Music

Music Rick Coates Michael Lee Seiler seeks spirituality through music
By Rick Coates
Boyne City singer/songwriter Michael Lee Seiler sandwiched a career as a manufacturing supervisor between what his heart and soul called him to do.
“Play the guitar,” said Seiler. “I felt the calling as a kid and at first it was about the girls -- the guitarists always got the girls. But then it became more of a spiritual thing.”
Seiler will perform this weekend at the Concord Academy in Mancelona on Friday for the Relay For Life event; Saturday night at Lil Bo’s in Traverse City; and then at the Mother’s Day Gospel Blues Brunch at Forest Dunes Golf Club in Roscommon.

Music Kristi Kates Big Phony - Kicking Punching Bags - BPM
Big Phony, aka NYC-Los Angeles coast-hopper Bobby Choy, has quietly stayed under the radar, crafting folk-pop tracks overloaded with catchy melody after catchy melody, all equally understated via Choy’s carefully wistful, mellow performance skills. Songs like the concise “Short Intermission,” “Talk of the Town,” and live, self-deprecating favorite “Girls Like You Don’t Go For Guys Like Me” recollect the folk-pop stylings of Elliott Smith, while his voice echoes that of Sean Lennon or Smith himself; he probably won’t remain under the radar for long.

Music Kristi Kates Jazz meets Boogie:Matthew Ball wraps up Dennos concert season
By Kristi Kates
Called both “the Gen-X arrival to this uniquely American art form” and
“The Boogie-Woogie Kid,” pianist Matthew Ball specializes in the blues and
- yes, boogie-woogie piano - and will be performing at the Dennos Museum
Center as the wrap-up to the 2009-2010 Dennos concert season.

Music Kristi Kates Keane - Night Train - Island
Serving as a mini follow-up to Keane’s 2008 set, Perfect Symmetry, this EP shows off both what’s best about the band as well as their ability to infuse new elements into their distinctive sound. Recorded on the fly during the band’s last tour, the new songs echo many of the places they traveled, from the South American horns of “Looking Back” to the appearance of Canadian/Somali rapper K’Naan (“Stop for a Minute.”) Songwriter extraordinaire Tim Rice-Oxley even throws in some solid vocals next to Tom Chaplin’s own impressive ones.

Music Kristi Kates Various Artists - Repo Men: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Relativity
Futuristic Jude Law/Forest Whitaker vehicle Repo Men’s storyline sends repossessors after those who can’t pay for their equally futuristic mechanical internal organ replacements. The soundtrack music, as might be expected, is appropriately quirky, blending atmospheric classics (Rosemary Clooney’s “Sway,” The Mamas and the Papas’ “Dream a Little Dream”) with more modern, scratchy tunes like Beck’s “Nausea” and UNKLE’s “Burn My Shadow” as perfect accompaniment to this thought-provoking sci-fi yarn.

Music Robert Downes If you feel the earth shake the weekend of April 30-May 1, relax -- that’s
no earthquake -- it’s the finals weekend for the Rock Your Way to the Top
battle of the bands that has been raging in Northern Michigan every other
weekend since January.

Music Kristi Kates The Knife - Tomorrow, In a Year - Mute
This grainy, chilly offering from mysterious, mask-wearing pair The
Knife finds the Swedish act in paradoxical moods, veering from one
electro-drama to the next. Influenced in part by German
theatrical-rock and also perhaps a little bit of opera, these
synth-based tracks are a dichotomy of themselves, as the album seems
at times like a whole, and at other times like you’ve gone entirely
into another musical plane. Evocative “Colouring of Pigeons,” the
title track, and “Letter to Henslow” are among the standout tracks,
especially instrumentally.

Music Kristi Kates Natalie Merchant - Leave Your Sleep - Nonesuch
Former singer for ’80s/’90s band 10,000 Maniacs, Merchant’s first studio album in over five years finds her adapting a variety of 19th and 20th Century American and British poetry into songs of her own. Ogden Nash, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Edward Lear are among the poets represented here, in such string-bedecked, Merchant-arranged tracks as the foreign-tinged “The King of China’s Daughter,” the folky “Peppery Man,” and the more poppy “It Makes a Change.” Merchant worked with 125 musicians in a wide range of genres for this set, and her enthusiasm for the project - not to mention her distinctive vocal talent - really shows through.

Music Kristi Kates Africa meets Appalachia at the Dennos
By Kristi Kates
Jayme Stone’s Africa to Appalachia CD - on which he collaborated with
Mansa Sissoko – singer, kora player, and a ‘walking encyclopedia of
Malian songs’ – won Best World Music Group at the Canadian Folk Awards
late last year, a high honor for a journey that started with Stone’s
own musical mecca to Africa.

Music Rick Coates “Best New Band” the FunDubMentals
By Rick Coates
Sometimes great bands come together when its members are not looking
to form a band. That was the case with the FunDubMentals, the Traverse
City based Reggae/Ska /Dub band that took home our Readers Poll honors
for “Best New Band.” While this was good news in the FunDubMentals
camp, the better news came a week earlier when band member Marc
Alderman was told he would be able to return home.

Music Kristi Kates Squeeze - ArgyBargy (Deluxe Edition Remastered) - A&M
Originally released in 1980, Squeeze’s ArgyBargy spawned more than a
few now-classic tunes penned by the gifted Difford-Tilbrook team, and
this two-disc remaster does decent justice to the pep and vigor of
these pop songs. The first disc contains the original album, which
includes landmark Squeeze tracks “Another Nail In My Heart” and “If I
Didn’t Love You,” plus bonus tunes and B-sides including “What the
Butler Saw” and “Farfisa Beat.” Disc two adds to the retro fun by
offering up the band’s Hammersmith Odeon show from March, 1980.

Music Rick Coates Best Solo Performer: Levi Britton
By Rick Coates
If you ask singer/songwriter/guitarist Levi Britton about his life, he
will tell you that he has the best of “three worlds” and soon plans to
have the best of four worlds. Britton took home the Best Solo honor in
this year’s Readers Poll, but despite his win in the solo category
Britton is known for his band work as well. In fact, last week he was
in Chicago rehearsing with his band mates Down The Line for their much
anticipated new release Open The Door. They held a CD release party at
Chicago’s Lincoln Hall and the group is putting the final touches of a
major summer tour.

Music Kristi Kates Berating Bowie: Petoskey Professor Picks a Musical Fight
By Kristi Kates
North Central Michigan College Liberal Arts/Social Psychology
Professor Erick Haight is throwing down a musical gauntlet.
Specifically, a musical gauntlet against none other than innovative
50-year rock music veteran and legend David Bowie.

Music Kristi Kates Madlib - Medicine Show No. 3: Beat Konducta in Africa - Madlib
Medicine Show This is the third in Madlib’s Beat Konducta series, in
which Madlib constructs his own potpourri of remixes, beat tapes, and
other productions into a cohesive listen. The Africa*set pulls quirky
vinyl tracks from the afro-beat, prog-rock, soul, and funk genres,
bringing the listener music from Nigeria, Botswana, Ghana, Ethiopia,
and the Ivory Coast, among other places. It’s interesting to see
Madlib’s personal stack of vinyl grow throughout his mixmaster
travels, and even more interesting to listen to what he builds out of it.

Music Kristi Kates Broken Bells - Broken Bells - Sony Music
Danger Mouse teams up with The Shins’ James Mercer for this skillful side project band/duo, on which the pair play every instrument on the disc save for the string section. “The Ghost Inside” references Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” beat and pairs it with a snappy high vocal; “Citizen” is all patchwork samples and sharp harmonies; and the more subtle, quieter “Trap Doors” goes more gloom-pop. If you’re a fan of either artist, you’ll find both of their styles sonically reflected here, although the songs themselves are new and eminently interesting.