The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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September 18, 2007
New Album Releases, 9-18-2007: James Blunt, Simpsons soundtrack, Barry Manilow The big excitement this week is definitely for All the Lost Souls, the second album from James Blunt. Despite the heavy suicidal vibes from his first album, he has seen fit to write a new album rather than kill himself. That's good, cause it would be a shame to have missed getting a follow-up to perhaps the best songwriter of 2005. Early word on this is very good, and I for one can't wait to get my hands on a copy of this bad boy.
The Simpsons: Testify is a soundtrack album with music culled from seasons 10 - 18 of the series. I'm a big Simpsons fan, like most people, and I'd go so far as to say that the series is even now somewhere near to being as good as it ever was. They do consistently fine work, and have now even added an excellent feature film.
Nonetheless, this soundtrack album is pretty underwhelming. Thinking on it now, it jumps out at me that South Park has it all over the Simpsons for music. Alf Clausen does perfectly good work for making soundtracks for the tv series, but most of this stuff isn't real songwriting, but little bits of comedy sketches broken up with dialogue. How many songs can you really remember from the Simpsons after nearly 20 years?
Weird Al Yankovic changing the Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane" to "Homer and Marge" is just not memorable music that anyone would want to listen to repeatedly. There's nothing here that's going to make anyone forget, say, "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch." Some of these things are cool for a fan who has seen the show, and this audio sparks that pleasant memory.
Probably the best thing here for a stand-alone recording is Kelsey Grammer's Sideshow Bob singing "The Very Reason I Live," a tender love ballad for his arch-nemesis Bart Simpson. It surely doesn't count as an all-time musical classic, but I do also pretty much enjoy the Los Lobos version of the closing credits music.
The main problem is that this stuff essentially consists of bits of the soundtrack to a sitcom rather than any kind of stand alone songs. Among several Simpsons albums over the years, way the best is still the 1990 The Simpsons Sing the Blues. Note that this was not a soundtrack album, but separately conceived and written as actual songs - not actually in the tv show. That includes the big hit "Do the Bartman," and the greatest Simpsons musical moment ever, Monty Burns excellent lament "Look at All Those Idiots."
Gloria Estefan puts out 90 Millas. The title refers to the distance from America to her ancestral home in Cuba. It's her first Spanish language album in seven years.
In re-issues, Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970 is a four CD Rhino box set in their signature Nuggets series. This looks pretty groovy. The 77 songs include a few obvious big hits of the era, "White Rabbit" and the Dead's "Dark Star." But mostly there are lesser known acts, and obscure picks that I've not heard from Sly Stone and Moby Grape among others. This looks like a particularly promising package.
Then there's the biggest nancy boy of the week, Barry Manilow. This week he puts out The Greatest Songs of the Seventies. Barry Manilow was pretty cheesy when it was the 1970s, so him covering "Sailing" 30 years later really seems less than necessary.
But rather than subject viewers of The View to such a desecration, he has publicly refused to play on principle rather than appear on a stage with that radical co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who is "dangerous and offensive" (ie Republican). Now, this would be an ugly Stalinist attitude for him to take against even Ann Coulter. But to take this attitude toward such a mild housewife character as Hasselbeck is just contemptibly ridiculous and unmanly. This is such a total FAG display. I'm sure Arec Barrwin will be sending him his Film Actors Guild membership papers right away.
Here's the complete list of this week's major new album releases, courtesy AMG:
James Blunt All the Lost Souls Atlantic / Wea Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Pop/Rock, Adult Contemporary, Singer/Songwriter
