Perhaps even better than the original.
Tag Archives: Rock
J.D. Souther: Home by Dawn
Souther’s sole 1980s album reissued with four bonus tracks
After breaking in as part of the Los Angeles scene of the 1970s, Souther retreated from the record racks, releasing only a pair of singles and this lone 1984 album between 1979 and 2008. These mid-80s sessions were helmed by Nashville songwriter and producer David Malloy, with a mid-80s studio sound that would soon establish itself on the country charts – though not for Souther, whose album only lightly brushed the bottom rung of Billboard’s Top 200. It’s not for want of good original material, touching vocals (including an appearance by Linda Ronstadt on “Say You Willâ€) and a timely popped-collar video. Apparently Warner Brothers didn’t know how to market the album, despite the title track having some resonance with the then-current hit “Footloose.â€
That said, the album’s aged reasonably well, with songs and performances that outweigh the period sound. Souther had been listening to a lot of rockabilly prior to making this album, and you can hear the 50s influences beneath the layers of production and digital studio effects. Among the bonus tracks added to Omnivore’s 2016 reissue is a demo of “I’ll Take Care of You†whose vocal is more restrained, yet more impassioned than the album take. Also included is Souther’s duet with Linda Ronstadt on the Urban Cowboy soundtrack’s “Hearts Against the Wind,†and the unreleased session tracks “Little Girl Blue†and “Girls All Over the World.†The bonuses make for a nice upgrade, and sweeten an often overlooked Souther album. [©2016 Hyperbolium] 
Willie Nile: World War Willie
New York rocker on a roll
Last we saw Buffalo, NY rocker Willie Nile, he’d stripped himself of his six-string, and sat down for a more introspective turn at the piano for 2014’s If I Was a River. The declarative rock ‘n’ roll of his recent albums gave way to a more conversational style, both between Nile and the piano, and between Nile, the piano and their listeners. Though only a temporary detour, it proved a valuable addition to Nile’s catalog, and a resting spot to gather himself for another album of highly-charged rock. Now into the latter-half of his 60s, Nile hasn’t lost a thing; one has to wonder if there’s an album in his attic whose music is aging away, Dorian Gray style.
Nile’s rock ‘n’ roll was bred in the 1970s, as a fellow traveler of those who fused the resuscitating spark of punk rock with a reverence for the roots of rock ‘n’ roll and blues. He’s played alongside Springsteen and the original panoply of CBGB acts, and the true-believer banner he hoisted with his 1980 debut still flies just as freely in his fourth decade of music making. Rock ‘n’ roll isn’t mere entertainment for Nile, though it’s certainly entertaining; more deeply, Nile shares Springsteen’s view that music is a redemptive force, and in Nile’s capable hands, it’s an emotional contact sport.
The album opens with a line drawn from teenage years to elder statesman, but it’s nearly superfluous to say in the wake of Nile’s unwavering commitment to rock ‘n’ roll. Rock isn’t Nile’s avocation or occupation (or even pre-occupation), it’s a fundamental tenet that leads to the only halfway tongue-in-cheek “Grandpa Rocks.†And Grandpa does rock. Hard. But he also takes it down to a knowing ballad for “Runaway Girl,†with lovely castanets (courtesy of Patricia Vonne) that echo Mink DeVille channeling the Brill Building. He breaks down to the blues for “Bad Boy†and the humorous social critique, “Citibank Nile,†and free associates a Dylan-esque catalog of unusual companions for the title track.
The free-spiritedness continues with the rockabilly “Hell Yeah,†and Nile’s love of all things music comes in a pair of tributes: Levon Helm is remembered in the original “When Levon Sings,†and fellow New York rocker Lou Reed in the album-closing cover of “Sweet Jane.†The latter builds to an anthem, and rings especially true as Nile sings “me, I’m in a rock ‘n’ roll band.†Thirty-six years after his debut, that membership, both in his exceptional band and in the larger brotherhood of rock ‘n’ roll, still seems to fulfill Nile’s deepest need. Lucky for us, he’s willing to share his personal fountain of youth. [©2016 Hyperbolium]
Bon Scott: Early Years 1967-1972
Bon Scott’s pre-AC/DC pop, rock and soul sides
Bon Scott was so compelling as the howling front-man of AC/DC that it’s nearly impossible to imagine the more tender pop vocals of his earlier years. Compiled here are twenty-two tracks that Scott recorded with his earlier groups, The Valentines and Fraternity, in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Highlights include an Everlys-ish take on Phil Spector’s “To Know Him is to Love Him,” a soulful version of Arthur Alexander’s “Every Day I Have to Cry,” covers of the Small Faces, Soft Machine and Steppenwolf, and songs from the Easybeats’ Vanda & Young.
Hints of Scott’s distinctive tone can be heard, but the material, vocals and arrangements are drawn from the pop, rock and soul music of their times, rather than the hard-rock of AC/DC. By the time the Scott joined Fraternity in 1970, his more familiar bluesy phrasings began to emerge, but not yet with the full-blown leer he’d bring to AC/DC. Diehard fans will enjoy hearing Scott’s evolution towards his famous style, as will those interested in late ’60s pop and early ’70s blues-rock. [©2016 Hyperbolium]
Lee Harvey Osmond: Beautiful Scars
Coming to grips with the experiences that define you
Acid-folk artist Tom Wilson and producer Michael Timmins (Cowboy Junkies) have conjured a dark electric sound for Wilson’s third album under the Lee Harvey Osmond name. Timmins’ production layers piano and guitar over a heavy bottom end, creating a musically cavernous space in which Wilson touches upon the poetic delivery of Leonard Cohen, the downtown sound of Tom Waits, and the more frightening regions of Captain Beefheart’s growl. Wilson is hypnotic as he stretches out over rhythm-rich tracks of drums and bass, pushed along by reeds and guitar, and punctuated by echos, reverb and stabs of backward guitar.
The acid and folk of acid-folk are heard back to back in “Oh the Gods†and “Dreams Come and Go,†as the spacey guitars and close-miked vocal of the former give way to the acoustic picking of the latter. The contrast is stark, no doubt purposely so, but with a blue mood that ties the songs together. The closing couplet of “Black Spruce†and “Bottom of Our Love†offers the same dynamic, the former expanding into a flute and blues jam, and the latter a weary acoustic lament. It’s the sort of contrast Led Zeppelin employed, though with vocals whose power is in their reserve rather than their ostentation.
“Loser Without Your Love†is both assured and distracted as it’s forced to admit “I’m just a loser without your love… I guess.†The vocal ellipsis doubts the statement’s sincerity, and the song’s instrumental playout leaves time for additional pondering. It’s a great opening to an album whose performance is comfortable with its confessions, if not always certain of their truth. Echo and distortion on the guitars and voices balance the supple rhythm grooves, and the acoustic bass and vibraphone of “Blue Moon Drive†soothe cool, whispered vocals that still manage to ring with passion.
Wilson doesn’t easily let go of his memories, seeming to dangle at the mercy of what was rather than what is or what could be. He pulls at his chains but can’t break free, a struggle echoed in the balance of insinuating music beds and shocks of backwards guitar. The disintegration of “Hey Hey Hey†is as much the lives of two individuals as of their pairing, and the conciliatory “How Does it Feel†has the subversive low notes of Lee Hazlewood. In his mid-50s, Wilson seems to have realized that it may be too late to remake himself, but it’s the right time to get comfortable with the scars that makes him who he is. [©2016 Hyperbolium]
Brett Harris: Up in the Air
Super sophomore release from a pop acolyte
Touring as a member of the dBs and the Big Star Third tribute cast, Harris had the opportunity to spend time making music with (and playing the music of) many of pop’s purest purveyors. His second full-length album is indebted to the Beatles, particularly on the Revolver-esque opener “End of the Rope†and the descending line of “Shadetree,†but you can also hear the influence of the dBs, Big Star, Badfinger and many others throughout the album. It’s not a period piece, but Harris makes no attempt to hide his musical lineage. The clarinet-led breakdown of “Lies†echoes the music hall influences that also struck Paul McCartney and Ray Davies, and the crooned vocal of “Out of the Blue†suggests Nilsson and Eric Carmen.
Harris’ southern connections surface in the soulful horns of side one’s closer (that’s right, the CD divides the song list into two five-song halves) “High Times,†sounding like something the Box Tops would have recorded for a B-side. The vibe continues in the organ lined “Rumor,†with sophisticated drumming and a lonely trumpet adding dramatic touches. You can continue to spot influences (early-70s Fleetwood Mac on the coincidentally named “Rumor,†and Todd Rundgren on the closing “Spanish Mossâ€), but Harris runs through his musical gears so smoothly as to turn his antecedents into jazz-like quotes rather than whole-cloth sources. The shadings have grown finer and more diverse in the six years since his debut, but the craft has been in place since Man of Few Words hit the racks in 2010.
Harris doesn’t often write directly from life, but he dips into personal heartbreak and indecision for “Lies,†singing memorable lyrics (“seems my mind’s made up, but my heart it feels so hollow, the unintended consequence of bitter pills I had to swallowâ€) with a Dylan-y rasp. Even without specific biographical details, Harris’ songs are clearly rooted in experience as he sings of damaging suspicions, healing hearts stumbling onto hope and cautious entry into new relationships. The Durham-area backing musicians are as talented and well-schooled as Harris himself, providing arrangements that are deep and surprising, such as the backwards guitar solo layered on the strings and bass of “Summer Night.†Harris has a lot of fans – famous and otherwise – and they’ll be happy to find their outsized expectations fulfilled by this terrific album. [©2016 Hyperbolium]
Brian Ritchey: Bordeaux
Following Justin Townes Earle’s advice to “write what you knowâ€
Nashvillian Brian Ritchey has been something of a chameleon as he’s rambled through Americana (E.P.), garage pop and singer-songwriter crooning (If I Were a Painter), and even an ambitious concept album (No Way Out of This House). It’s a sophisticated. disparate catalog threaded with a Southern sensibility that links to this latest full-length release. His earlier notes of Americana, garage blues, soul and singer-songwriter are here, alongside twangier bits of country and hummable pop-rock, but the arrangements are more straightforward and more quickly ingratiating than his last outing.
The songs suggest the Band (“Victory Marchâ€), canyon country (“We’re Just Wrongâ€), Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys (the clip-clop waltz time of “Someone Elseâ€) and even Screaming Jay Hawkins (“Rest My Headâ€). Ritchey sings of yearning, getting by, breaking away and moving on, and his downbeat topics will surprise those who first latch onto his incredibly hummable hooks. The album strikes defiant notes with “I’m Not Gone†and “Not Today,†but Ritchey more often seems to grapple with a world he can only react to rather than impact, turning autobiographical seeds into compelling vignettes that could just as easily be the listener’s truth as they are the singer’s. [©2016 Hyperbolium]
Queen of Jeans: EP
This Philadelphia quartet’s first two tracks (“Dance (Get Off Your Ass)” and “Rollerdyke“) are now expanded with four additions into a eponymous EP, streamable below, downloadable from Bandcamp, and buyable as a vinyl 12″ from Third Uncle. The new songs are just as mesmerizing in their nods to 1960s girl groups and lush 1990s alternatives run through a dreamy DIY psych aesthetic. Great stuff!
And while you’re here, check out their live set for WXPN:
Bob Woodruff: The Year We Tried to Kill the Pain
A 1990s Nashville artist finds his soul down a rough road
Singer-songwriter Bob Woodruff garnered good notices for his mid-90s major label country albums Dreams & Saturday Nights and Desire Road, and then fell largely out of sight. He finally resurfaced for an indie album in 2011, and recorded and released the original version of this album in Sweden in 2013. Luckily, Woodruff’s soul- and country-tinged rock is timeless, and a 2016 reintroduction to this release is as welcome as the less-widely circulated first blush three years ago. Returning to music after several years of hard living, Woodruff not only sounds seasoned, but full of life experience to funnel into both the words and melodic tone of his songs.
As good as Woodruff’s originals are – and we’ll get to those in a minute – his slow, country-soul crawl through the Supremes’ “Stop in the Name of Love†is revelatory. The song’s opening guitar figure gives no clue as to what’s coming, but as Woodruff launches into the lyric’s plea with a slight hitch in his voice, the guitar turns to chords whose familiarity will provoke the listener’s memory. The tempo is similar to Jonell Mosser’s cover from the film Hope Floats, but underlined by Clas Olofsson’s pedal steel, Woodruff’s vocal mourns a relationship that’s already finished, rather than one that might be saved through confrontation. Among the song’s many varied renditions, this one’s a tour de force.
Woodruff sounds a bit like Bob Delevante, and a bit like Willie Nile, pulling in rock, country, soul and blues influences that range from the Byrdsian “I’m the Train†to the New Orleans funk “Bayou Girl†to the crooned southern soul “There’s Something There.†The opening “I Didn’t Know†strikes a tone of recovery, with happy memories reawakened by a second chance. The title song recounts rougher years, resolving to remember the past without getting stuck in its decaying trajectory. Woodruff longs for connection to others, to a better self, to a past whose fissures were of his own making, and most of all, to the salvation of hope.
The path from self-pity to self-examination to self-confidence is drawn in the personal reckoning of “So Many Teardrops,†with a breakdown that keys the song’s emotional turn, and the album closes with an impromptu live performance of the wishful “If I Were Your Man.†One might think the album’s material is solely a product of Woodruff’s wilderness years, but several of the songs, including the title track, are drawn from his earlier albums. The repurposed material is transformed by its distance from ‘90s Nashville, freed from the confines of the city’s sound. This is the record Woodruff had in him twenty years ago, but not yet the miles on his soul or the independent distribution to deliver. [©2016 Hyperbolium]
Roy Orbison: One of the Lonely Ones
Mysteriously unreleased 1969 album has several treasures
With an artist of Roy Orbison’s stature, it’s hard to imagine how a fully finished album could simply slip through the cracks of a major label’s release machinery. But such is the case for this 1969 set, which sat in the vaults unheard by the public for nearly fifty years. Released in conjunction with an exhaustive 13-disc box set of Orbison’s MGM albums and singles, one might get the impression that his output was simply too much for the market to handle, but a closer look at this period suggests MGM was losing faith in Orbison’s commercial potential. At the time this album was shelved, 1967’s Cry Softly for the Lonely One had failed to chart, its title single had failed to crack the Top 40, and 1968 found Orbison retreating from the road while he recovered from the death of his two oldest sons.
By early 1969 Orbison was back in the studio, recording the material that would become this unissued album. He paused the sessions for a Spring tour, and reconvened in Summer to finish an album that should have been released in November. And then… nothing. MGM sat on the album, and waited until the next year to release the covers set, Hank Williams the Roy Orbison Way. MGM whiffed again the same year by failing to release The Big O in the US, adding to the picture of a label that no longer believed in its artist. But as both the box set and this newly released album confirm, Orbison’s MGM catalog is filled with excellent, if not always hit single material. In light of the quality, Orbison’s contention that his releases weren’t promoted properly (or, in several cases, actually released) weighs heavily.
One of the Lonely Ones combines catchy original material (co-written with Bill Dees), with covers of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Mickey Newbury and Don Gibson. Like many of Orbison’s MGM albums, there are songs that might have been hits, just not in the year they were released. The wounded falsetto of “Laurie†would have done well in 1963-4, but was out of time for 1969. The personal context in which Orbison sang the title track elevates its drama, and with Elvis having charted “If I Can Dream,†one is left to wonder how this would have fared as a single. Same for “Give Up,†which could have found room on the country chart. This is among the better albums Orbison’s recorded for MGM, and a welcome addition to his legacy. [©2016 Hyperbolium]