"The Warmth of the Sun" / The Beach Boys

It's frickin' cold outside right now, nasty scarf-hat-and-gloves weather, and all I can think about is getting warm. So tell me: Why does this ancient Beach Boys classic drive away the chill? Is it just the power of suggestion, the image of Southern California summers long gone by? Or is there something in those lush Wilson brother harmonies that actually radiates heat?

Every spring at college, on the first truly warm day, somebody would throw open her dorm windows and blast out vintage Beach Boys hits -- in the mid-70s, mind you, when those 60s songs about surfboards and hotrods seemed prehistoric. "Everybody's gone surfin' / Surfing USA" -- "Round round get around / I get around, yeah / Get around, oooh-oooh-oooh -- " suddenly you'd feel compelled to slip into shorts and pop open a beer and sprawl on the grass. It was officially SUMMER -- the Beach Boys had decreed it so.

I adore their racheted-up car songs, their chord modulations miraculously sounding just like a standard transmission shifting gears -- SoCal car culture was second nature to Brian Wilson, no matter if he had to fake it when it came to surfer culture (the adorable Dennis Wilson was apparently the only Beach Boy who actually surfed). But give me a choice and I'll always go with the Beach Boy ballads, particularly "Surfer Girl," the great agoraphobic anthem "In My Room," and "The Warmth of the Sun."

You can just hear Brian Wilson soothe his aching heart by diving deep into the textures of vocal harmonies. Even in 1964, this sounded retro, a throwback to the Four Freshmen or The Lettermen -- but Brian Wilson knew what he was doing. He was only a few steps away, in fact, from the bold new sound of "God Only Knows" and "Good Vibrations."

This is the kind of slow song you only wanted to dance with the "right" person at your school dance -- the languid shifting rhythms, the plaintive melodic line, and those drawn-out vocal chords were just made for resting your head on a special somebody's shoulder. (I can smell the English Leather cologne even now.) Never mind that this is the story of a guy who's been abandoned -- "The love of my life, she left me one day / I cried when she said, 'I don't feel the same way'' -- he's still warmed within by the feeling of his love, and so long as he can dream of her he'll be all right.

It's a totally adolescent view of love, where the romantic ideal is more important than the actual relationship, but since when did we look to Brian Wilson to be our relationship guru? What matter is those slightly nasal yearning "aaahhs" and "ooohs" melting in and out, and Brian's echo-chambered falsetto soaring over the muted guitar strum, brushes on the drums, and the occasional metallic zither pling. It's all texture, melody, and modulation, and even this early in Brian Wilson's songwriting career he instinctively knew how to pull it off.

So what if it's a "sad" song? Adolescents like sad songs. And just as the dream of his love keeps the singer warm, so the beauty of this song makes the storyline irrelevant. The key is major, the chords all get resolved, and the notes keep climbing upward. This is the song of a fantasist -- but a survivor. Carl and Dennis Wilson are dead now, and Mike Love looks faintly ridiculous as he still tries to tach it up with a new incarnation of the Beach Boys. But Brian, crazy old Brian, somehow has survived and is hailed as a genius everywhere he goes. And rightly so.

"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://

“Cumberland Blues” / The Grateful Dead

I have to make one thing clear: I’m not a Grateful Dead fan. It’s not that I don’t admire their music, it’s just that Deadheads raise the bar too high -- it’s impossible to be just a casual listener. Besides, I always put the Dead into the category of Guy Music: long loud jams full of top-this-one-buddy instrumentals. Girl Music features melody, hooks, crafted lyrics, and fine-tuned vocals, preferably running less than three minutes. The Grateful Dead is NOT Girl Music -- and hey, I suspect they’d all be just fine with that.

Still, I have to say I like this Workingman’s Dead album. The bluegrass/folk side of Jerry Garcia seems in control here, the psychedelia toned down, and that’s refreshing. While the best-known song from this album is “Casey Jones” (how can you forget that line “Driving that train/ High on cocaine”?), the track I really enjoy is “Cumberland Blues.” It’s full of juicy vocal harmonies (disguising the fact that the Grateful Dead really didn’t have a single decent singer) and the guitar picking is nimble and upbeat. Of course, I have no idea whether it’s Jerry Garcia or Bob Weir playing. I suppose I should care, but I don’t.

"Cumberland Blues" also has a story going on, one that even fits the album’s theme – and that appeals to the English major in me. The singer is hauling himself sleepily out of bed; he and his girlfriend Melinda have been up most of the night, but now he’s anxious to get to his shift at the Cumberland mine -- not because he likes working there, but because one false step could lose him that job. “A lotta poor man make a five dollar bill / Keep him happy all the time / Some other fella's makin' nothin' at all / And you can hear him cry / ‘Can I go, buddy, can I go down / Take your shift at the mine?’”

I love how this captures the working man’s economic insecurity, the catch-22 of it: “Make good money, five dollars a day / Made any more, I might move away.” The foot-jiggling pace of the song, that hustling drum track -- lots of cymbals and brushes, like jingling loose change -- come across as pure nervous anxiety. Of course, then the singer re-evaluates how he feels about this job: “Lotta poor man got the Cumberland Blues / He can't win for losin' / Lotta poor man got to walk the line / Just to pay his union dues.” By the last line, he sounds a whole lot less convinced. “I don’t know now, I just don't know / If I'm goin' back again.” I picture him sinking back into Melinda’s arms, switching off that Little Ben alarm clock (love that detail – the Grateful Dead could use more visual details like this).

True, if I were Melinda, I'd wish this song were more about being in love and less about going to work. But what do you expect? Like I said, it's Guy Music.

"Property" / The Kinks

Okay, all you Kinkaholics -- and apparently there are several of you out there -- another Ray song's gotten stuck in my head. This one's from State of Confusion again, but it's a whole 'nother thang. In "State of Confusion," the narrator whines that his girlfriend's moved out because the video machine broke, and you've gotta laugh. There is NO LAUGHING in "Property."

Rock music is full of break-up songs, but this is a rarer thing, a break-up song for grown-ups.

 

We get the characters' whole history in one sliver of time, one watershed scene, flavored with a mixed cocktail of emotions -- sorrow, acceptance, regret, and, oh yes, relief. The protagonist stands awkwardly in the vestibule, bags packed, sharply aware of all he's feeling, like an out-of-body experience: "When I think of what I'll be losing / It's hard to move along / But it's harder just to stay here / Knowing that I don't belong." I picture him taking a farewell glance at the mantelpiece, where he spots the framed photographs and a clutter of holiday souvenirs -- and he almost loses it. That's a nice realistic touch; that's the sort of thing that does trip you up, when you least expect it.

But what really gets me here -- the truly brilliant effect -- is how Ray describes those objects, with the lovers' fate foreshadowed in every one: "You take the photographs, the ones of you and me / When we both posed and laughed to please the family. / Nobody noticed then we wanted to be free / And now there's no more love, it's just the property." (Remember the Kinks song "Picture Book"? Ray Davies has always been skeptical of snapshots.) "And all the little gifts we thought we'd throw away / The useless souvenirs bought on a holiday. / We put them on a shelf, now they're collecting dust. / We never needed them, but they outlasted us." That rhyme, "dust" and "us," cuts right to the heart.

Then comes a final flicker of regret, Ray's voice straining anxiously upward: "Started off with nothing, started off just you and me " --but he's knows there's no going back. "Now that it's all over, you can keep the property," he concludes. And he's out the door. Slam. Finis.

Of course, a song isn't just words, but I can't imagine these lyrics set more perfectly. It's a midtempo track, with a simple unwavering drumbeat like a ticking clock (because time's running out). The guitar strums dully, the keyboards add an electronic sigh of regret. Both the verses and the chorus repeat the same melodic line over and over, as if the singer's too numb to come up with anything new. It's bouncy, but it's also a circular sequence of notes that makes him sounds trapped. Sure, in the bridge the melody does arc upward, but at the end of every line it sinks into a minor chord, as if whelmed by despair. At the end, things get synth-y (hey, it was 1983) but it works: dehumanized back-up vocals chant "property" like a cruel taunt, echoed by a creepy talking guitar.

This guy's got to leave; he knows it, she knows it. They've talked it to death. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, and somehow I feel that this is a lot more naked and personal than the usual Ray Davies song. Biographical or not, it aches with real feeling. On a day when you just feel like being sad, I can recommend it highly.

"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

"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

"The Way I Want To Be" / The Village Green

In the wonderful world of the internet, it's amazing what pops up with an innocent Google. I was looking for information about the Kinks' landmark 1968 album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, and what am I bounced to but the website for this young band from Portland, Oregon. The fact that they chose this name, though, is proof that they admire the Kinks -- and, it seems, lots of other British Invasion bands. The weird thing is that when these songs come up on my shuffle, I start thinking, "Who is this? The Tremeloes? The Searchers? The Small Faces?" You'd never guess they were a 21st-century band, they've absorbed the Beat Era sound so well. For me, that's a good thing.

I dig this song's skippy syncopation, its chunky guitars, and that plaintive lead vocal -- I swear that guy's putting on a British accent, or at any rate the accent of a British rocker trying to sound like a Delta bluesman. The melodic line flirts and dances all over the place; my head bobs up and down without my realizing it.

But as you'd expect from musicians who cite Ray Davies as a major influence, their lyrics put a darker spin on things: As upbeat and bouncy as this track sounds, it's sung by a misfit personality, a square peg twisting and wrenching around in his round hole. "I see the sun rising," he begins -- standard song opening, no problem -- but then it turns sour: "up through the stormy haze / Clouds in my eyes hide the view in this lonely place / All that I see turns to blank when I'm on my knees / All that I know turns to dust, and I don't believe..." Whoa, sorry I asked.

And then here's the chorus: "Like taking the sunrise from the morning / Stealing the water from the rain / Clearing the gutter from the ghetto / All of my life has been the same / All of my life I've lived forever / All of my life I've been in pain / Praying to God that there's no heaven / Give me the water, the way I want to be." I'm not a hundred percent sure I've transcribed those words right, but you get the point. It's pessimistic, but damn poetic -- any guy who can play with language this way has not signed out of life, no matter what he thinks. The guitar solo towards the end bursts with energy, a vigorous drumbeat whips along smartly, and somehow it's not nearly as depressing as it ought to be.

But that's just my take on the song -- follow this link and have a listen and let me know what you think.

http://www.myspace.com/villagegreen