Some time ago — way back in October — I thought the new record by The Clientele, Bonfires on the Heath was durn good, so good so that I wrote a review of it for NPR Music’s Song of the Day. I even compared the band to a Polaroid picture. Then we got distracted with end of decade coverage, end of year coverage and a mountainous heap of other work. And I forgot I had even written this. Well it’s live now. And the song “Harvest Time” still sounds pretty good to me. Very “fall” sounding. Take a listen and read the review here: The Clientele: Pop On A Polaroid
Over at NPR Music, I continue my reign of recent Tiny Desk Concert videos that I’ve helped put together. This week, is Lightning Dust, who put out one of my favorite albums of the year, Infinite Light. This video is infectious thanks to the wonderful harmonies of the two female singers, presumably sisters.
From time to time, I like to check in on recent musical performances on the late night talk shows. Here is are a few new finds from the ol telly.
Who knew Jimmy Fallon did such a spot on impersonation of Neil Young? Who knew the theme song to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air would make such a great folk ballad? I didn’t, but I’d say this is one of the best comedy bits I’ve seen Fallon do since he debuted on Late Night earlier this year.
Late last Friday I was asked by a member of NPR’s Multimedia team to come watch a video project they were working on and find some background music to match. All I knew ahead of time was that it was to be about “driving.” As I was envisioning road trip songs I soon realized it was about driver safety and clearly folky ditties weren’t going to fit.
After watching once through, we determined that the music should be something in the realm of electronic music, percussive and repetitive to propel the narration and visuals but not be overly busy either as to detract… and definitely not acoustic instruments if we could help it. I went back to my desk, quickly scanned through my collection to compile a short playlist of songs that fit those qualities.
We wanted something like Moby, but not Moby, not that distinctive that might distract the viewer. On my list of choices was a nice mix of mellow electronic and atmospheric music: Atlas Sound, Mum, Manitoba (now Caribou), Four Tet, The Books, Brian Eno, Benjamin Biolay, Stereolab.
After playing through all of my choices, we finally settled on a version of Nick Drake’s “Cello Song” performed by The Books and Jose Gonzalez from the awesome Dark Was The Night compilation from earlier this year. I quickly looped the intro a few times and then cross-faded it into the ending of the song.
Way back in July, I invited one of my more recent favorite groups Bowerbirds to perform at the NPR Music offices for a Tiny Desk Concert.
Many, many (MANY) months later, after getting buried in an almost insurmountable backlog and actually having the raw HDV tapes go missing for a few weeks, the video has finally gone live, produced and edited by yours truly. This is my second real foray into video editing, but I think the video looks pretty good.
— A Blog Supreme: The Decade In Review: Jazz And The Mash-Up (In which I considered Norah Jones, Ornette Coleman and Floratone — among others — as helping define the decade in jazz.)
My first real foray into video editing went live today on NPR Music. A Tiny Desk Concert from this past summer with Sondre Lerche. Sure there are some issues with lighting and title sequencing, but overall I think it works quite well as a first effort.
“Shit, I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can.” — Jay-Z
Seriously, has anyone done more good for the New York Yankees in recent years than Jay-Z? I guess A Rod or Jeter or Mariano perhaps, but Jay has never been shy about it.
I’m glad Jay-Z has finally gotten on board and taken a stand to express his fondness for the always under-appreciated New York City. Someone had to.
This is especially true in his performance last night at the still sparkling new (albeit cracking) Yankee Stadium for Game 2 of the World Series between the Yanks and the Phillies. Decked out in full-on Yankees gear*, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys played “Empire State Of Mind” from his recent Blueprint 3 album.
Not sure why this song is getting so much hate; I actually (ACTUALLY?!) quite like it and Alicia Keys’s chorus hooks. It’s a decent single and comes off as pretty epic within this sports context and with New York as the backdrop.
*It’s funny to see the Yankees players like Mariano, Jeter and Joba grooving to the song, but even funnier to see that cut to the Phillies player nodding along too. Maybe that’s why they lost last night.
**UPDATE 11/8: According to MTV News, it looks like the duo couldn’t “contain their enthusiasm” of New York to just one song. Alicia Keys’ new album, The Element Of Freedom, will have a sequel of sorts to “Empire State Of Mind,” creatively titled “Empire State Of Mind Part 2,” and feature a whole new verse by Jay-Z.
Check out the official video, directed by Hype Williams, below:
UPDATE 12/16: Check out Alicia Keys performing her the song “Empire State Of Mind 2” on the Colbert Report, complete with Colbert’s brilliant shout out to the lesser-loved suburbs.
Here are links to two different promotional audio slideshows I made for NPR Music’s upcoming 50 Great Voices series. They are my two first multimedia projects to go live on NPR.org so they’re a tad rough (though the second one is substantially better than the first effort).
Functionally, these two videos were intended to let our audience hear a few teases of music and interact with some of the great musical voices in recorded history. Personally I don’t think they’re a complete success in the goal interaction because the user is more or less tethered to the viewing experience of rather static images for the duration of the video.
But the music mixes do give an effective sense of flow between the different iconic voices.
Anyway, take a look (click on the images below to go see the videos):
