Picks of the Week
This week’s picks include a young jazz bassist with an eye for classic pop and a musical tale from the dark side.
The Real Tuesday Weld - The Last Werewolf [Six Degrees Records]
If you’re sick of vampires turning up every time you turn on the TV, go to the movies, or crack open a book, then this record’s for you. The Last Werewolf is the latest effort from The Real Tuesday Weld, the oddly-named group led by English singer/songwriter Stephen Coates. Coates’s albums always feature a strange and appealing blend of mid-20th century sounds, from Cole Porter to radio plays like "The Shadow," with a modern sensibility. The song “Love Lust Money” celebrates the barely-veiled eroticism of the werewolf, and features the retro sounds of the Puppini Sisters’ Marcella Puppini.
The Last Werewolf unfolds in a series of songs and spoken scenes, like a steampunk graphic novel. The story is only suggested, and by the end you’re not sure things are as simple as the opening tracks suggested. The album was actually created simultaneously with Glen Duncan’s new novel of the same name, but as with their previous collaboration on the novel and album called I, Lucifer, The Real Tuesday Weld’s version stands quite well on its own. A song like “Tear Us Apart” falls into the classic lineage of “Love Hurts” songs – but of course, in the context of lycanthropy, it has a whole different meaning…
The Real Tuesday Weld brings us a waltz, a torch song, a distorted blues, and a genuinely pretty love song. The album ends with a tune that sounds like it could’ve come from a James Bond movie, if 007 were fighting werewolves.
The album is The Last Werewolf, by The Real Tuesday Weld. (Available at Amazon)- Picked by John Schaefer
It’s been a big year for the big bass. Esperanza Spalding’s 2011 Grammy win for Best New Artist marked a major victory for the oft-sidelined instrument. And now, yet another rising star is bringing attention to the upright… double bassist Ben Williams.
Williams’ debut album, State of Art, is the product of a Concord Records contract awarded to him as part of winning the 2009 Thelonious Monk Institute prize for bass players. Although it’s a jazz album, it quickly becomes clear that the twenty-something Williams has a place in his heart for hip hop and go-go… a funk sub-genre native to his hometown of Washington, D.C.
Williams states in the album’s liner notes that the “tunes of today become the standards of tomorrow.” His own choice of modern standards featured on the album ranges from the mid-‘70s to the mid-‘90s, including an updated version of Woody Shaw’s “Moontrane,” Stevie Wonder’s “Part Time Lover” and Michael Jackson’s “Little Susie.”
A blend of yesterday’s hits, today’s standards, and tomorrow’s jazz… The album is State of Art, by Ben Williams. (Available at Amazon) - Picked by Katie Macpherson
