Psychedelic pill. Neil Young & Crazy Horse

You can listen to 'Ramada Inn' here.

Eerder dit jaar bracht Neil Young al een plaat uit met zijn band Crazy Horse. Er werd lange tijd met hooggespannen verwachtingen uitgekeken naar Americana, maar het bleek uiteindelijk een bittere pil; iets wat overigens voor wel meer platen die Neil Young de afgelopen decennia uitbracht geldt. Een paar maanden na de bittere pil van Americana ligt er een nieuwe pil van Neil Young en Crazy Horse op ons te wachten en dit keer gaat het om een psychedelische pil. Psychedelic Pill bestaat uit twee cd’s en bevat in totaal negen tracks die bij elkaar opgeteld zo’n anderhalf uur duren. Hieronder tracks van bijna een half uur en ruim een kwartier, maar ook een aantal songs van rond de drie minuten. Psychedelic Pill is gelukkig een stuk beter te verdragen dan Americana, maar het is zeker geen lichte kost. Zoals we van de platen met Crazy Horse gewend zijn, pakt Neil Young flink uit op de gitaar. De psychedelisch getinte songs zijn voorzien van flink wat gitaargeweld en gitaarsolo’s die lang aanhouden. Daar moet je tegen kunnen, maar ik moet zeggen dat ik het nog altijd prachtig vind. Neil Young maakte op Americana nog een weinig geïnspireerde indruk, maar klinkt op Psychedelic Pill bijzonder gedreven. De twee schijven van Psychedelic Pill hadden net zo makkelijk een aantal decennia geleden gemaakt kunnen zijn, maar de gitaarmuziek van Neil Young en zijn band heeft nog niets van zijn charme, kracht en glans verloren. Het maakt van Psychedelic Pill een heftig en hallucinaties opwekkend pilletje. Hoewel ik normaal gesproken niet zo’n liefhebber ben van hele lange tracks, vind ik de twee hele lange tracks op de plaat het mooist. Het gitaarwerk is om van te watertanden, Neil Young en Crazy Horse verrassen met mooie koortjes en de songs hebben ondanks het spetterende en breed uitwaaiende gitaarwerk wel degelijk een kop en een staart. Anderhalf uur Neil Young en Crazy Horse leek me op voorhand wat veel van het goede, maar de 9 songs op de plaat zijn voorbij voor je er erg in hebt en smaken ook na enkele keren horen nog naar meer. Het oeuvre van Neil Young is sinds de jaren 90 uiterst wisselvallig, maar zo af en toe maakt hij nog een plaat die er echt toe doet. Psychedelic Pill is er wat mij betreft zo een. Het is een plaat die voortborduurt op oud werk dat Neil Young met Crazy Horse maakte, maar het is ook een plaat die invloeden uit het heden verwerkt. In combinatie met de voor Neil Young begrippen goede zang en de hier en daar boeiende teksten levert het een plaat op die geen enkele Neil Young fan mag missen, maar ook iedereen die met een brede boog om het werk van de Canadees heen loopt zou op Psychedelic Pill best wel eens wat van zijn gading kunnen vinden. Een mooiere revanche voor het bloedeloze Americana hadden we ons niet kunnen wensen.

Erwin Zijleman


You can order Psychedelic pill here


or here

!Dos! Green Day

You can listen to 'Stray heart' here.

After having reviewed !Uno! here, let's take at numero due in the series of three new Green Day albums within a few months. I can only say: "I like it". Dos rocks, Dos swings, Dos is chock-full of sing-a-longs and superior melodies. Of course the band takes some songs to the edge of acceptable for 40 year olds, but on the other hand, let's have some fun sometime too.

The album starts off with a great song. The almost The Everly Brothers like 'See you tonight' is over before you know it and has nothing to do with punk rock. It's only a step to the next fantastic song. 'Fuck time' has some great riffs in the best rock and roll tradition, before it goes into this great chorus with a melody to die for and a fun solo as well. Yes, it's blunt, but then isn't this what some situation are like when there's nothing left to talk? The song itself makes up for all the bluntness as it is so much fun.

!Dos! may not have a lot to do with punkrock, but who cares? Only purists I guess. If a band can come up with glowing songs like 'Stop when the red lights flash' or great rockers like 'Ashley' or 'Baby eyes', it is in great form. Billie Joe Armstrong and friends are around for well over 20 years, so they have stepped into their forties. Wife and kids versus the great rock and roll lifestyle? That will undoubtedly play a role in the background. Still !Dos! is a mix of subtlety and brute force, leaning on melody. And whether I listen to 'Dookie', 'Nimrod' or 'American idiot', Green Day always has. So nothing's changed really. Green Day has become better at it, definitely more melodic and after small effects that work in a song. In short, that's called progression, while delivering loads of quality, as this is the second album in a short time full with great (punk)rock songs. And progression in life in general is a good thing, but hard to accept if you only want to hear that of old. (Look at the setlist that the Stones is celebrating its return with. Do I need to say more?) !Uno! and !Dos! deliver the Green Day fans a whole load of new great songs of which several will grow out to be favourites. And !Tre! is already in the shops I've noticed.

!Dos! delivers excitement, several great songs and a few new influences into the band's sound from 50s rock and roll, which is the basis of punk anyway. The best punkrock bands use history wisely. Green Day does so on this album.Two great albums out of three so far. Watch this space for numero Tre anytime soon in the new year.

You can order !Dos! here

or here

Sunken condos. Donald Fagen

You can listen to 'I'm not the same without you' here.

31 Years ago I bought 'The nightfly', on vinyl, as there were no cds yet. And no matter what people might say, I haven't heard a cd version sound better, warmer, than my old elpee. 31 Years is a long time. Donald Fagen hasn't made a better album since. Not solo and not with his companion Walter Becker in Steely Dan, until 2012 that is. Sunken condos may not be better, but definitely is competing as a serious contender. This album has that very same under the skin, creepy crawley kind of swing that has every limb moving. It works from the very first to the very last note and it does not seem to have a filler like 'The nightfly' did have.

As all Donald Fagen's and Steely Dan's good records Sunken condos is an amalgam of notes, harmonies and layered music and arrangements making up a simple sounding but intricately difficult song. I just love it.

The album is in the familiar jazzy, very soft-edged blues style that has become Donald Fagen's trademark over the years. Of course there's nothing new here, perhaps in some nuance, but this is the music we have come to love listening to 'The nightfly'. A clean, soft drum sound lays down the foundation for everything happening on the album. The soft bass seems one with the drums, right in sync. The rhythm guitars and supporting keyboards, all is there to let the unexpected happen. The choruses that sound like they come sliding in, just like gliding on ice after a long run to gain speed, each turn smoother and slippier. With the same amount of danger, as if it is possible to slip and fall vocally also.


All other sounds are solos and embellishments. From everywhere sounds escape the whole. A horn section or lone trumpet here, a loose guitar note, the background singers that move up front, a sprinkling of piano notes. All intricate and exactly fitting. It makes listening to Sunken condos with the headphones on so much fun. There remains something to discover with each spin of the record. Together with Michael Leonhart Fagen has put so much care into details that there is enough to study for years for who wants to reproduce the songs later. Layer after layer of instruments are stacked onto the sound and who knows how many parts were scrapped during the arrangement and mixing process.

The album kicks off with the laidback groove of 'Slinky thing'. The mix is such that the whole range seems filled. While all else still has its space in the mix. Like drawers being pulled out of a closet and then closed again. There's always the presence of the drums, brain wide. The tempo goes up in 'I'm not the same without you'. About as rocky as Donald Fagen gets these days. The funky guitar aids the tempo with its bright sound. The Stevie Wonder like harmonica solo, played by Will Galison, surprises and fits so good. Clean and funky. And than all the glitzy horns in the back ground. There's a lot going on. Every song has these distinctive features that make them stand out, like the un-Fagen like rough guitar in 'Weather in my head'.

If there was any critique on Sunken condos I read, it's about the cover of 'Out of the ghetto'. Too white. If you do not know the original, like myself, all you hear is a great funky track. A totally Donald Fagen song, so perhaps it's also a compliment that he takes this song to his own.

Whether I will play Sunken condos as often as I have played 'The nightfly' in the past, I do not know. What I do know is that Donald Fagen delivered one great album. Sunken condos is an album sitting on a lone star high up in the sky, ready to be played soft or loud. An album for all occasions. A deep, deep bow to you, mister Fagen from

Wo.

you can order Sunken condos here


or here

Interview with The Shakedown 8

Interview with The Shakedown 8 for WoNo Magazine and WoNoBlog

By Wout de Natris

© WoNo Magazine 2012

 

As not all readers are familiar with The Shakedown 8, who and what is The Shakedown 8?

We really liked your description in the first article you wrote about us, so if you don’t mind we will use that; "The Shakedown 8 is a Dutch band with one foot cemented so firmly into ska, that it allows them to explore almost everything else, as long as the backbeat is within hearing distance" (from WoNoBlog. Click here for the EP and here for the live show review.)

Where does the band name come from?

That’s a weird story, we were thinking about a name for a long time, and we had Shakedown in our heads but we wanted to add something. Then our former singer’s crazy brother decided he wanted to buy us t-shirts with the band name on it, so he kind off decided for us. We started out with 8 members so he said ‘’The Shakedown 8’’ and came back with the shirts and it just stayed that way. Now that we have six members it’s just a mysterious number, so don’t tell anybody.

The basis of the music is ska/two tone. As the heyday of this music lies just over 30 years ago, where does your fascination for ska come from?

We all just love music and listen to any kind of style; if it’s good, its good. Some of us got overloaded with music by our parents in our childhood and others by friends. Later on when we began playing music ourselves. Most of us started playing in punk bands, and when you listen to punk, ska is always around the corner.  A band like The Clash was one of the first to mix punk with ska and later on Operation Ivy and Rancid. Automatically we discovered Madness,  The Selecter and off course The Specials who started the whole two tone movement. We’ve always had the tendency to dig in to the roots of the music we listen to, so when you go back to the old days of ska music, you find out it started of as a mix of the traditional music from Jamaica (Mento, Calypso) and American Rhythm & Blues and Jazz. I think it’s more like a fascination for music in general but Ska just has a great Vibe to it and is a lot of fun to play. There’s lots of room for improvisation and you can practically mix any other style of music with it. It’s also great to see people happy and dancing around with a big smile on their face. If we get the opportunity to make someone forget his or her troubles for a while and have a great time, our job is done.

Is there a ska scene in The Netherlands of 2012?

There’s a ska scene but it never really gets any bigger or smaller, just like in the rest of the world I think there’s a solid base of people who love ska music. In fact I think everybody loves it, you just don’t hear it a lot on the radio so how would people know?

Does the fact that bands like Madness and The Specials perform again reflect on you?

Let’s hope so, but we never really thought about it like that.

Your influences also range beyond ska as your EP shows. Who brings what to the band sound?

We all bring something different to the band. On drums we have Bas, who never really played ska until he met us. He really got the hang of it pretty fast, and he’s just a great versatile and creative drummer. Than there’s Micha  (the best living bass player under the sea level) who always reminds us of the dirty, lousy punk band that’s still living inside of us. Jan is responsible for most of the song writing, backing vocals and rhythm guitar filled up with dirty blues and rock ‘n roll driven guitar solos. The accordion of Saku really jumps out. It’s not a very common instrument in ska music but I think it works very well. He brings a different flavour and melody to every song, some times a Cajun/zydeco kind of feel, and other times it’s more of a gypsy or folk thing. He’s also the man behind all of the artwork on the records and merchandise. Imre is a great musician who can play just about anything he gets his hands on, but luckily for us (besides playing the piano and keyboards) he has an almost unhealthy fascination for Hammond organs and Leslies, he has like hundreds of them laying around at home, at work, in dusty sheds and in the abandoned warehouse where we practice. He can just go wild on these things in this band, and he gives it a big greasy bluesy sauce to it. Tak is the son of a flower selling blues harp player, and after singing in many punk bands through the years, he joined us to be the frontman that he is. Besides writing lyrics, singing and hosting a blues radio show once a week, he sometimes jumps in his fathers footsteps to suck the hell out of that blues harp. I think you can say that were secretly a blues band disguised in a two-tone suit with a beard and a punk attitude.

Some songs are more keyboards driven, others more guitar. How do these choices come about?

Most of the time the basic structure of a song already exists before it enters the rehearsals. Then we just start playing it and try some different things. Sometimes a song just asks for a certain melody or builds up to a guitar or keyboard solo, it just happens. If something doesn’t work we try a different approach. A lot of songs never even made it to the stage because we just couldn’t get it to work, or they need some time and will come out later.

The lyrics on the EP have a common denominator, a sense of relational frustration and misunderstandings. How do you keep real life and songs’ lyrics apart?

There’s always a lot of frustration and misunderstanding between people. Everybody seems to think that it’s normal to be understood, but unfortunately it’s not that easy. It’s the hardest but also the most interesting thing about being human. Some of the songs are about our own experiences and some are just made up story’s inspired by the people around us. I don’t think it’s a matter of keeping real life and lyrics apart, because the lyrics are about real life. We have to deal with this stuff anyway so we just as well write some songs about it. Let’s just hope people will get inspired to try and see things from a different perspective. Instead of always looking for someone to blame in times of trouble, try to find a solution. Whether it’s in love, friendship or politics, in the end we all have to try to get along somehow.

My congratulations on the intro of ‘Big words’. Who’s responsible for this work of beauty?

Thanks, Imre came up with the intro before we made this song and it fitted in perfectly. We recorded it on a real grand piano and after that we added the rest of the instruments to built up to the rest of the song.

I thought the show I saw at the Q-Bus in Leiden was very well built up, truly capturing the audience by the song. Are you aware of your power in this way?

Thanks again, we’ve been messing around a lot with the playlist and this one really seemed to work. We were not really aware of our power in that way, but that was exactly what we were trying to achieve, so I think we’ll keep it like this.

What is the secret behind a The Shakedown 8 show?

We really love to play live shows. Most of us have been friends for a long time, so we’re just having fun together on stage and I think the audience really appreciates that.

What are your plans for 2013?

Besides playing a lot of gigs we are definitely going to put out another record. Maybe a second EP but we’re hoping to make a full album this time. We’ve been doing all the recordings ourselves and since we’ve just bought a band bus (an old fire truck), it’s not very likely we’re able to pay for a studio yet. We all still have to work so let’s hope we can find the time to make a full album but something is going to come out that’s for sure. And after that it’s time to take over the world!

Di-Rect Live in LVC Leiden

Marcel Veenendaal. Foto Wo.

You can listen to 'Say something' here.

Earlier this week you could read all about the support act of Di-Rect, Soul Sister Dance Revolution (click here), now it's time for the act of the evening. I was there as the presenter of a birthday present to a 14 year old, so to own up, it was not my choice. Di-Rect was something of a boy band in my recollection. On my route to the train station, ten years ago, I often biked passed an old van with Di-Rect lettering. The father of the drummer had a store there or so I understood.

Nowadays Di-Rect is a band from The Hague, long passed being a boy band, even moving into hippie-like spheres I'd say with its new(ish) singer Marcel Veenendaal. Preparing for the gig, I listened to the band's latest cd, 'Time will heal our senses' and I'll admit that I did not mind listening to the album at all. Before that I did unknowingly pick up a tune or two, I noticed and heard them perform a cover of The Young Giants at Giel Beelen's morning show on 3FM. This morning (on writing) they performed a fantastic cover with rappers Kern Koppen of 'Wallpaper'. Really, really well done, so click here to listen.

Jan Bakker. Foto Wo.

In the LVC Di-Rect rocked and rocked hard. In fact too hard. I moved backwards to not only save my eardrums, but also to try and distinguish what songs I was listening to. It was near impossible to find out, for someone not overly familiar with the songs. So it's hard to really write a review. What I did notice, is that this band rocks, is able to play different styles and work with dynamics. The basis supplied by Jamie Westland and Bas van Wageningen is rock solid and the rest knows how to play and sing. If I'm not mistaken a whole intermezzo of The Who's 'We're not gonna take it' was played. The interaction between lead-guitarist Spike and second guitarist Jan Bakker is like it should be, they weave in out and of each others playing.

In several songs the keyboard is the lead instrument. These were the moments that more of the song structure became apparent. It also made clear that Di-Rect is band that has expanded a lot and is not afraid of experimenting with the music they make and play. Rock, prog elements, classic rock, psychedelia and pop. A great mixture that the band conjures up. Listening to the sort of songs that were played, I was no longer surprised with the mix of audience. A few children, teenagers and adults all the way up to sixty something.The mix seemed quite odd to me before the show started. Di-Rect is able to surprise and will continue to do so in the future. It convinced me of that at the LVC.

Di-Rect & Kern Koppen. Foto Wo.

Marcel Veenendaal is a great singer, who also likes to twiddle a lot with effects on his voice and sings with ease. Too bad that most of it is lost in the noise. To me he seems too good not to be heard properly, but this was the effect of the ear-bleading loud music. I'm pretty sure the harmonies were quite nice also. Di-Rect does know were to find them. (Despite the noise several people in the audience managed to shout over the music anyway. So that's maybe why Di-Rect plays so loud.)

In the encore the band was joined by rappers Kern Koppen for the latest single, 'Say something'. This combination works well (just like in 'Wallpaper' as you have noticed). The song has swing and a totally recognisable refrain, so will undoubtedly become a hit for both. It shows that the band knows how to write a single that sticks and is interesting at the same time.

So all in all I have to say that I would like to see the band again but at a little less volume. This way I will be able to come to a more nuanced conclusion. Loud is not good.

Wo.

You can order 'Time to heal our senses' here.