Posts Tagged ‘Blues’

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Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs: No Help Coming

Friday, April 29th, 2011

Country and blues reflected in a cracked funhouse mirror

Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs (comprised of Golightly and multi-instrumentalist Lawyer Dave) continue to mash the hard-charging folk dynamic of Richard & Mimi Farina with a primitive (rather than the oft-labeled lo-fi), live-sounding recording aesthetic. The percussion prevalent on 2008’s Dirt Don’t Hurt continues to add punctuation, giving several of these tracks, such as the exotic “Burn, Oh Junk Pile, Burn,” the off-kilter feel of mid-period Tom Waits. But these blues are more hill-bred than Bowery, and the jittery twang of the title track will make you wonder what the Feelies would have sounded like if they’d grown up in Tennessee instead of New Jersey. Golightly croons a few tunes, and though it gets low and dark for “The Rest of Your Life,” the girlishness in her voice lightens what could be a Screamin’ Jay Hawkins track. Lawyer Dave hollers his tale of a summertime DUI, “You’re Under Arrest” and the duo comes together for a cover of Bill Anderson’s “Lord Knows We’re Drinking.” The album closes with a psych-tinged, foot-stomping take on Wendell Austin’s bizarre country novelty, “L.S.D. (Rock ‘n’ Roll Prison),” which may just explain the uniqueness of the Brokeoffs’ cracked country and blues sound. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | No Help Coming
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The Band of Heathens: Top Hat Crown & The Clapmaster’s Son

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

Austin quintet lays down another slab of funky country soul

Settling into their third studio album, this Austin quintet’s gumbo of funk, soul, blues, gospel, country and rock may no longer be a surprise, but it’s just as entertaining as on their previous outings. Better yet, having toured extensively, fans can imagine how the concise jams of these four-minute songs will play out on stage. Little Feat, the Band, the Jayhawks and the rootsy side of the Grateful Dead remain touchstones, but working across multiple genres with three singer/songwriters and a solid rhythm section, the band creates their own unique sound. The Gulf Coast is much on the songwriters’ minds as they harmonize for a cover of “Hurricane” and ruminate on the nonchalant consumerism underlying the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on “Free Again.” There are touches of Dr. John’s New Orleans funk in “Enough,” echoes of Memphis in the horn chart of “The Other Broadway” and a riff on “I Ain’t Running” that echoes War’s “Spill the Wine.” The set closes on a rustic note with the vocalists trading verses for the acoustic gospel “Gris Gris Satchel.” The album feels more like a moment of artistic consolidation than a new step forward, but the group’s breadth of influences and depth of musical grooves are still fresh and rewarding. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Polaroid
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Andy Friedman: Laserbeams and Dreams

Friday, April 8th, 2011

A beguiling album of thoughtful country, folk and blues

Friedman’s latest, recorded in 24 hours with only one overdub, fits even more deeply into the singer-songwriter realm than 2009’s Weary Things. His strummed acoustic guitar is backed by the electric leads of producer David Goodrich and the fingered and bowed stand-up bass of Stephan Crump. Friedman’s narrative vocal tone brings to mind Leonard Cohen, but the instrumental conversations lean to languid improvisation, and his lyrics aren’t as poetically elusively. Friedman’s a Brooklyn hillbilly whose hard-scrabble living in the outer boroughs leads him to the old-timey string band sound employed on “Old Pennsylvania,” and lyrics that imagine the city’s genteel yesteryear.

The opener, “It’s Time for Church,” provides a microcosm of Friedman’s talent – a vocal that resonates with hints of Dave Alvin, and a lyric that cleverly turns away from the title’s implication, feints back and then lands its final rejection. It’s a song about religion, but not the endorsement you’d expect. Friedman is a keen observer of his own days and the details of imagined lives and places. “Nothing with My Time” and “Quiet Blues” each contemplate what Friedman’s doing when he’s doing nothing, and “Pretty Great” offers the clear-eyed view of youth that’s only visible in rear view mirror. Friedman’s earlier years as a spoken-word poet are reflected in the short “Schroon Lake,” and his father-in-law’s poetry, written shortly before his passing, forms the core of “May I Rest When Death Approaches.”

Death also hovers over the electric blues “Roll On, John Herald,” with Goodrich raging away on electric guitar. More idyllic are Friedman’s dreams of long-gone summer retreats in the faded snapshots of “Motel on the Lake,” the warmth of a tour’s end in “Going Home (Drifter’s Blessing),” and the nostalgic “Down by the Willow.” The latter features a hypnotic, psych-inflected guitar jam by Goodrich. Friedman’s always been a fine songwriter and compelling performer, but on his third album there’s a heightened symbiosis between the two. The trio is terrifically sympathetic to his songs, adding emotional color and texture without overshadowing the lyrics, and Friedman’s vocals fit fluidly into the music. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | It’s Time for Church
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Kermit Lynch: Kitty Fur

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

The blossoming of a wine master’s music career

Kermit Lynch is well-known to oenophiles for his unique wine importing business; but even his most ardent customers would be surprised to find he’s also a gifted musician. Throughout the sixties, Lynch fronted bands in the Berkeley area, only giving it up in the early ‘70s when his travels through Europe begat a career in wine. With the encouragement of vintner/musician Boz Scaggs, Lynch returned to music in 2005, and with co-producer Ricky Fataar, released the album Quicksand Blues. In 2009 he followed-up with Man’s Temptation, mixing literate, world-traveled originals with well-selected covers that included a terrific old-timey take on Lee Hazlewood’s rockabilly classic “The Fool.”

With Fataar once again in the producer’s seat (and drummer’s throne), Lynch offers up his third course, adding an original title track to ten covers. Much like his taste in wines, Lynch’s music is varied and at times eclectic. He sings country, rock, blues, folk, reggae, Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Goodbye,” and even the romantic WWII-era “It’s Been a Long, Long Time.” His voice is a bluesy instrument with the weathered edges of someone more partial to grain than grape, and it adds new shades to each interpretation. The opening original “Kitty Fur” has the blue jazz feel of Mose Allison, the Rolling Stones’ “Winter” is played more like Sticky Fingers than Goats Head Soup, and Dylan’s slight “Winterlude” (from 1970’s New Morning) is slowed into a luscious waltz that’s more classic country than the original’s old-timey vibe.

Lynch is backed by top-notch players, including Rick Vito on guitar, Michael Omartian on piano, Dennis Crouch, Michael Rhodes on bass, Glen Duncan on fiddle and Lloyd Green on pedal steel. The core players are augmented by a horn section for Bobby Blue Bland’s “She’s Puttin’ Something in My Food,” and sound really together as a band, suggesting Lynch is as accomplished at leading a band as he is leading a business. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Kitty Fur
Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant

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Amy Black: One Time

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

New England singer/songwriter with Southern roots

For a New Englander, Amy Black sounds quite down home. Her Southern roots (she was reared in Missouri and Alabama until the age of sixteen) clearly packed their bags and traveled along in the relocation North and East, and have been renewed through visits to her family’s home town. Black sings in a folk-styled country voice that suggests bits of Patty Loveless, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Judy Collins, edged by the blues of Bonnie Raitt and a hint of Jennifer Nettle’s sass. It’s a voice that sat largely idle during a ten-year career outside the music industry, and one that wasn’t stirred back into action until a few years ago. Her 2009 debut with the Red Clay Rascals was stocked with covers, but on this sophomore outing she expands her artistic reach with nine originals that mix electric and acoustic, including guitar, fiddle (courtesy of Stuart Duncan), dobro, mandolin, dulcimer, bass (electric and upright), and drums. Though the album opens with a compelling tale of an imagined killer fleeing the law, the bulk of Black’s songs are about the lives of women. There’s straight-talking relationship advice in “One Time,” the lonely machinations of one who’s been left in “You Lied,” and tough realizations in “Whiskey and Wine” and “I Can’t Play This Game.” Black offers romantic optimism too, as she flirts with loving arms that remain just out of reach, potential yet to be realized. Among the three covers, Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough (to Take My Man),” despite a nice dobro solo, sounds least comfortable among Black’s originals, but Claude Ely’s gospel “Ain’t No Grave (Gonna Hold My Body Down),” provides blue notes for Black and Duncan to really dig into. This is a nice step forward for a singer-songwriter with an ingratiating voice and a pen that’s just warming up. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | One Time
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The Civil Wars: Barton Hollow

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

Two voices intertwined into one

From the first moment you hear the intertwining voices of Joy Williams and John Paul White, you might think of The Swell Season, She and Him and other male-female duos. But Civil Wars is less a duet than two voices pulled inextricably together as one. Their harmonies are guided by the sort of familial telepathy that usually only blesses siblings like the Stanleys, Louvins, Everlys or Avetts. Listening deeper into the album, the duo suggests Richard & Mimi Fariña (or Holly Golightly and Lawyer Dave) on the album’s bluesy title track. The drawn-out wordings can feel conspicuous at times, but the alchemy of their voices is never less than mesmerizing. The intimacy of the duo’s vocal tone stands in contrast to the emotional volume of their singing; they use mostly acoustic instrumentation, but conjure a power that feels electric.

White is a little bit country and folk, Williams a little bit pop, and they write songs that are both and neither – rootsy but sweet. They evoke the delicate outlines of romances that could possibly be, relationships that retain the intensity of adolescence, and the hymn-like drama of a troubled marriage in “Poison and Wine.” There are small town comings and goings, hopelessness and hoped-for redemption, and the pair ignites (unfounded) rumors of couplehood with their old-timey Western ballad, “Forget Me Not.” The digital album download includes two bonus covers, a radically reworked vocal arrangement of the Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back,” and an emphatic take on Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love” that adds a gypsy-jazz tone. Williams and White push and pull one another with their voices, but the battle is civil and the results enchanting. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Barton Hollow
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Little Faith: Spirituals

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Hammond organ spirituals flavored with sounds of Nashville and New Orleans

The Hammond organ is no stranger to spiritual music, but seasoned with jazz, blues and country flavors of second line drumming, saxophone, fiddle, and lap steel, Little Faith delivers on what it calls “Madri Gras erupting at a tent revival behind the Grand Ol’ Opry.” The material also mixes things up, ranging from the nineteenth century African-American spiritual “Wade in the Water” (led here by the violin of Leah Zeger) to Christian hymns “I’ll Fly Away” and “How Great Thou Art” to the traditional New Orleans funeral dirge “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” (with a terrific blues guitar solo by Nelson Blanton) to the Hebrew “Kol Dodi” and the Carter Family staple “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” The album includes only two vocal tracks, a full gospel chorus on “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and a reprise of “I’ll Fly Away” that complements the opening instrumental. Organist Jack Maeby’s pulled together an assortment of Los Angeles roots musicians who take these tracks to interesting new places anchored by the rock-solid soul of the Hammond. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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Patrick Sweany: That Old Southern Drag

Friday, March 11th, 2011

Heart-stopping Southern soul from a Northern immigrant

Ohio native and Nashville immigrant Patrick Sweany makes rootsy sounds that are out of place on Music Row, but will be welcomed in the home of anyone who likes a side order of the ‘60s with their rock, soul, and blues. The album rolls through Southern soul, vintage rock ‘n’ roll and anguished R’n’B, dovetailing punchy production with memories of Delaney and Bonnie, Arthur Alexander and the throwback sounds of Marshall Crenshaw. The bass, drums and rhythm guitar bolster the melodic howl of Sweany’s voice; his singing is edgy, pleading, and emotionally raw from blue disappointment. The nostalgic “Rising Tide” hits a ‘70s rock groove that might have belonged to Bad Company, but the deep bass, funky horns, vamping organ and guitar figures of “The Edges” return the listener to the Memphis that Dan Penn laid on the Hacienda Brothers. The tour de force ballad “More and More” is given the Otis Redding treatment with hard percussive stops, while the acoustic plea “Frozen Lake” is gut-wrenching in the blue-soul of its romantic apprehension. Sweany is well-known as a guitarist and songwriter, and he bolster each accolade here, but it’s the deep well of emotion in every vocal that will make this record stick in your heart. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Frozen Lake
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Lonnie Mack: For Collector’s Only

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

A ferocious rock ‘n’ soul ‘n’ blues guitar classic from 1963

This reissue of The Wham of That Memphis Man is the way that many listeners first met the savagely powerful guitar playing of Lonnie Mack. Originally released in 1963 on the Fraternity label, the album was re-sequenced and reissued with two extra tracks by Elektra in 1970. It’s since been reissue on CD, both in this stereo lineup, and in the original mono. The latter is more brutally powerful for its center-channel punch, but either configuration will astound you with Mack’s breathtaking, reverb-powered, tremelo-bar bent guitar playing. The album opens with Mack’s original “Wham!,” quickly gaining momentum until the song becomes an unstoppable locomotive. Mack picks wildly as the bass and drums stoke the beat and the rest of the band hangs on for dear life. Mack’s take on Dale Hawkins’ “Susie-Q” is just as deft, as he alternates between rhythm and lead, masterfully picking long twangy phrases that circle back to the root riff.

Mack’s first solo recording for Fraternity, an improvised cover of “Memphis,” is perhaps his most impressive, as he double-picks and ranges up and down the length of the fret board. No doubt Chuck Berry must have been impressed; Duane Allman, Stevie Ray Vaughan and others certainly were, as they taught themselves from these performances. Beyond Mack’s virtuosity as a guitarist, he was also a soulful vocalist who drew on the blues for Jimmy Reed’s “Baby What’s Wrong,” on gospel for the testimony of “Where There’s a Will There’s a Way,” and on both for the pained “Why.” For Collector’s Only adds two mono bonuses to the original Wham’s eleven tracks, the blues classic “Farther On Up the Road” and the flaming, original instrumental “Chicken Pickin’.”  Mono or stereo, original line-up or expanded, this is a true classic from 1963. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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Jerry Reed: Explores Guitar Country

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

Early Jerry Reed album explores country, soul, jazz, blues and folk

Long before Jerry Reed became a music star, breaking through with 1970’s “Amos Moses” and 1971’s “When You’re hot, You’re Hot,” and before he became a television and film actor,  he was an in-demand A-list Nashville guitar player and struggling solo star. No less than Chet Atkins felt that Reed was a major talent as a picker, encouraging him to add instrumentals and solos to his albums, and bestowing upon him the title “Certified Guitar Player.” This 1969 collection shows off the tension between Reed’s incredible talent as a guitarist and his self-image as a singer. Together with Atkins as producer, Reed creates modern-pop arrangements of standards and traditional folk, country and bluegrass tunes, adding original twists (such as jazz-inflected blues-funk on Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky”) and leaving plenty of room for his finger picking. This is a thoughtful and at times deeply contemplative album, surprisingly experimental and forward-thinking for a Nashville artist who’d yet to fully establish himself with country music fans. Those who know Reed’s later hits will enjoy this earlier work, and those who aren’t fond of Nashville’s ‘70s sounds (and perhaps favor Willie Nelson’s Stardust era interpretations of standards) will be impressed at the soul, jazz, blues, and folk flavors woven into the country base. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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