Gleeful Soles
November 4th, 2009 - Written by stevek
Glee: The Music, Season One, Volume One
You’ve seen the show. Or, you’ve heard about it incessantly from those who have seen the show. An elaborate, Machiavellian high school universe, the story focusing on the gang of losers, misfits and angst-ridden psychopaths that make up the William McKinley Glee Club.
Volume One was compiled before Fox picked up the show for a full season, so the soundtrack, while incomplete, will soon be joined by Volume Two, on December 8th. Volume One has all my favourites, fairly well edited together, including Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin”; “Can’t Fight This Feeling” by REO Speedwagon; Rhianna’s “Take A Bow”; Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”; Queen’s “Somebody to Love” and “Bust a Move” by Young MC, as well as 12 other outstanding tracks.
The album loses points (well, ONE point) because Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” was left out of these first 18 tracks (and will likely be left off Volume 2. Other than that, this one is fabulous; if you like the show (or if you want to try and front among your friends who do) you’ll want to get this one stat!
Glee: The Music, Season One, Volume One
Columbia
Steve’s Rating: 9/10
Sole and the Skyrider Band: Plastique
For more than a decade now, Tim Holland has been performing some of the darkest, most intellectually stimulating, and eloquent Rap music around. Better known as Sole, he is also co-founder of the Anticon label, home of “Avant-Hop” Rap, Indie Rock and Electronica music. Building on a solid instrumental foundation blending all three genres, Sole deftly weaves themes of anger-fed revolution with grim contemplation and confession into ‘Plastique’. This album is a force to be reckoned with, speaking truth to power and voicing outrage at injustice and doing it against a backdrop of Trip-Hop Electronica born of Massive Attack and Portishead.
Eight of the nine songs here are outstanding; even the weak entry on ‘Plastique’, the uncertain-sounding opener “Children of Privilege”, is positively brilliant, and serves as an effective lead-in for the lyrical genius of “Battlefields”. However the best song on the album is with out question “Mr. Insurgent”, which speaks boldly (if belatedly) against the abortive (and inevitable) American Private Enterprise empire-building going on in Iraq and the Middle East. “Bait” is another especially powerful allegory, told in the form of a disturbing tale of a mariner-slave. Spooky is the musical hook used towards the end of the epic poem towards the end: it sounds like the music from the chorus of Rod Stewart’s “Young Turks”; contrast the lyrics of that chorus against the final verse of “Bait”, and the synergy is a thing of grim beauty. “Black (is the new Black)” is another exceptionally well-crafted rhyme which closes the album with the powerful finality of a gavel-strike at the end of a Capital Trial.
This album is the future of Rap and Hip-Hop, a darker, more sophisticated lyrical and intellectual style than the glorification of “Thug Life” or self-aggrandizing peacocking that currently dominates said same industry. Sole and the Skyrider Band have crafted what is, arguably, their best album to date—if not their Magnum Opus.
If you are a fan of Trip-Hop, Rap, Hip-Hop or any other form of genuine musical expressionism, go out and get ‘Plastique’. This one is all but guaranteed a spot on my “Best of 2009” lists.
Related Articles:
Find arcitcles with similar tags: confront, confront magazine, glee, music, plastique, skyrider band, sole, volume one