ON ROTATION

Bombay Bicycle Club, A Different Kind Of Fix
Bombay Bicycle Club showed that they were not afraid to change musical direction with their sophomore album, the mostly acoustic endeavor Flaws. It was a big departure from the sound of their debut album that first got them so much attention, and it was a favorite album of mine last year. On their latest album, A Different Kind Of Fix, the band has blended the sounds of those first two album. While this does not result in the band breaking any real new ground, it does bring richness and sophistication to their music and shows that this band is continuing to grow in a great direction.
Lights Out, Words Gone   

Blitzen Trapper, American Goldwing
American rockers, Portland Oregon's own Blitzen Trapper, keeps you on your toes. Album to album, they find new, creative ways to explore that classic, southern American rock sound that we all grew up on. With their incredibly satisfying new release, American Goldwing, the band backs off from the edgy experimentation that has characterized a lot of their music, and gives us a collection of songs that have a more laid back feel and sound to them. By not pushing so hard, the band's songs feel like they originated more from their hearts than from their heads. While this may not be what many of their fans want, I find it to be a welcomed change of pace. This is genuinely a great, great album.
Love The Way You Walk Away 

The Weeknd, Thursday
Earlier in the year, The Weeknd released the very dark, moody and highly stylized House Of Balloons. The album was fantastic and made Scattered's Best Albums for the first half of 2011. Back with what is the second album in a trilogy, Thursday, R&B singer Abel Tesfaye continues the musical journey through a dark world of alcohol fueled partying and sex. As with House Of Balloons, the protagonist shows little remorse for his devient behavior or thoughts, but he does begin to show signs of having emotions underneath his steely veneer.                                     

Musically, Tesfaye brings a bit more light and volume to this album. Beats are more pronounced, the instrumentation is more complex and vocals are pushed further forward than they were on House Of Balloons. While I preferred the darker and moodier music of House Of Balloons, I understand the need to move the music and storyline forward. And like with a great dark novel, you are drawn into this world and you stay there to see what happens next. 

Thursday 

Nick Lowe, The Old Magic

I

The press release for Nick Lowe's new album, The Old Magic, starts off with the opening line of his song Checkout Time and goes on to comment on it. "I'm sixty-one years old now, Lord I never thought I'd see 30,"....The line cuts right to the quick.  For though he spent his 20s "busy not fitting into three successive movements: pub rock, punk and new wave" (NY Times), Lowe has mined fertile new creative ground in recent years and the eleven tracks on 'The Old Magic' dig deeper still. As NPR observes, “Few musicians get better with age.  Nick Lowe is an exception.”

Both quotes and observations could not be more on the money. Over the past few albums, Nick Lowe has completed a transformation from punk and new wave rocker, that defined not only him, but a generation of British artists in the '70's, to a crooner with a subtle and refined way about him. Along the way he has elevated his songwriting and performing to a level of perfection that few artists ever achieve professionally, let alone later in their careers. 

With his last album, At My Age, Lowe found a voice and a groove that seemed so natural, it made it almost impossible to listen to the younger Lowe and believe that it was the same person. With that album, Lowe received some of the best reviews of his career and showed that he was more than comfortable being in his own fifty something year-old skin. 

On The Old Magic, Lowe not only matches what he accomplished on At My Age, he surpasses himself. Once again, drawing inspiration from '50's country-tinged standards and ballads and easy-going rockabilly songs, Lowe sings and moves with grace and warmth through this collection of eight original songs and three covers. Every song on The Old Magic sounds and feels classic, timeless, and familiar, which makes listening to this album so completely satisfying. I absolutely love this album. For me this is just a perfect album...not near perfect. Perfect. 

Stoplight Roses 

The Rapture, In The Grace Of Your Love

 

Back in 2003, The Rapture released their dance-punk debut album Echoes to great critical press. I remember the album well, but never followed the band beyond its release. With In The Grace Of Your Love, their first album in five years, the band has my attention once again. It is inevitable that comparisons will be made between the two albums. I think that this is wrong. This is really a different band from the one that released Echoes, with artists who are at different stages of their lives and careers. There is a maturity to this album and I really like where the band is musically and lyrically.  
In The Grace Of Your Love 

The London Souls, The London Souls

The concept of the trio has always been intriguing to me. A trio seems so straight forward and basic....guitar, bass, drums...and vocals...should work every time. But it doesn't. Creating a dynamic and solid sounding song with a trio is hard to pull off...doing it really, really well is even harder to do. The London Souls, who in fact are from Brooklyn, NY and not London, are one of the best trios that I have heard in some time. With a cool retro '70's rock sound that dabbles with soul and funk, The London Souls just kill it on their debut, self titled album.
Someday 

ON ROTATION

Fink, Perfect Darkness
Perfect Darkness, a mostly acoustic endeavor, is filled with perfectly dark, moody, sparse, and tension filled songs. This may not sound like a recipe for a satisfying listen, but it is and then some. As a singer, songwriter, DJ, producer, and guitarist, Fin Greenall, the driving force behind Fink, is a serious minded guy who uses a less is more approach to allow this collection of songs to breath. This approach, coupled with crisp production, allows you to hear every little sound created on each song. This add some great texture to these songs which plays nicely against Fink's subtle vocals and dark lyrics. Fink has a winning recipe with Perfect Darkness.
Warm Shadow   

Gillian Welch, The Harrow & The Harvest
I have been a big fan of Gillian Welch since she first arrived on the folk music scene back in 1996 with her debut album Revival. Now, after an Eight year hiatus, since the release of her last album, Welch and her long time musical collaborator, David Rawlings are back with The Harrow & The Harvest. What I have always loved about Welch is her ability to reach back in time, grab onto the wonderful folk, bluegrass, and country music that is such an important part of our country's musical heritage, and bring it back to us in her own voice. This collection of original songs is exceptional and I would ask Welch to take another eight years off if it is going to produce another magnificent album like The Harrow & The Harvest (but really I want more now!).
                                                        The Way It Goes  

Sounding Out: Deep Dark Robot

When I was putting together Scattered's list of the best albums for first half of the year, I knew that Deep Dark Robot’s 8 Songs About A Girl had to be on it. It’s flat out a killer album. I also knew that I needed to track down Linda Perry, the driving force behind the band and talk to her about it.

I have been an admirer of Perry's for many years. While she found early success with the band 4 Non Blondes, it was her first solo album, In Flight that first drew me to her as an artist. Unfortunately for me, and others, Perry turned her attention away from writing and performing for herself and focused on the other side of the music industry, writing and producing for others. As I have come to understand through my interview with her, Linda is not good at doing two things at once, and made a conscious choice to hang up being a performing artist.

Now, after many years, Linda says that she has something to say and her gut told her it was time to get out from behind the studio walls and perform her new material. On the new album, 8 Songs About A Girl, Linda puts her raw emotions from a failed relationship on full display. It is a very powerful and personal album for Linda and a testament to artists who put every part of themselves out there for all the world to see.

Linda has written so many wonderful songs over the years. Even with the songs written for other artists, I assumed that some songs originate from her own emotions and experiences. I asked her if she found it harder to write songs with her own stories or emotions when she knows that she is going to be the performing artist vs. having someone else sing them? Linda told me that this sounded like a complicated thought.

“I just write songs. Whatever comes out comes out. Every song that I write is about me. If anybody came to me and said they want me to write a song about a little old lady crossing the street, I would say go find someone else because that is not my style. I deal with the here and now, real emotions. I don’t know that way of writing.”

In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Linda talked about becoming really bored with writing for others. She said, "If I hear another label tell me that they need a song for the radio I'm going to poke out their eyeballs with a fork.” I asked Linda how much of the tone and feel of the album was driven by the pure emotions that she felt from her break up and how much might have been a response to how she felt about the music industry and the type of music that labels want to put on the radio. She said that when the record was happening, she did not really know that it was happening.

“I was just writing these songs. I called Tony (Tornay, the other other half of the band) and said let’s record. I just dialed in a drum sound that I liked, I grabbed a guitar and an amp that I liked, I put up a vocal mic and sound for me that I liked, I hit record…....and all I could do was cross my fingers that the sound was good enough.”

Linda said that the record was actually a demo that she was putting together. When it was done, her intention was to have ‘real’ players come in (besides Tony, she clarified), and overdub the base and guitar and all that other tracks. But then the two of them realized that they just loved what it sounded like.

“I wrote the songs based on the emotion as it happened right then and there. I recorded the emotion that day. It Fucking Hurts. When I found out that this girl was dating this guy, I wrote the song that day and we recorded it that day. The emotion was fresh and in real fucking time. There was a lot of frustration. There was a lot of anger at times. I was pathetic. I was obsessed. So the feelings were happening. When we listened back to it, we knew this was the record. This is it. Those are one-take vocals. Me, Tony, guitar, drums, and vocals were all done live. Then, because it was just me and him, I went back and played everything else…..bass, keyboards, and the other stuff…..afterwords."

I told Linda, that if they had gone back and redone the songs, they might have ruined what they had created because it would not have had the same raw power and energy.

“I totally would have fucked it up. That is what I love about the album. It is so raw. It is so not perfect. It’s just eight songs linked up together expressing raw emotion.”

I asked Linda if she ever stopped while making this album and wondered how folks would receive her story about a failed relationship with another woman.

“I am just me and I happened to like girls and that is as far as it goes. It is equivalent to Bret Michaels singing to a girl and saying she’s my woman or whatever. It is the same thing. He is not stopping and sitting there and thinking ‘well I wonder how people are going to perceive this.’ I am just Linda and these are my experiences...and oh yeah, I happen to be gay. So I am not purposely trying to set any kind of standard or break any kind of rule. It is just who I am. I am a songwriter expressing my emotions. So I don’t give a shit how anything is perceived. These are just my emotions.”

More frustrated by my question than caring how others would respond to her story, Linda questioned whether or not I would ask Bret Michaels the same question.

“Would you ask any straight person that question? No you won’t, so why are you asking me? I am not mad or annoyed; I just find it surprising every single time I come across a question like that, like really? Are we still here? Are we not in 2011? It seems like we have traveled far, but really we haven’t at all. And we are still coming across certain little questions. I am a girl who likes women. It should be no different than any guy singing......Maybe it is really intriguing that this is happening. But the fact that it is still intriguing is still the shocker to me.”

I told Linda that my question was less about content and more about intent, but I acknowledged that my question was off-putting. In another interview, Linda had talked about mentoring young artists. She said, “Everyone’s afraid of losing something. They don’t think about the gifts that they have been given or the things that they can gain by believing in their gut and believing in themselves.” I told Linda that they are afraid of not having an audience. From my perspective, there are a lot of bands and artists that are very cautious and conscious about what they are doing in order to find an audience for their music. Wasn’t this the same for her music?

“For me, I feel like, since I am also a producer and songwriter, I am dealing with these people that want to just get their song on the radio. I’m like really? Are you kidding me? Do you want to be on the radio? Really, have you heard the stuff on the radio? It is not even good. It’s like…instead of wanting to pee on a mountain, you think that peeing on a curb is great. I would rather pee on a mountain instead of a curb. Our standards are so fucking low that a curb actually looks more appealing than a beautiful gold mountain. That is where we are at musically.”

Linda said that what she wants to convey to an artist is that nobody knows what is going to happen. It is impossible. She said that the people who last are those who do what they want to do and do it from their heart. Their intention, she said, is to make music.

“The people who are doing things just for brand and commercialism and to make money…we're not going to remember them. We are not going to look back at......Lady Gaga for instance......I think that she is awesome…..But are we really going to look back at her music as something that we can say ‘gosh this is amazing?’ We are going to look back at her in pop culture as a personality, her visual. Her music is invisible to me. It could be any body. And it is any body. But her personality, the way she looks, the way she dresses, she is a performance artist. Lady Gaga is the Andy Warhol of 2011. We will remember her for that but not for her music.”

The music business, Linda said, is being divided up between people who are trying to make music, which she believes are very few, and the people who are becoming personalities. "It really should be divided now. There should be personality stars and rock stars. We would definitely know right then and there what we are dealing with because right now people are trying to mix in the personality with the rock stars and it doesn’t work. It is fucking up the rock stars.”

I told Linda that I thought singing shows like American Idol contribute to this trend in some respects. Rhetorically, I asked her if these individuals were singers or personalities?

“They’re neither! There just normal everyday people coming out of the woodwork that are getting an opportunity, which is amazing. But honestly, I believe in the rock star. I don’t believe that any Joe Schmo should get up on stage and play. There is a reason why David Bowie is David Bowie. There is reason why Madonna is Madonna. There is a reason why Mick Jagger is Mick Jagger. These are fucking rock stars! They walk the talk, they dress the talk, and they live the fucking life from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep. And that is what I believe in. I don’t believe in soccer mom by day and fucking rock star diva by night. I don’t believe in skater boy, scooting around during the daytime and then puts on a leather jacket and all of the sudden is a rock star. These people are not living the life."

As an art form, Linda has a lot of respect for music and she said that she just wants to focus on making great music. “Right now music does not really sell. But I don’t care. I am going to make music until people want to hear music again and believe in the rock star. I’m just going to do it and if it is successful, awesome! Do I want to have that success? Of course I do. I would be a fucking moron and a liar if I said that I was not interested in that, but I am not going to sell myself out or sacrifice anything that I believe in to do so.”

“I love when people do what they want to do, so my advice is do what you got to do. Do what you want to do. The format is dead so do what makes you happy, because if you start following the game plan and the rules of what is going on....you are going to go nowhere."

In a 2003 interview Linda was asked if she could ever see herself pursuing a solo career again in the future. She said ‘no’ and added that this was a choice she made the day she was looking at the labels and Pink. She said, “I made a conscious decision right then and there that that part of my life was over. So when I need to perform, I'll play my piano by myself.” I asked Linda if she was being a bit naïve back then given the fact that she is now back out on stage with Deep Dark Robot. She said that she made exactly the right decision. She wanted to focus on working with other artists at the time and could not do both.

“I can’t do two things. I wasn’t that person back then that I am now. I know more about me, as a human being, my likes and dislikes, and I am a stronger individual. I fell on my gut and my gut told me this is what I was supposed to do…what I have been doing. Now that gut is telling me to go back out there now and I just follow my gut, that’s all that I do. I was not naïve. If anything it took balls to make that decision."

With Deep Dark Robot, Linda and Tony are really starting out like any new band trying to find a place for itself in the listening world and find an audience. I asked Linda what it was like starting out from scratch all over again?

“The first week of our tour there were maybe five people in the audience, and it was like ‘Ok. I got this. I can do this. I get it. I have to start all over again!’ The last time that I was on tour, I was playing to anywhere from twenty to forty thousand people with 4 Non Blondes." 

Linda said that regardless of the size of the audience, She and Tony had fun and made every show a show because they did not have to try so hard. 

"I wasn’t trying to impress anybody. When we got on stage, we had a really fucking good time. I loved it. And if there were five people out there, they would get a fucking stadium show no matter what. I learned a lot. I loosened up a lot. I cherished it. It was just fun and I can’t wait to go out there and do it again. And I really don’t care how many people get there because I know that if I keep doing it long enough they will just keep showing up. That is the name of the game and I am willing to go through that and I am really excited about it."

Linda added that she she is really proud of 8 Songs About A Girl and loves that the album has been so warmly received by others. "It means the world to me. To create something that you believe in and to have other people, even if it is just five other people that believe in it too, that’s where it starts. I am loving every moment of it."

I told Linda that what I really appreciate about her as an artist and as musician is that she does not compromise her craft, her convictions, or herself.

"I do the best that I can. I am a little salty sometimes. That is because I am an Aries. I can be overly confident and I can be overly insecure as well. It depends on what day you catch me on of how my attitude is going to be. There is really not a lot for me to do to control that. I just kind of am what I am. I try to do the best that I can out here in the world and I think that being a producer and a songwriter, I’ve been locked behind these studio walls for 14 years and now I am out and I do have something to say and I have an attitude to convey. And that’s it."