"Just One of the Guys"- Jenny Lewis (Prod. Beck)

There are several ways to parse an echoed Jenny Lewis admitting "there's only one difference between you and me, when I look at myself all I can see, I'm just another lady without a baby," in her blithe new single "Just One of the Guys". One dovetails with her reference to a perpetually ticking (biological) clock. She's locked in a bathroom "full of tears," lamenting the motherhood that alludes her. That said, her past aloofness on the "issue" signals she's not as concerned as someone on the outside might assume. Another possibility of the admission is she's comparing herself to a person with a significant other. Playing the comparison game only reminds her of the absence in her own life. But that rather trite sentiment ignores the fact that Lewis has a longtime boyfriend in fellow singer/collaborator Johnathan Rice. A third reading imagines former band Rilo Kiley as her "baby" and when the band painfully dissolved in 2011, that child was forever taken from her.

While the latter seems likely considering Lewis wrote upcoming album The Voyager on the heels of a "creative meltdown," any "sinister" interpretation ignores the distinctive bounce Beck's production gives the song. Buoyed by dulled percussion and draped in warm acoustic guitars and mandolin, "Just One of the Guys" is the type of song you expect to float into a final chorus of "da da da's." Despite the occasional disappointed line about being unable to fit in with friends, it has an ebullience to it that's inescapable. Lewis may very well have had dark times in writing the record, but they've led to something incredibly bright.

The Voyager comes out on Warner Bros. July 29 and is set to feature collaborations with the Postal Service, T-Bone Burnett, Elvis Costello, and more.

What's New(s)?

T.I., Katy B cover "Drunk in Love"

With the number of covers of Beyoncé's giddy "Drunk in Love", it's only a matter of time before I somehow end up on a remix. Last week alone yielded the official "Drunken Love" remix, along with takes by Kanye West and the Weeknd. A little more than two weeks ago we saw Future hop on and offer up his own slurred reworking of the tune. 

Today that ever-widening list expanded again with performances by rapper T.I. and dubstep/R&B singer Katy B. Somewhat paradoxically, B's version which co-mingles with a cover is the more organic of the two with only piano and the soft pattering of drums to prop it up. T.I. meanwhile snarls over a hyper-kinetic "EDM remix" where vocal samples stutter ad infinitum and the music seems to shift gears every 30 seconds. If its on anything at all, odds are it isn't alcohol.

"Drunk in Love"- Katy B

Morning Phase streaming now

Early returns on Beck's 12th studio album Morning Phase have been nothing short of laudatory. Today, courtesy of NPR, one of Spin Magazine's "50 Albums You Gotta Hear" has been made available for streaming. Beck has been touting this record as a spiritual companion/sequel to 2002's Sea Change and from the first few string-laden moments of "Morning" which drift into rustic guitar you know exactly what he means. I haven't had time to process everything yet, but what I've heard is absolutely gorgeous and fully deserving of the Sea Change comparisons. 

 

As mentioned last week, Morning Phase is just one of two LPs Beck hopes to release in 2014. The other, which has an extremely tentative fall release date may or may not be a dance record and feature the omnipresent Pharrell on it.


For news updates throughout the day, follow @AllFreshSounds on Twitter and check back in tomorrow for more of the newest in new(s).

What's New(s)?

Beck working with Pharrell

At this point, I'm convinced that Pharrell Williams is a robot. There's no other conceivable explanation as to how one man could hold up to such an endless workload. Last week he popped up on the monstrous posse cut "Move That Dope". Two-and-a-half weeks before he was snatching up Grammys and rocking a hat that would make Dudley Do Right envious. Last year, he crafted a 24-hour music video and managed turns on two of the biggest hooks of the summer ("Feds Watching" should've been a clear-cut third). And somewhere in there, he was caught up in the midst of Clipse rumors that appear not to be true.

So why not work with Beck? The indie-chameleon has a new album coming out February 25th entitled Morning Phase, but that's just one of two albums he's been promising for 2014. Now according to a recent interview with Billboard, Beck's detailing that the omnipresent Pharrell will be involved with the other project along with "other high-profile collaborators."

There's no details on that album yet, other than a tentative 2014 release. But as previously mentioned, Morning Phase is out February 25th through Capitol.

"Blue Moon"

"Drunken Love" remix

It seems blasphemous to ask how Beyoncé's soaring "Drunk in Love" could become anymore captivating, but producer Noel "Detail" Fisher had the bravery to. At Complex, he debuted his official remix of the song, appropriately entitled "Drunken Love". And while the original was chugging down thunderous drums and bass, the remix gingerly sips on orchestral flourishes and floating choral vocals. Bey's voice doesn't soar now, it seemingly glides; curlicuing into every line. And Jay's verse, which felt shoehorned into the original, is far less harried her and better for it. If "Drunk in Love" was a full-on body-rush, this is the heady feeling that comes later. 

You can hear the song below and check out of video of Detail describing both the original and the bold reworking here.

For news updates throughout the day, follow @AllFreshSounds on Twitter and check back in Monday for more of the newest in new(s).

What's New(s)?

Beck shares a new song

 


After teasing a new song in the trailer for his upcoming album Morning Phase on Friday, Beck has released the first taste of his upcoming 12th studio LP with "Blue Moon". The record has been touted as a "companion piece" to 2002's lush Sea Change and the carefully strummed first single confirms the reports. Beck's voice hovers above the acoustic and orchestral strings, resonating "don't leave me on my own" during the chorus.

Morning Phase, Beck's follow-up to 2008's sorely under-appreciated Modern Guilt will be released February 25th through Capital Records.

Death Grips working on a new album

Experimental-rap/punk group Death Grips can be accused of being many things, but lazy isn't one of them. Since the three-piece's clamoring debut in 2011, they've released three LPs, including two in 2012 and the phenomenal 2013 manifesto Government Plates.

According to drummer Zach Hill, the group doesn't have any intent to slow down in 2014.

Taking to Facebook, Hill writes "starting to record the new Death Grips album right now," and adds "hope to tour a lot this summer." And while the band's touring record has been "spotty" at best, there's nothing to suggest their output will suddenly taper off in 2014. Even if they fall into old show routines, I'm willing to bet that by late-Summer/early-Fall all will be forgiven with the release of a new album.

 "Whatever I want (F*** who's watching)"

Damon Albarn unveils a video for "Everyday Robots"

 

It's almost impossible to believe that in the incredibly prolific three-decade career, Damon Albarn of Blur/Gorillaz/The Good, The Bad, and the Queen fame has released exactly one solo LP, 2003's largely underwhelming Democrazy. That all changes with the release of Everyday Robots, which Albarn tells Rolling Stone is a sort-of "folk soul project."

Now the project has an accompanying CGI-heavy video for the title-track. The hauntingly skittish "Everyday Robots" which features clanking percussion and scratchy orchestral strings blurs together with cranial scans of Albarn to create an intensely personal video. Director Aitor Thorup calls the piece "a unique digital portrait of Damon" and you can see the artist discuss the making of the clip courtesy of Dazed.

As for the album, a press-release reveals the record will feature contributions by electronic-music luminary Brian Eno and Bat for Lashes' Natasha Khan. Featuring production-work by XL Recordings head Richard Russell, Everyday Robots arrives in the U.S. April 28.

Check back in tomorrow for more of the newest in new(s) and follow @AllFreshSounds on Twitter for updates throughout the day.

Top 20 Opening Lines to Songs (10-1)

Welcome back to the second half of the countdown of the "Top 20 Opening Lines to Songs". In part one there were the weirdos, the ragers, and the whispers, and part two isn't going to be any different. Here again you'll find some iconic lines intermingling with a few oddballs that deserve your attention. But before we dive back into the list, let's backtrack to numbers 20 through 11. If you haven't read the first half here, do that first and then reconvene for the final 10. With that said, let's get on with it. 

20. "Oceanographer's Choice"- The Mountain Goats

19. "Wouldn't It Be Nice"- The Beach Boys

18. "Criminal"- Fiona Apple

17. "Bastard"- Tyler, the Creator

16. "Only Love Can Break Your Heart"- Neil Young

15. "Space Oddity"- David Bowie

14. "Imagine"- John Lennon

13. "Sympathy for the Devil"- The Rolling Stones

12. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"- The Beatles

11. "Buddy Holly"- Weezer

10. "Heroin"- The Velvet Underground

 

"I don't know just where I'm going."

I'll admit a small part of "Heroin"s appearance on this list is due to Lou Reed's recent passing. Still, if Lou had lived for another 100 years, this song would probably make the cut. Originally written by Reed in 1965, "Heroin" captures the spirit of a confused 23 year old kid. It's right there in the opening line, "I don't know". "Heroin" prominently figures into the equation of course, but the squelching guitar solos it inspires only obfuscate that original sentiment. A crestfallen Reed encounters "sweet girls with all their sweet talk" and wishes he was "born a thousand years ago today", but none of that wishing can stymie the uncertainty which plods right along with the strumming guitar. Even that aforementioned guitar part and John Cale's shrieking viola can't wrest the doubt out of Reed's mind. After the final ringing of arpeggiated chords, Reed delivers one final time "I guess I just don't know". The only thing he knows is that he knows nothing at all.

9. "Thunder Road"- Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band

"The screen door slams and Mary's dress waves."

 Just as in part one I wrote no lyrics list would be complete without an appearance from the Mountain Goats John Darnielle, the same can be said of New Jersey's Bruce Springsteen. The ultimate rock music champion of the working man, Springsteen's early narratives spoke of the glory of America. Not on some jingoistic, flag-waving level; in character studies. His first two records were littered with fortune-tellers waiting down on the pier, local jokers, and young romantics making love in the dirt. To Springsteen, the nation's greatest resource wasn't the golden valleys or the military might, the greatest resource was the people. Those people began wild and free, but by the time Born to Run rolled around in 1975, they were itching for something more. 

Springsteen's last ditch effort at stardom, Born to Run is rife with the desire to just pack up and leave, to put all your troubles in the rearview as you barrel down the highway at 90 MPH. The troubles hadn't reached the harrowing depths of Nebraska quite yet, though disappointment had crept in. In "Thunder Road" the ghosts of "boys sent away" haunt skeleton "frames of burnt out Chevrolets". The only praying is done in vain. There's a lone chance left. That waving dress of Mary's hangs out of reach, as the narrator pleads "don't run back inside". Soundtracking the couple's flight from a "town full of losers" is Orbison's "Only the Lonely", foreshadowing the darkness that loomed just over the horizon. The door flung wide open for Springsteen after Born to Run's success, while slowly closing on his characters.

8. "Anarchy in the U.K."- The Sex Pistols

"I am an Antichrist, I am an anarchist."

Anti-religion. Anti-government. Anti-capitalism. Anti-dinosaur-rock. An easier list to make for the furious and filthy Sex Pistols is what they actually stood for. The Ramones expressed the rebellious spirit of punk with "Blitzkrieg Bop", but this was something else entirely. Their rousing "hey-oh let's go" chant sounded tame compared to John Lyndon's caterwauling. Rebellion seemed real when the Sex Pistols emerged on the scene with "Anarchy in the U.K.". If Buckingham Palace had burned down on November 27th, 1976 (the day after the single dropped), authorities had the perpetrators' manifesto blaring over the airwaves. Lydon/Jones/Matlock/and Cook (Sid Vicious had a lone appearance on "Bodies") don't simply sound frustrated, they sound "pissed". You can picture a bloodlust overtaking Lydon's face as the band creates an unholy racket behind him. Passersby won't be spared, and forget the future, it's all a scheme. The band was living moment-to-moment and after three turbulent years that life came to an abrupt ended. More the anything, the band's short existence proved anarchy can't be contained.

7. " The Sound(s) of Silence"- Simon & Garfunkel

 

 

"Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk with you again." 

Some time back in my "I hate everything" high-school days, I can recall an afternoon spent cooped up in my room as a particularly dour playlist wafted out of my computer speakers. Apparently "fed up" with such wallowing music, my father poked his head in and politely asked "don't you have anything less depressing to play?" I nodded and then clicked on "The Sound of Silence" to let it play. When that bone-chilling opener wafted into the air, my dad rather comically said "that's better". Knowing little of Simon & Garfunkel's discography, I can't blame him for the mistake. Delivered in an angelic whisper, nothing about Simon's calm voice suggests unfathomable pain. Darkness isn't some stranger or a mere acquaintance; it's an "old friend". It's sought out as if there's nothing else.

Written in part as a recollection of the still fresh Kennedy assassination, Simon penned the opening line after fumbling with his guitar in his bathroom with the lights off and the faucet running. And out of that innocent moment came the song the duo would refer to as "more than either of us expected." Despite such profound despair, where silence grows like cancer, a reworked full-band version of the song found a home on commercial radio. So popular was "The Sound of Silence" that when director Mike Nichols and editor Sam O'Steen needed a song to illustrate Benjamin Braddock's post-college existential dread in The Graduate, they turned to the track. As Braddock wearily rode the automated walkway, the silent raindrops of the track pitter-pattered. Surrounded by fellow travelers, it was clear he was all alone. And in the madcap party scene, Braddock's experience reflected the song. He attempted to share his plans, only to be cut off by talk of "plastics". He was talking, but no one was listening.

6. "F*** tha Police"- N.W.A.

"F*** the police coming straight from the underground, a young n**** got it bad cause I'm brown."

Call order in the courtroom all you'd like, nothing about this protest track is civil in its disobedience. In all of rap music, few statements have ever been so effusive and damning as the opening line of the seminal "F*** tha Police". 1988 in hip-hop was a year defined by the righteous anger of Public Enemy and their desire to "Bring the Noise". Nothing about "F*** tha Police" is righteous or holy. The Compton crew doesn't want to see abusive cops off the force; they want them led to slaughter like pigs. The song was the embodiment of the 1968 Kerner Commission which warned "our nation is moving towards two societies, one black, one white-- separate and unequal".

Critics of the song and the album as a whole came out in droves. Finally they had their hip-hop boogie man. The F.B.I. wasted no time in condemning the group for "encouraging violence and disrespect towards law enforcement". Assuming these are just local hoodlums is a tremendous mistake. Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Eazy-E are hip-hop journalists; giving a first-hand account of what they've seen. One of the Society of Professional Journalism's tenets is to expose unethical practices, and when Ice Cube recounts being stopped simply for "being brown", he's performing his journalistic duty. Many journalists themselves had failed to report on the police state that been allowed to grow in inner-city L.A., resulting in thousands of arrests. Instead, they opted to pigeonhole Straight Outta Compton as a racist/sexist/violent diatribe. N.W.A.'s vindication came in 1992, when seemingly everything they predicted came to pass with the Rodney King trial and subsequent riots. After that, if you still scoff at their press credentials or the profanity laced APB they put out, you might just be the "redneck, white-bread, chicken-s*** motherf***er" Dre warned of.

5. "Hurt"- Nine Inch Nails

"I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel".

Welcome to the downward spiral or better yet, the bottoming out. Downward Spiral, Trent Reznor's second album as Nine Inch Nails was an audible suicide watch and closer "Hurt" became the flat-lining. This isn't a suicide that burns away, that wouldn't be punishing enough. It's a self-inflicted bloodletting where every droplet pouring out should signal the end, but doesn't.  Here we have immolation that refuses to cease.

Even for Reznor's nihilistic catalog, "Hurt" is oppressively bleak. Putting "Hurt" on ensures you'll drift into dark thoughts no matter what your disposition is. That said, "Hurt" is in no way relatable.We're given a narrator who wants nothing more than to shuffle his mortal coil and cruelly he's the last one bound to it. Every familiar face he can remember slowly fades from memory. Drugs masquerade as an escape, but in turning to the needle, the narrator further digs further into an "empire of dirt". Now the pain he chased as sweet release is gone, numbed by the heroin coursing through his veins. A lone clatter of noise can't snap the subject out of it and the final seconds of "Hurt" float on in ambient feedback. Feeling nothing at all is the worst thing in the world, but not for reasons you'd think.

 

  



4. "Travelin' Band"- Creedence Clearwater Revival

"737 coming out of the sky."

When I was younger, anytime I heard Creedence Clearwater Revival's effortlessly shuffling "Down on the Corner" I never had any idea what John Fogerty was saying in that bayou-affectation of his during the chorus. Hearing CCR's life-on-the-road chronicle "Travelin' Band" for the first time, I had no such problem. Even delivered in a snarl, it's clear what Fogerty is saying when the entire band screeches to a halt for the opening line. This isn't some idyllic picture of a band traveling through the countryside, peering out their bus windows and admiring the scenery. What we have here is pure chaos. That airline may as well be in freefall. "Hit something hard" you can picture Fogerty telling the doomed pilot. The livewire narrative presented here is less shuffling to the next gig and more sprinting. "I wanna move" Fogerty flatly declares. Tour-life can be hell and staying in one hotel room or city too long can become purgatory. You lose your luggage along with your mind. Fogerty captures this perfectly when he wails before a mid-song solo break that swelters as much as any CCR solo. The monotony of playing again Saturday night is getting to him and he's doing everything to rage against it. Rest assured, when that 737 touches down on the tarmac Fogerty will be the first one off the flight.

      




3. "Loser"- Beck

"In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey."

In the land of the non-sequiturs, this one reigns supreme. "Butane in my veins so I'm out to cut the junkie." "Get right with the Cheeze Whiz." "Saving all your food-stamps and burning down the trailer park." Trading "the cash for the beef for the body for the hate." Beck's 1993 hit single "Loser" stockpiles all of these bizarre utterances as some form of slacker currency. The delta-blues slide guitar riff screams product of the people. Beck though seems to have come from an alien race where everyone knows what "beefcake pantyhose is" and time is just a "piece of wax fallin' on a termite that's chokin on the splinters." To most listeners, he may as well being speaking the "Deutsches"  He's confessed to much of it being "accidental", but that chorus arrives too fully formed to have happened by chance. Any 90s kid knows at least one line of Spanish courtesy of this song, "soy un perdedor", translation: "I'm a loser." He cops to being less evolved than the rest of us in that opening line. But, what lower form of life would ever dream of blending laconic rapping, delta-blues, drum loops, and droning sitar together? "Daytime crap of a folksinger slob" this is not; Beck's on a whole other level. It's fine if none of this makes sense to you, just know "you can't write if you can't relate."

2. "Gloria"- Patti Smith

   

"Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine."

Go and find a better line to open the first song on an artist's first album than this. I'll wait as long as you'd like and still you'll come back empty-handed. They don't exist. Smith may have fooled major-label Arista into thinking she had pop-leanings by including a doleful piano part, but that opening proclamation is pure punk-rock. She's been presented with a free gift and she outright rejects it. Dubbing yourself "Lucifer" or saying you're the "Antichrist" is so passé. Anyone who's picked up a Bible knows the devil and the Antichrist exist. Much rarer is the story of someone being completely skipped over by God's saving grace. Being the forgotten is much more memorable.

In being abandoned, Smith is free to do as she pleases. Now "anything's allowed" she relays in her Tom Verlaine yelp. If she's bored by the party she's at, she can leave to chat up the sweet young thing she spies "leanin on the parking meter." G-L-O-R-I-A remains her name. Van Morrison's original take had all the trappings of a sexually frustrated teenage boy waiting to end his dry spell and Gloria marked the end. To an ecstatic Smith, this urban Isis walking down the street is the beginning. She wants to take the big plunge with her when the jagged guitars are at their most fractured; "make her mine" in an eternal sense. It won't be easy, that "thick heart of stone" is wearing her down. Those sins she's made her own are a heavy burden. She'll be alright though; they're just rules and regulations after all.

             

1. "All Along the Watchtower"- Bob Dylan

" 'There must be some way out of here,' said the joker to the thief."

He started in the middle. Without any context, the Sphinx-like Bob Dylan drops us smack dab in the midst of the action. Instead of beginning at Genesis or working back from the Book of Revelation, he plunges us somewhere in Isaiah. Like the two lead characters, we're forced to fight our way out to find any meaning, its sink or swim from word one. The confusion they feel runs rampant in the mind of anyone trying to make sense of all of this. Where's all this confusion coming from? What has happened to cause such calamity?

One suggestion from the commonalities between the John Wesley Harding track and Isaiah is that Dylan's mysterious tale concerns the fall of Babylon. Our fabled leads are on their way back to tell the Israelites that a great evil is no more. Something about the conversation we're privy to says this is not the case. Nothing in their tones is the slightest bit celebratory. "There are many here among us that feel that life is but a joke" the thief relays in the second verse. There's no warmth in their souls, plowmen have dug up their earth and without any land they're trapped outside in the cold. Now outsiders, they can't trust anyone, least of all each other. A psychological danger lingering in the corner of their mind is far more worrisome than the growl of a wildcat. Meanwhile, Dylan's harmonica is setting us up for some grand conclusion. An unalterable fate neither of them can ever come back from. And then, he affixes upon a distant image "two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl" he hails in his nasal whine. Like that we're back at the start with the joker and thief and seemingly nothing has happened. In crafting this circular narrative, Dylan reminds us all we're doomed to repeat ourselves. There's no way out.

     

I hope everyone enjoined the list. If you think something is too high or too low or some grand omission was made, feel free to say so in the comment section.