Someone has put together a Muxtape streaming 3 tracks from the forthcoming Scarlett Johansson album, Anywhere I Lay My Head. Click here to check it out [songs removed]. Despite the fact that seemingly everyone who considers him/herself a "fan of music" already hates it on premise alone, I think the premise -- Johansson singing Tom Waits covers, with production from TVotR's David Sitek -- is so weird that, regardless of quality, it's bound to at least be one of the most interesting releases of the year. I picked up the current issue of Vice yesterday and was surprised to see that their music reviewer, in the first review of the album I've seen so far, responded to it in pretty much the same way. He writes that Johansson doesn't always hit the notes, but Sitek's production buries her deep enough in the mix that the album is still listenable, and that the audacity of the project alone is reason to at least give it a listen.
Update: You know what? I should probably listen to the songs more than once before I start talking about them. These songs are a little better than I initially thought. The only one that is overtly lullabye-esque is "I Wish I Was in New Orleans", the last track on the Muxtape, and apparently the only one I remembered when I started typing. The title track is pretty good, with a definite Celebration feel to it, which makes sense since Sitek produced their album, and the band's multi-instrumentalist Sean Antanaitis plays on this one. On the remaining track, "I Don't Want to Grow Up", ScarJo sort of talk-sings over a backing track that reminds me of 80s synth-pop in general, but doesn't recall any song in particular. Though I've changed my mind a little bit, I'll still be disappointed if "Anywhere I Lay My Head" is the best song on the album.
Also newsworthy is the fact that, as these streams have already been pulled by Imeem, Muxtape may be the new go-to source -- for the time being, anyway -- for providing unapproved streaming previews of unreleased albums.
2 comments:
She's breaking the Tom Waits rule:
Never cover Tom Waits, no matter how good you are your creations will always be inferior to Tom's
this is of course the opposite of the Bob Dylan rule, whereby every cover version of a Dylan track is an improvement on the original.
This will be an interesting barometer to watch, along with all those Beatles mixes which cannot possibly be legal. (I didn't notice muxtape announcing any 400million dollar deal for digital distribution rights to the catalog).
I suspect muxtape will get forced to take down mixes soon and they'll have a choice to either fight the music business in court, or to add the restrictions to music selection that imeem has.
Audible magic is probably already knocking on muxtape's door. After all, it's the only game in town now that Snocap was bought by imeem.
So it looks like this is the first high profile case of a mux being taken down. No doubt this will be he first of many as the company tries to keep the door open for legitimizing its service.
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