Tuesday New Releases in Music

A few big albums remain unreleased in the run-up to Christmas, but this week the industry still recovers from its post-Black Friday hangover. So Alicia Keys offers the only major-label new release of note this week, with Girl on Fire set for a strong debut. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find a wealth of great music coming out this week, including an exceptional survey of Charlie Christian’s contributions to the development of bebop and jazz. Plus: Rage Against the Machine receives a 20^th anniversary reissue, and the Winter Sounds prove you don’t need a huge budget to craft solid pop hooks.

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Alicia Keys – Girl on Fire (RCA)

Don’t call her prolific, as Alicia Keys releases just her fifth studio album in the last twelve years, her first since 2009’s The Element of Freedom. It’s worth the wait, however, as early reviews have praised Keys for taking things back to basics, focusing on intimate moments and what Uncut calls her “technical brilliance.” The strongest of those intimate moments, “Not Even The King,” serves as a highlight of what Girl on Fire offers.

Big Dipper – Big Dipper Crashes on the Platinum Planet (Almost Ready Records)

Blood of the Sun – Burning on the Wings of Desire (Listenable Records)

Breathless – Green to Blue (Shellshock)

Charlie Christian – The Genius of the Electric Guitar (Sony Legacy)

Fans of jazz and bebop already know the music of Charlie Christian, but fans of anything modern involving the electric guitar should care as well. This four disc collection brings that music into stunning clarity, focusing on Christian’s pioneering work with the instrument while a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet from 1939-41, along with a disc of rarities from his time in Goodman’s orchestra and the Metronome All-Stars.

Daniel Higgs – Say God (Thrill Jockey) – Vinyl

Fort Shame – Double Wide (Redeye Label)

Great Big Sea – XX (Great Big Sea)

Jefferson Starship – Tales from the Mothership (United States Distribution)

Jerry Cole – Surf Age (Sundazed Music Inc)

Flash back to the era of classic surf-pop via this reissue from Jerry Cole and His Spacemen. Surf Age attempted to merge surf music with the wider sphere of 60s pop, more carefully focusing Cole’s mile-a-minute recording process. Incredibly rare until this long-awaited CD release, enjoy the perfect holiday time capsule. Highlights include the title track and “One Color Blues.”

John Zorn – The Concealed (Tzadik)

Junkie XL – Synthesized (Nettwerk)

Lone Wolf – The Lovers (It Never Rains)

Mike Cooper – Life and Death in Paradise (Entertainment One)

Myriad 3 – Tell (Alma Records)

My favorite discovery of the year by far, this Canadian jazz trio builds on the collective nature of improvisation, crafting a nuanced debut you won’t want to miss. The album’s highlights include “But Still and Yet” and the band’s peerless interplay on “Disturbing Inspiration,” which will haunt you, guaranteed.

Nektar – A Spoonful of Time (Cleopatra)

Outasight – Nights Like These (Warner Bros.)

Piatcions – Senseless > Sense (I Blame The Parents Records)

Rage Against The Machine – XX (20^th Anniversary Edition Deluxe Box Set) (Legacy)

Sonny Burgess – Live at Sun Studios (Cleopatra) – Vinyl

The Winter Sounds – Runner (New Grenada Records)

Serving up a hybrid of Arcade Fire, Mumford and Sons and Snow Patrol, New Orleans’ the Winter Sounds craft shiny pop nuggets which stand strong on repeat listens. Highlights include “The Sun Also Rises” (video below) and “Run from the Wicked”. Also worth noting: the band funded the album entirely through $9,000 in fan contributions, proving pop this good doesn’t require a major-label budget.

Therion – Les Fleurs Du Mal (End of the Light)

Wild Billy Childish & the Spartan Dreggs – Coastal Command (Damaged Goods)

Wu-Block – Wu-Block (Entertainment One)

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With a new year looming and Christmas just around the corner, now’s the time to look back at albums already out in 2012 which may have slipped from your radar. Any of these, including the latest from Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews and David Crowder Band, would make perfect stocking-stuffers for the music fan in your world.

The International Business Times Today:

I was really excited about the new HBO show Luck, starring Dustin Hoffman and created by the brilliant Deadwood scribe David Milch.

But since the show’s debut I’ve been mostly quiet about it, trying to figure out how best to articulate my objections to the series premiere.

***SPOILERS FOLLOW***

I knew of course the show would be dark and feature plenty of evil people doing evil things. Deadwood is filled with horrific scenes and degrading circumstances. But Milch painted his canvas with many colors. Yes, there were some cruel people in Deadwood, but individuals at least struggled with moral questions. Good people did bad things, bad people sometimes redeemed themselves, and by season 3 the enemy of my enemy becomes my friend.

But with Luck Milch seems to have limited himself to varying shades of black. Watching the first episode ALL of the characters struck me as unlikable and too broken to inspire me to spend time with them in their seedy world. Only in the glorious racing of the horses did a sense of grace and beauty brighten the degenerate world of compulsive gamblers and career criminals.

And then what do they do? At the end of the pilot a horse breaks its leg on camera and has to be put down.

My wife — who has first hand experience in horse rescue and animal abuse — immediately started screeching in horror. Now it turns out that my attempt to remind her that it’s just a TV show and no animals were harmed was wrong. Two horses died in the filming of the first season of Luck:

Luck production chiefs rescinded its American Humane Association stamp of approval – which certifies no animals were harmed during the making of the programme – following the show’s pilot episode after a horse was euthanized on location.

Prior to filming, network executives at HBO assured officials at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) that experts would be on hand to ensure all “necessary safety procedures” were in place, however reports of a second fatality have again prompted activists to worry.

I’m not an animal rights fanatic or anything. PETA is a terrible, hypocritical Marxist organization as Penn and Teller demonstrated in this legendary episode of Bullsh*t (language warning):

But this news now casts even greater darkness over the show.

This Sunday, January 29, is my 28th birthday and there are three parts of the plan to make it a success: a morning trip to DisneyLand, homemade sushi for dinner (April just got this sushizi sushi maker thing — expect a write-up about it here on PJ Lifestyle sometime next week,) and in the evening on HBO it’s the premiere of Luck, the new drama from Deadwood creator David Milch starring Dustin Hoffman. (Also expect my review Monday morning here at PJ Lifestyle.)

There are few TV shows I’ve enjoyed as much as Deadwood over the last decade. The reinvention of the Western mesmerizes with its unique dialogue, vivid characters, twisting plot, unique setting, and startling action. I’ve probably watched the whole series at least twice and should watch it again. (If nothing else so I can compare it with The Wire which I’m almost finished watching.)

Will we now get that same intensity and drama only at a horse track?

So far so good. Check out this preview of the show at The Atlantic:

When it comes to luck, and the new HBO series Luck, there is no in-between. There is only good luck and bad luck. And the nine-episode-long morality play brought to us by creators Michael Mann and David Milch–not brought to us, more like thrown in our faces–doesn’t pretend to argue otherwise. The low are raised high in this dark work about human vanity and vice. And the high are laid low. Good things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people. And then bad things just happen. It’s a dramatic series, and a powerful paean, for all you people out there who don’t believe that shit just happens.

About the only thing about Luck—which premieres on Sunday at 9 pm Eastern—that comes directly and honestly at you is the title. The title–and of course the horses, the magnificent animals, who grace the screen in every episode as brilliant props.

Read the whole thing. It looks like we’ll have a show that could deliver some potent, serious moments:

At the bottom end of the spectrum, we are introduced to a group of four diehard gamblers, led by the brilliant Kevin Dunn as the disabled, breathless, cranky Marcus. At the other end of the line is Dustin Hoffman, as Ace Bernstein, the mobbed-up guy just out of prison who has eyes for a special horse, the racetrack, and for California racing itself. The only thing they have in common, aside from wanting to spend a lot of time at the track, is that they both have a dim view of human nature. And why not? One is scarred on the outside; the other on the inside. One expresses it in virtually every sentence. The other hides it behind a rich mask

Yes, I’m thinking it’s going to be a good birthday (even though 30 is now starting to get a bit too close for comfort.)