// Category Archive for: Music

Free Single: The Explorers Club, “No Good To Cry”

By Cait Brennan

Charleston, South Carolina’s classic pop new traditionalists The Explorers Club are young men with old souls who have graced us with some of the finest pop music of the last ten years. Their output includes two critically lauded albums and a series of fun EPs featuring their fine originals alongside well-chosen covers of golden-age pop gems by Burt Bacharach, Vanity Fare, and Dennis Yost’s Classics IV.

The band is back with a one-off single, “No Good To Cry,” a dynamite tune guaranteed to blast the transistors out of your AM radio, and if there’s any justice, one that should garner the group some well-deserved attention.

“No Good To Cry” was a regional smash from the summer of ’67 by The Wildweeds. The band was fronted by 19-year old guitarist Al Anderson, and while The Wildweeds never quite broke through on a national level, Big Al went on to front the hugely influential NRBQ before going on to yet more success as a Nashville songwriter. “No Good To Cry” was just the third song he ever wrote, and it’s a gem that by all rights should have been a national hit instead of merely a huge regional number one record.

The Explorers Club version captures the raw energy and irresistible hook of the original scorcher and adds Matt Goldman’s lush, sophisticated production and the peerless musicianship that has been a trademark of the band’s fine albums Freedom Wind and Grand Hotel. Paul Runyon contributes a 50,000 watt soul vocal that transforms “No Good To Cry” from a mere cover into one of this very accomplished band’s finest moments yet. The song is free via the Explorers Club Noisetrade site, but “tips” are welcome and will help support the band as it works on its third long-player. Don’t miss this one.

Music Review: Bert Jansch, Heartbreak

By Cait Brennan

Trying to name the greatest guitarist of all time is a fool’s errand. One, because it would be impossible to choose a single player from a slate of candidates as diverse as Django Reinhardt, Andres Segovia, Jimmy Page, Lindsey Buckingham, Prince, Richard Thompson, Mick Ronson, George Harrison, Ron Asheton, Don Rich, Brian May, Frank Zappa, etc, ad infinitum. And two, because the answer is Bert Jansch.

Fine, reasonable souls may disagree, but from his stunning masterpiece of a debut in 1965, Jansch blazed a staggeringly original trail through an eclectic mix of folk, jazz, blues, rock, and even African, medieval, renaissance, and baroque music. Whether solo or with his band Pentangle, his highly distinctive playing and his warm, earthy vocals made him a major influence on everybody from Jimmy Page, Neil Young, Nick Drake, Donovan and Mike Oldfield to Paul Simon, Johnny Marr, Graham Coxon, Bernard Butler, and so many more. Bert died in 2011, doing what he did best till the very end.

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Movie Review: Better Than Something – Jay Reatard

By Less Lee Moore

Still from Better Than Something

“What I do is not about being comfortable with the world.”
—Jay Reatard, in Better Than Something

There’s a part in Better Than Something, the Jay Reatard documentary, where the musician talks about being “so tired. . . and I’m only 29.” He laughs a little and adds, “There’s nothing to look forward to.” Anyone who sees this and doesn’t agree with this statement just a little—even secretly—is probably not going to like Jay Reatard’s music and may not even care about this documentary.

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Music Review: The Edie Adams Christmas Album

By Cait Brennan

Ernie Kovacs is rightly regarded as television’s first genius. Dynamic, irreverent and uncompromising, Kovacs pushed TV technology to its limits in the service of his anarchic comic brilliance. More than that, Kovacs was larger than life. His personal motto was “Nothing In Moderation,” and he lived up to that billing until the day he died.

Few mere mortals could hope to keep up with his madness. But he met his match the day he met Edie Adams. Smart, sexy, sultry and with a voice like butter, Adams was everything Ernie needed: merry co-conspirator, brilliant comic foil, and a tremendously versatile actress and vocalist that brought elegance and heart to the proceedings. Kovacs’s life, and for that matter his untimely death, cast a big shadow, and Edie’s talents have often been unfairly overlooked.

Thankfully, the lady’s finally getting her due. From the formidable Kovacs/Adams archive and the good folks at Omnivore Recordings comes The Edie Adams Christmas Album, featuring Ernie Kovacs, a warm, charming, and nostalgic record featuring 15 never-before-heard holiday classics. It’s the perfect antidote to contemporary holiday angst and a testament to Adams’s vocal gifts.

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Music Review: David Cassidy, Romance Reissue

By Cait Brennan

Like a lot of artists who were huge in the early ‘70s, David Cassidy didn’t get much respect. The magnetic and charming breakout star of The Partridge Family topped the charts with his TV band and made waves as a solo artist as well. Modern audiences weaned on prefab TV pop stars may find it difficult to understand the extent of Cassidy’s fame at its peak. On one weekend in 1973, Cassidy sold out six consecutive shows at Wembley Stadium (capacity 82,000) and had similar sellout audiences at arenas around the world. Far more complex than the million-dollar teenybopper albatross they hung around his neck, Cassidy tried offroading it with Broadway plays, a TV series, and tons of other media appearances. In the UK and Europe, his later ‘70s albums continued to do well, but in his home country, David Cassidy was a man that was a little too undercover.

It’s a shame, then, that American audiences never got to hear Romance, Cassidy’s 1985 album for Arista Records. His only studio album of that decade, Romance is a bold re-invention that became a Top 20 hit in the UK and launched a couple of memorable hit singles that should’ve been hits at home, too.

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Music Review: School Of Seven Bells, Put Your Sad Down EP

By Less Lee Moore

The only downside to a new School of Seven Bells EP is that I’m in no way tired of Ghostory, their full-length release from February of this year (reviewed here). This is a good problem to have.

Put Your Sad Down opens with the 12-minute-plus title track, which takes a while to build, but has a beautiful payoff, an extremely skillful hybrid of straight-up dance music and SVIIB-style dream pop. It’s what My Bloody Valentine might sound like if they hadn’t broken up after two albums. The lyrics are straightforward and sexy; “Put Your Sad Down” is the rare song that sounds exactly like what the lyrics imply. The song’s intensity eventually tapers off only to dial it up again with an impressive subtlety and finesse.

“Secret Days” (listen here) signals a shift to pre-Ghostory SVIIB, with a heavy drumbeat and decidedly South Asian influence in the music, and a wordless vocalized chorus that’s pure magic. I wish I liked “Faded Heart” more, however. It sounds like a clichéd remix of a superior song that’s buried somewhere inside, although that core does show the anthemic pop sheen of Abba.

The next song, “Lovefingers,” is a cover of the 1968 song by Silver Apples from their 1968 self-titled debut album. Here the original’s psychedelia is replaced with a spooky, Middle Eastern mysticism with wonderful results. The repetitive pulse of “Painting a Memory,” the EP’s final song, nourishes a hypnotic dance beat with more South Asian sounds in Alejandra Deheza’s vocalizations. It also shows that the band sounds best when they give themselves enough time to let the ingredients of their recipes simmer for a while.

Although Put Your Sad Down isn’t as consistently excellent as Ghostory, it is after all an EP and one with an overwhelming ratio of hits to misses. It’s definitely whetted my appetite for the band’s next full-length release, whenever that may be.

Put Your Sad Down is out today from Vagrant and can be ordered from the band’s website.

Subscribe To Marshall Crenshaw: New Single Out On November 23

By Cait Brennan

It’s hard to believe that Marshall Crenshaw’s tuneful, songs have been with us for three decades, but amazingly, 2012 marks the 30th anniversary of his acclaimed, self-titled 1982 debut. Three decades, five presidents, and thirteen albums later, he’s still going strong, not only with his own music, but his radio show, a book, film music, and vital compilation work as well. (It’s not an overstatement to say that the Crenshaw-helmed Hillbilly Music . . . Thank God!, a 24-track compilation of rockabilly and country sides by artists from Buck Owens to Rose Maddox to Hank Thompson to the Louvin Brothers, saved my soul and the souls of every living, breathing human being who heard it. It’s not too late for you, brother, get yourself a copy.)

Writing and performing new music is still where his heart’s at, though, and like so many artists in the still-evolving, post-record-industry-Armageddon landscape, Crenshaw turned to Kickstarter to fund a new way of getting his songs to his fans. After blowing past his goal with a cool $33,000, Crenshaw is launching a subscription EP series, enabling him to get new music to his fans in a cool way. Over the next two years, Crenshaw will release six exclusive three-song 10-inch, 45-rpm vinyl EPs, along with a download card for digital versions of the tracks.

The opener, which debuts November 23, features the brand-new Crenshaw tune “I Don’t See You Laughing Now,” combining Crenshaw’s relentless knack for melody with a withering character portrait of somebody who clearly had it coming. “It must be hell to realize you fell for your own lies,” sings Crenshaw, dismantling his subject line by line and rubbing it in with some gorgeous harmonies and the fine playing of Andy York on guitar and the brilliant Graham Maby on bass.

Track two features Crenshaw and alt-country sensations the Bottle Rockets on a live alted-up version of the Crenshaw gem “There She Goes Again,” originally on Crenshaw’s 1982 album.

A weird and wonderful cover of The Move’s post-apocalyptic 1971 classic “No Time” rounds out the set. Recorded with Glen Burtnik (who starred as Paul McCartney in Beatlemania opposite Crenshaw’s John Lennon), “No Time” is worth the price of admission all on its own, with its rich layered harmonies, gorgeous psych-pop production, and fine mastering by engineer Greg Calbi.

“I’ve always put a great deal of care into the albums I’ve made,” Crenshaw said in a press release. “But as a listener, I’ve always been a singles guy and an individual-tracks guy. I’m looking forward to creating a steady output of music in small batches, rather than being stuck in a cave for months and stockpiling a whole bunch of music and dumping it out all at once. Now, when I finish something, I get to put it out, instead of having to wait until I’ve got 12 more.”

“I Don’t See You Laughing Now” is available November 23 from marshallcrenshaw.com. Please note: the website has been down due to issues resulting from Hurricane Sandy, so keep checking back.

Assemblog: November 9, 2012

Sinister, 2012

New this week on Popshifter: I give a wrap up of Toronto After Dark; Chelsea reviews The Red Machine, reminisces about ’90s Boston band Tribe, and raves about Sophie Auster’s debut EP The Red Weather; Danny wonders if Creedence Clearwater Revival’s new Ultimate box set will prove they’re the American Beatles; and Julie praises Firewater’s International Orange! as well as their recent concert in Cleveland.

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Music Review: Firewater, International Orange!

By Julie Finley

The new Firewater album came out on 9/11, so I have had some time to let it sink in. I don’t think it was a coincidence that it came out on that historic day, either; I truly think that Tod Ashley was thinking that it would be a good day to release the record, just in time for my first wedding anniversary (I’m kidding!).

I believe it’s been about four years since the last Firewater album, The Golden Hour, was released and International Orange! is the perfect sequel. In fact, I think I kinda like this one even more (and I really loved the last one). They are very similar musically, but lyrically there is a much more positive and playful vibe to International Orange!

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Concert Review: Firewater At The Grog Shop

By Julie Finley

Cleveland, OH
October 6, 2012

It had been a while since I’d been to a show . . . almost a year. There really hasn’t been anything worth seeing that has come through Northeast Ohio (with the exception of Blowfly, but yours truly had a migraine that wouldn’t quit that day, so I had to skip it). I heard that Firewater was actually coming back to Clevehole; I figured that Tod Ashley would’ve just skipped this dump altogether since the last time they played here, the crowd was small and the venue sucked. Luckily, he brought himself and his newest batch of minstrels to The Grog Shop in Cleveland, one of the few venues I actually like. The show was also on a Saturday night so I figured it was going to be mobbed, but that sadly wasn’t the case.

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