And now it's time for Tuesday Reviewsday, our weekly new music segment. Music critic
and
- associate editor of Latin at Billboard Magazine - join A Martinez in studio to talk about what new album's they're enjoying.
Justino Aguila
Artist: Miguel Bose
Album: "Amo"
Songs: “Encanto”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWOvssyessg
Notes: It’s back to basics for Spanish crooner Miguel Bose. His new album, Amo, illustrates that the songwriter does his best when it comes to pop ballads.
The iconic singer, who is also an actor and philanthropist, returns with an album that’s poetic to match his deep voice, eclectic style and riveting compositions.
We’ve seen Bose record more than 20 albums in his career and he’s also worked as an actor in films such as “High Heels” from Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. But it’s his music that keeps his fans tuned in to see where he takes us next.
Amo features 12 songs and Bose once again takes his fans on the narrative of love, hard ache and a journey that’s rich in lyrics and melody with the nice dose of electronic music as heard on the song “Encanto,” or “Enchanted.”
The album’s title song highlights Bose’s powerful vocals in a slowed paced song that shines in a story about love and hope.
Amo is one of the year’s richest albums that’s multi-layered in theme and direction that reminds us why Bose is masterful in his delivery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zuouAIXD7Q
Artist: Ximena Sariñana
Album: "No todo lo puedes dar"
Songs: “La vida no es fácil”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZInD-M5ff1o
Notes: Pop singer Ximena Sariñana (SAR-E-YAH-NAH) returns with a new album and this time in Spanish. The project remains true to her signature style that includes pop ballads with edge.
The album, “No todo lo puedes dar” (You Can’t Give Everthing), is themed around songs about love, but the kind of love that escapes us. The universal appeal of the songs are rooted her soulful voice.
While Sariñana has a style that’s all her own, there are touches of early Fiona Apple in this latest album features 11 songs such as the pop ballad “La vida no es facil” [Life is Not Easy][When You Lie], about calling out a lover who betrays his partner. The song has a rock vibe with a layer of angst that beautifully illustrates the Sariñana’s vocal chops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPNl6VTkfvw
Steve Hochman
Artist: Various
Album: "The 78 Project" movie soundtrack
Songs: “I Want Jesus to Walk With Me,” “After You've Gone”
Notes: Jack White's Third Man Records is set to release its second volume from the vast Paramount Records catalog - 800 more songs from the '20s and '30s, essential foundations of jazz, blues, gospel and folk, all recorded in one-take sessions directly to 78 RPM discs.
Before that elaborate release, though, another, more modest set of direct-to-78 recordings is here. And these aren't from the early days of recording, but from the very digital right now, featuring artists ranging from Victoria Williams and John Doe to John C. Reilly to adventurous Louisiana Cajun band the Lost Bayou Ramblers and Mississippi hill country singing Reverend John Wilkins.
The filmmaker team of Alex Steyermark and Lavinia Jones Wright, inspired by folk recordist Alan Lomax, lugged a 1930s-vintage PRESTO Model “K8” Recorder around the country seeking artists both nationally known and locally obscure to perform into the single microphone as a needle cut a groove in a lacquer disc, an analogue representation of the music. It's a tricky, laborious and unforgiving process. Many things can go wrong, and you can't patch up mistakes or technical glitches with a little Garage Band copy-and-paste. Imperfections aren't just magnified, they're glorified. In the album's liner notes, the pair state that it gave them “a real appreciation for how remarkable it is that all those great early field recordings exist at all.”
All this is shown colorfully in the documentary film The 78 Project, making the rounds of festivals and theaters now. Videos of individual sessions were also posted regularly on the project's web site as recordings were made throughout 2012 and 2013 with dozens of artists. But you don't need any of that, or any of the background, to appreciate the music on this album.
One of the songs on this collection draws a direct line back to the originals: The gospel song “I Want Jesus to Walk With Me” by the Reverend John Wilkins, recorded in Hunters Chapel in Como, Miss. Wilkins father was Reverend Robert Wilkins, one of the first generations of recorded bluesmen, with 78s from the '20s and '30s on the Vocalion and Brunswick labels.
And then there's L.A.-based Gaby Moreno and Adam Levy teaming up on the saucy “After You've Gone,” a little bit more on the jazz-blues side of things, and another L.A. session with Reilly and Tom Brousseau on an early country-leaning “Careless Love.”
Other highlights include Coati Mundi, of '80s tropical show-band revivalists Kid Creole and the Coconuts, does a lively “Billy Boy,” accompanying himself on spoons. In contrast, Memphis R&B aces the Bo-Keys with singer Percy Wiggins presented a challenge of a larger group - six musicians in this case - including drums, horns and electric guitar, a lot of sound to get on one mic.
What's the appeal of new recordings like this when you could do something with much higher fidelity on your cell phone? To say that it is somehow more “real” at a time when everything seems artificial would be facile and trite, but also right. This is no mere steampunk fancy, no snobby hipster sniff. This is music presented as directly, as honestly, as can be done - shy of the performers coming into your living room to play.
Artist: Damien Rice
Album: "My Favourite Faded Fantasy"
Songs: “I Don't Want to Change You,” “It Takes a Lot to Know a Man”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnzHOsiaJns
Notes: We all like to think that a singer is singing directly to us. So forgive me if I read something into the title of Damien Rice's new album and in such lines as “I never meant to let you down,” from the song “The Greatest Bastard.”
You see, back in the early 2000s there were three new acts I was certain, positive would become international superstars, headlining festivals, viewed as icons and influences, tone-setters, nearly genres unto themselves. They were the White Stripes, Arcade Fire and …. Damien Rice. Even playing tiny, dingy clubs, the way I first saw each, they were commanding. And I went out on limbs, professionally, declaring such with each in no uncertain terms.
Well, two out of three ain't bad. And there are so many factors involved in such things that it's almost more surprising when something big happens than when it doesn't. But with Rice it wasn't just a matter of the vagaries that are the currents of pop culture having swept him away from stardom. It was at least in part his own doing.
Just when he was on the verge, his 2002 debut album O having put his name on the tongues of the in-the-know and building to 2 million sales, he went dark - first figuratively and then literally. His 2006 follow-up album, 9, lacked the expansive, at times operatic reach of the debut. And after that he just seemed to disappear, only the occasional single or tour to bring him back to mind.
But after eight years of near-silence, the Irish bard is back with…. an apology? Well, yes. Sort of. Though of course it's not so much to me, or us, as to someone a bit closer. And perhaps to himself. The title may reference the global domination that once seemed in his grasp. More likely it's a smaller scale, perhaps his relationship with Lisa Hannigan, his partner, co-singer and seeming muse on the earlier records before they broke up. In any case, he feels pretty bad about it. There is no quibbling here. The titular “greatest bastard” is named Damien Rice.
Rice has always been contemplative, self-probing, but with far-reaching ambition. His songs often turned into wild journeys with oddly electrifying twists and turns - having a real opera soprano sing metaphorically about Eskimos, among the more notable examples, but all underscored with a sense of beauty and wonder.
Turning 41 next month, Rice again looks in, but also again reaches out. And he has some impressive help in a co-producer, Rick Rubin, he of credits ranging from Slayer to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Johnny Cash's redemptive, elegiac American Recordings series. Recording the music at his Malibu studio, Rubin brings in an impressive support cast including ace acoustic guitarist Dave Rawlings and some flowing strings, all supporting a voice capable of equal measures of nuance and power, often together. The sound is sort of reminiscent of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, though only occasionally with the jazzy swing.
The basic Rice formula remains - songs generally start somber and reflective, taking their time to unspool (the epic, serpentine self-examination of “It Takes a Lot to Know a Man” takes nearly 10 minutes) as Rice sets a conversationally poetic tone, often building to intensely impassioned peaks. INTENSELY impassioned. What's new here is a directness. There are no Arctic side trips, little in the way of flowery imagery. “I Don't Want to Change You" says it plainly enough (he sounds very sincere). As does “The Box” (he doesn't want to be in one). He'll be “Trusty and True” (he promises).
And yet the music, the presence, the personality remain compelling and colorful. This is Damien Rice returning with all his artistic powers in full force, but with hat in hand.
Welcome back. We forgive you.
Justino and Steve
Artist: Mariachi El Bronx
Album: "Mariachi El Bronx (III)"
Songs: “Raise the Dead”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsfqB2egvzw
Notes from Steve: It reads like a joke: Punk band hires mariachi horns and strings to accompany it, even dons the delightfully gauche embroidered black suits and hats. Seems like a goof for one song, maybe a video, maybe a snarky festival appearance. Certainly not something beyond that, not something that could remotely be sustained for, oh, a full album.
Well, three albums into it now, Mariachi El Bronx has sustained it, and rewardingly so. And this is no joke, but rather a rich artistic move that that has only gotten better over time. Mariachi El Bronx, technically is no more mariachi than it is from the Bronx - it's an alter-ego of the L.A. punk band the Bronx. These are not mariachi songs, not even in Spanish. But they are good songs, some of which could work in a punk or at least punk-pop setting. The trumpets and violins, though, give them a whole other dimension.
The song "Raise the Dead” effectively draws on the multiple traditions represented, evoking both punk spirit and Dia de los Muertos spirits. And in the course it shows that there is still plenty of life left in this distinct musical venture.
Notes from Justino: Mariachi el Bronx return with a third album featuring the music the witty, ironic and romantic lyrics written mostly in English and performed with traditional mariachi brass, wind, string and percussion arrangements. The band’s unique blend of musical styles stemmed from a 2006 appearance on Fuel TV’s “The Daily Habit,” when the show unexpectedly asked them to perform an acoustic number. The band came up with a mariachi arrangement of “Dirty Leaves.” Mariachi el Bronx’s new album is refreshing, sharp and charming. Songs such “Raise the Dead” feature tight orchestration and killer melodies.