Never Had Much Faith in Love or Miracles

Bruno Mars is perfectly mediocre. You are not going to actually buy his music, but you are also not going to switch the channel when he comes on the radio. It is probably why his music is so popular on karaoke shows, his songs are inoffensive and his voice is mediocre enough that you will not embarrass yourself singing one his songs like the morons who think they can match notes on an Adele song. But some would argue it is better to be horrible than mediocre because you can get more attention being horrible. I believe scientists call this The Rebecca Black Phenomenon which was recently perfected by the Gangnam Style dude. And even though Mars is much better than Psy, I do find myself thinking about Psy more often. Sure it is a fiery cauldron of hate, but like they say, it is better when people talk about you then do not talk about you (i.e. The Kardashian Paradigm).

Then Bruno Mars came out with Locked Out of Heaven much dirtier than anything on his debut with some annoying chopped up yeah’s (but hey, annoying is more memorable than mediocre), and was a changed note away from getting sued by The Police for ripping off Message in a Bottle. Even the album art is a bit offensive with a close up of a woman’s chest with a plunging neckline.

But for the rest of Unorthodox Jukebox, Bruno Mars is back to just nine other hard to hate songs. There is not a bad song on here and most certainly be the soundtrack of many of Middle School dances and Vegas is currently taking bets one weather someone on The Voice or American Idol will be the first to have a contestant sing Young Girls. There really is not unorthodox about these jukebox of songs, it is exactly what you expect from a Bruno Mars album, overwrought lyrics, danceable music for your bar mitzvah, be it awkward grooving or even more awkward arms length slow dancing with the cute chick whose braces are supposed to come off in the next week.

The “jukebox” instead sounds like Mars checking off his influences. The New Wave of Locked Out of Heaven, the eighties soft rock of Moonshine (when Mars sings moonshine, I swear I can hear Don Johnson singing Heartbeat, I do not think that is particularly a good thing), the Elton John balladeering of When I Was Your Man, the watered down reggae of Show Me, and the Motown of If I Knew. The only unorthodox is when Bruno goes disco for Treasure. And in true Bruno Mars tradition, he is not completely horrible even when he goes Full Travolta. You might find Unorthodox Jukebox to be mediocre, I am sure the album would be something to give your mother for Christmas. Moms love mediocre music. Why do think Michael Bublé still has a career.

Song to Download – Locked Out of Heaven

Unorthodox Jukebox gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

I Don’t Want Your Sympathy, I Don’t Want Your Honesty, I Just Want to Get Some Piece of Mind

In these musical times, it is not enough to be good (with the exception of Adele), you have to have a gimmick. Which Is probably why Green Day planned to release three albums, ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, ¡Tré!, about seven weeks apart. But shortly after ¡Uno! was released (see my review: Tonight My Heart’s on the Loose), lead singer Billy Joe Armstrong went on an anti-Bieber rant and landed himself in rehab and has not been heard from since. With the lead singer in hibernation, ¡Dos! was released with little fanfare last month aside from a creepy, but entertaining heartless music video. Apparently their record company is cutting their losses and just released ¡Tré! this week instead of the original mid-January release, less than a month after ¡Dos!. Well they were either cutting their losses or decided it get it released before the world ended.

During my review of the previously mentioned review of ¡Uno! I mentioned that the final song, Oh Love, was sonically different than the previous eleven songs, possibly hinting at what ¡Dos! may have to offer. As it turns out, I was wrong because ¡Dos! turned out to be more of the power pop that most of ¡Uno! was. The band did not change much up until late in the album with the slick Nightlife featuring an almost half rap from Monica Painter which is the first time I can remember anyone besides Billy Joe singing lead vocals on a Green Day song. That album ends with the sparse sixties inspired Amy, which I dare to say again may hint at what was to come on ¡Tré!?

¡Tré! actually does start up with another sixties garage rock song Brutal Love which kind of sounds like Green Day trying to record a U2 song when they are trying to record a mellow song. But after that, it is back to more power pop. Of the thirty-seven tracks among the trilogy, thirty-one are in that fast paced rock that the band was known for in the nineties, but with an elder twist to them. It makes it a bit repetitive if you listen to all three albums for the two hour plus runtime, but who listens to albums straight through anymore? If you like classic Green Day, grab all three albums and enjoy them when they come up while randomly listening to your music library on random.

Song to Download – Brutal Love

¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, and ¡Tré! all receive a on my Terror Alert Scale.

Find Your Peace of Mind with Some Indie Record Much Cooler Than Mind

Over her first three albums, Taylor Swift has made country pop that moved closer and closer to the latter genre. But earlier this year she recorded a song for The Hunger Games Soundtrack with The Civil Wars. Safe and Sound was dark and moody and the second best song in her career (I still contend that Our Song is the second finest pop song written over the past decade). The song really got me excited for her next album as I was hoping Safe and Sound was the direction she was heading in her career. Then she released We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, a song so sugary it makes Call Me Maybe sound like Radiohead in comparison. Ugg.

The song was the latest ear candy from the teen pop svengali Max Martin who produced three songs on Red. The other notable song Martin contributed to is the “dub-step” I Knew You Were Trouble that really does not drop the bass like the DJ’s that make the subgenre famous and just comes off across a watered down version of dub-step. It really is just a novelty for Swift because is you listen to the acoustic version of the song it is much better. The other Martin enhance song is the forgettable 22 where Swift makes fun of hipsters, echoing her slam of indie records during We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.

Aside from Max Martin, Taylor brings in a few more collaborators for the new album. Dan Wilson, who co-wrote Someone Like You, co-wrote Treacherous with Swift but just does not hit the heights of the Adele monster hit or even his work on the last Dixie Chicks record. The Last Time features Gary Lightbody and comes across more like a Snow Patrol castoff than a Taylor Swift song. She alaso duets with Ed Sheeran on Everything Has Changed and the acoustic ballad sound more like something you would find on his album. Of court that may be the point of these duets because Safe and Sound sounded much more like a song by The Civil Wars.

But Red is at its best when Swift goes back to writing by herself. The best song on the album is actually stuck at the end. Begin Again is a sweet ballad where Swift is ready to move on with a James Taylor fan. As the second single it is a great yin to We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’s yang. Really Swift should stick to writing by herself or work just with The Civil Wars and T-Bone Burnett for now on.

Song to Download – Begin Again

Red gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

I Don't Want a Lot for Christmas There's Just One thing I Need

It seems like every year we listen to the same Christmas music, or at least that is what gets played on the radio. Sure songs from new releases that year may get played but are quickly forgotten the next year. There really has not been a new Christmas song that has entered the holiday cannon since Mariah Carey released All I Want for Christmas Is You, which is this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame.

All I Want for Christmas Is You is another lovelorn Christmas tune in the vein of the great Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) but manages to be more upbeat than the Darlene Love original. It is really one of the rare Christmas songs that is not just great for the holidays, it is just a great song period.

The rest of Merry Christmas is filled with your traditional holiday fair, traditional songs like Silent Night, and more upbeat songs like Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. There are a couple other original like the sappy ballad Miss You Most (at Christmas) but it will be All I Want for Christmas Is You that will continue to get major airplay over the next month.

Don’t Be Mad, It’s a Brand New Kind of Me

For a decade, Alicia Keys was a picture of class making the best RnB that reminds you of the classics but still kept accessible for modern times with four albums that range between good and great. Then in between album she got caught up in a bit of a scandal where she was accused of being a home wrecking. And looking at the evidence, it is probably true. Granted on the scale of scandals, home wrecking ranks near the bottom of most egregious but it is a bit weird listening to her new music with that nuggets in the back of your mind especially when the guy in the equation, Swizz Beats produced a song on the album. It does not help that New Day may be the weakest track on the album.

It is also a bit odd that she named her fifth album Girl On Fire which shares the name of The Hunger Games sequel that is set to be released next summer but does not seem to share anything with the movie series aside from the name. (Let me quickly add a three word review of the movie: severly over-hyped.) It just seems like a shameless attempt to attach herself to the biggest pop culture phenomenon of the year. It also does not help that the title track is probably the second weakest song on the album that is brought down even further by the always annoying Nicki Minaj. It should be noted that the smoother and Minaj-less Bluelight Version (which is not featured on the album) is significantly better than the Minaj enhanced Inferno Version on the album.

Those mediocre songs aside, Girl on Fire is another solid album by Alicia Keys. Thankfully she washes the bad Minaj taste out of your mouth on the next song by singing duet with Maxwell on Fire We Make with guitar by Gary Clark Jr. while both singers get their smooth falsetto on. But some of her strongest tunes were when Keys did some co-writing with British songstress Emeli Sandé (who was supposed to be this year’s Adele but never caught on stateside) on Brand New Me, Not Even the King, and 101.

Keys also brought in uber-nineties writer / producer Babyface for That’s When I Knew which drops Keys traditional piano for a beautiful acoustic guitar based ballad. But it was Bruno Mars and his The Smeezingtons production team (who is best known for The Song Otherwise Known as Forget You) that contributed the best track on the album Tears Always Win. A modern throwback that Mars and his boys are best known for and ranks as one of her best track in her career. It almost makes you forget any past transgressions.

Song to Download - Tears Always Win

Girl on Fire gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

It’s True What You Heard, I am a Freak, I’m Disturbed

Two years ago Christina Aguilera released Bionic and it sank like a rock. It features songs where it sounded like Christina was trying to out-Gaga Lady GaGa at a time when most people were already tiring of Lady Gaga. It mirrored her debut album where she was riding the teen pop coattails of Britney Spears. But the thing is, Christina Aguilera, unlike the two other pop star (and many that populate the charts for the past decade) can sing. She is even the lynchpin coach on a show called The Voice. A half a year after Bionic dropped off the charts, Adele released 21 showing that people who can sing without all the trappings of a modern day pop singer. I thought to myself, Christina Aguilera should not be competing with the Britney Spears and Lady Gaga’s of the world; she should be competing with Adele.

So how does Christina Aguilera start her first album, Lotus, in the post-Adele era? With a heavy dose of auto-tune. Not only that, the first single was co-written and produced by Max Martin, the pop maestro who have us Baby One More Time. And like most songs from the Max Martin catalogue, Your Body is ultra catchy, but you think less of yourself when you catchy yourself singing along. I guess after three seasons of The Voice I should have seen this coming as everyone on her team have been bland pop singer with the exception of Jesse Campbell and Lindsey Pavao (neither of who inexplicably made the finales of her team) leading her to two straight last place finishes and with the new rule change this season will probably have her entire team voted off before the finals.

Christina did recruit two of her fellow coaches from The Voice to her new album (apparently Moves Like Jagger was enough studio time with Adam Levine). Cee Lo Green shows up on Make the World Move where Cee-Lo plays a glorified hype-man for the club ready track. Just a Fool is the closest thing Christina has ever come to country so it is not surprising she trades verses with the resident country voice on her show Blake Shelton, but I was left after the song was over wishing that Christina would had kept the song for herself as it could have been her one of her strongest ballads.

Even though she goes the ultra-pop route for most of the album, there is a quick Adele-type interlude for two songs in the middle of album starting with Sing for Me where Aguilera shows she is still the best voice of her generation. That is followed by Blank Page, which goes the stripped down Someone Like You route where it is just Christina and a piano (and some subtle strings flourishes). I would much rather have had a whole album like this especially where a song latter she starts a weird reggae segment includes pair of songs, Cease Fire and Circles.

But Lotus, for better or worse, is a pure pop album. Of course the album is littered with self empowering anthems, about half the tracks. While Red Hot Kind of Love harkens back to her Genie in the Bottle days. Army of Me and Make the World Move are good old school dance songs that thankfully do not utilize any of that annoying dub-stop or EDM trends that every pop song has to have these days (unfortunately Let There Be Love does jump on the annoying trend). It is clear from her choices on The Voice, Christina Aguilera still loves pop music, I just wished she would put out a record that rivals Adele.

Song to Download – Blank Page

Lotus gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

If You Want Beef Then Bring the Ruckus

As I pointed out in my review for the Man with the Iron Fists Soundtrack review, if there is one thing I have learned in my life is to never, under any circumstance, trust a big butt and a smile. If there is a second lesson I have learn it is Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nuthin ta (expletive deleted). Just when the Golden Age of Hip-Hop seems likes it was starting to come to the close in the early nineties thanks to gangsta rap and hip-pop, the nine New York collective dropped Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) , this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame.

The album just sounded like New York City (or at least it sounded like that to this teenaged suburban white kid), it was grimy, dirty, and menacing with plenty of kung-fu sounds (of course the guy went on to write, direct, and star in a kung-fu movie). With beats by RZA, the music somehow managed to sound sparse and big at the same time. And the Clan managed to assemble the greatest crew in the history of rap by a country mile. Ghostface Killah and Raekwon are two of the best lyricist in the game. Method Man brought in a commercial aspect, and Ol' Dirty Bastard was just unhinged bringing in an element of anything can happen.

Oh, and the songs. Three of the songs from the album made my list of the 100 Greatest Songs from the Golden Age of Hip-Hop. As the intro would have you believe, the teenaged version of myself ran around chanting the Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nuthin ta (expletive deleted) wit , even the present day version does the same thing occasionally. My favorite line remains, “I’m causing more family feuds than Richard Dawson.” (R.I.P. Richard). C.R.E.A.M. was a stroke of genius, and another chant worthy chorus. And the song is just pure paranoia, and the second most paranoid songs ever after Mind Playing Tricks On Me (with all due respect to Black Sabbath). Then Method Man why the M.C. ended up being the breakout star of the Clan and featured maybe the most memorable opening of any song ever which was hilariously parodied by Dave Chappelle.

Who knows when we will get the next proper full length We-Tang Clan album, if ever? It is not the easiest thing to get these guys at the same place at the same time (I know from experience from the massive delay of the Wu-Tang Clan / Rage Against the Machine concert I went to because the members were too busy playing basketball and started their set a full hour after the opening act finished). But hopefully it gets done soon.

I Could Take the Pitchfork from the Devil

If there has been one word of wisdom I have given in my life is that you never, under any circumstance, trust a big butt and a smile. If there was a second piece of advice that I take to heart it would be that The Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nunthin’ to (expletive deleted) with. It has been five years since we last got a Wu-Tang album and it does not look like we will get another one for a while so The Man With the Iron Fists may be the closest thing we get anytime soon. The soundtrack to the RZA written, directed, and starring film features nine tracks with a Wu member on it but only two credited to the Wu-Tang Clan as a whole.

RZA, who is never confused as the best lyricist in the group does show up on the best track on the soundtrack when he teams up with The Black Keys (this may be the closest thing we will get to Blakroc 2 any time soon too) where he tryes to out boast Dan Aurbach throughout the song. Dan may grab a crocodile by the tail, but RZA will take a gasoline bath then walk through fire. And just image how much better Once Upon a Time, Season 2 - Once Upon a Time would be if it featured RZA date-rape Beauty right in front of the Beast. (I should note that I in no way condone any form of date rape and any rapist should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but if there were an exception, it would involve a member of the Wu-Tang Clan and a fictional character).

On the flipside, Ghostface Killah does show why he is one of the Clan’s best rappers when he teams up with M.O.P. and Pharoahe Monch on Black Out, a song so old school great, it will make you accost a teenager with a Meek Mills shirt about tales of real hip-hop back in the day. Of the two tracks here credited to the whole Clan, Rivers of Blood with Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, and U-God with an appearance by Kool G Rap is the better one with its great horn and kung-fu samples (which of course fits in well with the movie). And Built for This with Method Man, Freddie Biggs, and Streetlife is pure menacing.

Where most of the Clan member bring their A-games to their respective tracks (or as close to an A game as U-God can get), the Kanye West track White Dress sounds like a My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy leftover that was not even good enough to put out during G.O.O.D. Fridays. It does not help that the song could be about a Kardasian. Kanye’s buddy Pusha T has a much better show micing it up with Raekwon, Joell Ortiz, and the always weird Danny Brown on Tick Tock which thankfully does not mention Ke$ha at all. If the trailer for The Man with the Iron Fists did not get you pumped enough for the movie, the soundtrack certainly will.

Song to Download – The Baddest Man Alive

The Man with the Iron Fists gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

Tonight My Heart's on the Loose

It seems a bit weird reviewing the new Green Day album ¡UNO! because it is technically is the first of a trilogy of albums (¡DOS! is due November 13 while ¡TRE! is set to be released January 15). But if people can review individual movies in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy I guess it is possible. As the story goes ¡UNO! is the pre-party, ¡DOS! is the actual party, and ¡Tre! is the morning after. But do not expect some grand political rock opera of the previous two albums, the new albums are almost politics free.

¡UNO! also ditches the band’s recent foray into grand rock opuses that sound more like U2 stadium ready anthems than something by The Ramones. The longest song on the album is Oh Love at 5:03 and there are only two other songs that clock over four minutes. For those longing for the punk-pop that Green Day popularized back in the nineties (and inspired too many to count crappy rip-offs) you will want to check out ¡UNO!.

Despite being the first single, Oh Love is the outlier of the album. The song is stuck at the end and much slower and more glam rock than the rest of the album (I suspect will end up being a bridge to ¡DOS!, which is why maybe the album should not have been reviewed until all three were released). The rest of the album is much more like the frantic Let Yourself Go which you could insert into a live bootleg from the band back in 1994 and the listener may not even notice. Now we have to wait seven weeks to give a listen to ¡DOS!.

Song to Download – Let Yourself Go

¡UNO! gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

So Give Me Hope in the Darkness so that I Can See the Light

Mumford & Sons came out of the gate like a battering ram destroying all crappy music in its path with the angriest and most impassioned folk music you have ever heard. Little Lion Man may be the first acoustic song that ever inspired a mosh pit. They managed to take the Tenacious D’s joke of acoustic heavy metal and made it a laugh free reality. The Cave was so impassionate it almost had me turning into a teenage groupie ready to throw myself on the band despite not being a gay homosexual (and even if I were I would not go for the unshaven, straight from the set of Newsies look, which is how great the song is). Then you have songs like White Blank Page that just burned with quiet, building rage.

But that was then. As the saying goes, you get your whole life to write your first album, then you only get six months to write the next which is why many bands (and creative arts in general) fall into a sophomore slump. And expectations were tempered even more considering the first album was build around a lot of anger, but in-between albums Marcus Mumford married Carrie Mulligan (you know, the chick from Never Let Me Go not named Keira Knightley).

All doubt that Mumford and Sons could come up with a competent follow-up were quelled right off the bat with the title track that starts off Babel, where the band turns the passion up to twelve (two more than ten). You have already undoubtedly pulled out you air-banjo for the first single I Will Wait where the group shows that can still bring the power even with a positive and loving message and will having you playing the air banjo by the end of the song. The band leaves everything out on the floor for these songs you have to wonder how none of them have yet to have a heart attack yet.

Babel does slow down a little near the middle with a couple mellower songs (or as mellow as Mumford and Sons songs can get). Ghosts That We Knew is a sweet ode to the dearly departed. That is followed up by Lover of the Light an uplifting love song. That continues with Lovers’ Eyes which borders on an Irish folk song (dare I say shanty) but stays true to the band’s core while it builds to a satisfying end. Reminder is the quietest and most simple song the band has ever written. But Mumford and Sons did not go soft because Broken Crown may be angrier and loader than anything on their debut album.

A couple weeks ago I mentioned how Dave Matthews Band songs get better after they have been road tested, after their Saturday Night Live performance, which may be the same for Mumford and Sons. But unlike the new DMB album, Babel is great enough already with the studio version, I cannot wait to hear how much better they get live. But I will wait for Mumford and Sons.

Song to Download – Babel

Babel gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

You Can't Escape the Rising of the Tide

I have a love / hate relationship with The Killers. I loved the synth-dance-rock of their debut Hot Fuss. I hated their overblown arena rock follow up Sam’s Town. By the time their third album came out, I learned how to stop worrying and learned to accept the pomposity of Brandon Flowers continuing attempt to be the new generation Bruce Springsteen (circa Born to Run) and his continuance of falling short of such goals.

From the opening blips of the opening track Flesh and Bones it sounded like they may be going back to their older sound, but alas, even though there seems to be more synthesizers on Battle Born, the band’s fourth album, it seems like they are quickly covered up and drowned out by a wall of guitar sounds. The band does lay off their Springsteen ambitions aside from the lead single Runaways which sound like their last chance power drive, but still comes up short compared with their other Springsteenian attempts like When We Were Young.

Unfortunately Runaways is the best the album has to offer. Really the only reason to listen to the rest of Battle Born is to hear just how pompous Brandon Flowers can get like when he “swears on the head of our unborn child” or, “I drove through the desert last night, I carried the weight of our last fight.” C’mon Brandon, it cannot be that hard carrying weight while you are driving. Unless, of course, you were driving a smart car. And I could not help but laugh at the way he delivers the line, “Don’t want your picture on my cell phone” on Here with Me. So I think I am back off The Killer bandwagon. But I will surely be back on in two years.

Song to Download - Runaways

Battle Born gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

Can You Tell That I Am Alive, Let Me Prove it to You

Mumford & Sons gets a lot of the credit for bringing folk-rock back to the mainstream over the last couple years, but it was really The Avett Brothers who laid the groundwork for groups like The Civil Wars and The Lumineers. They were acoustic punks who brought as much energy as those during the alternative rock crazy of the early nineties but were able to it with a banjo, a cello, and an upright bass. Three years ago Rick Rubin was able to harness that energy and produced the best album of the band’s career with I and Love and You.

The Avett Brother reunited with Rubin with the follow-up The Carpenter and the results are the same. Songs range from the sweet (Live and Die), to heartfelt (Winter in My Heart), to a waltz (Down with the Shine), to frantic (Paul Newman vs. the Demons), to a hoedown (Geraldine). None of the songs reach the heights of the best songs on their previous album, but The Carpenter is still pretty solid as a whole.

They even have a rare electric guitar featured song Pretty Girl from Michigan, though it is not rare of them to sing about pretty girls because they have already dedicated a song to girls from Matthews, Raleigh, Locust, Annapolis, Cedar Lane, Feltre, Chili (my personal favorite), and San Diego. But the biggest chance the brothers Avett take is with A Fathers First Spring which flows like none of their songs have flown before. The song teeters on going into soft rock territory, but they manage to keep it closer to their sensibilities making it a stand out on the album.

Song to Download – A Fathers First Spring

The Carpenter gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

Don’t Waste Time Trying to Be Something You’re Not

After ten years of putting out a bunch of good, but not great albums, Dave Matthews Band ended the ’00 with their best album in a decade with Big Whiskey and the Groo-Grux King, an album so good, one critic said the album was a Dave Matthews Band album for people who do not like The Dave Matthews Band. After the great previous album, news only got better that Steve Lillywhite, who produced the band’s first three (and the aborted fourth that eventually turned into Busted Stuff without him) is back as producer for the first time in over a decade.

So expectations were high for the release of their eight studio album Away from the World. The only problem is the album turned out to be a bit of a bore. Sure the first single Mercy was a bit sleepy, but the band usually does not release the best song first (or usually at all). But it turned out the whole albums sounded as if the whole band was slipped an Ambient before recording started.

It does not help that one of the songs, Belly Belly Nice, sounds as if it were written by a Dave Matthews Band tribute band trying encapsulate the band’s essence and even throws in a nursery rhyme (Jack and Jill this time around) for good measure which is almost cringeworthy. The songs as a whole are the most unremarkable the band has ever written and is only kept out of the bottom of the band’s catalogue by the time they tried to cram their music into four minute pop songs.

Even though within five years I expect most of the songs from Away From the World will appear on as many setlists as the songs from Everyday, there are a few songs I cannot wait to hear live even if the studio version are uninspiring. Sweet (which does appear in live form, from here in Cleveland, on the Deluxe Edition of the album which finds Matthews at his falsetto best), with its ukulele intro that expands a couple minutes later into the full band, is the most simple song from the band since the haunting piano based Out of My Head. But Sweet has the exact opposite reaction for the listener and lives up to its title.

But it is Drunken Soldier that will be a highlight of many concerts to come and will probably end up being an encore staple. In true Dave Matthews Band fashion, the song is split into four sections, there is the ho-down beginning, which transitions into a more traditional beginning which I can see being stretched into five to ten minutes live which includes a beautiful solo from violist Boyd Tinsley, before transitioning into the most earnest lyrics by Dave on the whole album. The song ends with a segment that sounds like it is floating away on a lazy river in the moonlight. If I do not hear a twenty minute plus version of this song the next time I hear the boys live, I will be severely disappointed.

Song to Download - Drunken Soldier

Away from the World gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

As We Start our Travels, Things They Will Unravel

It is weird to think about it nowadays, but my love of A Tribe Called Quest could be attributed to Married...With Children of all things. If there two things I loved in the early nineties it was hip-hop and Al Bundy. Then one day watching Yo! MTV Raps a new video came on called Bonita Applebaum which the young brain of mine assumed was a Kelly Bundy reference. Before you laugh at that notion, I apparently was not the only one because a few years later PM Dawn included in their song Set Adrift on Memory Bliss the lines “Christina Applegate, you gotta put me on”. After picking up Peoples' Instinctive Travels & the Paths of Rhythm, this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame, it was clear that A Tribe Called Quest would be no one hit wonder releasing some of the greatest songs of the Golden Age of Hip-Hop.

Riding the second wave of great hip-hop (known back then as the new school) along with Jungle Brothers and De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest quickly went to the forefront of the new movement. Where the previous generation built their songs around rock music, and burgeoning gangsta rap genre out west was building songs around funk samples, Tribe and the Native Tongues went more mellow with jazz samples and out of the box samples like Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side.

Tribe even had one of the first Latin inspired tracks in hip-hop with I Left My Wallet in El Segundo about, well, the title explains it all. But the Spanish guitar that opens up the track sets the stage in one of the more entertaining tales in the history of rap. It is a shame nobody ever thought to turn it into a movie (it could at least have been as entertaining as all the House Party movies). Another stand out track on the album is Can I Kick It? a perfect call and response track that Tribe perfected on their five albums.

But it was Bonita Applebaum which included one of the most recognizable riffs in any rap song ever (and later bit by The Fugees in their version of Killing Me Softly). When LL Cool J’s love songs all come off with a bit of cheese, Bonita Applebaum was pure coolness. Even twenty plus years later, it is not just one of the bet songs in hip-hop history; it is one of the best songs ever. And their debut showed that A Tribe Called Quest makes the ultimate head nodding music.

Come On and Get the Minimum Before You Open up Your Eyes

I never understood why musicians do not add more cover songs to their albums. Instead they usually have a couple of good songs and the rest fillers. Back in the day you would see major acts fill out their album with songs made famous by other singers, some of which were great songwriters in their own right. You would think all these televised karaoke contestants would think, everybody knows me for singing other people songs, why not I add some to my first album, if not an entire album of covers. I am assuming the reason why this is rarely done anymore is why anyone does anything these days: money. It is probably cheaper to commission someone to write a new song than record an established hit. And of course if you write it yourself, you get to keep all the royalties.

Joss Stone actually bucked that trend on her debut album The Soul Sessions when the then teenager updated some soul songs (and one surprise track) from the sixties and seventies for a new millennium produced by soul legend Betty Wright to much effect. Coming just after the teen pop boom, Stone’s sultry throwback was a welcome change from the overproduced and over-autotunes tracks from her peers.

Four albums of new material would come next to mixed results as she tried to reboot her career a couple times (her third album was called Introducing Joss Stone while her fifth was called LP1). Almost a decade after her debut Joss Stone is releasing The Soul Sessions, Vol. 2 where she has dug through her crate of soul songs from the sixties and seventies (and one surprise track) bringing them into a new century. This time around Joss is tacking classics from Chi-Lites, Womack & Womack, Sylvia, The Dells, and The Casinos.

In the middle of all the old soul albums on her first album sat a smoothed out version of the garage rock of Fell in Love with a Girl by The White Stripes which Joss made it almost unrecognizable changing the genders and almost as good as the original. This time around she tried converting Broken Bells’s The High Road into a soul standard. Unfortunately this time it does not work as well, the original is already smoothed out and the weirdness of the task is what makes The Broken Bells version great, but Joss strips the song of any weirdness.

Really Volume 2 lacks the magic that the first one did with many of the songs drowned out by unnecessary organ. Joss’s version of Labi Siffre’s I Got The… is novel but only because it is interesting when the track transitions into the same funk line that Eminem sampled in My Name Is… Joss is at her best when she keeps it simplistic with love songs like The Love We Had (Stays on My Mind) and Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye.

Song to Download – Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye

The Soul Sessions, Volume 2 gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

Turn the Record Over, I'll See You on the Flip Side

A reoccurring conversation my generation have these days is how the music of today does not mean anything. Everything these days seem to be either scantily clad girls taking about how slutty they are, rapper talking about how rich they are, whiny bands complain about… who knows what. Excuse my grandpa moment, but back in my day, Pearl Jam meant something. Counting Crows talked to me. Public Enemy were important. It has been awhile since I have heard anyone who sounds important. Sure this could just be a generational thing much like our parents complains about how no one makes music like The Beatles anymore, plays like Eric Clapton, or sings like Marvin Gaye.

But then I heard The Gaslight Anthem with every song sounding more important than the last. Seriously, how can you not get excited about lyrics like, “Give me the fevers that just won’t break and give me the children you don’t want to raise. And tell be about the cool he sings to you in those songs if it’s better than my love.” “You ain’t supposed to die on a Saturday night.” When they sing about having her name tattooed inside his arm, you want to head down to your local parlor. He may sing “Cool is dead go baby go on asleep,” cool may have been dead, but The Gaslight Anthem may just resurrect it.

If all is right with the world, The Gaslight Anthem will finally have some breakout success with the release of the first major label release Handwritten. And let’s face it; the world is in some dire need of great rock and roll music. Right now there is The Black Keys and that is it. And for those ready to rock, Handwritten is full of enough Aye’s, Whoa’s, Sha-la-la’s, Eh-hey’s, and Oh-oh-oh’s to get your fist pumping.

As the title track suggests, these songs have traveled from heart to limb to pen. The opening track "45" is a hard driving rumination of the ending relationship comparing it to turning a record over to something new. And the album does not let up from their with guitar riffs coming fast and aggressive. They may be on a major label now and are in the studio with uber-producer Brendan O’Brien (Rage Against the Machine), but these Jersey boys are still wearing their Bruce Springsteen and The Replacements influences on their sleeve.

Even though it does not take away from songs on this album, The Gaslight Anthem should be wary of becoming a parody of the heart on their sleeve lyrics in the future like Coldplay became a self-parody on their third album. They did come close of this album with lines like, “I’d just die if you ever took your love away,” and, “What’s left for you to take if I put too much blood on the page?” Actually some of the best songs on Handwritten are on the rare songs from the band that make you put your fists down and raise your lighters up like on the final two songs Mae where they “wait for kingdom come with the radio on” and the beautifully simple National Anthem. If these two songs are a hint of where they may go next I cannot wait to hear it.

Song to Download – "45"

Handwritten gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.