New Music Roundup, 1/22/13

You're getting this a day early, because I am going to be out of town tomorrow and was able to find a couple of streams of albums coming out tomorrow.  If anything comes out tomorrow that absolutely needs to be addressed, I may add an addendum some time tomorrow or Wednesday, but I'm pretty sure I got a chance to listen to the most prominent releases.

Free Energy - Love Sign

How many Loverboy songs can you name?  How you answer that question may go a long way towards how you react to this album.

Free Energy is a band from Philadelphia with what appears to be a completely unironic love of 80's middle of the road rock.  That means this album has no shortage of cowbells, double tracked guitar solos, hand-claps, whoa oh ohs, and singalong choruses.  All of this should be right up my alley, and in some ways it is.  

What gives me some pause in recommending this album is that the production is a little too dead-on in its 80's-ness, which leaves the whole thing sounding a little too sterile.  Everything sounds vaguely nice but also can skirt into boring territory.  This is likely all intentional: whereas the first Free Energy album was produced by LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, this new one is done by John Agnello, a long-tenured producer who actually has produced albums for The Hooters and The Outfield (to his credit, he also has tons of non-80's cheese on his resume as well).  Assuming it was their goal to sound as if they fit right in on the classic rock channel, Free Energy undoubtedly hit their target; I just question a little bit how worthwhile of a target it is to hit.

Still, there's an earworm-y nature to several of the songs that cannot be denied, the very Cars-ish "Girls Want Rock" being the prime example (it's also possible that this is a summer album being released when it's 10 degrees outside; that will be something to monitor going forward).

Selections

Girls Want Rock

Electric Fever

Hangin'

Drunk on Old Music

I'm back with another underrated album that more people should know about.

Album: The Stone Roses

Band: The Stone Roses

Year: 1989

Background: The Stone Roses officially formed in 1983, when Ian Brown and Johnny Squire started a band with several other musicians from the Manchester, England area.  They would spend the next several years in obscurity, changing lineups several times and writing songs, several of which would ultimately end up on The Stone Roses.  By 1987 the lineup had been set, with Brown as lead singer, Squire as guitarist, Gary "Mani" Mounfield on bass and Alan "Reni" Wren on drums.

In Manchester at this time a music scene was beginning to form, and The Stone Roses would prove to be central to it.  Ultimately called Madchester or baggy, the scene was influenced by both English bands from the 60's as well as contemporary acts such as The Smiths and New Order and ultimately came to incorporate aspects of 60's British Rock, psychedelia, college rock, and dance music.  The sudden prevalence of ecstasy in the area probably also did not hurt the genre's popularity.

The Stone Roses would prove to be this music scene's Nevermind, at least in terms of its genre-defining nature.  Unfortunately for the band, the album would not prove to have the chart-topping success of Nevermind: despite having solid reviews from several British magazines, sales were low initially.  As the British press began to pay more attention to the Madchester scene, The Stone Roses would gain more popularity in England, but mainstream success in America would ultimately prove beyond reach.

New Music Roundup, 1/15/13

Guess who's back?

I got keys

Comin' from overseas

Cost a - (This seems like an appropriate time to raise the question: am I allowed to use the n-word if quoting a rap song?  No?  Ok, then.  Moving on...)

Anyway, as that aborted rap verse indicates, after a several month-long hiatus, the new music roundup is making its - if not exactly triumphant, then at least enthusiastic - return.  Not all of this is technically new music, but it's all new to me, so you'll just have to indulge me.  I swear to god, fictional audience, sometimes you can be so picky.

Emile Sandé - Our Version of Events

This is one of those older albums I only discovered the past couple of days.  I'm a little unsure when the album was released in the US, but it was released in the UK almost a year ago.  If my Sirius Radio listening experience is any indication, Sandé is starting to get a lot more exposure over here in the past couple weeks, and with good reason: if I had to succinctly describe what Sandé sounds like, I'd go with "Alicia Keys on steroids."  This isn't meant to be a knock on Keys, who's perfectly acceptable, but I think Sandé has the more powerful voice of the two, and she is at least Keys's songwriting equal.  Like Keys she's comfortable working across a couple different genres, mainly R&B, hip hop, dance, and soul.  I'm honestly surprised this record hasn't gained much traction in the United States to date, listening to it I thought it could very easily be in the same vein as Adele's 21 and think it deserves something approaching that ubiquity.  If nothing else, if you haven't yet heard the song "Next to Me," I'm fairly certain that will be rectified in the coming months.  

Selections

Next to Me

Heaven

Read All About It (Part III)

My Kind of Love