tUnE-yArDs

how can someone be a know-it-all and a know-nothing all at once?

i really liked the one klosterman piece in grantland about a crazy basketball game he saw at a ND junior college tournament. but it conspicuously had like three other SI staff listed under 'additional reporting'

"tUnE-yArDs/Phish Sandwich" is a new mash-up album that blends the Oakland crooner's eclectic stylings with the beloved jam band's extended improvs.

lol omg i need to hear this

iiiiii think i'll pass

oh come on this could be the greatest musical team-up since Lulu.

google is not turning anything like this up right now though

weird

http://pitchfork.com/news/46613-tune-yards-uestlove-cover-fela-kuti-for-charity/

o_O do people not get what the lyrics to "Lady" are about?

Considering how smart both Questo and Merrill are, I'm pretty sure they both know what they're doing.

ok, maybe these two are "smart" enough to have found a way in 2012 to cover a song that castigates Europeanized African women for claiming mastery over men while celebrating African women who know their proper subservient place. I'll admit I love "Lady" with all its problematic, macho, patriarchal awfulness--it's definitely, and unfortunately, one of his best songs--but I wouldn't go anywhere near it if I was a musician. the only way to redeem it is to put it in the context of Fela's anti-colonial sentiments, which I would guess would be hard to put across in a cover.

i guess we'll see

I mean, yeah the song is problematic, but some of those very issues are some of the things Merrill has, at least tangentially, touched on with her lyrics, so I'm sure she knows what she is getting into. Whether they succeed or not, that's a different story.

so it's pretty straight up, except for the raps: http://soundcloud.com/knittingfactoryrecords/tune-yards-angelique-kidjo/

this is pretty bad-ass

yeah, like it a lot.

still a little perplexed by this--it sounds kind of like they're doing a deliberate selecting or misreading of the lyrics, but w/e that's a much better idea than just singing the whole thing. but the music is great and despite giving tuneyards first billing, not having her sing lead makes all the difference. also yay charity

I won't front like i understand the context but the track is nice

still a little perplexed by this--it sounds kind of like they're doing a deliberate selecting or misreading of the lyrics.

well yeah. they subvert the song by singing only the lyrics that seem to assert female power. where fela's original harshly criticized that impulse, akua naru's raps in this version bolster it.

The artist's task when attempting problematic material isn't always to put a redeeming or subverting interpretation on it, right? Sometimes singing a problematic song can be analogous to playing a problematic character in a drama, where the point is to present the thing as lucidly as possible.

yeah, part of my confusion about this cover is that it's for an AIDS charity and Fela died of AIDS-related complications. So if you take the subversion route, you're subverting a song written by a guy who famously died from the disease you're trying to raise money to fight. But anyway, sort of like forks said, I can't possibly know what Angelique Kidjo's relationship with this song is like. My initial (over)reaction to the news was rooted in my expectation that a white american woman would be singing the lyrics. Idk, it's pretty interesting though, iirc from Michael Veal's Fela book, this song has often been misinterpreted as a feminist anthem--I'm not sure what I think about deliberately refashioning it as such.

very astute discussion. i won't front like i know enough about the original or paid enough attention to their lyrics to contribute something intelligent. but i would absolutely listen to a whole album of similarly styled Fela covers from this same group of collaborators. hot shit. that ?uest knows how to hit that snare just right.

i'm a huge fan of the first red hot + riot record

for real tho

http://www.okayafrica.com/2012/06/04/okayafrica-tv-the-making-of-lady-w-questlove-tune-yards/

The artist's task when attempting problematic material isn't always to put a redeeming or subverting interpretation on it, right? Sometimes singing a problematic song can be analogous to playing a problematic character in a drama, where the point is to present the thing as lucidly as possible.

― Träumerei, Friday, June 1, 2012 9:28 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, either way, right? it's up to the interpreter. and i don't think there's anything wrong with respectfully questioning or subverting a celebrated artist's work, even in this context.

its the kind of thing people will wince at later. like going through an old box and finding a 10,000 maniacs peace train cassingle.

― scott seward, Tuesday, September 20, 2011 3:42 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Brutal truthbomb. Icky music.

she seems, musically, to revel in her own rawness, "realness", funky warts-and-all earthiness. kind of a hippie thing?

― contenderizer, Friday, May 20, 2011 4:31 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ This gets at it, too... I HATE this sort of thing.

This is good! The drumming is fantastic, the tune-yards style tonal cluster background vocals work really well. Better than anything on the tune-yards record, never got into that after the first single.

For Fela covers, nothing matches MAW Expensive (with Wunmi singing Upside Down):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efLcPbJd7QY

Clarke, have you ever heard Rusted Root?

its the kind of thing people will wince at later. like going through an old box and finding a 10,000 maniacs peace train cassingle.
― scott seward, Tuesday, September 20, 2011 3:42 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Brutal truthbomb. Icky music.
― Clarke B., Monday, June 4, 2012

not... at all?

yeah, no. i can see how people who hate merrill's music might want to make that sort of sneering comparison, but it's lazy and cheap, imo. the two don't share much in common besides the hippie/boho vibe (which they generate in very different ways) and the fact that there's a woman on the mic. tune yards come on a good deal stranger, sharper and more challenging that 10,000 maniacs ever were.

It's not that they share much in common, but there's a very specific kind of "wow, I was listening to THAT?" feeling Scott perfectly nailed... I read it as less a direct comparison of the two groups and more a capturing of that feeling. I just don't connect to Merrill's voice or her way of singing, and that hippie/boho vibe you mention is generally a real turn-off for me. But more specific to Merrill, I'm with flopson way upthread in that her way of singing makes me uncomfortable somehow, sort of squirmy and embarrassed.

see, what i got from that is your suggestion that this will age poorly. And thus far at least that's not true at all. Only two years yes, but Tune Yards sounds as good to me now as when i first heard it.

I kinda think more time has to pass and more people have to let Tune-Yards fade from their immediate listening habits in order to determine how well they've aged... That feeling Scott describes is, for me, one of a bygone minor cultural consensus that leaves people scratching their collective head down the road.

I have basically settled down as mostly agnostic on the question of the merits of tune-yards but it seems very, very strange to claim as counter-argument to a prediction that something will not age well to say "well it still sounds fresh to me two years later!" Two years is nothing. "Love The Way You Lie" is almost two years old and it doesn't sound dated or so far removed from the context of current pop music that no one can figure out why so many people fell all over it. No one's going to be able to answer this question until the tune-yards albums are as old as the 10,000 Maniacs albums.

dan otm

but I do see some stylistic/cultural signifier similarities between TY and past-pop-crit obsessions

like, say, Arrested Development, Annie DiFranco, lol even Alannis a little bit

coco rosie?

i guess that was one word

i'm less interested in what makes people pick up stuff like this than it what makes them (sooner or later) put it down

Fiery Furnaces

okay, five of the six mentioned so far are female-fronted...

i just find the whole idea of "man are you gonna hate this in a few years" spurious on the face of it.

I want a Shackleton remix of Bizness.

In between the gorgeous singing on other parts of the album I get a CocoRosie vibe. Maybe a little Indigo Girls. Do not have opinion, still want remix.

Oh yeah Graceland with a loop pedal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as91OCbbEsc

New album Nikki Nack in May 2014. Clips sound badass.

happy to hear about this

I have a friend who hates tune-yards more than anything. His name is Nicky. He is very angry right now.

But my name's not Nicky.

Ok yeah this sounds pretty badass