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Post by kds on Nov 13, 2020 15:05:10 GMT
Well, there's still about a month and a half left in 2020, but release dates for 2021 releases are coming out. ultimateclassicrock.com/alice-cooper-detroit-stories/Alice Cooper is about to release his next album on February 26, 2021. This article states that the surviving members of the original Alice Cooper Band - Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, and Neal Smith - are involved. It does not specify whether they're on the entire album or just on a few songs like on Alice's last two albums Welcome 2 My Nightmare (2011) and Paranormal (2017). |
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 13, 2020 15:07:21 GMT
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Post by Kapitan on Dec 17, 2020 13:55:07 GMT
David Bowie covers of John Lennon's "Mother" and Bob Dylan's "Tryin' to Get To Heaven" will be released on January 8. Both were recorded in 1998 but are officially previously unreleased. The Lennon song was done with longtime collaborator Tony Visconti. |
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Post by Kapitan on Dec 22, 2020 18:27:46 GMT
St. Vincent said last week she's got a new album ready to go for 2021, and I'm glad to hear she is changing direction from the highly stylized, artificial-to-Bowie-creepy-standards sound she has mined for the past 10 years. “I felt I had gone as far as I could possibly go with angularity. I was interested in going back to the music I’ve listened to more than any other—Stevie Wonder records from the early ’70s, Sly and the Family Stone. I studied at the feet of those masters,” she is quoted as telling Stereogum.
She's a great guitarist and sometimes really interesting songwriter, but I was getting really bored with her very modern, mechanical, almost robotic kind of music. Not even music, just her whole world--look, vibe, and sound. Not that it didn't have its moments, but I'm very curious to hear what she does in a '70s soul-and-funk vein.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 4, 2021 18:51:56 GMT
88-year-old Loretta Lynn announced her 50th studio album: Still Woman Enough is due on March 19 and, as the title suggests, celebrates the contributions of women to country music with reinterpretations of songs from her back catalogue as well as new material. It also features Reba McIntyre, Carrie Underwood, Margo Price, and Tanya Tucker. |
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Post by kds on Jan 5, 2021 13:40:50 GMT
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 5, 2021 13:48:22 GMT
As it fairly common for legacy acts who might struggle for new material, but still want to get an album out, many release covers albums. You know, I actually don't mind that practice ... but I wish (maybe contrary to common sense from bands' perspectives) that they would do this in their primes rather than late. Like, I'd rather have heard a KISS album of covers in 1977 than a few Ace Frehley covers albums in the '10s and '20s. But obviously in their primes, they are doing what they can on their own, with their own material, and forging their own identities.
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Post by kds on Jan 5, 2021 14:01:12 GMT
I don't mind the covers albums either. Although, I tend to like it when artists go outside the box a little bit. Old rock bands covering older rock bands can be interesting and fun. But, I think it's interesting when they throw in something you wouldn't expect. German power metal band Helloween did a covers album in the late 90s, and one of my favorites on it is a cover of ABBA's Lay All Your Love on Me.
In 2007, Queensryche put out a covers album that included a cover of Heaven on Their Minds from Jesus Christ Superstar, The O Jays For the Love of Money, and Odissea from an operatic version of The Odyssey.
Hearing another metal / hard rock take on Deep Purple's Speed King is slightly less interesting.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 5, 2021 18:18:19 GMT
It appears 2021 is going to be a good year for fans of 90s-00s Scottish indie rock. Arab Strap (disbanded since '06ish?), Teenage Fanclub (nothing in about five years, and now featuring brilliant and quirky Welshman Euros Childs), and Mogwai (first in four years) are all scheduled to release albums this year. Hopefully Belle & Sebastian can get in on the action, too.
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Post by kds on Jan 5, 2021 21:00:41 GMT
Here's a short list of 30 "anticipated" 2021 albums. This list cheats a bit as it includes live releases and reissues, neither of which really quality as "new albums" to me.
The one I'm intrigued about is KK's Priest, which will be KK Downing's first album since leaving Judas Priest ten years ago, also featuring former Priest singer Ripper Owens and drummer Les Binks. I think Priest's two albums after KK's departure were moderately OK, so I'll be interested to hear how KK's offering measures up.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 5, 2021 21:18:33 GMT
The one I'm intrigued about is KK's Priest, which will be KK Downing's first album since leaving Judas Priest ten years ago, also featuring former Priest singer Ripper Owens and drummer Les Binks. I think Priest's two albums after KK's departure were moderately OK, so I'll be interested to hear how KK's offering measures up. I can deal with band names like this for splinter touring acts, but if they are releasing new music there is something really odd about being "KK's Priest." Honestly KK Downing was around so long as a prominent member of Priest--even I knew his name by the late 80s, and I wasn't even a particularly big Priest fan--I don't know how many more fans he can draw as KK's Priest than just under his own name, or some other new name.
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Post by kds on Jan 6, 2021 13:15:56 GMT
The one I'm intrigued about is KK's Priest, which will be KK Downing's first album since leaving Judas Priest ten years ago, also featuring former Priest singer Ripper Owens and drummer Les Binks. I think Priest's two albums after KK's departure were moderately OK, so I'll be interested to hear how KK's offering measures up. I can deal with band names like this for splinter touring acts, but if they are releasing new music there is something really odd about being "KK's Priest." Honestly KK Downing was around so long as a prominent member of Priest--even I knew his name by the late 80s, and I wasn't even a particularly big Priest fan--I don't know how many more fans he can draw as KK's Priest than just under his own name, or some other new name.
I suspect hardcore Priest fans will give it a chance, but it's highly unlikely that a guitarist who is about to turn 70 will form a new band with former members, and a fractured name, from his old band, and really attract a ton of curious metal fans. Glenn Tipton's solo material didn't make much of a dent. Halford made a bit of a splash in the early 00s, but that's mainly because he finally went back to a more traditional metal style after experiments with hardcore and industrial metal. Although, I would not be shocked at an 11th hour name change before the album is released. Actually, over the last decade, the appeal of Judas Priest seems to be on the decline. The venues they play have gotten significantly smaller over the last several years. At the same time, their peers Black Sabbath (until they retired in 2017) and Iron Maiden were still playing to 20,000 - 25,000 people (in the States).
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 14, 2021 15:27:03 GMT
Just in case you feel like "WAP" wasn't enough, ladies and gentlemen, yesterday's Pitchfork Rap Song of the Day, "Slob on My Kat." It is, yet again, just another explicit sex song that is sold as empowering because it's by a woman. And I'll say, yet again, that it is about as interesting as were 2 Live Crew some 30+ years ago, which is to say, barely at all unless you're 12, curious, and get off on being transgressive.
I'll also say again, it isn't in any way empowering or admirable to do the very thing you condemned in others. If men objectifying women for sex was wrong, so is the converse. To make the point on a bigger scale, if there is a roving band of murderers, the best solution isn't to become a murderer yourself. If something is bad, the solution isn't being allowed to do it yourself.
Lastly and most importantly, it's just a terrible song. I don't mean that it's offensive--not much offends me, particularly sexually: I'm not squeamish about that topic--I just mean that as a piece of music, it is excruciatingly dull.
Oh, and that isn't how you spell cat. I really hate misspelling for slang. Really. This is the old man, get off my lawn portion of the post, despite what you might think. It's not the explicit sexual lyrics part. It's that kat isn't a word, except as an abbreviation to that catastrophe of a basketball player on the Wolves.
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Post by kds on Jan 14, 2021 15:40:06 GMT
Well, I guess 2021 also isn't going to be the year that we see a return to form for music as a whole.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 15, 2021 14:01:59 GMT
I've been listening to Pearl Charles's newly released Magic Mirror this morning. A lot of it has a '70s soft and warm vibe ranging from country to pop to a little disco here and there. I really like the sound, the production, the style ... the worst part is actually Charles's voice! She's not a bad singer by any means, but there is something in her pronunciation that is unusual in a way I'm not sure I like. She really pronounces Rs in a way that is unusual in pop--a way I recognize as being very north-midwestern (which is odd, since I understand she's a native Californian). I'd compare it to Zooey Deschanel's accent/enunciation.
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