Track of the Week: Dry Your Eyes by Wax Tailor

This week’s track is Dry Your Eyes featuring Sara Genn, off of Wax Tailor’s In The Mood for Life.

I haven’t heard much of Wax Tailor until I stumbled upon this album. In the mold of RJD2, he’s a French producer/DJ and on his album there are a variety of guest vocalists and a broad variety of hip hop styles.

Dry Your Eyes carries a trip-hop sound, much in the way Mono’s Life in Mono was. In many ways the song brings you back to a time when Sneaker Pimps were on the radio. That’s a large part of the reason I like the song, as all those trip-hop acts in the late 90s were making their mark on both electronica and hip hop.

Brooding and built in layers of a plucked guitar, a synth and ambient noises of what sounds like a playground, the track wanders through the lyrics. Sara Genn’s delivery of the chorus “Dry your eyes, those tears are all you’re given / It’s no surprise now, your heaven’s what you’re living in” is haunting (and somewhat depressing) over the strings.

Track of the Week: Fences by Phoenix

This week’s track is Fences by Phoenix off of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. I admit I’m very late to the Phoenix party. By late, I mean a Grammy nomination and about a year late.

I heard this track first mixed in to The Twelves’ Essential Mix, where the repetition of “dissident” and “miss it” makes for a great house mix over a dance beat. I’m not totally sure what the track is about — the the chorus is “Fences in a row / Why are they protecting Rome?” seem to make sense but not really in the context of the rest of the song.

Nonetheless, I’ve been loving the song for a few weeks. It’s a great little indie rock song with a simple 4/4 beat. The super funky bass line it’s built on sounds like it’s out of the 70s and Thomas Mars’ vocals are infectious. If you don’t have the album it’s worth getting for nearly all of the tracks.

Track of the Week: Revolution by 2Pac

We return to some raw rap for this week’s Track of the Week, Revolution by 2Pac, off of the Rap Phenomenon II Mix Tape by DJ Vlad, Dirty Harry, DJ Green Lantern.

It’s hard to find any real authoritative information on this mixtape. From what I know, it’s a collaboration of DJ Vlad, Dirty Harry and Green Lantern to do a tribute to 2Pac’s career. My exposure to the mixtape came via @airlai, who sent it to me in 2007 or so.

It’s the second of two mixtapes, the first of which was a tribute to Biggie. While most of the mixtape is good, this track is great. Angry, raw, powerful and mixed masterfully with new vocals by Busta Rhymes, this song as far as I know does not appear anywhere in 2Pac’s catalog. It’s a composite of spoken word, prior raps and never-before-heard raps from 2Pac.

The song is mixed over Puff Daddy’s Victory (the first line of the melody is Biggie rapping “one, one two, check me out right here”) and opens with 2Pac speaking about gangs in America and the government’s involvement in distributing crack to the ghettos. The content of the raps is most centrally themed about life in the ghetto and wanting a revolution to make things better. 2Pac admonishes his peers for living a “cartoon life”. He closes his raps with this spoken verse:

“Now if we do want to live a thug life and a gansta life, and all of that, ok. So stop being cowards and let’s have a revolution. But we don’t wanna do that, dudes just wanna live of character / they wanna be cartoons.”

As I listen through the song, it’s one of the most powerful, makes-you-want-to-break-doors-down anger fueling 2Pac tracks (or mixes) I’ve ever heard. Chris Rock had commented on the album, “It’s ultimate fighting music. You will kill somebody listening to this sh*t.”

Track of the Week: 1 Thing by Amerie

Going back to 2005, Amerie’s hit single 1 Thing is this week’s track of the week. I loved this song when it came out, and recently stumbled back on to it when my friend Ben shared with me TheRoot’s Top 10 Hip Hop / R&B Songs from the ’00s.

There’s not much to say about the song that’s not already been said, but a few words never hurt. Amerie’s vocals soar on the track; nearly every line is delivered at the top of her range, but never above it. You keep wondering what “this one thing” is, and what keeps her coming back for it. The song’s production, for me, is the standout. The stripped down funk percussive beat holds the song down, while the guitar on top simply adds to the sound. Most often it’s Amerie’s vocals that give the song the melodic glue, generating a hit song.

Track of the Week: Tik Tok by Ke$ha

To kick off this new year, the track of this week is smack dab in the middle of main-stream-Top-40, it’s Tik Tok by Ke$ha (yes, with the dollar sign in the spelling).

Couple of things about this track deserve mention. First of all, it’s insanely catchy. The techo-pop melody in the beat sounds vaguely reminiscent of something David Guetta might put together. The first few seconds of the song, when it’s just singing and the melody line and before the drums, is the most apparent part of the song where the French-house influence on the production is seen. It’s a great example of how mainstream music is moving to be more dance / electro inspired.

Second, the Ke$ha’s delivery outside the autotuned hooks about all night dancing and drinking sound fantastic. Her carefree opening “Waking up in the morning feeling like P. Ditty” sets the stage for the rest of the song, especially when credibility is delivered to the song by the two lines by P. Ditty: “Hey what up girl / Let’s go”. Her raps (if you can call them that) remind me of Uffie, if you want to find more that’s more in that style.

The song is fun, catchy and largely disposable much in the way that Lady Gaga’s Just Dance was.

Track of the Week: Salt Peanuts by Dizzy Gillespie

As the year winds down, a little Salt Peanuts by Dizzy Gillespie is in order. The recording I have is by “The Quinent”, the collection of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach performing Live at Massy Hall in Toronto. The reason I’d picked this recording up in the first place was Mingus’ involvement in the performance (my obsession for Mingus’ recordings continues).

Salt Peanuts is a bit unusual in that it features Gillespie vocalizing the phrase “salt peanuts” multiple times while taking breaks from his racing trumpeting. It’s a solid bop sound, with a pretty standard bop structure. Given the luminarys that are on the recording, the song is without a doubt Gillespie’s. The crowd cheers any time he takes a break from his horn, which takes center stage. Roach holds the song together on the drums and makes Powell’s solid piano solo come alive by rimming on his snares. What I love the most of live jazz recordings is how the musicians (for lack of a better word) cheer each other on during solos. Anybody who has been to a live jazz show knows how when somebody is jamming, everybody else drops their head and cat calls in approval. This recording of Salt Peanuts captures that quite well during a few of the solos.

Recently, I shared the album with @emalasky at the office a few months ago and he repeated the phrase “salt peanuts” a few times to me afterwards (to me, a strange affirmation of how catchy the odd phrase still is). I also heard it at Shady Lady in Sacramento last weekend. It’s a bit anachronistic given that Shady Lady is suppose to be a speak easy, I’ll take it any time I hear some Gillespie at a bar.

Track of the Week: Ysabel’s Table Dance by Charlie Mingus

Mingus, without a doubt, is my favorite bebop/post-bop musician. His music often has a brooding sound but this week’s pick of Ysabel’s Table Dance from Tijuana Moods is a departure from what I’d consider typical Mingus. I didn’t find this album until I had Mingus Big Band play at Yoshi’s in SF about two years ago. It’s one of his lesser known recordings.

The story goes that Mingus was inspired by a trip to Tijuana after a break up. The cover reads on the 1962 release reads “The album Charlie Mingus feels is his best work, in which he and his men re-create an exciting stay in Mexico’s wild and controversial border town.” The album as a whole probably comes in behind Mingus Mingus Mingus for me, but outside the tapestry of Ysabel’s Table Dance is a great bebop album.

It opens with high tempo castanets, then adds a layer of Mingus’ bass, then drum sticks, then a layer of vocals and piano, at which point the sound scape is set for the song. The track clocks in at 10+ minutes and it’s not until the 4 minute mark that you remember that this is not an action song written for some Brad Pitt movie but rather a bebop track from ’62. The whole thing, through and through is manic. Saxes show up, tear through a few bars of chaos then are fought back with a trumpet as the cadence gets faster and slower and at some point you’re just lost to what you’re hearing. It’s not until the last minute or so that you see how it all comes together, and then the moment you’ve understood the song ends. It’s a fantastic track, and one of my all time favorite Mingus recordings.

Track of the Week: Chan Chan by Buena Vista Social Club

This week’s track of the week is Chan Chan by the Buena Vista Social Club, from their eponymous album. While released in 1997, I don’t think I found the album until 2004 or so. I’m going to try to post a few more tracks from the greater jazz genre over the next couple of weeks.

This album, as a whole, is fantastic. It’s pensive, interesting and full of great guitar sounds and ad hoc harmonizations. Chan Chan specifically has the greatest Spanish guitar riff I’ve ever heard (do you call it Cuban guitar since they’re from Havana?). The singing, with the casual harmonization, is great. I’ve wondered how the vocals were recorded, in order to give them that spacious in a room sound. They’re haunting and warm, and on top of the guitar and muted trumpet they make the song a classic.

Track of the Week: Sunrise by Yeasayer

Self described as Enya with a Bounce on their MySpace, I had never heard of these guys until their name was passed on in a music email list I belong to. This week’s track is Sunrise by Yeasayer off of All Hour Cymbals. The song (and most of the album) has long melodic undertones (synth + strings) that have this somewhat spooky sound to them. What hooks me is the rhythmic drumming on top of the backing sound that has a great layered effect. The vocals are fairly heavily processed with reverb and overdub which adds to the ambient sound. Most of the entire album is like this and recommended.

It’s worth listening to this one on different headsets/speakers. I first listened to this on my iPod through headphones, where are treble heavy, and then later in my car with tends to be bass heavy. Very different parts of the song come out in each scenario.

Track of the Week: Contemplate by Wale

Today’s track of the week is from Wale’s first studio album, Attention Deficit: Contemplate, featuring Rhianna. My favorite part of the song is Rihanna’s distorted hook and how it lays on top of a simple beat. I first heard of Wale from @airlai as a rapper coming out of the DC area via his mixtapes. Probably what’s most catching about his songs is the long verse format he raps in. I’d love to see a Kid Cudi + Wale track.