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When I walked in the door the other night my roommate was already blasting Big Star. He had heard, as I had, of the death of Alex Chilton by a heart-attack on March 17th, aged 59. We had all heard. Late into the night I was trading text messages and e-mails with all sorts of friends, sharing the news, sharing our sadness. The band never achieved the legendary status they aspired to (the "unluckiest band in the America," according to Ed Ward on NPR), but for some of us that made them even more important. Chilton was at the centre of it all.

Big Star is today acknowledged as one of the most important rock'n'roll bands of all time. The music remains stellar, a perfect template of all power pop to follow. Yet it is a wonder why their sound, which evolved from crystalline pop perfection to morphine-dazed pop darkness, remains so meaningful nearly 40 years later. I once had a theory that the best music, whether blues, jazz, rock or soul, had to be either scary or crazy. I've since added "holy" to that mix, which is where Big Star seems to fit in.

Chilton got his start with the Box Tops, a charming if uneventful blue-eyed soul outfit that had a big hit with "The Letter". He then recorded "1970", an all-over-the-place LP that mixed this earnest soul sound with a bit of country. Big Star came next. Though "#1 Record", the band's debut, embraced a triumphal rock stance (more was cribbed from the Beatles than from Stax), a soulful, spiritual feel rises out of its most ecstatic moments. Their pop wasn't just about youthful introspection and brightness; it yearned for something almost lofty.  read more »

She married one of the Beatles, divorced him, married Eric Clapton, hung out with the Rolling Stones, drank with the Who, toured with Cream. Pattie Boyd has some stories. Like other Beatles plus-ones early on, she kept to the background. She occupied herself by taking Polaroid pictures, serendipitously documenting one of the most important eras of music history (her photos can be seen on her website).

After years of struggling with her past—the broken marriages and knock-on effects of a rock‘n’roll lifestyle—Boyd was able to write about her experiences. Her biography, "Wonderful Today", which debuted at the top of the New York Times best-seller list in 2007, begins in Kenya, where she spent her early childhood. She then recounts her modelling career in London, her time with the Beatles and her role in inspiring such songs as “Something”, “Layla” and “Wonderful Tonight”. Lately Boyd has devoted herself to photography. "Through the Eyes of a Muse", a collection of personal photos from her years with George Harrison and Clapton, recently finished making a grand multi-year tour through America, Canada, Britain and Australia.

In a conversation with More Intelligent Life, Pattie Boyd spoke about her past and the way photography helped her heal.

More Intelligent Life: What convinced you to dig up the past and sort through your memories to put together "Through the Eyes of a Muse"?  read more »

A man of good taste, we always knew. (See the third photo down on his journal.) Mr Byrne, the feeling is mutual.

It sounds too cute to be true, but these are the facts: Derek Miller and Alexis Krauss met when he waited on her table at a restaurant in New York. She was dining out with her mother; he was a former member of Poison the Well, a Florida post-hardcore outfit. Conversation turned to music and lo, Miller had been chewing over a new musical project for months while Krauss, a fourth-grade teacher in the Bronx, had a secret past singing in Rubyblue, a girl pop group. The pair got to talking, and Krauss, it seemed to Miller, was just the ticket. And vice versa.

The two formed Sleigh Bells and recorded a demo of loud, fuzzed-out songs. Success unspooled quickly. Attention from Sasha Frere-Jones ("my favorite band in New York") and Pitchfork, plus a much-hyped performance at CMJ, cemented the band as one to watch.

With Miller handling beat production, song writing and guitars and Krauss on vocals, the two engage onstage like a duo that's been performing together for a decade (in fact it's been less than two years). Other things they have in common include shiny hair and a willingness to unleash great sonic blasts of music upon unprepared audiences. More Intelligent Life caught up with Miller to discuss their sound, the recording process and Sleigh Bells's forthcoming debut album.

More Intelligent Life: The New York Times classified your music as "electronic dance rock". How would you describe it?  read more »

José James’s debut album, "The Dreamer" (2007), revealed a serious talent. Here was a young man of Panamanian-Irish descent whose ageless baritone placed him in a rich lineage of jazz vocalists, including Mark Murphy, Leon Thomas and Jon Lucien. A paean to the fertile post-bop period of jazz, "The Dreamer" featured savvy reconstructions of John Coltrane and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, as well as several tunes penned by James himself.

"Blackmagic", James's new album, fills out the sound adumbrated on "The Dreamer". The smoky, nostalgic feel of his earlier songs has been traded for a more extensive and assertive sonic palette that draws on hip hop, dubstep and techno. This time James worked with a hand-picked collective of underground innovators, including Flying Lotus (aka, Steven Ellison, an LA hip hop alumnus); Moodyman, a Detroit house/techno veteran; and Taylor McFerrin, a beatboxer-producer.

Ellison’s influence is immediately apparent on "Code", the album's sensual neo-soul opener, which James overlays with highly rhythmic, half-whispered pseudo-raps. Cuts such as “Lay You Down”, the feel-good “Promise In Love”, the late-night voodoo of “BlackMagic”, and a gorgeous duet with Jordana de Lovely called “Love Conversation”, all blend James’s jazz-accented vocals with crunchy beats and deep basslines more reminiscent of J Dilla than John Coltrane. But James doesn't completely ignore the bass, drums and piano combinations that made his first album such a classic. The ballad “Beauty” wouldn’t be out of place on "The Dreamer".  read more »

There aren’t many bands that can do what Hot Chip do. Since releasing their first album, "Coming on Strong" in 2004, they have become masters of the clever-kitsch soundtrack, full of electro-pop, hip hop and Prince-like soul. And everything comes garnished with the left-field lyrics and soul-boy falsetto of Alexis Taylor, the band's lead singer.

Hot Chip’s last couple of albums—2006’s "The Warning" and 2008’s "Made In The Dark"—were exercises in eclecticism. They brimmed with edgy, kaleidoscopic disco-funk and kooky dance-floor hits, such as “Over and Over”, “Ready For The Floor”, “The Warning” and the heartfelt “Boy From School”.

"One Life Stand", their new album, is different. The band have reined in some of their more excitable urges to produce something less fidgety and more coherent. Unlike their earlier songs, which careened off each other and landed on the dance floor like mad spinning tops, these form an orderly British queue. Each somehow prefigures the next.

Sound boring? The good news is that these tracks are still destined for the discotheque. The album opens with the exuberant synthpop of “Thieves In The Night”, and moves on to the plangent piano and thrusting drums of “Hand Me Down Your Love”, the sawing, soaring strings of “I Feel Better” and the pounding steel drum of the title track, on which Taylor declares the virtues of long-term commitment.  read more »

When a pop star dies an untimely death, the audience knows what to do: weep, gnash teeth, and buy their records. We’ve had too much practice, most recently with Michael Jackson and Stephen Gately. But when a star is bereaved, there are no conventions to fall back on.

Corinne Bailey Rae was still basking in the success of her debut album, which sold an estimated 4m copies and won no fewer than ten awards, when she lost her husband, the jazz saxophonist Jason Rae, to a suspected overdose. That was nearly two years ago. The difficult second album could have become impossible, but here she is returning with “The Sea”. Her palette has moved on from light retro soul to something darker and heavier, drawing on her background in a hard rock band. But you know instantly that it’s her, because the songs are still lit up by that radiant voice: gentle, involving, never overdone. It could become the template we need for converting grief into pleasure.

"The Sea" (Virgin) by Corinne Bailey Rae, out now

~ TIM DE LISLE

You’d be forgiven for wondering if six CDs of Wilson Pickett is overkill. You know the big hits: “In The Midnight Hour”, “Land of 1000 Dances”, and probably one or two others. Hard-driving soul music—it really got you moving at your cousin’s wedding. But while you’re discerning enough to realise that his “Mustang Sally” trumps that version from The Commitments, you’re really not sure if seven-hours-plus of his screaming hyper-virility is what you need to spend your money on.

“In the Midnight Hour”, in 1965, was the song that sealed Pickett’s legend, and deservedly so. Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler brought the "Wicked" one to Memphis, borrowed Stax’s house band (Booker T. and the MG’s) and suggested the off-kilter backbeat (a delay on the two and four beats). The result revolutionised soul music. Stax shut its doors to Atlantic soon after (why give away Booker T. and the MG’s?), but for years afterward, nearly every uptempo song on the Stax label borrowed that rhythmic trick.

And nearly every subsequent Wilson Pickett hit carried some of its DNA—the ballads never sold quite as well. But one of the great revelations of Rhino's new six-CD "Funky Midnight Mover: The Atlantic Studio Recordings (1962-1978)"—and there are many—is the strength of the slower album tracks. Pickett could plead and cry with the greatest of them.  read more »

“Pray For Rain”, the opening salvo on "Heligoland", Massive Attack’s fifth studio album, augurs a welcome return to form for Bristol’s broodiest b-boys. The track’s dolorous mood, underpinned by rolling, tribal drums and indigenous, ravished-plains imagery (delivered by Tumbe Adebimpe, the lead singer from TV On The Radio), could easily have provided the soundtrack for the apocalyptic blockbuster "The Road".

The last time the band sounded so gloriously glum was over a decade ago, on the masterful "Mezzanine" album from 1998. There was only one other studio album since then, "100th Window" (2003), an indulgent misfire from Robert del Naja (aka 3D) working alone (Daddy G, finally living up to his moniker, was taking time off to be a father).

Seven years on and it’s heartening to be wrapped again in the band’s familiar claustrophobia, their almost comforting paranoia. Adebimpe’s rich, spectral voice gives way to one that’s more translucent but no less familiar--that of Tricky’s former sparring partner, Martina Topley-Bird. She copes admirably with the bright, spiky beats, rhythmic, industrial hisses and choppy post-punk guitar of “Babel”, imbuing the song’s determined angularity with a soulful radiance.  read more »

"Bring earplugs," a friend IM'ed me recently when I told him I was going to see the band A Place To Bury Strangers perform at the Barfly in London. "I think they might be going in a more poppy, Joy Division direction now, but they're still fu*!ing loud."

For about six years, the New York-based three-piece band has won over audiences–and driven some away–with an ample supply of volume. The New York Times credited them with "reviving the ominous, feedback-drenched drones of the 1980s", while the Washington Post described them as "the most awesome, ear-shatteringly loud garage/shoegaze band you'll ever hear."

At the 2008 SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, the band ended its set with a ten-minute-plus sonic meltdown that surely inflicted some hearing loss. At some point during the show I had to stuff my ears with tissue-paper from the bathroom; I could still hear them ringing afterwards. Yet I never considered leaving early.

In October the band released their second album, "Exploding Head", on Mute, a London-based label. There's been much chatter about how their sophomore effort is weaker, softer, more drab, too much like My Bloody Valentine or Jesus & Mary Chain. But others have praised the new material as "noisily cathartic and epic".  read more »