The Band That Time Forgot

The Eagles, AKA - The Band that Time Forgot, took the stage at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night, poised in their "Men in Black" outfits (a la Johnny Cash...or Tommy Lee Jones), geriatric as ever, and proceeded to rock like it was 1980…before the “fourteen year vacation.”

All four "official" members were playing the guitar. Don Henley stood front and center, as calm and imposing as any Tarantino character. He was flanked by co-leader Glen Frey, bassist Timothy Schmit, and Joe Walsh, who is as silly and immature as any Sandler character (as a performer, not a guitarist). There was also another guitarist (the show-stealingly good Stuart Smith) and a drummer (when Henley wasn't pulling double duty on the mic and the kit). And two keyboardists. And a piano player. And everyone had a microphone! It was completely over the top (in a good way…most of the time). Nine musicians to play classic rock 'n roll?! With the occasional horn section (fronted by the surprisingly stellar sax/violin/keyboard/percussion player Al Garth), it took THIRTEEN MUSICIANS to play "Hotel California!" Admittedly, the players were all impeccable and served their roles well, so any excessiveness was redeemed by talent. The timeless quality of both the songs and the band were delivered well to the capacity crowd.

Coming off The Long Road Out of Eden, their first complete studio release in almost three decades (1994's essential Hell Freezes Over was mostly recorded live), the band looked rejuvenated despite the fact that not one of the founding members will be under 60 years old by the end of this tour. And they were really having a good time. Sure, they've played these same hits thousands of times. But somehow they are able to keep their energy level high for over three hours of classics. Timothy Schmit looks like a mysterious and wise sage with his elbow-length hair, and his slow ballads lent themselves well to Frey's country-rock, Henley's pop-rock, and Walsh's gritty, guitar-driven, straight ahead rock.

The drug-aged Walsh was as silly as ever, constantly joking with the crowd and the band, but his social confidence was not reflected through his weakening vocals. In his anthem, "Life's Been Good," or virtually any other song he was singing, Walsh literally backed away from the highest notes, needing the other eight band members on stage to pick up his slack. Luckily, his out of control guitar licks were the focal point of the spotlight, and he is an improved version of the guitarist he was forty years ago.

Similarly, when Henley wasn't playing the guitar and singing (which he still does as effortlessly and beautifully as ever), he was either drumming and singing or pretending to play percussion and sing. I was a little embarrassed for him up there, robotically and artlessly flailing his arms from conga to conga, but he more than made up for it with his time behind the kit (where he belongs) and with the guitar.

What really impressed me and stood out, though, were the four(or more)-part harmonies. Frey, Henley, Schmit, and Walsh have a Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young-esque ability to always be on key, always stay within their refined ranges, and never meander into someone else’s territory. Aside from Walsh’s need for backup, I didn’t notice one vocal flaw. Many musicians (see Billy Joel) lose a lot of range after six decades of living, four decades of touring, and five decades of drug use. Every time they sang together, I was enthralled…from what I could see, I may as well have been the only one.

Though the plethora of instrumentation and light-driven stimuli was a good step toward involving the crowd, most fans are about as old as the band. They stayed seated, unless they had dropped well over $200 on close floor seats. The only time people stood was after certain songs, out of respect, as if saluting a maestro after brilliantly conducting a 200-year-old work of art. While I agree that "Hotel California" and "Desperado" are brilliant works of art that are deserving of the ovations they got, some during-the-song-enthusiasm would've greatly added to the high-energy atmosphere that The Eagles worked hard to establish and maintain.

At the same time, they don't take themselves too seriously, and it showed through the goofy photo montages and caricatured scenes playing behind them. This can be either a blessing or a curse, and unfortunately I found myself distracted by their class-clowniness to the point that, as the visualizations got cartoonier towards the end of the set, I had to consciously remind myself that there was an attention-worthy concert going on.

The highlight of the night, other than Glenn Frey's joke that "You Can't Hide Your Lying Eyes" was written for his first wife, "Plaintiff," (pause for laughter)...was definitely the earnest, emotional version of "Desperado." The harmonies soared and the band backed Henley with just enough force to provide the perfect heartbeat to one of the greatest, saddest love songs of all time. As Henley held the final note in his trademark tenor and, still in his black suit and tie, coolly gazed out at the adoring mass of fans standing in respect to 40 years of accomplishment, it was clear that the 1980 breakup is behind them, the "vacation" is over, and The Eagles are back.

Review: Jason Mraz - We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things (2008)

Jason Mraz has always been an infectious songwriter. And I mean that in the most endearing way possible. Waiting For My Rocket To Come was pure funkyfresh acoustic elation. So what if another pop acoustic guitarist from that era evolved into the artist currently known as John Mayer? So what if Mraz's second album, the cleverly eponymous Mr. A-Z, met the ire and disdain of virtually every music critic on the planet? I still loved (almost) every second of it. It was fun, it was cute, and above all, it was somewhere between respectable and bubblegum pop. And it still is.

I first heard Mraz during high school and his feel good lyrics, especially his wordplay, were unique and diverse and really spoke to my teenaged self. "You and I Both" was my long-distance-high-school-girlfriend-during-college anthem, as I'm sure it was for just about every other couple in that situation in 2003. I had no such sentimental connection to A-Z, though it was produced by Steve Lillywhite (U2, Dave Matthews Band, Peter Gabriel, Guster, Phish, Rolling Stones, etc.), which lends it a decent amount of credence. This time around, he doesn't even have that. In the five-plus years since Rocket, Mraz hasn't changed one damn bit.

He's still a mild pervert, a sex addict, and a wordplayer. But it's all so stale and forced. A-Z was an attempt at a newer, more produced sound. Sure, it came off as zany and ridiculous, but at least he tried! On We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things he's back to straight acoustic pop, but this time his witty quips are replaced with songs that are packed tight with a jumble of often nonsensical words.

What's worse, when his rhymes do make sense they are often embarrassingly frank about sex. I don't blush easily and I don't often get uncomfortable from the content of pop music (rap aside), but "Butterfly," Mraz unabashedly sings, "Curl your upper lip up and let me look around. Ride your tongue along your bottom lip and bite down, and bend your back and ask those hips if I can touch. Because they’re the perfect jumping off point of getting closer to your butterfly." Closer to your butterfly? Is this a joke? I can't believe a grown man wrote this. It gets worse, but I'll spare you...oh, I can't help it. Here's another gem from that same song: "You make my slacks a little tight, you may unfasten them if you like." The whole album is rife with overly graphic and unartistic descriptions of sex and shitty euphemisms for vaginae.

There is a token "You and I Both" style track entitled "Details in the Fabric," which is a refreshing throwback to when Mraz still had an artful, heart-touching way with words. In it, he advises a friend on how to best heal his broken heart with the simple counsel, "Hold your own, and know your name, and go your own way." It's simple, honest, and strikes a chord with anyone who's ever had to move on, which is everyone. That used to be the joy of Mraz...his ability to speak to the heart of complex matters in frank and/or clever ways. Other than "Details," there is no track that reminds us of that rare and valuable artistic quality. Unfortunately, the track is nearly ruined by the intro and outro, which consists of a pair of voice messages from, presumably, the friend that Mraz wrote the song about. It's a hokey ploy, though a valiant effort to fully establish the song's realism. The cherry on top is when the friend finishes the outro by jokingly confessing to being "an island of reality in an ocean of diarrhea." Funny? Yes. Appropriate for the song? Not even close. It's nice to see that Mraz doesn't take himself too seriously, but if he ever wants us to he'll have to refrain from the childish act of turning serioustime into playtime.

The music itself (lyrics aside) is very Mrazian and upbeat, with sentimental slow songs (most notably the aforementioned) scattered sparsely throughout. The one redeeming aspect of the entire album is the Stevie-Wonder-worth horn section that is featured on tracks 1, 4, 5, and 9. It's rather ironic that horniness is both the lyrical downfall and musical saving grace of We Sing, and it's a shame that he doesn't use it more. Similarly, Mraz uses a children's choir to back him up on several tracks, most notably the uplifting star track and first single "I'm Yours," and they add a layer of depth that is needed when it's there and missed when it's not. The grandiosity provided by the horn section and choir pales in comparison to the grandiosity of Mr. A-Z that drew so much unfair criticism, and works well to make the album much grander than it would have been in their absence.

Admittedly, I was toe tapping for most of the time, and however much I disliked the album as a whole, it's going to stay on the iPod for a while. While the infectious nature of his first two albums was charming, the infectiousness of We Sing is more viral than anything else, and far more nostalgically painful than what I had hoped to see come out of the almost three years since Mr. A-Z. It's abundantly clear that Mraz had a great time making We Sing...perhaps too great a time. His incessant self-indulgence reeks of immaturity, though I'm sure his die hard fans will consider this a goofy adolescence rather than a disappointing young adulthood.

Virginia is for Lovers

We drove for over three hours in the pouring, blinding rain to see Radiohead last night. The venue, Nissan Pavilion in Bristow, VA, is only 40 or so miles from DC, but due to flooding and general hickishness, roads were awfully crowded. Somehow we got to the show in time to catch more than half of Radiohead's epic set (see below):

All I Need
Jigsaw
Lucky
15 Step
Nude
Pyramid Song
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Myxomatosis
Idioteque
Faust Arp
Videotape
Paranoid Android
Just
Reckoner
Everything In Its Right Place
Bangers + Mash
Bodysnatchers

Like Spinning Plates
Optimistic
Karma Police
Go Slowly
Planet Telex

Fake Plastic Trees
The National Anthem
House Of Cards

Now, I could spend hours complaining about the terrible traffic patterns and disappointment I felt at having missed such an undoubtedly memorable first ten songs. I could tell you for days about how frustrating it is to drive stop-and-go for 7 hours just to see the greatest band on Earth play music for roughly 1 hour.

But those are not my overarching memories of last night. In fact, our exodus through the rivered streets and mucky highways of rural Virginia led us to a Garden of Eden, adorned with shifting camera projections and hanging lights, ruled by five Gods and Devils on a stage. Seeing Radiohead on stage for the first time was something so surreal, so religious, that it is hard for me to put into words.

For years, Radiohead has existed solely on my car radio, on CDs, on my iPod. When we took our seats in Row 19 in between "Paranoid Android" and "Just," the band was doused in white light. They looked so...human. These machines that lived in my electronic devices were there, real, making music for me. As soon as "Just" began, in a flurry and flash of bright lights, Radiohead became much more than a band. They were, in spurts of a few minutes at a time, entities all their own. In between songs, the human light brought them back to Earth. Thom Yorke even casually chatted with the capacity crowd. He was personable, fun...even humorous. He humbly thanked the crowd on the lawn, the masses willing to stand in the thunder and rain. However divine the musical performance was, the rehumanization of Radiohead between songs was tangible.

And then "Reckoner" started.

The dangling LED lights, fading from purple to blue to white, and the honeycombs of spotlights and video screens lifted the band to a new level of Godliness. As the drums pounded out the opening beat, tens-of-thousands of people were silent, in awe, waiting. Yorke's breathy falsetto started softly, tenderly and continued unabated through verse and chorus until, at the most transcendent of moments (2:23 in the MP3 on the right side of the page), the band fell out and Yorke was alone with his guitar, wailing, imploring, declaring, "Because we separate, it ripples our reflections."

And the drums were back in, driving the song forward toward its inevitable end. The crowd remained in a reverie, grooving and bobbing to the music. My eyes were wider than they've ever felt, and for just that one breakdown we all felt so connected.

The high was maintained for a few more songs and then, in a flash of blood red, Radiohead ripped us from Heaven and showed us the depths of a fiery angry Hell. From the opening chords, "Bodysnatchers" was a flailing, angry rant by Yorke. He was yelling, he was screaming, and his awkward scrawny body was writhing, as he preached to his loyal followers, "Has the light gone out for you? Because the light's gone out for me. It is the 21st Century. It is the 21st Century...I've seen it coming."

It scared me to feel so drawn to this leader, this God or Devil (or whatever the Hell Thom Yorke really is) on stage who seemed to bring thousands together, bring us to spiritually musical heights rarely known, and then leave us standing there dumbstruck in his wake. People sang along as if chanting to their supreme cult leader, carrying them on toward the afterlife. For the hour that I saw them on stage, they could have led 25,000 young adults willingly to drink the Kool Aid.

It is rare that a band can reach out to so many and grab them all at once, losing no one in its grasp. Somewhere between the human light, which revealed their instruments so clearly to me, and the reds, greens, and blues that accompanied me to Heaven and Hell and back, lie five real people with an incredible power.

"I really hope it was fucking worth it," nudged Yorke as Radiohead left the stage last night. And though my ratio of car-time to Radiohead-time was 7:1 instead of 2:3, I can say that no concert that I have ever been to was more worth it than last night's. To be Baptized by Radiohead in a deluge the likes of which I've never seen was worth it. To actually feel transcendent from listening to music was worth it. And to know that it was only a preview of what I'll get at All Points West on August 9th made it more fucking worth it than Thom Yorke could even imagine.

Review: Feist - Monarch (Lay Down Your Jeweled Head)

In the 9 years since Feist first released Monarch (Lay Down Your Jeweled Head), she has become an artist that must be virtually unrecognizable to her earlier self. I'm not at all convinced that Feist didn't make some sort of deal with the devil in the five years between Monarch and the acclaimed (see previous post) Let it Die that would give her the unique talent and style that has led her to her current level of success.

The fact is, Monarch is a good effort from anyone else. The style is less defined than later Feist, but the instrumentation (loads of horns, textured electric guitar and, above all else, xylophone) is a signature sound that she has spent almost a decade developing and perfecting. Despite the eventual praise that I and countless other reviewers would heap at her feet, Monarch is very clearly a Freshman effort. Not even -- It's more of a "I'm still a senior in high school but just got into college so I've already checked out" kind of effort.

Musically, it falls flat of her later efforts. Not flat in the pitch sense, but rather flat in affect. There are no upbeat tracks, along the lines of The Reminder's "I Feel It All" and, conversely, there are no solo acoustic dirge's like Let It Die's "Lonely Lonely." Each of the ten tracks is at least boringly similar to all of the others, if not almost indistinguishable. All ten are very pleasant and, had they been written by any other artist with a less illustrious future, would make for a pretty good album. The problem is that they lack the feeling and truth of a memorable collection of songs. There's no story here or, if there is, it's lost on me. Let It Die and The Reminder each take Feist's unique songwriting and vocal abilities to their respective pinnacles, to the point that assessing her earlier work without comparing it to what came later is almost impossible. To see that so much musical greatness has come from such seemingly humble musical beginnings both surprises me as a writer and gives me hope as a musician.

Of course, Leslie Feist is known for her airy vocals and incredible vocal control, which she exercises quite adeptly. She doesn't focus on her lower range very much (see "When I Was A Young Girl" on Let It Die) and her higher-range runs often seem contrived on Monarch, as if the producer said, "Um, hey, Leslie...You haven't flitted your voice in the higher octaves yet in this tune so, do you mind?...Yeah, that's it, thanks." Don't get me wrong, it is a beauty to behold the way she eases up and down the scale. But if she did it a little less on Monarch it might serve her a bit better and make the listener appreciate it more.

The strongest and most redeeming aspect of Monarch is, without a doubt, Feist's obviously natural way with words. Though she is more of a storyteller in her more recent works, she has composed a collection of the honest, ethereal lyrics that are simply...well, I can't even describe them. See for yourself, from the album's title track:

The Queen had a feint had a fall
Don't give me ether or open my vein I'm sane
I know I'm sane
I don't give a care for the crown or the shield
I will not protect you or happily yield
To the one who makes me come undone

Who was born and in what way
All the fields and poppies ay
Who was born and in what way
All the fields

What does that mean?!?! I can't honestly tell you, but I think the words themselves sound absolutely perfect when you put them to music, even if the music itself could be better.

Despite my best efforts to avoid prejudgement of Monarch, I did just that. I knew I'd get masterful lyrics and a pre-frosh musical effort, and I knew that I'd probably be hard on it because of my expectations for Feist. But because of those very same expectations, I was willing to keep an open mind and be forgiving of any wrongdoing on her debut album. After all, in the decade that followed she would make some of the most memorable music out there.

Monarch is a late-90's popfest that is truly lovable only outside the scope of the rest of Feist's career. As a standalone album, it's an easy listen that doesn't shock but also doesn't surprise. As part of her discography, though, it is sure to disappoint while it sheds a historically useful light onto her Broken Social Scene/solo artist transition.

Review: The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride

In an effort to bolster my ability to write album reviews, which I have not done in the year since my fruitful stint at the GW Hatchet ended, I will be -- you guessed it! -- writing album reviews. Initially, my goal was to do this once every week for a new and/or obscure album, and I'd like to stick to this starting today.

Two months ago, Pitchfork Media's notoriously critical reviewers gave the breakdown on Heretic Pride, the latest release from The Mountain Goats. Headed by quirky staccato singer John Darnielle, Goats has a unique sound in an indie market that is oversaturated with acoustic singersongwriter types. What makes the difference, without a doubt, are his completely out-of-left-field vocals and his blunt narratives.

Darnielle babbles completely coherently about so many topics it will make your head spin: war, death, love, spies, religion, pride, redemption, apocalypse, sex, childhood, and even alien invasion...and not once does he lose the attention of the listener. Aside form a few weak spots (namely the 'Puff The Magic Dragon'-esque "Tianchi Lake" and "Swamp Creature"), it was difficult to pick what to focus on since it was all so riveting and beautiful, but here are some highlights:

Sax Rohmer #1 (Track 1): This song is the most explosive that an acoustic rock song can possibly be. The build just blows my mind. Darnielle starts simply enough, with a basic muted strum (more on this later) and light vocals, but by the second half of the first verse you can already feel the tension creeping in. Electric guitar starts to flow all around the chords, drums start to come in from the bottom up, and by the time the first chorus arrives, Darnielle is belting the oddly meaningful "I am coming home to you, with my own blood in my mouth" at the top of his very limited (but not limiting) range. And, given his quirky yet satisfying vocal ability, it hits my heart like a ton of bricks. I still can't figure out why.

San Bernadino (Track 2): "You got in the warm warm water, I pulled the petals from my pocket. I loved you so much just then." The frankness of the lyric is the essence of Darnielle's ability to tell his story quickly and easily, and make you feel how deeply true it is.

So Desperate (Track 6): There is not a solitary defining lyrical or musical moment to this song, but only because it reaches bare-bones perfection. The same few chords are repeated throughout, and the chorus contains only seven words ("I felt so desperate in your arms"), but these act in perfect, uncomplicated unison to signify the love Darnielle eloquently narrates.

In The Craters On The Moon (Track 7): Two old cowboys saunter to the center of town, surrounded by the old saloon and general store, their spurs jangling and boots crunching the dusty rocks. Tumbleweeds scurry across the barren landscape, vultures circle overhead and call out in anticipation of inevitable death, and aside from their cries the town is tensely, silently awaiting the impending duel. From note-one, "Craters" feels musically like the Old West, and lyrically like a war-driven topical powerhouse. Darnielle frantically and frustratedly matches his vocals to the drums, which standout dynamically for one of the only times on the album (in a good way), especially during the timelessly relevant refrain, "In the declining years of the long war," which is delivered much more effectively than it looks on paper (or on screen).

And that's how this album can be defined...with light and sharply delivered vocals that never seem to match Darnielle's incisive and deeply personal (though not autobiographical) lyrics. Of course, I have one overarching complaint that applies to almost every song, and it is the 'basic muted strum' that I referenced earlier. Rhythmically, the album has virtually no variation at all. The accented notes in Darnielle's strumming pattern on 9 of the 13 tracks all fall on the same beats (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +). This might not make sense if you've never played the drums or taken a music theory class, but essentially this means that most songs after the first are rhythmically identical to the ones before it. If Darnielle did this intentionally, a rhythmic theme is a stroke of genius. If it was an oversight on his part, it was a massive one. Luckily, it hardly takes anything away from the album as a whole. After a dozen listens, each one more pleasant than the last, I can once again say Pitchfork has led me in the right direction.

And so I hope to lead you there, as well. Buy it if you can, steal it if you can't, and enjoy it either way.

Novelty For Novelty's Sake

Once upon a time, say about 45 years ago, society underwent an unprecedented shift in what it found musically acceptable. I refer, of course, to The Beatles and their final act of manifest destiny in moving rock music into the mainstream. Specifically, 1968's The Beatles (A.K.A. - The White Album) moved musical mountains when it was released to the rock-hungry public. Though it was one of their last albums, it is certainly their most diverse (A.K.A. - eclectic) and surprising, given references to Baroque Era classical ('Piggies'), country-western ('Rocky Racoon'), and even ragtime ('Honey Pie'). Its 30 tracks run a staggering 93 minutes long, but somehow it wasn't overdone. It was tasteful and, more importantly, it made use of new musical techniques ('Revolution 9') and singlehandedly birthed a new sub-genre of rock ('Helter Skelter').

Once upon another time, only 5 years ago, Jay-Z released The Black Album to mounds of critical acclaim and hype because it was his "last studio album" (until 2006, when he predictably unretired and released another one). It may not have been as revolutionary as its juxtaposed predecessor, and it may not have even been original since no fewer than six albums were titled The Black Album before 2003, but it was good enough for Danger Mouse to find it worthy of a "mash-up" with said predecessor. And so, in 2004, with licensed a capella tracks from Jay-Z and pirated tracks from The Beatles, The Grey Album was distributed online through various file-sharing services and became an immediate and everlasting sensation (the oh-so-wise Entertainment Weekly even had the cojones to name it the "Best Album of 2004"). There's one problem, though: IT'S NOT GOOD.

Just doing something new for the sake of novelty does not automatically make it worthwhile. There is so much wrong about The Grey Album that I hardly know where to begin. It is terribly mixed, which is understandable since it was never officially released due to lawsuits (which resulted from the pirated Beatles tracks). Still, though, for people to heap so much praise on something as unproduced and rough-draftish as this is very telling as to how little attention is actually paid to quality when an album is revered simply for being "fresh."

What the album lacks in production quality, it does not make up for in substance. I do not consider myself any sort of expert on Jay-Z, but I do consider myself an amateur Beatles historian. I can often be an elitist or purist about things like the greatest band ever, so forgive me if I sound unforgiving, but I simply don't think that the slow, stringy sorrow of "Long, Long, Long" belongs within 100 yards of "Public Service Announcement" (a restraining-order-worthy offense), or that the undeniable classic "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" should even be mentioned in the same sentence as "What More Can I Say" (one of the worst efforts on Grey), let alone combined with it. The mash of "99 Problems" with "Helter Skelter" is the standalone quality track on the album, and only because Danger Mouse decided to use only two measures of "Helter Skelter" (the drum lead-in) to act as the beat behind Jay-Z's hook, "I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one."

In the past I've often lauded artists for combining new and old styles (Feist's Let It Die) or returning to their musical roots (Radiohead's In Rainbows) or even reinventing themselves completely (Bright Eyes' Cassadaga), but the combination of White and Black into Grey is something that attempts to do all three and fails each time.

The purist in me says that The Beatles are at the root of all boundary-breaking pop/rock music that has been made since the mid-to-late 1960s, so Danger Mouse was making a daring attempt to connect one of the newest musical styles with the band that in some ways gave birth to it. By altering the work of either artist, he has rendered his efforts virtually pointless. Because of the distorted, slowed down, and sped up samples that he uses from The Beatles' tracks, he is essentially distorting the purpose of the entire project: an unadulterated combination of new and old, a return to the roots of contemporary music, and a reinvention of both The White Album and The Black Album.

Given these failures, the attempt to combine a timeless musical landmark with a new trend was an exercise in egotism and shock-value by Danger Mouse. He took two artists that are beloved by at least two generations of music lovers and tried to force them together like two random jigsaw pieces based solely on the fact that the latter's title is an allusion to that of the former. And, what's worse, it worked! He duped millions of people into thinking that The Grey Album is a masterwork of technological prowess, when in reality it was novelty for novelty's sake. He is the Howard Stern of mash-ups. It might seem impressive and even important on a superficial level, but if you take the time to listen -- to really listen -- it's impossible to avoid the clear conclusion that the standalone brilliance of each album should have remained just that.

iTunes Single of the Week: Part II (Good Feist)

On Tuesday April 5, 2005, Leslie Feist began a love affair with Apple that would culminate in the "1 2 3 4" heard 'round the world. On that day, "One Evening" from her second album, 2004's Let It Die (and 'major label' debut with Universal) was featured as the 'iTues Single of the Week.' (You don't have to go back in time to get it, though...just click on the MP3 player on the right side of the blog!)

Though she was already a longtime member/contributor to the Canadian experipop conglomerate Broken Social Scene, her first solo outing in 1999 entitled Monarch (Lay Down Your Jeweled Head) never gained much steam and, according to Wikipedia, remains out of print. I have, however, managed to obtain a VERY LEGAL copy via "The Internets," and it is with much pride and excitement that I would like to announce the beginning of a new column on A Stereo Sun! Every week (I'll try to keep it that frequent), I'll be reviewing albums that I have either a) never heard before b) am sure you all -- my 3 loyal readers -- have never heard before c) absolutely love and want to spread or d) absolutely hate but want to give another chance to. That being said, next week's inaugural review will be Feist's aforementioned inaugural rarity.

Back to April 5, 2005. I listened to the 30-second preview of the old-meets-new/80's-funk 'One Evening' and was more than happy to "purchase" the free single from iTMS (please see Part I for a definition of iTMS). Immediately, I was drawn to her jazzy, as well as the combination of scratchy sound (old) with light, flowy electronics (new). I managed, since these were my days of piracy, to obtain a VERY ILLEGAL copy of Let it Die. The mix of pleasantly obscure covers and fresh originals is surprisingly cohesive, and Feist manages to introduce herself as a musician we hadn't been introduced to often by iTMS: potentially popular, innovative, and...wait for it...wait for it......TALENTED! They didn't just put something on there because it was new, but because it was good and new!

I've seen Feist twice live, and her musical prowess and stage persona far exceed what her albums would deem her capable. Her unique use of self-harmonization (via looping) is something I haven't experienced before or since, and she opened my eyes to the possibility of using electronics during a live performance.

We all know what happens next. In 2007, Feist's third album The Reminder came out to critical and popular acclaim, reaching #4 on the Billboard Top Digital Albums (U.S.) and reaching platinum status (1 million copies sold). In September of that year, Apple again gave Feist a swift and helpful kick up the charts (she reached #8 on the Billboard Top 100) by featuring her video and song for "1 2 3 4" in a third generation iPod Nano commercial, which subsequently aired approximately 7 GAZILLION TIMES every hour on every station.

"1 2 3 4" has helped drive Feist and Apple to new heights, and she should be considered a saving grace of hope and goodness for the iTMS. Sadly, as I made clear in Part I, I haven't had much to celebrate from iTMS very often. "One Evening" is a standout 'Single of the Week,' and I cannot honestly say that I can remember one other that I've downloaded since, though I know I often have (usually ending in disappointment). Still, though, in the words of Leslie Feist herself, "the pleasure was mine."