Word: riffs
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...well-worn jazz riff: superb player, been around forever but known mostly to musicians and insiders. Andrew Hill almost fit the bill. Over his 50-year career, he was lauded as a groundbreaking pianist and composer. And yet he was often overlooked by mainstream audiences, which focused on contemporaries like Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins. But Hill refused to fade. His 2006 album, Time Lines, earned him album-of-the-year honors from Down Beat magazine. Hill, who performed just three weeks before his death...
...with catchy up-tempo dance beats and the moody lyrics of lead singer Kele Okereke. The album opens with Okereke in an almost theatrical falsetto on the track “Song For Clay (Disappear Here),” before the entrance of a fast snare and surging guitar riff that brings the energy to a classic Bloc Party peak. The lyrics set a theme for the rest of the album, which features more overt allusions to the issues of stardom and even the drudgery of life in the band’s homeland, England: “Because East...
...experimental arrangements range from saxophones and glockenspiels to Knopf’s own digital looping machine. The chorus of “Evil Bee” emulates “The Argument”-era Fugazi before pulling out all the stops with a horn fanfare and triumphant piano riff. Menomena is fearlessly confident in its musicianship, and even the album’s few faltering steps are refreshingly original...
...part one of “Beautiful Machine 1-2.” It’s the first half of what is intended to be the equivalent of a “grand classical concerto,” whatever that means. It opens up with a riff that sounds like something straight out of a Psychedelic Furs song and then the high-pitched harmonies of the band bounce in. Even the transition into part two of the “concerto”—a mere 90 seconds into the song—can?...
SAVANE OPENS WITH A FEW NOTES on a single-stringed African violin. Then Tour comes in with a guitar riff worthy of onetime boss John Lee Hooker, and Pee Wee Ellis, James Brown's ex-saxophonist, blows on through. And there you have it: the journey of the blues from West Africa to the Apollo in just a few seconds. It's rare that world music actually contains multitudes, but Tour, a hero in his native Mali, picks the pocket of any culture with something to offer. There's a stew that makes you optimistic about the future, even...