Listening Post /Brief reviews of select releases
Hip Hop
Shwayze, “Shwayze” (Suretone/ Geffen). A friend of mine who is a lifelong rap and hip-hop fan refers to the style Shwayze epitomizes as “backpacker rap.” According to my buddy, recently relocated to Buffalo from the Bay area, the laid-back, mush-mouthed blend of stoner-rap and Jack Johnson-like surfer-folk is an affront to anyone who takes hip-hop seriously. This debut effort from the duo consisting of producer Cisco Adler and rapper Shwayze lends strength to this argument. It’s a lazy blend of pure, Sugar Ray-style dance-pop, lame drum loops, sleepy rhymes and inane melodies. “Corona and Lime” serves as a case in point. The song sounds like an advertisement for the beer that gave it its name — which means, it’s garbage, but catchy garbage. Same goes for the rest of the record, which is centered around the exploits of a narrator interested solely in getting high and chasing girls around Malibu. Tough gig, but somebody’s gotta do it. ★½ (Jeff Miers)
Classical
Eugene Ormandy: The Original Jacket Collection with the Philadelphia Orchestra — Limited Edition (Sony Masterworks). It didn’t take much discernment to know who were the sacred monsters of the podium were in the late-’50s, ’60s and ’70s: Lenny (Bernstein), George Szell, Fritz Reiner, Herbert Von Karajan, Leopold Stokowski and one of the most commercially successful but criminally overlooked of them all, Eugene Ormandy. Very few modern maestros have ever been taken for granted — and, therefore, dismissed — as much as Ormandy. And yet the string sound of the Philadelphians that he developed from Stokowski was one of the great phenomena of modern recordings (listen here to his classic recordings of Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings” and Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”). Nor was that all by any means. Even with late-’50s sound, the Philadelphia brass section in the finale of Respighi’s “Pines of Rome” was thrilling. Remember too that the woodwind section was so good it recorded and toured on its own as the Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet. This was one of the great orchestras of its time and the now much-overlooked Ormandy was one of the great 20th century conductors. How much attention in its time, for instance, did the Bartok recordings of Reiner and Kubelik receive and how foolishly little did Ormandy’s extraordinary reading of Bartok’s “Concerto for Orchestra” receive. Ormandy’s range was as quietly miraculous, in its way, as Haitink’s a little later. Except for Bach, Bartok, Mendelssohn’s violin concerto (with Isaac Stern) and smaller string works, this 10-CD set is mostly Russian — everything from Shostkovich’s Cello Concerto with Rostropovich and First Symphony to Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” to Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” to Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony and Vocalise to Tchaikovsky’s Fifth and Violin concerto with Stern. This is what happens when a conductor becomes popular for turning old warhorses into racers again. It’s a limited-edition set reproducing the original jackets and notes but exceptional, it seems now, in an entirely new way that only hindsight can provide. ★★★★(Jeff Simon)
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The Play of Daniel, “The Dufay Collective” (Harmonia Mundi USA). Here is a fun-loving foray into ancient music. “The Play of Daniel” dates from the early 13th century. It tells the story of Daniel in the lion’s den, but it became traditional to perform it around Christmastime. Pick it up and give it a place among your Anonymous 4 and Chanticleer Christmas albums. It is that beautiful — plus, you can enjoy it all year. It starts with a solo harp, then there’s a lovely soprano solo, then a bright chorus, and things go from there. You’ll recognize some of the tunes, among them the, ahem, “Song of the Ass” (better known as “The Friendly Beasts”). The Dufay Collective is good at capturing early styles of singing and playing without being flat or static. Processionals, accompanied by harp and handbells, are sweet as carols. The whole performance has a luminous, timeless feeling. One more thing: If you acquire this disk, tell the kids that the Dufay Collective has been heard in the movies “Harry Potter 3” and “Shrek 3.” It’s true. ★★★★ (Mary Kunz Goldman)
Pop
Glen Campbell, “Meet Glen Campbell” (Capitol). The musical career of 62-year-old Glen Campbell has been one of amazing versatility. Dating back to the early 1960s, the Arkansas guitar slinger has recorded or sung with such luminaries as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, the Monkees, the Righteous Brothers and Phil Spector, just to name a very few. Ballads like “Wichita Lineman” and “Galveston” were unforgettable. On his new disc, he moves into a surprising new direction, covering newer songs by bands like U2, the Foo Fighters, Green Day and the Replacements. The result? A stirring set of 10 songs. Campbell sings with power and emotion, and Wallflowers producer Julian Raymond builds a wall of sound that would make Spector proud. Musicians from Cheap Trick and Jane’s Addiction are along for the ride. ★★★½ (Dan Herbeck)
Jazz
Lisa Hilton, “Sunny Day Theory” (Ruby Slippers). Not to be confused with Paris or any other member of the low-wattage California Hiltons, this beauteous California pianist has some of the better friends you can have in jazz these days. Her quartet here is Parnassian — bassist Larry Grenadier, drummer Lewis Nash and tenor saxophonist Brice Winston who contributed the most beautiful tune of all to Terence Blanchard’s “A Tale of God’s Will,” in mourning for New Orleans after Katrina. Anyone finding in the tunes of this Malibu pianist quite a bit more modal New Age simplicity and low-temperature melodism than you’d find, say, in the piano music of contemporaries like Jason Moran or D. D. Jackson has merely discovered one reason why she has the potential be almost as hugely popular a jazz pianist as, say, Diana Krall is a singer/pianist. And, of course, blonde beauty is by no means incidental to it. Let’s be honest here — the disc is more irresistible than vacuous. ★★★(J. S.)
