Oliver di Place

Hat Check Girl - Six Bucks Shy

2012-01-28T17:14:00.000-05:00

[purchase]

It would be easy to report that Hat Check Girl is the duo of Peter Gallway and Annie Gallup. That’s them on the album cover, and that was true of their debut album, Tenderness. But the inside cover of the new album has three musicians listed in bold type, and guest musician Mark Dann listed in plain type. The new “member” is drummer Jerry Marotta, who also co-wrote all but two of the new album’s thirteen songs. Yes, that Jerry Marotta! Liner note freaks like myself will know the name from Marotta’s work with Peter Gabriel and others. You might expect that Marotta would add punch, and that his presence here would mean that this album rocks out. There are times when his drumming adds a pulse that really propels this music, as in What Hemmingway Said, but it is never over the top. Marotta has a talent for creating texture with his playing, and that is often more to the point here. Marotta’s contribution is sometimes little more than a subtle line played with brushes. On top of that, Gallup and Gallway’s guitar lines intertwine like a caress, as do their breathy vocals. Dann adds bass and/or keyboard lines with a light touch. It all adds up to the most sensual-sounding music I have heard at least since Chris Isaac’s Wicked Game.

This sensuality is very much to the point. Six Bucks Shy is a collection of songs about heated moments. It can be the delicious passion of a forbidden tryst or the adrenaline rush of an actual crime. The songs present the passion of stolen moments, when voices can not be raised for fear of discovery. The writing does something rare. I admire songs which tell stories, but also those which capture the complex mood of a moment in time. These songs do both. August Sin sounds like the heat of the day it describes, and the tryst it presents is described in all of its languid passion. But the back story of how these lovers came to be here is also sketched in lightly. Getaway Car captures the rush of a minor heist, but also fills in the back story of the two characters. Echo Echo uses something as insubstantial as a radio signal floating in the ether to tell the tale of a tender parting in wartime. Cigarette Girl describes the push and pull of a flirtation, while it gets inside the hearts of its two characters to show us what each risks in this meeting. All of these and more are wonderfully economic pieces of writing. But the marvel of the bunch is Leave Most of It Out. Annie Gallup’s narrator talks around the real subject of this song. She reminisces about her now gone husband, and describes how she is raising their children. Only gradually, you realize the part she can not bring herself to put into words. The husband died in the World Trade Center on that awful day in 2001. No graphic description of that day could convey the sorrow as eloquently as this woman’s silence.

I would be leery of hearing covers of these songs. Gallup, Gallway, and Marotta have crafted eloquent gems of songs, and the performances smolder with barely contained heat. It would be all to easy to do to much with these songs, or too little. Hat Check Girl hits everything exactly right.

Hat Check Girl: Getaway Car

Hat Check Girl: What Hemmingway Said

******************************************************

Blog business: This will be my last full album review here for the time being. I have become involved in some things, and I find that this kind of post requires me set aside a large block of time that I am finding it increasingly difficult to find. I will be going back to spotlight posts and single-song coverage. On the plus side, I am hoping that this will mean that I can get back to posting far more often than I have been lately.

New Year’s Special: at the “Lord of Two Faces”

2012-01-07T02:39:00.001-05:00

A belated Happy New Year to all of my readers. New Years is the time not only for looking forward, but also for looking back at the old year and summing up. This is why the month of January takes its name from the ancient Roman god Janus, who had two faces, and was always looking behind him and forward at the same time. The Lord of Two Faces, a club named after him, would feature a selection of music that moves forward by drawing on the past in new ways. It’s a tricky thing to balance. The music can sound like an oldies act if overdone in one way, or it can come unmoored from the body of tradition that inspired it if overdone the other way. But, when the proper balance is found, the resulting music can sound both familiar and refreshingly new at the same time. Let’s have a listen.

Mark “Pocket“ Goldberg: This Train

[purchase]

The foundation for the music of Mark “Pocket” Goldberg is clearly the blues. The music is partially electric, but Goldberg’s instrument is the stand up bass. In terms of vocals, Goldberg has the bluesy growl you would expect if you thought that Howlin’ Wolf and Tom Waits were somehow related to him. Despite that, Goldberg can sound very soulful on the ballads here. This Train is more of a blues incantation than a ballad. Goldberg and his band are after a gritty intimacy here, and they hit it perfectly. Rather than sounding like something crafted in a recording studio, (even though it surely was), this music sounds like something that was in a man’s heart and just had to come out. The gospel-like backing vocals in This Train are done in a way that only enhances this effect. All of the songs here were written or co-written by Goldberg. Within the blues form, which he stretches somewhat, Goldberg writes more involved lyrics than are typical of the blues. This allows Goldberg to tell detailed stories, but the emotional immediacy of the blues is preserved.

The Way Down Low: Check My Condition

[purchase]

The Way Down Low are a four piece band whose members play mandolin, acoustic guitar, banjo, and upright bass. Three of the band members sing. Must be bluegrass, right? Not exactly. Bluegrass is certainly an element, but so is rock. The band displays a sensibility that reminds me of the Violent Femmes. And there is also a jazzy element that shows up more prominently in some songs than others. The Way Down Low get all of this to make perfect sense, through their high energy performances. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of all this is the fact that this is their debut album. They show an assurance and a well defined sense of musical identity that is very rare for a new band. The future for the Way Down Low seems very bright.

Elephant Revival: Drop

[purchase]

Elephant Revival is a five piece band. Between them, the play eighteen different instruments, so they have a lot of options in terms of arranging their songs. One of the highlights is their beautiful arrangements for strings. Band members play violin and cello, and they bring extra violin or cello players on some songs. I use the word violin instead of fiddle, because of how it is played here. The music of Elephant Revival combines elements of folk and classical in songs that have a delicate power. That may seem like a contradiction, but they make it work. The band has both male and female singers, both on lead and background vocals. So again, they have a lot of options, and they know what to do with them. The singers each have their own personalities that come through when they sing lead, but the band has a consistency in their sound, even when they are working with a wonderful variety of musical textures. You can ignore all of this, and just enjoy a wonderful set of emotionally engaging songs. But this music is also very rich, and should greatly reward repeated playings.

Biscuit Kings: The Day I Met My Waterloo

[purchase]

In the Day I Met My Waterloo, we are musically in New Orleans. The house is rockin’, and you can just about smell the gumbo in this song. But step back a bit, and you will notice that the smallish band is playing entirely acoustic instruments. Biscuit Kings are the duo of singer and songwriter Johnny Pierre and bass player Jeff Goldstein. Pierre plays guitar, keyboards and percussion, and there is a decent sized group of guest musicians. But this album is all about making a big sound with a group that is no larger than absolutely necessary. One key to making that possible is Pierre’s voice. He half-growls half-sings in a friendly but gruff baritone that is actually quite musical. When he gets to the ballads, of which there are quite a few, his voice manages to be intimate and emotional at the same time. Some of the instruments eventually get plugged in, but the power of this music comes from that voice, and the tightness of the band. Normally, I would wonder how the music would hold up when performed live by just the duo, but Pierre and Goldstein have earned my trust here.

Malcolm Hunter & the Makeshift Dream Orchestra: Hangups

[purchase]

Suppose I told you that someone had discovered a long-lost tape from 1979 of an album that was never released, and that featured collaborations between Steely Dan, Michael Franks, and Gil Scott-Heron. To my knowledge, no such tapes ever existed, but Malcolm Hunter’s album Nostalgia in My Square Head is what they might have sounded like. It’s a heady mixture, and it really works. In the midst of all of this, Hunter includes a cover of a Charles Mingus tune, and it feels right at home. Hunter’s voice has that cool breeziness that Franks was known for, but with some of Scott-Heron’s grit. The arranging ideas, especially the interplay between Hunter and his background singers, are from the Steely Dan playbook. But this album doesn’t feel like a pastiche at all. It feels like the work of a talented artist who is paying homage to his inspirations, and laying down a solid foundation from which to build his own thing. Hunter is going to be an artist to keep an eye on as he develops his talent, and this is a great place to start.

Happy Birthday to Me

2011-12-28T03:34:00.000-05:00

Oliver di Place was born on December 23, 2008. I’m celebrating a little late this year. That happens during the holidays. In this third year, I have reached the point where the blog is almost what I imagined at the beginning. This is a place where you might hear folk music, singer-songwriters, Americana, or jazz singers. This year, I was able to add my first musical love to the mix: blues. I also opened the Oliver di Place Cabaret for business this year; this is where you can hear music that defies categorization. For this year’s birthday celebration, let’s hear some of all of that, and see how it connects or doesn’t.

Mitchell & Harris: The Canyon

[purchase]

From the folk/ singer/songwriter camp comes the duo of Anna Mae Mitchell and G Pat Harris, known collectively as Mitchell & Harris. Mitchell plays mostly rhythm on acoustic guitar and is the voice of the duo. Harris plays basses and does all of the writing. They are joined by a small band, playing a mix of electric and acoustic instruments. The sound is based on folk, but not bound by it. The Canyon is a fine example of how this album works. It is a haunting ballad that fits Mitchell’s voice perfectly. The musical setting beautifully enhances the mood while leaving Mitchell’s voice front and center, where it belongs. As a writer, Harris shows himself to be a fine storyteller, and also a great mood setter. His narrator has fled to the desert, and you can feel not only the heat rising off the sand, but also the loneliness of a place where not another living thing can be seen.

Bert Deivert: Kid Man Blues

[purchase]

Ask me for two countries where I would not look for blues music, and I might name Sweden and Thailand. Actually, now that I have heard Bert Deivert, I can’t say that anymore. Deivert was born in the United States and lived there until he was 24, but his recording career started after he moved to Sweden. The acoustic blues styles from before World War II are his main inspiration, and that comes through loud and clear in his playing and singing. But Deivert is seeking and finding something that transcends historical recreations. He makes this music his own, and, by the time he gets to Thailand, Deivert has created a powerful new dialect for the blues. This album was recorded in Sweden, Thailand, the Mississippi Delta, and Germany. Deivert makes unique connections in each place. As fascinating as this is, it wouldn’t mean much if Deivert didn’t have the passion of a blues player and singer. He does, making Kid Man Blues, both the song and the album, a wonderful blues discovery for me.

Beau Hinze & the Back Porch Shufflers: Thunderstorms & Dominoes

[purchase]

I suppose the music of Beau Hinze falls in the alt-country or Americana category. But this is acoustic music, and it is played and recorded in a way that dispenses with the layer of artifice that is so common in country-based music. Hinze sings in a rough manner that drops into spoken word for a moment here and there. This makes it all more real. Hinze is an imaginative writer. In Thunderstorms & Dominoes, he places a group of hard-working cowboys in a cabin together, and he has them stuck there due to a flood. What could be a calamity proves instead to be a rare opportunity to relax and enjoy each other’s company. In Hinze’ hands, the sense of comradery is almost a living thing.

Elizabeth!: Melting Snow

[purchase]

On Brainchildren, Elizabeth! is usually a jazz singer. The are a couple of ventures into pop territory, but the jazz creeps in even there. There are also a couple of instrumentals. Her instrument is the trombone. Usually the trombone is a brash instrument, and you might expect a singer who plays one to be similarly brash. I have heard that done in jazz to good effect, but that’s not what happens here. Both as a singer and on trombone, Elizabeth! brings a quiet intensity to her performance. Her emotional expression is definitely subtle, but her songs are filled with emotion. She and her band go more for texture than improvisational fancies, making this a good album for people who are just discovering jazz. For the rest of us, Brainchildren is the work of a subtle artist backed by a responsive and talented band.

Don Ryan: Tangle Town

[purchase]

Tangle Town, the album, is conceived of as a performance at a music hall in a fictional world, with slightly different natural laws than we are used to. It is a studio album, but there is a brief moment of “audience noise”, followed by an “encore” to close the album. The music makes reference to folk, country, and blues, but Ryan never lets us quite hear what we expect. The song Tangle Town starts off sounding like folk, but halfway through the band comes in, and we are suddenly in a woozy version of country. Similar things happen in other songs on the album. None of this is for show. Allow this music to take you where it will, and you will find the album to be a rich emotional experience. You will also find Ryan to be an artist of rare originality.

For a Song Christmas Eve Special: Chelsea Boys

2011-12-24T15:13:00.001-05:00

Spottiswoode and His Enemies: Chelsea Boys

[purchase]

Christmas is often referred to as the season of love. Jonathan Spottiswoode takes that to heart in Chelsea Boys. In a wonderful role reversal, he places a straight couple in the minority amidst a group of gay men. It’s not a problem at all. “They won’t care that you’re a girl”, he sings. In this season at least, love is love, and they all join in the celebration with singing and dancing.

As a bonus, this one has a beautiful video. It’s an animated short, with art by the Brazilian illustrator Maria Eugenia. Eugenia has more of her work available for viewing on her blog here. She has done wonderful work for books both for grownups and children. Just make sure you have plenty of time when you follow the link, because you will want to stay a while.

For a Song Solstice Special: Solstice Night

2011-12-21T15:14:00.001-05:00

Michael Lewis: Solstice Night

[purchase]

Sometimes in winter, there is a magical moment. It has snowed enough to completely cover everything, so the familiar world has been replaced by the mystery of smooth white shapes. The storm is over, the clouds have skittered away to their burrows for a winter’s nap, and the whole scene is lit by the full moon that wasn’t there a moment ago. Most of these images are not in Michael Lewis’ song Solstice Night, but he captures the same feeling in music as this scene does in in vision and feel. Lewis has only our sense of hearing to appeal to convey the full range of sensory and emotional response, and he succeeds brilliantly. No wonder he places this magic on the night of the winter solstice.

Lewis is the songwriting half of Traveler’s Dream, but The Natural World needed to be a solo album, because Lewis is after a different sound here. Some of the arrangements are a bit fuller than Solstice Night, but this music is rooted in the relatively young tradition of singer-songwriter music, rather than the British Isles folk stylings of Traveler’s Dream. The songs on The Natural World are personal, detailing the comfort Lewis draws from nature, and the awe it inspires in him. Where the Traveler’s Dream material is shaped by traditional forms, here Lewis can shape is words however he wishes. The result is every bit as much a collection of poetry as of music.

Shorelines

2011-12-17T18:23:00.000-05:00

Sometimes a post tells me how it wants to be written. My last post, about Stanley Greenthal, was absolutely intended to lead into this one. Here then is a feature about music from the British Isles, with four examples with roots in Ireland, and one from England. But, as I was putting all of this together, I was struck by how three of the album covers, including the Greenthal, feature water imagery. And then I realized that none of this music is purely traditional. All of it has roots in tradition, but some of it crossed the sea, while some stayed home and had musical influences come to it across the water. So, even though some of the artists here live and work inland, this is music that lives on the shore, and grows and is nourished by what comes in with the tide.

Beannacht: Lovin‘ Ain‘t Ever Wrong

[purchase]

Only one band name and album title in this post are in Irish Gaelic. Beannacht means “blessing”, and they hail from County Hunterdon. Now maybe you are an expert on Irish geography, and you are surprised you have never heard of it. That’s because County Hunterdon is in New Jersey. The music of Beannacht combines an Irish lilt in the background with American folk music closer to the surface. In the remarkable case of Love Ain’t Ever Wrong, the result is an Irish blues song, and it works. The most noticeable Irish part of this music is the vocal approach of Deardre Forrest. The Irish are rightly famed especially for the beauty of their female voices, and Forrest’s is no exception. The other half of Beannacht is Forrest’s uncle, Tom Johnston. He also sings, and provides a solid rhythm on guitar at all times. Johnston wrote almost all of the music here. Both members of the group write lyrics, with Forrest being the stronger lyricist at the moment. But Beannacht is a new act, and they are only going to get better. That is certainly something to look forward to.

Queen Elvis: Round and Round

[purchase]

So, now let’s actually go to Ireland. There we meet Queen Elvis, a group that takes its name from a song by Englishman Robin Hitchcock. Hitchcock tends to ignore the rules in his songwriting, and so it is here as well. Round and Round is a waltz, featuring acoustic guitar and cello. The cello is plucked at first, making an almost percussive sound. Then we hear the amazing voice of Caroline Stanley. She sings powerfully in a low alto, with smoky tones. The only clear influence here of traditional Irish music comes in some of the bowed lines in the cello. Over all, Round and Round is a song of war, given a stern beauty by this performance. Little World is the only release so far from Queen Elvis, and it is just a three-song EP. I haven’t heard, but I hope there is a full length album in the future.

Fling: Ballyshannon Bends

[purchase]

I had reported about Fling’s debut, also an EP. That one has become impossible to find, but no matter; All of the songs on it and much more are here on their debut album. The EP was all instrumentals, but there also three songs here with vocals. Curiously, those are all American songs, and they are performed that way, although with a slight Irish accent. But the instrumentals take inspiration from everywhere. Yes, there are a number of traditional Irish airs and dances here, but some tunes remind me of the folk-punk of the Pogues. And then there is Ballyshannon Bends. This one might have been at home on the Stanley Greenthal album; it sounds to me at first like it could have come from Greece. But the song is named for a road with perilous curves, located in County Donegal, and it speeds into folk punk territory by the end. It is performed, like everything on this album, with the irresistible combination of fine musicianship and high energy.

John Doyle: Selkie

[purchase]

John Doyle may be the musician in this post who is most steeped in traditional Irish music. Even though the songs on Shadow and Light are all originals, they show a strong love of Irish storytelling. But Shadow and Light was recorded in Nashville. On Selkie, Doyle plays electric guitar, the other instruments are lap steel and stand up bass. The bass player is Todd Phillips, who I know best for his jazzy playing with David Grisman. Elsewhere on the album, more traditional instruments are heard, like fiddle, banjo, mandolin, and concertina. Doyle plays acoustic guitar and sometimes bouzouki. But even there, the fiddler is Stuart Duncan, who I first heard playing western swing. So there is no doubt from the sound that Shadow and Light is the work of an Irish musician, but Doyle finds common ground with other traditions throughout, and the result is an album of rare beauty.

Anthea Neads & Andy Prince: River of Lights

[purchase]

Anthea Neads sings in a beautiful English folk soprano. She has a light tone, but the emotion of each song comes through wonderfully. Her musical partner here is bass player Andy Prince. Usually, a bass is heard in the background, as a supporting instrument. Not here. Prince is a melodic player, and the tone he gets from his instrument makes it a second voice, intertwining with Neads to make a greater whole. There are other instruments here, mostly for color, but Neads and Prince are the stars. English folk and folk-rock are the foundations here, but Neads and Prince are unafraid to go adventuring from there, and the results are well worth it.

For a Song: The Waves

2011-12-15T03:18:00.000-05:00

Stanley Greenthal: The Waves

[purchase]

The bouzouki is an instrument that is often heard in Celtic folk music. But the word bouzouki is not any form of Gaelic. In fact, the instrument comes from Greece, and the word is also Greek, possibly derived from Turkish. So maybe that explains the mix of musical influences in the work of Stanley Greenthal. there are Celtic songs and dances, from Ireland, Scotland, and Brittany. But there are also instrumental pieces from Greece, Macedonia, Crete, and even Turkey. The Waves is an original song, sung in English, but inspired by the songwriting techniques of Crete. So words and phrases repeat, like the rhythm of the water gently lapping up onto the shore. The result is hypnotic and beautiful. The water’s caress of the sand becomes a powerful metaphor for love. First Song is an album with many such treasures. It makes unexpected connections, and finds a common beauty in varied traditions.

Christmas Cabaret

2011-12-10T15:29:00.000-05:00

The Oliver di Place Cabaret is pleased to announce the line up for this year’s holiday shows. Prepare to go on a musical journey to parts unknown and unimagined. Prepare to have your ideas of holiday music stretched to the limit. But most of all, prepare to smile and laugh and dance. Welcome.

Chris Bauer: I‘ll Be Home For Christmas

[purchase]

To start off the evening, let’s ease in with some holiday jazz. Now this kind of thing, even when it’s instrumental, can easily get syrupy. But Chris Bauer leads a solid straight-ahead combo here, and he sidesteps the musical traps of the season. In a Yuletide Groove is a set that reveals a sincere love of both the season and its songs, with no sweetening needed. It helps a lot that Bauer gets such a full and rich tone from his harmonica. From the sound, I assume that he is playing a chromatic harp, which has a wider tonal range and is better for chording than a regular harp. It is also harder to bend notes on a chromatic, but Bauer mostly doesn’t need to. He finds the richness of his instrument, and his band provides a solidly swinging backdrop. Yuletide Groove is a generous program of holiday favorites that has a mellow vibe, but also great energy.

Doug Munro and La Pompe Attack w Cyrille-Aimee Daudel: Santa Claus is Comin‘ to Town

[purchase]

Doug Munro and his band are playing what is called gypsy jazz here, the style pioneered by Django Reinhart. Singer Cyrille-Amee Daudel appears on three songs, including the one I have chosen. Elsewhere, the melody is heard on fiddle or clarinet. There are lead and rhythm guitars and bass, but no drums. They are not needed, because Munro and his rhythm guitar player get a sound that is both percussive and melodic, and they and the bass player power the music along nicely. The tightness of the band makes this album a joy to listen to. Daudel contributes a nicely understated sweetness to the songs she sings, and she gets to cut loose in brief scat solos that are emblematic of the pleasure these musicians were obviously having as they made this album.

Asylum St Spankers: Red Nosed Reindeer Blues

[purchase]

I was always taught that holidays were the time to ask questions, to help you gain a better understanding of your culture, heritage, and faith. Here’s one: what would Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer sound like if it had been written by Muddy Waters? The Asylum St Spankers answer that question brilliantly here. Elsewhere, there is a version of Silent Night played on a musical saw, but over all, this is a collection with a jazzy and bluesy flavor, and the joy and cheer of all of the musicians is abundantly evident.

The Invincible Czars: Trepak (Russian Dance)

[purchase]

Having asked about Rudolph and Muddy Waters for the last song, it’s only fair to present this puzzler: what would The Nutcracker sound like if it had been the result of a collaboration between Fishbone and The Pogues? You’re kidding, right? Nope. The Invincible Czars have created this work of mad genius, and there is an entire album of it. It works surprisingly well, even when things go off the rails for a bit, as they do in the bridge of Trepak (Russian Dance). I won’t say any more. Just listen, and prepare to be tickled.

Everett Bradley: Holidelic

[purchase]

If you haven’t gotten up to dance yet, our last act of the evening should fix that. The song Holidelic is a holiday anthem in the style of Parliament/ Funkadelic. There are even P-Funk references in the lyrics. Everett Bradley nails this style, and creates an irresistible dance number for the holidays. Holidelic the album functions as a survey of 1970s and 80s soul and funk styles. Bradley obviously loves this music, and understands its workings perfectly. But more than that, he provides the boundless energy necessary to pull this kind of thing off. For the most part, that don’t make records like this anymore, but Bradley does. There is also an annual live version of this, and it must be quite something to see.

Holiday Folk

2011-12-08T04:04:00.002-05:00

The image above is actually a wine stop, available from Strika Distribution.

Here is the first of two holiday posts this year. Originally, the plan was to split it into a post of mostly acoustic holiday songs and another post of a wild mix that might turn out to be the Oliver di Place Cabaret Holiday Party. This is the acoustic post, but something interesting happened while I was putting this together. This post wound up being a celebration of the varying traditions that are celebrated at this time of year. I chose the songs I liked best from five wonderful albums, but I am also thrilled that it worked out this way.

Laurelyn Dossett, Rhiannon Giddens, Mike Compton, Joe Newberry, and Jason Sypher: Gathering Night

[purchase]

The Gathering started out as a six song cycle by Laurelyn Dossett, commissioned by the North Carolina Symphony. These are the first six songs on the album, and they do not have an orchestra on them as recorded. Instead, there is a five-piece folk ensemble. Rhiannon Giddens, from the Carolina Chocolate Drops, is the only one I had heard of before, but on the strength of this album, I am going to have to fix that. The six songs that start the album The Gathering are the original cycle, and Gathering Night is the opener. The cycle tells of a woman who is anxiously returning home after a long absence, on a winter’s night. The symbol of the candle in the window is evocative of many winter holidays, including Solstice, and the power of this symbol comes through beautifully in this haunting performance.

Once Dossett had assembled this fine band to record the six songs, they decided to expand the recording to a full length album by adding seven Christmas songs. These include a stunning rendition of O Holy Night arranged for just a single voice and stand-up bass, and a joyous version of Christ Was Born on Christmas Day for the full band, that closes this wonderful album on a high note.

Traveler‘s Dream: Holly and the Ivy Revisited

[purchase]

Traveler’s Dream is the duo of Michael Lewis and Denise Wilson, but each plays several instruments, so they often sound like a larger group. Cold Blows the Day is an album of Christmas songs, mostly familiar. There are many such albums, of varying quality. Aside from the quality of the musicianship, what makes an album like this work is a set of performances that make it clear that the artists care about the meaning of the songs. Lewis and Wilson deliver. There appear to be very few Solstice songs, but there are more than most people realize, and they are hiding in plain sight, as Christmas songs. The Holly and the Ivy is one of these. The line in the chorus about “sweet singing in the choir” almost certainly replaced earlier words as the song became Christianized. But Lewis and Wilson, with Holly and the Ivy Revisited, put the song back in the woods that it came from. Their lyrical changes are not restorations of lost text, but simply an attempt to restore the original spirit of the song. The care for the roots of this music comes through beautifully in their performances throughout the album.

Robin Greenstein and Cecelia Kirtland: Hanuka (Ladino)

[purchase]

On Songs of the Season, Robin Greenstein and Cecelia Kirtland joyously perform some of the familiar Christmas songs. But the real gems here are the less familiar songs. There is a set of Kwanzaa songs here, and also a wonderful set of Hanukkah songs. When most people think of Hanukkah, they think of the celebrations in the Ashkenazi tradition of the Jews from eastern Europe. But another group of Jews turned west instead of east, and settled for a time in Spain. These are the Sephardic Jews, and they developed their own traditions, and their own language, Ladino. Hanuka (Ladino) is one of their songs, and the performance here is just beautiful. I know most of this background because my uncle is Sephardic, but I never learned the language, so I don’t know what the song means. Can anyone help in the comments?

Louise Taylor: Let‘s Make a Baby King

[purchase]

Wonderland is one of many multi-artist samplers with a holiday theme. Often, this kind of album forces the listener to sift through the chaff to find the few good songs. But this collection comes from the Signature Sounds label, so the talent level is very high, and no sorting is needed. That said, Luoise Taylor’s performance of Let’s Make a Baby King is a standout. Jesse Winchester wrote the song as a pop-gospel number, but Taylor transforms it into a spiritual with a bluesy flavor and real power. Taylor plays guitar and adds African-sounding percussion and little else, but that’s all she needs.

Danaher & Cloud: Santa Claus, I Believe in You

[purchase]

I featured Danaher & Cloud’s last album here, and you can look for coverage of their next one after the new year. But, in between, they have released The Holiday Album. This collection is almost evenly split between familiar songs and originals. The album opens with a haunting rendition of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. I have never heard of Gretchen Guard before, but based on the wonderful cover of her song Follow Now, O Shepherds, I will need to find out more. And an original song, The Little Birds in the Snow, is an eloquent reminder of the true spirit of the season. But I settled on Santa Claus, I Believe in You for its classic sound. This is a frothy and jazzy number that needs only to be heard by the right person in the music industry, and it will become a massive hit in a big, overblown arrangement. But I like it just as it is here, with a small combo, a spot-on fizzy vocal, and a wonderful lead part on fiddle.

Folk to Blues

2011-12-03T14:07:00.001-05:00

A big thank you goes to my daughter Caitlin for creating the image above.

Folk music, in its broadest definition, is music that is handed down within a given tradition. This can apply to Tuvan throat-singing, Mexican polkas, or even English murder ballads. Or to the blues. Indeed, many American folk singers include blues songs in their repertoires, and some show the influence of it in everything they do. Still, there is a qualitative difference between a folk artist performing a blues song and the performance of a blues musician. To me, the difference is the approach to the song. A folk artist emphasizes the song in their performance. The lyrics are clear, and the playing likewise. This can be done in an emotional way, and I thoroughly enjoy these kinds of performances. But a blues artist takes a song, any song, and focuses on the emotion of the piece. The performance is raw, with everything out in the open. Subtlety comes from the shades of emotion in a performance, in conveying a glimmer of hope amidst the sorrow, or love amidst the anger.

The above makes it sound like there is a sharp line between a folk performance and a blues one. But life is rarely so neat, and so it is here as well. There are degrees of “folkness” and “bluesness” in the performance styles of most artists who plow the ground where the two meet. Let’s meet some of these artists, and I’ll show you what I mean.

Ernest Troost: Real Music

[purchase]

Ernest Troost was a New Folk winner at Kerrville a while back. He plays acoustic guitar, and his playing style shows that he knows well the styles of the great pre-war blues masters. As a writer, Troost’s work is informed by the blues, but not bound by it. His approach to vocals is folk all the way. His words are important, and he is emotionally invested, but he’s keeping some for himself as well. Live at McCabe’s presents a selection of Troost’s songs from his three studio albums to date. The show begins with just Troost and his guitar, and the band members join him one by one. So some of the songs are presented in sparer arrangements than the studio versions, while others have a fuller arrangement than before. Over all, Live at McCabe’s is a great introduction to the bluesy folk of Ernest Troost. He is new to me, but I will be keeping an eye on him from now on.

Grant Dermody: First Light

[purchase]

Thank you, Marco Prozzo, for the cover image. You can see more of Prozzo‘s work here.

Two of the best know acts working this ground between folk and blues would be Eric Bibb, from the folk side, and the duo of John Cephus and Phil Wiggins, from the blues side. Grant Dermody has worked extensively with both. His album Lay Down My Burden has liner notes by Phil Wiggins, and Eric Bibb plays on several songs. Dermody is a singer and Harmonica player, and he has the Piedmont blues style down. Dermody also knows how to write in this style. And his choices of covers include many of the old masters. But Lay Down My Burden closes with a Tibetan chant, and the album also includes a wonderful version of Amazing Grace. Dermody is also a creative arranger. A couple of songs here feature just two harmonicas and voice, and other songs have a four piece band, but with mandolin where you would expect a guitar. So First Light is solidly in the blues tradition, and a Dermody original, but elsewhere, Dermody explores the boundaries of the blues, and sometimes steps outside of them. Over all, he shows himself to be a confident musical explorer. He is also a generous band leader, sometimes stepping back and giving the lead vocals to someone else. If you buy only one album from this post, it should probably be this one, because Dermody most eloquently sums up the theme of this post in his album, and it is a thrilling trip.

Mary Flower: I‘m Dreaming of Your Demise

[purchase]

Mary Flower is here for a couple of reasons. She likes to open her songs with just her guitar, before adding her voice and a second instrument, and those guitar intros are pure blues playing. Also, I’m Dreaming of Your Demise add the piano of Dave Frishberg, so the song makes a good bridge to the piano blues in the rest of this post. But Mary Flower’s singing is a wildcard here. This is neither a folk nor a blues approach to the song. Instead, Flower is a jazz singer. Dreaming is a song sung by a wronged lover seeking revenge, but it is even more chilling because it is delivered with a wink and a smile. The structure of the song, with its extended lines in the vocal part, also place it in the jazz tradition But Flower’s playing is blues all the way. The best measure of her enormous talent is that she makes this combination sound completely natural, even though I’ve never heard anyone do it before.

Big Joe Duskin: Get Out of My Way

[purchase]

Big Joe Duskin was a throw-back. Born in 1921, Duskin began performing before World War II, playing piano in the classic boogie woogie style, and singing in a manner that is pure blues. However, Duskin did not make his first album until 1978. By then, he was living representative from another world, that of pre-war blues. Duskin died in 2007, and Big Joe Jumps Again! Was made three years before that. In all, Duskin only made three studio albums and two hard-to-find live ones. Boogie woogie is usually thought of as fast music, but I chose Get Out of My Way to show how Duskin could burn up a slow number as well. I love the ornamentation, played mostly in the right hand, that changes from verse to verse. Duskin’s voice had to have been stronger when he was younger, but all of the emotion this song needs is there. I can imagine the then 83-year-old Duskin shouting to the drummer and bass player on these sessions, “Try to keep up!”.

Eden Brent: Ain‘t Got No Troubles

[purchase]

If you haven’t listened to Ain’t Got No Troubles yet, hold off for just a second. Forget that this is a blues post, and look at the picture of the woman on the album cover shown above. Try to imagine what her voice must sound like. Got it? OK, now listen. Wow! Where did that come from? Eden Brent is an old fashioned blues belter, and a fine one. She is also a New Orleans blues pianist in the tradition of Professor Longhair and Dr John. That said, she has a wonderful light touch on her solos, dancing across the keys while never losing the backbeat. She is surrounded by a great band, including George Porter Jr of The Meters. Some people may think of the blues as depressing music, but this album is a fine example of how exciting this music can be, and why such a wide variety of artists are drawn to it.

Visitors

2011-11-29T03:12:00.000-05:00

The time between now and the turning of the year is the season of visits. In a good year, every weekend is carefully divided between shopping expeditions and social obligations. Either someone has asked you over, or you have asked them. There are many opportunities to catch up with seldom seen family and old friends, but there are also new people to meet. This post is a musical version of this activity.

One Alternative: Consider the Source

[purchase]

Sometimes, you get invited to a friend’s house, and there is someone you haven’t seen in years, someone you lost track of and thought you would never see again. I met the three musicians in the original line up of One Alternative in 1987, at a small folk coffeehouse in New Brunswick NJ. I don’t even know if I introduced myself, but I doubt they would remember me in any case. Jill Haley plays oboe and English horn, and Mark Oppenlander and David Bozenhard play acoustic guitars. The music they made had elements of folk, classical, and jazz. A year later, they were recording with additional musicians on electric bass and drums. The sound was heavier, sometimes too heavy, I thought. Still, I always wondered what became of them. I use a couple of services that connect musicians and bloggers, and I was pleasantly surprised recently when I was contacted through one of these services about the new One Alternative album, Air Sculpture. A drummer and bass player are now part of the regular line up, but the sound is better integrated. There is more of a jazz influence than there used to be, with improvisations in the midsections of songs that can be pretty wild. To give you an idea of where they are coming from, the two covers on this album are of songs by Weather Report and Frank Zappa. But Consider the Source is the song I have chosen, because it takes me back to the sound I first heard from them and liked so much. The song is entirely acoustic, and the rhythm section drops out of this one. The original trio casts a beautiful spell here. The interplay between these three musicians is a wonderful thing to hear. By the way, Air Sculpture is a generous package, with a full length CD of music, and a second disc with videos of a couple of live performances and a history of the group.

Postcard Comets: Drown

[purchase]

I have never been invited to an internet party, but there should be such things, and this would be the right time of year for it. At an internet party, you meet people you have only known up to now online. In person, the friendship could deepen as you learn more about each other. I met David Partridge of Postcard Comets on a forum on MySpace. Earlier this year, I featured a song from their latest album, Super Normaal. They have settled into an acoustic-based sound that works very well for them. Bodies of Water is their first album, and here they hit a 70s rock vibe that I wouldn’t have expected to work, but it does. Drown has a great groove that gives the song its power. The song I chose from Super Normaal has a similar groove, but it works in a completely different way.

Sam Llanas: Fare the Well

[purchase]

At one of these holiday gatherings, you may meet someone who you have only known as part of a couple, but who shows you another side of himself now that he is single. The Bodeans were originally a four piece roots-rock band, but they withered to a duo. Kurt Neumann and Sam Llanas were writing all of the songs together. Both Neumann and Lllanas play guitar, but Neumann also adds a host of other instruments. For their albums, they would add whatever studio musicians they needed. Earlier this year, Sam Llanas left the “band”, and now he has released his first solo album. For 4AM, Llanas is working in a full band again. Bukka Allen, who played keyboards on the last Bodeans album, is here playing accordion, and this gives the album a special feel. Llanas is making soulful rock here that borders on classic R&B. Fare the Well is a fine example. Lllanas’ vocals on this album are the most emotionally invested performances I have ever heard from him.

Kathy Sparling: Love Song

[purchase]

Somewhere during the season, you will meet someone entirely new. As You Believed is Kathy Sparling’s debut album. On Love Song, Sparling shows herself to be a writer to keep an eye on. She is explaining to a lover why she doesn’t want to marry him. It becomes clear that she loves him, and wants them to grow old together. No, her issue is with the rituals and hassles of a wedding. Sparling alternates between tender expressions of love and humorous descriptions of the potential wedding from hell. it’s a wonderful juggling act, and Sparling pulls it off perfectly. Her performance here and throughout the album shines with sweetness and warmth. Sparling’s main instrument is the ukulele, and she surrounds herself with a collection of musicians that swells to a folk orchestra at times. But even when the band includes eight other ukuleles strumming along with her, as it does on the song The Moon is Coming With Us, the music is rendered with a light touch that serves the songs beautifully.

Pharis & Jason Romero: Lay Down in Sorrow

[purchase]

Of course, the one kind of visitor you only see at this time of year is a caroler. People you have never met show up at your door, and sing songs which are instantly familiar. Pharis & Jason Romero are not singing carols here, but their covers are old songs that evoke older, simpler times. They also perform original songs, but these have that same classic feel. Lay Down in Sorrow is a secular song that has the quality of a hymn. It is one of the originals here. The performances here are quiet but passionate. Pharis Romero plays acoustic guitar and sings, while Jason plays mostly banjo and also sings. One of the remarkable things about this album is the sound of Jason’s banjos. A banjo usually has an almost abrasive or percussive quality, ringing out, and certainly not blending with only an acoustic guitar. But Jason gets a sweet, almost mellow tone from his instrument that I have never heard before. I believe he makes his own banjos, so that may explain it in part, but surely some credit goes to his playing. The result is a group sound that can be powerful when needed, but is always unified, and always heartfelt.

Looking Back

2011-11-19T03:23:00.000-05:00

There are times in a musician’s career when they take a moment to reflect on the past. Joni Mitchell twice summed up phases of her career with live albums, before making her next bold leap. A greatest hits or “best of” album can be a contractual obligation at times, but sometimes it can be an artist taking stock of their work to date. And a reissue, especially if it comes with extras, can allow an artist to revisit a moment in time, and sometimes even fix mistakes. Recently, enough albums like this have come my way to make a post, and here it is. When I set out to do this post, I neglected to take into account that albums like this often have generous amounts of music on them. So, where most of the albums I deal with have just over a half hour of music, four of the albums heard here are over an hour long each; that’s why this post is so late, and I would like to thank my regular readers for your patience. Consumer warning: three or four of the artists in this post, depending on your musical taste, make musical sense together, but then things go off the rails. All of these artists are here because I really enjoy their work. I hope you will keep an open mind, and enjoy them too.

Slaid Cleaves: Broke Down

[purchase]

Slaid Cleaves’ album Sorrow & Smoke is not only a look back, but also a homecoming. The Horseshoe Lounge in Austin Texas is where Cleaves made his breakthrough. At a pair of shows there last year, Cleaves played many of the songs from his breakthrough album Broke Down, including the song Horseshoe Lounge. Music from three other albums is included here, as well as some choice covers of other Texas songwriters. On his studio albums, Cleaves is usually accompanied by a full band, but here he has just another guitar player and a keyboard player with him. The keyboard is usually either a piano or the accordion heard here. So the songs are presented here in an intimate setting, and Cleaves’ talents as a singer and songwriter shine through. I chose the song Broke Down as much for the fact that it was the title track of Cleaves’ breakthrough album as anything else. The quality of the music is remarkably consistent over the length of Sorrow & Smoke.

Guy Clark: The Cape

[purchase]

On Songs and Stories, Guy Clark looks over his career with the help of his full band. The “Stories” in the album title are mainly song introductions, but the songs are more than enough to make up for that. Some of the older songs here got a country treatment in their original studio versions, but now the arrangements are more on the folk side of things, and the songs are better for it. Guy Clark turned 70 this year, and you can hear his age in his voice. But he takes the gravelly sound he makes now, and makes use of it. The Cape is one of many songs here that sound different when sung with the voice of experience. It says a lot about Clark’s strength as a writer that his age has caught up to his material, but he was able to write these songs when he was so much younger. Wisdom, warmth, and humor all come through wonderfully. Clark is a generous host, letting his bandmates Verlon Thompson and Shawn Camp take the lead on two songs each. Overall, Songs and Stories is an album that leaves me feeling that I have spent just over an hour in some very good company.

Paul Geremia: Lovin‘ Sam (The Sheik of Alabam‘)

[purchase]

For Love My Stuff, Paul Geremia went through recordings of his live performances throughout his career, and compiled an album from them. This is a generous sampling of 18 songs, most of which have never been on an album before in either a live or a studio version. Geremia is an old style blues artist. Before World War II, most blues artists lived and worked in the American South. The music was acoustic. In blues, musicians do what is called bending notes, which is sliding a note sharp or flat for emotional effect. Those old blues players would bend time the same way, stretching or compressing a musical phrase. To modern ears, this can sound sloppy or like a mistake, but it is done on purpose, and it is a powerful technique once you know what you are listening to. Paul Geremia is the only modern blues artist I have heard who plays this way, and he does it very well indeed. Geremia applies this technique to folk blues and to jazzier numbers as well, and either way, it works beautifully.

[purchase Persuasions of the Dead]

Sometimes, there are second chances. In 1999, The Persuasions went into the studio and recorded the tracks for their album Might as Well. This was a set of songs that the Grateful Dead had become known for, so it might have seemed to be an odd project for the legendary a capella group. But the Persuasions had previously done an album of Frank Zappa songs, and they were never afraid to add unusual songs to their repertoire. Normally, The Persuasions took pride in the rich sounds they made with just human voices, but Might as Well had guest musicians, including not only more voices but also instrumentalists too. Producer Rip Rense was never quite satisfied with the resulting album, but group leader Jerry Lawson left the group in 2003, and that seemed to be that.
Fast forward all the way to this year. Somehow, Rense managed to reconvene the entire group, including Lawson, and create a new version of the album. It has a new name, given by Tom Waits: Persuasions of the Dead. The new name is warranted, because the album has been resequenced, with songs that never made it onto the original album. Some of the original instrumental parts have been toned down, but there are also entirely new instrumental parts, some by musicians who were not even part of the earlier sessions. The Persuasions and the other singers on the album have redone some of their parts, and the whole thing has been remastered. The results sound glorious. With all that goes on here, the album shines the spotlights in the two places they belong: the singing sounds full and rich, and the quality of the songs shines through.

Sadly, I do not have permission to share songs from Persuasions of the Dead with you. The same thing happened when I reviewed the last Persuasions release, Live at McCabe‘s Guitar Shop. Happily, I do have to permission now to share some of that music, so here it is. You can buy Live at McCabe’s at the link below, but there is also a combo deal on the site for Persuasions of the Dead, if you would like to buy both albums together.

The Persuasions: Peace in the Valley

The Persuasions: Under the Boardwalk

[purchase Live at McCabe‘s]

Ljova: Midnight Oil Change

[purchase]

What have we here? Midnight Oil Change opens with the most haunted accordion part you may ever hear, just two chords alternating, like the beating of the Tell-Tale Heart in its effect.. That is soon joined by an electric guitar. The third instrument you hear is a viola being plucked. For lack of a better term, and taking the album this comes from as a whole, this would be considered classical music. The composer and violist is Ljova. It isn’t too hard for me to imagine a more conventional orchestration for Midnight Oil Change, especially once the strings and brasses enter. But Ljova isn’t about conventional. Lost in Kino is a collection of music Ljova wrote and recorded for films during the years 2006 to 2011. Most of these are what might be called “deep independent films”, the sort you would have to dig to find. They include short films, animation, and documentaries. I doubt that many of them had soundtrack albums. So Ljova wanted to preserve this music, but also focus on pieces that would work without their visual context. The songs in the first half of the album were recorded with the gypsy band Romashka, who I need to find out more about. Much of the second half is Ljova playing multiple parts on the viola and the famiola, (like a viola, only with six strings where the viola has only four). Throughout the album, Ljova draws on folk music, mostly from eastern Europe, but also from Apalachia for one track, and China for another. The result is a wonderful document of Ljova’s work for film, but also an album of music that really works beautifully as a whole, and out of context. There is much here for the more adventurous fans of folk music to enjoy, and Lost in Kino is also a fine continuation of a classical music tradition of composers including folk melodies and motifs in their work.

Songs to Look At

2011-11-09T03:25:00.002-05:00

The image above comes from a music video by Brian Jin, called Memories of a Song. You can see the whole thing here.

I am old enough to remember when MTV was new. It first went on the air in cities, and I didn’t see it until two years later, when my local cable system finally picked it up. I can’t remember the first video I saw, but I remember the excitement I felt. I was thrilled that artists and bands who would have been unknowns only a few years earlier were getting their music heard, and the best videos were also an amazing new form of artistic expression.

Of course, things are different now. MTV hasn’t been music television in many years. The big budgets that major labels once gave artists for their videos are long gone, and they wouldn’t make business sense now. So, that means that the artistry of music videos is gone forever, right? Actually, no. Budgets are much tighter now, but creativity still thrives. In fact, it may be that tight budgets are forcing artists who want to make artistic videos to be more creative than ever. This is the first time I have ever shared music videos on Oliver di Place, and I probably won’t do it often. But these five examples of the art demanded to be shared. Each shows a different way of marrying sound and vision. The music is quite a mix of styles. But the visuals, or visualizations if you like, are the point this time out. Let’s take a look.

Hilary Grist - Tall Buildings

Hilary Grist: Tall Buildings

[purchase]

I never thought I would be posting any videos here, and I don’t think this one had been released yet when I posted the song Tall Buildings before. But you can see why I had to repeat myself. Grist got some friends together, and built a miniature city out of recycled cardboard. The amount of detail is truly astounding, with cardboard people in at least some of the windows who can move by means of stop-motion animation. This city is such an astounding creation that it is being displayed this month at the Beaumont Gallery in Vancouver.

dogbrain - My Reprieve

My Reprieve from Jason Kessler on Vimeo.

dogbrain: My Reprieve

[purchase]

The video for dogbrain’s song My Reprieve is a short film, directed by Jason Kessler. I hadn’t heard of Kessler before, but he is apparently well known in the world of independent film. My Reprieve has the quality of an old Twilight Zone episode. This perfectly fits the song, about a man about to be executed, who is hoping for a last-minute phone bringing his pardon. The music has a woozy, disoriented feel, which is perfectly mirrored by the quick cuts in the film. The song comes from the album Nest, which includes a remarkable mix of musical moods, from classic R&B to songs that hint at Delta Blues. There are also a few more unclassifiable songs like this one. I will have more to say about this album in a future post.

Christine Leaky - Lovely

Christine Leakey: Lovely

[Not yet released, preorder here]

The video for Lovely shows a different approach to matching visuals to music. This one has images that are recognizable, people, flowers, and such, but there is no attempt to tell a story. Instead, what you get is a perfect matching of visual and musical mood. Christine Leakey’s songs have a breezy feel and a Brazilian lilt. The gauzy and sometimes abstract look of the video works perfectly.

Danaher and Cloud - Hey Banker, Hey Banker

Danaher and Cloud: Hey Banker, Hey Banker

[purchase new album here when released]

Hey Banker, Hey Banker is a protest song. Where a well wrought political song will tell a story to make a point to someone who may not have seen it that way, protest songs are written to energize a crowd that shares your position. The video is a slide show. The pictures do not move, but their sequence is brilliant and powerful. Images from the Great Depression, in black and white, alternate with color images of the here and now. The result is an statement of greater eloquence than even words and music can achieve. The song is a worthy accompaniment. It will be found on Danaher and Cloud’s forthcoming album Late Bloomers, which I will also have more to say about in a future post.

Drew Smith - Love Teeth

Drew Smith: Love Teeth

[purchase Fossils as a download]

I love well done animation, and Love Teeth, while clearly not made on a big budget, is a fine example. The video is the work of Korean animator Sohee Jeon, who I hadn’t heard of before. But, based on this example, I want to know more. Love Teeth, both visually and in the story it tells, has a marvelous fairy tale quality to it. I won’t spoil the ending for you, but this one needs to be watched all the way through. Drew Smith’s album The Secret Languages is due out early next year. Love Teeth represents the quieter side of Smith’s music. Based on a few advance tracks and what I have heard of Smith’s previous album Fossils, this will be one to keep an eye out for.

Bread and Bones - Could Have Been a Dream

2011-11-04T03:39:00.000-04:00

[purchase]

In Bread and Bones, the whole is greater than the sum of some very good parts. The group is a trio, with Beth Duquette on lead and harmony vocals only, Mitch Barron providing subtle support that is always right on a variety of basses, and Richard Ruane on lead instruments and lead and harmony vocals. Ruane wrote all of the original songs here, but when Duquette takes lead vocals, she inhabits her narrators so completely that it’s hard to believe that they were created by a man. I don’t think it was intentional, especially since the original songs were written over the course of nine years, but Could Have Been a Dream winds up being a set of songs about physical, emotional, and spiritual dislocation. I think the sequencing of the songs was probably intuitive, because Ruane is an intuitive songwriter, but the intuition was dead on, and the album winds up making an eloquent and powerful statement.

What you hear on this album is Ruane’s playing, and Ruane and Duquette’s voices. Barron’s bass parts do not announce themselves, but they add texture and enhance the emotion of the songs. Ruane usually plays acoustic guitar, but sometimes he switches to mandolin, ukulele, or even banjo on one song. That song, Emily Sits By the Window, is the one time I heard instrumental overdubs, with Ruane playing banjo, guitar and mandolin. But mostly, the songs sound they way they would live. There are no lead parts on the instruments; every thing is in support of the vocals. The group does show their prowess instrumentally in the way they vary the textures from song to song. Ruane sings in a range that straddles the line between baritone and low tenor. He rumbles a bit on the low notes, but he knows how to use that to his advantage. He has a folk style, direct and full of feeling, without much ornamentation. Duquette sings in a bluesy alto, and I have the feeling she could really belt one out if it suited the material. But the two of them blend masterfully, with their different styles meeting in the middle, and always in service of the song.

Ruane’s songs are about moments captured. There isn’t much storytelling here, although what happens in these moments sometimes tells a story of a kind. So the song Could Have Been a Dream presents a woman who remembers the mother who gave her up into fosterage when she was two or three years old. She has a collection of scattered impressions, filtered through the awareness of a young child, and her one clear memory is the refrain of a lullaby her mother sang to her. The song hints at why the mother had to give her up, but a child that age could never have understood all of the details, so the narrator of the song doesn’t either. It’s a great piece of writing that really hits home. You can tell, listening to Emily Sits By the Window, that this is an older woman; her memories come to her as she watches the sky outside, and then slip away again. We end up knowing some details of her life, but we can’t put her full story together, and we don’t need to. In the Air has a narrator who is probably a trapeze artist in a carnival. The song is about working at love without a net, and the metaphor works that much better because Ruane does not press the point. These are some of the songs of emotional dislocation. Physical dislocation is described best in North Along the River. Here we meet a group of fugitives who can not settle down, or even move about in daylight. The song does not say why they are fugitives; it simply and eloquently describes the rootlessness they feel. Will I Be Welcome and Breakwater are both about the idea of home. Welcome has a narrator wondering if he still has a home, while Breakwater tells of a man who knows he will always be able to find his home again. Who Do You Think It Was is a cover of a Charlie Sohmer tune, and finds a man in the midst of a test of his spiritual beliefs. The song has a gospel feel to it, with a great vocal blend. The album concludes with No Angels. This one says that we as human beings must rely upon ourselves and our intelligence, not on a higher power. It is a fitting conclusion to the journey this album has taken us on, and it feels in context like a message of hard-won hope.

I have nothing against flashy playing, but Bread and Bones don’t feel that they have to prove anything like that on this album. Could Have Been a Dream is a collection of finely written songs, with wonderful vocal performances, and solid instrumental backing to put the whole over with eloquence and grace.

Bread and Bones: Could Have Been a Deam

Bread and Bones: Emily Sits By the Window

Bump in the Night

2011-10-29T04:11:00.000-04:00

Halloween music. I don’t think it can be called a musical genre, but you know it when you hear it. Or do you? A few years ago, I put together a one-hour set of Halloween songs for myself and my family to enjoy. I was greatly surprised when I played it for my wife, and she kept saying, “that’s not a Halloween song.” So I guess it’s a personal thing. In assembling this year’s Halloween set, I put out a call far and wide for submissions. Maybe some artists did not have a song they thought was appropriate, but I might have disagreed. One thing that makes it difficult is that most songs don’t appear on Halloween albums. That is true of all but one of the songs I chose for this set. (The exception will be obvious when you get to it.) To me, a Halloween song needs to have a creepy ambiance, and either take place at Halloween or have supernatural elements. Enter if you dare, and let me show you what I mean.

Bob Malone: So What If It‘s Halloween

[purchase]

Is Halloween the scariest day of the year? Bob Malone may not think so. In So What If It’s Halloween, he explains that people are often scarier when they are not wearing their costumes. Malone is a very talented musician who works in jazz, old-style R&B, and Americana, for starters. His refusal to stay with a single musical genre has probably kept him from being better known, which is a shame. Because he is such a musical chameleon, one song doesn’t do him justice. I have in mind to fix that soon. Stay tuned.

Mark Tulk: Ghosts

[purchase]

Ghosts has the quality of an incantation, as if the singer is summoning a spirit back from the other side. The song can be taken as a literal invocation, or as a summoning of old memories. Mark Tulk makes music that is richly textured, and he communicates his passions with hushed intensity. The textures vary enough to make his album Central State a richly varied listening experience, one that only gets better with repeated listens.

Susan James: Cold Moon on the Highway

[purchase]

Cold Moon on the Highway is here for the mood of the piece, but it also belongs in this set unambiguously for the lyric. Musicians sometimes say, “this place is dead tonight”, and they talk about “gigs from Hell”, where there is an audience that doesn’t care about the music, and where the band has trouble getting paid at the end of the night. James takes these two statements to their logical extremes, and tells of a show that may well have happened at this time of year. Her album is a solid work of Americana, with folk, rock, and country elements. James is a fine lyricist, displaying great sympathy for her narrators, as well as a wonderful imagination and sense of humor.

Andrew McKnight: Chemical Voodoo

[purchase]

Chemical Voodoo is an acoustic blues song that suggests that there is a monster in the swamp. Andrew McKnight takes the premise seriously, and, in the manner of the best horror films, he suggests rather than shows. This may be a straight supernatural tale, or an environmental fable, and that ambiguity makes the song that much spookier. Andrew McNight is a fine guitar player, equally at home playing solo pieces on acoustic guitar, working with a mostly acoustic band playing songs with a bluegrass influence, or working with a mix of electric and acoustic instruments making a more pop-influenced sound. In all cases, McKnight creates original songs that sound like something you must have heard before. He knows his various traditions well, and makes classic sounding music in varied settings. Look for another one of his songs on Star Maker Machine next week.

Southern Culture on the Skids: Idol With the Glowin‘ Eyes

[purchase]

Southern Culture on the Skids has made a career out of celebrating the earthiest, (I’ll say it that way), people of the Amaerican South. Zombified is their “tribute to the horror and exploitation movies that populated Southern theaters and drive-ins during the 60s and 70s”. For some reason, the album was originally released only in Australia as an eight song EP. Now, for the US release, five more songs have been added, and the whole thing has been remastered. The music is crunching Southern rock, done by the modern masters of the genre. Idol With the Glowin’ Eyes is a song of an enchantress who captures the hearts of men with her sinister magic. It is very much in the tradition of songs like Black Magic Woman. Like the album as a whole, this one is a treat, although it is also something of a guilty pleasure for me.

Gabriel Kahane - Where Are the Arms

2011-10-27T04:14:00.003-04:00

[purchase]

When I reviewed Gabriel Kahane’s self-titled album two years ago, I found an artist who came from the world of contemporary classical music, and reached into the world of pop music, but on his own terms. The result was an album of sometimes challenging, but always fascinating music. Where Are the Arms is Kahane’s follow-up to that album, and this time Kahane is continuing the journey with some interesting friends. Rob Moose has worked with Bon Iver, Anthony and the Johnsons, and The National. Casey Foubert, who co-produced this album, has worked with Sufjan Stevens, Richard Swift, and Pedro the Lion. And Matt Johnson’s credits include Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright. The featured instrument is usually the piano, but some songs feature acoustic or electric guitar instead. Sometimes there are actual drums, while other songs may have soft percussion, or no percussion at all. The texture of the music shifts constantly, with accents provided by string, brass, and/or woodwind sections. I use the names for these sections that are used in classical music, because that is how Kahane uses them; instead of the wall of sound found in pop music, here each of the wind players, for example, has their own part to play, and it adds up to a wonderfully detailed whole, even though these sections are small.

Where Are the Arms takes off musically from where the last album ended. Lead track Charming Disease starts off sounding like it could have been on the previous album, but then the song changes. Rock elements join in, and the song becomes more assertive as it goes along. Parts of Speech lays down a shimmering pattern of electric guitars, then adds a kick from the drums, and finally finds Kahane singing in a voice with more bite than I have heard from him before. Kahane shows on this album that he can be a fine rock singer when needed. Last Dance is a lament, but there is a break where Kahane must sing some blue-eyed soul. He pulls it off, and the moment becomes one of this album’s delightful surprises. Calabash & Catamaran starts off sounding like it will be a folk number, (there is even a banjo), but layers of sound are added until it becomes a driven art-rock piece. The album closes with Great Lakes, and things seem to have settled down, but the song has a big rock climax at the end. Overall, Where Are the Arms takes the contemporary art song approach of the last album, and successfully weds it to some indie rock sensibilities.

Where Are the Arms is a collection of songs about missed and missing connections. Merritt Pkwy tells the tale of a hitchhiker who is picked up by a woman. They wind up spending a romantic-seeming day together, and the listener would expect this to turn into a happy ending if Kahane hadn’t warned us otherwise. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but suffice it to say that Kahane displays a wicked sense of humor, and his narrator has a sour memory to take from his adventure. Barn Song explores how language, or the lack of it, can separate young from old. Last Dance looks at how a death always seems to strike before we get to do that one last thing with the person we lose. And LA explores how an environment can lead to alienation. These are weighty topics, and Kahane does a great job of conveying all of these different moods with amazing vocal versatility. But what is even more remarkable is that the album is not a downer at all. Instead, Where Are the Arms is collection of portraits that draw our sympathies. The lyrics are spare, but they are free of cliché, and the performances of Kahane and his guests fill in any blanks. I am tempted to say that Kahane has arrived at his musical destination, but I suspect that that will only be true until the next album. I look forward to hearing it.

Gabriel Kahane: Charming Disease

Gabriel Kahane: Calabash & Catamaran

Folk Permutations

2011-10-22T03:13:00.000-04:00

My first encounter with folk music came when I was a child in the 1960s. Folk came in two flavors in those days. There were solo performers like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, who sang traditional songs and accompanied themselves with just a guitar or banjo. And there were groups like Peter, Paul, and Mary, usually trios, who might sprinkle in the occasional original or contemporary number, but were still folk because at least most of their material was traditional. The music was strictly acoustic. The subjects of the songs were the usual love and mayhem of traditional songs, plus a mix of protest songs.

Of course, things have changed, starting with Bob Dylan’s notorious performance at the Newport Folk Festival. Dylan plugged in, and performed original songs. The first result was that Dylan was denounced as, (horrors), not folk. But nowadays, most folk artists use some electric instruments, and original and modern songs are more often heard than traditional ones. For this set, I present five artists and bands who start almost from the foundation I first heard so long ago. But these artists write their own songs, and so they express a wider set of experiences than the music of my youth. They don’t rule out arrangements that may use plugged in instruments, but their sound is mostly acoustic.

The Weather Station: Everything I Saw

[purchase, price in Canadian dollars]

The Weather Station is Tamara Lindeman. There are three other musicians helping her out, but she is calling the shots. Lindeman plays guitar and banjo, and the arrangements here focus on her. Everything I Saw opens with Lindeman singing in a breathy near-whisper about the plants she grew in her garden, and you think this will be a neo-hippie flower-power song. But very soon, Lindeman shifts gears. The song becomes requiem for a relationship that has died. The narrator tells us of how she gave everything to this man she was involved with, and finally realized that she was getting nothing back. The intensity in Lindeman’s voice increases as the song goes on. The result is a powerful emotional statement, one of many on this album.

Jon Brooks: Cage Fighter

[purchase]

Jon Brooks is a storyteller. His songs present characters you don’t usually meet on old folk albums. Some of his characters lead lives filled with violence, but they still find their own personal form of grace. This is nowhere more true than in the song Cage Fighter. The protagonist here grew up as a child soldier in Sarajevo. From that, he became a Cage Fighter, like Wolverine was in the first X-Men movie. The fighting was real, and so were the injuries, but the narrator of the song describes the feeling of being in the cage as “Zen-like”. As listeners, we may be appalled but what this character did, but we sympathize with him as well. It takes a great writer to pull this off, and Brooks is.

The Barefoot Movement: Tobacco Road

[purchase]

The Barefoot Movement is a trio, with guitar, mandolin, and fiddle. On this album, there is also an upright bass to fill out the sound, and, only on Tobacco Road, a cello. The fiddler, lead singer, and main songwriter, is Noah Wall. I am fairly sure that it is physically impossible to play the violin and sing at the same time, so Wall plays fills and brief solos between verses. This Noah is a woman, and she sings in a wonderfully emotive folk soprano. Lyrically, Tobacco Road would seem to be the closest to traditional themes of any song in this set, but a close listen reveals layers of meaning. The song opens with the images, beautifully drawn in just a few short lines, of a farm that has fallen on hard times. On the surface then, the song is a story of a farm that has known better times. But Tobacco Road can also be taken as a portrait of a relationship that has changed as the rush of youthful first love has given way to age and the changes that come over time. In the end, this is a song about perseverance in the face of adversity, with the personal reflected in the condition of the soil and crops. It’s a great piece of writing, and Wall and Co back it up with a wonderful performance.

ellen cherry: 1998: The Things I Long For and the Things I Have Are Not the Same

[purchase]

Each song on (New) Years imagines a woman in a different year, from 1864 to 2010. The first six songs on the album fall in 20 to 30 year intervals, or roughly one for each generation. The last six songs are more closely clustered, with songs for 1983, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2005, and finally, 2010. The years chosen are not always the obvious ones, with no songs for the years of either World War, and no song for the 1960s or 2001. ellen cherry plays mostly guitar and some piano, and her style can be folk, jazz, or something in between, as the song demands. She also sings equally well in either style, a rare gift. This allows her to change the style of the music as she moves through the years, and she does this masterfully. Stylistically, 1998: The Things I Long for and the Things I Have Are Not the Same falls between jazz and folk. In the song, cherry takes us back to one of the last years in which you could easily find a pay phone, and imagines the woman’s part of a conversation with her lover. The strength of the writing and the emotion of the performance allow the listener to fill in the other side of the conversation. This is the magic of cherry’s writing. She provides a portrait of her character in such a way that we get to know the people in their lives, even though we never meet them.

Sinful Savage Tigers: The End of the Horse Drawn Zeppelin

[purchase]

Sinful Savage Tigers are also a trio. Between them, they play guitar, harmonica, banjo, mandolin, and every song has a stand up bass. Guest musicians provide fiddles, percussion, and dobro. All of this adds up to a sound that I would call modern stringband. All of the songs have a swing to them. The End of the Horse Drawn Zeppelin is a song that takes the phasing out of an old technology as a metaphor for the end of a relationship. There is a recognition of the need to move on, but also a powerful sense that something of value has been lost. The song is a fine example of the band’s ability to powerfully evoke emotion through indirection, with a strong performance to back it up.

Brother Sun - self-titled

2011-10-15T16:05:00.000-04:00

[purchase]

Brother Sun is the trio of Pat Wictor, Joe Jencks, and Greg Greenway. After ten years or more each as a solo artist, they have come together, and the result is an album that sounds like they have never been anything but a group. Here are three singers who take turns singing lead and back-up for the other singers, and the vocal blend is a marvel. Each plays guitar, but Greenway can switch to piano, Jencks to bouzouki, and Wictor to lap slide guitar. I’m not sure who plays electric guitar on some songs. I don’t think there are any overdubs, and there are no other musicians on the album, but the sound is full and rich throughout. There are a minimum of solos here, and two songs are accompanied only by fingersnaps. Just as the singing is so tight, so too is the ensemble playing. These artists support each other and the songs they have chosen.

Based on the lyrics, I would have called this album The Rock and the Reason. One of the songs Pat Wictor contributes is Love is the Water, and the next line is “That wears down the rock.” Later, Joe Jencks contributes Love is the Reason. As solo artists, each of these artists as explored a number of different themes, but the songs on this album are all about reaching for love and friendship in the face of adversity. There are eleven songs in all. One reason the album held my interest that long, with only one subject for all the songs, is the wonderful variety of musical settings. The different instrumental blends make for a nice variety of textures. Vocally, Brother Sun can go from the creamy harmonies of Trouble to the gospel stylings of Well Well Well, to what might be called the “folk” style of All I Want is a Garden. It also helps to have the singers taking turns singing lead. All three convey emotion, but each in their own way. Greenway starts things off with Trouble. He sings in a high tenor, and he expresses beauty in the way he sings. But sadness and even anger lay beneath the surface, trying to break through. Jencks is also a tenor, but, as heard on Come With Me, the pain is closer to the surface in his voice. Beauty and love come through in his voice is yearning, but he also conveys hope. Wictor has the lowest voice here, and sings in a folk blues style. The rough surfaces of pure blues are smoothed out, but the strong brew of emotion still comes through loud and clear. On Sister Moon, Wictor presents a different voice for a different kind of song. This one has an almost lullaby quality, and the song comes across as a beautiful expression of the wonder of love.

One song perhaps best displays everything that is so right about this album. Go Tell Mary is a co-write by Tom Prasada-Rao and Pat Wictor. But Brother Sun is a group of three generous musicians who are most interested in what is best for the song. So it is Joe Jencks, not Pat Wictor, who takes the lead vocal on this one. The bluesy quality on Wictor’s writing comes through, but in Jencks’ voice this time, and it works beautifully. The song is a telling of the biblical story of Lazarus, from the point of view of his sister Martha. Martha’s love for her brother, and also her sister Mary, form the focus of the song. Martha has taken on burdens for her sister’s sake, and now she does not regret it, but she yearns to lay them down, if only for a little while. The song is thus consistent with the album’s theme, but it also demonstrates how much these three songwriters find to say about it.

The album concludes with All I Want is a Garden. This one is a song of a traveling musician’s love of home and family. The song functions on the album as a closing benediction and prayer. It’s a great conclusion to a fine album. I was already familiar with Pat Wictor’s music. Now I know that I will need to find out more about Greg Greenway and Joe Jencks as well. Stay tuned.

Brother Sun: Trouble

Brother Sun: Well, Well, Well

Red Molly - Light in the Sky

2011-10-11T04:11:00.002-04:00

[purchase]

The easy and hard way to write about Light in the Sky would be to compare the new Red Molly with the old one. Molly Venter has taken the spot in the group that had been held by Carolann Solebello, and this is the first album with the new line up. It would be easy because it is an obvious entry point. It would be hard because I don’t want to say that this or that line up is better or worse. Red Molly was and is a special group of three women who bring diverse talents and blend them into a greater whole. Here, they are aided by the same backing musicians throughout the album, and that helps bind together a more stylistically varied set than before. The blues and country flavors are still strong here, as are the beautiful folk ballads, but there are also a couple of jazzy shuffles and one gospel number. And I got my wish: Fever is here as a delightful bonus track to finish the album.

On most of the album, Abbie Gardner plays dobro and Molly Venter plays acoustic guitar. Laurie MacAllister picks up an electric bass for two songs, and Gardner sets down her dobro and picks the banjo for one. The opening track, Dear Someone, is performed a capella, and serves as a wonderful intro to the blend of the three women’s voices. Gardner brings the blues and jazz influences, and has a sob in her voice that also works beautifully on the more country-flavored songs. She shines on Come On in My Kitchen, making the song a promise of shelter from the storm. MacAllister’s lead vocal on Ghost is a fine example of what she brings to the group. She delivers a clear reading of the lyric, her voice breaking with the emotion of the song. It’s never overdone, but the yearning of the song comes through perfectly. Venter’s voice has a smoky quality and a bit of bite in her delivery. This approach works beautifully to convey the gospel fervor of By the Mark, and the call and response vocal between Venter and the other two on this song is a great example of the rapport that these women have. Much as I admire Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, this version of By the Mark, with its full band arrangement and vocal ensemble work, greatly improves on the original. The band includes drums and stand up bass, with piano or organ on some tracks, and fiddle and mandolin on others. Jake Armerding’s fiddle parts are especially notable. Appearing on seven of the album’s fourteen songs, Armerding is asked to cover a wide stylistic range, and he delivers.

Light in the Sky was recorded entirely in the studio, but thematically, this can be considered a road album, at least in part. Dear Someone, Ghost, and especially Oh My Michael are songs of yearning, and of separation over a great distance. As rendered here, Walk Beside Me and Come On in My Kitchen are songs of female solidarity and bonding. And the title of Your Long Journey speaks for itself. But there is also Hold It All, the first song written by Molly Venter that the group has recorded, and it is a prayer for strength. And the rest of the songs concern falling in and out of love. In addition to Hold It All, there are only two other original songs this time, both cowrites by Abbie Gardner. But Red Molly is a group that is committed to strong songwriting, whether it is in their own material or their choice of covers. Light in the Sky is a collection songs of varied emotions, eloquently written and beautifully performed.

Red Molly: Oh My Michael

Red Molly: Fever

Based on Blues

2011-10-04T03:43:00.000-04:00

The image above is the work of artist Kenneth Anderson. Learn more about him, and see more of his work here.

Blues is foundational music. What I mean by that is that the music itself developed in several directions, but along the way, artists in other genres took inspiration from it, and made something new. Sometimes, it was a new kind of blues. Other times, it was a new musical genre. The five songs in this post represent snapshots of different points in this process. Some of these artists are certainly blues artists, while others are simply drinking from the deep well that is the blues.

Big Jim Adam and John Stilwagen: Work Til the Sun Goes down

[purchase]

The music of Big Jim Adam and John Stilwagen is a survey of blues styles from country blues from prior to World War II to Chicago blues as it sounded in the 1950s. But these songs are not just museum pieces; Adam and Stilwagen invest each with the immediacy and emotion that great blues demands. Work Til the Sun Goes Down is an original song, just written a year ago. But, there is a type of blues, one of the earliest forms, known as work songs or field hollers. These were rhythmic songs, sung by field laborers a capella, that accompanied tasks like the hoeing heard here or the chain gangs swinging their hammers. Work Til the Sun Goes Down sounds like it might once have been a field holler, and Adam and Stilwagen have given it a haunting instrumental backing that works perfectly.

Danielle Miraglia: See the Light

[purchase]

Danielle Miraglia is a wonderful singer-songwriter. Blues is one of many ingredients in her work, and its presence is subtle. You can hear it in how she approaches her vocals, with moans and growls mixed in with the sweetness. See the Light also has some wonderful, although brief, blues licks on the banjo towards the end of the song. Some of her other songs, obviously including her version of Stagger Lee, are bluesier than this. But See the Light is a perfect example of how the blues mixes with other musical forms, and, like this entire album, it is also a fine performance.

Scott Ramminger with Mary Ann Redmond: There Must Be Something Wrong With You

[purchase]

Scott Ramminger’s songs come from the place where Chicago blues began to morph into early rock and roll. He also mixes in a healthy dose of New Orleans spirit. And there are even hints of country on a couple of songs. But there is never any mistaking the fact that Ramminger is a bluesman first, and a fine one. There Must Be Something Wrong With You is a slow burner, a passionate blues ballad. Mary Ann Redmond is his duet partner here, and their voices mesh perfectly. Ramminger is a sax player, so the horn parts here and elsewhere on the album are an extra treat.

Gina Sicilia: Members Only

[purchase]

I have stated elsewhere that the music that is called R&B these days has had all of the blues stripped out of it. R&B originally stood for Rhythm and Blues, and Gina Sicilia restores the connection between the two. You can call Sicilia a belter, but only if you admit that Aretha Franklin was too. Both singers raise their voices when their emotions swell, but neither does it for show. Lyrically, Members Only is a rhythm and blues song, but the vocal is well within the passionate tradition of blues shouters. Some of the other songs here are even more in the rhythm and blues category, but the vocals come straight from the blues.

The Jeff Golub Band: I‘m Tore Down

[purchase]

In his day job, as it were, Jeff Golub is a fusion jazz guitarist, somewhat in the mold of George Benson. But the album The Three Kings is something different: a tribute, with vocals on most tracks, to BB, Albert, and Freddie King. Golub hands the vocal off to others, and focuses on leading the band. This is electric blues with horns. The band is both tight and loose, in all the right ways. The songs feel like honest outpourings of emotion, with the band providing a solid frame for brief, but spontaneous-sounding solos. It’s powerful stuff, as the blues should be, and I’m Tore Down is a fine example.

For a Song: The Promised Land

2011-09-30T02:39:00.001-04:00

Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer: The Promised Land

[purchase]

You might recognize the illustration I have chosen for this post. It’s the fool card from the Morgan-Greer tarot deck. The card represents a person who has set aside their old life, and set out to parts unknown in search of something new. The departure has no set destination, only the desire to go, and see what happens. Dave Carter’s song The Promised Land tells of a departure like this from a literal point of view, a physical departure. The card also has a spiritual element, the setting aside of ones comfort zone to seek new experiences and perspectives. Some of Carter’s other songs make this spiritual side more explicit, but I think it’s safe to say that it is an element here as well.

The Promised Land comes from Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer’s album Seven is the Number. This is a collection of songs Carter wrote, but it fell to Grammer to turn them into finished tracks and shepherd their release after Carter’s untimely death. This was the beginning for her of a spiritual journey that continues to this very day. Grammer’s journey has not been by choice however, so a different tarot card would suit her better.

Poetry Men

2011-09-24T15:26:00.000-04:00

When I hear a song, and when I hear an artist for the first time, I usually hear the music before the words. I am drawn in by the melody, or maybe something in the arrangement, or the groove. Sometimes, I go years without knowing what a favorite song is about. But that doesn’t work, and isn’t fair to the artists, when I am covering someone here. So running this blog for the last three years has taught me to listen in a new way. There are times when the rewards are great. Some songs are beautiful as poems first, with a musical setting, in the best case, that perfectly compliments the words. Here then are five such songs. It may not be the case, but I imagine as I listen to them that the words were written first, and then the music was created afterwards to enhance the meaning. These songs not only made me appreciate the words, but also led me to consider what a poem is, and what it can do.

Grant Davidson: Up and Leaf

[purchase]

The image at the top of this post suggests a type of poem that celebrates nature in rhapsodic terms. Grant Davidson, in Up and Leaf, uses the image of a nesting bird as an extended metaphor. The narrator is a man who wants his relationship with a woman to go in a certain direction. But he is having trouble telling her directly, so he resorts to the metaphor. All at the same time, Davidson tells a story of a relationship, clearly explains his character’s state of mind, and renders his images beautifully. And this in the space of a few short lines. Up and Leaf is a marvel of concise writing, and just one of many examples on this album. The music on the album ranges from folk to country, all with a beautifully understated approach that focuses the listener on the words.

Joe Crookston: The Nazarene

[purchase]

Joe Crookston is a folk-based artist who creates musical settings with textural elements that take his listener out of their comfort zone. His words do the same thing, to powerful effect. The Nazarene is a fine example. This is the story of an almost-normal family. The song is narrated by the son. There is the father who coaches his Little League team. And there is the mother, who lives in a mental institution, and believes that she is Jesus. Crookston could tell this as a sort of horror story, but he does something far more remarkable. He tells of how father and son go to visit the mother, and how they participate in her delusions when they are with her. Crookston presents this as an act of love, and the love is what comes through to the listener. Other songs also dwell on the theme that our emotional reactions are not always what others might expect. A widower expresses sorrow at the loss of his wife, but he is also angry at her for leaving him alone. There is a folktale which I know as “That’s Good, That’s Bad”, and it makes perfect sense that Crookston has turned it into a song here. A farmer’s neighbors show up alternately to congratulate him on his good luck, or to commiserate when apparent misfortune strikes. But the farmer assures them in each case that things may not be as good or bad as they seem. Crookston knows that human emotions are complex, and he finds a way to convey this complexity brilliantly in the space of a short song.

Mark W Lennon: Home of the Wheel

[purchase]

I had to listen to Home of the Wheel, the song, more times than the other songs in this post. I needed to convince myself that Mark W Lennon could not have been present for the events described in the song. Yes, indeed, Lennon does tell us that this happened the day his father was born. Lennon is a very visual writer, and his songs have an immediacy that sounds like the songs are drawn from personal experience. Home of the Wheel tells of a hurricane that struck in 1938, and I can see the changing colors and textures of the sky as I listen. In other songs on the album, I can see the wrinkles on people’s faces as they talk. The music is on the border between folk and country, but there is a dark edge to some of the songs, as Lennon’s characters struggle to keep misfortune from their doors. As much as I enjoyed Lennon’s debut EP, Down the Mountain, Home of the Wheel, the album, is the work of an artist who has found his voice.

Donal Hinely: Saint Pauline

[purchase]

Donal Hinely knows that a song does not always have to be a poem. He relies on the familiar tropes of country songs, twisting them just enough to make them his own. But Hinely can rise to the occasion when a riff gets up a head of steam. Saint Pauline is a song of gratitude to a loving wife who steered her man onto a better path than he had been on. But as the song develops, it becomes clear that the narrator’s devotion has become almost a religious worship. It sounds over the top as I describe it, but Hinely makes it believable and sincere. This is the kind of poetry that emerges on its own from everyday life, as when someone you might not expect says something amazingly beautiful. And then Hinely returns to his album, with a solid set of country based songs that know what they are, and are very good examples of their type. Within the country/ alt-country spectrum, Hinely demonstrates an impressive stylistic range, and he makes it all work beautifully.

Robert Earl Reed: Road to Hattiesburg

[purchase]

The other songs in this set each get at something real in the world, each in their own way. Robert Earl Reed creates a surreal alternate universe in his songs, and gets at something real by holding it up to this mirror. I would call his words Southern Gothic. His characters are haunted by the threat of Judgment Day, and oppressed by a corrupted humidity in the air. There is a rawness here, (and also some strong language), but it’s not all darkness. There are interludes where love rises from the ashes, or where a person can gain a personal victory, or at least a respite and a safe haven. Road to Hattiesburg introduces this journey, and it depicts a man on the run from memories and personal demons. The only thing he can get on the radio is a tent revival meeting. Where the other songs in this post may have been fine wine, this is strong whiskey that bites on the way down. The music sometimes has hard edges, with a banjo used especially well for this. This kind of thing would be easy too push too far, but Reed gets it exactly right.

Spottiswoode & His Enemies - Wild Goosechase Expedition

2011-09-22T03:47:00.000-04:00

[purchase]

When I wrote about Spottiswoode in my post on Rosler‘s Recording Booth, I said I wanted to know more about his work. It’s great in this business when you get your wish, but it’s even better when your first impression is correct. Wild Goosechase Expedition is a generous helping of Spottiswoode & His Enemies, with seventeen songs and just over an hour of music. The rich musical imagination that was on display in his Rosler performance is here in abundance. This is also my first encounter with Spottiswoode as a writer. He serves up a wonderfully varied but highly coherent program of songs here. His band must be conversant in a variety of musical styles and moods, and they show themselves here to be very fine musicians. I particularly want to single out the work of drummer Konrad Meissner. Spottiswoode’s regular drummer Tim Vaill was not available for the recording sessions, so Meissner was called on to sub for him. Meissner had to be versatile, and pick up on the variety of moods that Spottiswoode wanted in these songs, and he did a great job. Vaill is now back with the band, but they would do well to stay in touch with Meissner in case they ever need him again.

The line-up of Spottiswoode & His Enemies starts off normally enough, with drums, bass, and Spottiswoode on guitar. Then things start to get interesting. A second guitarist also plays mandolin and glockenspiel. The keyboard player plays piano, organ, accordion, and maybe something else that I missed. And there are two horn players, who can contribute R&B riffs or Miles Davis-like harmonies on trumpet and sax. The horn players also contribute background vocals. The album opens with Beautiful Monday. This is a sunny pop-rock tune with a British invasion feel, and some horn work of the sort Burt Bacharach used to favor. This establishes a tone of comfort and normalcy that is soon to be disrupted. Purple River, Yellow Sun opens with chanted vocals over chiming piano notes, and the song has bursts of tumult, with anthemic rock vying for supremacy with the poppier sound of the opener. The sense of comfort fades, and the music becomes unsettled. Odd harmonies begin to move in. Just a Word I Use has verses with a French cabaret feel, and bursts of almost hard rock on the choruses. Elsewhere, there are Bo Diddley beats, chiming guitars, jazzy excursions, even some things that border on world music from an unknown tribe. Spottiswoode ties all of this together with his vocals. He sings in a slightly scratchy baritone, and he is one of the most passionate singers I know of. There are plenty of opportunities for him to cross a line, and make the songs bombastic, but that never happens. That said, this album overall has a theatrical quality, and it’s a show I would gladly see.

The title Wild Goosechase Expedition suggests aimlessness, but this album tells a story. I mentioned the sense of normalcy that opens the album. Beautiful Monday is a celebration of normalcy, with only the vaguest hint that this will soon be disrupted. It opens the first section of the album, entitled Setting Out. The setting out actually occurs in Purple River, Yellow Sun, and the previous normalcy becomes either an illusion or a fading memory. The next section is called The Kingdom of the Dead. Here, Spottiswoode’s narrators try with out success to hold on to memories of love. I’d Even Follow You to Philadelphia shows that Spottiswoode can tell his tale with droll humor. The longest section is titled Massacre in the Desert. Here, the narrators have reached the point of despair. Loved ones try to send lifelines, but their messages fall on deaf ears. The album’s title track comes in this section, and it uses black humor to express a sense that whatever motivated this journey was wasted. The final section, Starvation and Surrender, has the narrators returning home, but something has been irretrievably lost, at least as of the end of the album. You Won’t Forget Your Dream closes the album with the suggestion that recovery may be possible, but it can also suggest that the reason for the departure in the first place is regaining its strength as the narrator rests. So this may be a somewhat happy ending, or just the resumption of a cycle. There is ambiguity here, and that is intentional. Taken as a whole, the album may be about a breakup and reconciliation. Or it may be about a spiritual journey, in which a character learns that fulfillment lay in what he already had. Or, the album may be about a band going on and returning from a tour, an idea that is most clearly suggested by the song Wake Me Up When It’s Over. Personally, I think the album is about all of these, and probably a few other things I haven’t mentioned. These songs reach out to the listener, and invite us to imagine. It’s an invitation I was glad to accept.

Spottiswoode & His Enemies: Purple River, Yellow Sun

Spottiswoode & His Enemies: Wild Goosechase Expedition

Spotlight Special: I Love You

2011-09-20T03:48:00.000-04:00

I Love You: Carol Morgan Quartet

[CDs will be available for purchase soon here]

The new album review is taking longer than I expected. Partly, that is because the album I’m working on is a long one, with over an hour of music. But it is also an album that takes me out of my musical comfort zone. I hope to have the review up tomorrow, but you, my readers, have been more than patient, so I wanted to share something with you while you wait.

As it happens, this post also takes me out of my comfort zone, because I never write about instrumental jazz. That’s because I love it when it’s done well, but I am not sure I know how to say why. Let’s find out. The Carol Morgan Quartet has Morgan on trumpet, and there are a tenor saxophone, stand up bass, and drums. No piano. I Love You as an old Cole Porter standard. The risk in doing a song this familiar is that the listener may compare it to a favorite version by someone else. The way to overcome that is to add something original to the conversation. Carol Morgan and her group do so brilliantly. Morgan introduces the theme by herself; the trumpet comes in by itself, and states the theme in a lonely vacuum. When the saxophone enters, the bass plays a heartbeat accompaniment. There is something of a sense here of the trumpet and sax feeling each other out. The drums come in with a sudden jump of joy, and the bass pattern changes to accentuate this. But the sax soon drops out, with the trumpet trio moving things along for a bit. The trumpet drops out to make room for the sax solo, and the rhythm pattern changes again. Then it’s just drums and bass for a bit at one point; usually, that would mean a bass solo, but here it’s a drum solo supported by a bass pulse. Finally, everyone comes back in for a finale that features wonderfully intertwining sax and trumpet lines. So there are all of these shifts in mood, and even in the approach to making the music. In some modern jazz, the melody and the idea of the song fracture into shards, becoming abstract and unrecognizable. Not here. Morgan and her group put a standard through a remarkable number of changes, but they never lose track of the melody. The result takes the words “I Love You”, and makes an eloquent statement on how love changes and grows in the long course of a relationship. All of this happens without a single word being sung. There are times when no words are needed.

Group Dynamics

2011-09-14T15:05:00.000-04:00

I haven’t talked much here about my own musical experience. I tried many instruments as a child, and mastered none. The first was cello for three years as a boy, and the other longest one was piano for about a year. In between, I tried flute, oboe, even clarinet for a few minutes. But I would say that the only thing that really took, and that really has a bearing on what you read here, was my discovery of choral singing in high school. Once I got to that point, I found a preference for smaller chamber choirs, and I stayed with that for a few years into adulthood, until the demands of parenthood got in the way. More relevant to this blog was my education as a listener. That began with a wonderful gift from my parents. They were both amateur classical musicians, my father on oboe and my mother on violin. They had friends who played piano and cello, and they would get together at our house every Saturday night when I was a child to play chamber music. There was also a flute player who couldn’t always make it. So chamber music works were my lullabies. From this, I gained a lifelong appreciation of the sound of musicians interacting in small groups. My examples in this post have nothing to do with classical music, but the interplay of these musicians is just as wonderful.

The Boxcar Lilies: Leaving You (Was Like Quitting My Day Job)

[purchase]

The Boxcar Lilies are the trio of Jenny Goodspeed, Katie Clarke, and Stephanie Marshall. Each plays an instrument, (isn’t Katie Clarke the perfect name for a banjo player?), and they take turns on lead vocals, with the other two providing great support singing backup. Heartwood is their debut album, and they were more than ready. The album is a marvel of consistency, a solid work of contemporary folk that allows each of their voices to be heard, but shows why they are together. Jenny Goodspeed takes the lead on her song Leaving You. The song is an acoustic country waltz, and it leads you to expect a heartbroken break up song. But then the chorus arrives, and the song turns into a marvelously over the top brush off song. The Boxcar Lilies can show their serious side too, but I love the playfulness and good humor of this one.

The Steel Wheels: Riverside

[purchase]

As players, The Steel Wheels are a high energy bluegrass band, but on top of that are rock vocals. This is especially true of lead singer Trent Wagler. Their harmony arrangements are also inspired by gospel music, and some of the playing also has a jazzy feel to it. Can they make all this work together? Listen to Riverside. The song is actually a blues, the fervor of the performance is gospel, but, whatever else it is, it’s one of the mightiest and most righteous performances I have heard this year. And the album offers up many more treats of this kind, as well as some great slow burners, and a couple of fiery instrumentals.

Blame Sally: Parajos Sin Alas

[purchase]

What do you think of Country and Spaghetti Western as a new musical genre? The music of Blame Sally is the sound of country flying through a lonely canyon on a dry wind. There is the suggestion of space in this music, and a haunted quality. Parajos Sin Alas is a fine example of this sound, one of many on this album. The song uses the combination of syncopation and repetition to create an insistent quality that works beautifully. I only wish I knew what the Spanish words meant.

The Reneaus: Room For Roses

[purchase]

The other groups in this post share the writing and lead vocal duties. But the Reneaus are Ashley Cooper Winn’s band; she takes all of the lead vocals, and all of the songs are hers, at least on this album. That’s a perfectly good model for a band, and it certainly works here. Winn sings in a plaintive soprano with a bit of breath. A lot of the time, the instrumentation is that of a rock band, except for the stand up bass. That makes a powerful difference here. In the title track of Room For Roses, the bass starts things off with a rumble of thunder. The percussionist is playing what I think is a snare, cymbals, wood blocks, and maybe something I missed. There is a rhythm guitar, and the lead guitar has an abrasive tone that slashes through the song. The gentleness of Winn’s voice makes an excellent foil to this. There is an organ part in the background that helps to blend all of this together. This music is no more unsettled than the emotions it presents. And the combined effect is powerful indeed. Elsewhere on the album, there is banjo and some pedal steel. In all cases, The Reneaus show a great talent for combining musical sounds that don’t normally mix, and making them work.

The Greencards: Mrs Madness

[purchase]

The instrumentation is bluegrass, the vocals by Carol Young and Kym Warner are understated, but clear and full of feeling, and the musical style is… unpredictable in the best way. Their website refers to their “multi-dimensional Americana vision”; it’s clunky, but accurate. So some songs here lean towards bluegrass, some towards folk, still others have a jazzy feel that puts me in mind of David Grisman. And then there’s Mrs Madness. This one could have gone in my Cabaret post back in July. It’s probably the last thing you would expect from a folk group, but The Greencards seem to specialize in the unexpected, and they make it all work beautifully.

Ray Bonneville - Bad Man’s Blood

2011-09-10T11:19:00.000-04:00

[purchase]

Listening to Bad Man’s Blood, I am reminded of the music of John Lee Hooker. Hooker would set up a groove with just a few notes, and he would stay on those notes for the entire song. The effect was haunting, like an incantation. It was a technique that only worked for Hooker, I thought, but its power was undeniable. Ray Bonneville has a somewhat richer musical vocabulary here, but he achieves some of the same kind of effect. Bonneville casts a spell, and he holds you for the length of the album.

The songs on Bad Man’s Blood are mid-tempo stomps, and stomps is an apt term. Bonneville plays either acoustic or electric guitar on every song, sometimes both. To this he adds what the liner notes call “foot percussion”; basically, this seems to mean that he stamps his foot in time to the music. Mike Meadows is the drummer on some tracks, but this is not drumming as you usually hear it. Meadows is playing a “Black Swan”, which is a tunable hand drum with changeable heads, so you can get a wide variety of sounds from it; here, Meadows is just playing a steady pulse, like a heartbeat. Gurf Morlix plays electric guitar, baritone guitar, bass, and banjo in various places. His role is to thicken the sound and add texture. Also adding to the texture on two songs is Dexter Payne on saxes. And here and there, Bonneville adds smudges of sound on harmonica. These smudges are sort of accidental chords, and their purpose is not melodic at all. They sound like something from another planet, but they make musical sense in context. In sum, the tempos don’t change much on this album, but Bonneville and his crew vary the textures enough to make this a fascinating listen. Bonneville sings in a weathered bluesy baritone. Bonneville knows his limits vocally, but he can imbue the title song with a sense of foreboding, while the affection in Blond of Mine, the sly humor of Funny ‘Bout Love, and the yearning in Darlin’ (Put You Suitcase Down) all come through loud and clear.

There is also a nice variety of themes in the lyrics. Of course, there are love songs. Darlin’ (Put Your Suitcase Down) is what it sounds like, a song about a break up. But Bonneville leaves open the possibility that the Darlin’ in the song might finally decide to stay. Funny ‘Bout Love is about the feelings of a man and a woman who meet years after they stopped being a couple. And Sugar and Riley relates the tale of a lovers quarrel overheard through a wall; Bonneville hastens to assure us in the first chorus that everything was ok again by morning. Other songs are more mysterious. River John sounds like a fond remembrance of a friend who has passed on. Night Walker is a speculation about a stranger who is observed walking around outside night after night; Bonneville’s narrator regards him with intense curiosity, but does not see him at all as a threat. In all of these songs, there is a sense of hope, and abundant sympathy. Bonneville sees the world as full of good people who sometimes get in bad situations.

So, where John Lee Hooker portrayed men in hopeless positions, overcome by their fate, Bonneville uses the same kind of insistent music not to despair but to urge perseverance. Bad Man’s Blood casts a spell, but the darkness never takes over. This album is insistent, but hopeful in hard times. Bonneville’s voice has a smile in it, especially later in the album. I’m sharing that smile right now.

Ray Bonneville: Sugar and Riley

Ray Bonneville: Night Walker

Bluegrass and Beyond

2011-09-06T02:04:00.001-04:00

Newgrass is a term that is used to describe some of the music that is coming out these days. It is mostly acoustic music, and it uses instruments that are often found in bluegrass: acoustic guitar of course, but also banjo, fiddle, stand up bass, dobro, mandolin, and so on. That all sounds specific and vague at the same time. You can use some of these instruments and not others, and still be newgrass. You can incorporate a variety of musical influences. So I thought it might be helpful to listen to some of the different traditional musics that newgrass grew out of. Even if you, the reader, end up as confused as before about what newgrass is, I promise you some great music along the way.

Ivan Rosenberg & The Foggy Hogtown Boys: Low and Lonesome Sea

[purchase]

I am talking about musical traditions that have their origins in the American South. So it makes sense to begin our journey in Toronto, Canada. Actually, that only makes sense in the company of Ivan Rosenberg and the Foggy Hogtown Boys. Rosenberg and the Boys have set out to make an album of bluegrass as played in the 1970s, before many of the musical innovations that so muddy the waters today. But this album is no museum piece. The music sounds lively and fresh, because the musicians clearly love what they are doing, and they have the talent to back it up. The Hogtown Sessions is a mix of originals and covers. The new songs sound right at home with songs by the Osborne Brothers and Ralph Stanley. There are also old country songs here, quite successfully reimagined as bluegrass. Low and Lonesome Sea is a reminder that this music evolved from the traditional ballads that were brought to Appalachia by the areas original European settlers. The song is an old English ballad that I first heard as The Golden Vanity.

Thomm Jutz (with Caroline and Hannah Melby of Nash Street): The South‘s on Fire

[purchase]

The 1861 Project is a wonderful album that can function as a survey of Southern music. There is an Irish ballad here, and also two songs that represent the acoustic side of modern country, with lead singers John Anderson and Marty Stuart. In between are various strands of Southern folk, including The South’s on Fire. The song is close to bluegrass, but it has some jazz flavorings that make it newgrass. The vocals are by sisters Caroline and Hannah Melby. They have their own band, Nash Street, and I checked them out in preparing for this post. I can report that Nash Street is quite good in their own right, and I hope to have more to say about them in the future.

Meanwhile, it is true that The 1861 Project could be a horrible mishmash. That it is not is a testament to the talent of Thomm Jutz. This album is his baby. All of the songs were written or cowritten by Jutz, and he performs on all of them, even taking the lead vocals on a few. The 1861 project is a collection of songs about how ordinary people got through the American Civil War, although we do meet the occasional general along the way. Jutz puts his musical mark on everything here, but his lyrics are just as important. Jutz takes people who lived 150 years ago and brings them to life in the here and now. This album has “Volume 1” in its full title. I look forward to volume 2 as well.

Robin & Linda Williams: Somebody‘s Someone

[purchase]

Robin and Linda Williams made their recording debut on a small Minnesota label in 1975. They made their early reputation on A Prairie Home Companion, the radio show also out of Minnesota. But they originally hail from Virginia, and their music is Southern folk, but not exclusively bluegrass by any means. Stonewall Country is another Civil War album of original songs. This one is set of music written for a stage show that tells the story of the life of Stonewall Jackson. Each song represents a different character or mood, and the music shifts accordingly. So there is a bluegrass number, a blues, and any number of songs that resist genre labeling beyond folk. Robin and Linda Williams handle all of the lead vocals, and portray all of the different characters and moods, proving themselves to be wonderfully flexible singers. My point in including this album in this post is that what is called newgrass actually includes music that is only tangentially related to bluegrass in the first place. Somebody’s Someone is a beautiful love ballad, inspired by actual letters that Stonewall Jackson exchanged with his second wife during the war. Musically, it has more in common with country than bluegrass. Either way, it is one of the most moving songs on an album that is full of them.

Nell Robinson: Wahatchee

[purchase]

Nell Robinson can play and sing bluegrass as well as anyone, and she proves it here. But Robinson is not bound by it. On the Brooklyn Road is a set of songs inspired by Robinson’s family history and lore, and the music moves back and forth in time with the stories. There are also pieces of oral history, spoken by Robinson’s family, between some songs. The songs that tell of the earliest times are closest musically to bluegrass. Wahatchie is one of the oldest, but here something interesting happens. The song seems to be pure bluegrass, until you reach the first instrumental break. That’s when you realize that you have been hearing modalities from Celtic music all along. There are touches of Southern gospel, folk, and even blues in other songs. Robinson takes all of these influences and makes at clear that they are all part of her. It’s a wonderful performance.

Cheryl J Watson: I‘ll Learn to Live With the Blues

[purchase]

Take Cheryl J Watson’s album Watertown as a whole, and there can be no doubt that she is a newgrass artist. There are country and bluegrass and folk tunes here in abundance. But there are also a couple of moments that show just how far the label is being asked to stretch. One is an instrumental called Beaumont Rag, which proves to be a remarkable hybrid of bluegrass and ragtime. I’ll Learn to Live With the Blues is the other. This song would be right at home in one of my posts of jazz singers. In fact, if Watson ever does a whole album like this, I would have to consider it. The thing is, as Watson presents all of these different styles, she more than does all of them justice. She shows great versatility on guitar and mandolin. In fact, she switches out her accompanists to accommodate the varying musical styles on the album, but she plays on everything. And then there is Watson’s voice. She has a clear and clean tone, and she can handle the stylistic shifts with ease. Through it all, she never loses track of the emotion of each song. In short, Watson’s voice is the glue that hold this wonderfully diverse album together. I have a feeling that we will be hearing a lot more from her in the future.

Call for help:

Dudley Saunders: The Rain on Eight Avenue

[purchase The Emergency Lane here]

[listen to Monster and make your donation here]

Dudley Saunders is conducting an unusual fund drive to finish his next album Novelsongs. He is offering his new song Monster as a name-your-price download. Novelsongs is a good term for what he does. In a novel, as opposed to a short story, there is time to evoke a mood and establish a character. Saunders does this beautifully in his lyrics, and he creates musical settings that compliment this beautifully. Of course, I can not offer Monster as an example, but you can stream it before you give by following the link above. The Rain on Eighth Avenue is from Saunders’ previous album, The Emergency Lane, and it is a fine example of what I mean. Please help if you can. Thank you.

For a Song: Indigo Rose

2011-09-02T03:14:00.000-04:00

Salamander Crossing: Indigo Rose

[purchase]

This blog is my space to play some music that I love for whoever cares to listen. And Indigo Rose is a choice I can certainly live with. The song comes from what would be Salamander Crossing’s last album, Bottleneck Dreams, and it is a beautiful bittersweet contemplation of lost love. The extended metaphor of the deep blue flower is perfectly rendered, and lead singer Rani Arbo gives the song all the emotion it needs in an understated performance that is stronger for it.

But Oliver di Place is also my space to get things about music off my chest. Salamander Crossing were hailed as a bluegrass band while they were together. I don’t hear it at all. Nowadays, this music would be called Newgrass, and that is one of my least favorite genre labels. Basically, you can make any music at all using bluegrass instrumentation, and it’s newgrass. So, the label is almost meaningless. In my next post, I have in mind to take a look at some of the variety of music that fits this very loose description. Stay tuned.

Eliza Gilkyson - Roses at the End of Time

2011-08-30T03:39:00.000-04:00

[purchase]

I saw Eliza Gilkyson perform at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival last year. I remember that it was hot, and their were lots of people around. I don’t remember the songs she performed. But the next time I see her, it will be different. Roses at the End of Time is the first Gilkyson album I have ever heard, and I will not forget these songs. They are marvels of subtlety, and fine examples of the art of songwriting. It’s just that Gilkyson’s art is intimate, and a festival is probably not the best place to hear it for the first time.

On Roses, Gilkyson plays acoustic guitar most of the time, and she when switches to electric on some tunes, she does so for the difference in tone, but stays with the same technique. Most songs have a second guitar, either electric or acoustic, a bass, likewise either stand up or electric, and all but two songs have some kind of drums or percussion. No one steps out to take a solo, and neither are these songs driven by hooks. Instead, the band creates a set of textures that are completely in synch with the intent of each song. So Slouching Towards Bethlehem has a sort of gut bucket gospel feel, sort of like a Tom Waits song with the rough edges smoothed out some. Death in Arkansas sounds like an old time bluegrass song that is in danger of succumbing to modernity, which perfectly suits its subject matter. Belle of the Ball has an appropriately haunted sound. In short, the band here shows an astonishing tonal range, and Gilkyson shows a great gift for creating diverse musical settings that perfectly suit her songs. On top of all this is Gilkyson’s voice. As the album begins, it would be easy to Gilkyson a limited singer. She sings in a slightly scratchy alto, and she does not appear to have a wide range in terms of notes. But the more I listened, the more I came to marvel at her tonal and emotional range. She doesn’t raise her voice much, but she uses subtle shadings to put over a wide range of material. Blue Moon Night conveys a sense of wonder, 2153 is gently mocking, and Belle of the Ball and Vayan al Norte tug at the heartstrings in different, but equally powerful ways. Elsewhere, she conveys love, longing, and road weariness with equal eloquence.

Of course, the writing has something to do with it too. Vayan al Norte is an amazing piece of songwriting. Gilkyson presents Mexican immigrants in the United States. She begins the song in English, but Spanish words begin to slip in, and then take over completely. Thanks to a full English translation on Gilkyson’s website, I can tell you what’s going on here. The narrator of the song starts out emotionally in the US, but slowly their consciousness returns to Mexico, and what they had to leave behind to come here. The music also shifts subtlety to become more Mexican sounding. It’s a brilliant device. Once I Had a Home starts out sounding like it is about someone who became homeless when their house was foreclosed, but later it sounds more like it is about Native Americans who were forced from their lands and onto the reservations. The song ends up making a powerful connection between the two without explicitly stating either one. Other songs are more direct. Blue Moon Night captures a fleeting moment in time. The song has great beauty, but also a wonderful wistful quality. And Slouching Towards Bethlehem rides a great groove to spell out some of the evils of the world. It manages the trick of having a gospel fervency without sounding preachy in the least.

Blue Moon Night was great way to open this album. Its momentary bliss drew me in, and kept me listening long enough to discover more of the treasures on Roses at the End of Time. I suspect that I will find more of these treasures each time I listen to the album. That’s all I could ask.

Eliza Gilkyson: Blue Moon Night

Eliza Gilkyson: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

For a Song: Little Ramona (Gone Hillbilly Nuts)

2011-08-26T03:54:00.002-04:00

BR5-49: Little Ramona (Gone Hillbilly Nuts)

[purchase]

Things are kind of serious around here, as we await the arrival of Hurricane Irene on Saturday. So I wanted to lighten the mood. To my ear, Little Ramona (Gone Hillbilly Nuts) could not be more of a country song. But, even though BR5-49 recorded the song for Arista Nashville, they received minimal support from the label. The lyrics tell of a former punk rocker gone country, and the tongue is firmly in cheek. But the idea is not really that far fetched. There was a musical sub-genre in the 1980s and 90s known as cow punk. Jason and the Scorchers and Rank and File were two of the better known bands in this category. Also, John Doe and Exene Cervenka of the punk band X went on to form The Knitters as a side project, and an outlet for their form of country. So I find it easy to imagine that fans of punk might have traveled the same road. Little Ramona dons leather boots and western wear as a rebellion from the conformity of punk fashion. I find the irony of that irresistible. From Monty Python’s Life of Bryan: “Yes, we are all individuals!” “Eh, I’m not.”

Theme and Variations

2011-08-22T02:37:00.000-04:00

The starting point for much of the music that I post here is one man or woman with an acoustic guitar. Sometimes, they are seated at a piano instead. Either way, from this basic set-up a song emerges. Maybe the artist performs that song exactly the way it was written. But maybe they take the song and add a few other instruments. Maybe they take it to a working band, and a fuller arrangement is created. Or maybe that original guitar or piano part disappears, to be replaced by a full arrangement for a large band. Whatever happens, the original spark of inspiration must be present, and must survive the process, and hopefully be improved by it. The five songs I am presenting show a progression of how this can work out. All of the artists here had great songs to start with, and those great songs thrived under the treatments they were given. And each artist reached a different conclusion about how to make this happen.

Cam Penner: Cool Cool Nights

[purchase]

Cam Penner plays enough different instruments to record a rock album without needing a band, although he still has one on Gypsy Summer. Most of the album falls on the rock side of Americana. Cool Cool Nights is an exception to the overall sound of the album, and it was clearly written on the acoustic guitar. At first, all you hear is Penner’s voice and guitar, and the bass and drums enter quietly and stay that way. There is a harmonica solo on the break, and that’s it. Arranging the song this way brings Penner’s words and voice to the fore, and they stand up to the scrutiny beautifully. Penner’s voice has some weather in it, and that’s perfect for this song of longing and separation. The writing hits home, as it does throughout the album.

Lisa Jaeggi: Empirical Science

[purchase]

Lisa Jaeggi is an interesting case for inclusion here. In 2009, her album Oh Lady You Shot Me came out. It was a collection of nine songs, arranged for voice, acoustic guitar, and stand up bass. But, when Jaeggi’s current publicist contacted me about Epic Epic, she told me that it was Jaeggi’s debut album. Digging a bit further, I discovered that Epic Epic contains six songs from Oh Lady, and six new songs. So what gives? Apparently, Oh Lady was successful enough to allow Jaeggi to rerecord those older songs the way she actually heard them in her head. So, Oh Lady may be regarded as a set of demos, and Epic Epic would be the debut album. Clear?

In any case, this gives the listener the ability to hear how the arrangement of the song developed, and how it affected the sound of the song. Empirical Science was on Oh Lady, and it had a fierce groove, but it also sounded sparse. Now, the stand up bass is gone, replaced by an electric one, drums kick the beat along and really put this one high gear, and additional guitars thicken the texture and help to put the emotion across. The full band is particularly effective in making the transitions between verses and choruses. Jaeggi has a somewhat deadpan delivery, which works for her, but the full band arrangement really helps to put the full emotion of the song across. Ironically, in my original review of Oh Lady, I chose two of the three songs that did not make it onto the new album. Those songs did not need the full band treatment, but the rest have benefited greatly by it, and the new songs are of a piece.

Levi McGrath: By Your Side

[purchase]

Levi McGrath uses folk-pop arrangements to powerful effect. The basic arrangements here call for drums, bass, and acoustic and electric guitars, plus keyboards. String parts are added to some songs with a very light touch. McGrath’s voice reminds me of Duncan Sheik’s, and his arrangements are somewhere between Sheik’s and Luka Bloom’s. So the music leads you to expect well written love songs. To begin with, you might think that is what is happening in By Your Side, but then you find out that the song is sung to a twelve year old boy, and your world shifts under you. The album title Children of War, it turns out, is meant literally. This is a set of songs about child soldiers in the Ugandan Civil War, and the pop trappings give the music great power by playing with the listener’s expectations. Given that McGrath uses field recordings and performances by Ugandan musicians on some of the album’s songs, it is safe to say that Children of War is a powerful eyewitness account of a tragedy. McGrath tells the tales of individuals, so he never rants, and his sympathy for his characters makes the listener care as well. What could have been a depressing, or even horrifying, set of songs is inspiring instead.

Gwendolyn: American Gothic

[purchase]

Gwendolyn’s album Bright Light may be described as Americana, but it sounds like it doesn’t quite fit. She likes unusual tones and instruments, which add texture in subtle ways that you might only notice if they were pointed out to you. American Gothic is a fine example of this. Once the song gets going, it becomes clear that the musical basis for it is bluegrass. But the drum part is the obvious element that sets the song apart. There are also some more subtle additions, including electric guitar and glass harmonica. On top of this is Gwendolyn’s sweet voice. She is the center of attention, and everything comes together beautifully to support her.

Pinataland: The Death of Silas Deane

[purchase]

Like Gwendolyn, Pinataland favors experiments with musical textures. But where Gwendolyn uses a subtle approach, Pinataland’s approach is deliriously up front. The songs here depict characters whose emotions are unsettled, and the music reflects that. These songs are cowrites by the band’s male lead singer and keyboard player. Although there is an acoustic guitar part on The Death of Silas Deane, that part is really just transposed piano chords. The song has parts that sound like circus music, and others that sound like eastern European folk music. This all serves as a powerful backdrop to a tale of a man who is dying either of poison or of a severe stomach ailment. The music is a fascinating mixture that serves the lyric well, and it is a tribute to the band’s talent that it all holds together and makes a powerful impression. Incidentally, Silas Deane was a real person, a contemporary of John Adams and George Washington. Deane would become a spy in France, and finally die, either of poison or natural causes, during a voyage that would have returned him to the United States after a long absence. There is a lot more to the story, and it is quite interesting. For details, go here

Kris Delmhorst - Cars

2011-08-18T03:40:00.003-04:00

[purchase]

Starting in 1978 and running through most of the 80s, there was a new sound in popular music. Prior to that, your standard pop-rock band had drums, bass, and rhythm and lead guitar. There was a lead singer who sang sincere and heart-felt lyrics of the vicissitudes of love. A fifth member of the band, if there was one, played piano or organ or both, and sang back-up. But in 1978, a new band arrived, with great hooks, a lead singer who sang with ironic detachment, although the subject matter had not changed, and with a keyboard player who played synthesizer. The band had great writing, with some of the best hooks anyone had ever heard, and with lyrics that began with tales of teenage lust, and progressed to more mature tales of love as the band matured. The band was The Cars, and you may have guessed that they were favorites of mine. So I’m going to be touchy when someone covers one of their songs. Kris Delmhorst has covered an entire album of them.

The album is Cars. I have to believe that this project started back in the 80s, with Delmhorst learning each new Cars album by heart, and singing along with the records in her bedroom when she thought no one was listening. I say that because her phrasing throughout is perfect, just the way I remember the originals. Now, I don’t go for people who cover a song by reproducing the originals note for note. But, what saves Delmhorst’s vocal performances here for me is the fact that she understands that she is not Ric Ocasek. The notes and the phrasing are here, but the tone is new. Delmhorst does not come off as ironic at all, but the lyrics can support a sincere reading as well, and Delmhorst projects a wonderful warmth that works beautifully. The fast songs, like You Might Think and My Best Friend’s Girl have a playful quality that really works. But Delmhorst especially shines on the ballads. Drive was a big hit in the original version, but it was one place where I always thought that the ironic approach didn’t work. Here, Delmhorst gives a completely sincere reading, and I hear what I was missing.

But I have saved the best for last. Those great hooks are all here, but Delmhorst has arranged the songs for a sort of folk orchestra. On top of a solid foundation of drums and bass, there is an army of mostly acoustic instruments. Those synthesizer line from the original songs might be played here on accordion, fiddle, penny whistle, or even clarinet. On Drive, the original had a wash of synthesizers as the key to the sound of the song, but here it’s a combination of accordion with some bass clarinet added as the song progresses. This really warms the song up, making it more emotionally resonant. Delmhorst also loosens up the arrangements at times. The cello parts on Why Can’t I Have You add depth to the song. Listen closely to the bass line on My Best Friend’s Girl, and you will hear the wonderful playfulness of this album. And the banjo part in Hello Again is a great touch. The background vocals are a mix of high female voices and low male ones, and the push and pull between the two is a device that is used here to great effect, especially on Shake It Up.

In sum, Kris Delmhorst shaows that she loves these songs, and the album gives me fond memories of when I first heard them. But the songs have been revoiced, both vocally and instrumentally, which makes Cars an album that is full of delightful surprises.

Kris Delmhorst: Why Can‘t I Have You

Kris Delmhorst: Drive

The Joy of Jazz

2011-08-15T03:20:00.000-04:00

Critics sometimes talk about transcendent performances. I think that these happen when an artist is having fun. Everything else falls away, and the sheer pleasure of making music shines through. Jazz, with its freedom, lends itself to these kinds of performances. Here are some of them, from five jazz singers.

Mark Winkler: Sweet Spot (w Barbara Morrison)

[purchase]

I’ve talked here before about how I find it so difficult to find to find male jazz singers to feature. The model for many is the brat pack sound of Frank Sinatra and his cohorts. I find that sound heavy handed and overdone. Here’s why. Mark Winkler has all the emotion of any brat packer, but Winkler’s comes off as genuine, because he sings with a marvelous light touch. Sweet Spot the song has a bonus: Winkler is paired with Barbara Morrison, who has a great bluesy voice. Their voices are well matched, and this song sounds like it was a blast to record.

Incidentally, it may be a cliché, but Barbara Morrison is one of those great musicians who can’t afford emergency medical care. In researching her for this post. I learned that she recently had to have a leg amputated due to her diabetes. There is a fund drive on her website to raise money for her medical expenses, and you can donate here. Please help if you can.

Deborah Pearl: Doozy Blues

[purchase]

Deborah Pearl is one of those singers who uses her voice like a horn, in this case a tenor sax. On ballads, she skips around the beat but never loses it. She also has great dynamic control, going from loud to soft with the same emotional intensity. On the faster songs like Doozy Blues, Pearl is off and running, throwing in some scat singing along the way, and just completely celebrating the music. Souvenir of You is a tribute to Benny Carter, with Pearl’s original lyrics set to Carter’s tunes. Pearl knew Carter personally, and counted him as a friend. Souvenir of You then is a labor of love, and it sounds that way.

Audrey Silver: Exactly Like You

[purchase]

Where Deborah Pearl is a sax, Audrey Silver is a trumpet. There is a brashness in her delivery that gives her songs a bit of sass. I’ve heard this sort of thing taken too far, and it can really kill a performance. But Silver hits it just right, it pays off beautifully for her. Exactly Like You has both excitement and warmth as performed here. Silver likes to elongate her notes and phrases at times, pulling against the beat as laid down by her band; this creates a dramatic tension that works beautifully to get her point across.

Danielle Reich: This Year‘s Kisses

[purchase]

You have to listen for Danielle Reich’s voice above the band. She sings in a soft purr, caressing her songs. It seems at times that she is going to be overwhelmed by the band, but it never happens. Singers in this style can go off the rails if they are not precise about the rhythm. Reich has that down. At the end of the song This Year’s Kisses, she stops on a dime. Her voice has a quality of playful enticement, and she does a great job of finding songs that play to her strengths.

Cinzia Spata: Carlos

[purchase]

I started off by talking about the freedom of jazz, but singers are, of necessity, bound by the words they sing. However they do it, they must honor the emotion of their text. This is as true of Cinzia Spata as anyone else. Into the Moment is a mix of standards and more modern songs, But where the musical models for the other songs and singers in this set date from the swing era, Spata draws from bebop and the cool jazz of Miles Davis in her approach. The band is looser, and Spata has a playful quality in her voice to match. And then there is Carlos. There are no lyrics here. Spata sings scat throughout the song, and she can do whatever she wants. There is a middle section that is almost free jazz, and Spata gets some sounds in this section that a human voice should not be able to make. But she and her band never lose their sense of musicality, and they find their way back to the original melody in breathtaking fashion. In the end, this is one of the most exciting feats of vocal gymnastics I have ever heard.

For a Song: Galileo

2011-08-12T03:32:00.002-04:00

Indigo Girls: Galileo

[purchase]

I bought a book from Amazon a while back, called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles MacKay. The book is well known in the world of finance, particularly for its account of the Dutch Tulip Mania. It also discusses alchemy, dueling, and supposed holy relics, among other things. The book dates from 1841, so the use of language is somewhat archaic, and MacKay rambles, so it’s not exactly an easy read.

Well, it got to be early May, and I got an e-mail from Amazon asking me if I wanted to sell back my text book. Huh? What text book? And then I read the rest of the e-mail. Apparently, Extraordinary Popular Delusions is used as a text book for some college courses. And apparently, no one at Amazon can imagine anyone in their right mind reading the book for fun. And that is exactly what I am now doing, and I am having fun. I don’t what that says about me, but there it is.

What does any of this have to do with music? Well, Galileo is one of my favorite Indigo Girls songs, so I decided to share it this week. The song opens with an interesting percussion sound, which carries through whole song. The vocal features the wonderful harmonies of Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, aided in this case by Jackson Browne and David Crosby on backing vocals. The fiddle part sounds like an entire string section, but used really well. And if you think from all of this that I never completely heard the lyrics before, you’re right. So, now I have, and that’s what reminded me of the book. One of the major themes of the book is that a society can get an idea in its head that just grows and grows, regardless of the fact that it never really made sense. This can also happen to an individual, and in the song, the idea is reincarnation. The narrator gets into her head that she has had a number of past lives, and these past lives become both an excuse and a burden. For her, being responsible for just one life was burden enough. But as I said, the idea grows and grows. The whole thing is delivered in a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek way. Maybe reincarnation is real, but it doesn’t follow that every person would be better off for knowing that.

Quilters

2011-08-09T03:54:00.000-04:00

A group of woman gets together to make a patchwork quilt. The rules of the game say that each is to bring a patch of cloth with something beautiful on it. None of the others is to know what she brings. The result is a new kind of beauty, fascinating in its variety, and yet somehow of a piece. Musical genres can be like that. Each artist works within or around the conventions of the genre, and the genre is richer for it. Here are five women who each bring their scraps of cloth to country music. Country can perhaps be more stale and cliché ridden than any other genre. What makes it work, when it does, is that the artist is fully invested in it emotionally. These women are, each in their own way.

Leslie Krafka: The Best For Me

[purchase]

Leslie Krafka understands the form of country music very well. Her sound comes from Texas wing of the genre, where productions have a little more space in the music, and instrumental touches like the wonderful mandolin part heard here are not unusual. Krafka has a fine voice for this too, warm with an occasional sense of wonder. But what stands out for me are her words. Wandering Troubadour won Kafka a Song of the Year award from the Houston Songwriters Association for its contemporary take on gypsy romance, and The Best for Me is just as good. This time, Krafka presents a kind break-up song. The narrator knows that it is time for her to spread her wings, but she also expresses love and gratitude to the partner she is leaving. It’s a refreshing change from the bitter break-ups that are so much a part of country music, and Krafka makes it completely convincing.

Susan Cattaneo: Fall to Fly

[purchase]

Fall to Fly presents a woman who is just at the point of daring to love. The winter imagery here is a great touch. Susan Cattaneo has the perfect soaring voice for this, with quiet moments coming at the perfect times in the song. The key here is the production. Do too little, and a song like this sounds almost like a caricature, with the vocal unsupported. Do too much, and the message gets buried in a wall of sound that makes the whole thing sound artificial. Cattaneo and her producer Jan Stolpe get it perfect here, and the result is a soaring love ballad that is utterly convincing. Bonus: Jake Armerding, who long-time readers here have heard both solo and with Red Molly, does the background vocals here.

Kate Redgate: Cold November

[purchase]

Kate Redgate has a voice with some wear in it, and that works perfectly here in a song about a relationship gone cold. Late autumn and a house in disrepair serve as metaphors for a relationship the narrator can’t quite bring herself to talk about in direct terms. The wound is still too raw. The honesty comes through loud and clear, and Redgate conveys the emotions perfectly, and never overdoes it. The drummer uses mallets instead of sticks on this one, which gives the song an unusual sound that works perfectly.

Amy Black: One Time

[purchase]

If Amy Black ever does an album of acoustic blues, I hope someone lets me know, because she has a great voice for it. The beginning of the song One Time is blues, and that’s just what I mean. But then the song goes country, and Black shows how the two forms are connected. The song has the narrator advising a friend to leave a man who mistreats her. This kind of song is common to the blues and country genres, so a great performance is what makes it worth doing. In terms of production, the harmonica and fiddle are both used beautifully here.

Kathryn Caine: The Fall

[purchase]

On The Fall, Kathryn Caine is not backed by the David Grisman Quintet, circa 1979. But that’s the sound the band gets, and it’s as exciting now as it was then. With that kind of jazziness going on underneath, Caine could have chosen to do some kind of jazz singing over the top. The vocal delivery that Caine chooses is what places the song on the country spectrum. Her performance has grit and swing, but she hits the beat straight on, without the rhythmic ornamentation that would make this jazz. The combination is completely unexpected, and it works beautifully. The song opens with the narrator warning a new lover that she won’t allow herself to be hurt this time. Then she realizes that he feels the same way. They decide that neither one will be hurt, and the song becomes a statement of determination that this relationship is going to be the one. The trick to putting over this kind of song is to avoid stridency, and Caine succeeds brilliantly.

Acoustic Guitars

2011-08-05T04:27:00.002-04:00

I have some unstated rules for Oliver di Place. One is that I don’t post instrumental music, especially not music for a single solo instrument such as, oh say, the acoustic guitar. I enjoy this music when it is done well, by say John Fahey, Stefan Grossman, or Martin Carthy, to name a few. But I feel somewhat at a loss to say why. There is a lot of technical language that other guitar players would know that describes this music, but I don’t speak the language. Maybe you don’t either. All I know is what I hear and what I like.

Having said all that, I heard from a guitar player from Israel at the end of last year, and I enjoyed what I heard. Next thing I knew, I had an album for Oliver di Place that I didn’t know what to do with, so it sat. That was Yair Yona. Then, more recently, a British guitar player named Sean Siegfried got in touch. Again, I didn’t know what I would do with it, but I soon had another album. Finally, I connected the two, and decided I had better find some more guitar players and get it over with. I’m glad I did, because these five players certainly deserve to be heard.

Sean Siegfried: Apples in Winter

[purchase]

Sean Siegfried takes his inspiration from great British and Celtic guitar players, notably Bert Jansch. Siegfried’s tunes are original, but he succeeds in capturing the flavor of traditional songs, and I can hear one of those wonderful British folk baritones in my head as I listen. Siegfried sets up a strong rhythmic foundation on the lower string, and harmonizes his melodies using the middle strings. To my ear, it sounds like he is using a lot of minor keys for his songs, but those could also be open tunings. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it. Just sit back, and let Siegfried take you down the beautiful country lanes of his native land.

Chris Proctor: The Anniversary Waltz

[purchase]

When someone says of an instrumentalist that he is a musical storyteller, I usually roll my eyes. But Chris Proctor really is a storyteller with his music. He plays with a light touch, his fingers gliding across the strings. His melodies take the listener from a definite start to finish, with an interesting plot and wonderful characterization along the way. The melody is in the top string, with countermelodies and harmonies in the rest of the strings. The rhythm comes from the song as a whole. It all falls into place beautifully.

Eric Loy: Catbird Seat

[purchase]

On the cover of Eric Loy’s new album, you can see a variety of guitars, including some electric ones. There is a similar mix on the album. Loy even plugs and rocks out on two songs, with drums and bass accompaniment. But the treat here for me is the solo acoustic material. Ragtime is the basis for this music, with exciting and complex rhythms played on all of the strings at once. Loy plays chords sometimes that threaten to fall apart. These are jazz chords, I think, and some sound strange to a listener who is more used to folk. But get used to that, and you will hear just how thrilling this music is. Catbird Seat is one of the most accessible songs here, so it makes a good introduction to Loy’s artistry.

Patrick Woods: Evening in the Village

[purchase]

The title of Patrick Woods’ album, Vortex of Discovery, as well as the cover art, suggest a new age album, with gentle ripples of notes easing you into a meditative state. So this may be the most misleading album cover ever. Woods has a percussive playing style. He slaps the body of the guitar for drums, and he attacks the bass string like a funk player might. Evening in the Village shows how this works out on a ballad. On the top strings, Woods plays multipart melodies that stay with you. As assertive as Woods is in his playing, he also displays great dynamic range. All of this is secondary to putting over the emotion of the song.

Yair Yona: Pharaoh

[purchase]

Yair Yona is actually the ringer here. He plays guitars of various sorts, including electric. Qn Remember, he also plays some banjo and synthesizer. Yona uses overdubs on many the tracks, and there are even guest musicians helping out on two tracks. So, I think I have chosen a solo guitar track with no overdubs, but I could be wrong. In any case, Yona’s music makes a connection between the blues and the modalities of middle eastern music, with some eastern European influences showing up on some tracks as well. Pharaoh is a perfect example. In the opening slow section, I can see in my head the sun rising, either over the Delta or the desert. The faster section is tremendously exciting. Yona alternates these sections that shouldn’t fit together but do. In the process, he shows himself to be both a fine player and writer.

For a Song: Veracruz

2011-07-30T03:02:00.002-04:00

Warren Zevon: Veracruz

[purchase]

I could tell you all about the occupation of Vera Cruz, how the refusal of a Mexican commander to offer a 21 gun salute to an American naval commander led to a six-month American occupation of the city, how the attempt by Woodrow Wilson to intercept an arms shipment from Germany failed, and the shipment only wound up being diverted to a different port. I could hold all of this up as an example of the follies that led to World War I. But what interests Warren Zevon and his co-writer Jorge Calderon is the human cost of war. And so, the song is the words of one man to his wife or lover, a loving probable farewell from a man who feels honor bound to fight in a losing cause. Inevitably, when the forces of one nation invade another, it is the civilians of the native country who suffer the most. So it was in Veracruz, and Zevon and Calderon make this point brilliantly by making it personal.

My Cabaret

2011-07-24T16:56:00.001-04:00

Cabaret is a word that can indicate a musical genre. Jazz singers who work with just a single accompanist or a small ensemble, and who perform programs of music organized around a single theme get this label. They tend to go for a musical style like Frank Sinatra, or late Ella Fitzgerald. There is nothing wrong with that, but it’s not what I mean.

Think of the show and movie Cabaret, not so much for the sound as for the feel. You walk into a gloomy room, lit mostly by the spotlight directed at the stage, and filtered through a thick haze of cigarette smoke. On that stage is an assortment of musical instruments. Some are predictable, guitars, piano, stand-up bass, sax and trumpet perhaps. But there are some surprises in the mix. Is that a gypsy‘s violin? There, an accordion? Harmonica even? And maybe one or two you can’t identify at all. I don’t know if the artists I have chosen wear costumes when they perform, but in this place, the performers are extravagantly dressed. And then there is the music. The songs are almost familiar but elusive. At times, they seem to veer away from every rule you know about songwriting. And yet, in this place and time, it all makes sense, and it takes your breath away. There is a sense of otherness in this music, even a hint of danger and a splash of darkness. But, above all, there is fierce originality. Welcome to my cabaret. Get yourself a drink, and stay for a few songs at least.

Alexis Marceaux: Stars

[purchase]

Alexis Marceaux is a powerful singer with a rich and emotive alto voice. Stars is a fine example of her work. The lyrics have an otherworldly feel to them, but it’s handled lightly. The arrangement is stunning. Marceaux, I believe, is using two fiddles here, but one is bowed and the other plucked. These join an acoustic guitar, drums, and bass. And then there is a moment in the middle of the song where everything except the guitar and voice drop out, and the song is rebuilt from there. All of this gives the song a unique feel, and it all serves the text of the song, about separation and yearning.

Tea Leaf Green: It‘s So Easy to Be Your Lover

[purchase]

I’m supposed to hate Tea Leaf Green. This album is a survey of pop styles, from the light reggae of It’s So Easy to Be Your Lover to folk, 60s rock, maybe even a dash of new wave. It’s all bathed in reverb, for that extra retro feel. But Tea Leaf Green obviously love this music, while also approaching it with a knowing wink. And they take these diverse styles and get the album to make sense as a whole. There is a slight sense of melodrama here, enhanced by the wonderful illustrations on the cover and in the booklet. These illustrations are by band member Josh Clark, and they suggest a gangster story told in the form of a graphic novel. If Clark ever does do a graphic novel, I want to know about it.

Fellaheen: Always on the Way

[purchase]

What does cigarette smoke sound like? It’s not a question that I would have thought to ask. But it sounds like Fellaheen’s song Always on the Way. The smoke suffuses Bruce Hanson’s lead vocal. It also oozes through the twin accordions that provide the musical cushion for this song. Listening to this, I imagine a Parisian café, filled with scientists and artists making secret plans. That may sound bizarre, but the musical setting here makes it entirely plausible.

Dirty Bourbon River Show: The Day the Devil Took My Happiness Away

[purchase, download only]

The Day the Devil Took My Happiness Away starts with a vibe that recalls the best versions of St James Infirmary. Soon there is haunted whistling, then chorused male vocals like some of the old big bands used to use, and even some horn parts that feel more like strings. And then it’s all done. This song passes quickly, but with a powerful effect. And all of those disparate elements add up in a coherent way. Dirty Bourbon River Show has this gift. Blues is the foundation for their music, but they can build from it in various ways, and it all works.

Jack Cheshire: Copenhagen

[purchase]

Throughout this post, I have been talking about the arrangements, and the unusual uses of some instruments. But Jack Cheshire makes the most from the least. The band here is just guitar, stand-up bass, drums, and lead and background vocals, with minimal overdubs. Yet the sound is as rich as anything else here. The bass sings, which helps. But mostly, it’s just great economical writing and arranging. Copenhagen feels like a combination of moving parts, gears catching gears catching gears. If you have ever seen a perpetual motion machine where all of the parts are exposed to view, you have an idea of the sense of wonder that this music inspires.

Call for help:

Olinde Mandell: Love Me Tomorrow (demo)

[donate here]

Olinde Mandell is a type of performer who is rare these days; she can carry her delicate and beautiful songs with just her voice and guitar. For her debut album, she wants to add light production touches, including fiddle and backing vocals. On the evidence of her demo for Love Me Tomorrow, that is going to sound great. As I write this, Mandell is about half way to her fund raising goal with 13 days to go. If you can do anything at all, please help her go over the top, so this album can get made. Remember, this is a Kickstarter campaign, so if she doesn’t make her goal, she gets nothing. Thank you for what ever help you can give.

For a Song: Talula [The Tornado Mix]

2011-07-21T16:19:00.004-04:00

Tori Amos: Talula [The Tornado Mix]

[purchase]

The album title Boys For Pele has nothing to do with soccer. Like so many people, I first became aware of Tori Amos when her solo debut, Little Earthquakes, came out. Here was a set of songs by a woman who had been badly mistreated by the men in her life, and who was releasing years of pent up anger in her songs. Musically polished and emotionally raw, these songs featured Amos voice and piano, with only a bit of embellishment. Yes, there were strings, but the sound was still intimate. This couldn’t go on forever. At some point, Amos had to broaden her musical palette, and also her emotional range, or people would stop listening. And she did. Boys For Pele is Amos’ transitional album. Emotionally, she has talked about how she had to cast aside the various men who had hurt her, so that she could reach an emotional state where she could welcome love into her life. So each of the album’s songs is about one of these “Boys”, and Pele is the Hawaiian volcano goddess to whom Amos is symbolically sacrificing them. Musically, Amos started working with a band, particularly with bass and drums, and there are some unusual instruments in the album’s songs. This would lead Amos to the more muscular sound she is known for now. Talula [The Tornado Mix] is a key song in this development. Here a strong beat supports Amos’ lead on harpsichord. The combination shouldn’t work at all, but does. There are also horns on the song, used for accents. If you have an older edition of this album, you may be wondering about the “Tornado Mix” in the title. Apparently, this is not how the song was originally released, something I didn’t know until I researched this post. The strong beats were added in this remix, which has replaced the original version on more recent releases of the album. Amos apparently didn’t like the way the beats were done on this remix, and said that she would have rather done them herself. Since then, she has, and that has become a key part of her sound. I don’t have the original version of Talula. If anyone does, please let me know. I would love to add it to this post.

Update: I have the best readers in the world. A big thank you goes out to David Heil, who sent me the original version of Talula. Here it is:

Tori Amos: Talula (original version)

Spuyten Duyvil - New Amsterdam

2011-07-17T04:31:00.002-04:00

[purchase]

When I reviewed Spuyten Duyvil’s previous album a year ago, I noted that the band had just replaced their bass player and added a drummer and a harmonica player. Now, these new members are fully integrated into the band, and we get to hear what they sound like. James Meigs is the harmonica player, and he often plays Chicago style, which means that he places the harmonica directly on the microphone and gets that dirty, distorted sound that one hears in Chicago blues. Mark Miller can now write for a band with a tight rhythm section. So New Amsterdam is an album of folk, blues, even occasional old-time jazz and gospel flavors, but all delivered with a powerful rock kick. Beth Kaufman has the strong voice to put all of this over beautifully, and Miller, who takes more of the lead vocals than last time, is very impressive here as well. He has the power for an old-time blues number, (One Fine Day), but can also take a more subtle approach for a jazzy shuffle, (Through the Light). Overall, the affect is a wonderful blend of rock energy and jug band flavor and variety.

There are two covers on the album. Things get started with a rocking Shady Grove. I’ve never heard the song approached this way before, but I challenge you to try to sit still for this one. Later, a perfect train rhythm starts up, and Beth Kaufman launches into a fine performance of Freight Train. After she completes the lyrics the first time, Mark Miller comes in with a song I haven’t heard before that I would call Angel, Lay Him Away. This then becomes a counter-melody, when Kaufman comes back in with Freight Train again. All in all, it works beautifully. The album cover lists ten songs, but there is also a hidden track that should not have been. Track eleven is just two minutes of silence, but then comes a song called Pride Packs Her Bags. This is a beautiful breakup song, filled with yearning. It is more acoustic than the rest of the album, so maybe that’s why it’s hidden. But don’t miss it.

Mark Miller has a knack for writing original songs that sound traditional, and I certainly mean that as a complement. In particular, I actually searched on line to try to find an older version of One Fine Day. I was that sure I had heard the song before. These kinds of songs often have spare lyrics, with a lot of details left for the listener to fill in. But Miller also writes more modern songs, with more of the details in the lyrics. I was particularly impressed with Coal Train, Through the Light, and Peace With the Damage, as well as Pride Packs Her Bags. Coal Train depicts a weary soldier who must return to the war; the subject could easily be rendered as a political song, but here instead is a deeply human portrait. Peace with the Damage is a portrait of a woman who regrets the actions that have led to a breakup, but who can not yet take full responsibility and apologize. Through the Light has a story that is somewhat in shadows; a man is in the hospital for a life-threatening situation, but he considers his situation through a series of metaphors to avoid fully facing his fears. Miller finds characters in emotional flux, and he depicts them perfectly.

I don’t know when was the last time I mentioned this many of an album’s songs in my review. New Amsterdam is a treat from start to finish.

Spuyten Duyvil: Through the Light

Spuyten Duyvil: Peace With the Damage

Special Projects

2011-07-12T03:03:00.000-04:00

When I was younger, artists used to make albums to have something to sell, and to make money. Labels signed them for the same reason. Beyond that, there was and still is the desire to get the music out to as many people as possible. Nowadays, most artists probably don’t make much from album sales. But someone who buys a CD at a gig might play it for a friend, and the friend might be at the next gig as a result. I hope that sending a CD to me means that someone might hire an artist for a gig who they wouldn’t even have heard otherwise.

But sometimes, there are other reasons for making a CD, reasons that transcend business considerations. Someone gets an idea that demands their attention, and nothing else can happen until the album gets made. Often, these ideas become themes around which the albums are organized. The music is often a passionate reflection of this. These kinds of albums are the special projects in my title. Let’s check some of them out.

Darryl Purpose: Life, Based on a True Story

[purchase]

Kevin Faherty is an extreme example of a songwriter’s songwriter. By this, I mean that his songs are known and admired by other songwriters, but almost unknown to everyone else. Faherty seems to have decided that he does not want to sacrifice the purity of his art by making albums, and I’m not even sure that he performs in a formal setting very often. But a large number of other songwriters have gotten to know Faherty’s songs from his appearances at campfires at the Kerrville Folk Festival. One of these is Darryl Purpose. Purpose put together the album Singer-Songwriter Heaven as a sort of musical surprise party for Kevin Faherty, who apparently knew nothing about it until the album was close to completion. Purpose has gathered eighteen other artists who know Faherty and admire his work, and gotten each one to record a different Faherty Song. Each artist was apparently left to determine how they wanted to treat the song. So some of the artists here have done simple arrangements with just guitar and voice. Others, like Purpose, have chosen to do full arrangements with a band. All have respected the reason they are here, the song. Faherty emerges as a writer with humor, warmth, and sympathy for his characters, not prone to cliché, and fine at his craft. Given that Faherty has shown no desire to make his own album, Singer-Songwriter Heaven can be taken as his debut, or as a tribute. Either way, it’s a fine introduction.

Spottiswoode: Where Do I Come In?

[purchase]

Rosler’s Recording Booth is also a multi-artist compilation, but of a very different sort. New York City used to have recording booths in key locations that attract tourists, notably Coney Island and the Empire State Building. A person or group would put a quarter in the slot, enter the booth, and record a spoken, (or sometimes sung), message. When they were done, a vinyl record would pop out, which could then be sent to a friend or loved one. Don Rosler was able to obtain at least 16 of these records, probably more, and these old messages became the inspiration for the songs heard on this album. Rosler decided that he didn’t want to perform all of the songs himself, so he brought in some help. In all, ten artists or groups perform these songs, and each brings a different sensibility to the table. But the inspiration for these songs means that there is a common theme, that of separation and longing. Rosler has interesting ideas about orchestration, which all of the artists here follow to a greater or lesser degree. So there are surprising combinations of instruments and tonalities, but it all works beautifully. Spottiswoode’s take on Where Do I Come In? brings it all together for me. The arrangement here is startling, with sudden shifts in mood and tonality. Don’t judge this one until you’ve heard it all the way through. But all of these changes are not simply for show. The emotion of the song comes through loud and clear. There are many other fine performances on this album. I want to know more about Spottiswoode, and also about Terry Radigan, who contributes four wonderfully varied performances here. Other listeners will find other gems as well.

Danny Darst: No Responsibility

[purchase]

Exit 10 marks the debut of Danny Darst, not only as a musician but also as a playwright. And this one has been brewing for a long time. One of the songs here is a cowrite with the film director Robert Altman, who died five years ago, and to whom this album is dedicated. Darst has been an actor on stage and screen, and he has written songs that other people have made into country hits. He performed some of his own songs in the films Something Wild and Melvin and Howard. But it took becoming a playwright himself for Darst to release a full length album of his own songs. Darst proves to be a wonderful storyteller, with a weathered voice that is perfect for his tales of the open road, and of the connections and disconnections that are made there. Is No Responsibilty an example of a connection or a disconnection? I will leave that question to each individual listener.

Thomas Fox: Hopalong Peter

[purchase]

Look at a map of Miineapolis, MN, and you will see what you see in most maps of cities. The streets are close together, but as you zoom out, you find a borderland where the space between streets starts to grow. As you move northwest from Minneapolis, that borderland is a place called Osseo, and there you will find the Yellowtree Theatre. The Yelllowtree bills itself as an integral part of the community, and that means that they like to put something special into their productions. For a recent production of Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, that meant the folk music performances of Blake Thomas and Mary Fox, collectively known as Thomas Fox. The album Our Town is simply a collection of those performances. Most of the songs are traditional, with one original and two covers. The music is entirely acoustic, and this is folk music as I first heard it. It is the sound of two people celebrating the beauty of some great old songs with honest and heartfelt performances. I believe there are some overdubbed instruments, but it sounds like a gathering on somebody’s back porch. Hopalong Peter has a jug band feel that I thoroughly enjoyed. A straight ahead folk sound is more typical of songs here, such as the standards Wildwood Flower and Banks of the Ohio. Other songs are less well known, but just as beautifully rendered.

Liz Queler & Seth Farber: The Betrothal

[purchase]

My last example of a special project grew out of a birthday present that was set aside. Liz Queler’s mother-in-law gave her a book of poems by Edna St Vincent Millay. Queler says she was “never much of a poetry reader”. She only picked up the book at all to try to cure a case of writer’s block by setting one of the poems to music. What was supposed to be just an exercise soon became an obsession. First Queler, and soon her husband Seth Farber as well, began to research Millay’s life and work, even visiting the house the poet once lived in, and going to sites where she wrote some of her poems. Ultimately, Queler and Farber created an album of 21 of Millay’s poems set to music, and given beautiful performances. There is a lyric sheet, and it’s hard to believe that these words weren’t written as songs in the first place. You would hope that such an obsession would result in heartfelt performances, and it does. Some songs are set for just guitar or piano and voice, while others, like The Betrothal, feature a full band. So the album presents a wonderfully varied listening experience as well.

David Francey - Late Edition

2011-07-09T04:05:00.002-04:00

[purchase, priced in Canadian dollars]

Based on the example of his new album, Late Edition, David Francey is an economical man. By that, I mean that he uses only as many words and as much music as he needs to make his point. The twelve songs on Late Edition run about a half hour total. There are solos, but nothing flashy, and the arrangements of this music are little marvels of efficiency. Make no mistake, Francey is a man of deep feelings and strong opinions. He just doesn’t need a lot of space to show it.

Francey sings in a somewhat scratchy baritone. All of the songs here are either Francey originals or co-writes of his, but on Late Edition, he does not play an instrument. I probably wouldn’t either if I had a band that included Kieran Kane, Fats Kaplan, and Richard Bennett. Drummer Lucas Kane has a most unusual role here. Bennett plays acoustic or electric guitar, except for his beautiful bouzouki part on the song Wonder. His electric guitar playing has an acoustic quality, and is mainly used to vary the sound and texture of the music. Kieran Kane, who also co-wrote three of the albums songs, contributes banjo, guitar, and mandolin parts. Fats Kaplan usually adds tasty fills with his fiddle, but he switches to a beautifully subtle accordion part on Wonder, and picks up an electric guitar and rocks out on I Live in Fear. It would be easy to miss the drums, except on I Live in Fear. Usually, Lucas Kane adds just a whisper of a bass thump to the songs here; the effect is an almost subliminal heartbeat. There is no conventional rhythm section on these songs, and no bass player. The songs range from ballads to ragtime influenced up tempo numbers, and the subtle shifts in texture make Late Edition a richly varied listen. I’m using the word subtle a lot here; it is the hallmark of these songs.

The musical arrangements place an emphasis on the words. Francey grew up in Scotland, leaving for Canada when he was 12, and the accent is very much there, but his words are clear. Francey’s lyrics set moods and feelings, but they don’t tell stories. Instead, these are beautifully sketched slices of life, and they rely on both the music and the listener’s imagination to fill in the details. Pretty Jackals is clearly concerned with the Crucifiction, but you have to get to the last verse to see what Francey has done here. Then you realize that he has imagined how the Crucifiction would be reported today on the TV news. Wonder and Grateful are powerful evocations of love, from two different angles. Solitary Wave and Borderlands are mood pieces based on contemplations of the natural world, and in each case, I can see the scene in my head as I listen. And Blue Heart of Texas is a song that snuck up on me. When I started working on this review, I did not think that I would be posting Blue Heart. But its depiction of the loneliness and yearning of a musician on the road won me over. I should mention that the song as written does not have to be about a musician at all, but that is where it takes me when I listen.

As I said earlier, the listener winds up filling in the details of these songs, so your experience of this album may be different than mine. But I can promise you that these songs will take you somewhere, and that the trip will be well worth it.

David Francey: Pretty Jackals

David Francey: Blue Heart of Texas

For a Song: If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time)

2011-07-06T03:05:00.003-04:00

Merle Haggard: If You‘ve Got the Money (I‘ve Got the Time)

[purchase]

When people talk about Merle Haggard, the phrase “country music legend” comes up. And why not? Haggard began his recording career in 1963, I think, and he had 38 number one hits on the country charts. And he wrote at least one definite classic, Mama Tried. But the great secret about Haggard is that he is still at it. Mainstream country music passed him by about twenty years ago, but he keeps doing what he has always done. These days, his music would be considered alt-country, which is a shame.

By 2001, Haggard was already out of the mainstream. That year, he released the album Roots Volume 1. This is Haggard’s tribute to the songs and artists that influenced him early on. Haggard included three originals, to put his sound in context. The only other artist represented by more than one song is Lefty Frizzell. If You’ve Got the Money is the best known of these. Haggard in 2001 didn’t have the vocal power of his younger days, but he put what he had to the best use. Haggard also found a great set of musicians to bring out that 1950s country sound. For my money, Rascal Flatts, for one example, is a southern rock band, and this is what real country sounds like.

American Heritage

2011-07-03T03:56:00.002-04:00

Here in the United States, Independence Day is an occasion to celebrate the birth of our nation. Of course, we were originally British colonies, and early settlers came, not only from England, but also from Ireland and Scotland. The music of these early settlers was our first music, and it would form the foundation of American folk music. That foundation is very much in place today. Here are five artists, four Americans and one Canadian, whose music reflects this musical heritage in one way or another.

Traveler‘s Dream: Black Cavalry

[purchase]

Traveler’s Dream is the duo of Denise Wilson and Michael Lewis, and they have made a point of preserving the music of these early settlers. Their mix also includes French songs. Black Cavalry shows a strong Irish influence, including the wonderful interplay between the guitar and bouzouki. But I think of the concertina as an English instrument. So the song probably reflects the intermixing of cultures that would lead to the development of a uniquely American sound in time. In any case, this performance of Black Cavalry is no museum piece. Traveler’s Dream bring the song fully to life with their energy and talent. I should also note that Denise Wilson has a wonderful singing voice, although it is not heard here.

Debra Cowan: The Long Grey Line

[purchase]

Debra Cowan also presents a wonderful mix of Irish, English, and American music. Her blues version of Darling Corey may sound like a scary idea, but it really works. But I settled on The Long Grey Line because it is a Scottish song, so it fills out the set nicely. The song sounds traditional, but it is actually the work of contemporary songwriter Alan Hunter. A tinker, if the term is new to you, is another word for a gypsy. This song beautifully captures the conflict between the yearnings for freedom and stability, and Cowan’s performance is perfect.

Heather Dale: The Maiden and the Selkie

[purchase]

Heather Dale writes her own songs, but they are very much in the tradition of English folk music. Her arrangements are another matter. Dale freely mixes modern and traditional influences in her music. The Maiden and the Selkie begins with a drone played on a synthesizer, then adds bodhran, guitar, and eventually whistle. The tale is one that could be told anywhere in the coastal regions of the British Isles, and the selkie, a seal man, is a folkloric figure known throughout Britain. Dale gives the song a haunted quality that suits the tale perfectly, and her singing also captures the romantic yearning that is essential to the tale.

Robert Sarazin Blake (with John McSherry): Storms of November

[purchase]

Robert Sarazin Blake is an American folk artist, and his guitar playing has as much to do with rock as it does with traditional Irish music. Blake’s voice has a rough quality that contrasts with the smoother stylings of most of the Irish singers I have heard. But this album was made in Belfast with Irish musicians, including piper John McSherry. It turns out that the two musical forms complement each other beautifully here. Storms of November has both power and poignancy, and is the best of both worlds.

Kyle Carey: Monongah

[purchase]

Kyle Carey is a modern folk artist, with just the hint of an Irish accent. Her arrangements feature her beautiful alto voice and her fine guitar playing. Her songs tell stories in an Irish manner, but her subject matter is American, with particular emphasis on the South. The exception to this is one song sung entirely in Gaelic. Monongah is a town in West Virginia where a mine explosion took the lives of 362 men and boys in 1907. The song is set in a present day that is haunted by these long ago events, and Carey captures the emotions of this perfectly in her performance.

For a Song: Tenth Avenue Freeze Out

2011-07-01T02:52:00.002-04:00

Bruce Springsteen: Tenth Avenue Freeze Out

[purchase]

It’s funny how this works sometimes. I noted the passing of Clarence Clemons this past week, and I really wasn’t thinking about posting anything here. I have lived in New Jersey all my life, and I was fifteen when Born to Run was released. But I never took to Bruce Springsteen with the near religious zeal that many of my fellow Jersey residents did. Don’t get me wrong, Born to Run is a great album, and Springsteen is a great artist. I heard Born to Run not long after it was released, and I came to know the album well because one of my brothers bought it. But I never owned a copy, and it was the only Springsteen album that ever lived in our house.

Having said all of that, here is my post of Tenth Avenue Freeze Out. What happened? Funny you should ask. This evening, my family and I went to see some fireworks. You know how this goes, for fifteen minutes of fireworks, you get to sit through four hours of festivities, including the dreaded cover band. Actually, this one was about as good as they get, doing competent versions of everything from Disco Inferno to Honky Tonk Women. Oh, and Tenth Avenue Freeze Out. And, listening to this, I began to write a post in my head about why the original was so much better. And this is not that post.

I was going to talk about how Clarence Clemons was such an essential part of that band, that album, and that song. How Springsteen, Clemons, and the rest of the E Streeters captured the essence of rock and roll for one brief moment. But I got home and I listened to the song. Two things struck me immediately. The outstanding thing about the song and the album is not the rock and roll, but rather the soulfulness of the music. This music is heartfelt and honest, at a time when so much popular music was based on artifice. This is rock music, but the arrangement, with its use of keyboards and horns, owes a great debt to classic R&B. The other thing that struck me is about memory. I can hear in my head that big sound that Clemmons always got from his sax, squealing away solo throughout the song. But that’s not how the song goes. Clemmons does his part as part of a horn section, soloing only for a few notes in the middle of the song. Over the years, the other horns had disappeared in my memory, but there they are. So now I once again know what Tenth Avenue Freeze Out sounds like for real, and it’s great. But I can’t guarantee that it won’t change in my memory again going forward.

David Bromberg - Use Me

2011-06-29T03:17:00.002-04:00

[purchase]

A lot of hip-hop albums these days are made with multiple producers, each producing one or two tracks. I believe some country albums are also done this way. I’m old school, so this bothers me. An album, in my view, is supposed to have a single point of view, and this is achieved by having an artist and producer working together as a team for the length of the album. What then am I to make of the new album from David Bromberg? There is an over all concept to this album: it is Bromberg’s musical wish list of who he would like to work with. So Bromberg’s guitar and vocals are the constants, but each track has a different guest artist who also provided the other musicians and produced. Most of these guests also wrote their song specifically for this album; the others chose the song they wanted Bromberg to cover with them. Only Levon Helm contributed two songs, and they are completely different from one another. And the collaborators came from the worlds of country, blues, folk, old school R&B, funk, jam band, and pop. So what does this all add up to? A stylistically diverse album that can stand with David Bromberg’s best.

You see, even in the old days, David Bromberg was, by choice, a musical chameleon. His work was based on the blues, but he could rock, and he was always equally adept on acoustic or electric guitar. He eventually would record a wonderful album of Irish folk. So the mix of styles makes sense here, where it might not for anyone else. Also, the guest artists here have chosen or written songs that they feel Bromberg would sound good on. So Linda Ronstadt, for example, brings a Brook Benton tune, It’s Just a Matter of Time, but it’s arranged for just acoustic guitar and stand-up bass, with a chorus of female vocals. Los Lobos, with The Long Goodbye, stretch Bromberg with a Mexican waltz, but he is more than up to it. A slow blues with Keb Mo makes all the sense in the world, as does a jug-band tune with Levon Helm. Bromberg gets funky with Dr John, but also with widespread Panic. A slow R&B workout asks almost the same thing of a singer as a slow blues. John Hiatt doesn’t get enough credit for his talent at writing these kinds of songs, and Ride on Out a Ways is a fine example. Bromberg’s voice lacks the power it once had, but he has figured out ways to compensate, and convey as much emotion as he ever did. I am particularly impressed with the way he can still adjust his tone for the different styles of song heard here. Bromberg has also become a more subtle guitar player. Where he might once have broken out in an extended solo, now he knows that he can get his point across with just a splash of notes.

Use Me, then, is an album that Bromberg might have wanted to make at the peak of his career, but he was on a major label then, and they never would have allowed it. I’m glad he found a way to do it now. Use Me has the most important element any great album needs. It sounds like all of the musicians are having a great time.

David Bromberg: Ride on Out a Ways

David Bromberg: It‘s Just a Matter of Time

Flavors of Folk

2011-06-26T02:28:00.000-04:00

I am comfortable saying that all of the songs in this post are folk music. And yet, there are a variety of approaches to writing, arranging, and performing these songs. In part, this reflects changes in either what constitutes folk music, or my perception of it over the years. It comes down to the question of what folk music is. It almost seems that, with every new album I receive, the answer gets bigger. Folk music these days has more subgenres then there are posts in the president’s cabinet. So I can’t cover them all here. But this survey gives a brief overview of what folk music can be, and how my understanding of it has changed over the years. Let me show you what I mean.

Chris McCune: The Bitter End

[purchase]

I originally thought that folk music was the sound of one man or one woman, and an acoustic guitar. The music was unadorned, not raw but true and unprocessed. Chris McCune makes his music that way. He sings in a gravel-y baritone, and his guitar playing is fine, but not the center of attention. The focus is on the songs, especially the words. McCune sounds weary of the world, but he varies his expressions of that with the poetry of his words. He also can get an amazing range of moods out of his guitar playing. So an entire album of one man and his guitar held my attention throughout. Not many artists can do that anymore.

Sheila MacDonald: Lucky Luke

[purchase]

Sheila MacDonald has a pretty voice, but you can tell that she is not a trained singer. So, her songs don’t sound polished, but they do sound true. She varies the sound of her album by letting someone else handle some of the guitar playing, and by adding an extra instrument here and there. The fiddle on two songs is particularly beautiful. But Lucky Luke has just MacDonald’s voice and the guitar playing of Raymond Gonzalez. MacDonald adds overdubbed background vocals with a beautifully light touch. What comes through is a quality of innocent sympathy for the title character that would have been lost in a more polished performance. MacDonald has a perfect feel for how best to use her musical and writing gifts, and Lucky Luke is a perfect example.

Jami Lynn: The Lame Soldier

[purchase]

As I continued to explore folk music, I began to understand that it could be played and sung not only by individuals, but also by groups. The music of the Kingston Trio is not what I would call folk, but the music of Doc and Merle Watson certainly was. On The Lame Soldier, Jami Lynn plays banjo, and she is joined by Josh Reick on guitar and stand-up bass for a wonderful trio sound. Another requirement for my earliest definition of folk music was that the songs had to be traditional. Half of the songs on Sodusters, including this one, are indeed traditional, but the other half are written by Jami Lynn. Throughout, the songs have the haunting sound that traditional songs so often have. As a songwriter, Lynn is so well versed in traditional music that her originals fit in perfectly on this album. Sodbusters is one I know I will want to come back to again and again.

Dala: Anywhere Under the Moon

[purchase]

Based on their music, you might guess that all of the artists in this post so far listen only to folk music. You would not say that of Dala. They can do folk as well as anyone, and their music is acoustic. But songs like Anywhere Under the Moon have rock strumming. The woman in Dala have their ears wide open, and a variety of influences can be heard in their music. In their case, that diversity of influences makes their albums richly varied. Girls From the North Country is no exception. The album has a traditional song, as well as covers of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, to name a few. But it also has original songs. For Dala, it is never about the genre, but simply about the song. All of the songs here are performed beautifully, with the wonderful vocal harmonies that are a key to the group’s sound.

Claire Lynch: Whatcha Gonna Do

[purchase]

Ostensibly, the music of Claire Lynch is bluegrass. But there are hints of country and jazz as well. They call this kind of thing new grass these days. I just call it great stuff. Lynch has a voice that borders on Dolly Parton territory, with that wonderful sweetness. Whatcha Gonna Do, the song, is a fine example of how the diverse elements that make up Lynch’s music can combine to create great beauty.

Lori Lieberman - Bend Like Steel

2011-06-23T03:57:00.000-04:00

[purchase]

I’ve waited quite a while for this album. Lori Lieberman’s last album, Gun Metal Sky, came out three years ago, and it was a marvel of subtle beauty. Bend Like Steel was worth the wait. This is a personal album, and the beautifully rendered musical settings here are even more intimate than last time. The basic band has Lieberman switching off between acoustic guitar and piano, plus additional acoustic, stand-up bass, and percussion. There are also cello parts on many of the songs, and an electric guitar is sometimes added with the lightest of touches. It would be a mistake to add much to this. Lieberman is a passionate singer here, but she does not raise her voice much. She often gets quieter for emotional effect where most singers would get louder. So it is remarkable how well her voice and Monty Byrom’s baritone combine on the album’s one duet number, Mr and Mrs Make-Believe. Byrom must match Lieberman’s subtlety with his own, and too few singers know how to do that.

The big surprise to me about Bend Like Steel was the content of the lyrics. Lieberman has been making music for almost 40 years, and I haven’t heard nearly all of it. But this album feels like Lieberman had some kind of a breakthrough, and years of pent up emotion came out in the writing of these songs. Lieberman says in the liner notes, “A writing streak led to the making of this CD… where the more I said, the more I felt I needed to say.” The album opens with songs of love gone wrong. If Not Now feels like a snapshot of a moment when a woman who has been isolated in an abusive relationship decides to break out. Mr and Mrs Make-Believe depicts a hollow marriage, where their acquaintances believe they are the perfect couple, but their relationship is actually loveless. Cup of Girl is one of the most heartfelt songs on an album full of them; it depicts a singer who has been manipulated, but has finally decided to take control. The song uses an extended metaphor of a recipe, and this is a device that could have failed miserably, but Lieberman nails it. As the album progresses, the emotional tone begins to shift. Now, the narrator who had been so unlucky in love begins to find the real thing. My Sister’s Boyfriend is a flashback that represents a long-sought ideal for what love should be. The relationship in the song did not endure, and there is a heart-stopping moment in the song that explains why not with one word. I don’t want to give a spoiler by saying more, but you will know the moment I mean when you hear it. That one moment sums up everything that is so right about this album. These Things is a wonderfully ironic song; after recounting all of the experiences that could have warned her off of love forever elsewhere on this album, Lieberman finds herself in this song assuring a new lover that he does not have to let his past hurts scare him away from her. And that sums up what Lieberman has taken away from all of these experiences, and what she wants the listener to take away from this album. Through it all, Lieberman never lost her faith in true love, and so, she was ready when it found her at last. Netherlands finds her in that country for the first time since 1975, and it completes a circle for her. And There’s a Harbor closes the album with an affirmation of the power of love. Lieberman didn’t write this one, but she chose the perfect song to conclude this journey.

And it is a journey. Much care has obviously gone into sequencing the songs on Bend Like Steel. This is an album that should be heard straight through in one sitting if possible. Heard this way, the album tells a story that is real, but also heartwarming in the end.

Lori Lieberman: Cup of Girl

Lori Lieberman: My Sister‘s Boyfriend

Between Rock and a Folk Place

2011-06-20T04:07:00.000-04:00

Long time readers know that I am uncomfortable with genre labels for music. I try to use them as shorthand, to give my readers a quick reference point for telling how something will sound. But the best artists are individuals, and their music is whatever they need it to be. Folk music may be blues, bluegrass, Celtic, etc, or it may draw from all of these and more. Singer-songwriter simply means that a person sings and writes many of the songs they perform. And rock implies that a band has plugged in at least some of their instruments. What I call hybrid genre labels only make matters worse. Folk-rock, for example. This simply means that the music lies somewhere on the spectrum between folk, (whatever that is), and rock, (whatever that is). In assembling a set of songs to illustrate this point, I found myself with five songs that all have a country flavor as well. That only confuses matters further. That said, let’s see what happened.

Robert Larisey: Yesterday

[purchase]

Yesterday starts, folklike, with just Robert Larisey singing and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. He plays finger style, creating a rhythmic and detailed cushion of sound to back his words. A subtle but beautiful fiddle part comes in before the end of the song, and there is also bass and background vocals. But what truly keeps this one from being pure folk is Larisey’s approach to the vocals. His voice sounds like the cracks will get wider, and he will break into dust at any moment. The emotion of the song threatens to overwhelm him, but never quite does. Elsewhere on this album, there are drums and some electric guitars in places. But that sense of barely restrained emotion is a powerful constant throughout. Larisey backs it up with the quality of his writing.

The Original Snakeskins: Jesus and Jexebel

[purchase]

There is an overlap between the musical influences that led to the development of both folk and country music. Both draw on blues and gospel, for example. I have read interviews with some of the old-time blues artists, and they talk about how their parents would beat them if they found out that they were sneaking out of the house to play blues at the local juke joints. Some of these artists turned to gospel as a cover. So you have blues artists like the Reverend Gary Davis, and you have blues standards like Twelve Gates to the City. The sacred and the profane mix freely, and blues becomes secular music of the spirit, while gospel of a certain vintage shows a great blues influence. I am reminded of all of this as I listen to the music of The Original Snakeskins. Some of their songs lean into the territory of bluegrass, but there is a blues/ gospel feel to much of their work. Jesus and Jezebel is an original song that sounds like it could have been written 80 years ago, and I mean that as high praise indeed. Anne Unger provides the soulful vocal that makes the whole thing work.

Thee Shambels: Jenny Come Back

[purchase]

Jenny Come Back has acoustic guitars, stand-up bass, banjo, and accordion. Even adding drums, this seems like folk territory. But the music and the lyrical content go somewhere else. Jenny is a the waltz that give this EP its title. This is the kind of dark waltz that might have been written for the Three Penny Opera, and the lyrics paint that kind of gritty urban picture, and they are not for the faint at heart, or for young listeners. This is also something that Tom Waits might have had something to do with, to provide another point of reference. The performance has a woozy carnival feel. This is a perfect match of words to music, and Neville Elder’s vocal is spot on. He combines sympathy for the downtrodden with a hint of menace, and the whole thing really works.

Cyndi Harvell: Northbound

[purchase]

With Northbound, we are much closer to rock territory. Here are drums and electric guitar and bass. But the guitar part is beautifully interwoven with a banjo. And the lyric is both poetic and enigmatic in a way that is more folk than rock. Harvell’s voice has a bit of a country twang to it, and there is a break to an almost falsetto that Harvell knows how to use to the best advantage. Northbound rides a wonderful slinky groove with an almost reggae feel to it. Some of the other songs on this album have more of a rock feel, but there is often an instrument in the mix such as a banjo, mandolin, or acoustic guitar. Harvell is adept at choosing and executing the best musical setting for each song, and the variety makes this album a fine listen.

Trampled by Turtles: It‘s a War

[purchase]

Trampled by Turtles is a five piece band, with a mix of instruments that marks them as bluegrass. There are no drums, and all of the instruments are acoustic except the bass. And yet, It’s a War Comes at the end of this post, where we are closest to rock. How can this be? It’s in the attitude of the playing. The guitar and banjo pound out power chords. The fiddle races along. The vocals are melodic but raw. This is punk bluegrass. Elsewhere on the album, the band slows down a bit, but there is always a rock sensibility to the playing and singing. It means that this album is not for the bluegrass purist, but also that it is a thrill for the rest of us.

For a Song: Missing Person Afternoon

2011-06-17T01:34:00.000-04:00

The Story: Missing Person Afternoon

[purchase]

I have always loved the Latin rhythm of Missing Person Afternoon by The Story. If you are not aware, The Story was the duo of Jennifer Kimball and Jonatha Brooke, before each of them went solo. Brooke is much better known than Kimball. That’s not surprising, since Brooke did most of the songwriting, and played instruments as well as singing, while Kimball only sang. Still, both have made music as solo artists that is well worth seeking out. As a duo, The Story started from a foundation of folk-rock, but their ears were wide open, and many of their songs reflect this. Hence the carnivale feel of Missing Person Afternoon.

The lyric is another matter. The narrator sings the song to Luisa, who is evidently a recently departed lover. But the narrator tries to apologize to her, and sings, “But I was wrong, (and here is where you will have to imagine the rest).” So Luisa may be physically absent, but the narrator could be the missing person in the title. Her remorse seems genuine, but she can not express it in words. A part of her is not there, and maybe it never was. Maybe that’s why Luisa left.

Storytellers

2011-06-15T03:24:00.000-04:00

Probably, the first songs that were sung by humans were chants and ritual music, asking the gods for their favor. But it can not have been long after that mankind began to tell stories in song. Some were myths, tales of gods and goddesses, while others told of success or failure in the hunt, or in love. By the time of the ancient Celts, the bards were said to have the power to curse or bless with their songs. Their stories could transport the listeners to another world for the length of the song, and some never returned. Today, there are still fine storytellers among our songwriters. Let’s hear some.

Lauren Shera: Storyteller

[purchase]

First I will let Lauren Shera give us an introduction. Her song Storyteller doesn’t really tell a story itself, but it is all about the power of story. She a wants a potential lover who can transport her to another world with his tales. As she works through this idea, she realizes that the term “story” for her means fiction. She ends up lamenting that these tales are not true. Even so, the song beautifully presents the power of storytelling in a context that I have not seen before, and it really works.

77 El Deora: Radio City

[purchase]

The first thing many story writers do is set the scene. Maurice Tani does this beautifully in Radio City. I can see the parking lot outside the radio station as I listen, and I just about see the DJ’s face. It takes a little while for the plot of the story to come out. This is a tale of heartbreak, and the narrator is hesitant to tell it. He seems to feel that saying it aloud gives it power, and yet, it is a tale he must tell. This narrative device makes the song all the more powerful.

Tani and Jenn Courtney roughly split the lead vocals on this album. She has the more expressive voice, but he knows how to use what he has to good effect, so the vocals work throughout. The Crown & The Crow’s Confession is a mix of ballads and rockers, all rendered beautifully. Tani is the main songwriter, and a fine one.

David Serby: Evil Men

[purchase]

David Serby sings the stories of forgotten men and women. His characters sometimes do things that we as listeners can not condone, but Serby always presents them with their dignity. In Evil Men, we meet a man whose crimes have earned him a death sentence, and yet Serby makes sure that we care about him. Elsewhere, we meet factory workers who have good cause to want to unionize, a poor young woman who must give up a child she can not afford to raise, and outlaws and gold diggers from the old West. Serby makes the listener feel that the know all of these people and more, and we care about their stories.

Kevin Brown: Medicine Bow

[purchase]

Kevin Brown’s songs are earthy but magical tales. There is no contradiction there. Listening to his songs, you get grit in the soles of your boots, and you see marvels, visions which can inspire amazement or fear. Medicine Bow concerns the white buffalo, and the Native Americans who knew them best. The story is powerfully told. Some of the other songs here do not tell stories, but simply set a mood. Brown also does this beautifully.

Danaher & Cloud: The Train to Baltimore

[purchase]

Imagine that you are visiting an elderly relative, a grandfather perhaps. He has accidentally on purpose left out an old photo album where you will see it. As you leaf through the sepia-toned, faded photographs, at first you see just pictures of strangers. But your grandfather sees stories, and soon enough he begins to tell them. They have the bittersweet quality of times past, never to be seen again, but there is also love, and an innocent quality. Portraits, the album by Danaher & Cloud, has something of that flavor to it. Each song tells a different tale, and the music reflects this. One tale might have a jazzy feel, while another might recall old Irish legends. All are told with great warmth. The Train to Baltimore gets a wonderful folk arrangement. This is a love story, the kind that has a happy ending. This kind of sweetly romantic tale is one that many artists today can not pull off without cynicism creeping in. Danaher & Cloud play it straight, and make the story utterly convincing.

Carolann Solebello - Threshold

2011-06-11T02:25:00.001-04:00

[purchase]

I’ll start by saying that Threshold is Carolann Solebello’s first solo album since she left Red Molly. But being part of a group that does a lot of sweet harmonies is different from being a solo artist. And writing for a group is also different from writing for yourself. Threshold shows how Carolann Solebello creates and performs an album’s worth of material just for herself. The rich and sweet alto voice is still here, of course. But there are times here when Solebello cuts loose and belts out a few notes. This is all the more affective because Solebello does it sparingly. And having an entire album of Sollebello originals, plus two well chosen covers of traditional tunes, puts her writing in a context that was not possible in a group. I will always treasure the albums Solebello made with Red Molly, but Threshold is a treat of a different sort.

In a sense, Threshold can be heard as a single song. It starts as a folk-rock tune, with both electric and acoustic guitars prominent in the mix, backed by drums and bass. Then there is a quiet midsection, where the electric guitar and drums, and soon even the bass, drop out, and a fiddle and mandolin show up. The folk-rock arrangement comes back, although not as forcefully. Finally, there is a gospel coda, with just acoustic guitar and chorused background vocals. Put this way, it sounds very schematic and deliberate, but that’s not how it sounds. The lyrics are a set of stories, organized around the themes of freedom and home. In Solebello’s eyes, these concepts are opposites, and the tension between them is what really drives the album. There is an emotional ebb and flow here, mirrored by the changing tone of the music.

One extreme of this emotional dynamic comes out in the song Empty House. Solebello makes it clear that a house is a mere shell. A home is about being surrounded by loved ones. This motif reappears later in Tea Without Sympathy. The urge for going, and for freedom, is represented most clearly here by the traditional Black Jack Davey, where the protagonist gives up her family and home to travel with a gypsy. But not all of Solebello’s narrators can make this choice so easily. In Paint My Wagon, the narrator wants her freedom, but she wants her husband to go with her. Alice, in the song of the same name, ties herself to a house and family, but keeps the spirit of freedom alive in her heart for when it will be needed again. Alice is a wonderfully realized heroine, probably my favorite on an album full of fascinating women. Somewhere in the middle emotionally are the songs A Song I Can’t Remember and Someone Else’s Dream. These are songs where Solebello’s heroines sing in the first person, and they feel that they have arrived in a place where they do not belong.

Finally, that gospel coda I mentioned is Wash Me Clean, which must close the album. The conflict expressed in all that has come before is not completely resolved, but Wash Me Clean feels to me like a secular prayer to help the heroine accept her situation, and the consequences of her choices. The song powerfully binds the album together, and leaves the listener with a feeling of hope. This is an album that is best heard as a whole, in the order the songs appear on the disc. Taken this way, Threshold is a powerful emotional document that I know I will want to come back to.

Carolann Solebello: Alice

Carolann Solebello: Wash Me Clean

For a Song: They Raided the Joint

2011-06-09T03:07:00.002-04:00

Long John Baldry: They Raided the Joint

[purchase]

I once did a post on Star Maker Machine where I tried to explain what jump blues is. But really, the best explanation comes from hearing it. Long John Baldry gives a perfect example with his version of They Raided the Joint. On the vocal, he channels the playfulness of Louis Armstrong. The arrangement is a textbook example of how to put a jump blues song together. There is great vamping on the piano throughout. The sax solo in the middle has the perfect feel. And the little statement on the trumpet at the end, with the band coming back at the very end for a single closing chord is a great dollop of sweet syrup and a dash of whipped cream on top.

I don’t know the full history of the song, but I found out that there was a movie of the same name in 1947, which included a version of the song. Shortly thereafter, Helen Humes had a hit with it, with the cleaned up lyrics the Baldry also uses. In the older lyrics, the narrator hadn’t been drinking at all; instead, they were high, probably on marijuana.

Grab Bag

2011-06-06T23:47:00.002-04:00

I have a tremendous amount of music that I am excited about. Some is by artists I have been following, while some is in the new discovery category, and some is from people who I became friendly with before I ever heard their music. So, when I receive music submissions for Oliver, I often have to set some of it aside for the dreaded later. And while I wish I could get to all of it, for some, later never comes. So this week, I thought that I would pick five artists from the “for later” pile, and call it a set. I cheated a bit by starting with eight albums and whittling it down. Still, here are five artists whose albums I hadn’t gotten to, and who are just as worthy as anyone else I have ever featured.

Update: I had accidentally loaded several of the songs in this post as WMA files. I have now replaced them with the mp3 versions. Thank you to the anonymous reader who pointed this out, and I apologize for the inconvenience.

Allysen Callery: Favourite Son

[purchase]

I have featured Allysen Callery before, but her new EP Winter Island got set aside because of the packaging. This one was issued in a limited addition, and it came in a plastic sleeve inside a cloth pouch. It didn’t fit safely on my CD pile, so I set it aside. But Allysen Callery and Winter Island deserve better. Until now, I have only heard Callery with a full band behind her. I admired her quiet intensity, and the folkloric quality of her writing. But here she is solo, just her voice and guitar. And this setting is a revelation. The first thing I noticed is that Callery is a fine finger style guitar player. Her playing tends to blend in in a group setting, but here she shines all on her own. I am reminded of what the ancient Irish believed about their bards. It was said that a bard could cast a spell with just his harp playing and his voice, and the spell would transport the listeners to another world while the song played. Most but not all of the listeners would make it back when the song ended. Callery displays that kind of otherworldly ability here, and Favourite Son is a fine example.

Giant Cicada: Gonna Get Through

[purchase]

Giant Cicada is a group that makes music in the cracks. Is this jazz, folk, Americana, what? Some of my favorite music doesn’t fit neatly in any genre, and I will add this to the list. The rhythm section of this band is a cajon, (a hand-played box drum), and bowed bass. On top of this, add guitar, fiddle, and the wonderful vocals of Lynn Stein. There is also bottleneck guitar on some tracks. Gonna Get Through has a Brazilian lilt, both in the playing and in Stein’s vocal. But the song also has the propulsive drive of 80s rock. Giant Cicada’s gift is to take these incongruous elements and have them make sense together. Stein is an emotional singer who never has to shout, and that really puts this album over the top.

Anthony Walker: Forget the Railroad

[purchase]

Anthony Walker’s new album This City Won’t Sleep was the last album I grabbed for this post. It was still in its shrink wrap, and I knew I must have heard something I liked, but I couldn’t remember why I requested it. Now I do. Walker sings in a high tenor that is an excellent rock instrument. Many of the songs here do in fact rock out, and it’s a great sound. But for me, the quieter songs are the standout tracks. That’s because they focus your attention more on the lyrics, and Walker is a great storyteller. Forget the Railroad seems to be set in the here and now, but Walker provides a line of flashback here and there, and pretty soon the listener can fill in the history of a relationship. Probably, no two listeners would tell it quite the same way, but all of the essential details are here. Walker gives all the clues, and he makes you want to fill in the details. That’s a pretty good definition of fine songwriting.

Postcard Comets: The Guardhouse and the Moon

[purchase]

I first met David Partridge of Postcard Comets quite some time ago, in an online song review group, and later in an acoustic music forum. Many of the people who are to be found in these places are amateur musicians, trying to get better at what they do and maybe make an album some day. But not Postcard Comets, at least not by the time I met them. Their music stood out, it because it was ready for the big(ger) time. I remember that, but I didn’t remember exactly what it sounded like. So when Partridge offered me their new album for the blog, I knew I wanted it, but I didn’t remember why. Now I remember.

Postcard Comets is the duo of Partridge and Buck Wilburn. Between them, they play seven instruments by my count, so the sound on the album is that of a full band. Partridge does most of the writing, and he is an expert scene setter. In The Guardhouse and the Moon, I can see that night sky as I listen, and I can feel that cold autumn breeze blowing on me. Partridge’s voice has the texture of fine sandpaper, but he knows how to use that to his best advantage. Wilburn contributes a great part on lead acoustic guitar, with something of a Spanish flavor. All told, the emotion of this song comes through loud and clear. The subject is two childhood friends parting, as one begins military service. There are not all that many songs on this subject, so Partridge shows himself to be not only an evocative songwriter, but also a true original. The Guardhouse and the Moon is no fluke either; there are many other gems to be found on this album.

Carrie Graham: Mirrors

[purchase]

I met Carrie Graham in that same acoustic music forum I referred to above. She sent me her EP Notes From the Nut Hatch just over a year ago. So why did it take me so long to get to her? Graham’s EP is only available as a download, so it has sat on my hard drive all this time, waiting for me to remember that it was there. It was knowing that I would be posting Postcard Comets that reminded me. So, Carrie, I’m sorry this took so long.

Graham sings in a slightly breathy low alto, and it’s a great sound. She writes little unsettled love songs, and her performances perfectly portray these feelings. The rest of the songs on Nut Hatch fall loosely into the Americana category, and Graham does that very well indeed. But Mirrors is something else again. This one has a stuttery rhythm and great atmosphere. The narrator might have been transported to the Otherworld by Allysen Callery’s bardic arts, and now she seeks her way back through love. That might sound corny, and it probably isn’t exactly what Graham had in mind. But the song really works. The purchase link above will take you to Graham’s Bandcamp page, where you can purchase a download of Nut Hatch. There is also a link on the sidebar to a new song. Graham’s writing continues to develop, and her originality increases. I hope that there is a full length album in the future, and I hope I can get it as a physical CD, so I can share it here in a timely manner.

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One last thing: I would like to congratulate Teresa Storch on the success of her Kickstarter campaign. To all of my readers who were able to help, thank you.

For a Song: Too Darn Hot

2011-06-01T12:48:00.002-04:00

Janis Siegel: Too Darn Hot

[purchase]

I live in New Jersey, and today is already the fourth or fifth day of the year where the temperature is over 90 degrees. That isn’t supposed to happen at all until July. So the choice of a For a Song this week was obvious. But I can never do anything in a completely obvious way. It takes a certain amount of courage these days for a female jazz singer to record Too Darn Hot. That’s because Ella Fitzgerald laid claim to the song and made it her own. If you’re a guy, you compete with Mel Torme on this one, but his claim is not as strong. Regardless, Janis Siegel can handle it. Siegel was a founding member of the Manhattan Transfer, and her jazz credentials as a solo artist are even stronger. She slides into this one, even including a playful quote from Heatwave to start, but the Siegel takes flight. By the time the full band kicks in, the listener is sailing right along with Siegel. I don’t know if I feel any cooler, but I certainly am enjoying the heat more now.

Tara O’Grady - Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

2011-05-29T16:32:00.002-04:00

[purchase]

I am very pleased to present to you Tara O’Grady’s new album, Good Things Come to Those Who Wait. As you know if you have been reading this blog for a while, last year I started spotlighting artists who were having fund drives to make their next albums. Of the various drives I have featured so far, O’Grady’s was the first to produce an album. So Good Things Come to Those Who Wait is an album that some of you may have helped make. I thank you for that, because it’s a good one.

For now, Tara O’Grady is a jazz singer. I say for now, because some of Good Things suggests that she has other options. Her backing band includes the drums, stand-up bass, and piano that you would expect. But there is also acoustic guitar, harmonica, fiddle, accordion, even tin whistle. So O’Grady is not afraid to bend the rules, but she and her band make this all sound natural. O’Grady sings in a dramatic alto that can sound like some of Aretha Franklin’s jazzier moments. This voice is something of a pose, and she drops it for a bonus track in which she sings in a poppier voice. To call her vocal a style a pose is not a criticism here; it perfectly suits what she is after. Good Things is a collection of songs of idealized romance. These are not songs of experience, but rather of imagination. O’Grady sometimes winks at the listener to let us know that she understands that love isn’t really like this, but she captures the dream beautifully more often than not.

This separation of dream from reality is never clearer than in the song Let Me Be Your Audrey. Audrey is Audrey Hepburn, and the lyrics make references to some of her movies. O’Grady knows that she is offering a fantasy here, and she makes it sound very appealing. Some of the best moments on this album come in songs that mix this dream quality with romantic yearning. Shadow Blues opens the album with a woman who wants one name to fill out her dance card for the rest of her life. Later, November Moon is a gorgeous ballad with some Irish touches, concerning a woman who may be losing her lover. Tara O’Grady wrote all of the lyrics here with two exceptions. Trouble in Mind is a cover of the classic blues song. Think of Me is another musical wink on O’Grady’s part. The words are excerpted from a poem by Thomas Hood, Lines to a Lady on Her Departure for India. Hood describes a series of extreme situations, and asks the lady to “Think of Me”. There is an element of absurdity about the whole thing, and O’Grady delivers this perfectly by singing the song straight up as a ballad of romantic yearning. The poem is actually a satire of an earlier work by Thomas Hood’s brother-in-law, John Hamilton Reynolds.

I mentioned that O’Grady has other options besides jazz. Waiting For You has the sound of an early soul ballad, and it is one of the most powerful vocals on the album. Goodnight Nora is a beautiful duet and a lullaby of the love of two newlyweds. The male singer is Alan Bennett. I have to say that I would love to hear this one recorded again; Bennett is not a bad singer, but his voice and O’Grady’s are not well matched. The song is wonderful, and deserves a better treatment. Goodnight Nora should have been the last song on the album. It is followed by a bonus track, Love on the Underground. This is a tale of an almost-encounter on the subway in New York City. O’Grady uses her voice here very differently than she does anywhere else on the album. She goes for a light tone, and the whole thing sounds like what Bare Naked Ladies might come up with if they wrote a love song. I found the song enjoyable, but it belongs on a different album. The rest of the album casts a wonderful romantic glow, and powerfully evokes a time that is either long gone or never existed at all. It is a world that appeals in the same way as a well constructed world in a fantasy novel. O’Grady’s playfulness only makes it more appealing. I can’t wait to hear what she does next.

Tara O‘Grady: Shadow Blues

Tara O‘Grady: November Moon

For a Song: Blitzkrieg Baby

2011-05-26T02:07:00.001-04:00

Una Mae Carlisle: Blitzkrieg Baby

[purchase]

I want to stay with jazz singers for just a while longer, to lead into my next album review. So here is Una Mae Carlisle singing her hit Blitzkrieg Baby, with, I believe, Lester Young and his band. This song has been collected in a number of places, and I would usually give a purchase link for an album by the artist. But this one is for a various artists collection with the somewhat misleading title of Ladies Sing the Blues. The music isn’t blues at all, but the album is a great introduction to classic jazz singers and their art. So, if Oliver di Place is the first place you ever heard a jazz singer, this album would be a great next step.

I mentioned that Blitzkrieg Baby was a hit in its time. Can you imagine a song like this about a current war? It wouldn’t work. The song belongs to my parents’ generation, and is specific to World War II. The Vietnam War forever changed how Americans feel about the wars we fight. The attack on the World Trade Center might have changed things back again, but the sense of a nation united against a common enemy was squandered in the handling of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now we are back to questioning the motives of our wars again. While this is probably healthier for us as a nation, something is lost as well. Blitzkrieg Baby reflects a time when the nation as a whole believed that it had an important job to do. I have never lived in a United States that felt that way, and I can’t help wondering how it would feel.

Jazz From Many Angles

2011-05-23T03:49:00.002-04:00

Jazz is a musical form with certain strictures. And yet, with its emphasis on improvisation, jazz is a form that prizes individuality perhaps more than any other musical genre. So there is a natural tension there. The situation is even more interesting for the jazz singer. Not only must they observe the strictures of form, but their performance is also bounded by the need to serve the lyric. Actually, in an upcoming post, I have an example of a jazz singer who does not sing words, but that’s for later. For now, I will note that even with need to serve both form and text, jazz singers have a number of ways available to express themselves. Here are five who do it beautifully, each from a different angle.

Rachel Pearl: Hello, Officer

[purchase]

Hello, Officer is a Rachel Pearl original, but the song has a classic feel. Pearl uses a small group here, but it is easy to imagine a full big band treatment. The song is flirty and fun, with a mischievous wink. Here and on the other songs on Keepin’ It Old School, Pearl delivers performances that are just perfect for her material. My only gripe is that Old School is just four songs long. Hopefully, Pearl will have another full length album out soon.

Ezra Weiss (with Shirley Nanette): Shirley Horn‘s Sound of Love

[purchase]

Shirley Nanette is channeling Shirley Horn here, on an album-long tribute to Horn by Ezra Weiss. Horn was both a singer and a pianist, and Weiss the pianist is directing the show. Ezra Weiss would like everyone to look into Shirley Horn’s music after hearing this, and I must admit that that is what I had to do. I found that Weiss and Nanette both get Horn’s approach perfectly, but they also are their own artists. Weiss takes a delicate approach on Shirley Horn’s Sound of Love, opening with a single note line on the piano, and only expanding on it slightly as the song progresses. Nanette enters softly, and teases out of this delicate ballad all of the nostalgic yearning in the words. Nanette and Weiss both leave plenty of space in this music, and it works to deepen the mood. This is also a great lyric, using the most subtle of our senses, smell, as a metaphor for the passage of time. That may sound strange, but it really works. Nanette is a guest on this album, singing on about half the tracks. Both the delicate touch and the full emotion of the music prevail throughout the album as a whole.

Andrea Wood: Comes Love

[purchase]

I often single out a jazz singer for their work on a ballad, and Andrea Wood does fine with those. In particular, her version of Someday My Prince Will Come is a jaw dropper. But Wood and her band really shine on the uptempo songs as well. Comes Love is a standard, and it is a playful and flirty song. But Wood also renders it as a funky workout, and it really cooks. The rhythm section hits it hard, and Wood rides the wave on top, but she never has to shout. The band takes a flight of fancy in the solo section in the middle, and it all comes back together beautifully, so Wood can take it home. This is a great way to open an album, and varied pleasures follow. Wood also shows a fine feel for Brazilian-flavored songs.

Lisa Kirchner: Leila‘s Song

[purchase]

Lisa Kirchner sings songs from the American songbook. For other artists, that might mean Cole Porter, Lerner and Lowe, maybe even Stephen Sondheim for a stretch. I am quite sure Kirchner could do justice to any of those, and maybe she will in the future. But here, Kirchner’s American Songbook includes Charles Ives, Ned Rorem, and Samuel Barber, to name a few. Maybe these names are not even familiar to some of my readers. They were 20th century classical composers. So was Kirchner’s father, and some of these composers were visitors to her home in Kirchner’s childhood. So Something To Sing About is certainly a jazz album, but many of the songs were born as art songs. The album’s 18 songs also include two Lisa Kirchner originals that sound right at home in this company. Kirchner has a richly textured voice, and she purrs her way through Leila’s song. She moves around the beat, elongating or shortening notes to enhance the emotion of the piece, and she does this very well. Her use of dynamic shifts is very gradual and subtle, and all the more effective for it. The odd-sounding instrument you hear is an accordion, played in a way I have never heard before. Modern classical music can be intimidating to listen to, but don’t let yourself be scared off of this one. Something to Sing About is a treat from start to finish.

Eleanor Dubinsky: America

[purchase]

America is the only song in this set that has no bass part. Eleanor Dubinsky constructs her songs in efficient ways, with some parts implied but not played. Her voice is a low alto, but it floats like smoke. There is no lack of feeling here, but it has an almost deadpan quality, and the emotions get stronger with repeated listens. Some of the songs on Touch the Sky are in Spanish, and the Latin influence is clear even on the songs that are in English. Dubinsky’s songs build slowly, with America being a fine example of this. Dubinsky enters singing over just a single percussion line. Just when you think that’s it, the acoustic guitars enter, followed by additional percussion. The song comes apart differently at the end. Everything the song needs is here, and nothing else.

For a Song: The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul

2011-05-19T02:04:00.003-04:00

XTC: The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul

[purchase]

This is one of those times when a song told me what to do. The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul popped into my head as I started my day, and said, “post me”. XTC was always a band that used strong rhythms, and, especially late in their career, they loved to experiment with their sound. Most of it worked, while some of it flopped amazingly. The album Skylarking is a microcosm of this. It’s a flawed album that I always find myself drawn back to. The album was produced by Todd Rundgren, and some of it is almost ridiculous for how overwrought the emotions are. In particular, 1000 Umbrellas is a song I often find either laughable or pathetic. And yet, the good stuff on this album is great. Man Who Sailed is a fine example. The lyrics describe a man who looks back over his life, and finds much to regret. His tale is told against an almost jaunty jazzy musical setting. The tension between the sound of the song and its content give this one its power. This is, as far as I know, the closest XTC ever came to exploring jazz, and it is a sound I wish they would have done more with.

Call for help:

Teresa Storch: Happy Girl (demo)

[donate here]

As I write this, Teresa Storch has 16 days to go to complete her Kickstarter campaign for her new album The Honesty Kitchen. The first thing I noticed about Storch was her voice. Her music is not blues, but her voice is a bluesy moan, and she does this as well as anyone I have ever heard. Some of the songs in her video look like they have jazzy touches, (one has fiddle and trombone together!), and I can’t wait to hear them. Happy Girl in its present form reminds me of the quiet intensity of a young Tracy Chapman. Please help Storch finish The Honesty Kitchen if you can. Thank you for whatever you can do.

Danny Ellis - The Space Between the Lines

2011-05-17T04:14:00.002-04:00

[purchase]

The Space Between the Lines is, in a sense, Danny Ellis’ first album. This Tenderness, his actual debut, was a set of electronic soundscapes with trombone and a scattering of other acoustic instruments humanizing the proceedings, and helping the songs to connect emotionally. 800 Voices was Danny Ellis telling his harrowing story of growing up in the notorious Artane Industrial School in Dublin, and the music was based on traditional Irish music, leavened with other types of music that Ellis heard growing up. Having made that album, Ellis was finally free to make an album of songs that sound like himself as he is now. In the liner notes to The Space Between the Lines, Ellis describes how these new songs came pouring out of him. Lines has a consistent sound, and planned or not, there is a consistency of theme in the lyrics.

The arrangements here are spare, but they sound fuller than they are. Ellis plays acoustic guitar, and his parts are doubled and enhanced by mandolin or a hybrid of guitar and bazouki called a bazar. There also beautiful fiddle parts. On some songs, Ellis overdubs his own piano or organ parts. I am pretty sure that I also hear bass parts on most songs, but there is no bass player credited in the album notes. And that’s it. In particular, there are no drums, but none are needed, because the rhythm of this music comes through just fine without them. Ellis overdubs some background vocals, and everything sounds like a band that has played together for so long that they fill in each other’s part’s intuitively. Ellis sings in a high tenor voice that manages to be gentle and fully emotionally invested at the same time.

I would say that the theme of these songs is first love. It’s true, but the phrase carries certain connotations that do not apply here. Lines starts with the song Shine, and Ellis describes how he thought he knew what love was until he met his current love. His narrator now realizes that there was no love between his parents, so he never saw the real thing modeled by his role models. The song is a profound thank you for the gift of real love at last. The next song, Ask, is about first love in a completely different way. Here, the narrator describes a romantic encounter from when he was sixteen, in beautiful and tender language. But, at the end of the song, we find that the song is not what it appears to be. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but it takes the listener to another place that seems perfectly natural when you get there. And the album continues, with similarly well crafted songs about discovering love and exploring its depths. Then, in the later part of the album, a second theme emerges: the idea of home. The “home” songs include Another Dublin, which is about the differences between how a place feels in memory and in actual fact. Ellis’ narrator here goes to Dublin, hoping to experience the good things about the city of his youth, but discovers instead that that city is as gone as his youth itself. In the other “home” songs, home is as much an emotional place as a physical one, and the ideas of home and love become intertwined. This is all expressed in beautifully poetic lyrics.

My description may have made it sound like Lines has a premeditated quality, but that is not the case at all. I tend to think that Ellis was not consciously developing a theme either when writing or recording these songs. They have a feel that is completely natural and sincere. The Space Between the Lines is the sound of one man’s heart speaking, beautifully.

Danny Ellis: Ask

Danny Ellis: Another Dublin

Blog business: although I hate to break the mood, I am late in congratulating Adam Sweeny and the Jamboree on the success of their Kickstarter campaign. Thank you to all who helped.

For a Song: See See Rider

2011-05-14T00:41:00.000-04:00

Lightnin‘ Hopkins: See See Rider

[purchase]

While we are on the subject of the blues, let me present Lightnin’ Hopkins. Hopkins was one of those bluesmen who disappeared and was then rediscovered during the folk music revival of the 60s. Lightnin’ Hopkins, to my mind, is best appreciated as a solo artist, playing acoustic guitar. Listen to his See See Rider, and you might think that he was a sloppy player who couldn’t keep time. But that is because we are used to blues fitting a tight, even restrictive, format. Hopkins knew just what he was doing, and his guitar obeyed his will. Yes, he would elongate or compress musical phrases, especially when he soloed. But the result was a dramatic tension and release. Hopkins made the blues an unsettled music about unsettled emotions. His music has a real power that most blues players nowadays cannot or will not achieve. That doesn’t mean that their music is bad, but it doesn’t have the untamed feeling that Hopkins achieved. In the course of his career, Hopkins also made many recordings with small groups, and there is some great music there as well. But group settings tended to reign him in, and his solo works are it for me.

Where the Blues Takes You

2011-05-07T16:13:00.000-04:00

The Blues. Those two words conjure a particular sound. Like so many kinds of music, you can hear it in your head, but you may not be able to define it. But try this: get together with a group of people to discuss it. You might get a surprise. You might find that not everyone hears the same music in their head that you do. You see, the blues is not a static form. It has changed over time, and that process is still going on. The earliest blues is almost unrecognizable to most people. And some artists who started with the blues are now making music that strains that definition. Here are five songs to show what I mean. That’s not nearly enough, so, as a survey, this is very incomplete. But I think it is a fair starting point. The music here, stylistically, spans about fifty years of music. But these are all contemporary artists, and these albums have come out within the last year. Nevertheless, taken together, they take us on a long journey through the blues. Walk with me.

The Little Brothers: Crow Jane

[purchase]

The blues comes from Africa, and then arrives by force in the United States, where it is influenced by Western music to some extent. By the time it started to be recorded, there were black string bands throughout the American South. In addition to the familiar guitars, there were fiddles, banjos, and mandolins. This is the music that inspires The Little Brothers. Their version of Crow Jane has a raw sound that is a perfect reflection of these early blues songs. The musical phrases are longer than you hear in newer blues, and time can expand and contract in this music. Listen to the early recordings that Lightnin’ Hopkins made as a solo artist, and you will hear where this music went. The Little Brothers are a trio, with fine male and female singers. They preserve this early blues sound, but they do not sound like scholars or preservationists. They invest this music with all of the passion it ever had.

Pete Anderson: One and Only Lonely Fool

[purchase]

Pete Anderson first came to my attention as Dwight Yoakum’s first producer. So this album really took me by surprise. The songs on Even Things Up are soaked in blues, and the styles range from the jump blues heard here to Rhythm and Blues and Southern rock. Anderson wrote or co-wrote all of the songs, and it all cooks. Actually, One and Only Lonely Fool isn’t quite jump blues. In the 1930s, many of the big bands had singers, including blues singers like Jimmy Rushing. As these bands began to shrink, the singers stayed on in some cases, and a blues/ jazz hybrid called jump blues developed. First T-Bone Walker and then B B King took this music and began to emphasize the electric guitar in the arrangements, with stinging lead lines to cut through the cushion of horns. This is where One and Only Lonely Fool fits in. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see how the music went from here to James Brown.

John Primer: Chicago Bound

[purchase]

The pivot point for blues is Chicago in the 1950s. The tale of how Southern blues artists like Muddy Waters came to Chicago and plugged in their guitars is well known. On The (R)evolution Continues, the people who run Raisin’ Records have brought together a fine roster of artists with deep roots in the Chicago blues scene to present a survey of the rise and development of Chicago blues. The album is actually the second in a series called Chicago Blues A Living History. This one includes a booklet that gives the year each song was written, and places it in the context of the development of the Chicago sound. It’s a beautiful package, and a great place to start any exploration of this music. Of course, the most important thing is that the music is great.

John Primer is not the best known artist on this album, (that would be Buddy Guy or James Cotton), but his performance of Chicago Bound is a high point, and the song fits this post perfectly. The song is a Jimmy Rogers tune from 1954. He recorded it shortly after leaving Muddy Waters’ band. The interplay of the guitar and piano and the feel of the rhythm section are hallmarks of the Chicago sound. So is the harmonica sound on the solo.

Peaches Staten: I Know You Love Me Baby

[purchase]

After the 1950s, some Chicago artists began to adapt to Rhythm and Blues. Blues is still very much part of the sound, but there is a gospel influence in the big voices, and this is music for dancing. Peaches Staten is a modern Chicago artist who shows how this played out. Her album Live at Legends has bluesier numbers and others that are more soul music. There is even one zydeco number, where she plays the washboard. Through it all, her voice growls and purrs, and there is never any question of how she is feeling. I Know You Love Me finds a stylistic balance. The song opens with a funk line in the guitar that is soon joined by the drums and bass. But the harmonica and Staten’s voice on this one are pure blues. The overall sound of this album is what modern blues sounds like in one of its guises. It’s a long way from The Little Brothers, but the passion is still there.

Tom Principato: Don‘t Wanna Do It

[purchase]

In the 1960s, white musicians began to discover the blues. Notable examples from England included John Mayall and his bands, and the Rolling Stones. A little later, American rockers like the Allman Brothers began to follow suit. From their beginnings as actual blues bands, these artists became rockers who used blues as an important ingredient in their music, and blues-rock was born. The guitar gods like Eric Clapton come from this period. Tom Principato began making his own blues-rock in the 70s, and he’s still at it. Without the context of this post, most people would probably call Don’t Wanna Do It southern rock, and that would be fair. Chuck Leavell from the Allman Brothers even plays the organ here. But now I hope you can hear the blues in this music as well. Elsewhere on this album, there are a couple of Latin-tinged songs. Keep in mind that Carlos Santana started out as a blues guitarist, and that Black Magic Woman was written by Peter Green shortly after he left John Mayall’s band. So overall, Principato delivers a tour of where blues rock has gone. A couple of instrumentals also have a delicious jazzy flavor to them. And Principato, in both his singing and playing, delivers all of the passion of a bluesman.

For a Song: Yvette in English

2011-05-06T02:54:00.000-04:00

Joni Mitchell: Yvette in English

[purchase]

In her younger days, Joni Mitchell seemed to believe that a relationship could be a complete merger of two personalities, with nothing held back. But her later songs take a different view. Yvette in English presents a chance meeting between a man and a woman. They are separated by the barrier of language. And yet, she can make the offer, “Please have this little bit of instant bliss”. In Cary, the joy promised to never end, but now, the whole thing has a quality that is more tentative and fragile. Perhaps, it is more valuable as well. The quality of the music reflects this as well. In the later part of her career, Joni Mitchell has become a fine storyteller, and Yvette in English is a fine example of this.

Abbie Gardner - Hope

2011-05-04T03:12:00.001-04:00

[purchase]

Country music is a hybrid musical form. It represents a blending of many older musical genres, and that certainly includes the blues. The music of Abbie Gardner makes this connection very clear. I already knew this from Gardner’s work with Red Molly, but Gardner’s new album Hope is still a revelation. For one thing, I love the sound of the National steel guitar, and Gardner plays it here far more than I have heard her do before. For another, where Red Molly performs roughly an even split of original material and covers, and that includes songs by the three different artists who make up the band, Hope is Abbie Gardner’s show, and she wrote all but three of the album’s songs. The last element that makes Hope something special is that Gardner gets to show off her jazzy side, which mostly doesn’t fit with what Red Molly does. Naturally, I am eager for the next Red Molly album, hopefully later this year, but Hope is a wonderful treat in its own right.

The country-blues connection starts with Abbie Gardner’s voice. She doesn’t growl like some blues singers, but her slightly breathy alto has a full range of expression, whether on a bluesy burner like Break It Slow, or on a tender country waltz like Hope. On jazzier numbers like Comes Love, she adds a wonderful sassiness that is perfect for the song. On the album, Gardner plays the National, the dobro, and a lap steel, with the National often featured. So she goes from a percussive guitar sound to a twangier one, and she can also add lead lines that are reminiscent of Bonnie Raitt’s slide work. The core band here adds Craig Akin on stand-up bass and Ben Wittman on drums. Gardner puts these rhythm players through their paces, what with the stylistic and mood changes here, but both players display amazing versatility. Akin also contributes one original song, the instrumental Do It, which sounds like it arose out of a jam session; the three musicians are having entirely too much fun here, which makes the song fun for the listener as well. Some tracks add Herb Gardner, Abbie’s father, on piano; others have Sarah Gardner, her sister, on organ. In both cases, Abbie Gardner has chosen the best available musicians for the songs. There is also a variety of background singers on the album.

As a songwriter, Abbie Gardner shows a great love of classic forms. Break It Slow is the tale of a woman who fears that her relationship with her lover may be ending. The sung kicks off the album in high gear, with its uptempo blues sound, but the lyric could just as easily be a country song. Hope is a country waltz with a wonderful cello part, and it shows Gardner’s gift for imagery. Her “glasses that shatter like broken little pieces of stars” is an image that, in the context of the song, I can see in my head as she sings the line. In all, these are stories of love sought, found, and lost, told with great eloquence. Gardner’s performances invest her words with great emotion, and thus she demonstrates her love of classic song forms. And then, late in the album, she breaks the rules a bit. Bang Bang has an ambiguity that one doesn’t usually find in country. Here, a woman who has found her lover with another woman lets the us know that she has a gun, and she intends to use it. But she might shoot her lover, his lover, or herself. She only knows that “something wants to go bang today”. Her feelings and the sense of danger are both very real in this song, but Gardner wants to present the situation, not its resolution. Nellie is a great piece of storytelling, and it describes a harrowing situation. The narrator, whose relationship with the title character is unclear, offers to help Nellie escape from an abusive relationship. Gardner tells the tale, not graphically, but with a bluntness that is unusual and brave. Finally, the album concludes with Too Soon (For Karena). This one is a beautiful hymn for a lost loved one. Coming at the end of the album as it does, Too Soon offers comfort not only in the context of the song itself, but also for all the stirred emotions that have come before.

In all, Hope is an album I know I will be going back to. The playing is sometimes flashy, but always in service to the song. The writing is rich and varied. And Abbie Gardner has a great voice for blues, country, or jazz.

Abbie Gardner: Break It Slow

Abbie Gardner: Hope

Blog business: Take a look at the Oliver di Place community page on Facebook, and put a like on it. Not only will you see announcements of new posts here, but there is also exclusive content, including new release announcements and other news about Oliver di Place artists.

For a Song: Harpo’s Blues

2011-05-01T15:28:00.000-04:00

Phoebe Snow: Harpo‘s Blues

[purchase]

Have you heard Poetry Man this week? Maybe for the first time in years? Phoebe Snow passed on this week at age 60. Her story has much to tell us about the business end of how music gets made. Poetry Man, of course, was the monster hit from her 1974 debut. But Harpo’s Blues comes from the same album. The voice is unique, and it is certainly the same one on both songs. Snow’s voice shimmered, like gentle ripples on a moonlit pond. But, where Poetry Man leaned towards the pop-folk sounds of the then-new singer-songwriter movement, Harpo’s Blues is a wonderful bluesy jazz number. That debut album found Snow merrily genre hopping, and hitting most of her marks beautifully. It’s the kind of thing that no major label would touch nowadays. But in 1974, it was a viable way to launch a career. So what were some of Phoebe Snow’s hits from her later albums? Stumped? Let me tell you what happened.

Before the release of Phoebe Snow’s second album, she had a child. Daughter Valerie suffered from hydrocephalus, a severe form of brain damage. Phoebe Snow made the decision to care for her daughter at home, and this occupied far more of her time than the development of her musical career. So it was that many artistic decisions, including the choice of producer and material, were made for her. Because she transcended musical genres, this meant that her labels had a hard time finding material that was best for her. In some cases, like turning her into a rock singer for one album, poor judgments were made. Even so, that remarkable voice never faltered, and it is well worth picking through the rest of her albums for the many gems that are to be found there. As a parent myself, I applaud Phoebe Snow for the courage and determination she showed in deciding to keep her daughter out of institutions. I don’t know if I could be that strong. Still, can’t help wondering about the music she might have made… Valerie died in 2007. Phoebe Snow recorded only one album after her daughter’s death, Live in 2008. The amazing voice had gained some muscle since her debut, but all of the soulfulness of her youth was still there. If only she had had more time.

Brother Joscephus and the Love Revival Revolution Orchestra - Live at Brooklyn Bowl

2011-04-29T04:12:00.002-04:00

[purchase]

In some cultures, music is used to induce a shared ecstatic trance state. Individual participants are then driven to shout and move wildly, as their spirits rush out seeking expression. On Live at Brooklyn Bowl, Brother Joscephus and the Love Revival Revolution Orchestra give us an idea what this sounds like. The key word in the name of the band is revival, as in “revival meeting”. This is not sacred music, but the spirit is very much involved. When I reviewed Brother Joscephus‘ debut album, I spoke of the theatricality of the music and the clear New Orleans influences, and those qualities are very much still here. But, heard live, other qualities emerge that just weren’t as clear on a studio album. One is the generosity of Brother Joscephus himself; most of the other musicians who made up the band on the night this was performed get spotlights to show what they can do, which is a lot. Another pleasant surprise here were the little hints of jazz that turn up from time to time.

The songs here are not, taken as a group, as thoughtful a batch as last time. That is as it should be, since a studio album is more geared towards listening, while a live performance like this is about presenting the best party possible. These songs are appeals for love in its varying forms, and the lyrics would sound a bit naïve if the performances were not invested with so much passion and fervor. Brother Joscephus himself is a soulful shouter. On Somebody to Love, (yes, that’s a cover of the old Queen song), he yields the microphone to Seoul Sistah #1, (AKA Samia Mounts), who delivers a stunning gospel soul performance that brings to mind Aretha Franklin in her prime. The band is huge. I counted twelve instrumentalists, four main singers, and a chorus of five background singers. There is a horn section of trumpets, trombone, and sax, but they can switch to clarinet and tuba for a wonderful take on When the Saints Go Marching In. Revolution of Love is a funky workout that turns jazzy when the horn players step out to take their solos. The trombone solo is particularly tasty here. Shine On has a funky groove, but the band all but drops out for a middle section that features first the piano, and then is joined by electric guitar playing pure rock. These are some of the ecstatic moments that I mentioned, and there are more. In each case, it is easy to see how the musicians got swept up in the group sound, and the band does a great job of finding the groove again and getting back to the song. So you could call this jam band music, but in the best sense. The band is tight enough to get loose. That sentence may not make much sense on the page, but you can hear it throughout this album.

For the last two songs, I Still Love You and Mighty Mighty Chain of Love, the band takes the pace down, and gently brings the audience back to earth. I criticized the last album for flagging at the end, but, in the context of a live performance, I see how this works, and it is done beautifully here. An album should leave you wanting to hear more, and a live album should make you want to attend a performance. Live at Brooklyn Bowl succeeds perfectly on both counts.

Brother Joscephus and the Love Revival Revolution Orchestra: Revolution of Love

Brother Joscephus and the Love Revival Revolution Orchestra: Somebody to Love

The Default Setting

2011-04-25T03:42:00.001-04:00

The image above is by Kristin Morris. See more of her work and purchase prints here.

By now, most of my readers know of my dislike of genre labels. The best music is individual, and doesn’t necessarily fit any genre label anyway. When I use these labels, I always try to expand on them, to convey a sense of what the music sounds like. And then there are times, when a song may fit a genre, but a set does not. For those times, there is a default setting that usually covers it, but means very little: singer-songwriter. Anyone who sings and writes their own songs qualifies. Yes, traditionally, singer-songwriters create acoustic-based music and confessional lyrics in the first person. But look at Joni Mitchell, just for one. She started out as the definition of a singer-songwriter, but she eventually quit writing confessional lyrics, and she later plugged in. Was she a singer-songwriter no more? It’s a debatable point, but I would say no. Here, then, are five songs by “singer-songwriters”. Together, these songs show how the term “singer-songwriter” breaks down.

Dennis Crommett: High Cotton

[purchase]

Dennis Crommett can serve as our baseline. He is close to the classic definition of a singer-songwriter. High Cotton has a first person narrative, and beautifully rendered nature imagery, and these are hallmarks of the songs here. The acoustic guitar is featured in most of the arrangements, and Crommett sings in a wonderful low tenor with a conversational tone that draws the listener in. The harmony vocals on the choruses are done with a light touch, and suit these songs beautifully. Occasionally, Crommett rocks out, but mostly his songs are wonderfully understated gems.

Hotels & Highways: Heaven Knows

[purchase]

Heaven Knows has a lyric told in the first person. The music is mostly acoustic, with electric bass adding emphasis and a chiming electric guitar filling out the sound beautifully. The trouble here is that Hotels & Highways is not a person but a group. They are a trio of two male and one female artist, and their vocal blend is one of the highlights of their sound. The three of them collaborate on the writing of most of the songs, including this one. These are three writers who clearly know each other well, and have a great sense of what each can contribute. Heaven Knows is actually one of their gentler tunes. The vocals can be on the folkier side, as heard here, or more soulful, as the song requires. This is a band that can rock out, and there is even one jazzy tune on the album. It all works, and it hangs together beautifully.

Chanda Cooper: Canvas

[purchase]

Chanda Cooper sings in a wonderful folky alto, and accompanies herself on acoustic guitar. Canvas, like so many of her songs, opens with just her voice and guitar. If you were to listen to the first thirty seconds of each song here, you might think you had discovered a marvelous folk artist. The lyrics are in the first person, and full of emotion. So we would seem to be on safe ground here. But there is a wild card here. Chanda Cooper writes all of her own words, but she usually collaborates on the music with Martin Johann Kloppers. Kloppers plays several variations on the cello that I have never heard of before, and he gets the most amazing sounds from them. Usually, as on Canvas, Kloppers enters a song along with the bass player and drummer, and suddenly the song is transformed into a rock number. Passion boils up in Coopers voice at the same time. It’s almost like someone angered Bruce Banner, releasing the Hulk, so stark is the change in the music. But it makes sense, and the effect is powerful indeed.

Shayfer James: Tombstone Road

[purchase]

By the time we get to Shayfer James, we’re not thinking about singer-songwriters any more. James sings in a powerful tenor, and he plays the piano in a strident style. This is music with muscle and drama. I can easily imagine Shayfer James covering Queen; in fact, I much prefer his voice to Freddy Mercury’s. James sings where Mercury yells, and James never pushes to hit a note. But both singers have great passion, and like things dramatic. Shayfer James needs to have a versatile band behind him. Tombstone Road has a carnival feel to it, and other songs show a cabaret influence. This one really delivers the goods.

Amelia Curran: The Dozens

[purchase, price in Canadian dollars]

Amelia Curran usually fits in the singer-songwriter mold, including on most of her latest album Hunter Hunter. Her lyrics are first person and concern relationships, and many of her songs feature her voice and acoustic guitar. That voice is a smoky alto, and her guitar playing has a bit more attack than one usually finds in this kind of music, but still… But then, Curran does something like The Dozens. This one puts me in mind of a smoky cabaret, with film noir shadows and broken hearts scattered about. It struck me that the women in Curran’s songs are characters from these old movies. These women love hard, and when they hurt, they never show it. But Curran sees it, and she lets us in. Her voice is perfect for this material, so this one really works.

Reminder:

I told you two weeks ago about the Kickstarter campaign for Adam Sweeney and the Jambouree. With nine days to go as I write this, it’s crunch time, and they could really use an angel or two. Of course, smaller donations will also help. If you can do anything at all, please donate here. Thank you for whatever you can do.

For a Song: Everybody’s Dancin’

2011-04-22T19:12:00.003-04:00

Gove Scrivenor: Everybody‘s Dancin‘

[purchase]

This post was born out of a discussion I started in the forum on the No Depression website. I asked about musicians who were fondly remembered, but whom the writer had lost track of, and Tom McD mentioned Gove Scrivenor. I remember Scrivenor fondly myself. He released two albums on the Flying Fish label in the 1970’s, Shady Gove and Coconut Gove. His music was a combination of acoustic blues and the poppier sound heard here. But Everybody’s Dancin’ is the song that stayed in my head all these years. Maybe it’s because I was a teenager when I first heard it, well into my hormones with feet stage, and this sounded like a party I wanted to attend. All I can say is that I am now older, and presumably wiser, but this still sounds like a great time.

Natalia Zukerman - Gas Station Roses

2011-04-20T03:22:00.000-04:00

[purchase, scroll down]

Almost every artist I have reviewed goes with a tight song structure. Verses and choruses proceed in a predictable pattern, and the bridge, if there is one, comes roughly in the middle. The verses rhyme and scan in a particular way, and the choruses might have a different scheme, but each chorus works the same way as every other. I’m not knocking writing a song this way. It’s not easy to do it and have it sound true. But it’s possibly even harder to break these rules, and still have songs that work. That’s what Natalia Zukerman does on Gas Station Roses, and she makes it work beautifully. The songs here are messy, but so are the relationships they portray. Choruses arrive like unfinished thoughts, to be fleshed out in later iterations. Rhymes happen naturally, if at all, and the number of syllables in a particular line may change from verse to verse. All of this comes on top of the tight grooves laid down by Zukerman and her band. In fact, there is a tension between the tightness of the playing and the looseness of the vocal lines, and that is why the whole thing works so well.

The last song on the album is Little Bird, and it features just voice, acoustic guitar, and an understated bass part. But the rest of the album’s songs have drums, bass, and some combination of electric, acoustic, and lap steel guitars. Brooklyn adds a tenor sax, Indiana has some amazing interplay between tenor sax and harmonica, and Howard Hughes features fiddle and banjo. The music is a fine stew of rock, blues, and even intimations of funk in places. And then there is Zukerman’s voice. She sings in a smoky alto. Her voice is often breathy, but she can break into a full voice that tends to reach for higher notes and heightened emotions. She can portray hope and disappointment in the same song. And her singing adds a detail to some of the songs that is not in the lyric: she has a warmth and even a sense of humor that says she can pick herself up and go on. Love doesn’t always work out, but Zukerman’s characters are never ready to give up on it.

In the song Brooklyn, an unread book can cause an avalanche. At the start of the song, this is a symbol of a cluttered life. But by the end, when the image returns, I had the sense that reading the book meant allowing oneself to fall in love, and the avalanche was now emotional rather than physical. This is a fine example of how Natalia Zukerman uses a metaphor, and she does it exceptionally well. A word or a phrase will repeat in the course of a song, and its meaning will change with the context. Zukerman uses this device to tell her stories. Gas Station Roses is one those songs where you wonder what the chorus has to do with anything. The song seems to be a simple plea for love. But the last verse ties it all together, and the song turns out to be an attempted apology. Indiana is a mood piece. On top of great atmospheric music, the lyric uses a series of images to describe a bleak emotional landscape, but Zukerman still offers hope. Sorry Side of Town has a narrator who must learn to let go of self pity and accept love. Instead of the sudden breakthrough you might expect, there is a gentle evolution, beautifully rendered. And Come Undone might have been a good title for this album. Each of the song’s four verses ends with the words “Come undone”, and each time the meaning of these words shifts, from a burst of mutual attraction, to a tumultuous point in a relationship, to finally an acceptance and a sort of emotional détente.

On the basis of this album, then, Natalia Zukerman is a fine writer who speaks by indirection, but eloquently. She is a singer who can say things that her words do not. She has put together a fine band who create exactly the right atmosphere for each song here, and also provide a nice variety of sounds throughout the album. Gas Station Roses is a rare treat.

Natalia Zukerman: Gas Station Roses

Natalia Zukerman: Come Undone