Monthly Archives: December 2011

Jeremy McComb: Leap and the Net Will Appear

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Nashville country artist goes direct to his fans

Jeremy McComb’s 2008 debut, My Side of Town, was the product of serendipitous Nashville connections. Signed to J.P. Williams’ Parallel Entertainment, home of Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy, McComb recorded a debut whose mainstream production was salted with an earthy voice and a couple of terrific songs, including the original “This Town Needs a Bar” and a honky-tonk cover of Bob Dylan and Old Medicine Crow’s “Wagon Wheel.” But when follow-up projects failed to materialize, McComb opted to take an independent route, funding this follow-up through Kickstarter and recording “without the Music Row ass kissing.” He’s fully engaged the direct artist-to-fan model of Internet marketing, performing live shows via Stageit, posting frequent updates and blogs on Twitter and Facebook, and growing his fan base into a social network.

Interestingly, McComb’s self-produced work sounds a lot like his debut. The old-timey banjo leading into the first cut is only a feint, as the album launches into the sort of rocked-up energy you hear in Nashville’s mainstream. McComb distinguishes himself with soulful guitar playing and a voice that resounds with rough-hewn vitality. He has a talent for marrying words to rhythms, enlivening lyrics that lean to the tried-and-true topics of hell raisers, romantic desire, distress and dissolution, and a father’s unconditional love. The album’s more adventurous lyrics include the philosophical “Time” and the self-appraising solo acoustic “Breaking, Folding, Fading” hidden at the end of track seven. As on his debut, McComb proves himself an interesting singer and songwriter, but one whose sound still remains tied to Nashville’s mainstream. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Jeremy McComb’s Home Page

1910 Fruitgum Co. Sticks to the Wall of Sound

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It’s hard to believe that the bubblegum group that hit with “Simon Says” and “Indian Giver” also produced one of the greatest Phil Spector tributes of all time, “When We Get Married.” Their last single for Buddah, it barely bubbled under at #118 in 1969, and marked their last chart appearance. But 40+ years later, it still packs an incredible Spectorian wallop thanks to Richie Cordell’s take-no-prisoners production.

MP3 | When We Get Married

1910 Fruitgum Company’s Home Page

The Bumps: Playin’ Italian Cinedelics

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Organ trio riffs on ‘60s and ‘70s Italian soundtracks

Given the obscurity of the titles, all but the most devoted Italian cineastes will have to take this trio’s word that these organ-jazz arrangements are based on movie soundtracks. Their best-known inspirations, Ennio Morricone and Piero Umiliani, are augmented by Gianni Ferrio, Piero Piccioni, Luis Bacalov and others. The selections mix breezy sounds of mid-60s la dolce vita with a good measure of early-70s exploitation cinema. Vince Abbracciante’s Hammond, Farfisa and Rhodes range from jazz cool to psych-soul heat, and the rhythm section plays with sharp, percussive force. Wordless vocals add an Esquivelian touch to several tracks, and guest players add flute, sax, flugelhorn, guitar and a duet vocal on Armando Trovajoli’s “L’amore Dice Ciao.” This is a nice spin for Italian cinephiles and lovers of hot organ jazz and cool easy listening. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

The Bumps Home Page

Neil Diamond: The Very Best Of Neil Diamond – The Original Studio Recordings

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An oddly sequenced collection of Diamond’s diamonds

As anyone familiar with Neil Diamond’s career knows, he’s had more hits that could possibly fit onto a single CD. But drawing across his stints on Bang, Uni, Capitol (for which he recorded the soundtrack to The Jazz Singer) and Columbia, this twenty-three track set shows Diamond’s maturation from Brill Building songwriter to hit-making singer to worldwide superstar to reinvented elder statesman. Of course, given the set’s non-chronological programming, you’ll only hear the actual arc of his artistic development if you reprogram the tracks as 12, 4, 9, 10, 16, 21, 20, 18, 6, 11, 21, 7, 5, 13, 8, 17, 2, 14, 1, 3, 15, 22, 23, 19. If you play the set as-is, you’ll start near the end of Diamond’s hit-making career with 1978’s “Forever in Blue Jeans” and spin through a few other 1970s releases before jumping back to 1966’s “Cherry, Cherry.”

Given the focus on hits, it’s easy to excuse the great album tracks left behind, but the inclusion of lesser sides in place of the hits “Thank the Lord for the Night Time,” “Longfellow Serenade” and “Heartlight” is surprising. The mix of Top 10s, Adult Contemporary hits (“Beautiful Noise”), low-charting singles that were hits for other artists (“I’m a Believer” and “Red Red Wine”) and latter-day sides with Rick Rubin (“Pretty Amazing Grace” and “Hell Yeah”) covers the breadth and depth of his career, but the muddled timeline and interweaving of mono Bang-era tracks with modern stereo productions is without obvious purpose. Segueing from the 1980’s “Love on the Rocks” to hard-rocking guitars of “Cherry, Cherry” is awkward, as is the mood shift from 1972’s “Play Me” to 1967’s bubblegum-soul “I’m a Believer.”

Despite the set’s odd characteristics, Diamond shines as a talented songwriter who learned early on how to write a hook, and a dramatic vocalist with a memorable voice. He’s been well-served by arrangers and producers who fit his voice into a variety of contexts – guitar-charged rock, organ-backed soul, contemporary pop and huge productions that echo the operatic grandeur of Roy Orbison. Diamond’s song-by-song notes are peppered with interesting recollections and generous sharing of credit with his many exceptional co-workers. It may surprise casual fans to find that he co-wrote with Marilyn and Alan Bergman, was produced by Robbie Robertson, and recorded several of his biggest hits in Memphis at Chips Moman’s American Sound Studio.

Noting the missing chart entries, as well as the terrific list price, this is a good single-disc sketch of Diamond’s career as a hit maker, but it’s only a sketch, and only a sketch of his hits. It balances his years at Bang (seven tracks), Uni (seven), Columbia (six) and Capitol (three), and plays well for those wishing to relive the artist’s most familiar songs. The two Rick Rubin-produced cuts, “Pretty Amazing Grace” and “Hell Yeah,” show Diamond still vital and growing in his fifth decade of recording. Still, a career as rich as Diamond’s can’t really be condensed onto one disc; even the three-disc In My Lifetime left fans arguing about what was missing. A more complete picture of Diamond’s early years can be heard by picking up The Bang Years: 1966-1968 and Play Me: The Complete Uni Studio Recordings… Plus!, and his Columbia years are well represented on original album reissues and several anthologies. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Neil Diamond’s Home Page

Jeff Black: Plow Through the Mystic

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Complex, soulful singer-songwriter Americana

Nashville-based singer/songwriter Jeff Black has some heavy friends, including mandolinist Sam Bush, guitarist Jerry Douglas and singer/songwriters Matraca Berg, Gretchen Peters and Kim Richey. And though they all lend a hand on his fifth solo album, it’s Black’s voice – both singing and writing – that gives the album its soul. Black also played most of the instruments, overdubbing himself on guitar, banjo, keyboards, bass and percussion, but the only hint of one-man-bandism is the music’s tight grip on the songs. Black’s voice takes on many different shades, at various times recalling the downtown soul of Willy DeVille, the gruff side of Springsteen, the melodic saloon growl of Tom Waits, the deadpan of James McMurtry, the rye twinkle of Randy Newman and even a few moments of Neil Diamond’s pop-soulfulness.

Black draws from country, folk, soul, blues, gospel and contemporary pop, offering songs that range from the contemplative banjo solo of “Virgil’s Blues” to the foot-tapping Little Feat-inflected title track. Jerry Douglas laces his twang throughout “Walking Home,” but the husk in Black’s voice is more Memphis than Nashville, and his lyric – an internal monologue anticipating a forthcoming explanation – isn’t your standard country fare. Black writes phrases and draws images that are easily known, but connects them into verses that recast the easy first understanding. Early in the album, his characters are caught in dilemmas that find them on the verge of apologizing, disaffected from their taught beliefs, and weighed down by riches.

But the album takes a more grounded and optimistic turn with “New Love Song” and the turmoil in Black’s head subsides with the acceptance of “Waiting.” Still, even as he embraces a less guarded life, his happiness seems to be that of a cynic who finds potential loss at the root of joy, one who counsels “you’re going to find out just how heavy happiness can be.” He closes the album with the confessional “Ravanna,” contemplating the physical and emotional distances one travels from childhood, and meditating on the relationship between human frailty and divine grace. The travel from inner turmoil, through confession, awareness and acceptance suggests the pages of a personal journal, but one whose journey is still a work in progress. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Jeff Black’s Home Page

Dale Waston: The Sun Sessions

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Texas honky-tonker conjures the Sun spirit of Johnny Cash

Dale Watson hasn’t exactly kept his musical debt to Johnny Cash a secret, but just how thoroughly he’s absorbed Cash’s roots has never been more apparent than on this new release. Recording in a trio (with “the Texas Two”), Watson’s baritone and tic-tac guitar, Chris Crepps’ upright bass and Mike Bernal’s snare drum are warmed by Sun’s famous acoustics and slapback echo. The fourteen original songs tip their hat more than once to Cash’s early works, but at the same time they stay true to Watson’s honky-tonk roots. He writes of loving, longing, losing, traveling and faith, and he sketches friends and acquaintances with a keen eye. Watson rides Cash’s train rhythm for a trip through Sweden to the country music hotbed of Gothenburg, and revisits Cash’s “Get Rhythm” with the Texas shoeshine man “Big Daddy.” The sessions have a vitality that’s lost in the bits-and-pieces method of modern studios, and the few muffed notes are quickly forgotten as the guitar twangs, the snare drum shuffles and the acoustic bass thumps out its rich tone. In lesser hands this homage to Cash ’55 might have sounded gimmicky, but Watson long ago established his country music bona fides, and as Steve Legett points out, this isn’t an homage to Sun records, it is a Sun record, and a good one at that. It’s also one of the most entertaining records in Watson’s already rich catalog. Highly recommended to fans of Watson, Cash and Sun. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Dale Watson’s Home Page