Jack White "Lazaretto"

 

He does not need my help.  Top 10 debuts in at least 15 countries, including the US and Denmark, and still charting here and in France three+ months later.  Sadly, it suffers the same fate as Blunderbuss for me....only keeping a couple of tracks.



He looks kinda affected, don't ya think?  Maybe he was pissed because he was having to play during daylight.  This demonstrates some of his Nashville-based influences that appear on the album. Nothing like a little rock 'n' roll fiddle, especially by a dark-haired hottie in a flowing white dress wearing cowboy boots!  This also features one of my hang ups about the guy.  That yelping vocal style doesn't work for me.  Love the intensity of the music, not the singing.  Which would explain why one of the tracks I'll retain is the instrumental halfway through the album and the other features a treated vocal.

Like a shark in a tank, I'm out, until he decides to do another side project like Dead Weather and lets somebody else sing... 


 

Eno Hyde

Could barely contain my excitement when I heard of this collaboration.  Brian Eno (Talking Heads, Roxy Music, King Crimson, etc., etc., etc.) teaming up with Karl Kyde (known by most as part of Underworld but please look up Freur).  I envisioned something along the lines of Eno's Berlin trilogy of albums from the late 70's with David Bowie intertwined with Doot Doot...



First of all, Hyde is no Bowie.  Not really in possession of an identifiable voice.  Yes, there were touches of Low, Lodger and Heroes, some Freur and a smidgen of Underworld, but "Someday World" is its own creation...



Simply one of the best tracks of the lot.  Sure wish we had a show like Jools' here stateside.  Plenty of layered synthesizers, a  multitude of rhythms and a boatload of studio effects are found throughout the record's forty-five minutes.  One reviewer called it,"...an excellent exercise in beat-conscious, electronic art pop."  I won't go quite that far but I will keep it digitally.  It's a more traditionally styled record, the songs averaging five minutes a piece, more radio-ready (yeah, like radio would play any of it).  One of the major drawbacks I had with it was once the guys hit on a working groove/theme they were too quick to roll it over into the next idea.  Too much genius at work...

"High Life" came out just a few weeks later and is more the dance/club-styled record with four of the six tracks close to nine minutes in length.  Hyde said the creative juices were still flowing after completing the album proper so why not put it out there, too.  I'll tell you why not......this is way too repetitive and ventures close to the period of Underworld where they lost me with this same drivel.  I obviously don't partake in the congruous pharmaceuticals for this Ibiza-style.  Will only keep the shortest selection, a jazz/funk workout...



Reminds me of Jeff Beck back in the day.

Both releases sniffed the Top 200 but had much better showings on the Electronic and Independent Albums charts.  "Someday World" even appeared on the Rock Albums chart!  Yeah, there's guitar on it, but rock?                  No way...

Body Count "Manslaughter"

 

Actually hit the wrong button while sampling this and bought it by mistake.

Best blunder I've made in some time.

Way back in the early days of my music retailing career in a small town south of Nashville, TN, this guy named Ice-T caught the fancy of some of my more knowledgeable rap clientele (of course, I figured "Rap" to be a passing fancy.................missed that one, huh?) and one locally influential DJ kept spinning it over and over at his gigs.  Gang life in LA.....I didn't like it but I liked ringing the register.  I'll admit to being fond of the cover of his album "Power" because of the scantily clad bodacious bombshell, not him, his buddy or the guns.  Still have the poster...

 

Shortly after I moved to Orlando, he came out with what many considered the defining moment for gangsta rap, "O.G."  When he was a kid, Ice had a cousin who turned him on to heavy metal music and a track on OG had a band he put together called Body Count.  They were on the bill for the initial Lollapalooza stop in Orlando, 1991, and absolutely blew me away.  They didn't even have an album out yet!  The guitarist, known as Eddie C., was incredible.  Hell, Henry Rollins came out and did a song with them!  Call it what you want, be it speed/heavy/rap metal, there was an underlying sense of humor that got lost in all the angst that surrounded the debut album a few months later.  "Cop Killer" was the track that riled everybody up and it was later pulled from the album and the cover art was changed.  I kept a cassette (!) of the sealed original and actually considered selling it a few years ago for $15.  May be worth more now...  Honestly, it wasn't all that good, lots of clichés, but they weren't the only band of that ilk getting away with it at the time.  Since the album was a Top 25 seller, a follow-up happened quickly and Ice tried to be taken more seriously.  The humor was gone, the musical attack was akin to being bludgeoned, and it didn't sell nearly as well.  I never gave the third album a shot (no pun intended) and no one else did, either. 

Along the same timeline as Body Count, Ice-T began an acting career in the movie New Jack City and several other films followed.  He's been on TV in Law & Order: SVU since the turn of the century.  Not bad in it, either.  I didn't even know he'd put out any other music since.  Turns out there was a solo and another Body Count in 2006.  Which was why I was curious when I saw "Manslaughter" on the release board and why I was sampling it when I made the click error. 



I'm sorry but I laughed my ass off at this video.  I'll be honest and say I had no clue that "99 Problems" was his first, much less recall Jay-Z making a hit of it a decade later...all I remember is the Billy Squier sample.  "Back To Rehab" has lines that say, "You say you're done gettin' high, BULLSHIT!", "You're checkin' in next week, BULLSHIT!"  That's a funny intervention....
They update Suicidal Tendencies' "Institutionalized" and Mike Muir should be proud. 

Listen, this is better than anything they did previously and superior to 90% of the metal out there today.  Sure, there's still some rubber-stamped riffs but Ice and Eddie sound great (they are MY age, fer chrissakes) and all but one of the tracks clock in at under four minutes, so they get shit done and get out.  I read where they played Fallon but it wasn't on his channel.  I found this dude with it on his (watch it soon because you know it'll disappear) and his commentary as it plays says it all...

    

The record has appeared on Top Independent, Rock and Hard Rock charts as well as nudged the #100 spot on the Top 200.  Though it's far from anything I listen to now and even back in my younger Mad Rocker days I'd pass on most rap metal, but I'm very happy to add this to my catalog.

Blondie "Ghosts Of Download"

The band reportedly started working on this shortly after releasing their previous album in 2011 and it was supposedly ready to go over a year ago.  Delay after delay after delay.  It finally happened in May and was piggybacked onto a greatest hits redux cd.  Easy to hear why... this album sucks.  In an effort to be relevant in today's market, Blondie has pieced together a dance record via computer and it sounds like it. Generic, dull, boring, flushable...

Yeesh.....see what I mean?  While researching a clip, I found some live footage that was essentially unlistenable.  They went through this same phase on their first "comeback" around the turn of the century, trying to be "current" and not the methodology that made them stars.  I'm not alone in my repugnance as I happened across more than a couple of reviews that questioned the rationale for this record.  There was only one redeeming quality to be taken from "Ghosts of D..."...

...the cover art.

Ray Lamontagne "Supernova"

The musical chameleon.  Lamontagne was actually mentioned in my very first post with one of 2008's best releases.  That album, "Gossip In The Grain," was a complete shift in style from the previous record, "Till The Sun Turns Black," which was, and still is, my favorite of his.  A couple of years ago, he went folk/country/Americana with "God Willin'..." and won a Grammy.  Since he's a star now, I couldn't help but hear about how this new album was another cosmic shift, this time straight back to the 60's.  Had a great debut in North America and a decent showing in the UK, France and Australia.  Noticed a tour stop locally but it was being held in a venue notorious for difficult acoustics.  Figured I'd load the record onto the thumb drive and crank it up in the auto to see if it would trump my concerns about the concert hall.........................and it didn't.  Hell, it barely made the grade to keep at all, and like the Pink Mountaintops from the previous post, only digitally.  No Featured 500 for "Supernova."  

The 60's sound is all there, alright, layer upon layer of reverberated psychedelic pop/country-rock with fuzzed-up guitars, Mellotrons & Wurlitzers.........I should love this shit, but half the album was as blasé as a non-bubbling lava lamp, you know, the light works but the goo doesn't move.  Hell, on a couple of tracks I wouldn't have known it was him singing if you had given me a "name this artist" sample.  During the spins I heard some Lennon leanings, "Pet Sounds" similarities and some early Van Morrison...

 

Hand down, this title track is the best of the bunch.  It takes about three days to work its way out of my brain after hearing it.  The album's closer (track 10) is the next best selection, so with the title song coming in at #7.....that's a lot of iffy amongst the body.  Ahhhhhhhh, maybe this is why..............
the album is produced by the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach.   I  DO  NOT  UNDERSTAND  THE   FASCINATION  WITH   THIS  MAN!!!!!

Dude, get away from the artists I like, please....

Pink Mountaintops "Get Back"

 

There is so much junk in my musical trunk that I had completely forgotten my connection to this band.  One of my clients who is in the targeted demo for this blog ( > half century of age) asked if Pink Mt.tops was a spinoff of Black Mountain.  I had to say I didn't remember but I knew Black Mt. had a record a few years ago that blew me away.  I went back to the post and there it was, the reference to the fact that I "discovered" Pink Mountaintops a decade ago!  So embarrassing...    Anywho, the first four tracks of this album were exceptional, the only hindrance being the punkish vocals of the opener, you know, the off-key squalling kind, but the musical base was splendid.  Two of the next tracks had me yelling "New Model Army!" 



Sorry, thought you needed some reference material...   This is one of the tracks I referred to reminding me of NMA...



The other of the four had the 80's British style of say Inspiral Carpets or Stone Roses.  So do the connections with these bands and I'm screaming at my voice recorder, "they had better be a UK band!"  Remember that I had forgotten I had known them in the previous decade.  So, fuck me, they're Canadian.  The next half record wanders into other territories and it's OK but nothing special, and then the final track closes with 7+ minutes of outstanding psychedelic rock...



Going to make this permanent in my new digital storage location instead of the Featured 500.  Not quite good enough for a physical copy but good, nonetheless...

moe. "No Guts, No Glory"

 

I remember when this band started issuing albums some twenty years ago.  Didn't get it.  Sounded like wannabes.  Sony picked them up a few years later for three more albums.  Still didn't get it.  The last record I gave a shot was "Dither."  No indecisiveness for me...still didn't get it.  BKP sent this along a couple of months ago.  Had zero interest in picking it up for myself but at the price of gratis, I owed it a chance.



Man, that is borrriiinnnggg.  The singing has been unremarkable throughout their career but the musicianship satisfactory.  I understand why it appeals to some, though, just not moi.  For example, one long track has a nice four-minute instrumental intro before breaking into plagiarism from Pink Floyd's "Dark Side..."  Interesting?  Yes...my ears perked up a bit but I'll go listen to Phish or the original Floyd track. 

Well, it's been a long holiday weekend since writing the previous paragraph, providing the opportunity to give this one more visit and you know what?  I will keep the aforementioned track (I've given the new Phish another listen and the base Floyd song is playing now on any number of music sources) and the other nine-minute tune that closes the record. 

I truly believe these are the first moe. songs in my inventory...