The Liner Notes best of 2009 featured on Largehearted Boy

The Liner Notes’ “Top 10 albums of 2009″ list is featured on Largehearted Boy.

This is the second consecutive year The Liner Notes has been featured on the web site. The music site’s post –  Online Best of 2009 Music Lists – features The Liner Notes.

The extensive list of sites rating top books and music for 2009 includes: All Music, Pitchfork and Paste.

Top 10 albums of 2009

Top 10 albums of 2009

This year the music industry in 2009 continued to trend towards the digital download model making more music than ever before available to the masses. There were a number of standout albums, and promising bands that emerged this year. Below is a list of the top 10:

10) Rated O by Oneida

So dense, it almost takes an active, analytical listener to truly appreciate the breadth and depth of this album. Largely instrumental, the Brooklyn band spans a litany of mind-bending genres in this album. From psychedelic 20 minute jams to structured rhythmic rock, Oneida braves new musical territory with this gem.

9) Horehound by The Dead Weather

It seemed like 2009 was the resurgence of the “supergroup.” Jack White (The White Stripes and The Raconteurs), Alison Mosshart (The Kills and Discount), Dean Fertita (Queens of the Stone Age) and Jack Lawrence (The Raconteurs and Greenhomes) suddenly formed The Dead Weather this year and the result is nothing less than some of the best rock and roll produced in years. Horehound is simply sublime. Reports are the group is working on a follow up album.

8) Humbug by Arctic Monkeys

Humbug took the Arctic Monkeys in a new direction from their past work. Darker, more mature and developed, the music flows more deliberate and less sporadic than previous works. Song such as “Crying Lighting” and “Dangerous Animals” still seep the signature AM sound, but the guidance of Queens of the Stone Age’s frontman Josh Homme, who produced the album recorded in Joshua Tree, Calif. Is evident throughout. The result is a more deliberate, stoic and untimely cohesive album.

7) Octahedron by Mars Volta

Characterized by a smooth subdued pace, pined up more by Thomas Pridgen’s insane drumming than ever before,Octahedron steps towards a more “traditional” album than previous works. Still filled with spectacular guitar by Omar Rodriquez-Lopez and surreal screeching vocals by Cedric Bixler-Zavala, MV continues to advance music is a direction unexplored by any other artist. This is the kind of deep, dark and phenomenal album one has come to expect from MV.

6) Manners by Passion Pit

Following on 2008’s promising Chunk of Change, Manners is the ideal follow up full of everything one could ask for. Rhythmic beats, fun hooks, choppy synchs and airy lyrics that make up one of the year’s most pleasurable albums to listen to. It just one of those records that makes the listener feel good.

5) It’s Blitz by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Some might frown upon commercial success, and Karen O and the crew have seen the limelight this year more than ever before. It’s Blitz achieved that new degree of success by departing from its conventional formula. Still true to its roots, the YYY added a heavy amount of synthesizers and reverb to the album taking the band to the next level.

4) Old Money by Omar Rodriguez Lopez

Perhaps one of the most complex albums of 2009, Lopez, of Mars Volta, unleashed a juggernaut with Old Money that could be interpreted a million different ways. Much like MV, Old Money is an epic journey of disjointed sounds, rhythms and themes. Revolving around otherworldly themes of dreams and nightmares, the album is an intricate mix of instruments and textures making for a surreal listening experience.

3) Felt 3: A Tribute to Rosie Perez by Felt

In a time when hip-hop is pretty uninspired, primarily composed of guys ripping off each other’s beats and rapping about cliché’s, comes Felt’s new album produced by Aesop Rock.  Murs (Living Legends) and Slug (Atmosphere) compose an intelligent original piece of work in their latest tribute to b-list celebrities. Adding Aesop to the mix adds an edge to Felt 3 that the previous two albums didn’t have.

2) Them Crooked Vultures by Them Crooked Vultures

Another superband to make this year’s list and the members pretty much say it all: Dave Grohl, of the Foo Fighters and Nirvana, Josh Homme, of Queens of the Stone Age and Eagles of Death Metal, and John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin. The combination creates a classic rock album that chock-full of heavy guitar riffs and thumping bass. The album sounds more like a QOTSA than anything, but that may be Homme’s predominance on vocals.

1) Cosmic Egg by Wolfmother

Who cares if Wolfmother frontman Andrew Stockdale wasn’t even alive when Robert Plant and Ozzy Osbourne were in their heyday. Nearly 40 years later he is blatantly ripping off their style with a precision that makes listeners have flashbacks to ZoSo. Stockdale takes his new band and breathes a second life into the notion of comprising an album around power chords thundering bass lines, reverb and wailing vocals.

See 2008’s list here.

Apple buys LaLa, looks to overhaul iTunes

A recent acquisition by Apple could mean a completely new business model for the popular music service iTunes.

iTunes made the music ala carte option popular by allowing single song downloads for a dollar. While the model was overwhelmingly successful, perhaps in part because of the stores companion iPod, it had its flaws.

Perhaps the biggest problem, which has been rectified as of January, was iTunes DRM restrictions, which limited the use of downloaded media to only Apple’s products. Other issues include limiting iTunes accounts to specific computers and only streaming 30-second samples of songs.

Enter Lala, a music site that makes more than 8 million licensed songs available to users to stream for free. The site reads:

“Take your music and fuse it with a massive licensed catalog to easily play, buy and share on the web.”

Users can register and steam any song once for free. After listening to a song they can replay a 30-second sample of it.

If a user decides to buy a song, or album, they can purchase it outright, for as low as $3, and own the file, which they can play on any MP3 player.

Now here is where Lala is innovate, for 10-cents a user can buy the rights to add a song to their collection and stream it online, from any computer, all they want. Full albums can be added to user’s collections for as low as 45-cents, most are around $1.

Universal access to a collection of streaming music from any server in the world is very appealing. So appealing that Apple reportedly paid $85 million for La La Media Inc.

The acquisition could have a number of ramifications. At first glance it looks like a monopolistic move as the 100-pound gorilla, Apple with 70 percent of the digital download market share, buys up a promising fledgling start-up.

It has been reported that Apple was more interested in the minds behind Lala than the streaming service itself; however there is also speculation that Apple may dismantle the site eliminating current user’s access to their streaming collections.

However, the Wall Street Journal reported today that Apple intends to revamp iTunes with a focus on the web.

The WSJ report reads:

“Apple Inc., the company that restructured the music industry around its iTunes service, is exploring an overhaul of the way it sells and stores music that is aimed at extending its influence to the Web, according to people briefed on the strategy.”

Regardless of the outcome, Lala has clearly spurred change in the music industry that appears to benefit the customer.

Pixies “Doolittle” Tour sublime way to celebrate 20 years

Frank Black knows.

He knows that the Pixies never have to create another original album again. All he has to manage is to keep the group on semi-friendly terms, enough that they can stand on stage together for 90 minutes, so they can play their hits and rake in ridiculous amounts of cash.

Cash from ticket sales, t-shirts, live recordings of shows and a new Minotaur box set that is selling for up to $600 for the limited edition package.

The Pixies have had their differences over the years. After parting ways in the early ‘90s, the quartet reunited for a tour in 2004, which is covered in the documentary “loudQUIETloud: a film about the Pixies.”

In fact, if Black ever did decide to record a new Pixies album it would most likely harm the group more than benefit it. There is really nothing Black can record, no matter how mind-blowing it is, that will stand up to the groups seminal works – “Come on Pilgrim,” “Surfer Rosa,” and “Doolittle.”

Weezer could take a cue from the Pixies.

Rivers Cuomo keeps releasing music that disappoints his fan base and enrages critics. Every couple years Weezer releases an album full of tracks that are amazing. Most musicians would kill to be able craft a pop-rock song half as catchy as Weezer’s.

Yet, no matter how catchy Cuomo’s licks are there is one common critique that haunts him: the album doesn’t sound like “Pinkerton.”

Imagine if Weezer simply did a “Pinkerton” tour where all they did was perform the album live. People would lose their minds to get their hands on those tickets.

Granted, from my understanding “Pinkerton” is the bane of Cuomo’s musical career, akin to Nirvana’s frontman Kurt Cobain’s relationship with the song Smells like Teen Spirit.

Coming full circle, Cobain was a huge Pixies fan who admittedly tried to “rip-off” the Pixies.

In a 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, Cobain, in talking about recording Smells Like Teen Spirit, stated:

“I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band— or at least a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard.”

Cobain’s love of the Pixies, ultimately lead to my love for the Pixies. When the Pixies were in their heyday I was only seven years old and thus had never seen them live.

The Pixies have had their differences over the years, parting ways in the early ‘90s, to reunite for a tour in 2004, which is covered well in the documentary “loudQUIETloud: a film about the Pixies.”

When the news of a “Doolittle” tour, where the band would play, arguably my favorite album of theirs, in its entirety, surfaced this year I was ecstatic.

The show offered far more than just the Doolittle gems, as good as they are live. After a nearly eight minutes of Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali’s surrealist 1928 short film Un chien andalou, which inspired the Pixies’ song Debaser, the band emerged to perform four b-sides.

The b-sides, including Dancing the Manta Ray and Weird at my School, were so obscure that bassist Kim Deal said they actually had to practice them.

From there the group ripped into “Doolittle” backlit by an array of surreal videos that varied dramatically from creepy to lighthearted. The vibrant videos are almost like a portal into Black’s mind revealing macabre or silly images that seem to complement a song’s lyrics and tempo.

Following the “Doolittle” performance, the group delved into another set of b-side starting with Wave of Mutilation (UK SURF).

The show came to a spectacular finale with an encore of some of their signature hits: Nimrod’s Son, Caribou, Crackity Jones, Vamos and Bone Machine.

Black may have gained a pound or two over the years, but he still has a voice that sound otherworldly when he screeches like a banshee.

All in all it was quite a 20-year anniversary for the quartet whose music has left a gaping imprint on popular music of the past two decades.

A Debaser Andalou:

Freelance Whales live show a sonic spectacle of goodness

Freelance Whales

After several weeks of listening to the Freelance Whales debut album “Weathervanes,” I was hooked, but had to eject the CD on occasion to make sure I wasn’t listening to Death Cab for Cutie or The Postal Service.

The indie underground group out of Queens seemed to have harnessed the soul of Ben Gibbard and perfected its essence in their own music stylings.

Having gone to school with the Freelance Whales’ drummer Jake Hyman in London, my brother got us into a recent show in Denver as the group, which just formed in late 2008, is trekking across the country in support of their new LP.

After seeing the band live my opinion of their music has changed quite dramatically. While the comparisons between their music and Death Cab’s is undeniable, their unfettered child-like exuberance on stage added new depth and meaning to their music.

The five member group delved into an extensive set where they each played so many instruments in so many different manners that I couldn’t keep track of who was playing what.

Instruments, in addition to the conventional guitars, I noted were: synthesizers, banjo, tambourine, harmonium and a garden watering can.

Aside from the fact that the band members are all around adept musicians, the lyrical styling of lead singer Judah Dadone is sublime.

On Broken Horse Dadone’s hauntingly sings “that curve in your spine a question mark a doctor sign was framed by the windowsill and you saw something I did not end that night you saw something I did not end that night.”

Watching FW live adds a degree of depth to the music inaccessible just by listening to the album alone. There is much more to this young group than meets the ears. I don’t expect them to still be unsigned next time they come through Denver.

Sputnik Music gives the album a 4.0 (excellent) rating writing:

“Freelance Whales’ Weathervanes is the creation of an unknown band that deserves to be heard and possibly accessed with the most promising of 2009’s music.”

Sterogum dubbed them a band to watch last month writing:

“Turns out FW are way out of step with the dominant trend of ‘09, and more in line with what the non-Gang Of Four appropriating wing of indie music was fixated on a few years ago”

Ki:Theory offers free new album download

You can’t beat free.

Wednesday I was watching the trailer for “The Road” by Brandon Gust, which featured the song “The Smallest Piece” by Ki:Theory as the soundtrack.

Liking the song I instantly Googled the band and found their respective webpage page. There I was prompted to enter my e-mail address for a free download, which I did.

I anticipated getting one track, so I was surprised when I opened the download to find the entire “Arms For Legs (Autumn Edition)” album. I immediately cued it up and listened to what is a great progressive album.

Ki:Theory can be describe as an ambient melodic band that composes such harmonious songs that you can’t help but hum along to.

From the band’s blog:

“Ki:Theory (a.k.a. Joel Burleson) lives in Richmond, VA by choice. He makes glitchy cut-n-paste songs and sings along to them. He did not go to school for this. He and his band (Ash Bruce) have toured nationwide US, Japan and Korea. He’s done remixes for Ladytron, UNKLE, Sasha, Queens Of The Stone Age, and Brazilian Girls. He continues to make music that he likes to hear in hopes of creating something that others might like to hear.”

Check them out for yourself here.

Them Crooked Vultures streaming entire album online now

When I heard a few months ago that Dave Grohl, of the Foo Fighters and Nirvana, Josh Homme, of Queens of the Stone Age and Eagles of Death Metal, and John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin, were combining forces to create a band I was skeptical at the very least.

Frankly, it seemed too good to be true.

Well not only is it true, but the group called Them Crooked Vultures let loose all 12 songs in their entirety on YouTube.

The end result is a thick album full of beefy riffs and chunky beats courtesy of Grohl. While each member’s perspective style seeps through the hard rock album, I hear more QOTSA than anything here. Perhaps that is because a large share of the vocals are Homme’s.

Of the 13 spectacular tracks, the first single, “White Fang,” stands out as the best with a monster beat, thundering bass and slightly distorted vocals.

Hear the album, which comes out Nov. 17, here.

DJ Hero features Daft Punk, DJ Shadow and more

Photo courtesy of djhero.com

I suppose it was just a matter of time.

I mean Guitar Hero was such a raging hit with the kids, adults and especially the musicians who watched their sagging record sales soar, that MC’’s wanted their slice of the pie.

Thus we have DJ Hero – a delightfully tacky new Freestyle Games creation complete with a faux turntable and tunes from Eminem and Daft Punk.

The premise for the video game, set to hit stores Oct. 27, is akin to its predecessor Guitar Hero and Rock Band where the player takes on the persona of a DJ with a control in the shape of a turntable instead of a guitar or drums.

The turntable is complete with 360 degree rotation and three buttons, two for records and one sample. Then there is a cross fader and effects and “euphoria button.  The player is given the opportunity to “spin” by correlating the three buttons and fader with a predetermined pattern playing during a song on the screen in three separate timelines.

So for the good part – music – the game boasts more than 102 songs and unique mixes. The list is impressive.

DJ Hero just seems like another way to waste time mastering something that is pointless. However DJ Hero skills may actually transfer to real turntables a bit more than Guitar Hero as the game teaches basics of mixing tracks.

And what’s next? Keyboard Hero, Tambourine Hero, Harmonica Hero or even perhaps Accordion Hero?

DJ Hero Artists:

• 2 Pac
• 50 Cent
• 88 Keys
• Aceyalone
• Afrika Bambaataa
• Beastie Boys
• Beck
• Bell Biv DeVoe
• Benny Benassi
• Billy Squier
• Black Eyed Peas
• Blondie
• Bobby “Blue” Bland
• Boogie Down Productions
• Cameo
• Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers
• Classics IV
• Common
• Connie Price & the Keystones
• Cut Chemist
• Cypress Hill
• D-Code
• Daft Punk
• David Axelrod
• David Bowie
• David McCallum
• David Penn
• David Penn
• Dizzee Rascal
• DJ AM
• DJ Demo
• DJ Grandmaster Flash
• DJ Jazzy Jeff
• DJ Kool
• DJ Shadow
• DJ Yoda
• DJ Z-Trip
• DJ Z-Trip ft. Murs
• Eminem
• Eric B. & Rakim
• Eric Prydz
• Evidence
• Fedde Le Grand
• Foo Fighters
• Foreigner
• Freedom Express
• Gang Starr
• Gary Numan
• Gorillaz
• Grandmaster Flash
• Gwen Stefani
• Hashim
• Herbie Hancock
• InDeep
• Isaac Hayes
• J. Period
• JAY-Z
• Jean Knight
• Jurassic 5
• Justice
• Kid Cudi
• Kid Sister
• Kool Moe Dee
• KRS-1
• Little Richard
• LL Cool J
• M.I.A.
• Marvin Gaye
• Masta Ace
• MC Hammer
• Mobb Deep
• Motörhead
• Murs
• N.E.R.D.
• NASA
• No Doubt
• Noisia
• Paul van Dyk
• Paula Abdul
• Pharrell
• Public Enemy
• Q-Tip
• Queen
• Rakaa
• Reel 2 Real
• Rick James
• Rihanna
• Sandy Rivera
• Scratch Perverts
• Shlomo
• Street Sweeper Social Club
• Tears for Fears
• The Alchemist
• The Aranbee Pop Symphony Orchestra
• The Jackson 5
• The Killers
• The Mad Stuntman
• The Trammps
• Third Eye Blind
• Tiësto
• Vanilla Ice
• Wale
• Weezer
• Wild Cherry
• Young MC
• Zombies
• Zakk Wylde

Wolfmother’s Cosmic Egg streaming now

When the Australian hard-rock trio Wolfmother released its debut in 2006 it was like a vision of Led Zeppelin reincarnate.

There are sessions on that album where I have to remind myself I’m not listening to Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. The point being: these guys rock hard.

So when two of the group’s founding members departed citing creative differences, it seemed like this month’s follow up album – Cosmic Egg – had the potential to fall short.

Singer Andrew Stockdale, the sole member of the original group remaining, crafted a new band in the same image as the original delivering a blistering array of hard rock tracks.

The band has unveiled the album, streaming in full on its MySpace Page, and not only does the album bring the heavy 70’s rock vibe it created on its self-titled debut, but Wolfmother expands upon the thick metal bass driven beats.

Stockdale takes a page from Robert Plant’s vocals and detours into an mix of hard and fast songs combined with a few bluesy and slower songs such as “Far Away”

The first single “New Moon Rising” is already making its way onto the airwaves and is the signature sound associated with Wolf Mother. The music video for the song features the band performing with a Kaleidoscope of visual effects. The live shots are combined with animated color sequences creating a trippy 70’s-style show.

The album hits stores Oct. 27, but check it out streaming here.

Tracklist:

1 California Queen
2 New Moon Rising
3 White Feather
4 Sundial
5 In the Morning
6 10,000 Feet
7 Cosmic Egg
8 Far Away
9 Pilgrim
10 In the Castle
11 Phoenix
12 Violence of the Sun

Black unleashes Brutal Legend

Eddie Riggs voiced by Jack Black in Brutal Legend (Photo courtesy of brutallegend.com)

Jack Black comedian, actor, musician and video game character. While Black may not be that great at any particular one he does try them all as evident by his new video game released today called Brutal Legend.

Black’s new videogame looks like a cross between World of Warcraft and Rock Band. The game will appeal to metal fans that are also in to video games, if they even exist.

The game, produced by Electronic Arts, has an interesting storyline to say the least.

The premise is ex-roadie Eddie Riggs (Jack Black) travels back to the ancient world of Heavy Metal, a sort of prehistoric rock land, where Riggs battles an array of monsters. Other famous voices featured in the video game include: Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy and Rob Halford.

Tim Schafer directed the game that appears to be chocked full of levity, humor and copious amounts of headbanging.

Regardless, it can’t be worse than Pick of Destiny.

Check it out online and follow the game on twitter