It’s commonly said that Four Tet, Kieran Hebden’s one-man band, is an electronic outfit that’s difficult to classify.  Hebden has more »]]> Four Tet
There Is Love in You
(Domino)

It’s commonly said that Four Tet, Kieran Hebden’s one-man band, is an electronic outfit that’s difficult to classify.  Hebden has a huge arsenal of samples and rhythm loops, and he arranges, overlays, and wrangles them in non-obvious ways to avoid any neat genre classification.  While typical dance-oriented music has a first-and-foremost aim of invoking a compulsory physical reaction, Four Tet appealed to listeners who sought a more mentally-stimulating kind of music, with multiple forces at work and an avoidance of formulas.  It was slightly odd, then, to hear the Ringer EP from 2008, which had a more outwardly dance sheen and insistent, driving beats.  There Is Love in You is Four Tet’s latest album and first proper full-length since 2005’s Everything Ecstatic; it continues in the direction of Ringer, traveling down minimalist pathways with glitchy sonic elements strewn along the way.

Four Tet often uses vocal samples, but they’re mostly utilized to shape sound textures, rather than providing any anthemic, strong vocal hooks.  For example, one track uses an obscured, faintly audible Chiffons vocal sample, and the title of “Love Cry” is sung in a wistful, soulful manner and looped so that it builds upon the song’s pulse.  The album’s opener, “Angel Echoes,” is ear-catching, using cut-up vocal snippets with abrupt edits, making it sound like the CD is skipping, but in perfect rhythm with the beat.  “Circling” features a typically wide variety of timbres and sounds, with a nylon-string guitar pattern, sparkling glockenspiel notes, bubbling electronics, and backwards vocal fragments; the title of “This Unfolds” describes its own increasingly busy approach, with chiming melodies and seemingly random, possibly twelve-tone synthetics.

There Is Love in You presents Four Tet at its most cohesive and entrancing, but I wouldn’t say it’s a step forward.  A track like “Sing,” with chopped pure tones, might have been a revelatory dance number a dozen years ago, but it wouldn’t be so distinguished today.  It would be wrong to define this album just in terms of instruments and sounds, since its flow is a vital aspect; it reveals Four Tet as being more hypnotic and less cerebral, fluttering at the edges of dance music conventions.

Saturday Looks Good to Me
Love Will Find You
(Polyvinyl)

Several early tracks by the Ypsilanti, Michigan ensemble Saturday Looks Good to Me sound like they could be lost, obscure gems from the ’60s, owing much to the band’s often low-fidelity, yet carefully crafted recording style and front man Fred Thomas’s admiration for the work of pop music figures such as Brian Wilson and Phil Spector.  Actually, within the catalog of Saturday Looks Good to Me, Love Will Find You was itself pretty much a lost release.  It was originally issued in 2002 on Whistletap Records in a batch of just 100 CD-Rs, and it was overshadowed by the albums which preceded and followed it, Saturday Looks Good to Me and All Your Summer Songs respectively—the band’s finest albums.  About half of it showed up on the singles/rarities compilation Sound on Sound, but now Polyvinyl Records has given the whole album a new life as a digital download, replacing the old mono mix (done surely as a tribute to both Wilson and Spector) with a stereo mix; while it’s not the best starting place for newcomers, fans will be glad it was unearthed.

Three tracks were re-recorded for later higher-fidelity releases on Polyvinyl, and although there are a few lyrical and arrangement changes between the versions, the ones presented here are fleshed out well, not sounding like any bare-bones demos.  Lead vocals are primarily handled by Thomas and Erika Hoffmann (member of Godzuki and occasional singer for His Name Is Alive), who sings with an unadorned, yet pretty and easy-going style.  Thomas is unabashedly nostalgic, channeling decades-old, organ-enhanced soul balladry on the title track, and the twin tracks “Liquor Store” and “Record Store” have a distinctive Beach Boys flavor, with irregular, treble-heavy snare drum hits that serve as one of the band’s trademarks.

Love Will Find You doesn’t quite have as many epic pop moments as other Saturday Looks Good to Me albums; however, it features a healthy batch of durable songs, and as best demonstrated on the closing track—a rousing cover of “I Get So Excited” by Eddy Grant’s ’60s band, the Equals—it has a striking, often irresistible sonic exuberance.

It is possible for a diligent and resourceful musician to create a professional-sounding recording in a modest bedroom studio, nowadays.  Then, there more »]]> Small Black
Small Black EP
(Jagjaguwar)

It is possible for a diligent and resourceful musician to create a professional-sounding recording in a modest bedroom studio, nowadays.  Then, there are those who prefer to make no attempt to hide the fact that their recordings were made in a home studio, to maintain a certain cozy, unpolished appeal.  Small Black consists of the core duo of Ryan Heyner and Josh Kolenik, who recorded their debut EP in a Long Island attic, and it’s full of the sounds of electronic instruments that could have been thrift-store purchases.  They’re shameless about it—some rhythm tracks unmistakably come from a Casio keyboard—but any novelty aspect of the release fades and is quickly overshadowed by the tunes themselves.

The opening track, “Despicable Dogs,” weaves keyboard melodies that are gingerly distorted, as if to intentionally sculpt sounds that might never be precisely recreated.  In a way, it could be an econo, hazy combination of ’90s noise-pop with early synth-heavy material by the Magnetic Fields, and it doesn’t overextend itself, using a tried-and-true pop song structure and saving its best vocal hook for the chorus.

The recording style is crucial to Small Black’s sonic identity; sounds aren’t articulated and sharply defined, and there isn’t a great deal of frequency separation, causing everything to end up in a big, swirling maelstrom.  “Weird Machines” is a heavier number, with a fuzz guitar anchor and simple, layered note patterns, and an easy trick that works for the band is having instruments drop out of the mix at various times, to emphasize their presence when they re-emerge.  Shoegaze fans might be drawn to tracks like “Bad Lover” and “Lady in the Wires,” which have a few things in common with the more pop-oriented material by My Bloody Valentine.

The EP was self-released last October, and this reissue on Jagjaguwar appends two extra tracks, including the dual-personality, low-rent new wave track “Baby Bird Pt. 2.”  Listeners who don’t already listen to this kind of stuff might not find the rough, homemade sound palatable, but for those in the club, it’s a satisfying release with overdriven goodness and hard-to-dislike melodies.

Small Black will perform at 412 Market on March 13 with Washed Out and Pictureplane.

Joanna Newsom
Have One on Me
(Drag City)

One might view the latest Joanna Newsom album as an indulgent stunt.  Newsom’s astounding previous full-length album, Ys, was widely acclaimed, featuring lengthy, lyrically ambitious songs with extravagant arrangements by Van Dyke Parks.  It’s tough to follow an album like that, and the two-hour, triple-disc Have One on Me could be seen as Newsom trying to outdo herself with sheer volume.  It’s certainly a lot to swallow in one sitting, but patience is rewarded, as the songs steadily dig their way into the listener’s memory.

The gently coaxing Have One on Me is one of those albums that’s best savored with devoted attention, preferably while sitting in a comfortable chair, with the lyric booklet in hand and a warm beverage nearby.  As a lyricist, Newsom is known for her quaint vocabulary, peppered with words about animals and arcane romance, and not many people these days can get away with a line like, “Her faultlessly etiolated fishbelly-face: the muzzle of a ghost.”  But what might not be apparent is her meticulous care in crafting her words; the opening stanza of “Easy” is a brilliant example, with multiple rhyme-threads, partially obscured by her vocal rhythms.

Newsom’s distinctive voice—nasal, clenched, and squeaky—seems to be a little less affected on Have One on Me, and most prominently, she reveals a rich, finely controlled vibrato.  As expected, many of the songs are built upon Newsom’s harp playing, and now she also plays the piano, with a discreet manner that sometimes dances freely on tracks like “Soft as Chalk.”  She’s also branching out stylistically, beyond the quasi-Ren Fair/folk approach, and the gorgeous “Baby Birch” unfurls in an endearingly odd way, with startling percussion and muffled electric guitar skronks, followed by an Appalachian/Irish hybrid.

The song arrangements feature a number of plucked and bowed strings, brass, winds, and percussion, but wisely, they’re rationed over the course of the album, making it not as orchestrally dense as Ys.  The first disc of Have One on Me alone would make an impressive album, but having three discs worth of new, consistently excellent material is pretty awe-inspiring, with ample charms that gradually unveil themselves.

Fingerstyle guitarist Jack Rose died of a heart attack at the maddeningly young age of 38 last December; his newest more »]]> Jack Rose
Luck in the Valley
(Thrill Jockey)

Fingerstyle guitarist Jack Rose died of a heart attack at the maddeningly young age of 38 last December; his newest album, Luck in the Valley, had been completed at the time and now must serve as his first posthumous release.

Rose was in the mind-expanding drone-folk band Pelt, which alternated between being wearisome and fascinating (mostly the latter, thankfully), and Rose’s solo work drifted away from Pelt’s adventurous abandon, focusing more on pre-war blues and ragtime.  His approach was similar to that of inspirational guitar mavericks John Fahey and Robbie Basho, who both understood folk and felt no qualms about infusing eclectic flavors from other continents.  For example, the excellent opening track of Luck in the Valley, “Blues for Percy Danforth,” is between Appalachian folk and an Indian raga, with drone notes meshing with mouth-harp twangs and slide guitar flourishes; it’s not a fast song, but there’s a compelling, disciplined insistency to it.

The rest of the album covers more familiar territory, from the fiddle-enhanced mountain music of “Lick Mountain Ramble” to the country blues of “When Tailgate Drops, the Bullshit Stops,” fortified with a forceful-yet-quivering piano.  There are a few covers, including a Blind Blake song and a take on the W. C. Handy standard “Saint Louis Blues”; it eschews the haunting atmosphere of Bessie Smith’s immortal version for a barroom blues swagger, with an impish harmonica and a mid-song boost of energy.  Folk and the blues are about structure, not variation; however, this reviewer wouldn’t have minded a few more diversions, or another raga number or two, and the low oom-pah notes of the fingerstyle method act as a not-quite-stern but certainly rigorous pulse for the album.

The timing of Rose’s death only raises people’s expectations for the album, as it must serve as some final artist’s statement, although, of course, it wasn’t recorded with that intention.  The good news is that it stands up well—it’s a solid release from a guitarist who was in control, carried a few torches, and last but not least, displayed ample chops.

Various Artists
Pomegranates
(Finders Keepers/B-Music)

When you hear about entertainers from the non-Western world attempting to take on Western cultural idioms, let’s face it—the bad ones are the ones that often get our attention:  those cheesy, off-kilter or hilariously awful results.  Example A: Turkish Star Wars.  Example B: search on YouTube for “Korean karaoke fail.”  Pomegranates is a new compilation featuring funk and pop hits and obscurities from Iran in the ’60s and ’70s, before the revolution in 1979 and ban on female singers.  This is a collection that deserves attention, and not out of any sense of irony or kitsch.

The immediate standouts are the deep funk grooves found throughout the disc.  These are the kinds of vamps that you can’t ignore; they’re impossible to hear without at least nodding your head along.  Sima Bina’s “Naz Kardanet Vaveyla” starts off sounding like an early ’70s blaxploitation film soundtrack, wah-guitar and all, before it breaks out the strings playing Middle Eastern scales while Bina sings her notes with a matching passionate release.  The album opener, “Helelyos” by Zia, begins with some odd, unhinged human beatboxing before sliding into a 6/8-time Afrobeat jam, horns a-blazing and playing call-and-response with each other.  Indian influences reveal themselves on Soli’s “Negar,” with fluid tabla rhythms, and on the powerhouse groove of “Soul Raga” by sitar player Mehrpouya, with a killer organ/horn vamp (borrowed from Santana’s “Hope You’re Feeling Better”) and a fierce (yes, fierce) flute solo.

One of the more successful singers here is Googoosh, represented by three tracks; her voice is full and ardent, yet nimble and nuanced.  Noosh Afarin’s contribution is a dramatic whirlwind dance-funk number, and she has an adept control of her voice, alternating between ending her notes with vibrato or a sultry delivery.  The pop and folk moments are, quite honestly, overshadowed by the funk tunes, but notably, the track from Ramesh (whose face is on the collection’s cover) is a nice highlight with a psychedelic pop undercurrent.

Describing a song from Pomegranates might sound like a joke—say, for example, “Iranian sitar-funk”—but this is seriously good music.  These singers and musicians could hold their own and even teach the rest of the world a thing or two, with inventive blends and soulful performances.

Getting rock-and-pop-centered listeners into jazz requires some kind of gateway.  Some will respond to Duke Ellington’s big bands, Charlie Parker’s bebop, or more »]]> Miles Davis
Isle of Wight
(Columbia)

Getting rock-and-pop-centered listeners into jazz requires some kind of gateway.  Some will respond to Duke Ellington’s big bands, Charlie Parker’s bebop, or vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday.  Starting with a tried-and-true classic album isn’t a bad idea, such as John Coltrane’s Giant Steps or trumpeter Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue.  But, to reach  rock listeners who are particularly attracted to its visceral, charged aspects, it might be fun to take an aural sledgehammer to them, with the jaw-dropping, intense music of Davis’s electric period.  After his adventurous second quintet in the mid-’60s, Davis shifted to an even more daring fusion style; acoustic instruments were replaced with electric ones, such as the Fender Rhodes electric piano and the electric guitar.  His landmark 1970 album Bitches Brew alienated jazz purists, but for each jazz fan he lost, he probably gained a couple in the rock realm.

The long overdue CD at hand documents the August 1970 set Davis played at the Isle of Wight Festival, which concentrated on folk and rock acts, like Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and Joan Baez; gauging from the receptive response from the 600,000-plus audience, people didn’t blink an eye at Davis’s appearance.  The official name of the 36-minute long piece is “Call It Anything” (Davis’s response when asked what it was called); however, based on some recognizable motifs, the set may be divided up into six pieces, reprising themes from recent albums.

The opener, “Directions,” dives right in with a tight, funk groove from drummer Jack DeJohnette, bassist Dave Holland, and percussionist Airto Moreira, and it packs a wallop in seven minutes, with piercing staccato notes from Davis; it becomes increasingly busy and ends with some blistering, downright sick keyboard sounds from Chick Corea.  Keith Jarrett on electric piano and saxophonist Gary Bartz round out the solid lineup, and it functions like some hectic, yet ultimately cohesive juggernaut of sound.  The whole set never fails to be engaging, from the slow-burn vamp of “Bitches Brew” to the spark-spitting “It’s About That Time.”  The sound quality is excellent, and after doing an A-B comparison with the 2004 DVD Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue (which features the same set in entirety), I conclude that both use the same source recording.  Unfortunately, the only way a person can purchase this CD at this time is as part of the recently released, massive 71-disc The Complete Columbia Album Collection.

With Sly Stone as a model, Miles Davis wanted to be a badass rock star in 1970.  For all practical purposes, he was, and this CD has proof.

Various Artists
Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox
(Merge)

Beloved songwriter and musician Chris Knox, un-questionably one of the most important figures of the indie scene in New Zealand, suffered a stroke last June, leaving him unable to speak normally and temporarily immobile.  There was an outpouring of support and tributes—even Eddie Vedder sang one of Knox’s songs at a Pearl Jam show in New Zealand—and the most organized and abounding tribute yet comes as a double-album entitled Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox, with all proceeds going towards Knox’s recovery.  Stroke may seem like an oddly stark title, but it’s in line with Knox’s willingness to tackle demons in song; here’s a man who is epileptic and names one of his albums Seizure.  Few musicians can credibly cover the range that Knox covers, going from incredibly affecting songs to lighthearted ones to the more grotesque numbers with biological fixations, and he’s known as a must-see live performer, able to be simultaneously charming and goofy.

The covers on Stroke are arranged chronologically, beginning with tracks originally by his punk-inflected, late-’70s band Toy Love before moving to songs by his duo Tall Dwarfs, his solo material, and his most recent outfit the Nothing.  Knox’s music often has certain recognizable elements, such as the frequent use of weird rhythm loops, his fuzz rhythm guitar sound, or his Omnichord (an electronic autoharp), and most of his music was taped using home recording equipment.  The artists on Stroke for the most part don’t try to emulate Knox’s sonic styles, which keeps things interesting.

As expected, his fellow kiwis come out to play, including his Tall Dwarfs partner Alec Bathgate and the Neil Finn (of Crowded House and Split Enz) family band the Pyjama Party capturing Knox at his catchiest on “It’s Love”; Flying Nun label mates such as the Chills, the Bats, both David and Hamish Kilgour (from the Clean), and the Verlaines are all present in fine form and impart their own methods over Knox’s songs.  The North American contingent is also strong, with artists such as Yo La Tengo and Lambchop dealing out their acoustic serenity, and AC Newman and the late Jay Reatard provide concise, 2-minute contributions with sharpened hooks.  Perhaps the most anticipated contribution on Stroke is the one from Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum, and his acoustic-guitar-and-voice take on the Tall Dwarfs track “Sign the Dotted Line” is pretty straightforward yet certainly welcome.

Most artists play it safe on Stroke, with a few exceptions, like Pumice’s ultra-low-fidelity static/fuzz piece “Grand Mal” and the wonderfully overloaded, off-kilter synthetics of “Beauty” by Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields, actually recorded in 1988.  Knox himself even appears on the final two tracks of the compilation, providing mostly wordless singing that shows that his musical abilities are still intact.  Stroke is a celebration born of misfortune, highlighting the durability and distinctiveness of Knox’s songwriting and returning the favor of his inspiration with a deluge of love not given lightly.

There’s something endearingly ghetto about the configuration of a performance from the Philadelphia outfit U.S. Girls.  Megan Remy, the sole member, kneels or more »]]> U.S. Girls
Go Grey
(Siltbreeze)

There’s something endearingly ghetto about the configuration of a performance from the Philadelphia outfit U.S. Girls.  Megan Remy, the sole member, kneels or crouches over a cluster of guitar pedals and clutches a microphone, sometimes accompanied by a reel-to-reel tape player.  She doesn’t even afford herself a card table, providing a wholly make-shift, even primitive (by today’s standards) imprint on the proceedings.

One might presume it’s some sort of anti-refinement statement—sitting among the dust mites—and her music certainly must be.  Remy sings pop melodies in a manner that channels the spirit of Ronnie Spector, but her sonic style is the opposite of slick, as she runs her vocals through an effects gauntlet, often making them distorted and barely comprehensible.

Like the debut album Introducing…, the second U.S. Girls album, Go Grey, is a brief outing and is only available on vinyl and as a digital download; it’s an improvement over its predecessor, as it seems to have fewer moments that are directionless.  Remy continues with her haunting lo-fidelity approach, with sparing instrumentation and beats that are so sonically overdriven that it’s often hard to tell what she’s hitting exactly.  “Red Ford Radio” is somewhere between a dirge and a pop song, and its lyrics are actually discernable; Remy sings “Can’t breathe in this red Ford anymore / I’d do anything to get out, get out” as if it were a chain-gang chant.  The six-minute “Sleeping on Glass” (practically an epic, by U.S. Girls standards) begins with Casio beats followed by a dirtied-up ditty; it’s chased by some nightmarish noise and echoing minimal guitar notes that go in and out of phase with each other.  I go back and forth between really digging it and thinking that it sounds like some 12-year-old who just discovered what a delay pedal is.

“I Don’t Have a Mind of My Own” is a departure, with a drums-and-guitar setup that channels garage rock, but the distorted sound treatment gives it an even more raw sound than typical garage rock—think Guitar Wolf, but more basic and without the musicianship.  One of the album’s best and most eerie tracks is the disquieting “The Mountain’s High,” dominated by reverberating drum beats and Remy’s ghostly vocals, which sound like they’ve been run through a pitch-shifter, to allow her to harmonize with herself.  The coarseness of Go Grey will be too harsh for most ears, but for those with both a tolerance for noise and a fondness for off-kilter pop wanderings, it reaches an itch that rarely gets scratched. — Ernie Paik

Anais Mitchell
Hadestown: A Folk Opera
(Righteous Babe Records)

Anais Mitchell takes a trip to Hadestown with some well-known musical guests on her latest album Hadestown: A Folk Opera. The album is a true compilation of original songs that tells a story from beginning to end—specifically, the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Orpheus’ story—his descent into the underworld, musical entrancement of Hades and Persephone, and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to rescue of his dead wife—has been the subject of many operas and ballets over the years. Folk opera is a medium which translates familiar—in this case, mythical—folklore into the context of local culture. It defines who “folks” are (through simple and repetitive lyrics) and uses the “opera” format (where all ideas are sung) to tell a musical story. Perhaps the most well-known folk opera is Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Mitchell succeeds beautifully in the medium, assigning well-known indie folk/rock artists in the parts and an eclectic orchestra (with every instrument from guitar to accordion to banjo) to perform a poetic musical epic that is both mythic and modern at the same time. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver plays Orpheus; Greg Brown is Hades, Lord of the Underworld; Ani DiFranco is Hade’s defiant wife, Persephone; and Mitchell herself is Orpheus’ doomed wife Eurydice. The Fates (or Greek chorus) are the Haden Triplets and Ben Knox Miller of The Low Anthem is the messenger Hermes.

“Way Down Hadestown” could come right out of the ravaged New Orleans music scene, with jazzy, nasty instrumentation and a whole cast celebration of Orpheus’ impending journey into the seductive, sassy underworld created by Mitchell. “When the Chips are Down” is swinging salsa, complete with monophonic stereo, sung by the powerful Greek girl chorus. “Why We Build the Wall,” led by the gravelly-voiced Greg Brown and supported by the Greek chorus, sounds like both an African American spiritual and a tribute to Barry White, supported by a wonderfully heavy-plucked bass, organ and rock’n’roll drums.

All in all, the album is a soulful journey through the musical mind of the gifted Anais Mitchell. Fearlessly personal and irresistibly harmonious, Hadestown is an absolute must-have, folks. (www.anaismitchell.com, release date: March 9). — Stephanie L. Smith

The latest Magnetic Fields album, Realism, is intended to be a counterpart to its predecessor, the feedback-drenched Distortion, and Stephin Merritt, the group’s more »]]> The Magnetic Fields
Realism
(Nonesuch)

The latest Magnetic Fields album, Realism, is intended to be a counterpart to its predecessor, the feedback-drenched Distortion, and Stephin Merritt, the group’s songwriter and primary singer, even wanted to title one of them True and the other False to signify recording styles.  Merritt stated that he couldn’t decide, however, which would be which; I would go as far to say that both albums would be called False.  Distortion is obviously false (think of the sound manipulation as “a distortion of facts”), and while Realism was more-or-less recorded cleanly, using acoustic instruments, its title and execution show that Merritt is playing games with the listener.

Realism is ostensibly the band’s folk album, inspired by orchestral British folk and Judy Collins’s early variety albums, and a track like “We Are Having a Hootenanny,” a cheerful, strummy sing-along, recalls the structure of public domain folk songs like “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain.”  But the tidy, layered recordings of Realism belie folk music; in a way, the notion of “orchestral folk” itself is an absurdity—how can you fit an orchestra on some rickety, backwoods front porch?  The album’s title makes the most sense when considering “realism” in the visual-arts context.  Art is intrinsically false, and Magritte’s painting of a pipe, with the caption “This is not a pipe” comes to mind (of course it’s not a pipe—it’s a painting) as well as Picasso’s quote, “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.”  It’s part of Merritt’s sense of humor, like the running joke on 69 Love Songs, which disguised certain romantic tunes as ersatz punk, gospel, or even civic-pride songs.

OK, so is it any good?  It’s very much in line, quality-wise, with the previous two albums, i and Distortion, and on first listen, a few tracks seemed like trifles, like “The Dolls’ Tea Party,” with a toy piano accompaniment, or “Everything Is One Big Christmas Tree.”  But, the melodies have a way of sticking with the listener, and more than a cursory glance at the lyrics reveal further themes of artificiality—the German-sung chorus of the latter track acknowledges the singer’s delusion, saying “No, maybe it’s not all a dream.  It’s all a nightmare?”  The gorgeous “I Don’t Know What to Say” contains a pointedly non-folk ending fadeout, which actually is a vital and clever part of the song; the singer, unable to express his feelings, pushes the love interest off a cliff, so the fadeout corresponds to what the falling person might hear.  An attentive listener’s appreciation will likely grow with each listen to Realism, and the irresistible “The Dada Polka” (not a real polka, by the way) ends with a perfect recap of the album’s deception: “Do something a little out of character: do something true.”

Gil Scott-Heron
I’m New Here
(XL Recordings)

Gil Scott-Heron and early ’70s contemp-oraries the Last Poets are often credited with being forefathers of rap.  Sonically, however, the two acts’ early work is ostensibly a bit like open mike night at a beatnik coffeehouse, with spoken poetry over bongo accompaniment, and not much like rhythm-loop-heavy rap as we know it.  If you pay attention to the lyrics, then it’s a different story—it’s angry, thorny, uncompromising stuff that was in line with the concurrent Black Power movement.  Scott-Heron shifted to a mellower soul-funk approach, and his most well-known number, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”—his anti-couch-potato call to action—was updated from a bongo-infused rant to a superb funk excursion.  While Scott-Heron’s music became more satisfying, with much credit to collaborator Brian Jackson, his pieces became less visceral and agitated; also, his talents as a singer became clearer, particularly on standout tracks like his reverent “Lady Day and John Coltrane.”

It’s been more than 15 years since Scott-Heron’s last album, and they’ve been rough years for him, with drug troubles and time in prison; perhaps echoing this, his new effort, I’m New Here, has a pointedly dark mood, often with electronic arrangements.  It’s largely nonpolitical, and even more surprising is that the title track is a cover of a song by Smog; it rambles without dips or peaks, with a finger-picked acoustic guitar pattern and Scott-Heron sounding appropriately lost.  Other covers include Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil,” with shadowy synth chords and beats that sound vaguely mid-’90s; the mysterious arrangement for the Bobby Bland cover, “I’ll Take Care of You,” had more potential, with a piano and strings, but it’s apparent on that track that Scott-Heron’s singing voice is shot.  Scott-Heron revisits his old piece “The Vulture,” renamed here as “Your Soul and Mine,” but the background electronics already sound dated.

Overall, the album seems a bit thin, clocking in at less than a half-hour, and four tracks are spoken “interludes” that are each less than 20 seconds long.  The album begins and ends with him in storytelling mode, with familial reminiscences, but enough time isn’t provided for him to explore the stories.  Earlier Scott-Heron material worked best when the music was as strong as his lyrics and singing, but here the music isn’t up to snuff; simply putting an old-timer in a modern sonic setting isn’t enough.  While his singing voice is rough, his speaking voice is possibly more compelling than ever; it’s deep, weathered, and fascinating and would have served a straight-up spoken word album well, with ample room for nuanced storytelling.

Any respectable overview of American music requires a chapter on gospel music, and more »]]> Various Artists:
Fire in My Bones: Raw, Rare & Otherworldly African-American Gospel, 1944-2007
(Tompkins Square)

Any respectable overview of American music requires a chapter on gospel music, and ignoring gospel music in this nation’s history leads to an incomplete picture, like one without jazz, country, or the blues.  Harry Smith’s essential and influential Anthology of American Folk Music from 1952, released on Folkways, included a penetrating disc of spiritual music from the eve and early years of the Great Depression, and props go to Dust-to-Digital for its 6-disc compilation released in 2003 of early-to-mid 20th-century gospel, entitled Goodbye, Babylon.  However, the music market isn’t exactly crowded with well-curated gospel collections.

The new 3-disc Fire in My Bones is a distinguished entry worthy of attention, centered on the post-war era and full of obscure and astounding African-American gospel music.  Potential listeners should take the title description “raw, rare & otherworldly” seriously.  Make no mistake—this is not glossy, contemporary gospel or “praise music.”  Most selections are not high-fidelity recordings, and the vast majority of the singers and musicians here are unknowns, with songs released primarily in limited batches on regional independent labels.  Actually, the only performer’s name I recognized among the 80 tracks was that of Abner Jay, and we’re informed that many of the musicians represented on the set have only one known release to each name.

On some level, compiler Mike McGonigal (founder of Yeti magazine) may be channeling Harry Smith, who assembled the Anthology not as a strictly representative folk document but one with some of the most eccentric records in his collection.  McGonigal is careful to point out in the liner notes that although he strived for diversity, he was not presenting the set as a collection of novelties or “outsider music.”  Blues and folk origins are widely evident, and there are plenty of call-and-response numbers.  However, the compilation branches out in a remarkable way, with a wide sonic variety and numbers that swing or rock out; there’s even some funk, a harmonica quartet, and a fife-and-drum number.

One would guess that the performers mostly had modest ambitions (one group is the Madison County Senior Center Singers), but the purpose of a recording is not only for documentation but also to allow the music to be disseminated, to spread the word.  In line with this, it’s interesting to hear how gospel adopted popular forms in order to aid this purpose, and in an unintentional moment of ironic humor, Elder Beck criticizes rock music for nearly bringing the “disintegration of our civilization,” before the song unleashes a wild, awe-inspiring rock guitar solo.  — Ernie Paik

Various Artists:
Rhythm & Blues
(Putumayo World Music)

Putumayo World Music’s newest release, Rhythm & Blues, is the fifth in a series of collaborations in their American music series and is touted as “classical rhythm & blues performed by first-generation legends and rising stars of today’s retro R&B revival.” Rhythm & Blues is produced by various artists in collaboration with the Putumayo label.

The CD features songs that pair blues and gospel with soul and pop. The aim of the album is clearly to celebrate the foundation of rhythm & blues. Unlike the other albums in the American music series: American Blues, New Orleans, Women of Jazz, and Mississippi Blues, this is the label’s first to focus exclusively on the genre and might be a welcome addition to an R&B fan’s collection.

Lavelle White’s I’ve Never Found a Man to Love sounds soulfully similar to hits from girl groups White has performed with for the past four decades, including Gladys Knight & the Pips. With the edge of Aretha Franklin and her own smooth delivery, White elevates girl power everywhere. A Mother’s Love is a straight-out-of-New-Orleans combination of sassiness and church hymn, led by a rhythm & blues guitarist with dexterous fingers. The recently deceased Snooks Eaglin was renowned for his electric guitar licks that left professionals during his lifetime awestruck and speechless, and A Mother’s Love is no exception.

While I found most of the updated arrangements to be in no way superior to the originals, there is one standout. Sam Moore (of the classic soul duo Sam & Dave), Keb’ Mo’ and Angie Stone’s collaboration on Wang Dang Doodle is a lighter take on the Howlin’ Wolf classic, more groovy than growly. If this one don’t make you jump out of a chair, grind and shake what yo’ mama gave ya, then nothing will. — Stephanie L. Smith

The development of new musical technology can lead to creative bursts and even movements, and one such example is the invention of more »]]> Luc Ferrari
L’œuvre électronique
(Ina GRM)

The development of new musical technology can lead to creative bursts and even movements, and one such example is the invention of the magnetic tape recorder in the 1930s.

From this device came musique concrète, a type of music developed by Pierre Schaeffer in France in the ’40s that uses recorded sounds to create pieces, instead of traditional notes and rhythms.  It’s not simply random sounds, like a stock sound-effect CD on shuffle play; it’s something that Schaeffer and others approached from an academic standpoint, leading to a meticulous classification of sounds and requiring the artist to be an expert arranger and sound manipulator.  The most popular example of musique concrète is the least-loved Beatles song “Revolution 9”—bless the Beatles for making that track, but take it from me: there’s a lot of musique concrète that is much better.

Take the work of French artist Luc Ferrari and the astounding release at hand, L’œuvre électronique, a massive 10-CD boxed set retrospective of Ferrari’s tape music that spans 1958 to 2003.  Just about every sound imaginable can be found within—nature sounds, speech, machinery, and so on—and the range of emotions that the sounds can convey is remarkable.  Ferrari strived to make radio-phonic storytelling, or “cinema for the ears.”  As Ferrari’s wife, Brunhild, explained in the liner notes, “Luc liked the idea that the listeners build their own images and scenes.  Of course, he also wanted to create emotions and reactions in all his works.”

Certain pieces have a distinct sensual appeal, with Ferrari using the sounds of women laughing or just breathing.  Within the 10-hours worth of material are several of Ferrari’s masterpieces, such as the fascinatingly expansive and unpredictable “Hétérozygote” and the minimal, yet strangely gripping “Presque Rien” (“Almost Nothing”) pieces that prominently feature insect and frog sounds and other nighttime ambient noises.  His “Far West News” pieces are like aural travelogues, using material recorded in the USA, and the last work on the set, “Les Arythmiques” from 2003 (two years before his death) was inspired by a trip to the emergency room and going into cardiac arrest.  Ferrari could transform everyday sounds into incredible pieces of art, and in his field, it’s understood that a musician must have an acute talent for listening.

The Necks
Silverwater
(Fish of Milk/ReR)

Pop music can be like fast food, in that it strives to deliver immediate satisfaction; on the opposite end of the spectrum are long, European-style evening meals that slowly unfurl and last for hours.

The Necks, an unclassifiable Australian instrumental trio, would be the musical equivalent of those banquets.  To enter their world requires a few things, including an uninterrupted time commitment and patience, and this is because a typical album from the Necks has a single hour-long song.  The threesome—pianist Chris Abrahams, drummer Tony Buck, and bassist Lloyd Swanton—has the instrumentation of a jazz combo and largely improvises its pieces, but it’s not jazz.  The outfit has an element of minimalism, often using repeated figures that change in subtle ways, and it might take five or ten minutes for a change to even register.  The band’s slow builds can lead to some immense payoffs, and the listener knows when the magic really kicks in, because all sense of time is lost while submerged in a hypnotic blissful state.

The group’s latest studio album, Silverwater, distinguishes itself in a few ways; the band uses a wider sound palette than usual, including shakes of a bamboo rattle, guitar strums (played by Tony Buck), and a bed of glitchy electronics.  In general, it’s more sprawling than a usual Necks album, and some instruments enter more abruptly than expected.  The initial build-up uses vibrating organ tones, punctuated with gongs and chimes before tension grows with the bamboo rattle, a single, repeated piano note, and mirrored tom hits.  A mysterious, noir-ish scene is conveyed with a disciplined four-note double bass pattern and plaintive piano chords, and at about the 32-minute point, the piece becomes anchored with drumbeats among the multiple layers.  The final act begins with all sounds dropping out except for a pulsing keyboard, leading to a cool-down reprise of the noir motif.  Silverwater takes the Necks’ disciplined approach and stretches it a little, resulting in a subtly complicated, immersive, and utterly compelling album.

Think about this: rock music is more than half-a-century old.  It’s still endearing for a number of reasons, but one is that more »]]> Turbo Fruits
Echo Kid
(Fat Possum)

Think about this: rock music is more than half-a-century old.  It’s still endearing for a number of reasons, but one is that it is generally an inviting sort of music—easy to grasp, with immediate payoffs.  I’m reminded of an intro to a Tom Lehrer song, where he refers to, “Rock and roll, and other children’s records”—mind you, he said this in 1959.  A punk phase is a sort of rite of passage for bratty young musicians, which can require a minimal amount of ability for entry.  Since it’s so easy to make rock music these days, it also makes it difficult.  As much as some punks might not want to admit it, punk music is nonconformist in spirit and attitude, yet utterly conformist in structure and execution.  The ever-present challenge these days with rock musicians is to distinguish themselves in some fashion without alienating.

The Nashville trio Turbo Fruits has no use for that previous paragraph, which would probably be considered over-analyzing the situation.  The man behind the band is Jonas Stein, who at 21 is already a veteran, being a founder of Be Your Own Pet at age 16.  The group has managed to kick off its second album, Echo Kid, with a furious salvo that accomplishes what is sorely needed from rock today: to lift the listener out of his chair and throw him across the room.  The opener, “Want Some Mo’,” has a blistering pace, channeling ’60s garage rock and late ’70s British punk bands like the Damned, and the impulse is to head-bang during the pounding chant of “Mo’!  Mo’!  Mo’!  Mo’!”  It’s followed by “Naked with You,” which starts with vocal harmonizing and slips into a Ramones chord progression, and the group makes it work by taking the rudimentary musical scraps and throwing all of its energy behind them.

It’s only slightly disappointing, then, that the rest of the album doesn’t quite match the openers, although there aren’t any dramatic departures in style.  Once your attention is grabbed, the key is to then stop thinking.  A track like “Lotta Lotta Ladies” doesn’t require any analysis; it works on some dumb, gut level, like when you’re on PBR number four and enveloped in oblivious joy.

Turbo Fruits will play JJ’s Bohemia on January 24 with Monotonix and Future Virgins

Various Artists
Where the Action Is! Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968
(Rhino)

Aficionados of mid-to-late ’60s garage and psychedelic rock are well aware of the now-canonized and absolutely essential Nuggets compilation released in 1972, which was expanded into a superb four-CD boxed set in 1998.  That was followed by the outstanding Nuggets II, which mined similarly minded (yet even more out-there) material from non-American bands, and Children of Nuggets, which had a nice concept—explore the bands influenced by Nuggets-era bands—but a sometimes puzzling execution.  Now, the Nuggets series is exploring regions; a 2007 set centered on San Francisco, and the latest entry, Where the Action Is!, focuses on Los Angeles—bands who frequented the Sunset Strip, its producers and studio wizards, and groups on the city’s geographic and creative fringes.

One welcome surprise is that this generous, 101-track, four-CD boxed set (actually, an 8” x 11” hardcover book that includes write-ups for every song) sounds more diverse than the original Nuggets set, even though it limits itself to one region, albeit a huge one.  A good decision was to assign a different theme to each disc, and one can tell that some thought went into the groupings.  A sticker on Nuggets II cheekily boasted “Contains virtually no hits!” and the new set carries a similar spirit, although several prominent band names stick out, like the Doors, the Monkees, and the Mamas & the Papas, among the obscurities.  Still, the song selections are mostly non-obvious ones, and the collection seems to have two main purposes: not only to unearth overlooked tracks but also to accurately capture the vibe of the scene.

There are plenty of satisfyingly gritty, guitar-driven stompers and blatant, yet reverent imitations of more popular contemporaries (like Bo Diddley, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys), with a very healthy hit-miss ratio.  The standout set is disc three, “The Studio Scene,” which closes with the twisty pop song “Poor Old Organ Grinder” by Pleasure, with a non-linear, ever-changing “Good Vibrations”-esque approach, and an unusual, percussion-heavy cover of “Baby, Please Don’t Go” by the Ballroom. While the set only has three previously unissued songs and many of the tracks are presented in their mono versions, all but those with the most exhaustive ’60s collections will likely find this set to be a worthy addition to their collections and a solid entry in the Nuggets series.

Composer John Zorn provides an aural, condensed Women’s History Month on Femina, using an all-woman six-piece ensemble, but the women being honored aren’t ones more »]]> John Zorn
Femina
(Tzadik)

Composer John Zorn provides an aural, condensed Women’s History Month on Femina, using an all-woman six-piece ensemble, but the women being honored aren’t ones that might immediately come to mind.  Instead, Zorn selects several artists and notables on the cultural fringes—true iconoclasts who pushed boundaries on one or more levels.  Among the women cited who inspired this project are musicians Yoko Ono and Meredith Monk, artists Louise Bourgeois and Frida Kahlo, writers Hélène Cixous and Dorothy Parker, and figures such as the moon-god high priestess En Hedu’Anna and the infamous emasculating (literally), homicidal nymphomaniac Abe Sada.
On Femina, Zorn employs his “file card” technique, used previously on such quasi-portrait, faux soundtrack works like “Spillane” and “Godard” (tributes to the novelist and filmmaker, respectively), where his music is arranged using a sequence of note cards, each with a different musical idea on it; this form tends to result in music with abrupt changes, akin to Godard’s cinematic jump cuts.

Laurie Anderson provides the spoken introduction, saying “Woman of truth, astronomer, magician, priestess with a tablet of lapis lazuli, she measures off the heavens”; what follows is a number of cycles, alternating between serene passages and wildly chaotic ones.  In “Part One,” a piano pattern and string harmonics mesh with electronic sounds from Ikue Mori; halfway through, disorder emerges, and a scream is heard in the background, leading to quick starts and stops, harp runs, and wilting notes.
The turbulent moments perforate, using an assortment of sounds like clattering percussion or vocal outbursts.  The Gertrude Stein poem “A Petticoat” is recited in “Part Three” before a cacophony and a crashing piano chord cluster, and the final track is “End Titles,” implying that the listeners have just experienced a movie; it serves as a cool-down section, with a melody placed in unison on harp and metallophone.

Any Zorn fan is all too familiar with his violent, jump-cut style, and Femina is basically Zorn being Zorn, so the cycles of order/disorder fail to surprise.  However, the ensemble pieces work well to make a complex patchwork—a simple, unified statement about feminine creativity would be inadequate, so Zorn appropriately leaves it complicated.

RJD2
The Colossus
(RJ’s Electrical Connections)

The satirical paper The Onion once ran an article entitled “Nation’s Rappers Down to Last Two Samples” (which happened to be “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” and “Mr. Roboto”), and while this, of course, is a huge exaggeration, it does bring to mind the struggle of the crate digger.  Ramble John Krohn, better known as RJD2, is one of the more prominent members of a current breed of hip-hop vinyl crate diggers, who are constantly searching for those elusive killer, yet-unused samples—not just funky breakbeats, but distinctive instrumental snippets.  His most widely heard song is likely “A Beautiful Mine,” a portion of which is used as the opening theme song for the TV show Mad Men, and its killer sample is taken from an Enoch Light rendition of “Autumn Leaves.”

RJD2’s latest album, The Colossus, kicks off in a satisfying way with “Let There Be Horns,” in full-on sample-happy fashion; it’s seemingly a nod to the oft-sampled Incredible Bongo Band, overlaying orchestral blasts atop head-nod-inducing beats, and it ends with the comforting sound of vinyl record surface noise.  Much of the album basks in ’70s-soul-funk-pop glory, but at times it seems like it’s a smirking embrace, felt on a refrain like “Got the glow, we got the glow” or any of many nostalgic flourishes that are endearingly dated.

There are a number of vocal tracks, including ones with contributions from Kenna, Phonte Coleman, and Aaron Livingston, but I lean toward RJD2’s crate-digging-sample side over his ’70s emulation mode.  The former is just more interesting and stirring, with numbers like “Tin Flower” or “Small Plans,” which uses some stern piano chords and synth-orchestral blends to make a gripping concoction.  Crossover hits tend to have vocal hooks, which may explain RJD2’s slide toward vocal numbers, but on The Colossus, the instrumental numbers are more immediate and memorable, which is perhaps why his music can work well even in a 30-second dose.

RJD2 will play Rhythm & Brews on Monday, January 18.