Kasabian vs. Shelby Lynne



As I was re-connecting with some of my long-lost friends (my fault), they were telling me about the Kasabian show they're going to this Wednesday. I've heard their name before, but never heard their music. I was excited at the possibility to go with them for a moment, until I realized I had already purchased tickets for the Shelby Lynne at the House of Blues on the same night.

After listening to the new Shelby Lynne CD on the way to class today, and then reading the Scene article on Kasabian today while in class, I'm really bummin' I hadn't heard of Kasabian before.

Fookin' A
Kasabian wants to become the coolest, most stereotypical Brit-rock band around.
By Michael Alan Goldberg

In addition to the ever-popular "bloody wankers" and "daft cunts," there are two somewhat more charitable insults that Britons hating on their nation's dominant rock bands like to sling. "Bed-wetters" is directed at overly earnest, sensitive swoon merchants like Keane, Coldplay, and Snow Patrol. "Students," meanwhile, is the derisive tag hung on Franz Ferdinand, Muse, and anyone else perceived to be indulging in artsy pretension.

It takes only a few moments on the phone with Sergio Pizzorno -- guitarist and chief songwriter for the kinetic U.K. dance-rock quintet Kasabian -- to figure out that neither term applies to him. It's four in the afternoon, and he's just rolled out of his bunk.

"I decided to go on a two-day drinking binge, and it was an incredible experience," Pizzorno murmurs in his thick Leicester accent. "But now I'm here, but I'm not, and we have sound check in a few, so I gotta get with it."

Rest of the article can be found here.



 Shelby Lynne
With Raul Midon. Wednesday, July 20, at the House of Blues.
By Franklin Soults

With her head-turning looks and arresting voice, Shelby Lynne landed a record deal almost instantly when she moved to Nashville at age 18, but it was a Faustian bargain that even the devils on Music Row came to regret. As Lynne says in a phone interview from her Palm Springs home, they didn't expect her "rebel bullshit": "They don't need it; they don't have to put up with it. There're too many people in line who will bend over and do what they say. It was kind of a private pact. They agreed to let me go, and we left as friends."

In 2000, the newly liberated singer-songwriter made the Dusty Springfield-style I Am Shelby Lynne, a milestone which landed her a Best New Artist Grammy, six albums and a dozen years into her recording career. It didn't quell her rebellious spirit, however. On the three disparate discs that followed, Lynne has tried to prove that she's a label-free "individual" -- a quintessentially American turn of phrase that she uses for everyone from the White Stripes to Johnny Cash (whose mother she plays in I Walk the Line, an upcoming biopic starring Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix). Her latest, Suit Yourself (Capitol), is a breezy collection of home demos and studio jams, yet it works because she still sounds like the kind of southerner that Faulkner would recognize, one haunted by the past that she's forever trying to escape. "I Won't Die Alone" abstractly hints at the troubles she's seen, which include one she never talks about: the day in her 17th year when she saw her father shoot her mother to death before killing himself.

"I think that's pretty much what it's about -- the past, and how it's kind of like a monkey on your back," Lynne says warily. "There's nothing you can do about it."

Posted: Fri - July 15, 2005 at 04:26 PM           |

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