Review: Lila Downs, Shake Away

Shake Away is a pretty remarkable album, but then that isn’t really surprising when you take into account that Lila Downs is a pretty remarkable woman.  Her mother, a singer, is a Mixteca Indian from Mexico; her father, a professor of cinematography and art, is an American of Scottish/English descent from Minnesota.  She lived in Mexico and California as a child, spent two years in college studying opera and classical music, dropped out and became a Deadhead following the band around the country while making jewelry to support herself, dropped out of that and returned to college eventually graduating with degrees in anthropology and voice.  And that leaves out the immersion in jazz and learning to weave among other things.

Shake Away reflects the convoluted path of Downs’ life.  Tracks range from rock  to heavily Mesoamerican influenced pop with many stops and detours along the way.  She does both original compositions and covers including an amazing version of Santana’s “Black Magic Woman”.  Her deep and husky voice and spooky delivery turns the tune from one about the woman to one sung by the woman.  She sings in both English and Spanish and one song, Lucinda Williams’ “I Envy the Wind”, is presented in both Spanish and English versions.

Her core band includes drums, bass, percussion, guitars, brass, accordian and a varity of latin instruments.  Almost every track on the album is supplemented with additional musicians that fill out the horn section, provide more guitars and sing.  Among the more notable are jazz clarinetist Anat Cohen who plays on five tracks, Cafe Tacvba’s lead vocalist (calling himself Ixaya Mazatzin Tleytol this time around) who sings on “Perro Negro”, and La Mari de Chambao who does an outstanding duet with Downs on “Ojo de Culebra”.

In an excellent essay in Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor write about how the divisions that are typically imposed on popular music like rock, pop, country, blues and R&B are usually derived from the marketing concerns of the record industry and do not reflect the way musicians who are categorized with one of these labels often listen to or play music.  Downs work on Shake Away is an almost perfect example of this.  The album sounds like she ignored all convention and combined the many types of music she knows and enjoys sometimes across different tracks and sometimes within a single song.  Shake Away is a rich and rewarding album that is recommended for listeners with open ears, especially those who enjoy latin music.

Review: Girl Talk, Night Ripper

Girl Talk is DJ and remix artist Gregg Gillis.  Gillis garnered a good deal of popular media attention a year or so ago for his blatant use of clearly recognizable samples without regard to copyright in his remixes, his frenetic club shows which often involved him stripping to his underwear, and his obvious talent as a sample-based remixer.

Night Ripper unfolds as a nonstop combination of hip-hop and rap vocal samples combined with a wide variety of muscial underpinnings.  It’s a markedly mixed bag.  On the one hand is Gillis’ musical talent.  He is a masterful mash-up artist who is familiar with a fairly wide range of music.  The mix on Night Ripper is terrific.  Gillis uses samples that are long enough to be clearly recognizable and it’s not only fun hearing segments and riffs you know in unexpected places and combinations, but also enjoyable appreciating how well he puts it all together.

On the other hand is Night Ripper’s simplistic and often crass vocal content.  Many of the vocal samples feature the kind of crude sexual proclamations that are typical of a segment of hip hop but have come to stereotype and stigmatize the genre among people who don’t listen to very much of it.  The excuse that will be given is that this is party music so the emphasis on crass sex is appropriate.  If your idea of a party is getting down with some guys who chant “Head down, ass up, that’s the way we like to fuck” , you’ll be right at home here.  If you’re not still fourteen, it’s likely to come across as unrelentingly juvenile.

If Girl Talk had anything interesting to say, Night Ripper would be a great album.  As it is, you have terrific music combined with empty vocals that some listeners will find offensive.

Review: Kaiser Chiefs, “Off With Their Heads”

I finished my review of Kaiser Chiefs’ second album, Your Truly, Angry Mob, by writing that I was looking forward to their next CD.  Well, here it is and I’m finding that I’m enjoying “Off With Their Heads” even more than its predecessor.  The Chiefs are putting out state-of-the-art power-pop, new-new wave influenced rock.

Your Truly led off with mega-track “Ruby” which was not only the best thing on the album but  brought Kaiser Chiefs a host of new fans when it showed up on the original version of Guitar Hero.  “Ruby” sounded like a hit the first time it played and nothing on “Off With Their Heads” has this immediate impact.  However, the new album has a characteristic that is arguably even more important than an obvious hit single.  It sounds good the first time through and it’s a grower.  The more we listen to “Off With Their Heads” the more want to hear it.

Part of the reason Kaiser Chiefs music is so compelling is that they are masters of vocal hooks combined with driving, propulsive rhythms and good songwriting.  “Good Days Bad Days” with its loping bass-driven rhythm is a good example.  Out of nowhere I find myself singing “‘Cause you are / Descended from animals / And you are / Constructed of chemicals” from “Like It All Too Much” at odd times throughout the day.  And “Always Happens Like That” is so catchy it out to come with a warning label.

Another reason the Chiefs rock is that everyone in the band can play and Ricky Wilson (vocals), Andrew White (guitar), Nick Baines (keyboards), Simon Rix (bass) and Nick Hodgson (drums)  work very well together as a band.  If there are super-sized egos in the group, they are doing a good job of not letting them dominate the music.  They are also very well recorded.  Producers and engineers Mark Ronson and Eliot James give the band a sharp, clean sound with well defined and beautifully integated instruments and vocals.  “Off With Their Heads” sounds terrific on a quality sound system

“Off With Their Heads” is Kaiser Chiefs third album and each one has been better than the last.  I don’t know how long this can go on but where I was looking forward to their next album after Yours Truly, the one after “Off With Their Heads” will be an automatic purchase.  The Chiefs are on a roll (a Kaiser roll? . . .  lol).  Get ‘em while they’re hot.