Blogcritics Author: Marcelo Baeza Sequeira

Music Review: The Kooks - Inside In/Inside Out

Marcelo Baeza Sequeira — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:48:04 EDT

This CD could be another immortal gem from the British invasion if the musical ideas were new.
Love songs, acoustic guitars, and a charming singer follow by a band gaming to be rock stars, this is the British band The Kooks, a band that like to play simple songs of two or three minutes (with just one exception).The LP Inside In/Inside Out, the debut of The Kooks has 14 songs, I used to think that was the perfect number of tracks for an LP,...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Music Review: Badly Drawn Boy - About a Boy

Marcelo Baeza Sequeira — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 09:22:51 EDT

The original soundtracks (OST) from movies should be an independent musical genre where one of the requirements could be how well the music reminds you of the feeling of the movie and another requirement could be how many people appreciate the LP without having seen the film before.I don’t know if it’s a shame, but I saw the movie first. We’re talking about About a Boy, with Huge Grant and Nicholas Hoult. I liked it a lot, especially the scene where Grant comes on to the stage to sing “Killing me Softly” with Hoult, just unforgettable. But the idea is to talk about the music of the film, recorded just by one artist: Badly Drawn Boy. This is unusual in the OST genre.About a Boy is a good album with sophisticated arrangements and different textures produced by an acoustic guitar, symphonic orchestral support, and some electronic sounds. The soundtrack is well balanced between instrumental tunes and songs done in a folk songwriter style. His mission, to write song for a film, has improved his writing style. I’m talking about the songwriting style of the third millennium like James Blunt or Jack Johnson. The voice of Damon Gough (a.k.a. Badly Drawn Boy) is warm and soft; he uses different styles of vocalization dependent upon the songs.The instrumental tunes catches some feelings from the film, like tenderness and the lazy days, very well. The songs are good enough to be singles, especially “Silent Sigh” and “Something About You”. Growing and loving are the topics of the lyrics (of course, those are the topics of the film): “I bet at your age /That's easier for you to say” on “A Peak You Reach” and “I will take you as you are / Please accept me as I am” on "Above You, Below Me".This LP came to me a couple of years after seeing the movie and reminded me of the film, but when I saw the film I didn’t have a special feeling about the music (except for the “Killing Me Softly” part). If you need a reference, when I saw Pulp Fiction, after the first scene, when I heard the opening song (“Misirlou”), I said very excitedly to my brother sitting besides me in the cinema: “tomorrow I will buy the soundtrack”. The same when I saw Magnolia on cable TV, after the scene where the song “Momentum” plays I said to myself: “I will download the soundtrack.”I think that you could love this LP without seeing the movie, but as I said, I saw the movie first and it’s recommendable too

Marcelo is just another fan of music from Valparaiso, Chile, that plays guitar and writes songs in his own rock and roll band (Revos), all just for fun. Some university gave him the title of Marine Biologist a couple years ago (a job is necessary to buy more music).

Music Review: Kaiser Chiefs - Yours Truly, Angry Mob

Marcelo Baeza Sequeira — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 07:01:29 EDT

Each time I listen to Yours Truly, Angry Mob, the second LP from the British band Kaiser Chiefs, my mind, in an unconscious way, tries to link their sound with the perfect cross between a new wave band from the 80’s and a brit pop band from the 90’s. Trying to describe an album using the popular knowledge of some famous bands is a lazy and cheap trick that I won’t waste your time trying to explain.Dancing songs filled with unforgettable choruses, pop melodies, rocking guitars and adolescent lyrics. This is Kaiser Chiefs, a band that “read the papers everyday day” (“The Angry Mob”) and wants to be famous right now! (“Retirement”). And there is nothing better to get their aim across than a couple of smash hits with choruses that have just a couple of words going around in your head (“Ruby” and “I Can Do Without You”). But not all are dance tunes, Yours Truly, Angry Mob, also features “Love's not a competition (but I'm winning)” that is a nice ballad with the most interesting lyrics on the LP; which is one of the highlights, a perfect song to play on your guitar in your room, alone. Other quiet moments are “Try Your Best” and the shorter track “Boxing Champ”, but those songs cannot change the main proclamation of the LP: get on your dancing shoes! (Oops, any relationship with Arctic Monkeys is a coincidence).Kaiser Chiefs will not change the fate of the music, they are just trying to record the perfect pop song, and well, sometimes we need a band that gives us a couple of new lines to sing in our cars or in the shower. Quoting their own lyrics “I can do it, I can do it, I can do it, I can do it without you / But it wouldn't be very good”.I think that they didn’t have problems with that, especially if they are trying to look like a new version of Beatles for Sale (the quoting of LP cover is so obvious), and also trying to sound like a cross between their favourite bands; something like Duran Duran mixed with Oasis, or Spandau Ballet mixed with Blur, or Human League mixed with Suede (finally the old cheap trick comes to me). You can choose your own couple.Yours Truly, Angry Mob is a fresh LP with songs that stick in your head for a couple of days.

Music Review: Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare

Marcelo Baeza Sequeira — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:28:40 EDT

Like a hyper kinetic kid that always has problems with his teachers and mathematics, Alex Turner sings in a vertiginous way with all the words that his tongue and his lungs let him modulate, without taking care of the timing and the rhyme. But it’s infectious; you never get bored with his style, which gives more energy to the music than the riff guitars, although all the instruments are played in a strong way. In fact the opening track “Brianstorm” has a demolition intro with drums and bass, an excellent choice to introduce Favourite Worst Nightmare. Although the Arctic Monkeys are talked about as being really new band, being new in rock and roll is quite a hard thing to do. I could say that they have a ‘new’ style, or at least when you listen to the Arctic Monkeys you don’t try to link their music with other bands. For this reason all people talk about them like ‘the new saviour of rock and roll’, but for me rock and roll is saving itself everyday in thousands of bands that never reach the mainstream and play without earning a pound or a dollar. By the way, putting on the shoulders of four young men the heavy burden of being the ‘saviour of rock and roll’, is too much, and The Beatles were The Beatles.Favourite Worst Nightmare is an amazing LP, an improvement from their debut, the acclaimed Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. It is an improvement because its songs have more personality, more careful arrangements and more demanding vocal work. Although the sound of the guitars, bass and drums are similar on each song, the LP doesn’t sound like a long track of thirty-seven minutes with a dozen of little mute pauses.A sarcastic and conceited smile flows from the first to last track, “the confidence is the balaclava” they say while they hit their darts on the third millennium yuppies (“Brianstorm”) or the second millennium old neighbours friends (“Fluorescent Adolescent”), although a couple of quiet tracks with more mature lyrics appear on the LP (“Only Ones Who Know”, “Do Me A Favour”, “505”), “Do the bad thing” is the concept (“Take off your wedding ring, But it wont make it that much easier, it might make it worse”).Favourite Worst Nightmare is not an LP where you would easily find songs that could be promotional singles, the commercial success seemed to be an aim far from their music, but it is precisely what gives them success. You have other bands and singer that have recorded the choruses that you can download as ring tones to your cellular phone.Finally I can’t resist to compare Arctic Monkeys with The Ramones, a band that only have one musical idea and development that through 30 years without a smash hit (the only way to recognise the songs from the 70’s to the songs of the 80’s or the 90’s is the technical quality of the recording), but influenced thousand of bands all over the world.

Music Review: Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

Marcelo Baeza Sequeira — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 09:00:23 EDT

So “Not much chance for survival / If the Neon Bible is right”. Damned! What can we do now?The last album, Neon Bible from the Canadian band Arcade Fire talks about the hypocrisies, the lies, the ambition, and the cynicism of a society that searches for shelter in religion but always finds more pain, more lies, and more ambition without noticing what is happening in front of their eyes.With a large dose of ironic criticism towards the media establishments (“Neon Bible” and “Windowsill) they have a couple of songs with real explicit lyrics, like “Intervention” (“Working for the Church while your family dies”) and “Antichrist Television Blues” (a song that talks about a father that exploits commercially the talents of his pre adolescent daughter. Does it sounds familiar?). When I say 'real explicit lyrics', I'm not talking about bad words (this is just a dirty commercial trick).Arcade Fire sounds like the alternative bands of the nineties, but with the typical sound of the new bands that seem to all have the same producers. Sometimes, when I listen to a new song on the radio I can hardly tell if it's from Bloc Party, Interpol, The Rakes, or The Killers. Well, I suppose that people say the same at times of British invasions, glam rock, or grunge groups.Although they recorded a couple of rock songs, the urge to dance doesn't hit you when you listen to the LP. The quiet songs have precise arrangements, broadcasting the feelings of the lyrics, especially the last track “My Body is Cage”.The little details make this special, like the voice of the artist and sentimental couple Win Butler and Régine Chassagne as well as violins, accordion arrangements, and some lyrics in French.Well, if darkness is the feeling of your soul and you were recently born when The Cure recorded Pornography or Disintegration, this could be your new favorite band, side by side with Bloc Party.Finally, I want to recommend the song “No Cars Go”, the only one with a positive message, at least that is how I felt. The best song of the LP, It has a solid arrangement, a beautiful duet with Butler-Chassagne, and the timing is almost perfect. It is the song that Arcade Fire should never forget to play live.I know a place where no cars go too.

Music Review: The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers

Marcelo Baeza Sequeira — Sat, 7 Jul 2007 09:48:44 EDT

The first thing you think of when you're listening to the debut album of The Racounters is 'what is that? White Stripes trying to sound like Deep Purple?'. Take it easy. Jack White himself plays on this album; this is his new project. In his own words, it's "A new band made up of old friends." Specifically, it is Brendan Benson and Jack White; they co-write the ten songs as other legendary partners did (Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards) and sing almost all the tracks in duet. Their sound is completed by drummer Patrick Keeler and bassist Jack Lawrence.Broken Boy Soldiers is a big album, with all the power of rock and roll and blues. The sound appears to be influenced by The Pixies (intros of “Steady, As She Goes” and “Broken Boy Soldier”), Deep Purple (the keyboards on “Store Bought Bones”), Janis Joplin ("Blue Veins"), The Kinks ("Yellow Sun") and the psychedelic songs of The Beatles (the reverse effects on “Blue Veins”). The Racounters recorded an album that is so natural, spontaneous, and powerful that it makes you say: "Where is my guitar! I can write songs like that." They makes it look easy when it’s so hard; That's talent.There is nothing new in the guitars, keyboards, bass, and drums. The arrangements are good and are mixed well. All the songs smell like seventies rock anthems. The influences are so obvious, but all the songs are very good. Please don’t ask me for highlights! When all the new bands are trying to sound like something really new (is this possible in rock and roll?), we have The Racounters that give us ten solid songs. That is what the listener wants; good songs. If you insist on the highlights, my favourite is “Together” but the singles are “Steady, As She Goes”, “Hands” and “Broken Boy Soldier”.Benson and White sing almost all the songs as a duet. They make very interesting vocal arrangements, which build up the 'Racounters sound'. The vocal timing on “Blue Veins” is amazing, Janis would cry in her grave. But, I need to say that the arrangements on “Call It A Day” remind me of Alice in Chains. I don’t know if the band had the soul of Stanley in mind when they recorded it.There is nothing special about the lyrics, but with all of those emo bands buzzing your ears, you really appreciate a band with a mature way of seeing life: “Your friends have shown a kink in the single life / You've had to much to think, now you need a wife” (“Steady, As She Goes”). As they sing on “Together”: “You've gotta learn to live and live and learn”.I would like to mention the design of their web page. It simulates the old 80s computers.Finally a blasphemy, Jack White does it better with The Racounters than the White Stripes. Sorry Meg, maybe rock and roll is a game for boys.

Music Review: The Rakes - Ten New Messages

Marcelo Baeza Sequeira — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 06:22:44 EDT

The Rakes new album sounds like it was recorded with the same instruments and amplification as Bloc Party, but happier, like Franz Ferdinand. At least, you feel this in the mood of the songs and in their lyrics. The Rakes plays listen-able, dance-able rock. It's a great addition to your MP3 player. But it's rock with enough energy guitar too, with an important amount of the new 'classical riff guitar' that plays only quavers (were The Strokes the first?). Another characteristic of their music is a singer with a mature voice that sometimes sings tired and some sound effects that appears in a couple of songs. The female voice in “Suspicious Eyes” gives more texture to the short disc of forty minutes long. The conversations over the melodies are a good trick, better than the typical voice-over. Ten New Messages has entertainment as its vocation. This is very different in comparison with other new British bands with similar sounds who cannot liberate themselves from the melancholic and their dark vision of life. Maybe The Rakes have the same view (in fact “Down with Moonlight” sound like a Placebo song) but you can see that they had fun recording this LP. The Beatlesque melodies are a case in point. The opening track raises your expectations. “The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect” is a funny song that reminds you of Tony Blair's cynical smile as he said everything is OK in Iraq, but it's really talking about the simpler things in your life, like how many times you accept your bad fate (“sometimes troubles finds you no matter what you are”) just hold on waiting quietly for your lucky day. The expectation is met with the single “We dance together” and other highlights like “Trouble” and “When Tom Cruise Cries” that talks about cynical friends too, quoting the film Magnolia (a honorable mention to the sample of an interference produced by a cellular phone being too near to a radio). The quietest song “Leave the City and Come Home” was the best option to close the LP, which makes you to play the album again.

Music Review: Paul McCartney -- Memory Almost Full

Marcelo Baeza Sequeira — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 10:56:28 EDT

At the symbolic age of 64, Sir Paul McCartney has released his new solo album Memory Almost Full, recorded in the way that he likes most: alone, or almost alone. He plays all the instruments by himself (except for the strings) and does all the voices by himself too.There are many interpretations of the title Memory Almost Full which you can find in a sea of reviews about the album, but for me it’s just the evidence of a man in his third age thinking seriously about his death (“The End of the End”), looking over his shoulder at the long and winding road that he had taking (“Ever Present Past”, “You Tell Me”, “Vintage Clothes” and “That Was Me”).But also the title Memory Almost Full is about the feeling of his soul after his painful divorce, so tired after that old deal because he really loves that woman (“Gratitude”).Before listening I was thinking about this album like the last part of a third millennium trilogy with Driving Rain and Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, but I was surprised by the album that reminds me of the best moments from Wings, with some musical déjà vu of the Flaming Pie.Can we expect something really new from Paul? Hard question, looking back in retrospect. Press to Play sounds new compared with his first eighties albums, although for me the lowest point on his solo career was Press to Play. On the other hand, the amazing Run Devil Run was really something new compared with the albums released in the last 20 years; furthermore it was a vindication of the rock and roll after the decaffeinated CHOBA B CCCP album.Asking again, Can we expect something really new from Paul? Yes, Memory Almost Full is a bit different, more fresh, more rock, more raw, and more emotive than the last albums, but of course it has the typical Macca clichés and it has the same musical tips which we love in his music. This is what we want: his charming voice in the emotive song (“You Tell Me”), his powerful and hoarse voice in the rock tune (“Nod Your Head”), his unbeatable arrangements and his infinite talent to play bass, guitar (great solo on “House of Wax”!), piano, and drums.Let me quote: Paul collaborated with Ringo on Vertical Man, and while they were mixing the album, Ringo said to Paul with a little disappointment, “hum, it sounds like The Beatles” and Paul answered, “hey man, you’re a Beatle!”. Paul didn’t have a problem sounding like his old records, because what he is, is what he is (“Vintage Clothes”, “That Was Me”).Now it’s time to disagree a little with Sir McCartney, I don’t like “Dance Tonight” as the opening of the album, even more, I don’t like this track on the album. After the kicking rock tunes that opened the last albums (“Lonely Road” and “A Fine Line”) I was waiting for a stronger tune, specially after he announced that he would work with David Khane as producer. “Only Mamma Knows” would have been a better option than this monotone track that could give you a lazy preview of the album.This is not an album to introduce a new audience to Paul, but the most successful songwriter alive hardly needs that. This is just the album that fans were waiting for, thousands of fans all over the world.

Music Review: The Dears - No Cities Left

Marcelo Baeza Sequeira — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 10:43:37 EDT

When you listen to the opening track of No Cities Left you may think that Jeff Buckley has come to life again … and this feeling rules the entire LP, the third in the The Dears musical career. How important is the first track? Usually you pre-judge an LP from the first song and usually the artist tries to give you a preview of what's to come, sometimes they raise expectations and use a little track (an “intro”) to introduce the first song. Is “We Can Have It” a good opening? At first listen, I would say yes. It has an emotive musical development, but if you attention to the lyrics you can feel so much sorrow and frustration (“Someone somewhere says they've got it all / But that's not even what we want / Not even close”). If you listen to the rest of the album, the songs are easier to listen to. Personally I prefer as a first track a song that takes risks like “Pinned Together, Falling Apart” with its messy intro (reminiscent of Pulp's This is Hardcore).On the next tracks the British influences appear. It's so hard to postulate if it's Suede, Pulp and Blur, or Morrissey’s band that have influenced The Dears the most. Maybe they took musical ideas from all of them. Sometimes, it seems, they took more than just the ideas though. For example, the arrangements of the fourth track “Don’t Lost the Faith” are too similar to “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”.The lyrics dramatically cover all aspects of life: the new high stress tension that can lead to an unsatisfied adult life (“Don't Lose The Faith”), reminiscing about a kiss that eventually broke your heart (“22 The Death Of All The Romance”), worrying too much about the little things (“The Second Part”), and the dream of breaking out of your mundane everyday life. (“Imagining and planning out the course of both our lives”).No Cities Left is a good LP, full of melancholy, sadness, and passion. It's only weakness is it becomes a catalogue of the alternative brit pop cliché, using intros, arrangements, and vocal work that always reminds you of songs you have heard before. It may seem like a new concept, but in reality it's not new at all if you thing about the use of samples. At least it's a different development.

Music Review: Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights

Marcelo Baeza Sequeira — Fri, 1 Jun 2007 08:56:03 EDT

The debut album from the NYC band INTERPOL sounds like it was recorded on the green grass lands of the UK. It has the same melancholy feelings of many British old bands and the powerful and messing guitar of the new bands like Arctic Monkeys and Bloc Party. However sometimes it reminds you of The Pixies, specially on the solo guitar track “The New”. But there are two musical elements that rule the LP. The first is a kind of dark mixing. Although some songs are strong rock tunes, you don’t want to dance, you can feel the weight of the emotions on the tracks that pass one by one slowly like a big and heavy wheel climbing up a hill.The second musical element is the way that the singer of the band does his job. Without a good register, he sings like he was rushed to say all the words his soul needed to say, like now or never. Sometimes he puts more words than the musical timing allows, and sometimes faster. He finished the phrases after the instrumental line had completed leaving some strange space without singing, like mute notes. Paul Banks sings, forgetting the pop rules of how to build a perfect song.But the LP flows naturally with little surprises, maybe with the exception of the longest song (“Stella Was A Diver And She Was Always Down”) but this track is like an abstract of the musical ideas of the band. The second longest track (“The New”) doesn’t justify its length of six minutes either.Talking about the lyrics, they are focused on a man flattened by a lover that “Was A Diver And (She) Was Always Down” that is the object of all his devotion and desperation, almost all the songs talks about it (“Untitled”, “Obstacle 1”, “Pda”, “Say Hello To The Angels”, “Obstacle 2”, “Stella Was A Diver And She Was Always Down”, “The New” and “Leif Erikson”) Maybe I should quote the songs with different lyrics. It’s not easy to recommend highlights from this LP, although one guide are the singles (“Obstacle 1”, “NYC”), but I can pick up a couple with good lyrics, like “Leif Erikson” and “Obstacle 1”.