It's hard to tell what will be hot and what will not in music. Some artists hit and some artists miss. Here are 3 Good and 3 Bad For The Next 3 Months.
3 Good
Man Man
Like Bukowski growling alongside a barroom piano.
Power-pop fuzzy goodness may burn brightest on the musical radar these days, but there’s a thriving parallel movement that runs through darker soundscapes. Man Man embodies that genre of black melodies with strong edges. Hailing from Philidelphia, the band is led by singer “Honus Honus” and features a supporting cast of other colorful characters. “Feathers”, the bands most accessible piece, takes a simple-sounding piano waltz and infuses it with plenty of feeling. They are quickly gaining a reputation for original music and high-energy shows. Expect them to get even bigger, faster.
Beirut
Think young gypsies chanting gossip on their train ride from Marrakech to Budapest.
Accordions were once considered too hokey for elevator music by the Muzak Corporation. Beirut brings them back with a hipness that eludes that vast majority of artists. Swelling romps through European folk medleys are peppered with a few suitable dashes of electronica. Beirut is at its best on tunes like “Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)”, where they blend generous amounts of bitter sweetness and expansiveness to create what sounds like a timeless sea shanty.
Madeline Peyroux
Billy Holiday redux on a sunny, windy San Francisco day.
Television/music aficionados may recognize a Madeline Peyroux track from a Dockers commercial, where a young man and young woman spot each other from adjacent streetcars and wind up staring at each other across the tracks. By the time it cuts to a panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge and a sun-drenched promenade, Peyroux is crooning sweetly and you're on your way to buying Dockers and her album.
3 Bad
Nick Lachey
The public grows tired of La-saturation.
It’s not often that a reality show actor becomes as engrossed in the genre as viewers on TV, but Nick Lachey is a laughable exception. Fans who could stand “The Newlyweds” can get another dose of hair gel and inanity as Lachey stars in a show that details the reality of making a horrible album. It’s “David Hasselhoff” bad.
Ashlee Simpson
Music fans finally ask why Ashlee Simpson is famous and get no reply.
Unlike her sister, Ashlee needed no help from Nick Lachey to reduce her career to farce. Her Saturday Night Live and Orange Bowl debacles have tarred her with the same brush as Milli Vanilli, from which she will be unable to recover.
Angels and Airwaves
Reputation isn’t everything.
Tom DeLonge may have stumbled on a formula for teeny-bopper gold with Blink-182, but his instinct fails him with a thrown-together band and far more style than substance. Doing nothing but riding the good will generated by past successes, DeLonge offers nothing new. That won’t stop kitschy stores in the mall from playing it, but it should stop you.
TOM DELONGE IS AMAZING
I dont think that this assumstion should be made that this album of We Dont Need To Whispher is just style and not subtance. Anges and Airwaves has created a band of soul and depth that reaches out to those who understand the message that they are trying to convey. Even though some people may not understand the brilliance in this message, the people that do understand become touched with an amzing musical experience.