Wyclef Jean-The Carnival Volume II (Memoirs Of An Immigrant)
SONY
Former Fugee hitmaker now creating hip hop without frontiers.
Given Wyclef Jean's Haitian roots, it's no surprise that the sunshine-soaked sound of the Caribbean has been an omnipresent feature of the former Fugee's solo albums. This sixth opus is no exception, as the vibrant dancehall syncopations of Carnival Jam and edgy dub inflections of King & Queen illustrate. But reggae is just one of a multitude of styles thrown into the blender on this refreshingly eclectic album that fuses hip hop with muscular rock (Trouble Again), ruminative acoustic pop (the lovely Any Other Day, featuring Norah Jones), R&B (What About The Baby, with its cameo from Mary J. Blige) and Middle Eastern music (Immigration). Jean's sonic scope is breathtaking, complemented by imaginative lyrics whose themes range from family break ups, prostitution and drive-by shootings to the US occupation of Iraq. A heady polyglot infusion.
Charles Waring
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Ramones-It's Alive 1974-1996
Ramones-It's Alive 1974-1996
One band, two discs, 123 songs...1-2-3=4!
2004's shocking yet compelling End Of The Century told the Ramones' story, rock-doc-style, as one of failure, despondency and lovetriangle bitterness. It's Alive... serves up а happier narrative: five straight hours of chronologically ordered, unremittingly асе live footage. Debuting at CBGB in September '74, they're nohopers, with Joey mincing around in leathers like а codDoll, and ultimately falling off the stage. By June '77, they're blowing the same place apart, and pretty much everywhere else they visit, including London's Rainbow (14 cuts from New Year's Eve '77 - the It's Alive double-album show).
It's testament to their ability to generate electricity that the sparks fly highest in а German N studio (11 tunes from Musikladen). Performances from the mid-'80s onwards are stony-faced, but, internal friction notwithstanding, given а partisan crowd, as at Argentina's River Plate Stadium in '96, they remain unstoppably powerful. The tragedy sinks in only after you've switched off: had heroin and cancer not intervened, the Ramones would've ruled supreme in these reunion-friendly days.
Andrew Perry
One band, two discs, 123 songs...1-2-3=4!
2004's shocking yet compelling End Of The Century told the Ramones' story, rock-doc-style, as one of failure, despondency and lovetriangle bitterness. It's Alive... serves up а happier narrative: five straight hours of chronologically ordered, unremittingly асе live footage. Debuting at CBGB in September '74, they're nohopers, with Joey mincing around in leathers like а codDoll, and ultimately falling off the stage. By June '77, they're blowing the same place apart, and pretty much everywhere else they visit, including London's Rainbow (14 cuts from New Year's Eve '77 - the It's Alive double-album show).
It's testament to their ability to generate electricity that the sparks fly highest in а German N studio (11 tunes from Musikladen). Performances from the mid-'80s onwards are stony-faced, but, internal friction notwithstanding, given а partisan crowd, as at Argentina's River Plate Stadium in '96, they remain unstoppably powerful. The tragedy sinks in only after you've switched off: had heroin and cancer not intervened, the Ramones would've ruled supreme in these reunion-friendly days.
Andrew Perry
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