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Anna Domino Land of My Dreams

Aretha Franklin Land of Dreams

I was anticipating Beach House's latest album Bloom to be another stunning achievement, deeply affecting and moving, etc, having enthusiastically loved their prior output...  But no such luck.  I didn't loathe it, but just as with the most recent Destroyer album, it went in one ear and out the other.  Neither colourless nor terrible, just workmanlike.  I couldn't hum a melody from it with a gun at my temple.

Not so with Ms. Domino's 1986 version of Aretha Franklin's dazzling torch song...  The hypnotic guitar-interplay mirrors Felt, with a rockabilly twang on the leads, her voice is rich in character and depth.  Throaty, even!  A sweet soporific lullaby for the droopy eyed positioned between the morose ballads of Christine McVie in Fleetwood Mac and the Baltimore-bred sleepwalking hymns of (yes) Beach House and Cass McCombs.

Sadly the rest of Ms. Domino's work doesn't always add out - hopelessly dated sounding experiments with canned drum loops and an over-reliance on studio "texturing" drag it into the Lilith Fair swamp...  Actually, not a swamp - if only she had only recorded something in a backwoods bog! - but rather the estrogen-saturated chamber of some strip mall Yoga studio.  The sort of globe-trotting treacle that Tilda Swinton's character in We Need To Talk About Kevin would have on her walkman while hitchihiking through Andalusia. Jane Siberry and frozen yogurt.

Tread forward at your own peril or content yourself with her album East and West and a late period contribution to Stephen Merritt's project, The Sixths.

Catch up with D'Angelo. A great piece on the soulful recluse by Amy Wallace for GQ.

Stealing From Our Favorite Thieves: Mario Kart Soca

Aretha Franklin Jump To It
Delorean Monsoon
Delorean Warmer Places

Up until recently, the calculated upbeat dance-floor pop of Delorean didn't have a lot to recommend itself to me: 2006's Into The Plateau album presented the Spanish group as a tepid VHS or Beta (imagine that), diluting an already weak post-punk brew with an obnoxious singing style and unfocused guitar-playing, and so I was content to consign them to the dustbin of blogosphere history, over-stuffed as it is.

But when I heard Monsoon from last year's Ayrton Senna EP, I realized I might not have given them as much credit as I should have. Sampling Aretha Franklin's Jump To It* isn't anything new, (there were God knows how many house songs in the 90's that did the same thing), but the vocal slicing and dicing is subtle enough that, in this instance, they're swinging for the fences/trainspotting readers of Prefixmag. And while it seemed like Delorean was committed to aping Lo-Fi-FNK's mannerisms until such a time as that Swedish duo got its act together and released more than a single song every four years or pinching a bit from The Friendly Fires, last month they branched out on Subiza, which added El Guincho, Tanlines, Lemonade, Air France and 90's pop-techno to their creditors' list. It is, sadly, a capable and generally forgettable contribution to the yet-to-be-named genre of music inspired by the soundtrack to Mario Kart. (Mario Kart Soca, perhaps?) Witness Warmer Places.

I'm sure they have taste. I'm sure they're fun to hang out with. Enjoy the festival season this year, guys.

* Again, one of my favourite songs, and produced by Luther Vandross!

I Know Karate: The Songs of Chaz Jankel

Chas Jankel Without You
Chas Jankel Ai No Corrida
Chas Jankel Glad To Know You (Todd Terje Edit)

I don't write about it all that much on this blog, but one of my deepest and abiding musical pleasures is post-disco and early 80's R&B, particularly when experienced performers and producers, looking for a sound beyond dead-as-nails disco, forged a new sound marrying the dance-insistent beats of disco to the synthesizer sounds found in funk and pFunk. Some of my favourite stuff from that period is produced by Luther Vandross - who should be remembered for being more than an overweight, closeted crooner of schmaltz appearing frequently on Detroit cable stations... For example, Aretha Franklin's 1982 album Jump To It (and titular single) is so perfectly executed that I can only marvel that it hasn't stuck around in the popular mind as much as Diana Ross' Chic-produced albums.

Earlier this year I was taking the expensive and long time-ride to my ladyfriend's place in one of the more eastern boroughs of Montreal (just how east? Well, enough that the graffiti is equally divided between swastikas and dicks), and, being a bit tipsy, forced my driver to put on Aretha Franklin's Jump To It. We listened to the song twice in a row, pumping it, and doing our best car-dancing, and by the end, the guy was the proud owner of that CD. I felt I'd done my evangalical duty, both to Ms. Franklin and Mr. Vandross.

Chaz Jankel, a white British keyboardist and one-time member of Ian Dury & The Blockheads (Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick) might seem an unlikely source of some seriously awesome R&B, but this is the guy wrote Ai No Corrida, which would go on to be a defining (and chart-friendly) song for Quincy Jones. Mr. Jankel has quiet the talent - even though this well-produced and ear candy, there's a rhythmic leanness to the production and song-writing that avoids the excesses of string-laden disco or snooze-worthy house. Check it out above.