music

Dub Colossus — A Town Called Addis

When two of my favorite crit­ics rec­om­mend some­thing, I lis­ten. First Matt Cibu­la, my favorite world music crit­ic, tipped me to Dub Colos­sus’ new album, A Town Called Addis. Now Jeff Weiss has sec­ond­ed that rec­om­men­da­tion. I’ve lis­tened to the album once and liked what I heard. I’ll be spend­ing more time with it this after­noon as I prep for tonight’s cov­er­age of the third and final Pres­i­den­tial debate for comcast.net’s elec­tion blog.

Be sure to check Mat­t’s blog, Cave 17, for a thor­ough­go­ing review and Jef­f’s for a taste of what Dub Colos­sus are about, mp3-style.

(This post is mak­ing me miss what Sty­lus Mag­a­zine offered in a big, big way.)

SOLANGE!

Solange Knowles, orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by Black­mail Is My Life.

Yes­ter­day I rode my bike over to Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege of Philadel­phia to check out MTV’s Rock the Vote show. Solange was the big high­light for me. She played five songs, includ­ing “Sand­cas­tle Dis­co” and “I Decid­ed.” Her band was great, the back­up singers were real­ly fun and her per­son­al­i­ty seems much more fun and nat­ur­al than her fem­bot sister.

It was a great time. I’ll be writ­ing about it and youth vot­ing lat­er today.

MOVE TO TRASH: THE STREETS — “EVERYTHING IS BORROWED”

I’m going to start “Move to Trash” as a recur­ring fea­ture for new albums that are big let­downs. First up? The Streets’ lat­est album, Every­thing Is Bor­rowed.

As I com­ment­ed on Stere­ogum’s Pre­ma­ture Eval­u­a­tion post, fame has not been kind to Mike Skin­ner. Like his last album, The Hard­est Way to Make an Easy Liv­ing, Skin­ner has a hard time recap­tur­ing the glo­ry of his mad­cap ram­blings on Orig­i­nal Pirate Mate­r­i­al and the bril­liant A Grand Don’t Come for Free. Instead of bizarre rhymes about every­day dra­ma, Skin­ner resorts to pre­scrip­tions for right liv­ing and hor­ri­ble self-help advice.

Where are the fun songs? Lul­la­by beats make me very sleepy. Can some­one remind Mike Skin­ner that he made “Fit But You Know It?” Every­thing Is Bor­rowed, like its pre­de­ces­sor, is the sound of a 12-step pro­gram put to music. It’s depress­ing to see such a promis­ing artist com­plete­ly lose track of what made him so inter­est­ing in the first place.

I take back every­thing I ever said about Mike Skin­ner being the new incar­na­tion of Mark E. Smith.

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO TONIGHT

I went to see two doc­tor’s today about my nag­ging right ankle injury today. The ver­dict isn’t bad: I need to rest and take stronger anti-inflam­ma­to­ries. Just a lit­tle ten­donitis, which for me is famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry. Tonight I’ve been icing and doing some house­clean­ing. Literally.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the lat­est Black Moth Super Rain­bow EP, Drip­pers, and the new Grouper album, Drag­ging a Dead Deer Up a Hill. Both seem to real­ly fit a drea­ry evening here in Philadel­phia. I’ll prob­a­bly lis­ten to weird Poc­a­haunt­ed cas­settes to nail the tri­fec­ta in a bit, or maybe the new Grails record instead. I guess I’ve reached the time of year when I set aside the R&B and pop and start lis­ten­ing to more noise and folk.