Best Music Writing of 2010 edited by Ann Powers

One of my personal treats around this time every year is a copy of Best Music Writing of the year, published annually by Da Capo. It’s a particularly well produced and thought out book. It’s not a beauty contest (although it easily could be). And it’s not about the biggest artists or the most envied mastheads or anything like that. Rather it does exactly what it promises: it collects the very best writing about music from the year that was. You end up with a beautifully rendered portrait of that year: the highest highs, the lowest lows and just the heartbeat of that moment; technologically, stylistically and, to a certain extent, even politically. This year the book is comprised of 36 terrific and far-ranging pieces. I loved every second.

Ann Powers is guest editor of this 10th edition of Da Capo’s Best Music Writing. She is the chief pop critic of the Los Angeles Times and the author of Weird Like Us, Rock She Wore and several other books.

“Music itself is a call that invites response,” she tells us in the opening to Best Music Writing 2010. “It organized desire, sorrow, and joy into a form both primal ... and intensely communal; in every know culture, some sort of music has been in a constant in every day life.” It is, once again, celebrated here. ◊


Lincoln Cho is a freelance writer and editor. He lives in the Chicago area, where he works in the high-tech industry. He is currently working on a his first novel, a science-fiction thriller set in the world of telecommunications.

High Valley Will Open for Emerson Drive

Canadian Country Music Award nominees, High Valley, have announced that they will be joining Emerson Drive this March, opening for all shows on the eastern leg of the 2011 Decade and Driving Tour.

The first stop will be on March 16 in Sarnia, Ontario, where they will be performing songs off of their two previous albums.

“We’ve been wanting to get back out to the East Coast for a long time,” says Brad Rempel, High Valley’s lead vocalist. “Being Western Canadian boys it’s a great opportunity for us to expand our territory and make new fans across this awesome Country. It’s great to be joining Emerson Drive on their Ontario and Maritime dates!”

The Alberta-based brothers stepped into the spotlight with the release of their sophomore album. While recording in studio they had the opportunity to work with Canadian music star Paul Brandt and Nashville-based Sean Neff (Rascal Flatts), who assisted in producing the new album. Additionally, in fall of last year the trio were nominated for a Canadian Country Music Award (CCMA) in the Rising Star category.

In addition to working with Brandt and Neff, the band has opened shows for a number of superstar acts, including Brad Paisley, Keith Urban, LeAnn Rimes and Reba McEntire helping them garner considerable recognition in the country music industry. The band’s previous independent album, Broken Borders, was named the Album of the Year at the 2001 GMA Canada Covenant Awards in the country category and the hit “Back to You” was awarded Country Song of the Year.

High Valley’s debut single “I Will Stand By You” had great success on the Canadian airwaves last year, reaching the Top 15 on Country radio and the Top 10 on CMT’s Chevy Cross Canada Countdown. Recently, the band’s hit single was nominated for Country Single of the Year at the Canadian Radio Music Awards. The winner will be announced at Canadian Music Week this March, in Toronto.

The cross-country tour coincides with the release of Emerson Drive’s first-ever greatest hits package, Decade of Drive, and will give audiences an in-depth look at the group’s history through a set list that will showcase music from their early recordings to now. Canadian alt country star, Ridley Bent opens for the western leg of the tour.

Grow Some Gnarly Hair. Win A Rad Prize Pack!

MetalSucks has announced a Viking Beard Contest inspired by the upcoming release of Amon Amrath’s eight studio album, Surtur Rising, which will drop in March. The magnificent mane of Amon Amrath vocalist Johan Hegg provided additional inspiration for the contest which will run from now until the record’s release date and be judged by the folks at MetalSucks and the band.

The contest page is here.

Ben Lovett’s Debut Album Will Drop Mid-March

Ben Lovett is the elusive and talented man behind a long list of film scores and musical projects. In March he will unveil Highway Collection, a new album spanning an all-star carnival of contributing musicians, film directors, kids, choirs and painters.

According to Lovett, his nomadic and exploratory lifestyle has compelled him to create an album of intense variety, each song crafted “from a different part of another life, into a diverse philosophy of sound deep enough to sink a ship.” From a release:

On Highway Collection you find a driving pulse and child-like innocence akin to The Shins, layered with zany and dreamy backing vocals a la The Flaming Lips, floating above the rolling drumbeats of a modernized Strawberry Fields-era Beatles, all led by a constantly evolving voice with an eloquent message of mature and heartfelt universality.

The eclectic cast of contributing musicians include members of The Avett Brothers, The Mars Volta, and Cursive, as well as additions by Money Mark, Electric Owls, Ponderosa and appearances by talents involved in projects as diverse as the Eels and Spiritualized to Against Me, The Zac Brown Band and the Sonos Quartet.

Lovett has composed original scores for 12 films, including Last Goodbye, starring Faye Dunaway; the Sundance critically acclaimed The Signal, in 2007; and was awarded Best Score in the 2009 Brooklyn International Film Festival for his work in The Last Lullaby.

You can download the single, “The Fear,” here.

Burns & Poe Will Play Super Bowl Bash

Burns & Poe, comprised of Keith Burns and Michelle Poe, will perform at the third Annual Jim McMahon’s Swang’n Super Bowl Bash for the benefit of The Taco Bell Foundation for Teens and the Lynda McMahon Ferguson Memorial Foundation for Literacy in Texas.

Presented by two-time Super Bowl Champion Jim McMahon, the star-studded evening will be held Saturday February 5, 2011 at the Granada Theater in Dallas, Texas. Burns & Poe will be among the featured performers, along with a host of major league athletes and award-winning entertainers and musicians. This Jim McMahon event is partnered with Gene Simmons’ events; special invitations have also been extended to Simmons, Kid Rock and Brett Favre who may also make a showing.

“We’ve enjoyed the opportunity to perform at a lot of different events,” Burns said. “But this one is extra special, to lend aid to a program created to help teens -- our future -- and to hang out with the pros in their field, that’s a score and a win!”

Burns & Poe celebrated the release of their new self-titled LP/CD release last November 2010. Their new single entitled “How Long Is Long Enough” came in at No. 5 on “New & Active” on the Billboard chart this week.

Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney by Howard Sounes

You only have to look at Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney (Da Capo) to know that it is going to at least try to be exhaustive: it’s a very thick book. But let’s face it: McCartney deserves a big biography. Considering the magnitude of his star, there haven’t been many books on the ex-Beatle’s life. And there’s probably some massive fan out there who can tell me why two in-depth looks at this musician should come out in the same publishing season, but I can’t imagine what it is.

Though Peter A. Carlin’s Paul McCartney: A Life (Touchstone) offers a breezy look at McCartney’s life, in some ways that book focuses too sharply on the Beatles years. Admittedly, those are the significant years of McCartney’s story, but he’s traveled many miles since.

Fab author Howard Sounes (Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life) does a very thorough job of researching McCartney’s early life as well as the post-Beatles years, including the ex-Beatle’s disastrous second marriage and his 2008 album.

Fab is an enjoyable book. If there is, in the end, no real secrets revealed, as well as little we truly didn’t know about McCartney, it seems possible that’s par for the course. For one of the wealthiest and successful musicians alive, McCartney comes across as mostly even and happy and almost disappointingly normal in many ways. If you want a rock biography dripping with revelations, try Rolling Stone Keith Richards’ Life (Little, Brown) last fall.