03-08-2018 11:37 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from the recent past]

03-08-2018 11:37 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from the recent past] # Walking Papers, Warmduscher, Walking Papers, Boss Hog, Esperanza Spalding, David Bowie, Baxter Dury, Belle and Sebastian, Harlan T. Bobo, Chicano Batman, PJ Harvey, Moon Duo, Samara Lubelski

M U S I C

pres_perf_mix # The player always plays the latest playlist tracks. / A lejátszó mindig a legújabb playlist számait játssza. 

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Seattle-based hard rockers featuring members of the Missionary Position and Duff McKagan. Seattle-based quartet Walking Papers make no-nonsense, guitar-heavy rock & roll. 
Walking Papers
My Luck Pushed Back (Jeff Angel / Walking Papers) 3:54
This Is How It Ends (Jeff Angel / Walking Papers) 6:29
from WP2 2018
Packed with enough dirty guitar riffs to fill a smoky roadside bar, Walking Papers' second album, WP2, is another dose of no-nonsense rock & roll from the Seattle-based group. Recorded in early 2015 -- shortly after wrapping up touring behind their self-titled debut -- WP2 arrived three years later in 2018, due to bassist Duff McKagan's obligations with his other band, Guns N' Roses. Improving upon their first with polished production and a livelier vigor, WP2 is blues-drenched rock that fans of Queens of the Stone Age and Screaming Trees should enjoy. Frontman Jeff Angell's voice carries the project, his gritty delivery reminiscent of Bono filtered through the murk of Mark Lanegan...

London-based rock & roll band featuring members of Fat White Family, Insecure Men, and Paranoid London. 
Warmduscher
Big Wilma (Saul Adamczewski / Jack Everett / Craig Higgins / Ben Romans-Hopcraft / Quinn Whalley) 2:05
The Sweet Smell of Florida (Saul Adamczewski / Jack Everett / Craig Higgins / Ben Romans-Hopcraft / Quinn Whalley) 4:15
from Whale City 2018
There's a lot about Warmduscher's music that qualifies it as good-time rock & roll (albeit of a distinctly deviant variety), but there's a whole lot more going on in Whale City. Their weirdly wild 2015 debut, Khaki Tears, set them apart from any standardized classification, and with the follow-up, they certainly continue to plow a furrow as outliers...

Raw and raucous blues-punk ensemble fronted by the husband-and-wife team of Jon Spencer and Cristina Martinez.  All-star N.Y.C. blues-punk combo Boss Hog was helmed by the husband-and-wife team of singer Cristina Martinez and singer/guitarist Jon Spencer, who'd previously teamed up in the legendary cult band Pussy Galore.
Boss Hog
Billy (Boss Hog) 3:47
Signal (Boss Hog) 2:54
Sunday Routine (Boss Hog) 3:49
from Brood X 2017
Boss Hog have always been a band content to work on a time-line that would puzzle most bands, perfectly willing to go five years between releases as they attended to their other projects. But 2017's Brood X arrives over 16 years after their last proper album, 2000's Whiteout, as Cristina Martinez sets aside her duties as a working mom and Jon Spencer takes some downtime from his Blues Explosion. If Boss Hog sound a bit different than they did at the dawn of the 21st century, that's to be expected, but Brood X (and the 2016 companion EP Brood Star) reveals that they've changed very little conceptually; their dirty mixture of punkified blues, raw funk, and stoned but committed show band swagger is a bit less swampy, but it will still make you feel good and greasy after a few spins...

Singer and instrumentalist Esperanza Spalding established herself as a wildly flourishing talent in the '00s.  Hailed as a prodigy on the acoustic double bass within months of first touching the instrument as a 15-year-old, Esperanza Spalding has emerged as a fine jazz bassist, but has also distinguished herself playing blues, funk, hip-hop, pop fusion, and Brazilian and Afro-Cuban styles as well.
Esperanza Spalding
Good Lava (Esperanza Spalding) 3:37
Judas (Esperanza Spalding) 4:09
Funk the Fear (Esperanza Spalding) 5:04
from Emily's D+Evolution 2016
On previous albums, Grammy-winning bassist and vocalist Esperanza Spalding dived into jazz standards, Brazilian rhythms, and sophisticated, harmonically nuanced R&B. But with her 2016 album, Emily's D+Evolution, she takes an entirely different approach. A concept album revolving around a central character named Emily (Spalding's middle name), Emily's D+Evolution is not a jazz album -- though jazz does inform much of the music here. Instead, Spalding -- who also co-produced the album alongside legendary producer Tony Visconti (David Bowie) -- builds the release largely around angular, electric guitar-rich prog rock, kinetic, rhythmically rich jazz fusion, and lyrically poetic pop. Of course, Spalding's version of pop is never predictable, always harmonically inventive, and frequently imbued with as many improvisational moments as possible within the boundaries of a given song. But relative to her previous releases, this is still a significant shift. Helping to bring Emily's D+Evolution to life is a band Spalding put together specifically for this project, including guitarist Matthew Stevens, drummer Karriem Riggins, keyboardist Corey King, and others. Conceptually, the character of Emily represents Spalding as a young girl, and works as a conduit through which she explores and unpacks complex ideas about life, love, sex, race, education, and the creative process. While it would be reductive to call Emily's D+Evolution a retro album, Spalding's harmonic and melodic content and production aesthetics definitely have a '70s quality...

The mercurial music icon widely considered the original pop chameleon and figurehead for countless musical movements.  The cliché about David Bowie is that he was a musical chameleon, adapting himself according to fashion and trends. 
David Bowie
Blackstar (David Bowie) 9:57
Lazarus (David Bowie) 6:22
Sue (Or in a Season of Crime) (Paul Bateman / Bob Bharma / David Bowie / Maria Schneider) 4:40
Girl Loves Me (David Bowie) 4:51
from Blackstar 2016
It's difficult to separate 2016's Blackstar from The Next Day, the album David Bowie released with little warning in 2013. Arriving after a ten-year drought, The Next Day pulsated with the shock of the new -- as Bowie's first album of new material in a decade, how could it not? -- but ultimately it was grounded in history, something its cover made plain in its remix of Heroes artwork....  To that end, Bowie recruited saxophonist Donny McCaslin and several of his New York cohorts to provide the instrumentation (and drafted disciple James Murphy to contribute percussion on a pair of cuts), a cast that suggests Blackstar goes a bit farther out than it actually does. Cannily front-loaded with its complicated cuts (songs that were not coincidentally also released as teaser singles), Blackstar starts at the fringe and works its way back toward familiar ground, ending with a trio of pop songs dressed in fancy electronics. These don't erase the heaviness of the opening quartet but such a sequencing suggests Blackstar is difficult when the main pleasure of the record is how utterly at ease it all feels: Bowie's joy in emphasizing the art in art-pop is palpable and its elegant, unhurried march resonates deeply.

Spinning wry, observant stories of life among the well-heeled but poorly behaved, Baxter Dury is a songwriter and vocalist with a strong and distinctive style. He's also British rock royalty, the son of pub rock/new wave icon Ian Dury, and his vocal style and lyrical bent owe a certain debt to his old man, while his music confirms he has a keen creative mind of his own.
Baxter Dury
Miami (Baxter Dury / Ben Gallagher / Madelaine Hart) 4:34
Prince of Tears (Baxter Dury / Ben Gallagher / Madelaine Hart) 3:05
from Prince Of Tears 2017
Sounding more like his old man with every passing year, Baxter Dury also sounds more confident than ever on Prince of Tears, his fifth album. Picking up where he left off on 2014's It's a Pleasure, Dury populates Prince of Tears with a rocky, Euro-disco, tongue-in-cheek allusion to his father's peak, which also provides useful support for his song-poems. Each of Dury's songs are deliberately shorn of excess -- there are no more hooks than necessary, no more beats than needed, the hooks are streamlined and slim -- which draws attention to the economy of his words and his wry delivery. All of this is familiar, so what counts on Prince of Tears is execution, and from top to bottom, it's one of his strongest albums, benefitting from his assurance and lack of nonsense.

A band that takes its name from a French children's television series about a boy and his dog would almost have to be precious, and to be sure, Belle and Sebastian are precious. But precious can be a damning word, and Belle and Sebastian don't have the negative qualities that the word connotes: they are private but not insular, pretty but not wimpy; they make gorgeous, delicate melodies sound full-bodied. Led by guitarist/vocalist Stuart Murdoch, the seven-piece band has an intimate, majestic sound that is equal parts folk-rock and '60s pop, but Murdoch's gift, not just for whimsy and surrealism but also for odd, unsettling lyrical detail, keeps the songs grounded in a tangible reality.
Belle and Sebastian
Sweet Dew Lee (Belle and Sebastian) 6:29
I'll Be Your Pilot (Belle and Sebastian) 4:15
Best Friend (Carla Easton / Belle and Sebastian) 3:41
from How To Solve Our Human Problems (Parts 1-3) 2018
On the eve of launching Belle and Sebastian's project How to Solve Our Human Problems, leader Stuart Murdoch explained his band's decision to release a series of three interlocked EPs instead of a long-player with this: "I think these days when an LP comes out, it's kind of disappointing. Nothing seems to happen, and I thought, 'We've got to do something different.'" Murdoch's way to combat the digital grind harks back to Belle and Sebastian's earliest days, when the group released a series of three EPs between 1996's If You're Feeling Sinister and 1998's The Boy with the Arab Strap, but those releases were spaced out over the course of 1997, where each of the installments of How to Solve Our Human Problems arrived in succession in the first months of 2018. Consequently, all three Human Problems EPs feel cut from the same cloth, all buzzing to a stylish good vibe pitched halfway between '60s modernism and '70s disco...

An enigmatic figure on the Memphis music scene, Harlan T. Bobo is a vocalist, songwriter, and arranger whose songs are obsessively personal, often dealing with the peaks and valleys of his love life. Bobo's confessional lyrics are usually married to polished, classically melodic music that blends elements of vintage pop and countrypolitan, though he sometimes veers into chaotic rock & roll
Harlan T. Bobo
Human (Harlan T. Bobo) 3:40
Ghost (Harlan T. Bobo) 3:58
Town (Harlan T. Bobo) 3:34
from A History of Violence 2018
On his first two solo albums, 2006's Too Much Love and 2007's I'm Your Man, Harlan T. Bobo dealt with the aftermath of a difficult romantic breakup, and with 2010's Sucker, he sang of his successful efforts to win the heart of an adventurous woman from Europe. It turns out that happy marriage has come to an end, but if you're imagining this will mean a return to the sound and outlook of Bobo's first two albums, you would be wrong. Apparently Bobo's divorce was something less than amicable, and 2018's A History of Violence is dark, bitter, and hard-edged in a way his music has never been before, not even in his punky side project the Fuzz. Bobo's slightly smoky voice is little changed from his previous efforts, even when he pushes it hard, and there's still a wickedly baroque sense of detail and character in his songs...

Alternative Latin band with a psychedelic hybrid sound who have opened for Alabama Shakes and Jack White.  Chicano Batman source their high-spirited alternative Latin synthesis from tropicália, West Coast psychedelia, and late-'60s/early-'70s soul, among other styles. Eduardo Arenas (bass, vocals), Bardo Martinez (lead vocals, organ, guitar), and Gabriel Villa (drums, percussion) made their recorded debut in 2009 with a self-released, self-titled album.
Chicano Batman
Passed You By (Chicano Batman / Bardo Martinez) 3:27
Freedom Is Free (Chicano Batman / Bardo Martinez) 4:03
The Taker Story (Chicano Batman / Bardo Martinez) 5:27
from Freedom Is Free 2017
Hitting the good groove may seem like a simple thing, but it's not. (If it were, anyone could have been James Brown, and a quick spin through his catalog confirms that's impossible.) And the ability to move the crowd can be used to say any number of things. Musical shape-shifters Chicano Batman have drawn from a rich variety of sources for their third album, 2017's Freedom Is Free -- Brazilian Tropicalia, Latin funk, vintage American soul, and R&B, shades of Afrobeat, and psychedelia of all sorts. But the way the band gracefully navigate the nexus between the passionate and the laid-back sides of their musical personality is what makes Freedom Is Free stand out. Just as Funkadelic's classic early albums indelibly merged rock guitars with funk grooves, Chicano Batman make music that makes your hips sway, but with a purposefully easy tempo. They give their music a vibe that's powerful and sensual all at once, merging their influences in a way that doesn't cancel out any of the elements...

The most challenging singer/songwriter to emerge in the '90s, her brutally honest lyrics match well to a progression of raw musical styles.  During the alternative rock explosion, several female singer/songwriters rose to prominence, but few have proved as distinctive or as widely praised as Polly Jean Harvey. Over the course of her career, Harvey established herself as one of the most individual and influential songwriters of her era, exploring themes of sex, love, and religion with unnerving honesty, dark humor, and a twisted theatricality.
PJ Harvey
The Community of Hope (PJ Harvey) 2:23
The Orange Monkey (PJ Harvey) 2:47
The Wheel (PJ Harvey) 5:38
from The Hope Six Demolition Project 2016
On 2011's Mercury Prize-winning Let England Shake, PJ Harvey connected World War I bloodbaths with the 21st century world in harrowing, moving ways. Its follow-up, The Hope Six Demolition Project, feels like a companion piece with a wider focus and more urgent mood. For this project -- which also includes the 2015 book of poetry The Hollow of the Hand and a film -- Harvey and her Shake collaborator, war photographer Seamus Murphy, emphasized documentation: The pair spent years researching in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C.; later, Harvey was literally transparent about the recording process, making Hope Six at a recording studio behind one-way glass for public audiences at London’s Somerset House. Befitting its origins, the album's sound is blunt and raw, mixing rock, blues, jazz, spirituals, and field recordings into the musical equivalent of photojournalism...

This San Francisco group featuring Wooden Shjips' Erik Johnson plays Krautrock-tinged psychedelic jams.  A project of Wooden Shjips' Erik "Ripley" Johnson and Sanae Yamada, San Francisco's Moon Duo are a psychedelic Krautrock band with chilly electronic underpinnings and drones inspired by Spacemen 3, Silver Apples, and Suicide.
Moon Duo
New Dawn (Moon Duo) 6:05
Sevens (Moon Duo) 6:46
from Occult Architecture Vol. 2 2017
...Occult Architecture Vol. 2, their fifth full-length, is their sweetest spot so far. It’s intended as a brighter counterpart to the darker Vol. 1 released in February, and while the two albums aren’t radically divergent, *Vol. 2 *is definitely the lightest, breeziest Moon Duo record to date. Everything flows ahead at mid tempo, with no tangential digressions or disruptive curveballs. Nearly half the album is taken up by two instrumentals that suggest the band jamming on a sunny, worry-free afternoon. It’d be easy to say music this pleasant is also fleeting, but just because Moon Duo indulge a sweet tooth doesn’t mean *Vol. 2 *is weightless. Think of them as sonic pastry chefs: you can’t live off their songs alone, but they’re not all empty calories either...

Violinist, singer, and songwriter Samara Lubelski’s experimental indie pop is wispy and web-like, nodding to both classic '60s psychedelia and 21st century freak folk aesthetics.  Since she began making music in the early '90s, Samara Lubelski has split her time between being a member of bands Hall of Fame, the Sonora Pine, and Tower Recordings (to name a few); a respected contributor on violin and guitar with Fiery Furnaces, MV & EE, and White Magic; a busy recording engineer; a member of avant-garde outfits; a guitarist in Thurston Moore's band Chelsea Light Moving; and a solo artist who has crafted a series of compelling albums that delve into light psychedelia and acid folk.
Samara Lubelski
Black Dots 3:30
High Rise 2:39
Tunnel Visions (Station the Spectacle) 3:50
from Flickers at the Station 2018
Since she released her first solo record in 2014, Samara Lubelski has made a string of under-the-radar gems that mix darkly psychedelic sonic textures with gentle melodies, knotty guitars, and Lubelski's mystical lyrics and tender whisper of a voice. As a former member of Tower Recordings and the Sonora Pine, as well as a collaborator with Thurston Moore, Lubelski has been part of a lot of interesting albums, but her solo work is where she really shines. Released in 2018, Flickers at the Station is another installment of baroque pop laced with intricate guitar figures, vintage synths, and haunting melodies, not far in style or quality from her other solo albums...