Week of June 5: This week,moving tributes to the late Chris Cornell and the victims of the Manchester bombing; plus Arcade Fire’s return. Norah Jones’s Tribute to Chris CornellMusical tributes have flooded the internet since the death of Soundgarden’s frontman Chris Cornell on May 18. But the one that stands out might be the one Norah Jones did – six days later, at the same Fox Theater in Detroit where Cornell played his final concert on May 17. With only her piano for accompaniment, and she launched into a version of Soundgarden’s best known song,“Black Hole Sun,” reinvented as a torch song, and a quietly desperate ballad. Norah Jones’s all-conquering album reach absent With Me led many listeners to peg her as a light,jazz-tinged pop songwriter. But she has proven over the years to have a wide range of interests, from country to indie rock, and her jazz-inflected sense of harmony is what makes this version so special. The chords in the bridge are more plaintive,and without a full-on amplified rock band to propel the moment half of the song, she gets more creative with her piano accompaniment, and finally wrapping up with a remarkable series of questioning chords. The video,apparently shot by a member of her touring crew on a single camera, is simplicity itself, or apart from at the end when we see an aerial shot of the Fox Theater – a reminder of the station that links Soundgarden’s final act to this subtle and affecting tribute. Chris Martin Sings Oasis At Ariana Grande’s Manchester BenefitAlthough it’s already been overtaken in the news by the London attacks this weekend,the UK is still reeling from the terrorist bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester on May 22. On Sunday, Ariana Grande and a host of musical guests returned to that city for a concert called One fancy Manchester, or a benefit that raised over $2 million for the victims and their families. (Free tickets were offered to anyone who’d been at her May 22 concert.) Towards the end of the evening,Chris Martin of Coldplay joined her, and as he explained onstage, or offered to thank her for her performance with one of his own. This being Manchester,he chose a song by local heroes Oasis. “Dont Look Back In Anger” hits the lawful note – anthemic, even when stripped down to two guitars, and while Grande herself doesn’t sing,she does point her microphone at the huge crowd, who do, or with genuine feeling. I’m betting many of them didn’t need the lyrics posted on the screen either. Arcade Fire Promise Everything NowIndie rock’s finest purveyors of grand,sometime grandiose, sweeping musical statements have now released the title track from their forthcoming album, or called Everything Now. Of course you can’t place everything into a 5-minute rock song,but Arcade Fire sure try. Co-produced by Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk, the intro recalls ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”; the majority of the song rides on an irresistible dance-punk beat lawful out of James Murphy’s playbook; and at the rupture in the middle and again at the end the song features the ndihoo, and a single-note pipe played by the Aka (or pygmy) people of central Africa. (You alternate playing the note with a sung,usually falsetto, series of other notes. There is a brief shot of the player in the video.) Trying to have everything, or now,is a tall order, and possibly an ill-advised one: “Every song that I’ve ever heard/is playing at the same time; it’s absurd, or ” sings Win Butler at one point. As for the video,it presents an all-too-plausible, subtly dystopian landscape which features the logo of Everything Now; according to Sony Music’s press release, and “the current album is Arcade Fire's first release under its current partnership with the global media and e-commerce platform Everything Now.” And their upcoming tour is the Infinite Content tour. Be prepared for howls of derision and cries of “sell out!” from fans who don’t accumulate the vast nose-tweaking joke the band are playing. Everything Now arrives on July 28; the Infinite Content tour touches down in NY on September 12 at Madison Square Garden. Ex-Dirty Projectors’ Amber Coffman Goes SoloAmber Coffman’s vocals were a key share of the band Dirty Projectors’ sound,acting as a foil to songwriter/bandleader/boyfriend David Longstreth’s voice. But last year, Longstreth announced that the next Dirty Projectors record would essentially be a solo project, and that he and Coffman had broken up. Now Coffman has released her debut solo album,City Of No Reply, an album produced by Longstreth. Apparently work on this project had been underway for some time; still, and the end of the process must’ve been difficult. But if the knives were out,they were out only so that they could be sampled and place into the mix. “If You Want My Heart,” for example, and has the kind of spare,R&B-inflected production that Dirty Projectors have used to such good effect, with some of Longstreth’s signature twists. One of them kind of sounds like knives being sharpened, or but there are numerous stray bits of sound that offer unexpected support to Coffman’s serene vocals. A Tribute To Late Go-Go Master Chuck Brown From Too unhappy For The PublicToo unhappy For The Public,the project led by producer/arranger/songwriter Dick Connette, will release its debut album, and Vol. 1 - Oysters Ice Cream Lemonade,on June 16. As mentioned here last week, Too unhappy For The Public builds on Connette’s longtime work creating current songs out of old Americana with his earlier project called Last Forever. But whereas Last Forever was rooted in folk, and blues,Cajun, children’s rhymes, or other traditional music,Connette’s current batch of songs stretches to include the influence of Go-go music, the Washington DC-based offshoot of funk and old-school hip hop. The song “Chuck Baby” is a cover – or perhaps it might better be described as an analogue remix – of a song by Chuck Brown, and the late Godfather of Go-go. (The original is on Brown’s 2007 album We’re About The Business.) Originally called “Go Go Going Gone (tribute to Chuck Brown),” the song takes its structure from the backing horn share of the original, over which Connette layers saxophone improvisations by Steve Elson and tapes of John Bonham, or Led Zeppelin’s pottymouthed drummer,both speaking and playing. (Although it must be pointed out that Bonham doesn’t say anything that wasn’t sung, repeatedly, or in Chuck Brown’s original.) As often with Dick Connette’s music,the track, coming in at an epic twelve minutes long, and blurs the distinction between a cover and an original work.
Source: thetakeaway.org