The easiest takeaway from the Alabama Shakes debut album was that Brittany Howard burst into the scene with a God-sent voice. The critically acclaimed four-piece southern rock darlings from Athens, Alabama debuted Boys & Girls in 2012, a fairly formulaic, but intriguing album. It hinted at the Shakes’ potential, but it was apparent they were a promising new band baby steps shy of unearthing its desired sound. Following extensive touring and a three year span between albums, Sound & Color emerges as their powerhouse ascension into prominence.
The band, comprised of Zac Cockrell, Heath Fogg, Brittany Howard and Steve Johnson, has evolved from being a southern rock specific outfit, into a tight-knit unit capable of navigating genre jumps and time changes with ease. The music is an immovable force that is sometimes gentle, sometimes arena ready, but most importantly, it always costars harmoniously with Howard’s commanding vocals. She sings like a woman who has begun to realize the sheer power of her voice and is embracing the challenge of discovering how strong it can become.
The twinkling vibraphones in the intro of “Sound And Color” indicate that the band has laid layers on its roots without abandoning its original sound. “A new world hangs outside the window, beautiful and strange, it must be I’ve fallen awake,” Howard sings, hinting that this alternate reality full of only sound and color has been within reach, but now is a dream that has unknowingly become a reality.
The album picks up speed with “The Greatest,” a fast paced rocker that showcases the band’s depth. Howard begins by muttering, “Check this out,” then launches into the song, guitars blazing. “Well, I never meant to be the greatest, I only ever wanted to be your baby,” she sings, half joking, half deadly serious, as if being the greatest is merely an accidental byproduct of her songs.
The song serves as an undeniably fun and energetic comedic interlude bursting with bravado. It has three distinct styles: the introduction and ending speed past with guitar fills before detouring into a swing style ballad. Finally, it erupts into a climactic boardwalk-carnival style keyboard riff leading to a roaring bass line.
With a pained, dry, wheezing shriek indicative of a prolonged battle, Howard introduces “Don’t Wanna Fight,” a blues rocker that also incorporates psychedelia into the remaining mix of the album. “Gemini” is a slow scorcher with a “The Good The Bad and The Ugly” style guitar riff and a destructive drum and bass beat that feels fitting as an album closer.
Luckily, “Over My Head” follows as an in-album encore that leaves Howard contemplating the afterlife and the difference between religious faith and scientific certainty: “Science, they explain it to me, there’s no joy I can take with knowing what’s waiting. Here for now, but not for long, where will my mind slip away?”
This is the universally appealing album The Black Keys hoped to create with Turn Blue, but fell leagues short of accomplishing (“Weight Of Love” excepted). The archetypal laid back, guitar driven Blues/Southern Rock that made up a majority of Boys & Girls never feels forced on Sound And Color, while the psychedelic tapestry of sound expertly guides a genre bending masterpiece from the first dreamlike vibraphone notes, to the reverb suspended final chord.
People don’t want to pay for music. Why pay when there are so many options to listen for free? The internet has made it easy to avoid dishing out the dough for music at all, even to achieve access to millions of songs for a low monthly fee from a streaming service.
The newest service to attempt to break into the already crowded market is TIDAL. Owned by Jay-Z, Beyonce, Kanye West, Jack White, Madonna and other A-List musicians, TIDAL has emerged from being an unknown company to a headline-stealing streaming service aimed at providing compensation for the artists whose music it plays. It began as Aspiro, a Swedish technology company centered on innovating music consumption, before Jay-Z bought the company for $54 million.
TIDAL is available for either $10 or $20 per month, or a 30-day free trial period. The $20 plan boosts TIDAL’s HI-FI sound, an industry first. According to TIDAL’s info page, TIDAL is “unlike any other service currently on the market. TIDAL offers high fidelity sound quality, high definition music videos, and curated editorial, expertly crafted by experienced music journalists.”
The $10 plan, does not feature HI-FI sound quality. Judge for yourself here if the $10 difference is worth it. On computer speakers and cheap headphones, the difference is not perceptible. Both sound great, but the difference is essentially similar to HD versus Blu-Ray. One is slightly better, if you know how to tell the difference.
The best features of TIDAL are the exclusive playlists and artist recommendations. Playlists can be divided by genre, theme, decade or by artist. The lists focus on combining smash hits with lesser known gems to provide a playlist that dives below surface level knowledge. The Legend Series playlists are great starting points for understanding what a band is all about. Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, as well as more modern legends such as Green Day and Daft Punk are a few of the many Legend series currently available.
TIDAL is dedicated to delivering your favorite music, but there is also an emphasis on discovering the bands that influenced your favorite bands.
The big question for such a young company is: Is it worth it?
If you already happily use Spotify or any other of the plethora of streaming services available, then you probably won’t benefit a great deal from switching. Spotify is the giant right now with 60 million users, 15 million of who are paying subscribers. College students can receive Spotify Premium for $4.99, giving a slight edge to TIDAL on the grounds of cost alone.
It is still fairly unclear if artists (other than the owners) will actually receive compensation for their music being played, per this article by The New Yorker, until TIDAL begins to turn a profit.
Many people scoff at the idea of rich artists complaining about not making all of the money they possibly can off of their music, but for struggling artists, TIDAL could possibly keep them financially stable in the future if the idea takes off, and that is worth supporting.
If you saw The Replacements in concert during the 1980s, there would be two likely outcomes. They would either be too drunk to complete an entire show (or sometimes even a single song), or they would quite simply be the best band on the planet.
With two shows already under their belt on the “Back By Unpopular Demand Tour,” The Replacements have proven that they are, once again, the best band on the planet. The tour started with a perfectly imperfect show at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle before a triumphant return to Portland.
Paul Westerberg sings “Androgynous” from his “Timeout Tent” during the first night of the “Back By Unpopular Demand” tour at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, Washington.
Young Fresh Fellows opened the show with their high energy, frantic stage show. With NASA space suits, cowboy and fur hats, Young Fresh Fellows gave us no choice but to love every second of their performance. They are one of the most fun bands to watch perform live and set the stage for The Replacements.
Taking the stage of the Crystal Ballroom in Portland to “Surfin’ Bird” blaring over the loudspeakers, the band opened with “Takin’ A Ride” from their 1981 debut album Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash. A stunned crowd quickly realized the goal of the night was to break the “Portland curse” that contributed to the alleged worst Replacements show in history at the Pine Street Theater in 1987.
There is always time for joking around at a Replacements show, but the band has matured in a good way. Bassist Tommy still plays with the same energy he had as the 11 year old he was when he first picked up a bass guitar, and singer Paul Westerberg still sings with the reckless abandon he has always exhibited. Westerberg wore a plain white T-shirt with the letter “H” spray painted on the front, with an “O” on the back.
During “Hangin’ Downtown,” Westerberg led a Blues breakdown titled “Whole Food Blues” about wandering the Whole Foods market in search of a protein shake to keep his “girlish figure.” It was a good four to five minutes long but felt like a natural interlude to “Hangin’ Downtown.” As fans yelled out requests for cover songs later, Westerberg joked, “If you keep yelling out for covers, you’re only going to get more blues.”
So often The Replacements appear to be carefree on stage, as if chaos fuels the set, but Westerberg became visibly frustrated after forgetting the opening verse and guitar solo to “Sixteen Blue.” During “I’ll Be You,” Westerberg couldn’t tune an off-pitch string on his guitar, so instead of stopping the song to tune, he ripped the string off of the guitar and continued playing before flipping his monitor and ripping the cords out in frustration.
Tommy Stinson and Paul Westerberg share a laugh during The Replacements concert at the Crystal Ballroom. Photo: Garrett Harmon
The first half of the show was an undeniably powerful and tight punk rock set. The final two Replacements albums, Don’t Tell A Soul and All Shook Down, are often criticized for being overproduced and for sounding too glossy on record. The gloss was stripped away and blended in perfectly with the band’s early material. “Kissin’ In Action,” an outtake from All Shook Down, seamlessly followed “I’m In Trouble” (the band’s first ever single) while also veering into a ten second clip of “Iron Man.”
A cover of the theme song from Green Acres found its way into the set with guitarist Dave Minehan singing Eva Gabor’s portion about big city living. Also covered was “My Boy Lollipop” by Millie Small. Westerberg sang it true to the original without ever cracking a smile, even though it followed the anthem “Bastards Of Young.”
Being in Portland, it seemed like they would feel obligated to play the apology song “Portland.” They did, but it was more innovative than obligatory, as the first two verses of “Talent Show” pivoted into “Portland.” The chorus of “It’s too late to turn back, here we go/ Portland. Oh no” was screamed at the top of the crowd’s collective lungs.
Westerberg apologized to the city for what should be the final time after finishing the medley with a snippet of “Nowhere Is My Home,” a classic outtake from 1985’s Tim.
To begin the first encore, Westerberg appeared alone on stage with a 12 string acoustic guitar for “Skyway.” The band joined him midway through “If Only You Were Lonely,” which Westerberg seemed to be a bit upset about, and the band admitted they were unsure if he wanted them to jump in for that song.
The poignant “Left Of The Dial” was executed perfectly, nearly brining a collection of middle aged punk rockers to tears. Someone in the crowd hurled three Voodoo Donuts and what looked like a piece of pizza onstage during the song. Tommy Stinson was intrigued by the Cap’n Crunch donut and took a bite while playing. His verdict: “Pretty good.”
After “Alex Chilton,” the lights in the Crystal Ballroom slowly began to turn on, but the stage lights remained dark, giving fans a glimmer of hope that the band might possibly come back for one more song. As the road crew shut off amps and gather guitars, the crowd grew louder, begging for more. Suddenly, the crew began walking faster, turning all the amps back on. The Replacements resurfaced for a loud, fast, and powerful “IOU,” a perfect ending to a perfect set.
Paul Westerberg plays “Skyway” during the first encore at The Crystal Ballroom. Photo: Brett Wright
Many of Westerberg’s songs are about alienation, not fitting in, or simply being bored. Through these classic songs, he has created a home for all of the “Bastards Of Young” who have ever shared similar feelings of solitude. The songs are instantly relatable because Westerberg himself used to be an average guy working as a janitor who would hide in the bushes outside of the Stinson house while the band that would one day be The Replacements practiced. Eventually he worked up the courage to play with them, and the rest is history. A drunken, often sloppy history, but history nonetheless.
For the doubters who may think The Replacements are either too old, or that the reunion doesn’t count because drummer Chris Mars chose not to partake, guitarist Dave Minehan and drummer Josh Freese are no longer replacement Replacements. They are the failsafe anchors who have filled the large shoes vacated by founding members Bob Stinson and Chris Mars, as well as former guitarist Slim Dunlap who is in long term care at the hospital following a debilitating stroke.
The Replacements should have been the biggest band of the ‘80s, but with every chance they received, they shot themselves in the foot and missed the first rung on the ladder of success.
Westerberg was focused and unforgiving of mistakes all night. There were no stage decorations or a fancy light show. The music was all that mattered. This is how Rock and Roll is supposed to be.
“Every town is all the same when you’ve left your heart in the Portland rain,” M. Ward elegantly sings in “Paul’s Song.” This follows the typical trend of songs about Portland, Oregon. They generally serve as an ode to the picturesque landscapes and the simultaneously inviting, yet oppressive rain. The city has a special charm that is easy to fall in love with and difficult to forget.
During a destructive, drunken bash on Dec. 7, 1987 at the now defunct Pine Street Theater, The Replacements themselves rained down with all of their ramshackle glory on the city of Portland, along with a wardrobe’s worth of clothing, a couch, a chandelier and maybe even a kitten.
“It’s too late to turn back, here we go. Portland, oh no,” Paul Westerberg regretfully sings on “Portland,” one of the band’s great unreleased tracks, before formally stating, “Portland. We’re sorry,” as the song fades out. The song serves as a hungover apology to what is commonly referred to as the worst show The Replacements ever delivered.
The Replacements developed from the 1980s Minneapolis punk scene and were notorious for their mercurial performances. Certain nights, they were the greatest rock band to ever wield instruments on a stage.
Other nights, they would be lucky to drunkenly stumble onstage at all. It was one thing to enjoy listening to the albums, but to sit through an off night was a true test of loyalty. Part of the attraction was that it was impossible to predict what would happen during a Replacements show.
If the band had been drinking (and they almost always had been), they would frequently launch into — and subsequently abandon — cover songs after realizing they only knew the main riff. Guitarist Bob Stinson would wear any outfit he could piece together backstage, sometimes leaving little to the imagination. Shows had the tendency to tailspin into an embarrassing parade of amateurism for no real reason at all.
To pinpoint the “worst” Replacements show is a nearly impossible task. So what was so bad about the Portland show that prompted the famously unapologetic and crass Westerberg to apologize on record and etch “Portland. We’re sorry” into the original vinyl pressing of Don’t Tell A Soul?
To begin with the facts, The Replacements and opening act Young Fresh Fellows drunkenly stormed the stage with freshly shaved eyebrows on the December night. This is the reported setlist of the show, so it appears the band played and completed a handful of songs including Rolling Stones, Prince and Dusty Springfield covers.
Other than that, accounts of the show differ on a case-by-case basis, providing the background for a hazily recalled, booze-filled Replacements legend.
Young Fresh Fellows singer Scott McCaughey recalls the night as being “quite a blur in my mind for numerous reasons. Suffice to say, neither band was stellar and our focus was not on the music. Rather it seemed we were hellbent on following through with any inane idea that might entertain us for the moment. It was fun, but desperate fun. At-the-end-of-your-rope kind of fun.”
Singer Scott McCaughey leads Young Fresh Fellows in concert while wrapped in robes. The band shared the bill with the Replacements at Pine Street Theater on Dec. 7, 1987, partaking in the now fabled shenanigans. Paul Westerberg told Creem magazine in 1987 that Young Fresh Fellows were the best band in the world. Photo credit: Marty Perez
Gorman Bechard, director of Color Me Obsessed (a film about The Replacements, which features no photos, music or videos of the band), did not attend the show, but heard a collection of stories about the fabled show in the process of creating the film.
“The things I’ve heard about the Portland show is that the Replacements got there early and were sitting at the bar drinking,” Bechard said. “Scott from Young Fresh Fellows got there and Westerberg said one word to him: ‘Drink,’ and handed him a beer. By the time Young Fresh Fellows went on, they played for maybe 20 minutes, and they could barely get through a song. The Replacements came on after that and did a horrible medley of “Hey, Good Lookin’” and “Silent Night” with Young Fresh Fellows.”
According to posts on Replacements fan message boards, Westerberg wore green spray painted shoes with a black dollar sign gracing the front, and Bassist Tommy Stinson boasted a homemade necklace of a CD hanging from a string.
Tommy Stinson performs with the current lineup of The Replacements at Midway Stadium in St. Paul, Minnesota on Sept. 13, 2014. The show was the first hometown performance for the band in more than 20 years.
“Backstage, as the Replacements sometimes tended to do, they traded clothes,” Bechard said. “Paul traded clothes with Scott, but not only did he put on this Leonardo Da Vinci velour cape that Scott wore, he literally went into Scott’s bag and tied all of his clothes around him. Through the show he would be throwing clothes into the audience, so Scott never saw his robe again.”
The band encouraged the crowd to throw their clothes onstage, as the Replacements themselves stripped down. Tommy Stinson reportedly threw his pants into the crowd before realizing he forgot to empty the money from his pockets. After desperate pleas for someone to toss the money back to him, he searched an unoccupied pair of pants that made their way to the stage and claimed a $20 bill. In celebration, he danced a little jig in his underwear.
The havoc onstage was far from the only issue that night. An unconfirmed report says the venue refused to pay the band for its set, which sent them into a destructive rage.
“In the dressing room, there was a chandelier,” Bechard said. “Paul decided to play Tarzan and leaped onto the chandelier, trying to swing across the room, but the chandelier just comes crashing down. Of course, they also took the big couch that was there and threw it out the window, but I believe that was before the show. A lot of people say they threw it out before they started playing.”
Despite all the chaos of the night, the band still appears to have completed songs, so from a musical standpoint, odds are that this was not the band’s worst concert ever.
“I’d not be surprised if someone unearthed proof of a worse musical Replacements show,” McCaughey said. “They sort of specialized in “off nights.” I think this one has gained traction because both bands were out of our minds and wanton destruction was in the air. We’d spent a lot of time together that year egging each other on and this was the culmination. Not that the ‘Mats needed any help sinking their own boat.”
Paul Westerberg prepares to play “Unsatisfied” with a lit cigarette in mouth at Midway Stadium on Sept 13, 2014. Photo credit: Brett Wright
One possible candidate for the worst musical performance was at Grinnell College in the spring of 1984. When the band arrived, their van door flung open and empty beer cans exploded out, setting the stage for a bumbling performance, according to University of Oregon Senior Instructor Alex Dracobly, who attended the show.
“That Grinnell show could not have been worse,” Dracobly said. “They were truly awful. I don’t think they could have been on stage for more than ten minutes. When I say they didn’t finish a song, I mean they didn’t finish a song. They started maybe a half dozen of them, but they didn’t get very far. They came out, and they were obviously super drunk by the time they got on stage, and there was a lot of heckling even before they started. They were totally belligerent. Rude, obnoxious, and they could not play a song. The heckling got worse, and then it finally ended. Bob Stinson pissed off the side of the stage and he was promptly arrested. They spent all their gas money on beer on the way down and didn’t have enough money to get back to Minneapolis.”
Despite this encounter, Dracobly still willingly went to see them play a few years later in Seattle in 1991.
So the pick is yours. Is a concert worse if the band never completes a song, or if they cause absolute chaos in the immediate vicinity of the venue while managing to sputter through a slew of songs?
“I think everyone involved was so intoxicated that maybe none of this happened,” Bechard said of the Portland show. “Maybe it really was a great show. There’s always that.”
Something has to have resonated in Westerberg’s soul about that night for him to go on record with an apology though. For a man who once said, “I’m not ashamed of anything (The Replacements) did,” there has to be an unsettling element of the night that will remain a mystery to everyone except Westerberg himself. Don’t count on him to spill the secret anytime soon.
The Replacements and Young Fresh Fellows play the Crystal Ballroom on Friday, April 10, marking the Replacements’s first return to Portland since June 27, 1991. The show sold out in a matter of minutes. Apology accepted.
Sufjan Stevens has never completely delved into his personal soul-wrenching tale of abandonment and quest for discovering his true self before because, quite frankly, it was probably too difficult. Carrie and Lowell, his ninth studio album, shares his heartbreaking story in full.
In what may be the only way to begin an autobiographical account such as this, Stevens sings, “I don’t know where to begin,” repeatedly during the first track, “Death with Dignity.” His whispered, double tracked words are surrounded by a brightly fingerpicked acoustic guitar before a piano gently enters.
The story begins to unfold in “Should Have Known Better” as Stevens reveals, “When I was three, three maybe four, she left us at that video store.” “She” is Carrie, Steven’s mother who suffered from drug addiction, schizophrenia and Bipolar disorder. She abandoned Stevens as a child, leaving his stepfather, Lowell to raise Stevens for much of his youth.
There are many references to Oregon, especially Eugene, as being places that helped Stevens escape various times of difficulty. The song “Eugene” compares his swim instructor to a pastor baptizing him in the communal pools near Emerald Park. The father figure provides an even greater want for his distant mother, though, and what may have happened had he “never seen hysterical light from Eugene.”
The final two stanzas of “Eugene” provide the greatest insight into Steven’s past, and the emotional dilemmas he overcame (his mother fought and lost a battle with stomach cancer in 2012), or at least tamed through this album:
“Still I pray to what I cannot see/ In the sprinkler I mark the evidence known from the start/ From the bed near your death, and all the machines that made a mess/ Far away the falcon flew/ Now I want to be near you.
“What’s left is only bittersweet/ For the rest of my life, admitting the best is behind me/ Now I’m drunk and afraid, wishing the world would go away/ What’s the point of singing songs if they’ll never even hear you?”
The point of singing songs that may never be heard is that sometimes, the soul-searching involved in writing them may lead the artist to a spine chilling masterwork that improves with each listen, as Stevens has done here.
Simply listening to the sound of Stevens’ haunted whispering voice conveys the heartbreak and abandon he felt as a young child, phrased like an accomplished poet. The lyrics and music serve as foils to each other on many songs, as the music shields the dark undertones of the lyrical content, making it an accessible yet poignant reminder of what lingering effects an abandoned child can feel through adulthood.
This is an album that can completely envelop you in its world and leave you in a trance-like state until it calmly fades into nothing at the finale, returning us to the world that Stevens has so gracefully created an escape from.
As Spring Break approaches, the need to find a road trip soundtrack becomes increasingly important. This brief guide by Daniel Bromfield and Craig Wright will provide a starting point for making travel feel shorter, or provide a basis for further enjoyment of the break in general.
No Cities To Love — Sleater-Kinney
Sleater-Kinney returned at the top of its game after a ten year absence. No Cities To Love brings Carrie Brownstein’s signature guitar sound, Corin Tucker’s banshee-esque vocals and Janet Weiss’s thunderous drums back together for a production that can simply be described as near-perfection.
I Love You Honeybear — Father John Misty
Josh Tillman has created a love story made for the spring. From the opening title track to the closing of “I Went To The Store One Day,” the album breezes along with a sampling of different genres, but begins and ends with a storybook love tale.
Uptown Special — Mark Ronson
Ronson (along with a barrage of guests) creates an easy to enjoy funk album, highlighted by the mega hit “Uptown Funk” (with Bruno Mars). It plays like a classic funk album, but maintains a modern twist throughout that will help those long road trips pass along much more quickly.
1989 — Taylor Swift
There may be a time during break when you just need to “Shake It Off.” 1989 overtook the Frozen Soundtrack as the best-selling album of 2014 in a mere nine week span. Taylor Swift holds control of the pop world, and studies have shown that her music is scientifically proven to improve your mood, so why should her reign end now?
— By Craig Wright
Jack U – Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack U. Skrillex soundtracked Harmony Korine’s millennial-skewering cinematic masterpiece Spring Breakers–and as his brutal EDM bangers prove, he was the right man for the job. Working in tandem with Diplo, he’s made a spring break album for the ages. Every song goes hard, but I’d recommend “Beats Knockin’” or “Take U There” (preferably the Missy Elliott version, though the original is fine as well).
Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp A Butterfly. The Compton rapper’s latest opus is as thematically weighty as anything he’s put out, but as a spring break soundtrack, those G-funk grooves are all that matter. Like Biggie’s Ready To Die (and his own good kid, m.A.A.d city) before, To Pimp A Butterfly works equally well as a social-gathering accompaniment and an intellectually and emotionally stimulating private listen.
Project Pablo – I Want To Believe. Vancouver’s made some of the best house music on the planet over the last two years, and Project Pablo’s I Want To Believe is the latest addition to this canon. Funky, immersive, compulsively listenable, and often strikingly beautiful, I Want To Believe is a great album to party or simply sink into the couch to.
Jeff Tweedy once made an infamous speech at the Crystal Ballroom about audience behavior at concerts; he took on rude fans who were talking and watching the show through the screen of a cell phone. As frustrating as it may have been at the time, he was able to joke about the incident in his return to the Crystal, and even offered up advice to the sold-out Portland crowd:
Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), no other rants occurred.
Tweedy is a band anchored by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and his son Spencer, a drumming prodigy. The two made the album Sukierae together after learning that Sue Miller, Jeff’s wife and Spencer’s mother, relapsed in her battle against lymphoma. The tour and album are how the Tweedy’s dealt with the problem. She is scheduled to finish radiation this week, as Spencer told the Oregonian in an interview.
The first portion of the concert focused solely on material from Sukierae. The five piece band played the highlights from the just-too-long Sukierae, giving new life to the mellow album. “Summer Noon” and “Low Key” were particularly good, but “Diamond Light Pt. 1” allowed Spencer and bassist Darin Gray to fall into a locked groove while Jeff produced a feedback fueled guitar solo.
Jeff Tweedy performed the second portion of the set alone, playing Wilco classics such as “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” “Via Chicago” and “Jesus, etc.” To substitute for the intensity of Wilco’s version of “Via Chicago,” Jeff incorporated a harmonica into the narrative of dreaming of an ex’s death, and it played like a brilliant Bob Dylan impersonation.
The most memorable event was during the encore when Jeff Tweedy railed off a guitar solo, then asked the audience if making pained expressions makes a solo more convincing. It then devolved into a guitar fart experiment after he determined the only time making faces of such anguish are appropriate when “taking a shit, or farting. Playing guitar is easy and making faces will never make it tougher.”
The band closed with an encore of cover songs, which featured a powerful cover of John Lennon’s “God,” in which changed the lyrics to “I only believe in Spencer and me.” The final song was “California Stars” from Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue Vol. 1. which allowed both guitarists to trade off soloing while Jeff and Spencer held the easy beat, smiling the whole time.
Call this dad-rock all you want. Jeff Tweedy is literally touring with his son on drums on this tour, but remember that this is also a man who has struggled with drug addiction, depression and a wife battling lymphoma. To see him cracking jokes, interacting with the audience and leading a family band with a smile on his face for the whole show was refreshing. The show was never anything other than fun, proving that if you pay attention during a concert, a truly special experience can occur.
It’s safe to say that everyone has at least thought about what it would be like to fly at some point in life. Most probably dream about the peaceful feeling we would gain from overcoming body limitations and soaring above our cities. Will Butler’s dream of flight is a bit simpler: “If I could fly, you know I’d beat the shit out of some birds,” Butler sings on “Take My Side,” the opening track of his debut solo album, Policy. Will Butler is an original member of Arcade Fire, and the younger brother of Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler.
The 27-minute, eight-song album breezes by with a variety of genres tossed into the mix that somehow blend together well. The majority are lighthearted songs that venture into a more humorous side that the heavy-handed ensemble Arcade Fire is unable to explore. In reality, even if Arcade Fire released the next Sgt. Pepper, critics would still find a way to hate it, which is why going solo was a smart idea for Will Butler to explore
“Take My Side” sounds like electric Bob Dylan taking a stab at Rockabilly, while “Anna” dabbles in synthesizer driven beat. The album on a high note with “Witness,” a ’50s Doo-Wop song. The various stylings add texture to the short album, much like Arcade Fire’s explorative albums always do.
Butler offers up his advice for a romantic gift idea with, “If you come and take my hand / I will buy you a pony / We can cook it for supper / I know a great recipe for pony macaroni.” On “What I Want,” Butler combines humor with the ever-present Arcade Fire theme of war, saying “If you told me that there was a war, I would fight until we were all free,” before asking, “What about Tuesday night, are you free?”
“Sing To Me” finds an exhausted Butler revisiting the desperation of Neon Bible with less serious inhibitions. He is tired and simply needs someone to sing to him on order to help lull him to sleep.
Policy is no Funeral, but it is a good addition to the Arcade Fire family of music, and it serves as a temporary fill between the usual three-year album gap for Arcade Fire. It is apparent on a few of the tracks that Policy was quickly recorded in the span of a week, but “Take my Side,” “Finish What I Started,” “Sing To Me” and “Son Of God” are strong tracks worth checking out.
Noel Gallagher will forever be praised and tormented for the smash hit “Wonderwall” in his previous band Oasis. At its peak, Oasis was the biggest band in the world, and that’s not just Noel Gallagher’s equally big mouth speaking. Definitely Maybe became the UK’s fastest-selling debut album of all time, and Oasis was also the UK’s most successful band of the ‘90s as they managed a string of 22 consecutive top-10 singles.
Like so many other great bands, egos conflicted and brothers Noel and singer Liam Gallagher were unable to reconcile their differences. Noel Gallagher is notorious for speaking his uncensored and unfiltered mind, as is apparent in this hilarious interview with Rolling Stone. A brief sample to best sum up his attitude is his response to Simon Vozick-Levinson’s question “Are you excited to tour this album?”
“Of course. It’s the yin to the album’s yang, isn’t it? Who would want to be Brian Wilson, sitting in a studio in a nappy, eating a fucking carrot with your little fat feet in a sandpit, not going on tour? Fuck that.”
Gallagher formed his new band, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, following Oasis’s break up in 2009. Chasing Yesterday is the band’s second studio album.
While much of the album is a push toward new sonic horizons for Gallagher, the opening chords of the album in “Riverman” are a blatant homage to “Wonderwall.” The similarity confirms the album title of Chasing Yesterday, as if the only way for a Gallagher brother to continue is by rewriting the seminal Oasis hit.
That’s not to say the song isn’t enjoyable, but as the beginning song of the album, it is a bit distracting.
Sprinkled throughout are songs about the ideological transformation Gallagher underwent while making this album. On “The Dying Of The Light,” he said, “I was told the streets were paved with gold/ there’d be no time for getting old, when we were young.” The middle-aged Gallagher realizes that he no longer can live the same lifestyle he had as a young man and that he now must live his lifestyle of a “faithful sheepdog,” as he told Rolling Stone.
The album has an honest moment of realization with “You Know We Can’t Go Back.” It’s sung to a lover, but in reality, it more likely than not serves as a formal farewell to Oasis. The song feels like the pre-closing credits song where the troubled lovers make up in a romantic comedy, but this time, the resolution is a complete separation from the past and a dedicated continuation to his current project.
“You Know We Can’t Go Back” fits as the second to last song of Chasing Yesterday because it allows closure, but also feels like a new beginning, which leads to the final track, “Ballad Of The Mighty I.” It’s propelled by a driving bass line and Gallagher’s narcissistic charm which seems to have finally set him free of the wonderwalls which incarcerated him for so long.
Nick Frost will probably always be best known for his fabulous work in The Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead,Hot Fuzz, The World’s End) with Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright because the films are, simply put, comedic gold.
In support of his new movie, Unfinished Business (starring Vince Vaughan and Dave Franco), Frost allowed college journalists across the country the chance to participate in a conference call with him, and yes, he is every bit as charming in real life as he appears to be on the screen.
During the call, Frost confirmed there will be more movies with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright.
What follows are the questions I was able to ask during the call.
NF: Yeah, I don’t know what it will be, but I’ll be flushing something down the toilet. The problem with celebrating my birthday here in Britain, is, being very pragmatic, our toilets are not good flushers like yours over in America. You guys have the strongest flush anywhere in the world, and it’s a system that allows the flushing of cakes and other pastries. I think over here I would probably just flush half a tortilla.
CW: For Cuban Fury, you recently tweeted that you trained 30 hours a week for seven months, so what inspired you to make that movie?
NF: I never even thought about the training regimen when I initially pitched the idea, and I think if I would have known it was going to be that much, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. But I wanted to test myself, I’ve always wanted to secretly do a dance film, and I’ve always wanted to do a musical as well, a film where I sing a lot. I like the idea, and I wanted to dance. I’ve always loved dance, and now I find myself doing a big dance film, and that was a real challenge. If any actor does 30 days training for seven months, there should be an Oscar nominee for most effort put into a dance comedy, and there isn’t sadly. I think if I trained that much to play a scientist or an alcoholic, you’d probably get some kind of nomination somewhere, but because it’s a romantic comedy with dancing in it, it’s not really given much credence, sadly.
CW: So what did it feel like the first time you saw the final product?
NF: It had its network premiere over here (in London) on Saturday, and we sat and watched it, and I’m tremendously proud you know, now that it’s like a year down the line. I can look at it and kind of almost forget the broken toes and all the pain and anguish I went through, and I’m tremendously proud of all the effort I put in, and I love it.
CW: Which of your characters that you’ve played did you enjoy playing the most, and which do you identify with the most?
NF: I loved Danny Butterman in Hot Fuzz. He’s one of my favorites that I’ve played. He’s such an innocent idiot that it was difficult to not like Danny. I did an adaptation of a Martin Amis novel called Money for the BBC a few years ago and I got to play a character called John Self and he’s a real piece of work, and I loved being him and I think I’m sad to say I’m kind of a cross between the two, really. I’m like a piece of work with a big heart.
Unfinished Business opens in theaters Friday, March 6.
