Three to Consider: Blues, Pop and Disco Be-bop

Here are three to consider from the recent Relix sampler. A bunch of dudes, but all with a very different orientation.

First up is the Jaik Miller Band featuring NYC frontman, you guessed it, Jaik Miller. I won't try to give you the whole history as I know little to nothing of ancestral efforts including Xanax 25. The new band includes Ryan Adams and the Cardinals guitarist JP Bowerstock (who also produced the album) and got quite a good deal of positive feedback for this self-titled album. Not sure what I think about the whole enterprise overall, but this slow blues tune has a nice feel. If you like it, visit their site to learn more.

Orange Sunshine

Next up is "him" otherwise known as M. Ward who most recently became famous as part of this duo. Of course it will be interesting to see how things change for, er, "him" on his seventh solo effort after that popular album. If this cut is any indication, I imagine he is going to find a larger following since it has much of the great pop feel of the duo album--in fact, I think you might hear a familiar voice in the background. For more on M Ward and the new album Hold Time, check out the release site.

Never Had Nobody Like You

And lastly we send a shout out ot anyone from Ann Arbor, MI to tell us about Macpodz who have coined the term "Disco-Be-bop" to describe their music. You have to be thinking Medeski, Martin and Wood here, but I don't have lots of info. This is their third studio album and they appear to have developed a following, but let's hear what others have to say. And like any good funky fun band, you can hear lots more just by heading to their website here.

Followaduby

Trying to Get into the Present Tense with James Carter

I remember the first time College Roomy had me sitting in his back room (post college) and put on James Carter's 1995 release, The Real Quietstorm which opens with the phatest baritone sax openings of "Round Midnight" one could ever imagine. It was a sound that made you melt the minute you heard it. That whole album, which I picked up the first chance I could after I heard it, was simply wonderful all the way through with that totally sexy late night jazz feel to it. I thought, this is a player I am going to be listening to for a very long time. Carter's contrbutions on Robert Altman's 1996 Kansas City soundtrack did nothing but confirm that sense as Carter's distinctive growl on any saxophone he touched--whether bari, alto or soprano--and on any style of song he played, was both distinctive and a pleasure to listen to. As Pico puts it:

When you hear Carter play the saxophone, it's pretty unmistakable that it's him: he's got the soul of Lester Young, the grit of Eddie Harris and the technical proficiency of John Coltrane.

But alas, I didn't keep up (at all) and it was only recently that I picked up my second James Carter album--his 2008 release Present Tense. Now you have to be a real curmudgeon to not enjoy Carter's playing, but I can also understand some of the slightly, er, nuanced reactions to this album. It has exquisite playing throughout and great mixes and each song is worthy of comment, but it doesn't quite hold together as a whole.

Carter plays just about anything that has a reed and requires wind and then throws in a little flute for good measure--so talent is not an issue. And the album contains a variety of influences from standard swing, to Latin, to alternative jazz, so you have to respect the variety. And all of it does have a certain Carter touch--this isn't just a cat with a sax showing off his skills . . . but it still doesn't move me as a great disc (although it has, for the most part received some very solid reviews).

The disc opens with "Rapid Shave"--a swinging Blue Note era sounding bop tune by Dave Burns that sets the tone. That is followed by "Bro. Dolphy"--a Carter original that leans toward the atonal, alternative jazz Dolphy played and Carter, on the bass clarinet of course, does Dolphy justice. That said, the tune throws off the album for me as it is as if I just hit the shuffle button on the iPod and jumped from one era to the next. Eclectic and wide-ranging yes, but not really how I like my discs to flow.

In fact, I think it is this moment in the disc which is the real hitch for me as after that we settle in with a Django ballad (never can you go wrong there) and a slow cha-cha piece where Carter's growling sax is at its best--slow and menacing. We then move into a pretty nice mix of pieces although I have to say I am not real keen on jazz albums where the artist is dueling himself on a multi-track mix of, well, himself, which we get on "Song of Delilah." The disc has some nice pieces in the later half with a great swinging version of Gigi Gryce's "Hymn of the Orient" and some nice Latin-flavored pieces.

Ultimately though the breadth of styles becomes a bit too much of a mish-mash for me. I don't want it all to be the same, but I would really have liked a bit more sense of how it all fits together. Perhaps I am a bit too wed to a certain type of jazz album and am just still trying to figure out how to move forward with jazz rather than being hung up in the classics of the past. There are many wonderful moments here (with Dwight Adams' trumpet work and D.D. Jackson's piano providing great complements to Carter's sensibilities) and it is definitely worth a listen. It just doesn't reach the level of classic to me--a high bar I suppose, but one that this guy has the talent to reach. Of course to be fair, I should listen to something from the previous 15 years (and if you have a sense of offerings between Quietstorm and Present Tense that should be looked into, please advise).

Check these out, which I think are a few highlights of the album (which you can buy here).

Rapid Shave

Sussa Nita

Hymn of the Orient

And if you haven't heard this from Real Quietstorm which you can also buy here, well then let me share!

Round Midnight

And lastly, check out this swinging tune from Kansas City, on which JC takes a rippin solo (oh and you can buy that there too).

Moten Swing

Barely Contained Pandemonium: Second Thoughts on The Dodos

After I got done watching the video of “Fools” by the Dodo’s a bazillion times like I was a teenager who just discovered MTV (or whatever the kids watch these days), I actually picked up Visiter and have been exploring it heavily for the last few weeks.

First off it is important to get into your mind that this is basically two guys, Meric Long and Logan Koeber, making a lot of sound that reminds me of XTC. Their tools include one acoustic guitar (although there is electric guitar, particularly feedback, scattered throughout the album) and drums—and I mean drums. There are no cymbals although there is the occasional tambourine or bell thrown in for jangle and a metal sound, but for the most part rims and sticks serve to create the counter-punch to the heavy deep tom-tom sound. Oh and their voices. But basically everything is percussive—even when they are in quiet mode, the drumming and banging is anticipated.

Parts of this disc are simply wonderful—if I compiled a best songs of 2008, “Fools” certainly would have been near the top the list. In fact, the opening four songs which are really just two short acoustic pieces (“Walking” and “Eyelids”) each which set up great drum-driven, fast strumming acoustic pieces (“Red and Purple” and “Fools”). And I think we know how important those opening tracks are to me.

Plenty of folks have made the comparison to Animal Collective. Yes, there is yelling and hooting—one might even suggest barking—and yes, there is plenty of primal drumming and repetitive beats, but the Dodos just aren’t that complicated in the end. Ultimately, they are two young dudes who have a bunch of talent and an interesting idea about song arrangement, but mainly they have tons of energy that they seem to be doing all they can to contain within the structure of these songs. So it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise that while the lyrics are fine for the most part, the middle of the album contains a couple really sophomoric songs, which, Crawdaddy precisely assesses as the valley of the album. Similarly, most of the songs have some great build and tension and resolution, but here and there the boys to go on as long as a Genesis keyboard solo. In short, they could have used one more good edit.

Still, this is a romp of an album and a really fresh sound. That said, I can’t help but feel that they are still working it out a bit and finding their stride—as if they are on the verge. We will see. I think they have the potential to put out a really amazing album if they can narrow in on the best parts of their music and lose just a tad of the silliness without losing their edge.

Buy Album

Walking
Red and Purple
Jodi

Acid Tongue: Perhaps a Bit More Base?

As I continue to catch up on albums from 2008, I have been listening a lot lately to Jenny Lewis' second solo effort, Acid Tongue. Having enjoyed exploring some of the work of Rilo Kiley last year, I was hopeful about getting into Lewis' solo work. The album was getting a solid set of reviews and as the year was coming to a close, it was showing up on a lot of top "this and that" lists.

Now surely you are hearing the sound of the other shoe getting ready to drop. Only kind of. It isn't that I dislike this album or think it is undeserving of some of the praise it received, but rather that I found it inconsistent and my reaction therefore is a bit ambivalent (leaving me unable to weigh in on either side of the haiku debate over the album in Paste). Much of the debate about this album seems to be related to those who were positive about her first non-Rilo Kiley effort (they don't like this one as much) and those who didn't like the first effort (they loved this one).

The album opens with, in my opinion, what is one of the weakest tracks, "Black Sand," which is simply too sparse and repetitive for my taste. The second track is an improvement, but at this point of the disc my first impression was "really underwhelmed" (and that hasn't changed much after many, many listens). Albums with a track or two that don't measure up to the strongest parts of the album are neither uncommon nor unbearable, but when an album opens with one or two of those tracks, it is harder to get past.

The disc takes a decided turn at this point though, with the third track, "The Next Messiah," being the single that has garnered some of the most attention. It is an 8 minute-plus, three part bluesy-gospel-rock affair that starts with a Doors-like guitar riff (think "Love Me Two Times"), followed by a section that has a Talking Heads "Take Me to the River" feel, and then a section that has an INXS sound to me, with a final culmination of the song's theme to wrap it up. The song's story, involving a "troubled relationship" sets up the next song, "Bad Man's World," both thematically and musically.

At song five, the album finds its stride. As the UNCUT review puts it "from that point on, fortunately, there’s a perceptible sense of Lewis finding gear." The next three songs, which are those sampled below, are by far the best on the album and show Lewis' best songwriting ability. Honest and revealing, simple and straightforward but with an edge to the character sketches and stories, and beautiful. And the mix at this moment of the album is wonderful--with "See Fernando" perfectly framed by the revealing title cut and "Godspeed."

From there, I hang in on the strength of these central songs. The next tune "Carpetbagger" is a great rollicking tune that I was all into until who should appear? Elvis Costello of course, who appears to be making a new career out of guest appearances. Now, as I have said before, I love Elvis, but this obsession of apparently everyone to have him on their album is getting a bit obnoxious--it even made me laugh when I read Pitchfork's assessment:

The first minute or so of the shit-kicking "Carpetbaggers" is pretty thrilling, too, at least until Elvis Costello shows up to wheeze all over everything.

That said, the last three tracks are interesting and round out the album quite nicely. In addition the live-in-studio recording gives the album a nice intimacy and energy. Definitely going to go back and pick up the first Lewis solo effort and will follow her in the future as well. If you haven't, you might want to pick up this album too.

Acid Tongue

See Fernando

Godspeed

Distractions

I have noticed a number of folks posting about not posting a lot lately—guess that includes me. Here are my excuses.

• First off, this past weekend involved the metropolitan area in which we live being overrun with people wanting to get to a certain event, which while it did not consume a lot of our time, was a very welcome distraction—particularly seeing more people gathered on the National Mall than the number of people out there who still approve of the last eight years!
• Then of course there was The Next Big Project which is really what is taking up my time and will continue to for the foreseeable future, although hopefully not forever.
• That project meant that the TV got moved down into the basement (aka, the Last Big Project) whch meant that after eight years of nothing but network and public television, we bit the bullet and had FIOS TV installed resulting in much slouching on a couch surfing hundreds of stations and staying up way too late watching culturally important cult films.
• This was only exacerbated by the NetFlix queue being backlogged and our guilty consciences that if we are paying for these, we better watch them—not that we don’t enjoy the movies and it was especially fun to finally see the Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart at long last (during which I kept thinking they should have just cast Jack Black as Jay Bennett to fully convey the “he is the high-maintenance, pain in the ass, whiny, uptight guy who was ruining the band” message).

And, of course, there is the blogging about not blogging about music which takes time away from, well, blogging about music.

More Cathedrals, Fewer Cowboys: Second Thoughts on Joan Osborne

Ever since I suggested that I wouldn’t be able to keep myself from purchasing the latest Joan Osborne album I have been swamped with emails from anxious readers wondering whether or not I did, what I thought, etc. I have been meaning to write about it since I did, of course, get it (the next day) and listened to it considerably. The fact that I generally thought it a pretty mediocre album has probably been why I have put it off. I guess I can’t love everything—although I try.

Here is the deal with Little Wild One. I bought it because the single I heard had all this wonderful New York imagery overlaid on a hymn-like-tune and I could just imagine an album of such landscapes generally in that style—with appropriate variation. And, in fact there are other songs that are in that vein and are equally as good. Unfortunately they are interwoven in with just as many songs that are okay, but nothing special with the occasional song that makes me reach immediately for the skip button. For instance, I wasn’t really ready for the western motif to be dropped on me in the middle of the album with Joan singing yippee-aye-eh, yippee-aye-oh (about her long lost cowboy lover). Ack.

No, the album I was hoping for would have sounded like the three songs I am going to share (including “Cathedrals” which I shared before)—although this should be considered the highlights rather than a sample in my mind. They all have a New York theme/setting and they all have gospel and blues running through them that really let Osborne show off that great alto voice.

And lastly, in the category of "my obsession with song order," I really love how the disc-replay-rollover (technical term) gives you “Hallelujah In The City” (the first song on the disc and a fine opener) after you have just heard “Bury Me Down On The Battery” as the last song on the disc—in fact, let me give you the songs in that order. And, of course, you don’t have to take my word for it, you could buy the album.

Bury Me Down On The Battery
Hallelujah In The City
Cathedrals

"R" is for Raconteurs

The Raconteurs 2008 release Consolers of the Lonley:

• rocks hard on the the majority of the album including the rouncus opening two tracks;
• reflects (at times) the move from the Motor City to The South;
• has rippin' guitars and Jack White vocals that often sound like rippin' guitars;
• recounts (of course);
• rated a consistent 80/100 over at the Big Board (with some hard and low outliers that dragged their rating down a bit);
• resembles a Who-angst-driven-teenage-rock-opera at moments;
• rollicks;
• rages about middle-aged boredom with work (although this might be over-reading);
• relies heavily on the blues;
• rebels (also, of course);
• is accurately reviewed by Rolling Stone when they note: "Overall, Consolers feels less like a project and more like a jam session. But it's fun to watch White make things up as he goes along"; and,
• presents a real challenge in terms of which songs to share.

Here R three that hopefully reflect the overall rockin affair. Bottom line is that you must be ready for some heavy blues rock, with some wonderful accousitic intervals and even an ocassional bit of horn playing.

(Buy Album)

Old Enough
Hold Up
Carolina Drama