Filed under: album, review | Tags: alicia keys, katy knight, the element of freedom
Alicia Keys
The Element Of Freedom ••••
SonyBMG
If freedom really were an element, it would surely be the noblest of gases. And it seems Alicia Keys has been letting plenty of it go to her head between her last album and this, her fourth studio offering; it’s a record that swoops and soars like a majestic, melancholy eagle through thick and curling clouds of grief. The opening title track sets the tone for the whole piece, a 12-second voiceover claiming that the day has come “when the risk it took to remain tightly closed in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom”. It’s a strong, affirming message couched like a pearl in the cold shell of uncertainty and pain (not to mention a healthy dose of reverb).
Filed under: news, trouser press | Tags: alan pedder, alicia keys, beyoncé, the element of freedom
For a while now Alicia Keys has been hinting about having some superstar guests on her upcoming fourth album The Element Of Freedom, out December 14 through SonyBMG, and now it’s official. Queen bee Beyoncé continues her recent spate of collaborations by pairing up with Alicia for a duet called ‘Put It In A Love Song’, while newcomer Drake lends his pipes to the background of ‘Unthinkable (I’m Ready)’. Production on the fourteen-track album comes from longtime collaborator Kerry ‘Krucial’ Brothers plus Jeff Bhasker, Swizz Beatz and Noah ‘40’ Shebib. First single ‘Doesn’t Mean Anything’ is out November 30.
Filed under: news, trouser press | Tags: 2009, alan pedder, alicia keys, amanda blank, anjulie, janelle monae, la roux, matt and kim, music, the dead weather, yeah yeah yeahs
Janelle Monae, Amanda Blank and The Dead Weather also nominated
Nominees for the annual Woodie Awards, a public-vote enterprise established in 2005 by college music channel MTVu, were also announced today. While no female artists are up for the overall Woodie Of The Year award, or indeed in the Performing Woodie (i.e. live) category, the other four categories include artists as diverse as Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Dead Weather to La Roux and Alicia Keys. The Best Video Woodie category includes The Dead Weather’s gun-toting video for ‘Treat Me Like Your Mother’, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ bloody clip for ‘Heads Will Roll’, Anjulie’s fantastical ‘Boom’ and Matt & Kim’s public nudity promoting ‘Lessons Learned’. La Roux is carrying the flag for women in the Breaking Woodie category, up against the likes of Friendly Fires, Grizzly Bear, Never Shout Never, Passion Pit and Wale, while in the Left Field Woodie category, Janelle Monae and Amanda Blank are competing with Jay Reatard, Major Lazer and Tech N9ne.
Filed under: album, review | Tags: 2009, alicia keys, chris catchpole, music, whitney houston
Whitney Houston
I Look To You •
Arista / RCA
The name Whitney Houston conjures a whole multitude of disparate, and desperate, elements. One of the big ones, she made it as a singer, an actress, at one point a model, and an all-round money-making powerhouse. Her career defines the ’80s and, for most, she needs no introduction, her status being on the same scale as the dementedly huge voice she is so well known for. Some of what springs to mind, however, fits less comfortably alongside her once squeaky clean image, the Houston who once sang so innocently of wanting to dance with somebody, somebody who loved her. That someone turned out to be a certain Bobby Brown and, well, we know the rest. Rumours of drug addiction, financial ruin, and then finally, after 14 years, divorce followed by rehab.
Many reports over the last decade have focused on how ravaged and incapable Houston had become, her voice described as “raspy” and her behaviour unfocused and at times downright defiant. Her gaunt physical appearance did nothing to console her ever watchful public, who, with the airing of fly-on-the-wall show ‘Being Bobby Brown’ in 2004, got a shocking look into the lives of the troubled pair, revealing a somewhat depraved and unhappy world (“She was so constipated I had to stick my finger in and…you remember that honey?” – cringe). This was not the lifestyle expected of an international crossover superstar with fame almost on the same scale as Michael Jackson. Drawing parallels with Jackson’s equally troubled existence is easy; wealth and talent don’t fix everything. What is worth noting, however, is that Houston is not dead and, well, Michael Jackson is. We should definitely celebrate that she’s still around to tell the tale, but what is really left of her we ask?
Filed under: news, trouser shorts, video | Tags: 2008, alanis morissette, alicia keys, clyde petersen, deerhoof, free MP3, imani coppola, jack white, james bond, kate miller-heidke, little jackie, missy higgins, music, news, quantum of solace, your heart breaks
Proving yet again that you can’t put your arms around a memory but you can go back and alter your songs so that radio will play them, here’s the new Alanis Morissette video for break-up ballad ‘Not As We’. Alanis walks alone on a beach, overfills her bath, writes in her journal and drinks coffee earnestly. You’ll probably want to give her a hug.
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Directed by Clyde Petersen, frontwoman of Seattle-based collective Your Heart Breaks, here’s the new video from Deerhoof, ‘Chandelier Spotlight’, taken from their new album Offend Maggie, out this week. Like it? Then download the song for free here. Sorted.
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We love Imani Coppola here at Wears The Trousers. Always have, always will. Okay, so her new project Little Jackie doesn’t quite scale the heights of brilliance like last year’s The Black & White Album or her enduring debut Chupacabra, but it’s nice to see her burning up the charts after paying her dues for all these years. The next Little Jackie single will be the title track of their debut album The Stoop, but the video for it has been taken down from YouTube. Rats. Instead, here’s Imani and Adam’s recent appearance on ‘Later…with Jools Holland’.
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This isn’t as good as we’d hoped. Oh well. It’s still better than this. And a vast improvement on this. Best post-millennial Bond theme in the bag then.
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other videos we’ve been watching this week (Australian edition):
a new promo (the second) for the brilliant ‘Where I Stood’ by Aussie singer-songwriter Missy Higgins
‘Can’t Shake It’, the first single from wacky Aussie Kate Miller-Heidke’s new album Curiouser. “I execute the moonwalk like I stepped in shit”? Now that’s what we call a lyric.
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Alan Pedder
Filed under: news, trouser press | Tags: alan pedder, alicia keys, amy winehouse, drowned in sound, duffy, jack white, james bond, jessica simpson, lindsay lohan, liz phair, mercury music prize, MIA, music, news, nightwish, on!air!library!, paris hilton, pj harvey, portishead, quantum of solace, saint etienne, sam sparro, sarah cracknell, school of seven bells, tarja turunen, xenomania
– Liz Phair comes in from the cold
– Saint Etienne announce new single and compilation
– illegal downloads backed by Duffy
– Bond theme suspense heats up with new rumour
– vote in Drowned In Sound’s alternative Mercury Music Prize
– debut album on the way from School Of Seven Bells
– Finnish metallers Nightwish line up rarities
– Hilton, Lohan and Simpson get up to stuff
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After years spent in a glossed up anti-wilderness, Liz Phair has finally thrown her old fans a bone with news that her next album will see a return to “sloppiness”. Speaking to Billboard, Phair was quick to point out that she’s not making a new Exile In Guyville, her classic 1993 debut, but is fighting to keep some sort of edge to the songs. “The best way I can describe it is ‘natural’,” she says. “It has mistakes in it. It has layered background vocals of mine that just make an overall slop, but it’s perfect slop.”
Phair has already reissued Exile In Guyville in the US through new label ATO after leaving Capitol earlier this year, and has been playing a small series of gigs in which she plays the album in its entirety. The reissue, complete with three bonus tracks and a DVD, comes to the UK on August 25th (although you can currently get the bonus tracks through various digital download services).
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