Solomon Burke – Don’t Give Up On Me
Posted on | June 19, 2010 | No Comments
Despite years of reading articles, I know almost nothing about Solomon Burke that is not contained within his album Don’t Give Up On Me. The control and power in his voice carries a constant sorrow.
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Solomon Burke – Sit This One Out
In 2001, when Rev. Burke recorded Don’t Give Up On Me, people had given up on him. He had been absent from the record charts for almost three decades. All around him, soul and blues legends were being lionized. Aretha Franklin was signing at the White House; B.B. King was recording with Eric Clapton; the name of Marvin Gaye was still part of the music conversation in the U.S. Burke’s secular recordings, though, were all but out of print.
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Someone remembered. Joe Henry remembered. He put together a recording session, put out a call for songs, and pieced together this album. The songs came tricking in. Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. Tom Waits and Brian Wilson. They all sent in new material. (The best songs, though, are not from those luminaries.) For the recording session, they even found Solomon Burke’s old ribbon mike – Number 9 – that he had used for his first recording career. The album is built around that mike and Rev. Burke’s voice. Like Johnny Cash’s American Recordings, the whole idea of the album is a legendary artist stamping out quality songs. And it worked.
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Solomon Burke – None Of Us Are Free
Unlike Mr. Cash, Rev. Burke abandoned the formula after it brought him back on the scene. His next album, Make Do With What You Got, changed producers and went more up-tempo. The song writing was strong and the vocal phrasing powerful. The album, while good, became stuck in a neverland between the original soul sounds of the 1960s and the stark production expected in late career legacy albums. The good reverend continues to record, but the new albums are not events. Joe Henry went on to resurrect Betty LaVette‘s career.
Johnny Flynn – Sweet William EP
Posted on | April 3, 2010 | No Comments
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Johnny Flynn – Trains [Rose, Mary, and Time]
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Brashness and swagger are necessary parts of the job for Mr. Flynn. The press has him carrying the banner of Anti-Folk in Britain almost singlehandedly. A burden he neither shirks nor disavows.
Mr Drum was here yesterday, he knows just what he needs
And gives what he’s got to the thump of his creed
Last November, he released the Sweet William EP, but it didn’t cross my path until the SXSW coverage. The EP is short, well paced, and possibly meaningless. The lyrics are so vague that they invite the listener to speculate and free associate almost at will. There is some charm in that. It tickles the mind as it tickles the ears.
I’m full of you although we’re far apart
Trains don’t stop your soul they break your heart
After ten, or maybe fifteen, listens, the parallels to Joanna Newsom have come home. Mr. Flynn has many of the same sonic textures combined with opaque lyrics. Bubbling up, though, is a dash of Devanda Banheart‘s accessibility to moderate the tonic.
Hello Saferide – Retrospective
Posted on | January 8, 2010 | No Comments
Hello Saferide – The Quiz
Hello Saferide – Loneliness is better when you’re not alone
Hello Saferide – Lund
“What would you say if I asked of you / out of loneliness, out of loneliness / Could I be with you?”
Hello Saferide is led by Sweden’s Annika Norlin, who also has worked a day job as a journalist. The lyrics, written in English for this band and in Swedish for her other project, Säkert!, are telling and vulnerable. She’s scared of feet. She’s smart and she likes to read. And she rakes over her adolescence to reveal the still burning coals.
“One of them would have gotten my virginity / but he didn’t know that back then, did he!”
Wikipedia says that the band is twee pop and it’s hard to argue. The chords are major keys with pleasing progressions. The songs make for pleasant background music. When listened to carefully, they are even more comforting. Wrapped together they are like tomato soup and grilled cheese on a cold day.
“And if I fall, would you pick me up? / And if I fall, would you pick me up?”
They have two albums and one EP to their name. The LPs – Introducing . . . and More Modern Short Stories From . . . – are both good, but the EP – Would You Let Me Play This EP Ten Times A Day? Is the strongest effort. Cherry picking the collection yields a very strong best of, but the EP stands on its own. One only hopes that the clever earnestness of Hello Saferide wears better than the clever disingenuiness of The Beautiful South.
Pearl and the Beard – God Rest
Posted on | January 2, 2010 | No Comments
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Pearl And The Beard- Voice In My Throat
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Pearl And The Beard- Donny And Johnny
Percussion and harmonies are the central are the dominate layers of the giant cake that Pearl and the Beard have named God Rest Your Weary Soul, Amanda Richardson.
The first two songs start off with the big guns. Pearl and Beard jump right into singing duet verses, harmonies, and holding forth with multiple lines at the same time. It is not often that modern artists force me to track two separate speakers at the same time.
| Pearl Says: | Beard says: |
|
I walk down the road and I’m alone again, but I will sing a song as I go I walk down the road and I’m alone again, but You will be the voice in my throat |
All these years I’ve travelled down the lonely pathway Singing something you’ll never know All these years I’ve travelled down the lonely pathway You have been the voice in my throat |
They collaborate on the chorus, but immediately break apart when it is time for the second verse. By literally singing on top of each other, they create a strong sense of a short story. Art lovers separated by time or place who feel the separation keenly, but are unable to come together.
As the next track starts, Pearl and Beard are immediately together. Beard takes the lead on the verse and Pearl sweetly owns the chorus. But in verse two, they voices and lyrics split again emphasizing that their experiences are different even as their emotions track together.
For me the rest of the album coasts off of those first two tracks.
The third track, Twice Today, is the calm from the storm. After two driving, complex songs Twice Today lowers the intensity and allows the listener to fall down with the voices on a bed of cello. Some of the stark energy comes back on Oh Death, the fourth track and the whole album shows these two playing around the boundaries and nibbling at the edges of the land they have staked.
Musically, the whole experience feels like pulling into a small town in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and being serenaded by the fiercely proud locals. They know their land and they mark it with power and force. It is a beautiful land, but isolated and unique.
See them in action doing a Will Smith medley.
Back Door Slam – Roll Away
Posted on | September 7, 2009 | No Comments
Back Door Slam – Too Good For Me
Back Door Slam – Roll Away
I saw the Back Door Slam perform at the old Crocodile Café in Seattle, which has since abruptly closed, been sold, renovated, and reopened. As I recall, the band’s drummer (Ross) was celebrating his twenty-first birthday that night. He was the oldest member of the band.Back Door Slam – Too Good For Me
The set opened with some serviceable blues. Now, I’m not much of a blues guy. I was sort of nodding along, but I wasn’t opposed to checking to see if my date wanted a drink. Things had picked up by the time I got back. By the seventh song in, the guitarist was commanding the set in a way I have never seen before or since. He didn’t have stage presence, but he had music presence.
For the last two years, I’ve checked the price of the album every so often. It was such a viscerally live memory that I doubted a studio recording would be worthwhile. I was wrong. The $10 mp3 set from Amazon is excellent. I must have listened to the album ten times in the first week I owned it.
The band that recorded Roll Away has broken up. The bassist and guitarist have moved on and left the guitarist to relabel the band Davy Knowles and The Back Door Slam. The new act has released a live album of pretty much the same set. I’m on the edge of getting that too, just to add a little variety to the performance. If you like the tracks, buy the album and see ‘em next time they play your town. (Except they are playing my town next with Chickenfoot – and I don’t have any desire to see Chickenfoot.)
Rench’s Gangstagrass
Posted on | April 15, 2008 | No Comments
Gangstagrass – Pain
Gangstagrass – Pistol Packin
Brooklyn-based musician, Rench, flirts with magic. I purchased his first album from Aime St. more than a year ago. After recently hearing one of those tracks on the TV, I checked up on his website. And so I found Gangstagrass.
Gangstagrass has been my bubblegum for the last month. On first taste, the disc gave me a giddy rush of wonder. Hip-hop rhymes and flow immersed with old-timey country sounds I love. I was pushing the disc on everyone I knew and everyone I saw. I loved throwing this in my stereo and pounding my typewriter in time with the easy beats and twang-y strings. The puppy love was perfect.
In an effort to have something interesting to say, however, I began to pay close attention to the tracks while spinning them again and again. Sadly, the close attention broke the magic. Rather than being integrated part of the music, the bluegrass samples sound more and more like post-production flair. So, just sit back and enjoy the ride for as long as the flavor stays fresh.
For the extra curious, check out this interview of Rench by a Swedish roots music site.
The First CD I Ever Heard
Posted on | April 14, 2008 | No Comments
Editor’s Note: This started out as a post for Star Maker Machine but I misread the prompt and wrote about my first CD listening experience instead of a first music purchase. Instead of tossing the post, I’m throwing it here. A more traditional post is in the works.
Strewn across the bottom of my brain pan are a whole slew of musical firsts. The first album that was “mine”, the first mixtape I ever made, the first mixtape I received, the first time I *really* listened to Sgt. Pepper’s, the first time I pitched woo through song. From all of these precious memories, it’s hard to the choose the most important one. So I chose on song.
In 1988, I was seven and living in Yakima, a medium sized city in central Washington. One weekend, the parents threw my brother and me into the back of our crackerbox VW van and drove out to Seattle to visit their old school friends. One family we visited had a teenage son who was directed to entertain us while our parents talked. Not only did he have the inherent coolness of nearly-infallible teenage power, he also had all the newest toys. He was the first one to show us an 8-bit Nintendo, the first to show us a tree house, and the first to show us CDs.
The first CD he played that rainy day in his attic loft was R.E.M.’s Green. For a kid raised on Peter, Paul, and Mary; the early Beatles; the Beach Boys; and other safe fodder, R.E.M. was a revelation. Loud and awkward, the melodies were safe enough to embrace while being different enough to ensure the rest of the family would never like them as much. I became minorly obsessed with R.E.M. as a result. I hunted out bargain copies of old albums at every discount store my parents frequented. I pestered adults with questions about the biology of sleep. I even tried (unsuccessfully) to like the B-52s because they were from the same city.
To be honest, the magic of CDs was not particularly clear to me then and it was another seven years before I owned one myself. The first I ever purchased was a collection of John Williams tracks from Steven Spielberg films, but that is a different story.
Jane Vain – Love Is Where The Smoke Is
Posted on | April 2, 2008 | No Comments
Jane Vain – C’mon Baby Say Bang Bang
Jane Vain – We Must Destroy
Jane Vain and the Dark Matter live within the lines. The songs (or at least the ones I’ve counted off) are built in four-measure phrases of four-four time.[1] The down beats are so heavily emphasized that they almost count twice. Jamie Fooks even sings about the time signature in “Moving Notes”:
Now I can only hope
This broken heart of mine
Will mend in moving notes
And four-four time
The comforting simplicity of the structure allows each of the instruments to take turns very naturally. The use of minor keys and limited vocal range remind me very much of a Into The Pink era Verbena,[2] with both the up and downsides thereof. Taken individually, these minimalistic qualities and varied instrumentation create very compelling songs. In sequence, however, the limited palette makes the album essentially unlistenable.[3]
April 14th Update: Time has corrected my opinion. I have been spinning the whole album on a regular basis lately; it grows on me.
[1] I only counted out three of the tracks.
[2] Into the Pink’s fourth track from the end is Bang Bang; Jane Vain’s is C’mon Baby Say Bang Bang. Verbena’s most similar track, though, is the opener – Verbena – Lovely Isn’t Love.
[3] For a different take, I recommend the review over at Hero Hill.
Kat Flint – Dirty Birds
Posted on | March 15, 2008 | No Comments
Kat Flint – Anticlimax
Kat Flint – Fearsome Crowd
She unrolls with tight discordance on the left channel for a full a half minute before the guitars are killed. Her voice has arrived. “Shall we kiss on the lips or shall I say that I’m sorry? That on any other day of the week I would have asked you back.” Such a simple opening and so assertive. Within forty-five seconds, Kat announces she is not tied to her guitar, not tied to boys, and not particularly concerned about either.
Scottish, she lives in London now. Kat’s not just one of those London Ladies, though. She’s not following Lily Allen, Kate Nash, Lady Sovereign, Beth Orton, Dido, etc. Goodness knows that a lot of Londoners. Nope, MFR says “The best thing about Flint is that she doesn’t fall into the trappings of lonesome female performer.” I’m not going to go that far – I think her songs are better than her musical taxonomy. The Run Out Groove compares her to Judee Sill and that’s not right either – Ms. Flint is no Laurel Canyon introvert.
As she says:
I could appease the fearsome crowd
But then I didn’t need to
I was a child and I had better things to do
And there, in short, is the what makes Ms. Flint special, she doesn’t need the attention, approval, and recognition of nameless strangers. Still, she does appreciate the support. Her first album was partially financed by fans. Can’t wait until I can get a copy stateside; can’t wait to see her on tour.
I found her, as I often do, at Aurgasm.
The McDades – Bloom
Posted on | March 13, 2008 | No Comments
The McDades – Pull The Anchor
The McDades – Dance of the Seven Veils
The McDades must put on one hell of a live show. On several of these tracks, the band hits their instruments hard. I appreciate the fast, joyful sections, but I feel trapped outside of the moment because they never seem to let loose. The biggest drawback of Bloom is that the playing and recording are too perfect. Every note sounds crisp, every percussive beat in time, and every phrase perfectly coordinated. Even the mixing leaves no frayed edges. Unlike my friend Nika, I just can’t relax in the cleanroom. Now, if only they were touring the Northwest . . .
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