Blogcritics Author: John Owen

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Music Review: Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha

John Owen — Fri, 11 May 2007 10:53:57 EDT

It's an unjust world that doesn't hail Andrew Bird with parades and midnight fetes. Nine years ago or so, when the Chicago-based violinist and songwriter formed Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire, I nearly wrote him off right then and there. At the time, Bird, a Suzuki-trained musician who claimed to have barely heard any rock music at all, ever, was a hot-jazz violinist somewhat in the mold of the great French player Stéphane Grappelli and a sometime member of swing revivalists The Squirrel Nut Zippers. Given that the neo-swing revival lasted all of two years, and my patience with it considerably less time, I was disinclined to give Andrew Bird a free pass.With The Bowl of Fire, Bird put out Thrills (Rykodisc, 1998) and Oh! The Grandeur (Rykodisc, 1999), two albums which I received as basically updated museum pieces, kind of neato like a garage-built replica of a Model T Ford, but like a Model T replica more curiosities than accomplishments. His archly retro songs and arrangements were entertaining amalgams of ragtime, hot jazz and swing, Weimar-era cabaret, Eastern European folk music, and other similarly unfashionable influences, but their appeal (for me, at least) stopped at the eardrums. The albums seemed to sell passably well, he built a small and dedicated fanbase, but for my part I had my fill of Andrew Bird pretty quickly. (Full disclosure: I was working for the label that put out Bird's first three albums. As if that makes me any more patient with nonsense.)And then it all got weird. Bird's third album went in what you might call a completely unexpected direction. I suspected it might be getting interesting when, one afternoon, I was instructed to find a Hohner Beatle bass on short notice for Andrew to make use of in the studio (luckily for me, Manhattan is sick with Beatle basses for rent), and my suspicions were borne out when he delivered his third Bowl of Fire album, The Swimming Hour (Rykodisc, 2001). Gone were the hot jazz, the Hungarian folk music and the two-step beats. Gone were the one always-arched eyebrow and the sense that every note was part of some elaborate in-joke.Instead, Andrew Bird had learned in his own way to rock. But, being a classical music junkie and polymath, Bird didn't just sit down and pen a raft of "easy" by-the-numbers garage rock songs and dress them up with electric violin and Beatle bass. No, no no. Instead, Bird sat down and listened to what must have been the entire history of rock and roll music from Elvis up to Pavement, and then went off and encapsulated that history in one neat and quirky package. From the clattery Ray Charles jump blues of "How Indiscreet" (which featured a Raelettes-style backing chorus) to nods to Latin music, Burt Bacharach chamber pop, that Weimar cabaret again, it was a dizzyingly accomplished leap forward. Every song still featured his signature violin, but it appeared in a thousand disguises - distorted, plucked, and echoed, and his light and mellow voice became a secret weapon as he slyly intoned little stories about rest stops and mistaken identity. It was rock music, yes, but coming from a wholly original place and sensibility that had little to do with the blues, Chuck Berry, Zep or the Stones. In short, The Swimming Hour was a smart and original album of marvelous songs played in a marvelous fashion, and I thought to myself, "no way that Andrew Frigging Bird is gonna top this."Boy, was I wrong. Having gone solo starting with 2003's Weather Systems (Grimsey/Righteous Babe), each of his subsequent albums has been better, deeper, more mature and masterful than the last. His songwriting has become more confident as he has developed his own voice - his own genre - that nods at but does not rely on anything else that's been done before. Ever. His lyrics have become sharper, blending keen observation with poetry and Tin Pan Alley wordplay, and he has become (check this out) a master whistler.Andrew Bird's latest album, Armchair Apocrypha (Fat Possum, 2007) was released in March to... thunderous silence. I don't get it. Andrew Bird has made the album of the year, an absolutely breathtaking tour de force of beautiful and brilliant... something... pop? I don't know what it is... and the only press I'm seeing is in the usual places that review indie-rock (Pitchfork, The Onion). No ticker-tape, no guest stint coaching the vocal gymnasts on American Idol, and it's a crying shame.Bird created Armchair Apocrypha with the help of electronic-music experimentalist Martin Dosh. Dosh's influence seems mainly to be in the way that most of the productions are big as Western vistas, full of nuance and texture and sweeping motion, even when they are quiet as whispers. When Bird takes full advantage of his singing voice - a light, agile tenor not too different from Jeff Buckley's - or his multifaceted violin, or the whistling that sounds more like a Theremin than something human, and sets these monstrous talents off against Dosh's expansive productions, the effect is breathtaking. When from time to time, the electronic flourishes intrude a little more, as with the canned shuffle beat on "Simple X" or the storm of drums that ends "Armchairs," it's usually to the song's advantage. (But not always; "Simple X" is probably the weakest track, relatively speaking, on an otherwise stellar album.)Somewhat like David Byrne (whom he resembles in eyebrow and cheekbone), Bird's lyrics are full of wordplay and detached observation that seems to come from a wry weariness, taking on the persona of someone who's seen enough to know that he doesn't want to see any more. On Armchair Apocrypha, disaster seems to lurk just underneath every surface. You find yourself grooving to "Heretics" well before you figure out that the chorus runs, "Thank God it's fatal," and the album-opening "Fiery Crash" seems to contemplate the titular tragedy in order to ward it off.Bird even delves obliquely into politics for what I believe is the first time with "Scythian Empires," which pulls together three millennia worth of Middle East conquests and their subsequent fiascos over a gently driving beat built on acoustic guitar, plucked violin, and that ever-present Greek chorus of Bird's otherworldly whistling:five day forecast bring black tar rains and hellfirewhile handpicked handler's kid gloves tear at the inseamstheir Halliburton attaché cases are uselesswhile Scotch-Guard Macintoshes shall be carbonizednow they're offering views of exiting empiressuch breathtaking views of Scythian empiresScythian empirehorsemen of the Russian steppeScythian empirearchers of an afterthoughtrouted by Sarmatiansthwarted by the ThraciansScythian empirekings of Macedoniaand the Scythian empireHalliburton attaché cases, by the way, are fantastic.No matter whether Bird is punning on, well, birds on "Spare-ohs" and the clever album art, or contemplating mortality and the game of Operation on "Dark Matter," every shot hits the target dead center. This album is as career-defining and as one of a kind as Pink Moon, Tapestry or Dark Side of the Moon, and I'm frankly shocked that music this good - even if it's not immediately comprehensible as "pop" - isn't burning up the adult alternative radio charts, being written up in Rolling Stone, and generally being lauded as great.Today, I'm at the point where I'm tempted to run to my nearest music store, order a 30-count box full of Armchair Apocrypha and run into the streets thrusting the album into every passing hand. It's that good, that different, that lovely. Not to everybody's taste, maybe not your particular cup of tea, but objectively a great, great album. Andrew Bird has come a long way since I rolled my eyes at "Ides of Swing" and "Candy Shop" from Thrills and Oh! The Grandeur. Before I said it because I still doubted his ability to pull off anything he wanted; now I'm saying it because practically nobody makes two albums this good in a career (even while I hope that this is not true): no way is Andrew Frigging Bird gonna top this.

John Owen was born in the rust flats of Northeastern Ohio, where he was kidnapped and raised by a small tribe of Oldsmobiles. Currently residing on the rockbound coast north of Boston, he is the editor of the academic journal, Review of Arcane Minutiea and its companion lifestyle glossy, The International Obscurantist. His ill-considered front porch maunderings may be found at The Ministry of Minor Perfidy.

Music Review: Robert "Junior" Lockwood - Steady Rollin' Man

John Owen — Thu, 10 May 2007 17:52:14 EDT

Can you imagine the pressure, being the heir apparent to immortal greatness? That kind of thing can do a man in.Robert “Junior” Lockwood was more than just a close personal friend of the great Delta bluesman Robert Johnson. Due to an on-and-off ten year romantic entanglement between Lockwood's mother and the dashing, skylarking Mr. Johnson, Lockwood found himself with a big brother, a stepfather of sorts, and a musical mentor who would teach him all the tricks he had to tell. It was this relationship that gave Lockwood his “Robert Junior” nickname and the keys to his future.And as with most such family dramas, it would be wonderful to write that the three of them, Robert, Robert Junior and mom, retired to a long and happy life on a farm somewhere in Arkansas or western Mississippi and ended their days in the company of beloved friends and family.But instead, Robert Johnson found himself dying in a warm Mississippi night, poisoned by the jilted partner of one his many female companions, Robert Junior found his way out of the Delta by feet and inches, and only his mother had a shot at the idyllic storybook ending (God only knows if she got it).As it turned out, Robert “Junior” Lockwood, heir to immortal greatness, was made of pretty stern stuff. Armed with all the tricks of music and showmanship he'd learned from his mentor, and cut loose from home at a fairly young age, he made a name for himself in juke joints and fish fries up and down the big river, wound his slow way North, and eventually became the go-to guitarist for dozens of recording sessions in the golden age of the Chicago blues.Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Lockwood appeared with some of the all time greats of the Chicago blues style, like Sonny Boy Williamson, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, Little Walter and even Muddy Waters, adding what needed to be added, always staying out of the spotlight. Along the way he continued to teach himself more about the guitar, getting jazz lines and chords under his fingers, even mastering the art of the blues on the notoriously cumbersome 12-string guitar.In the wake of Lockwood's death late last year, the Delmark label is reissuing once again their CD release of his first session as a bandleader, Steady Rollin' Man, recorded in 1970.I have to admit, I was all set to politely pan this album. Its plainer moments are nice enough, sure, but not really incredibly distinct from any one of dozens of worthy Chicago blues albums recorded in the last half-century. But then I found myself walking down the street on a cloudless Massachusetts afternoon, with the sunlight slanting just so from the west and a beautiful melancholy mood coming down, and the song playing in my head was Robert "Junior" Lockwood's "Western Horizon."Structurally, the song is nothing more than a stock Chicago blues by way of the Delta: start the song with the little turnaround where one voice descends chromatically from the flat-7 to the dominant, kick in the twelve bar shuffle vamp, and then cue a lyric whose first two lines are the same and begin with "I believe, I believe... I believe I'll...." Trust me, you know this song. Whether it's sung as "Sweet Home Chicago" or "Dust My Broom" or any one of dozens of alternate lyrics, you know this song.But what I forgot when I got ready to politely pan the album is that in this kind of blues, it's all in the details - the bent notes, the vibe of the song, the little turns of lyric and phrasing that make a blue performance just right.And there's lots in "Western Horizon" that is definitely right. Lockwood studied jazz, and you can hear it sometimes in the way he pulls a phrase behind the beat, the way he swings a line, the way he builds some altered harmonies into his rhythm vamps. On “Western Horizon,” he sings behind the beat and then creeps right up to it, rushes some words and draws others out, and generally sounds like he was born singing the song in that same unhurried way. The effect is cool and stylish, and is a neat twist on top of the late-night saloon mood that he and the band kick up on this song and the album in general. And what a band! For this session, Lockwood tapped some of the best that Chicago had to offer - Fred Below on drums, Dave Myers on bass, and Louis Myers on second guitar. The arrangements and tempos they dig into are less aggressive, less slick, than some of the work that Lockwood was doing as a session man around the same time. Instead, Lockwood and the band let a whiff of country mud into their jazzy urban blues by laying back into grooves, moving some of the rhythm playing up the neck of the guitar (like Junior's ‘godfather’ used to do) and pulling out some great old turnaround riffs that could have come straight from the pines of Arkansas in 1937. On the slower grooves, like "Take a Little Walk With Me," "Mean Red Spider" and "Western Horizon," the band sit back in a simmer that showcases their sedate rock-steadiness and country overtones. But on the jump blues numbers like the overtly jazzy "Lockwood's Boogie" they sit right up in the pocket and deliver all the energy you could ever want to power a Chicago blues bar.With repeated listens, the jazz elements drift to the front of the record. Jazz harmonies and a cool late-night vibe are all over songs like the instrumental "Tanya" and even the by-the-numbers "Take a Little Walk With Me" and "Steady Rollin' Man," and Lockwood's solos on any song may at any point quietly pass over from basic pentatonic flat-five scales into something that's no longer just the blues. The cumulative effect is pretty impressive, a nice balance of influences that don't often play well together but on this album fit together almost seamlessly.So, okay. Maybe there are one or two too many straight-ahead numbers on this disc which sap a little energy from the running order. But that really doesn't hide the fact that I was wrong, and that Steady Rollin' Man is a minor masterpiece of the blues, pulling together the city, the country, and even jazz into one unassuming and masterful demonstration of why Robert “Junior” Lockwood was thought so highly of. Good stuff.

Music Review: Scuba

John Owen — Thu, 10 May 2007 17:19:40 EDT

Midriff Records has a really nice thing going. Founded in 2001 by the New England band The Beatings for the purposes of releasing their own music, they have built a stable of high quality indie-pop bands who mostly trend toward (from what I've heard) the bittersweet and hooky side of the spectrum. In some respects (notably in that their bands seem to all be friends and in some cases brothers), Midriff is becoming a power-pop version of Elephant 6 or K Records, two labels who took a friends-and-family approach to artist development and who are now legendary in some circles. Indeed, the last year or so has seen at least three high-quality releases that should cement Midriff's reputation as a label to rely on: a stellar release from The Beatings themselves; an excellent solo album from Beatings guitarist Eldridge Rodriguez; and now Scuba with a self-titled debut. Like The Beatings, Scuba exist to invoke (and improve on) some of the most revered sounds of the past thirty years or so. But where The Beatings draw on The Pixies, Mission of Burma and Sonic Youth, Scuba are best described as - get this - shoegazer revivalists. Shoegazer! When's the last time you thought about that word? For me it must have been back in college in Ohio in the mid-1990s, hepped up on Mickey's Big Mouths, listening to My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr., and leaving the room every time anyone put on anything by the execrable Sebadoh. Remember when The Jesus and Mary Chain were on Lollapalooza? When The Cure were having hits? When Bob Mould was releasing records as Sugar and even got on the radio? I sure do! And I loved it!But it's both condescending and limiting to describe a band as solely the sum of their influences. On their website, Scuba themselves acknowledge their fuzzy and moody pop roots, saying "We're not a shoe-gazer band. Though we look at a lot of things apparently our shoes are not one of them. Or rather they're not looked at for long enough to become a quote-unquote 'gaze' unquote."Okay, so fair enough. "Shoegazer" implies that Scuba are a tribute band, which isn't correct. So what's the deal with Scuba? Well, the fuzzy guitars and washes of noise aside, they play sumptuous and hypnotic power pop that delivers on what Neil Young said about Crazy Horse, his backing band: "It's all one big, growing, smoldering sound, and I'm part of it. It's like gliding, or some sort of natural surfing." Although you can name check great bands of the past one after another as the songs pass by (right now I'm listening to the leadoff single "Gary Powers' Spy Plane" and dreaming of Boston's late lamented The Sheila Divine), the truth is the songwriting is strong and original and more than the sum of its (My Bloody Valentine, Joy Division, New Order, Sugar, Jesus and Mary Chain, The Cure) worthy influences.The big trick with playing noisy pop-inflected rock is to have it not all sound the same. I've heard literally dozens of boring bands who play boring music that sounds great for three point five minutes until they start their next song and you realize that one song is really all they have. Luckily, Scuba duck the "samey" tag with aplomb by using studio and songwriting tricks to good effect, sometimes washing the sound-field with enormous distortion, other times pulling back to a tunneling bassline and a few chimed guitar notes, sometimes compressing everything into angular chords and a great melody. Scuba manage to duck the other great pitfall of modern power-pop as well, which is the "softLOUDsoft" formula that The Pixies invented and Nirvana made famous. Instead, in the great tradition of their shoegazer forebears, Scuba manage the flow of each song beautifully, creating new textures and moods through smart production and layering of sounds, rather than the crass expedient of stomping the distortion pedal and blasting out the windows every time the chorus comes around.Highlights include the album opener "You Break My Heart in 1000 Different Ways," the echoey suspended overdrive of "Freight," the gorgeous Joy-Division wail of "Maybe It's Different With Johnny" and the gigantic suspended-chord riff of "Into The Water, Down To The Bottom." In a just world, or a different time, any one of these songs should be, or should have been, a monster underground hit, part of the lingua franca of cool youth to be passed down by word of mouth.Simply put, Scuba have made a well-written and beautifully produced debut record that references a decidedly unfashionable genre, one that makes aging hipsters like me feel like rock has a future that isn't limited to Franz Ferdinand, Pink, and tenth-generation SoCal punk. Granted, for the time being the band are leaning hard on their influences, but they're a long way past merely paying tribute to them, which is a whole lot more than million-sellers like Queens of the Stone Age, Sum 182, or, heaven forfend, Nickelback can claim with a straight face.

Music Review: Eldridge Rodriguez - The Conspiracy Against Us

John Owen — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 06:38:28 EDT

My favorite rock album of 2006 was by the New England collective The Beatings, whose sweet-tart invocation of the greats of Boston's postpunk history (The Pixies, Sonic Youth, Mission of Burma) on Holding Onto Hand Grenades struck me as much more than just attribute to their influences.In the wake of the release of Holding Onto Hand Grenades, Beatings guitarist E.R. (aka the improbably named Eldridge Rodriguez) kept going, writing and recording his own stuff under his own name, finally releasing in late February of this year an album of his own, The Conspiracy Against Us. Many of the songs on Rodriguez' album could fit comfortably on a Beatings record, but where the band as a whole tended toward tense, rigorous arrangements featuring loud and layered guitars, Rodriguez alone is much more relaxed, at times a little more acoustic, and in a welcome way, weirder. He's still comfortably within the basic genre definition of "indie rock" or "postpunk" or whatever, but he sounds like he's having a ball.What do I mean by "weirder?" Well, for example, although the Beatings have a nice way with a hook, I can't imagine a Beatings song featuring hand claps, 'sha-la-la' backing vocals, or a cheerleader chorus bleating "a-c-t-i-o-n, action, action, we want action" underneath the big hook. But there they are, the female chorus on "You Get What You Want," adding a winsome dimension to what's already a hooky modern rock song. And I can't imagine, well, anybody with the courage to write a Bowie song and record it in a Bowie voice like Rodriguez does on "Black History Month." Yet, there it is in the middle of what, by rights, ought to be a mildly interesting set of songs by one member of a not-famous-quite-yet rock quartet. The Conspiracy Against Us is full of songs like this, quirky enough to stand out, but strong and restrained enough not to just be irritating, cutesy or precious. The Conspiracy Against Us probably isn't going to win any awards, and probably isn't (such a crime!) going to break huge and move a million units at retail. But Eldridge Rodriguez has made a very impressive, accomplished and most of all interesting debut album, and that's good news for the future.

Music Review: Junior Wells - Live at Theresa's 1975.

John Owen — Mon, 4 Dec 2006 12:14:31 EST

Electric blues in this day and age is, I think we can all agree, about ritual rather than absolute novelty. A good night in a blues bar in Chicago or for that matter in Kiev is about going to the familiar source, reconnecting with the trinity of I-IV-V, with the familiar language of the twelve bars, the bent note, the repeated phrase, and the sweet release of finding company in blackest misery. The blues structure is as well known, as dear and familiar to its devotees, as the Mass is to lifelong Catholics. Sure, okay, all the songs sound alike - it's the ritual that counts.But what ritual! The rhythms don't always change much and the melodies don't either, but that's not the point. The point is the astonishing amount of energy, of feeling, of meaning a good player can put into one little moan, one note, one line that skids right across the song without regard for the form or the changes, that makes you want to stand up and holler right along. That's where the originality comes in - a good blues player can find something new for you in material you know by heart. A good band on a good night can do practically anything and leave you wrung out, serene, and (for a little while anyway) all right with the world.So, sure yeah all right, to non-believers the blues sounds like the same basic thing over and over again. But then again, so is sex, and I don't see many folks getting tired of that. And like sex, (wait, John... so you contend the blues is like sex? How novel!), it's all about the moment. That band, on that night, in that room, is going to put on a show and try to make some magic happen.Case in point: Delmark has just released Live at Theresa's 1975 by the great Junior Wells, a legendary blues harpist and certified magician, that shows why he was considered one of the Chicago's all-time finest. Wells was a prototypical harp player (that's "harmonica") in the Chicago mold, blowing riffs and phrases through a warm and fuzzy microphone that muddies up the sound and buffs the sharp edges off the harmonica's shrill sound. When he was on, his playing was incredibly thrilling, one of the definitive sounds of the Chicago style.Wells was a regular at Theresa's Tavern, a now-defunct venue on Chicago's South Side, and Theresa's doesn't have the swing-for-the-fences atmosphere of a big festival show. According to the archives of the Chicago Reader, Wells and his band played Theresa's at least fifteen times in June of that year, so it's safe to say that Wells felt at home in the venue. So rather than being a big-budget spectacle, Live at Theresa's, which was originally recorded for broadcast on Chicago's WXRT, captures Wells and his band in a relaxed mood, hanging out for a late night of blues and casual profanity and whipping off a gem-studded set designed solely to entertain the good people of the greater Chicago metropolitan area.Wells got his early start in Muddy Waters' band, but by the mid-1960s had migrated to a slicker, smoother sound. He was probably an early influence on James Brown's move to funk, and sometimes took heat for the R&B sound of some of his compositions.On

Music Review: The Slits - Revenge Of The Killer Slits EP

John Owen — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 11:44:21 EST

The Slits were one of the more interesting stories to come out of the great first wave of London punk bands in the late 1970s. Indeed, they are only incidentally 'punk,' in that the teenaged founding members (all female) began their careers as musical incompetents of the "bashed guitar and screamed vocals" school. But by the time Cut, their debut album came out in 1979, the group had moved far beyond the strictures of formal 'punk,' integrating reggae rhythms and dub production into their arsenal. Their second (and last worthwhile) album, 1981's Return of the Giant Slits deepened their commitment to experimentation, adding world-music gestures to their already wide-ranging sound. After these two achievements, the band broke up as its members began to work in other ensembles. They became part of a pantheon of feminist punk bands, alongside little-heard but fondly remembered peers like X-Ray Spex and The Raincoats, but for the next two and a half decades The Slits didn't record another note together.The closest comparison I can make to the Slits' classic albums is to Public Image Ltd's Metal Box LP, which merged reggae, rock, punk, scratchy and sketchy guitar work, and (let's say) "interesting" vocal performances. If you're not familiar with that record, all I can say is the Slits' music was difficult, catchy, bassy, super-feminist, and creative and and off-putting in equal measure, and they deserve the reputation they have as one of the most pioneering of all the bands to come out of the British punk scene. It's not necessarily anything that every person on the planet needs to have in their collection, but people who are into PiL, Neil Young's noisy and angry side, Lou Reed, or post-punk of the Mission of Burma/Sonic Youth school, really need to get their Slits on.And now The Slits have re-formed and seem intent on recapturing the old magic. Last year, core members Tessa Pollit (sometimes Pollitte) and Ari Up (sometimes Upp) teamed with ex-Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook, Adam and the Ants guitarist Marco Pirroni, and the daughters of Cook and The Clash's Mick Jones to record three songs for a newly released EP, Revenge of the Killer Slits.I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Revenge is either a nostalgia trip or a bold new offering, or it could be both. I can't tell. The lead track, "Slits Tradition" is a clattering and edgy mess that merges their old blocky punk-reggae sound with 2006 hip-hop beats to decent musical effect. However, the lyrics aren't anything special, featuring Ari Up boasting about the Slits' greatness in a faintly embarrassing dancehall accent. It's a little good, a little not-good, faintly embarrassing, but deeply intriguing.The second track is more straightforward; an old-school punk workout called "Number One Enemy" that was written in 1976 and belongs completely to that era. From the Sex Pistols-y guitar to the one-note vocals, this is 100% nostalgia trip, albeit a pretty good one. It's the third of three that's worth the price of admission. "Kill Them With Love" is a dubby and spare drum-and-bass track which puts Up's vocals (which influenced Siouxsie Sioux and Bjork, to name just two) right up front. Although it's not exactly the greatest thing I've ever heard, it does promise good things from a more permanent Slits reunion. It indicates that Up and Pollit still have some of the old magic and possibly some new mojo too, and are not just adults who mistakenly think that they are still "hip" and "with it." If nothing else, the fact that they are trying as adults to revist what they did so very well as teenagers suggests they haven't lost the boldness that made them great.There's a lot left unsaid by this three-song EP. The original Slits were stunning partly because they were so consciously political, so consciously feminist, and so musically fearless. The risks they took and the rules they broke paid off in spades in 1979, and whether that's because they were too young to know better or too young to care is beside the point. But the Slits are now in their forties, and it's too early to tell whether that crazy-ass energy that made their original work so thrilling and creative has dried up, or merely matured into something new and thrilling.

Music Review: Jane's Addiction - Up From The Catacombs

John Owen — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 13:46:14 EDT

I remember the winter of 1991-1992, driving around in cars with my friends. Shawn had the treacherous old Chevette with no floorboards he'd gotten for $35, and Tom had the tiny Toyota truck and then the boat-sized wood-paneled station wagon. We'd be tooling around the barren back roads of northeastern Ohio, tuning the radio obsessively, searching for another dose of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." No fooling, when alternative rock hit my part of Ohio, it was like the dawn breaking through a permanent midnight. Sure, we already had what we in my area called "progressive music," our Information Society, Depeche Mode, Cure, Violent Femmes, and so on. But as good as that stuff was (and is), the incurable Britishness of most of these bands failed to really connect with something primal inside me. As a red-blooded briarhopper (that's 'flatland hillbilly'), my need for rock just can't be satisfied for long with synthesizers and doggerel 'bout blisters in the sun. Me, personally, I would drive around with my friends, ravenous for another dose of "Teen Spirit," and then go home and put the amazing art-metal crush of Jane's Addiction on auto-repeat for hours and hours. Briarhopper's gotta feed his jones, after all.Rising out of the same trashy, glammy El Lay scene that gave us Motley Crue, Black Flag, X, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and even The Eagles, Jane's Addiction combined parts that just should never have worked together into one messy machine. Stephen Perkins was a clattery, sticky drummer who played like he'd be as much at home in some tweaked-up bebop band, Eric Avery's thick-toned bass was just a little too metal to be merely funky, Dave Navarro was a metal guitarist with an amazing head for dissonant rhythm parts and bluesy leads, and Perry Farrell was... well, what the hell was he? An androgynous little walking id with a thin whine of a voice who keened and snarled and bled lyrics that, in anybody else's hands, would have been painfully earnest, high-school jottings somehow given dignity through sheer force of will and questionable sanity. They were like Guns 'n' Roses' weird little brothers, hanging out smoking pot in the high school art room while their big bro' lurked behind the school beating up nerds.Together, they made two absolutely classic albums, 1988's Nothing's Shocking and 1990's Ritual de lo Habitual that threw together art school pretension, metal, funk, a few nods to prog-rock, and a heavy dose of drugged-out mysticism to boot. The music and the lyrics bled sex and oil paint, the songs were like nothing ever before, and Perry Farrell stood over it all like a deranged emcee at the greatest drag queen prom ever thrown.And then they were gone. That was the end of the road for them. Three albums (counting their rarely-heard debut) and gone. Perry Farrell threw his energy into the diminishing returns of the Lollapalooza festivals, and into his next musical project, Porno for Pyros. He seemed to be trying to give everyone a big patchouli-scented Los Angeles hug. Dave Navarro retreated into a sleazy demimonde of drugs and prostitutes, eventually shacking up with Baywatch babe Carmen Electra and engaging in some legendary feats of debauchery while cutting himself off from the world. Just like in Jane's Addiction, his darkness and rock energy pulled in the opposite direction of Farrell's utopian guttery poetry, but without each other's balancing forces, both Farrell and Navarro seemed diminished after Jane's ended. For their part, Avery and Perkins launched projects few people seemed to want to hear, and few people did. But between their music and Farrell's brilliant idea for Lollapalooza, Jane's Addiction did as much as anyone to usher in the sea change that overtook popular music in the early 1990s, the decade or so where rock was young again. Although less influential than other bands of the time (e.g. The Pixies, Nirvana, Alice in Chains), their cultural impact was much greater than their record sales would indicate.Frankly, I can't think of a single band in the world more deserving of a best-of compilation than Jane's Addiction, and I'm shocked it took until 2006 for one to show up. I'm also shocked that it's g-d d-mn fantastic. The good people at Rhino, who must surely rise every morning amazed they can do the work they do while drawing pay from their masters at Warner Brothers, have put together Up From The Catacombs: The Best of Jane's Addiction, a seventeen-song retrospective of the band's history that actually manages to do justice to their legacy.I can't believe it -- everything works. The song choices are practically bulletproof, with the highlights of both the big albums present plus a couple choice tracks each from their debut and 2003's "comeback" album, Strays. Wisely skipped is the fairly awful and decidedly inessential Kettle Whistle, a 1997 stopgap (Janes' own The Spaghetti Incident?) that did more to tarnish the band's legacy than keep it alive. Although big fans can always find something to cavil about (I sort of wish the epic "And Then She Did..." from Ritual had been included), there's only so much room on a compact disc, and a lot of great material to choose from. Jane's Addiction was a two-sided band, working equally well on hard-driving funk-metal and on more unorthodox and generally quieter material. Any best-of worth its salt needs to address both sides of the band's personality without privileging one over the other. Up From The Catacombs hits just the right balance.The sequencing is inspired, too. The first three songs progressively raise the ante, skipping from the clattering "Stop!" (the lead track on Ritual) to the enormous punch of "Ocean Size" (the lead track on Nothing's Shocking) to the metal attack of a live version of the early favorite, "Whores." Just like with any good mix tape, we then take a left turn into new territory, in this case to the bad hangover of "Ted, Just Admit It...," a disjointed and, I suppose, arty offering off Nothing's Shocking that ably showcases that side of the band's identity. After a couple more heavy rockers (including the unjustly ignored "Just Because" from Strays), the compilation veers into the contemplative, almost for good. Here is where we find the band's high-water mark, the eight-minute epic of "Three Days" as well as the pastoral "Summertime Rolls" and the quietly devotional "Classic Girl." The comp ends (naturally) with the snarling "Pig's In Zen" (which closed out Ritual) and an absolutely fantastic live version of the band's signature "Jane Says."Absolutely anyone who doesn't have any Jane's Addiction already in their collection should run right out and pick up Up From The Catacombs. Actually, anyone who doesn't already own them should pick up both Nothing's Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual. Ownership of either the best-of or the two great albums is more than just highly recommended -- it is required. I'll be checking. Jane's Addiction were not necessarily the most influential band on the face of the planet, but in the dark cold days of 1991, they were perhaps the most original, the most interesting, the most creative band on the national scene, and their music has stood the test of time. Hats off to Rhino for a job well done.

Music Review: Solomon Burke - Nashville

John Owen — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:07:51 EDT

In Dream Boogie, Peter Guralnick's fantastic biography of soul music innovator Sam Cooke, very few people come off completely well. Cooke, for all his genius and generosity was an avid womanizer with a boundless ego. Sometime tour-mate Johnny "Guitar" Watson often slagged off touring because pimping paid better. Little Richard, well, the less said of his freaky-deaky exploits the better for us all. Better to think of him as the king of "R&B uptempo! R&B uptempo! WOOOOOOOO!" than as a tortured soul with poor impulse control and a Bible whose margins he filled with scrawled records of his sins.One of the only figures in the entire book who seems like someone you'd trust with your house keys is soul-gospel-blues singer, "The King of Rock & Soul," Solomon Burke. A religious man (he was preaching from the age of twelve) he (according to Guralnick) was more famous for cooking up fried chicken for his tour mates than for any epic feats of sin and dissipation.Burke was one of the yeomen of the early soul period. He racked up a number of hits and a great deal of respect among his peers in the late 1950s and 1960s as a performer and singer of gospel-country-soul-blues rave-ups and confessions, but he never quite cracked the upper reaches of the pop charts. Although his career never reached the critical mass of a James Brown or a Ray Charles, he continued releasing albums throughout the '60s, '70s, and '80s, and also returned to his roots as a minister. And although his popularity waned over time, his albums remained, if not inspired or inspiring, refreshingly free of self-parody or outright desperation.A few years ago, Burke signed with the good people at Fat Possum Records, one of the keepers of the true flame of the deep blues, and released what turned out to be a comeback album, 2002's Don't Give Up On Me. For that project, Burke was paired with young indie rock producer Joe Henry, who (yes, just like Rick Rubin did with Johnny Cash) sat Burke down in a comfortable chair with a batch of songs by top-notch writers, and made sure that Burke's own church organist was sitting in on the sessions to boot. The result was a landmark career revival, as good as any of Johnny Cash's comeback records, Loretta Lynn's comeback record, or that of any other formerly neglected rootsy legend you might care to name. Burke's latest album is Nashville, a collection of country songs, reinterpreted in his own style. But I need to interrupt these proceedings to talk a little about what that means, "country." What is "country?" One answer is, "it's what's on the country charts," but I don't mostly like that answer. What's on the charts is crap. Another answer is "anything that Hank wrote." That's a pretty good answer, but limiting. Another answer, according to Solomon Burke himself in an interview I did with him recently is, "[T]his whole thing about country music and soul music and gospel music just wears me out. The truth is that for me, these are all separating categories that do a disservice to music. Because if you go back and listen to my work through the years, you will see that regardless of the category, it all comes down to a message of love."That works for me.Solomon Burke has some seriously high-profile fans. Don't Give Up On Me featured songs by Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, Nick Lowe, and Van Morrison, and Nashville is just as studded with talent, including songs by Tom T. Hall, Dolly Parton, Gillian Welch, George Jones, Bruce Springsteen(!), Patty Griffin, Don Willams, and more. Moreover, many of his female song contributors (Parton, Welch, Griffin, Patty Loveless, and Emmylou Harris) actually appear as duet partners on the album.From the first notes of the opening "That's How I Got To Memphis," a country standard written by Tom T. Hall, Burke infuses each song with truckloads of expression and emotion, bending his voice into a whine, a howl, a barely veiled sob, wrenching every bit of meaning out of the words he's singing. The result is probably the best album I've heard in 2006, an amazing set of performances by an artist who's old enough not to give a damn anymore about how much he's going to sell, but deeply concerned with making music that hits the spot.Highlights (from an album full of highlights) include "Valley of Tears," which is a plaintive and ragged duet with Gillian Welch, the aforementioned saga of misplaced devotion, "That's How I Got To Memphis," the love-gone-bad lament of "Does My Ring Burn Your Finger," written by producer Buddy Miller and his wife Julie, the quiet devotion of "Up On The Mountain," with a deeply affecting, nearly wordless duet contribution from songwriter Patty Griffin, and a stunning performance of "Atta Way To Go," a Don Williams song that Miller produces in the ornamented style of George Jones' hits with Billy Sherrill, and which Burke takes from an intimate chat to an over-the-top cry of anguish without apparent strain to his considerable vocal gifts.And what a gift! Burke's voice has burnished with time, and at 66 he is in total command of his instrument. He can growl, whisper, moan, plead, cry, laugh, even give an evil cackle without breaking the musicality of his singing, and he has a flair for the dramatic and the theatrical that doesn't ever descend into mere melodrama. His performances on Nashville are thrilling, and his ability to adapt himself to the style of his duet partners is a welcome treat. However, the single weak spot on the album is in Emmylou Harris' wan and marginal vocal contribution. Though he tries mightily, Burke can do nothing delicately enough to keep her from practically disappearing from sight. This might be a simple matter of song choice, as Burke and Harris are paired on the George Jones-Tammy Wynette classic "We're Gonna Hold On," and Harris is a far, far lighter singer than Wynette ever was. But regardless of why, in an album full of inspired performances from all parties, Emmylou Harris is, surprisingly, the only weak patch.In keeping with Burke's stated disdain for genre titles, the styles represented on Nashville run the gamut from bluegrass (on Springsteen's "I Ain't Got You") to countrypolitan to country blues to gospel and beyond. "Country" is a concept as hard to pin down as "soul," or what the Spanish call "duende." To play flamenco music you have to have duende - you either have it, or you don't, and you can only tell it's there when you hear it, but without it flamenco music is just some fool playing the guitar really, really fast. Same with soul and country. You know soul when you hear it, and you know country music when you hear it (in everything from Travis Tritt to Tom Waits, from Kitty Wells to Neko Case), and what Burke's got on this album is the Platonic idea, the eidos of both of those things in spades. At age 66, Solomon Burke is at the top of his game and deserves a fuller dose of the belated success that has come to him in recent years. Nashville is a spectacular album, and he can be proud of what he's done. People spend so much time talking about the ridiculous exploits of artists, searching for evidence of genius in dickish behavior, that it's easy to believe that a man who's good at making chicken, whose day job is looking after souls, couldn't possibly possess that same secret flame. Well, crap to that. Solomon Burke is the real deal, and Nashville is God's honest proof.

An Interview With Soul-Blues-Gospel Singer Solomon Burke

John Owen — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 20:52:08 EDT

Soul legend Solomon Burke's latest album, a set of country songs titled Nashville, was released on September 26. I interviewed him by email on October 10. What music are you listening to these days?I'm listening to india.arie, Christina Aguilera, Emmylou Harris, and Gillian Welch. For the guys, I love Usher, Bruce Springsteen's latest CD, Alan Jackson, Eric Clapton. I also am enjoying the Foo Fighters, the Raconteurs, the Wreckers, and anything by Merle Haggard.Who selected the songs for Nashville? The songs were selected by [album producer] Buddy Miller, [executive producer] Shawn Amos, and me. We all listened to a ton of amazing songs -- together, probably over 200 songs. There were certain songwriters whose points of view were important to interpret, in our minds, so that helped us narrow down the list and focus… and then just trying to see what shape the various combinations of songs took that would be a respectable body of work. It was really tough to let go of certain songs that I loved, but that's a part of the process.You do Springsteen's "Ain't Got You" in a nearly bluegrass style, there's some nods to Billy Sherrill-style strings on "Atta Way To Go," and the rest of the album covers all the territory from honky-tonk to country blues to soul to gospel. (Yes, there's a question in here somewhere.) The arrangements are definitely a departure from what you've been doing recently, and (in the good way) definitely not what I would have expected. Who was in the driver's seat when deciding on arrangements?Buddy Miller was very much the driver when it came to the arrangements. But the beauty of how Buddy works is that his arrangements left me a lot of room, and he brought together such amazing musicians that when I "turned left" on a song, the entire band turned left with me. It was a great feeling.On the last album you covered a Hank Williams song, and this time around you cover a George Jones song. Between them, they're two of the most iconic singers of the last 50 years; how do you go about singing a song that belongs completely to someone else, and make sure it's not a mere tribute? How do you take the George out and put the Solomon in?Well, first off, I love Hank Williams and George Jones and I love their bodies of work. For me, there are a lot of songs that I would never ever try to sing, for that exact reason. But if I can feel the song inside of me, then what I sing is a tribute to the original artist as well as the writer, but mostly it's a tribute to the listener. I think we all try to reach out to people and if a George Jones song sung by Solomon Burke and Emmylou Harris is going to be the way to get a message to one person who would have otherwise missed the message, then we are all successful and the story of the song is richer for it. Along these lines, I just want to mention that I have never experienced such graciousness from songwriters and artists as I have on this project. Their generosity in allowing me to sing their songs freely was overwhelming and in my career, historic!There's a few great duets on the record, with Dolly Parton, Gillian Welch, and Patty Loveless, among others. Thank you!This is, if I'm told correctly, the first time in your career when you've done duets. How much collaboration was there between you and your duet partners? Did you have the opportunity to sing face-to-face, to vibe off each other and work out your arrangements together? Actually, I did a duet with Zucchero ("The Devil in Me") and with Junkie XL ("Catch Up To My Step Up") in the last few years. Let's go ahead and mention each lady who sang with me: Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Patty Loveless, and Gillian Welch. I am a lucky, lucky man! Each duet on this CD was as unique as the artists with whom I sang. Buddy did all of the arrangements and really had it set up so I could come in and sing without worrying. He accommodated every artist that came through his door as a friend coming to his home, and that was the vibe of the entire session. My experience with the duets was so personal, I treasure each day, each session, each recording experience of this project. I received so much love and support from the ladies who "duetted" with me, as well as from the songwriters and musicians. What I received from this project was far more that what I was able to give, and the lessons that I learned in Nashville are lessons I carry in my heart.Do you have any plans for future collaborations? I've read that you'd love to work with Willie Nelson, and that you'd even be willing to work with KISS? Heck, I'm 66 years old. I'm just happy to get a gig these days! I'm still reeling from working with Buddy Miller and his wife Julie. But once I start looking toward the future, I would love to work with Willie Nelson -- would love to work with Vince Gill and Kid Rock. I met Jerry Lee Lewis on stage for the first time in our lives, and it felt so good; I would love to do more with the Killer. I don't think it's a question of my being willing to work with KISS -- it's a question of them being willing to work with me. I love those guys -- I'm a huge fan. My dream is to perform with Aretha Franklin. We sang together briefly in Cleveland last year and I still get chills thinking about that night.What made you decide to do a country album? Considering that when you started out, there wasn't much of a difference between a country song, a soul song, and a gospel song (and didn't you chart on the country charts a few times?), it certainly makes sense. Have you always listened to country? If so, who are your all time favorites? My first song at Atlantic was "Just Out of Reach of My Open Arms" which was a country song. I have always loved country music and it has always been my desire to record country. It took me a while but I think this was meant to be at this time in my life. When I was a little boy, it was Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. Still is -- my alarm clock wakes me up to "I'm Back in the Saddle Again" every morning. Later on, it was Patsy Cline, Porter Wagoner, Loretta Lynn, then Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette… and the list goes on.You've made a number of gospel records over the course of your career, and preaching has been an important part of your live since you were young. Now that your career seems to have entered a new phase and you are reaching an audience who doesn't necessarily know anything about gospel music, do you have any plans to make a gospel album in the same vein as the last three records? How about a duet with Mavis Staples? Wow, you know, this whole thing about country music and soul music and gospel music just wears me out. The truth is that for me, these are all separating categories that do a disservice to music. Because if you go back and listen to my work through the years, you will see that regardless of the category, it all comes down to a message of love which is the most Godly thing there is. I would love to sing with Mavis. It would be an honor. But regardless of who I sing with, the most important thing is to find a new way of reaching out to people, so if they maybe missed the message in one song, they're going to get it in the next one. I'm going to keep on singing and working towards that message "'til I get it right."I hear you used to be famous for making fried chicken for your touring partners, or at least that's what Peter Guralnick claims in his biography of Sam Cooke. Can we have your recipe for fried chicken? No, but you're invited over to try it out for yourself!

Music Review: The Kooks - Inside In/Inside Out

John Owen — Mon, 9 Oct 2006 21:18:43 EDT

It is said that there will always be an England. In the grand geological sense, that's as true as it gets. Britain is situated on the far trailing edge of the Eurasian Plate as it slowly crashes into the Pacific Place, meaning that barring calamity, asteroid collision, or devastating attack by giant space robots, Britain is the closest thing the world has to a permanent feature. As long as there is a world and humans to live on it, there will always be an England, full of old gaffers in tweed caps, shaven-headed football hooligans and their pasty girlfriends, Sikh cabdrivers, old sheep villages full of amusingly skewed Tudor homes, cul-de-sacs full of quiet little old ladies with razor tongues, milky tea, Bovril, and people leaping behind the couch at the first sight of Daleks.And if the English and the cockroaches do ever manage to prevail as the only remaining multicellular species to walk the blasted and parched face of the Earth, I guaran-damn-tee you they will still hail every tousled and precious power-pop band to come down the pike as the saviors of all humanity.The latest in this long and occasionally distinguished line of rakish English popsters are the Kooks. And like their forebears the Beatles, the Who, the Kinks, the Dave Clark Five, Badfinger, the Small Faces, the Monkees (yes, the Monkees), Suede, XTC, Blur, Oasis, Pulp, Supergrass, all the way up to this year's heavily promoted Arctic Monkeys, they make raffish and occasionally gorgeous pop music with a distinctly British form and flavor that crosses echoes of the Victorian music hall with crunchy rock, symphonic flourishes, and a typically boozy and distracted demeanor.The Kooks are young. The Kooks need shaves and probably a bath. The Kooks have floppy hair that hides their eyes and surely moistens panties from Norwich to Newcastle. The Kooks slouch endearingly in promo shots, grinning diffidently or striking halfhearted rawk poses that they are clearly a generation too young to take seriously. The Kooks could have been put together in a laboratory or - better yet - a focus group.The Kooks have sold out four tours on their own in the UK. The Kooks have opened for the Stones. The Kooks have charted five singles and sold over a million copies of their debut album, Inside In/Inside Out in the UK, an area that is home to only 60 million. The Kooks have been hailed, as were Blur, Oasis, Supergrass and The Arctic Monkeys, as champions by MOJO and the NME.So the Kooks are a thrilling story. But are they any good?Sure, I guess. Why not? Inside In/Inside Out begins with a bit of Ray Davies-ish rococo songwriting called "Seaside" that lines up the hooks one after the other, bang-bang-bang, as lead singer Luke Pritchard croons about vacations at the shore. For thirteen more songs (only five of which last more than three minutes), the Kooks deliver winsome pop that at times recalls every one of the bands mentioned above, plus a few others. The songwriting is definitely competent, the playing is good, and production flourishes like the reggae touches on "Time Awaits" keep things from smearing together into an undifferentiated mass of goo.I listened to Inside In/Inside Out cold, without reading any of the band's press releases, without looking up any of the fevered praise they've garnered from the UK press, and without even bothering to find out which songs were the singles. Over the years, I have fallen madly in love with plenty of bands, crushed on them like crazy for a week or so, and then suddenly realized that everything they had was in one pretty good song and a bunch of repetitive fluff. Since then, I've learned to play albums by wannabe popsters until I'm good and sick of them, because only then do you figure out what's what.After all this, I am happy to report that Inside Out/Inside In contains exactly no songs that verifiably suck, and at least seven songs that could be mistaken for lead singles. On the other hand, none of those seven possible singles are particularly distinguished or memorable - the minute the album ends I find I can't recall any hook or melody - and the same diffidence that makes the band so very cute in promo shots robs the music of any enduring qualities. Their biggest singles, like "Eddie's Gun" compare favorably to golden-age-of-powerpop British hits like "Starry Eyes" by the Records or "School Days" by the Starjets. However, Oasis, the Arctic Monkeys, and especially Supergrass have already done this revival to death. At this point, it's not enough to write winsome pop songs you can sing along to; I now find myself asking Britain's musicians, en masse, "but what have you done for me lately?" In the USA, it's easy to see the Kooks becoming a college hit and selling a bunch of records, which is good for them and their label. But it's also easy to see the album ending up in a couple months on the shelf next to Bush's Sixteen Stone and (just to prove it's not Britain's problem alone) the Strokes' first album as a mildly interesting reminder of that one band, who had that song, that I could probably sing if I could just remember how it starts. The Kooks are trashy and huggable. The Kooks write incredibly cute pop songs with competence and just enough attitude to make them seem more dangerous than the boys from 'N Sync. But unfortunately, the Kooks are a little boring, too. Inside In/Inside Out is just fine, but 'just fine' doesn't get me hard anymore. If your personal kink is for young and attractive British sensations, or if you're new to the cycle of hype-and-bust, then by all means check this out; it's as okay a place to start familiarizing yourself with Britpop in the '00s as any. But if not, you're probably better off picking up The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society and the Supergrass album of your choice.