Song of the Moment

"I've Been Everywhere", Johnny Cash, American Recordings II: Unchained (1996)

The man, the myth, the voice. Hearing Johnny's take on this standard, at the beginning of his creative resurgence is nothing less than a punch in the stomach. His thoughtful, calling baritone implies that he isn't lying...he has been everywhere, man. And not just in the geographical sense, but this is the voice of a man who has loved, and already lost, but is preparing for a more devastating loss than he can possibly imagine. But Cash is as ready for it as anyone can be, because he's been everywhere, man.

Lynx live

Lynx
5/21/11 Main Park, Artsposure, Chapel Hill, NC


Lynx is a force to reckon with. The multi-instrumentalist and singer is a varitable one-woman band. Her voice fills a room, even when the room is wall-less park in the middle of downtown Chapel Hill. The woman has a voice, not just literally, but in her engaging since of self as she commands the stage with an unparalleled presence. It's eccentric, her look, her music, the whole package - but it still never waivers from the ebb and flow of human heartbreak.

Armed with an acoustic guitar and an iMac, she creates sinewy worlds and soundscapes that explore loss, love, and occasionally even politics. The California native's set centered mostly on her latest release, "On the Horizon", a sweeping album that critics have been gushing over for months. And it's no secret that as good as she sounds in the studio, she definitely doesn't falter on stage.

The highlights of her, oh too short, hour-long set, were forelorn renditions of "Young Blood" and "Tricksters and Fools" - politically minded tracks that hold our leaders to task without crossing the fragile line into preachy. Her self produced backing tracks, wrap electronica around her traditional bran of coffee shop folk, building a musical tapestry that sucks the audience into her weird little world. And her a-capella/beatbox rendition of "This Is Not a Remix" should hail her as a modern goddess of hip-hop that would put these other fools to shame.

Lynx is an artist that has with a hard-line to human emotion. And her show confirms that's she's a performer whose chemistry will enamor an audience. Definitely not a show to miss.

The Fervor, "Arise, Great Warrior"

The latest offering from Louisville’s own The Fervor is serenely electric – there’s a charge of urgency that hides just below the calm surface. It’s beautiful, haunting, and a little bit stunning.

Natalie Felkor’s vocals are earnest and sad and make you fall in love with her from the first note of the first word of the first song, the title track “Arise, Great Warrior”. Her voice is cold and heavy – like that empty side of the bed after a break-up. Her brutally honest lyrics can speak volumes with only a phrase…and sometimes with only a single word.

Besides Felkor’s voice and impassioned lyrics, its hard ignore her ferverant keyboard parts. The intro to “Let’s Get Loaded” sounds like such a brilliant callback to early 70’s Elton John, I can hardly stand it. And I’m going to venture to say now, that “Let’s Get Loaded” might be the best song you’re going to hear this year.

If Felkor is the heart and soul of this band, Mat Herron’s drum set is the whole goddamn body. The way each tap of every roll or tumble fills out the body of these arrangements proves that he is nothing less than a master, as well as a student, of his craft.

And the often somber band never sounded as playful as when they bounce their way through the first verse of “Crazy for the Feeling”. But be careful with the fun even when The Fervor sounds happy, heartbreak is right around the corner, when Natalie sings, “I’ve got hands that are colder than the thought that’s on your mind.”

In the end, the seven songs on “Arise, Great Warrior” show that these guys are every bit as good, if not better than the bands that are crowding the Louisville scene right now. And if this album doesn’t make you take notice, then nothing ever will.

"Talking to Girls About Duran Duran"

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Hair Cut

By: Rob Sheffield

If you’ve read Rob Sheffield’s first memoir “Love is a Mix Tape,” then his latest offering, “Talking to Girls about Duran Duran,” will initially offer lots of existential quandaries for the reader to wrestle with.

Long gone is the hopeful melancholy that flowed through “Mix Tape,” a memoir that documented his first star-crossed marriage to Renee Crist (who died tragically of a pulmonary embolism at age 31). In “Duran Duran,” we are reading a post-modern/post-millennium/post-Renee memoir and, in a lot of ways, a post-Rob Rob. The awkward, love-struck young man from “Mix Tape” is not here; left is the awkward, love-fascinated boy as told through the filter of a humbled middle-aged man.

Sheffield doesn’t seem like the forlorn romantic he was in “Mix Tape,” but this material isn’t as heavy from the outset, so there’s no beautiful sadness weighing down these memories. He remains an engaging, passionate writer who sucks you in with every quirky observation and obtuse pop-culture reference — from “Heathers” to “Purple Rain.”

Each chapter is titled after a different song and artist from his New Wave youth, like Hall & Oates’ “Maneater” or The Smiths’ “Ask” or Madonna’s “Crazy For You.” And each of these songs has, somewhere in the back of his mind, melded itself to a specific memory or point in time. Sheffield’s thought process is far from linear. Figuring out how he brings his disconnected thought process to bind the stories of his life with the songs that define them (or is it the stories that define the songs?) becomes part of the joy in this book.

Prime example: In the chapter about “More Than This” by Roxy Music — the actual song isn’t even brought up until the last four pages. The first six are dedicated to the wisdom spewed in Kenny Rogers songs, leaving you to find the through-line from where you are (Kenny Rogers), and where you know you’re going to end up (Roxy Music). And between these two points, Sheffield weaves in the story he wants you to read.

In “Mix Tape,” he told the tragic story of he and his wife, and in doing so, told the tragic story of the ’90s, an uncertain time that seemed pretty certain and was played out to a soundtrack of feedback and fuzz. “Duran Duran” is a series of disconnected stories that combine to tell the story of the ’80s, a decade of excess that seemed like a decade of depression, bad clothes, bad music, bad hair and bad presidents, all of which felt like part of the norm. There seemed to be a comfort in all of the badness of the era — a security blanket of badness that was unceremoniously ripped from our hands with the inauguration of Bill Clinton and Kurt Cobain as the following decade’s pacesetters.

The smeared, Technicolored tapestry of the ’80s offers the perfect backdrop for Sheffield to mull over his relationship with his sisters, his childhood friends or the guy on the Amtrak train. In a weird, cyclical, chicken-or-egg sort of way, this leaves neither Sheffield nor his adventures to drive this book; rather, the decade itself emerges as the protagonist of this story.

Perhaps the ’80s are the star-crossed lover he’s pining for this time around … that 10-year block of time that dripped of cultural and socio-political innocence is his new Renee. Although it’s hard to tell through the changing lens of so many selves we’ve seen of Sheffield, here he seems fully content sucking his proverbial thumb, basking in the safest unsafe decade our country’s ever known — and talking to girls about Duran Duran.

Random Song of the moment

"Supergirl" - Gin Blossoms, Major Lodge Victory (2006)

I'm sure you're thinking...Gin Blossoms? Really? Yes. Really. "Supergirl" is a sadly passionate song that will break the heart of anyone with long gone high school sweetheart. And unlike the rest of this forgotten 2006 album, "Supergirl" harkens back to the day when no band had a better ear for pop hooks than these guys.

Think about the smile on your face the first time you heard "Hey Jealousy", or "Found Out About You", or "Allison Road", or "'Til I Hear It From You", or "Follow You Down". Think about that smile and get prepared to see it again when you put on "Supergirl".

33 1/3 (#75): Slint, "Spiderland"

331/3 (#75):
Slint
Spiderland
by: Scott Tennant

The latest installment in the 33 1/3 series, music journalist Scott Tennent has taken on Slint's 1991 masterpiece, "Spiderland."

It seems more than appropriate that someone has finally decided to probe into one of music's most mythic albums, released by one of the most mythical bands. The first two-thirds of the book are fascinating, as he deeply researches and probes into the birth and methodology of the mysterious Louisville quartet. However, when he gets to actually discussing "Spiderland" the pace comes to a screeching halt. His in depth descriptions of how songs like "Nosferatu Man" and "Good Mornin, Captain" become tenuous. It's as though he assumes the reader hasn't heard the album, and apparently feels that his bland descriptions can somehow replace the experience of acutally listening to the album.

In the end, it does offer a context around the album that has previous been lacking when you look at the limited discography that Slint's career left behind. And it offers perspective as to why this album, as quirky and abstract as it may be, is one of the most influential albums of the past two decades.

December's Children Top 100 Albums (2001-2010)

001. Wilco - "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" (2002)
002. Johnny Cash - "The Man Comes Around" (2002)
003. Drive-by Truckers - "The Dirty South" (2004)
004. My Morning Jacket - "It Still Moves" (2003)
005. The Killers - "Hot Fuss" (2004)
006. Radiohead - "In Rainbows" (2007)
007. Kanye West - "The College Dropout" (2004)
008. Ryan Adams - "Gold" (2001)
009. Coldplay - "A Rush of Blood to the Head" (2002)
010. Bright Eyes - "I'm Wide Awake It's Morning" (2005)
011. Loretta Lynn - "Van Lear Rose" (2004)
012. Morrissey - "You Are the Quarry" (2004)
013. Flaming Lips - "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" (2002)
014. Queens of the Stone Age - "Songs for the Deaf" (2002)
015. Gnarls Barkley - "St. Elsewhere" (2006)
016. Levon Helm - "Dirt Farmer" (2007)
017. Postal Service - "Give Up" (2003)
018. Outkast - "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below" (2003)
019. R.E.M. - "Accelerate" (2008)
020. Tenacious D - "Tenacious D" (2001)
021. Gorillaz – “Gorillaz” (2001)
022. Hockey - "Mind Chaos" (2009)
023. Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore - "Dear Companion" (2010)
024. Clutch - "Blast Tyrant" - (2004)
025. Tom Waits - "Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, & Bastards" (2006)
026. Jay-Z - "The Black Album" (2003)
027. The White Stripes - "White Blood Cells" (2001)
028. Bruce Springsteen - "The Rising" (2002)
029. Drive-by Truckers - "Southern Rock Opera" (2001)
030. Mitch Hedberg - "Mitch All Together" (2003)
031. The Roots - "Phrenology" (2002)
032. John Mayer - "Room For Squares" (2001)
033. Robert Plant & Allison Krauss - "Raising Sand" (2007)
034. The Avett Brothers - "Emotionalism" (2007)
035. Band of Horses - "Cease to Begin" (2007)
036. My Morning Jacket - "Z" (2005)
037. The Good, The Bad, & The Queen – “The Good, The Bad, & The Queen” (2007)
038. Ryan Adams "Love is Hell" (2004)
039. Beastie Boys - "To The 5 Boroughs" (2004)
040. The Black Keys - "Attack & Release" - (2008)
041. Derek Webb - "She Must and Shall Go Free" (2003)
042. The Shins - "Oh, Inverted World" (2001)
043. Shooter Jennings - "Put the O Back in Country" (2005)
044. 50 Cent - "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" (2003)
045. The Raconteurs - "Broken Boy Soldiers" (2006)
046. Spoon - "Gimme Fiction" (2005)
047. Neil Young - "Prairie Wind" (2005)
048. Zac Brown Band - "The Foundation" (2008)
049. Backyard Tire Fire - "Good to Be" (2010)
050. Lucero - "Nobody's Darlings" (2005)
051. The Walkmen - "Bows + Arrows" (2004)
052. Jason Isbell - "Sirens of the Ditch" (2007)
053. Radiohead - "Amnesiac" (2001)
054. The John Mayer Trio - "Try" (2005)
055. Danger Doom - "The Mouse and The Mask" (2005)
056. Bright Eyes - "Lifted or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground" (2002)
057. U2 - "How to Dismantle and Atomic Bomb" (2004)
058. Wilco - "Sky Blue Sky" (2007)
059. Greg Giraldo - "Midlife Vices" (2010)
060. Gorillaz - "Demon Days" (2005)
061. Caedmon's Call - "Share the Well" (2004)
062. Cage the Elephant - (2008)
063. Guster - "Keep it Together" (2003)
064. Wax Fang - "La La Land" (2009)
065. Jack Johnson - "In Between Dreams" (2005)
066. Elton John - "Songs from the West Coast" (2001)
067. Probot – “Probot” (2003)
068. Golden Smog - "Another Fine Day" (2006)
069. Tom Petty - "Highway Companion (2006)
070. Willie Nelson - "Songbird" (2006)
071. Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - "III/IV" (2010)
072. Tool - "Lateralus" (2001)
073. Eddie Vedder - "Into the Wild Soundtrack" (2007)
074. Bob Dylan - "Modern Times" (2006)
075. Rodrigo y Gabriela - "11:11" (2009)
076. Modest Mouse - "Good News for People Who Love Bad News" (2004)
077. Them Crooked Vultures - "Them Crooked Vultures" (2009)
078. Death Cab For Cutie - "Transatlanticism" (2003)
079. Sliversun Pickups - "Swoon" (2009)
080. She & Him - "Vol. 1" - (2008)
081. Dave Attell - "Skanks for the Memories" (2003)
082. Steel Panther - "Feel the Steel" (2009)
083. Eyedea & Abilities - "By the Throat" (2009)
084. The White Stripes - "Elephant" (2003)
085. My Morning Jacket - "Evil Urges" (2008)
086. The Whigs - "In the Dark" (2010)
087. Lewis Black - "Rules of Enragement" (2003)
088. Band of Horses - "Everything All the Time" (2006)
089. Monsters of Folk – “Monsters of Folk” (2009)
090. Jay-Z - "The Blueprint" (2001)
091. Pearl Jam - "Backspacer" (2009)
092. Prince - "Musicology" (2004)
093. The Raconteurs - "Consolers of the Lonely" (2008)
094. The Shins - "Chutes Too Narrow" (2003)
095. Flobots - "Survival Story" (2010)
096. Dane Cook - "Isolated Incident" (2009)
097. Weezer - "the green album" (2001)
098. The Hold Steady - "Stay Positive" (2008)
099. Drive-by Truckers - "Decoration Day" (2003)
100. The Walkmen - "Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone" (2002)