The New Pornographers: “Together”
Sometimes I feel bad for the New Pornographers; it seems, one might say, that they began writing themselves into a corner with their very first album, welding their very identity to an aesthetic that thrives on a sort of comforting familiarity, leaving very little room for anything resembling reinvention. Every album they’ve made, more or less, has been a variation on a theme, a slight tweaking of a sound that aims for the Beatles by following an unerring, linear path through power pop history by way of Weezer and Big Star, Cheap Trick and early Who. Each album is distinct enough from the last to have its own discernible flavor, but rarely enough to really rock the boat– well, except for Challengers, the low-key record that through fans a major curveball and didn’t exactly go over well in some circles; never mind that it happened to be their most focused, and in many ways their best album.
Not that they seem to mind. Challengers follow-up Together feels like a cheerful return to the norm, not a deliberate act of renouncing the last album so much as a peppy, good-natured acknowledgement that yes, its mellow vibe was probably not what New Pornos fans really wanted. And so we have an album that mostly sounds like the album that could’ve followed Twin Cinema had Carl Newman and Co. not taken that curious detour. It is not a direct retread of that album, but it is, basically, a sequel, a logical progression that, as per usual, shakes things up enough to sound like its own distinct entity without sounding like anything radical. Yes, there are even some slower numbers here, suggesting that Challengers did teach the band some important lessons, or at least provide them with some happy memories.
Newman is still very much the ringleader of this motley crew, which means that the album spends a great deal of time exploring straight-ahead power pop territory– albeit with a few twists. What’s key, though, is that these little curveballs all feel natural, warm– not the kind of changes that smack of experimentation so much as gentle efforts to keep things fresh without alienating any listeners. And so we have the most Neko-centric New Pornos album ever, the golden-voiced chanteuse taking the lead more than ever before, both on slower numbers and rockers, and centering the proceedings around her warm, familiar vocals. We have numbers like album opener “Moves,” which cleverly mirrors its crunching, metal-aping guitar riffs with furious orchestral strings and pounding piano; similarly, a cello provides much of the drive of “The Crash Years,” as if to bridge the gap between power and chamber pop.
Elsewhere, the band tinkers a bit, but not in ways that could be described as surprising so much as pleasantly eclectic. Believe it or not, there are guest spots here for St. Vincent, Okkervil River’s Will Sheff, and the Dap Horns– but you’d hardly know it if you didn’t consult the album credits, so seamlessly and unobtrusively does Newman blend them into the New Pornos sound. The horns are most prominent in “A Bite Out of My Bed,” and the role they play could have just as easily been filled by another layer of chiming guitars, to roughly the same effect. The biggest departure here is a ballad called “Valkyrie in the Roller Disco,” wherein Newman plucks away at a banjo Sufjan Stevens-style; but even here, the sound is natural, easy on the ears, and still not too far removed from past New Pornos slow songs. (Indeed, one naturally expects it to erupt into a big, show-stopping crescendo a la “The Bleeding Heart Show,” and when it doesn’t, it’s the album’s biggest surprise.)
Together is, then, marked by nothing so much as a dogged insistence on bringing in a variety of sounds and ideas, and then conforming them all to a sound that can only be classified as vintage New Pornographers; even Dan Bejar‘s songs seem streamlined here to fit better into the power pop mold, less fussy or wordy than they usually are on these records. The result is a typical release from Newman and the gang: Typically enjoyable, typically catchy, and typically unsurprising. Their familiarity is as comforting as it is, at times, a bit tiresome, and while Together has very much its own distinct identity within the New Pornos catalog, it boils down to roughly the same thing as all the others: Nothing more or less than a very good New Pornographers album.
Marco Benevento: “Between the Needle and Nightfall”
It’s probably fair to say that the seeds of complacency have been there from the very beginning for Marco Benevento. Well, maybe not the very beginning. His debut recording as a solo artist, the triple-disc Live at Tonic, was primarily a rousing, rollicking showcase for his on-stage skills as an improviser, his natural knack for composition, and his astonishing way with a piano. From there, he headed to the studio, a truckload of gizmos and gadgets in tow; the resulting LP, Invisible Baby, was a delirious delight, Benevento sounding both like a mad scientist and a child at play. Yes, he loved his electronics, but on that album the toys seemed new to him, his use of them streaked with mischief — and always in service of the songs.
Read the rest at Stereo Subversion.
Josh Ritter: “So Runs the World Away”
Josh Ritter’s last album was called Historical Conquests, but maybe he should have saved the title for its follow-up. On the lavishly-titled So Runs the World Away, Ritter does indeed sound a like a conqueror– a world traveler and explorer who’s returned home with stories of all he’s done and seen. The portrait of the mighty ship on the front cover is instructive: This album is a travelogue, a report taken from a long, sometimes harrowing journey into a new world.
Exploration is a recurring theme here, not just in the lyrics but in the music. Historical Conquests was a loose, ramshackle album that filtered dusty Americana through Ritter’s pure pop sensibilities; at times it felt almost like an inspired jukebox, spinning one brilliant idea after another. That same mix of wide-eyed curiosity and exploratory instincts are present here as well, but this time Ritter sounds more confident in his own inspiration and craft, less like he’s riding a glorious wave of spontaneity and more like he’s etching out his own masterpiece, a work that’s as bold and as visionary as any album he’s made. And if Historical Conquests was loose and rough around the edged, Runs the World is grand, elegant– imagine the volatile chemistry of the last album crossed with the stately arrangements of The Animal Years and you’re on the right track.
The album was recorded, once again, with producer Sam Kassirer, as well as the same band Ritter made Historical Conquests and has since been touring the world with; the album is, yes, and exploration of this increasingly fruitful partnership, Ritter’s escalating confidence as a recording artist feeding off of Kassirer’s own increased intuition. Together, they take Ritter’s sound to places it’s never been before, to majestic highs and quiet valleys. “Southern Pacifica” is a lush pop song, its vibe-adorned passages sounding positively ornate, and certainly more meticulous than anything from the last album, but the sound is hardly overwrought– Ritter and Kassirer are at once giddy with ideas and confident in their own execution, making the song into a genuinely grand anthem. And would you believe that “Rattling Locks”– with its sour, jazzy arrangement and clattering, Bone Machine percussion– could almost pass for a Tom Waits track? Or that “The Remnant” expands on the barbed-wire guitar sound of “Mind’s Eye,” as gritty and raucous as anything from the last record?
That Ritter finds solidarity with fellow explorers is a given, but what’s astonishing is how he’s taken previously-blazed trails and wound up somewhere completely different. His fascination with American folk music burns as passionately as ever, and in some ways he’s as audacious here as he’s ever been, not just in how the jovial “Lark” sounds like it could be a long lost Paul Simon classic, but also in how he rewrites the old murder ballad “Delia”– written by Blind Willie McTell and performed by everyone from Dylan to Cash– as “Folk Bloodbath.” It’s a sort of revisionist Western in the vein of Unforgiven, the genre’s proud history of violence here called into question.
It’s not the album’s only song that asks big questions. Ritter’s explorations have seemingly taken him to the edge of the world and back, and he returns fueled by inspiration drawn from travelers, navigators, and scientists– but also daunted by what he’s found lurking at the frontiers of human experience. The opening anthem “Change of Time” sets the tone for the work that follows with its twin themes of love and death– and of the cold, terrifying chasm that lies between them. The next song, “The Curse,” is a piano waltz, a story song in the same league as “The Temptation of Adam” from the last album; it tells the story of a Victorian archaeologist who falls in love with an unearthed mummy. What’s the curse, then? Perhaps it’s mortality itself, or perhaps it’s the fact that the two ever feel in love in the first place, only to be torn asunder by the ravages of time.
Ritter’s resentment grows into a full-fledged showdown with the Almighty; a divine, discontented dialogue flows through the album like a bitter undercurrent. “Rattling Locks,” the album’s most puzzling and provocative number, finds the argument reaching its boiling point, our singer choosing an eternity in Hell over a life of unanswered questions. But it’s clear– at least to this listener– that these songs are not empty provocation; Ritter borrows his own spirit of theological inquiry from the explorers and scientists he writes about, and his angry fist-shaking at God seems to come from a real desire for knowledge and truth.
What truth he finds is, perhaps, a matter left for Ritter and the Deity to sort out. I will say, though, that the album’s epic centerpiece, “Another New World,” is a perfect summation of the album’s themes, drawing together its ideas of love and death, exploration and violence, frontiers both literal and metaphysical. I won’t spoil the song’s finale for anyone, but suffice to say that, if Ritter doesn’t quite find peace of resolution, he does sound open to the idea that they could be out there. He’s not making any final judgments about anything just yet: After all, he’s still exploring.
Jennifer Knapp: “Letting Go”
“Careful what you say/ Careful who might hear,” goes the first line of Letting Go, the first new Jennifer Knapp album in some nine years. If only she’d heeded her own advice. Never mind the fact that this is the first new Knapp in close to a decade. What’s sure to get more play with the press is that it’s the first new Knapp album since she broke the news to Christianity Today that she — beloved of the evangelical community — was a lesbian. And what a shame: amidst all the fuss about her lifestyle, her faith, her sexuality… well, whatever happened to the music? So it goes. Letting Go is destined, probably forever, to be known for its backstory, the actual music going largely underappreciated.
Without question, no one will be able to hear “Fallen” without thinking about… well, you know. It might be the first love song Knapp has ever committed to tape, and it’s a pure and beautiful one — its faint piano undercurrent tastefully recalling Coldplay, its lyric too elegant and heartfelt to play as a tawdry confession of tabloid sideline—not that that’s gonna stop anyone from hearing it that way, of course.
Read the rest at Stereo Subversion.
Dr. Dog: “Shame, Shame”
“I do believe that there’s no more tricks up my sleeve,” goes the chorus of “Stranger,” the first song on Dr. Dog’s new album Shame, Shame — only, methinks they’re selling themselves a bit short. They may not unveil any new tricks on this, their sixth album, but when their standard bag of tricks is so impressive, who’s going to complain? The Philly band has one trick, in particular, that makes their records consistently enjoyable, and this one more than any of ‘em: it’s the trick of taking the past and reshaping it in their own image.
Read the rest at Stereo Subversion.
Doveman: “The Conformist”
What Thomas Bartlett lacks in musical imagination, he very nearly makes up for in his dogged commitment to a very personal — and very quiet — vision. It’s a little trick he likely picked up from his friends and frequent collaborators in The National; on his latest album The Conformist, released once again under his Doveman banner, Bartlett hones in on a single aesthetic — one is almost inclined to call it a formula — and he simply works it, less interested in expanding his approach outward than burrowing further inward, mining his chosen sound space for everything in it.
Read the rest at Stereo Subversion.
Roky Erickson with Okkervil River: “True Love Cast Out All Evil”
My review of True Love Cast Out All Evil– the much talked-about return of Roky Erickson and collaboration with Okkervil River– is posted today at CT. This one is among my favorite things I’ve heard this year, singular and moving in how it translates Erickson’s haunting life story into blood-letting, demon-excising rock and roll. It’s also a masterpiece of collaboration– it may tell Erickson’s story, but the Okkervils are instrumental to bringing it to life. All in all, a really special recording.
Willie Nelson: “Country Music”
It’s been so long since Willie Nelson recorded a straight-ahead, concept-free recording of simple country songs that the title of 2010′s Country Music is less an understated irony, more a necessary qualifier– but also a tell-tale sign that this isn’t the loose, amiable Willie of old, but a Willie who continues to approach each album as a sort of formal exercise, which is basically what Country Music is. He’s done reggae, he’s done blues, he’s done a Cindy Walker tribute and a set of American standards, and now he makes an album of traditional country music– an album that is not only confined to a particular style, but shaped sonically by a specific collaborator, in this case T-Bone Burnett, who is truly the album’s chief architect, Willie simply his easy-going, ever-agreeable mouthpiece.
The upside to this set of country standards is that this is the kind of music Willie grew up with and can play in his sleep, and his natural ease here is only enhanced by the fact that he has, of late, been game for recording with basically anybody, so he sounds perfectly comfortable in T-Bone’s vintage country set-pieces. And make no mistake: The goal of this album is to emulate the sound of vintage country music through and through, something that separates it from the more cinematic soundscapes of T-Bone’s recent work with Jakob Dylan; here, it’s all about the organic interplay between the musicians– among them Jim Lauderdale and Buddy Miller– on traditional string instruments, a soung that’s steeped in classic country music with heavy doses of bluegrass, as well as hints here and there of honky-tonk.
But if everything here sounds perfectly agreeable and pleasantly old-timey, the one thing is never is is relaxed; despite the organic performances and generally slow tempos, the album is, in its own way, every bit as rigidly conceptual as anything Willie’s done in the last decade or so, and it benefits neither from T-Bone’s continued obsession with recreating the “authenticity” of analog Americana or Willie’s ongoing genre endeavors, two factors that make this feel more like a forced bit of historical reenactment than the loose, unpretentious return to form it might have been for Nelson. It’s also not his turn for a Raising Sand style comeback– T-Bone’s atmospheric country noir is replaced here by something that is, at times, coldly calculating in its classicist approximation– but, if nothing else, it’s fun to hear Willie take a turn at these songs, and if the album isn’t the creative revitalization it might have been, it’s at least consistent and immaculately played and produced, and never anything less than enjoyable.
Review Round-Up: Paul Weller
Long-time Hurst readers might remember that I rather liked 22 Dreams, the terrific, kaleidoscopic album that Modfather/former Jam and Style Council ringleader Paul Weller released in 2009. I liked it enough to feel very comfortable calling it his best solo album yet, enough that it was a serious contender for my Best of 2008 list, and certainly enough that I became eager to find out how he would try to follow it.
What I wasn’t prepared for was for Weller to follow that top-notch album with one that’s even more dizzying and impressive, but that’s exactly what he’s done with Wake Up the Nation. The album comes out stateside in June, and I’ll be reviewing it then. For now, the album is already released in the UK, and a quick survey of the British rock rags shows just how significant and provocative this album is. Q, for example, in a five-star rave, calls it his solo masterpiece, and likens it to the best latter-day Dylan albums. Andy Gill, writing for the Independent, gives it five stars as well.
But there’s more. NME says that Weller is a “godlike genius.” And then there’s this:
Take a moment to compare Paul Weller to his 1977 classmates, and you’ll find that nowadays everyone’s either dead, virtually senile or beyond caring. Sting? Plays the lute. Geldof? No chance. Mick Jones? Content with backing up Damon Albarn. Even Lydon’s decided to revive his role as the fairy godmother of panto punk for the 1,056th time.
True, there are some (MacGowan, Costello) who still apply themselves with a certain level of dedication to their initial cause. But none apart from Weller actually appear that arsed about writing songs – damn fine ones – anymore. He’s just about to turn 52, and ‘Wake Up The Nation’ is his 10th solo record. It’s a collection of ludicrously fresh-sounding, short and sharp material (the majority of tracks are under two-and a-half minutes) that confirms he’s in the midst of a seriously impressive rebirth. This period of reinvention took shape with 2008’s ‘22 Dreams’, but whereas that album coerced the listener into a woozy, acid-flecked slideshow of sprawling psychedelia, ‘Wake Up…’ pushes classic British beat, mod, funk and R&B. The songs are homely and familiar, but Weller’s delivery – he made up many of the lyrics on the spot – is gloriously imperfect; lending a remarkably youthful and frankly often drunk-sounding edge to proceedings.
And this:
“Fire and skill”, our man spat in 1977. After three decades, he’s still at the top of his game – still reinventing, still chasing melodic perfection. Only difference now is that he’s pretty much on his own; nobody else flits from style to style with as much ease and precision. Modlike and Godlike – ‘Wake Up…’ shows just how lucky we are to have Weller.
The Telegraph offers similarly breathless praise:
Where 22 Dreams was pastoral and rambling, Wake Up the Nation is off the wall yet to the point, its 16 tracks shoehorned into 40 action-packed minutes. Dine apparently pushed the singer to abandon folky whimsy, in favour of a chaotic, urban wall of sound.
…
So, Wake Up the Nation is anything but easy listening. Its relentless vigour is exhausting, rather like the Jam’s final blowout, 1982’s The Gift. But, within its grimy kaleidoscope, Weller strikes gold all over again with lyrical acuteness and tunes – the sweepingly beautiful No Tears to Cry, in particular – as good as any he has written. Bravo!
Simon Price says the album is Weller’s “stunning return to form,” continuing:
For the first time in too long, Paul Weller is not playing catch-up with the zeitgeist, nor trying to live up to his own canon. Waking Up the Nation is an unchained, liberated album, the sound of a young dog chasing cars rather than an old one eating its own tail.
And Dan Cairns enthuses:
The sense that you knew pretty much what you’d be getting with each new Paul Weller solo release — gruff, bluesy dad-rock workouts with bracing if rare signs of the old bark and bite — vanished with 2008’s sprawling, multigenre 22 Dreams. That double album was, it is now clear, merely a rehearsal. Wake Up the Nation began as a series of “sound collages” recorded by Weller’s co-producer, Simon Dine, which the 51-year-old then worked up into songs, the vocals and often extempore lyrics added at the 11th hour. The result is an album at once baffling, unpredictable, urgent, passionate and, in terms of the Weller canon, uncategorisable: you genuinely do not know where its 16 tracks are taking you.
More Weller coverage coming as the album’s U.S. release date draws nigh!
Shelby Lynne: “Tears, Lies & Alibis”
Americana is a tricky term. The word itself suggests a culture, a sense of history, a sense of place. It suggests tradition, following in the footprints of giants– which means that, for many, it’s a word synonymous with art and culture that dutifully mimics the giants in their every step. But the best Americana isn’t like that: The really good stuff earns its name through the invocation of a weird, idiosyncratic people, as manifest in weird, idiosyncratic lives. This is Shelby Lynne: She makes personal Americana, music that bends the tropes of culture and history to the whims of her personality, her vision.
Her latest, Tears, Lies & Alibis, is the personal vision of Americana she’s been working toward for years. Self-produced and, for the first time, self-released, Tears is a neat ten-song set that comes and goes in 37 minutes, and in that span, refines the swampy mix of country-blues, southern soul, and pop she made seem to effortless on Suit Yourself– with a few lessons learned from her Dusty Springfield tribute album thrown in for good measure. The record begins with a couple of bouncy, sassy pop songs that bend elastic melodies over brass and keys straight out of Memphis. After that, it locks in for a stretch of lazy, humid, back-porch strumming, heavy on ballads and thick with bawdy country atmosphere. The album was recorded primarily in Lynne’s basement, and sounds like an informal pickin’ session. Horns and steel guitars, mixed in after the fact, call out like ghostly, spectral voices from somewhere in the bayou.
It sounds on paper like a natural follow-up to Suit Yourself, but on record not quite like anything she’s ever done. Lynne has never sounded more confident as a record-maker, or more assured as a singer; if the Dusty sessions taught her anything, it’s to trust her own instincts as a storyteller and a singer, and indeed, it’s amazing how much of the story she conveys with her own voice. Incidentally a companion piece to sister Allison Moorer’s recent Crows– simpler, but no less sophisticated, and perhaps more compelling overall– the album has a cyclical feel, moving from heartache to flight, then circling back again for a return home. She plays with archetypes we know well– “Alibi” is a cheatin’ song, “Something to Be Said” a ramblin’ song, “Old #7″ a drinkin’ song– but she reveals these forms to be malleable in her hands, bending them into something that’s partly classic American music, partly Shelby Lynne’s own handiwork.
The album is drenched in sweet sadness and soul, and performed by an artist who knows well enough to let those things carry the record; she keeps things compact and cut close to the bone, meaning that it’s the songs that stand out more than anything else, and the album doesn’t wear out its welcome but lingers even after it stops playing. In other words: Listening to it is an experience, and an affecting one at that. There’s something to be said for ambition, but just as much for restraint; this is Shelby Lynne’s masterpiece of self-discipline, a short and sweet album that transforms tradition through her miraculous singing, and if it isn’t her most ambitious album ever, it might be her most powerful.
