The topic of music has gone largely untouched by me so far this year, but this shouldn't be misconstrued to suggest that I have not been partaking as usual (it has been tempting to blast forth in anger at all the love ELO is getting these days - what unfortunate revisionism. Anyway...) If ya think I've gone soft, t'ain't true; I simply have give y'all a break after going apeshit crazy with it around New Year's. So have a quick look at the Texas Polygamy Singers video (surprisingly "out") and then the break's over...back on your heads, the floodgates are parting:
Khan Jamal - Fire & Water: This is pretty much a duet between freaky jazz vibraphone and bass. I love the vibes when used in this context, and I liked what little I had heard from Khan Jamal's vibes that I bought this sight-unseen. It proved to be an excellent call. This album has actually been functioning as a replacement for television in my house. I can put this on, open a book, and I am off. I imagine that if I put it on repeat I wouldn't look up from my book til it is done. It is perfect for that sorta thing, and baby, I have much of that sort of thing to make work. (B)
Elvis Perkins In Dearland - All The Night Without Love EP: This song is going on a few years old by now I think. Not sure why it took til 2008 for this little iTunes-only EP to show up, but I am glad it did. It gives me a chance to gush over the title song again. While this re-recorded version is not as hard core as the original, the song itself is so tight it really can't be ruined. The b-sides are somewhat slight, but if they are of recent vintage, then I shall not worry about the follow-up to Ash Wednesday being a complete dud. I simply can't say enough about Ash Wednesday (which you should get long before you would download this quickie EP.) That album has been with me for months now and I have not tired of it. Originally, I wasn't sure that would be the case, but hot damn, I can put that on anywhere, anytime, and I can get into listening to it end to end. To have some b-sides to throw in on a playlist just makes it all the more merry. Good for me. (B-)
Madhouse - 8, 16: If you are a Prince fan to any serious degree, no matter how much you are willing to give his new stuff a fair airing, you are always happy to get your hands on un-heard material from his prime (which for me is mostly 1999 through Sign O' The Times, but there is certainly other stuff I consider classic - just covering my arse should Prince be reading this...) I have long enjoyed Sheila E's first two solo records for this reason (which were mostly Prince, and certainly feel like his prime stuff.) I have enjoyed The Time's Ice Cream Castles for this reason. I will even sit through crud like Apollonia/Vanity 6, Mazerati and The Family on occasion; they were all early Paisley Park bands and Mister Nelson was all over them. These side projects can be great at times, primarily in the case of The Time & Sheila E, but mostly, they are like eating without ever feeling full. After many years, I finally got my grubby stumps on a copy of the two Madhouse albums that came out in the mid and late eighties. These discs are different than most of the Paisley Park stuff because Madhouse was actually Prince. Yeah, he is doing a quasi-smooth jazz/fusion type thing on these discs, and there are no real vocals to speak of, but I don't really care. This is Prince...this is Prince right smack in the middle of a wave of creativity that literally NO rock-n-roll/r&b/funk artist has accomplished before or after; and because of that, I find myself enjoying these discs now even though I thought they were suitable only for the dentist office background at the time they came out. There certainly are no great lost tracks here that he buried (Kiss and Nothing Compares To U both got buried in Paisley Park bands before they were loosed properly elsewhere), but THAT GROOVE is here, and that groove is one of primal pleasure in my world. I don't expect there to be another Madhouse album in my lifetime, but if there was, I would still be inclined to check it out (there is a WICKED jazz arrangement of Ballad Of Dorothy Parker out there on the internets if you need proof that he can swing it.) There is no reason to buy this on eBay for a boatload - verily, it isn't that kind of phenomenon - but if you stumble upon it out there on the cyber tubes, you really can't go wrong. It is kinda fun as a little jazz thing, but it still has a little bit of the nasty about it, and that never gets old. (C+)
Wye Oak - If Children: They are on Merge Records. They are from Baltimore. They have a little hottie singer and a nerdy dood and they do stuff that kinda veers into shoogazing. On paper, one might think they are just another Pitchfork-anointed indie "IT" band that rode free MP3s to a little music weblog-love but they actually ain't much. Happily enough, that actually wouldn't be fair. Yes, they meet many of the current cookie-cutter criteria for indie fandom, but they can actually write and the songs stick to one's brain more pleasingly than the flash-in-the-pan stuff surely does. I have had at least 2 or 3 cuts of theirs in heavy rotation for months, and now that I have the full album, I think they compare very favorably to old school alphas like Opal and Lush. If anything, I would say they borrow a little from the 4AD and (older) Creation Records ethic, but fold it into something very American, and at times, something almost folksy/downhome. That is a mixture of elements I dig, and I would be shocked if these 2 fall off the earth after this, never heard from again. (B-)
John Fahey - The Mill Pond: I freely admit that I have procured more John Fahey than I can possibly enjoy. I also confess I was totally a bandwagonista with Mister Fahey after M Ward came out as a big big fan. I like 90% of the stuff I have from him, but there are so many recordings with overlap and slight differences with other recordings, I feel like I have been burned in going through his catalog. This disc is one in which I really can't say that. I love his plucky Bicycle Built For Two/Orinda-Moraga/Poor Boy stuff, but this is the first of his Jim O Rourke-tainted noisy stuff that I really really like. I drive around the wilds of Cali listening to the nicey-nice plucky stuff, but a cut like Garbage is for feelin' mean on the bus or some shit. It is the best of that stuff I have heard from him. I don't know why a part of me still gets off on the noisy and the nasty, but it does, and I am pretty sure that will never go away. That I get it from someone exceptionally talented - and in this case, someone who was capable of doing something other than the nasty/noisy stuff, and in fact did relatively little of it - adds even more virtue to this little EP. I can't explain its value other than in these terms. I have no idea who to recommend this to other than myself. (B-)
Sam Amidon - All Is Well: I just happened to be reading Greil Marcus' The Old Weird America when I first started hearing this dood, and the coincidence is eerie. Sam Amidon has a bit of a thin man-boy voice, but I got over it (even after hearing the cover of Tears For Fears' Head Over Heels he did years ago - no small feat.) The boy is steeped into history. He is feeding off of the same eternal energy that has inspired all the greats. He is Harry Smith Folk Anthology-inspired no less than ol' Bob Dylan himself, and I mean the real Bob Dylan, not the one Greil Marcus imagines. Even if I were to buy into Greil Marcus-ville, I would still say that Sam Amidon is a greater lover of Dock Boggs than Dylan was. Hell, Sam Amidon thanks Dock Boggs by name in the credits on top of the musical debt. The love couldn't be any more plain. I am tempted to say that Mister Boggs is to All Is Well what Woody Guthrie was to Bob Dylan. That's totally cool with me. I know next to nothing of Dock Boggs, but clearly, that man hits the heart like a laser among many sensitive to The Great Flow of humanity and time. Sam Amidon is hit and puts out an album much better for it. I can't say this album hits me at that kinda level, but I know why stuff like Sugar Baby will never die and why there will be another Dylan or Sam Amidon recording it just this way at least a dozen times a generation until The Great Flow stops. I enjoy this album in part because it proves out the circle ain't broken but it is also quite good on its own merits. If you like the old stuff done by new blood, this is pretty much can't miss. (B)
Crass - Penis Envy: I have really liked everything I heard on the Jeffery Lewis Tribute to Crass disc, and I knew they were gonna be really different-sounding, but I thought I would like this stuff way more since I knew how good the lyrics are. It just hasn't bonded with me, and I don't think it is for a lack of trying. I can't knock them since I know the songs are there and they were as good as just about any punks of their time, I just don't groove on it. I can't give them a grade.
Horace Andy - Exclusively: This is material from the same sessions that produced his amazing, awesome, and near-perfect Dance Hall Style album; and in fact there is some overlap between the two discs. That said, this is really not the equal of Dance Hall Style, even with the overlap of Eating Mess (an odd cut, better left uncredited and buried as it was on DHS), and the re-use of the (awesome) Spying Glass backing. There is nothing wrong with anything on this disc, and had this been the only evidence of that session, this would still be an important disc; but as it stands, it merely rounds out a Horace Andy playlist rather than anchoring one. I think Horace Andy was one of the few reggae artists who could be counted on to produce decent albums. Reggae long seemed better as a singles medium. Horace Andy could do both. If all you know of Horace Andy is from Massive Attack, get this disc only after getting Dance Hall Style and In The Light (at least.) It is quite good, but in context, I am not sure it is great. (B)
Clinic - Do It!: I dig Clinic a lot. Yes, there stuff "all sounds alike", but that is its virtue. I love nothing more than that absolutely cavernous sound they get - it feels old and warm, quite analog, lost on some old Jamaican dub plate or something. I simply love the sound. That they punctuate it with the melodica gives the source away to some extent, but no old reggae artist ever hung with this sound for the ten years that Clinic has. It is also said that Clinic's song quality is somewhat spotty, and indeed, that is true too. They have had some thinner albums in the past, but even then, they are always good for at least one or two tight songs. Moreover, they always find a way to bring something new to their dedicated basic ingredients. This album follows a "comeback" of sorts from them in the form of Visitations, their last new studio album. I loved Visitations, and it absolutely was a return to form for them. This new disc, sadly enough, doesn't hold the momentum in the sense that this disc isn't great from beginning to end, and it also lacks an absolutely killer single. That isn't a crime or anything. For any knock one could have against this album, the band has done quite a bit of experimentation here with both their sound and songs. The single Free Not Free is one of the strangest songs to make a single I have heard in awhile, but I must say it has totally grown on me (y'all can find it online for a download pretty easy if ya check Hype Machine.) It is slow, prickly, totally lacking in any discernable hook, and dark. For me, those things are virtues, and it isn't just this cut that has that going on. "The Clinic sound" is still operative on this album, and for all the sameyness that usually comes with that, I must say, there are quite a few successful experiments with the style and feel of their usual song structure. I guess if you are new to them, that wouldn't matter; and if that is the case, get Visitations first. In fact, Do It! would eventually end up on your shopping list, but it would take awhile. You have much to get used to before you can find your groove in an album like this; but if you have the ear for it, that is actually quite rewarding if not always stunning. (B-)
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Much more to come as soon as my peckin' fingers recover.
Posted by rudayday at April 24, 2008 04:47 PM