Monthly Archives: August 2011

Preview: The Philles Album Collection

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Coming on October 18th is a box set that many Phil Spector fans have been waiting for. The seven-disc set will include six original albums from Spector’s Philles label:

  • The Crystals Twist Uptown (The Crystals, 1962)
  • He’s a Rebel (The Crystals, 1963)
  • Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah (Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, 1963)
  • The Crystals Sing the Greatest Hits, Volume 1 (The Crystals, 1963)
  • Philles Records Presents Today’s Hits (Various, 1963)
  • Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica (The Ronettes, 1964)

and a bonus disc,

  • Phil’s Flipsides (The Phil Spector Wall of Sound Orchestra)

This represents six of Philles’ first seven albums (the seventh, A Christmas Gift for You, has been reissued separately and as part of box sets several times), and includes numerous non-hit album tracks that have not been included on standard Spector anthologies. The bonus disc provides sixteen rare B-sides that Spector used to pad his hit singles (and, with no commercial appeal, to ensure jocks stuck to the A-side). On the same day, a two-CD hits collection, The Essential Phil Spector, will be released.

You can pre-order the box set at www.philspector.com and Amazon.com, or find it through standard retail on October 18th. Check back here for a review in October!

Buffalo Killers: 3

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Heavy guitar rock that echoes the James Gang

You wouldn’t be alone in thinking this Cincinnati band’s third album was a long-lost James Gang platter. Not only is the band a power trio, but the vocals have the same keening tone Joe Walsh brought to “Walk Away,” and the band’s rhythm section finds the sorts of grooves once laid down in “Funk #49.” All of which isn’t meant to suggest that the Buffalo Killers are a carbon copy, but that their music is anchored unapologetically in the rock (not rock ‘n’ roll) music of the post-Woodstock ‘60s and pre-punk ‘70s. It’s the moment just before rock music became bloated and faced a DIY backlash, a time when the hangover from psychedelia, thick guitars, heavy bass, instrumental prowess and production craft hadn’t fallen into self-seriousness and arena bombast. A similar strain of rock emerged in the mid-90s, but egos and self-consciousness quickly overwhelmed the music; the Buffalo Killers avoid these pitfalls by remaining relatively unknown (and thus not fashionable), and more importantly, more interested in music than the congratulations. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Huma Bird
Buffalo Killers’ Home Page

Candye Kane: Sister Vagabond

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Candye Kane and Laura Chavez tear up the blues

Kane’s first album after beating pancreatic cancer, 2009’s Superhero, was rightly built on themes from the fight. This follow-up release extends the recovery, but more by doubling-down on the blues belting career she had before, than by living some sort of hyperaware second chapter. There’s a pleasure in her singing that’s perhaps a step more ferocious than before, expressing George Herbert’s notion that living well is the best revenge, or in this case, the greatest triumph. But the scars she carries – a problematic childhood, early motherhood, less-than-savory jobs and cancer recovery – are those of a winner, the marks carried by anyone who’s lived enough life to really sing the blues. Kane’s nine new original songs are matters of the heart, mostly roughed-up and broken, occasionally recovered. The four covers include a sweet and sexy take on Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s “I Love to Love You” and a moody version of “Sweet Nothin’s” that adds Wanda Jackson’s scorching sass to Brenda Lee’s original precociousness. Laura Chavez’s guitar is given equal voice to Kane’s vocals, motivating the songs with twangy rhythm playing and stinging riffs, and James Harman guests on harmonica for Jack Tempshin and Glen Frey’s previously unrecorded “Everybody’s Gonna Love Somebody Tonight.” Take these tunes for a spin on Whittier, Tweedy or Bellflower, and enjoy the punchy mixes as they roar from the rear speaker of your ’62 Impala. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | You Can’t Hurt Me Anymore
Candye Kane’s Home Page

The Rubinoos: Live at the Hammersmith Odeon

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Seminal power pop band live in 1978

Originally released as part of the omnibus box set Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Rubinoos, the band has released this period live performance on its own for separate download. Taped at London’s Hammersmith Odeon on April 1, 1978, the concert shows off the band’s stellar harmony singing, tight guitar rock, super-tuneful songs and broad stage humor. Jon Rubin’s voice (which still sounds great today) is d-r-e-a-m-y, Tommy Dunbar shows off his killer guitar skills, and the band’s rhythm section is dialed in. This was a really tight live unit. Along with their best-known sides (the original “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,” a charting cover of “I Think We’re Alone Now” and the pop-soul “Hard to Get”), there’s the rare “Hey Royse,” an a cappella doo-wop cover of “Rockin’ in the Jungle,” and a monumental jam of “Sugar Sugar” that quotes “Smoke on the Water” and “Downtown” before inviting the audience to sing along. The set closes with an unrelenting take on the Seeds “Pushin’ Too Hard” that suggests maybe rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t quite dead… yet. If you weren’t there, this is what you missed; if you were, this is what you heard, and it still sounds sweet. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

The Rubinoos’ Home Page

Robert Quine, Guitar God

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As great as was everything Matthew Sweet gave to his third album, Girlfriend, what turned it up to eleven were the twin guitars of Richard Lloyd and the late Robert Quine. Here’s a vintage live performance of the album’s title track, with Quine’s unassuming appearance matched by the utter ferocity of his guitar playing.

Butchers Blind: Play for the Films

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Rocking alt.country from the heart of Long Island, NY

This Long Island trio dropped a few demo tracks in 2009 (reviewed here), promoting the catchy “One More Time” into a single and attracting some local attention. They’ve returned with a full album that leans on both their alt.country and rock roots. The Wilco influence is strong (unsurprising, given the band is named after one of Wilco’s lyrical creations), and Pete Mancini’s voice favors the reediness of Jeff Tweedy; but there’s also a melancholy in his delivery that suggests Chris Bell, and a soulful bottom end in the rhythm section that gives the band plenty of rock flavor. Mancini’s latest songs were inspired by travel journals kept by his father, as well as his own cross-country travels. From the opening “Brass Bell” you can feel the wanderlust, the urge to blow town, the expectation of the journey ahead and the confidence of someone young enough to enjoy (or at least react to) the moment.

The previously released “One More Time,” is repeated here at a faster tempo, adding a measure of urgency to the road’s opportunities and challenges. There’s discord and difficult choices, and emotional dead-ends magnified by the relentless closeness of travel. Communication shuts down, relationships split, and roundtrips don’t always end in the same emotional spot they began. The album tips its hat to Steve Earle, as “Highway Song” opens with the signature guitar riff of “Devil’s Right Hand,” but where Earle’s early work, especially Guitar Town, pictured small town inhabitants dreaming of escape, Mancini’s protagonists are looking back from the road. The album closes with “Never Changing Thing,” a letter home filled with the growing realization that a return trip may not be in the cards. It’s a fitting end to an album of emotional changes wrought by physical travel, and physical changes wrought by emotional travel. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Dice Were Down
Listen to more of Play for the Films at Paradiddle Records
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Suzy Bogguss: American Folk Songbook

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The simple pleasure of classic folk music

If you grew amidst the 1960s folk revival, you may well remember a favorite Pete Seeger, Burl Ives or Johnny Cash record of great American folk songs. You might have been schooled by the Dillards (in the guise of the Darling Family) on The Andy Griffith Show, had parents who sang these songs as you drifted off to sleep, sang folk songs at camp or had a progressive grade school teacher who introduced these songs at music time. But it’s probably been a few decades since folk songs were central to your life. Of course, you’ll still hear many of these titles on Prairie Home Companion and at bluegrass festivals, but their mainstream circulation has dwindled, pushing their legacies to the fringe. And that’s a shame, because these are great songs, rife with historical significance (both in their creation and in the stories they tell) and deep musical pleasures.

Suzy Bogguss has collected seventeen titles, mostly well-known, and assembled them into a songbook of both musical and intellectual depth. In addition to her lovely acoustic renderings, assisted by a terrific band of musicians and backing vocalists, she’s written a companion book that provides history and sheet music. The song backgrounds essay the unsettled origins of many songs (is “Red River Valley” a reference to a tributary of the Mississippi, a spur of the Hudson, or the valley drained by the Red River of the North?), the variations of their lyrics, and their paths to prominence. The sheet music is perfect for accompanying your home sing-along on piano or guitar, and the CD is sure to be a favorite for both parents and kids, not to mention a nutritious respite from calorie-free children’s records. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Suzy Bogguss’ Home Page

New Album Coming from The Shants!

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Word from Oakland, California is that the Shants (whose earlier Russian River Songs was reviewed here) will release their first full-length album, Beautiful Was the Night, in September. There’s a release party scheduled for Viracocha (998 Valencia St., San Francisco) on October 8, for those of you in the Bay Area. The band writes:

The album is called Beautiful Was The Night (which is a phrase taken from Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline). It was recorded in Oakland at Rec Center Studios and Tones On Tail Studio by Eliot Curtis (who has worked on records for Bare Wires, Nectarine Pie), with some vocal harmonies from Brianna Lea Pruett & Quinn DeVeaux, violin by Howie Cockrill, and horns by Ralph Carney (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Black Keys) as well as the Blue Bone Express. Half the album was funded by our fans, via Kickstarter.

As an appetizer for the album, they’re offering the track “Baton Rouge,” of which they write “It’s basically a letter to the city of Baton Rouge, as though it were an ex-lover.” Enjoy!

MP3 | Baton Rouge

Paul Simon: Still Crazy After All These Years

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Paul Simon expands his catalog of jazz-, soul- and gospel-inflected pop

After a lengthy world tour and live album (Live Rhymin’), Paul Simon returned in 1975 with his third post-Simon & Garfunkel studio album. Simon’s comfort with his solo stardom is signaled in part by the return of Art Garfunkel for the album’s top-ten “My Little Town.” He also shares the microphone with Phoebe Snow and the Jessy Dixon Singers (the latter of whom had toured with Simon in ’73 and ‘74) on “Gone at Last.” On the other hand, the cover photo of a mustachioed and behatted Simon suggests some lingering insecurity, if only with his long-thinning pate; perhaps it was the final dissolution of his marriage (which was grist for several songs on 1972’s Paul Simon) that instigated the physical changes.

Musically, the album continued the successful commercialtrajectory his previous pair of solo albums, launching four hit singles (including the chart-topping “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”) and winning a Grammy for Album of the Year. Musically the new songs weren’t as far-reaching, sitting mostly in the jazz-, soul- and gospel-flavored grooves Simon had explored on his earlier albums. Columbia/Legacy’s 2011 reissue reuses Bill Inglot’s remastering and the two bonus tracks of Rhino’s 2004 reissue, including demos of “Slip Slidin’ Away” and “Gone at Last.” Legacy’s traded out Rhino’s digipack for a standard jewel case and an 8-page booklet of lyrics and pictures. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Paul Simon: Paul Simon in Concert: Live Rhymin’

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Paul Simon live in 1974

With Paul Simon having licensed his early solo catalog to Sony, the Legacy branch has taken the opportunity to reissue four key titles on their original Columbia label. Of the four (which also includes Paul Simon, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon and Still Crazy After All These Years), this 1974 live album is the only one to get a fresh remastering (by Dan Hersch at D2 Mastering) and the addition of two previously unreleased bonus tracks. Given that this is the least consequential of the four albums, it’s a good marketing move to make it the sole title to be updated. Coming off two commercially and artistically successful solo albums, Simon hit the road for a series of solo shows that included the Brazillian group Urubamba and the gospel Jessy Dixon Singers.

The song list includes Simon’s recent solo hits and several classics from the Simon & Garfunkel catalog. Though he wasn’t ever going to replace Garfunkel’s award-winning vocal on “Bridge Over Troubled Water” or duplicate the bite of the duo’s harmonies on “Homeward Bound” and “The Sound of Silence,” the net effect is a showcase of the Paul Simon songbook. The Singers’ take the spotlight for the gospel “Jesus is the Answer,” and in the original concert set, Urubamba was featured on several instrumentals. Legacy’s 2011 reissue adds solo acoustic performances of “Kodachrome” and “Something So Right,” but here’s hoping a complete rundown of the reported 24-song set eventually sees the light of day. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]