Trombone Shorty: “For True”

Troy Andrews appeared on a few episodes of HBO’s Treme last season, and every time he was on screen I couldn’t help but wish I could make a trip down to New Orleans to see him (or, really, any of the performers– Wendell Pierce’s fictional Soul Apostles group included) in their natural habitat. Andrews, who performs as Trombone Shorty, is perhaps as emblematic as anyone of the hip but historically-aware New Orleans music scene that Treme and Shorty’s own brilliant Backatown record have brought into the popular imagination, and if Kermit Ruffins gets the funnier and flashier scenes on the show, it’s Shorty whose records most effectively channel the genre-defying fusion of rock, brass, hip-hop, blues, and funk that makes NOLA’s music scene so incredibly combustible. That in mind, I think Shorty’s second post-Treme album, released just over a year after Backatown, is just the kind of record he ought to have made right now. It may not channel history as vividly as, say, Allen Toussaint’s masterpiece The Bright Mississippi, it may not break ground like Backatown, and it may not even have the same addictive, expansive energy as Galactic’s Ya-Ka-May, but For True is the album that best seems to capture the blistering energy and momentum of a sweaty, brass-fueled rave-up at some hole-in-the-wall New Orleans club. On those terms, it’s pretty close to perfect.

It’s a different album than the one that came before it, though it may take a listen or two for those differences to sink in. Backatown caught us all off guard– at least, those of us paying attention. There’s never been anything like it before, nothing to boast such a volatile and vibrant concoction of sounds old and new, of rock and funk and Mardi Gras-ready line music. For True is less shocking, and maybe even a little less eclectic. But it’s also tighter and more confident. It’s tougher, fueled by improvisation but strengthened by a stronger sense of song. Since the last album, Shorty and his Orleans Avenue band have been steadily touring, popping in on Treme from time to time, and generally honing their skills. If Backatown was New Orleans put through a kaleidoscope, For True is New Orleans condensed into one fist-pumping, sing-yourself-hoarse night of rock and soul and brass. What both albums share is that they’re packed with explosive ideas, but those ideas seem sharper here.

Hip-hop is a more prominent force than it was on the last album, which may simply be the result of the record being tailor made to get heads bobbing in clubs and bars and concert halls. Hip-hop is all over the place, though, and it makes itself known in the fiery opening number, “Buckjump,” featuring a boom-bap rhythm and dancefloor-ready lines from the Rebirth Brass Band. It’s there, too, in the electrifying, funky rock tune, “Mrs. Orleans,” a sassy, sweaty love song with a surprisingly effective, NOLA-worshipping rap from Kid Rock, of all people.

Rock, soul, and even the blues coarse through the album’s veins, which is nothing new for Shorty; what is new, perhaps, is the way he allows these different styles room to stretch out and make themselves known apart form the thick gumbo of sounds he’s known for. Which is not to say that anything here is ever simple or straightforward. The first single, “Encore,” feature scorching electric guitar from Warren Haynes, soulful brass punctuation, and a hovering B-3 organ that grounds it in muscular funk; that it was co-written by Motown legend Lamont Dozier is unsurprising but not unimpressive. It’s a hot track, and so is the horn-drenched rock sing-along “Do to Me,” which has guitar work from Jeff Beck; working on a completely different level is the title cut, which is really straight-up jazz improv locked into a hip-hop beat, with a terrific trumpet line from Andrews. The album is star-studded– as feature-rich as a modern hip-hop album, which is surely the intent– but it’s never overly flashy; Shorty’s sense of showmanship, and his tight songcraft, leave plenty of room for pyrotechnics but not for needless showboating. The best use of guest musicians here may actually be the two Neville Brothers who show up for the jittery, jazzy funk “Nervis,” a mostly-wordless cut that somehow ends up being one of the most evocative and memorable things here.

Shorty himself sings most of these songs, and he proves himself to be a more consistently strong vocal presence here than he was last time; Backatown hinted at his hidden strengths as a soul singer, but it didn’t quite prepare us for him standing toe-to-toe with Lenny Kravitz in the funky mid-tempo cut “Roses.” But of course, he’s smart enough to leave the real showstopping soul singing to a real, showstopping soul singer; Ledesi provides the album’s obvious crescendo in the knockout love ballad “Then There Was You,” a song built out of old-fashioned R&B but decked out with a thoroughly-modern flair for tearing the roof off the joint. It’s the kind of finale you’d expect– nay, demand– from any good New Orleans club show.

And if it seems like I’m harping on the club aspect, it’s only because For True really is a club-worthy banger, structured like a great concert and flowing with the kind of momentum that makes Shorty’s blasts of fusion that much more addictive. It’s a strong and mightily entertaining record that might even top his previous achievements, and leaves no doubt that Trombone Shorty is one of the hardest-working, most forward-thinking bandleaders, songwriters, and performers working today– in New Orleans or any other town you care to name.

Glen Campbell: “Ghost on the Canvas”

My review of the new Glen Campbell album, Ghost on the Canvas, is posted at CT today. Given that I quite like both the classic Campbell recordings and the recent, delightful Meet Glen Campbell record, I can’t help but feel like this one is a bit forced, a touch too maudlin– a shame, given that it is to be his swan song. If you like what Glen Campbell does, though, there’s a good chance you’ll find something here that will move you.

Paul Burch: “Words of Love: Songs of Buddy Holly”

2011 may well be remembered as the Year of Buddy Holly– a strange pronouncement to make, given that the man’s been dead since 1959, yet where we are, celebrating the 75th anniversary of his birth with a slew of tribute albums. Just over a month ago we had the multi-artist compilation Rave On, and before the year is through we’ll get another commemorative disc, one that will feature many of the same songs and even a few of the same performers. Between the two we have Word of Love, the work of just one man– Paul Burch– and his mighty WPA Ballroom ensemble. Is it all a bit much? Maybe so, but hear this: If ever there was an artist perfect for the task of breathing new life into Holly classics, it’s Paul Burch. His record is, unsurprisingly, the one I’d pick, were we only allowed one Holly tribute per year.

The only caveat I have is that I love Burch as a singer and a recordmaker, but I also love him as a songwriter, and, given the choice, I’d much prefer an album of new Burch compositions. Given that Words of Love follows the masterful c&w rock-and-soul feast Still Your Man doesn’t do anything to dampen the slightly anticlimactic effect of this Holly disc; it’s like your favorite filmmaker directing a remake of a movie you’ve seen a few times already. That said, Burch is a man who seems to be cut from something of the same cloth as Holly. His own records are awash in unvarnished romance and earnest, heart-on-sleeve warmth. He’s a crooner with roots in country and blues but ultimately very little use for genre distinctions. So no big shock: He does some sublime things with these Buddy Holly songs.

Leave it to Burch– who else– to reconnect “Midnight Shift” to its rockabilly roots in a way that even Holly never realized. That song and “Think it Over” are steady, old-school rock and rollers that sound like they could have been cut at Sun Studios, right down to the slapback bass. And leave it to Burch to do croon “Everyday” as such a winsomely simple and direct love song that it redeems it from decades of use in TV commercials and reminds us of the sweet, whispered lover’s prayer it was always meant to be.

Burch’s readings of these songs are not radical reinventions, necessarily, but they are– consistently, from the first song to the last– the one thing none of the songs on Rave On can really claim: Ragged. There’s a ramshackle feel to the whole disc, a careening energy that begins with a fiddle-led, hoedown version of “Rave On.” (Truly, it’s the best version of the song I can remember– including Holly’s.) Some of the songs swagger like the earliest rock and roll, strutting with all the optimism of young love and all the romance and endless possibility that early rock offered. “Not Fade Away,”for example, has a spontaneous, rough draft quality to it, not because it feels incomplete but because it feels like it could have gone anywhere. Other songs are little more than sweet, front-parlor whispers. “I Guess it Doesn’t Matter Anymore” is stripped of everything but naked emotion and Burch’s sweet singing.

Speaking of which, anyone thinking this might be some kind of stopgag will find no evidence of that here; Burch pours himself into these songs with the same vigor and charisma he brings to his own material. I think it’s fair to say, in fact, that this might be his best turn yet as a singer (and I don’t give that one up easy, so strong and enduring is my love for Still Your Man). Anyway, the point is that everything on this record is really charming and fine, and what’s more, nearly every one of Burch’s covers improves upon most any other performances of the same material I can think of. (I’ll still throw “It’s So Easy” to McCartney– what can I say? I love the ridiculous bluster of his rendition.) Burch’s stripped-down and ruggedly romantic songcraft fines a neat mirror in these Holly performances, and the album is not only as rewarding a Holly tribute as we’re ever likely to get, but– more importantly, I think– it’s wonderfully true to Paul Burch.

Blitzen Trapper: “American Goldwing”

There was a point– and I’d zero in on Exile on Mainstreet, though others may put it a bit earlier– when the Rolling Stones’ country music fixation went from sounding slightly kitschy to thoroughly lived in. I’m not sure if Blitzen Trapper has reached such a point in their own career, and I sorta hope they never do. On American Goldwing– their most focused and country-ish record to date– they still tear into American roots music like a power pop band who learned everything they know about twang from Elton circa the Tumbleweed are and the Dylan of John Wesley Harding and New Morning. They’re not adverse to throwing in some pedal steel and juke-joint piano, but they’re always too restless, to prone to muscular rock and swoonworthy, radio-ready pop to approach anything that might pass for authentic country music. I love them for it: They’re a rock and roll band without ego or pretense, uninterested in adopting a pose but simply devoted to sharing the music they love. American Goldwing revels in memories without ever scumming to nostalgia, and offers a generosity of spirit that’s virtually unheard of these days. It’s no more a country album than Tumbleweed Connection was, but it’s a damn fine and wildly entertaining record no matter how you want to classify it.

And by the way: These guys don’t really sound much like the Rolling Stones, my earlier comparison and a song called “Street Fighting Sun” notwithstanding. Part of the disconnect is because they don’t play blues riffs; they learned their guitar moves from a few decades of arena rock, so there’s a lot of soaring and not a lot of strutting. More crucially, their singer, Eric Earley, has none of Jagger’s smugness or attitude. He’s more of a heart-on-sleeves earnest kind of guy, a teddy bear who dresses up his sensitivity in the language and lore of rock music, which I assumed he’s absorbed from what must be a huge and fairly excellent record collection. If anything, the Blitzens make the kind of records I wish Wilco would make, and think they could make were they not so self-referential, or so prone to equating a sense of adventure with a love of “experimenting.”

Really, I’m just inclined to say that this is a Blitzen Trapper record; through no self-conscious efforts to brand themselves, really through nothing other than making the kinds of record they want to make, they’ve established themselves as one of America’s best and most underrated rock and roll bands, somehow coming across as a worthy alternative to both Wilco and Weezer. Their last few albums have been kaleidoscopic cross-sections of classic rock and American roots music, complete with their own personal “Bohemian Rhapsody” at the start of Destroyers of the Void. There is nothing so bombastic here. American Goldwing is an album that goes for depth over breadth, discovering further variations and ultimately tightening up their country/rock leanings while eschewing anything as dramatic as “Destroyers,” but also anything as overtly classicist as the Gram Parsons-styled “The Tree.”

This is just Blitzen Trapper doing what they do best; it’s a blaze of muscular rock and roll romance with twilit country overtones, all played with a wink at the past but nothing close to nostalgia or smirk. It’s made with a certain weight given to tradition but no particular reverence, or even significance, attributed to genre distinctions; piano and harmonica and pedal steel are thrown into the mix when they sound good but never to underscore how “rootsy” the band can be or lend some sense of faux authenticity. It’s made with knowing references to the past– “Astronaut,” for example, seems likely to have been written as a rejoinder to Elton’s “Rocket Man,” but it’s neither a sequel nor a cloying invitation for reference-spotting, but rather plays like an honest and unpretentious interaction with rock history.

The best songs here, in fact, are the ones that use familiar tropes as launchpads but twist them into new expressions of timeless truths, in a way that only Blitzen Trapper could. “Love the Way You Walk Away” has a Dylanesque cadence to the thick verbiage of the verse, and its sentiment– a kind of respectful shrug to a lover on her way out the door– is the kind of subversive thing Bob himself might appreciate. The chorus is a soaring, cathartic thing, with plucked banjo, weepy steel guitar, and a thrilling chorus that sounds, yes, like it could have been a Tumbleweed anthem. “Fletcher” is a good-old-boy anthem with earnest compassion, twang, distortion, and feedback– but what’s most memorable is the sing-along hook. “Taking it Easy Too Long” is a self-effacing lament draped in steel guitar– and it is, indeed, a more natural slide into pure Gram territory than “The Tree” was.

The album is boundlessly energetic and steeped in a not-too-reverent view of history, but what’s most vital is that it’s even more bountiful in emotion; Earley has a knack for expressing common tropes in fresh language that sounds, nevertheless, like it could find a home on classic rock or country radio. Just about every track here could be a single in some alternate universe, which at this point is something of a cliche, but one that the Blitzens deserve; American Goldwing may be their best work yet, and is certainly their most consistently compelling.

Dave Stewart: “Blackbird Diaries”

This is the year Dave Stewart dives headlong into roots music, apparently; in just a few weeks, he’ll be diving into reggae-fueled rock with Super Heavy, a project in which I imagine he’ll be largely outshone by the likes of Mick Jagger and Joss Stone. He’s very much the center of attention on The Blackbird Diaries, though, a full-on country/rock excursion that, despite heavy-hitting guest stars like Martina McBride, Stevie Nicks, and a Bob Dylan co-write, feels very much like Stewart’s own, deeply personal labor of love from start to finish.

It should go without saying that this feels, on paper, like a bit of a stretch, so I’ll happily state from the get-go that this record is a lot better than you might expect it to be. Which is not to say that it’s pure magic from the first note to the last; the rock numbers are excellent across the board, just about, but some of the ballads fall flat. Listening to a song like “The Gypsy Girl and Me,” though, and it’s difficult not to be swept along in the singer’s repurposing of classic blues tropes; the song is a humorous travelogue that takes the familiar ramblin’ motif and dresses it up with a bit of Stewart’s own European chic. Combined with driving country hooks, pedal steel, and a jaunty juke-joint piano and it’s pretty well convincing, not as straight blues but as proof that Stewart’s got the light touch needed to put his own spin on the music without wandering too far off into pretension.

The song spans nearly six minutes, giving Stewart and his band plenty of time to ease into a groove, show their chops, and let the song unfold gracefully and leisurely; that said, there’s no flagging of its intensity and no feeling of indulgence. The best songs here follow suit, though some of them are a little more pointed in their blues approximations; indeed, some of them are not really blues songs, but songs about the blues. “Magic in the Blues” is a heavenly tale of getting lost in the music, finding solace and revelation in it; it begins with gentle acoustic guitar and fiddle, builds into electrifying, organ-drenched mayhem, then cools down for a lovely, rustic denouement. The ebb and flow is hypnotic, and the melody is a thing of beauty. Opener “So Long Ago,” meanwhile, is a crunching rock song that playfully namedrops Stewart’s blues idols (and, it should be said, features a hilarious, gentle putdown of Jagger’s Rolling Stones).

Stewart is celebrating American roots music here, not in sound so much as in spirit and in his loving repurposing of familiar lore. It’s a humble and generous work in which the singer never sounds like he’s making his own claim for rock greatness by invoking so many iconic names; he’s simply reveling in the music that he loves. And he’s more than willing to go off on tangents or get downright silly. He makes no effort to rope in his own European proclivities on “One Way Ticket to the Moon,” a lush tune with marimba, café accordion, and harmonies from the Secret Sisters. Significantly less enchanting is “Cheaper Than Free,” a duet with Stevie Nicks that’s based on an off-the-cuff comment made by Reese Witherspoon, of all people; “Cheaper than free” is the kind of cutesy contradiction that has launched many a country song, and this one is basically just a pile-up of similar paradoxes and ironies that never build into anything compelling.

But other ballads work better: “All Messed Up,” a duet with McBride, builds into a dazzling swell of emotion. The midtempo Dylan co-write, “Worth the Waiting For,” trades in turn-of-the-century whimsy and romance better than anything on Dylan’s own Together Through Life, I dare say. Everything on the album is catchy, all of it is written and played with the utmost generosity and openness, and, while the set comes with plenty of polish, the performances are spontaneous and lived-in. Stewart’s clearly proud of this one, and he ought to be; it’s a terrifically entertaining roots music set, by just about any standard you could come up with.

More on “Watch the Throne”

I almost decided to renig on my earlier promise of further Watch the Throne commentary, not because I have nothing let to say but because so much has already been said, and is still being said, about this provocative (I’d almost say controversial) piece of work. I confess that my love of Kanye and Jay-Z is not quite strong enough to have convinced me to stay up until the wee hours of the morning, listening to the album immediately upon its midnight release, but I was rather delighted to awake the next morning and see the entire Twitterverse abuzz, with both the album itself and several individual songs making the cut as “trending topics” for a couple days straight. That, combined with the blog posts and editorials I’ve seen posted on facebook throughout the week, leads me to believe that either Kanye really is peerless at creating hype, or there is something really substantive and challenging about this record that folks just can’t help but talk about.

Of course I think both are ultimately true, and I think both are ultimately worth celebrating. I’m not nearly ready to comment on whether I think this is an all-time hip-hop classic– I’m leaning toward no, but it is, perhaps, pretty close, and is certainly a strong entry in the canon of both artists. Worst case scenario, I think, is that it’s an empty but stylish shell, a masterfully-orchestrated piece of pure rap bombast that has snookered at least half the critical community into thinking it’s got lofty issues on its mind. And if that’s all it is, I’m still very much on board; in the age of iTunes and an ever-fragmented community of pop music listeners, these two MCs have pulled off what appears to be an all-out blockbuster. I’ve been hitting the rewind button on it all week, trying to soak up every wisecrack and double entendre that comes out of these two smooth-talking mouths, and I’ve been doing so in unison with a pretty substantial segment of the online community. That’s not nothing. That’s something to celebrate.

And make no mistake: It’s no accident, and it isn’t purely a matter of the Kanye hype machine, either. To be sure, the album gets some momentum from the very good year Ye had last year, but I think this album is constructed to be a crowd-pleaser in the best sense of the term– not a pandering or watered-down album (like, say, the last proper Hov album), but one that goes for broke and pulls out all the stops to provide us with a good, if sometimes challenging, listening experience. The differences between this and both My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and The Blueprint 3 are important. The former was basically a baroque hip-hop album, and didn’t always come down on the right side of the art/rap divide, at least not for my tastes; for all the talk of this album being prone to excess, there is nothing here even close to the indulgence of “Runaway” or the Chris Rock interlude. Nor are there any songs as shamelessly pop as half the Blueprint 3 material– even the most obvious singles here are kinda out-there and weird, like the space-age ambiance of “Lift Off” and the truly masterful sampling and sonic manipulation on “Otis,” which is a kissing cousin to Ye’s monster hit “Gold Digger” but is at once less hooky and equally compelling. This is a harder-edged and in many respects more basic rap album than either MC has made in a good while (maybe ever, in Ye’s case), but it’s hardly lacking in expert hip-hop craft or in sheer scope; indeed, it is an absolutely huge album, not in terms of length or complexity but in terms of the sonics. If MBDTF was a headphones album, this one is all about wide open spaces and sweeping, IMAX-sized vision. It’s meant to be played loud in order to hear it at full effect.

But with all that said, I do not think this album is merely so much beautiful bluster. I’ve read the criticisms about it– about how it’s just a bunch of bragging, about how it’s so crassly materialistic, etc.– and I understand them. I even sympathize with them. Those who think this kind of machismo is somehow a bad thing, however, should be reminded that there is no greater or purer topic in all of hip-hop than “how dope I am,” and by that standard this album makes a pretty convincing claim for rap supremacy. As for the materialistic bent here, I wouldn’t necessarily contend with the notion that it’s pushed a bit far, but it isn’t empty or hollow. This album is the product of two successful black men who have a lot– who have it all, really– but it’s framed in the context of a time and place where many black folks still have very little, where black people are still very much second-class citizens in many respects. The chip-on-the-shoulder attitude here is earned (“Not bad for some immigrants,” hardly a throw-away line, is one of the most precise and ruthlessly efficient statements here).

More than just asides or afterthoughts, “Made in America” is the necessary context that positions the whole record as part triumph, part statement of mere survival, while “Murder to Excellence” is essentially the Throne mission statement: In a world gone mad with “black on black murder,” what more pragmatic or effective response could there be than to strive for black excellence? The “smell of success” that permeates the album is not pure brag, then, but real empowerment. (The most moving line on the whole thing: “Power to the people/ When you see me, see you.”) It isn’t bragging so much as a celebration of what can be done– and an invitation to do the same. That’s a kind of swagger I can get behind, a kind of swagger that shouldn’t be off-putting, but inspiring. The Rolexes and Benzes and Obama name-drops aren’t a matter of vanity, then, but the very best kind of pride– and Beyonce’s “Lift Off” hook (“How many people you know that can take it this far?) a rallying cry that does, indeed, lift this decadent but celebratory record into something pretty heavy, and pretty remarkable.

Ollabelle: “Neon Blue Bird”

Amy Helm happens to be the daughter of one of American music’s most iconic drummers– Levon‘s his name– so it’s probably no great surprise that her band, Ollabelle, has a conception of Americana that’s wide enough to include R&B rhythms and shimmering soul grooves. What is surprising is how long it took them to discover it. Ollabelle started out as a gospel group, but by the time they released their first couple of albums their sound had fallen prey to an all-too-common interpretation of American roots music that’s part twang and part twee– a folksy sound with too little grit to be really rustic. Neon Blue Bird re-aligns this band in a major way. It’s a corker of a record, by far their best and one of the best American music releases of the year.

In fact, it plays like a rather lovely, low-key celebration of all the best things about American music– twangy guitars, soulful gospel harmonies, and did I mention the beats? The scope of the thing is modest and the attitude entirely unassuming, so at first it plays simply like a quaint, old-fashioned Ollabelle album, albeit a very good one. Actually, the first song, “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” plays like a quaint, old-fashioned song by The Band– and yes, a very good one, at that. The next one, “One More Time,” is a sweetly shuffling country/folk song with a jaunty piano and some rich harmonies.

Around the time “Be Your Woman” comes around, though, you begin to realize just how deep these guy roll, how many gifts they possess but almost never flaunt. For starters, the song rocks– not conventionally, perhaps, but certainly enough to count as a real barn-burner. On top of that, this band is blessed with several very good singers, and their gospel roots come into play here in a big way, with what sounds like the whole group coming in at key moments. (The chugging rhythm and mixed harmonies remind me, oddly enough, of Fleetwood Mac– perhaps not the impression they’re trying to make, but it’s a killer song no matter how you want to slice it.) On top of all of that, the group has developed a real ear for what sounds good– not just for songwriting, but for creating a rich, multi-layered, full-bodied sound that’s pretty far removed from the thinner, folksier stuff they were doing early on.

“Wait for the Sun” splits the difference between soul balladry and soft rock– but it’s the harmonies that make it. I tell you, the Fleet Foxes crew would kill for something so heavenly. The best thing here, though, is “Brotherly Love,” a straight-up, organ-drenched soul groove with a wickedly streetwise, socially conscious lyric that skewers the very notion of human goodwill or charity as a cure for society’s ills, advising in its righteous chorus to “aim a little higher than brotherly love.” The song finds easy company in some of the prime work of Wonder and Gaye– not bad for a group of white folks.

Ollabelle seamlessly integrates covers and reconfigured traditional songs with their own work, including a spirited version of Taj Mahal’s “Lovin’ in My Baby’s Eyes.” That song suggests that they are in full possession not only of good taste but of their own voice, qualities that come into stark display on a pair of the traditional numbers. They pick a British folk song, ironically enough– “The Butcher Boy”– and do a reading that’s marvelous in its deft balance of drama and restraint; the story unfolds patiently, with subtle coloring in the background and an arrangement that suggests just a hint of the theatrical, but not enough to make it anything less palpable than a very fine folk song. Almost as startling and just as effective is a radically re-interpreted “Swanee River,” which closes the album; on his fine new album Let Them Talk Hugh Laurie does this one as a rave-up, but here it’s a benediction, tranquil and quiet and just a bit unsettling.

It’s a beautiful record from top to bottom, steeped in good taste but also more than willing to step out on a limb; what it suggests, to this listener, is that Ollabelle has come into their own and is speaking in their own voice like never before. Neon Blue Bird reveals that they have plenty to say, and I plan on listening closely from here on out.

Kanye West & Jay-Z: “Watch the Throne”

My quick-draw review of the much-hyped Kanye/Hov collaborative album is posted at CT today. I’ve got more to say about it, here in the next day or two, so I’ll say nothing else about it for now– except that I think it’s possible for an album like this to be simultaneously overhyped and deserving of a good bit of our attention and analysis. It’s pretty rare to find the entire music Twitterverse and blog-o-sphere all abuzz about a single record, so for that much, at least, this one deserves some serious kudos.

First Impressions: Joe Henry’s “Reverie”

(Ed. Note: The following notes were composed after spending just  few days with this fine record, and while I still believe every word of this original post, I also want to note that a more thorough and thoughtful review of the album is available here.)

It’s pretty well-established, I think, that Joe Henry records his albums from a studio in his own basement—not just the ones released under his own name, but even many of the records he produces for other musicians. This, combined with the reverence he surely has for Bob Dylan, makes it just a might baffling that it’s taken this long for him to record his very own set of Basement Tapes, or at least something closely akin to it. But the day has come at last: Reverie is an album that begs the comparison (or at least the pun) more than any other set of songs Henry has yet waxed.

Or so my first impressions of the record lead me to believe. I’ve been living with a handful of the songs for a couple months now; most of them, just over a week. Conversely, I’ve had, say, Tiny Voices for close to eight years now, and it still changes the weather in my house and in my mind, in strange and never-the-same ways, every time I play it. Civilians— which is just shy of reaching the tender age of five—is an album that has grown in richness in stature like few others I can think of, and seems to be a constantly re-aligning presence in my life, even after I’ve logged so many countless listens. So when I say that these few paragraphs you’re reading contain my first impressions of Reverie, I mean it by way of defense, explanation, and apology: There is really nothing I can say just yet about this piece of work—yes, as elusive and rich in mystery as the last few Joe Henry albums—that isn’t subject to change. (In a month or so I’ll post a proper review, which will itself be tragically underinformed.)

So. Reverie. Given how much I write about Joe Henry, I expect that some will come here wanting a quick proclamation of this as his “best” album, or at least as my favorite. I couldn’t possibly stack his last four albums on their heads and compare them, though—the run of Tiny Voices through Reverie has been basically flawless—and as for favorites, Tiny Voices has an eight-year lead on this one, though I suppose nothing is impossible.

But I will say that it is indeed the loosest, rawest thing Henry has yet recorded. (A friend recently told me that he assumed the song “Odetta” to be a live concert recording, so frayed are its edges; this is a good indicator of the energy on the album as a whole.) Its spontaneous mayhem is not unprecedented in Henry’s canon; Tiny Voices may not have been cut in a basement but it is full of odd bumps and rattles and seems to lurch about with its own kind of energy, which is true of Reverie as well. But since it is lacking in horns and is entirely acoustic, it also reminds me a little of Civilians, but perhaps only on superficial levels.

The absence of horns is a bit ironic, actually, given that the interplay between bass, drums, and piano on some of these songs (especially the first, “Heaven’s Escape”) makes me think this is the jazziest thing in the Henry canon. That said, there’s a blues number here called “Sticks and Stones”—which moves to its own kind of loose swagger—and an altogether howling, pounding song called “Strung” that make me think this is essentially a Joe Henry rock and roll record.

And yet, for all the mayhem—and I’m not just taking about those songs but also the dust-kicking in “Odetta” and even the ominous dance of “Deathbed Version”—there is also a purity of poetry here that is uncommon even for a Joe Henry album; you hear it most on the slower numbers, like “Tomorrow is October,” a sad but kind of stoic paean to the ravages of time, and in his Vic Chesnutt tribute, “Room at Arles.” You could look at the lyrics of these songs on paper and have no way of knowing they are intended for music, so well do they work as stand-alone poetry. I am also quite taken with “Piano Furnace,” a more cordial ballad that could pass for an Over the Rhine song, actually, which makes it unsurprising to see that it was based on the writings of Linford Detweiler. There is also the twinkling, twilit Americana in “After the War,” and “Grand Street,” a sort of pile-up of little moments and scenes that recalls the construction of “This Afternoon,” in a way.

Another corker, then, or so it seems to me right now. Given that the album is concerned, primarily, with matters of time, I suppose I should let the thing age a bit before I make any further comment. I’m sure a month or so will be plenty of time, right?

William Elliott Whitmore: “Field Songs”

I’ve been meaning to say a few words about this, a very fine record that’s been spending time on the box for a few weeks now, but the words for this music have been eluding my grasp—that is, until today, when Amanda Petrusich’s lovely review unburdened me from the weight of needless comparisons and historic references I’d been struggling to put into perspective. Amanda’s review is noteworthy if for no other reason than it is the only one I’ve come across to completely fail to mention Woody Guthrie, an omission that I find to be both legitimate and rather freeing. Instead of trying to trace a straight line back from William Elliott Whitmore to his folksy antecedents, I realize that it makes more sense to locate him as just one thread in a much wider tapestry of folk song—or, as the title of this one succinctly puts if, Field Songs.

The Woody namedrop would be handy only insofar as it’s good shorthand for topical folksongs, a label that works for all eight of the cuts here; based on that criteria, I could just as easily name, say, Billy Bragg, and of course where there’s a Guthrie reference there’s a built-in nod to Dylan. But Whitmore’s songs suggest deeper roots; in fact, he is the rare folksinger and songwriter who sounds like he could have predated Dylan, or been one of his contemporaries in the Greenwich scene.

The eight songs here transcend era and genre, and, despite their topicality, they even transcend contemporary politics—but that’s not to say they don’t speak to them. Whitmore can be an outspoken guy. His last album (and first for the esteemed ANTI- label, which also released Field Songs) began with an indignant commentary on George Bush (opening line: “It’s a goddamn shame what’s going on”). Field Songs has no references to modern life, really; these are literally songs about working in the fields, about hard labor and simple pleasures and the unvarnished truth about dying.

And yet: It is an even more radical and yes, political album than Animals in the Dark was. These songs are deliberate—even pointed—in their rejection of any kind of salvation from the government or from modern convenience; they are resolute in a kind of agrarian dream, where the simple acts of work in the field are the only earthly comfort or satisfaction any of us could need.

Whitmore delivers these songs in a soulful, craggy baritone that seems to have contain entire worlds within its folds, worlds of history and experience that belie his mere 33 years of life. He plays a banjo and is accompanied, here and there, by a kick drum—nothing more. The songs are delivered without sentiment, and without artifice; you believe, even if you know nothing of Whitmore’s personal life, that these field songs were indeed written after a day in the field, and when he warns you about getting a sunburn you take it at face value, as a bit of practical advice from an old farmhand and not some kind of deeper metaphor.

The benefit of Whitmore’s austere approach is that his simple songs exist outside of time and convention—they are folk songs, I reckon, but just as much cowboy songs or campfire songs; more to the point, he is able to harness history and topicality in ways that don’t come across as polemics so much as honest expressions of ideals. Here’s a guy who bemoans what we lost when we won the West, who points to Custer’s frontier campaigns as historic signifiers and identifies with the Native American armies—and he does it all without sounding like a curmudgeon or a hippy, but as an everyman raising his voice in spirited support of a life he loves and fears is disappearing.

The payoff is that when he invites the listener to unburden himself, or bids us rally behind him and “do something impossible,” it’s not cloying or sentimental, but fiercely and exhilaratingly true. It’s a testament to the weathered, rooted power of this kind of bullshit-free folk music—music that ultimately shuns whatever conventions or labels we might try to impose on it.