I’ll Take the Long Road: Music for Every Passenger

Tamara — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0000

Fresh perspective — that’s what we’re all in need of to get the juices flowing. Here are a few prime choices hot off the presses for music lovers of all generations.

Big Tone
The Art of Ink
Let’s get inked. This is an original concept — a musical celebration of tattoo art.Detroit’s smooth stylist Big Tone blasts forth with a new album stacked with scintillating delivery. Chanteuse Monica Blaire serenades in the backdrop of scene one with “Skin Deep.” “Pedigree” brings forth a mouth-watering dynamic duo lining up Guilty Simpson and Big Tone whose voices match wits. “Authentic is the song I sing” goes the hook, and that’s truth tlaking.. “The Look” featuring Ta’raach and Phoenix is fantastical and dreamy, albeit hard hitting. But our personal favorite is “Squo.” What? If you don’t know, you don’t know Detroit. Here Big Tone draws fresh ink.

Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens
What Have You Done, My Brother?

Here is an extraordinary album by a woman who sings directly from her soul, whose experience cannot be duplicated, whose authenticity cannot be disputed. It’s an album whose positivity, no matter your beliefs, is immediately felt. An album that exudes a happiness, and a hopefulness, that is necessary now more than ever. “I’ll Take the Long Road” is the refrain that’s perfectly resonant in these times.

Robert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine
So perhaps you’ve got kids. Or your brother has a kid. Or your best friend has a kid. Or you see kids on the street. If the kid you know is like my kid, your kid responds to music. So when indie prince Robert Schneider released Apples in the Robert Bobbert & The Bubble Machine last week, he brought a modern rock perspective to the world of children’s music. Schneider reportedly tested out some of the material on his son Max. Here is a fun, quirky album with something for every child, and fantastical content for adults, too. Percussive tracks “Fee Fi Fo, Fee Fi Fum and “The Mighty Elephant” were hits with our resident infant critic.

The Whitefield Brothers
In the Raw

If new music sounds stale, then revisit classic funk with a dusted-off face that pays homage to the African diaspora. Poets of Rhythms founders were instilled with an identifying ear and they assembled a band of capable hands. The result ig-bodied acoustic funk on “Weiya” dipped in a polyrhythmic backbeat, the cool-hand of “Eji” and the light touch of “Buster.”

Hey Rosetta
New Goodbye

While it’s not your typical kids’ album “I’ve Been Asleep for a Long, Long Time” lulled the 5-month old baby in the house to sleep. But this is no soothing lullaby music, but rather full-bodied electric chords and a string-like backdrop with interesting lines like “The schools that we went to have all been closed.”

Rachel Yamagata
Elephants

We’re late, but that doesn’t mean we’re not out of time. Rachel Yamagata is that voice you want to hear before you go to sleep, and dream. “For those of you falling in love, keep it kind, keep it good, keep it right. For those in the midst of danger, keep one eye open at night.”

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I’ll Take the Long Road: Music for Every Passenger