Charles Bradley: “No Time for Dreaming”
I’ve really been enjoying No Time for Dreaming, by Charles Bradley– who, at 62 years old, is releasing his debut recording, a terrific new/old soul record on the Daptone label. Check out my review at Stereo Subversion for all the details.
Dolorean: “The Unfazed”
They call themselves “The Unfazed,” and they say it neither in humor nor in hubris; it’s a simple statement of fact, the way things are, an admission of stone-faced stoicism from a band that remains, above all things, resilient. By all accounts, Al James and his Dolorean crew have been through the wringer, the title of their last album, 2007′s You Can’t Win, turning out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy; it was fine work but absolutely no one paid attention to it– the story of their career, really– and their relationship with their label became a little prickly.
I don’t know if they got religion or simply made peace, but their return to recording, The Unfazed, more than earns its title. It isn’t markedly different form Dolorean albums past. Their trade is still in mid-tempo, folksy country-rock, not dissimilar from early Jayhawks records, or even the albums Joe Henry was making around that same time, like Short Man’s Room or The Kindness of the World. If anything, their music is less concerned with preserving the grit of traditional country music, more interested in James’ beatific melodic gifts– every song here, just about, swells and swoons with something sublime. They’re masters of the slow-burn– not unlike a similarly underrated (and, seemingly, unfazed) band, Over the Rhine– and, as with that band, the initial temptation is to say that their songs are too uniform in tempo to truly stand apart from each other; it’s only after a couple of patient listens that the depth of their craft begins to reveal itself, though it must be said that, despite the tumult they’ve gone through, this is the loosest, most confident, most immediately charming album they’ve ever made. (Unfazed.)
James’ greatest gift, I dare say, is in those wonderfully evocative melodies, the ones that conjure melancholy and catharsis so handily. There’s a song here called “Country Clutter,” written with precision and arranged immaculately, voice and piano and a steadily shaking tambourine driving the thing home, that’s so gorgeous it initially masks how nasty the song’s sentiment is. It’s a kiss-off track that earned it a comparison to Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You” from the NPR crowd, and it’s simply wrenching in its truth-telling brutality. I don’t know that I’d call it a sad song, though: James writes not from a place of heartache but of resilience, his narrator finding strength in the face of sadness. It’s a common thread throughout these songs which really feel more like short stories in their precision, their economy, and their sense of mystery– I can imagine them coming from Raymond Carver’s pen with no problem. The narrator in “If I Find Love” may as well be a stand-in for any and all of the characters assembled here– in their best moments, anyway. “If I find love, it’ll be the end of me,” he says, but it doesn’t seem like he plans on giving up the search. He may not possess optimism, but he seems to possess hope– a small but crucial distinction.
I like the guy in the title song, as well. The song finds pleasure in simple things– a jukebox, playing the good ol’ stuff on a Saturday night at the honky tonk– and it does so even when the stakes are high. Here James’ dogged endurance runs up against finality itself: He’s “unfazed by blond hair turning gray,” he says, and if his voice shakes just a bit, in a way that suggests he may not quite believe it, you and he both realize that it’s really not a matter of choice.
My favorite thing here, though– and maybe the song that’s most striking for its short-fiction level of detail and resonance– is the opener, a really lovely tune called “Thinskinned” that employs fiddle, piano, and a comparatively rocking beat in service of an Al James melody that rivals anything here, even “Country Clutter,” and has a lyric that paints, in painful detail, a contentious couple who are just a little too good at getting under each others’ skin. The lyric culminates in a statement that’s almost– perversely– hopeful, like maybe getting under each others’ skin is better than the alternative: “I can’t believe it would be better/ If I was hard as nails, and you were tough as leather.”
This is an album where a lot of the joy comes from the details of the songwriting and the production, which means that not all of this is going to sink in on first listen; what might leave a more immediate impression, actually, are the ones that find the band taking a step or two outside of their wheelhouse: “Black Hills Gold” flirts with dubstep, if you can believe it, and “These Slopes” is a rhythmic, slow-building folk song that takes on a particularly meditative quality– an interesting companion sound to its gospel-influenced lyrics. I find these songs to be appealing detours, not the main attraction, but they’re essential to making this feel like a balanced and vibrant record– the work of a band that is, creatively at any rate, really starting to blow up.
CT Review: I Was a King
This week marks the release of Old Friends, the terrific new record from Norwegian troupe I Was a King; I reviewed the album way back in November, and this week I’ve reviewed it once again for CT. Truth be told, this is– aside from Long Surrender– the 2011 release I’ve played the most. I’m as surprised as anyone, actually, as this isn’t the kind of record I normally fall in love with– a thoroughly “indie” affair that plays fast and loose with the rules of pop, rock, folk, and metal– but this is a special one, from a special band: Endearingly ramshackle, hypnotic in its careful balance of melody and chaos, and– key for me– full of warmth and heart, where so many similar bands opt for easy irony. Great stuff all around, and an early favorite for this year.
John Vanderslice: “White Wilderness”
Over at Stereo Subversion, I’ve just reviewed the new album from John Vanderslice, a quirky and strange and at times rather lovely collaboration with the Magik*Magik Orchestra. In my review I compare it, to a certain degree, to Peter Gabriel’s orchestral work from last year, and if I don’t think Vanderslice’s works nearly as well, I do think it’s something totally worthwhile and unique.
Aradhna: “Namaste Sate”
Here’s something a little different– at least for me: Aradhna combines Christian liturgy and ancient Sanskrit prayers with traditional Indian music, worldbeat rhythms a la Peter Gabriel from the Passion era, and trace elements of American folk, rock and classical music into something beautiful, devotional, and highly moving. The new album, Namaste Sate, is really fine; you can read my quick CT review here.
Iron & Wine: “Kiss Each Other Clean”
I kid you not: Yacht rock is making a comeback in 2011, and the indie rock set is leading the charge. Iron & Wine is first out of the gate with a big comeback album– some four years in the making now– and I swear there are moments that make me feel like I’m listening to the mournfully melodic song stylings of one Christopher Cross. Other names that the music brings to mind: Fleetwood Mac. Steely Dan. Sting at his poppiest. And perhaps no one more than the young Paul Simon– not the one who’s Still Crazy or Rhymin’ but the one who brings horns and marimbas to bear on songs that otherwise aim straight for the pop charts (as they may have appeared in the late 70s, early 80s).
It’s all pretty beguiling: Once upon a time, this man recorded acoustic songs all by himself, in a basement or a bedroom, and never allowed the music to rise above a soft hum. Now his albums are drenched in squawking horns and doo-wop harmonies. The first song on the record is drenched in echo and feedback, almost a perverse antithesis to the just-a-whisper aesthetic of his roots. But, for one thing, we should have seen it coming: Kiss Each Other Clean isn’t exactly a sequel to The Shepherd’s Dog, but it does continue that album’s trend toward a more expansive sonic palette, and a list of influences that doesn’t always make the most sense. And for another thing, Sam Beam warned us well in advance: The pre-release chatter about this album was full of references to the feel-good sounds of 70s radio staples, and, to that end, it delivers exactly what it promised.
And on that level alone, it’s a welcome turn away from some of the noisier or more experimental flavors on The Shepherd’s Dog. The most appealing thing about that particular record was how it played with different sonic textures, but its junkyard mayhem was ultimately a distraction: Sam Beam is, first and foremost, a great songwriter, and that album seemed to do everything it could to obscure the austere truth of its songs. Kiss Each Other is sleeker, cleaner, busy but not really noisy. You can actually make out the words and the melodies, and for the most part they’re really fine. It isn’t a return to Beam’s roots, but it is a return, to some degree, to his greatest gifts. And it is a warm record– relative to The Shepherd’s Dog, anyway. He has chosen his influences and his sonic palette deliberately to invoke sounds that are welcoming, music that makes one feel good.
But I am still not quite won over. For all its good intentions about being a record that welcomes listeners to spend time with it, it still sounds rather alien to me. I am not opposed to the Iron & Wine sound expanding outward– I write this as a fan whose favorite recording isn’t The Creek Drank the Cradle but the wonderfully lush Woman King EP– but the direction of that expansion is, to my ears, a little nonsensical. At times it feels purely like an affectation, particularly when lazy sonic markings such as DJ scratching make broad references to a particular era, or when the production takes on a deliberately dated tone, what with its retro synths, muted horns, and sometimes reverb-heavy bass. There is a song here called “Monkeys Uptown” that feels for all the world like it could have been a post-prog Genesis number, perhaps, or even a solo hit for Phil Collins in the early 80s; it’s paired with an uncharacteristically lazy lyric that takes broad shots at The Establishment and doesn’t skimp on the vulgarity. The odd pairing of music and words might be a stab at irony, I suppose, but it is mostly a bore regardless.
I do suspect that there will be those who think Beam is enjoying his Dylan-at-Newport moment, and I’m the philistine who’s calling him out as a Judas, so let me hasten to add that I think there are some wonderful moments on this record, moments where the production actually works in tandem with the songwriting. I dig the doo-wop harmonies on “Half Moon,” for instance; one can imagine it working well as a sort of classic I&W folk tune, but here it works just fine as something a tad closer to pure pop. And the album opener, “Walking Far from Home,” is just brilliant, a sort of existential travelogue that plays like a cinematic pop anthem, the synths and echoes actually enhancing rather than distracting.
But my feeling, for the most part, is that Sam Beam’s songs don’t need so many bells and whistles to take root, and on thee tracks his natural gifts as a folk singer are overshadowed by his slightly-less-natural abilities as a pop singer. It’s just sort of senseless, this album, not because he’s moving his art forward, but because he seems almost to have forgotten where he started.
CT Reviews: Gregg Allman; The Decemberists; Daniel Martin Moore
A trio of new reviews at CT today, including some of my early favorites from 2011. My favorite record of the bunch, I think, is the Gregg Allman, whose fine Low Country Blues is a spirited affair, rich in soulful, gritty performances. Not so coincidentally, it’s one of the best T-Bone Burnett productions in ages. Additionally, there’s the warm country-rock embrace of the new Decemberists album, and the easy-going Americana of Daniel Martin Moore.
The Decemberists: “The King is Dead”
Here’s a band that I always love, even when I don’t necessarily enjoy each and every album that they make. When last we heard from Portland’s own brainy, folksy rock troupe, it was on a sprawling and complicated rock opera, done up in full-on prog-rock bombast, called Hazards of Love. Me, I didn’t find it to be quite to my taste, but I nevertheless adored them for making it. They were pushing themselves, making music both deliberately and fearlessly, playing with their own internal formula by pumping up one facet of their music (their theatrical side) and dialing down the others, bulldozing whatever boundaries they saw around them.
A couple years later, the new story is that maybe boundaries can be a good thing. The King is Dead isn’t a repudiation of Hazards so much as a conscious effort to flip the equation, to let up on the theatricality and the pomp and instead lean on their more intimate, folksy charms. This is intentional record-making– not a whim, but a concentrated effort to maintain balance in their catalog and ensure that all of their gifts are being put to use. Think of this album, I reckon, as a quick but well-crafted short story collection, following on the heels of their Great American Novel. (Or would that be Great American Opera?)
I still love this band, as much for making this album as for making the last one– making an album as ambitious as Hazards took guts, but so does following it with something so much more miniature in scale. And as a matter of personal taste, I have to say that this is the kind of Decemberists album I prefer. It’s everything the last album wasn’t– lean, efficient, direct– and no less impressive because of it. Indeed, as any short story reader will tell you, brevity doesn’t suggest a lack of complexity, and these songs, more tightly-constructed but also open-ended, are as riddlesome and as flecked with mystery as anything on Hazards.
It’s also a shift in the band’s stylistic palette– again, a wonderful yin to Hazards‘ yang, as the two albums together might form a pretty well-balanced portrait of The Decemberists while, taken as two separate units, they show a band confident enough to follow their creative instincts down side roads and back alleys without ever losing sight of their starting point. The last album was their prog record, and this one is their country and folk album– country and folk as interpreted through jangly college rock, R.E.M. in particular, and not just because Peter Buck guests on over half the songs, but because Colin Meloy can write a song like “Down by the Water” which cops shamelessly from “The One I Love” but still somehow sounds more like a Decemberists cut than an R.E.M. B-side. Even the album title is sort of a college-rock reference, or at least a Smiths reference, though, ironically, this, more than any other Decemberists album, is devoid of anything that sounds like it could have come from Morrisey‘s pen. But I still like the title: It suggests to me that this is a sort of non-specific tribute album, not to a particular artist but to a form, and not comprised of cover songs but of artful homages.
Fair enough, then. There are also some country touchstones here, particularly country as it was played by the Byrds, perhaps a bit of Gram Parsons or Tumbleweed-era Elton John, as well. The twangy stuff rears its head most brazenly on “All Arise,” as delightful a song as this band has ever recorded, a sort of country hoedown with fiddle and jaunty saloon piano. Elsewhere, the band creates a wonderful little circle of influences: They play country and folk music like a band that learned it from R.E.M., who in turn learned it from the Byrds, and it’s neither difficult nor unseemly to hear Meloy and his band creating a space for themselves on the continuum. They turn to their forefathers here, and emerge looking like a band that’s earned the right to be mentioned alongside them.
But it isn’t just the thrust of their musical influences that has changed, but the entire way of crafting songs: Hazards of Love found strength and complexity in the way its songs joined into a dramatic and thematic framework, where here, the songs are forced to stand on their own feet. They are crafted as self-contained entities, with elegance and economy; I actually do think that Meloy regarded the writing of these songs as something along the lines of short story writing, as they are written with lots of open space and loose ends, as though they are meant to be sketches– or better yet, puzzles. But that isn’t to say that they feel incomplete, or that the band doesn’t cover as much ground here: What impresses is the precision with which they play out, how nearly every song proves to be enthralling in its own right.
I love, for example, the way Meloy hijacks the melody of an old Irish folk song for “Rox in the Box,” in its own way a reminder of this band’s love of folklore and storytelling as anything on the last album. Some of Meloy’s most affecting ballads are present here– a couple of pleasantly intimate folk tunes, “June Hymn” and “January Hymn,” the similar titles suggesting that Meloy hasn’t completely gotten the prog-/opera bug out of his system– and the closing number, “Dear Avery,” takes it place alongside the great Decemberists war songs, though this one is perhaps the most gentle yet: The emphasis isn’t on politics or even the act of war itself, but rather on the loss of a child, on feelings of empathy and compassion. As a closing song, it makes for a nice book-end with the opener “Don’t Carry it All,” which rattled along on a rhythm aped from Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” but sounds very much like a country/folk song, and features lyrics about carrying one anothers’ burdens. These are good touchstones for the album, good signifiers of everything that lies between them, for this album isn’t about pushing the listener or challenging us to keep up with the band’s ambitions but rather it’s about being welcoming, warm, inviting– the kind of album that pulls you close, and, as such, an album that’s easier to fall in love with than Hazards, unless you just really love rock operas and proggy stuff.
I haven’t even mentioned yet that Gillian Welch joins the band to sing harmonies on most of these songs, something that is not only a good indicator of this album’s authenticity– Welch has a pretty good track record for appearing on albums that constitute the Real Deal– but of its noble intentions: With harmonies this rich, it’s impossible to hear the record as anything other than an invitation to sing along. It’s made with a lot of love, this one, not only for the music itself but for the listener, who is encouraged not just to hear these songs but to share them, to engage them with the band. That’s not a small achievement– at least as impressive as, say, a prog-rock opera– and it inclines me to say that The King is Dead, rustic and homely though it may seem at first, is as warm-blooded, and perhaps as lasting, as anything this band has done.
Gregg Allman: “Low Country Blues”
A new year, a new T-Bone Burnett joint– and this one with no dearth of truth in advertising. This one is what is says it is, and if you’ve ever heard a blues album, there’s nothing here that will surprise: It’s one of the great singers in classic rock, performing a bunch of old blues stalwarts, the man behind O, Brother and B.B. King’s One Kind Favor at the board and an ace band, including Dr. John, cooking behind him. Yes indeed: You can guess at what this one sounds like. But the element of surprise, as it turns out, isn’t always necessary for true revelation: Low Country Blues is a truly fine record, and, in fact, a high watermark for all parties involved.
I’ll give T-Bone credit for this above all else– he knows how important the sound of a recording is, and I’d argue that that’s never truer than when dealing with the blues. Happily, this is one of my favorite-sounding Burnett productions, as it largely eschews the sort of analog approximation that makes some of his work sound rather affected. This one is loose, clean, simple, and open, and recalls nothing so much as the B.B. King album mentioned above. If there are also some trace hints of his work with, say, John Mellencamp, that probably has more to do with the players assembled than with the production itself, like the way Jay Bellerose’s percussion rattles through the background of “Floating Bridge” like a train of ghosts. The thing is simply unobtrusive, though; when you’re recording a group of blues songs that are pretty well-known to most fans of the genre, the album lives or dies by how hot the performances are and how vividly their energy is captured on tape, and this one bottles every last bit of the heat.
The musicians, meanwhile, play like their lives depend on it– which might actually be sort of close to the truth, at least as far as Allman is concerned. The sessions for this album took place after he underwent a liver transplant, but if death is on his mind, it only rears its head in roundabout ways– like the fact that the album begins with “Floating Bridge,” a song about a near-death experience throwing everything into a new light, or the way in which the Allman original “Just Another Rider” is sort of an existential road song, reflective but not ponderous. And indeed, there’s nothing ponderous about any of this; as with the B.B. King album, any morbidity or introspection the singer might feel takes a back seat to the kick of the music and the awesome, simmering grooves of the band. “Floating Bridge” transitions, with the playful sound of an organ, into the driving jump blues of “Little by Little,” a nasty little heartbreak number with a terrifically powerful, snarling vocal from the singer– as if to say that this is the work that still seems worth doing, the stuff that still matters on some basic level.
So that’s the refreshing thing about all this: It’s an album from a veteran rocker that stands not as a genre exercise, not as a near-death reflection, not as a comeback or even a last will and testament, simply, wonderfully, a smokin’-hot blues album. Neither singer nor producer needs to lend the proceedings any sort of artificial importance, because that’s not what makes this music stick; it’s all about being deeply felt, and played with vigor, which, to be sure, everything here is. It’s a celebration of the blues, really– which may sound a bit paradoxical at first, but there’s real joy to this music, even though it’s all about deceitful women and broken hearts, about life’s weary road and the admission of sin.
Standout songs? Well, pick one. I love the brassy, tough-as-nails but still swingin’ strut of “Blind Man,” a high point not just for Allman as a singer but also for Dr. John, who does indeed swing throughout this album, his piano bringing energy and physicality to everything here– yes, in much the same we it did on One Kind Favor. I love the playfulness of “I Can’t Be Satisfied,” with its tight piano, guitar, and percussion interplay. I love how “Please Accept My Love” blurs the line between blues and old-timey rock ballad, how it shimmers and sways. I love the little dash of New Orleans flavoring on “Floating Bridge”– naturally, a Dr. John innovation.
All to say, this is one of those records that could prove to be a perfect career capstone, even if it never presents itself as one. My hope, though, is that it’s more like a new beginning. There are a lot of great songs in the blues canon, and even if we’ve heard ‘em all before, the triumph of Low Country Blues is that it reminds us of how smashing they still sound once re-invigorated with the right amount of heat. I’d be more than glad to get a second helping.
Daniel Martin Moore: “In the Cool of the Day”
And, back to the regular record reviews. First out of the gate this year– for me, anyway– is a real gem: Daniel Martin Moore, a terrifically low-key indie singer/songwriter on the Sub Pop label, releases an imaginative and deeply personal recording of hymns and old spirituals called In the Cool of the Day. It is very different– to say the least– from any of the similarly spiritually-minded, gospel-ish releases from last year, and a really lovely album that I’ve been enjoying more and more. Full review at Stereo Subversion.
