Bob Dylan: “Together Through Life”
“Life is hard,” intones a somber Bob Dylan, two songs into album #33. Damn straight, Bob; times are tough generally, and by the sounds of things they’re not much better even if you’re the Voice of a Generation, universally considered to be the most incalculably influential artist in all of pop music, a living legend in the midst of a bona fide late-career renaissance. Given both the high quality and the ceaseless praise accorded to his last three albums– 1997′s Time Out of Mind, 2001′s Love & Theft, and 2006′s Modern Times, to say nothing of high-profile documentaries and biopics, well-received turns as a memoir-writer and radio DJ, and last year’s monumental archival release Tell Tale Signs– one was beginning to think Dylan was at the point in his career where he could release pretty much anything and be showered in adoration for it. But what can you say? Expectations are a bitch, even five decades into the game, and no matter what you’re anticipating Together Through Life to be, it ain’t it.
The record’s first song, “Beyond Here Lies Nothin,’” was released several weeks ahead of the full album; it served as a bit of a tease then, and so it does here as well, opening the record with a sly reference to the “boulevard of broken cars.” And that’s about as far as Dylan goes into discussing the perilous days in which we live: The most off-handed of references, and then nothing. Even with a song called “I Feel a Change Comin’ On,” Together Through Life is an album made with stubborn refusal to comment on these modern times, as though the Voice of a Generation can’t be bothered to sing about such trivial matters as a historic depression and a crisis of capitalism. And on some level, it’s probably wrong of us to expect him to: He is, after all, only an artist, albeit an artist like no other, and it seems fair to say that he’s done more than anyone to galvanize the artistic community and focus its powers on enacting social change. Really, “The Times They are A-Changin’” alone pretty much earns him a free pass.
Besides, anyone who knows anything about Dylan knows that he’s never been big on doing what’s expected of him, and, after several years of critical adoration and commercial success, it’s not too surprising to find him shaking things up a bit. Call him Judas if you must, but this is what makes him Dylan: At a time when most expected him to offer a manifesto or a State of the Union address, he instead shows his road band the door, invites a new cast of players into the studio, and leads them through a gently-strutting set of whimsical country-blues songs– co-written with The Grateful Dead’s Robert Hunter, no less! It’s his jauntiest, breeziest set in years, an album that seems as unconcerned with commenting on world affairs as it is shoring up the master’s legacy. If Times Out of Mind was his comeback, Love & Theft his masterful display of his full powers of depth and expression, and Modern Times a weighty testament to his status as rock’s great elder statesman, Together Through Life is a vexingly casual affair that seems like it was recorded for no one more than for Dylan himself.
Might as well just call it what it is: Another weird curveball in a career that thrives on ‘em, and another strange riddle for Dylanologists to sort out. What it ultimately means within the broader context of Dylan’s body of work– if indeed it means anything at all– there’s no telling, at least not yet. For now, this much seems important: It bears fleeting similarity to several of his past albums, but ultimately doesn’t sound much like any of them. It drinks from the same classic-blues well as Modern Times, but it’s a markedly simpler, more spirited affair. At times it shakes and sways like Love & Theft, but not with abandon or creative gusto so much as casual nonchalance. The presence of David Hidalgo on accordion– adding what critics seem intent on calling a “border cafe” feel” to most of these songs– recalls Scarlet Rivera’s violin work that added shading and character to Desire, and indeed, this album is similarly unassuming, though more focused, less varied, and lacking the big, major highlights.
But perhaps the best way into it is to remember that, in recent years, Dylan has become rock’s great allusionist, and he continues the trend here. Several years back, a few bone-headed journalists brought charges of plagiarism against Dylan for his lyrics on Love & Theft, simply because he borrowed many of his lyrics from ancient poetry, mythology, American folk songs and short stories. It was a profoundly misguided attempt at hero-assassination that thankfully didn’t come up when Modern Times was released, despite the fact that half the songs on that album were essentially rewrites of classic American blues numbers. Dylan’s gift, at least at this stage in the game, lies in his ability to effortlessly conjure the ghosts of the past and bid them to speak in some strange, timeless language– to stitch together, from the pieces of our cultural history, a story that’s both very old and completely Dylan’s. And that’s what happens here: Together Through Life is, if nothing else, a Valentine to the music that Dylan loves, drawing inspiration from the warm sounds of the old Chess recordings (“Shake Shake Mama” is pure Howlin’ Wolf) and offering sly revisions of electric blues, dirt-road country, and pre-war parlor songs.
Dylan, more than any other living/working songwriter, guards the doorway to an old, mythic America that’s as old as the nation itself and as real and visceral today as it’s ever been– and of course, when you consider this album under the full weight of history that it bears, it suddenly opens up not as some artifact of the past, but as a commentary on the present, as seen through the tropes and tall tales that have always carried the seed of the American story. Dylan re-introduces us to that great archetypal blues character, the devil woman, in “My Wife’s Hometown,” and she becomes a presence of deception and decay that resonates during these fractious times. When he tells us that he fought in the Mexican War, it’s as though he sees our entire history in front of him at once, and his barb about a “clown” politician could have been written at literally any point of the last two hundred years and sound perfectly apropos. And when he indulged in his fascination with lovestruck parlor crooning, as in “Life is Hard” and “Forgetful Heart,”he taps into a decidedly American sense of idealism– a hope rooted in romance that sees us through dark days, an optimism that belongs as much to this age as to ages past. In the final song, “It’s All Good,” he filters the modern parlance through the lens of history and turns it on its side, capturing a timeless sense of the absurd.
He is, to be sure, playing with expectations, but he’s playing with history and language and myth, as well– and he’s obviously tickled to death to be doing it: Dylan sounds strong and engaged, and he’s never made an album as rich in playfulness and wonder, with the harder-rocking numbers and the more genteel ballads imbued with the same sort of whimsy. Those expecting a last will and testament will be suitably shocked to find, in its place, a party, one filled with all the darkness and hope of the age in which it was conceived, and in which history comes crashing into the present day. In other words: It’s a sly, winking album from an artist who knows what he’s doing and doesn’t much care if it meets our approval. From Bob Dylan, what else could we possibly expect?
Film Break: “The Soloist”
Finally– a “film break” that’s actually somewhat music-related! My review of The Soloist– the terrific new movie directed by Joe Wright and starring Robert Downey and Jamie Foxx– is posted at CT Movies.
CT Reviews: Andrew Bird; Buddy & Julie Miller
Just a quick note to say that I’ve reviewed two albums from earlier in the year in Christianity Today, and both reviews are now available online. Here’s my abbreviated take on Andrew Bird’s Noble Beast, and here’s Buddy & Julie Miller’s Written in Chalk.
If you’re a CT reader, keep your eyes open for my reviews of M.Ward, Madeleine Peyroux, and Brian Blade, all coming in the coming couple of months.
Indie Round-Up: Camera Obscura, Art Brut, and I Was a King
Here are three terrific new records that demonstrate just how great– and varied– the indie pop genre can be. The first two are already doing well with the indie set, having won raves from Pitchfork and the like. The third one hasn’t quite caught on yet, and perhaps it never will, but it’s their loss– it just might be the best of the three albums here.
Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career
“I don’t believe in true love, anyway,” sang Tracyanne Campbell, on her band’s show-stopping 2006 LP Let’s Get Out of This Country– and of course, we didn’t believe her any more then than we do in 2009, when she tells us that her “maudlin career is over.” Truth is, no other band is quite as spellbinding and romantic, as utterly swoon-worthy as Camera Obscura; their music could convince the most jaded cynic that true love is real, and for that reason, let’s hope the band’s career is only beginning.
And if their new album, My Maudlin Career, is perhaps a tiny bit less instantly-infatuating as the last one, it’s still a ravishing, passionate work, the stuff of which major musical crushes are born. An incomparably blissful marriage of beach music, country, doo-wop, and girl-group harmonies to diarist sincerity and theater-major melodrama, this is nothing if not a sequel to Let’s Get Out of This Country, but so what? Here the band offers subtle refinements of an album that didn’t really need refining to begin with, and the Belle & Sebastian comparisons that have long hounded them have never been more irrelevant: Camera Obscura sounds more confident and comfortable with themselves than ever. If Country was their break-through, Maudlin is the victory lap where they make it clear that they’ve carved for themselves a signature sound– and, with it and great albums like this, a legacy.
If anything, the album is bigger and bolder, but also darker. Tracyanne falls in love with a sailor and sees her reflection in the moonlit waters– and that’s just in the first song!– while the songs are supported by lavish, increasingly complex and integral string arrangements. The upbeat songs are less interesting here– there’s nothing as immediately memorable as “Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken” or “Let’s Get Out of This Country”– but the band shows growth on their ballads, especially the striking, painfully wounded tracks “Away with Murder” and “James.” Love hurts, as they say, but romantic longing may never have felt sweeter.
Art Brut – Art Brut vs. Satan
For their third album, Art Brut celebrates The Replacements, takes potshots at Brian Eno and U2, and oh yeah, records with 
indie godfather Frank Black in the producer’s chair. In other words: If you’re looking for something arty and esoteric, you’re looking at the wrong band. Art Brut finds their footing somewhere between punk, indie, and garage rock, and, just in case their love of raw, jagged riffs and full-band energy isn’t obvious from the record’s careening momentum and rough-and-ready sound, they’ve recorded another one of their meta-songs to spell it out for you– this time, it’s called “Slap Dash for No Cash,” and it’s a Valentine to those bands that record lo-fi, lo-budget, high-speed rock and roll without a lot of studio overhead or rehearsal time. It turns out to be a perfect album that marks something of a return to form after It’s a Bit Complicated, which may have been just a shade too fussy; and if the Frank Black collaboration isn’t quite a boon in the way you might think it would be, it’s a boon nevertheless: He may not put Art Brut in touch with their inner-Pixies, but he does keep them true to their inner Art Brut, preserving their enthusiasm and passion in all its ragged glory.
Art Brut isn’t a band you listen to in hopes of being surprised; if anything, they’re a band that proves just how utterly thrilling a time-tested formula can be, as their sound is nothing if not drunk on the spirit that’s kept rock and roll alive and well for all these years. Still, there might be something just a tad eyebrow-raising about Eddie Argos’ songwriting. As usual, his vocals are closer to spoken-word than actual singing, but his witty, cheerfuly absurd narratives about music, drinking, romantic pitfalls, and general loserdom have a surprising new twist here: In a way, the album paints a picture of growing up and accepting maturity versus remaining in perpetual adolescence, beginning with an anthem of pathetic, unrepentent alcoholism but ending on a note that’s just a tad more remorseful. Between those songs, Argos celebrates those childhood pleasures that remain with you throughout life (“DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshakes”), ponders growing up within the context of not knowing how to drive (“The Passenger”), and cleverly sends up teenage neuroses (“Am I Normal?”). That these songs have a lot of humor goes without saying, but they’ve also got a lot of heart, which is what makes the whole thing an exhuberant good time, even when Art Brut squares off with the Prince of Darkness on “Demons Out!”
I Was a King - I Was a King
The lead singer of I Was a King is named Frode Stromstads– and what’s amazing is, that’s not even the most awesome thing about them. Sure, this Norwegian rock outfit wears their influences on their sleeves, but damn if they don’t have great taste. Imagine: The power chords and sugar-rush hooks of Teenage Fanclub or New Pornographers, wed to the noisy, ramshackle production of early Pavement and filled with wicked guitar freakouts worthy of Hendrix. Not exactly what you’d expect from a group with close ties to Scandanavia’s native Christian music scene, but then, the only evidence of religiosity that you’ll hear on this terrific album is a cover of “Hard Luck and Bad News,” written by Christian rock pioneer Larry Norman. Here’s an album that’s drunk on big hooks, smart songwriting, and rock-god guitar heroics– a perfect shot of power pop madness, just in time for summer.
Allen Toussaint: “The Bright Mississippi”
Ask any raconteur who’s worth his weight in salt and he’s certain to tell you the same thing: It’s not the story you’re telling that matters so much as how you’re telling it. It’s like in that movie The Aristocrats, where a zillion different comedians tell the very same joke over and over again, each offering their own embellishments and, thus, their own flavor, by way of illustrating the point that the richest payoff doesn’t come from the punch-line; it comes from the build-up.
So never mind the fact that, on The Bright Mississippi, Allen Toussaint tells a set of stories that have all been told before. That couldn’t be further from the point. And don’t for a minute think that, just because a lot of these songs are “standards,” there’s anything in the least bit “standard” about the way Toussaint delivers them. There’s a gravity to this set that says these are stories worth hearing again, and a spark of mischief whispering that you’ve never heard them told quite like this.
Toussaint himself has never told these stories before, of course, but that doesn’t mean they’re new to him, or that they aren’t somehow connected to the larger narrative at work in his career. The twelve tracks assembled for this record are all songs written in, written about, or at least associated with the city of New Orleans– the city that happens to serve as the primary setting for Toussaint’s own city. These are the songs that Toussaint grew up with, the songs that gave him inspiration in his formative years as a musician– and it’s easy to hear the impact they had on his own soulful funk and R&B tunes. But what these songs mean to Toussaint’s music is less important than what they mean to his spirit, and to the spirit of the city he so dearly loves: These songs are Bourbon Street brawlers, Mardi Gras romps, funeral dirges, roadhouse blues, and churchhouse spirituals, capturing in them all the spirit and history of a place that’s very specific but not necessarily bound to geography.
That Toussaint is recording these songs for the first time is evident from the first joyful notes, sounding like a trumpet call to exploration and excavation; the great pianist leads a band that shows a deep appreciation but not a strict reverence, and he himself performs them not as dusty old folk tunes or esoteric jazz pieces but as celebrations of song and spirit, unbound to any particular genre– indeed, he plays the jazz cuts like they were rollicking funk numbers, and in his delirious improvisation you can even hear little snippets of some of his own compositions. The typically-solemn spiritual number “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” is turned into a punch-drunk strut, and secular numbers like “Blue Drag” are filled with a familiar sense of play. Throughout, Toussaint and his band sound like they’re discovering these songs for the first time, feeling them out not with fear and trembling but with humor and good cheer and a taste for adventure.
But they paint in deep blues, as well, as though to remind us that not everything– in life or in New Orleans– is a party. And yet, even on the more somber numbers, the tone isn’t one of sadness so much as a wistful melancholy. Ellington’s “Solitude” closes the set not as a lament but as an after-hours hymn to stillness and serenity, and his “Day Dream” is appropriately yearning. “Dear Old Southland” is something else altogether, shifting from a lonesome reverie into a satisfied revelry and then back again.
The set is produced by Joe Henry, who has a gift for making this kind of thing sound spontaneous and free-spirited but not frivolous or lightweight, and Toussaint is joined by a backing band that’s full of ace musicians, including bassist David Piltch, clarinetist Don Byron (who adds a winking sensuality to “Just a Closer Walk…”), guitarist Marc Ribot, and trumpeter Nicholas Payton. Joshua Redman and Brad Mehldau play on a track apiece, and special mention ought be made of drummer Jay Bellerose, who coaxes strange poetry from hand percussion instruments and high drama from seemingly simple cymbal-work; the smallest flicker of his mischievous musical imagination can totally change the course of a song’s tone or shape. And yet, in the end, this feels like Toussaint’s show through and through, a showcase for him both as instrumentalist and as band leader, sounding like an extension of his previous work even while it stands as something utterly unique in his history. He is the master storyteller here; the others, sympathetic support.
And this is all without mentioning, mind you, that Toussaint sings on only one track here, the weary blues of “Long, Long Journey,” a gesture that’s pregnant with significance, or that this is such a departure from this veteran artist– so different from anything he’s done before– that its mere existence, the fact that something so daring would come from an artist who’s now into his seventies, is itself mind-blowing. But here’s the thing, stated simply and without exaggeration: The Bright Mississippi is a masterpiece, a stone classic, a story that’s been told many times over but has never been told like this, and can never be told like this again. It’s pure joy, a flight of spirit and adventure and imagination, and as such it’s not enough to call it a fine record, or even a great record; this right here, it’s nothing short of liberating.
Booker T. Jones: “Potato Hole”
Don’t let the timetable mislead you: Potato Hole might be Booker T. Jones’ first album in twenty years, but that doesn’t mean he’s spent the last two decades working on it. There’s no mistaking this album for a work of carefully-planned studio presicion or love-borne labor– it’s an album that was recorded quickly, spontaneously, with no particular vision in mind other than the creation of music that simply feels good to listen to. And that’s exactly what the album turns out to be; neither a deliberate departure from Green Onions, the seminal record that has cast its shadow over Jones’ entire career, nor a stab at recreating it, Potato Hole is simply the sound of a veteran musician settling into one big, long, comfortable groove.
Jones’ studio band is none other than the Drive-by Truckers, who proved their mettle as an inspired roadhouse-soul band on Bettye LaVette’s wonderful album The Scene of the Crime, but if the Truckers’ drummer Brad Morgan is the album’s MVP– his limber timekeeping keeping the band anchored while keeping the songs malleable and pushing them in different directions– the flashier star here is Neil Young, who plays ragged electric guitar on all but one of the album’s tracks and covers Jones’ fluid, gently funky compositions with a greasy sheen of grunge. For his part, Jones whirls right along on his B-3, keeping the grunge from drowning out the funk.
His great gift has always been making this kind of thing sound easy, which of course we all know it’s not, but that turns out to be a bit of a two-edged sword here; if the album’s virtue is in the laid-back charm of hearing these top-notch musicians ease into a warm, comfortable groove, its vice is that it’s all just a little too comfortable, with all of the songs reaching a repectable simmer but never quite coming to a boil. Nowhere is that more evident than on the cover of Outkast’s “Hey Ya,” a selection that sounds more audacious on paper than on the record; try as he might, Booker T. just can’t replicate the careening joy of Andre 3000 with his organ– a B-3 is a poor subtitute for a thick Southern drawl– and without the steady progression of the lyrics, there’s not as great a sense of dynamics here, making it, like several of these songs, feel like a great little groove that’s stretched just a bit too thin.
There’s a cover of Tom Waits‘ “Get Behind the Mule,” as well, which is less radical but more effective; Jones doesn’t stray too far from the structure or spirit of the orginal, but he does offer a more playful reading, which, it turns out, is what separates the very good songs from the merely solid songs on this set: A sense of play. There is, alas, not enough of it to make Potato Hole a knockout, but what it lacks in thrills it makes up for in warmth and rhythm, so if the album isn’t anywhere in the same league as Green Onions, it’s at least worthy of the comparison.
Brian Blade: “Mama Rosa”
As a music critic, I always try to evaluate a record within the context of the values and standards of its particular genre; far be it from me to expect a hip-hop record to play by the same rules as a folk record, or, worse yet, to make arbitrary hierarchies in which one style of music is regarded as “better” than another. So understand that, when I say that Brian Blade’s new album Mama Rosa is a minor disappointment, it isn’t because he’s abandoned the searching, spiritual jazz of the Fellowship Band in favor of a smoother, more somber collection of singer-songwriter fare. My disappointment comes simply from the fact that, for the first time, Blade is making music in a world in which his footing isn’t always sure, his normally graceful execution sometimes faltering.
That said, the album is anything but a regression. Even if it flat-out sucked– which it doesn’t, not by a long-shot Blade would still deserve major kudos for having the artistic courage to step away from his drum kit and everything he’s become known for, pick up an acoustic guitar, and sing a collection of deeply personal, autobiographical songs that were never really intended for public consumption. Blade says that it was his long-time mentor and former boss Daniel Lanois who first heard the songs and encouraged Blade to release them; given that they were written as private memoirs and confessions, it’s unsurprising that they have a certain rough quality to them, but that’s part of the album’s charm: Blade is baring not only his soul but an untested, unpolished side of his artistic personality– and God bless the guy, that takes courage.
This is not, by the way, Blade’s Americana album, or even a folk album in the strictest sense of the term: It’s very much a singer-songwriter record, influenced by gospel and R&B and also by muted, confessional albums by the likes of Joni Mitchell, another of Blade’s friends and former employers. And though many members of his Fellowship Band are present– Jon Cowheard on piano and organ, Kurt Rosenwinkel on guitar for a single track– it sounds pretty much nothing like the instrumental jazz albums Blade usually makes. This is muted, at times even morose music, meditative and reflective, often a bit too much so; it far too easily drifts into the ether and becomes mere background music. The musicians are given little room to stretch themselves– after all, they’re really just here to support Blade. And since Blade learned about studiocraft from Daniel Lanois, and co-produces the set with Lanois’ longtime engineer Adam Samuels, it’s unsurprising that the album borrows from Lanois’ own hazy, gauzy sound. At its best, that lends the album a certain warmth, but it just as often blurs the musicians together into a murky elevator music.
Blade writes about faith and family here, paying tribute to the friends and relatives who have shaped him, who raised him, who taught him about Jesus and love. Of course, Blade communicates in a very different way here than he does on his jazz albums– for the first time, his expression isn’t wordless– but what’s interesting is that these songs are very much in keeping with his aesthetic: Last year’s Season of Changes, recorded with the Fellowship Band, explored spirituality and unity with powerful musical themes. On Mama Rosa, the words feel like an extension of Blade’s typical musical tropes, making the album sound oddly like, well, a Brian Blade album, despite its very different musical make-up.
Blade is less expressive and confident as a singer than as a bandleader, but he exudes a sense of intimacy that fits these recordings. Bewilderingly, he ends the album with a pair of weird, droning instrumentals, confirming that while Blade’s adventurousness is the album’s greatest asset, its occasional aimlessness is its chief flaw. And yet, this album is a blessing to have, for what it says about the artist more than for its actual songs: Let it be remembered that Brian Blade is an artist who follows his muse without concern for image or reputation, and if the results are sometimes flawed, the spirit is always right and true.
Mastodon: “Crack the Skye”
There’s an interesting story at play on Crack the Skye (and no, I’m not talking about its trippy narrative about worm holes and Czarist Russia and the great unknown). But speaking of, let’s deal with that first. Yes, Mastodon has written yet another concept album, this one a surrealist, faux-mystical reflection on death and loss, and it takes the band out of time and space and into who knows what. Given that they’d already made a thrashy update of Moby Dick with Leviathan and scaled the mythological Blood Mountain, where exactly did you expect them to go, if not into the weirdest, most cerebral recesses of their collective imagination?
Read the rest at Stereo Subversion.
Sara Watkins: “Sara Watkins”
There was a time, however brief, when critics and casual fans of Nickel Creek thought that Chris Thile– the closest thing the group had to a true leader– was the mastermind behind the band’s more progressive tendencies– their flirtations with pop and rock, and the oddball cover selections that always popped up in concert; his two companions, Sean and Sara Watkins, were “merely” virtuosic musicians. The faithful always knew better, and those of us still paying attention are finding the disbanded trio’s now-divergent careers to be quietly revelatory; if the fine but flawed solo and side projects from Thile and the Watkins siblings have tarnished the idea of Nickel Creek as an unstoppable group of musical synthesists, it’s also trashed the notion that Thile was the only forward-thinker in the group. Though he continues to hurdle into increasingly esoteric territory, as with his dense and daunting fusion of bluegrass and classical music with the Punch Brothers, the Watkins brother and sister are ably proving themselves to have musical imaginations just as big (and much more accessible) as Thile’s; just a few months back, Sean appeared as one half of the duo Fiction Family, along with Switchfoot’s Jon Foreman, proving himself to possess both a collaborative spirit and interests in pop, rock, and coffeehouse folk idioms.
And sister Sara? Her first album, Sara Watkins, does exactly what any self-titled debut album should: It establishes who she is and what she cares about, and offers promising hints of what she can do. And, as you might imagine by now, it’s an album steeped in bluegrass, but hardly limited to it; Watkins reveals herself to be a bit more complex than merely a bluegrass fiddler. She is very much a singer-songwriter, and her debut as a solo performer reveals that her personality and music are as much shaped by the LA singer-songwriter scene as by the sounds of Nashville or Appalachia.
That diverse pedigree manifests itself in different ways, of course, but the most obvious is in her song selection. Watkins stomps through a thick, muggy bluegrass tune with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings (John Hartford’s “Long Hot Summer Days”) and contributes a few of her own instrumental workouts for fiddle, guitar and mandolin. There’s country and gospel, as well, but just as notable are the LA tracks; she covers Jon Brion’s “Same Mistakes”– a ballad with nothing bluegrass about it, though Greg Leisz’ peddle steel makes it fit right in– and she goes to the feet of the godfather himself, Tom Waits, for a cover of Mule Variations‘ “Pony.” The record’s most indelible moments are the originals on which Watkins weds her twin instincts– as on the longing opener, “All This Time,” which blends bluegrass instrumentation and country twang with the LA scene’s lyrical idiosyncrasies and genteel mannerisms, suggesting even better, more integrative music to come down the road.
But you can hear the differing (and at times, competing) influences in more than just the song selection; there’s also her choice of colalbroators, particularly producer John Paul Jones. If his presence makes you think Watkins is trying to bring a classic rock edge to her music, you’d be mistaken– Jones proves to be just as adept at rootsy singer-songwriter fare as his bandmate Robert Plant has turned out to be– but his hand on the wheel does indicate that while Watkins loves traditional bluegrass music, she’s not interested in being a complete traditionalist. And if her abiding interest in singer-songwriter tropes ocassionally leads to some overly slick, polite ballads– as on “My Friend,” which could really use an extra bluegrass zip– she and Jones also find ways to play with formula and come up with something really fascinating, as on the sinister, spooky lament “Bygones” and the breezy, playful pop number “Too Much,” where Jon Brion himself shows up for some rockist axe-shredding even as Watkins provides a rootsy fiddle breakdown.
It’s moments like that– when the different parts of Watkins’ musical make-up really gel and form something whole, and wholly personal and unique– that the record takes off and becomes not just a solid roots music exercise, but also a fine, spirited album from a creative and very talented singer/songwriter who is only now coming into her own. And it’s that promise that sustains this album and makes it exciting even on the less interesting or half-realized numbers– it all points forward toward a bright future, whether her band ever reuintes or not.
What’s the greatest single of all time? (part 3)
Gavin Breeden, the proprietor of Tone Marrow Reviews, proposes that I add Nicke Lowe‘s “Cruel to be Kind” to my running list of the all-time great singles, alongside previous entries “Common People” and “Spoonful.” With pop this pure and a hook this strong, it’s tough to argue.
