Search results matching tag 'music'

New Music Titles

LemmyCaution@evpl — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 20:22:00 GMT

If you're feeling adventurous, and looking for some of the most engaging and creative artists currently working, then you might find some of musicians or bands listed below satisfying.

A singer-songwriter with a long and storied career that includes membership in the indie power-pop supergroup, The New Pornographers, Dan Bejar has shifted from the David Bowiesque rock of earlier albums to a synthesizer, keyboard, and brass based effort which references the excesses of eighties era Steely Dan and Roxy Music. Destroyer's Kaputt melds pop, disco, and smooth jazz into a cohesive vision which transcends some of the more melodramatic elements of the genres it references. Hallmarks of Destroyer's previous work remain, including Bejar's penchant for lyrics filled with witty and self-referential observations. Meanwhile, Bejar's lyrics also take aim at the bands and genres of music referenced in his lyrics.

Last year the British artist James Blake released a series of singles which melded the musical genre of dubstep with elements of soul, and created a more sublime and contemplative version of the dark genre dubstep. His debut album includes a cover of Feist's Limit To Your Love, which made the rounds among blogs last year, and his subsequent album has been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in Europe. The songs on the album consist of soulful ballads wrapped in layers of synthesizers and programmed beats, which build around repetitive refrains sung by Blake in a mournful and somber tone. Blake's promising debut has allowed dubstep to progress after too many contrived efforts by lesser artists in recent years.

One artist who has come to dominate coffee shops, and the dorm rooms and apartments of sensitive college students, is the evocative folk project Bon Iver. The project is primarily the effort of Justin Vernon who wrote his debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago in a remote cabin in rural Wisconsin. The now mythologized story and album led to his inclusion on several best of the year polls and a collaboration with Kanye West. On Vernon's most recent effort Bon Iver, Bon Iver, he utilizes an expansive array of musicians, thus providing a larger and more nuanced sound beyond the more simple arrangements of For Emma, Forever Ago. In terms of vocals, Vernon's ethereal falsetto lends poignancy to his poetic lyrics, which evoke a variety of emotions and places. The greatest distinction on this album remains Vernon's progression as a songwriter and his focus on production and the subtle inclusion of a variety of instruments.

One of the most discussed and debated genres since 2009 has been chillwave, or what is otherwise known as glo-fi. The genre primarily consists of an individual artist working with synthesizers and software to arrange instruments, samples, and loops together into a hazy and psychedelic rhythm. The best album to emerge from this genre, and manage to push the genre's boundaries, comes from Toro Y Moi, the bedroom project of Chaz Bundick from South Carolina. His second album Underneath the Pine adds greater clarity to his vocals and the music contains a variety of instruments from organ to drums, along with the inclusion of the musical stylings of funk and pop. Several danceable songs appear and are filled with basslines and synths that align well with Bundick's smooth vocal delivery.

For those seeking to move away from the world of synthesizers and programmed beats, Okkervil River's latest album I Am Very Far, while not their best, should hold your interest. On their latest album, the band's principal songwriter Will Sheff, and now producer, has refrained from making another concept album, and instead has shifted his excesses to the amount of musicians present on the album. Each song contains multiples of several instruments from piano to drums, and lends the album a density which packs a punch. Otherwise Shelf blends his celebrated literate and cerebral lyrics with a rollicking mixture of rock and roll and Americana that reaches orchestral levels.

Soundproof Barbershop Quartet

wag.mado@evpl — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 21:40:00 GMT

Come join us as Soundproof Barbershop Quartet performs on Saturday, April 16 at 2:00 PM in the Browning Events Room at Central Library. This is the Finale program for our spring “Savvy Seniors Series”, however it is free and open to all ages. Refreshments will be provided as you sit and listen to the harmonic sounds of this award winning group. You will not want to miss this one!

For a complete list of our upcoming summer Savvy Seniors Series programs, please click here.

Registration is NOT required for this event.

Crazy Heart

KickinLibrarian@evpl — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:10:00 GMT

Jeff Bridges gives an Oscar-worthy performance in his latest, Crazy Heart, in which he plays Bad Blake, a musician who has seen better times. The movie begins with Bad's tour taking place in dive bars located in bowling alleys and small towns. It is during one of these trips that he comes across journalist, Jean, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. A single-mom, Jean is reluctant to get involved with Bad, but their casual fling develops into something more. Bad becomes attached to both Jean and her four-year-old son, and we discover that Bad has a grown son he never knew. Colin Farrell comes into the story as Tommy Sweet, Bad's former protégé, who is willing to give Bad another chance, but only if his ego will allow it. Between his growing relationship with Jean and opening for Tommy on tour, it seems Bad's life is turning around.

Then a fateful event occurs when Bad is drunk (as he often is throughout the movie), that causes him to lose everything he has recently gained. Enter his favorite bartender and friend, played by Robert Duvall, who helps Bad get back on track. With great performances by the entire cast and music by T-Bone Burnett, this movie is worth checking out. Definitely worth the hype it received during the Oscars.

UPDATED: Book Cart Drill Team competing in "Tri-State's Got Talent"; your help is needed!

professor.knowsitall@evpl — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:35:00 GMT

UPDATE (12/7/09 10:30AM): It turns out that the deadline for viewing was NOT Friday, December 4th, as originally stated. The actual deadline is FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18th. So we still need your help!

Below is the original blog post, with corrections made in red.

The EVPL Book Cart Drill Team burst onto the scene last September at Central's 5th Anniversary Celebration. With a complex routine based on Lord of the Rings, the EVPLBCDT wowed the crowds. (Missed it? See the epic performance here!)

The EVPLBCDT has a new drill, based on Alice in Wonderland, and is currently competing in Tri-State's Got Talent! We've uploaded our video entry to 14newstube.com, and we need YOU, our adoring fans, to watch it. The top 10 videos, based on number of views, continue to the next round of qualifying, with the eventual winner earning a spot in The Really Big Show scheduled for February 13, 2010. Help the EVPLBCDT simply by watching the video below, but hurry...the deadline for viewing is 11:59pm on THIS FRIDAY, December 4th FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18th.

(Video will open in a new window. Direct link.)

And due to fan demand, we've filmed an EXCLUSIVE BEHIND-THE-SCENES LOOK at the EVPLBCDT. In this informative video, you'll get an up-close look at the team and find out more about the sport/art of professional book carting.

Thanks for your support and we hope to see you in February at The Really Big Show!

More Info

14newstube.com: Check out videos from all Tri-State's Got Talent competitors, and vote on them with your views!
EvansvilleArc.org: Find out more about Tri-State's Got Talent and The Really Big Show.
YouTube.com: Check out these book-carting videos on YouTube...you may not think of librarians the same again!

The Clash's "London Calling" Still Rocks!

Bufkinite@evpl — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:17:00 GMT

I have been listening to London Calling - the Clash's 1979 breakout album - on my morning drive recently, and wanted to blog about how fresh it still seems after 30 years. In fact, it's hard to believe that it was 30 years ago that I was first entranced by the hypnotic sounds of the title track.

It's aged really well, and seems almost playful now - at least tracks like "Jimmy Jazz" and "Lost in the Supermarket." Other tracks maintain their effrontery and anger as fresh as the first time I heard them. I'm thinking especially of "The Guns of Brixton," the lyrics of which predate the race riots that took place there in the 1980s, but are almost prescient in terms of depicting the tensions that were building at the time that bassist Paul Simonon penned the song in 1978, largely due to the heavy-handedness of the police.

Other songs that still resonate are "Working for the Clampdown" and "The Card Cheat."

One thing you never had to be afraid of with the Clash was being shortchanged. The 19 tracks on this album contain over an hour of listening. Their other recordings are similarly generous.

An interesting note about the album cover: it was a parody of/reflection on Elvis Presley's debut album, "Elvis Presley," which came out in 1957. Considered a "bad boy" in his day, by the time the Clash debuted with "London Calling," Elvis seemed positively wholesome, and the image of bassist Paul Simonon smashing his bass on the stage of the Palladium in New York City reinforces the new level to which being a "bad boy" had risen by that time.

Give the Clash a listen! If you've never heard them, it's high time; if you have, you'll enjoy the return trip.

Holiday Harmony Multi-Cultural Event

FiddleChick@evpl — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:21:00 GMT

We are currently looking for people to sing or speak the first verse of Silent Night in other languages.

In the past we have had the pleasure of hearing this verse in Swahili, Navajo, Dutch, German, Japanese and Gaelic.

If you or someone you know would be interested in participating in our Annual Holiday Harmony event, held Wednesday, December 16th at 5:30pm christas@evpl.org

We look forward to hearing from you!

Central's anniversary celebration SUNDAY features mini-golf, Book Cart Drill Team, & more!

professor.knowsitall@evpl — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:59:00 GMT

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Starting with a press conference on Thursday, September 17, we've been honoring Central Library's 5th anniversary with some special events. Our Film Festival wraps up this afternoon with a showing of Citizen Kane. On Saturday, we'll be hosting a Poetry Festival.

On Sunday, party with us at Central Library's Anniversary Celebration! There will be activities & entertainment for all ages to enjoy.

How many times have you had the urge to play mini-golf in the library? Satisfy that urge on Sunday, when we'll have 18 holes of mini-golf set up in Central's stacks (on the 1st & 2nd floors)! And don't worry...there won't be any water hazards. Get your golf game on from 1-5pm.

Enjoy some food & music in the café garden from 1-4:30pm. We'll be grilling hot dogs & hamburgers!

Over 20 cakes will be on display in the lobby from 1-3:30pm as part of our Cake Decorating Contest. Vote for your favorite! Winners will be announced shortly before 4pm, and the cakes (& punch) will be served from 4-5pm.

Nothing will prepare you for our Book Cart Drill Team's first public performance at 2:30pm in the lobby! With epic choreography & drama, the team will recreate a famous battle from literature (& a recent movie trilogy). With book carts.

We'll also have a scavenger hunt & appearances by literary actors (can you guess who they are?) throughout the celebration.

There will be something for everyone at Sunday's Anniversary Celebration. Hope to see you then!

Finding a Favorite Author again

kiya@evpl — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:36:00 GMT

Many years ago, I discovered the wonderful novels of Barbara Rogan, and quickly read all that she had written. Each was different from the others, but all were well-written. I loved A Heartbeat Away so much that I chose it for a book discussion title many many years ago. It is still my favorite romantic ghost story. When I realized it was going out of print, I bought several paperback copies, and have now given away all but my last copy. I reread it again recently, and found that I love it still. Crow, Elias, Alice, Pilar and Dr. Graystone are unforgettable characters. There was a tiny part of me that was surprised to find them just as I had left them - they seemed real enough to have gone on with their lives after I closed the book...

After finishing A Heartbeat Away, I checked to see if Rogan had anything new since I had last looked - she is not on a book a year pace like some authors, and it is easy to lose track of her titles. I found one I hadn't read, and saw on her website that another one is almost ready to be published, so I have new treats to anticipate. Why don't you give her books a try?

Barbara Rogan's website

Revolution In The Air by Clinton Heylin

Bufkinite@evpl — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:09:00 GMT

When Clinton Heylin writes about Bob Dylan, people listen. His biography Dylan: Behind the Shades, not only dug deeper than any other biographer or Dylan enthusiast, the painstaking detail of his scholarship was obvious.

So having the chance to get my hands on the first of a projected two-volume opus detailing each of the 600 songs Dylan has written thus far, I couldn’t let it go. I haven’t been disappointed. Heylin chronicles the songs in the order they were written, not the order in which they were recorded or performed (many of them have yet to be recorded, or were recorded and not released, and some of them have no known performance date), and this choice serves him well, allowing him to use his detailed knowledge of Dylan’s biography to give the songs a context that the lyrics alone might not provide.

The first volume details the first 300 songs, from “Juvenilia” in Hibbing (1957) to 1972 and the songs associated with Pat Garret and Billy the Kid. Amazingly, 207 of these 300 songs were written in the five year period of 1962-1967, what Heylin calls “a burst of creativity that dwarfs any comparable twentieth-century figure.”

The scholarship and attention to detail are, as was the case with Behind the Shades, commendable. My only complaints are that:

Heylin tends to grouse about the scholarship of others that got there before him. For instance he says of Michel Krogsgaard’s sessionography, published in nine installments in two Dylan fanzines, that it “has become, in the fullness of time, a valuable resource. But it could have been of greater value still if he had collated his own work with that of the the only other person to use Sony’s resources [Heylin], and annotated his session listing with a clear indication of which material he had actually heard (almost none of it, I’d surmise).” 
There are few - very few - glaring omissions: places where Heylin seems to just simply have missed what most other folk music students know. For instance, Heylin lists Dylan’s #16 song as “Just As Long As I’m In This World,” a song written by Rev. Gary Davis, and first recorded by him as “I Am The Light Of This World” during his initial recording session for the American Recording Company in 1935. Heylin mentions Dylan’s studies of traditional blues music, and even the fact that Dylan would often borrow tunes and lyric phrases and call them his own. But he describes “Just As Long As I’m in This World” as “another early attempt at a would-be spiritual” that “tries hard to evoke a Pentecostal fervor, the singer suggesting he has ‘fiery fingers / I got fiery hands / And when I get to heaven / I’ll join the fiery band.’” All without ever mentioning Rev. Gary Davis, or the earlier recording, which have just exactly these lyrics as one verse.

But these are admittedly petty complaints, given the immensity of the task Heylin set for himself. No one else even made the attempt of a chronicle so daunting, so minor grouses and omissions do not constitute failure. Heylin has succeeded beyond my expectations.

The book contains a song index and a general index, and each song is keyed to books where the lyrics have appeared, and to published recordings where the song first appeared.

The second volume, entitled Still on the Road - The Songs of Bob Dylan 1974-2006, is due out later this year.

The official Bob Dylan web site.

Dylan's MySpace page, where you can listen to tracks from his forthcoming recording Together Through Life, which you can buy at Amazon.com & benefit the Public Library Friends.

Clinton Heylin's site, detailing published and forthcoming works.

E Can Write More Than Songs

Shh_ImReading@evpl — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:28:00 GMT

Mark Oliver Everett is probably better known simply as E, the lead singer and creative force behind the Eels, but a few months ago he published a memoir under his full name called Things the Grandchildren Should Know. He might be a little younger than most people who've decided to write memoirs, but people in his family don't seem to live long lives, so he decided to write it while he still could. Tragedy and triumph have occurred over and over in his life, with little middle ground between. It's quite a story, whether you read the book yourself or have E's friend Chet read it to you on the CD audio version. I would recommend it not just to Eels fans, but also to anyone who enjoys a good memoir.

Things the Grandchildren Should Know by Mark Oliver Everett

Things the Grandchildren Should Know by Mark Oliver Everett -- CD audio edition, read by Chet Lyster

Eels' music available at the library