It's the merry, merry month of May, boys and girls, and the cup continues to runneth over with great and interesting new releases all needing our time and attention. In most weeks, I'd spend more time talking about the new solo album from Everything But The Girl's Tracey Thorn, Love And Its Opposite . She's one of my favorite unheralded voices and I've already streamed a couple tracks from this record. I will be adding it to the collection. Now, let's take a look at the headlining releases for May 18:
Black Keys - Brothers
Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street Re-issue
These are the two titles that will get most people talking and with good reason. The Black Keys have become one of those breakthrough indie bands and their profile continues to grow with each release. Gone are the days of the two-man, DIY, rough-n-raw bombastic blues. Working with Danger Mouse and doing the limited edition rap-rock collaboration has clearly had an impact on the Akron duo and they've left those days behind. Brothers is a sonically diverse collection of songs that mines classic blues, rock, and soul elements with modern production and electronic traces. It is a bold record that will please many — including our own Mark Saleski (review) — while possibly alienating a few who fell in love with their earlier work.
I won't spend a lot of time chronicling The Rolling Stones' Exile On Main Street. You either know about it or you need to get a lap. It's one of the landmark records of the 20th century. To some it's the greatest double album in rock history. To some it's the greatest album in history. Others — including Mick Jagger and Keith Richards — find it a bit overrated. Regardless, it's a vital cog in the history of rock music and it's now being re-issued in a remastered format and fans can also get a version with some rarities and previously unreleased cuts from that era of the band. Sort of.
Most Stones fans know it wasn't uncommon for the band to take songs that were leftovers from sessions for one album and carry them over to the next. Let it Bleed, , and Sticky Fingers weren't all recorded in easily definable, separate settings. Songs that had origins in one session showed up later. I said all that to say anything that didn't get recycled in many cases wasn't all that special or never got finished so in order for the Stones to present these "leftover" Exile tracks, many of them were "finished" by the current Stones lineup within the last year. Are these old tracks, new tracks, interesting tracks? Hard to say. Jagger has been particularly finicky about what gets released from the vaults. The remastering is also going to be controversial. Exile was intentionally grungy and murky. Even if we ignore the (likely) impacts of the "loudness wars," it's going to be tough to remaster this record without losing some of what people loved about it the first time. Of course I'm going to end up investigating all of this but I'm not sure what to make of it going in.
Article comments
1 - Jordan Richardson
Wow. That's a lot of John Tesh.
2 - Josh Hathaway
Imagine how angry God is about that!
3 - Josh Hathaway
But way to ignore all the really cool stuff and focus on that, Jordan. ;-)
4 - El Bicho
Noam Chomsky?? I hope he learned after his poor venture into country
5 - JC Mosquito
Exile bonus tracks - 10 tracks - over 40 minutes - that's a whole album right there. As for latter day overdubs - well, Springsteen did that on the Tracks set too, didn't he? Exile sounds decent on first listen - but the bonus tracks are just filler - nothing stellar here - interestingly enough - I think that's what I said the first time I heard Exile as a teenager.
6 - Mark Saleski
i'd take the Noam Chomsky over the freaking piano tribute to Maroon 5. holy heck.
7 - Kandie Fuller
Every time the Stones trot out their newest piece of product (as with this year's execrable Bridges To Babylon), each seemingly more lackluster than the last, it becomes harder to believe that they were once what they now merely advertise themselves to be--The World's Greatest Rock n' Roll Band.
8 - Joanie
I'm glad I'm not the only one who found all that Teshness a bit much.
James & Rynn for the win! Oh, wait. That's in about seven months. And dude, I thought you said you HAD listened to the CD already. Okay, so now it's officially past the release date. What'd you think?
9 - Kandie Fuller
Every time the Stones trot out their newest piece of product (as with this year's execrable Bridges To Babylon), each seemingly more lackluster than the last, it becomes harder to believe that they were once what they now merely advertise themselves to be--The World's Greatest Rock n' Roll Band.