Saturday, January 19, 2008

Status Ain't All Stupid

Much as his writing annoys me 98% of the time, I'll give it up for Tom Breihan for coming up with sentences like this one (in a post on the Wu-Tang Clan's homecoming show in NYC):

And maybe the Germans have a word for it: the smile you get when you're standing on a stage in front of a few thousand white people and your dead son's rap group is performing his song celebrating unprotected sex, passing you a mic so you can sing along.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Kate Nash

We fiftysomethings like to keep up with what the kids are blowing their hearing out with these days, and Rhapsody is perfect for sampling without paying (much) money. So while I'm not blown away, I do like how her songs at least have stories with details in them, like getting up after tending the drunk boyfriend all night and finding dried puke on your sneaker and ending a fight with the now-hungover boyfriend who left the puke by saying, "Intelligent input darlin' why don't you just have another beer then?"

Interesting that she's got a major label pushing her. I remember back in the day (Nineties) Liz Phair just handed cassettes out to her buddies who were in bands. Pretty far ahead of her time, that girl was.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

PJ Harvey, White Chalk

If I tell you my favorite PJ Harvey record is Rid of Me, you probably peg me for an admirer of Polly Jean, grunge rocker, beating Albini and Cobain at their own game. This is true, but what's equally impressive is that she's a rare pop musician who gets bored easily with one style, so we've heard her do trip-hop, Beefheart blues, straight-up pop. And on last year's new one, she puts the guitar away and takes up the piano and beats Galaxie 500 and Opal and Cat Power at their own game, turning the volume way down, turning the reverb up, keeping the intensity level high. I've never listened to the lyrics but they all sound like they're telling some Brontean ghost story.