Word: songe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Musical genres, like city streets, need names to make things navigable. Artists rage against categorization, but it's a useful tool to define the boundaries of a given phenomenon. Neo-soul is the best name to call the latest emerging genre. Simply defined, neo-soul describes artists--like song-stylist Erykah Badu--who combine a palpable respect for and understanding of the classic soul of the '60s and '70s with a healthy appetite for '90s sonic experimentation and boundary crossing. Neo-soul artists tend to create music that's a good deal more real, a good deal more edgy than...
...splash as Hill's, and it might be dismissed by some as overly subtle. However, the album's subdued tone shouldn't be misread as timidity. Maxwell wants to draw you in, cast a spell, and by singing in falsetto, by crooning and cooing, by whispering his way through songs, he forces listeners to really listen, to confront the emotions in his songs rather than avoid them through the cathartic escape hatch of volume. One song, the gorgeous, unhurried Submerge: Til We Become the Sun, is an abstractly worded ballad about two lovers flowing into each other and facing...
Success for a punk is quite the paradox, at least in term of ideology, and Armstrong spends a whole song contemplating the fleeting whirlwind journey of Rancid's radio success in "Backslide": "nobody knows me/I'm all alone/I gotta go/Hollywood bus stop and the party's over/I gotta go." Exemplifying the amazing lines exhibited throughout Life Won't Wait, crooning, "have you ever been looked at by your past and it will never let you go." You get the impression that the members of Rancid weren't perfectly aware of what they were getting into by releasing the modern rock...
...Every song on Life Won't Wait deservesan explanatory mention, but with 22 tracksconstituting over an hour of enjoyable musiccovering rainbow of topics, there is just notenough space. From love songs ("Who Would'veThought") to pleading peace among races andstereotypes, from questioning American values toattacking international social problems("Warsaw"), every subject and approach are worthclose attention. The familiar personal stories ofaddiction and relationships ("Hoover Street") areeasily followed by abstract digs ("Cash, Cultureand Violence") and thoughts on global resolve...
Pure reggae tunes are absolutely new to Rancid,although reggae influences were prominent onWolves and weave their way a bit morethrough the harmonies and crossover song thatpepper Life Won't Wait. Most prominent inconveying the genre are the title song, "WrongfulSuspicion" and "Coppers." Jamaican reggae starBuju Banton guests on these tracks, strengtheningthe new Rancid voice with an authentic tongue. OnLife Won't Wait, a good chunk of the vocalsare provided by Banton, although Armstronguniquely offers his gravelly, unadorned slur tothe mix. One of the best punk-reggae confluenceson the album, "Hooligans," will get you hoppingalong to the beat...