Who Was Changed And Who Was Dead – John Wesley Harding
By Brian Harris (Brookdale Student) Harding has been compared on more than one occasion to Elvis Costello and I can see the comparison as Costello also had many different influences. Unlike Costello, Harding comes across as somewhat goofy on this album. Hell, one of the songs on the album has Harding breaking out a kazoo solo. The rest of the album is your standard acoustic tinged rock record with Harding cheekily refers to as “folk noir” and “gangsta folk”. The albums sounds good but its schizophrenic changes in style make it hard to give it a solid recommendation. Fans of Harding will enjoy it but this isn’t the type of album to get people into John Wesley Harding.** White Lies for Dark Times – Ben Harper’s and Relentless 7
By Brian Harris (Brookdale Student) What stands out most about White Lies for Dark Times is the sound. Harper and his band mates have created a sound that stands out among the other bands of today. They have created a sound that comes across as part-James Brown, part-Stax and part-BB King. Even though the lyrics aren’t the most cheerful lyrics ever written, the musicianship of the entire band and Harper’s great skill for writing music has manifested into a great debut album from the band and hopefully a follow-up sooner than later.**** Ari Hest – Twelve Mondays
By Brian Harris Hest’s songwriting talents are on full display on Twelve Mondays as each song has a very textured and rich sound and you wouldn’t think that every song on the album went through the entire songwriting process in less than a week. Hest’s sound is akin to people like John Mayer and Jason Mraz so his music is very viable commercially. There’s already proof of that as one of the songs on Twelve Mondays, Broken Voices was featured on the CW show One Tree Hill. Hopefully, this will lead to more people checking out Ari Hest as he is one of the better singer-songwriters out today and Twelve Mondays is a great showing of his work. **** Odds – Cheerleader
By Brian Harris (Brookdale Student)
There is one truly stand-out track on the album is a song called Leaders of the Undersea World. It’s like the other tracks that it is a fusion of other bands but this is a cross of a Hives-like garage rock sound with Vandals and Aquabats-esque lyrics. In addition, the song delves into a dub-like groove for part of the song. The album would sound much better if all the tracks sounded like Leaders of the Undersea World. Cheerleader is a well-produced and slick sounding power-pop album. However, in a genre where everyone sounds good, you need something to stand out with, unfortunately for Odds, they have made a good album, but nothing that would make you go out and whole-heartedly recommend this band to others. **3/4 Fork In The Road – Neil Young
By Brian Harris (Brookdale Student), The album musically is not much different from other electric-based Neil Young album. However, by no means is Fork In The Road a bad album. It’s a well-produced album, with Neil Young co-producing the album, and has almost a folk-punk quality to most of the songs while keeping the revved-up blues rock that Young is famous for.**** |
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John Wesley Harding’s latest album with The Minus Five is called Who was Changed and Who was Dead and it’s a great showing of the different and eclectic styles and interests of Harding, who got his stage name from the Bob Dylan album John Wesley Harding, who was a famous Old West gunslinger.
White Lies for Dark Times is the debut album for Ben Harper’s latest project, Ben Harper and Relentless 7. The sound is heavier than most Ben Harper albums but it doesn’t take away for his musicianship as this album should be the album that is put on at all parties this summer. It’s a very good blues-rock album that melds together the signature blues lyrics about love and all of its many different feelings that it could make a person have with a more modern rock sound.
Ari Hest is not your typical musician. Last year, he did something that he called the “52†project. Hest’s idea was to write, record, produce and release one new song per week for an entire year. The result of this endeavor is his self-released latest full-length album, Twelve Mondays, which contains the twelve best songs from the “52†project, as chosen by fans. It’s amazing what Hest can do in a week as he has put out a very good sounding album that should get him more noticed by the mainstream, more than he already is.
It’s a good record, don’t get me wrong, but it feels like they are taking all of the little gimmicks that the other power-pop bands used and throwing it against the wall and seeing what sticks, from Weezer-type lyrics to Matthew Sweet-like guitar riffs. It still sounds good but they sound like the other bands and not themselves.
The album touches upon all of the feelings that rise up when people talk about alternative fuels. Songs like “Cough Up The Bucks†and “Fuel Line†talk about the expensiveness of both setting up a car to run on alternative fuels but also how it will pay for itself after a time and the price of gasoline nowadays. Other songs like “Get Behind The Wheel†and “Hit The Road†talk about the freedom. The highlight track on this album is Johnny Magic, which is a thank-you song to Jonathan Goodwin, the mechanic who helped out Young on what was known as the “Lincvolt†project.
