COURTNEY BARNETT
Sometimes I Sit And Think,
And Sometimes I Just Sit
(Mom + Pop)
At the wise old age of 26, Courtney
Barnett already sounds like a grizzled veteran of the indie rock scene. She debuted
her sun-bleached, bone-dry wit and droll
delivery on last year's Split Peas EP. With
the release of her full length debut
Sometimes I Sit And Think And Sometimes I
Just Sit, the Australian native seems
poised to capitalize on her ever growing
buzz. Her ability to make the mundane
sound and feel epic in scope is easily
attributed to a wicked turn of phrase.
When she cracks off a line like "Put me on
a pedestal and I'll only disappoint you" in
her matter-of-fact tone, she comes across
as the heir apparent to Elvis Costello or
The Replacements' Paul Westerberg.
Whether it's the patient, deliberate build
on songs like "Small Poppies" and "Kim's
Caravan" or the impossibly dirty guitar
and nasty groove on first single
"Pedestrian At Best," Barnett plays as if
she's effortlessly mastered the rock and
roll art form.
– Curt Baran
Appearing 7/19 at Pitchfork Music
Festival, Union Park, Chicago
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ULI JON ROTH
Scorpions Revisited Volume 1
(UDR)
Perhaps the only hard rock guitarist
more publicly elusive and enigmatic than
Michael Schenker is another Scorpions
alumnus, Uli Jon Roth. Back then, Roth
was simply known as Ulrich Roth. Oh,
and back then, Scorpions were heavy. Very
heavy. Scorpions Revisited – Volume 1 is a
dream release for Scorps fans. It features
Roth revisiting some of the all-time
favorite Scorpions songs, interpreting the
way he imagined- with more guitar.
Several of these classics haven't been performed live by Scorpions in decades.
Essentially, it's an updated studio version
of one of the best ever live albums,
Scorpions' Tokyo Tapes. Vocalist Nathan
James does an exceptional job filling bigger shoes than I ever realized. While
James is obviously the right man for the
job, one listen made me finally appreciate
Klaus Meine more than ever. That's not a
slap at James. That's a slap on myself for
taking Meine for granted all these years.
Highlights include, well, basically everything! All the classics are here, or at least
most of them- "Sails Of Charon," "Dark
Lady," "Polar Nights," "Virgin Killer," "In
Trance," "Fly To The Rainbow," and
"Pictured Life," among others on this 2 CD
set. The only thing keeping me from rating this a perfect "10" are the omissions of
"Robot Man," "Speedy's Coming," and
"Top Of The Bill." Perhaps Roth will
include them on Volume 2, rumored to be
a DVD. One can only hope.
– Tim Shockley
9
DRAKE
If You're Reading This
It's Too Late
(Motown/Cash Money)
Surprise-released on the 6th anniversary of Drake's breakout, So Far Gone, and
not – as widely surmised – as a Valentine's
gift, Too Late carries on conversationally,
ambiently, and without hooks. Yet it is a
far more compelling insight to hyper-stardom than Kanye West's erratic Yeezus, and
presents a surprisingly tougher Toronto
MC than the person largely derided for
emo-fying hip-hop. The lyrics continually
return to the growing animosity between
Drake and the label that nurtured him,
but he also paints a tense conversation
with his mother and assuredly throws his
(figurative) weight around as a legit
usurper and iconoclast. We probably
won't hear it on the radio, which is a
shame, while its growing reputation as a
"retail mixtape"/contract fulfillment will
forever cloud the forward-looking direction it points for not just Drake, but hiphop, too.
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– Steve Forstneger
songs that she loved as a kid and two that
she couldn't have loved until she became
an adult (she was 22 when Crowded
House released "Don't Dream It's Over," 31
when Randy Newman unveiled "Feels
Like Home") into languorous, late-night
make-out music. And unless you have
something against late-night making out,
you'll succumb.
True, her breathily
androgynous alto makes it hard to tell
whether she's duetting with Michael Bublé
(on Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again
[Naturally]") and Bryan Adams ("Feels
Like Home") or merely overdubbing herself. But in the end both songs' sentiments,
which she obviously feels deeply, come
through. Ditto for those of the Bob Dylan
trifle "Wallflower." Only the over-compressed Carpenters cover drags.
—Arsenio Orteza
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groups of the era. Whereas many of the
bands that came out of the genre put a contemporary spin on blues rock, "the Fudge"
usually embraced "Black" music, combining it with slower-than-usual tempos;
heavy bass and organ; and piercing fuzztone guitars. The band made it to the Ed
Sullivan Show and had a handful of radio
hits, including a classic re-make of The
Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On."
Nearly 50 years later, The Vanilla Fudge
have returned with The Spirit of '67. The
album consists of songs that had their
biggest chart success in 1967, and the list is
unique and varied: "Heard It Through The
Grapevine," "The Letter," "I Can See For
Miles," "I'm A Believer," "Ruby Tuesday,"
"Gimme Some Lovin'" and others. Of
course, in true Fudge fashion, none of
these songs sound like the original versions. They have essentially turned them
into Fudge psychedelic originals. One
might imagine what this album would've
sounded like while on acid if you lived
through that era; although it sounds pretty
cool as well without any drug enhancements. Carmine Appice, Mark Stein,
Vinnie Martell, from the original band are
all here, along with Cactus bassist Pete
Bremy, who has replaced the retired Tim
Bogart. Check out 1967 and take a trip on
the "Way Back Machine," to see the future
through a kaleidoscope lens.
– Bruce Pilato
8
BOB DYLAN
Shadows In The Night
(Columbia)
With his recent AARP interview and
MusiCares speech, Bob Dylan has sure
trumped his buddies U2 where promotional gimmicks are concerned. And he's right
when he says in the former that, because
he has assayed standards before, n