Category Archives: Video

Lloyd Cole: Standards

LloydCole_StandardsLloyd Cole renews his rock ‘n’ roll license

Thirty years into his career, Lloyd Cole can’t exactly “go” electric; that honor belongs to the Commotions’ 1984 debut, Rattlesnakes. But after a decade making what he terms “age appropriate music,” he’s “re-gone” electric with an album that reteams him with several players who help shape Cole’s 1990 solo debut, including Fred Maher on drums, Matthew Sweet on bass and Blair Brown on keyboard. Guitarist Robert Quine is missed from that lineup (having passed away in 2004), but Cole’s son Will, along with Mark Schwaber and Matt Cullen fill the guitar spot well.

You could call this a return to form, if the past decade’s acoustic work wasn’t such a pleasing form of its own; perhaps “welcome return” is more apt, given Cole’s previous forsaking of electric pop and rock. The group (which also includes Joan As Police Woman on piano and Michael Wyzik on percussion) sounds tighter than the 1990 aggregation as the album opens with its lone cover, John Hartford’s “California Earthquake.” Written for (and recorded by) Cass Elliott, Cole’s vision is more grittily determined, almost shell-shocked, with guitars that bring to mind the intertwining drone of Television.

Cole’s songs have always been literate and poetic, but often with strong narrative lines. The narration is fragmented in the scenes-from-a-college relationship “Women’s Studies” and the nostalgic “Period Piece.” The latter is sung as (rather than about) the Berlin Wall, and offers a first-person view of the wall’s existence and demise. The lyric’s mention of “Hansa” likely refers to the West Berlin Hansa recording studio, an easter egg that might escape many listeners’ notice.

Such references are easier to decipher in the Internet age, but you still have to recognize there’s something there to decode. The lyric “And I should be the one touched by your very presence, dear,” for example, will strike a chord with Blondie fans, yet seem wholly original to most everyone else. It’s really not cheating, since the original lyric is there to be found, and provides context to the astute listener. For each one you find, there are no doubt two more that pass you by.

Cole spends considerable time looking at relationships, including the tugs-of-war “Myrtle and Rose” and “Opposites Day,” and the dissolutions of “Silver Lake” and “No Truck.” The latter cleverly shifts the opening lyric’s acceptance (“don’t mind”) to the closing lyric’s expectation (“won’t mind”), as the narrator steadies himself for the exit. The album is filled with ambivalence in its knowledge of what needs-to-be butting heads with a sense of what’s possible. It’s encapsulated neatly in the paradoxical lyric “I can’t stay / But I can’t leave you like this.”

“Kids Today” takes an ironic stroll through the perils of bebop, heavy metal, rock ‘n’ roll, electric guitar, long hair, comic books, body art and decades of fashion as Cole realizes there’s nothing more wrong with the kids of today than the childhoods of his own generation. The album returns to failed relationships for “Diminished Ex,” admitting that “Maybe I aimed a little too high / No question that I failed in my endeavour,” and suggesting that Cole is coming to grips with a music career that’s rich in dedicated fans, but not worldwide hits. Lucky for him (and his fans), the lack of the latter won’t keep the former from embracing this superb album. [©2015 Hyperbolium]

Lloyd Cole’s Home Page

Mark-Almond: Mark-Almond

MarkAlmond_MarkAlmondA neglected early ‘70s British rock-jazz classic

Guitarist Jon Mark and wind player and percussionist Johnny Almond met in 1969 as members of John Mayall’s band. Upon their departure from Mayall in 1970, they formed this eponymous quartet (not to be confused with Soft Cell’s Marc Almond!) with bassist Rodger Sutton and keyboardist Tommy Eyre. As with the music they recorded with Mayall, Mark and Almond chose a drummerless configuration that continued to work surprisingly well. Eyre’s piano, Sutton’s bass and Mark’s rhythm playing each take turns holding down the beat, leaving the others free to jam and improvise.

The album’s original five tracks clocked in at forty minutes, with two suites (“City” and “Love”) stretching past eleven minutes apiece. This provided the players – all four – a lot space to stretch out and interplay. The opening “The Ghetto” is a gospel soul number with a moving lyric of desperation set to a vocal chorus and Eyre’s perfect mix of acoustic and electric piano. Almond’s superb sax solo is perfectly set in a middle section between the hushed vocals of the opening and closing.

“The City” has a short lyric of escape, but quickly gives way to a jazz-tinged instrumental that provides each player a chance to shine. Sutton’s bass flows underneath as Almond takes a sax solo and Eyre vamps on piano, the two occasionally joining one another for to riff. Sutton steps to the front for a short interlude before Almond returns on flute; a few minutes later the song turns heavy with Mark’s low twanging guitar and assorted hand percussion.

The moody “Tramp and the Young Girl” hits blue notes in both its vocal melody and the tragic disposition of its title characters. The bass, electric piano, vibraphone and flute provide superb backing for Mark’s perfectly wrought, jazz-tinged vocal. Things pick up for “Love,” a suite that opens in a renaissance style before transitioning into a percussive, bass- and vibe-led middle section. The song’s vocal is a short, blues should, which leads to an ear-clearing, calling-all-dogs sax solo and a mellower instrumental play out.

What’s truly impressive about this band – aside from the talent of the four players – is its range between songs and within suites. The compositions carry over the ballroom jam of the ‘60s, but tighten them up and expand the instrumental and musical palettes, much as did Traffic, Steely Dan and others. It’s hard to imagine how this album was allowed to fall out of print; even Line’s German reissue disappeared. Varese’s domestic issue augments the original five tracks with a pair of single edits and a four-page booklet that includes liner notes by Jerry McCulley. [©2015 Hyperbolium]

Willie Nile: If I Was a River

WillieNile_IfIWasARiverA New York rocker trades his guitar for piano

Willie Nile’s artistic renaissance continues unabated. Having championed rock ‘n’ roll guitars on his last few albums [1 2 3], he now strips himself down to singer-songwriter roots with his own piano serving as the primary backing for these intimate vocals. The piano brings an entirely different mood to the album than did the guitars, and while Nile’s songs have always been deeply personal, he sings here with introspection instead than proclamation. Rather than readying songs for a stage and an auditorium and an audience, these feel as if they were written to be sung directly to each listener, one-on-one.

Nile is an expressive pianist, and the Steinway Grand on which he recorded the album is an old friend from earlier days at New York’s Record Plant. His affection for this musical partner is detailed in the album’s promotional video, but even more so in the conversation he has with the keys. The piano’s sustain hangs in the air more moodily than that of an electric guitar, and recording without a drummer (or even a click track), frees Nile’s singing to follow the ebbs and flows of his songs. The lyrics display Nile’s social consciousness, particularly in the opening track, but also the way in which he uses ambiguity to leave himself open to interpretation.

“Lost” could be sung either by a lover without his mate or a lapsed believer seeking his forsaken God. Similarly, “The One You Used to Love” could be a call to an ex or a renewal of faith. Nile writes of love and war, lullaby wishes, and on “Lullaby Loon” a sarcastic loathing of just about every kind of music. With the bulk of a full band stripped away, the album becomes a duet between Nile and the piano, supplemented by light touches of guitar, strings and backing vocals. Trading guitar for piano impacts not only the playing and recording, but also the writing and singing, which keeps the songwriting familiar, but the expression new, unexpected and entirely welcome. [©2015 Hyperbolium]

Willie Nile’s Home Page

Mason Summit: Loud Music & Soft Drinks

MasonSummit_LoudMusicAndSoftDrinksSophisticated California pop from Los Angeles prodigy

Los Angeles pop-rock is returning with a vengeance. Matthew Szlachetka’s recent Waits for a Storm conjures Jackson Browne and Bob Welch, and Mason Summit’s second self-produced album suggests Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds era, alongside the ‘80s East Coast work of Chris Stamey. That’s heady company for a 19 year old, but Summit’s something of a prodigy (and a prolific one, at that), laying down electric and acoustic guitars, bass and organ alongside an impressive assemblage that includes producer John McDuffie’s pedal and lap steel, Zander Schloss’ bass, Lynn Coulter and Shawn Nourse’s drums and Carl Byron’s keyboards.

Summit’s got a sweet voice whose high, keening notes may remind you of another aficionado of L.A pop, the Explorers Club’s Jason Brewer; when Summit double-tracks himself, it may remind you of Elliot Smith. Again, impressive company, but unlike most teenagers, Summit’s deeply schooled in a broad range of music and sufficiently self-reflective to have something to say. Brian Wilson had to think back on his teen years from his early 20s, but Summit’s in the thick of puzzling out relationships, developing political ideals and sorting through newly discovered passions. He writes in an authentic teenaged voice that’s sincere and surprisingly polysyllabic. [©2015 Hyperbolium]

Mason Summit’s Home Page

Mark Erelli: Milltowns

MarkErelli_MilltownsA deeply felt tribute to New England singer-songwriter Bill Morrissey

When a song is recorded, its performance is frozen at a point in time that instantly begins to age. But when a song is passed along, it is reborn every time it is performed anew. The same can be said for songwriters: when their lives end, their performances pass into record and memory, but their songs continue to be renewed in the performances of others. And so it is with New England singer-songwriter Bill Morrissey, whose passing in 2011 closed the book on his life as a performer, but whose songs remains alive in the voices of others.

Mark Erelli is one of those voices, and as a disciple of Morrissey, he’s reflected the teacher’s craft in his own work. To repay the debt, Erelli’s recorded an album of Morrissey covers, capped by an original composition that reflects on the bookends of their relationship: the first time they met and the last time they performed together. It’s a bittersweet close to an album of covers that is itself a bittersweet catalog of longing, missed opportunities, farewells, happenstance, wanderlust and resolution that’s sometimes happy, sometimes resigned.

Morrissey’s songs are filled with details that could probably be traced to specific inspirations. He intertwines people, places and things, employing emotions, actions and even geographic details as the seeds of his observations. He steps inside his characters as they observe themselves and others, and distills these thoughts into lyrics whose truth seems to have been latent, waiting to be exposed. His characters struggle with the harsh realities of the Northeast’s declining milltowns, banal jobs, dashed dreams and harrowing reflections of their own mortality.

As drawn by Erelli’s selections from Morrissey’s catalog, love is a restless siren whose call is as likely to be heard departing as it was arriving. But there are bursts of hope, such as the optimism that pours out of “Morrissey Falls in Love at First Sight” and the expectations of “Long Gone.” There’s also humor, albeit of a gallows variety, as “Letter From Heaven” imagines a hereafter where one’s heroes have shucked off their Earthly foibles. Perhaps Erelli imagines that this vision of heaven welcomed the songwriter himself, as the closing elegy “Milltowns” laments the songwriter’s struggle with alcohol.

Erelli’s talent as a musician is magnified by his taste as a producer. Performed and produced in large part by himself in his basement studio, the guitars, dobro, mandolin, harmonica, bass and drums all appear naturally in place, with nothing missing and nothing extra. Even the overdubs of his guest musicians and vocalists sound as if they were added extemporaneously. It’s a mark of his instrumental and studio prowess that the layering sounds so organic, showing absolutely no trace of construction.

The fealty to Morrissey and the craft of his songwriting add up to something much more than a covers album; it’s a personal tribute from someone who knew, worked with and learned directly from the subject. Morrissey’s songs were passed to Erelli in much deeper form than a recording or sheet music, or even a performance; Morrissey’s legitimization of the Northeast as a place from which gritty, honest folk music could spring was a legacy that launched Erelli’s career, and something for which Erelli is obviously deeply grateful. These performances remind us that a songwriter’s songs make an indelible mark on the world as their DNA is passed in an intergenerational chain. [©2014 Hyperbolium]

Mark Erelli’s Home Page
Bill Morrissey’s Songbook

Amy McCarley: Jet Engines

AmyMcCarley_JetEnginesWant, desire and a dose of pragmatic pessimism

It’s little surprise that singer-songwriter Amy McCarley developed an early affection for co-producer Kenny Vaughan’s work with Lucinda Williams. She writes from a similar emotional place as Williams, and her vocals evidence the same sort of moaning world-weariness. She’s at once resigned to and responsible for the outcomes of her decisions, whether it’s a painful morning-after or even more painful personal realization. But even with a history filled with signposts, her tiptoeing gives way to wading and headlong dives, and she often finds herself tangled in others’ webs of emotion and deceit.

McCarley explores the tension between the ties that bind and an urge to escape. She sings of running towards new experience in “Head Out of Town,” but subtly undermines her direction with a revelation in the last verse. She weighs the ache of losing against the emptiness of not playing, and on “Won’t Last Forever” she proves herself a pragmatic pessimist who enjoys the fruits of relationships before their inevitable rot. Like Williams, there’s desire and want in McCarley’s songs, but also a feisty thread of individuality; it’s the relief of the latter against the former that adds personal notes to themes that ring with universal appeal.

Producers Vaughan and George Bradfute draw out McCarley’s varied moods with mixtures of electric and acoustic guitars, bass and drums, ranging from rainy day introspection to upbeat Saturday night carousing. McCarley feeds off the collaboration, setting her vocals deeply into the pocket and letting the music give her lyrics a sympathetic frame. The twangy “Turn the Radio On” recalls the music of Albert Brumley’s gospel classic “Turn Your Radio On,” though its call-to-loving is on a different spiritual plane, and the album’s title track has a reggae undertow in its rhythm. McCarley’s self-titled debut showed that she had the songwriting goods, and with the help of Vaughan and Bradfute she’s found a new level of expression in the studio. [©2014 Hyperbolium]

Amy McCarley’s Home Page

The Electric Mess: House on Fire

ElectricMess_HouseOnFireNew York garage rockers up their attack

New York’s Electric Mess returns with a new album that intensifies their Farfisa-laced mid-60s garage rock with the raucous bombast of the Stooges and Dolls. Esther Crow still spits out her lyrics with the ferocity of a latter-day Paul Pierce, but this time the organ plays from the sidelines as the group’s louder, harder instrumental attack takes center stage. Even when the tempo slows for “She Got Fangs” or the licentious “Lemonade Man,” the ferocity doesn’t dip, and up-tempo numbers like “Beat Skipping Heart” sound as if they’re being sprayed from a high-pressure fire hose. You can still hear the band’s mid-60s roots, but the location has changed from a suburban garage to a downtown squat. [©2014 Hyperbolium]

The Electric Mess’ Home Page

Scruffy the Cat: The Good Goodbye

ScruffyTheCat_TheGoodGoodbyeNot-so-scruffy odds & sods from 1980s indie-roots-rock legends

This late-80s Boston band barely managed to break beyond college radio adoration, but with their catalog back in print alongside this disc of previously unreleased demos, live-in-the-studio performances and unused session tracks, it’s a great opportunity for reappraisal. The group’s 1987 debut, Tiny Days, brought critical praise for its country-tinged Boston rock, while the less scruffy 1989 follow-up, Moons of Jupiter, garnered mixed reactions to its tighter productions and pop sounds. Whether or not the band was actively striving for broader success, this disc of material spanning the years before and after their formal releases demonstrates the many influences and broad aspirations that make them something of a Boston-based analog of NRBQ.

The band’s earliest tracks don’t evidence the overt country twang that would come shortly. “The Burning Cross” has a droning undertow that suggests Boston contemporaries like the Neats, as well as West Coast compatriots in the Paisley Underground. As the band developed, Stona Fitch’s banjo became a dominant flavor as songwriter and vocalist Charlie Chesterman even took to folk-country crooning for “Lover’s Day.” The group’s growing in interest in country sounds was inventively mated to surf harmonies for Leon Payne’s “Lost Highway,” and covers of Larry Williams’ “Slow Down” and Buddy Holly’s “Well… All Right” are given acoustic-roots twists.

The distance traveled from the garage-psych of 1984’s “The Ghost Psych” and the Beau Brummels’ inspired harmonies of “Tonight” to the horn- and organ-lined Memphis soul of 1989’s “Sweet News” isn’t as long as it might seem, and the path feels entirely organic. Though the latter sessions don’t exhibit the youthful abandon of the band’s earlier work, the barn-burning “I Knew That You Would,” powered by Burns Stanfield’s boogie-woogie piano, offers a return to the Boston club rock in which Scruffy steeped, and the closing “The Good Goodbye” shows off how seamlessly the band could combing its influences.

For a group with a small official catalog, their cache of odds & sods is impressive. Even better, Pete Weiss’ mastering of the disparate tape sources has sewn things together into a surprisingly consistent experience. The jump from 1985 (tracks 5-14) to 1989 and beyond (track 15 onward) leaves Scruffy’s commercial era unmined; perhaps nothing of value existed on tape, or the anthologizers felt the previously released recordings spoke best. Either way, what’s here neatly bookends Sony’s recent anthology, and offers a great spin for both Scruffy die-hards and those just seeking very fine 1980s indie-roots-pop. [©2014 Hyperbolium]

Town Without Pity

Few remember – or even knew – that Gene Pitney’s breakthrough hit, “Town Without Pity,” was both the title and title song of a 1961 film. Even more surprisingly, the melody was written by Dimitri Tiomkin, who scored dozens of westerns, five films for Frank Capra (including It’s a Wonderful Life), and composed the score and theme song for Fred Zinneman’s High Noon. He not only wrote the melody for High Noon‘s “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling,” he believed in it enough to buy the rights back and release it as a Frankie Laine single. It was recorded by Tex Ritter for the film and won Tiomkin an academy award for best song.

Tiomkin’s other enduring Western classic is the theme song to the late-50s television show Rawhide, which Frankie Laine also took up the charts. Two years later, Tiomkin wrote the score and title track for “Town Without Pity,” gaining another Oscar nomination, winning a Golden Globe, and giving Gene Pitney his first Top 20 single. Pitney’s recording is included in the film, but the song is also rendered as a jazz instrumental and as a transitional theme. Tiomkin garnered several more Oscar and Golden Globe nominations and awards, but never again cracked the pop or country charts!