After crafting one of the last decade’s best songs (Archers of Loaf’s “Web in Front” from 1994), Eric Bachmann scrapped his band and created one of this decade’s best, “Call to Love” under his new nom de rock, Crooked Fingers. The sparkling songs are cut by a creeping darkness that recalls Lou Reed in places (especially on “Destroyer”), and the title track is a duet for piano and broken heart.
African music accessible to American ears. Mali’s leading exporters of indigenous pop team with Manu Chao to produce songs with layer upon layer of rhythms, guileless guitar, and stacked vocals. Don’t fret that you don’t know the language. You’ll understand the music.
AA Bondy makes music that comes from the “old, weird America”, a term coined by Greil Marcus to describe The Basement Tapes. Bondy, a spiritual kin to the rickety folk rock of The Felice Brothers, picks at the scabs that threaten to bleed the demons and devils that lie just beneath the skin’s surface. His debut, American Hearts, is a ghostly, weary affair that examines faith and despair in equal measures of darkness and redemption.
Mixing a down-on-his-luck everyman’s socially conscious worldview with a sly sense of humor, Jason Heath & the Greedy Souls debut sparkles with the same clean, effortless sound Uncle Tupelo captured on Anodyne, their magnificent swan song. Heath shoots (and scores!) for Petty and Springsteen territory, his sound sweetened with an alt-country stew of fiddle, accordion, standup bass and harmonica. I dare you not to fall in love with Heath’s “Anarchist Girl”.
Not since peanut butter first slammed into chocolate has there been a confectionary collision as satisfying as the head-on smash-up between the spun sugar of Neko Case’s voice and the heavy syrup of Carl Newman’s songs. On this, the band’s first, jagged melodies swarm like fireflies, and none glows brighter than “Letter From An Occupant,” one of the decade’s great indie singles.
Damon Albarn spent the decade doing whatever he damn well felt like, and he did what he felt like damn well, especially on the second album by his band of cartoon warriors, which combines funk, dub and pop into a bubbling, propulsive and dark platter of anti-matter.
Yet more exquisite professional perfection from the world’s leading purveyor of folkjazzbluespop. Delicate, but not dainty, wistful, but not wispy, and by the time the album builds to its centerpiece “Suit on a Frame,” it gains a sort of momentum you never saw coming.
Resist your initial inclination to dismiss the work of the wayward scion of a troubled troubadour, because Justin Townes Earle delivers a high and lonesome debut album that traded on the old-timey sounds of Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers, but still managed a fresh approach for ten original songs that mark him as an alt country star-in-waiting. Highlights include a jaunty romp of tough love (“Hard Livin”), a simple declaration of rootlessness in “The Good Life” and thoughts on “What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome”. Not to be missed in concert - JTE will be appearing at Johnny Brenda’s in March.
Ike Reilly is a long-time Teenage Kicks favorite. He returns today with Hard Luck Stories, ten songs about sex, drugs, returning vets, fucked up losers, fucked up winners, sex and drugs. Drawing on Dylan's deep, twisted phrasing and the feral gut punch of prime punk rock, Reilly is a master storyteller who's bringing back two things sadly missing in rock and roll - humor and swagger. The dude is a fist fight wrapped up in a three minute explosion of rock and roll, complete with pulsing, soaring chouses that imbed themsleves deep - you may not know it, but you need to hear Ike Reilly.
After our top 100 of the decade, we'll be bringing you more Ike Reilly, including an exclusive interview, but for now we'll leave you with this freewheeling duet with Shooter Jennings, "The War On The Terror And The Drugs", whose title seems to promise one thing but whose lyrics deliver, in the words of Monty Python, "something completely different". Meant to be played LOUD.
Hard Luck Stories is available digitally now at itunes and amazon.com.
There have been approximately 24,000 album released this decade. We heard less than 5% of those. But we know what we like and over the next few weeks we will bring to you, our loyal and content-starved Teenage Kicks readers, our favorite 100 records of the past ten years. We created a very comprehensive and scientific methodology to determine the artistic merit of each record. Some of the metrics included minus 10 points for any reference to an animal in your band name, plus 25 points for keeping all songs on the album under four minutes, minus 20 points if we could connect anything about your music to Dave Matthews, plus 5 points for any band including brothers and plus 15 points for bringing the rock.
And when we're done (or even before we start), feel free to tell us who we missed.
[This post, written by Trip, originally went up a few months back. It is being reposted because of technicall gremlins]
Imagine a reverb-less Fleet Foxes with Ben Folds playing piano and harmonizing and then listen to this absolutely lovely new song by The Avett Brothers, the title track to their new Rick Rubin produced album, I And Love And You, due 9/29 from Columbia Records. This moves to the top of my "I'll keep hectoring you until you buy this in 2009" list.
While we here at Teenage Kicks endeavor to cover as many musical events and happenings as possible, sometimes we're just proud to know people who are attending such rock and roll milestones as last night's Miley Cyrus concert (nice job Sherry), Pearl Jam's closing of The Spectrum, the Sir Rod tribute show at The Polish American Club in Clifton Heights on 11/21(Teenage Kicks gives this one our highest rating - at least the fab 70's first half of the show!). But then sometimes people who know people get to see rock and roll history unfurl right in front of them. Ace TK field reporter Scott McClatchy (aka Scooter) got to see The Rock and Roll 25th Anniversary concerts last week at Madison Square Garden. While Teenage Kicks initially cast a skeptical eye towards an event surely headed for major bloat (hello U2), could any rock show with Bruce Springsteen be a letdown? Our ace reporter says no, and files his report here.
10/13/09 – Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band open a four night stand as they play The Spectrum one last time… or four last times. Nostalgia has a way of refocusing the lens of time so that if we squint hard enough that a sports arena that housed its share of bad basketball teams, who-cares hockey teams, mutant circuses, pound-of-flesh-taking Disney extravaganzas and dinosaur rock bands somehow gets remembered as a quaint little showcase. Now we shut the old girl down and every gig becomes a must-see last gig. The good news is Springsteen rarely fails to deliver (I’m willing to forget the acoustic shows and the by-numbers Human Touch/Lucky Town tour if you are).
If you’re fortunate enough to have seen this tour (or at least don't live in Kansas City), I hope you saw a Born to Run show. From the mournful, opening call of “Thunder Road’s" harmonica and piano through the final, wounded howl of “Jungleland”, seeing Springsteen’s 1975 masterpiece start to finish was goose bump city. Yeah, the diehards were soiling themselves over rarities like “Seaside Bar Song”, “The Fever” or “This Hard Land”, but only because they were rare, not because they cold hold a candle to songs like “She’s The One”, “Backstreets”, “Meeting Across The River” (itself a bit of a rarity) or the twin titans of the title track and “Thunder Road”. Born To Run is the greatest American rock and roll record ever made and seeing Springsteen and the band tear through it was exhilarating and life-affirming, but also sadly beautiful.
And that’s because it really feels like this is the last tour for this configuration of the E Street Band. And this is the way to go out – not at their peak (nothing will top the legendary shows from the E Street Band’s first decade), but a still dynamic brotherhood who on their best nights can still summon the essence of rock and roll. The reason that believers still swear by Springsteen’s live show are the small moments that demonstrate that rock and roll should, at its core, be about fun. Think about that simple concept – FUN. (Ed. Note: It makes me wanna smack Jay Farrar). The local flavor inserted into the new “Wrecking Ball” (“cheesesteaks are as big as airplanes”), the request granting (a “Can I Sing” poster gets a little schoolgirl a show-stopping duet on “Waiting on a Sunny Day that also includes a kiss), another delirious little girl being twirled during “Dancing in The Dark”, the garage stomp of “Little Bit O Soul” complete with po-face mugging about his AARP cover appearance, are all topped off with the greatest of encore songs, “Rosalita”.
If this is indeed the last full blown E Street tour, as I’m positive we’ll see Springsteen down the road, I’ll just say:
“Well if you do you'll know I'm thinking of you and all the miles in between
And I'm just calling one last time not to change your mind
But just to say I miss you baby, good luck goodbye”
.
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - "Thunder Road" (12/28/75 - Tower Theater)
The next time someone tells you rock and roll is dead and cites Taylor Swift, the Jonas Brothers or Kanye West as proof, just tell them a) they’re wrong and b) Taylor, the JoBros and Kanye are the bomb. Now if they tell you that there’s no good current music and cite Britney Spears, Animal Collective and Jason Mraz as proof, just say a) I’m feelin’ ya, bro and b) you’re still wrong.
Because in 3 days this month, I experienced 5 shows that cleared away the cobwebs, got the blood pumping and proved that J-Roll’s double may not have been the most earth-shaking, head-snapping, jaw-dropping, chest-thumping moment this October. (OK, that might be a lie – while music rarely breaks your heart like your favorite sports team, moments like J-Roll’s gapper are timeless, unforgettable and able to unite a city that can usually only agree that there’s nothing that we can all agree on.).
So stay tuned and bear witness to the fervor and soul of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Lucero, the Avett Brothers, Lucero and Gaslight Anthem. That’s a murderer’s row of passionate rock and roll bands.
As a teaser, here’s two of my favorite songs of the year. My buddy Allen calls “Sounds of The City” the song of the year and god damn if “I And Love And You” doesn’t get me every single time.
