Amplifying the music, books, movies and journalism that matter.
Life is complicated and busy. Did you notice? Keeping up with the music, movies and books that fed your youthful imagination and conversations is harder than ever, but even more important. Here's the good news: there's never been more great new stuff. The challenge is to find it.
So here are my highly opinionated views on sounds, sights and words that will help you keep it fresh and real, and links to the veins where the richest motherlodes can be found.
I think I would love any Brooklyn duo who name themselves after New York's great, but deeply flawed, master builder. But these guys actually deliver the goods with a smooth take on deep house and electro-pop that is the perfect sound for changing seasons.
For me it recalls Rhye's staggeringly beautiful Woman from 2013. Like that disc, Days Gone By has a warmth and humanity perfectly communicated by its album cover: these are love songs.
"Too Much Is Never Enough" is my favorite cut. On headphones, this is the stuff of daydreams; playing through your house, you're in clubland.
Here in midsummer, we don't need things to be any more complicated than boiling corn. The musical equivalent is surely the cover album. On this new release, Iron & Wine's Sam Beam and Band of Horses' Ben Bridwell pair beautifully and simply on some lesser known tunes.
Listen to them turn David Gilmour's "No Way Out of Here," into what sounds like an outtake from the Burrito's "The Gilded Palace of Sin."
You get the idea. Fire this up around sunset while these lazy days last.
Last summer brought "All Under One Roof Raving," a strange and hypnotic single from Jamie Smith, part of the brilliant techno-pop trio, the XX. Smith is transfixed by the Manchester rave scene of the '80's, in his mind a Xanadu moment that looms like the "Summer of Love" for those of us of a certain age. He's not wrong, but that moment is just as gone as the Airplane at Winterland.
Still, even a generation older than Smith, it's hard not to have a sense of yearning when you hear this track:
So now we have an album of Smith's reprocessing of this sound of staying up all night. When I listen to many of the tracks here -- and "Gosh" is a perfect example -- I keep wondering what I would have made of this music had it been beamed to my radio forty years ago in 1976.
I hear how he stylizes gospel and hip-hop brilliantly a la Moby in "There's Gonna Be Good Times":
But it's this track, "Loud Places," the pop masterpiece here, that makes it all click for me.
My staying up all night nights are rationed now, tempered by the knowledge that transcendence is not more available at 4AM. But In Colour can give you a tiny taste of the abandon in the wee small hours anytime you want.
With the year half gone, this is one of the best we'll see in 2105.
I was 11 when Stan Getz had his inescapable hit with "The Girl from Ipanema." Brilliant as I now understand it to be, for my younger self it was just more fluff washing ashore on the tide that brought the Tijuana Brass. Get me the Dave Clark Five, quick.
So it was years before I gave a proper listen to Bossa Nova, to Jobim's Wave, Getz and Joa Gilberto's classic, eponymous collaboration, Davis' gorgeous Quiet Nights, and Ellis & Tom (where you can find Jobim's true sound). By then my British Invasion jets had long cooled and my ears were better trained. I was old enough to hear the "new beat" that always animated this music and patient enough to listen to lyrics in a language unknown to me.
Which brings me to Gilberto Gil. A couple of his classic '60's hits turned up on David Byrne's Tropicalia collection in the '80's and piqued my interest, especially "Andar Com Fé."
But that disc sent me into the arms of Caetano Veloso and Milton Nascimento, which proved short lived infatuations. Gil was still out here making music and The Times regularly noted his NY appearances and the new discs they promoted. It's happened again.
At 72, Gil (once Brazil's Minister of Culture) has a transporting new collection of sambas, titled plainly enough Gilbertos Samba, including some classics you'll know the sound of, if not their names. Here are 12 tracks that do what Bossa Nova sambas do -- break your heart (in the best way) with strummed guitars, brushed drums and 2/4 time.
These songs, especially "Desafinado" and "Desde Que o Samba É Samba," make me keep wondering -- is it too late to learn Portuguese?
Smack in the middle of Michael Brown and Eric Gardner, D'Angelo drops his first disc in 14 years, a funky opus full of songs connecting the political to the personal. Its texture is dark, even if it's punctuated by pop hooks. The bass is mad -- propulsive, danceable and erotic. It calls to mind the underworldly feel of his own Voodoo and the sweep of Prince's Sign of the Times. But on repeated listens, I sensed another touchstone. Hmmm, haven't we been here before?
And then it hit me: There's a Riot Going On. No, not the one on the streets of Ferguson -- the 1971 masterpiece by Sly and the Family Stone that marked the end of Stone's greatness. Just like Riot, Black Messiah is about the impossibility and the necessity of living life in a disrupted world. "I can't go on; I must go on." But even as history gets made, life keeps happening, love keeps surprising, babies keep arriving.
Both of these albums are extraordinary documents of their time, from artists who stretch the limits of their genres, informed by anger, optimism and, yes, drugs. They share a sly humor, too (sorry), winking at how fucked up things can be and how little notice gets taken. They start with dissonance, daring you to come along on this ride. Then they reward with the simplest musical pleasures.
Listen to D'Angelo's "The Door" alongside Stone's "Family Affair":
Make no mistake, Black Messiah is as fresh and real as anything that's come my way lately. And the best thing on it, is this promise of enduring love -- "Betray My Heart":
Makes sense that Black Messiah would put love above everything else, right?
Ten reasons to turn it up even louder. Each one is a gem.
Courtney Barnett,Avant Gardener - Is she on acid or Ritalin?
Lake Street Drive, You Go Down Smooth- Big horns, big hook, big-voiced woman. Heaven.
Ray LaMontagne, Airwaves - The trippiest song of 2014 gave me an urge to tie-dye something.
Damon Albarn, Lonely Press Play - The guy from Blur and Gorillas gets all existential on us.
Temples, Shelter Song- Was there a track on Rubber Soul that I missed?
Mark Ronson,Uptown Funk - "Don't believe me, just watch."
Usher, Good Kisser- Soooooo smooth.
Jaime XX, All Under One Roof Raving - ...if the rave in question were in Trinidad. Headphones, please.
Jenny Lewis, She's Not Me - A little bit Petty, a little bit chamber pop. All Jenny.
Curtis Harding, Heaven's On the Other Side - This is what Mayer Hawthorne really wants to sound like.
Honorable mentions:
Chet Faker, Talk Is Cheap
Prince, This Could Be Us
SBTRKT, New Dorp, New York
Mary J. Blige, Therapy
Pablo Nutini, Let Me Down Easy
The War On Drugs, Red Eyes
