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THE RECORD EXCHANGE RECOMMENDS: NEIL YOUNG’S ‘A TREASURE’ ON CD & LP

June 11, 2011 - Recommended , The Record Exchange Blog - by - No Comments

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Neil Young‘s highly-anticipated new archival album A Treasure will be available in all formats on June 14, including a deluxe vinyl version!

The 12-track live album includes songs — five of which are previously unreleased — recorded during Young’s 1984 and 1985 U.S. tours without the support of an album or Young’s then record label due to unique and unusual circumstances.

A Treasure features Young’s onstage work with some of the greatest artists in the history of country music, including the late, great Ben Keith on steel and slide guitar and Rufus Thibodeaux on fiddle, along with living legends Spooner Oldham and Hargus “Pig” Robbins on piano, Tim Drummond and Joe Allen on bass, Anthony Crawford on mandolin and guitars and Karl Himmel on drums, among many others. A Treasure is Young’s first release since last year’s Grammy and Juno Award-winning album, Le Noise.

The live album captures this iconic artist during a fascinating time in his career, when he was facing criticism and lawsuits from his then current record company for exploring a more traditionally country sound. “You can call me erratic,” Young said when asked at the time about his tendency toward musical shape-shifting, “but I’ve been consistent about it, consistently erratic.” A Treasure is akin to a sonic time capsule, instantly transporting the listener to the time and place when it was made. “I love this record,” Young says. “I hadn’t heard these takes in 25 years, but when we unearthed them co-producer Ben Keith said, ‘This is a treasure.'”

Part of what makes A Treasure so compelling is the musical contributions of The International Harvesters, with whom Young was playing at the time. Many of them were already paragons within the country music world and their notoriety has only grown in the years since. “I just love to hear those guys,” Young says. “They’re all country music legends.” Those behind the scenes also made significant contributions to A Treasure‘s sonic potency. Tim Mulligan mixed and mastered the tracks. At the time these songs were recorded, Bob Sterne was the tour manager, Tim Foster ran the stage and Larry Cragg was in charge of the band’s instruments.

TRACK LISTING:

*Denotes previously unreleased track
1. *Amber Jean (9/20/84) Nashville Now TV – Nashville, TN
2. Are You Ready For The Country? (9/21/84) Riverbend Music Center – Cincinnati, OH
3. It Might Have Been (9/25/84) Austin City Limits TV – Austin, Texas
4. Bound For Glory (9/29/84) Gilleys Rodeo Arena – Pasadena, TX
5. *Let Your Fingers Do The Walking (10/22/84) Universal Amphitheater Universal City, CA
6. Flying On The Ground Is Wrong (10/26/84) Greek Theater – Berkeley, CA
7. Motor City (10/26/84) Greek Theater – Berkeley, CA
8. *Soul Of A Woman (10/26/84) Greek Theater – Berkeley, CA
9. Get Back To The Country (10/26/84) Greek Theater – Berkeley, CA
10. Southern Pacific (9/1/85) Minnesota State Fair – St. Paul, MN
11. *Nothing Is Perfect (9/1/85) Minnesota State Fair – St. Paul, MN
12. *Grey Riders (9/10/85) Pier 84 – New York City, NY

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NEW RELEASE OF THE WEEK: MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA’S ‘SIMPLE MATH.’ AVAILABLE ON CD & VINYL!

May 10, 2011 - Recommended , The Record Exchange Blog - by - 1 Comment

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Ambition is great and all that, but without the ability to realise it you’re only going to be left staring sadly at the stars. Manchester Orchestra always threatened to be a truly great band but never quite tipped the balance – ‘I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child’ and ‘Means Everything To Nothing’ were good but flawed, and their shows sometimes dragged into self-indulgent meandering – so it’s a pleasure to report that ‘Simple Math’ is an unqualified success, the sort of record that will doubtless end up on many end-of-year lists. It’s because they’ve taken the bruised intimacy of their best work and found a musical palette that’s broad enough to make everything blossom: ‘Pale Black Eye’ and ‘Virgin’ are alternately delicate and thickly crushing, and the beautifully vulnerable opener ‘Deer’ shows frontman Andy Hull is at his most potent when he lays himself bare. ‘Apprehension’ and expansive closer ‘Leaky Breaks’, too, tread the boundary between light and shade, and are all the more powerful because they’re always a breath away from total fucking chaos or lullaby-soft crooning. And throughout, the highs are tinged with sadness and the lows with hope, making ‘Simple Math’ a complex and rewarding album that soars above the pack. –avclub

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OKKERVIL RIVER’S ‘I AM VERY FAR,’ AND OTHER NEW RX CD RECOMMENDATIONS!

May 10, 2011 - Recommended , The Record Exchange Blog - by - No Comments

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When music defies easy description, it’s tempting to define it by what it isn’t. In the case of Okkervil River’s I Am Very Far, it’s difficult to hear its dark, dense, mysterious songs without immediately branding them as a far cry from the straightforward rock ’n’ roll fables of The Stage Names and The Stand Ins. For a band so often noted for its emotional directness, that could be a death sentence. However, considering that frontman and lead songwriter Will Sheff has shouted out exactly what’s on his and his characters’ minds since 2005’s Black Sheep Boy, a turn toward obliqueness suits I Am Very Far just fine.

As a producer on I Am Very Far, Sheff brings some thrillingly outré textures to the table: an unspooling cassette tape in lieu of a guitar solo on “Piratess,” ghostly choral voices on “Your Past Life As A Blast,” a runaway wall of sound on “White Shadow Waltz.” There’s a sense that the accoutrements grew from and with these songs, and Sheff shows healthy (and uncharacteristic) restraint with a few of them. The excellent torch song “Hanging From A Hit,” for instance, is allowed to toss and turn in a minimalist setting that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Walkmen record.

“Hanging From A Hit” is also the frankest of the album’s 11 tracks, but without its slowly revealed tale of reluctant adultery, Sheff’s vocals and their dusky brass accompaniment would still telegraph that something’s amiss. Even at its fever-dreamiest, the record projects an urgency that marks it as a product of Okkervil River. It’s no longer the Okkervil River of The Stage Names or Black Sheep Boy, and that’s a plus: I Am Very Far signals that the band’s gifts with song and sentiment were never tied to specificity.-avclub

OTHER RX RECOMMENDATIONS:

Manchester Orchestra, Simple Math
Cars, Move Like This
Felice Brothers, Celebration Florida
Warren Haynes, Man In Motion
Booker T. Jones, Road From Memphis
Lonely Island, Turtleneck & Chain
Marty Robbins, Collider
Antlers, Burst Apart
Blue October, Ugly Side: An Acoustic Evening With Blue October
Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Heirloom Music
Mathew Morrison, Mathew Morrison
AND MORE!

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RECORD EXCHANGE RECOMMENDS: BRETT DENNEN’S ‘LOVERBOY’

May 4, 2011 - Recommended , The Record Exchange Blog - by - No Comments

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California iconoclast Brett Dennen is an anomaly in today’s musical landscape, carving out a niche for himself with his self-titled first album back in 2004 and proceeding to spin out funkily elegant strands of timeless pop that turn on heart, hooks and the total absence of irony. With his androgynous voice, romantic inclinations and gift for neoclassic songcraft, Dennen has built a devoted following while existing outside of any trend or movement — which is why cynics find him such a turn-off. But this dude apparently couldn’t care less — the shots he’s taken from the dark side seem to roll off him like water off a duck; Dennen is completely comfortable in his own skin and in his life-embracing vibe.

You have to see him live to get the full picture of this polarizing pied piper. Fronting a rock-steady, surprisingly hard-hitting band, the lanky redhead swivels around the stage brimming with confidence and playfulness, his slinky/gawky body language oddly reminiscent of the New York Dolls’ David Johansen back in 1973 — I kid you not. And Loverboy, with its cleverly self-descriptive title, gets closer to the more full-bodied impression Dennen and his ace posse make onstage than any of its three predecessors.

Eschewing the pointed social commentary of memorable earlier songs like “Ain’t No Reason,” “There Is So Much More” and the zeitgeist-capturing “I Ask When,” Dennen opts to embed a broader humanistic message —“This album is about having fun and letting go,” he writes in his brief liner notes — in sprung rhythms resolving into cascading chorus payoffs. The most immediately sticky tracks are the three sequenced together near the top of the record, on which Dennen gets an assist from co-producer Martin Terefe (who’s done memorable work with Ron Sexsmith, another articulate, single-minded romantic). A pugilistically punchy groove and a guileless “nah-nah-nah” chorus provide “Comeback Kid” with its yin and yang; the balmy, string-laden “Frozen in Slow Motion” evokes the late-morning sun breaking through the marine layer at Paradise Cove; and the handclap-powered falsetto chorus of “Sydney (I’ll Come Running)” trampolines upward from the body of the track in irresistible fashion. Toward the end of the LP, the band stretches out languorously on “Queen of the Westside,” its sleepy-eyed rhythm not that far removed from the narcoticized reggae bump of the Stones’ “Hey Negrita.”

While it may be a bit much to listen to Loverboy as a whole, its 13 tracks spanning 56 minutes coming off as a homogeneous sugar rush, consuming the record in bite-sized pieces can be extremely satisfying. The most engaging tracks deftly blend nimble grooves, creamy choruses and vocal performances of immediacy and genuine feeling, attaining a sort of carefree soulfulness that recalls Van Morrison circa “Brown Eyed Girl” (the seeming blueprint for the ecstatic “Cosmic Girl”) and Silk Degrees-era Boz Scaggs. If you’ve got a problem with that, so be it. But it works for me. — Paste Magazine

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RECORD EXCHANGE RECOMMENDS: THE KILLS’ FOURTH LP ‘BLOOD PRESSURES’

May 4, 2011 - Recommended , The Record Exchange Blog - by - No Comments

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For their fourth album, Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart have side-stepped the sparseness of Midnight Boom and once again filled their sound with crushing drums, searing guitars and thrilling layers of textures and sounds. Dirty, loud and intimidatingly sexy, Blood Pressures is the result of a year spent apart — Hince’s adventures in sound provide the album’s thick production, while Mosshart’s stint as Dead Weather frontwoman instils further confidence and swagger in her provocative lyrics. From the reggae dread of ‘Satellite’, through the psych lullaby of ‘Wild Charms’, to the sharp and cutting ‘You Don’t Own The Road’, it’s a bruisingly brilliant experience. — Clash Music

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