Elise – Page 62

The Reign of Kindo | The Man, the Wood + the Stone

“Play with Fire is The Reign of Kindo’s third full length record,” (CandyRat Records). “… music that pinpoints the middle ground between a respect for past greats and a boldness to pave tomorrow. This is, quite modestly, the definition of The Reign of Kindo. Citing influences from Dave Brubeck to Ben Folds to Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto to John Mayer, there’s not a degree of pomposity in this sound, just an honesty in the group’s craft to blend such diverse influences into an identity.”

Perhaps some of the highest possible praise for this eclectic indie/prog/jazz/rock/etc. band comes from Sputnik Music: “… me and my dad can listen together in the car without one of us saying ‘God, this sucks.'”

Starting in A minor, “The Man, the Wood and the Stone” (2013) is full of harmonic pivots. At 2:01, we’ve shifted to Db major; 2:19, C major; 2:30, A major … accelerating and building from there. Other than a difference in meter, the final melodic phrases of the album-closing track (3:24) mirror the first phrases of the opening track, “The Hero, The Saint, The Tyrant, & The Terrorist” — weighty bookends for a wide-ranging album.

Belinda Carlisle | Heaven is a Place on Earth

Belinda Carlisle, lead singer of the girl group synonymous with early 1980s pop, The Go-Go’s, later left for a solo career. Stereogum reports that in December 1987, “Carlisle had the #1 single in America, and she had it with a fiercely, fervently, almost defiantly mainstream song. Carlisle’s big hit is a simple, straightforward love song built around terms so overstated that they cross over into actual religious territory. In the video, Carlisle makes out with her husband, a Hollywood scion who was once part of the Republican political machine … (In the decade proceeding the hit), Belinda Carlisle went full normie. Along the way, though, she made a hell of an impact.”

“‘Heaven Is a Place on Earth’ is a glimmering, expensive-sounding pop record, with that shiny-synth/big-drum thing that you hear on practically every successful record of the era … On his Hit Parade podcast a couple of years ago, Chris Molanphy points out that (songwriters Rick Nowels and Ellen Shipley) took that trick from Bon Jovi, who’d used it on ‘You Give Love A Bad Name.’ Later on, that chorus-up-front move became a go-to trick for late-’90s boy-band producers. It’s some effective shit! When a chorus is big enough, there’s no need to be subtle about it. You can just bludgeon it directly into somebody’s brain before the song even starts.” Songwriter Ellen Shipley sang backup on the song, as did Diane Warren and Michelle Phillips (of The Mamas and The Papas fame); synth-driven songwriter and music tech groundbreaker Thomas Dolby served as a session keyboardist for the track. Stereogum continues: “You almost certainly can’t pick out those individual voices or keyboard tones … but you can definitely hear that there’s money in the song … it’s the sound of ’80s blockbuster pop cranked all the way up to full power. It sounds like Top Gun.”

After a start in E major, 3:23 brings an unprepared shift upward to F# major — if “unprepared” is a broad enough term to include a bombastic instrumental chorus (starting at 3:09), plenty of percussion pyrotechnics, an insistent re-statement of the keyboard hook, and a 2/4 bar thrown into the 4/4 mix to bring us to the key change with the g-force of a hairpin rollercoaster turn.

Marina Manafova | “Viva Italia” Fantasy for Piccolo on Themes by Rossini and Verdi

The “Viva Italia” Fantasy for piccolo on themes by Rossini and Verdi, by Marina Manafova, is performed here by the Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra; Kuelyar Ksenia is the soloist. The Orchestra has performed for 239 years and “is one of the oldest in Russia. Its history dates back to the first orchestra of the St Petersburg Imperial Opera Orchestra. Information on Manafova, a Russian composer, is nearly impossible to find, but this 2018 performance was the world premiere of the Fantasy.

Italian composers Giuseppe Verdi and Gioachino Rossini are often linked due to their shared focus on opera. WQXR’s blog illuminates the relationship between the two colleagues: “The two men met in Bologna in June 1842, and Verdi quickly admired his older colleague. Verdi was able to discuss with Rossini his many operas and it seems that he particularly came to learn a lot about L’Italiana in Algeri, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and what was known in Italian as Guglielmo Tell. He later said that ‘I cannot believe that there is another opera that has a greater abundance of musical ideas, comic verve and truthfulness of declamation than Il Barbiere di Siviglia, which must be the greatest comic opera there is. I admire Tell, but how many other sublime things there are in his other operas.’”

The piccolo soloist, Kuelyar Ksenia, was the winner of the All-Russia competition in 2000. She “is a regular (flute and piccolo) soloist with St. Petersburg Philharmonic orchestra …. participates in projects organized by Ensemle of Modern Music under Pro Arte Foundation … (and) gives master classes in Russia, Germany and Spain … ” She has worked as a teaching assistant “at the St. Petersburg Conservatory named after Rimsky-Korsakof.”

Ksenia’s mastery of the diminutive woodwind is evident at all times, but never moreso than when the highest arpeggio notes sail gracefully out into the crowd, strongly stated but sometimes somewhat quieter than the low notes. This excellent technique is no small feat for a flutist, but a near-miracle on piccolo! After starting in D major, 2:18 brings a transition to A major, followed by several other modulations throughout (the music begins at the 0:40 mark).

Gabriel Kahane | Sit Shiva

Composer/songwriter/pianist/vocalist Gabriel Kahane occupies a very specific part of the musical firmament. His work has ranged from pop-inflected solo voice and piano to orchestral and chamber works. “I’m sort of trying to reconcile the very direct songwriter in me with the guy who’s interested in architecture and formal rigor and harmonic and rhythmic expansiveness or complexity,” (WBUR).

Kahane’s label, Nonesuch, describes his upcoming 2022 release Magnificent Bird: “The album … chronicles the final month of a year spent off the internet … (It) revels in the tension between quiet, domestic concerns, and the roiling chaos of a nation and planet in crisis. ‘Sit Shiva,’ the album’s first single … finds Kahane skirting the rules of his digital hiatus in order to mourn, online, the death of his maternal grandmother; in typical fashion, he mines not just pathos, but humor and grace amidst his family’s grief.

In October 2020, the final month of his tech sabbatical, Kahane set out to write a song every day. ‘I wanted to create an aural brain scan at the end of this experiment,’ he explains, ‘and to give myself permission to write about small things, rather than trying to distill the enormity of the moment into grand statements. … My internet hiatus grew out of a belief that at root, our digital devices reinforce the fiction that convenience and efficiency have intrinsic value. That has implications with respect to climate crisis, to inequality, to our (in)ability to see ourselves in each other, to build the kinds of coalitions necessary to make a more just world. I wanted to leave it all behind not as a further expression of techno-pessimism, but rather in search of a positive alternative.'”

“Sit Shiva” is named after the Jewish tradition of the early part of mourning after a death of a loved one. In the case of the passing of Kahane’s grandmother, the video suggests an acutely modern version of the ritual. The tune, in C# major overall, is punctuated by a bridge in E major (2:25 – 2:43).

Billy Joel | Tell Her About It

“When Joel made 1983’s An Innocent Man, he was rich, famous, and single for the first time ever,” (Stereogum). He was dating supermodels like future second wife Christie Brinkley. He’d been asked to write a song for Easy Money, a Rodney Dangerfield movie, and he’d come up with a peppy, stagey facsimile of early-’60s soul. Joel was into it, so he just went ahead and made a whole album like that. With that album’s first single, Joel made it to #1 for the second time.

When he wrote ‘Tell Her About It,’ Joel was trying to pay tribute to the feeling of early Motown — an even more difficult sound to recapture than the doo-wop of ‘The Longest Time.’ As a songwriting exercise, ‘Tell Her About It’ hits its marks. Joel and his band effectively tap into the classic Holland-Dozier-Holland four-four big-beat stomp. Joel comes up with a memorable hook, and he keeps the structure sharp and uncluttered. There’s nothing revolutionary about it, but that fits the conceit. It’s pastiche. There’s not supposed to be anything revolutionary about it … In a period of great pop-music futurism, Billy Joel looked backwards. If The Nylon Curtain was Joel’s attempt to evoke the frustrations of working-class Reagan-era America, then ‘Tell Her About It,’ and An Innocent Man in general, are Joel capitalizing on the rose-tinted simpler-times nostalgia that helped Reagan get elected in the first place.”

After the tune starts in Bb major, the chorus shifts to F major at 1:11, then back to Bb for the intro to the next verse (1:32). From 2:25 to 2:46, the bridge drops to Ab major. The video, complete with its oddly Nixonian take on Ed Sullivan, only adds to the retro feel!

The Beach Boys | Disney Girls (1957)

“The way the story is sometimes erroneously told, The Beach Boys were nothing more than a convenient vehicle for Brian Wilson’s incendiary songwriting and brilliant producing,” (American Songwriter). “Of course, that misconception overlooks the crucial contributions of the talented men at Brian’s side bringing his artistic vision to thrilling life with their vocals. It also neglects to take into account the years when the troubled genius contributed only sporadically to the band’s output. Consider 1971’s album Surf’s Up, where the rest of the band picked up the songwriting slack for their leader and Bruce Johnson’s wistful waltz ‘Disney Girls (1957)’ stood out as one of the disc’s finest moments.

If you’re not listening closely enough, you might read the title, hear some of the references in Johnston’s opus, and think that it’s easy nostalgia, something in which The Beach Boys have been known to trade. But what you come to realize, either by perusing the lyrics or listening to the subtle ache in those ‘oohs and aahs,’ is that the ‘fantasy world’ on which the narrator fixates is just that, an idealized vision of happiness that he hasn’t yet attained. ‘Oh, reality, it’s not for me / And it makes me laugh.’ … The unspoken context is that this song comes from a touring musician leading what was likely a hectic life with one of the most famous bands on the planet …”

After starting in F# major, we reach a dreamy bridge at 2:07. At 2:28, the groove falls away as the layered vocals briefly take on the oblique, rubato harmonies of a Barbershop quartet, proclaiming that “… she likes church bingo chances and old-time dances.” At 2:37, a strong IV/V in the new key (G major) leads us to another verse (2:45) as the 3/4 time resumes. The track could be a more grown-up echo of the band’s 1966 hit “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

Mike Stern | What I Meant to Say

Voted Jazz Guitarist of the Year in 1993 by Guitar Player and one of DownBeat Magazine’s “75 Great Guitarists,” Mike Stern has released 20+ albums of his own as well as collaborating with Miles Davis, Blood Sweat and Tears, Steps Ahead, Michael Brecker, The Brecker Brothers, Jim Hall, and many others.

A lot of work and preparation have set the stage for Stern’s versatility. “‘There are so many different things to get into and study,’ (RivetingRiffs). ‘I check out a lot of horn players, a lot of saxophone players and trumpet players, and Miles, I check his stuff out. I write it out, I transcribe stuff like that. Piano players, like McCoy Tyner and Herbie, I try to get some of those ideas on the guitar … You can arrange everything to a certain point and you can rehearse it to a certain point, but it doesn’t all have to be Pro Tooled to death and everything lined up perfectly. It’s got to have some rough edges … with Miles, there was an edge, but I’ve always liked a kind of a vocal sound, like a horn. I use a little chorus and two amps to try and make it sound a little more vocal, like Jimi Hendrix, because he sang, and the blues guys I grew up with, BB King, Albert King, they bent the strings and sounded very vocal and I’ve always been a fan of that style. I want the guitar to sound more legato and more singing like. I want air in the sound.’”

Although Stern is well known for tunes that fit into a more uptempo rock/blues/funk/fusion vein, “What I Meant to Say,” from his Grammy-nominated 1994 album Is What It Is, embodies the legato, lyrical style he detailed in the interview. Verse 1 starts in Ab major; after a surprisingly smooth side step into D major at 0:34, we return to Ab major for verse 2 (0:42). A shift to E major hits at 1:21, then C major at 1:38, and a sustained solo section in Ab at 2:12. Stern re-visits many of the sections until the verse is re-stated in the original key at 4:25.

Owsley | Coming Up Roses

Owsley was born William Reese Owsley III in 1966 in Alabama. According to his website, “he was raised in a musical household; his mother was a singer and stage actress, his father the drum major for the marching band of University of Alabama, his sister a classically trained pianist and his brother a rock guitarist.”

In his early 20s, he moved to Nashville to work as a touring guitarist. At the same time, he worked on writing his own material. In seeking a record deal, he made sure to emphasize that he didn’t want a record label shifting the emphasis of his work: “I had heard the story of Tom Scholz of the band Boston recording his first album and taking it to the record company, where he told them that it was finished and they could take it or leave it. And I thought, ‘What a cool idea!’ I didn’t want anyone else coming between me and what I was trying to accomplish.” Owsley also worked as a guitarist, backing vocalist, songwriter and producer with artists including “Charlotte Church, Kenny Loggins, Amy Grant, Michael McDonald and Rodney Crowell. He also wrote and produced for many Disney stars – among them Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, and the Jonas Brothers – and went back on the road as a guitarist for Amy Grant’s touring band. He once described himself as having moved ‘not up or down in the music industry, but sideways.'” He died at the painfully early age of only 44.

After a start in C minor, the chorus for “Coming up Roses” (1999) shifts to C major at 0:29. At 0:55, verse 2 reverts to C minor. The pattern continues throughout, with strings and a catchy wordless sing-along hook joining the mix as the fade ending leads us down a Beatle-esque path.

Thin Lizzy | Do Anything You Want to Do

“If you want to see the platonic ideal of a rock band, go to YouTube and search ‘Thin Lizzy Rainbow 1978’,” (The Guardian) ” You’ll find the band’s classic lineup … in full flight, and even the degradation of old dubbed recordings can’t diminish their power. Gorham and Robertson flank Lynott, the trio in motion, the two guitarists criss-crossing and taking to the monitors, Lynott in the centre, bass held high, a beautiful, heavy-lidded man half seducing his audience and half assaulting it.”

The Irish rock band is probably best known for their 1976 release “The Boys are Back in Town,” which was a top 10 hit in the UK, Ireland, and the US; it placed 272 on the 2021 edition of Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list.

1979’s “Do Anything You Want to Do,” from the album Black Rose: A Rock Legend, reached #25 on the Irish charts and #14 in the UK. The tune starts in a de-tuned G major, shifts to Bb major at 1:37, then alternates again between the two keys.

Joe Cocker + Jennifer Warnes | Up Where We Belong

“‘Up Where We Belong’ was written for the movie An Officer and a Gentleman and won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1983 and a Grammy for Best Pop Performance by Duo or Group With Vocal in 1983,” (Songfacts). “Island Records boss Chris Blackwell liked the idea of Cocker recording the song with Warnes, but Cocker was on tour in the Pacific Northwest at the time.

No problem: he simply flew to LA one afternoon, recorded the track with Warnes that evening, and flew back to resume the tour. Warnes and Cocker stood next to each other when they recorded this in the studio, where they had a great chemistry that carried over to live performances. ‘Off stage, I never saw him,’ Warnes said in a 2018 Songfacts interview. ‘But on stage he understood exactly what we were doing … He wasn’t going to step on my note and I wasn’t going to step on his. We felt free to take chances.'”

At 2:52, a late bridge brings a half-step modulation which carries on for the short remainder of the tune.