Echoes Top 25 for March 2014

Progressive guitars, Serene Songs and Hang Drums Lead Echoes Top 25 for March

It’s no surprise that our March CD of the Month, Mark McGuire’s Along the Way, leads the Echoes Top 25.  Fans of Popol Vuh, Ashra and Mike Oldfield should be in prog-epic heaven with this album.  Hear Mark McGuire interviewed on Monday March 31.   Beck’s Morning Phase comes up next, a beautiful psychedelic tinged pastoral song-cycle from this popular, yet I think still underrated artist.  And James Hood returns to the Echoes Top 25, having previously spent some time here with his other recording persona, Moodswings.  His album of Hang meditations, Ceremony. sounds better the more I hear it. Fully half of the top 25 have never been on this list before.

ECHOES TOP 25 FOR MARCH 2014

1. Mark McGuire – Along the Way (Dead Oceans)
2. Beck– Morning Phase (Capital)
3. James Hood – Ceremony (Edible Sounds)
4. Tycho – Awake (Ghostly International)
5. Mary Fahl – Love & Gravity (Mary Fahl)
6. Luna – Luna (Domo Records)
7. Ane Brun – Songs 2003-2013 (Balloon Ranger Recordings)
8. Marissa Nadler – July (Sacred Bones)
9. Lyla Foy – Mirrors the Sky (Subpop Records)
10. Erothyme – Circadia (Erothyme)
11. Coldplay – Ghost Stories (Parlophone UK)
12. Davidge – Slo Light (The End Records)
13. Mree – Winterwell (Mree Music)
14. The Capsules – The Long Goodbye (Saint Marie Records)
15. Elbow – The Take Off and Landing of Everything (Concord Records)
16. Linnea Olsson – Ah! (Universal UK)
17. Bluetech – Spacehop Chronicles Vol. 1 (Native State Records)
18. Priscilla Ahn – This is Where We Are (SQE Music)
19. Ernesto Schnack – Worldbuilding (Ernesto Schnack)
20. The War on Drugs – Lost in the Dream (Secretly Canadian)
21. That That Revolves – Chasing Sunshine EP (Hungry Media)
22. Cinema 12 – Cinema 12 (Cinema 12)
23. Armon Jay – Everything’s Different Nothing’s Changed (Armon Jay)
24. Dawn Landes – Bluebird (Western Vinyl)
25. David Torn – That Awkward Moment (Varese Records)

 

 

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

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Greatest Songs of the 21st Century… So Far: An Idiosyncratic List.

The thirteenth year of the 21^st century doesn’t seem to be the right time to look back on the best of the millennium.  Those lists usually come on the decade and quarter century marks.  But I was asked to compile another Top Ten list for Echoes affiliate, WXPN in Philadelphia.  This time, the impossible assignment was picking the Top Ten Greatest Songs of the New Millennium for their 885 Greatest Songs of the New Millennium Countdown.  This is never an easy task but it made me think of the songs I keep coming back to, the songs that haven’t left my iPhone where music is constantly being cycled off to make room for new material.

One thing I like about this list is it takes classic rock, new wave, progressive rock and just about everything else I grew up with out of the equation.  In my 885 Best Rock Songs list I picked The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” as number one and wrote that “I think any of 10 tunes by The Rolling Stones could be on this list.”  On this  list, there aren’t any great new Rolling Stones tunes in this century.  Nor are there any great new Pink Floyd, The Who or Hendrix tunes to be found.   Six of my ten songs are from artists who began recording in the 2000’s

Because it is greatest “songs,” I left out instrumentals, except for one, which, in an admittedly idiosyncratic move, I made number 1.  For some reason, several of the tracks are from 2008.  It’s not much like the lists of other XPN hosts, and will certainly be nothing like the list that comes from their 885 Greatest Songs of the New Millennium Poll with listeners, but it’s my list.  Follow the link to vote for your own.  Voting ends September 16. At the bottom, I’ve got a Spotify Playlist of John Diliberto’s Top Ten Songs of the New Millennium, So Far.

JOHN DILIBERTO’S GREATEST TEN SONGS OF THE NEW MILLENIUM

1 Ulrich Schnauss “Clear Day”
What a great way to start this list, a wash of white noise obliterating all that came before, then slowly a syncopated 4/4 snare groove rolls in, droning synth chords, a chilling melody and one of those classic Ulrich Schnauss choruses that hooks you on a train ride to ecstasy.  This is one of several tracks from Schnauss’ 2003 CD A Strangely Isolated Place that I could’ve picked. (See Five Best Ulrich Schnauss CDs).  Somebody should write lyrics for this. It’s waiting to be a hit.

2 Moby – Wait for Me
In my review of this Echoes CD of the Month in July 2009 I wrote: “The title track is another song that seems to contemplate eternity of a lost soul.  It’s sung by Kelli Scarr, who has a fragility that breaks over the waves of Moby’s ghost rhythms, minimalist piano figure and sonic scrims.  She sings “I’m gonna ask you to look away, I lost my hands and it hurts to pray” like a half-remembered nursery rhyme, a paean to lost youth, a contemplation of the end.

It’s a heartbreaking song from an album that makes heartbreak beautiful and noble. (See Five Best Moby CDS) The video doesn’t quite fit the song, so just listen, or just watch.

3 Black Angels, “Yellow Elevator #2”
This is a song I often hit repeat on with my iPhone.  In fact, I just did again. Quoting the “Twilight Zone” theme and Pink Floyd’s “Lucifer Sam,” with Question Mark & the Mysterian’s organ, The Black Angels paint a psychedelic landscape of oblivion this song from their album, Phosphene Dream.  I usually don’t like codas, but the coda for “Yellow Elevator #2” is the most poignant theme this band has recorded.  It was great this year to hear them return it to their live performances after excising it the previous couple of tours.  Excuse me while I kiss these guys. (Review of Album & performance: http://wp.me/pgATL-14j)

4 Loner – “Already Numb” Is heartbreak a theme of this list?  It doesn’t get more forlorn than Loner’s song of lost innocence sung in a beautiful alto over a spare, Satie-like piano theme backed by organ.  The line that gets me every time is

“Album covers, I don’t know how.  Could move me once, but cannot now.”

It’s from his album, Western Sci-Fi which is full of beautiful chamber pop.

5 Olivier Libaux “Go With the Flow” After that heartbreak, I need some joy.  “Go with the Flow” is easily one the most jubilant tracks on Olivier Libaux’s album Uncovered Queens of the Stone Age the Echoes CD of the Month in July 2013. It’s a rollicking party played over a bouncing groove, with vocals provided by Iceland’s Emiliana Torrini.  The sound effects of a cheering audience are used as a musical element that amps-up the elation in QOTSA writer Josh Homme’s story about trying for love despite it all.

6 Alu – “Circus Cosmos”
Alu paints a soundtrack from Mr. Dark’s Pandemonium Carnival (“Something Wicked This Way Comes”).  It’s a three-ring psychosis with calliope organ spinning a tale of delirious love.  Rather than go gothic in tone, Alu’s is euphoric.  It also has an unforgettable chorus:

You are the photograph that I’ve never seen
You are my phantom, the fountain of dreams.
I’ve been living in a mortuary, my whole life long.

There’s more imagery in that one chorus than most musicians conjure for an entire CD and it’s delivered by Alu’s keening soprano with such aching and despair that I know there’s more behind this tune than Alu let on. It’s one of several great tunes from her underrated album, Lobotomy Sessions.

7 Agnes Obel – Riverside
The Danish born singer recorded a heartbreaking song about the ebb, flow and emotional turmoil of life’s currents. Obel brings her lilting, slightly slurred soprano to bear on lyrics of memory and loss.  Singing over a spare cyclical piano riff, she deftly layers her voice into plaintive harmonies that will have you swimming in her bittersweet stream.  Her debut, Philharmonics,  was the Echoes CD of the Month in January of 2012.

8 Gnarls Barkley “Going On”
This may be the most anomalous track on this list. Gnarls Barkley made some crazed R&B that was retro-soul in its melodies, sung by Cee Lo Green, and futuristic in its arrangements from Danger Mouse.  “Crazy” is their massive hit, but I always loved this hyper-kinetic leaving song from The Odd Couple album with Cee Lo’s manic rap-inflected melody, the stop time rhythm and the gothic freak-out at the end.

9 Dandy Warhols – “The Legend of the Last of the Outlaw Truckers A.K.A. the Ballad of Sheriff Shorty”
This is a hyped-up mix of Country-Jitterbug-New Orleans Voodoo psychedelia from Earth to Dandy Warhols. Courtney Taylor-Taylor rips it up in this hipster-jiving ode to speed and trucking, “jacked up on java and nicotine.”  I can’t get it out of my head. Check out this great video and it will be embedded in your head as well.

10 Beck – “Chemtrails”
Beck’s “Chemtrails” from his 2008 album Modern Guilt has one of those Pachelbel-style hooks that could go on forever. The song starts as a lament and turns in to an anthem of deep despair for humanity, while still somehow maintaining hope using chemtrail conspiracy theories as a metaphor.  I saw him do a great version of it with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra at the Bowl that year and it stayed in my head thereafter despite the assholes sitting behind me. Even the pointless coda doesn’t ruin it.

John Diliberto’s 10 Best Songs of the New Millennium Spotify Playlist

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

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John Diliberto’s Top Ten Songs for 2008: Alu to Gnarls Barkley

When WXPN, our Philadelphia Echoes affiliate, asked me to submit my Top Ten Albums and songs list, Program Director Bruce Warren said “send us your top ten albums and songs (if you have songs).” I knew what he meant by that parenthetical on a couple of levels.

On Echoes, we usually don’t play songs, right? Instrumental pieces are usually called compositions. Songs are something you hear on pop radio and have singers. And even if they were songs, we don’t think of the music here in a “song” sort of way. They’re more like parts of albums, atmospheres, moods and sonic architecture.

But we do actually play songs on Echoes. In the last year, you’ve heard tunes by Goldfrapp, Alu, M83, All India Radio and many more. So I approached this list like my Top Ten CDs for 2008. I didn’t limit it to Echoes materiel only, but they’ve all been in heavy rotation on my iPod.

Topping my list is Alu, someone not well known outside the Echoesphere, but she should be. Her album, Lobotomy Sessions is the Never Forever (Kate Bush) of the 21^st Century, and this song in particular, “Circus Cosmos,” haunted me for months with its refrain:

You are the photograph that I’ve never seen
You are my phantom, the fountain of dreams.
I’ve been living in a mortuary, my whole life long.

There’s more imagery in that one chorus than most musicians conjure for an entire CD and it’s delivered by Alu’s keening soprano with such aching and despair that I know there’s more behind this tune than Alu let on.

Digitonal’s “93 Years On” is equally haunting. A masterpiece of ambient chamber music, Andy Dobson’s tortured clarinet solo, reputedly performed in a drunken haze over a lost girlfriend, is a blistering, pained cry of luxurious anguish set in an electronic cocoon.

Beck has one of the non-Echoes pieces here. But “Chemtrails” has one of those Pachelbel-style hooks that could go on forever. He did a great version of it with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra at the Bowl in September that stayed in my head thereafter.

“The Legend of the Last of the Outlaw Truckers A.K.A. the Ballad Of Sheriff Shorty” by The Dandy Warhols is worthy of its over-long title. It’s a hyped-up mix of Country-Jitterbug-New Orleans Voodoo psychedelia. Courtney Taylor-Taylor rips it up in this hipster-talking ode to speed and trucking. I can’t get it out of my head. Check out this great video and it will be embedded in your head as well.

The electronica band Goldfrapp took a pastoral, nearly acoustic turn on their Seventh Tree album. I loved “Little Bird” for its wistful tone that ends in a psychedelic crescendo that reminded me of Magical Mystery era Beatles. Alison Goldfrapp’s voice is the kind you want to sleep with.

My youngest teenaged daughter, Grace hipped me to MGMT and  “Time to Pretend.”  It’s a tongue in cheek parody of the rock lifestyle with a surprisingly poignant undertone, delivered with driving synthesizers.

Lights Out Asia‘s “Radars Over the Ghosts of Chernobyl” is about as epic as they get, starting with Gothic chords and Latin voices that sound like an oblivion mass before slowly emerging into surging guitars, hell bound rhythms and Chris Schafer’s anguished vocal.

Mariee Sioux is a partly Native American singer who uses Native themes and imagery in her music. Her song “Buried in Teeth” is part children’s song and part lament with a fragile voice that breaks over her finger-style guitar playing with some nice Native flute by Gentle Thunder.

Another catch from my daughter is Gnarls Barkley.  Every time she’d throw a mix CD in the car and I asked her what that track was, it would be something by this electro-soul duo.  Their album, The Odd Couple is brilliant and “Surprise,” with its mix of chorus harmonies redolent of The Association coupled with surf grooves doesn’t stop.

Finally Sumner McKane’s “After the Fireworks we walked to the Rope Swing,” is the least song-like of anything here, but the epic, almost operatic electric orchestration always sends a buzz up my spine and the guitar solo is sublime.

You can see the list along with other host and staff picks at WXPN
or just go right here:

John Diliberto’s Top 10 SONGS

 

TOP 10 SONGS
	FIRST-LAST/GROUP NAME	SONG TITLE/ALBUM NAME	SOURCES
	Alu	Circus Cosmos/Lobotomy Sessions
	Digitonal	93 Years On/Save Your Light for Darker Days
	Beck	Chemtrails/Modern Guilt
	Dandy Warhols	The Legend of the Last of the Outlaw Truckers/Earth to Dandy Warhols
	Goldfrapp	Little Bird/Seventh Tree
	MGMT	Time To Pretend/Oracular Spectacular
	Lights Out Asia	Radars Over the Ghosts of Chernobyl/Eyes Like Brontide
	Gnarls Barkeley	Surprise/The Odd Couple
	Mariee Sioux	Buried In Teeth/Faces in the Rocks
	Sumner McKane	After the Fireworks We Walked to the Ropeswing/What A Great Place to Be

Copyright 2008 Pennsylvania Public Radio Associates,
Inc.

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John Diliberto’s Top 10 CDs for 2008

From Digitonal to the Dandy Warhols, John Diliberto’s Top Ten CDs for 2008.

While you’re pondering the Echoes 2008 Listener Poll, I’ve already been solicited for a few year-end lists. I usually give a different list to different outlets. My (uncredited) Amazon.com list is pretty strictly New Age and limited to  titles that are actually on Amazon.com, although as you’ll see, I stretch the definition of New Age quite a bit. The 25 Essential Echoes CDs for 2008 is limited to what I play on Echoes (Look for that in a week or so). But when WXPN solicited lists for my 10 Top CDs and songs for 2008, there were no limitations. So there are a couple of things here that I wouldn’t be playing on Echoes. This is my personal Top Ten.  

A lot of my top ten albums will be appearing right on top of the 25 Essential Echoes CDs for 2008. I’ve written about many of them already. Digitonal’s Save Your Light For Darker Days remains my favorite disc of the year and I say why in my  September CD of the Month review. Sumner McKane’s right up there and my paean to his psychamericana on What A Great Place to Be is in my October CD of the Month review. Saul Stokes’ entrancing electronic cycles on Villa Galaxia probably should have been a CD of the Month. I wrote about that in an Echo Location. The Persian fusion group, Niyaz  topped their debut with the double CD, Nine Heavens.  It could’ve been a CD of the month as well, but it came out in the midst of CDs we’d already selected by Jamshied Sharifi and Biomusique with similar exotic female singers.   We try and spread a little variety among CD of the Month Selections.  But I am intoxicated by Azam Ali’s  voice which taps into something beyond this world, while still living sensually in this world. Alu is a relatively new singer who made me think of early Kate Bush with her electronica cabaret on Lobotomy Sessions. I wrote about her in an Echo Location. Nik Bärtch’s Ronin has been making a cerebral brand of minimalist jazz for years and Holon spins like a melodic meeting of Dave Brubeck and Steve Reich. Lights Out Asia orchestrated a perfect mix of shoegazer rock and ambient electronics but on an epic scale on their enigmatically titled CD, Eyes Like Brontide.   You can also read about them and hear their music in an Echo Location.  Now we get to the two non-Echoes titles here. Beck‘s Modern Guilt, is another great album of insightfully poetic and ironic lyrics set in new variations of organic quirk, much of it provided by Danger Mouse from Gnarls Barkley who made my Top Ten Songs.    Earth to the Dandy Warhols is a brilliant pastiche of styles from jive-talking  jump-blues to Can, all distilled through their psychedelic sensibilities.   The German group, Qntal rounds out the list with Lucidia, a definitive example of their Medieval Electronica fronted by the haunting, imperious voice of Sigrid Hausen. The Top Ten list is below. I’ll have My Top Ten songs later, or you can just go to WXPN and see it there, sans sage commentary. While you’re in the neighborhood , vote in their year end poll, but while you’re here, vote in ours, The Echoes 2008 Listener Poll.  You might even win the Top 25 Echoes CDs for 2008.
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

John Diliberto’s Top 10

TOP 10 ALBUMS
	FIRST-LAST/GROUP NAME	ALBUM NAME	SOURCES
1	Digitonal	Save Your Light for Darker Days
2	Sumner McKane	What A Great Place to Be
3	Saul Stokes	Villa Galaxia
4	Niyaz	Nine Heavens
5	Alu	Lobotomy Sessions
6	Nik Bartsch’s Ronin	Holon
7	Lights Out Asia	Eyes Like Brontide
8	Beck	Modern Guilt
9	Dandy Warhols	Earth to Dandy Warhols
10	Qntal	Qntal VI: Translucida

Beck, James Blunt and Elliott Smith producer Tom Rothrock unleashes his Americana Electronica.

I’ve been beating the drum for Tom Rothrock‘s music for about a year and a half now, ever since I heard his debut album, Resonator.

It’s an album of electric slide guitar and dobro married to strings and rhythm loops that conjure up an atmosphere that’s palpable. I’ve got another opportunity to sing his praises when he plays live on Ghost Trails & Ambient Americana, an Echoes Soundscape for July 4th.

(You can also hear an audio version of this blog, with music)

Back in February, we gathered in an expansive Hollywood Hills home with floor to 18 foot ceiling windows, an ornate fireplace and massive crystal chandelier. Mixed in with construction equipment and sawdust amidst a renovation project was a clutter of amplifiers, guitars, dobro, drums, a string quartet, a French horn player and vibraphone. It’s the home of Tom Rothrock. He’s the one with the dobro. It looks like an acoustic guitar except instead of a soundhole there is an ornate, acoustically driven, metal speaker.

Tom Rothrock: Hear that. That’s the 1930s, this is the technology we’re talking about. (Squeeky tuning pegs) These guitars were made in the big band era for soloists and they had a speaker to make them cut through and they traded the tone of a nice instrument for the projection of a metal speaker…

On an album called Resonator, Tom Rothrock projects his dobro into an Americana Electronica. Rothrock is usually found behind the boards as a producer. He cut James Blunt‘s multimillion selling CD, Back to Bedlam and its worldwide number one hit single, “You’re Beautiful.”  Before that, all he did was produce Elliott Smith and discover Beck and produce his debut, Mellow Gold. It’s the sound of “Loser,” that planted the seed of Tom Rothrock’s CD, Resonator.

That slide guitar on “Loser?” that was Rothrock.

Tom Rothrock: ….that is a guitar that Beck had back then. It’s a Japanese kind of what we, maybe someone of the 60s someone would call a beach guitar or something . . . and that was the first time we had recorded a slide lick, I think that really, so that really sort of started it for me.

Resonator is an album raunchy slide guitar, elegant strings, bristling textures and driving rhythms that could be the soundtrack for Bladerunner in the west. Tom Rothrock continues to produce, releasing an album by Roman Carter on his own Bongload record label and producing the latest James Blunt album, All the Lost Souls. You can hear Rothrock’s Electronica Americana on the album, Resonator. Right now, it’s only available online from iTunes.

Tune in to Echoes on July 4th and you can hear that group gathered in Tom Rothrock’s living room when they play their only live performance ever on Ghost Trails and Ambient Americana, a July Fourth Soundscape from Echoes. This has been an Echo Location, soundings for new music.
 
 And once again, you can also hear an Audio version of this blog, with music.

John Diliberto

July 2008(((echoes)))