Netherfriends Experiment With Nilsson

By Sarah Cobarrubias in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 27, 2011 6:20PM

Local psychpop troubadour Shawn Rosenblatt of Netherfriends mentioned back in June that he was planning to release an album comprised of Harry Nilsson samples. Earlier this month, he delivered. And he’s hit us with a few extra surprises since.

For those unfamiliar, Harry Nilsson was a Grammy-winning American singer/songwriter in the early ‘70s - the guy who made the “put the lime in the coconut” song. The new album is titled Nethefriends Does Nilsson, a play on the album title Nilsson Does Newman (in which Nilsson covers Randy Newman songs). But Rosenblatt isn’t doing any covers here. Instead, he took samples from Nilsson songs to compose six new tracks and added his own vocals over the music.

While many of the new songs retain the general mood of their sampled tracks, Rosenblatt often times takes the music in new directions. For example, “Nobody’s Talking,” which takes samples from "Everybody’s Talking,” starts out as a gentle, melodic love song much like the original. But it soon becomes more energized, twitchier, and more like the psychedelic pop we’re used to hearing from Rosenblatt.

The opening track “Full of It” (which takes heavily from Nilsson’s “All My Life”) is the one we keep coming back to. It’s funky, colorful, and just what we need on a grey day like today. Rosenblatt combines his own vocals with snippets of the original track’s vocals to create what seems like a back-and-forth duet. Check it out for yourself - the whole album is free to download through Bandcamp.

But this isn’t the newest material Netherfriends released. Rosenblatt recently and unofficially redid the music to the movie Baraka, this time with original, non-sampled material. That’s also free to download or you can watch the footage accompanied by the music over at Netherfriends’ blog. And to commemorate the first day of fall last week, he released a new track “FALL (in love every night).” Right now, Rosenblatt is touring the states, but you can catch him live Monday night when he stops in town to perform at Schubas in support of Bobby.

Netherfriends plays Monday, October 3 at Schubas, 3159 N Southport, 8 p.m., $8 in advance or $10 at the door, 21+