In 2011, after a 10-year hiatus, Sade returned to the U.S. for a 54-date tour in support of the platinum-selling album Soldier Of Love, which became one of last year’s top 10 grossing tours. The tour, directed by the renowned Sophie Muller, is now available on DVD/CD featuring 22 of Sade’s biggest hits performed live on the visually stunning stage that was nominated by Pollstar for “Most Creative Stage Production” and “2011 Major Tour of the Year Award.”
Sade also grants fans a rare, all-access look behind-the-scenes with a 20-minute documentary film shot by Sophie Muller, as well as a technical documentary by Stuart Matthewman, and outtakes from the crew. Fans and critics alike have hailed the show for its intimate vibe, eye-catching production, and dazzling imagery, making this DVD/CD a must-have for the ultimate Sade fan.
Brooklyn’s Here We Go Magic is a band that has been growing, physically and sonically. Originally a project for folk songwriter Luke Temple to have a brand name associated with his Shins meets Simon and Garfunkel approach to lo-fi songwriting, the “band” swelled to a five piece, released 2010’s Pigeons, and is now expanding yet again by snagging Radiohead producer (credited sometimes as a sixth member of said group, such is his influence) Nigel Godrich to helm the production deck of their A Different Ship, the third album under the Here We Go Magic moniker.
You may be wondering what Mob favour Temple and company had to pull in to get such an appreciated producer to work on an indie album, but the story goes that the band played the Glastonbury Festival in June 2010 deprived of sleep, but managed to perform well enough to impress both Godrich and Thom Yorke, who would later call the band his favourite of the festival, both of whom were in the front row during the set. Godrich would go on to see the band a few more times on tour in Europe, and then propose that he aid the group on their next release. Instant magic!
Well, I can say one thing with absolute certainty: Here We Go Magic have basically turned in the album that Radiohead should have made immediately following In Rainbows. It’s a tunefully, poppy affair, clearly influenced by ‘70s Krautrock, with a completely layered sound that invites you to peel away at it to get to all of its carefully structured secrets. And you listen to A Different Ship and have to wonder: how much has working with Radiohead influenced Godrich as a producer, or how much Radiohead has benefited the other way around? It’s a puzzle, but one thing is clear: Godrich’s stamp of genius is all over A Different Ship … a careening, exhilarating ride with highlight after highlight. With A Different Ship, Here We Go Magic has clearly and undeniably arrived at the port of entry to indie rock’s pantheon of top shelf acts – an utterly shattering release that anyone who likes forward-thinking music must have. — PopMatters
94.9 FM The River presents Ed Sheeran live at The Record Exchange (1105 W. Idaho St. in Downtown Boise) at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 29. As always, this Record Exchange in-store performance is free and all ages. THIS IS SHEERAN’S ONLY SHOW IN TOWN!
No doubt you have heard the UK singer-songwriter’s latest single “The A Team” on 94.9 The River. Sheeran created a lot of buzz for himself coming out of SXSW recently and The River is bringing him to Boise for this special free concert! His new album “+” will be coming out June 12 and this is your chance to see a new artist who will fast become a rising star in the music scene!
ABOUT ED SHEERAN
Ed Sheeran is blessed – he seems to know exactly where he is going, and exactly how to get there. Where countless others fail to make an impression amid today’s information overload, Ed’s music and talent cut straight through.
He has a poise that is as welcome as it is unusual in someone so young. He’s both utterly self-assured but still charmingly open. He has a confidence that’s built not on being able to sing someone else’s song quite nicely on a teatime TV show, but on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of gigs where it’s just him, his guitar, a loop pedal and a crowd.
Above all, Ed’s got this voice with buckets of soul and these incredibly affecting songs that despite being played on acoustic guitar are far removed from the standard singer-songwriter fare. In fact, Ed’s songs are as informed by Jay-Z as much as they are by Damien Rice. They talk about the city he loves and the people in it and of it. They talk about the people made by it, and those damaged by it. They are about love and loss, but are also joyful when you need them to be. He is a unique talent whose combination of skills is frankly quite startling.
Ed grew up in Suffolk, where he learnt to play an old guitar given to him by an uncle. Spurred on by a chance meeting with the aforementioned Rice when he was 11, Ed started writing songs. Aged 16, he moved to London – into a flat above the T-Bird pub in Finsbury Park – with only one thing on his mind: playing gigs, as many as he could and as often as he could.
“I was playing every night,” he says, “sometimes three times a night. I played every open mic night going. At first the crowds weren’t interested, but I learnt how to make them interested!” A thousand audiences from acoustic shows to hip-hop nights, or, indeed, any other genre, will agree with that.
One night Ed played a tiny bar in North London whose website listed every young promoter in town. That night Ed Myspaced them all and a few days later he had nearly a hundred new gigs lined up. A pattern began to emerge – all day in the studio, all night playing gigs. From the early days Ed would sell CDs of his songs out of his backpack, putting cash in his pocket to get to the next gig, but also planting a flag in people’s minds that here was music that was worth paying for. Not satisfied by CDs alone, fans have flocked to his website to pick up everything from hoodies to jewelry.
When Ed was told by his then management that he would need to conform to succeed – including dying his hair, and giving up his unique delivery – Ed responded by writing the cult song, ‘You Need Me, I Don’t Need You’. Over the next year he released five EPs, each one totally different, each one totally him. There was a singer-songwriter one, a live from The Bedford one, one written with singer Amy Wadge. Each sold better than the last.
In February last year, after two years of constant gigging and sofa surfing, Ed recorded a live version of ‘You Need Me, I Don’t Need You’ for leading urban YouTube channel, SBTV. The clip got 100K hits in two days and is now approaching 1.5M views. A few days later, he wrote what would become his first major label release, ‘The A Team’: a story about a girl he met whilst working at a homeless shelter. The video for that has just surpassed 1M views.
By the time Ed released the final EP – ‘No. 5 Collaborations’ in January, which featured the who’s who of UK hip hop and grime: Devlin, Wretch 32, Dot Rotten, P Money, JME and Wiley, the support was so strong it propelled Ed to Number 2 in the iTunes album chart after just 24 hours. The only artist selling more copies was Rihanna. When Elton John called his mobile to congratulate him, Ed realized quite how big things had got. Amid interest from numerous labels Ed shortly signed with Asylum – part of Atlantic Records.
“Collaborations was the peak of my independent career,” Ed says. “Now I am beginning my signed career. You have to pass the barriers, go to the next level. Some independent people do it well, but some never progress far enough. Signing to a label is the smart thing to do if you have the right deal. And I have the right deal.”
So now there is the album, entitled ‘+’. “I’d like to say it’s all about positivity,” Ed laughs, “but really it’s just a cool sign that I love. It is also one step on from all the independent releases I have done.”
Ed’s album features a host of very special songs. ‘Small Bump’ is a true story, with the most heart-wrenching twist, about a friend and her baby. ‘Lego House’ is a love song that imagines a world where you can “pick up the pieces and build a Lego house, and if things go wrong we can knock it down!” ‘Wake Me Up’ was written while sat, really drunk, under a tree by Jamie Foxx’s pool (that’s another story). ‘Grade 8’ (“your body is my ball-point pen/ and your mind is my new best friend…”) sees Ed as a worrier/warrior with bloodshot eyes, his heartstrings being twanged by a virtuoso guitarist. The truth is, there’s not a bad song on it, precisely because Ed wouldn’t dream of allowing there to be a bad song on it, he’s that type of guy. As you will soon see.
“I have slept on a different sofa every night for two and a half years so I can do this,” Ed says. “But the sofa thing can get lonely. I’m ready for my own place now; I’m ready for the next level.”
Curtis Stigers will perform a special Record Store Day album release concert at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 21, at The Record Exchange, 1105 W. Idaho St. in Downtown Boise. (Note: The Record Exchange will close at 7 p.m. to set up for the event.)
Wristbands guaranteeing admission to the concert are available now at The Record Exchange with preorders of Stigers’ new album Let’s Go Out Tonight (one wristband per CD preorder). Let’s Go Out Tonight will be available on Record Store Day at The Record Exchange, three days before its official U.S. release on Tuesday, April 24.
ABOUT LET’S GO OUT TONIGHT
An epic work: 5 Stars … Let’s Go Out Tonight is perhaps the most impressive genre crossing release for the year. — Critical Jazz
His eye for classy material is as sharp as ever … Stigers remains one of the most thoughtful and uncategorisable of artists. — The Sunday Times
… Nocturnal, jazzy but modern. Spare treatments of Dylan’s “Things Have Changed” and “Into Temptation” provide other highlights. — The Mail
On April 24, 2012, singer/saxophonist Curtis Stigers will release Let’s Go Out Tonight, his seventh album on Concord Music Group. A departure from Stigers’ previous projects, Let’s Go Out Tonight sidesteps the Great American Songbook completely. Rather, it includes a vibrant cross-section of pop, folk, country and soul songs from songwriters ranging from Bob Dylan, Eddie Floyd and Richard Thompson to Jeff Tweedy, Hayes Carll and David Poe, whose “Everyone Loves Lovers” was crafted expressly for Stigers.
Though jazz has been integral to Curtis Stigers’ musical vocabulary throughout his career, his transformation from rock/pop headliner (of the sort that filled stadiums and made Leno and Letterman appearances) to jazz vocalist is barely a decade old, dating from the release of his debut Concord album Baby Plays Around in 2001. Stigers is often placed at the forefront of post-millennial jazz singers, but isn’t a pure jazz artist in the tradition of, say, Mark Murphy or Mel Tormé. Nor does he want to be. Critical to his unique vocal style and his inimitable interpretative skills is his ability to draw upon his checkered professional past and his wide-ranging musical tastes to synthesize myriad influences, coloring tracks with various shades of pop, country, folk, blues and classic R&B. Stigers’ genre-blurring instincts have never been never been more defined than on his latest album, Let’s Go Out Tonight.
Stigers also describes the new project as “probably the most autobiographical album I’ve ever made. It hits so many places I’ve been and things I’ve gone through and am currently going through.” Ironically, given its deeply personal nature, Let’s Go Out Tonight is the first album since 2003’s You Inspire Me that includes no original Stigers songs.
While shaping the playlist with producer Larry Klein, Stigers says he “played him a few songs I’d written, but I hadn’t been writing that much. It’s been a tumultuous year, and I haven’t been able to focus on songwriting. He didn’t think the ones I played fit in with what we were going for, and I had to agree with him.” Instead, Stigers and Klein each drew up long lists of song possibilities. “Then,” Stigers explains, “I started flying down to L.A. [from Boise, his birthplace, and once again his hometown, after many years in New York] every couple of weeks and we’d play songs for each other. He came up with a lot of songs, but I came up with a lot, too; and we ended up using more of my suggestions, which I’m very happy about. They’re songs I’ve had in my back pocket for years and have always wanted to record. So, in a way, it feels like I wrote the album anyway.”
The set opens with Stigers’ rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Things Have Changed,” Dylan’s Oscar-winning song from the film Wonder Boys. From the Eddie Floyd canon, Stigers selected the relatively obscure “Oh How It Rained,” originally recorded by Floyd in 1971. “You Are Not Alone” was written by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy for Mavis Staples. Another standout is the Neil Finn/Crowded House song, “Into Temptation,” about which Stigers says, “Give me a song about sex any day of the week.”
The David Poe song, “Everyone Loves Lovers,” on which Poe sings harmony, is, says Stigers, “A song I wish I’d written. Instead, David wrote it for me to sing, after hearing me with my band at The Blue Note in New York. It’s sweet and romantic, until you get to the part where it kicks you in the stomach. I love that brutal twist. We’ve all been there. No matter how perfect a relationship seems, there’s always a place down the road where it’s going to get rocky.” Another highlight is Steve Earle’s harrowing “Goodbye,” of which Stigers says, “We all spend periods of our lives numbing ourselves to block out what’s going on around us. I spent an unhealthy amount of my adult life doing that in different ways. It was a little scary how easily it fit.”
Stigers closes with the title track, The Blue Nile’s “Let’s Go Out Tonight.” “I’ve been a fan of The Blue Nile since their first album. Everything they’ve recorded is so understated and haunting. Basically, this song is about that unfortunate place that a relationship gets to, where you know everything is broken but all you want to do is pretend that it’s not. I spent years doing that. It’s about the saddest thing I can think of, and every time I hear it, I get choked up.”
The Record Exchange and Go Listen Boise present the Finn Riggins Record Store Day Kickoff/EP Release Party at 8 p.m. Friday, April 20, at the Linen Building, 1402 W. Grove St. in Downtown Boise’s Linen District. $7 at the door. Pontiak (Thrill Jockey), Red Hands Black Feet open. All ages, full bar, Pie Hole pizza.
Boise’s Finn Riggins is releasing the new Benchwarmers EP on 10-inch red vinyl for Record Store Day via Tender Loving Empire. Benchwarmers finds the band in top form, making experimental rock jams you can dance to. NYLON premiered the title track in March, saying “this song is so good, it makes us totally reconsider the benchwarmer bad rap.”
Over the past several years, Finn Riggins has been making a name for itself around the Western and greater United States as road warriors from the oft-overlooked state of Idaho. Since the release of their debut album on Portland’s beloved mom-and-pop label Tender Loving Empire in 2007, the band has averaged close to 200 shows a year in 43 states, including playing support for fellow Idahoans Built To Spill on three separate tours.
The collaborative brainchild of three music school graduates from the University of Idaho — Cameron Bouiss, Eric Gilbert and Lisa Simpson — Finn Riggins relocated to Boise in 2009 where they’ve become key players in the young music and art scene of Idaho’s largest population center. Eric Gilbert is the festival director and talent buyer for Boise’s Treefort Music Fest, which made its debut March 22-25 and put a spotlight on the town as a destination for music and the arts while raising money for independent station Radio Boise.
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