Beatles – Rubber Soul
Mason Jennings – Blood Of Man
Beatles – Revovler
Beatles – Abbey Road
Mark Knopfler – Get Lucky
Beatles – White Album
Pearl Jam – Backspacer
Thrice – Beggars
Kings Of Leon – Only By The Night
Beatles – Help
Beatles – Sgt Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band
Beatles – Let It Be
Brand New – Daisy
Fruit Bats – Ruminant Band
Yim Yames – Tribute To
Arctic Monkeys – Humbug
Black Dahlia Murder – Deflorate
Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown
Radiohead – In Rainbows
Rodrigo Y Gabriela – 11:11
Zee Avi – Zee Avi
Mayer Hawthorne: 9/13/09
If you’ve ever been a fan of soul music, take note.
I, myself, spent 10 years at KCBX, every Saturdays evening, blasting rhythm & blues and funk into the atmosphere as the Night Train, and I can whole claim you’ll want to hear Mayer Hawthorne’s album, Strange Arrangement. Scroll down to get a taste and a review of his recent album. But more importantly, he’ll be playing at Downtown Brew this Sunday, September 13th. Not only that, but we scored a soul DJ set from him earlier in the day at 3pm. This may seem like a lot of fuss over someone who’s debut record just arrived this week, but he’s already won the hearts of NPR, and I think he’ll spark your enthusiasm too.
Mayer Hawthorne
The story goes that Ann Arbor native Andrew Cohen, a DJ/producer and member of Athletic Mic League and Now On, began recording neo-soul tunes as a little side project for friends and family, layering in all the instruments himself, then singing all the vocal parts, and then mixing the tracks with a spare and lightly funky breakbeat sensibility. The result of all this was a simply stunning re-imagining of the classic soul and Motown sounds of the late ’60s and early ’70s, so well executed that Peanut Butter Wolf, head of the L.A. hip-hop label Stones Throw, initially thought he was listening to remixes of obscure old soul singles when he first heard Cohen’s demos. Wolf signed Cohen, who was now billing himself as Mayer Hawthorne (combining his middle name and the name of his hometown street), to a recording contract on the strength of songs like “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out,” which sounds like a long-lost Al Green track lightly reassembled for the 21st century.
His debut, A Strange Arrangement, is a wonderful, joyous delight from start to finish, managing to be both a nostalgic-sounding soul facsimile and a fresh urban retro dance listen all in one package.
Review: Magnolia Electric Co.
Magnolia Electric Co. – Josephine
Judge Josephine as the cathartic diversion for Magnolia Electric Co. key songwriter Jason Molina. With an apartment fire taking the life of his bassist Evan Farrell, Molina expresses his lose by recasting his emotional blues through his song narratives. Pining for a lost love filters through the country ballad “Shenandoah”, a slide guitar echoes a slippery, trailing tear. Weariness fills the opener “O! Grace”: “Its a long way between horizons/ And it gets farther everyday.” Equipped with additional instrumental ensemble (piano, dobro, lapsteel, saxophone) and the wonderful ear of Steve Albini to capture it all to tape, there is something captivating in his melancholy release. And the ghost of Josephine never sits still. Wanders out of her own self-titled song, she materializes eerily on “Hope Dies Last” with its allusion to fire and longingly on the album send-off “An Arrow In The Gate.” Though familiar territory, Molina continues to captures the ubiquitious themes of tragedy and loneliness.
Listen To: O! Grace
