Reverberations Countdown-No. 8, Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

Welcome to the top 25 for 2010 Countdown! Each day we'll countdown, today we continue with number 8, 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. 

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)
10 (tie). Aloe Blacc - Good Things (Stones Throw)
  9. Roky Erickson & Okkervil River - True Love Cast Out All Evil (Anti-Epitaph) 


   8. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest (4AD)

Dream states, punk power and wounded, alienated youth” 

 

Bradford Cox has suggested that the inspiration for the title of Deerhunter’s beautiful new album Halcyon Digest was “the way we write and rewrite and edit our memories to be a digest version of what we want to remember, and how that’s kind of sad.” It’s his intense sense of the sadness of memory that drives Halcyon Digest. And it’s only reflective of a deeper, experiential melancholy; after all, what Cox describes is simply what human memory does. It’s Cox who locates the pathos in it.

Halcyon Digest is a culmination of the vision that Cox has built over the course of several Deerhunter releases and his solo work as Atlas Sound. That’s not to say that it isn’t a group effort. After all, two of the best songs on Digest are by guitarist Lockett Pundt. “Desire Lines,” at 6:42 and positioned as the closing track on a theoretical (on cd, anyway) side one, achieves a mesmerizing, repetitive density. Lundt’s shimmering guitar lines are equal parts Cure, Sonic Youth and kudzu-draped Strokes. The pensive lyrics (“what was once grace now undertows”) reinforce Cox’s marriage of the wistful and glum. Lundt’s ‘Fountain Stairs” allies a “Waiting for my Man” urgency to a more blithe vision (“when I look around I can feel it spinning, feet on the ground head on the ceiling”).

So, indeed – Deerhunter is very much a band. Yet, as the rest of Halcyon Digest demonstrates, Deerhunter is very much Bradford Cox’s band. Cox’s yearning captures the bland horrors at the core of the suburban dream, expressing defiance and rage in muted, stream of consciousness poetics. With empathy for a young lad doubtlessly like himself in “Don’t Cry” he suggest the boy’s “mansions are fading still,” and on “Revival” Cox uses a Bolan/Bowie guise and a modified Spector beat to illuminate “all these darkened hallways.”

There’s a voluntary isolation to the Lennon-like “Sailing.” “Memory Boy’s” chiming guitars and pounding (dig the propulsive double-time on the bridge) beat carry a reminiscence that alluedes to the departure of a hippie father. There’s an Everly Brothers-go-Twin Peaks unease about “Basement Scene,” as it captures that moment in youth when “I don’t want to get old” transforms into “I wanna get old.” ‘Helicopter” is harrowing, an elliptical answer to novelist Dennis Cooper’s grim saga of a young male sex slave. The song’s enveloping, almost Elizabethan charms make it both enchanting and haunted.

Cox turns up the heat on “Coronado,” an evocation of rejection and rage with a musical lineage that goes back to Diamond Dogs era David Bowie. Cox goes solo for the album’s closing track “He Would Have Laughed.” Dedicated to Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr. (Jay Reatard), “Laughed” is a do not go silent epitaph about questions answered and unresolved - it’s also a one man band tour de force that evokes Lindsey’s work methods.

Deerhunter’s sound is derived from many sources – from the Clean to Stereolab, from Kraut-rock to Motown. Together, Cox and Lundt, with bassist Josh Fauver and drummer Moses Archuleta, have created a sound that’s dreamy and ambient, but powered by punk at the same time. Some of their songs are sheer pop pleasures; others drift in and out of your consciousness. Halcyon Digest is a near perfect expression of their art – a millennial time capsule full of lost youth, alienated affections and the dreams that remain.

Reverberating: 9.0 (original), upgraded to 9.1

Roky Erickson at No. 9. 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 9, 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. Such is the case with this piece on Roky Erickson. 

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)
10 (tie). Aloe Blacc - Good Things (Stones Throw)

  9. Roky Erickson & Okkervil River - True Love Cast Out All Evil (Anti-Epitaph)


"Astonishing return from the abyss by a rock pioneer"

There’s a documentary film, directed by Keven McAlester, which shares its name with one of Roky Erickson’s classic songs, "You’re Gonna Miss Me." The film chronicles Roky Erickson’s descent into madness. It covers his lost years (hell, decades), a downward spiral precipitated by one lysergic voyage too many, the absurd barbarism of American drug laws and enforcement, the indictable cruelty of the Texas penal system, and his own family’s bizarre psycho-religious preoccupations. The story is tragic. That’s on overused word. Wide receivers pull a hamstring and miss a playoff game and it’s a “tragedy.” Roky Erickson’s story is the real deal.

A bit lost in this tragic tale is the reason, outside of simple human empathy, that anyone gives a shit. It’s the music. Roky Erickson is a remarkable figure in rock music history. His band, the 13th Floor Elevators, made three studio recordings in the sixties that influenced countless musicians (artists like R.E.M., ZZ Top, Primal Scream, Doug Sahm, T-Bone Burnett and the Jesus and Mary Chain contributed to a 1990 “tribute” record called Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye). His solo work from the seventies and eighties, forged through the fog of mental illness and depression, still adds to his myth. His “horror-rock” with the Aliens was nearly as celebrated and influential as his work with the Elevators. Shock, novelty and other such notions aside, Erickson is a wonderful, expressive singer and a remarkable songwriting talent. For ample demonstration of his depth and breadth as a writer I would steer you to a tremendous collection on Shout Factory called I Have Always Been Here Before.

In the early part of the previous decade, Erickson was rescued from the stasis of his mother’s loving, but misguided care (she had religious reasons for denying Erickson schizophrenia medications) and custody was granted to his brother Sumner. Sumner, a tuba player in the Pittsburgh Symphony, had escaped the Erickson family’s religious entrapment and despair. His intelligence and caring quite simply saved Roky’s life. As Will Sheff’s liner notes to True Love Cast Out All Evil plainly state, there are years Erickson will never get back. There was damage done to his psyche and his intellect. Thankfully, though, that’s not the end or the essence of the story.

Cool as that was, it in no way, shape or form prepared me for the triumph of True Love Cast Out All Evil. This album is a revelation, an artistic rebirth, and a joyous collaboration between Erickson and Okkervil River and Austin, Texas band with a pretty impressive resume of their own.

Cast Out’s song stack is bookended by two songs that derive (as do the recordings themselves) from Erickson’s days at The Rusk Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where Roky was sent after a pot bust to commingle with murderers and rapists. The psychedelic Biblical vision of “Devotional Number One” opens the album, the more hopeful, direct “God is Everywhere,” concludes it. The songs in between speak to the whole range of emotion and experience contained in Erickson’s remarkable story.

He pulls no punches, but these songs are amazingly free of self-pity; this is just Erickson telling it like it was, and is. “Be and Bring Me Home” finds him shouldering not his heavy load, but just his “given” load. “Bring Back the Past’ is a thrilling two minutes of 12-string folk-rock. “Please, Judge” makes poetic record of Erickson’s plea for freedom; written during his incarceration, it’ s all the more compelling for its use of third-person voice. There are few comparisons to this music when it comes to depth of expression — maybe Bob Dylan and Richard Manuel’s “I Shall Be Released.” “Please, Judge” is followed by the barely contained rage of “Johnny Lawman,” a one-line (repeated seven times) howl from the bottom of Erickson’s existential hell. Okkervil River plays like a hurricane behind him, a perfect musical representation of the lyric’s twisted portrayal of the law’s perversion. Vocally, Erickson may have lost some of the top end of his range, but he’s never sung more expressively. The impact of these performances is at once chilling and heart-rending.

Okkervil River is a marvel throughout. They project the regal authority of early Procol Harum, the massive power of Mott the Hoople, the nimble moves of the Band, and the howling distortion of early Velvet Underground. Cast Out would not be the powerful statement that it is without their committed musicianship. Guitarist and producer Will Sheff is especially central to the album’s success. It was his task to cull an album’s worth of songs from the roughly 60 songs submitted for consideration by Erickson's management. His selections not only present the diversity and depth of Erickson's talent, they tell a story. It’s a story of abject misery (“Goodbye Sweet Dreams”) to be sure, but it’s finally a tale of renewal (“Forever” — ‘One is not a style. One is not a trend’), family (“Be and Bring Me Home” — an especially dramatic and soulful vocal performance), love (the title song) and possibility (“Birds’d Crash”).

True Love Cast Out All Evil is the sound of an artist reborn. It features some of Roky Erickson’s finest, deepest singing. Okkervil River’s accompaniment is as natural, essential and empathetic as the Band’s on Dylan’s Planet Waves album; itself a statement on pain, love and the stuff of life itself. Like Dylan’s music, this music is Americana in the truest, deepest sense of the term. Rooted in blues, folk, country, gospel and rock, the sounds of True Love Cast Out All Evil dispel any latent notions of Erickson as some psychedelic freak and confirm his status as a great American artist.

Reverberating: 9.3 (original), downgraded to 9.1 (it's a tremendous record, but my early enthusiasm has been ever so slightly tempered)

Aloe Blacc (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 10, 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)

10 (tie). Aloe Blacc - Good Things (Stones Throw)

"Aloe Blacc hits the refresh button for Soul"




Panamanian born Aloe Blacc brings the skills he developed as a rapper (a decade in the hip-hop duo Emanon) to his second record
as a neo/retro soul singer on the Stones Throw label, and the results are splendid. His vocal influences range from Marvin Gaye to Gil Scott-Heron, but over the course of Good Things Blacc asserts his own soul vision. He may not have the chops of Marvin, but he’s a soulful, supple singer whose hip-hop informed
phrasing gives him a clear identity.

The production by the Stones Throw crew evokes old school, Seventies soul
music, but it’s fresh enough to sound totally contemporary. Leon
Michels, on keys, guitar and sax, knows his Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye
(What’s Goin’ On), and Charles Wright and the 103rd Street Rhythm band -
bringing the funk and enhancing the songs. Nick Movshon’s bass playing is an
encyclopedia of soul and funk bass, endlessly inventive, moving the songs,
sometimes stealing the show by not trying to steal the show.

Blacc’s songs honor his heritage while extending it. If the catchy, arresting
capitalist critique ‘I Need a Dollar’ isn’t an anthem for these times, I don’t
know what is. And “Life So Hard,” with its There’s a Riot Goin’ On vibe isn’t
far behind. Blacc shows his stylistic range with a knowing, nuanced take on
Lou Reed’s ‘Femme Fatale.’ His ‘Mama Hold My Hand’ echoes both Bill Withers
and 2Pac, while standing confidently in their esteemed company.

There’s a not so quiet revolution going on in contemporary rhythm ‘n’ blues.
Singers as diverse as Raphael Saadiq and Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed, or Mayer
Hawthorne and John Legend are going to the well of classic soul and drawing
waters of melody, invention and humanity that are bringing a genre thirsting for real
human emotion back to life. Good Things absolutely lives up to its name; it’s a fresh,
original collection of songs from a singer-songwriter who understands that modern black
music has to look back in order to move ahead.

Reverberating: 9.0

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

Owen Pallett at No. 13 in the continuing Top 25 for 2010 Countdown!

Welcome to the top 25 for 2010 Countdown! Each day we'll countdown, today we continue with number 14, 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, as I have in this case. 

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)

"Gifted Canadian musician composes an alienated song cycle for our age"

 

Owen Pallett has played or arranged strings for innumerable alternative stalwarts like The Arcade Fire, Beirut and Fucked Up. His solo work was previously released under the Final Fantasy moniker. For Heartland, his often-brilliant new record, he’s just Owen Pallett.


Fans of the artist can give you more background than I’m inclined to pursue or portray, from his sexuality to his Dungeons and Dragons obsession. Supposedly, his previous album He Poos Clouds practically required D & D familiarity to decode. I’m a grown man and I could give a rat’s ass. Fortunately, to enjoy the music on Heartland I don’t have to.

And enjoy it I do — despite the fact that Pallett courts everything I detest in the precious modern artiste. His arrangements are complex, sometimes to the point of fussiness. At times, as on the opening track “Midnight Directives," he buries a good melody under au courant layers of electro-percussive percolation. And his lyrics can court obscurity to unnerving degrees.

His best songs are brilliantly crafted, though, and at their most communicative and impassioned they can be uniquely moving. Pallett has skills; you know — like in “Napoleon Dynamite” — composing skills, arranging skills, violinist skills. On the best performances from Heartland he puts these skills to work in service to the songs. An extraordinary talent by pop, indie or any standards, the multi-layered musicality of his arrangements approaches the work of John Cale on Paris 1919, updated for a post-digital universe.

That’s not to say there’s much tech-overkill to Pallett’s palette. For the most part, these songs are carried by violin, viola, keyboards (acoustic and electronic) and percussion. And when he needs embellishment he calls upon the Czech Symphony Strings and the St. Kitts’ Wind Ensemble, giving many of these tracks a full (sometimes lush, sometimes strident) chamber sound.

The protagonist of Heartland’s narrative of a sort is a farmer named Lewis. He has a nemesis named Owen. Yeah, that Owen. It’s complicated, convoluted even, but taken individually the songs address personal and political conflict (“Keep the Dog Quiet”), identity and religious devotion (“Red Sun NO. 5”), youthful defiance (“Lewis Takes Off His Shirt”), and alienation (“E is for Estranged”). And they betray a probing young mind, unafraid of the big philosophical questions.

Pallett’s musical touchstones are several, sometimes in one song — “Oh Heartland, Up Yours” shares half a title with an X-Ray Spex song, a melodic curve with classic Todd Rundgren, and a bridge structured like Steely Dan. Modern serious music touches are everywhere too, especially on “The Great Elsewhere” with its Phillip Glass serial, repetitive themes.


Heartland reaches an emotional crescendo with “Lewis Take Off His Shirt,” a gorgeous string and keyboard swirl ornamenting the defiant “I’m never gonna give it to you” refrain. Lewis is both embodiment and messenger of Pallett’s prevailing dread, invoking a sense that under the surface of normalcy lurks malevolence.

Owen Pallett certainly isn’t afraid of musical complexity, but he’s no stranger to hooks either. Heartland’s songs have fetching melodies and Pallett doesn’t shy away from a catchy chorus if the song is enhanced by one, a refreshing thing indeed in an alterna-verse dominated by the hook averse.

Reverberating: 8.7 (original), upgraded to 8.9

First Aid Kit at No. 14 in the continuing Top 25 for 2010 Countdown!

Welcome to the top 25 for 2010 Countdown! Each day we'll countdown, today we continue with number 14, 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, as I have in this case. 

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)

Beautiful sibling harmonies, elemental tunes, the sound of America … from Sweden”

Upon first impression, the Soderberg Sisters could have you believing they have lived hardscrabble lives in the American South. Nope, they are from a suburb of Stockholm. And they are all of seventeen (Klara) and twenty (Johanna), respectively. They call themselves First Aid Kit and on The Big Black and The Blue they demonstrate that great American music can come from anywhere. I suspect, too, that a certain wintry Nordic melancholy only enhances their songs of love and loss.

I’ve seen First Aid Kit compared to all of the leading lights of American nu-folk. Natural, I suppose, given the YouTube popularity of their version of Fleet Foxes’ “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song.” Listen carefully, though, and those Joanna Newsom comparisons seem a bit ridiculous. Johanna’s husky singing is closer to Neko Case and when she harmonizes with Klara’s more fragile voice their blend is uncannily like the Everly Brothers. There’s a break in their voices, too, when they reach for falsetto that is reminiscent of Kate & Anna McGarrigle. These are strong, iconic influences that the Soderberg’s reflect in stride.

Their songs tend toward slow to mid-tempo performances, and the lyrics (in English) vary wildly from the deeply poetic to the slightly contrived. But those harmonies always convey meaning that the words only suggest. When FAK spurns a Bible-thumping suitor in “Hard Believer” you get the idea that these young ladies aren’t God-fearing or afraid of much else. They do wrestle, unsuccessfully, with embracing the deity on “Heavy Storms” (“I wish I could believe in something bigger”).

Elemental themes (“Heavy Storms”) and strains of folk-fatalism (“I Met Up with the King’) abound, along with familiar lamentations on love. Sweden’s proximity to the sea suffuses the neo-bluegrass sounds (the close-to-yodeling ) of “Sailor Song.” And tidal imagery is central to the lovely “Waltz for Richard.” There’s a touch of Rubber Soul era Beatles on “Josefin,” which exemplifies the Sister’s ability to construct wonderful, rangy melodies over two or three chords.

Sung and played almost entirely by the Soderberg Sisters (a drummer, Charlie Smoliansky, appears on five tracks), The Big Black and The Blue could profit from an up-tempo track or two and the songwriting can be inconsistent. But their debut augurs well for First Aid Kit’s future. They already write and sing with maturity beyond their years. The Big Black and The Blue may only hint at what First Aid Kit will deliver down the road.

Reverberating: 8.0 (original), upgraded to 8.9

Thus Continues the Top 25 for 2010 Countdown! (with No. 15)

Welcome to the top 25 for 2010 Countdown! Each day we'll countdown, today we continue with number 15, 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, as I have in this case. 

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)

"The irascible Mr. Smith sez: 'You don't deserve rock 'n' roll'"

Your Future Our Clutter is the Fall’s 28th album. Loosely associated with punk, having emerged from England’s North in 1978, the Fall certainly had a punk-ish defiance, but stylistically they hued to no particular creed. You could populate a small town with the Fall’s discarded and disappeared; the band’s front man Mark E. Smith is reputedly not the easiest guy to work for. Smith, however, may be mellowing ever so slightly at 52. This version of the Fall may set some kind of record, having remained consistent for this, a third consecutive album. Lucky for Mr. Smith, this edition of the band is a monster.

The Fall formula remains more or less the same; the band moves seamlessly from hard rock to rockabilly, from techno to Bitches Brew-vintage Miles and beyond while Mark E. Smith rambles like a tune-challenged improviser who decided to blow off the lyrics as they scrolled on the Karaoke screen. Criticism? Absolutely not. Smith is the one constant and the absolute glue in the Fall. And his rambling mix of poetics, autobiography and random observation is singular. The Fall sound like a god-awful racket to your average Nickelback fan, but once seduced by Smith’s queer artistry it’s hard to look away.

Smith has jokingly referred to the band’s sound as Country and Northern, acknowledging his Salford/Manchester sensibilities, which remain unadulterated. As usual, Smith’s lyrics touch on a variety of his current obsessions — the banality of modern architecture in “Bury Pts. 1 + 3,” intimations of mortality in “Cowboy George,” and throughout Your Future Out Clutter his hospitalization and wheelchair-bound days after suffering a broken leg — in “Chino” Smith wonders “when do I quit this hell / when do I quit this hospital” and adds “my darlin’ is waiting.” … ah!

Ross Orton, the man behind the board for M.I.A.’s Arular, captures the full power of this edition of the Fall and gives it a contemporary sheen. Guitarist Peter “PP” Greenway plays with bruising power, evoking Keith Levene, John McGeoch, Link Wray and Pete Cosey. Smith’s wife Eleni Poulou plays a critical role in the band’s arrangements; her squiggly synth lines are assertive, powerful and as much a part of the band’s ensemble power as Greenway’s guitar work. Dave “The Eagle” Spurr on bass and Keiron Melling on drums make a powerful rhythm section. Their expert, brutal authority gives the band an almost maniacal force.

“Bury Pts. 1 + 3” melds garage-rock, Kraut-rock and Golden Earring-vintage Seventies rock snarl. “Mexico Wax Solvent” features Melling’s Billy Cobham gone punk drum power. The ominous “Cowboy George” sounds like a cross between Love’s “7 & 7 Is” and the Seed’s “Pushin’ Too Hard,” and even tosses in a Daft Punk sample. “Hot Cake” is the Sab’s “Faeries Wear Boots” gone dub. The Fall bash it out all over the musical map, but their groove is relentless.

“Weather Report 2” closes Your Future Our Clutter with, at least for the Fall, something approaching a beautiful ballad. Over a pretty guitar figure from Greenway, Smith meditates on the “best years of my life,” excoriates the cast of Murder She Wrote (“deserved to die”), remarks that “nobody has ever called me sir in my entire life,” and as the music fades concludes that “you don’t deserve rock n’roll.” Who’s he addressing? A select target? All of us? Such are the mysteries of Smith’s art; you’re never 100% sure what he’s on about, but you’re captivated all the same.


Reverberating: 8.5 (original), upgraded 8.8

Thus Continues the Top 25 for 2010 Countdown! (with No. 16)

Welcome to the top 25 for 2010 Countdown! Each day we'll countdown, today we continue with number 16, 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, as I have in this case. 

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)

“Noise is the new silence to No Age’s generation of indie-punk"

No Age is a pure product of indie-rock culture, and part of a generation raised on noise. Sonic Youth may as well be the Beatles to a generation brought up to fear silence. But on their third and best record yet, Everything In Between, No Age have discovered dynamics. It’s not the loud-soft dichotomization of the Nirvana era, but a dynamic based on the epic swell of obligatory sonic overload, rising and falling with each song’s emotional nuances. Not space exactly, but an approximation.

It is a mammoth sound that guitarist Randy Randall and drummer Dean Spunt make. But it’s not without it’s light and shade, its drama and intimacy. “Life Prowler” is Joy Division meets Sonic Youth (w/touches of Suicide), Spunt repeating, “I don’t have time.” Randall’s Frippertronic guitar tempest and Spunt’s cheerleader stomp drumming propel “Glitter,” Spunt claiming “I don’t fear God, I don’t fear anything,” then pleading “I want you back underneath my skin,” as if the lack of love could stir fear that God can’t. “Fever Dreaming” is close to straight up Stooges/Ramones punk roar. “Depletion” is punk rebellion turned into style, the band blasting away like a distortion saturated version of the Vibrators.

No Age intersperses instrumental segues like “Katerpillar” and “Positive Amputation” into Everything In Between’s program like palate cleansers, lbreakdowns with roots in the sonics of Bowie-Eno material like “Warszawa.”

Part of No Age’s balancing act is to alternate the under mixed vocals, like the Dave Vanian meets Thurston Moore vocal persona of “Valley Hump Crash,” with more out front pop mixes like “Sorts,” the latter which starts out a trashed out La’s and evolves into a snotty pop snarl that reminds of bands like the Original Sins. “Shed and Transcend” has elements of both approaches, sounding like pop-punk under an avalanche of Randall’s guitar noise. “Chem Trails,” on the other hand, is a flat out catchy tune – all “Band on the Run” trills and “Pretty in Pink” chord changes.

No Age’s basic vision is of the alienated individual struggling in a stifling culture, it’s there in Spunt’s direct lyrics, and sometimes represented by the transcendent, overwhelming noises that Randall coaxes from his guitars. The photography of Zen Sekizawa, which pays homage to Robert Mapplethorpe’s evocation of aesthetic rebellion for Patti Smith’s Radio Ethiopia, and the constructivist/Factory Records graphic sensibilities of Brian Roettinger’s packaging are fine translations of No Age’s sensibility into visual language.

With Everything In Between No Age have become better songwriters and more versatile, dynamic arrangers. With just a touch of roll off on the distortion they aren’t too damned far from the Eighties angst-pop of Echo and the Bunnymen or the Psychedelic Furs. It will be fun to see where their development takes them.

Reverberating: 8.2 (original), upgraded to 8.8

Thus Continues the Top 25 for 2010 Countdown! With a new review of the Parting Gifts (No. 17).

Welcome to the top 25 for 2010 Countdown! Each day we'll countdown, today we continue with number 17, 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. Since I hadn't reviewed the Parting Gifts previously this is a NEW REVIEW.

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)

 

"Reigning Sound + Coco Hames = Parting Gifts"

The most recent record by the Ettes (Do You Want Power) was co-produced by Greg Cartwright of Reigning Sound and Oblivians renown. The Ettes lead singer Lindsay ‘Coco’ Hames hung around Memphis long enough to work on a further collaboration with Cartwright and the Reigning Sound. They call themselves the Parting Gifts. Heck, it would be a damn good record if it was just the Reigning Sound, but Hames’ contributions kick the sessions into another gear. Hames has one of those voices, a voice that can suggest such inspirations as Ronnie Spector and Wanda Jackson, but that possesses a unique character all its own.

The album is called Strychnine Dandelion, and it is a treat. It’s essentially a Reigning Sound record with Hames as guest vocalist – she sings with Cartwright and takes lead on five of the fifteen (short, sweet and sassy) tracks. As such, the band sound is much in keeping with Reigning Sound’s output. Dave Amels, who co-produces, shines on keyboards throughout. There are few players these days whose stylistic range and ease remind of the great keyboard players of the past; Amels would hold his own in the company of guys like Barry Beckett, Nicky Hopkins and James Dickinson. His seasonings are all over Dandelion.

Cartwright does what he does so well, synthesizing British rock, American garage (Sixties, the original Nuggets and Pebbles type stuff), and Southern soul stew with character, passion and brilliance. His knack for such blends is obvious on the opening cut “Keep Walkin’” – the Parting Gifts pulling off a cross between Sir Douglas Quintet, Del Shannon and Stooges circa Raw Power. “Bound to Let Me Down” and “My Baby Tonight” feature Cartwright’s way with early Beatle twists on Latin rhythms. “Strange Disposition” borrows in both name (“This Strange Affect”) and sound from the Kinks, the band bringing Muswell Hill to Memphis, making a genre bending exercise into a convincing song.

Cartwright’s a sharp songwriter. You can hear his attention to detail on songs like “Staring” with its’ Springsteen urgency, nifty rhymes like ‘aspartame/same,’ and killer bridge. On “I Don’t Wanna Be Like This” he combines a torch song and working class lament with feeling and without pretension.

The songs Coco Hames contributes (it gets confusing – she writes a few songs here, including one that Cartwright sings) range from the Loretta-Skeeter-Dolly styled country tearjerker “This House Ain’t a Home,” to the cow-punk rave up “My Mind’s Made Up,” to the rocker (dig the Stones-y fuzz bass) “Born to Be Blue.” Cartwright plums from the Stones odds and sods collection Metamorphosis again (Reigning Sound did a tear up version of “I’d Rather Be with the Boys” on Time Bomb High School) for “Sleepy City,” Hames fusing Ronnie Spector and Lulu while Cartwright arranges with an ear toward Phil Spector acolytes like Roy Wood and Dave Edmunds.

Dan Auerbach (Black Keys), who co-produced Do You Want Power with Cartwright, and Patrick Keeler (Greenhornes/Raconteurs) make guest appearances on Dandelion. It’s the kind of project that finds top-notch contributors ready to check their egos to make a really good record. And that’s exactly what Strychnine Dandelion is.

Reverberating: 8.8