Word: songwritersã
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...number of the songs on “Tabloid” are taken from white artists as profoundly influenced by black music as Phoenix has been. Selected gems from these singers and songwriters??Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, Lou Reed, the Dirty Projectors, to name a few—are paired with songs by preceding, contemporaneous, and succeeding black artists—The Impressions, D’Angelo. For Phoenix, stylistic connections trump relations of chronology or influence. Placing Elvis Costello’s schmaltzy, intricate “Shipbuilding,” just before D’Angelo?...
...disparate, equally unique voices who do not commonly work together leading to an album that lacks both consistency and coherence. While often engaging for the same reasons that My Morning Jacket, Bright Eyes and M. Ward separately are engaging, the album as a whole falls short of the combined songwriters?? potential. In the end, the album is almost saved by those four tracks that match any Pitchfork-induced fantasies about the sounds that M. Ward, Conor Oberst, and Jim James would produce if given the chance to collaborate, but these tracks alone cannot make up for the unfocused...
...simplicity. Lerche is very much fascinated by a wide variety of genres, including jazz and rock, and with childlike absorption, incorporates them to his own sound. As a result, even his choice of acoustic guitar as the basis for many of his songs—fairly typical for singer-songwriters??becomes distinctive through his unusually syncopated rhythms and complex, bluesy chords. The title track is the most obvious example of this; its intro is marked by an emphasis on the off-beat. The drums, entering in the in the second verse, match the syncopation of the acoustic guitar...
...steps removed from the alt-metal stylings of Tool. Ironically, the only cut on the album that doesn’t quite work is “The Farmer’s Hotel”: the sole song attributed to both Berman and Malkmus. The track suffers from both songwriters?? characteristic excesses: Malkmus’ directionless guitar noodling and Berman’s oppressive verbosity. Luckily, the band is stacked with enough talent to keep these two honest, and missteps are few and far between. “Tanglewood” is a focused, energetic, and ambitious work...
...folk may have faded to the periphery of popular culture, but the small venue tucked in the alleyway between two halves of the Harvard Coop continues to bring together singer-songwriters??including two Harvard grads, David Berkeley ’99-’00 and Noam I. Weinstein...
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