Recommended Albums #13

03 Apr 2012 1 Comment

by Ed Cyphers in Recommended Albums Tags: , , , ,

Flying Colors (Limited Edition Digipak)

Flying Colors (2012)

In 1982, four estimable musicians, each of whom had been a member of a highly regarded progressive rock band, joined forces to release a record that sounded less “progressive” and more like mainstream arena rock than any of their previous work. Though critics were underwhelmed, Asia went quadruple-platinum and was number one for over two months.

Thirty years later, five of the most revered members of progressive rock’s current scene have teamed up in releasing a CD that is similarly more accessible than any of the members’ previous bands’ prog-niche music. And while I wouldn’t predict a number one album–much less multi-platinum sales–this might just be the best new rock album I’ll hear all year.

Drummer Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater), keyboardist Neal Morse (Spock’s Beard), guitarist (and no relation to Neal) Steve Morse (Deep Purple, Kansas), bassist Dave LaRue (Dixie Dregs) and vocalist Casey McPherson (Alpha Rev) have created what sounds like a classic rock album from days past. If you’re looking for first-rate musicianship, it’s plentiful here–minus a lot of gratuitous showing-off of chops. Nor do proggish tendencies hold sway: only one song clocks in at a prog-like 12 minutes. Most of these songs are concise and radio ready. Solos are about note selection and melody rather than flash and complexity. The ace vocals of pop singer McPherson give the album the final push into mainstream rock territory. Influences are diverse enough with five songwriting contributors that nothing sounds blatantly derivative. And while it’s hardly Christian rock, you may notice some positive messages and family values subtly seeping through too.

Hopefully Flying Colors will be better received by critics than Asia were. Of course, these guys don’t carry the weight of the reputations of legendary bands such as Yes, King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. As for fans, their response is already overwhelmingly positive, and with good reason. This is a remarkable collection of pop/rock songs by five guys who sound like they want to come out from the shadow of their legacies and step into the bright lights. Can they find a mainstream audience, chart success, maybe a hit single? As Asia sang 30 years ago, only time will tell.

Listen to: “The Storm”

Listen to: “Everything Changes”

Don’t miss: “Fool in My Heart”

Listen to: “Better Than Walking”

Recommended Albums #12

19 Mar 2012 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in Recommended Albums Tags: ,

Pet Shop Boys: Yes (2009)

Sometimes we miss out on some great music because of our tendency to relegate an artist to a particular era in our minds.

If you think of Donovan, for example, as an artist of the 60’s–since he last hit the top 40 in 1969–you might not realize he recorded some great live albums, most of which he delivered in the 1970’s and later.

If you only think of the late 70’s when you think of great Warren Zevon music, you probably missed a career highlight when the sobered-up Zevon released the cracking Sentimental Hygiene album of 1987.

If you thought the only work of Graham Parker’s that mattered was his early albums with the Rumour, you’d find 1988’s The Mona Lisa’s Sister an unexpected treat. 

If you lost track of Asia when the 80’s ended, you won’t be aware that they may have turned in their finest album ever when the original lineup reconvened for 2008’s Phoenix. And if you think Prince hasn’t released anything good since the late 90’s…actually, you’re spot on in that case–but I digress.

pet-shop

Pet Shop Boys’ run of US top twenty singles began in 1986 and was over by ’88–a short peak era for a fairly iconic act. So to many (myself included) they existed mostly in a small 80’s dance-pop box. They do have their loyal fans though; they’ve continued releasing albums every few years and in the UK none has charted lower than #7.

But to the mainstream American record-buying public, they’re an act from another era; they may as well be Culture Club.

But some bands continue releasing quality material, or even release their best material, long after their fifteen minutes of limelight is over–making all the impact of the proverbial tree falling in the forest. And Yes is, to my ears, the best album Pet Shop Boys have ever made. Had it come around in, say, 1989 it would have been all over American radio and had the audience it deserves.

Any band that’s been around for decades is subject, on the release of something new, to the scrutiny of whether it “stands up” to their older material. Not only does this stand up, but in some ways it is superior. Pet Shop Boys have never employed a lot of harmony vocals; here, ecstatic choruses unfold in full color as never before.

Whereas for most artists the peak of sales coincides with a peak of artistic vision and creativity, followed by a long slow decline into mediocrity, in the case of PSB it’s more like they’ve only refined their songcraft over the years. And now, rather unexpectedly, 20 years on from their peak of record sales, they’ve reached the height of their record-making skill.

Even someone who never cared particularly for their old stuff could appreciate this album. If you’ve never been a fan of Pet Shop Boys, give Yes a chance to turn you into one.

Listen to “Did You See Me Coming”

Listen to “All Over the World”

Listen to “Love Etc.”

Listen to “Pandemonium”

See also: https://edcyphers.com/2019/04/21/songs-you-may-have-missed-636/

See also: Songs You May Have Missed #829 | Every Moment Has A Song

Recommended Albums #11

09 Mar 2012 2 Comments

by Ed Cyphers in Recommended Albums Tags: ,

Summer of Lust

Library Voices: Summer of Lust (2011)

This is one of those sneaky ones. If you have it repeating in the car you’ll first notice it’s providing a great soundtrack for the drive–sprightly middle-weight indie rock that compels you (weather permitting) to start rolling down windows. Then little bits of lyric float by on an appealing melody and you find yourself hitting “repeat” while you reach for the lyric sheet because they just nailed a turn of phrase or thought. What? you’re listening to a downloaded version on your iPod and have no lyric sheet? We’ll put aside your contributing to the demise of the pop album for the moment as I quote my lyric booklet (which didn’t come with your downloaded version):

All my friends are buying diamonds for their girls and bringing children into this world/Signing their names to a home on land they captured/Me? I’m still writing songs I’m scared you’ll hear some day

(from “If Raymond Carver Was Born in the 90’s”)

And…

It was Paris, 1949. It was love in a better time/Before photoshopped hips and collagen smiles, when longing meant more than a drunk dial/That’s why I’m always coming back to you

(from “Be my Juliette Gréco, Paris 1949”)

Literary references are sprinkled throughout, but don’t have the effect of an irritant (I’m looking at you, Sting). “Be My Juliette Gréco, Paris 1949” is like an energetic update of “Caroline No”. Honestly the whole album, with its propulsive rhythms and bright melodies, just sounds like summertime’s soundtrack to me.

In fact, it sounds a whole lot more like a great summer record than one from the summer previous that elicited description as a “great summer record” with a “Beach Boys vibe”. That record was Best Coast’s Crazy For You, and I think the shoreline cover art and fuzzy “retro” sound may have convinced some people it was something that, to my ears at least, it clearly was not. Though I feel sure Summer of Lust will sell far fewer copies than that album, this Canadian 10-piece has it all over Best Coast in songwriting terms. So with all that lazy, hazy, crazy just a few months off, it’s time to start that bikini diet and pick up Summer of Lust.

Listen to: “If Raymond Carver Was Born in the 90’s”

 

Don’t miss: “Reluctant Readers make Reluctant Lovers”

 

Listen to: “Be My Juliette Gréco, Paris 1949”

Recommended Albums #10

05 Mar 2012 2 Comments

by Ed Cyphers in Recommended Albums Tags: ,

Light Divides

Winterpills: The Light Divides (2007)

Northampton, MA Indie/Folk/Pop band Winterpills’ second (and finest) album unfolds its melodic charms with each repeated listen, until it feels as indispensable as any recent pop record. It’s a work of seductive wintry melancholy as the cover suggests.

Acoustic guitar is usually central in the mix, with electric guitar and keyboards texturing the simple yet sophisticated arrangements. But the sound most prominently defined by songwriter Philip Price’s lead vocals and Flora Reed’s complimentary harmonies–a magical male-female vocal mix. A work of gentle sophistication, this is a gem of a record.

See also: https://edcyphers.com/2013/05/10/songs-you-may-have-missed-411/

Listen to: “Shameful”

Listen to: “July”

Listen to: “A Ransom”

Recommended Albums #9

01 Mar 2012 2 Comments

by Ed Cyphers in Recommended Albums Tags: ,

Easy Wonderful

Guster: Easy Wonderful (2010)

I reckon that the way I was turned on to Guster is typically how it happens among their fans. A friend handed me their Ganging Up On The Sun CD and said pretty casually, “Every song on this album is good”. I laughed. Said friend’s taste is usually but not always a reliable barometer for me, and this was the most bodacious claim she’d ever made for a band. I scoffed at the thought that there could be an artist out there virtually unfamiliar to me (I’d heard them do “Donde Esta Santa Claus” on a holiday compilation) who could fill a whole CD with musical goodness. But it only took me about three listens to come to the same conclusion: there was no filler on Ganging Up On The Sun. What a fluke.

guster

Shortly after the record reached heavy rotation status in my world I learned Guster was about to release Easy Wonderful. I was filled with the dread of knowing the Guster high I was on was about to crash to earth. No way would the next album be nearly as good. I’d become a fan, you see, but not yet a true believer. Easy Wonderful is probably better than Ganging Up On The Sun.

So I sent some Guster to a friend in Massachusetts. It sat on his pile of music–every hapless music fanatic has at least a stack or two of stuff that’s waiting to be heard; I have about 30–until I reminded him I wanted to know how he liked it. What I didn’t tell him was how secretly smug I was in the certainty that he’d love Guster. Or that I was looking forward to that magical moment…you know, the moment when you get to bask in the reflected glory of a band just because you were the one who handed them off, conveniently forgetting for the moment that friend who was hipper than you and turned you onto the same band. But enough about her…

My friend’s email began: “Ed: Okay, Guster’s great.”

YESSSSS!

Similar stories must happen all the time for this band. They’re one of the archetypical “word of mouth bands”. Their fans aren’t casual fans. “Gusterrhoids” are among the most fanatical followers of any band. I get the reason. Simply put, no current band or artist comes to mind who puts more appealing melodies on an album. If you like somewhat quirky, melodic pop performed by three somewhat quirky, charismatic guys–this is your band. What I don’t get is why they arent’t bigger. Perhaps it’s because their music is simultaneously accessible and outside the realm of mainstream pop. Whatever. I only know of two types of music fans: those who love Guster, and those who don’t know Guster. Easy Wonderful is your invitation to cross to the other side.

See also: https://edcyphers.com/2013/03/17/songs-you-may-have-missed-364/

See also: https://edcyphers.com/2015/01/31/songs-you-may-have-missed-521/

See also: https://edcyphers.com/2019/03/23/songs-you-may-have-missed-633/

 

Listen to: “Do You Love Me”

 

Listen to: “Architects And Engineers”

 

Listen to: “On the Ocean”

 

Listen to: “Bad Bad World”

Recommended Albums #8

26 Feb 2012 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in Recommended Albums Tags: , ,

Ye Olde Space Bande Plays the Classic Rock Hits

The Moog Cookbook: Ye Olde Space Bande: Plays The Classic Rock Hits (1997)

Classic rock is awesome. So awesome I can’t stand to listen to most of it anymore.

I was raised on the rock that’s now called “Classic” but it was never the only kind of music I loved. I followed the trail of melody that snaked its way through classic rock and Pop in the 70’s, meandered across Country for part of the 80’s, hid out in the badlands of alt country in the 90’s, and sometimes stays at the youth hostel of indie pop today. I’ll always love melody and harmony, but have an undying appetite for new music, so the classic rock songs I loved in my youth, while still magical, have been faded by radio’s heavy rotation. I’m numb from their overexposure.

moog

I remember the visceral thrill of hearing ambitious, iconoclastic songs like “Hotel California”, “Sultans of Swing” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” for the first time. In some cases I actually remember where I was when I first heard them, they were that impactful and format-bending. And even today I love when any band shows a willingness to “take it to the limit” and try to write that Big One–the concert encore, their own “Stairway to Heaven”.

The flip side is, there’s a slippery boundary between the portentous and the pretentious, and I’ve found I’m capable of simultaneously feeling that a song is undeniably great and “a bit up itself”. So sometimes a “great” rock song needs somebody to take the piss out of it.

Enter The Moog Cookbook, a “band” made up Brian Kehew and Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. who perform rock’s sacred canon on cheesy analog synthesizers (mostly Moogs), the musical equivalent of drawing caricatures of Jesus in the margins of a Bible.

moog-2

Having enjoyed its heyday in the Disco and New Wave eras, the synthesizer was eschewed by pop acts of the late 80’s and early 90’s. Brian and Roger, who shared a love for synth sounds, bought up unwanted keyboards at bottom dollar and got the idea to make a modern version of the type of album popular in the 60’s, when cheesy synthesizer instrumental tributes to the Beatles and others were popular. Their self-titled 1996 LP sent up contemporaries like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Weezer and Green Day. “Ye Olde Space Band: Plays The Classic Rock hits” was another brilliant combination of parody and homage, with 70’s icons from Nugent to Skynyrd as its subject (or target, depending on your point of view).

“Hotel California” is a highlight. The original version being famous for one of the longest instrumental codas of any hit single (maybe second only to “Layla”) that coda is here used to pay tribute to a couple Moog riffs from the past (Hot Butter’s “Popcorn” and Del Shannon’s “Runaway”). On “25 Or 6 To 4” they raise the ante, throwing in pieces of Led Zeppelin’s “All My Love”, the Ventures’ “Walk, Don’t Run”, The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and War’s “Spill the Wine”, also demonstrating the chord progression the songs all share.

This album is like a music fan’s Easter egg hunt. It’s also really funny, if you’re inclined to get the musical joke. And the bonus: it pisses on Don Henley a little bit. And he kind of needed it.

About two minutes’ listen should be long enough for you to decide for yourself if it’s genius or rubbish. I know what I think.

Listen to: “Hotel California”

Listen to: “More Than a Feeling”

Listen to: “25 Or 6 To 4”

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