Album Reviews

like the title says, these are album reviews

Francis Lai – Vivre Pour Vivre

vivre pour vivre

French composer Francis Lai is perhaps best known for his breakthrough song Un homme et une femme from the 1966 film of the same name.

Lesser known, however, at least in the States, is the film from the next year called Vivre pour Vivre (Live For Life). It was the second collaboration between Lai and Un homme et une femme director Claude Lelouch.

This film is incredibly hard to come by in America; Netflix doesn’t offer it. Amazon offers a Russian! import. And, at the time of this writing, eBay has a single listing for it on PAL DVD. It’s entirely possible that it hasn’t seen any kind of release in the U.S. since the original 1967 debut, which seems odd since it was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe.

The music itself was also nominated for a Golden Globe but lost to Camelot. For this score, Lai composed a specific theme for each of the main characters: Robert, newscaster; Catherine, his wife; and Candice, his mistress (played by Candice Bergen of all people).

Without having seen the film, I can’t comment on how it works on screen, but Candice’s theme evokes a kind of troubled, but determined passion:

[audio:061210ThemedeCandice.mp3]

Trotter Trio – Sketchin on Star Wars Jazz

Interpretations of John Williams’ Star Wars music is a veritable cottage industry. A portion of it is sure to turn up at any concert performance featuring “movie music” as well as concert recordings featuring the same. Then, there’s Meco’s disco versions, The Evil Genius Orchestra’s excellent cocktail versions as well as countless techno/dance/club versions.

So it should come as no surprise that there is at least one jazz variation. The Trotter Trio lays out nine tracks from the original trilogy plus one “inspired by” song that incorporates quotes of the “Force Theme.” The styles range from uptempo swing jazz to mellow cool jazz. There’s even a hint of “smooth” jazz mixed in too but I won’t hold that against it.

Listening to this record, I can’t help but imagine Star Wars set, not as an epic space opera, but as a mirky black-and-white film noir, particularly when hearing Han Solo and the Princess:

[audio:061204StarWarsJazz.mp3]

It’s a Cool, Cool Christmas: An Indie Alternative

It's a Cool, Cool, Christmas

Thanksgiving is, of course, the beginning of the Xmas season in the United States. Everyone takes a day to spend time with loved ones and rest up a bit, giving thanks for all that is well and good in their lives. The festive among us put up Xmas trees and other holiday trimmings while the more adventurous plot how to take maximum advantage of “Black Friday” retail savings.

Everything stops for a day and the world seems to change; it will be different for the next thirty days or so. In addition to changes in decor, another environmental shift signals the start of a new season: it is now acceptable to play Xmas music.

Yes, an entire sub-genre of music that is forever relegated to irrelevance for all but four weeks of the year is suddenly thrust into the spotlight. In fact, numorous radio stations throughout the country devote all of Thanksgiving’s Day to nothing Xmas tunes as a way of ushering in the season, Some stations continue the practice through Christmas Day.

The thing is, as nice as it is to hear the songs one hasn’t heard in a year’s time, Xmas music gets old. Fast. There’s a reason it languishes in obscurity for the majority of the year… It’s repetitive; the handful of staples that one hears ad infinitum each year quickly wear out their welcomes.

That’s why I really enjoy this album: It’s a Cool, Cool Christmas.

Released in 2000, this compilation features a plethora of notable indie rock bands performing some fresh, inventive and just plain off-the-wall renditions of the classics as well as some nice original compositions, like the one below. The group is Grandaddy, the song is Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland. Yeah, it’s goofy, but it’s got a kind of silly charm.

Shaken and Stirred: The James Bond Project

Webomatica posts about his best and worst James Bond songs. It’s a nice list; I threw my picks into the comments, though I left out the iconic James Bond Theme. god bless John Barry for that. We disagree about Man With The Golden Gun, but to each his own.

But, really, I’d like to call some attention to another Bond-related project. Shortly before composer David Arnold took over the scoring responsibilities of the franchise, he produced a covers album featuring the famous intro songs performed by contemporary artists. In fact, this project contributed to his getting the assignment for Tomorrow Never Dies.

The disc was titled, oddly enough: Shaken and Stirred: The David Arnold James Bond Project and honestly, overall it’s not that good.

None of the performers involved (David McAlmont, Pulp, Shara Nelson, Martin Fry, others) manage to improve upon the original versions, which leads to the question, “What the heck was the point?”

Of course, there are a couple worthwhile tracks on the album. Aimee Mann does a pretty decent rendition of Carly Simon’s Nobody Does It Better and UK progressive house outfit Leftfield submits an intriguingly up-tempo remix of Barry’s Space March theme.

But the real surprise on the album comes from none other than Iggy Pop. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but his version of Louis Armstrong’s We Have All The Time In The World is sublime. Give it a listen:

[audio:BondIggyPop.mp3]

Curiously, Bjork also recorded a song for the project (Nancy Sinatra’s You Only Live Twice), but withdrew it shortly before publication. Her version is fairly faithful to the original and basically sounds, well, like Bjork singing You Only Live Twice. It surfaced on the internet a few years ago; you can listen to it below or download an mp3 here.

[audio:BondBjork.mp3]

Stereolab – Sound-dust under your skin

sound dusted stereolab

Sound-dust was Stereolab’s first release since Cobra and Phases… the record that really exposed me to their music. It came out as I was slowly digesting the groop’s extensive back catalog. The previous records had built expectations and I was trepidatious toward the possibility that it might not meet them.

I was a fan, but I just didn’t know what to expect.

On the first couple listens I found it wasn’t a disappointment. Sound-dust had a cleaner, straight-forward sound to it that’s easy to breath. Space moth and Captain Easychord were both instant classics, the latter of which I have a pleasant memory of: sitting in traffic in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, windows rolled down in my ’93 Hyundai Sonata, blasting it as loud as I could.

Beyond those hits, though, the rest of the album lingered, failing to really catch on. And that’s how it deceived me.

For all its simple exterior, this album gets under your skin. The cleaner compositions hide within an engaging complexity, becoming more appreciated over time until suddenly you step back and realize almost every song has a five-star rating in your library.

In retrospect, I come to the realization that this one might be Stereolab’s best record ever.

on iTunes
Spacemoth (remastered version from Serene Velocity)

Supreme Beings of Leisure: Overlords of Recreation

supreme leisure

The Supreme Beings of Leisure debut has the distinction of being one of two albums that I’ve ever purchased after hearing less than a minute of music from it. The other is The Dandy Warhols Come Down. I bought it shortly after listening to snippets of a couple of songs at a Barnes & Noble kiosk. Incidentally, it’s entirely possible that themodernista sold the cd to me about six months before we officially met.

For a time, I was enthusiastic about it and the record received a lot of play. That was five years ago.

I can truthfully say that, despite the enthusiastic start, the album hasn’t aged very well. Perhaps it’s because it has this kind of big-budget Propellerheads-meets-Portishead slickness to it that comes across as formulaic. Like a Michael Bay film, the Beings produce a superficially appealing work that can’t help but come across as cold and calculated from the start.

Granted, the album’s retro-lounge-spybreak sensibilities do sound good and the music is not unpleasant to listen to. I just can’t escape the feeling that each song was deliberately designed to be used as the establishing background music for trendy night clubs on TV or in as many commercials as possible.

In the end, I think I’ll hang on to it (for a lark), but I won’t respect myself for it.

On iTunes
Supreme Beings of Leisure
Dandy Warhols
Propellerhead
Portishead

Joel McNeely – Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

In 1996, LucasFilm embarked on a multi-channel marketing project in an effort to make more money off the aging Star Wars franchise. The result was Shadows of the Empire, a venture that involved all the machinations of a movie marketing and tie-in campaign, without the production of an actual movie. In total, the endeavor included a novel, comic books, video games, trading cards, toys (of course) and, most relevant to this site, a soundtrack.

Not surprisingly, John Williams was approached to compose the score, but he declined, instead recommending Joel McNeely for the job.

McNeeley’s results are quite surprising and offer a unique look at Star Wars music. In contrast to Goldsmith’s approach with SG-1, McNeely almost completely abandons the established music for the franchise. Beyond the opening titles, there’s scantly a mention of any Star Wars motif or cue. No location cues for places featured in the films, and no character motifs save for a short mention of Leia’s theme. There’s a single quote of the "rebel fleet" cue from the end of The Empire Strikes Back and brief blast of the force theme. The Imperial March makes two brief appearance. Beyond that, the music is wholly original.

Listening to the soundtrack this past week, I couldn’t help but hear this music as I would some romantic-era "program music." Indeed, that’s what Shadows of the Empire essentially is. As a soundtrack without a film, each track works as a symphonic poem that exists to convey the ideas, settings and emotions of the story, without being tied literally to the images on a screen, leaving sonic imprints of peoples, places and events that can only be imagined.

Easily highlighting the score is track seven: The Seduction of Princess Leia, which is built around a fabulous freakin’ waltz, a first for Star Wars. The rest of the album is equally intriguing, invoking fantastic settings in a way reminiscent of the late romantics. Imagine Debussy or Holst writing music for Star Wars; the results would probably be similar to this.