Ben Shive: “The Cymbal Crashing Clouds”

Something a little bit different today: Ben Shive is a member of the Square Peg Alliance, a collective of Nashville-based folk singers and songwriters; his new album is anything but coffee-shop fare, however. It’s a lush exercise in Sgt. Pepper pop sophistication, and an homage to the harmonies of Brian Wilson and Co. It also reminds me, in some striking ways, of the kind of whimsical, cartoony pop Andrew Bird perfected on The Mysterious Production of Eggs. Now factor in songwriting that expresses Christian faith in a highly imaginative and literate fashion and you’ve got a really lovely record; my review is posted over at CT.

Van Hunt: “What Were You Hoping For?”

Perhaps the highest praise I can pay Van Hunt’s new album is this—that at times it sounds for all the world like it could be the great lost Prince album (made back when the Purple One was still weird and still funky), or, at the very least, like a trippy continuation of the work D’Angelo began on Voodoo, and yet, even in its moments of greatest emulation, this record is album that could have been made by no one else but Hunt, the most out-there and inspired neo-soul cat this side of Ms. Badu. I ask you, who else would record a hardcore punk song, fueled by poverty and with religion in its crosshairs, and end it with a kind of ragtime-gospel coda? Who else would pen a throbbing, six-minute ode to a lady’s plumb-shaped backside and have it dovetail with—what else—a country song?

I submit to you that Van Hunt is the only one who could, and the only one who would. Take the title of this thing as a signifier of knowingly, brilliantly dashed expectations; or perhaps, as his shrugged-off response to the Blue Note label execs who unceremoniously dropped him after he recorded his sublimely sexy funk/soul platter Popular. It’s an ironic name for an album that was never even released, but has become something of an underground classic, at least among the leak-savvy. All of us get to benefit from his new one, which will also never be popular, but clearly relishes turning all our expectations inside out.

What Were You Hoping For? is an album made by a man who no longer cares about making music unless it’s on his terms—lucky us. It’s a record inspired by busy streets, the cling and clatter of modern life; it’s an album about money, sex, God, and love, though not always in that order. It turns plays fast and loose with classic soul and blues tropes, gets druggy here and existential there, dabbles in sweet bedroom talk one moment and uses designer jeans as a symbol of cultural narcissism the next, then ends with a nonchalant admission that life is nothing more than a “mysterious hustle,” a phrase that would also have made a nice alternative album title.

How bold, how utterly fearless is this record? So much so that it opens with a song, “North Hollywood,” that might as well be, well, a great lost Prince song—right up until the moment it twitching beats collides headline into a squealing rock and roll number that feels like a second great lost Prince song. It’s a full-on alterative-history Controversy mind-meld, made all the more outrageous and inspired when Van Hunt’s lyric—a dry paean to hollow exteriors and phony people—dips into a winking innuendo worthy of James Brown: “The fastest way to a man’s pocket is on his rocket.”

That line is all about money and sex, but the next song is about money, love, and religion. “Watching You Go Crazy is Driving Me Insane” is a hoarse punk thrasher—but then, how else would Hunt frame his tale of a couple whose sanity is sapped by poverty and a stack of unpaid bills? The narrator slips into a church and asks for Communion wine, not because of its spiritual fortification but just because he’s hungry and thirsty. The priest: “Go home, funnyman!” The song is a jolt of energy and rock and roll mayhem that, it should be said, has little to do with Prince or any of the other R&B and funk luminaries Van Hunt gets compared to, and it works brilliantly. He saves the best line for the end, and cuts the guitars out so we can hear it clearly: “They are much less attractive when their money is subtracted.”

Throughout the record, easy symbols of status are lampooned, as are pat answers concerning matters of meaning and identity. “Designer Jeans” is pure street funk, a trance-like beat that could be a D’Angelo song, only it’s way too trippy for that; it’s more like Sly at his druggiest. But the lyric asks a pointed question for the Facebook age: Why do our beliefs about religion and politics and sexuality have to be worn like emblems of class or social standing? For that matter, why do we insist on making them public? Then, later on, an uproariously strutting rock song called “Cross Dresser” puts the psycho/sexual implications of clothing and physical possessions through the blender, and comes out with an analysis too clear-eyed and kooky even for the Purple One.

But not everything is about subversion—well, not exactly. “Eyes Like Pearls” is a soulful and soaring rock song that seems to be fueled by real peace, love and understanding; that it’s followed by a demented song in which the singer wishes to go back in time, then ends up just making the time machine his new girlfriend, adds complexity but does nothing to undercut the sincerity. The album’s hinge seems to be “Plum,” a hypnotic ode to a finely-shaped ass that’s set amidst weird song effects, gurgles, and distortion but still seems intimate and heartfelt. It has the album’s MVP lyric: “Lord, why’d you put her in an aquarium/ Now she’s easy to see, hard to touch.” Its flipside is “Falls (Violet),” straight C&W soul that somehow fits perfectly.

Anyone doubting that Van Hunt could have played nice and made a more conventional soul record need only give a listen to “Moving Targets,” a sexy and tender ballad without any funny business, unless you could the slightly off-kilter vibe given by the drums. Thank God he decided to make this record, instead—one that’s soulful and song-oriented, outlandishly personal and profound, unpredictable and completely held in place by its own unerring momentum. The title song, coming toward the album’s end, starts with a channel-surfing sound collage then locks into a steady funk groove, eventually building quite a nice rock and roll lather. Because, how else would the banner song of an album like this sound? Whether it ends up being popular or not, Van Hunt’s made a stone-cold killer with this record, an album built on the sounds of the past that easily sidesteps easy comparisons and stands as a true original.

Wilco: “The Whole Love”

Is there any band more self-conscious, or at least more self-aware—more encumbered by the weight of their own history and cloudy mythology—than Wilco? Before answering, I bid you remember that this is the band whose last album was called Wilco (The Album), complete with “Wilco (The Song).” Their new one has a real title—The Whole Love—but it also has a first single which hinges on the this line: “You won’t set the kinds on fire/ Oh, but I might.” A gesture toward all those who hate on this band for being purveyors of “dad rock?” Given who we’re dealing with, I think the answer couldn’t possibly be anything but a yes.

The band may never have sounded more caught up in the web of its own history than it does here, on an album perched rather precariously between the power pop and country-rock leanings of their early albums, the sonic rabbit holes of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born, and yes, a bit of the more temperate, classicist rock and roll of the last couple of records. I’ll give them this, though: They don’t sound comfortable just standing there, hiding in the shadow of their own checkered past. More than anything they’ve done since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Whole Love has a twitch, a pulse of something risky and bold. And unlike Foxtrot, this one isn’t wrapped up in feedback and gauze; it sounds like the work of musicians recording in the same room together, feeling out the studio space and their own parameters as a working unit, setting their eyes toward adventure like they haven’t done in a decade or more.

And yet, this is still Wilco we’re talking about: They measure their adventure in spoonfuls. They open the album with a red herring, a song called “Art of Almost” that clocks in at over seven minutes and bobs its head to a fidgety krautrock groove. There are shards of sound and some guitar heroics from Nels Cline that set the stage for a cantankerous and bold rock album that never quite materializes. They do match, nay, exceed the brilliance of that opening gambit on the closing song, a twelve-minute folk song called “One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smily’s Boyfriend),” a simply stunning track that justifies its silly title for its sheer, bravura act of restraint; it’s so simple it could almost be called a drone, and it seems to ape Nick Drake without remorse, yet the lyric and vocal from singer Jeff Tweedy are sublimely soulful, and the band’s performance is warm and spare and perfect. I would almost advise not listening to the song, because once you’ve heard it, the whole album will just feel like a tedious buildup to that final song’s beauty.

But as for the rest of that adventure I mentioned before, it mostly falls through the cracks—literally. The production and recording of this album—both excellent, I should say—leave shards of ambient noise and sonic details that make The Whole Love a rewarding headphones experience. But while their little trick of smuggling in some of their more “experimental” leanings is certainly an admirable try, it doesn’t quite hide the truth that the bulk of this recording can’t help but disclose—namely, that Tweedy’s songs just aren’t that good, at least not when he’s confining himself to more traditional pop structures and conventional running times.

“I Might” is a pretty good example, actually; its playful little farfisa organ figures grant the illusion that it’s a garage rock gem in the Attractions vein, but the reality is that the hook isn’t much to speak of; if the band cut loose a little more they could more than compensate, but their dogged focus on studiocraft leaves no room for the kind of ramshackle, full-band fury that a song like this practically demands. Conversely, the studio sheen and sensualist detail adorns “Sunloathe” quite brilliantly, but the craft is so precise that it only calls attention to Tweedy’s obvious tip of the hat to George Harrison in full chamber mode.

That’s the trouble with Wilco in a nutshell. The knock against them has always been that they’re little more than the sum of their record collection, but of course, a lot of great bands have fueled spectacular albums with little more than raw energy and classic rock reference-spotting. It’s the raw energy that this outfit lacks, I think. They play their influences straight-up, and twitch with excitement over the possibility of doing something instinctive and expansive—but then they relegate those instincts to the opening song and to little flourishes here and there, choosing instead to hang their hats on songs that offer fine but ultimately rather tedious variations on familiar country and power pop influences. (It’s the country-ish stuff that works better, I should say; the spindly “Black Moon” is not without its charms, while the charging “Born Alone” reminds us of the different shades of boredom invented by The Album.)

The ironic thing about this venture—which is truly, I hasten to say, their best work in a while, even if that’s measured praise—is that it has a kind of tentative vibe, like the band is having a good time sketching out the possibilities of their Chicago studio space, but rather than channel that uncertainty into something brave, they mostly fall back into the same mundane tropes that always seem to tie them to the ground. Rather than feed their classicist leanings through the murk of their sonic noodling, they end up with a kind of steady, tension-free intermingling of the two, one that emphasizes their sense of craft but not their flair for adventure, their knack for sound but not any particular penchant for song. In other words, The Whole Love turns out to be an album borne of references to Wilco’s near and distant pasts, which I guess makes it another quintessential, perfectly pleasant, and mostly forgettable Wilco album.

Lisa Hannigan: “Passenger”

Lisa Hannigan’s second album, Passenger, comes adorned with a map on its front cover. I couldn’t tell you what city is being mapped, or even if the locale exists anywhere outside the singer’s head, but I do think it a fitting image. On Passenger, the Irish singer embarks to an interior geography that’s been traversed by many singers before, and will be explored by many singers to come; she’s mapping out her own destination, though, finding new roads leading to the same place. Which is to say, Passenger has the feel of a classic recording, and like one that only could have been made by Hannigan. It’s beautiful and soulful, warm and sad, and its songs are enlivened by her own indomitable spirit.

It comes with a sort of built-in concept, or at least a thematic hook on which to hang its hat. The idea of a “passenger” as an individual who stays with you, held tightly, throughout life’s journey is the conceit that unfolds in the title song, and it seems to inform everything that surrounds. These are songs of hushed intimacy and fraying bonds; of quiet melancholy and deep-seated hope. It’s ravishingly romantic even in its saddest moments, and its moments of greatest peace are held in place by the weight of temporality: “A Sail” is a solemn hymn to broken trust and fractured intimacy, “O Sleep” is a lover’s lullaby strained by distance, “Knots” is a bundle of anxiety, and even a song called “Home” uses melting snow as its primary metaphor, suggesting the ravages of time and separation that hold these songs in place. Hannigan’s spirit is not one of oppressive sadness, though, but of hopeful resolve; Passenger’s cartography of the soul feels like a mapping of the things that matter most, the things that can’t be left behind.

Ravishing beauty and deep feeling shine through these songs, which feel like they could be classics, even standards; Hannigan, who used to sing with Damien Rice, is a singer and songwriter who understands the sense of heft, the emotional gravity that comes from making music that feels time-tested but looks to tradition with no particular reverence. The songs here quite nicely split the difference between folk and pop idioms, something that’s clearer nowhere than on “What’ll I Do,” a fiddle-led dance that cloaks uncertainty in pure, unfettered play. “A Sail” and “Knots,” meanwhile, build tension not through gimmicks but through lyrics and melodies that gradually escalate their momentum, that lead the listener to conclusions that feel organic. Passenger stands as a reminder of just how moving a sense of craft can be—or, if you prefer, of how careful and precise this business of soulful, emotionally resonant music really is.

Hannigan’s co-craftsman on this one is producer Joe Henry, who gives this recording a very different feel from Hannigan’s Mercury-nominated debut, but also from anything he’s previously worked on. The hallmarks of Henry’s work are all here—soulful singing and playing, first-take intimacy, a focus on Song over all else—but what’s missing is the usual cast of characters. Henry and Hannigan recorded the album in Wales, with her backing band in tow but the regular cast of Garfield House players nowhere to be found; it’s initially difficult to peg it as a Henry joint without the steady thumping of Jay Bellerose’s drums, for instance, but the producer seems liberated to make a record that stands as something quite distinct from his normal output. Both “Knots” and “What’ll I Do” have an uncommon lightness to their step that are crucial to their success, while “Home” opens the album with a flourish of drama, a swelling anthem that harnesses the kind of drama that has sadly become linked with bands like Coldplay. The song, though orchestrated fairly heavily, is lively and soulful. It stands on its own.

As much as anything, the album testifies to the resourcefulness of Hannigan, her producer, and her band; there’s a fiddle here, a trumpet there, a duet vocal from Ray Lamontagne—and yet, the proceedings are spare and elegant, modeling warmth and a devoted sense of craft. It’s that sense of craft, from the songs up through the production, that suggests something of a calling card for Hannigan, whose voice as a singer and as a songwriter feels initially like one you’ve heard before but reveals itself to be singular, its sense of familiarity simply the result of how heavy, and how timeless, this material seems.

Lydia Loveless: “Indestructible Machine”

I reckon I ought feel some sense of unease at listening to hard-drinking, shit-talking songs of bawdy soul-searching and alcoholic abandon from a woman who has not yet reached the legal drinking age, much less the point at which this kind of profane stock-taking tends to be more acceptable. But the songs are just too good. Indestructible Machine is a late-night, barroom confessional, an awakening for a singer who’s been living like her body and heart are, in fact, indestructible machines, and is only beginning to realize that they’re not. There are nine songs here that are gussied up in a cussin’, fightin’, drinkin’ veneer, with just enough cracks to let the light of vulnerability shine through. They walk a fraying wire, strung between a honky-tonk and a punk rock dive.

And as for Loveless herself? Well, she’s something else altogether—a real live wire of a singer, someone whose voice could be a ringer for stalwart country women like Loretta Lynn did she not deploy it with such unself-conscious, punkish abandon. Instead, she comes across sounding an awful lot like Neko Case, only a Neko Case who’s fully willing to relinquish control and put all her frayed nerves on display. It takes very little imagination to believe she could flat-out belt these numbers like a juke joint diva, yet she’s no showboater. The first song, “Bad Way to Go,” opens with a fumble of banjo and electric guitar, the band sounding like they’ve careened off track before they even begin; the song hits a gallop, and Loveless comes in with a commanding presence, but never one that threatens to send the whole thing toppling.

That song represents one end of the spectrum. It’s a pure country number, albeit a vulgar, drunken one, done up with rock and roll mayhem. At the other end there’s “Crazy,” a knockout, show-stopping closer, country soul and naked lust led off with fiddle and acoustic guitar. It’s a song of naked desire, the driving force behind everything here—the barnburners and the boozy laments alike. Its lyric is a perfect country lamentation: “Well I hope that this moment will never be over/ ‘Cause I just don’t know how I’ll face being sober.”

But anyone thinking this  a cloying play of country drinkin’ and sex songs is in for a kick in the ass; Loveless is too confessional a songwriter, too inward-looking despite her tough-talking demeanor. These are songs caught between freedom and desire, independence and love. “Can’t Change Me” is a hard-charging rock and roll number, the snottiest and most pissed-off thing here, but its lyric—in which Loveless tells all of mankind (including Jesus himself) that she won’t change for them—is at once an anthem of empowerment and, it should be said, a profoundly lonely-sounding song. Note the last verse, in which Loveless admits that it’s not a matter of not wanting to change, but of not being able to. And then there’s the blazing honky-tonk rocker “Do Right,” which boasts what might as well be the album’s mantra: “I grew up on whiskey and God so I’m a little confused.”

Loveless is a songwriter fully adept at capturing conflicted, complex humanity in her songs; she sounds, I think, like someone who knows she could probably use redemption, but doesn’t particularly want it or see it as all that urgent. She talks a big game throughout these nine songs, but what’s remarkable is how, even if she’s writing according to genre or playing up what could almost be a novelty angle, the songs are steeped in authenticity and grit. As to the former, “How Many Women” is a country weeper that betrays a lonely heart; for the latter, “Steve Earle” and “Jesus Was a Wino” both suggest bruised and battered hearts in need of repair, and both find empathy in strange places; it’s the empathy that keeps them from being trifles.

There are no trifles here; just nine knockout songs, heartbreakers and dust-kickers and rabble-rousers. There’s real country soul, and blazing punk rock glory. And the voice—oh, what a voice. It’s a tremendous album, debut or otherwise, and its only downfall is the sense of worry it leaves you with: If Loveless keeps guzzling all that gasoline, one fears she could burn out before her star truly reaches its full brightness.

Jonathan Wilson: “Gentle Spirit”

Are rock’s canons open or closed? The question is raised by Gentle Spirit, the long-time-coming debut album from studio veteran Jonathan Wilson, an album that evokes, rather uncannily, the fertile folk/rock movement based out of Laurel Canyon, California. According to Wikipedia, the Laurel Canyon movement was in large part a 60’s thing; many rock writers would say it was more of a 1970’s phenomenon. Thing is, Gentle Spirit makes me wonder if the movement ever really came to a close, or if it simply slowed to a trickle.

Gentle Spirit sounds like it could have been made in the same time period, and the same mindset, as any given classic from CSNY, and when I say that I don’t mean to suggest that it is a studious recreation; no, it’s all a bit too lose and shambling for that, with the historical allusions seeming a matter of instinct rather than deliberation. Nor does the music comment on the Laurel Canyon legacy. There is no subversion here, no sense of detachment or perspective that comes from elapsed time.

Instead, Wilson gives a straight-faced (but never self-conscious) set of hippy-ish, mellow jams. The harmonies are deep and rich, the songs perfectly content in their own meandering runtimes and relaxed tempos, even the more rock-and-roll moments feeling leisurely rather than intense. There are guitar freakouts—none more rewarding than the jittery cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Way I Feel,” ironically enough—and some jams that verge on the truly epic. It’s all totally beautiful, and totally stoned; if you have any question about the frame of mind Wilson and his amiable collaborators are in, simply consider that there are songs with titles like “Natural Rhapsody,” “Rolling Universe,” “Canyon in the Rain,” “Valley of the Silver Moon,” and “Magic Everywhere.” Again: All of this is straight-faced and sincere, and presented without pretense or affectation.

At times it’s a little silly, frankly, but it’s too good-natured to be anything other than a pleasant, low-key stretch of words and melody. The title song, which opens the record, is fairly emblematic of everything that follows; it’s a gently-strummed acoustic meditation, its verses mourning unrest in the world and its chorus calling on some anonymous “gentle spirit” to fill our hearts with love. There is something about the universe being a circle, as well, which is just the kind of phrasing you have to get used to here. (Another standout line: “The natural world, she needs our energy.”)

For all the positive energy and mysticism, this music has always been rather narcissistic; that’s the deep, dark, navel-gazing secret that Wilson’s music does nothing to subvert, and it comes to the fore in a song like “Can We Really Party Today.” It verses move at a relatively sprightly pace through a series of images of the natural world. The chorus slows things down to address societal ills—“all that’s going on,” as Wilson phrases it. But it’s not really a protest; more like an apology for the fact that these guys are too stoned and distracted to actually mount a protest.

Your mileage will vary depending on your patience with all the good vibrations, ancient wisdom, and all that; the commitment of Wilson and his collaborators to this music is unflagging, however, and the record is both more difficult and, in a perverse way, more loveable because of its commitment to embracing the Laurel Canyon mysticism in all its glory and excess; many of the songs here are simply very, very long. The whole thing runs close to 80 minutes, and the final song alone takes up a good ten. That’s an awful lot of cosmic noodling around, but the album’s warmth and lack of pretense make the duration of the thing cheerfully indulgent.  And the best, often most concise moments click remarkably well: The hushed whisper of “Ballad of the Pines,” the amiable, organ-drenched gait of “Don’t Give Your Heart to a Rambler,” and the spaced-out blues “Woe is Me” all sound, to my ears, like perfectly worthy additions to the storied Laurel canon.

More on Nick Lowe and “The Old Magic”

I did a full write-up of the excellent new Nick Lowe album a couple weeks back, but the album’s release is upon us today and with it there comes my short take from CT.

A lot of great new records out today, actually, and while Lowe’s might be my favorite of the bunch, Trombone Shorty is a very close competitor. Also out: St. Vincent, Laura Marling, Blitzen Trapper, and more. My takes on the new Lydia Loveless and Jonathan Wilson– both quite good– coming very soon, I hope.

Laura Marling: “A Creature I Don’t Know”

Laura Marling’s third album is a dark one, and it seems like there’s a monster lurking in every shadow. In one song she summons Sophia, the goddess of wisdom—but in place of a deity she gets a beast. In another song, the beast rears its head again, only this time it’s inside her, a part of her. The whole album abounds with horrifying and unholy revelations; “I know it’s not right, but it’s real” she sings at one point, and her words could well serve as the album’s mantra. For ten songs straight, demons file in as if on cue, and while the singer may not know these creatures by name, she offers the distinct impression that she’s met each one of them before, on some other night and in some other pool of shadows.

In other words, we’ve got ourselves a heavy one here—and this from a singer who’s only 21 years old! Not that the weightiness of these songs is any great surprise; Laura Marling was inadvertently one of the pioneers of the UK’s “neo-folk” scene, bur while groups like Mumford & Sons struggled under the burden of an entire movement, Marling seemed preternaturally adept at shouldering the weight of a much larger sense of history, effectively tying herself to Joni Mitchell, Sandy Denny, and decades (if not centuries) of British folk music, no prefix necessary. For her creaturely third record, the greatest beast of all might be the album itself: This is a monstrous leap forward for Marling, whose roots are so deep she leaves no question that she’ll continue to flourish even if the movement that she propels starts to wither.

The Joni comparisons are more apt than ever, as are notices of an interest in American folk music more generally. Her last album, the very fine I Speak Because I Can, opened with a barnburner; there’s nothing quite like “Devil’s Spoke” here, which instead opens with a playful jig. “The Muse” unfolds with a jazzy flourish and her most Joni-ish vocal yet—delivering an opening line about God’s Word and its sovereignty, an early sign of heavy things to come—and builds, with banjo and fiddle, into a tempestuous sort of rain dance that invites love and inspiration to fall like a downpour. And it works.

Many of the songs are presented here as all-consuming flames; their intensity and purity of poetry are so hot and bright you expect the singer to be devoured, or else just collapse into ash. Others burn slowly. In the latter category is “My Friends,” not nearly as peaceful or settled as it sounds; it starts slow but its melody takes flight and soars through a tangled jungle of guitar and banjo. But it never falters; the song just keeps rising, and you think it’s going to come back down, at one point, but it doesn’t. “Night After Night” is even less convoluted, just the song standing naked, only Marling and her guitar; its lyric, adorned so simply, is the most chilling thing here: “Night after night, day after day/ Would you watch my body weaken, my mind drift away?”

Marling reteams with producer Ethan Johns here, who does some fine work, helping the singer anchor more of this material in rock and American folk idioms without severing any of those roots to the ghostly refrains of the British Isles. He provides a bed of warm winds and brass to “I Was Just a Card,” and he helps build “Sophia” from a folk song into a rock number, a tricky move that is pulled off more or less seamlessly. Most astonishing of all is “The Beast,” which culminates in raging slash-and-burn guitar; at first the production almost seems too genteel, but anything more unhinged would stick out like a sore thumb. Context makes it seem like the nastiest rocker imaginable.

That the songs sound so good, that they have such visceral appeal, is essential, because it underscores the fact that Marling writes very good songs, never better than the ones assembled here. She writes in arcane verbiage, in language tilted toward the folk music she so clearly reveres, but where that would be a stunt in the hands of a lesser writer, one forgets the stylized nature of the language here rather quickly, because the songs are simply so soulful and so stirring. They communicate their dark romanticism—songs of personal demons and failed love, written in failure but never cynicism—with great emotional clarity. The words themselves serve as scaffolding, not obstructions, and the sheer heaviness of the thing hits hard precisely because the songs resonate. The cover image, it seems to me, could summarize the record’s themes quite well—whether you want to interpret it as picture of good and evil colliding, or simply of sex.

It’s a wonderful album with sharp teeth and claws but a warm, beating heart; it entices you, captures you, and holds you spellbound. I suspect that Marling has even better records in her, actually, and hers is a talent that should age gracefully; regardless, Creature is tremendous, and a fine folk album by any standard.

Lindsey Buckingham: “Seeds We Sow”

With Seeds We Sow, Lindsey Buckingham has made what could well be the finest indie record of 2011—an odd thing to say about a man whose voice as a singer and songwriter was integral to Rumors, the Fleetwood Mac blockbuster that was, at one time, the best-selling pop album of all time; less odd for the architect of Tusk, whose frayed edges and druggy haze make it a perennial favorite for cultists and leftfield pop enthusiasts. But of course, both sides are crucial to who Buckingham is, both inside the Mac and outside it—and that has never been truer than here, perhaps. Seeds We Sow is his first self-released album, launched under his own Mind Kit imprint upon the fulfillment of his stint with Warner Brothers. More crucially, it’s a homespun glory that revels in its one-man-band roots, propelled by voice and melody, built upon Buckingham’s glowing Nylon-string guitar work and his (surprisingly seamless) ProTools rig.

You can hear those glorious Rumors melodies on just about everything here. You can hear a little bit of the Tusk idiosyncrasy. More than anything else, you can hear the homemade, ramshackle approach of the early Paul McCartney solo albums, whose DIY spirit personifies what it means to be “indie.” Make no mistake: Beautiful though it is, and wonderfully of a piece with latter-day Buckingham gems Under the Skin and Gift of Screws, this is the most ragged music he’s ever made under his own name, a wonderfully loose and rough album that finally finds him completely abandoning the full-band illusion he harbored on those other fine records and flaunting the album’s solitary basement roots. I’ll be honest: I’m generally not big on the one-man-band thing, which often sounds either flimsy or stilted. But by embracing it full-on, Buckingham harnesses the implicit roughness and turns in a record that feels surprisingly lively and spontaneous. Plus, the songs have the man’s musical and lyrical signatures all over them, which is just another way of saying that they’re quite good.

Seeds We Sow is a testament to the singer’s enduring romanticism; he fumbles for understanding in the universe and resigns himself, not bitterly but hopefully, to the fact that he may never find the answers he seeks, but love is enough to win the day. More than anything, though, it’s a testament to Buckingham’s own resourcefulness as a record-maker. He offers glistening, finger-picked folk songs; baroque pop numbers; and gloriously big, propulsive rockers. And he does it all by himself, simulating full orchestration without assistance from any other players (save for on “That’s the Way Love Goes,” where he’s joined by a full band—and where things really do explode).

“In Our Own Time” is evidence of the full extent of Buckingham’s gifts. It’s a serpentine rock tune that moves from a contemplative verse into a slamming chorus—and crescendos with a glorious, cascading, finger-picked bridge. There’s programmed percussion that gives it a twitching pulse, but the blood in its veins comes entirely from the lyric and melody. It’s followed by a remarkably loose, hard-hitting rocker—surprising when you consider that it’s a one-man show, anyway—called “Illumination,” a cantankerous ode to personal revelation that might as well be Buckingham’s theme song.

There are quieter moments, as well. The title cut, which opens the album, is one of the most beautiful things he’s recorded as a solo artist, a wonderfully hypnotic, circular guitar figure with a wistful melody—not dissimilar from something that might have been on the inward-focused Under the Skin. Meanwhile, “When She Comes Down” is a chilled-out pop ballad where synthetic percussion, keyboard tones, and vocal effects are used with restraint and great effect; the chorus is almost a gospel anthem, not unlike the Gift of Screws standout “Treason.”

All of Buckingham’s recent records have included songs based around repetitive, trance-like finger-picking—“Not Too Late” and “Time Precious Time” are two examples—and this record is no exception; here, one of the standouts is “Stars Are Crazy,” a resigned but not despairing reflection on a romance that’s destined to fail. What makes albums like this one so rich and expansive, though, is that a song like that one can sit so comfortably alongside “One Take,” a jittery rock and roll number with a Mac-worthy chorus, a politically-charged lyric, and a blistering electric guitar solo, all stitched together using the same lone-strummer magic that holds the entire album together.

It’s a very special record, in other words, and it is of a piece with Under the Skin and Gift of Screws in one key respect: It’s an album only Lindsey Buckingham could have made. It’s a joyfully ragged singer/songwriter album that transforms lo-fi production values into high pop style. It’s an indie record just about any way you care to define it—though it’s unlikely to be credited as such, I imagine—and it’s maybe the most enticing entry yet in Buckingham’s very fine, very special latter-day catalog.

St. Vincent: “Strange Mercy”

The third St. Vincent album comes bolstered with not just one, but two songs of hopeful, New Years Eve resolve. Midway through the album, Annie Clark declares that it’s “going to be a champagne year,” and, at the album’s end, she refers to herself as “Tiger” before wondering if this might well be the “Year of the Tiger.” And it’s kind of funny: The narrators in these songs are clearly kidding themselves—and, based on the lives of quiet desperation Clark’s characters lead, they’re probably right to keep their hopes at bay—but for the singer herself, I dare say 2011 is going to be a pretty good one. Strange Mercy is a bold leap forward. If you’re not paying attention to this lady already, there’s a better than decent chance you will be soon.

The record is a masterful collection of jitters. It’s a boldly confident album, fueled by insecurity and doubt. Clark’s characters wrestle with issues of femininity—and, more broadly, with identity in general—and their revelations often come in the form of bleak psycho-sexual awakenings, sometimes accompanied with bursts of jolting violence. One gets the feeling that the women in these songs are seeking to assert control over situations in which their options are very limited. But Annie Clark has never seemed in greater control of her art. This is an expansive and full-bodied recording that blows past the homemade pop of Marry Me while also whittling away some of the more blown-up theatrical impulses of Actor.

It’s a heavy one, and it moves accordingly. The record’s sound is based in the deep tones of the Moog, which gives everything here a weightiness you might not expect; previous St. Vincent excursions had a certain lightness of step, a daintiness that isn’t replicated here. But if these songs lurch more than they dance, they do so only at Clark’s command. Indeed, Strange Mercy is nothing if not graceful; Clark employs her electric guitar primarily for texture, and unleashes solos with scalpel precision. Waves of synths and other faux-symphonic flourishes provide a sense of grandeur, but for the most part Clark’s art-rock leanings are scaled back in favor of something leaner and more muscular. Kate Bush is an obvious touchstone, I suppose, but Clark’s work is more intimate and concise. The way she punctuates synth waves with a guitar freakout here, a hip-hop beat there reminds me, in an odd way, of a laid-back Prince.

Opener “Chloe in the Afternoon” is a pretty fine example of the kind of dark, demented (and yes: strange) magic Clark weaves throughout this thing. It’s a song about sex—a midday tryst, I reckon—set to a hip-hop beat, but the song isn’t sexy, nor is it a summertime banger. Clark suggests a relationship that is consensual, perhaps, but nevertheless dehumanizing—no kisses, no names, we’re told—and the song itself is so warped, the beat becomes a menacing grind. The chorus is spare and eerie, almost a kind of monster movie moment.

“Cruel” is more sugary, more overt in its juxtaposition of bright sounds and dark imagery, and ultimately more insidious because of it. Symphonic synth washes make it one of the more cinematic things here, but the lyric—which imagines domesticity as a kind of bondage—is subversive. My favorite cut, though, is “Cheerleader,” wherein the narrator offers a litany of ways in which she’s been forced to be subservient, to let go of her own identity as she’s bled into someone else. Basically, Clark sings about not wanting to be on the sidelines any longer, and, with an album this fine in the can, it’s hard to imagine her ever taking on such a role again. (Worth noting: Clark used to tour as part of Sufjan Stevens’ band, and some of the material here actually makes for a fine, more digestible mirror image of the psycho/erotic menace on Age of Adz.)

Indeed, the album impresses on multiple levels—for the way its jet-black themes play against the inherent sweetness of Clark’s voice, and indeed, her very image; for the carefully-controlled palette, where the same combinations of analog keyboard flurries and shards of electric guitar create an uncommonly rich and deep array of sounds. But I like, most of all, that it speaks, with empowerment, to issues of sex and domesticity and social identity in a way that’s subversive, suggestive, and at times sublime. One of the best moments—and one of the few beams of light, or at least moments of calm—is the title cut. Here, a single mom pledges her vigilance in protecting a child who’s been abused and abandoned before. The child—or, perhaps, the very act of mothering—is a source of strength and of hope. A strange mercy, indeed, and a welcome wrinkle in this rather twisted but quite remarkable record.