The Black Keys

El Camino

Nonesuch

Rolling Stone: star rating

Community: star rating

 WILL HERMES

December 6, 2011

Over 10 years and seven albums, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney have turned their basement blues project into one of America's mightiest bands. Weaned on Stax 45s and Wu-Tang loops, the Black Keys smeared the lines between blues, rock, R&B and soul, with Auerbach's horny Howlin Wolf yowl bouncing off garage-y slashing and nasty body-rocking grooves. Like that other guitar and drums duo from the Rust Belt, the Akron, Ohio, guys brought raw, riffed-out power back to pop's lexicon. On 2010's Brothers, they found a perfect balance between juke-joint formalism and modern bangzoom. The result was a few Grammys and so many TV ad placements, The Colbert Report did a sketch about it.

El Camino is the Keys' grandest pop gesture yet, augmenting dark-hearted fuzz blasts with sleekly sexy choruses and Seventies-glam flair. It's an attempt at staying true to the spirit of that piece-of-shit minivan on the album cover – similar to their first touring vehicle – while reimagining it as a pimpmobile.

This is the Black Keys' third meeting – following 2008's Attack & Release and one track on Brothers – with Danger Mouse, a.k.a. Brian Burton. Here, the band essentially becomes a trio, with Burton as co-producer/co-writer throughout. His brilliance, as the planet heard on Gnarls Barkley's Crazy, is blowing details of classic pop up to Jumbotron scale. Listen to the keyboard part that kicks in the door of El Camino's "Gold on the Ceiling": a serrated organ growl backed up with a SWAT team of hand claps. It's Sixties bubblegum garage pop writ large, with T. Rex swagger and a guitar freakout that perfectly mirrors the lyrics, a paranoid rant that makes you shiver while you shimmy.

The single "Lonely Boy" works the same way, launched on a gnarly, looped guitar riff whose last note slides down like a turntable that someone keeps stopping. Then a sugar-crusted keyboard comes in, along with what sounds like a boy-girl chorus, changing the swampy chug into a seductive singalong.

The Keys cited the Clash as an influence for El Camino, and that influence is evident in the increased zip of the grooves, and in the group hug between roots music and rock spectacle: See "Hell of a Season," whose choppy guitar chords and relentless beat twists into a dubby, uptight reggae pulse. Of course, you can just as easily hear Led Zeppelin in "Little Black Submarines," an acoustic blues that gets run over halfway through by electric riffs and brutish drums, Carney doing a hilariously great junkyard John Bonham.

There's still a strange jukebox anonymity to the Keys' approach; their vintage organ and guitar sounds often project larger personae than the band itself. But part of the reason Carney and Auerbach keep finding new ways to shake up that old-school blues-rock rumble is that they're workaday dudes smart enough to get out of the way of their own songs. Like Clark Kent's or Peter Parker's, their 99 percentness only seems to enhance their powers.

The Grateful Dead

Shakedown Street

Rolling Stone: star rating

Community: star rating

By : Gary Von Tersch

March 8, 1979

With few exceptions, Shakedown Street, rife with blind intersections, comes across as an artistic dead end. The punch that producer Keith Olsen provided on Terrapin Station, the Grateful Dead's last LP, has all but vanished here, and Olsen's successor, the usually reliable Lowell George, offers almost nothing to replace it. You can hear echoes of inventive reverberation and some crosscut grittiness in the percussive "Serengetti," while the seductive "France" gets off the ground in spots — but two songs make a single, not an album.

Over the years, the Dead have shown a knack for turning even the most undistinguished material into something at least moderately interesting. No more. Both "Good Lovin'" and "All New Minglewood Blues" feature aimless ensemble work and vocals that Bob Weir should never have attempted. Similarly, "Fire on the Mountain" and "Shakedown Street" suffer from too much strain and not enough revving up musically. The disco tinges in the latter merely add to the catastrophe.

And the rest? "I Need a Miracle" sounds like an Englebert Humperdinck reject, Donna Godchaux' "From the Heart of Me" is as clumsy as its title and "If I Had the World to Give" and "Stagger Lee" don't even boast instrumental solos to offset their flaccid lyrics. Maybe the band's energy is still in Egypt, partial payment perhaps for sending King Tut to America.

Phish

Farmhouse

Elektra

Rolling Stone: star rating

Community: star rating

 JON PARELES

May 25, 2000

There's a thin line between mellow and torpid, and Phish repose on that line all too calmly on Farmhouse, their eleventh album. It's an album dominated by songs from Phish's guitarist and main singer, Trey Anastasio; it was even recorded in his Vermont barn. He's leading Phish's latest attempt to come up with radio-length tracks that might spread their renown beyond the jam-band faithful. To hear why those fans fill arenas, try "First Tube" or the quickly accelerating "Piper," two glimpses of Phish jams in motion that turn vamps into breezy journeys. But songs have always been the least of Phish's assets; they're just raw material for those jams.

Most of the songs on Farmhouse are going to need a lot of live resuscitation. Leaving behind the shape-shifting cleverness of older Phish fare like "It's Ice," they're straightforward countryish rock that sets out to be genial but, with Anastasio's nonchalant singing, comes off slightly smug. If Farmhouse is Anastasio calling the shots, maybe he's not the group's resident genius after all. Tom Marshall's lyrics are about mild bummers or existential musings: rapacious girlfriends in the Allmans-style "Heavy Things," complete withdrawal in the sluggish, wanna-be-R.E.M. dirge "Dirt," dream-catching in the acoustic "Sleep."

One of Phish's problems is that their members are such music fans that they can't help re-creating their idols; the minor-key groove of "Twist," one of the album's better songs, leads Anastasio to a Santana guitar simulation. Then again, most music fans wouldn't be shameless enough to imitate the "Everything's gonna be all right" phrase from Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry," as Phish do in "Farmhouse." Another problem is that Phish just ain't that funky; "Sand" would like to be as cool as War's "Cisco Kid" but comes off more like Steve Miller's "Fly Like an Eagle." These songs are bound to improve in concert; bring a tape recorder.

Red Hot Chili Peppers

One Hot Minute

Warner Bros.

Rolling Stone: star rating

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October 5, 1995

By : Diana Darzin

Fake heartbreak is a top 40 staple; it's usually carried by Michael Boltonesque histrionics. On the other hand, real heartbreak (think Joy Division) tends to be quiet; it kinda sneaks up on you and grabs you and then sticks with you for the rest of the day. On One Hot Minute, "Transcending" has that quality: gorgeously trancey, anguished, undulating rhythm loops and crescendos wrap around lyrics about death that are both weirdly spiritual ("Never know when the gods will come and/Take you/To a loving stream") and raging ("Fuck the magazines/Fuck the green machine").

All this from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the sloppy punk-funk troupe that rose to fame wearing tube socks on its dicks.

One Hot Minute dives into the emotionally deep end of drug addiction and loss, themes the Chili Peppers first touched on in their biggest hit to date, "Under the Bridge," from their 1991 megaplatinum wonder, BloodSugarSexMagik. For these guys, seriousness turns out to be a lot more liberating than any misadventure. Before their original guitarist Hillel Slovak's 1988 accidental-overdose death, the Peppers' gleeful insanity often masked their broad and fluent musical vocabulary, including bassist Flea's interest in jazz and classical music. Now their belief in the power of jamming, innovation and spontaneity is fully unleashed. One Hot Minute is a ferociously eclectic and imaginative disc that also presents the band members as more thoughtful, spiritual — even grown-up. After a 10 plus-year career, they're realizing their potential at last.

Since the Chili Peppers are cagey veterans and returning producer Rick Rubin is no fool, One Hot Minute also offers songs that recall the hits on BloodSugarSexMagik: "One Big Mob" features a moody, sensitive section and furious, atonal, minimalist funk à la the Grammy-winning "Give It Away." "Falling Into Grace" takes the Chilis' deep, funky groove and adds a sexy, unexpected Middle Eastern flavor, cool and somehow malevolent. The melody line twines itself around the groove like a snake charmer's critter.

"My Friends," with its lovely, vaguely folky chorus, sports the same sad wishfulness of Blood Sugar's "Under the Bridge" and "Breaking the Girl." Ditto "Tearjerker," one of the tracks that reflects One Hot Minute's recurring death-and-loss theme. Less successful is "Deep Kick," whose Doors-ish spoken-word intro ("Love and music can save us and did while the giant gray monster grew more poisoned and volatile around us") comes off as pretentious and silly — although its punch line, "The Butthole Surfers/Always said it's better to regret/Something you did/Than something you didn't do," is surely something to live by. Even better, this bit is recited in a zippy tone while squealy, off-center instruments create a drunken cacophony in the background. It's the sonic equivalent of a loud birthday party.

"Warped" mixes harrowing lyrics ("Night craving/Sends me crawling"; "I need repair/Take me please/To anywhere") with a multitoned, layered intro and a whirling dervish of noises and big-rock rhythms surfing through and over big, funky hooks. It's like, well, a drug rush. But "Transcending" is the real triumph: Flea takes a go-round with lyrics and, stealing a page from Natalie Merchant, pens a tribute to his dead friend River Phoenix.

A succession of Peppers guitarists has followed Slovak's death. Perhaps the newest member, Dave Navarro, formerly of Jane's Addiction, will become a permanent addition. He makes a real contribution by taking the Chili Peppers' penchant for jazzy, unexpected nuance and sonic telepathy one step further — and also helps the band plug into its slamming punk-metal roots as well as a more retro, syncopated funkiness.

The joyful pro-creative "Aeroplane" ("Music is my aeroplane") features a happy midtempo groove that recalls pre-pop Kool and the Gang and ends with a chorus of children's voices (including Flea's daughter, Clara). "Walkabout" makes the groove slower, lazier, more spare — and then surprises with a snappy fusion break.

The disc's most potentially controversial song, the Catholic-baiting "Shallow Be Thy Game" ("To anyone who's listenin'/You're not born into sin/The guilt they try and give you/Puke it in the nearest bin") bristles with metallic fury, while "Pea" picks up on the big rampage-of-power-chords stampede of old Priest-Ozzy-Maiden metal, then metamorphoses it into similarly aggressive funk.

And then there's the title track. It's funky and fun. It's about love and sex. What the hell. Some things don't have to change. When they do it live, they'll probably be wearing wild 'n' wacky hats.

Dave Matthews Band

Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King

RCA Records

Rolling Stone: star rating

By : David Fricke

Saxophonist LeRoi Moore of the Dave Matthews Band was a famously taciturn man. Moore, who died last August at 46 of complications from injuries suffered in an off-road-vehicle accident on his farm in Virginia, never spoke onstage — not at any DMB show I saw, anyway — and declined to be interviewed for stories about the group. When I wrote about the Dave Matthews Band for a Rolling Stone cover story in 2002, Moore avoided even saying hello. A founding member of one of America's best-selling bands, he was also spectacularly successful at minding his own business.

Matthews, who drew the richly detailed artwork for this record, knew a different Moore. On the cover of Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, DMB's seventh studio album, Matthews portrays Moore as a giant laughing head on a Mardi Gras float, leading the delirium on a French Quarter street. And Matthews opens the record with a sparkling evocation: the sound of Moore's piercing alto sax dancing atop drummer Carter Beauford's eruptive rolls and Stefan Lessard's humming bass in the brief instrumental "Grux." A still, stocky presence in concert, like an upright bear in corkscrew dreads, Moore was a nimble, lusty player on his various horns, threading Matthews' vocal melodies and Boyd Tinsley's violin runs with jazzy intuition and funky punctuations.

Moore died early in the sessions for Big Whiskey, before the bulk of the album was made with producer Rob Cavallo in New Orleans last winter. (The album credits do not specify which tracks Moore played on; Jeff Coffin of Bela Fleck's Flecktones also plays sax here, and now on the road with DMB as well.) The sudden loss hangs over this record's startling punch like one of that city's humid summer rains. "Still here dancing with the GrooGrux King," Matthews declares on "Why I Am," tenaciously holding on to Moore's memory. More typical, though, are references like the "soldier's last breath" in "Funny the Way It Is" and Matthews' blunt fatalism in "Spaceman": "Doesn't everyone deserve to have the good life?/But it don't always work out." "Squirm" is straight-up doomsday. "Out there, no food, no drink/How many days do you think you'd last?" Matthews sings, then throws down a growling challenge at the end: "If kindness is your king/Then heaven will be yours before you meet your end." It's as if his way of coping with Moore's passing is by contemplating everyone else's.

Matthews also roasts most of his conclusions with hot rusted electric guitars, played by himself and his longtime collaborator Tim Reynolds. It is a new wrinkle for a DMB studio album, and one too long in coming. The group's first big records, such as 1996's Crash and 1998's Before These Crowded Streets, were never as compelling to me as the live shows — particularly the spiraling sax-and-violin ascents propelled by Beauford and Lessard's fusion of funk and African rhythms — mostly because of the airy center left by Matthews' acoustic rhythm guitar. Cavallo, working with DMB for the first time, has brought some of the classic-rock edge of his hit records with Green Day and My Chemical Romance to Matthews' arena-size spin on early-Seventies Traffic, like the power-chord punctuation and slithering-fuzz flourishes behind Matthews' bad-news snarl in "Squirm."

Matthews and the band also bend the rock to their will. The hearty guitars and cackling brass in "Shake Me Like a Monkey" go perfectly with Matthews' blatant comic lust: "I like my coffee with toast and jelly/But I'd rather be licking from your back to your belly." (That he doesn't say exactly how he expects to get from one to the other means you will probably be able to buy this album at Walmart.) "Funny the Way It Is" is a busy, catchy bundle of tension and release, with Tinsley's violin slicing across the band's cut-and-thrust and a grunting riff in the bridge that gets under your skin like another chorus. For much of "Time Bomb," Matthews sings about his anger with grumbling restraint, in a nervous quiet — silver dots of soprano sax, soft, curdling organ, hovering violin. But when he finally blows up, Matthews shreds his voice like Eddie Vedder against a brick wall of Pearl Jam — a startling compact thrill, lasting only a minute and change, that sounds exactly like a guy losing control just when he needs it most.

The most aggressive instrument on "Alligator Pie (Cockadile)" is actually a banjo, played with locomotive relish by Danny Barnes, with Matthews scatting overhead, dodging Tinsley's scathing violin. The song is a prayer for New Orleans, still drowning in need nearly four years after Katrina ("Grace is all I'm asking/When will grace return?"). But when Matthews sings about all that's gone there now, it's hard not to hear Moore's spirit passing by as well: "All the things we wanted/Everything that was sure/Now there is a scar."

Big Whiskey, though, is a lot like a New Orleans funeral parade — mourning and zest balled into big, brawny music. "We'll be drinking big whiskey while we dance and sing," Matthews crows in "Why I Am." "And when my story ends, it's gonna end with him/Heaven or hell/I'm going down with the GrooGrux King." I'm betting on heaven — and that Moore will be quietly waiting for him.

Rating : 4/5

I think the words added in are kind of idiot in some cases such as "Twerk" in my opinion is really ridiculous. the other words seem to new to be added to a dictionary such as "Phablet" as well.

My Words that should be added to the dictionary next year :

Christmannoying : (Noun) When people begin to listen to Christmas music right after or before the day of Halloween.

Schoogle-Translate : (Adj.) The process in which someone such as a student, uses "Google Translate" in school to get by their world-language classes.

Rusteeth : (Adj.) The feeling of waking up in the morning with an excess amount of plaque build up on your teeth even though you brushed thoroughly the night before.

Coun-try-hard : (Noun)  A person who believes they are at the standards and have the right to act like a fellow from the deep south. Acts to find out who is a "Countryhard" would include ; Excess obession with Luke Bryan, Mudding, Driving only trucks and treating it like your child, and frequent use of  "Dip".

Senioritis : The "illness" of getting the sense that you don't have to try that hard to get by your senior year of high-school.

Ethos : The speaker had a lot of data to be presented and he seemed to know a lot about global warming as well.

Pathos : The emotion-of the speaker gave me a sense of grief emotion because he talks about how serious the situation of our ecosystem, and atmospheric issues really are and how they will effect us and the earth, throughout our lives.

Logos : The logic the speaker uses relates to reasonable issues the even I have noticed and he speaks broadly about the lack of oxygen as it reduces in forests and the issues in the Arctic.

I believe that parents should have some limits on technology and apps such as twitter and Facebook because you really don’t need those 24/7. Kids just get dragged into the whole thing because everyone else does. Maybe not every technology item in the household but people get a little too much addicted and obsessive that it serves as a primary distraction in some lives… which is sad when you actually think about it. Technology such as smartphones and other devices should be limited around family and school time.

High Interest Question

How do you feel about the 2013-2014 Boston Celtics and where do you think they're going to finish in the season standings?