Category Archives: Music Review

News Round Up: Merlefest Line Up Announced

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  • The Austin Chronicle’s Audra Schroeder reviews Texas’ own honky angel  Rosie Flores  new Bloodshot Records release Girl of the Century. Rosie is backed by the Pine Valley Cosmonauts led by the Mekons and Waco Brothers’ front man Jon Langford. Rosie and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts recently performed at San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, and they sounded great!
  • Te lineup for Doc Watson’s annual MerleFest has been released. The 23rd year of the excellent Americana and roots festival will again take place in Wilkesboro, NC, on the campus of Wilkes Community College. Some of the performers will be The Avett Brothers (and their dad Jim Avett), Bearfoot, Dallas’ Brave Combo, Elvis Costello, Jim Lauderdale, Little Feat and many more.
  • Tom Russell’s newest blog post discusses taping Letterman during the “controversy” and the ongoing tour supporting his newest excellent release, Blood and Candle Smoke.
  • Speaking of excellent albums , PopMatters.com’s Andrew Gilstrap reviews the recent release by Chris Knight, Trailer II.

Music Review: The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You [American] The Felice Brothers -Yonder Is The Clock [Team Love]

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To use a threadbare, but in this case useful, musical duality that has fueled decades of heated rock music discussions for (in SAT analogy form) – the Avett Brothers are to the Beatles what the Felice Brothers are to the Rolling Stones. (Sure lots of people like both bands but that’s boring.)

Like the Beatles and the Stones, the Avett and Felice Brothers define a needed duality of similarity. Both draw from shared sundry of musical influences – Old time Appalachian, barroom barrelhouse, delta blues, traditional country music, bluegrass, but, hoisting their musical rucksack,  the pathways each band embarks oncould not be more distinct.

IandLoveandYouCover_0With their big label debut the Avett Brothers – Seth Avett and Scott Avett, who share vocals and play the guitar and banjo respectively, and Bob Crawford on stand-up bass – don’t take any extreme steps toward commercial success, quite the contrary given their situation. The band brings their sound and earnest, reflective and playful lyrics are taken to a more mature state and producer and label owner Rick Rubin does what he does best, focusing on subtleties and strengths. Piano and stings give even the nuanced piece an epic feel  -The title cut, Head Full of Doubt, Road Full of Promise, and a slices of giddy pop – Kick Drum Heart, Tin Man, Slight Figure of Speech, It Goes On and On – not frothy pop but the layered buoyancy of early Beatles, Kinks and Beach Boys. With others before them – Waco, Neko Case – the move from the  rustic territories to town comes with a price, and the price in this case is facial hair. That’s the surprising thing about I and Love and You. It’s not the seismic shift of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or Case’s Middle Cyclone or more representative of indie to big label REM’s Green. The songs are sharper, production crisper but if you loved the Avetts Autumnal odes before, you’ll love this album.

yonderistheclockThe Felice Brother’s newest release, Yonder Is The Clock , came out in April of this year and it also hold no surprises for long time fans. Released on indie label Team Love The Felice’s -Ian Felice guitar/vocal , James Felice – accordion, Simone Felice on drums, Christmas Clapton on bass, Greg Farley – fiddle and washboard – again channel the rollicking Big Pink-style Dylan/The Band front-porch jam with a dash of Tom Waits junkyard orchestra thrown in for good measure. Where the Avetts are dewy with wonder and innocence the Felice’s have an urbane, rough edge to their Catskill Mountain rearing (probably cultivated from busking in the streets of New York City.) Darkness abounds – There is nautical peril (the subtle album opener The Big Surprise and Waits-like ballad Sailor Song, dying homeless (in the rollicking stomp of Penn Station), reanimation from a frozen cocoon (the woozy waltz of Buried in Ice), Innocence lost – the deliriously beautiful All When We Were Young (sung with quivering elegance by drummer Simone Felice who recently left the band to start The Duke and The King with Robert “Chicken” Burke) and chickens (!) with the barn-burning bluesy bombast of Chicken Wire and the zydeco spiked Run Chicken Run.

To mix metaphors (or is it analogies?) the Avetts are the quaint town square with funky vintage stores, throwback ice cream parlors and inviting brew pubs. The Felice’s are the loading docks at the edge of town where to one dares go, but if you risk it you can score a traceless pistol and a jar of local skull rattle. But both the dark and the light make up the human condition.

I’m just a Stones man myself…

The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You [American]

Official Site | MySpace | Buy

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The Felice Brothers -Yonder Is The Clock [Team Love]

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Music Review: The Drive By Truckers – The Fine Print (A Collection Of Oddities and Rarities 2003-2008) [New West]

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I discovered the Drive By Truckers while an ex-pat Texan living in New York City. The environment that I has always known, and taken for granted, was replaced by something foreign and I was looking for cultural footing to make me feel “at home” but also to reflect my learned redneck attitude, a new framework look back over my home and its history. That’s when I came across a review for the Drive By Truckers’ 2004 Southern rock masterpiece The Dirty South. Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, and Jason Isbell proved to the reincarnation of Lynyrd Skynyrd cut with the  Replacementsthat I needed at the time. Blue collar, backwoods gems like Where the Devil Don’t Stay, Danko/Manuel and Daddy’s Cup revived my faith in the Southern magic of storytelling and the band’s triple guitar attack revived my faith in rock and roll .

The Fine Print (A Collection Of Oddities and Rarities 2003-2008) is an odds & sods largely culled from that fruitful period in the DBTs career. Along with Live from Austin, TX album, The Fine Print fulfills the DBT’s obligation with New West Records and allows them to move on to their own label, Ruth Street Records. The dozen songs on contained here is a bumper crop from a fertile period underscoring the power and focus of that time and that line up. The bitter-sweetness from listening to the album is that as good as the consecutive albums have been, the band has not met this level of intensity or focus since the departure of the youngster Jason Isbell after 2006’s middling A Blessing and a Curse.

The album kicks off with the jaunty George Jones Talkin’ Cell Phone Blues featuring John Neff’s sweet pedal-steel. The song deals the Possum’s 1999 car wreck while he was driving drunk and talking to his daughter on a cell phone. It shows love to Jone’s hopes it’s a while before he joins the legions of legendary country stars cluttering the afterlife.

The Trucker’s have never been shy about their influences and the four covers contained here are tackled with heart and reverence. Tom Petty’s Rebels is elevated to a Springsteen-like anthem and Tom T. Hall’s Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken) details the everyday cost of war without mounting a soap box. Warren Zevon’s Play It All Night Long fits right in with the The Dirty South‘s dark swampy groove and the cover of Bob Dylan Like a Rolling Stone is woozy fun and features a Shanna Tucker debut as a front and center vocalist.

The Alternate Versions of Uncle Frank, from 1999’s Pizza Deliverance and Goode’s Field Road from 2008’s Brighter Than Creation’s Dark are great but hardly improve on the originals. The gangstabilly mythos of The Dirty South‘s Where the Devil Don’t Stay and The Boys From Alabama has their dark reflection in The Great Car Dealer War, but to lesser narrative affect and Little Pony And The Great Big Horse highlights Mike Cooley’s subtle greatness in songwriting and storytelling. The creepy Christmas blues cut Mrs. Claus’ Kimono should have been the song behind the closing credits of Billy Bob Thornton’s black comedy Bad Santa.

Like most outtakes and rarities collections, The Fine Print is a bit of a mish-mash and overall doesn’t stand up as consistently as the DBT’s best work, but almost all the cuts are hands down better than most of what passes as rock these days. Besides it’s great that these songs (featuring another excellent cover by their long-time cover/poster/t-shirt illustrator Wes Freed) have seen the light of day at all I hope the release points the way to a revitalized and impassioned future for the mighty Drive-By Truckers.

Official Site | MySpace | Buy

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLP_r7NZY_w[/youtube]

Music Review: Chris Knight – Trailer Tapes II [Drifters Church]

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It’s Labor Day and I just finished watching Billy Bob Thorton’s contemporary Southern Gothic film Slingblade, so I believe I’m in the perfect frame of mind to review a Chris Knight album.

Knight storytelling style reflects John Prine (who he studied when learning the craft of songwriting) and Steve Earle (who he’s most often inaccurately compared to.)  His narrative thumbnail sketches are small-towns inhabited by country folks swinging from grinding poverty, break-breaking work and menacing fun and lawlessness (and sometimes all in the same song.)

Knight is writing his life. Growing up in the western Kentucky mining town of Slaughters he was able to stay out of the mines by getting a degree in agriculture from Western Kentucky University. But he did end up spending time on the business side by working nearly ten years as a mine reclamation inspector and as a miner’s consultant.

The Trailer Tapes II is a 44 minute companion to 2007’s The Trailer Tapes. The full session was recorded as stripped down kitchen table demos in 1996 with just Knight and his acoustic guitar, two years before Knight’s Decca debut, by producer Frank Liddell in the singer/songwriter’s single-wide trailer in Kentucky. Unlike its predecessor Trailer Tapes II is mostly comprised of songs that later appeared on official Knight studio releases, but the similarities between the two is the like raw emotion of the performances by a man thta doesn’t need any fancy studio wizardry to spin gold.

Old Man, which turned up on 2006’s Enough Rope, is Knight’s version of Cats in the Cradle. A son’s life journey turns back toward his land as well as toward his checkered and violent heritage. It Ain’t Easy Being Me, later on 1998’s self-titled debut, has Knight crooning forcefully of   self-loathing but never self-pity.

Highway Junkie, later on 2001’s A Pretty Good Guy is a raucous road song and Knight spits gravel befitting the story. The excellent Love and a .45  sounds better stripped down then the already well performed verion on the self-titled debut.

Fans will be familiar with the rest of the cuts. Bring the Harvest Home, Summer of ’75, and The River’s Own from the self-titled debut. Send a Boat from A Pretty Good Guy, all benefit from the less-is-more approach, along with the unreleased I’ll Be There and Speeding Train and Till My Leavin’s Through.

The first time I saw Knight perform it was a cold December night and he played in the basement performance space of New York City’s Knitting Factory. A man with only his acoustic Gibson guitar, and one man backing on guitar, spun dark gems and kept the city crowd rapt in silence for nearly two hours. This is that man in all his brilliant, simple, glory. (release September 15)

Official Site | MySpace | Buy

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Chris Knight – Highway Junkie.mp3

Chris Knight -  Blame Me.mp3


Music Review: George Strait- Twang [MCA Nashville]

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GS_twangAnybody that’s read this blog for more than five minutes knows that the style of country music that I champion is typically not represented on the flavor of the week  “country” charts. I’m not in the business of puffing up entertainers that have more in common with REO Speedwagon than Hank Williams and my M.O., my brand if you will, has always been cream doesn’t necessarily rise to the top, sometimes it’s found around the edges.

George Strait is the type of rare bird that can sit on last week’s  #1 Billboard 200 and Country Chart spot and yet finds it’s place in my heart. It’s not that I hate popular country music per se, it’s just that most popular country music is made for, and consumed by, people that wouldn’t be caught dead with a Merle Haggard or Loretta Lynne CD in their collection and their idea of classic country is Alabama or Kenny Rogers.  George Strait is an neo-traditional alchemist that can please both the arena-filling masses and the discerning and grumpy critics like myself.

Maybe it’s his residence in Texas and his perceptible love of his (and my) home state’s regional flavor and away from the syrup factory of Music City, maybe it’s his sharp instincts for picking just the right songs to cover, whatever it is it’s been like a sound as a classic truck for over three multi-platinum decades.

Twang is Strait’s 25th studio album and his follow up to 2008’s excellent Troubadour and as subdued that earlier release was Twang is more like a celebration. The boisterous Bakersfield vibe of the Kendall Marvel, Jimmy Ritchey and Mr. Americana Jim Lauderdale penned title song comes right from the Buck Owens school of songwriting and lets it be known that Strait is not about to shy away from some hillbilly hell raising.  Where Have I Been All My Life and  Living For The Night are pure coming of age and heartache schmaltz (complete with string section), but Strait’s authentic delivery drives it right to the heart.

On Twang Strait steps up to the songwriting plate again for three songs co-written with his son, George “Bubba” Strait, Jr. The aforementioned  beer-soaked bawler Living for the Night,” the Ray Price-style crooner Out of Sight, Out of Mind and the frothy-lament He’s Got That Something Special. On his own Bubba penned the excellent Marty Robbins-style tale of the outlaw and gunfighter Dave Rudabaugh, Arkansas Dave.

Strait pays tribute to Texas’ neighbors with both the rollicking Gordon Bradberry and Tony Ramey penned Hot Grease and Zydeco and the José Alfredo Jiménez classic ranchera song El Ray that he does completely in Spanish.

Once again Strait proves that he’s the most consistent talent going and the current King of Country Music.

Official Site | MySpace | Buy

4_rate

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9EJWIeNzIs[/youtube]

Music Review: Colt Ford – Ride Through the Country (Average Joe’s Ent.)

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Are there any more maligned or misunderstood genres of music than hip and country? When asked what kind of music a person likes these two styles are at the top of the excluded list. Now imagine them joining forces in some unholy alliance of country-rap (or as one person I know coined it “crap.”) I can just imagine the exit becoming glutted with the fleeing hordes. Screw ’em….

I was cruising twitter and came upon several posts/tweets the name of Colt Ford. He’s become sort of surprise dark horse on the both the country and the hip-hop charts . I have a soft spot for both country underdogs so I checked him out.

Though not as left-of-center as Buck 65 or Ridley Bent , or as bat-shit crazy as “Insane” Shane Mckane, this 300 lb former PGA golfer comes across as a drinking buddy of Everlast and Bubba Sparxxx that might have passed a bottle with Jamey Johnson (who appears here on the cut Cold Beer) when he was working out the lyrics for Honky-Tonk Badonkadonk.

Like a typical hip-hop album Ride Through the Country offers cameos from other artists and you can judge the performer by the company he keeps.
The title cut is a slow country-rock ride back to Colt’s Georgia roots with smooth backing vocals and guitar furnished by John Michael Montgomery. The excellent Gene Watson trailer-park kiss-off cut No Trash in My Trailer gets a great reworking here and is made better by the great Mike Dekle on chorus.

As mentioned earlier, Jamey Johnson sings chorus on Cold Beer a rollicking party cut and Nashville singer Lindsey Hager provides a smooth counter to the Ford’s gruff lone-wolf with a soft heart lyrics on Never Thought. Saddle Up is a hell raising fiddle laced cut featuring the Alabama rapper Attitude. The bluesy, swaggering Good God O’mighty is tailor made for a good old fashioned hell raising drunk singalong.

The themes on Ride Through the Country are as cartoonish as a typical rap or country album – beer and rotgut, fighting, Southern cooking, pride in vehicle choices (4X4), pride in America, God and the bible, keeping it real – except the mean streets of Brooklyn or Philly are replaced by the dusty, feel good (where even fights are cordial) streets of Georgia. This is about as good as something like this can get and it beats the crap out of anything Kid Rock ever did.  Somebody give me a hell yeah!

Official Site | MySpace | Buy

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUKt91wvPE8[/youtube]

Music Review: Charlie Robison – Beautiful Day (Dualtone)

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On Beautiful Day Charlie Robison is a man wounded by love lost but with no time to bleed.

Robison stated in a recent interview that he and his then wife, Dixie Chicks’ Emily, decided to get a divorce on a day he was in the studio cutting a track for this album. The couple split in 2008 after nine years together cause given as “insupportable because of discord and or conflict of personalities.” They have three children.

It’s hard to know when the news came from the whole body of Beautiful Day because thematically it’s very cohesive. Though a casual listen to the album leaves the impression of a breezy slice of Summer country-rock diversion a closer inspection, past the artful musical arrangements, soaring vocals and bright production, shows the work wrapped around heartbreak and loss.

Robison has stated that Emily and he ended things on a amicable note, and that he “…let her hear the songs as he finished them because he didn’t want there to be any surprises.” but it’s hard for me to believe she didn’t wince a few times at the deceptively sunny title cut with lines like “Well she’s hanging down in Venice (CA) with her Siamese cat, she’s telling everybody she’s a Democrat” and “I promise you she’s never gonna get real fat, she’ll get a little lighter underneath her hat.” Zing!

The following songs move from pointing an accusing outward finger to pointing it back at the accuser. Yellow Blues opens with psychedelic guitar noodling then cribs a pace and phrasing from Steve Earle I’m Alright for song about emotional cowardice and Down Again slows the pace but guitarist Charlie Sexton still works his magic throughout this song about introspection that never falters into bitching and whining.

Nothin’ Better To Do keeps the jaunty self-flagellation going with a song penned by Bobby Bare Jr., a man that know his way around the dark whimsy of the human soul, and offering rose thorns like “…I’m in love with you ’cause I got nothin’ better to do…I got nothin’ better to do.”

Reconsider, written by Keith Gattis and Charles Brocco, is a straight ahead plea for second chances and regret of loss, complete with weeping pedal steel. Feelin’ Good finds Robison in the fifth stage of grief, acceptance, with this devil-may-care tune he heads down the road with top down and “Willie on the radio.”

With Beautiful Day Charlie Robison gives his brother Bruce a run for his songwriting money, and shows his distinctly Texas musical style. All while mining what must have been a difficult period and recovering wry and heartfelt gems. Feeling bad has rarely sounded this good.

Official Site | MySpace | twitter | Buy

4_rate

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOmXyJIprFE[/youtube]

http://www.charlierobison.com/

Music Review: Holly Williams – Here with Me (Mercury Nashville)

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holly-williams-here-with-me-coverIt’s one thing to be Shooter Jennings or Justin Townes Earle, but being the Granddaughter of country music legend Hank Williams and the Daughter of the hard-living, hell raising outlaw and legend of sorts Hank Williams Jr., well that’s a whole other mountain to climb.

Like her half-brother Hank Williams III, Holly Williams takes the fundamentals laid down by her ancestors and burns her own brand on the work. Here With Me is much more a country record than her previous release for Universal South The Ones We Never Knew and perhaps the turn in style was a result of the automobile accident that nearly took the lives of her and her sister Hilary. Maybe, like Hank III, the primary motive for moving into the family business was the promise of a ready audience and cash.

Whatever the motive this is a great release that brings to mind the work of another blood kin of country music royalty, Rosanne Cash. Like Cash, Williams does great things with a modest vocal range and brings a sophistication to the songs (many of which she wrote) without completely smothering out the rustic charm with glossy productions and lazy paint by the numbers fluff reaching for a top charting radio hit.

Holly Williams is every bit the outlaw her destiny assumes she’ll be, she just prefers a level of uptown refinement to her country pedigree.

Official Site | MySpace | Buy

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExpUM6nNxf0[/youtube]

Music Review: Jamey Johnson – My Way To You

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I don’t usually review singles on this blog. I think any craftsman worth their salt releases a whole body of work and it should be heard as such. I don’t give a shit about the charts or the downloadable single mentality. I prefer to tackle the whole of a work because I think it’s most fair to someone that has poured blood, sweat and tears into 10 or more songs. I prefer to focus my attention on good music and good music is never produced to be sliced out like bologna.

But here I go reviewing a single. This is because Jamey Johnson is no typical artists and his damn full length isn’t out until Fall and his newly release single, My Way To You, is all I have to tide me over until then.

The song begins like many of the songs on Johnson’s excellent previous effort  (and now certified Gold) – That Lonesome Song. A far off chill of pedal steel cries out and is met with an acoustic guitar. High-living, hell-raising and regret. Living on the edge and living to come back to set it all to music. The story Johnson tells, with his eerily Waylon-like baritone, is a country music chestnut most eloquently told by Johnson himself on his last release’s’ High Cost Of Living (penned by Johnson and James Slater)

Sure Johnson is repeating himself from that song, but it’s a sin many have committed and he does it so damn well he gets a pass. Where the song breaks down for me is when this lonesome confessional rocks out. Yes, I said rocks out.  First there is the piano that seems a bit tickly for the subject matter. Then the drums thunder in as if it were a Springsteen epic. Then the electric guitar squeals in like it was some Poison rock ballad. It’s just too much all over the place and way off target.

Johnson still brings the goods and this song is still better than 99.99% of what’s on mainstream country radio. But I’m using his own benchmark album as a measure here.  And though the song is a familiar theme and works deftly in his able hands, the arrangement detracts from him and it’s tone of  solemn redemption.

Look I know a case can be made that the big “BOOMING” ending is the cathartic part of his rising like A pheonix from his sordid past and blah blah blah… I’,m not buying it and I just hope when the proper release is dropped all the bombastic fat is stripped out and Johnson is allowed to be the raw talent that has made him part of the new wave of Outlaw heroes.

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Music Review: Maylene and the Sons of Disaster – III (Ferret Records)

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maylene_iiicoverThere are few genres as maligned as Southern Rock. The term brings to mind a drunken guy wearing a wife-beater and a trucker cap with a Confederate flag patch screaming “Freebird!” Despite stereotypes the truth is that most people that grow up in the South/Southwest are born knowing about two musical genres, Country and Rock. Given the working class environment and the musical heritages of the regions this is no surprise.

The legacy of the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd were revived and renewed most popularly by the DIY success of Northern Alabama’s Drive By Truckers. But other bands, like Austin, Texas’ Dixie Witch and Birmingham, Alabama’s Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster follows the Allman and Skynyrd path by way of  a more aggressive Southern metal route most famously blazed by Pantera.

Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster rose from the ashes of vocalist Dallas Taylor’s unceremonious dismissal from the Christian post-hardcore band Underoath in late 2003. Though MATSOD are designated A “a Christian southern metalcore” band on Wikipedia the Christian element is not the central focus, the music is. Like Johnny Cash and U2, MATSOD are about getting their message across in allegory delving into the ambiguities of faith rather than self-righteous cartoon ideas of good and bad. In the case of MATSOD it’s just done faster and louder.

To blur the line further between heaven and hell the band’s name is taken from  the legend of the barbarous criminal gang of Ma Barker and her fraternal offspring.

Step Up (I’m On It) offers Southern-fried bottleneck and banjo, Listen Close and No Good Son lift  licks from the Skynyrd playbook and Oh Lonely Grave begins as an updated swampy dirge, but the blasting intensity of the latter part of the piece and of  Settling Scores By Burning Bridges and Harvest Moon Hanging shows that the  combination of  Saturday night sin and Sunday morning salvation still proves a potent mix.

Official Site | MySpace | Buy

Little White Lies.mp3 |   Step Up (I’m On It).mp3

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxNu9rLKxF0[/youtube]