I’ll just put this out there now: I think I’m in love with The Muse. The Wood Brothers’ new album is pure auditory bliss and I might never stop listening to it. Recorded “the old fashioned way,” with the band circled around microphones and all in the same room, The Muse has warmth and analog coziness. There’s a loose-limbed, ramshackleness to it that is delightful.
Blitzen Trapper‘s Eric Earley has a story to tell. Loads of them, in fact. Blitzen Trapper’s seventh studio album has a seriously Southern Gothic vibe, which is pretty damn amazing for a guy from Portland, Oregon. VII is full of tantalizing, vivid details and stories that evoke dusty roads and swamplands and rusted out cars. It’s one hell of a ride.
Canada’s Headstones are back after a long hiatus and their return is welcome. Their brand of straightforward, damn the torpedoes and hang-on-to-your-wigs-and-keys rock is refreshing in this age of . . . well, you know the state of popular music today.
San Francisco’s Kelley Stoltz has made the jump from SubPop to Third Man Records and has embraced the garage rock ethos fully—Double Exposure was recorded in his garage. Not a mere garage this: it goes by the name of Electric Duck Studio and houses vintage synths, an amp used by a Stooge, and a tape machine used by The Residents.
Double Exposure is garagey in the best way. It’s full of exploration and experimentation, and all kinds of noises not naturally occurring in nature. It’s reminiscent of the ’60s psychedelia revival from the ’80s ala the Fuzztones and Fleshtones and their brethren, awash in handclaps and harmonies.
Allen Toussaint has probably written your favorite song, and you didn’t even know it. His new album, the remarkable, amazing Songbook, is a live recording (including a DVD of the performance) of Allen Toussaint, a piano, and his venerable back catalogue. His songs have been covered by such diverse artists as The Rolling Stones, Glen Campbell, Warren Zevon, Devo, Irma Thomas, and The Who. Listening to Songbook, you can’t help but marvel at his songwriting brilliance.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Allen Toussaint was flooded out of his home and studio and relocated to New York City. There he began to perform solo shows at Joe’s Pub, resurrecting songs he hadn’t performed in years, honing his live show, and developing a passionate following outside of New Orleans. Songbook is taken from those Joe’s Pub shows; an intimate, warm set of songs written by Toussaint that were made popular by other artists.
The veritable Van Dyke Parks has curated a collection culled from New Orleans-based piano god Tom McDermott’s previous albums. Bamboula is pure sonic pleasure from the first note.
Parks elaborates on just what makes McDermott’s playing and composing so astonishing: “As a composer, Tom’s compositions each read like a good short story, filled with motifs, anecdotes, and suspended sub-plots that all resolve in conclusion.” As I listened to Bamboula, I was struck by the visual nature of Tom McDermott’s music. Each song became the music for a movie I wanted to see or possibly be in, richly layered and fascinating. It’s transporting in a way that you long for music to be.
The delightfully named Ha Ha Tonka (named after a gorgeous state park in Missouri, replete with a crumbling mansion/hotel) are clearly at a crossroads. Their latest effort, Lessons, is a departure from their previous more stripped-down records, and is chock full of soul-searching, thinky lyrics. I’m not sure the change in direction was a good move.
There’s debate on the Internets regarding whether releasing Glen Campbell’s See You There is exploitative. Campbell is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and some say this album—stripped down versions of his greatest hits—is just an attempt to cash in. I disagree, utterly. See You There is touching and triumphant—and painful to hear, but in a good way.
San Fermin‘s self-titled debut is wildly ambitious. Full of songs that are like journeys, but journeys that end up in an entirely different place than you thought you might go, it’s a challenging, interesting listen. San Fermin is the brainchild of Yale-educated composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone, and he is ably backed by vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig (of Lucius) and Allen Tate.
If you were to give Quentin Tarantino a copy of Loose Lips Might Sink Ships—Greasy Instrumental Magic From The Vault Of Lux And Ivy, he could probably pull a movie out of it, or the soundtrack to one at the very least. It’s a tidy, brief collection of pockets of unheralded instrumental awesome, and it may as well have been subtitled “All your guitar vs. sax needs are covered here.” Like it says on the tin, these are tracks culled from Lux Interior’s Purple Knife Show and they cover the gamut of early rock with twangy guitars, dirty sax, and surfy beats.