My Favorite Albums of 2014

Counterfeit Blues / Corb Lund

My favorite Albertan. (I would say my favorite Canadian musician, but that would be unfair to Ron Sexsmith, Neil Young and Dan Bryk.)

I'll give my good friend Nick S. credit for turning me on to Corb Lund, although to tell you the truth he only planted a seed -- it was 2012's Cabin Fever, stumbled upon in a year-end frenzy, that really leapfrogged him into my roots-rock pantheon. Oh, hell, let's admit it, he's a country singer. And me, who grew up vowing that I hated country music -- well, let's just say I know what I like and I like this.

Though I'm tempted to focus on the haunting "Truth Comes Out,"  I'm just too in love with this track -- "Gonna Shine Up My Boots" -- to pass it up. And -- bonus points! -- the video is a total hoot.

 

 

 

While this album starts out with a Dylan-esque talking blues track called "Counterfeiter's Blues," note that the album itself is called Counterfeit Blues -- and I'm guessing that's because Corb Lund has too sunny a personality to do more than fake the blues.  That must be why these smarty-pants comic songs of his are so infectious. 

 

But really, it's a tightly crafted little song.  Our cowboy hero has such a simple agenda:  "I'm gonna shine up my boots / I'm gonna go into town / I'm gonna scrape up twenty dollars / I'm gonna throw it around."  (Love how each line of that refrain move up a triad, with the escalation of hope.)

 

Of course, it never stays simple. Next thing he knows, he's bought a dance, and met a girl, and in order to win her hand he's got into a card game. And when he wins, he buys a ranch, and then -- well, I won't give away the ending, but you can see where this is going. 

 

The repeated chorus, with its parallel phrases, helps anchor us in this shaggy-dog time-telescoping tale. (It makes me think of that wickedly wise John Mellencamp song "Love At First Sight.")  But it's worth noting that the cowboy himself is no fool -- he's the one telling us where all this is going. And in the last verse (wait for it), he resolves everything with a down-to-earth shot of wry wisdom.

 

This song makes me smile every time I hear it come on.  And hey, that's no small thing.



The Thursday Shuffle

The stack of new CDs on my desk is making me feel very guilty, but sorry -- coming off a few days of mild flu, I need to flex my blogging muscles first with a Shuffle. Herewith, the first Shuffle of 2013!

1. "To Be Someone (Didn't We Have A Nice Time?)" / The Jam
From All Mod Cons (1978)
All neurotic guitar strums, power chords, and rat-tat drums, the Jam gave punk rock a snappy urban flair that should have warned us Paul Weller wouldn't be happy for long in a rock straitjacket.  I love how the song evolves from the coaxing first verse ("To be someone must be a wonderful thing" ) through the punchy second verse ("No more swimming in a guitar-shaped pool") to the defiant chorus ("But didn't we have a nice time?"). How does a punk reconcile worldly success with his rebel outsider image?  

2. "She" / Gram Parsons
From Gp (1973)
Ah, so the new music shows up anyway! After years of thumbing past Gram Parsons LPs in record bins while looking for Graham Parker albums, a great article in the recent Uncut (which I only bought for the Ray Davies interview) persuaded me I've been missing something special all these years. And dang, they were right! Plangent and laid-back and oh, so country soulful.

3. "Build Me Up, Buttercup" / The Foundations
From Build Me Up Buttercup (1968)
An all-time feel-good favorite -- everybody knows those opening beats couldn't be anything else.

4. "She Comes Around" / The Fortunate Sons
From The Fortunate Sons (2008)
No, not a Creedence Clearwater tribute band -- these Fortunate Sons happen to be Scotland's answer to the Black Keys, a surprisingly persuasive Delta-blues band from Glasgow that  I fear may have broken up since this debut album was released. "She comes a-rround / To ease my pain, ease my pain" -- whoa, that vocal is just d r i p p i n g with lust.

5. "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" / The Alan Price Set
From The House That Jack Built; The Complete 60s Sessions (2005)
In this BBC recording with his new band, Alan Price couldn't resist reinterpreting this Nina Simone song that had been such a hit for his former band, the Animals. (And gave it yet another spin in 2008.) Add some horns, slow down the tempo to a jazzy lope -- though still not as mournfully slow as Nina's -- a perfect declaration of independence. Sadly, this album is an out-of-print import -- grab it if you ever can.

6. "Over the Rainbow" / Israel Kamakawiwoole
From Facing Future (1993)
Yes, the song you've heard in countless movie soundtrack, just a simple ukelele and one heavenly voice singing two old standards that cannot fail to bring a lump to the throat. Call it schmaltz if you will, but it still provides an instant mood lift when it dials up on my shuffle.

7. "I Like It Like That" / Brinsley Schwarz
From Nervous on the Road (1972)
The kings of pub rock, inviting us to a party we don't want to miss. Don't know which of the Brinsleys is singing on this delicious old chestnut, but you can't mistake that roadhouse piano -- that's pure Bob Andrews. I only knew this as a Dave Clarke Five song; who knew it had been co-written by Chris Kenner and Allen Toussaint? How fitting that Bob Andrews now hangs with Toussaint's circle in New Orleans -- serendipity indeed.

8. "You Ain't A Cowboy (If You Ain't Been Bucked Off)" / Corb Lund
From Cabin Fever (2012)
A new favorite, from my end-of-year round-up. Definitely check this guy out!

9. "The Informer" / The Kinks
From Phobia (1993)
Maybe Ray Davies wrote this after seeing the old John Ford movie on late-night TV, but somewhere in there I believe he's also singing it to his brother Dave, as their forever-fraught relationship was on the verge of bringing the band crashing to an end. Poignant, poignant indeed....

10. "Blue Condition" / Alan Price and Georgie Fame
From Fame and Price, Price and Fame Together (1971)
What a lovely, if all too brief, collaboration this was. Georgie's innate jazz chops and Alan's R&B-pop instincts melted into each other like a dream. "I'm in a blue condition, and it's not too good for me / I'm in a strange position, I need you to set me free" -- oh, but there's nothing blue about Price's boppy, syncopated tune. They're having way too much fun here for anybody to feel blue.... 

My Top Ten Eleven Albums of 2012

All in one place . . . like a  Christmas list. I'm not numbering them 1 to 10 because they're too good -- and too different -- to rank absolutely. Click on each title for a link to my original post.

Graham Parker & The Rumour:
Three Chords Good
Even I, a confirmed Graham Parker fanatic, didn't predict just HOW good this reunion album would be. I'm gobsmacked by its brilliance.

The Shins: Port of Morrow
A combination of gorgeous melody, striking lyrics, and a sweetly melancholy worldview -- it's almost drunkenly beautiful.

Corb Lund: Cabin Fever
Ranging from honky-tonk to rockabilly to bluegrass to Western swing, Lund doesn't approach country music like an artifact or an ironic affectation; he approaches it like a cowboy..

Rhett Miller: Dreamer
From the Old 97s front man, an entire alt-country album about love, lost and found, sour and sweet.

Paul Weller: Sonik Kicks
Ever the restless risk-taker, Weller loads up this album with studio effects and sonic experiments, while his insane commitment to melody and to syncopation shines gloriously through.

The Ben Folds Five:
The Sound of the Life of the Mind
I adore Ben Folds' solo work as well, but the driving energy and impish wit of the Ben Folds Five is something else.

The dBs: Falling Off the Sky
Reuniting this beloved late 70s band so many years down the road seems like a joyful and natural thing, judging from the copasetic energy of Falling Off the Sky.

John Hiatt: Mystic Pinball
Start to finish, that raspy voice, the visceral rhythms, the crunchy guitarwork, all come together to craft a sound so authentic and idiosyncratic, it fits like a glove.

The Avett Brothers: The Carpenter
Scott and Seth Avett have never shed the upbeat sweetness of their southern folk roots, even as they steer it into rock territory.

Mumford & Sons: Babel
Hipster indie Brits forge their own peculiar Americana sound, like O Brother Where Art Thou? meets Martin Amis, full of post-modern angst and old-time religion.

M. Ward: A Wasteland Companion
OOF!! Released way back last April, I forgot at first to put this on my 2012 top ten list. But I adore its acoustic reverbed charm, a retro-flavored meditation on love, loss, and resilience.

My Top Ten Albums of 2012
Why it pays to take a chance sometimes.

Corb Lund: Cabin Fever
"You Ain't a Cowboy (If You Ain't Been Bucked Off)"

I try not to be a music snob, I really do. I know I've got a blind spot when it comes to country music -- the inevitable result of watching too many cornball TV shows like Hee Haw and Midwestern Hayride as a kid. But label it "Americana" or "Texas outlaw" or "alt-country" and I'll come runnin'.

So now I've got to figure how Corb Lund fits in. I recognized his name from some New West Records sampler a couple of years ago, but he's hardly a household name, at least not in the States. Far from a Nashville insider, he hails from the high plains of Canada -- his backing band is even called The Hurtin' Albertans. (Gotta love that name.)

So it was purely on a whim that I starting clicking on Corb Lund's sample tracks while nosing around Amazon a few weeks ago.  With every click, though, I became more and more intrigued. I was astonished by this album's range, from honky-tonk to rockabilly to bluegrass to Western swing. It's got nimble guitar picking, it's got mournful pedal steel, it's got Dobro, it's got mouth-harp, it's got yodeling (no fiddles or banjos, though -- leave those to the indie boys). Best of all, it's got -- oh, my, has it got -- melody.

Only after I bought it, though, did I discover the depth of this record. The musicianship is crazy good, and the bracing intelligence of the songwriting knocks my socks off. Like John Hiatt or Guy Clark or Fred Eaglesmith, Corb Lund actually has something to say about life, and he says it memorably. He doesn't approach country music like an artifact or an ironic affection; he approaches it like a -- well, like a cowboy. Like a cowboy who's prone to some deep pondering while he's riding the range.

Probably the most accessible track is the wistful cowboy ballad "September," but that alone is no indication of the spunk, hustle, and mordant humor of this record. Just listen to some of these titles: "Bible on the Dash," "Pour 'Em Kinda Strong," "One Left in the Chamber," "The Gothest Girl I Can," and the delightful "Priceless Antique Pistol Shoots Startled Owner."

There's no single track that will give you the whole picture. So I've picked one that shows how deeply, deeply country this record is:

 

Yeah, of course it's a metaphor. Country music enjoys a good metaphor, the more cliched the better. That tough-it-out philosophy -- "Get back up on the horse that threw you" -- is a well-worn concept, but it suits the country mindset.

 

Besides, it's what you do with the cliche that matters. First of all, the tempo of this song is just right, with its lurching roll, like a bow-legged rodeo rider limping out of the corral.  That emphatic drum slap makes me picture the bronc buster slapping his dusty hat on his legs as he exits the scene of his humiliation.  There's a weary resignation to this song's syncopation that I love. And look at how he matches melodic line to the logic of each verse, starting out with an upbeat assertion, then crunching with some chromatics as he admits the complications in his story. 

 

"Well I was minding my business / holding the fort," he recalls, adding with a sigh, "And I still remember how you sallied forth." I love that archaic "sallied forth," perfect for a rueful touch of irony. "And my mind it was busy awarning my heart" -- but too late, bucko. "Hell, you ain't a cowboy if you ain't been bucked off." I love the shrug of resignation there -- it still hurts, but he'll find a way to move on. Because he has to.

 

He hits the perfect country note of self-deprecation in verse two: "Well the story's familiar, the oldest tale in the west / I fell into love and the bird left the nest." He's making no excuses for himself, even though he regrets what he sees as a moment of weakness. "Well I guess that there's reasons / we let our hard hearts turn soft" -- you wouldn't find that line in a pop song. 

 

The metaphor comes into full flower in the bridge, as his voice sails yearningly into a higher key: "There's all kinds of horses / Leave you grabbin' the breeze / Busted up, broken up, scars you can't see / But if you ain't been bucked off and been throwed a few times / It don't count for nothing when you make that last ride." Last ride? Could mean finding the woman he's meant to spend the rest of his life with, but there's at least a hint there of the Judgment Day. Either way, learning how to mend your own soul and carry on is essential for redemption.    

 

Verse three catches us up to the present: "Well the years've passed quickly / And there ain't nothing the same / Only I don't feel different and you've hardly changed." Funny how that works. You run into an old love and you think you've grown, yet the old emotions still bubble up. But you can deal with it; it's the cowboy ethos. Not some pampered whiny Nashville approach, but a real western grit-and-spine outlook. Suck it up, cowboy. Life hurts.

 

The pain? It's still trembling beneath the surface, in the plaintive swoops of Lund's voice, in the growl of the bassline below the acoustic strum. That's how you know it matters. That's what brings this song home.