Gene Clark/White Light

4 Men With Beards

Producer(s): Jesse Ed Davis for Washita Productions

Street Date: 1971

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Gene Clark. You may know him as the bowl-cutted guy in the grainy YouTube videos, playing the tambourine in the middle of one of the greatest ’60s bands—the Byrds—or as the lonesome, country-folk solo artist that followed after his early exit from the band. Or, you may have no idea who the guy is at all. Gene who? you might say, looking at me like I have three heads and no noticeable taste in music (some readers may think this already; I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you).

Anyhow, I’ve decided to write my second blog of the New Year (I realize it’s already April; Josh Rouse took a lot out of me, OK?), and in this fascinating twist, I’m going to be reviewing a 2008 vinyl reissue of the 1971 “classic” Gene Clark solo album entitled Gene Clark (at least on the cover of the album), but known to most of the established rock and roll community as White Light (also a name of a song on the album).

(Note: This is not to be confused with the Velvet Underground “classic” White Light/White Heat or the mid-199os Social Distortion revival disc White Light, White Heat, White Trash.)

I was inspired to write this by two separate events, which I’d like to relate in the next few paragraphs.

First, on my 30th birthday, a friend who was “interning” (that phrase is used loosely these days, because most of the time, companies use it to exploit young professionals like my friend) and really, really enjoying the work he was doing at a record/CD distribution company here in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, gave me a copy of Gene Clark/White Light as a gift. He brought it in that lovely, square, brown paper bag that vinyl record stores will give you to stow away your new albums, and I remember opening it and wondering, well, what the hell is this? On the front upper righthand corner is written, in white letters, “Gene Clark,” and about halfway down and not dead center but more like right of dead center, is this picture of a silhouetted gentleman sitting directly in front of a big orange-red sun. (I also remember thinking that it looked like it could be a contented fellow on a toilet, sitting in front of the sun and taking a giant dump at, like, 6 a.m., but I knew what people would say if I relayed that message to any sane person.)

Now, the back of the album was an altogether different idea—there he is, Gene Clark, wearing what appears to be a brown leather jacket or possibly a red cowboy shirt, just eerily staring out of this window (I know it’s a window, because you can see the white silken shades and the reflection of the tall pines in the background—what he’s actually looking at). It’s an absolutely amazing picture. It reminds me of that famous Spanish masterpiece Las Meninas, which hangs in the Prado art museum in Madrid. Las Meninas is this mind-twisting portrait of a court portrait-painter painting a picture of the royal family—but the portrait’s audience (us) is literally in front of the picture (i.e. with the king and queen, whose portraits are being painted). This gaggle of crazy handmaidens and dogs and midgets and such are standing in the foreground of the portrait, obviously there to cheer on the king and queen, who no doubt have been sitting there for hours straight in one pose and are probably getting antsy. And (I’m doing this from memory, so it may be totally wrong) to the left of the foreground is the artist looking, well, like an artist, trying to decipher how best to capture the king and queen—without fucking it up too bad and getting his head cut off and put on a pike. All of that reminds me of this album’s back cover. Except that in this one, it’s sort of a shot of anti-happiness. Gene’s eyes look kind yet tired. He looks like he’s been through a lot to get on the other side of that picture window. And his face is literally blue (not sure if it’s how the photo was exposed or if it’s the reissue’s photo quality, but it’s definitely blue). This picture is a long time (yet not that long) removed from that bowl-cutted youngster tapping that tambourine in time for the Byrds. I’m not sure whether to be fascinated, scared or get caught up in that sadness trapped in his eyes. It’s just the back cover of the album—it can’t do me in.

The second thing that led me to review this album is this book by John Einarson I’m reading called Mr. Tambourine Man: The Life and Legacy of the Byrds’ Gene Clark. It is both journalistic and Gene Clark–fan crazy, so it’s a decent read. It helps that Einarson is an “expert” on this era of rock and roll, too, because he puts a lot of the book into perspective. “This was cool at the time, so this is why it sounds this way” sort of stuff. I recommend it to anyone who’s obsessed with the Byrds like I am.

So given that there were these two solid reasons, I decided that, although the Rant Rave Revue usually does modern-era albums or pre-releases, it would be worth it to start reviewing ages-old vinyl albums and things like that, which make their way into my collection. So without further adieu, here’s my RRR for Gene Clark/White Light:

First Impression(s):

“The Virgin” is the lead song, and it’s not at all what I expect, based on the grim cover treatments—this is a song of life, with a little bit of Grateful Dead and a little bit of Bob Dylan flowing through its veins. I like the harmonica intro/solo, but this always leads me to think: Not going to sell. The harmonica has been one of those instruments that makes its way into songs that do not want to be on mass-market radio—and maybe that was the idea, or it was a subconscious thing. I just noticed at the end that the bass has a nice Motown sort of feel to it, when all the instruments drop away.

“With Tomorrow” is up next, and this is more of what I’d expect on an album with such depressing imagery on its back cover. This is straight singer-songwriter acoustic folk. Like the first song, Gene’s voice sounds amazing. It sounds 100 percent more mature and full-bodied than his days with The Byrds. I also notice that this is a dual-songwriting credit with Jesse Ed Davis. There’s nothing else on this track except Gene and acoustic guitar. Perfect.

“White Light,” or what everyone seems to call this album, is the third track. More harmonica, more mysterious happiness shining through and possibly some Beatles nods (maybe to Rubber Soul, with that downward scale in the melody). Absolutely no electric instruments, save possibly the bass, which is aptly holding things together not super far down on the mix. Another thing I haven’t mentioned is the lyrics: They’re just so full of constant imagery and, well, words, which might be hard to pick up in the first listen. This is an album that is crying out for multiple spins. I like that the harmonica and “lead” acoustic guitar share this sort of New Orleans Zydeco thing in the outro/intro.

“Because of You” is up next. Not so sure about the organ and the percussion. It seems a little dated. Wow, the lyrics and melody Gene’s singing are just so much better than the arrangement. I wonder what it would sound like if you replaced the organ/campy percussion with just a grand piano or something, and just Gene? That, I think, could be a masterpiece. This also has a Dylan-esque structure to it, but not the mouthful-of-words one from Bringing It All Back Home-era stuff. This sounds like later Dylan. Nashville Skyline Dylan? And it’s interesting, because around that time, Dylan’s voice takes on this Levon Helm-like sound to it, and you’re like, who is this impostor? But it’s Dylan just the same. I didn’t have as much a visceral reaction to the different timbre of Gene’s voice here, but it’s definitely a changed thing.

“One In a Hundred.” Now this is a great tune. Love that slide guitar, which I gather is Jesse Ed Davis. It has a Southern flavor to it—a barbecued beat, too. The melody is very Byrds-ian but is much more mature. It’s not about losing a girl or missing a girl. This has adult themes in it. The percussion is held back, with that tambourine in rhythm in the background: signature Gene Clark. Gaudy percussion pisses me off, and this is not gaudy at all. Okay, here comes a chorus of female or children’s voices—sort of like that chorus that comes in at the end of the Dead’s “Ripple.” Yeah, just nice and light.

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Note: I just got up and flipped over the record. This leads me to deep thought about the listening experience of old. I recently read a fantastic 33 1/3 book about Radiohead’s OK Computer, which was written by a British music professor (as far as I can remember), and he spent a quarter to half of the tiny book talking about the music experience, and how it’s changed drastically since the days of vinyl LPs. (He was arguing that OK Computer was one of those first “concept” albums of the modern era, where you could listen all the way through, and it hadn’t been “written” in a sense for the two-sided vinyl LP: i.e. two sides of 20 minutes, or whatever the golden mean is for vinyl. Fans, the world over, have deemed the album one of the best in history.) With the advent of CDs, listeners could pick and choose much more readily the tracks that they’d want to listen to on an album—you know, by hitting skip on their Hi-Fi’s remote or on the actual machine itself. Sure, they could also listen to the CD all the way through, too, without (for lack of better words) skipping a beat, and by G-d, that’s pretty amazing if you think about it. That minute or so that it took me to get up out of my kitchen chair, walk to the record player and turn this record over, could have been at least a minute on a CD that I was spending enjoying the hell out of that little choral piece at the end of “One In a Hundred,” then onto the next song, without (again for lack of better words) skipping a beat. There’s an inherent stress involved in listening to an LP, I think, that probably didn’t exist back then. It’s that notion that you’re going to have to, at some point, whether it be 20 minutes or 25 minutes, flip that record. You’re going to have to go out of your way to get to that other side of music. You’re going to have to work for it. Work hard, I suppose. And what that means is you’re going to have to break the thought process you had about the album you were listening to, stand up, flip over the physical album, those thoughts put on hold (“paused,” I guess) and then sit back down and press your inner “play” button again and go back to what you were doing. Now that’s a process! Well, here comes side B of this album:

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“Spanish Guitar” doesn’t sound like Spanish guitar work at all. This sounds like The Byrds. Not sure if that’s a 12-string guitar in there, or just an interestingly-miked 6-string. This sounds like a Gene Clark song of yore, but it’s again wholly mature compared to the “Here Without You”-type song from The Byrds era. This is not commercial stuff at all, but it’s really, really pretty, which goes a long way. So the Spanish guitar is the vessel of music-making—in Gene’s mind. That’s what he seems to be saying. Is it a classical guitar? Is it just the sound of a Spanish guitar (Mexican or Spain Spanish)? Clark seems to be saying that solo acoustic guitar is a freeing experience. Maybe this is a kiss off to his former bandmates in The Byrds. He’s saying, “I dare you to make an album like this, free of electric guitars and 12-string Rickenbackers. I dare you. You might find that it’s exactly what you always wanted.”

“Where My Love Lies Asleep.” That title in and of itself sounds like Dylan. Or the name of a painting. More of that noncommercial harmonica. It’s name is the first line of the song, which leads me to believe that Clark either didn’t know what to call this song, or this was a song that just came from somewhere mystical—and it just sort of wrote itself. I think the bass is a little too much in the mix. It might be nice to hear a mix without bass on this song. It strikes me as a percussion-less song, with a misplaced bassline. Do I hear some strings? Maybe really low in the mix? Or is that some sort of wind instrument? There is one less track on this side than side A, and that leads me to believe that these songs are going to feel “longer.” They’re all four-plus minutes. This is not pop, by any means, but I can only imagine what Gene was thinking when this was released. Will they respond to it? (And they didn’t, really.)

“Tears of Rage.” Now this is a Dylan cover. And it was covered aptly by The Band quite awhile earlier than this album, sung heartbreakingly (I think by Rick Danko on lead) on Big Pink. This is a much more straightforward cover, but he speeds up the lyrics in a few phrases, which gives it a Gene Clark feel. I like the organ in this mix a lot more than in that previous track. It feels like it belongs here. I also like the percussion. Not gaudy at all. Bass is way low in the mix, too. Clark sings straight through the chorus, whereas The Band really wring every last tear out of the handkerchief on their version. Sure, they also take it a lot slower, but I like this tempo.

“1975.” I wonder what this one’s about? It feels like a George Harrison song. Like a song that should end an album. Maybe this is one of those “hopeful for the future” songs. Gene is looking forward. Remember, this album came out in 1971, so he’s thinking about the long run here. He’s hoping that the future will hold great things for him—or at least happiness. He’s talking about his family. He’s talking about places he’s “never been before.” He’s talking about casting your gaze ahead. I gather that, in hindsight, this was not exactly how 1975 turned out for Gene. Maybe this is one of those songs that is a false harbinger—even though the narrator is singing about good things to come, he knows deep in his heart that it’s not going to turn out this way. He knows that it’s going to be more of the same sorrow. Gene Clark didn’t have the career he wanted for many different reasons, and it’s a shame it turned out the way it did (in many ways). The mix of this song sort of abruptly gets thrown into a fade out, and I’m now sitting here writing in silence (the only thing that I can hear is the hum of the refrigerator and the softly falling rain outside).

That’s it.

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Conclusion(s): This is a great album, certainly. There are parts of it that feel a little dated, and sure, if I were the producer or the music director, I would tweak a few things here and there (as noted), but that would probably bring me the ire of thousands of Gene Clark fans, who tout this as one of his strongest recorded works. I think this is the sound of a songwriter in transition; certainly if you get a chance to listen to his, at times, gaudy but mostly fantastic project No Other, you’ll know what I mean by “transition.” I think it’s funny that this one, at least in the liner notes for No Other, is listed as his first solo album. The 1967 album Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers is really his first solo work, and is, well, good in as many ways as it’s bad. Some of the songwriting is still in the vein of those early Byrds records—immature, at best. But this, if you want to call it his first real solo record, is mature stuff. Not for the pop-loving, screaming-girl crowds. This is laid back, joint-rolling, 1970s folk stuff (if you’re not a pot smoker, like me, I’d suggest maybe a nice bourbon or a single-malt Scotch; or a cup of tea). It’s an album you have to open your ears to listen, and as I mentioned in my stream-of-consciousness middle section, it’s also an album you should listen to multiple times before adding it back to your huddled vinyl masses. Sure, it’s sort of tedious to spin multiple times on vinyl, because that means you’ll have to break your concentration on it half of the times you listen to it all the way through, because you’ll have to get up and turn it over. But …

I’ll say this: If you’re a fan of the vinyl “experience” and don’t mind brain multitasking, you should pick this one up immediately. If you’re of the group of modern folk-loving masses that can’t be bothered to keep getting up out of your kitchen chair (or hell, you might have a physical excuse or a note from your doctor), you would be much more engaged by this album if you simply found a digital or CD version of it.

Great stuff, either way, though.

El Turista

Bedroom Classics

Producer(s): Josh Rouse and Brad Jones

Street Date: February 22, 2010

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NOTE: In keeping with tradition, I’ve decided to re-up with WordPress for an additional year, thus keeping the “Rant Rave Revue” brand name alive for yet another solid go. At just over $15 a year, that makes for a decent deal, considering I have an open forum to (a) write about whatever I want and (b) say whatever I want. Nary is there an editor to tell me “cut this to size” or “flesh out your idea.” That editor is ultimately me, so if I screw up, I can blame myself. It’s a blank slate on which I can chalk and chalk all day long (if it were a conversation, of course, I’d “talk and talk”). So, take a read, write a comment or just let my review sink in. Let me warn you ahead of time, as one reader last year found: I swear a bit; I’m up front and personal when it comes to good and bad music alike; and I absolutely will stick to my guns. You can count on it. Enjoy!

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Now that that is out of the way, let’s talk Josh Rouse.

I came across Rouse more than 10 years ago, when the manager of a used record store in my former hometown (Saratoga Springs, NY) gave me Rouse’s 1998 debut Dressed Up Like Nebraska for free, telling me to listen and enjoy. I believe the fellow’s name was Walt or Walter—maybe his friends knew him as Wally?—and we shared several lengthy discussions about one of our mutual favorite bands, Son Volt, whom I’ve written about here at RRR at great length. We would talk the latest album, seeing Jay Farrar/The ‘Volt live and all the other sister bands that had sprung up since the advent of Uncle Tupelo, The Jayhawks and Whiskeytown—that first real push of what critics then were calling alternative country and what has been stricken down in several interviews by Farrar as a means of pigeonholing him and his former bandmates. (Obviously, Wilco, who were once connected at the hip to Son Volt in more ways than one, have since jettisoned that moniker and have thrown themselves fully into the avant-garde/kraut-rock scene. But as always when Son Volt comes up, I’m getting off subject.) Walter gave me Dressed Up Like Nebraska as a gift from one alt.country fan to another and gave me some homework: listen and enjoy.

So I listened.

As far as “enjoyment” is concerned with regards to Rouse’s first album, I enjoyed most of it, which is saying something about an album of any kind. If you can enjoy the majority of the songs on any album, it’s a feat not many in this digital age have been able to accomplish. For, with the proliferation of iTunes and other mp3-based supermarkets, American rock audiences have, somewhat ironically, begun to mirror U.K. audiences, in that they purchase mass amounts of singles and not-full albums; and what is hot one minute is as cold as a witch’s teat the next. So in a sense, full album-listening as we know it has become a thing of the past. Do you ever really listen to an album all the way through every time you listen to it? I suppose there’s something to be said about “the past,” when people sat down, put on a record, let it spin for approximately 20 minutes and then were literally prompted by the record player to “turn over” the record to the next side with that little “click.” In recent months, I’ve been listening to a lot of vinyl, and the general experience I get is much more favorable than listening to a CD. You sort of have to listen to the entire record—hence my point.

So, as a means of explaining (again, not straying too far off topic), I would listen to the first four tracks of Dressed Up Like Nebraska (“Dressed Up Like Nebraska,” “Invisible,” “Late Night Conversation” and “Flair”) and hardly ever listen to the last five (“The White Trash Period of My Life,” “A Simple Thing,” “A Woman Lost in Serious Problems,” “Livinia” and “Reminiscent”). And this is how it has been since the day Uncle Walter gave me that disc.

These first four tracks are by far the best out of the majority of Rouse’s songs on his subsequent albums, and I can say with ease that since this debut, I’ve enjoyed probably three to four songs on each of these albums as well (the majority of which I actually own). Which is not to say that all of the songs on his subsequent albums haven’t been good or above average. It’s just that there are three to four songs on each of his later albums, which are even near equal in greatness to those four songs from Dressed Up.

Diehard Rouse fans will probably have something to say about this. There might even be a backlash against RRR. “Who does this Rant Rave Revue asshole think he is saying Josh Rouse only has three to four songs on each of his albums starting with album No. 1 that are intensely great?” And I will respond, that’s a pretty damned good ratio, considering the amount of albums there are out there and the amount of artists out there who strive to make all their songs on all their albums amazing. “What more could you ask from an artist who you consider to be your ‘favorite’?” I’d ask back. Like Nashville‘s “Winter in the Hamptons.” Fantastic song. Equal in greatness to those first four Dressed Up tracks. And 1972‘s “1972″ and “Love Vibration.” Both equal in greatness to those tracks. But the parts are not always equal to the sum (or something like that).

(I must add: I own Rouse’s Under Cold Blue Stars and have only given it one or two spins in the several years I’ve owned it. I only recently transferred all of my CDs to iTunes, which could be a possible reason why it never got the spins it deserved. But more likely, it’s because I feel an aversion to it, because I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard any critic, writer or fan talk about that album in any way, shape or form that would lead me to want to sit down for an hour or so and listen to it front to back. More than likely, though, I just let it sit, because, like the other Rouse albums in my collection that I do listen to on a semi-regular basis, I probably came to the conclusion that there were between three and four songs that I would enjoy on the album—no more, no less—and it would take some serious listening to undercover those. Maybe I’ll get around to that by the time I’m done with this review. Most likely, not, though.)

Continuing on the Rouse album front, I ended up on a mailing list for most of Rouse’s albums after 2003′s much-lauded 1972 and fan-darling Nashville (2005). (Note: The album I skipped is called Home (2000); I would assume it has three to four solid tracks on it, but your guess is as good as mine.) I bought 1972 (used) at the same junk music store where I was given Dressed Up years before; and I only came upon Nashville years later, after a friend burned me a copy (by that point, I had heard it at several parties, while joints were being passed around and alcohol was flowing freely, so as far as “remembering” all of the three to four tracks that were great on the album, that escapes me at this point).

During this later period of songwriting, Rouse traded in his gruff roots vibe and started to nod at the mainstream (though very slightly). His voice also became “cuter,” in the sense that his songs had to be sung in a “cute” way for the lyrics to do their job. This, I must admit, annoyed the hell out of me, but I realize now that it’s just the sound of a guy who needed to support himself any fucking way he possibly could. It’s not easy being a singer-songwriter, and let me tell you, if a guy needs to sound “cute” to put food on the table, let him. (If you’re still trying to figure out what I mean by “cute,” think about the difference between the normal, gruff/mannish speaking voices of Dave Matthews and John Mayer, and the type of throaty, lovey-dovey voice they bring on in song.) “Comeback” from 1972 is an example of a “cute” song. It’s listenable and even danceable (if you see Rouse live), but compared to those first four songs on Dressed Up, it’s like a caricature of the old Rouse. The same could be said of “His Majesty Rides” from 2006′s Subtítulo. A decent, but more “cute” than decent, song. “Hollywood Bass Player” (from 2007′s Country Mouse, City House) is another fine example of “cute.”

All the while this “cuteness” was occurring, I was still enjoying Rouse’s music—most of it, that is. So in finding my way in a roundabout way to his latest, El Turista, I’m expecting the same Rouse-ian equation: Strong start (most likely), with a solid three-to-four songs that are of solid quality. The rest may or may not be decent and “cute.” Let’s find out.

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First impression(s):

Well, this is different! Sounds like jazz. String arrangement is late-Rouse-ian, yes. But this sounds more like the soundtrack to a Hollywood movie than anything. Did Rouse write this arrangement, because if he did, it’s positively Brian Wilson-like. If he didn’t, well, it won’t be the end of the world. It’s still pretty. The swelling violins near the end of the arrangement are a nice dramatic touch. Any type of instrument-swelling is great in my music handbook.

Cue the Brazilian/Spanish guitars—and the “cute” vocals. Back to the “cute” vocals! Well, what did you expect? Rouse is singing, in what sounds like Portuguese. Definitely not Spanish. He saying something about “eating” and “sleeping” (I studied Spanish in my time, and it’s definitely similar to this language he’s singing in). “Duerme, Mobila” is the name of the tune. “Duerme” means “sleep” (it’s the command form/tense of the verb, I’m almost positive). But what or who is “Mobila”? He also says, “las dulces,” which means “the sweets.” No time to look all this shit up via Google, because I feel the next song is coming up soon. The point of this blog is to come up with a picture of the album, listening to it the first time around. Anyhow, this is pretty cool. Nothing like anything Rouse has ever done, accomplished. Good so far.

Piano glissando leads into more Brazilian/Spanish guitars, and here we go. English lyrics! Rouse’s voice is not as “cute” as in the prior song, and it has a nice helping of reverb on it. I like this. Very ethereal. Song is called “Lemon Tree.” The chorus is not sing-along-able, per se, but it’s catchy. I think we’ve come across our first of the most-likely three to four likable songs on this album. There is nothing kitschy about this tune; it’s just about hanging out and walking around in a valley with lemon trees. He must be talking about somewhere warm—a warmer climate altogether. I think I heard he lives in Valencia, Spain, now. That would make sense.

“Sweet Elaine” is again in English. No “cute” voice. This is OK. It’s not his most complicated song, but it’s got a movement and topic that I can deal with. I like how the classical guitar follows the second verse (I think it’s the second verse—the first half of the song whizzed by). Again, this sounds like really nothing Rouse has ever done before. Sure, the “cute” voice has already come into play once—and there’s that theatrical sort of sound that made its way into his stuff circa 1972, but this has a tinge of “foreign” that has never really been in his music (save for, maybe, Subtítulo). Who is “my sweet Elaine”? Must be an American, because “Elaine” is not a Spanish name. It would be Elena or Alana in Spanish, I believe. And we know Rouse is married to a Spanish woman named “Paz” (“peace,” in Spanish). I wonder.

Again, the thick acoustic bass, and this sounds like it’s Spanish. “And I went to New York …” he says in Spanish. “I, I am an artist …” I think. He’s going to dance the “can-can”? Am I crazy? I like the way this song is moving. He’s talking about all the places he went in the world. “My name is Julian Martinez,” he says. So this is not Josh Rouse’s voice. It’s Julian Martinez. I’ll have to look that up later. Must be a famous artist or musician or dancer (hence the can-can). His accent is OK. Look, when I lived in Spain my accent was decent after a year. This is decent.

“I Will Live on Islands” … another solid-moving song. Again, in English. This sounds exactly like Paul Simon. This is No. 2 of the good songs on the album. This is fantastic. It sounds like an outtake from Graceland. Haha. That’s such a cliched thing to say. Everybody’s like, Oh, Vampire Weekend sounds like David Byrne meets Graceland. Critics need to get over themselves. Well, that would mean I would need to get over myself. I suppose that should happen at some point down the road. Last review I wrote, I did a bit of swearing, and this commentor got all pissy about my language. So I’m keeping the swearing down to a minimum for this retch. Yes, you are a retch, commentor. I really like this song, by the way. “I will on islands/and I will see the sun.” Sounds like a plan to me.

A-ha. This one’s called “Valencia.” Since I’ve been there, I’ll be the judge of how authentic this is. By the way, Valencia is a fantastic place. Everyone should go there before they day. (Another great song, “Valencia,” is by The Decemberists, except they call it “O Valencia.”). This one is Spanish … in Castellano Spanish … the Spanish of Spain. The Spanish I dig more than South American Spanish (sorry, S.A. friends!). It moves more. This sounds like a ringing endorsement of living in Valencia. It’s a happy song. I agree. I think it’s a great place. “vale, vale, vale, vale” means “right, right, right, right.” It’s a colloquialism. He’s talking about “la playa” (the beach). Here’s No. 3 good tune. It does sound a bit like something that could air in a Pro-Tourism commercial for Spain or Valencia, which makes it a little kitschy, but I can deal with it. It’s got the right movement. Ever heard of Jarabe de Palo? If you like Jarabe, check this [song] out. This will definitely be up your alley.

“Cotton Eyed Joe.” More English. I like the long-held notes. Something you don’t often get in Rouse songs. No “cute” voice. I like the piano and upright bass interplay. Two of my favorite instruments. Nice, whispy sort of song structure. Is this a cover of the traditional? Or is it Rouse’s own? There was that awful techno version years ago that I remember them playing in the Spanish clubs, drinking red wine and Coke (callemacho, as they call it). This was 10 years ago, almost. It almost has a Nick Drake quality to it. If that’s possible, sung by Rouse. “The living is easy”—taken from “Summertime.” Another old standard. “Where do you come from? Where do you go?” Yeah, I think that is the chorus from the standard. I like the arrangement. And I think this is a great one-up of that shitty club version. G-d forbid, any Spaniard or American studying/working abroad there should have to hear it ever again. A candidate for No. 4.

“Las Voces.” Again, in Spanish. I must admit, this sounds like a beginner Spanish-speaking doing his best to write songs in Spanish. I mean, by no means is it a fluent Spanish speaker. My old pal from Spain, who moved there with her husband from Georgia—now she was fluent. She could speak on the phone a mile a minute in Spanish. Bridgette. But I think Rouse is doing a decent job. This is a really nice song, either way. I like the rising “voices” (las voces, in English) at the end of each phrase. He’s obviously been doing his homework, as far as listening to Spanish and Brazilian music. It’s a hard nut to crack, I think. Not all Spanish music is good. A lot of it is shitty. But this is a decent try. I could see Spanish people thinking this was decent. I could see multiple Spanish people liking this music and clip-clapping their hands to it in rhythm—they do that at clubs and bars alike. If it has a Flamenco beat, they clap along. It’s just a thing you do.

“Don’t Act Tough.” Some saxophone, OK. Not sure how I feel about that. But I like the piano. Some more swirling, swelling violins. In English and his vocals are distorted. They have a little echo on them. Maybe a touch of distortion. A touch of reverb. I like it. It’s a ballad. I don’t like the saxophone, though. I rarely like saxophones in songs. I HATE the saxophone at the end of Ryan Adams’ “New York, New York.” It comes near to wrecking the song, for me. This sax is not wrecking the song, but come on! How many saxes does it take before rock stars realize they don’t belong anywhere other than in jazz? I think there are a few sax sonatas or something—classical. But really. Sax? This would have been a much better track without the sax.

—–

Conclusion(s):

This is one of Josh Rouse’s strongest albums to date—in fact, I’d go as far to say since his debut. It’s also one of his strangest albums, too, which might be a hard sell to “new” Rouse fans. But if you’re already in the little group that enjoys his stuff—most of his stuff, that is—this will be a refreshing glass of sangria. In the middle of a lemon-tree field. In Valencia, Spain. Go there, the weather is nice. The Euro is strong, which sucks for the dollar’s sake, but having just been in Spain last year for a wedding, it’s a great country to go to at any time. A really great place. No, this is not the Spanish Tourism Board. This is Rant Rave Revue telling you to buy this album, because it’ll send you across the Atlantic to Valencia free of charge. Just tune in, tune out and listen.

Listen Here First!

In a Rant Rave Revue first, we’re giving you a first-look at this album. Take a listen to “I Will Live on Islands” here.

Memoirs at the End of the World: Composed and Performed by The Postmarks

Unfiltered Records

Produced by The Postmarks (I’d assume)

Street Date: Out Now

————–

I was sifting through my stacks this morning and came upon this one—the three members of the band staring back at me off of their press photo. Two everymen in black-and-white suits and a hottie in a black-and-white-striped, skin-tight dress. Hmm, I thought. Interesting. So I cracked the press release and read an interesting story about a trio called The Postmarks: Jonathan Wilkins and Christopher Moll round on the dudes in suits; and Tim Yehezkely (an Israeli-born woman), the hottie in the dress.

Turns out that the band was formed in South Florida, of all places, and that the two guys in the band are both radioheads—DJing, arranging and composing along the way. The chanteuse happened to do an open-mic night at one of the guy’s clubs, and that was apparently that.

Now, the press release is quite interesting, as it is set up like the script of a movie, which of course, is supposed to get the writer (me) thinking “cinematic,” “Broadway,” “Hollywood”—shit like that. Publicists get more and more creative as the economy gets worse and worse. But it had the proper effect; I’m hoping this first listen will provide me with what I need to rock out this first Rant-Rave-Revue in awhile.

I’m on their Web site now and am even more impressed. They’ve gotten some solid press, from both new and traditional media sources. A favorite music blog of mine, Stereogum.com, says, “Bacharach meets Brian Wilson!” Interesting. Noted. American Songwriter, whom I’ve written for numerous times over the years also sings The Postmarks praises. I’m intrigued. Let’s do it.

—–

First impression(s):

It didn’t occur to me until now, but this is a similar dynamic to Scottish-American band Garbage. Two producer-types and a hottie in the middle with not only immediate sex appeal, but also serious singing chops. I always had a major crush on Shirley Manson of Garbage—and after spending a year in her home country of Scotland had an even bigger crush on her. There’s something about that Scottish accent coming out of a woman. I digress, though.

I’m drawn to the use of reverb on the drums, and yes, the “cinematic” quality of the music. The publicists didn’t need to print the press in script format—but now it seems like a nice little touch. The music reminds me very much of that from a James Bond movie: maybe from the Goldfinger movie era. It feels “old,” like it was made in another era completely. The second track has got this Supremes-thing going on.

All these initial thoughts about the music itself, and I half forgot to mention how much I like Tim Yehezkely’s voice. It’s not forced in any way—it doesn’t sound like she’s trying to do something that she’s not. It’s airy, whispery and golden. It’s cute, it’s attractive, it’s fantastical. She sounds like a better version of Zooey Deschanel; the latter’s voice always sounds a bit forced (though I think it works well, in the end). Think of the takes Deschanel does in the movie Elf. A tad bit forced. But Yehezkely’s, no way. This is great, natural vocal beauty. Look, I realize I’ve totally painted Tim into a box saying she’s a hottie, etc. etc., but I must say, she’s a hottie with chops. Her hotness comes second to her vocal performance.

Getting back to the music, I really dig the use of string arrangements. I grew up listening to various level of stringsmanship—my father and brother both played the violin, I played the cello—and I think it always adds a layer to music that a guitar, drums and bass are just incapable of doing. Not that the guitar isn’t a versatile instrument (I play that, too). Jimmy Page even went as far to bow his Les Paul, but I think that was sort of a cop-out. It doesn’t provide the preferred beauty one gets from bowing a cello or a violin. It adds this “mystique” to the sound of the guitar—almost the same as percussive taps on the body of an acoustic guitar. But The Postmarks use of string arrangement is not done in a gaudy manner; it doesn’t take away from the quality of song performed. It merely adds a nice, buttery layer to what’s already there.

OK, I’m already on the fourth track, which starts out and has a club-type beat to it, but here come some horns. Some motherfucking horns! I am slightly more suspicious of horns, mainly because they were used into the ground during the ’90s ska-band explosion and started to really sound campy and shitty after more than a few songs hit the radio with prominent horn parts. Think the Mighty-Mighty Bosstones or Reel Big Fish. Great bands in their own right, but they really killed horns for me. The Postmarks, however, are using horns here, not only as a “bass” instrument (they are providing an actual backbeat), but also for a main “theme” (think the song “Goldfinger” that Dame Shirley Bassey made famous).

Here slithers in the fifth track, with some off-tune piano (something I really dig), and in rolls Tim like a warm cup of hot chocolate. The song opens up just after the 1:10 mark—with sitar (or something being made to sound like a sitar) following Tim on vocals. Love it. Another great instrument that everyone seemed scared to use in pop songs after the Beatles took it and ran with it. Sure, Guns ‘N Roses used it on the opener of “Pretty Tied Up” (I believe) on Use Your Illusions II, but it was merely used for effect, not as a main instrument in the song. This is true, lead instrument use. You also have the coupling of violins with it—something that George Harrison has in “Within or Without You” from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a truly mysterious raga-based song. But The Postmarks are not using a raga-theme here; this is a majestic pop song, through and through. I like the na-na-na fadeout at the end.

“Runaway Love,” the sixth track, is short and sweet. So is my take on it.

The seventh track seems to be using a Harpsichord or something similar in tinkle-tinkle-tinkle-ness as the main theme producer. In runs Tim, and it immediately reminds me of Supergrass, a perennial favorite of mine. In listening to a lot of Kinks, I’ve realized that Supergrass delves deep into the Kinks songbook to pick up riffs and other nuggets, but the Kinks are a band that need to be honored for what they were, and I sort of give them (Supergrass) a free pass when it comes from dipping into the Kinks. Here, The Postmarks are taking this Supergrass-sounding major-to-minor song, and wrapping it in the splendor of multiple orchestrations. Horns, strings, timpani (can’t get enough of that timpani, man). What a lovely effect.

I’m going to listen to the next couple of tracks one after the other and pick up with the review after that. OK?

I’m sorry, I have to throw in how enamored for this music I am—they’re bringing back the song “Thorn in Your Side” for a reprise, and even though there are no words, I’m still intrigued. Great shit.

“Go Jetsetter” has doubling on the vocals, which is a great studio trick, which all the greats have used. Elliott Smith did it so effectively. Tim is doing a damned good job with here. The sounds has a really nice ’60s pop sort of feel to it, but an updated feel, no less. There’s this connection it makes with “now” and “then” that I just don’t here in other’s music these days. The Aislers Set, who hail from Portland, Ore., I believe, have this really great “old sound” thing going on (I heard about them from the leader singer of The Shins, James Mercer, when I interviewed him a few years back), but the Set just sort of meld the old feeling music with that indie-rock sentiment—that sort of cooler-than-cool thing. Whereas The Postmarks seem to not care about their hipster cred. They’re really doing this old sound, because that’s their thing.

Onto the “Theme From ‘Memoirs’”—how funny. So this is really a fucking movie soundtrack, huh? A soundtrack to what? Being young and having fun? Being at the top of your game musically? Not giving a shit what other’s say about your music (including moi)? I just got the image of Johnny Cash about to say “Fuck You!” and sticking up his middle finger—that iconic photo.

The next tune is called “The Girl From Algenib.” Give me a second. I’ll look it up. It’s Arabic for “flank” and is a star in the constellation Pegasus (Gamma Pegasi), i.e. the wing on the flying horse. The song has that lovely ’70s wah-wah effect going on deep under the production—and works as sort of a percussion effect. This sounds like it could’ve been written by The Flaming Lips. It’s got that outerspace campiness to it, as well as this real sound musicianship. It is catchy, too, which doesn’t hurt. Is it possible that Tim writes these lyrics (she’s the lyric writer, by the way) without knowing how the boys are going to take it and run with it? Do they write the music second? Wow, that would be a real revelation. Sort of an intergalactic Elton John-Bernie Taupin thing.

I haven’t noticed a single guy’s voice on this entire album, which is sort of nice. Fuck guys, anyway, right? Bunch of pigs.

Cripes, we’re already on the last song. I was enjoying myself so much. The last tune is called “Gone,” and has this club-y beat—here come the strings. Love ‘em. And this sort of Suzanne Vega vibe going on. I’m now certifiably in love with this music. It’s climaxing on everything I look for in music (Copland, you taught me well).

——

Roundup:

I’m not going to have to listen to this album a second time to write about what I think you should do with it. Go out and buy this today. It would make a great under-the-radar Christmas or Hannukah present.

Decca Music Group

Street Date: September 15, 2009

——————–

I know nothing about Gary Go. Diddly squat. So let’s read the press release. He’s from London and wears glasses. We find out that The Sun thinks he sounds like “…the musical love child of Chris Martin [of Colplay] and David Gray[.]” As you know from reading my other reviews, I’m a fan of David Gray, and frankly, only the first Coldplay album. But there’s the undeniably “big” sound to the band’s songs, which gets them lots of press and things like Gwyneth Paltrow.

Go, it turns out, is the son of a Muppets producer, which means he’s probably naturally an artistic guy—I wonder if Dr. Teeth is a fan? Also, he’s influenced by writer Paul Auster, which I must say, impresses me greatly. This is the second artist, who I’ve reviewed in recent years, who has named Auster as an influence (the other is Fionn Regan, who mentions Timbuktu, which I still haven’t read, in his song “Put a Penny in the Slot” on his debut album). If you’ve never read Auster, he’s a native Brooklyn guy, who has a real knack for narrative and exquisite hold of plot. But it’s the former that makes Auster, in my opinion, and that’s a solid influence if you’re a songwriter, looking to grab your audience through its headphones. It has a lot to do with narrative.

Also, of note, I read, is that “eclectic songstress Carina Round” sings on this album. Now, about six or seven years ago, when I was first starting out in the City as a journalist, I wrote a kind review of Round’s first album. I still remember it clearly: raw, Zeppelin-esque, bluesy and her voice was just dark chocolate. The album is called The Disconnection (2004). Buy it today.

On the other hand, years after writing that review—which I unfortunately can’t find right now on the Internet—I re-explored Round, with a review in American Songwriter of her follow-up, 2006′s Slow Motion Addict, produced by Alanis Morissette knob-turner Glen Ballard. Here’s a reproduction of the unedited copy I filed to the magazine:

—-

“If you were lucky enough to stumble across Carina Round’s debut album, The Disconnection, you would’ve been pleasantly surprised by this British songinatrix’s music, which sounds like Polly Jean Harvey, Robert Plant, and Fiona Apple engaged in a titillating threesome of sound. On her follow up, she has taken on the polysaccharine production of Glen Ballard (best known for his work with Alanis Morrissette) and firmly supplanted her stripped-bare loveliness with a created-on-an-Apple pop sheen. “Stolen Car” is Round (via Ballard) doing her best Pink impression. “Same Girlfriend” sounds like Gwen Stefani’s reaction to finding Gavin Rossdale in bed with Avril Lavigne. Round is at her best in slow motion—Ballard hardly seems to exploit her sultry sex-drenched cabaret alter-ego, which she only hints at on “Come To You” and the title track. And how ironic is it, then, that the strongest tune on this slumped-over sophomore effort shares the name of her first album?”

—-

As you can tell, when you’re only allotted 150 words to write a game-changing review for an artist, you have to be blunt. ‘Cause you’re trying to tell someone whether or not they should bother listening, and that’s a decently unfriendly job, if the music isn’t up to par (as this album’s was). I gave the album just two stars.

But I’ll be interested to see how Go works Round into this album. Round we Go, with this record; right Round.

First Impression(s): This is definitely pop for a British market—American audiences might have a hard time wrapping their head around it. Does sound like Coldplay, but the later, more pretentious version. I actually like this guy’s voice more than Chris Martin’s—it’s less douchey. The production is sparkling, which most likely means meticulous work but auto-tuning and that element of inauthenticity, which makes me double-take, no matter how gifted the artist. Let’s say I’m a music traditionalist. The first song’s lyrics are repetitive for hook’s say—and it takes way too long to get from verse one/two to the chorus, which is decent. Where, I wonder, is the David Gray that The Sun saw in this guy? David Gray is actually an amazing lyricist, who at times goes rotten, but is mostly amazing. Gary Go is pretty much regularly rotten lyrics-wise, the second song included. The songs are decently catchy, but I’m just not digging on the lyrics/arrangements: They’re both extremely generic. Which I suppose might be good for an American audience, after all (you’ll find that I give American ears very little credit). Fourth track, we get more whispy, airy shit in the intro (like track one). Crap. Poor effect. Don’t use it again, Gary. Don’t Go there. (Regarding the track, my girlfriend just said, “This track is horrible.”)

Conclusion(s): Between the time when I wrote the above just-having-heard-the-album appraisal and now, I’ve done several more spins of the album, and it’s had the same effect on me: Large, overproduced sound, which could work really well on mainstream radio; but tiny songwriting/lyrical talent. You’ll probably dig it if you’re a Coldplay fan—probably less if you’re a David Gray fanatic.

I’ve also read that one of the songs on the album was conceived completely on an iPhone, which although mildly intriguing, is pretty fucking ridiculous. With all the gimmicks one can pick for becoming a well-known artist, phone production doesn’t come to mind as the top pick. Not to mention the fact that it’s just fucking ridiculous recording anything on your phone. Sure, the technology’s there, I’m sure, but why even try it? Is your laptop or desktop too uncomfortable a place to record? Or how about a recording studio, Gary?

We’ll have to see how well the album breaks through the American pop audience—but I’m going to predict this one falling short of the goal of stardom. Don’t Go by it, unless you are swimming in cash.

American Central Dust

Rounder Records

Produced by John Agnello, Mark Spencer, Chris Masterson and Jason Hutto

Street Date: July 7, 2009

———————

Son Volt has been around a lot longer than Jay Farrar’s original act, Uncle Tupelo, so I think it’s about time (music) journalists stop namedropping Jeff Tweedy whenever a new Son Volt album finds its way onto record store shelves. Promise? There will always be that tug-of-war between Son Volt and Wilco fans, the “who’s better?” argument that seems to have already been solved by the greater media: Son Volt had the potential—Trace was 100 percent better of an album than A.M.—no denying it, but after that, Farrar was led astray; and Wilco, as it goes, is better, they say, because after A.M. (ironically) came the dawn of a new era, that in which Wilco ruled the world, put out records that people cared about (even if their record labels didn’t) and enjoyed that underground success that all but vanished from Son Volt like a rug pulled from under a babe. And, they say, Wilco markets to a mass audience, and they [Wilco] understand it. They’re in commercials. They headline all the big, cool festivals. They’ve got the same artistic clout that a master impressionist painter has with his paintbrush—yet they’re doing it with their guitars and ambient computer sounds and krautrock sensibilities and absurdist lyrics. Somewhere after A.M., there was this Holy Shit! moment, during which Tweedy put the words “impossible” and “Germany” in the same song title, and by G-d, it’s so weird it’s cool. And the papers and blogs eat it up. In fact, the Chicago Tribune‘s got its own Wilco-ist, Greg Kot, who is like the band’s private critic—who never really ever criticizes the band. He’s their historian, their biographer, their friend.

I saw Wilco several years ago at Skidmore College in upstate New York, shortly after the band had put out A Ghost Is Born, one of those albums that you’re not sure whether to love or hate. Let’s call it Wilco’s “black period.” Sure, there are some fantastic songs on it that just stand right out (“Muzzle of Bees,” “The Late Greats”), but all in all, it’s one of those albums that I’ve tried hard to enjoy but just can’t.

Well, anyway, the show was pretty much tracks from that album, which at the time, I admit, I was really into; and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Being There, two generally fantastic albums. I had been hankering to see the band for a long while, and by golly, I enjoyed the concert but wasn’t blown away. There was something, well, impersonal about it; Tweedy had really little interaction with the audience, and when he did speak to us, it was sort of in a grumpy way. Maybe he was still getting over the pill addiction he had publicly kicked at that point or maybe that’s just how he is, but I remember thinking, “Well, OK. Now I’ve seen Wilco. What next?”

Now, I’m going to come right out and say that I don’t agree that Wilco is a better band than Son Volt. In fact, I’d argue the opposite: that despite what all the young dudes at Rolling Stone and the Trib‘s Kot will have you believe, Son Volt is actually the better of the two. Sure, they don’t market as widely as Wilco (they did show up covering the Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye” on an ESPN ad campaign awhile back) or write long art-rock songs. And there’s very little name recognition behind the band—well, that is, save their “moment in the critics’ sun,” directly after Trace. I assume they don’t look at themselves as a “brand” or something corporate like that. But I would argue that there are several factors working in their favor that often go overlooked.

(a) Jay Farrar is a shy, quiet, soft-spoken fellow, who seems to be clean, decently nice and has a pretty simple fashion sense. I’ve seen the band countless times, and the closest Farrar has ever come to a Nudie Suit is a country-Western-style shirt (you know, the ones with the white-on-black stitched patterns) and plain black pants. He shows up to work looking like an everyman, because that’s who he’s trying to reach.

(1a) Now, the Wilco-ists might argue, here, that because Farrar plays for the everyman and rarely shows “stage presence” at his shows, that he, in fact, is trying to avoid interactive shows, but I’d say that this is the product of his shyness more than anything—it’s not that he doesn’t want his fans to know he cares; it’s just that he can’t say it, because he doesn’t know the right words to say it. If you truly believe, as I think Jeff Tweedy does, that he is special, you get grumpy, like that moment on Four-Way Street, where fucking Graham Nash starts shushing the crowd, so they will listen to the four men on stage with the acoustic guitars. Big fucking deal, Graham. Same thing goes for Tweedy, I feel. Farrar would never shush a crowd.

(b) The band has pretty much only had two derivations: The 1995–1998 version (Trace, Wide Swing Tremolo and that one song on the Alejandro Escovedo tribute album [a cover of "Sometimes"], before lawyers came in and things went South); and the 2005–2009 version, which has had a revolving cast of lead guitarists, but other than that, has featured Andrew Duplantis (bass), Mark Spencer (guitar) and David Bryson (drums) repeatedly. This, I think, demonstrates the stick-to-itiveness of Farrar, and his want for something stable; he needs stability for the magic to happen. Whereas, I think Tweedy needs a fight. Read on.

Wilco, on the other hand, has been all over the place, which means its leader, Tweedy, has had to beat back egos more than once. Ken Coomer, the original drummer, was replaced before the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Co-songwriter Jay Bennett, part-founder of the modern Wilco, was fired during the making of the album (he recently lost his life after a brief battle with, somewhat ironically, painkillers).

As far as I can remember, Jay Farrar has never fired anybody from Son Volt. Sure, some shit went down around the Alejandro Escovedo reunion thing, but nobody was fired.

(c) Son Volt still plays country-rock and folk-rock music, the brand that got them the initial exposure by a national audience. Their critically acclaimed first album, Trace, is a classic—Wilco’s first, A.M., is decidedly (by many) not, as was previously mentioned. Something is to be said about brand loyalty in this day and age. When critics judge you on how much your sound changes, it’s a testament to the strength and conditioning of bands like Son Volt that only make minor tweaks here and there. After all, this is Jay Farrar’s vehicle, just as Wilco is Tweedy’s. But whereas Tweedy has taken the vehicle and allowed others to pimp it out, Farrar is still driving the same ’90s Honda Accord he had back in 1995. It runs just as well as Tweedy’s Prius, and may not get as good of a mile-per-gallon ratio, but it has just as much (or, as I continue to argue, more) character.

(d) Jay Farrar can still write decent songs about historical events and subjects, whereas Tweedy has long since pitched these ideas (he did do that series of songs with Billy Bragg, but to be honest, I could get into any of them—even “California Stars,” which always seemed the most likable). Take “Sultana” on the forthcoming American Central Dust. I was recently talking with a friend in the music business, who will go unnamed here, and he complained that “Sultana” was another example of Farrar “reading a wikipedia entry” and calling it a song. I beg to differ. Sure, it’s a little clunky in the sense that it doesn’t have a rhyme-scheme, but that’s how songs used to be—you listen to Woody Guthrie or early Bob Dylan, and you get these sort of generic story-songs, which are just meant to relay information, pass it down from one generation to the next. It might as well be a guy reading a primitive version of wikipedia, whilst strumming a guitar. And you know what? There’s not enough of that around anymore. Ever since music became a commodity, musicians lost sight of what it meant to be a musician. You have to tell a story with your song—not literally, all the time, tell a story, but it should be on your mind more often than not. Oftentimes, you’ll hear drivel that just screams “I wrote this to make a buck.” And while I don’t hear a lot of that in Wilco’s music, I certainly do hear a lot of throwaway lyrics and jams that are too long for their own good.

This is not to say that Son Volt hasn’t been guilty of the throwaway track—2007′s The Search would have been a hell of a lot tighter without that lead track “Slow Hearse,” leading things off. Come on, Farrar. Did you really need that on there? And who can forget the ear-splitting harmonica solo “Jodel” from Wide Swing Tremolo? That’s not sonic experimentation; it’s sonic irritation.

But more often than not, you hear an attention-to-detail in Son Volt’s music that you don’t in Wilco’s. It’s like the latter just jumps headfirst into a studio session and “writes as they go along.” Son Volt, on the other hand, have it all planned out and do a professional job of creating their best version of what came out of Jay Farrar’s head.

(e) This, I think, is the most important positive in Son Volt’s court: They write/sing for the everyman. The car companies have picked up on the fact that Wilco writes songs for the yuppie and crunchy jam-band crowd and that’s why they use Wilco songs to market their cars. As I mentioned before, Jay Farrar’s music appeals to the used-car set, and right now, that’s the type of guy we need helming music. There are too many people who have lost their jobs and hate life to need another fucking band that wants to shove their bourgeois bullshit down our throats like Wilco. Wilco might as well be Daughtry for all I care.

——

So that brings me to my assessment of Son Volt’s latest album American Central Dust.

I’m not going to compact my review into 150 words as I did for American Songwriter. However, I will be true to my original assessment—I really think this is a sparkling gem in the Son Volt canon. I went as far to say that this is Farrar at his “songwriting peak”—and I believe this, wholeheartedly.

First, to the album. I’m taking each track in order and will give a fair assessment to each:

The album starts out with “Dynamite,” which I mention in my review is “wittily ambiguous.” I didn’t have enough words to explain what that meant. In the chorus, “This love is like celebrating/the Fourth of July with dynamite,” it is unclear whether the narrator is saying his love is an amazing explosion of goodness—or a volatile, explosive disaster. I’ve spent the last few 4ths at Congress Park in Saratoga Springs, NY, and let me tell you, when they light off those first few fireworks, it rattles you to the bone. As part of the American lore behind fireworks’ use on the 4th, I believe it’s to signify the “bombs bursting in air,” etc. that we had to deal with, suffering hard to get our independence from England. (Certainly, the War for Independence, as the Brit’s like to call it, probably didn’t play into the songwriting process for Mr. Farrar. I was merely explaining my case for “dynamite: good” vs. “dynamite: bad.”

My evidence for “dynamite: bad”: “There were diamonds, there was gold in your eyes/now just silence and broken words on the side.” What are we supposed to think of that statement? I don’t think there’s any other way of looking at it than in a bad connotation. i.e. “Everything was great/now it pretty much all sucks.” Hence, “dynamite: bad.”

It’s a sad song, as far as I’m concerned, but then again, I’m not sure. Because I sat across a bar table from Jay Farrar several years ago and tried to bounce my analysis of his songs off of him, and he just shot me down, time and time again. “So that song ‘Jet Pilot’ is about George W. Bush?” I remember asking. “No,” said Farrar, although at this point, I’ve heard the song enough to know that he was, in fact, talking about GW. There’s no other answer. “His daddy has a job in Washington/wants to raise a Harvard son.” Come on, Jay. Give the old, young journalist me a break, man.

But as your high school English teacher tried to point out one time or another, I’m sure, the narrator isn’t always the author’s own voice—sure, it might have shades of the personal intermingled in it, but that’s why writing a good book is so hard; it’s imagination in third gear. And that’s what I guess I was missing about Farrar’s songs.

As for how good the song is, I think “Dynamite” was positioned up top this album, because it’s strong. It’s definitely risky throwing a potentially depressing song in at the top, but let me tell you, Farrar’s fans know what they’re dealing with when they pick up his albums. He’s full of emotional surprises, and this is no exception.

“Down to the Wire,” the second track on Dust, I’ve noticed, has been singled out in many reviews of American Central Dust as one of the album’s best. I think it’s OK; I’m not overjoyed every time I hear it. There’s some socio-political commentary in there somewhere—as well as a decent backbeat and nice melody. But it’s nothing to write home about, in my opinion. It feels like not-as-handsome younger brother of The Search‘s “The Picture.”

“Roll On,” however, is fantastic. Classic Jay Farrar country. This is the type of highway ballad he’s been writing since the early days that Jeff Tweedy’s Prius would look ridiculous driving down. It’s also one of those songs, I think, only Farrar can churn out; Tweedy is incapable of writing a tune with such authentic dust-caked grit. Maybe it’s the timbre of Farrar’s voice, maybe it’s the simple shuffle beat. Which reminds me of a new theory I have, and bear with me, because this one’s going to be a bit of a Rant.

The album opener on Son Volt’s Trace is one of Jay Farrar’s greatest songs—”Windfall,” which is told from the point of view of a man driving down a lonesome road, telling himself everything’s going to be all right. “May the wind take your troubles away/May the wind take your troubles away/Both feet on the floor, two hands on the wheel, may the wind take your troubles away.” Amazing. Now that song came out in 1995, and was surely written near or at the time when Uncle Tupelo dissolved.

It has since been told, most thoroughly in the September/October 2005 Relix, at least from Farrar’s point of view, that the breakup happened because Tweedy was, in a not-too-subtle way, hitting on Farrar’s future wife. Certainly, other factors played into it, but on that personal level, that was where it ended. Here, I am reprinting (without breaks) Anthony DeCurtis‘ interview with Farrar:

“The most divisive incident occurred one night after a show. I [Jay] was driving. My girlfriend of seven years [Monica Groth, now Farrar's wife] was in the van, and another friend of ours was in the front seat. My girlfriend was sleeping in the back seat, and Mike [Heidorn] was sleeping on the floor or something. Jeff [Tweedy] went in to get paid and came back out. Then we were ready to go home. As I was driving, Jeff woke my girlfriend up and I saw a situation develop that I’d seen before. It was common knowledge that Jeff’s pick-up routine was to start crying to elicit sympathy from whatever female he was attracted to. To any outsider it would have been a tragicomedy, because I’m punching on the brakes and punching the gas. I found out later that he was telling her stuff, like, he loves her. He’s always loved her. He thinks she’s beautiful. In the rear view mirror I could see him stroking her hair. It was a nightmare.”

Now, if that doesn’t change your mind about Jeff Tweedy (and Wilco), I don’t think anything ever will. When I read those words back in 2005, I guess it was sort of like “an answer” in a call-and-answer musical figure. For years, I’d been a bigger fan of Son Volt and had heard all these rumors about why Uncle Tupelo broke up. It all lead to Jay Farrar firing Tweedy, or Jay Farrar quitting the band; Jay this, and Jay that. And here was an answer. Not “the” answer, but “an” answer. Certainly, there is Tweedy’s side of the story somewhere lost in the ether—and hopefully Greg Kot or some other Wilco-ist will squeeze it out of him someday. But for now, this is “an” answer. Thank you, Mr. DeCurtis, for helping Farrar excorcise his demons.

Now, to the point of this side-tracking Rant, I recently noticed that on the 1998 Weird Tales album by Golden Smog, which, in part, features the songwriting of both Jeff Tweedy and one of my all-time favorites Gary Louris (of The Jayhawks), there is a track written by Tweedy called “Lost Love.” Now, by no means do I think this song has anything to do with the aforementioned incident between him and Farrar in the van, but there is an interesting twist. In the first breakdown in the song, which occurs nearly a minute in, the guitar sounds very, very similar to the signature riff that opens “Windfall.” Coincidence? I think not. Which opens up a giant new can of worms in the Tweedy vs. Farrar legend. This means that Tweedy had listened to Trace and was either lifting that riff as a nod to his old buddy Jay, or lifting it as a kiss-off. I would like to think it’s the former, but given Tweedy’s flare for the dickishness, I would have to go with the latter.

Now, back to the review.

“Cocaine and Ashes”—how has this track been overlooked in most of the reviews I’ve read for this album? (Possibly, because it was noted prominently in the press release, but sometimes, and I’m not saying all the time, but sometimes publicists get it right; sometimes they understand what the gem track on an album is, and us journalists just have to write about it.) This is by far one of the most advanced Farrar ballads ever. The addition of the fiddle in the background just pulls at your heart strings, and the piano doesn’t seem too forced, as it has on other Farrar/Son Volt tracks. It’s obviously not Farrar’s first instrument, but he’s gotten better at it over the years. The piano melody on “Dent County,” for example, a sad one about the death of his father on Farrar’s solo album Terroir Blues, sounds like a cross between Bryan Adams’ “Everything I Do (I Do It for You)” and Richard Marx’s “Right Here Waiting.” Not one of my favorite Farrar tracks. But “Cocaine” is just fantastic.

“Dust of Daylight” is another top-notch Farrar country ballad. “Love is a fog and you stumble every step you make.” These are words out of the book of life—and out of a guy who enjoys a good metaphor from time to time. A reviewer whom I recently read, first ridiculously called Farrar a “nasal” singer (nothing nasal about Farrar, honey), then scolded him for these throwaway lyrics: “There are ways to buy trouble/like a bail bondsmen finds friends in jail.” Sure, they aren’t the greatest set of lyrics in the world, but are you really going to single out a set of lyrics and damn the entire song because of them? Come on. Good song—some shit lyrics, I agree.

“When the Wheels Don’t Move” questions what will happen when gas runs out for good—more socio-economic/political commentary, which I think Farrar does a decent job of getting across. I’ve found, though, that it’s his songs written in times of struggle—i.e. after the breakup of Uncle Tupelo or shortly after the first phase of Son Volt was complete—that are the best. Not the ones that are sort of “already written on the Huffington Post.” I guess we’ll have to all be driving a Prius soon. Well, shit. This track’s melody is a little repetitive (no, actually a lot), but it’s got that DADGAD tuning (or something like it), which works so well with Farrar’s deep, melancholic voice. I like how Dave Bryson’s drums echo that downward-pull of the chord, each time it drops. It’s a good Son Volt song.

“No Turning Back”—jury’s still out on this one, but I think it’s an above-average song. The first thing that came to mind when I saw it on the tracklisting was “No Rolling Back,” a similarly named song on Farrar’s solo effort Terroir Blues. “No Rolling Back,” the album’s opener, could be seen as either a nod to Farrar’s father, who had recently passed away; or, as I saw it at the time, a warning for post-9/11 livers. “Who do you know?/Who do you trust?/Who keeps you sane?/And who cleans off the dust?” It’s a real icey-cold song, another depressing track starting off an album. But it’s one of the strongest tracks of the set.

“No Turning Back,” on the the other hand, falls, in my opinion, into the “Windfall” category of songs: It’s a guy telling himself “even when times are tough, this is what you do for a living; it’s your dream and ‘there’s no turning back.’” In a way, this a really positive song, but I feel that it has some negative connotations attached to it. “So much promise, with so much pain,” the song starts off with. And then it goes into a detailed description of “the road,” or being on it. Not in the Keruoac sense—in the Farrar sense. This is told from the point of view of a touring musician. And while this is definitely a subject only Farrar can wax poetic about, at least from his point of view, it’s one that shows up in his body of work quite often, some done better than others. This one is like a B-.

“Pushed to Far,” starts off with “Memories of Crescent City,” which I would assume is not referring to the place in California called “Crescent City,” but in fact, refers to the nickname of New Orleans. He talks about seeing a live show, which is “pure gasoline for the soul.” Then he delivers, “Take me back to Mound City,” a place in Missouri, nearby where Uncle Tupelo started and where, I believe, Farrar presently lives on the offseason. (He also mentions these “mounds,” which I believe are Indian burial mounds, in his solo song “Cahokian”—”building our mounds out of control/full of our finest throwaway things.”)

This one is another Farrar country song, but rocks much more gently than the previous ones on the album—and is absolutely glazed in a yearning for someplace better than the present. Maybe Farrar wrote it when he was homesick on the road, or maybe it was written at home about being homesick on the road. I wonder who “Mother Theresa to the Animal Kingdom” is in the chorus? That’s a lyric you’ll never get from Tweedy.

“Exiles” is a weaker-than-usual melody, with solid lyrics. I guess you can’t ask for a great melody on every song. The chorus, on the other hand, is decent, but feels like a half-realized idea. “We’re exiles now/pulling out of this place,” sings Farrar. Another road song, I would assume. Definitely not one of my favorites, though.

“Sultana” is the song that I argued with my friend in the music business about—remember, he said he thought it sounded like Farrar reading a Wikipedia entry into a song. And I argued back that it was this type of song that doesn’t get written anymore—because songwriters have lost their way. (At the time, too, I believe I argued that it was a song Farrar “could write” now that he was on in his years a bit, and had already proven to critics that he wasn’t a bullshit artist.) I like the fact that this is the type of song a social studies teacher would be able to teach a class about in a high school. Where’s your social studies song, Tweedy? Not to mention, this one is completely out of place on this album—it could’ve been one big social studies lesson, but Farrar decided to only include one historical nugget. And this is a strong one.

“Strength and Doubt”: This waltz-y number could be filed under “contemplative”—and is typical of the latest Farrar albums. There’s really not much to the song’s melody; the focus here is on the strength of the lyrics. None of these lyrics strike me as throwaways. Mark Spencer’s solos were much better realized on Farrar’s solo albums and this song is a perfect example. The two noter he plays near the end just shouldn’t be there. His presence on this album is a little suspect. I don’t know, maybe Jay just missed having Spencer in the mix. But his solid solo work doesn’t seem to mesh well for the non-country songs.

“Jukebox of Steel”: I think I mentioned in my Songwriter review that this song is a close relative of Okemah and the Melody of Riot‘s “Gramophone,” because it’s quite pop-y and is not entirely in character for Farrar. By the latter, I mean Farrar is best known for his moody, contemplative type pieces—when I think of classic Farrar, I roll it back to the Tupelo days with “Whiskey Bottle” and “Still Be Around”; “Windfall,” “Tear-Stained Eye” and “Catching On” from the Trace days; etc. “Jukebox” and “Gramophone” sort of strike me as songs written with a more modern Nashville country pop station in mind—i.e. Farrar maybe being interested in breaking onto mainstream radio again and/or making a few extra bucks from the massive exposure. He’s never struck me as an exposure junky, though, so I would have to say that these songs are fluke-ish at best.

To the song: It’s under three minutes, it’s catchy and, although, I don’t think the chorus is sing-along-able, the melody is definitely remember-able. I also dig how the opening riff mimics that of a train: “Choo-choo/choo-choo.” Not sure if that was meant to be onomatopoeic—or whether the “jukebox of steel” is in fact a metaphor for a train. I would doubt it. I think it’s just an ode to the jukebox and the great songs that it often plays in great bars. A few jukeboxes of steel in the New York City area: Hi-Fi (East Village: the things electronic, but it’s one of the lone jukeboxes with Son Volt/Farrar tunes on it), The Corner Bistro (West Village: great hamburgers, cheap beer and eclectic jukebox) and Spike Hill (Williamsburg, Brooklyn: great hamburgers, decent decor, amazing jukebox)

As out of place as “Jukebox” seems on this record, it’s a welcome addition to the Farrar portfolio. Maybe he wrote it for his kids?

Parting Thoughts:

While I’ve given some of album reviews on this blog “grades,” I’m going to leave this one to the listener to decide. I already gave it four stars in American Songwriter, and have noted that I’m sticking to my guns. This post was just meant to elaborate on why I thought it was special (and touch upon some of its flaws, so you know I’m not just turning around and slapping a bunch of stars on it). You really don’t hear a solid, eclectic group of songs like these anywhere other than Son Volt/Jay Farrar. Not even with Wilco.

Back & Forth

Columbia Records

Produced by Mike Mogis

Street Date: June 23, 2009

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I can’t remember where I was or what I was doing when I heard “Life On a Chain” from Pete Yorn’s first album Musicforthemorningafter (2001), but I know that I liked it. I gather it was probably on WEQX 102.7 in our family’s little black Honda Accord (with the flip-up headlights; remember those?), and it was probably the spring or late summer of that year, which turned out to be the last gasp before the world changed forever. September 11, 2001 would occur weeks into my senior year of college, and I remember how empty I felt, watching that shit unfold on my TV screen. Ultimately, it was the music I was listening to at the time, which helped ground me in reality—which helped me get through it all.

Anyhow, I heard that song and immediately took to how hooky it was, without being too pretentious—there was that scratchy opening guitar riff, then the sudden break to nonscratchiness into the chorus (“I was waiting over here…”). It was just a great, little tune, which got quite a bit of airplay in our small upstate New York town and probably helped sell Yorn a few hundred copies of that album on that track alone.

The other single, which I believe was out at near the same time, was “For Nancy (‘Cos It Already Is),” which had this hurdling forward motion, like it was on speed, and this great syncopated guitar riff, which I was never entirely able to recreate on my guitar. I liked “Nancy” equally as much as “Life On a Chain”—and as it goes, I figured that with two songs enjoyed out of, say, 10 on the average album, I was doing pretty good with Pete Yorn.

So I went out and bought the album, which at the time was probably $12.99. I’m going to go ahead and say that the album is actually worth $1,299.99, because it is one of those top-to-bottom gems, which only come around once in a lifetime. I’m pretty sure that Music is one of the top-10 most-listened-to albums in my stacks. I’d have to say that my favorite track on it is “Sense,” a brooding love song, with a hypnotically pretty chorus (“Is something wrong with me?/I show you things you’ve never seen.”).

An interesting side-note: In 2002-03, when I was living in Madrid, Spain, I had an American roommate, who was a really talented graphic designer and big music fan. At the time, he was really into Jimmy Eat World (especially Bleed American, which had come out on or near September 11), Saves the Day and other similar artists, and we shared a passion for the then-two-months-and-change old Flaming Lips magnum opus Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (we would be in stitches every time Wayne Coyne would sing “those evil-natured robots/are programmed to destroy us.”). But it was I that got Nick into Pete Yorn’s Music album, and from the first few spins onward, Nick would literally play “Nancy” three to five times a day, while he did his design work. Sometimes, he would burst into my room and just start air-guitaring it. It’s that infectious. To this day, every time I hear that song, I think of Nick and that apartment we shared.

An even more interesting side-note: Another friend of mine in Madrid, an Irish guy named Steve, who had moved there from Chicago, Ill. (by way of Cork, Ireland), claimed that that song “Nancy” was about a girl he used to know. While I never was able to find evidence supporting this, I trust that Steve was telling the truth; he was the type of guy who wouldn’t up and lie to you often. And if he did, he’s a bloody langer (look that one up, if you don’t know what it means; I believe it’s local to Cork).

Anyhow, getting back to my introduction, around spring 2003, Pete Yorn’s second album dropped, Day I Forgot, which of course, I bought immediately. After six years of trying to enjoy Day I Forgot as much as his first album, it’s pretty much a lost cause. It’s just not that great an album. “Come Back Home” and “Crystal Village” are early standouts, which just gleam with that pop crust from the first album. “Carlos (Don’t Let It Go to Your Head),” on the other hand, still, to this day, makes me scratch my head for a few seconds and then skip forward. It’s just an awful song. The remainder of the album is, well, decent but not great, save for the idiotic ode to Mexican food/love “Burrito,” which has an extremely catchy chorus. It’s sort of a poor man’s “Nancy.”

Yorn’s second offering didn’t hit it out of the park—at least that much was true. But it didn’t scare me away completely. In 2004, Yorn put out a live album, which I distinctly remember Rolling Stone giving a fantastic review. I never bought it, because it really didn’t have anything that new on it, save for a few choice covers (one of which was by Springsteen, which is no doubt at least worthy of an additional half a star to Rolling Stone). I recently had a chance to buy it at a local record shop but backed out for some reason. Maybe it was the thought of having to skip over its fourth track, “Carlos,” for eternity.

Well, when I moved down to New York City and became a big, important music journalist, I started getting a ton of music in the mail. (I wish “important” meant “rich.”) One of those albums was Yorn’s third studio album, 2006′s Nightcrawler, which supposedly was the third in a three-album story arc: MusicfortheMORNINGafter, DAY I Forgot and NIGHTcrawler. This explanation I found slightly suspect, but I took note of it and have done my best to think of these albums as one, giant “concept” album. Why the second album wasn’t entitled “At NOON, I Forgot” or something, escapes me, but I get the reasoning behind the “Day” thing. It just sounds better.

Yet another interesting note: four years before the album was released, its third track “Undercover” was featured on the 2002 Spider-Man soundtrack, and Yorn guessed (correctly) that it was a strong enough song to add impact to the tracklisting of Nightcrawler. In short, he added an invisible hook. Also included in the tracklisting is a Warren Zevon cover, “Splendid Isolation,” which was featured on a tribute album to the singer-songwriter in 2004.

What did I think of his third? Well, it was neither as strong as the first album, nor as so-so as the second; it fell somewhere in between, but closer to the strength of the first than to the so-so of the second. “For Us” has sort of a Traveling Wilburys backbeat and is a decent single. It doesn’t blow you away, but Yorn, master of the bridge/chorus, is at it again; the chorus shines like a crazy diamond. The aforementioned “Undercover” is the pop-iest you’ll ever find Yorn, with that Hollywood movie song “it” in it, which makes it sound so fucking grand. It’s “size” reminds me of The Goo-Goo Dolls’ “Iris”; whether or not you like the latter song, it’s got an undeniably large size to it. “The Man,” on the other hand, is gorgeous in its simplicity and features a Dixie Chick harmonizing with him. The other collective tracks don’t fall flat, but I feel that Yorn, at least at this point in his career, had fallen into the trap of sloppiness for the sake of the contract (maybe it’s against his control, I’m not sure): his first album was near perfect, and you could almost hear the meticulousness that went into tracking each song; but his follow-ups, while having a few gems scattered throughout, are mostly bunts or complete throwaways.

Which brings me to his fourth studio album, Back & Forth, which is sitting in my disc player as we speak. Let’s get on with it.

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First Impression(s): Stripped down, acoustic, mandolin, that same old fantastic voice. Those are the first words that pop into my head when I listen to the first track, “Don’t Wanna Cry.” Oh, and here we go, in the last chorus, Yorn is raising the octave (and octane) and singing in that just-high-enough range he does so well. Not sure about the female voices singing “if it makes you feel better” over the last minute or so of the song, or the trumpet, which seems out of place. But strong start. Second track “Paradise Cove” sounds a little like Josh Rouse—breezy, jazzy, smoke-weed laidback—and of course, the chorus is spot on. I think the female harmonizer is Orenda Fink (Azure Ray). We’re already on the third track here, “Close,” and there hasn’t been a single upbeat song. But these have all been pretty damned strong sad songs, and I must say, I like sad songs more than happy ones—always have. I’m intrigued by the fourth track name: “Social Development Dance.” Very personal verse lyrics, and again, an unmissable chorus. Christ, if every singersongwriter had his gift! He actually says “Googled” in this song—and yep, it’s a sad one. A story of falling in love, falling apart, then finding out that that person has died. Ouch (but a good ouch). I already like “Shotgun,” because of its chunky guitar riff, which Pete Yorn is also damned good at sculpting. And it turns out that this album was written lyrics-first, which is quite the Bernie Taupin feat. So all these songs’ melodies were written after their accompanying lyrics. The bridge on “Shotgun” is a bit generic, but I’m just being picky here. This is another solid song (and it’s also decently upbeat). “Last Summer” is definitely not upbeat but rocks hard from the beginning. I like the steely, jangly sound of the guitars. I really, really like the mix of Yorn’s voice with Fink’s. The song has a The Weight Is a Gift-era Nada Surf quality to it; just great pop. “Thinking of You,” the seventh track, is pretty rotten, lyrically. (Let’s see if the second verse is better than the first.) Nope. The chorus is decent but not great. The bridge is the best part of the song. “Country” is played on a 12-string guitar, which I always dig right off the bat. Well, at least one of the guitars has twelve strings. Definitely got a Byrds feel to the chorus—or maybe it’s that 12-string guitar that makes me think it sounds like the Byrds. I don’t care what rock historians say—George Harrison may have played the 12-string Rickenbacker on “A Hard Day’s Night,” but the Byrds were the ones that made it the instrument of that era. Roger McGuinn, to be more specific. He just took the fucking thing and ran with it. And it’s been a fantastic part of many great songs over the years. “Country” could’ve fit on the first record. Great stuff. “Four Years”: more sketchy lyrics. This may have been another issue of not-too-strong lyrics melded with a what-should-I-do-for-this-one? melody. You can hear quite a bit of that on Elton John’s albums—some of Bernie’s lyrics just blow, and conveniently, so does the melody. The twine need to work separately and together for the magic to take place. The album closer, “Long Time Nothing New,” is a piano ballad, which could work out. I like these lyrics; they’re working a hell of a lot better than the previous set. This is classic laidback Yorn. The plucked (upright?) bass in the background is a nice touch. At the lyric “burns on in your mind” we get that lovely Yorn on Yorn melody/harmony, which he does so well. The high/low mesh of his voice is just so lovely.

Song(s) of Note: Well, in order to make it easy for you, I’ll just reiterate the fact that “Thinking of You” and “Four Years” fall flat lyrically and melodically and that the rest of the album is a beautiful departure from the normal rockin’, upbeat Yorn (not that he hasn’t written sad songs; he just hasn’t written virtually an entire album of sad songs). A little bit too laidback at times, but I think you’ll like it if you give it a try. It might be worth cracking a beer, letting a bottle of red wine breathe or lighting up a joint for the full effect. Not that I have done any of those three things while listening to this album. In fact, I have merely taken off my shoes and socks and sipped at a glass of Diet Dr. Pepper (it tastes exactly like the real Dr. Pepper; it’s true).

Roundup: Pete Yorn Fan: You’re going to dig this album: buy it today, tomorrow or whenever you have the money. Non–Pete Yorn Fan: It might be worth buying his first album before cracking this one; it’ll give you more songs to enjoy before having to take a step out onto the edge of the “new Yorn” abyss. It’s a friendly one, though; it’s not the type that will suck you in and spit you out. I’ve seen the guy live, and it’s worth becoming a fan. He’s a really likeable guy—just an average sort of fellow, who is a good songwriter, enjoys Syracuse basketball (he went to college there) and happened to hit it big.

Will Levith

#1 Record (1972) and Radio City (1974)

Produced by Big Star

Remastered by George Horn (Fantasy Studios, Berkeley)

Street Date: June 16, 2009

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I’m sure there’s a scientific term for the chill you get up your spine when you hear a fantastic song for the first time. I don’t remember the exact moment I heard the Box Tops’ “The Letter,” but I’m sure it was on the long-since-defunct oldies station where I grew up in upstate New York (I think it was called Electric 99.5). Anyhow, if you’ve ever heard the song, you know right off that it’s a good one. There’s this driving desperation in the lead singer’s gruff vocals—and that lovely, horn-blown backbeat. Sure, the airplane noise at the end is as campy as you can get, but after you hear that song for the first time, it requires several more spins.

Some 15 years after I heard “The Letter” for the first time, three successive years saw three happy accidents in this order: (a) I fell hard for Yo La Tengo’s Summer Sun (2003), (b) I had a coworker burn me Big Star’s #1 Record/Radio City (in 2004) and (c) I read a Big Star biography by Rob Jovanovic (2005). I had recently moved to New York City and scored a coveted internship at Rolling Stone magazine, and my intern coordinator let me burn a bunch of her albums, including YLT’s Summer Sun. Top to bottom, it’s a delightful little album, with some signature trippy jams, as well as melodies only the intimacy of a husband/wife team can produce. Not known to me at the time, but the final track on the album, “Take Care,” is a Big Star cover—from the least Big Star of the Big Star albums, Third/Sister Lovers (this is the perfect example of why buying CDs is a must for the true music fan; if you don’t have the liner-notes, then most likely, you have no idea what you’re listening to. I could’ve gone on for years believing that “Take Care” was a Yo La Tengo song had I not stumbled upon Jovanovic’s biography a year later. An interesting side-note: The “sister lovers” name comes from a line in a Byrds outtake written by the then increasingly-obnoxious-but-highly-talented David Crosby for the Notorious Byrd Brothers album in 1968. The song is called “Triad” and is about, in the words of the next door neighbor from Office Space, “doing two chicks at the same time.” Supposedly, Roger McGuinn, chief Byrd, was none too pleased about the song and left it off the final album track listing, much to Crosby’s dismay. McGuinn also fired Crosby [or Crosby quit?] shortly thereafter. You can hear it on the Notorious Byrd Brothers reissue with bonus tracks or solo acoustic on Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Four Way Street. It’s a fantastic song, but definitely didn’t fit on Notorious.).

In between the time when I found out about “Take Care” and reading the Big Star biography, I received the burned copy of the first two Big Star albums and proceeded to immediately upload them to my first iPod. Now, when you listen to anything—including people speak—in the streets or subway tunnels of New York City, you’re bound to hear very little, because everything is so fucking loud. Everywhere you go there are jackhammers pecking away at the street, 18-wheelers whoosing by belching out god-knows-what and people yapping on cell phones and BlackBerries. For the first year or so I had those albums on my iPod, I heard very little of what I listened to, even with the levels cranked all the way up. I would sometimes listen to the albums at the gym, but Big Star is not the type of music you should go pump iron to; it’s the type of music you should sit at home with a beer or a joint and allow to fill up the empty spaces.

It wasn’t until immediately after I’d read the Big Star book that I really fell desperately in love with the band, and it took just two songs, initially, to do the job: “When My Baby’s Beside Me” (with “Thirteen” coming in at a close second) from #1 Record and “O My Soul” (with “Way Out West” coming in at a close second) from Radio City.

I would suggest going out and buying the book first—it will give you a great springboard from which to leap into the band. And now let’s leap into the reissue.

First Impression (#1 Record): I’m not entirely sure what it means to “remaster” an album. Does it mean the album is supposed to be different in any noticeable way? Is the album supposed to be of better quality than the original? Most likely, it means that a new producer sat behind the board and twisted some knobs slightly and adjusted the levels to be just so.

The remastery certainly isn’t that noticeable, but there is definitely a crispness to this version compared to the one I still have on my iPod. Definitely noticeable on “Thirteen,” with the second guitar (are the levels slightly higher?). Or maybe it’s just the damned prettiest song on the album, and my mind is telling me it sounds different.

What can I say? I love the fact that I’ve given myself a second first chance to listen to this album. It’s like turning back time but being a hundred times wiser this time around. It’s like an out-of-body experience, to say the least. It’s like I’ve gone back to 2004 and tapped myself on the shoulder and said, “Listen, motherfucker, listen.”

Random thoughts, brought to you by stream of consciousness: Does it bother anybody else that the “don’t cross me babe” parts don’t line up at that one part, two minutes and change into the song “Don’t Lie to Me”? It’s too bad that Andy Hummel penned just one tune on #1 Record: “The India Song.” What a lovely little kitch of a song, though! Nothing pretentious about it whatsoever. It’s just about a guy who would like to bring a beautiful girl to India and live there. I would like to go to India, too, but whenever I eat Indian food these days, it really gives me a bad stomachache. I really like chicken tikka masala—christ, if I could have a big, heaping sloppy portion of that with a piece of naan to sop it up with (without the repercussions afterward), I would give my left foot. I wonder if that’s what Andy Hummel was thinking when he wrote that tune? [While I was writing those ruminations about "The India Song," I totally missed "When My Baby's Beside Me." I just skipped by disc-changer back.] What a juicy riff to start this one off. It’s like a big steak topped with melted cheese and bacon (you can actually get said-steak at Dylan Prime right here in New York City). Songs like “My Life Is Right” really make you miss Chris Bell on that second record—but make his solo album I Am the Cosmos that much more special. It’s basically Chris Bell’s All Things Must Pass; it has all the Chris Bell stuff on it that didn’t make the Radio City. I never really noticed this before, but after “When My Baby’s Beside Me,” the album really takes a turn towards the depressing and introspective. Is that Bell’s influence coming out or Chilton? Funny I should bring up All Things Must Pass, because that slide guitar solo in “Try Again” sure sounds like something George Harrison might do. “Watch the Sunrise” is what happens when a guitar player discovers an open tuning for the first time—and when he tries to come up with a song based on it. (I’m pretty sure that the opening riff is in an open tuning.) Not quite sure if the 12-string acoustic is in an opening tuning once the verse kicks in, though. Another pretty tune. It really sounds like classic Tea for the Tillerman Cat Stevens. Just so simple, so pretty. There’s a story behind “ST 100/6,” which I can’t remember from the Big Star book. But if you read it, you’ll find out. Read it.

Bonus Track: “In the Street” single mix. A cool new take on the song—more moving lead guitar lines, slightly different arrangement, still a spectacular cut. Different guitar solo! More countrified! Woo-hoo! Take me home! Great addition.

First Impression (Radio City): Wow, now I think there’s definitely a difference to “O My Soul.” I think Mr. New Producer Guy cranked up the bass, to great effect. I never realized it was there under that great jazzy Chilton guitar riff. The song sounds like a circus, a joyride and a lay all at once. Is that even possible? Not to mention the trillion different riffs that are packed into this one song. Most songwriters would kill to have one of those riffs in one song—Chilton has got literally a trillion going on in one (well, not exactly a trillion). I always thought the song name “Life Is White” sounded sort of like “My Life Is Right,” and was a kissoff to Chris Bell. “I know what you’re like/and I can’t go back to that.” I’m not entirely sure what “your life is white” means, either. Does it mean that it’s lacking color? Would that make Chilton a rainbow? Hooray! Here we go with Andy Hummel’s second song, “Way Out West.” What a simple, weird little song. First, let me state the obvious: It’s about a guy who loves a girl who’s gone away (out West). And he wants her back. Now, the not-so-obvious: Is it just me, or does that riff sound like just about every single the ’90s alternative band the Gin Blossoms put out? I bet the GB’s were big Big Star fans. I dig how “What’s Going Ahn” starts out in a major key and goes minor-ward within seconds (not sure about the alternate spelling of “On,” though). It sounds weird at first to the untrained ear but really makes for different, cool little song. “Get What You Deserve”: Do you think The Screaming Trees may have been listening to this one when they crafted that fantastic ’90s hit “I Nearly Lost You”? Maybe. Some similarities. “Back of a Car” could’ve been on the first record and leads me to believe that it has Chris Bell on it somewhere—had he been connected in any way to Radio City (there are rumors that he was, briefly). Or maybe Chilton was just thinking about the good old days when he wrote it with Andy Hummel. Never noticed the talking in the beginning of “She’s a Mover.” Then there’s “September Gurls,” which is just pure Byrds/Kinks fallatio, with awfully nice results. Again, what is with the alternate spelling, Chilton? Does that make it “December Boyz got it bad?” That might be the first time “boys” was ever spelt “boyz.” “Morpha Too” finds Chilton tickling the ivories in that sinister sort of way that he does—hear the nod to “Rhapsody in Blue” in there? I sure do. “I’m In Love With a Girl” is a lovely way to cap the album off, which compared to the first one, is all over the place stylistically. This is another track that could’ve easily been on #1 Record.

Bonus Track: “O My Soul” single mix. Sounds pretty similar to the regular mix, save for the tiny cut in the beginning between the opening riff and the verse (which makes it shorter, i.e. more “single” worthy). There is really nothing different about this track, which is sort of a letdown, even though it’s a fantastic song.

Roundup: I skipped the Song(s) of Note section, because this was pretty much covered in the First Impressions and introduction sections. By way of reissues, there’s really not much difference between these albums and their original counterparts. Sure, if you want to add in that great “In the Street” single mix, which really is a breath of fresh air on the album, you could say there is a reason for purchasing this album, but I say go out and buy the vinyl on eBay or burn it from your friend, read the Big Star book and discover the albums/band that way. This is an album that didn’t really need a reissue treatment and is getting one to make the surviving members of Big Star and their families a little extra bread from the diehard fans that they know will go out and slap down the money for this “reissue.” Wait until the boxset comes out.

One Hundred Years From Now

Rounder Records

Produced by Dennis DeYoung

Street Date: April 14, 2009

———————–

I remember the first time I really gave a good listen to Styx—I was working a summer job, washing dishes in the sweaty, grimy kitchen of a local Italian bistro. Sure, I’d heard Styx before on the local classic rock station but had never really done hard labor to it. That fateful night, another dishwasher, whose name I believe was Gary, said that he’d discovered an amazing new album (The Grand Illusion) and that we should use it as our scrubbing music for at least ’til the album was over. I think he threw in for dramatic emphasis that it was the one with “Come Sail Away” on it.

Now, I’m not going to lie: dishwashing wasn’t the most amazing job in the world, and I could have done it to Sade, had she been singing live near the grease-crusted oven. And that night, though I finished my shift having actually heard an entire Styx album, from to back, I wasn’t blown away. It seemed, well, too produced, the lyrics overly dramatic and the “it” was really nothing special: high-harmonies and loud guitars. It sounded like the ’70′s precursor to the era they have come to call “hair metal,” an era a lot of us would just soon forget.

And so brings me to the album by Dennis DeYoung, which made it to my kitchen table: One Hundred Years From Now (of no relation to The Byrds-cum-Gram-Parsons’ song “One Hundred Years From Now,” I can safely say; though, I did, for a second, wonder).

In reading the press materials, we find that DeYoung is “a singer, songwriter, keyboardist and record producer” and has seven solo albums under his belt. Not a bad output for a guy who we find has completely gone gray/white in the liner-note booklet. I would like to hope that I’m still doing amazing feats when I’m gray/white—and god forbid anyone should notice, but I’m starting to go gray on the sides of my head.

Strangely absent from DeYoung’s press is information about One Hundred Years From Now. Nearly every line on both sheets is his musical C.V.—what he’s done over the years as a member of Styx, et cetera. Which begs the question: Does his label really give a hoot about this record, or is it just trying to lure in the Styx fans? “Who needs new Dennis DeYoung fans?” says this press. “Don’t even listen to this album,” it continues, “just fucking buy it. It’ll sound like Styx. Don’t worry; the old coot is out on his own now but just because he’s going by his own name doesn’t mean it’s not going to sound like the real thing.” Well, that’s at least what the press says to me. How about the music?

First impression: Holy shit! It sounds exactly like Styx! Everything seems to be there: The overproduction, the ultra-Broadway-esque lyrics, the pre-hair-metal hair metal, the BIG guitars. I mean, I would’ve been better off just receiving this in the mail without any press—it’s Styx, for chrissake, without the silly name tacked onto the front. No “grand illusion” here, Mr. DeYoung. Now, I have to admit that, having not heard any of his other solo albums, I was sort of hoping that DeYoung had dropped that sound, which was never really all that original in the first place, and gone the opposite way of, say, Bob Dylan: unplugging his riotous guitars, playing “acoustic” pianos, writing songs that don’t evoke the Globe Theatre. I was actually hoping that this was a Byrds covers album. But no, it’s not, and what we’ve got here is Styx, through and through. Call it what you want to, but this is Styx.

Song(s) of note: A-ha! Remember the sentence right before this one where I called this a Styx album? Well, according to Mr. DeYoung this is, in fact, not a Styx album at all. His evidence? The song of note: “There Was a Time,” which I’m going to go out on a limb and say was written by Dennis DeYoung for Dennis DeYoung as a rock-and-roll pep-talk. A “Fuck Styx It’s Time to Grow Up” pep-talk. “There was a time when we believed in happily everafters/And fair tales would always end[.]” We’re talking about the “royal we”—i.e. “I.” So goes this song, a story of the rise and fall of Styx. There were good times and bad, but what comes out of it all is the “I” and the “me”—not the fucking royal we, which DeYoung is hiding behind. How about this line: “There was a time/When all our dreams were filled with grand illusions[.]” Basically, this song is telling Dennis to put the past behind him, embrace the solo career he’s carved out for himself, remember the big hits (“Grand Illusion”) and put any thoughts of an original-Styx-lineup reunion tour on hold (because I guarantee that’s been on his mind, given the sheets of dough other acts have been making on similar tours. The Police, My Bloody Valentine, The Stooges—the list goes on and on.). [I feel a rant coming on.] It’s this type of song that really never makes me feel sorry for rockstars when they bottom out or lose their stadium-sized fanbases. I’m starting to think that this type of attitude is what broke up the band in the first place: me, me, me. Well, guess what, Mr. DeYoung? There’s more to life than just you. Look, most people dig “Come Sail Away,” because it’s a fun(ny) song, which sounds like Kansas (see “Carry On Wayward Son“) and Boston and Supertramp and all the other stuff that came out around the same time. A lot of people bought it and a lot of people dig it still like they dug it back then. And that ain’t going to change. But what will (and has to) change is you. You’re going to get older, you’re going to get wiser, but if you keep on being the silly, old asshole that you are in this song, you might as well put the dream to bed. As my father’s mother used to say: “Self-praise stinks.” Vivian knew a thing or two.

Roundup: I’m not going to give this album a crappy grade. In fact, there’s much more to it than just a self-centered song about Dennis DeYoung, which I happened to single out here. It’s a protest album—at the War in Afghanistan and Iraq and life in general (see “Private Jones” and “Turn Off CNN”). DeYoung’s right; life pretty much sucks right now, and we can blame a lot of it on our leaders and corporate chiefs. “I Don’t Believe in Anything” is as far from a Styx song as you can get (save the chorus)—and is a hidden gem on the album. It’s got slide guitars and a computerized-sounding backbeat, which is ironic, because the song is an anti-computer song. For some reason, DeYoung has a bone to pick with computers—CGI, DSL and Auto-Tune. He also takes a swipe at politicians—which is a little out of place in the song, but you know what? It’s worth hit just to hear Dennis DeYoung say that politicians are “all so full of shit.” Since this album genre is completely out of my comfort zone, I’ll give it my blessing—as long as you give it a listen and realize what you’re getting yourself into. This IS a fucking Styx album, godammit. Don’t have any illusions about it.

Better Times Will Come

Proper Records

Produced by Diana Jones

Street Date: May 19, 2009

—————————-

Folk music is a fickle bitch, to paraphrase Lost‘s Ben Linus. If you’re a Guthrie-ite, and you just like the sparse acoustic guitars and wind-blown lyrics, you might call yourself a traditionalist. You might be a neo-traditionalist-loving Dylan fan, who sent old Zimmy down a volley of boos at Newport when he went electric. You might be of the sort that enjoys a glass of red wine, a nice hunk of brie cheese and a bite at “Alice’s Restaurant.” Or, you might be a depressive, like me, who enjoys a cold shower and a solid mope with an expert British songsmith such as the long-dead Nick Drake or the recently passed John Martyn (rest in peace, my friend; may [we] never lose sight of you). Or…and this is the last “or,” you might have just seen the light with a modern-era folkie like Fionn Regan.

Country-folk, on the other hand, is harder for me to nail down. What makes it country? Well, it’s definitely in the instrumentation/arrangement (acoustic guitar, fiddle, banjo, slide guitar or Dobro) and lyrical bent (Southern storylines; New Testament religiosity; and blue-collar themes such as alcohol, labor and poverty)—but oftentimes, the folk I described above has similar qualities. It’s hard to put your finger on. I’d say it’s also a rhythmic thing, which is a lot more difficult to describe in print (I’d suggest listening to a Hank Williams song, then immediately following, a Nick Drake song; you’ll sort of see what I’m talking about). There’s almost an ingrained backbeat in the solo acoustic guitar strumming rhythms of a country-folkie.

This is where we find Diana Jones, whom of all periodicals, the Financial Times calls “intensely moving.” I wonder why? Maybe working at the FT is where the true emotional core of America lies. Certainly, it has been one of the sectors of the economy hit hardest during the current Great Recession. Who knows? [Dear readers: Here begins a Rant.] Also, from the press release, we find out that this is a followup to her 2006 recording My Remembrance of You, which was “critically acclaimed.” I’ve found, over the years, that this (being “critically acclaimed”) is a staple to most press releases. What does it mean? Well, it has come to signify that music critics (like the one at the FT) enjoyed or somewhat enjoyed Ms. Jones’ music—hence, a “critic applauding or praising” it. The question asks itself: How long does it take for an artist to become “critically acclaimed”? According to this press release, not very long. For Ms. Jones really only has her 2006 wide-release to show—and but three years later, we have been blessed with only the second wide-release. Is that enough time for the global public to reach a decision about how much we like/dislike Ms. Jones’ music? I guess so, for some. For the sake of this review, absolutely not. [Readers: Rant ends here.]

Another thing we learn from the press release, which I really can’t let go of at the present moment is the fact that Ms. Jones’ music seems to be more popular in the U.K. than in America. [Readers: Feeling another Rant coming on.] This has always fascinated me—the divide between U.K. and American listeners. What makes us so different? Why are some acts embraced by them and not us? (And vice versa.) Is it the way our ears form in our mother’s womb? Is it that we, as Americans, innately find certain music more listenable than our British cousins? (Yeah, I said cousins; we’re historically related—a lot of us, at least.) Why do we spurn certain British acts like Robbie Williams and S Club 7, while they go soccer-stadium nuts for them? Why are there some musicians from England we have never heard of and the opposite true for Brits? And how do British magazines weigh American acts? (And vice versa.) Is it a different process? Does the NME get it right more often than Rolling Stone?

Now, I have quite a few friends who live or grew up in the U.K., and I’ve spent a pretty good chunk of time living in England and Scotland (well over a year and change), and I know one thing for sure: The U.K. mainstream is a singles world. Let me explain. Whereas our pop stations play the latest hits all day, every day, and we know them if we hear them in passing (“if you like it than you better put a ring on it!”), in England, singles absolutely rule the charts, and U.K.ers know every word, sing them at clubs and bars and soccer games and rugby matches, and the songs themselves become this nationalistic call to arms. Have you ever been in a crowded pub with hundreds of kids singing Robbie Williams’ “Angels”? The song comes on, and it’s like that moment in Naked Gun when then-California Angels’ first baseman Reggie Jackson retrieves the revolver from under first base and starts robotically chanting “I must kill the Queen.” In short, it’s an absolute nightmare, at least for me. I hate being that one guy in the bar who doesn’t know the words to the song and can’t sing it. But anyway, that’s how the music market thrives over there—off of singles. Do people listen to other stuff? Sure. Do they listen to full albums? Yeah. But the mass market is a singles market. [Rant end. Full stop.]

So then why is Diana Jones so popular over there and not over here? I think I may have at least part of an answer. If your society lives on a single-by-single basis and knowing singles is the way of conforming, the best way to fight the power is to listen to other, not-so-single-y stuff. A-ha! Add a few Diana Jones songs into the mix, and you’re practically causing a nuclear meltdown to conformity. Throw in an album, and well…you get the point.

First impression(s): I must admit, on the first spin this morning at about 8:30 a.m., Diana Jones’ voice sounded like a cross between the timbres of Big Bird and the Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street. Sort of that unnatural, muffled tone of Snuffy married to that outgoing, high-octane charm of BB. (I was drinking coffee at the time, so this was not a sleep-deprived ear-llucination.) I also must admit that I found the music itself awfully unoriginal, but my version of what is original, I’m sure differs greatly from the next guy. There wasn’t that it thing to put your finger on—I could’ve been listening to an anywoman in a coffeehouse in Scranton, PA. It did, however, sound American, which goes a long way these days, considering the amount of acts out there that seem to wad up their heritage and chuck it in the trash. Being American and sounding American are two different things, let me tell you. And considering the fact that Diana Jones is, indeed, American, I was thankful that her sound and her background lined up. However unoriginal I found the sound, I found the lyrics to be much higher on the originality scale. There is a personal quality to them that makes these lyrics very Diana Jones, if she can be used as a qualifier to herself. What am I saying? Her lyrics are not written as if from the mouth of another. Case in point, there have been groups lately who have embraced Bruce Springsteen as their musical springboard, striving to sound like him (The Killers and The Hold Steady come to mind). So, in sum, her lyrics are original; her sound ain’t.

Song(s) of note: I’m not paraphrasing Elton John/Bernie Taupin here when I say that sad songs say so much (well, maybe I sort of am)—and in those terms, Diana Jones’ “Henry Russell’s Last Words” is the gem on this album. Tempered by the most lacrimose little fiddle line you’ll hear and a simple tragic mandolin (which is uncredited under the song—maybe it’s just well-produced, high-capoed guitar?), the song floats along with heartbreaking steadiness. The lyrical hook, took, is in the repeated “chorus”: “Oh, how I love you, Mary.” But after listening to the song several times, I can’t help but think: Wouldn’t this sound even better covered by Alison Krauss and Union Station? Maybe they should take my advice.

The other song of note is “Soldier Girl,” which moves right along, in the tradition of Irish folk—with that drone-y bass (?) holding it all together and a magical fiddle dancing a jig around the vocals. As on Todd Snider’s Excitement Plan, this album sports some guest vocals from other, better-known female singer-songwriters. On this one, we get some background vocals from one Nancy Griffith, a name songwriter, who I’ve heard good things about. I don’t know her music well enough to comment on its quality in relation to this review, but I will say that again, as in the Todd Snider/Loretta Lynn matchup, there was really no need for Griffith to be on the song at all and the “harmony” line, if that’s what you want to call it, is weak and falls flat. It might’ve been nice for Ms. Jones to allow Ms. Griffith to sing an entire verse, but alas, I can only review these songs, not produce them.

Roundup: Diana Jones’ voice is just not special enough for me to warrant an amazing review here—nor are her melodies. It feels like she’s trying too hard to sound old (time-wise, not age-wise) and in the process is losing her “self”—what makes her different. Her lyrics are what set her apart from the pack, but unfortunately, lyrics alone don’t make the album. Sure, some might say that Dylan is all lyrics and no vocals, but I’d ask those people to go back and listen to a ton of music from that era—nobody sounded like Dylan and nobody, since then, has been able to equal that sound. Even his guitar work on some of those albums is decent. If you’re a grammarian or a collector of words, I’d suggest getting this one when it’s on sale at the used record store, but otherwise, leave this one alone. (I refuse to give this a really low grade, because I don’t think it’s shit; I just don’t think it’s worth your ear’s time.)

Will Levith

Rose City

Barsuk Records

Produced by Viva Voce

Street Date: May 26, 2009

—————

I first came upon Viva Voce three years and change ago, with their release Get Yr Blood Sucked Out. The band is a husband-and-wife team—Kevin (drums/vocals) and Anita (guitars/bass/vocals) Robinson—that plays this driving, psychedelic indie rock (I wouldn’t quite call it “stoner” rock). Originally based in Muscle Shoals, AL (yes, “it’s got the swampus,” whatever that’s supposed to mean), the band ultimately landed in Portland, OR, a recent headquarters for indie rock musicians. I’ve heard it described as the “Williamsburg, Brooklyn” of the West Coast (that should mean a whole lot of nothing to you non-New Yorkers). To put it simply, it’s a haven for the hip, artsy and musical. (Skinny jeans abound!)

When I first received the advance for Blood, I remember imagining this giant collective: Viva Voce’s sound is mighty big. Lots of hearty guitars, big drums. So imagine my surprise when I found out the band consisted of just two souls. Sure, the Police got a huge sound out of three, but this was just two. The other twosome that comes to mind, in terms of sheer sonic output, would be The White Stripes, but I honestly don’t even count Meg White as a single member—she’s like the mustard stain on your shirt after eating a big, juicy Fenway Frank. Not to mention the fact that The White Stripes are on a whole different trip than Viva Voce; a much more bluesy one.

At the time, there were two songs on the album that I had on permanent repeat: “From the Devil Himself,” an acoustic-based jam featuring Kevin on vocals, which transforms into this psych rave, with the meatiest bass riff under it; and “We Do Not Fuck Around,” another Kevin-sung ditty, which I guess speaks for itself. Sure, the other tracks on the album had merit, but these were the two standouts, and as I mentioned in my Car Wheels on a Gravel Road review, it’s hard for me to enjoy an album (or be compelled to buy one) if I only like one song on it. So in this case, I loved two, so Viva Voce had a lot going for them from the get-go.

I must also confess that I was able to see Viva Voce live—they opened up for The Shins at Madison Square Garden. It’s one thing to take in a band on disc or vinyl, it’s a whole other ballgame live. I’m not entirely sure what I expected of the band, but I forced my buddy to go to the show early so we could catch the opener. It paid off. Viva Voce was just as good live as they were on the album. I’d say they were better. There were two factors working in their favor that night: They played the shit out of their songs and hit pretty much every note, which is the sign of a tight band; and Anita Robinson absolutely fucking blew me away on guitar (in fact, I think she was playing a contraption that had bass strings on the low register and guitar strings on the upper). Like the listen-crush I have on Lucinda Williams’ “Right In Time,” I have a guitarist-crush on Anita Robinson. She makes Bonnie Raitt look second-rate (like that pun?). Seriously, killer riffage.

***

So, after all that, I bring you to the Rose City review. It’s three years later, and I’ve listened to what seems like a billion more songs, and every day since then, I’ve hoped that the next Viva Voce album would make its way to my kitchen table. And what do you know? Here it is.

Let me begin by saying that I read a report last year on MySpace that Viva Voce was no more—that they had morphed into a full band called Blue Giant and they would be recording as such. I wasn’t sure what to think. Would their sound be the same, expanded? Or would the mystic two-equals-seven [members] be lost? Well, the press release mentions Blue Giant but nothing of the supposed fracture, so I’m relieved. However, it does note that Kevin and Anita have added two members to the “official lineup,” Corrina Repp and Evan Railton. So, in fact, I am working with a new set of paints. You’re probably wondering: Is the two-equals-seven equation gone? Read on.

First impression: Technically speaking, two-equals-seven is now four-equals-nine. The original “sound” that Anita and Kevin produced is still there and still Brobdingnagian. In fact, it’s hard to see where the two new members fit in to the recording. The press says nothing about Repp or Railton being on the album, so I’m going to go forward assuming that we’re just hearing KevinAnita. I must confess, this review has taken me so long to write, this is the third listen of the album I’ve taken part in over the last few days. So this is more of  a third impression. All the pieces are there: Kevin- and Anita-sung songs, psychedelic guitars that swirl around like tornadoes, chunky bass-lines and above-average songwriting. Anita must enjoy ’60s pop—because that aesthetic pops up in her melodies. This is music that makes you want to get up and dance to. Shall we?

Song(s) of note: I’m going to touch on just one song, because I could sit here and type all day long, and I would still only really be acting as a catalyst to you, RRR reader, buying a Viva Voce record (hopefully this one, when it comes out). The body of work on Rose City is similar in its cohesiveness to Get Yr Blood Sucked Out: You can listen to the entire shebang in one sitting. But the song that defines the band’s “sound,” at least for me, is “Die a Little,” the second track. It features Anita on lead vocals (with Kevin a few octaves below), with this cool little woo-ooo-ooo additive to the end of each chorus. It’s got the driving bass-line, drums and a lead guitar drenched in a chorus effect. And it’s but two minutes long (good things come in small packages). It makes you want to get into a car and drive across the country. If you do drive cross-country this summer, put this one on your driving mix.

Roundup: What can I say? Viva Voce still has its game on—and with the addition of two new members, I can’t wait to hear this album live. I’ll give this album a strong 3.5S to 4S. Buy it when it drops.

Will Levith