Black and White Audio

That’s right, as the title says, this website is temporarily out of order. The reason for this is that I’m writing a new blog called Bw’s blog.

It’s very similar to this site, except that it gets updated daily, and the posts are a bit shorter. So check it out, subscribe, and enjoy. Oh, and check back here in a few months…I might write start writing here again.

Visit the new blog! http://bwaudio.today.com

On June 10th, 2008, My Morning Jacket released their fifth studio album: Evil Urges.

Produced by the legendary Joe Chicarelli (U2, The Shins), the recordings are a relatively faithful reproduction of the band’s live performance. The audio quality is great on this album.

Before listening to Evil Urges, I’d never heard the band and I didn’t know what to expect. From the name, I expected something poppier - maybe a tad emo? To my surprise, I heard quite the opposite. My Morning Jacket sounds to me like a cross between hard-rock, funk, and country…with some old-timey pop mixed in at times.

The title track starts off the album with five minutes of wierd falsetto vocals over music that sounds dark at times, but really light and up-beat at others. It’s a good song, but not my favourite on the album.

Sec Walkin, really emphasizes the old fashioned side of their music. It’s a slow song that definitely has some sort of country influence - did I mention they are from Kentucky?  Jim James’ voice shines on this song and has a really pleasant tone to it - no whiny screams to be found.

Librarian starts out with James playing acoustic guitar and singing (I’m led to believe that these parts were recorded simultaneously). His voice is heavily reverberated and is reminiscent of classic vocal sounds we all know. The string section changes the mood off the song drastically - this is one thing that’s highly prominent on the album: the ability to change tones from part to part.

Changing the tone and mood of music is a difficult thing to do without ruining a song. My Morning Jacket seems to do this with ease! Evil Urges is full of mood shifts that are very subtle, yet highly moving.

As a whole, the album is full of great songs; the musicianship is very solid - surely due to their extensive touring and years of playing together; and the audio recording is really stunning. Inspirational even. The style of music may not be for everyone (but thats impossible right?) but anyone who listens to this album must be able to admit that they are a great band.

Myspace.com/mymorningjacket

Okay, before I begin, I would like to address what you’re all thinking: she’s hot. Now we can talk about music right? Okay, good.

I listened to a few songs from Lights‘ new EP and they were pretty enjoyable. Her voice is really nice sounding and she’s clearly talented.

After watching a video-blog of Lights performing her song The Last Thing On My Mind, I was really impressed with her ability to play guitar and sing simultaneously.

When I got the opportunity to see her perform live at the Mod Club, I was looking forward to more of her excellent guitar playing. Unfortunately, she didn’t touch a guitar the entire night. Pretty disappointing.

Lights Poxleitner (her real name…I was surprised too) took center stage and was flanked by some interesting individuals: Synth player Adam took his job extremely seriously while headbanging non-stop and tapping his keyboard viciously with his index fingers; alternatively, drummer Maurie seemed like he was about to fall asleep most of the time…maybe he was tired?

She performed her single Drive My Soul perfectly, along with February Air which is another interesting song. I wasn’t very impressed with It’s Over Casanova, which is apparently a fan-favourite (I’m guessing it’s a girl thing). The best moment of the night was the intimate cover of Akon’s Don’t Matter. I liked it way better than the original, and she pulled it off beautifully - good choice.

Her inexperience showed a bit when she tried to get the crowd involved with the show. Just yelling out “Toronto!” at random times, and asking for people to hold their cellphones up (it’s cool if Chris Martin makes 15,000 people do it, but it doesn’t work at the Mod Club!) came across awkwardly. This is one aspect she needs to brush up on.

Overall I think Lights is a great artist, but her performance just wasn’t that impressive. If she keeps performing (which I have no doubt she will) she’ll probably improve a lot and eventually prove me wrong. A friend of mine (Lauren) told me that she really enjoyed the show, so at least someone was impressed.

I would probably go see her play live again - but only if she plays guitar, and only if the drummer can keep his eyes open.

If you want to hear some good pop music, go to iamlights.com and click on the myspace link. While you’re there, laugh at the hundreds of dumbass myspacers who ask her to marry her through picture-comments. It’s dynamite.