New Music: Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong and jazz-pop songstress Norah Jones collaborate on, of all things, a country album. These two are doing an album-length tribute to the Everly Brothers’ 1958 album Songs Our Daddy Taught Us on their new album Foreverly. For those who don’t know who they are, the Everly Brothers were a seminal early rock and roll duo comprised of brothers Don and Phil Everly who wrote songs like “Cathy’s Clown,” “When Will I Be Loved” (covered more famously by Linda Ronstadt), and “Bye Bye Love,” amongst others. They were a huge influence on the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and Simon and Garfunkel with their close harmonies and country-tinged songwriting.
Foreverly is due to come out on November 25, but Armstrong and Jones adapt their beautiful harmonies to the traditional songs on the album, such as country favorites “Long Time Gone,” “Oh So Many Years,” and the track that’s on the web now, “Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine.” From what the tracks available show, this will be a fantastic album for fans of traditional country, early rock, and maybe even for fans of Billie Joe and Norah who want to see what they’re up to. Check it out.
What I’ve Been Listening To: A few of the things that I’ve been checking out for the past week include Tame Impala’s 2012 album Lonerism, the newest from the Perth-based psychedelic quartet. They’ve been doing well off the release of this one, with spots at the Coachella festival and lots of touring. This album embraces the same lo-fi psychedic-pop aesthetic as their previous album Innerspeaker, evident on songs such as “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards,” “Music to Walk Home By,” and “Endors Toi.” They also sound White Stripes-esque on the track “Elephant.”
Another album that I’ve come across is Rare Joe Meek Recordings of the 1960s, a compilation of songs by British producer Joe Meek, who recorded artists such as Tom Jones, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, and George Bellamy (the father of Matt Bellamy of Muse) all at his home studio in a London apartment. This album contains fairly saccharine 60s pop, but Meek was a pioneer in getting new sounds out of instruments in the ways he recorded them, and I guess that’s why I listened to it. Another album I found very intriguing is Electronic Movements by Tom Dissevelt. It contains many of the hallmarks of modern-day electronica, with swooping synths, drum loops, and sampling, but this record was made in 1958. Dissevelt and some other researchers for Philips were essentially just screwing around with the synthesizers and wave generators they were making and decided to make an album that is actually pretty cool. Check out “Drifting” and “Syncopation.”
Local Music:
1. Nu-metaller-turned-country-singer and Western Mass native Aaron Lewis will be coming to the Mass Mutual Center in Springfield on December 12.
2. Former UMass-based band Fat Bradley will be at the Elevens in Noho on December 12 as well. They were the stylistic and functional precursors to Bootystank, with funk jams aplenty and killer musicianship.
3. On March 26, jazz guitarist Pat Metheny will be coming to the FAC. If you went to go see Herbie Hancock in October, this is one to go see as well.