The Tower of Song Tour preview, featuring Alysha Brillinger and Kristen Bussandri

Since I will not be able to catch this show (unless I can make it towards the end (I am volunteering at Pop Montreal, and have to get my ‘training’ — I volunteered last year, so I should be able to get the hang of it! By the way, it is not too late to volunteer!)), I am giving it some publicity over here in order to generate some additional buzz!

I am only familiar with both singer-songwriters from hearing their audio online, and sounds like it would make for a good show. So to steal from their bios, as I do not know too much about them, “Alysha Brillinger’s blues and reggae influenced songs combine her funky guitar playing and unique voice to create a fresh new organic vibe of music.” I find she has a bit of a jazzy delivery as well. Check out her song “Better Soon” below (I actually hear a bit of Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” in the melody. She is presently signed to Lava/Universal Republic, and is a native of Kitchener it would seem. Hence the tour (see below) doing their respective hometowns, and Toronto in between!

The first time I heard Kristen Bussandri, a local (Montrealer), who has split her time between New York City and here in Montreal, I thought sultry, and lo and behold, in her bio: “Kristen Bussandri is a long-legged sultry brunette who will stop you in your tracks with her timeless pop songwriting and heartbreaking vocals that transcend genres, embracing everything from intimate acoustic ballads to gritty R&B to rock with uncompromising sophistication and depth.” In July, she just released her debut EP, Diamonds to Dust. It can be heard and purchased online, just head on over to her official website, kristenbussandri.com. Embedded below, a live rendition of her song “If You Don’t Love Me You’re Wrong.”

The three city micro-tour starts in Montreal Wednesday night (September 14), and the next two nights are Toronto and Kitchener, Ontario, respectively. Head on over to Dukits.com, which seems to be a crowdsourcing (as they say) meets a deal of the day site, for advance ticket, and show information. As of this writing there is only a couple of hours left to get Toronto and Kitchener tickets at a reduced rate, so hurry!

And individually they will be doing shows in the future (I reckon!), so check out their official websites: AlyshaBrillinger.com and KristenBussandri.com.

Music Video of the Day recap week 19

Week 19 started December 24 with two Holiday/Xmas/winter music videos, and then business as usual.

As always, stay current by following me on Twitter at twitter.com/tmmblog, and watch for the #MVOD hashtag.

#127 Deana Carter – Once Upon a December

As I said on Twitter, my favourite holiday(ish) country song.

#128, Faith Hill – Where are you Christmas?

Pretty poppy, but not a bad little Christmas song.

#129 Imelda May – Psycho

I still have to listen to her albums, but from what little I have heard, sounds good! Nice to see some rockabilly in the mainstream!

#130 Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock – It Takes Two

A bona fide hip hop classic, no doubt. For those who do not know, The Black Eyed Peas butchered sampled this in “Rock That Body”.

#131 Beastie Boys – Ch-Check It Out

Not counting The Mix-Up, this is from the Beastie’s last proper album released. Still a great track from a great album! In no way am I discounting The Mix-Up, hey, it won a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Album. Looking forward to Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2 at some point! Seems the version I linked is now blocked here in Canada (likely a lot of what I link to is blocked somewhere).

#132 Amy Winehouse – Fuck Me Pumps

Excellent track from Amy’s stellar debut. Whew, it was released almost eight years ago (October 2003)!

#133 Holly McNarland – Elmo

Highly recommended Canadian Content. This was one of Holly’s big singles back in 1997/1998, and although she is not getting the promotion as she was back then, or airplay, etc, she still releases very good music.

Norah Jones – …Featuring Norah Jones album review

Definitely an interesting concept for a release. One that features a vast number of tracks Norah Jones has collaborated on. These are of course mostly all other artists songs, that feature Norah Jones as a guest performer.

Right off the bat, I’d love to see this compilation done for Esthero. There was a time around the early 2000s, when she was doing nothing but collaborating with other artists (Black Eyed Peas’ “Weekends”, Nelly Furtado’s “I Feel You”, and even the Blue Man Group’s “White Rabbit” to name a few). Esthero’s voice lends itself very well as a featured performer, of course solo too! The same goes for Nelly Furtado. Also Macy Gray. However I can’t really see it happened for Esthero, as she does not have the Norah Jones star power.

The compilation album starts off with The Little Willies, which is a group featuring Norah Jones. So with that in mind, it really focuses on her musical style. In this case jazz with a country feel to it.

As it is a compilation album, artists she was featured with range from the Foo Fighters, to Q-Tip, to Herbie Hancock, to Willie Nelson, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Therefore the genres found within are quite varied.

Most tracks are indeed featuring Norah Jones, however there are three tracks that are Norah Jones’ songs that feature other guests (“Bull Rider” featuring Sasha Dobson, “Loretta” featuring Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, and “Creepin’ In” featuring Dolly Parton.).

The aforementioned “Bull Rider” is a very good track on its own. Sasha Dobson has been involved in the jazz scene in New York for several years now, and has a couple of albums under her belt. She has also worked with Norah Jones in the past on various side projects. And most recently, she is providing percussion, guitar and vocal harmonies on Norah Jones’ tour promoting The Fall. On “Bull Rider”, their voices work very well together on a country tinged bluegrass track.

The track with OutKast, or Andre 3000 to be more specific, “Take Off Your Cool”, is originally from his portion of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. It finds Andre 3000 toning down his vocals so as to better suit Norah. Not that she could not manage on a standard OutKast track. Whereas one of the other hip hop tracks, “Life Is Better”, Q-Tip has Norah Jones doing the chorus in a more hip hop style, even if the track is fairly laid back, as Q-Tip still raps in the track. Norah does a quite a good job on this track, but to draw from earlier in this review, this is the sort of guest spot where Esthero shines. It is much more in the vein of a smooth hip hop track, not unlike something Guru would have done for the Jazzmatazz series. Similar for the Talib Kweli track, “Soon The New Day”, as it is another mellow track, but does not find Norah straying from her normal vocal style. The latter two are good mellow bouncing hip hop tracks on their own.

“Loretta”, a live track which features Gillian Welch & David Rawlings would not feel out of place on a Norah Jones release. As also would be the case with “Bull Rider”. Of course “Creepin’ In” featuring Dolly Parton is from Norah’s second album, Feels Like Home, but definitely a worthy addition to this compilation.

Individually many tracks work very well on their own, as a compilation, well it is just that, a compilation so genre run a wide gamut. The tracks do seem to be well organised though, making for a decent listen from start to finish. It has been said before numerous times, for numerous releases, and I will reiterate it here. I’d mostly recommend this for fans of Norah Jones. Non fans would probably be better off choosing from one of her four solo albums.

Music on television August 30 – September 3

Just about a month since I did a music on television post. Here it is for the coming week. Picks are in bold, and I added repeats only if it is something I’d be interested in.

Monday August 30

Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses on The Late Show with David Letterman
Cyndi Lauper & Jonny Lang on The Tonight Show not with Conan O’Brien

Tuesday August 31

Merle Haggard on The Late Show with David Letterman
Norah Jones on The Tonight Show not with Conan O’Brien
Norah Jones on Tavis Smiley
Street Sweeper Social Club Lopez Tonight (repeat from August 2)

Wednesday September 1

Goo Goo Dolls on The Tonight Show not with Conan O’Brien
Ozzy Osbourne on Jimmy Kimmel (not) Live! (repeat from August 16)
Kate Nash Last Call with Carson Daly (repeat from May 14)

Thursday September 2

Karen Elson on The Late Show with David Letterman
Susan Tedeschi & Derek Trucks on The Tonight Show not with Conan O’Brien
Heart on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

Friday September 3

Sara Bareilles on The Tonight Show not with Conan O’Brien

Montreal Jazz Fest days 3-5. Elizabeth Shepherd, Amanda Mabro, Beast, etc.

Sunday, day three started off with watching Toronto based singer Elizabeth Shepherd. She is fairly straight forward jazz. Quite good though. I listened to her latest album, Heavy Falls the Night, and it is fairly impressive. Despite being Toronto based, she did go to school and earn a degree at Montreal university, McGill.

I only watched a few minutes of Elizabeth Shepherd, as I went to check out Jah Cutta. He is a fairly big name in Canadian reggae. I remembered him mostly from when he performed as Jah Cutta and the Determination band. And for a while he was on local punk label 2112, now part of the Stomp Records label group.

I checked out Elizabeth Shepherd again on her second performance, as I had missed the beginning on her first show. Again, good! Of course she plays the same setlist, as do pretty much all artists that have two shows in the same evening. I have a couple pictures linked on my twitter (one, and two)

From there I headed over to Montreal ska band The Planet Smashers, they never tend to disappoint!

Last night, I saw Amanda Mabro, again, I watched at least 20 minutes of her two sets. She is a local jazz/pop, etc singer. It was the first time I saw her live, and she kind of reminded me of Norah Jones. Her Myspace page says cabaret pop-noir which seems like a good description.

Finally I watched some of Lulu Hughes and the Montreal All City Big Band. I knew her by name mostly, I had seen a music video of hers from years ago, but could not recall without checking it out first. Anyway, she seemed to be doing covers as she was with the big band. I was starting to watch her first set, but that was when it started pouring rain, just about as she took the stage! I waited quite a while beforehand, as it was a slow rain, but when it started pouring I gave up the ghost. She is a bit more adult contemporary, I’d like to check out her solo stuff at some point.

Finally, night 5 was only Beast. They were the featured performer for the night, so the crowd was quite big, easily in the high five digits to upwards of 100 000. As I Tweeted, I was quite far away, but on the plus side no ear damage! I started out checking Lulu Hughes second set right at the front of the house (I think that’s the technical term used), where it was crazy loud, so that did not last long before backing up. Even if I had earplugs, I think it would have been a tad loud.

Regardless, Beast seemed pretty good, I thought they were probably the least likely to be found on the Jazz Fest, as they are kind of electronic indie. At best with jazz elements. Surely they can pull jazz influences in their work, but it does not show. I only knew the song “Mr. Hurricane” from their self titled 2008 debut. They made a video for the song along with “Out of Control”. See “Mr. Hurricane” on YouTube (“Out of Control”, their other video is linked on the side of that page).

Finally, MySpace links to check out any of the above artists. Of course they have official pages too that can easily be found by googling.

Elizabeth Shepherd
Jah Cutta
Amanda Mabro
The Planet Smashers
Beast

Well that is about it for the Jazz Fest for me, I’ll still check it out, but I do not have anyone I am really looking forward to anymore.

Quick Picks August 7 2009

First is Joan Osborne‘s second studio album, Righteous Love. The follow up to her proper debut (since her first release was a live recording) which was her commercial breakthrough. It scored her the hits “One of Us”, “St. Teresa”, and “Right Hand Man”.

Righteous Love did not garner the attention of Relish. It does feel a little less accessible, yet it is still a good album. I believe I do prefer Relish, even though it has been a while, it has a bit more of a playful feel. My favourite track I would say would be “If I Was Your Man”. “Baby Love” is another good track.

Second is Alice Peacock‘s third release, Who I Am. It is considered to be within the adult alternative/pop-rock genre. While she is also called a folk singer. I am not too familiar with folk, for the most part. However this release is fairly solid.

Her major label debut, her self titled second album, featured John Mayer and Emily Saliers from the Indigo Girls. Both guests being Sony recording artists, while her major lable debut was on Sony.

This album finds her back on her indie Peacock Music, in cooperation with Universal though.

“Time” has a bit of a jazzy feel to it, as does “I’m Still Here”. While “Runaway Day” is a good poppy number.

So all in all it is an album that would make for a good listen just about anytime.

Amy Winehouse – Back to Black (LP of the Week)

I am a little behind with album of the week entries as I am for quality over quantity. Okay, and I am a bit slow. However it is definitely not for lack of music. On with the show.

This weeks album of the week is one that has been out for a while, and yet it took me quite a while to actually listen to the entire album. It is a slight departure from the last two weeks of R&B releases, but has similarities.

So, as you probably read by now, it is Amy Winehouse’s second album, Back to Black. It starts of with the song everyone who listens to music, or hears popular music knows, “Rehab”. As everyone knows this one, there is no need to discuss.

The second track, “You Know I’m No Good”, is what starts to give a feel for the album. This track, as with the album, has a vintage quality to it. It is especially true on the following track, “Me & Mr Jones”, this track could easily fit in with soul/R&B from the 60s.

One of the album highlights for me is “Tears Dry on Their Own”. It contains a sample interpolation of “Ain’t no Mountain High Enough”. The Winehouse track, which is written by her, along with Nickolas Ashford, Valerie Simpson, is a mid tempo track that feels positive and optimistic. Definitely in the vein of “Ain’t no Mountain High Enough”. The Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell track is a classic, however Amy Winehouse differentiates herself well enough that the average listener would not realise the sample interpolation being used (myself included initially!)  (to add a shameless plug for my baseball blog, the Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell video for “Ain’t no Mountain High Enough” was shot at Expo 67 in Montreal, what is believed to be the greatest World’s Fair. Anyway, the Montreal Expos baseball team was named after the event, and the baseball team is the main focus of my blog, Baseball 363).

Back to Black is only 11 tracks long, clocking in just under 35 minutes, however, it is definitely an album that can be thought of as all quality.