"Make a left, Rob. This left right here onto 101 south. Left turn, 101 south. Left!"
I've obviously caught Max Bernstein at a bad time.
Excepting a brief hiatus at the tail end of the 1960s, recording artists The Contours have been performing and touring every year since 1960. It's just that, as original group member Sylvester Potts says, "People just didn't hear of us.
With
a voice that sounds a bit like Michael Stipe gone folk, Richard
Shindell's songs feel instantly familiar even if you've never
heard him before. Those vocals are magnetic and dramatic, and the
singer/songwriter pays as much attention to melody and musical
settings as he does his words. But it's his first-person narratives
that have garnered him critical praise and a loyal following.
There
is nobody like Andrew Bird in the world, a songwriter and a performer
who makes his whistling, his glockenspiel, and his violin at home
with guitars, drums, and vocals in detailed, pitch-perfect pop songs
that never seem precious or forced, as eccentric as they are.
In
band-speak, "indefinite hiatus" is the equivalent of filing
divorce papers; it's the formal beginning of the end.
In
retrospect, everything turned out well, but Dewey Bunnell was
skeptical when America was presented with an opportunity to record
its first album for a major label in more than 20 years.
If
you casually watch the Charlie Hunter Trio on stage, something might
nag at you. It sounds like there's a bassist, but ... there's no
bassist. Just Hunter and his guitar, drummer Simon Lott, and
keyboardist Erik Deutsch playing jazz fusion with the direct appeal
of rock music.
If
you've ever heard William Elliott Whitmore's singing - or read
reviews of his work, which typically note that he has the weathered
pipes of someone at least twice his age - you might snicker at this
statement from the singer-songwriter: "I always wished I could sing
like Frank Sinatra, or Morrissey, or fucking Dean Martin - those
real crooner guys," he said in a phone interview this week.
Reel
Big Fish's new record, Monkeys
for Nothin' & the Chimps for Free,
features "Another F.U. Song," which begins "Hey kids! It's
time to use the 'F' word!" and includes, among its tamer
phrases, "with a big rusty pole or a splintery post." You can
guess the context in which those words are sung.
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