Music OnLine : tina munim
Led by the piercing, soulful vocals of singer and bassist Shingai Shoniwa, Noisettes are a trio of London garage-rock revivalists who channel Ike and Tina one moment and the MC5 the next. Shoniwa, guitarist Dan Smith and drummer Jamie Morrison began playing together in 2003 and recorded their debut EP, Three Moods of the Noisettes, soon after, releasing it on London's Side Salad Records in 2005. The strength of that EP aided them in landing a deal with Universal, who helped issue the band's "Scratch Your Name" single. They toured hard for the next two years, opening for the likes of TV on the Radio and Muse and gaining a large international fan base. In the spring of 2007, the group released its first LP, What's the Time Mr. Wolf?, to wide acclaim.
Hit singles are one more thing that they just can't make like they used to. One major exception is the Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love" which still sounds as forward-thinking retro as it did in 1981. A celebration of classic soul, Funk, and reggae, the tune laid the blueprint for the Tom Tom Club's innocent and bright-eyed dance club sound. This may have started out as a side project for the Talking Heads rhythm section, but since then Tom Tom Club has turned into a regular gig for Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz. So far they haven't recaptured the singular brilliance of "Genius of Love" but The Good, The Bad and the Funky (2000) is their most focused, slapdash tour of dance music yet. Good fun for good people.
With a voice that sounds like Tina Turner swallowing a shop-full of whiskey and razor blades, Macy Gray may not seem a likely first choice for stardom; but in the age of pop divas who value vocal theatrics over communication, her gravelly voice sounds lived-in and real. Gray's style is like a hip-hop, thrift-store version of the '70s, owing more to the sights and sounds found on a rerun of Ten Speed and Brown Shoe than to the real polyester decade. But this isn't a bad thing -- why remake the past when people like Curtis Mayfield did it so well the first time? Gray puts her own spin on classic soul with lyrics that don't get dewy-eyed for a past that never was. A winner when stacked up against today's R&B superstars.
The Bellrays are one of the last real rock 'n' roll bands on planet Earth. Imagine a young Tina Turner kickin' out the jams with MC5 and you have just scratched the surface of what this wonderfully anachronistic outfit sounds like. Their innovative Garage/Gospel and Soul/Punk puts every other helmet haircut band with black bellbottoms and an infatuation with the Motor City to shame. Singer Lisa Kekaula takes back what many subversive East Coast bands have bastardized with her stellar vocal performances on each song. She can wail and belt out her soul as if Motown's on fire. Amazingly constructed works with clever arrangements, bionic guitar playing, and a rhythm section that seems completely possessed at times. The freakbeat soul of the Bellrays will make you want to steal a car and hit the road with the cruise control on.
Watch these girls. They're going to be huge. First of all, they have these perfectly matching, stunning platinum blonde locks that shine effervescently from every stage they play. Second, they're as catchy and quirky as the Dixie Chicks, yet as talented and skilled as Nickel Creek. Third, their sound is so much like Dolly Parton's bluegrass recordings that Ms. Parton herself has been known to come up on stage and sing with them (this got them their start at Dollywood, entertaining park-goers because of their dead-ringer likeness to the proprietress). Shaunna and Tina Larkin are sisters who grew up in East Tennessee singing perfectly wrought, airtight harmonies. Their mother and father are also musicians, so it's no surprise that much of their godhead talent comes from the kind of parental support and encouragement that nurtures future superstars.
The legs, the hair, the history! If Tina Turner comes across like a marketing concept in shimmy shoes, she's only being true to her past. Turner's never been an originator; instead, she's always been the expression of that colorful ex-husband or today's smooth corporate team. It's just as well that she doesn't call the musical shots: Turner passed on "Physical," which became Olivia Newton-John's biggest success, and only sang "What's Love Got to Do with It" as a concession to insistent management. Even back in the early Sixties, Turner's radar was off. An R&B belter at the dawn of the soul era, she missed a good twenty years of evolution in black music. She and Ike chose to court white pop and rock audiences instead of mastering the new idioms. "River Deep, Mountain High" may be Phil Spector's crowning achievement, but it wasn't a U.S. hit. And Tina's association with the rock gods served mainly to validate their R&B leanings rather than to advance her own career.So the monumental success of Private Dancer came not out of the artist's own traditions (excepting her bias toward white English writer-producers) but seemingly from thin air. It's no surprise that Turner's new Break Every Rule, without any deeper creative sources to draw upon, obeys every rule set by Private Dancer, and slavishly.
Instead of trying out some promising new collaborators on this LP (how about Mike Scott of the Waterboys, Tears for Fears or even the Hooters?), Turner's organization doubled up on the safe bets, giving us more from Terry Britten, Mark Knopfler and Rupert Hine, her partners from Private Dancer. Bryan Adams is a low-risk addition (considering the success of their duet "It's Only Love"), but is that really the producers' idea of innovation?
Rule rules out the growth and daring that we expect of a major artist. But looking past "Typical Male," the rote first single, and "I'll Be Thunder," Rupert Hine's bombastic closer, Turner and her crew have compiled an enjoyable album.
For one thing, Turner has never sung better. In the "A Fool in Love" days she possessed more pure curdle, but there's plenty of that left (check out "Girls," David Bowie's spectacular Spector deconstruction), and now, for the first time, there's a depth of understanding to her readings. From the smooch in "What You Get Is What You See" to the admission in Knopfler's "Overnight Sensation" ("Well I guess I been a long time/Workin' in the backline/Tryin' to make a song fit/You know it never was mine"), Tina even lets in some humor. Throughout Break Every Rule, Turner sounds as if she had the time, guidance and confidence to really master these songs. The result is a potent display of passion and control, and that alone would make this record worth discovering.
Break Every Rule comes in two halves. Side one is all Britten (producing, writing with Graham Lyle and rendering Bowie's "Girls" in fine style). Side two
Don't call Renaissance a comeback -- it's actually Lionel Richie's third album since 1996, when he returned from a decade-long hiatus. Richie's last two efforts went nowhere, however, so either he's due for a break or it just ain't gonna happen for the guy. Odds aside though, Renaissance brings the goods. This is unabashedly slick adult contemporary fare -- file between Eric Clapton's work with Babyface and the last Tina Turner album -- but Richie can still write and sing the hell out of a get-you-right-there-where-it-hurts ballad; "Tender Heart" and particularly "How Long" both measure up to 1983's "Hello." The up-tempo numbers are more hit and miss, but even if the obvious-but-ultimately winning "Angel" and "Don't Stop the Music" don't quite inspire dancing on the ceiling, they'll at least get you tapping the dashboard of your Lexus. And Ricky, Enrique and Santana, take note: a cover of the flamenco-seasoned "Cinderella" is a Number One hit-in-waiting for whoever calls dibs on it first. That is, unless the third time's the charm and Richie scores a hit with it himself.
The urgent, melodic and frequently anonymous Riddlin' Kids are -- like much of the post-Blink 182 set that includes Sum 41, Fenix TX and New Found Glory -- a little too polished to be truly punk rock. But, judging by "Here We Go Again" and the semi-hit "I Feel Fine," their pop-injected take on the genre is plenty appealing. What the Austin, Texas-based quartet lacks in originality it makes up for in chops on the lovesick, mid-tempo "Tina" and the metallic blast of "Pick Up the Pieces." While the Kids' album-closing cover of R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It" seems pointless, it's still leaps and bounds ahead of the 2001 career-mulching stab at the same by fellow punks the Suicide Machines. Other ear candy like "See the Light" and "Take" proves that the Kids are alright. JOHN D. LUERSSEN
(August 6, 2002)
It'sofficial: these guys are the greatest Germanbubblegum-neo-glam-goth-emo boy band. Ever. On their English-languagedebut (they're already huge in Deutschland), the four fresh-faced ladsfrom Magdeburg unveil a genre-and gender-bending act that justifiessuperlatives. Much of the credit goes to lead singer Bill Kaulitz, an18-year-old androgyne whose stupendous electroshock hairdo stands a goodsix inches taller than Tina Turner's Eighties coif. Kaulitz is atechnically limited vocalist, but he has the charisma of a naturalfrontman, delivering both yowling rockers ("Scream") and sentimentalballads (the acoustic weeper "By Your Side") with an audible twinkle inhis eye that suggests he's not entirely serious. (His dodgy Englishdiction — he pronounces the word "eyes" like "ice" — adds to the charm.)The taut power-trio arrangements mix the whisper-to-a-scream dynamics ofpost-grunge with glam-rock chords and a big dollop of emo's teenpsychodrama. ("Ready, Set, Go!" has already soundtracked an angsty sceneon The Hills.) And then there's "Love Is Dead," which sounds like a lostEighties hair-metal chestnut. With some strategically applied spandex,Kaulitz could become the rock god Bret Michaels always wanted tobe.
Especially given the label's fondness for sonic byways, I admit that these three CDs of obscure-inna-Babylon Manley Buchanan filled me with gray-haired professional dread. Oh I-and-I of little faith. Youth remains an unimaginable original whatever his debt to U-Roy, whose (comparatively) suave presence on the two-part "Battle of the Giants" only highlights the younger toaster's innocence and joy. Rapping, chanting, preaching, sing-songing, ripping off War or Ike & Tina or the Last Poets, Youth never undercuts his race-conscious commitment to agape. Even invoking damnation's "Hotter Fire" he assumes no prophetic airs, and he details the poverty of "Riverton City" as if reciting a nursery rhyme--as if he's the little child who shall lead us. His mission is to render palatable a Rastafarianism he knows as the simple word of Jah. The rhythms are obviously essential. But only on the dubbier final disc do his revealed truths lose any charm. (Grade: A-)
Unbeknownst to white people, she was Soul Sister Number Two--more and better top-20 r&b back when than Dionne Warwick, Martha Reeves, Tina Turner, Carla Thomas, Irma Thomas, any black woman besides Soul Sister Number One and Diana Ross, who belongs to pop. She's been a cult heroine since around the time she kicked heroin in 1974--albums with Wexler and Toussaint, tour with the Stones, etc. But her many post-'60s recordings have disappointed: often out of touch with herself (didn't kick alcohol till much later), she could coast on savvy and a fabulously down-and-dirty voice. So I expected not much from what turns out to be her best album since she met Barry Beckett at the Tell Mama sessions in 1968. Part of the difference is Beckett, the producer who's constructed the solidest bottom and sharpest top of her career, but mostly it's the something extra she invests in these half-remembered Memphis-type standards. Not all the way there--all the way there is hard after 35 years in the biz. But not cult-only either. (Grade: B+)
Until she was rediscovered early this decade, Detroit's Bettye LaVette was a great lost soul diva, her career derailed in the early Seventies due largely to record-label troubles. LaVette made a comeback in recent years, earning a spate of new fans -- including Southern rockers the Drive-By Truckers, who back LaVette on this covers-heavy set. The full-bodied soul they provide begs to be heard live in a smoky club, and it's more sympathetic than the raw grooves Joe Henry cooked up for LaVette on 2005's I've Got My Own Hell to Raise. The songs here are well chosen -- particularly Willie Nelson's "Somebody Pick Up My Pieces" and the Ray Charles-associated "They Call It Love" -- and LaVette's nuanced singing evokes prime Tina Turner with even more command. The singer's lone original, "Before the Money Came (Battle of Bettye LaVette)," tells her hard-luck story over a Skynyrd-esque groove, but even better is the spare ballad "Talking Old Soldiers," a 1971 Elton John song that LaVette makes her own.
Santogold, nee Santi White, has quite the curriculum vitae. Born and raised in Philadelphia, but based out of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, she was an African-drum-playing music major at Wesleyan University, a Sony A&R underling, and ska-punk band Stiffed's leading lady before evolving into an avant-garde mash-up artist and critical darling. And even though she's spent the majority of her career in the deep underground, she's definitely got some friends in high places: she's toured with friend and artistic peer M.I.A.; opened for Bjork; worked with Spank Rock; penned and produced for R&B siren Res; and has written for the GZA, Lily Allen and Ashlee Simpson. Master craftsmen like Mark Ronson, Switch, Diplo, Jon Hill (her partner in Stiffed) and the late Disco D produced her self-titled debut album. Santogold, which reflects influences like Bad Brains, Tina Turner, Devo, the Smiths, Cocteau Twins and many more, is a stunning display of hipster pastiche -- it's ear candy loaded with brain food of a subversive flavor.Englishman Steve Marriott is the late, great leader of the maximum R&B/mod group the Small Faces, as well as the thundering Boogie Rock road dogs known as Humble Pie. After getting his start as a child actor in musical theater, his love of American R&B and blues as a teen led him down the wayward path to rock 'n' roll. The diminutive singer had a mighty, blown-out rasp of a voice that sounded like a combination of Wilson Pickett and Tina Turner. The Small Faces made a series of fine albums, experiencing chart success in the United States while achieving mass popularity at home in Britain. Marriott quit the Small Faces and assembled Humble Pie with Peter Frampton (who soon left to follow his own road to superstardom) and set about creating the Boogie/Hard Rock blueprint for what would eventually become Metal. Although the group enjoyed little chart success, they were a popular album rock act and a major live attraction throughout the 1970s. Marriott spent most of the '80s in relative seclusion. He was in the process of getting together to record with Frampton again when he perished in a house fire in 1991.Santogold, nee Santi White, has quite the curriculum vitae. Born and raised in Philadelphia, but based out of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, she was an African-drum-playing music major at Wesleyan University, a Sony A&R underling, and ska-punk band Stiffed's leading lady before evolving into an avant-garde mash-up artist and critical darling. And even though she's spent the majority of her career in the deep underground, she's definitely got some friends in high places: she's toured with friend and artistic peer M.I.A.; opened for Bjork; worked with Spank Rock; penned and produced for R&B siren Res; and has written for the GZA, Lily Allen and Ashlee Simpson. Master craftsmen like Mark Ronson, Switch, Diplo, Jon Hill (her partner in Stiffed) and the late Disco D produced her self-titled debut album. Santogold, which reflects influences like Bad Brains, Tina Turner, Devo, the Smiths, Cocteau Twins and many more, is a stunning display of hipster pastiche -- it's ear candy loaded with brain food of a subversive flavor.Santogold, nee Santi White, has quite the curriculum vitae. Born and raised in Philadelphia, but based out of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, she was an African-drum-playing music major at Wesleyan University, a Sony A&R underling, and ska-punk band Stiffed's leading lady before evolving into an avant-garde mash-up artist and critical darling. And even though she's spent the majority of her career in the deep underground, she's definitely got some friends in high places: she's toured with friend and artistic peer M.I.A.; opened for Bjork; worked with Spank Rock; penned and produced for R&B siren Res; and has written for the GZA, Lily Allen and Ashlee Simpson. Master craftsmen like Mark Ronson, Switch, Diplo, Jon Hill (her partner in Stiffed) and the late Disco D produced her self-titled debut album. Santogold, which reflects influences like Bad Brains, Tina Turner, Devo, the Smiths, Cocteau Twins and many more, is a stunning display of hipster pastiche -- it's ear candy loaded with brain food of a subversive flavor.
The Neville Brothers' much-awaited followup to their generally overrated, live-at-Tipitina's Neville-ization (1984) should have been titled Pointer-ization. Here's the formula: black singing group with strong R&B roots plus white producers and songwriters with creditable rock & roll résumés equals crossover pop record with something for everybody. Tina did it. The Pointer Sisters have been doing it for years. So why not the Neville Brothers?
This is why not: the New Orleans sound – a hash of R&B, rock, funk, jazz, reggae and zydeco – is growing hazier every day. And because the Nevilles are the embodiment of that sound, Uptown is a sorry step toward the obsolescence of a unique American regional music.
But Uptown deserves fairer consideration. It is, in fact, a warm, catchy album loaded with dance tunes and singalongs that will surely satisfy the average listener. "Shek-A-Na-Na," "Old Habits Die Hard" (penned by Tina Turner's songwriting team, Graham Lyle and Terry Britten), "Midnight Key" and "Money Back Guarantee" (both co-written by Jimmy Buffett) are all cleverly retro without being blatantly nostalgic. Aaron Neville, whose vocal prowess has been painfully ignored since his 1966 hit, "Tell It Like It Is," is given numerous opportunities to flaunt his tremulous falsetto (the highlight is his cover of "Drift Away"). Branford Marsalis takes several turns on sax, and there are guitar solos by Carlos Santana, Jerry Garcia and Ronnie Montrose.
But the Nevilles never quite get to strut their stuff. Charles Neville's sax is noticeably quiet, Cyril Neville's percussion can barely be heard (he does sing several songs), and Art, the oldest Neville, lies relatively low. The last Neville Brothers' studio effort, 1981's Fiyo on the Bayou, contained authentic New Orleans music. The critics loved it; everyday people never got to hear it. Uptown is more likely to be heard by those people – too bad this introduction to the Nevilles is so far from the truth. (RS 504-505)
STEVE BLOOM
Here we have two of the biz' primo canaries coming up with long-awaited (and, you can bet, carefully considered) albums and not exactly setting the charts on fire. Both Ross and Newton-John are selling themselves as hot-blooded pinups proudly past the innocent age (playing up your maturity is not only sound politics but also sound business, as Tina Turner proves). And both have come up with good-to-excellent records.
Ross' album was produced by Barry Gibb and Company, with unhelpful help on the first single from Michael Jackson. He cowrote and coproduced the duet "Eaten Alive," certainly his worst effort since "Muscles." But then Diana gets down to the rest of the album, a brilliant Gibb-brothers confection. The good news, for those forced to endure "Swept Away," her Daryl Hall-Arthur Baker collaboration, is that the Miami guys didn't let Ross sing any of the lousy notes that marred that record. Better news is that Barry Gibb and his brothers have turned in a record that is as deep and intelligently crafted as their minor masterpieces for Dionne Warwick and Barbra Streisand.
As it happens, the relative neutrality of Ross' instrument makes her an ideal vehicle for the Gibbs' boudoir swish of sound. Layers of transparent voices and instruments veil and reveal the star, on flawless ballads like "Experience" and "I'm Watching You" and on "Chain Reaction," with its ingeniously moody whiff of the Supremes. Ross' album isn't a hit, one associate told me, because the whole package – Diana, the Bee Gees and the album – is square. I choose to believe it's not a hit because of a poor first single. If this pinnacle of popcraft is square, what's the latest Heart album? Cubic?
After a long period of corporate fine tuning, MCA released Olivia's Soul Kiss with a kinky Helmut Newton cover, a lean John Farrar production and a fun single, the album's title track. Originally (and wisely) passed on by Tina Turner, "Soul Kiss" is just right for Newton-John. She proves once again that she is the best pure pop singer working today. Check her out live sometime, mark her for range, pitch, phrasing, energy, ballsiness and, yes, commitment to the songs, and see if you don't agree.
Too bad the rest of the material doesn't match up. There are good songs, but no other bull's-eyes, and a pair of embarrassments. "Queen of the Publication" is a Livvy-as-crack-journalist fantasy that would have worked better as the storyboard to a feminine-deodorant commercial. In "Culture Shock" Newton-John asks her hurt beau if her other beau can move in with them. It's a male pipe dream in which nothing but the pronouns have been changed.
Olivia, like Diana, may be cut wrong for this week's pop meat rack, and maybe for next week's too. If that's so, the fault lies with wardrobe and one or two ill-chosen songs. Both have much to offer as performers, and both are making records with at least as much modern surface and pace as A-ha or S
On 'Vagabond Heart,' rodeo drive intersects Gasoline Alley. Though the album's production shows typical signs of conspicuous consumption, the strength of the songs and the depth of Stewart's conviction make this his most compelling work since the early Seventies. Rather than attempting to bring his career full circle – inevitably an exercise in return-to-form nostalgia – Stewart has wisely chosen to explore the connections between what he was and what he is.While Out of Order, from 1988, offered hints of renewal, the inspiration for Vagabond Heart likely came from last year's Storyteller anthology, on which Stewart returned to his soul roots with an Isley Brothers revival, stretched his interpretive capabilities on a Tom Waits tune and took the opportunity to reassess his career. Apparently, he realized he had been trivializing his talents, because Vagabond Heart finds him rising to new challenges as both a songwriter and a singer.
Half of the twelve songs are co-written by Stewart himself. The older-but-wiser balladry of "No Holding Back" and "If Only" lifts those songs to the level of Stewart's best work, while the full-throttle rock of "Rebel Heart" and "Moment of Glory" shows a self-deprecating maturity beyond the sexual adventurism of his days as a disco dandy. As for the covers, he matches rasps with Tina Turner on a version of "It Takes Two" that is more Mick and Keith than Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston and delivers a soulfully understated reading of "You Are Everything" that rivals the Stylistics' original.
The album explores a stylistic terrain that ranges from Robbie Robertson's "Broken Arrow" to Van Morrison's "Have I Told You Lately." While Stewart doesn't quite connect with the former, and the latter is the schmaltziest Van in the catalog, such selections at least find Stewart pushing beyond formula. Only "The Motown Song" sounds as generic as so much of his Eighties music. Overall, however, Vagabond Heart comes across as a personal testament – deeply felt, honestly affecting.
Even if she is in great shape, a woman in her late 50s has to be a class act to get away with wearing a microminiskirt, as Tina Turner does on the cover of her latest album. Fortunately, Turner's flawless legs are not the only assets she's kept intact. On Wildest Dreams, her first collection of new material in seven years, Turner's raspy, robust alto and her ability to carry herself with both dignity and chutzpah are as formidable as they were when she recorded the incendiary "River Deep, Mountain High" three decades ago.What has changed, of course, is the music behind her. Since her early '80s comeback, Turner has favored increasingly slick production and tame, synthladen arrangements better suited to Mariah Carey and Toni Braxton. Nevertheless, Wildest Dreams is rich in Turner's native grit. "In Your Wildest Dreams," a softly percolating duet with Barry White, Turner matches the Maestro of Love's steaminess with her own fierce carnality. Turner also sharpens the genial-funk tone of "Something Beautiful Remains" and "Confidential" with her sensuous, urgent delivery.
None of the material on this album is going to make Phil Spector jealous, but there are a couple of songs that at least provide Turner with a flame worth stoking rather than forcing her to generate all the heat by herself. In "Whatever You Want," one of several tracks produced by Trevor Horn, quiet, intense verses segue into bright, exhilarating choruses. And the hip-hop-laced "All Kinds of People" has a lithe, buoyant spirit crackling with energy. All this vim and vigor – and not a perceptible ounce of cellulite.
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