One from the Heart

Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle singing the bluesy "This One's from the Heart" over an evocative clip from Francis Ford Coppola's under-appreciated movie One from the Heart featuring Frederick Forest. I really like the movie and I LOVE the soundtrack.

The 2007 Twenty

Neverending Rainbow's 3rd annual rundown of our 20 favorite reasons to have owned a CD player. These are the best CDs of 2007...or more to the point, given the daunting number of recordings released each year...the best CDs that we heard over the course of the year. Your mileage may (and doubtlessly will) vary. In any case, the picks (in alphabetical order by album title):

Back to Black – Amy Winehouse
(At once retro and utterly modern, as fine a soul record as you could ever hope for)

Children Running Through – Patti Griffin
(Passionate, evocative, utterly compelling, an amazing collection of songs and performances)

Finding Forever – Common
(Sly and sassy, romantic and randy, acerbic and hopeful, a seamless album featuring stellar guest turns by Lily Allen and Kanye West and held together by Common’s smooth, peerless flow)

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga – Spoon
(Urbane pop-rock…delightfully melodic with tight playing and solid vocals…that soars and shimmers from beginning to end)

High Steppin’ – The Pimps of Joytime
(A really fine…really funky, really soulful, really rockin’, really jammin’, enormously entertaining…CD.

In Rainbows – Radiohead
(Challenging and accessible in the same moment, an utterly remarkable rock and roll record)

Live in Dublin – Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band
(A grand, accomplished, enormously entertaining 2-disc live set combining traditional songs with reworked Springsteen tunes)

Magic – Bruce Springsteen
(The Boss and the E Street Band on a set of rock solid, earnest, cranky, and soaring rock and roll ruminations)

Neon Bible – Arcade Fire
(Ominously haunting and undeniably rousing at the same time, the full bodied baroque rock and roll of this CD effortlessly gets under your skin and into your head and stays in both places and man is that a cool thing)

100 Days, 100 Nights – Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
(As gritty and old school funky as it wants to be, this CD grooves, growls, and bites with soulful fury as the righteous, gutbucket beauty of Ms. Jones’ voice is ably supported by the sterling musicianship of the Kings)

Raising Sand – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

(What seemed a strange match on paper became a magical, compelling, and heartfelt collaboration when they came together in song trading stunning leads and sharing remarkable harmonies)

River: The Joni Letters – Herbie Hancock
(A graceful and tasty tribute to Joni Mitchell featuring an excellent band and some nice guest vocal turns)

Teknochek Collision – Slavic Soul Party!
(This 9-member ensemble claims to be the “#1 brass band for Balkan-soul-gypsy-funk” and the music…joyous, worldly, full-bodied and, yes, brassy, soulful, and funky…proves the point with potent, irresistible charm)

The Hottest State – Movie Soundtrack
(Judging by critical response, the movie wasn’t so hot but the soundtrack…with songs by Jesse Harris and sublime performances by, among others, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Cat Power, Feist, and Norah Jones…is a cool, evocative gem)

The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster – Ruthie Foster
(An evocative, rocking, soulful CD that more than lives up to its grandiose title)

The Reminder – Feist
(A smart, sparkling collection of slightly offbeat pop tunes)

The Spiritual Kind – Terri Hendrix
(Witty, whimsical, insightful, heartfelt, delightful…a grand country record with all of the soul and twang and none of the glossy pop that too often passes for country music these days)

Under the Blacklight – Rilo Kiley
(Jenny Lewis and the guys embrace their funky edge to very fine effect)

Version – Mark Ronson
(The celebrated DJ and producer serves up a groovy party record filled with covers of British hits sung with gusto by, among others, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, and Robbie Williams)

We’ll Never Turn Back – Mavis Staples

(Righteously soulful and soulfully righteous, a collection of compelling standards delivered by one of the most incomparable voices in pop, soul, and spiritual music)

I'm Not There

Bob Dylan is such a distinctive singer and songwriter that it can be problematical trying to cover his songs. Of course, this doesn’t stop people from trying (the songs are too magnetic and powerful for that)…I must have at least a dozen CDs of Dylan covers (with Dylan songs sprinkled liberally amongst many, many other discs) in my personal collection. More than perhaps with any other singer-songwriter, those attempting to cover Dylan need to dig in and find their own way of coming at the songs or else they probably shouldn’t bother.

This collection…the soundtrack to Todd Haynes’ upcoming movie where 5 different actors (including Cate Blanchett) play Dylan…is a slightly mixed bag but there are more than enough highlights to make it a very worthwhile listening experience. The set gets off to a worrisome start with the epic “All Along the Watchtower”…the music (by the Million Dollar Bashers, a group that backs several performers over the course of the 2-disc set) is biting and fierce but Eddie Vedder’s vocal is strangely distant, as if he was afraid to really try to connect to the words. But then things pick up with Sonic Youth’s muscular take on the title track and then My Morning Jacket's Jim James (backed by Calexico, who also back up several artists on the set) takes a fine turn on “Goin’ to Acapulco”. The great Richie Havens inhabits “Tombstone Blues” with vigor.

Stephen Malkmus (backed the Million Dollar Bashers) threatens to get close to getting caught up in doing a parody of Dylan’s idiosyncratic phrasing on “Ballad of a Thin Man” but in the end he manages to avoid that trap for the most part. He also covers “Can’t Leave Her Behind” in a clipped, singsong way that is plaintive enough to suffice. Malkmus also sings “Maggie’s Farm” but his wan vocals are not up to the level of the killer rock-steady backing that the Million Dollar Bashers give him.

The amazing Cat Power kills on a throbbing, horn-driven romp through “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” while John Doe is equally impressive on the soulful gospel of “Pressing On” (Doe later also sings “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” with soulful conviction) and Yo La Tengo offers up a delicate, lilting version of “Fourth Time Around” (they kick it up into higher gear later on a rollicking version of “I Wanna Be Your Lover”.)

Calexico appears several times: backing up Iron & Wine on an atmospheric version of “Dark Eyes”, offering up sweet Latin flavored support (including some sublime horn and string work) to Roger McGuinn’s lovely “One More Cup of Coffee”, providing supple support to Willie Nelson’s potent cover of “Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)” (which features a powerful Spanish verse sung by Salvador Duran), and effectively underscoring Charlotte Gainsbourg’s ethereal, whispery reading of “Just Like a Woman”.

The Million Dollar Bashers (featuring Tom Verlaine on guitars, John Medeski on keyboards, Wilco's Nels Cline on guitar, and Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley on drums) also a couple of other appearances: providing stellar support on Karen O’s feisty cover of “Highway 61 Revisited” and presenting an appropriately dense and spooky version of “Cold Irons Bound (with Verlaine on vocals).

Mason Jennings’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” (accompanied only by his acoustic guitar) is well-intentioned but it lacks bite and therefore comes off a pale imitation of the brutally acerbic original (he fares a little bit better later on “The Times They Are A-Changin’”.) Los Lobos’ gently-driving take on “Billy 1”, on the other hand, is a full-bodied gem. Jeff Tweedy, accompanied by drums, bass, and fiddle, takes on Dylan’s phrasing to good effect on “Simple Twist of Fate” while Mark Lanegan is deliciously foreboding on the ominous “Man in the Long Black Coat”.

Mira Billotte is a wonder of vocal economy on her quietly shimmering “As I Went Out One Morning” and Sufjan Stevens turns Dylan’s gospel dirge “Ring Them Bells” into an almost baroque fantasia (complete with a soaring horn section) that works wondrously when you imagine that it shouldn’t at all. Jack Jackson is his soothingly laconic self on “Mama, You’ve Been on my Mind/A Fraction of Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie” which features some of the best acoustic guitar playing on the CD.

Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (of the Swell Season) play a fine acoustic (guitar, harmonica, banjo, bass) version of “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” while The Hold Steady rock out on a potent take of “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott offers up a ragged but heartfelt “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”. The Black Keys rock a thick, bluesy “Wicked Messenger” while Marcus Carl Franklin (the youngest of the actors playing Dylan in the film) is surprisingly assured on “When the Ship Comes In” and Antony and the Johnsons are subdued (to haunting effect) on “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”.

Dylan and The Band tie up the CD with “I’m Not There”, recorded during the fabled Basement Tapes sessions.

Dylan afficianad0s may argue the merits of these covers but there is, as I said before, much to be enjoyed on this soundtrack.

The Hottest State

Jesse Harris is a talented songwriter and musician whose greatest claim to fame is writing and playing on Norah Jones’ breakthrough hit, “Don’t Know Why”. Called to provide songs for Ethan Hawke’s new movie, The Hottest State, Harris put out to call to some of his friends to provide vocals for those songs (drawn from the 50 or so tunes offered to Hawke). Among those who answered the call are Jones, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Cat Power, Bright Eyes, and Feist.

Harris’ songs here are, for the most part, soothingly languid, mid-tempo affairs but the singers inhabit them with their own unique voices and energies.

Harris steps into the spotlight for three vocals: the delicate “It Will Stay with Us” (backed only by his own guitar work), the rootsy countrypolitan groove of “One Day the Dam Will Break”, and the pure pop/jazz swing of the hopeful “Dear Dorothy”. Harris doesn’t have the greatest voice but his unabashed earnestness carries the day on all three cuts.

Harris also plays guitar on 2 of the 3 instrumental tracks: the lilting “Morning in a Strange City” (which includes some nice trumpet, accordion, and marimba playing) and the gentle dual guitar closer “There Are No Second Chances”, a duet with Tony Scherr (who also sings “You, the Queen”, a spare ballad that is the only track on the disc that doesn’t quite click.) The 3^rd instrumental track is a lovely solo piano version of “Never See You” by Brad Mehldau.

In the movie, Sarah (played in the movie by Catalina Sandino Moreno), the female lead, is a singer and songwriter and on the soundtrack Rocha, a newcomer from Argentina, is her voice and she sings lead on 3 of the 18 tracks including two versions, one in Spanish (for which Rocha provided the lyrical translation) and one in English, of the bittersweet recurring theme “Never See You” and the gently-swinging “No More”. Rocha’s voice is sweetly vulnerable and, at the same time, plaintively engaging.

Willie Nelson, old pro that he is, slips comfortably into the amiable lilt of “Always Seem to Get Things Wrong” with tasty backing of his own signature guitar picking and the sweet piano work of Norah Jones (who also takes a typically fine lead vocal turn on the wry “World of Trouble” as well playing piano and singing backing vocals on M. Ward’s elegiac take on “Crooked Lines”.)

The ever-remarkable Emmylou Harris brings grace and understated intensity to the haunting ballad “The Speed of Sound” (accented with lovely, ethereal, harmonica playing by Mickey Raphael, a mainstay of Willie’s band, and equally lovely backing vocals.) Cat Power, backed only by Jesse Harris playing guitar and banjo, delivers a sweet and soulful vocal on “It’s All Right to Fail” and Feist is equally fine on the simply grand “Somewhere Down the Road” (which features horns, organ, and guitars blended to sublime effect.)

Bright Eyes offers up the atmospheric rocker “Big Old House” (complete with thick swirls of keyboards and horns) while the Black Keys plays a more straight ahead bluesy rocker with “If You Ever Slip”.

I have no idea how these songs fit into the movie (director and star Hawke says they fit perfectly) but as a CD they make up a delightfully coherent and entertaining collection indeed.

Black Snake Moan Soundtrack

Is there nothing that Samuel L. Jackson can’t do? (Well okay, he couldn’t get tons of folks to buy tickets to see Snakes on a Plane but we’ll cut the brother some slack on that one…there was no way the finished movie was going to live up to the internet hype…)

Here on the soundtrack to Black Snake Moan (I haven’t seen the movie myself…looks like a “wait for Netflix” picture for me) our man Sam holds his own as blues singer (I’m not saying he should quit his day job…dude’s no Muddy Waters or anything…but he acquits himself better than some other actors who decided they needed to be singers…and yes I’m looking at you Bruce Willis, Eddie Murphy, Don Johnson, Russell Crowe, Steven Seagal, and too many others to go into here…)

Jackson’s take on the ominous title song…complete with a compelling spoken word entry…is stark and haunting while the spare “Just Like a Bird without a Feather” is heartfelt and fine. He is in excellent form on the rollicking “Alice Mae” and, especially, on the profane (yep he get to drop the MF bomb a couple of times), darkly comic talking blues of “Stack-O-Lee”.

This soundtrack is a rough and tumble, down and dirty journey through the delta blues in many of its myriad incarnations: thick swampy rock and roll (The Black Keys’ muscular “When the Lights Go Out”, the slow lope of John Doe’s “The Losing Kind”), down home tales of woe and redemption told with rough hewn vocal and simple but effective chord progressions (Jessie Mae Hemphill’s quietly-wrenching “Standing in my Doorway Crying”, Bobby Rush’s randy tribute to his woman and her cooking “Chicken Heads”), and country folk blues (Precious Bryant’s wistful “Morning Train”).

Not everything works…Outrageous Cherry’s sonic attack on “Lord Have Mercy on Me” is powerful but the vocals don’t have the soulful heft of the blues and so the tune ends up sounding tepid despite the big tangle of aggressive electric guitars.

Scott B. Bomar’s short instrumental interludes interspersed throughout the disc all ring with authentic blues flavor as, of course, do the two brief spoken word tributes to the blues by Son House.

The CD ends with bluesmen old and young: the late, great R.L. Burnside bringing soulful gravitas to “Old Black Mattie” and the North Mississippi Allstars bringing the proceedings to a rocking, engaging conclusion with “Mean Ol’ Wind Died Down”.

Black Snake Moan probably won’t bring delta blues into the musical mainstream but it is a very tasty sampler just the same.

* * * * *

More MKW Blogstuff: Bread and Roses

Love

Am I a big fan of the Beatles? You betcha! Am I a fan of so-called “mash-ups”? Not so much. Those two things together let me to believe that I might not like Love…Beatle classics re-worked, remixed, and re-imagined by producer George Martin (arguably the best candidate for the title of the “fifth Beatle”) and his son Giles Martin for the Vegas Cirque de Soleil Beatles show of the same name…but I was wrong.

Once the gorgeous a cappella vocals (aided and abetted with the singing birds from “Across the Universe”) of “Because” led into snippets of “A Hard’s Day Night” and “The End” just before the always-rocking “Get Back”, I knew that this disc…which took over two years to complete…was indeed a labor of love and not the abomination that it could have become in lesser hands.

The sound on this disc is utterly glorious (“Revolution” and “Back in the USSR”, for example, both explode out of the speakers with fierce fire and bite.) The only new music here comes from strings (beautifully arranged but a tad ovewhelming) added to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”…everything else is taken from the original recordings (which George Martin, as the original producer, knew quite intimately, of course.)

The vocals and backing tracks are sometimes chopped up and put back together in intriguing, entertaining ways (the rhythm track of “Drive My Car”, for example, becomes the seamless foundation for a rocking medley featuring that song along with “The Word” and “What You’re Doing”…while “Sun King” is run backwards for the oddly compelling “Gnik Nus”.)

The medley of “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”, “I Want You (She’s So Heavy”), and “Helter Skelter” is dense and psychedelic while the guitar from “Blackbird” flows sweetly into and through “Yesterday”.

Not everything works. There’s a hodge-podge of snippets in “Strawberry Fields Forever” (including the trumpet from “Penny Lane”) and it is, admittedly, a bit of a misfire. Sometimes I got the feeling that some of the tracks would make more sense if I had seen the Vegas show (this is basically a soundtrack album after all) but those feeling were fleeting (probably because the music is so familiar and cherished already.)

Some purists are already crying “heresy!” (some of the comments about this disc on Amazon, for example, are downright vitriolic and totally unforgiving) and that’s their right, of course, but I think it’s a bit of an overreaction. Love is an interesting, and often successful, experiment…it doesn’t supplant or blaspheme the original classics (which are still out there to be enjoyed in all of their undeniable original glory)…it’s just a bit of heartfelt fun that is at once wonderfully familiar and, at the same time, a fine new experience with the Fab Four.

Happy Feet: Music from the Motion Picture

Happy Feet is another animated movie about delightful animals having charming adventures (we’ve had a few of those this year, haven’t we?…2006 must going for the record) that I will not be seeing until it hits DVD (nothing against animated movies about delightful animals having charming adventures…I’m just not willing to pony up 9-10 bucks for the experience.) This one seems to be about singing/dancing penguins (see? I told you…delightful…charming…it’s all there.)

This soundtrack is, like so many others, a compilation of pop songs that may or may not fit together without the context of the movie. On the CD, they don’t flow all that seamlessly but, that said, the individual tracks are a lot of fun.

The disc opens with some dialogue from the film which flows directly into the beat of a fun, inspirational, snappy new pop song, “The Song of the Heart”, by Prince. The song features a smooth beat, tasty horns, and sweet female background vocals (and a vocal break by, I can only assume, one of the animated penguins from the movie.) It’s a charmer all the way around.

17-year-old Gia Farrell makes her recording debut with the spunky “Hit Me Up” (which is featured in the commercials for the movie.)

The rest of the new recordings here are covers. Pink takes a funky stroll with “Tell Me Something Good”, a Stevie Wonder song originally recorded by Chaka Khan and Rufus. Another Stevie Wonder song, “I Wish”, is given the full-on gospel treatment by Fantasia, Patti LaBelle, Yolanda Adams, and a gospel choir (the choir could have pushed a bit further down in the mix for my tastes but the ladies cut loose and the thing still works anyway.)

Some of the actors lending their voices to the movie take turns at the mike with varying degrees of success. Brittany Murphy is more than up to the task of covering Queen’s gospel-flavored classic “Somebody to Love” (she’s no Freddie Mercury on the tune but she has a strong, soulful voice) and later she has fun with “Boogie Wonderland” (originally recorded by Earth, Wind, and Fire with The Emotions.) Robin Williams cheerfully mugs his way through Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” (sung in Spanish.)

Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, on the other hand, get a bit lost in a strange mash-up of Prince’s “Kiss” and Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel” (they sound okay together but the arrangement and vocals, despite a promising beginning by a breathy Kidman on “Kiss”, end up seeming more suited to a Broadway show than in the same company with the sprightly pop tunes that dominated this CD.)

Another strange mash-up, Jason Mraz covering Steve Miller’s “The Joker” mixed together with Chrissie Hynde’s take on Bread’s “Everything I Own” (???), actually works against all odds. It’s a loping, fun pop song.

(Again, I’m presuming these mash-ups will make more sense when seen in the context of the film.)

The disc also features the Beach Boys’ chestnut “Do it Again” and the Brand New Heavies’ propulsive “Jump n’ Move”.

K.D. Lang closes the disc (well, before an instrumental piece from the soundtrack) with a version of the Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers/The End”, which is pretty enough (of course…it’s K.D. Lang) but kind of a somber way of ending the record (like the Kidman/Jackman offering, it seems a poor fit with the rest of the performances here…but, yet again, I’m presuming it makes more sense in the context of the movie.)

The Happy Feet soundtrack will indeed make you want to get up and dance…and there’s nothing wrong with that in my book.

One from the Heart

There's sometimes wonderful good that comes from the most self-indulgent of excesses...it's a paradox that both pleases and perplexes us.

The excess in question here is Francis Ford Coppola's visionary but unnecessarily expensive love story, One from the Heart, a film from the early 80's that I (and woefully few others) loved when it first came out. It's at once intimate and a gloriously over-the-top mess (said affectionately by yours truly, said more derisively by more than a few critics.) This film...which I've recently fallen in love with again thanks to a grand DVD release...is full of fire and portent and shameless melodrama and enough neon to blind the populace of a small city. It's dazzling.

The good alluded to above is the film's absolutely amazing soundtrack...a song cycle that both compliments and transcends the movie for which it was created.

One of the key conceits of One from the Heart is that is a musical in which the actors onscreen (Teri Garr and Frederic Forrest as the star-crossed lovers) don't sing. Instead they act out the songs in understated ways while the voices of Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle fill the air...and the spaces.

...I can't tell if that's a siren or a saxophone...

The amazing songs...all written by Waits....give heft to the film's simple plotline of love lost and found anew (as tale as old as love itself, of course.) The singers become the thoughts of the troubled lovers made aurally tangible. In the movie the effect is showy (and occasionally distracting) but often devastatingly effective just the same.

On paper the pairing of Waits' gruff, gravelly growl with Gayle's pristine, measured lilt would seem too incongorous a match to work. But, beyond all common sense, it does indeed work. Waits' voice is modulated with a tenderness that a casual acquaintance of his music might not believe him capable of. And just as marvelously, Waits manages to elicit from the frustratingly-mannered Gayle something no one really had before...a truly soulful, subtle and substantive, series of performances that easily outshone almost the entirety of the rest of her often pretty but mostly vacuous (the sweet uptown stroll of "Don't it Make My Brown Eyes Blues" being a shimmering exception that proves the rule) recorded output.

As with most movie music, something is lost when listening to the music without viewing the images it was composed to accompany...but that loss is not all that great here with this music as the songs flow like bluesy operetta, telling the story in vivid enough strokes to stand on their own. Heartbreak-weary pianos and plaintive (are there really any other kind?) saxophones glide in and about the vocalists...the blues in waltz time (especially for dancers who don't seem to know that they do indeed know how to dance...and for lovers who almost forget that they're truly in love with each other.)

The music soothes and pleads as love is won...love grows cool and complacent...love leaves...love comes back chastened and renewed...

take me home, you silly boy, because I'm still in love with you...

A story as old as time, bittersweet fodder for filmmakers and, most especially, for songwriters and poets and torch singers who always have and always will celebrate the imperfect majesty of love. Oh baby, this one's from the heart...