WFHB Add Pool Quick Pick: Sigur Ros, "Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust"

Date:	11/30/08	Label: XL Recordings
artist:	Sigur Ros
title:	Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
file under:	Rock
grade:	A
Review: With Med Sud . . ., Sigur Ros has managed to make its most accessible record (a relative statement!) to date, without compromising the beauty and subtleties that make them one-of-a-kind.  Produced by Flood (U2, Depeche Mode, etc.), this music is indescribable but beautiful and, in places, actually FUN!  Once again filled with Icelandic gibberish and quasi-fake invented language, this album soars with strings, strange acoustic guitar play, and Thom York-ish vocals.  Any track will do, but try the syncopated organic stomp of “Gobbledigook,” (track 1), the horned-up harmonizing Flaming Lips-ish “Inni Mer . . .” (track 2), the dreamscape of “Med Sud . . .” (track 6), or the sleepy-sleepy first English language track for the band, “All Alright,” (track 11).  Put a little Radiohead against it!
comments / tracks  of interest: 1, 2, 6, 11 FCC: Are you kidding me?  THIS AIN’T EVEN ENGLISH!
reviewer:  Hopedaddy

WFHB Americana Genre Director Quick Pick: Bruce Robison, "The New World"

Date:	11/30/08	Label: Premium
artist:	Bruce Robison
title:	The New World
file under:	Americana
grade:	B
Review: How do you stand out as a songwriter when you are married to Kelley Willis, brother to Charlie Robison, and brother-in-law to Dixie Chick Emily Robison?  Well, you write DAMN GOOD SONGS and probably have a hell of a hootenanny around the Thanksgiving table.  Robison’s written hits for Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, George Strait, and the Dixie Chicks, but his own project is no slacker.  A slice of folk / Americana (think Lyle Lovett or a countrier John Hiatt), The New World has a lot to recommend it.  Check out the twang plodder “The Hammer” (track 1), the weepy “Bad Girl Blues” (track 3), the poppier “California 85” (track 4), or the banjo folk of “She Don’t Care” (track 9).
comments / tracks  of interest: 1, 3, 4, 9 FCC: None
reviewer:  Hopedaddy

WFHB Americana Genre Director Quick Pick: Waylon Jennings, "Forever"

Date:	11/30/08	Label: Vagrant
artist:	Waylon Jennings
title:	Forever
file under:	Americana
grade:	A-
Review: Waylon left us in 2002, but not before (even years prior) he recorded a few tracks with his son, Shooter.  His place in rock history well-fixed, this Grammy award winner and Hall of Fame member’s posthumous release was put together by Shooter, who resurrected the tracks from the 95-96 sessions and finished recording them with his own band, the .357’s.  Standouts include covers of Rodney Crowell’s “Ain’t Livin Long Like This” (track 3) and Neil Young’s “Are You Ready for the Country?” (track 4).  Also spin the golden blues creeper, “Waymore’s Blues” (track 6)—it’s GOLD!.  A fitting last project for Waylon, and a bridge to Shooter and the .357’s.  Oh, and pop the cover open and check out the photobooth pic with Buddy Holly!
comments / tracks  of interest: 1, 3, 4, 6 FCC: TRACK 2 “SHIT”
reviewer:  Hopedaddy

WFHB Americana Genre Director Quick Pick: Luke Doucet, "Blood's Too Rich"

Date:	11/30/08	Label: Six Shooter
artist:	Luke Doucet
title:	Blood’s Too Rich
file under:	Americana
grade:	B+
Review: Canadian singer/songwriter Doucet has been recognized as a quality writer, voice, and guitar player for a few years now, including sideman stints with Canada’s Kathleen Edwards and Sarah McClachlan.  With Blood’s Too Rich, Doucet turns his songwriting AND guitar prowess up a couple of notches, releasing a more Americana project with nods in places to (smoother versions of ) Neil Young and Mark Knopfler.  Just as the writing gets a little light or the production a little smooth, though, Doucet dirties it up with tasty turns on the guitar.   If Doucet can calm his artistic schizophrenia, he will mature into an Americana artist to watch.  Check out his (un-Americana) cover of the Cure’s “The Lovecats” (track 3).   “The Comandante” (track 7) was recently featured on Nick Hornby’s NYT playlist.
comments / tracks  of interest: 2, 3, 7, 11, 12  FCC: none
reviewer: Hopedaddy

 

WFHB Americana Genre Director Quick Pick: Dave Alvin, Best of the Hightone Years

Date:	11/30/08	Label: Hightone
artist:	Dave Alvin
title:	Best of the Hightone Years
file under:	Americana
grade:	A-
Review: Alvin’s long and colorful Americana career includes founding member status of the legendary Blasters, as well as stints with the Knitters and, for a time, as Billy Zoom’s replacement in the seminal L.A. punk country band X.  Alvin’s sound has always been rooted in blues and Americana music, and his solo records on Hightone are proof.  This collection swings between fingerpicked country blues, National slide, and straight ahead country rock.  This “Best of” includes unreleased tracks “Dry River” and “Dixie Highway Blues” and “Out in California.”
comments / tracks  of interest:  Plenty to draw on here, but recommended tracks include the signature acoustic roll “King of California (track 2),”  rocker “Haley’s Comet (with Dwight Yoakam, track 3),” an acoustic version of X standard “4th of July (track 5)” and the  smoker 12-bar “Out in California” (track 13).  FCC: none
reviewer:  Hopedaddy

 

 

The Hold Steady: "Stay Positive" - Review

I knew The Hold Steady had finally won me over with Stay Positive on about my fifth listening. Though there were still layers of lyrics and stories to pick through, the record already felt like an old pair of Chuck Taylors, comfortable and very familiar, but designed to kick someone's ass.

My previous problem with The Hold Steady can be blamed on Critic's Shorthand-- you know, "this band sounds like __________, with a bit of ________." Record reviews for The Hold Steady, from earlier releases right through last year's Boys and Girls in America, placed Craig Finn and his band directly on E Street. I'm no prude, but the previous releases were a little too full of drugs, booze, and parties gone bad. It felt a little gimmicky after repeated listenings. As a thirty-year-plus fan of The Boss, I tried and I tried, but I never heard it. Sure, they both have sweeping piano lines over bridges of their songs, but that's where the similarities begin and end.

Look, this girl I dug in 6th grade actually had a little mustache, but she never made me think of Burt Reynolds.

So I put away the Hold Steady, suffering the scorn of many trusted sources, distancing myself from the Bruce references, and I forgot about the Hold Steady . . . until last week's release of Stay Positive, an absolutely blistering set of good old American Rock and Roll. Interestingly, for such a highly-anticipated (and presumably well-funded) record, Stay Positive suffers from some of the worst production/mastering I have heard. It may be the only rock release in recent memory that actually sounds worse on headphones than in the car, and I'm beginning to realize that may be by design. Sure, Stay Positive is art . . . it's gushing with great stories . . . but it's art made to be played at 11, mullet out, T-tops off the Camaro.

From the opening track, "Constructive Summer," Stay Positive serves up throw-up-the-horns rock and roll that demands singing along. In fact, "Constructive Summer," with its refrain, "We're gonna build something this summer," may just be this Summer's unofficial anthem.

Throughout Stay Positive, Finn and company drop 70's and 80's rock references, lyrical and musical, like bait for aging iPod owners. Whether conjuring up Iggy Pop in words ("Constructive Summer") or the Cars and Van Halen in sounds (the spiraling keyboards and guitar crunch of "Navy Sheets"), Finn has cred in this department-- he's just weeks from his 37th birthday.

Underneath the rock din, Finn is, at essence, a very literate storyteller. "Sequestered in Memphis," a less-than-clear story of a bargirl encounter gone bad, finds him re-telling a story that one suspects might be his own. In the hero's responses to a police grilling, Finn finds the biggest hooks of the entire record-- "In barlight, she looked all right, in daylight, she looked desperate. That's all right, I was desperate too, I'm getting pretty sick of this interview. (Subpoenaed in Texas, sequestered in Memphis)." We have no idea what happened to the poor girl, but we can't help but sing along.

Despite the hooks (and the title), the stories and songs on the record are often dark. In "One for the Cutters," a college girl (presumably in Bloomington, Indiana), bored of her college friends, ventures out to the quarries to party with the "townies." Avoiding the spoiler, let's just say that this song may single-handedly scare this Bloomingtonite father of two girls into keeping them in the house after dark well past their twenty-first birthdays.

The only misstep on Stay Positive is "Joke About Jamaica," a song (over-stuffed) with Zep references. Though every rock and roller over forty remembers the friends who couldn't pronounce "D'Yer Maker," because they didn't get it, the remaining references . . . Houses of the Holy, Trampled Under Foot, etc. are numerous, heavy-handed, and eventually render an otherwise good song just . . . Zo-So. (Ugh.)

And so, my apologies for what I may have said about The Hold Steady. I get it. I love it. But Bruce is the complement, not the analog. Bruce and Craig, they're in the same room, but they're not friends. Bruce is Breakfast Club wrestling champ Andy Clark-- successful, polished, and sexy, but also troubled and sometimes annoyingly self-aware. Craig Finn, of course, is John Bender-- dope-smoking, doughy and unloved, casting stones from the outside. But he knows exactly what he's doing, and we laugh at every one of his jokes, no matter how pointed or mean-spirited.

Stay Positive is anything but positive, but it is mature. Like Jeff Tweedy, maimed by rock and roll, music is also Craig Finn's savior. In opening the song (and the record), he proclaims "Our Psalms are sing-along songs." In the title track, he again shouts "the sing-along songs will be our scriptures." Any record that includes a song ("Constructive Summer") dropping both Joe Strummer (this blog's icon, a personal hero, and the patron saint of those of us who never gave up on the power of rock and roll) and a little buddhist wisdom is a must-have: "Raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer, I think he might have been our only decent teacher. Getting older makes it harder to remember-- we are our only saviors."

Indeed, Mr. Finn. I hope you come around these parts soon, so I can apologize in person.

Bell X1: Flock - Review

Popping seven bucks, grabbing a couple of friends, donning some stunningly sexy oversized plastic polarized sunglasses, and taking in ninety minutes-plus of the new U2 3D raises damn few questions, and certainly fewer worth any meaningful consideration. Quality sound? Check. Better seats than the Average Joe could afford to an actual U2 show? Check. Fifty-foot version of Bono's goofy-ass racquetball goggles? Check. (Was he also seeing us in 3D?)

Moreover, after consideration of what it took for a little band from Ireland to grow from pub shows to (sometimes gag-inducing) Three-Dimensional World Domination, another question bubbles up: It's been more than 25 years-- where are the other Irish superstars? Over the years, critics have routinely forecast others as iMax-bound: The Pogues, The Waterboys, Hothouse Flowers, The Cranberries, and, more recently, The Frames-- all great bands, some not seeking superstardom, none achieving.  2008's version, however, may have all of the right elements at the right time. Bell X1, from North County Kildare, have released three critically-acclaimed albums in their native Ireland. This week, Yep Rock gives a stateside release to the band's third full-length project, Flock.

Flock sounds at once both very unique and yet like some strange sampler of every other popular stadium rock band of the past ten years. Inspired, but not derivative, Irish folk underpins strong songs that echo, at times, Radiohead ("Reacharound"), Coldplay ("Flame"), and, all over the record, their most obvious kin, The Frames.

Much of the balance comes from the disarmingly comic lyrics that creep out when the mood becomes insufferably heavy.  In "Flame," just as vocalist Paul Noonan challenges the capacity of the cheese-o-meter with "Your flesh melts in my mouth like Holy Communion," he quickly deflates it, funning on Leonard Cohen, "but you don't really care for Jesus, now do you?" As you find yourself joining in on "Flame"'s catchy chorus, you suddenly realize just how un-serious Bell X1 can be, with what sounds like the entire band repeating the silly proclamation, "I wanna be near you and blink in your light, and toast marshmallows on a cold dark night."

"Rocky Took a Lover," an acoustic anthem imagining a conversation between a homeless man and woman falling in love, is the clear candidate for a single (if there is such a thing anymore), with a made-for-stadium-singalong chorus. Again, just as the characters' exchange approaches heavy-handed prose, the woman reflects, "I don't believe in any old Jesus-- If there was a God, then why is my ass the perfect height for kicking?"

By the same token, neither does the periodic giddiness of the lyrics ever dissolve into nonsense or pure novelty. "Bad Skin Day" skips along through a simple drum/acoustic pattern, building into a slow and infectious chant. "Natalie," another slow burner, could easily be mistaken for a Joshua Tree B-Side, punctuated with chiming guitars like the Edge of Old. After an electronic-laden bridge on "Bigger Than Me," a flat-out rocker, Noonan, doing his best David Byrne, shrieks, "Am I a stone? Am I a sponge?", so convincingly that one fully expects him to follow with, "This is not my beautiful wife!"

Flock is not perfect, an observation borne out by the plodding "He Said, She Said" and "My First Born for a Song," the latter introduced with an electric piano riff that sounds as though it was lifted straight from an NPR radio button.  These are mere blemishes, however, as Flock is, at its essence, an ambitious and well-formed project, worthy of repeated plays.  After all, even The Unforgettable Fire had its "Fourth of July."

The Whigs: Mission Control - Review

31 years ago this Valentine's Day, a group of friends in Athens, Georgia formed a band, musical skills be damned. Though perhaps more about fun than musicianship, the rise of the B-52's to prominence (and radio dominance) was the tip of an Athens music scene iceberg, with the college town subsequently turning out college and indie rock staples at anything but a glacial pace, including Indigo Girls, Widespread Panic, and college-rockers-now-commercial-megagods R.E.M.

Save for a few drips in the bucket, the Athens well has run a bit more dry in the past decade or so. Now, while no one is looking, Athens three-piece The Whigs, who just released their second full-length project, Mission Control, sneak out of Athens. I don't know what the "Athens sound" is, but the Whigs have maintained a wide berth.  Instead, Mission Control comes out like a punchier 'Mats project, often a blistering wall of guitar and vocals that demands "going to 11." There's no Westerberg writing here, mind you, but the record often sounds like a respectful tip-of-the hat to the later, more studio-finessed Replacements.

On this sophomore release of 11 quick and tasty tracks, frontman Parker Gispert moves from rock croon to hoarse wail.  The voice is impressively strong, never double-tracked, and often harmonized to a lovely end. Songs are frequently built around the explosive drumming of Julian Dorio, who thunders from the very opening track, "Like a Vibration," straight into the machine-gun attack of "Production City." In fact, it's the drumming that eventually detonates the radio-friendly steady romp of "Right Hand Over My Heart" into a full garage-rock explosion. 

The writing tries a bit too hard at points, such as in the  forced Beatle-esque opening to "Sleep Sunshine," a song saved only by a weeping lap steel at its close. When the band forgets to be at least a little bit loose, they drift toward every other Fighting Foo trying to get on the radio ("I Never Want to Go Home," "1,000 Wives"), but without the cloying smugness or knowing irony that Dave Grohl now appears unable to move beyond. On "Already Young," the carefree grunge that appears toward the end of Mission Control, the Whigs sound more like that other little band that used Grohl was a part of-- as a drummer.

Sometimes you hear a record that you know is a magnetized taste of a looser, louder live act, and Mission Control is just such a record. After the Strokes-like march and tight bass melodies of "Hot Bed" and the screamer "Need You Need You," it may not matter that your car speakers are destroyed, because you may find yourself driving to the next Whigs' gig to see what this band sounds like live. Upcoming dates with the Drive-By Truckers should yield the exposure that the band, and this record in particular, deserve.

Liam Finn: I'll Be Lightning - Review

In the late 80's, smack dab between his MTV-friendly Split Enz and his more recent solo singer-songwriter career, Neil Finn commissioned famed luthier Danny Ferrington to build two guitars. Finn was seeking inspiration in writing and performance with his then-band, masters of crafty pop Crowded House. Closely tied to his family, both in his life and in his music, Finn asked Ferrington to inlay the ebony of the first guitar's fretboard with pearl symbols representing each member of his family. Perhaps in a fit of wishful thinking, Finn requested that the fifth fret, representing 7-year old son Liam, be adorned with a drum kit.

Nearly twenty years on, it appears Neil got his wishes, as Liam is playing the drums . . . and the bass, and the guitar, and the piano, and nearly every other instrument appearing on I'll Be Lightning, Liam's solo debut released this month on Yep Roc. Though the project is chock full of lyrical phrasing, melodies, and the voice, that voice, that all draw lines right back to Papa, I'll Be Lightning finds Liam skipping right out of his father's tall shadow.

Lightning is nothing earth-shattering. It's a pop record, and it doesn't attempt to be anything more. But it's a beautiful pop record, fat with double and triple-tracked vocals, keyboards, and infectious melodies that sneak from your iPod into your brain and live there for the afternoon.

The record starts in simplicity with "Better to Be," a bit of a throwaway song built around a loopy keyboard riff. From there, the complexity increases quickly through the strong three-song run "Second Chance," "Gather to the Chapel," and the closer to what feels like the album's first segment, "Lead Balloon," ending in a screaming bit of pop-punk.

Finn's vocals are a bit thin in places, especially where only single-tracked, as on the plodding rhythms of "Energy Spent," or in the silly "Music Moves My Feet." In fairness, the weakness in Finn's voice is due in part to his freshman lack of confidence in delivery, but also to the less-than-conscious comparisons the listener inevitably makes to the more muscular and pop-seasoned pipes of Finn's father.

By the album's close, Finn hits his stride. Reviewers trotting out Brian Wilson references may be a bit cliche, but the references are warranted in this case. More directly, the last half of Lightning references the Fab Four, not so much as mere influence as outright homage at times, especially on the title track, which ends in a beautiful chorus of Finn vocals.

Identifying the weaknesses in this solo release seems almost unfair, as this is a strong solo debut that is a worthy purchase, and not just for Finn completists. Rolling Stone was dead-on in identifying Liam Finn some months ago as one of its "Artists to Watch."

Finn Footnote: That second guitar? Neil had Ferrington build a miniature version of his own guitar to give to boy Liam. Neil immediately borrowed the mini-guitar and carried it into the studio, where it can be heard on "Four Seasons in One Day," "Weather With You," and "She Goes On," three standouts from Crowded House's 1991 pop-gem Woodface.

That's So . . . 2004

Wherein, Hopedaddy asks, where was I?  This time out, the wayback machine takes only a short spin back up the block, pulling over to the first shiny object in the road: Magnet's 2004 release, On Your Side. Magnet, the alter ego of Norway's Evan Johansen, turned in a delicate and lushly produced record, full of strings, horns, multi-layered voices, and even Radiohead-esque electronic snippets, all packed into a perfectly dreamy pop release.  Imagine a highly-produced Jose Gonzales, and you are about there.  A "new discovery"?  Where was I?  Check it out.