New Music
Posted on Jun 01, 2010 @ 12:27PM - Add a comment
A Song for My Father features the sons and daughters of famous artists paying tribute to their parents with covers of their songs. Some of the highlights are Carlos Santana’s son Salvador covering Evil Ways, James Taylor’s son Ben performing Bartender’s Blues and Leonard Cohen’s son Adam’s rendition of Bird on a Wire. The album also features the children of Jim Croce, Bob Marley, Aaron Neville, John Phillips, Arlo Gutherie, Robin Gibb, Gregg Allman and Harry Chapin.
Rufus Wainwright, Stripped Down
Posted on Apr 26, 2010 @ 11:50AM - Add a comment
Canadian crooner Rufus Wainwright is back with his sixth studio album, All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu, which finds him stripping down his sound to the bare essentials—just a piano and those distinctive vocals—on a collection of achingly beautiful songs that he wrote during his mother’s three-and-a-half-year battle with cancer.
According to the famously grandiose Rufus, recording this deeply emotional album with such sparse accompaniment was one of the most difficult things he’s ever done. “After hiding behind a 70-piece orchestra with my opera you can blame everything on the tuba player,” he says with his signature humor. “With this album, when the curtain is raised it’s me on my own. There’s nothing more powerful in Western culture, in my opinion, than a voice with a piano or a voice with a guitar.”
In true highbrow fashion, Rufus set three Shakespeare sonnets to music on the new album—joking, “I’m privileged to have such a quiet, cheap, and brilliant collaborator as William Shakespeare.”—and even included the final aria from the opera he penned, Prima Donna.
There’s an ode to his beloved New York City entitled Who Are You New York? and a song dedicated to one of his high school sweethearts called Zebulon, while on Give Me What I Want and Give It to Me Now, Rufus blasts a British critic for panning his opera, without losing his sense of humor, singing, “I would never wish death upon you, your cats and your throw cushions on Christmas.” He maintains that it was the critic’s right to dislike the opera, but that she went out of her way to write a scathing review so it would get picked up by other outlets, which it did.
And, of course, the album features the moving ballads Rufus has become known for, filled with romantic despair, which he arguably conveys like no other since Leonard Cohen. “I want to offer some kind of emotional safe place where people can feel free to be unhappy and sensitive and imperfect,” Rufus said of his work recently.
The Songs for Lulu tour comes to the U.S. this summer and the shows will feature Rufus alone with his piano, replicating the highly personal feel of the album. "It's an opportunity to have this slight moment of intimacy with me, which I know everybody wants,” he says with a laugh.
New Music Releases
Posted on Jan 26, 2010 @ 04:35PM - Add a comment
If you’re looking to buy some new music this week, your money would be most well-spent on Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earth Relief, which is a round up of all the songs performed at the Hope for Haiti benefit organized by George Clooney that aired last Friday night. All the proceeds from purchase of the songs go directly to the Haiti cause. The album logged the biggest album pre-order in iTunes history and is currently Number One in 18 countries and it’s no wonder why.
"Hallelujah" For Leonard Cohen
Posted on Dec 18, 2009 @ 12:07PM - 1 comment
The brand-new biography on legend Leonard Cohen makes the perfect holiday gift for the music snob, er, music aficionado on your list! Named after what's easily Cohen's most covered song, Hallelujah- which has been recreated by the likes of Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright and even Fall Out Boy-Tim Footman's tome couldn't be more well-timed with Cohen's recent resurgence and appeal to younger audiences, marked by sold-out concerts in the US and Europe over the past two years. The book follows Cohen's journey from growing up in a middle class Jewish family in Quebec to his years as a poet and author and his foray into the world of rock and folk later in life, at 37 years old, and touches upon his recent recordings, which are scheduled for release in 2010.
Leonard Cohen: Live In London
Posted on Mar 30, 2009 @ 04:21PM - Add a comment
Live In London
Last year when gravelly-voiced ‘60s crooner Leonard Cohen came out of retirement, in this case a California Zen Buddhist center, to tour for the first time in 15 years, European venues sold out and dates had to be added. This double disc/DVD, recorded at London’s O2 Arena last July, captures that epic live experience and is guaranteed to get you revved up for the 74-year-old legend’s long-awaited North American tour dates, kicking off in Austin on April 1st.
Peter, Bjorn and John
Living Things
