Counting Crows, in their latest release Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings walk the razor line between reinvention and recapturing the past. The album, built on the theme of frenetic Saturday nights and restoration -- or lack thereof -- on quiet Sunday mornings, is their first studio recording since Hard Candy in 2002.

The six years off have proved useful to the band: they return to the themes present on their first two albums, August and Everything After and Recovering the Satellites. Essentially, in terms of sound this is a conglomeration, and it carries the rock of Satellites for the first half, while resolving into the relaxed rhythms that were present on August. For long time Crows lovers, then, this album offers a return to what drew us to the band in the beginning; for new listeners it recollects the band while it was at its height of popularity in the mid-1990's.

It usually takes me several listens to an album before I feel like I have even begun to process it. Considering that R.E.M.’s Accelerate just hit the market this Tuesday, I’m not sure where I am yet in the process of processing. But we here at rednoW have never been about processing things for you. We’re much more interested in inviting you to do it for yourself. So let me try and whet your appetite for a great album.

What seems unmissable (I don’t think that is a word) in the early listenings of Accelerate is that the religion R.E.M. sang about losing in the early 90’s must have been found again. Accelerate is full of wonderings about faith, religion, God and the meaning of life. But that is not all. Dreaming of telling Chris Matthews-types what to do with themselves and expressions of being tired of getting jacked around by politicians and power-holders fills up much of the space on this, their fourteenth album. R.E.M. sounds pissed. R.E.M sounds great.

I've long defended Kanye, Jay-Z, The Roots, Nas, etc. when people said that all hip-hop is just junk, a glorification of all that is wrong with our world. Obviously those people haven't listen to the whole catalogs of the above artists. But it's hard to defend the majority of hip-hop, even the majority of the above artists' catalogs. That's why when Lupe Fiasco put out his latest album, "The Cool," I was intrigued by the name. I wasn't sure how to take name of the album at first; Lupe's been known to employ some heavy satire at points, like on his previous album when he questions what hip-hop is all about: "Now come on everybody, let's make cocaine cool. We need a few more half naked women up in the pool."

 

So after listening to "The Cool" I was shocked at how Lupe went after not only the heart of what hip-hop seems to be, but also at the individual, rapper and listener alike. In a country that holds up individuality and the competitive spirit as the unstated national religion Lupe's album is quite a statement. He's not about to back-off though, as one of the tracks on the album, titled "Dumb It Down," admits that Lupe'd sell more albums if he'd dumb it down. But don't think that Lupe's just throwing stones from his glass house; he seems to know that this is his own personal problem as well.

Life comes to us in instances, in images, in sounds. Then we process all that and turn it into a tale of happenings that we are able to express to others. Have you ever noticed that some people are better story tellers than others? This comes from the ability to pinpoint the moments that matter, the moments that make a narrative what it is and an ability to recreate those moments as images. The stories that grab hold of us are the stories that are able to recreate moments as images of sight, sound, smell, emotion, etc. and allow us as the listeners/readers to connect these images. It is the connection of these images that makes a story, but without the precisely crafted images the process of connecting the images falters, even if only in degrees.

 

I've been listening to Iron & Wine for a few years now, since a friend of mine introduced me to the quirky song "Jesus the Mexican Boy." Then Iron & Wine seemed to blow up with the Garden State soundtrack. But I hadn't seen I&W live until this past Friday when I caught Sam Beam (who is Iron & Wine) performing at Wheaton College. Like any good concert Beam's live performance added a whole new level to the music. It turns out that Beam's slow, rhythmic guitar playing on the albums is an artistic choice, as he proved on Friday that he is an absolute ninja with a six-string (the only other person I've seen live get more sounds out of a single guitar is Jose Gonzalez).