Category Archives: Music Review

Review – Ben Mallott – Look Good, Feel Good (Self Released)

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It’s rare that I play a new release passed my way and my mind is stopped from lazily latching onto the closest analog. Classification is what the mind does to make sense of the word and allow progress but with music critiques it can be a handicap.

The new release by Austinite and ex-Helpers front man, Ben Mallott, Look Good, Feel Good, is a musical monkey wrench to the sated mechanics of the jaded ear.

First the album cover of the album. Mallott looks at you from an old school barber shop’s mirror (flanked with the omnipresent Barbicide jar full of combs) bedecked in an an pink ornate pearl-snap shirt, white pants fringed with gold and kicked-up baroquely tooled boots that would make Nudie Cohn swoon. This juxtaposition of ordinary and flamboyant was a staple of 70’s Nash-Vegas alchemical imagery that Porter Wagoner mastered.

Then there is the voice.  As stated before an obvious analogy doesn’t spring to mind, and to do a just description would lead to a hyphen polluted mess. Suffice to say Mallott can moved from gritty baratone to soaring ache within a single song. Case in point is the opener Heartbreaks, the guitar lays a chugging foundation, and pedal-steel and fiddle gently interlock, to travel the timeworn terrain of the anguish of lost love. What saves the piece from cliche’ is the subtle soul in Mallot’s pipes.

Austin folk goddess Eliza Gilkyson on backing vocal on a gently rolling Shotgun Suzy and I half expected a matador to suddenly appear in the mariachi-horn and guitar start to Purgatory’s Last Massage Parlor which names drops George Jones and features some fine fiddle work. I Want It All is straight up Memphis-seared soul the would Make Van Morrison smile and The Artful Dodger sound like a long-lost opaque ballad by the late Jeff Buckley.

Midnight and Broke Down is a lonesome, lovely tune that comes closest to a trad country piece and Cold Feet is a Jerry Lee rockabilly-style cooker. The somber B-3 organ opening of Love Is Cold Water soon breaks into a shuffling Gospel rouser.

I have said that I think great musicians drawing from a wide view of musical sources have always made the best conduits for synthesis (or in the modern parlance, Mash up) and Ben Mallott adeptly shows this ability with this extraordinary surprise.

Official Site |   MySpace |  Buy

Ben Mallott – Heartbreaks

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awha88Lp37E[/youtube]


Music Review – The Mickeys: Walk Along (Riverbeat Music)

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I’ve read the hype. Country music’s latest flavor-of-the-week writes or helps write her own songs…she’s the biggest selling artist of 2008…she’s like 12 years old…I get it. Don’t care…

To me it’s the music and not the hype. The more hype I see the more I assume it’s smoke and mirrors compensating for something that might not be able to stand on it’s own, stripped of shiny gowns, pumps, make-up and pro-tools. I sat through Taylor Swift’s “Fearless” once and that was once too many. As the father of a daughter I’m always on the look out for female role models to introduce into my daughter’s world giving her a larger view of her potential and how she might impact the world. Giving my little girl a copy of Swift’s “Fearless” would be the cultural equivalent of giving her a box of Lucky Charms complete with a toy Barbie that spouts things like “Math is hard!”

In contrast, I would have no problem handing her The Mickeys’ “Walk Along.” These beautiful young twin’s second release is a country/roots act affair that strikes a fine balance of celtic/country/roots music deftly blended with just the right touch of pop.

And you can use the this Kalamazoo, MI  based group as a great example musical AND business excellence. In 2000 Amy and Julie (their maiden name Mickey) completed a minor in music business from Nashville’s Belmont University and then formed their own label, RiverBeat Music, to release their music through, secured nationwide distribution for the first record and co-produced their new release Walk Along.

The album opens with the dreamy Caroline. The song is a graceful stretch of country road beautifully displaying the magical close harmony that can, like theLouvin Brothers and the Everly Brothers, only be achieved by siblings. The title song is a Dobro-backed swagger of country gospel.

Like Swift, these women and sing about things many young women think about. Love, romance, magic, angels, unicorns (okay, not unicorns).
The floating I Believe is about the foundation of faith that can hold a relationship together and Greatest Thing is a song of the power of love and how it trumps all other earthly achievements. Sure these sound like these are worked out in a girls diary but their also universal themes that, in the right hands, don’t come off as maudlin but ‘ as declarative statements against of the worlds cynicism.

The calypso-laced soft rock of Take It Slow sounds like a adult-pop page out of Carole King’s Tapestry. They do one cover of a Tom Petty song “Alright For Now”, the rest are all original written by different configurations of Amy and Julie and friends and husbands.

Country music with a pop sensibility is a shiny but rustic thing, proud but not preening, lovely but simple – think Dolly Parton. Pop music that adds “country” elements – fiddles, steel guitar, references to trucks and horses – comes off as well, pop music. The Mickey’s know the difference.

Official Site |  MySpace |  CC Now

Album Review – Phosphorescent – To Willie (Dead Oceans)

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Part of the appeal of the Texas Yoda is his ability to musically transform himself in ways that balance his musical curiosity with a foxes eye towards expanding his market. This allows him to be the steward of this own musical journey and makes him a beacon for artists that prefer to forge their own path.

Mathew Houck aka: Phosphorescent’s sound is similar to fellow alt.folk/slowcore solo-artists-using-revolving-bands-and-alias’-with-a-partiality-toward-heaps-of-facial-hair Will Oldham aka: Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Samual Beard aka: Iron and Wine, and actual bands like The Mountain Goats, Mark Kozelek’s Red House Painters and the man I consider the granddaddy of the genre Nick Drake. Sparse, somber and wistful these bedroom troubadour’s introspection borders on emotional honesty and precious self-indulgence.

With For Willie Houck leaves these other artists in the dust. The album is done, primarily, with a palpable love for Willie and his work. The album cover art obviously alludes to Willie’s own To Lefty from Willie but Houck displays self-aware humility by not including his name in the title.  The cuts dig deep into Willie’s back catalog to uncover gems rather than  well- known tunes. This is a smart move since it allows Houck some leverage for stylistic interpretation. But Houck is no deconstructionist and the soul of the songs remain intact. Too Sick To Pray features guitar reminiscent to will gut-string hillbilly jazz style and Walkin’ is a straight-up steel driven barroom weeper. Can I Sleep In Your Arms sounds shimmers like a rodeo-angel choir lament to lost love and The Last Thing I Needed (First Thing This Morning) beautifully exposes the melancholy heart beating within the song

The album’s sparse production is reminiscent of Willie’s own criminally underrated Spirit and Daniel Lanois produced Teatro. Willie has always been too innovative to fit in the Nashville country music straight-jacket and these works might have been what bought the attention of Houck  in the first place. I would like to hear Houck  do some originals in this style and perhaps he could tuen out to be the artistic bridge between Willie Nelson and the alt.folk/slowcore territory instead of just an adroit interpreter.

Amazon | MySpace | Dead Oceans Site

Phosphorescent- Reasons to Quit

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-XGhPrsODw[/youtube]

Album Review – The Wildes – Ballad of a Young Married Man (Release Date 3/09)

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Ever since seeing the darkly striking Australian western The Proposition I’ve been fascinated with the similarities between the Land Down Under and the American South and West of the nineteenth century, both good (confronting a wild frontier to achieve independence and establish a society) and bad  (attacking and displacing an indigenous people.) Now due to The Wildes, an Americana/alt.country band from Victoria, Australia, I am now just as fascinated with roots music as interpreted in the land of Oz.

Some of the cuts on Ballad of a Young Married Man take an old-testament page from fellow countryman Nick Cave (and script writer for the aforementioned movie The Proposition). The title song, “Jack the Blacksmith,” “Nothing” and the tribal drum-beat brooder “Slap-Back Mary” could have all come from Cave if was inclined to pen country-hued songs.

The chugging “Streets of My Hometown” carries the DNA of Steve Earle’s Hometown Blues and the sweetly melancholic “Sue-Ellen” sounds like a lost Waterboys cut. “If I’ve Done You Wrong” is a organ backed barroom weeper that basks in its unrepentant spirit and the wonderfully reflective “Loverman” is a rustic beauty. The bonus track Broken Blossoms is a piano and banjo bawler that I imagine could have been penned by that trash can troubadour Tom Waits. The Wildes cover a wide expanse of Americana dirt roads and wear their influences proudly on their sleeves, but their interpretation on these styles are uniquely their own.

Official Site |  MySpace

Sweet Teresa.mp3

RollingStone.com on Hank Williams Unreleased Recordings

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David Fricke  over at RollingStone.com has some noce things to say about the upcoming Hank Williams Unreleased Recordings box set – “…the 54 performances in this three-CD set pack a magical, concentrated immediacy that is, in its time and way, as electrifying as Johnny Cash’s Sixties prison shows or Bob Dylan’s early acoustic concerts. Williams’ nasally drawl is crisp and strong, like the young Dylan without the sandpaper; he holds the long, desolate notes in “Cool Water” with stunning force.”

Country Music legend Marty Stuart’s “Sparkle & Twang: An American Musical Odyssey“, an exhibit of four decades of rock, country, rockabilly, bluegrass, rhythm & blues and gospel music memorabilia from Stuart’s personal collection
will make its way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland from Oct. 30 through March 1. The 300 items, including musical instruments, stage clothing, handwritten lyrics and photographs. Among them are Hank Williams’ handwritten lyrics “Cold, Cold Heart” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart, Elvis Presley’s sweater worn in a photograph with Junior Parker, Johnny Cash’s first black suit from 1955 and handwritten lyrics for “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Man in Black,” Performance outfit worn by Bob Dylan, Clarence White of the Byrds’ blue leather suit, Pop Staples’ 1962 Fender Jazzmaster guitar and Marty Stuart’s first guitar and performance outfit, sewn by his mother.

Record Review – The Moonshine Sessions – Solal (Indent Series)

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Much of my wayward youth was spent journeying through various musical genres. Like the geographical type, musical travel helps impede bigotry, in this case musical bigotry. This experience has helped me to look at the music I hear more fully and not to reflexively dismiss something just because it doesn’t for some rigid idea of what I should like.

One genre (sub-genre really) I still love is, for lack of a better term, World electronica. Old world sounds mixed with laptop beats that meld into a surprisingly great thing. One artists that did this melding particularly well was the tango/electronica focused Gotan Project stewarded by  dj, producer and Frenchman Philippe Cohen.

If you mentioned to me that this Parisian was now not only jumping genres by another border altogether by packing up his laptop and heading to Nashville I would have told you it was a recipe for disaster, and I would have been dead wrong.

Cohen had solid instincts to hire some of Nashville and Texas’ best – Jim Lauderdale, David Olney, Sam bush, Melonie Cannon and Rosie Flores to name a few – and to hire Bucky Baxter (Bob Dylan, Ryan Adams) to co-produce. Like with the Gotan Project works, the songs here are lush and custom made for early morning brunch or relaxing late night listening, but the soul is still intact and beauty undeniable. Atmosphere is scattered throughput the songs in the form of musicians chewing fat, crickets and distance dog barking and train whistles. What could have easily been ham-handed is an outsiders’ loving snapshot of country music and culture.

From the pedal steel and banjo flecked opener of Jim Lauderdale sung “The Academy of Trust” to the unlikely covers of
Abbas “Dancing Queen” (featuring Melonie Cannon) and the Sex Pistols “Pretty Vacant” (featuring the amazing Rosie Flores.) All this with the warm, organic production of a front-porch guitar pull with the slightest tinge of electronic wizardry.

Cohen has proven himself to be a true connoisseur of sound and annihilator of boundaries with this fine release.

Moonshine Sessions Main Site |  MySpace

The Moonshine Sessions – Luna’s Song

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta-CLoJYs2s[/youtube]

Record Review – O’ Death – Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin (Kemado)

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New York based Gothic/Country/Punk band O’Death are named after the Dock Boggs penned song made famous by Ralph Stanley on the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack. Like that hauntingly plaintive Appalachian dirge “Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin,” the third LP from O’Death, 14 tracks recollect tales of sorrow and ecstasy nearly reaching levels of a Pentecostal tent revival on a hot, sticky Summer night. If Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were invited to contribute to the same “O Brother Where Art Thou” soundtrack it might sound a lot like this.

The release commences with “Lowtide” with its gypsy plucked violin trot that quickly breaks lose to a full runaway gallop, all cleaved through with Greg Jamie’s unnerving vocals.  Jamie intermingles British Sea Power and Brake’s Eamon Hamilton nervy wail and Pixie’s main howler Frank Black to result in something unflinchingly manic.

“Fire On Peshtigo” is a searing thrash-hoe-down that gives off as much heat as those described in the lyrics. You can almost imagine Bob Pycior’s fiddle smoking and threatening to burst into flames. “Legs To Sin” is a mountain jig that owes as much to white-hot punk as it does to old timey dittys.

“Mountain Shifts” is a woozy junkyard waltz that might tickle Tom Wait’s fancy. “Vacant Moan” starts with Gabe Darling’s slow discordant  claw-hammer banjo but quickly careens toward a wheezing, stuttering thunderous end.

“A Light That Does Not Dim” recalls The Pixie’s “Nimrod’s Son” (which O”Death covered on a 7″ single in October 2007) with all it’s primal impact and “Grey Sun” puts a fine point on the Gothic elements of O’Death’s with the refrain “hang the hardship baby, we go to sleep and then we die.”

“On An Aching Sea” is a slinky trash can sea-shanty of a poisoned marriage and “Angeline” is a sweetly aching tale of loneliness, abandonment and mortality. Like the before-mentioned Ralph Stanley’s genre of mastery, Bluegrass, there is no shortage of dark and tragic narrative in these songs.

Like their sonic brethren The Felice Brothers, Th Legendary Shack Shakers and Those Poor Bastards, O”Death takes a fever dream of music echoing from the saloons, alleys and churches across America’s past and distills it into a dark elixir of blood, moonshine and adrenaline.

O’Death – “A Light That Does Not Dim” – Roisin Dubh in Galway – 09/26/2008

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYRNk10xN6g[/youtube]

Music Review – Chris Knight “Heart of Stone” (Red Distribution)

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Before he became the equivalent of a hillbilly Che Guevara Steve Earle was the king of roots-rock. Since moving to New York City, and shunning his redneck past, the roots-rock division seems open for the next singer/songwriter able to blend introspective, populist narratives  fueled by an amped-up rock sound. Slaughters, KY’s Chris Knight‘s “Heart of Stone” makes a convincing run at that title.

Small people in small towns with little to hope for populate Knight’s landscapes. Enduring and overcoming economic and cultural obstacles that would make lesser souls crumble and succumb.

The classic tale of the road is told on the opener “Home Sick Gypsy.” Though there is a series of sexual liaisons alluded to it’s made clear that it’s rough and lonely going out there for the working musician.

“Hell Ain’t Half Full” is a raucous morality tale that cuts just as deep against the meth cooker as it does the preacher with nothing good to say. The song ends on a note of stark humanistic self-reliance for our moral salvation since “Up in Heaven above, God ain’t paying much attention at all.” Another Dollar is another moral tale, this time on greed, that is far too busy rocking to become sanctimonious.

“Something To Keep Me Going” is an electrified country song about love gone wrong where memories do as much to call him back to his ex-lover as they do to remind him why he needs to keep heading on down the road. The tile cut sets a story of rural abandonment of family and how hardships can shape a man for the worse. Knight uses the chorus to caution the listener to persevere and overcome and “Don’t break yourself on a heart of stone.” “Crooked Road” is introspection of a man that is, like Knight himself, from a coal mining town and trying desperately to leave the hard, dangerous work behind to save himself and his family.

“Hear of Stone” returns Knight with producer Dan Baird of Georgia Satellites (who produced Pretty Good Guy and The Jealous Kind) and Baird has the good sense to let well enough alone. With a vocal style reminiscent of a Southern Randy Newman Knight taps into what made country music (and later folk) great since the days of Jimmy Rogers and the Carter Family. Walking that delicate line that balances sentimentality with an iron core of earnest character to make it through another day.

In Nashville last year I was fortunate to catch Knight in a round table that included Southern fiction writers and song writers on how story-telling through the different mediums were alike. Like the great writer on the panel William Gay, Knight’s takes are stark in their telling and elusive in their seeming simplicity. It’s there that the common can become extraordinary.

Chris Knight – Heart of Stone

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qk6Rv2bN38[/youtube]

Review – The Weight – The Weight Are Men (The Colonel Records)

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The Weight are a Brooklyn, NY based country rock band that, in spite of it’s North-Eastern local, delivers the Southern-fried goods. The band was beget by singer/songwriter and veteran of the Atlanta, GA, punk rock scene Joseph Plunket who began dabbled in country music and recorded several EPs and one long-player with a revolving cast of musicians as he tapped his inner hillbilly.

Now blessed with a stable and top-notch line up Plunket, along with Fletcher “Poor Boy” Johnson on guitar, piano, and harmonica, Will Noland on bass, Jay Ellis on drums and Johnny Carpenter on pedal steel, has recorded an album of shear authentic and audacious country-rock, stripped clean of post-whatever and 100% free of ironic smugness. Imagine as the 60’s came to a close that back off in the woods of Saugerties, NY the Band had hung out with Gram Parsons instead of Dylan cutting tracks in the basement of Big Pink, that alternate history it might have sounded something like this.

The Weight’s newest release “The Weight Are Men” kicks off with a gentle strumming of “Like Me Better,” a bittersweet barroom testament to love gone wrong delivered by Plunket in his earnestly gruff vocal style. The highway rave-up “Had It Made” follows with its Southern boogie roots planted firmly in Chuck Berry’s territory.

“Johnny’s Song” is a lulling tune on life and love that builds to a big singalong finale and “Talkin” is a tune taken right from the Neil Young book of groove-roots compositions (complete with yawning harmonica) and offers one of my favorite lines from the album – “Give me a lady and rent control, it might take one, it might take both, to satisfy my soul.”

“Sunday Driver”  is reminiscent of the best of The Band’s bittersweet compositions. It’s a slow-moving, pedal-steel laced gem that really showcases Plunket’s voice. “Hillbilly Highway” is a traveling man’s fiddle-laced yearn to come back to his love that should be on mainstream country radio (it won’t be, mainstream country is too rigid and short-sighted.) “A Day In The Sun” is a harmonica fueled Southern boogie gives a the release a woozy “Sticky Fingers” send off.

Bottom line, “The Weight Are Men” is one of the best roots-rock releases of 2008.

The Weight – Had It Made (mp3)

Joe Pug – Nation of Heat EP

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We mere mortals can only hope to be meager conduits for the grand themes of life – Love, hope, fear, death – these concepts are bigger then any one of us but that doesn’t stop the courageous and foolish from shaping these experiences into music and words.

Joe Pug, a Chicagoan sometimes-carpenter, is standing on the shoulders of Guthrie, Dylan, Van Zant, Prine, Clark, Simon and Young to join the ranks of present-day troubadours like Ryan Bingham, Willy Mason and Ray LaMontagne. Joe Pug’s songs belie this greenhorn’s recent foray into the craft of songwriting and his world-beaten voice belies his youth (early-twenties.)

“Hymn 101” is worth the price of admission alone. A trotting acoustic guitar supports the lyrics  “I’ve come here to get high, to do more than just get by, I’ve come to test the timbre of my heart.” and “I’ve come here to meet the sheriff and his posse, to offer him the broad side of my jaw, I’ve come here to get broke, and then maybe bum a smoke, we’ll go drinkin’ two towns over after all.” This is goddamn staggering in its courage and rich in it’s symbolism.

“Call It What You Will” has a mournful mood that brings to mind Townes Van Zandt at his most melancholy. “I call today a disaster, she calls in December the 3rd” Pug sings being at once melodramatic and nonchalant. You can almost feel the whiskey and brimstone on Pug’s breath when he sings “I am the day, I am the dawn, I am the darkness coming on” on the harmonica laced Hymn 35

There is a timeless quality to this 7 song EP, like a found chest of remembrances in your grandparent’s attic, there are treasures for this that pay attention. And the foolish courage of man armed with only an acoustic guitar standing as a lightening rod for the ages is a wonder to behold.

Joe Pug performing Hymn#101

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMTj6pZ1HCM[/youtube]