"These Roads Don't Move" / Jay Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard
What's with all these "side projects"? Back in the day, you were either in a band or you weren't. Remember how Eric Clapton had to break up Cream before he could be in Blind Faith? But now you've got guys like Jack White, who can do White Stripes and the Raconteurs and who knows how many other bands all at the same time. Or those guys in Monsters of Folk, Conor Oberst and M. Ward and Jim James, all of whom belong elsewhere. Jeff Tweedy dances in and out of Wilco, Golden Smog, and Loose Fur, then records with Billy Bragg, the Minus 5, 7 Worlds Collide -- jeez, when the guy wakes up in the morning, does he even know who he's working with today?
So yeah, I was skeptical about this One Fast Move project. It began as the soundtrack for a documentary about Jack Kerouac's novel Big Sur, enlisting Jay Farrar -- the alt-country pioneer of Uncle Tupelo and then Son Volt -- and Benjamin Gibbard of the indie pop band Death Cab for Cutie (not to mention his side project Postal Service). The pairing is hardly obvious. Sure, they both exhibit a depressive streak, but with Gibbard, the depression comes out like your seventh-grade boyfriend's wistful poetry; Farrar's brand of melancholy is hard-bitten and adult, best suited to grubby barrooms and high-plains truck stops. Marry all this to lyrics taken straight from Kerouac's scouring prose -- well, watch out, sister.
But to my surprise, I loved this album. (Read here for my Blogcritics review.) Forget the film, forget even the book: This album is on my permanent playlist for its musical merits alone. Dark as some tracks may be, they're balanced by exhilarating songs like "These Roads Don't Move." Admittedly, I'm a sucker for traveling songs, especially when they're a metaphor for getting a fresh start. But I love the central image of this song -- "These roads don't move, you're the one who moves" -- an almost Zen-like koan about how travel offers a glimmering hope of change.
Throughout the album, I love how Farrar's flexible melodies accommodate the extra syllables of Kerouac's prose, imposed on bedrock rhythms that make up for the lack of rhyme scheme. Different melodies convey different moods, and Gibbard takes the lead vocal on the more tuneful, hopeful songs (which better suits his voice anyway). The passage Farrar chose for "These Roads Don't Move" is a rare island of optimism in the novel: "There is no need to say another word / It will be golden and eternal just like that / Something good will come of all things yet / Simple golden eternity blessing all." If there's irony there, it's dramatic irony; at this moment in the novel, Kerouac does believe in redemption and clean slates and all that sort of stuff. Notice how the melody soars upward at the end of lines, or nestles in a comforting little glissando phrase. And as the chorus repeats that "These roads don't move, you're the one who moves" mantra, it does so with a tuneful hook that swings you right down the road with it.
Verse two is more explicit about his journey: "Now get my ticket and say goodbye / And leave San Francisco behind / Go back home across Autumn America / And it'll all be like it was in the beginning." Verse three casts a shadow -- mentioning "dark torturous memories" and "irrational mortal loneliness" -- but by then we're just sailing along on that steady, wheeling beat, uptempo and bright. Yeah, there's the Western loneliness of a slide pedal steel guitar, but there are also shuffling drums (who knew Ben Gibbard was also a drummer?) and a brisk guitar strum to keep our narrator skipping right along.
I'm guessing this side project will be a one-time deal; Farrar and Gibbard are both too much in demand. If Kerouac hadn't brought them together, who would have imagined this? Yet Gibbard's honey and Farrar's grit add up to a beautiful and haunting album. I highly recommend.
Showing posts with label Americana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Americana. Show all posts
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
"Wordless Chorus” / My Morning Jacket
Okay, I’ll admit I was wrong. I saw My Morning Jacket in 2006, opening for Ray Davies at the Taste of Chicago festival, and I was not impressed. Granted, they had two things working against them – 1) the sound system was atrocious, and 2) I couldn’t wait for Ray to get on stage. I noticed a small throng of MMJ devotees crowding the stage, garbed – like the band – in what looked like Neil Young’s cast-off ragged jeans and combat jackets. For the life of me I couldn’t get the attraction. I was just glad they cleared out in time for us to grab the front row seats.
Okay, I’ll admit I was wrong. I saw My Morning Jacket in 2006, opening for Ray Davies at the Taste of Chicago festival, and I was not impressed. Granted, they had two things working against them – 1) the sound system was atrocious, and 2) I couldn’t wait for Ray to get on stage. I noticed a small throng of MMJ devotees crowding the stage, garbed – like the band – in what looked like Neil Young’s cast-off ragged jeans and combat jackets. For the life of me I couldn’t get the attraction. I was just glad they cleared out in time for us to grab the front row seats.
It’s taken me this long to give them a second listen. (I’ll admit that for a while, I confused them with My Chemical Romance – another strike against them.) But I’ve been driving a lot this summer, and every time My Morning Jacket came on the radio, I liked what I heard. Really liked it. The debt to Uncle Neil is still clear – Jim James’s voice can't help but sound like Neil Young -- but they’ve got many more cards up their rumpled sleeves.
This 2005 album, Z, is probably what they were playing when I saw them (yeah, like I remember), and it’s a treasure. This song kicks off the album with a whoosh, grooving along on a funked-up reggae beat. (So much for the alt-country label.) The same syncopated melodic line repeats, trance-like, throughout the verse, dipping down and then gently levitating upward. Like a latter-day Marvin Gaye, Jim James soulfully muses, “So much going on these days / Forget about instinct, it's not what pays.” Ah, but that copasetic groove, it’s all about instinct, isn’t it? My irony detector’s beeping already, and it goes into overdrive when he adds, “A carton of eggs think it's all worthwhile.” (I kinda like the egg-carton image, weird as it is.) Looking askance at the me-too pursuit of the Next New Thing, he adds, “Tell me, spirit, what has not been done? / I'll rush out and do it -- or are we doing it now?”
Then, with a single cut-off beat, the song shifts gears, morphing into a lush wall of sound, a full bank of shifting vocal harmonies singing . . . well, “Ahh – wahh ahh – whoa-oh ahh.” Aha, the wordless chorus of the title. James wheels around on top with some falsetto yips and howls, and you’re carried away on the sheer soulfulness of it.
In verse two, he bucks the trend, declaring, “But you know all of this can change / Remember the promise as a kid you made.” Considering the throwback honesty of their sound, this stuff about original intentions makes perfect sense to me. And after another repeat of that wordless chorus, he plants his flag: “We are the innovators, they are imitators.” Pretty bold talk for such a young band, but by this point, in my opinion he’s earned the right to say it.
Apparently Jim James -- the singer, the songwriter, and pretty much the soul of the band -- fell off a stage in 2008 and the band hasn't performed much since. He has, however, recently released an album with Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and M. Ward (more on him soon), performing as the Monsters of Folk. I like the track or two I've heard; I also like the bits I've heard of James' solo EP of George Harrison covers, Tribute To, which is a benefit for Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. But already I'm torn, wistfully hoping My Morning Jacket will survive too. And to think, six months ago I made gagging noises whenever anybody mentioned this band to me. Well, anybody can make a mistake!
Monday, July 27, 2009
"How Deep Is The Red" / Elvis Costello
Of course I like Elvis Costello's new album, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane. You should know by now, I've adored Costello for over 30 years; he's HUGE in my personal rock pantheon, maybe one of my Top 5. Despite his many strange digressions (I can't say I listen to The Juliet Letters very often, or that album with Anna-Sophie Mutter), something about his oddly-textured voice and his snarky wit and his surprising melodies has always perfectly met my music-listening requirements.
I saw Elvis sing a few tunes from this album at a dress rehearsal for Prairie Home Companion a couple months ago, and I knew instantly I'd like it. I so dig it when Elvis gives into his love of American country music -- King of America has always been one of my favorite EC albums -- and here he's going even more old-school, with bluegrass fiddles and Dobros and finger-pickin' banjos straight out of O Brother Where Art Thou?
I reckon some anonymous poster's gonna come on here and bitch and moan about how lazy Elvis has become -- he just banged out this album in 3 days, sitting around a Nashville studio with T-Bone Burnett and a bunch of topnotch session men. He co-wrote a couple of new tunes, 2 with T-Bone ("Sulphur to Sugarcane" and "The Crooked Line") and one with Loretta Lynn ("I Felt the Chill Before the Winter Came"). (Wish I coulda fly-on-the-walled that songwriting session.) He recycled a couple of songs he wrote for Johnny Cash, "Hidden Shame" and "Complicated Shadows," the latter of which he'd already used on All This Useless Beauty. He covered an old Bing Crosby chestnut, "Changing Partners," and then threw in 4 songs he wrote for a yet-unfinished opera about (get this) Hans Christian Andersen, commissioned by the Royal Danish Opera. That means that Elvis himself only penned 3 new songs for this LP. You could say he's like a grocer with his finger on the scale, shorting his customers with every sale.
But you've got to remember, Elvis is a graduate of the old Nick Lowe "Bash it out now and tart it up later"school of recording -- and he seems to be getting back to those roots lately. His previous album, Momofuku, was another of these sit-down-and-crank-it-out all-at-one-go efforts, and though it's uneven, there's pure creative joy running all through that record. Elvis is too prolific for his own good -- I wish I could do one of those Young Frankenstein brain drains with him and Nick Lowe, exchange a little of Nick's scrupulous self-editing for Elvis's willingness to throw anything against the wall and see what sticks. But EC's boundless energy, confidence, and enthusiasm are a wonderful antidote to the cautious, premeditated, over-produced major-label crap being pushed at us these days.
After a day or so of listening to this album, the track that's haunting me is one of the songs cribbed from the Andersen opera, "How Deep Is the Red." From Elvis' cryptic notations, I'm guessing this song is supposed to be a hymn sung by Andersen's love interest, the famed Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. The way Elvis & Co. perform it here, though, it's anything but hymn-like.
The deliberately archaic lyrics remind me of something Colin Meloy might have written for the Decemberists: "Is this not a pretty tale? / Is this not a riddle? / A bow shoots arrows through the air / A bow drags notes from a fiddle." Well, that play on words is distinctly Elvis, I guess -- the man cannot pass up a pun. In tried-and-true folk ballad style, Elvis goes on to describe various red objects -- a soldier's tunic, a rose's thorn, and the blood of Christ. I suppose that's the bit that would make it a hymn, though Elvis, with his Catholic upbringing, often gets hung up on religious imagery. "How deep is the red our redeemer bled, the debt of our sins to settle?" -- I can see the gory blood streaming from a crucifix right now.
On the surface, this song's not even ironic -- maybe in the opera, it's meant to be a straightforward hymn. But Elvis gives it a dark spin by using a minor key, and adds a mournful fiddle and Dobro to his fiercely strummed acoustic guitar. The melody is peppered with octave drops that almost seem shivers of woe. Over and over, in a drawn-out coda, he keeps questioning, "How deep is the red?" His "pretty tale" feels damn bleak, with all those soldiers and pricking thorns and suffering Saviours. It's more a crisis of faith, or a vision of endless sorrow. And at the end, as he softly reiterates the first verse, he slows it to an ominous tempo, his voice punching "deep" hard before dropping sorrowfully to "is the red."
So why is this song sticking in my head? Dunno, it just is. It's haunting me, in fact. The passion, the dumb hurt throbbing through it -- they have nothing to do with the lyrics and everything to do with the performance. So who cares whether Elvis wrote new songs or not?
How Deep Is the Red sample
Of course I like Elvis Costello's new album, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane. You should know by now, I've adored Costello for over 30 years; he's HUGE in my personal rock pantheon, maybe one of my Top 5. Despite his many strange digressions (I can't say I listen to The Juliet Letters very often, or that album with Anna-Sophie Mutter), something about his oddly-textured voice and his snarky wit and his surprising melodies has always perfectly met my music-listening requirements.
I saw Elvis sing a few tunes from this album at a dress rehearsal for Prairie Home Companion a couple months ago, and I knew instantly I'd like it. I so dig it when Elvis gives into his love of American country music -- King of America has always been one of my favorite EC albums -- and here he's going even more old-school, with bluegrass fiddles and Dobros and finger-pickin' banjos straight out of O Brother Where Art Thou?
I reckon some anonymous poster's gonna come on here and bitch and moan about how lazy Elvis has become -- he just banged out this album in 3 days, sitting around a Nashville studio with T-Bone Burnett and a bunch of topnotch session men. He co-wrote a couple of new tunes, 2 with T-Bone ("Sulphur to Sugarcane" and "The Crooked Line") and one with Loretta Lynn ("I Felt the Chill Before the Winter Came"). (Wish I coulda fly-on-the-walled that songwriting session.) He recycled a couple of songs he wrote for Johnny Cash, "Hidden Shame" and "Complicated Shadows," the latter of which he'd already used on All This Useless Beauty. He covered an old Bing Crosby chestnut, "Changing Partners," and then threw in 4 songs he wrote for a yet-unfinished opera about (get this) Hans Christian Andersen, commissioned by the Royal Danish Opera. That means that Elvis himself only penned 3 new songs for this LP. You could say he's like a grocer with his finger on the scale, shorting his customers with every sale.
But you've got to remember, Elvis is a graduate of the old Nick Lowe "Bash it out now and tart it up later"school of recording -- and he seems to be getting back to those roots lately. His previous album, Momofuku, was another of these sit-down-and-crank-it-out all-at-one-go efforts, and though it's uneven, there's pure creative joy running all through that record. Elvis is too prolific for his own good -- I wish I could do one of those Young Frankenstein brain drains with him and Nick Lowe, exchange a little of Nick's scrupulous self-editing for Elvis's willingness to throw anything against the wall and see what sticks. But EC's boundless energy, confidence, and enthusiasm are a wonderful antidote to the cautious, premeditated, over-produced major-label crap being pushed at us these days.
After a day or so of listening to this album, the track that's haunting me is one of the songs cribbed from the Andersen opera, "How Deep Is the Red." From Elvis' cryptic notations, I'm guessing this song is supposed to be a hymn sung by Andersen's love interest, the famed Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. The way Elvis & Co. perform it here, though, it's anything but hymn-like.
The deliberately archaic lyrics remind me of something Colin Meloy might have written for the Decemberists: "Is this not a pretty tale? / Is this not a riddle? / A bow shoots arrows through the air / A bow drags notes from a fiddle." Well, that play on words is distinctly Elvis, I guess -- the man cannot pass up a pun. In tried-and-true folk ballad style, Elvis goes on to describe various red objects -- a soldier's tunic, a rose's thorn, and the blood of Christ. I suppose that's the bit that would make it a hymn, though Elvis, with his Catholic upbringing, often gets hung up on religious imagery. "How deep is the red our redeemer bled, the debt of our sins to settle?" -- I can see the gory blood streaming from a crucifix right now.
On the surface, this song's not even ironic -- maybe in the opera, it's meant to be a straightforward hymn. But Elvis gives it a dark spin by using a minor key, and adds a mournful fiddle and Dobro to his fiercely strummed acoustic guitar. The melody is peppered with octave drops that almost seem shivers of woe. Over and over, in a drawn-out coda, he keeps questioning, "How deep is the red?" His "pretty tale" feels damn bleak, with all those soldiers and pricking thorns and suffering Saviours. It's more a crisis of faith, or a vision of endless sorrow. And at the end, as he softly reiterates the first verse, he slows it to an ominous tempo, his voice punching "deep" hard before dropping sorrowfully to "is the red."
So why is this song sticking in my head? Dunno, it just is. It's haunting me, in fact. The passion, the dumb hurt throbbing through it -- they have nothing to do with the lyrics and everything to do with the performance. So who cares whether Elvis wrote new songs or not?
How Deep Is the Red sample
Sunday, November 09, 2008
"Sex on Fire" / Kings of Leon
All those years of training my children to like rock music, and what do I get? I'm now forced to listen to Sirius Radio's Alt Nation channel every time we take a car trip. Of course, some of Alt Nation's artists are fabulous, but I also have to endure such tripe as that screamer in Rise Against, or the endless narcotizing techno riffs of LCD Soundsystem, or worst of all, the Ting Tings, a horrible British duo that's basically the B-52s without a sense of humor (and the whole point of the B-52s was their sense of humor). Not only that, but listen to Alt Nation long enough and you will hear the exact same 37 songs played over and over in exactly the same order.
Do I sound enough like my parents yet?
But at least that means that every 37 songs I got to hear the Kings of Leon again. This is a completely addictive track, and excellent driving music, too; you absolutely have to pound the steering wheel when it comes on. The title is stupid, I'll agree, like something Justin Timberlake would write, and it's extra embarrassing to listen with your adolescent daughter to what's basically a song about a blow job. But so far she hasn't caught on, so we're safe. For a while, still.
Let's get one thing out of the way: The opening riffs of "Sex on Fire" are stolen straight from Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark." Still, that seems to be standard operating procedure on Alt Nation; Fall Out Boy's latest single is a complete rip-off of "Spirit in the Sky," and since two out of the three Alt Nation listeners in my car had never heard "Spirit in the Sky," my guess is that Fall Out Boy will get away with it. Anyhow, the opening riff is the only really good thing about "Dancing in the Dark," so let's just call the Kings of Leon's version an "homage" and move on.
They get extra points from me for being another brother band -- in fact, they beat out the Davies brothers, because there are not two but three Followill brothers in the band, as well as their cousin. It makes more sense to compare them to the Allman Brothers, or the Black Crowes' Robinson brothers, or Luther and Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi All-Stars, because these guys are classic Southern rockers. That borrowed riff becomes a propulsive motor for this song, cruising lustily around the curves without braking for a moment. But while the crisp drums and hopped-up bass and chugging guitar never let up, Caleb Followill's hoarse high vocals howl and soar and swoop all over the place, adding a great jittery nervous energy.
The lyrics are ambiguous, of course, and vaguely poetic, as in "Hot as a fever / Rattling bones" or "The dark of the alley / The break of the day / Ahead while I'm driving / I'm driving." (Or is it "a head while I'm driving"?).
There's one little rhythmic trick they pull off that's sheer genius. At the end of every verse, they repeat the last phrase of the last line -- as in "feels like you're dying, you're dying" -- standard pop technique, right? But nooooo, they make you wait for it, stuffing in an extra measure while the song's motor keeps pulsating, and even when you get the repeat it still idles anxiously on a minor chord. What did you expect, resolution? No way; they just downshift gears and accelerate into the next verse. The spasmodic tension this creates is just brilliant. Like I said, it's a song about a blow job (not only that, but a blow job in a moving car) so it's a perfect case of art imitating nature.
Well, the road trip's over, and I'm happy to go back to my own little quirky playlist of cute aging British rockers. But I've "borrowed" my son's Only By the Night CD and downloaded a few of the Followill boys' tracks -- after all, you never know when you'll need a little steamy Southern alt smut.
Sex on Fire sample
All those years of training my children to like rock music, and what do I get? I'm now forced to listen to Sirius Radio's Alt Nation channel every time we take a car trip. Of course, some of Alt Nation's artists are fabulous, but I also have to endure such tripe as that screamer in Rise Against, or the endless narcotizing techno riffs of LCD Soundsystem, or worst of all, the Ting Tings, a horrible British duo that's basically the B-52s without a sense of humor (and the whole point of the B-52s was their sense of humor). Not only that, but listen to Alt Nation long enough and you will hear the exact same 37 songs played over and over in exactly the same order.
Do I sound enough like my parents yet?
But at least that means that every 37 songs I got to hear the Kings of Leon again. This is a completely addictive track, and excellent driving music, too; you absolutely have to pound the steering wheel when it comes on. The title is stupid, I'll agree, like something Justin Timberlake would write, and it's extra embarrassing to listen with your adolescent daughter to what's basically a song about a blow job. But so far she hasn't caught on, so we're safe. For a while, still.
Let's get one thing out of the way: The opening riffs of "Sex on Fire" are stolen straight from Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark." Still, that seems to be standard operating procedure on Alt Nation; Fall Out Boy's latest single is a complete rip-off of "Spirit in the Sky," and since two out of the three Alt Nation listeners in my car had never heard "Spirit in the Sky," my guess is that Fall Out Boy will get away with it. Anyhow, the opening riff is the only really good thing about "Dancing in the Dark," so let's just call the Kings of Leon's version an "homage" and move on.
They get extra points from me for being another brother band -- in fact, they beat out the Davies brothers, because there are not two but three Followill brothers in the band, as well as their cousin. It makes more sense to compare them to the Allman Brothers, or the Black Crowes' Robinson brothers, or Luther and Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi All-Stars, because these guys are classic Southern rockers. That borrowed riff becomes a propulsive motor for this song, cruising lustily around the curves without braking for a moment. But while the crisp drums and hopped-up bass and chugging guitar never let up, Caleb Followill's hoarse high vocals howl and soar and swoop all over the place, adding a great jittery nervous energy.
The lyrics are ambiguous, of course, and vaguely poetic, as in "Hot as a fever / Rattling bones" or "The dark of the alley / The break of the day / Ahead while I'm driving / I'm driving." (Or is it "a head while I'm driving"?).
There's one little rhythmic trick they pull off that's sheer genius. At the end of every verse, they repeat the last phrase of the last line -- as in "feels like you're dying, you're dying" -- standard pop technique, right? But nooooo, they make you wait for it, stuffing in an extra measure while the song's motor keeps pulsating, and even when you get the repeat it still idles anxiously on a minor chord. What did you expect, resolution? No way; they just downshift gears and accelerate into the next verse. The spasmodic tension this creates is just brilliant. Like I said, it's a song about a blow job (not only that, but a blow job in a moving car) so it's a perfect case of art imitating nature.
Well, the road trip's over, and I'm happy to go back to my own little quirky playlist of cute aging British rockers. But I've "borrowed" my son's Only By the Night CD and downloaded a few of the Followill boys' tracks -- after all, you never know when you'll need a little steamy Southern alt smut.
Sex on Fire sample
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
"Something To Talk About" / Bonnie Raitt
Meg Griffin played this this afternoon on Sirius Disorder, and I immediately felt a rush of warm feelings -- towards Bonnie, toward Meg, and even toward Sirius for hiring a DJ like Meg who will play this sort of music.
When I was in college, Bonnie Raitt was just starting out -- all we knew was that this chick had dropped out of Harvard to go play blues guitar (which even in 1973 seemed quintessentially pure and cool ) -- and one afternoon there she was, playing at the outdoor amphitheater at my school. Can you imagine, opening your dorm window and hearing Bonnie Raitt playing live 200 yards away? Well, I suppose it could be annoying if you were studying for finals, but I wasn't -- it was a warm spring Saturday afternoon and I had a cold six-pack (my junior year, I was trying to cultivate being a beer drinker) and I just popped a brew and climbed out on the roof outside my room and dug it. Ah, those were the days.
Now jump forward to the summer of 2007, when three girlfriends and I met up in Central Park to hear Bonnie in concert. Well, actually we went to hear her opening act, the divine Keb' Mo' (I have a deeply irrational thing for Keb' Mo'), but by the time Bonnie sauntered out on stage, we were so primed to hear some kick-ass blues, we couldn't have been a more eager audience. And I was just pulverized by the entire gestalt of Bonnie Raitt -- this flame-haired beauty in blue jeans, ripping off mean licks on her guitar, leaning so casually into the mike and wailing unbelievably passionate vocals. I hazily recall making all sorts of secret feminist pacts with myself that night; well, maybe not so secret, since my girlfriends and I repaired afterward to a bar and misbehaved disgracefully. No matter. Bonnie still represents to me some shining Follows Her Own Muse ideal that I'm still very far from attaining.
This song? I have to admit, it's not one of my favorite Bonnie Raitt songs, probably since it was the theme song for a Julia Roberts movie. I know that's not fair -- the movie was inspired by the song, not the other way around, and anyhow I have never been able to justify my Julia Roberts aversion (jeez, the woman was married to Lyle Lovett once, there's got to be something good in her). But it's more likely my old prejudice against Top 40 hits. When I think about it, this song expresses just exactly the same saucy, self-possessed attitude that I love Bonnie for. (A lot more so than the woman-as-victim anthem "I Can't Make You Love Me," Bonnie's other big hit -- which, I don't care, I still love).
And listening to it in the car this afternoon, I heard whole new dimensions I'd never noticed. Yeah, it's about an affair, but we're catching it right on the threshold, still charged with danger and eager excitement. In the first verse, she's viewing how other people see them ("We laugh just a little too loud / We stand just a little too close / We stare just a little too long") and I don't know, there's something awfully sexy about that -- as if she's been so deep into the laughing and standing close and staring that she had no idea where it was leading. We're catching her right at the tipping point -- "It took a rumor to make me wonder / Now I'm convinced I'm going under" -- and her reckless vocals and woozy bluesy guitar give it an extra hell-yeah juiciness. It's very clear where this thing will end up, but it's not there yet -- things are still throbbing and vibrating between them.
I'm thinking now of Keats' "Ode On a Grecian Urn" (sorry, but I wrote my senior thesis on Keats and it stuck) -- about the poignance of freezing a moment in time. In the world of this song, these lovers will always have the hots for each other -- they won't have to deal with pissing each other off, or finally noticing each other's flaws, or betraying other people. We, of course, know that all that crap is bound to ensue. We sympathetically exult with them, at the same time as we cringe for them.
All that, in one pop song? Why not?
Something To Talk About sample
Meg Griffin played this this afternoon on Sirius Disorder, and I immediately felt a rush of warm feelings -- towards Bonnie, toward Meg, and even toward Sirius for hiring a DJ like Meg who will play this sort of music.
When I was in college, Bonnie Raitt was just starting out -- all we knew was that this chick had dropped out of Harvard to go play blues guitar (which even in 1973 seemed quintessentially pure and cool ) -- and one afternoon there she was, playing at the outdoor amphitheater at my school. Can you imagine, opening your dorm window and hearing Bonnie Raitt playing live 200 yards away? Well, I suppose it could be annoying if you were studying for finals, but I wasn't -- it was a warm spring Saturday afternoon and I had a cold six-pack (my junior year, I was trying to cultivate being a beer drinker) and I just popped a brew and climbed out on the roof outside my room and dug it. Ah, those were the days.
Now jump forward to the summer of 2007, when three girlfriends and I met up in Central Park to hear Bonnie in concert. Well, actually we went to hear her opening act, the divine Keb' Mo' (I have a deeply irrational thing for Keb' Mo'), but by the time Bonnie sauntered out on stage, we were so primed to hear some kick-ass blues, we couldn't have been a more eager audience. And I was just pulverized by the entire gestalt of Bonnie Raitt -- this flame-haired beauty in blue jeans, ripping off mean licks on her guitar, leaning so casually into the mike and wailing unbelievably passionate vocals. I hazily recall making all sorts of secret feminist pacts with myself that night; well, maybe not so secret, since my girlfriends and I repaired afterward to a bar and misbehaved disgracefully. No matter. Bonnie still represents to me some shining Follows Her Own Muse ideal that I'm still very far from attaining.
This song? I have to admit, it's not one of my favorite Bonnie Raitt songs, probably since it was the theme song for a Julia Roberts movie. I know that's not fair -- the movie was inspired by the song, not the other way around, and anyhow I have never been able to justify my Julia Roberts aversion (jeez, the woman was married to Lyle Lovett once, there's got to be something good in her). But it's more likely my old prejudice against Top 40 hits. When I think about it, this song expresses just exactly the same saucy, self-possessed attitude that I love Bonnie for. (A lot more so than the woman-as-victim anthem "I Can't Make You Love Me," Bonnie's other big hit -- which, I don't care, I still love).
And listening to it in the car this afternoon, I heard whole new dimensions I'd never noticed. Yeah, it's about an affair, but we're catching it right on the threshold, still charged with danger and eager excitement. In the first verse, she's viewing how other people see them ("We laugh just a little too loud / We stand just a little too close / We stare just a little too long") and I don't know, there's something awfully sexy about that -- as if she's been so deep into the laughing and standing close and staring that she had no idea where it was leading. We're catching her right at the tipping point -- "It took a rumor to make me wonder / Now I'm convinced I'm going under" -- and her reckless vocals and woozy bluesy guitar give it an extra hell-yeah juiciness. It's very clear where this thing will end up, but it's not there yet -- things are still throbbing and vibrating between them.
I'm thinking now of Keats' "Ode On a Grecian Urn" (sorry, but I wrote my senior thesis on Keats and it stuck) -- about the poignance of freezing a moment in time. In the world of this song, these lovers will always have the hots for each other -- they won't have to deal with pissing each other off, or finally noticing each other's flaws, or betraying other people. We, of course, know that all that crap is bound to ensue. We sympathetically exult with them, at the same time as we cringe for them.
All that, in one pop song? Why not?
Something To Talk About sample
Saturday, July 26, 2008
"She Loves the Sunset" /
The Old 97s
Here they are again -- didn't I write about these guys, like, two weeks ago? But I've been doing a little housecleaning on my iTunes, and when I got to the Old 97s' most recent album, Blame It On Gravity, I found it just about impossible to prune down the numbers of tracks I'm keeping on my hard drive. And I'll let you know, I'm generally ruthless when it comes to editing the music on my hard drive.
"She Loves the Sunset" is the kind of song you want to play LOUD out the window on a summer afternoon like today. That cha-cha-cha beat is irresistible, though the pedal steel keeps it twangy; Rhett Miller's vocals lay on just enough ironic exaggeration to keep the alt in their alt.country sound. What's it about? Why, nothing much -- loving a girl who loves the sunset is about the extent of it. But the guy sounds so exhilarated, so dumbfounded by his own good luck, that it gets by on charm alone.
The more I listen, though, the more complicated this blissed-out love seems. First of all, the girl's got some issues: "She loves the sunset / She loves the cocktail bell / She loves the trembling, that evening brings, / Or might as well" -- he knows perfectly well that she's a teensy bit of a head case. (Aren't we all?) But he still loves her. Now I'm nervous -- is this love reciprocated? But no, verse two tells us: "She loves the sunset / She loves me also" (whew!). They seem well-matched -- "She loves me trembling, /And everything, oh I can tell / There is no other man in her dreams / Although every so often it seems -- " Then he breaks off, unable to complete that thought; instead he stubbornly repeats, "I love a girl / She loves the sunset."
"Oh, it’s the simple things," he declares in the bridge, " oh, but simple things are scarce / You’ve got to figure out / About what, and for whom, you care." Tangled grammar aside, he's getting at something important -- sometimes the best course in love is just to close your eyes and go with it.
In verse three, he stubbornly declares, "Let's say the trembling / That evening brings, / Is just the cold." (I love the way he carries that loaded noun "trembling" through all three verses -- that's craftsmanship.) Yep, he's made up his mind to be in love, and nothing's going to stop him. "I hope I’ll always be by her side," he adds, slowing down gingerly as he reflects, "Even if I’m just along for the ride . . . ." You can almost see him shake himself, then launch back into "I love a girl / She loves the sunset." It's the power of positive thinking.
A final cha-cha-cha and one last echoing twang, and they're outta here. Perfect.
She Loves the Sunset sample
The Old 97s
Here they are again -- didn't I write about these guys, like, two weeks ago? But I've been doing a little housecleaning on my iTunes, and when I got to the Old 97s' most recent album, Blame It On Gravity, I found it just about impossible to prune down the numbers of tracks I'm keeping on my hard drive. And I'll let you know, I'm generally ruthless when it comes to editing the music on my hard drive.
"She Loves the Sunset" is the kind of song you want to play LOUD out the window on a summer afternoon like today. That cha-cha-cha beat is irresistible, though the pedal steel keeps it twangy; Rhett Miller's vocals lay on just enough ironic exaggeration to keep the alt in their alt.country sound. What's it about? Why, nothing much -- loving a girl who loves the sunset is about the extent of it. But the guy sounds so exhilarated, so dumbfounded by his own good luck, that it gets by on charm alone.
The more I listen, though, the more complicated this blissed-out love seems. First of all, the girl's got some issues: "She loves the sunset / She loves the cocktail bell / She loves the trembling, that evening brings, / Or might as well" -- he knows perfectly well that she's a teensy bit of a head case. (Aren't we all?) But he still loves her. Now I'm nervous -- is this love reciprocated? But no, verse two tells us: "She loves the sunset / She loves me also" (whew!). They seem well-matched -- "She loves me trembling, /And everything, oh I can tell / There is no other man in her dreams / Although every so often it seems -- " Then he breaks off, unable to complete that thought; instead he stubbornly repeats, "I love a girl / She loves the sunset."
"Oh, it’s the simple things," he declares in the bridge, " oh, but simple things are scarce / You’ve got to figure out / About what, and for whom, you care." Tangled grammar aside, he's getting at something important -- sometimes the best course in love is just to close your eyes and go with it.
In verse three, he stubbornly declares, "Let's say the trembling / That evening brings, / Is just the cold." (I love the way he carries that loaded noun "trembling" through all three verses -- that's craftsmanship.) Yep, he's made up his mind to be in love, and nothing's going to stop him. "I hope I’ll always be by her side," he adds, slowing down gingerly as he reflects, "Even if I’m just along for the ride . . . ." You can almost see him shake himself, then launch back into "I love a girl / She loves the sunset." It's the power of positive thinking.
A final cha-cha-cha and one last echoing twang, and they're outta here. Perfect.
She Loves the Sunset sample
Saturday, June 28, 2008
"Jagged" / The Old 97s
A fellow Kinks fan sent me a compilation CD of this alt-country band's music, and I've been digging it ever so much, thank you. What's really amazing, my teenagers actually don't scream and make me take it out of the CD player when we're in the car.
This is what the record companies can't seem to figure out: music sharing is good business for them. Sure, my friend ripped off 16 tracks and gave them away to me for free. How is that worse than the old days when people lent their vinyl albums to each other? That's how you learn about new artists, especially now when radio sucks and the independent record store is dead. (Even the chains are dying -- I just heard that the Virgin Records Mega-Stores are vacating Times Square, the only place my son has ever had that quintessential bin-browsing experience.)
Now that I've listened to this sampler, I'm sure I will buy Old 97s CDs -- and I certainly wouldn't have if she hadn't sent me this. All those Nick Lowe samplers I sent to friends a couple years ago? Every one of those people bought Nick's new CD last year. (Note to self: Send out some Ron Sexsmith samplers to whip up the audience for his new CD, due out July 8.)
But back to the Old 97s. This song, from their 1999 album Fight Songs, is the first track on the sampler, so it's the one that hit me first. And what a great first impression it made. On this one, the alt side outweighs the country -- just listen to the buzzing guitar work and skipping drumbeat, or the indie whine and mumble in Rhett Miller's vocals, perfectly appropriate for the subject matter. "I would give anything," he frets over and over in the chorus, "Not to feel so jagged." It's an odd word to use -- it's anything but a cliche -- and as soon as I heard it, I knew exactly what he was talking about.
It's not love that doing this to him -- or is it? "What remains of the day remains to be seen / By the TV that we never turn on / Each other's enough / I never had it so rough / Ever since I been gone." You tell me what's going on with these people. But I like the opacity of this situation; I really feel his misery, when he can't even put into words what's going on. "White noise swells in my head," he says in verse two; "It's the summertime / But it's the dead of the fall / It's the dead of the night / Hell yes I mind." Whoa, there's some existential angst for you. That never goes down well in Nashville (but Austin might get it). "I couldn't drink enough to make this make sense," he adds, "But I think I'm gonna give it a try."
What I like about this song is that it doesn't have to get all moany and mopey to express depression. They've found another grammar -- a restless guitar line, jerky rhythms, fretful octave jumps in the melody, obssessively repeated lyrics, a pained wail at the end of every chorus. It's about depression, but it's not one bit depressing to listen to. Now there's a feat for you.Jagged sample
A fellow Kinks fan sent me a compilation CD of this alt-country band's music, and I've been digging it ever so much, thank you. What's really amazing, my teenagers actually don't scream and make me take it out of the CD player when we're in the car.
This is what the record companies can't seem to figure out: music sharing is good business for them. Sure, my friend ripped off 16 tracks and gave them away to me for free. How is that worse than the old days when people lent their vinyl albums to each other? That's how you learn about new artists, especially now when radio sucks and the independent record store is dead. (Even the chains are dying -- I just heard that the Virgin Records Mega-Stores are vacating Times Square, the only place my son has ever had that quintessential bin-browsing experience.)
Now that I've listened to this sampler, I'm sure I will buy Old 97s CDs -- and I certainly wouldn't have if she hadn't sent me this. All those Nick Lowe samplers I sent to friends a couple years ago? Every one of those people bought Nick's new CD last year. (Note to self: Send out some Ron Sexsmith samplers to whip up the audience for his new CD, due out July 8.)
But back to the Old 97s. This song, from their 1999 album Fight Songs, is the first track on the sampler, so it's the one that hit me first. And what a great first impression it made. On this one, the alt side outweighs the country -- just listen to the buzzing guitar work and skipping drumbeat, or the indie whine and mumble in Rhett Miller's vocals, perfectly appropriate for the subject matter. "I would give anything," he frets over and over in the chorus, "Not to feel so jagged." It's an odd word to use -- it's anything but a cliche -- and as soon as I heard it, I knew exactly what he was talking about.
It's not love that doing this to him -- or is it? "What remains of the day remains to be seen / By the TV that we never turn on / Each other's enough / I never had it so rough / Ever since I been gone." You tell me what's going on with these people. But I like the opacity of this situation; I really feel his misery, when he can't even put into words what's going on. "White noise swells in my head," he says in verse two; "It's the summertime / But it's the dead of the fall / It's the dead of the night / Hell yes I mind." Whoa, there's some existential angst for you. That never goes down well in Nashville (but Austin might get it). "I couldn't drink enough to make this make sense," he adds, "But I think I'm gonna give it a try."
What I like about this song is that it doesn't have to get all moany and mopey to express depression. They've found another grammar -- a restless guitar line, jerky rhythms, fretful octave jumps in the melody, obssessively repeated lyrics, a pained wail at the end of every chorus. It's about depression, but it's not one bit depressing to listen to. Now there's a feat for you.Jagged sample
Monday, April 28, 2008
"Memphis in the Meantime" / John Hiatt
Some good news from Nashville: in September, John Hiatt will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association, following in the footsteps of Willie Nelson, John Prine, and Guy Clark -- a well-deserved honor, because in my opinion nobody defines Americana like John Hiatt does. That, together with the news that John's got a new CD coming out May 27th -- wryly titled Same Old Man -- has got me deep in a Hiatt groove today. That's never a bad thing.
Sampling from country, R&B, alt rock, bluegrass, folk, and whatever else you've got that sounds good, Hiatt's wonderful body of work can't be boxed into any one genre -- the grab-bag term "Americana" kinda had to be invented to describe what Hiatt does. It probably hasn't helped his career that he's so hard to slot in any one niche (his buddy Lyle Lovett suffers from the same thing.) But that's what "Memphis in the Meantime," one of many great tracks from his breakthrough 1987 album Bring the Family, is all about. Sure, it's a driving song, a perfect bookend to "Drive South." But propelled by a speedy, funky beat (dig that rhythm section, with Jim Keltner on drums and Nick Lowe on bass), it's also about music, and how you've got to mix things up to keep from going stale.
This is a great springtime song, busting out with energy and longing for a fresh start: "We've been hanging around this town / Just a little too long a while . . .But if I don't get outta here pretty soon / My head's going to explode." He hangs on that "explode" for a dizzy extra beat; you can almost hear the blood pulsing in his temples. He's got Ry Cooder chipping in on guitar too; those riffs snap, crackle, and pop with nervous energy.
Hiatt lives in Nashville now (he grew up in my neighborhood in Indianapolis) but that doesn't mean he has to worship all the time at the church of Ryman and the Opry. "Sure I like country music / I like mandolins," he admits in the lead-in to the chorus, "But right now I need a Telecaster / Through a Vibro-lux turned up to ten." (I love how Hiatt defines it all through those specific details.) And so he invites his girlfriend to hop in the car and breeze down the highway to Memphis. Hiatt's got a long-standing romance with the open highway, another prime Americana quality (and hey, it's the Indy connection too). They're not going forever -- it's just for the "meantime" -- but dang, sometimes you need a change.
In his early days Hiatt was packaged as the American Elvis Costello, which ended up being more of a curse than anything else -- both were forced to act like angry young men a little too long -- but as far as witty lyrics go, Hiatt deserved the comparison. Here he deals out image after image to contrast the Nashville and Memphis scenes: "I wanna trade in these ol' country boots / For some fine Italian shoes . . . Forget the mousse and the hairspray, sugar / We don't need none of that / A little dab'll do ya, girl / Underneath a pork pie hat," and in the final chorus, "One more heartfelt steel guitar chord / Girl, its gonna do me in / I need to hear some trumpet and saxophone / You know sound as sweet as sin." Oh, yesssss.
Sure, he knows this won't be his long-term route to success -- "I don't think Ronnie Milsap's gonna / Ever record this song" (these days in concert I recall he sings "Kenny Chesney" instead). Eventually he'll dutifully toe the Nashville line again -- "And after we get good and greasy / Baby we can come back home / Put the cowhorns back on the Cadillac / And change the message on the code-a-phone." But it's spring, and he's itchy, and change is always invigorating: "If we could just get off-a that beat little girl / Maybe we could find the groove / At least we could find us a decent meal / Down at the Rendezvous." Hey, a good meal is reason enough to hit the road, especially now that the dogwoods are in blossom. Put this track on in your car next time you go road tripping -- you may end up in Memphis yourself before you realize it.
Memphis in the Meantime sample
Some good news from Nashville: in September, John Hiatt will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association, following in the footsteps of Willie Nelson, John Prine, and Guy Clark -- a well-deserved honor, because in my opinion nobody defines Americana like John Hiatt does. That, together with the news that John's got a new CD coming out May 27th -- wryly titled Same Old Man -- has got me deep in a Hiatt groove today. That's never a bad thing.
Sampling from country, R&B, alt rock, bluegrass, folk, and whatever else you've got that sounds good, Hiatt's wonderful body of work can't be boxed into any one genre -- the grab-bag term "Americana" kinda had to be invented to describe what Hiatt does. It probably hasn't helped his career that he's so hard to slot in any one niche (his buddy Lyle Lovett suffers from the same thing.) But that's what "Memphis in the Meantime," one of many great tracks from his breakthrough 1987 album Bring the Family, is all about. Sure, it's a driving song, a perfect bookend to "Drive South." But propelled by a speedy, funky beat (dig that rhythm section, with Jim Keltner on drums and Nick Lowe on bass), it's also about music, and how you've got to mix things up to keep from going stale.
This is a great springtime song, busting out with energy and longing for a fresh start: "We've been hanging around this town / Just a little too long a while . . .But if I don't get outta here pretty soon / My head's going to explode." He hangs on that "explode" for a dizzy extra beat; you can almost hear the blood pulsing in his temples. He's got Ry Cooder chipping in on guitar too; those riffs snap, crackle, and pop with nervous energy.
Hiatt lives in Nashville now (he grew up in my neighborhood in Indianapolis) but that doesn't mean he has to worship all the time at the church of Ryman and the Opry. "Sure I like country music / I like mandolins," he admits in the lead-in to the chorus, "But right now I need a Telecaster / Through a Vibro-lux turned up to ten." (I love how Hiatt defines it all through those specific details.) And so he invites his girlfriend to hop in the car and breeze down the highway to Memphis. Hiatt's got a long-standing romance with the open highway, another prime Americana quality (and hey, it's the Indy connection too). They're not going forever -- it's just for the "meantime" -- but dang, sometimes you need a change.
In his early days Hiatt was packaged as the American Elvis Costello, which ended up being more of a curse than anything else -- both were forced to act like angry young men a little too long -- but as far as witty lyrics go, Hiatt deserved the comparison. Here he deals out image after image to contrast the Nashville and Memphis scenes: "I wanna trade in these ol' country boots / For some fine Italian shoes . . . Forget the mousse and the hairspray, sugar / We don't need none of that / A little dab'll do ya, girl / Underneath a pork pie hat," and in the final chorus, "One more heartfelt steel guitar chord / Girl, its gonna do me in / I need to hear some trumpet and saxophone / You know sound as sweet as sin." Oh, yesssss.
Sure, he knows this won't be his long-term route to success -- "I don't think Ronnie Milsap's gonna / Ever record this song" (these days in concert I recall he sings "Kenny Chesney" instead). Eventually he'll dutifully toe the Nashville line again -- "And after we get good and greasy / Baby we can come back home / Put the cowhorns back on the Cadillac / And change the message on the code-a-phone." But it's spring, and he's itchy, and change is always invigorating: "If we could just get off-a that beat little girl / Maybe we could find the groove / At least we could find us a decent meal / Down at the Rendezvous." Hey, a good meal is reason enough to hit the road, especially now that the dogwoods are in blossom. Put this track on in your car next time you go road tripping -- you may end up in Memphis yourself before you realize it.
Memphis in the Meantime sample
Friday, February 08, 2008
"What's the Matter Now?" / Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
Being in a bluegrass mood got me to listening to Bill Kirchen again, which sooner or later was bound to get me pulling out the classic album Lost in the Ozone, by Commander Cody. It's snowing outside but this tasty bit of vintage ham-and-grits warms me up just fine.
Now, I have to make one big embarrassing admission: For years I got Commander Cody and Captain Beefheart mixed up. I remember albums by both of them in the guys' record collections I'd thumb through in college, but I can't recall anybody ever actually playing them. It never seemed important to me to learn the difference.
Well, I was wrong. I've listened to Captain Beefheart now and it just doesn't do it for me (please, somebody, explain what I'm missing). But I completely dig this Commander Cody stuff, with all its honky-tonk piano and country twang geetar and deadpan humor. These guys deliver the same sort of fun as the Jim Kweskin Jug Band and Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks, only less esoteric and arty; they're like all those British pub rockers I love, but much more lazy and laidback.
There isn't any "message" in a song like "What's The Matter Now?" -- nothing but a leisurely rhythmic stroll that leads us from one solo to another ; some twiddling on a tinny piano, a shuffling steel guitar, a meandering fiddle solo, and a loping bass. The singer wanders in from time to time to scratch his head and wonders what his woman's up to, singing in a woeful, baffled voice, "What's the matt-errrr now? / What's the matt-errr now? / Well I haven't seen my baby since way last spring / Tell me pretty mama did you bring that thing? / I want some honey from that honeycomb (gimme!) / Tell me what's the matter now."
This guy is so clueless. His wants are simple: he hasn't seen her in ages, he wants some love, and he just can't fathom why she has to make it so complicated. That classic honeycomb metaphor is just graphic enough to make me snort. MEN! If he really thinks he can just walk in, probably without washing his hands or nothing, and get a piece of that action -- well, buddy, you got another think coming.
It's like Nick Lowe* sings in "People Change," "Storybook love, meant for each other / And now she treats you like a brother / And you don't know what you've done / Or even how to make it right." I'll side with the ladies here; men can be so dense sometimes. If I have to tell you what's wrong, then what's the point?
Of course this track is really all about those loose-limbed, easygoing solos; the singer can moan and complain all he wants, those playful instrumentals make sure we don't take him one bit seriously. Every once in awhile somebody hoots in the background, just to keep the roadhouse vibe going, and eventually a slightly offkey barroom chorus harmonizes in sympathy. Sure, there's the old war between the sexes, but hell, sugar, have another beer and it'll be all right.
* You knew I'd bring him in eventually.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
"Kansas" / Fred J. Eaglesmith
Here's another thing the internet is good for; occasionally on a message board or music site you hear tell of musicians who're never gonna get played on the radio--not even Sirius or XM--who're never gonna be nominated for a Grammy or a CMA, or interviewed in the New York Times. And provided the recommendation comes from someone whose taste you trust, you know you have to follow it up.
So thanks to my Kinks friend Jim (a.k.a. Nappers) for dropping the word about Fred Eaglesmith. That rattled around in my brainpan for a few weeks, until by chance I was offered a album of his to review for Blogcritics.org -- not even a new release, but his 2006 CD Milly's Cafe. The first time I put that baby on my CD player, I was just blown away. So how come Steve Earle gets all the press and this guy gets none?
This is a whole album full of lonesome-highway songs, ballads about forgotten Americans, done in an exquisitely worn and scrubbed alt.country style. "Kansas" in particular has the light touch of a true master: the whole thing's just a guitar, a bare whisper of drums, and a particularly effective Dobro. About fifty percent of the lyrics of this song consist of the line "It's always Kansas" repeated over and over, but if you think that's lazy songwriting, you are completely wrong. Playing up the creaky, weary edges of his voice, Eaglesmith is taking on a character here--a guy who's inarticulate in the first place, and numb with heartbreak on top of that. I don't know about you, but I'd be suspicious of any guy who could spin fine phrases in the middle of that kind of grief.
Have any of you ever driven across Kansas? Well, I have, and I know just what Eaglesmith's talking about here. The yawning emptiness of a straight-shot west Kansas highway is exactly where all the thoughts you're trying not to think will catch up with you. As he remarks in the second verse, "Those sad sad songs / On the radio, in the jukebox in the truck stops / They don't bother me, you know / I can face the day / I can walk away / I can tell myself I'm gonna be okay." That's how it works, all right; for a while you're keeping it together, you're proud of yourself. And then you let your guard down, and suddenly you're a mess all over again.
Or as Fred puts it, "It's always Kansas / That's where I fall apart / That's where my broken heart / Catches up with the news." That seems to me an pretty astute insight into human psychology--that gap between knowing something and accepting it can be HUGE. As T.S. Eliot once wrote, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." We're catching this guy at the very moment where he can finally admit that he's lost his woman, and I can just imagine the dull agony of that long drive from Leavenworth to Dodge. I see the guy through a rain-spattered windshield, sobbing; and yeah, I know I added those details, but it's Eaglesmith's genius to pull you into his storytelling and let you take over for yourself. (May I add here that Bob Dylan still hasn't learned how to do this?)
It doesn't have to be Kansas, really; it could be the A train, or the Staten Island ferry late at night, or the Stop & Shop check-out line--any place or any time where your heart catches up with the news. The news could be 20 years old, even; it doesn't matter. We all have some kind of Kansas where we always break down, and somehow just having it put into a song helps.
Thanks, Fred; and thanks, Jim.
Kansas sample
Here's another thing the internet is good for; occasionally on a message board or music site you hear tell of musicians who're never gonna get played on the radio--not even Sirius or XM--who're never gonna be nominated for a Grammy or a CMA, or interviewed in the New York Times. And provided the recommendation comes from someone whose taste you trust, you know you have to follow it up.
So thanks to my Kinks friend Jim (a.k.a. Nappers) for dropping the word about Fred Eaglesmith. That rattled around in my brainpan for a few weeks, until by chance I was offered a album of his to review for Blogcritics.org -- not even a new release, but his 2006 CD Milly's Cafe. The first time I put that baby on my CD player, I was just blown away. So how come Steve Earle gets all the press and this guy gets none?
This is a whole album full of lonesome-highway songs, ballads about forgotten Americans, done in an exquisitely worn and scrubbed alt.country style. "Kansas" in particular has the light touch of a true master: the whole thing's just a guitar, a bare whisper of drums, and a particularly effective Dobro. About fifty percent of the lyrics of this song consist of the line "It's always Kansas" repeated over and over, but if you think that's lazy songwriting, you are completely wrong. Playing up the creaky, weary edges of his voice, Eaglesmith is taking on a character here--a guy who's inarticulate in the first place, and numb with heartbreak on top of that. I don't know about you, but I'd be suspicious of any guy who could spin fine phrases in the middle of that kind of grief.
Have any of you ever driven across Kansas? Well, I have, and I know just what Eaglesmith's talking about here. The yawning emptiness of a straight-shot west Kansas highway is exactly where all the thoughts you're trying not to think will catch up with you. As he remarks in the second verse, "Those sad sad songs / On the radio, in the jukebox in the truck stops / They don't bother me, you know / I can face the day / I can walk away / I can tell myself I'm gonna be okay." That's how it works, all right; for a while you're keeping it together, you're proud of yourself. And then you let your guard down, and suddenly you're a mess all over again.
Or as Fred puts it, "It's always Kansas / That's where I fall apart / That's where my broken heart / Catches up with the news." That seems to me an pretty astute insight into human psychology--that gap between knowing something and accepting it can be HUGE. As T.S. Eliot once wrote, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." We're catching this guy at the very moment where he can finally admit that he's lost his woman, and I can just imagine the dull agony of that long drive from Leavenworth to Dodge. I see the guy through a rain-spattered windshield, sobbing; and yeah, I know I added those details, but it's Eaglesmith's genius to pull you into his storytelling and let you take over for yourself. (May I add here that Bob Dylan still hasn't learned how to do this?)
It doesn't have to be Kansas, really; it could be the A train, or the Staten Island ferry late at night, or the Stop & Shop check-out line--any place or any time where your heart catches up with the news. The news could be 20 years old, even; it doesn't matter. We all have some kind of Kansas where we always break down, and somehow just having it put into a song helps.
Thanks, Fred; and thanks, Jim.
Kansas sample
Thursday, September 13, 2007
"Somebody More Like You" / Nickel Creek
A few weeks ago I had the unexpected pleasure of seeing this alt-bluegrass trio perform in Central Park (see here for my review). I love it when you take a chance on a band whose music you've never heard, and they turn out to be GREAT.
Nickel Creek (not to be confused in any way shape or form with Nickelback) consists of fiddler Sara Watkins, her brother Sean on acoustic guitar, and their friend Chris Thile on mandolin. They've been playing professionally since they were about 10, but they're 20-somethings now and they've evolved from traditional bluegrass into this wonderful hybrid that's indie rock one minute, folk the next, quirky downtown pop the next. This track is one of Sean's (you'll find it on their 2005 album Why Should The Fire Die?) and it really sold to the crowd that night in the park.
It starts out so earnest, with a folky guitar line and Sean's wistful tenor, backed up by Sara's harmonies and mournful fiddle solo. "I didn't hear you / Say you're / Sorry," he begins, adding "the fault must be mine." At first I take that remark at face value, but the song soon enough slides into snarkiness, as each repeated melodic phrase edges down the scale. "I wish you all the best of luck / In finding somebody more like you." As the song develops, it becomes plenty clear that being like her is NOT something he admires.
"You said you'd love me / Always / Truly," he reminds her, adding ironically "I must have changed." Yeah, right -- I can just imagine him rolling his eyes. And in the bridge, he really lets her have it -- "I hope you meet someone your height / So you can see eye to eye /With someone as small as you." Ouch.
It's a rueful minor-key melody, delicately syncopated and sparely arranged. Their bluegrass roots are still there, in Sean's nimble guitar picking and Sara's singing fiddle, but that bongo-like percussion (which I seem to recall was Chris tapping on the body of his mandolin) plants a foot in alt-rock. It's hypnotic, smart, subtle --- just the sort of thing I like.
Song after song from these folks that night kept wowing me. I walked out afterward simply buzzing with happiness, my faith in modern music restored.
Somebody More Like You sample
A few weeks ago I had the unexpected pleasure of seeing this alt-bluegrass trio perform in Central Park (see here for my review). I love it when you take a chance on a band whose music you've never heard, and they turn out to be GREAT.
Nickel Creek (not to be confused in any way shape or form with Nickelback) consists of fiddler Sara Watkins, her brother Sean on acoustic guitar, and their friend Chris Thile on mandolin. They've been playing professionally since they were about 10, but they're 20-somethings now and they've evolved from traditional bluegrass into this wonderful hybrid that's indie rock one minute, folk the next, quirky downtown pop the next. This track is one of Sean's (you'll find it on their 2005 album Why Should The Fire Die?) and it really sold to the crowd that night in the park.
It starts out so earnest, with a folky guitar line and Sean's wistful tenor, backed up by Sara's harmonies and mournful fiddle solo. "I didn't hear you / Say you're / Sorry," he begins, adding "the fault must be mine." At first I take that remark at face value, but the song soon enough slides into snarkiness, as each repeated melodic phrase edges down the scale. "I wish you all the best of luck / In finding somebody more like you." As the song develops, it becomes plenty clear that being like her is NOT something he admires.
"You said you'd love me / Always / Truly," he reminds her, adding ironically "I must have changed." Yeah, right -- I can just imagine him rolling his eyes. And in the bridge, he really lets her have it -- "I hope you meet someone your height / So you can see eye to eye /With someone as small as you." Ouch.
It's a rueful minor-key melody, delicately syncopated and sparely arranged. Their bluegrass roots are still there, in Sean's nimble guitar picking and Sara's singing fiddle, but that bongo-like percussion (which I seem to recall was Chris tapping on the body of his mandolin) plants a foot in alt-rock. It's hypnotic, smart, subtle --- just the sort of thing I like.
Song after song from these folks that night kept wowing me. I walked out afterward simply buzzing with happiness, my faith in modern music restored.
Somebody More Like You sample
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
“Crippled Inside” / Widespread Panic
I don’t know about you, but I found the recent worldwide Live Earth concerts to be a little, well…disconcerting. I know we need to save the planet and all, but still -- did those shows really make a single person more environmentally aware? I bet they wasted more energy than they saved, in the long run.
Nevertheless, I’m not opposed to do-good causes, when they’re done right, and it seems like this Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur has been done right. Trust Amnesty International and Yoko Ono to play their cards shrewdly. Cashing in on John Lennon's songwriting genius makes complete sense if it's for a political cause. Okay, it’s a little annoying to hear Avril Lavigne warble “Imagine,” but Green Day doing “Working Class Hero,” Matisyahu rapping away on “Watching the Wheels,” or Los Lonely Boys rocking out on “Whatever Gets You Through The Night” (really, can anybody ruin that song?) make it all worthwhile.
I love it when a tribute album turns me on to a band I’ve never heard before. Though it’s only available on the iTunes bonus tracks, Widespread Panic’s version of “Cripple Inside” did just that. It was great to get a jolt of southern jam band energy after all the slick pop and Important Anthem Rock performances on this record (R.E.M. no longer counts as a southern jam band in my book). Lennon’s original recording of “Crippled Inside” already had a nice jangly honky-tonk vibe; Widespread Panic has taken that and added bluegrass picking and pedal steel -- I even hear a little washboard in there -- and then let it swing like the roadhouse classic it was always meant to be.
Sure, Widespread Panic’s lead singer sounds more like a cracker-barrel philosopher than the snide, bitter pundit Lennon was. But somehow it works this way, too. “You can shine your shoes and wear a suit / You can comb your hair and looks quite cute” – when Lennon sang that, he was a long-haired dropout sneering at conformists; when WP sings it, it comes off as a country boy poking fun at a city slicker. You can almost imagine him pausing to spit tobacco juice between verses. “You can go to church and sing a hymn / And judge me by the color of my skin” – these lines sound even more relevant when sung by somebody with a southern twang. And the chorus just crackles with down-home wisdom: “Well now you know that your cat has nine lives / Nine lives to itself / But you only got one / And a dog’s life ain’t fun / Mamma take a look outside.”
Anyway, I apologize in advance for shilling a track that can only be bought on iTunes. (Must be my secret crush on Steve Jobs leading me astray.) But check it out if you’re iTuned in; otherwise, head over to www.widespreadpanic.com and check out some other tunes by these guys. That’s what I plan to do.
I don’t know about you, but I found the recent worldwide Live Earth concerts to be a little, well…disconcerting. I know we need to save the planet and all, but still -- did those shows really make a single person more environmentally aware? I bet they wasted more energy than they saved, in the long run.
Nevertheless, I’m not opposed to do-good causes, when they’re done right, and it seems like this Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur has been done right. Trust Amnesty International and Yoko Ono to play their cards shrewdly. Cashing in on John Lennon's songwriting genius makes complete sense if it's for a political cause. Okay, it’s a little annoying to hear Avril Lavigne warble “Imagine,” but Green Day doing “Working Class Hero,” Matisyahu rapping away on “Watching the Wheels,” or Los Lonely Boys rocking out on “Whatever Gets You Through The Night” (really, can anybody ruin that song?) make it all worthwhile.
I love it when a tribute album turns me on to a band I’ve never heard before. Though it’s only available on the iTunes bonus tracks, Widespread Panic’s version of “Cripple Inside” did just that. It was great to get a jolt of southern jam band energy after all the slick pop and Important Anthem Rock performances on this record (R.E.M. no longer counts as a southern jam band in my book). Lennon’s original recording of “Crippled Inside” already had a nice jangly honky-tonk vibe; Widespread Panic has taken that and added bluegrass picking and pedal steel -- I even hear a little washboard in there -- and then let it swing like the roadhouse classic it was always meant to be.
Sure, Widespread Panic’s lead singer sounds more like a cracker-barrel philosopher than the snide, bitter pundit Lennon was. But somehow it works this way, too. “You can shine your shoes and wear a suit / You can comb your hair and looks quite cute” – when Lennon sang that, he was a long-haired dropout sneering at conformists; when WP sings it, it comes off as a country boy poking fun at a city slicker. You can almost imagine him pausing to spit tobacco juice between verses. “You can go to church and sing a hymn / And judge me by the color of my skin” – these lines sound even more relevant when sung by somebody with a southern twang. And the chorus just crackles with down-home wisdom: “Well now you know that your cat has nine lives / Nine lives to itself / But you only got one / And a dog’s life ain’t fun / Mamma take a look outside.”
Anyway, I apologize in advance for shilling a track that can only be bought on iTunes. (Must be my secret crush on Steve Jobs leading me astray.) But check it out if you’re iTuned in; otherwise, head over to www.widespreadpanic.com and check out some other tunes by these guys. That’s what I plan to do.
Friday, April 27, 2007
"How To Fight Loneliness" / Wilco
At this very moment a debate is probably raging on some message board somewhere about whether Wilco is better than Uncle Tupelo (Jeff Tweedy's earlier band) or Son Volt (the band fronted by Jay Farrar, Tweedy's Uncle Tupelo partner). Most likely, that argument will morph into another about whether Tweedy betrayed his alt.country roots to gain commercial success. Me, I can't get too worked up about it. I like them all; I like Tweedy's side project Golden Smog too. I suspect that being a full-time Wilco fan could be a demanding job, more than I'm ready to take on. But as far as the music goes, what's not to like?
I'm trying to remember now what first turned me on to Wilco. I think it was this number from their 1999 album Summerteeth -- was it on some indie movie soundtrack? If not, it should have been; it has just the sort of tentative, discontented moodiness that belongs in an indie movie. Maybe it's the laidback beat, or those ruminating chord progressions; could be that layered texture of the meandering piano against the soughing organ; or the odd bits of recorded melody played backwards, like sucked-back sighs. However they pulled it off, it's atmospheric as hell.
This is an I'm Lonely Song, but with a difference. Most I'm Lonely Songs are just Missing You songs in disguise, loaded up with romantic self-pity; this guy's loneliness may have started with romantic loss, but it's much more general by now. He's no longer bemoaning his own fate, simply offering fumbling advice on how to cope. It's a self-help manual for the social isolate: "How to fight loneliness / Smile all the time / Shine your teeth to meaningless / And sharpen them with lies." (Or as T. S. Eliot, the high priest of modernist anxiety, once put it, "There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.") Tweedy's listless vocal is anything but encouraging. He offers us two choices -- dumb conformity, or remaining in your hermit cave -- and it's not entirely clear which one he'd choose himself.
In verse two, Tweedy paints an even bleaker picture: "That's how you fight loneliness / You laugh at every joke / Drag your blanket blindly / Fill your heart with smoke." That line about the blanket makes me think of a lost little kid, clinging to his security blanket, and the image of the heart filled with smoke (as in "smoke and mirrors," no doubt) is simply haunting. I see something pathetically brave in all this. If you follow these easy instructions, you can just about convince yourself to settle for shallow social contact: "And the first thing that you want / Will be the last thing you'll ever need." (I think here also of the Death Cab for Cutie song, "The Sound of Settling.") Am I the only one who detects a whiff of longing here for that easy out?
It's funny how the jaded melancholy of this song works. Someone else (say, Bob Dylan) might have sung it with a cynical snarl, emphasizing words like "meaningless," "lies," "blindly," "smoke." Tweedy, though, shuffles through this with a weary diffidence that makes you wonder which way he's gonna go. It's like he's half closed-down already. Sure, that lying smile is a sell-out, but when you've been lonely enough for long enough...well, you don't have any energy left to take the high road. Talking himself into it, he repeats over and over, "Just smile all the time," his voice heaving hopefully upward on "smile", then slipping back down the scale. It's a pretty thin hope, but I find myself rooting for this guy. I can just picture him -- unshaven, hair tousled, shirttail out, eyes glazed -- I see guys like this on the streets every day. I'm rooting for all of them now.
How To Fight Loneliness sample
At this very moment a debate is probably raging on some message board somewhere about whether Wilco is better than Uncle Tupelo (Jeff Tweedy's earlier band) or Son Volt (the band fronted by Jay Farrar, Tweedy's Uncle Tupelo partner). Most likely, that argument will morph into another about whether Tweedy betrayed his alt.country roots to gain commercial success. Me, I can't get too worked up about it. I like them all; I like Tweedy's side project Golden Smog too. I suspect that being a full-time Wilco fan could be a demanding job, more than I'm ready to take on. But as far as the music goes, what's not to like?
I'm trying to remember now what first turned me on to Wilco. I think it was this number from their 1999 album Summerteeth -- was it on some indie movie soundtrack? If not, it should have been; it has just the sort of tentative, discontented moodiness that belongs in an indie movie. Maybe it's the laidback beat, or those ruminating chord progressions; could be that layered texture of the meandering piano against the soughing organ; or the odd bits of recorded melody played backwards, like sucked-back sighs. However they pulled it off, it's atmospheric as hell.
This is an I'm Lonely Song, but with a difference. Most I'm Lonely Songs are just Missing You songs in disguise, loaded up with romantic self-pity; this guy's loneliness may have started with romantic loss, but it's much more general by now. He's no longer bemoaning his own fate, simply offering fumbling advice on how to cope. It's a self-help manual for the social isolate: "How to fight loneliness / Smile all the time / Shine your teeth to meaningless / And sharpen them with lies." (Or as T. S. Eliot, the high priest of modernist anxiety, once put it, "There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.") Tweedy's listless vocal is anything but encouraging. He offers us two choices -- dumb conformity, or remaining in your hermit cave -- and it's not entirely clear which one he'd choose himself.
In verse two, Tweedy paints an even bleaker picture: "That's how you fight loneliness / You laugh at every joke / Drag your blanket blindly / Fill your heart with smoke." That line about the blanket makes me think of a lost little kid, clinging to his security blanket, and the image of the heart filled with smoke (as in "smoke and mirrors," no doubt) is simply haunting. I see something pathetically brave in all this. If you follow these easy instructions, you can just about convince yourself to settle for shallow social contact: "And the first thing that you want / Will be the last thing you'll ever need." (I think here also of the Death Cab for Cutie song, "The Sound of Settling.") Am I the only one who detects a whiff of longing here for that easy out?
It's funny how the jaded melancholy of this song works. Someone else (say, Bob Dylan) might have sung it with a cynical snarl, emphasizing words like "meaningless," "lies," "blindly," "smoke." Tweedy, though, shuffles through this with a weary diffidence that makes you wonder which way he's gonna go. It's like he's half closed-down already. Sure, that lying smile is a sell-out, but when you've been lonely enough for long enough...well, you don't have any energy left to take the high road. Talking himself into it, he repeats over and over, "Just smile all the time," his voice heaving hopefully upward on "smile", then slipping back down the scale. It's a pretty thin hope, but I find myself rooting for this guy. I can just picture him -- unshaven, hair tousled, shirttail out, eyes glazed -- I see guys like this on the streets every day. I'm rooting for all of them now.
How To Fight Loneliness sample
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
“I Wanna Slow You Down” / Joe Ely
Joe Ely has been touring the country lately with his colleagues John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, and Guy Clark, and it kills me to read the reviews of their performances – four songwriters armed with acoustic guitars, sitting on a bare stage and trading off songs with each other. I saw them about a year ago and it was one of the great concerts of my life. I wish they were visiting my neck of the woods this time around.
I didn’t even know who Joe Ely was before I saw the Songwriters Circle, but after I came home, I promptly downloaded several songs and soon picked up a couple CDs (he’s released about a dozen.) His stuff has been growing on me like crazy. This is just one of the many wonderful tracks on his 1992 album Love and Danger (an absolute gem). Joe Ely is from Texas, so I’m not surprised by the western twang at the beginning, or lyrics that mention truck stops and coyotes. But he straddles the line between country and rock better than almost anybody I know -- I read somewhere that Bruce Springsteen is a Joe Ely fan, and I can see that roots-rock similarity – and even on this relatively languid track, a knocking drumbeat and peeling guitar riffs jack up the wattage. It’s not a ballad, exactly, but a . . . well, a lovemaking song. And one that sets my pulse racing.
“Come here with me,” Joe coaxes, in his slightly weathered real-guy tenor. “I wanna slow you down / I wanna smear the moonlight in your skin / And put Orion in your crown.” I’m already intrigued – I’m such a sucker for men who spout poetry, especially when they wear faded blue jeans. Then he reveals just enough of his sensitive male side: “Let it all go / I know that you’re beat / That truck stop’s just not good for you / You’re always on your feet.” By now I’m relaxing on the couch, feet up, waiting gratefully to be taken care of. Instinctively I feel as if this man knows women – and likes them. By the time he sidles into the chorus, I’m all ears. “I wanna slow you down / Slow you down / I wanna slow you down” he repeats with growing urgency, hissing on the occasional s, lengthening the o in “slow” and “down” with a suppressed groan. Not sleazy, though; not at all. It's just plain erotic.
“Take off your dress,” he suggests next, casually, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. I can almost hear the zipper being tugged open, tooth by tooth, taking its time. “I wanna feel the warmness of your skin / As your heart begins to pound.” The physical immediacy of these up-close details is intoxicating; I am feeling flushed, and my heart is pounding. Then he closes in for the last verse: “Lay a while beside me / Forget about your cares / Down in your arroyo / I wanna climb your silver stairs…” Now there’s a songwriter who knows how to use a metaphor.
If Joe had sung this song the night I saw him, I’d have hung around the stage door for hours afterward. Maybe it’s just as well…
http://www.amazon.com/Love-Danger-Joe-Ely/dp/B000002OKP/ref=m_art_li_4/002-8741997-4930451
Joe Ely has been touring the country lately with his colleagues John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, and Guy Clark, and it kills me to read the reviews of their performances – four songwriters armed with acoustic guitars, sitting on a bare stage and trading off songs with each other. I saw them about a year ago and it was one of the great concerts of my life. I wish they were visiting my neck of the woods this time around.
I didn’t even know who Joe Ely was before I saw the Songwriters Circle, but after I came home, I promptly downloaded several songs and soon picked up a couple CDs (he’s released about a dozen.) His stuff has been growing on me like crazy. This is just one of the many wonderful tracks on his 1992 album Love and Danger (an absolute gem). Joe Ely is from Texas, so I’m not surprised by the western twang at the beginning, or lyrics that mention truck stops and coyotes. But he straddles the line between country and rock better than almost anybody I know -- I read somewhere that Bruce Springsteen is a Joe Ely fan, and I can see that roots-rock similarity – and even on this relatively languid track, a knocking drumbeat and peeling guitar riffs jack up the wattage. It’s not a ballad, exactly, but a . . . well, a lovemaking song. And one that sets my pulse racing.
“Come here with me,” Joe coaxes, in his slightly weathered real-guy tenor. “I wanna slow you down / I wanna smear the moonlight in your skin / And put Orion in your crown.” I’m already intrigued – I’m such a sucker for men who spout poetry, especially when they wear faded blue jeans. Then he reveals just enough of his sensitive male side: “Let it all go / I know that you’re beat / That truck stop’s just not good for you / You’re always on your feet.” By now I’m relaxing on the couch, feet up, waiting gratefully to be taken care of. Instinctively I feel as if this man knows women – and likes them. By the time he sidles into the chorus, I’m all ears. “I wanna slow you down / Slow you down / I wanna slow you down” he repeats with growing urgency, hissing on the occasional s, lengthening the o in “slow” and “down” with a suppressed groan. Not sleazy, though; not at all. It's just plain erotic.
“Take off your dress,” he suggests next, casually, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. I can almost hear the zipper being tugged open, tooth by tooth, taking its time. “I wanna feel the warmness of your skin / As your heart begins to pound.” The physical immediacy of these up-close details is intoxicating; I am feeling flushed, and my heart is pounding. Then he closes in for the last verse: “Lay a while beside me / Forget about your cares / Down in your arroyo / I wanna climb your silver stairs…” Now there’s a songwriter who knows how to use a metaphor.
If Joe had sung this song the night I saw him, I’d have hung around the stage door for hours afterward. Maybe it’s just as well…
http://www.amazon.com/Love-Danger-Joe-Ely/dp/B000002OKP/ref=m_art_li_4/002-8741997-4930451
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
"All the Right Reasons" / The Jayhawks
Continuing on the Valentine's theme...
There are plenty of pop songs about first love and infatuation, but they wear thin after awhile; what we need more of are grown-up songs about love. That's why I keep coming back to this song from the Jayhawks 2003 album Rainy Day Music, which may well have been their last outing (though never fear, half the band -- Gary Louris and Marc Perlman -- probably can be found with the band Golden Smog). Perhaps disbanding was inevitable -- the Jayhawks were one of those bands that kept changing personnel, and changing their sound in the process. I like them best when they stick to this acoustic-Americana style, though, and Rainy Day Music is one lovely album.
The chorus of this song, sung in soft harmonies over an acoustic strum and softly wheezing accordion, tells you most of what you need to know: "I don't know what day it is, I can't recall the seasons / And I don't remember how we got this far / All I know's I'm loving you for all the right reasons / In my sky you'll always be my morning star." Love sneaks up on you sometimes, just like this, and right in the middle of life -- when you're not paying a bit of attention -- you can suddenly realize what matters to you. It has nothing to do with love at first sight, or promising to love somebody forever, or any of those romantic cliches; in fact, those are generally the wrong reasons for being in love. What Gary Louris is describing here is something completely different, a love that sustains a couple through the hard times, a love that helps them move ahead with all the other baggage of life. Grown-up love.
My favorite verse is the second one, where drums and electric guitar join in to lay on a bit of grandeur as Louris steps back for a panoramic perspective. His slightly ragged tenor swoops upward on a climbing melody: "Like a tired bird flying high across the ocean / I was outside looking in/ You made me live again." That sense of weariness and isolation speaks to me; who doesn't want a love that'll overcome that? He goes on to shamelessly steal a line from "God Bless America": "From the mountains to the prairies, little babies / Figures fill their heads / Visions bathed in red." Frankly, I have no idea what he's talking about here, but somehow that just makes me suspect he's writing this to a real woman, and if she understands the code, that's what matters.
In the third verse Louris gives us his "Homeward Bound" moment -- "From the train in Manchester, England / Lightning fills the sky / As I watched you wave goodbye" -- with the accordion swelling underneath, as if his heart is bursting with affection (really, the accordion is a tremendously underrated instrument). Again I picture a real woman, who clearly remembers that farewell in Manchester (the life of a touring musician, such a drag), and that makes it all the more poignant.
I guess what I'm saying is that I don't want into this relationship -- I'm not lusting for Gary Louris, appealing as those earnest snags in his voice may be. I just want something like this. Grown-up love doesn't come in one-size-fits-all, it's custom tailored. Looking for love is one thing, and often a fruitless quest; finding it on your doorstep is something else. Something wonderful indeed.
Continuing on the Valentine's theme...
There are plenty of pop songs about first love and infatuation, but they wear thin after awhile; what we need more of are grown-up songs about love. That's why I keep coming back to this song from the Jayhawks 2003 album Rainy Day Music, which may well have been their last outing (though never fear, half the band -- Gary Louris and Marc Perlman -- probably can be found with the band Golden Smog). Perhaps disbanding was inevitable -- the Jayhawks were one of those bands that kept changing personnel, and changing their sound in the process. I like them best when they stick to this acoustic-Americana style, though, and Rainy Day Music is one lovely album.
The chorus of this song, sung in soft harmonies over an acoustic strum and softly wheezing accordion, tells you most of what you need to know: "I don't know what day it is, I can't recall the seasons / And I don't remember how we got this far / All I know's I'm loving you for all the right reasons / In my sky you'll always be my morning star." Love sneaks up on you sometimes, just like this, and right in the middle of life -- when you're not paying a bit of attention -- you can suddenly realize what matters to you. It has nothing to do with love at first sight, or promising to love somebody forever, or any of those romantic cliches; in fact, those are generally the wrong reasons for being in love. What Gary Louris is describing here is something completely different, a love that sustains a couple through the hard times, a love that helps them move ahead with all the other baggage of life. Grown-up love.
My favorite verse is the second one, where drums and electric guitar join in to lay on a bit of grandeur as Louris steps back for a panoramic perspective. His slightly ragged tenor swoops upward on a climbing melody: "Like a tired bird flying high across the ocean / I was outside looking in/ You made me live again." That sense of weariness and isolation speaks to me; who doesn't want a love that'll overcome that? He goes on to shamelessly steal a line from "God Bless America": "From the mountains to the prairies, little babies / Figures fill their heads / Visions bathed in red." Frankly, I have no idea what he's talking about here, but somehow that just makes me suspect he's writing this to a real woman, and if she understands the code, that's what matters.
In the third verse Louris gives us his "Homeward Bound" moment -- "From the train in Manchester, England / Lightning fills the sky / As I watched you wave goodbye" -- with the accordion swelling underneath, as if his heart is bursting with affection (really, the accordion is a tremendously underrated instrument). Again I picture a real woman, who clearly remembers that farewell in Manchester (the life of a touring musician, such a drag), and that makes it all the more poignant.
I guess what I'm saying is that I don't want into this relationship -- I'm not lusting for Gary Louris, appealing as those earnest snags in his voice may be. I just want something like this. Grown-up love doesn't come in one-size-fits-all, it's custom tailored. Looking for love is one thing, and often a fruitless quest; finding it on your doorstep is something else. Something wonderful indeed.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
"Worry B Gone" / Guy Clark
Every day my Google news alert teases me with another appearance, somewhere around these United States, of what they call the Four Horsemen Tour -- John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, Guy Clark, and Joe Ely, four of the finest singer-songwriters you'll ever hear. If they're coming to your neck of the woods SEE THEM at all costs. I took in one of their shows a year ago, mainly on account of John Hiatt (one of my personal music gods), but to my great surprise I fell wildly in love with the other three as well. I wrote about Lyle Lovett a few weeks ago; now it's time to rave about Guy Clark, as I spin his new CD Workbench Songs.
On my iTunes, Guy Clark tracks get classified as everything from folk to country to blues to rock -- it's like he's pitched his tent at the Four Corners of music. Maybe that's why he's never been successfully marketed to a wide public. Well, the fact that more folks don't know about Guy Clark is a crying shame. Just listening to him sing these down-to-earth numbers in that mellow, slightly growly voice makes me feel all warm inside. I totally dig his love songs, the way they ooze genuine affection for flesh-and-blood women, not plastic hotties; I sink happily into his nostalgic reminiscences of his small-town Texas boyhood. Guy Clark never seems to take himself too seriously, but don't be fooled -- he'll sneak in some edgy home truths just when you least expect it.
That's where we stand with this little tune. "Give me just one more puff of that Worry B Gone," he croons over a perky acoustic line, with his buddies chiming in, "Worry be gone," like some 1930s-period piece out of O Brother Where Art Thou. His scratchy vocal is completely disarming, and obviously NOT your typical slacker stoner. He can't really mean he's smoking dope, can he? "I got a world of trouble I need to forget," he says, with just the slightest wink; "I'm on my way, but I ain't there yet." Now what could drive a good ol' boy like this to smoke pot?
Well, hang on a minute, and he'll get around to telling you. (Don't be in such a dang hurry.) "Everywhere I look, trouble is all I see," he gripes lazily, matching his pace to that shuffling old-time rhythm (a little honky-tonk piano slips in here now too); "Can't listen to the radio and I hate TV." Hmmm...well, I'm with you there, Guy. Go on. "Trouble with the air, trouble with the water / People ain't treating one another like they oughtta," he adds, and he does have a point -- it's enough to drive anybody to seek a little herbal escape.
"I don't want to hear no preacher preaching," he continues, your classic front-porch philosopher; "No more politician bitchin' / All them songs about love gone wrong / Got me wondering where's my baby's gone / I can't suffer fools wastin' my time / Don't give me no advice that rhymes..." and even though he's giving us advice in rhyme right there, I'm suckered in. "Don't gimme no shit, just gimme a hit / I been smokin' all day and I can't get lit," he complains, with a sly chuckle in his voice. By now, it's clear that this song is only incidentally about the virtues of marijuana, and whether you puff Worry B Gone or not, you know where he's coming from.
If the modern world can drive a danged old coyote like this to pot, then something must be wrong. But, hey, Guy Clark's not preaching at you; he'd never do that. No, sirree. You just happened to stumble on some notions he left lying around...
http://www.echotunes.com/mmTHEECHOPLEX/audio/mp3/GC_WS_10_WorryBGone.mp3http://
Every day my Google news alert teases me with another appearance, somewhere around these United States, of what they call the Four Horsemen Tour -- John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, Guy Clark, and Joe Ely, four of the finest singer-songwriters you'll ever hear. If they're coming to your neck of the woods SEE THEM at all costs. I took in one of their shows a year ago, mainly on account of John Hiatt (one of my personal music gods), but to my great surprise I fell wildly in love with the other three as well. I wrote about Lyle Lovett a few weeks ago; now it's time to rave about Guy Clark, as I spin his new CD Workbench Songs.
On my iTunes, Guy Clark tracks get classified as everything from folk to country to blues to rock -- it's like he's pitched his tent at the Four Corners of music. Maybe that's why he's never been successfully marketed to a wide public. Well, the fact that more folks don't know about Guy Clark is a crying shame. Just listening to him sing these down-to-earth numbers in that mellow, slightly growly voice makes me feel all warm inside. I totally dig his love songs, the way they ooze genuine affection for flesh-and-blood women, not plastic hotties; I sink happily into his nostalgic reminiscences of his small-town Texas boyhood. Guy Clark never seems to take himself too seriously, but don't be fooled -- he'll sneak in some edgy home truths just when you least expect it.
That's where we stand with this little tune. "Give me just one more puff of that Worry B Gone," he croons over a perky acoustic line, with his buddies chiming in, "Worry be gone," like some 1930s-period piece out of O Brother Where Art Thou. His scratchy vocal is completely disarming, and obviously NOT your typical slacker stoner. He can't really mean he's smoking dope, can he? "I got a world of trouble I need to forget," he says, with just the slightest wink; "I'm on my way, but I ain't there yet." Now what could drive a good ol' boy like this to smoke pot?
Well, hang on a minute, and he'll get around to telling you. (Don't be in such a dang hurry.) "Everywhere I look, trouble is all I see," he gripes lazily, matching his pace to that shuffling old-time rhythm (a little honky-tonk piano slips in here now too); "Can't listen to the radio and I hate TV." Hmmm...well, I'm with you there, Guy. Go on. "Trouble with the air, trouble with the water / People ain't treating one another like they oughtta," he adds, and he does have a point -- it's enough to drive anybody to seek a little herbal escape.
"I don't want to hear no preacher preaching," he continues, your classic front-porch philosopher; "No more politician bitchin' / All them songs about love gone wrong / Got me wondering where's my baby's gone / I can't suffer fools wastin' my time / Don't give me no advice that rhymes..." and even though he's giving us advice in rhyme right there, I'm suckered in. "Don't gimme no shit, just gimme a hit / I been smokin' all day and I can't get lit," he complains, with a sly chuckle in his voice. By now, it's clear that this song is only incidentally about the virtues of marijuana, and whether you puff Worry B Gone or not, you know where he's coming from.
If the modern world can drive a danged old coyote like this to pot, then something must be wrong. But, hey, Guy Clark's not preaching at you; he'd never do that. No, sirree. You just happened to stumble on some notions he left lying around...
http://www.echotunes.com/mmTHEECHOPLEX/audio/mp3/GC_WS_10_WorryBGone.mp3http://
Friday, January 26, 2007
"King of California" / Dave Alvin
Anybody remember the Blasters? Yeah, me neither.
That was Dave Alvin's first band, with his brother Phil (love those brother bands), Phil Alvin being the lead singer and Dave the guitarist and songwriter. I've now got a couple albums by the original Blasters, a power-fueled rockabilly shot of adrenaline; though released in the 1980s, their musical roots were set deep in the 50s, like something you'd find on an ancient roadhouse jukebox. Eventually, I gather, Dave and Phil couldn't work together anymore (love those brother bands); Phil kept hammering away at the Blasters, while Dave went solo. So it goes.
This 1994 solo album, King of California, was the first I knew of Dave Alvin, though, and it's hard for me to backtrack to the Blasters after falling in love with this. This release shows Dave exercising his acoustic chops and exploring where his own gravelly voice could take a song. "King of California" is particularly heartfelt -- the Alvins are not only Californians, they're fourth-generation Californians (not too many of those around), connected to an old gritty California that has nothing to do the beach/mall/freeway culture. Dave may not have his brother's great yelping voice, but he does have a rough, sincere vocal edge that makes me visualize sagging barbwire, a sunbleached cow skull, a snarl of tumbleweed. This stuff may be classified as "country", but it's far from Nashville and NASCAR; it's a pipeline into the authentic West, and I love it.
There's a tender, yearning quality to this track , with sweet slide guitar fills and a deft mandolin twanging alongside Dave's acoustic strum. Though Dave wrote it himself, it's basically a pioneer folk ballad : "Well I left my home and my one true love / East of the Ohio River / Her father said we'd never wed / For I had neither gold nor silver / But my darling dear please shed no tear / For I think that it's fair to warn ya / That I return to claim your hand / As the King of California." Maybe it's just me, but I love that "warn ya/California" rhyme. He crosses the Indian country and desert (dreaming of his girl), prospects in the Gold Country (dreaming of riches and his girl), and . . . er, is killed in a gunfight (dreaming of her kiss as he sinks to the floor). Killed? Yup, a tragic ending.
We've been so seduced by that loping melody, buoyed by that earnest gruff voice -- that melancholy ending devastates me, especially the way Dave groans and heaves on the line "His bullet in my chest is burning" (inverted syntax, a perfect 19th-century touch). For some reason I picture the ending of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, my favorite Robert Altman movie. "My darling dear please shed no tear," he pleads -- too late, I'm already choked up -- then adds, "'Cause I think that it's fair to warn ya / That I return to claim your hand / The king of California." Okay, possibly he survived that gunfight; but I think he's coming back as a ghost to haunt her, in classic folk-ballad manner. The mandolinist plucks an unsettling riff, the guitar strum gets louder, almost frantic . . . and for just a moment, we feel the sadness at the heart of things. That's what I call striking gold.
Check it out at http://www.mp3.com/albums/157017/summary.html?from=2955
Anybody remember the Blasters? Yeah, me neither.
That was Dave Alvin's first band, with his brother Phil (love those brother bands), Phil Alvin being the lead singer and Dave the guitarist and songwriter. I've now got a couple albums by the original Blasters, a power-fueled rockabilly shot of adrenaline; though released in the 1980s, their musical roots were set deep in the 50s, like something you'd find on an ancient roadhouse jukebox. Eventually, I gather, Dave and Phil couldn't work together anymore (love those brother bands); Phil kept hammering away at the Blasters, while Dave went solo. So it goes.
This 1994 solo album, King of California, was the first I knew of Dave Alvin, though, and it's hard for me to backtrack to the Blasters after falling in love with this. This release shows Dave exercising his acoustic chops and exploring where his own gravelly voice could take a song. "King of California" is particularly heartfelt -- the Alvins are not only Californians, they're fourth-generation Californians (not too many of those around), connected to an old gritty California that has nothing to do the beach/mall/freeway culture. Dave may not have his brother's great yelping voice, but he does have a rough, sincere vocal edge that makes me visualize sagging barbwire, a sunbleached cow skull, a snarl of tumbleweed. This stuff may be classified as "country", but it's far from Nashville and NASCAR; it's a pipeline into the authentic West, and I love it.
There's a tender, yearning quality to this track , with sweet slide guitar fills and a deft mandolin twanging alongside Dave's acoustic strum. Though Dave wrote it himself, it's basically a pioneer folk ballad : "Well I left my home and my one true love / East of the Ohio River / Her father said we'd never wed / For I had neither gold nor silver / But my darling dear please shed no tear / For I think that it's fair to warn ya / That I return to claim your hand / As the King of California." Maybe it's just me, but I love that "warn ya/California" rhyme. He crosses the Indian country and desert (dreaming of his girl), prospects in the Gold Country (dreaming of riches and his girl), and . . . er, is killed in a gunfight (dreaming of her kiss as he sinks to the floor). Killed? Yup, a tragic ending.
We've been so seduced by that loping melody, buoyed by that earnest gruff voice -- that melancholy ending devastates me, especially the way Dave groans and heaves on the line "His bullet in my chest is burning" (inverted syntax, a perfect 19th-century touch). For some reason I picture the ending of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, my favorite Robert Altman movie. "My darling dear please shed no tear," he pleads -- too late, I'm already choked up -- then adds, "'Cause I think that it's fair to warn ya / That I return to claim your hand / The king of California." Okay, possibly he survived that gunfight; but I think he's coming back as a ghost to haunt her, in classic folk-ballad manner. The mandolinist plucks an unsettling riff, the guitar strum gets louder, almost frantic . . . and for just a moment, we feel the sadness at the heart of things. That's what I call striking gold.
Check it out at http://www.mp3.com/albums/157017/summary.html?from=2955
Thursday, January 25, 2007
"Sway" / Tres Chicas
Is it country? Is it folk? Is it jazz? Let's just call it Americana and settle in, because these three women from North Carolina -- Lynn Blakey, Caitlin Cary, and Tonya Lamm -- blend all those traditions to yield a gorgeous, soulful sound. I'm a sucker for lush female vocal harmonies, my ear programmed early by Cass Elliott and Michelle Phillips, or Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie; but when these gals harmonize strong and clear, it reminds me more of Emmylou, Linda, and Dolly on that Trio album. You get the feeling that these Three Chicks are really on the same page of music . . . and, oh, they're probably not sleeping with each others' boyfriends.
This 2006 album, Bloom, Red, and the Ordinary Girl, is another Nick Lowe-related discovery for me; Tres Chicas went to London to record it with a gang of British musicians, including several who've worked with Nick (he himself plays bass on a couple tracks). Robert Treherne's copasetic drumming and Geraint Watkins's elegantly tossed-off accents on the electric piano give this track a lush groove, over which the vocals can scat and swoop and swirl all they please.
The chorus repeats over and over "How we sway / In the breeze", and with that langorous beat, the sexy frisson of the vocals, at first I got an image of a couple dancing, swaying close together. But then I dove deeper into the lyrics and realized it's a lot more interesting than that: It's about how to move and give, like a tree buffeted by the wind, how to be flexible enough to weather life's ups and downs (or at any rate, a relationship's ups and downs). Not your usual candy-gloss pop sentiment, eh?
"You can't have too much faith / In a person, or place / You can't have too much room to breathe / To breathe," says the first verse. Amen, ladies. This is a love song all right, but it's from the perspective of someone who's been around a bit, who's suffered her share of hurt and loss. I like that; I don't feel like these girlfriends are lying to me. And with those soaring vocals, the three-part harmonies blending perfectly, you can relax into its warm wisdom, shifting and swaying right along with them. Do yourself a favor -- check these girls out.
http://www.treschicas.org/music.html
Is it country? Is it folk? Is it jazz? Let's just call it Americana and settle in, because these three women from North Carolina -- Lynn Blakey, Caitlin Cary, and Tonya Lamm -- blend all those traditions to yield a gorgeous, soulful sound. I'm a sucker for lush female vocal harmonies, my ear programmed early by Cass Elliott and Michelle Phillips, or Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie; but when these gals harmonize strong and clear, it reminds me more of Emmylou, Linda, and Dolly on that Trio album. You get the feeling that these Three Chicks are really on the same page of music . . . and, oh, they're probably not sleeping with each others' boyfriends.
This 2006 album, Bloom, Red, and the Ordinary Girl, is another Nick Lowe-related discovery for me; Tres Chicas went to London to record it with a gang of British musicians, including several who've worked with Nick (he himself plays bass on a couple tracks). Robert Treherne's copasetic drumming and Geraint Watkins's elegantly tossed-off accents on the electric piano give this track a lush groove, over which the vocals can scat and swoop and swirl all they please.
The chorus repeats over and over "How we sway / In the breeze", and with that langorous beat, the sexy frisson of the vocals, at first I got an image of a couple dancing, swaying close together. But then I dove deeper into the lyrics and realized it's a lot more interesting than that: It's about how to move and give, like a tree buffeted by the wind, how to be flexible enough to weather life's ups and downs (or at any rate, a relationship's ups and downs). Not your usual candy-gloss pop sentiment, eh?
"You can't have too much faith / In a person, or place / You can't have too much room to breathe / To breathe," says the first verse. Amen, ladies. This is a love song all right, but it's from the perspective of someone who's been around a bit, who's suffered her share of hurt and loss. I like that; I don't feel like these girlfriends are lying to me. And with those soaring vocals, the three-part harmonies blending perfectly, you can relax into its warm wisdom, shifting and swaying right along with them. Do yourself a favor -- check these girls out.
http://www.treschicas.org/music.html
Thursday, December 07, 2006
"Over Time" / Lucinda Williams
Now here's a real woman singing. It's not just because her voice isn't perfect (though it sure is distinctive, sliding into the pitch, carelessly enunciated, with a little strident quaver as she hits certain notes) . No, what Lucinda's got going for her is better than vocal perfection: It's that worse-for-wear weariness, that veteran shrug of resignation. Men don't fool her anymore, but she's learned to take the bad with the good -- 'cuz, really, what are your other options?
Amen, sister.
"Over Time" may be a "getting over you" song, but it's a version strictly for realists. For some reason I think of a back-porch screen door banging shut, and a woman flopping down in a hammock with a Mason jar of icetea to nurse her bruised-but-not-broken heart. Her guy's hit the road already, and this is how she exorcises the memory of his cute butt in those faded blue jeans.
The vibe here definitely defers to Lucinda's country roots, though this 2003 album World Without Tears embraces many other styles as well. The shuffling tempo isn't mournful or frantic, just a half-listless two-step; the western-style electric guitar twangs with a funny distorted shimmy; the drums slap along aimlessly. Williams' voice sounds flat and a little numb; the wound's still fresh, but she already knows that this too shall pass.
The chorus is a nugget of common beauty-parlor wisdom -- "Over time / That's what they all tell me / That's what they say to me / Over time" -- and maybe it's a cliche, but aren't cliches what real people cling to? She repeats this hope over and over, almost under her breath, while she studies her chipped toenail polish and waits for the medicine to kick in.
And then, as if stretching and shifting her weight in the hammock, in the verse she thinks wistfully back on her defected lover. She doesn't fool herself with any you-were-the-best-thing-I-ever-had stuff; her memory of him is totally down-to-earth, and so specific it doesn't even bother to rhyme: "Your pale skin / Your sexy crooked teeth / The trouble you'd get in / In your clumsy way." I love that little affectionate note that creeps in, almost against her will. Aw, hell, he was kinda hot, wasn't he? And I am so there, like a sympathetic neighbor stopping by with a casserole and a carton of cigarettes to show female solidarity.
Lucinda Williams may not hit every vocal note perfectly, but she hits the emotional notes just right. This is something guys don't always realize: Women know that all men are assholes -- and we love 'em anyway. Sometimes we love them because they are assholes. And hey, if we didn't, the human race would've died off a long time ago.
www.lucindawilliams.com
Now here's a real woman singing. It's not just because her voice isn't perfect (though it sure is distinctive, sliding into the pitch, carelessly enunciated, with a little strident quaver as she hits certain notes) . No, what Lucinda's got going for her is better than vocal perfection: It's that worse-for-wear weariness, that veteran shrug of resignation. Men don't fool her anymore, but she's learned to take the bad with the good -- 'cuz, really, what are your other options?
Amen, sister.
"Over Time" may be a "getting over you" song, but it's a version strictly for realists. For some reason I think of a back-porch screen door banging shut, and a woman flopping down in a hammock with a Mason jar of icetea to nurse her bruised-but-not-broken heart. Her guy's hit the road already, and this is how she exorcises the memory of his cute butt in those faded blue jeans.
The vibe here definitely defers to Lucinda's country roots, though this 2003 album World Without Tears embraces many other styles as well. The shuffling tempo isn't mournful or frantic, just a half-listless two-step; the western-style electric guitar twangs with a funny distorted shimmy; the drums slap along aimlessly. Williams' voice sounds flat and a little numb; the wound's still fresh, but she already knows that this too shall pass.
The chorus is a nugget of common beauty-parlor wisdom -- "Over time / That's what they all tell me / That's what they say to me / Over time" -- and maybe it's a cliche, but aren't cliches what real people cling to? She repeats this hope over and over, almost under her breath, while she studies her chipped toenail polish and waits for the medicine to kick in.
And then, as if stretching and shifting her weight in the hammock, in the verse she thinks wistfully back on her defected lover. She doesn't fool herself with any you-were-the-best-thing-I-ever-had stuff; her memory of him is totally down-to-earth, and so specific it doesn't even bother to rhyme: "Your pale skin / Your sexy crooked teeth / The trouble you'd get in / In your clumsy way." I love that little affectionate note that creeps in, almost against her will. Aw, hell, he was kinda hot, wasn't he? And I am so there, like a sympathetic neighbor stopping by with a casserole and a carton of cigarettes to show female solidarity.
Lucinda Williams may not hit every vocal note perfectly, but she hits the emotional notes just right. This is something guys don't always realize: Women know that all men are assholes -- and we love 'em anyway. Sometimes we love them because they are assholes. And hey, if we didn't, the human race would've died off a long time ago.
www.lucindawilliams.com
Thursday, October 26, 2006
"Learning How To Love You" / John Hiatt
"I'm thirty-four years old now, and I've come to you..." I can't fully explain why this opening line always hooks its sinewy fingers around my heart, but it does.
Maybe it's the specific detail of the age, sung in John's shrewd, wary Hoosier twang -- so we know we're in confessional mode here, and the man standing before us maybe has a couple crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes, the hairline's retreating a bit, perhaps his plaid shirt is a little faded from washing. Thirty-four years old: Not over the hill yet, but face it, he don't get carded no more.
All his romantic illusions were shot down a long time ago, and as he picks deftly on his acoustic guitar, his shoulder is hitched high, fending off more hurt. He squints long and hard at the new woman who has wormed into his life, and as he runs over a catalog of all his lousy love affairs -- "From that first kiss in the schoolyard / To the last heart broke in two" -- he realizes that, against all odds, just when he had abandoned all hope, This Is The Big One.
Not exactly the sort of song that's gonna fly on Top 40 radio. But you see, that's what I love about John Hiatt's music: This is Music For Grownups. I'm sure I wouldn't have thought this was a sexy song when I was 14 years old, pining away for Paul McCartney or Davy Jones or whoever the pop flavor of the month was back then. I did NOT want to be told that love is hard work. I still believed in love at first sight, and love forever and ever, and preferably I'd like to find it in time to have a date to the junior prom.
But now . . . well, I find this song devastatingly sexy. I feel like this is a real man, who'd still be around the morning after a fight. Someone you can cry in front of without minding that your eyes are puffing up and your nose streaming snot. Someone who'd forgive the hurtful things you screamed at him during labor pains; someone who'd adopt your half-grown kids and call them his own. And that's the sort of stuff I find sexy now.
Okay, John Hiatt's voice is pretty damn sexy in its own right: soulful, with just a slight raspy edge that can turn into a snarl or a caress at any moment. It sends shivers up my spine anyway. But still, it's Hiatt the songwriter that speaks to me, not just Hiatt the performer; and "Learning How to Love You" -- that one gets me every time.
www.johnhiatt.com
"I'm thirty-four years old now, and I've come to you..." I can't fully explain why this opening line always hooks its sinewy fingers around my heart, but it does.
Maybe it's the specific detail of the age, sung in John's shrewd, wary Hoosier twang -- so we know we're in confessional mode here, and the man standing before us maybe has a couple crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes, the hairline's retreating a bit, perhaps his plaid shirt is a little faded from washing. Thirty-four years old: Not over the hill yet, but face it, he don't get carded no more.
All his romantic illusions were shot down a long time ago, and as he picks deftly on his acoustic guitar, his shoulder is hitched high, fending off more hurt. He squints long and hard at the new woman who has wormed into his life, and as he runs over a catalog of all his lousy love affairs -- "From that first kiss in the schoolyard / To the last heart broke in two" -- he realizes that, against all odds, just when he had abandoned all hope, This Is The Big One.
Not exactly the sort of song that's gonna fly on Top 40 radio. But you see, that's what I love about John Hiatt's music: This is Music For Grownups. I'm sure I wouldn't have thought this was a sexy song when I was 14 years old, pining away for Paul McCartney or Davy Jones or whoever the pop flavor of the month was back then. I did NOT want to be told that love is hard work. I still believed in love at first sight, and love forever and ever, and preferably I'd like to find it in time to have a date to the junior prom.
But now . . . well, I find this song devastatingly sexy. I feel like this is a real man, who'd still be around the morning after a fight. Someone you can cry in front of without minding that your eyes are puffing up and your nose streaming snot. Someone who'd forgive the hurtful things you screamed at him during labor pains; someone who'd adopt your half-grown kids and call them his own. And that's the sort of stuff I find sexy now.
Okay, John Hiatt's voice is pretty damn sexy in its own right: soulful, with just a slight raspy edge that can turn into a snarl or a caress at any moment. It sends shivers up my spine anyway. But still, it's Hiatt the songwriter that speaks to me, not just Hiatt the performer; and "Learning How to Love You" -- that one gets me every time.
www.johnhiatt.com
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