"Tokyo" by Lust for Youth

”Tokyo” by Lust for Youth (from the album Compassion on Sacred Bones Records)

"Heatwave" by Makeout Videotape

[Originally posted 11/29/10]

This EP from Alberta, Canada duo Makeout Videotape came out at the end of 2009, too late to make most of that year’s Best Albums lists, and too early to not get caught up in the waterfall of 2010’s new music. Which is too bad, because this is some outstanding work (written by a lead singer/guitar player who was only 19 when the tracks were recorded) that deserves Best Of recognition.

It’s a surprisingly realized sound for two people working in a fairly rudimentary environment. The songs are brilliant examples of ’60s-influenced lo-fi garage-pop. I picked up “Basketball Kids” and “Slush Puppy Love” from WFMU's blog almost a year ago and am still listening to those tracks regularly. The rest of the EP is just as good.

The entire EP is available for free on the band’s label's (Unfamiliar Records) Web site - click here to get to it.

"Samson & Delilah" by The Staple Singers

Soul music got its beats from Rhythm and Blues, but its passion came from Gospel. The legendary Staple Singers spread their gorgeous harmonies and inspirational messages across musical genres for decades. This track is just one example of how they did it, retelling an old Bible story in a way that'll get your head bopping and feet tapping.

"Easy Come, Easy Go" by Great Lake Swimmers

This is down-home Folk-Pop (or is it Roots-Pop?) that has a nice up-tempo groove using instruments that suggest a more languid pace, similarly to Blue Giant's excellent 2010 album.

10 Thoughts About the 2018 Pitchfork Music Festival

I attended the Pitchfork Music Festival the weekend of July 20-22 2018. I had these thoughts about the event…

1. Kudos are once again due to the festival’s organizers for once again staging a fantastic festival. They improve something about P4K every year, and this year was no exception. This year they moved the beer ticket section and concessions out to the edge of the festival grounds made it much easier to get to and from the Blue Stage. Little things like that make a huge difference.
2. Diversity absolutely rules. In terms of uplifting cultural experiences, Pitchfork was a nice oasis from the sh*t-show that is life in the U.S.A. in 2018. In important ways, it was the opposite of a Trump rally. I’ve seen the future of America, and was in the Black and Brown faces of the audience members.

Separating the Art From the Artist

[originally written and posted January 2014 by Clarence Ewing]

Despite the tabloids’ best efforts, it appears that the general public’s interest in Michael Jackson’s death has pretty much run its course. Although Jackson’s musical and cultural influence had been on the wane for the last few years, mainly thanks to his self-imposed semi-exile to exotic lands, his passing brought up a lot of feelings from both pro- and anti-Jackson camps in the US.

To his fans, Jackson was a musical genius and one of the best entertainers the world has ever seen. There are a lot of people, though, for whom Jackson’s tumultuous personal life, especially his alleged involvement with young children, outweighs anything he did on stage or in the recording studio.

My Favorite Albums of 2018

Here is a repost of my Best Albums of 2018 list that originally appeared last year ago on CHIRP Radio’s Web site...

1. Kamasi Washington - Heaven and Earth (Young Turks)

2. Noname - Room 25 (self-released)

My Favorite Albums of 2012

Here is a repost of my Best Albums of 2012 list that originally appeared last year ago on CHIRP Radio’s Web site...

1. Helado Negro – Island Universe Story One (Asthmatic Kitty) 

Roberto Carlos Lange, aka Helado Negro ("Black Ice Cream") uses the strong Latin American influences from his South Florida birthplace to create humid, hazy experimental electronic landscapes using tape loops, strategically placed feedback, and what sounds like found objects, backed by thudding beats and thick bass lines.

It’s not quite Avant-Garde and not quite Dance music and not quite Eletro-Pop; It's a unique combination of the best of all of these genres that I suspect I’ll be listening to a lot for years to come. Favorite Tracks: “Con Mi Suerte,” “Enfocando”

2. Wild Nothing – Nocturne (Captured Tracks)

Further solidifying his place in the Dream-Pop scene, the 2nd album from Wild Nothing (aka Jack Tatum) features more of the refined, polished, relentlessly gentle sound (a combination of jangle-pop guitars and synth-based bass and drums) he first emerged with in 2010.

Along with Island Universe, this is one of the all-around best sonically crafted albums I've heard this year. Favorite Tracks: “Through the Grass,” “Nocturne”

My Favorite Albums of 2020

These are my favorite albums of 2020. This list appears along with others on the CHIRP Radio blog.

#1 UNTITLED (Black Is) by SAULT (Forever Living Originals)

Who are these people? The mystery is just one aspect of a deeply effective recording that seemingly came out of nowhere. A bunch of albums have been produced by this entity in a relatively short time span (including UNTITLED (Rise), released within months of this one and just as phenomenal). More, please.

#2 We're New Again: A Reimagining by Gill Scott-Heron and McKaya McCraven (XL Recordings)

Classic meets new, and the space time continuum is that much better for it.

My Favorite Albums of 2017

Here's the list of CHIRP Radio's Top Albums of 2017.

And here's a list of my favorite albums of 2017...

#1 A Projection - Framework (Tapete)

Five Swedish office drones ditch their day jobs to follow their passion. The result is air-tight post-punk, performed with urgency and joy. The antidote for a trying year in most folks' non-music areas of life.

#2 Aquaserge - Laisse Ça Être (Crammed Discs)

Guitars + horns + flutes + electronics + krautrock + bossa nova + funk + progressive rock + lounge pop from a French supergroup playing the kind of genre-bending, inclusive music that America was known for back in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

"Fire of God's Love" by Sister Irene O'Connor

An Australian nun recorded an album of religious songs using a drum machine. The result, released in 1976, is something that would be right at home on left-end-of-the-dial alternative radio.

Sister Irene's voice, combined with the primitive electro-beats, has the same eerie qualities of post-punk and alternative bands that came along more than 10 years later, while approaching that conceptual border between religious ecstasy and, shall we say, a more secular kind of rapture (not unlike the ideas explored in Black Narcissus).

Even without the subtext, it's a cool track that I would never have imagined coming from a nun in the '70s.

Lollapalooza Vs. Pitchfork

written by Clarence Ewing [originally published Spring 2009]

Lollapalooza and Pitchfork are the two major summer rock/alternative/hip-hop music festivals in Chicago. Now that both events have released their lineups for this year, a few articles have appeared that ask which is the better festival. Here’s one from Red Eye, and here’s one from Chicago Tribune music critic Jim DeRogatis.

To me, it’s tricky to compare the two festivals, since they’re both operating from different business plans and targeting somewhat different kinds of audiences. But having been to both festivals, I can say subjectively that Pitchfork is better than Lollapalooza (hereafter referred to as “Lolla”).

I'm not a Lolla hater, in my experience Pitchfork has been just a better music-listening and festival-going experience.

Two years ago, the last time I was at Lolla, I saw some great performances and had a lot of fun. But between the heat, the massive crowds, and the spacious Grant Park layout, the weekend ended up turning into a bit of a grind.

Thomas Dolby’s “The Golden Age of Wireless” and “The Flat Earth”

Written by Clarence Ewing

This is an essay I wrote for CHIRP Radio that also appears on their blog. Have a listen to this great community-based independent radio station!

Growing up in Omaha, Nebraska in the mid-1980s, before the existence of the Internet and MP3 players, meant you had to look a little harder to find new and interesting pop music.

Fortunately I had a sister who was plugged in to the few places in town where one could find new stuff that wasn’t featured on Casey Kasem’s Top 40.

One day she got hold of two albums on cassette tapes that I dutifully sponged off of her and that introduced me to the brilliant synth-pop of Thomas Morgan Robertson, a.k.a. Thomas Dolby.

In these days of ubiquitous electronic equipment, it’s easy to forget there was a time when it wasn’t possible to just push a button and have coherent sounds (or songs, or albums) come pouring out.

Digital music didn’t come off the shelf; they had to be built from the ground up and made into something useable, hopefully by someone who knows what they’re doing, musically and technically. Dolby was one of those people. His skills enabled him to make two of the best pop albums to come out of the New Wave era.

2009 Pitchfork Music Festival Review

Pitchfork is the first of Chicago’s two major summer rock/pop/hip-hop music festivals, the other being Lollapalooza. Pitchfork is the smaller of the two and, as I’ve written before, the superior festival-going experience. For 2 ½ days they take over Union Park on the west side and deliver an assortment of veteran and up-and-coming local, national, and international acts. Every year I feel I’m getting more than my money’s worth, and this weekend was no exception. This year the weather was fantastic (no typical Chicago mid-July heat and humidity this time), which made it even easier to focus on the music.