Soundcheck

With his dramatic voice, his elliptical but emotive songs, his classically-derived piano playing, and his striking presence on stage, Benjamin Clementine occupies a singular place in the music world – somewhere between art music and pop. We met him last year when he joined us in the Soundcheck studio. Two weeks later, he won Britain’s prestigious Mercury Prize. Coincidence? Maybe. But after years of hard work and street hustle in London and Paris, the high-flying artist has finally landed (for the moment) in New York, and we’re happy to have him back at our piano to play more songs from that Prize-winning debut album, called At Least For Now. Click the player above to hear the set and conversation.

Rich Cohen's new biography of the Biggest Band in the World is called The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones, and it got its title from Keith Richards himself. It was Keef's way of pondering the fact that the author had only ever known a world with The Rolling Stones, that they were as much an elemental fact of life to Cohen as, well, the sun and moon. But after years of exclusive access to the band (and a fanboy's dream job of working side-by-side with Mick Jagger on HBO's Vinyl) Cohen has cleaned his critical lens and taken a hard look at why all the booze, drugs, women, and touring—and years—haven't derailed this particular rock'n'roll circus. Imagine, he says, hearing "Satisfaction" on the radio, for the first time, in Middle America. Imagine what that did to the cultural landscape. How did this group of musical misfits manage to reinvent itself every five years for the forty years since—and why does it matter at all?

How do you pronounce 'Xavier Dphrepaulezz'? If you're Xavier himself, you pronounce it "Fantastic Negrito." To hear the Oakland blues and funk artist tell it, it's more than a stage name — it's the vessel for a new musical incarnation, one that follows years of "street shit," terrible luck, and cultural miscues. The autobiographical story is told in the new record, The Last Days of Oakland, along with a load of observational storytelling from an angry, politically engaged and street-honed performer — all of which is clear on the album. But you can hear the story straight from the artist himself, in a scorching live set and conversation from the Soundcheck studio. Just click the player above.  

Rogue Wave has a number of associations with water: they’re from Oakland, California, for starters. There’s that "wave" right there in their name. One of their most identifiable tunes is a love song to Lake Michigan. And their new record Delusions of Grand Fur features the song, “Ocean,” which features all the hallmarks of this now-veteran indie band – angular, surprising instrumental elements, and melancholy lyrics that surf on sunny, nostalgic melodies. Click the player to hear the group play some of the new tunes live in the Soundcheck studio.  

"Porcelain" is the name of one of Moby's most recognizable songs. It's also the name of the musician's new autobiography which, in suitably idiosyncratic fashion, chronicles the years before his ascent to global fame. So it begins with Moby returning in 1989 to the New York City of his birth as an aspiring DJ, and ends with the process of writing Play, the 1999 record that launched him to stardom. To mark the book's release, the bald-headed beats master sat down with Soundcheck's John Schaefer at the Union Square Barnes and Noble to talk about how a "distrust of joy" impacted the development of dance music, the virtues of Bob Seger, and to reveal how much he paid for his first NYC apartment.    

It took Aoife O’Donovan a decade to record her debut as a solo artist, the 2013 album Fossils. But it’s not like she was sitting around twiddling her thumbs prior to that. She was busy playing with the high energy bluegrass band Crooked Still, or collaborating with Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, and other stars of the strings. O’Donovan’s gorgeous follow-up record is called In the Magic Hour, and it fully delivers on that stellar pedigree, tying together elements of pop, folk, and bluegrass in a cohesive, emotive package. Click the player above to hear O'Donovan's return to the Soundcheck studio.  BONUS: You can also watch an archive of Aoife performing solo in our studio here.  

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has long been one of the country's most celebrated interpreters of classical music, and for the last two decades his Silk Road Ensemble has used music to build bridges across cultures. The latest recording from the always-rotating cast of master musicians is Sing Me Home, the companion album to a new documentary about the group called The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble. The record is tinctured with sounds from Ireland, The Balkan Peninsula, East Asia, the American South, India, Mali, and beyond. Click the player above to hear Yo-Yo Ma, banjo star Abigail Washburn (singing in Mandarin!), and members of The Silk Road Ensemble perform in the Soundcheck studio.  

Sam Cohen was the guiding force behind the psych-pop bands Yellowbirds and Apollo Sunshine. He self-released a solo album called Cool It in 2015, which caught the ear of producer Danger Mouse (the man behind The Gray Album, Gnarls Barkley, and so much more). Danger Mouse said, “Cool It is one of my favorite albums of the last few years.” So he signed Sam Cohen to his new 30th Century label and is now giving the album its first wider release. Cohen and his band play some of their sunny, summery psychedelia for us, live in the studio. 

Martin Creed is an artist. And a musician. And the two don't really have a distinction, in his mind. His work is serious, his work is whimsical, and, again, there is no distinction. Stand under the slowly rotating "Understanding" sign in Brooklyn Bridge park — his doing — and you slowly become aware: this is ridiculous, I'm standing under Understanding. But then it takes on a new significance, as you stand there Understanding, staring at Lower Manhattan, a place not known for its humane-ness. Creed's music allows for the same dichotomy: "Understanding" is also a pop song, with a jangly, shaggy lope and a simple -- serious -- message. Creed's having a major New York moment: his work is on display at the Park Avenue Armory from June 8 to August 7. His art is not bound by genre or medium – he uses paint, sculpture, film, dance, and music. We get at least some of the music part during our live set with him; scroll down to see some of the art on display, and click the player above to hear the performance and conversation. Creed and his band are also performing at National Sawdust on June 14.   Martin Creed's guitar. (John Schaefer/WNYC)   Martin Creed's piano -- note the electrical cord. (John Schaefer/WNYC)   A Martin Creed sculpture: plywood stacked to be as high as it is long. (John Schaefer/WNYC)   A Martin Creed video installation. (John Schaefer/WNYC)  

In the 1960s, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass sold more albums than anyone except The Beatles and Elvis. For most musicians, that would be enough. But Alpert went on to co-found A&M Records, which launched the burgeoning careers of other superstars like Cat Stevens, The Carpenters, Janet Jackson, and The Police. And Alpert also found the time to write a few songs for others that eventually became smash successes in their own right (Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World,” Jan and Dean’s “Baby Talk”). AND he's a renowned sculptor, as Soundcheck found out when we went to visit him at one of his installations a few years back. Now, Alpert and his wife and co-creator, acclaimed vocalist Lani Hall, are tackling another challenge: a multi-night residency at the Cafe Carlyle. Click the player above to hear Alpert talk about his storied career.

Natalia Lafourcade had writer's block. Her 2009 album Hu Hu Hu had been a critical and commercial triumph, nominated for Grammy awards and hailed as one of the best records of the decade by tastemakers in the Latin music world. How to move forward? She returned to her roots to find inspiration, mining her home country of Mexico for fresh ideas and deep connections, and responding to Latin American songwriters like Simón Díaz and Caetano Veloso. In fact, she called the 2015 record Hasta la Raíz -- "Down to the Roots." The result? Grammy Awards and heaps more critical praise. Not to mention, beautiful music. Click the player above to hear Natalia Lafourcade play a special acoustic session live in the Soundcheck studio.

Truth in advertising is a powerful thing. So when you name your book Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll -- How One Man Discovered Howlin' Wolf, Ike Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley, and How His Tiny Label, Sun Records of Memphis, Revolutionized the World -- you've already promised a lot. But it's an appropriately descriptive and sprawling title for the life story of a multi-faceted and occasionally contradictory man. And it's a book and story filled with great rock and roll. Author Peter Guralnick visits Soundcheck and tells host John Schaefer why Sam Phillips' musical DNA is imprinted on the modern world through his many innovative moves in the 1950s and beyond.

In this podcast: jungle explorations and studio experiments.  When you think of the sound of a frog, you probably default to some version of "ribbit." Not something that whines like a squeaky hinge. But naturalist Jonathan Meiburg plays recordings for Soundcheck's John Schaefer that sound just like that, from deep in the Amazon jungle. When you hear a polished rock record, it's hard to hear the experiments, the roads not traveled, the sounds played with and discarded along the path to the final product. But rock songwriter and Shearwater lead singer Jonathan Meiburg gives a peek into the making of his band's latest record, Jet Plane & Oxbow, out on January 22.   

This is an encore edition of Soundcheck. Peter Schickele celebrates 50 years of PDQ Bach at The Town Hall tonight and tomorrow. On April 24, 1965, Peter Schickele swung down a rope from the balcony at New York’s Town Hall, landing onstage without mishap. It was then that civilization began to collapse around him. For that was the day when Schickele, a gifted young composer, first unveiled the music of PDQ Bach to an unsuspecting world. Of JS Bach’s 20 children, PDQ was the 21st. No one had ever heard of him, of course, so rumors began that he never really existed. An exasperated Schickele responded by saying, “Well, what can I say… the idea that his works were actually written by Christopher Marlowe seems ridiculous.” For the next half century, Schickele would doggedly root through dumpsters and the bottoms of birdcages for the lost manuscripts of PDQ’s music, rescuing them from their richly deserved oblivion. We would learn that PDQ was not only a terrible composer, but a terrible thief as well. He stole music from everywhere – even, curiously, from songwriters who wouldn’t be born for another 200 years. With the 50th anniversary of one of the most finely-mistuned, hilarious parody acts approaching, Peter Schickele joins Soundcheck to talk about how to make serious music funny, and how to take funny music seriously. Schickele plays back some of that first PDQ Bach performance, and offers several favorite moments from the long and checkered history of musical comedy.

So many new CDs of indie music come out of Brooklyn these days that it can be hard for one to stand out. But BKLYN 1834 Compilation_01 manages to do just that. Because it doesn’t come from a buzzy new band from Williamsburg or Bushwick – it comes from an artistic commune that shares a rambling Victorian home on a leafy street in the Ditmas Park neighborhood. A rehearsal in the Clubhouse living room. (aaronisnotcool) The Clubhouse, as it’s known, was founded nine years ago by singer and songwriter Andrew Thomas Reid, who was inspired by earlier examples of communal creativity: the famous salons of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris in the 1920s and 30s, where Picasso and Hemingway shared dinners and their latest work; or the so-called February House in Brooklyn Heights, where British poet W.H. Auden, American novelist Carson McCullers, English composer Benjamin Britten, and even the famous burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee all lived in the 1940s; and of course, Hitsville in Detroit, the home of Motown.  The Clubhouse is a utopian ideal, but one that is actually working in real life. Part of that is thanks to the artists’ partnership with BKLYN 1834, a new media company that supports emerging artists. The name has a dual meaning: listen to the podcast to learn more.  Rocking in The Clubhouse. (aaronisnotcool)