Ballas Hough Band

BALLAS HOUGH BAND
"BHB"
(Hollywood, 2009)


I've never watched "Dancing With The Stars", so the names Mark Ballas and Derek Hough have never had any significance to me. In that respect, I didn't have any emotional investment in this album before hearing it. Nonetheless I was a bit disappointed at first, but only because, with the word "Band" in their name, I was expecting something a bit more rock and a little less pop out of them. That's not to say that I dislike the album; it just took me a bit longer to warm up to it. Funny how your expectations can alter your perception, isn't it?

The Ballas Hough Band (Shouldn't there be a hyphen or slash in between those, since it's two last names and not one person's full name? Anyway....) demonstrate pretty well on this album that they're not just a couple of pretty faces who parlayed their proverbial 15 minutes on a dancing show into a recording contract they wouldn't otherwise have gotten. Arguably they might not have landed a major-label imprint like Hollywood Records without their "DWTS" notoriety, but that's beside the point. I'm having a bit of trouble telling Mr. Ballas' and Mr. Hough's voices apart, assuming they share lead vocal duties, but that's not a major complaint since I find the vocals enjoyable.

Once I got past the realization that this "Band" isn't quite so much The Script or Maroon 5 as much as they are a high-gloss, more-pop-than-power take on The Click Five, I was able to appreciate the fact that they actually make some enjoyable tunes. And I grant you, it's not all pop ... yes, "Do It For You" sits firmly in the contemporary-R&B category, and "She Was The One" is equally unlikely to win over fans of Bon Jovi or Bruce Springsteen ... but alternatively, "Fall" is a blast of crunchy guitar that sounds like The All-American Rejects with a dash of Black-Eyed Peas, and "Devastated" also brings on a bit of the rock ... "Underwater" is a surprisingly atmospheric closing song, and the female backing vocals add a nice touch to the harmony on songs like the nice ballad "Longing For". Bottom line: don't expect anything groundbreaking or otherwise worthy of Grammy consideration, but if you like ear-candy that's a blend of rock and pop, you can expect to be entertained.

Together Faraway - Ballas Hough Band

Breaking News: Here Comes Da Judge!

As if I needed any more reason to watch "American Idol" next season -- Ellen DeGeneres announces on her show today (and officially broke the news just hours ago) that she is being brought on board as the fourth regular judge on the "Idol" panel, to fill the vacancy left by Paula Abdul when she announced her departure last month. With the passion she has shown for "Idol" on her daytime talk show -- talking about the week's performance round at nearly every opportunity, and bringing almost every departing finalist onto her show as a guest -- as well as her passion for music in general, I have a hard time thinking of a more suitable person to sit on the judges' panel.

Notice I said "suitable", and not "qualified". That's the only problem I have with Ellen becoming an "Idol" judge: she'd be the only one on the panel who doesn't have a professional background in the music business. All of the other three judges have worked as producers, with Kara also having extensive experience as a songwriter and a singer, and Randy as a studio and touring musician with countless music acts. Don't get me wrong ... I'm otherwise totally jazzed about Ellen being on "Idol" ... I'm just worried about how everyone else will accept her, particularly because of this notable lack of actual experience in the music industry.

Will she be funny? Of course. Will she know what she's talking about? As long as she sticks to what she knows and doesn't pretend to know more than she does (in other words, if she speaks from the perspective of a passionate music fan, and also provides feedback from her experience as a performer trying to entertain an audience), and I don't think we'll have to worry about Ellen coming off as fake. So ... bring on the new season of "Idol"!

Tyrone Wells

TYRONE WELLS
"REMAIN"
(Universal Republic, 2009)


I can only assume that Tyrone Wells is one of those artists that I was destined to get turned onto. I had picked up his 2007 major label debut, "Hold On", a year or so ago, but for some reason didn't cotton to it at first. Fast-forward to early this year, when I happened upon a promo CD of his "More" single in the freebies box at the local record shop. I found the song enjoyable, and around the same time, blogger Entirely Random (a terrible shame that you post so sporadically, Random!) posted a YouTube video of him performing the song. Obviously, Fate was trying to tell me something, so I picked up his sophomore CD, "Remain", shortly thereafter. Fate must have known what it was doing, 'cause it turns out I like this guy a lot more now than I ever thought I would.

Tyrone Wells doesn't stray much here from the singer-songwriter-folk-pop-rock sound he established on his debut, and far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing. The lyrics may be more introspective or soul-searching than on his first album, but you can't help but come away from the album feeling uplifted, since the songs are mostly still dressed in appealingly tuneful hooks -- be they strong (the radio-worthy upbeat cuts "In Between The Lines" and "Along The Way") or subtle (the spiritually-minded ballad "All Broken Hearts" and the fragile closer "Together").

His rich, somewhat husky voice might sound a bit too much like Chris Martin in some places (especially when his songs take on a bit of a Coldplay feel, like in "Losing Ground" or "Drifting"), but the similarity is entirely coincidental. Tyrone Wells is an original, talented, and enjoyable artist in his own right, and I just hope this album gets him noticed, like he deserves to be.

Before It Started - Tyrone Wells

Econoline Crush

You've probably noticed that I've started using the imeem player to embed songs. Why, you ask? Well, Google/Blogger have been cracking down on TOS violations lately (and I'm wondering if that's why I had at least one post of mine disappear inexplicably one day), so to cover my ass in that regard, I had been looking around for streaming players that have a well-stocked catalog of songs. As soon as I realized that imeem has nearly all the artists I've featured on my blog lately (including the relatively obscure one I'm featuring today), and that they even provide iTunes and Amazon search buttons right alongside the player, I decided it was the one for me. Sure, you can't actually download the songs (at least not easily), but since it's free you can't really complain -- plus, you can go right to the artist's catalog on imeem and hear more of their songs! Sounds like a pretty sweet compromise to me.

ECONOLINE CRUSH
"BRAND NEW HISTORY"
(EMI Canada, 2001)


If any of you out there are just starting to read this blog, then in a way it's pretty good timing: this post juxtaposed with the last one do well to illustrate the wide variety of things I listen to. I was going to start this post by saying that Econoline Crush was an "anomaly" in my music collection, but I honestly have a little bit of everything in my library, so I probably have so many "anomalies" that the ordinary stuff looks like the out-of-the-ordinary. But anyway, this is yet another artist whose CD I stupidly traded in years ago, only to find it on the used rack for five dollars and buy it back in a pang of nostalgia. (Yes, I've said that about two other artists I've featured on here before ... pathetic, I know.) As with the others, I don't know how or why I let myself get rid of it, but I won't make that mistake again.

Econoline Crush is one of Canada's best-kept secrets, having yielded only one marginally popular single in the U.S. They're the only group I listen to that's classified in the "industrial rock" subgenre; basically, they play hard rock with some electronica overtones. Of course, for their two major-label outings the band did tone down their sound and make it more accessible to mainstream listeners, but it makes for a bit of an adventurous listen nonetheless. The opening track, "Make It Right", and the closer "You Don't Know What It's Like", provide the aggressive punch characteristic of Econoline Crush (thanks in part to production by veteran Metallica producer Bob Rock), along with the near-thrash of "Trash" and "Go Off". "Tomorrow Starts Today" and "By The Riverside" show a more mellow side of the band, but still keep the guitars turned up to a decent level, thank you. And just in case the rest of the album is too loud, the band takes a breezy sidestep into Sugar Ray-like territory with the cool "May I Go".

Oddly, just when the band seemed to be hitting their stride, with two solid albums (this one preceded by the more successful 1998 set "The Devil You Know") solidifying their popularity in their native Canada, Econoline Crush seemed to drop off the face of the earth. It would be seven years before they re-emerged with a new album, 2008's "Ignite". I haven't bought it yet, but the sound clips on Amazon have me interested, so I'll probably end up getting it. Like I said, I don't know what it is about Econoline Crush that I like ... the sporadic bursts of guitar ... Trevor Hurst's distinctive raspy howl in the vocals ... the electronic flourishes? Who knows ... and why question it?

Make It Right - Econoline Crush

Basia

BASIA
"IT'S THAT GIRL AGAIN"
(Koch, 2009)


For not having a drop of Latin blood in her, Polish chanteuse Basia sure has a way with a Latin groove, especially in the Brazilian stylings of Samba and Bossa Nova. Basia Trzetrzelewska (no wonder she only goes by her first name as a recording artist) hit the peak of her popularity back in the late '80s and early '90s, and before that was a member of jazz group Matt Bianco. She reunited with Matt Bianco for their 2004 album "Matt's Mood", but other than that, this -- the tongue-in-cheekly titled "It's That Girl Again" -- is Basia's first album of new material in 15 years.

I'm delighted to say that neither she nor her music seem to have aged a day. Her voice is as robust and enchanting as it ever was, and this batch of songs is as much a breath of fresh air now as her early albums were a decade and a half ago. I'd have to go back and listen to them again to be sure, but I think this album may have a wider variety of sounds than any of her previous discs. It's tough to lull Basia into a true ballad on this album, but "A Gift" and the idyllic "Two Islands" come close. The frantic chorus of the appropriately urgently titled "I Must" is as energetic as the album (and Basia in general) gets; and "Love Lies Bleeding" is more laid back and -- I guess "whimsical" would fit as well as any other word -- than its title would suggest. Throw in the Polish-language song "Amelki Smiech" (with its swaying verses contrasting against a militaristic chorus), and you've got as eclectic a Basia album as you might ever see.

Basia's three early studio albums (and the EP nestled amongst them) have never left my collection since I bought them as new releases, and though I haven't listened to them quite as often as I probably should have been during the last 15 years, I was nonetheless looking forward to this album as soon as I heard it was coming, nearly a year before it dropped. I only hope this signals the beginning of a new, ongoing phase of Basia's solo career, because her beautiful, airy voice, with its appealing lilt of what I can only assume is a Polish accent, brings back so many warm memories of the beginnings of my obsession with music.

Blame It On The Summer - Basia

Paula Abdul Leaves "American Idol"!

Wow ... how are we possibly going to get the same joy out of "American Idol" now that we know Paula Abdul isn't going to be a part of it next season? It might be tough for me to express my feelings at a time like this, but let me try....

You have been truly wonderful, and ... the light you shine is ... it's what you do, and ... you do it so well, that ... it's hard to express the ... the joy and energy and goodness that you create is ... it's beyond description ... I am so happy that ... this world has had a chance to experience ... your beautiful ... talent and presence and ... I can't wait until ... the next step in your life ... becomes a reality and illuminates the world because ... you deserve the world ... you truly do, and that's ... I just can't put it any more clearly than that.

Better Than Ezra

Wow ... something must be wrong here ... I just realized it's been a whole month since my last CD review. Well, nothing's wrong, really ... was just a bit preoccupied with my sister visiting from out-of-state ... but maybe things will get back to normal now. I'm not quite sure, though ... might be best if y'all just go with the flow and don't hold out any expectations. I'll try and keep you posted on exactly what I mean by that.

BETTER THAN EZRA
"PAPER EMPIRE"
(BTE, 2009)


The record labels have lost my business more than once lately because they've been packaging more and more of their CDs in what I call "sleeve" packaging (like a digipak, but worse -- instead of a tray the CD rests in, just a pocket that the disc slides in and out of, making it more vulnerable to scratching), The Fray's and Ben Kweller's latest releases being the two prime examples. But when Louisiana rockers Better Than Ezra released their latest album, I was so set on picking it up that I flinched for only a moment when I saw that it, too, is packaged that way. But then I knew that it was going to be worth getting regardless of its packaging, and I was right.

This album has a healthy blend of sonic moods, but the more subdued tracks tend to be the stronger ones of this set. The ruminative "Just One Day", the exquisite love waltz "Fit", and the anti-war anthem "Wounded" are amongst the best that BTE have ever come up with. As far as the uptempo tracks, lead single "Absolutely Still" and stadium rocker "Hell No!" (which, if I'm not mistaken, hints at comparing football to war) are winners, but the feather-light "All In" is little more than filler, and though the guys do an admirable Duran Duran impression on "Nightclubbing", it just sounds silly coming from these guys.

I've been a fan of BTE since their very first major-label album, back in 1995, thanks in part to the unmistakable voice of frontman Kevin Griffin, which is still as rich and resonant as it was when I first heard it fourteen years ago. The band has occasionally taken a more artistic detour (such as the curious and commercially unsuccessful "How Does Your Garden Grow?"), but more often than not has dedicated itself to crafting melodically accessible but lyrically substantial songs. "Paper Empire", their fifth studio effort, carries on that tradition nicely, and I expect to be a listener of theirs for their next five albums too.

Just One Day - Better Than Ezra

United Breaks Guitars

I caught wind of this on the news the other day. It seems that back in the spring if 2008 a small, up-and-coming band called Sons of Maxwell was flying from Halifax to Omaha on United Airlines (a carrier in whom I had plenty of trust -- until now), and their guitar cases were treated with just as much gross negligence by the baggage handlers as any other piece of luggage. Not surprisingly, when they got to their destination, at least one of their guitars was badly damaged. Unfortunately, the airline refused to take any responsibility, so these guys did what any disgruntled passenger with an Internet connection would do these days -- they wrote a song, made a video, and posted it on YouTube for all the world to see.

According to the news story, the band was hoping to see this video get one million hits by the end of this year. Well, not surprisingly, its exposure has helped it more than double that goal in mere days (2.1 million hits and counting)! And, well, it doesn't take a fortune teller to know that these guys are really going to go places thanks to this story, and I rather suspect we'll all be able to see their debut album on CD shelves everywhere before too long. If you want to read all the gory details of their ordeal with United Airlines, click here. Meanwhile, here's the story in a very entertaining and tuneful nutshell:



Oh, and just yesterday, the band's frontman posted an update to the story. Hmmm ... nine months go by with absolutely no help or cooperation whatsoever from United, but now that the story has spread like wildfire, the guys finally get a response. Who'da thunk it...?!



I don't own a guitar myself, and have never had any complaints about United's service, but from now on I'm really going to need a good and compelling reason to fly their airline anymore. After all, I love music, so seeing musicians treated this way (come on, how much brains do you need to know that a guitar case should be handled with at least some amount of care?!?) is almost like a personal inslut to me. As for Sons of Maxwell ... just the creative "lemonade from lemons" way they worked out their frustrations about the situation is making me want to buy their music...!

Life In Stereo

My life is about to plunge headlong into the gaping maw of chaos. Well, actually, it's just my stereo, but to me it's pretty-much the same thing. Hard as it is for me to believe, that trusty old music machine of mine is in fact 13 years old. Only it's not quite so "trusty" any more ... some of the buttons on the front panel have begun doing strange things (the "next track" button switches the stereo from CD mode to radio mode, the graphic equalizer button changes CDs, the "play" button resets the graphic equalizer), it sometimes doesn't see that there's a CD loaded into a specific slot (or just skips over a slot or group of slots for no good reason), and the cassette playback deck went "boink" almost two years ago.

All is not lost, because I can work around those faults, at least for the time being: the remote control still works perfectly so I use it whenever I can, a strong blast of air makes the CD slots behave normally for awhile, and there's still the cassette recording deck that I can use when I have occasion to play (or record on) a tape. But if and when this thing finally bites the dust, it's gonna be a really sad day. This beaut has a 51-disc carousel CD changer, and a dual-cassette deck -- two features that are all but extinct on so-called "shelf" stereo systems anymore (the best I can find now is a 5-disc changer). If I went to a specialty retailer and assembled my own component system, I'd probably be able to find features like those, but I'm neither financially inclined to spend the money on a customized system with all the bells and whistles, nor am I such a finicky audiophile that I need a top-of-the-line sound system.

I'm still old-school in that I sometimes like to make mix CD's "the old-fashioned way", by recording them in real-time, track by track, from my stereo onto my stand-alone audio CD recorder. That's one reason I like my system so much -- I can load all the CDs I'm burning tracks from into the stereo at once, and just nudge the jog dial from one disc to the next as I go. Sure, it would be faster and easier to assemble the playlist in iTunes and hit the "burn disc" button, but it's so fast and easy that I almost think of it as cheating ... besides, such a mix CD would be made of 128Kbps MP3's instead of coming straight from original CD tracks. As for the remaining working cassette deck, I still make use of it, though admittedly not a lot. I do still have a couple dozen tapes that I listen to occasionally enough that I haven't felt the need to burn to CD; and I have yet to get a request to record a mix tape instead of a mix CD, but it's nice to know that, for now, I still have the ability to do so. And to top it all off (quite literally, in this case), not long after I'd gotten this stereo, I happened upon a matching turntable add-on for it, the same brand and dimensions and color and everything, making it a complete and total all-format (for its time) system!

The more I think about it, the more I realize that it's not just these conveniences that I'll miss if and when its proverbial number is up, but it's what this stereo represents in a broader sense. This is mostly what I've listened to music on for the last thirteen years ... in other words, for almost three-quarters of my music-loving life. Though I've embraced the iPod and now basically can't imagine life without it, I grew up with CDs, cassettes, and vinyl records, and now it seems that the big-name electronics manufacturers have all but forgotten those formats and now almost totally cater to the MP3 and iPod crowd. If you're not sure just how old(-school) your generation is becoming, all you have to do is check out the shelves of any electronics retailer, and it'll become pretty clear. Hey, I've still got a cassette Walkman, for cripe's sake! (It almost never gets used, and its belt clip is broken off, but I just can't bear to part with it.) Did I mention that my stereo doesn't even play CD-RWs or MP3-CDs? It reads CD-Rs just fine, though.

So, the question remains: what am I going to replace my existing system with when it finally kicks the bucket? I do have to admit, a 250- or 300-disc CD changer would be way bitchin' to have, but the way my listening habits have been changing slowly but surely (when playing a CD at home nowadays, I've gotten into the habit of just popping it into the computer and listening to it from iTunes), I just can't imagine getting my money's worth out of such a thing anymore. I went browsing around at Best Buy's online store the other day to get a feel for what's out there, and I guess I hadn't realized just how much the iPod has truly taken over -- the vast majority of the shelf systems out there are iPod-ready, complete with a dock that will not only pump your Pod's tunes through its own speakers, but even recharge its battery.

But I like to think of my iPod as being for strictly on-the-go music listening (Really, if you need to have songs in MP3 on your computer to put them onto your iPod, why not just play music from your computer when you're at home?), so I probably won't be looking for that particular feature. Sp far I've found a sweet-looking Sony 5-disc changer with a CD-recorder, which would potentially allow me to get rid of two machines at once, but then away go the cassette deck and turntable. Then again, there's a very cool-looking "retro" Victrola-style turntable housed in a desktop-sized woodgrain speaker cabinet, complete with a cassette deck on the side panel and a built-in CD player (or, for a bit more money, a CD recorder, for making those LP-to-CD or tape-to-CD conversions) as well. Maybe that's the ticket ... hey, if my stereo is my life, and I'm as old-school as I say I am, I might as well walk the talk, right?

Remember The Time

I didn't plan on letting ten days go by before saying something about Michael Jackson on this blog, but there are a couple of reasons it ended up that way. Mostly it was the deluge of news reports and fan tributes that absolutely flooded cyberspace, so what I could have said would have already been said by many others, plus it would have been delivered with more heartfelt sincerity and profundity, by people who felt a deeper connection with the artist and his music. You see, as much as I love music in general, and pop music in particular, I was never a huge MJ fan, probably mostly because the biggest peak in his career happened years before I really began to appreciate music. (Back in the early '80s I was much more a fan of "Star Wars" and Legos than I was of vinyl records and cassettes.)

But one doesn't have to be a fan of Michael Jackson to recognize what a powerful influence he had on the world of music, especially in two key ways. First of all, he broke the color barrier on radio and the then-fledgling MTV. Black artists may have ruled disco, but were seldom taken seriously by the mainstream until he came along -- and just like that, the color of the artist didn't seem to matter anymore. Secondly, Michael Jackson was the first artist whose look was as much a part of his gestalt as his sound, and pop music has, for better or worse, focused on the artist's image as much as his or her music ever since. It may have been the fact that his rise to fame coincided with the music video revolution, and it may have had something to do with the magnitude of a star that MJ was -- and being the keen self-marketer that he was, it's a safe bet that MJ was aware of it all and used it to his advantage.

And let's not forget his music, of course. There's a very short list of artists who have had such a phenomenal impact on music that it has made the artist and their sound instantly identifiable, and essentially influenced all who have followed. All you have to do is look at how many subsequent artists cite him as an influence. As much as the '50s were ruled by Elvis Presley, and the '60s belonged to The Beatles, Michael Jackson personified the '80s. Think about it: when you hear the name Michael Jackson, a distinct style of music flashes before your ears, and when you hear one of his songs, you just know that it's Michael Jackson. And, just like The Beatles and Elvis, you simply can't turn the radio dial very far until you hear a song that has something in it, big or small, that Michael Jackson did first.

It might sound like hyperbole, but it's the truth ... none of us can even vaguely imagine what pop music would be like today if MJ had never come along. And, sadly, times have changed such that there will never be an artist again of such all-encompassing superstardom. The music business, and pop culture in general, are vastly different beasts now than they were then; thanks to the Internet and globalization (and perhaps to our resulting shorter attention spans), there are ten times as many artists of twice as many genres coming at us from ten different directions.

I've never been a big fan of The Beatles, but my music library simply would not be complete, nor would I be able to call myself a fan of popular music, without some of their recordings (their two double-disc greatest hits albums, in this case). The same goes for Michael Jackson ... I think I had his "Thriller" album on cassette many years ago, and though I don't own it or any of his other studio albums now, I consider "The Essential Michael Jackson" a ... well, essential ... part of my collection. Maybe I didn't love you, MJ, but I'll miss you all the same.