Changing Way

There is no current shortage of female singer/songwriters. My current favorite among the crowd is Basia Bulat. If I had to categorize her music, it would be as folk, although Rhapsody describes it as Alternative/Punk, and Basia’s MySpace page as “Pop/Folk/Melodramatic Popular Song.”

Her band includes her brother on enthusiastic percussion (and photography, an example of which you see in this post) and Holly the blogging ukulelist. Basia herself switches between guitar and autoharp. You can see her clutching the latter and she and her entourage bop through the woods in the “In the Night” video.

Basia has an album, Oh, My Darling, out, and is due to go back in to the studio this summer to record a second. Her Session at Radio K includes a new song, which I presume will be on the new album. It also includes a full-length version of “Before I Knew,” a short version of which opens the current album.

She also did a Session at Daytrotter, from which this cover of Daniel Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You In The End” comes.

Any other Boston area bloggers thinking of going to see Basia on Sunday? She and Devotchka are playing the Paradise.

Elvis Costello has received a high proportion of my musical attention so far this year. One of the ensuing posts has accounted for a high proportion of this blog’s recent traffic.

I’ve read a couple of books on Costello. This post is about them, and about writing about music, and about writing about books. The first book is Elvis Costello - God’s Comic: A Critical Companion To His Lyrics & Music by David Gouldstone. It’s an update of the same author’s A Man Out of Time. The main difference is that God’s Comic has a chapter on the 1989 album Spike.

Although I enjoyed the extra chapter, and agree with Gouldstone that Spike is among Costello’s best albums, I think that A Man Out of Time is a more coherent book, focusing as it does on Costello’s first decade. The inclusion of good material that reduces the coherence of the whole is appropriate in a book about Costello, especially when the material relates to the sprawl that is Spike.

Writing about music is notoriously difficult. The music blog Dancing About Architecture quotes Costello himself as stating that: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture… it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.” Let’s not get into tracing the history of that quote, otherwise we’ll never get back to the books.

I think that Gouldstone does a pretty good job in giving his take on Costello’s music and, especially, lyrics, without claiming that his are the last words or the only right words. The writing in God’s Comic is analytical without being heavy.

In that, it contrasts with the writing of the second book: Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell, and the Torch Song Tradition. Consider the following sentence.

He [Costello] readily models existing musical, literary, or cinematic techniques in service of his songs, and in so doing, enhances his lifework’s sonic diversity.

I couldn’t get through even the part of the book on Costello, let alone the rest of it (even though Joni Mitchell also interests me).

At this point, I think that I should bump the thoughts on reviewing books into its own post, and close by remarking that I have high hopes for another book on Costello. It’s Graeme Thomson’s Complicated Shadows: The Life and Music of Elvis Costello, which will probably be part of my next Amazon order.

Yes, it’s Momofuku day for those Elvis Costello fans who don’t own a turntable. By the way, I suspect that many of us in that category wish we still did own a turntable.

I’m on my second listen to the album right now. The first was via Rhapsody at work, through PC speakers. The current listen is at home, streaming from Lost Highway Records and coming out through semi-real speakers. On the basis of those listens, and some earlier listens to other versions of Momofuku tracks, I’m pleased.

I’m not sure how long the album will stream from the record label’s site. I thank Stereogum for telling me about the stream. By the way, it was at another post at the same site that I saw the wonderful quote from the wonderfully quotable Lou Reed: I can’t wear the sunglasses now because I’d fall over a cable.

Here’s an interesting juxtaposition of stories from Techmeme. The WSJ story is one of many today about Zune 2.5. The link to WSJ takes you only to a couple of paragraphs and an invitation to subscribe, so you’re probably better off with a link to a real article (e.g., at Engadget).

However, none of the stories about Zune 2.5 I’ve scanned say much about DRM. I believe that the Zuniverse is ridden with the stuff.

That brings us to the second story in the above screenshot. The title is yet another exaggerated rumour of music’s death. But the post itself is an excellent account of what Microsoft will do, on August 31, to people who bought from MSN Music.

On that day, Microsoft will turn off the servers that they maintain for the sole purpose of validating that the songs that people have already “purchased” through MSN Music are still theirs to play. Those people (hereafter “the victims”) will not notice the change right away. The victims will only notice it when they purchase a new computer, or when they upgrade the operating system on their current computer, or when the hard drive in their computer dies and needs to be rebuilt/reinstalled. At that point — transferring the music files they have “purchased” to another drive or a new computer — the Microsoft music player running on the victim’s PC (like iTunes, but all Microsoft-y instead of Apple-y) will make a call to Microsoft’s validation servers to verify that the music files were legitimately purchased. This call will fail, since the servers are not responding, since Microsoft has intentionally turned them off. The Microsoft music player will then conclude, incorrectly but steadfastly, that the music files were downloaded illegally and that the victim is a filthy pirate, and it will refuse to play them.

What can we learn from the juxtaposition of the two Techmeme stories? If we are music buyers, we should avoid DRM like the plague, especially when it comes from Microsoft. If we are writing about Zune, or about pretty much anything to do with digital music, we should tell our readers about the DRM implications.

Or we should at least ask our readers to comment on the DRM implications. So, can someone enlighten us about Zune and DRM?

If you’re suffering from Radiohead overload, skip ahead. I’m obviously not, since I’m leading with a portrait of Thom Yorke which, by the way, is by Joshua Gorchov.

The first show of the tour, in Florida, has just finished. I won’t be able to catch the Boston show (or indeed any other).

I haven’t even had time to watch all of the session from Nigel Goodrich’s basement, which is up at VH1. I will, though, since I was blown away by the preview/teaser: a great version of Reckoner.

Tomorrow sees the CD release of Elvis Costello’s Momofuku. My earlier post on the album has been way more popular, at least by the humble standards of this blog, than I expected.

Enough of this Brit rock. It’s Cinco de Mayo, and the song of the day at the Rhapsody blog is a rather wonderful cover version of “Mexican Radio” by Kinky.

Enough, for the moment, of this Brit pretending to be a music blogger. If you want to read a real music blog post, check out Heather Browne’s tremendous account of day 3 at Coachella. She’ll take you there.

Early-ish leaders in the “least appropriate album title of the year” stakes are The Last Shadow Puppets: Alex Turner (of the Arctic Monkeys) and Miles Kane. The album from those two 20somethings, The Age Of The Understatement, is anything but understated, with dramatic melodies and sweeping strings harking back to the 1960s.

The CD comes out on May 6, but Understatement is already out: legally, as well as through the channels you might be thinking about. It’s on Rhapsody early. While the CD format isn’t dead yet, it is steadily becoming less important. For further evidence, consider another album already out before its CD release…

My post about the new Elvis Costello album, Momofuku, is proving a lot more popular than I expected. This suggests to me that Elvis’ approach of recording the album stealthily, then getting it out in a format most people can’t use (vinyl) before it comes out in any digital form, has aroused curiosity.

Here’s a different kind of understatement from Elvis Costello: his version of “My Funny Valentine.” The version is older than either of the Shadow Puppets. The song is even older than Elvis.

Elvis Costello has a new record out, and I do mean record. Well, actually, I mean a double album, as in two black vinyl discs. That in spite of the fact that the album consists of 12 tracks, which is fewer than we usually get on an Elvis album.

Momofuku won’t be out on CD until May 6 (US). I hope that it’ll be available as an MP3 download, and for streaming from music subscription services, on the same date. Those who have the vinyl also have a code to download Momofuku.

I’m surprised that there don’t seem to be many reviews on the web yet. But there is a very good review by Allan Raible at ABC news blogs. It’s good in the sense that it captures the sheer vinyl specialness of the release.

Until yesterday, I hadn’t bought any new vinyl in probably 20 years… I’d forgotten how glorious records truly are. Sure, they are big and clunky, but as I first gazed at the immense “Momofuku” in all its purple-y goodness, I was awe-struck…

[Glowing review of side one]

Now it is time to take a breather and turn the record over. People used to have to do this all the time.

Talking of glowing, the review is also good in the sense that it’s highly favorable. “It’s a clear five star example of a legend adding to his stack of classics.”

I said goodbye to my turntable years ago, so I’ll have to wait for May 6. Or maybe May 1, when downloaded MP3s will start to appear. I’m surprised that I haven’t stumbled across MP3s created from the vinyl yet. I’m also surprised that I haven’t seen more comments on the release sequence: analog first, then digital, with CD not even being the first digital release.

By the way, May 6 is also the release date for The Last Shadow Puppets’ album. If there is an heir to Elvis Costello, it may turn out to be Alex Turner. But that’s a big if, so early in the career of someone who wasn’t even born when Elvis advised us to Get Happy.

Recent delvings into early Elvis Costello have led me to Robert Wyatt’s version of Costello’s “Shipbuilding,” and to Comicopera, Robert’s acclaimed album from last year. On first listen to the latter, I am amazed, and in a very good way.

But here’s “Shipbuilding,” which sounds as great to me now as it did in 1982.

Thanks to Cromacom for making the photo available.

When She & Him were on Conan O’Brien, they brought with them Yo La Tengo. Zooey Deschanel’s voice sounded rather thin, but since a recent show had to be canceled because she’d lost her voice, that’s understandable. My favorite part of the performance is the instrumental coda, and particularly the way that Ira Kaplan’s piano and M. Ward’s guitar go together.

This is another post prompted by my favorite podcast, Coverville. Anyone out there with experience migrating blogs from Movable Type to WordPress, and with a love of cover versions? If so, please contact me or Brian. Brian (Mr Coverville) is having blog trouble.

I’ve just upgraded the blog to Movable Type 4.1… But for whatever reason, I can’t make the comments work…

Honestly, I’d rather move the whole blog to WordPress (which all of my other blogs are using), but I think that with the number of posts, comments and links I have, it would be a huge undertaking.

If you think you might be able to help, please contact me (andrew at thisblog) or Brian (and mention my name).

If you’ve read this far, you deserve some good music, so here’s Elvis Costello covering Tom Waits.