Category Archives: Folk/Americana
The Jukebox – Giant Giant Sand’s “Forever and a Day” (Fire Records)
Giant Giant Sand
Forever and a Day
Since Magazine Cover I never thought I would say that Howe Gelb could do any better. Sure his ‘Sno Angel was a great intimate look at the Southwest artist potential, but by the end, it felt tired and after listening to his solo work, you were not sure what was to come out of it beyond a testament to a humans strengths and weaknesses.
Surprisingly, I never would have thought that something as exemplary as this upcoming single “Forever and a Day,” a song to be featured off of an upcoming album simply titled Tucson (due out the beginning of June) would be the next wave in Gelbe’s career.
A glimpse of a country rock opera, Gelb is the Meatloaf of Americana. “Forever and a Day” is the result of Southwestern culture amplified times two. The song is a tale of the Wild West, glorified yet believable.
A movement in three parts, Gelb describes this song like a yard sale with everything and anything thrown in. The guitars, the horns, the dust, the howl, his Lou Reed banter on horseback, the band is paving the way into the history books of Old West banter. You feel like the song has been etched by time, and maybe it has. What Giant Sand has given us is so big, they had to re-term the band as Giant Giant Sand.
The beauty of it all is that we can live it and not read it in some worn out book of tales and western mythology left by a stray bullet hole in a saloon or the ghosts that wander the halls of Hotel Congress. This is now.
Lindsay Fuller – You, Anniversary (ATO Records)
Lindsay Fuller
You, Anniversary
ATO Records
Link: Lindsay Fuller
Born and raised in the south, Lindsay Fuller writes like she haunts the French Quarter of New Orleans or the cemeteries of Savannah, Georgia. Embedded in the southern style, you don’t really expect Birmingham, Alabama to be a hot spot for gothic prose, but for Fuller’s album You, Anniversary, she proves that Birmingham is the perfect place to talk about death and darkness.
Just as the title track is based on W.S. Merwin’s poem, “For The Anniversary of my Death,” you feel mortality hang on to every word. You can feel it in the deep vast of her vocal chords.
Growing up, I thought Tracy Chapman was a man, until one day I did the research and to my surprise who I thought was a he was really a she. Not that it should belittle my perception of Chapman, I think it really just gave me a stronger bond, amazed at the way she could carry her voice. And for Fuller, she carries her voice in such a unique way, you get and genderless fascination to her songs, letting the stories about death carry the way. With a song like “Circa Never,” you are not quite sure if she is going to snap, but your intonations are that she could.
This is not simple singer/songwriter affairs. Fuller reaches in and grabs on deep. These are not love stories or songs of folly. These are meaningful tunes to help bring light to an otherwise frightening contemplation.
And when “One More Song” chimes in at the third tick of the roster, it’s a song that really brings out the best in what Fuller is trying to accomplish. When the first two songs are spent introducing us to her style and luring us in, “One More Song,” fills out with more musical expanse while “Grey Gardens” leads us down the dusty path of Southern folk rock and a gritty pose than what we hear otherwise. “Sound of Regret” does this to an extent but is illuminated by Old Country twang.
You, Anniversary is beat down by the hot Southern humidity, with the reaction like a withered religious confessional, but ends up bearing the light of optimism that comes from these songs that make the music and how Fuller writes all that much more comforting.
Sharon Van Etten – Tramp (Jagjaguwar)
MP3: “Serpents”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Sharon Van Etten
Tramp
Jagjaguwar
Links:
All songwriting and performing is personal. Everything a musician releases has a little piece of their heart and soul in it. Even if it’s only because he or she had to rehearse and rewrite the song a million times before your wanting ears hear it, each song has been constructed from tiny yet important fragments of the artist’s heart and soul.
Such is the case with Tramp, the new album released by Sharon Van Etten. With the assistance of a host of helpers, Matt Barrick of The Walkmen, Thomas Bartlett of Doveman, Jack Condon of Beirut and Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak, Tramp has the worn-in presence of a raggedy scrapbook — as heartfelt as any old blues music. The album is somewhat standard adult-contemporary work meets bluesy alternative rock, yet it reveals enough emotion to rival a high school drama troupe.
Like the air in an old man’s bar, most of the production is hazy, sticky and drab. Some songs clip the production; the rumbling distortion successfully emphasizes the desperation in Van Etten’s voice. The sonic power of the album ebbs and flows, whereas the writing stays strong. Biting criticisms and lamentations dance with swirling siren’s calls to balance out the work.
While her sensibility is apparent in every cut, not all the tracks seem to belong on the same album. The intensity of Ms. Van Etten’s lamenting on more aggressive tracks like “Serpents” and, to a lesser degree, “All I Can” contrasts with more subdued songs like “Joke or a Lie” or “I’m Wrong.”
The production and her vocals mostly unite Tramp; most of the tracks are more low-key, dirge-like tracks that I imagine could be played during a dinner party or get-together. In this way the more upbeat songs (tempo and presence-wise) stand out as successful singles that are vaguely related to the other tracks. There is of course no requirement that every song on an album share the exact same production and feeling,
Sharon’s vocal skills remind me a bit of ’90s-era Margo Timmins of Cowboy Junkies; her confident and bluesy tone summons the image of a performer who spent ten too many nights at a bar smoking and drinking and hearing endless pick-up lines from would-be suitors without a single chance in hell.
Sharon Van Etten recently performed “Serpents” on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon show to promote Tramp. The piece swells to full power in less than a minute and stays strong with its rambling vocals and mock-cadence drumming. Basic two to three-chord structure is repeated over and again in a dream-rock ambient jam causing the listener’s attention to stay on the lyrics: “You enjoy sucking on dreams/ so I will fall asleep/ with someone other than you/I had a thought, you would take me/ seriously and listen up.”
“Serpents” was the best choice for a single. It’s a great song, the best on the record by far when considering the poetry and cutting lyrics. The problem with this is that “Serpents” does not represent the rest of Tramp for the same reasons. After some research, the live video performances show that a number of other songs get a kick in the ass when done on stage. The caffeinated versions are better than those from the studio, which are an incentive to see Ms. Van Etten live. But one would have to do their homework to know this ahead of time.
“All I Can” is more indicative of the rest of the songs on Tramp. “All I Can” relies more on Van Etten’s vocal prowess and backup harmonies, where “Serpents” relies on building guitars and drums. The track swells, albeit at a slower pace, to a grand finale with horns, harmonies, drums and guitars. Van Etten’s voice slides between notes in her words without twang or yodeling (thank god), deliver her wanting to show/ I want my scars to help, and heal/ how much you wanted/ so much you found”
“Ask” is another powerful track to check out. Van Etten’s voice shows its depth and range from solo smoky lows to bright, soaring harmonies. The struggle to ask for help from a dark place is laid out in beautiful melancholy for the near three-minute struggle. Acknowledging we all get down and stuck sometimes, Van Etten admits though it’s easy to feel tough and self-sufficient, it’s sometimes simply not enough.
A set of songs from a show in Philadelphia in early February has been turned into videos that can be found on YouTube. Check them out. Do it.
First Aid Kit – The Lion’s Roar (Wichita Recordings)
First Aid Kit
The Lion’s Roar
Wichita Recordings
Link: http://thisisfirstaidkit.com/
I will admit, even though this is their sophomore album, The Lion’s Roar is my first taste of First Aid Kit. When I found out they resided in Stockholm, Sweden, I was shocked. This is a group who fits more comfortably in either Nashville, Texas, or California circa 1963, not Sweden circa 2012. That’s why when they extrapolate a Buffy Saint-Marie cover as they did for the Third Man 7-inch Series it is genuine and not novelty.
But Stockholm? Now that I am equipped with that knowledge, and I listen closer, I can pick out the Stockholm pop sound nestled in a song like “Dance to Another Tune.” It’s easy to get confused between that and the California sound because it’s where Scandinavian pop looked to when creating its scene. And the folk balladry of “New Year’s Eve” with its autoharp strumming also points to the West Coast of the United States who originally got its sound from the Appalachians.
Sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg sing about beauty and heartache like Dolly Parton spun metaphysical philosophy in the late ‘60s. You feel the dusty trappings in the Durango sounds and rusty Old Country homages. It all feels mythological, and that is what makes this album brilliant.
Like glorified tales of the Wild West, The Lion’s Roar is romanticized stories of humanity in all of its simplified glory. Instruments come and go throughout. A fiddle here, a slide guitar there, the music is a call back to nature and the elements that bond our self to the soil. It’s even more poignant if you grew up in that small town in anywhere America. You feel closer to it. The sound of the train. The smell of farm life. Music carved out of it like the sun carving wrinkles in skin.
But this is not working class music. It’s sincere longing for a time long past (“Emmylou”) and it’s a celebration of life by whimsical fascination (“King of the World”). From candle lit introspection to a bohemian travel down that dusty trail, The Lion’s Roar is a magnificent creation and ode to the music that inspired this album and the people who now should be inspired by First Aid Kit. I know I am now one of them.
Lambchop – Mr. M (Merge)
Lambchop
Mr. M
Merge
Link: Lambchop Official Site
Just when I think I am amazed at what Lambchop has done in the past, then comes an album like Mr. M. It did not happen this way at first. When I first heard “If Not I’ll Just Die,” I felt the effects of what a Lambchop song can do, but I was not convinced.
Kurt Wagner still does a great job at tearing your emotions down and making you feel the low points of the human scale through personal tales of worn regiment. But with “If Not I’ll Just Die,” feels more like Mark Eitzel at the back-end of the bar pounding one scotch and water after another. It’s not something I would expect come from the Nashville group.
“2B2” is what got me and sunk me into another glorious Lambchop release. Wagner and the musicians make your soul sail away on a lazy day. The piano mating with the acoustic make it as elegant as any Cat Stevens song, that is if Stevens was weathered from years of hard labor from the land.
“Gone Tomorrow” feels more like a traditional Lambchop song, the tempos traveling down the highway as Wagner’s lyrics fly by like the passing landscape. His enunciation and care treat each word like it’s a delicacy.
And if that does not do it for you, “Gar” is outright beauty haunted by the ghosts of ‘60s laissez faire embedded in a dainty instrumental that will warm you like the summer sun.
The Old Country charm of “Nice Without Mercy,” the back porch intimacy of “Buttons,” and the bedroom pop of “Never My Love,” it all conjoin into a gorgeous piece of musical art, a tamer more crooning approach to Wagner’s traditional romps, but another masterpiece from a band who knows how to craft gorgeous songs.
You don’t have to be battered and bruised to enjoy this album, but it sure helps.
