Elvis Costello: “National Ransom”
Elvis Costello has spent the better part of his career– intermittently, perhaps– chasing down the elusive spirit of American myth and music. It goes back much farther, certainly, than his more recent stabs at American R&B and jazz, farther back even than King of America, his lived-in, mythology-chasing country-folk reinvention with T-Bone Burnett. You could trace it back at least as far as his Gram-worshiping country covers disc Almost Blue– we’re back in 1981 now– or even to the songs “Different Finger” and “Luxembourg,” from the album Trust, released earlier in that same year. But really, one might as well go back to the beginning– to his off-the-cuff invocation of his hip-shaking namesake on songs like “Mystery Dance” and “Sneaky Feelings.” And that goes all the way back to his debut; he was just another angry young Brit back then, his classical dalliances and operatic aspirations then unimaginable.
I’ll make the argument that National Ransom– album #33, but who’s counting?– is his most seamless and sophisticated assimilation of American musics and myths thus far. It’s another T-Bone production, but it’s both more ambitious than King of America– its vision of said musics here extending far beyond country-folk and the occasional rambling blues– and more deliberate than Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, an album of tossed-off charms diluted by the sinking suspicion that it was pieced together from table scraps. Ransom is wider-ranging, less a study of a particular musical idiom than a cinematic travelogue of the last hundred years or so of songs and stories from the land of want and plenty. Each song is a snippet, a scene from either the too-painful present or an age gone by but never forgotten; the music reflects the literary scope of the writing, moving with deft purpose through stringband numbers and jazzy torch songs, country weepers and the earliest formations of American rhythm and blues. The final song– “A Voice in the Dark”– could have been manufactured in Tin Pan Alley, and heard in any New York nightclub circa 1930.
The songs are held in place by the thread of history; these are not just American songs but American stories, each track a different paradigm, a new perspective, on the same central truths. This is an album of betrayal, a set of lover’s laments from the jilted and the downtrodden; sometimes the one who did the jilting is another lover, elsewhere it’s America and her dream, and the distinction becomes less important as the album progresses. The title song– “for the bankrupt times,” Costello says– is a howling indictment of the wolf on the album’s front cover; he’s stolen all the money, and set it all on fire. The betrayal here is perpetuated by Wall Street, by the government, by all of us; Costello makes it clear that we’re in a tar pit of our own making, and if you think it’s the last time we’ll get stuck in the mire, consider the song’s blurring of ripped-from-the-headlines urgency and its backward glances to 1929. This, and everything here, is strung along by the thread of history; it could have sprung from the pen of Faulkner or Fitzgerald, Nathanael West or Walt Whitman.
The origins of the music are less lofty. This one spun off of Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, but if that one marked the first tentative meeting of the ensemble, this one is something more carefully orchestrated, musically integrative and thematically unified. Costello and Burnett cut it in Nashville in under two weeks, with a large group of players that includes members of Costello’s Impostors and his Sugarcanes, along with Marc Ribot, Vince Gill, Leon Russell, and Buddy Miller. The players are arranged in various permutations and ensembles, but not with the tossed-off informality of the last record so much as a sense of service to what each song requires. There are some seriously groove-oriented rock and roll combos here, and their orientation is strictly toward movement and momentum; historicity becomes a blur, to the extent that Steve Nieve’s farfisa organ and Mike Compton’s mandolin show up as unexpected flavorings, as though everyone was simply caught up in the generous spirit of these sessions. Elsewhere, Costello strums an acoustic guitar with only Dennis Crouch’s upright bass supporting him; he is joined by orchestral ensembles that swell to over two dozen pieces; he unites his players around the warm strains of Nieve’s grand piano.
The rock songs here are generally very good ones. “National Ransom” opens the record with what could have been an Attractions classic– a sense heightened by Nieve’s presence on the organ– but Marc Ribot slashes at the guitar with an electric mayhem Costello himself generally avoided. It’s vintage EC, but also a decidedly old-fashioned rock and roll number; untouched by fashion or trends, it could have come from the pen of an Ian Hunter or an Alejandro Escovedo. The other rockers come in variable flavors: “Five Small Words” is a dark-tinged country shuffle, “I Lost You” is a roaring road song with high and lonesome steel guitar, “The Spell That You Cast” is vintage R&B, and “My Lovely Jezebel” is a Leon Russell number, a jaunty roadhouse piano tune. These tracks are less ornate, narratively speaking, and more prone to first-person confessions; I hear them as transmissions from America’s radios and jukeboxes, from the early 30s to the present day, the lyrics turning the album’s themes of betrayal and deceit into anthems of a history both cultural and personal.
But I tend to find the other songs– more musically layered, more nuanced in their grasp of history and narrative thrust– are the more interesting ones. Some of them are playful, almost trifles– a cheerfully old-timey parlor song called “A Slow Drag with Josephine,” reportedly a hoot and a holler at recent concerts; others are outright masterful in their construction– the penultimate song is an absolutely spellbinding narrative of paranoia and distrust, written with T-Bone, called “All These Strangers.” In particular, I’m drawn to a couple of songs that might bare a very loose resemblance to orchestral pop or chamber jazz– arranged, as they are, around Nieve’s grand piano– but harder to pin down than some of EC’s past excursions in this direction. “Stations of the Cross” reminds us that Costello’s take on American music extends not only to Almost Blue‘s country weepers and The Delivery Man‘s rambling rock, but also to the classicist pop found in North; here, though, the edges are frayed, both song and performance several shades darker, as Costello sings of a religious elite who keep a pious distance from anything resembling real human pain or suffering; his liner notes suggest that it may or may not be set in the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina. Meanwhile, “Church Underground” encompasses tumultuous times and harsh modes of redemption via the story of a nightclub singer who’s forced to slum it; the backbeat here is anchored in rock, Costello’s voice a pained sneer.
There is an abundance of religious imagery here, as in the hushed, haunted folk tune “Bullets for the Newborn King.” On the surface it’s the story of a political assassination somewhere in South America; the doers of the dirty deed realize too late that they may have martyred their homeland’s only real source of hope, and the song’s title seems to suggest a certain redemptive/historical parallel that’s echoed in the voice-in-the-wilderness prophetics of “A Voice in the Dark.” And yet, this is a Costello album that emphasizes story over the mere cleverness of his wordplay or obscurity of his allusions; and so we have a song like “You Hung the Moon,” written about a family who contacts a fraud psychic to conduct a seance, hoping to find closure with a lost son who was hanged as a military deserter. Deserters and charlatans, the gullible and the desperate– these are themes that lie at the heart of this record, and their curious strength comes from how the songwriter traces them through the years and through stories that might otherwise seem to have little in common.
To that end, there are some fine character sketches here, one of my favorites being “Jimmie Standing in the Rain,” about a phony London cowboy performer who’s been abandoned by the fickle public he once so loyally entertained. It’s worth noting that this song– which, with its mention of an “indifferent nation,” articulates some of the record’s concerns fairly directly– is actually set in Britain instead of the States, suggesting that Costello’s aims here are not exactly political, at least not in any conventional sense. I also love that the song is echoed later in its more hopeful counterpart, “Dr. Watson, I Presume,” also about an entertainer– in this case, bluegrass stalwart Doc Watson. Costello met him a couple years back and was obviously rather enamored of him; this song is a series of moments, of regrets and opportunities, mistakes and strange coincidences, that add up to a life well-lived, with purpose and with grace. It’s a hopeful heart for a record made for desperate times and a bankrupt era– a humble nod from the once and future King of America.
CT Review: Aaron Neville
Major bummer: I Know I’ve Been Changed, the astonishing new gospel recording from Aaron Neville (with a little help from misters Toussaint and Henry), has seen its release date bumped back to November 9, for reasons that remain unclear to me. Having to wait for something so beautiful is a minor tragedy, yet I promise you all that it’s well worth it. Until then, my full review is still posted here, and, as of today, my CT review is posted here.
Film Break: “Hereafter”
I reviewed Clint Eastwood’s new film, Hereafter, for CT, and, alas, I found it to be pretty lame. It’s a movie about death and the afterlife that avoids any really tough questions or critical thinking in favor of vaguely-spiritual mumbo jumbo. Bit of a bummer, especially given that I remain an apologist for nearly all of Eastwood’s recent films.
Aaron Neville: “I Know I’ve Been Changed”
There is, on the one hand, gospel– a myth, an archetype, a tall tale that might actually, in the end, be true. Then there is gospel– a shared legacy, a music, a piece of folklore, a music that is handed down, passed from fathers to sons, sung in the fields and in the church house and occasionally the ale house. And there is the Gospel– the story, the song of a person transformed.
I make the definition tri-fold because I think Aaron Neville’s understanding of the term is broad enough to embrace all three– though I hasten to qualify my use of the word “broad” here. Neville’s new recording is a gospel recording– not gospel-pop, not spiritual rock, not folk or blues or church music in particular, but gospel. The songs are the stuff of history and tradition; they are old spiritual numbers, some of which might be familiar to you and some of them might not be. I confess that my primary experience with the song that gives the record its title was, until now, Tom Waits’ recording; Neville’s is decidedly less ironic, as this is seemingly a deeply personal account, not of a particular religious experience or of “spiritualism” in vague terms, but of something that really happened, ostensibly to this singer as well as to the people who wrote and passed down these songs.
I don’t mean to read too much into the specifics of these recordings; perhaps Neville sings these particular tracks simply because they are great songs and he a great singer, performing here with both sweetness and soulful power, the kind of stuff that comes only from a loose, spirited recording session. For all I know, he didn’t even select these songs; the album was produced by Joe Henry, who typically has trustworthy instincts for song selection, so perhaps Neville is just being agreeable. I very seriously doubt it, though. There is not just conviction to these songs, but the sort of simplicity that speaks to a concrete sort of Truth: There is nothing conceptual or metaphorical to hide behind, only songs sung in a passionate first-person.
The details of the recording bear witness to this. I’ve been told that the songs here were bottled in just three short days, with a gospel quartet being recorded and dubbed shortly thereafter. That’s quick work by any standards, and the final result is an album touched by the holy fire of inspiration and improvisation. Henry’s regular musicians provide able support, but the band is anchored by Allen Toussaint, a long-time friend of Neville’s whose work from the piano bench gives the record much of its spirit; his playing is steeped in the down-home grit of a little country Baptist church, but it also has much of the strut and sway of a Crescent City club. It’s a spirited, high-energy set; the most festive, celebratory strands of gospel music are the ones that seem to be picked up on the most here.
Henry’s method of production– locking a bunch of talented people in a room and not letting them out until they’ve banged out a killer record– basically can’t fail. This album, in particular, benefits from the approach, seeming to invoke the characteristics of several of Henry’s past projects without ever sounding like anything other than its own, special thing. There is something of the minimalism and bare-bones rhythms of the Henry/Solomon Burke album, Don’t Give Up on Me, and there are moments that recall the blues-based intonations of the album he did with Mary Gauthier. More than anything, I’m reminded of the Bright Mississippi record Henry did with Toussaint, if only because this kind of music-making carried the uncanny ability to bottle pure, unpretentious joy– something that’s fairly difficult to capture on record, I reckon.
I suspect that it is also Henry’s direction that the songs here are presented at least partly as relics of folklore. I say relics, but there’s nothing about them that smacks of museum pieces; there’s too much integrity to the singing and playing to take this as a historical document or a genre endeavor. But the way the songs were written– and how they are preserved here– emphasizes a structure not at all dissimilar from the blues, certain repeated lines and motifs suggesting that these were songs written to be sung and shared, written for the community and for posterity.
And the power in them is lasting and immediate; they are presented here in a way that enhances their innate strength, if only because the musicians serve them instead of overpowering them. I’m amazed by the reading of “Oh Freedom” here; the album’s only real ballad, it begins with a slow, spare, hymn-like reverence, emphasizing its roots as church music. Neville begins the song by himself, but further voices are added along the way; it builds until Toussaint and drummer Jay Bellerose come in, bringing a sultry New Orleans sway that points the listener back to the spiritedness and joy of the rest of this recording. It becomes something rousing and inspirational, in the truest sense.
Bellerose deserves a special mention, as he always does; his drumming– which I sort of want to describe as “pentecostal,” though I’m fairly certain that doesn’t really mean anything– is as important as Toussaint’s piano work in giving the album its swing. But for the first time on a Henry production, I think I’m equally enamored of David Piltch, perhaps just because the arrangements here leave more room for the sensual pop of his upright bass to be heard. These are the things that make this an immensely joyful and special recording; there is a joyful swing, a contagious affection in the simple sounds of the instruments and the interplay between musicians, to the extent that the instruments don’t sound like accompaniment so much as further additional members of the choir.
And I think there’s room for the rest of us, as well. This is music made for singing, and for rejoicing; it is a decidedly Christian music, not because it is exclusive but because it is specific: These are songs of personal redemption, salvation, shelter, deliverance, hope, and they are presented as such– as testimonies of something real and and irrevocable. In the sense that it speaks to a religious stripe and a spiritual experience with both personal integrity and historical awareness makes it, perhaps ironically, both more honorable in its convictions and more welcoming in its appeal than most anything that we call sacred music these days. But I hasten to add that this music is not necessarily made to fall entirely, or even mostly, under that umbrella; its gaze may be cast heavenward, but its feet are on the ground, locked in step with sensual pleasures and earthly seduction. It is holy, and human, a few simple moments that have been captured on tape and preserved as something timeless.
Elvis Costello: The Lost Classics
Elvis Costello’s latest album, National Ransom, opens with the song of the same name; it’s an old-fashioned rock and roll song, fueled by wordplay, indignation, and Steve Nieve’s kitschy farisfa organ. It almost could have fit on one of Costello’s classic albums like Trust or even Get Happy!! But the pace changes pretty abruptly from there; the following song is a country number about a British cowboy. The rest of the album is devoted to stringband tunes, jazzy torch songs, R&B as it might have sounded half a century ago. The last song, “A Voice in the Dark,” could have been a staple of any nightclub in the 1930s.
I happen to think it’s a tremendous record, one of Costello’s best; all of the above, however, gives me a sinking suspicion that it will be written off, by a certain stripe of Costello fan, as so many of his latter-day albums are, for the simple reason that it isn’t another My Aim is True or This Year’s Model. Never mind the fact that Costello is a pop musician of almost unparalleled ambition, or that National Ransom is not just a more satisfying record than last year’s Secret, Profane, & Sugarcane, but even, I might argue, the culmination of Costello’s decades-long dance with American roots music.
I choose now to give Costello the “Lost Classics” treatment that I gave U2 a couple years back partially as a celebration of the excellent new album– which I’ll be writing a great deal more about, rest assured– but also because I happen to think that the second half of his career has been far more rewarding than it’s often given credit for being, something that National Ransom really exemplifies. I say this as a true apologist for the early, angry Costello; honestly, there aren’t very many rock and rollers who can boast as many stone classics as EC can– my favorites, among those earlier Costellos, are Get Happy!!, This Year’s Model, Trust, and My Aim is True; I also dearly love Almost Blue, but ah, we’re already getting away from the rock stuff, aren’t we?– but then, I’m not sure that there are any rock and rollers who have moved so expansively or so convincingly into the realms of classical and jazz, country and R&B.
This is the Costello who I love every bit as much as the angry young man of This Year’s Model: Older and wiser, still capable of gettin’ riled up and full of piss and vinegar but marked more by a genuine curiosity, a spirit of exploration and invention and a love of musical craft for its own sake that makes the back half of his career consistently fascinating, and frequently brilliant. These five records here are all culled from what I consider to be the second act of Elvis Costello– though one of them pushes that distinction a bit, and even those earlier albums betrayed a songwriter whose interests were too varied to stick with straight-up pub rock for very long. However one classifies them, if indeed one even feels that classification is necessary, these are five really terrific albums by any standards at all– not necessarily my five favorite Costellos, but five that always tend to remind me of how special he is, certainly five that could, I dare say, stand a reappraisal, as they are too often written off as minor works or diversions when truly they are anything but.
All This Useless Beauty
with The Attractions, 1996
I admit a bit of a sentimental bias here, as it was this fine set that made me a lifelong Costello fan; from here I worked my way backward into the vintage stuff and forward into the experiments, and in a way this album seems like a good doorway between the two; its footing is in rock, and the presence of the Attractions makes it feel somewhat akin to the earlier works (albeit much heavier on ballads, lighter on punkish mayhem), but it also shows a certain bookish devotion to the craft of songwriting that hints at the more overt forays into classicism and formalism that followed. (Again, I am being a bit reductionist; he was a craftsman from the very start, and what is Get Happy!! if not a devotion to form?)
I do have a lingering complaint about this one, which is that the production is perhaps just a tad too genteel where something more spontaneous might have impressed even further; I would have no objection whatsoever to Costello re-cutting this one with someone like Joe Henry to bring a lighter touch. But oh, please, keep every one of those songs; for my money, they are simply the best, as a bunch, that Costello ever recorded. That they were written at different times and for different occasions is somewhat astonishing, as they seem to fit together so well as a lovely, elegant, witty and wise account of grace and virtue, beauty and vice. Purely on the terms of its songwriting, I’d stack this against anything else Costello has done– often funny, sometimes melancholy, pissed off in just the right moments, heartfelt and timeless and utterly classic.
Painted from Memory
with Burt Bacharach, 1998
I don’t know that many albums make so compelling a case for craft as an exciting and involving thing in its own right; I know plenty of folks who don’t care for Burt Bacharach or his style of pop, but this collaboration is a pitch-perfect affair, Bacharach keeping things simple and Costello spiking the punch with typical wit and a dark undertow. These are melancholy pop songs that really tug at the heart, and I’d make a case for at least two of them as all-time Costello classics: “I Still Have That Other Girl” is simply priceless, and “God Give Me Strength” the epically anguished cornerstone on which this sterling collection is built.
North
2003
I readily confess that this inwardly-focused, downcast set of classically-minded pop and torch songs is a little difficult, but patience reveals that, here again, we have occasion on which to note just how elegant and deft this man’s craft is, and how what might have been a rather stuffy, scholarly affair is in fact quite moving as an album-length journey from darkness into light, from bitterness into romance. And it is not without its moments of instant gratification: Check the magnificent swell of “Still,” one of our man’s most ravishing love songs, and any arguments that these genre explorations are devoid of visceral pleasures immediately go out the window.
The River in Reverse
with Allen Toussaint, 2006
Another unexpected collaboration, and this one on very different terms, Costello’s partnership with Allen Toussaint (and Joe Henry) is a bewitching, one-of-a-kind record that succeeds wildly on a multitude of levels. As a politically-charged tirade against the Bush administration’s handling of Katrina, you won’t find many records more bristling with rage–in fact, 2006 Costello gives his younger incarnation a run for his money in the aggression department; as a celebration of the city of New Orleans and everything it represents, you won’t find many records that are more spirited, more full of joy.
It’s true that this one is set mostly on Toussaint’s terms– both musically and geographically speaking– but I’d make an argument for Costello as every bit the equal player here; some criticized him, upon the album’s release, for oversinging this stuff, and that might be true if this were intended purely as a straight Toussaint primer, but my feeling is that Costello’s handling of this material is pretty flawless; it’s forceful and angry where it needs to be, mournful elsewhere, joyful when it’s appropriate. He hammers it pretty hard, but this one isn’t about subtlety; it’s pure dynamite, and Costello brings much of the spark.
Momofuku
with The Impostors, 2008
We end with a curveball; this one, as much as anything Costello has done in the past fifteen years or more, is a Costello rock and roller in the classic sense– it’s loose and limber, full of ragged performances and songs that are built from puns and howling anger. But there’s more to it than that; Costello’s perspective hasn’t softened, but it’s widened, his anger tempered with compassion, self-deprecation, and empathy. The songs are more sophisticated than they were in the early days; clearly, his time spent outside the rock and roll club gave him plenty to absorb in terms of composition and craft, and there are traces of everything from country and folk to jazzy torch songs here. There’s a sense of inclusion– combined with the looseness of the performances– that make this one more appealing, at least to my ear, than the other rock albums he’s made semi-recently, certainly more than the relatively stiff When I Was Cruel and the uneven (but at times really terrific) The Delivery Man.
My argument for these records is not necessarily that every single one of them deserves a place in the highest echelon of the Costello canon, so much as that each of them individually, and all of them taken as a group, makes a clear call for the canon to be re-evaluated. I suspect that my argument for a canonical shake-up will only be made more aggressive once we come to National Ransom in earnest, early next month.
Elton John and Leon Russell: “The Union”
There’s a lot of love on this one– not only does Sir Elton sound like he’s trying harder than he has in years, generally speaking, but he’s pulling out all the stops not for the sake of his ego, but his idol. The story goes that the impetus for The Union was for John to use his celebrity to restore his all-time musical hero, Leon Russell, to the public eye, but what those noble ambitions rolled into is a full-blown duet album, complete with dueling pianos and trade-offs on vocal and songwriting duty (the latter is also split with Benie Taupin).
John’s taking this one seriously, and his ambitions– for this to be a monstrously successful album, mostly for Leon’s sake– haven’t been very veiled. His vision of the project extends to his choice of producer; he put in a call to T-Bone Burnett, despite having never worked with the man before, simply out of the hope that this record might blossom into something as high-profile and celebrated as Raising Sand. Burnett’s not a bad choice for this rootsy, country-infused, but still very mainstream affair, though I’m inclined to say that, for the next go-around, Joe Henry or Buddy Miller might make for favorable alternatives. The good news: It isn’t as sleepy as Raising Sand. The bad news is that T-Bone is in a bit of a rut as of late, and The Union carries with it all the baggage that a T-Bone production entails in 2010. The edges of this thing are so rounded, the atmosphere so hazy, that nothing here really pops, sonically speaking– something that’s a little bit of a problem when you come to a rocker like “Hey Ahab,” which never catches fire the way recent John bangers like “Just Like Noah’s Ark” did, or when you realize that the blazing inferno of Robert Randolph‘s steel guitar cameo is somewhat lost in the mix. It’s also a rather overlong project– 14 songs, which is about two ballads too many– though in truth, I’d rather this one be a little on the lengthy side: It’s a good omen that this creative rejuvenation, for both Russell and John, isn’t a minor or a temporary thing.
And it is– make no mistake of this– a creative rejuvenation; it’s not an all-cylinders-firing masterpiece on the level of, say, a Love & Theft, not as daring as Paul Simon’s Surprise or as vital as Neil Young’s Le Noise, offering not new contexts so much as reminders of why the old stuff was so good. It is, in other words, very much a wheelhouse album, sounding like the common ground between Russell’s 70s albums and John in his country/Western mode, as per Tumbleweed Connection. The distance between those two isn’t that far, so the feeling of this record is one of comfort, but not of complacency. Both men are writing, singing, and playing with vigor. T-Bone’s production emphasizes the country leanings with steel guitar and gospel choirs; his obtrusive touch can do nothing to sand down the grit or dampen the warmth that comes from the chemistry between the two musicians, the the simple joy they’re obviously finding in playing together, their mutual respect and affection making this feel like a perfectly gracious, generous collaboration. It’s a comeback for Russel by simple virtue of the fact that he’s making vital music for what will probably be a respectable audience, after literally decades of being lost in the woods. For John, it at least equals, and perhaps slightly bests, his own excellent, albeit minor, comeback album from 2006, The Captain and the Kid.
The record’s greatest charms come from how laid-back and low-key it is; the album never calls attention to the fact that it’s actually the most varied thing John has been involved with in quite some time, nor does it play up the bluesier aspects of “The Best Part of the Day” the way that the more cinematic Tumbleweed may have. Really, that song could almost pass as a ballad from John’s more adult contemporary days, its country-ish melody being the thing that saves it and makes it fit here. The low-intensity vibe of this thing means that some of the best songs take some time to really distinguish themselves– I’m thinking, in particular, of the steel-drenched country shuffle “Jimmie Rodgers’ Dream,” the jaunty handclap beat of “A Dream Come True,” the minor-key, metaphysical blues tune “There’s No Tomorrow.” It also means that some of the most addictive material here is also the least flashy; the two most durable cuts on the album, it seems to me, are a pair of sturdy country-rockers– “If It Wasn’t For Bad” and “I Should Have Sent Roses”– which impress with their sheer craft, the gentle propulsion and forward momentum implicit to the music and the lyrics.
What else? Neil Young stops by to cameo in “Gone to Shiloh,” a ghostly Civil War ballad in which he, Russell, and John each take a verse. “When Love is Dying”– which hits even closer to John’s AC days than “Best Part of the Day” does– is nevertheless winsome for its totally low-key sincerity, and for the nice, natural vocal trade-offs from the two singers. “Monkey Suit,” drenched in horns, is a welcome chance for John to rock out a bit. And even if it’s no “Noah’s Ark,” I do rather like “Hey Ahab,” its lyrical concerns of obsession and failure sounding like a nice metaphor for the artistic life and the pursuit of the muse– good, slightly meta- themes for an album like this.
Other than that, the only direct references to The Union‘s origins are in “Eight Hundred Dollar Shoes,” a handsome little ballad on the bluesy tip. John sings it, and its lyric is one of admiration for a man who was once heralded as a visionary, but was all but forgotten while he was still in his prime. As a reverent, affectionate nod to Russell, it’s fairly obvious, but no less touching because of it. It’s a modest and heartfelt moment, perfectly befitting a record of this sort– one that isn’t perfect, but is certainly warm, charming, and easy to embrace.
Bilal: “Airtight’s Revenge”
Bilal Oliver could, I suspect, make a convincing turn as an Afrofuturist– though whether he’d ever want to, I really couldn’t say. He’s flirted with it already, providing supple vocal support to Erykah Badu‘s modern masterpiece New Amerykah: Part I, an album so out-of-this-world, it seems to fit with the basic spirit of the Afrofuturist beat, if not with the genre’s technical specifications. But the music Bilal makes under his own first name carries off the rather impressive trick of nicking Afrofuturism’s greatest artistic virtues, without actually casting its lot with that particular literary and musical movement. Still: A tantalizing affiliation, particularly now that the Soulquarians– with whom Bilal was a dues-paying member– are on extended hiatus.
What I mean to say is, you can imagine Airtight’s Revenge– the first Bilal recording to be released in almost ten years– fitting on the shelf with any of the recent classics that fall under the Afrofuturist umbrella– The Archandroid, Aquemini, stuff from Badu associate Shafiq Husayn– even though, for his part Bilal skips over most of the sci-fi tropes that give Janelle Monae her musical theater appeal and Outkast their literary bent. What those albums do, though, is to simultaneously blast into outer space while somehow having their hearts remain earthbound, to retell a culture’s history and cast personal struggle and triumph alike in the terms of space fantasia. Take out the space part and you have Airtight’s Revenge– an album of extra-orbital imagination and ambition that is fueled by the vision of the individual, that exists chiefly as a vehicle for self-expression.
One could speak, then, at some length about the technical excellencies of the record, of which there are many. One might note, for instance, the way Bilal and his producers– who include Husayn and frequent Mos Def collaborator 88 Keys, among others– create a seamless fusion of soul, R&B, jazz, hip-hop, and a thick trace of Eastern modal music; one might note also how Bilal comes up with not just one but a handful of the year’s dopest hooks, then folds them all into a single track on “All Matter,” or how perfectly sleek and streamlined the space-age production sounds, seeming luxurious and efficient and never cluttered despite the general busy-ness of the arrangements. But what’s more pertinent is how all the stylishness and variety here feels like a natural outpouring of the artist’s own generous, curious personality; how his stellar hooks seem to follow directly from his love of singing; how the production is not just steely, but also rather perplexingly warm and intimate, all befitting a record that seems, above all else, keen on revealing the beating human heart behind the robotic motions of modern R&B.
The balance is one of artistic cunning and showmanship, but also of deep pathos and compassion; my contention is that, for as inventive and otherworldly as the record is, all of its deviousness and inspired craftsmanship are presented not as cleverness for its own sake but almost as unintended afterthoughts, nothing but the result of the artist’s own capacity for positivity, truth-telling, and empathy; they are, in other words, not affectations, but reflections of Bilal himself– singer, artist, human being. The chic get-up of these tracks feels like the result of an imagination given room to roam, an impressively stylish record collection serving as inspiration and a blueprint of sorts, one he only follows so far before going off on his own. The songs, then, are completely disinterested in appealing to any sense of time or trendiness, to the extent that opener “Cake & Eat it Too” feels like it belongs to a different era– a different world, even– then the Missy Elliot/Timbaland collaborations from the last decade, even though it’s that duo’s fusion of club-ready R&B with Asian motifs that Bilal’s song most directly recalls (at least on paper), and ultimately bests. And when certain artistic touchstones are invoked, it’s in such a way that it emphasizes their best, and sometimes least celebrated, qualities; I suppose I can hear echoes of Prince at his druggiest, Sly Stone at his most empathetic, but Bilal clearly looks to his heroes only as starting points, not final destinations.
What is perhaps most impressive, though, is how the album creates such a dense, heavy sound– a sonic sprawl that requires some patience to fully process– but resists sounding oppressive or alienating; the world Bilal creates is very much inhabited by human beings, and he cherishes each and every one of their stories. And so we get songs that speak of class and politics and economics– “Levels,” “Robots,” “The Dollar”– through the megaphone of compassionate humanism, and when “Flying” presents a dark narrative of urban plight and desperation, it hits hard because it doesn’t sound abstract or theoretical in the least. I confess that I’m not as enamored of “Who Are You,” with its false dichotomy of religion and neighborly love, but even here the quest for transcendence is nothing if not honest– something reinforced by standout ballad “Little One,” penned for the artist’s two song, both of whom live with physical handicaps. Not that this last fact is laid bare in the song; there’s no schmaltz here, just the grit, the dirt-under-the-nails real talk of a father to his boys.
That the unfolding of this album is unconventional, be it by the standards of soul, R&B, or what have you, perhaps doesn’t need to be restated; to be honest, though, I wouldn’t even be comfortable leaving it with the much broader tag of “black music.” Succeed though it does in integrating various strands of culture and history, the real sense of unraveling narrative here is of a deeply personal kind; Bilal takes the personal and expresses it as something wildly unique yet profoundly universal, and on that level his motives are the same as Stevie’s and Dylan’s alike.
Long Live the King
Today I’m remembering– with humility and gratitude– the life of one of the world’s most extraordinary soul singers, whose stirring recordings are largely to thank for my own love of soul music. RIP, Solomon Burke.
Fistful of Mercy: “As I Call You Down”
The first album from Fistful of Mercy is a laid-back, low-key, unpretentious treat– a most welcome development from a group that surely deserves to be called “super.” I give much of the credit for the music’s modesty and simple charms to Dhani Harrison; when your dad was one of the Beatles, keeping things relatively small-scale is probably the only way you’re ever going to get anywhere on your own, and everything I’ve heard and seen of the man has indicated a contentment with focusing on small gifts and the charms of straightforward, heartfelt musicianship. Harrison is joined in this trio by singer/songwriter Joseph Arthur and rock and roller Ben Harper, men who have, at various points in their substantial careers, engaged in musical conceits much broader and more grandiose than anything present on As I Call You Down; that they’re willing to work in such brotherly harmony together, producing something that surpasses any suggestions of ego or overreach in favor of more minor but lasting pleasures, is ultimately what makes Fistful of Mercy work– not because it’s a supergroup, but because the music here is simply very appealing.
The modesty of this nine-song record is evident from the outset: “In Vain or True” begins with folksy acoustic guitar strumming that quickly develops into a lovely Beatles-esque melody and warm three-part harmony. (I’m sorry to make the Beatles comparison, for Harrison’s sake, but it really is the most fitting analogy.) Herein reside the three basic gifts of this handsome little album– that is, melody, harmony, and, most impressively, a sense of genuine warmth that is hard to reproduce on record without sounding somewhat artificial, which it never does here, perhaps for reasons as simple as the fact that these three men actually enjoy each others’ company and captured the amiable spirit of their recording sessions with clarity and a lack of unnecessary fuss. And indeed, this is music that flows very organically, everything orbiting fairly close to the central fascinations with melody and vocal interplay but diverting into some lovely colors along the way, be it the soulful violin that appears at the end of that first song, the elegant piano and organ overtones that splash across “I Don’t Want to Waste Your Time,” or the bluesy slide guitar accents that Harper provides throughout the record.
The music is so comfortable in its gentle demeanor and amiable harmonies that the risk it runs is in growing too sleepy, something it does here and there, but mostly avoids thanks mainly to its brevity and focus. A bigger concern, I think, is that the music here is simply so modest that it’s easy to overlook, especially since the initial impression one gets is of the overall mood, the little details here and there, rather than of the songs themselves, which take a listen or two to begin to sink in. But there are some real pleasures here, enough to make immersion in the record a worthwhile pursuit. I’d point to four songs of special note, two because they highlight what this group captures so nicely and two because they suggest ways for the group to move forward on any future meetings. In the former camp I point to the song “Fistful of Mercy,” which doesn’t offer any deviations from the album’s basic template so much as it illuminates everything that’s so winsome about it, the three-way harmony vocal moving into positively heavenly territory and a mournful violin suggesting a certain romance, a fascination with simple, unfettered beauty. There’s also a fine instrumental number called “30 Bones”– contemplative, slightly on the bluesy tip– that suggests how deep the trio’s chemistry goes, even when the vocal harmonies are taken out of the equation.
On the other side of things there’s “Things Go Round,” a playful, almost theatrical number– again, with nods to the Beatles– that begins with staccato piano before eventually coming back to the swirl of voices and violin that characterizes much of the rest of this music. It’s a good showcase for the three different voices here, each of the singers taking a turn at the lead, but it’s also evidence of how this band’s music could be fleshed out without sounding too much like a departure. The real standout, though– and, admittedly, the most uncharacteristic song on the whole album– is “Father’s Son,” a bluesy, gospel-flavored hoe-down with hand-clap percussion from Jim Keltner and Harper’s slide guitar licks surrounding the driving guitar work from Arthur and Harrison. The arrangement is energetic in a way that much of the album isn’t, and the lyric toys with blues and country music idioms cleverly in its tale of sonship, inherited sin, and perhaps redemption. I’d be on board with an entire album of stuff like this; for now, though, Fistful of Mercy delivers a lovely record that is, despite its smallness of stature, rich with beauty and reward.
