Seattle’s Ivan & Alyosha make thoughtful and inspiring music that resides at the crossroads of power pop and folk, but that doesn’t explain enough. Their latest, It’s All Just Pretend, is captivating, as well as familiar, but not derivative. It feels like a classic album but refreshingly new. It’s charming, but not twee.
Croydon Municipal’s third album of Popcorn tracks, Popcorn Exotica, is another unbelievable confection. “Popcorn” refers to a Belgian club music scene that peaked commercially in the 1970s, and the common thread is the rather sleepy tempo. DJs would sometimes play 45s at 33 RPM to hit the proper beat.
Marc Almond’s latest, The Velvet Trail, feels like something of a miracle and sounds even better. After his 2010 release, Varieté, Almond intimated that he would no longer record his original material. When producer and songwriter Chris Braide (Lana Del Rey, Britney Spears, Beyoncé) heard this news, it became his mission to change Almond’s mind. Braide composed a trio of instrumental tracks specifically for Almond. Upon hearing them, Marc Almond changed his mind. They worked together long distance: sending files to each other, writing long emails and not speaking on the phone, all to keep their chemistry intact. They didn’t meet until the album was finished.
It’s not often that I listen to an album that makes me grin like a lunatic after every track. Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers’ #imsoneworleans is nine tracks of pure joy. (See what they did there? It’s a hashtag, for the Twitters.) (Incidentally, I kept reading it as “I’ms One Worleans” which makes no sense. I mean, I knew New Orleans was in there, but I just didn’t know where exactly. Pardon the digression.) A mix of covers and originals, #imsoneworleans is a fun album. The musicians sound like they love what they’re doing, and Ruffins always brings a great time.
There’s a compelling, understated darkness to Ambrosia Parsley’s Weeping Cherry. The former Shivaree front woman’s new album has an undercurrent of dread and danger running through: off-kilter keyboards, fiery slashes of guitar, dangerous percussion, and Parsley’s own curious, fascinating vocals. The songs are evocative and rich, experimental and strange. Even the most typical song structure (verse-chorus-verse), becomes a bit twisted in her hands.
“Well bless my soul and hush my mouth.” With the first words on Blue Healer, you know that Jimbo Mathus’s latest is going to be more of the gritty, swampy Southern Rock that is his stock in trade. Drawing from a lifetime in the South, Jimbo Mathus has created his manifesto with Blue Healer. It’s a concept album that eschews the parts of concept albums that make them so annoying, and instead is filled to the brim with excellent hooks, fine songwriting, and and a layer of honesty that is deeply authentic.
Who doesn’t love Record Store Day? Piles of picture discs, odd singles, repressings of things you’ve always wanted but couldn’t shell out the car payment-prices for on Ebay. Numbero (an offshoot label of the amazing Numero Group) is releasing Lows In The Mid Sixties, Volume 54: Kosmic City Part 2, on vinyl for Record Store Day 2015, and it is . . . odd.
Beale Street Saturday Night is a historical document that you could dance to, if you were so inclined. In 1976, James Luther (Jim) Dickinson (who played with loads of people, from the Stones to the Cramps, and produced Big Star, The Replacements, et al) set out to document the music and the musicians that played on the storied street where rock and roll arguably began. He recorded blues musicians at home, at clubs, and at the Orpheum theater, creating a sonic trip with spoken reminiscences from the artists cut in to their songs. The resulting album, Beale Street Saturday Night, was released in a limited run in 1978 and fetches astounding prices for original copies.
On the song “Too Old To Die Young” from their self-titled album, The Damnwells’ Alex Dezen sings, “We could have been Everclear.” Herein lies the problem with the record. The Damnwells make accessible pop/rock that would not be radio-unfriendly in the mid-’80s to ‘90s. It seems wholly inspired by The Outfield (sans clarion vocals) or the Goo Goo Dolls. Someone likes that sort of thing; those bands sold lots of records. It’s just not inspiring music. It’s not music that makes you yearn for more, music that makes you feel something, that makes you excited, happy, mournful. It’s the one-ply toilet paper of music. And the Damnwells’ new album is that. Meh.
Ray Wylie Hubbard is the kind of artist that it takes the world a bit to catch up with. Making a sort of bluesy, country-tinged, mystic-thinking, completely rocking sound, he should have been huge in the Outlaw Country days. Instead, his fame was mostly limited to Texas, despite having made critically acclaimed albums.