The Seattle band Seapony just released their first album Go With Me for Hardly Art this week and it’s a gem. Drawing from the fuzz pop of the ’80s and the American Indie sound of the early ’90s, they have a just right blend of ramshackle energy, melodic smarts and unabashed sweetness that’s guaranteed to have anyone who liked Small Factory or Beat Happening losing their dentures with joy. And if those names mean nothing to you, you can still just be knocked out by the great songs! We asked the members of the band (past and present) to list some songs and musicians that inspired them and here’s what they said:

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Not long into the ceaseless promotional parade for Born This Way, Lady Gaga’s second full-length record and easily the most anticipated record of the 2010s, a certain sense of inevitability crept into play. It was inevitable that Born This Way would be an escalation of The Fame, it was inevitable that Gaga would go where others feared to tread, it was inevitable that it would be bigger than any other record thrown down in 2011, both in its scale and success. This drumbeat, pulsating as insistently as Eurodisco, is so persistent that there is an inevitable feeling of anticlimax upon hearing Born This Way for the first time and realizing that Lady Gaga has channeled her grand ambitions into her message, and not her music.

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The year has gotten off to a great start with the release of some terrific new CDs. This list is a diverse sampling of some of the top choices of AllMusic’s classical editors and writers. Click on the links below to read the reviews and listen to the music samples, which should whet your appetite for checking out these outstanding albums.
 
 
Blair Sanderson
Angela Hewitt, piano – Bach
Marcus Bosch, conductor – Bruckner: Symphony No. 2
Andrew Litton, conductor – Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring; Petrushka (1911)
Colin Davis, conductor – Nielsen: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5
David Zinman, conductor – Mahler: Symphony No. 10
Emmanuel Krivine, conductor – Beethoven: Complete Symphonies
 
 
 
 
 
 
Jim Manheim
Yevgeny Sudbin, piano – Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5
Szymanowski Quartet; Matthias Kirschnereit, piano – Dmitry Shostakovich, Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Piano Quintets
Trio Wanderer – Smetana: Piano Trio; Liszt: Elegies
Marie Kuijken & Veronica Kuijken, piano – Mozart: Sonatas for Four Hands
Icicle Creek Piano Trio – Haydn, Shostakovich, Turina
 
 
 
 
 
 
Mike D. Brownell
Jamie Walton, cello – Walton, Shostakovich: Cello Concertos
Tabea Zimmermann, viola; Kirill Gerstein, piano – Brahms, Clarke, Vieuxtemps: Sonatas for Viola & Piano
Peter Martens, cello; Luis Magalhaes, piano – Beethoven: Sonatas for Cello and Piano
Charles Dutoit, conductor – Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade; Russian Easter Festival
Lawrence Power, viola – Hindemith: Music for Viola and Orchestra
 
 
 
 
Stephen Eddins
Leonardo García Alarcón, conductor – Henry Purcell: Dido and Aeneas
Toby Twining, conductor – Toby Twining: Eurydice
Robert Hollingworth, conductor – Alessandro Striggio: Mass in 40 Parts
Rebecca Miller, conductor – Aaron Jay Kernis: Goblin Market
Mark Elder, conductor – The Debussy Preludes, orchestrated by Colin Matthews
Iarla Ó Lionáird, Dawn Upshaw, vocals – Donnacha Dennehy: Grá Agus Bás
 
 
 
 
V. Vasan
Jan Willem de Vriend, conductor – Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 5
Richard Rosenberg, conductor – Jazz Nocturne: American Concertos of the Jazz Age
Kirill Karabits, conductor – Khachaturian: Spartacus; Gayaneh Highlights
Angelika Kirchschlager, mezzo-soprano — Gustav Mahler: Lieder
Andrew von Oeyen, piano – Liszt: Sonata in B minor; Waldesrauschen; Rigoletto; etc.
 
 
 
 
Patsy Morita
Renée Fleming, soprano – New Year’s Eve Concert 2010
Jin Ju, piano – Schumann: Piano Sonata No. 1 Op. 11; Fantasia Op. 17
Christoph Deluze, piano – Kabalevsky: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-3
Sigure Slåttebrekk, piano – Chasing the Butterfly
 
 
 
 

We’re looking to do this HDJ thing every couple of weeks now. I know we took a long time off, not because there weren’t any good jams out there. No, there were, are, and always will be, tons of great jams all over the world just waiting for people to discover them. It’s more that the HDJ crew spent too much time too close to the fire and got burned out spectacularly. It was in all the papers… Don’t cry for us though. We’re back. We’re dedicated. We’ve got the damndest jams around. Just! For! You!

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Alasdair MacLean of the Clientele and Lupe Núñez-Fernández of Pipas made a record (Street of the Love of Days) under the name Amor de Días and basically it turned out like a perfect blend of the Clientele’s quietly autumnal, richly arranged sound and Pipas’ fragile and intimate approach to indie pop. Full of truly lovely songs, beautiful arrangements, and wonderfully intimate and sweet vocals, the record will be very tough to dislodge from the top of my best of 2011 list. The Poplist asked the duo to tell us about some of the inspirations behind the band’s sound….

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Today is the first truly hot day of the year here in Jamztown, the air smells a bit like sweat and it hangs around your head like a fuzzy halo. Perfect time to go digging for some early summer jams and blams. Now as far as we’re concerned there are two kind of summer jams: we’re hot, we don’t care so let’s party jams and it’s so hot I want to curl up and die jams. We’ve got a few of both this week….

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You may know Johan Agebjörn as the producer/songwriter behind the melancholy Italo Disco of Sally Shapiro. Or maybe you know him for his charming new age-inspired albums, or his remixes for people like Lindstrom and You Say Party. Sadly, you may not even know him at all. Well, if you’re a fan of big, bright and glittery nu disco, you need to get hip right now to the Swedish producer. His new album Casablanca Nights is packed with wonderfully constructed, perfectly arranged and sung disco jams that sound just right in 2011 with the summer coming up. They also would have fit right in back in 1976 or 1986. Or anytime really! We asked him to make us a list of his all-time favorite Swedish electronic artists and he provided us with some nice new/old electronic avenues to explore.

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John Walker, one of the founding members of the Walker Brothers, died at his Los Angeles home at age 67 on Sunday. Walker, who had been suffering from liver cancer, scored hits such as “Make It Easy on Yourself” and “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine (Any More)” in the ’60s and ’70s. Said band member Gary Walker in a statement, John was the founder member of the group and lead singer in the early days … He was also a fantastic guitarist which a lot of people didn’t realize. He was a compassionate songwriter and a gentleman with lots of style.” [Guardian.co.uk]

Whitney Houston has checked into rehab for drug and alcohol issues, according to the singer’s spokesperson. According to the representative, Houston is undergoing treatment in an out-patient facility on a voluntary basis; she also entered rehab in 2004 and 2005. [MTV.com]

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