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Craig Finn - Clear Heart Full Eyes

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Posted by Sean @ 10:54 AM

Craig Finn describes himself as the kind of writer who sits in the back seat of the car driven by his characters, taking notes. For the sake of his sanity and general health, this is doubtless a good thing. On Lord, I’m Discouraged, a song from The Hold Steady’s 2008 album Stay Positive, the Minnesota-born resident of Brooklyn profiles an unrequited love whose life is sliding into the despair of drug addiction. "The sutures and bruises are none of my business / She says that she’s sick but won’t get specific," he sings, later adding: "I know it’s unlikely she’ll ever be mine / So I mostly just pray she don’t die."

To say that Finn is a lyricist of uncommon humanity, not to mention one possessed of a fine attention to detail, is to understate the case. On Clear Heart Full Eyes, he shrouds his tales of foolish people lost on long wanderings on the inexpensive side of the tracks with music that is less dense than that offered by The Hold Steady. That band has been described by American Psycho author and alt-punk expert Bret Easton Ellis as being the finest group in the United States; their sound is a tough one to better. Fans of the group will identify with Finn’s solo flight in no small part due to the distinctive treble-heavy voice and narrative style, but songs such as the sparse Apollo Bay – which sees the narrator drunk on similarly treble-heavy Victoria Bitter in Australia – and the gentle Not Much Left of Us offer something different from the author’s usual work.

But as fine as the music on offer here happens to be – and often it’s very fine indeed – it is Finn’s sense of humanity in lyrical form that really sets this album apart. "From the way you picked up the phone, I could tell you weren’t going to die / February is as long as it is wide," is the opening sentiment of No Future, and an early contender for couplet of the year. Elsewhere figures as diverse as Freddie Mercury and John Lydon are thrown into the mix, characters listen to Ozzy Osbourne and KISS in studio apartments, as well as a whole host of city-dwellers whose lives are led on the serrated edge that separates good people from bad. It is these people, and the fact that their creator has sufficient skill to humanise them and have the listener care about their fate, that makes Clear Heart Full Eyes a work of understated beauty.

Craig Finn - Honolulu Blues

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Labels: Music

Howler - America Give Up

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Posted by Sean @ 4:42 PM

It would make it easy for lazy critics if Howler proved to be a real dog of a band, causing pre-release naysayers to howl with laughter. But the tipped Minneapolis mob has delivered a succinct and energetic debut album that casts aside any doubts as to their qualities.

Having turned heads with a series of fiery (and fleeting) live shows, frontman Jordan Gatesmith’s crew have wasted little time in realising an album of thoroughly contagious, albeit fairly derivative, Strokes-flavoured gutter-rock. These 11 tracks zip by, dashing from start to finish in a breathtaking 32 minutes.

There may be a paucity of original ideas across this set’s running time, but it will stir within listeners memories of great moments in gutter-rock history. When Gatesmith sings, "I scrape my kneeeeeeees," on America it sounds like Lou Reed has temporarily stolen his microphone. Elsewhere, Back to the Grave’s macabre but fun lyrics – "I want someone to take me out tonight / We’ll go back to the grave before we turn out the lights" – could easily be lifted from a lost Ramones tune.

Scientists have yet to convincingly prove that writing killer song titles automatically enhances your chances of sexual and financial success but, if they do, Howler are in for a sweet future. Another (perchance rotten) peach of a title, alongside Back to the Grave, is the album’s opener: Beach Sluts. Its riffs are reminiscent of The Drums or The Vaccines, but it also has handclaps aplenty, and it’s this palm-on-palm percussion that carries the track towards greatness.

Too Much Blood (another great title) slows down the outfit’s punkier tendencies to hiss and snarl like The Jesus and Mary Chain, while Free Drunk (yet another marvellous moniker) is this debut’s greatest moment. Its chorus melodies might be stolen from Tom Petty, but here we find Gatesmith’s most widescreen and windswept vocal, impressive atop feedback and riffs that feel like dirt underneath your fingernails. Top stuff.

There is one moment of (unintentional?) hilarity on the album: the third song is called This One’s Different, but anyone expecting a panpipe version of Cotton Eye Joe will be disappointed. Instead the song’s riffs paint pictures of whiskey-swillers in leatherjackets, just like every other song here. But what better way to fight off the dull winter?

Howler - Back Of Your Neck

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Labels: Music

Beverley Knight - Soul UK

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Posted by Sean @ 3:47 PM

The covers album is a noble tradition: a chance for an artist to pay tribute to their roots, to avoid writing any new material, and to present their listeners with songs that everyone knows they like already, because they’ve heard them. From Bowie to George Michael, John Legend to Paul Weller, a covers set is a chance to tell people where you’re coming from and, often, to pause for breath while you work out where you’re going to next.

Beverly Knight is a brilliant soul singer, who grew up at a time when black British music wasn’t as united as it is in these days of grime riding high in the pop charts. High quality dance and soulful pop acts struggled to have more than one hit single, and very few – Rod Temperton’s Heatwave and Jazzie B’s Soul II Soul are notable exceptions – were able to maintain albums success and international fame.

Both those acts are referred to here on Soul UK. ‘Soul’ in this insistence is a fairly broad church, referring to the (generally brilliant) soul pop made in Britain over the last 30 years. As a testament to the often-overlooked music made in the days when RnB still meant Big Joe Turner, not Beyoncé, Soul UK is remarkably effective. The songs covered here are wide-ranging, from the Prince-like rock pop of Roachford’s Cuddly Toy to Heatwave’s gorgeous ballad Always and Forever. Knight’s memory and taste are impeccable – it’s nothing but a joy to hear Junior Giscombe’s Mama Used to Say or Princess’ Say I’m Your Number One again.

If there is a criticism of this album – which is certainly a record you’d be enormously hard-pressed to dislike – it’s that Knight doesn’t always find it easy to impose her personality on these well-known tracks. On the great Apparently Nothin’ – and despite an excellent rap break – she doesn’t add anything particular to the Young Disciples original. But when the arrangements and the vocals are given a touch of freshness, as in the Motown’ed-up cover of Cuddly Toy, Knight’s version breathes and her versatility is given room to roam. More of that (and a cover of Linx’s awesome Intuition) would have been nice here, but this is a good record.

Beverley Knight - Cuddly Toy

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Labels: Music

The Little Willies - For The Good Times

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Posted by Sean @ 9:55 AM

Two albums in eight years might not sound like a particularly great level of productivity – but The Little Willies are no ordinary band. A collective ostensibly fronted by Norah Jones, albeit with ample vocal support from Arden-born folk singer Richard Julian, this outfit came together in 2003 to jam out some much-loved country cuts at New York’s Living Room venue. A debut, self-titled album emerged in 2006, featuring tracks penned by the likes of Kris Kristofferson (Best of All Possible Worlds), Townes Van Zandt (No Place to Fall) and, perhaps inevitably given their chosen moniker, Willie Nelson (I Gotta Get Drunk). For the Good Times follows the formula of its predecessor, offering up a selection of the band’s favourite numbers as well as a jaunty original, the near-instrumental Tommy Rockwood, written by gifted guitarist Jim Campilongo.

There’s plenty of care taken with these covers, the players evidently keen to not tarnish their own memories of the songs in question. Lovesick Blues, the Cliff Friend and Irving Mills show tune that Hank Williams made his own in 1949 when it topped the stateside country chart, is beautifully delivered by Jones and Julian, whose vocals intertwine atop a sparse acoustic backdrop, percussion minimal but just powerful enough to drive the piece forwards. Johnny Cash’s Wide Open Road is given a rather sunnier disposition than the 1950s original, more suited to a swinging barroom than any backwater barn dance. And Jones shines on Loretta Lynn’s 1968 chart-topper Fist City, making it clear that she’s as comfortable with this style as the softer-edged output she’s collected so many Grammy Awards with.

While not all of these selections are familiar to the fair-weather country listener, the closer certainly will be. Dolly Parton’s Jolene was a major international hit in 1973, and appears at number 217 on Rolling Stone’s top 500 songs of all time list. With Jones on vocals and piano, and little else imposing itself prominently onto the mix, the version here is a striking take that swells like a persistent lump in the throat until it’s guided to a close by Campilongo’s gently sighing, delicately twanged guitar work. It’s a downbeat end to what is, predominantly, a wonderfully rousing collection; but it’s an end that, one hopes, points the way to a third instalment of The Little Willies’ refined reinterpretations.

The Little Willies - For The Good Times:

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Labels: Music

Green Day - 39/Smooth

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Posted by Sean @ 9:16 AM

In 1995 Billie Joe Armstrong wrote a song about a scene populated by people he once considered his friends. 86 appeared on Insomniac, its authors’ tightly coiled and deeply troubled fourth album, which itself succeeded Dookie, the multi-platinum release that had the world telling Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool that while their band was cute its music was not punk.

The fact that just three years prior to their elevation to Millionaires’ Row the Oakland-based trio found themselves on a tour of European squats that saw their frontman contract body lice was neither here nor there. Following their decision to sign with the Warner Music Group-owned Reprise Records, at home the group were disowned by the militant Berkeley punk magazine Maximum RocknRoll and banned from playing at that city’s all-ages not-for-profit venue Gilman Street. "Exit out the back," sings Armstrong on 86, "and never show your head around [here] again."

It is worth repeating that, prior to the success of 1994’s Dookie, American punk rock was not a genre that sent cash registers ringing to any kind of crescendo. Green Day were the first to manage this, and prior to this achievement their genre credentials were impeccable. Released on the tiny Lookout! label, 39/Smooth (pictured/listed) and Kerplunk are early efforts from a band who no one at the time predicted would rise above their modest station. Indeed, their first album, 39/Smooth, was recorded for just $700. Even here, though, one is reminded of drummer Tre Cool’s assertion that seeing Armstrong write a song is the closest thing to magic one will ever witness. Barely 17 at the time, a track such as the magnificent Going to Pasalacqua showed anyone who cared to listen that here stood a writer of already rare talent.

But it was with 1992’s Kerplunk that Green Day really came to the notice of more people than their pay grade suggested possible. Featuring songs of the quality of 2,000 Light Years Away, Christie Road and Welcome to Paradise – a track the group would revisit on Dookie, to devastating effect – with no promotion whatsoever, and with its creators touring in a converted mobile library, Green Day were soon able to draw up to 2,000 people a night in whatever city they visited. To the wider world, the group’s success in 1994 may have appeared to have arrived overnight; but in reality the rumblings of the underground heading upwards had begun in style, some years before.

Green Day - 39/Smooth (Full Album):

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Labels: Music