Jarrett House North: Music

Les Troyens: Early reviews in

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:39:46 GMT

Boston Globe: Glimpses of Fire, Passion at Symphony Hall. As I mentioned last night, Dwayne Croft’s cold was in evidence, and Jeremy Eichler mentions it, and is negative about Marcello Giordano’s performance as well. But he gives thumbs up to Yvonne Naef and practically glows about the TFC, giving the longest review mention (a full paragraph!) that we’ve had from the Globe in recent memory:

The hero of last night's outing was the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, which sang, from the outset, with unflagging energy, commitment, and focus. The expansive contours and sheer tonal force required for the score's massive climaxes were all present, but so were the delicacy and transparency necessary to bring across passages such as the beautifully tender prayer sung by the Trojan women at the outset of the second tableau of Act II.

Oh, and thanks to the angle the photographer took for the article photo, you can clearly see me. Look directly above Clayton Brainerd (the second standing soloist from the right) and I’m two rows up, with my mouth wide, wide open. Hey, it was a big scene.

And regarding the “rough-edged” comments about the work: we have three more performances, and history tells us that each one will be better and better.

Wow, that was something: Les Troyens

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:22:14 GMT

Opening night is past. Les Troyens, Part I is a magnificent beast, and it has already bloodied the cast—poor Dwayne Croft had a cold the likes of which I’ve never heard from someone singing a part like that. I think we all breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the duet. All the soloists were magnificent, but the prize has to go to Yvonne Naef, or as I called her in my Facebook status “Yvonne Fricking Naef” in homage to John Moltz’s Jennifer Fricking Connolly. Her Cassandra is vulnerable, fierce, and fey, and easily the strongest presence on stage. A close second would have to be our women: hats off to Fanw and other women of the chorus, whose second act number is one of the great heart-seizing moments in Berlioz (or in all women’s chorus literature, for that matter).

I’ve been overwhelmed with the rehearsals, but now I can’t wait to sing it again. Good thing we repeat Part I three more times!

Performing for the Pope

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:18:22 GMT

My friends and colleagues in the Suspicious Cheese Lords have been busy lately. This weekend they sang for Pope Benedict XVI (Yes, seriously.) at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center. The piece was a composition by George Cervantes, a setting of the Peace Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, making the occasion that much cooler. Plus Skip was interviewed on CNN about the performance. And the video is prime Skip. Full video of the performance (starts at around 18:30). and other activities at the center is available through the EWTN Global Catholic Network site.

Way to go, guys. I expect to hear about your official appointment as choir in residence at the Sistine Chapel any day now. (But maybe not an appointment to be a CNN correspondent! Boy, they cut Skip off pretty fast in that interview!)

New mix: 2:42

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 04:46:16 GMT

My 2:42 mix is now posted at Art of the Mix. I decided to keep to the format of the original, and only included twelve songs.

I noticed, looking at Isis’s version, that some of her track lengths were different from mine—for instance, her version of “That Teenage Feeling” by Neko Case is 2:42, whereas mine is 2:43. A second’s difference is surprising—maybe it’s just the difference between buying the track digitally and ripping it. Or maybe different media players round differently, who knows.

I haven’t had a chance to take up Greg’s challenge and make a 4:33 mix yet. Who knows what that would turn out like? Very quiet, I expect.

2:42

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:47:24 GMT

Joshua Allen at The Morning News (via BoingBoing) writes about his deductive process of identifying the perfect pop song length, at two minutes and 42 seconds:

The scientists then dug up this song by a group that pretty much defines one-hit wonder: the La’s. The song is “There She Goes,” and is so flawless that it instantly made everything else the band did pointless. This ditty is two minutes and 42 seconds, and is all about songwriting economy....
What else is at 2:42? “Don’t Do Me Like That” by Tom Petty. “Divine Hammer” by the Breeders. “Helplessly Hoping” by Crosby, Stills & Nash. “Get Up” by R.E.M. “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas & the Papas. “This Charming Man” by the Smiths.
You need more proof? Jerk. Let’s look at Sgt. Pepper. “Lovely Rita” is two minutes, 42 seconds. It delivers that psychedelic vibe and a coda but then gets the hell out of your life.

Allen then lays down the challenge with a mixtape of twelve songs that clock in at exactly 2:42. Which sounds like a meme waiting to happen. Unfortunately my iTunes library is at home so I can’t try the experiment, but I’ll put it out there for the usual suspects. Can you top his mix?

Fun with Berlioz

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 04:31:40 GMT

We had an unusual rehearsal the other night. Instead of being in the chorus room in the bowels of Symphony Hall, we were on stage, and we had cameras on us. It was for the BSO’s podcast series, and the episode is now out: an interview with our fearless leader John Oliver, with shots of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus rehearsing the Berlioz Les Troyens and some footage from the recent Met staging of the opera. I think it gives good insight into both the piece and the chorus (as well as some amusing photos of John in the 1970s).

What’s that? You didn’t know the BSO had a podcast series? Well, that might be because the podcast link is ill-placed on the front page, is not autodiscoverable, and isn’t in the iTunes directory. Not to mention, the podcast URL has a session ID in it. Hey BSO webmaster—fix it, won’t you?

We love it when our friends become successful

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:17:01 GMT

In another of an intermittent series of posts about past acquaintances of mine who are now Doing Great Things, I happened to think the other day about Darius Van Arman. Darius and I went to the University of Virginia at around the same time, and primarily bumped into each other in the basement of Peabody Hall, where all the University publications were at that time. I was getting a poetry magazine called Rag & Bone off the ground; he was working on a music and creative magazine called 3.7. I publicly disclaimed some things the magazine did (spending lots of money on heavy cover stock, lookalike black covers, extremely goth fiction and illustration, heavy reliance on distorting type on a path in Quark—the latter was a Darius trademark) and privately admired the magazine’s confidence in its own aesthetic and their ability to get interviews with musicians and artists, a real differentiator between the magazine and anything else that was going on.

I bumped into Darius a little while after graduation. He was still living in Charlottesville but was working on starting a label, which he was going to call Jagjaguwar.

This week I decided to search for Jagjaguwar and see what I could find. What I found was: Jagjaguwar is the home of bands like Okkervil River, Black Mountain, Bon Iver, Wolf Parade side project Sunset Rubdown, and Ladyhawk. They’s got a good nationwide scope through a distribution deal with indie label Secretly Canadian. Heck, I’ve been listening to Jagjaguwar cuts on the KEXP podcasts for a year or more without knowing it. Darius has made it... well, not big, but he’s made something real without compromising his credibility. Heck, he even did an NPR interview with ex-Sleater Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein. Back in the Hook, that would have gone the other way around.

Rolling Stones on eMusic

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:26:01 GMT

Busy today, so just a quick note: I think eMusic just justified the cost of a subscription to the service. All the Rolling Stones albums on ABKCO are on the service now, including the singles compilations. Go, go, download.

Getting ready for the big one

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:21:59 GMT

The big concert, that is, or concerts to be more precise. The last Tanglewood Festival Chorus concert series of the Symphony Hall part of our season is coming up, and it’s big: Hector Berlioz’s two part opera, Les Troyens. Everything about it is big: five acts divided into two nights, big chorus, big orchestra, big writing.

The background on the opera’s composition makes for some interesting reading, a classic battle between artist and public. Berlioz wrote what he felt to be a magnum opus, only to have it whittled down by the only opera house willing to perform it. Of the audiences who came to see the opera, he remarked glumly, “Yes, they are coming, but I am going.”

We’ve had a pair of rehearsals, and all I can say is that so much tonality, after the astringent aesthetic of the Bolcom, feels kind of sinful. Should be a fun run.

Reliving youth I: Ramagon

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:32:27 GMT

I don’t know what it says about me that I spent a good part of Saturday morning obsessively trying to remember the name of a toy that I had twenty-five years ago. In my defense, I was only trying to get the second movement of Bolcom’s 8th out of my head.

The toy I was trying to recall was a construction set. The main parts were a polygonal hub to which one connected struts to build the structure. After a good amount of aimless Google searches (though building toys 80s rods does turn up some funny things), the name swum into my head, unbidden. Ramagon.

The best image I found of the Ramagon toy was in an eBay listing. You can see the struts, in multiple lengths, in the front of the photo, with the soccer-ball-like hubs beside them. I had forgotten the snap-in panels, which were in different shapes to adopt to the different angles that could be formed from the intersection of hubs and spokes. And this was one of the cooler bits about the toy: while you could build right angles with it, its native symmetry was triangular and pyramidal. The symmetry came from the hubs, which are octagonal in cross section. The hubs could accept eight spokes in the same plane around their equator, eight more above or below the equatorial plane, coming off at about 45 degree angle, and one more at each pole. The spokes snapped in and out easily, as their tips were composed of two prongs that could be compressed together to fit into the holes in the hubs, and compressed again to come out.

The spokes were the weak link in the set; while the rest of the construction was solid, the plastic was just on the brittle side of strong and those prongs were prone to snapping off. (You’ll notice in the eBay image that a few prongs, disconnected from their struts, are included). But the set as a whole was very cool. You could build stuff with it that simply outclassed anything that you could do with either Lego (of the time, with its strongly rectilinear bias) or Erector. In fact, I remember hearing from one of my Dad’s NASA colleagues that the set strongly resembled something that was to become the foundation for the Space Station frame, and that NASA used the Ramagon sets to model future structures (this mention of the toy in a Kennedy Space Center kid’s book is kind of suggestive).

So what happened to Ramagon, and why isn’t it remembered in the same breath as Lego? One issue, perhaps was the purity of the hub and spoke model. You’ll notice in the eBay picture that the hubs had to do a lot of extra duty as engines, gun barrel mouths, and even wheels (with special rubber wraparound “tires” applied). There was no real room for the custom pieces that allowed Lego builders to extend beyond the basic brick.

And the company building the toy had its own issues. The founder, Richard Gabriel, took the concept from licensee to licensee but was apparently never able to get enough going to build market momentum.

More Bolcom reviews

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:24:41 GMT

I’ve turned in my score and come back to work from Carnegie Hall, but I still can’t get Bolcom’s 8th out of my mind. Then the perilous path was planted/And a river and a stream/from every cliff and tomb/till on the bleached bones/red clay brought forth, indeed. My bleached bones are a little sore from too little sleep and the train ride, but I remain under the spell of the piece.

There was no review in the New York Times this morning—one hopes one will be forthcoming—but a pair of reviews in other sources give a pretty good impression of the concert. ConcertoNet gave a positive review, pointing out the strong role of the women of the TFC in the work (“At other times, as in The Shadowy Daughter of Urthona, the rarified women’s group (as well as a lovely solo by Lorenzee Cole) illustrated this feminine poem”). And on a blog called Leonard Link, New York Law professor Arthur S. Leonard specifically called out the “excellence of the chorus” while declining to give a detailed impression of the piece since he and other listeners in the balcony did not receive text booklets. It’s unfortunate, as I thought our diction last night was particularly clear; I guess the hall swallowed the consonants.

For the benefit of Mr. Leonard and the other balcony listeners, the texts, as well as the full unexcerpted program notes, are available in PDF on the BSO web site.

BSO review: TFC "positively heroic" in Bolcom Symphony #8

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:45:26 GMT

It was one of those concerts where you had to wait for the review to see how it came out.

William Bolcom’s Symphony #8 is an enormously complex work compressed into less than 40 minutes of polychromatic, muscular, dense writing, in which the chorus is singing for approximately 35 of those minutes. And the chorus runs its vocal gamut, from sprechstimme to dense six-voice a cappella passages to pure melodic intervals that recall the Andrews Sisters to big Mahlerian finale scales. Add to that an orchestral arrangement that crams a marimba, piano with plucked strings, bells and half a dozen other unusual percussion instruments alongside the strings, winds, and brass, all playing hell for leather through the opening and closing movements, and you begin to understand why the audience response might be muted as they absorb what they heard.

And muted it was. At the end the audience applauded seated, rising to its feet only after the orchestra and chorus stood for their bows. None of the wild adulation that greeted our Gurrelieder performances. We joked onstage that the applause was actually much louder, but that we had been deafened by the French horns and timpani in the final chords.

The Globe’s review (Jeremy Eichler) captures some of the challenges and the rewards of the piece:

The chorus has an extremely prominent role throughout the 35-minute work. Those not steeped in the mythology of Blake’s prophetic poetry will need to rely on help from the program to grasp the meaning of figures like “the shadowy daughter of Urthona” or “the red Orc.” Or you can sit back and let the textual details slide. Bolcom’s choral writing is so assured that the expressive force of the music comes through clearly. This is especially true in the rich and harmonically pungent passage that closes the second movement. The finale ends with a grand orchestral-choral tapestry woven from Blake's line “For every thing that lives is Holy,” and crowned with a blazing apotheosis.
The sincerity of this music is touching and there is no denying its primal expressive power; its dimensions feel at times overstuffed and its emotional pitch less varied than one might imagine for a cosmos as vast as Blake’s. Singing from memory, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus gave a positively heroic performance, and Levine and the orchestra went a long way toward bringing out the countless buzzing details in this score.

Bolcom and Blake: Songs of prophecy and chromaticism

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:39:48 GMT

An article in the Globe last week about composer William Bolcom’s new string octet, given its Boston premiere on Friday, spilled the beans about Bolcom’s new Symphony No. 8, commissioned by James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra and dedicated to the BSO and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. It’s a monumental work in four movements, a choral symphony that sets the prophetic poetry of William Blake (“The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” “America: A Prophecy,” and “Jerusalem, or the New Albion” among others) into a four-movement symphonic poem. It’s a foreboding piece to learn, particularly for the chorus that has to memorize six to eight voice harmonies that are frequently in augmented sevenths and diminished ninths to each other.

But last night we ran through it for the first time for Maestro Levine, and it started to make sense. And the moments of great lyricism started to insinuate themselves into my skull. And I started to realize that part of coming to terms with this piece is coming to terms with Blake himself, which is no small task.

I feel, as a lone chorister facing the work, somewhat like one of Blake’s copper plates. Having received my acid bath I am ready to reveal his text in all its glory.

We will premiere the work at Symphony Hall next weekend and in New York at Carnegie Hall on Monday night. If my good friend Pes, whose undergrad thesis was a work on Blake that he etched into copper plates (!), is out there listening, you should come by. I’d love to hear what you think of Bolcom’s take on the visionary.

Best albums of 2007

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:27:24 GMT

I had been meaning to post this for a while and finally got around to it. I couldn’t quite pull off a top 10 for 2007, but I did manage a top 12, and you can find it on Lists of Bests (where you can create your own list of “Best of 2007” and see how your tastes stack up against other LoB users).

My number one, unsurprisingly, was Radiohead’s In Rainbows, which stayed at the top of my playlist for a good three months—longer than any other album this year. Right behind it, of course, was Black Francis’s Bluefinger. And behind that? A few surprises. Marissa Nadler’s Bird on the Water totally pwned me the first time I heard it, and it’s one of the few albums I listened to twice in a row this year. Only a little weakness in some of the lyrics kept it out of the top 2. M.I.A.’s Kala, on the other hand, snuck past me when it came out; it took her KEXP in-studio appearance to get me to listen to it again, and now I’m hooked. And Feist’s The Reminder is a nice chocolate ice-cream of an album, in that it’s probably unhealthy how many times I spun it this year to enjoy its sweet pop hooks.

The rest of the list is probably unsurprising—Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, new records from Iron & Wine, the White Stripes, the Arcade Fire, and PJ Harvey. But two were kind of surprising to me personally. I didn’t expect Nick Cave’s side project Grinderman to be as much fun as it is, and I was totally blown away by Rickie Lee Jones’s rambling, honest, and deeply devotional Sermon on Exposition Boulevard—highly recommended for all, and a must listen if you’re a seminarian. (Ahem).

New mix: coverflow

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 05:23:59 GMT

The only mix that I’ve ever done that started as a visual pun, coverflow contains a set of covers that hit some familiar ground and some unfamiliar items as well. It’s hard to do these right; my previous effort suffered from some lofi recordings and the same is true here. But there’s some fun stuff here. Particularly fun was sorting through the long hidden track at the end of Justin Rosolino’s first self published album to call out a few items that I feel are totally what covers are about.

Usual Suspects™: you’ll get this mix along with days that you choose to ignore.

Awful, awful, awful classical music covers

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 06:00:22 GMT

I love the awful classical covers linked in this post (via). Not least of which the one that provides the spectacular thought that Die Walküre = breasts, or VW hubcaps, or breasts covered with VW hubcaps!

But I was especially pleased to see, on the Westminster Gold fansite, this particular number—which my sister actually gave me for Christmas!

New mix: "days that you choose to ignore"

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 05:04:25 GMT

Here’s one for the end of 2007: days that you choose to ignore, now posted at Art of the Mix (AOTM Mix ID 116837). I’m particularly proud of the first three or five transitions on this one; afterwards it gets a bit choppy.

Copies en route shortly to the usual suspects; contact me using the link below (on the site, if you’re reading this in a feedreader) if you want to be a usual suspect or haven’t been getting copies of my mixes already. Artwork also forthcoming…

David Byrne interviews Thom Yorke

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:01:25 GMT

On Wired today, a pair of brilliant David Byrne articles—one an interview with Thom Yorke about the business and about Radiohead’s new album; one by Byrne about the evolving nature of the music business. People used to say Brian Eno was the smartest guy in the business, and that may still be true, but Byrne shows himself to be the smartest guy who’s still relevant in this pair of articles.

The recorded extended excerpts from the Yorke interview are absolutely brilliant as well.

Boston Pops: Sleighing them in the aisles

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 17:32:05 GMT

As I noted yesterday, last night was the opening of the Pops Christmas concert season. And you know what? It was a lot of fun—maybe the most fun I’ve had at one of these concerts in a long time. Part of it, of course, was Noah Van Neil (the Singing Fullback) and the crowd’s reaction to him (for the first time in the three years I’ve been doing these programs, the student guest soloist got a standing O!). But a big part of it was the repertoire. I mean, I don’t think that two years ago in the midst of the interminable set piece “The Snowman” that I could have imagined that we’d ever be singing Amahl or the Vaughn Williams Fantasia, but they were two substantial highlights of the program last night.

The biggest highlight is mentioned in the Boston Herald review of last night’s opening show, which calls our new “12 Days of Christmas” arrangement a highlight but doesn’t mention that it had the crowd on its feet, screaming, laughing, and clapping before we were actually on day 12. Yes, folks, we killed. Who’da thunk it? (Of course, we had a little help from the arrangement, which was well-nigh Schickele-worthy.)

The return of Onalaska

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:00:57 GMT

It’s been a while since I checked in with many of my Seattle friends, so I received a positive surprise when I checked Tom Harpel’s Flickr site and found information about the new Onalaska album, You and the Fishermen. Released something like five years after To Sing for Nights, the new release came out in October and features final versions of some songs that have kicked around in demo form for years, plus some brand new stuff. I can’t wait to check it out.

ComScore on Radiohead: the unreliability of panels

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 23:44:29 GMT

Interesting debate going on between ComScore and Radiohead regarding the Comscore report that alleges that 62% of worldwide Radiohead downloaders paid nothing.

My thought: this is where selection bias potentially becomes a real problem for Comscore.

Comscore gets their metrics from a panel of Internet users who are recruited with a package of incentives—in the past, it was browsing acceleration and download monitoring. The user’s traffic is passed through a Comscore proxy server, monitored, and warehoused. Traffic is anonymized but indexed against demographic variables.

So the issue of how the data is collected is pretty unremarkable. If Comscore sees a transaction, it really happened. The larger question is: do people who volunteer to have their traffic sniffed represent the whole Internet? It seems pretty clear to me that they don’t, and in fact Comscore regularly adjusts the metrics they report from the panel to account for overall demographics (percentage of women, percentage of users from different geographic areas). But you can’t a priori adjust the numbers based on a worldwide count of Radiohead fans, or Radiohead fans who are comfortable downloading music. And that’s where I think there is a potential problem with the numbers. Comscore’s Andrew Lipsman says that their sample, 1000 people of whom several hundred downloaded the data, is representative. I say that’s true only if there was no selection bias in the sample to begin with, and Comscore hasn’t proven that.

Return of the Knee Plays

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 20:25:11 GMT

The Blogcritics new release roundup for yesterday reports that David Byrne’s Knee Plays recording has finally been released on CD (though not, surprisingly, on MP3 or iTunes). I found an LP copy of the album a few years back and fell in love with the music. With eight extra tracks, and with the Dixieland brass meets spacey spoken word vibe of the original now in pristine digital sound, this is going to be a pretty good release to check out.

My favorite track on the release is probably “In the Future,” the original album closer:

In the future everyone will have the same haircut and the same clothes.
In the future everyone will be very fat from the starchy diet.
In the future everyone will be very thin from not having enough to eat.
In the future it will be next to impossible to tell girls from boys, even in bed.
In the future men will be ‘super masculine’ and women will be ‘ultra-feminine’.
In the future half of us will be ‘mentally ill’.
In the future there will be no religion or spirtualism of any sort.
In the future the ‘psychic arts’ will be put to practical use.
In the future we will not think that ‘nature’ is beautiful.
In the future the weather will always be the same.
In the future no one will fight with anyone else.
In the future there will be an atomic war.
In the future water will be expensive.
In the future all material items will be free.
In the future everyone’s house will be like a little fortress.
In the future everyone’s house will be a total entertainment center.

And that’s just the beginning. It’s fun to listen to the track and check off the items that have come true, 22 years later: starchy diet, starvation, mental illness, water crisis, home security, entertainment center... of course, Byrne cleverly hedges his bets by including diametrically opposed predictions throughout, so it’s easy to point to all the things he got right, and ignore the ones that were misses.

In Rainbows

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:30:08 GMT

I will find it hard to say anything about In Rainbows that hasn’t already been said elsewhere. It’s an album that repays close listening and repeated attention, which is nice; there hasn’t really been another album quite like that that has crossed my path for a while. There are some familiar bits on it: I recall (back in the old, lawless days) Napstering a live concert performance of a song called “Big Ideas (Don’t Get Any),” which is very clearly the Neanderthal ancestor of “Nude.” But there is a lot that is fresh and wonderful, too.

I will probably be in In Rainbows for a bunch of listens. I have a flight south today that will be a good opportunity for me to disappear into it.

Then there were four

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:07:57 GMT

An exciting music day, to be sure. Yes, yes, In Rainbows is out. But so is a major chunk of George Harrison’s catalog, just out yesterday on iTunes. I’m listening to All Things Must Pass right now (a bargain at $9.99 for 28 tracks plus a movie!), and man is that a wonderful album. I can’t believe it took me this long to check out more than a few tracks from it.

I’m still waiting to hear the outcome of Radiohead’s grand experiment, like everyone else, I guess. But I can’t help but hope that their new immersion into digital music leads them to open up their stuff to other retailers. It would be nice to see them on the iTunes store again.

Oh, and for anyone who is counting, I think Apple Corps has run out of Beatles-related non-Beatles music to re-release digitally. Bets on when the last shoe will drop and the full catalog goes up?

Shameless self-promotion: BSO, All-Ravel program

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 20:20:14 GMT

One of the reasons I haven’t posted much this week is that I have spent a lot of time at Symphony Hall, getting ready for the first concert of the season with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. The program, an evening of compositions by Maurice Ravel, includes a complete performance of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, his brilliant ballet composed in response to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

For much of the work, the chorus has an atmospheric rather than a soloistic part; there is no text, for one thing, but rather humming and vocalizing with various vowels. But there is a section near the middle that woke me up in yesterday’s orchestra rehearsal: a fairly difficult section for chorus a cappella (mostly—there are a few punctuation points provided by the orchestra in places). In the chorus room the section was difficult and muddy. In the hall, on the other hand, with James Levine conducting and with the orchestra providing responses to our lines, it was a completely different beast, raising my hair and pricking my skin in a way that hasn’t happened musically in a very long time. If we can recreate half of what happened in yesterday’s rehearsal, the performances tomorrow and Saturday night should be quite special.

Nota bene: we’re also taking this show to Carnegie Hall on Monday night. So all of you New York-based readers (yes, Tin Man, I’m talking to you), come check us out.

Followup: Paul Potts has One Chance

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:23:12 GMT

Well, Simon Cowell wasn’t kidding when he told Paul Potts that he was going to make an album. It was June 17th when the former mobile phone salesman won Britain’s Got Talent by singing opera, melting just about everyone who saw him on TV or YouTube in the process (including myself). His album came out July 31st; that’s about six weeks after he won the competition, or maybe one week in the studio plus five weeks’ marketing lead time. The US release of the album occurred last week, and I downloaded it on the strength of his YouTube appearances.

The album is ominously entitled One Chance, presumably referring to his once in a lifetime shot that he took to win the competition. But in a real sense this is the make or break for Paul Potts the career singer. So what did he and Sony bring to the table?

My first impression is: this recording positions Paul in the pop-classical world, not the operatic world. If he wants to get to the Met, this recording doesn’t show that path. On the other hand, if he wants to sell a boatload of records, fill arenas, and appear with orchestras like the Boston Pops, then he’s definitely on the right track.

I have to assume, given the short timeframes, that Sony had more say over the material than Paul did, which perhaps explains the Italian language covers of “Time to Say Goodbye” and “You Raise Me Up,” the Spanish version of “My Way,” and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s execrable “Music of the Night.” Of course, the desire to have him “cross over” to the pop audience explains it too. Some of these are a little limp; my one thought after hearing “My Way” is that it is a mercy they didn’t ask him to sing “Wind Beneath My Wings” too.

But other cuts on the album—his make-or-break “Nessun Dorma,” the surprisingly effective Italian version of “Everybody Hurts,” “Caruso,” and the US-only bonus track “O Holy Night”—show promise in the arrangement and in the passion of his delivery. He is clearly a lyric tenor with strength rather than a true dramatic tenor, but his voice carries across multiple dynamic levels and octaves with relatively little strain. He is a little shy on one or two high notes, but given the compressed recording schedule this is perhaps to be expected.

I hope to goodness for Paul’s sake that this album does great things. It is currently #10 in Amazon’s overall music sales and #1 in Opera and Vocal and in Classical, so one can project that this might actually get Paul the exposure he deserves—and another recording session where he can get into some meatier material.

Review: Black Francis, Bluefinger

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 04:24:12 GMT

Who is Black Francis? And where has he been all these years?

The first question seems fatuous, the second coy. Even the 21 year old hipster who was still eating strained peas and filling diapers in 1987 when the Pixies released Come On Pilgrim knows that Black Francis was the frontman, resident UFOlogist, and tortured lead screamer for this most pivotal underground band that almost made it mainstream—opened for U2 during the Achtung Baby tour, for Chrissakes—before he broke the band up by fax.

And Black Francis hasn’t gone anywhere, despite the fact that there have been no releases on which that nom de plume played from 1991’s Trompe Le Monde to 2004’s “Bam Thwok.” That selfsame callow hipster knows that Black Francis became Frank Black when he went solo in 1993, and released a series of solid, if workmanlike, releases between the debut s/t and 2006’s Fast Man/Raider Man.

So much for the history. The questions remain: where has Black Francis been in Frank Black’s solo work for thirteen to fifteen long years? And who is Black Francis, as opposed to Frank Black, anyway? And, most pertinently to Tuesday’s full-length release Bluefinger, why is this the first release of Frank Black’s career to be credited to Black Francis? These are all related questions with one at their core: what is the Black Francis sound?

As I ask the question, I hear Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV, aka Frank Black, aka Black Francis, cough, then laugh dryly, then advise me to go f*cking die.

But there is something to the change of name, for sure. Or else this would have been the fifteenth release credited to Frank Black. So is this a change of soul? Or just of brand?

MBA voice over: The Black Francis brand stands for slicing up eyeballs, screaming, quiet loud quiet, being the band that inspired Nirvana, and being the most awesome band ever. The Frank Black brand stands for a workmanlike approach to rock and roll. Direct to two track. Country rock. Low sales. As he sang in “Chip Away Boy,” “I used to have some fun/Me and everyone/Now I’m just employed.”

And that may be all there is to it. Except.

Exhibit A: “Captain Pasty.” Mars attacking. Irregular meters. And that awesome growl-laugh that opens up the track. It will make your car go like nitrous, if you happen to be behind the wheel when you are listening

Exhibit B: “Tight Black Rubber,” with its Fugazi meets Nirvana bass + guitar duet settling into a Meat Puppets meets Velvets chugging rocker full of tension and bondage tropes.

Exhibit C: “Your Mouth Into Mine.” Could be a Frank Black song, except the spaces between the verses run over with Black Francis’s love-as-body-invasion imagery at a speed that feels at once relaxed and chemically enhanced. Love never sounded so much like theft.

Exhibit D: “You Can’t Break a Heart and Have It.” The one song on the album that provides a tight connection to the album’s supposed inspiration, transgressive druggie Dutch artist/musician Herman Brood, whose song this was before Black Francis made it his own.

Exhibit E: “Threshold Apprehension.” A romp through Pixies touchstones, from high pitched, screaming vocals to four-chord hooks to girlish spoken background vocals (courtesy Charles’s wife Violet Clark) to two of the finest couplets in post-Pixies rock: “Every little sh*t gotta find his salt lick/If I don't find my babe I'm gonna be junk sick” and “Grand Marnier and a pocketful of speed/We did it all night til we started to bleed.” The hit single the Pixies should have had in the summer of 2007, showing up first as a bonus track on the best of compilation Frank Black 93-03. Your reviewer was stuck in traffic on the Mass Pike the first time he heard the song and nearly rear ended the car in front of him, so immediately propulsive was the impact of the song, and so hard was he laughing with the force of the bliss coming at him from six speakers.

Even in slacker moments an animus of tension and anger moves the record forward. “She Took All the Money”’s “shama lama ding dang” chorus is pushed forward by an irritable rhythm guitar, surprisingly sweet backing vocals from Violet Clark, and some impatient drumming that takes the song out on just the right dry note.

So: what makes it a Black Francis work? There are some descriptive touchstones—screaming, odd meters, UFOs, Lou Reed as Surrealist lyrics—that are ultimately insufficient to describe what’s going on here. What this is is nothing more than the rebirth of Charles Thompson, his musical juices revitalized by the 2004 tour with the Pixies. As he says in the publicity notes for the album, reunions “are bittersweet, and all of the rekindled foreplay of performing the old Black Francis songs never warmed to the full coitus of a reunion LP…I privately went back to the old stage name…almost as a joke. I couldn’t get the Pixies back into the studio, but I would transform into my alter ego of yesteryear.” And even if there is no Herman Brood revival as a result of this LP—Wikipedia can’t even be bothered to link to his artwork, and none of his music is available in the usual download sources—the transgressive junkie artist/musician/suicide deserves some posthumous credit for waking up Black Francis and sending him out screaming into the light of 2007.

RIP Luciano Pavarotti

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 23:59:45 GMT

It is incumbent on me as a tenor to stop and pay honor to the memory of Luciano Pavarotti, who died yesterday (NY Times, Salon). After all, Pavarotti gave the world of popular culture an understanding of what a dramatic tenor could do with his voice, and made opera and vocal classical music accessible through his sheer personality.

One might despair, however, about his long-term cultural impact. Vocal classical music and opera is more of a live performance phenomenon than a recorded phenomenon—and if you doubt me, ask your local classical radio marketing director how he feels about vocal music. And without recordings and radio play, all too often, a classical star’s presence dies with him. Consider Beverly Sills—when was the last time (before her recent passing) that you even heard her name in classical circles? Yet when I was growing up she was a household name.

Did Dinosaur Jr. get the limo?

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 20:34:21 GMT

Guitarist/vocalist Thurston Moore says Sonic Youth should have broken up years ago—so they could make mad Benjamins on the reunion circuit like the Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., and Mission of Burma have. Heh. (via)

Review: Magnet, The Simple Life

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 04:00:38 GMT

When an artist is so moved by the release of his new album to break a world record for highest-altitude concert, it’s hard to avoid puns about other high things: spirits, melodies, hopes. Norwegian artist Magnet raised just such allusions in a March solo acoustic performance of his new album in a plane between Oslo and Reykjavik (in-flight altitude: 40,000 feet; check the video). Now the album is being released stateside, and the question is: will the high spirits of the album live up to the high hopes for its release? Will its world record for altitude take the album to similar heights on the charts?

Before we tackle those questions—what is it about Scandinavian indie rock artists? First Peter Bjorn and John come out of nowhere (er, Sweden) with “Young Folks,” with a whistle hook to die for (and which is already being sampled by Kanye West). Now Magnet, aka Even Johansen, brings a brilliant collection of pop songwriting in his third full-length, The Simple Life, along with pop production that the Shins would give eyeteeth for. What is it about the Scandinavians? Something in the Northern Lights, perhaps.

So, about the music. Some things this release is not:

A continuation of the dark, earnest vibe of The Tourniquet
Anything to do with Paris or Nicole

Instead, The Simple Life is a collection of upbeat, clever pop, propelled by killer horn and string riffs and buoyed by Johansen’s high, aching vocals. Where The Tourniquet’s “Hold On” registers as an urgent, synth-thick plea, many of the songs on The Simple Life are joyous little ditties, including the handclaps of “The Gospel Song” and the bouncy drumline of “Lonely No More.” Throughout, unusual instrument choices pop out of the texture: a banjo here, a treble harmonica there, poking through the horn sections and pianos.

In fact (again apropos given Magnet’s world record), the one adjective that comes to mind over and over again on relistening to the album is buoyant. That is not to say, however, naïve. The song craftsmanship is tight throughout, with “You Got Me”’s brilliant fingerpicking and horns offset with the string quartet and oboe of “Count.” Buoyant goes a little overboard in the cover of Bob Marley’s “She’s Gone,” including whistle chorus and woodblock percussion. It’s like a meringue, so airy that it threatens to dissolve into nothing at every turn. It holds together somehow, but I sincerely hope a full Magnet/Marley tribute album isn’t in the works.

Is this going to be the album that sends Magnet up the charts, to the toppermost of the poppermost? Unlikely. For all the airiness, there is a depth of sadness and empathy in the lyrics that grounds the album in an un-poplike sensibility. So it is that a wine bottle solo in “Lucid” takes on emotional resonance that belie the rest of the album’s grin. And this is the ultimate joy of The Simple Life: it bears close examination and re-examination and brings new pleasures in each new light, all while still remaining a hummable pop masterpiece. So, probably no pop stardom for Magnet. But maybe the beginning of a beautiful friendship for the lucky listeners who wind their way into this album.

RIP, Max Roach

Tim Jarrett — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 03:19:16 GMT

I saw Max and his band play in the early 1990s at UVA, when the university was still putting on tremendous jazz festivals that brought everybody who was anybody in the jazz world in. The jazz fan that I am today would love to be able to remember who was in Max’s band that night. All I remember is that his dry beat and drier wit stole the show that night. And I am sorry that I only got a chance to see him that once; though I am glad that I got the chance.

Obituaries: BBC, NYT, WaPo.

Recommended recordings: just about any Parker or Diz recording; the We Insist! Freedom Now jazz suite, featuring Abbey Lincoln on some seriously inspired vocals; Money Jungle, the trio recording that he cut with Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. Other pivotal recordings listed by Ben Ratliff in the Times.

John Lennon on iTunes

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:36:15 GMT

The presence of the third Beatle’s solo catalog on iTunes (the holdout at this point is the sublime George Harrison, whose estate one must imagine is going to take some time to process the question of moving to new formats) is old news at this point. In fact, John’s solo catalog generally is old news for most listeners—or is it? I would guess that the number of music aficionados born after 1970 who have listened to much more than Plastic Ono Band, Imagine, and maybe Shaved Fish is pretty low.

I got Mind Games earlier this week and am listening to it right now. There is a lot of mid-70s paunch in this recording; the session musicians aren’t bringing their a-game, and John’s songwriting isn’t at his finest here. Except, of course, for the title track. And “Aisumasen,” which is pretty touching.

And one verse in “Out of the Blue” which completely grabbed me by the throat:

All my life has been a long slow knife
I was born just to get to you

That’s quite a statement. In another universe, that would be the standard toast from a bride to a groom. Coming as it did on the heels of John’s “lost weekend,” it’s got even more power and resonance.

It’s nice to have the opportunity to go back and sample some of this material without having to devote physical space to the disc.

Friday Random 10: Getting back to it edition

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:32:28 GMT

Because I am woefully behind in my posting, and because it is Friday, and because I am listening to music:

Jeff Buckley, “Calling You” (Live at Sin-é)
Low, “Silver Rider” (The Great Destroyer)
David Byrne, “Don’t Fence Me In” (Red Hot + Blue)
U2, “Party Girl” (Under a Blood Red Sky)
Sonny Rollins, “Blue 7” (Saxophone Colossus)
Roy Orbison, “It’s Too Late” (Sun Recordings)
Peaches ‘n‘ Cream, “112”
Nirvana, “Serve the Servants” (In Utero)
The Tallis Scholars, “Requiem 5. Sanctus - Benedictus” (Cardoso: Requiem)
Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach, “I Still Have That Other Girl” (Painted from Memory)

Marissa Nadler

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 15:33:30 GMT

How much buzz must there be about an artist before she is an overnight sensation?

I’m not in the habit of raving about musicians after hearing one performance—there have been too many about whom I’ve obsessed for weeks or months only to have them disappear—but I cautiously think that Marissa Nadler might be the real thing. The Stereogum crowd appears to agree, as they invited her to participate in OKX (she covers “No Surprises”), but the real thing is in her songs and her voice. I was working down the podcasts on my iPod and decided to play her in-studio appearance on KEXP in my car on the way in this morning. Wow, what a sound. Just lifted the hair on the back of my neck. The vocal quality bridges Jeff Buckley and classic 60s folks like Joan Baez, and the songwriting recalls 80s psychedelic folk revival (in fact, there are moments listening to her when I hear strains of Mazzy Star loud and clear—if Hope Sandoval were a high soprano).

She’s kind of a local, too, having grown up in Needham; though, since she makes a reference to being from a “plastic place” in her KEXP interview, I’m guessing that she doesn’t harbor a lot of love for the Bay State. Looks like she’ll be at the Middle East on September 11; I might have to check it out.

New mix: a young escape to find you

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 05:08:38 GMT

New mix up at Art of the Mix: a young escape to find you. Been working on this one for a while, finally got it put together tonight. Copies out soon to the usual suspects.

Two or three superb cuts on this—the return of Black Francis on “Threshold Apprehension,” Sonic Youth’s “Do You Believe in Rapture?,” Gillian Welch’s take on Radiohead’s “Black Star,” and three tunes that have been waiting their turn on one of my mixes since high school, “Fixing a Hole,” ”Yer So Bad,” and “Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires.”

Bjizzle

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:32:19 GMT

While on vacation, I borrowed Björk’s Homogenic from my sister Esta. Listening to it reminds me of nothing so much as the conversation between Björk and Diddy, as imagined by Milkfat.com. “Sometimes... I climb into a laundry basket and tickle my ears!”

Then of course there’s the sequel, featuring the conversation between Diddy and Snoop: “Yo yo, you know that Japanese lookin’ white girl from Europe?” “Bjizzle?”

OK, I’m easily amused, but it does stick in the head. Even after it was posted, like, a lifetime ago.

OKX

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:17:54 GMT

Ten years ago, I was in North Carolina—specifically, in a small town outside Camp Lejeune—on a consulting assignment. I was bored stiff. The dialup at the hotel was awful—and yes, there was dialup; this was before wifi, before Ethernet in every room, and at least in this hotel before reliable plain old telephone service to every room. Even then I was an Internet addict, so this was like a virtual guarantee of death by boredom that night. So I got out and walked down the street from one strip mall to the other, ending up at a Wal-Mart. In the music section. Where I decided that it was the right sort of night to take a risk on an artist I had listened a little to but didn’t know that much about, and pick up OK Computer by Radiohead.

And something, even as I played the album through my computer’s crummy speakers, exploded in my head.

Ten years on, and I am writing a blog post at my parents’ retirement house in western North Carolina, over wifi while I download OKX, a tribute to OK Computer. While I haven’t heard of most of the artists on the album, those I have—Doveman and the inimitable John Vanderslice—make me think that this is going to be pretty darn good.

A lot has changed in the intervening ten years, but the basic message of impersonal alienation has more relevance than ever before.

Universal declares age of 8-tracks open again

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 04:33:56 GMT

Because really, that’s the only possible explanation for their pulling out of their iTunes Store contract. For once, Cory at BoingBoing nailed all the snidery that I wanted to drop onto this announcement in his opening sentence: “Universal Music Group, the largest record label on Earth (an accomplishment akin to being the world's largest corset-buttoner, horse-shoer, or gutta-percha cable-insulator)”…

Heh.

No Europe, no cry

Tim Jarrett — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 03:27:35 GMT

Following up on Monday’s post, I should report that I decided against joining the tour. Its obvious attractions aside, family and work come first, and I’ll be quite busy with the latter the few weeks around Labor Day.

Not to say I’m not disappointed. I haven’t been to Europe on a non-business trip in a few years. But right now this has to be the right decision.

Conundrum

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 04:25:24 GMT

Until this afternoon, I had the summer figured out. Push like heck to get a software release out and the sales team solid for June; take a week in July to visit family; then get back on the treadmill, with the exception of a single Tanglewood weekend (in monastic compensation for last summer’s excesses). And that would be enough, really.

Until this afternoon. When I got a call from Symphony Hall. One of the tenors in the chorus dropped out, the woman at the other end said. Could I do the European Tour?

Could I? That’s the question. We are, after all, talking about four additional evening rehearsals, more than ten days on the road, and two additional Tanglewood residencies. Of course, we’re also talking about singing with the BSO in Europe; specifically, in Lucerne for the Lucerne Festival, Essen, Mosel, Paris, and London. Even better, in the Royal Albert Hall.

So: what to do? I am fatigued from the year and just want to spend time with my family. But I haven’t sung much lately either (though this would surely cure me of that). I’ll have to decide soon: I have until 5 pm tomorrow.

Britain has talent, and so does Paul Potts

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 04:32:11 GMT

Via Mandy, a UVA friend, I found this YouTube video of Paul Potts, a broken-toothed contestant on “Britain’s Got Talent” who murmurs when asked why he’s in the competition, “To sing opera.” And then proceeds to tear the house down:

I mean, and please excuse my French, but: holy shit.

This is the dream, if you are an amateur musician; for a vocalist, this is the prototypical origin story. It’s how you decide you are going to pursue this for the rest of your life. (As I confessed a while ago.) And he does it. Makes the female presenter take heavy sighing breaths and cry, makes the audience jump to their feet, makes Simon gush like a schoolgirl.

And not only does he pull off this performance, which would have been cool enough; he goes on to win the whole shebang. And: sing for the Queen, record contract with Simon Cowell, get money to pay off his debts. Even get his teeth fixed.

Sometimes the good guys win. But apparently only in Britain. Lucky bastards.

(And, um, it’s OK to be just a little jealous of him, right?)

For a more reasoned response to the whole thing, SJ Reidhead has a good piece on Blogcritics.

Updated 9/26/2007: Had to update the YouTube link. You’d think that the rightsholder would treat this amazingly successful clip as promotion rather than yank it, but no...

Music articles for June 11, 2007

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:55:36 GMT

Nice crop of reviews and other music related pieces today:

Blogcritics has an appreciation of John McLaughlin that suggests that the British guitarist should be accorded a prime mover place in the formation of jazz fusion.
The New Yorker profiles Spoon, placing it within a tradition of doing more with less.
Pitchfork has an article on Bill Evans that puts him at the center of all 20th century piano work, both jazz and classical.

Capacity issues at the iTunes store

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:58:28 GMT

iTunes Plus, the DRM-free version of the iTunes Store, launched yesterday with kind of a big bang—Paul McCartney’s full catalog. The promised Upgrade My Music feature launched too. I didn’t really know what to expect there, so I was kind of astonished to see that the list of my purchases that were eligible for upgrade included twelve albums worth of music. I decided to go ahead and make the move to the high resolution downloads.

Now I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t—or at least that I had waited until a few days after the service launched. That’s a lot of 10 MB downloads, and they have a tendency of taking a really long time. Three of the downloads stalled the entire queue last night, so it looks like I will have to babysit the downloads for a few days. Fortunately restarting iTunes appears to have cleared whatever blockage was causing the problem.

One interesting unanticipated feature of the upgrade was spotlighted by CNet, who point out that the upgrade feature provides a way to retrieve a previously purchased but lost song for only 30 cents.

Review: Jeff Buckley, So Real

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 29 May 2007 23:48:06 GMT

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of Jeff Buckley into the Mississippi River, and into legend. At the time, the death of the 30-year-old singer felt like a body blow, and ten years haven't dulled the impact; if anything, the feeling of cosmic unfairness has deepened over the years. So the new anthology So Real: Songs from Jeff Buckley comes at a time where many of us were pondering Jeff's legacy anyway, and it is that rarest of things, a greatest hits that illuminates and surprises rather than simply summing up. There is no way that I can write a review that does justice to this in a linear way; there are too many connections striving to be made. I will include these as asides throughout the review.

Number of Jeff Buckley albums and EPs released in his lifetime: 2
Number of albums, EPs, live albums, DVDs, greatest hits compilations, box sets, and deluxe editions released after his death: 7

The compilers of the collection, Mary Guibert (Jeff's mother) and Tom Burleigh, had a challenge: How do you do a greatest hits album for an artist who only had one album before his untimely death? They chose an unconventional path: include half the debut album, Grace, together with selected b-sides, studio work released posthumously, and released and unreleased live recordings. It could have sounded like a shambles; it's a testament to Jeff's artistic brilliance and consistency that it sounds like a coherent whole.

Number of tribute songs to Jeff Buckley listed on Wikipedia: 51

In one form or another, eight of the ten songs that formed Grace are on this disc, four in their studio version ("Last Goodbye," "Lover, You Should've Come Over," "Grace," "Hallelujah"). The compilers chose alternate versions (that previously appeared on the Grace Legacy Edition of a few years ago) for "Eternal Life" and "Dream Brother," a live version of "So Real" that was previously only available on a promo single, and the hypnotic version of "Mojo Pin" from Live at Sin-É. From Buckley's posthumous Sketches for My Sweetheart, the Drunk, we get "The Sky is a Landfill" and the sultry "Everybody Here Wants You," and the driving "Vancouver." The delicate "Je N'en Connais Pas La Fin" (also from Sin-É) also appears as a bridge to the closing three songs.

Brilliant collaborations left off the album: "Fireflies" and "Southern Cross" with Patti Smith, "Faith Salons" with Brenda Kahn, "All Flowers (in Time Bend Toward the Sun)" with Elizabeth Fraser, "I Want Someone Badly" with Shudder to Think
Never-heard collaborations and covers mentioned in the liner notes: "Kashmir," "Shombalor," "Cobra" (John Zorn cover with Mike Doughty)

The remaining two songs are where this collection sets itself apart from a "greatest hits" mentality into the realm of the fan compilation. "Forget Her," a Grace-era b-side that also appeared on the Legacy Edition, has long been one of my favorite Jeff Buckley songs. A straight-driving impassioned blues with little of the Middle Eastern meets Zeppelin flavor of his debut, it has the dual distinction of being more singable and more direct than most of his early output, presaging the slow jam of "Everybody Here Wants You" and other late tracks.

Age of Jeff Buckley on May 29, 1997 when he drowned: 30
Age of Tim Buckley, Jeff's father, when he died of a drug overdose on June 28, 1975: 28

The final track, a never-before-heard live performance of the Smiths' "I Know It's Over," wraps the compilation in the mystery of Jeff Buckley's passing, what Mike Doughty calls in the liner notes his "effortless ability to become a myth, a legend." Where the Mystery White Boy live recording included "I Know It's Over" in medley with "Hallelujah," here that striking first lyric, the finest line that Morrissey ever wrote for Jeff Buckley, stands on its own and makes you catch your breath with the unfairness of it. Because the rest of the collection is a testament to his brilliance and range as an artist, performer, and songwriter, the ending hurts all the more ten years on. At least we have more to remember him by now than we did then.

Lyrics in Jeff Buckley originals and covers that presage his death by drowning:
"This body will never be safe from harm" ("Mojo Pin")
"As their shoes fill up with water" ("Lover, You Should Have Come Over"
"Asleep in the sand with the ocean rushing over" ("Dream Brother")
"Just like the ocean, always in love with the moon/It's overflowing" ("Opened Once")
"Stay with me under these waves tonight" ("Nightmares by the Sea")
"Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head" ("I Know It's Over")

Buckley fans are nothing if not opinionated. So Real comes close to meeting my high standards for a single-disc compilation, though there are a few changes I'd make--as a fan, I'll always want more rarities. What would your greatest hits of Jeff Buckley look like?

New mix: “empty as a pocket with nothing to lose”

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 28 May 2007 13:57:29 GMT

At Art of the Mix, a new one somewhat in honor of my sister's graduation this weekend from seminary: empty as a pocket with nothing to lose. Somewhat in honor because it didn't start out that way, but between the gospel and devotional music in the first half and the general promise at the end it seems like a good fit. Congrats, sis.

Music Review: Bebel Gilbert, Momento

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 24 May 2007 19:51:00 GMT

Bebel Gilberto, whose music hovers the blurred boundaries between bossa nova, salsa, and trance music, has come a long way from her first album. Tanto Tempo came out of nowhere to establish Gilberto as a fresh voice in the global musical culture, with its catchy blend of traditional Brazilian sounds and global dance music. The subsequent remix album positioned her within the electronica tradition alongside such vocal muses as Beth Orton.

Subsequent albums, though, have backed away from that dance focus somewhat. The second, self-titled album, was less cool and perhaps more approachable, with greater focus on songcraft and more memorable songs. The third album, Momento, continues to seek a different path. At the end it finds, not masterpiece territory, but a very pleasant place to relax for a while.

My perspective on Momento is summed up rather neatly by a positive Amazon review of the album, which begins, “I discovered Bebel's music at the coffee shop...” For background mood music, the album is darn near perfect: impeccably produced, constantly keeping dynamics and tempi just under the liminal threshold. But if you're looking for something world-changing, move along; this is no Radiohead album. Instead, it’s music for a pleasant afternoon. Which, frankly, there is not enough of in the world at present.

I find it difficult to disengage my critical faculties even when an album is so precisely targeted, though, so I must share the bad news: Bebel’s performance is not so much cool as sleepy. On her self-titled second album there were moments alternately playful (“Baby”) and dramatic (“Aganju”) that showcased the interpretive range of her vocal instrument. Only “Caçada” steps above an emotional mezzoforte, and that largely on the strength of the superb backing band. The other performances are pleasant enough, but curiously affectless.

Where an artist like Sadé might build a career out of flat vocals, it is frustrating coming from Bebel. Thanks to her superb first two albums, we know she can give more. Here’s hoping that she digs a little deeper next time around and gives us a release that is not just pleasant, but essential.

Also posted at BlogCritics.

Friday Random 10: Oy edition

Tim Jarrett — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 03:07:06 GMT

Oy indeed. If I have too many more weeks like this, I’ll plotz.

Dave Brubeck, “Her Name is Nancy” (So What’s New?)
Little Milton, “Grits Ain’t Groceries” (Oxford American Southern Music CD 2003)
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, “In This Home on Ice” (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah)
Tori Amos, “Angie” (Crucify EP)
Rob Wasserman, “Freedom Bass Dance” (Trilogy)
Justin Rosolino, “Sweet Day” (Music (The Live Recordings))
Moby, “The Sky is Broken” (Play)
Sleater-Kinney, “Living in Exile” (The Hot Rock)
Sting, “We Work the Black Seam” (The Dream of the Blue Turtles)
They Might Be Giants, “Hypnotist of Ladies” (Apollo 18)

Music Review: Christopher O'Riley, Second Grace: The Music of Nick Drake

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:31:40 GMT

Christopher O’Riley is on a roll. Recently he has parlayed his successful public radio gig into a public television gig; he also has two Radiohead transcription albums and one Elliott Smith transcription album under his belt. Now comes his latest transcription album, Second Grace: The Music of Nick Drake. And for better or worse it’s of a piece with the albums that preceded it: technically brilliant, undeniably deep in its understanding and love of the source material, but somehow less than compelling in overall execution despite some bright points.

The disappointment of this album is that the material O’Riley had to work with was so rich. Nick Drake, who has been wearing the “undeservedly obscure” label for so long that he’s in danger of overexposure, produced both orchestral chamber-pop of high complexity and stark, isolated solo recordings before his untimely death after just three albums (official cause: overdose of antidepressants). The great thing about a Nick Drake song is that he could take that voice that ranged from low murmuring (“From the Morning”) to high keening (“Black Eyed Dog”) and his amazingly proficient acoustic guitar work and make songs of all flavors and descriptions come alive.

But--and here is my bone with all Mr. O’Riley’s pop transcriptions to date--in his hands all Nick Drake’s songs sound alike! Almost every track features the same curse: O’Riley’s technically impressive transcriptions swamp the songs in complexity. Two years ago, I wrote of “Hold Me to This” that O’Riley’s approach “too often ... yields a harmonically accurate overload of undifferentiated hemidemisemiquavers.” Translated into plain English, I mean that the songs are occasionally in danger of losing their rhythmic integrity under the onslaught of rolling chords.

Exhibit 1: “Pink Moon.” Made famous twenty years late in a Volkswagen commercial for its wistfulness, here it sounds hurried, busy, and way too cheerful. One supposes that the latter is unavoidable given the beauty and simplicity of the underlying melody; it is, after all, Drake’s words (“And none of you stand so tall/Pink moon gonna get ye all”) that carry the substantial menace of the song. But isn’t this the job of the performer of a transcription: to bring across that unspoken menace through the performance, to compensate for the missing lyrics?

Is there a bright spot in this bleak adaptation of Drake’s music? Generally adaptations are difficult anyway; as Charles Schulz once observed, reading classic literature that has been “adapted” for children is “not unlike drinking diluted root beer.” The good news is that the bones of Drake’s songs are underneath, and what good bones they are. And in places they come through: “Fly,” where the bass voice of the piano carries the melody to good effect, is a good early example. “Harvest Breed”’s unusual chord progression carries through the trappings of the arrangement to grab the listener. And “Three Days” builds suspense through its gradually thickening chromatic language.

Probably the most successful reworking on the album is “River Man,” where O’Riley lets the driving rhythm (in the liner notes he cites Dave Brubeck as an inspiration here) mingle at something like a meditative tempo with an increasingly discordant accompaniment. The bridge is delightful, a storm across the river valley. The second verse introduction after the bridge, where the introductory chords dip down to a minor fourth below the tonic, starts to carry the appropriate amount of menace. I will go so far as to say that here O’Riley may actually best Brad Mehldau, who consistently has gotten to this repertoire first (recording “Everything in Its Right Place,” “Exit Music (For a Film),” and “River Man” several years ago); his version of the song is more complete and holds more emotional range.

So there are some bright points on the album; overall, though, it is too reminiscent of Abraham Lincoln’s supposed observance, “People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.”

I close by noting, as I did in my review of “Hold Me to This,” that the listening experience is greatly helped by turning the volume way up. Listening to the playback at an appropriately high volume level helps to bring out the subtleties of the recording and hold somnolence at bay.

This review was also published at Blogcritics.

Friday Random 10: Sun's Out Edition

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 20:10:42 GMT

I turned on the iPod this morning, and the song that was playing was Lyle Lovett’s “Since the Last Time”:

I went to a funeral
Lord it made me happy
Seeing all those people
I ain’t seen
Since the last time
Somebody died

And I decided, you know, I should really listen to something else this week.

The Black Keys, “No Fun” (The Moan)
Peter Hurford (J.S. Bach, composer), “Toccata and Fugue in D minor (“Dorian”) (Great Organ Works)
The Jimi Hendrix Experience, “Stone Free” (Are You Experienced)
The Police, “Invisible Sun” (Ghost in the Machine)
Romano Zanotti, “Michelemma” (Chansons Napolitaines)
Me’shell NdegeÓcello, “Deuteronomy: N*ggerman” (Peace Beyond Passion)
Lee Ranaldo, “The Bridge” (East Jesus)
Kronos Quartet (Osvaldo Golijov, composer), “III. Colmo. Sospeso-Allegro Pesante” (The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind)
Boss Hog, “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” (Suburbia Soundtrack)
Belle and Sebastian, “You’re Just a Baby” (Tigermilk)

Friday Random 10: Not much like Easter edition

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 20:47:59 GMT

The holiest of the church seasons has really sneaked up on me this year. It doesn’t help that it snowed another three inches earlier this week, making it feel extremely unlike April. Today, though, with the office quiet, I simply started taking this Random 10 in midstream, and was delighted to find a number of selections from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion—topical, what? There will be repeat artists, because I left it on Shuffle by Album.

Tears for Fears, “Year of the Knife” (The Seeds of Love)
The States, “Parade” (Multiply Not Divide)
Wilhelm Furtwängler, Vienna Philharmonic (J.S. Bach, composer), “Blute Nur, Du Liebes Herz!” (Matthäus-Passion)
Wilhelm Furtwängler, Vienna Philharmonic (J.S. Bach, composer), “Ach, Nun Ist Mein Jesus Hin!/Mit Chor: Wo Ist Denn Dein Freund Hingegangen?” (Matthäus-Passion)
The Tallis Scholars (Manuel Cardoso, composer), “Magnificat (Secundi Toni 5vv)” (Cardoso: Requiem)
The Reindeer Section, “The Day We All Died” (Y’All Get Scared Now, Ya Hear?)
Ry Cooder and Ali Farka Touré, “Gomni” (Talking Timbuktu)
Ry Cooder and Ali Farka Touré, “Amandrai” (Talking Timbuktu)
Lou Reed, “Lisa Says” (Between Thought and Expression)
Lou Reed, “Rock and Roll Heart” (Between Thought and Expression)