Medleyville

7 Walkers, Tumbledown, Sarah Sample and Fran Healy

* 7 Walkers — 7 Walkers (Response Records)
Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann is the most familiar name in this quartet, but the star is singer/guitarist Papa Mali (who got his stage name while touring with reggae legend Burning Spear). At times, Mali's wonderful rasp brings to mind Dr. John, John Hiatt and Elvis Costello. Standout songs on the band's self-titled debut (due Nov. 2), a mix of New Orleans-flavored rock and funk, include "Sue From Bogalusa," "New Orleans Crawl" and "Someday You'll See." Willie Nelson makes a cool cameo on "King Cotton Blues."

* Tumbledown — Empty Bottle (End Sounds)
With drummer Yuri Ruley retiring from MxPx in July, the future of the punk band is up in the air. In the meantime, though, MxPx singer Mike Herrera has a pretty good side thing going with the cowpunk outfit Tumbledown. Empty Bottle (out now) blends tasteful twang with hard, steady beats and would fit comfortably between Mike Ness' solo work and most everything by the Old 97's on an all-alt-country jukebox (if one exists). "Great Big World" and "St. Peter" are among the best of the bunch.

* Sarah Sample — Someday, Someday (Ramona PO Records)
Blessed with smooth, sexy voice, Sarah Sample puts it to good use on Someday, Someday, which was recorded live in a Utah studio over three days in July. She lives at the corner where rock 'n' roll and country intersect, and she sounds right at home on ballads, mid-tempo tunes and even rockers. Notable tracks include "Be My Middle Ground" and "Staying Behind."

* Fran Healy — Wreckorder (Rykodisc)
For his first solo album, Travis frontman Fran Healy chose to literally go at it alone, handling with aplomb nearly all of the singing and instruments himself. But Wreckorder (out now) is not entirely a one-man show: Notable helpers include Paul McCartney (who plays a, well, McCartney-esque bass line on "As It Comes") and Neko Case (who contributes sweet vocals to "Sing Me to Sleep"). Healy's voice remains gentle and inviting, and he's written some good material this time around.

— By Chris M. Junior

Posted by Medleyville at 09:23 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

DON AND PHIL WALK RIGHT BACK

Not even the most periphery listener of rock 'n' roll should need any explanation whatsoever at this point regarding how two young Kentucky-bred brothers placed a stamp upon the sounds of the '60s equaled only by Buddy Holly and his Crickets: One listen to nearly every John Lennon and Paul McCartney vocal duet from "Love Me Do" onward — not to mention those most blatant protégés by the name of Simon and Garfunkel — more than prove that particular sonic point.

Then there are albums such as Songs Our Daddy Taught Us (1959) and the ever-amazing Roots (from '68), which created the undeniable, if criminally under-acknowledged template for the folk- and/or country-rock of any Bob Dylan, Byrds or even Rank and File track you’d care to name-check. "We owe those guys everything," the man I like to call Bob is on record as admitting. "They started it all."

Plus, need I even mention a staggering string of globe and genre-spanning hit records which continue to reverberate within the DNA of popular music creators and listeners to this very day?

Absolutely not. But what I feel I do need to state here and now, however, is the incredibly long-awaited DVD release via Eagle Rock Entertainment of The Everly Brothers Reunion Concert: Live at The Royal Albert Hall, now here for all to watch, weep, and learn from.

Ending their first run beneath the spotlight with a literally explosive onstage breakup in 1973, the pair saw and spoke with one another only once (at their father's funeral) during the ensuing downcast decade. Not surprisingly though, I suspect, as one can imagine little constructive musical place for the duo throughout an era book-ended by "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" and "Billie Jean."

But in finally burying various personal and musical hatchets, the brothers returned to the country that always seemed to not only love, but understand them most with a 1983 performance in London. There, somehow, it took only 25 songs in less than an hour and a half to forever erase the years of bickering, brawling, bitterness and deeply-seeded sibling rivalry.

The Everly Brothers Reunion Concert presents it all. Every roll of the tom-toms, every country-baked guitar lick (courtesy of the stupendous Albert Lee), every thrash of Don Everly's signature acoustic and, of course, every note-and-inflection-perfect vocal duet still dripping pathos one bar, then grating passion the next (as only these two Everlys honestly ever could).

Rounding out this superb package is the (unfortunately truncated, however) 1984 documentary Rock 'n' Roll Odyssey, which chronicles not only the songs and successes but the strains and struggles behind this most often completely misrepresented act.

Of course the Everlys followed their Royal Albert triumph with one McCartney-penned minor hit (the soaring "On the Wings of a Nightingale") and landmark album (1986’s Born Yesterday), which returned the duo to a much-deserved critical, if sorrowfully not commercial level unsurpassed since their late '50s/early '60s achievements. In fact an older, wiser, and most definitely still vital Don and Phil Everly continue to harmonize onstage to this very day, though all attempts to get the brothers recording again have failed. But then, as no less an authority on the subject as Don Everly himself stated in his own inimitable manner, "I don't know whether there’s a place for us. Country music’s turned into a kind of a video soap opera — a contest of cute butts and pretty faces."

He added, “I was raised in front of a microphone, and on the other side of the microphone was an audience. So it got instilled in me from the beginning: You go out there and do your best, and if they appreciate it, that's the reward."

Your reward? Reveling anew in Don and Phil's Reunion Concert, and with it the fantastic flood of heartaches and harmonies those Everlys forever bring your way.

— Musician/writer Gary Pig Gold is the co-founder of the To M'Lou Music label.

Posted by Medleyville at 01:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Terminal 5 -- Oct. 23, 2010
New York

-- Photos by Chris M. Junior

Posted by Medleyville at 10:31 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

With name issues in the past, Flashbulb Fires looks to the future

If a band is going to change its name, one of the best times to do so is before releasing its debut album. Sometimes, though, making such a switch is not a smooth and simple process.

Fiance, which already had the EPs Girl From the Ivory Coast (2007) and Please, Ambitious, Please (2008) under its belt, got to a point after about four years where it felt like the name didn’t fit anymore. So around April 2009, the Denver-based Fiance changed its moniker to The Atlantic, only to find out a few months (and a few gigs) later that another group had already trademarked the name.

Around July 2009, the problem was solved with the announcement that the short-lived Atlantic had become Flashbulb Fires.

"We liked the image that the phrase put in our heads," explains guitarist/singer Michael James. "In addition, it speaks to the lyrical content of our music to a certain degree — kind of this burnout of American pop culture and sensationalism — as well as evoking a sense of nostalgia that we feel is an element in some of our music."

As for any public confusion his band may have caused with its name switcheroo, James says, "We were still relatively new in the eyes of Denver … so even though we were all over the place for a few months, it ended up not making a big difference in the long run. People know us as Flashbulb Fires for the most part; there are very few Fiance holdovers these days."

Prior to the whole name-changing process, the band had been hard at work recording the majority of what would be its debut album, Glory, in a rented Denver house.

"One of the most important things for us was to have a space we could call our own and spend hours and days at a time recording in without having to worry about the constraints of typical studios," James says. "We could experiment and try different things without feeling pressure to be productive and get the most out of our 'studio time.' The point was to foster creativity as much as possible. Recording that way also gave us the chance to do some writing in the studio. Songs like 'Heavy Hands' and 'Rope and River' were all completely written in the studio during the recording of Glory."

Since the release of Glory in late 2009, Flashbulb Fires has changed bassists, replacing Tyler Reschke — "his priorities changed and he decided that he needed to move on to other things," according to James — with Brett Schreiber.

Word of Reschke's departure came as a bit of a shock. A piece of news that the group was hoping to hear arrived in June, when Flashbulb Fires learned it was voted by the public as the best indie-pop band on the 2010 Westword Music Showcase ballot, finishing ahead of 10 other Denver-area nominees in the indie-pop category.

While James says his band is proud of the Westword honor, he's not entirely comfortable with the indie-pop tag, which he feels "seems too one-dimensional to encompass everything we do. Some of our music probably leans more toward the 'pop' side of things, yet some of our stuff is much more experimental."

That pretty much sums up Glory, which James goes on to describe as "brooding, dark and melancholy. Both lyrically and musically it is tortured, but it has an underlying hopefulness to it."

A good portion of the follow-up has already been written, says James, who adds that the album will have a different feel from Glory.

"We will still do quite a bit more writing when we get back from our tour," he adds. "The bulk of the recording will probably take place later this year and early next year. We want to get something out as soon as possible because we are very excited about the new material.

"There is this energy that is driving and stirring in a lot of the new music — a sort of caged animal trying to get out. From a lyrical standpoint, I think the satire remains, but with a different take than on Glory. It will be interesting to see how the full story of this second album evolves over the next several months as we continue to shape it. The truth is, what the album ends up being will probably be different from where we thought it end up at the start. That's usually how these things work out."

— By Chris M. Junior

Flashbulb Fires on tour (schedule subject to change):

* Oct. 23: The ATC – Woodbridge, Conn.

* Oct. 25: The Trash Bar – Brooklyn, N.Y.

* Oct. 26: The Saint – Asbury Park, N.J.

* Oct. 27: Mojo 13 – Wilmington, Del.

* Oct. 28: The Cave – Chapel Hill, N.C.

* Oct. 29: The Evening Muse – Charlotte, N.C.

* Oct. 30: Diversity Den – Concord, N.C.

* Nov. 1: LiveWire – Savannah, Ga.

* Nov. 2: The Golden Bough – Macon, Ga.

* Nov. 3: Soho – Columbus, Ga.

* Nov. 4: The Independent – Auburn, Ala.

* Nov. 5: The Apollo – Murfreesboro, Tenn.

* Nov. 6: The 5 Spot – Nashville, Tenn.

* Nov. 8: The Coup – Clarksville, Tenn.

* Nov. 9: The Buccaneer – Memphis, Tenn.

* Nov. 11: Shreveport Music Collective – Shreveport, La.

* Nov. 12: The Green Elephant – Dallas

* Nov. 13: Fassler Hall – Tulsa, Okla.

* Nov. 14: Kirby’s Beer Store – Wichita, Kan.

Photo by Todd Roeth

Posted by Medleyville at 11:42 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Unicycle Loves You records Mirror, Mirror as a trio

When two of its members left on good terms in recent years, Unicycle Loves You reacted in typical fashion: by holding auditions for replacements.

In the end, though, the experimental pop/rock Chicago band decided to leave well enough alone.

"It just felt so strange to try and bring somebody else in," says bassist Nicole Vitale. "It wasn't that anybody who auditioned with us wasn't good enough or wasn't cool enough or anything silly like that. The three of us felt we could get this done ourselves."

Doing so meant expanding their roles: More vocals for Vitale, keyboard duties for singer/guitarist Jim Carroll and technical-related tasks for drummer J.T. Baker.

"We rely on each other a lot more," Vitale says. "Whereas with the five members, we were all just trying to not step on each other's toes. It was almost like too many cooks in the kitchen. We didn't realize it [at the time]; we were all just having fun. But once everything progressed the way it did and it came down to the three of us, we just stepped up to the plate in our way to bring more focus to what we're playing, what we’re doing and how we wanted things to be."

That degree of control and focus goes beyond playing — it also includes production. After working with notable Chicago producer Brian Deck and getting "the full studio treatment" to make Unicycle Loves You's self-titled debut album, Vitale says the band members opted to pursue their collective "secret wish" and stay in-house with producing the follow-up, Mirror, Mirror (Highwheel Records).

"We've always loved the sound of the recordings Jim was able to come up with in the first place," Vitale says. "And we knew it would just take a little extra effort to try and figure out how to bring it to that next level where we could actually make it a real album. We did it, and in so many ways it was so much more rewarding. It wasn't us standing behind somebody saying, 'No, that’s better.' It was us with our fingers on the button saying that."

Using its rehearsal space to record basic tracks, then an apartment for overdubs, Unicycle Loves You took more time making Mirror, Mirror than it did recording the band’s 2008 debut, but the time was well spent.

"We recorded two versions of a song that doesn't even show up on the album, just because we were experimenting," Vitale says. "We would never have had that opportunity if we were in a studio paying everybody by the hour. We were in our apartment doing it, screwing around, and if it didn’t work, no harm, no foul."

— By Chris M. Junior

Unicycle Loves You on tour (schedule subject to change):

* Oct. 20: Spike Hill — Brooklyn, N.Y.

* Oct. 21: Cake Shop — New York

* Oct. 22: The Local 269 — New York

* Nov. 13: Schubas — Chicago

Posted by Medleyville at 08:21 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Less Than Jake's novel EP clocks in around 13 minutes

Love them or hate them, TV theme songs and commercial jingles do pack plenty of hooks and skill into a finite amount of time.

The guys in Less Than Jake recognize the high level of craft that goes into these bite-size tunes, and proof of their appreciation can be found on the Florida-based ska/punk band's latest release, TV/EP (Sleep It Off).

LTJ tackles 16 favorites on TV/EP, which clocks in at around 13 minutes. There are nine TV themes and seven commercials, and each one is track-listed as an anonymous "channel" in order to provide the feeling of switching from one random television channel to another.

According to LTJ trombonist Buddy Schaub, recording a batch of TV themes and commercials was something the band had been kicking around for a few years.

"Once we actually got to the point where we were really going to do this," he says, "we all just kept e-mailing each other ideas or bringing them up during practice. [Singer/guitarist] Chris [Demakes] came over a few times to my house and he, [saxophonist] JR [Wasilewski] and myself sat around looking up YouTube clips for old shows and commercials. One would lead to another and to another. There are a gazillion choices out there."

Schaub says the theme for Animaniacs was the most challenging of the bunch.

"It changes key five times throughout the song," he explains, "and we all sang so many different parts it was hard to keep straight what the hell was going on half the time.

"It was really interesting to see how much musicality you can pack into 40 seconds of songwriting," he says of the entire TV/EP project. "There are key changes, weird harmonies, half verses, chromatic walk-downs — just so many things you can pack into such a small amount of space and still come out singing every part all day long."

Following tours of Japan and Europe, Less Than Jake plans to make demos and/or record songs for its next album (scheduled for a 2011 release) prior to starting a U.S. tour in January.

— By Chris M. Junior

Less Than Jake on tour (schedule subject to change):

* Jan. 19: Captain Hiram's — Sebastian, Fla.

* Jan. 20: Freebird Live — Jacksonville, Fla.

* Jan. 21: Motorco Music Hall — Durham, N.C.

* Jan. 22: The Orange Peel — Asheville, N.C.

* Jan. 23: The Norva — Norfolk, Va.

* Jan. 25: Sherman Theater — Stroudsburg, Pa.

* Jan. 26: The Chance — Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

* Jan. 27: Sonar — Baltimore

* Jan. 28: Webster Theatre — Hartford, Conn.

* Jan. 29: Starland Ballroom — Sayreville, N.J.

* Jan. 30: Trocadero — Philadelphia

* Jan. 31: Water Street Music Hall — Rochester, N.Y.

Photo by Dennis Ho

Posted by Medleyville at 09:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

With few exceptions, musicians hate having labels attached to their music.

Not KT Tunstall. In fact, she's is in a league of her own: Instead of waiting for someone else to categorize her music, she goes ahead and does it herself.

Tunstall uses the phrase "nature techno" to describe her third album, Tiger Suit (Relentless/Virgin), and by that she means the sound features a mix of organic instrumentation and electronic textures.

"What I really wanted to do was make a record you can dance to," says Tunstall.

She's succeeded with Tiger Suit, which follows Eye to the Telescope (2006) and Drastic Fantastic (2007). The Grammy Award-nominated singer/songwriter/guitarist recently talked about the role whistling plays on her new album, collaborating with Linda Perry, the different locations she used in the recording process and more.

Medleyville.us: Thanks for coming up with the term "nature techno." It suits the blend of the organic and electronic very well, and it's better than anything music journalists would have come up with.
KT Tunstall: "Oh, thank you. Obviously it's hard to come up with something that describes the whole album, but it fits the spirit."

Going back to the disco days of the 1970s, anytime the word "danceable" has been used to describe a song, people automatically think of it as disposable.
Tunstall: "Yeah, that's true."

But it hasn't always been that way — before disco, there was the good Motown stuff, the soul stuff.
Tunstall: "One of the things for me in terms of what I was trying to pinpoint what I wanted to do was 'C'mon Everybody' and 'Summertime Blues' by Eddie Cochran. He's always been a great inspiration for me, a real idol. So I thought, 'What if Eddie Cochran was working with Leftfield?' I really didn't know if it was going to work, but I was delighted when it started to."

As far as some of the organic aspects of Tiger Suit, it doesn’t get much more organic than whistling, and your new album has a couple of songs with whistling. At what point did you decide that whistling was better than playing the melodies on an instrument you could hold in your hands?
Tunstall: "Whistling is just always a very quick and easy guide tool for a melody. Certainly with 'Glamour Puss' — I'd actually whistled the melody into my iPhone. And then when I was working on the song with Greg Kurstin, he said, 'I actually really like that.' He's a keyboard player with Beck, and that was what it was reminding me of — a really raw, organic sound like that is very much something that Beck would use. It automatically breaks barriers between the listener and the performer where it feels very personal. In a modern pop world, to bizarrely strive for this, it's a good antidote to that."

On the new album, you once again collaborate with Martin Terefe and Jimmy Hogarth, but you also work with Kurstin and Linda Perry. What do you look for in collaborators, and what was the give and take like with Kurstin and Perry?
Tunstall: "Well, it’s obviously very personal. You have a very intimate window of time with someone where you create songs together. I got to a point where I loved working with Martin and Jimmy and I trusted them, and they knew how I worked.

"One of my major things working with writers is I have to write the lyrics. I just wouldn't really be comfortable singing words that didn't come from me. There's an editing process within that in a collaboration, where someone will say, 'Maybe you can do better than that there.' But it's important that the sentiment and the stories and the emotion are coming from me.

"So with Jimmy and Martin, I felt very safe. … [Kurstin and Perry] were suggested to me, and it ended up being a great time. Linda, in particular, was such an important person on a personal level to me because I had no expectations. I mean, I knew what she had written and produced in the past; I knew that every record label that sends an artist to her probably hopes they’re going to write [another] 'Beautiful,' and I knew that wasn't going to happen. I'm sure she knew that wasn’t going to happen. I walk into her studio, and there's this massive original print of Led Zeppelin on the wall, and I just thought, 'We're going to get on well' (laughs). And we did. She's a wonderful, powerful, inspiring person, and she said just at the right time, when I was sort of wondering what the hell to do next, she said, 'You've got the songs, you’ve got the talent: The only problem is you give a [damn] about what everybody else thinks.' And it was such good advice. It really started me on the path of cutting ties with being concerned about other people's judgment and expectations."

Was it any different writing with her as opposed to the others? Was there a female bonding of some kind that's different from writing with guys?
Tunstall: "Yeah, I would say very quickly there was a strong feeling of sisterhood. And she's been an artist herself, so she completely understands the pressure and the fear of not coming up with the goods that you think you’re capable of. Her great skill is just telling you to shut up (laughs), to stop being a bag of neurosis and write a bloody song.

" 'Madame Trudeaux' is not what I expected to come out of a Linda Perry session, and it's one of my favorite songs on the album. It’s a song of female rebellion and emancipation, and it’s a real anthem for me. It was a real kind of sense of abandonment that came out working with her.

"Working with Greg was a whirlwind experience. I had six days, and we wrote and finished six songs — it was so prolific. The first time I went to see him, we had a three-day session — three songs, done and dusted. And I went back a second time, and I thought, 'I'm sure that must have been a fluke,' but again — three days, three songs, done and dusted. One of which was '(Still a) Weirdo,' which was written and recorded in five hours. I couldn't better the demo, so the demo's on the album. That's really magical for me; there’s this special window of time between a song being written and you knowing it, and you sing it very differently once you know it."

You made some demos at home, and then you traveled to London, Berlin and back to London to record Tiger Suit. How did each facility and location shape the songs and the sound?
Tunstall: "The majority of the record started in pre-production jamming in London with myself; my husband [Luke Bullen], who’s the drummer; another drummer, Jamie Morrison; and a whiz-kid named Seye Adelekan. He's 21 and just a ridiculously good guitarist and bassist.

"So the four of us jammed stuff out with [producer] Jim Abbiss. We then went over to Berlin for three weeks, and in those three weeks, we cut most of the album completely live, just the four of us. So there’s no synthesizers at this point, but I think being in Berlin was angling us to play in a way where it was going to work with the synth aspect. It definitely gave the whole live experience an edge in an angular nature that it wouldn’t have had. Hansa Studios was such a fantastic space; Berlin is so great. We went out clubbing one night and had such a great night of abandon and got into some really hard-core techno. Recording in the room where [David Bowie's] Heroes was recorded just makes you step up and play better.

"And then we came back to London, and me and [Abbiss] worked on all the synth stuff and the overdubbing, and that's when it really started to form a landscape. It had that energy of the live [sessions], but then we added this really beautiful, luxurious texture of the snyths."

— Introduction and interview by Chris M. Junior

KT Tunstall on tour (schedule subject to change):

* Oct. 5: The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (performing "Fade Like a Shadow")

* Oct. 31: Crystal Ballroom — Portland, Ore.

* Nov. 2: The Showbox SODO — Seattle

* Nov. 4: Knitting Factory — Spokane, Wash.

* Nov. 5: Knitting Factory — Boise, Idaho

* Nov. 7: Knitting Factory — Reno, Nev.

* Nov. 8: Warfield Theatre — San Francisco

* Nov. 11: The Music Box — Los Angeles

* Nov. 12: House of Blues — San Diego

* Nov. 16: Ogden Theatre — Denver

* Nov. 18: Epic — Minneapolis

* Nov. 19: The Vogue — Indianapolis

* Nov. 21: Vic Theatre — Chicago

* Nov. 22: The Crofoot — Detroit

* Nov. 26: The Trocadero — Philadelphia

* Nov. 27: 9:30 Club — Washington, D.C.

* Nov. 29: House of Blues — Boston

* Dec. 1: Terminal 5 — New York

Posted by Medleyville at 01:46 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

An ethereal, eerie album about love, loss and war

Fans of Neil Young have come to expect the unexpected. He’s reached the point in his career (and life — Young will turn 65 on Nov. 12) where it becomes hard not to retreat into the past and repeat himself. Young is not one to stand pat or back down. He’s like the prototypical gunfighter of the old west, still fast on the draw, still on top of his game.

With Le Noise (Reprise), Young once again cheats the ticking clock, changing his frame of reference with a sonic assault that is beautifully structured by producer Daniel Lanois, whose credits include works by Peter Gabriel, U2 and Bob Dylan.

Recorded in Lanois’ mansion in Los Angeles, Le Noise, according to the producer, "is just a man on a stool and me doing a nice job on the recording." Modesty aside, Lanois brings a palette of sonic textures to Young's compositions that enhances without burying the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's signature guitar sound. Lanois refines but never obscures the bite in Young’s tales, enhancing the performer’s sharp-edged songs and masterful feedback.

Young’s major weapons of choice here are a hollow-body Gretsch White Falcon guitar and Lanois' custom-made electric-acoustic hybrid. Young almost but never quite disappears beneath Lanois’ tape loops, distortion and echo effects. Like a ghost haunting the mansion’s long hallways and cathedral ceilings, the overall sound is ethereal and at times eerie.

Love, loss and war are the main themes here, as the lyrics search for solid ground and stability in a world being torn apart by war and stripped away by the loss of friends (such as sideman Ben Keith and producer Larry Johnson). The opening track, "Walk With Me," is classic Young, a love story filled with lament and portent, an ode to lost friends and loves, a hand reaching out for comfort.

"Love and War" is one of the quietest and most powerful tracks here. "There've been songs about love/I sang songs about war/since the back streets of Toronto." Young's sentiments haven’t changed much since his days with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. War is still the wound, and love is the suture to bind it. It may be Young's most quintessential anthem on the condition of war. In the final line of the song, Young vows to continue to "Pray about love and war."

"The Hitchhiker" is an autobiographical search for wisdom after countless mistakes. "Then came paranoia/And it ran away with me," is just one of the afflictions the narrator encounters. The lyrics "I wish I was an Aztec/Or a runner in Peru/I would build such beautiful buildings/Like an Inca from Peru" are a sly reference to Young's 1982 recording Trans, the experimental album (inspired by the German group Kraftwerk) that bears the most resemblance to Le Noise, in which Young’s use of the vocoder and other electronic treatments probably drove David Geffen to label the singer "uncommercial."

The lyrics of "It’s An Angry World" hold out hope. "It's an angry world and everything is going to be all right." The same sentiment is embraced in "Someone's Going to Rescue You." The album ends with the song "Rumblin.' " The lyrics "When will I learn how to listen?/When will I learn how to feel?" bring a somber and thoughtful conclusion to a powerful album of engaging songs.

Le Noise (a play on Lanois’ surname) is a dance on the edge of a cliff, a concerto played in the heart of a hurricane, a levee valiantly holding off a tsunami. It is another successful experiment produced (along with Lanois) from the laboratory of Neil Young's mind.

— By Donald Gavron

Posted by Medleyville at 10:52 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)