Amph What Album Did You Just Hear?

The Band Royale - Live at Lincoln Hall

So this was recorded a while back, but due to the fact that Royale is a side gig for these guys, it finally came out in March. Some of the songs are changed up live from their studio work, and the singer/lead guitarist is clearly a guitarist first, singer second. But! Still a great album with a lot of fun stuff, tons of atmospheric work, and their signature off-the-beaten-path "sci-fi yacht metal" sound.

If nothing else, the musicianship, mixing, and gorgeous tones should be interesting for guitarists and gearheads. The entire band works at the Chicago Music Exchange, so if you're familiar with them, you'll get a sense of the sounds you'll hear on this album.

 

Frustratingly imperfect, especially compared to the albums that bookend it, but when it works, it's like nothing else in the world.

 

Turnstiles - Billy Joel.

He seems to go to a number of these songs in his live shows these days. Really like it. Bit of a hidden nugget.

 

Not an album but I finally heard the 17 minute version of Iron Butterfly's In Da Gada Da Vita. Basically 1/2 an album.

 

The Cult "Electric". Just pure ass Kick'n.

 

dj BC Presents the Beastles (2004) – The Beastles



In a world gone mad, it’s hard to think right.

This isn’t quite the natural fit that it was when the Black Album and the White Album got mashed up into the Grey Album with the Beatles and Jay-Z getting mixed together, but the principle is the same. dj BC mixes up the Beatles with the Beastie Boys with basically good results, if rarely transcendent ones. The obvious Beatles samples work as well as you’d expect they would. Tripper Trouble mixes the indelible riff from Day Tripper with the frantic raps of Triple Trouble and it works brilliantly. Even better is I Feel Fine Right Now, which points up just how perfect the riff in I Feel Fine really is; it feels like it was made to be rapped over, years ahead of rap. No points for mixing up Sure Shot, one of my favorite Beastie Boys tracks, with Ob-Bla-Di, Ob-Bla-Da in order to create the basically unlistenable (and horribly titled) Sure-Bla-Di, Shot-Bla-Da and the cacophonous Root Down Reprise, a mix of Root Down and the Sgt. Pepper reprise is about as bad. But it’s the odd choices that really work. Mother Nature’s Rump is a melding of the beautiful and ethereal Mother Nature’s Child with the Beastie’s Shake Your Rump and it somehow works magnificently. Best of all is Mad World Forever. It melds the angry raps of In a World Gone Mad with the luminously beautiful Strawberry Fields Forever and it’s somehow genuinely transformative. Hearing the chorus of In a World Gone Mad over the quiet, sad opening harmonium chords from Strawberry Fields changes the feel of the original Beastie Boys track unbelievably. The song stops being angry and becomes deeply sad. “So much violence, hate & spite” used to be an angry declaration; now it’s a sad, almost resigned refrain. But anyway, this is worth listening to simply as a curiosity; the fact that a large portion of it works well and some of it extremely well is a bonus. 3 stars.

tl;dr – DJ remix of the Beatles & the Beastie Boys is a compelling curiosity, though less transformative than it could be; some of the tracks work incredibly well taken on their own merits. 3 stars.

More Music Reviews!

 

^^^

Me too!

I personally think the first half works better than the latter half. I love everything up to Cinnamon Girl, after that it's a little ho-hum. 3121 is a much stronger album.

 

I love the entire Musicology album.
I've never heard all of 3121, unfortunately, but I will soon, hopefully.

 

Batman Begins OST. Brilliant, beautiful stuff from Hans Zimmer

 

Bring ‘Em Back Alive (1992) – Dixie Dregs

A live concert album featuring the Dixie Dregs, a band featuring electric guitar, keyboards, drums, bass and a fiddle. Intriguing idea and every note played is actually composed. It sounds a bit like jam-band music, but everything’s written by the guitarist and leader of the band. The musicianship is certainly good, but the songs, all instrumentals, aren’t memorable. The covers are about the worst. The central riff of Kashmir doesn’t sound great on a synthesizer, I’ll say that. You can’t dispute that these people are technically skilled, but they don’t add up to much. Great production values. Album sounds great. Music doesn’t live up to it. 1 ½ stars.

tl;dr – live concert displays great technical proficiency, but mostly in service of bland and uninteresting compositions. 1 ½ stars.

 

CRIMINALLY underrated:

 

Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls - Getting revved up for the gig on Friday night

 

Unconditional EP (2004) – The Bravery

I never know what I should do.

Can I leave it up to you?

Can I leave it up to you?

So, I’m still kind of exploring my rediscovery of the EP as an art form by trolling old issues of Rolling Stone for their EP reviews, which they did occasionally. This one is extremely short, just a hair under ten minutes, which is about the bottom length for an EP; any shorter and you’re just a single with an extra song. But the three songs here, Unconditional, No Brakes & Out of Line, are really just brilliant. This was The Bravery’s debut; their debut LP would come out in 2005. The songs here have this really wonderful mix of influences. There’s a U2 to their high-pitched guitars, something of the Editors or the Killers in the vocals and a great catchy Franz Ferdinand-esque spark to their music. It’s really, really catchy, very fast-paced and kind of perfect modern Britpop, each song a little “three minutes and change” masterpiece. The songs don’t really sound exactly alike though, which is good. Out of Line has a great, fuzzy electronic beat and none of the chiming guitars that really define the sound of the title track. And the final minute or so of No Brakes is absolutely anthemic. I may need to get into more of this group’s stuff. Whether I do or not, I’m super glad I checked out this EP; it’s only about ten minutes, but it’s a brilliantly consistent little album, just three near-perfect songs adding up to a great listen and a great calling card for the band. 4 stars.

tl;dr – Britpop group’s debut is a very brief three song EP, but every song on it is catchy, up-tempo and memorable. 4 stars.

 

Live from Under the Brooklyn Bridge (2004) – U2



It’s you when I look in the mirror
It’s you when I don’t pick up the phone
Sometimes you can’t make it on your own

The music video for All Because of You was shot in New York City by the band U2 and at the end of the day of shooting they performed a “surprise” concert at the Brooklyn Bridge. It was filmed and released as a concert video; this four-song EP was also released, featuring three songs from their newest album, at the time, that is, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and one throwback. It’s a really brilliant EP. It starts with All Because of You, a very nice live version, and then it improves from there. The version of Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own here is my new favorite version of the song, I think; Bono’s vocal performance is really beautiful and heartfelt and the song just builds to this explosive, cathartic bridge. It’s also a moment when you can hear the live rawness of the song in a way you can’t always hear it on live recordings. The falsetto sections of the chorus are not totally on, if you know what I mean, but somehow that gives the song an even more ragged emotional feel. Then there’s a frantic performance of I Will Follow from their debut, Boy, and it’s just pure frenzy. And where does one go after the most frenzied version of Boy ever recorded? Well, it’s obvious; a place called Vertigo. Great rendition to close out the EP. It’s only sixteen minutes, this entire EP, and I think selecting songs from throughout the set really helped them focus on the super-strong stuff from the concert. I have no idea how well the entire concert would play on disc if it had been released; maybe these four songs were the best in the set and, on a full album release, they’d have gotten lost between some less than stellar stuff. So, I feel like this is a good argument for the EP format. There’s probably a little filler in there when you look at the whole set-list, but the EP format allows the band to release the cream of the crop in a short, energetic, very emotional burst and it really, really works. This is a great live album, EP or not. Great stuff. 4 stars.

tl;dr – live EP captures U2 at their energetic and cathartic best; only four songs, but they’re all absolutely gripping and brilliant. 4 stars.

 

Early days yet, and for any Radiohead album that's usually a slightly unclear, uncertain listening experience, which usually grows into a deep and powerful appreciation. First impression is an intricate and hauntingly beautiful album.

 

Drake-Views From The 6

 

why would you do that to yourself

 

Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own, like Moment of Surrender, is a diamond amongst post millennium U2 work. Unfortunately such diamonds are few and far between!

 

Nice obscure funk compilation. You need more funk, so get this.

 

Motorhead's No Sleep Til Hammersmith



Also DebonaireNerd your avatar combined with your last two posts in this thread lead me to believe your title of "Coldplay Fan" is a joke, right? I must know the joke.