Tag Archive for 'Beck'

Lykke Li In The Street: A YouTube Exploration

Published by almostaghost on March 8, 2011 in almostaghost and YouTube. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

So I’ve been enjoying the new Lykke Li album, which led me of course to poke around YouTube one night watching some of her videos. Turns out, she has a number of videos, performing acoustic in the street! How cool! My one minor criticism of the new record is it feels slightly overproduced, and I really like hearing her songs stripped down like this. Obviously, these are all from her first album, instead of her new album since that just came out. But let’s look:

Here’s Lykke and her band singing “Little Bit” on the street in Stockholm. Pure busking! A guy in the window shouts to be quiet or he’ll call the police. A car drives by. The same guy is converted and throws them money at the end.

This one’s incredible. Lykke Li sings, dances, plays the trumpet, and rattles chains while Bon Iver (!) jam on the edge of a fountain. I am not sure why Lykke Li was hanging out with Bon Iver, but they should more. Also apparently Lykke Li plays the trumpet.

Another one outdoors here, it’s “Dance Dance Dance” again, but this time with El Perro Del Mar as her backup. (Kazoo this time, not a trumpet.)

This “I’m Good, I’m Gone” is not out in public, but it is acoustic and apparently outdoors, so close enough.

This one here might be my favorite, and it features Robyn on the chorus! But I can’t embed it, so you have to click over.

And since I don’t like to leave you without music, here’s Beck’s remix of her new single “Get Some”:

Lykke Li – “Get Some (Beck remix)”

- almostaghost

AlmostAGhost’s Best Albums Of 2010 – #17. Record Club – Oar

Published by almostaghost on December 6, 2010 in almostaghost and review. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .
Beck Wilco Jamie Lidell Feist

I could use me some yin for my yang

#17. Record Club – Oar

Beck’s superb and on-going Record Club project is my next choice for this countdown. Beck organizes a handful of fellow musicians and friends, and in one day, they cover an entire album. The tracks are recorded as videos, and then released on Beck.com weekly. He tackled Skip Spence’s Oar for the third project, which is an unbelievably good record. It is a sometimes strange mix of folk and jazz, but with the emotion of one man singing the blues. Skip Spence was an obscure genius, a lesser-known Syd Barrett-type who also went mad. His story is fascinating, but better saved for another post. Beck has been a long-time fan of Spence’s, and has covered him a couple of times prior to this as well.

The first couple of Record Clubs were a fairly random bunch of musicians. This time, the third project, Beck surrounded himself with a band, Wilco, who already have their own chemistry. This brought an added dimension to the proceedings, and the ability to go almost anywhere musically. Further, the other musicians (Feist, Jamie Lidell, Brian LeBarton, James Gadson) are all supremely-talented collaborators, who can easily fit in with whatever is going on. With Beck overseeing everything, this Record Club was set up to succeed.

And succeed they do. They all jump into Oar with unbridled enthusiasm and creativity, relishing the brilliant songs. They handle the project in two sections, basically. Eight of the tracks were done with all the musicians, and the remaining were done as a killer funk band of Beck, Lidell, Gadson and LeBarton (i.e., without Wilco). These two set-ups really complement each other, and make for a very well-rounded album.

The tracks with Wilco and Feist for the most part play the songs straight. Beck sings lead on “Little Hands” and “Diana,” sticking quite close to Spence’s original vocals. Wilco fills out the music in subtle and playful ways, like those lead guitar licks on “Diana.” Feist gets to sing the staggering “Weighted Down,” which was a perfect decision. I don’t think Beck or Jeff Tweedy would have been quite right for the song, neither’s voice has the necessary heft for it. Feist, however, brings it. Similarly, the band starts Spence’s slow and spooky “War In Peace” slow and spooky, but then drop a crazy guitar solo by Nels Cline. They never overdo anything, which is a perfect skill to have when doing an album in a day. For example, on “All Come To Meet Her,” they strip the song all the way down, and the entire group sings it acapella.

Meanwhile, the funk band lets loose with more abandon on the remaining songs. While the Wilco tracks are beautiful and tasty, after Wilco left (or before they got there, not sure), the other guys jammed. Jamie Lidell has a high soul falsetto, James Gadson is a legendary funk drummer on all the classics, Beck and Lebarton are groovy dudes. They must have realised, what else are we going to do here? “Books Of Moses” and “Cripple Creek” are the answer.

As you can see, this Record Club was up for anything-acappella barbershop, ’70s funk, acoustic guitars, rock, Ace Of Base (yep), whatever. That they were doing it from a template of Skip Spence’s songs is pretty inspiring. The project both stands on its own, and brings new light into the sometimes shady corners of Spence’s genius. If you’re not following Beck’s Record Clubs, you’re missing out. (It’s on hiatus at the moment though, I’ll certainly post when it returns.)

You can watch/listen to all of the songs on beck.com by clicking here.

Record Club: Record Club – “Grey / Afro”

Record Club – “Broken Heart”

Skip Spence:

Alexander Skip Spence – “Cripple Creek”

Alexander Skip Spence – “Weighted Down (The Prison Song)”

- almostaghost

definitely this is the wrong place to be

Published by breathmint on March 6, 2010 in mp3. 0 Comments Tags: .

Over the last few years I have accumulated growing numbers of friends, family, colleagues, etc. asking me for music recommendations, turning to me for news/updates on artists, etc. Nearly independently I feel the need to talk about the music and bands I am listening to, loving, and perhaps not digging so much.

I have done this in a few different places. Primarily it’s carried on through personal conversations, instant messaging, text messaging, email, etc. I have also used a few different blogs to write about music. I started with myspace which I quickly found to be lacking and inefficient. Then there was mog, which I actually liked quite a bit. However, they have undergone several site updates which have rendered it into something like “everything else.” I like the idea of having complete control over my content and format, and after finding wordpress a while back I set up “Good News” as part of my Snowden fan site snowdenology. It was mainly intended to serve as a “snowden blog” but I found myself starting to include entries for recent mixes, “best of lists”, etc. Right about this time I was talking to a friend over at Tasty Fever! who suggested having a separate blog just for music writing. She’s going to be our London correspondent here too – more on that later.

So that’s how I got here at cyanidebreathmint.net‘s first post. Would you believe the first post on my new music blog doesn’t even have any music mentioned it? Don’t fret! That’s why today I have for you, 2010 So Far AND [bonus beats] Have One On Me.

In closing, I share with you lyrics from this blog’s name sake.

“There’s nothing to tell you, there’s nothing to sell you.”     (complete lyrics available on whiskeyclone)

We’re going to try anyway. Speaking of which, I changed my mind (about the no music in this post thing). The song is from the amazing album One Foot In The Grave, which you can and very much should buy here.

Beck – Cyanide Breath Mint

namaste,

cyanide breathmint

- breathmint