Loane

Loane is a French singer/songwriter and pianist who made her album debut in 2008 on Virgin Music France. Born Loane Rathier and hailing from Paris, she began learning to play piano at a young age and, in later years, performed with numerous groups before embarking on a solo career as a singer/songwriter. Upon signing a recording contract with Virgin Music France, she collaborated with producers Fabrice Dumont and Frédéric Fortuny on her full-length album debut, Jamais Seule (2008). Featuring the title track as its promotional single, Jamais Seule reached number 128 on the French albums chart.

~ Jason Birchmeier, All Music Guide



Here's my fan video for Wilco's most baroque-like track off the new album - "Deeper Down".




Farrah and the Partridge Family

A 23-year-old Farrah appeared in the 1970 Partridge Family episode, “The Sound of Money.” She played a young woman hired to beguile a man, a natural fit for the natural beauty. (from the blog "Daily Beast")

God Help The Girl

God Help the Girl is a musical film due to be shot in 2010, written by Stuart Murdoch, frontman of Scottish indie pop band Belle & Sebastian. The film will feature new songs written by Murdoch, along with two Belle & Sebastian songs "Funny Little Frog", which reached #10 in the U.K. charts in 2006 and "Act of the Apostle", as well as a number from Stevie Jackson. Murdoch held open auditions in which members of the public could send in videos or audio clips of themselves singing for a chance to sing on the God Help the Girl soundtrack, which was recorded in 2008. The LP features lead vocals by newcomer Catherine Ireton, and guest vocals from Asya, lead singer of the Seattle teenage indie band Smoosh and Neil Hannon from the Divine Comedy. Also featured are contest winners Brittany Stallings and Dina Bankole, as well as Celia Garcia and Alex Klobouk.






The God Help the Girl soundtrack will be released on 23 June on Matador Records in North America, and on 22 June on Rough Trade Records in Europe. The first single 'Come Monday Night' was released on 11 May.




"Girl singer needed for autumnal recording project," the ad in the paper said. "Autumnal," of course, being the Queen's-- and the critics'-- preferred English for, uh, "fall-like." You know that song where, when people talk about the fall, Jens Lekman thinks they're talking about Mark E. Smith? Stuart Murdoch probably thinks they're talking about the Garden of Eden.

After all, the main character in God Help the Girl-- a new album of songs from the Belle and Sebastian singer/songwriter's planned musical-film project-- is called Eve. She's voiced angelically by Catherine Ireton, cover girl for the Scottish septet's "White Collar Boy" single and one half of a sleepy acoustic pop duo called the Go Away Birds. Ireton is one of nine singers (incuding the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon) joining members of Belle and Sebastian for the recording, and her Irish-Zooey-Deschanel-next-door vocals have ended up gracing 10 of the set's 14 songs. But not until after an internet-wide sing-off. "The competition was me showing a startling lack of faith in what was right in front of me, but I had to see what was out there," Murdoch recently told London's Guardian.

From the humble school project that became 1996 debut Tigermilk to the professional pop majesty of The Life Pursuit a decade later, the Scottish pop savant's work has been almost one leap of faith after another. Murdoch lands on solid ground again with God Help the Girl, which has catchy, jangling girl-group ditties aplenty, a little theatrical flourish thanks to Belle and Sebastian trumpeter Mick Cooke's orchestral arrangements, and at least one typically Murdoch-esque character, Eve. The imagery is always vivid, even when the plot isn't. From what I can tell, Ireton's bookish ingenue gives herself to the Holy Trinity: sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. God love 'er.

Always one for evocative character sketches, Murdoch clearly relishes his role as demiurge of God Help the Girl's self-contained universe. First single "Come Monday Night" is a good preview, with the wispy lilt of early Camera Obscura and a way of lingering on "the gray of ordinariness" long enough to show how it's lined with silvery subtleties. Like, that restless first evening between a disappointing weekend and another drab workday. The way sleep leaves a face "crumpled and creased." And the full rundown of Eve obsessing over some guy she likes ("Please stop me, I'm even boring myself!"). At times, Murdoch's realistically elaborate fiction points to its own phoniness. "Life could be musical comedy," suggests "Hiding Neath My Umbrella", a bittersweet Murdoch-Ireton duet over waltzing piano and swelling strings.

God Help the Girl opens with a delicate new version of The Life Pursuit centerpiece "Act of the Apostle II". Switched from "senior year" to "senior ward," and re-titled simply "Act of the Apostle", the song also drops its last verse-- making the whole thing more prologue-like-- and gains a bit of Andrews Sisters swing. For all the specifics about a sick narrator and fighting parents, "Act of the Apostle" is still essentially a pop kid's update of the Velvet Underground's "Rock and Roll": "My Damascan road's my transistor radio." Her life was saved by girl groups.

Or was it? The nuance-rich Murdoch is characteristically coy when it comes to certain details. He's mentioned musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar or the original Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory film as inspirations; my fellow 1980s babies may remember Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act, where all those awesome Motown songs turned out to make real nice hymns if you did the ol' Christian rock trick and replaced "him" with "Him". So The Life Pursuit's "Funny Little Frog", sung here by Internet contest winner Brittany Stallings, might not work as a soul song, but just think: a soul song. About someone who is everywhere, but you don't think of in a physical way. Someone you might go and visit on rainy Sundays.

"She was into S&M and Bible studies," Murdoch once sang. Eve's first romantic experience is creepy, Murdoch offering to rub and scrub her during the ironically formal strings and piano of "Pretty Eve in the Tub". No wonder she winds up in the arms of Hannon's hammy rake on "Perfection as a Hipster", asking for haircare tips even as she wastes away from lack of nutrition. Asya, of Seattle teen keyboard-drums trio Smoosh, may have an even more girlish voice than Ireton's, but on "I Just Want Your Jeans", she's looking for boys to make her "go, 'Ouch!'"-- heck, she's "open to dark surprises." And somewhere in there I just skipped a couple of totally skippable instrumentals.

The last two songs are among the album's most inspired. "I'll Have to Dance With Cassie" suggests Eve has returned to the church of rock'n'roll; now that she knows her "dream boy" doesn't exist, she's shimmying with a girl friend like they're a pair of boxing kangaroos. On closing number "A Down and Dusky Blonde", having "fried" her head-- another double entendre?-- Eve joins an entire sisterhood of female singers. She hasn't been getting her apple a day, so a doctor counsels, "A woman does not live by the printed word/ Forgive yourself, and eat." How about it, Eve?

"I need a friend and I choose you," the final song continues, with a vow to "forget the kiss and feel." Hmm. God Help the Girl is a spirited expansion of some of Murdoch's best ideas, but until the film finishes shooting-- set to start next year-- we'll probably just have wild-ass guesses like mine as to the real story. "I feel like I have God for a pal because no one else would have me," Murdoch writes in an online journal entry. "Maybe that's the basis for a lot of religion. He's the invisible friend that it's OK to have as an adult." Tell you this much, He's in the details.

— Marc Hogan, June 23, 2009

Wilco's Writing Technique: Classic Hip Lit, Cadavre Exquis, and Free Jazz

From the fans’ point of view, it seems like each of your records has a specific sound or style—“Yankee” is considered the experimental one, “Summer Teeth” is the ‘60s orchestral one, and so on. I wonder, does it seem that deliberate when you’re working on them? And if so, what were you going for with the new one? It sounds to me like a collection of good songs, but with no specific historical reference.


Jeff Tweedy: Um, it’s got a camel on the cover—so I don’t know what more people can want.





The camel signifies temperance, patience and perseverance.





Wilco & Literature:


The lyrical structure of Wilco's songs have been dictated by classic hipster literature Among the writers that the band has cited as being stylistically influential include William H. Gass, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, and Harold Bloom













Wilco & Cadavre Exquis —an exercise where band members take turns writing lines on a typewriter, but are only allowed to see the previously written line.


Here's some illustrators using the same technique.









Wilco & The Crazy Music Connection: Tweedy digs free jazz artists. Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. While usually considered experimental and avant-garde, free jazz has also oppositely been conceived as an attempt to return jazz to its "primitive," often religious roots, and emphasis on collective improvisation.



















Thanks for reading & we would love for you to listen! (its free)

Regina Spektor: Moscow, The 12 Chairs, & Doctor Zhivago

Spektor was born in Moscow, USSR (now Russia), to a musical Jewish family. Her father, Ilya Spektor, is a photographer and amateur violinist. Her mother, Bella Spektor, was a music professor in a Russian college of music, and now teaches at a public elementary school in Mount Vernon, New York.


Regina's Home Town: Moscow In Your Pocket









Spektor working with E.L.O.

Pitchfork: Jeff Lynne is a real old-school rock'n'roll great, how did you hook up with him? Were you a big fan of his before you guys started working together?


RS: It's kind of funny. Actually, it's kind of sad-- I didn't know who he was or what he had done when I asked him if he'd like to produce some songs. I'm the opposite of a knowledgeable music aficionado; tomorrow, I could discover an amazing artist that people have been listening to for the past 60 years and be, like, "wow."





The reason I asked to contact Jeff was because I saw he produced the last Tom Petty record, Highway Companion, which I really loved. I noted him down so next time I did a record I could actually tell people, like, "I have a few producers I'd like to check out." I remember the silence on the phone when I said the name "Jeff Lynne" to Tom Whalley, the president of Warner Bros. But Tom was really positive about it.

By the time I was about to meet Jeff I was sufficiently nervous. But he's really sweet. We drank a lot of tea. And after I worked with him, I started to understand, like, "Oh yeah! That's Jeff-- I know that song." Sometimes you know the song or voice but you have no idea who sings it. But Jeff's definitely in the world of legends. He had these banjoleles-- a mix between a banjo and a ukulele-- and I picked one up and he was like, "Yeah, George [Harrison] gave that to me." I was like, "Oh my god," and then put it down.


Pitchfork: After you learned more about his background, did you think, "Oh, he probably won't work with me"?


RS: No. The myth of rock'n'roll doesn't weigh heavily on me. If, god forbid, he wasn't cool and didn't do good stuff with my music, I wouldn't have been thinking about what he's done in the past or who he is. I mean, I didn't even know any Traveling Wilburys stuff until after I worked with him. I think the exciting thing about Jeff is that he made amazing stuff just recently. I feel like he was really inspiring when I was working with him and wasn't just resting on his laurels.










Literary Influences: Authors Found In Regina's Music



The Twelve Chairs (Russian: Двенадцать стульев, Dvenadtsat stulev) is a classic satirical novel by the Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov, released in 1928



In Soviet Russia in 1927, a former member of nobility, Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, works as a desk clerk, until his mother-in-law reveals on her deathbed that her family jewelry had been hidden from the Bolsheviks in one of the twelve chairs from the family’s dining room set. Those chairs, along with all other personal property, had been expropriated by the government after the Russian Revolution. He becomes a treasure hunter, and after the “smooth operator” and con-man Ostap Bender forces Kisa ("Kitty", Vorobyaninov’s funny childhood nickname, which Bender prefers) to partner with him, they set off to track down the chairs. This ultimately helps Kisa, who doesn’t possess Bender’s charm and is not as street-smart.








At the very beginning, the two “comrades” find out that the chair set has been split up and sold individually. They are not alone in this quest. Father Fyodor took advantage of the deathbed confession, and has also set off to recover the fortune. In this search for Mme Petukhova’s treasure, he becomes Vorobyaninov’s main rival. While in this enterprise Ostap is in his element, Vorobyaninov is not so happy. He’s steadily abandoning his principles and losing self-esteem. “The Twelve Chairs” satirizes not only its central characters, but also the people and institutions they encounter: the operations of a Moscow newspaper, student housing, a provincial chess club, and so on.



Through the process of elimination, the two finally discover the location of the last, 12th chair. The one containing the treasure. To avoid splitting the loot, Vorobyaninov murders Ostap. He then discovers that the jewels have already been found, and that they have been spent on building a new public building. Bender represents values of the old order, egoism and individualism. He knows “four hundred ways to get money without working for it”, and he has no future in the post revolutionary Soviet Union. Ilf and Petrov’s observations on aspects of everyday life are comic, but shrewd. “The Twelve Chairs” was first published in 1928.




Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (Russian: Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к) (February 10 [O.S. January 29] 1890 — May 30, 1960) was a Nobel Prize-winning Russian poet and writer.





In the West he is best known for his epic novel Doctor Zhivago, a tragedy whose events span the last period of Tsarist Russia and the early days of the Soviet Union. It was first translated and published in Italy in 1957. In Russia, however, Boris Pasternak is most celebrated as a poet. My Sister Life, written in 1917, is arguably the most influential collection of poetry published in the Russian language in the 20th century. "Boris Pasternak [is] considered by many the greatest Russian poet of the 20th century, who helped give birth to the dissident movement with the publication of his 'Doctor Zhivago'."

Jay Bennett's Baroque Pop Favorites

Ram – Paul McCartney





Paris 1919 – John Cale






Hunky Dory – David Bowie

The Fevers: Love Is Blue

"L'amour est bleu" ("Love Is Blue") is a song whose music was composed by André Popp, and whose lyrics were written by Pierre Cour, in 1967. Paul Mauriat's familiar instrumental version became the only number-one hit by a French artist to top the Billboard Hot 100 in America.


The song describes the pleasure and pain of love in terms of colours (blue and gray) and elements (water and wind). The English lyrics ("Blue, blue, my world is blue...") focus on colors only (blue, gray, red, green, and black), using them to describe elements of lost love. An odd twist in the lyric uses the word "gone" in the same pattern used to introduce each color.

Supercordas from Rio de Janeiro - São Paulo, Brazil

Elementary particles with identity crisis, the naked horizon reflected in the frog's eye, echoes of '67 psychedelia absorbed by seventeenth century sugar kane leaves, cryogenic machines developed by mad alchemists. Those are a few things Supercordas are about."

That's how the band define themselves.