Category Archives: Free Download

Brett Shady: The Devil to Pay

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Tuneful singer-songwriter indie pop, folk and Americana sounds

The opening track of singer-songwriter Brett Shady’s solo debut is very good (especially for the terrific lyric “For every somebody somewhere in love / there’s somebody else”), but it’s the defeated loneliness of the second track, “Jerome, AZ” that sets the album’s emotional hook. Shady sings of giving up on his big city dream and heading for open skies. But even though he didn’t give up on his own big city dream, his initial discontent with Los Angeles, born of the dislocation and culture shock felt by a gold country immigrant provides much of the album’s emotional fuel.

Shady seems to have finally made himself at home in Southern California, but at the time he wrote these songs, his lack of connection became the locus of his songwriting. Like many lovelorn pop songwriters, he balances himself on the edge of self-pity and self-strength, wallowing in the darkness but mindful that the sun still shines on the other side of his drawn curtains. Shady follows in a long line of rock musicians whose later years led them away from the outward-bound excess of rock and punk to the introspective songwriting of folk and Americana. Dana Gumbiner’s production nicely balances a minimum of studio decorations with Shady’s simple combo of guitar, bass, drums, and banjo, leaving room for the lyrics to be heard and felt.

Shady first latched onto music as a child, and looking back to acts from the ‘50s and early ‘60s in the craft of “Darling.” He suggests the song is seeded in Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Since I Met You Baby,” which you can certainly hear in the piano figure, but the vocal seems more heavily influenced by doo-wop crooning. Winningly, the production gives the whole song an indie-pop feel, which makes the ‘50s influences play more like ghosts. Shady’s country antecedents can be heard in the shuffle beat of “Red House Plea,” but here again the song takes off in an original direction with strummed guitars, a meandering banjo and an imploring vocal whose high tone suggests Don McLean and the Avett Brothers.

What’s immediately apparent in listening to these performances is the difference between a band album and a songwriter’s album with a band. There’s a singleness of tone here that you don’t often find in collaboratively written material. There’s also a sensibility in the combination of disparate musical influences – waltzing country, folk strumming, pop melodies, 50s balladry, indie-pop – that could only come from a single head full music listening. It all tumbles out so seamlessly as to make it look simple; but making music that’s both familiar and new – catchy to the ear on first spin but without feeling like a rehash of something you’ve heard before – is a nearly impossible trick, and one that Shady has managed on his first solo outing. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Somebody Else
Stream The Devil to Pay
Brett Shady’s MySpace Page

Jump Back Jake: Call Me Your Man

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Rock ‘n’ roll from a Brooklyn transplant in Memphis

Jump Back Jake is a group headed up by guitarist Jake Rabinbach of Francis and the Lights. Their 2008 debut Brooklyn Hustle / Memphis Muscle combined the rock ‘n’ roll of Rabinbach’s native Brooklyn with the soul, horns and funk of his adopted Memphis. The band’s latest EP drops the horns and follows in the footsteps of melodic New York rock ‘n’ rollers like Willie Nile and the Del Lords. There’s a lot of variety packed into these five tracks, including the power-pop “Tara” and rampaging blues-rockabilly “If I Ever Go Back.”  The dramatic “Rose Colored Coffin” threatens a ‘70s rock odyssey with its opening riff, but settles into a more tractable heavy electric blues. The title track is performed twice, first as rock ‘n’ soul and at EP’s end as a solo acoustic folk-blues. Rabinbach comes alive on the rock tunes, cutting scorching riffs on his guitar and allowing a touch of rasp into his voice, charting a new direction for his band that doesn’t miss the horns at all. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Call Me Your Man
Jump Back Jake’s Home Page

Rosehill: White Lines and Stars

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Optimistic country, rock and pop from former Texas High Life duo

Rosehill is the new duo formed by the founding members of Texas High Life, Mitch McBain and Blake Myers. Their earlier tavern rock has taken a twangier direction, and Radney Foster’s production gives them a winning polish. The duo writes hummable melodies and lyrics that catch familiar moments such as the togetherness of the title track’s nighttime drive, and the colorful late-night crowd of “Midnight America.” There are college-students fending off hangovers with a plate of scattered-smothered-and-covered, waitresses working the graveyard shift, and truckers catching up on missed miles. The lyrics are rife with optimism, searching out opportunity beyond tough circumstances and finding healing salvation in love. The album’s few notes of pessimism include the alcoholic spiral of “Glass of Whiskey” and the regretful bachelor of “Picassos for Pesos.” Even here there’s a self-awareness that suggests escape routes rather than incurable misery. McBain and Myers celebrate the weekend but never get really rowdy, they enjoy the warmth of love without crowing in excessive celebration, and they see life’s troubles while keeping them in perspective. The music combines twang and rock into something that’s neither Nashville slick nor roots raw; something that would sound at home on country radio without bowing to the Nashville studio sound currently in vogue. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Glass of Whiskey
Rosehill’s Home Page

Lucky Peterson: You Can Always Turn Around

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Resurgence of a triple-threat bluesman

At the age of 46, Lucky Peterson has already had a forty-year long career. Discovered by Willie Dixon at three-years of age, Peterson was recording and appearing on television by the age of five. His apprenticeships with numerous blues legends led to solo albums on Alligator, Verve and Blue Thumb, culminating in 2003’s Black Midnight Sun for the Birdology label. It was at this point that Peterson’s drug problems began to affect his career, and the next several years were spent making releases on small European labels and, eventually, getting clean. Lucky for Lucky that the blues revere their elder statesman, and at middle-age he’s primed to reintroduce himself to American audiences.

This latest album was waxed with a number of Woodstock-area players, but it’s his triple-threat talents as vocalist, guitarist and organist that provide many of the highlights. The buzz of Peterson’s resonator guitar fills Blind Willie McTell’s “Statesboro Blues” and Robert Johnson’s “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” begging his way inside on the first and forcefully calling out a cheating mate on the second. He turns to his piano for a cover of Ray LaMontagne’s (and Travelers Insurance’s) “Trouble,” giving the song a deep gospel groove steeped in his personal recovery. Salvation is also the theme of Bill Calahan’s “I’m New Here,” a line of which provides the album’s title; Peterson finds room for a new interpretation between the plain folk styling of Smog’s original and the quick-paced cover recently released by Gil-Scott Heron. The music is more lush and Peterson’s connects with the lyrics’ portrayal of physical and spiritual rebirth.

Peterson stretches out on a pair of contemporary covers, matching Lucinda Williams’ fiery images in “Atonement” with scorching electric guitar, and finding beauty in Tom Waits’ “Trampled Rose” by expanding the melodic hook into an Arabian maqam. Blues and soul still remain the core of his musicality as he hard-strums his resonator guitar and expertly picks his acoustic against funky shuffle rhythms. His guitar sparks with outbursts of emotion on Reverend Gary Davis’ “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” and his vocals (accompanied by wife Tamara) strike a hopeful tone on the civil rights anthem “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.” Peterson never really disappeared from the blues scene, but his latest album has the feeling of a fresh start, with terrific players helping him realize music with deeply personal roots. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Four Little Boys
Lucky Peterson’s MySpace Page

Riley: Grandma’s Roadhouse

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Terrific 1971 country-rock obscurity with Gary Stewart

Record thrifters know the thrill of discovering a previously unknown recording that’s both a missing piece of history and worthwhile spin on its musical merits. Crate diggers and vault anthropologists continue to make incredible discoveries, and such is this obscure 1971 album. Pressed by the band in an edition of 500, it was sold at shows in upper Michigan and quickly disappeared into the collections of band members, families, friends and fans. Its claims to fame are several: it’s an early example of country, rock and soul fusion, it was recorded in the famed Bradley’s Barn studio in Nashville, and it marks the recorded debut of then-future country star Gary Stewart.

The group was named for its leader, Riley Watkins, and started out as a late-50s instrumental band backing first generation rockers who toured through Michigan. They relocated to Florida in 1963 to play the beach circuit, and there met the Kentucky-born Stewart. Stewart sat in and eventually joined the band (then called the Imps) for six months of shows in the wintery North. By decade’s end Watkins had formed a new trio with bassist Jim Noveskey and drummer Jim Snead, while Stewart had signed on as a songwriter in Nashville. One of the perks of Stewart’s songwriting gig was a sideline as an engineering assistant for Bradley’s Barn. Thus the connection was made, as Stewart invited Watkins to record tracks at the Barn. Stewart may have thought this an opportunity to put a band behind his songwriting demos, but Watkins jumped on the opportunity to record many of his originals.

Over the course of a year Watkins’ trio would race to Nashville to record their original songs, along with demos of tunes written by Stewart and his partner Bill Eldridge. As in the Florida days, Stewart sat in with the band, adding lead and rhythm guitar and harmonica, and singing lead on a couple of tunes. The band played emotional country rock that mixed elements heard in the Band, Poco, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Moby Grape and the Allman Brothers, as well as the southern soul sounds of Tony Joe White and Joe South. The band distinguished their sound with powerful guitar, bass and drums and strong multipart vocals. Watkins and Stewart sing a duet on the title track, and the harmonies on “Love, Love You Lady” suggest CS&N. Stewart steps to the front for the Creedence-styled “Drinkin’ Them Squeezins,” and the gospel sound and brotherhood-themed lyrics of “Listen to My Song” bring to mind Joe South’s “Walk a Mile in My Shoes.”

The turn from the late ‘60s into the early ‘70s was a special time for pop music, mining the late 60s underground for nuggets of invention while shucking away the ponderous ballroom jamming. The ease with which this band combined rock, country and soul follows the heavier experiments of FM, but the conciseness of their compositions would have sounded at home on AM. It’s a shame these tracks didn’t get into the hands of someone at Capitol, as no one in Nashville at that time could have known what to do with this “headneck” music. Riley and Stewart write of greasy roadhouses and cheating lovers, but also love, brotherhood and fine weed. The entire album feels warm and familiar, as if it’s been sitting on the shelf next to Cosmo’s Factory, Don’t It Make You Wanna Go Home, Black and White and The Allman Brothers Band all these years. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Field of Green
Grandma’s Roadhouse’s Facebook Page
Delmore Recordings’ Home Page

Hank Williams: The Complete Mothers’ Best Recordings… Plus!

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Astonishing Hank Williams’ vault find – the Mothers’ Best mother lode

In 2008 Time-Life released the brilliant Unreleased Recordings box set. The fifty-four previously unreleased tracks cherry-picked live-in-the-studio recordings from Williams’ 1951 Mothers’ Best radio show. The acetate transcriptions showed off a directness and intensity that wasn’t always found in MGM’s studios, and illuminated a new side of a superstar whose biography had long since transcended to folk lore. At the time of the box set’s release there was debate as to whether it was right to excerpt the musical selections from the original 15-minute radio programs, and there was much clamoring for the original full-length transcriptions. Time Life’s new fifteen CD set presents the original acetates in their full glory – seventy-two programs totaling over eighteen hours, and may remind you to be careful of what you wish for!

As illuminating as were the songs excerpted for the previous box, the intact radio programs add yet another dimension to Williams’ personal and professional personalities. The very circumstance of their recording, waxed for broadcast when his heavy touring schedule prevented him from broadcasting live, speaks to the career peak Williams achieved in 1951. Not only was he selling records and filling seats at concerts, but he was writing some of his most revered original songs. Two of these, “Cold, Cold Heart” and “I Can’t Help it (If I’m Still in Love With You)” even received their public debuts on his radio program. Williams lights up numerous country and western chestnuts, sings hymns and spirituals with his Drifting Cowboys, and gives recitations. There’s a wealth of obscure and rare material among these recordings.

Williams performs with the ease of a seasoned performer rummaging around for something to entertain the folks, enticing them to stay tuned through the commercials and to come out to his live performances. Although recorded for later broadcast on WSM, these performances have the informality and spontaneity of live radio programs. Williams’ asides are clearly unscripted and unrehearsed, and at only twenty-seven (and just a couple of years from his untimely death), he married the fire of youth with the poise of artists decades his senior. The music is an obvious goldmine, but the continuity – the commercials, ad lib asides and joshing with those in the studio – draws a distinct picture of, to quote Hank Jr. “a young man on top of his world.”

A great DJ or radio talk show host can create a personal connection with their listeners, and Williams had the talent. He showed off his quick wit and drew listeners into the party taking place in the studio. But unlike a DJ or talk host, Williams both spoke and sang, seamlessly weaving together his conversations, announcements, introductions and songs into an effortlessly magnetic whole. Even a minor gaffe of live radio, such as an announcer’s momentary forgetfulness, is turned into material as everyone breaks up and the joke is shared with the listeners. Williams’ band is exceptional, responding on a dime as their leader calls out a song, and playing in perfect balance to the microphone. Fiddler Jerry Rivers and steel player Don Helms are real standouts and often featured. Williams’ wife Audrey, who was the motor behind his career, also sings a few, but with more charm than vocal talent.

The transcriptions have some minor audio artifacts and scattered surface noise, but it rarely distracts from the astonishing clarity and presence of these recordings. Engineer Joe Palmaccio has restored these recordings with the deftness of an artisan, and the catalog and performances are beyond compare – even to Williams’ much revered studio catalog. As with the previous box, it boggles the mind that country music’s greatest ever artist should have his music catalog so vastly expanded more than fifty years after his passing. Bonus material includes a 1952 program on which Williams auditions for a show sponsored by Aunt Jemima, a musical-story public service announcement warning of the dangers of venereal disease, and a DVD featuring interviews with Williams band members Don Helms and Bill Lester.

Colin Escott’s liner notes are superb and should net him a Grammy. He provides informative and entertaining context for the songs and performers, and explains many references that would escape modern day listeners. For example, you might know that Pee Wee King was born Julius Kuczynski, but you probably didn’t know he was prone to swearing in Polish when he was mad! The packaging matches the grandness of the recordings, with a 108-page book that includes full-panel vintage photos, reproductions of various ephemera, detailed biographies of the key show participants, an introduction by Hank Jr. and an afterword by Jett Williams. The set is housed in an antique-style radio box that even plays a few audio snippets at the turn of a knob.

This is an astonishing new portrait of an artist most fans thought they already knew intimately, especially after the 2008 release of the shows’ musical elements. What the full radio programs reveal is a completely different side of an artist whose popular image, particularly in historical retrospect, was defined by the tenor of his songs and his singing. What emerges is a preternaturally talented performer who wrote and sang decades beyond his age, and, in contrast to the pain etched into his lyrics, was personally buoyant and friendly and funny. Those who sat by their radio in 1951 may have already known this, but the rest of us are just finding out that Williams’ was more than an iconic singer and songwriter, he was also a crackerjack pitchman and offered his fans a warm, entertaining human presence. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | On Top of Old Smokey
The Complete Mother’s Best Recordings’ Home Page
Also available from Ernest Tubb’s Record Shop in Nashville
Available from Bear Family in Europe

Raul Malo: Sinners & Saints

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Raul Malo revisits his country, rock and Latin roots

After spending the better part of the last decade edging away from the sounds of the Mavericks, Malo began to find his way back from cover songs and supper club countrypolitan with last year’s genre-bending Lucky One. Here he takes an even more personal step, producing himself in a home studio and finishing off the tracks in Ray Benson’s Austin-based Bismeaux Studios. Malo reconnects with the upbeat Tex-Mex (or really, Cuban-Country) and gripping balladry that made his earlier work so arresting; the relaxed tempos and too-neat productions that failed to spark After Hours are counted off here with verve, and the arrangements are given soulful edges that match Malo’s deeply emotional vocals.

The balance weighs making music from the heart over production perfection, as evident on a cover of Rodney Crowell’s “’Til I Gain Control Again.” Sung in a complete take, Malo aptly describes the recording as “not perfect, but the emotion is there.” If it’s not technically perfect, Malo’s probably the only one who could point out the problems, and singing with the dynamism Waylon Jennings brought to his earlier cover, it’s hard to imagine the words being put across any better. Just as effective is the Spanish-language “Sombras,” with Malo pledging no less than his life to prove his love, and the drowsy “Matter Much to You” builds tension by hesitating to make the operatic Roy Orbison leap you might expect.

Cuban roots open the album with a lonely trumpet that beckons a bullfighter into the ring, but before the toreador appears, Malo’s organ and guitar add surf twang and spaghetti western mystery. Augie Meyers’ classic Vox Continental appears on several tracks, adding the texture and tone of the Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados; the latter guest on “Superstar,” with Michael Guerra’s accordion casting a truly incredible spell. The rock ‘n’ soul of “Living For Today” suggests Delaney and Bonnie, but with the seeds sewn in the Nixon era watered by decades of American imperialism the lyrics have sprouted into mortal fatalism and the politically charged feeling that “we tried givin’ peace a chance / the only thing that’s wrong with that / we been at war since I was born.”

The original “Staying Here” sounds like something Elvis might have cut on his triumphant late-60s return to recording in Memphis. Malo plays everything on this track but the lead organ, but you’d be hard-pressed to know this was a one-man overdubbing band if you didn’t look at the credits – he’s that good at drums, bass, guitar, Mellotron and even tambourine; his voice is so fetching that it’s easy to forget his talents as an instrumentalist. Malo’s new songs are complemented by a cover of Los Lobos’ “Saint Behind the Glass,” further demonstrating that the contained form of his previous lounge material may have been an interesting singer’s exercise, but the expansive soul of these performances is the greater listener’s joy. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Living for Today
Raul Malo’s Home Page

The Famous: Come Home to Me

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Post-punk informed country twang

San Francisco’s The Famous, led by guitarist/vocalists Laurence Scott and Victor Barclay, debuted five years ago with the post-punk rock of Light, Sweet Crude. They still profess deep affection for the Pixies, but their new release isn’t nearly as raw as the debut, and the country twang explored on the earlier “Deconstruction Worker” is the new record’s raison d’être. Scott’s vocals retain their edgy emotion, and the music still has its rock power, but the band plays with more dynamics, and the tempos mull over the lyrics’ angst rather than spitting them out. If country music’s original outlaws had made their break with Nashville in the post-punk era, it might have sounded a lot like this. Scott’s bitter words and needy tone straddle the line between anger and remorse on the perfectly unconvincing “Without You,” and though “Perspicacious” sounds like the post-punk power-pop of Sugar, Scott retains the twang in his voice. The band shows their instrumental chops on the lengthy spaghetti-western intro to “Happy,” and the title track mixes the growl of Tom Waits and dark theatrics of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins with a mix of trad-jazz trombone, hard-twanging guitar and pedal steel. The closing instrumental “Under the Stars” is wistful, with countrypolitan piano, lazy steel and a terrific Endless Summer guitar that draws the day’s surfing (or perhaps trail ride) to a close. The melding of eras and influences is heard throughout the album, with heavy lead guitars winding into hard-charging Gun Club-styled verses, and spare solos that build into musical walls. This is a terrific evolution from the band’s debut, focusing the muscle and energy of their post-punk rock into compelling, emotional twang. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Under the Stars
Stream Come Home to Me
The Famous’ Home Page

Marty Stuart: Ghost Train- The Studio B Sessions

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Stuart amazes with the honesty and heart of his country music

Like ex-presidents who turn the mantle of their former office into opportunities to improve the world, talented musicians can turn the freedom of their post-hit years into explorations of that which really moves them. And such is Marty Stuart, whose baptism in bluegrass led to a run on Nashville in the mid-80s and, more successfully, in the early 90s with a four year chart run that included Hillbilly Rock, Tempted and This One’s Gonna Hurt You. His subsequent releases kept his core fans, but provided only middling commercial returns. But as his chart success waned, his artistic vision expanded. 1999’s song cycle The Pilgrim was his most powerful and coherent album to that date, showing off both his musical range and his ability to write songs that are literary, but still communicate on an emotional level.

Throughout the current decade he’s explored gospel (Souls’ Chapel), Native American struggles (Badlands: Ballads of the Lakota), and country and folk standards (Cool Country Favorites). And this time out, Stuart salutes the classic country of his youth, but other than a couple of well selected covers, he uses all new originals to conjure the sounds that inspired him in the first place. What will really ring in listeners’ ears is how natural and heartfelt this is. Like a dancer floating through his steps, Stuart plays songs as an extension of his soul, rather than as a performance of words and music. Recording in the legendary RCA Studio B, Stuart amplifies the echoes of performances past, much as John Mellencamp has on his recent No Better Than This.

Stuart is a country classicist, and his new songs resound with the spirits of Waylon, Merle, Buck and Johnny. The instrumental “Hummingbyrd” recounts the playfulness of “Buckaroo” and the Johnny Cash co-write “The Hangman” retains the Man in Black’s gravitas and frankness. The opening “Branded” splits the difference between Haggard’s “Branded Man” and Owens’ “Streets of Bakersfield,” tipping a musical hat to the piercing guitar of Roy Nichols. Don Reno’s “Country Boy Rock & Roll” gives Stuart a chance to roll out his rockabilly roots, and show off the glory of his band, the Fabulous Superlatives. Stuart and guitarist Kenny Vaughan sing a duet and duel on their electric guitars as drummer Harry Stinson and bassist Paul Martin push them with a hot train rhythm – this one’s sure to leave jaws hanging slack when played live.

The album’s ballads are just as good, not least of which for the emotional steel playing of Ralph Mooney (whose own “Crazy Arms” is covered here as an instrumental). Co-writing with his wife, singer Connie Smith, Stuart sings tales of romantic dissolution and regret. Smith joins Stuart for the exceptional duet “I Run to You,” drawing together threads of Gram and Emmylou, the Everly Brothers and classic Nashville pairings of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The album’s saddest song, however, is “Hard Working Man,” which questions the soul of a nation whose work ethic is undermined by globalization. There’s personal salvation in “Porter Wagoner’s Grave,” but the questions raised in “Hard Working Man” is what will really haunt you.

The album ends with “Little Heartbreaker,” the best Dwight Yoakam song that Yoakam didn’t actually write lately, followed by a short mandolin solo that brings things back to Stuart’s bluegrass roots. The sounds of Stuart’s influences are immediate throughout, but as someone obsessed with country music from his teens, and a protégé of both Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash, this is less a nostalgic interlude than a heeding of his mother’s words: “When you find yourself, if in the middle of nowhere, go back to Jerusalem and stand. Wait on divine guidance. It’s the only guidance worth having.” The recent neo-redneck movement may position themselves as modern-day hellraisers, but this rockabilly, Bakersfield twang and heartbroken balladry are the true sounds of rebellion, or as Stuart describes them, “sounds from the promised land.” [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Branded
Marty Stuart’s Home Page
Marty Stuart’s MySpace Page

Richard Barone: Glow

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Eclectic collection of sounds from throughout Richard Barone’s career

Richard Barone was introduced to listeners as the lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter of the legendary Bongos. Their recording career spanned a handful of singles, two EPs and two albums, but their impact on the Hoboken music scene – and on Hoboken itself – was much larger. Upon the band’s dissolution, Barone developed a solo career that garnered critical notice and fan support, but flew below the radar of the mainstream record buying public. He released an album every few years for a decade, bookended by the live recordings Cool Blue Halo in 1987 and Between Heaven and Cello in 1997, and continued on to produce other artists and collaborate on theater projects. Though he oversaw reissues and compilations of earlier material, this is his first collection of all new solo material since 1993’s Clouds Over Eden.

What makes this album particularly special is Barone’s collaborations with producer Tony Visconti. Barone’s a well-known Bolan-ista, having covered “Mambo Sun” with the Bongos and “The Visit” on his first solo album (and “Girl” here). Tony Visconti was the producer of those seminal T. Rex sides, and had Barone had his way, Visconti would have produced the Bongos 1983 RCA debut. But the label declined, and the pair had to wait another twenty-seven years to collaborate. Surprisingly, for all of Barone’s glam-rock influences and Visconti’s glam-rock bona fides, the cache of vintage instruments they tapped (including E-bow, stylophone, mellotron, moog bass, chamberlain) and sonic references they make (such as the opening of “Candied Babies” borrowed from the Bongos’ “Zebra Club”), the results sound neither nostalgic nor out of time. Instead, the productions combine elements Barone’s explored throughout his career, including slithering glam rock, power-pop chime, cello-lined chamber pop, and punchy dance floor beats.

The lyrics sway from weighty contemplation of middle age to the title track’s celebratory call for shucking off emotional limitations and living freely in the moment. Barone is neither morose in his backward glancing assessments nor blindly exuberant in his forward looking proscriptions, but seems to be discovering original emotional territory in new experience; even the fatalism of “Yet Another Midnight” is expectant rather than downcast. The notions of return and unspoken feelings are threaded through several songs, including a visit to old stomping grounds in “Radio Silence” and the uncertain romantic resurrection of a co-write with Paul Williams, “Silence is Our Song.” The latter production is shorn of Visconti’s ornamentation, pared to guitar, piano and cello for a live performance on Vin Scelsa’s Idiot’s Delight. A second co-write, with Jill Sobule, yields the terrific “Odd Girl Out” and its story of a pre-Stonewall lesbian.

Visconti’s rock productions are ornate and imaginative, though on “Sanctified” the volume interrupts the inviting, quiet groove established with the introduction’s combination of voice, strummed acoustic guitar and mellotron. The album closes with a lush instrumental version of the title track, finishing with a lovely coda of violin and cello. Barone was obviously quite excited to finally work with Visconti, and he sounds energized and vital throughout. His new songs retain the hooks and melodic innovations of his earlier work, and his lyrics have grown concrete in character and concept while remaining poetic in their words. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Glow
Richard Barone’s Home Page
Richard Barone’s MySpace Page