Steve Wilson. On music.

Monday, December 20, 2010

J. Roddy Walston (in a tie for No. 10) as the Top 25 for 2010 Countdown! continues

Welcome to the top 25 for 2010 Countdown! Each day we'll countdown, today we continue with number 12, culminating with our (okay, my) numero uno album of the year. When they're handy I'll borrow my earlier reviews from the KC Free Press. Sometimes, I'll need a new review (or revised, actually, from the "R" blog) like this one!


I welcome all comments, criticisms, questions and dialog in general.

25. Jon Langford - Old Devils (Bloodshot)
24. Vaselines - Sex with an X (Sub Pop)
23. Drive-By Truckers - The Big To-Do (ATO)
22. Magnetic Fields - Realism (Nonesuch)
21. Dum Dum Girls - I Will Be (Sub Pop)
20. Peter Case - Wig! (Yep Roc)
 
19. Bettye Lavette - Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook (Anti-Epitaph) 
18. Super Wild Horses - Fifteen (Hovac) 
17. Parting Gifts - Strychnine Dandelion (In the Red) 
16. No Age - Everything In Between (Sub Pop)
15. The Fall - Your Future Our Clutter (Domino) 
14. First Aid Kit - The Big Black and the Blue (Wichita Recordings) 
13. Owen Pallett - Heartland (Domino)
12. Mavis Staples - You Are Not Alone (Anti-Epitaph)

10 (tie). J. Roddy Walston and the Business - s/t (Vagrant)

"Boys from Baltimore rock like their lives depend on it, and they probably do."


How to describe J. Roddy Walston and the Business?

They do play some rock ‘n’ roll. Big ol’ rock ‘n’ roll, too, damn it. It’s too crazed and punk-tinged to be “classic rock,” and it’s insufficiently parochial to qualify under the current definitions of garage-rock; too much retro-garage stuff is either too nice (mannered) or too naughty (crappy playing and recording=authenticity).

This music has roots, but it sounds like it blew right out of the barroom – fresh and ready. Frankly, Walston and the Business sound like a train wreck. Jerry Lee Lewis could be the engineer. Slade, AC/DC and T. Rex are drunk in the dining car. Led Zeppelin is high and staring down the tracks from the observation deck at the back of the train. They don’t see the crash coming, an approaching head-on featuring two cars, careening in opposite directions – one’s filled with members of the Replacements and the Stones (rock critic approved); the other is driven by Kid Rock, and Black Oak Arkansas are partying in the back seat. Yup, this Southern rock dynamo is not a straight line Pitchfork cinch. Hipster alert – if you’re scared of beautiful, vulgar rock ‘n’ roll music beware: Scurry home to your Bon Iver and Animal Collective records, now!

Emerging from this glorious train wreck, J. Roddy and his gang sound like kids who ran from the Baptist church, but still full of fervor they are ready to blow the roof off any dump they play.

I can’t tell what the hell J. Roddy is on about all of the time. It’s down to the bone stuff – living, loving, and drinking. He dances on the proverbial edge (“Brave Man’s Death”), and parties (“Don’t Break the Needle” with its dirty double entendre) to be sure. On “Don’t Get Old” Walston implores his ladylove to (not) do exactly that. Next, he launches into a roadhouse stomper called “I Don’t Want to Hear” which mixes the band’s Zeppelin II stomp with ‘c’mon everybody’ vocals straight outta Springsteen and his love for Gary U.S. Bonds. Throughout, Walston pounds the ivories (a genuine piano) like a man possessed. Logan Davis (bass) and Steve Colmus (drums) approximate the Jones-Bonham tandem beautifully, while guitarist Billy Gordon lets fly like Ariel Bender in Mott the Hoople.

J. Roddy Walston and his boys practically defy criticism. This is music for driving too fast in your death-to-the-environment mobile. Not that they sound like Kings of Leon, but they provide a lot (rather than a little) of what those preacher’s boys promised on their first album, way back when they sounded like avatars of a new suck-free Southern rock, before they started dating models and dreaming of U2. That promise was that the rough beast that blew out of the American south ecstatic and guilty, black and white, sacred and sexy would never die. If J. Roddy Walston and the Business are any indication, that great beast still roars.

Reverberating: 9.0

Mavis Staples at No. 12 as the Top 25 for 2010 Countdown Continues!



Welcome to the top 25 for 2010 Countdown! Each day we'll countdown, today we continue with number 12, culminating with our (okay, my) numero uno album of the year. When they're handy I'll borrow my earlier reviews from the KC Free Press. Sometimes, I'll need a new review like this one!


I welcome all comments, criticisms, questions and dialog in general.

25. Jon Langford - Old Devils (Bloodshot)
24. Vaselines - Sex with an X (Sub Pop)
23. Drive-By Truckers - The Big To-Do (ATO)
22. Magnetic Fields - Realism (Nonesuch)
21. Dum Dum Girls - I Will Be (Sub Pop)
20. Peter Case - Wig! (Yep Roc)
 
19. Bettye Lavette - Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook (Anti-Epitaph) 
18. Super Wild Horses - Fifteen (Hovac) 
17. Parting Gifts - Strychnine Dandelion (In the Red) 
16. No Age - Everything In Between (Sub Pop)
15. The Fall - Your Future Our Clutter (Domino) 
14. First Aid Kit - The Big Black and the Blue (Wichita Recordings) 
13. Owen Pallett - Heartland (Domino)
 
12. Mavis Staples - You Are Not Alone (Anti-Epitaph)
 
 
 "An American soul-stirring treasure adds to her great legacy"

Mavis Staples was one of the voices of civil rights, black pride and social liberation in the Sixties and Seventies. From their first recordings in the early Fifties on United, released when Ms. Staples was a teenager, through the self-titled finale in 1985, she was the voice of one of American’s musical treasures, the Staples Singers. Her father, Roebuck “Pops” Staples, an inextinguishable spirit and quiet guitar hero, passed in 2000, effectively ending the group’s fifty-two year run.

At seventy, the voice and spirit of Mavis Staples are undiminished. Her deep soul and legendary sound have attracted innumerable producers, including Prince and Ry Cooder. None have served her better than Jeff Tweedy. For Staples’ new release You Are Not Alone, the auteur behind Wilco wisely followed the producer’s equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath – first do no harm. With a singer of Staples’ depth all you need is the right songs and musicians in tune with her message. Tweedy found them. There’s no instrumental flash in these performances, but Wilco’s Pat Sansone on keyboards and ace blues guitarist Rick Holstrom (he made some great sides with the harmonica ace Johnny Dyer) provide the kind of playing that manages to be supportive and distinctive at the same time – no mean feat on music so supple, but lean. Singers more often associated with the “American” genre, Nora O’Connor and Kelly Hogan, couldn’t be better as supporting vocalists.

The songs that Staples and Tweedy have selected for You Are Not Alone come from tried and true sources like Staple’s father Roebuck, the gospel songwriter Alex Bradford, Jr. and the blues/gospel titan The Reverend Gary Davis. They also come from more contemporary writers like John Fogerty, Randy Newman, Allen Toussaint, and Tweedy himself. Staples is always at her best when she’s singing close to home. Her home turf is gospel, and unlike Sam Cooke and others who brought gospel feel to popular music, Staples has never really crossed over. While her sinewy blues feel makes the Lord’s work sexy, Staples isn’t a truly secular singer; her vision is always informed by a gospel-fueled righteousness, a sensibility that invariably returns to issues of equality, justice and compassion. Tweedy’s title song is perfect – steeped in gospel soul, but offering a new, poetic twist on the genre. John Fogerty’s “Wrote a Song for Everyone” isn’t overhauled so much as inhabited by Staples’; this is a song Staples feels deep in her bones. Only Toussaint’s “Last Train” sounds a trifled strained, the wacky Nawlins rhyming slang sounding just outside of Staples comfort zone.

You Are Not Alone is a tremendous addition to the distinguished career of the great Mavis Staples. Jeff Tweedy’s attuned, sympathetic production helps make it a durable listen. I’ve been putting this record on practically every day since its release. Believe me, it wears well. This is music that’s broken in, like an old leather jacket – tough, but comfortable.

Reverberating: 9.0