onal Pt. 3,” even he’s not so sure, relying on guest stars (Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Nas, et al.) for each of his album’s 18 tracks. This head-on collision of identity yields a real crisis: one of adhesion. There’s a lot of anger brewing here, but the tracks render much of it superficial. Numbers meant […]
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Scotty Karate breaks out with unique punkabilly sound in OKC
You’ve got to be bold to include your appearance on TV reality show “Elimidate” as a resume builder in music, but with a name like Scotty Karate, boldness is probably just second nature. But the episode, which showed Karate throwing pizza on an arrogant competitor, shouldn’t dissuade anyone seeking out his high-energy honky-tonk. The […]
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Don Peris – Go When the Morning Shineth
From Pennsylvania came the cold and The Innocence Mission. “Bright As Yellow” on the “Empire Records” soundtrack may have been the highest level of notoriety the dream-folk band achieved since beginning in the late Eighties. The band fell somewhere between adult contemporary and cult status with classic-rooted compositions tailor-made for NPR segues. Today, from a […]
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Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass/Various artists-Whipped Cream & Other Delights Re-Whipped
Shout! Factory Every music collection needs at least one cover sporting a model in a Reddi-wip bikini. Chances are, your grandparents have one in the form of Herb Alpert’s classic 1965 album “Whipped Cream & Other Delights.” But a much more revealing one adorns that album’s 40th-anniversary remix collection, appropriately subtitled “Re-Whipped.” While not […]
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Ghostface Killah-More Fish
Def Jam Scattered Wu-Tang Clan projects are better than none at all. Ghostface Killah’s “Fishscale” was one of 2006’s more accomplished rap records, competing perhaps only with Rhymefest’s “Blue Collar” for the crown of year’s best. Squeaking in at the end of the year, “More Fish” continues the bracing brilliance of “Fishscale,” a paranoid, poetic […]
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17 Pygmies-13 Black Birds
Trakwerx 17 Pygmies have been away for 17 years, but the 10-member 2006 version of the California consortium has returned younger than yesterday to produce its best work yet, a 30-track, two-disc beguiling behemoth. Even if you discount the fact that disc two is 13 versions of the same song, done in wildly differing ways […]
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Massive Attack-Collected
Virgin Since its start in the late Eighties, Massive Attack has been a leading force in electronic music and DJ culture. Even if you don’t know the band by name, chances are you’ve heard one of its oft-licensed songs. When a commercial, movie or TV show needs some down-tempo trip-hop with an icy chill, Massive […]
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Karen Dalton-In My Own Time
Light in the Attic Records Bob Dylan and Devendra Banhart named her as their favorite singer. Nick Cave lists her among his faves. Enid native Karen Dalton was part of the early-Sixties Greenwich Village folk boom, but played the part of wallflower when it came to recordings, producing only two in her lifetime. Her […]
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William Orbit-Hello Waveforms
Sanctuary William Orbit is better known for other people’s music than his own. He engineered Madonna’s late-Nineties comeback by producing “Ray of Light,” her Grammy-winning album of plugged-in pop, and when an LP under his own name actually moved units, it was comprised of covers of classical music stalwarts like Beethoven and Barber. It […]
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Gob Iron-Death Songs for the Living
Transmit Sound/Legacy Son Volt’s dour Jay Farrar continues his quest for the world’s slowest tempo, this time enlisting Varnaline leader Anders Parker in a (probably) one-off duo. Gob Iron specializes in traditional folk and blues, with Farrar frequently reworking the lyrics. Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times” is changed to great effect, though it bears little […]