Songs You May Have Missed #627

02 Jun 2018 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in Songs You May Have Missed Tags: ,

Courtney Barnett: “Need a Little Time” (2018)

On her Grammy nominated 2015 debut, Courtney Barnett sliced through the muck largely due to a brilliant off-the-cuff lyric style, a wry, witty sense of detail, and a punk lite, almost Dylanesque delivery.

All good stuff.

But “Need a Little Time”, from the sophomore outing Tell Me How You Really Feel, confounded expectation. Where most of Barnett’s work playfully jabs at your frontal lobe, this one earnestly pulls at your heart. And the melodic hook here is like a fall into a vat of strawberry-flavored taffy.

Also good stuff.

See also: https://edcyphers.com/2015/05/16/songs-you-may-have-missed-531/

See also: https://edcyphers.com/2021/12/23/songs-you-may-have-missed-720/

Video of the Week: The Making of ‘Aura’, the Stunning Light Show at ​Montréal’s Notre-Dame Basilica

13 May 2018 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in Video of the Week Tags:

Loreena McKennitt: Why I’m leaving Facebook

11 May 2018 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags:

(Richard Haughton photo)

The invasion of privacy and erosion of human rights, the weaponizing of our personal data, the destruction of the music and news industries, a platform designed to be addictive — the time has come to act, writes Loreena McKennitt.

By Loreena McKennitt (via the star)

I remember as a rambunctious red-headed tomboy running around the house with my playmates and my mother admonishing me, “Don’t run so fast, you’ll break something!” And sure enough, sometimes we did.

Now, decades later, those words come flooding back as I reflect on the defining motto of Silicon Valley, “move fast and break things.” In particular, I think of Facebook.

In response to the recent revelations of its misuse of personal data, I’ve decided to leave the platform and encourage my half-million-plus followers to instead keep in touch through my website. I’m told this is a path of professional suicide, especially as I’m about to release a new recording.

Times have certainly changed in the music business since I started out busking in the 1980s. Some would argue we were the first industry to be broken…

Read more:

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2018/04/19/loreena-mckennitt-why-im-leaving-facebook.html

The Low Notes: Examining The Worst Songs Of All Time

11 May 2018 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags:

(via urbo) by Jamie Wiles

They say music is subjective, but don’t tell that to the critics.

Lester Bangs, the patron saint of U.S. rock criticism, once said that, “The first mistake of art is to assume that it’s serious.” Yet plenty of music critics get paid to make that mistake, and even more do it on a volunteer basis.

Paid or not, critics seem to assume that the creators of a song are, like, morally culpable for the quality of their product. People hate few things like they hate a bad song. Maybe that’s just because no nuanced weighing of relative merits is as fun as a thorough critical hatchet job.

That’s why we have Sean Beaudoin in Salon sneering at the “10 Bands [He] Will Be Forced to Listen To in Hell.” (Beaudoin goes on to trash The Beach Boys, a band that inspired luminaries from The Beatles to My Bloody Valentine.) It’s why we have Pitchfork, the website that once said of Sonic Youth: “These 40+year olds continue to operate under the perception that they matter.”

Here’s the weird thing about paying really, really close attention to pop music, though: The closer you look at a given track, the harder it is to discard it out-of-hand. When you pry a song open to check out its composite elements—harmonic structure, melodic lines, counterpoint, rhythmic shifts, dynamics, all the nuts and bolts of the pop tradition—pretty much everything is at least interesting. Even the terrible stuff…

Read more:

https://www.urbo.com/content/examining-the-worst-songs-of-all-time/

Here’s What the Members of ABBA Have Been Up To During Their 35-Year Hiatus

28 Apr 2018 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags:

© RB/Redferns Abba

(via msn entertainment) by Morgan Enos

BBA suddenly announced their return to the studio and stage Friday (April 27). The legendary Swedish pop band took to Instagram to clarify their full intention behind their upcoming “avatar” tour project, in which the band will be featured as holograms resembling their 1970s selves. Said the band: “We all felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did.”

This most unique pop ensemble, consisting of two married couples — Agnetha Fältskog with Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson with Anni-Frid Lyngstad — may not have produced any music together during their three decades apart, but they’ve hardly been out of commission. There have been plenty of dispatches from both camps prior to their reunion this year. Here is a breakdown of what the members of ABBA have been up to during their long silence…

Read more:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/heres-what-the-members-of-abba-have-been-up-to-during-their-35-year-hiatus/ar-AAwroXN?ocid=spartanntp

Thanks to streaming, recording industry revenues are back up to pre-internet levels, but musicians are poorer than ever

27 Apr 2018 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags:

(via boing boing) by Cory Doctorow

Since the days of Napster, record labels have recruited recording artists as allies in their fight against unauthorized music services, arguing that what was good for capital was also good for labor.

But as Teresa Nielsen Hayden says, “Just because you’re on their side, it doesn’t mean they’re on your side.”

Since the rise of streaming services, recording artists have complained bitterly about the pittances they receive in royalties, while the streaming services countered that they were sending billions to the labels, who were pocketing all the money without passing it on to the talent…

Read more:

https://boingboing.net/2018/04/24/which-side-are-you-on-3.html

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