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May 31, 2008

LISA O'KANE
It Don't Hurt
(New Light)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- "Aint' Done Nothin'", the self-penned kiss-off that begins Lisa O'Kane's It Don't' Hurt, is a rocking little middle-finger of a record. "I'm thinkin' maybe you could use a change of scenery," she sneers at her one-time paramour. "I'm thinkin'...'bout a million miles from me." It's the sort of assertive, instantly catchy song Patty Loveless might once have scored a hit with -- and might still, if country radio hadn't contracted so tightly around such a limited number of artists, sounds and emotions.

It Don't Hurt has a few touches of Loveless but is actually more of a piece with the likes of Rosanne Cash, Mary Chapin Carpenter, the Judds and Kathy Mattea -- all those strong (today's preference is for "sassy") women who succeeded on country radio in the late 1980s. She writes smart songs -- "I'm Done" conveys an acceptance of what can't be changed that's a rare commodity these days -- and she covers better ones: Ernest Troost's poignant title track, John Prine's "Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness", and Marty Axelrod's biding-its-time "Got The Car Running" (as in "If he ever takes it out on me again..."). Seated at a variety of keyboards, she sings both her songs and others in a big, full-throated alto that recalls her older sisters in another way: Intimate emotions are usually best expressed intimately.

-- DAVID CANTWELL
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or David Cantwell.

Posted by Peter at 5:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 30, 2008

BOB MOULD
District Line
(Anti-)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- It must be tough to release new material when you are a genuine, rarified post-punk icon. Bob Mould surely knows that pressure. Whenever the songwriter re-emerges, longtime fans hold out hope that Mould will somehow retrace paths similar to his raucously jagged jaunts from Husker Du's mid-'80s heyday. Fans of Mould's more popcore-oriented leanings hope for a rekindling of his days fronting Sugar, the mid-'90s college-radio darling band. And me? I pick up everything, wondering if it could possibly be in the neighborhood of Mould's brilliantly sober and understated first solo album, Workbook.

Sorry, folks -- all of you. On District Line, his latest in a growing catalogue of varied solo material and his first album for the tastemaking Anti- label, Mould clears out yet more brush, carving a new musical path, albeit one that draws on just about every element of his past. Hard-rocking tunes such as "Stupid Now", "Very Temporary" and "The Silence Between Us" throb and bristle behind Mould's layered electric guitars and Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty's banging. The tender, more acoustic-driven "Walls Of Time", was originally written for, but left off, Workbook. Finally, I think I speak for most Mould fans when I express thanks that only one song reaches back to the unfortunate 2002 electronic-dance album Modulate for inspiration.

-- SCOTT BRODEUR
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Scott Brodeur.

Posted by Peter at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 29, 2008

KAREN PARKS
Nobody Knows: Songs Of Harry T. Burleigh
(Ottimavoce)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- Born in Pennsylvania just after the end of the Civil War, Henry Thacker Burleigh studied at the National Conservatory of Music, conducted African-American operas such as George Walker and Bert Williams' 1898 The Senegambian Carnival, and gained fame for his baritone singing voice. As arranger, Burleigh recast African-American spirituals as art songs; his "O Southland" used a text by poet James Weldon Johnson. He's an important, neglected figure. Nobody Knows: Songs Of Harry T. Burleigh includes spirituals such as "Weepin' Mary" and songs on the order of the knotty, complex "His Helmet's Blaze". Karen Parks, a classically trained, South Carolina-born soprano who turned up on last year's compilation Song Of America, interprets Burleigh's music perfectly. These fifteen performances, recorded in Nashville with pianist Wayne Sanders and strings from the ALIAS Chamber Ensemble, illustrate a synthesis of humble material and refined execution. Burleigh's conception and immaculate taste shine through on this collection, and the production and engineering are first-rate.

-- EDD HURT
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Edd Hurt.

Posted by Peter at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 28, 2008

JOHN HIATT Same Old Man (New West)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- As they have throughout so much of John Hiatt's career, the twin themes of love's redemption and time's inexorable passage find a common denominator (much as they did in Slow Turning) in his first release since 2005. The North Mississippi Allstars' Luther Dickinson returns to provide multi-stringed support, with drummer Kenneth Blevins resuming his on-and-off association with the artist that has extended for almost two decades. Yet the songs are plainly the main attraction, produced by Hiatt in such a stripped-down, rough-cut, primarily acoustic fashion that many of them sound like demos.

Perhaps an outside producer would have encouraged the singer to lighten up on the blackface vocal affection of the opening (and very funny) reminiscences of "Old Days", and saved the writer from the saccharine "What Love Can Do" (which, with his daughter Lily providing harmony, makes Paul McCartney sound like Sid Vicious) and the lazy chorus rhymes of the title track ("I love you more than I ever did/I love you just like a little kid/I guess I'll always be your biggest fan/Honey I'm still the same old man").

If this mixed musical bag isn't likely to extend Hiatt's following, it nonetheless has plenty of highlights to satisfy the faithful. He remains the master of the soul-twisted ballad, as "Love You Again", "Hurt My Baby" and the mandolin-driven "Our Time" attest. "On With You" forges a groove akin to Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower", while "Cherry Red" delights in its playful lyricism. The conversational confessionalism of "Let's Give This Love A Try" reflects the songwriter at his intimate best. No new tricks from the same old man, but the familiar ones still work just fine.

-- DON MCLEESE
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Don McLeese.

Posted by Peter at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 27, 2008

JENNY SCHEINMAN
self-titled/Crossing The Field
(Koch)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- Though violinist Jenny Scheinman has made her biggest mark in cutting-edge jazz, she cut her teeth on folk and country while growing up in rural California and may be best-known for accompanying rootsy singers including Lucinda Williams and Norah Jones. On her self-titled disc -- one of two being released simultaneously -- she reveals herself to be as personal a stylist with her vocals as she is with her violin, navigating roots and folk-rock styles with consummate ease.

Benefiting from an earthy, vibrant sound fashioned by producer and guitarist Tony Scherr in his home studio in Brooklyn, New York, Scheinman's forceful but friendly singing on tunes such as Mississippi John Hurt's "Miss Collins" and her own mystical rocker "Come On Down" have the quality of light escaping darkness. The settings vary from voice and slide guitar to wired electric band. The standout tracks include Williams' "King Of Hearts", which is shook up by Scherr's shivering guitar solo, and an unlikely reading of the Platters classic "Twilight Time" that brings it smolderingly up to date.

The equally varied Crossing The Field, an instrumental album, doesn't hold together quite as well. With each segue from lush, classically-tinged orchestral piece to twangy dips into Frisellian Americana featuring inventor Bill Frisell on guitar to swinging encounters with the great young jazz pianist Jason Moran, you're reminded of how eclectic and ambitious the album's aims are. At times, the violinist gets lost in the shuffle.

The collaborations with Moran, including a lovely reading of Duke Ellington's "Awful Sad" (the only non-original on the album), suggest these two adventurous artists should record a complete album together. Crossing The Field comes alive most when they share the spotlight.

-- LLOYD SACHS
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Lloyd Sachs.

Posted by Peter at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 26, 2008

JO CAROL PIERCE
Dog Of Love
(self)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- A new album arriving out of the blue from Jo Carol Pierce is like a miracle -- an immaculate conception, a resurrection. The Lubbock-to-Austin transplant last (and first) released a recording in 1996, though the conceptual Bad Girls Upset By The Truth was as much chicken-fried performance art as a collection of songs. She'd been flushed from obscurity three years earlier by Across The Great Divide: Songs Of Jo Carol Pierce, in which a stellar array of Austin artists introduced songs celebrated among fellow Pierce fans to a wider public. Before that, she was known mainly as Jimmie Dale Gilmore's former wife.

An appreciation of her new work requires none of that ancient history -- though, thematically, Dog Of Love feels like a belated follow-up chapter to Bad Girls. Even Pierce devotees will be surprised at how musically rich this song cycle is -- as well as, no surprise, lyrically inspired. With production by veteran bassist Mark Andes (formerly of Spirit and Heart, now an Austin mainstay), guitar and songwriting collaboration from the great David Halley (and when will we hear another album from him?), and musical support as well as obvious inspiration from Blackie White, Pierce's husband (a.k.a. Guy Juke, renowned visual artist), Pierce has never sounded more melodically and vocally assured.

The predominant mode is Pierce's piano balladry, with disarmingly supple vocals ("Naked And Home", "Life Is Sweet", "Barb Wire Clown"). Other highlights range from the tremulous, poetic "You're So True" to the Brazilian-tinged "Quicksand" to the guitar-driven propulsion of "Rock In My Shoe" to the blast-from-the-past "My Boyfriend" to the Stooges-with-a-smile title track. For fans, this is holy communion, while initiates can receive their baptism here.

-- DON MCLEESE
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Don McLeese.

Posted by Peter at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 23, 2008

DAILEY & VINCENT
self-titled
(Rounder)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- Jamie Dailey just finished nine years working with Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver. Darrin Vincent spent the better part of a decade with Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder. Both Skaggs and Lawson are known for putting together powerful traditional bluegrass ensembles, but Dailey and Vincent have chosen to explore an even more traditional acoustic sound: the brother-style duet.

The history of bluegrass music is dotted with brother duets: Bill and Charlie Monroe, the Blue Sky Boys, the Stanley Brothers, the Lilly Brothers. Skaggs and Tony Rice recorded a classic brother-style album in the early 1980s. Don Rigsby and Dudley Connell did the same in the late '90s. But until now, you'd have been hard-pressed to name a high-profile duo touring the bluegrass circuit today.

Workingman's anthems, gospel songs, and bittersweet nostalgia are the stuff of Dailey and Vincent. Their characters find work in Detroit factories; they drive railroad spikes; they float cedar logs down the Cumberland River. They are committed to God and country; they're confidently heaven bound. Their vision of "the good old days" revolves around family and a cool front porch in Elrod, Alabama, 1949.

Dailey and Vincent are both masters of harmony singing, and they are supported here by a cast of top-shelf pickers. The most moving music, however, comes from the pared-down sound of two voices, a guitar, and a mandolin. In fact, their sparse, reverent rendering of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings' "By The Mark" could plant a seed of faith in the hardest of skeptic hearts.

-- DAVID BAXTER
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or David Baxter.

Posted by Peter at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 22, 2008

ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO
Real Animal
(Back Porch/Manhattan)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- I still remember the dreary January afternoon, ten years ago, when Grant showed me the mock-up of the cover of ND #14. It was the day before the magazine was due at the printer and I was helping with some last-minute proofreading. When I saw the words "Alejandro Escovedo: Artist of the decade" splayed to the right of Glenn Hilario's illustration, my first thought was, "You gotta be kidding. Alejandro is terrific, but what about, I dunno, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle or Lucinda Williams? Or maybe an omnibus nod to '90s alt-country progenitors Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt and Wilco?"

Grant had recently moved to Nashville and we were working in his second-floor apartment above a garage in southwest Nashville. When I asked him about the thinking behind the decision to lionize Alejandro in this way, he shrugged and said that there were just some artists you went to the mat for, and that "Al" was one of them.

Something to that effect anyway. Grant cited a couple-three other names as examples -- Billy Joe Shaver, the Bottle Rockets, maybe Steve Earle -- before going on to say that making the announcement two years before the decade ended was sure to get people talking, not to mention attract attention to a deserving and largely unsung artist.

Alejandro's annunciation certainly got me thinking, and the more I mulled the idea of him being named alt-country's artist of the decade, the more sense it made, especially coming from ND. The spirit of his bracing fusion of punk, rock and twang was totally in keeping with that of a magazine born of a Seattle grunge scene that increasingly turned to tradition-steeped, song-based material for grounding. Not only that, Alejandro embodied many of things that ND aspired to be -- original, nervy, forthright, committed.

"Al" has long since proven Grant and Peter's case, and not just with his unassailable records and epiphanic shows, but also with his irrepressible zest for living, even as he struggles with Hepatitis C, a perennially life-threatening condition. His forthcoming Real Animal (due June 24 from Back Porch/Manhattan), meanwhile, sounds to me like a career record, at least after my first dozen or so plays. The album definitely qualifies as a summation of sorts, a taking stock -- through inspired new material written with fellow traveler Chuck Prophet -- of more than three decades on the road and in the studio.

"Nun's Song" looks back on Escovedo's late '70s stint with the punk band the Nuns, who, along with fellow San Franciscans the Avengers, opened the last-ever Sex Pistols show at Winterland in 1978. "We don't want your approval /It's 1978/We know we're not in tune/We know we'll never be great," Alejandro defiantly taunts. Later, after musical or lyrical nods to "Louie Louie", "96 Tears" and the Stooges, he gives a shout-out to a punk goddess who smacks of Nuns lead singer Jennifer Miro, while in "Smoke", he namechecks Richie Dietrich, another vocalist with the group, who apparently did time in Chino.

"Chip n' Tony" revisits Alejandro's days with the Kinman brothers in the cowpunk outfit Rank & File. "We're coming on strong, just like an accident," he exults, alluding to the band's then-unholy alliance of thrash and twang. "Chip and Tony said it was against the law/Come on!"

Scenes from the Chelsea Hotel, Max's Kansas City and San Francisco's Tenderloin are interspersed throughout the album's thirteen tracks, along with snapshots of poets on barstools and the fringe-dwelling likes of Sweet Demida, Neon Leon, and "Nancy in her black underwear/Dead on the bathroom floor."

Dispatches from the demimonde tend to predominate, but there also are plenty of intimate, introspective moments here. None is as wrenching as "Sister Lost Soul", a tender outpouring of regret, accented by Spectorian flourishes, for someone from Alejandro's past who is forever beyond his grasp. "You had to go without me/You wandered off alone," he sings, "And all the neon light reflecting off the sidewalk/Only reminds me you're not coming home."

In "Golden Bear", a spooky ballad that seems to be about the potentially fatal infection he's lived with for more than a decade, he muses, "There's a creature in my body/There's a creature in my blood/Don't know how long he's been there/Or why he's after us." Elsewhere, he reckons, "Nobody left unbroken, nobody left unscarred...That's just the way things are."

Sonically, Real Animal serves as a compendium of Alejandro's music, reflecting nearly every facet of his expansive body of work. "Smoke" is volcanic punk of the sort heard in his epic remake of Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog", while "Always A Friend", punctuated by ebullient "uh-oh" chants, is a surging post-glam anthem, snakeskin boots and all. "Swallows Of San Juan" is but the latest example of the gorgeous chamber-pop Escovedo and his band have cultivated over the last decade and a half; "Sensitive Boys" is one of his crepuscular, pathos-drenched ballads. The harmonica blues of "People" and slashing guitar of "Real As An Animal" have the tough garage-y feel of his work with the True Believers and Buick MacKane. The spirits of fellow rock 'n' roll animals Lou Reed, Ian Hunter and David Johansson are in there, too.

All of Alejandro's musical passions are represented here, with the exception of twang, the absence of which isn't entirely surprising, given that Real Animal was produced by Tony Visconti, perhaps best known for his glam-inflected work with David Bowie and T. Rex.

"Slow Down", the elegiac ballad that closes the record, has Alejandro singing, "Close your eyes and you can hear the music in the wind." Listening to the by turns lovely and serrated playing on Real Animal, I found myself hearing echoes of songs, from "The Rain Won't Help You" to "Broken Bottle", from just about every phase of Alejandro's career.

Much of that music is intertwined with No Depression, a magazine that, at its best, enabled us to hear the music in the wind as well.

-- BILL FRISKICS-WARREN
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Bill Friskics-Warren.

Real Animal will be released June 24. More details at www.alejandroescovedo.com

Posted by Peter at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 21, 2008

GUTTER TWINS
Saturnalia
(Sub Pop)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- Elegant gloom is the shared gene between the Gutter Twins, a new duo pairing two of the more enigmatic figures of the 1990s alternative nation: Mark Lanegan of the Screaming Trees, an early architect of grunge in the northwest, and Greg Dulli, who fronted the Afghan Whigs and later the Twilight Singers, a collective which excelled at beautiful moods. Their collaboration is the result of opposing strengths: Lanegan's sludge-rock inclinations and Dulli's sensual soul, which together examine both the horrors and the splendor of primal introspection.

Maybe because his baritone vocals have nowhere to go but down, but Lanegan's half engages the least. There is standard nihilism on "Idle Hands", a synth-rocker stacked with guitar riffs in which Lanegan delivers goth-ready lyrics -- "I suffer you/You suffer me/We are the devil's plaything/Into this reckoning" -- that sound like napkin philosophy by Marilyn Manson. His darker tones are best used in more unexpected ways, including "All Misery/Flowers", where, atop a twitchy beat, he releases a torrent of abstract vocal images ("I saw an animal/With eyes like mine on fire") that sound directed from a nightmare.

The Twins sound best trying to rise up from the gutter instead of laying there resigned. Thanks to a host of collaborators (from Joseph Arthur to New Orleans electro-whiz Quintron), the music is exotically arranged and restless. Dulli's soaring vocals shade the music with spiritual overtones, making it both personal and universal. Some of his best vocal work is here, especially "God's Children", a psych-anthem reaching for redemptive glory. On "I Was In Love With You", grinding guitar textures stack tension that Dulli breaks through, his voice intoning the title lament with sorrow and also catharsis.

-- MARK GUARINO
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Mark Guarino.

Posted by Peter at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 20, 2008

BAND OF HEATHENS
self-titled
(BOH)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- With its triple-guitarist/singer/songwriter approach to southern-fried roots-rock, Austin's Band Of Heathens draws quick comparisons to the Drive-By Truckers, although their debut marks them as being quite memorable in their own right. Gruff-voiced Colin Brooks serves up the bluesy "Cornbread" and the big-riffed rocker "Heart On My Sleeve". Ed Jurdi's contributions include the rousing opener "Don't Call On Me" (think the Eagles with Texas roadhouse grit) and the introspective love song "40 Days". Gordy Quist supplies the Little Feat-grooved "Unsleeping Eye" and the melancholic romantic ballad "Maple Tears". With their wealth of wonderful tunes, it's easy to see why Texas music great Ray Wylie Hubbard signed on to produce this fabulous first effort.

-- MICHAEL BERICK
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Michael Berick.

Posted by Peter at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 15, 2008

VAN MORRISON
Keep It Simple
(Lost Highway)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- Van Morrison is the kind of superlative singer who justifies the cliche about the artist who "could sing the phone book." The songs on Keep It Simple are certainly better than names and numbers, though none of them rank with Morrison's best. To be fair, competing with one's finest work is a Herculean challenge for an artist who has made records for over four decades and just recently repackaged his past into multiple volumes of "hits."

Blues shuffles and country ballads are the templates for much of Keep It Simple. A beefy organ riffles through the bluesy songs, such as "How Can A Poor Boy", while pedal steel surfaces on the country-styled tunes. Background singers who turn occasionally schmaltzy are applied liberally, and familiar lyrical phrases abound. "Don't get around much anymore," admits Morrison on "Don't Go To Nightclubs Anymore", while on "School Of Hard Knocks", the singer is left "high and dry." Morrison as much as admits that the verse melody of "Love Come Back" owes a debt to Hanks Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", but instead of the moon, his song finds the "sun behind the clouds."

"Song Of Home" is a sweet country waltz that transcends its familiar allusion to "harbor lights," but on "Soul", Morrison's blue-note exhortations best explain what he otherwise expresses in mundanely literal words. On "Behind The Ritual", a meditative seven-minute groove that closes the collection, Morrison chants of "drinking that wine" and later sings a verse of, literally, "blah blah blah." Blame it on the pleasurable perspective of being a Morrison fan for decades, but that just doesn't seem as poetic as the "nah nah nah" calls of "Caravan".

Posted by Peter at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 14, 2008

ABIGAIL WASHBURN & THE SPARROW QUARTET
self-titled
(Nettwerk)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- Abigail Washburn has resisted categorization from the start of her relatively young career. She plays banjo with the traditionalist all-female string band Uncle Earl, but she released a solo album in 2005 that included, alongside old-time chestnuts, a couple of songs written and sung in Mandarin Chinese. That year she also put out a deceptively modest EP with the Sparrow Quartet, which she formed with her banjo mentor Bela Fleck, cellist Ben Sollee and fiddler Casey Driessen. The five-song disc only hinted at the quartet's stylistic expansiveness, and at the options it made available to a singer and songwriter of Washburn's imagination and talent.

Both are given plenty of rein on this spirited and elegant album, produced by Fleck, which permanently removes Washburn from the ranks of revivalists and puts her in a broad if loosely defined art-folk community with musicians such as Joanna Newsom and Nina Nastasia, whose work expands the possibilities of folk idioms in personal and unpredictable ways. In Washburn's case, that means a mingling of Appalachian banjo tunes, traditional Asian forms (mostly Chinese, but one song is called "A Kazakh Melody") and jazz inflections.

Hybridization is a tricky business, particularly in the realm of "world music," where literal-minded forced marriages often produce something less than the sum of their parts. What Washburn understands, either implicitly or explicitly, is that folk forms themselves are often hybrids of one kind or another. (Consider the phrase "Appalachian banjo tune," which describes an alloy of African, English and Celtic cultures, forged over a century of cross-fertilization.) And hybrids work best when they make sense in some intuitive, non-academic, non-gimmicky way to their creators.

Washburn's forays into Chinese forms, such as the breathtaking "Taiyang Chulai", don't feel like exoticism for the same reason the native midwesterner's Appalachian appropriations don't: Both are built on an affinity that goes well beyond mimicry or high-minded tribute. Washburn majored in East Asian studies and has spent a lot of time in China off and on for the past dozen years. She came to its music by way of its language, which she is reported to speak fluently. I have no way to judge the fidelity of her pronunciation or pitch, but the key from the perspective of a western listener is that her vocals on a handful of Mandarin-language songs sound comfortable and unaffected. The same is true of her singing in English, for that matter; she has a strong and pretty voice that she does not try to contort into some exaggerated mountaintop wail.

But the 28-year-old's linguistic and cultural dexterity is just the starting point of the adventurousness on display here. The Sparrow Quartet is a real ensemble, not a backing band, and most of the music was written collaboratively. All four members show a fluid ease in moving between conventions and genres, and sometimes in abandoning them altogether. It is hard, for example, to categorize a song such as "A Fuller Wine", with its rolling banjos, chugalug fiddle and swooping, sonorous cello. The complex arrangement picks up the melody of Washburn's vocal line and plays it out in variations that ricochet back and forth, transforming what could have been a piece of pleasant coffeehouse folk into something much richer.

The same thing happens on other tracks, from the moody blues of "Strange Things" to the superficially straightforward string-band rave-up "Banjo Pickin' Girl". Despite the presence of two banjos -- and despite one of them being played by Bela Fleck -- the bowed instruments really set the tone of the album. Washburn and Fleck trade licks and provide propulsion, but the interplay between Sollee and Driessen creates the stylistic bridges that support Washburn's melodic and cultural explorations (which include, I should note, yodeling).

The result is an unusual and unexpected album, one that inches toward some global-folk ideal without sacrificing anything by way of specificity or peculiarity.

-- JESSE FOX MAYSHARK
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Jesse Fox Mayshark.

Posted by Peter at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 13, 2008

DUFFY
Rockferry
(Mercury/Rough Trade)

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- Someone with ears mentioned Duffy's name during SXSW, but long experience has taught me not to believe the hype from England (and James Hunter doesn't count). Or maybe there isn't any hype, and whoever it was I was talking to has especially good ears.

Duffy, in any event, is a comely young ~~English~~ Welsh woman with a fondness for 1960s orchestral pop. Mostly a recipe for disaster, but she's got it just about right. If there is a Petula Clark/Dusty Springfield divide, she falls closer to the Petula Clark side. But all nods to the past aside (and there are many on her self-titled debut), Duffy's voice is quite her own. And it's worth noting that she's co-written the ten songs on this slender, 37-minute album. Just the right length for the LPs from which Rockferry clearly draws inspiration.

And it is Duffy's voice which is the principal charm of her debut. It has a nice little rasp to it in the lower register (I am reminded of the Canadian singer Romi Mayes, though nobody else will make that jump), but as she slides effortlessly upward it becomes sweet and a tiny bit breathy. It is, in any event, a solid instrument over which she has substantial control, and which she uses quite tastefully.

The songs are mostly the kind of relationship fluff which fits neatly atop a string section (notably what I gather is the first single, "Warwick Avenue," which opens with what one hopes is a knowing nod toward "My Girl"; as "Hanging On Too Long" vaguely echoes "Smiling Faces"), and she's not above a drum machine ("Serious"). Set against a hollow-body guitar -- and nothing else -- on "Syrup & Honey" she acquits herself marvelously. No cheap tricks, careful technique, plenty of emotion. And it's as good a song as she offers in this set. Her New Orleans nod, "Mercy," swings along nicely, with a more nasal, sassier voice than she shares elsewhere. And a more knowing point of view. And a fabulous hook.

Like the 1960s albums Rockferry is meant to acknowledge, some of the songs are dross ("Delayed Devotion" and "Hanging On Too Long"; or maybe my dislike of Philly soul deafens my ears to its pleasures). And even the middling songs are carefully, freshly, lovingly executed.

The inevitable comparison is, I fear, to Amy Winehouse. Ms. Duffy has a better voice, and more to say. More room to grow. More likelihood of recording ~~a second~~ another album. I'm not a real aficionado of her reference points, but Duffy has a first-rate voice, and this is as good an album as I've heard this year.

Posted by Grant at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

May 1, 2008

TIM O'BRIEN
Chameleon
(Proper American)

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- Chameleon finds former Hot Rize hotshot Tim O'Brien puttering around co-producer Gary Paczosa's garage with a "hillbilly apparatus" that includes guitar, mandolin and bouzouki. O'Brien plays the hell out of them, swinging minor-key blues on "Where's Love Come From" and making something nicely obsessive of his fiddle accompaniment on "Phantom Phone Call". He sings in a warm, bluesy voice, and the material -- by O'Brien and a brace of collaborators that includes David Olney and John Hadley -- confounds expectations in charming fashion. On "Phantom Phone Call", he declares that "the mobile phone is a threat to the human race," while "Megna's" is a piece of reconstituted childhood memory on which O'Brien sings the praises of a vendor whose melons, okra and aubergines gain him the attention of "pretty women."

Chameleon transcends formalism; O'Brien has something to say about imperialism on "This World Was Made For Everyone", which praises "our robust economy" in ambiguous fashion. "Father Forgive Me" features an appearance by Jesus and O'Brien himself, who meditates on fate, "the midnight garden of agony," and gigs that compromise a working musician's soul. "Hoss Race" places the singer at the track, where, for once, he's winning.

Jaunty, accomplished and funny, Chameleon presents a persona along with the amazing licks; this is an average guy too observant for his own good. Global warming foils his suicide attempt in "World Of Trouble", which also mentions Humvees and Asian bird flu. Is it time to "plant orange groves in the Smokies"? Could be, now that he mentions it.

Posted by Peter at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)