Stav Sherez

SOME OLD REVIEWS FROM MY MUSIC JOURNALISM DAYS

Okkervil River | Down The River Of Golden Dreams (Jagjaguar)
The album after the album that initially got you into the band. Always a difficult one that. The first time around you probably didn’t have any expectations. You picked it up because something drew you, something liminal perhaps. And then, not expecting anything, the album suddenly delivers everything. Second time round you come loaded with more luggage than a supermodel on a Med holiday tearaway. And the album always disappoints. Axiomatic, you might think. Life, you might think. Nothing’s as good as the first time. We all know this yet we still rip off the shrink-wrap with that baited anticipation that really we know we shouldn’t expend (hope kills) but we still do…because? Because every now and then (once in a long unexpected while) that second time actually delivers and delivers harder and better than the first time. Perhaps this is because so many follow ups to great albums are always viewed as disappointments; it makes sense then that the few which actually deliver the goods are rated all the more highly for this very fact.
And so consider, ‘DTROGD’, the second full-length from Okkervil River. Last year’s ‘Don’t Fall In Love….’ was a breath of fresh air, a sharp shank to the kidney, a dream unloosed, roiling and raging, a promise kept. All these things and more. So, with great trepidation I put on the new album, garnered with similarly swirly fantasy artwork. And man, it’s not only better, it actually promises more than even the first album did. Promises you that these guys have actually found one of the loopholes in current music that allows them to draw from the deep well of the roots movement, the modernist movement, and yet pay no lip service to either.
So – this record as opposed to the last: well, there’s nothing as outright catchy or hummable as Kansas City or Red but the songs are still delicately constructed, complex beasts that swing and wail and rage and then ebb gently to their ends. Gone are the outright stringed tones of the previous albums (perhaps a reaction to being labelled Americana – but then listen to the last song) and ushered in are a whole phalanx of keyboards, Wurlitzers, drones and organs, lending the album a lush, grand feel that, due to the writing, never seems easy listening-ish or soft. We’re not talking about the Tindersticks here. Okkervil River use the organs and keyboards to create great washes of sound (think: ‘In A Silent Way’) over which Will Sheff’s ever-developing voice and lyrics float so powerfully. And it’s the songs that bring it all back home. Always that. A Niagara Falls of words that come tumbling out of the singer’s mouth. Listen to the desolate emptiness, pain and frustration of the adulterer’s lament, Maine Island Lovers, and if your heart doesn’t melt then man, you’re made of stone. Or the shockingly articulate and musically brave The War Criminal Rises and Speaks which contains some of the best lyrics this side of the century. Or perhaps it’s heartbreak you want. Well, how about the innocently titled Yellow which just drips melancholia and pain like an open wound. It’s almost a mirror piece to the previous album’s Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas, a similar sense of desolation and fear and death creeps through this work. And then it all ends with the country-tinged Seas Too Far To Reach, a drunkard’s lullaby, a mad shanty at the edge of the world.
Comparisons become redundant when music of such strength and intensity is being produced but if you want pointers try mid-period American Music Club or Will Oldham but, on the basis of this album, OR look as if they too will soon join such exalted ranks of the heart. Album of the year again? It’s not even worth discussing.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #13 – Autumn 2003

 

 

 

Willard Grant Conspiracy | Regard the End (Loose)
Another year, another WGC album. Well, not quite. Since the last time we saw them, singer Robert Fisher has split with his principal collaborator Paul Austin and taken the helm of the band single-handedly, aided and abetted as always by a amorphous pool of musicians, this time drawn from not only Boston and London but also from the far reaches of Slovenia where the basic tracks to this album were recorded. So what change, you may ask? Well, it’s hugely apparent from the first song that things, while sounding the same, are in fact very different. It’s all in the structure. Previously, WGC songs always started out with promise, threat and menace and would invariably culminate in the kind of idiotic, asinine sing-along chorus (repeated 12 times) that anyone with a modicum of decency or taste found anodyne and facile. And so, guess what, the choruses are gone. Hurrah! And what we’re left with is a sepia-drenched, slow (very slow) album that takes as its root traditional folk narrative storytelling and fuses it to the world weary ennui that Fisher has so successfully mined. And, of course, there’s his voice; rich and magnificent at times, downbeat and full of dread at others, really finding its pitch on the opening River In The Pines, perhaps the best song here, stuffed and suffused with misery, love, marriage, death and disaster. That’s what you want, after all. And, by now, you know what to expect from Fisher on this, his fifth album: songs about drifters (The Trails of Harrison Hayes,) burdens of shame, oceans of regret and twisted folk spirituals. All without the maddening football-chant choruses of yore. After a great start though, the album dips slightly in the middle. Soft Hand introduces drum loops and a more modern feel but for all that sounds tired and bedraggled, a kind of Lambchop-lite (perish the idea!) Perhaps here is where the album’s main fault makes itself evident and it’s in the pacing of these songs which is downbeat all the way – a shame as Fisher’s voice sounds great on faster, more aggressive pieces. There’s also a slightly nagging admonitory tone to some of the lyrics but these are small things and the album, overall, is more satisfying than any of theirs since ‘Flying Low’. Perhaps the album’s contradictions are best exemplified by The Suffering Song which boasts some great writing in the verses detailing a family being fractured by the death of a mother but which resorts to the old platitudinal chorus stratagem, an Everybody Hurts type of asininity which states “Suffering’s gonna come to everyone someday.” Well, yeah….thanks for that, Robert.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #12 – Summer 2003

 

 

 

Richmond Fontaine | Winnemucca (El Cortez)
This is the kind of record you spend all year waiting for. Longer sometimes. And then it comes and it blows you away. Makes every other record seem petty and lacking in substance. And then you realise it won’t even be released here and it makes you mad, so what do you do, you write a review and hope people will try it (and if you order it from the band’s website, www.richmondfontaine.com, for your $13 you’ll get this and their great live album all shipped to your door here in the UK!) But let’s talk about the album. How the first track, Winner’s Casino, immediately pulls you into Willy Vlautin’s tightly detailed world. An acoustic guitar strums lazily, a pedal steel crawls around it – it’s probably the closest thing that RF have done to a pop song, it’s catchy as hell but its heart is dark and dank, recalling the casino scenes from Denis Johnson’s last novel ‘The Name of the World’. Out Of State follows with some delicate Leonard Cohen fingerpicking and a whispered entreaty to a lover. It’s so intimate and fragile it’s heartbreaking. While, on previous album’s, RF’s propensity for big noise has sometimes overshadowed the nuances of the songwriting, on ‘Winnemucca’ everything is stripped away, letting the songs shine like diamonds in the glare of an unremitting sun. Paul Brainard’s pedal steel playing takes the forefront, a lovely, enervated sound that manages to be both spacey and poignant, never settling into country cliché, evoking blistering hot Nevada days, sitting outside in the emptiness, the future ahead of you, the past in tatters behind, you feel like curling up on the floor but then you catch something out of the corner of you eye. It works like a dream and no more so than on Santiam, the best song of the year, no competition, a slow, haunted piece that details a man’s last drive through his hometown before spending a year and a half in prison. It’s a marvelously detailed and affecting piece of writing, Vlautin’s voice sounding wracked and tormented as he lists the places that will disappear for him, each chord change ratcheting the tension until the narrator can’t take it any more and he spills all his fears to his brother. If nothing else buy it for this track – you won’t hear as moving a song as this for a long time to come (and to think some people say there’s nothing left to write about.) Vlautin is in good voice throughout the record and while for many his voice may recall Jay Farrar’s, there’s none of the ponderous tone that the ex-Tupelo singer so often falls foul of. But again, to go back to the crux, it’s the writing that shines here (not to downgrade the music which is vast, spacious, unsettling and dreamsucked). Vlautin has the ability (like Springsteen, like Waits) to draw you into his character’s worlds and fears within two lines and once drawn, you won’t let go, whether it’s the lover who sees his ex in every face that passes by (Glisan Street) or the man holding the dying body of his friend, telling him it’ll be all right, telling him, there’s a place where the beautiful women will smile (Western Skyline). There’s no more I can say, if you’re a fan of albums like American Music Club’s ‘United Kingdom’ and ‘California’ or Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ then you’ll know what to expect and hell, it’ll leave you curled up on the floor. It’ll cut your fucking heart out.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #11 – Autumn 2002

 

 

 

Brute | Co-Balt (Evangeline)
Another year, another Vic Chesnutt record. Dependable in quantity if not quality as the great British rainfall and drenched summer, ‘Co-Balt’ sees him reuniting with jam band ordinaire, Widespread Panic, for a follow up to their surprisingly good debut, ‘Nine High a Pallet’. Now Vic always gets my hopes up. You see him in concert and he performs a string of new wondersongs, leaving the audience often gaping and awed and then a few month’s later an album comes out and none of the songs are there, their places taken by lightweight doppelgangers instead. So it’s a huge relief to find that here, in perhaps the most inauspicious of places (for Vic fans anyhow) we find his best album in years. Crunching guitars introduce the first track and it’s vituperative Vic at his best, snarling out lines with bile and a wink. Things really take off on Expiration Day, a slightly weird metaphor for his own musical efforts (“I’m a machinist at the Springfield armory / Just slightly ahead of my time / But I don’t make much money / So I sell eggs and chickens on the side). It starts with an almost pastiched Springsteen harmonica flutter and then Vic begins crooning in that soft, vulnerable voice of his and you’re hooked. The song itself is a statement of intent and, as the verses build, Vic’s singing gathers intensity until he’s screaming out “I’ll shave metal until I die” reaching the last chorus, a resolute “But I feel it is important / What I do upon my lathe / I pledge to do this detail work / Until my expiration day.” It’s totally whacked out, haunting, crazed and affecting at the same time. It’s what music should be and it’s only the second track. The next track, Adirondacks is possibly even better. From the propulsive opening notes of John Herman’s piano you know you are in the presence of a classic. The piano punches the song along on a gorgeous groove and towards a chorus melody that, no matter how cynical and disenchanted you are, will make you smile, Vic gleefully chanting “Grinding ax / in the Adirondacks” and though it’s not immediately obvious what he’s on about it’s still guaranteed to conjure up images of sheer backwoods inbred horror. One of those songs that just sweeps you up with it. It’s also very promising, after the last couple of albums (which featured scraps of songs), to see Vic writing lots of lyrics, long flowing lines and compellingly cracked narratives. The rest of the album, despite a couple of nondescript rockers, has many more treasures, not least among them the rolling barrelhouse gait of You’re With Me Now, the crooned disconsolate melancholia and abjection of Cutty Sark and Morally Challenged, a skewed southern sing-a-long which gets extra points for being perhaps the only song in the history of rock music to name-check W.H. Auden. It’s just great to hear Vic having so much fun and it comes through in his performance, the way he really sings on this record like he did on his first couple, his voice soaring majestically. The album ends as it began, with two great songs, the former, All Kinds, an ambient funk homage to diversity whose first verse (“I am a lonely guy / I sit around the house getting high / My only friends are dealers and dolers / All we have in common are psychoactive compounds / Sitting in their sad living rooms / That smell like stale mounds of semen”) is something we can all relate to. The title track finishes things off on an epic ten minute scale, kicking off with the breathtaking description, “The sky went Papal purple as they started plowing forth” and rolling through several verses of highly attuned writing to a shimmering conclusion where “They performed precisely as mathematicians dictated.” An unexpected triumph then, unsuspected and unguessed, the frisson of collaboration has driven Vic Chesnutt to produce his best album since ‘West of Rome’.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #11 – Autumn 2002

 

 

 

Peter Case | Thank You, St. Jude (Prima)
Pity poor Peter Case, once proto-Power Popper with the Plimsouls then carving a distinctive solo career that was pure proto-Americana and yet doomed to forever languish in the bargain bins of the world, assigned the deadly moniker of also-ran. But if life teaches us anything, it’s that those who get there first or perform best more often than not don’t get their just dessert. Simple as that. The world isn’t fair as Randy Newman so elegantly (and brutally) stated and it’s a strange kind of truth to learn, for if we didn’t have musicians, writers and artists who believed they could both make good music and good money (at the same time) then we wouldn’t have the pleasures of Peter Case, or, for that matter, a whole host of other names whose reach may be limited but whose effect and affect are immeasurable, necessary as a pair of lungs and quite often the difference between a life worth living and one that’s merely a listless waiting. But this tells you nothing at all about the record. Recorded in the studio with only the accompaniment of violinist David Perales, ‘TYSJ’ showcases Peter Case in raw, vital form performing songs from his back catalogue (often rescued from the shackles of their bad production) and, curiously, three songs all written in 1928. It starts off with a terrific, forceful version of Icewater from Case’s very first album (of which, unfortunately, it’s the only representative). The heart of this disc though is composed of six songs taken from his 1989 follow-up The Man With The Blue…’ (made after his divorce from Victoria Williams) and it’s a wise move for it’s Case’s best record and one that needed a fresh look. There’re stunning versions of Entella Hotel and Poor Old Tom, a song that even after 12 years still manages to be harrowing and shocking. Case has a great, evocative voice that swoops and flies on Put Down The Gun and the hilarious Charlie Poole number, Leavin Home. The devastating Two Angels sums up the incomprehensibility of breaking up while Hidden Love is a chilling post mortem of an affair with its haunting refrain of “someone sees the dreams we hide”. The old country blues numbers are given passionate and energetic readings but they can’t compare to Case’s own songs which hold you with their dark narratives and intuitive playing. It all ends with the charming 4th of July / Christmas Rag, a new song, that manages to be uplifting and morose at the same time. Most re-recordings of old work are the result of bankrupt minds and pockets but here is an exception to the rule, a useful redux that should stand along Case’s other work with its head held high.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #11 – Autumn 2002

 

 

Gordon Gano | Hitting The Ground (Cooking Vinyl)
With the splendid recent re-release of the Violent Femmes astonishing first album on Rhino, lead singer Gordon Gano’s profile is as high as it’s been for years. Never had a band that started off so well disappointed so greatly as each successive album saw the law of diminishing returns so brutally proved. And it was a shame. Because, in Gordon Gano, the Femmes had a singer and songwriter so idiosyncratic and compelling, so twisted and bitter, that you just wanted more and more while having to settle for less and less. So, for Gano’s first release under his own name, expectations were high. Thus it was somewhat discouraging to find that Gano himself would only sing three songs on the new album and the rest would be sung by his chosen group of singers. Much more encouraging was the news that these singers included Lou Reed, John Cale and PJ Harvey. PJ starts things off with the title track and immediately you’re transported back to the beer, leather and cigarette smell of CBGB’s circa 1976. Harvey wails and screams against gnashing guitars and stuttering drums sounding like Patti Smith at her acerbic best. It’s a short, power-packed burst of energy that sets the album up. Next up is Mary Lou Lord who, with her trademark whispered style and gentle acoustics resembles nothing so much as a steroid-boosted Victoria Williams on a Bubblegum kick. It’s a track that’s bound to annoy and thrill in equal measures. Gano steps up to the mic for the next track, Make It Happen, a delirious amphetamine rush through early Femmes and the Ramones with its call and response vocals and NY ‘attitood’. John Cale weighs in with a sombre, intense Don’t Pretend, his typical percussive key strokes and Welsh accent making you long for a new album from this underrated artist. It’s by far and away the best track here. Former VU sparring partner and hatedoll Lou Reed is up next with the dirty, grungy semi-spoken word Catch ‘Em In The Act which sounds like the long lost cousin to Egg Cream or an outtake from the fiery ‘Ecstasy’ album. Frank Black does Black Flag in an almost palindromic maneouver while They Might Be Giants surprise with a soft, Smile-era Beach Boys soundalike. And finally we get to the last two songs, sung by Gano himself, the woefully short, psychotic nursery rhyme of It’s Money and a reprise of the title track, Gano out-yelping Harvey in the feral stakes, borne along by an awesome, deep rumbling bass that sounds like the very earth is shifting under your feet. So, what to make of it all? It’s short and always entertaining, reaching a few undoubted high spots but due to its very nature, it’s a bitty work, the clashing styles sometimes working, sometimes not and it leaves you yearning for the true Gano solo album that is yet to come. But until then, this will definitely do.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #11 – Autumn 2002

 

 

 

Sixteen Horsepower | Folklore (Glitterhouse)
On their fourth album, Denver based 16HP confound all expectations and show that they’re not the one-trick ponies that their first three records suggested. You know what I mean and I guess they do too because gone are the Gun Club / Violent Femmes swagger and brimstone cliché of their early work and ushered in, in its place, is a much more considered, thoughtful sound, a sound of a band breaking away from their usual structures and stretching out. Not that this is an easy girlmeetsboy collection of bubblegum pop. David Eugene Edward’s sozzled, bourbon preacher yelp and Southern Gothic lyricism remain as potent and potentially off-putting as ever but somehow they’ve managed to focus their intentions and find a receptacle that highlights their strengths without pandering to their weaknesses. Case in point, Hutterite Mile, the first track, introduced by a slow country blues guitar that sets up a sinister atmosphere that’s actually held in check rather than rocking out and thus manages to sustain the tension of the song over its four haunting minutes. There’s still the trademark hypnotic swirl of the rhythm section but it’s subtler, more resonant, while the group’s trademark instrumentation of accordion, banjo and fiddle are used sparingly, for colouration as opposed to shoving everything in the mixer at full volume. And it’s just this restraint that gives the album its underlying tension as they mix originals with traditionals from across the world. Outlaw Song is a tale of horse thievery gone wrong, punctuated by a sinuous banjo line despite the fact that it’s based on an Hungarian rather than Appalachian traditional, reaching a perfect conclusion in Edwards’ bile-ridden spat-out words as the law surrounds him: “They ask again what was my name / Two were dead before they could move / That’s my name if you please.” Blessed Persistence is a grim, unsettling tale with the great couplet, “The locust has no king / Just noise and hard language” and though you don’t always know what he means, there’re enough striking and original images scattered throughout the album to keep this listener interested. The cover of Hank Williams’ best and darkest song, Alone & Forsaken, almost captures the bone-chilling haunt and shiver of the original but then spoils it by adding some unnecessary backing vocals while the cover of the Carter Family’s Single Girl is the Americana equivalent of Chas & Dave, a rollicking knees-up that should have been confined to some fetid swamp or at least a B-side. Still, those two apart, the album hangs together well, sustaining the claustrophobic, acoustic feel until you get to the last song, sung in French, aided and abetted by the wheeze of an old accordion, and if you close your eyes you could be in some dank, underground cellar in Marseilles, drinking Calvados and singing along though the fog of black tobacco. Their best album by a country mile.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #11 – Autumn 2002

 

 

Various Artists | Balling the Jack (Ocho)
“There’s no imagination in the Blues” David Berman proclaimed on a recent B-side and he was right. Once, admittedly, the spur for all that we now know and love as Rock ‘n’ Roll, the last thirty years have been unkind to the medium, seen it dulled and enervated by a host of Clapton-aping sleep guitarists or pathetic hard rock squeeze-my-lemon-types. The Blues has, indeed, a lot to answer for. Thirty years of boring twelve-bar structures and infinitesimally dull chord progressions coupled with lazy, meaningless magnetic-poetry lyrics, and hell, you know Berman’s right; Blues as an idiom that’s polluted popular music with repetitive and downright dull paroxysms of attempted noise. So, one is rightfully wary when unshrinkwrapping this latest package, subtitled ‘The Birth of the Nu-Blues’ (especially as anything prefixed with ‘Nu’ immediately sends shivers and portents of yawn down this particular spine) but a quick look at the track list and yes, you realise, wait a minute, I own several of the albums extracted here. Wisely separating the Claptons from the Captains (Van Vliet, that is) compiler Joe Cushley’s notes point towards Beefheart and Tom Waits as the true instigators of this new blues revival or whateveryouwannnacallit and it’s a wise move. So, it was with a certain trepidation that I spun this disc and despite several tracks that are exactly what you fear (Billy Childish most notably) there’s plenty here that’s well off the beaten path, somewhere away from the main road that leads to that famous crosspoint. Cushley has done an admirable job in compiling a wide variety of tracks that while not instantly recognisable as blues, still hold some shudder of the idiom within their limits. Full marks go to the Tom Robbins quoting Asie Payton’s Oooh Baby which despite the title is an easy-flowing rapping delight. Even better is Chris Thomas King’s (the guy who played Tommy Johnson in that awful Coen Bros film, you know the one) Mississippi Kkkkroassroads, an angry, bitter coruscating rap that uses the blues as a contextual historical reference point to delve into the deep waters of Southern slavery and racism with great couplets like: “He said fellows like me / Make for good decoration on his Xmas tree / He keeps heads in a trophy case / That’s when I started running / Hellhounds they began to chase me.” This is what the Nu-Blues should be about. Beefheart makes an appearance with the early Electricity which, while not being one of his best songs, still manages to burn some retinal material in its attempt to be the perfect acid blues number, while Tom Waits chips in with the astonishing sax and semen grunts of Big In Japan. There’re are also some great selections (all previously released unfortunately) from a host of newcomers who’ve somehow welded old Blues forms to the fear and desolation of Country music, producing a dark, unsettling hybrid, best evinced by the Cowboy Junkies haunting Postcard Blues, Johnny Dowd’s A Picture From Life’s Other Side and the truly chilling and splendidly wigged-out Diamanda Galas. There’s also Nick Cave’s unstoppered take on Stagger Lee just in case there’s not enough violence, blood and rage on this compilation for you. That said, there’s several tracks that should have been buried deep underground so as not to contaminate our ears for years to come. Moby, of course, heads the list with his naff and bone-crushingly boring Find My Baby though the awful Techno-Blues of Pig In A Can is worth a mention. But any compilation’s bound to impress, excite, bore and anger in equal measures and, on the whole, this one, while not refuting Berman’s axiom, does point towards a certain imagination and creativity apparent in some post-blues hybrids. Oh, and thank God there’s none of the White Stripes ilk of pub rock. We have one Dr. Feelgood and that’s plenty for us. Omissions, if you want them, would be some Pigpen-era Grateful Dead, early Dylan, Dream Syndicate and Jon Spencer – but, as the man said, you can’t license ‘em all.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #11 – Autumn 2002

 

 

 

The Beauty Shop | Your Money Or Your Life (Parasol)
With a back cover that recalls the cheap vulgarity of Alien Sex Fiend, some truly hideous typefaces and song titles that revel in gloom, you’re prepared for the worst. What you’re not perhaps ready for is a slyly captivating acoustic album of superior laid-back alt.country gothic. Singer John Hoeffleur has the kind of resonant, narcotic drawl that sounds like it’s chewing through your speakers, vaguely threatening and consoling at the same time. The first song, Death March, is told from the perspective of a man buried alive, now a ghost roaming the world for his lost love. The other songs riff on similar themes. It could all collapse into parody but, apart from a couple of misfires (Lies, Art Project) the album delivers. Songs of obsessive love saturate this collection, balanced on a bed of banjos, acoustic guitars and brushed drums. Hoeffleur at times sounds like Redstar Belgrade’s Bill Curry, his ravaged voice just brimming with subsumed anger and pain, driving the love-lorn and desolate Denver or the epic stalker ballad, To Keep You, with its admission of “I drive by your house three times each day / In the desperate hope your car’s in the driveway” and the slowly building, sinister refrain of “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you.” A couple of songs venture into more up-tempo territory, I Got Issues most notably, sounding like Iggy Pop gone bucolic and the hard driving Dutch Courage, but mostly it’s slow and broody all the way. The last third of the album begins to drag but songs such as the moving Shell Game and the creepy, menacing Science Lights make sure that you’re there until the end of the ride.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #8 – Summer 2001

 

 

Bonnie Prince Billy | Ease Down The Road (Domino)
Compulsive name-changer Will Oldham returns for his second album under the Bonnie Prince Billy moniker and while there are surface similarities with 1999’s I See A Darkness, Ease Down The Road is a beast of an altogether different nature. On his last album, Oldham explored the nature of death and the way it affects life. On Ease Down The Road it is love and lust that come under his scrutiny; this is his bump ‘n’ grind album, if you will. Oldham taking on the role of BPB taking on the role of the rakish Victorian seducer who admits “well, it usually isn’t my thing to do another’s bride” and then goes ahead and does it anyway. The twelve songs on offer skirt the parameters of romantic love from the a cappella hymn of Careless Love to the Leonard Cohen seduction poetry of After I Made Love To You. The lyrics are far more straightforward than on previous albums, trading elliptical baroque poetry for innuendo and graphic description of amorous acts. The music is coated in a glossy sheen of production and layered backing vocals, befitting the gentle pastoral mood, but lacking the jagged nooks and dark crannies of his best work. Sheep, which manages to encapsulate Orphic myth, blood sacrifice and Greek Tragedy over a strummed guitar line that’s like a nervous itch you can’t reach, is the only track that’s really compelling, raising the usual questions of whether what’s good for life is bad for art. On his last album, Oldham sang of hoping to someday ‘find peace in our lives’ – it seems that he has for the moment, the cover shot of a country road fading into the horizon, an apt metaphor for this charming but ultimately disappointing addition to Oldham’s considerable oeuvre.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #7 – Spring 2001

 

 

 

Paul Burch & The WPA Ballclub | Blue Notes (Shoeshine Records)
The rain spatters outside. It is always raining. The streetlights are out and inside the bar men sit staring dead eyed into their drink. Welcoming the slow, unfolding oblivion. Someone gets up and pumps the jukebox. This record comes on. In a voice hijacked from another part of this century, Burch sings “What you call romance is like walking a barbed wire fence / Barefoot, blindfolded, one arm tied, nothing to break the fall.” Someone says they haven’t heard music like this since before the war. Someone else falls off his barstool. Welcome to the world of the WPA Ballclub – a smoky world, held in a time capsule, a world before microwaves, modems, napalm, before the funny man with the little moustache became elected leader. Lambchop Vibes player and solo artist Paul Burch has been elegantly mining this seam for three albums now and with Blue Notes he’s produced his best music yet. Lazy and languid vocals, stand-up bass, unobtrusive drums and a barload of atmosphere make up this record. Going back to Country music of the ‘twenties, that dark, chilling idiom of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers, Burch moves away from the more Western Swing / Honky Tonk flavoured stylings of his first two albums to a land of low-lit natural disaster. Burch’s voice is smooth, urbane, sophisticated and witty, his phrasing perfect – the ghost of Jimmie Rodgers haunts each line. There’s Dylan here too. Not the wild flashing demon Dylan but the unfashionable country squire of Nashville Skyline and Self Portrait (check out Burch’s hat and demeanor on the cover – cross reference it with Nashville Skyline – you’ll see what I mean.) Isolda is a disarmingly gorgeous ballad about a woman who “With her incense / Her absinthe / Her calumets and her pinfold” could easily be one of Dylan’s mystery temptresses. The call and response dynamics of How Do I Know? lend a bit of light, utilising the great Tom House on backing vocals while Hitting Bottom is so slinky, sad and sensuous it could have come straight out of a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. On each of his preceding two albums Burch has included one narrative of such great power that it makes you think this man’s got the Depression-era version of Nebraska inside him – on this album, it’s the drifter’s lament of Carter Cain, a warm empathetic song whose moral stature could have come off John Wesley Harding. “Tune in to the Grand Ole Opry” it says (in true Lambchop fashion) on the inner sleeve, though what you’ll hear on this record is a far cry from anything you might catch on that venerable institution – this music should come crackling out of a mono radio speaker somewhere in the wet hills. Someone else falls off their barstool. They make a clean thud on the floor, but no one notices, they’re too wrapped up in the music. It’s the 21st Century but inside the bar it will be 1930 forever.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #8 – Summer 2001

 

 

 

Paul Burch | Last of my Kind (Spit and Polish)
On his fourth solo album, Lambchop vibes man and country purist Burch has written a narrative cycle suggested and inspired by a reading of his next door neighbour’s Southern rites-of-passage novel Jim The Boy. Considering the current penchant for all things Bluegrass since the release of the ‘O Brother’ film (the Coens’ worst – by a long shot) he’s made a wise move. Though always a country classicist at heart, Burch’s last album saw him moving more in the direction of classic pre-WWII crooners and ‘Nashville Skyline’-era Dylan. On ‘LOMYK’ he returns to pure Bluegrass, unsullied by anything so modern or faddish as electrical instruments, his voice a high, keening facsimile of Jimmie Rodgers’ blue yodel, urbane and jazzy yet retaining an earthy charm. The story concerns a young man’s descent from the mountain and his awakening in the city. The mountain is of course a symbol of the past, of tradition and family ties while Aliceville, the town, is an entry into the modern world, its trials and gifts. In a series of short, spare songs Burch chronicles the young Jim’s adventures and regrets from his wild glee at the arrival of electricity in Aliceville to the sad realisation by the end that he is, indeed, the last of his kind. Unfortunately the first half of the album is just too light to properly handle the themes, too laid back to be genuinely engrossing. Throwaways such as the repetitive Going To The Carnival and Livin’ Up To The Man You See In Me are nice background wallpaper but fail to really capture the feel of the material. It’s only on the last third of the record that things really ignite with the jazzy shuffle of Polio, a stark narrative vignette that traces the devastating effects of the disease on a small community and on the sinister warnings of the eponymous psychotic bootlegger of Amos’s Blues. It’s not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with this album, it’s just such a disappointment because it promised so much more and, in Polio, delivers a track that’s so good it leaves the rest of the album wanting.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #9 – Winter 2002

 

 

 

Johnny Cash | American III – Solitary Man (American Recordings)
Having recently come back from the brink of death, as all true legends should at least once in their careers, Johnny Cash releases the third in his series of collaborations with Rick Rubin’s American label, a collection of fourteen songs, stripped down and bare, that is arguably his best album in a long and distinguished career. It is impossible not to read the lead off track, Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down, as a statement of intent. Cash sings this and the title track with an eye towards his own myth, filling the songs with his deep warehouse voice, taking them down to their bare bones. It’s becoming ever clearer just what a good interpreter of songs Cash is, hell, he even does the impossible and makes U2’s One sound like a decent song. Death, naturally, haunts these songs. The album revolves around the two centerpieces, Will Oldham’s I See a Darkness and Nick Cave’s The Mercy Seat. The former is tackled with a sense of gravity and dignity and makes you wish for a whole album of Oldham covers. In the latter, Cash takes on the role of the about-to-be-executed murder with a cold, detached relish. His voice is so dispassionate that it gives you the creeps as the cascading choruses ease off into an unsettling instrumental coda. The second half of the album leans towards more traditional material but maintains the focus and immediacy of the early songs, ending with a moving rendition of the old folk chestnut, Wayfaring Stranger. His delivery on this track is incredible, making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. This is a man who knows he’s living on borrowed time. Luckily for us, Johnny Cash has decided to use it to record the best material of his career.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #7 – Spring 2001

 

 

Clem Snide | The Ghost Of Fashion (Cooking Vinyl/SpinArt)
For those appetites whetted by the wry wordplay and cool demeanor of ‘Your Favourite Music’ (released earlier this year), ‘TGOF’ should serve as the welcome main course. A languorous, witty travelogue through the middle class American psyche, saturated in puns and pop culture references, the album presents a far more rounded artifact than its predecessor. Let’s Explode chugs amidst a burst of horns and guitars, Eef Barzelay’s knowing voice proclaiming “A peacock died to color my lips.” The song introduces the theme of the album, concerning itself with the surface reality of the glamour culture, its amorality and pettiness, reaching a crescendo which has Barzelay repeating “I don’t want to know me better” as if it was the worst thing he could think of. There’s been a great leap forward since their last album, utilising a more expansive sound with horn and brass sections adorning most of the tracks here. That the Clems sometimes fall into the very thing that they’re criticising is perhaps just an occupational hazard though, as on previous records, they do have a tendency to occasionally sound smug and pretentious. You sometimes feel that a whole song has been written around a singular lyric conceit and the thrill of the ironic wears quickly. The eminently whistleable first single Ice Cube (not, unfortunately, about Amerikkka’s Most Wanted) is a good example; all surface and hook with not much going on underneath. But then they confound you and come up with a great line (“Like a pigeon choking on a diamond ring”) or a wonderful piece of music (the majestic, funereal horn intro to Don’t Be Afraid Of Your Anger which sounds like The Band on ‘Rock of Ages’). That same song neatly mutates into a swinging country shuffle that lays into the self-help culture with suitable aplomb. Two songs make this album an essential purchase: the crackly, almost a-cappella, The Curse Of Great Beauty and the incredible Joan Jett Of Arc – not only one of the best titles of the year but one of the great songs too. Over a dead slow rhythm, Barzelay’s voice comes across filled with yearning and loss, singing about a childhood sweetheart lost in the wastes of time. The lyric references to Hall & Oates, Sizzler and Roller Rinks create a dense, resonant fabric, setting the song in a particular era, equaled only by Joel R.L. Phelps similarly tormented Now You Are Found – a moving, astonishing song that makes up for the more whimsical stuff on offer here. The sound of a band finding their feet, playing with their sound, expanding outwards and inwards – this should be a must have for anyone into slow, low and lonely songs that haven’t yet been amputated of their humour.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #9 – Winter 2002

 

 

 

Cowboy Junkies | Open (Cooking Vinyl/Latent)
Once heralded as the saviours of rock, Canada’s Cowboy Junkies have slipped into the shadows of late following a string of less than thrilling records. After being dropped in a bout of corporate takeovers, they’re on their own label, Latent, and sounding at least half refreshed and somewhat like the Junkies we love of old. Open begins with a down and dirty guitar riff, like something off the last Lou Reed album, then slides smoothly into the ghostly deconstructed beat of I Did It For You, a glacial murder ballad that reminds you of the blood curdling coolness of Margo Timmins’ voice, a wonder to behold indeed. The third part of the Junkies’ continuing River Song Trilogy is up next, a shimmering eight-minute whirlwind of noise and flux. Michael Timmins’ guitar sounds incredible, all jagged and crisp strokes, slowly winding through the deep swampy soul of the track as sister, Margo, sings about death, loss and dragging bodies from the river. It’s probably the darkest track the band has ever done, and one of their best. The following songs never quite reach this peak, sometimes being lost in the mire of a messy mix, with Margo’s crystal clear vocals all too often being submerged under layers of effects and double tracking. A song like Thousand Year Prayer shows how a clear, untreated vocal is still the most affecting, a drop dead gorgeous love song that sounds like a Caution Horses outtake. Several songs (Bread And Wine, I’m So Open) however, take a BIG rock tack, all crunching guitars, distortion and a 4/4 beat, losing much of what makes the band’s music so special. Where once they specialised in taking songs and deconstructing them to their salient elements, playing down the chord changes, it now seems they’re doing the opposite, building songs around big, obvious progressions and riffing on them. Hard to decipher vocals, loose, open structures and a power chord fixation make this a difficult and obstinate album, but one which slowly yields small delights and scattered moments of brilliance.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #8 – Summer 2001

 

 

 

Destroyer | Streethawk: A Seduction (Misra)
Are you ready for Destroyer? The latest in a new wave of speed metal bands festooned with bad haircuts and rottweiler tattoos, screaming about Satan, death and destruction to the sound of frenetic fretwork. No? Well, fear not, Destroyer, despite their name, are an entirely different proposition. A tight, no-nonsense indie band with something special bubbling under the apparently simple surface of their songs. The title track introduces Daniel Bejar’s voice, a sort of cross between the lead singer of Granfaloon Bus and Will Oldham, an acquired taste certainly, but one like steak tartar that soon proves irresistible, especially when he’s singing “Go or don’t go” on the chorus with the kind of passion and need that’s so lacking in the irony rich field of today’s music. A basic guitar, bass and drum trio aided and abetted by some wondrous piano and keyboard solos, there’s something so fresh and unaffected about Destroyer’s music, something that keeps you hitting the Play button. Even the seven minute Bad Arts manages to sound taut and tight as a Marine’s bed. Most obvious reference point is perhaps early Pavement, Bejar sounding a bit like Malkmus’ younger brother and having a similar penchant for weird song subjects, cerebral and non-personal lyrics. The Sublimation Hour is a great tribute to the uselessness of rock with a well embedded London Calling quote while Virgin With A Memory is a sprightly acoustic number with the nagging refrain of “Was it the movie or the making of Fitzcarraldo?” The second half of this album is even more impressive, the slow agonised Farrar, Strauss and Giroux (not, unfortunately, a tribute to one half of Uncle Tupelo) spins around the refrain of “no man has ever hung himself from the rafters of a second home” – a fact that Michael Meacher should perhaps be made aware of. Ignore the name and you’ll find a small and perfectly formed debut. A flash spark of friction, a splinter in the polished homogeneity of the current music scene.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #8 – Summer 2001

 

 

 

Johnny Dowd | Temporary Shelter (Munich / Glitterhouse)
Having released his debut album at the tender age of fifty, Johnny Dowd isn’t wasting any time, this being his third album in as many years and his most ambitious and fully realised work so far. The spooky cover shot is of Dowd’s parents and the album, as a whole, takes marriage as its main theme. Not that it’s a happy record. No way. Each song is so deeply steeped in guilt, betrayal and other demons, making the album a frightening, claustrophobic, but ultimately compelling listen. It begins with a swathe of churchly organ and then the beat comes crashing down resulting in horrible speaker damage. Through the maelstrom, Dowd recites in his inimitable half-spoken style, “The highway of life / It ain’t no free way / For the cruelty you inflict / Someday you’ll have to pay.” He sounds like a preacher out of a Southern Gothic novel, spitting out homilies with a biblical sense of judgement, while behind him the music is like an unholy gestalt of Tom Waits and Black Sabbath. Through the course of the album, Dowd charts adulterers, (“Forget about your husband / He don’t know what makes you tick / When he puts his hand between your legs / It makes you sick”), a widow bent on vengeance, a dying surfer still dreaming of the ‘big wave’ that will come and take him away, serial killers and abandoned children. It is a bleak palette, with Dowd sounding increasingly unhinged as the record progresses. The only glimmer of light is found in Hell or High Water which, despite a guitar riff so down and dirty it should carry a health warning, is a moving portrait of how companionship can stop the jackals of the outside world from tearing down your door. Epic in all the right senses, this album snarls and strains at its leash like an abused dog, spitting with energy and aggression. Imagine what Tom Waits might sound like after a course of Electro-shock therapy and you’re halfway there.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #7 – Spring 2001

 

 

 

 

Hamell On Trial | Tough Love (Righteous Babe)
For his first studio release since 2000’s breakthrough ‘Choochtown’, Hamell On Trial returns with an album that’s alternately facile, frustrating and occasionally fucking brilliant.
Some of this is to do with the use of three independent producers and some to do with the quality of the material itself. Hamell on Trial has always been a strange proposition, there’s something artless about his music, something almost amateur and yet at times it all clicks and the rage and bellicosity are sublimated into a gattling gun torrent of narrative that wipes the floor with most contemporary songwriting.
This album is no different. It begins abominably, with two of the four John Leckie produced tracks and they sound pretty horrible. If you know Leckie you know what I mean. Luckily these songs can be skipped, especially the opener Don’t Kill which falls into the lacuna of simplistic moralizing and emotional fascism that has been the hallmark of the anti-war movement. You just want to shout at him: ‘Grow Up!’ But then on the third (self-produced) track things change. When Destiny Calls is a wonderful alliterative, rhythm-bounced spew of narrative detailing a failed kidnapping, the discovery of thirteen kilos of cocaine in a stolen car and the subsequent brutal and bloody trail of events as the owners reap their revenge.
And this is what Hamell’s best at, these sleazy, noir-drenched tales that – when they work – are like almost nothing else in popular music. Dear Pete, at just over a minute and a half, is another good example. In this sparse and spare song the narrator owes money to a man who’s promised to cut his thumbs off if he doesn’t pay so the narrator convinces his friend Pete to help him stick up a liquor store by blackmailing him with faked internet porno pictures and threatening to tell his wife about them. And for those two songs, any album would be worth getting.
Hamell’s other forte is, unexpectedly, the Carveresque vignette, the gaps between people’s lives, and the tremulous Hail and Everything and Nothing highlight his (shock horror) tender side. But there’s also too much of the just routine, the scratchy angry rubble of words that doesn’t lead anywhere, that sounds like a drunk braying in your ear at the worst party in the world.
So, judicious use of the program button is recommended but, for the two songs mentioned above, where briefly rock music and hard-boiled detective fiction merge, this album will remain essential.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #13 – Autumn 2003

 

 

 

 

Geoff Farina | Reverse Eclipse (Southern Records)
On his second solo album Geoff Farina takes the blueprint of the Karate sound and deconstructs it to its salient parts, producing a dazzling album of mini-masterpieces that shimmer and shake with a yearning romanticism and graceful propulsion. Stripping down the arrangements to just his voice, lead and rhythm guitar could have been disastrous but instead it only highlights just how strong Farina’s songs are. They are slinky, vulnerable things filled with wit and mystery, with some of the best lyrics currently being written. Other writers would weep at the wonder of “Sometimes I think God should erase all memories to change the way we deal with times like these / That would surely be heaven to me / For you it would surely be hell, as to separate the moon & stars from the Atlantic’s gentle swell.” The words probe the structures of both love and language with a testy intelligence rare in rock while the music glides by with precise, coiled guitar solos, exquisite harmonics and glistening arpeggios. This is Jazz but Jazz riveted to the structures of the rock song. This music instantly makes you want to be sitting in a small apartment on the Left Bank smoking opium and debating existence. Farina is a mercurial, elliptical talent, who, if this was a fair world, would be a star. Forget about all those bands you read about in NME, this is the coolest music being made this year – it’s only January and it’s already wearing shades when all the other albums are wrapped tightly up in the folds of their clothing.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #7 – Spring 2001

 

 

 

Fruit Bats | Echolocation (Perishable)
With the death of alt.country having been widely reported in many publications and throughout the media, it was something of a shock to come across this album – like a 5′’ silver Lazarus it almost single-handedly resurrects the promise of that much maligned genre. Including Ex-Red, Red Meat-ster Brian Deck and Charles Kim from the now defunct Pinetop Seven, the (ignominiously titled) Fruit Bats are a five piece (playing mainly acoustic instruments) who’ve produced one of the unexpected delights of the year. There’s a freshness, immediacy and vitality to this record sorely lacking in the majority of recent releases, reminiscent of the purity of Flophouse Jr’s ‘Woodland’. The songs take their time, bubbling like a delicious soup, quietly progressing, like driving 40 down a hot, desert road through spine-snapping scenery. Lyrically there’s a welcome fascination with the Old West and with all things bucolic. Tropes of water and ice re-occur throughout the album, giving it a glacial, nostalgic feel, tinged with melancholy and quiet desperation. Buffalo And Deer (despite the uncharacteristic presence of electric guitar and synth) could be the Loving Spoonful recording the soundtrack for a David Lynch movie while Black Bells is a slow, crying-in-my-tequila ballad with a great opening line (“Stars are shining in the Western sky / Like a million alligator eyes / Black bells are ringing / Frogs are singing Sister Ray.”) The creatures of the wild appear in several songs making this the album with the highest animal count I can think of apart from the new Handsome Family record. Coal Age is the kind of thing Pinetop Seven were once so good at – creepy, probing, spiky banjo instrumentals that linger long after they’ve finished. The ensemble playing throughout is wonderful, producing a warm, richly textured sound that’s both thrillingly organic and pleasingly complex. Dragon Ships is as good as Pavement got, falsetto chorus and all, before it morphs into a multi-tracked vocal coda that sounds like the Beach Boys on bad acid. The song also contains what has to be contender for the best couplet of the year: “I wish I was a Viking in 1103 / I’d fuck up shit on the high, cold sea / You know that the Vikings were always ripped / They kept a lot of drugs on their dragon ships.” What more could you ask for?
Stav Sherez
CWAS #9 – Winter 2002

 

 

 

Robbie Fulks | 13 Hillbilly Giants (Boondoggle)
Note the political usage of the term Hillbilly as opposed to Country. Hillbilly was the pejorative name for pre-WWII country music and Fulks has reclaimed it here, to distance himself from the mulch of Nashville to a time when Country music really came from the country, embracing all its parochial eccentricities and stripped down values. Thirteen covers of songs written by mostly obscure songwriters, the avowed intent on the sleeve is to rescue and re-promote these marginalised artists and, overall, Fulks succeeds. Opening with the brisk, rollicking instrumental Southern Comfort and closing with the moving drunkard’s lamentation of Bury The Bottle With Me, Fulks covers the gamut of ‘hillbilly’ styles in between. Bill Anderson’s Cocktails is a real gem, “Cocktails tore up my family / Cocktails tore down my home” Fulks sings, detailing the slow seduction of alcohol, one of his favourite themes. Next up is I Wanna Be Mama’d, Fulks taking the novelty number and turning it into a genuinely disturbed piece of Oedipal frenzy. The music is all snappy, clean, pre-Countrypolitan country, ably produced by Steve Albini with some superb guitar and fiddle playing. The responsibilities of family and fidelity are explored on Family Man and Act Like A Married Man while Knot Hole is a delirious celebration of the joys of voyeurism. Burning Fire is Las Vegas period Elvis, brimming with sex and fury while Dolly Parton’s Jeannie’s Afraid Of The Dark is transformed from the sentimental to the existential. Perhaps the only real flaw here is that there aren’t enough songs with the gravity of Bury The Bottle or of Robbie’s own compositions, but there’s always his new album to look forward to for that. In the meantime this is a satisfying cornucopia of cornpoke craziness that will send all you Indie kids screaming into the streets.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #8 – Summer 2001

 

 

 

Robbie Fulks | Couples In Trouble (Boondoggle / Bloodshot)
On his first album of new original material for four years, Robbie Fulks has achieved a remarkable transformation. Or perhaps that’s the wrong word for it. His talent was clearly evident on his first two honky-tonk influenced albums and on 97’s power pop missile ‘Let’s Kill Saturday Night’. Perhaps blossoming is a better word. Whatever. This album rushes by in a flash and spark that leaves most of this year’s other contenders stranded at the gate, breathless and stunned. As the title suggests, the twelve songs herein detail domestic anguish of one sort or another but it’s with a startling maturity and poignancy, as well as originality, that is so lacking in most contemporary music. (Albini-watchers take note – the man of a thousand credits continues his long association with Fulks, – ‘recording’ here.) It begins quietly enough with the stark In Bristol Town One Bright Day, a chilling folk lament that sounds like it’s being played from deep inside a well. Next up, Anything For Love, starts off slow and fractured, a small vignette of masochistic love that suddenly erupts midway through into a swirling maelstrom of strings and layered vocals. It’s the kind of moment that makes you sit up, stop what you’re doing, and listen, launching the album into regions that few contemporary artists have the skill to traverse. The savage power pop riffing of Dancing On The Ashes follows, a tale of forced friendship in times of war, (“On a low bank where the smell hangs thick / Harry huddles over a legless wretch / Yes, dear Jack, I’ll finish you quick / And we’ll leave mother to imagine”) of senseless carnage and brutality that’s all the more poignant post-Sept 11th. She Needs You Now, perhaps the best song here, is an unsettling, quietly evocative meditation on marriage and death, rising and falling on the pulse of a probing double bass. It’s one of those songs where you forget to breathe – it’s that good. Often filed away as an alt.country rocker, Fulks displays an amazing array of styles and genres on this record, never sounding forced, always promising new twists and turns. My Tormentor is a lush, Bacharach-esque string and piano piece with Robbie’s resigned, smoky vocal residing between the silent spaces of the music. Then there’s the swampy soul groove of Real Money which, along with the child abuse saga Brenda’s New Stepfather (“Hey little hotpants, I’m your daddy, no matter how hard you scratch”) makes clear that Fulks is the natural heir to Randy Newman’s acerbic and yet empathetic portrayals of human monsters. Mad At A Girl is the only piece of light relief to be found on this finely textured album, a breezy horn driven piece of immaculate pop. The sweat soaked, shaking-in-your-shoes-soul of I’ve Got To Tell Myself The Truth is simply fantastic, building gradually into a surprise ending and if you want further proof of this man’s genius then just listen to the way that the Celtic fiddle and accordion of the suicide ballad Banks Of The Marianne morphs into a complex Grateful Dead-like percussive coda and then morphs yet again into a series of silence violations worthy of Aphex Twin. Eclectic suddenly seems a very poor word. Unequivocally brilliant and unlike anything else you’ll hear this year. The first great album of the twenty first century.
Stav Sherez
CWAS #9 – Winter 2002