Wow And Flutter

Long and short pieces on music you should listen to; audio gear; and pop culture.

Category: Reviews (Page 1 of 2)

Record Store Day Part 1 releases, part 2

June 18, 2021 /

Happy Friday, everyone.  I hope you’ve had a happy and healthy week.  Here in Massachusetts, we’re in a very good place for the time being (and hopefully much longer than that), but other parts of the country (never mind the world) are not as fortunate.  So think of them; and if you can do something about it, do something about it.   

Let’s listen to some more finds from the first 2021 RSD: 

Al Green – Give Me More Love: The Orchestral Greatest Hits (Hi/Fat Possum) 

(Hi/Fat Possum) 

Winner of the first annual Wow And Flutter “Least Essential RSD Release.”  Al Green’s Hi recordings are legendary and essential American music, equal in stature to any of the great American vocalists.  Now, I’m not one to say a recording can NEVER be improved – look at what Giles Martin has been able to do with the Beatles remasters.  But taking Willie Mitchell’s perfect production, overlaying strings over it AND de-emphasizing the original instrumental work subverts one of the great beauties of the original recordings, which is the SPACE, or ‘holes’ that exists in those arrangements, that let Reverend Al’s delivery breathe.  To boot, a crappy paper inner sleeve is included.  It’s on pink vinyl, if you find that important.  Give Me Less. 

Donny Hathaway – Live (Atco/Rhino) 

(Atco/Rhino) 

This is a storied live album that regularly makes its way into lists of “best live albums.”  I don’t know if it makes my top 5, but it’s a wonderful, soulful set.  Hathaway, who was taken from us too soon at age 33, shows his estimable skills and beautiful voice in this VERY live set recorded at the Troubadour in Hollywood, and the Bitter End in the Village.  It sounds almost like a very, very good audience taper recorded it – you can almost smell the smoke and whiskey.  (This is not a complaint.)  Made up of mostly – well-chosen – covers and originals like his classic The Ghetto, the rapturous audience has every right to be rapturous.  John Lennon’s Jealous Guy is a highlight.  And the band COOKS, notably on the closer Voices Inside (Everything is Everything.)  Another carefully made Rhino reissue – wonderful gatefold jacket and a proper poly-lined inner sleeve.  

Toots and the Maytals – Funky Kingston (Island) 

(Island) 

Another classic, the definitive reggae album.  Yes, more than anything by any of the Wailers, or The Harder They Come.  Aside from the fancy white/blue split vinyl pressing, nothing fancy here packaging-wise (and yet another shitty paper sleeve!)  This is not remastered, but it’s a decent pressing, though nothing special.  At the end of the day though, it’s just fabulous and uplifting reggae.  If you don’t own this yet, please fix that immediately. 

Working From Home, day 1,345

April 7, 2020 /
the jon madsen movie commentary podcast: Episode 12: Sixteen ...

Well, no. Not that long.  It’s only been four weeks now that I’d been sent away from my office to work from home (WFH), and thankfully I’m still working.  Zoom is my absolute lifeline to the outside world, along with Roon+TIDAL.  If you haven’t heard of Roon yet, you will (mainly because I’m going to write about it in an upcoming post.)  But with all of my traditional, brick-and-mortar, touchy-feely record places shut tight for the foreseeable future, TIDAL is my musical lifeline.

One of the absolute killer features of Roon is its music discovery capabilities (think a much more sophisticated Pandora) that suggest music based on what’s in your library AND what you’ve listened to.  It misses some times, but when it hits, it’s creepy how good the suggestions are.  So, having set up a more permanent office in Wow and Flutter HQ (i.e., my old music room), I connected my Roon server to my vintage Harman/Kardon Citation Receiver and spend the first 5-10 minutes of my work day setting up an 8-10 hour queue of music for the day.  Here are some new-to-me discs I’ve played over the past couple of days. Check ’em out:

[enoshop.uk]

Mixing Colours, Roger Eno and Brian Eno
Of COURSE I’m going to start with an Eno disc.  This was just released as I was starting to settle in to my forced solitude, and it arrived at exactly the right time.  The Brothers Eno have uncorked yet another beautiful collection of ambient music, this one having music Roger created as long as 15 years back, to which Brian added his sonic treatments. 

[Superior Viaduct]

Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo, Raul Lovisoni/Francesco Messina
This one came out of left field (actually, from one of a bunch of artist lists in a Pitchfork piece.  This is a 1979 bit of “occult esoterica” from two Italian ambient music pioneers.  Although it gets ever-so-close to ‘aromatherapy music’, it never goes over the line into Windham Hill territory.  Recommended.

Future Nostalgia, Dua Lipa
OK, I listened to this at the END of the day.  This entire disc is a JAM, full of smart, danceable pop.  This is her second studio album, and was planned to be released as part of a huge rollout, with a spot on the Glastonbury roster, and a big tour (all of which were, obviously, scrapped.)  So, they took a chance and put it out.  I think their gamble paid off. Highly recommended.

Social Distancing Saturday Night, week 2

March 29, 2020 /

Our current reality for Saturday night fun: having some good Italian takeout from local favorite Orzo (support your local businesses that remain open!) and watching one of the many movies we missed from their original theater run (tonight: 1917. Well done all around.)

David Bowie - Blackstar - Vinyl LP - 2016 - US - Original | HHV

Tonight’s post-cinema disc: the fingers landed on David Bowie’s final album, Blackstar. His parting gift to us all, and his final piece of art. He recorded the damn thing in secret in NYC while he was sick with liver cancer with old friend Tony Visconti producing, and jazz saxophonist Donny McCaslin’s quartet backing him. It was released on his 69th birthday, and two days later he was dead. The album package is reputedly full of Easter eggs, but the most important thing here is the music.

Talk about a sprint to the finish line: while 2013’s (also) out-of-the-blue The Next Day was a welcome return to form, it wasn’t as start-to-finish strong as this disc. The band puts plenty of swing into these tracks, but they all rock. Bowie’s lyrics here are more evocative/cryptic than ever. They paint a gray mood at the beginning of the disc, growing darker towards the beginning of side two, then the light dawns on the last two tracks. It’s on “Dollar Days” and “I Can’t Give Everything Away” that he appears to come to terms with his end. You come to realize in gifting this work to us that he loved this world as much as the world loved him back.

The only five R.E.M. albums you need

May 27, 2019 /

My piece on the Bingo Hand Job (a/k/a R.E.M.) 1991 concert disc got me thinking about this band that’s been part of my musical DNA since they wormed their way into my brain in 1983, with the release of Murmur, their dark, mysterious, poppy and pretty fantastic full-length debut album. That disc sat on my turntable for a good solid month while I listened, headphones on, trying with all my might to figure out just exactly what Michael Stipe was actually singing about. And once I thought I had the lyrics figured out, I had to reevaluate that opinion the next time I listened to those songs. It was like they were a living being, constantly changing their shape and identity; but that’s what made those early songs so beautiful. Their meaning is what you want to believe it is. It’s like the ending of Lost In Translation: what is Bill Murray whispering in Scarlett Johansson’s ear in the last scene? Doesn’t matter: write your own poetry.

Which R.E.M. albums do you need to have? That your life will be entirely empty without? Well, let’s be honest: you need ALL of them, but if you had to pick only five, they are:

  1. Murmur (1983) Where it all began. Jangly guitars, and mood that mirrors the kudzu vines growing on the cover. Song You’ll Play On Repeat: Radio Free Europe.
  2. Reckoning (1984) Their followup, but deftly avoids the “let’s make another one like the last one” trap. Their lyrics are a little clearer, and the sound punchier. Song You’ll Play On Repeat: Don’t Go Back To Rockville.
  3. Document (1987) The album after Lifes Rich Pageant. NOT produced by John Mellencamp’s producer Don Gehman, but goddamn if “Strange” isn’t the spitting image of vintage Mellencamp. Side two gets murky (but worth the trip) after “The One I Love,” but side one is killer, including the song-for-our-current-times “Exhuming McCarthy.” Song You’ll Play On Repeat: It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).
  4. New Adventures in Hi-Fi (1996) A recent addition to my collection, and so fricking good that it kicked Out Of Time from the top 5 list. The last album with Bill Berry behind the drum kit, and the band playing (most of the tracks were recorded live, during their tour behind Automatic for the People) as if they knew it were the last time they’d all be together. Song You’ll Play On Repeat: The Wake-Up Bomb.
  5. Automatic for the People (1992) Saved the best for last. In fact, if you only had room for ONE R.E.M. album on your shelf, this would be it. There is not a single song on this album that is not a classic. Despite the album’s overall theme of (as guitarist Peter Buck noted) “mortality, the passage of time, suicide and family,” it’s inspiring, moving and (yes) funny. And it rocks hard (“Ignoreland.) Song You’ll Play On Repeat: Nightswimming.

The Flash of (Soundtrack) Recognition

May 9, 2019 /

I love the movies. More to the point, I love going to the movies. When I was a kid I loved seeing movies, but I really started going to the movies in college (the scene of so many discoveries, I know.) Everyone at the U had a writing requirement in their first year – everyone took the same course first semester, but you got to pick the second semester course. So, I picked “Rhetoric of Film.” NOT a gut course, I assure you. We had to write a lot, but the fun part was that we got to see a different film/program every week to write about. One week was Persona. Another week was a bunch of Max Fleischer cartoons (“Popeye”, the Superman shorts.) But every week was awesome, and I grew to love and appreciate every aspect of great film – the cinematography, the writing, and the music.

Music has always been a key tool of the filmmakers’ craft, used to create mood or convey thoughts without dialog. In the mid-70’s filmmakers (starting pretty much with Saturday Night Fever) began incorporating more popular music in their soundtracks, and relying less on traditional, original musical scores. (TV, too – The Sopranos was masterful in its music selection.) Blockbuster movies especially leaned heavily on pop music. It’s become a game of mine to rate movies based on how awesome the song selection is. High Fidelity, of course, gets top marks.

But I was very pleasantly surprised when I went to see Avengers: Endgame opening weekend and found that the filmmakers were totally on their music game, capped with a scene where two of the Avengers visited another (don’t worry, no spoilers here!) to the backdrop of The Kinks’ Supersonic Rocket Ship. Whaaaaat?

“SRS” is on Everybody’s In Show-Biz, the half-studio, half-(drunkenly) live followup to the Kinks’ classic Muswell Hillbillies, and the track is often overlooked by the titanic song that is Celluloid Heroes, a legit Kinks Klassic. But Supersonic Rocket Ship is a classic in its own right. It channels the same tropical vibe as Apeman, but spools out some of the well-honed Ray Davies social observation in a way he wouldn’t do this skillfully for quite some years later. So, Marvel: well-done! If Avengers: Endgame wasn’t great enough already, including this song pushed the movie into the stratosphere.

Record Store Day 2019 Review: Bingo Hand Job (R.E.M.), Live at the Borderline 1991

April 25, 2019 /

One of the more anticipated releases from this year’s rich Record Store Day trove was a widely-bootlegged March 1991 almost impromptu live set from R.E.M., playing under the hilarious pseudonym Bingo Hand Job.  There are a couple of reasons I was stoked to get a copy: 1) the fairly limited number of copies pressed (3000 in the US); 2) R.E.M. was a band I sadly never got to see live, and 3) at the time, the band was not quite the biggest band in the world, though they were sure on their way.  So the chance to hear them in a really loose, mostly acoustic setting (they cover Love Is All Around, for crying out loud) was too good to miss.

[Craft Recordings]

The Borderline is a pretty legendary London club – holding only about 300 people, it’s pretty intimate.  You can get a sense of the room from the acoustic space generated from this recording.  For a bootleg recording, it’s not too bad.  I honestly don’t think they’ve cleaned it up at all, but it doesn’t matter: muddy sonics didn’t hurt Murmur, after all.

R.E.M. in 1990 (JA Barratt/Photoshot/Getty Images)

This is still the early R.E.M. I love so much – the songs on this two-disc set span their entire catalog up to that time.  The band is clearly loose and having a great time (as is the well-lubricated crowd), and the fun extended to the band members’ pseudonyms (Michael Stipe =“Stinky,” Peter Buck =“Raoul,” Mike Mills = “Ophelia”, Bill Berry = “The Doc,” as well as guests Spanish Charlie (Peter Holsapple of the dBs), Conrad (Billy Bragg) and Violet (Robyn Hitchcock).  As Mike Mills said recently, “” too concerned about being a professional band.”  Thank god for that.  If you can track down a copy of this at a not-insane price, (copies are going on eBay right now for about $75(!)) get it. 

Tracklist:

Side A

1. “World Leader Pretend”

2. “Half A World Away”

3. “Fretless”

4. “The One I Love”

Side B

1. “Jackson”/”Dallas”

2. “Disturbance At The Heron House”

3. “Belong”

4. “Low”

Side C

1. “Love Is All Around”

2. “You Are The Everything”

3. “Swan Swan H”

4. “Radio Song”

5. “Perfect Circle”

Side D

1. “Endgame”

2. “Pop Song 89”

3. “Losing My Religion”

4. “Get Up”

5. “Moon River”

Sight Unseen™ – David Byrne, Grown Backwards

April 3, 2019 /

I’ve loved the Talking Heads from the(ir) very beginning.  Their entire career arc – until it came to a crashing halt with Naked – was one of joy, exploration, funk, noise, and flat-out weirdness.  It says something about how the world has finally caught up with them, that when you do your weekly shopping at Market Basket and hear “Take Me To The River”, it just sounds like the jam that it is rather than the eyeballs-open-oh-my-god-what-is-that-coming-out-of-the-speakers effect it had on everyone in 1978.  Although: when I hear “I Zimbra” or “The Great Curve” in the Produce section, THEN the world will have fully caught up.

Of course I’ve been engaged in David Byrne’s post-Heads work, although given how musically promiscuous he’s been over the past almost 30 years with solo work and collaborations, it’s a bit of a task to keep up.  I’ve liked selected singles of his like “My Fair Lady” (released in 2004 as part of a Wired magazine collection produced under Creative Commons) and his track “Who” with St. Vincent, what’s and of course his two collaborations with Brian Eno, especially 2008’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.

[Nonesuch Records]

Nonesuch released Byrne’s 2004 disc Grown Backwards on March 15th on vinyl for the first time (hard to remember the “no vinyl” days, I know.)  The quality, inside and out, is typical for Nonesuch’s recent vinyl re-releases (including the spectacular 180g remaster of Nashville by Bill Frisell.)  Although this is the lighter 140g vinyl, the pressing quality is great, and Greg Calbi’s mastering is likewise. 

Grown Backwards is, on the one hand, a typical Byrne outing, running the gamut from songs like the opener “Glass Concrete & Stone” (now one of my new favorites) to “Glad”, with its Talking Heads-like cute/quirky/insightful lyrics (“I’m glad I’ve got skin, I’m glad I’ve got eyes/I’m glad I got hips, I’m glad I’ve got thighs/I’m glad I’m allowed to say the things I feel”)  The tunefulness of the original material is on par with the same year’s “My Fair Lady.”  And, strings!  Lots of them.  So, the album’s a keeper just based on those.

What really clinched the deal for me were the two songs lifted from the opera canon.  Yes.  Opera.  Byrne’s voice has always been an almost-operatic sweet tenor, just “off” enough in places to make to make it sound more like a natural yawp, but the rest of the time quite sweet (rather like one-time Talking Heads guitarist Adrian Belew (his voice is all-the-time great.))   “Au fond du temple saint”, from an 1863 Bizet opera, and Verdi’s “Un di felice, eterea” are the standouts on this record.  “Au fond du temple saint” is a duet with Rufus Wainwright(!) and is, hands down, the best track on this record.  The twin voices complement each other – in parts where Byrne’s seems to falter, Wainwright’s soars.  And vice versa.  There aren’t a lot of «««««-rated tracks on my iPod, but: welcome to the club, “Au fond du temple saint.”

The nice thing about Sight Unseen records is that they often (not always!) surprise you.  Grown Backwards turned out to be a satisfying confirmation of David Byrne’s creativity.  Get yo’self a copy.

You Guys, We Have To Talk About Thundercat

March 19, 2019 /

I have a TIDAL subscription, which lets me a) stream their tremendous catalog in VERY high fidelity anywhere I’ve got a broadband connection (some content even in the VERY VERY high fidelity MQA format) and b) dig in to a new artist’s catalog if I hear a new track I like, or read an article somewhere about someone hot or interesting.

Which brings me to Thundercat (Steven Lee Bruner.)  He’s been on the scene for about 15 years, joining Suicidal Tendencies as their bassist WHEN HE WAS 16.  Since then, he’s been in the forefront of the music scene, working closely with Kendrick Lamar, Kamasi Washington and Childish Gambino.  Just for starters.  And he’s released three albums as Thundercat, the most recent being 2017’s Drunk.

(Brainfeeder)

[Which I just started listening to last weekend!  Listen, I’ve got a backlog of music to get to!  Don’t give me shit!  Have you gone through your entire Netflix queue?  No?  Finished all those things around your place that you promised your roommate/wife/partner you’d get done?  Ok, then.]

Drunk is a 51 minute, wildly inventive, solid jam from start to finish.  Every track has an authoritative groove, and a lot of it is pretty chill.  Quite a few tracks actually remind me of early, downtempo Earth, Wind and Fire (without the horns.)  Which is not to imply that it’s in easy listening territory.  OK yes, Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins do show up on Show You The Way.  But the very same disc includes maybe my favorite song, Uh Uh, which is 2:16 of just insane bass playing that rivals anything Jaco Pastorius did in his most fevered sessions.  So, yes: nobody’s putting Uh Uh on at the company dinner party.   Or Walk on By, featuring Kendrick.  But it’s one of the most satisfying listens I’ve had in long time.  When I really like something, it pushes everything else out of the way for a good couple of days.  (In fact, prior to Drunk, my obsession for about a week was Stereolab’s Space Age Batchelor Pad Music.)  So, I figure this record has at least another week of the deep dive treatment; but, after that, Drunk is definitely going to occupy a permanent spot in my regular album rotation.  Highly recommended.

New feature! Sight Unseen™: Giorgio Moroder, Midnight Express soundtrack

March 7, 2019 /

Sight Unseen™ is a new feature here at WNF, where I write about a disc that I’ve taken in to my collection without knowing or heard anything about it, other than thinking that there may be good music in those grooves.

My most recent vinyl haul (from The Listening Room in Chestertown, MD) included Kurt Vile’s most recent release, Bottle It In (read my review here), and this gem from 1978.  It’s the soundtrack to the Alan Parker film Midnight Express, that late-70’s nugget that brought the phrase “Turkish Prison” into the wider vernacular.  To be honest, I’d never heard this record, even though it was ubiquitous in the years since its release (even I can miss stuff.  Yes, it is true.)

Recently, I’ve been digging back into Jean Michel Jarre’s groundbreaking 70’s works Oxygene and Equinoxe, and Moroder’s similarly important music in the same time parallels what Jarre was doing, but with a solid dance beat.  Moroder’s influence was everywhere then – see his work with Blondie, or with Donna Summer – straight through to the present, where no less than Daft Punk genuflected before him on Random Access Memories. 

As I walked into the shop that day, this very album was on the turntable  – the opening track, “Chase” was playing, and I just said, “take it off.  I need that.”  This music has aged very well, in contradistinction to its contemporaries.  One thing I appreciate about Moroder’s work is that the human element is always present.  No matter how cold the electronics may seem (e.g., I Feel Love) there is always a warmth that manages to work its way to the surface.  This ain’t Kraftwerk (and I love Kraftwerk, don’t flame me.) 

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