Author: mark

three to consider

great new release by norah. she has bounced around in styles in the last few years, all done very tastefully and competently, but here she returns to the format that made her famous. much of it is piano based jazz orientations with a country blues shading, but she also throws in a few pop laden gems as well. all originals, save for three covers – neil young, duke ellington, and horace silver. on the latter two i was pleasantly surprised to hear my old friend wayne shorter on sax. they both sound better than ever.

john prine just turned 70. on his new release, he revisits the album he put out in 1999 after recovering from cancer, ‘in spite of ourselves’. that release was comprised of duets with some of his favorite female vocalists, and consisted mostly of covers of old country songs. some of those songbirds return here, plus a few new ones. alison kraus, miranda lambert, kasey musgraves, susan tedeschi, holly williams, amanda shires and others join in to pay tribute to one of the great artists of our generation. his voice is older and gravelly, but it is clear he still has that spunk of his youth, and his back up band performs wonderfully here.

wilco puts out a follow up to their ‘star wars’ release from last year. supposedly it was recorded in the same sessions from that album, but it is hard for me to hear the similarities. this feels like a totally different vibe. the overall feel is a little more laid back, measured, and not exactly uplifting. and i don’t mean the latter in a bad way. this isn’t a cd you put in the car on the way home after work on friday night. but it is one you can listen to when you have some time to appreciate a different twist on the world as tweedy sees it. the last couple of years have seen some interesting times in this country and, although none of the lyrics are expressly political, the anxiety seems to bubble to the surface here. and of course i may just be projecting. possibly somewhat related – you can usually pick up tweedy’s influences in his work, and i seem to hear a lot of john lennon in his vocals on this one. this band just gets better with age. quite simply one of the best groups out there playing today. if they come to your town, you should go see them.

dear jerry

i got this in the mail last week. by coincidence, i had a road trip planned to see my daughter for dad’s weekend, which involved a three hour trip through the foothills of the appalachian mountains. it was a crisp late autumn morning, sunny skies, plenty of fall foliage, and a few patches of fog. got very close to finishing the whole thing by the time i pulled into her small college town. it basically set the tone for a nearly perfect day.

this is a chronicle of a show that was put together last spring to pay tribute to the life and music of jerry garcia. all surviving members of the original grateful dead were there (the ‘core four’), and were prominently featured throughout. it is a two cd collection, and a dvd of the show. all of the performances are at least worth a three star, and some are just downright righteous. highlights for me include buddy miller tackling ‘deal’, jimmy cliff doing his own ‘harder they come’, and then delivering a killer ‘fire on the mountain’. bill kreutzmann and billie and the kids do ‘help on the way/slipknot/franklin’s tower’, then are joined on stage by disco biscuit and deliver a stunning ‘scarlet begonias/ i know you rider’. and that is just the first disc.

back up band for many of the artists includes buddy miller, don was, and sam bush. grand finale with the entire cast doing ‘ripple’. if you like jerry, you will like this.

also arriving last week was the most recent dave’s picks, volume 20. recorded at the university of colorado in december of 1981, it is a particularly energetic show. there are really only two flaws throughout, one due to the band and the other in the recording. jack straw is the second song, and weir just totally blows the lyrics about halfway through and kills the momentum of the song (in fairness, jerry seems to have gotten off track before this, which may have in turn confused weir). half way through the first set the overall recording has a completely different sound to it (the band is a little muted and the crowd is much more up front), and so i expect that there is a gap in the original seven inch reel to reel tapes, and they spliced it with a high quality taper source. but again, i quibble. ‘bird song’, ‘candyman’, and ‘cassidy’ on the first disc are great. the first set closer starts the second disc, a solid ‘china/rider’, which would basically set the tone for the epic second set.

‘scarlet begonias/fire on the mountain/estimated prophet to start, a nearly perfect ‘stella blue’, and then close out with ‘around and around/good lovin’/us blues/satisfaction’.

pete townshend, deep end

recently released showcase of a concert pete did during a tour promoting one of his solo records, ‘white city’. i have always considered that album one of his most underrated, and it is well represented here. featuring a full horn section and 5 back up vocalists, this is a big entourage and the set list is half pete solo selections, and the remaining balance is old who classics and r&b standards. guest guitarist david gilmour is a welcome addition to the overall sound. i was not aware that he was on the original album, but it seems obvious now. compare his unique intro to ‘give blood’ and u2’s edge of the same period. my guess was that the former was inspired by the latter, but i could be wrong. i really loved this period of pete’s musical output, and this is a very good snapshot of an artist at the peak of his career. i of course believe that the who’s overall peak was the quadrophenia era, but have always been struck by the outpouring of songs pete laid on us after stretching out on his own in the eighties. included in the package is a dvd of the concert from cannes, france. it was recorded for a german tv show. ‘give blood’ has always had a place in my ‘top ten songs to listen to real loud’. specifically simon phillip’s double kick bass drums emanating from my klipsch speakers in the man cave. it was good to see him in action on this dvd. pete is clearly inspired, sincerely embracing the role of frontman for a big band.

my only issue is the overall mix on some songs. too much high end when they try to get all the gang up front. but considering the elements they were dealing with (outdoor show, inclement weather), i can deal with it. trust me: pete is on it here.

margo price, midwest farmer’s daughter

a very strong debut from a girl who has been struggling to break out of the nashville bar circuit for over a decade. signed to jack white’s third man label, and backed by her highly competent bar band (the ‘price tags’), this is a solid piece of work. she hocked her wedding ring and car to get the money to record the tracks at legendary sun studios in memphis. the six minute opener, ‘hands of time’, is autobiographical, and draws you in right away. the album title is a subtle nod to loretta lynn, and her voice and songwriting remind me of the old gal. most of the rest of the songs are about failed romances and the gritty nashville music scene, and she doesn’t pull any punches.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21745-midwest-farmers-daughter/

bob weir, blue mountain

it seems to me that bob has felt a need to record this album for quite some time. in a way, there is a sense of closure about it. he has described it himself as a collection of ‘cowboy songs’, and it is definitely that. in the dead nomenclature, that term usually referred to any of the songs from their repertoire that had in its subject line stories from the old west, and bobbie sang many of them (me and my uncle, jack straw, mexicali blues, as a few examples). but that is really not what is at play here. to a certain degree, this is autobiographical. he ran away in his midteens and stayed on a ranch, and this is where he developed an appreciation for campfire songs sung by the ranchhands he worked with at that time. weir also had experiences with ranch lifestyles through his collabaration with his long tome lyricist, john barlow, whose family has had property in wyoming since the beginning of the last century. he gives credits in his liner notes to his adoptive parents, and he says they found him at the ranch and let him stay there.

if you have seen the recent documentary ‘the other one’, he spends time on the reconciliation with his parents in recent years. all of that is a backdrop to this release, which is really quite interesting to me. let me start with what i like about it. the production, and the musicianship, is really well done. it is produced by bob and josh kaufman, and it has a very daniel lanois type of feel to it (think of the ‘no mercy’ album from dylan). lush and sparse at the same time, it has a laid back atmosphere throughout. josh ritter is involved in most of the lyrics, with bob and others as cowriters on maybe half the songs. he then uses a slew of americana musicians, notably members of the national (dessner and devendorf brothers). this is very much a weir solo album, and his first compilation of totally original material in thirty years.highlights are ‘gonesville’, which sounds like it could easily be a johnny cash tune (bob says he envisioned elvis when writing it, but i don’t hear that), and ‘ki-yi bossie’, which he wrote himself and plays unaccompanied on acoustic (ramblin’ jack in the background).

the title track, ‘blue mountain’, is also a keeper. what keeps me from giving a big green light to this release is bob’s singing. those who know me will not be surprised about this. on at least half the cuts, i think he does great. but bob’s weakness, i think, is that he tries to hide his less than natural singing abilities by trying to veer from ‘just singing the song’. he will bend the lyrics, growl or bark, sing slightly off key, tend towards spoken word interpretations, and all manner of improvisations, instead of just singing the frickin song. it has annoyed me to no end for decades. he really is a good singer when he stays lyrical, but for whatever reason he feels the need to elaborate, and he doesn’t generally do that well. add to that his degradation in vocal ability (he’s 68 and been on the road for over 50 years), and you get some merely average performances on some of the songs. but please don’t let that get in the way of checking this out. he seems like he needed to get some things off of his chest with this release, and overall i think it is an impressive statement from him. he is touring on this release over the next month or so, and so if you are going to see him, you really need to get this.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/review-bob-weir-blue-mountain-w442061

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22368-blue-mountain/