CD Review: Will Scott – Gnawbone

This is a roughhewn, somewhat menacing album. Vocally, Will Scott is a casual, soulful presence. He’s got a big voice that fills the space here comfortably – he knows he doesn’t have to work too hard to make his point, and he doesn’t. Likewise, his guitar playing is terse, with a bite. Scott comes out of the Mississippi hill country school of blues playing, continuing the tradition that Junior Kimbrough, T-Model Ford and R.L. Burnside kept alive for so long. It’s a literally mesmerizing style, with long, improvisational songs that go on for minutes on end, frequently without a single chord change. Scott puts his own individual stamp on it, along with several considerably successful ventures into country. Christopher “Preacher Boy” Watkins’ production is marvelously oldschool, vocals up front, guitars and then the rest of the band a little further back in the mix like an old vinyl record. With sparse, tasteful cameos from the Be Good Tanyas’ Samantha Parton, Jolie Holland and Jan Bell along with Preacher Boy on a multitude of instruments, this was made for late-night listening.

The cd opens with the growling psychedelic Americana of Jack’s Defeat Creek, a murky, genre-blending success. The title track, a sarcastic chronicle about several big bullshitters bears Scott’s signature hill country stamp: it could go on for twice as long as it does and that wouldn’t hurt a bit. Make Her Love Me layers acoustic and electric guitars eerily in the background, with a wild, screaming, all-too-brief noise guitar solo making a particularly imaginative crescendo.

Lazy Summertime blends slow swinging 70s style outlaw country with a more rustic Tom Waits vibe. Country Soil reverts to hypnotic blues, like Wayfaring Stranger as Country Joe & the Fish might have done it if they’d been able to handle their drugs a little better With its subtle gospel inflections, Louisiana Lullaby would be perfectly at home on a vintage Waylon Jennings lp.The defiant Paper Match has some neatly intricate bluegrass-inflected twelve string work coming out of the chorus along with some fluidly potent upright bass from Jim Whitney. Of the rest of the tracks, there’s a swing blues, a fast Waits-ish number, a dark, rustic spiritual and the absolutely fascinating Long Time Since, almost a dub reggae production with its haunting and hypnotic repeater-box guitar popping in and out of the mix as the rhythm section careens along. If there’s anything to criticize here, it’s that like so many other studio albums by bluesmen, it would be awfully nice to hear [fill in the blank: B.B. King, Albert Collins...Will Scott] get a chance to cut loose more here – Scott plays a mean solo. Maybe next time. In the meantime, this will help put him on the map. He just got back from UK tour, back to his more-or-less weekly Wednesday 8:30 PM gig at 68 Jay St. Bar, something you ought to see if Americana is your thing.

Concert Review: Lenny Molotov and the Oxygen Ponies at the Saltmines, Brooklyn NY 7/3/09

Three hundred years ago, most low-key musical performances took place in private homes rather than on any kind of public stage. In yet another indication of how the future is reprising the past, there’s been a new and somewhat welcome trend in New York music circles, taking the old loft show idea to the next level: friends and fans of the band only, no advertising, strictly word of mouth. This was one of those shows. Opening act Lenny Molotov has gotten a tremendous amount of ink here, by virtue of his own oldtimey Americana songwriting as well as his longtime association with Randi Russo, whether playing bass or guitar in her band. Suffice it to say that Friday’s show with Ray Sapirstein on trumpet was as richly virtuosic as always. On the newer songs, it was like an oldschool jazz or blues session: Molotov would call out the key and Sapirstein would invariably find something interesting or appropriate to add. They did two songs about boxing (Randi Russo deviously adding synth flourishes to one of them), a rousing hobo song, a Lightning Hopkins blues and a couple of ragtime-inflected numbers.

The Oxygen Ponies followed with a characteristically brilliant, lyrical show, this time around just frontman/guitarist Paul Megna on a beautiful Danelectro hollowbody and Russo alternating between keys, percussion and backing vocals. The band’s latest cd Harmony Handgrenade (very favorably reviewed here) has been blowing up recently, and they’re capitalizing with a UK tour toward the end of the month. This set mixed new material with older and unreleased stuff plus a couple of devious covers: the Cars’ It’s All I Can Do was given the total noir treatment, while New Order’s Love Vigilantes became a stark antiwar dirge remarkably similar to the Laura Cantrell cover. The defiant soul-inflected anthem Grab Yr Gun was as sarcastic as the recorded version, with Russo’s deadpan harmonies; The War Is Over, a fiery, 60s-ish garage rock stomp on the album, was recast as ominous folk-rock. A new song, The Saddest Thing I’ve Ever Seen maintained the defiant feel: “When the angels come for me/I will not go comfortably,” Megna intoned. Another new number, said Megna was directed at someone “who won’t talk to me anymore since they became a movie star.” “I can’t save you…I always listened when you talked about yourself,” he railed. They closed with a couple of numbers from their first album, notably the hypnotic, antagonistic, Velvets-inflected Brooklyn Bridge. The UK is definitely in for a treat here.

The Oxygen Ponies play two other secret shows in the next couple of weeks, email for password/location/time.

Top Ten Songs of the Week 7/6/09

We do this every Tuesday. You’ll see this week’s #1 song on our Best 100 songs of 2009 list at the end of December, along with maybe some of the rest of these too. This is strictly for fun – it’s Lucid Culture’s tribute to Kasey Kasem and a way to spread the word about some of the great music out there that’s too edgy for the corporate media and their imitators in the blogosphere. Pretty much every link here will take you to each individual song.

 

1. Marty Willson-Piper – Sniper

The Church guitarist has a career-best solo album just out (very favorably reviewed here) and this is its centerpiece, a towering anthem about the ethics of assassinations. Not what you might think. The Church are at Irving Plaza on 7/8, tix still available.

 

2. Moist Paula – Your Singlet

Haunting and hypnotic, something probably from the great underground composer/baritone saxist’s cinematic Secretary project.

 

3. Painted on Water – 1000 Faced Man

Eerie Doorsy art-rock by this innovative Turkish-American group.

 

4. Dagmar – Secret Agent Men

Harmony-driven dark pop with a noir cabaret feel. They’re playing the cd release show for their new one at Caffe Vivaldi on 7/15 at 8.

 

5. Heather & the Barbarians – Kiss Me or Kill Me

Slow snarling country song. They’re at Spikehill on 7/8 at 9.

 

6. Kendra Smith - Heart & Soul

Joy Division cover by the legendary ex-Dream Syndicate bassist. Most Joy Division covers suck. This one doesn’t.  

 

7. Dan Berg & the Gestalt - Minty Bembe

Real cool song – part latin jazz, a little gypsy feel over a hypnotic African groove.

 

8. Reverb Galaxy – Balkan Stomp

Self-explanatory surf rock madness. They’re playing on the Coney Island boardwalk at 4 PM on 8/15.

 

9. Lorrie Doriza - Elle, en Nuit

Magnificent piano-based art-rock. Wow – check out those high notes.

 

10. Mustard Plug – Waiting Room

Very much better-than average ska punk with horns with a little Hawaii 5-0 feel

Song of the Day 7/7/09

Every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1. Tuesday’s song is #386:

The Reducers – Fistfight

New London, Connecticut’s finest export is this fiery, long-running quartet whose 80s heyday saw them as a sort of a cross between the Jam and 70s British pub rock bands like Ducks Deluxe, putting out several generally excellent albums. Fueled by the twin guitars of Hugh Birdsall and Peter Detmold and Steve Kaika’s busy, melodic, Bruce Foxton-esque bass, this is their greatest shining moment, a blisteringly catchy look at smalltown anomie and its consequences. From Cruise to Nowhere, 1985. The band still performs frequently in southern New England.

CD Review: Debashish Bhattacharya – O Shakuntala!

Debashish Bhattacharya is one of the world’s most extraordinary and innovative slide guitarists. Since the 1990s he’s fused influences from all over India as well as the west, creating a style which is both hypnotic and fiery. Bhattacharya continues to push the envelope: it would not be hyperbole to mention him alongside Ravi Shankar. This new cd follows the arc of an ancient Sanskrit love epic, Bhattacharya playing three self-designed slide guitars and accompanied by three percussionists, Chitrangana Agle Reshwal and Charu Hariharan as well as his brother Subhasis. A blend of trancelike Hindustani sounds, southern ragas and an incisive, western-influenced melodicism, Bhattacharya’s guitars ring and reverberate, often in the style of a sitar. As fast a player as he can be, most of the songs here are warmly contemplative, often plaintive.

Basically, this a love story interrupted: king marries a beautiful woman, they separate but happily reunite at the end. Most of the instrumentals here are long, clocking in at seven minutes or more. Bhattacharya swoops and dives to the lowest registers, then hangs on insistent, anguished phrases, hammering them home for all they’re worth. The individual tracks vividly illustrate the storyline: their bouncy, optimistic central theme; the courtship cast as a stately march; the stormy fire of the marriage ceremony, the pensive evocation of their time apart and their reunion, surprisingly lush and peaceful. When he’s not providing jangly, clanging ambience, Bhattacharya ornaments the melodies with a variety of attacks from wild sitar-inflected lines to some pretty, pointillistic playing that wouldn’t be out of place in bluegrass. The polyrhythms enhance the otherworldliness of much of the album. Cutting-edge yet with an ancient feel, it’s another triumph for Bhattacharya: having won the BBC World Music Award in 2007 and a Grammy nomination last year, he’s having trouble doing anything wrong right now. The album is out in the US right now, due out in the UK on July 13.

Song of the Day 7/6/09

Every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1. It’s been a  somewhat insane weekend around here. In the meantime, here’s Monday’s song, #387:

Patty Ocfemia - Misspent Youth

Fearless, majestic, absolutely unrepentant anthem that serves as the centerpiece to this vastly underrated New York songwriter’s excellent 2008 album Heaven’s Best Guest, her voice indomitable and resolute over a lush bed of acoustic guitars that fade out gracefully at the end:

 

Not like old lovers

No permanent scars

No fixed agenda

No calendars

No heavy hand

Or privileged truth

No guilt or shame

For my misspent youth

Song of the Day 7/5/09

Every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1. Sunday’s song is #388:

Ellen Foley – Indestructible

Singer/actress Foley rode her famous cameo on the Meatloaf monstrosity Paradise by the Dashboard Light to considerable European top 40 popularity before hooking up with Mick Jones. He and Joe Strummer produced, wrote and played on her 1981 lp Spirit of St. Louis (she’s from there) – it’s the great lost Clash album. This is one of its most riveting moments, a slow, wrenchingly haunting ballad written by frequent Strummer collaborator and violinist Tymon Dogg. Foley continues to record and play the occasional New York show. The link in the title above is a video from Hungarian tv; mp3s are kicking around if you do some digging.

Song of the Day 7/4/09

Every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1.  Happy birthday, Aimee; happy birthday, America. Today we celebrate with a song about unemployment:

389. The Jam – Smithers-Jones

Bruce Foxton’s sarcastic, quintessentially British chronicle of downsizing has taken on new relevance in these depression days. Several versions out there, all readily downloaded: for rockers, there’s the single with characteristic melodic Foxton bassline, also some even fiercer live takes. But the one we love best is the version from Setting Sons, 1979, with the string quartet in place of the band. Which we couldn’t find a stream of: the link here is the rock version

CD Review: Amy Allison – Sheffield Streets

Her best album. Amy Allison in many ways is the quintessential cult artist, possessed of a fan base that borders on rabid and an equally avid following among her fellow musicians, even if she never broke through to a mass audience. Which is somewhat mystifying until you consider the climate of the music business she grew up in (her now out-of-print albums with her 90s indie rock band Parlor James remain locked in a Warner warehouse somewhere). Allison already has a couple of genuine classic country albums to her credit, her debut The Maudlin Years and Sad Girl. This one is both musically and lyrically richer and considerably more diverse, ranging from characteristically gemlike, tersely metaphorical country songs to jangly pop to saloon jazz (including a duet with Elvis Costello on her dad Mose Allison’s wry, brooding classic Monsters of the Id, with the Sage himself on piano) And her voice has never sounded better – like all the best song stylists, she’s able to say more in a minute inflection than Kelly Clarkson could relate in an entire box set. Sheffield Streets is also notable for its purist sonics, producer and former Lone Justice drummer Don Heffington imbuing it with the warm feel of a 70s vinyl record.   

The title track (and its charming video) effectively captures a bittersweetness and yet a fearlessness, as happens to anyone with a sense of adventure caught in a drizzle on unfamiliar turf: “I found a bar and curled up like a cat/I wrote a song on a beer mat.” The gently matter-of-fact, commonsensical second cut, Calla Lily takes existential angst and replaces it with a striking logic and purposefulness. The Needle Skips is vintage Amy Allison, with its vividly metaphorical oldtimey feel: “It’s funny how we lived so many moments, in the minutes of a song that came and went,” Allison reminding that it’s the scratches on the album that give it character.

I Wrote a Song About You sardonically looks at rejection as a self-fulfilling prophecy, set to a swaying country backbeat. A duet with Dave Alvin on an older song, Everybody Ought to Know actually doesn’t work as a duet (Allison realized that with considerable amusement after recording it), but both singers are at the top of their game as honktonk crooners. Hate at First Sight is a juvenile delinquent take on Brill Building pop; Come, Sweet Evening is a flat-out gorgeous nocturne, welcoming the darkness rather than shying away. The single best cut on the album is Dream World, both its bruised, exhausted protagonist and the bums on the street outside looking for escape in dreams, Allison taking care to wish those less fortunate a similar good night. The album winds up with another equally brilliant number, Mardi Gras Moon, its narrator popping pills and drinking: “I hear the distant music of the band/I’m losing all the feeling in my hands,” wishing she hadn’t made the trip to New Orleans only to be jilted. Rich with layers of meaning, shades of emotion and understatedly beautiful playing, this is a classic. Let’s see – for Amy Allison, that makes three. She plays the cd release show for Sheffield Streets at Banjo Jim’s on July 19 at 7 PM

Three Killer Vinyl EPs by the Hussy

The Hussy like short songs. They keep it simple, just volcanic, distorted guitar and drums, punk beats and blistering garage-inflected tunes. Both guitarist Bobby and drummer Heather sing. Sometimes they take turns, sometimes they do it together. It’s catchy, anthemic, fun stuff. If what they’re doing in the studio is any indication – a lot of this sounds completely live – their shows ought to be killer. And they have three records out on vinyl, something that more bands like this ought to be doing.

The Winter Daze 7″ manages to squeeze in six songs. One Word is like Ramones without the bass, with sassy punk pop vocals. A couple of these are barely a minute long: Herbie, sung by Heather sounds like a NY Dolls demo with one of the groupies joining in the melee. Turkey might or might not be about slaughtering a bird – it’s as assaultive as everything else here. Head Set  is sexy, confrontational 3-chord garage punk with guy/girl vox. Winter Daze is poppier, with layers of guitar including an incisive solo – and is that a Casio? The best song on the ep is the irresistibly fun bubblegum punk Drinking Song which turns the original idea of teenage pop on its head. What do kids do? They get wasted! “Let’s go out and drink tonight with me!”

Also available is the Science of Sound split 7″ with the entertainingly playful garage/punk/noise band Sleeping in the Aviary. The Hussy’s contributions are I Got Soul, a minor-key riff-rock rumble; One Time, which sounds a little like X,  layers of overtones and natural distortion screaming from Bobby’s amp, and a barely thirty-second number about snakes that resembles the DK’s.

The Creepy Season bonus tracks (which you can also get online) include Oh No, vintage Stooges gone unhinged, lo-fi, zeros style; Brown Eyes and its 60s Sonics fuzztone guitar vibe and Going Home, a snotty frenzy of cymbal crashes and a catchy walking guitar line. The Hussy have a whole slew of Madison and Milwaukee shows coming up: Summerfest next year, guys!