Interview: Karl Bartos

Karl Bartos was a member of Kraftwerk, which makes for legendary status and then some. His tenure in the gob-smackingly influential German group ran from 1975 to 1990, and his contributions include melodies and rhythms in the midst of such classic albums as The Man-Machine and Computer World. It’s hard to imagine music sounding the way it does now without such canonical accomplishments, even if Bartos himself holds a certain ambivalence about Kraftwerk after the fact.

More recently, after a stint as a professor in Berlin, Bartos revisited archival sounds he made during his Kraftwerk years and refashioned them in the form of Off the Record, an album full of taut, allusive synth-pop songs that signal back to the past while peering toward the future. Over Skype from Berlin, Bartos talked about both with a mix of objective dispassion and palpable excitement — characteristics that play into the music he favors more than 60 years after he was born.

Looking back at your years in Kraftwerk, with so much accomplished and such profound influence put into play, what makes you most proud?

We had so much rejection at the time that there was really no time to be proud. We struggled really. I remember for the first concerts in England, for instance, we had this huge centerfold in the paper New Musical Express, and they made a collage with us sitting in the center of the Nuremberg Trials. We had to face a lot of rejection. Finally, in the end of the ’80s with MTV and especially in the ’90s, it was getting better all the time. But I was not really very proud of it. It was just daily work.

Did you not think the music significant, personally? Did it feel powerful and new to you, or not necessarily?

We felt we were always some sort of pioneers in terms of production. Before the computer arrived in the studio we had good analog machinery working, with sequencers and electronic drum devices. They were custom-made, and we always thought, “When will the black guys from America discover that a drum box can have a really groovy beat?” Finally, they did! I remember, when I visited, going down the streets of Manhattan and seeing a guy with a boombox, or ghetto blaster, and doing some weird dancing. Now I would call it “breakdancing,” but I didn’t know it at the time. They were listening to loops of Trans-Europe Express, a segment from “Metal on Metal,” and they were head-spinning and stuff like that. That made me really happy.

Did you breakdance yourself?

I tried it, once. [Laughs.] When I first came to America, it was 1975, and I remember being in Memphis, Tennessee. After a concert, all four of us — there was a cover band playing some rock ‘n’ roll tunes, and all four of us were dancing. It was a very happy time. It was one of the Elton John hit singles. The covers band played the pop charts, and they were really good players. This was pre-hip-hop, pre-club music, pre-Detroit techno, pre-all that stuff.

In reference to the cover band as good players and musicians, do you think of yourself, as an electronic-musician, as a good player, or is it something else, something different? Do you think of your work more in the language of programming and organizing, or is it all musicianship to you?

If I had to come up with one occupation, I would say “musician.” That’s true. But for the last 10 years or so, I stepped more into the convergence of image and sound. When I was a professor at the University of the Arts in Berlin, I was free to come up with my own curriculum, so I had a closer look at the history of filmmaking and what role sound played in film. All the theoretical stuff, people like [storied sound-editor] Walter Murch, came up. In terms of music culture, to me at least, it’s much more important how the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino’s new movie is than the latest Lady Gaga record. I think all the intelligence, since the business model is no longer of any interest for a huge industry, the interest of music culture is in filmmaking: music in films and with films. And music is only one part of sound in movies. We have dialogue, we have the sound of the environment, we have the ambience, we have music. So there’s much more to talk about.

What is the earliest interesting use of sound in cinema that you teach?

I look at sound in a broader picture. Beginning of the 19th century, painting was getting abstract. Kandinsky was very jealous of what musicians and composers could do. He was drawing and it was very hard for him to get emotion in a picture. So he thought, “What can I do to bring music into my pictures?” He was desperate with this idea. He called his paintings like “Movement in Blue,” “Composition in Yellow” and so on. At the same time, there was this new medium of film coming up. People who read Kandinsky’s [journal] The Blue Rider had the idea of bringing abstract painting onto a timeline. So suddenly you have on this timeline rectangles, circles and so on, and those geometric pieces started to dance. Doing so, they thought, “OK, we have now what we’ll call Gesamtkunstwerk (translation: “a total work of art”). It’s really interesting how these media are talking to each other and how they complement each other. This tradition brought me into the kind of performance I do nowadays. During the ’90s, we had this movement of VJs — in any club they had VJ putting on the walls of the clubs visual candy, or whatever you want to call it. So I wanted to take early movements, from Oskar Fischinger and Walter Ruttman — these very early ideas of abstraction on a timeline — and treat them visually like music together with the VJ movement. This brought me to the kind of performance I do nowadays.

There was a fantastic exhibition of films by Oscar Fischinger at the Whitney Museum in New York recently.

Fischinger went to Disney and he took part in Fantasia. But he was never happy really in Hollywood.

Your new album draws inspiration from sounds sourced from your past. What motivated you to revisit them?

It was very simple. A guy from the label kept asking me, again and again and again, if I had any old tapes from the ’70s or ’80s when I was in Kraftwerk. I kept saying no, but after I stopped teaching I wanted to do a new record, and he brought me back to this time. Finally I decided to do this marathon effort — it’s nothing you want to do: to clean up your attic. It was all in boxes, huge amounts of material. I always thought, “Oh, maybe later, maybe next year…” But then, being German, I ended up transferring it all into the computer. When I was there in the computer, I only saw the dates — 77-8-2, 76-7-4, and so on. It looked like an auditory diary, and that’s when I thought I could make it concept and make it real. I delved really deep into all this material. I brought together pieces that didn’t belong together and stuck them together and worked them into a collage. Remakes [new simulations of pre-existing sounds] were done with old instruments: an old Moog, an Arp, all this old stuff. I recontextualized. I replayed the instruments, old synthesizers from the ’70s, with their pitch and so on.

The sounds go back to your years in Kraftwerk. Are you in touch with any members of the group still?

I just had a telephone conversation with Wolfgang [Flür]. My other colleague Florian [Schneider] is very happy not to be a robot for the rest of his life. So there is just one person left [Ralf Hütter]. But Florian, Wolfgang, and I are in contact.

Have you talked to Ralf?

[Makes shrugging gesture with his shoulders, beneath a suggestively sly smile.]

A press-release for your new album says “Forget about nostalgia in 3-D.” Have you seen any of the recent Kraftwerk shows?

I got invited by The Guardian to attend the Tate Modern shows [in London] and to write a review, but I turned it down. I don’t have the time. I have so much to do now. This record took me two and half years now, and I’m still working on it, because I’ve made six videos. I’m going to London to do screenings, and I’m going to big cities in Europe. I know all the material of the Kraftwerk concerts, so I’ve been there already, sonically.

In the history of Kraftwerk, you’re credited for making big contributions in terms of melody and in terms of rhythm. Often those are regarded as separate and distinct musical properties. Do they work that way for you, or are melody and rhythm one and the same?

Music is a time-based art, and there are a lot of ways to articulate time. In life, we came up with this concept of dividing time into years, months, weeks, days and so on. In music, we came up with this dimension of meter. We invented bars and can say this bar is 4/4 or 3/4 or 7/4, and within these metric devices we put our rhythms. But the question if I make a distinction between rhythms and melodies or not…Well, first of all, what we think of as rhythm is a formula, because we are used to a drummer playing a rhythmic formula and repeating it. So the “Numbers” beat is a formula. But if I compose a song or a piece of music, rhythm for me is how all the instruments complement each other. It’s very important that the bass line and the melodic line and the chords each all have a rhythmic quality. But in the end, it’s all a line that you can see in a score. The drum beat is just one part of it.

Do you keep up with contemporary electronic music? Do you go to clubs in Berlin?

I had the privilege for about five years to talk to young musicians in Berlin. They had a lot of respect because of my biography, so the first thing I did with them was take them to see the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to attend a rehearsal. Afterward, we talked about scores what [conductor] Simon Rattle does in front of the orchestra. We discovered all the similarities between a score and the timeframe used by a computer. In the end, all these young DJs and musicians got the idea that it’s all the same, and it really doesn’t matter where it comes from. If it’s from someone in front of a computer or 80 people onstage in an orchestra, they have the same blood in their veins. We are all musicians, and we are all doing the same thing. It really doesn’t matter. It’s all about how the recipient receives it.

When you speak of the audio-diary aspect of your new album, do you mean a diary in a soul-baring kind of way or was it more a store of archives?

The intention was not to write a diary — it was just a scrapbook to evaluate ideas. I had no emotional thing going on where I wanted to write down what was going on in my life or how I felt. Years later, when I put it into a computer, I decided to call it a diary because in the end, that is what it is, if I look at it as a whole. It was sort of like meeting myself as a young guy, innocent and naïve, and now, with my experience as a producer, I could speak with myself. I was not trying to patronize that young guy, but it was OK — I think he would have liked it!

In your song “Without a Trace of Emotion, “you sing “I wish I could remix my life to another beat.” What did you mean?

Everybody keeps referring to my former band because it got so important over 40 years of existence. But I’m quite ambivalent about it. Sometimes it’s nice, because people are interested in my work still and I have contributed to some famous songs that became evergreens. But sometimes it’s really annoying that I always have to work so hard to get even close to the same reception for my music now. It’s not that good — a song like “The Model” cannot be that good because “The Model” was written more than 30 years ago, and it has gone through so many filters of time. Maybe in 30 years from now people won’t want to be so picky with my solo stuff.With that song in particular ["Without a Trace of Emotion"], I was trying to work this out. I came up with a story where I meet Herr Karl, which was the name of Kraftwerk showroom dummy, and I start a conversation with him. I talk to him and he talks to me. “I won’t let go, I won’t let go,” he says. And I tell him, “Red shirt, black tie, you’re history, you’re history.” I made a video for it, and it shows Herr Karl in all of his costumes: a red shirt, a Tour de France outfit, acting like a model. It became really funny without being comic. You can see me walking on this famous street in Hamburg where the Beatles used to play — I live very close by. Then suddenly I am passing this Panopticon and see Herr Karl. I had to do it just once in my life, to make it subject of an album and especially one song. “Without a Trace of Emotion” sums it up for me very well.

40 Years of Catch A Fire

“Time is my ammunition,” says Bob Marley in a room at the Chelsea Hotel in July of 1973. Now 40 years have passed — longer than Bob himself strode upon this earth singing his redemption song.

The night before we spoke, I had watched transfixed as the Wailers played Max’s Kansas City, opening for Bruce Springsteen. Not that it was an unusual billing for Max’s: A week later Iggy Pop would headline three midnight performances; in mid-August Tim Buckley was scheduled; coming attractions included the New York Dolls and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.

The Wailers fit right into this spatial mix. It was their first time in New York, and they brought with them the harbingers of a reggae poised to become a world music, breaking out of its West Indian shantytown stylee. After years of transmuting American pop songs into the characteristic loping rhythms of Caribbean music, a beat off-centered and on-kiltered, the cultural exchange was beginning to flow upriver: Desmond Dekker’s “Israelites,” Johnny Nash’s version of Bob’s “Stir It Up,” Paul Simon’s “Mother and Child Reunion,” the soundtrack to The Harder They Come. Infused with a sense of destiny, preaching the apocalyptic tenants of Rastafarian poetics, the sacrament of ganja amid lofty Biblical invocations, this was music ready to ignite.

Catch A Fire was the Wailers’ calling card. They were no strangers to recording, with a lengthy career dating back to 1963, when they made their debut under Leslie Kong’s aegis, and then worked with ska-master Clement Dodds, and through to the inimitable Lee Perry. If there is anyone responsible for turning the group from a harmony trio (Bob, Bunny Livingstone and Peter Tosh) into a more expansive mode, it’s Perry. “Scratch” was on the verge of losing himself in the welter of effect and reverberation that made his later dub-work so hallucinatory. But he administered tuff-love to the Wailers by tightening their rhythm section, a turnabout that became fair play when the Wailers hired the backbone of Perry’s Upsetters rhythm section, the brothers Barrett, Aston and Carlton, masters of the one-drop bass drum.

Chris Blackwell, who ran Island Records, had lived a hybrid life. He grew in Jamaica in wealthy circumstances (his family was in the rum business), and was aware of the bubbling-under sounds emanating from Jamaica. He founded his record label in 1962, and had leased early Wailers singles. Though his label was primarily known for its rock acts, from Traffic to Roxy Music, he had broad tastes (Millie Small’s “My Boy Lollipop” was one of his early hits in Britain and America), and instinctively understood the global possibilities of the infectious riddim of Jamaica. He was an investor in the movie The Harder They Come, had partnered with Trojan Records at one point, and saw in Bob’s songwriting ability and forward-looking acumen and charisma the only performer who might take the music to another, more international level. He even leased the early Wailers singles. His opportunity came when the Wailers found themselves stranded in London after a proposed European tour had fallen apart. He paid for their air fare home, and advanced the capital to record in Kingston. Then the group returned to England to complete the masters.

As co-producer on Catch A Fire, Blackwell suggested touches to make the album more appealing to non-reggae ears and seductive to non-reggae radio programmers. He enlisted studio musicians — Wayne Perkins, a Muscle Shoals regular, whose lead guitar lines bring a taste of southern-rock to the album opener “Concrete Jungle” and the long-form “Stir It Up,” which also features “Rabbit” Bundrick adding synthesizer and keyboard touches — and overdubbed them on the tapes Bob had recorded in Jamaica. Released in April of 1973, the album was acclaimed in the rock press, scraping the bottom of the Top 200 in America, serving its purpose to alert the world of reggae’s approaching firestorm.

Catch A Fire also marked a turning point in the evolution of the Wailers. The album is credited to the group, but Marley’s increasing preeminence in their stage show and his dominance as the group’s chief songwriter inevitably led to more emphasis being placed on his leadership role. Bunny would leave the original trio soon after, preferring to return to Jamaica and not tour, and though Peter Tosh writes two of the album’s best songs — “400 Years” and “Stop That Train” — his own solo career would soon inevitably be underway. Bob might have been increasingly drawn to the mystic groundations of Rastafarianism, but the album still offers such pop-ish material as “Baby We’ve Got A Date (Rock It Baby)” and “Kinky Reggae.”

When I spoke to him at the Chelsea, he was already shifting into the rhetoric of revolution and salvation that would, as the ’70s progressed, make him a spokesman for unity and spiritual transcendence and cultural brotherhood. Drawing deeply on a spliff, he preached the word to me, an eager congregant. “Take off your face, and strip down y’old self, and see who you is, that is who you really is. Rasta. We can’t pretend. I a Rasta. I live…”

And so he does, his message resounding, in this future prophesized by the burning bush that is Catch A Fire.

Jaimeo Brown, Transcendence

Jaimeo Brown’s Transcendence is “essential” music, in the sense that the essence of the black church, the blues and the emotional gutbucket that marks the best jazz improvisation help distinguish its identity. And yet this is almost the opposite of a “roots” album; Brown, a drummer-conceptualist in his mid 30s, has fostered a species of music that incorporates the scalding blues-rock guitar and hip-hop sonics of Chris Sholar (probably best known for his Grammy-winning work with Kanye and Jay-Z on “No Church In the Wild”); extended samples from the rural Alabama gospel group the Gee’s Bend Quilters from their recordings in 1941 and 2002; the sinuous, Carnatic-styled East Indian vocals of Falu; the resonant, ductile jazz tenor sax of J.D. Allen and piano of Geri Allen; and Brown’s own polyrhythmic, African-bush-to-NYC-club assaults on the drum kit.

After a couple of straight-through listens, the entire package soaks into your soul. The terrifying, god-fearing declamations of the Gee Bend vocalists on traditional spirituals anchor the opener, “Mean World” and “You Can’t Hide.” The former finds drummer Brown and saxophonist Allen enacting the blitzkrieg of woe that befalls the wretched, yielding to a soundscape designed by Brown and his father, Dartanyan Brown, that wafts like dust and fog over a desolate plain at the end. On “You Can’t Hide,” Sholar’s guitar electrocutes and illuminates the Holy Ghost, followed by another caldron of phrases from J.D. Allen.

But the passion and reverence unfurls at differently evocative levels of intensity. “Somebody’s Knocking” features the parallel ululations of Falu’s voice and Andrew Shantz’s harmonium. “Patience” leads with the well-deep bass of Dartanyan Brown. “Power of God,” my for-now favorite track, lowers the volume on the gospel singers so that Geri Allen’s incredibly beautiful, understated piano can take hold, resulting in a softly shimmering tune. “Accra” is a drum showcase for Brown inspired by his trip to Ghana a week for the recording session.Transcendence concludes with another pair of spirituals, “You Needn’t Mind Me Dying” and “This World Ain’t My Home,” that mesh raging gospel and gauzy hip hop dappled with the rubato jazz of Allen’s horn. It will find a place on my best-of listings at year’s end.

Paramore, Paramore

“No one’s the same as they used to be,” sings Hayley Williams at the outset of her band’s boldly catchy fourth album, her lightning-rod yelp ricocheting off new-wave synths and tense punk-pop riffage. For Paramore, it’s a prophetic lyric: On this expansive self-titled set, they’ve all but ditched the emo stiffness of their early Warped Tour days, plunging head-first into the slick, arena-friendly stylings of modern pop.

But Paramore isn’t an album of safe, simple hooks — it’s a deftly arranged and deceptively eclectic batch of songs, revealing sophisticated new layers with each listen. Working with producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen (who recently brought an expert wide-screen approach to the latest Tegan and Sara album), Williams and company try on new genres like pairs of shoes. The old Paramore wouldn’t have attempted a series of cutesy ukelele interludes, or country-inflected balladry (“Hate to See Your Heart Break”) or dreamy doo-wop (“One of Those Crazy Girls”).

Seventeen tracks is, arguably, a bit ridiculous — this is a pop album after all, not a concept-album prog-rock suite. But in blowing up their sound and going for broke, Paramore deserve props as massive as their ambitions.

The Knife, Shaking the Habitual

“I’m telling you stories,” Karin Dreijer Andersson shrieks on the opening track “A Tooth For an Eye,” before letting rip with “Trust meeeeeeeeeeee-aaaaaaahhhhhh!” And what stories those are: On their long-awaited follow-up to their 2006 U.S. breakthrough Silent Shout, this Swedish brother-sister duo have crafted the musical equivalent of a Wes Craven horror movie for PhDs. Politics, feminism, gender studies, social class, “commercial homogenization,” as they state in their biography — all those weighty ideas are explored on 13 tracks.

Whether any of this makes sense in the hands of a press-shy, costume-wearing duo is another question. Andersson has long reveled in screwing around with audiences: She famously accepted a televised award in 2010 for her side project Fever Ray while wearing a mask that looked like molten flesh. And on Shaking the Habitual, she remains equally opaque: Plainspoken, politically-charged lyrics (“Not a vagina/ It’s an option!”) get masked with all sorts of vocal effects, shrieks, yelps, groans and grunts. Then there are downright silly sentiments: “A handful of elf pee/ That’s my soul.” Huh? Sure, Andersson and her brother Olof Dreijer have said in interviews that they want to challenge the listener’s understanding of race, class, sexuality, etc., on this album. But over a double-disc set, it’s hard not to think this is a giant practical joke — a musical version of a 4chan troll.

What is clear, however, is the Knife’s gift for crafting some of the most forward-thinking electronic music around — Shaking the Habitual is an exhilarating, what-the-fuck-is-going-on-here listen. It’s definitely their freakiest set yet — maybe the freakiest record this year. Cuts like “Full of Fire” and “Raging Lung” are packed with synth earworms and djembe drums and storm-the-floor electronic beats and flutes and recorders and art-damaged acoustic guitars and feedback drones. And is that the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz shrieking on “Without You My Life Would Be Boring”? That reference would sense — L. Frank Baum’s fictional character is all about illusion — and Anderson clearly revels in playing with the role of a modern-day sonic wizard. In a time when pop stars and television personalities offer up every mundane detail of their personal lives for the sake of a retweet, sometimes it’s nice to have an artist who remains shrouded in nothing but mystery.

Numbers And Letters, Guns Under Water

Austin alt-country outfit Numbers And Letters open their full-length debut with a brash declaration: “The fire’s been lit,” sings frontwoman Katie Hasty on “Ghost.” “I hope you still love this house, ’cause I just burned it down.” She’d rather torch the place than share it with ghosts who lurk but don’t pay rent. It’s a memorable introduction to an album littered with memories of doomed loves and populated by lovers pushed to emotional extremes. Hasty’s lyrics can be a little overwrought, especially on the quiet “Dark Adam,” but they’re never timid. Plus, she sings them in a voice that’s eloquently textured and expressive, barely suppressing a southern accent that subtly bends her notes and syllables. On “If You Say the Words,” Hasty (a music critic for Hitfix) sounds both wounded and determined as she hits the high notes and delivers weary observations about “love wasted on me.” With each song, the band introduces some new idea or sound that expands the album’s palette: the sympathetic clarinet accompaniment on “Stacks and Stacks,” the violent punctuation of guitars on “Ghost,” the Morricone moodiness of “Wading.” Guns Under Water is all over the places, yet Numbers And Letters never sounds scattered or unfocused, thanks largely to the band’s charismatic frontwoman. She brings the house down.

Dawes, Stories Don’t End

Ah, the sound of Fender Telecaster singing out of a clean channeled amp: The twanging, mellow tone instantly summons a long-lost endless summer of West Coast folk rock and peaceful, easy feelings. Dawes may insist that they want to outgrow the narrative that they’re a product of those Laurel Canyon influences — “It borders on ridiculous. We have never lived in [Laurel Canyon] — I don’t think I’ve driven through, even, for years,” singer Taylor Goldsmith complained in the most recent American Songwriter. But their third album, tellingly titled Stories Don’t End, doesn’t quite shed the sound that ties them to that era, which turns out to be a good thing.

Full of irresistible harmonies, clear-ringing guitar solos and astute lyrical self-awareness, Stories Don’t End serves as a graceful evolution from 2009′s debut North Hills and 2011′s Nothing Is Wrong. The album offers a more optimistic, or at least hopeful, tenor that you can hear most clearly in “Someone Will” and “Most People,” as well as the Blake Mills cover “Hey Lover.” Musically, the upbeat tracks like lead single “From a Window Seat” move with a renewed sense of purpose, exemplified here through curt piano chords and jumpy bass riffs. Whether or not Dawes has finally accepted its cozy SoCal-revivalist label, Stories Don’t End feels like the work of a band embracing its strengths while trying to assert its continued growth.

New This Week: The Knife, James Blake, Paramore, & More

The Knife, Shaking the Habitual: The Knife’s latest is exhilarating and maybe the freakiest record this year. Kevin O’Donnell says:

What is clear is the Knife’s gift for crafting some of the most forward-thinking electronic music around — Shaking the Habitual is an exhilarating, what-the-fuck-is-going-on-here listen. It’s definitely their freakiest set yet — maybe the freakiest record this year. Cuts like “Full of Fire” and “Raging Lung” are packed with synth earworms and djembe drums and storm-the-floor electronic beats and flutes and recorders and art-damaged acoustic guitars and feedback drones. In a time when pop stars and television personalities offer up every mundane detail of their personal lives for the sake of a retweet, sometimes it’s nice to have an artist who remains shrouded in nothing but mystery.

James Blake, Overgrown: James Blake might sound like blue-eyed soul to some, but if you think he sounds like Jamie Lidell, you should get your ears checked. eMusic’s Andrew Parks says:

James Blake revisits the profoundly weird stomping grounds of his self-titled debut on Overgrown. Free of Feist or Joni Mitchell covers, the only creative voice that’s tortured or tweaked this time around is Blake’s own, whether that means something as live and direct as “DLM” or the patience-rewarding returns of, well, everything else.

Paramore, Paramore: Paramore stray from safe, simple hooks on their super-long self-titled LP. Says Ryan Reed:

“No one’s the same as they used to be,” sings Hayley Williams at the outset of her band’s boldly catchy fourth album, her lightning-rod yelp ricocheting off new-wave synths and tense punk-pop riffage. For Paramore, it’s a prophetic lyric: On this expansive self-titled set, they’ve all but ditched the emo stiffness of their early Warped Tour days, plunging head-first into the slick, arena-friendly stylings of modern pop.

Villagers, {Awayland}: The second LP from Irish troubadour Conor O’Brien, aka Villagers. Dan Hyman says:

Villagers, the musical outlet for troubadour Conor O’Brien, is a folk act at its core. But on 2010′s Becoming a Jackal, O’Brien drew justifiable comparisons to fellow Irishman Glen Hansard and Bright Eyes for his ability to expand outside the genre’s steel-stringed framework. With {Awayland}, O’Brien pushes these experiments further and expands this experimental bent, dabbling in lush orchestration and electronic textures.

Dawes, Stories Don’t End: Dawes embrace their folk-rock strengths on their latest LP. Hillary Saunders says:

Full of irresistible harmonies, clear-ringing guitar solos and astute lyrical self-awareness, Stories Don’t End serves as a graceful evolution from 2009′s debut North Hills and 2011′s Nothing Is Wrong. The album offers a more optimistic, or at least hopeful, tenor that you can hear most clearly in “Someone Will” and “Most People,” as well as the Blake Mills cover “Hey Lover.

Numbers And Letters, Guns Under Water: The debut full-length from Austin’s Numbers And Letters. Stephen Deusner says:

Austin alt-country outfit Numbers And Letters open their full-length debut with a brash declaration: “The fire’s been lit,” sings frontwoman Katie Hasty on “Ghost.” “I hope you still love this house, ’cause I just burned it down.” She’d rather torch the place than share it with ghosts who lurk but don’t pay rent. It’s a memorable introduction to an album littered with memories of doomed loves and populated by lovers pushed to emotional extremes.

The Postal Service, Give Up -  The side project that swallowed the career of everyone involved. For something so unassuming and wispy, this record changed a lot of lives, straight up. I do not have much to say about this album that you all don’t already  know/feel, but “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” remains one of the  greatest songs of the last decade, and will be around for a long while.

Various Artists, Fania Records 1964-1984, The Incendiary Sounds of New York – Tito Puente, Ralfi Pagan, Celia Cruz, and more on this dazzling and true-to-its-name (INCENDIARY!) compilation of NY salsa, as presented by the legendary Fania records. Hear a city boiling.

Jaimeo Brown, Transcendence -  A stunning statement from the “drummer/conceptualist” Jaimeo Brown, as Britt Robson calls him. In his rave review, he observes:

Jaimeo Brown’s Transcendence is “essential” music, in the sense that the essence of the black church, the blues, and the emotional gutbucket that marks the best jazz improvisation help distinguish its identity. And yet this is almost the opposite of a “roots” album; Brown, a drummer-conceptualist in his mid-30s, has fostered a species of music that incorporates the scalding blues-rock guitar and hip-hop sonics of Chris Sholar (probably best known for his Grammy-winning work with Kanye and Jay-Z on “No Church In the Wild”); extended samples from the rural Alabama gospel group the Gee’s Bend Quilters from their recordings in 1941 and 2002; the sinuous, Carnatic-styled East Indian vocals of Falu; the resonant, ductile jazz tenor sax of J.D. Allen and piano of Geri Allen; and Brown’s own polyrhythmic, African-bush-to-NYC-club assaults on the drum kit. After a couple of straight-through listens, the entire package soaks into your soul.

Dave Douglas, Time Travel – The celebrated trumpeter brings his new quintet back to the clean-lined basics for his latest offering.

Julieta Venegas, Los Momentos – Airy, off-kilter Spanish-speaking indie/folk pop from the Mexican singer-songwriter Julieta Venegas.

Joey Bada$$,  “Unorthodox” – Talented, throwback-NY rapper, not yet twenty years old, links up with DJ Premier.

Vondelpark, “California Analog Dream” – Lovely, smooth, Arthur Russell-influenced watery dance-pop.

Sinkane, “Warm Spell” – Jittery, light-stepping rock/pop single given a number of bouncy, buzzy remixes.

The Juan MacLean, “You Are My Destiny” – Fluidly propulsive new one from DFA faves The Juan MacLean.

Kacey Musgraves, “Apologize/See You Again” – member of Lady Antebellum strikes out further into her own rootsier, downcast solo lane on this single

Kid CuDi, “Girls” – New single from Kid CuDi.

Kids on A Crime Spree, “Creep The Creeps” – This song sounds great; The Cure in a tin can,  just wonderful pop songwriting.

Villagers, {Awayland}

Villagers, the musical outlet for troubadour Conor O’Brien, is a folk act at its core. But on 2010′s Becoming a Jackal, O’Brien drew justifiable comparisons to fellow Irishman Glen Hansard and Bright Eyes for his ability to expand outside the genre’s steel-stringed framework. With {Awayland}, O’Brien pushes these experiments further and expands this experimental bent, dabbling in lush orchestration and electronic textures. These moves occasionally yield revelations: “The Waves” elegantly detonates with guitar distortion, while “Passing a Message” climaxes with thrashing, therapeutic piano clamor.

But O’Brien’s music thrives when at its most raw and unfettered. His voice, allusive and just on the right side of vulnerable, is best left to its own devices, as on the spare, harmonic “My Lighthouse” and the slow-rolling “Rhythm Composer.” The album often bows under the weight of O’Brien’s lyrical bloat (“There’s a sleeping dog under this dialog/ obedient only to rhyme/ but if I could beckon her/ if I could find the words/ all they would be is lies”). Even through misguided mouthfuls, however, the singer’s supreme knack for melody shines, acting as a much-comforting tuneful compass.

Uri Caine and Han Bennink, Sonic Boom

This inspired meeting between adventurous keyboardist Caine and gale-force drummer Bennink delivers everything their pairing promises. Caine, known for his avant-jazz/chamber excursions that approach classical masterworks with a uniquely twisted flavor, is challenged and encouraged at every turn by Bennink, a master of free jazz drumming with a unique, gleeful attitude. Recorded at Amsterdam’s Bimhuis in 2011, Sonic Boom is comprised of nine brief but exhilarating songs — if these roller coasters of form somersaulting function can be called songs. Caine plays impishly, no doubt inspired by Bennink’s childlike shenanigans, the kind of thing you might tell a young child to “STOP!” if not for the sheer joy billowing from his drums and cymbals. Performing primarily improvised material, the duo also cover Monk’s “Round Midnight,” but it goes all wrong. Caine extracts the familiar melody from the piano’s keys and internal wires, but then everything is dissembled and scattered, as if Madlib were dissecting/delivering the performance via two Technics SP 1200 turntables. Sticks fly, brushes swoon, Monk screams for mercy, and before you know it the pair are swinging sweetly, sparkling, like it’s 1959. They follow with an avuncular blues, “As I Was,” a sonic freefall through shocking accents; “Furious Urious,” and the equivalent of a swinging, Willie the Lion Smith barrel house shuffle, “Lockdown.” A triumph.

James Blake, Overgrown

After spending the tail end of 2011 pushing his idiosyncratic productions down two very different paths — the freakish experimental flourishes of Love What Happened Here and the manic emoting (complete with a Bonny Bear collab!) of Enough Thunder — James Blake revisits the profoundly weird stomping grounds of his self-titled debut on Overgrown. Free of Feist or Joni Mitchell covers, the only creative voice that’s tortured or tweaked this time around is Blake’s own, whether that means something as live and direct as “DLM” or the patience-rewarding returns of, well, everything else.

Like his last LP, Overgrown will sound like a beat head’s version of blue-eyed soul to most people, which sells Blake’s songwriting far too short. Thanks to his obsession with sound itself, the record doesn’t reveal itself unless you actually listen. Only then will you notice the dying embers and buzz-sawed sonar blips of “Our Love Comes Back,” the devastating build of “Retrograde,” or the catastrophic time changes of “Digital Lion,” a knob-twiddling duet with Brian Eno that’s got more in common with Kid A than Eno’s own recent run of selected ambient works.

He’s not the only guest that benefits from Blake’s restless imagination either; RZA also makes a highly unexpected appearance on “Take a Fall For Me,” rapping oh-so-softly about the rules of attraction and how he’d sure like to have a “candlelight dinner/ fish and chips, with the vinegar.” Taking all of Overgrown‘s left turns together, something that Blake told Pitchfork a few years back suddenly makes sense: Asked about critical comparisons to Jamie Lidell, the classically-trained singer said, “If you listen to some of Jamie Lidell’s stuff and hear the way he’s singing, it’s revivalist. Frankly, if that’s the comparison being made, I think some people need to get their hearing checked.” Amen.

Re-Documenting the Blues

Austrian collector Johnny Parth launched Document Records in 1986 in order to reissue the complete works of early 20th-century American roots musicians, mostly blues artists. Document’s modus operandi was simple: Pick an artist and reissue the total output on however many albums — or, later, CDs — it took. Less-recorded artists — Geechie Wiley, say — shared a single album with other names; the more prolific — like Peetie Wheatstraw — got considerably more (seven CDs, in his case). Document, which currently boasts some 900 titles, hasn’t issued a new LP in 20 years, but now Jack White’s all-vinyl Third Man Records is getting into the act with a series of reissues taken from the Document catalog. The first volumes are out on three artists, and they say plenty about our perceptions of the blues, and about the artist-versus-entertainer conundrum so knowingly explored by Elijah Wald in his 2004 book Escaping the Delta.

Those three blues artists are the Mississippi Sheiks, Blind Willie McTell and Charley Patton. The first two have a lighter, simpler and more melodic approach than Patton, but all three are exemplary entertainers. Across the whole spectrum of blues, which is much more diverse than it’s ever given credit for, some artists are just like that, no matter how harsh the sound of their music — Robert Johnson, for example, put out deeply emotional music with an undeniably rough sound, but he also wrote irresistible hooks and formalized the verse-chorus pattern of American popular music in the blues. He went that distance to make his music, however searing, more accessible to more people; that’s (along with mystique) a big part of the reason he’s by far the most popular early artist of the blues revival that been off and on since the 1950s. With that in mind, let’s look at the three new Third Man reissues.

The Mississippi Sheiks: The Complete Recorded Works Presented in Chronological Order, Volume 1 documents the Delta string band built around members of the Chatmon Family, most prominently Armenter Chatmon, known professionally as Bo Carter. Drawing on white as well as black rural traditions including blues, pop, hokum, country and folk, their guitar-fiddle sound made them one of the most popular acts of the 1930s, even though they only recorded for the first half of that decade. The interplay between Carter’s oily voice and Lonnie Chatmon’s scratchy fiddle is as otherworldly when sweet as when severe. Their 1930 “Sitting on Top of the World,” written by Sheiks guitarist Lonnie Chatmon the morning after a triumphant gig at a white dance, was a crossover even back then — it’s since been revived by Bob Wills, Bill Monroe, Ray Charles, Howlin’ Wolf, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Les Paul, White and countless others — and the group’s influence on American music is everywhere. You can hear it in the stateliness of “The Sheik Waltz,” the skittering heat of “The Jazz Fiddler,” the carefree country of “We Are Both Feeling Good Right Now,” the hoodoo of “Stop and Listen Blues,” the down-and-out moan of “Winter Time Blues” or the wit of “Grinding Old Fool.”

As an Atlanta bluesman, Blind Willie McTell also made music lighter, bouncier and less dark than the most tortured Delta blues; this ragtimey sound is usually called Piedmont blues and McTell was perhaps its greatest master, picking his 12-string guitar with both agility and elegance. His nasal warble had a touch of country in it, and his repertoire included blues and ragtime, spirituals, ballads, pop, folk, hillbilly and story-songs that sometimes had vaudeville and/or medicine show overtones. Like the Sheiks, Willie cut his calling-card number, the brilliantly-constructed “Statesboro Blues,” which the Allman Brothers popularized more than four decades later, at his first sessions (in ’27). But he never ran out of melodies, licks or ideas. Listen on his Volume 1 to the way his guitar fills alternate between high and low strings on “Mamma ‘Taint Long Fo’ Day,” or his carousing slide on “Three Women Blues,” for a display of his nimbleness as a picker; it’s as if there were two different guitarists on these songs. Or to the stunning lyrics of “Dark Night Blues” (“Drink so much whiskey/ I’m stagger when I sleep/ My brains are dark and cloudy/ My mind’s gone to my feet”). Or the happy-go-lucky way he acts out “Atlanta Strut” with his guitar and the percussive effects he gets from it on “Drive Away Blues.” McTell’s reach was arguably the broadest of anyone of his era who called himself a bluesman, and he presumably seduced a wide range of listeners on the street corners where he did most of his singing.

You might think the whole entertainer analogy among these three breaks down with Charley Patton. After all, his growling, gravelly voice is forceful enough to unnerve a Howlin’ Wolf fan, and his layered, impossibly intricate rhythms effortlessly conjure up West Africa. It’s the kind of stuff people are talking about when they refer to “authentic” blues. Yet “intricate” shouldn’t be confused with “driving” or “aggressive.” On “Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues,” his playing exploits hesitations, shifting accents and rhythmic variations to garrote what is generally a laid-back piece with relaxed vocals. On the astonishing “Down the Dirt Road Blues,” he gets three rhythms going simultaneously — one with his voice, one with his guitar lines and one by tapping his guitar.

So yes, Charley Patton was a ferocious Delta bluesman, perhaps the form’s true father. But only about half his 50-plus sides are even blues; as the oldest Delta bluesman to record, he worked in all the other forms that his audience would expect of a pre-blues rural entertainer. His Volume 1 embraces religious songs (“Lord I’m Discouraged”) and folk ballads (“Mississippi Boweavil Blues”), ragtime novelties (“Shake It and Break It”) and familiar slide guitar standards (“Spoonful”), even “composed folk” topical songs like “Tom Rushen Blues” (or his opus “High Water Everywhere” about the 1927 Mississippi River flood, which will appear on a subsequent album). So when Patton turns out something like “Pony Blues,” doubtless his most influential blues, he’s showing just a fraction of what he can do. Plus, live he was unabashedly show biz, playing guitar behind his head or between his legs, peppering songs with vaudevillian asides and the like. Fellow Delta bluesmen who only saw him live considered him a clown; they were then shocked to hear his records in all their fierceness and complexity.

Ultimately, the “performer” designation unites these three artists when their sounds are so different. At a segregated time when record companies confined “race music” to a particular market these guys worked hard to get around the limitations being imposed on them. Today, they face a different kind of segregation, that imposed by the “purist.” But they all, each in his own way, rise above it…again.

New This Week: The House of Love, Charles Bradley, Rilo Kiley & More

The House of Love, She Paints Words In Red The second reunion album from Guy Chadwick and Terry Bickers is a dream come true for disciples and nu-gazers alike. Andrew Perry writes:

“Listening to “PKR” – aka “Purple Killer Rose”, an old Chadwick / Vickers gem which slipped between the cracks in their partnership back in the day – it’s like being transported to House of Love’s late-’80s majesty… Other tracks like the opening, exquisitely starlit “A Baby Got Back on Its Feet” thrillingly reunite the tension between singer/guitarist Chadwick’s simmering poetry, and Bickers’ fluid virtuosity.”

The Leisure Society, Alone Aboard The Ark After two Ivor Novello nominations, The Leisure Society are heading for pop’s main stage with their dazzlingly confident third album, recorded at Ray Davies’s Konk Studios. Sharon O’Connell reviews:

“Alone Aboard The Ark arrives with some degree of expectation, but Nick Hemming and Christian Hardy, the quintet’s creative core, have managed to pull off another elegant and admirably underplayed orchestral-pop coup.”

Charles Bradley, Victim of Love Charles Bradley recaptures and transcends the Southern soul grooves of his last record. Barry Walters says:

“Charles Bradley is not the kind of guy to sing of love in fantastical terms; he’s much too real for that. Bearing a voice streaked with the ravages of inner torment, this nomadic 64-year-old soul shouter — now based in a Brooklyn very different to the one in which he grew up — instead captures the pains and pleasures of love in sobering but unrestrained tones: He screams, shouts, pleads and moans of desire and disappointment so extreme that words alone cannot suffice. Not merely singing, he testifies of love and social injustice: This former James Brown impersonator does not hold back.”

Primal Scream, It’s Alright, It’s Okay The full-throttle rocking return of the Scream, produced by David Holmes. The album More Light is coming May 13. Recommended.

Mudhoney, Vanishing Point Mudhoney’s ninth album may feature a song about white wine (“Chardonnay”), but sonically there’s no discernible let-up. David Raposa says:

“Regardless of what’s being sung, it’s set to the kind of propulsive, sludgy, punk-powered music that sounds as good now as it did when grunge was the Next Big Thing. There’s no rose-coloured nostalgia trip happening here, though: as Mudhoney enter their 25^th year, they’re arguably at the height of their powers.”

Harper Simon, Division Street Paul Simon’s son follows up his 2010 country-folk debut with an album of primary-coloured power pop, featuring Nikolai Fraiture of The Strokes and Wilco’s Mikael Jorgensen.

A Hawk & A Hacksaw, You Have Already Gone To The Other World The duo’s sixth album adds another rich seam to their musical patchwork quilt by putting a twist on the music of the Ukraine, Hungary and Romania. Luke Turner reviews:

“The title track features echoing, rattling rhythms and a gripping finale – it’s as if Liars had been transported via time-machine to an ancient pagan ritual on some dark mountainside. A Hawk & A Hacksaw’s music is a fusion of folk music styles that feels unforced, thoughtful and celebratory, and You Have Already Gone To The Other World is their finest work yet.”

The Besnard Lakes, Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO The Montreal indie-rock collective hit a new, blissful peak on their fourth album. Arye Dworken writes:

“On the atypically brisk, “People of the Sticks,” the album’s spiritual center and immediate highlight, the Lakes hit an energetic peak, yet there’s still a settled sublimity at the music’s core, allowing them Lakes to continue their low-key reign as the best dreamers in indie-rock.”

Bleached, Ride Your Heart Sisters Jennifer and Jessie Clavin left their old band Mika Miko behind, but now they’re back as Bleached. Alex Naidus says:

“After the dissolution of the Clavins’ previous band — the locally-beloved, yelpier Mika Miko — the pair took joyous refuge in writing sweet, revved-up three-chord songs together. Ride Your Heart comes down a bit from the wide-eyed, sugar rush-ed bubblegum punk of early singles, mixing in some slower tempos and minor-key melodies, but Bleached’s primary m.o. is still the simple, sunshine-y, chunky-chorded Ramones-esque jam.”

Merchandise, Totale Night The incendiary Tampa trio Merchandise continue to push outward on their sound. Here they deliver five sprawling, anthemic, passionate rockers over thirty-four epic minutes.

Rilo Kiley, rkives An odds-and-ends compilation from Jenny Lewis and co. Says Patrick Rapa:

“Mostly unreleased or barely released, these tracks span the band’s career to create a lovely and peculiar listening experience. The antsy, lo-fi demo of the Sennett-sung “Rest of My Life” from 2001′s Take Offs and Landings can’t be from the same planet as this clubby remix of the Lewis-sung “Dejalo” from 2007′s Under the Blacklight — and, hey, Too $hort just popped up for a verse about tapping asses, just in case you weren’t confused.”

Generationals, Heza Jangly indie-rockers expand their sonic palette with their third LP. Ryan Reed says:

“”Say When,” with its tongue-tied percussion and sputtering sequenced synths, sounds like New Order on a beach vacation; “Put a Light On” is adult-contemporary funk, bolstered by electronic loops and digital handclaps; “Kemal” is the biggest head-scratcher (and maybe their best song ever) — a barrage of stabbing reggae guitar, sweaty hand drums, and twinkling glockenspiel.”

The Black Angels, Indigo Meadow Blown smoke rings of psych-rock revival from The Black Angels’ latest.

Yo-Yo Ma & Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Silk Road Ensemble, New Impossibilities

Cellist Yo Yo Ma’s musical adventures along the Silk Road continue with perhaps his biggest project yet: an album with his Silk Road Ensemble, made huge by the addition of a little band called The Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Since beginning this extraordinarily productive series of concerts, recordings and educational programs in 2000, Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project have traced the lineage of the Western classical tradition back through the trade routes that brought people, instruments, and techniques from Central Asia into Europe, usually through Venice, during the so-called Age of Exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries. This has meant putting the violin, cello, flute, and other orchestral instruments in close contact with their musical cousins — fiddles from Iran, lutes from Uzbekistan, zithers from China. The addition of a full-on Western orchestra, especially one with the powerful collective voice of the Chicago Symphony, could easily have overwhelmed the chemistry that has developed within the Silk Road Ensemble. Happily, that has not been the case. The orchestrations here are usually restrained but telling, rising to a grand climax only on the rare occasions where the music specifically calls for it. And Osvaldo Golijov definitely calls for it in his piece “Night of the Flying Horses,” which ends with a heaven-storming gallop that is definitely a high point on the album.

The famous Chinese piece “Ambush From Ten Sides” is one of the most popular works in the repertoire of the pipa, the Chinese lute; but here, it is augmented by sheng (a handheld mouth organ), guitar, cello, and orchestra. The original is a marvel of musical economy — a single, ancient instrument is somehow able to graphically depict a famous battle from Chinese history right down to the flight of the arrows and the retreating hooves of the horses. But sometimes you don’t want to economize; the piece here becomes something very close to a film score, where you don’t really need to see the film.

The album starts well, too, with the “Arabian Waltz” by the Lebanese-born, German-based oud player Rabih Abou-Khalil. The grand sweep of the orchestra and the exotic tinge of Abou-Khalil’s Near Eastern and flamenco-steeped melody offer a winning combination of familiar sonic territory with unexpected tonal and instrumental colors. Another high point is “The Silent City,” a collaboration between Ljova (real name Lev Zhurbin), the Russian-American violist and composer, and Kayhan Kalhor, generally considered to be Iran’s premiere player of the kemanche, the traditional fiddle. It is one of a series of works these two have done, separately and together, with the string section of the Silk Road Ensemble, which has spun off to record its own musical journeys under the name Brooklyn Rider. And so Yo Yo Ma’s globetrotting Eurasian musical project ends up having strong ties to the New World as well.

The Besnard Lakes, Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO

Since 2003, the Montreal indie-rock collective Besnard Lakes has been perfecting their blend of dreamy, otherworldly indie rock; on their fourth album, Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO, they hit a new, blissful peak. Frontman Jace Lasek, bassist (and Lasek’s wife) Olga Goreas, along with drummer Kevin Laing and guitarist Richard White, once again ply their elongated, swooning harmonies, like The Beach Boys at half-speed, over majestic, glacially moving rock suites. According to the band, the album has a vague concept of sorts, a “journey of introspection” told by multiple narrators that deals with “the endurance of the human spirit during prophetic times.” Whatever this means is not clear, but the yearning, searching feeling shines through nonetheless. On the atypically brisk, “People of the Sticks,” the album’s spiritual center and immediate highlight, the Lakes hit an energetic peak, yet there’s still a settled sublimity at the music’s core, allowing them Lakes to continue their low-key reign as the best dreamers in indie-rock.

New This Week: Charles Bradley, Rilo Kiley, The Besnard Lakes & More

Charles Bradley, Victim of Love: Charles Bradley, who’s taking over eMusic this week, recaptures and transcends the southern soul grooves of his last record. Barry Walters says:

Charles Bradley is not the kind of guy to sing of love in fantastical terms; he’s much too real for that. Bearing a voice streaked with the ravages of inner torment, this nomadic 64-year-old soul shouter — now based in a Brooklyn very different to the one in which he grew up — instead captures the pains and pleasures of love in sobering but unrestrained tones: He screams, shouts, pleads and moans of desire and disappointment so extreme that words alone cannot suffice. Not merely singing, he testifies of love and social injustice: This former James Brown impersonator does not hold back.

Bleached, Ride Your Heart: Sisters Jennifer and Jessie Clavin left their old band Mika Miko behind, but now they’re back as Bleached. Alex Naidus says:

Bleached’s motto might be “Sisters just wanna have fun.” The L.A. four-piece orbits around Jennifer and Jessie Clavin, the two primary songwriters and sisters who specialize in exuberant garage-punk. After the dissolution of the Clavins’ previous band — the locally-beloved, yelpier Mika Miko — the pair took joyous refuge in writing sweet, revved-up three-chord songs together. Ride Your Heart comes down a bit from the wide-eyed, sugar rush-ed bubblegum punk of early singles, mixing in some slower tempos and minor-key melodies, but Bleached’s primary m.o. is still the simple, sunshine-y, chunky-chorded Ramones-esque jam.

Rilo Kiley, rkives: An odds-and-ends comp from Jenny Lewis & co. Says Patrick Rapa:

Mostly unreleased or barely released, these tracks span the band’s career to create a lovely and peculiar listening experience. The antsy, lo-fi demo of the Sennett-sung “Rest of My Life” from 2001′s Take Offs and Landings can’t be from the same planet as this clubby remix of the Lewis-sung “Dejalo” from 2007′s Under the Blacklight — and, hey, Too $hort just popped up for a verse about tapping asses, just in case you weren’t confused.

Milk Music, Cruise Your Illusion: The first proper LP from Olympia, Washington’s Milk Music. eMusic’s Ilya Zinger says:

On Cruise Your Illusion, the first proper full-length from Olympia, Washington’s Milk Music, the quartet wedges itself somewhere within the SST Records-Neil Young-Wipers universe, pitting sweat-stained, heavy hardcore punk against indelible melodies and endless sincerity. Since their early output, a 2009 demo cassette and a 12-inch in 2010, the band has turned their DIY determination into full-fledged ambition, and the songs on Cruise are as honest and spiritual as they are messy and loud.

 

Mudhoney, Vanishing Point: David Raposa argues that being eligible for AARP hasn’t done much to make Mudhoney soft. He says:

The so-over-it cynicism and exhaustion that’s been the group’s m.o. all these years is a much better look on them as distinguished gentlemen. Granted, it’s hard to imagine a younger Mark Arm taking the time to write a song about white wine. But the 96-second scorched-earth screed that is “Chardonnay” shows that no subject is safe from Mudhoney’s indomitable anger and ennui. There’s no rose-colored nostalgia trip happening here, though: As Mudhoney enters their 25th year, still wrestling with whatever crawled up their backside and died way back then, they’re arguably at the height of their powers.

The Besnard Lakes, Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO: On their third LP, The Besnard Lakes perfect their blend of dreamy indie rock. Arye Dworken says:

On their fourth album, Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO, they hit a new, blissful peak. Frontman Jace Lasek, bassist (and Lasek’s wife) Olga Goreas, along with drummer Kevin Laing and guitarist Richard White, once again ply their elongated, swooning harmonies, like The Beach Boys at half-speed, over majestic, glacially moving rock suites.

Tyler, The Creator, Wolf: The face of Odd Future takes a page from Eminem on his third LP. Says Nick Murray:

In the past, Tyler, the Creator has made it clear that his favorite album by Eminem, the man he once referred to as his atheist God, is Relapse, the dark, dense comeback record that preceded the chart-topping Recovery. Wolf, the producer/rapper/clothing designer/cockroach-munching troublemaker’s third full-length, inherits the Shady influence that marked its predecessors, but it also looks back past Relapse to earlier entries in the older rapper’s discography, The Marshall Mathers LP in particular.

A Hawk & A Hacksaw, You Have Already Gone To The Other World: A Hawk & A Hacksaw’s sixth release is loosely based on a score written to accompany Sergei Parajanov’s 1965 documentary film Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors, and Luke Turner says it’s their finest work yet:

Over the past decade, the New Mexican duo of Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost, aka A Hawk & A Hacksaw, have taken a fascinating journey through the music of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Turkey and beyond. They also have a long-standing connection with cinema: Their first release was the soundtrack to a documentary about Slovenian thinker Slavoj Žižek. This album, their sixth, is loosely based on a score written to accompany Sergei Parajanov’s 1965 documentary film Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors, about the Slavic Hutsul people in the Carpathian mountains that run through Central and Easter Europe. Clearly, there’s magic in those hills, and it’s richly mined here, as the pair put some fierce twists on the music of the Ukraine, Hungary and Romania.

Generationals, Heza: Jangly indie-rockers expand their sonic palette with their third LP. Ryan Reed says:

The New Orleans duo have completely expanded their sonic palette, branching into some fascinating new directions: “Say When,” with its tongue-tied percussion and sputtering sequenced synths, sounds like New Order on a beach vacation; “Put a Light On” is adult-contemporary funk, bolstered by electronic loops and digital handclaps; “Kemal” is the biggest head-scratcher (and maybe their best song ever) — a barrage of stabbing reggae guitar, sweaty hand drums, and twinkling glockenspiel.

Cold War Kids, Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: Cold War Kids make a bold move that puts emphasis on frontman Nathan Willett’s blaring, soulful voice. Ryan Reed says:

Lead single “Miracle Mile” is the most hard-hitting track they’ve ever penned, Willett warbling over a surge of bar-room piano and Matt Aveiro’s primal pound. It’s the sole moment of familiarity on an album of colorful new twists: The creeping “Lost that Easy” buzzes with electronic hi-hats and new-wave synth-bass; “Bottled Affection” marries hip-hop programming to drizzled guitar noise and a monster chorus falsetto; the closing “Bitter Poem” is a slow-building ballad, laced with melancholy keys and grizzled sax.

Merchandise, Totale Night – The incendiary Tampa trio Merchandise continue to push outward on their sound. Here, they deliver five sprawling, anthemic, passionate rockers over thirty-four epic minutes. Watch these guys: They are building towards a Statement, and if they’re not yet all the way “there,” they’ve hit upon something.

The Black Angels, Indigo Meadow – Blown smoke rings of psych-rock revival from The Black Angels’ latest. Killer guitar tones on this.

Burger Records! Burger Records! Burger Records! – One of our favorite labels. Just go and play here for awhile! Burger Records is one of the best purveyors of lo-fi home-taped indie-rock and indie-pop around these days. Just clicking around on random titles will give you joy, I promise; I just bopped in my seat to Garbo’s Daughter’s recorded-in-a-trash-can surf-pop ditties, the warped campfire-rock of Burnt Ones, and the thrillingly cruddy home-piercing punk of The Cosmonauts. You can also find CLASSIC jangle-pop from groups like Cleaners From Venus. Trust us on this one, guys; there is something for you here!

The Gates of Slumber, The Wretch – Balefully lumbering down-tuned stoner metal, heavy on riffs. Satisfying.

Martin Hall, Phasewide Exit Signs – The Danish singer/songwriter/composer/multi-instrumentalist/author’s latest batch of heady, forbiddingly beautiful art songs, on his own Panoptikon label. RIYL: Solo Nico, Scott Walker.

Fairport Convention, Live in 87 – As the title says, a live set from the legendary folk-rockers.

Gun Outfit, Hard Coming Down – This band has been around for awhile, wallowing sexily around in bad vibes and barely-tuned guitars. This is their strongest-sounding release yet, their dual male/female vocals and dirty guitars hitting a new groove.

Mad Season, Above (Deluxe Edition) – The one-album side project featuring members of Pearl Jam (Mike McCready), Screaming Trees (Barrett Martin), and, of course, Layne Staley of Alice in Chains. These guys weren’t exactly the highest artistic peak of grunge, but this is still an interesting moment in music history, and this is a definitive reissue of their project.

Anne Sofie Van Otter/Thomas Quasthoff, Schubert: Lieder With Orchestra -  Schuber lieder, sung with mellow late-afternoon-sun glory by Van Otter Quasthoff, two of the greatest lieder singers on the planet, backed by the Berlin Philharmonic. A-list stuff.

Olafur Arnalds, For Now I Am Winter – Lovely, subdued neoclassical miniatures.

Various Artists, The Music is You: A Tribute to John Denver – An indie-world tribute to good old John Denver, whose music could use to be rescued from its thick layer of accumulated cultural cheese. Here, J Mascis, Lucinda Williams, Josh Ritter, Edward Sharpe, and others pitch in with covers of their favorites.

The Baptist Generals, “Dog That Bit You” – Ornery Crazy Horse homage going on here, right down to pinched, hollering Neil Young-style vocal.

Guided By Voices, “Xeno Pariah” – New single from band that just won’t stop releasing music. It sounds like classic GBV, which you know by now is something you want in your life or not.

50 Cent, “We Up” - New track from 50 Cent, featuring Kendrick Lamar.

What is an eMusic Takeover?

All this week, we’ve invited Charles Bradley and his co-writer and co-producer Tom Brenneck (also of the Menahan Street Band) to “Take Over eMusic.” The “eMusic Takeover” is a special honor we extend to artists we feel are true visionaries — forward-thinking, aggressively committed to their art, and unwavering from expressing their unique point of view in song. All it takes is even a cursory listen to Bradley’s second record, the slow-smoldering Victim of Love, to realize that he meets all of these criteria and then some. We are honored to have him as our honorary editor-in-chief for the week.

Any artist we ask to take over eMusic gets control over our editorial for that week: They assign interviews with artists they like and they handpick albums to run as Reviews of the Day that week. Past eMusic Takeovers have been conducted by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Jens Lekman, Edwyn Collins, John Lydon and Bjork. We are thrilled to add Charles Bradley to that esteemed list.

We’re always on the lookout for artists to add to this roster. So we turn the question to you: Which artist would you most like to see take over eMusic in the future?

Bleached, Ride Your Heart

Bleached’s motto might be “Sisters just wanna have fun.” The L.A. four-piece orbits around Jennifer and Jessie Clavin, the two primary songwriters and sisters who specialize in exuberant garage-punk. After the dissolution of the Clavins’ previous band — the locally-beloved, yelpier Mika Miko — the pair took joyous refuge in writing sweet, revved-up three-chord songs together. Last year Jennifer told Spinner, “I feel like I wouldn’t be playing music if I didn’t have that [connection] with my sister…I really feel like we complete each other’s music situation.”

Ride Your Heart comes down a bit from the wide-eyed, sugar rush-ed bubblegum punk of early singles, mixing in some slower tempos and minor-key melodies, but Bleached’s primary m.o. is still the simple, sunshine-y, chunky-chorded Ramones-esque jam. Garage isn’t just a facile label here — the sisters actually learned their instruments in their parents’ suburban L.A. garage growing up — and the no-frills approach makes much of the album wonderfully unabashed and direct. “Love Spells,” a perfectly punchy ditty with a great snotty descending melody, is followed immediately by the irresistible hyperactive punk doo-wop of “Searching through the Past.” The band doesn’t exist to kill its idols — Jennifer has said that she’s “obsessed with Blondie,” which partially explains naming a song “Waiting by the Telephone” — but to gleefully romp alongside them like they’re at a raucous, imaginary punk fantasy camp.

Charles Bradley, Victim of Love

Charles Bradley is not the kind of guy to sing of love in fantastical terms; he’s much too real for that. Bearing a voice streaked with the ravages of inner torment, this nomadic 64-year-old soul shouter — now based in a Brooklyn very different to the one in which he grew up — instead captures the pains and pleasures of love in sobering but unrestrained tones: He screams, shouts, pleads and moans of desire and disappointment so extreme that words alone cannot suffice. Not merely singing, he testifies of love and social injustice: This former James Brown impersonator does not hold back.

Bradley’s second album teams him with the Menahan Street Band, a dynamic crew drawn from the Dap-Kings, Antibalas, the Budos Band and other Daptone acts. Unlike his 2011 debut No Time for Dreaming, this one’s solely comprised of originals composed by Bradley, Menahan leader Charles Brenneck, and other band members who help him both recapture and transcend the southern soul grooves of Dreaming. Victim of Love is no less reverent, though: When it leaves behind the romantic themes of its first half for a suite of socially conscious tracks starting with “Confusion,” producer/guitarist Brenneck conjures up a storm of psychedelic sound effects and thunderous rock riffs that evokes Norman Whitfield’s late-’60s/early-’70s work with the Temptations. The tough, tumultuous results suit Bradley’s growls and grunts, particularly on “Hurricane,” where man’s ecological abuse begets tears from heaven that make life hell. On the concluding “Through the Storm,” clouds part for prayerful sentiments of gratitude and hope. He’s weathered the tempest, yet remains tenacious.

Interview: Charles Bradley

[Charles Bradley turned heads and broke hearts with his 2011 triumph No Time for Dreaming. On the advent of his second masterpiece, the scorching, searing, Victim of Love, we invited Bradley and his bandleader and co-writer, Tom Brenneck, to take over eMusic's editorial section. Below, they discuss the whirlwind that was the last two years of their lives. You can also read our interview with legendary songwriter Leon Russell, commissioned at Bradley and Brenneck's request. — Ed.]

Emerging from nowhere to deliver his 2011 debut at the ripe age of 62, Charles Bradley has quickly become one of the most talked about and beloved artists of the decade. With a rich, raspy voice fit to compare with the greats of the golden era in the 1960s and early ’70s, Bradley, almost overnight, has become soul’s leading ambassador in the new millennium.

His live performances routinely unfold as touchy-feely love-ins between artist and audience. Behind this in-the-now euphoria is a life story of deprivation, itinerancy and bitter failure. As illustrated in a new documentary about him called Soul Of America, Bradley, like the subject of a Curtis Mayfield song, has lived most of his life beneath the poverty line, relying on charity from soup kitchens, sleeping rough, with no fixed abode.

After settling in Brooklyn, he plied a meager trade for many years as a James Brown impersonator in the Black Velvet revue. His fortunes only began to reverse when he hooked up with Gabe Roth from New York’s R&B imprint, Daptone, who in turn introduced him to aspiring band leader, producer and songwriter, Thomas Brenneck. From unsteady, no-budget beginnings, the duo worked at realizing Bradley’s higher talent.

Backed by Brenneck’s Menahan Street Band, Bradley released “No Time for Dreaming,” about his own private hardships, to huge global acclaim. He duly wowed the world on tour, and now returns with Victim Of Love — a record of exquisite joy, hope and gratitude, which pushes at the boundaries of conventional R&B like some lost treasure of early-’70s psychedelic soul. When eMusic hooks up with him and Brenneck on their latest ambassadorial London visit, Bradley’s voice is hoarse from so much testifying and giving. But now, at last, is the time for dreaming.

Yours is an incredible story, Charles: all that power to move people has been bottled up inside you all these years. Did you always know it was in there?

Charles Bradley: True artists, that sing from their soul and heart — nobody knows the depths they go under for a length of time trying to hold onto the honesty and decency and respect inside them. A person don’t get that easy. They work their asses off. I’m saying if you wanna be a career singer, you gotta take that hurt with ya.

But it was all this guy [pointing at Brenneck], helping me get heard. I say this to all my interviews — he’s gonna get tired of me thanking him. Then I’ll say, he might as well get used to it, because I can’t tell him enough where I would’ve been at right now — calling people and getting nowhere, doing my James Brown show still, keeping alive the dream, hoping it’s not too late.

Did you ever audition for TV talent contests, hoping to become a Susan Boyle-style “senior” success?

Bradley: I tried to get on all those things. Then I saw Jennifer Hudson [low-ranking finalist on the third season of American Idol, who went onto recording and acting mega-success] — I was angry at her! How did she get the chance? Overnight she just flew up, and I’ve been trying to get there for years? I was having doubts about everything. But my time came, in its own way.

The first album, No Time For Dreaming, documents the pain and hardship of your life, in a gritty funk style. Was it a kind of exorcism for you?

Bradley: I say, what is soul? Soul don’t have no creed or color. It’s what you been through, your hardship deep in your soul. You gotta reach down there where people’s never been half as deep, and pull it out. So the more I’m going deep into myself — that’s what soul’s about. Me and Tommy, we didn’t let go, we kept digging at one another, and that turned into that first record.

Was it a DIY effort, between the two of you?

Thomas Brenneck: 100 percent. I wrote all the songs with Charles, produced it, recorded it in my bedroom at the time — our humble beginnings. Gabe actually bought me a half-inch 8-track machine, which I kept right next to my bed, with a little stereo and a piano, and I chipped away, played stuff for Charles, and he loved it.

The years have been nice and we’ve got a recording studio now. We toured the first record, wrote a bunch of other songs, then went to the studio and recorded them with a much bigger sonic palette to choose from.

Did you know Daptone’s stuff before that, Charles?

Bradley: I knew Tom going on a lotta years.

Brenneck: We had recorded two singles, prior to the first album, with a different group. We first got introduced by Gabe from Daptone. I had an instrumental group called Dirt Rifle & The Funky Bullets, based on The Meters, James Brown, Dyke & The Blazers and such. Charles had knocked on Gabe’s door, saying, Hi, I’m a singer, you make records — are you looking for singers?

So Gabe introduced us, and we recorded two singles for Daptone that Gabe produced, as Charles Bradley & The Poets. The two singles were extremely derivative. It took five years after that, I’d say, of growth for myself, maturing in taste of music, for me to record some Menahan Street Band stuff that was much deeper music, it wasn’t just funky on the surface. It was slower and much deeper.

When Charles heard that music, he got inspired, and I think all his inspiration was really coming from all his trials and tribulations, and from living a life of struggle and poverty, and moving around, and not really having a home, and so that first album is really just Charles singing about the darkness, about the world from his perspective.

So that was Ground Zero?

Brenneck: Yeah, exactly, and now he’s felt warmth from people all around the world, and it’s because of those stories that people can relate to Charles — they’re drawn to him, and they love him, and he’s not just an entertainer up there that’s singing somebody else’s songs.

We write these songs together, they come from a really deep place, and now his inspiration is being drawn from some of these positive things that have happened in his life, and it still lends itself to be beautiful, soulful songs. They don’t just have to be tough, gritty and raw, they can be beautiful and psychedelic and soulful at the same time.

Some of your live shows have become the stuff of legend. One that often gets mentioned was at an outdoor festival in Utopia, Texas, where the heavens opened for a biblical downpour, and you went out and hugged crowd members in the rain…

Bradley: Yeah, that was a show! There’s nothing on earth like being on stage. To me, stage is home. If I see the people standing outside in the rain, getting wet, to watch me perform — I said, “Naaah, that not fair!” I had to jump off the stage and get out in the mud and get wet with ‘em! That’s when everybody went crazy. I said, “You gettin’ wet out there watchin’ me perform — can I come out, too?” Yeeah! It was a tear-dropper. There was warmth, kindness, hurt, love, and, in the midst of it, it was beautiful.

Does it feel massively different to you, doing your own show, with your own music, compared to doing your old James Brown show?

Bradley: I think they’re loving me more because I’m singing my song, and I’m singing from the heart, rather than doing James Brown and trying to manifest on his style.

Victim Of Love feels like a watershed record for Daptone. People were sometimes sniffy about it at first, like it was pointless and copyist. Has it all been a process of winning people over?

Brenneck: Yeah, to modern soulful music. With this album, I was really trying to push outside of the boundaries of the normal Daptone production by adding elements that you wouldn’t hear on Sharon Jones records and such. We’re trying to make soul music in 2013, and embrace all our influences that are outside of just directly James Brown or Otis Redding or any Motown Detroit artist. But once he sings on it, it’s impossible to call it anything but a soul record.

Bradley: Tommy said, “You wanna move on from James Brown?” And he’s doing it by putting in that music that I like. Once my spirit gets into the depths of the music when I hear it, it all happens. I don’t wanna do James Brown no more, because I’m feeling that feeling I’ve been wanting for a long time, and the more you put it on me, and when I get into it when you give it to me, the more I want it. That’s just the bottom line.

Now we’re doing funk and rock. We’re gonna find a new mixture. We’re heading into a mixture that nobody’s doin’, our own creation.

Brenneck: It’s not gonna be fresh by doing a hip-hop song. It’s gonna be by him doing his own song, that embraces all that and lots else beside. Bradley could take a Black Sabbath song and turn it into a soul song.

You might go heavy metal next time? Like with Jimmy Page guitar?

Brenneck: Jimmy Page is cool, but that’s not heavy metal, it’s rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s where we’re going. Bradley can do a good Robert Plant impersonation, and he doesn’t even know it!

Bradley: Yeah, and one song we play is Neil Young’s “Heart Of Gold.” I lu-u-urve doing that song. It feels good, it fits right in.

How has your life changed since your upturn in fortunes, Charles? Do you have a decent lifestyle now?

Bradley: Not totally. I’m working on it.

Do you have a family, with kids to provide for?

Bradley: I made a vow to myself when I was 14 years old, and I lived that commitment from that date right up to today: No child of mine is comin’ into this world. I’m gonna keep seeking, but right now at my age, 64, it’s too late for me to have kids.

But surely your story proves that it’s never too late for anything?

Bradley: No, man, it’s best to have kids at Tommy’s age. He can grow up with his kids, be young with ‘em, play with ‘em. My playin’ — I wanna do it onstage. I’m gonna be godfather to a lotta kids [gesturing out into imaginary audience, smiling], and I’m gonna teach them to the best of my ability. Same thing with Oprah [Winfrey]: She never had no kids, but she’s like the motherhood of all kids. So I’m gonna be a godfather!

And you’re going to be a movie star, too, with your own documentary…

Brenneck: That’s not gonna make Bradley a movie star, that’s just gonna make him a topic of conversation. It’s more about his life than his music. Where it ends, another documentary could start, because the last few years have been crazy, successful, amazing — but with that success, after 60 years of being down in the dumps, your shit doesn’t change overnight, even if the money starts coming your way. It’s still hard to change what you’re used to, psychologically, even if physically it’s easier to get material things.

There’s a lot of people around Charles trying to help him out, and Charles is trying to steer on the right path, not listen to people around him who’re trying to just leech onto him. It’s hard.

Bradley: One thing my mother taught me, I won’t forget: Go out and make money, but never let money make you. And I won’t. The only thing material things can do for me, is buy things I don’t have, and get me outta that level that I’m live in.

But this new record is about documenting the changes that are underway, and expressing your hope, love and gratitude?

Bradley: This new record is coming out of the darkness into the light, and meeting new peoples. I’ve been meeting lots of positive people, and they’ve been making me more sure of myself. [smiles] It’s a beautiful thing.