Rock Is Dead, but It Won't Lie Down

Bob Dylan's Top-Five Songs Beginning with "T"

2013-05-17T18:34:00.003-07:00

1. “Tangled Up in Blue” (1975). Dig (as “Lenny Bruce” might’ve said): In 1985 I drove “out west” with a red-haired woman (let’s call her Miss X) who was “married, soon to be divorced.” A U-haul trailer full of her stuff was killing my car’s transmission alive, but otherwise I did not use “a little too much force.” Sometimes I wish I had. I definitely sometimes wonder whether “her hair is still red.” During our road trip, we stopped in at the Milltown Union Bar made famous by Richard Hugo in the poem of the same name. We bribed a motel maid in Wyoming to let us overstay our checkout to watch John Cassavetes‘ Love Steams, which just happened to be playing on HBO. We spent a night in the Badlands made famous by Terrence Malick (and Charlie Sheen and Sissy Spacek) and Bruce Springsteen. Once during my two-year stint in Seattle, she was my date for a solo Roger McGuinn show at the Backstage in Ballard, WA, and therefore shared with me the pleasure of hearing Byrds-lite performances of “My Back Pages,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and (approximately ten years after its nightly roll in the Rolling Thunder Review) “Chestnut Mare.” I got McGuinn’s autograph. As far as I know, she did not ever work in a “topless joint,” and, to this day, I know nothing about her parents‘ attitude toward homemade dresses or bank accounts. A few years later, I drifted down not to New Orleans but to Opelousas, which is just three hours north of it (i.e., close enough for jazz) and eventually saw lots of shows (three of them Dylan’s) in the Big Easy, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Thibodeaux. I never worked on a fishing boat, but I endured four or five “Hurricane”s (Katrina included). I don’t know any Montague Streets, but for sure something inside of me has died, and I own a vinyl copy of Eddie Kendricks’ “Keep On Keepin’ On.” None of my friends are mathematicians or carpenters’ or truck drivers’ wives--at least I hope not. But it’s not dark yet, so, you know, there’s still time. Do I ever wonder what’s going on with Miss X (besides hair-color changing, I mean) these days? Sometimes. In short, this song is the story of my so-called life. I’d have it over “Brownsville Girl” any day.

2. “Tombstone Blues” (1965). The “Papa’s in the alley, looking for the fuse” lyrics on Real Live are better than the Highway 61 Revisited originals that have papa “looking for food,” not only because fuse rhymes more precisely with blues but also because the ghost of electricity can howl in the bones of your face whereas you can’t live by bread alone because you won’t be satisfied. Otherwise, either version will do. “Stop all this weeping, / and swallow your pride. You won’t / die. It’s not poison”--besides prescribing the antidote to the disease of conceit--is haiku. And although “Ma Rainey and Beethoven” is more interesting misheard as “My Iranian Beethoven,” the singer’s desire to “write a melody so plain” that it could function as an easing, cooling, analgesic that helps folks unlearn what they didn’t want to learn in the first place explains in part why he once told an interviewer he hopes he "never" paints his masterpiece.

3. “This Dream of You” (2009). First, listen to 1979’s “I Believe in You.” “Don’t let me drift too far,” sings the newly reborn Dylan, touchingly illuminating the fear of apostasizing that haunts even the most obvious believers. Skip ahead thirty years. Dylan has drifted too far--from shore, from sure, you name it. (A busted second shotgun marriage, a pile of second-or-third-rate albums, discovering the shallowness of American Evangelicalism, and a heart ailment resulting from inhaling too much chicken merde down on the farm will do that do a Voice of a Generation.) But the dream--i.e., the memory--of that magic once-upon-a-time moment when the presence in a “cheerless room in a curtained gloom” couldn’t have been anybody else but Jesus persists and keeps Dylan hanging on like a Vanilla Fudge Supreme. “There's a moment when all old things / Become new again,” sings the sixty-eight-year-old, now much craggier-voiced troubadour, paraphrasing the non-Minnesota Saint Paul in Second Corinthians 5:17. “But that moment might have come and gone.” He goes on to paraphrase Second Timothy 4:7 (“I’ll run this race until my earthly death”). He’d admitted that he was a “little too blind to see” circa “Precious Angel,” but now by asking “Am I too blind to see? Is my heart playing tricks on me?,” he’s questioning not only his own vision but that heart of his as well. He doesn’t want to believe, but he keeps believing. He’s not so much hanging on to a solid rock as discovering that somehow the solid rock is hanging onto him. No wonder come Tempest he was swearing to uphold the laws of God--and insisting that the blood with which he was paying was not his own.

4. “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” (1988). It’s been common knowledge for so long that this song is a Springsteen spoof that people coming to it for the first time nowadays probably don’t find it all that funny. But when The Traveling Wilburys Volume One was new, the audacity of the Old Dylan’s making unfiltered fun of the most famous New Dylan ever was unexpected enough to be flat-out hilarious. That the Old Dylan’s fellow grizzled vets went gleefully along for the ride (and included a Beatle, an Electric Light Orchestrator, a charter member of the Only the Lonely Hearts Club Band, and that grizzled-vet-to-be Tom Petty) gave the sarcasm added cachet, as did the way the humor echoed the many punch lines of the similarly goofy trees with roots that the Old Dylan had once planted in the Band's basement. The main difference? He'd been so much older then; he was younger than that now. And by christening this song's protagonist “Tweeter,” he obviously foresaw the Twitter world in a grain of sand. (Follow me at https://twitter.com/ArsenioOrteza).

5. “Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love?)” (1985). This song was a bona fide single (peaking at 103 on Billboard), with an MTV video featuring Dylan turning Japanese and everything. And it’s rich, drawing upon everything from Puccini (“Madame Butterfly, she lulled me to sleep”), Gene Pitney (“in a town without pity where the water runs deep”), and Humphrey Bogart (“Well I had to move fast, / and I couldn’t with you around my neck") to Foreigner (“there’s a hot-blooded singer”), Hoagy Carmichael (“singin’ ‘Memphis in June’”), and overtly palace-of-the-Pope language (“Never could learn to drink that blood and call it wine”) that wouldn’t rear its head in Dylan’s lyrics again until the reference to the “mother of our Lord” in 2012’s “Duquesne Whistle.” Atop a Sly Dunbar and Robbie “In the Alley” Shakespeare’s reggae-groove-with-benefits excavated from an Infidels outtake, Arthur Baker applies just enough techno-sheen to accentuate this song's many positives. So why doesn’t "Tight Connection" appear on any of Dylan’s post-1985 compilations? And why mightn't the Gary Cooper paraphrase that goes “What looks large from a distance /close up ain’t never that big” be a reference to the Dylan body part that itches in the third verse of “Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight”?

Bob Dylan's Top-Five Songs Beginning with "S"

"Religion Today Bondage Tomorrow": A Bob Dylan Interview from 1983

2013-05-15T05:50:00.003-07:00

(Click on the images--except for the last one, which for some reason is easier to read before clicking--to view the whole thing.)

Bob Dylan's Top-Five Songs Beginning with "S"

2013-05-11T04:58:00.000-07:00

1. “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” (1966). The narrator may be stuck inside some place (either a city in Alabama or a gas station), but the music sure isn’t. If anything, it’s rollin’ and tumblin’, with Al Kooper showing off his rapidly improving prowess on the organ to delightfully virtuosic effect. The lyrics, meanwhile, evoke Stockholm Syndrome. Not only does the “stuck” singer have a “debutante” to give him what he needs, but there are also ladies who go so far as to treat him kindly, among who are a French girl who brags about knowing knows him, a honky-tonk woman named Ruthie who wants him to come up and see her sometime so she can give him what he wants, and a Mona whose middle name may or may not be Lisa and who may or may not had the highway blues but who sure enough worries about the train tracks. Frankly, Mobile sounds a lot like the home that’s not a house in which Judas Priest gets stranded and dies with a smile on his face. Moral: Don’t go mistaking Memphis for that home across the road.

2. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (1965). Dylan’s spiking Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business” with Beat-poet punch and cue-card synching to the resulting concoction in the coolest rock-and-roll video ever made is what makes this song subterranean. That the “home” to which Dylan was “bringing it all back” is the same one to which he would have “no direction” just a few months later is what makes it blues. Cultural events of this magnitude do not happen every day.

3. “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)” (1978). Nobody noticed back in 1978, but “Señor” is a term that those for whom Spanish is a loving tongue often use for “Lord.” Thus this eerie track may have been Dylan’s first song to Jesus. Can’t blame folks for not noticing really, so preoccupied were they with all the negative reviews Street-Legal was getting. In hindsight, however, “Let’s overturn these tables” and “Lincoln Country Road or Armageddon” come straight out of the Messianic complex while “Son, this ain’t a dream no more, it’s the real thing” foreshadows Slow Train Coming’s “In order to dream you got to still be asleep.” As for “Tales of Yankee Power,” it may have simply been an insider-baseball reference to “Catfish” Hunter’s million-dollar right arm. Or a red herring.

4. “Sweetheart like You” (1983). This song was a bona fide single (peaking at fifty-five on Billboard), with an MTV video featuring Carla Olson finger-synching a Mark Knopfler guitar solo and everything. And it’s rich, drawing upon everything from Samuel Johnson (“They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings”) to the overtly New Testament language that had dominated the S-album trilogy (“They say in your Father’s house there’s many mansions”) to cast a smoky seduction spell over a precious angel who, according to the seducer (and to the affront of some feminist critics), would be better off “at home ... taking care of somebody nice” than doing whatever it is she’s doing down in the dumps. So why isn’t this song on any of Dylan’s post-1983 compilations while the negligible “Time Passes Slowly” (Biograph) and “Under the Red Sky” (twice--Greatest Hits Volume Three, Dylan), for instance, are? It’s not as if the singer said that the titular sweetheart should stay barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.

5. “Sign on the Window” (1970). Perhaps the least Dylan-sounding recording that Dylan ever made. The David Ackles-like chord progressions, the lead acoustic piano, the cornfield flutes, the mid-song weather report in which the hard rain that the singer fears is sleet and sleet only, the desire to make like a Mormon and family up in Utah, the sheer gorgeousness of the thing generating an emotional nimbus so hopefully optimistic that the undertone of too-good-ever-to-be-true is as heartbreaking as the voice with which it’s sung--in short, what Graham Nash was aiming for in “Our House” and almost hitting.

Bob Dylan's Top-Five Songs Beginning with "R"

Bob Dylan's Top-Five Songs Beginning with "R"

2013-05-04T19:53:00.003-07:00

1. “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” (1966). “[S]ome people,” observed Rolling Stone’s Mikael Gilmore to Dylan in 2012, “still see ‘Rainy Day Women’ as coded about getting high.” “It doesn’t surprise me that some people would see it that way,” replied Dylan. “But these are people that aren’t familiar with the Book of Acts.” Heck, these are even people that aren’t familiar with what “stoned” meant to non Bible readers circa 1966. According to Dave Marsh in The Heart of Rock and Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made, Ray Charles’ 1966 recording of the Ashford-and-Simpson composed “Let’s Go Get Stoned” was about the “pleasures of getting wasted”--but not via marijuana or any other then-illegal drug. It was, rather, a musical “plea to go out for a drink.” So “stoned,” like “tight” a decade or so earlier (but not in the “Tight Connection to My Heart” mid-’80s), probably just meant “drunk,” which is certainly how everyone in the studio sounded when Nashville tapes captured this raucous waltz. But back to the Acts of the Apostles (which, lest anyone forget, was originally Part Two of the Gospel According to St. Luke). In Chapter Seven, verses fifty-four to sixty, Stephen becomes the first Christian martyr. “And they stoned Stephen,” writes Luke, “calling upon God, and saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, ‘Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.’ And when he had said this, he fell asleep.” Dylan, by his own admission (cf. Don’t Look Back), wasn’t much of a Bible reader himself in those days, so it’s unlikely that Stephen was on his mind when he wrote this song. But he did know a thing or two about being “stoned,” having weathered by that point the ire of folk-music Pharisees for his having gone electric. Thirteen years later, he’d suffer a similar backlash for recording and performing nothing but songs in praise of the God-Man whom Stephen was stoned for preaching about--a fact that, along with his well-documented fondness for alcohol, no doubt explains why this song continues to pop up in Dylan’s set lists. As for its spirit’s (if not its letter’s) having inspired the Meters’ “They All Ask’d for You” (in which men give names to all the animals in New Orleans’ Audubon Zoo), well, Cyril Neville, that song’s lead singer, did show up as a percussionist on Oh Mercy, didn’t he?

2. “Ring Them Bells” (1989). Speaking of Oh Mercy, this simple piano-and-eerie-organ hymn distills that album’s ghost-whispering-into-the-night gestalt at least as potently as “What Good Am I” (the acknowledged tour-de-force of his current Duke Robillard tour). Addressed to “ye heathen” (like Infidels?) and alluding to the “bride” (the term for the Church in Dylan’s favorite biblical book, Revelation) for the first time since “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar” eight years earlier, the song urges quasimodos everywhere to get over the hump and sound the alarm. “Sacred cow[s],” widows, orphans, lilies arrayed finer than Solomon, “sweet Martha” (who, unlike her sister Mary, “was worried and upset about many things” [Luke 10]), sheep in need of a Shepherd, the “chosen few,” a God who is one--biblical archetypes abound. But just who is St. Catherine? It depends. There are at least six by that name in the Catholic Church alone. My guess is St. Catherine of Alexandria, about whom the Catholic Encyclopedia says, “far from forsaking her Faith, effected so many conversions, [and] was condemned to die on the wheel, but, at her touch, this instrument of torture was miraculously destroyed.” I mean, if this wheel was destroyed because it was on fire....

3. “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” (2006). The great rock-and-roll guitarist Bill Kirchen, who was actually in the audience at the Newport Festival when Dylan plugged in with Mike Bloomfield (and who went to high school in Michigan with Iggy Pop, but that’s another story), once told me that, while he revered Dylan’s first ten albums, he was no fan of this Modern Times song as it merely and lazily recycled the Muddy Waters’ song of the same name. Well, recycle Muddy Waters Dylan unquestionably does but not without tossing in some piquant additives of his own: “Ain’t nothing so depressing as trying to satisfy this woman of mine” (ring them bells, ye divorced); “[t]his woman so crazy, I ain’t gonna touch another one for years” (yeah, good luck with that, ye heterosexual males); “[s]ome young lazy slut has charmed away my brains” (that’s more like it)--each sung in an experience-ravaged voice that does not by any means absolve the singer from having been one of the two that it took to tango. And beneath it all rumbles a fast train coming.

4. “Rita May” (1975). It was the B-side of a live Hard Rain single although it was recorded a year before during the Desire sessions. It was included on the Masterpieces collection although a masterpiece is one of the many things that it’s not. It may have been addressed to the author of Rubyfruit Jungle, a lesbian roman à clef that I would like to think Dylan, if he read it at all, preferred to whatever he read by Erica Jong. It was covered by Jerry Lee Lewis (because it’s rockabilly-ish and because Lewis is randy). In 2025, when Dylan is eighty-four, it will be included on Sony’s Desire 50th anniversary box. You read it here first.

5. “Romance in Durango.” “Me and Magdalena on the run”--nah, Dylan didn’t identify with Christ much, did he? “No Ilores, mi querida, / Dios nos vigila”--nah, Spanish isn’t the loving tongue, is it? “Then the padre will recite the prayers of old / in the little church this side of town”--how much you wanna bet that that church is ringing them bells? “Soon the face of God will appear”--Dylan had no idea how soon (cf. Slow Train Coming, 1979). The live Rolling Thunder Review versions, in which Dylan cracks the whip on all the tired horses dragging the rendition on Desire, gallop apace. And If ZZ Top hadn’t already had folks “dancing the Fandango” before Dylan and Jacques Levy crafted these weird words, this song could even be more “Dylan is a prophet” material.

Bob Dylan's Top-Five Songs Beginning with "Q"

2013-04-26T04:23:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: On August 12, 2010, I abandoned this project in the hopes that Dylan would hurry up and write a bunch of songs whose titles started with V, X, and Z. Not really. I abandoned it because I’d been in a serious automobile accident (admittedly, a motorcycle one would’ve been much more to the point) and because I’d fallen back in love with a woman I’d dated circa Shot of Love. Tending to both situations, as well as keeping the twin plates of my two jobs spinning atop their precarious poles, seemed more important than proving that, like a few million other people, I’d spent a lot of time listening to Dylan. Now, however, finally re-settled (in China of all places), it’s time to resume pressing on.

1. "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)” (Biograph version) (1967). Where were you during the week that Biograph and Spin’s cover story on Dylan simultaneously appeared? I was in Seattle, and the story that Rubin Carter had finally been sprung due to a lack of still-living witnesses was front-page news for a day. Manfred Mann’s second cover version of this song had recently celebrated its seventh birthday. (It’s now about to celebrate it’s thirty-fifth.) Why wasn’t this version included on The Basement Tapes? It’s so much better than the version on Self-Portrait. Self-assured lower-register vocals, Garth Hudson at his organ-grinder best--not until Cornershop tackled it on Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast (2009) would the song qualify so effectively as anyone’s cup of meat.

2. "Queen Jane Approximately” (1965). Does A.J. Weberman think this song is about marijuana? He should. Mary (a “Queen” as in “the mother of Our Lord” ["Duquesne Whistle"]) Jane was certainly the easiest way for someone “sick of all this repetition” (folk music circa 1965) or sick of “advisers [Albert Gro$$man?]” who had “heaved your plastic” (vinyl, kids) or tried to “convince you of your pain” to bliss out. “Queen Jane is a man,” Dylan famously told an interviewer in 1965--probably in the sense that the “man” in “Man of Constant Sorrow” (Bob Dylan, 1962) is also a “maid” (Judy Collins’ A Maid of Constant Sorrow, 1961) and that “A Man Needs a Maid” (Neil Young’s Harvest, 1972).

3. "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)” (Self Portrait version) (1970). As I type, word on the street, spurred by the Record Store Day release of the “Wigwam/Thirsty Shoes” seven inch, is that a “naked” version of Self Portrait is soon to comprise the next installment of The Bootleg Series. ’Bout time. Let’s face it: The only reason people consider Self Portrait one of The Worst Albums of All Time is that it bore the name “Bob Dylan” at a time during which that name signified the height of counter-cultural umbrage. Well, it’s high time we stopped that signifyin’ and admit that if anyone of us mere mortals were to have recorded Self Portrait we’d have friends coming out of the woodwork if not crawling out their windows. And, as far as we’d be concerned, all the tired horses would have riders named Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death.

4. "Quit Your Lowdown Ways” (1962). “If you can’t quit your sinnin’,” sings Dylan seventeen years before Slow Train Coming, “please quit your low down ways.” The Whitmark Demos contain one version, The Copyright Extension Collection Volume One another. On both young Bob not only sounds like a hillbilly but also makes sounding like a hillbilly seem just the thing to slap a wayward Chosen People (whether Israelites or Calvinist Christians) upside the head.

5. “Queen Jane Approximately” (Dylan & the Dead version) (1987). I attended the Eugene, OR, concert at which this performance was taped, but anyone who saw even one of this tour’s shows can tell you: Dylan was a mess. In front of football-stadium crowds, he called out songs that he and the Dead had barely or never rehearsed, mumble-sung more self-parodyingly than ever, forgot whole verses of classic songs, and donned a bandana. But he also stayed onstage as a rhythm guitarist and background vocalist for his set’s inevitable encore, the Dead’s then hit “Touch of Grey.” “I will survive,” he sang, and thus proved prophet material yet again.

Bob Dylan's Top-Five Songs Beginning with "P"

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: A

2013-04-11T06:16:00.000-07:00

AMADOU AND MARIAM: Folila (Nonesuch)

Some critics have their panties in a wad over the fact that Bertrand Cantat, one of the featured co-stars on this Malian duo’s latest motherlode of infectious global blues, has done time for killing his girlfriend lonesome-death-of-Hattie-Carroll style. On one level, the umbrage makes sense. But on another--the one that matters most (or at least more)--it’s beside the point, which would seem to be the sheer joy that Amadou and Mariam, even at fifty-seven and fifty-four respectively, still take in making music that you don’t have to speak the languages they sing in to love. Thankfully, it’s a point that the other cameo makers (Theophilus London, Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears, Santigold, members of TV on the Radio, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs) obviously got.

ASIA

XXX

(Frontiers)

Critics won’t admit it, but in perfecting the art of playing down to the masses for fun and profit, these prog-rock veterans (average age: sixty-two) have made some catchy music. They’ve also made albums like this one--reasonable facsimiles of what made them famous, recycled and reshuffled so that even their biggest fans will be hard pressed to tell you which ’80s Asia songs the new ones sound like. Alas, they’ll be equally hard pressed to tell the new songs apart. Some will blame the similarity of the tempos, others the similarity of the melodies, still others the similarity of the song lengths. No one, however, will have a stronger case than those who blame the clichés, without which John Wetton would apparently have nothing at all to sing.

lIllinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: B

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: B

2013-04-11T06:09:00.000-07:00

THE BEACH BOYS

That’s Why God Made the Radio

(Capitol)

From a collective that hasn’t seriously tried since 1985, this album is hardly a washout. But it could’ve been stronger. Joe Thomas, who oversaw some of Brian Wilson’s lamer ’90s music, has co-written almost everything, and, well, Van Dyke Parks he ain’t. “Spring vacation, good vibration, / summer weather, we’re back together,” “We’ll find the place in the sun / where everyone can have fun, fun, fun”--heck, Thomas might not even be Eugene Landy. There are, however, pleasant surprises: Mike Love’s “Daybreak over the Ocean,” Brian’s reality-TV commentary “The Private Life of Bill and Sue,” and the concluding three-song suite, in which Brian finally admits “Summer’s Gone.” Of course, the harmonies are pleasant too, especially with sideman Jeffrey Foskett keepin’ the high notes alive. But they’re no surprise.

THE BIG PINK

Future This

(4AD)

Don’t let the band’s name fool you. This spacey, studio-belabored, mid-tempo pop couldn’t have less to do with Robbie Robertson or The Basement Tapes if it had been arranged by Lawrence Welk. And don’t let the album title fool you either. The “future”? This? British combos have been working variations on these aural templates since Margaret Thatcher. Milo Cordell has implied that he and his partner Robbie Furze enlisted the producer Paul Epworth (Adele, Foster the People) in part because they like the Now That’s What I Call Music! series as much as anything officially hip. But a producer seldom makes or breaks an album. Words and hooks--better ones than the Big Pink is currently coming up with--help too. Suggested title for the followup: Past That.

THE BLACK KEYS

El Camino

(Nonesuch)

The best way to play devil’s advocate with Black Keys fans used to be to ask them whether Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney would’ve discovered the nobly savage possibilities of the electric, two-man band format if Local H and the White Stripes hadn’t discovered them first. If fans answered that one convincingly in the affirmative, the next step was to ask them whether Auerbach and Carney would’ve discovered the liberations of basslessness if it hadn’t been for Alien Sex Fiend, Jucifer, and the Jelly Roll Kings.

But thanks to El Camino there’s now a better question, namely, whether Auerbach spent the previous six albums preferring riffs to melodies because he knew that 1) melodies would require him to sing, 2) when he’d sing he’d tend to sound like Bono, and 3) when he and Carney would play melodies as opposed to riffs they’d tend to sound like either Bono’s band or the Clash.

If the answer is “yes,” then kudos to Auerbach for finally surrendering to his inner U.K. rocker (perhaps at the behest of this album’s producer, Danger Mouse) and going with a flow that was probably the only way for the Black Keys to escape the rut into which they’d pounded themselves. “Lonely Boy” is a better followup to “Vertigo” than U2 has managed so far, and “Dead and Gone” is a better followup to “London Calling” than the Clash will ever manage again.

Unlike Bono, Joe Strummer, and Mick Jones, however, Auerbach has yet to get the hang of writing lyrics worth anyone’s attention. “Hey my my she’s gonna take ya / Way down down she’s bound to break ya” (“Money Maker”), “Like being cooled by the rain / in the eye of the storm” (“Stop Stop”), and the many other similar El Camino lyrics are functional enough (i.e., they scan), but they won’t stick in the head, get scrawled on restroom walls, or start fights. They will, in short, age badly.

What might age better is “Little Black Submarines.” In fact, as a melodic and stylistic fraternal twin of “Stairway to Heaven” (right down to its meditative acoustic first half and frenzied electric second half) it has done much of its aging already. And even if as a Led Zeppelin re-write it’s therefore as anachronistic and derivative as many another Black Keys song, at least it’s anachronistic and derivative in a new way.

JONATHAN BOULET

We Keep the Beat Found the Sound See the Need Start the Heart

(Modular)

Using fourteen credited singers to make most of this album’s substantial vocal noise renders this Aussie rocker vulnerable to comparisons with the Polyphonic Spree. Pounding most of this album’s songs home with a percussion ensemble that may as well be the Royal Drummers Of Burundi renders him vulnerable to comparisons with Adam and the Ants. Sounding like a Polyphonic Spree/Adam and the Ants hybrid renders him capable of passing his lyrics off as one more aurally impressionistic brick in his wall of sound. Good thing too. Were his music ever to go into heavy rotation, a refrain such as “This crap tastes good ’cause they play it, / now you’re sayin’ what they’re sayin’” (“Dread Is This Place”) might strike those singing along to it on the radio as awkward.

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: C-F

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: C-F

2013-04-11T05:53:00.000-07:00

JIMMY CLIFF

Sacred Fire EP

(Collective Sounds)

If Jimmy Cliff were as great as his Rock and Roll Hall of Famer status suggests and not an overrated reggae journeyman, these five songs might seem like a condescending sop to fans willing to lap up anything bearing his name. As matters stand, however, Sacred Fire comprises his most consistent twenty minutes since 1980’s underrated I Am the Living. Too bad a third of it’s given over to a version of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”: Other than making the protagonist’s blue eyes brown, its main accomplishment is interrupting the flow established by the Clash cover (“Guns of Brixton”), the Rancid cover (“Ruby Soho”), and a Cliff original (“Ship Is Sailing”) that makes having many rivers to cross seem like not that big a deal after all.

ARIZONA DRANES

He Is My Story: The Sanctified Soul of Arizona Dranes

(Tompkins Square)

How obscure was the piano-pounding gospel shouter Arizona Dranes? So obscure that Michael Corcoran, the author of the Dranes biography that accompanies this compilation of her music, has only come up with forty-two pages on her despite years of investigating. Granted, the story is interesting, if only because it traces rock-and-roll to black Pentecostals and therefore implies fascinating truths about America. But decades of Dranes’ life itself remain elusive. As for the lovingly speed-corrected remastering of the 78s that Dranes recorded, it sounds about the same as what Document Records captured on Dranes‘ Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order in 1994--as much naked Holy Ghost enthusiasm as the Chicago recording studios of the late 1920s could handle without going up in flames.

DUB PISTOLS

Worshipping the Dollar

(Sunday Best)

Considering that in “West End Story” the featured rapper Akala says global poverty goes unnoticed because “we’re too busy blingin’,” you get the impression Dub Pistols are against the monetary idolatry referred to in this album’s title. On the other hand, the hedonistic, cocaine-fueled fantasy narrated in “Mucky Weekend” by its featured rapper, Rodney P, could only come true with lots of surplus cash. So call this bi-racial London-based ensemble ambivalent about the filthiness of lucre in general but rock-solid sure about its cleanliness when used to finance reggae-rooted beats as deep and crisp as the many that proliferate throughout this relentlessly catchy recording. Really, “Bang Bang” (featuring Kitten and the Hip) is what Madonna was aiming for on MDNA’s “Gang Bang” and almost hitting.

THE EXPLORERS CLUB

Grand Hotel

(Rock Ridge)

Don’t hate the explorers in this club because they’re dutiful--to picking up where ’60s AM radio left off, to imagining what Brian Wilson might’ve accomplished if he hadn’t turned his brain to mush, to making music the likes of which hasn’t been heard in nearly fifty years simply because they want more of it. If on 2008’s Freedom Wind they were practically Beach Boys clones, this time, by adding and combining other influences, they sound determined to prove they’re no mere novelty act. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (the title cut), the Turtles (“Any Little Way”), Climax and the Association (“It’s No Use”)--actually, Climax was a ’70s band. Hmmm. These guys had better be careful or they’ll be channeling Three Dog Night before they know it.

LEE FIELDS

Faithful Man

(Truth & Soul)

It’s understandable that those mourning the departures of Solomon Burke and Howard Tate might find solace in Lee Fields, a dogged journeyman with an equally dogged, if relatively small, core of fans who’ve long considered him the heir apparent to the old-school-soul throne. The problem is he’s more like Percy Sledge--same upper-range intensity, same sense of strain while going to emotional extremes--but without anything as riveting as “Take Time to Know Her” or “When a Man Loves a Woman.” What’s almost riveting is his cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Midnight Mile.” It begins with the pitter-patter of the percussion riff from Ann Peebles’ “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” It ends without Fields ever once having given Mick Jagger reason to look over his shoulder.

Illinois Entertainer 2012: Green Day

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: Green Day

2013-04-11T05:49:00.000-07:00

GREEN DAY

¡Uno!

(Reprise)

“I'm not growing up,” sang Billie Joe Armstrong at the outset of Dookie eighteen years ago. “I'm just burning out.” As his recent much-publicized rehab stint suggests, he wasn’t kidding about the latter. And judging from his lyrics on iUno!, the first installment of Green Day’s gradually unfolding triptych of new releases, he remains committed at forty to the former as well.

Grownups, after all, don’t worry about “taking down all [their] enemies” or refer to them as a “fucking useless ... bunch of shit-talking drama queens” (“Loss of Control”) even if a fucking useless bunch of shit-talking drama queens is, in fact, what those enemies are. Neither do grownups insult former lovers by exclaiming “Thought you were falling in love, / but now you're sucking on a doorknob / that I slammed in your face”: Grownups know it’s doors and not doorknobs that one slams.

Of course, if the more than fifty million units that Green Day has sold worldwide mean anything, it’s that lots of people don’t mind the inarticulate expression of an American idiot as long as he and his bandmates remain adept at setting them to skeletal, tightly wound hooks that play like recycled Kinks or Ramones. And, from start to finish, iUno! plays just that way.

“Sweet 16” plays even better. Three minutes of wistfully romantic bubblegum sunshine, it could very well become a high-school-reunion anthem for generations who pooh-pooh “Jack and Diane” as their parents’ music.

And therein lies this album’s rub. Try as he may to hold on to sixteen as long as he can, Armstrong can’t help hearing time’s footsteps or pining, if only subconsciously, for a conservatism at odds with the profanity he sometimes overuses in a desperately unbecoming attempt to sound hip.

In “Nuclear Family” he likens the “breaking down” of that most fundamental social unit to a “Chinese drama and conspiracy,” neither of which, apparently, he considers a good thing. And he doesn’t sound any happier in “Kill the DJ” about walking through Central Park only to find that it has turned into “Sodom and Gomorrah.”

“I don't want a suicide, I don't want this to end,” he sings on “Lady Cobra,” a leaked track from iUno!’s soon-to-be-released follow-up, iDos! “I just want to be your friend.” Maybe life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone after all.

GREEN DAY

¡Dos! & ¡Tré!

(Reprise)

By now it’s obvious that Green Day should’ve culled the best cuts from its ¡Uno! ¡Dos! ¡Tré! trilogy and made one killer longplayer. But they didn’t, so listeners will have to do it themselves. The obvious winners from iUno! were “Sweet 16” and “Nuclear Family.” As for iDos!, it mostly finds Billie Joe, Mike, and Tré, diligent wind-up toy that they are, ramming their heads into the pop-punk wall, oblivious to the fact that it’s their heads and not the wall that’s sustaining the damage. Or maybe they’re not oblivious. “I'm too mental to go crazy,” goes “Lazy Bones,” the best song on this triptych linchpin and the closest these guys will probably ever come to a common man’s fanfare. “I'm too drunk to be pure, / and my mind is playing tricks on me, / And I can't sleep tonight.” Oblivious or not, however, the brain damage is real. How else to explain Armstrong’s describing iDos! as “garage rock”? Green Day might be panning for Nuggets, but at least half of what it ends up with on iDos! is pyrite. (Oh, and it’s the one that should’ve been called ¡Tré!, as Tré Cool’s drumming makes it go to the extent that it can actually be said to.) So what of ¡Tré!? In the grand tradition of saving the best for last, it may as well have served as the template of the whole shebang. Yes, it’s that good. The stand-out cut is “Drama Queen,” perhaps the only time Green Day has waxed slow and acoustic and lived to tell the tale. In it Armstrong, the real-life father of two boys, nails the mixed emotions of every father whose teenaged daughter’s uniquely feminine problems put her just beyond the reach of anything he can do to help.

Illinois Entertainer 2012: H-M

Illinois Entertainer Reviews: H-M

2013-04-11T05:42:00.000-07:00

RICHARD HAWLEY

Standing at the Sky’s Edge

(Mute)

You can’t fault Hawley, a forty-five-year-old rocker with a baritone voice, for sounding like Iggy Pop from time to time. In fact, if only because he has rewritten the lyrics of the Stooges’ “1969” and called the resulting song “Down in the Woods,” Hawley himself seems to invite the comparison. No sooner does he invite it, however, than he comes up with “Seek It,” a softly sung, medium-tempo number with which Michael Hutchence himself might have someday been pleased to follow up “Beautiful Girl.” The songs that avoid easy comparisons do so by marinating in psychedelic drones emanating from the sounds of guitars feeding back. As for the title cut, it suggests that maybe Hawley and not Ian Astbury should be fronting the Doors these days.

WANDA JACKSON

Unfinished Business

(Sugarhill)

Wanda Jackson is seventy-five, making her, along with Bob Dylan, Ian Hunter, Leonard Cohen, and three of the Beach Boys, the latest septuagenarian to release an album of new material this year. And while you can’t say she outdoes Dylan or Cohen, she sounds livelier than Brian Wilson, Mike Love, and Al Jardine and wrestles Hunter to a draw. What she sounds most like is Maria Muldaur, a similarly still-vital rootsy interpreter with whom Jackson shares a passion not only for Jesus (hence this album’s inclusion of Townes Van Zandt’s overtly gospel “Two Hands”) but also the blues (Sonny Thompson’s “Tore Down”), country (excellent originals by Greg Garing and producer Justin Townes Earle), and vintage rock’n’roll (“It’s All Over Now”). All right, Rolling Stones, the ball’s in your court.

KINDNESS

World, You Need a Change of Mind

(Polydor)

Fans of Adam Bainbridge’s dreamily futuristic R&B disagree about whether it’s rooted in the '70s or the '80s, probably because it’s rooted in both. In “Gee Up,” for instance, Bainbridge urges listeners to “get up” and “get down” to a disco vamp worthy of Studio 54. But it’s the cassingle era that permeates “Anyone Can Fall in Love” (which pays homage to DeBarge), “House” (ditto Spandau Ballet), and his gently iconoclastic electronification of the Replacements’ “Swingin’ Party.” Meanwhile, don’t rule out the '60s--in “Bombastic” Bainbridge includes John Lennon and Brian Wilson in a list of musicians for whom he “can’t wait any longer” but from whom he also doesn’t “want any more.” Whether because they’ve already given him enough or because they’ve given him too much remains unclear.

THE MACCABEES

Given to the Wild

(Cooperative)

For this album’s first six songs and a few thereafter, The Maccabees do all that they can to sift the U2 out of Coldplay until all that’s left is a nimbus-like shimmer. Sonically impressive, the demands of the sound also require the lead singer Orlando Butler to go all castrato and enunciate like just another instrument. Not until Track Seven, “Pelican,” rolls around do less dreamy elements like stuttery guitars, crisp drums, and intelligible lyrics come into play. And catchy though it is, the song also exposes Butler as the worst kind of not-too-deep thinker--one who thinks he’s deep. “One thing's for sure,” he sings, “we're all getting older.... / Before you know it, pushing up the daisies.” Translation: Life’s a bitch, then you die. We know.

KYLIE MINOGUE

The Abbey Road Sessions

(Parlophone)

Forget comparisons to Madonna or Olivia Newton-John. Minogue’s merely scoring five top-forty hits in the U.S. while being one of the biggest pop stars everywhere else for the last quarter century makes her, if anything besides herself, the female Cliff Richard. That comparison means, among other things, that Minogue has a voice worth hearing these in de-electronicized orchestral versions of her greatest hits. Her voice isn’t as smooth or elastic as Richards’, but, because she’s a woman, it doesn’t have to be. The fairer sex has means of conveying vulnerability--breathiness (“Slow”), poutiness (“I Should Be So Lucky”)--of which even the most sensitive male singer can only dream. The obligatory refurbishing of “The Loco-Motion” (#3 U.S., 1987) is the only track that feels de rigueur.

Illinois Entertainer 2012: P

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: P

2013-04-11T05:32:00.001-07:00

AMANDA PALMER & THE GRAND THEFT ORCHESTRA

Theatre Is Evil

(8 Ft.)

After the stripped-down self-indulgence of Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radio Head on Her Magical Ukele and Several Attempts to Cover Songs by the Velvet Underground & Lou Reed, this return to studio form by the former Dresden Doll is a welcome reminder of how powerful she can be when she gets serious from within walls of sound. She can still come off exhibitionistic: Complaining and boasting about her own sensitivity for seven minutes in “Trout Mask Replica,” she makes one wish she’d cover “He Hit Me (and It Felt like a Kiss).” But give her points for universalizing the tragic-comic details of performing-artist promiscuity (“Do It with a Rockstar”), hating omnipresent cameras (“Smile [Pictures or It Didn’t Happen]”), and leaving her ukelele at home.

PERFUME GENIUS

Put Your Back N 2 It

(Matador)

With society’s increasing tolerance for homosexuality has come a corresponding tolerance for homosexual love songs, but tolerance and enjoyment are two different things. And therein lies Mike Hadreas’s--a.k.a. Perfume Genius’s--challenge. From the swim-team pecs on Put Your Back N 2 It‘s cover to the “Hood” video in which Hadreas cuddles with a porn actor, there’s none of the ambiguity that gay singer-songwriters have traditionally used to help straights universalize a gay song’s dramatic situation. So if anything is going to put Perfume Genius over, it isn’t the quiet desperation of Hadreas’s vocals but his music’s gauzily sad, lazily hymn-like languor, about which the following observations: Fans of Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks music will love it, and, compared to Justin Vernon, Hadreas sounds like Bruce Springsteen.

Personal Space: Electronic Soul 1974-1984

(Chocolate Industries)

You want obscure? How about this--seventeen songs by fifteen acts, none of whom have a Wikipedia entry and only four of whom merit a mention at Allmusic.com. The subtitle sets the stylistic and chronological parameters, but “blaxploitation-film soundtrack” would’ve done just as well. Amid spacey soundscapes, slinky-moist synthesizers punctuate reified ghetto emotions recollected in tranquility: “Can’t pay the rent, can’t drive my car without money” (Spontaneous Overthrow, “Money”); “Gather, all you saints of God, / it’s time to go with Jesus Christ” (Otis G Johnson, “Time to Go Home”); “When you’ve got a freaky feelin’, baby, and you discover that your body is willin’, ... are you ready to come” (U.S. Aries, “Are You Ready to Come”)? It wasn’t recorded inside Sly Stone’s head, obviously, but it could’ve been.

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD.

This Is PiL

(PiL Official)

The former Johnny Rotten inaugurates his first Public Image Ltd. album in twenty years by declaring, “This is PiL,” pronouncing it “pill” and even spelling it out. Then, one song later, atop an uptempo Middle Eastern reggae beat, he declares “I am John, and I was born in London! / I am no vulture, this is my culture!” Obviously, the hiatus has him worrying that people may have forgotten him although he has long been to punk what Jerry West is to the NBA logo. Whatever. The insecurity has inspired him and his latest cohorts to record music as aggressive and skeletal an any bearing the PiL imprint since Album if not Metal Box. Drums, bass, guitar noise, misanthropy, and whatever the ridiculously catchy “Lollipop Opera” is rule. And then some.

Illinois Entertainer 2012: R

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: R

2013-04-11T05:26:00.001-07:00

LEE RANALDO

Between the Times and the Tides

(Matador)

That the guitars are still sonic and the vocals still youthful is practically all that’s noteworthy about this ninth solo album from Thurston Moore’s and Kim Gordon’s erstwhile bandmate. “Xtina As I Knew Her” borrows its melody from Neil Young’s “Like an Inca” and “Lost (Plane T Nice”) its riff from New Order’s “Age of Consent” as surely as “Tomorrow Never Comes” borrows its overall vibe from The Beatles‘ “Tomorrow Never Comes,” and the two acoustic songs drag. But it’s the lyrics, especially coming from a published poet, that disappoint the most. Whether recycling clichés or forcing rhymes, Ranaldo has nothing to say and no special way to say it--unless inadvertently shilling for Skittles in “Off the Wall” by citing a rainbow “shattered into pieces” on the floor counts.

THE RAVEONETTES

Observator

(Vice)

If last year’s seventy-eight-minute, twenty-seven-track Rarities/B-Sides was too much of a good Raveonettes thing, this tirty-one-minute, nine-track album is too little. No sooner does Observator establish what the Everly Brothers would’ve sounded like if one of them had been a sister and both of them were trapped in a David Lynch film than it ends. Fortunately, it establishes something else too: namely, that as long as co-producer Richard Gottehrer is on hand to help Sune Rose Wagner transform the musical ideas he comes up with when he goes on drug-and-boozed-fueled benders into flattering soundscapes for Sharin Foo’s singing, Wagner should be drugged, drunk, and depressed more often. As for Foo, especially on “The Enemy,” she’s a lover, not a fighter.

HALEY REINHART

Listen Up!

(Interscope/19)

Listen Up! isn’t bad as album titles ending with exclamation points go. But Now That’s What I Call Music! would’ve fit this album too. Not that Reinhart sounds like all things to all people. Her un-Auto-Tuned voice is her own no matter which pop-R&B style she’s inhabiting. But she delivers in abundance and enthusiasm what it has become fashionable for female singers to sound as if they’re delivering only under duress: a nuanced grasp of the dramatic trajectory of the songs she’s singing. Getting from the flirtatious bounce of “Oh My!” to the soulful heartbreak of “Undone” is impressive. Getting from the proto-disco of “Now That You’re Here” to the blue-eyed gospel of “Walking on Heaven” is practically miraculous. And, man, can she sing.

Illinois Entertainer 2012: S

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: S

2013-04-11T05:19:00.001-07:00

SAY ANYTHING

Anarchy, My Dear

(Equal Vision)

Max Bemis has referred to himself an “ADD-infected, clumsy, and right-brain- centric dolt of a man,” and on Anarchy, My Dear he proves it. Or, rather, careening within post-punk parameters of his own devising, he proves it again, having already given abundant evidence--both in and outside the nuthouse--that he contains self-contradictory multitudes. This time he has “Randy Newman in [his] head” (“Night’s Song”), a welcome addition that sharpens his humor ( “Don’t want to hear about how the latest Rihanna single / is a post-modern masterpiece”), his misanthropy (an entire song wishing Stephen Hawking dead), and his pop sense (“So Good” and “Overbiter” could qualify for Now That’s What I Call Music). All this beause of Randy Newman? Heck, wait ’til Bemis discovers Angry Samoans.

HARRY SHEARER

Can’t Take a Hint

(Courgette)

The first requirement of satirical songs is not that they work as satire but that they work as songs. If in addition they’re funny and-or insightful, all the better. The ten acts referred to as “featured” on this album’s cover (most notably Fountains of Wayne, Dr. John, and Judith Owen) guarantee sufficient musicality. Whether any of the cuts, however, would’ve provided, say, The Book of Mormon with serious Grammy or Tony Awards competition is dubious, mainly because of the obviousness and safety of Shearer’s targets. Sexually predatory priests (“Deaf Boys”), Madonna (“Like a Charity”), Sarah Palin (“Bridge to Nowhere”), Joe the Plumber (“Joe the Plumber”)--will it come as a surprise to anyone that Shearer is against them all? What is surprising: the lameness of his Ian Dury impersonation.

SKRILLEX

Bangarang

(Big Beat/Atlantic)

Bangarang is not only this EP’s title but also what this EP’s music sounds like. In fact, “bangarang” would make a better name for the entire hyper-electronic genre of which Skrillex is currently the best-selling example than “dubstep.” Listeners needing more explanation might imagine minimalism, hip-hop, Keith Emerson’s synthesizers, machine guns, and jackhammers force fed into a garbage disposal then trash compacted until even such lyrics as poke out--“Bass makes that bitch come” (“Kyoto”), “Come on, baby, light my fire” (the Doors-featuring “Breakn' a Sweat”)--function more as aural shards than sentient expression. The pummeling can get dull, like a wind-up toy ramming repeatedly into a wall. It can also get impressive, as if Skrillex just might break on through to the other side.

CHRIS SMITHER

Hundred Dollar Valentine

(Homunculus)

It must be nice to have Chris Smither’s chief aesthetic problem, which is that he’s so consistent and consistently good at what he does his albums have begun to sound nearly identical. What he does, for those who don’t yet know, is set existential conundrums to brisk, acoustic folk-blues and sing them in a warm, husky baritone soaked in stoicism with his tapping foot for a heartbeat. What’s new this time is that he has finally eschewed covers, thus quashing doubts about whether a verse like “They say the good die young, but it ain’t for certain. / I’ve been good all day, I ain’t hurtin’. / And anyway I’m too old to die young” is his own. And if you like that one, there are plenty more where it came from.

ESPERANZA SPALDING

Radio Music Society

(Heads Up International)

After her “Best New Artist” Grammy in the wake of Chamber Music Society, Spalding could’ve played things safe and merely reprised that album’s jazzy, non-verbal charms. Instead, she has created an elastic jazz-pop tour de force, assembling a cast of dozens (four drummers alone, Jack DeJohnette included) and replacing the vocalise with lyrics. Some of them, such as those in “Black Gold” advising African-Americans to boost their self-esteem by pondering ancient Egypt, are embarrassingly naive. And “Vague Suspicions” and “Endangered Species” barely make sense. But “How can we call our home, the land of the free / Until we've unbound the praying hands / Of each innocent woman and man” (“Land of the Free”)?, especially as Spalding sings it, ain’t bad for an Afrocentric “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Illinois Entertainer 2013: U-W

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: U-W

2013-04-11T05:12:00.001-07:00

UFO

Seven Deadly

(SPV)

One of the highest compliments anyone can pay a hard-rock album these days is to say it would sound good in an episode of Supernatural, and with “Burn Your House Down,” this twenty-first studio LP by Phil Mogg and Co. passes that test. It’s truly amazing how far falsetto background vocalists going “Ooo, ooo” over minor chords and a mid-tempo beat can go toward diminishing one’s fear of the reaper--the other mid-tempo cuts might as well be Bob Seger B-sides by comparison. Fortunately, loud and-or fast rules. “Fight Night” makes watching boxing on Tijuana TV sound like a joyride on the highway to hell. And “Wonderland,” powered by Vinnie Moore’s precision riffs, will have headbangers old enough to know better risking air-band whiplash.

JAH WOBBLE & KEITH LEVENE

Yin & Yang

(Cherry Red)

PiL’s Metal Box is one of the greatest sounding albums ever, and Wobble (on bass) and Levene (on guitar) were at its core, throbbing and scraping away as if there were no other way out of the punk cul-de-sac that John Lydon yowled about atop them. There wasn’t. And now, thirty-three years later, Wobble and Levene have picked up where they left off. Lydon’s not aboard, but, when verbal bile must be spewed, Wobble does a close-enough-for-antichrist impersonation--especially on “Jags & Staffs,” the spoken bits of which recall PiL’s “Religion I.” As for the duo’s re-forging of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’s weakest link (“Within You Without You”) into a throb-scrape template, it could’ve kept Lester Bangs brooding deep into the night.

Illinois Entertainer 2012: Christmas

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: Christmas

2013-04-11T05:05:00.002-07:00

LADY ANTEBELLUM

On This Winter’s Night

(Capitol)

The quality of Lady Antebellum’s early singles was so high that it was possible to entertain fantasies of the trio’s becoming the Fleetwood Mac of twenty-first-century country-pop. Alas, no longer. Fleetwood Mac would never have made a Christmas album, but if it had, the album would’ve been a lot less bland than what Hillary Scott and Charles Kelley accomplish by carrying these (mostly) well-known tunes in holly-bedecked buckets while unimaginative, yuletide-lite arrangements play in the background. Why, competing against this year’s crop of new Christmas releases alone, they’re outperformed by Rod Stewart (“Blue Christmas”), Tracey Thorn (“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”), and the Polyphonic Spree (“Let It Snow,” “Silent Night,” “Silver Bells”). And they never stood a chance with “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”

SCOTTY McCREERY

Christmas with Scotty McCreery

(Mercury Nashville/19/Interscope)

Spending Christmas with Scotty McCreery wouldn’t be so bad. A small-town boy at heart, he’d probably take you on a tour of his North Carolina environs then invite you to dinner with his family (who’d no doubt be playing his renditions of “Jingle Bells,” “Holly Jolly Christmas,” and “Winter Wonderland” on the Bose). Then maybe you’d go with everyone to church. You could even pew up next to Scotty during the singing of “O Holy Night” and “The First Noel” and verify whether his baritone twang as captured on his recordings is Auto-tune free. Finally, later on by the fire, after the eggnog had kicked in--but only then--he’d sing “Santa Claus Is Back in Town” and his grandma would roll her eyes. But she’d be smiling.

ROD STEWART

Merry Christmas, Baby

(Verve)

It would be easy to dismiss Stewart’s Christmas project as his having discovered that it would allow him, at sixty-seven, to mine the Great American Songbook--a source that has enabled him to sell nearly eight-million albums--one more time. And a cynical ploy it may be. The strategic duets (Cee Lo Green, Michael Bublé, Trombone Shorty, Dave Koz, the long-deceased Ella Fitzgerald) certainly suggest as much. But, although Merry Christmas, Baby’s secular chestnuts outnumber their sacred counterparts approximately three to one, Stewart sings each of the latter as if deep down he senses the significance of the Incarnation. He certainly puts as much loving care into “This, this is Christ the King” as he put into “People get ready for the train to Jordan” twenty-seven years ago.

R.I.P., Andy Williams

2012-09-27T03:33:00.000-07:00

(As published in the October 23, 2009, issue of WORLD)

Moon River: The Very Best of Andy Williams (Sony Legacy)

Andy Williams

In recently making headlines with anti-Obama comments more typical of Ted Nugent, the veteran pop crooner Andy Williams proved that politics does indeed make strange bedfellows. Alas, those hoping to discover rugged individualism in Williams' greatest hits will instead find very smooth sailing: Not for nothing did Rush Limbaugh turn "Born Free" into his animal-rights-update theme song. Sometimes, though, Williams' velvet pipes were just preternaturally creamy enough to make a song sound as if it were floating in from a--if not exactly the--twilight zone.

Wendell Kimbrough: The Complete Q&A

2012-04-12T04:46:00.012-07:00

"The rest of the world, from the Beatles on, have just been trying to sound like poor folks from Mississippi."

In March 2012, I had the pleasure of interviewing, via e-mail, the Washington, D.C.-area singer-songwriter Wendell Kimbrough for WORLD magazine: http://www.worldmag.com/articles/19375. The occasion was the release of his excellent second album, Things That Can't Be Taught. Alas, he had a lot more to say than I could include in the article. I told him that I thought his comments deserved to be available on the 'net and asked his permission to publish them here. He acquiesced. Hence the following barely edited transcript of my questions and his replies....

When were you born? I.e., how old are you?

I was born in 1983 in Ozark, AL. My family moved to Mt. Olive, Mississippi when I was six, so I consider that "where I grew up," but we lived in southern Alabama when I was born. I'm twenty-eight years old. Birthday in August.

Your PR info mentions that as a toddler you were once “performed” “Jesus Loves Me” by humming it before the entire congregation of the Presbyterian Church of Clio, Alabama. What other musical precociousness did you demonstrate?

My first grade classroom at Mt. Olive Attendance Center (strange name for a school) was located across the breezeway from the marching-band practice room. We could hear the drums all day, and I (along with several classmates) took to drumming along on our desks. I loved it! And it became an obsession for me, where I would beat on things and hear beats in my head all the time. I don't know how my mom put up with me, because I would literally walk through the house keeping a beat on the hallway walls and doors as I passed through. Strangely, I still hear beats in my head as an adult. I even have dental-jaw problems because since I was a kid, I "grind" my teeth to the rhythms in my head. But the beats-rhythms are so deeply ingrained in my subconscious that stopping is not really an option because I don't even realize I'm doing it. So if I get TMJ [Temporomandibular joint disorder], so be it.

Around fourth grade, we got our first PC, and my dad purchased a program called "The Miracle" that taught piano lessons with a midi keyboard. I took to it really quickly, and my parents realized they needed to find me a real "live" piano teacher. I was lucky to get a great teacher, Mrs. Rosemary Mooney, who realized I had a good ear (I could pick up songs without the sheet music) and helped me develop it more fully. She let me play a song I composed at one of my first recitals as well as a song from a movie that I had learned by ear.

I taught myself guitar when I was thirteen and started a Christian acoustic rock band a couple of years later.

By the way, where along the Protestant conservative-liberal continuum did (does?) the Presbyterian Church of Clio, Alabama, fall?

It's a PCA [Presbyterian Church in America] church, so pretty conservative. I grew up in PCA churches with my dad as the pastor.

To what extent did growing up under that church’s influence leave its mark on you?

It was pretty central in my childhood and is still a huge part of who I am on many levels. I'll give two examples. One: Hymns, specifically the Trinity Hymnal, is probably the single biggest influence on my sensibilities about music. I now lead music at an Anglican church here in DC, and my entire philosophy and practice of leading congregational music is shaped by the wisdom of Protestant hymnody. I blog about church music over at http://churchmusicblog.wordpress.com and do occasional instructional videos on how to adapt traditional "piano" hymns to the guitar. Two: I'm still pretty reformed, and I love the church. I moved to DC to do the music for an Anglican church plant.

So, obviously, you’re still a believer.

Yes, I'm a believer. I'm not in the PCA anymore, but I'm part of an Anglican church that is under Rwanda. And as I mentioned, I lead the music at the church. It's called Church of the Advent. And Christianity is still central to my life. I wouldn't be working in music professionally if I had not come to believe that God cares about goodness, truth, and beauty.

Is your music-leading gig your main source of income?

Last year I made about half of my income from working at the church. The other half came from my singer/songwriter music "business"-- playing shows/gigs and selling CDs. This year, I'm forgoing CD income because I'm giving away for free my new album. I'm doing that in the hopes that it allows me to greatly expand my fan-base. So I'm a full-time musician, working half-time at church and half-time self-employed. Tax time is so much fun.

What made you move from the PCA to the Rwandan brand of Anglicanism?

I wasn't specifically drawn to Anglicanism, but I do love it now. I just happened into it in God's providence. After college, I spent a year at the Trinity Forum Academy--which is another, big part of my story, but I won't go into it here. After my year at the TFA, I began searching for an urban church where I could participate in music leadership. I thought I would end up in the PCA, but a friend put me in touch with an Anglican church plant in DC, and they offered me a job.

So I never had a "breaking" with the PCA. I'm really grateful for that tradition. I just found another gospel-centered church in another tradition that was a good, healthy place for me to be, to serve, and to use and develop my gifts.

Of course, now, after being here for almost five years, I definitely consider myself Anglican and love the church calendar, the Book of Common Prayer, and many of the traditions of Anglicanism.

Did your parents ever restrict your access to music or films in any significant way? Or did they, recognizing your natural gifts, allow you to explore the highways and byways of your interests as long as you were home by dinner?

My parents limited the amount of television we could watch as young kids, for which I'm deeply grateful. They also shielded us from things that were inappropriate for kids. At the same time, my parents modeled "loving the good" by keeping high-quality music (both Christian and non-Christian), film, and television as part of our life. As a result, my tastes were shaped by the tastes of my parents. By the time I was a teenager, they let me make my own decisions about what music, film, and TV to take in, and I had a pretty good idea by that time of what was worthwhile and what wasn't. But they largely let me make my own decisions, with some trial and error.

Talk about your approach to songwriting.

I spend a lot of time on songwriting, but it comes in seasons. I'm set up at home in such a way that I can capture an idea when it first comes to me (record a quick demo and jot down lyrics), but then I have to make time to return to the idea and mold it into a full song. For example, right now, I haven't dedicated time to songwriting in almost a year. So I have this huge backlog of ideas--short mp3 recordings, lyrics scribbled--filling up a notebook and on my computer. Some of them I think are really exciting, but it remans for me to sit down and give them enough shape to be presentable songs. I hope to do some of that this spring before touring again. Of the things I do as an independent musician, songwriting is my favorite. So I wish I could do more of it and less marketing-booking-promoting. But I'm figuring it out as I go.

In terms of process, some people always start with music or always start with lyrics. I can go either way, but music usually comes first. I have more musical ideas than lyrical ideas, and the lyrics take a lot more work to get right. I'm a perfectionist with lyrics: I don't want to ever stand up in public and have to sing a line that I know was just a "throw-away" or space filler. So I work hard to make each line hold its own.

A couple of examples. One: The song "Home" from my last album began as an instrumental piano piece that I wrote sometime around high school graduation. I loved it and played it whenever I had access to a piano, but it didn't get lyrics and thus "meaning" until I was twenty-seven, almost ten years later when I began dating my now wife. Then it became a kind of anthem to the people who have loved and cared for me as I've wandered around with a head full of "knowledge" but not able to figure my own life out. Two: "The Death of Death" began as a piano jam with a friend playing a hip-hop beat pad. A few weeks later I had a disturbing experience with some of the homeless guys I knew through volunteering at church, and I found myself playing the piano piece as a sort of "soundtrack" to my emotional world at the time. Lyrics soon followed.

How can you tell that a song is "done"?
I know a song is done when I feel overwhelmingly excited about it. Or at least, that's when it's time to put it out in public. Sometimes I'll revise a bit after performing it a few times, but typically I don't put it out in public until I'm pretty confident that it's mostly done.

Your PR also says that “[a]long the way, [you] absorbed the sounds that make Things That Can't Be Taught come alive—from early twentieth century jazz, channeled through greats like Louis Armstrong and contemporary composer Randy Newman, to folk heroes of the 1970s, James Taylor and John Prine. T-Bone Burnett once wrote that “[w]e are all branches on a tree.” What do you think you add to the musical tradition mentioned above?

This is a tough question. Certainly one worth asking, but a tough one for me to answer. I think that's because I haven't analyzed my own music very much, at least not on a meta level. I guess I tend to think "with my head down," focusing on what I'm doing right now or what comes next. Said differently, I'm pressing on as diligently as I can, trying to improve my craft, write the best songs I can, and get my music out there, hoping that if I work hard enough at it, one day I'll be considered a noteworthy leaf or branch on the same tree as the guys I love. And then hopefully other people can tell me what I've added or contributed.

For what it's worth, though, I asked my wife, and she agrees with your suggestion. She says she sees me as having "a very inclusive art" that "looks outward" while I "mine (my) own heart for stories." And again, having not thought much about it myself, I can say that I push away from the side of the singer-songwriter tradition that strikes me as self-referential to the point of being self-indulgent. When I hear carelessly or intentionally esoteric lyrics from other artists, they piss me off. I heard a Christian philosopher/thinker (I believe it was Greg Wolfe) say once something to the effect that the "particular" and the "universal" are two sides of the same coin. If the "particular" voice is telling the truth, then others will see themselves in it. Since then, in my songs, I try to tell the truth about my own life in such a way that something universally true about the human experience emerges.

I don't know if that makes me unique or if it means I'm adding anything to the tradition. But that's at least what I see myself doing. Hopefully, someday someone will think I've contributed something good to the tradition.

More from your PR: “From the first chords of “When I Work Alone”—like the gentle swell of an orchestra tuning up—to the choir shouting “hallelujah!” and shaking the walls of some great cathedral in “The Death of Death,” you can tell that Kimbrough is doing what he loves.” What might you be doing if you weren’t doing what you love?

Mold remediation? Ha! I had a nasty experience with mold in the basement of a house I rented, and the presence of so many scoundrels and manipulators in the mold remediation industry made me angry. It took months, and I was sick, depressed, and at the end of my rope when I finally met someone who was honest and trustworthy. I realized that God builds his Kingdom through the goodness and truth telling of hard working people. I asked the guy if I could work for him part time if I couldn't make enough money in the music. I kind of hope that I won't have to do that. But I grew up in a blue-collar town, and I have such respect for hard-working people (and some experience with it), enough to know that I could do it and live a good life. Heck, I might be a better musician, too.

Being a pastor has always been on my radar, too. And I still might end up in seminary when I'm thirty-six and begin pastoring in my forties. But I wanted to pursue music first, because it was where I felt God's pleasure the most. (Chariots of Fire was a big influence on me in general, my dad's favorite movie).

You’ve said that “Things That Canʼt Be Taught leads the listener through a soundscape reminiscent of an early Tom Waits record, rooted in the pre-rock-era jazz, folk, and soul music of the American South.” Why do you think that the “music of the American South” is important? What do we risk losing by neglecting the “pre-rock era”?

Well, let me say a few obvious things first. The South is where all the good American music came from. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit of one. Blues, jazz, Gospel, and rock--basically all of the important musical forms in American culture--have their roots in the South or Southern musicians. The rest of the world, from the Beatles on, have just been trying to sound like poor folks from Mississippi.

I think this is because beauty in music and art almost always come as the fruit of suffering. It's a flower growing out of a grave or honey from a lion's rotting carcass. It's damned frustrating, and I wish it wasn't this way so I could live an easy life. But the best of beauty only comes when we suffer. (There's a parallel between the aesthetic and ethical world here, too: the kindest, wisest, most glorious humans I've known were people who suffered a lot).

The South has suffered, particularly the African American community, brought over as slaves, still racked by generationally entrenched poverty. (I've often thought there was a kindred spirit between Mississippi and Russia--both places of immense suffering, and both producing some of the best writers and musicians the world has known.) And out of that hot, humid, awful, ugly place where human sin has done so much damage, some of the best music in the world has emerged. It's like God's gift to the suffering--beautiful, powerful music.

I think the danger in neglecting the pre-rock era, (or maybe it'd be better to call it the "pre-mass-media" era) is forgetting that there's no end-around suffering that produces the same kind of heart-wrenching, gut-grabbing beautiful music. I mean, listen to top-forty radio today: It's riddled with the anthems of people who don't know what suffering is; made by kids who were raised in privilege and the worst thing that ever happened to them was a girl dumped them. It rings empty. It's not even fair to malign their music, because they're doing the best they can. And to some degree, I'd put myself in that camp, as well. My whole generation spends way too much energy avoiding pain. Our privilege is the greatest enemy of our music.

I could go on this topic for a long time. But I might already be sounding a little crazy. To try to wrap it all up in a summary statement, maybe I'd say: The best music comes through suffering; the South has suffered. We need its songs to help us learn how to do something beautiful with our pain.

Why did it take you two years to follow your debut, Find Your Way Home, with Things That Canʼt Be Taught?

Well, speaking of suffering; it's funny how all this connects. I wouldn't say I've lived a very difficult life, but I did encounter some hardships along the road to making this album. The reason it took two years was that I had to raise the money, spend it down, get lost and discouraged, and then get back up and try again. I almost gave up on the album half-way through because I was low on money and working alone too much, beginning to hate my music.

The short version of the story goes like this: I hired a close friend to be my producer, but mid-way into the project, his life fell apart, and he walked away. So I lost money, lost a friend-ally, and a producer. This left me working alone for long hours, losing perspective, and nearing the point where giving up was appealing. This coincided with me getting sick, losing my voice, and realizing that I had lost my voice a lot in the last year and had actually been sick for most of the year. I thought, "How foolish of me to think I could have a career in music when I can't even keep my voice healthy."
About that time, I discovered the aforementioned mold in my basement (which made me more sick), and I had to move out and live in a friend's basement.

I remember sending out a distress e-mail to some friends, speaking out for the first time about how discouraged I was. That e-mail was kind of a turning point--I asked for prayers. People started praying, and not long after, a friend suggested I cut gluten from my diet. I did and started improving quickly. Some other friends reminded me about Kickstarter and encouraged me to do a campaign. I did, asking for five thousand dollars, and my friends and fans fully funded me in forty-eight hours. (You can view the campaign here: http://tinyurl.com/3l9xlvp).

That was a dramatic turnaround. The love and enthusiasm I received from people supporting my project put new wind in my sails. With the new funding, I was able to go work in a studio nearby with a local engineer. That got me out of my house, out of my own head, and in about three months the project was complete. It felt like I'd been clawing my way out of a grave and finally broke through to daylight.

As well, and my voice got healthy again. I was able to go on tour in the fall of 2011 and play twenty-four shows; didn't lose my voice the whole time!

How did you decide to title your latest album Things That Can’t Be Taught? Do you harbor any opinions about teaching, leaning, or education?

I've always been someone who did really well in the classroom. I loved college, liked to learn and know things and give good, nuanced answers to questions. But in my first few years of adulthood, I realized that I didn't have as many answers as I thought I did. I found myself relearning, through experience and often through mistakes, many things that I thought I already knew. It's been a humbling few years. So the album title reflects that: lots of lessons learned the hard way, things that I could not learn in a book or from someone else's experience; I had to learn them myself. Getting truth into the heart is harder than getting it into the head.

In “Two Ways to Be Worthless,” you sing, “Tell me I’m an asshole....” Some of your more conservative fans might object. Any advice to help them over the hump?

I think most listeners who understand the song will understand the strong language, so let me just give an explanation of the song.

"Two Ways to Be Worthless" is essentially a letter (or epistle) to my friends, exhorting them to meet me with "tough love" in the event that I should need it. Although the song is humorous and light-hearted in feel, the content is actually among the most serious of any of my songs. It imagines a scenario in which I have ignored my marital vows and abandoned my wife and family. (I don't have kids yet, but the song assumes that is a possible future.) In other words, the song presents a sort of worst-case-scenario for my life.

If that scenario were to come true and I was in a self-destructive downward spiral, doing great harm to the people around me, I would not want my friends to come to me and say gently, "Hey Wendell, we think you might want to reconsider a few things." I would want them to get in my face and get my attention. If ever there is a time to use strong language, that would be the time--for the sake of snapping me out of my self-pity, waking me to the damage I am doing, and calling me to repentance. Vulgar language is rarely appropriate. But when someone is in egregious sin, I think strong language is justified.

It's a little bit like Jesus calling the Pharisees "you brood of vipers!" when they claimed he was from the devil in Matthew 12. Strong language was merited because the offense was great. So while it may seem out of place to have strong language in a bouncy folk/jazz song, I just ask listeners to consider the story the song is telling. In the scenario the song describes, I believe the language to be appropriate.

My 2011 Illinois Entertainer Reviews: B

2012-03-17T21:45:00.002-07:00

KATY B

On a Mission

(Columbia)

In “Easy Please Me” (this disco doyenne likes omitting words from titles), Katy B complains no “man” pleases her because “their lines are far too cheesy” and “no boy is on the level.” Besides not knowing the difference between a man and a boy, she’s also a hypocrite: She herself isn’t on the level either. “You don’t have to have a lot of money,” she sings. “All you’ve got to have is fire burning deep in your soul.” Yeah, right. Beats like hers don’t grow on trees. In fact, they’re probably the best money can buy. They’re also the only aural detail of these songs that makes them seem special to the extent that they do. Recurring subject: feeling good. Recurring malaise: not making feeling good feel all that special.

JAMES BROWN

The Singles Volume 10: 1975-1979

(Hip-O Select)

What bliss it must have been to be James Brown in the mid-to-late ’70s. Judging from these thirty-six A and B sides, all he had to do to get on the good foot was assemble his musicians, tell them to make it funky now, grab the mic, and freely associate on whatever theme happened to be occupying his mind at the time. If the jam went on too long for seven inches of vinyl (as was the case, for instance, with “For Goodness Sakes, Look at Those Cakes”), he’d just fade it out halfway through then bring it back up on the flipside. Biggest surprise: the David Bowie “Fame” sample in “Hot (I Need to Be Loved).” Best line (from “Woman”): “My mother was a woman--and she still is.”

My 2011 Illinois Entertainer Reviews: C

My 2011 Illinois Entertainer Reviews: C

2012-03-17T21:39:00.004-07:00

CANT

Dreams Come True

(Terrible)

Any album with the word “dreams” in its title had better be dreamlike if not necessarily dreamy, and on that count Chris Taylor, a.k.a. Cant, scores a ten. A kaleidoscopic array of electronica envelops these songs, unifying them into a haze that’s soporific without being dull, maybe because by Track Four (the misleadingly titled “Bang”) Taylor’s dreams start to sound a lot like nightmares, becoming downright horrific by Track Six (the slowly churning “She Found a Way Out”). By the time Track Eight (the bad-acid-trippy title cut) careens around, Taylor has descended all the way into a Dante’s Inferno of his own making, and in neither of the last two tracks (“Rises Silent” and “Bericht”) does he find a way out.

JOHNNY CASH

Bootleg 3: Live Around the World 1956-1979

(Columbia/Legacy)

That hearing Cash “live around the world” from 1956 to ’79 isn’t as exciting as hearing him live at Folsom Prison or San Quentin in 1968-’69 says more about the crowds than him. “Here’s a song called ‘I’ll Never Forget Ol’ Whatsername,” he cracks on Disc One, Track Eleven. On Track Sixteen: “No, I don’t drink anymore--I don’t drink any less, but....” In short, although you own these songs in multiple other versions, this collection isn’t entirely redundant. By Disc Two he’s playing the White House: “[H]e was born in Arkansas, and he now lives in Tennessee,” quoth President Nixon. “But he belongs to the whole country.” Then Cash sings “A Boy Named Sue,” albeit with a vocal screech where the “son of a bitch” should be.

CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH

Hysterical

(Red General Catalog/V2)

Alec Ounsworth’s most impressive accomplishment this time out is that, from what sounds like bits of early New Order and U2, he has fashioned a shimmeringly anthemic sound that keeps the keening thinness of his voice from being annoying. He even delivers the mellow change of pace “Misspent Youth” without making the modern-day Hamlet pose he strikes in it seem ridiculous. As for the poses he strikes elsewhere, they’re tougher to assess because the music’s windswept grandeur tends to overwhelm what he’s singing. Taken as a whole, though, this album sure sounds good--hooky, pretty, and sometimes both. His formula fails him only once: The seven-minute “Adam’s Plane” not only doesn’t get to wherever it’s going but also doesn’t sound as if it ever will.

CORNERSHOP FEATURING BUBBLEY KAUR

Cornershop & the Double ‘O’ Groove Of

(Ample Play)

“Minus the mock-heroic guitars,” writes Spin’s Mikael Wood of this album, “Tjinder Singh's globalist critiques lose some of their pop-political punch.” Well, maybe, but as all 10 of these songs are sung in the Punjabi tongue of the guest lead vocalist and lyricist Bubbley Kaur, the politics would be lost on Cornershop’s English-speaking fans anyway. What won’t be is that Tjinder Singh and Benedict Ayres have seldom if ever recorded a bubblier (pun intended) or catchier version of the East-meets-West synthesis they’ve spent the last 18 years perfecting. Sitars and synthesized clavichords atop dub-wise bass and drums whose bustling shuffle might or might not be programmed--it’s a sound for sore ears. “Double Decker Eyelashes” is to cry for. And good luck not shaking it to “Don’t Shake It.”

My 2011 Illinois Entertainer Reviews: E

My 2011 Illinois Entertainer Reviews: E

2012-03-17T21:30:00.002-07:00

KURT ELLING

The Gate

(Concord)

You needn’t be a fan of vocal jazz to enjoy the latest album by this perennial Grammy nominee, although being a little old might help. Under producer Don Was, Kurt Elling and his combo transform King Crimson (“Matte Kudasai”), the Beatles (“Norwegian Wood”), Earth, Wind & Fire (“After the Love Is Gone”), and Stevie Wonder (“Golden Lady”) into acoustic, late-night meditations entirely worthy of the Bill Evans-Miles Davis (“Blue in Green”) and Marc Johnson (“Samurai Cowboy”) company they keep. The real coup though is Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out.” By slowing the tempo and upping the swing quotient, Elling puts the emphasis on the music and takes the burden off the lyrics, the too-inside nature of which he meanwhile renders moot by singing them in a sandpaper baritone that’s pure mood.

BRIAN ENO

Drums Between the Bells

(Warp)

Quoth Eno in the liner notes: "We are right at the beginning of a digital revolution in what can be done with recorded voices.... Speech has become a fully-fledged musical material at last." Funny, you’d think the guy would’ve heard of Laurie Anderson by now. All the same, if it’s by keeping his head in the sand that he dreams up soundscapes as eerily beautiful as the ones he has created on this album for the poems of Rick Holland, more power to him. In fact, although the words (read by an assorted cast) and the soundscapes mesh just fine, the soundscapes sparkle even more brightly on their own--as anyone who plunks for the limited-edition package and its bonus disc of the entire album voice free will discover.

My 2011 Illinois Entertainer Reviews: F-G

My 2011 Illinois Entertainer Reviews: F-G

2012-03-17T21:21:00.006-07:00

THE FLYING BURRITO BROTHERS

Authorized Bootleg/Fillmore East, New York, N.Y.: Late Show November 7, 1970

(Hip-O Select)

The Flying Burrito Brothers (or “the Flying Bean Sandwiches,” as one member jokes on this album right before “I Am a Pilgrim”) have been legendary for so long that it’s easy to forget how relatively small a deal they were when these forty-two minutes of music were recorded forty-one years ago. Gram Parsons, who’d just been replaced by future Firefaller Rick Roberts, wouldn’t achieve drug-casualty status for three years, Bernie Leadon was yet to become an Eagle, and the rhythm section of former Byrds wasn’t exactly auditioning for the Rolling Stones. But, oh, could Sneaky Pete Kleinow pick that pedal steel and make it weep, and, oh, could they sing! “Lazy Days,” “My Uncle,” and, lest we forget, “Wild Horses”--like, Susan Boyle has nothing on these guys.

ARETHA FRANKLIN

The Great American Songbook

(Columbia/Legacy)

Now that Rod Stewart has relinquished dibs on the “Great American Songbook” franchise, Sony moves in with this eighteen-track teaser for its dozen-disc box, Take a Look: Aretha Franklin Complete On Columbia. That’s “Columbia” as in Columbia Records, the label long maligned for trying to turn Franklin into a cross between Nancy Wilson and Mahalia Jackson and of therefore clipping the soulful wings she would later sprout on Atlantic. It turns out it’s not that simple. She sounds plenty soulful on “Cold, Cold Heart,” and elsewhere she’s hardly chopped liver. The accompaniment (the metropolitan equivalent of countrypolitan) is what takes getting used to. But Franklin sure did. And although she wouldn’t record Young, Gifted And Black until 1972, she sounds all three here--and in that order.

GOLDMUND

All Will Prosper

(Western Vinyl)

Goldmund is Keith Kenniff, an American composer and musician mysteriously attuned, on this album at least (he also records shoegaze, ambient, and children’s music), to the melodies of the Civil War-era United States--music that, as his PR puts it, “tied friends and families together in a time when the nation was being torn apart.” With nothing more than a piano and an acoustic guitar, he resurrects “Dixie,” “Shenandoah,” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” and eleven other contemporaneous songs in shatteringly ghostly renditions. Not every melody registers instantly. Several (“The Death of General Wolfe,” “Bonnie Blue Flag,” “Who’ll Save the Left?”) might even strike anyone less than intimate with the popular music of that period as new. As for the one genuinely new song, Kenniff’s “Ashoken Farewell,” it fits.

GREEN DAY

Awesome As Fuck

(Reprise)

As a description of the band and-or the music itself, this album’s Walmart-unfriendly title is either comic hubris or self-delusion. “Awesome”? This? But as a reaction to the ride on which Billie Joe, Mike, and Tré found themselves when they recorded these seventeen intensities in sixteen cities, it’s understandable and just the shibboleth to let the inarticulate hordes for whom they speak know that, even while pushing forty and with a Broadway musical just around the corner, they’re still American idiots at heart. 21^st Century Breakdown provides five songs, “21 Guns” benefits from the communal vibe, and “Cigarettes and Valentines” makes its debut. What was almost certainly not retouched in the studio: “San Diego, let me hear you scream!” “What’s in your heart, Michigan?!” and (twice) “Let’s get fuckin’ crazy!”

My 2011 Illinois Entertainer Reviews: H-K

My Review of Joel Gilbert's ELVIS FOUND ALIVE

2011-12-29T05:42:00.000-08:00

In 2010, Joel Gilbert set out to prove that Paul McCartney is dead. Now, with Elvis Found Alive, he sets out to prove that the King of Rock and Roll isn’t.

Actually, proving that seems to have been the easy part. In the film’s first few minutes, with nothing more than a box of heavily but insufficiently redacted Freedom of Information documents, Gilbert and his film crew trace Elvis Presley to a modest, suburban home in which he has apparently been living for quite some time under his longtime alias “Jon Burrows.”

What was probably hard was verifying the details that the interview subsequently granted by the outed Presley. Speaking in shadowed profile (the better to protect the anonymity he has been enjoying as a member of the federal Witness Protection Program), Presley supplies a two-hour narrative rife with so many cultural and political footnotes that only an intrepid and indefatigable researcher could have fact-checked them all.

About half of Presley’s tale, the part covering his official lifespan, will be familiar to most rock-and-roll fans. The latter half, however, not only connects many well-known Presley dots (his incessant performing and Col. Parker’s gambling debts, his Memphis Mafia and the actual Mafia, his identification with Captain Marvel, Jr., and his choice of stage apparel) but also supplies many new and even more explosive ones, including but not limited to Presley’s role in Bob Dylan’s conversion to Christianity, his role in stopping the Weather Underground, his failure to stop the ascension of either its leader Bill Ayers or Ayer’s close friend, Barack Obama (or, as Presley prefers to call him, “Barry Soetoro”), and the conditions under which he’ll make yet another comeback.

But for all of the answers that the film supplies, it raises at least one troubling question. Present among Gilbert’s crew is the actress Celeste Yarnall, Presley’s co-star in his 1968 film Live a Little, Love a Little, and her on-camera reunion with her former screen partner is touching indeed. Unfortunately, no one asks her why on July 2, 2010, she married a man named “Nazim Artist.”

In light of his declaration at one point in Elvis Found Alive that Presley considers himself Jewish, it’s a question that someone--perhaps Gilbert in his next documentary--should definitely investigate.

My 2011 Illinois Entertainer Reviews: H-K

2011-12-10T21:21:00.000-08:00

JOE HENRY

Reverie

(Anti-)

“I’m dead to the world,” Joe Henry sang in 1993, and in 2011 he sounds it. Not once during the hour it takes these fourteen songs to drag past does he up the tempo. And while the smoky, detritus-strewn, crap-bar atmosphere he and his band create suits his eloquent introspection (think Leonard Cohen for the early-Tom Waits claque), his voice doesn’t. That it’s gritty as sandpaper isn’t the problem. Lines like “Some take wine for water, / some make bread from stone, / some take love for granted like they’ll never be alone” (“Dark Tears”) are particularly convincing coming from someone who sounds hungover. But his voice is thin as sandpaper too. And when he comes on extra soulful, even his sharpest lyrics can rub you the wrong way.

THE JAYHAWKS

Mockingbird Time

(Rounder)

As birds of a feather, it was inevitable that Gary Louris and Mark Olson, the two wings with which the Jayhawks originally took flight but who’ve been estranged since 1995, would reunite. But did Louris have to count his chickens prematurely by telling Rolling Stone that his and Olson’s “goal” was “to make the best Jayhawks album that’s ever been done”? Carefully constructed though Mockingbird Time is, it isn’t the best Jayhawks album that’s ever been done. Rather, its hooks and lyrics feel as tentative as you’d expect from songwriters learning to collaborate again after a long separation. In other words, although Louris and Olson still skillfully blend the Eagles and the Brothers Everly and Flying Burrito, they have a way to go in terms of blending with each other again.

TOBY KEITH

Clancy's Tavern

(Show Dog/Universal)

If this album is any indication (and with a lead cut called “Made in America” it had better be), Toby Keith’s Southern “blue dawg” Democrat politics are simply what would’ve passed for ordinary national sentiments back when his grandmother, the bar-tending “Clancy” of the title track, was making the “regular Joes of the world” happy by keeping their beer glasses full and their ashtrays emptied. The church-going neighbors probably considered the tavern a den of iniquity, but Keith remembers it as a macrocosm of a democratic bonhomie unique to the country he loves. And not only do the rest of his latest songs keep that spirit alive, but the best of them (“Tryin’ to Fall in Love,” “Beers Ago,” “Red Solo Cup”) might’ve even qualified for Clancy’s jukebox.

My 2011 Illinois Entertainer Reviews: L

2011-12-10T19:15:00.000-08:00

MIRANDA LAMBERT

Four the Record

(Sony Nashville/RCA)

If only for the energy, humor, and intelligent sympathy that Lambert, her studio hands, and her co-writers put into it, this album deserves its acclaim. But it’s not quite energetic, funny, or intelligently sympathetic enough to justify its fifty-seven-minute length. In other words, it doesn’t provide the jolt that the twice-as-lean new album by Lambert’s side project, Pistol Annies, does, in part because the Annies are also twice as mean and somehow (therefore?) more country. Still, Lambert solo is country enough to have benefitted from playing by country’s rules, one of which is that if you can’t bowl ’em over inside half an hour minutes, maybe you deserve to be passed over by posterity for the music that Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette were making at your age.

HUGH LAURIE

Let Them Talk

(Warner Bros.)

Just what we need--an album of blues and jazz classics for people too busy watching House to discover the dozens, if not hundreds, of better versions available for the downloading. (Not for nothing, one suspects, does the disc lead off with “St. James Infirmary.”) As a vocalist, Laurie isn’t bad. With his ability to carry a tune in a battered bucket, he certainly does better by this material than Bruce Willis did by his in the 1980s. But Laurie still sings like someone who’s famous for acting, i.e., like someone who’d be doing well to land a steady gig in a French Quarter dive were he not better at playing doctor. Would you leave change in his tip jar? Yep, but probably not as much as this album costs.

NICK LOWE

Labour of Lust

(Yep Roc)

Whereas “instant classic” usually puts the “moron” in "oxymoron," this pub-rock tour de force has been proving itself worthy of the term for thirty-two years. And, as this reissue adds the previously U.K.-only “Endless Grey Ribbon” and the previously B-side-only “Basing Street,” it’s more classic now than ever. It’s also more instant. Lowe’s decision to keep Terry Williams’ drumming high in the mix provides sterner reproof to the Age of Digital Compression than it did to the Age of the Aphex Aural Exciter, and, now as then, the hooks and wit just keep on coming. Lovers of the former will enjoy discovering that the oft-anthologized “Cruel to Be Kind” gets stiff competition from the never-anthologized “Skin Deep.” As for lovers of wit, they get bawdy punch lines out the wazoo.
My 2011 Illinois Entertainer Reviews: N-P

My 2011 Illinois Entertainer Reviews: N-P

2011-12-10T02:21:00.000-08:00

WILLIE NELSON & WYNTON MARSALIS FEATURING NORAH JONES

Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles

(Blue Note)

Classy but in touch with their roots, Wynton Marsalis and his jazz quintet are the ideal musicians to recreate the vibe of a vintage Ray Charles gig. And NYC’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, where this album was recorded, is exactly the kind of place Charles would be playing today were he alive. But it would be hard to find singers less worthy of “celebrating” his impassioned soul-gospel vocal style than Willie Nelson and Norah Jones. At least Nelson is comfortable with the material. Jones, on the other hand, except maybe on “Makin’ Whoopee,” is doing well even to sound fully awake. Thank heaven then for Marsalis, who, singer though he isn’t, keeps the evening interesting with vocal turns on “Hit the Road Jack,” “Busted,” and “What’d I Say.”

PRAXIS
Profanation: Preparation for a Coming Darkness

(M.O.D. Technologies)

One good thing about avant-garde noise is that it never really sounds dated, which is especially fortunate for this apocalyptically roiling space-metal funk album by Bill Laswell (bass), Buckethead (guitar), and Brain (drums). First set to come out in 2005, it wasn’t released until 2008 and then only in Japan. Has it been worth the wait? Fans of Iggy Pop, Serj Tankian, and Mike Patton, each of whom makes a cameo, will probably think so. But it’s the recently deceased Rammellzee who steals the show. “I was reading the Bible backwards and upside down as usual,” he deadpans in “Revelations Part 2.” “And I came across a passage that said, ‘Loop-loop-de-loo.’” The music sounds upside down and backwards too--that is, when it doesn’t sound backwards and upside down.

ELVIS PRESLEY

Young Man with the Big Beat: The Complete ’ 56 Elvis Presley Masters

(Sony Legacy)

One probably shouldn’t encourage this kind of thing. If this box does well, you just know that Sony will release one dedicated to every year of Elvis’s corporeal career, right up to Fat Man with the Big Sideburns: The Complete ’77 Elvis Presley Masters. But if you’ve got $100 to spare, you really could do worse than to splurge on this five-disc set. Yes, the alternate takes and live cuts on Discs Three and Four are as comically superfluous as the interviews on Disc Five are heartbreaking: The world was his oyster, only he didn’t know that clams sometimes slam shut. But if the nearly two studio hours of Discs One and Two were all that Elvis recorded, his status as rock-and-roll’s greatest singer would still be secure.

My Illinois Entertainer Reviews: Q