The frenzied horror of the first movement attempts to replicate sirens, a devil’s choir of car alarms and the chaos following the crash of the planes the second is a grief-stricken lament the third reaches for some sort of peace or closure. The Chiaras premiered this at New York’s Trinity Church, barely two blocks away, in October, 2002. Robert Sirota – Triptych – The Chiara String QuartetĪrguably the most powerful, intense musical response to the horror of 9/11, composer Sirota’s anguished, horror-stricken suite for string quartet draws on artist Deborah Patterson’s triptych depicting the detonation of one of the towers, the death of NYFD chaplain Mychal Judge and the sky over the smoking hole at Ground Zero. The whole thing is streaming at grooveshark here’s a random torrent.Ĥ95. Everything Rothberg has done subsequently, especially the 2007 album Double Standards, is worth hearing. The sarcastic garage rock anthem Treat Me Like Dirt went to #1 in Europe, while the characteristically tongue-in-cheek Inside reached the American top 40 the rest of the album ranges from pensive, symbolically charged purist slightly new wave-flavored pop tunes like Flicker, Forgive Me and It’s Alright to the sarcastic powerpop Perfect Stranger, Change Your Ways and Out of My Mind as well as the coyly sultry This One’s Mine. Patti Rothberg – Between the 1 and the 9ĭiscovered busking in the New York City subway (the album title references the local train running between Harlem and the Battery), Rothberg debuted auspiciously with this in 1996 and has replicated its clever lyricism and catchy, smoldering rock sensibility several times since then. Who says sidemen can’t make great albums as bandleaders? Here’s a random torrent via Jazz Is My Life.Ĥ96. It ends on a poignant note with If I Should Lose. Mobley made a name for himself playing just a hair behind the beat for maximum swing impact (something that didn’t ingratiate him to his hard-bop contemporaries), and he does that tunefully and memorably here, on their remake of the Irving Berlin ballad Remember as well as originals like the wryly soulful This I Dig of You, Dig This, the aptly titled, somewhat ambiguous Split Feelin’ and the high point of the album, the title cut. Which on one hand makes perfect sense since it has Wynton Kelly on piano and Paul Chambers on bass, with drummer Art Blakey in almost shockingly cool mode. This 1961 album is sort of a tenor sax response to Almost Blue, with a similarly beautiful nocturnal vibe. Dark, lyrical four-on-the-floor rock doesn’t get any better than this. There’s also the Bowie-esque Britrock of Dead Man Walking the sarcastic Good Samaritan the defiant Soap N Water and Ripoff the lush, beautiful janglerock of Knees of My Heart and the alienated angst of No One. Taking care to kick off the album with persuasive proof that he’s undiminished by all this, he revisits his glam side with Still Love Rock N Roll before the apocalyptic Wash Us Away, the relentlessly ferocious Death of a Nation and Morons, the anti-yuppie diatribe Purgatory and the vitriolic American Spy, directed at sellout ex-punks. It’s amazing how ten years ago, at practically age sixty, he came up with this bitter, ferociously angry requiem of sorts for the entire world. Ian Hunter may have played in a stadium rock band back in the 70s, but his best years were ahead of him, and that may still be true – and he’s no less vital today, now in his early 70s. Simonian continues as a member of lyrical indie rockers Little Silver and the entertaining, punkish Sprinkle Genies. Surprisingly, this one is AWOL from the usual sources of free music, but it’s still available from cdbaby, where there are also clips from each song. The most unforgettable song here is Bitter and Brittle, a vivid portrait of the edge of madness the blackly humorous Eternal Spinsterhood is awfully good too. Wrong, an amusing pickup scenario predictably on its way to going awry. An air of disillusion and betrayal creeps in with the opening vignette, sarcastically titled Food From the Cow, followed by the even more sarcastic Pretty Good Wife the cabaret-inflected Self Made Drama Machine, a kiss-off to a selfish bitch and Mr. Simonian’s wryly literate lyrics range from sardonic to casually savage, set to precisely fingerpicked, austere melodies sung in a minutely nuanced voice that can be deadpan hilarious…or absolutely brutal. Erika Simonian – All the Plastic AnimalsĪ cult classic from 2004. For albums #900-1000, and an explanation of what this list is all about – other than just plain fun – click here.Ĥ99.
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