Blues Clues

Sony Legacy has outdone themselves with their new batch of Roots ‘n’ Blues reissues.  Alan Jacobson excavates.

Everyone else is focusing on Howlin’ Wolf and his new biography.  My theory: why add grist?  Here’s all I’ll say about him, nice and precise, nothing too pretentious—just the serious LOVE Modern Kicks is known for: the Wolf’s 1951 recording of “California Blues” may just be the prettiest mixture of delayed guitar and wheezing vocals I have ever heard. 

But we must move onward and upward, the blues capsules follow; for it was George Steine who said that the blues unabashedly displays “the pressure of life”.  Well, these suckers have been weighing down my review desk for quite some time. 

So, of course, it is time for me to relieve/relive some of that pressure for the blues vicariously expresses what we need to say, a real safety valve for our darkest moments.  I will rate these recordings for quality, historical importance, and utility equally.

Shave ‘em Dry: The Best of Lucille Bogan

About 15 years ago, Rhino issued the seminal Risque Rhythm, an exploration of nasty 50’s R & B, filled with more inspired double entendres, a pair involving butter churning and washing machines, than any collection before.  In the Thirties, Lucille Brogan whacked out some of the nastiest (what...B?) ever committed to record.  In the songs, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox and Ma Rainey’s peer struts out quite the unique personality.  Whether Bogan was a coke-snorting lesbian who sold her body in real life is up to debate, but rollicking tunes such as “Barbecue Bess” where she describes “barbecues/the only thing I sell/and if you want my meat/you’ll have to come to my house at twelve” sound authentic enough.  She wrote them all, save “I’m Gonna Shave You Dry” which was written and performed by her sole accompanist, pianist Walter Roland. For a wicked google-eye, listen to the original, recorded solely for friends way back and unearthed for the first time for this collection, with the kiddies safely locked away.

Quality: 9.0       Historical Importance: 9.5         Double Entendre: 10

Honey Babe Let the Deal Go Down: The Best of the Mississippi Sheiks

Every once in a while, I hear the “greatest thing ever”.  As in, I’ll be driving along and listening to the rare great radio show and I will be utterly lost to something the DJ seems to have chosen just to yank my soul out of my body, twist it into some beautiful sounds... I am of course referring to the “Macarena”. 

Some nearly crash their cars when a pretty girl crosses the street.  I’m in danger when I hear something like Bill Dogget’s stunning Carnival of Souls soundtrakker “Moonglow”.  The first time I heard the Mills Brothers, I bounced off a curb from sheer surprise at how damned good it was and nearly crashed again at the joy inspired by the organic cuteness of their proto doowop. 

So, I slipped this new collection of the most important and successful string band of the 1930’s into the ol’ CD-o-matic and virtually lost my shit again—even though I was somewhat prepared. 

The Sheiks named themselves after the Valentino character and Charlie Patton and Memphis Slim performed in different incarnations of the group; I knew something about how significant these cats were supposed to be.  This will not prepare you for the Sheiks’ strange magic.  Just to pinpoint: the deep blunk of the guitar counterpoised to Walter Vinson’s vocals and Lonnie Chatman’s fiddle synthesis creates such a stunning sense of otherness, of poignancy, that their version of “Sitting on Top of the World” may easily kill you even if you’re just taking a stroll.

Quality: 10        Historical Importance: 10          Deadliness: 10

Crazy Blues: The Best of Mamie Smith

As spicy as Bogan’s later recordings would be, Smith’s stuff would be sweet, but towards the bitter end of that spectrum.  Mamie Smith was the first black vocalist to sing on a commercial American record.  And her product was very viable—during the first six months of its 1920 release, “Crazy Blues” sold over a million copies, a feat unheard of especially  then.  

This was a pre-divergence era when jazz and blues blended exceedingly well and Smith’s Jazz Hounds provide an emotive, wailing dixie-style cacophony to back her unusual vocals.  Though Mamie would pave the way for Ida Cox and Bessie Smith, her high, vibrato delivery sounds more in line with light opera than a blues like “Every night and day I hang my head and weep/Yes, weep!”  This is a counterpoint that runs through the entire collection, even to the later proto-big band tunes, providing heightened contrast and a feeling of importance and confusion.  What’s even more astounding about this reissue is its sound quality.  Recordings from the 20’s have never sounded this brilliant.

Quality: 9.8       Historical Importance: 10          Speaking for Our Confusion: 10

Are You Bound for Heaven or Hell?: The Best of Reverend J.M. Gates

The most successful and prolific of all recorded preachers, James M. Gates was a huge star, recording over 200 songs.  Way ahead of his time, he also hated Wal-Mart.  The first 2 tunes on this CD, “Good Bye to Chain Stores” decry the coming of the big stores as the reason for unemployment, destruction of community via the fall of the mom and pop stores, alcoholism, depression, and a spread of every evil across the country.  It all begins with a rant, a bit of acting, and then some lovely, soulful chanting about how “they’ll ruin you sure as you’re born”. 

I am not a religious man, but I can easily tell that a true feeling of important work being done pervades this collection.  Backing Gates’s coarse telling of a “Devil in the Flying Machine” is testifying which creates a gritty, surreal, elevated state of expression. Virtually forgotten now, until MLK’s, Gates’s funeral was the biggest Atlanta had ever seen.

Quality: 9.5       Historical Importance: 10          Fighting Corporate America: 10

The Winter of 69

Oliver Hunt explores the ins and outs of blues as approached by those of us damaged by hacks.

There was a band I used to see as a teenager in Kansas City called the Sin City Disciples.  As a group of older guys who’d weathered the first couple generations of punk rock, their take on the blues was snarling and irreverent, a piss-take, similar to like minded outfits such as Poison 13 and The Dicks.  They’d made no claims on authenticity, but were probably closer in spirit to any quote-unquote real thing than whatever was being championed by Rolling Stone or classic rock radio at the time.  The Sin City Revivalists were a punk rock, not blues revival, band.

Having grown up white and middle class in the Eighties, I make no claims to being a barometer of authenticity.  The blues form that I’d had the most immediate access and exposure to was the stuff that had succumbed to the decade’s misguided video-age makeover and production values: The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Delaware Destroyers, and Robert Cray’s MTV hits; aging mediocre limeys Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton; cinematic guitar duels between seasoned blues vets Steve Vai and Ralph Macchio*; suburban high school guitar jocks running through the scales and just feelin’ it man...it was all less than fascinating and I was uninspired to delve much further.  Blues was music I wanted to like more than I could and was made to feel like a shallow product of my generation when I couldn’t.

Later in life, I was living in Austin; many a night had been wasted staggering down Sixth Street in a glassy-eyed haze of alcoholic misanthropy and unrequited lust, a half eaten slice of pizza being knocked out of my hand by a silk-shirted frat goon, a chorused-out guitar tone providing recycled shuffle behind wailing cliché after wailing cliché of hard livin’ and col’ bluddid wimmin.  Jimmie Vaughan plays Dubya’s victory party and yuppies affect rural Ebonics such as Ah UnnaSTAN!  An eyesore statue (of SRV) turns its back on Town Lake, as it should.

I don’t know that I hated blues music; I do know that I hated Stevie Ray Vaughan and his legacy.  SRV, I figured, was the Hendrix for people who wanted to like Hendrix but couldn’t get past his blackness.  It was an easy thing to think in Tejas’s biggest suburb, where sleazy, overweight bar owners kept it real keeping seasoned blues vets like Rob Schneider a regular attraction. 

Revivalists are, by definition, revisionists.  This means that they weren’t there the first time and the past is re-imagined to fit their particular aesthetic agenda.  This becomes problematic when revivalists start believing they are genuine.  It’s been only the ugliest Caucasoid trend in music ever since Clapton walked out of the Yardbirds in a puritanical huff only to end up the blue version of Kenny G.

I’m not sure, exactly, where Johnny Winter’s debut fits into the watering down of the watered-down.  He was never exactly a revivalist.  Winter had established himself as a rock ‘n’ roll outsider before rock itself had really hit puberty.  An early television appearance with his brother** had actually prompted kids to stop buying an early single of theirs.  They’d looked as though they’d gestated in their mother’s cold, clammy cellar of a womb before emerging, Boo Radley-like, into toxic sunlight as adolescent greaser scarecrows.  Looks like my generation isn’t the only shallow one.

The unfortunate circumstance regarding this reissue, to my ears, is that it hits every cliché.  Winters deserves some credit for getting to them before they’d cemented, but he couldn’t save them and though his conviction is genuine, a post-mortem cliché said with conviction is still unfortunately a cliché. 

Johnny Winter is not a complete bore to listen to, however.  His guitar tone is tight and dry, which works.  But the best tracks are light on the guitar and heavier on backing arrangements that favor piano and brass.  Those particular songs showcase an unaffected voice that’s far more serviceable without being showy.  They’re at least more interesting than the shuffle and run that set the stage for Winter’s misguided acolytes.

Winter may be the genuine article and not a revivalist.  However, he only has the revivalists to thank for my disparagement of this reissue.  Blame Clapton, blame Stevie, hell...blame Texas, but don’t blame me.  I’m just the guy who has to hear it; a shallow product of my generation--I don’t make any claims toward authenticity.

Decide for yourself if he's the real thing. Johnny Winter plays live at the House of Blues on Friday, July 9th.
Contents of this article, copyright, Oliver Hunt.

*Editor’s note: from the film, Crossroads.  Macchio wins, apparently something truly to behold.

**Editor’s note: Brother Edgar of FRANKENSTEIN: “DUN DUN DUNT DUN DUN DUN-DUN-DUNNN/DOOBIE-DEE-DEE-DOOBIE-DEE-DEE-DOO...”

Living on the Edge

Sam Beam does Florida and folk music proud Alan Jacobson reports.

Right; so Sam Beam’s Iron & Wine is folk music.  But the music is as atypical and unusual as his rise to indie fame; a music as delicate and wistful as it is hearty and focused, filled with thoughts and words that are introspective and personal while remaining utterly accessible and universal.

Beam relocated to Miami to pursue a career in film production.  The long, strange hours didn’t mesh with family priorities, so he quit and began teaching cinematography at The International Fine Arts College.  He also had a hobby.

Beam produced and traded tapes of his four-track acoustic suites with fellow musician (Carissa’s Weird) and childhood friend, Ben Bridwell.  Ben loved the tunes, named the venture Iron & Wine, and featured “Dead Man’s Will” in his zine’s CD compilation.  Sub Pop heard the track and came running.

Beam still teaches, seeing his music as more of a hobby than anything else.  Maybe his technical knowledge of how things look when effectively filtered through the camera’s point of view makes his take on life so unique and engaging.  Perhaps the fact that he humbly creates this music simply for the joy of expression is what makes it so solid and good. 

Beam recruited Brian Deck (Red Red Meat, Modest Mouse) to produce Iron & Wine’s new Our Endless Days Are Numbered.   The result is a view of the artist’s psyche perhaps more layered, but every bit as subtle as before. 

Simple ideas still traverse simple rhythms to simple accompaniment.   The percussion of “Cinder and Smoke” consists of a bongo which cleanly augments the deeply percussive guitar; what stands out and provides the spine is a stereophonic crackle, adding eerie texture and emotion.

“Teeth in the Grass” follows the cycle of life via fitting accompaniment featuring mild percussion, a drivingly bluesy rhythm line, and slide guitar to lyrics that match the form: “And when you give me your clothes.../there will be teeth in the grass.../And when there’s nothing to want.../there will be teeth in the grass”.

Sam Beam cites Leonard Cohen as an influence, but his delicate, passionate delivery of deep universal truths, humanism, and even his plaintive whisper all recall Nick Drake’s elegance rather than Cohen’s stark lyricism. 

The process emphasized, Beam says the music comes first and the words seem to write themselves.  Like a great avant-garde artist, there is a central motif, a fount from which everything flows.  And like the great country songwriters, Beam focuses on the stories and poems for their own sake. 

Unlike Will Oldham (Palace) or Jason Molina’s (Songs: Ohia) depressing desolation, Sam Beam is more like another indie folk romantic minimalist, Damien Jurado.  Strikingly similar are both the acoustic intimacy of their live performances and the poignant lyrics (“a baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone”) delicately confided over gentle acoustic accoutrement.  The audience invariably becomes hypnotized and moves closer to the source of this lovely sound.  A feeling which invariably strengthens with each listen to Our Endless Days Are Numbered.    

Iron and Wine play the Abbey Pub on Friday, July 2^nd.

It Is Actually Funny...

David Cross kvetches up a storm, but does so hilariously.

While I realize that is a terrible headline, I am shucking pretension to let you know I also realize that I am nowhere near as funny as David Cross.

David Cross is not happy with the state of world politics and how we relate to it.  And he is a spazz.  But he is also more sophisticated.  This is not to say Cross is not a happy man; he is naturally funny, knows comedy, and is capable of making brilliant, illuminating connections between the seemingly incongruous.

But he’s harshly critical of the US of A and its ties with little else but it these days.  Consumerism, the Right, and especially religion take hard hits.  From the liner notes, “Lastly, I would like to quote the Bible, Leviticus 24:16, ‘And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death.’  Wow, what a vindictive, irrational egomaniac.”    

Cross trashes Bush for asking his troops to pray for him, relating the behavior to a king, smug in Divine Right, munching on a leg of mutton, and sending for court jester Dennis Miller to provide safe jabs at the state of affairs.

Similarly, last night on Conan, I watched a comedian.  He was OK.  Actually, by talk show standards, I’d say he rated pretty high.  What kept him from being really something special was his lack of ability to be anything but a gag man.  He was intelligent, his gags were good, but apropos of nothing, he’d lay into something like: “Paul Abdul is half Arab half Jewish.  My idea: send her to the Middle East.  Problem solved, no more Paula Abdul”. 

Tuning in midway to It’s Not Funny, you might hear Cross asking the audience in a bizarre twist on standup mannerisms, “was anybody here aborted?”, this after making a snarky joke about how providing several abortions to his girlfriend is way harder than raising a child.  This is the funny, intelligent, motivated way to shock.  Cross later notes that he’d rather hear the “death rattle of his only child” than see Evanescence live—all via a brilliant simulated phone conversation. 

But Cross’s focus is tight as he quickly gets back to the business of flaying the like of: electric scissors, The Simple Life, gold-covered desert, religion, and how all of this is emblematic of American life and politics--all making Cross angry, bitchy, and so, so very funny.  Highly recommended, if only to find out under what context Bush would say, “Mmmmm that’s good Jew baby heart!” and to find out why it works so magnificently.

Damned Good Music.  So Says I.

The Shins have earned the right to do just what they please and are doing it well, see them do it live at House of Blues June 18^th & 19^th.

The indie scene rocked two years back with the release of Oh, Inverted World, easily one of the most beautiful-sounding records this side of Margo Guryan, and its corresponding mind-numbingly gorgeous, single “New Slang”.  The Shins seemed to burst onto the scene.  But appearances often deceive.   

Guitarist/auteur Jamie Mercer set Shins in motion with poppy Seattle trio, Flake, in 1993.  They released but 1995’s Wild Cool Anger on Y Records.  Additional members and a slight name change to Flake Music resulted in When You Land Here, It's Time To Return, which earned Mercer and his lads comparisons to Beulah and the Apples in Stereo.  Mercer and drummer Jesse Sandoval (whose tenure with Mercer explains his remarkable sensitivity to the material) broke off to form The Shins as a duo and change of pace, supporting indie superheroes Cibo Matto and Modest Mouse

Flake alumnus and keyman Marty Crandall jumped shin—that doesn’t actually make sense, does it?--shortly thereafter.  Dave Hernandez and Ron Skrasek of Sacred of Chaka joined and quickly jumped shin—that does make sense!--when Chaka blew up.  Neal Langford, another former Flake musician, came aboard to pull down bass duties. 

Omnibus knocked out the 45’s “Nature Bears a Vaccuum” and “When I Goose Step” in 1998 and 2000, respectively.  This gained the Shins their first important notice, notably from big ol’ Sub Pop who invited them to feature as single of the month.  That song was “New Slang”, a classic by anyone’s estimation.

The (fairly) new Chutes too Narrow pulls off the deft one-two of managing to be at once more varied, and subtler than its predecessor.  A straight listen from the soulfully pounding “Turn A Square” to the Sweetheart of the Rodeo groove of “Gone for Good” disconcerts at first.  Repeated listens reward immeasurably.

Instead of filling an entire song with virtually numbing beauty, The Shins manage to make beauty seem more special by virtue of a sparer implementation this time out.  The baroque break on “Saint Simon” with its cascading lalala’s is enough to make the knees buckle.  A tune full of this kind of stuff would induce nothing short of paralyzing rapture accompanied by joyful lolling and dribbling.    

Melancholy is displaced by a more mischievous spirit on Chutes.  This may put off the listener at first.  In fact, when I originally bought this record, I gave it away.  Yes, folks, it’s another edition of “confessions of a music columnist what oughta know better”.  But, as I snag listen number 6 in a row, tune into Mercer’s masterful Will Sergeant impersonation on “High Horse”, it occurs to me how wonderful change is, for the Shins and myself--I’m older, wiser, and could not at this very moment think of a rcord to recommend any more than the richly textured Chutes too Narrow.

The Shins Kick Out the Jams Motherfucker at the House of Blues June 18^th & 19^th.

He’s Not Jus’ A Rascal...

Cockney wunderkind creates –and mangles-- a new lexicon on Boy in da Corner.

I have witnessed my colleagues laboring, nay torturing, over Dizzee Rascal’s remarkable Boy in da Corner.  But I’m not going to talk about my fellow manatees here except to briefly mention that Vice magazine’s new issue details an alphabetized list of the cutest things ever.  An unusually inspired, yet non-smug/non-hateful article, they chose, for “D”, drunken koala bears.  I hate to knock solid work, but these uber-hipsters, lovers of their own cool, missed the dingy.  At the risk of sounding patronizing, I’d like to add Dylan Mills, the man who can be referred to as phenomenon with no fear of overstatement, crushing that cliché with his raw talent and vision, the man known as Dizzee Rascal.

I am not debating the fact that Mills could, were I pitted against him with a lead pipe and machete, rip me apart with his bare hands and then trot away with my girlfriend on arm for a nice, relaxed evening.  I am not insulting the guy; my mission here is to prepare the potential American listener for what it is going to feel like to hear this album—until you are acclimated to what a tough East Londoner sounds like, giggles will have to be stifled, believe me.

Boy in da Corner is a near-maddening, completely distracting, almost imperceptible mélange of words and sounds that we, stateside, are not used to.  In London, at least there’s the referent of the accent.  Here, nothing.  So, allow me to present my translation of this lower-class East London rap, this Garage meets Hip-Hop style called “Grime”, for your American ears.

“MC’s best start chattin’ about what’s really ‘appenin”; 18 year-old Dizzee Rascal has unleashed a singular, challenging, dense slab of remarkably unique sounds, thick production, and complex rhymes about dramatic situations.  “Sittin’ Here” kicks off the album, bringing the listener into the fray by describing a young man resting for a moment to asses, in a milieu of gang warfare, how his innocent childhood of football and having fun transformed into a battleground where he holds a confusingly unusual smile that’s “sweet but could turn sour”.  Dizzee’s final assessment, backed by gunshots and sirens: the perplexed, defiantly individualistic, “wahgwan...!”  

The first tune Rascal ever produced, “I Luv U” clicks along with the insectine rhythms and thumping, grinding bass of the rest, but features some of the most engaging vocals of the whole album.  Though he comes from the UK Garage scene (referring to himself in true rave style on “2 Far” as a “fitness instructor”) this is no dance grist—in fact I cannot imagine anyone ever being able to dance to any of this album...maybe a new “seizure” step?  A duet of dispassionate feelings, representing both sexes equally, the tune jabs about like the rest (boy/girl): “I swear that’s your girl/No that ain’t my girl/She got juiced up/Oh well/She got cheaped up/Oh well...I swear that’s your man/I ain’t got any man/You was with that man/He was just “any” man/He got hurried up/Oh well/He got whacked up/Oh well”.

“My attitude/My language/They ain’t used to it” Rascal spews on “Vexed”, title nicely suggesting the confusion (and downright alarm) that has greeted Boy in da Corner.  This is no contentious nonsense put out by someone whose aim it is to confuse.  This is a defiantly personal, richly textured Dylan Mills work through and through—merely one sample on “Fix Up, Look Sharp” and the rest is pure Rascal brilliance.    This thick, singular, debut from this highly gifted young man takes some acclimation, but is well worth it.  Rather than question and trouble yourself over what it is, rather than hold back an appreciative chuckle, just let it all out and enjoy the inadvertently adorable, inspired, and viciously brilliant Boy in da Corner.

The Grand Opening

Planet Asia finally dropped one of his own, and for this we can all be thankful.

Jason Green, aka Planet Asia, sounds awfully confident for his first small-label platter.  This is because Green has been at it for a long time.  On the confusingly entitled The Grand Opening, this Fresno native brings a battle-scarred delivery to some of the tightest, most contemporary-sounding music this side of the Interscope bread line he walked away from (Eminem, 50 Cent, Dr. Dre, etc.).

It all began in 4^th grade.  Green jumped out of the lunch line, grabbed the mic, performed an impromptu rap & beatbox, gained everyone’s respect, and has been doing much the same ever since.  Studying Islam, Green decided to take the name Planet Asia—mirroring his belief that the Asiatic black man and woman are the mother and father of the entire world. 

Asia began his musical career in earnest in a Tower Records in Fresno, where he met longtime associate, Cali, guesting on his album and gaining exposure on Yo! MTV Raps.  He soon released a self-titled EP, which he swept Tower’s floor to.  Cali and Asia joined forces as the Cali Agents and independently sold 40,000 copies of their record.  The majors came calling. 

Green signed with Interscope but decided he’d had enough after his album never came out.  Promisingly enough, he had cut three songs with Dr. Dre but was courageous enough to walk when he realized that 50 Cent, Rakim, and Ice Cube would always get top priority—Planet Asia was tired of being ignored, his music not even potentially getting out to anyone.

Now signed to Avatar, who had merely released compilations and soundtracks prior, Planet Asia sounds confident, bold, practiced, and ready to take over, founding his own Goldchain imprint to help struggling artists avoid his pitfalls.  And this may be why The Grand Opening hits so hard.  Asia is a man who is sure of himself and already great at what he does.

Autobiography informs much of the album, but especially the opener, “16 Bars of Death” where Asia details “spitting at assemblies” in grade school.  Towards the end of this remarkably confrontational rant, DJ Mums the Word declaims, “Space Ghost niggas trying to battle my nigga...shut the fuck up!”—and language can’t get much more economical than the image of bars (arms) in the air as Planet Asia rips a new one for some starchy-white-toned shmoe while his DJ looks on admonishingly.

The Grand Opening is a bold album rife with tension.  On “Right or Wrong”, Asia pumps herb, Asiatic forces, and responsibility as he advises to “get off that ‘to each his own’”.  But on the very next song, “Real Niggaz” (feat. Ghost Face Killa), he argues “all of my peoples in the hood on their way to the top/Get yours whether anybody likes it or not”.   On the latter, the bold, defiant strokes, such as the giant-sized funk sample, absolutely make the song feel important, a sense of event infused throughout much of the album.  Refreshingly, no skits fill The Grand Opening’s 16-tracks, but on the sole album’s grime-backed interlude, Asia reprimands those seeking empty fame, arguing against—or perhaps simply refining--his earlier words of inspiration.

Texture also defines this record, but created by a variety of producers and styles rather than Dizzee Rascal’s defiantly individualistic onslaught.  “Hypnotize” (feat. Crunch & Cecelie Davis) is a slow jam love-in featuring superbly appropriate vertiginous keyboard backing.  Dre-like production offers nice contrast to the content while propelling “Upside Down” (feat. Goapele), where Asia rails against “children paying tuition to these brainwash colleges”. 

This is a clever and powerful record from a man with a lot on his mind.  On a tune featuring the tightest, poppiest keys ‘n’ bass production this side of Timbaland, “It’s All Big”, Asia refers to The Grand Opening as “15 years in the making/Now it’s 16 beers in Jamaica”.   On “Pure Coke” (feat. Martin Luther), backed by cinematic samples, he refers to himself as the hip-hop Barry White, making “honeys wanna touch theyselves” and MC, “most craziest”, to his music as “pure coke for heads to nod to/this is for niggas to ride to”.  And once sucked in to the bold sounds of The Grand Opening, it becomes awful hard to argue with any of that. 

Sub-Pop vs. the USA!

New records from The Thermals and The Constantines flip a big bird towards mildness and complacency.

Wake up, Rome is Falling...

As revenge for their city’s destruction these Carthaginians wreak revenge on the USA, rock.

Well, maybe, they’re named after the Roman emperor responsible for spreading much of Christianity who turned out to be a closet homosexual?  Or is it John Constantine, a sound-experiment musician that singer, Bryan Webb, found inspiration in on the radio one evening?  The latter is probably the truest, but this mixture of questions about the name speaks to the difficulty had in describing the music.  The band has been analogized to Fugazi, The Clash, and Bruce Springsteen.  

And they do sound a smidge like the Boss on “On to You”, a lyrical, anthemic, tune which treads the typical denim fairgrounds via a city-descriptive close-up on the little people.  Of course, why not just listen to Springsteen, then?  The thrummed bass on this tune is answer enough alone.  Though The Constantines have been known to cover “I’m on Fire” live, these guys are their own entity.

Now to explain the Fugazi analogy...OK we’ve got a heavily-mixed rhythm section meeting an equally precise, angularly jagged and unusual guitar attack.  Let me please state for the record that this style of music has been existent in bands for years and years as even a casual listen to Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables or something by a band like the Hot Snakes would quite easily illustrate.  This is punk rock by slightly wiser, older, more intelligent musicians.  Gristle-riddled tunes filter through ennui rather than what in earlier days may have been snarling brattiness.   On “Nighttime/Anytime (It’s Allright)” the rhythm and lead guitars contrast and invert so sharply and in such an obviously studious and challenging manner that it’s almost prog rock.  The time shifts, unusual song structure, and broad theatrical lyrics like, “What sway the bloody minded/what hang above the graceless herd”, give off an eerie progressive glow, but filtered through a punk’s lack of patience for noodling and keen antisocial bullshit sieve.

Like indie hotshot contemporaries, TV on the Radio, “Goodbye Baby & Amen” finds the Constantines forging new oddly swinging ground—even down to the skronking sax lines.  Maybe it’s a Toronto vs. Williamsburg schism, but it seems like the Constantines don’t have to try as hard.   As a result, whereas TV’s new record is virtually impenetrable, though a relatively rewarding listen, Shine a Light is so textured, varied, and fun by contrast that it goes down much, much easier, holding condensed inspiration well above overreaching affectation.

From first to last, Shine a Light is a stirring listen.  “National Hum” rips out of the gate with its ass on fire and barrel of water a country mile down the street.  A huge, savage, growling mess absolutely squeals with the threat of yet more potential energy on the cusp, unless it falls apart first—a promise it fulfills.  “Sub-Domestic” is gentle folksong protest a la 1962 Dylan, yet refracted through a deep anger at contemporary complacency, shifting from times changin’ and answers blowin’ to an aggressive call for personal responsibility: “If sanctuary still exists/it’s among the shaking fists”; a nice visual corollary, the album’s fold-out poster reveals a variety of skyscrapers growing from a junkyard.   In my proudest moments, count me among the shaking fists.

The Constantines play the Empty Bottle on May 19^th.

Hot Hot Heat

The Thermals new record starts a fire that mercilessly tears through your shitty apartment.

“We find the title Fuckin A describes our new record perfectly.  It conveys the intensity of the music and the passion of the lyrics, with the mouth of a twelve year old”.   Indeed, the noise, the howling urgency of the Hutch Harris’s vocals, and the intense tightness of the band (Kathy Foster, bass, Jordan Hudson, drums) distorted through intentionally sloppy four track production by Chris Walla, guitarist/producer for Death Cab for Cutie, unquestionably has a sophisticated caveman tension and giganticism about it. 

Portland Oregon’s the Thermals have only been together a couple of years.  So the intensity of their tunes and shows is still at full tilt.  This is the sound that shit bands like Blink 182 and The Offspring inadvertently mock with their asinine yet well-calculated attempts at punk’s ebullience and urgency.   

Hutch Harris’s words and vocals communicate love’s fading with the urgency of a sermon.  “I’ve seen the sun/losing light/I blink/and it burns so fuckin bright/it’s a fallen time we’ve seen/and it’s all the time I need/so take it” from “Every Stitch” is delivered with all the gravity and amphetamine of “picture the galaxy/scattering/blood, sand and soil/and cheap motor oil/our union/our movement/our greatest high/the shit we die for” from “Top of the Earth”.  Personal and political reflect one another, amplify, and blur until eardrums pierce from the correspondingly necessary volume of the Thermals’ second 28-minute package of intense emotional outpouring.

The Thermals play the Fireside Bowl on March 23^rd. 

*...where the hell was I?*
An embarrassingly regular feature, here I take a moment to alight upon music missed or dismissed from days past.
This time’s feature: The Webb Brothers (who’ll be playing live at The Bottom Lounge on the 18^th).

All right, I admit it.  I’ve had this near-perfect pop platter recommended to me dozens of times.  Maroon by the Webb Brothers was hard to take into my heart for several reasons, though.  The “off-put factor” is in heavy effect here.  The album is produced to glossy imperfection by good old Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur, etc.), so the sound is too unified, polished, marooned...in addition to being downright viral in the first place, and the cover is equally slick featuring the kids on some planet doing something or other.  Which leads me to what initially threw me off this great album: the pedigree.  Being an American means that I favor the underdog.  Can’t help it.  So, I just naturally assumed that super-successful pop song meister (“Wichita Lineman”) Jimmy Webb’s brats had it too easy. 

I had it wrong.  Turns out it was a bit of a struggle, actually.  As students at Boston University, Justin and Christiaan Webb began their musical career together.  After struggling in a town with too many bands, the kids packed up for Chicago, where they were similarly ignored.  London was the next stop.  Good choice, since it meant notice from an important record label rep, a sold-out show and EP, and ultimately their own imprint within a contract with Warners.

Beyond the Biosphere dropped shortly thereafter in 1999 and was universally lapped up by critics and fans alike.  Strange for a debut to have such a readymade following, but their EP and promo had gained them quite the cult status.  Gigantic, ambitious, fun—many of the things a debut often is not, Biosphere is a fully rewarding listen.

But nothing like the textured masterpiece that follow up, Maroon, would be.  The millennium saw los bros. Webb with stronger confidence and clearer vision than perhaps they’d ever have in their entire career.   The tunes serve as weary indictment of liars, false love, drunkenness, and gettin’ fucked up amidst a seemingly incongruous romanticism sweetened occasionally by well-guarded optimism. 

Maroon kicks off with the symbolically orchestral bombast one might expect from an initial excursion to the moon.  Mullets, check!  Flashlights, on!  Pop sensibilities, well-bred!  Then, easing the listener into this rich, dense, textured platter, “The Liar’s Club” begins with brother Justin’s strummed acoustic and mundane establishing shot of people who “get together to pretend that everything is fun/where everyone looks perfect and the party’s never done/’til we see the sun, see the sun”.  Brother Christiaan’s lumbering Roland provides the grounding bedrock which naturally leads to the morning after’s “you’ll give yourself away/and everyone will see/that you’re unhappy”. 

The album’s obvious single “I Can’t Believe You’re Gone” kicks off with Neal Ostrovsky’s solid, expressive, heartbeat-suggestive, thumping, and a sole voice extolling the wonders of a relationship.   Naive romanticism bleeding into cynicism, “I can’t believe you’re gone/this was part of your plan for me/I can’t believe it”.  Repetition is expert in this case, suggesting a totally confounded individual and the rest of the album’s wonderfully packaged pop singles behave in this manner, “Summer People” being the strongest and most unusual of the bunch.  “Winter’s over again/summer people/some are even, but then/some are evil”.  Poignancy or bullshit?  At the heart of it, it doesn’t matter.  The tune is so jaw-droppingly, mind-numbingly, hyphenation-necessary-for-explanation great that it just doesn’t matter.

What elevates Maroon to semi-mystical “classic” status, though, is the filler.  Filler used to be a good thing—just grab hold of an old Dave Clark 5 album.  Compare the draggotry of something like a “Catch us if you Can” to an inspired hyper-amphetamined dirty sax showcase and you’ll catch my drift.  “All the Cocaine in the World” is a plainly remarkable work from a pair of pop scholars.  Who writes about coke anymore?  No one but a mercenary harkener, son.  And what a connection as they explain in angelic chorus and over snowy percussion how it “couldn’t bring back the girl”!

A weisenheimer desert island (or jupiter, mars, moon)  creation by these super-gifted lads...a collection of the sounds that pop addicts would hope to have with them if isolated for long periods of time, Maroon, is an unquestionable, resounding success and one of the best pop records of its time, no question.  The fact that I am, indeed guilty, of having left this cake out in the rain, having come to it a couple years back, and enjoy it immensely still is testament both to its lasting impact and severe pop brilliance. 

The Webbs have hired on a new member, unsurprisingly young brother James.  With their eponymous release last year, they have made their stake for permanence in what could have easily been a career-defining, brilliant one-off.  Instead of shuffling the meditative amongst the crystal-sharp pop tunes, they’ve halved them, kind of a silly thing to do in the CD age--but another fine album nonetheless.  Consider me though, for the nonce, plumb stuck where I “think I’m going places/but it’s only in (my) mind....marooned again/marooned again/marooned again/again”. 

The Webb Brothers play the Bottom Lounge with the Cosmic Rough Riders on Tuesday, May 18^th.

In Defense of the Singer-Songwriter

Norwegian Sondre Lerche yanks this DIY ethos back to the side of the good with his release of Two Way Monologue.  Lerche plays Martyr’s with a full band on May 19^th.

INT: SOME POOR SHMOE’S APARTMENT

A man, the critic, in black-framed glasses and Soft Boys t-shirt harangues another, an apparently normal, well-adjusted person, except for the fact that he is backed into a corner.

NORMAL GUY:

I invite you into my house, make you dinner, let you play with my kids...damn!  I shoulda known... 

CRITIC:

No!  You don’t get it!!  Hold on, this Sondre Lerche guy...he’s really clever and sincere, examining great matters via the important little things...he’s very...how else can I put this...uh...sensitive.

                        NORMAL GUY:

Shut.  Up!  Don’t..! 

                        CRITIC:

Hold it; hold it!  I’m just trying to tell you about this rather new talent...a real fresh voice in so many ways; well, let’s just say he does it all, like...like an old-time troubadour...

Now, now...Woah!  Put down the chair, friend.  I can see why you’d initially be put off, but if you’d just give it a...CHAAAaannnce!!

Door slams.  Exit music critic, having suffered just a few bumps and bruises in spirited defense of a genre that has been killed (and summarily raped) countless times.

On his first album, Billy Joel pretentiously notes in verse how he is a bard, a troubadour—nicely illustrating the invalidation of the singer-songwriter.  For anyone who survived the seventies, a decade full of froggy-throated clumsily-conceived quasi-sensitive nonsense spewed from that clan of variously bearded, passive aggressively mellow, and painfully earnest (often ironic to the dippy content) singer-songwriters, even someone as distinctive as a romantic world-weary  Norwegian may be a hard sell.  Fie on everyone on that interminable list of phony, self-indulgent, mongoloids that have made this personal, direct form of music unpalatable. Fuck you, Billy Joel. 

Of course, serious arguments for the genre abound.  Let’s implicate a few.  Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell, Townes Van Zandt, and Todd Rundgren (who kicked the genre’s ass all over town with his release of Something/Anything?) all fall among an endless stream of artists who—bravely risking categorization alongside James Taylor and Jim Croce--followed this compulsion to express exactly what they needed in precisely the manner they needed to.  No filtration.  No bullshit.  Add to this list a young man named Sondre Lerche.

Get past the cover, with Lerche staring his wearily-creased sensitivity into your soul (in a scarf, black and white, and against the artsy mainstay brick wall, no less!), throw on the record, and out flows not only an acoustic guitar awash with violins ala Nick Drake, but a lovely voice will soon confer: “Down came the sky/And all you did was blink/I would cry like I never do/In order to stay true”.  Ad hoc emotion?  Maybe.  Delivered so well it wouldn’t matter if it was?  Absolutely.

Sondre Lerche is an artist who, only on his second album, projects a stunning maturity, not only writing every lyric and note, but playing a number of the instruments as well.  Yes, this suggests a lack of counter voice which virtually always makes for the awkward, overly-insular public humiliation that is trademark of the SS...like Morrissey without the balance of Marr.  But Lerche?  He’s Morrissey and Marr combined.

Lennon and McCartney combined as well?  Sure, Lerche seems to know when to enlist some help, such as on most of the production and the gorgeous string arrangements.  But split personality is what Two Way Monologue is all about, so he may just as well host a whole Steppenwolf-sized party of people inside his big, brilliant noggin. 

The title track begins suspiciously with earnestness croaked over a sloppily-strummed acoustic guitar.  Through the historically-disadvantaged veil of singer songwriter sucketry and a song whose first word is: “Mum”, the natural assumption that this will be a very bad way to spend time, that reflex towards the eject button—well, the feelings seem justified, especially with Lerche’s unfiltered emotional ballast.  Pop luminosity dispels murky doubts.  For after a mere 54 seconds, the pace doubles, a tight and dynamic rhythm section leaping into the fray, and all the important parts are underscored masterfully with cymbal crashes, neo-futuristic keyboards, funk riffs, and even a skronking sax hook just for kicks.  Wonderfully synthesized, absolutely delightful...pure pop.

Perky horns, earthy organs, and layers of keyboards (space chimes and harpsichords imparting the band visual of robots in paisley bellbottoms) provide the kick-off for the chorus of “Counter Spark” which features some of the cutest “Ba-ba-ba baa-ba’s” this side of the Partridge Family.  A love song for cynical times, “I chose you from a million/You were the choice of billions/wishing they would try to be like you/But I’d rather fall in love with you”, the pretty mess ends in nihilistic defiance: “I’ll pass you by and fall in love with you”. 

Lend your ears and heart to Two Way Monologue all alone at first...but leave that bedroom door cracked so the earnestness of this “option-less, turkey-free, and blind” humanist with his seductive acoustic-cum-23^rd-century support drifts out.  Anyone with any feelings of romance (as in: “in love with feeling”) will pick up on the raw emotion, go absolutely ape shit, and understand that having an open mind and love of music means granting everything a second examination, even that DIY (thanks to Croce and his ilk, now come to abbreviate dreadfully inane yarbling) singer-songwriter.

www.sondrelerche.com

www.astralwerks.com

No Strings Attached

Beautiful string and brass arrangements highlight Bostonian Paula Kelley’s career-defining album and singing-songwriting high water mark.

Let’s knock out the vocals right away.  If you can take Mary Lou Lord--and I haven’t met a college radio music director that wasn’t in love with her yet, voice and all--then you’ll be fine with Paula Kelley’s wispily intimate, genuine delivery.  The unique voice of this confident, inspired artist could become her trademark.  I find Kelley’s delivery to be quite affecting rather than cloying, with a range and expressiveness which easily overcomes the thinness.

On her new The Trouble with Success or How You Fit into the World, Kelley broke the bank (literally, a friend told me she had to skip rent to hire the band) bringing on the 40-piece PK Orchestra to add color and flourish to the songs.  It worked.

The strings and bombast not only support Kelley’s emotional outpouring, but they validate it as well.  Anything that sounds this pretty—and I mean honest and pretty, we’re not talking obfuscation; rather gigantic, lovely support for equally huge and solid lyrics—is all right with me.

The first track, “My Finest Hour (Enter)” begins a lot like Sondre Lerche’s Two Way Monologue.  Kelley’s harpsichord and Wendy Mittelstadt’s magnificently expressive violin set the mood, appropriately cueing in an album bursting to the gills with introspective expression.

Paula Kelley has made the album of her career.  This is a mature, intelligent work which gives the listener plenty of room to stretch out and enjoy the brilliant symphonic instrumental breaks.  Call it what you will, but chamber/baroque pop certainly fills much of the album.  The Trouble with Success... is kept constantly engaging via sprinklings of the best bits out of Pet Sounds, and the work of Carole King, Margo Guryan, The Left Banke, and ELO.

But of course it’s not that simple.  Boston is a town full of music scholars and Kelley is no exception.  She began her career with a variety of indie-darlings (Drop Nineteen, Boy Wonder, Hot Rod, Boy Joys) only to move along each time as she grew impatient with the need to convey her own ideas, a range at work on The Trouble with Success far beyond the pithy analogies above.  Even the most seemingly mundane, virtually Cranberries-level pop, such as “Girlfriend” only seems so at first by virtue of its subtlety.  Further listens reveal surprises--filled as it is with a delicious muted trumpet, inspired string arrangement, and equally distinctive delivery and perspective: “Write about the simple way that I don’t/Oh she’s staring at the sky/There’s quite a lot of space there/But nothing in her eyes”.

Juicy hooks fill The Trouble with Success.  Urban horn grooves float the energetically driving “My Finest Hour” into the upper echelons.  The ripping fury of the music grants ironic poignancy to its equally powerful and painfully subtle, lovely, earnest, and potentially deadly final words: “Every time I think I finally have the answer/In comes someone else to tell me that I’m wrong/Life/What a puzzling place to live/What a wonder we’re taking it on”.  

The true feel of pop triumphalism that permeates the disc mitigates any slow moments.  “I’d Fall in Love with Anyone” isn’t merely huge, sunny, gushing, and fun.  It is complete.  The words, “I’d fall in love with anyone/Tell me what needs to be done because/I’m dying over here in the sun”, don’t just serve to match the music beautifully but they offer compelling self-help via identification and catharsis.  Sammy Kahn put it another way, “I fall in love too easily”.  Duke Ellington also said, “If it sounds good, it is good”.  Paul Kelley may have said both more effectively via a particularly lovely singer-songwriter resonance on the fascinating The Trouble with Success or How You Fit into the World, one of the best albums of its class.

www.kimcheerecords.com

Dan Bejar, aka Destroyer, is an artist constantly lusting for forward motion. Bejar began Destroyer’s life as something of a solo artist. Self-described “ragtag four-track”, We’ll Build Them a Golden Bridge is a dense and bizarre record, but a bare bones eclectic cum electric folk record nonetheless. Destroyer’s lineup constantly shifts as Bejar fights to express exactly what he needs to without compromise.

Other records followed, most notably his profile-raising fourth, Streethawk: a Seduction, which earned him a place in the David Bowie mutual admiration society (hopefully he’ll have better luck than D Generation...) and Bowie’s top ten list. Twists and turns through his own acclaimed recordings as well as work with the much-vaunted New Pornographers have helped to somewhat lessen both the Bowie comparisons and complaints of obliquity. But acclaim seems to disagree with Bejar. Spotting potential stagnancy which may block or pervert his expression, he runs screaming from complacency, “not showing up” for the New Pornographers tour in support of 2000’s wildly popular Mass Romantic, and having has back turned in photos for that hot indie commodity.

Destroyer’s sixth record, Your Blues, sounds just as hermetic as one may expect from someone with Bejar’s history. But there are some surprises. The record is less glam-orized Stardust and more synth-explosive OMD--a bit like Prefab Sprout, but far too unique for pigeonholing. A boldly stylized, mental landscape-razing sound results from the heavily-acoustic guitars and deadly crisp drums juxtaposed to the equally heavily-synthesized keyboards—a dichotomy made even bolder by longtime production team JC/DC. The entire disc smacking of one word: “event”, juxtaposition also exists in this sense of import and charming adventure that fills Your Blues. Bejar underscores his often-obscure lyrical ideas with synth-symph poignancy. Even if the listener doesn’t know what’s going on, at least it sounds good...and damned important.

Bejar’s multitracked near-falsetto also fills each of Your Blues’s songs with a desperate poignancy. On “Certain Things You Ought to Know”, Bejar cautions, “All a dagger can ever be is a ship against the sea turning to snow”. Nature imagery, particularly snow, pops up in a lot of songs, suggesting the Sisyphusian battle we all engage in to work, to be. Bejar also warns “Don’t become the thing you hated”, noting a means of escape through the “Strathcona doors”, Strathcona is both a nice neighborhood in Couverton, Canada that has a dangerous population of drug addicts and a tidy symbol of how escaping blindly can be just as bad as being stuck—something he also derides throughout Your Blues.

Your Blues crawls with proud carriage from its very beginning. “Notorious Lightning” betrays Bejar’s “John Lennon meets The Fall” description of his music. The contentious tone of his almost-straight read of a song which may be an apologia for his lack of ability to accept his place in independent rock semi-fame over a very minimal guitar strum forces focus on to the perplexingly savage words much like a Mark E. Smith lyric: “Oh, Notorious Lightning! Yes, I had to ride you and trash the crystal jets they kept in storage inside you!” But there is something more humanistic at play here as evidenced by the hope of lines later in the song: “Something once was delivered, then you banned it! But, oh there is a key to this thing...”

On “The Music Lovers”, a gargantuan synth-orchestral sound imbues in the tune balanced parts sophistication and irony, creating in the process what is so far the underground art rock single of the year: “The time of your lives has been had and your wives have been bad! And look, the private sector’s not denied you for the last time. They’re saying- ‘Those grapes go rotten on the vine.’ Oh, but once we were the Music Lovers! People say – ‘They just didn’t want it enough”. Dan Bejar, Destroyer...call him what you will, but never forget this: he works hard, challenging himself and his audience. Bejar obviously lusts for both acceptance and pure expression and just as plainly will not compromise an iota of his vision on the way; consistent if nothing else, Destroyer’s live show merely reflects this ethos writ large.

Destroyer plays the Empty Bottle Tuesday, May 4 Frog Eyes and Candyland Riots open.
Back to the Top


Pure Pop for Now People
The Apples in Stereo perk up the Bottom Lounge on Sunday, May 6th.

It all began in Chicago. On a worldwide tour for Heaven Tonight, favored sons Cheap Trick played for young Southern girls and boys alike. Robert Schneider and Jeff Mangum, yes that Jeff Mangum, were in the audience at one particular concert. The pair of future indie-pop geniuses rushed home and kept Mangum’s mom up all night with a bedroom hysterical version of “Dream Police”.

Schneider’s blood now infected by power pop genius, the stage was set for him to begin an idealistic record label community of sorts. And until the now-legendary Elephant 6 collective folded last year, Robert Schneider did everything for them short of sweeping the hallways. He produced records in and out of Elephant 6 by the Olivia Tremor Control and others, including possibly the best album of the Nineties by old friend Jeff Mangum’s outfit, Neutral Milk Hotel--their breathtaking In the Aeroplane over the Sea.

Schneider’s 1997 Marbles album alone would have been enough of an accomplishment. A four track small-scale solo outing, Pyramid Landing & Other Favorites is his Smile. But this is an album he recorded for “my friends, my kid brothers and my cats”, one that brought him closer to pop brilliance, not cracked madness. Pyramid Landing is as precious as an album can get without being saccharine, as cute as it is inventive. Life anthems that cheer the fact that there is the “Sun to Shine” could be nauseating if they weren’t delivered so well.

Throughout the balance of the late nineties, Schneider’s band The Apples in Stereo skirted the edges of indie rock masterfully. Their early recordings display an affinity, but no allegiance, to garage rock. As Schneider shifted his kaleidoscopic spectacles from nuggets of kontroversy to the vast strawberry fields of pet sounds, their 1997 coup de grace and best album to date, Tone Soul Evolution, was unleashed upon throngs of joyous college radio music directors. This 24-track platter is bursting with not only tenderly propulsive psychedelic ruminations on the inner life of the soul, but a generous stash of thrilling pop goodies like “What’s the #” and “We’ll Come to Be”.

Super-Beatles pop filled 1999’s highly-regarded Her Wallpaper Reverie EP; when I say this, I do so with the emphasis on the word, “super”, to indicate that the Apples in Stereo do not slavishly imitate, but used the tools the Beatles created and helped bring to the mainstream. With these tools, the Apples filled this EP with wistful, wonderful, pop—catchy tunes which alternately slow-crash and buzz. This incredibly rich 30 minutes, also filled with some lovely toy piano interludes, gained them much notice.

2000’s ambitious Discovery of A World Inside the Moone found Schneider and his band of merry men exploring funk and a sunnier, louder pop that would be fully fleshed out in a couple of years. A fine record on its own, its only failing may lie in that nomadic je ne sais quoi that often accompanies great ambition. But tunes like the almost harmfully addictive “Go!” and the masterful Parliament homage of “The Bird that You Can’t See” create in Moone the most textured Apples disc to date.

The result of solar poisoning contracted from the band’s involvement with the Powerpuff Girls, sunshine met aggressive decibels head on and exploded into the loudest record of the last 100 years, late 2002’s Velocity of Sound. This is a power pop record with an emphasis on the power.

Now Hilarie Sidney’s left the Apples to embark on her own tweedorable pop in the High Water Marks (RIYL Dressy Bessy’s first album) and though her solid drumming, song craft, and sweet voice will be missed, the group is Robert “Brian Wilsonoid” Schneider’s baby alone. This isn’t to say that Eric Allen’s bass work and John Hill’s guitar (also of Dressy Bessy) aren’t equal parts sharp and inspiring.

But Schneider is running the show with more confidence and sincerity than ever. The last time they came through Chicago, they killed. The Apples used to be very spotty live. Schneider would never use his microphone properly, the shyness of this studio hermit translating to stage coyness that only makes for a drag show. However, last time this band was: huge. Giant and loud (even the vocals); just amazing.

But The Apples in Stereo has never been Schneider’s only project. He has recorded songs with fellow pop mastermind Andy Partridge (XTC) and has collected them as Orchestra Fantastique. Though Schneider has become a studio architect of great power and precision, the pure fun of kids hysterically thrashing out Cheap Trick riffs just for the sake of rocking continues to infuse his music. The future of the Apples seems uncertain, but Thursday’s show promises to be all the things great pop ought to be: bright, sunny, harmonic, gigantic, and, most of all, fun.

The Apples in Stereo play Thursday, May 6th at the Bottom Lounge, 8 pm 18+. Fresh faced happy poppers Apollo Sunshine and High Water Marks, featuring former Apples drummer and songwriter Hilarie Sidney on vocals and guitar, open.
The Tally:
Fun Trick Noisemaker 7.5/10, Science Faire 7/10, Tone Soul Evolution 9.5/10, Her Wallpaper Reverie 8.3/10, The Discovery of a World inside the Moone 8/10, Velocity of Sound 8/10, The Marbles Pyramid Landing and Other Favorites 8.8/10

Back to the Top


Country with a Bitter Aftertaste.
Survivor Graham Parker Delivers an Excellent Outsider’s Perspective in Your Country.
Alan Jacobson reports.

Plenty of unusual, and often brilliant, work results from stubborn and unique artists giving country a shot. Long ago, Gram Parsons delivered a brand new “cosmic” country while Townes Van Zandt was busy redefining the genre as something even more soulful, more disturbingly personal. In modern Chicago, one only needs to crack open a window to grab hold of John Langford’s thick Welsh accent soulfully coloring Hank Williams and Johnny Cash’s high lonesome blues.

Add to this endless list another Brit by the name of Graham Parker. Sure, plenty of rockers have felt the eardrum buzz and decided to tone it down to country. Neko Case and Alejandro Escovedo, Parker’s new Bloodshot label mates, immediately spring to mind; and Parker initially seems to fall into this category. But like good friend, fellow back roads traveler, and sometime-producer Nick Lowe, Parker began his musical life as a pub rocker (also a beginning for Elvis Costello and Joe Strummer who have both dabbled in C & W). A bit later on, Parker would be lumped in with the sarcastic angry young new-wavers, Joe Jackson and Costello (who went so far as to additionally don Parker’s cynic-colored glasses)—ironically, far more popular artists for whom he provided the blueprint . But, like Lowe, he never abandoned his rootsy, thundering, bluesy, sound, a sound often flirting with country.

Country is many things, but at its best, it is something of an honest white man’s blues. Parker considered naming his new album Yer Country, channeling The Beatles nasal earthy blues screecher. His new Your Country, is something of a pub rock country record—and, without question, the blues the way it ought to be. No Albert King-humping guitar lines, no self-consciously constipated vocals from a John Mayall-styled blues number, but country: raw, nasal, sad, cathartic, and utterly natural-sounding blues. The very first tune “Anything for a Laugh” addresses and derides this very idea of masquerading, taking “The Tears of a Clown” one step further to a level of personal responsibility: “I’m not that bad I’m not that great/I’m just your average clown/People think that’s my nature/That’s how I wanna be/But I wonder if it’s just a shield in front of me”.

Parker’s eye for the little person’s struggle to create a meaningful life is not only a trope of country music, but serves to reveal a harsh critique of his “Nation of Shopkeepers”. Its title cribbed from a Churchill speech, the tune’s lyrics are a lazy celebration of mediocrity, of life devoted to creature comforts, distractions, consumption, and an underlying current of fear which boldly comes to fruition when the protagonist rips off the mask at the very end: “And you can’t expect me too/Put up a fight/No I’m just sitting still/My eyes are all over you/But my hand remains in the till”.

Ever the polished songwriter no matter the genre, Parker’s music matches his words perfectly; a resigned tone puts across the masterful breakup song “The Rest is History” and the similarly bitter “Cruel, Cruel Lips”. Though she is not telling this story, the latter heavily features Lucinda Williams on vocals, subtly suggesting that both sides of a failing relationship can feel equally destroyed: “Oh what does it take to stop your sharp, sharp tongue/You know I’m not invincible and those words really stung/They cut me to the marrow they cut me to the quick/Oh what does it take to shut your cruel, cruel lips”.

The feeling of joy in experimentation all over Your Country is mirrored nicely in the lyrics to “Fairground”. Wistfully, Parker suggests: “Let’s remember what life was like/When life was a wild ride”. For an artist liberated in the wild exploration of a fresh genre of music, the listener’s feeling is balanced between appreciation of a damned fine record and joy for Graham.

The album closes with Parker’s classic sweaty plea for self-acceptance, “Crawling from the Wreckage (Revisited)” whose original version was a sizable hit for fellow ambitious pub rocker, Dave Edmunds. Recontextualized here by an artist moving on and living creatively, the tune becomes a rollicking anthem for not only Parker’s new country voice, but doing one’s best and everything being just fine as a result.

Your Country is no put-on, no trite appropriation by a man 30 years into a frustrating career that has seen him mistaken for and laboring in the shadows of Costello, whose Almost Blue exhibits a similar, yet more self-conscious, fondness for country. Parker’s are country tunes, but effortless and unselfconsciously so; and in the best country style, these are soulful and cleverly incisive stories about everyday people.

Graham Parker has nothing to prove and it’s a delight to hear it. From his essay in the press release to Your Country: “country music is just the blues anyway...I can’t claim to be able to identify the music of classic artists with surnames Tubb, Williams, Haggard, or Jones, and I’m still fairly sure that I have never heard Gram Parsons, but I know what country music is, or at least ought to be, and I’ve just made an album full of it”. Parker’s compelling wisdom, honesty, love, and brilliance --all via the filter of a refreshingly genuine country-- will be the showcase at Martyr’s on Friday.

Graham Parker performs at Martyr's (9 pm, 3855 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago) Friday, April 30. Anne McCue opens. For more information, log onto www.martyrslive.com or www.grahamparker.net.
Back to the Top


In A Big Country
Chicago continues to be modern country’s ground zero with a month of unique events and surprising releases. Alan Jacobson dons his cowboy suit and investigates.

Steel Sweetness
Jon Rauhouse’s Steel Guitar Rodeo goes down like a glass of sweet tea on a blazing summer’s day.

Jon Rauhouse began his illustrious underground country career on a high school dare. He picked up the banjo and a spot in bluegrass outfit, Southwind. Shortly after joining the band, Rauhouse switched to pedal steel guitar. Southwind lasted 7 years. Rauhouse spent a decade as a session man in his home of Phoenix, finally landing in the Grievous Angels, an outfit that, as the Parsons name might suggest, blended country and rock. Apropos of nothing, but amusing just the same, the dubbed their bluegrass alter ego Ned Beatty and the Inbreds.

Rauhouse then had a short stint with Jamal Ruhe in the Sleepwalkers. Towards the end of the nineties, he started backing Bloodshot’s impressive female country roster, including Mekon Sally Timms and part-time jazz singer Kelly Hogan. While on tour with Neko Case, Rauhouse met up with old Southwind band mate Tommy Connell. They became a duo.

Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant were an insatiable pair of country/jazz guitarists who performed endlessly throughout the Fifties. Subtle and brilliant, it’s the kind of music where the listener ends up naturally hooting and hollering occasionally just to express the pent up awe at how damned good it is. Mirroring that duo in inspiration and talent, Rauhouse pulls a remarkable turn on the steel while Connell picks in a similarly augmentative fashion.

Jon Rauhouse’s 2002 album was called The Steel Guitar Air Show, nicely alluding to the remarkable stunt that creates in this music a vibrancy, an homage without sounding dated. The rodeo even covers similar ground, roping in standards from the era—but sounding fresh enough and performing the tunes so well, that the listener is transported not to a dogmatic recreation of 1942, not to some self-consciously “new swing” astro turf, but to the green, green grasses of an altogether new place, a new home that not only works, but is delightful and goes down easy, like a good glass of lemonade.

Hideout Svengali Tim Tuten gets the rodeo of Rauhouse originals and carefully selected covers going with a humble spoken introduction. Rauhouse instrumental “Widowmaker” then kicks in Chicago-style with Tom V. Ray’s solid bass and Kevin O’Donnell’s subtly propulsive brushwork. As throughout, Rauhouse’s banjo and pedal steel/Hawaiian guitar lines are unreservedly inspired while absolutely gorgeous to both the ear and aesthetic sense all at once--easy to appreciate on any level, depending on what mood you’re in.

All in all, the instrumentation is phenomenal. The crimejazz-esque classic TV theme “Perry Mason Theme” is given the steel guitar filter. It sounds natural, great. “Powerhouse”, Raymond Scott’s impossibly complicated masterpiece of 40’s faux-jazz is a bold tune to even attempt; Rauhouse and his band of merry men pull it off with flavor and flair. Throughout the rest of the album, the innumerable guest contributors include John Convertino, Will Lovell, and Joey Burns lending their Tucson rhythmic talents, Carolyn Mark granting backup, and a slew of others of equal and varied talents (minus the rodeo clowns), all sandwiched within appropriately lovely old style cover work by Kathleen Judge.

Kelly Hogan pulls double duty on the sultry “Smoke Rings” and punishing “Prisoner of Love”. Remarkable standards both, the listener can easily imagine Kelly snug both in a satin dress and behind one of those old microphones, smoking a cigarette; but behind her the bandstand musicians have traded their suits and uniforms for denim and dungarees. As Hogan wistfully intones, "Tell me where do they go, the smoke rings I blow at night? What do they do the circles of blue and white? Why do they seem to picture a dream of love? Why do they fade like phantom parades above?", one cannot help but simply drift away along with the dreamy tune and that intimate and alluring voice.

Sally Timms brings a time-appropriate reverence to “(There’ll Be Blue Birds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover”. The Rodeo improves this song, transforming a tune that has traditionally been mismanaged. Normally, its poignant lyrics have been ironically put across as a perky big band jump with corny male vox. Here, Timms makes “Blue Birds” into just the soft, coaxing, hopeful plea for peace we need. Just beautiful.

Everyone complains that Neko Case is underused in The New Pornographers. I always respond: how much can you take? In “River of No Return” Neko Case virtually destroys everything before and after with her voice. God, that voice: all the raw power and emotion of Patsy Cline, the wisdom of Loretta Lynn, spooned onton the tongue with an indescribably sweet seductiveness. Incomparable. Unfairly superior. More than one song may be too much to take.

That was fine for the girls, but how about the boys? Blacky Ranchette himself, Howe Gelb, whacks the ivory while monotonously intoning the “Indian Love Call”, a superb standard, fashioned almost note-for-note from the best of the big bandleader’s versions. Of course, I’m talking about the rebellious genius that was Artie Shaw. Gelb shines as always.

No vocal slouch, Rauhouse himself sounds a bit like Steve Earl, as he stomps, spits and derides “Work Work” as the dirtiest word he’s ever heard. And it is his Hawaiian guitar that eases the listener out of the Steel Guitar Rodeo; but don’t bother getting up and changing the disc. You’ll only listen to it again—it’s so easy and so, so damned good.

Settin’ the Barn on Fire
Bloodshot’s been on fire all month, fulfilling Chicago’s false promise of warmth (those seductively sunny days which, with wind chill, amount to single-digit temperatures.)

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to be living in this town. Then I slip into the Hideout, catch a whiff of what’s cooking over at Bloodshot, swoon over Kelly Hogan’s sweet and lovely voice, and I feel home and warm and squishy in a way that only fantastic old-style music and, in this case, specifically country can make a body feel. Get your calendar out, son.

“Off the Charts”, Robbie Fulks’s tribute to and presentation of Jamie Meltzer's documentary on the song-poem, will be showing at the Hideout on Sunday, the 18th.

The 80th anniversary of the first barn dance will be taking place on Monday, the 19th. Vintage footage of a WLS broadcast will be featured alongside live music by Jon Langford & the Pine Valley Cosmonauts. “The Rise and Fall of the National Barn Dance”, an installation by Jon Langford and Rob Lentz will also be on display. Anyone familiar with Langford’s bold and unusual paintings and fine work with the Cosmonauts (his Bob Wills tribute of a few years back is unparalleled) will know to get there early. It starts at 7:30 PM and is free.

Kelly Hogan makes it all look easy. She continues to perfect her intimate and precise, yet bold and highly emotive take on jazz at The Hideout every Thursday. “Jazz with A Limp”, they call it. I call it jazz with an obvious appreciation and adoration for what they’re doing. Hogan also opens for the Indigo Girls at the Vic on Friday the 23rd.

And set your Palm Mach IV life conductotron 2000’s way in advance for the Graham Parker show on Friday the 30th at Martyr’s. The postpunk prince’s last album is country via Dylan (think Elvis Costello’s Almost Blue, but more gritty, personal, and evil-sounding) and he will kill, guaranteed.
Bloodshot Website

Back to the Top

VHS or BETA – The Disco Ball Says “Dance Punk!”