Weekly Music Roundup: Sci-Fi Westerns and Hip Hop Epics

Week of April 18: This week, a “Space Oddity”from The Flaming Lips, epic storytelling from a long-absent Boston rapper, and Rosanna Arquette’s bad (but musical) trip. 

Not A Music Video, Despite Tom Petty, Dhani Harrison, and “Bob Dylan”

Musician and comedian Jack Dishel (Only Son, Moldy Peaches) has found a way to fuse his two parallel careers: it’s a web series called DRYVRS, and after a first episode that featured a very game and hilariously disturbing Macaulay Culkin, Dishel has now released a second episode. “Bob’s Direction Home” sees Dishel taking what should be a short trip with an Uber driver (Rosanna Arquette) but which turns into a long, strange trip. (Sorry for the Grateful Dead reference but I couldn’t come up with a Dylan one that fit.) Dishel wrote some very Dylan-esque music for this 5-minute feature, and while the real Bob Dylan never appears, the real Tom Petty does; and the real Dhani Harrison provides the punch line. 

Michael Kiwanuka Takes Us Into The Studio

Now this is a music video, even though it also looks to be a short documentary of the making of the song “Love & Hate.”  The English soul singer Michael Kiwanuka received massive global acclaim for his 2012 debut Home Again; now he’s about to return with his sophomore release, Love & Hate, on May 27. The cameras take us inside the studio where he and his sizable band appear to be recording the title track, live. They even cut away to the control room a couple of times, while the song continues to be heard over the speakers. (The album was produced in part by Danger Mouse, whose cinematic leanings can be heard in the middle of this song.)  Kiwanuka’s songs are ambitious and sharply observed; and they make no concession to radio-friendly length. The new album seems to be looking back to the classic rock of the 70s, as much Pink Floyd as Otis Redding. This title track is eight minutes long, and sports a genuine guitar solo. Watch it all unfold, above…

Sci-Fi/Western Guitar From Marisa Anderson

While the prog rock of the 70s tended toward the grand, or the grandiose, most of those bands would occasionally clear out the thick synthesizer texture and let a little classical guitar solo in. Think of Steve Hackett’s introduction to the Genesis song “Blood On The Rooftops” for example. “He Is Without His Guns” is the new song by guitarist Marisa Anderson, and it made me think of some of those moments. Anderson is classically trained but has been playing blues-based guitar in recent years, and apparently wrote her new album, Into The Light, as a kind of soundtrack for an imaginary sci-fi/western film. This piece has a definite classical flavor to it, though the subtle use of slide guitar gives it just a hint of Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western scores. Anderson plays in New York on May 4 at Trans-Pecos in Ridgewood, Queens.  

A Hip Hop Hero’s 7-Year Journey

I became a fan of the Boston rapper Mr. Lif back in 2006, when he released his album Mo’Mega. I especially liked the fact that he wrote about things most rappers didn’t; yes, others rapped about societal ills and inequalities, but Lif also wrote a song about fast food (“The Fries”) that was smart and twisted and catchy. But being a Mr. Lif fan turns out to be an exercise in patience.  It’s been seven years since his last record, and on Friday, finally, he returned with Don’t Look Down – an album that describes the arc of a journey through violence, confusion, despair, and something like redemption, or at least hope. The track “Let Go” (featuring Selina Carrera) displays Lif’s easy-going flow even as he delivers some apocalyptic lines: “Now where you gonna be when panic hits? Can you grow your food and can you fish?” Again, not the kind of rhyme you’ll hear from many rappers.

The Flaming Lips Cover Bowie’s “Space Oddity”

The Flaming Lips were in New York last month to play at the Carnegie Hall tribute concert to the late David Bowie. While here, they also taped a performance of Bowie’s first single, “Space Oddity,” for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which airs tonight, April 19.  Now they’ve released a video of their arrangement of the song. Because it is The Flaming Lips, the imagery here ranges from the striking and evocative to the willfully weird. But the arrangement is surprisingly true to the Bowie original… until the very end.