:As editor of an entertainment magazine that spends as much time on music as Paste, I often get asked what I’m listening to. Lately, I’ve been pointing a lot of people to Frightened Rabbit and Mumford & Sons. But that just scratches the surface of stuff that has me excited this year. Here are 10 that don’t even include great releases from LCD Soundsystem, Phosphorescent, Josh Ritter and plenty of others I’m sure I’m forgetting. Listen to a track from each in the playlist below.
10. Beach House – Teen Dream
I didn’t know I needed a new dreamy pop album on my iPod until I heard this.
9. Free Energy – Stuck on Nothing
The aptly named boys from Philly are the best bar band since The Hold Steady.
8. Janelle Monáe – The Archandroid
She’s amazing live, and now she’s got a full album to tide me over between shows.
7. Sleigh Bells – Treats
This album absolutely sounds like the future of music.
6. The National – High Violet
Apparently I’m release-date challenged. I originally thought The XX was 2010 and The National wasn’t out yet. Mea culpa. I’m fixing my list.
5. Band of Horses – Infinite Arms
This album has the office divided, but I fall squarely in the camp that loves its ’70s So-Cal vibe.
4. Frightened Rabbit – The Winter of Mixed Drinks
I can’t get enough of either of this Scottish band’s first two albums—or the live album that came out in between.
3. Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More
We may have matched them on the soccer pitch in South Africa this year, but England has out-Americana’d America this year.
2. Jonsi – Go
The Sigur Rós frontman sounds like he’s having more fun than ever.
1. Preservation Hall Jazz Band – An Album to Benefit Preservation Hall
Guests Tom Waits, Yim Yames, Steve Earle, Buddy Miller and Ani Difranco sound even better with some legendary New Orleans brass.
-Thanks, Josh!
"Mama ya don’t say, uh
Oil and water don’t mix
Petrolio don’t go good with no fish
Aw, it ain’t my fault
BP, big pimpin, big problem, bad presence
Billionaire pirate, boiling point, burst pressure
Aw, it ain’t my fault
Say man, who pushed the marshes back ?
Where’s the hurricane shelter and the garden at?
Aw, it ain’t my fault
Said, from the gulf of Mexico to the broke levee wall
Something gone wrong and it’s somebody’s fault
Aw, it ain’t my fault
Scripture says, it say they go to rock to hide they face
And the rock cried out no hiding place
Say, they go to rock to hide they face
And the rock cried out no hiding place
Say, they go to rock to hide they face
And the rock cried out no hiding place
Oh lord, oh lord, it ain’t my fault
OW!
Lord have mercy!
Aw, it ain’t my fault
This is part of my gospel song,
Say they go to rock to hide they face
And the rock cried out no hiding place
Say they go to rock to hide they face
And the rock cried out no hiding place
Say they go to rock to hide they face
And the rock cried out no hiding place
Oh lord, oh lord, it ain’t my fault
OW!
Aw, it ain’t my fault
This is part of my gospel song,
Aw, it ain’t my fault
It ain’t my fault
It ain’t my fault"
Early on May 12
, Preservation Hall Jazz Band creative director Ben Jaffe was still fuming about the previous day’s U.S. Senate hearings on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster.
The spectacle of BP, Transocean and Halliburton executives shucking and ducking responsibility warranted a response, Jaffe decided.
A certain New Orleans rhythm & blues classic sprang to mind: “It Ain’t My Fault.”
Written by legendary New Orleans arranger Wardell Quezergue and drummer Smokey Johnson in 1964, “It Ain’t My Fault” is now a Mardi Gras and brass band standard.
Less than 24 hours after the idea first struck Jaffe, a new version of “It Ain’t My Fault” featuring Lenny Kravitz, Mos Def, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews, actor Tim Robbins and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band had been recorded and mixed.
Jaffe hoped to release the song immediately on iTunes to benefit the nonprofit Gulf Relief Foundation, created to promote coastal restoration and assist families affected by the spill.
But creative processes often move more quickly than legal processes. Weeks later, the various parties involved still were securing necessary clearances and lobbying iTunes to waive its percentage of sales. Meanwhile, a video of the late-night recording session at Preservation Hall circulated online.
Barring another delay, “It Ain’t My Fault” should be available via iTunes on Tuesday.
Its existence is a testament to the ability of technology to facilitate creativity — and the musical possibilities available at any given moment in New Orleans...
This Little Underground
Geoffrey Redick and I went down to New Orleans for the first weekend of the city’s annual Jazz and Heritage Festival in late April. We recorded 12 interviews with 12 musicians all over the city in all kinds of settings. My favorite was Ben Jaffe AT Preservation Hall in the French Quarter. He was kind enough to meet us at 9am on a Sunday morning, just five hours after wrapping up a show with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Jaffe plays tuba and double bass and is the band’s director. As we waited outside, Jaffe rode up on an old bicycle painted Saints gold and covered in stickers - his trademark reddish afro bobbing with each push of a pedal. The building is about 260 years old, as Bob pointed out OLDER than this country and was first a private residence, then a Spanish tavern, then who knows what. It’s only been Preservation Hall for the last 49 years. (Click here for a virtual tour of the property). After showing us around the main room where the band performs and the crowd sits on benches along the walls, and on cushions on the floor, Jaffe surprised us by opening up his family’s old living quarters for the rest of the interview. It’s mostly one big room, with a bedroom/office up in the old hay loft. That was once his parents “room” and below that was a kitchen that the Jaffe’s turned into Ben’s brother’s bedroom. The main room is now chock full of knick-knacks, a collection of tuba player figurines here, dozens of mouthpieces for old tubas and horns there, a hand-crank player piano in an alcove along with a whole bunch of stuff collected by Ben’s father Allan Jaffe, who along with his wife Sandra, started the Hall in 1961...
