Review of Antigone Rising's "Whiskey & Wine Vol. II"

I posted this review on the Sputnik Music website earlier this morning.

Review Summary: "It's a drive up a hill it's a drink on a porch/It's the colors and shapes of old victorian doors/It takes a village and what's mine is yours/And we don't need reminding/Not in my town"

Doubtlessly many Sputnik Music readers have never heard of this group. That's unfortunate, as Antigone Rising is a talented band with powerful vocal harmonies, strong songwriting skills and a following that has been built through many years of hard work and constant touring. The core of the band has always been two sisters from Long Island, NY, Cathy and Kristen Henderson. They first achieved renown in 1998 when they won a contest run by Levi's Jeans to earn a spot on the stage of Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair. In 2005, they became the first artists to be promoted in Starbuck's Hear Music Series, selling 450,000 copies of a live album, From the Ground Up, that was exclusively sold in Starbucks stores across the country. The band has a particularly strong following among the LGBT community (and Kristen Henderson has penned a very successful memoir about her marriage to her partner, Sarah Kate Ellis-Henderson, entitled Times Two, Two Women in Love and the Happy Family They Made), and also a strong country music following (with a number of successful videos that have aired on CMT). In their current lineup, their music has evolved to a point where I'd describe them as sounding like an all-female version of The Eagles.

The band has had a number of different lead singers over the years, but with no disrespect meant towards any of their previous vocalists, I'd have to say that their current one, Nini Camps, is the strongest they've ever had. Her voice is not only powerful, but also extremely pleasing. Her first studio album with the band was the excellent 2011 LP 23 Red, followed by the Whiskey & Wine Vol. I EP in 2014. Whiskey & Wine Vol. 2, their most recent recording, was released in 2015.

There are five songs on the EP, and while three of them are in the decent-to-good range, the other two are sublime. "Weed & Wine" is an inoffensive number (unless you're offended by weed, drinking or backseat hanky-panky), but it's a fairly mundane "let's get high and fool around" kind of song, and for me, it's the least interesting song on the album. "Game Changer", the EP's first number, is better. It's based on the true story of a Texas high school girl who successfully fought her school for the right to have her senior "superlative" photo taken showing her holding up a copy of an issue of Time magazine that featured a cover of Kristen Henderson and Sarah Kate Ellis-Henderson in their fight against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). It's a gung-ho song, praising the teen as a "game changer" because she was willing to fight for what she believed in. Finally, "I See You", the best song among the first three tracks of Whiskey & Wine Vol. II, is a basic love song that Camps and Kristen Henderson co-wrote with Kristen Hall, one of the founding members of the hugely popular country music band Sugarland.

Now we come to the two songs that take this EP to a whole different level. "Last Time", the last song on the album, is a powerful country-style breakup song. It's essentially a reaction by the song's protagonist to an argument she's just had with her lover. It seems that her significant other was just caught (and not for the first time) checking out another women, and when confronted about it, compounded her offense by brushing the accusation off, turning her back and just walking away. And this woman (the singer) is pissed about it. Country music, and music in general, is awash with songs where someone threatens to leave their lover, but you just know they're going to wimp out and come crawling back. That's not the case here. "Take a good look, look at my face" she practically spits, "Cause this will be the last time/You ever walk away". The song is as potent an ode to regaining one's self respect by ending a poisonous relationship as I've ever heard, and on most albums, this would be the best song. But not here. Because it gets better.

I don't consider myself an overly sentimental person. Cloying movies like The Sound of Music send me running for the bathroom clutching my stomach, and I generally don't do wholesome. But sometimes, if something is sincere, simple, and doesn't overdo it, it can touch even this sheet metal heart. Such is the case with "My Town", my #1 song of the year for 2015. It's a cycle-of-life song co-written by Camps, Kristen Henderson and popular country songwriter and folk singer Lori McKenna. "My Town" is portrayed on the AR website as having been inspired by the town and people where Camps and Henderson currently live, which they describe as "a community coming together in the face of adversity". And it's heart-achingly beautiful.

The song paints the picture of a beach town winding down after the summer, as the "days are getting shorter". There's a pretty little church, and down the block, a honky-tonk bar with a jukebox playing, because, as the singer discloses, "there's something here for saints, and for sinners like me". The song is quiet and straightforward, carried mostly by the vocals and some appealing acoustic guitar. The singer explains to us that "it's not just the memories of those that I've known/Or the ghosts of the lovers I've had" that always bring her back. There's a community here, and a sense of people helping one another. "In my town/We give second chances/We're hopeless romantics like that." By the last verse, the warm weather is coming again, the beach sign has a fresh coat of paint, and once again "days are getting longer". There's nothing fancy about the song; it's not showy or lushly orchestrated. It's just plainspoken and genuine. If ever there was an example of how less can be more, this song is it.

Antigone Rising doesn't tour as much as they used to, but you can still catch them live from time to time, especially on the East Coast of the United States. If you have any fondness for music in the folk/country rock vein, I'd suggest you give them a listen. Whiskey & Wine Vol. II would be a fine place to start.



Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Review of Blondie's "Plastic Letters"

I posted this review a short while ago on the Sputnik Music website.

Review Summary: On this album, Deborah Harry play-acts an assortment of roles as her band hits you with a dizzying array of mostly short songs in a variety of speeds and styles.

Welcome to another entry in my continuing series, "I Can't Believe This Album Didn't Have a Review on Sputnik". Today's entry is the sophomore album by the chic New York punk/new wave band Blondie, 1978's Plastic Letters. This album demonstrated that the band had grown considerably since their 1976 debut album Blondie, both artistically and commercially; landed Blondie on the album charts for the first time, coming in at #72 on the U.S. Billboard charts and at an impressive #10 on the British charts; and set the stage for the band's third album released later in the year, Parallel Lines, which would launch Blondie into the upper strata of pop rock bands. All of which is why ... say it with me ... "I can't believe this album didn't have a review on the Sputnik!" Well now it does.

Plastic Letters is a historically important album. It was Blondie's first original release on Chrysalis Records (who had also re-released the Blondie album when the band first signed to the label), and it's the album that really broke the band in Europe (although they were still mostly a cult favorite in the U.S.). More importantly, though, it's a truly excellent album. It shows Blondie and their charismatic lead singer Deborah Harry, if not quite at the height of their powers, at least heading in that direction very swiftly. It's creative. It has energy. It has a sense of fun. It has a terrific mix of styles, and includes fast, slow and mid-tempo songs, almost all of which are three minutes or shorter (so they hit you and they're gone and on to next one before you even know what happened). In particular, the album has the youthful exuberance of a band on the way up. If I compare it to Eat to the Beat or Autoamerican, the two albums that Blondie released directly after Parallel Lines changed their (and our) world, I'd say that while both of those are good albums, there's a self-consciousness on them that doesn't exist on Plastic Letters. If you listen to each of those LPs, you get the sense that Blondie was very aware they had something big to live up to after the mind-bending success of Parallel Lines and its monster hit single "Heart of Glass". On Plastic Letters, they were just having fun.

There were two singles released from the Plastic Letters album. The first, "Denis", was a cover of a 1963 single by Randy and the Rainbows called "Denise", and unsurprisingly, it sounds like an old-style pop song. The song didn't chart in the U.S., but it hit #2 in the UK. (It's worth noting here that with the exception of the "Heart of Glass" single, throughout their career, Blondie has always had more success on the British charts than they have in their native America). Blondie followed this up by releasing the musical tale of a girl and her supernatural boyfriend "(I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear", written by bass player Gary Valentine, who had left the band before Plastic Letters was recorded (Chris Stein plays guitar and bass on the album). "Presence" wasn't even released as a single in the U.S., but it hit #10 in the UK and charted in a few other European countries as well. Both singles have remained popular with Blondie fans over the years, and have been re-released on a number of the band's Greatest Hits LPs. (In fact, a remix of "Denis" was released as a single ten years later from the group's Once More Into the Bleach compilation, and it charted again in Britain and a few other countries).

As a whole, Plastic Letters is a much more consistent album than Blondie's previous effort, which had some excellent tracks but also had its share of throwaway songs. There's precious little filler here, as the record jumps from one amusing number to another. So we hear Harry play a spy (''Contact in Red Square"), a sniper victim ("Youth Nabbed as Sniper"), and the victim of a plane crash in the Bermuda Triangle ("Bermuda Triangle Blues (Flight 45)"). We also hear her as a woman picking up a pretty boy-toy for a one-night stand ("No Imagination"), and a woman who finds a new lover at a pier, only to abandon him when his excessive sun-tan oil causes him to slide into the water and drown ("Love at the Pier"). We have fast numbers ("I'm on E" and "I Didn't Have the Nerve to Say No") and slow numbers ("Cautious Lip"), and all shades in between. We even have an ode to a maniac who kidnaps a bratty 13-year-old rich girl for the ransom money ("Kidnapper"). The album takes us so many places, it's a little dizzying. And with the possible exception of the two singles, these are all songs that haven't been played to death on the radio, so that Plastic Letters still feels fresh today.

As you might expect, given the varied subject matter of the songs, Harry's vocals are playful throughout. She doesn't so much sing songs as she acts out a breathtaking array of roles, sometimes talking as much as singing, sometimes "doo-be-do-ing" in the manner of a '60s girl-group singer, and even breaking into French for a couple of verses of "Denis". She's a star in the making here, and listening to her performance, you can hear how she became a cultural icon.

Plastic Letters was the first Blondie album I ever bought. It has always been and remains one of my favorite Blondie albums, with Blondie being one of my favorite bands. Which is why I couldn't believe it didn't have a review on Sputnik.


Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Review of The Who's "Magic Bus: The Who on Tour"

I posted this review earlier this morning on the Sputnik Music website.

Review Summary: "I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it ..." "You can't have it!"

Cards on the table here -- I consider The Who to be the greatest band in the history of rock and roll. I'm not saying they're my favorite band. Some days they are, other days it might be Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Yes, or even The Good Rats. But looking at it as objectively as I can, when you consider their achievements -- the genius writing of Pete Townshend (and I don't use that word loosely); the musical expertise of each of the band's members; the chemistry of the band; their accomplishments as a live band; and their studio album output (they have at least three albums that are ranked among rock's all-time greatest -- hell, they're the only band on my Sputnik ratings list to have three albums rated 5's, and I've only awarded 14 albums a 5 rating over 50 years of music) -- I think you can see why I say this. All of this is a huge disclaimer, of sorts. I want you to understand where I'm coming from, so if you're one of those who doesn't like this band, or who doesn't share my opinion of their greatness, you're going to want to knock at least a star or so off my rating.

I opted to review Magic Bus: The Who on Tour for three reasons: 1) Feeling as I do about The Who, I really wanted to review a Who album; 2) Since I usually only review albums that don't have a full review posted on Sputnik, this was as close to a Who studio album as I could get. Technically, it's a compilation album, but for those of us who live in the States, it served the function of being The Who's fourth studio album (more on that later); and 3) I've been reviewing some serious, somber stuff lately -- a bunch of progressive rock, including Rick Wakeman's Myth and Legends of King Arthur album, and some dark wave and electronic ambient LPs (Lycia's Estrella and Tangerine Dream's Firestarter soundtrack) -- all good-to-great albums, but none of them exactly chuckle fests. While The Who also had their share of serious and thoughtful albums, Magic Bus isn't one of them, making this a welcome break in mood for me.

First things first -- in spite of the title Magic Bus: The Who on Tour, this isn't a live album. I guess some bright light in the offices of Decca Records (who's probably either passed away by now or is at least long past his solid food days) took the whole "bus" idea and decided to run with it, never imagining that almost 50 years later, I'd be writing a review complaining about how he confused people. As I said earlier, it's technically considered a compilation album. The Who never went into the studio to record these particular tracks together. In fact, when they did the photo shoot for the album cover, the band never even knew that's why the record company had ordered the shots in the first place. When the album was released, they were pissed, and Townshend in particular frequently expressed his dislike for this album. Decca compiled it to deal with a couple of problems: first that it had been a year or so since the release of The Who Sell Out and they wanted to sell some records and keep the band's name out there, and second, because they had a trio of singles that were reasonably successful in the U.S. that had never been released on albums and weren't otherwise scheduled to be. So they pulled together some other songs that hadn't been released in America, filled it out with a few songs they repeated from previous studio albums, and abracadabra! Before you knew it, they had cobbled together an album. So for Who enthusiasts in the United States, this was as close to a studio album after The Who Sell Out and before the release of Tommy as they were going to get.

I don't know why Decca chose the songs they did. Six of the eleven songs were obvious: the three singles, and their corresponding B-sides ("Call Me Lightning", "Pictures of Lily" and "Magic Bus" with "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", "Doctor, Doctor" and "Someone's Coming"). "Disguises" and "Bucket T" had been released on the British EP Ready Steady Who but never in the States. As for why they slapped on "Run Run Run", one of the Who's least inspired songs from the Happy Jack album or "I Can't Reach You" and "Our Love Was, Is" (which are at least better songs) from The Who Sell Out, I'll never know. There were a number of earlier songs and even some good singles that had never been released on a U.S. album, so go figure. 

Anyway, as you can see, the album is kind of a mishmosh. To make things even worse, seven of the eleven songs on the album were recorded in mono. Only "Magic Bus" and the three songs pulled from previous LPs were stereo recordings. No wonder, then, that The Who weren't pleased with Magic Bus.

Here's the thing, though. Taken on its own terms, the album is kind of fun. Three of the songs on it are Entwistle songs, and feature his bizarre sense of humor. "Bucket T" is a cover of an old Jan and Dean song, and was doubtlessly recorded to please surf music lover Keith Moon. Even most of the Townshend songs are pretty lighthearted and kind of silly. If Magic Bus didn't exist, it wouldn't effect The Who's reputation as a great rock band in the least. But its existence is just a little extra seasoning on the gourmet meal that is the band's recorded output -- you don't really need it, but you're grateful for that little bit of extra flavor. 

The funny thing is, even the singles aren't overwhelming. I wouldn't rate them to be anywhere near as good as such other singles from The Who's pre-Tommy days, as "Substitute" or "The Kids Are Alright", and none of the three were as iconic as "My Generation". "Call Me Lightning" is one of the band's more forgettable songs, and although "Magic Bus" reached #25 on the Billboard charts, it's never been one of my favorites (although I'll admit it's grown on me over the years). "Pictures of Lily", wherein a noble Dad tries to help out his son by giving him some pictures of a long-deceased but hot British dance hall star, is better. And yet, somehow, Magic Bus works as a whole.

My favorite song on the album other than "Lily" is probably Entwistle's "Doctor, Doctor". It's sung from the point of view of a typical hapless Entwistle musical protagonist. This time it's a hypochondriac who believes he has every ailment under the sun, speaking to his beleaguered physician. After recounting a list of his various maladies, he asks "Do you think it's time that I made out my will?/I'll leave everything to you to pay my bill". Again, the Who's legacy might not be built on their John Entwistle-penned songs, but it's certainly enriched by them.

I can't really tell you why I like "Disguises" or "Someone's Coming". The first is a ridiculous Townshend song about a changing teen relationship. Its hero begins by singing "I used to know everything about you", but now his lady friend has changed so much that he has trouble even recognizing her. It's not just that her hair or her figure that have changed, though: "And today I saw you dressed as a flower bed/Last week you had a wig on your head/Directing traffic in the street/And your shoes were too big for your feet". Like I said, ridiculous. "Someone's Coming" is a different sort of tale of a teen relationship where the girl's parents have forbidden her to see the boy, so every day she uses walking the family dog as an excuse to sneak off to spend some time with him. Why the song is written in such a way as to have him explaining these things to her, though, is unclear. Presumably she already knows all of this. As I said, I can't explain why I like either of these songs. But somehow I do. That's kind of the story of this album.

I'm pleased to see that Magical Bus's average rating on Sputnik is 4 out of 5 stars, so there are obviously other fans out there who have enjoyed this album besides me. In spite of the band's displeasure with it, it did well enough in the U.S. that Direct Hits, a similar compilation album with a slightly different set of songs, was released in the UK shortly thereafter. Taken together, these two albums marked the end of the era of The Who as a singles band before the release of Tommy, which made them major stars in the burgeoning album rock/FM radio arena, and helped to open up the world of rock and roll to previously unforeseen possibilities.


Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Review of Rick Wakeman's "The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table"

I posted this review a couple of hours ago on the Sputnik Music site.

Review Summary: "Whoso pulleth out this sword from this stone and anvil is the true-born king of all Britain."

The story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table is the quintessential British legend. At least, that's how it's always seemed to this American, gazing across the pond. It has something for everyone: action, romance, magic, betrayal...and a tragic ending. It's a story about attempting to do something so great and noble that even in failure, the world becomes a better place just because of the effort. In America, supporters of the late President John F. Kennedy called his brief term in office "Camelot" because they believed in the ideals he stood for, even though his life was cut too short to actually accomplish many of them. Similarly, keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman's The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table is, in some ways, the quintessential progressive rock album. It contains all of the pretensions and excess that later caused music fans to turn away from the prog rock genre. It is also magnificent.

Myths was Wakeman's third solo album, if you don't count 1971's Piano Vibrations (and I don't), and also his third concept album. It followed the instrumental work The Six Wives of Henry VIII, which put him on the map as a solo artist, and the hugely successful live album Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which made him such a big star that it became a joke among his Yes bandmates how much better Wakeman was treated by his label A&M Records than the rest of the band was treated by Atlantic. However, as interesting as the story of Henry VIII's wives might be, and as much fantastic and magical imagery there might be in Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth novel, with Myths and Legends, Wakeman had the richest source material of his career.

Wakeman seemed to approach Myths in much the same way he did Journey. He kept the same two lead vocalists, Garry Pickford-Hopkins and Ashley Holt; used both an orchestra and a choir (trading in Journey's London Symphony Orchestra for the New World Orchestra, and keeping the English Chamber Choir for both); and replaced Journey's narrator David Hemmings with a narrator who sounds so much like him to me that it was years before I discovered it was actually Terry Taplin providing the narration for Myths. What he got for his troubles was an album that was highly commercially successful (reaching #2 in the UK and #21 in the U.S.), although not quite as successful as Journey (which had reached #1 in the UK and #2 in the U.S.). Artistically, though, I believe he exceeded both of his previous albums. At its best, The Myths and Legends of King Arthur is transcendent.

There are only seven songs on the album, and I'm mostly going to talk about three of them. Two of them are among the best songs the genre ever produced, but to fully appreciate them, you first have to be familiar with the other one.

The album begins with Taplin's declaration which I've quoted in the review summary above, "Whoso pulleth out this sword...". It then launches into the song "Arthur", which not only serves as the introduction to the story, but also establishes the main musical theme of the work which will be repeated in various forms later on. "Arthur" explains how the young squire Arthur was sent by his master, Sir Kay, to find a sword. He finds the sword Excalibur stuck in a stone, and pulls it out, unaware that by doing so, he has just become the King of Britain.

The music of "Arthur" is powerful and majestic. It establishes right from the beginning that the musical journey you're about to embark on is a grand one. My only criticism is this: it's a little too Gilligan's Island, lyrically, if not musically. What I mean by this is you can easily imagine it as the opening theme to some kind of wacky half-hour television comedy that will be repeated each week, just to remind you of the set-up of the story you're about to watch ("Just sit right back/And you'll hear a tale/A tale of a tiny king ..."). If Monty Python and the Holy Grail had been a weekly sitcom ... well, no, their theme song would have been much sillier, but I think you can see what I mean. "Arthur" is so obviously serving a function, that of setting up the rest of the album, that it detracts just a little from the song itself. 

The song "Guinevere" has no such problem. This track tells the love story of Guinevere and Lancelot, and it's exquisite. "Guinevere" begins with a short and beautiful piano piece that actually sounds like it would have fit perfectly in Six Wives. It then launches into a slow piano bit that is overlaid by a synthesized version of the eight notes from the album's grand theme first established in "Arthur". The song is slow, and a little sad ... the listener knows how things eventually work out for Guinevere and Lancelot, and the music reflects that. Still, it gives you a sense of Guinevere's great beauty ("Golden tresses shining in the air/Spread against the Jasper Sea"), and of Lancelot's passion for her ("All his love he gave her/Fought through quests to save her"). The song can definitely stand on its own merits. But that familiarity with the album's main musical theme just lends it that much more power.

The other truly great song from Myths and Legends is the last one, appropriately titled "The Last Battle". The circumstances under which it was written are worth relating. Wakeman, at age twenty-five, suffered a mild attack. As he recovered in the hospital, his doctor suggested he would need to retire from his musical career if he wanted to live. That night, while still in the hospital, Wakeman decided to ignore his doctor's advice and began writing "The Last Battle." It's no stretch of the imagination to guess that much of the power of the song comes from his own brush with mortality.

It begins with the lyrics "Gone are the days of the knights", and proceeds to tell you how Arthur's reign ended. The song is slow and somber, yet completely majestic. As the Saxons pour into Britain and overwhelm the remaining knights of the round table, Arthur and his son, the traitorous Mordred, see each other on the battlefield and fight to the death. The song mixes the "Gone are the days" theme with the album's main theme, and Taplin narrates the end of the story, beginning (in a moment that still gives me chills) "Sir Hector, Sir Bors, Sir Bladwain and Sir Berboris, the only surviving knights of the round table, ended their days, after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land." He goes on to explain that although the dream was over, many believed Arthur would return someday to save Britain "in the hour of its deadliest danger." He closes his story by recounting that in later years, Arthur's tomb was discovered by the monks of Glastonbury, with a simple inscription "Here lies King Arthur in his tomb, with Guinevere, his wife, in the Isle of Avalon." Pickford-Hopkins and Holt then sing their final "Gone are the days..." chorus, followed by a grand musical ending that includes a series of descending key changes, lofty, full-throated singing by the choir, and Wakeman's synthesizer imitation of the sound of birds crying, before the orchestra reaches a flamboyant finish. It's a stunning piece of music, grandiose but poignant.

The rest of the album is worthwhile also. "Merlyn the Magician" is probably the best known number from the album, but while parts of it are beautiful, there's a comical "Keystone Cops" sounding piece in the middle that taints the song for me. 

After Myths and Legends, Wakeman toned down his ambitions, possibly out of physical necessity given his health issues, or maybe for financial reasons, since both Journey and Myths and Legends cost him a fortune to make and take on tour. Regardless, none of his later solo work ever reached the Gold Album status of Six Wives, Journey and Myths and Legends. Of these three albums, each a progressive rock masterpiece in its own way, I've always loved Myths and Legends best. He reached for the stars on this one, and to me, he largely succeeded.


Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Review of Lycia's "Estrella"

I posted this review earlier this morning on the Sputnik Music website. It's an expanded version of a review I of this album for Good Times Magazine in 1998.

Review Summary: Imagine you could gene splice Stephen King and Clive Barker with John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Imagine just for a moment that you could learn a magic spell so powerful that it would open the gates of hell just a crack so you could hear some of the sounds from within. Or that you could turn your radio to WHLL for Satan's top spins of the week. Imagine you could gene splice Stephen King and Clive Barker with John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Or if imagining that is too much work for you, but you want to achieve the same effect, you could just listen to the album Estrella by the band Lycia.

Lycia (on this album, anyway) is the husband/wife team of Mike Vanportfleet and Tara VanFlower from Superstition, Arizona (I swear this is true). They refer to their style as ethereal goth/dark ambient, which is a pretty accurate description. Originally formed by Vanportfleet in 1988, Lycia managed to create a decent-sized following throughout the U.S., especially after VanFlower joined the band in 1994. Estrella was the third album they released thereafter, following on their 1995 double album The Burning Circle and Then Dust and their 1997 release Cold.

Estrella is an album of great somber beauty. It perfectly combines Vanportfleet's dark musical sensibilities with VanFlower's brighter lyrics and vocal style. The songs are all slow and minimalistic, instrumentally sparse but full of atmosphere. They're like sound paintings of scenes from some strange dimension, both gloomy and alluring, drawing you in and distressing you in equal measures. There are several instrumental tracks, notably the first and last songs on the album, "Clouds in the Southern Sky" and "Distant Fading Star". Throughout the rest of the album, Vanportfleet and VanFlower trade vocals. His are whispered, and deliberately barely audible, as though his throat has been scorched by hellfire. However, it is on the tracks where VanFlower sings that the album really takes off. Her voice is lovely and ethereal, but there's more to it than that. There's something playful about her vocals, in a dangerous kind of way, like the demons in one of the Evil Dead films who taunt Bruce Campbell's Ash character, singing "I'll swallow your so-ul! I'll swallow your so-ul!"

VanFlower shines brightly on tracks like the nightmarish "El Diablo", singing lyrics such as "See the serpent twine/Wrapped around her spine/Coils inside her mind/Bleeds her eyes so blind", and on the wistful "Silver Sliver", where her words are more stream-of-consciousness, and her delivery more gentle, as she plays off of Vanportfleet's high single guitar notes and a recurring 3-note piano chorus. Then there is the song entitled "The Canal", where her wordless vocalizing is as disturbing as it is effective.

The highlight of the album, however, is the stunningly beautiful title track "Estrella". It begins with a few lines of slow percussion which lead into piano and synthetic string sounds for several measures. Vanportfleet's deliberate guitar then kicks in, followed by some of VanFlower's most unearthly vocal work. "You/Peach lips, rose hips/Wrapped around/You", she begins. Particularly effective are her high-pitched "La la la la"'s on the chorus. If you analyze the lyrics carefully, I think it's just a simple love/lust song, but somehow, it sounds like something so much more than that, like it's happening on some kind of higher (but vaguely ominous) plain. For me, this is undoubtedly the finest song they ever recorded.

On the whole, I would rate Estrella as Lycia's best album. They released four full-length studio albums after it, as well as two EPs and a couple of compilation albums, but Estrella was their zenith, at least so far. If slow, doleful synthesizer music and restrained electric guitar, simultaneously lightened yet made more threatening by otherworldly female vocals, is something you think you might enjoy, chances are high you'll love this album.


Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Top 20 Songs of 2016, Part 2

I didn't expect it to take a week for me to get back to posting this list, but suddenly, for better and for worse, my job has exploded. So let's get back into it.


10. Lights - "Follow You Down"

Lights is the performing name (and apparently now, the legal name) of a female electropop musician from Canada. This song come from her album Midnight Machines, which is mostly just an acoustic version of her album from last year, Little Machines. "Follow You Down" is one of only two new songs on the album, but it's a good one, very quiet, very pretty. I really don't have much else to say about it.


9. White Lung - "Below"

White Lung is a female-fronted Canadian punk rock band from Vancouver, British Columbia. The song comes from Paradise, their fourth studio album, and by far their best. "Below" is pretty much the ballad of the album, on which they reach emotional depths I didn't previously realize they were capable of. Pretty good year for Canada. They made this list twice.


8. Kristin Kontrol - "X-Communicate"

Kristin Kontrol, aka Kristin Welchez is also Dee Dee, the lead singer of the California indie rock band Dum Dum Girls. Kontrol has since moved to New York and released this solo project. This album tends more towards danceable synth-pop than her work with the Dum Dums. I'm only so-so on the album as a whole, but there's no question that this is an excellent track.


7. Blink-182 - "San Diego"

There's a lot to like on Blink-182's California album, and this song is at the top of heap. It's a lost love song, with some powerful vocal harmonies on the chorus, as the singer looks back with regret on a happier time before things fell apart, when he and his love bought a one-way ticket to San Diego to see a Cure concert. A lot of longtime Blink fans have had a hard time getting into this album, but as more of a casual fan of the band, I enjoyed it. Especially this song.


6. Mother Feather - "Beach House"

Mother Feather is a glam rock band from New York City. Although I enjoyed their self-titled debut album, this, their most atypical song, is my favorite on the album. It's a musical version of many a city dweller's fantasy, namely to own a house on the beach to which to escape. But unlike most people, this band is willing to work for it: "But I want the beach house/I wanna build it with my bare hands/Work until I wear out/Sleepover with my best friends." I'm not even a beach person, but they make it sound soooo good.


5. Against the Current - "Young & Relentless"

As you know if you read my Top 10 Albums list, I really liked this Poughkeepsie band's LP debut album a lot. This kind of seems like it might be the group's theme song. They're this very young band, full of energy, and somehow their lyrics just capture that fast-paced lifestyle that the young often lead: "We could be anyplace, anytime, in any moment/It's a race to the line". I myself  need a nap just thinking about it.


4. Gwen Stefani - "Rare"

This is a pure pop song, my favorite of the year. In a world full of songs about love gone wrong, this is one about love gone right, as Stefani tells her man "You're rare/And I'm loving every second of it, don't you know/You're rare/And only a stupid girl would let it go." The album, This Is What the Truth Feels Like, hit #1 on the Billboard charts, but for some reason, they didn't release this as a single. Maybe they still will.


3. Twenty One Pilots - "Heathens"

This is one of those songs that grabbed me at first hearing. It was a natural fit for the Suicide Squad film, a movie where the heroes are a bunch of misfit super villains, so it's no surprise this was part of the soundtrack of that film. It's an ode to finding beauty in the damaged and downtrodden of society. The last line says it all: "It looks like you might be one of us."


2. 888 - "Critical Mistakes"

888 is an alternative electro band from Denver, CO. Like "Heathens", this song grabbed me at first listen. And also like "Heathens", this song has a great video that goes along with it, featuring people who messed up their lives by making terrible mistakes like murdering someone or accidentally killing someone while drunk driving, being confronted by the people whose lives they have damaged, and trying to find a way to live with the things they've done. As I said in my intro to Part 1 of this list, I actually cheated on my own rules with this song and bought the EP as a download because a hard copy wasn't available. The song was worth it. For the last few months I struggled to decide if this song or the next would be my #1.


1. Bayside - "Mary"

In the end, though, I guess it's no shock that in a close call, I leaned a little in the direction of Bayside, one of my favorite bands. "Mary" is a little different for a Bayside song. To my ears, it sounds more like classic rock than their usual pop punk. It's an ode to a lost friend (or fan), with a very danceable chorus. I've searched the Internet in vain to find who the actual Mary might have been to lead singer/songwriter Anthony Raneri, but in the end, I guess it's enough just to enjoy the song. "So go on, work all your angles out/Get a plan together, get your demons out/'Cause Mary, the world wants to bring you down/But don't you let them."


So that's it for this year's Top 20 Songs list. I hope you liked the list, and that maybe you enjoyed some of these songs too.

Palaye Royale, William Control and Andy Black

You guys already saw that the Andy Black solo album was one of my favorite albums of the year. So when I learned that Black was coming to play at a local venue, 89 North in Patchogue, I immediately bought tickets. Denise decided to pass, but I got tickets for myself, my daughter (who is a huge fan of Black and of his band The Black Veil Brides), and my son. As it turned out, my son had a fever all week, so I wound up taking my daughter and her friend.

There were two things that made this show a little iffy for me. One was that the venue wasn't selling reserve seating, and as I had never been to a show there before, I didn't know what to expect. Their website said that they had some seating at tables in the upstairs section, on a first-come first-served basis. It also said the show was for people 16yo and over, and no one without I.D. would be admitted. Now I'm not at a point in life where I can stand through even one set of music, let along three, so finding a chair was a deal breaker. If I didn't get there early enough to get one, I'd have to go home and pick up the girls after the show.

The second thing that left things a little up in the air was that we got hit with a major snowstorm Thursday night. My wife and I took a ride out this morning in her car, which has 4-wheel drive. Now, our block was great. I'm pretty sure the reason our block was great is that I have either an ex-Congressman or his brother living down my block by the water. So whenever it snows, we get plowed at least twice an hour. The rest of Suffolk could be an icy wasteland, but politics is politics, so my block is always clean. Is it corrupt? Totally. But it's one of the few corrupt things in life that I actually benefit from instead of pay for, so I say "God Bless Mr. xxx." (I'm not giving him up for anything). Anyway, so my block was great, Route 112 was great, but everything else, including Montauk Hwy. was a frozen tundra. And since my car handles crappy in the snow (crappily?), I was a little nervous about the driving, even though the venue is close by.

Luckily, we got there OK. When we did, we found a line of mostly teens that ran down the block while they froze their butts off in the snow while people's I.D.'s were checked. As we got closer, I discovered that part of the reason the line took so long was that there were some vicious Mom's going insane because apparently they didn't bother to read the website, so they either didn't bring I.D. for their kids, or they brought school I.D.'s which weren't being accepted. There was one particularly abusive Mom at the front, giving the doormen hell, threatening to sue, etc. I wanted to yell "Move it! You're holding up the line!" And I would have, too, except that I'm pretty sure she would have killed me in a minute.

Once we got inside, I discovered that the venue wasn't what I pictured at all. When they said "upstairs", I was expecting a balcony, like they have at The Paramount in Huntington or The Space in Westbury. Instead "upstairs" meant up two stairs, or maybe three. It was sort of like the set-up of the Old Downtown in Farmingdale, as far as this V.I.P. section went, except that the rest of the club was like half the size.

Don't get me wrong, it's actually a very nice club, but tiny for a national act. For a local band, it's very upscale. Even for a local band with something of a national following, like Nine Days, for example, it's not bad (they did a CD Party for their Snapshots CD there last year). Yes, it would be alittle small, but it's their hometown and it's a nice, respectable place to play in front of family and your earliest fans. But for a national act like Andy Black, who sings at much larger venues with The Black Veil Brides, I would think it had to be depressing. I mean, picture it -- Andy Black's tour bus drives down Main St. in Patchogue. They sight the marquee for the Patchogue Theater, and Black says "Hey, not a bad sized venue! All right!" Then the bus turns the corner of Ocean Ave. and stops in front of 89 North, and he's like "wtf!!?" So we were joking for the whole early part of the night about poor Andy's reaction -- they had to take away his belt and shoelaces. They had to post extra security outside his dressing room to keep him from fleeing the building. Or was that Andy we spied in front of The Patchogue Theater as we drove up trying to score some heroin just to drag himself through the show that night?

Anyway, when we entered, I discovered the girls couldn't come "upstairs" with me, because that section is for 21 and older. (That was set up as the only area where the alcohol was for this show). But we were able to score some bar stools in the back of the main floor anyway, so all was well. I bought my daughter a shirt, and learned from the merch guy that the club had just caved on their I.D. policy -- apparently those Moms from hell frightened them as much as they did me, so they decided to let everybody in after all.

The first set was by a 5-piece band called Palaye Royale. They were energetic, and the crowd (which numbered maybe 150 or so, about 75% of them under-21-yo females) seemed to like them OK. I have to hand it to the club, the sound was very good. The band didn't really do anything for me. They did a pretty basic rock set, and although they only played 5 songs, they used one of those songs to do a cover of My Chemical Romance's "Teenagers". (And it was their best song). On the last song, the lead singer decided he had to whip off his shirt and display a heroin chic physique, which the teenyboppers seemed to like, but I could have easily lived without. After the set, the little 16yo's lined up for hugs and selfies from this sweaty shirtless would-be rock god.

Somewhere in between sets, a very drunk Mom fell down and hit the floor hard. "Mom down! Mom down!" I thought. Security helped her up and examined her carefully, and at some point when I wasn't looking, they must of taken her out of there.

Next up was William Control, an electronica band that is apparently a side project for Aiden's lead singer wiL Francis. The guy hit the stage dressed all in black with dark sunglasses looking for all the world (as my daughter pointed out) like the obnoxious version of Peter Parker (Toby McGuire) after he'd been dosed by Venom in Spider-Man 3.

The band, in this case, consisted of the lead singer, a drummer, and two guys programming laptops, one of whom also played keyboards. (I'm pretty sure I saw the other computer guy holding some kind of guitar at one point, but just as I looked up, he put it down, so I couldn't even tell you if it was a regular guitar or a bass). The lead singer took repeated dramatic poses, and spent much of the set begging the crowd to "Make some fucking noise!" etc. Truth was, I don't think his set was going over badly at all, but he seemed to feel like it was, at one pleading "I know you guys came out here to see Andy, but you understand he has to have some kind of opening act, right? He can't just come out here and play for 3 hours."

Anyway, as douchey as he looked, and as annoying as his personality was, here's the thing -- he and the band were actually very good, enough so that I bought a CD afterwards (even though was kind of afraid that the merch girl was going to laugh at me, like, "Poor old guy! He still thinks they make CDs".) The lead singer had a low and very rich voice, and the electronic songs were varied and interesting, even though I was completely unfamiliar with them. They  played a full set of maybe 9 songs, then left the stage, as the crew started setting up for the main attraction.

Finally the Springsteen music played between sets (which I thought it was an odd choice for this particular show, but whatever) shut off, and Andy Black hit the stage. There were a couple of minor disappointments -- 1) Black was playing with only a guitarist and a drummer plus himself, so a lot of the music, including the keyboards and synthesizers, the bass, and most of the backing vocals were canned; and 2) While the sound was excellent for the first two bands, during Black's set, his vocals were too low in the mix for most of the night, especially when he sang in his lower register, which was often.

Nevertheless, it was a very enjoyable show, with Black playing all of his best songs from his excellent solo album The Shadow Side, including "Stay Alive" (my favorite), "Ribcage", "Put the Gun Down", "Homecoming King" and "Beautiful Pain", plus a cover of Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself". He did his single "We Don't Have to Dance" as the encore. Between songs, he riffed on various subjects, and it turns out he actually has a really funny sense of humor. Far from appearing suicidal, he actually seemed to be enjoying himself (and the crowd was doing the same). After the show, both my daughter and her friend said they had had a good time, and that's never a guarantee -- the last show I took her to, my daughter sat stony faced through 3 pretty decent bands at the Paramount before actually enjoying herself a little for Sleeping With Sirens. So El Exelenti approved, we made it home safely through the ice, and all was well with the world. And next time, I know what to expect from 89 North.