Category Archives: Music (Re)Views

When I find an album, song or artist that strikes my interest. Or at least gets my attention.

Attention Data

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Nick Bradbury has written about attention data on his blog several times. What I see as an interesting use of attention data (that fortunately costs you some money. Yes, fortunately. You get 10 hours free to try it out.) is the site Pandora.com. While it may sound like you would be opening up a world of trouble by clicking on that link, I challenge you to check it out. You can type in artist names and Pandora will then start selecting songs that might fit your taste. What’s interesting is that you can rate the songs (click on the song in the player and choose from the popup whether or not you like it) and then they are able to take a list of songs that you’ve liked and can then compile a list of songs that you might like based on your attention data. I am amazed at the value of this sort of attention data.

Pandora’s musical evaluation of the songs is based on a complicated grid of characteristics that basically rank each song by each artist that has been rated by their group of music evaluators by various qualities so that if you’re a big fan of certain songs with various characteristics you’ll most likely get other songs with similar characteristics. Other bands with songs that sound similar will be brought in so that you can be introduced to new music. Sure, you could listen to the radio and hope that the record labels happen to be promoting the next thing that isn’t just a cookie cutter cut out of other music but this is quite amazingly good at nailing my musical preferences. As a former music department manager I can attest to the challenge of doing this manually. A database of music is just amazing in this context.

So, you pay them to use your attention data to be exposed to quality (ok, that’s a bit subjective) music, and then they learn from you to help play what you like but also they can take your attention data and discover what various tastes are and can give even better suggestions to other users.

Brilliant.

Thanks to Robin for pointing me to Pandora.

Grover Levy: Wrestling Angels

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There is an album in my collection that I love. I think its one of the best Christian albums from the 90’s. When I first heard it I wasn’t impressed with the musical style because I was looking for Nirvana (the band, not the spiritual place). However, now that I’ve matured and widened my musical tastes I have to say that this album rocks. Sell a kidney, appendix or some of your lesser quality albums and find this one to buy used online. The album is out of print but is worth owning.

This album has lyrics that are so well thought out. There are polemics to encourage you to not fit into the status quo of Christendom, but also one song that stands out: “If You Want to Lead Me To Jesus” is just brilliant. Its about the Christian’s attitude towards evangelism. I have to confess that I often have thought that Christianity has become so generic in popular 1st world culture that there is no compelling reason for people to even look at it as a viable solution to the problem of sin and as a source of eternal purpose. This song is a kick in the shins to get you to think – check out lyrics like this:
(verse)
Your Message is clear
you sound so sincere
your intentions are good:
forgieveness of sin
life without end
I’d believe it if I could
But I’ve watched from afar
and I’ve seen how you are
with the people around
And I don’t see a trace
of the love and the grace
you talk so much about

(chorus)
If you want to lead me to Jesus
you better find a better way
‘Cause your life is speaking so loud
I can’t even hear a word you say

If winning the duel is your golden rul
no matter the cost
then you may win the day
but the price you pay
is the greater war that’s lost
you would not believe
how different it seems
from the outside looking in
but the louder you shout
the more I tune out
and the less I am convinced
(bridge)
I want to believe but I’m gonna need you to work with me here
word with me here, work with me here

Mark Townsend, a brilliant guitarist and musician in his own right, plays guitars on this and added a quality influence to the music. You can’t lose if you pick this album up, its just about my favorite album of the 90’s (in hindsight).  If you like the wit of Steve Taylor… then this album is for you.

Review: Switchfoot – Nothing is Sound

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If you love rock and roll music, and don’t mind Christian undertones (this is not your overtly Christian album, in case saying Jesus 5 or more times is a criteria for your album purchasing rules) then this album is definitely a contender. I secretly bought the album about a week ago on iTunes, and then got it as a present in the CD form yesterday. I’ve listened to it about 8 times now and can confidently say that this is still Switchfoot, and that they’ve grown some musically. One thing that strikes me about this album is that each new album that Jon Foreman (frontman and one of the guitar players) writes has more emotional passion in it. I can’t think of another lyricist that has grabbed me from album one and held me close to his emotions like Jon. There is great guitar work here but you can tell that the band has been touring hard and learned about playing emotionally edgy, passionate rock and roll.

The song “Stars” is surely one of the songs that will get stuck in your heads, but I like every song on the disc with the exception of the last ‘bonus’ track (this is the Target special edition CD) “Good Night Punk.” Good Night Punk is definitely a demo song and it doesn’t fit the album’s style at all. Happy is a Yuppie word is where the album’s title comes from, its a powerful song about where your priorities and values come from. If you’re looking for happiness in stuff, cultural exceptance or any other place besides God, then you’re looking in the wrong place. “Politicians” is about… politicians and how we may have patriotic notions for our nation but that doesn’t mean that we blindly follow our political leaders or that by not supporting some of them we are not being anti-patriotic. Some politicains are scummy 🙂 All the songs are at least ‘good’ but the ones I pointed out should get (or not get) attention because they’re strong and will most likely get radio airplay.

The CD has Digital Right Management (DRM) software built into it so that on Windows you have to do a dance to get the songs into MP3 format, but on the Mac (yeah Apple!) you just insert the disc and tell it to rip the MP3s. Ironically the bass player and background vocalist, Tim Foreman (brother of Jon), posted on the Sony forums how to get around the DRM stuff on Windows 🙂 This disc is worth owning if you are wondering if DRM should be an issue.

I am not comfortable ranking this album among the other Switchfoot albums yet because frankly, they grow on me as I discover little nuances, harmonies and variation in instrumentation in their albums. Jon is creatively genious and every time I see Switchfoot (3 times so far) I’m impressed by their performance – I’m glad they came around for fifths 🙂

Also, the DRM has been handled by Sony. You’ll need to go to Sony’s site and request a replacement.

All Things To All Men

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When I was in seminary I met a guy named Ezra Boggs. He happened to know more about various musicians than me, and he was into the local indy scene. I was humbled by this since it seemed that lots of folks were ignorant of it and he new way more than me. I was also humbled by his attitude of being an instrument or the living of Christ out for all men to see. I bought his band Not Called Common‘s CD “Love Songs for My Enemies” on iTunes today. The lyrics are intense, though the vocals are a little hard to pickup in some of the mixes.

Either way, read this article: All Things To All Men that Ezra wrote. It caused me to sit with a slight tear in my eye as I humbly realized that God works outside of my world in a bigger way than I’ll ever imagine.

Amen.

They Might Be Giants do the ABC’s

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If you have a child, children or a well pampered puppy then you probably have have enough kids CD’s that you feel like a chump for having bought them all. At our house we’ve got every single Veggie Tales CD they’ve made as well as several other ‘generic’ kids CD’s that makes us want to barf (the generic CD’s, not the Veggie Tales). We’ve listened to all of them many, many, many times and often find ourselves singing them when we’re away from the car. It used to be songs from other bands that we heard but now kids songs play in constant rotation in our mental jukebox. We’re nearly loopy from the loops of the CDs.

We’ve added another CD to our collection though which has been a nice reprieve from the repetition (for a short while). They Might Be Giants’ kids CD Here Come the ABC’s. It’s the same They Might Be Giants that a few of you might know, but with lyrics that are safe for most children and at least 1/3 domesticated, overly pampered, puppies. I will warn you though that you might get ‘E eats everything’ stuck in your head and find yourself in the same old rigmarole . However, its the kind of insanity that I can enjoy in regular doses 🙂

If You’re Happy and You Know it: Stomp

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This weekend I’m going to go see Stomp. I haven’t seen them since the 90’s but I’m quite looking forward to it. I believe we’ll be passing Abby off onto someone else because it will be too loud for her, but I’m very excited. Saturday may lead to another day of working on ‘home things’ but Sunday night is going to be intense! I was blown away by the quality of the percussion rhythms and the diversity as well since to most folks drums have about 6 different beats in the music they listen to. Being a drummer in Jr. High and High School I just loved it and I bought the DVD for my collection – I pull it out every once in a while to enjoy the fun.

Have you seen Stomp, and if so, what did you think?

Music to Code To

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If you’re like me (I start out too many posts like this) you find yourself coding to various types of music depending on your mood. When I’m needing that extra drive I tend to code to really intense music like Chevelle (This Type of Thinking Could Do Us In and Wonder What’s Next) or maybe Demon Hunter (Summer of Darkness). I’m pretty sure that most of my readers are not familiar with the latter band, but the first band, Chevelle, is rather trendy now. Not to sound like a snob, but I listened to Chevelle before they were cool… and really wasn’t a big fan of their Point #1 album. It had a few good songs, but the rest were ‘just there’ taking up track space. However, the two albums I just linked to at Amazon.com are really, really good hardcore rock.

What do you code to? If you don’t code, what do you work to? Feel free to leave a link to Amazon.com or some other source for really good workin’ music.

James Clay

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James Clay is a new artist that I just discovered. I read up on him on his site and discoverd that he’s a young whipper-snapper at 22 but with an aged feel because he’s been working since 14. The feel of the album is what I would describe as a combo between Hootie and the Blowfish and Counting Crows. While I don’t agree with all of his theology* I found it generally acceptable and think that most mellow rock listeners will find it pretty darn good. You can hear low quality MP3’s on the site with their integrated flash player.

The strong songs on the album (which I’ve listened through to a couple times) include the first track, I Still Believe, the catchy, rasta tune ‘Send Salvation’ and Franklin Park. The whole album is pretty strong and consistent in sound so I can’t really say, “Just get a couple tunes on iTunes.” It was produced by a personal favorite, Phil Madiera, who is a brilliant musician in his own right. The whole album feels somewhat familiar so I instantly liked the songs and found myself wanting to sing along with the chorus – not a bad place to be for a new artist and new album.

Ratings:

Musicianship
3.5 out of 5 – good mucisianship but nothing insanely amazing – solid mellow rock sound
Lyrics
3 out of 5 – The Lyrics are good, bourne from James’ life lessons and tough dealings of his youth. The guy has been through some crazy stuff
Accessibility to the Masses
4 out of 5 – Like I said above the music sounds enough like it’s a blend of Hootie and the Counting Crows that if you like either of those bands you should be able to like this album pretty quick
Over-all recommendation
4 out of 5 – this album is fun for the most part with a few catchy tunes that will get folks tapping toes or singing along. People in passing cars will most likely look at you funny as they see you singing along.

*I find that most theology in the ‘Christian Music Scene’ is at least different from what I find in scripture. Sometimes it’s from rhyme schemes, sometimes its from actually having bad or questionable theology.