Ok, I got lazy and let some others do the talkin on the liner notes for this year’s playlist – ie the interwebz cut and pasted!
Alabama Shakes – Hold On
A very late in the year find for me but at the top of the list for obvious reasons. Pure soul energy all up in this. Watch this space….
On Record Store Day in April 2011, an unknown quartet called The Shakes — soon they’d discover that name was taken and adopt the reference to their home state — played the backyard stage at The Groove New & Used Vinyl & CDs to a dozen-or-so people, one of them being Seth Riddle, a former Rough Trade staffer.
Says Riddle, “After they started playing I was just kind of pinching myself, because it’s really rare that you see a band that strikes that chord with you and you’ve never heard of ‘em.
“Usually,” he clarifies, “you’ve heard a little buzz about ‘em, and they’ve got their website up, they’ve got some digital files up. This band, they didn’t have anything. Nothing. There was nothing there. I don’t think they had a Facebook page.”
This is what the saga of a breaking band can look like in the age of the constantly plugged-in, accelerated news cycle. In the case of The Alabama Shakes, there really is something beneath the hype that people are viscerally responding to. Aquarium Drunkard called it “a slice of the real” — as opposed to stuff that’s “fake” and “pre-packaged.” NPR music critic Ann Powers noted the pre-packaging inherent in retro soul, but pointed to Howard’s artistic self-determination, describing the 22-year-old singer as “a young woman living in the now, wrapping her arms around a tradition without letting it carry her away.” New York Times music critic Jon Pareles celebrated the contrast between The Shakes and the typical CMJ buzz band — one that’s “built around some cool-headed concept involving noise or irony or ambiguities or primitivism.”
Lucero
Beautifully merging memphis country & blues with punk rock. No wonder genre-pioneer Mike Ness sings his protege’s praises…
The 2009 album’s name comes from the address of the Memphis loft in which all four band members lived, practiced and even recorded portions of their 2003 release That Much Further West (the history of the space itself is even more colorful—in the `70s, 1372 Overton Park was a karate dojo where local resident Elvis Presley, among others, took lessons). Over recent years band members have gradually moved out leaving lead singer and guitarist Ben Nichols the sole resident of the space until word finally came down that the building would be sold and demolished. Almost as if marking the end of an era not only for the building but for the band as well, this record turns the page and signals a strong move toward the Memphis soul sound that has long served as an influence for the group. Nichols explains, “When [saxophonist] Jim Spake put that first horn track down, we began thinking of the record as having a certain sound. We heard pieces of Memphis history being played over our songs and it floored us and we just went with it.”
While 1372 Overton Park serves as a love letter to Memphis and its musical heritage, the band has far from abandoned the country/rock/punk influences that they’ve become known for over their previous five records and countless tour dates in front of rabid fans. “I think the fact that we don’t claim a genre is very important to what Lucero is,” according to Nichols. “There are too many rules in punk rock. Too many rules in country music. We’re hard headed and…god damn if we don’t do things the way we want to do them.”
http://www.luceromusic.com/site/bio.php
Alejandro Escovedo
Without a lot of background I could immediately feel the life-experience of living through punk rock in the 70′s in Escovedo’s songs. This album was produced by the great Tony Visconti (Bowie, Morrissey, T-Rex, Sparks). Glam riff-age abounds on the album yet this track slips into more wall of sound territory…
“Musically, Alejandro Escovedo is in his own genre.” David Fricke, Rolling Stone
Alejandro’s whole life has pretty much been documented already and reads like a “How to Make Rock and Roll A Lifelong Profession” primer. Ground Zero punk rock dude with The Nuns (they opened for the Sex Pistols last show, you know), cowpunk progenitor in Rank and File, gutter brawling guitar rawker in True Believers and Buick MacKane and now a songwriter and performer without peer; you know the story.
An Alejandro concert will find him playing for hours and draining himself and his audience with his performance. They can be full on punk sets that make all that SoCal pretty boy punk seem as tepid as it really is, and then he can stop it all on a dime and tear the room’s collective heart out with a sparse, harrowing confessional. In between, there may be lots of moments of him getting his glam rocks off by digging into the Ian Hunter or Bowie songbook. He can show up with just himself and a guitar, his huge chamber rock orchestra, a lean and mean rock and roll combo, or a string quintet. We’ve seen Alejandro dozens of times, and we really never know what to expect, and we never get bored. He can whip out every one of his songs ten different ways, depending on the mood, and they will jump into the rumble seat of your gut every time.
After a near-death bout of Hepatitis C in 2003, Alejandro took some time off from the road. All is, happily, well now and he is putting out more fantastic music and is again sharing it with lucky folks the world over with his regular tour schedule.
http://www.amazon.com/Alejandro-Escovedo/e/B000AP7YBS
Lucinda Williams
Lucinda William’s voice pretty much says it all – gravel and whisky, trouble and love…
The object of cultish adoration for years, singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams was universally hailed as a major talent by both critics and fellow musicians, but it took quite some time for her to parlay that respect into a measure of attention from the general public. Part of the reason was her legendary perfectionism: Williams released records only infrequently, often taking years to hone both the material and the recordings thereof. Plus, her early catalog was issued on smaller labels that agreed to her insistence on creative control but didn’t have the resources or staying power to fully promote her music. Yet her meticulous attention to detail and staunch adherence to her own vision were exactly what helped build her reputation. When Williams was at her best (and she often was), even her simplest songs were rich in literary detail, from her poetic imagery to her flawed, conflicted characters. Her singing voice, whose limitations she readily acknowledged, nonetheless developed into an evocative instrument that seemed entirely appropriate to her material. So if some critics described Williams as “the female Bob Dylan,” they may have been oversimplifying things (Townes Van Zandt might be more apt), but the parallels were certainly too strong to ignore.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/williams-p5833
Caitlin Rose
It would be a better world with more lady singers like this…
Nashville’s Caitlin Rose first appeared on the radar of music critics this year with the release of her widely praised debut full-length Own Side Now. Rarely does an artist display this level of uninhibited honestly and vulnerability in their writing; the fact that this wisdom is found at the start of Rose’s career promises that she’s not going away anytime soon. Drawing inspiration from female greats like Linda Ronstadt, Patsy Cline and Stevie Nicks, Own Side Now is an exquisite collection, showcasing a maturity in songwriting that few possess at such a young age.
Although steeped in the country tradition, Caitlin’s music is not constrained by that heritage. Her confessional style and wry observations place her very much in the 21st Century, but the heart-wrenching honesty, lyrical prowess and dexterous lyrical delivery found in her music sets Rose apart from her peers.
http://thecaitlinrose.com/bio/
Richard Hawley
I’ve been listening to Hawley for many years but The Country Social Club has renewed his playlist status! Perhaps Sheffield’s loneliest troubadour…he hits the heart strings….
Today, there is no shortage of serious young men in groups, sketching out how they imagine the extremes and depths of emotion might be. Time was, though, that only those who had earned the right to sing of love, loss and striving would share such confidences – real singers, of the calibre of Scott Walker, Roy Orbison, or even Nancy’s old dad, The Chairman himself.
Richard Hawley understands this. The man who could well be Britain’s finest songwriter insists his mind is full only with “confused thoughts and Guinness”. But when he sings, he does so in a voice that’s deep and low, and does not lie. His merciful, wise songs tell of the heart’s truths as seen in the dark, revealed by moonlight. Remember, this is the hopeless romantic who, on returning home from a lengthy tour of America was reduced to tears by the sight of a bottle of sauce – Sheffield delicacy Henderson’s Relish – on his kitchen table.
Coles Corner, Richard’s first album for Mute, was released on 5th September 2005. While his previous long-players, Late Night Final (2001) and Lowedges (2003), scaled remarkable heights of elegance and emotional candour, this collection is surely his best to date. Within, orchestral splendour sits alongside earthy rock and roll in songs that are by turns intimate and soaring.
http://www.mute.biz/richardhawley/Press_Biography.html
Gillian Welch
Welch’s folk songs describe the hard times of forgotten, back-water, American people. Backed ever-faithfully and superbly by David Rawlings. A beautiful bio here…
The Harrow & The Harvest, Gill and Dave’s new record, is both a product of and is unrelated to those years in-between. Best to forget that. What it is, indisputably, is the product of two people who have become so entwined in one another that the songs and the singing and the playing on this record seems to exude from a single voice. This is the sound of two people in a room, playing to one another, with one another. This is the sound of the room in which the two people are playing. This is the sound of two voices, locked in unison, locked in harmony. The sound of two people playing live, with no overdubs, and very few takes. Two people making music together as if they were one soul combined.
Gill and Dave met at Berkeley College of Music; Gillian was studying songwriting, while Dave studied guitar; they met at an audition for a country band. Together, they moved to Nashville, TN where most of their work together has been produced. Since then they have influenced and inspired new generations of country and folk singers, songwriters and players. They have earned the slavish admiration of many of the most lauded and loved voices of the Americana milieu now living – and some who have since deceased (rest their souls). They’ve had their songs recorded by the likes of Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, and Solomon Burke. Gill and Dave’s body of work is deeply rooted in the world it has sought to portray in song: the American South.
And the record they’ve made, tonally, is a new Southern sound, with the sort of songs you wouldn’t be surprised to hear issuing from some verdant, wooded hollow in Appalachia; the sort of songs you’d expect to be sung to soothe unquiet babies. Songs you’d expect to hear hollered from an Asheville grange hall, all too late in the evening. Songs with the wry humor of the back porch. “Dave says this record is ‘ten different kinds of sad’, but it’s not without humor. I feel like there’s a maturity in it and a sense of place that only comes with time.” Gillian continues, “We feel at home in the folk tradition, and using its language combined with our own.” “That’s the whole point of the folk tradition,” laughs Dave.
http://www.gillianwelch.com/bio/
Chuck Ragan
Hot water music always hit a chord with me. Ragan’s deviation into folk and country was not a surprise given his southern home base – there’s Springsteen and so much more on this album…
A duality lies at the core of Covering and when Ragan sings about “ten cylinders that fire and a woman at the end of the road” on the driving acoustic song “Wish On The Moon,” it’s dripping with so much authenticity that it’s hard not to imagine yourself behind the wheel alongside Ragan. “Writing has always been a form of therapy for me and something that I feel like I need to do rather than something I’m supposed to do,” Ragan responds when asked where the fire behind this songs originated. “Since I’ve started doing the solo thing in 2005 I’ve been consistently writing and I’m not worried about whether I finish a song, I just want to get this down to unburden my soul.”
http://chuckraganmusic.com/bio/
Deer Tick
Replacements die hards with the goods. By sound and by behavior. Good enough for me!….
To produce this record, the band recruited the team of Adam Landry and Justin Collins, who produced McCauley’s side-project Middle Brother‘s debut album. The results are unlike anything you’ve heard on a Deer Tick album, but Deer Tick achieves something that is a lot more accurate to their live sound. Distorted guitars are aplenty, guitarist Ian O’Neil and drummer Dennis Ryan take lead vocal duties for the first time on record. Man, you can practically smell the sweat and the beer! Shit, you may even hear a guitar or two break somewhere in there! It’s got a little Exile, it’s got a little In Utero, it’s got a little Nilsson Schmilsson, but it’s 100% Deer-Fucking-Tick in their purest, and most carefree form… perhaps that’s because this is the first record they’ve recorded in their home state of Rhode Island… GAH!!! No need to over-think this shit!!! Moving on…
The songs are there. The delivery is in your face. There’s no studio magic. There’s no hiding the fact that Deer Tick is just five regular dudes. This record may rattle your thoughts, and it may make you think differently about Deer Tick, but at least they didn’t make the same album four times in a row, right?
http://www.partisanrecords.com/artists/deer-tick/bio/
Kurt Vile
Hypnotic stuff. For me this has redefined “music that gets stuck in your head”.
Kurt Vile has a way of tying time in knots. You can hear it on his new album Smoke Ring For My Halo from the get-go – the pinwheeling guitars and reaching atmospheres are as strange as they are familiar: a demonstration of how Kurt can put worn methods and sounds through himself and end up with something that isn’t emotionally or sonically obvious. Instead we’re left with a record that contains traces of the past but doesn’t waste precious time in the now being reverent.
Once compared to Leonard Cohen, Tom Petty, Psychic TV, and Animal Collective in the same review (for 2009’s Childish Prodigy), Kurt can bring to mind anything from Suicide to Leo Kottke to My Bloody Valentine, Bob Seger, Nick Drake, and Eastern ragas. Still, he pieces together these disparate elements so seamlessly and unpretentiously that such reference points are rendered pointless by the singularity of his sound. Kurt Vile might belong to a long lineage of classic American songwriters, but he’s the only one who’s alive and in his prime today.
http://www.matadorrecords.com/kurt_vile/biography.html
Harry Nilsson
A long since passed, complete maverick and unique character with unparalelled songwriting skills. His tin pan alley influences echo today. The doco I recently watched “Who Is Harry Nilsson?” was ok but didn’t fully do him justice…
Singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson was named as the Beatles’ favourite American artist when he was still a relative unknown, but despite the acclaim of the world’s most popular band, Nilsson was too idiosyncratic to attain comparable fame. Later, he became John Lennon’s drinking buddy and confidante during Lennon’s split from Yoko Ono, but after rupturing vocal chords during a recording session helmed by Lennon for a new album, Nilsson’s career went on a permanent decline.
http://www.soundunwound.com/music/harry-nilsson/7663?ref=AADP
David Kilgour
A Kiwi that I stumbled upon via Richard Buckner’s site. Played in seminal NZ indie band The Clean in the 80′s. Now hitting his stride with The Heavy Eights as backing band. I’m hearing the Neil Young/Crazy Horse comparison…
David Kilgour’s way with music over the years is the kind of gift of talent that maintains its own pace; without being demonstrative about it, he just seems to release one excellent album after another in group, collaborative, and solo contexts, where one listen is all it takes to remind someone of just how good he is. Such is the case with his latest album backed by the Heavy Eights, Left by Soft, where the opening instrumental title track has not one, but two brilliant solos that seem to float above the energetic, crisp chug of the main arrangement like birds skimming over a lake; if anything, it almost sounds like a song by the Church, not a bad place to be at all. But given the the Heavy Eights’ strengths throughout, it makes more sense to say that Kilgour’s definitely found his own personal Crazy Horse.
http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/av/2011/04/album-stream-david-kilgour-and-the-heavy-eights–.html
Tom Waits
Fairly unexplored territory for me until now. Here be a long career path I’m needing to wander…
Thomas Alan “Tom” Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.” With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock music styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona. He has worked as a composer for movies and musical plays and as a supporting actor in films, including Down by Law and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his soundtrack work on One from the Heart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Waits
Cheap Trick
I was pretty damn obsessed for a while this year with Cheap Trick. Their 70′s catalogue is amazing! Forget the Beatle-esque 90′s singles, the riffage from “Heaven Tonight” rulez!
Combining a love for British guitar pop songcraft with crunching power chords and a flair for the absurd, Cheap Trick provided the necessary links between ’60s pop, heavy metal, and punk. Led by guitarist Rick Nielsen, the band’s early albums were filled with highly melodic, well-written songs that drew equally from the crafted pop of the Beatles, the sonic assault of the Who, and the tongue-in-cheek musical eclecticism and humor of the Move. Their sound provided a blueprint for both power pop and arena rock; it also had a surprisingly long-lived effect on both alternative and heavy metal bands of the ’80s and ’90s, who often relied on the same combination of loud riffs and catchy melodies.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/cheap-trick-p3879/biography
AC/DC
I loudly and proudly introduced my son to AC/DC’s back catalogue on the way to kindergarten many a morning in 2011.
AC/DC’s mammoth power chord roar became one of the most influential hard rock sounds of the ’70s. In its own way, it was a reaction against the pompous art rock and lumbering arena rock of the early ’70s. AC/DC’s rock was minimalist — no matter how huge and bludgeoning their guitar chords were, there was a clear sense of space and restraint. Combined with Bon Scott’s larynx-shredding vocals, the band spawned countless imitators over the next two decades
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/acdc-p3496
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
Ex (now current again!) Pavement leader Stephen Malkmus. Awkward.Intelligent. Rawk.
Bio written by Malkmus (!!!):
MY goal: to mix the precision of Saab, Stefan Edberg and Bergman with the laid back (yet heavy) beats of deepest Trenchtown. Well, at least on one song (“Vague Space”). The other tunes try to be new and entertaining versions of the type of songs I’ve always admired – mindlessly groove oriented (“Black Book”), cheeky (“Phantasies”), melodically rocking (“Jo Jo’s Jacket”), faux bar bandish (“The Hook”), catchy (“Discretion Grove”), emotional (“Church on White”), warped (“Troubbble”), you get the drift. And anyway these adjectives could easily describe the most annoying band in the world (set myself up for that one!)
AWESOME BONUS FLIM CLIP FEATURING JACK BLACK!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pADR7Hx9xqk
Jonny Corndawg
The most awesome, country fried, leather makin’, marathon runnin’, singer-songwriter weirdo I’ve listened to all year!!
Corndawg, whose own songs seem to borderline on earnestness and parody – in the vein of Roy Rogers singing a version of “Happy Trails” and having the meaning of the song have something more to do with pubic hair and tits than wishing dear friends so-long as they mosey on down the road. But somehow, the earnest Corndawg still tends to win out, when we’re to listen to these songs his ideas seem to be drawn from the skies like crazy lightening, strange buzzes that will make you loopy for a second, nailing him with an idea that he then feels compelled to communicate, no matter how off-color or graphic it may be. His mind is revealed in his songs and he makes no bones about it, letting the words just give what they’ve got to give and if some of the giving is “gross” or country and western bathroom humor, then so be it. His songs are flashes of the impulses that strike everyone, but most often they’re suppressed by those people. However, they’re not just that. They are odes to simple lives, to small towns that have a Pizza Hut, teenage pregnancy, a big bad football team that everyone’s proud of, some deep fishing holes and not too much else. They are odes to the boredom that ravages people in those places sometimes. They are odes to twisted thoughts that can be argued to be just as much admissions of the heart and soul – that the heart and soul exist sound and strong – as songs and sentiments that are mistakenly taken to be those of endearing love. He sings, “When a Ford man turns to Chevy an angel gets its wings and the babies they won’t ever cry no more,” and he means it about those babies and those angels – wearing a big, fat CHEVY belt buckle on his belt to prove where his loyalties lie. It’s not a joke, where he comes from and where he’s coming from. It’s this way of creating the blurred lines of folly and feeling that makes the man so charming in his views and in a classic country method that’s always had its fair share of tongues in cheeks with its tears and beers. He’s a freak-folker, by some definitions, and Nashville’s first with cowboy boots and a mad crush on Mountain Dew.
Jackson Browne
Such an incredible songwriter that I had heard a lot about but had not seriously delved into until this year. At his peak in the mid 70′s, Late For The Sky is definitely my fav album of his.
Jackson Browne has written and performed some of the most literate and moving songs in popular music and has defined a genre of songwriting charged with honesty, emotion and personal politics. He’s been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2004) by friend Bruce Springsteen and the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame (2007).
http://www.jacksonbrowne.com/bio
Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit
Formerly of The Drive-By Truckers. Keeping it real on 3rd album.
Here We Rest: The first motto of Jason Isbell’s home state got changed in the early part of last century to a Latin phrase that translates to “we dare defend our rights”. What starts out as peaceful idyll descends into a defensive posture with the threat of bellicosity just beneath the surface. That’s what tough times will do to a people.
Jason Isbell’s home is northern Alabama, a region that has been hit especially hard in the recent economic downturn. “The mood here has darkened considerably,” says Jason. “There is a real culture around Muscle Shoals, Florence and Sheffield of family, of people taking care of their own. When people lose their ability to do that, their sense of self dissolves. It has a devastating effect on personal relationships, and mine were not immune.”
The characters that populate Here We Rest are wrung out. In “Alabama Pines”, the protagonist has found himself on the outside of the life he once knew. He is living in a small room and in a state of emotional disrepair – estranged from the woman that he loved, as well as friends (“I don’t even need a name anymore/When no one calls it out, it kinda vanishes away”). He is beginning to recognize that his own remoteness and obstinacy has played a large part in his current state of affairs, and longs for “someone to take him home through those Alabama pines.” He’s not quite clear how to get back there himself.
http://www.jasonisbell.com/press/
Howlin Wolf
This man’s voice is like no other. Listen closely and enjoy.
Chester Arthur Burnett has probably had more impact worldwide than the 19th-century American president after whom he was named. With a musical influence that extends from the rockabilly singers of the 1950s and the classic rock stars of the 1960s to the grunge groups of the 1990s and the punk-blues bands of the 21st century, plus a legion of imitators to rival Elvis’s, he was one of the greatest and most influential blues singers ever.
http://www.howlinwolf.com/articles/bio_1.htm
Richard Buckner
Not a bad effort really for a man who during the making of this record was wrongfully named as a murder suspect and had to re-record his album several times due to robbery and home recording machine malfunctions. Buckner’s been recording albums for nearly 20 years.
Since 2006′s Meadow, fans of Richard Buckner have been clamoring for new material and wondering what was keeping their hero from releasing the new songs he would perform on the road. Well, it’s a long story!
First, there was the score to a film that never happened. Then there was a brief brush with the law over a headless corpse in a burned-out car that had all eyes in Buckner’s small hometown in upstate New York turned toward him and his long-suffering truck. Shortly after a move to a safer, less popular corpse dumping ground, the death of his tape machine led to yet another reboot. After Richard called in pedal steel and percussion players and put new mixes on his laptop, his new “safer” place was burglarized. Goodbye, laptop.
Buckner says: “Eventually, the recording machine was resuscitated and some of the material was recovered. Cracks were patched. Parts were redundantly re-invented. Commas were moved. Insinuations were re-insinuated until the last percussive breaths of those final OCD utterances were expelled like the final heaves of bile, wept-out long after the climactic drama had faded to a somber, blurry moment of truth and voila!, the record was done, or, let us be clear, abandoned like the charred shell of a car with a nice stereo.”
http://www.mergerecords.com/artists/buckner
J Mascis
I was bound to pick up on the Dino Jr frontman’s new solo acoustic record. His voice has always lent itself to this style in my opinion and [son], he didn’t dissapoint….
It’s all but inconceivable that J Mascis requires an introduction. In the quarter-century since he founded Dinosaur (Jr.), Mascis has created some of the era’s signature songs, albums and styles. As a skier, golfer, songwriter, skateboarder, record producer, and musician, J has few peers. The laconically-based roar of his guitar, drums and vocals have driven a long string of bands–Deep Wound, Dinosaur Jr., Gobblehoof, Velvet Monkeys, the Fog, Witch, Sweet Apple–and he has guested on innumerable sessions. But Several Shades of Why is J’s first solo studio record, and it is an album of incredible beauty, performed with a delicacy not always associated with his work.
Recorded at Amherst Massachusetts’ Bisquiteen Studios, Several Shades… is nearly all acoustic and was created with the help of a few friends. Notable amongst them are Kurt Vile, Sophie Trudeau (A Silver Mount Zion), Kurt Fedora (long-time collusionist), Kevin Drew (Broken Social Scene), Ben Bridwell (Band of Horses), Pall Jenkins (Black Heart Procession), Matt Valentine (The Golden Road), and Suzanne Thorpe (Wounded Knees). Together in small mutable groupings, they conjure up classic sounds ranging from English-tinged folk to drifty, West Coast-style singer/songwriterism. But every track, every note even, bears that distinct Mascis watermark, both in the shape of the tunes and the glorious rasp of the vocals.
