Chattanooga Pulse

Abner Jay
True Story of Abner Jay
(Mississippi)

Abner Jay is a man with problems on his mind, which he is all too happy to share.  In “St. James Infirmiry (sic) Blues,” he says, “The worst tragedy of my life was the first time when I got married” and relates his story from the shotgun wedding to having ten children in nine years (“Doubled up one year, thought we’d take a year off”) to his wife’s death, with charmingly awful jokes (“I was gonna have her face lift, but I didn’t have no jack”) sprinkled throughout.
He sings about going to Vietnam or drug addiction (“All I wanted for breakfast was some good old cocaine”), and sometimes he just moans in a most spectacular way, like for “I’m So Depressed,” on which he belts out his words with his full-on, stunning voice.

This is all in character, of course; Georgia native Abner Jay was a storyteller and the “last working Southern black minstrel” before he passed away in 1993.  The latest compilation of Jay’s work, the vinyl-only True Story of Abner Jay, has some overlap with the previous collection One Man Band and features a few songs from Swaunee Water & Cocaine Blues; some tracks are needlessly abridged, like his take on the standard “Ol Man River,” but nevertheless, this is a welcome release, since Jay’s material is hard to come by.

True Story begins with Jay in his one-man-band mode, playing the banjo, guitar, harmonica, and a foot-triggered bass drum and hi-hat for a not-too-steady beat.  Then there’s a track like “Cleo,” a heartfelt love song with a full-band accompaniment in a relatively conventional country-waltz style.  But Jay is at his best when he’s being his own individual, accenting a not-so-glamorous take on Americana with over-the-top woefulness, showing that if you bend the tragedies of the blues so far, then they can turn into comedy.

Samara Lubelski
Future Slip
(Ecstatic Peace!)

Don’t be misled by Samara Lubelski’s Sonic Youth connections.  Her latest album, Future Slip, was produced by Sonic Youth member Thurston Moore and is on his Ecstatic Peace! record label, and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley plays on it.  However, Future Slip is far away from the typical Sonic Youth approach, with no dissonance or significant guitar distortion; instead, it seems to take its cues from breezy pop from the late ’60s.  Lubelski’s light, whispery voice and clean pop arrangements actually remind me the most of the overlooked work of Margo Guryan, and at times, there’s a slight psychedelic folk aspect or the merest hint of funk in the drumbeats.  If there was any question, then the carefree “ba ba ba ba”s on a few tracks squarely place it in that nostalgic pop territory; Lubelski’s voice is pleasant, if a bit stoic and unchanging, and a little more emotional variation would have been welcome over the course of the 10-song release.

Primarily, the album uses a rock combo setup with an occasional keyboard, and although Lubelski has played the violin on her previous albums, any bowed strings are oddly missing on Future Slip.  Like her previous albums, the one at hand stays resolutely on course for the most part; one exception is the conspicuously eccentric track “Headships Down,” with intoxicated guitars that aren’t exactly in tune with each other.  “The Trip Is Out” leans toward more psychedelic material, with simmering, vibrating tones and lyrics like “Get a taste of the new dimension, falling out of sight.”  “Future Hold” uses a folky finger-picked guitar part, enhanced with E-bowed electric guitar notes and occasional reverberating soft bursts.  The closing track “Field the Mine” is as close as it gets to rocking out, with constant, unified streams of drumbeats merged with bass and guitar notes.  Lubelski seems content to not overextend herself; she’s comfortable with her restraint, but the listener, depending on any expectations, might not be.