She went from having never sung a note
in her life to releasing three albums - and being compared to
June Carter Cash. Meet Carrie Rodriguez.
It could have been so easy for sultry Mexican-American songstress
Carrie Rodriguez to play up the June Carter Cash comparisons on
her upcoming solo debut,
Seven Angels on a Bicycle (Back
Porch Records), due in August. With the success surrounding Walk
the Line, the biopic about the rise and fall of Johnny Cash,
audiences would have been already tuned into that somewhat lost
1950s country, 4-H-fair twang - the dominating sound on Rodriguez's
first three duet albums with country-folk legend Chip Taylor.
Instead, on
Seven Angels on a Bicycle, the 27-year-old
Berklee College of Music grad has gone with less bluegrass and more
sass.
Despite having grown up in a family steeped in music - she's the
daughter of well-known
Austin songwriter David Rodriguez and the
great-niece of even more famous Mexican bolero balladeer Eva Garza
- Rodriguez had never thought about singing; she played violin
instead, from the age of five. In fact, she had never even sung a
note outside of the shower when Taylor, with whom she was touring
as a fiddler, forced her to the stage in
Sweden in 2001.
"I honestly never thought there was any reason I should sing in
public," says the Texas-born
New York transplant. "My voice always
sounded kind of harsh to me ... still does. Every time a song was
coming up in the show that I had to sing on, I would get terribly
nervous - to the extent that my knees were literally shaking!"
Still, Rodriguez soldiered on, and the fruits of her partnership
with Taylor produced three duet albums, including 2005's critical
favorite,
Red Dog Tracks. "Singing in a recording studio or
onstage when you don't consider yourself to be a singer is a little
nerve-racking," she says. "When we made the first record,
Let's
Leave This Town, I remember thinking, 'People are going to hear
this or,
God forbid, buy this and know that I'm not a
singer.' "
On Angels, Rodriguez puts that anxiety to rest. She embraces the
center of attention, producing the album with Taylor and writing
half the tracks with him as well. While she hasn't abandoned
country-folk altogether - there's plenty of steel guitar and banjo
here - standout crossover tracks like the sexy "Got Your Name on
It" are sure to inspire more panting than pickin'.
MODERN-DAY MOUNTAIN MAN
His music is described as folk, Appalachian, bluegrass, and
sometimes even "reggae grass" and "jam grass." But whatever you
want to call it, it works. Because it's Michael Holland.
By James Mayfield
Though he's been making music since he was eight years old, Michael
Holland hasn't exactly reached household-name status … yet. But
it's not for lack of talent or work ethic on his part. The
37-year-old North Carolina-based singer-songwriter possesses both
qualities in spades.
From 1992 to 2003, Holland fronted Jennyanykind, an
alternative-rock-based quartet that saw the release of eight
albums. After the band's breakup, Holland pursued a solo career and
his own take on what would be folk music to some, Appalachian to
others - a melting pot of bluegrass and acoustic guitar-based tunes
that came together in 2004 with his debut
Bootlegger's
Dreams and gained momentum on last year's follow-up
Tomorrows American Treasures.
The latter features a combination of six-string strums, banjo
picks, fiddle, organ, upright bass, and a mandolin, courtesy of the
Chapel Hill outfit known as Big Fat Gap Bluegrass, which assists
Holland in bringing into the modern age what Flatt and Scruggs,
Charlie Poole, and the Carter Family brought down from the
mountain.
Holland cites
Miles Davis and his album
In a Silent Way as a
major influence on his recent material. "[
In a Silent Way]
was a very cinematic record," he says. "They just played, and
[Davis] would take passages that he liked and edit them together.
We would play for 10 minutes and roll through all these chord
changes, and then I would go back and just pick one little
10-second loop that I thought really summed up the idea or sounded
good."
After self-producing both of his solo records, Holland is working
with an outside producer for his next album, something he hasn't
done since Jennyanykind's 1996 Elektra release
Revelater. "I
want to move forward with the kind of feel that we went with on
Tomorrows American Treasures - which, basically, was no
feel. It happened very improvisationally. But I want to hand over
the engineering reins to somebody else," he explains.
With 12 tracks already complete (working titles include "I Remember
Leslie Riddle" and "Train Called Locomotive Dreams"), Holland is
well on his way to completing his third record in as many years.
Next month he can be found at the GrassRoots Festival of Music and
Dance in Trumansburg, New York (July 20 to 23).
The Favela Blues
He might sing in Portuguese, but the raw emotion and sultry rhythms
of Seu Jorge's samba-style pop transcends any cultural divide.
Along with the caipirinha and the film
City of God (in which
he played Knockout Ned), singer-actor Seu Jorge is the latest
Brazilian export to permeate American culture by capturing the
pulse of an entire nation into an easily digestible medium - in
this case, a 10-song CD.
Cru (Wrasse Records), Jorge's
American debut, is a cultural earful, steeped in elements of
traditional samba and laid out as casually as a balmy Brazilian
breeze.
Born into a poor community in
Rio de Janeiro, albeit one not as
poverty-stricken as the slums (known as favelas) portrayed in
City of God, the 35-year-old Jorge has escaped the social
exile imposed by upper-class Brazilians to become one himself. A
self-taught guitarist and actor, Jorge shot to stardom in Brazil
when his debut solo album,
Samba Esporte Fino (produced by
fellow Brazilian and Beastie Boys producer Mario Caldato), became
the country's album of the year in 1999. And then Jorge met
Oscar-nominated director Fernando Meirelles.
Unlike most of the actors in Meirelles's worldwide smash
City of
God, Jorge had performed in several plays when he was cast as
Knockout Ned in the brutally violent, wide-eyed, very real
depiction of life in one of Rio's largest favelas. That role led to
a gig in The
Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. In addition to
acting in the film, Jorge recorded a handful of Portuguese versions
of
David Bowie classics for its soundtrack.
Jorge's lyrics, like those of his musical forefathers Milton
Nascimento and Gilberto Gil, can run left of center into a
political whirlwind colored by the sultry rhythms of samba-style
pop, but they do so without campaign hyperbole; the music does most
of the talking. Though Jorge sings mostly in Portuguese,
Cru
does include an English cover of "Don't" (made famous by Elvis
Presley).
Whether he's singing about his native country's socioeconomic
injustices ("Eu Sou Favela") or the lighter subject of love ("Tive
Razão"), Jorge makes music a stripped-down affair that transcends
language, a raw journey (cru, in fact, means "raw" in Portuguese)
into one of the sexiest cultures on the planet, even if the subject
matter is anything but. "I call my music the favela blues, where I
put together all the emotions of the blues with the reality of life
inside a favela," says Jorge.
If the album's opening
tropicalia twang - courtesy of the
ukulele-like Portuguese
cavaquinho - doesn't transport you
south faster than you can down another caipirinha, something is
terribly wrong.
From Russia, With Love
Loopy. Odd. Playful. It must be
Regina Spektor.
By Suzanne
Ely
Moscow-born Regina Spektor has a loopy way with the English
language. On the song "On the Radio," from her new album
Begin
to Hope, Spektor sings: "It feels a little worse/Than when we
drove our hearse/Right through that screaming crowd/While laughing
up a storm/Until we were just bone/Until it got so warm that none
of us could sleep/And all the Styrofoam began to melt away/We tried
to find some worms … "
You get the idea. The jaunty song goes on from this peculiar
beginning to reference a DJ who has fallen asleep and,
inexplicably, the Guns N' Roses song "November Rain."
Spektor has most definitely mastered the art of penning odd lyrical
couplets, a skill first made evident on her 2004 album,
Soviet
Kitsch. She was summarily lumped in with the Fiona Apples and
Cat Powerses of the world, which is no slag, but beyond a ferocious
creative independence and a feminist sexuality, the comparisons
fizzle out.
Spektor grew up in Russia, and she brings a strong international
and multigenerational aesthetic to her songs. She was classically
trained on the piano and studied Mozart and Chopin, but her father
also brought home black-market copies (banned in Soviet-era Russia)
of albums by
the Beatles, Queen, and the Moody Blues. After moving
with her family to the Bronx, Spektor made her way to the cafés of
downtown
New York City. Coming up through the antifolk scene and
nurtured by bands such as the Strokes, Spektor expanded her
repertoire with the inclusion of hip-hop and punk influences.
On Spektor's latest album, she has added flourishes of electric
guitar and drum machines to her piano compositions, bearing out
her rock and punk persuasions. "Edit" is perhaps the album's most
obvious synthesis of classic and current. The song, mixing
Spektor's warm voice and ornamental piano passages, has the same
choppy and repetitive cadence, skittering beat, and electronic
blips as Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place."
Alternatively, "Apres Moi" opens with a sweep of melodramatic piano
and a Weimar-era cabaret mood, but there's a Björk-like oddity to
Spektor's vocal delivery. She dresses up phrases with hiccups and
grunts and draws out a word like
yours with an affected
bridge-and-tunnel accent. Likewise, on "Better," a vaguely Kelly
Clarkson-esque anthem, Spektor repeats the title, and with each
pronunciation, the word morphs from something like "bettal,"
(Russian accent?) to "betta" (New York accent?, and finally
"better."
Spektor's dissection of the English language and Dr. Seuss-like
playfulness with words are just a few of the oral tricks in the
singer's bag. Spektor also utilizes her voice as instrument in a
way not heard or accomplished since
Björk's groundbreaking album,
Medúlla. On the whimsical "Fidelity," Spektor sings: "I hear
in my mind all this music/And it breaks my he-ah-ah-ah-ah-heart" -
which has the effect of an aural exclamation point.
There is a messiness to the compositions - some thoughts aren't
fully formed and words are left unsaid. Some listeners who like
their music in genre-specific packages might bristle at this
artist's idiosyncrasies. But for the adventurous and open-minded,
the trip down Regina Spektor's rabbit hole is a uniquely good
time.
Low Maintenance
Forget drama - Secret Machines focuses on the music.
By Suzanne
Ely
Some rock bands and solo artists thrive on dysfunction and chaos.
They possess an uncanny skill for bottling tension, processing it,
and releasing it back out into the world, beautifully synthesized
into a killer song. This is the realm of a genius like Nirvana's
Kurt Cobain.
And then there are the well-adjusted, high-functioning musicians
who toil quietly, free of internal drama yet still capable of
producing highly nuanced, dynamic, and fresh music. They don't
score the tabloid headlines but build a slow burn to success and
respect. This is the realm of the Secret Machines, two brothers and
a friend who are pleasant, polite, well spoken, and most
importantly, talented, as evidenced on their sophomore release,
Ten Silver Drops. Forget high drama -
bassist/keyboardist/singer Brandon Curtis describes the Secret
Machines' songwriting process as no-nonsense and extraordinarily
basic. "We just do what we like to do. We want to spend our time
making music. It's not a discipline; it's just how you end up
living your life."
The Dallas-bred, New York-based trio tasted their first nibble of
success two years ago with the release of their debut album,
Now
Here Is Nowhere. In an age when album sales are judged like
opening night at the megaplex - 50 Cent's
The Massacre sells
1.14 million copies in its first week! - the Secret Machines are
entirely comfortable with the 100,000 copies that their debut has
sold. Not bad for a band whose sound is experimental like the
Flaming Lips, psychedelic like
Pink Floyd, and rock and roll like
Led Zeppelin.
No doubt, in terms of quantity, their success thus far has been
modest, but consider that the Secret Machines' debut landed on
quite a few critics' year-end top 10 lists and that their fans
include legends such as David Bowie,
U2, and the Band's Garth
Hudson. "It's nice to be recognized," Curtis, 33, admits during a
break in filming a video. "But we've never internalized it beyond
the notion of it's nice to be noticed."
Forgive this trio if they haven't taken much time to indulge in
praise. They've been too busy writing new songs, touring (two years
and counting), toiling in the studio, and, most recently, filming
an experimental, musically based art film in a small
Texas arts
community. The Secret Machines are assiduously focused on figuring
out how to evolve musically - their main goal is to satisfy their
own expectations. Their first album, Curtis explains, "was more of
an introduction, a statement to our audience about who we are and
what we're about. Once you've attracted everyone's attention, then
what do you do? Our intention is to expand the conversation with
this record."
Early buzz has been positive, but the group is already adept at
shrugging off hype like so much background noise. Curtis sees an
upside to such decidedly non-rock-and-roll pragmatism. "One good
thing is that we're never going to have to do the artsy record to
prove we're musicians, and we're never going to have to worry that
we're just pinups. We're making music because we care about
it."
Hot New and Upcoming Releases
The Raconteurs,
Broken Boy Soldiers (V2/Third Man), May 16
Dr. John,
Mercernary: The Songs of Johnny Mercer (Blue
Note), May 23
The Walkmen,
A Hundred Miles Off (Record Collection), May
23
Cheap Trick,
Rockford (Cheap Trick Unlimited/Big 3 Records), June 6
<
br/>Elvis Costello and
Allen Toussaint,
The River in Reverse (Verve Forecast), June 6
Frank Sinatra Jr.,
That Face! (Reprise), June 6
Regina Carter,
I’ll Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey (Verve), June 13
Keb’ Mo’,
Suitcase (Epic/RED), June 13
The Replacements,
Don’t You Know
Who I Think I Was?: The Best of the Replacements (Rhino), June 13
Smokey Robinson,
Timeless Love (New Door), June 13
<
br/>Sonic Youth,
Rather Ripped (Geffen), June 13
The Stills,
Without Feathers(Vice Records), June 13
Widespread Panic,
Earth to America (Sanctuary/Widespread Records), June 13
Guster,
Ganging Up on the Sun (Reprise), June 20
Keane,
Under the Iron Sea (Interscope), June 20
Diana Ross,
Blue (Motown/UMe), June 20
Golden Smog,
Another Fine Day (Lost Highway), July 18
Los Lonely Boys, title undecided (Epic), July 18
The Lost Trailers,
The Lost Trailers (BNA Records), August (exact date TBD)
Sorta,
Strange and Sad but True (Summerbreak Records), August 8
The Polyphonic Spree,
The Fragile Army (Good Records), late summer/early fall
Future Forecast
Three artists with new releases we’re absolutely fired up about for fall:
The Shins
Bloc Party
Natalie Cole