Music Blogs

In another lifetime when yours truly covered the music beat for Rolling Stone, I often enjoyed getting all hot and bothered over my new find of the week. One week in 2004 I got hot, bothered, and overjoyed over singer/songwriter Salim Nourallah. Here's what I wrote about Nourallah's second release, Polaroid.

"Discovering a singer-songwriter who can stop time is rare, but Salim Nourallah is such a find, a sleepy-headed wonder whose lo-fi songs conjure worlds of dysfunctional family life in carnival-like settings. At times recalling the music of the Flaming Lips or the Eels, Nourallah's small-scale songs breathe in a quirky, wondrous fascination with existence and all its gooey bits. Opener ‘Everybody Wants To Be Loved' revolves slowly and a little scarily, like a Ferris wheel about to collapse, the song's sweetly ascending chorus providing uplifting release. ‘1978' reminisces over blissful Sunday drives with a tambourine-shaking groove and Beatle-esque backwards guitars. Polaroid is moody and magnificent, unearthing an inner life many would rather forget."

Save a few poorly placed verbs and adjectives, I stick by those ancient words. Meanwhile, Nourallah has only improved. No longer a sleepy-headed wonder, Nourallah composes stellar songs with all the efficiency of a German automobile factory. Bold and beautiful, Nourallah's songs ("Days Disappear," in particular) continue to conjure a certain halo surrounded nostalgia, expressed in his wonderfully gravelly voice, Byrdsian electric hollowbody guitar and the kind of gorgeous, skyscraping melodies that leave a grizzled rock reporter in awe.

Salim's fourth album, Snowing In My Heart, is typically stunning. Plain and simple. On par with the best work from Aimee Mann, Jon Brion or the MIA Webb Brothers, Snowing In My Heart aims high and succeeds, track after golden track. Nourallah, like Mann, Webbs and Brion compose in that rarefied air innovated by the Beatles during their Help/Revolver/Beatles For Sale period. The surface of the songs glisten like hoarfrost, the sentiments are reflective and inward, the guitar solos are often backwards, and the melodies soar.

Leslie Pintchik: Jazz for Adventure Seekers: Jazz pianist Leslie Pintchik is the kind of fingers-flying, light-espousing talent that makes critics blush. Of her release, So Glad To Be Here, I wrote in Downbeat, "Pintchik's music is fresh, full of light and instantly invigorating.... So Glad To Be Here is simply a joyous release.... Pintchik and percussionist Takeishi express such playfulness in their musical conversations... that their elation is contagious."

Pintchik's new CD, Quartets (Ambient), follows So Glad To Be Here in making elation and sparkling energy an everyday occurrence. Quartets features her trio of bassist Scott Hardy and drummer Mark Dodge, with Steve Wilson on soprano and alto saxophones, and once again, masterful percussionist Satoshi Takeishi.

Pintchik operates in a glowing zone of cool on "Not So Fast," her resonant, rumbling low notes prodding the players like old man winter slapping them silly with some frigid concentration. Rhythmically, "Not So Fast" is the kind of dry heat hard bop one might associate with a classic Blue Note session, Pintchik's choice notes and cerebral maneuvers conjuring everyone from Keith Jarrett, Wynton Kelly and Bill Evans to McCoy Tyner.  Pintchik's songs are concise and to the point, same as her piano work.

"A Simpler Time" opens with Takeishi's gorgeous percussion rumblings, giving way to Pintchik's snowflakes-are-falling, starry starry night meditations. Don't ask me why but this reminds me of pianist Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas. Bittersweet, nostalgic, sad and probing, "A Simpler Time" stops time.  

Leslie Pintchik: "Not So Fast"  (MP3, 6:00)