nickels in the oven

Little Brother - The Minstrel Show
Released Sept. 13, 2005
on Atlantic

From the freestyles and audience interaction to the sample-based beats and on-stage spontaneity, this is a breath of fresh air. From the conceptual album to the energetic live performance, this is hip-hop done right.

The show

When Little Brother stepped into the limelight at Common Grounds in Gainesville, Fla., on Thursday night, emcees Phonte and Big Pooh didn’t just regurgitate the material from their latest album.

In a recent interview with Citizen-Times, producer 9th Wonder explains:

If people want to have the album laid out, they can listen to it in the living room. When we’re on stage our job is to give the crowd another experience.

Last night’s show reached an unexpected climax when a sassy and seemingly out-of-his-mind fan joined the group on stage for some spastic dancing.

“This right here is history,” Phonte said with a smile.

The album

LB’s cohesive sophomore album takes the form of a television show on the fictional UBN network, complete with announcers, commercials and appropriate skits. The Minstrel Show criticizes today’s exploitative mainstream hip-hop, comparing it to the blackface entertainment of the 1800s.

Believing in the group and its message, Joshua “Fahiym” Ratcliffe stepped down from his position as editor-in-chief of The Source Magazine because his employers wanted to give The Minstrel Show a lower rating than he had intended.

In an interview with Ratcliffe, Big Pooh details the album’s intent:

We’re just trying to bring some balance back to music because black life isn’t all about pimping or thugging.

With 2003’s The Listening, Little Brother garnered the attention that led to the group signing with Atlantic Records. Let’s hope that the new record continues to turn heads and more major labels give artists of this caliber a chance.

The song “Say it Again” sums up the trio’s collective sentiment:

“This is a movement. It’s bigger than showbiz.”

Coheed and Cambria - Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness
Released Sept. 20, 2005
on Columbia/Sony

Coheed and Cambria’s progressive rock albums serve as an outlet for the fanciful, epic stories born in the mind of front man Claudio Sanchez.

The lyrics on Good Apollo continue with the saga detailed throughout the band’s first two albums, an intergalactic tale involving a doomed married couple, their children and the fate of humanity.

The band even released a 116-page graphic novel to accompany the CD and further explain the complicated plot, adding to Sanchez’s Bag On Line Adventures comic book series.

Even if you ignore the whole science-fiction aspect of the ambitious band, the songs are well crafted and often both technical and catchy. The music on the album is just as dramatic and detailed as the story, using more strings, keyboards and references to classic rock than before.

I’ve seen Coheed and Cambria three times, one of which they played a double set. I’ll admit that when I bought a ticket for the Tampa date of the band’s upcoming headlining tour, I was more excited about the opening bands: The Blood Brothers, Dredg and mewithoutYou. But it seems that this time around, Coheed is finally taking its grand ideas to the stage for a show worth sticking around for.

In an article on MTV News last month, Sanchez revealed that for this tour the stage show will reflect the storyline:

We’re incorporating set pieces from the graphic novel…We have this huge guillotine with these wings that are going to unfold as the show goes on, outward — kind of like a vampire would. And the blade will come down. It’s going to be awesome.

The tour kicks off tomorrow in Atlantic City, N.J., and wraps up on Nov. 17.

Super Furry Animals - Love Kraft
Released Sept. 13, 2005
on XL/Beggars Group

Mixing sun-drenched pop with psychedelic, progressive rock, Love Kraft may be slightly more straightforward than some of the band’s past albums, but no less imaginative.

Super Furry Animals succeed in capturing the spirit of the music of the late ’60s and early ’70s, adding enough of their own flair to make the resulting sounds their own. Complete with infectious melodies, honey-dipped harmonies and enormous choruses, this is a guitar-heavy opus bent on musical and lyrical adventures.

With consistently innovative records, one reviewer argues that these Welsh genre benders may be the “most important band of the past 15 years.”

This is the Furries’ seventh studio album and the first to feature songs written and sung by four of the group’s five members. Half the songs contain string arrangements thanks to the High Llamas‘ Sean O’Hagan, a long-time collaborator and unofficial SFA member.

The often politically-frustrated band once turned down a seven-figure offer from Coca-Cola for the use of their song in a worldwide commercial. Lead vocalist Gruff Rhys explained the decision in a recent interview:

Ultimately you’ve got to hear your own voice on telly selling a product that you hate, you know? Obviously it would make a big difference financially, but we get to make a living making music, and that’s amazing in itself. We’re holding out for that Red Stripe advert in Jamaica. We could probably stomach that and live happily ever after.

Where do they go from here?

“The future now is wide open and clear,” are the final words on the piano comedown of Love Kraft’s closing track, and the answer is revealed:

Just about anywhere.

Sigur Rós - Takk..
Release Sept. 13, 2005
on Geffen Records

Listening to the latest album from Iceland’s enigmatic Sigur Rós can be like drowning in the same sounds that ultimately save your life. Perhaps then it is fitting that the group’s recording studio is a converted swimming pool.

As the songs build, break and fall perfectly into place, the music is at once accessible and experimental, simple and complex, sinking and floating. From the depression of a piano key to an explosion of orchestrated sound, it all comes together and flows gracefully.

The band’s ethereal sound is perhaps best characterized by the bowed guitar and otherworldly falsetto of front-man Jónsi Birgisson, though this record seems to emphasize the cascading piano more than before. Some may find the band’s songs formulaic by now. Others remain intrigued. I’m with the latter.

This album is sung mostly in Icelandic instead of the made-up language of Hopelandic that marked the band’s previous work, but Takk.. ironically sounds like the band’s warmest and most hopeful record yet.

In a brief article that preceded the new album’s release, Birgisson describes some of his lyrics:

There’s one called ‘Glosoli’, and [the central character] wakes up and everything is dark outside and he can’t see any light. He thinks that the sun is gone and somebody has taken it from the sky, so he makes a journey to look for the sun. He finds it in the end.

CYNE - Evolution Fight
Released Aug. 29, 2005
on City Centre Offices

This progressive hip-hop album will move crowds with ease. Or you can simply sit back and breathe it all in. And don’t worry, with no skits or weak tracks, you won’t have to reach for the “skip” button.

CYNE is easily the best hip-hop act out of Gainesville, Fla., and I would go so far as to say that Evolution Fight is a contender for the genre’s album of the year.

In an interview with Textura, group member Speck reflects on the the band’s collective viewpoint:

We rely on the diversity that exists within our group and we meet at a point of shared enthusiasm and concern: sonically, emotionally, politically, our immediate environment, our era, popular media, basic daily functions, etc. For the four of us, our strongest tool for displaying this is hip-hop.

Producers Speck and Enoch chop up samples and rearrange them on their MPC to create lush, layered soundscapes that would stand on their own, but instead provide the perfect backdrop for the group’s two emcees to flow over.

As their label’s Web site notes, CYNE also used live instrumentation on two tracks, with guest musicians including The Mercury Program.

Meanwhile, lyricists Cise Star and Akin sort out their internal and external struggles, taking full advantage of the cathartic nature of the artform.

Essential.

Kanye West - Late Registration
Released Aug. 30, 2004
on Roc-A-fella/Def Jam

It’s hard to avoid seeing Kanye West’s name in the headlines lately. First his sophomore release debuts as Billboard’s top-selling album, and then comes his controversial, off-script statement that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” during a Hurricane Katrina telethon.

As his ballsy declaration proves, West is not afraid to take risks, or he at least proceeds in spite of his fear. And it’s not the first time. With 2004’s College Dropout, West stepped up to the microphone, after already being hailed as a top-shelf producer, even though many said he couldn’t do it.

On Late Registration, he continues to side-step expectations, teaming up with producer Jon Brion, whose credits include Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn… and the score to “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” West’s trademark soul samples and drum loops are paired with Brion’s cinematic instrumentation, and the beats shine bright.

Another bold move that Mr. West pulls off is a collaboration with Jay-Z’s long-time nemesis Nas on the track “We Major.”

While I don’t think the album is as near-perfect as the surprising 9.5 rating from the often-pretentious Pitchfork Media proclaims, the attention he has been receiving is definitely a step in the right direction for commercial hip-hop.