No one asked me...

Scotland Yard Gospel Choir - I Never Thought I Could Feel This Way For a Boy

Scotland Yard Gospel Choir first caught my ear this past winter when their song “Aspidistra” found it’s way onto my bi-weekly mix CDs. I think I first found them on My Old Kentucky Blog or WOXY or one of the blogs out there that invite up and coming acts into the studio for a live session. Crazy name aside, this band is easy to remember.

SYGC (because the full name is just too long to keep typing) are a chamber pop-meets-folk band with an uncountable number of musicians that contribue their uniqueness to the overall sound. They churn out little pop gems that set stuck in my head anytime they cue up on my iPod. But they aren’t from the British Isle (they’re from Chicago,) they have nothing to do with law enforcement (in fact they used to buy drugs as explained in “Aspidistra,”) and they sound less like a choir and more like a southern hoe-dwon, jam band.

Lead singer and songwriter Elia Einhorn crafts brilliantly inciteful and entertaining songs about drug rendevous and sexual identity and I suspect he has a whole lot more where those came from. These guys are DEFINITELY a band to watch out for.

if you are SYGC (whoa!) or their people and you want the track taken down, just let me know and I’ll be happy to oblige.

Jennifer Hudson - Spotlight

Jennifer Hudson rocks my world. I can’t wait to hearing her debut album this fall, so when I found out she was about to put out her first single I got really amped. “Spotlight” is a mid-tempo, R&B track that finds J-Hud lamenting about being stuck in a relationship with a man that wants to keep her all to himself. The lyrics are nothing special, but it is pretty catchy just the same. The background “hoo-hoo’s” remind me of early, stripped down Whitney Houston. Hudson does a perfectly good job of getting across the emotion of the song, but I really wish she had sung it with a little more attitude. She should really be givin’ it to this man, telling him why she can’t stand to be under his thumb - but instead she’s just sort of complaining about it and letting it go…

I get trying to distance herself from the Effie White persona from Dreamgirls, and that if she came across too diva on this track she’d risk drawing comparisons, but frankly, the comparisons are going to come - and if her people wanted to avoid ‘em, they should have released an uptempo summer jam as the first single and bypassed the whole angry lover route all together.

Even without the passion I expect from Hudson, “Spotlight” is still a favorite track of mine right now because I simply love listening to her sing. Can’t wait to see what else her new album has in store on September 30th.

if you are Jennifer Hudson (whoa!) or her people and you want the track taken down, just let me know and I’ll be happy to oblige.

The Ting Tings - Shut Up and Let Me Go

When I first heard the Ting Ting’s “That’s Not My Name” in late 2007 I knew this pair was going to be special. I can’t get enough of this album. It’s just fun, peppy, upfeat, feel good music. Barely a ballad anywhere to be found and packed with irreverent lyrics and quirky subject matter, We Started Nothing is the perfect album to listen to as summer begins.

I have a feeling all of these tracks will wind up on this blog sooner or later. I picked “Shut Up and Let Me Go” to post first because of it’s prominence on the iTunes commercials. It’s not to say that all iTunes songs deserve to be super-hits, but I think this one does.

I suspect the Ting Tings put on a great live show. I’ll let you know after I see them at Bowery on June 18th. Tickets still available - join me?

1. Great DJ

2. That’s Not My Name

3. Fruit Machine

4. Traffic Light

5. Shut Up And Let Me Go

6. Keep Your Head

7. We Walk

8. Be The One

9. Impacilla Carpisung

10. We Started Nothing

if you are The Ting Tings (whoa!) or their people and you want the track taken down, just let me know and I’ll be happy to oblige.

Rilo Kiley - Silver Lining

Rilo Kiley got a lot of flack in my circle of friends for putting out a CD like Under the Blacklight, but the more I thought about it, the more I think we were wrong. Since the release of More Adventurous I have been in love with Jenny Lewis’s mix of indie rock and alt. country and the dainty, cute, deeply longing tone in her voice. I went back and researched the band’s first two albums, and loved each of them equally. When UTB was released I was excited for new material, but worried that since the album had been recorded as the first in a deal with Warner Brothers, that it was going to be glossy, overproduced major label crap.

…and I was half right.

The album is definitely an overproduced mess - but the heart and soul of what made Rilo Kiley my favorite indie band in the land was still there. Jenny’s ability to write quirky, almost childlike lyrics that deal with real adult situations, Blake’s sexy, brooding guitar, and the band’s ability to write music that makes you want to smile and sometimes cry at the same time is still front and center.

I stand by my belief that if this had been released on Barsuk or Saddle Creek it would sound more “indie” or more “rilo” but ultimately they were trying to get their music out to a larger audience and took their tunes to a major…so what? As long as they don’t make another song like “Moneymaker” they’re still alright by me.

Watch the video (and look for Blake’s cute ass sitting on top of Jenny’s piano…awww)

if you are Rilo Kiley (whoa!) or their people and you want the track taken down, just let me know and I’ll be happy to oblige.

These United States - First Sight

I have no idea how I first found out Washington, DC’s These United States, but I have been slightly obsessed with them ever since. The quick singing, yet easy to understand lyrics of “First Sight” will definitely be on every mix I make all summer long. Jesse Elliott is a talented songwriter, who crafts each song more like a story that you want to listen to over and over to make sure you’re not missing a single inflection along the way. I am clearly not the only one to have fallen for Elliott as he recuited over 30 area musicians to help him record the album from which “First Sight” is the title track, A Picture of the Three of Us at the Gate to the Garden of Eden. I missed their last NYC show, and they’re spending June in the United Kingdom, including playing sets at the Glastonbury Festival (WISH i was going!) but I’ll be waiting right here for them to return.

Check the lyrics for “First Sight” - no chorus (i LIVE FOR a great hook) and yet I’m addicited to every word:

“With her mouth making movements to introduce thoughts, I sat. Deafened by trust on the sofa across, quietly calculating the logistics of lust – of when unspoken things could then happen between us. And once all those were done, and we’d got through to love, we would shoot from the hip, reacting off of the cuff. Splitting up at the fork when the going got rough, with a plan for a point to rejoin on the road further.
Up our windows thin, where the ice carved its flowers, I would hold her, and let the wind beat back those hours. And then swaying in subway trains, clutching her dress, dependent on her balance. The walls were useless. While it’s alright to hold tight, please don’t try to hold on; because it’s a home run we hit, love, as it’s going. And gone. But then the world turned so fast it was astoundingly still.
And it must have been that moment made of midnight on the hill, right when the cataracts-ed alley cat spat back at the moon, thrown out into the nighttime. Nine lifetimes too soon, we had come such a ways and knew just what he meant.
There’s a picture of the three of us at the gate to the Garden of Eden.
You can get home, but you can’t get in; locks are like longing, an ever-changing thing. And keys are just clouds made of metal and spark. We knew exactly who we were, and yet couldn’t say quite who we still are. I saw it all happening in one grand epic sweep. From that first sight, we wouldn’t get to sleep for a week. Generations would follow the course that we’d charted.
From the sofa across, I couldn’t wait to get started.” First Sight

if you are These United States (whoa!) or their people and you want the track taken down, just let me know and I’ll be happy to oblige.