Today’s Free Download – The Decemberists

And a bouncy little number “Summersong” is, provided by the nice, if occasionally cranky, folks at Pitchfork:

Continuing in the vein of 2004’s The Tain EP, the Decemberists have crafted their fourth full-length, The Crane Wife, to be an enormous folk-prog monsterpiece. It’s a beautiful thing, really…This song has none of the multi-part progginess of others on the record. It’s a simple, accordion-tinged ode to the end of summer.

With the temperatures creeping down and most of the festival activity leaning towards the blues, here’s a chance to squeeze a little more out of the season.

Thanks, Pitchfork!

Local Rhythms – SpiralFrog is a Leap Forward

Appears in the August 31, 2006 Claremont Eagle Times:

Partially adapted from an earlier post
Watching the record industry come to grips with the new realities of the music business is a bit like watching Sam I Am’s evil twin at work. You remember the Dr. Seuss character? Sam tried to force an unwanted breakfast on a poor guy who was probably studying for his cholesterol test.

“Would you eat them with a fox, would you eat them in a box?” Well, now it’s music instead of green eggs and ham. “Would you buy it in a stream, a cell phone beam with an encryption scheme?”

But the cute little music business muffin-head has now turned mean and ugly: “How about if I sue your spouse, lien your house and smash your mouse?”

I do not like this, Sam I Am….

SpiralFrog, announced Tuesday by Universal Music Group, is the industry’s first credible attempt to confront the new economic order. In an unprecedented move, the service plans to make UMG’s entire catalog available for free online – with restrictions.

Tracks can’t be burned to a CD, but can be copied to a Microsoft-sanctioned portable music player, which also has to be re-docked to the computer periodically. Plus, you’ll have to look at ads before you download. It’s Windows-only, which makes perfect sense. They’re trying to slow down the Apple digital music juggernaut, which means no iPods, no iBooks, no iNothing.

Some, most notably Bob Lefsetz, consider SpiralFrog another big dud by the usual suspects. Much as I love Lefsetz, I think he misses an important point. Magazines, papers, and now television have all latched onto web-based advertising as to pay for making free content available online. Now, here comes the music business – can Hollywood be far behind?

For Lefsetz, it’s the restrictions that kill the deal. People want to own music, the argument goes, and this scheme makes them rent it. Well, something that’s free can’t be rented. In this case, it also can’t be owned. But it also won’t get you arrested.

Besides, stealing music online is a huge pain. For every quick track pulled from LimeWire, there are five more stuck waiting for available hosts, or completely dead on the vine. Spiral Frog, at the very least, will behave more like iTunes and less like Kazaa.

Claremont’s last record store closed months ago, but there’s more music to be had, and at better prices, than ever before. That’s a reason why a column called “Local Rhythms” is so often about the world beyond the Twin State Valley. Here are my local music picks:

Thursday: Matt McCabe, Canoe Club – A quiet storm in downtown Hanover. McCabe’s piano playing has been known to liven up records, as a sideman to Roomful of Blues and Duke Robillard. At Canoe, he settles into a jazzy space, with sophisticated music that inspires dinner conversation, not booty-shaking.

Friday: Pete Merrigan, Sophie & Zeke’s – Sadly, the season’s nearing a close for my favorite ex-pat, with just a few appearances before an Irish vacation and a return to his Florida home. Fortunately, two of them are in downtown Claremont, consecutive Fridays at a venue that’s building a following for music as well as food.

Saturday: Stonewall, Royal Flush Diner – Vermont’s grittiest power trio takes over Springfield’s new hot spot tonight. Stonewall’s been laying down tracks for an album of late, at former Ingrid’s Ruse drummer Shamus Martin’s Exsubel Records studio. Check out their MySpace site for a taste of things to come, or see them live. They always bring out my inner headbanger.

Sunday: Josh Maiocco, Front Porch Series – Speaking of the now-defunct Ruse, their excellent lead guitarist showcases his solo work at this, the final installment of the Bellows Falls Front Porch Series. It’s a movable “Picnic Potluck” feast held today at the Village Guest Suite, 6 Hapgood Street. Josh has a nice bluesy singing voice, and great taste in covers to go with his own stuff.

Monday: Bread & Roses Folk Music Festival – In 1912, Lawrence, Massachusetts became an international focus for the debate on child labor, workplace safety and subsistence wages. On Labor Day, that legacy is celebrated in music. It’s as much about learning as listening, with Phoebe Legere and Anne Feeney carrying on the Woody Guthrie tradition, and Corey “The Singing Lecturer” Dolgon (a full-time Worcester State College professor) playing historical songs. The roots rocking Mammals headline.

Tuesday: Irish Sessions, Salt Hill – Blue Monday is dark this week, as the Tuohy brothers get into the Labor Day spirit. But Tuesdays will once again burst forth with sounds of the old country, with Dave Loney and whatever friends happen to drop by. They always play in a circle at the center of the room, like a heartbeat. It’s lovely, and even better with a pint.

A Review of Kasey Chambers’ Carnival

Appears in the August 31, 2006 Claremont Eagle Times:

In 2000, when U.S. audiences were first exposed to Kasey Chambers, she was already a star in her native Australia. American radio programmers didn’t know what to do with the quirky singer-songwriter. “Cry Like A Baby” was a minor hit on country radio.

But the genre was an uncomfortable fit for Chambers, with her punked-up Deana Carter vocal style and pierced lower lip. After a well-received stint opening for Lucinda Williams, she found a place in the cult artist-rich Americana format.

Despite huge success down under – her last record entered the charts at Number One – she’s been slow to catch on here.

With each release – 2002’s “Barricades and Brickwalls” and 2004’s “Wayward Angel” Chambers’ music has gotten edgier. With her latest, “Carnival,” she busts out all the stops with her most un-country record yet.

The menacing love song “I Got You Now,” a duet with Tim Rogers, moves along at a pace reminiscent of seminal punk band X’s most frenetic work. The bluesy “Railroad,” with moaning guitars and shrieking train sounds, also kicks up a lot of dust.

“Sign on a Door” teases with the drawl that got her on many a Nashville station, but the slashing playing of new guitarist Jim Moginie, formerly of Aussie political rockers Midnight Oil, propels the song along with insistent urgency. Chambers’ deceptively child-like voice shines as she flits up the register in “The Rain,” while “Light Up a Candle,” which sounds a lot like the swaying “Pony” from her last record, features a real child’s voice.

In “Hard Road,” a weary yet resolute track, she effectively trades vocals with Powderfinger’s Bernard Fanning. The upbeat “Nothing At All” goes in the other direction, a goofy singsong that works because of its’ mindlessness, not in spite of it.

Less successful is “Surrender,” an odd bid for a dance floor hit that sounds too close to Madonna for comfort.

The song is the only miss on “Carnival,” which moves easily from rock and roll rave-ups to passionate bursts of soul, like the easygoing “Dangerous” and the Motown rhythms of “Don’t Look So Sad.” It’s Kasey Chambers’ strongest bid yet to export her success from down under.

(four out of five stars)

A Review of Ray LaMontagne’s Till the Sun Turns Black

Appears in the August 31, 2006 Claremont Eagle Times:

New Hampshire native Ray LaMontagne’s latest release is a sometimes too-deliberate move away from the successful formula that propelled his surprise 2004 hit “Trouble.”

“I never learned to count my blessings/I choose instead to dwell in my disasters,” he reports convincingly in a typical track (“Empty”). The morose cloud never quite lifts from the record, but what “Till the Sun Turns Black” lacks in mood it does make up in musical texture – an element it shares with “Trouble.”

The arrangements, assisted by well-regarded producer Ethan Johns (Ryan Adams, Tift Merritt), are at once meaty and pristine. Johns manages to lift the songs from the lugubrious swamp of LaMontagne’s outlook. Trembling horns frame “You Can Bring Me Flowers” and also lift up the record’s liveliest song (and the disc’s first single),“Three More Days,” a smoldering Otis Redding-styled boogie.

Other tracks employ chamber strings to stark, evocative effect. A Van Morrison inspired dirge, “Gone Away From Me,” is all agony, as LaMontagne’s dark, plaintive whisper of a voice lays his pain raw: “Life is long and love is gone away from me.” The title cut is the record’s best track, with mournful violins draped over an otherwise spare arrangement that’s occasionally punctuated by timpani flourishes. At its’ highest point, LaMontagne simply moans a beautiful singsong as a coda to lyrics examining self-fulfillment.

It’s strong material, but also relentlessly bleak. It makes one long for any hopeful echo from “Trouble.” Perhaps a shadow of the title song’s joyful chorus (“I’ve been saved by a woman”), or the comforting sentiments of “I Could Hold You in My Arms.”

Instead, the listener is drenched in a thunderstorm of sorrow.

The record ends with “Within You,” a funereal anti-war song that never quite ignites a spark. Like the instrumental “Truly, Madly, Deeply,” it’s more an interlude than a complete song.

It’s a characteristic that’s shared with most of the record. “Till the Sun Turns Black” finds LaMontagne trying too hard to distance himself from his artistic past. Every buoyant moment of “Trouble” has been replaced with gnawing emptiness – and, unfortunately, confusion.

It’s a great record for anyone fresh from a breakup, and looking to dwell in despair. Otherwise, one hopes that the next time out, Ray LaMontagne will find time to come in from the rain.

(two out of five stars)

Why SpiralFrog’s Free Music Plan Will Work

Watching the record industry trying to come to grips with the new realities of the music business is a bit like watching Sam I Am’s evil twin at work. You remember the Dr. Seuss character, haranguing that poor guy, who’ s probably studying for his chloresterol test.

Trying to force an unwanted breakfast on him – “would you eat them with a fox, would you eat them in a box?”

Well, now it’s music instead of green eggs and ham.

“Would you buy it in a stream, a cell phone beam with an encryption scheme?”

But RIAA’s cute little muffin-head has now turned mean and ugly: “How about if I sue your spouse, lien your house and smash your mouse?”

I do not like this, Sam I Am….

SpiralFrog, announced by Universal Music Group on Tuesday, is the industry’s first credible attempt to confront the new economic order. In an unprecedented move, the service plans to make UMG’s entire catalog available for free download – with restrictions. They’re working to bring other companies on board.

With SpiralFrog, tracks can’t be burned to a CD, but can be copied to a Microsoft-sanctioned portable music player, which also has to be re-docked to the computer periodically.

It’s obviously Windows-only, which makes perfect sense. They’re trying to slow down the Apple digital music juggernaut, which means no iPods, no iBooks, no iNothing.

Some, most notably Bob Lefsetz, consider SpiralFrog another big swing and a miss by the usual suspects:

These are the same guys who came up with Farm Club and PressPlay. Literally the same guys, Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine. Doug’s a sexagenarian song guy. Jimmy? He’s an opportunist. Believing these guys have the digital answer is akin to believing the guys who did the Mentos movie are going to eclipse Paramount.

Much as I love the guy, I think Lefsetz is missing an important point. Magazines, papers, and now television have all latched onto web-based advertising as the key to making content available for free online. Now, here comes the music business – can Hollywood be far behind?

For Lefsetz, it’s the restrictions that kill the deal. People want to own music, the argument goes, and this scheme makes them rent it. Well, something that’s free can’t be rented. In this case, it also can’t be owned.

Every time I hear him make this argument I wonder – how many promo CDs are in his collection? How many concert tickets has he actually PAID for in the past 30 years? What’s the ratio of free (as in you didn’t buy it, the record company gave it to you) music to the stuff he truly owns?

One more thing, Bob. LPs don’t count.

Regular people buy one or two albums a month, and a year later they’re tired of them. Online mavens steal a lot more music than that, but I’d be surprised if their listening habits are much different. They just don’t have anything to sell back to the used record store.

Here’s another news flash – downloading music is a huge pain. For every quick track pulled from LimeWire, there are five more stuck waiting for available hosts, or completely dead on the vine. Spiral Frog, at the very least, will behave more like iTunes and less like Kazaa, which is a very good thing.

I think this is a revolutionary move.

Like the New York Times, I’m sure Spiral Frog will eventually offer a paid premium content component, sooner rather than later. But with the tectonic shift in advertising, something impacted by Tivo on the one hand and the Long Tail of business on the other, the time is ripe for a model that doesn’t force cosumers to buy music when they’re convinced it’s their right to have it for free.

Let ’em have it – right after this word from E-Trade.

Today’s Free Download – Stonewall

These guys always bring out my inner headbanger. Since they’re playing at Springfield’s Royal Flush this weekend (Saturday, September 2), it seemed like a good idea to link “I Choose Not” in spite of the inevitable Stone Temple Pilots comparisons.

I also like “Since the Day,” available as a stream (but not a download) on their MySpace page.

If you’re in the Local Rhythms area, go and see this young band play live. They pound out every song with honest fury, and they’re amazingly melodic for a power trio, not all bitch-slapping aggression like some other bands. Josh Parker has rock-star swagger, Ryan Young looks like he could add 20 pieces to his drum kit and not miss a beat. Phillip Chiu rounds things out nicely on bass, with easy charm and steady rhythm (or was that steady charm and easy rhythm?).

Today’s Free Download – Jody Watley

Watley’s re-make of “Borderline,” one of Madonna’s first big hits, insinuated itself into my consciousness though it seemed a trifle the first time I heard it. But I kept coming back to her slowed-down, sultry take, until finally I just had to link it as a free download and let others decide whether it deserved a cover version.

Watley, you may recall, hit the scene with the 70’s disco trio Shalamar – remember “Second Time Around”? – and had a string of dance floor hits in the mid-80’s. She’s been quiet for the last few years. She had a minor hit last year, several re-mixes of her 1989 hit “Looking for a New Love,” but not much in the way of new material.

With “The Makeover,” the song selections are old, but she reinvents them quite nicely. Not an original trick, mind you, but given the state of R&B these days, Watley’s gorgeous, restrained phrasing on “Borderline” is a refreshing change.

Borderline – Single

Jody Watley
Avitone Recordings

• Buy at RealNetworks / Rhapsody
• Download “Borderline (Full Version)” (MP3, 192kbps)

Today’s Free Download – Mindy Smith

OK, it’s a MySpace stream, not a free download. But “Out Loud” is a strong advance track from Mindy Smith’s upcoming “Long Island Shores” CD, a record I’ve been anxiously awaiting.

She reminds many of Patty Griffin, but the deeply personal nature of her songs set Smith apart.

The upcoming record draws from childhood memories:

… a nod to her family and her heritage growing up in Smithtown, New York. The album is scheduled for release on Oct. 10th. “Long Island Shores” retains the raw, emotional intimacy of Mindy’s songs and haunting vocals but adds some sharp edges both musically and lyrically, broadening the landscape of Mindy’s storytelling. Mindy co-produced this record with Steve Buckingham and Lex Price along with additional production by Roger Moutenot.

“Out Loud” is a richly textured, complex track. It retains the frail vulnerability of “One Moment More” and “Angel Doves” but also has the urgent power of “Come to Jesus,” the breakout track from her first album.

“Why should we stand in lonely shadows/when there’s so much light around?” sings Smith, and the song emerges joyously around those sentiments.

Is Goombah MySpace Inside My Mind?

I’ve been playing with Goombah this weekend, and though it’s not perfect (what beta is?) it’s very intriguing. It’s an application that catalogues your iTunes library and feeds it into a database containing the libraries of other users. Goombah looks for matches between your playlist and other users, analyzing similarities. It then generates a ranked relevancy list.

It also creates a list of other Goombah users based on musical compability. You can drill down into their playlists to sess what they’ve got. Finally, and perhaps best of all, the service has a few hundred free tracks that are placed at the top of the list for your consideration. Every “Free Music Friday,” Goombah adds new tracks, some of which are from reasonably big names like Ani DiFranco, Sufjan Stevens, Calexico, XTC and Spoon.

Goombah is powered by BitTorrent, at least in terms of how it gathers user data, but it runs on trust. By standing between the record companies artists and music fans, it acts as a taste broker. That only works if Goombah’s user community is confident that the program isn’t gathering data for piracy lawsuits, and artists are certain that it’s spreading their music without depriving them of a chance to earn a living from it.

With that understanding in place, there’s a real opportunity to build a new and different musical order that levels the field and allows all artists unprecedented reach to their fans.

Of course, the algorithm has to work, and I’m not so sure at the moment. I have over 10,000 tracks in my library, ranging from vintage blues to metal, with pop, folk, country and world music situated in between. Why, then, did the free tracks (the new stuff that I likely haven’t heard before) situate on such a narrow range of styles? I glanced at the entirety of Goombah’s free library, and there were several other songs that might have been recommended based on my tastes.

It’s unclear which metadata is used for the relevancy matches. Does the program check play count, last played, play order? There’s also a basic problem with ID3 in iTunes – if a track is skipped before it ends, it’s not counted as having been played. With live albums that’s a real issue, since many tracks end with the long spoken introduction to the next song. I tend to jump to the end of those. As far as iTunes is concerned, I never played them.

It doesn’t look like Goombah does ranking based on iPod data, but if play count isn’t factored in, that’s probably irrelevant.

Most iTunes metadata is provided by CDDB, which can be problematic. For example, CDDB classifies Ellis Paul in the “Soulful Rock” genre when he’s pretty much a folk artist. Blank fields present a unique issue. There are more blank “genre” tracks in my library than I can count. Add in tracks traded on Limewire and the like, with bad or no data, and it gets worse.

These aren’t Goombah’s problems, but unless these challenges are addressed, it will affect the usefulness of the program.
These problems are in the current Goombah release (0.9661).

Here’s a specific issue, which I’ve reported to Goombah. When I first fired the program up, the “free track” list included five recommended artists, with an “adventurousness” scale set near the middle. When I increased that level to “high” the artist count DROPPED to one. Further, the remaining name was conicidentally a “featured artist” on Goombah’s home page.

On the other hand, the non-free list is packed with cool looking suggestions. My top ranked user match had a Mindy Smith record listed that won’t be released for another six weeks. What a cool way to get a news flash.

One note: I’m running both the PC and Mac (Panther) versions. The aforementioned problem only occurred my Win box (XP SP2).

With Zune, Toshiba Triangulates

An FCC filing announced Friday indicates that the Microsoft Zune is being built by Toshiba. It will feature a 30 GB drive and a wireless connection for song and photo swapping, although early reports indicate that the music-sharing component is, typically for Microsoft, ridiculously restrictive.

According to documents filed Thursday with the FCC, Zune has wireless networking abilities that once turned on, allow people to send and receive photos, as well as “promotional” copies of songs, albums and playlists. It sounds great, but the filing does not define “promotional copies”. I believe it is a term also known as “controlled sharing”, usually involving a few selected songs with a time limit of how long you can keep them.

Two interesting notes here. First, the iPod hard disk has long been built by Toshiba; how do they avoid non-compete problems? Second, the Gigabeat S, Toshiba’s own MP3 player recently beat the iPod in a CNET Prizefight, winning in all categories. So, really, it’s three-pronged dominance for the Japanese behemoth.