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Saturday, August 20, 2011 ( 8/20/2011 06:45:00 AM ) Bill S.  “YOU AIN’T NO VICTIM; YOU’RE JUST BEING NAÏVE.” The idea of an alt-Americana band from Helsinki may sound a bit incongruous, but with Finland’s the Latebirds, the results are more convincing than you’d initially expect. Last of the Good Ol’ Days (Second Motion), the band’s U.S. debut, states the ‘birds’ case clearly. An enticing collection of rock and folk sounds smartly delivered, Days mixes melancholy self-help entreaties with more angry socio-cultural plaints to decent effect.Led by the sweetly weedy vocalist Markus Nordenstreng -- and abetted by “honorary Latebirds” like ace keyboardist Benmont Tench, Minnie Driver, Levon Helms and Kris Kristofferson -- the new release casts a tunefully critical eye toward our modern “broken world.” In the title track, for example, Nordenstreng reminds us of a truism Hank Williams would recognize, “we’re all born to die eventually.” In the follow-up mid-tempo paean to carrying on, “Among the Survivors,” the singer croons over an ear-tickling fuzzy guitar line to someone “lucky to still be alive” Experienced geezer music, in other words, sung from the perspective of someone who’s more than a little surprised to still be around. If at times, the poppy vocals seem to bump against the music’s grizzled sentiments, the bands’ (which even includes a former member of the cultural instrumentalists Laika & the Cosmonauts) instrumental smarts keep you coming back to the disc. Ain’t a lot of groups who’d think to add musical saw to a gospel-tinged closeout, but these guys do. Stand-out track to these ears proves one of the angriest: “Fearless,” a tribute to murdered Russian journalist Anne Politkovskaja, with a ragingly orchestrated hard-rock backing and lyrics that noodge the dittohead listener to think for themselves. Good ol’ didactic pissed-off protest rock -- we could use a lot more of it these days. The current release also features an EP of five tracks cut at Levon Helm’s Woodstock studio. Three of these prove to be covers of singer/songwriter mainstays Steve Goodman, Kristofferson and Townes Van Zandt alongside two new Nordenstreng numbers. Though the band’s slowed-down remake of “City of New Orleans” won’t make you forget either the original or Arlo Guthrie’s cover, their folk-rocky Van Zandt track is worth a listen, while the sound of a croakin’ Kristofferson taking “In the News” over from the soft-voiced Latebird lead provides a telling contrast. One of the survivors, indeed. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: folk-pop # |Sunday, September 06, 2009 ( 9/06/2009 08:48:00 AM ) Bill S.  BLOWIN' IN THE WIND: Safe to say that if the only platter Jackie DeShannon released had been her debut, sixties pop fans wouldn't be holding her name in such esteem today. For as revealed in a recent Collectors' Choice reissue (one of four DeShannon platters to be pulled from the vaults), the first long-player to feature the singer/songwriter's evocatively husky voice was a set of sincerely strummed folk songs quite removed from the transcendent studio pop ("What the World Needs Now Is Love," "Put a Little Love in Your Heart") and pop-rock ("Needles and Pins," "When You Walk into the Room") on which she's since built her rep. Jackie DeShannon, the woman who co-wrote "Bette Davis Eyes," singin' "Puff the Magic Dragon"? Just don't seem right.Supported by master studio arranger Jack Nitzsche, the twelve tracks on 1963's Jackie DeShannon aren't bad; they just don't really rise above the multitude of albums released during the early sixties folk boom. A few tracks provide a slight hint of the more distinctive direction DeShannon would take -- this is a woman, after all, who paved the way for the ringin' folk-rock sound with "When You Walk into the Room" -- but it's easy to miss. Instead, the overall impression is of overly polished middle-of-the-road folk music: three Dylan songs (the best of which is loping opener, "Walkin' Down the Line"); two tracks better known by Peter, Paul and Mary; some spirituals; Brit folk and an interesting obscurity penned by a young Bobby Darin ("Jailer Bring Me Water"). At times, the singer and her studio collaborators can't keep their pop proclivities from sneaking onto the tracks: her remake of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" (re-titled "Oh, Sweet Chariot") features a girl group back-up that wouldn't sound out of place on "Breakaway," the DeShannon composition rollickingly covered by Tracy Ullman two decades later. Such production playfulness was certain to offend the sensitivities of the period's ultra-serious folk purists, but, thankfully, it didn't put a crimp in the singer/songwriter's still-developing career. Labels: folk-pop # |Wednesday, June 03, 2009 ( 6/03/2009 08:38:00 AM ) Bill S.  "SOONER OR LATER, WELL, ALL THE LIGHTS GET DARK." Though I hadn't known a thing about Tom Laverack before I unexpectedly received a copy of his newest CD, Cave Drawings (Sojourn Records), two facts about him immediately caught my fancy. First was his involvement in the soundtracks of two independent horror flicks, Wendigo and The Last Winter, the first of which I'd actually seen on Sundance Channel one late nite; second was the biographical detail that the man has made his living as a social worker in New York. Harder to gauge which is the more difficult avocation: laboring as a singer/songwriter or working in social services.Laverack's newest reportedly took over four years to complete and includes three tracks that appeared in the apocalyptic Winter. None too surprisingly, these three cuts ("Precious Little," "Running Out of Road," "No Shame") all share a fatalistic tone -- as do many of the other tracks, which tend toward rootsy mid-tempo rock or more mournful balladry with an occasional country soul lick tossed in for good measure. Listening to the mid-tempo opener, "Coney Island Heart," I found myself flashing on both Springsteen and Lou Reed, though Laverack's country-folkish delivery may get you thinking more of Steve Earle. To these ears, the more energetic tracks are the album's highpoints, though the insertion of soul sax by moviemaker Larry Fessenden on a track like "Running Out of Road" is a particularly neat touch. Most striking of the slow 'uns turns out to be "Dead Dog," wherein the singer comes upon a boy mourning over a dead pet hit by a truck. "I'd give it all up if I ever made it," Laverack sings, "just to save this dead dog," even if he knows he just singing into the wind. Laverack's lyrics can be merciless when considering the state of nation ("Blinded by our entitlement, our dollar signs read 'In God We Trust,'" he notes on the lopingly soulful "Precious Little"), but he can also be sharp on a self-castigating track like "Foolish Enough to Think," where he laments his inability to change his own self-destructive habits. This willingness to shift from the blisteringly social (check out his nursing home rant, "No Shame") to the equally self-critical proves one of Laverack's strengths as a lyricist. Laverack's back-up is provided by group of steady sidemen: Marc Shulman, who has worked with Suzanne Vega, and Joel Hoekstra on guitars; bassist Jeff Langston and label co-president Mark Ambrosino, who provides a suitably strong Max Weinberg-y beat to it all. Hoekstra's stinging work on "Foolish Enough to Think" is a particular stand-out, though his thoughtfully hooky licks on "Coney Island Heart" are also worth noting. "You don't know if you'll leave behind anything after you're gone," Laverack sings on the disc's title song, adding that he's content to leave little memories of "how this world did feel" for those who are willing to listen. After regular plays of this evocatively grown-up set of rootsy vignettes, count me among the willing. Labels: folk-pop # |Wednesday, March 04, 2009 ( 3/04/2009 04:56:00 PM ) Bill S.  "I SIT BESIDE A YOUNG MAN, HEADPHONES ON HIS EARS" A long-standing folk-rocker with a knack for alluring melodies and straight-faced romantic lyricism, Irish singer/songwriter Luka Bloom has had a long career as a musician -- both under his current stage name and his birth name Barry Moore -- that goes all the way back to the late seventies. Despite this durable career, the man isn't much known in the U.S., which isn't surprising considering how much scant regard basic songwriting receives these days. But those lovers of hard-strummed "electro-acoustic" music and honest singing, who perhaps came to Bloom with his early nineties releases and lost track of him after he began following more ambient turns, the new Eleven Songs will be viewed as a happy return to folk-rock form.Shifting from infectious country-folk shakers like "I'm on Your Side" and "Eastbound Train" through Latin-tinged celebrations of the beauty of the world ("I Love the World I'm In") and gospel admonitions to free your mind, the soothing voiced Bloom deftly conveys a mood of warmth tinged with melancholy without readily succumbing to the boy/man posturing of so many male singers. This is experienced music sung by a guy who isn't here to impress you with all the roads he's traveled, but mainly wants to tell you about the things he's seen. "There is a time we must sit with ourselves," he explains over a deftly played Spanish guitar in the album's opener. "Let the breeze in, let the winds blow." The album has only one serious misstep: the hectoring "Fire," which uses an admittedly addictive chorus to rant against 21st century techno alienation. Sorry, Luka, but I'm writing this review for the Internet. Besides, Billy Joel ruined the use of fire imagery in the service of protest songs twenty years ago. The rest of Eleven Songs is hooky and welcoming: great music for those times you wake up in the middle of the night feeling that unexplained sense of dread -- and want to listen to something that won't wake your significant other back in the bedroom. Listening to "I Hear Her, Like Lorelei," I couldn't help thinking of John Cale in one of his more subdued moments. But disc finale "Don't Be Afraid of the Light that Shines Within You" is the one you'll keep running through your head after you crawl back into bed. An achingly beautiful inspirational track, it implores its listeners to "warm our hearts and faces in the heat of the burning flame" (okay, I'll accept that fire image) over backup by Dublin's Gardiner Street Gospel Choir. In these grim times, we need all the buck-up music we can get . . . Labels: folk-pop # |Thursday, January 08, 2009 ( 1/08/2009 06:24:00 PM ) Bill S.  "IT'S HARD TO RIDE AT NIGHT ON YOUR BICYCLE WITH NO LIGHTS TO GUIDE." Fourteen years after Mark Olson departed the Jayhawks to strum alongside Ms. Williams' Guitar, the singer/songwriter has reunited with his fellow Minnesotan Gary Louris for a new set of largely acoustic alt-country. Ready for the Flood (New West Records) contains the twosome's appealing blend of raggedy Louvin Bros.-style harmonies and hometown angst. If, at times, the results sound a little too muted in the manner of "grown-up" Nick Lowe ("Kick the Wood" and "My Gospel Song for You" even have the same church-y organ backing that the onetime Jesus of Cool currently overuses), there's still plenty here for old Jayhawks fans to admire.Those 'hawks loyalists who prefer the group when Louris started steering the band toward a poppier direction may find this two man reunion a little too dour for their tastes, though the twosome do find the space on Flood for some jauntier tracks. "Chamberlain SD" is the disc's big rocker, and it's a damn fine one: a sinister description of dragging the Missouri River that makes its chorus exhortation -- "Chamberlain wants you" -- sound like an insistent invitation to Hell. "Bloody Hands" is a mandolin-sweetened jeremiad capped by a hooky cautionary refrain ("What the mind forgets, the soul retains"), while "Doves and Stones" makes particularly strong use of Louris' Wilbury-esque inclinations. It's arguably the closest Flood comes to the later Jayhawks sound. More typically, though, the duo works a slower, folksy tempo on their moody tales of loss and cruelly irreligious times. At their best -- the quietly urgent "When the Wind Comes Up" or the wistfully positive "Life's Warm Sheets," say -- these two sons of the Midwest temper their sermonizing proclivities with neatly detailed lyrics, strongly harmonic melodies and thoughtful strumming. At their weakest (as in the release's over-serious spoken word conclusion "The Trap's Been Set"), Olson & Louris get you missing the band who once thought it was a cool idea to include Grand Funk Railroad's "Bad Time" on a disc. Still, Flood's strong tracks outnumber its snoozers. "Where are the voices that cheer your days?" the two ask in their chorus to "Wood." Right on this disc, guys . . . Labels: folk-pop # | |
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