Redd Kross - Researching the Blues (Merge)

Red Kross.

I think I first heard them in about 1982. Guitarist Jeff McDonald and his bassist brother Steven were still in their teens. I was a fan of their early glam-trash-punk abrasions. Born Innocent, with killer tracks like “Linda Blair” – good stuff.  From 1984, Teen Babes from Monsanto was as kool as its title; purveying low culture thrills ala Sonic Youth, but the McDonald brothers offered melodic twists well beyond Sonic Youth’s sing to the chords school of songwriting. Neurotica, released in 1987 perfected their sensibility. Its glammy vision - freakbeat, drug through the gutter of the New York Dolls and put through the Back from the Crypt grinder – was Redd Kross fully realized. Even if only Jeff could buy a drink legally.

 I was even pretty thrilled through Third Eye, a chiming, pure pop distillation of their gnarlier selves, released on Atlantic in 1990. My crew played the shit out of it, turned people on to it, but then grunge came along. It was shitty timing for Redd Kross. Their sassy, suburban snarl, unafraid of androgyny, was anything but Eddie Vedder flannel. Their closest kinship by then may have been to bands like Dramarama (a fine, fine outfit indeed), who were still pretty burly by comparison. 

 Redd Kross’ other Nineties releases were fresh, melodic and rocking. But somehow their sound lost some of its distinction as the band shot for a little deeper commercial penetration. Somehow it seemed too safe, too Material Issue or something, after their Eighties stuff. Then, they disappeared.

Fifteen years disappeared.

They re-emerge on Merge Records with Researching the Blues. 

It is so good. 

It’s the kind of good – so rocking, so stacked with invention and turn of phrase – that its instantly classic songs hit you like a ton of  bricks (“Stay Away From Downtown”) first;  then give way to the subtle hooks of (at first) less arresting songs (“Winter Blues”).  

Title track, “Researching the Blues,” initially inspired by the scholarly, but gritty passions of John and Alan Lomax, is a fond, but scathing rebuke to a friend turning down every wrong street and dark alley (“You just can’t win, strung out on the devil again”).  “Researching” has a brooding, insistent edge that matches the lyric’s darkness. The devil appears again (“the devil inside your head”) in “Stay Away from Downtown.” This song is the embodiment of a power-pop performance, with no neglect in the power department. Jeff McDonald and Robert Hecker’s interlocking, riff off riff, guitar lines propel the song. Drummer Roy McDonald (no relation) holds it all together with rock-ribbed Ringo drive and occasional Moon bursts.  Jeff and Brother Steven’s harmony vocals remind how potent sibling harmonies can be (Everlys, Davies, … you get the picture)  At 2:40 the “yeah, you” vocals hit, the “sha la las” enter at 2:52. Shortly after, you knock yourself upside the head and realize – damn, this is in the same league with Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” – a kitchen sink of power moves and pop turns.

Japandroids - Post-Nothing (Polyvinyl)

I’m driving the wife’s car. There’s gas in it. That’s a plus. And it doesn’t need a timing belt. My poor old Volvo, though, has one superior feature - a fancy direct input for an iPod; her car has no such.

Accordingly, I pack up the compact disc wallet (so 90s, baby!) with classics (Ramones, Stones, Big Star) and current crap I am a) digging, b) curious to check out, or c) have told some promo dude I’d audition.

Eddie, my astute sixteen year-old son, flips through the wallet, not finding exactly what he wants. He’s used to the world at his iTunes/Spotify fingertips. At last he settles on the Japandroids, their new album Post-Nothing.

He asks me how it is. I respond that it rocks, the tunes are alright, and it seems like something of an indie-rock cause célèbre. In other words, I sorta like it, but I don't get what the fuss is about. Eddie said that some of his friends keep talking about them. Fair enough.

I keep my mouth shut and let him listen.

After three songs he’s handing me the Super Furry Animals disc Hey Venus! (exclamation pt, theirs).

“Had enough,” I inquire.

“Yeah“ he says, “it’s kinda boring.”

At which point I volunteer that I observe the following: 

1.  With aggressive rock music the farther the singer gets from any African- American influence whatsoever the more flaccid, white and suburban it sounds to me. 

2.  That, and they have too many “oh, oh, oh” lyrics, chants, background vocals, whatever (they use them a lot!) making my oi-mo (I think that covers the gamut of fist pumping ‘punk’ genres … oi to emo) tolerance quickly exhausted. 

3.  Generally, this music is vibrant. I don’t hate it. It entertains me in short blasts (like the cover of the Gun Club's "For the Love of Ivy"). But the songs are too long, too samey and the whole dude thing just isn’t very hip shakin'.

Eddie nods in assent.

‘I don’t like the drumming” Eddie adds. “Too busy,” I say. “Yeah,” Eddie responds.

Reverberating: 7. 4

Ty Segall Band - Slaughterhouse (In the Red Records)

I’ll begin by warning mature readers of REVERBERATIONS: in the event you don’t have a sense of humor and adventure about noise and excess, advance to the previous review of Bobby Womack’s The Bravest Man in the Universe.

If you do, say hello to Ty.

If Goodbye Bread was Ty Segall’s orange sunshine voyage; Slaughterhouse is his STP crash. But enough about drugs.

This young Segall chap is prolific. Slaughterhouse is his fourth release since 2008’s Lemons (excluding side projects, a disc with White Fence, etc.), and far and away his, like, heaviest. The full credit is to the Ty Segall Band. The sunny-sour Chilton-isms of Bread were also, like his second solo effort Melted, a bit on the shambolic side. Segall’s pop sensibilities were rarely obscured, yet he seemed to insist on showing that he could pull a T. Rex or John Lennon solo turn, but couldn’t be bothered to tighten up his performances. Fortunately for Segall, those records were long on melody and charm, so whether his lackadaisical qualities were laziness or aesthetic didn’t matter so much.

But causal brilliance isn't what heavy rock is about. The Segall Band on Slaughterhouse is brutally tight. They hint at the Stooges Funhouse without having that band’s primitive funk moves, but they nail the acid-rock (God, what an idiotic term, but it seems to work) of other Detroit psych merchants like the Frost and SRC, and even New York’s Autosalvage.  Other reference points, maybe Hawkwind, and Blue Oyster Cult; of course Sabbath. But enough about drugs; I mean, stoner-rock bands.

In the maelstrom of the late Sixties and early Seventies there was an element of tragedy attached to music this damaged and brutal. If, as that Karl Marx fellow suggested, history appears "first as tragedy, then as farce," it's first hard not to see Slaughterhouse as farce.

But I figure that if times have changed that doesn't mean they've gotten any prettier, and besides, when made with such vigor music like this is even idiomatically compelling.

I don’t always, but in this case I’ll go track by track, partly because the pop to plunder quotient shifts consistently throughout Slaughterhouse. Things start with “Death.”  The song begins with pizzicato violins playing in close harmony. KIDDING. It starts with howling feedback and, uh, skronk. And it sounds pretty cool when you’re driving down the highway at midnight. “Death” sounds like the Thirteenth Floor Elevators without the jugs and theremins and with the guitars on Blue Cheer meets Sonic Youth mind meld.

“I Bought My Eyes” (even the title sounds kinda Roky-ish) has spooky harmonies, like some Left Banke from hell, or at least B.O.C.’s rehearsal space. Emily Rose Epstein’s drumming is equal parts drive and splatter, perfect for this music.  Segall and guitarist Charles Moothart go for shards and splinters, but harmonies, too.

Bobby Womack - The Bravest Man in the Universe (XL Recordings)

He’s one of the great soul men. As far back as the early Sixties he was writing and singing (w/the Valentinos) timeless songs like “Lookin’ for a Love” and “It’s All Over Now.” Yes, you students of white guys playing the rock ‘n’ roll, those tunes were further popularized by the J. Geils Band and the Rolling Stones, respectively.

He’s Bobby Womack. Dude moved in on Sam Cooke’s widow before the greatest soul singer of all was cold in the ground. Yeah, he’s bad. His songwriting skills were undiminished, but by the late Sixties Womack’s performing career had little traction. The he surfaced in the Seventies in a big way. With a string of classic releases, including Communication, Understanding, and Facts of Life, Womack solidified his place in the soul firmament. His songs from the soundtrack for the flick Across 110^th Street, featuring the era evincing title track, represented, along with Isaac Hayes’ Shaft and Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly, the transcendent musical statements of the Blaxploitation genre of the Seventies.

Womack also made some fine records in the Eighties, chiefly The Poet and The Poet II for the short lived Beverly Glen label. The man has staying power. Nonetheless, a recurring combination of drug issues, personal problems and career cul de sacs kept his profile low. Now 68, and on the rebound from his demons, Womack is back with The Bravest man in the Universe on XL Records, home to bands like The XX, Sigur Ros, Jack White, and Adele. The label’s one effort at soul resuscitation was the late Gil Scott-Heron’s We’re New Here (not a bad start). Bravest is stone, classic soul in composition and spirit, utterly contemporary in arrangement and production. And the synthesis of classic and current elements is successful in ways that make Bravest Womack’s best record in forty years. 

 Bravest is co-produced by Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz, etc. – for those of you who have spent the last twenty years under a rock) and XL label honcho, Richard Russell. Albarn’s eclecticism and openness to adventures in sound is well documented. Russell, now sole proprietor of XL, was one of the label’s three original founders. XL initially emphasized music associated with dance and rave culture. All of these histories impact Bravery. This is not your father’s rhythm ‘n’ blues record. The kind of electronic rhythms and programming associated with acts like Massive Attack, XX and the trip-hop genre generally are consistent throughout Bravery. The contrast between these rhythm tracks and Womack’s gravelly, gospel derived singing is stark, but the synthesis is seamless.

Intermission

 Golly ...

I quite appreciate that it has been too long between entries here at 'Reverberations.' I have been listening to music, of course. Frankly, I hear plenty that entertains me, but little that inspires sufficiently to devote critical time. 

While I don't say much about it here I am also a musician and songwriter my own self. And recently my own work has been preoccupying me. Not that I'm working so damned hard on it, more like I'm distracted by it, and trying to use work time and dream time effectively.

I have two or three review ideas germinating, however, so look for those in the next week to ten days. I am also considering 'Reverberations' version of the sort of approach typified by R. Christgau's "Consumer Guide" or Creem magazine's "Short Takes" -  mini-reviews intended to plug and dismiss, inspire and discourage. My general disposition, as those of you who read this blog know, has been to delve into records in some depth, usually in appreciation and support for the artist. My nasty digs are few and far between. The "short takes" approach would almost certainly invite more negative reviews. First, the wider the net is cast the more driftwood one catches. Second, it's more time efficient to dispatch crap in fifty words than seven-hundred. So, I would ask you gentle readers ... is the capsule review approach one I should on occasion pursue? After all, I do this all for you. Oh, and the free shit. 

Love,

Steve W. / REVERBERATIONS

Bob Andrews - Shotgun (RKR-CB Productions)

Rock ‘n’ roll is a brazen enterprise. Ever since Little Richard those who provoke attention seem to get it. Would we have it any other way? After all, the music blasted out of a repressed post-war America with its Willie out and a gap-toothed grin on its mug. Still, the music has always allowed room for those talented individuals who weren’t quite so flamboyant, who perhaps had a measure of reserve superficially uncharacteristic of the music.

Take Bob Andrews - he is a more modest sort. In his storied if under-sung past, Andrews has contributed to some wonderful bands and recordings, chiefly as keyboardist for Brinsley Schwarz and Graham Parker and the Rumour. For the past twenty years he’s been living in New Orleans. Playing local clubs, marinating in the sounds he loves, living life. 

Shotgun, Andrews’ new album, demonstrates that restraint has its place, even in the world of rock ‘n’ roll. And, for that matter, restraint and the ribald needn’t be strangers. Andrews’s smart, idiomatic tunes accompany the words of lyricist Robin Hunn. She knows her partner’s needs well, delivering smart, blues-drenched lyrics that shift sexual personae and demonstrate a wide range of emotion, from the violated to the volatile, from the plaintive to the passionate. Their collaboration extends beyond Hunn providing words to Andrews’ music. The pair worked together envisioning these songs, discussing feel, context, and approach. It’s a partnership that works.

Shotgun is a bracing roots-rock recital that crackles with energy. It brims with Andrews’ astute musicianship and makes virtue of his vocal modesty. Restraint, combined with musicality, can be quite insinuating. Occasionally, with these performances I’ll strain to hear the ghosts of more robust rhythm and blues archetypes. Frankly, the title track might sound, well, dirtier if his pal Graham Parker had sung it; it has a bit of that “Hotel Chambermaid” salaciousness. But more often than not Andrews’ simmering, slyly expressive singing is unerringly right for these performances. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than on “I Knew It Was Wrong but I Did It Anyway.” Sung in the overtly emotive style of a Percy Sledge acolyte it would lose its shamed, but defiant steel. Here, Andrews combines the rock-ribbed reserve of Richard Thompson (“For Shame of Doing Wrong”) with the determined, dogged drawl of Arthur Alexander. On “Doghouse” there’s a bruised, conversational dignity to Andrews’ delivery that suggests the songs of Dan Penn, and Andrews plays a beautiful solo that shows his debt to Garth Hudson. 

Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires - There is a Bomb in Gilead (Alive Records)

Lee Bains III is the prodigal son, raised on the Good Book Jesus, corrupted by punk-rock and working out his own adult reconciliations between the two. It’s the blessing and curse of being Southern. From Jerry Lee Lewis to Tyler Keith (Preacher’s Kids), and all the way back to Robert Johnson, artists, black and white alike, have been torn between Saturday night and Sunday morning; ever since moonshine and lusty women first presented a challenge to the Christian life. Crap - that was probably in the fifth Century; in southern … France, or somewhere.  Hell, I’d have to get out my History books. Like I say, it’s nothing’ new. Bains and his Alabama boys, the Glory Fires, aren’t reinventing the wheel, just grinding the sucker. And it yields a great ride.

Even if there’s nothing new under the sun, each generation and every new artist has the opportunity to put its and his or her own spin on the eternal conflicts. On There is a Bomb in Gilead, the Glory Fires debut, Bains brings the sensibilities of a literary education to his talks with Jesus and his hallelujahs to Joey Ramone. I don’t say this just because he makes literary references, like the one to Walker Percy (“go ahead take my Walker Percy, go ahead and take the t-shirt by brother got when he saw the Ramones”), but because his melancholy and moral musings are offspring of Faulkner and O’Connor’s world. “Everything You Took,” the ditty with the Percy/Ramones lyric, establishes the artist’s lifestyle essentials: rock ‘n’ roll t-shirts and books. And essential they may as well be since he’s losing his gal. He’s clearly hanging on to a thread, clinging to “every little hope that you give me.” But the lady sounds to me like she’s moved on.

The singer’s wrestling with virtue resounds in “Ain’t No Stranger,” rhyming contrition and perdition, by God – and reminding the almighty that he may be prodigal, but he’ s “no stranger.” Bains and lead guitarist Matt Wurtele slash through the Willie Mitchell groove with guitars that are more Keith Richards and Ron Asheton than anything Memphis or Muscle Shoals. “Centreville” sustains the rocking pace. It’s Skynyrd after the Pistols (and Some Girls), Bains spitting out lyrics about guys who are “over educated and under-employed.” Perfect, it captures the new Birmingham, or hell – Boston, as the United States becomes the new Spain. Imagine Tony Joe White amped up and all pissed off. That’s what Bains sounds like on “Centreville.”

Corporate FM: A Film by Kevin McKinney and Jill McKeever

The depth of my experience with and feeling for popular music, especially rock ‘n’ roll, combined with reasonable skills as a writer, gives me a modest confidence when I share my opinions about music with you. I have been a life-long fan of cinema, but the range and intensity of my experiences film just aren't that remarkable. I by no means consider myself a film critic. I'm just a reasonably bright guy who likes movies.What follows makes no attempt to be a film review. It is an endorsement.

Sunday afternoon I saw Kevin McKinney and Jill McKeever's  documentary Corporate FM. In the interest of full disclosure, I play a small part in the film; I am among those interviewed. Working with Kevin and Jill I had a fairly strong sense of both their talents and objectives. And I felt confident that this film would be worth seeing. More than worth seeing, Corporate FM makes an entertaining and important statement.

Corporate FM concerns the corporate takeover of the people’s airwaves as expedited by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, legislation that allowed corporations to own several stations in a given market - market hegemony that had previously been forbidden by the law. The film succinctly chronicles the legislative folly that cleared the way for this assault on communities and free speech.


As someone who in some ways had tuned out commercial radio even before Clear Channel and their ilk turned it into pablum, I wasn’t certain how the filmmaker's eulogy for the likes of KLZR in Lawrence, Kansas would play. After all, there are plenty of us who found college, community and public radio superior, and perhaps sufficient to our radio needs. But Corporate FM  illuminates the ways which commercial FM’s demise effects us all, even if you're the kind of underground sort who thinks that the ascendance of bands like R.E.M., U2, Pearl Jam or Smashing Pumpkins, impossible without commercial rock stations, was inconsequential culturally.  


What McKinney and McKeever do so well is place the devouring of FM radio by corporate interests in the larger context of a political economy gone mad. Corporate media giants like Cumulus, and the aforementioned Clear Channel, have replaced local voices, often from varying political perspectives, with national, consistently conservative, voices. The result is the advent of a corporate Pravda or Izvestia of the airwaves. As a kid who grew up with something called the Fairness Doctrine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine), this is remarkable indeed. Seventy percent or more of all opinion reflected on commercial radio in 2012 is not only conservative, but radically so. And it goes unchallenged in the closed circle of corporate FM.

Of course, in the process of eliminating local and dissenting voices and creating ever-narrower music playlists, Clear Channel and Cumulus eliminated thousands of radio jobs, replacing local disc jockeys, program and music directors, reporters and other station personnel. The impact on local businesses has been profound as well, as the majority lack the financial resources and access to marketing dollars that corporate advertisers take for granted.

As McKinney puts it, they eschewed Michael Moore’s ambush journalish, exemplified by Moore’s chasing down GM’s ‘Roger’ in Roger and Me or Charlton Heston for Bowling in Columbine, in favor of letting the film function as blatantly partisan, a polemic told as both love story and lament through the eyes of those closest to it, many of whom may not have thought in particularly political terms prior to the experience, but who bear witness now. These are folks whose politics may not have been particularly anti-corporate, but they've been radicalized by brutal experience.


In summary, far beyond what the disappearance of a radio station may mean to a local music scene or the career development of individual artists, this is a story about what corporate behemoths, whose profitability is based on the anti-social imperatives of capital equity firms, can do to communities. And ultimately about putting corporate ‘freedom’ in front of the people’s.


I feared that the film's emphasis on regional events, especially the sad saga of Lawrence's KLZR, might provide too narrow, too provincial a focus. That fear was unfounded. The locals who testify state their cases effectively, and the universal resonance of this regional history is clear. In other words, they tell a bigger story and do it more persuasively than I anticipated.

My testimony doesn’t do justice to the film, frankly. What I would like for you take away from my remarks is simple, however. “Corporate FM” is a story worth absorbing. It's already been recognized locally, having won the award  for Best Heartland Documentary Feature from the AMC Theatres Kansas City FilmFest 2012. Like a great local band it deserves a wider audience.

You should see it if given the opportunity. 

If you have a few bucks chip in to their Kickstarter fund: (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/898777756/corporate-fm-the-feature-film?ref=email).

I’ll be back to music soon. Look for a piece on Lee Bains III and the Glory Fire’s album There is a Bomb in Gilead in the next day or two.

Spiritualized - Sweet Heart Sweet Light (Fat Possum Records)

The drone and rush of Spacemen 3 was dark, dirty fun. Like the Jesus and Mary Chain they brought a dash of demi-monde cool to the synth-pop Eighties. When they broke up, guitarist Jason Pierce initiated a new project called Spiritualized, a band who didn’t reject Spacemen’s ethos, but certainly gave it grander dimensions. 

Pierce has woven strands of Velvet Underground ‘rush and on my run’ thrust, lysergic propulsion (think 13^th Floor Elevators, and yes, even Pink Floyd), the epic pop pretensions of Phil Spector, and American gospel sounds throughout Spiritualized’s twenty-year history. The band’s apotheosis, Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating in Space, a classic statement of Pierce’s vision was released in 1997. Subsequent releases have to varying degrees retreated from or refined that classic. Good records, all of them in my estimation, but nothing stunning 

 

After 2008’s Songs in A and E, Pierce revisited Ladies and Gentleman, mounting extravagant live productions of the album. Immersed in his own classic and moved by audience response, Pierce determined that any new release from Spiritualized had to meet that standard. With Sweet Heart Sweet Light his mission is accomplished. It embraces Ladies and Gentlemen, but deepens and matures its sensibility. 

Where some of the band’s recordings hid behind a patina of noise and attitude, Sweet Heart is transparently detailed, achieving a clarity of pop production that would flatter halcyon period Beach Boys or the Beatles circa Magical Mystery Tour. 

With Pierce undergoing chemotherapy as treatment for liver disease, most of the basic tracks for Sweet Heart were cut in his home studio with a core quartet of Pierce, guitarist/bassist Tony Foster, keyboardist Tom Edwards, and drummer Kevin Bales. Pierce then convened sessions in Iceland (for orchestration) and Los Angeles (backing vocals). 

Dr. John - Locked Down (Nonesuch)

Every music lover has moments of revelation. I still recall vividly the first time I heard the Animals riveting (yes, it was riveting – I know it’s the critical cliché to end all critical clichés, and I don’t care) take on the American folk chestnut “House of the Rising Sun.” It was playing on the car radio. I made my mom leave the car running as we pulled into a parking space in front of my bro’s jewelry store in downtown Lawrence. Never in my sweet, short life had I heard anything like it. I was a pre-teen. My exposure to black music was limited to Nat King Cole and Harry Belafonte; suffice to say Charley Patton wasn’t playing on WHB. The Animals’ singer, Eric Burdon, was from Newcastle, England, but that voice, and its amazing conviction and intensity stemmed from his adoration of the American blues tradition. I didn’t even know it yet, but I was hooked.

The mise en scene of “House of the Rising Sun” was New Orleans. When you’re a white bread kid in the sixth grade from Kansas your impressions of New Orleans came from Al Hirt and Pete Fountain (okay, Louis Armstrong might cross your radar occasionally, but almost as a novelty). That’s what you saw on television. No knock on those dudes, but they represented a commercialized, somewhat sanitized version of the music of New Orleans. That sound occasionally seeped into the pop mainstream of the Sixties. Fats Domino may have been past his chart prime, but songs like “Iko Iko” by the Dixie Cups and the odd hit from Lee Dorsey (especially “Working in a Coal Mine”) gave a hint what was cooking in the Big Easy. Aaron Neville had a hit with “Tell It Like It Is” but its rhythm n’ blues sound was not especially Nawlins-centric.

For me, another revelatory moment was the first time I heard Dr. John – on a short-lived Kansas City underground FM station called KCJC. The tune was “Mama Roux” if I recall correctly. I’d never heard anything quite like it. Heck, most of America hadn’t. The gumbo of styles, representative of New Orleans, that became available to anyone receptive to it in the Seventies, was still underground culturally in 1968. The Meters first album didn’t drop until 1969. Professor Longhair, after recording for several labels in the Fifties with marginal commercial results, was working as a janitor throughout most of the Sixties. The aforementioned chart hits by Dorsey, Neville and the Dixie Cups only hinted at what was going on in the diverse neighborhoods of the Crescent City. 

 Dr. John, the Night Tripper was a persona created by a Los Angeles based New Orleans ex-pat named Mac Rebennack. Rebennack had played on many recordings as a very young man in New Orleans. He moved on to Los Angeles where he was a go-to session man between 1963 and 1968.

As Dr. John, Rebennack combined the full simmering roux of New Orleans sounds (sanctified church music and Saturday night grind) and mixed them shrewdly and affectingly with the psychedelic wail of the emerging counterculture. Three similarly themed albums cementing the Dr. John cult followed the debut record (Dr. John, the Night Tripper - the album that included “Mama Roux”). Rebennack followed those first four releases with Gumbo, an excellent session that paid homage to hometown piano heroes like Professor Longhair and James Booker, produced by fellow New Orleans legend, Allen Toussaint.

Over the last thirty-some years the Dr. has kept active. As a solo artist he’s responsible for twenty-eight albums. Not bad for a guy who hasn’t had a hit in forty years (1973’s “Right Place, Wrong Time”) and who fought a junk habit until the late Eighties, as I understand it. There’s good music throughout that twenty-eight record catalog; but nothing quite as unique or captivating as those early records – until Locked Down.