Fri, 28 Apr 2006

Wed, 26 Apr 2006

Mon, 06 Mar 2006

Wed, 15 Feb 2006

Wed, 01 Feb 2006

Fri, 06 Jan 2006

Anyway, after months of ignoring it, I finally put my friend's Kill Bill DVD in for a viewing. And I was transfixed at what Tarantino had accomplished. He had me from the opening credits, which were accompanied by a (you should pardon the expression) dead on cover of Sonny & Cher's Bang, Bang from this very album, Nancy Sinatra's second. Which also offers The Last Of The Secret Agents, the title song of a forgettable movie starring the comedy stylings of Marty Allen and Steve Rossi. Who are themselves largely forgotten. But not by Denny Hammerton, whose tribute website recalls their 60s catchphrase. And not by me; this post has me just dripping with nostalgia for my preteen years. Which like all good nostalgia has forgotten just how unpleasant those years were. But I digress. Twice in one post!

Wed, 28 Dec 2005

Wed, 30 Nov 2005

Fri, 28 Oct 2005

I first heard of Jonathan on Boing Boing, the source of way too many of best blog postings. This one mentioned that Jonathan had just done a folk cover of Baby Got Back, which you can listen to on his podcast. It's that most excellent combination of well crafted and totally wacky that we cherish.

Coulton's own songs are fine examples of musical skill merged with techie humor. If you're a nerd, you'll feel right at home. I certainly did. And that's a good thing, right?

Wed, 14 Sep 2005

That's what got me to stop: the feeling that I'd heard Melissa Errico's name before. But when I listened to the samples of her singing on the iTMS the mystery only deepened. A few seconds of And So It Goes told me that she's from the theater; there's a clarity and a precision to her delivery, a lack of artifice but no lack of warmth. So I went looking for her bio, to confirm my suspicion and to figure out why I knew her name.

Turns out I was right about her theatrical work, although I haven't seen any of her plays. But I did recognize a couple of her TV guest shots: as Lucie Arnaz's daughter in an episode of Law & Order and the cheating ex-wife of the title character in Ed. Neither one tells me much about her ability to act. But of her singing I have no doubts.

Wed, 07 Sep 2005

Wed, 20 Jul 2005

Kathy Compton's Gentle Ravings aren't quite ravings, although they aren't entirely gentle either. Her rhythms are sometimes upbeat, sometimes slow and languorous. But almost always with an edge, a sense that things are different, and more interesting, below the surface. I wonder what kind of stories one would find on her version of The Love Boat.

Wed, 06 Jul 2005

The Biddies make great music; their harmonies are sweet and their natural energy comes through on their recordings. I'd love to hear them live, assuming they ever make their way this far west. But until then I'll listen to their 'casts and wait for another album. These are four bitchin' babes. Just not the Four Bitchin' Babes.

Fri, 24 Jun 2005

Not that there's anything wrong with his singing. Quite the contrary; both his voice and his lyrics are rather good. It's just that I so enjoy his instrumentals. There's something distracting about them. Relaxing. Awakening could be the soundtrack for a rather good space epic, one without quite so many lightsabre duels. One Last Rendezvous and the title track are earthily romantic. Almost hypnotic in their way. And far more expressive than mere words.

Fri, 17 Jun 2005

I've written elsewhere about how getting my first player led almost inevitably to an appreciation for classical music, whose grand sound could be heard in all its complexity. The Nylons are at the opposite end of the scale: four guys from Montreal with no instruments at all. (Well, sometimes a little rhythm.) It's the minimalism of their performance that made them a natural for the crisp and clean sound of digital reproduction. It still does.

Mon, 16 May 2005

Not much to say about this one. I like her voice. A lot. It has a high and slightly trilling quality that reminds me of Bic Runga, about whom I wrote back when this blog was new.

One peculiarity about Fourth Person is that there are two versions on the iTMS. This one is dated April of 2004 and has 12 tracks. The other one is from March, 2005; the track order's a little bit different, there's an extra song called Blame It On the Night and, because it's a partial album (they cut a song intro), it'll cost you more. So if you decide you like it, buy the 2004 album and add the one track.

Oh, and here's another category rant: how come the 2004 version is listed as Pop, but somehow a year later the same songs qualify as Rock? That sort of thing just confuses the heck out of me...

Mon, 09 May 2005

That much I inferred from their website, and I'm not even sure of that. As for their music, it's light pop of a kind you don't hear much of any more. The songs are a mix of English and French, which means that I'm confused by half the tracks and completely lost with the rest. I'll leave you to figure out which is which.

Mon, 11 Apr 2005

I bought this one a while back after listening to the iTMS snippets. And I'll admit to disappointment when I sat down to listen to the whole thing. But that first impression was wrong. Now when one of Ms. McKay's songs shows up on my iPod, I can't imagine how I missed her wit, her sparkle and yes, her way with a song. She kind of grows on you.

Wed, 09 Mar 2005

It's like a good news/bad news joke on the iTMS. The good news is that there's more and more obscure and unusual music on the store with every passing week. The bad is that sometimes the music is so obscure, and the iTMS so lacking in context, that all you have is the music. And that's what we have here: a vocal quartet (I'm guessing from the cover) doing some unusual covers of pop tunes. And I have to say that The Carpenters or Captain & Tennille never sounded better than at the start of this album's Mix the Hits, which moves from Yesterday Once More to Do That to Me One More Time to Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly and beyond.

But again I ask: who are these guys? Even my trusty Google skills come up mostly empty: one measly listing for the album on a South African music store, which has little more information than the iTMS. They categorize Sexy as Afrikaans; is that right? Is this the new sound of South Africa? Quite a change from Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

Wed, 09 Feb 2005