Lhasa
I'm Going InLhasa 2009 via Nettwerk Records
House Concert Artist! Bidding starts Friday at 11:00am wyce.org
Rufus Wainwright is one of music's top Renaissance men. In the last several years, he's (ahem) released several acclaimed albums, written an opera and taken his own multi-octave voice to new heights performing Judy Garland's classic Carnegie Hall concert. Now, he's back with perhaps his most commercial and radio-friendly album ever, Out of the Game, and tells VMAN in their summer issue that he wanted to make an album meant to be listened to loud with the windows down while cruising in your car. To find that sound, he enlisted on-the-pulse producer Mark Ronson.
New Orleans legend Dr. John's Nonesuch debut, produced by Black Keys guitarist and uber-fan Dan Auerbach, distills half a century of this Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee's picaresque musical history, melding his shamanistic stage persona with the authority of a consummate studio musician, the cosmic conjurer with the street-savvy poet.
The Lijadu Sisters debut album, Danger (originally released in 1976), is as funky and mellifluous as it gets, the twins gorgeous harmonies underpinned by a solid Afro-rock beat and framed by Biddy Wright's funky organ and guitar work. Danger has a vibe of uplifting positivity which would be a feature of all four of the Lijadu Sisters albums. Lyrically, most of the songs address social and political issues, sometimes directly, sometimes through metaphor and allusion.
Chicha Libre plays a mixture of latin rhythms, surf music and psychedelic pop inspired by Peruvian music from Lima and the Amazon. The Brooklyn-based band mixes up covers of forgotten Chicha classics with French-tinged originals, re-interpretation of 70’s pop classics as well as cumbia versions of pieces by Satie and Wagner.