Shatner album released October 5th, plus another review

Taylor

This time Shatner has teamed up with Ben Folds (Ben Folds Five) for what he states are “…thoughts and experiences of mine that very few people have heard before.” He adds, “I wanted to share them with my loved ones.”

Recorded in Folds’ Nashville studio, Has Been features eleven tracks with select songs featuring Folds (also on piano), Henry Rollins on “I Can’t Get Behind That,” Aimee Mann, Brad Paisley, and Lemon Jelly. The band includes guitarist Jon Auer (The Posies), bassist Sebastian Steinberg (Soul Coughing), and drummer Matt Chamberlain (Tori Amos, Fiona Apple).

Click here for a tracklisting and more info.

Another Soft Commands review – ‘Stringfellow Avoids Soft Rock Stigma’

Billboard reviews Soft Commands

Taylor

Ken’s third LP implements the lush, gauzy hue its title suggests, seemingly embracing more of a kinship with the first Christopher Cross album and Don McLean’s “American Pie” than the Posies’ “Dear 23” on tracks like the piano-heavy “Known Diamond,” “Cyclone Graves” and the gorgeous intro “You Drew.” However, a closer listen to this album will also find Stringfellow exorcising his recent obsession with reggae on “You Become the Dawn” and its subsequent dub plate “Dawn of the Dub of the Dawn.”

Stringfellow is one of the most underrated songwriters of our generation, and while “Touched” may still remain his all-timer, “Soft Commands” could most definitely be considered his textbook.

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‘Working out’

Taylor

By Jim Sullivan

Boston Globe Staff

Ken Stringfellow is a very busy man. He just released a gorgeous solo disc, “Soft Command.” He’s been recording with three bands he plays in — R.E.M., Big Star, and the Posies — and tonight he brings a solo tour to the Middle East Upstairs. “I was having some anxiety about having too much of a good thing,” Stringfellow says from his Seattle home. “I’ve never had so much stuff working out so well.” Stringfellow’s music often has a lush, layered, Brian Wilson-like quality. The singer-guitarist-pianist admits to some sentimentality in song, but adds that “it’s sincerity that I like in art forms. . . .What I can’t relate to is mainstream pop music where the emotional content is so fake. That, to me, seems really sinister. . . . The importance of music is clear: It’s communication that makes the world a little closer. At the same time, a musician’s self-importance is something you can debate. My mission is to make people feel better rather than worse. My music isn’t angst-y — that is just not me. I’m here to give something comforting and humanistic.” Opening the 18-plus show: Jesse Sykes and Phil Wandscher and Jabe. Starts at 9, tickets $9.472 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, 617-864-3278.

Stringfellow masks often bleak message

Taylor

The Washington Times reviews Soft Commands.

by Scott Galupo

Mr. Stringfellow sings his heart out, giving the illusion of contentment. Really, he’s singing about merely the concept of love, the promise it holds of making one humble and “less than useless.”

Less than useless: It’s far from walking on air, but it’s credible. The satisfying thing about “Soft Commands” is that Mr. Stringfellow so easily juggles both the high and the low, the miserable and sublime of being useful – that is, in love.

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‘Still on the verge’

Taylor

The Oregonian reviews Soft Commands.
For all his considerable gifts, Stringfellow’s big break has proved elusive.

“Soft Commands” sounds like the work of a man attempting to correct for this fundamental error in judgment. It’s Stringfellow’s first disc with properly large-sounding Singer-Songwriter Production, encompassing a dozen new songs written in locations around the world — New York, Stockholm, Paris (Stringfellow’s occasional home, after marrying French girlfriend Dominique Sassi) — and reflecting the restlessness that characterizes his tireless work ethic.

 

For all its sonic clarity, the boldness of the production doesn’t serve the songs well. For every “Cyclone Graves” (Stringfellow’s best song since the Posies’ 1993 “Frosting on the Beater” album), there’s also “Don’t Die,” a maudlin meditation on suicide set to a Squeeze-style backing track that fails to capture any of Stringfellow’s typical charm.

 

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Rolling Stone reviews Soft Commands

Taylor

Ken Stringfellow Soft Commands (Yep Roc)

Posies co-founder, R.E.M. cohort and Big Star confederate Ken Stringfellow is deep into his second decade of creating sterling pop music. Soft Commands is his third solo release of intricately arranged, intimate songs that mine Bacharach, Bread, the Beach Boys and at least one Beatle (McCartney, of course). Written and recorded all over the world, from Seattle to Senegal, the album unfolds like a travelogue, with spartan piano ballads in between mini-symphonies with a few surprise stops along the way, like Stringfellow’s baroque mandolin on “Any Love,” the brisk electronic rhythm underneath “For Your Sake” and the blue-eyed soul-steeped “Let Me Do.” Occasionally, the multi-instrumentalist gets a bit precious (the Doors-y darkness of “Je Vous En Prie,” the dub experiment of “Dawn of the Dub of the Dawn” and the boy’s choir and reggae verses of “You Become the Dawn”), but Stringfellow’s clear, composed croon forgives all sins.

Big Star feature in this month’s Mix Magazie

Taylor

Down in the Delta

The Heart and Soul of Memphis Recording

By Rick Clark

Memphis is a town of contradictions, a seemingly illogical place where nothing seems to happen and a lot of things are happening at once. More than a million people live in the area, yet it feels like no one’s in a hurry and they’ll arrive in their own time.

The music that has come out of the River City has in many ways changed the world, thanks to iconoclasts, renegades and dreamers such as Sun Records founder Sam Phillips, Estelle Axton and Jim Stewart, who started Stax Records (Isaac Hayes, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding), Willie Mitchell and his Hi Records label (Al Green), Quinton Claunch of Goldwax (O.V. Wright, The Ovations) and John Fry of Ardent (Big Star, Cargoe). So much important music has come out of Memphis that it is easy to overlook fresh, new homegrown talent such as the North Mississippi Allstars, hard-rockers Saliva and hip hop act Three 6 Mafia…

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