Welcome back party people. With any luck, you’ll all be feeling much better than I have been this past week. I was blessed with the flu which, even while I’m on the mend at the moment, has made me feel like I’ve needed to take a nap every time I finish writing a complete sentence. To make matters worse, some of this week’s musical offerings make me want to shake my fist and throw a tantrum on the nearest floor. Actually, the floor sounds awesome right about now.
It turns out there’s a lot of new music out today, so I’ll have to break this column out into two days in order to give each album a fair turn. Tomorrow I’ll be covering the new albums from The Pierces, Dawn Richard, Carla Morrison, Macy Gray, Ladyhawke and Susan Justice. See, lots of new music! Now let’s get cray.
Are you still with me? I sure hope so, because Thee Satisfaction is a duo whose music is a multi-layered masterpiece. They are able to put the soul and energy into jazz that I just can’t seem to get out of Esperanza Spalding’s music and they don’t just stop there. This is creativity at work. Their genius is in weaving styles together that just shouldn’t make sense and making it seem effortless. Each song begs to be listened to multiple times if only just to see what sounds and influences they’ve been able to pull off. This is hip-hop, Afro-beat, Jazz, R&B, world music from a land that hasn’t even been discovered yet. This is also what I would point to as the antithesis of MDNA. Plus, they are girlfriends! Stream the album in its entirety over at Spinner or NPR.
Lindsay Fuller is an out singer-songwriter whose hard-rocking songs create a wall of sound much larger than you’d expect. Listening to the first two songs on You, Anniversary, I felt just as captivated by Fuller as I remember feeling when listening to Brandi Carlile and LP for the first time. These are songs with a pulse and raw emotion. I can’t wait to dive head first into this a little more later. You can stream the album in its entirety over at Spinner.
Honorable Mentions: Lionel Richie (Hello, yes, it was you I was looking for), Justin Townes Earl, Overkill, Paul Weller, The Used, Clay Aiken.
As stated earlier, there isn’t enough time in my day to have given all of today’s new music a spin, so come back tomorrow to hear about the rest. As always, feel free to yell at me through your computer in the comments, via Twitter or send love notes (sorry no haterade allowed) on my Facebook wall.
