Weekly Music Round Up: Vampires, Kings, and Lonely Wandering
Weekly Roundup | Aug 11, 2015
Rescue your Tuesdays with our weekly roundup of music news, videos and songs that just might help you get through the rest of the week. This week, the Comeback Kids: Joanna Newsom, Carole King, and Alice Cooper. And some irresistible sing-along songs.
Together Again: Joanna Newsom and Paul Thomas Anderson
The big news this week in indie music circles was yesterday’s surprise release of a video with a new Joanna Newsom song, “Sapokanikan,” which will be on her next album, Divers, due on October 23. It’s been five years since the last album by the reigning queen of allusive, baroque storytelling and elusive, beautiful songwriting. In the meantime she was the narrator of Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Inherent Vice, and his video here is simplicity itself: Newsom wandering the streets of New York, especially lower Manhattan, while singing the song. This seems appropriate, since Sapokanikan was the name of the Lenape Indian village that occupied part of lower Manhattan before the arrival of the Dutch, but what are we to make of the song’s references to an old “Dutch Master,” football, and a hunter a hundred years in the future? Typically, Newsom’s songs reveal their secrets slowly, if ever. Meanwhile, there’s none of Newsom’s trademark harp – she plays piano and celesta on the song, and guitarist Ryan Francesconi contributes a gradually blooming arrangement of trombones and what sound like tenor and bass recorders.
Another Film Tribute in Song
Apple Music - Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear
Well, it didn’t take Apple Music long to turn up a winner. One of only three artists whose videos were used to launch Apple Music, Madison Ward And The Mama Bear consists of a guy and his mom singing and playing guitars. Wait! Wait – don’t skip to the next song yet… give “Silent Movies” a chance and you just might find yourself bopping and singing along. The song is pretty short, but the video is a somewhat longer tribute to movies (silent and otherwise) that comes complete with credits and uses some 1950's film music by Ronald Hanmer (incorrectly spelled Hammer in the credits) to create a fun B-movie atmosphere, both at the beginning and the end. Watch for a shadow-cameo appearance by the title character of the 1922 vampire classic Nosferatu about 2:20 in.
More Vampires, Courtesy of Johnny Depp and Alice Cooper
In 1972, a motley crew of musicians would get together at an LA club to drink and – well, mostly just to drink. They called themselves The Hollywood Vampires, and their rotating cast included John Lennon, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon, and at the center of it all, Alice Cooper. Now, Alice Cooper has teamed up with actor/musician Johnny Depp to create a new, sober version of the Vampires. No, Lennon, Morrison and Moon have not joined the legions of the undead, but the current vampires got an impressive list of friends to play songs by the old gang. Joe Perry, Dave Grohl, Paul McCartney and more play old faves; and there are two new songs, written by Cooper, Depp, and their band, with one sporting an intro by the late actor Christopher Lee. The album is due on September 11 but you can preview three tracks here.
The Return of the King
In the late '60s, Carole King’s career as a songwriter hit a bump: her marriage to co-writer Gerry Goffin was falling apart and she removed herself and her kids to Laurel Canyon, in California. There, in semi-retirement, she found herself playing in a psych-folk-rock band called The City, with guitarist Danny Kortchmar (who would write and play with Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt and many others) and bassist Charles Larkey (whom she would later marry). In 1969, they cut a record, Now That Everything’s Been Said, and waited for it to top the charts. But King’s stage fright in those pre-Tapestry days prevented the band from playing live, and distribution woes sealed the deal: the album soon went out of print. Over four and a half decades later, it is finally being reissued. Release date is October 2, but you can hear Carole King’s distinctive vocals right now in this tune called “Victim of Circumstance.”
Meanwhile, In Another Part of LA…
Friday saw the debut release of a new band from Los Angeles that sounds like it could’ve been made down the road from Carole King’s The City. The record is called Heavenly Fire, by The Eagle Rock Gospel Singers. If the Mamas and Papas had tried their hands, or voices, at gospel music instead of sunny California pop, they might have sounded like this. The group somehow makes sanctified sounds over a stomping, pounding foundation of rock. “Little Light” is the leadoff track.
And As Long As You’re Up And Dancing…
From Miami via Arkansas, Steven A. Clark grew up loving hip-hop for its ability (at its best) to tell unvarnished, unflinching stories. But he loved the sound of R&B. On his debut album, The Lonely Roller, you can hear echoes of everything from early '80s Peter Gabriel to contemporary R&B artists like The Weeknd; but the album is not a pastiche of other people’s sounds. Sinewy songwriting and a keen ear for musical colors make it a distinctly personal effort, and Clark’s new single, “Can’t Have,” is a great example: a bright, glorious sound propelled by flowing synths, but with a darkness in its relentlessly beating heart. The full album is due on September 18.
Live on Soundcheck.org this week:
2:00pm 8/11: Pure Bathing Culture
John Schaefer
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