LA Weekly

Love or hate the music, I'll argue with you for hours (if we've got beer), that the physical album cover of Radiohead's In Rainbows sucks.

And love or hate the music on Nine Inch Nails' four-part Ghosts project, I'll similarly argue (again, if we've got beer), that the artwork on that album is quite excellent. Even as a five dollar download, you got 36 individual photos that show up connected to the 36 instrumental tracks. As far as digital packaging goes, the design work on Ghosts is finally mounts an argument against those of us that remember slipping the plastic off of gatefold-vinyl and curling up with it to examine every inch while the turntable turned.

So it was with a slightly jealous heart that I looked at the box that LA Weekly's Todd Sternisha brought into the office Monday containing the limited edition $300 deluxe hard copy of Ghosts. Just a few hours after it landed though, Reznor went a step further by announcing a free download of another new album called The Slip, this one a full out 10 song LP with vocals, full production, brand new songs: the works. But let's take a look at this insane Ghosts thing first:

Two black, cloth-covered slipcases to start off with, with a big chunk of NIN-logoed metal stuck on each box.

2500 and that's all. A fair number of these got immediately turned around and offered on ebay. Ahh, capitalism!

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10. Sea Wolf-Leaves in the River

At times, Leaves In the River reads a little predictably quirky, but Alex Church's pop heart salvages this from being the effort of another accordian-toting, maritime metaphor-using copycat. The sound might not be the most original (I can't wait for Colin Meloy's "Shark N---s (Biters)" skit on the next Decemberists record), but when Church connects, as like on Starbucks-gypsy stomp of "Winter Windows" or Indie 103.1 staple, "You're a Wolf," it's almost impossible to resist.

Sea Wolf on Myspace

Watch "You're A Wolf"

9. Le Switch-Hello Today

As Duke has repeatedly pointed out, Aaron Kyle's brand of tipsy saloon-rock grows on you like a fungus. At first, you're kind of like, 'hey a fungus, maybe I should get rid of that.' Then you realize that Aaron's a pretty big dude and maybe you shouldn't be so quick to go to the doctor. And the next thing you know, you're including him on your "Best Of" lists and not even because you're trying to avoid a brawl, (therein violating your personal rule about never feuding with bands named after weapons), but more importantly, because of the fact that Kyle is a deceptively proficient songwriter.

Le Switch On Myspace

MP3: Le Switch-"Living In Another World" (Left-Click)

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Animal Collective-Strawberry Jam

Sounds Like Bad Acid Trip

At arcade in New Jersey

Let Panda roam solo.

Arcade Fire-Neon Bible

Right now in heaven

Toole Composes Lengthy Indictment

Against Neon Bible.

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The film that ended the Cold War.

9. Hi-Tek Ft. Talib Kweli & Dion-"Time"

"People get caught up in a time and what that song represents to them at the time they hear it. Nothing I'm gonna do after that is going to match up to that time period, because they can't get that back. So I have to realize that when I make music, that time is never gonna be back to them-Talib Kweli

In 2001, I saw Talib Kweli five times and each performance he seemed grow closer and closer to greatness. There was a fierce hunger in his eyes then, he was young and eager, rapping in breathless machine-gun bursts as though he was trying to break out of the underground one syllable at a time. He had a restless quality to him, moving with intensity and focus, as though he if he stopped paying attention for a single moment, one of his thoughts would escape from him and never return.

But then something happened. Quality came out and it was solid but uninspiring. A step back not forward. Time lunged forward. By the time Beautiful Struggle came out, it it felt like how I imagine hipsters will feel in five years when realize that they spent two wears in the late 00's rocking mustaches and stove-pipe hats. It didn't help that the album was terrible. Every track seemed to come with a corny, and massive R&B hook. Not even touching the fact, that Beautiful Struggle single "I Try" was pretty much the exact same song as "Get By." Kweli was played out like keg stands and gravity bong rips. Things things that I used to fuck with regularly but never expected to include in my post-collegiate life.

Then I heard, "Time," easily the best track off of Hi-Tek's recently released Hi-Teknology album. Instantly, I fell back a half-dozen years, with the requisite flood of memories: old mix tapes made, Reflection Eternal as the soundtrack at some drunken party spilling into a gray morning, stoned nocturnal car rides through the lazy hills of northeast LA. Hi-Tek's beat is godlike, a celestial burst of stoned soul, Kweli's raps meld perfectly, with the sort of duo only great duos have. These two need each other, like Pete Rock and CL Smooth or Premier and Guru. In the meantime, Talib Kweli might never mean as much to me as he did six years ago, but you know what, I'm okay with liking him again. It's time.

8. Bishop Lamont ft. Phat Kat & Elzhi-"Goatit"

As discussed last week.

Download:
MP3: Bishop Lamont ft. Phat Kat & Elzhi-"Goatit"

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Mental Note: Avoid guys with the nickname "Mad Dog."

14. Redman-"Blow Treez"

Why did we have to wait until 2007 for Redman, the man who taught a generation of impressionable youths how to roll a blunt, to sample Bob Marley, the greatest blunt roller of them all? Flipping the halcyon palm-tree sway of "Sun is Shining" from 1978's Kaya, Reggie Noble enlists Method Man and whoever the fuck Ready Roc is to create the stoner anthem of the year. It's a bit reductive to tell you to bump this from a booming system stoned on an impossibly sunny spring day, but hey, sometimes that's just the way things were intended.

13. Kanye West-"Everything I Am"

Let's talk, Common. I can live with the Gap ads. I can even handle the weirdness of the B.F.F. relationship with Ari Gold, but something's gone terribly awry when you pass up a beat like this It's simple but soulful, twinkling piano keys, somber Southern Baptist wails, and soft trembling drums. Stir some Premier scratches directly into its heart and you get arguably the best beat on Graduation. Kanye does it justice too, rattling off a litany of his flaws, spazzing out at Awards shows, not being as black as one of the dudes in Blackstreet (?). It reads a little calculating but plays as one of the few humanizing touches that manage to make Graduation endearing in spite of its arena-sized ego.

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This list has very little to do with Back to the Future II. However, I am writing it from the inside of a Delorean.

19. Pete Rock ft. Styles P & Sheek Louch-"914"

Released by Nature Sounds in January as the single from Pete Rock' s still shelved New York's Finest record, "914" has inevitably become a hit among rich kids in Westchester County, stoked that Yonkers and Scarsdale share an area code. Despite capable verses from Styles P and Sheek Louch (or as they're commonly known in Black Hebrew Circles: A Side of Lox), Rock owns the track without saying a word, with a beat full of filthy drums, muffled horns, and the grimy New York subway rattle that he made his name on.

18. Rich Boy-"Throw Some D's Out On It Remix"

How about we just start by listing the bad things about this song. First, of all it has Rich Boy on it. And I know people are really into the whole, "let's pretend that Rich Boy isn't completely garbage" thing, but I'm not hearing it. He's pretty awful. I even listened to his eponymous NAMBLA-enticing debut twice and both times Rich Boy's entreaties to be a "Hustla Boy Gangsta Mack" barely lured me in. Barely. Also, the "Throw Some D's Remix" has a verse from Murphy Lee talking about how my girl has a picture of him on her wall. This is not true. I don't date girls with pictures of St. Lunatics on my wall. In fact, I'm willing to bet that Murphy Lee's sister doesn't even have a picture of Murphy Lee on her wall. On the plus side, Andre 3000 kicks off his string of awesome '07 guest appearances, The Game rambles about Cadillacs and Jim Jones ad-libs the word, "Innocent," while talking about his "kosher lawyers." And sadly, this never fails to amuse me.

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About three weeks ago when I was in New York, Tal Rosenberg pretty much gushed non-stop about the Burial record's brilliance. At the time, I didn't even know that the London-based Dub Step producer had a new album coming out, which isn't much of a surprise considering fewer than ten people know his actual identity, he doesn't do shows and he's not exactly known as being PR friendly. Apparently, his eponymous first record was named last year's Album of the Year by The Wire, but since I have a hard-time justifying spending ten bucks on an issue of a music magazine, I don't read The Wire.

In fact, other than a spectacular track called "Unite" on a Dubstep primer I own, it's safe to say that all I knew about Burial three weeks prior was that "Ceremonial burial" was a crucial and awesome civilization advance in the greatest computer game ever made.
Since then, its been hard not to read about Burial, with every music magazine from London to Brooklyn to E. Brooklyn, rushing to heap it with praise. So I'm a little hesitant to even bother wasting any more words on an album that basically everyone knows is great and at this point, it feels almost bandwagonesque to even chime in, but fuck it.

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Wu-Tang Clan
8 Diagrams (Loud/SRC/Universal)
By Ben Westhoff

The long awaited fifth Wu-Tang Clan album, 8 Diagrams, just leaked, and it’s fucking solid. After just a few listens, it’s already in my 2007 top ten, and it will surely battle Graduation for supremacy on hip hop critics’ year-end lists. That said, it has little in common with Kanye West’s latest; the hooks are much more subtle and there’s nothing radio friendly.

The back story is almost as juicy as the album itself. Not too long after Ghostface Killah complained publicly about Wu ringleader and beat maker RZA’s handling of the Clan’s finances, Raekwon came out in favor of all-out mutiny. In an interview with Missinfo.tv, he calls RZA a “hip hop hippie,” adding: “When we listened to the finals of the finals, we was like, ‘Nah, this album is rushed, that’s not it, it’s not what we want it to be […] The album ain’t weak, it just ain’t what y’all may be expecting […]We make ‘punch you in the face’ music.”

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With only two shows in the US currently slated around the release of her new album, White Chalk, PJ Harvey's concert at the Oprheum downtown had even more of a special-event vibe than her concerts usually have.
Photos by Aimée Candelaria

Photos by Aimée Candelaria

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Bad Religion
New Maps of Hell (Epitaph Records)
By Tony Ware

New Maps of Hell, Bad Religion's 14th original studio album, does an admirable job proving that the L.A. sextet is still the epitome of a tempestuous, polemically driven punk band. The anti-establishment espousers conform here to what they do best: melodic hardcore featuring increasingly cynical, doctorate-driven lyrics that threaten to get a bit pedantic at times. For better or worse, this album could've easily been released between 1990's Against the Grain and 1992's Generator, but it also sounds comfortable following the recent spate of Bad Religion's releases with reunited/founding guitarist Brett Gurewitz.

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M.I.A.
Kala
XL Recordings
Scheduled release date: August 21
By Oscar Pascual

The “World” section at your local music retailer is just a way to pile together all the stuff that isn’t from America or the UK. It really isn’t fair that Bossanova joints can be found right next to some Riverdance jams, but English-born Sri Lankan M.I.A.’s latest, Kala, truly deserves to be called a World album.

She proposes in her new disc that this is the Third World Democracy, and there’s no arguing here. M.I.A. did a lot of jumping from continent to continent for this one, and the end result captures the musical flavor of several different cultures and manages to infuse them with booming 808s and frantic rhythms.

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Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger
By Rossiter Drake

With the release of Easy Tiger, critics are eager to celebrate the return of Ryan Adams, alt-country savior. The truth, though, is that aside from self-indulgent missteps — Demolition, anyone? — the former Whiskeytown frontman never left. Sure, he took a well-deserved breather last year after releasing three studio efforts in 2005 (among them, the impossibly delicate 29), but rarely since the heyday of Bob Dylan has an artist been pulled in so many different directions by his fans. Some pine for a hefty helping of down-home country. Others prefer Adams the precious balladeer. And then there are the ones still demanding the more aggressive, Gold-era rock 'n' roll inspired by the 32-year-old's punk roots. A single album hardly ever satisfies all three camps.

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