Tag Archives: Rock

Jonny: Jonny

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Teenage Fanclub meets Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci

Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s Euros Childs have more melodicism in the tip of their respective pinkies than most musicians create in their entire careers. Paired together for their first full-length collaboration, the results are a brilliantly crafted cocktail of their respective bands, ‘60s British invasion and garage pop, canyon country, ‘70s power pop, pub and light rock, and ‘80s post-punk psychedelia. Like XTC’s Dukes of Stratosphear, there’s an element of spot-the-influence here, but the references are more fully digested and fleeting: a vocal harmony that suggests Curt Boettcher, CS&N or America, a melody hook that recalls the Kasnetz-Katz bubblegum factory, a stomping rhythm you’d have heard from Brisnley Schwarz, or an organ riff that lodges the Monkees in your ear.

The opening “Wich is Wich” would have made a terrific theme song to an H.R. Pufnstuf spin-off, and the nearly eleven-minute “Cave Dance” could be, for those who remember that Pufnstuf lived in a cave, both a stoneage dance sensation and a low-key escape from the powers of Witchiepoo. Unsurprisingly, the pair create buoyant, winsome music, but with just enough melancholy and angst to keep the sweetness from dissolving your teeth. Even the album’s first single, “Candyfloss,” crosses its lyrical dream woman in a duet vocal whose Motors-like harmony is laden with discontent. There are a few lesser tunes, but they quickly disappear as you indulge in the yearning of “Circling the Sun” and “I Want to Be Around,” tap your toe to the country-inspired “I’ll Make Her My Best Friend,” and glory in the duo’s irresistible melodies. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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Apex Manor: The Year of Magical Drinking

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A power-pop singer/songwriter recovers from a not-so-magical year

There’s something exciting happening in Los Angeles; singer/songwriters like Bleu and Adam Marsland are breaking out once again, but instead of rolling down from the communal experience of the canyon, they’re holing up in homes and hobby studios. Such was the inspiration for former Broken West guitarist/vocalist Ross Flournoy, whose relocation to Pasadena after a band breakup severed his daily musical connection, and left him casting about for direction. Amid writer’s block and a daily beer habit, his lifesaver was an NPR song competition that afforded only a weekend to write, record and submit a song. The external pressure turned out to be just what he needed, documenting his denial, admission, inventory, acceptance and recovery as a songwriter in “Under the Gun.” With one under his belt, dozens more tumbled forth, some written alone, some with Adam Vine.

Apex Minor on record – Flournoy and former bandmate Brian Whelan, along with help from Andy Creighton, Derek Brown, Rob Douglass and Dan Iead – is reminiscent of Broken West, similarly propulsive and tuneful, but warmer and looser. The album begins at Flournoy’s nadir, looking up from the bottom of a half-drunk mason jar in “Southern Decline.” Producer Dan Long layers on buzzing rhythm guitars, demonstrating just how deeply Flournoy was buried in depression. His salvation as a songwriter leads to emotional re-emergence, self-awareness and on “I Know These Waters Well,” the twelfth-step desire to pass along new found wisdom. The album alternates rave-ups and soulful ballads, with Flournoy’s voice particularly expressive on the latter. Despite the detour, Apex Manor marks a terrific new phase, predicted by the Broken West, but ignited by a fresh start. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Under the Gun
Apex Manor’s Home Page
Apex Manor’s MySpace Page

Kate Jacobs: Home Game

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A warm, musical letter from home

The girlishness in Kate Jacobs’ voice has always been perplexing. She sounds relaxed navigating the bossa-nova of “On My Monitor,” gliding along Astrud Gilberto-cool as she recounts the news of a young girl’s abduction; the everydayness of her delivery underlines the bland reaction one develops to the incessant nature of Internet-delivered instant alerts. Only at song’s end, as Jacob recoils from the constant provocation, does she react. But her reaction is to the news assault rather than the human one. Her own children take center stage for “All the Time in the World” and the album’s title track, but though her words of those of a mother, her voice retains its young tone. She continues to sound youthful as she cranks up the Kirsty MacColl-styled pop-rock “Make Him Smile,” and slides into the role of a jazz chanteuse for the ballad “A Sligo Lad.”

Six years since her last album, itself the product of a six-year hiatus during which she married and had children, Jacobs wrestles with the plenty of family life and the absence of solitary time, mutual attraction that doesn’t live up to the storybooks, and the ways in which children make time both stop and race. She’s a keen observer of her own life, dearly missing her years as a touring musician in “Rey Ordonez,” wistfully remembering the contrast of a cramped touring van and the imagination’s space of a baseball game on the radio. She recounts the joys and trials of parenting and marriage, but most deeply savors the rest that finally comes at the end of the day. Her longtime musical partner, Dave Schramm, adds blossoming notes of dobro, and surrounds Jacobs’ with guitars, drums, strings and backing vocals that turn her lyrics into a warm letter from a dear friend. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Rey Ordonez
Kate Jacobs’ Home Page

The Flamin’ Groovies: Slow Death

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The Flamin’ Groovies’ wilderness years (1971-73)

These ten tracks help fill in the five year gap between Roy Loney’s departure from the Flamin’ Groovies in 1971 (following the release of Teenage Head) and the band’s re-emergence in a Cyril Jordan-led configuration with the Dave Edmunds-produced Shake Some Action in 1976. In between the band took on singer/guitarist Chris Wilson and released the song “Slow Death” in 1972. It turns out that they recorded several more demos, including several Jordan-Wilson originals and a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash,” as heard on this collection’s first six tracks. Everyone turned up their instruments to eleven and thrashed, the bass was moved forward, the drums pushed the tempos, and the guitars and cymbals created an ear-piercing wall of sound that Chris Wilson still managed to break through with his high pitched wailing. A cover of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” is drawn from a 1972 live television appearance, and another pair of demos include an early version of the group’s iconic “Shake Some Action” that features layered acoustic guitar and more Byrd-like harmony vocals than the better-known album track. The disc closes with a loud and loose cover of Freddie Cannon’s “Tallahassee Lassie,” recorded at the same Rockfield Studio in which the band would later record their mid-70s classics. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Wanda Jackson: The Party Ain’t Over

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Jack White overwhelms a still-fiery Wanda Jackson

It’s a mark of Wanda Jackson’s enduring vocal fire that the uniqueness of her voice can be heard through the bombast with which producer Jack White has surrounded her. As on her earliest recordings, Jackson’s voice hangs half-way between girlish and womanly, the giggle of the former adding to the experience of the latter. But track after track, Jackson’s dwarfed by White’s production, overwhelming her substantial charms with cacophonous outbursts and circus-band theatrics that shrink, rather than magnify the vocalist’s stature. The horns sound like a drunk commandeering the microphone at a wedding, hailing themselves rather than punctuating the emotion of Jackson’s vocals. The voice processing sounds cold and artificial and White’s guitar, particularly on covers of “Shakin’ All Over” and “Nervous Breakdown,” sounds more like a Woodstock freakout than something to complement the queen of rockabilly. White finally gives in on the closing cover of Jimmie Rodgers “Blue Yodel #6,” dismissing the band, pulling out his acoustic, and giving both his guitar playing and Jackson’s impassioned vocal some room to roam. Jack White’s fans may very well love this album, as it seems to be more about him than about his vocalist. With any luck this will lead new listeners to Jackson’s magnificent catalog (check out Ace’s Queen of Rockabilly for an overview of her rockin’ side); those who joined the bandwagon decades ago may find the basic four-piece on her previous album, I Remember Elvis, the all-star salute of Heart Trouble, or Jackson’s earlier reintroduction on Rosie Flores’ Rockabilly Filly, more to their liking. The rock ‘n’ roll combos of these earlier albums generate more excitement – by shining their light on Jackson – than White does with more players and higher volume. Wanda Jackson’s still got it, but Jack White doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Wanda Jackson’s Home Page

The Avalanches: Ski Surfin’

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1960s L.A. studio players cut some rockin’ instrumentals

The Avalanches were a one-off studio group formed around Los Angeles studio players Billy Strange and Tommy Tedesco on guitar, future Bread main-man David Gates on bass, and legendary Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine. The original instrumentals offered here (in addition to the themed covers, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and “Winter Wonderland”) are the sort of studio rockers that populated dozens of mid-60s albums and exploitation film soundtracks. Strange and Tedesco blaze away in their respective twangy and fuzz-soaked styles, and the rhythm section burns down the slopes. There’s little here that’s really surf music, aside from a few moments of half-hearted staccato picking; the occasional jabs of pedal steel suggest Alvino Rey and the electric piano leans to the soul rave-ups of Ray Charles. But mostly this sounds like incidental music from a low-budget AIP teen-film. And that’s a complement. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Teenage Fanclub meets Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci

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PRESS RELEASE

Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub) and Euros Childs (Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci) are pleased to announce details of their debut album together as Jonny. Inter-twining the musical DNA of two of Britain’s most gifted songwriters, Jonny’s debut album proclaims the advent of an irresistibly infectious new strain of psychedelic pop. The self-titled, co-written album will be released via digital download on February 1st and in stores on April 12.

Blake’s Teenage Fanclub and Childs’ Gorky’s toured together in 1997, and when Blake contributed guitar and vocal harmonies to Gorky’s bitter-sweet How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart in 2001, Euros remembers “it just felt like he was part of the band… from that point on it always felt like we might do something together in the future, it just took a few years to actually get it organized”. Euros eventually made it up to Norman’s house in Glasgow in 2006 to record “what we thought was an EP”, and the duo played a handful of rapturously received live shows, before finally getting down to putting a whole album together early in 2010.

The album artwork (image above) is also revealed to be the inspiration behind their unusual name. Blake came across the image on a friend’s website “and thought it would make a great record sleeve… and name for a band.” “Sleeve first, band-name after”, confirms Childs, “that’s always the best way.”

To kick things off, Jonny are giving away a free, four-track download EP of non-album songs.

MP3 | Gloria
MP3 | Beach Party
MP3 | Continental
MP3 | Michaelangelo

Jan and Dean: Surf City and Other Swingin’ Cities

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Take a road trip with Jan & Dean

As great as are the singles (1963’s “Surf City” and “Honolulu Lulu”), Jan & Dean’s first concept album doesn’t always represent their most interesting or inventive work. Heavy on covers that pale in comparison to the originals, the duo’s nasally voices weren’t well-suited to Rodgers & Hart’s “Manhattan” or Tony Bennett’s classic “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Still, Jan Berry’s true stereo production is excellent, and there are some unusual touches in his arrangements – like fuzz guitar played against violins – that are oddly compelling. They manage to rock Freddy Cannon’s “Tallahassee Lassie” in a sun-bleached West Coast sort of way, and fare nicely with the nostalgic novelty “Philadelphia, PA” the swinging cha cha of Chuck Berry’s “You Came a Long Way from St. Louis,” and the go-go closer “Soul City.” [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Various Artists: San Francisco Roots

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Mid-60s San Francisco rock and pop from the Autumn label

This is a reissue of a 1968 Vault Records LP that anthologized mid-60s tracks from San Francisco’s Autumn Records. The Beau Brummels, the label’s biggest stars, sing four tracks, including the stellar “Don’t Talk to Strangers” and “Sad Little Girl.” Superstar-in-waiting Grace Slick sings lead on the Great Society’s pre-Jefferson Airplane version of “Somebody to Love” and provides background wails on “Free Advice.” The Mojo Men, Vejtables and Tikis offer up great pop-rock tracks, but the set’s gem is the Knight Riders garage-rock “I.” This collection doesn’t match the depth of Big Beat’s out-of-print Dance With Me: The Autumn Teen Sound, but it’s a good start for those who want a taste of San Francisco’s mid-60s teen scene. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]