Rapturous Musical Cross-Pollination at Women Between Arts at the New School
Yesterday was the fourth installment of Luisa Muhr’s new interdisciplinary series Women Between Arts at the New School. One would think that there would be several series in this city devoted to women whose work crosses the line between different artistic disciplines, but this appears to be the only one at present. What’s new with Muhr’s series is that it isn’t just a place for women artists who defy categorization: it’s also a space where adventurous established artists can branch out beyond their usual practice.
Case in point: Jean Rohe. She’s known as a songwriter and a strong, distinctive acoustic guitarist (to call her a folksinger would be reductionistic). Throughout her tantalizingly brief performance yesterday’s show, she did a lot of storytelling.
This narrative was harrowing. Rohe was named after her paternal grandmother, who killed herself on December 9, 1961. Tragically, just like her father, Rohe didn’t find out about the suicide until years later. That revelation springboarded an “odyssey,” as she termed it, to find out the truth and what pushed the woman over the edge.
Like many of the projects that find their way to Women Between Arts, it’s a work in progress, and a hauntingly captivating one. Rohe’s fingerpicking channeled distant delta blues grimness with her opening number, then she referenced the Penelope myth with a more expansive, anthemic tune. Her final song, she told the crowd, was set in Hades: “In New Jersey, as we all know,” she mused, drawing a handful of chuckles. The narrative saw her climbing into her grandmother’s old black Buick at a stoplight, to find her crying and incommunicado, a ghost before her time.
Noa Fort is known as a composer of translucent piano jazz informed by classical music as well as her own Israeli heritage. After guiding the crowd through a brief meditation, she had them write down their innermost feelings on slips of paper so she could channel and maybe exorcise those issues. As it turned out, this was a very uneasy crowd. Fort plucked around inside the piano gingerly, George Crumb style before launching into a series of eerie belltones, close harmonies and finally a woundedly descending anthem. She closed with a somewhat elegaic but ultimately optimistic ballad where a calmly participatory crowd carried the melody upwards.
Trina Basu, one of the great violinists in Indian classical music, leads the pioneering carnatic string band Karavika. This time out, she played a rapturous homage to 16th century mystic Meera Bai, joined by Orakel tabla player Roshni Samlal and singer Priya Darshini. Basu explained that she’d discovered the controversial, pioneering proto-feminist poet via the work of 1960s singer Lakshmi Shankar.
Basu opened the trio’s first epic number with elegant spirals that spun off into sepulchral harmonics, then built steam, rising up and down in a series of graceful pizzicato exchanges with the tabla. Darshini sang the second long piece, Basu and Samlal matching its poignancy, an ancient raga theme sliced and diced through the prism of progressive jazz.
The next installment of Women Between Arts is Jan 21 at 3 PM at the New School’s Glass Box Theatre (i.e. the new Stone) at 55 W 13th St., with Meredith Monk collaborator Ellen Fisher, lustrously haunting singer/composer Sara Serpa with cellist Erik Friedlander and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, and Appalachian music maven Anna Roberts-Gevalt.
Album of the Day 10/13/11
As we do pretty much every day, our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues all the way to #1. Thursday’s album was #475:
The Peanut Butter Conspiracy Is Spreading
The 1967 debut by this vastly underrated, eclectic psychedelic pop band combines the surreal folk-pop of early Jefferson Airplane with snarling garage rock and ornate chamber pop. Frontwoman Sandi Robinson’s vox are sort of a cross between Judy Collins and Grace Slick; the song arrangements are complex and sometimes haunting. The big innuendo-driven stoner-pop hits are Why Did I Get So High and You Took Too Much, both ostensibly love songs – back then, you couldn’t get on the radio if you sang about getting high on anything other than booze. There’s also the gorgeous chamber-rock of Then Came Love; the acid folk hit It’s a Happening Thing; the fuzztone-driven Twice Is Life; the punchy You Can’t Be Found, with its Leslie speaker guitar; and the intense, scampering Dark on You Now among the eleven tracks here. Here’s a random torrent via Hippy DJ Kit. The album was reissued in the early zeros as a twofer with the band’s second, more erratic one The Great Conspiracy, which you can get via Acid at Home.
Album of the Day 8/16/11
Every day, our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues all the way to #1. Tuesday’s album is #532:
Linda Draper – Bridge & Tunnel
Quietly and methodically, New York tunesmith Linda Draper has established herself as an elite lyrical songwriter. This 2009 release is the best and slightly most rock-oriented of her six consistently excellent, melodic albums. In a cool, nuanced voice, backed by her own nimbly fingerpicked acoustic guitar and a terse rhythm section, she stakes out characteristically sardonic, richly literate territory from a defiant outsider’s point of view. With its chilly organ background, the title track (Manhattanite slang for “suburban moron”) packs a quiet bite; the nonconformist anthems Sharks and Royalty and Broken Eggshell reflect a similar gentle confidence. Pushing up the Days is a snarky, pun-infused kiss-off, while Time Will Tell reverts to the psychedelic stream-of-consciousness vibe of her earlier work. The charmingly rustic Last One Standing hints that there could be a third choice besides leading or following; there’s also a casual, fun cover of the Stones’ Mother’s Little Helper. Here’s a random torrent via The Terminal; cd’s are still available via Draper’s site, with a highly anticipated new one due out sometime around the end of 2011.
Jolie Holland Draws a Pint of Blood
You know that Jolie Holland has a new album, right? Like everything else she’s done, her new one, Pint of Blood, is worth owning – and it’s quite a break with her earlier stuff. A collaboration with legendary downtown New York rhythm section guru and Marc Ribot sideman Shahzad Ismaily, this is her most straightforward, rock-oriented effort. But the rock here is graceful and slow, with lingering, sun-smitten atmospherics that occasionally shift back to the oldtime Americana she’s explored since the late 90s. A lot of this reminds of vintage Lucinda Williams. In her nuanced Texas drawl, Holland evokes emotions from bitterness to anguish to – once in awhile – understated joy. As with her previous work, this is a pretty dark album.
The opening cut, All Those Girls is a characteristically gemlike dig at an equal-opportunity backstabber, lit up with an echoey, hypnotic electric guitar solo. Remember, with its resolute Ticket to Ride sway, longs for escape, working a bird motif for all it’s worth. The pace picks up with the casually swinging, oldtimey groove of Tender Mirror, its warmly gospel-infused piano and organ and Ismaily’s judicious, counterintuitive bass accents. And then Holland dims the lights again with Gold and Yellow: “The night is over before it started,” she intones.
The real stunner here is June, a warily swinging oldschool Nashville noir tune with creepy, swooping ghost-bird violin and a gorgeous melody that’s over all too soon at barely two and a half minutes. With its oldschool soul overtones masking the lyrics’ dark undercurrent, Wreckage, would make a standout track on a Neko Case album. Then Holland flips the script with the unexpectedly bouncy, blithe, Grateful Dead-flavored folk-pop of Littlest Birds, winding out with one of Ismaily’s signature bass grooves. The Devil’s Sake, a sad, ominous 6/8 country ballad with gorgeous layers of s of acoustic, electric and steel guitars as well as reverberating Rhodes electric piano brings to mind Dina Rudeen’s most recent work. The album closes with Honey Girl, a companion piece to the opening track, and Rex’s Blues, a stark piano tune that’s part dustbowl ballad, part Mazzy Star.
In a year that’s been full of self-reinvention for Holland, she’s also started an absolutely killer new project with another oldtime music maven, Mamie Minch, who currently call themselves Midnight Hours. Watch this space for upcoming NYC dates.
An Interview with Uniquely Eclectic Songwriter Meklit Hadero
Meklit Hadero is one of the most individual new voices around. Drawing on elements as diverse as oldschool soul, indie rock and global sounds from Ethiopia to Brazil, her songs share a rare thoughtfulness, intelligence and unselfconscious soulfulness. And she’s only been writing songs for five years. In preparation for a series of appearances in Ethiopia, where she was born, Hadero has several New York performances coming up in April, kicking off with a full-band show on April 3 at 7 PM at NYU’s Skirball Center on LaGuardia Place. As gracefully articulate offstage as she is in front of a crowd, she took some time to give us the scoop about what she’s up to lately:
Lucid Culture’s Correspondent: There’s a youtube comment up about you that salutes you for being both “demure AND badass.” I picked that one because I like it. Are those qualities that you’re consciously trying to communicate in your music?
Meklit Hadero: I guess the idea of the music is to communicate the full range of feeling that is lurking inside us. Sometimes demure is just the right thing, other times, the badass wins.
LCC: You were born in Ethiopia. How old were you when you came over?
MH: I was about a year and a half when I left Ethiopia. After that, we spent 8 months in Germany and then came to the States.
LCC: You spent a considerable part of your life here in the BK. Let me guess which neighborhood – Fort Greene?
MH: True to my nomadic compass, we lived all around Brooklyn. We spent a year living on Eastern Parkway right across from the Botanical Gardens – this was 1986 – then we spent a year in Bay Ridge on 62nd Street, and four years in Park Slope.
LCC: Any thoughts of returning, or have you been priced out of the market like so many others?
MH: I’ll always have a special feeling about New York, and when I’m here, there’s a part of me that still feels moored to the city. But, I don’t really have a desire to settle here. San Francisco brings out different things for me. My apartment there is perched atop Potrero Hill and I can see the whole western slope of the city from my back deck. I call it my “big picture” view ’cause it puts you right in a big picture mindset. There’s no beating that.
LCC: Wow. That is cool. That’s a great view…and a guaranteed workout getting home every night! Did you leave for San Francisco after high school or did you finish there?
MH: There were many stops between New York and San Francisco. We lived in Jacksonville, Florida for a year….I went to high school in Gainesville, Florida, and college in New Haven. Along the way, there was a semester in London, and a summer in Miami. After college, I moved to Seattle and was there for almost two years before I landed in San Francisco in 2004.
LCC: How would you contrast the opportunities for an artist in San Francisco – where it seems to me you found a very nurturing and receptive environment – compared with New York or Brooklyn? Or is that a fair question since you’ve spent more of the past few years in San Francisco?
MH: Well, really, I spent my childhood in Brooklyn, so I can’t really speak to developing as an artist there. I came into my own as a San Francisco musician, which was indeed a wonderful experience. I’d say my relationship to San Francisco is embedded in that. But in the last year, I’ve spent a good deal of time in in New York, and I’ve had such an open-armed reception here as well, especially by artists like Somi, Suheir Hammad, Imani Uzuri, and Morley. I treasure those friendships!
LCC: You’ve played and recorded with unusual combinations of musicians – from a rock perspective anyway. For example, with just ney flute, guitar and voice; or bass, drums, trumpet and vocals. Were these arrangements planned from the beginning?
MH: The arrangements evolved as the songs evolved. Songs are quite mysterious. Sometimes you’ll specifically hear certain instruments as integral to creating a feel, other times it’s more about a particular musician’s hand needing to touch the song. I like the arrangement of classical guitar, upright bass, drumkit, and trumpet ’cause it’s so balanced and allows for a lot of contour. I’m really earthy and the guitar can be too, so my songs need the metal of the trumpet and the kit to cut across that earth, and the bass stabilizes that relationship. The upright bass is just one of my favorite instruments. It is so generous!
LCC: You won’t get any argument from me – those four strings are my lifeline. Now you’re proficient at both guitar and piano – were those instruments part of your earlier life, or just the past five years?
MH: I started playing guitar in mid-2006. At the start, I would play at least three hours a day, so I moved through some phases fast. I actually don’t play the piano, though I use it to write songs. On the piano, you can see everything laid out. I love sitting with the instrument, and having all that sound come at you! There is a sense of largeness to it, whereas playing the guitar feels so intimate, with the wood against your belly. One day I’d like to perform on the piano, and on the drums too. I’ve recently been taking lessons on the kit and it’s this heavenly physicality. It makes me feel strong enough to run for miles.
LCC: How – if at all – do you think your approach to music has been affected by the fact that you’ve only been writing songs for about six years? Has it perhaps allowed you to grow organically, or made you more immune to cliches than, say, someone who’s been immersed in music since day one?
MH: Growing up, I was a lyric memorizer. I could listen to a song a few times and know all the words, and I would always pay attention to meaning. At some point in my early teens, I started to pay attention to the difference between a line being animated because the singer was great, and a line being animated because a line was great. In a way, that was songwriting study. When I discovered Leonard Cohen’s lyrics, they became my touchstone. Musically, I think my philosophy was more like, go with what you hear, and get the skills later. For example, when I started songwriting, I would hear a melody in my head, figure out the chords on the piano, and then learn them on the guitar. It might take 10 months before I could play the song live, but determination and will go a long way. I don’t know if my newness protects me from cliche. I think in a way, it’s because I’m just willing to use the skills that I have and not feel limited by my limitations. I’m still learning a lot about music every day.
LCC: What were you doing artistically before you started playing music?
MH: Singing in the shower! Or singing while walking down the street… Just singing all the time. Actually I wasnt doing much creatively till I decided to finally take music seriously. Music was always the thing that called to me.
LCC: Was there a “eureka” moment where you decided you would do music, or was it a slower awakening?
LCC: There was indeed a eureka moment when I knew I could really be a musician. It was April of 2007, and I had been singing in San Francisco for about two years, with mostly friends and friends of friends coming to my shows. That month, I had a performance scheduled at the Red Poppy Art House and much to my surprise, there was a line around the block and I only knew a couple of people in the audience. I thought to myself, “Who are these people and how do they know about this show!” At that moment, I knew I could really do this.
LCC: You’ve got an amazing band assembled for your April 3 show at NYC’s Skirball Center which includes Keith Witty on upright bass, Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Pete Van Nostrand on drums, Analissa Martinez on cello, Jennifer de Vore on cello, Tarrah Reynolds on violin, and Eva Gerard on viola. Are you going to have the full string quartet playing on the songs?
MH: Yes, I’ll have a full string quartet with me for the April 3rd show! The core of the band is drumkit, upright bass and trumpet, and the quartet will join us for five songs. Playing with a string quartet is so luxurious. It feels like lying on a feather bed in the sun. I’m completely excited about to play with all the artists on the bill. They’re stars.
LCC: You’re currently NYU artist-in-residence – I believe that’s your official title. How did that happen?
MH: I was invited to do the residency by Manthia Diawara, and incredible Malian filmmaker and the head of the Institute for African American Affairs at NYU. He and I met through Walter Mosley, who is a dear friend of mine. Walter will actually be introducing me for the April 3rd show. Walter brought Manthia to a New Africa Live performance that I did at le Poisson Rouge last June. Post show, Manthia said that he’d like to talk to me about coming to the University for a residency. Since then, we’ve spent months developing the programs.
LCC: Are there other duties there as artist-in-residency other than playing and writing songs?
MH: It’s actually a jam-packed month! I’m sharing the residency with Ghanian-British filmmaker John Akomfrah, also an amazing artist. We’ll be working together creatively, and I’ll be writing a piece to a short visual work of his. We’re also doing lots of panels. I’m organizing one on April 11th called the Tizita Chronicles, using the Ethiopian concept of Tizita to explore collective cultural memory. I’ll also be on the panel Reshaping the Public Imagination through the Arts at the Black Portrait Symposium put on by the uber talented MacArthur fellow and NYU Professor Deb Willis. Information about all this is online here.
LCC: You’re also doing what looks like a really cool afterschool series at the Lincoln Center Atrium on Wednesdays at 4 PM in April with free performances where you’re moderating discussion afterward. You’ve got some cool people on the bill including Chanda Rule and Somi, and some of the guys from Debo Band, who pretty much everybody loves. Can you explain how that’s going to work?
MH: The series is a collaboration between Lincoln Center’s Meet the Artist Program and the Institute for African American Affairs at NYU. It’s all about a space to present the work of artists who are using the ideas that we are exploring in the residency panel series, including Reshaping the Public Imagination Through the Arts, as well as the Tizita Chronicles and Collective Cultural Memory, and multiplicity in the African Diaspora. I think having artists in residence at a university is broadly about finding paths for the NYU students to learn in a different way than they usually have access to. For me, it’s enormously important to offer students a chance to interface with arts and performance as they are lived and experienced, and with access to the artists who create the work.
Though it’s an afternoon series – every Wednesday in April from 4 to 5 PM – and ideal for students, the events are actually completely free and open to the general public. Anyone can come! There will be a 45-minute performance, and then a 15-20 minute Q&A with the artists that I will be facilitating. So it’s a chance to see a wonderful performance and delve into the process with the artists afterwards. The range of folks who are performing as a part of it are just fantastic. The artists include Somi and Chanda Rule on April 6th, Toshi Reagon on April 13th, Zimbabwean dancer Nora Chipaumire on April 20th, and the saxophonist and drummer from Debo Band on April 27th. These are all stellar artists and there will be some phenomenal performances.
LCC: I hear Nico’s Chelsea Girl in the opening track on your album – are you a fan of that album at all?
MH: I’ve never heard it before!
LCC: Um, ok! Some times great things are invented simultaneously – or close to it, I guess. I also hear bossa nova, and jazz, and rural Ethiopian music in your songs. On one level, anybody with internet access can discover all this stuff, no problem – but you were a pre-internet baby. Is it worth asking where you picked up these influences?
MH: I feel like anything you love ends up in your work. It might take years for some fragment or another to percolate into a song, or maybe it happens fast. I was a pre-internet baby, but I did have my first email account at 15, and at 18 was immersed in college filesharing. We also used to have listening parties where everyone had to bring music that they thought most of us would never have heard before. It ended up being a lot of folk music from different parts of the world, or obscure local bands from small towns round the globe. I’m also a little bit obsessed by possessing multiple sounds. Even vocally, I really search for different tones and voices to come through. I think that’s what gives an artist the ability to access the range of the human experience.
LCC: Do you come from a musical family?
MH: My parents are doctors.
LCC: The comparison everyone is making, which I think makes sense since you’re known as a fan of hers, is Nina Simone. Did you ever meet her? See her play in concert?
MH: I never met her, and never saw her play live. I almost had the chance at the Nice Jazz Festival in 1997, but the moment passed me by. She was a huge influence…talk about honesty and directness! She taught me that you don’t always have to make something pretty for it to be powerful. Let the power speak for itself. That’s a different kind of beauty.
LCC: It doesn’t seem to me that you’ve necessarily been seeking any kind of fame; your popularity seems to be a more organic thing. To what degree would you agree with the idea that your success affirms the argument that if you give people good music, they’ll listen?
MH: I certainly hope that that’s true. But there are definitely a lot of folks who put major energy towards helping my work make its way in the world and I don’t want to deny that….. But I also do have a natural aversion to the hype machine and for me, making music is certainly not all about fame. I think good music should speak for itself. I hope there will always be space for that. About once a week I get a google alert about a new place to download my music for free, and I can’t say it bothers me. It’s just part of the deal. In a way, it’s flattering because that means that people want to share the songs. It means they’re listening.
LCC: Downloading is the new radio. I think that’s great, actually – so the rest of the world can get to know your music. Here’s a hard one: how would you respond to someone who says “Oh, she’s just trying to be the next Snorah Jones?”
MH: I think if you see me live, it’s clear why that comparison doesn’t really make sense. I once got some great advice about recording an album from a cousin of mine who said “Think about how people listen to music these days… it’s mostly on ipods with earbuds. When you record, sing as though you are as singing into someone’s ear.” That rang true and I sang my album On A Day Like This… that way. But live, there’s a kind of abandon that takes over. There’s more contour and range and way more power.
LCC: In addition to being a musician, you’ve been an advocate for all kinds of good causes. Are there some in particular that we should mention here?
MH: I’d say I’m less into causes and more into a shift in perspective. A big part of my work in the arts is towards seeing the world in greater multiplicity. I feel very passionately about expanding the public narrative that we have around Africa as synonymous with poverty, hopelessness, chaos and despair. The continent is so much more than that. It’s really so many things at once, including real people living real lives, and it’s changing so fast. We have to get way more curious about it, and far less sure that we know how the world is. It’s a great big world out there.
LCC: Anything else we should mention here?
MH: Yes, this May, my band and I are headed to Ethiopia to play at the Music Without Borders Festival, taking place in the cities of Harrar, Gondar, and Addis Ababa. In Harrar and Gondar, the shows will be totally free and open to the public. Addis Ababa’s show will have only a minimal entrance fee, so we’ll really get to connect with the people. In Gondar, we will play upon the site of the landmark Fasilides Castle, built in the mid-1600s by Emperor Fasilides. That’s some serious history!!!!
The Arba Minch Collective, the collective of Ethiopian Diaspora artists that I founded in 2009, will also be there, and we’ll be giving free workshops, and continuing to build our growing relationships with the cultural movers and shakers of the country. I’ll even be taking photos for National Geographic World Music’s website! We’re not getting paid a thing to play, so we’re making it happen grassroots style through an Indie-a-Gogo campaign that we just launched. You can learn more about it or donate here.
Jessi Robertson’s Small Town Girls Want Out
Why is there so much madness in small towns? Because that’s where dreams get ground down into the dirt? Because anyone who can get out does, and those who stay behind are hell to be around? Jessi Robertson explores themes like these on her intense new album Small Town Girls. The women here want one thing and and one thing only: to escape. In a breathy, occasionally gritty contralto, over smartly arranged Americana rock, Robertson chronicles how they do it, or what they substitute for the real thing. More often than not, it’s impossible to turn away from. If you like the idea of Lucinda Williams but don’t like all the cliches she falls back on, Jessi Robertson is for you.
The album gets off to a sort of a false start and then comes together fast. The slowly raging title track explores how “small town girls learn to tell big lies,” and deal with the nosy townfolk who don’t have a clue what an interior life is. There’s a bitter triumph here, something that doesn’t always happen in the other songs. A big rock tune, Half Moon’s title refers to the marks left by a girl’s fingernails on her palms as she clenches her firsts, hypnotic verse giving way to catchy chorus: “I tried to laugh, I screamed instead,” she wails, with an angst that is nothing if not genuine. The madness comes front and center on the quietly electric 6/8 ballad Don’t Come In Here:
I never wore a cap and gown
They said I’d never get out of this town
But I defied everyone…
I know how to hide
I don’t run
Robertson maintains the raging, tormented ambience with You Don’t Want to Taste My Heart, chronicling the rituals of a girl who cuts herself because she “likes the center of the storm.”
The hopelessness lifts for the resolute, deftly fingerpicked Sunstorm and then The Travelers, dreaming of a better life on the road playing music. The most vivid track here out of many is Broken Rosary, a child’s-eye view of her dysfunctional family: “We poured water on her head til the ambulance came, and I watched through the car window as they rushed her away,” she relates with a chilling matter-of-factness. The album closes with something of a honkytonk piano ballad, Whiskey and Cigarettes, whose defiant, inscrutable bad-girl protagonist has no regrets until the room is spinning. What happens after that Robertson doesn’t address. Robertson is a very prolific writer with a substantial back catalog, but here she’s taken her art to the next level – always nice to see a good songwriter realize their potential. Jessi Robertson plays the cd release show for this one at Bar 4 in Brooklyn at 10 PM on Feb 26 with another first-rate, intense songwriter, Kelli Rae Powell, opening the night at 8.
Album of the Day 2/5/11
Every day, our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues all the way to #1. The brain trust here has decided to take a weekend vacation in Philly (which should tell you what kind of brains you’re dealing with here): more reviews and other fun stuff here very soon. In the meantime, Saturday’s album is #724:
Sharon Goldman – Semi-Broken Heart
Conclusive proof that there actually is such a thing as intelligent folk-pop. The New York songwriter’s 2004 album is sort of an American version of Shoot out the Lights: in a more quietly harrowing way, it chronicles the disollution of a relationship. Against a lush, lusciously jangly backdrop of acoustic and electric guitar and keys, Goldman stoically but plaintively lets the story unveil: the disillusion of Make-Believe and Happy Ever After give way to the wounded Uncertainty and Blue Rain. The big concert favorite (in another era, it would have been a huge radio hit) is Stained Glass Window, a casually chilling epiphany. The richly sweeping, clanging Change gives way to the NYC tableau Never-Ending Skyline, where a glimmer of hope appears. Finally, at the end, Goldman allows herself some righteous rage at the duplicitous cad who broke her heart. Moral of this story: never mess with a songwriter. They always get even in the end. The one thing this album doesn’t have is Goldman’s signature sense of humor: when she’s on her game (check out the Subway Song from her 2007 follow-up album Shake the Stars), she’s off-the-charts hilarious. A little sleuthing didn’t turn up any files floating around, but the album is still up at cdbaby (where there are samples of all the tracks) and at Goldman’s site.
Album of the Day 1/18/11
Every day our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues, all the way to #1. Tuesday’s is #742:
Gillen & Turk – Backs to the Wall
Songwriter Fred Gillen Jr. appropriated Woody Guthrie’s “this guitar kills fascists” for his own six-string. This 2008 collaboration with first-class Americana multi-instrumentalist Matt Turk – whose performance on acoustic and electric guitars and mandolin here is as soulful as it is virtuosic – perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the final, tense months of the Bush regime, when nobody knew if Dick Cheney was going to cede power or had something even more apocalyptic up his sleeve. The songs here alternate between fiery and brooding: this album is the high-water mark for both artists up to this point. The centerpiece is the ferocious, prophetic Fall Down, a nightmare scenario where the blowback from the war comes back to haunt us much like Malcolm X predicted. They explore smalltown anomie with the gorgeously harmony-driven These Nameless Streets, inner city bleakness with the allusive fingerstyle blues Satchmo, love during wartime with the stark Takes Me Away and aptly make the connection between military service and a jail sentence on the brutal war veteran’s remembrance, Killing Machine. The eerie psychedelic jam Three resembles early Country Joe & the Fish. The lone cover here is a joyous, piano-drenched version of Steve Kirkman’s Peace Rant. Turk also contributes Peruvian-flavored political pop, Gillen a soaring, historically aware anthem about the Black Hills. The album ends optimistically with the Beatlesque title track and the mandolin-infused singalong This Town Is Our Song. Hard copies of this one quickly sold out, but it’s still available at cdbaby and itunes.
Yet Another Terrific Album from Sharon Goldman
This is an album for jellybean thieves and those who love them. Not only is Sharon Goldman one of this era’s most brilliant tunesmiths, she also has a sweet tooth. If her lyrics are to be taken at face value, she also steals ice cream – or appropriates other peoples’, anyway. Behind her bright, shiny, catchy classic pop melodies and her symbolically charged imagery, there’s a devious streak. Sometimes it’s very funny, sometimes poignant, sometimes both at once. Perfect example: Short Brown Hair, the opening cut on her new album Sleepless Lullaby. It’s a classic Snow White/Rose Red dichotomy: the narrator’s cute blonde little sister gets all the attention, but this pensive, brooding brunette has something up her sleeve (actually in her pocket). By the end of the song, she emerges resolute and unchastened. That sense of triumph and indomitability has always been a backdrop on her previous albums, especially the 1999 cult classic Semi-Broken Heart, and it comes to the forefront here.
What’s new here is Goldman’s turn toward an Americana sound, backed tersely and soulfully by guitarist/mandolinist Thad Debrock, bassist Mark Dann and drummer Cheryl Prashker. Dann’s production is remarkably purist: the album has rich, practically analog vinyl feel, vocals up front, drums tastefully in the back, no cheesy autotune or computerized instrumentation anywhere.
The rest of the songs paint vivid pictures, especially the fingerpicked ballad Winter’s Come Around Again, a woman traipsing around in the snow looking for any possible sign of warmth. The title track, a slow, 6/8 country ballad is a knockout. Goldman has always been a good singer – on this album she has become a brilliant one, unselfconsciously plaintive and wounded. “I lie awake with my big mistake” comes across as understatement rather than overkill, enhanced by some soulful slide guitar work by Pat Wictor. House of Stone, a Rich Deans cover, is a country blues tune: with its succession of bitter imagery, it stands up alongside Goldman’s originals here. And the Americana-tinged Letters, a kiss-off ballad that starts out characteristically subtle and gets as vicious as she’s ever allowed herself to be, is righteously wrathful. Goldman then flips the script with Weekend Afternoon, a blithely upbeat country/pop hit.
The 6/8 jazz-pop song Time Is an Airplane is one of her most musically sophisticated numbers – and it namechecks the Cyclone rollercoaster at Coney Island, which makes it even harder to resist. Goldman wraps up the album by reinventing the Simon and Garfunkel chestnut Hazy Shade of Winter as piano-based art-rock, discovering a wintriness missing from the psych-pop arrangement of the original. It’s yet another display of smartly tuneful, captivating songcraft from one of the best songwriters you may have never heard of. Goldman’s next gig is at Brewed Awakening in Metuchen, NJ on Dec 16; watch this space for New York dates.
Lucid Culture 