Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs

The title does not lie. 16 songs sung by Eddie with little to no accompaniment; little help from guest performers. Most are originals. Some covers. But as Eddie sings alone, this feels like "alone" music. I suppose like all ukulele music. Without the benefit of a Hawaiian shore to walk barefoot down, I'll settle for a front porch in the rain.

The romanticism of being alone. An emotion perfectly expressed throughout this collection. An angsty opening track aside, these tunes are mostly romantic love-lost songs. "Broken Heart", "Goodbye", "Without You"; the song list goes on. It's simple. Songs about love generally are. And everytime I think I'm going to tire of this same uke-style song after song, Eddie hits some minor chord and I'm immediately back in.

While I've always been a Pearl Jam fan, I cannot immediately say why I love this record so much more than his last solo effort. But when I get the words, I'll come back and revisit- as I'm sure I'll be listening to Ukulele Songs a lot. (5 of 5 stars)

White Denim - D

I had just happened to have listened to a previous White Denim album after a local radio station played "I Start To Run" a couple of times. I had no idea that they would have a new album this week. A Black Keys comparison would seem way off to you, but White Denim are garagey and singer James Petralli has an Auerbach kind of voice if Dan were on psychedelics and speed at the same time.

But let's be clear, it's not blues-rock. It's avant-garde psychedelic jazz rock. There's little riffing going on. It's spaced-out lead fills with a very jazzy bass player and odd-time signatures. But it was still raw and rock-y to me.

"D" is more levelled than that. The vocals are more controlled. The songs are less rock-club sounding than they are studio-crafting. "At The Farm" sounds downright Phishy. "Street Joy" sounds like My Morning Jacket are covering Pink Floyd. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to paint a derivative picture. But it's clear the band is maturing... which is leaving me a little on the side of disappointed. Even though, the album is still clearly good. Progressive even. What keeps them from touring with Dream Theater is just amplification at some point.

Okay, wait- is that jazz flute? Okay, White Denim have completely jumped out of the jammy rock band pool and into full on hippies. "D" has none of the fluid post-punkiness of "Fits". This is for a different audience that doesn't fuck as much. It's a drag to say for something so theorhetically sound, but it's simply less fun. (2 of 5 stars)

Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi - Rome

An album inspired by spaghetti westerns may sound as cheeseball as many spaghetti westerns were. And while I didn't know anything about Luppi going into this listen, I do know quite a bit about Danger Mouse. He's certainly a guy who take an inspiration and turn it into something true. Like a musical Tarantino.

Which is a good analogy, really. The music has a perfectly visual feel. And while the interludes sometimes feel like filler; an instrumental like "Roman Blue" is perfectly paced and would create the same awesome no-talking moments at your dinner party that some Beastie Boys' funk jams provide.

Of the guest vocalists; it's a pleasure that they don't try to belabour some common lyrical theme to match the film-score feel. All the songs stand on their own. Jack White and Norah Jones, while never duetting, each provide an emotive story and fit each performance matching the mellow landscape that is painted by the music. (3.5 of 5 starts)

Okkervil River - I Am Very Far

As I have discussed here before, I've always liked Okkervil River based on the constant literary expression... Will is very wordy. It's a rare band under the folk-rock banner that pass through my headphones. So I have expectations on this record.

The album starts out with "The Valley", an epic tale that feels like it could have been inspired by the Decemberists' "Hazards Of Love". Others like this include "White Shadow Waltz" where Will seems to be be trading his lyricism of painting celebratory anthems (almost) to a darker story-telling imagery. The wordplay, while impressive, finds the listener (re: me) with less to relate to.

There are also some experimental jaunts musically, where the band expands beyond the singer-songwriter form. This includes "Piretess" as a foray into Roxy Music soul - and "Show Yourself"; which I assume they were going for Radiohead, but happens to sound more like Dave Matthews. The single, "Wake And Be Fine" strays farther into the Arcade Fire- big number band member thing. Farther than I am comfortable with. Hopefully, it will garner them a hit, but that sound is not generaly their forte - even if Will's lyrics are more bookish than ever.

"Rider" is a return to form and hooks me with the line:

I fly out on my silver, scissoring wings
With the other sardines
Over cities of things mommies need
Light as gas, and half-assedly free
Like I was in nineteen ninety three

And before I can finish writing the sentence that it's going to be hard to top "We Need A Myth" for "Best Song of 2011" award, we get to "Hanging From A Hit". With its Beach Boys meets Phil Spector perfection of orchestral build-and-recede, Sheff produces a heartbreaking account of lovers with a wall between them.

A day she spends the night
And I can hear her sighing
As she's almost asleep on one side
I lie back on my pillow
And ask what her husband is like

(3.5 of 5 stars)

Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part Two

I realize that this is a long-anticipated, highly sought-after seven-year follow up to the BBs last new release. I further realize that we almost lost a good man to cancer and that this should be the feel good triumph of the year with Yauch, already a positively outlooking Buddhist, being even further exasperated by life.

Trouble is... the record's just not that good.

Maybe I got myself spoiled on the live calypso-funk jamming of Paul's Boutique / Check Your Head and the rock of Ill Communication. Seriously, where is Caldato these days?

Hot Sauce just picks up where they've been since then. Hello Nasty / 5 Burroughs regressed all lyrical content to hip-hop boasting. All of it. And the rhyme's are not without merit, it's just after three albums, it's like- I get it. You like your style of rapping more than any other rappers'. I know that they have the ability to conquer more. It does not bode well for the three that my favorite track on the album is the instrumental.



"OK" is easily the worst song in the BB catalog since "Girls". And there's simply a LOT of filler. Unrealized song fragments. "Funky Donkey" "The Larry Routine" "Crazy Ass Shit" and they even close with a bullshit 1:30 tune that declares quite emphatically that they "Get down Grade A ground round."

The beats too, are not awful, just mostly electronic humdrum. Less, "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun"; more "Intergalactic". I think what they do well, rhyming, comes easy to them. But that eclecticism that paved their return from backlash of their debut is lost again. Maybe their content with that. (2 of 5 stars)