As most of you probably know by now, I get my interest in most musicians usually through movies and television. Recently I saw a Kia commercial, and I am sure you all know what I am talking about, in which there are some toys in the backseat that come to life and cruise around town in the car. I had always thought the song (“How you like me now”) playing in the background was fun, so of course I looked it up and was quite happy with the results I found.
The Heavy started out with two friends who bonded over vintage R&B, and Jim Jarmusch films. The two in question are lead singer Kelvin Swaby, and guitarist Dan Taylor. From there they put together a band that is a unique blend of rock n’roll and soul music. The other members of the group joined later and include drummer Chris Ellul, and bassist Spencer Page. While the band has only been together since 2007, they have been able to put out two albums that to me are quite impressive for a band who have been together for such a short time.
I chose this band because I think they are different than anything we have listened to, and thought they would possibly appeal to a few of you. One other note, I saw that The Heavy was recently on David Letterman, and in all the years that he has done his show they are to date, the only band that were asked to play an encore. I will post the performance below, and you can tell me what you think.
Recommended Listening:
1) Great Vengeance and Furious Fire (2007)
2) The House that Dirt Built (2009)
The fact that these guys are into vintage R&B and Jim Jarmusch movies makes them cool as shit. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is made by none other than Mr. Jarmusch.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really weird comparison, but the entire first album sounds like a Marilyn Manson album to me. While the riffs are not as heavy and the lyrics are not as aggressive, the delivery, style, and a few of the chords are spot on with Manson’s last few albums. ‘Brukpocket’s Lament’ was a pretty creepy track with a real cool baseline. ‘Colleen’ was a really cool track that absolutely brings in instrumentally and the chorus and backing vocals were extremely catchy. ‘Set Me Free’ has almost the same exact intro that I love in Chevelle’s ‘I Get It’, except it maintains those chords throughout the entire track. ‘That Kind of Man’ reminded me of a Crystal Method song, but was just as catchy as ‘Colleen.’ ‘Doing Fine’ and ‘Dignity’ helped reinforce my Marilyn Manson reference with the explicit lyrics that I thoroughly enjoy. ‘Girl’ reminds me of an old school track I had from Snoop Dog on a cd called ‘In the Beginning There was Rap.’ His song was called ‘I Need a Freak’ and was hilarious. ‘Girl’ has the same exact baseline and is almost as humorous. ‘In the Morning’ sounds almost exactly like Manson’s ‘Leave a Scar’ with the same exact riff. Then finally ‘Who Needs the Sunshine’ closes out the disc with a very dark track and depressing track. I listened to this at work and got lost in a project and ended up having this repeat about 5 times. Through this I found that this album was very hard to overplay and that the tracks never got old. This was a very entertaining album.
ReplyDeleteAfter a unique intro and a Beatles-like 1st track, we get right into their most recognizable song. This song has a lot of attitude and is just down right catchy. A perfect song for what Kia wanted to achieve in introducing a smaller car. The only thing that urks me is repeating the same line for an entire chorus. It reminds me of TLC’s No Scrubs where they repeat the same line over and over and over for the entire length of the track. ‘How You Like Me Now?” only repeats it through the chorus and the piano and horn section more than make up for it. ‘Short Change Hero’ is another excellent track that I expect to hear on a soundtrack very soon. The violin and drum beat are spectacular and allow you to paint a very clear western picture. ‘No Time’ is a pretty heavy rock song that switches up the sound to some variety to the album. ‘Cause for Alarm’ reminds me of Thievery Corporation week, and again switches up the sound to a more reggae feel. ‘What You Want Me To Do?” is probably the closest comparison to Manson on the second album with the heavy drums and bass line.
The first album was a great introduction to the band, while the second album showed some growth and had a lot of new sounds on it. I was very surprised with the outcome of this week and intend to follow this group going forward.
With my love of soul and blues music, I’m surprised this group slipped right by me. I’m blown away by the fact that David Letterman has never asked for an encore before these guys; he has had plenty of tremendous musicians and performers in his many years of broadcasting. Not to take anything away from your previous picks Beth, but it is nice to see you pick a non-folk act. From the little I’ve heard already, I like it.
ReplyDeleteSly Stone must be a huge influence for these guys because there is a heavy funk that resonates with the opening track “That Kind of Man”; I get the feeling of being apart of a chase scene in a blaxploitation film with the guitar and rhythm section. The horn section appears to be a looped sample, on the hip-hop flavored “Coleen”; with lyrics about gold-diggers who want the Gucci and Louis V. I was going to make the Black Keys comparison, but the lead singers are quite different, Kelvin is more soul where the Keys Dan Auerbach is more Delta blues. The mixing could be way better, a lot of the elements are competing with each other in a mess of noise; “You Don’t Know” is a perfect example of this with the loud guitars, cymbals and Kelvin’s attempt to be heard through it. “Dignity” is a blatant rip off of the Spencer Davis Group’s massive hit “Gimmie Some Lovin’”. “In The Morning” is a guilty pleasure song that just rocks, if you like this song you have to check out Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, they make unabashedly unforgiving blues/funk. I also enjoyed “Who Needs the Sunshine” with its slow churning angst. This album was a fun listen, a little sloppy in it’s execution at times, but fun.
After reading Thomas' post I realize I missed a song or two and listened to a couple of wrong ones. Grooveshark lied to me.
ReplyDeleteObviously, with video of the Letterman performance, we see that this group lives for the live performance; their music translates perfectly and there are elements of James Brown and the JB’s that I’m finally picking up on. “Oh No, Not You Again” has a rockabilly/ surf-rock groove that is hard not to dance to. The horns are super funky on the very recognizable “How You Like Me Now”. “Sixteen” once again openly steals from the song “I Put a Spell On You”, a song that was also sampled on Notorious B.I.G’s “Kick in the Door”. I feel like I’m listening to a Gnarls Barkley song on “Short Change Hero” as Kelvin does a very convincing Cee-Lo impersonation and the beat could easily be the workings of producer Dangermouse. Their experimentation in reggae is executed perfectly on “Cause for Alarm” with its Rastafarian content and funky bassline. “Stuck” is unexpectedly vulnerable, but The Heavy once again show how they are chameleons when it comes to their sound. While I wasn’t blown away, I was impressed by their execution and quality of their albums as a whole. Good pick.
ReplyDeleteThe Heavy are definitely major borrowers from music of the past. At certain times, their music seems like it would fit perfectly in just about every decade since the creation of rock n roll (the 1950s), and it's this wide variety of sounds that keeps each of these albums interesting for most of their lengths. I really don't feel like the band has hit their peak yet, and when they do I certainly want to be there to hear it.
ReplyDeleteKicking off 'Great Vengeance and Furious Fire', "Brukpocket's Lament" is a nice little moody opener, but it's with "Colleen" that things really get going. I love the looped beat throughout the song, and the energy throughout the song is great. "Set Me Free" gets into a really nice groove through the course of the song, and the instrumentation on "That Kind of Man" reminds me of a 70s or 80s action television show....it's awesome. "Doing Fine" is my favorite song on the album, and Kelvin's voice is really given room to shine on this track. This song is where I finally realized that his voice sounds a lot like Curtis Mayfield's....which is a great thing. The album goes into a 4 song lull at this point, lowlighted by the song "Girl", which is honestly one of the most annoying songs I've heard in a long time....it sounds like a terrible rip-off of British garage-rapper The Streets. Things finally pick up again at the right time for the haunting closer "Who Needs the Sunshine?". After the energy of the set preceding it, I think closing the album out on a dark note was a good idea. In all, I think the good songs on this album would have made for a really great EP, but as a long player it hits a rough 4 song stretch that was a little rough to get through.
'Great Vengeance and Furious Fire' Album Rating:
62%
"The House That Dirt Built" is practically a carbon copy of their debut album as far as the sequencing of the tracks go. Like on the previous album, there's an opening track that I don't like as much, a 3 or 4 strong stretch of relative greatness, a stretch of not so great songs finally followed up by a really good closer. If they could have combined these two albums into one, it would have been great. Obviously, like everyone else, I first heard "How You Like Me Now" on the commercial, and I thought it was a little bit annoying in that context. Hearing the full version is an entirely different experience, though. When the song hits it's heavy guitar coda, it really takes off and instantly becomes the best thing that this band has done to date. Like Justin said, "Sixteen" is an absolute rip off of Screamin' Jay Hawkins "I Put a Spell on You" in practically every way, but at the same time I love that song....so I really love this song as well. "Short Change Hero" kicks off a lot like the work that the great Ennio Morricone did for Sergio Leone's spaghetti western movies of the 60s, and then settles into a nice sort of Gnarls Barkley'ish hip hop groove that is really great. Like I said earlier, at this point this album once again goes into a lull up until the closing track that sounds like nothing that's come before it from this band. "Stuck" is a pretty brilliant song, and it's really nice to hear a lot of emotion shining through in Kelvin's voice. The instrumentation behind it is extremely pretty, and this almost completely wipes away the bad taste that the few songs before it had left. The good songs on this album were a little better than the good songs on their debut album, but like I said, the whole thing was drug down a little bit by a bit of bad sequencing. This band is gonna make something really great in the future, though....I can feel it.
ReplyDelete"The House That Dirt Built" Album Rating: 66%
Sorry for waiting until the last minute. I have been slammed with stuff to do these past few weeks and it won't get better till after Bonnaroo, or better yet, the end of June altogether. I had time to get some listening in, just not to write until now.
ReplyDeleteThis week started slowly for me, literally, with "Brukpocket's Lament," which I don't seem to have liked as much as everyone else this week. The guitar is cool and all, but things didn't really hit a stride with me until the second album. That being said, here's taking a look back at "Great Vengeance and Furious Fire."
First, the album name reminds me of the scene in "Pulp Fiction" where Jules busts out that Ezekiel quote, "And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee." Like I said earlier, I wasn't impressed with the first song. "Colleen" started out like a hip hop anthem, and I started to lose some hope for the album until things picked up with Track 3, "Set Me Free." The lyrics and the flow, with the guitar in the background, really struck a chord with me for the first time this album. Again, "That Kind of Man," wasn't my thing. The music almost overpowered the singer's voice and there may have been too much going on for my liking. "Doing Fine" improved the experience a little more and I started to see a pattern - I don't like these guys' hip-hopish stuff so much as when they tone it down and do the rock/r&b thing that I think makes them cool. "Dignity" would have worked for me if I hadn't wished I was listening to the original song through the whole track. It was a little too close for comfort for me."Who Needs the Sunshine" ended the album on a decent album, a psych-rock track that I thought was very fitting of them.
On "The House That Dirt Built," I still wasn't super impressed with "Oh No Not You Again," but I was happy to start the album off on a guitar and drums based tune. Knowing what's coming, I can see a little bit of Screamin' Jay Hawkins in this track too actually... "How Do You Like Me Now" is a pleasant enough song that I remember from commercials. It sounds more soul than anything I've heard in their other tracks. I am a little surprised at the range of songs this band puts out when the soul thing worked so well for them here. I think "Sixteen" sounded alright because I like "I Put a Spell on You," but I think it needs something of it's own identity. I thought Shortchange Hero" was a highlight on the album - I love the storm sounds (even though it's sunny I almost thought there was thunder outside) and the Western feel. It also has a catchy chorus, which is a plus. "Long Way From Home" was similar to me. "Cause for Alarm" was a strange, almost reggae track out of no where, just when I was starting to think this was a pretty decent soul/rock album. Overall, I like the distorted lyrics and the heavy (pun intended) rock, but I don't like that at times it seems like they're all over the place for me. I did enjoy this week, it just didn't blow me away. Maybe subsequent listenings will help my leanings one way or the other.
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