Tag Archives: Rock

Perhapst: Perhapst

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perhapst_perhapstTerrific pop-rock with bubblegum hooks

With the release of this solo album you can now add former Dharma Bum and current Decemberist John Moen to the list of singing drummers, somewhere between Tommy Lee and Country Dick Montana. Moen actually plays just about everything here, supplemented by a few instrumental contributions by Eric Lovre (Dharma Bums) and Stephen Malkmus (Pavement, Jicks). Moen sings in a high sing-song croon that sounds at turns like David Gilmour, Speedy Keene or a more languid version of Ray Davies. His music mixes the hooks of bubblegum and glitter-rock with the vibes of Meddle-era Pink Floyd (ala “San Tropez”), 70s UK acts like Marmalade, Stealers Wheel and Badfinger, and modern revivalists like the Pooh Sticks and Teenage Fanclub. The productions are very tight, as one would expect from a one-man overdubbing band with a drummer at its core. The basic guitar-bass-and-drums are augmented by touches of space-rock, grunge, country, keyboards, autoharp, harmonica and backing vocals. Moen’s lyrics are often difficult to discern from his stylized vocals, and the passages that come through are generally inscrutable. Much like listening to REM, you’ll find yourself compelled to sing along, happily making up mondegreens and frequently having no idea what they mean. The background “na na na’s” speak for themselves, of course. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Incense Cone
Perhapst’s MySpace Page

Adam Marsland: Daylight Kissing Night – Adam Marsland’s Greatest Hits

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adammarsland_daylightkissingnightSophisticated pop-rock from former Cockeyed Ghost leader

Adam Marsland and his former band Cockeyed Ghost were serious road warriors throughout the latter half of the 1990s, performing hundreds of shows a year and recording four albums between 1996 and 2000. When the band came to an end, Marsland carried on as a solo act, touring with his guitar and releasing a pair of albums under his own name. But even with a strong back catalog and a Rolodex full of contacts, Marsland finally surrendered to the grind of the itinerant indie musician in 2004. He stopped writing but kept playing and arranging, recorded the tribute album Long Promised Road: Songs of Dennis & Carl Wilson, and subsequently served as the musical director for the Beach Boys’ October 2008 tribute to Carl Wilson at the Roxy in Los Angeles.

Marsland reignited his recording career with the release of this bargain-priced set that distills his catalog to twenty songs spanning both Cockeyed Ghost and his solo releases. He’s touched up a few tracks and re-recorded a few more to even out a dozen years of instruments, studios, musicians and producers. Mastering engineer Earle Mankey gave the collection a final polish, and the results sound remarkably holistic. Long time fans will hear the songs as cherry-picked from various phases of Marsland’s career, but those new to the catalog will be impressed with how smoothly these tracks knit together. Marsland’s a clever writer, in the vein of Ben Folds and Ben Vaughn, and his music spans pop and rock with underpinnings of soul. This isn’t exactly power pop (not nearly enough broken hearts), but there’s plenty of chime in the guitars and hooks in the melodies.

The opening “My Kickass Life” could easily succumb to jokey sarcasm, but Marsland sings instead of the satisfaction found in the mistakes that have shaped him. The flipside of that contentment include the low point of solo touring, “I Can’t Do This Anymore,” and the fictional musician abandoning his adopted California in “Ludlow 6:18.” The latter may also be the tail end of the fleeing protagonist of “Disappear.” Marsland often throws listeners a curveball by matching lyrics of depression and ennui to chipper melodies that suggest things aren’t as bad as the words claim. Not so with “Ginna Ling,” whose dark twist cuts through the frothy sing-songy pop, and whose chorus changes meaning mid-song. The existential angst of “The Foghorn,” a song based on contemplations of a parent’s mortality, is even more straightforward.

Marsland’s affection for the Wilson brothers is evident throughout, but particularly in “The Fates Cry Foul,” which sounds like a modern-day Brian Wilson tune, and the Beach Boys-styled vocal harmonies of “Portland.” The high harmonies of “Big Big Yeah” borrow a page from Jan & Dean and add a spark to this wonderfully sarcastic song about disposable buzz bands. All in all, this is a good introduction to an artist whose acclaim should be wider, and a great way to catch up before Marsland unleashes a new album currently projected for March 2009. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Ginna Ling
Adam Marsland’s Home Page
Adam Marsland’s MySpace Page

Big Daddy: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

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bigdaddy_sgtpeppersSgt. Pepper as originally envisioned in 1959

Big Daddy is a retro doo-wop group that first appeared in 1983 with their debut What Really Happened to the Band of ’59. The band’s fictional backstory involved an aborted USO tour of Vietnam that resulted in their being held captive through the ‘60s and ‘70s. Given only sheet music to work from, they spent the years applying their ‘50s stylings to contemporary songs. Their debut featured ‘70s and ‘80s hits cleverly reworked in the style of well-known 1950s acts. Barry Manilow’s “I Wrote the Songs” was taken up-tempo in tribute to Danny and the Juniors’ “At the Hop,” Rick James’ “Super Freak” was given an Everly Brothers harmony treatment, The Cars’ “Just What I Needed” is mellowed with the sound of the Fleetwoods’ “Come Softly to Me,” and Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” is sung as a cappella street corner doo-wop. The new arrangements were impressive in their own right, but the group’s musical talents made the results both terrific novelties and surprisingly listenable music.

Additional albums in 1985 (Meanwhile… Back in the States) and 1991 (Cutting Their Own Groove) extended the joke by mashing up Bruce Springsteen with Pat Boone, the Talking Heads with Harry Belafonte, Dire Straits with Tennessee Ernie Ford, and A Taste of Honey (or Kyu Sakamoto, originally) with the Beach Boys. As on their debut, the depth of the group’s imagination and the quality of their musicianship merited listening past the novelty. In 1992 the band waxed their final album, a tour de force recreation of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as if it had been waxed in the late ‘50s. In place of the fab four’s psychedelia you get the title tune as it would have been rendered by the Coasters, “With a Little Help From My Friends” as crooned by Johnny Mathis, “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” as a Jerry Lee Lewis barn burner, “Lovely Rita” given the Bo Diddley beat of Elvis’ “His Latest Flame,” and a Freddy Canon-styled, sound effects-filled take on “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.”

There’s sax-lined doo-wop, Dion-inspired braggadocio, Spector-styled baion beats, beatnik poetry, baritone-voiced R&B, a cappella jazz vocalizing, and the album closes with a brilliant Buddy Holly styled recreation of “A Day in the Life” that blends “Peggy Sue” and “Everyday” into Lennon and McCartney’s individual sections of the original. The piano sustain of the Beatles’ original is given over to the descending sound of the music dying. Unfortunately, only two of Big Daddy’s original albums ever made it to CD, along with a greatest hits collection, and all are currently out of print. You can find them on the secondary market, though, and they’re all worth the hunt. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Ben Vaughn: Vaughn Sings Vaughn, Vol. 2

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benvaughn_vaughnsingsvaughnvol2Witty songwriter’s second volume of self covers

Vaughn is most widely known for his compositional contributions to television’s “3rd Rock From the Sun” and “That ’70s Show,” and from well-known covers of his songs by Marshall Crenshaw (“I’m Sorry (But So is Brenda Lee)”) and The Morells (“The Man Who Has Everything”). Liner note readers will also recognize his name from production work he’s performed for an array of artist that spans Charlie Feathers, Arthur Alexander, Ween, and Los Straitjackets. Ironically, his own carefully rendered recordings, starting with 1985’s The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn and running through 2006’s Designs in Music mostly remain the province of dedicated fans. His `80s and ’90s releases with the Ben Vaughn Combo are a treasure trove of `60s style, clever lyrics, droll vocals, AM radio hooks and, ultimately, a surprising amount of emotion for a songwriter whose tongue is usually found in his cheek.

This 2007 volume is the second in a series documenting Vaughn’s quixotic journey to cover all his own songs. Included are songs he’s recorded himself, songs he’s given to others, and a sprinkle of songs that never made it to commercial release. In addition to the time-shift of a mature songwriter reconsidering his earlier works, the use of a single band (Vaughn’s current working group, the Ben Vaughn Desert Classic) lends coherence to these songs that an anthology of their original versions couldn’t deliver. Vaughn’s revisited material in the past, reworking a few songs for 1992’s Mood Swings that he felt hadn’t previously reached their full potential, but never has he taken such a methodical tour of his own catalog. This time out he revisits material from 1988’s Blows Your Mind, 1990’s Dressed in Black, 1992’s Mood Swings, 1995’s Instrumental Stylings, 2002’s Glasgow Time, and the rare Swedish compilation album Hit the Hay, Vol. 3.

Included among the selections here is a helping of Vaughn’s truth-through-humor, including the all-too-feeling “Too Sensitive for this World” and the vindictively mending broken heart of “She’s Your Problem Now.” The former misses the soulful backing vocals of its earlier incarnation, the latter sounds more emotionally worn than the original. More buoyant are Vaughn’s ode to being in the band, “Rhythm Guitar,” the rockabilly love song “Hold Your Peace,” and the romantic testimonial “Carved in Stone.” Vaughn writes with the same sort of sincerity as Jonathan Richman, but where Richman exults in childlike wonder, Vaughn writes of the joys and heartbreaks that start turning up in one’s twenties. That he’s been able to hold on to the passion of those feelings is a testament to their strength as formative building blocks.

In revisiting earlier works, Vaughn takes the opportunity to reapply his ever-developing musical sensibility to previous creations. It’s like a talented touch-up artist reworking an early photo: the results aren’t as arresting as the first exposure, but the modulations reveal new aspects of the original composition, the path taken in the interim, and the artist’s current state. These fine shades will mostly enrich Vaughn’s longtime fans (as will the songs that appear to be introduced here for the first time). Those new to Vaughn’s catalog will get a good cross-section of witty pop-craft, but without the sparks that accompany the originals. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Ben Vaughn’s Home Page

Steve Poltz: Unraveling

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stevepoltz_unravelingThe odds ‘n’ sods of “Traveling”

These eleven tracks, available for download via the Internet or on CD at Poltz’s shows, are the quirkier flipside of Poltz’s recent album Traveling. It’s as though the singer-songwriter worked through darker emotions with therepeutic expression and broadened soundscapes on his way to the more conventional sounds offered on Traveling. This set a mixed bag rather than a polished album, veering from the King Kong stomp of the opener’s horrified look at war to the psychotically genteel kidnapping and murder of “Tied Down.” There are Pogues-like waltzes of rough characters, discordant string-lined confessions, celebratory ditties, impressionistic lullabies and dreamscapes, contented love songs, human travelogues, and an ornate search for forgiveness, “Once Again,” that’s the album’s most traditional tune. Poltz’s fans will enjoy this unfiltered peek into the loose ends of the artist’s imagination, but those new to the catalog should start with the more evenly tempered Traveling. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Hear “Bombs”
Hear “Once Again”
Steve Poltz’s Home Page

Dennis Wilson: Pacific Ocean Blue (Legacy Edition)

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denniswilson_pacificoceanblueRoyal reissue of first Beach Boys solo release

As a drummer, harmony vocalist and occasional songwriter, Dennis Wilson wasn’t the obvious member of the Beach Boys to be first to market with a solo album. But with this 1977 release he stepped outside the shadow of his brother Brian and showed off surprising. These rock productions, thick with guitars, drums, keyboards and orchestration, combine his legacy as a part of Brian Wilson’s troupe, along with influences of West Coast collaborators like Gary Usher and visionaries like Curt Boettcher. Interestingly, by the time Wilson completed the album in 1976, the sounds upon which he was weaned were giving way to rootsier singer-songwriter introspection and more bombastic arena rock. Both of those flavors can also be heard here, the former in Wilson’s introspective lyrics, and the latter in the grandiosity of the productions.

There’s a sophistication to this solo effort that sets it apart from contemporaneous work by the Beach Boys, who in 1977 were still lyrically in thrall of Brian Wilson’s childlike wonder. By this point Dennis Wilson’s ragged voice was no match for his brothers’, but he made canny choices: what to sing, how to sing it and how to surround himself with instrumentation. As other reviewers have noted, Dennis Wilson’s rasp is an acquired taste, and can be wearying at album length, but there’s no denying the feeling in his vocals or his commitment to the lyrics. Emotionally and sonically this is an album both of its time and of the times in which Wilson grew up as an artist, and the palpable air of depletion is heart-wrenching in contrast to the lyrical optimism. The album can be a wearying spin beginning to end, but the individual tracks make for very great surprises in a mix.

Legacy’s deluxe reissue is one of the best they’ve ever put together in this series. In addition to superbly remastered versions of the album’s original dozen tracks, disc one is filled out with four previously unreleased items, and disc two contains sixteen tracks from Wilson’s unfinished second album, Bambu. Wilson’s voice was spent and at times tuneless as he recorded the follow-on tracks, making Bambu even more of an acquired taste than POB. Much of the bonus material has circulated on bootlegs, but this is its first official release in full master tape fidelity. The quad-fold cardboard slipcase includes a 40-page booklet stuffed with photos, an essay by Ben Edmonds, a Dennis Wilson artistic chronology, song and musician credits, and lyrics. Disc one also features a PDF that includes a 16-page essay by noted Beach Boys biographer David Leaf and a slightly extended version of the booklet’s chronology. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Kleveland: Harder

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kleveland_harderKick-ass rock from Portland, OR

The melodic cascade of assertive words emanating from Kleveland singer/guitarist Stephanie Smith may remind you of Chrissie Hynde, but the band’s manic guitar attack borrows more from the aggression of metal and punk than the Pretenders much managed after their debut album. There are echoes of other bands with female leads, such as X and the Alley Cats, but Kleveland rocks harder, as if the Runaways’ chops had lived up to their ambitions, The Pandoras’ detour into metal had been more musical, or punk rockers like Civet or the Distillers took a breath once in awhile to decimate the objects of their derision rather than just cuss at them. Smith may not have Pat Benetar’s operatic range, but she’s got the same ballsy Attitude, and unconstrained by the niceties of MTV it’s something of a wash. It’s hard to imagine a VJ introducing the vampire gore of “You’re Not Sorry,” with its stinging rebuke “You’re not sorry you did it, you’re sorry you got caught,” or the acoustic “Sloppy Seconds” with its opening stanza “I’ll admit that I was kind of upset, when I heard that you were out fuckin’ my ex-, and the body wasn’t even cold yet, but that don’t bother you”). Kleveland quiets down on a couple of tracks, including the closing lament “It’s Over,” but it’s loud guitar rock that’s their calling card, combining the sonic punch of 1970s rock with the in-your-face confrontation of punk. Anyone else remember Sue Saad and the Next? Kleveland’s heavier and more lyrically fierce, but the combination of rhythm guitars and assertive female vocals may take you back. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

The Abrams Brothers: Blue On Brown

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abrams_blueonbrownYouthful country-harmony salute to Dylan and Arlo

The Abrams Brothers – a duo that sings and plays violin, viola, guitar and mandolin – take their place in a long line of sibling country harmony acts. They also join the family of precociously talented youngsters who play and sing with a preternatural ease, and an artistic vision that belies their youth. How many teenagers would think to record a tribute to the songs of Bob Dylan and Arlo Guthrie, and how many of those could reach deep into the two artists’ catalogs for songs that are amenable to bluegrass harmonies and string band arrangements? Well, these two, at least. Accompanied by their cousin on bass and studio hands that include Anton Fier (drums), Rob Ickes (dobro), Will Parsons (banjo), and Mickey Raphael (harmonica), the Abrams’ run through a half-dozen Dylan songs and a half-dozen songs written by or closely associated with Guthrie. The youth in their voices adds an arresting innocence to the iconic Dylan tunes “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Shelter From the Storm,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” The latter, lingered over at a slow tempo is especially effective. Their bluegrass fervor is a perfect fit for Dylan’s born-again hit, “Gotta Serve Somebody.”

When coupled with a full backing band, the duo is overwhelmed by over-thick productions, such as on Guthrie’s “Cooper’s Lament,” Woody Guthrie’s “Oklahoma Hills,” and Dylan’s “Going, Going Gone.” Anton Fier’s plodding drum beats are particularly distracting on these tracks. Much better are the light shuffle, tight harmony and slide guitar of “City of New Orleans,” the interplay of the Abrams’ guitar, mandolin and fiddle with Will Parsons’ banjo on “Every Hand in the Land,” and a superb reading of Guthrie’s wistful “Last to Leave.” The brothers’ gospel harmonies are well spent on Guthrie’s “Last Train,” with Mickey Raphael’s harmonica taking the song home. Dylan and Guthrie’s songs dovetail naturally, especially as selected by the Abrams from both hits and album cuts. The resulting fan portraits transcend smoothly into brotherly harmony. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Hear “City of New Orleans”

The Charles River Valley Boys: Beatle Country

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charlesrivervalleyboys_beatlecountry1966 bluegrass arrangements of Beatles classics

The Charles River Valley Boys came together amongst the early ‘60s folk revival scene of Cambridge, MA, the product Harvard and MIT students and a transplanted New Yorker. For all those Northeast roots (and the jokey name), their shared love of old-timey music resulted in surprisingly fine acoustic bluegrass. This 1966 album for Elektra could have been nothing more than a crass effort to cash in on the Beatles’ popularity (see for example The Hollyridge Strings’ contemporaneous Beatles Song Book), but the group displays an obvious love of Lennon and McCartney’s songs, and finds plenty of room to add bluegrass harmonies. Several choices find obvious analogs in the acoustic string band vein (e.g., “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” “Baby’s in Black” and “What Goes On”), but others are taken much further from their source. Lennon’s blistering “And Your Bird Can Sing” is turned from angry to melancholy, “Ticket to Ride” leans surprisingly on the blues, and the beat-heavy “She’s a Woman” is turned into a hot-picked instrumental for banjo, guitar and mandolin. Originally marketed to the general country music audience, rather than bluegrass fans or folk revivalists, the album stiffed and quickly became a hard-to-find collector’s item. Reissued first by Rounder and subsequently by Collectors’ Choice, the dozen cuts hold up as both bluegrass-harmony string band music and an affectionate tribute to the Beatles. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Listen to “She’s a Woman”

Alex Chilton: 1970

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Missing link between the Box Tops and Big Star

As others have noted, this isn’t one of Alex Chilton’s masterpieces, yet it’s a terrifically listenable album that bridges between his more straight-jacketed work with the Box Tops and the freedom of expression found with Big Star. Chilton can be heard indulging his affection for Memphis blues and soul on several tracks, stripped of his former group’s AM-radio sweetening. Produced and engineered by Terry Manning, and recorded on spec rather than in fulfillment of a signed contract, Chilton was freed to sing more grittily, to record his own material, to extend the guitar jams, and to loosen up with odd touches like the banjo on “I Wish I Could Meet Elvis.” Even when things get a tad sloppy, it’s hard to fault someone shaking off the confines of top-40 for a bit of self-expression. Ironically, the craft drilled into Chilton’s head as a Box Top would soon serve him well in Big Star.

The pedal-steel driven original of “Free Again” is more innocent and exultant than the 1975 redo on Bach’s Bottom, suggesting Chilton’s departure from the Box Tops was a more freeing personal success than his extrication from the commercial failure of Big Star. Foreshadows of Big Star’s expectant melancholy can be heard in the exceptional “Every Day As We Grow Closer,” and the vulnerable “EMI Song,” folk-country “The Happy Song” and heavy soul cover of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” are all worth hearing. The bombastic cover of the Archies’ “Sugar Sugar” sounds more like a studio joke than an artistic statement, but perhaps Chilton was offended by the original’s irrepressible ebullience. After hearing these other sounds from Chilton’s head, his indulgence of the blues turns out to be the most perfunctory and least interesting material here.

Chilton backed out of a contract to release this album through Atlantic, and was distracted with Big Star before a deal could be closed with Brother Records. This left the original mono demo master to be circulated for two decades by collectors as it was forgotten by its creators. When Manning was reminded by a bootleg copy, he found the original 8-track tapes in the Ardent vault and created superb new stereo mixes (except for “Free Again,” which remains in mono). Mannings’ original engineering provided the elements necessary to create a finished product, and his craftsmanship fit the sessions together into a modern artifact that remains remarkably true to Alex Chilton circa 1970. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]