An Album a Day

Sept 17: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Spellbound

2009-09-17T18:20:00.000-07:00

If there is a polar opposite of Mississippi John Hurt's take on blues, it might have to be Screamin' Jay Hawkins, who saw himself as much an over the top entertainer as much as a blues man. Really, blues was just the mode that allowed him to perform his emotionally charged music, and to do his theatrical shows. This compilation (early blues artists rarely did albums, but cut two sides at a time, making reviewing albums nearly impossible) covers some of his best known tunes and more obscure stuff (which makes up a majority of his catalog). His asphalt voice delivered at times emotionally tension, at times don't-take-me-seriously lightness. As his career progressed he walked the line between Bo Diddley/Chuck Berry rock and roll (Itty Bitty Pretty One, ) and the electric blues of his contemporaries like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters (Don't Deceive Me, Move Me), and R&B (It's Only Make Believe, I Don't Know), and even touching on the feel of big band jazz at points (Please Don't Leave Me). He had a voice with such a great range, both tonally and emotionally. He is most famous for I Put A Spell On You, which was never much of a hit for him, but that got covered by a wide variety of other artists, as well as Constipation Blues where his the sounds he makes can only be described as gross. In many ways his intense vocal tremolo is unmistakable, characteristically Screamin' Jay. His subject matter tends to cover the typical blues themes, good woman gone (Really Love You Baby), bad woman stays (She Put A Whamee On Me), drinking, but he also deals with his own mortality on Portrait of a Man, sings about making a love potion stew out of less desirable meat (Alligator Wine, which leads right into Feast of the Mau-Mau, that works the same blues riff, but uses different ingredients). He also sings about social relations on Same Damn Thing ("Materialistic/And sadistic," "From a slave to the grave/Instead of Emancipate").

Screamin' Jay Hawkins was the class clown of the blues world in many ways, but no one could easily dismiss his musicianship and vocal chops. He once said that black opera singer Paul Robeson was his favorite singer, and that he wanted to be an opera singer through the blues. His theatrics (rising from a coffin on stage to perform I Put A Spell On You, being rolled out on a toilet to perform Constipation Blues) showed this aspect of his performances. He was a serious singer who didn't take himself too seriously.

Listen:

I Put A Spell on You

Constipation Blues

Alligator Wine

Sept. 16: Mississippi John Hurt, 1928 Sessions

2009-09-16T16:42:00.000-07:00

Probably fifteen years ago, I promised myself that if I ever had a free summer I was going to teach myself the entire Mississippi John Hurt catalogue. Well, I've had lots of free summers, and haven't done it yet, but I also haven't forgotten that promise either. The first time I heard Hurt it was one of those revelatory musical moments, when you hear something you've never heard before, and you'll never hear anything quite like it again. After recording a number of sides in the 20's for the Okeh label that quickly went out of business, Hurt returned to sharecropping in Mississippi until these recordings were rediscovered in the 60's by a young musicologist, who went looking for and found Hurt living near Avalon, Mississippi. Musicologist Hoskins brought Hurt to a wider audience where he played regularly for three years before dying in 1966.

Hurt played delta and country blues reminiscent of the area. He had a laid back vocal delivery, at times barely rising above a whisper. This same delivery could be heard decades later in acts like M. Ward and Sam Beam of Iron and Wine. But for me, it was Hurt's intricate finger-picking style that always drew me in. He played the blues, which meant a lot of 1-4-5 progressions, but within that he had a melodic way of picking out guitar lines that at times made it seem impossible that only one guitar was being played. He had a metric way of picking out bass notes, while doing quick runs on the higher strings. This album consists almost exclusively of originals penned by Hurt, but early folk songwriting depended to a large degree on the deconstruction and reconstruction of well known stories and ideas. Hurt's writing shows the richness of that early blues tradition, with songs full of double entendres, as he sings on Candy Man, "If you try his candy, good friend of mine/You sure will want it for a long long time." He also does a treatment on the story of John Henry on Spike Driver Blues. On Avalon Blues, one of his best known songs, he sings the praises of his hometown from the view of New York. But in the end, there is only so much that words can describe. Hurt made a niche for himself with his unique vocal delivery and guitar style.

Listen:

Avalon Blues

Candy Man Blues

Big Leg Blues

Sept. 15: Fleet Foxes (2008)

2009-09-15T09:04:00.000-07:00

Fleet Foxes are one of those bands that seemed to come out of nowhere, which is in some ways true. When they signed to Sub Pop in 2008 they had no formal management. They released on EP in early 2008, and followed it up with this, their full length debut. There are obvious comparisons to the harmonies of the Beach Boys and Crosby, Stills and Nash, while they work the rock-folk ground with instrumentation largely consisting of finger-picked or lightly strummed guitar, acoustic and electric bass, sometimes full trap set and sometimes sparse percussion, the occasional banjo, mandolin and flutes, and cascading voices singing in three and four part harmonies. They move easily between sparse, quiet moments and the full band treatment. There are nods to modern indie-pop and their progenitors like Nick Drake, as well as a Richard Thompson-ian like take on English folk music at times. But even though it draws from these sources, it doesn't really sound like any of them. Lead singer Robin Pecknold's expertly controlled voice has an ethereal quality to it, easily alternating between sounding like it is floating and being full of a deep richness. And the backing vocals from the rest of the band only enhance this quality.

The songs tend to move in and out of parts, with unexpected changes in both chords and instrumentation. White Winter Hymnal is the centerpiece of the album, with the strongest harmonies and a percussive vocal delivery. Ragged Wood has a strong Shins feel to it, with rolling snare and a James Mercer inspired melody, that has an unexpected breakdown in the middle before it builds back up to its indie-popness. Tiger Mountain Peasant Song is an English folk inspired rumination on death. On some songs lines are repeated through an entire verse (Quiet Houses), with concentration being placed on the vocal qualities versus the words being sung, while on songs like Heard Them Stirring the vocals only sing ohs and ahs. Like others working the indie-folk circuit, many of their lyrics are explorations of the physical world, especially wilderness scenes. Although they can turn a phrase, "Penniless and tired with your hair grown long/I was looking at you there and your face looked wrong/Memory is a fickle siren song/I didn't understand" on He Doesn't Know Why.

This was an ominous debut, sounding much stronger than their lack of experience would let on. If you're a fan of the freak folk of artists like Devandra Banhart there is a lot to love here. But it's also a great pop album, full of catchy melodies and solid musicianship.

Listen:

White Winter Hymnal

Ragged Wood (Video)

August 9: Ron Woods, I've Got My Own Album To Do (1974)

2009-08-11T20:17:00.000-07:00

Sometimes unexpected albums come along and find their way into my player. This is Ron Woods' debut solo album, and is an album I would have never picked up of my own volition. It was recorded while Wood was still a member of The Faces, but the band members were moving in their own directions. They would break up the next year, after Woods had toured with The Rolling Stones. Once The Faces dissolved Woods became an official member of the Stones. His connections pay off on this album with guest appearances by Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart, and with Keith Richards and drummer Andy Newmark (from Sly and the Family Stone) playing on the whole album. It is pretty standard fare, full of groove heavy blues rock riffs, with the expected rock lineup, including lots of Hammond B3 and lots of guitar work. It is 70's radio ready rock, and is reminiscent of much of the Brit invasion blues rock of performers like John Mayall and Eric Clapton. It is full of big sing-along choruses and big guitar solos, with the occasional two guitar harmony solo thrown in. Woods voice has a rough around the edges quality to it, that adds a nice edge to the music, but makes the cameos by Jagger and Stewart stand out all the more. The song writing is solid if not spectacular, with the occasional great melody. Lyrically there isn't a lot to buy into. Mostly songs about women lost or wanted, but he does throw in the occasional non-sensical line that deeps things interesting. Rock music is littered, and becoming more and more so, with good but not great albums. This falls into that category. If you're a real British blues rockophile this would be a good album to check out, otherwise there are some nice moments and its an enjoyable listen, but probably not a lot to pull you in and keep you in.

August 8: Ry Cooder, I, Flathead: The Songs of Kash Buk and the Klowns (2008)

2009-08-09T17:24:00.000-07:00

Ry Cooder is a ubiquitous presence in American music, from playing on Captain Beefheart's debut album, Safe as Milk, to doing to guesting on Rolling Stones' albums, to doing soundtracks like Paris, Texas, to bringing music from other cultures to American audiences, like the Cuban superstar group Buena Vista Social Club. He is also considered one of the best guitarists in the history of rock, with the Rolling Stone placing him at number 8. Yet despite such an omnipresence and endless accolades he has never received the large scale commercial success that lesser musicians revel in. I don't know much about his solo releases, but am more familiar with his work with other musicians, so I didn't quite know what to expect coming into this album. It's a pretty straight forward line up instrumentally, guitar, bass and drums, with the occasional add on (mariachi horns on the cleverly named opener Drive Like I've Never Been Hurt, strings on Pink-O Boogie, Spayed Kooley, Filipino Dance Hall Girl, and the occasional keyboards), and has an appearance by the accordion master Flaco Jimenez. Much of it is reminiscent of the 70's singer/songwriter folk rock, ala John Prine, JJ Cale or John Hiatt (Drive Like I've Never Been Hurt, Waitin' For Some Girl, Ridin' With The Blues). There are also other influences that show throughout, the Memphis country of Johnny Cash, spoken word delivery over a major key blues change on Can I Smoke In Here?, the country swing of Steel Guitar Heaven and Spayed Kooley, the gypsy horns and rhythms of Fernando Sez.

This is a concept album, and the third in Cooder's California trilogy. The original came with a novella, which might help explain the story. As best as I can figure it is the story of an old performer who loves cars and country music who is just getting by. There are the internal references (Spade Cooley being name checked in Steel Guitar Heaven). There is also the references to music and cars throughout, with the name dropping of California locales. Pink-O Boogie uses Pink in its political way. Fernando Sez ends with a conversation between the protagonist and Fernando, a used car salesman, as they fight over who is more in need. He draws on the What Is He Building In There side of Tom Waits on Flathead One More Time. The album moves through a number of influences and moods, and does it fairly seamlessly. It took a few listens for the album to start to open up, but I think it is deeper than initial listens would indicate. For Cooder being such a revered guitarist, there is little in the way of guitar being out front and center. This is an album about songs, some good, some ok, but all of them seem to work together to create a bigger whole. It won't be for everyone, but there are nice moments, clever moments, and some very interesting production, so there is a lot to dig into.

Listen:

Drive Like I Never Been Hurt

Listen to Samples here:

Recommended: Fernando Sez, Flathead One More Time, Steel Guitar Heaven

August 7: Buddy Guy and Junior Wells Play The Blues (1972)

2009-08-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

I often find myself thinking that the blues are dead, as there are few innovations left to make within the blues form. There are some young bands who are taking the blues form and injecting it with a new vital energy (Hillstomp, North Mississippi All-Stars, Chris Thomas King), but I find most modern blues to be predictable to the point of being painful. But there are blues albums I really love, and this album, along with their Alone and Acoustic, is one of them. Buddy Guy is one of the best Chicago-style blues guitarists to come out in the generation after Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, and Junior Wells sits in the same company as James Cotton and Charlie Musselwhite as far as great harmonica players goes (oh, and both of them can sing the metal off of a microphone). This album was curated by Eric Clapton, who plays rhythm guitar throughout, and who also brought in heavyweights like A.C. Reed on sax and Dr. John on piano. Now despite the name of this album, it has as much in common with the R&B/soul of Stax than the traditional blues we think of. There is Sonny Boy Williamson's My Baby She Left Me (She Left Me With A Mule To Ride), Mel London's Messin' With The Kid and Willie Mabon's I Don't Know, full of Reed's driving sax and stride piano. It is delves deep into Chicago blues on songs like the Wells penned medley of Come On In This House/Have Mercy Baby, T-Bone Walker's T-Bone Shuffle, and Buddy Guy's This Old Fool. There is the juke joint blues of Wells' A Poor Man's Plea and Thomas Davis' Bad Bad Whiskey. The album closes with the easy moving instrumental Honeydripper by Joe Liggins. Like good blues, the album is full of stories of hard loving and hard drinking. But the blues is only peripherally about the stories it tells through words, and is much more about the hard scrabble and weathered personas that deliver the songs (something I think is lost in the overproduced modern blues). These two are giants that came out of that generation of blues artists. There are plenty of guitar and harmonica players who have mastered the blues riff and the pentatonic solo, and plenty of singers that can do the gruff blues delivery, but few that have that inherent power in their deliveries as a Mississippi John Hurt or Howlin' Wolf, or Buddy Guy and Junior Wells.

Listen here:

Recommended - Come On In This House/Have Mercy Baby, Messin' With The Kid, and Bad Bad Whiskey.

August 6: Neil Diamond, Home Before Dark (2008)

2009-08-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

Neil Diamond seemed to me to be a victim of the production values of the seventies. But even so, his songs always shone through the strings and horns and overwrought production that defined much of the 70's singer-songwriter genre. In the end he wrote pretty good songs that have, for the most part, survived the test of time. This Rick Rubin produced album seems to know that the thing that made Diamond relevant was his songwriting, and that is the focus here. There is nary a drumset to be found on this album, and little more than rhythm and lead guitars and bass (there is the occasional string and horn sections, but they are subdued in the mix). His signature baritone, that can easily rise a couple of octaves before returning, is still in place. And he is wordy on here, with the twelve songs filling up a full hour. Only one song clocks in at less than four minutes, with several hovering around the six minute mark, and the opening track, If I Don't See You Again stretching out to over seven. All of the songs move at slow to medium tempos, feeling meditative at times, as Diamond stretches out words, or just leaves space between lines. Most of the guitar is easy strummed guitar with non-obtrusive lead lines, making Diamond's voice the central aspect of every song. There are some light blues riffs here and there (Forgotten, Don't Go There), but mostly it is the light unplugged structure that defines the album. Lyrically, Diamond seems to be looking back at his life, examining different eras, aspects and relationships of his past, much of it celebrating his failed and successful relationships. But there are also stories of dangerous women (Don't Go There), his artistic self (Act Like A Man, One More Bite of the Apple), and enjoying what one has (Slow It Down). For the most part he avoids cliché, but also doesn't find a lot of inspired lines either. On the opener he sings what is typical of many of the lyrics, "I know it's crazy out there/I hated sleeping around/I went out looking for love/And never liked what I found," walking that middling space between clever and cliché. At times he delves further into the predictable than others, "Been away from you for much too long/Now I'm back where I belong," on One More Bite of the Apple. In the end it is a solid effort, if not completely inspired.

Listen:

Don't Go There

If I Don't See You Again

One More Bite of the Apple

August 5: Wilco, Sky Blue Sky (2007)

2009-08-05T17:06:00.000-07:00

Having Yankee Foxtrot Hotel as one of my favorite albums puts me in a strange position when comparing other Wilco releases. YFH was a stretch for the band that made its name producing heartfelt and solid country influenced pop rock. It was experimental in its sounds and production, it was interesting sonically yet didn't lose what made earlier Wilco albums emotionally engaging. So when they return to their pop-rock on this album it tends to make me long for the strange blips on YFH. Not that this album isn't good. It's just a little too easy too listen to. There's been lots written about the 70's easy rock feel of the album, with its throwbacks to Workingman's Dead Grateful Dead and post Nashville Skyline Dylan. The album mostly revolves around Jeff Tweedy's voice, which still has the ability to rise and fall and break at just the right times, and Nels Cline guitar wankery, which I find out of place in most spots. On Impossible Germany, a song that moves slow and sad under Tweedy's vocals, only to turn into a prog-rock solo with ELO or Steely Dan inspired harmony guitar lines. Tweedy is a master craftsman, able to construct solid songs reliably time and again. This is the first studio album with Nels Cline as a full fledged member of the band, and it seems that the songs were put together in such a way as to allow him much space to explore his prog-rock leanings, which never seems quite to gel with the rest of Wilco's sound. As for the songs they still straddle a variety of influences, from the slightly uptempo Pink Floydish Shake It Off to the finger-picked Richard Thompson like Please Be Patient With Me.

Tweedy's lyrics mostly stray away from his signature heartbreaking imagery, although there are still nice moments here and there. On the title track he sings, "The drunks were ricocheting/Off the old buildings downtown empty so long ago." On Hate It Here the protagonist declares "I try to keep the house nice and neat/I make my bed, I change the sheets/I even learned how to use the washing machine/Keeping things clean doesn't change anything," like the more soulful side of Randy Newman with a Beatlesesque break. There are some good songs on the album that most songwriters would kill to write, but there are an inordinate amount of throwaway tracks here, Leave Me (Like You Found Me) and Walken, with its 70's ZZ Top meets Dr. John feel. And there are a few songs that will go down in the Wilco catalogue as some of their best, What Light and Sky Blue Sky.

August 4: Failure is imminent

2009-08-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

I have to bring forth that "an album a day through 2009" passed away in its sleep sometime in the last month. Being too far behind to have any real hope for catching up, I will have to write off the last month, but start anew tomorrow, and see if I can finish off the year with a album review a day.

July 27: Interruptions

2009-07-27T13:02:00.000-07:00

Been at a wedding in the woods, now headed to the beach for the week. Hope to have a slew of new reviews when I return.

July 6: Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964)

2009-07-22T17:04:00.000-07:00

This album, the follow-up to The Free Wheelin' Bob Dylan, was his third. On it Dylan embraces the role of protest singer, recording an album of only originals, his first, with songs full of political and social awareness, trying to capture the zeitgeist of the revolutionary spirit of the early sixties. It is an album of sparse arrangements, once again nothing more that Dylan, his guitar and his harmonica.

The title track, the opening song on the album, is the closest thing to an anthem created in the sixties, a clarion call that the world that the older generation had grown up in wasn't going to be the world that continued. With an Irish dirge feel Dylan would sing, "Come mothers and fathers throughout the land/And don't criticize what you can't understand/Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command/Your old road is rapidly aging/Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand/For the times they are a-changin'." It would be a defining moment in Dylan's long career, as the most clear voice of the cultural revolution that was brewing. Ballad of Hollis Brown is an unflinching look at rural poverty told through the title character and the family he couldn't save, "You looked for work and money/And you walked a rugged mile/Your children are so hungry/That they don't know how to smile," with a tragic ending. With God On Our Side takes a hard look, full of historical references, at the tendency of those in war to think that God is on their side, "I've learned to hate Russians/All through my whole life/If another war comes/It's them we must fight/To hate them and fear them/To run and to hide/And accept it all bravely/With God on my side." One Too Many Mornings is a slow take on a relationship that isn't going to work. North Country Blues is an Irish folk inspired melody, and a story told from the perspective of a miner's wife, where the reliability of work was slim and poverty was always around the corner, until one day the mine shuts down and the husband leaves, leaving the protagonist and their children to fend for themselves, with an early reference to globalization, "They complained in the East/They are paying too high/They say that your ore ain't worth digging/That it's much cheaper down/In the South American towns/Where the miners work almost for nothing." Only A Pawn In Their Game is a sociological take on the roles that people play in their lives, acknowledging that larger forces are at work that push a person one way or the other, with references to the murder of Medgar Evers, and the race relations of the south, "And the Negro's name/Is used it is plain/For the politician's gain/As he rises to fame/And the poor white remains/On the caboose of the train/But it ain't him to blame/He's only a pawn in their game." Boots Of Spanish Leather is alternating verses of a conversation between a man who is leaving to sea and the lover he leaves behind. When The Ship Comes In is an upbeat companion to the title track, a metaphor for the time when a new world has arrived, and the older generation must give way, "Then they'll raise their hands/Sayin' we'll meet all your demands/But we'll shout from the bow your days are numbered/And like Pharaoh's tribe/They'll be drownded in the tide/And like Goliath, they'll be conquered." The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll tells, in literal language, the real life tale of the death of a black barmaid after harassment by a young, white, wealthy and politically connected young man, who received a six month sentence. Restless Farewell ends the album, a reminiscing piece looking at one's past without regret, sung in free time, with a mixture of flat picking and strumming.

There is something powerful about these early Dylan albums, with their emphasis on Dylan's voice and songwriting, and nothing else. Lots of fun gets made of Dylan's voice, but there was an authenticity there that few musicians could ever match. He embraced his high nasally delivery, and at different points in his career would even play it up more so than normal. This was at a time when young songwriters didn't tend to sing, and young singers didn't tend to write. Dylan came along and, without trying to pretty up his voice, embraced both wholeheartedly. This was a shock at the time, and to some degree still is. There has, to this day, no one that has the voice of Dylan, both artistic and literal.

Listen:

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Ballad of Hollis Brown

North Country Blues

July 5: Bob Dylan, Desire (1976)

2009-07-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

This follow-up to Blood on the Tracks found Dylan continuing his story song approach that he had been working on through most of the 70's. This album is a mix of wordy mid-tempo songs that for the most part eschew choruses, and shorter, more traditionally arranged songs, mostly about love and relationships. It also found him incorporating new influences and instrumentation, especially the ubiquitous fiddle that is all over this album, and Emmylou Harris, who does harmony vocals on quite a few of the tracks.

The album opens with Hurricane, a true life ode to Ruben Carter who was sent to prison for a murder that many people, and much of the evidence, say he didn't commit. At the time of his arrest he was working his way to challenging for the boxing heavyweight title. It is a mid-tempo song with a running fiddle line and a straight ahead style of story telling, "When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road/Just like the time before and the time before that/In Paterson that's just the way things go/If you're black you might as well not show up on the street/'Less you wanna draw the heat." Even though Dylan may have turned from his overtly political songwriting, this song is an indication that his social consciousness and his belief in the power of music is still alive and well. Isis is a thirteen verse story song about a man seeking relief in tough times with a decidedly Appalachian mountain music feel, with the title character only playing a minor role in the story. Mozambique has an island feel to, a take on Jimmy Buffet's beach bum melodies. One More Cup of Coffee is one of the more musically interesting songs of this period, a minor key piece with gypsy inspired inflections and percussion, and Dylan bending his voice, trying to imitate the Spanish flamenco singers. Harris is most prominent during the choruses. Oh Sister is a slow moving number, with Harris sharing vocals throughout, and is reminiscent of the country of Townes Van Zandt or Gram Parsons, with obvious christian overtones, "We grew up together/From the cradle to the grave/We died and were reborn/And then mysteriously saved." Joey is an eleven minute biography of the gangster Joey Gallo, told in a fairly straight ahead manner, complete with his jail house transformation. Some have criticized Dylan for his sympathetic portrayal of his title character. Romance In Durango finds Dylan using a southwestern flare, with Marty Robbins inspired country and Mexican ranchero inspired accordion and horns, and Dylan singing partially in Spanish, "No llores, mi querida/Dios nos vigila/Soon the horse will take us to Durango/Agarrame, mi vida/Soon the desert will be gone/Soon you will be dancing the fandango," the story of lovers trying to escape to the mountained landscape of southern Colorado. Black Diamond Bay is a series of vignettes about strange interactions in the place of the title with great, early country-rock melodies. The album closes with Sara, an ode to his wife, with small bits of poetry with self references, "I can still hear the sounds of those Methodist bells/I'd taken the cure and had just gotten through/Stayin' up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/Writin' 'Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' for you." It is an Irish inspired dirge in 6/8 time.

Dylan shows on this album why he was, and is, the most literate songwriter in rock, taking a novelists approach to song. He can write seven minute songs, and through his use of detailed story telling, keep them from feeling like they are dragging on (mostly). He also is looking to other musics for inspiration on this album, which keeps it interesting and engaging.

Listen:

One More Cup of Coffee

Romance In Durango (Concert Video)

Sara

July 4: Bob Dylan, Blond on Blonde, Sides 3 & 4 (1966)

2009-07-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

Blond On Blond was the seventh studio release by Dylan, and was his first double album (sides 1 and 2 found here). The second disc of this double album has only songs, with the eleven plus minute Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands taking up the whole of side 4.

Side 3 opens with Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine with Memphis horns and has a lighthearted, cartoonish lead guitar part, a letter to a lover he's letting go, with cartoonish lyrics to match the lighthearted lead parts, "Well the judge, he holds a grudge/He's gonna call on you/But he's badly built/And he walks on stilts/Watch out he don't fall on you." Temporary Like Achilles is a slow moving Memphis blues number, with his exaggerated and nasally melodies on the bridge. Absolutely Sweet Marie has a Lou Reed-like delivery, a few years before Lou Reed would deliver the Velvet Underground's version of psychedelic blues rock. It is full of quick key changes, before changing right back, and image heavy, almost non-siensical verses, "Well, I got the fever down in my pockets/The Persian drunkard, he follows me/Yes, I can take him to your house but I can't unlock it/You see, you forgot to leave me with the key/Ah, where are you tonight, Sweet Marie?" 4th Time Around moves through a mid-period Beatles' Norwegian Wood inspired melody and lyrics, "So I forced my hands in my pockets/And felt with my thumbs/And gallantly handed her/My very last piece of gum." Obviously 5 Believers is more Memphis electric blues, with a twelver bar blues structure and two bar instrumental breaks between each verse, with harmonica and electric guitar sharing the riff. Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands closes out the album. It is slow moving, literate and wordy, with a fair amount of use of poetic adjectives, and quick Beatles' inspired melodies, as it starts with "With your mercury mouth in the missionary times/And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes/And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes/Oh, who do they think could bury you?"

This may have been Dylan's most adventuresome album as far as length and ground covered is concerned, but as far as songs go I'd still take Highway 61 Revisited. This album found Dylan settling into his role as a pop song writer, dealing mostly with love songs, as well as perfecting his folkish version of blues rock with the help of The Band. This is one of the more powerful things about Dylan's career, is that he didn't have just one. From solo folky to purveyor of Chicago and Memphis blues, from the politically aware 'Voice of his Generation' to a writer of clever, heartfelt and sometimes cutting love songs. And all of that in well less than a decade. He leaves it up to the listener to gravitate towards the Dylan they like best.

Listen:

Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine

Absolutely Sweet Marie

Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

July 3: Bob Dylan, Blond on Blond, Sides 1 & 2, (1966)

2009-07-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

This album, the seventh by Bob Dylan, is considered by many in the know to be Dylan's best. It is, in many ways, Dylan's last album that was this adventuresome. Two albums later he would record Nashville Skyline, where he would move more towards the predictability of country and blues-rock. Coming on the heels of Highway 61 Revisited, it still found Dylan pushing boundaries musically and lyrically. Rolling Stone ranks it as the 9th best album in rock history, as does the musician polled VH1. It was released as a double album, which seems to me to be the culmination of the creative genius of Dylan's early career.

The album opens with the loose raucousness of Rainy Day Women #12 and #35, with its marching band drums, tuba and trombone, and a joyful and twisted call and response while Dylan sings "They'll stone you when you're at the breakfast table/They'll stone you when you are young and able/They'll stone you when you're trying to make a buck/They'll stone you and then they'll say, 'good luck'/Yeah, but I would not feel so all alone/Everybody must get stoned," capturing the double entendre of that phrase, twisting and kneading it for every ounce of meaning, all the while acknowledging that there just ain't no getting ahead in this world. This album also solidifies Dylan's move towards blues forms, with the Buddy Guy/Junior Walker Chicago blues of Pleadge My Time and Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat, with its image heavy lyrics, "Well, the room is so stuffy/I can hardly breathe/Ev'rybody's gone but me and you/And I can't be the last to leave/I'm pledging my time to you/Hopin' you'll come through, too," and "Well, I asked the doctor if I could see you/It's bad for your health, he said/Yes, I disobeyed his orders/I came to see you/But I found him there instead/You know, I don't mind him cheatin' on me/But I sure wish he'd take that off his head/Your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat." The seven and a half minute Visions Of Johanna dances around the subject matter of lost love with heavy use of electric lead guitar, and is filled with small bits of poetic imagery, "In the empty lot where the ladies play/Blindman's bluff with the key chain/And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the D train," and ends with "The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain/And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain." Sooner or Later (One of Us Must Know) is a piano driven number with lead guitar and Hammond B3 filling out the sound, that moves at a medium tempo but finds energy in the chorus, an apology for a relationship gone wrong told through metaphor in the verses and a more straight ahead take in the chorus. I Want You, maybe the strangest song here with its talk delivery and chorus that seems to be just filler between verses of fantastical imagery, "Now your dancing child with his Chinese suit/He spoke to me, I took his flute/No, I wasn't that cute to him, was I?/But I did it because he lied." Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, one of the better known songs off this album, is seven minutes of mid-tempo and upbeat blues rock supporting incredible and unpredictable imagery, with the Dylan pattern of ending each verse with the same line, rather than writing choruses:

Well, Shakespeare, he's in the alley
With his pointed shoes and his bells,
Speaking to some French girl,
Who says she knows me well.
And I would send a message
To find out if she's talked,
But the post office has been stolen
And the mailbox is locked.
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again.

Just Like A Woman finishes off the first of this double album. The story of a relationship where both were in over their heads, and finds Dylan exaggerating the nasally quality to his voice.

Next entry will be sides three and four

Listen:

Rainy Day Women #12 and #35

Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat

Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again

July 2: Bob Dylan, Blood On The Tracks (1975)

2009-07-15T11:48:00.000-07:00

After Nashville Skyline, it seemed that Dylan went into a bit of a hibernation mode. Not that he stopped releasing albums, because he didn't. Between 1969's Nashville Skyline and Blood On The Tracks Dylan still released five albums, but none of them caught much fire, which may very well had been to Dylan's liking. By the time this album came out he had effectively shaken the expectations placed upon him by the political protest and folk scenes, and was able to put together an album of great songs without the undue expectations that came with every Dylan release a decade earlier. This is an album often considered one of, if not Dylan's finest, with many considering it an exploration of his failing relationship.

Tangled Up In Blue, a medium tempo easy chord change many consider their favorite Dylan tune, opens the album. An exploration of lost relationships, their hopeful beginnings and tumultuous endings, and how individuals can run from and embrace them at the same time. It is a literal telling of a lover long lost, only to be reunited in the most unexpected of places, and the way a sense of nostalgia can cause us to want to return to long lost lives. On Simple Twist of Fate we see how Dylan has exchanged his pen dedicated to big social issues for one that explores life's smaller and more intimate moments, "A saxophone someplace far off played/As she was walking on by the arcade/As the light bust through a beat up shade/Where he was waking up/She dropped a coin into the cup of a blind man at the gate/And forgot about a simple twist of fate." You're a Big Girl Now shows off Dylan's maturing voice, which has rarely been more confident or soulful as on this album, as he sings something we have all had to say, either out loud or to ourselves at some point, "Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast/Oh but what a shame, that all we've shared can't last/I can change I swear/Oh, see what you can do/I can make it through/You can make it too." Idiot Wind, taking a turn from sad longing, opens up a vein of anger, "Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth/Blowing down the backroads headin' south/Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth/You're an idiot, babe/It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe," with verses that veer towards a ranting, angry inconsistency, only to turn his critical eye on himself in the last lines, "Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves/We're idiots, babe/It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves." You're Going To Make Me Lonely When You Go is an upbeat acoustic guitar and electric bass, with a surprisingly happy melody with a regular rhyming pattern and sad lyrics, "Situations have ended sad/Relationships have all been bad/Mine have been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud's/But there's no way I can compare/All them scenes to this affair/You're gonna make me lonesome when you go," and shows Dylan's ability to pull out cultural references is still alive and well, if it does make just the occasional appearance. Meet Me In The Morning has a heavy delta blues influence, with slide guitar and a subdued electric lead, and blues lyrical and musical schemes, "They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn/They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn/Honey you wouldn't know it by me/Every day's been darkness since you been gone." Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts is a fifteen verse, wordy and literate story with a country progression and rolling snare. It is peopled with shifty characters, a love triangle that would lead to one's death and another's hanging, all while a bank heist is going on, and all the while the ubiquitous Jack of Hearts is present. If You See Her Say Hello is a slow moving, broken-hearted ballad that finds Dylan over-emoting and seems to be the most out of place song, both in production and mood, with its arpeggiated 12 string guitar and a lack of conviction in Dylan's voice. It is quickly followed by one of Dylan's best melodies of his career on Shelter From The Storm. It is a story about a lover who saved him only to see the relationship deteriorate over time, told through sometimes fantastic imagery, "In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes/I bargained for salvation an' she gave me a lethal dose/I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn/'Come in,' she said, 'I'll give you shelter from the storm.'" Bucket Of Rain is a Mississippi John Hurt inspired finger-picked blues with an upbeat, traditional sounding folk melody, and might be the most beautiful song on an album full of beautiful songs. It is an acceptance of hard times, and an olive branch after so much hurt, "I been meek/And hard like an oak/I seen pretty people disappear like smoke/Friends will arrive, friends will disappear/If you want me, honey baby/I'll be here," and closes with "Life is sad/Life is a bust/All ya can do is do what you must/You do what you must do and ya do it well/I do it for you, honey baby/Can't you tell?"

This album found Dylan in full story teller mode, and utilizes Dylan's unique lyric structure, where he forgos choruses and instead ends each verse with a repeating line. There is a lot of heart, and a lot of heartbreak throughout this album, and is what in the end gives it its staying power. It is an album full of honest sentiment, and Dylan's unmatched songwriting ability.

Listen:

Idiot Wind

Tangled Up In Blue

Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts

Buckets Of Rain

July 1: Bob Dylan, Nashville Skyline (1969)

2009-07-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

By the time 1969 had rolled around, Dylan, as if pointing the way of the future, had made politics and social issues less and less important in his music. With this album, coming in at less than half an hour, he had traded in his wordy and righteous indignation for a chance to write and record an album of pretty songs that weren't going to be automatically dissected for their every nuanced meeting. It seems to me that at this point in his career he really just wanted to be Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard, good songwriters and performers who weren't loaded down with the baggage Dylan had been since his early days. Dylan just wanted to make a good country record, so he went to Nashville and went into the studio with some big (or would become big) names in the country scene, including Norman Blake, Earl Scruggs, and Charlie Daniels. Dylan uses his voice in a way that had rarely been heard before, exchanging his high nasally warble for a tenor croon.

The album's opener is a return to a track off of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Girl From The North Country is done as a duet with Johnny Cash. It is a loose performance with a fair more life than the original recording. Nashville Skyline Rag is a fast moving, major key instrumental with a swing blues progression and a melodic theme visited by pedal steel, dobro, flat picked guitar, piano, all so expertly delivered it leaves the usually confident harmonica of Dylan feeling flat in comparison. To Be Alone With You is a soulful, upbeat country rock number with busy piano. I Threw It All Away is a Ray Price like Nashville ballad, a slow moving number with a soulful vocal delivery and Hammond B3 in the background. Peggy Day has an easy moving pedal steel and dobro taking turns, and along with One More Night is a mid-tempo country swing number. Lay Lady Lay, the most well known song from this outing, a soulful slow moving number with a heartbreaking delivery that shows Dylan still has an affinity for a well delivered line, "Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed/Whatever colors you have in your mind/I'll show them to you and you'll see them shine." Tell Me That It Isn't True is a classic country heartbreak number about a man who is willing to take the word of his woman about her fidelity despite stories to the contrary, and is the most interesting song lyrically on the album, "They say that you've been seen with some other man/That he's tall, dark and handsome, and you're holding his hand/Darlin', I'm a-countin' on you/Tell me that it isn't true." Country Pie is a quick moving number with non-sensical lyrics in between his proclamations that "Oh me oh my/I love me some country pie." Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You is full of imagery about not leaving a lover long after he should have been gone.

More than anything this album is a testament to how diverse Dylan's influences are, and how capable he is to jump genres and put together as good a country album as any coming out at that time. There isn't really a stinker on this album, which considering the jump Dylan was taking isn't guaranteed. There is a looseness throughout, and a sense in Dylan's voice that he is just having a good time, which helps make this album so listenable. For those that had become accustomed to Dylan's cutting wit and socially aware lyrics, this album must have been shocking, as there is none of that here. The album is actually filled with clichés, both musically (the perfectly placed bridges) and lyrically. But the fullness of Dylan's voice and experience makes these all the more acceptable.

Listen:

Peggy Day

Tell Me That It Isn't True

Lay Lady Lay

June 30: Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home (1965)

2009-07-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

By the time this album, Dylan's fifth studio release, came out he was already rejecting the 'voice of his generation' label that had been placed upon him because of his protest songs like Blowin' In The Wind and Masters of War on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and the title track and Only a Pawn in Their Game on The Times They Are A-Changin'. It's not that he turned away from socially conscious music, there is still plenty of his anarchist and cultural revolution leanings on here. But he is doing it in a more obtuse way, giving up his straight ahead protest songs and burying gems of meaning in avalanches of words. This would coincide with him turning towards a full rock band sound as well, with the album divided between the acoustic music of his earlier albums and the country/blues rock band lineup that would dominate his future recordings. This was his fifth release in less than three years, and Highway 61 Revisited would come out shortly after.

Subterranean Homesick Blues, one his most fiery songs, opens the album. It's two and half minutes of lyrical explosions over upbeat and noodling guitar and a bass that sounds like a tuba. It shows his anti-authority and anarchist leanings and in my mind has two of his best and most insightful lines. When he says "Don't follow leaders/Watch the parkin' meters," he at once expresses a political philosophy, and in his new style, just as quickly dismisses it and moves on. And when he sings "Keep a clean nose/Watch the plain clothes/You don't need a weather man/To know which way the wind blows," you can't help but wonder if the weather man he refers to is himself. Dylan has been one of the most reliable and original writers of love songs, and he continues that here, with songs like She Belongs To Me, with it's twelve bar blues progression and lyrical pattern and poetic imagery, as well as Love Minus Zero/No Limit with its opening stanza "My love she speaks like silenc/Without ideals or violence/She doesn't have to say she's faithful/Yet she's true like ice like fire. Maggie's Farm may be one of the most discussed songs of his career. It is an upbeat cacophony with blues guitar, tambourine, piano and bass. On its face it seems like a declaration of independence, a Marxist critique about working for other's benefits. Some think it is a declaration of independence for Dylan from the protest folk movement. In the second verse he sings "Well, he hands you a nickel,/He hands you a dime/He asks you with a grin/If you're havin' a good time/Then he fines you every time you slam the door/I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more," while in the last verse he sings as if about his audience, "Well, I try my best/To be just like I am,/But everybody wants you/To be just like them/They sing while you slave and I just get bored." Dylan does his best Howlin' Wolf on Outlaw Blues with its blues harp and blues progression, "/I got my dark sunglasses/I got for good luck my black tooth/I got my dark sunglasses/I'm carryin' for good luck my black tooth/Don't ask me nothin' about nothin'/I just might tell you the truth." If there is a throwaway track on here it might be On The Road Again, but even Dylan's throwaways are more inventive and creative than other's best tracks, "Well, I ask for something to eat/I'm hungry as a hog/So I get brown rice, seaweed/And a dirty hot dog/I got a hole/Where my stomach disappeared," all over Chicago blues. Bob Dylan's 115th Dream has the infamous mis-start that finds him laughing after the second line, only to start again. It is six and half minutes of Dylan collapsing time and space, tying the Mayflower, Moby Dick parking tickets, and the bums of Bowery (to name just a few) together in one large narrative. The last four songs make up the acoustic side of the album, with mostly just Dylan's voice and guitar, and has three of his most well known songs. Opening with Mr. Tambourine Man, a veiled reference to the drug culture. On the Gates of Eden the first half of each verse is full of angry fire, while the second half has a more major key ease to it. Each verse is poetic metaphor deep with meaning and imagery. It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding is an angry, wordy explication full of doubt and disillusionment, taking on the war machine, advertising, religion, the education system, "Advertising signs that con/You into thinking you're the one/That can do what's never been done/That can win what's never been won/Meantime life outside goes on
All around you." It finds Dylan declaring and independence in the face of this, "But though the masters make the rules/For the wise men and the fools/I got nothing Ma, to live up to." After his dismissal of the alienation of the modern world, he also acknowledges that these forces are too strong sometimes and his powerlessness or refusal to what is expected, "But I mean no harm, nor put fault/On anyone that lives in a vault/But it's alright Ma, if I can't please him." The album closes with It's All Over Now, Baby Blue, another declaration of independence, although it's unclear who the antagonist really is (a lover):

Leave your stepping stones behind there, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

The weight Dylan must have carried prior to making this album would have destroyed lesser men. As the 'voice of his generation,' a burden was placed on him that no one could carry. It would make sense that Dylan would run from this as quickly as possible. Even though this album finds him declaring his freedom from all types who would make demands of him, he doesn't escape what made him the best songwriter this country has produced. His cutting wit, his deep cultural knowledge, his social consciousness are all on display, even if he has taken to burying them within imagery and metaphor a little more than he did previous.

Listen:

Subterranean Homesick Blues (Video)

Maggie's Farm (Video, Live 1965)

It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding

June 29: Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963)

2009-07-12T18:06:00.000-07:00

This was Dylan's second studio album, but the first where his songwriting was put front and center, with eleven of the thirteen tracks being originals. The production, much like his debut, is simple. It is Dylan's guitar, Dylan's voice, and Dylan's harmonica, and only very occasionally something more than that. It was this album that established him as a songwriter with a social awareness and possessing leftist politics. In the context of the times this was not all that unusual. Folk artists like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie had been walking that ground for a while before Dylan picked up a guitar, and he had contemporaries in songwriters like Phil Ochs and Joan Baez. This album also explored Dylan's affinity for delta blues, which he touched upon on his eponymous debut.

This album has some of his best known songs, and some of his most cutting and insightful protest songs. Blowin' In The Wind opens the album, one of the most ubiquitous songs in protest circles throughout the sixties. He poses philosophical questions and establishes himself as a thinking person's songwriter, "Yes 'n how many years can some people exist/Before they're allowed to be free?/Yes 'n how many times can a man turn his head/And pretend that he just doesn't see?" But he refuses, because he can't, to answer these questions, and the answers are just "Blowin' in the wind." He also does a number of love/relationship songs. The lonely, finger-picked Girl From The North Country and Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, showing he can aim his razor wit at x-lovers as well, "So long, honey babe/Where I'm bound, I can't tell/Goodbye is too good a word, babe/So I'll just say fare thee well/I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind/You could have done better but I don't mind/You just kinda wasted my precious time/But don't think twice, it's all right." Masters of War, one of Dylan's most impassioned performances, a dark minor key track calling out all of those that design the weapons and the wars that others must die in:

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
While the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
While the young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies and is buried in the mud

He has an unequivocal stance, and isn't afraid to tell how he feels about these dealers of war:

An' I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I'll follow your casket
On a pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your death bed
And I'll stand over your grave till I'm sure that you're dead

Down The Highway is a sparse delta inspired 12 bar blues guitar riff and 'down on my luck' lyrics, "Well, I'm bound to get lucky, baby/Or I'm bound to die tryin'./Yes, I'm a-bound to get lucky, baby/Lord, Lord I'm a-bound to die tryin'/Well, meet me in the middle of the ocean/And we'll leave this ol' highway behind." Bob Dylan's Blues provides a little light relief in the middle of an otherwise very serious album, with an upbeat 1-4-5 progression and a lighthearted vocal delivery, "Lord, I ain't goin' down to no race track/To see no sports car run/I don't have no sports car/And I don't even care to have one/I can walk anytime around the block." A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall gives some indication as to the direction his songwriting would take, a literate and wordy approach that would have as much in common with the poetry of Yeats and Pound as it does the songwriting of Guthrie. Verse upon verse filled with loosely connected imagery, leaving it to the listener to make the missing connections:

And, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
And, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
And the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it,
And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Bob Dylan's Dream is a small piece of nostalgia for friend's from long ago, and is characteristic of Dylan's loose interpretation of even his own songs, where each line moves at its own pace. Oxford Town is a major key exploration of race relations at the time, "Oxford town around the bend/Come to the door, couldn't get in/All because of the colour of his skin/What do you think about that my friend?" Talkin' World War III Blues is the first in a series of 'Talkin Blues' songs that Dylan would do throughout the sixties, songs which are recited as much as sung. On this one he talks about imagining WWIII in his brain and his recounting it to a psychiatrist, "Well, the doctor interrupted me just about then/Sayin, 'Hey I've been havin' the same old dreams/But mine was a little different you see/I dreamt that the only person left after the war was me/I didn't see you around.'" Corrina, Corrina, his first of two covers, is an old blues standard that he takes out of that context, adding a major key guitar lead and basic drums. The second cover, Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance, is an upbeat country tune that Dylan sings in his loose vocal delivery style. I Shall Be Free closes the album and is eleven unconnected verses, just quick ideas explored and forgotten, "Well, I got a woman four feet short/She yells and hollers and screams and snorts/She tickles my nose pats me on the head/Rolls me over and kicks me outta bed," and "Now, the man on the stand he wants my vote/He's a-runnin' for office on a ballot note/He's out there preachin' in front of the steeple/Tellin' me he loves all kinds-a people."

This album shows a Dylan still firmly entrenched in the folk music of the time, but still putting a spin on it that is firmly his. He perfectly at ease exploring ideas of power and politics, as well as love lost. He shows an ability to be deadly serious (Masters of War) and lighthearted and humorous (I Shall Be Free). In many ways this album was a clarion call for what Dylan was capable of and what he would deliver over the next series of albums.

Listen:

Masters of War

Talking WW III Blues

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

June 28: Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

2009-07-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

Despite Steve Earle's proclamation that Townes Van Zandt is America's best songwriter and he would stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table and yell it out, to me there is no doubt that Bob Dylan is still the best songwriter this country has ever produced. There are pitfalls when writing about Dylan, as there are already chapters, books, movies about every aspect of Dylan's career. Despite this, and as much as an influence Dylan is on my own songwriting, there are many great Dylan albums I haven't sat through. There are few artists that divides people along the lines of which album is their favorite, but Dylan does that. From various friends I have heard that Blond on Blond, Nashville Skyline, and The Freewheelin Bob Dylan are all favorites, but for me it is Highway 61 Revisited. Dylan has also called this the favorite album of his, but Dylan says lots of things. This was his sixth release in the three years since his debut in 1962, which makes the depth and scope of these songs all the more amazing. This was his first album with a full rock lineup, and came out shortly after his controversial performance at the Newport Folk Festival, where he played with an electric guitar.

This album is peopled with characters full of desperation, facing an uncertain world. It opens with what many consider to be the best song in rock history, Like A Rolling Stone. The story of a young woman from a privileged background now having to scramble to make a living on the streets. I always thought the woman left her life of privilege for a life in the counter-culture, only to find herself abandoned and alone. Dylan has no sympathy for the main character, at once mocking her privilege, "Ah, you never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns/When they all did tricks for you/You never understood that it ain't no good/You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you," but having no compassion for her once she leaves that life, "You say you never compromise/With the mystery tramp, but now you realize/He's not selling any alibis/As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes/And say, 'Do you want to make a deal?'" Along with Ballad of a Thin Man, make up the two most cutting portraits of people out of their element. On Ballad, Dylan fills verse after verse exploring a new language and a new way of looking at the world, and those that can't keep up are left behind, as our protagonist Mr. Jones, representing the culture left behind, discovers:

Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"

And you know something's happening
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

It's on this album that Dylan so nimbly ties his vast collection of references into cohesive narratives, weaving historical, musical, mythical and literary figures into a singular vision of the world. On driving and upbeat Tombstone Blues, Dylan sings:

The ghost of Belle Starr she hands down her wits
To Jezebel the nun she violently knits
A bald wig for Jack the Ripper who sits
At the head of the chamber of commerce

Mama's in the fact'ry
She ain't got no shoes
Daddy's in the alley
He's lookin' for food
I'm in the kitchen
With the tombstone blues

He quickly and easily takes a jab at business interests (and their head guy, Jack the Ripper), tying their interests with the poverty of the family, and just as quickly moves on. Later in the song, he imagines Beethoven and Ma Rainey as tramps on the road together. On the title track, an upbeat and lighthearted blues riff with its crazy whistle sound at the beginning of each verse, he delivers what may be might my favorite verse in rock, tying together biblical myth with Highway 61, a road that follows the Mississippi River and was the path so often traveled by African Americans escaping the south:

Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son,"
Abe say, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No," Abe say, "What?;"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run;"
Well Abe said, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God said, "Out on Highway 61."

Just like Tom Thumb's Blues and Queen Jane Approximately deal with a world that is only full of disappointment, "I started out on burgundy/But soon hit the harder stuff/Everybody said they'd stand behind me/When the game got rough/But the joke was on me/There was nobody even there to bluff/I'm going back to New York City/I do believe I've had enough," on the former, and "When your mother sends back all your invitations/And your father to your sister he explains/That you're tired of yourself and all of your creations/Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?" on the latter. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry and From A Buick 6 anchor the middle of the album with two blues rock numbers, easy stories told in a way only Dylan can, "Well, she don't make me nervous, she don't talk too much/She walks like Bo Diddley and she don't need no crutch/She keeps this four-ten all loaded with lead/Well, if I go down dyin', you know she bound to put a blanket on my bed" on From A Buick 6. The eleven and half minute Desolation Row closes the album, a summation of what was happening on the rest of the album, a mid-tempo track with a Spanish inspired guitar lead, where Dylan sings through the entire song (and it doesn't have a chorus). Desolation Row is the place where dreams go to die, and apparently where everyone ends up at some point, "Cinderella, she seems so easy/'It takes one to know one,' she smiles/And puts her hands in her back pocket/Bette Davis style." The album ends, as if saying goodbye to the acoustic folk of his earlier career, with this verse:

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
About the time the door knob broke
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row

The revolutionary spirit of Dylan's earlier work seems to have faded to a jaded spirit where everyone is lost, no matter which side of the revolution you were on. His cutting wit is honed to a sharp point, and everyone could be subject to it. Some of the best lines of Dylan's career came off this album, full of social commentary and an endless array of cultural references. People have dedicated better parts of their lives trying to decipher Dylan's career, and there is much to be said that I could never get to, but I always thought part of Dylan's power was his ability to say non-sensical things, to construct sentences on rhyming patterns and rhythms only, and make it sound like it's the deepest thing you'll ever have heard. This album, probably my second favorite of all time, seems to have come at a turning point in his career, where he was examining his own approach to his music, instrumentally, politically, and lyrically. And that sense of everything being up for grabs shows through in every aspect and line of this album.

Listen:

Ballad Of A Thin Man
Highway 61 Revisited

Desolation Row (first half)

It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry

June 27: Conor Oberst (2008)

2009-07-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

Conor Oberst made his name as the front man for indie-folksters Bright Eyes in the late nineties and early 2000's, based in Omaha, Nebraska. Oberst has been in and out of bands since the early nineties, and released solo albums prior to the success of Bright Eyes, but this is his first solo release after that success. The band that backed him on this album, which was recorded in Mexico, later became The Mystic Valley Band, which is the band he now tours with. He is often considered emo, which is a label I still don't understand to this day. To me he has always seemed to make an updated Dylan-esque sort of music, with a literate country/folk that more closely aligns with Townes Van Zandt and Dylan that the radio friendly alt-rock that seems to get labeled emo most often.

Cape Canaveral opens with an easy strummed guitar and a single quarter note drum beat. A number of images all lined up, explicating a number of relationships, all set against a backdrop of the title, "Like the citrus glow off the old orange grove/Or the red rocket blaze over Cape Canaveral/It's been a nightmare for me, some 1980's greed/Gives me parachute dreams like old war movies." Sausalito is an upbeat country tinged track, and like many of the lyrics here, tends to bounce around the heart of the story, filling it with imagery and metaphor, "I know that trouble's been your good friend/Kept you company on the weekends/Kept you company even once your mind was made." Get-Well-Cards is full of beach imagery and has a Joe Strummer like delivery on the choruses. Lenders in the Temple is a finger-picked then easily strummed guitar with a subtle organ underneath, a rough relationship told through disconnected imagery, "There's money-lenders inside the temple/That circus tiger's gonna break my heart/Something so wild turned into paper/If you love me, then that's your fault." Danny Callahan has a country-ish Belle and Sebastian like indie pop feel, with choruses that change slightly each time they're repeated, with the title character being given a verse, a small boy that died of cancer. I Don't Want To Die (In The Hospital) is a country/cajun upbeat number about someone trying to escape the confines of said hospital before he dies, "They don't let you smoke and you can't get drunk/All there is to watch are these soap operas/I don't wanna die in the hospital/You gotta take me back outside." Eagle On A Pole has that emotive high warble that is more associated with his vocal delivery in Bright Eyes. NYC-Gone Gone has a distorted bluesy riff, stomps and hand claps, and a twisted children's song type of delivery. Moab is a Tom Petty influenced roots rock number with the refrain "There's nothing that the road cannot heal." Valle Mistico (Ruben's Song) is just the blowing of a conch shell by one of the locals in Mexico. Souled Out! has a Replacements rock out feel, and is a loosely recorded with conversation by the band being recorded as they are recording, with a big chorus, and woman speaking Spanish words in certain spots. Milk Thistle closes the album, an easy finger-picked guitar and lazily delivered lines, "Lazarus, Lazarus/Why all the tears/Did your faithful chauffer just disappear/What a lonesome feeling."

Oberst has turned into a reliable purveyor of country-rock. He has a penchant for good, sometimes great, lyrics, has an ear for a melodic hook, and a loose approach to recording that is reminiscent of early Dylan. And more importantly, he's gotten rid (for the most part) of that over the top vocal delivery that defined so much of the Bright Eyes sound. His intermittent use of Spanish could come across as a bit gimmicky, but he pulls it off without much interference with what's going on the rest of the song, giving it a feel of respect for his surroundings more than a cheap shot. Here he pulls out his Dylan and Petty and Van Zandt influences, gives free rein to his backing band, and in the process creates a solid piece of folk/country rock.

Listen:

Souled Out! (Video)

Cape Canaveral

I Don't Want To Die (In The Hospital)

June 26: Townes Van Zandt, For The Sake Of The Song (1968)

2009-07-08T18:07:00.000-07:00

Townes Van Zandt is a religious figure in some circles, considered to be one of the best songwriters of the last half century. But this high regard never resulted in commercial success. He never had a hit record or album, although a number of his songs have been recorded by other artists, most famously Pancho and Lefty which Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings took to #1 on the country charts in 1983. Although his work is little known outside a cult following, within those circles naming Van Zandt an influence is critical. Firmly within a folk and country tradition, he wrote literate songs full of poetic imagery and stories mostly about people on the rougher side of life. With obvious influence from Bob Dylan and other singer-songwriters of the early to mid-sixties, he would go on to shape the sound of the singer-songwriter genre of the 70's as heard in people like Harry Chapin and John Denver. Although he moved around as a kid, at heart he was a Texan, and resided there throughout his adult life. His manic depression and substance abuse posed problems for his recording career, and he was mostly concerned solely with the writing of songs and turned over recording authority to his producer Jack Clement. This is his debut album and has some of his most well known songs like Tecumseh Valley and Waitin' Around to Die.

The focus is on his acoustic guitar and his voice, but the production of Clement also was grounded in the singer/songwriter aesthetic of the time, which means lots of strings, flutesand oohs and aahs of back up singers (which Clement later stated he regretted). It gives the album a dated feel, where as the songs by themselves don't feel dated at all. The album opens with the title track, which showcases his gentle and sad voice. It is a song about how hard communication in a relationship is, and that "Maybe she just has to sing, for the sake of the song/And who do I think that I am to decide that she's wrong." Tecumseh Valley is a finger-picked guitar and a story about a free-spirited woman who found herself in the namesake valley, looking for work in order to return home. Things don't turn out the way she had hoped, and in metaphor Van Zandt tells of her choices, "She turned to walkin' down the road/From all the hate inside her/And it was many a man/Returned again/To walk that road beside her." Many A Fine Lady is about the lovers he's had, and Quicksilver Daydreams of Maria shows Van Zandt's ability to turn a phrase, "One stood among them I remember most clearly/Well her sorrows were heavy and her laughter was slow" on the former, and "So the serpent slides slowly away with his moments of laughter/And the old washer-woman has finished her cleanin' and gone/But the bamboo hangs heavy in the bondage of quicksilver daydreams/And a lonely child longingly looks for a place to belong." Waitin' Around To Die is full of diminished chord sadness and tension, with each verse ending with the title, "Sometimes I don't know where/This dirty road is taking me/Sometimes I don't even know the reason why/But I guess I keep a-gamblin'/Lots of booze and lots of ramblin'/Well it's easier than just a-waitin' around to die." I'll Be Here In The Morning is the closest thing to a straight ahead country song on the album, mid-tempo with a Hank Williams melody, strummed bass and harmonica, and a four piece backing chorus. Sad Cinderella is mostly plucked harp and light snare rolls, and is a take on Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone, "When the bandits have stolen your jewelry and gone/And your crippled young gypsy, he's grown tall and strong/And your dead misconceptions have proven you wrong/Well then, princess, where you plannin' to turn to?" Talkin' Karate Blues is another take on Dylan's talkin' blues series, a not so politically correct track about visiting a Karate school run by a "Jap" named Lee Hung Chow. All Your Young Servants is a story about someone who has lost what they once had, but maintain the facade, "Your castle is dingy and dirty and dismal/Your carpets are faded, your walls are all grey/There's dust on your silver and cracks in your crystal/And all your young servants have drifted away." Sixteen Summers, Fifteen Falls closes the album with an Ennio Morricone spaghetti western feel, another showing of Van Zandt's poetic approach, "She died few in years with breasts still small/Seeing sixteens summers and fifteen falls."

For a debut this showed how much promise Van Zandt had as a songwriter, with his clever use of words and rhythms, and why he is so revered by other songwriters. Even as bad as the production is at points, the album is still highly listenable and highly enjoyable, and there is a lot to dig into as far as his lyrics go. There was a constant sadness and tension that ran through his music, even though on the surface it could seem gentle and pretty. Maybe that was one reason he never reached a larger audience. But that emotion that is built into the soul of every song is the thing that made Van Zandt Van Zandt.

Listen:

Tecumseh Valley

Waitin' Around To Die

I'll Be There In The Morning

June 25: Tom Brosseau, Grand Forks (2007)

2009-07-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

Tom Brosseau is a North Dakota raised, LA based singer/songwriter that has been on the circuit since 2002. He hasn't garnered much more than modest success. This is his sixth release, and has released three more since. He is playing an older form of American folk music, with his music being dominated by simple and easy guitar and a high pitched and delicate voice. This album was co-produced by John Doe (formerly of the seminal punk band X), which adds some heft to the outing. This album is a concept album about the severe flooding of his hometown, Grand Forks, in 1997. The flood destroyed 90% of the city and required the evacuation of all 52,000 residents.

There is a general sense of easy, western US folk music built in, think cowboy songs. His high register voice comes across like Nick Drake if he'd been born on the plains of the midwest. Alternating bass notes opens the album on I Fly Wherever I Go, and has a Moldy Peaches lightness to it, with a vocal melody that goes in and out of falsetto, "At my leisure or in a race/I always try to keep the piece/I double knot each lace/For whatever terrain I face," with brushes on a snare drum, an intermittent organ that feels like a xylophone and pedal steel. Fork In The Road features Doe on vocal harmonies, a waltz-time piece with a beautiful violin melody between vocal lines, a story about encountering a metaphorical fork in the road, and having to leave his lover. There's More Than One Way To Dance simple lines about the different ways one can dance "Go between a pair of legs/Go between a pair of pegs/Come on take a chance/There's more than one way to dance," with pedal steel giving it texture. Blue Part of the Windshield is another one in 6/8, and has a guitar line that mimics the vocal melody, with a doubled up violin. Down On Skidrow is Tom Waits like minor key track with a cello playing the role of the bass, and has strings playing an easy eerie melody, a simple sketch of bums down on skid row. Here Comes the Water Now seems to be the first song that tackles the subject of the flood, "You're going to have to leave your home/You're going to have to go and roam." Plaid Lined Jacket is another story, told from the first person, about a homeless man that despite everything "I keep my plaid lined jacket clean," sung to a quasi-blues riff with forward moving drums during the vocal breaks. Dark And Shiny Gun is the eerie and easily told story about a group of children playing with a gun found in one of their parent's bedrooms. 97 Flood is an examination of the that aforementioned flood and the communities response. It's a nice piece of history in song.

There are definitely some interesting and enjoyable moments on here, but I found myself being thankful it was only thirty-three minutes long. There is such little variation from song to song, with similar strumming styles and vocal delivery, which is the point, making the album about Brosseau's delicate voice and straight forward lyrics. There isn't a lot of depth either melodically or instrumentally, and the lyrics are easy in their descriptions, which means that after an initial listen there isn't much left there to explore. And as a concept album it doesn't really work either. There are a few songs that deal with his memories of that flood, but the album rather feels just like a collection of songs.

Listen:

Fork In The Road

Down On Skidrow

Plaid Lined Jacket

June 24: Richmond Fontaine, Post to Wire (2003)

2009-07-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

Richmond Fontaine are one of those bands that have been grinding it out for so long it's easy to forget how long they've been around. Starting out in 1994 in Portland, Oregon, they've been touring, releasing albums, and playing their hometown steadily in that time, and gaining a little more success and fame with each passing year. The band has had a rotating cast of musicians over the years, with songwriter/singer/guitar player Willie Vlautin and bass player Dave Harding anchoring the group during that entire time. The band is firmly grounded in the alt-country genre, with similarities to Jay Farrar's country tinged roots rock, but also with nods to the 80's/90's indie rock of bands like The Replacements and Hüsker Dü. There is plenty of electric and acoustic guitar, bass, and drums, with pedal steel and keys adding depth and texture. Vlautin is also a published author, which informs his literate approach to storytelling in song.

The Longer You Wait opens the album, with driving drums, subtle pedal steel, and ominous sounds rolling low in the mix, a story about escape as a couple drives late into the night with the heartbreaking image of a relationship barely holding together, "It's been two months since he kissed her face/Twice as long since he held her/The longer you wait," the harder it is. Mid-tempo country-ish tunes define most of the songs here (Barely Losing, Through, Two Broken Hearts, Polaroid), but there are also rock out numbers with power chords and forward moving drumming (Montgomery Park, Hallway). At times Vlautin's literal approach to lyrics leaves something to be desired, "We're having dinner at the Santa Fe and/We're walking underneath lights and/We're staying on the seventh floor of the Fitzgerald" on Barely Losing. While on other songs his imagery only gives a hint to the story, "A man came from the house/With white spit on his lips and his tattooed arms/Were trembling as he ran after them, " leaving no clue to who this man is on Two Broken Hearts. Deborah Kelly does a guest appearance for shared vocal tracks on Post to Wire and Polaroid, as a couple tries to reconcile on the former. He has a tendency to use imagery from his favorite places, and he sings about the landmark sign in NW Portland, in Montgomery Park. He has spoken pieces (as if reading a postcard) and instrumental pieces throughout the album (Walter's On The Lam, Postcard From California, Postcard Written With A Broken Hand, Postcard Postmarked Phoenix, Az.), creating a sense that there is some larger story holding this album together, although that is never explicitly stated. Willamette and Valediction close the album. The former a tale of wanting to escape, "At night we'd sit on the banks of/The polluted Willamette River/And we'd try and we'd try to piece together our lives/Away from there," over a Nick Cave like darkness and intensity. The latter an instrumental with a pretty pedal steel melody.

Vlautin's voice has a distinct similarity to Jay Farrar's, with its tendency to dance around melodies as much as sing them. But he also has a lazier delivery, as words are stretched out, waited for, and sang almost independently of what's happening musically at times. He will repeat some lines, while rushing through others. His at times hyper-literal lyrics leave me wishing for just a little poetry. But they make a solid sort of alt-country with all the right influences.

Listen:

The Longer You Wait

Montgomery Park

Polaroid

June 23: The Flatlanders, Now Again (2002)

2009-06-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

The Flatlanders are a super group of sorts, only that they did it backwards. Forming in 1972 in Lubbock, Texas, home of a unique style of Texas country, they recorded one album that was only released on 8-track as a contractual obligation, before disbanding. The three members, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock, and Joe Ely, then went on to each have successful solo careers as west Texas based singer songwriters. When word leaked out about this lost album, Rounder re-issued it in 1991. This is the second album by the band, and came out 30 years after their debut, and was highly anticipated by fans of the three.

The instrumentation is what one would expect out of west Texas. There is lots of acoustic and electric guitar, dobro and steel guitars, mandolin, bass, drums, and keys, with the occasional accordion, musical saw and harmonica. All the songs tend to move at mid-tempos. There are the folk and country influences, ala Townes Van Zandt and Waylon Jennings, with heavy blues influences as well. The opening track, Going Away, is the only cover on the album. It was written by professional hobo and anarchist troublemaker Utah Phillips, and might be the best song on the album. All the other songs on the album, with the exception of track two, are credited to the three Flatlanders, with Julia being written by Butch Hancock. There are the midtempo country-rock numbers (Going Away, Julia, Down in the Light of the Melon Moon, I Thought The Wreck Was Over, Yesterday Was Judgment Day), blues and blues rock numbers (Wavin' My Heart Goodbye, Right Where I Belong, Pay The Alligator), country swing (My Wildest Dreams Wilder Every Day), and straight ahead folk (Down On Filbert's Rise, The South Wind of Summer ). The three have distinct voices, with Gilmore's high register warble, Ely's thick tenor, and Hancock's rough around the edges rasp. They know how to sing together well, creating great harmonies throughout. Lyrically there isn't much to dig into, they tend to be love songs, good and bad, and full of predictable imagery and rhymes, "Night wind blows/Stars above the blue/Heaven knows/Only love will do," on Julia, "The moon sees you, the moon sees me/The moon sees who I want to see/I'll see you soon/Down in the light of the melon moon," on Down in the Light of the Melon Moon, or "Livin' with her liked t' killed me/Living without her might as well/At first I thought I'd died and gone to heaven/In fact I lived and gone to hell" on I Thought The Wreck Was Over.

They all know how to construct a song, having done it for a living for thirty plus years. This might be their greatest strength and biggest flaw. They take no chances here, putting everything right where it should be. It's enjoyable enough, but doesn't have a lot of edge to it. It's predictability is its biggest shortcoming. It's not offensive in the least, and like a lot of modern folk seems thin emotionally and in its vision.

Listen:

Going Away

Waving My Heart Goodbye

Down On Filbert's Rise

June 22: Munly and the Lee Lewis Harlots (2004)

2009-06-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

Munly came out of a Denver scene that produces dark, alt-country bands like fruit from a tree. Along with Munly, bands like Sixteen Horsepower, Slim Cessna's Auto Club (of which he is a regular member), The Denver Gentlemen and Devotchka have all arisen out of the streets of that prototypical western city. Coming out of that same tradition, Munly takes American folk music and lore from the Appalachian regions as well as from the American West, injects it with a modern and dark attitude and kicks out a music that is at once traditional and forward looking, full of dark imagery and melodies. Munly has a vocal range like few I've heard, his deepest notes are barely audible, and he will easily switch to an ungodly high register yelp before returning to his dark tenor. This is Munly's fifth release, and the first with the Lee Lewis Harlots, and collection of scene musicians from around Denver.

Munly creates a world that belongs to just him, and we might get a glimpse into that world, but we will never know what's really going on in there. Galloping drums, driving strings, old folk guitar riffs, and Munly's haunting and menacing vocals move this music in a forward direction, but it is a music grounded in the darkest traditions of American folk music, with touches of punk thrown in for good measure. The band is masterful at building tension, letting the quiet moments be quiet and coming in like a wildfire burning through a dry field of grass when need be. This album is a full seventy-seven minutes, with fifteen songs. The stories Munly tells are long, but there is plenty of space for the music to explore as well. A women's chorus will often come in, singing melodies based on Irish traditional music as filtered through Appalachian mountain music. As dark and intense as the music is, it is only a setup to the darker stories that Munly has to tell. They are stories that feel like they come from the turn of the last century, full of religious imagery and scenes from a less technologically developed rural life. He delves into the collective id, with stories about sex, violence, fear, god, murder, redemption, and loss. His tales are intricate, yet obtuse. His colorful descriptions only get you part way to the heart of the matter. On the opening track, Amen Corner, Munly begins, "It's glorious today so you know it will pass away/The doves and snapping turtles bite at me/Catatonic ash, don't bump against them tender wounds/This petunia land smells of timothy." On Big Black Bull Comes like a Caeser, he ties his own breach birth to that of the calf fathered by the title character, describing his brother carving words into the wood of the kitchen table, "I never could tell what they say,/But I could tell they were dirty. Dirty, dirty." On Another Song About Jesus, A Wedding Sheet, And A Bowie Knife he sings "Someone needs to take a rusty Bowie knife to you--/From your groin to your chest-bone, spill the truth" to a pretty melody over easily strummed guitar and pizzicato violin. Munly sings the entire Cassius Castrato The She-Male Of The Men's Prison in falsetto, interrupted by Irish inspired chorus. Song Rebecca Calls, "That Birdcage Song," Which Never Was Though Now Kind Of Is Because Of Her Influence has a Gogol Bordello like energy and violi melodies. The most haunting line might come from Goose Walking Over My Grave, as he begins "She said 'punch me in the stomach.'/I said 'girl I do not know./If I punch you in the stomach/Then our child inside will not grow'/She said 'if you truly love me/You'll do this thing for me.'/So I punched her in the stomach/And she fell down to both of her knees." There is much more where this came from.

I couldn't sit through the album in a single sitting, because the musical and lyrical content is so heavy. If you're a fan of Sixteen Horsepower or Nick Cave, this album is right up there with anything either one of them has done. But it's dark imagery can be a lot to take in large doses, which doesn't mean it is not absolutely enjoyable because it is. And there is a lot going on to provide endless amounts of material to dig into. If you like being challenged by music, there might be few albums that are more challenging than this one, and there's a lot to be said for such things.

Listen:
Amen Corner

Denver Boot Redux

June 21: Dolorean, Violence in the Snowy Fields (2004)

2009-06-21T12:58:00.000-07:00

Dolorean, mostly a project of Al James, are based out of Portland, Oregon and make a quiet, country tinged music that tends to not be in a hurry to get anywhere. Pulling from alt-country and folk of artists like Townes Van Zandt, he puts just a bit of twang in his voice, but also pulls from indie rock, especially slow core bands like Low and Yo La Tengo.

They tend to go back and forth between two personas, the quiet and introverted full of finger-picked guitar, and the full band slow core that can come across like a rootsier Yo La Tengo. Both seem to work equally well. On songs like The Search, To Destruction, and the title track, the full band fills in behind James' guitar and vocals nicely, finding just the right spots to place piano chords or steel guitar runs and building dynamics throughout. The Righteous Shall Destroy the Precious is the most slow core of the songs here, a six minute track that builds, falls away to a lonely whistle, only to build again. The slow finger-picked numbers like Put You To Sleep, Holding On, My Grey Life (Second Chances) and In The Fall can feel almost like Iron and Wine's quiet whispered folk. There are instruments that fill in these songs as well, like steel guitar and fiddle, but they are more sparse. Lyrically James tries to put more heft into the songs than the words themselves necessarily merit. There are nice lyrical images placed throughout, "Where is the place of understanding/And where can wisdom be found?" on The Search. He compares it throughout to precious metals only to decided that wisdom is worth more. On Put You To Sleep he tells the story of a person being woken up by their lover's bad dreams, set to haunting pedal steel. Dying In Time might be the throw away track here, a 70's FM radio feel with the line "Baby lets die at the same time." Holding On shows James' penchant for making small things mean more than they should as he sings about the loss of a lover, "Your Coat your keys/Your blankets and sheets/Your favorite blue jeans/I'm holding on to anything." The title track is full of religious imagery, as he assures himself that he is living a good and pure life, "And on a night like this when nothing stirs about/If I hear the hoof beat pounds I will not turn/I will not be afraid of how I spent my days/I may go down in flames but I shall not burn." My Grey Life might be the most heartbreaking song on the album as he sings goodbye to a lover over slow finger-picked guitar and not much else, "I believe in second chances/For everyone but you."

Dolorean know how to construct a song, and the musicianship on here is top notch, full of perfectly placed lines. The album is very pretty, sometimes too pretty. There are moments, especially in the slower, sadder songs where tension builds, but there is a lot of the album that is just too easily digestable. But in its thirty seven minutes there are very nice moments, both lyrically and musically

Listen here:

Recommended - The Search, My Grey Life (Second Chances), Violence in the Snowy Fields

June 20: Whiskeytown, Stranger's Almanac (1997)

2009-06-20T16:20:00.000-07:00

Ryan Adams, before his self-indulgent and self-destructive solo career, led Whiskeytown, based out of North Carolina. Firmly rooted in the alt-country/country rock tradition of Gram Parsons and Uncle Tupelo, as well as 80's and 90's underground rock of bands like The Replacements or Dinosaur Jr., they had a tumultuous go of it, with many line up changes and only releasing three proper albums before Adams moved onto a quite successful solo career. This is their second of those three albums.

There is little contentment to be found on this album, whether it's his own or someone elses. For the most part it is stories of lost love, or just feeling lost, or both. The songs tend to be packed with a quiet, desperate energy as songs build musically over the course of four or five minutes. Acoustic guitar, distorted electric guitar, lots of banjo, bass, drums, pedal/lap steel, fiddle, lead and backing vocals. Each song is built up from some combination of this instrumentation, and the instruments slowly come in, until the full band is in. Given this depth of instrumentation, the quiet moments seem all the more intense because of it. They tend towards country rock with lots of drums, fiddle and steel guitars (Inn Town, Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart, Dancing With The Women At The Bar), quiet folk influenced songs (16 Days, Houses On The Hill, Avenues, Somebody Remembers The Rose), and more straight ahead roots rock with indie rock influences (Yesterday's News, Turn Around, Waiting to Derail, Losering). They also have a touch of Muscle Shoals influenced soul with the horns on Everything I Do. Caitlin Cary's fiddle and harmony vocals create a depth that helps define the album, but ultimately it is Adams' ability to inject so much angst with his voice that makes this album an emotional experience. He is able to sing otherwise unremarkable lines but make them feel like all the sadness in the world is wrapped up in those words. Whether he's singing about returning to an unfulfilling life as on Inn Town, "Hang around with the people that I used to be/Hang around on a corner waiting to go have a seat," an lost love on 16 Days, "I got sixteen days/Got a bible and a rosary/God, I wish that you were close to me/Guess I owe you an apology," or about love letters his grandmother wrote to a love lost in WWII, "Well I found them in the northwest corner of the attic in a box/Labeled tinsel and lights/Didn't know what I was I looking for/Maybe just a blanket or artifacts/Eisenhower sent him to war/He kept her picture in his pocket that was closest to his heart/And when he hit shore/Must have been a target for the gunman," each is filled with such gravity as to make it feel like you were the one left or found the letters. Even on a song like Losering, where the lyrics consist of little more than the repeating of the title, they somehow find a way to do that for four minutes and make it mean something. Adams is also very good at capturing small moments, "Somebody remembers the dress/How it was handsome/Beautifully pressed," on Somebody Remembers The Rose or on Not Home Anymore, "I left all the lights on/In our old room/To pretend that you and I were home."

I picked this album up on a whim ten or so years ago, and it is one that I return to often. It has kept me company on many a long and lonely drive. There were no fewer than fifteen members of this band in its short life, with only Adams and Cary being there from beginning to end, which helps explain the tumultuousness of the music in a way. But whatever it was, this album is packed with heart and feeling, and is the reason I can return to it again and again and continue to connect with it.

Listen:

Avenues

Dancing With The Women At The Bar

Houses On The Hill

Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight

June 19: Marty Robbins, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs (1959)

2009-06-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

Marty Robbins was the golden voiced sage of country music through the late fifties and throughout the sixties. He worked mainly from a country music platform, but had plenty of cross-over success, as this album, and its most well known song, hit #6 and #1 on the pop charts respectively. Having an affinity for Hawaiian music, which the pedal and lap steels came from, he helped foster that relationship which would go on and define the sound of country music for decades. Living through the depression as an adolescent in the American west informed some of his world view, and the stories of the old west is told in myriad ways on this album. It is a combination of traditional western songs, Robbins' originals, and a few written by others.

It is a simple musical line-up, with rhythm and lead guitars, bass, drums, and Tompall & the Glaser Brothers singing backups. This simplicity in instrumentation and arrangement makes the album ride on Robbins' silky voice. He has an unusually large range, covering several of octaves while making it sound effortless. There is little fluff in the vocals, these are stories told in straight forward ways. There are characters that are developed, meetings and conflict, and almost always some resolution or redemption. The songs are wordy, as each one is in effect a short story told in three to five minute time spans. The stories tend to be told in very straightforward ways, as there is no dancing around the meaning of what is happening in the song, but there are nice moments of imagery and ideas. The songs revolve around characters and situations unique to the American west, and especially the lawless wild west of American folklore. There are the songs about outlaws and gunfighters. Big Iron deals with an Arizona Ranger coming to take Texas Red "Alive, or maybe dead," with a vivid description of the final gun battle. Billy the Kid is a short biography of the infamous outlaw in the plains of New Mexico. Running Gun tells the story of a man trying to escape a life of killing other men by getting to Mexico, but meeting his fate before he could get there. There are also the crimes of passion, as on They're Hanging Me Tonight, a story of being left by his partner to be with another man, and when seeing them together shoots them both, "They're burying Flo tomorrow, but they're hanging me tonight," or on Robbins' best known song El Paso, the protagonist finds his love for 'Felina' is in vain, and he kills that man that gains her attention. He flees only to return, "Maybe tomorrow a bullet may find me/Tonight nothing's worse than this pain in my heart," and dies in Felina's arms. Master's Call tells of a young man gone bad, who should have died in a cattle stampede only to be saved by a miracle, and he turns good and towards the lord. There are also scenes of pastoral life, the pleasantness of it (A Hundred and Sixty Acres), or wanting to return to it (The Little Green Valley). There's the Robbins' original, In The Valley, the only thing that passes for a directly told love song. And finally there are stories about just trying to survive in the harsh west. The Bob Nolans' written Cool Water tells the story of being stuck in the arid west, hoping to come across water but only being fooled by mirages, "The nights are cool and I'm a fool/Each star's a pool of water/Cool water/But with the dawn I'll wake and yawn/And carry on to water." Utah Carol tells the story of the protagonist seeing his best friend get killed in a cattle stampede while trying to save another. The traditional waltz Strawberry Roan is a tale of an out of work cowboy who gets hired to break an old bronc that no one else has been able to ride, "Said 'He's got one, a bad one to buck/At throwin' good riders, he's had lots of luck,'" and is full of great imagery, "He's about the worst bucker I've seen on the range/He'll turn on a nickel and give you some change."

Instrumentally there's not anything that could be considered a solo on the album but the lead guitar lines are perfectly placed, filling out the sound without taking away from the vocal lines. Using nylon stringed guitars it gives the music a Mexican feel at times, while at others Hawaiian melodies are used. Even though the songs are so wordy, they rarely feel too much so.

This might be one of the albums I listened to most in my childhood days. Growing up in rural New Mexico in a family of people who had made or were making their livings off the hard-scrabble western landscapes, and told old stories about the American West, made this music seem more real. And the fact that New Mexico gets mentioned quite often throughout automatically gained our appreciation, as we felt isolated from so much of the rest of the country. But ultimately what drew me then, and still draws me to this album, is that they are very good stories told through a voice with a golden touch.

Listen:

Big Iron

Cool Water

El Paso

Strawberry Roan

June 18: M. Ward, The Transfiguration of Vincent (2003)

2009-06-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

M. Ward came up through the Portland, Oregon music scene, and has since come to be a favorite of musicians from a number of backgrounds, playing with artists like Cat Power, Jenny Lewis and Bright Eyes. His early recordings were heavily influenced by John Fahey's American primitive guitar style, an approach that used unusual tunings and blues/Appalachian inspired finger-picked guitar to make intricate, instrumental music full of unexpected melodies and rhythms. But he also has an affinity for good lyrics and story telling. On this album, his third studio release, he uses a combination of the Fahey inspired instrumental, as well as a folk based approach to songwriting. Although he does bring in other instruments, using a full band at points, the focus stays on his guitar work and his barely above a whisper, sad intoned vocals.

The album is bookended by the instrumentals Transfiguration #1 and Transfiguration #2, the former a country-ish full band piece, the former a sad diminished-chord piano that works a single melodic theme. Along with the Mississippi John Hurt finger-picked blues Duet for Guitars #3 make up the three instrumentals on the album. The rest of the album works a sad theme, sometimes with a full band and forward moving rhythms (Vincent O'Brien, Fool Says, Helicopter), sometimes quiet and contemplative with the full band (Poor Boy, Minor Key, Undertaker, Voice at the End of the Line), sometimes with not much more than acoustic guitar and voice (Involuntary, Dead Man). Lyrically there is a theme that runs throughout his music, and it is the death of a friend. Although he never says it outright (although Vincent O'Brien has become this moniker), many songs revolve around death. On Vincent O'Brien he sings ""He only sings when he's sad/And he's sad all the time/So he sings the nighttime through/Yeah he sings in the daytime too," while on Undertaker he sings "Oh, but if you're gonna leave/Better call the undertaker/Take me under, undertaker/Take me home." On Dead Man he sings as if the person is listening, "Dead man, dead man don't cry/Don't cry/When you die it ain't the end/It ain't the end when you die." He also deals with issues of love and lost love, and escape from a world gone mad "I am somewhere in the city, I am climbing up a fire escape/I am somewhere in the city, I am climbing up a fire escape/I have gotta save my baby from a mess this world has made," hoping the titled Helicopter will come down and rescue them both. On Sad Sad Song, a track put together like an old folk tune, he goes around asking different beings (doctor, whippoorwill, whale) advice on getting a lover to return. On Poor Boy, Minor Key he sings of a couple, "One day they will be as giants/stronger than the sun/but that day ain't yet come." While much of his music tends towards the sad, he does break out of that with Get to the Table on Time, with its upbeat and light melody, and simple lyrics. He does a five minute acoustic guitar and voice cover of the Bowie Let's Dance, taking the dance beats out of it and making it a contemplative plea.

There's a heft in M. Ward's music, that he is able to draw the listener into quite effectively. Much of his music betrays a sadness, even in the upbeat and faster paced songs. He draws from a number of influences, combining them all, and in the process creating a music that is comfortable and familiar, yet still uniquely his. In that process he draws from the white folk music of the American south and Mississippi delta blues, mid century jazz, a touch of rock and roll. His willingness to experiment with instrumental music also separates him from many of his contemporaries.

Listen:

Go here to listen to Undertaker, Transfiguration #2, and Voice at the End of the Line.

June 17: Lyle Lovett, The Road to Ensenada (1996)

2009-06-17T12:12:00.000-07:00

Lyle Lovett can spin a hell of a tale. That's probably the thing I've admired most about him as a songwriter, a performer, and a band leader. Hailing out of Texas, and approaching country music as a Texan (that has to go through Nashville), but refusing to believe that country is just one or two or three things. Avoiding many of the clichés of modern country music, he has succeeded commercially and critically from pretty much the time of his debut. Having won the prestigious songwriting competition at the Kerrville folk festival, he quickly established as a writer and performer with some heft. Pulling equally from Willie Nelson's outsider country, Bob Wills' country swing, and Townes Van Zandt inspired singer/songwriter, he creates music that is funny and heartbreaking, big band swing and quiet balladry, and somehow does it all competently and without missing a beat.

Here he touches on a number of themes, both musically and lyrically. But there are always the standard instruments, no matter where the music is coming from, fiddle, pedal steel, electric and acoustic guitars, bass, drums. There is the quiet and sad fingerpicked songs, reminiscent of Townes Van Zandt or Richard Buckner (Who Loves You Better, Christmas Morning, Promises). There is also standard Nashville issue country, ala Randy Travis and George Strait (It Ought To Be Easier, I Can't Love You Anymore), Texas style country (Don't Touch My Hat, Fiona, Long Tall Texas with its blues progression) and Texas swing, ala Bob Wills, (That's Right (You're Not From Texas)). And finally, a Bossa Nova rhythm on Her First Mistake.

There are the expected leaving and being left by love stories, but where Lovett seems to do his best is in his funny, unexpected storytelling. Don't Touch My Hat is an ode to the title, "If it's her you want/I don't care about that/You can have my girl/But don't touch my hat," full of quick musical breaks and a bluesy finish. Her First Mistake is a story about him trying to woo a woman by trying to convince her he's from, in order, Boston, Alabama and Lousiana, trying to find out which is closest to her. That's Right (You're Not From Texas) is full of horns, fiddles and boasting the way only someone from Texas can. Long, Tall Texan lays out the stereotypes of Texans of wearing ten gallon hats and riding horses enforcing justice, with Randy Newman singing the duet part. Lovett is good at little bits of poetry within his wordy story telling, "And would if my fingers/To cut off and give you/Could gain my redemption/I'd cut off my hands" on Promises.

One thing about certain musicians that I love is their refusal to be boxed in by labels. Lyle Lovett, although firmly rooted in the country tradition, is willing to jump outside of that box and delve into other modes of expression, especially pulling from blues and big band jazz traditions. And that has made him one of the most interesting and acclaimed artists in country music over the last two decades.

Listen:

That's Right, You're Not From Texas

Her First Mistake

Long Tall Texan

Christmas Morning

June 16: Gram Parsons, Grievous Angel (1974)

2009-06-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

This album was the follow-up to Parsons' debut solo album, GP, and was released posthumously. He again assembled much of the same band that backed him on GP, including Emmylou Harris as a duet partner. Also like on his debut, he penned just over half the songs here, looking to old country standards to fill out the rest of the album. The time between the release of his debut and the recording sessions that would eventually turn into this release found Parsons touring with his backing band. This can be heard in the amount of confidence that shines through on this release. He seems to be a more sure-footed songwriter, as well as performer, and his own voice shines through more. Whereas on GP the influence of Jerry Garcia and Merle Haggard showed through, here his voice is stronger and feels more like his own. There are still those influences present, as much of this album is still rooted in American country music; melodically, instrumentally, and thematically. And that influence is still intertwined with west coast rock.

Return of the Grievous Angel, a song that has become somewhat of an anthem for Parsons, opens the album. The harmonies between Harris and Parsons are much more refined, and their voices intertwine more confidently. It is a story of being on the road, with outlaw country influences, and Parsons' lyrics showing more poetic leanings, "The news I could bring I met up with the king/On his head an amphetamine crown/He talked about unbuckling that old bible belt/And lighted out for some desert town," with pedal steel, electric guitar and fiddle filling in the solo space. Parsons is leaning towards the 70's singer/songwriter, ala Harry Nillson, with the piano based Brass Buttons and $1000 Wedding, a ballad that builds and tells the story of being left at the altar. He does the Jerry Lee Lewis inspired I Can't Dance, a song written by Tom T. Hall. And along with Ooh, Las Vegas, with Carl Perkins inspired guitar riffs, shows his range of influences includes early rock and roll, "Ooh Las Vegas, ain't no place for a poor boy like me/Every time I hit you're crystal city/You know you're going to make a wreck out of me." The affection for the Buck Owens/Merle Haggard Bakersfield sound is still apparent with the Louvin brothers penned Cash On The Barrelhead, where along with the original Hickory Wind, is full of stock honky tonk crowd noises cheering for the harmonies and the solos. Hickory Wind is another track that shows Parsons increasing poetic lyricism, "It's hard to find out that trouble is real/In a far away city, with a far away feel/But it makes me feel better each time it begins/Callin' me home, hickory wind." The album ends with the Parsons and Harris penned In My Hour of Darkness, full of beautiful Dead-like harmonies, dobro and fiddle, and seems fitting posthumously, "In my time of darkness/In my time of need/Oh, Lord grant me wisdom/Oh, Lord grant me speed."

I've never quite understood why alt-country fans hold Gram Parsons in such high regard. It's not that he isn't good, because he is, but there were people like Merle Haggard and the Grateful Dead (not that they're not held in high regard, but don't seem to be treated with the same reverence as Parsons), doing much the same thing only better. With this album we could start to see the promise of Parsons as a solo artist, with his confidence and his performances being heads and shoulders above those on his debut. Maybe it's that arc that got cut short, where we can imagine what he would have done if he had not died in the fall of '73, that allows us to live with our expectations without having to measure them up to reality.

Recommended here:

Hickory Wind

The Return of the Grievous Angel

Brass Button

In My Hour of Darkness

June 15: Gram Parsons, GP (1973)

2009-06-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

Gram Parsons is often looked to as the father, or at least a founding member, of alt-country. His work with The Byrds, his membership in The Flying Burrito Brothers, and his tragically short solo career established him as an artist with a definite affinity for traditional country music, but with an interest in and ability to expand on that tradition, either in the way he approached country music, or his dabbling in other forms. He only recorded two solo albums before a drug overdose claimed his life at the age of 26. In many ways Parsons was playing the same country and country rock that had was being played for half a decade prior. Acts such as The Byrds and The Grateful Dead had been using country music as a touchstone for some time, and country acts like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens had brought West Coast rock into their own music, so as a hybrid this was nothing that new. Parsons had a professed affinity for both Haggard and Elvis Presley, whose backing band he hired for these studio sessions. On this album he does a fairly even mix of covers and originals, and has Emmylou Harris singing backup, where she found her first commercial success as a performer.

The influences are varied throughout the album. There are the classic country influenced tunes, the Parson's penned Still Feeling Blue, with its upbeat, fiddle driven story of lost love. We'll Sweep Out The Ashes In The Morning, a medium tempo duet about a doomed and passionate love affair, A Song For You, a slow ballad full of pedal steel, fiddle and Hammond Organ, and along with She and How Much I've Lied, has a vocal delivery reminiscent of Jerry Garcia. Streets of Baltimore may be the best song on the album, and was written by Tompall Glaser and Harlan Howard. It is classic Bakersfield with electric guitar lead and tells the story of the protagonist and his lover leaving the country to return to the namesake city, only for him to find out "she loved those bright lights more than she loved me." It showcases Parson's ability to nail those heartbreaking country melodies. She has 70's FM pop and R&B influences and rural imagery about a woman in the delta who "sure could sing." That's All It Took, a George Jones co-written tune is classic Nasheville country. Kiss The Children has a Jordanaires like big chorus as a backup. Cry One More Time is Fats Domino like R&B with quarter note chords pounded out on piano, bass sax, and a country-ish guitar solo. The Parson's co-written How Much I've Lied is George Jones style country. Big Mouth Blues is early rock and roll as filtered through the Rolling Stones, with a driving bass sax.

Listen here:

Recommended: Streets of Baltimore, How Much I've Lied, Cry One More Time.

June 14: Willie Nelson, Red Headed Stranger (1975)

2009-06-14T12:58:00.000-07:00

This was the breakout album for Willie Nelson as a performer. Prior he had penned some of the best known songs in country, Crazy and Hello Walls, to name just a couple. But after being frustrated with the direction of his career in Nashville, he picked up and moved to Austin. This was the first album he recorded once he got there and became one of the most loved and respected albums in the country canon. It is sparse in its production, with much of the album just being Nelson's guitar and voice. It is a concept album built around the title track, an old country song written in the 50's by Carl Stutz and Edith Lindeman. Nelson penned a few new songs for the album, and grabbed a few others to fill in the story. It is about a preacher that kills his wife after she leaves him for another man, then goes on the lam, traveling through the American west, until he finds a woman to accept him, where he settles down again. As a concept album, it is barely held together, but as a collection of songs there are great moments.

A lot of the album is defined by Nelson's easily strummed acoustic guitar and his rich voice. He returns to themes, both musically and lyrically, giving the album a rich sense of cohesion. Time of the Preacher, the opening track, sets the stage for the protagonist. I Couldn't Believe it Was True is an Eddy Arnold and Wally Fowler song and splits up the two parts of Time of the Preacher, with the whole song falling on each side of track two. It is a classic sounding country song, when the influence of old time and Appalachian music was still apparent in country music. Drums, piano and a bass harmonica come in for just a few measures then drop back out. Red Headed Stranger comes in two parts as well, the first time as a medley with Blue Rock Mountain, and is split up by Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain, one of Nelson's biggest hits. Blue Eyes helped establish Nelson's torch song approach to country ballads, giving a jazzy feel, in delivery if not musically. Red Headed Stranger is the tale of a man who wanders the west with just his stallion, trying to get away from the pain of losing a lover. Just As I Am is an instrumental, with piano and guitar and chromatic harmonica all featured in different verses. Denver is a sub one minute tune, a quick story about the beauty of Denver, and the protagonist finding a woman and feeling at home because "An' it's nobody's business where you're goin' or where you come from/An' you're judged by the look in your eye." Down Yonder is a upbeat piano driven tune feeling like an old barrel house saloon song you'd expect to hear in Denver, circa 1869. The Hank Cochran penned Can I Sleep In Your Arms? is a classic country ballad that Nelson wraps his voice around, making it his own. Remember Me is an upbeat number, with jazz inspired electric guitar lead and bluesy piano breaks. Hands on the Wheel another country ballad that centers around stand up bass and guitar, with the rest of the band coming in for the ends of the choruses. The album ends with a nice and easy instrumental, Bandera, with a lonely harmonica giving the feel of Texas plains, and piano that alternates between a country delivery and a classical one.

As a concept album the story is loosely told, but one thing that does work is the musical and lyrical themes that are returned to time and again. But putting that aside, these little sketches (many songs are less than two minutes, with a couple clocking in at less than one) are interesting and beautiful. The sparse production, a rejection of the Nashville pop approach, provides plenty of space to explore musical themes, and makes the other instruments, when they come in, that much more present. And Willie Nelson has one of those voices that just sucks you in, welcoming and rich as it is.

Listen:

Time of the Preacher

Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

Hands on the Wheel

June 13: Merle Haggard, Sing Me Back Home (1968)

2009-06-13T19:13:00.000-07:00

Merle Haggard has one of the most interesting biographies in country music. Having done a stint in San Quentin for armed robbery, he saw Johnny Cash's concert that turned into Live From Folsom Prison. Having had minor musical success before heading to prison, this was one episode that scared him straight, and convinced him he could make a run at the music biz. Having been born in Bakersfield in the midst of the depression, and losing his father at a young age, he was in and out of delinquency. But he was living in the midst of a new country sound that went on to be defined by him and other artists like Buck Owens, and would be called the Bakersfield sound. It was a response to the over-produced Nashville sound, with scaled back production and Fender Telecaster guitar leads taking a large role in the music, and incorporated elements of West Coast rock. Haggard tends towards two subject matters (besides good, bad or broken love), hard scrabble people and drinking. Into the 70's Haggard would become a part of the outlaw country clique that included the likes of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.

Haggard sings on the title track about a man in prison being led to be put to death, and just wanting to hear Haggard sing one more song. On Look Over Me he recalls the smooth style of Marty Robbins, clearing off the rough edges of his voice, and shows his vocal range, the story of seeing an ex-lover and asking her to "Please look over me/While I cry." The Dallas Frazier penned Son Of Hickory Holler's Tramp has a surprisingly upbeat melody while it tells the story of the protagonists mother turning to prostitution in order to feed fourteen children after their drunkard father ran away with another woman, "Oh the path was deep and wide from footsteps leading to our cabin/Above the door there burned a scarlet lamp/And late at night a hand would knock and there would stand a stranger/Yes I'm the son of Hickory Holler's tramp." Yet they never had a hungry day and he has nothing but respect for his departed mother. Wine Take Me Away is classic sad Bakersfield country, with strong harmonies over the chorus, "Wine take me away where I can lose myself/Take me where I won't even see the light of day/It's my life and I wanna live it it's my will and I wanna give it/Help me friend of mine wine take me away." The Buck Owens tune Where Does the Good Times Go, is a more upbeat Bakersfield sound with rockabilly inspired electric guitar lead. I'll Leave The Bottle On The Bar has bluesy guitar lines, but is classic country through and through, a story about a man who will quit drinking if only his woman would take him back. Home Is Where a Kid Grows Up has a Dylan-esque picked guitar and has a west coast folk feel. Good Times is another bluesy number with easy piano and acoustic guitar lead and solo, and has a feel like it could have been recorded last week, a Haggard written tune about living in the moment, "Now I won't think about tomorrow/When the happy times are gone away/The good times can't last forever/But the good times are here today." The album ends with Seeing Eye Dog, an upbeat rockabilly inspired number about a man so blinded by love he needs the title character in order to get around.

Haggard's voice had a depth and authenticity that made him one of the most revered singers in country music, and you can hear his influence in those that came after, superstars like Garth Brooks, George Strait, and Randy Travis. Haggard authored or co-authored seven of the twelve tracks here, showing the depth, not just of his performance but his ability to pen a hell of a good country song. Haggard was a part of a generation of country stars that did their best to stay away from the vacuousness of Nashville, and ended up creating a music that was much more authentic and influential, and had much more staying power. His ilk created, and still creates, a music that feels timeless. His shadow stretches far and wide, influencing everyone who is attempting to make any sort of country music, from Dwight Yoakam to Jay Farrar, and everyone in between.

Listen:

Sing Me Back Home

Wine Take Me Away

I'll Leave The Bottle On The Bar

Seeing Eye Dog

June 12: Tom Waits, Rain Dogs (1985)

2009-06-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

If I were to do the old exercise of If you could only have one artist on a deserted island... Well that would be Tom Waits. And if I could only have one album, it might very well be Rain Dogs. This is his second album after jumping over to Island Records and deciding to leave behind his rough and tumble lounge singer persona and adopted a street wise operatic one. There he began making a music defined by unpredictability, the oompah jauntiness of Eastern European traditions, dirty blues, and by beat inspired street tough stories. And with a beautiful ballad thrown in every now and then for good measure. Being equally inspired by Kurt Weill (of Three Penny Opera fame), Captain Beefheart, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins, he made (and still makes) albums that are definitely his. Nothing sounded quite like it before, and nothing has sounded quite like it since. This album, along with with the albums released on either side of it, Swordfishtrombone and Frank's Wild Years, redefined Waits as an artist, and is one of the most interesting turns in pop music history.

This is the first album that Waits worked with guitarist Marc Ribot, who in many ways helps define the Waits sound of the mid-80s onward. Slight distortion, with a inclination towards tremolo and Cuban Son inspired lines, his open, spacious and sometimes dissonant playing is the perfect partner to Waits' too-much-whiskey-and-cigarettes voice. It's melodic but unpredictable. Minor key progressions command most of this album, as do juanty rhythms and strange stories about stranger characters. Singapore opens the album with synchopated guitars, undefined percussion, marimba and stand-up bass holding everything in place. A story of sailors stuck on a ship and all of the fantastical encounters and experiences that come along with that, "The captain is a one-armed dwarf/He's throwing dice along the wharf/In the land of the blind/The one-eyed man is king, so take this ring." Clap Hands, one of his best known songs, opens with simple guitar floating underneath a moving marimba, and a distinct Ribot solo. It is one of his more accessible songs, not because it's predictable but because of its soft delivery, feeling like it is delivered on cotton. Cemetery Polka comes on with that rough edge of pots and pans percussion, with the bass line being held down by brass, and a circus-y organ break. It is a song of quick character sketches of crazy aunts and uncles, "Uncle Bill will never leave a will/And the tumour is as big as an egg/He has a mistress she's a Puerto Rican/And I heard she has a wooden leg." Jockey Full of Bourbon showcases Ribot's affinity for Cuban melodies, a groovy number with ominous, undefined sounds moving throughout. Tango 'Til They're Sore is an easy moving bass line with simple piano lines and muted trombone circling around it. It's a sort of self-eulogy, "Just make sure they play my theme song/I guess daisies will have to do/Just get me to New Orleans and paint shadows on the pews." Big Black Mariah is a dirty blues number with Waits doing his best throaty growl, delivering lyrics only he could know what they mean. Diamonds and Gold is a Weill like sad and dissonant piece, it recalls depression era train hoppers, "Broken glass, rusty nails where the wild violets grow/Say goodbye to the railroad, the mad dogs of summer/And everything that I know." Time, full of some of the best imagery in the Waits canon, is sang over sad and easy moving guitars, "Well, the smart money's on Harlow/and the moon is in the street/the shadow boys are breaking all the laws/and you're east of East St. Louis/and the wind is making speeches/and the rain sounds like a round of applause." (The rest can be found here). The title track, a reference to dogs who can't find their way home after a rain storm destroys their scent trail home, has angular percussion and Ribot's guitar, and opens with a masterful solo accordion, "Aboard a shipwreck train/Give my umbrella to the Rain Dogs/For I am a Rain Dog, too." Midtown is his first attempt at an instrumental, a chaotic brass number, with hints of James Bond themes. 9th and Hennepin, a reference to a Minneapolis intersection, is Edward Hopper Nighthawks-like character sketches, delivered in a spoken word style over ominous brass and angular double bass and marimba, "And no one brings anything small into a bar around here/They all started out with bad directions/And the girl behind the counter has a tattooed tear, one for every year he's away, she said/Such a crumbling beauty." Gun Street Girl is a lazily told story about a man on the lam told from the view of the protagonist in prison, over Waits' percussive guitar style, "Bought a second hand Nova from a Cuban Chinese/Dyed his hair in the bathroom of a Texaco/With a pawnshop radio, quarter past 4/Well he left Waukegan at the slammin' of the door." Union Square and Walking Spanish are dirty Chicago blues with beat inspired lyrics. Blind Love is a lost love country song filtered through Waits' unique world view, "Now you're gone, and it's hotels and whiskey and sad-luck dames/And I don't care if they miss me, I never remember their names." Hang Down Your Head and Downtown Train, made more famous by Rod Stewart, are straight ahead rock ballads. Bride of Rain Dog is a strange instrumental with that distinct Waits' synchopated jauntiness and lack of definition. Anywhere I Lay My Head closes the album, with Waits delivering his lines like a gospel singer, over counter-melody brass lines, "My head is a-spinning round/My heart is in my shoes, yeah/I went and set the Thames on fire/Now I must come back down," that ends with a New Orleans style brass band section.

Even after listening to this album so many times, I'm still never quite sure where it's headed. There are endless surprises throughout, from the production to hearing lines in new ways, to the sheer range of styles and influences. In the end, Waits creates a world that only belongs to him. But that's part of the beauty of it. We get a glimpse into this sometimes mad genius' inner workings.

Listen:

Cemetery Polka

Gun Street Girl

Time

9th and Hennepin

June 11: Kanye West, 808's and Heartbreak (2008)

2009-06-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

Kanye's Late Registration was just about a perfect album for me. It was an exacting mix of the personal as political, clever cultural references, both lyrically and musically, and undeniably catchy production, moving from light-heartedness to dead seriousness without missing a beat. After three masterful hip hop albums, Kanye, one of the biggest stars in music over the last half decade, moved away from straight hip hop on this album. He has capital to spend, which provides him opportunities to try brand new things, which he does with this album. Moving into territory more familiar to artists like Björk or, more recently, Santigold, this is more electro-pop than hip hop, trading in his samplers for synths, and making heavy use of drum machines (the 808 refers to a Roland model), as well as the voice flattening effect of the auto-tune.

Say You Will opens the album with sparse percussion, synth chorus, and panning blips, with piano coming in over the chorus. It's a wide open song that settles in and never moves much beyond its initial ideas, but doesn't get boring, as Kanye sings about a lost love he can't get over. That leads right into a cello opening Welcome To Heartbreak, with a more industrial production full of ominous and dark synth sounds. It's a strange tale of how much he's missed because of a life of fame and fortune, "My friend showed me pictures of his kids/And all I could show him was pictures of my cribs/He said his daughter got a brand new report card/And all I got was a brand new sports car." Heartless, the first single off the album, has Kanye singing the chorus through auto tune and rap/singing the verses, with quarter note synth chords and spacious production, and Kanye layering vocals. It's a story about a woman he can't be with, but can't quite leave either, "Decided we weren't gon' speak so/Why we up 3 A.M. on the phone/Why does she be so mad at me fo'?/Homie I dont know, she's hot and cold." Young Jeezy guests on Amazing, with him and Kanye boasting about their life and success in hip hop, with a pop piano break. Love Lockdown has a heavy auto-tune with marching band drums during the chorus, as a counterpoint to the spacious verses, with poly-rhythmic beats to end the song. Paranoid is full of mid-80's pop synth sounds, giving it a definite throwback feel reminiscent of bands like Cameo or DeBarge. Robocop goes back and forth between heavy industrial sounds and string driven pop, and tells the story of a woman that's only been trouble but he loves the drama. See You In My Nightmares has Lil Wayne, and shows the ability of the auto-tune to flatten the uniqueness of each human voice as both Kanye and Lil Wayne use it at points and it makes it hard to differentiate between the two. This is interesting because Lil Wayne has one of the most unique voices in hip hop. Coldest Winter is the last studio song on the album (there is a live bonus track), and has the strongest and most capable singing by Kanye on the album.

Besides the typical, good, bad and crazy love themes, there is also an undercurrent of dissatisfaction that runs throughout (Street Lights, Welcome to Heartbreak). The 90 degree turn in musical styles would seem to open the opportunity to play up these themes, as it freed him from the confines of being stuck in a single genre.

I'm not sure what I think about the heavy use of auto-tune as it's used in hip hop and pop especially. On the one hand it's the latest step in the industrialization of music production where musicians have been systematically replaced by electronics and machines. But even through that there was still the need of the human voice, the most unique instrument in the world, to deliver vocals. It has taken the uniqueness out of that instrument and maybe soon will replace the need for humans to even deliver vocals. From an intellectual perspective this is very interesting, but from an artistic perspective one reason we listen to music is because we are interested in somebody's view of the world as delivered through song, which includes how that song is performed. If we take that last step that the auto-tune is heading towards, that all vocal performances are identical, then we lose maybe the last unique thing in music. But in a a way this is hand wringing that occurs every time some new innovation happens in music.

For me it's always enjoyable when an artist expands their boundaries and tries something brand new, and succeeds, which is what Kanye does here. Is he better at this than the hip-hop he has done prior? Definitely not, but this isn't bad. He has an ear for production, which he transfers over to pop song structure quite effectively. And his vocal performance, while not able to match the best of the genre, still he provides his own take on what a modern R&B/pop song can be, and it's a pretty good take.

Listen:

Love Lockdown (Video)

Heartless (Video)

Welcome To Heartbreak (Video)

June 10: Sam & Dave, Hold On, I'm Comin (1966)

2009-06-10T21:01:00.000-07:00

Sam & Dave, as a duo, were one of the most powerful and successful acts to come out of the 60's soul revolution. With perfectly matching voices, the song writing of Isaac Hayes and David Porter, and the Stax studio backing band, Booker T. and the MG's, behind them, it was a nearly perfect combination of factors that led to this debut album. Taking the gospel and doo-wop influences of their early years, they transformed that into the high energy soul music of the 60's that was so prominent in places like Memphis and Detroit especially. With groovy bass, big horns, full organ sounds and funky drums and guitar, it was an infectious and undeniable sound that Sam Moore and Dave Prater stepped right into, creating one of the best combinations in popular music.

The title track opens the album, with big horns that give way to Prater rough drawl and Moore coming in behind him as a response. The bass sound is big, there are nice, unexpected chord changes, the horns come in and drive the song forward. It's one of the best tracks in the Stax catalogue, which means it is one of the best tracks in American popular music. If You Got The Loving is a slow soul burner with Sam and Dave sharing vocals, pulling from the Memphis blues, with its synchopated beats, that informed much of the Stax sound. The album tends to break down into these camps, the high energy, forward moving soul (I Take What I Want, It's A Wonder), slower burning numbers (Don't Make It So Hard On Me, Don't Help Me Out), as well as Otis Redding like Detroit soul (Ease Me, I Got Everything I Need, Just Me). Booker T. plays several types of pianos and organs, adding to and changing the texture from song to song. The combo of Hayes and Porter show songwriting subtleties that made them one of the best songwriting teams in popular music, like the quick key change and quick return on Don't Help Me Out. Don't Blame Me (Blame My Heart) is the last of the twelve tracks, and finishes the album with a smoldering cry to try and keep love.

Lyrically, the songs revolve around the various stages of love, getting, having, losing, but is so much more forgivable when it's coming from the old soul guys. As a debut album this is ranked high up there. Even though the duo had been working together for close to a decade prior to going into the studio to record this album, and found a near perfect match with Hays and Porter and Booker T. and the MGs. This is a reminder of why soul music of that era remains so vital and never seems to age.

Listen:

Hold On, I'm Comin'

You Don't Know Like I Know

June 9: Michelle Shocked, Arkansas Traveller (1991)

2009-06-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

I've never allowed myself to get to far into Michelle Shocked. She always came across as a hyper earnest folk singer which always seemed out of place to someone who valued the cool detachment, self-deprication and irony of bands like The Pixies, Modest Mouse and Pavement. But there is no doubt that she is a musical force, as she's been making music successfully for 20 plus years, and has found a way to chart her own course through the eat-em-up and spit-em-out music industry. Coming out of the plains of Texas, much of her music revolves around the blues and folk music that that area has produced so abundantly. She has a long list of collaborators and producers on this album, ranging from Pop Staples to Don Was to Uncle Tupelo. This was her fourth release for Mercury Records, but was re-released by her own label in 2004.

33 RPM Soul opens the album, a blues rock tune along the lines of Susan Tedeschi or Keb Mo'. The title a metaphor for sinning ways, "Should never have tried to rock/Should never have tried to roll/Aw but damn I don't regret/The 33 RPM Soul." As with many of these bigger acts that I've never gone out of my way to listen to, there always one or two songs that pop that I've heard that I never knew it was that artist. Come A Long Way is that track here. It has the best melody on the album as Shocked sings over the chorus "I've come a long way/I've come a long way/I came 500 miles today/I've come a long way/I've come a long way/And I never even left LA." The Don Was produced track is decidedly poppier than anything else on the album, a drive through LA landmarks. The band backs her up on Secret To A Long Life, with subtle accordion lines, and a predictable story line about a bank robber who shacks up in the desert with a woman with a "ruby red mouth." Contest Coming opens with an Irish fiddle line before banjo and Shocked come in. It eventually kicks into a bluegrass mood and imagery, about a young fiddler practicing because there is "A contest coming and a ticket to Nashville/And the Jones boy aims to win." Over The Waterfall is an Irish jig about a protagonist that wants to go over the waterfall of a mountain stream with a wah guitar solo in the middle. Shaking Hands features Uncle Tupelo, it is a mandolin heavy dirge that jumps in between major and minor keys, a story about confederate soldiers fighting proud before becoming addicted to the morphine, "Soldier's Joy, oh what's the point in pleasure/When it's only meant to kill the pain." Jump Jim Crow is a take on the heavily racially stereotyped Disney feature Song of the South that only partially successfully challenges those stereotypes in the film, and feature Taj Mahal grunting his way through a vocal solo, "Tarbaby, Tarbaby, tell me true/Who is really the jigaboo?/Is it the white man, the white talking that jive/Or the black man, the black trying to stay alive?" Strawberry Jam, with Doc Watson, a call to make your own homemade jam and to "close down these corporate jam factories." Prodigal Daughter makes a move towards the prodigal son story, being warmly welcomed back, while the prodigal daughter returns to find "It's draw your shades and your shutters/She's bringing such shame to the family name," but never follows up on this theme for the rest of the song. But despite this the harmonies of Shocked and Allison Krauss are just about perfect, then ends in three plus minutes of expert bluegrass soloing. The title track is an Appalachian instrumental with banjo, mandolin, violin and spoons, and with Hee Haw style comedy breaks in between, with jokes like "Hey farmer! You're not too far from a fool are you?/Just a barbed-wire fence between us." Woody's Rag finishes out the album, an instrumental with a bluegrass progression and the instruments taking turns at solos.

Michelle Shocked is deeply rooted in the American folk tradition, and at times recalls Joan Baez type sixties folk, as well as older Appalachian bluegrass and Irish inspired folk, as well as souther blues. She doesn't do much on this album to break out of those confines, but she does that genre very well, and maybe that's enough. She does well to add to that canon, but at times comes across as a little too predictable.

Listen:

Come A Long Way (Video)

Thirty second samples of the songs can be found here.

June 8: Kaki King, Until We See Red (2006)

2009-06-08T15:50:00.000-07:00

Kaki King is considered by many to be a fairly young (30) guitar vituoso. This has gotten her noticed by many admiring musicians (including Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder), but not much in the way of mainstream success. She was featured in the soundtrack of the Sean Penn directed Into The Wild, and toured with the Foo Fighters. This is her third album, and breaks away from the formula of her first two which were largely instrumental albums. Here she sings on a number of tracks with her layered, ethereal voice drifting in and out like wispy clouds. This album was produced by John McEntire, who also drummed on the album, and is known for his membership in post-rock experimental projects Tortoise and Sea And Cake.

The album opens with Yellowcake, full of finger-picked guitar and King singing over herself. The title track is indicative of her approach, layered guitar (acoustic, electric, slide) filling in much space as the song slowly builds up with chaotic drumming before settling back down to end. You Don't Have To Be Afraid is an 8+ minute piece that seems to be two different songs shoved together, with the only lyrical line tying the two together, "You don't have to be afraid of what's inside you." It returns to its first theme for the final three minutes and builds into a solid indie rock number with a crumbling guitar, and flugelhorn and trumpet to end it. Goby comes across like jazz-lite filtered through post rock chord progressions, with easy drums and a light organ sound. Jessica is the tale of a love affair that never developed that comes across like Sea and Cake or Gastr Del Sol in their more accessible moments, with experimental guitar sounds floating low in the mix. First Brain has elements of Andre Segovia like classical guitar, a quick fingered finger-picked guitar track with a backing of flitting electronic sounds and amorphous vocal. I Never Said I Love You comes across like a jazzy torch song with quick lead lines that come in and out of rhythm, and fall in and out of dissonance. Ahuvati leads effortlessly in to These Are The Armies Of The Tyrannized which again builds and drops, adding layered guitars and driving drums at points. On Second Brain, she blithely asks, "Are we to have another century of guitar/When the best instrument in the world is still the piano?" The Footsteps Die Out Forever recalls the Hawaiian influence on early country music. Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers closes the album, an instrumental with a catchy guitar line and an ethereal slide guitar interspersed within.

I was initially skeptical about this album, as the term guitar virtuoso brings to mind the vacuousness of Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmstein, but after several listens the teaming of McEntire and King seems like the perfect fit. McEntire's production seems to give the music an edge that it might otherwise lack, and King's obvious ease with the guitar and grasp on a number of styles gives a wide and deep palette to work with. They infuse the music with an infectious energy, and while there are few lyrics to grab onto, there are plenty of both pretty and interesting moments, and there is a lot to be said for that.

Listen:

I Never Said I Love You

These Are The Armies of The Tyrannized

Yellowcake

Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers

Life gets busy

2009-06-07T12:34:00.000-07:00

The perfect storm of finals week, a big conference of fellow grad student union activists, and the release of my own bands latest CD has put a dent in my daily output. I will catch up soon.

Wes

June 7: The Arcade Fire, Funeral (2004)

2009-06-07T12:13:00.000-07:00

The Arcade Fire, based out of the fertile Montreal music scene, came to the forefront of indie-rock with this release, they debut album. Prior they had self-released an EP, that garneredd them enough attention to get signed to indie label Merge. They make a cacophonous music, full of energy and varied instrumentation. Writing within a pop/rock tradition with big choruses, they tend to sit on chords with no rush to move through changes. They touch on 90's indie rock like the Pixies and Pavement, as well as 80's Brit pop like Echo and The Bunnymen or Elvis Costello, with nods to David Byrne and the Talking Heads as well. They have a large vision with their use of instrumentation, which includes the expected lineup, along with violin, viola, cello, accordion, xylophone, synths/keyboards, horns, recorders and lots of percussion. There are no fewer than 15 personnel on this album, which tends to be the way they tour as well.

The album opens with Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels), with a Yankee Foxtrot Hotel disjointed production, as instruments quickly join the mix and Win Butler sings of digging through snow to reach a childhood love, then they disappear from the world, losing touch with everyone they knew. It has a distorted guitar that feels like is barely holding together deep in the mix. Neighborhood #2 (Laika) follows, with an accordion opening and distorted and distant talking vocals over the verse, reminiscent of Pixies era Frank Black. It's the story of a brother that causes chaos on the house, "Our older brother bit by a Vampire!/For a year we caught his tears in a cup./And now we're gonna make him drink it./Come on Alex don't die or dry up!" Un Annee Sans Lumiere is a slow moving number with one of the prettier melodies and harmonies on the album, much of it sang in French. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) might be the best known song on the album, a forward moving song full of energy, with a prominent xylophone that gives way to cello over the chorus sections. Another childhood story, a metaphor for a chaotic household, "Ice has covered up my parents hands/don’t have any dreams don’t have any plans/Growin’ up in some strange storm/nobody’s cold, nobody’s warm." Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles) is a slower moving number with heavily effected violins and easy percussion and a simple guitar line, "I am waitin’ ’til I don’t know when/cause I’m sure it’s gonna happen then/Time keeps creepin’ through the neighborhood/killing old folks, wakin’ up babies just like we knew it would." Crown of Love moves like a doo-wop piece with quarter note piano chords. Haiti is an acoustic guitar ode to lost homeland, sung mostly in French by Regine Chassagne. Rebellion (Lies) is full of dance-y drums, a meditation on escaping by sleeping. In The Backseat closes the album, with Bjork like vocals coming in, "I like the peace/in the backseat/I don’t have to drive/I don’t have to speak/I can watch the country side/and I can fall asleep," over piano and strings, which give way to strings and a heavily distorted, but subdued guitar.

One of the things the Arcade Fire do so well is they take all of the varied instrumentation and place it perfectly, with nothing ever sounding out of place. They also use this effectively in their tendency to move in and out of their dense production, making their open spaces that much more prominent when they come around.

Listen:

Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) (Video)

Neighborhood #2 (Laika) (Video)

Rebellion (Lies) (Video)

June 6: Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, Ballad of the Broken Seas (2006)

2009-06-06T17:02:00.000-07:00

This is one of those unlikely duos. Isabel Campbell, the mastermind behind this album, is a former member of indie-pop band Belle and Sebastian, where she sang and played cello. Lanegan is the former lead singer of 90's alt-rock stalwarts Screaming Trees. Campbell left B&S in 2002 to pursue her solo career. Lanegan made a name for himself post Screaming Trees by going acoustic and playing a form of dark country music. This album is folk based, drawing from a number of traditions, but is largely an acoustic album, full of acoustic guitar, simple but full drums, and Lanegan's gruff, gravelly voice and Campbell's angelic like delivery. Various instrumentation fills in around that formula.

The album opens with Deus Ibi Est, and has Lanegan reciting the lyrics in his husky voice, a story about a man drawn to go to war, while Campbell sweetly sings the chorus in Latin while referencing an Irish dirge, over acoustic guitar and a quarter note frame drum. Campbell does the lead vocals on Black Mountain, which also has an Irish folk feel and an unexpected melody during the chorus with a quick fiddle break. The False Husband has Lanegan singing the chorus over a spaghetti western production, and Campbell comes in on the verses singing over string heavy 70's inspired pop. It's a story of a relationship on the edge, "And all the while that you would burn/Your tongue was working overtime/Love foregone and life's so good/Aren't you darling." The title track has Lanegan sounding like a cross between Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen, over piano, with a cello solo, and nice vocal harmonies by Campbell. Another story of a relationship on the brink, "Ours was an ocean to swim around in/Ours was an ocean I should have drowned in/My doctor reports that we must be strong/But I'm praying that it won't be long." Ramblin' Man is a Hank Williams cover filtered through Tom Waits, with pots and pans percussion, and Marc Ribot-like guitar. Campbell quietly answers Lanegan's claims that "When God made me he made a ramblin' man" with her own calls for him not to stay away too long. Saturday's Gone is fingerpicked guitar, simple hand percussion and a sweet minor key melody sung by Campbell. It's the story of a woman we're not allowed to learn much about, other than things are uncertain once you are in her presence, "See the sapphire in the skylines so blue/See the diamond in the dirt/When you think the subject won't turn to you/She got demons up her skirt." It's Hard to Kill a Bad Thing is an mid tempo major key instrumental with acoustic guitar and bongos, that leads into a string section for the end. Dusty Wreath opens with a clavinet(?), in waltz time. The Circus Is Leaving Town has a late period Bob Dylan feel with Lanegan's voice and the presence of a Hammond organ.

At first the dinstinctness of their voices seems almost shocking, but after several listens I started to see how those voices weave in and out and fill in the empty spaces of the other. The album moves slow mostly, but there is enough variation in influence and production to keep it interesting. The melodies reveal themselves slowly, but there are very pretty and engaging parts throughout.

Listen:

Ramblin' Man (Video)

Ballad Of The Broken Seas (Live)

June 5: Califone, Roomsound (2001)

2009-06-05T14:11:00.000-07:00

Califone came out of the remnants of 90's underground rockers Red Red Meat. It was started by Tim Rutili, and consists of him and a rotating cast of musicians. With close connections to the Chicago post rock scene, he eschews the alt-rock of his former band and trades it in for a more wide open sound based around dirty blues and gothic folk, with tinges of Tortoise-like experimentation. This was Califone's full length debut album.

The album opens with Trout Silk, a dirty blues number imbued with sadness, and has a vocal delivery like a darker Lyle Lovett. It is an acoustic guitar riff with bass drum and electric lead that gives way to piano and flitting sounds, spending the last two minutes exploring. The lyrics double on this experimental approach, "dissection wise/half onion stone/stuff your mattress/loose dog loose." Bottles and Bones (Shade and Sympathy) also bases itself around a simple and open spaced strummed guitar chord progression, that leads into a full sounding chorus with a pop melody as Rutili sings "Steal your sweet decline/This is the longest goodbye." The rest of the album flows along at its slow pace, steel and acoustic guitar based numbers and lyrics with their meanings buried deep. It's full of simple drums and piano that come and go, with a variety of other instrumentation that make quick entrances and exits (fiddle on Fisherman's Wife, flute on Porno Star vs. Rodeo Clown, Hammond organ on Tayzee Nub, ). There are little moments within Rutili's subdued vocal delivery (which never rises too far in the mix) that show brilliant, "the cardinal staggers, vinegar skies/burned up carpet, lazy to change/the cashier grins an electrical storm/dizzy and shortchanged charms you blind" on Fisherman's Wife, or "Warm your hands, a smokestack heart/Swear on your cloudy eyes/Someone's talking through your mouth/Some monkeys sleep through anything" on Slow Rt. Hand. Half the tracks on this album stretch out over five minutes, usually devolving and evolving slowly as the song goes on well past the point of the lyrics. The album closes with the increasingly and then decreasingly noisy New Black Tooth.

It'd be easy to place this beside the dark folk of acts Palace or Sparklehorse, or even new folk artists like Iron and Wine or Devandra Banhart, but Califone's vision seems to be wider than these other acts, even though they share American folk roots. Coming out of a Chicago scene that values noisy experimentation has affected the bands sound and expanded their musical palette.

Listen:

Tayzee Nub (Sample)

Rattlesnake Smell Like Split Cucumber (Sample)

June 4: Camera Obscura, Let's Get Out Of This Country (2006)

2009-06-04T18:29:00.000-07:00

Camera Obscura is another of those bands where I see their name enough to know they exist, but not enough to actually know what they are about. Hailing out of Glasgow, Scotland, this is their fourth release, with their debut coming out in 2001. They make a 70's inspired pop music, and would seem to be closely aligned with fellow Glasgowians Belle & Sebastian. With a soft around the edges approach, they tend towards clean guitar sounds, melodic bass lines, keys and strings and trumpets, and Tracy Anne Campbell's sweet vocal delivery. With production values taken from Phil Spector and Burt Bacharach, and drawing from more modern pop like Belle and Sebastian or Of Montreal, the music moves smoothly and cleanly along, with flourishes of roots rock, ala Neko Case and Calexico, thrown in here and there. Campbell's voice can come across like Beth Orton's rich delivery at times as well, and has a delivery like Isobel Campbell's (formerly of Belle and Sebastian) at others.

The album opens with a church organ on Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken, an ode and reference to Lloyd Cole. Up-tempo beats and strings come in while Campbell belts out a sweet melody over driving drums and guitar lines. Tears for Affairs comes across like bossa nova tinged 70's rock, with a prominent accordion. Dory Previn goes towards American folk and country, with a lightly chorused guitar and simple drum beat full of rim shots, evoking the American west as she sings about escaping to Montana. The False Contender is a waltz beat with accordion and organ, as Campbell sings about wanting her current lover to leave her because she hasn't gotten over someone in her past. The title track is full of big string sounds, arpeggiated guitar, keys and drums, and is a song about escape, "Let's get of out this country/I'll admit I am bored with me." Country Mile moves like a more upbeat Nick Drake as she sings of having to leave a lover, "The more you look forlorn, the more to you I warm/I won't be seeing you for a long while/I hope it's not as long as a country mile." If Looks Could Kill and I Need All The Friends I Can Get start with two chord progressions, and has a 60's girl group feel. Razzle Dazzle Rose closes the album, with Calexico like trumpets and snare rolls moving at a medium tempo, and finishes with a minute plus outro.

If you're a sucker for catchy, pretty melodies there is a lot to enjoy on this album. The production on the album also keeps things constantly moving forward and interesting. Lyrical content for the most part is heart-broken lost love songs, but they are delivered in such a way as to never seem too trite.

Listen:

Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken (Video)

Let's Get Out Of This Country

Dory Previn

June 3: Low, Things We Lost In The Fire (2001)

2009-06-03T17:31:00.000-07:00

Low, hailing out of Duluth, Minnesota made a name for themselves by creating a quiet, electric, contemplative music at a time when being loud and angry was all the rage, releasing their first album in 1994. That is a theme they continue to work with to this day. It is a music that moves slowly, with lots of space for the band to explore. Songs tend to develop slowly, with mostly lightly strummed electric guitar, bass and simple drums and married couple Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk's harmony vocals defining their sound. On this album they also bring in a line of musicians playing strings, keys and trumpet. Taking elements of shoegaze and dreamy pop, they create a sound that depends on My Bloody Valentine guitar tones at times, and the slowed down, stretched out sounds of bands like Galaxy 500 or The Jesus and Mary Chain.

The music is pretty, with quiet, whispered vocals at times (Medicine Magazines). But it can also get repetitive, as on Dinosaur Act, where they repeat the title endlessly, punctuated by non-sensical two or three line verses. Laser Beam has just a tremoloed guitar and Parker's delicate voice. Mostly it's easy percussion, repetitive bass lines, and interesting guitar tones. But you need to be willing to have some patience if the slow going isn't your thing. Cuz slow going this is. Like walking knee deep in mud. Like A Forest has a tinny piano, and small viola lines. The lyrics tend towards indie-rock style obtuseness. Rhymes for the sake of rhymes, obscured meanings and isolated imagery. "Every time they lift you up/Every time more thread to cut/Seems like you've been cut enough" (Kind of Girl). The album ends with In Metal and is tom rolls, tambourine and acoustic guitar, and actually seems to have the most energy on the album (though that's no saying much).

It's easy to see that some of the quiet folksters, ala Iron and Wine and Laura Gibson, would have been influenced by the moods of Low. I know there are ardent supporters of Low. It is really pretty at points, but the music always feels like it is barely moving, and that is hard to sit through sometimes.

Listen:

Sunflower

Laser Beam

Like A Forest

June 2: Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks, Pig Lib (2003)

2009-06-02T12:42:00.000-07:00

Stephen Malkmus, better known as the front man for 90's indie rock stalwarts Pavement, relocated to Portland, Oregon after the breakup of Pavement in 1999. Once there he proceeded to put together a rotating cast of musicians that would come to be collectively known as The Jicks. Using the same moods as much of the 90's indie rock, there are also elements of psych rock and the updated indie rock that looked to Pavement and its contemporaries for inspiration. Still having a strong bent towards guitar rock, there are a variety of keyboard sounds to accompany the guitar, bass and drums. Malkmus' distinct vocal style, with its dry and lazy delivery, and its barely in tune quality at times, is still ever present and defines much of the mood of this album.

The album opens with Water and a Seat, with a smooth guitar intro before the band kicks in with touch of psych rock, and a shifting time signature. Most of the song is in 13/8 time, but moves in and out of 5/4 and 8/8 time in unpredictable ways. It has Malkmus' indicative obtuse lyrical style, "wicked weed and logic creed/I need a tremendous seat/A cup of snow, a snowflake kid/He is coming off the grid." Ramp of Death has a simple and easy keyboard sound throughout and moves like Pavement's slower stuff. (Do Not Feed The) Oyster has the catchiest melody on the album as Malkmus sings "Do not feed the oyster/under a cloud/he'll suck you like a seagull/into the sound," and it has a big guitar break with 70's radio rock harmony guitar leads. Vanessa From Queens has a lighthearted touch on the lyrics, "There's aggression in the air this morning/Got your ballerina tights around my head/In a samurai pose on the bed," making quick references to Bob Packwood and "Vanessa from Gresham." Sheets has a dirty 70's rock vibe with the wah guitar line mimicking the vocal line, with breaks in 7/8 time. Animal Midnight is easily strummed guitar and organ and opens with "Sacrifice for you is just flirtation/And friendship a cold convenience/I wonder sometimes what you're made of/Is it rayon or is it dust?" Dark Wave has a Spoon like feel, with its broken instrumental lines and dance-y drums. Witch Mountain Bridge wonders about simpler times where simple spells solved problems, "In better times a spell could save you/The wine that we threw into a chasm came right back to you," only to now live in an age where skeptics rule. It all ends with along psych rock solo. Craw Song is acoustic guitar and hand drums with a subtle keyboard line. 1% of One is nine plus minutes and jumps from a lazy vocal delivery full of stream of consciousness lyrics to big rock guitars, to slow sludge rock inspired sections, and back again. Us closes the album with harmony vocals, giving an almost Dead or Phish feel at points. It is an easy moving song with its once again obtuse lyrics, "I don’t really know your taste in ceilings/I don’t know the rpm you rev."

Malkmus has always seemed to define himself by not taking himself too seriously, that he combined with a cutting wit. And that continues here. But he is also experimenting with new sounds, marrying the dark intensity of psych/sludge rock with the lighter feel of his easy indie rock. There are lots of nice moments here, and if you're a fan of 90's college rock there will be lots to enjoy here. Malkmus has a way of putting nice melodies together, and then shrouding them in his dry delivery. That might be the most enjoyable part of this album.

Listen:

Do Not Feed The Oyster

1% of One

Dark Wave (Video)

June 1: Sixteen Horsepower, Sackcloth and Ashes (1996)

2009-06-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

In the mid-90's I was driving around Santa Fe listening to the local college station when a sound came on like none I had never heard before. It was instruments that were all quite familiar; guitar, drums, banjo, bass, but there was dark, raucus quality to the music that was unlike anything I had heard up to that point. When the DJ came on and said that was Sixteen Horsepower off their new album Sackcloth and Ashes (for the sake of the story) I headed straight to the record store and picked it up as a cassette tape, which I eventually wore out. Using the instrumentation of American folk music, but bringing with it a dark, bible verse filled version of the world, the music was intense and interesting, instantaneously magnetic. Based heavily in the folk traditions of Appalachia, their songs are stories redemption and trying hard to stay within the good graces of God in a world full of sin, with biblical images, as well as that of rural mountain life.

The first sounds on the album are snare rolls and minor key slide guitar over strummed guitar and bass on I Seen What I Saw. When David Eugene Edwards' voice comes in, with its dark intense yowl, the mood of the album is quickly established. With its story of sneaking upon a house only to see something he wanted no part of, and "Then I climbed up on the big horse strapin'/Put the spur down to blood/He took off sixteen horses strong/Left me lyin' in mud." Black Soul Choir is the battle to stay true to God when the world makes people evil, "Yes an no man ever seen the face of my lord no/Not since he left his skin/He's the one you keep cold on the outside girl/He's at your door let him in," with a chorus of "Every man is evil yes an every man is a liar/An unashamed with the wicked tongues sing/In the black soul choir." All over fingerpicked banjo, bass and backbeat drums. Scrawled in Sap is the temptation of untenable love. Horse Head, with its distant vocals, is full of guilty imagery over electric guitar and driving drums, "You are not needed here/To help me feel low down/I'm doin' it fine all on my own." Ruthie Lingle is full of the temptations of sex, as he begs "Black eyed Rebecca take me home/Here buxom Gretta take me home/The curse of those red lips o me/Goddess Samantha take me home," but in the end wants to run from that temptation, "Meek mother Mary take me home." Harm's Way opens with a bandoneon, a button accordion used in many types of South American music. Again, Edwards is battling the demons that haunt him, "An like the fool I am for my own gain I pray/You say you found, a way back inside my closet/Ol' bones upon bones an joints upon sockets." Black Bush has some of the most direct Christian references on the album as he sings, "My knees was made for kneelin'/An that's just what they'll do." Red Neck Reel is the unusual major key track, with a hoedown energy with banjo and fast drums. Strong Man closes the album with just solo slide guitar and Old Testament imagery of a vengeful God, "There will be no pity for him/We must kill him where he stands/No there will be no mercy for him."

I had a friend while living in Denver who grew up and played in bands with Edwards in their younger years, and through this friend I know that he and Edwards both take their Christian faith seriously. The imagery here isn't appropriating biblical imagery to create art, but rather art as a form of struggle and worship. But the faith on this album isn't exalting the lord, but is rather one man's struggle to live a life faithful to what he believes. Whether it's what you believe or not, watching a person struggle honestly and openly with their demons seems to make good art.

Listen:

Haw (Video)

Black Soul Choir

I Seen What I Saw

Harm's Way

May 31: TV On The Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain (2006)

2009-05-31T11:05:00.000-07:00

One of the first albums I did as this project was TV On The Radio's latest, Dear, Science. Among people who think about such things, TVOTR might be one of the most innovative and important bands making music today. With their combination of programming and live instruments, the shared vocals of Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone, and with enough energy to fill up a room several times over, they make some of the most engaging music being released today. Coming out of the fertile Brooklyn scene, they have quickly risen to the top of the indie-rock mountain. This was their third album (not counting an EP release).

The album opens with drum machine and synth generated strings on I Was A Lover. With its disjointed instrumentation, full of synths, programmed drums, keyboard piano, and electric drill guitar, it is a clarion call that this album will be pushing boundaries. Over this cacophony Malone sings in his falsetto "We don't make eye contact, when we have run-ins in town/Just a barely polite nod, and nervous stares towards the ground." Hours has bass sax and shifting synth sounds with snare rolls throughout. Province is slow electronic soul with vocal harmonies reminiscent of Prince, as Adebimpe and Malone sing "Hold these hearts courageously/As we walk into this dark place/Stand steadfast beside me and see/That love is the province of the brave." Playhouses has hyper drumming with synth swells and free time vocals, only to break down in the middle with a distant jack hammer sound before kicking back in to the combination of live and programmed drumming, it finishes with a flurry of guitar feedback. Wolf Like Me was the most played song on the album, a high energy guitar and drum driven number, it slows down in the middle with synths and glockenspiel sounds. The song starts with "Say say my play mate/Won't you lay hands on me/Mirror my malady/Transfer my tragedy." Method is not much more than various percussion instruments backing a harmonized a capella vocal performance. Lyrically TVOTR tend to bounce around ideas versus taking them head on. Meanings are more clear at certain times than others. Method being one of the less clear times, "Broken plates on dirty highways/Pave the way for alien grace." The sounds on Let The Devil In recall mid-90's industrial music without being as dark. Dirty Whirl opens with a Rhodes sound and easy moving chord progression, and showcases Adebimpe's powerful voice as the music underneath feels less hectic than much of the rest of the album. The story of a tumultuous relationship told in metaphor, "So shake the shame from it/Burn me up inside you/Let me churn in your furnace of whirl/Dirty little whirlwind." Blues From Down Here also recalls early industrial/goth, along the lines of Bauhaus or Joy Division. Tonight is a spacious track with easy, but distorted guitar and synth sounds, dominated again by Adebimpe's voice and Malone's harmonies, "Could keep it silent and tortured,/or shove it unto the floorboards/A rusty heart states to whine/In its tell tale time/So free it up tonight." Midway through a clarinet and Adebimpe share a melody line for just a few measures. Wash The Day closes the album over heavily distorted My Bloody Valentine guitar tones and some sound imitating a sitar.

Part of the power of this album, which was so critically acclaimed (gaining album of the year status from a number of music mags/sites) is that it moves so effortlessly from sound to sound, style to style. No two songs on here sound quite the same. They vary their song structures, instrumentation, and moods from song to song yet it never feels disjointed. They pull from modern rock, neo soul, electronica and DJism equally, creating an amalgamation that only belongs to them. It is not necessarily easily digestable music, but there is enough there (especially the shared vocals) to make you not want to walk away. Many critics (for whatever that is worth) put them just on this side of Radiohead as being the most important rock band playing today, with their innovative approach and emotional elements of the music. For an album that is full of synths and drum machines, this album never feels cold or distant, a testament to the power of Adebimpe's and Malone's vocal delivery.

Listen:

Dirty Whirl

Wolf Like Me (video)

Wash The Day

May 30: Smog, A River Ain't Too Much To Love (2005)

2009-05-30T22:13:00.000-07:00

Smog is the working name of Bill Callahan. He began releasing tapes in 1988, gaining a name for his low fi and simplistic approach to songwriting and recording. Defined by his deep baritone, acoustic guitar, sparse vocal delivery and heavy lyrical matter, it was music that found contemporaries in Palace and Mark Eitzel, and helped define the current round of indie folkish singer-songwriters working today, such as Iron and Wine and Devandra Banhart, if not in sound at least in approach. He has recently changed his moniker, releasing Sometimes I Wish I Was An Eagle under his own name.

The songs here are defined by acoustic guitar and voice, with the occasional accompaniment of bass, drums, harmonica, keys or strings. But these extra instruments always exist far behind his guitar and voice. His guitar tends towards simple finger-picked lines, often just plucking out two notes at a time. His voice comes across like Richard Buckner's, with his tendency to take single words and stretch them out over up and down melody lines, or Greg Brown's Iowa drawl at points. Sometimes he backs himself up with harmony vocals or will be the response to a call. On The Well, he kicks up the energy and tempo just a bit with drums as accompaniment. On I Feel Like The Mother Of The World, mountain dulcimer and strings accompany the guitar and voice, giving it fullest sound on the album. He does a version of In The Pines, an old traditional tune most famously done by Leadbelly and Nirvana, pulling from verses rarely heard on other versions.

Nothing ever happens quickly in the music, much the same with the lyrics. Stories develop slowly, words get stretched out. There might be long stretches without words, or he might repeat a line again and again. It always feels like there is something just below the surface waiting to explode. Like the songs are a sort of therapy, as he works out adolescent experience, "I remember drinking at the dam/With the jarheads on the other side/Warm beer and tearing up the cans/And all of us yelling abuse" (Drinking at the Dam), family relations "I love my mother/I love my father/I love my sisters too/I bought this guitar/To pledge my love/To pledge my love to you," (Rock Bottom Riser), or looking back while trying to live in the present, "I did not become someone different/I did not want to be/But I'm new here/Will you show me around," (I'm New Here). On the opener, Palimpsest, he sings "Winter weather is not my soul/But biding for spring." It feels like his songs are ways to make amends at times, "I could not work/So I threw a bottle into the woods/And then I felt bad for the doe paw/And the rabbit paw/So I went looking for the pieces/Of the bottle I threw" (The Well).

In the end this is music is music that has to be sat with and contemplated. His deep voice tends to cut through whatever else might be happening in the room, demanding a certain amount of attention. His melodies and vocal delivery create a tension that doesn't let you get comfortable, and his stories, delivered in their minimalistic ways, keep you guessing at their deeper meanings.

Listen:

Rock Bottom Riser (Video)

I Feel Like The Mother of the World (Video)

May 28: The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)

2009-05-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

The Velvet Underground is like the Blarney Stone of indie rock. If you visit this land you gotta kiss The VU. They are a touchstone for much of the music that has followed the forty years since this album, their debut. Having said that, I can't say I have ever pulled a Velvet Underground album down off the shelf and put it on. It's not that I'm unfamiliar with their music, how could one be? But my level of familiarity isn't as deep and wide as it should be.

Coming out of the New York art scene, and pushed and supported by Andy Warhol, they established and/or were given a unique niche. They lived and sang about the underground, with all of its dirt and grime and intrigue. Warhol, who is nominally the producer here, pushed the band to include Nico in the recording process, where she ended up lead vocals on three songs. Stylistically the band touches on a number of influences, as well as creating a sound that only belonged to them. Garage rock (Run Run Run, There She Goes Again), Bossa Nova (Femme Fatale), jangly psychedelia (All Tomorrow's Parties), easy pop (I'll Be Your Mirror, Sunday Morning), noise rock (European Son), and gothic storytelling (The Black Angel's Death Song, I'm Waiting For The Man) all make a strong showing here. There is the expected instrumentation, as well as the occasional electric viola played by John Cale. The sound of the electric viola on Venus In Furs is unlike any other sound I have ever heard on any other recording, with an Appalachian menacing and melodic feel. The subject matter isn't dealing with love here. Drugs (not just any drugs, but heroin), disaffection and marginalization, and interesting women all are sung about here. Lou Reed's unsteady vocal delivery only adds to the sense of this music existing on the edge, and is a counterpoint to Nico's diva-esque delivery.

There are few bands that are considered more important than The Velvet Underground, as evidenced by their long shadow. This album is more diverse than they are generally thought about, with references to a number of styles. The fact that you can hear the influence of The Velvet Underground in acts as diverse as Sonic Youth, Belle and Sebastian, and Nick Cave is testament to their uniqueness and importance in rock music.

Listen:

Venus In Furs

I'm Waiting For The Man

European Son

May 29: What Made Milwaukee Famous, Trying To Never Catch Up (2006)

2009-05-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

This debut by Austin, Texas' What Made Milwaukee Famous was originally self-released, but was picked up and re-released with added tracks by Seattle's Barsuk Records. They mine the back catalogue of pop rock, sounding like Elvis Costello sometimes, sometimes like Mark Eitzel of The American Music Club, maybe The Smiths or The Shins. Singer Michael Kingcaid comes across like singer/songwriters David Gray and Jeff Buckley at times. The songs are full of the expected instrumentation, layered guitars, toe tapping drumming, thick keyboard sounds, solid but not unexpected bass lines.

At their worst, they sound like radio friendly pop rock, along the lines of the Foo Fighters, Ben Folds or a more rocking Jack Johnson. At their best they sound like lesser versions of indie pop bands like The Shins or Spoon. But this is a debut, and as such the band is experimenting with finding their own sound. The performances are all solid, and there is nothing offensive about the music. They do show a tendency to try lots of different things. The first sounds on the album sound like rave music. On Trying to Catch Up, within the first minute they have humming over battlefield snare rolls, a finger-picked acoustic guitar, and then big radio friendly guitars with shoe-gaze delivered vocals. Curtains opens like a Shins' song, but quickly turns to a Foo Fighters rip off. Sweet Lady has quarter note guitar chords and drums chunked out, and has a catchy melody over one line that belies the rest of the song which comes a little to close to Jack Johnson for my tastes.

The band does decent lyrics, and might be the strongest part of the band. On Hellodrama they sing, "When you show up it's like a landmine, close enough to leave indelible scars." They open The Jeopardy of Contentment with "Basically, this is an apology/I still know what's the best for both of us, kid." On Sweet Lady, he sings about his problematic lover, "But you're running at a hundred miles/Flashing that million-dollar smile/And everybody turns to stone when they see that you're alone."

The music on this CD isn't bad, but it lacks some definition. Are they indie-pop, radio rock, are they trying to find the place where the two can coexist? They released their second album last year, to a fair amount of critical acclaim. There is good energy throughout, and maybe that's enough.

Listen here: Sweet Lady, Idecide, Hellodrama

May 27: The Thermals, More Parts per Million (2003)

2009-05-27T18:22:00.000-07:00

Portland, Oregon's The Thermals cut into the punk scene out of seemingly nowhere. Being signed to SubPop after just a few shows, they have been one of the more successful underground punk bands of the last several years. But punk doesn't seem to quite capture their sound on this album, they owe an obvious debt to post punk bands like The Pixies and Guided By Voices. Yes there are the two and three chord progressions, hyper tempos, Hutch Harris' unrestrained vocals, two minute songs that eschew guitar solos, but there is something there. It might be called pop punk because of the catchy melodies sung in Harris' high register voice. This album, their debut, was recorded on a four track, so it has a decidedly lo-fi sound, with thin drum sounds and distorted vocals. Maybe that is what keeps the album feeling a little to unpolished and in that way has more in common with early Black Flag and Circle Jerks rather than Green Day.

The pattern is established early, with every song consisting of distorted electric guitar, Kathy Foster's anchoring bass, drums and Harris' voice. There are the requisite drum breaks, the two parts per song that don't follow the verse/chorus pattern. Harris isn't a wordy guy, and since the songs move at such fast tempos and there are no solos, he tends to return to certain lines and stanzas in unexpected patterns. He might combine the first half of one verse with the second half of another, or just repeat a line several times. And he has an obvious affinity for f- bombs (their second album was called Fuckin' A). Lyrically he seems to trace his way around meanings. It's not quite stream of consciousness, but it's not far off of that. He knows what he's saying, but for the most part he's not going to let you in so easily. There are enough nuggets to grab onto, "Carry me home/Carry me home/Carry me through/With eyes so deep/You'd never see through" (Goddamn The Light), or "On your breath/On your flesh/On line, On time/On your head/On your chest/On line, on time" (Out of the Old and Thin). He does seem to use his songs to critique others, "Hardly art/Hardly starving/Hardly art/Hardly garbage," (No Cultural Icons), or "If you have no wisdom/You can still have an opinion/Everybody's got one" (A Passing Feeling).

Much of the album bleeds together as there isn't a whole lot to separate one song from the next, and the level of intensity never really wains. But there is undeniable energy throughout this album, and Harris' voice can start to grate after a while, but part of that appeal is that he never lets you get comfortable. And the more I listened to the album the more it became apparent that this was a direct offspring of Guided By Voices lo-fi aesthetic, and approach to songwriting, just hyped up.

Listen:

No Cultural Icons (video)

Overgrown, Overblown!

A Passing Feeling

May 26: The Shout Out Louds, Howl Howl Gaff Gaff (2005)

2009-05-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

The Shout Out Louds hail from that hot bed of indie rock, Stockholm. Indie rock in this case being a reference to their sound considering that this debut album was released by Capital Records. They draw from the American and British rock traditions, pulling from Blur and The Replacements, Flaming Lips and Hüsker Dü, Pavement and U2, Dinosaur Jr. and The Beach Boys. They take these sounds and find a way to mix them all together, creating a sound that is at once completely familiar but feels somehow new.

The album is full of jangly guitars and driving drums, and Adam Olenius' restrained yet tense vocal delivery. His voice has that same built in tension of Connor Oberst's (of Bright Eyes), and has the same timbre of Wayne Coyne (Flaming Lips) at points. The album opens with The Comeback, which has the catchiest chorus on the album, but only barely. Augmenting those jangly and forward moving guitars are blips of electronic sounds, keyboards, accordions, the occasional strings or xylophone, quarter note bass lines. Most of the songs move along at an upper mid tempo, A Track and A Train being an exception, but still builds towards the end of the song. Go Sadness happens over quarter note strums on the guitar, with electronic static flitting in and out, while he sings "I'm in a golden age/A great calender page." Otherwise the songs tend towards broken and unfulfilled love, but have such great melodies and rhythms that they are great sing-alongs. 100˚ moves at a clip with a great melodica/keyboard line. Hurry Up Lets Go starts out with fast moving hand claps that return intermittently through out. The album ends with the eight and a half minute Seagull.

This is catchy summertime music. Even if it is predictable to some degree, it never quite feels that way.

Listen and See:

Please Please Please (video)

The Comeback (video)

Very Loud

May 25: Wilco, Yankee Foxtrot Hotel (2002)

2009-05-25T17:03:00.000-07:00

This is the first part of my “Albums I Really Love” series (although Destroyer’s Rubies and The Animal Years should be on here too). These are albums that I return to again and again, not only because the music is great, but because there is something for me to dig into, no matter how many times I’ve heard it. Whether it’s the production, the lyrics that provide layers of meanings, or instrumentation that always keeps me guessing, these are albums that I never tire of.

Wilco, prior to this album, had made solid, if somewhat predictable roots pop. With an ear for a hook, they filled albums with catchy guitar rock. Which is why Yankee Foxtrot Hotel came as such a surprise, and launched them into the next sphere of rock stardom. The production on the album broke out of the predictable rock lineup of drums, guitar, organ/piano and bass, filling it up with strange blips and bleeps, ambiguous sounds that seem to have no origin, manipulated and heavily effected sounds, all interspersed within or between the rock instrumentation. There is a tension between the strange and the familiar, with just enough of each to keep you from getting comfortable or from running away. Engineered and Mixed by Jim O’Rourke, whose work as a musician includes everything from ambient noise to straight ahead rock, the album bears the mark of his work. The only steady part of this album is Jeff Tweedy’s quiet, lazy vocal delivery. Under that voice (which carries enough tension by itself) is an ever shifting palette of sounds, pounded out piano, easily strummed acoustic guitar, wild squawks, drumming full of space that comes and goes with an easy regularity. Sometimes sounds show up for a measure or two, and then disappear as quickly as they came. But it’s Tweedy’s voice that is strong enough and confident enough to hold it all together, even when everything around him is falling apart. At the end of the album opener I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, when most of the sound is decaying electronic loops, bowed bass, and any number of sounds that are unidentifiable, Tweedy's voice comes in from across the room, reminding you what you are listening to.

Lyrically he sounds like a man cycling between sublime contentment and a heart-broken existential crisis. The ambiguous mixes with the mundane, the heartbreaking with happy nostalgia. "I am an American aquarium drinker/I assassin down the avenue/I'm hiding out in the big city blinking/What was I thinking when I let go of you," he sings on the first verse of the album. Radio Cure is barely held together by a bass drum, distant piano whole notes, and a sloppily strummed guitar, as Tweedy sings "Cheer up, honey I hope you can/There is something wrong with me." Jesus, etc. has a double fiddle lead and is built on Rhodes piano, and is one of the more straightforward songs on the album. Heavy Metal Drummer, the first single off the album, is an upbeat ode to "Those heavy metal bands/I used to go see on the Landing in the summer." On Pot Kettle Black he delves into his self loathing, "I myself have found a real rival in myself," all over dance-y drums and upbeat strummed acoustic guitar. The album closes with Reservations, a seven and a half minute track where Tweedy sings over a cacophony of sounds "I've got reservations about so many things/But not about you" while the last three and half minutes are just ambient sounds building and dropping.

The production, coupled with the solid songwriting and performances, is what draws me to this album again and again, where many other Wilco albums are enjoyable, but don't have that same quality.

Listen here:

Recommended: I'm Trying to Break Your Heart, Pot Kettle Black, Reservations

May 24: Eagles of Death Metal, Death By Sexy (2005)

2009-05-24T13:53:00.000-07:00

Despite their name, the Eagles of Death Metal are neither eagles nor death metal. What they are are a couple of guys trying to capture elements of early hard rock, drawing from proto-punk, glam rock, blues rock and any number of similar genres of the 70's and 80's. It's mostly forward moving drumming and heavy guitar riffage, they also delve into psychedelia and jangly 60's garage rock here and there. They're part Kiss, part Deep Purple, a little Zeppelin-lite, with nods to The Sex Pistols and The Kinks thrown in for good measure. They're interested in reclaiming Rock AND Roll, making it about parties, Rock and Roll and sex again. And where else would they be from than southern Cali? This is their second release.

I Want You So Hard (Boy's Bad News) starts the album with a straight ahead punk riff, with a number of voices coming it during musical breaks warning a woman off the the protagonist, "Leave him alone cuz the boy's bad news." I Got a Feelin (Just Nineteen) is a 80's hair band riff, with the expected subject matter "Now looky baby you're just 19/I got the flesh and I will make you scream." Cherry Cola starts out like a Nirvana song, but soon diverts itself, "I can be your daddy, be your Rock and Rolla/You can be my sugar, be my cherry cola," with a sloppy (in a good way) guitar break, and an unexpectedly good four measure bridge. I Like to Move In The Night is reminiscent of 70's white boy blues bands (ZZ Top), and yes you know what he's talking about. That's how most of the album goes. There are exceptions, where they break out of the trashy Kiss inspired hard rock. Solid Gold has a dance-y beat over twelve string guitar with British invasion inspired melodies as they sing "You see us comin and we'll make you scream/We are the stars of your real teen dream." The Ballad of Queen Bee and Baby Duck has a late 60's psychedelic garage rock feel, with voices telling a story behind the actual lyrics. Chase The Devil throws a little psychobilly right into the mix. On Shasta Beast they sing "I wanna pick the lock and break your chastity/I got the combination and the master key." Bag O Miracles is a foot stompin' blues slide guitar number with a half-assed whistle solo.

Ultimately, this is purposefully trashy, and they put that right up front, so that this album can't help but be fun. The musicianship is good, if not great, and the melodies are surprisingly catchy. But it succeeds because in the end they want to have fun and make music that is fun to listen to. Their doesn't seem to be much pretension here, which only makes it that much more enjoyable.

Listen:

Don't Speak (I Came To Make A Bang)

Cherry Cola

Chase The Devil

May 23: Earlimart, Treble and Tremble (2004)

2009-05-23T13:09:00.000-07:00

Earlimart is one of those bands operating in obscurity, except for a few hard-core indie pop fans that follow the genre religiously. They tour relentlessly, record prolifically (this was their fifth release in five years, including one EP), and generally garner good reviews from the king makers of indie music. This album seems to be the one where Aaron Espinoza settled into his own, as the band bounces back and forth between Elliot Smith like folk-pop, and Yo La Tengo's noisy dream pop. Hailing out of LA they released their first album in 1999, and continue to tour and record today.

Hold On, Slow Down opens the album with Espinoza's high register, almost whisper over simple piano and a bed of keyboard noise. A tribute to Elliot Smith (a friend of the band), he sings "Well I miss you my friend/Will I see your face again?" Much of the album is obviously influenced by Smith's introspection and his voice that oozed sadness (First Instant, Last Resort, All They Ever Do Is Talk, A Bell and a Whistle, Heaven Adores You) as well as Beatles-esque melodies (Broke The Furniture). The acoustic guitar is present throughout much of the album, as are subdued, and sometimes vague, electronic/keyboard sounds. But Yo La Tengo's slow moving but noisy pop seems to make a dependable showing as well (Sounds, Unintentional Tape Manipulations). There is also a smattering of strings throughout, as well as electric guitar leads. 808 Crickets is a quick instrumental with piano and said crickets. But it's the sounds that drop in and just as quickly leave that gives this the feeling of a landscape, and you never quite know what's coming up next. Lyrically the album is mostly about loss, with much of it being told in a straight forward way, "Yeah I lost my way, and tried to find somewhere else to stay." It's Ok To Think About Ending ends the album with just a touch of country-ish flourish.

Earlimart seems to be one of those bands looking to mid-90's underground pop and trying to update it. They are one of many bands walking that same road, and are not one of the best, but they are solid in their songwriting and performances, and there are nice moments to be found here, but the best ones are the ones that sound like Elliot Smith.

Listen:

Hold On, Slow Down

Unintentional Tape Manipulations

It's Ok To Think About Ending

May 22: Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures (1979)

2009-05-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

Joy Division is a band that I don't know well, but I know the long shadow they cast on popular music. Often considered the first significant post-punk band, they took the energy of punk, but moved away from the open aggression of it. They slowed their music down, creating tons of sonic space on their recordings. Expressing much of the same disaffection as punk, they used melodic bass lines, and drums and guitars that didn't take up too much space, and Ian Curtis' dark vocals to create a whole new sound. It was a sound that would influence or be copied by bands like The Cure, The Smiths, Interpol (whose singer stole Curtis' sound directly), and Bloc Party (to name just a few).

The first sounds on the album are dance-y drums, followed by a high energy bass line on Disorder. The guitar plays single note lines and when it is strummed feels just vaguely present. On Day of the Lords Curtis sings in his dark baritone "I remember it all/Oh I've seen the nights/ filled with bloodsport in vain." Candidate and Insight have a slow psychedelic feel that is only intensified by vocal melodies that feel like they are barely holding on as Curtis goes in and out of tune. New Dawn Fades captures the alienation and disaffection present in so much of their music, with atmospheric guitar, quarter note bass lines, and Curtis singing "Directionless, so plain to see/A loaded gun won't set you free." She's Lost Control, one of Joy Division's better known songs, has a melodic bass line that helped define the band's sound, and tells the story of a tumultuous relationship, "Well I had to phone her friend to state my case and say/She's lost control again/And she showed up all the errors and mistakes/And said 'I've lost control again.'" On Interzone Curtis does an almost call and response with himself that feels like a conversation as he sings one line and then answers himself. I Remember Nothing closes the album and is a Door's like piece of gothic psychedelia, a five plus minute that doesn't develop, but rather sits on a single bass line with industrial sounds and broken windows dancing around the bass and drums.

Curtis' lyrics and vocal delivery keep you on edge. He has an almost mechanical way of delivering syllables in quarter note bursts on the faster songs, and tending not to stretch words out too long. He paints portraits of city life and relationships where no one really fits in, and beauty has been stripped. It's a world full of alienation and disillusionment. It's a dark vision matched by dark melodies.

Drawing inspiration from Can's industrial approach and The Doors like psychedelia, Joy Division found a way to take these influences and create something that was new. I would imagine that in 1979 there was nothing that quite sounded like this.

Listen:

She's Lost Control (Alternate Version)

Interzone

Shadowplay

May 21: Jolie Holland, The Living and The Dead (2008)

2009-05-21T18:25:00.000-07:00

Jolie Holland, one of the founding members of The Be Good Tanyas, mines American music, from Appalachia to Louisiana to the Texas plains where she grew up. But it might be that Texas connection that really defines her music. Wielding her guitar like fellow Texans Lyle Lovett or Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and has a penchant for imagery in the vein of Townes Van Zandt. Her voice comes across like a smoother Lucinda Williams, phrasing words and lines in much the same way, but without the gravel in the voice of Williams. And she has garnered the praise of Tom Waits, a ringing endorsement if I've ever heard one. This is her fourth solo release, and her third on the ever adventurous ANTI- label.

She captures the feel of open space, a result of her years jaunting around the American west. She isn't doing a whole lot that's new here, you'll have heard these chord progressions and melodies before, the songs all move at slow to mid tempos, although she does show a penchant for mixing up her production techniques (especially on the Dylan cover Love Henry, with its electronic sounds flitting around the lone acoustic guitar). Her voice, although good, shows little ability to adapt to the instrumentation going on around her. Subject matter ranges wide in her lyrics. Broken love and good love of course makes a showing, but she also sings about the loss of an old friend to drugs on Corrido Por Buddy, "Oh, Buddy. I'll never get a chance again Oh Buddy, I wish I'd been a better friend." Fox In A Hole has Tom Waits like production with simple percussion, and Marc Ribot's tremolo guitar. Enjoy Yourself closes the album, with Holland having an infectous laugh through much of the track, as she sings through the whole song "Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think."

In many ways Holland is walking the same road as Neko Case, M. Ward and Norah Jones, sweet voiced singers with great range and a quiet power. But her music can feel, if not necessarily sound, like indie pop songstresses Regina Spector or Joanna Newsom. But the monotonous delivery can make it hard to listen for very long.

Listen:

Mexico City (Video)

May 20: John Vanderslice, Romanian Names (2009)

2009-05-20T09:15:00.000-07:00

John Vanderslice is one of those names that seem to just float around the music world, his name being connected in one way or another to many other bands. I know him as much (if not more) for his recording studio in San Francisco, Tiny Telephone. A kind of Mecca for lots of hipster bands. But he also is a prolific and praised songwriter/performer. This is his seventh full length since his debut in 2000.

Vanderslice is writing in a solid pop tradition, pulling equally from The Beach Boys and The Beatles, The Cure and Bowie, and the Elephant 6 collective, he creates a kind of transcendent pop where his soft, high register voice floats above an ever shifting collection of instruments and sounds. On this album there are also small flourishes of southwest Americana pop, ala Calexico. Tremble and Tear opens the album with Vanderslice harmonizing with himself over acoustic guitar, keyboards and simple drums, with a strange analog keyboard break. Fetal Horses has a heavily flanged acoustic guitar with piano and subdued drums. It is a story of seeing an old lover break out of her current relationship and wishing she'd come and break him out of his, with a chorus of "Fetal horses gallop around the womb/Seeing corpses in an empty room." C & O Canal tells of the loss of a love when she goes to work overseas, and the protagonist "tracked down your friend/and won her heart over slowly/and i walked away/hoping it gets back to you someday." Too Much Time seethes sadness with whole note piano over a shifting variety of synth sounds and tom rolls. D.I.A.L.O has a thick keyboard line and simple drums and is about losing old friends and gaining untrustworthy new ones as he becomes more successful. Forest Knoll is a subdued track over a beating heart beat and whole note piano about killing a deer and "sitting there I couldn't shake that guilt/as the deer walked free up the hill." Oblivion is nominally about writers block, "can't write a song strap the capo on/can't close the deal/play Defender until dawn," and has the best melody on the album. The title track is just acoustic guitar and voice, a story of losing his girlfriend to gymnastic practice at three o'clock everyday. Hard Times closes the album over cello and violin almost exclusively.

Vanderslice is right in the middle of the indie pop pack. He has contemporaries in Sufjan Stevens, Of Montreal, The Shins, Iron and Wine and any number of acts mining that same ground. His melodies are as strong as any out there. But it his production aesthetics where he carves out a niche for himself, not relying on (but not running away from) the traditional rock lineup, he might have more in common with Tom Waits in that regard than his indie pop brethren. There is a lightness in much of the music that belies the heartbreaking stories told in them. A combination of this lightness, pretty melodies and interesting production means there is a lot grab onto throughout its thirty seven and a half minutes.

Listen:

Fetal Horses and Too Much Time are available for download here.

May 19: The Mountain Goats, Tallahassee (2002)

2009-05-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

The Mountain Goats, hailing out of North Carolina, make what feels like simple, if dramatic, music. It is largely defined by easy strummed guitar and John Darnielle's high register voice and a delivery full of immediacy. Supplementing that line up are the occasional keyboards, drums or strings, and the ever present bass. This was the band's eleventh release in as many years, and their first for super indie label 4AD.

Tallahassee is a concept album about a couple living a Leaving Las Vegas type story in the title city, trying to drink themselves and each other to death in between fits of passion and anger. In typical Mountain Goats fashion there is plenty of drama in these people's lives to dig into. The album opens with the title track, a single strummed guitar with what feels like a looped bass string on a guitar, and showcases Darnielle's way of making uninteresting little moments of life at least somewhat interesting, "Window facing an ill-kept front yard/Plums on the tree heavy with nectar/Prayers to summon the destroying angel/Moon stuttering in the sky like film stuck in a projector." Southwood Plantation Road finds the couple living a life where "Our conversations are like minefields/No one's found a safe way through one yet," but "I am not going to lose you/We are going to stay married." Game Shows Touch Our Lives is a slow number with acoustic guitar and cymbal roles, and a declaration, "And I handed you a drink of the lovely little thing/On which our survival depends/People say friends don't destroy one another/What do they know about friends?" Idylls of the King has a jazzy/bossa nova chord progression where he continues to capture the drama of the relationship, "Your eyes twin volcanoes/Bad ideas dancing around in there." No Children kicks up the energy (as much as they can) with a heavily strummed guitar and piano, "I hope that our few remaining friends/Give up on trying to save us/I hope we come up with a failsafe plot/To piss off the dumb few that forgave us." It captures the heart of the self doomed relationship, as he sings at the end "And I hope you die/I hope we both die." See America Right is a cow-punk inspired piece full of angry energy, and a story of getting busted for a DWI. International Small Arms Traffic Blues compares his love to any number of situations about to explode or fall apart. Oceanographer's Choice has a bit of a psychedelic feel with a noise guitar solo, and the final lines full of remorse, "What will I do when I don't have you/When I finally get what I deserve?" Alpha Rats Nest finishes off the album.

He has a tendency to write songs that stay on a single chord progression, and then stretch them out at the beginnings and ends. The songs rarely develop past their initial progressions and melodies, which makes three minute pop songs seem much longer than they are. And his voice varies little from song to song, making the songs bleed into one another. There is a constant tension and sadness built into his voice which gets overwhelming at some point. About three quarters of the way through the album I was ready for the protagonists to be done with it all.
It's not that it's bad, he has a great way of telling a story, and a good ear for melody, but with such little variation I figured out what the album was about pretty quickly. He can write a catchy song, but one at a time might be enough.

Listen (just so you get the idea):

http://www.mountain-goats.com/videos.html

May 18: My Morning Jacket, Z (2005)

2009-05-18T17:12:00.000-07:00

I have tended to avoid My Morning Jacket, despite the heaps of critical praise they receive. Their early stuff was so drenched in reverb, making it sound like the band was recording in an old grain silo, that I found it nearly unlistenable. But the band has continued to evolve, and have seemed to move away from that early sound on some of their later albums. Coming out of Louisville in 1998, this is the bands fourth studio release.

The band mixes old soul and southern rock as a rule, but the first sounds on here sound like a club hit synth as the album opens with Wordless Chorus. It soon kicks into a mild dub/reggae beat heavy on the synth. A slow moving soulful number with hints of 70's FM radio, Flaming Lips like vocals, and a wordless chorus. It Beats 4 U is based around a picked acoustic guitar, but fills out with spacious and effected guitar lines and keyboards and a melodic bass line. Gideon is filled with tom rolls and whole note guitar chords, that gives way to a rocking middle section. What A Wonderful Man falls somewhere between the Flaming Lips and ELO, with it's big cymbals and harmony guitar lines. Off The Record is reminiscent of The Clash's poppier and dub influenced songs, with quick, unexpected key changes. It spends its last two minutes doing Zeppelin like psychedelia. Into The Woods is in a circus-y waltz time, with organ and plenty of theremin. Knot Comes Loose is piano, guitar and pedal steel, with hand percussion, and is the quietest track on the album, with a country feel. Dondante closes the album, with a Neil Young like vocal delivery over nothing more than drums and bass at times. Three minutes in the rest of the band kicks in, and the song spends its last two minutes on a slow fade out, as instruments drop out one by one.

Lyrically Jim James, the singer/songwriter of the band, tends towards everyday situations but has a way of saying them in interesting ways. On Anytime he starts with "Is this 'climbing up to the moon?'/Or is it bailing out too soon?" On Wordless Chorus he sings in the second verse "Fissure is the thrill of the day/Forget about feeling/That's not what pays." On Gideon he sings to some unknown antagonist, "Who are you?/What have you become?/You animal come on." There would also seem to be religious sentiment, as on What A Wonderful Man, "Big devil told us to sing along/And like a loving flock we obey/Except 4 him, he went his own way....Till the day I found out his cause/Was to do it for all of us."

Jim James still uses plenty of reverb on his vocals, but this effect works well, giving the music a feeling like it is taking up more space than it really is. They owe more to the Flaming Lips than I would have expected coming into this album, taking production aesthetics and vocal style cues from that Oklahoma City band. Drawing on them, as well as 70's arena and southern rock, they have created a sound that belongs to them. The song writing and performances are solid, and they tend towards long, drawn out guitar driven solos, much like fellow southern rockers Widespread Panic. And like WS they have don't overuse those moments, and they have enough sense to know when to quit. The album balances its quieter moments and more rocking moments well, as the album flows from one song to the next. And the catchy melodies, sometimes delivered in James' reverbed falsetto, keep you wanting more.

Listen:

Off The Record

Wordless Chorus

Dondante

May 17: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (2005)

2009-05-17T16:02:00.000-07:00

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is one of those true and rare success stories in the music biz. This self-released debut garnered enough attention to shoot them up towards the top of the indie rock hierarchy, getting them slots in some of the most revered music fests around the country, and selling a couple of hundred thousand copies, all without the help of a label. This was largely done through the internet and on music blogs, where I once read a reviewer say that he was equally enthralled and disgusted by the band's name. The band is based out of Brooklyn and Philadelphia.

It is impossible to ignore the direct relation to David Byrne and Talking Heads. Alex Ounsworth's voice could easily be mistaken for a younger Byrne's on most of this album. They do something between the Velvet Underground's rock dirges and the dance punk of the Talking Heads, but tend towards the Talking Heads significantly more. With dual guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, and Ounsworth's voice, they create a energetic melange of indie rock sounds. The album starts with Clap Your Hands, a Tom Waits-ish circus organ and a barker's call and response. The rest of the album is mostly mid-tempo tracks with dance-y beats, hard panned guitars that feel like they are playing off of each other in a back and forth conversation, and keyboard sounds that tend to float above everything else. Details of the War starts with a thrift store keyboard and hand percussion, before kicking in to a slower number and Ounsworth sounding alternately like Lou Reed and Byrne. Is This Love? has Sgt. Pepper's era backing vocals, and quickly changes to a 6/8 time signature to end the song. Blue Turning Gray is a John Fahey inspired, finger-picked instrumental piece. The album ends with Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood, where rather than figuring out an ending they just pull the needle off the record.

Ounsworth has a way of stretching out some words, then hurrying through the next line, giving the music a constant sense of momentum, even when there isn't much in other parts of the music. And Ounsworth seems to see his songs as vehicles for his critiques, of other musicians, "You look like David Bowie/But you've got nothing to show me/Start another fire/And watch it slowly die" (Over and Over Again), of lovers "You say you can't say anymore/You've already said it before/In a million different ways which were all not quite right" (Is This Love?), of ex-lovers "But what goes up has so far down to fall/So go salvage/Some of that human dignity/It'll be a long, hard road," (Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away). Sometimes he delivers lines like Destroyer's stream of consciousness approach, "Should I trust all the rust that's on TV/I guess with some distaste I disagree/With a fashionable dispassion for the dispossessed under-stressed" (In This Home On Ice). On Gimmie Some Salt he has lazy, drunken delivery.

There is nothing mind blowing or new here, but they seem to have found what they do well, and perfected that. The music is quite catchy and energetic, and has a sense of forward momentum that kept me engaged. Lyrically it's fairly interesting, with nothing said in too easy of a way, and the delivery is engaging even when I'm not sure what they're trying to say.

Listen:

The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth

Let The Cool Goddess Rust Away

Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood

May 16: Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Cardinology (2008)

2009-05-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

I first encountered Ryan Adams as the front man of Whiskeytown, an alt-country band out of North Carolina that made a version of heart breaking music based on the traditions of Gram Parsons and Townes Van Zandt. I must have bought that album, Strangers Almanac, in the mid-90's, and it is still in my collection and is an album that I pull out on a semi-regular basis. In many ways that album was the perfect soundtrack to my many long drives through southwestern deserts. After the demise of Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams set out on his solo career, an up and down journey full of great songs, bad songs, live shows defined by Adams' cyclical nature of brilliance and drug and alcohol use, recovery and relapse. It always seemed to me that Adams' doesn't have the ability to edit himself, so he releases albums at a hyper rate, and this has meant that good songs, bad songs, and in between songs have filled his many releases. But when Ryan is good he is very good, and when he is not he is only slightly better than the Jason Mrazs of the world. This was the fifth and last release with The Cardinals, his backing band over a number of years.

Adams mines American roots rock with flourishes of Minneapolis thrown in, ala The Replacements and Husker Dü. You find the expected roots rock lineup, acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums, piano and organ, lapsteel. The album opens with the best melody on the album on Born Into A Light, with a Lucinda Williams laid back feel. All the songs here move at mid-tempos, with slight variations in themes musically and lyrically. There is 70's southern rock (Fix It, Natural Ghost), 70's arena rock (Magick), outside-Nashville country (Born Into A Light, Let Us Down Easy), modern pop (Crossed Out Name), and Dead-style folk (Sink Ships, Evergreen, Like Yesterday). Lyrically there isn't a lot that stands out here. It tends towards love and broken love, and loneliness. It seems he's attempting to use metaphor, but mostly it just seems like little, unexceptional life scenes. Exceptions seem to be Stop, a story of his recovery told mostly over a solitary piano, and Born Into A Light, a call to be hopeful in times when hope is hard to come by.

Adams is a strong enough performer and songwriter that he can take any creation of his and make it a listenable piece of music. And The Cardinals are his perfect foils, keeping his music moving forward and filling out the space in solid, if somewhat predictable, ways. This isn't his strongest release, but it isn't unlistenable by any means. But if you're unfamiliar with Adams and his discography there are better places to start.

Listen

Born Into A Light

Natural Ghost

Evergreen

May 15: Slowdive, Souvlaki (1994)

2009-05-15T21:16:00.000-07:00

Slowdive came out of the British shoegaze scene. Shoegaze? Yes. They were one of the pre-eminent bands making an ethereal, dreamy pop, full of heavily effected guitars, dream-like vocals, and slow, often two chord, progressions. The name shoegaze came around because during live shows the musicians would often spend a fair amount of time looking at their pedals while they created dense, often times wall of sound, music. Slowdive followed, and then helped define, what shoegaze would sound like. Using two guitars, bass, keys, drums and alternating or shared female/male vocals, they made a music full of texture and space. And it was in this texture and space that shoegaze made its stand. Slowdive had contemporaries and/or were influenced by bands like The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and Galaxie 500.

The album opens with Alison with heavily effected (flanged in this case) rhythm guitar and vocals that just seem to float within the music. The melodies are easy but catchy, both vocally and on the guitar. This is the pattern for most of their music as Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell go back and forth vocally. Many of the songs come across just like that (Machine Gun, Altogether). On other songs like 40 Days, they start out with a cutting and distorted guitar, but then fall back into the dreamlike feel, this one backed by a subtle acoustic guitar. On Sing the first sounds are soft, cascading keyboard sounds that continue throughout but move to the background behind a dominant bass. Later in the song panned key sounds are used to space, while Goswell sings "love is here to stay, you call away, i wait/I know that youre listening, to everything i say." Here She Comes moves away from that big sound from earlier songs, having just a chorused lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and simple percussion (shaker and hand drum). On Souvlaki Space Station Goswells vocals are so deep down in the mix that they are barely distinguishable from the sounds around her. On When The Sun Hits Halstead sings in his soft delivery "It matters where you are/As the sun hits, she'll be waiting/With her cool things and her heaven." Dagger, the album closer, breaks out of the pattern of the rest of the album, as it's just Halstead with an acoustic guitar and a heavily effected harmony he sings with himself. The lyrics are sparse, usually only one or two stanzas that get repeated over the course of a 4 minute song. And while the lyrics aren't bad, that isn't the main point of this music.

This music is first and foremost about mood. And they create that mood, dark and dreamy as it is, through open arrangements full of space and texture. They let songs just sit with themselves, feeling no need to necessarily push them forward. They are content to sit on a two chord progression, letting the heavily effected instruments define the song. This is not sing-a-long music, but the moods created are interesting and unique. It seems that shoegaze, as a sub-genre, has faded, but left a mark on many bands that would come after (Smashing Pumpkins took much of the shoegaze aesthetic and reworked it).

Listen:

Alison

Melon Yellow

Dagger

May 14: Tara Jane O'Neil, You Sound, Reflect (2004)

2009-05-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Tara Jane O'Neil is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and visual artist based out of Portland, Or. Musically she has been in a number of bands through the years, as well as collaborating with Come, Mirah, and Jackie O. Motherfucker among many others. She has also scored films and theater productions. As a solo artist this was her her fourth full length release.

In her music you can hear the quiet, dark folk of Nick Drake, Palace and Cat Power, as well as experiments with soundscapes, ala Gastr Del Sol or Tortoise. The album opens with the five plus minute soundscape Take the Waking, full of repetitive guitar chords and sounds that come and go, including O'Neil's ethereal voice. The songs are defined by easily strummed or fingerpicked electric guitar, and O'Neil's voice that has it's closest cousin in Cat Power's soft, high delivery. But it's what happens around the guitar and voice that keeps things moving and interesting, violin on Howl, The Poisoned Mine, and Without Push, keyboard sounds (often highly manipulated) on Love Song Long and Famous Yellow Belly, a ghostly piano on Famous Yellow Belly. She uses instrumental pieces, heavy on lonely sounding banjo, to break the album up as well, I Call You, Ours Soared and the album closer Tea Is Better Than Poison. The songs are full of sweet sentiment, that when delivered with O'Neil's understated, often whispered, vocals, takes some of that sweetness out. On Without Push she sings "I'd eat your salt, your sadness."

This is music that moves and develops slowly, but has a great amount of depth. O'Neil's voice is full of character and subtlety, and she is nearly perfect in delivering lines in a heartbreaking way, almost independent of what the words actually are. I suppose you'd throw this in the realm of neo-folk, but it's use of space and sound keep it on the edge of that realm, and keeps it interesting.

Listen:

The Poisoned Mine (click on music notes by track listing)

Without Push

Famous Yellow Belly

May 13: Gastr Del Sol, Upgrade and Afterlife (1996)

2009-05-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

Gastr Del Sol was made up of David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke. Both made their name in the Chicago post-rock scene that spawned groups like Tortoise and The Sea and Cake. Much like Tortoise they have a no boundaries approach to music making. O'Rourke has especially been a jack-of-all-trades. He has produced a number of albums you are guaranteed to have heard. He has collaborated with Sonic Youth, members of Wilco, and a long list of experimental musicians, and he has made and scored films. Grubbs was a member of the highly regarded punk band Squirrel Bait before branching out and writing, recording and performing more experimental music, as well as collaborating with a long list of performers. The group was mostly the two of them with a long list guest musicians on every album. Gastr Del Sol released seven recordings between 1993 and 1998, when the duo disbanded. This was their sixth release.

It is apparent early on that their work is informed by their experiences with scoring films. The opening track, our exquisite replica of "eternity," is an eight and a half minute piece that develops slowly, and feels like the background to a scene from an intense thriller. It is mostly ambiguous sounds, heavily effected instruments along with a variety of keyboard sounds, that will break out in unexpected moments, giving way to a trumpet led horn section backed by timpani six and half minutes in. Only to slowly fade out. This piece shows the influence of film composers like John Williams, but also New Music composers like Steve Reich and Phillip Glass. Rebecca Sylvester is mostly free time acoustic guitar undergirded by blips and beeps of electronic keyboards, and lyrics that are as hard to pin down as the music, "The wind had picked up/where it left off the night before/these are sharks' fins/i believe the tongue propels them." The Sea Incertain starts with an easy John Cage inspired piano, and the whistle of a tea kettle coming in at close to two minutes. This is followed by manipulated electronic sounds that overtake the piano slowly, only to give way to the piano again. The center of the album, the ten and a half minute hello spiral, starts with nails on a chalkboard, dissonant electronic sounds, before vocals come in sharing a melody line with another free time guitar. Which then gives way to two looped guitar lines. At just over five minutes in, drums join the guitar lines, giving it the feel of many mid-90's indie bands like Superchunk or Archers of Loaf in their more mellow times. They spend the rest of the time working around this arrangement. The Relay is another New Music inspired piano piece, with sparse Neil Young inspired vocals, and breaks of silence. Again with sparse and obtuse lyrics, "the electric curtain was busted/it should have been a frame, please." Crappy Tactics is the short track, coming in at under two minutes, again with a single note guitar line under-girded by ominous keyboard sounds. The album closer, the twelve and a half minute Dry Bones in the Valley (I saw the Light Come Shining 'round and 'round) is a cover of a John Fahey song, and starts with a respectful rendition of his fingerpicked style. Six minutes in a slightly off fiddle joins in as each does a repetitive line. This is generally the way the song finishes out the last six minutes with subtle sounds coming and going.

This album has its own quiet intensity, but you have to be willing to sit with it. Drawing from ambient composers as much if not more than indie rock, the music develops slowly and subtly. Sometimes it makes good background music, sometimes it grabs you, not letting you involve yourself in anything else for that time. It is also an album that challenges our basic notions of music. With long sections free from any discernable melody or rhythm, and sometimes making you want to run from the room, if you sit with it you can't help but to question the boundaries of music and what we will allow within those boundaries and what we will kick out. In this way it as philosophical as it is musical.

Listen: (Samples)

The Sea Incertain

Rebecca Sylvester

Dry Bones in the Valley

May 12: Scott Walker, Scott 4 (1969)

2009-05-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

Scott Walker (stage name) came to me without me being the least bit familiar with him. It came from a good source so I was excited to hear it. Walker rose as a teen idol in the late 50's, and established himself as a solid studio musician before he was out of his teens. In the mid sixties he formed The Walker Brothers, relocated from LA to London and found great success on the British charts. The Walker Brothers performed pop ballads with big string arrangements and charted both in Britain, and to a lesser extent in the US. That band only lasted a few years before they split. At this point Scott Walker went solo and stayed in London. As the title indicates, this is the fourth release as a solo artist. The four albums and a album of TV theme songs were all released between '67 and '69. To call him prolific would seem to fall short. Burt Bacharach is an obvious influence here, especially in the arrangements, as are mid-century pop stars like Frankie Lane and Marty Robbins. There are also nods to psychedelic and early garage rock melodies.

He has a deep baritone voice that like the Walker Brothers, comes wrapped in big string arrangements, easy drums, acoustic guitar and the occasional pedal steel. The songs here all move at a ballad's pace. The album opens with The Seventh Seal, and a Mexican inspired guitar and spaghetti western trumpet, before falling into a quarter note tambourine and string backing. It is a musical take on the Ingmar Bergman film by the same name. On Your Own Again is a short broken love story over acoustic guitar and strings, that ends with the heartbreaking line "Except when it began, I was so happy. I didn't feel like me." The World's Strongest Man is much the same, with a beautiful melody as he sings the title line. Hero of the War is a slightly faster tempo about a young man who returns from war who "Can't shake hands and move his feet," tragically stating that he's a hero of the war. The Old Man's Back Again is "dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist regime," but he never says which regime he's referring to. Later in the album he switches to more country-ish production with lap steel, the strings having a lighter footprint, and a less dramatic feel. Duchess has one of the better starting lines on the album, "It's your bicycle bells/And your Rembrandt swells/Your children alive and still breathing/And your look of lost when you're coming across/Makes me feel like a thief when you're bleeding." Get Behind Me shakes off the doldrums with a female chorus joining Walker on the choruses, and Beatles' inspired guitar work. Rhythm of Goodbye again has a prominent lap steel over cowboy waltz beat, giving it a spaghetti western feel at points.

Walker has a big voice, which he uses to great dramatic effect. In his voice you can hear later artists like Elvis Costello's slower songs, Mark Eitzel from American Music Club, and The High Llamas. Walker released a new album in 2006 to great critical acclaim, but his releases have been sparse since the mid-70's. The hyper speed releases of the mid sixties could indicate a lack of self editing, record company pressures, or just a very productive time in his life. But it seems like that kind of release schedule could take its toll. Upon first listen the dramatic vocal delivery and dramatic strings was a bit overwhelming and turned me off from the music. But subsequent listens began to reveal a depth to the music, and also revealed moments of lightness to counter the heavy feel of much of the rest of the album. I don't know if I will return to this album or not, but I understand that there is more to explore if I ever do.

Listen

On Your Own Again

The World's Strongest Man

Duchess

May 11: Bardo Pond, On The Ellipse (2003)

2009-05-11T23:34:00.000-07:00

Bardo Pond is another of those bands that are well known within some circles, have name recognition in slightly larger circles, and are unknown in most circles. They write long, rambling, heavy on the instrumental songs, pulling from Galaxy 500 and Jefferson Airplane, God Speed You Black Emperor and My Bloody Valentine. The music moves and develops slowly, if it develops at all. They openly state that their music is heavily influenced by psychedelics, and this influence shows in their guitar lines, barely audible lyrics and songs that tend to stretch well past the seven minute mark. They came out of a Philadelphia scene that boasted of a scene psychedelic bands.

Their songs tend to start slowly, a single guitar sound held out or a flute playing a simple melody over quiet drums, with guitar tones that tend towards those of My Bloody Valentine at points, feeling like they are about to crumble. Sometimes the songs don't develop much beyond that, as on the instrumental Dom's Lament. Other times the songs start that way and don't necessarily build but will, on a dime, turn louder more intense (Every Man). On songs like Test, with the music being a fairly intense wall of sound, when the only thing left at the end is a distant electric guitar, that quietness matches the intensity of the rest of the song. On Walking Clouds they trade in their heavy electrics and base the song around a single acoustic guitar picking out a two chord progression. Around that is flute, an inaudible and echoed male voice, and a delayed acoustic guitar. That goes on for seven minutes and quietly fades. Night of Frogs, a nearly thirteen minute track, closes the album. The track starts with a heavy electric guitar which fades into a quiet guitar line, and then slowly builds as Isobel Sollenberger sings "Fast as the light/Then you're gone/Fast as the light/Then you're gone/Fast as the light/Then you're born/Pierce the spheres/Become all one/Pierce the spheres/The final one."

This is not light background music. It is music that demands your attention, even though the music and lyrics tend to be rambling. There are subtleties in the music that take time to suss out, but you have to become accustomed to the unfocused energy before you can get to that point. And there is plenty of that energy to get through.

Listen:

Night of Frogs

Everyman

May 10: Richard Buckner, Dents and Shells (2004)

2009-05-10T22:59:00.000-07:00

Richard Buckner has lived the troubador's life. Fighting the good fight, he is constantly touring, predictably releasing records, and writing songs full of heartbreak delivered in his deep baritone voice, often over nothing more than an acoustic guitar. He released his first album, Bloomed, in 1994 to great critical acclaim, and established himself as an important voice in the alt-country/indie world. As his career progressed he expanded his production palette. But his voice and vocal delivery have remained fairly constant. Once you hear his deep warble, and a style that is more likely to dance around the melody than sing it, you won't ever mistake his voice for anyone else's.

On this album the mood is fairly constant, and consistent with his past work, where despair is ever present. The songs move at slow to medium tempos, backed by the ubiquitous acoustic guitar. Most of the songs (A Chance Counsel, the opener, Her and Invitation,) have guitar, along with a full sounding drum kit, pedal steel, and piano, and move at medium tempos. Firsts is a single note guitar line and Buckner's voice sharing a melody, with an ominous string section filling in the background. Charmers is full of dark sounding strings, tom rolls and cymbal crashes, and Buckner's voice, which sounds nearly upbeat compared to the darkness of the music underneath him. Straight is defined by a twelve string and an easy Rhodes melody. Fuse is in a major key and replaces the lap steel with dobro, while Rafters, also a major key (more) upbeat feel has the piano and sparse percussion. The album closes with As The Waves Will Always Roll, full of organ and strings with chaotic drum breaks.

Lyrically, it always feels like Buckner is dealing with ghosts, his own as well as those of others. There is always some past event that needs to be exorcised, and these songs are the best way he's found to do that. But Buckner isn't going to let you in that easy. The lyrics tend to, like his melodies, dance around where he intends to be. Full of coded imagery, his songs are often conversations, with himself, with antagonists, with others who aren't even there. In Invitation he sings, "you see, the walls are gone sometimes,/there's no other way./is looking down, still moving on?/I think you'd know what to say." Despite these conversations nothing ever feels resolved, as in Rafters

"I pulled the rafters down, but the ghosts were only dropping

and since that night......"

The lyrics printed in the liner notes share qualities of modern poetry, indentations, punctuation, and quotation marks show up, but in no discernable pattern. And the lyrics flow over the music in much the same way, with the music making verse/chorus/verse changes, even if that change doesn't quite match up with the changes lyricallly.

Buckner's music has always been about mood. And that mood has always been one of restlessness and discontent, vague notions of the way things should be or could've been, but just aren't. And Buckner is accomplished in making the listener feel every nuance of that. He doesn't make music that can be listened to lightly. Much like Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt before him, he's gonna make you take sides. This album continues that conviction to mood, but that mood isn't for everyone, and for most is an only for sometimes thing I would guess.

Listen:

Firsts (Sample)

A Chance Counsel (Sample)

Rafters (Sample)

May 9: The Walkmen, A Hundred Miles Off (2006)

2009-05-09T23:33:00.000-07:00

The Walkmen have always been one of those bands that have achieved great critical acclaim, but haven't found a way to translate that into great commercial success. Not that they haven't done well, but after years of great reviews they're still the band that plays the medium sized clubs of major cities. Hailing from NYC, this was The Walkmen's third album. The band had modest success with their previous album, Bows and Arrows, and especially its single, Rats, and gained the band a wider audience. This album was also met with critical acclaim, but still only had modest commercial success. In Hamilton Leithauser's voice you can hear the influence of Bob Dylan, giving the band the feel of Dylan fronting a proto-punk influenced rock band. Influence wise, you can hear the energy of The Clash, and the music of U2, The Pixies, The Velvet Underground, and Pavement, and share the same ground as contemporaries like The Arcade Fire, Spoon or The Strokes.

They have a standard rock line up, guitars, bass, drums, and piano/organ, and will supplement that with the occasional trumpet, lap steel and hand percussion. The songs tend to move at upper medium tempos, with driving drums, chords chunked out on guitars, melodic bass lines, and the occasional piano run. One of the exceptions being Tenley Town, with its Descendents inspired drumming. The guitar driven songs tend to be void of solos, and in their place are instrumental breaks, piano and trumpet on Louisiana, or will just sit on the chord progression, (Emma, Get Me a Lemon). The band will also use the organ as the main backing instrument on occasion (All Hands and the Cook), or piano (This Job Is Killing Me). The music is largely moved forward by Leithauser's voice, being full of tension as it is. His voice comes across like a tightly wound rubber band about to burst, and that keeps the emotional tension a constant, never really giving an opportunity of release. Lyrically the songs tend towards conversations between the protagonist and some unknown (or in the case of Louisiana a known) entities. There aren't any great lines here, but the songs are filled with solid enough lines, painting small portraits of interactions. But the point of the music isn't so much the words, but the words give Leithauser an outlet for getting out whatever it is that he has to get out.

The defining characteristic of this band is Leithauser's voice, and as tense as it is it will turn some people off. But if his voice doesn't turn you off, there is some depth to dig into emotionallly. The rest of the band have figured out how to create the space for the vocals, and how to do just enough without doing too much. There is no one song here that stands out above the rest and the album seems to move along at a constant clip easily feeling like a whole.

Listen:

Louisiana (Video)

All Hands and the Cook

May 8: Beastie Boys, Paul's Boutique (1989)

2009-05-08T14:51:00.000-07:00

The Beastie Boys hold a unique place in hip hop, three Jewish kids doing an art form previously done almost exclusively by African Americans. Starting out as a punk band in their native Brooklyn, they started releasing 12" hip hop albums in the early 80's, and had their debut album released in 1986. The juvenile hit You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party was their break out, but also made it easy to dismiss them as serious artists. When Paul's Boutique came out, with its dense production and no obvious single, they took a step back from their commercial success but in its place came critical acclaim. This album would have to be considered one of the greatest sophmore efforts in the history of pop music. And it marked a change in hip hop production that would divide what came before and what would come after. Taking their cues from Run DMC, especially in the shared vocal delivery, they established themselves as doing hip hop as an art form, but also pushed boundaries as far as production and vision throughout their career.

Produced by the Dust Brothers, they layered samples on top of each other, creating a dense maze of sonic exploration. The songs lead right into one another throughout the album, the songs will break down in the middle with from left field samples filling in the space. The samples they chose were as diverse as pop music itself, Beatles, Curtis Mayfield, Pink Floyd, The Eagles, Elvis Costello, Sly and the Family Stone, Public Enemy, Kurtis Blow, themselves, and this is only scratching the surface of the samples here. And then there is the delivery, three MC's that exchange and share stanzas, lines or words. Sometimes nasally, sometimes growling, there is a sense that they don't take themselves too seriously, but maybe we should. Lyrically they throw out cultural references left and right, some well known others quite obscure. They also move between self effacing humor and machismo boasting. On Shake Your Rump they rap, "Got arrested at the Mardi Gras for jumping on a float/My man MCA's got a beard like a billy goat," and later sing " Never been dumped 'cause I'm the most mackinest/Never been jumped 'cause I'm known the most packinest/Yeah we've got beef chief/We're knocking out teeth chief." On Johnny Ryall they drop a Dylan reference, "Washing windows on the Bowery at a quarter to four/'Cause he ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more." On Sounds of Science they drop a historical reference, "Ponce De Leon constantly on/The fountain of youth not Robotron," what it means I don't know but they found a way to use both Ponce De Leon and Robotron back to back. Even their song titles can be quirky cultural references, High Plains Drifter and Sounds of Science. They finished the album with a 5 part 12 minute

The album is dense, sonically, in ideas and references and in delivery. This album rarely makes it onto best of hip hop albums lists. I think largely for hip hop purists album is too much of an amalgamation of too many things. But at its core is the beating heart of three guys who love hip hop, but who also love punk and other underground forms of rock. And they do a hell of a job marrying all of those. In some ways this album is hard to get through because it is such a sonic onslaught, but that means there's a lot to dig into, and it is well worth it.

Listen:

Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun

Johnny Ryall

Sounds of Science

May 7: Jack Johnson, On and On (2003)

2009-05-07T23:58:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me knows there is only one thing I have more disdain for than contemporary country, and that is Jack Johnson. Much like modern country, Johnson's music is shrouded in predictability, and that seems to be the most compelling trait about his music. It rarely breaks out of his two/three chord easy strum with his barely above a whisper vocals, and tends towards a minimal amount of production and instrumentation, consisting of easy drums, easy bass lines and the occasional keyboard. Every song tends to move at the same medium tempo, the melodies tend to be predictable, as there aren't many moments to make the listener say "wow, that was different." But having said all that his music isn't offensive, on any level, and in some way that is the most offensive thing about it. He never stretches out or takes chances, his lyrics do their best to be earnest and meaningful but come across as childish poetry most times. He's settled into what he does, and obviously there is a very large audience ready to consume his music, so maybe being adventurous isn't necessary or desirable. But for someone who likes to be challenged by music his music most times feels like an empty vacuum, there just isn't much there, and therefore not much to explore.

Johnson seems to draw from two sources, 70's singer-songwriters ala James Taylor and reggae influenced rock, ala Sublime. Every song seems to fall into one of these two patterns, but are only marginally different from each other, upstroke guitar replaces downstroke guitar, the drums might have more of a reggae feel, but that's about it. It's over this bed of music that Johnson sings his incredibly earnest lyrics that sometimes leaves me wondering what he is talking about, other times wondering if that's really the best way he could have said what he wants to say. On Traffic in the Sky he sings "Puzzle pieces in the ground/but no one ever seems to be digging/instead they're looking up towards the heavens/with their eyes on the heavens/there are shadows on the way to the heavens/it's enough to make me cry," leaving me wondering what it is he's exactly trying to say. Taylor opens with a decent funky guitar line, a story about a young woman who runs away only to become a prostitute, that comes across as creepy, "Such a tough enchilada filled up with nada/giving what she gotta give to get a dollar bill/used to be a limber chicken, times been a ticking/now she's finger licking to the man." Gone seems to be his stance on anti-consumerism, that actually has a decent line, "What about those shoes you're in today/They'll do no good on the bridges you burnt along the way." Holes to Heaven seems to be about some adventure in India, and actually has a melody with a little edge when he sings "There were so many fewer questions/When stars were still just the holes to heaven." Tomorrow Morning starts with an M. Ward like distant vocal, and Johnson would have done well to perform the whole song with that effect. Fall Line is just an acoustic guitar and quickly delivered lyrics with a country-ish feel that provides a nice change in mood. Cookie Jar deals with who to blame for a culture of violence, the answer: all of us. Rodeo Clowns has a hip-hop inspired delivery with a story about I don't know what, people at dance clubs and how bad that is? Symbol In My Driveway closes the album with the constant sound of waves crashing, and another narrative that I can't quite make out, although it does have one of the more promising lines on the album, "I've got a phosphorescent secret," but he doesn't quite know what to do with a line like that.

He's making an earnest attempt at making earnest music, and maybe there's something to be said for that. But I'm just not sure he has that much to say. He does a good job of writing very palatable melodies, and surrounding those melodies with easy and predictable instrumentation. And in that way I can see his appeal. Actually trying to decipher his lyrics is a whole other issue. I prefer song meanings to be buried deep in imagery and metaphor, but on this album those lines I can make no sense out of have no deeper meaning to be found. Everything is right on the surface in his music. Which might be pleasant for a listen or two, but what's to draw me back to listen again.

Listen:

Holes to Heaven

Rodeo Clowns

Traffic In The Sky

May 6: Kenny Chesney, Lucky Old Sun (2008)

2009-05-06T23:19:00.000-07:00

Anyone that knows me knows my disdain for contemporary country music, full of clichés and predictability. I've always thought it is a music made to sell, versus a music made to say something. But to paint any genre with such a wide brush obviously poses problems. There will always be exceptions to the rule, and as someone who is interested in what music has to reflect back to us and tell us about ourselves, country music must be accepted as a vital form of expression. The question then becomes what does it have to say to us, as it continues to be one of the biggest selling genres in popular music. Kenny Chesney always seemed to fall just outside the Nashville music machine, but continues to be one its biggest stars. He seems to fall somewhere between George Strait and Jimmy Buffet. He often sings about beach life in his deep, rich voice, and Chesney talks about the influence island life has had on him the liner notes. Here he pulls from a number of influences, doing standards, and collaborating with Dave Matthews, The Wailers, and Willie Nelson, among others.

In many ways this album is indicative of lots of modern country. It has good, if not adventurous production, solid performances, and a mixture of clever and clichéd songwriting. In the song descriptions there isn't a song where he doesn't mention his boat or the islands, and even though that seems to be organizing force in his life, all his songs don't explicitly talk about it (but he does have a song called Boats). Just about all the songs here move at slow tempos, an attempt to show the pace of life in his favorite places I assume. Acoustic guitars, simple percussion, and melodic bass lines fill up much of the album. The album opens with I'm Alive and is a duet with Dave Matthews, and actually has the line "Today is the first day of the rest of my life." Way Down Here moves at the same tempo, and has a major key sax solo, which I didn't like, but is unusual in country music production. Boats talk about just that, and how they are "vessels of freedom." Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven was originally to be recorded by George Strait, but Chesney got it and was a #1 single on the country charts, and has as the chorus, "Everyone wants to go to heaven/But nobody wants to go now." It was written by a Nashville songwriting duo, and it shows with its perfectly (and predictably) placed bridge. Down the Road was originally recorded by Mac McAnally, and he makes an appearance on Chesney's cover of it, a song about a young man wanting to take a young woman away from her home and her parents asking whether he is washed in the blood of the father, and whether he makes enough to take the daughter. Down the road has double meaning, in both time and space. Ten With a Two is an upbeat song with horns and a bluesy beat. For the chorus Chesney sings "I came in at two with a ten but I woke up at ten with a two." The Life is another song about life on some Mexican beach, story of an encounter with a simple life of a fisherman free from many of the constraints of modern urban life, and examining his own complicated life. Keys in the Conch Shell has a Carribean beat with hand percussion. That Lucky Old Sun closes the album and is a duet with Willie Nelson, and is an old standard that's been recorded dozens of times by people like Brian Wilson and Ray Charles. The story about a man who toils in his life, and longs to have the simple life of the sun.

Much of the album is very earnest, with little bits of clever comedy. If you're a jaded hipster it makes it hard to dig into this album, as earnesty is (or should be) dead. And it is hard to listen to Chesney sing about how great his life is on the beach or down on his boat that he leaves docked at some Carribean port, while he has his Lexus at home. Thanks Kenny for letting us know that hanging out on a beach all day is a great life. The album isn't bad, and in many spots is quite enjoyable, but there just isn't anything to dig into in many ways. The production is simple, Chesney doesn't get too adventurous with his songwriting or his production (although there are small parts where he tends that way). The best part of the album is when Willie Nelson comes in at the end, and shows the contrast of his voice full of character, and Chesney's less so. Chesney is working with the constrictions of Nashville, and that by definition is going to limit one's ability to explore and be adventurous. But Chesney does avoid a lot of the cliché that seems to come out of Nashville, and there is something to be said for that.

Listen:

Lucky Old Sun

Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven

May 5: Josh Ritter, Animal Years (2006)

2009-05-05T23:25:00.000-07:00

After having seen so many musicians with so many acoustic guitars over so many years, it takes something special to make me take notice if that is the route they take. In a way, I don't know how many singer-songwriters with an acoustic guitar I could really listen to. But when I ended up working a show in Denver where Josh Ritter was the opening act, and he did just that, he stood up there with an acoustic guitar and kept a mid-size crowd, including myself, enthralled and engaged. He comes out of the school of song craft that performers like Neil Young, John Prine and James Taylor attended. Not that he sounds like any of those specifically, but more that he has the same respect for the art of writing a good song of those two, and many others who mine the same ground. Coming out of Moscow, Idaho, he found initial success in Ireland before expanding his American audience.

He uses a pop approach to production, creating movements with varying instrumentation and lots of dynamics, while writing songs that fall well within the American folk tradition. But his real strengths lie in his ear for melody and his ability to turn a phrase. The lyrics on this album tend to marry the best of story telling, and poetic imagery in the service of that story telling. The album opens with Girl In The War, with its ambiguous politics, as Ritter sings "If they can't find a way to help her they can go to hell." Wolves is an example of Ritter's use of metaphor, as the wolves called him to leave, "Then one day I just woke up/And the wolves were all there/Wolves in the piano/Wolves underneath the stairs/Wolves inside the hinges/Circling around my door." Monster Ballads has soft snare rolls, sparse piano, and a lightly strummed guitar, backing the loneliness of the lyrics, "Ones and zeroes bleeding mesa noise/And when you're empty there's so much space for them/You turn it off but then a still small voice/Comes in blazing from some vast horizon." Lillian, Egypt is a fast moving story about running off with a rich girl, only to have her end up a silent movie star and fall for a movie director. Idaho is a barely audible guitar and Ritter's more present voice, with a melody reminiscent of an Appalachian folk tune. In The Dark has one of the better verses on the album, "Every heart is much the same/We tell ourselves down here/The same chambers fed by veins/The same maze of love and fear." One More Mouth is the story of losing a lover to the big city over a softly strummed electric guitar, with the closing lines "Will I starve in this eclipse while you treat every hungry kiss/Like one more mouth to feed." Good Man opens with a verse dedicated to his guitar, "These chords are old but we shake hands/Cause I believe that they're the good guys/We can use all the help we can/So many minor chords outside....Oh I love to sing along with you/We got tunes we kicked around." Best For The Best showcases his way to turn a heartbreaking line, "Once I knew a girl in the hard hard times/She made me a shirt out of five and dimes/Now she's gone but when I wear it she crosses my mind/And if the best is for the best then the best is unkind." Thin Blue Flame is an almost ten minute Dylanesque piece of poetry, that builds and drops and builds again, and surprisingly never feels like it has gone on too long, with too many good lines to pick just one (see link below). The album closes with Here At The Right Time, a song full of heart and a sweet, but not sappy, melody.

There is a wide array of moods, themes, tempos and instrumentation, but the album never loses a sense of cohesion. Ritter's musical vision has been honed by international travel, time at the School of Scottish Folk Studies, and a dedication to the craft of songwriting. He uses organ, piano and mandolin to compliment the other expected instrumentation, which keeps the music fresh and interesting from song to song. There really isn't a weak spot on this album, and the good parts are really, really good.

Thin Blue Flame Lyrics

Listen:

Girl In The War (Video)

Wolves

Thin Blue Flame

May 4: Fela Kuti and the Afrika 70, No Agreement (1977)

2009-05-04T23:50:00.000-07:00

There are some artists worth revisiting again and again. Fela Kuti is one of those. His importance in the global music scene can't be overstated. Political, funky, fun, his ensemble embodied the possibilities of music. Having effectively invented his own genre, Afrobeat, it was/is a musical movement, but in Fela's hands it was also a social and political force.

He uses the same tools here, a guitar that repeats a repetitive funky line. Shakere and other African percussion instruments. Long instrumental sections, electric piano and horns filling in space along the way. This album consists of two tracks, No Agreement and Dog Eat Dog, each clocking in at fifteen minutes and a half. No Agreement is classic Fela, the guitar and percussion holding everything down, while the electric piano and horns trade solos. The piano lines are obviously influenced by American funk, along the lines of James Brown, while the tenor sax moves between Charlie Parker inspired be bop and 60's funk, and horn blasts call back in response. For eleven minutes, this is the formula, before Fela comes in to sing in his deep baritone, "I no go agree make my brother hungry, make I no talk/I no go agree make my brother jobless, make I no talk/I no go agree make my brother homeless, make I no talk," while a chorus of women's voices respond with "la la la" or "no agreement." Dog Eat Dog is an instrumental falling firmly within the Afrobeat tradition, with Miles Davis inspired trumpet work, funky tenor sax, quick moving electric piano lines, and a guitar repeating the same line. The two songs taken together criticize the individualistic outlook on the world, that one person should not benefit from the suffering of another.

I'll probably do another Fela album again soon, but that's largely because I think his music, social stance, and politics are so engaging. In many ways you just have to listen.

Listen:

No Agreement

Dog Eat Dog