So here's how you do it:
- Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
- Put it on shuffle
- Press play
- For every question, type the song that's playing
- When you go to a new question, press the next button
- No cheating!
Carney are one of the few bands from the 00s (and by that I mean originating in the 00s, not just continuing into them) that I can really get into. No surprises that they have a pure heavy classic-rock sound, but for them it sounds organic and natural, definitely not an attempt to cash in on nostalgia or just ape other bands (I was going to put in a jab at Wolfmother here, but I haven't heard enough of either them or Zeppelin for it to be warranted. Hell, why should that stop me, I'M LOOKING AT YOU, WOLFMOTHER). The band itself is tight and powerful, and it's all drawn together by the sometimes-ethereal sometimes-raw always-genuine vocals of Reeve Carney, brother of lead guitarist Zane. No, I don't know what their parents were thinking either. And in other news, Reeve has just been cast as Spiderman in the Broadway musical I believe, so yay for him.
This EP is just four songs, but they are all high-quality and diverse enough for me to have high hopes for an LP soon enough.
1. Nothing Without You
2. Imperial Lover
3. There She Goes
4. Testify
Nothing Without You is the song that drew me in, and is probably still my favourite if I am forced to choose. It opens the EP with a barely-controlled yell of
I'm NOTHING! WITHOUT! YOU!
and then after a moment of quiet the song settles into its rhythm, mellow and understated, vocals cool and breathy except for those few moments where there is nothing for it but to howl. I feel like I need to know a lot more about music to be able to explain how great this song is. It's atmospheric, with a steady cymbal-heavy drumbeat, and guitars working around the spaces in the song. It's one of those songs where everything just does exactly what it needs to do without standing out above any other part. The lead up to the ending is fantastic, where the drums finally get a hammering before it ends just as it began.
Sometimes
I'm kinda surprised
You kept me alive
This long
I will be your lover
Holding you close to my heart
And forever
I will endeavour to show
Oh that I will be
Your lover
Imperial Lover opens quietly, with the vocals at centre stage again.
Imperial lover
I didn't know this was the way it was gonna be
We're pulling me under
All that it was
Is nothing but a memory
Something I tend to not realise is how good the lyrics to these songs are. They're not exceptional, of course, and the content isn't anything out of the ordinary, but they have a poetry and a flow that I haven't found in many places. The strongest thing about them is the way they meld effortlessly with the music around them, so that most of the time I don't notice a particular instrument, or the words he's saying, but I just hear the sound they have made with the combination. This song doesn't even really have a high point like Nothing Without You had, but it is captivating as a whole.
There She Goes runs with a classic theme and does it flawlessly: that of the everyboy watching the unattainable female, and dreaming about what they could be together, but without the courage to make a move.
There she goes
Once again
She's the kind of girl who'll drive a poor boy insane
As she strolls
Down the lane
Every word prepared eludes my heart can't explain
Maybe this time I'll be brave and tell her how I feel
Oooh, there she goes
You know I think it's time
I let her know
Oooh, there she goes
I don't think I can wait
Another day...
The chorus and the bridge both rise above the gentle verses, the boy psyching himself up out of his admiration, trying to find the nerve to go up to her. There is a wider variety of instruments (as far as I can tell, there's underlying organ, occasional flute and some form of strings in addition to the regular crew), and impeccable female backing vocals that come in at the high points and lift the song to a whole new level. Every note is considered, and though the guitar is nowhere near the front of the mix, on closer listening it is one of the greatest parts of the song. From a high point it shuts down pretty quickly, with descending ooohs and guitar, leading in to the five-minute closer:
Testify is a pure heavy blues-rock jam, complete with heavy guitars, extended jams, solid drums and a bassline I can't hear very well with my un-awesome headphones. The vocals are rougher for the most part as well, but not without that same haunting quality.
I just wanna listen to your heartbeat
Tell your people that you're still alive
There ain't nothin' sweeter than your mercy
I will testify
The strongest parts are without lyrics, where they just play. For the first half it just rocks hard, then there is an almost psychedelic section, complete with wordless wailing, both from the voicebox and the guitars, which settle down into silence. The intro repeats itself after this, with the opening lyrics all but acapella:
I don't wanna have to learn the hard way
I don't wanna fall along the side
Why'd I keep on learning I was (???)
I will testify.
Then the same thing, genuinely acapella.
Then the same trick as in Nothing Without You, but out of complete silence, and accompanied by the crash of the whole band coming back in.
It's ALL! for you
Gonna do it all for you
I'm gonna give it all for you
Gonna do it all for
You.
And the thing is done.
These four songs, in less than fifteen minutes, take me to another place. One of those pasts-that-never-was, or a world-that-could-never-be, where everything is heightened and means so much more than it does in this dreary reality. This band plays music like it's the reason they are still breathing. Reeve has incredible presence in the music, not just on stage, and I hope he stays a musician rather than heading more into acting, because I am selfish and greedy.
The one other song they have out officially, Love Me Chase Me is of course nowhere to be found in Australia, but I have used my extreme research skills to unearth it on a secret music website called "youtube". I had no idea about the whole circus theme either, but then I learned that for some reason they had access to the Carnivale sets at HBO, so I guess that's why. Warning: TIGER
Well it's the end of 2009 and with it, time for a bunch of album of the year reviews. Mine is no exception. This review will be based solely on my likes, dislikes and opinions. I will present some facts and use them accordingly. I encourage anyone to chime in and let me know what they think, if I missed anything or even their top lists. Only albums that came out during the calendar year 2009 will be here. Without further hesitation, here are my top ten releases followed by the total track scrobbles per album. These are in no order.
If I were to go strictly by the scrobbles then Stone Axe would walk away with the title hands down. The self titled album was released in March of this year. I've had plenty of time to play it and play it I did. I also turned a few people onto the band in the process. My initial reaction was this sounds a little like a southern Soundgarden. In some songs where Drew is singing, he does remind me of Chris Cornell. It's not a bad thing. I didn't care for Chris Cornell's solo release this year. If I were Chris I would try to tell people that Stone Axe was my other band. Of course we all know better.
Sometime in the summer of 2009 I got into this big Queens of the Stone Age kick. I never really listened to an album thoroughly until this year. during that kick it was rumored then confirmed that Josh Homme was working with Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones. I'm a fan of Foo Fighters and Led Zeppelin so I was pretty psyched. I couldn't see their first show due to a slow Ticketmaster website and then them selling out so quick. The end result was Them Crooked Vultures. They put out a self titled release and I tell you I'm hooked. I'm hooked more then I was with any Queens material and there's a lot more of it. the first two tracks are just mind blowing and the rest of the album is just as equally good. I ordered two copies of the album. The CD/tshirt combo from the band and the iTunes release with two live tracks. I can't put this album down even if I tried.
Pearl Jam's Backspacer album was highly anticipated by me. Pearl Jam has been consistently my favorite band for the last 16 years. I don't know why but it seems that every chapter in my life revolves around a Pearl Jam release. Anytime a new album comes out, something big in my life happens. Perhaps I was always finding solace in my life by listening to their music but they always got me through. Backspacer is a much slower mellower album then past albums. Maybe because their anti-Bush messages are no longer part of their music since W is no longer president. I think Eddie Vedder's solo album had a lot of influence on making this album because there are a lot of similarities in the two.
First they disbanded then they got back together with a somewhat different lineup. The end result was a good long rocking album. Wolfmother came back this year with a pretty powerful album. Of course it has its highs and lows but it's a pretty consistent album. The last album got my hooked for the first few tracks but then it faded off. I can't think of a time when I listened to the last album from start to finish without skipping songs or turning it off all together. Cosmic Egg was a good listen from start to finish.
Clutch are no strangers to making good solid hard rocking albums. Strange Cousins From The West is no exception. The album starts out hard from the get go and doesn't let go. I think they should've called the album 50,000 Unstoppable Watts, after the song of the same name because of the amount of energy in this album. Clutch easily became one of my favorite bands this year. Seeing them four times (once as The Bakerton Group) helped solidify that. Not to mention that because of Baroness dropping out of the tour in the summer, my favorite band, Low of the Low, got to open on the main stage for them when they played in Milwaukee. Being the photographer for Low of the Low I got all access to the venue and got to see the soundcheck and meet Neil Fallon. I got to talk music for a few minutes with Neil and got to talk to him about his side project which is....
The Company Band self titled. When I talked to Neil in August he had said the album was finished and was just waiting on the record company. He said about 8 weeks or so. It was more like 12 but who's counting? This album, as good as it is and as psyched as I was to hear it, was unfortunately over shadowed by the Them Crooked Vultures release. Not only did the album release on the same day, the albums were leaked on the same day as well. I came across The Company Band album first and I'm glad I did otherwise I probably wouldn't have given it a fair chance. It's a good solid album and doesn't sound to much like a Clutch album. Obviously the comparisons are going to be there due to Neil singing on both but it's the instrumentals that set the two apart. Clutch has more a southern spacey tune to the instruments whereas The Company Band doesn't have much distortion to it. The end result is a good rock album.
When I read the reviews on Weird Owl's album and read the comparisons to Neil Young and Crazy Horse I was intrigued. I couldn't have agreed more. It's good, it rocks and there is a little psychedelic to it which is probably why they are signed to Tee Pee Records. Any Neil Young fan would like this unless the only thing by the godfather of grunge you like is his acoustic material in which case you're in for a huge disappointment.
Truckfighters and Throttlerod I'm going to talk about here at the same time. I love both bands. I think very highly of both and they both put out solid albums. I wasn't overly thrilled with either and while good, it didn't exceed my expectations like other top albums did or their previous albums. Mania sounded a little to commercial compared to past albums and Pig Charmer wasn't to far off. Maybe it was the commercial radio sound that keeps me from giving it a fair chance. I don't know. Both albums are on my iPhone still and haven't been taken off yet. I haven't listened to either album start to finish in a while but tracks have come up numerous times when I hit shuffle.
The last album I want to discuss here is Sun Gods In Exile. Eye For an Eye is the opening track and it seems that is what the band is trying to do to make their mark in music. They don't disappoint. I heard the term somewhere that said the greatest southern rock not from the south. That may be true. I don't know about the greatest but great, yes, I'd agree with that. The album doesn't let up. Like Stone Axe, I've turned quite a few people onto this band.
Now that I've gone through all that onto my album of the year for 2009. Ready, the album of the year is....
going to revealed....
after these messages.
Ok, enough with the messing around. My 2009 album of the year goes to:
Enough said. Maybe it's because I'm listening to the album right now, maybe I can't put it down. I'm not sure. There were a lot of worthy candidates and a lot that I had difficulty trimming down to my top 10. It is what it is. It's a great album that will stick with my for quite sometime, perhaps well after the world ends in 2012. We shall see.
2010 promises to be another great year for music. There's a lot of good stuff in the works that will hopefully see daylight next year. Here's a list of bands working on albums that are due next year.
Wolfmother
