Hey Rosetta!

I’ve been asleep for a long, long time
Blond hair to brown and then brown to white
My mom is buried beside my dad
But I was asleep for all of that

I shut my eyes for a moment’s rest
‘Cause I get so tired
What thing transpired while my body slept?
Beset my mind

All the schools that I went to have all been closed
And all of my teachers are dead I suppose
The songs that we sung have all gone quiet
What happens below as you sleep at night?

I shut my eyes for a moment’s rest
‘Cause I get so tired
What things transpired while my body slept?
Beset my mind

The river’s up, the reeds are caught
Halfway across what never was
The water rose and swept in slow
When the reeds awoke they were half below

I’ve been asleep for a long, long time
Blond hair to brown and then brown to white
My ma is buried beside my dad
But I was asleep for all of that

I’ve been asleep for a long, long time
Blond hair to brown and brown to white
My ma is buried beside my dad
But I was asleep for all of that
For all of that

The Two-Minute Miracles

Thanks to CBC Radio 2 and a December 20th trip to Costco with Steve Jones, I now know about the Toronto based band, Two-Minute Miracles. These guys are so under the radar but totally authentic and unwary roots rock.

The video above is of a live performance of "Stall Tactics", which I encourage people to purchase off iTunes, from the album Volume III The Silence of Animals. Weird title, but that's good. I purchased several songs from various recordings of theirs and then burned a CD for Steve for Christmas. This I hope, will push him to set up his iTunes account on his "new" iMac and buy the albums in full. So far, Steve loves these guys.

This video link is of a more polished production; an upbeat sort of tune, which I will also buy, from the album "Lions of Love". Title song from that album is also really good.

The Beautiful South's Superbi Recording

As published in The North Shore News, Friday, February 2, 2006

Album: Superbi
Artist: The Beautiful South
Rating: 6 out of 10
Reviewer: Stephanie Kiernan

The Bitter and the Sweet

Whatever bitterness Paul Heaton can amass with his lyrical tales, The Beautiful South have managed to maintain their sweet temperament within their melodies. This paradoxical mix is the deliberate bill of fare with the band’s eleventh album, “Superbi”.

Paul Heaton and David Hemingway cast themselves as The Beautiful South after their initial partnership as The Housemartins dissolved in the late 1980’s.
Hailed as one of the most British of songwriters, Heaton, and his distinctive voice, makes The Beautiful South easy to digest. Nevertheless, the harmonic template has been a blend of Heaton, Hemingway and a female vocal component – recently with third time’s a charm, Alison Wheeler filling that role. She throws herself into the established mix right from the album’s opening track, The Rose Of My Cologne; as does a peculiar Country clang.

Superbi narrates classic elements of English sentiment and cynicism, never mincing rhyme, as “you know when romance is dead, that deathly cold blast from his side of the bed” shakes When Romance Is Dead. But it’s the invasion of steel guitar and banjo that steer us far from British bleakness. Though I find a mental image of the very British Paul Heaton sporting cowboy boots, a straw hat and line-dancing more than amusing, it isn’t the clever timbre I expect from The Beautiful South. Nevertheless, hardnosed TBS fans are likely to allow such novelty. This markedly buoyant country recording may only remain a semi-sweet keepsake in my own CD collection.

Cat Power with George Stroumboulopoulos

Last night on, The Hour, Cat Power; aka Chan Marshall was interviewed. And as George said, "you should be listening to this stuff." And so says I.

So check out what you missed on last night's show.




I also love her cover of Wonderwall - hey, everyone's doing this song so why not?

Sparklehorse: Strains of the beautiful and the sad...

I've just sent off the following to The News. Sparklehorse plays Vancouver at Richards On Richards February 15th so Mr. Goodman will leave publishing of this until closer to that time -Friday, February 9th paper I would guess. (All music reviews and editorial is in the Friday editions)

SPARKLEHORSE

‘Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain’
7 out of 10

Like a rusty tension rod, strains of the beautiful and the sad carefully bolster Mark Linkous and Sparklehorse’s release “Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain”.

The album with the exasperatingly lengthy title pulls material from previously released B-sides, compilations and soundtracks. In fact, you will have already heard the work of Sparklehorse’s creator, Mark Linkous, if you’ve seen the 2002 film Laurel Canyon, in which some of his songs were used.

Mark Linkous is Sparklehorse and Sparklehorse is Mark Linkous – a project rather than a band per say. Known for its mellow and woozy alternative sound, reminding me of Grandaddy, Built To Spill and perhaps even The Pernice Brothers.

Mark Linkous’ character has been described as “hermit like”. And despite tucking himself away in his homemade studio in the hills of North Carolina, his latest work summons collaboration from heavies such as Tom Waits, Flaming Lips’ Steve Drozd, and Sol Seppy (Sophie Michalitsianos), with finishing touches by genious producer Danger Mouse.

Linkous’ less than perfect voice echoes The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne; particularly picked up with tracks “Mountains” and “Shade and Honey”.
It’s this incongruous nature that also upholds tracks “Morning Hollow” and “Return to Me”, perfectly revealing Linkous’ character – being at ease with gloom having fought severe depression, disability, substance abuse and addiction.

Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain is not completely despondent as it chokes up two rock tracks, “It’s Not So Hard” and “Ghosts In The Sky” and one of my favorites, the upbeat “Some Sweet Day”. But that’s not what illuminates this album. It’s in songs “See The Light”, Knives Of Summertime” and “Getting It Wrong”, where shards of stoicism and engraving grief carry through.

One can appreciate this Sparklehorse release simply because its style is so far off the beaten path of the mainstream. It can be incredibly mellow and lamenting, but can’t be altogether criticized. I loved it.


A DFLYITBOAM Review link at Playlouder.com
(Yes, just when I think I can write about music, I come across some smart ass - just kidding. Ted Grant has fantastic perspective and writing)

Playlouder Review

Costello Music

My CD review of The Fratellis' "Costello Music" was published December 22 in The North Shore News. I'm including my "extended" article here. I have to say though, I hate the idea of rating music. Seems cheeky really.

Artist:

The Fratellis

Album: Costello Music
Label: Fallout Records/ Island Records Group
Rating: 5 out of 10

Costello Music by Glasgow ensemble, The Fratellis, isn’t exactly complicated music. It’s straightforward from stepping off the play button with Henrietta, the album’s first single. It’s full hype, fast paced and made to be heard with a lot of treble. Just the music I have huge distaste for. So right away I find myself skipping to find ordinance. The first sign found in Whistler for the Choir.

The band’s name “The Fratellis” as a trio of brothers is harmless pretense. Only bassist Barry Fratelli comes by the surname honestly, while drummer Mince and vocalist-lead guitarist Jon purely assume it as honorary brothers.

While NME this past August declared them “the best new band in Britain”, the record plays like a hyper transcription of emergent rattling, unnerving to listeners with birthdates before 1970. Still within this jutting play of sound you’ll find a familiar resonance of another Scottish enterprise, The Bay City Rollers and the chant-cheering of S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night.

This meager ounce of familiar charm may not be enough to coax you getting on this Kasabian-come-Franz Ferdinand bandwagon. It’s a particular imprint cast by these new Scottish-Indie bands that render such distinction within its genre.

Chelsea Dagger’s intro with a reflective Ramones veneer, achieves the brazen anthem tempo you’d expect to hear at a football match or a late night sing-a-long at a raucous Glasgow bar. Tempting toe-tapping appeal and a highlight of the album.

In the end, sadly I find myself either too female or no longer, ahem, young enough, to bear with the most of Costello Music.

Grant Lee Phillips' New Album

Friday, August 11th The North Shore News published my album review for Grant-Lee Phillips.
Here are the specs and that review:

Album: nineteeneighties (Zoe Records 2006)
Artist: Grant-Lee Phillips
Rated: 8 out of 10
Written by: Stephanie Kiernan

As I approach my twenty-year grad reunion date this coming September, I can’t help but connect my memories to the music we listened to in those times. I have a certain soft spot for the music of the 80’s and its unique power it had to infiltrate our lives.

Today when I listen to New Order, The Smiths, or Elvis Costello, I wonder whether the New Wave Genre of the 1980's was the final installment of a true musical movement. So it is with warm regard that I receive Grant-Lee Phillips’ endearing tribute album “nineteeneighties”.

Prior to initiating a solo career in 2000, Los Angeles based Grant-Lee Phillips was lead singer-songwriter and guitarist of the 1990's trio, Grant Lee Buffalo, and even previous to that, the neo-psychedelic Shiva Burlesque.

As Underground music streamed from the vital hubs of London, Manchester and Los Angeles, the pop conventional began to splinter and crack. Grant-Lee Phillips himself describes the time perfectly, saying "For every hokey hair band there was once an alternative - a parallel universe, existing just below the conservative, pastel surface."

With nineteeneighties, Grant-Lee Phillips is paying homage rather than playing cover. The song selection is wonderfully curious and somewhat unassuming. If you're a GLP fan, then you'll understand and appreciate the nostalgia of this songbook. If not, you may be disappointed. He hasn’t attempted to modernize them; he's genuinely and respectfully matured them. At times, these departures can simply be described as sublime.

Phillip’s has an intelligence and precision in his approach to these songs. Spinning the hard edges of The Pixies’ “Wave of Mutilation” with slow, bluesy restraint, he then smoothly translates new folk incarnations of New Order’s “Age of Consent” and Joy Division's, "The Eternal". My personal favourite early 80’s tune, Love My Way, from the Psychedelic Furs’ 1982 “Forever Now” album, is also skillfully transformed and easily appreciated anew – secured by crisp acoustic guitar and violin. It’s as if these songs were live entities that have aged, and through the perception of Grant-Lee Phillips, they have matured and mellowed some twenty-plus years on.

Another excellent example of this style is “The Killing Moon” by Echo and the Bunnymen; which runs entirely self-sufficiently, independent of Ian McColoch's brilliant original. Under the Milky Way by The Church, also continues to be haunting in its newly honed, unsaturated form.

The lapse for me was perhaps the over-burdening of “South Central Rain (Sorry)” which frankly wilts from REM’s primary vibrant form. The Smith’s “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me”, lacking it’s interlude, limps along without crooning inspiration. Maybe we’re not ready to age these ones just yet.

As a whole the album is tremendously unique and special. With the backdrop of the eighties quietly fading to black, a quiet recollection of that eager new music remains and we recall that precedence with even more admiration.