It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart
Marié Digby released an album of pop covers this week. I’m pretty sure these were all recorded before and are only collected and put into sequence here for the first time.
I just released an albums worth of my favorite pop covers I’ve recorded over the years! If you’d like to listen, you can check it out here 🙂 https://t.co/MdcglJIeTa
— Marie Digby (@mariedigby) June 22, 2018
I love Marié. You love Marié. There’s no need to sell anyone on checking this out, and you pretty much know what to expect, although the Soundgarden cover might be a nice surprise!
You drown out the crowd
- Hold On, We’re Going Home (Drake) (2:05)
- Diamonds (Rihanna) (2:48)
- New Rules (Dua Lipa) (2:57)
- Too Good at Goodbyes (Sam Smith) (3:03)
- Let it Go (James Bay) (3:41)
- Black Hole Sun (Soundgarden) (2:49)
- Ordinary World (Duran Duran) (3:16)
- Enjoy the Silence (Depeche Mode) (2:55)
- When You Say Nothing at All (Alison Krauss) (2:45)
- Empire (Shakira) (3:13)
What’s being said between your heart and mine
I do not like the original recordings of any of the first five songs, so I am quite possibly the wrong person to evaluate these as covers. I do very much like the originals of tracks 6 through 9, and Shakira’s always been semi-interesting. Context for deciding on my cred.
Marié gives even the songs I don’t care much for her usual sweet, breathy treatment and I don’t have a single complaint. Reinterpreted as mostly acoustic, stripped-down songs, everything here works. I was surprised to find myself really liking the Sam Smith cover, “Too Good at Goodbyes.”
The real highlight is Alison Krauss’s “When You Say Nothing at All,” which is itself a cover of a Keith Whitley recording. I’ve heard (and seen) Marié play a bunch of songs on her guitar, but she gets a really clear, ringing tone on this one, something a little different sounding from what I’m used to from her. It sounds like she recorded the vocal live, as she accompanied herself, and rather than cheap or hurried, it sounds spontaneous. It’s also one of the few tracks here where she doesn’t do the moaning-into-the-notes singing and it just sounds freaking pretty.
Although I’ve heard many of these recordings already, putting them together this way makes them more interesting. Whether you’re a casual fan or hardcore, you’ll probably want to put this in heavy rotation for the rest of the summer.
Now you say it best
- Best song: “When You Say Nothing at All”
- Second-best song: “Ordinary World”
- Meh: “Enjoy the Silence”
- Songs I didn’t know before I spun this album: “Let it Go” and “New Rules”
- Not an improvement on original: “Enjoy the Silence”
- Huge improvement on original: “Hold On, We’re Going Home” and “Diamonds”
- Best moment: The piano intro on “Let it Go”
- Second-best moment: The almost yodel-like melody in the chorus of “Empire,” minus the hooing, which is better than in the original recording but still doesn’t do anything for me
- Song to make you text your ex (don’t do it!): “Let it Go”
- Song to make you whip out your old guitar and try to write a song (do it!): “When You Say Nothing at All”
Rating: 7/10
Old Mr. Webster could never define
site, amzn, sptfy, itns, appl, googl, ig, twttr, fb, ptrn, ytbe
I been writin’ these rhymes on the 7 train
The highlight is easily “Ghost,” in which she talks about ghosting a couple of guys. The track has a stuttering high-hat sounding rhythm with twangy, bouncy instrumentation and a catchy chorus. The next track, “Testify” sounds like Awkwafina’s getting sincere about struggling to create her art and get people to connect with it. Even here, when she says “I’mma make the city so proud,” and “ain’t gotta justify ****,” she adds, “not a happy camper when I’m stepping off the weight scale.” There’s a sense of longing here that feels disarming.
Taimane Gardner’s new album dropped last week. Elemental is a mostly instrumental blending of many styles, as one would expect from this ukulele virtuoso. Her FB bio says,
Only open eyes and ears and minds can hear
While Taimane delivers these seven element-themed songs with her usual cross-genre style, the dominating mood is atmospheric. She’s at her best when she’s playing alone, without accompaniment, but there aren’t any bad or boring moments on the album. Listen to “Air” and you’ll get a sense of the ukulele’s range of sounds in the hands of a competent musician. The instrument has very little sustain without electronic help, but you hear how a mostly strummed style can provide a nice droning staccato and even some sweet harmonics for kind of an illusory sustenance.
I guess I’ll get the 8A angle out of the way first and say that Spock’s Beard is a four-person progressive rock band from California with a Japanese keyboard player named Ryo Okumoto.
Disc 1: Noise Floor
Last week, I said I think the new Meiko album is my second-favorite album of the year. I said second-favorite because I’d already listened to this one. As much as I love this band (and I reeeeeally love this band), I thought the last couple of albums were pretty forgettable. It pains me to say that although I purchased them as soon as they were available, I pretty much never listen to them.
It’s thirty-three years later, and the band is still at it. Loudness has been through multiple lineup changes, but since 2001 or so has recorded with the original group, which continues today minus original drummer Munetaka Higuchi, who died ten years ago.
Rise to Glory is accessible the way all pop metal is, but its appeal is mostly to middle-aged fans like me who still pay attention to Ratt and Def Leppard all these years later. It’s heavily riff-driven, melodic, catchy, and mostly a showcase for shredmaster Akira Takasaki’s guitar chops, which are considerable and almost always interesting. The album reminds me most of early-80s Scorpions with a little bit of Ratt thrown in. It’s mostly riff riff riff riff, but with occasional slow grooves and some thoughtful composition.
The vocals are an acquired taste. There’s nothing wrong with the quality of singer Minoru Niihara’s singing; there’s just a Japanese-accented English that non-Japanese listeners have to find some way to deal with, combined with the band’s writing lyrics in its second language. Niihara is kind of a dork on stage, and it comes through more than a little in his singing. But this is true of a lot of great metal bands from Germany, Italy, and Scandinavia. My advice is to get used to the voice, tolerate the weird lyrics, and enjoy the whole picture, because Rise to Glory is mostly a fun, interesting ride.
