhead, The Ramones, The Stooges and a few other “rawk’ legends and toss them into a blender and you get the dirty sound that Gino and the Goons have mastered over the course of five records. You know what you’re getting from these guys, but they always deliver.

31. Young Guv, Guv I & II. The side project of Fucked Up guitarist Ben Cook could be described as a lo-fi tribute to bands such as Big Star and Teenage Fanclub. But then out of the blue comes a synth tune that’s almost danceable. It’s just part of the charm of this double record.

32. Ravi Shavi, Blackout Deluxe. Some records are sleepers. They don’t work the first time you hear them. They may not even work on the fourth or fifth airing. Then suddenly you can’t stop listening. That’s the case with this new wave-influenced, Prince-obsessed, garage rock group.

33. ATOM, In Every Dream Home. Just like the previous record, ATOM didn’t work for me at first. Then suddenly I had to race to the stereo to crank up the volume. What changed? Well,it helps when the musicians are Australian indie rock heavy weights led by Crime and the City Solution’s Harry Howard.

34. Geoff Palmer, Pulling Out All The Stops/Brad Marino, Extra Credit. (Tie) I can’t possibly vote for one of these records to be higher than the other. The pair both were members of the The Connection and The New Trocaderos. Both of them are veteran power pop performers who have written more than their share of catchy tunes. And both may have put out the records of their careers.

36. Honey Radar, Ruby Puff Of Dust.. A lot of reviews of this Philly band compare them to Guided By Voices, but I honestly don’t understand why. Yet it’s what made me check them out, and I do appreciate their fuzzy psych-rock sound.

37. Titus Andronicus, An Obelisk. Produced by Bob Mould and recorded at Steve Albini’s Chicago studio, Titus’ sixth album is their most straight ahead to date, although as always leader Patrick Stickles’ lyrics are open to interpretation.

38. The Dream Syndicate, These Times. While most band reunions never result in worthwhile albums (or any new music at all), there are instances where the second run rivals the first. That’s the case with these leaders of the mid-’80’s “Paisley Underground”, and it’s mainly because they refuse to just rest on their laurels.

39. Jesse Malin, Sunset Kids. The teaming of Malin with Lucinda Williams may seem like a head scratcher, but it actually works! Not only does Williams produce the album, she duets with him on a handful of the album’s tracks. The end results may be quieter than a typical Malin album but the tunes are also as strong as a typical Malin album.

40. More Kicks, More Kicks. Haven’t I said that this was a year for great power pop? Here’s another one. This time it’s a UK group, and like the others I’ve highlighted there’s nothing wimpy here. It’s pop music that absolutely rocks.

After listening, please go purchase those tracks you enjoy! You can find this show at almost any podcast site, including iTunes and Stitcher...or

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE SHOW!

Note: Tracks from the albums listed above were presented in reverse "Casey Kasem countdown" order. In two instances (Darts/Pale Lips and The Muffs/Purple Mountains), songs were erroneously flipped in error. I apologize for this mistake.

1. More Kicks, I'm on the Brink

2. Jesse Malin, Room 13

3. The Dream Syndicate, Bullet Holes

4. Titus Andronicus, Troubleman Unlimited

5. Honey Radar, Cornflake ESP

6. Brad Marino, Broken Record Baby

7. Geoff Palmer, All The Hits

8. ATOM, No Future

9. Ravi Shavi, Riding High

10. Young Guv, She's A Fantasy

11. Gino And The Goons, Pills In MY Pocket

12. Drahla, Gilded Cloud

13. Kevin Morby, OMG Rock n Roll

14. Juliana Hatfield, Staying In

15. The Mystery Lights, I'm So Tired (of Living In The City)

16. Jordan Jones, Rumors Girls

17. CTMF, You're the One I Idolise

18. Pale Lips, Some Sort Of Rock n' Roll

19. The Darts, Don't Hold My Hand

20. Ty Segall, Taste

21. Cherry Pickles, I Still Miss Lux

22. The Sweet Things, Dead or Worse

23. Frankie and the Witch Fingers, Purple Velvet

24. Peter Perrett, Love Comes On Silent Feet

25. Tijuana Panthers, Path of Totality

26. Guided by Voices, Your Lights Are Out

27. Wilco, Everyone Hides

28. The Dates, pictures with rene

29. Twin Peaks, Laid In Gold

30. The Cowboys, Female Behavior Book

31. White Fence, I Love You

32. Wreckless Eric, Strange Locomotion

33. Wand, Walkie Talkie

34. Kiwi jr., Murder in the Cathedral

35. The Resonars, The Man Who Does Nothing

36. The Muffs, No Holiday

37. Purple Mountains, That's Just the Way That I Feel

38. Pernice Brothers, Mint Condition

39. Bob Mould, Sunshine Rock

40. Mikal Cronin, I've Got Reason

[gojiro]

The Vinyl of the Day is ‘A Night At The Opera’ by Queen, 1975.  Nothing succeeds like excess–at least that’s the case with Queen’s breakthrough classic, A Night at the Opera. On one level, the title is a reference to the band’s operatic pretensions, best in evidence here on the classic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which was championed by headbangers a generation before being revived by the Wayne’s World set. Of course, A Night at the Opera was also the title of a Marx Brothers movie, and the reference isn’t lost on Queen, who seldom scaled the heights of pomp-rock without a knowing wink. This was another one of those game-changing albums for me when I heard it for the first time - it was like nothing I’d heard before. I think if Queen had worked in a more ‘serious’ manner, the album wouldn’t have worked, but it was their self-conscious humor and sense of fun and showmanship and the incredibly unique sound of Freddie and Brian that made it a true ‘Sgt. Pepper’ of the time. It really blew the doors off of the music of the day. 

The album has been discussed to death, but here it goes anyway. Everyone's heard the brilliant 'Bohemian Rhapsody', which might be the band’s career song (and IMHO has been ruined by the ‘Wayne’s World’ parody) and 'You're My Best Friend' (written by bassist John Deacon) is also excellent. But have you heard gems like Brian May's '39', a beautiful folk/sci-fi fusion that is one of the unsung highlights of the album? Then there's the breezy, endlessly creative 'Seaside Rendezvous', 'Love of My Life' is a fan favorite (to my ears it's a little too sappy, but Freddie's vocals make it all worth it). For all the silliness, all of these tracks are carefully produced and are worth re-visiting time and time again. Queen didn't completely abandon their hard rock roots, either. There's 'Sweet Lady' and 'Death on Two Legs' (which was dedicated to their former manager). A classic album, though it might not be to everyone's tastes, but you can't deny the talent and sheer creativity. A Night at the Opera is viewed by most as the quintessential Queen album, and justifiably so.

From Wikipedia;

At the time the most expensive album ever recorded, May has asserted in subsequent years that, had A Night at the Opera not been successful, Queen would have disbanded. Upon release, the album was a commercial success, debuting at No. 1 in the UK and topping the charts for four non-consecutive weeks. In the US, it reached No. 4, the band’s strongest showing at that time. In 1977 “Bohemian Rhapsody” received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus and Best Arrangement for Voices.

In a contemporary review, Kris Nicholson of Rolling Stone magazine said that, although they share other heavy metal groups’ penchant for “manipulating dynamics,” Queen are an elite act in the genre and set themselves apart by incorporating “unlikely effects: acoustic piano, harp, acapella vocals, no synthesisers. Coupled with good songs.“ Melody Maker called the album a “must-have”, encouraging listeners to “turn it up loud and enjoy”, while the Winnipeg Free Press wrote: “The group’s potential is practically limitless, indicating that Queen is destined to finally take its place among the small handful of truly major acts working in rock today.” Robert Christgau, writing in The Village Voice, felt that the album “doesn’t actually botch any of a half-dozen arty-to-heavy ‘eclectic’ modes … and achieves a parodic tone often enough to suggest more than meets the ear.” However, he questioned what “that more is”.

Uncut noted “the extent of the band’s barmy diversity.” Mojo called the album “an imperial extravaganza, a cornucopia”, and Queen “a band of hungrily competitive individualists on a big roll of friendship and delight.” Pitchfork Media’s Dominique Leone said that the band topped their contemporaries on the album without limiting themselves or sparing any effort. According to Rhapsody’s Mike McGuirk, A Night at the Opera is often viewed as one of the greatest rock albums of all time. McGuirk felt that the album’s combination of heavy metal, recording effects, theatrical sophistication, and British grandeur still make for an engaging listen.The BBC said of the record: “Christmas 1975 was to be forever remembered as Queen’s. And A Night at the Opera remains their finest hour.”

AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine 

Queen were straining at the boundaries of hard rock and heavy metal on Sheer Heart Attack, but they broke down all the barricades on A Night at the Opera, a self-consciously ridiculous and overblown hard rock masterpiece. Using the multi-layered guitars of its predecessor as a foundation, A Night at the Opera encompasses metal ("Death on Two Legs," "Sweet Lady"), pop (the lovely, shimmering "You're My Best Friend"), campy British music hall ("Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon," "Seaside Rendezvous"), and mystical prog rock ("'39," "The Prophet's Song"), eventually bringing it all together on the pseudo-operatic "Bohemian Rhapsody." In short, it's a lot like Queen's own version of Led Zeppelin IV, but where Zep find dark menace in bombast, Queen celebrate their own pomposity. No one in the band takes anything too seriously, otherwise the arrangements wouldn't be as ludicrously exaggerated as they are. But the appeal -- and the influence -- of A Night at the Opera is in its detailed, meticulous productions. It's prog rock with a sense of humor as well as dynamics, and Queen never bettered their approach anywhere else.

In 2015, actual Rocket Scientist Brian May was named by NASA as a New Horizons probe collaborator! Here he is in 3D;

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/rock-starastrophysicist-dr-brian-may-goes-backstage-with-new-horizons

[mastcomm]

Demi Lovato’s Anguished ‘Anyone,’ and 11 More New Songs

Demi Lovato is 27, but has lived much longer. A former Disney star, and the one who consistently had the most conflicted relationship to that enterprise, she emerged in her late teenage years as a pop star with a big voice and unexpected edge. But she also struggled with addiction, and in 2018, she suffered an opioid overdose. “Anyone,” which she premiered at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night, is her first single since then — a pensive eruption, a harrowing peal. It moves slowly and determinedly, and not totally steadily, which is the point — recovery is not a straight line. The pain here is palpable, and Lovato wields it like a weapon and a shield. She’s a torch singer for our modern era, which asks too much of those too young, and doesn’t stop until it breaks them. JON CARAMANICA

Dua Lipa, ‘Physical’ Little Dragon, ‘Hold On’

Let’s have some fun, this beat is sick: There is hope for upbeat pop in 2020. The first song from a Little Dragon album due March 27 is an electro-soul benediction for an undramatic relationship set to a low simmer. The third track from Dua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia” (out April 3) cleverly threads Olivia Newton-John’s 1981 song “Physical” through Lady Gaga’s album “The Fame.” It’s not as icon-clad as Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now,” but it has enough sizzle to winningly live up to the album’s title. CARYN GANZ

Torres, ‘Good Scare’

Torres — the singer and songwriter Mackenzie Scott — ponders the volatility of romance and the relation between life and art in “Good Scare” from her new album, “Silver Tongue.” Booming percussion and sustained electric guitar tones give her a spacious backdrop as she observes a partner who’s scaring her by “eyeing all the exits”; her reaction is to think about writing a country song. This is not one. JON PARELES

Sturgill Simpson, ‘A Good Look’

Will people learn line-dance moves from an anime? Sturgill Simpson, the insurgent roots-rocker, thinks they might. The underlying structure of “A Good Look” is funky blues-rock, but its sliding synthesizers and nonstop bass line make it feel machine-driven. And while Simpson is singing about all the things that compromise heartfelt songwriting — image, commerce, “you know they don’t like it when you take a stand” — the video clip is all artificial glee. Enjoy the paradox. PARELES

Meek Mill featuring Roddy Ricch, ‘Letter to Nipsey’

An earthy, uplifting tribute to Nipsey Hussle from Meek Mill with Roddy Ricch, one of Nipsey’s protégés. (They premiered it at the Grammys on Sunday.) Meek is in reflective storytelling mode, with scars still fresh: “When we lost you it really put some pain on me/Got me scared to go outside without that flame on me.” And Roddy sings his way through the pain. Even his melancholy is sweet, a balm for a feeling that’s never anything other than terrible. CARAMANICA

Kate Tempest, ‘Unholy Elixir’

“Our songs were spells and our spells were plain facts,” Kate Tempest declares in “Unholy Elixir.” She’s more a poet than a rapper, but her recordings make the music an equal partner. “Unholy Elixir” feels unstable but obstinate from the start, with deep, wavery, not-quite-in-tune synthesizers and a lurching beat; other synthesizer riffs arrive to turn the track into glowering synth-pop. Tempest confronts excuses for apathy — “don’t bother protesting because nobody listens” — but warns, “You better start sowing or there won’t be a harvest.” PARELES

Insistent, relentless six-beat patterns run nearly nonstop as Raphaelle Standell-Preston, of the Canadian band Braids, sings about lust overcoming rationality. Her “Young Buck,” she knows, is “the blaring example of what I am drawn towards/and should strongly move away from.” Layers of counterpoint accrue as her better judgment fades; it’s math-rock versus irresistible impulses. PARELES

Jah Wobble featuring Keith Levene, Richard Dudanski, Mark Stewart, Andy Weatherall and Youth, ‘A Very British Coup’

Jah Wobble, the original bass player in Public Image Ltd., and other post-punk alumni — Keith Levene from the early Clash and Public Image Ltd., Mark Stewart from the Pop Group, Youth from Killing Joke — greet Brexit with the fractious “A Very British Coup.” It’s a dense, ever-shifting collage, variously hinting at ska-punk, Britpop, fiddle tunes and “Sympathy for the Devil,” with barbed bits of lyrics like “sordid, sentimental, sick souvenirs” and “Even the devil sold his soul.” In 2020, post-punk disgust and cynicism aren’t dated. PARELES

Destroyer, ‘It Just Doesn’t Happen’

Dan Bejar, who records as Destroyer, has a fey tenor voice perfectly made for easy whimsy. But this is not a playful era, and he knows it. On his new album, “Have We Met,” the idiom he chose is the reverberant, electronics-enhanced, early MTV tone of confidence with hidden misgivings. “It Just Doesn’t Happen” begins, “You’re looking good/in spite of the light,” and that ambivalence persists; it’s a portrait of the artist as winner, loser and lost soul. PARELES

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (featuring Wayne Shorter), ‘Contemplation’

If Wayne Shorter is something like jazz’s Pablo Picasso — a master composer of the modern era who never abandoned tonality and form, but was constantly finding new ways to turn them upside down — then the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra works as a gilded frame to display his masterpieces. Members of the 15-piece big band, led by the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, wrote arrangements of compositions from throughout Shorter’s career, and the orchestra performed them with him at Rose Hall in 2015. A glorious moment came on “Contemplation,” one of Shorter’s early works, first recorded with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in 1961. Playing it with the orchestra, he takes the tune’s only solo, subtly harking to the hollering style of the early R&B saxophonists he grew up hearing. But his blues phrasing often veers toward abstraction, his notes smearing and disappearing without an alibi — like a nose on a canvas shrewdly misplaced. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

The Westerlies, ‘Eli’

An arty quartet featuring two trumpeters and two trombonists, mixing ideas from jazz, new classical and Appalachian folk, the Westerlies don’t really have the option of doing a straightforward cover of most songs. That’s doubly true when they’re dealing with Arthur Russell, the experimental-pop cellist and vocalist. His music is about melody and counterpoint, but it’s also about the grain of his voice, and treating sound as humid atmosphere. On this rendition of Russell’s “Eli,” the Westerlies smartly lean into the tune’s blend of harmonic splendor and hollering lament — and they’re mindful of the need for some textural play. One of the trombonists folded tin foil across the bell of his horn, creating a restless sibilance underneath the crystal tones and rough growls of his bandmates. RUSSONELLO

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/demi-lovatos-anguished-anyone-and-11-more-new-songs/

[joneswilliam72]

Scott Walker, 1943-2019

At the time of sitting down to write this piece, it has been 90 minutes since I read the news of Scott Walker’s death. His label, 4AD, posted a beautifully written, poignant statement on Twitter which was 4 minutes old by the time I read it. I am genuinely heartbroken.

Scott Walker meant a lot to me, but it is at times such as these that I try to reconcile my emotions with knowing that they are projected towards an idea of a person, somebody who I would never meet, or see on stage, and rarely had any idea of the kind of person they were. So why do I feel so upset? Music is a universal force at the very essence of the human experience; it connects people, it helps us to understand certain situations through vicarious means, it soundtracks moments in our lives and it is perhaps the most immediate and therefore the most evocative of popular art forms. Music is feeling, and music allows us to feel. And Scott Walker’s voice and music made me feel more than most other artists.

Born Noel Scott Engel in America, his career spanned the mid-1960s pop pin-up mania of The Walker Brothers, to a run of four (and a half) astonishing solo albums in the later years of that decade which saw diminishing returns in terms of sales. He then quit writing his own material in the 1970s as self-doubt and alcoholism took hold before he returned to work with The Walker Brothers in 1975 for three more albums. From the 1980s onwards, Scott released an increasingly astonishing body of work at frustratingly large intervals but with each album from 1984’s Climate of Hunter through to 2014’s collaboration with Sunn O))), Soused, there was a move away from pop song structures to avant-garde experimentalism. He also wrote the score for the films Pola X, The Childhood of a Leader and Vox Lux, sang on a Bat for Lashes track, produced Pulp’s We Love Life album and composed a 24-minute commissioned piece of experimental neo-classical music for CandoCo, an inclusive (disabled and non-disabled) dance company with the music performed by the London Sinfonietta. No doubt the news this evening will skip over most of this and just go for the ‘disappeared from public view’ angle in his biography as it’s easier that way.

Scott’s output, as a solo artist and as a member of The Walker Brothers, spans not just decades but ideals. In the late 1950s, he was championed by Eddie Fisher (Carrie’s dad) and appeared on his TV show a few times and recorded a number of fairly forgettable tracks. The first Walker Brothers single (the agonisingly titled ‘Pretty Girls Everywhere’) can be dismissed in many ways as pop fluff; fodder for the masses with another bunch of pretty boys singing a superfluous song for a teenybopper audience who would soon move on to the next manufactured act as instructed to by the record labels. John Walker sang on this first track; it is not essential listening. And then they released ‘Love Her’ with Scott’s beautiful baritone front and centre, and the template was set for the melancholic tone which would permeate through Scott’s output for the next fifty (FIFTY!) years.

The lyrical themes of The Walker Brothers centred largely on love, mostly on the pains of unrequited or lost love, but as Scott moved into his solo career there was a schism which saw him embrace more challenging and ‘arty’ areas. One song was dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime, another centred on the narrative in Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece of existentialist cinema The Seventh Seal, while controversial Italian neo-realist film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, Clara Petacci (Mussolini’s mistress) and Jesse Presley (Elvis’s stillborn twin brother) were all topics of focus in his songs. It is really hard to distil his body of work into 1000 words or so, you just need to dip into his back catalogue yourself and see for yourself. And don’t believe the naysayers who say his early '70s covers work holds nothing of value as there are some gems hidden amongst the undeniably dire work whose purpose was solely to claw some money back for his record label.

In the brilliant documentary 30th Century Man, the man himself states in rare interview footage that he didn’t ‘disappear into the wilderness’ as many people saw it, he just didn’t have anything to say. This is a theme which comes up when you watch what little footage there is of him in existence talking about his career, that he didn’t feel the need to write unless there was a compulsion to do so. I suspect the steady stream of royalty cheques from The Walker Brothers probably helped this a little. There was a feeling that his output was becoming more and more personal to him, and increasingly satisfying as a result. In 2018 he stated in The Guardian that his album with Sunn O))) was “pretty perfect” and it is hard to disagree with him on this.

There are so many moments in my life that have been soundtracked by Scott Walker and no doubt they would make for boring reading if I put them all down here. My favourite, however, was listening to my then 3-year-old-daughter singing 'It’s Raining Today' in the back of the car. Music means so much to me that the thought of my children understanding this about me is of personal paramount importance. I don’t necessarily want them to like the same songs I do (though it helps), I just feel that I use music as a conduit for the trapped emotional mess that contributes to me being the particular human that I am and if my children can understand me a little more through the culture I consume then that is some way at allowing them to know me in a more nuanced way.

The limiting nature of patriarchal society’s role in teaching males how they can and cannot express their deep feelings has impacted me and although I am aware of it I am still a work in progress in letting people in to my innermost fears and joys – but music is one way that I establish links with people and I use the words of others to illustrate my own feelings without recourse to the apprehension and the seemingly inevitable mocking words of others that scar aspects of masculinity in our fucked up society.

My initial sadness on hearing of Scott’s death was that I had lost an ally, someone I could lean on to channel my self-awareness and knowledge of my own emotional state and this is where the deep connection between artist and audience is perhaps most deeply felt. I need Scott’s words and music, and although I know that they will always be there for me as products of a mechanical process, it is the sensation of loss of a significant presence in my life that weighs me down at present.

A Spotify playlist of 20 of Scott’s songs cannot begin to truly demonstrate the wide-ranging body of work that he leaves behind, but it’s a start:

Only yesterday, Scott Walker’s music was blaring in my house as the sun shone outside. His tense, melodramatic and evocatively melancholic voice is my idea of the perfect musical accompaniment to what others call a ‘nice day’. Today doesn’t feel like anything other than a terribly sad day.

from The 405 https://ift.tt/2OoMQLF

[caveartfair]

How Long Do People Really Spend Looking at Art in Museums?

Photo by Igor Miske.

Roughly 16 years ago, two researchers wrote about a paradox they observed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Lisa F. Smith and Jeffrey K. Smith—now both professors at the University of Otago—had been studying how visitors experience museums for years. They focused on the way museum-goers thought about their jaunts through white-walled institutions and extolled the cognitive pleasure that came with looking at art. The Smiths found that visitors professed to love museums, describing the experience as “incredible,” “breathtaking,” “outstanding,” and “a thrill of a lifetime.”

But they also noticed something else: People don’t spend that much time looking at art. So, they wondered, in what would become a seminal study, published in 2001, “How can people be so deeply moved by works of art that they have viewed so briefly?”

To answer, they took a step back and asked another question: How much time were the people strolling the halls of the Met spending looking at art? Working with a volunteer, the couple monitored 150 people as they looked at six paintings from the museum’s collection, including famous works like Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851) by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze and the The Card Players (1890–92) by Paul Cézanne.

They found that the mean time spent looking a painting was 27.2 seconds, while the median time was 17 seconds, and the longest time was 3 minutes, 48 seconds—recorded as one person observed Rembrandt van Rijn’s Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1653). So, long before the age of the iPhone (and digitally stunted attention spans), Smith and Smith concluded that “a [museum] visit is not characterized by long looks at a few works of art; it is characterized by brief looks at many works of art.”

Today, the question of how long people look at artworks in a museum remains an interesting one—especially to the Smiths. In February 2016, the pair published another, larger study (with more artworks and more people tracked) alongside Pablo P. L. Tinio of Montclair State University, based on research conducted at the the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). They found “remarkably similar” results as they had with the 2001 study, with the mean time spent looking at a work coming in at 28.63 seconds. The median time had increased to 21 seconds (the mode remained unchanged at 10 seconds).

These results suggest that cell phones haven’t changed the amount of time people spend in front of art that drastically. The big difference the study found was the birth of selfies—or “arties,” selfies taken with artworks, as the authors dubbed them. Though they hadn’t initially planned to measure arties, the authors witnessed the “selfie phenomenon” on the first day of the new study and decided to begin tracking it. Of the 356 observations recorded by the study’s authors after they began tracking these art-selfies, they found that approximately 35 percent involved “arties.” Two people were taking so many “arties” that they had to be excluded from the study, because they weren’t even looking at the art.

Another study published in early 2017, titled “Art Perception in the Museum: How We Spend Time and Space in Art Exhibitions,” sheds even more light on the issue. Researcher Claus-Christian Carbon looked at how much time visitors spend looking at art in a smaller exhibition space that bans photography. After all, visitors to the AIC and the Met are often out-of-towners who are keen to see the collection highlights before catching a flight home or booking it to another tourist destination.

“People are often in a ‘Met mode,’” as Carbon, a professor of psychology at the University of Bamberg, said to me. “They want to see a lot of things.”

His study was focused on six paintings by Gerhard Richter within a temporary art exhibition devoted to the artist. Observers monitored how long viewers spent with the six works, out of a total of 28 in the show. Unlike the seminal 2001 study by the Smiths, Carbon’s study measured if individuals returned to spend more time with a work after they had already looked at it. He also measured the viewer’s distance from the work.

The median time visitors spent looking at Richter paintings was 25.4 seconds—comparable but certainly longer than both of Smith and Smith’s studies. Interestingly, Carbon’s study found that there was a 51-percent probability that a visitor would return to an artwork at least once, and those who did so had spent 12 seconds less, on average, looking at the piece originally, compared to those who only looked once. This tendency increased the overall time spent looking at a given work of art in the study.

The data Carbon collected of visitors’ viewing distances suggested that people tend to adjust their distance depending on the size of the work (an intuitive finding).

But all of this is significant because a great deal of research on how people perceive art, such has how people’s eyes move across a canvas, occurs through computers in a lab, not actual artworks in a museum. This includes some of Carbon’s own work. The conditions of viewing art on a screen in a lab are generally quite different than at a museum, as his work has demonstrated.

Does this mean that all lab research on art is useless? Absolutely not. Combining lab and field research is useful. “Together, you can really get a comprehensive picture of what we call the art experience,” Carbon said.

As I’ve written about before, there is no “correct” amount of time you need to spend looking at a work of art. It’s completely valid to spend three hours in front of a single work, but it’s also fair to quickly glance at all of the masterpieces in a major museum, or every work in an exhibition. People spend a number of hours watching an opera, the Smiths noted—and that same total time can amount to very little when divided among dozens of artworks in a major retrospective exhibition.

So, if you go to a museum and spend one whole minute looking at an artwork, give yourself a pat on the back. You’re above average.

from Artsy News

[a-h-arts]

old skool tribute an absolutely amazing collection of sharp, clear and vividly colorful photographs of the maturation of the new york city subway graffiti scene circa early to late seventies. i was there and remember it well. any writer/artist interested in the roots of "modern" graffiti needs to see this. amazing to compare this old skool flavor with todays awesome cutting edge graffiti from here and all over the world. it belonged to new york once and now the whole world shares in this most unique art form. the author starts out by giving respect to the old philly scene, most notably cornbread and kool earl. but clearly jack stewarts intentions were to document the evolution of a renegade art form that few people realized was happening in the subway tunnels and train yards in new york city, brooklyn, bronx, and queens. so many old skool cats are represented here and a lot of these fella's (and ladies) were overlooked when graf blew up in the 80's. this book gives them their due. graffiti kings is sort of like the next chapter to john naar's magnificent the birth of graffiti. where as the birth of graffitis photos were a little on the arty side featuring an even mixture of trains, walls, playgrounds etc. graffiti kings is almost entirely trains. and again these are really good photographs. no blurry polaroids here. the first photo you will see in this book is the bathroom door in jack stewarts studio which is covered with a whos who of old skool bombers tags. a caption claims over 190 hits! it took me about fifteen minutes to get past the first page! this door belongs in the smithsonian. but then the trains come. and its just page after page after page of whole car wild styles, throw ups, and tags from tracy 168, fdt 56, blade, comet, clyde, ajax, cliff 159, butch, kindo, super kool, mono, etc, etc, etc. the book has numerous interviews with, and observations by many of the writers from that time. there is also mention of graffiti in the media news paper articles etc pertaining to that era as well. so in conclusion; if old skool is your thing then by all means pick up this book you will not be disapointed. if youre new skool see where it all began and be amazed by progress. five stars plus. Go to Amazon

finally a dope book drops. well what can i say.short and simple,this book is dope.worthy of your hard earned cash for sure. Go to Amazon

Know your Graff, history This book has one of the best and most interesting stories of the beginnings of graffiti in NYC. Tons of great pictures. Go to Amazon

Great Historical record Great book! Any fan of graffiti art and its origins must have this! Many train photos that i have never seen before and i have seen zillions! Excellent! Go to Amazon

Interesting Book Great book if you are an advid or novice fan or collector of graffiti art. Nice color photos to reference Go to Amazon

Five Stars very good Go to Amazon

Five Stars A++ Go to Amazon

one of the best to date As a graffiti historian myself, I am always looking for books that deal with the history of graffiti on trains in America. I read Jack Stewarts dissertation (Subway Graffiti; An Acsthetic Study of Graffiti On The Subway System Of New York City 1970 - 1978) long before this book was published. Since it is from that dissertation this masterpiece was derrived, I was familiar with much of it already. However, the copy of the dissertation is in a basic typeset and the photos are poorly reproduced photocopies. With all that said, Graffiti Kings was a refresher course in the birth of Writing for me....in full color. Seeing it all again, this time in full color, made it a welcomed read, now for the 4th time (I read the dissertation 3 times). The fact that he begins with Philly is all but perfect as it lets the world know that what is known today as graffiti, or more accurately Writing, began in Philly. The remainder of the book takes you year by year through the development of the fundamentals of of how this culture began. Because Jack Stewart was not a writer, there is no bias. Anyone who is writes (does graffiti) or anyone interested in writing needs to have this book. It is hands down the best book on Writing (not just subway writing) since Subway Art. Go to Amazon

The origins of NYC graffiti art Pick Up This Book and Learn

[secondsightcinema]

Children of Divorce 1927

I had the extraordinary pleasure of my first viewing of Children of Divorce

I had no expectations before seeing Children of Divorce—I had never heard of it. Gary Cooper was the featured star at Capitolfest 2016, where old movie fanatics gather for a few days each August to watch silent and early sound films in a dilapidated movie palace with a fantastic pipe organ for live accompaniment. When I slipped into my seat

A passion for old movies and the people who made them can be consuming.

There was a show called Divorce Court on daytime TV when I was a kid in the ’60s. The opening credit was an illustration of a kid kneeling by his bed, hands clasped, praying, with a voiceover something along the lines of, “And please…make Mommy and Daddy stop fighting.”

Children of Divorce is the story of three kids whose parents did not stop fighting, and whose lives have been as a consequence uprooted. Kitty, the youngest, will grow up to be Clara Bow, with everything that entails. Ted (CK) grows into tall drink of water Gary Cooper, just beginning his long career as a major star, and Jean turns into Esther Ralston, of whom I knew nothing until seeing her her.

Children of Divorce is one of those wonderful surprises. It’s not a masterpiece, an “important” film. That is, unless you love old movies and enjoy stepping into a past that feels phenomenally remote, seeing stars you may know from their later work when they were just starting out (Gary Cooper), rising to their peak (Clara Bow) or already moving toward the end of their Hollywood career (Esther Ralston, **CK**).

In addition to all the usual stuff that strikes us in movies—acting, screenwriting, direction, set and costume design, cinematography—in old films we **enter** the past in a more fully dimensional way than we do in the imaginative act of reading, or looking at art from another time, or even speaking with our elders about their experiences in the past, that remote country. When we become open to old movies, when we fall in love with these visits to a past that is at once impossibly foreign and has brief moments that could be happening **right now**, time does not move relentlessly forward for us as it does in real life. Or at least we get to enjoy little respites from the grind of 21st century life.

Kitty’s end is dictated by her character. That’s what drives the plot. Another person in her situation might have reacted differently. She could have left Cooper, either with or without their daughter. She could have stayed, knowing that Jean and…Ted? love each other but are too honorable to give in to their love. Or she could have taken the road she chose, the only one she was able to see. Thing is that scene—it has a visual motif that I know from the famous Kane shot after he busts up Susan’s room, where he walks through a series of doors, becoming more and remote all the time. And I thought, Wait a minute—this scene is way more arty and stylish some of the rest of the movie. And it turns out there’s a reason for that.

Turns out that the execs or preview audiences decided that as directed by DIRECTOR TK, Children of Divorce was a stinker. At which point Schulberg (CK) brought in the young Turk Josef von Sternberg to reshoot the picture. Small detail: He would only be able to shoot for three days.

You know how Abbey Road kept these incredibly precise records of recording sessions, so that we have extraordinary detail about how the Beatles records came together? Who did what, when, how many times. How things changed.

That’s the film historian’s dream, records like that, which document the process of making the film. Who did what, when, how many times. How things changed.

Children of Divorce opened April 25, 1927. Place that in time: Two years before the Crash of 1929, and at the moment when sound was very new but starting to become a thing (CK).

from Second Sight Cinema http://ift.tt/2nN5yOG via http://ift.tt/1om9FS6

[mastcomm]

Demi Lovato’s Anguished ‘Anyone,’ and 11 More New Songs

Demi Lovato is 27, but has lived much longer. A former Disney star, and the one who consistently had the most conflicted relationship to that enterprise, she emerged in her late teenage years as a pop star with a big voice and unexpected edge. But she also struggled with addiction, and in 2018, she suffered an opioid overdose. “Anyone,” which she premiered at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night, is her first single since then — a pensive eruption, a harrowing peal. It moves slowly and determinedly, and not totally steadily, which is the point — recovery is not a straight line. The pain here is palpable, and Lovato wields it like a weapon and a shield. She’s a torch singer for our modern era, which asks too much of those too young, and doesn’t stop until it breaks them. JON CARAMANICA

Dua Lipa, ‘Physical’ Little Dragon, ‘Hold On’

Let’s have some fun, this beat is sick: There is hope for upbeat pop in 2020. The first song from a Little Dragon album due March 27 is an electro-soul benediction for an undramatic relationship set to a low simmer. The third track from Dua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia” (out April 3) cleverly threads Olivia Newton-John’s 1981 song “Physical” through Lady Gaga’s album “The Fame.” It’s not as icon-clad as Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now,” but it has enough sizzle to winningly live up to the album’s title. CARYN GANZ

Torres, ‘Good Scare’

Torres — the singer and songwriter Mackenzie Scott — ponders the volatility of romance and the relation between life and art in “Good Scare” from her new album, “Silver Tongue.” Booming percussion and sustained electric guitar tones give her a spacious backdrop as she observes a partner who’s scaring her by “eyeing all the exits”; her reaction is to think about writing a country song. This is not one. JON PARELES

Sturgill Simpson, ‘A Good Look’

Will people learn line-dance moves from an anime? Sturgill Simpson, the insurgent roots-rocker, thinks they might. The underlying structure of “A Good Look” is funky blues-rock, but its sliding synthesizers and nonstop bass line make it feel machine-driven. And while Simpson is singing about all the things that compromise heartfelt songwriting — image, commerce, “you know they don’t like it when you take a stand” — the video clip is all artificial glee. Enjoy the paradox. PARELES

Meek Mill featuring Roddy Ricch, ‘Letter to Nipsey’

An earthy, uplifting tribute to Nipsey Hussle from Meek Mill with Roddy Ricch, one of Nipsey’s protégés. (They premiered it at the Grammys on Sunday.) Meek is in reflective storytelling mode, with scars still fresh: “When we lost you it really put some pain on me/Got me scared to go outside without that flame on me.” And Roddy sings his way through the pain. Even his melancholy is sweet, a balm for a feeling that’s never anything other than terrible. CARAMANICA

Kate Tempest, ‘Unholy Elixir’

“Our songs were spells and our spells were plain facts,” Kate Tempest declares in “Unholy Elixir.” She’s more a poet than a rapper, but her recordings make the music an equal partner. “Unholy Elixir” feels unstable but obstinate from the start, with deep, wavery, not-quite-in-tune synthesizers and a lurching beat; other synthesizer riffs arrive to turn the track into glowering synth-pop. Tempest confronts excuses for apathy — “don’t bother protesting because nobody listens” — but warns, “You better start sowing or there won’t be a harvest.” PARELES

Insistent, relentless six-beat patterns run nearly nonstop as Raphaelle Standell-Preston, of the Canadian band Braids, sings about lust overcoming rationality. Her “Young Buck,” she knows, is “the blaring example of what I am drawn towards/and should strongly move away from.” Layers of counterpoint accrue as her better judgment fades; it’s math-rock versus irresistible impulses. PARELES

Jah Wobble featuring Keith Levene, Richard Dudanski, Mark Stewart, Andy Weatherall and Youth, ‘A Very British Coup’

Jah Wobble, the original bass player in Public Image Ltd., and other post-punk alumni — Keith Levene from the early Clash and Public Image Ltd., Mark Stewart from the Pop Group, Youth from Killing Joke — greet Brexit with the fractious “A Very British Coup.” It’s a dense, ever-shifting collage, variously hinting at ska-punk, Britpop, fiddle tunes and “Sympathy for the Devil,” with barbed bits of lyrics like “sordid, sentimental, sick souvenirs” and “Even the devil sold his soul.” In 2020, post-punk disgust and cynicism aren’t dated. PARELES

Destroyer, ‘It Just Doesn’t Happen’

Dan Bejar, who records as Destroyer, has a fey tenor voice perfectly made for easy whimsy. But this is not a playful era, and he knows it. On his new album, “Have We Met,” the idiom he chose is the reverberant, electronics-enhanced, early MTV tone of confidence with hidden misgivings. “It Just Doesn’t Happen” begins, “You’re looking good/in spite of the light,” and that ambivalence persists; it’s a portrait of the artist as winner, loser and lost soul. PARELES

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (featuring Wayne Shorter), ‘Contemplation’

If Wayne Shorter is something like jazz’s Pablo Picasso — a master composer of the modern era who never abandoned tonality and form, but was constantly finding new ways to turn them upside down — then the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra works as a gilded frame to display his masterpieces. Members of the 15-piece big band, led by the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, wrote arrangements of compositions from throughout Shorter’s career, and the orchestra performed them with him at Rose Hall in 2015. A glorious moment came on “Contemplation,” one of Shorter’s early works, first recorded with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in 1961. Playing it with the orchestra, he takes the tune’s only solo, subtly harking to the hollering style of the early R&B saxophonists he grew up hearing. But his blues phrasing often veers toward abstraction, his notes smearing and disappearing without an alibi — like a nose on a canvas shrewdly misplaced. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

The Westerlies, ‘Eli’

An arty quartet featuring two trumpeters and two trombonists, mixing ideas from jazz, new classical and Appalachian folk, the Westerlies don’t really have the option of doing a straightforward cover of most songs. That’s doubly true when they’re dealing with Arthur Russell, the experimental-pop cellist and vocalist. His music is about melody and counterpoint, but it’s also about the grain of his voice, and treating sound as humid atmosphere. On this rendition of Russell’s “Eli,” the Westerlies smartly lean into the tune’s blend of harmonic splendor and hollering lament — and they’re mindful of the need for some textural play. One of the trombonists folded tin foil across the bell of his horn, creating a restless sibilance underneath the crystal tones and rough growls of his bandmates. RUSSONELLO

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/demi-lovatos-anguished-anyone-and-11-more-new-songs/