Maybe in this freer live setting she'll make that dream come true. You get the idea that, in her dreams, she's less Keisha Cole than Janelle Monae. Her third and latest album, "Let Freedom Reign," both embraces conventional R&B, and challenges it in a few tracks. Her voice has real pain in it, with a cry at the back of the throat that lends nuance to even her happiest songs. The meaty voice of R&B singer Chrisette Michele has thick-tongued quirks you can chew on. Sal and Fever went on to launch many other dance, R&B and rap careers, but this show salutes the stars from that crucial era when aging disco met emerging hip hop.īest Buy Theater, Broadway and 44th St., (212 307-7171: Later, he formed Fever Records, which recorded the first cuts by Kurtis Blow. Starting in 1977, Sal Abbatiello began booking rappers at his dance club, Disco Fever, including Grandmaster Flash, Sweet Gee, and Love Bug Starski. "They're a means to the same end," Brownstein says, "Both allow you to get your mind off this crazy world and float away."įever Records looms large in the lore of Bronx hip hop. Like all the band's disks, the new one strikes an expansive vibe shared by both its core genres. They're so unconcerned with such matters, they gave away their most recent CD, "Otherwise Law Abiding Citizens," free. That the band focused on such live events from the start has inoculated them against the meltdown in album sales. For the last decade, this multiday fest has sold over 25,000 tickets per year. And that's what keeps fans coming back."Įnough have done so to birth a festival of the band's own, known as Camp Bisco. "But once we get out of the vocal sections and get into the instrumental stretches, we have long musical conversations. "We do have 140 vocal songs, so we could could fill nights of shows with just those," he says. Brownstein claims that's not the reason for the imbalance. The best disco songs ever were largely produced by Giorgio Moroder, so it’s only fitting for the Italian legend to be the one to pick them. The approach comes in handy considering the tepid nature of their singing (think: the guys in Phish. But, in the manner of both factions, they favor instrumental work over vocals. While studio albums lay down the raw skeleton of their songs, it’s undoubtedly the live setting where the meat on those bones really begins to take shape, where good songs meet with improvisational risks to create moments of unexpected and unpredictable brilliance.In truth, DBs' sound leans closer to jams than raves. This serves to remind the listener that even with the clean crispness of studio tracks the true heart and soul of the Disco Biscuits always has been, and always will be, their live show. The live “Mirrors” has a classic Disco Biscuits vibe, a just-sappy-enough love song with an almost orchestral sound and a soaring glitchy peak. Twisted Dee’s “On Time” extended club mix brings the high-octane untz in a big way, and bears much more resemblance to the original than Lipp’s reading. It doesn’t even come close to resembling the original until the samples of the lyrics come in over halfway through the track, a truly new piece of music loosely based on the original. With a strummed guitar riff oddly reminiscent of The Cure, the only real gripe with the song could be the bordering lameness of some of the lyrics, ie: “Who needs sexy when you’re filthy rich, you sexy bitch.” The dark, dirty, slowed-down club banger vibe of the killer “Konkrete” also has some seemingly weird-for-the-sake-of-weird lyrics, but that’s the Disco Biscuits, and Jon Gutwillig’s almost spoken delivery fits the sound of the song so well that it ultimately doesn’t matter.Īs for the “On Time” remixes, Eliot Lipp’s uber-chill take on the song is most definitely best suited for super latenight or very early morning listening. “Loose Change” will worm its way into your brain and stay there, consider yourself warned. This preview EP of the forthcoming full-length, Planet Anthem, features three tracks off the album plus two remixes of “On Time” and a live version of “Mirrors” from Red Rocks. “On Time” is undoubtedly catchy, but seriously, who else can reference “ctrl-alt-delete” and not only make it work, but make it a sexy rump shaker? Maybe Pharrell, but that’s about it. Leave it to the Disco Biscuits to put out a computer and Internet-themed sex song that’s somehow amazingly not laughable.
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