He Excites Me, Must Be Like the Genesis of Rhythm

Only Fiona Apple can release an album titled The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do and have no one bat an eye. That is because she previously released an album whose title was so long it could double the length of this review if I printed it in its entirely. Weirdly enough the number of words in the album title is more than the words in the album tracks combined. And though it has been seven years since her last album, the new album sounds like a rawer version of Extraordinary Machine (which can be explain by Fiona self producing this album unlike the last with polished producer Mike Elizando). Even her vocals become more unhinged during her darker songs than we have heard before.

Only the vibraphone enhanced Every Single Night, which crescendos into a big chorus, is the new song that could have fit well on Extraordinary Machine. The only other song that comes close is the bouncy Periphery. Though the rest of the album is rarely just Fiona and her piano, there is sparseness all over her new album even when there is a full band behind her. Fans of the striped down Fiona will definitely appreciate songs like Valentine, Jonathan and Regret. These songs may be hard to listen to the first time around, butstart to grown on you after a couple listen throughs.

The album is at its best when Fiona pusher her boundaries like when she occasionally includes tribal beats like at the beginning of Left Alone before transitioning into a frantic jazz track. Anything We Want sound like it uses Coke bottles as percussion. She really goes all out for the final track Hot Knife where Apple makes a weird analogy where she is butter and the guy in her life the preverbal hot knife. That is pretty much the entire songs with her scatting over a weird drum circle beat for four minutes.

Song to Download – Hot Knife

The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

I Want My Music Television - 6/12/12

There have been a couple of videos that have caught my eye lately so I thought I’d give them some love since the death of Musical Television left a void for a forum on the art form. If you are interested in buying the video through iTunes, click the title link (where available). If you are interested in buying the song, look for a link in the analysis.

Every Single Night - Fiona Apple



Nothing like an octopus on the head to reintroduce yourself to the general public. Welcome back Fiona Apple and it was nice to see you smile at the end.


Mercy - Kanye West featuring Big Sean, Pusha T, 2 Chainz



The video to Kanye West and his G.O.O.D. Music rappers is so fun to look at I almost forget the song itself is fairly lackluster. But has there ever been rap label crew track that did not suck? Do we have to go all the way back to It's All About the Benjamins to find one?


Favorite Song - Colbie Caillat featuring Common



After he showed up on The Jonas Brothers album, it should not be that surprising when Common (former G.O.O.D. artist) shows up pretty much anywhere, but I still had to do a double take after he popped up in the new Colbie Caillat video. On a side note, when did Colbie start morphing into Raylan Givens’s ex-wife?


"45" - The Gaslight Anthem




A straight forward performance video from The Gaslight Anthem but I wanted to share it just because Handwritten, coming July 24, may be my most anticipated album of the summer and still very high on the list for the second half of 2012.

The Five Most Anticipated Albums of Spring 2012

A pretty slow week for music releases (unless you’re a fan of the 90’s: Wilson Philips! Candlebox!!) and where spring has become a wasteland for new music ever since the major labels pushed 90% of major releases to the weeks before Christmas, there is a surprising glut of great music coming in the next couple weeks, here are the top five album I am must looking forward to in the next couple months.

1. …Little Broken Hearts – Norah Jones (May 1): Sure the spaghetti western soundtrack album Danger Mouse released last year was a bit of a letdown, but the three standout tracks all utilized the vocal talents of Norah Jones (sorry Jack White). The duo is back together for a new album, but unlike Danger’s previous duets with Cee-Lo and the dude from The Shins, no new band name instead the album is being released under Jones’s name. Despite the darkness of Rome’s tracks, the first single from …Little Broken Hearts is the bouncy break up song Happy Pills. And looking at other track names (Say Goodbye, Travlin’ On) we will be getting a full on break up album.

2. Born and Raised – John Mayer (May 22): Let’s get out of the way first: Mayer’s last album sucked massively because nobody wants to hear a concept album about dating and breaking up with Rachel Green. In the three year since the album his stupid mouth has gotten him much more publicity than his music but has been relatively quiet since starting recording the album, which may just be because of a lingering throat problem, but the first single Shadow Days suggest that he is truly sorry for saying things like how his genitalia is racist. I just hope the album is more on par with his first three.

3. What We Saw from the Cheap Seats – Regina Spektor (May 29): The first song off the new album from Spektor, All the Rowboats, sound darker than anything she has done before. This could be thanks to producer Mike Elizondo who is most famous for working with Dr. Dre but also produced that last album from fellow pianist Fiona Apple. But the second single, Don’t Leave Me does fit much better into her back catalogue, most because it is actually a new version of a song she released a decade ago.

4. Blunderbuss – Jack White (April 24): Now that he has stated no more new bands, Jack White is now on his own, but I get the sense we will still get the blues-pop-rock through a weird filter that we have come to love from the guitarist.

5. The Idler is wiser than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords will serve you more than Ropes will ever do – Fiona Apple (June): Much like her last album, Fiona’s new album has been sitting on the shelf for a while but will supposedly get a June release, though no specific date gives me pause that we will actually get to hear the album before then. Unless, of course, you caught her nine date tour last month where she unveiled some new song (I avoided listening to them because I do not like to judge songs based on a crappy YouTube recording). (Scooter Update: It seems like whenever I create one of these music preview lists, inevitably that day a major release gets announced and today was no difference as just an hour after I published this post, Fiona Apple wrote on her Facebook page that her album got an official release date: June 26 along with the cover art. No presale on Amazon as I write this update.)

And here are some other notable releases. Click on the album title to preorder on Amazon or the artist name to be taken to their iTunes page.

Today
Dedicated – Wilson Phillips
My Head Is an Animal – Of Monsters and Men
Bottoms Up – Obie Trice
Love Stories & Other Musings - Candlebox

April 10
Underwater Sunshine (or what we did on our summer vacation) – Counting Crows
Boys & Girls – Alabama Shakes
Slipstream – Bonnie Raitt
MTV Unplugged – Florence + The Machine
A Wasteland Companion – M. Ward
New Life – Monica
Scars On 45 – Scars On 45

April 17
Love Is a Four Letter Word – Jason Mraz
Picture Show – Neon Trees
California 37 – Train
I Missed Us - SWV
Moving Up Living Down – Eric Hutchinson

April 24
Speak in Code – Eve 6
This Machine – The Dandy Warhols
Landline – Greg Laswell

May 1
Blown Away – Carrie Underwood
Master of My Make-Believe – Santigold
Strange Clouds – B.o.B

May 8
Strangeland – Keane
After Hours – Glenn Frey
After Hours – Silversun Pickups

May 15
Not Your Kind Of People – Garbage
Heroes – Willie Nelson
Rize Of The Fenix – Tenacious D
The Only Place – Best Coast
Bloom – Beach House
Welcome To: Our House - Slaughterhouse

May 22
Apocalyptic Love - Slash

May 29
Here – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

June 5
Americana – Neil Young & Crazy Horse

June 12
The Bravest Man in the World – Bobby Womack
Sythetica – Metric

June 19
Cherry Thing – Neneh Cherry

June 26
Overexposed – Maroon 5

TBD
Handwritten – The Gaslight Anthem
The Diving Board – Elton John
Life Is Good – Nas
The Lion the Beast the Best – Grace Potter & The Nocturnals
Lollipops and Politics – V.V. Brown
Write Me Back – R. Kelly
Undisputed – DMX
Songs of Accent - U2
Mumford & Sons
The Avett Brothers
The Beach Boys
Bob Seger
D'Angelo
Diane Birch
Pearl Jam
Green Day
Linkin Park
Taylor Swift
M.I.A.
Wu-Tang Clan
The Offspring

And of course let’s not forget the obligatory this may be the quarter we finally get to hear Dr. Dre’s Detox.

Feed Your iPod the CD vol. I

Feed Your iPod was created to highlight songs that may not have been hits, or even released as singles, but deserve a much bigger audience. Hopefully of the first nineteen I have posted you have a least found a couple that you may not have heard before but have made it into your regular rotation. Of course Feed Your iPod is just a catchy title and any of these can be for any mp3 devise, just your computer and now you can make a CD out of them as the first set comes in at 78:24. You can even help create volume two by emailing me (or use the comment section) song suggestions and a short description on way everyone should have it on their iPod for me to post. Click the links below to be taken to iTunes where you can download the songs or use the widget below to go to Amazon MP3 to get them DRM-free (and sometimes a dime cheaper) or use the label function to scroll threw what I had to say about these songs and full song previews.


1. The Seed (2.0) - The Roots and Cody ChestnuTT
2. Bad Reputation - Freedy Johnston
3. Passing Me By - The Pharcyde
4. School Spirit - Kanye West
5. Paper Bag - Fiona Apple
6. You Never Know - Dave Matthews Band
7. Nightswimming - R.E.M.
8. Award Tour - A Tribe Called Quest
9. Nothing at All - Santana and Musiq
10. Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing to F’ Wit - Wu-Tang Clan
11. Tell Him - Lauryn Hill
12. Summertime - The Sundays
13. Catalyst - Anna Nalick
14. Devil Town - Tony Lucca
15. Have a Little Faith in Me - John Hiatt
16. I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You - Tom Waits
17. Someday We’ll All Be Free - Donny Hathaway
18. Sunny Hours - Long Beach Dub All-Stars
19. Adelaide - Old 97’s

Feed Your iPod vol. V: Paper Bag

Recently I scanned my iPod for potentials songs for this running segment and ended up with a playlist of over fifty potential songs for future Feed Your iPods (that is not to say I don’t want to hear from you, if you have a suggestion that fits the bill, write up a short paragraph and shoot me an e-mail and maybe I’ll feature it later). But there is something to say that amongst all these great songs, there is one that went into instant repeat mode.

I can’t say I was ever much of a big Fiona Apple fan in the beginning, there were a few good songs, one great song, one great speech (ah, remember when the VMA’s were interesting) but nothing really kept my interest. Like most people I ignored her second album mostly because I didn’t finish reading the album title until sometime last year. That was a shame because I missed a great song Paper Bag.

I have Zach Braff for introducing me to the song as it was included in the soundtrack to the otherwise forgettable The Last Kiss. I guess I shouldn’t have expected more from the hack who wrote Crash. But enough about pretentious movies. The song is full of quoteworthy lines thanks to Fiona not being afraid to let everyone know of her eccentricities (full discloser: I like my woman a little off kiltered), there is just something about the way she says, “I went crazy again.”

But the best lines are saved for the chorus: “Hunger hurts and I want him so much I would kill. But I know I’m a mess he don’t wanna clean up.” And you get the sense that Fiona knows of all these eccentricities when she sings, “He said ‘It’s all in your head’ and I said ‘so is everything’ but he didn’t get it.” There is also something to say about the pitch point production that hits every right note thanks to Jon Brion who has gone on to help out with Kanye West’s two most recent albums.

When looking to see if there was a video on YouTube so I could highlight the song I was surprised to see there was a proper music video produced for Paper Bag. It is disturbing that a song of this quality couldn’t get any airplay especially considering the song was released in 1999, the worst year in recorded music ever. Seriously, look it up, worst ever. The video makes the great song even better with the pseudo-musical feel to it, reminiscent of the McG videos from the mid-nineties (before he went off to make crappy movies and television shows) without the exaggerated color.

Paper Bag - Fiona Apple

Best Videos of 2006

For today’s end of the year spectacular I will be counting down the best music videos of the year. And thanks to YouTube we saw a return to the art form and more videos may be getting viewed that the heyday of MTV when they actually showed them. Unfortynately some record labels are not fond of the idea of free advertisement so some videos have been take off the site yet they always seem to find their way back on the site. I have embedded the top five videos, after that you can click on the title to go to YouTube and view it if available. Also if you are interested in buying the video (or the song) click the iTunes tag, again if available.



1. God’s Gonna Cut You Down - Johnny Cash




2. White & Nerdy - “Weird Al” Yankovic




3. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley




4. Boston - Augustana




5. Not About Love - Fiona Apple



6. Bones - The Killers

7. Rollin’ with Saget - Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone

8. Wind it Up - Barenaked Ladies

9. When the Deal Goes Down - Bob Dylan

10. Work it Out - Jurassic 5 & Dave Mathews Band

11. Here it Goes Again - OK Go

12. When You Were Young - The Killers

13. I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in my Hair) - Sandi Thom

14. Crooked Teeth - Death Cab for Cutie

15. Fidelity - Regina Spector

16. Smile - Lily Allen

17. Touch the Sky - Kanye West

18. Dani California - Red Hot Chili Peppers

19. Gone Daddy Gone - Gnarls Barkley

20. Waiting on the World to Change - John Mayer

21. Where’d You Go - Fort Minor

22. Hips Don’t Lie - Shakira & Wyclef Jean

23. Learn to Live with What You Are - Ben Folds

24. Before He Cheats - Carrie Underwood

25. How to Save a Life (Mark Pellington Version) - The Fray