NEWS
August 27, 2004.
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Busy Year For Neko
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Neko Case |
Canadian singer-songwriter Neko Case has just announced two(!) albums until the end of this year. The first one is already recorded and it should be out in early November. This is a live album, the title is
The Tigers Have Spoken and has nothing to do with LSU. It's recorded together with The Sadies, who also have a new album which we already featured in our show. This is not a "best of" type of deal - she only has two previously published songs - other stuff is either new songs or covers (Buffy Sainte Marie for example) and some traditionals. After the live album is out, Case will go back to the studio and start working ont the new regular album. In other news - there is a rumor that Neko is not in powerpop band The New Pornographers anymore. I hope that's not true. They also have a new album in making. No news about Neko's Playboy photo session, supposedly they approached her for that. Whether it's true or not - Neko wrote a nice article about how is it to be a female in music world on her website
http://www.nekocase.com, which we at The Little Lighthouse value more than the nude photo shots.
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Only at first glance it might seem that one of the most adventurous albums this year belongs to a 53 year old British accordionist who played as a guest musician to Shakin' Stevens and Mark Knopfler. But when you hear the stuff and dig underneath you realize that Geraint Watkins is one of the legendary pub rockers of the seventies, one of Nick Lowe's buddies who had several good albums at the time with his band The Dominators where he played piano and accordion. Now it become clearer how Watkins can so comfortably go from a ballad (Two Rocks) to a dirty boogie (Cold War), country (Heaven), soul (Soldier of Love) and swing (Go West). But I think that the key point to understand the beauty of this album is when in the middle part of Turn That Chicken Down a dirty mississippi style blues sung in a spitting image of Howlin' Wolf suddenly changes into a techno chill out. Don't let this one pass by you.
Watkins' fan site contains loads of interesting stuff!
<==rewind
Cargoe: Live In Memphis!
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Perhaps it's logical that the musical scene from Memphis is full of hidden treasures. All that musicians in Memphis ever wanted is true music that comes straight to the heart and perhaps they see infiltration and politics of record companies as something that would damage their pure sound. The most notorious example is perhaps Big Star. But it turns out, Memphis in seventies didn't only have one great power pop band, there was an entire scene! Music enthusiast Terry Manning who himself participated as one of the scenesters of the time and a former Ardent label boss, recently founded a new record label dedicated in bringing back that good old Memphis sound back to life. You can find more info about the label at http://www.luckysevenrecords.com/, but for now let's spend a few more lines on one of this label's releases - Cargoe cd Live In Memphis!. Cargoe came to Memphis in early seventies Oklahoma in search for a more fruitful ground. They had excellent songs, they looked like the 1969 Beatles, and quickly they got signed by the Stax records making ultimately the same mistake as Big Star. Just like them, Stax didn't pay much attention to them and their single and other recorded sessions were poorly distributed of just remained in vaults. This CD contains a live recording from a concert Cargoe recorded for a Memphis rock FM radio, WMC. This is thirteen of their original songs culminating with their hit single at the time Feel Alright. The sound is a bit greasier version of power-pop. I imagine the group probably sounded a bit softer in studio, but here they rock out hard sounding like an imaginary Badfinger and Faces session. When you take in account that it all happened on Memphis ground - this is something you must hear. Cargoe website is here.