Mott the Hoople - Live at Hammersmith Apollo 2009 (4Worlds Media)

If you blog (and isn’t that a savory verb?), you’re supposed to keep content fresh. You’re supposed to make new entries frequently. Well, it’s been a good two weeks since my last post. I shan’t bore you with tales of the intrusion of so-called real life on my activity. I assure you, though, it’s a factor.

Honestly, I haven’t been that inspired by recent releases. I’ve found plenty to enjoy, but nothing that suggested spending the requisite three or four hours to listen carefully, take a few notes, draft a review, and finally shape into a finished product. Now, I’m not going to name names; after all, some of these heretofore-desultory platters may prove stimulating enough to provoke the above process. Who knows?

Still, I’m reminded of the rhetorical laydown offered by David Bowie in the song “Young Americans:” ‘ain’t there one damn song that can make me break down and cry?’

I’ll tell you what did make me cry. And I preface this by admitting that this dates me and risks making me seem like an enormous sap. What the fuck – I’m strong, really.

I wept while listening to Live at Hammersmith Apollo 2009. It’s a live recording taken from Mott the Hoople’s five-night reunion stand in London in 2009. So, why was I blubbering? I shall endeavor to explain.

Dum Dum Girls - Only in Dreams (Sub Pop Records)

Well, here we are. Reverberations is fond of the Dum Dum Girls. We’ve covered every release of their short, sweet career except for their initial seven-inch on Hozac. Let’s see, that includes their debut full-length I Will Be, the follow up extended play He Gets Me High, and now the feature length release number two Only in Dreams.

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Kristen Gundred (aka Dee Dee) is still Dum Dum Girl number one. But she’ s no longer the whole show that she was on I Will Be. She’s taken her road band, a trio of accompanists who give credence to the band’s plural name, into the studio for Only in Dreams. There were no credits given for He Gets Me High, but the sonic similarities between that EP and the new album suggest that her band mates either joined her on those sessions or have modeled their performance on Gundred’s work from those sessions

Where I Will Be had a gauzy, aural cubist mix, He Gets Me High cut the distortion in half, focusing more on Gundred’s increasingly expressive singing. These new sessions accelerate that shift. Touring has made Gundred (Dee Dee) a more muscular singer. In my review of He Gets Me High I referenced a vocal similarity to Chrissie Hynde, which the new album only accentuates. 

Jack Oblivian - Rat City (Big Legal Mess/Fat Possum Records)

 Memphis has long been the place where the rural cultures of the Deep South meet and mix. It was surely the case before Sam Phillips put the ignition in the mighty motor of Sun Records in 1952. But Sun does provide the most obvious and optimal example of Memphis’s place in American musical experience. While Phillips first recorded the likes of Howlin’ Wolf, he made his fortune discovering white performers whose influences were reflective of an emerging South where, prior to but anticipating the social convulsions of the Sixties, whites were being entertained by black performers and vice versa. Well before schools and lunch counters integrated, Southerners radio dial and record shop preferences were crossing racial lines.

What’s this got to do with Jack Oblivian? Lots, as it turns out. Oblivian (or Yarber as his ma and pa know him), is a modern day Memphis mixer, putting together stray stands from Fresno blues to Carolina beach music, from the Stooges to Springsteen and the Clash, he’s a working class musical magpie, and in top form on his new release Rat City.

With Greg (Oblivian) Cartwright and Eric (Oblivian) Freidl in the Oblivians, he became an icon of the (re)emerging garage-rock genre by blasting grease pit , r ‘n’ b infused rock ‘n’ roll at punk tempos. As a soloist (and with his nominal ‘band’ the Tennessee Tearjerkers) Oblivian has purveyed a slightly grown up version of the same thing. He’s become a better singer and musician, and it sounds like he’s running his beloved cheap Jap guitars through better amps in better studios (actually, the portability/affordability of good recording gear is probably the bigger change). But he’s still a thrift shop recycler. And his uncanny ear for sweaty hooks and grooves is sharper than ever. 

Wild Flag - s/t (Merge Records)

Well before the release of Wild Flag’s debut album on September 13^th, videos of the band began to surface on youtube.com. Live versions of the songs from the album, certainly, but more telling was their selection of covers. I’ve seen their takes on Patti Smith’s “Ask the Angels,” the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden” and “She's My Best Friend” from the  Velvet Underground. What these choices said was that Wild Flag wasn’t going to be limited by any parochial notions from the indie-rock world. Nor were they going to pursue any express political agenda. Instead, Wild Flag get that the most powerful statement they could make as women and musicians was to flat rock out. And that’s what they do on Wild Flag.

After all, what can a poor girl do ‘cept to sing for a rock ‘n’ roll band? By the time Sleater-Kinney came to the end of their road in 2006, singer/guitarist Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss had already borne the burden of dreams for a generation of young rockers, especially young women. Mary Timony’s career as soloist and the force behind the group Helium was less visible, but no less connected to the preconceptions that animate the alternative-rock world, i.e. a non-star, one-of-us demeanor, aversion to “hooks” (Sleater-K had already broken that one a few times), and  indifference to commercialism and wider popularity. Keyboardist Rebecca Cole from the Minders arrived at the rehearsal studio for Wild Flag’s first practices with the least baggage, and her musicianship and spirit is critical to the success of Wild Flag. Her expressly garage-rock  keys signal Wild Flag’s connection to a rock ‘n’ roll world that spans “Nuggets” style Farfisa organ sounds, John Cale’s playing with the Velvets and the late Greg Hawkes work with the Cars. She can suggest the howling growl of “Sister Ray” or the pizzicato whimsy of the solo from the Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard” – as she, by God, does expressly on “Future Crimes.”

Gospel Music - How to Get to Heaven from Jacksonville FL (Kill Rock Stars Records)

Owen Holmes hails from Jacksonville, Florida. Wow, there’s one place I’ve never wanted to go. Already, I digress.

He plays bass for the Black Kids. They’re okay, I guess; hadn’t really given them much thought. If his (mostly) solo project Gospel Music is any indication, though, Holmes has a solid future as a singer-songwriter. And not one of those boring, self-indulgent ones, but more like an entertaining, diverting, poetic and self-indulgent one – hey, the last goes with the territory. Pretty much.

Recorded at home in the Sunshine state, How to Get to Heaven From Jacksonville, FL is a small treasure for anyone attracted to literate, self-abasing humor and primitive, but musical melodicism. Taking substantial cues from Lou Reed and Stephin Merritt, Holmes writes with pith and wit about romantic mismatch (“Bird/Fish”), romantic despair (“This Town Doesn’t Have Enough Bars for Both of Us”), romantic betrayal (“I Shared Too Much with Her”) and romantic resignation (“Bedroom Farce”). He self-accompanies these little morsels with sharp, spare instrumentation that concentrates on acoustic guitar, toy piano and ukulele, fleshed out with all manner of instrumentation, including the standard bass and drums (he even uses banjo without making me grab for my faux-Americana annihilator … a handy weapon, indeed). With limited chops, Holmes makes the most out of nifty little framing lines on guitar, bits and pieces of melodic guitar-age, stray elements of this and that, from the Velvets to the Ventures.

Jim Jones Revue - Burning Your House Down (Punk Rock Blues)

Jim Jones has been knocking around the British rock scene since the late Eighties. His previous band, Thee Hypnotics, combined blues and psychedelic influences, tending toward long-ass jams that weren’t terribly removed from, uh, stoner rock. And in 2004 he formed the Jim Jones Revue. With the band’s new album, Burning Your House Down, I’m pretty much ready to swallow their Kool-Aid.

The JJR was described by one critic, more or less aptly, as “a car crash between Little Richard and the MC5.” Okay, the imagery is a little violent and jejune. It’s also not that far off.

Instead of Thee Hypnotics’ blitzed jams,  the JJR favor short, jagged bursts of maniacal rock ‘n’ roll that pay homage to the primordial intensities of Fifties fathers like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. But Fifties homage this ain’t. Like the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the JJR take full advantage of the last several decades’ worth of sonic advances and abrasion. Certainly, among their inspirations, you could include the MC5, Stooges, New York Dolls, and the Sonics. And if that’s stoner rock it’s for much shorter attention spans, as the bug-eyed speed-freak rock of Burning Your House Down attests.

Tommy Stinson - One Man Mutiny (Done to Death Music)

A working musician since the age of thirteen, Tommy Stinson grew up in rock ‘n’ roll. Incredibly, at least for those of us who remember him as the irreverent punk who played bass in the Replacements, Stinson is now a forty-five year old man.

And still very much a working musician. Having watched his brother Bob (Replacements guitarist) and his band self-destruct prepared Stinson for almost anything. How else to explain his having been employed by Axl Rose since 1998 in whatever Axl considers Guns ‘n Roses.

Best known as a sideman, Stinson has a long history as bandleader and solo performer. Between 1992 and 1994 he helmed an outfit called Bash and Pop, whose lone recording Friday Night is Killing Me was a sweet surprise to many ‘Mats fans who figured Paul Westerberg was the only real songwriting talent in the Replacements. Friday was full of rough, but right performances in a loose Faces-Stones idiom and songs sturdy and impassioned enough to stand up to their archetypal moorings.

Stinson’s next outfit Perfect wasn’t. They somehow lacked the immediacy of Friday Night at its best. Honestly, I missed his first truly solo release, Village Gorilla Head, in 2004. Given that I work in the industry and scarcely knew of the album tells you plenty about its lack of distribution and publicity.

Fountains of Wayne - Sky Full of Holes (Yep Roc)

If Mike Nichols were making The Graduate in 2011, he might well ask Fountains of Wayne to provide music. Listen to “The Summer Place” with its Updikean compendium of the discontents of the highest tax bracket, the opening track on the band’s fifth album Sky Full of Holes. “The Summer Place” features a protagonist who waxes nostalgic for her days as a teenage shoplifter while downing large quantities of ‘shrooms to stave off the tedium of life at forty. Briskly paced, “Summer” even suggest Nichol’s original Greek chorus Simon and Garfunkel with its “Hazy Shade of Winter” syncopated urgency.

For fifteen years, over the course of five albums, Fountains of Wayne have delivered well-crafted pop-rock gems with clever, literate lyrics that don’t necessarily shortchange deeper emotions or social commentary. Their second album Utopia Parkway remains a personal favorite. If I’ve played “Troubled Times” or “Amity Gardens” once I’ve played them five hundred times. Welcome Interstate Managers was a worthy successor, yielding their one truly big hit song, “Stacey’s Mom.” Their last record, 2007’s Traffic and Weather, was a comparatively lackluster affair, but Sky Full of Holes finds them in peak pop form while aging gracefully with their protagonists as well as their audience.

Consequently, nothing on Sky Full of Holes has the adolescent nerd preoccupations of Utopia Parkway’s “Red Dragon Tattoo.” The dilemmas of Sky’s characters are more consequential than tattoo selection. In “Action Hero” Chris Collingwood spares the sarcasm button for an empathetic look at a family man living a Walter Mitty existence. But what at first sounds like a simple escapist fantasy is finally the tale of a father confronting real health issues, strapped to an EKG monitor at Mt. Sinai Hospital. Collingwood’s reedy alto, as always, betrays little in terms of obvious emotional range. But by letting his and Adam Schlesinger’s sharply observed lyrics speak for themselves, Collingwood’s discretion speaks volumes.

Eleanor Friedberger - Last Summer (Merge Records)

First things first, I suppose. This comes from the “there’s a bathroom on the right” school of rock lyric mishearing. The first two times I listened to Eleanor Friedberger’s sparkling new record Last Summer I thought she was singing “you promised to take me to the end of the Seventh grade” on track two, “Inn of the Seventh Ray.” Hey, I know, all I had to do was look at the track listing, right? But by golly, before I came to enjoy the real thing (listening properly to the lyrics and all) I constructed a whole emotional world around Ms. Friedberger reconstructing her life, revisiting some pivotal moment in, well, Seventh grade.

Lord, I digress. Of course the real “Inn of the Seventh Ray” is even better. With quiet, urgent repetition Friedberger sings of a certain someone who promised to take her to the titular destination, but who couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t know the way. The mounting disappointment is musically palpable, and the song could be about anything from the obvious (a desired journey never taken) to a metaphor for romantic, erotic, or existential failure.

Jolie Holland - Pint of Blood (Anti-Epitaph)

In her live shows and on recordings, Jolie Holland delivers performances of such intimacy that one at first feels like an eavesdropper. As if you’re the ghost in the room while she confides in a close friend or lover, or is simply singing her heart out for her own emotional benefit. Her demeanor is neither hostile nor ingratiating. She simply sings for her own satisfaction, hoping too that you as a listener derive some inspiration or delight. She’s got me. I do.

Having followed her career I’m struck by her determination to follow her own muse. It defines her. Never more so than on the new recording with her band the Grand Chandeliers, Pint of Blood. She’s made records that were poppier (The Living and the Dead), rootsier (Escondida) and more intimate. As one who finds her songs charming, if sometimes shapeless, I’ll confess a fondness for the near-pop of The Living and the Dead. On Pint of Blood, Holland’s tunes sound effortless, but they don’t always stick with you at first listen. But having listened many times to Pint of Blood, and having been caught in her live spell at the Record Bar in Kansas City recently, I will concede that the spell she wields is increasingly seductive with exposure.