Fat Freddy’s Drop self-define their music as reggae or soul or reggae jazz or power funk or …. but ever since a friend turned me onto them a couple of years ago, I’ve just thought of them as wildly weird, with more than a hint of wonderful. This New Zealand group is not easy to identify. Their sound doesn’t always hit you right but come at it again in a different space, it can both challenge your definition of music and go down like a tall, iced cocktail on the hottest day of the year.

Few people have heard of Fat Freddy’s Drop, more people would enjoy life if they had.

You’ll get a chance with the Sept. 28 release (on their own “The Drop” label) of their live show at the 5,000 capacity Roundhouse in London. They’ll also tour next year, including rare stops in the United States.

FFD songs are stretchy and never more then when played live. They wander in the way an organic jam band veers from one thought to the other; one beat launches from a half-formed idea, does a back flip and alights on a floating trumpet note. Lyrics aren’t prominent, they merely fold inside the aural envelope. Layers of horns make this changeling music.

It’s music that no doubt would enhance any drugs already leisurely infusing your body but it’s also mood-changing all by itself. With “Live At the Roundhouse” you get the live full effect of this traveling from Point A to Point B, via D, X, N, and Z – across trance, jazz, soul, new age, 70s porn soundtrack ecstatic moments and 80s electronica echo. Six tracks make up the 80 minutes of this album: “The Camel”, “The Raft”, “Flashback”, “Pull The Catch”, “The Nod” and “Shiverman.”

The songs spans the seven-member band’s existence – to this point they’ve played together 11 years, only releasing a first album after six years of playing. “Roundhouse” is their third since then, following 2005′s Based On A True Story and Dr Boondigga and The Big BW released in 2009. Knowing where in that existence the song pulls from only adds a slight depth; it’s not completely necessary..

“One of the upsides of being far away from the action and not having to deal with the weight of a strong musical history is that we don’t feel we have to stick to one particular style or approach,” said on-stage music conductor DJ Fitchie, in a news release.

Check in at about the 6:50 mark of “Pull The Catch” where a new sound rips into the air. It’s Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue” previously unparalleled bassline on steroids. The crunch come as a crest to what’s gone before because by that point, the drums, trombone and trumpet-filled landscape has been as gently rolling as the green hills of New Zealand’s North island.

“Shiverman” has the best vocal imagery of the album. Bringing up different calming images – the sea, empty space, it encourages listeners to “shake that Shiverman loose” before running at uncontrolled, leg- and arm-wheeling speed into a wall of sound. It also wouldn’t be out of place at any high profile nightclub – boys in duotone Polos, girls in shiny short skirts.

“Flashback” is the most laid back soulful number on an ocean of an album that moves from hurricane force whitecaps to the trickle of water falling back into the next slow wave (often both in the space of 30 seconds). Dallas Tamaira’s voice washes over the 12-minute version of this love song that still seems as if it has more to say: “There’s something natural in the way you touch me. It’s a feeling that I can’t describe. There’s something mystic in the soul connection, something magic in your misty eyes.”

Breathe easy, music lovers. Breathe easy.

The Band
DJ Fitchie aka Chris Faiumu – Music Production Center
Joe Dukie aka Dallas Tamaira – Vocals and lyrics
Do bie Blaze aka Iain Gordon – Keys and Synth
Jetlag Johnson aka Tehimana Kerr – Guitar
Tony Chang aka Toby Laing – Trumpet
Hopepa aka Joe Lindsay – Trombone and Tuba,
Chopper Reedz aka Scott Towers – Saxophone

Turns out it wasn’t the voices in my head I was hearing – it’s the new Disturbed CD.

Don’t know if I was in the perfect mood to listen to this or whether it’s just really that good, but Asylum is a progression for these guys and damn it’s good to hear from ‘em.

With a bloodied grip, “Remnants” leads listeners down a steep path, with (shorter) ghosts of Metallica’s “Orion” or “To Live is To Die.” Bass heavy, slow, mood-setting. As an instrumental it brings you into the album, into the Disturbed environment. The title track (some consider it Part 2 of “Remnants”) punches hard and the dreamscape gets darker and darker.

Every song on “Asylum” pounds home another nail in the buried foundation of a testament to the way the world is in the late summer of 2010. It’s what the band has always been self-tasked with, yet they’ve become more focused and emotionally unrelenting with this their fifth full-length release. Political meanings catch your ears, like spiders grab flies. The band is desperately seeking meaning and even hope, where every direction seems a dead end. It’s a fight against a fatalistic vision many people have as they cling to ropes dangling, breaking strand by strand over the chasm of their lives.

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I wanted this soundtrack for one reason only – to check out an acoustic version of The Airborne Toxic Event’s new song, “Half of Something Else.”

Forget “check out,” TATE’s music at its best hovers over you, giving butterfly kisses to your ears and enveloping you in a warmth for which people spend their whole lives searching. “Half…” is no exception, with violin at its most mournful, single-note piano fading in and then Mikel Jolett’s great modulated voice peeks its head around the door, sheepish smile fixed and waves a silent hello.

Apparently it plays over the closing credits of the film as everyone troops out. The song’s sadness seems to indicate there’s going to be emotional strings heartily pulled throughout the Drew Barrymore-fronted movie.

“Going The Distance” releases Sept. 3. Hard to believe it’s going to be a box office smash with Justin Long – Apple vs. Mac short-statured, metrosexual – in a starring romantic comedy role. It might be a case of more thought being put into the soundtrack than the story of the film.

With a couple of exceptions, the tracks, generally, have a slow-tempo indie spirit. The Boxer Rebellion leads the way, offering new (“If You Run” – jangly, muted, no new TBR ground broken) and old (Evacutate and Spitting Fire off 2009′s Union). They also show up playing in the movie.

Lead-off track “Either Way” from The Generationals is a 50s-tinged infectious tune, wolf whistles, car metaphors and male-female harmonizing included. It’s debut-new to the world on this soundtrack. An added synth zest gives it an 80s revival feel that The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” echoes three songs later (pre-echoes?). On the strength of this song alone – if you haven’t already heard “When They Fight They Fight” – these New Orleans guys are worth finding out more about. Helpfully, you can stream their new album, Con Law.

The soundtrack is a mixture of sadness (“Cold Fame” by Band of Skulls, “Here Comes A Regular” by The Replacements) and pep (“The Reeling” the best song off Passion Pit’s Manners, the humorously sung “Hey Na Na” by Katie Herzig). In fact, a lot of the bands here are quirky and hard to pigeonhole. It may be a stretch but that definition also applies to the movie’s star, Drew Barrymore. Coincidentally perhaps, “Learnalilgivinanlovin” was also on the soundtrack to the Barrymore-produced Roller-derby romantic comedy / female empowering, “Whip It.”

It’s always fascinating to listen to a soundtrack both before and after seeing a movie. True because some songs may appear for 20 seconds, and the song order doesn’t correspond to when they are heard in the movie. This soundtrack, with bonus tracks, clocks in at 80 minutes, just slightly less than the 97-minute movie, which isn’t a musical but might be better if it was by all accounts. As you can with a carefully crafted trailer, you can get a totally wrong impression yet you cannot stop putting together the missing pieces.

Song List

Either Way – The Generationals (new track)
Places – Georgie James
Hey, Na Na – Katie Herzig
In Transit – Albert Hammond Jr.
Just Like Heaven -The Cure
Don’t Get Me Wrong – The Pretenders
Spitting Fire – The Boxer Rebellion
Could We – Cat Power
Cold Fame – Band of Skulls
Prizefighter – Eels
The Reeling (Groove Police Remix) – The Passion Pit
Harold T. Wilkens, or How to Wait for a Very Long Time – Fanfarlo
Here Comes A Regular – The Replacements
Learnalilgivinanlovin – Gotye
Half of Something Else – The Airborne Toxic Event (New track)
Hot Child In the City – Nick Gilder
If You Run – The Boxer Rebellion (New track)
40 Day Dream – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes
Miss Me – Joe Purdy
Evacuate – The Boxer Rebellion

Both “Puttin’ On the Ritz” and “Love Is A Battlefield” bring memories of so many different voices trying on their mantles.

There are some songs such as “Careless Whisper”, “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” Pearl Jam’s “Immortality” which, for me, have the base strength to carry any style from any artist who cover them, whether religiously or with a profound sense of attempted blasphemy.

Puttin’ On The Ritz by Antonia Bennett

Love Is A Battlefield by Antonia Bennett

“Ritz” and “Battlefield” fall into that category. Class or clash, their original styles differ radically. Yet, they’re always treats and no less so in the voice of Antonia Bennett, who gives them a light, piano-heavy, jazz interpretation. Both are on her six-song debut jazz EP, Natural released yesterday alongside standards, “Soon” “The Thrill is Gone” “I Wish I Were In Love Again” and “I Fall To Pieces.”

You get a sense of some of Bennett’s connections within the music business knowing that this cover of “…Battlefield” is arranged by Holly Knight, who, along with Mike Chapman, originally wrote the song for Pat Benatar.

And yes, her father is Tony Bennett, who has brought his rich smooth cords to so much of America’s soundtrack -and still hasn’t worn out his welcome.

Both have been and continue to tour this year, with Antonia as the opening act.

There’s a certain minimalist sparsity to the songs on Natural, with a too delicate touch on the piano. Ms. Bennett is new to me, but this lightness is clear when contrasted to other songs you can hear from her forthcoming, self-described, pop CD. She comes alive and so do the new, original tunes.

It helps when one of the songs, “Pill” is downright evil, twisting the knife into the spent charcoal stump of a former relationship or a paramour, multiply spurned:

“f I could grab your hair and know you wouldn’t care. If I could pull that stick from out your derriere. If I could turn this into a love song … you know that I would.”

“We all want music that really grabs us and is meaningful,” says Antonia, in a news release. “I have opened up in a big way. This upcoming album contains an empowering message for for both men and women.”

There’s no date set for that release but if you’re looking for the ole’ Bennett range, as well as more sass and sexiness, it’ll be more satisfying to a broader audience.

If you allow your heart, your life to slow down these songs will aerate your bloodstream.

And then quicken your heart again. This Can’t Be My Life (Wrong Records) is a slice through someone’s body, looking at hidden beauties amid the mess.

Ruth Gerson’s series of stories pull at your conscience – like trials and unsettling events always do for the introspective.

She fell in the river before she could cry. The spring tide pulled her under. I jumped into save her, the waves came like fire. They pushed me aside as they flung her. Her neck snapped like a branch as her head hit the banks and the rocks ripped her blue dress right from her.”

From “Black Water”, those words happened to be the first I heard from Gerson’s new CD. Whispered, torn from her lips as if telling someone what she just saw, still standing out in the cold crying. A story that seems to be of untimely, violent, drowning death, through the voice of the murder. Yet it has a 1,000 interpretations and new ones come at each listen. The perfect picture of atmosphere and scene the words created made me turn my head sideways, quizzically, ready to believe there was something worth paying attention to.

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Savannah Jo Lack has a true, cold revenge voice that could work and be pushed at almost any tempo. Knitting Songs, released July 27, leaves you fondly wondering, where she’s going with it.

Via Australia, jazz infusion, the instrumental group Trinkets, and session play it becomes more and more clear in listening, where she’s been.

Two songs back to back cover so much territory. “Bitch” follows “Little Girl.” Though musically SJL easily covers the purity / whore spectrum fine, a dark dark cloud hovers over both songs. There’s no breeze pushing the bad smells away; nothing to cool the pain like a mother’s breath on a scary wound. Both are raw and open.

“Little Girl” goes through a series of childhood memories of people she knew back then, back when. The listener is never quite sure whether these are self-referential or just fictional observations of what might have happened. No doubt intended this way, the song is immature, it’s twee — despite the subject matter — with the reflective capacity, not of the adult looking back but the innocence of the girl only a few small steps removed from it all.

While a couple of phrases clang – “When I was just a little little girl, I had a best friend, her skin was black” – much more prominent is an angelic harmony that glides across the surface; bringing to mind the same girl spinning in slow motion across an ice rink’s oval, her breath clouding.

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Found about this Portland, Oregon band, The Quick & Easy Boys and I was going to hold on for a CD review of their sophomore release (ooh, dirty), Red Light Rabbit.

But hell, this is too good. Yep, easy going, polished and unbelievably energetic with great vocals. The keys in the ribcage from the video, below? Hilarious.

Take Your Medicine:

The Quick and Easy Boys have four imminent tour dates in Oregon and Seattle. Like right around the corner:

July 29, The Red Shed in Troutdale, Oregon. 6pm

July 30, Laurelthirst Pub, Portland, Oregon. 6pm

August 6, Blue Moon Tavern, Seattle, 9pm (Hey, I’ll be in Seattle that day!!)

August 13, Grand Lodge, Forest Grove, Oregon. 7pm. Part of the Americana Music Festival

(SOUNDLUST REVIEW) — So as I was writing this review I fell asleep and dream-pictured Liz Phair, hands over bent-up knees, her face large-lipped, large-headed, floating above a small-bodied cartoon caricature, talking to people on stage with her. Not her band but fans, who’d crowded into this little anonymous, low-ceilinged place to listen to her play. “Normally we’d play packed,” she said, “but this one’s for the musicians and the band.” And then I woke up.

Tempted to say, Funstyle – it’s $5.99, just try the fucking thing. You get high-quality lossless mp3s and music that hasn’t been pasteurized.

Listening to Liz Phair here brings alive so many female music references. Madonna screaming, I have a reservation off of “Act of Contrition” started ringing in my ears, seconds after the bass hit of the amazing “Smoke” started.

Too, Janis Joplin’s rage at the world. Bjork’s loopiness at her most inspired and lucid, Tori’s intensity and obscurity. And Kim Carnes: She’ll turn the music on you / You won’t have to think twice / She’s pure as New York snow /She’s got Bette Davis eyes. / And she’ll tease you / She’ll unease you /All the better just to please you / She’s precocious and she knows / Just what it takes to make a pro blush / She’s got Greta Garbo stand-off sighs / She’s got Bette Davis eyes.

And, well, you know listening to Phair you’ll get her throaty voice. A sound full of resonant scratchy timbre that always pushed her past twee. Distinctive, character-filled. Can carry anything. She delivers malice aforethought with a smiling sneer, can turn on the innocence while gently but firmly, sliding cold steel inside you. Give me sharp wit over all the other shit. Anger in song, raged or quiet — almost pure ecstasy.

I wet my jeans listening to Funstyle.

As I always asks when someone inspires me, where the shit is this coming from? If all this obscure, random yet beautiful sound just flows from her au naturel – I love her more. There’s the ripe ballad-folk of “You Should Know Me” and “Miss September,” delicious hilarity on “Smoke” and “U Hate It”, “Bollywood” and “Beat Is Up”. That fine line between pretentious, self-indulgent and art? Phair always stays on the right side, while simultaneously redefining it.

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(SOUNDLUST REVIEW) — “Hello, girls and boys. Today we’re going to make music. Happy music and sad music. Funny music and serious music. Music that has many of the feelings we have. So get your instrument and come along with me. Let’s put some of our feelings into music.” — Wake Up Call.

I want to play “The Remedy” over and over again, forever.

I look forward to it. I crave it. It’s disappointing, then, that Stories of Survival, Authority Zero’s bass-spanking new release, doesn’t have more “can’t get enough” tunes.

Expecting to be blown away, this release seems more of a blown opportunity.

With a history of being hard to define – with ska-punk being the most common shorthand – the band seems to have played it safe and gone for an unsound sound formula. I love this band with a passion, so it pains me to write that. But after several listens, I’m not as excited as I should be.

This truth is all the more bitter to swallow because they’ve packed so many memorable, fine moments in such a few albums (4 previous, including a live 2006 release). “Taking On The World” is my all-time favorite A.Z. original recording. I can and still do go to it regularly when I’m unsure how I want to start my listening day. It has musical elements missing from anything on SoS. Like energy. Quirkiness, too, as on on the 50s croon of “Prom Night” or the surfer music, soundtrack crazy vibe of “Chili con Crudo” that compels movement in paralyzed people.
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Right now, that’s what happening. Funstyle – available at her Web site, lizphair.com without a record deal … I’ve been warned that the rap record may suck. It may be an F U to …. Wait, what? Yeah, you read that right. A Rap record from the poison-barbed indie artist of the mid-90s. Gulp. Whip Smart wasn’t just the name of her second album, it defined her. Let’s she if she can pull off ironic through music.