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Counter Culture Recommended Listens..
Each month, we try to recommend 4 artists and their albums to you, our music-loving listener. These will
be chosen based upon on our personal strict criteria. First and foremost, they are albums by artists that we feel comfortable advising
you to spend your hard-earned money on. That doesn't mean that there are one or two good songs on them, but that these albums have
desirable beats from beginning to end.
We have also selected these albums NOT because of a record company's agenda, but because we feel these are very good and will stand the
test of time. And most importantly, we feel these should be heard not only at our shop but on your own radio.
Below you will find information about the artist, album reviews from some major music publications, as well as links to bios, multimedia
and pictures, if available. Enjoy these albums and please let us know what you think.
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Reviews
Allmusic
Billboard
Photos
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Download
Read Linear Notes From Yell fire Listen to "Yell fire"
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Michael Franti and Spearhead - Yell Fire
Two years ago Michael Franti decided to walk his talk' and traveled to the war zones of Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This
wasn't a USO green zone sponsored visit -- Franti and his team organized a trip that would take him to the core of the red-zoned, war torn neighborhoods of Baghdad,
the West Bank and Gaza Strip with his guitar, video cameras and the intent to experience first hand the human cost of war.
Out of this journey, Franti has created a compelling documentary film titled I Know I'm Not Alone and a searing, reflective new album of original
songs titled Yell Fire! recorded in Kingston, Jamaica and Franti's hometown of San Francisco, California.
The Kingston sessions brought in the godfathers of riddem Sly and Robbie on live drums and bass, percussionist Sticky Thompson along with Spearhead bassist
Carl Young and guitarist Dave Shul. The tracks were recorded at Anchor Studios with Mario Caldato Jr and Robert Carranza (Beastie Boys, Jack Johnson) engineering. Franti
continued to write and record upon his return home to San Francisco before handing mixing duties over to Brian Malouf (Eric B, Ziggy Marley, Pearl Jam).
Franti has always spoken his mind through his music: from his early punk rock band Beatnigs, to the industrial-noise of Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, to
the thinking-man's hip-hop of Spearhead.
While seeing Yell Fire! to completion back in San Francisco, Franti began editing the hundreds of hours of footage from his travels in the Middle
East. What emerged was an intimate telling of how war affects the individual: the cab driver, the soldier, the aspiring young musician. It was during this process that
the film and album became inextricably linked.
In addition to his groundbreaking recordings and globally acclaimed live concerts, Franti is a renowned speaker for social justice and human rights. He has lectured at
many of this country's top universities, including Yale, Georgetown and Stanford, and shared the stage with the likes of Mohammad Ali, Bill Clinton, Michael Moore, Ralph
Nader, and Gloria Steinem. In 2005, Franti became the first recording artist since Johnny Cash to perform at the maximum security, level 4 section of Folsom State Prison.
The new studio album Yell Fire! and full-length feature film I Know I'm Not Alone are slated for a Summer 2006 release.
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Reviews
All Music
Pop Matters
Contact Music
Photos
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Download
Listen to "When the Night Feels My Song"
mp3
Listen to "Money Worries ft. Vernon Buckley"
mp3
Listen to "Jeb Rand" mp3
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Bedouin Soundclash - Soundainga Mosaic
This reggae-influenced Canadian band started in its native Kingston, not the traditional Jamaican reggae capital. In early 2000, Eon Sinclair and Jay Malinowski met at university
and discovered a mutual love of dub reggae music. Both musicians, the duo began performing classic reggae numbers at university. This continued for some time, and djembe player
Brett Dunlop was added to create a fuller sound. In 2001, Bedouin Soundclash won a Battle of the Bands competition at Queen's University. The group has performed in Canada and the
United States, opening up for David Usher, Default, the Slackers, and Wide Mouth Mason. In late 2001 and early 2002, the band entered the studio to record its debut album. The
album, Root Fire****, was released in April 2002. Sounding a Mosaic, which was produced by Bad Brains' Darryl Jenifer, followed two years later.
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Reviews
Prefix Mag
Pop Matters
Stylus
Pitchfork
Photos
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Multimedia
Listen to "Dorothy at Forty"
mp3
Listen to "Bad Sects"
mp3
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Cursive - Happy Hollow
Call it art-core, call it post-hardcore, call the genre whatever you want; Omaha, Neb.'s Cursive has been running that drill for nearly a decade.
The band's 1997 debut album "Such Blinding Stars for Starving Eyes" featured explosive guitar melodies as well as front man Tim Kasher's inimitable
throat-ripping vocals and lyrical catharses that provided a kind of emo music for angry young people who would rather read than go to the mall.
Over the next five
years, Cursive would release three full-lengths, each more mature than the last. They added a cellist. Chops took over for abrasive guitar strangling,
belting replaced braying, and songs of loss and failure took on a decidedly more adult tone.
The spastic gushing of "Such Blinding Stars..." in songs like "After the Movies" ("Have I hurt you?/ I have hurt myself/ These
sad songs won't change anything") gave way to veritable concept albums, like 2000's magnum opus "Domestica," a taut, chilling (if didactic) rendering of a painful break-up.
"Happy Hollow," their first proper album in years, is yet another creative leap away from Cursive's screaming, thrashing, heartbroken beginnings,
and it is damn good. Eschewing loving and losing for issues of faith, frustration and suburban/rural decay, this is Kasher's most ambitious songwriting
effort to date.
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Reviews
Stylus
Three Monkeys
Multimedia
Watch Debaser Video on YouTube
myspace.com/pixies
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Pixies - Doolittle
After 1988's brilliant but abrasive Surfer Rosa, the Pixies' sound couldn't get much more extreme. Their Elektra debut,
Doolittle, reins in the noise in favor of pop songcraft and accessibility. Producer Gil Norton's sonic sheen adds some polish, but Black Francis' tighter
songwriting focuses the group's attack. Doolittle's most ferocious moments, like "Dead," a visceral retelling of David and Bathsheba's affair are more stylized
than the group's past outbursts. Meanwhile, their poppy side surfaces on the irresistible single "Here Comes Your Man" and the sweetly surreal love song "La La
Love You." The Pixies' arty, noisy weirdness mix with just enough hooks to produce gleefully demented singles like "Debaser," inspired by Bunuel's classic surrealist
short Un Chien Andalou and "Wave of Mutilation," their surfy ode to driving a car into the sea. Though Doolittle's sound is cleaner and smoother than the Pixies' earlier
albums, there are still plenty of weird, abrasive vignettes: the blankly psychotic "There Goes My Gun," "Crackity Jones," a song about a crazy roommate Francis had in
Puerto Rico, and the nihilistic finale "Gouge Away." Meanwhile, "Tame," and "I Bleed" continue the Pixies' penchant for cryptic kink. But the album doesn't just refine
the Pixies' sound; they also expand their range on the brooding, wannabe spaghetti western theme "Silver" and the strangely theatrical "Mr. Grieves." "Hey" and "Monkey
Gone to Heaven," on the other hand, stretch Francis' lyrical horizons: "Monkey"'s elliptical environmentalism and "Hey"'s twisted longing are the Pixies' versions of
message songs and romantic ballads. Their most accessible album, Doolittle's wide-ranging moods and sounds make it one of their most eclectic and ambitious. A fun,
freaky alternative to most other late-'80s college rock, it's easy to see why the album made the Pixies into underground rock stars.
Until Next Time,
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