If you interested in buying any of the albums below, click on the album title to go to Amazon and the artist name to download it in iTunes. Also check out my original album reviews in the link under the album where for those I reviewed.
For the best live performances of the year, you can take the song title link to view the performance(aside from the first couple embedded ones) and the iTunes links will take you there where you can buy the performances (where available).
1. Friday – Stephan Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, The Roots, Taylor Hicks, and the Knick City Dancers (Late Night with Jimmy Fallon)
2. The Cave / Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise / Maggie’s Farm – Mumford and Sons, The Avett Brothers and Bob Dylan (2011 Grammy Awards)
3. Someone Like You – Adele (2011 MTV Video Music Awards)
Nothing like a little rejection to get your creative juices flowing. After a pair of forgettable album released on a major label, Meg & Dia were dropped and turned that rejection into some of the catchiest songs your ears could hear this year for their album Cocoon. The only problem is without a major label to promote the album it just sat there in the ether of the internet. So the singing half of the group Dia Frampton tried out for The Voice and let’s face it, should have won. But her effort landed Dia her second chance at a major label record contract.
With the release of The Broken Ones, it sounded like Dia might be in for a repeat of her first major label with an uninspired song in the vein of the bore of an “original song” Inventing Shadows that was written for The Voice. Fortunately most of the rest of her debut solo album Red sounds more like the direction she took with her band in the last year. The only other forgettable song on the album is the duet she sang and co-wrote with her coach on The VoiceBlake Shelton for I Will which sounds like your run of the mill overdramatic sentimental ballad that populates most country albums these days.
Despite being mentored by the country superstar, there isn’t much country influence on Red unless you count Isabella with its banjos and foot stomping beat, but even that song sound more like the folksy Mumford & Sons filtered through a pop prism than a tradition country song. But much like on the show when she transitioned from the Colbie Caillat to Kanye West to R.E.M. to Tom Petty, there is plenty of genre skipping throughout Red. Aside from the previously mentioned trips into folk rock and country, you can also hear elements of adult contemporary (The Broken Ones), acoustic singer-songwriter (Daniel), alternative rock (Bullseye), and even hip-hop (Don’t Kick the Chair which features a verse from Kid Cudi).
Dia was marketed as the “indie pop” artist on The Voice and she certainly kept that theme for Red bringing in some top flight “indie pop” producers like Greg Kurstin of The Bird and the Bee (Don’t Kick the Chair), Mark Foster and Isom Innis of Foster the People (Billy the Kid), and Isabella Summers who is the Machine in Florence + The Machine (Bullseye). The influence of Foster the People spreads to other songs on Red. Aside from Billy the Kid, which sounds like it could have been a leftover from their album rerecorded with Dia’s vocals with its plucky bass line and vocal effects that accompany the spaghetti western style lyrics, there is Walk Away, a whistle heavy song with a bass line that sounds like a slowed down version of Pumped Up Kicks and also features a chorus about bullets.
And apparently there were an over abundance of catchy tunes because there are a couple of bonus tracks worth hunting down (and could have replaced the sappier I Will and / or The Broken Ones) including Hearts Out to Dry on iTunes which is more adventurous than anything on Red with her spooky vocals and would have rivaled the heartfelt delivery of Trapeze for the best vocals on the album. While over at Walmart there is the exclusive track Love Can Come From Anywhere which could have battled for the best track on Red with its absurdly catchy chorus. With Red, With the release of Red Dia Frampton is living proof that second chances are worth giving out.
There have been a couple of videos that have caught my eye lately so I thought I’d give them some love since the death of Musical Television left a void for a forum on the art form. If you are interested in buying the video through iTunes, click the title link (where available). If you are interested in buying the song, look for a link in the analysis.
I was not that enthused with the orginal song Dia Frampton sang on The Voice and this is slightly better, but not as good as anything on Cocoon. The Peter Pan meets Lord of the Flies video. Does that make Dia Wendy or Simon?
Posthumous music videos are a weird proposition; you either have to go archival footage or someone do the lip-syncing instead. Seeing old Amy Winehouse videos and pictures is still a bit unsettling especially when her upcoming album seems like a pure cash grab.
A couple years ago, Fleet Foxes released a cool video for Mykonos and the new video looks to have the same animation style but with a more linear story. Just do not ask mean what it actually means.
I wonder what is more ironic, that the new Selena Gomez & the Scene video looks like a glossier version of The Naked and FamousYoung Blood video, that it sounds like every other pseudo-disco pop song on the radio right now, that she blatantly stole a line from Teenage Dream, the verses sound like leftover lines from a certain Alanis Morissette song, or that I kind of like it.
Quote of the Week: Texas forever. (Tim and Billy Riggins, Friday Night Lights)
Song of the Week: Heaven – Brandi Carlile (Friday Night Lights)
Big News of the Week: America Comes Up Short: Augments could have been made after the USA beat Brazil that it was the best game ever of any sport, right up there with the Miracle on Ice. Now that they came up short in the World Cup final, the Brazil match sits squarely in the second tier with all the other “Yeah, but” games. And the Japan win was eerily reminiscent of the US beating Brazil (sans any controversial referee moments) with a late goal in extra time and pulling out the win in penalty kick. They even got a red card, but only had to be down one player for seconds (and America was just about a foot away from possibly getting a penalty kick win in regulation). And if Alex Morgan is reading this, you are more than welcome to cry on my shoulder as long as you like.
Leverage: I would not have been opposed had they done an entire segment devoted to the team trying to get the douchebag to do something heroic. That was comedy gold. You can stream recent episodes on TNT.tv. You can also download Leverage on iTunes.
Falling Skies: The creepiest moment of the short series has to be when the skitter led the children into the room and nested on them like a mama bird. It creeps me out just writing that. You can stream recent episodes over at tnt.tv. You can also download Falling Skies on iTunes.
Rescue Me: with just two months worst of episodes left, I am ready to say goodbye to this show. The part where Tommy took a drink so he could hear the dead people, just to spit it out was a little too much for me. Considering the show will end with the anniversary of 9/11, I am sure there will be a touching sendoff, but I fear the lead up will be too cumbersome. Granted the firehouse discussion of offensive stereotypes on reality television was entertaining. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Rescue Me on iTunes.
Friday Night Lights: The finale is still a little fresh and am still formulating my thoughts (which will be too long for this space) so until I get the digital version of pen to paper (fingers to keyboard?) check out Grantland’s Oral History of Friday Night Lights, which hopefully is a precursor of a 250-page book. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu.
Video of the Week: Earlier this week I reviewed her band’s Cocoon album (see I Gave Up on Giving Up on Me) and for those that that want to relive her time on the Voice, here is the Best of Dia Frampton (though you should go to Hulu and search her name for her full performances, or just go to iTunes and buy her songs).
Next Week Pick of the Week: Rescue Me, Wednesday at 10:00 on FX: With everthing going on last week, I almost forgot that Rescue Me was returning for its final season. First episode back was a little rocky (if I am not mistaken, the last two seasons were originally supposed to be one, but the network broke them up so the show could end just prior to the tenth anniversary of 9/11), but hopefully it ramps up for its series finale just days before we memorialize that tragic day.
When scrolling through some of the blind auditions from The Voice that caught my eye, I immediately recognized Dia Frampton (or at least was able deduce who she was from her not so popular first name and her sister / bandmate Meg in the friends and family room) from the rock band Meg & Dia. Though just barely did because the band was an afterthought for me in the bland emo chick rock genre that eventually got popularized by Paramore (who I once labeled the most mediocre band).
Then Dia popped up on The Voice performing the antithesis of emo rock, the breezy Bubbly which Dia found a folksier version of the song, changing the phrasing ever so slightly to make it interesting (and wisely dropped the cheesy “Will you count me in” intro). Where most singing competition contestants pick songs where they can sing with their hands, Dia went the other way and paid off with Blake Shelton set the record for fastest button press on the show and became one of only three singers from the blind auditions I cared about. Granted she almost lost all the goodwill she built up from the blind auditions when she was part of the single worst performance during the first season of The Voice when she “Battled” Serabee during Can’t Hurry Love (which was not all her fault, but unlistenable nonetheless). The performance was so bad the judges, that never met a superlative that did not want to over use, could not find anything positive to say. But all that changed with one single performance.
When Dia performed Heartless, it was a jaw on the floor performance which I instantly called the gold standard for singing competition performances and any hyperbole couldn’t do the performance justice. Alright Cee Lo Green’s “greatest rendition of a song I ever heard” may have been a bit overboard (for more thoughts on Heartless see: You Got a New Friend, I Got Homies). It was at this point when I thought maybe I should give Meg and Dia another listen starting with the Meg and Dia YouTube page where Dia uploaded some amazing and interesting covers by the likes of some of my favorite artists like The Avett Brothers, Mumford and Sons, and Adele.
Also up on their YouTube page was a video for My Ugly Mouth from their It's Always Stormy In Tillamook EP. The infectious track will have you singing along by your second listen with its Beatle-esqe chorus, folksy verses and a high point when the sisters do their own little battle in the bridge. And as it turned out the EP, as well as the full length follow up Cocoon, which the band put out independently just prior to the premiere of The Voice, is one hundred percent bland-emo-chick-rock-free.
For those going through Dia withdrawals now two weeks after The Voice wrapped up, Cocoon is a great album to subside the shakes while waiting for her to make new music (seriously record executives, pick her and her band up already, she had the number one song on iTunes for goodness sake). And there are plenty of tracks that can transition you from her time on The Voice. If you liked her version of Bubbly, check out the bouncy I Need You in It. If you liked the vulnerability in her Heartless performance, go to Mary Ann where Dia pleads with another woman not to take her man against a bluesy barroom backdrop. And for anyone who found themselves clapping along with Losing My Religion on their couch, you will be clapping along with the more upbeat Unsinkable Ships.
But as the name Meg and Dia suggests, the band is not a one person band (or even a two member group). Dia’s sister Meg even takes over the vocal duties on Better Off. Sure Dia has the more distinctive voice which is why she is the lead singer (and tries out for vocal competitions), but Meg has the sweeter voice (check out the free download of Weeding Through the Rubble on Bandcamp), but elects to go sultry for Better Off that simmers in jazzy lounge background music. Then the sisters trade verses on the next track Said and Done and the contrast of their voices make you wish they would do this more often.
Dia’s voice aside, musically Cocoon is an eclectic mix of different styles of music but never sounds scattered. The album starts earnest enough with just Dia and an acoustic guitar on Love Is before bringing in a wall of sound around the three minute mark with piano (really, whenever the band breaks out the piano is a high point on the album), harmonies and, of course, handclaps. Breakdown (which is the song that Dia mention on The Voice where you can hear a dishwasher humming during the song) could fit right in at adult contemporary stations today next to Norah Jones and Sara Bareilles. Bandits (which you can hear sirens blaring at one point, but with the title, the sirens may be intentional unlike the previously mentioned dishwasher) sounds like a refuge from college radio in the early nineties. While Teddy Loves Her closes out the album with a guitar solo worthy of a seventies arena.
The two standout tracks on Cocoon could not sound any different. Summer Clothes sounds like the most fun Meg and Dia have ever had on a song before and it is a shame that Dia never brought out this side of her during The Voice (a bigger shame is that the show picked Inventing Shadows as her original song instead one of her own original song that she or her sister wrote like this one which is much better than Inventing Shadows). Summer Clothes is then follows up by the melancholy Separate which allows us to hear what the Fleet Foxes may have sounded like if the Fleet Foxes were fronted by females. And much like a Fleet Foxes song, Separate flips in the middle of the song musically into a fuzzed out interlude like something off the latest Coldplay album when they deviated from their signature sound. If you were one of the people who put Dia Frampton at number one on iTunes, or are just a fan of indie pop in general, you owe it to yourself to check out Cocoon (and It’s Always Stormy in Tillamook for that matter), you will not be disappointed.
Wow, I actually made it through an entire review of a Meg and Dia album without mentioning that Dia was totally robbed on The Voice finale. Oops. Nevermind.
Welcome to the 7th Annual Scooter Television Awards honoring show that aired new episodes between June 2010 and June 2011. Without further ado, here are the winners of the 2011 STA's:
Best Duo: Coach and Tami Taylor (Friday Night Lights)
Most Entertaining Reality “Star”: Special Agent Philip Sheppard (Survivor: Redemption Island)
Most Annoying Reality “Star”: Boston Rob (Survivor: Redemption Island)
Best Quote: Listen to me: I said you need to strive to be better than everyone else. I didn’t say you need to be better than everyone else. But you gotta try. And that’s what character is: it’s in the trying. (Coach Taylor, Friday Night Lights)
Show That Should Be Brought Back: Friday Night Lights
Biggest Question for 2011-2012: No, seriously, who killed Rosie Larson Will anyone continue to watch The Killing?
Quote of the Week: Do you know what else is going to be distracting to them, is when they turn their phones here in about thirty minutes and they look at iTunes and see you sitting way above their records. That’s going to be so distracting. How are they going to focus with all that iTunes domination happening? (Blake Shelton, The Voice)
Song of the Week: Spirit In the Sky – Norman Greenbaum (Friday Night Lights)
Big News of the Week: Dia Frampton is the Only Player that got Robbed and Kept all Her Jewelry: To be honest I wrote that title right after The Voice finale and opened with a joke about Barry Bonds, George W. Bush and the 1972 Russian Basketball team needing to make room in the asterisk club for Javier Colon. But three days later I do not particularly care anymore because I realized like everything that allows internet voting, the show has no creditability for that simple fact. Sure Dia Frampton still was robbed but since she outsold everyone else on The Voice, having the hightest charting single after ever show and the only one to hit number one on iTunes she should easily find a new record contract and have more flexibility than Javier not being the winner to have more creative control and record with her band Meg & Dia. And keep in mind the person Dia sang a duet with on Wednesday, Miranda Lambert, made it to the finals of Nashville Star and lost to some dude named Buddy Jewel. Yeah, never heard of him either.
But what is frustrating about The Voice is the solution to fix its voting problems is really easy: give equal weight to the three voting methods, 33.3 % from internet, 33.3% from phone, and 33.3% from iTunes. That way people that actually spend their hard earned money on the music have the same say as losers who created a hundred different e-mail accounts because they believe their opinion is more important than everyone else. So if the producers of The Voice are reading this, feel free to use my idea, all I ask for in return is a private performance of Genie In a Bottle from Christina Aguilera (preferably Christina circa 1999). Since I started this with a Kanye West quote, I’ll give the last word to him and his thoughts on the finale:
Falling Skies: It may be hard not to be distracted by plot points that were already used in alien invasion movies. Seeing Noah Wiley dragging the unconscious alien around, it was hard not to think of Will Smith in Independence Day or even Aaron Eckhart in Battle: Los Angeles who also captured aliens for study. But the ending was extremely creepy with both the alien and kid waking up at the same time. You can stream recent episodes over at tnt.tv. You can also download Falling Skies on iTunes.
Pretty Little Liars: I have long been in the A is a not so dead Allison so I am predicting that is who the shadowy figure in the house that her brother is hiding. But what happened to the that one’s chick’s girlfriend’s family that lived in the house? Here they just renting from the family and moved out or are the writers making things up as they go? You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Pretty Little Liars on iTunes.
Friday Night Lights: Holy Smash Williams sighting! Of course that is just what Tim Riggins needed to see right out of prison, his archnemesis excelling at the college level. Hopefully he can get things together by the end of the season. Unfortunately that end of the season is coming way sooner that I was hoping. With every passing playoff game I cringed because the faster they get to state, the faster the season would end. And after avoiding looking up the number of episodes left all season, the promo monkeys finally clued me in that there are only two episodes left. Sigh. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu.
Video of the Week: What better day than the 4th of July to honor the newest citizens of the United States of America than with their own documentary Citizen USA which attends naturalization ceremonies in all 50 states. You can watch it Monday at 9:00 on HBO. Here is the trailer:
Next Week Pick of the Week: It’s 4th of July: Go outside, eat some hot dogs and watch the firework.
- Fleet Foxes
- Raphael Saadiq
- The Civil Wars
- Adele
- The Black Keys
- Jay-Z & Kanye West
- Ryan Adams
- R.E.M.
- Beyoncé
- Meg & Dia
- Beastie Boys
- Rachael Yamagata
- Lupe Fiasco
- Blitzen Trapper
- The Roots
- Laura Jansen
- Childish Gambino
- Nicole Atkins
- Anthony Hamilton
- Dia Frampton
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on my 
(Deadwood, Eastbound and Down, Six Feet Under)
- 311
ending on a cliffhanger
)
: This sampler includes songs by Fleet Foxes, The Head and the Heart, and J Mascus.
- Old 97’s