My Amazon Reviews: Various Artists "I'll Scratch Yours - A Tribute to Peter Gabriel"

Mutual Scratching Society
3 Out Of 5 Stars

Although it took him three years to pull it together, Peter Gabriel at last put his "Scratch My Back - And I'll Scratch Yours" out as a whole piece. Initially designed to be a collaborative project, Gabriel gets 10 of his "Scratch My Back" artists to add their voices to a select Gabriel song, with varying results. (You may also quibble about Bryan Eno subbing for David Bowie, but it does up the collabs; the missing links are Neil Young and Radiohead.) If you don't already have "Scratch My Back," I highly recommend getting the limited edition two CD issue.

One of the things that held my rating back of the initial album was that Gabriel had set all his choices to orchestral arrangements (he did the same to himslef on "New Blood"), which kept the album's pace to a crawl. Fortunately for "I'll Scratch Yours," the collaborators had no such imposition. It varies the album considerably and offers a few surprises. For starters is the realization that anything Randy Newman touches sounds like Randy Newman, from the dry wit of the vocals to the piano playing, and he turns "Big Time" from the ironically pop MTV hit into the biting commentary that the lyrics had posited all along.

My other favorite here is Lou Reed turning "Solisbury Hill" from Gabriel's gathering of courage in a pastoral setting into a dingy echo laden guitar look into the mean streets of New York City (and may be one of Reed's last recordings). The criminally underrated Elbow take one of my all-time favorite Gabriel songs, "Mercy Street," and do an uncanny sound-alike version. Stephin Merrit (Magnetic Fields) stamps the paranoia out from underneath "Not One Of Us" and makes it sound like a bubbly synth-pop record from the 80's. And finally, Paul Simon turns "Biko," a song I thought I was tired of, into an acoustic folk anthem.

Those are the hits. There are a couple of misses; Brian Eno doesn't do anything to make "Mother Of Violence" interesting. Bon Iver tries as hard as he can to sound interesting, but remains a bore to listen to. David Byrne uses his falsetto on "I Don't Remember" to make you remember what nails on chalkboard sounds like. But that's only three real duds. The remainder of the songs, from the likes of Feist, Arcade Fire and Regina Spektor at least show that Gabriel hasn't lost his taste for new artists and that his songwriting transcends formats. Taken together, "Scratch My Back and I'll Scratch Yours" is a good pair of bookends and a fine tribute to Gabriel's multi-decade career.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Arcade Fire "Reflektor"

Arcade Fire Loosen Up
3 Out Of 5 Stars

Arcade Fire find themselves stirring up emotions and dance floor beats on their double CD, "Reflektor." As the most famous band of their beloved Indie scene, they have to contend with being the little band that could, as in could win a Grammy for Album of The Year ("The Suburbs"). Their answer? To invoke Orpheus and the failed love to Eurydice (she's the image of the cover art), bring in Haitian musicians to lay down some serious grooves, let David Bowie sing back up (the title track) and make what feels like their least densely produced album of their career. If anything, it frequently reminds me of how Talking Heads sounded when they used "Speaking In Tongues" to open up their overall sound.

"If there is no music in Heaven, then what's it for?" bemoans Win Butler on "Here Comes the Night Time" (the first part, the second opens disc two as a dirge), and he's here to celebrate. That means giving "Reflektor" over to James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem to make the grooves pop. Granted, this isn't Saturday Night Fever, but the percussion and bass drive better than half the album. Eurydice and Orpheus tangle again on twin songs "Awful Sound" and "It's Not Over" to again invoke their tragic love before moving onto other topics. Like "Porno." Not as bad as the title implies, it's a slower tune that contemplates the simplistic ways that men misinterpret love, like "little boys with their porno." Yes, Arcade Fire may be loosening up, but that doesn't mean their lyrics have gone soft.

Which is what makes "Reflektor" a pretty good album. Arcade Fire are still finding ways to get their sound to new places without losing their identity. If I have any gripes, it's that the expansive grooves seem to often come at the expense of over-lenghty songs (some judicious editing - like the 5 minutes of drivel at the end of "Supersymmetry" - could have made this a single disc), and the album packaging comes with lyric sheets that tore as soon as they got caught on the CD's. But that's hardly a fault to Arcade Fire. I'd gladly take a two CD set of music this ambitious than a single disc of poorly thought through laptop pop. So go ahead, dance to a song about dying (the New Order-ish "Afterlife") till "we work it out."

     

My Amazon Reviews: Soundtrack "The Hunger Games"

Songs to Kill People By 
4 Out Of 5 Stars

300 Years in the future and folk music is still high lonesome depression. Guess "The Hunger Games" thinks that - other than watching kids kill each other for sport - we won't be changing all that much. These songs (mostly inspired by the film/book as opposed to being featured in said film), stick mainly to acoustic guitars and the sad laments of the participants. I find it funny in the odd way that kids usually pounding their way to hip-hop and punk rock will be lapping up country waltzes ("Tomorrow Will be Kinder" by Secret Sisters) and Appalachian cries like The Carolina Chocolate Drops doing "Daughter's Lament."

T-Bone Burnette, as executive producer, allows for few curve balls. Kid Cudi gives the disc its heaviest and most ominous song with "The Ruler and The Killer," which sounds more like the oppressive state that would find a real life version of "The Hunger Games" to be a day's TV dinner. Adam Levine is pulled away from his comfort zone, as Maroon 5 pick up a mandolin and ditch the synths for "Come Away To The Water." Taylor Swift sounds all grown up as she teams with the Civil Wars for "Safe and Sound" then The CW gets their own chance to shine with "Kingdom Come" ("Don't cry my dear, it will all be over soon").

The Alt-Rock crowd gets two dollops from Arcade Fire and The Decemberists. AF pounds out a militaristic drum tattoo on the threatening lullabye "Abraham's Daughter," while Colin Meloy keeps the Decemberists in REM territory for "One Engine." It also happens to be the most propulsive song on the disc, so maybe life in District 12 won't be so sad after all. It used to be that you couldn't turn on the radio without being pummeled by songs from a film, be they good or bad. Since that has changed and the deluge slowed, good soundtracks are harder to come by. "The Hunger Games" is one of the better one and hits more than it doesn't.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Cold War Kids "Mine is Yours"

Cold War Kids in a Grown Up World  
4 Out of 5 Stars

These guys used to be loud and gritty, even with the undertones of hidden anthems on their earlier albums. For their third full length album (and first for Geffen/Interscope) "Mine Is Yours," Cold War Kids drop all pretense towards indie-rock sound and go full charge for the areanas of the world. They've discovered their inner U2 and the ghost of Jeff Buckley as seeped in as well. They may have even caught a case of the Arcade Fires, while we're at it.

Which is to say that "Mine is Yours" aims at big targets and bold sounds, and mostly hits its marks. Singer Nathan Willett is a pretty soulful dude for a belter, which makes some of the more awkward lyrics (like "the crown on my head is heavy on me" from the otherwise great "Out of The Wilderness) sound positively inspirational, and when he gets the perfect match, he is. The title track and "Sensitive Kid" are polar opposites with the same effect; where the title track roars forth like a star climbing anthem, "Sensitive Kid" strips down to a slinky bass and piano drop ins to just grab you by the collar for a good shaking. Then, when they sneak back to their earlier, grittier blues sound on "Cold Toes on The Cold Floor," you understand that understated guitarist Jonnie Russell - who spends most of this album buried in producer Jaques King's reverb - is a coming axe-hero.

"Mine Os Yours" is going to fluster some of the Cold War Kids fans that will scream sell-out at A) Signing to Interscope and B) CWK's new-found sonic richness. To me, it's just a natural progression. "Mine Is Yours" is an unexpected surprise for me, and has slowly climbed into the upper reaches of my 2011 favorites.

 

My Amazon Reviews: Arcade Fire "The Suburbs"

It takes a village to make a Suburb 
4 Out of 5 Stars

Allegedly a song cycle that came together after various band members either visited or heard from the areas they grew up, "The Suburbs" is Arcade Fire's love-hate letter to nostalgia, decay and growth, growing up and the hazy nostalgia of being young in a small town. It's a pretty good series of songs, and more straight-forward than "Neon Bible."

There's also a decidedly folkier edge to the music this time around, especially in the title track and the epic "Sprawl II." However, there are still times when the dense rock that built the band's reputation. The punkish "Ready To Start" may be the most propulsive song AF has ever recorded, and the ever present Springsteen influence reigns over "City With No Children." The blend of songs is pretty incredible, as fairly soon afterward is the poppish lament of "Wasted Hours," reminiscent of The Band, and the most acerbic lyric of the whole album.

"The Suburbs" is a complex and rich album, yet Arcade Fire's most direct. When Wim sadly describes "kids and buses still waiting to be free," it cuts as hard as anything off "Funeral" ever did for me. I may find "Funeral" to remain their best album, but "The Suburbs" is maybe even more universal. One of the year's best.