Music Blog

Another batch of random audio for your weekend ahead: Model turned singer channels Nancy Sinatra! Alejandro Escovedo hits the street! Explode Into Colors drink the poison kool-aid! Take these guilt-free-like to the rainy, rainy days ahead...

1- From the outset, Karen Elson has several strikes against her. Heretofore, she's been a model who married a rockstar-- a talented one in Jack White, but still. And it's White's touch all over her debut record, The Ghost Who Walks, seemingly setting up his lady with a musical role to fill-- in this case the Nancy Sinatra record of her dreams. The backstory's a bit cliche, in other words. Pretentious quibbles aside, however, that all goes away pretty quickly when one hears the actual record. It's not ground-breaking by any means, but ably fills a niche I can only hope never goes out of style...
► Karen Elson- "The Ghost Who Walks"

2- Is it just me, or has Alejandro Escovedo been hanging with Gil-Scott Heron? He seems to channel him on this song at least, resorting to an almost spoken word verse to tell a gritty tale. Street Songs of Love is out June 29th.
► Alejandro Escovedo- "Street Song"

3- Seattle's Moondoggies return next month with a new EP on Hardly Art entitled You'll Find No Answers Here. Nice and easy does it on this track, RIYL The Band, for one.
► The Moondoggies- "Fly Mama Fly"

4- The ghost of 1983 haunts this new song from Anni Rossi, who adds elements of synth and disaffected vocals to temper a sound that has entertained in the past, but also threatened to drown in its own cutesy quirk. This is better.
► Anni Rossi- "Crushing Limbs"

5- Well this is disappointing. Explode Into Colors have sort of unofficially announced that their June 5th performance at Rotture (part of The Portland Mercury's 10th anniversary celebration) will be their last, thus bringing an end to the band that sounds so much more like the Jonestown massacre than the Brian Jonestown Massacre ever have. The trio departs without a full-length release to their credit, yet somehow managed to win last year's Best New Band poll and tour the country earlier this year with Quasi. Shouldn't somebody stop this?!? Can't anything be done?!? So long, EIC, sorry we never got to have you in for a session.
► Explode Into Colors- "Paper (Hot Sax Version)"

 

To the weekend, then!

Tagged: mp3