My new music blog address is http://culturemotional.tumblr.com/

I hope to see you there. It will be more of what was going on here. New location but same attitudes & tastes & content.

The album cut of Cee-lo’s “Fool for You” was already flawless. A highlight of a very solid album (Lady Killer). How do you do it baby / keep it coming indeed. I didn’t think having Philip Bailey of Earth Wind and Fire on the track could be topped, but this alternate version with Melanie Fiona has a wonderful, sexy give-and-take that I’m also digging.

Cee Lo Green – Melanie Fiona – Fool For You (Radio Rip) by melaniefionaworld

(Heads up from Pretty Much Amazing)

[mp3/stream] Eric & Magill – Should We All Wake Up
[mp3/stream] Eric & Magill – Grandpa’s Pink Wine

You might not have heard of Eric Osterman and Ryan Weber, the low-key duo known as Eric & Magill, but you need to know. This is honest, heartfelt music they’re making. Weber, a talented multi-instrumentalist, corralled the support of his friend Osterman and a variety of other musicians he knew from Shearwater, The Dirty Projectors, Volcano Choir, Collections of Colonies of Bees, Pele, Owen, Joan of Arc, Cap’n Jazz, American Football, Via Tania, Headlights, Sufjan Stevens, and Maritime to put together All Those I Know. Pretty impressive, right? The praise for the results is not obliging, however, but richly deserved.

All Those I Know is an album to be spun at dusk, outdoors, which makes the album cover literal in a way most actually aren’t. You can file it under “electrofolk” or “awesome”. The lead-in title track sets up the album’s provisions- misty, stomp-along acoustic pop- nicely. On “Should We All Wake Up”, the muted, weary vocals served up over simple acoustic guitar manage to compel, especially when Lussia Kamberian Weber’s lilting voice chimes in. With “You Make It So Good”, the band veers left just before shoegaze territory. Echoed voices and percussion add to a calming, dreamy affect. “Grandpa’s Pink Wine” and “Pontoon Boats” just might be my favorites, the former with its fuzzy tones and plethora of synths, the latter with gorgeous vocals and whistle, but it’s hard to say on an album this precisely, consistently moving.

You can download the entire record at no cost (or support them however much you can) at their Bandcamp site. AT NO COST. There is no reason you shouldn’t be listening to them.

It’s so loud inside my head / with words I should have said / as I drown in my regrets / I can’t take back the words I never said

This track completely BLEW ME AWAY and I wasn’t expecting it at all. It’s not that I dislike Lupe, though I notice that seems to be a trend lately (?) even with his record label, holding this album up for years, but… wow. He is on point here in verse and delivery. I feel like there are scorch marks on the side of my face now. This is music that is pointedly saying something even as it lays an inescapable hook on you. And Skylar Gray is used to great effect here, I love the chorus (interestingly, I’m unmoved by the chorus of  Diddy Dirty Money’s “Coming Home”).

They keep you on the bottom then tease you with the upper-crust

Glenn Beck is a racist… Gaza strip was gettin’ bombed, Obama didn’t say shit / that’s why I ain’t vote for ‘em

You need this track in your iTunes library. Put on some headphones and get an earful of what passion and honesty sounds like.

[mp3] Lupe Fiasco – Words I Never Said (feat. Skylar Gray)

Lasers finally does drop March 8th, support Lupe and check out his official site.

Basically, a ripping hook-laden pop-rock singalong track off of the upcoming Dears album. I cannot get enough of it. It feels a little vintage Arcade Fire to me, and that’s not a bad thought at all. I am always horrible at identifying actual instruments used in a song, and this is definitely an instance where I wish I wasn’t because there are so many interesting sounds here. Well, what I am pretty sure is a synth makes a cool ZONG ZONG sound over the verses. It’s such a full track, something you can sink your teeth into.

We should be home tonight / We’ll hold each other tight / I will with all my might

[mp3] 5 Chords

Preorder the shit out of Degeneration Street in your choice of format over at Dangerbird.

It’s not much of a secret to the people that know me, this unpopular opinion: the Style Council is my favorite of Paul Weller’s musical efforts. That’s far more than British national treasure The Jam (they’re too… incoherent for me personally, I don’t know) and even his solo efforts, though I do find Wild Wood unbearably lovely because it throws into highlight my favorite thing about Weller- his voice. He can snarl like you’d expect Weller of The Jam to snarl, but he can also be impeccably tender on his own. The Style Council is like a weird experiment that falls in between the two poles of pub rocker and father of … mod pastoral soul, whatever it is they like to refer to Wild Wood as.

The Style Council’s overall output is an ultimately messy compilation of Paul’s influences- interests and whims- the band borrowed freely from soul, jazz, rhythm and blues, incorporating different styles and flavors before eventually taking a heavier synth-bent (it was Britain, and the 80s, that’s to be expected). Someone once said to me, “when the Style Council were bad they were very bad, but when they were good they were brilliant”, and I think it’s a pretty apt summary. I tend to overlook the embarrassing alleyways of their legacy because my favorite tracks are so affecting. Paul Weller himself believed in them- “I had a total belief in The Style Council. I was obsessed in the early years. I lived and breathed it all. I meant every word, and felt every action.”

It’s funny to me that when Paul Weller broke up the Jam and wanted to go into a different music direction, nobody liked the idea much. I feel like some of it holds over today with people’s view regarding The Style Council- they are way too often overlooked and their own uneven (mostly towards the end) output doesn’t help, but their singles hold up well. They remain powerfully optimistic and boldly empathetic, experimental yet heavily melodic. I will always love music that is synthesizer/organ based but The Style Council did so while drawing from a diverse number of influences. To me they sound so creative, like nothing else then or now. Said keyboardist Mick Talbot,  “When we first started he [Weller] had two boxes of seven inch singles which were all relatively rare ’60s and ’70s soul, some northern, some funk, these influenced his writing on the early Style Council singles. By the time of Café Bleu we were trying to embrace jazz such as it is, we didn’t see ourselves as jazz musicians, we were musicians who liked jazz.”

Paul Weller is far and away my favorite vocalist (though I haven’t thought enough about his competition- probably David Gray, Ryan Adams, Justin Vernon, Laura Marling, Tina Dico, Natasha Khan, Teddy Pendergrass, Justin Timberlake), and I think one of his strongest vocal performances is on “You Are the Best Thing”, a 1984 double-single off of Café Bleu that brings out his falsetto on the chorus. Much of the music the band released as singles would come off with a heavy political bent- expressed interest in the ’84-’85 UK miner’s strike- but this one’s a simple love song (‘I’m content just with the riches that you bring’) with a jazzy breakdown in the middle utilizing all of the musicians brought in on the sessions (which would include Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt from Everything But The Girl).

Slightly later, off of Our Favorite Shop came “Shout to the Top”, a song that triumphs with Mick Talbot’s use of keyboards.

The pinnacle of the band’s existence, and their biggest and only hit on this side of the pond, is “My Ever Changing Moods”, a soft-seeming track with warm guitar and full brass and Weller’s lyrics at their best:  But I’m caught up in a whirlwind and my ever changing moods / Bitter turns to sugar – some call a passive tune / But the day things turn sweet – for me won’t be too soon. Though actually I am a bit surprised the track was such a hit in Reagan-era US, the music video being what it was- the criticism of consumerism/capitalism is less than subtle. I’m amazed they got away with what they did anywhere- the lyrical content was much like a fuck-you to their British pop-rock contemporaries at the time; Weller saw them particularly in contrast to Duran Duran. I love how his website puts it so much I will straight-up quote the line here:

They were socialists, vegetarian, didn’t drink, wore cool rain macs, colourful knitwear, expensive footwear and made some of the most brilliant modernist music ever. They also spoke out against the corrosive issues of the day, even if it meant the threat of commercial suicide.

There hasn’t been any new Style Council for decades- the band split in 1989 agreeably and Paul embarked on his eventually successful solo career, but I still keep coming back to these tracks. Again and again and again. I think they’re timeless.

[mp3] Wanted
[video] My Ever Changing Moods
[mp3] Speak Like A Child
[video] Walls Come Tumbling Down
[mp3] It Didn’t Matter

IT’S BEEN A WHILE YOU GUYS, FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF EARTH WAS 2006. 2006. BUSH WAS STILL PRESIDENT BACK THEN.

I’m trying to remember how I felt about the Strokes in 2006, call back those dizzy-headed feelings for rock songs where dancing was appropriate, but the sort of dancing where you swayed your shoulders to the left and right lackadaisically, and there wasn’t enough room on the  floor for more than that anyway. I remember being kicked in the head by a crowd-surfer for the Strokes in 2006, back in New York, when I was still an undergraduate and I was halfway back from the stage and Julian was wearing a leather jacket and singing “I don’t wanna waaaste my time” in that peculiar half-sleepy intonation. Strokes songs always sound like they are pressing down on his voice trying to make him be quiet, maybe because they were having so much fun before the record started drinking in some seedy Brooklyn bar. It’s actually really easy to envy the Strokes for the seemingly natural looseness, it benefits their tracks so greatly that the songs never overreach themselves past four minutes, or in any sense. You are jumping up and down for the right amount of time. The grooves are comfortable. Let’s hope the upcoming record holds to a good groove too.

The Strokes – Someday

When we was young oh man did we have fun / Always, always

Yesterday it was all over the music blogosphere: WHITE STRIPES CALL IT QUITS. When I first heard, it wasn’t a DELUGE OF EMOTION that resulted or anything. I let it settle for a few hours.

If you go to the official White Stripes website right now, you will be greeted with this message:

It really doesn’t come as a massive shock. Actually, it makes a lot of sense given the myriad of “side” projects that eventually brought a sense of extremity to the White Stripes. A door has closed now, for us and them. I can’t help but feel bummed (though I feel the whole process to be done with class and like I said, it’s not shocking), solely for the fact that we won’t get any new material from them- they could be counted upon to revitalize the rock scene with every new release and the rock scene does need revitalizing.

I am really interested to read commentary on the White Stripes’ place in music from this new position of retrospect in the weeks and months (and years) to come. Right now, my thoughts are along the lines that their worth doesn’t come from doing anything groundbreaking. Their situation was quite the opposite- they did not shape and influence other rock outfits that were their contemporaries. They may have popped out from the rest of the pack as zany red-black-and-white outsiders with vintage hearts on their sleeves, but the White Stripes were the influenced, not the influences. They offered a rich messy vigorous churning of the roots that formed more traditional rock n’roll outfits, roots that seemed distant from contemporary single-oriented rock radio.

It’s true though, that for me never did sloppy-seeming, raw from-the-garage energy have such impeccable results. There was such unique spirit there- old-fashioned showmanship, but with a modern-era vitality. Oh man, Jack and Meg, keep on keeping well.

White Stripes – Blue Orchid

White Stripes – The Hardest Button To Button

James Vincent McMorrow’s debut album Early in the Morning, which finally receives stateside release this January, comes at you largely in a whisper that could be mistaken for Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. For the listener to make that assumption however could be critical- for them, not McMorrow. The singer-songwriter probably owes a greater debt to Crosby Stills Nash and Young, or Donny Hathaway, whom he confesses lured him away from hardcore music for good, though does have a higher register similar to Vernon. Early in the Morning also features a haunting homespun sound, stemming from the album’s recording in isolation at a house in Ireland by the sea. McMorrow is overspilling with his own softly-strummed talent however. Early in the Morning achieved chart-topping success in Ireland in 2010 and deserves the full attention and praise critics have to offer here.

“If I Had A Boat”, the album’s powerful, harmonized first track which McMorrow claims was fated to begin the album, sets the tone for the rest of the tracks. It’s melodic and folksy, but also reflective, transformative. The album reveals itself darkly like an iceburg, seemingly monolithic and ancient as McMorrow increasingly draws upon darker themes of abandonment and loneliness, disillusion in the world and loved ones. He mythologizes even as he confesses his own personal experiences of great change and self-discovery were a massive impact upon the songwriting. He tries to avoid a too critical reading of his own lyrics, however.

McMorrow got a late start with his interest in music, having picked up a guitar only at the age of nineteen. He was originally a fan of metal, an influence that is absent from his work now because he began listening to 60s music instead. Hathaway’s song “I Love You More Than You Will Ever Know” is what made him want to sing, and he cites a lot of female singers as influential as well, given his range. After several years of focused practice at the piano, he got the idea to produce his own album from notions of hip-hop artists doing the same. Six months of recording produced the eleven tracks that make up Early in the Morning.

“Sparrow and the Wolf” has energizing, bright acoustics and is sure to warm the coldest of winters, even as McMorrow proclaims “I see no joy in this world”, a sentiment seemingly echoed in the more somber-sounding “Breaking Hearts”, in which the speaker admonishes a former lover to stop crying and wanders aimlessly. “We Don’t Eat” is breathtaking lyrically and sonically, with McMorrow proclaiming “at dawn I would watch the sun cut ribbons through the bay”. “This Old Dark Machine” is downright soulful and “And If My Heart Should Somehow Stop” full of passion. It’s followed by the wistful, banjo-strummed “Early in the Morning, I’ll Come Calling”. This finale track, perhaps suggesting Peter Paul and Mary’s “Early in the Morning” in spirit as well as title, is uplifting and restorative, bringing the album to a conclusion reminiscent of the beginning but forward-looking; a fitting end to McMorrow’s journey.

James Vincent McMorrow – If I Had A Boat by statemagazine

James Vincent Mcmorrow – This Old Dark Machine

Every so often I will make a post about a few songs that center around a very select and specific feeling. Not an official mix or playlist, not anything like that, just a handful of tracks. A small selection. I say that music causes me to have an emotional reaction, and it’s true, but sometimes we listen to music to reflect the emotional reaction we’re already having. Like, when you’re sad because someone dumped you, and you sit in your car and cry along to “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. That Emotions: Criticial! post would be “songs that reflect a time you were in your car crying ’cause it was over and you were having a total eclipse of the heart”. Brought to you loosely by Plutchik’s wheel.

Today, it’s

the kind of calm yet tragic exhaustion when I know should be sleeping now but the glow of my laptop is so alluring

Surely this has happened to you before if you are a member of my age group. Probably many times. It’s three in the morning and you could wonder “why am I awake” but instead you’ve achieved a kind of strange, semi-exhaustion fueled zen, a unique calm, like hypnosis, in front of the soft bluish glow of your computer screen. You could play these three tracks as you surf Pitchfork’s Echo Chamber and your head feels like it floated away from your body, a black balloon.

Create a playlist at MixPod.com

“Peripheral Visionaries” is slinky and spaced-out. It’s the half-drunk couple up really late in the hotel bar and lounge, clumsily dancing in dress attire. The gentleman is with tie under left ear and his partner is holding her heels in her free hand as the other arm is slung around his neck. She’s mostly leaning against him for support. Everything I have to say about “The Wilhelm Scream” was best articulated at my other blog, but let me quote myself

A lot of superlatives have been said… “the future of music” heading in this direction, like it can head in any one single direction, but my interest in his music was slow-building I have to admit. I got there, finally, a few weeks ago. I was listening to his cover of Feist’s “Limit to Your Love” and thinking about how the appeal of his music is the distant-ambiance of the backing, a calmer spin away from dubstep where negative space is sculpted with the electronic noise, contrasted with the style of his singing. That’s a warm and uncertain and human voice, a voice with soul. The electronic antics don’t extend to James Blake himself. The genre has a name now, “minimalist soul”, and I thought about that too. How can soul (the soul) be minimalist? It’s such a contemporary concept to carve human uncertainty that throbs like a beating heart over a cold, empty landscape… My personal conclusion about James Blake though stemmed organically from when I found myself calmed and soothed by his album, particularly “The Wilhem Scream”. James Blake is actually an electronic-based artist who uses his voice like brushstrokes of warmth. He’s taking something back from the technology to make it human again. Our modern life is full of these distancing aspects from the technology we’ve come to rely, no survive by. We evolve by our technology and we evolve again when we preserve our true organic selves, carve ourselves out and go on.

The Cloud Remix of “Back in Time” by Clazziquai is all dreamy repetition. It has a sense about it of coming from some distant video-game reality. You sit, clouds drift apart across the sky, and you’re almost finally ready for bed. (Thanks to Earmilk for the heads-up about this track!)

Everything Dan Black touches turns to pop magic, including this track by Sydney dancefloor princes Chris Stracey and Jack Glass aka Bag Raiders. Check it out after the jump.

When I see your face, it’s like sunlight dripping…

[mp3] Bag Raiders – Sunlight (feat. Dan Black)