Archive for October 10th, 2013
Soundgarden’s Sub Pop Years to Be Remastered and Expanded
Acclaimed grunge outfit Soundgarden are revisiting their years on the Sub Pop label with a new remastered compilation due in November.
Before they burst onto the national scene with 1991’s Badmotorfinger, the Seattle quartet (featuring vocalist Chris Cornell, guitarist Kim Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron and – at first, bassist Hiro Yamamoto, ultimately replaced by Ben Shepard in 1990) started off their career with a pair of EPs for the famed local label. 1987’s Screaming Life, recorded with producer Jack Endino, featured six raw original tunes and was met with rave reviews.
A follow-up, Fopp (1988), was a bit more of a curve ball, featuring the titular cover of an Ohio Players tune as well as a take on “Swallow My Pride” by fellow Seattle rockers Green River. The band cut a full-length, Ultramega OK, later that year for SST, ultimately gaining the attention of A&M Records, who’ve had the band ever since. (Soundgarden, of course, were a dominant force in ’90s rock before splitting up in 1997; the band reunited in 2010, releasing a new compilation and a new LP, King Animal, in 2012.)
Screaming Life/Fopp was first combined into one long-player in 1990. This version, available on CD and double-vinyl, will also include one more track the band cut for Sub Pop, a winking tribute to the scene called “Sub Pop Rock City” and released on the Sub Pop 200 compilation in 1988. (That tune shared space with exclusive tunes by Green River, Mudhoney and Nirvana.)
The new reissue will be available on November 25. Hit the jump to pre-order your copies!
La-La Land Unleashes “Dead,” “Black Beauty”
La-La Land’s soundtrack reissues this week include a title that’s perfect for Halloween and an offbeat score by a composer normally responsible for music that’s perfect for Halloween.
That latter title is the first up this week: in 1994, Danny Elfman – known best for his offbeat scores for Tim Burton (Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, The Nightmare Before Christmas, countless others) – was commissioned to write a soundtrack for Warner Bros.’ adaptation of Black Beauty, the acclaimed 1877 novel by Anna Sewell told from the perspective of a horse living (and caring for) several owners in England.
Despite sturdy performances by British actors including Sean Bean and David Thewlis – and even a memorable performance by Docs Keepin Time as the titular horse of the film (who would, in one of the most amazing sentences I’ve ever typed for this site, became an in-demand horse in Hollywood, starring in a television series based on The Black Stallion and Robert Redford’s adaptation of The Horse Whisperer) – the film was a major box-office failure, one of many that helped sideline Warner Bros.’ Family Entertainment imprint by the end of the decade. But Elfman’s score, a notable departure from his usual fare, is robust and acclaimed by fans and critics of the composer alike – and La-La Land greatly expands its original release on the Giant Records label with this new disc, featuring nearly 79 minutes of music and copious unused and unreleased material.
When there is no more room on the page, the dead will walk after the jump (propelled by a reissued score to a George Romero classic)!
Special Review: Joe Grushecky, “Somewhere East of Eden”
As these words are being published, we’re in Day 10 of the U.S. government shutdown, with no end apparently in sight. Could Joe Grushecky have picked a better time to release his seventeenth and latest solo album, the poltiically-charged and socially-conscious Somewhere East of Eden (Schoolhouse/Warner Nashville 2-535518, 2013)? Grushecky has always evinced that he cares deeply for America, and for its citizens – particularly the blue-collar, working class. On Eden, the rootsy singer-songwriter (frequently categorized alongside the likes of John Mellencamp and Bob Seger as a proponent of “heartland rock”) directs one track at the “politician man,” but though he seethes on that song and elsewhere, the album is more than just a polemic. It’s a deeply personal statement of who he is, where he’s been, and where he’s going. Eden is very much in the spirit of Grushecky’s past work, but though the terrain is familiar, the artist has managed to find new corners to illuminate.
This release from Grushecky’s Schoolhouse Records is being distributed by Warner Music Nashville, and though Eden is not a country album proper, the focused collection of twelve songs is certainly imbued with a hint of that flavor. But more often, the attack is straight-ahead, guitar-driven, melodic rock and roll from a plain-spoken narrator with a fire in his belly. “Don’t you know these days, it’s the cold, hard truth,” the singer asserts on the album’s opening lines. “All my money goes to guys in suits/Who always take more than they need/Don’t even try to hide their greed…” With its chorus of “the rich get rich and the poor stay poor,” Grushecky is mad as hell in the hard-rocking opening salvo, “I Can Hear the Devil Knocking.” The up-tempo groove of the pointed “Prices Going Up” is similarly blunt in its take on modern life (“I’ve been workin’ too hard, bustin’ my butt/I’ve been breakin’ my back…I can’t afford the gas…I can’t afford the bread…”) and ends with perhaps the only response possible: a pained wail.
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