Johnny Cash: American Recordings VI Ain’t No Grave, Rating 5.0 How can you write anything bad about Mr. Cash. The album isn’t bad but I don’t think it needed to be released. “American Recordings VI” sounds like it’s all the songs that weren’t good enough to make the cut for “American Recordings V” which were both recorded in the few months between the death of June and his own. It’s hard to listen to songs about death and dying from a guy who is actually dying. I want to remember cash as the guy who “shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.”
Peter Gabriel: Scratch My Back, Rating 5.8 “Scratch my Back” is the first part of Gabriel’s cover album project the 2nd being “I’ll Scratch Yours.” Gabriel covers the likes of Bowie, Bon Iver, Lou Reed, Radiohead, Arcade Fire and Neil Young. No guitars, no bass, no drums only piano and orchestral arrangements. “Scratch my Back” is a very pretty album but it’s almost equally as awkward. I’m not sure this really needed to be made. This album is a good one to have on while you work, doesn’t take a whole lot of concentration. However there are a couple stand out songs that just too good to glance over “Flume” by Bon Iver and “The Book of Love” by The Magnetic Fields. Let’s hope for better when the artist’s cover Gabriel’s songs on “I’ll Scratch Yours.”
These New Puritans: Hidden, Rating 7.2 Q: What do you get when you mix Gil Evan’s-esque arrangements, Kodo style drumming, Choirs and synthesizers? A: “Hidden” by These New Puritans. This honestly sounds like nothing I’ve heard before so I have nothing really to compare it to. The first couple songs sound like they could be used on a horror movie (probably vampire based, but not like that twilight junk) soundtrack, dark and ominous. Then it moves to more of the mind of a serial killer feel through the middle, a little off but always calculated. Towards the end you feel like you just took a quaalude and you’re floating on clouds. I have a feeling this will be an album I continue to come back to.
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