2.16.2002

 
A new Palmermix feature: most posts dealing with a particular artist will be accompanied by a Listening Station set: recommendations for further listening by that artist. Though Palmermix, a slender, meager web enterprise, doesn't have the technology to offer streaming audio, you can often find samples on Amazon pages. Or use this list as a starter kit when you go fishing with your file-share software. Which will, of course, lead you to soon go to your local shop and purchase these discs in the store, giving your artists a dollar or two per album, and giving the RIAA the necessary capital so that they continue lobbying Washington in the name and interest of the six or seven biggie label fatcats.

Listening Station: Lucinda Williams

1. "Return of the Grievous Angel," from Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons

2. "Metal Firecracker," from Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

3. "You're Still Standing There," duet with Steve Earle, from Steve Earle's Feel Alright

4. "Essence," from Essence

5. "Steal Your Love," from Essence

6. "I Just Wanted to See You So Bad," from Lucinda Williams

7. "Passionate Kisses," from Lucinda Williams

8. "Which Will," from Sweet Old World (Yes, the Nick Drake song)

9. "Wings of a Dove," from Nanci Griffith's Other Voices, Too
(N.B. Lucinda sings lead on this, which is also the song that Robert Duvall sings in a pivotal scene in Tender Mercies, one of my favorite films. I do not recommend this Nanci album, though I actively recommend her Other Voices, Other Rooms, Griffith's first album of folk covers.

10. "Right in Time," from Car Wheels on a Gravel Road


posted by Anon. 9:39 PM

 
First Draft
2001 in Review: Lucinda Williams' Essence

Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road was such a universally embraced album, there was bound to be some backlash. But who would have expected that Williams' next release would seem to join in?

Bill Bryson's "Delta Nights" piece in The New Yorker claimed to expose Lucinda as what anyone who had ever paid attention to her lyrics already knew her as: a neurotic, insecure, self-absorbed woman with plenty of man issues. That said, the Bryson piece also showed her treating her band and crew like shit, never an endearing quality.

But in some cases, the critical backlash was aimed not just at the musician but at her product, critiques not just of her personality but of the record itself. More often than not, the slam against Car Wheels was that it was over-written. It was too ambitious, it was everything but the kitchen sink, the music suffered at the hands of the lyrics.

I disagree. I think much of the success of that record was built around melodies, especially on songs like "Metal Firecracker," "I Lost It," and, one of the all-time great odes to sexual self-stimulation, "Right in Time." While the lyrics of the title song and "Concrete and Barbed Wire" were certainly extensive, they weren't over-done, the way John Mellencamp's "Justice and Independence" always made me wince.

If Car Wheels had a weakness, it lay in a few dull songs where neither the music nor the lyrics had risen to the high bar set by the stronger songs. There's a word for that: filler. "Can't Let Go" and "Joy" were the worst kind of B-level blues, songs that would have been more at home on a Bonnie Raitt live album.

Williams apparently took a lot of that criticism to heart, though, in making Essence. First off, she took a much shorter time between albums this time, as opposed to the seven or eight years between Sweet Old World and Car Wheels. Releasing this almost three years after Car Wheels, well, that's rushing for Lucinda Williams.

But secondly, this album is almost painstakingly underwritten. Make that anemic.

It starts off promisingly, with "Lonely Girls" and "Steal Your Love"; these opening ballads are so quiet and soft, you think, okay, so she's gonna make a Nick Drake record. (The last cover she put on any of her own records was Drake's "Which Will," so I could see it.)

But unfortunately, she doesn't quite do much once she's in that quiet space. The lyrics are dull, even lazy, avoiding the evocative imagery ("a derelict in your duct tape shoes," and so on) and memoiristic candor that made Car Wheels so absorbing. That's fine if she feels that sharing time is over. But the music doesn't then step in to fill the void, except on the admittedly churning title track, a powerful song of yearning.

Here's the sadder news: Lucinda Williams has never sang better. Generally, when female singers, particularly female country singers, get older, what was once a melodious songbird voice then gains a little bit of gravel. It happened with Emmylou Harris, it happened with Tammy Wynette, it happened a thousandfold with Marianne Faithfull. (If you don't believe me, compare "As Tears Go By" with "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan.") But strangely enough, Lucinda Williams is singing smoother than ever before as she stumbles head-first into her late forties.

It's a shame that now that her voice has hit a new peak, she suddenly doesn't have much to say.

posted by Anon. 4:52 PM

2.15.2002

 
Angels Laid Him Away
2001 in Review: Avalon Blues: A Tribute to the Music of Mississippi John Hurt

When it comes to tribute albums, I’ve been accused of being an easy lay.

I admit it; I like tribute albums. I like hearing musicians offering their takes on another artist’s work – and also, as I said in an earlier post about Beatle covers, I like to hear people taking some chances with the covers. They can act as introductions to an artist; or they can further one's appreciation of an artist one already knows.

Yet my favorite tribute album of this past year is one where almost all the covers are faithful, where there are no radical reinterpretations. What gives?

I guess the explanation is, hey, it’s Mississippi John Hurt, and his songs bring me joy whoever is doing the singing duties.

Blues rookies too often start off with in their education by listening to Robert Johnson or Muddy Waters. I think that’s a mistake, as far as starting points go: Johnson sounds so alien, and his music, while rich in rewards, requires a lot of work, just as Charley Patton does. And at a first listen, a lot of Muddy’s songs sound an awful lot alike. Not a good place for beginners.

If I were to introduce anyone to the blues, I’d first hand the person a copy of Deep Blues by the late critic Robert Palmer, no relation either to me or to the singer of "Addicted to Love," and I’d hand them Mississippi John Hurt’s 1928 recordings and a Howlin’ Wolf anthology.

Palmer’s book is a wonderful read, a boon for history buffs and music fans alike. As for Wolf and Hurt, they seem to represent the two extremes of the spectrum: Wolf, with his grunting and hollering and strange urgent noises, sounding like not a man possessed, but the demon doing the possessing. And Hurt, all sweet soft acoustic fingerpicking, and a worldview so optimistic that in his version of Stagolee, no one gets hurt. But both of them offer pretty quick rewards, with Hurt an easy listen for folkies, and the Wolf being one of the first practitioners of a punk aesthetic.

Avalon Blues, the tribute album produced by Peter Case, features musicians' interpretations of both Hurt's 1928 recordings, and songs he recorded after a long hiatus, re-emerging in the late 50s and early 60s on the folk revival circuit.

Say this for Avalon Blues: they cast a wide net, and drew top quality fish. There are older folkies and bluesmen on hand, like Chris Smither and Taj Mahal; there are card-carrying members of the alt-country/Americana brigade, like Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, and John Hiatt; and there are newer, younger practioners of the blues, both traditional (Alvin Youngblood Hart) and a far cry from traditional (Ben Harper, Beck).

Both Beck and Gillian Welch sound as if they recorded their songs in a wind tunnel, their tracks sounding distant, "older," little ships in bottles. But even their versions display an intimacy that makes this record an album that seems perfect for a Sunday morning. The only misfire on the record is Victoria Williams. There’s a reason why the only project of hers I’ve ever liked is the Sweet Relief tribute album: instead of hearing Victoria sing in that shrieking Muppet voice of hers, you instead get to hear people with pipes, like Eddie Vedder and Maria McKee, sing her songs.

The best songs here have an easy casualness to them, like the musicians came in with their acoustic guitars and took a fun couple of banging it out, before leaving the studio to go back to their day jobs.

"Monday Morning Blues," by Case and Dave Alvin, is a great example of that. As these two veterans of the post-punk scene join each other for the choruses, it simply sounds like good friends sharing good music.

The spirit is infectious. I've never seen a photo of Mississippi John Hurt where he's not smiling, but there's plenty of reason to smile here, even the bleakest of us. Maybe especially for the bleakest of us.

posted by Anon. 4:07 PM

2.14.2002

 
Little Riffs
A soul surprise

The cut-out bin can truly be the junkshop of the musical soul.

It's kind of a graveyard for the couldabeens, sad the same way it's sad to look through baseball cards from 1987 and see all the Rated Rookies that weren't Greg Maddux and Mark McGwire and who never made it. The nameless masses of a cut-out bin are often only interrupted by the occasional appearance of a has-been, or a misfire by a normally big seller. What could be worse as an artist than to find the words "price to sell" stuck on the cellophane of one's product?

I haven't been surfing through a cut-out bin recently, but one of my apartment building neighbors, John, was fired from Elektra in the fall, and is now moving back to New York to helm Dave Matthews' new label.

John left a big stack of CDs for people in the apartment building to peruse and take at their leisure. I think I was the first to find the little stack, accompanied by the sign that said, "Hey! Free CDs! Please take them," which to me is like "Free candy."

I picked up an oddball mix from John's stack-- The Marshall Mathers LP, the Lauryn Hill record, a mediocre Freedy Johnston album from last year, a sampler of one of Phish's live box sets. But on a whim, I also swiped a 1998 album by Peter Wolf calld Fool's Parade.

Yes, that's Peter Wolf, as in David Lynch's old art school roommate. As in the lead singer of the J. Geils Band. As in the man who gave us "Freeze Frame" and sang a song about discovering the grade school classmate he lusted after, with a staple in her navel, an Angel in a Centerfold.

And Wolf sang "Love Stinks," which, before we quickly rush to condemn it as '80s Music, was named by Griel Marcus himself as the best single of 1980 -- and remember, that was the year that "Train in Vain" was on the charts. Wolf was fired from J. Geils Band, and released a series of mediocre records that never really did much.

Which is why I've been so pleasantly surprised by Fool's Parade. It's a soul record, with sweet grooves and sweeter organ, a 1 AM record to listen to at the end of an evening with friends. Wolf has one of the white soul singers this side of Bill Medley, and, yes, fuck Daryl Hall. In songs like "Long Way Back Again" and "Roomful of Angels," Wolf talks frank and sings openly about trying to make some mature love in a world that can be woefully adolescent. It's the best new soul -- I mean soul, now, not R&B -- I've heard since "Tramp" off of the second Robert Bradley's Blackwater Surprise album. And I don't know about you, but I find Staxy melodies with blues harmonica hard to resist.

If you come across it in your own cut-out bin search, it's certainly worth the $2.99. Probably even more.

posted by Anon. 12:44 PM

2.13.2002

 
Cupidmix
Songs about Valentine's Day, etc

1. "Valentine's Day," Steve Earle
Steve "only has his love to give" on Valentine's Day, since he's been in the clink and unable to procure flowers in exchange for cigarettes.

2. "Valentine," The Replacements
The Replacements get earnest. Two albums later, the band was over. Coincidence? Maybe.

3. "On Valentine's Day," Bruce Springsteen
"I have one hand on the wheel, the other on my heart," sings Bruce. A driving song about Valentine's. Naturally.

4. "Valentine's Day is Over," Billy Bragg
Brutal Bragg song about woman who gets beaten by her husband on Valentine's Day. Not a happy tune.

5. "Valentine," Nils Lofgren

6. "Valentine," Willie Nelson

7. "St. Valentine," Joe Ely
"St. Valentine drove a Lincoln Continental/he looked straight out of Lonesome Dove."

8. "Heart Shaped Box," Nirvana

9. "Manic Monday," The Bangles
"I was kissing Valentin-o by a crystal blue Italian stream." Okay, a stretch.

10. "Valentine Jam," The Allman Brothers
Okay, this doesn't exist. But it could.


posted by Anon. 11:44 PM

2.12.2002

 
Crooked Rain, Wicked Groove
2001 in Review: Stephen Malkmus

When overblown lit phenomenon McSweeney's chose to include a CD with one of their volumes, they chose a CD by long-standing Brooklyn accordian affecianados They Might Be Giants.

That fit seemed off. Yes, Eggers and company share a same homebase of Brooklyn as the TMBG duo. But TMBG has always struck me as goofy and silly -- practitioners of ironic music, maybe, but a high schooler's irony: no one was going to accuse the auteurs of "Particle Man" or "Don't Let's Start" of being the troubadours of the graduate student set.

Pavement would have been a much better match. They were the band of a smirk, the band that perfected bemused detachment and uber-referential lyrics, a band that embraced the punk aesthetic of not caring about being able to play their instruments and went one further: they wouldn't just play their instruments poorly, they would also play them without much energy.

Which if you've ever driven through their hometown of Stockton, California, makes perfect sense.

From their first great single that launched them (and launched Matador as a hipper-than-thou label while they were at it), "Summer Babe (Winter Version)," through the closest thing they ever had to a bona fide radio hit, "Cut Your Hair," they seemed to always be laughing at themselves.

When it worked, they let the audience in on the joke; but sometimes, I think, the audience was left out. Way out. Like across two state lines.

(My favorite Pavement song, and one well worth finding if you have access to file share software, is their "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence," from the No Alternative compilation. It starts off as a song talking about how much the band likes REM ("Time After Time was my least favorite song, Time After Time was my least favorite song"), but at the end winds up describing Stipe/Buck/Mills/Berry marching through Georgia with General Sherman. Complete with the sound of cannons and soldiers charging. You have to hear it to believe it.)

The irony got a little too thick for me with Pavement, as did those turgid, droning guitars. I gave up and stopped listening pretty early on, around the time of Wowee Zowee. Even when Brighten the Corners received great reviews, I figured, eh, I already the first two records. Like Guided By Voices and Sleater Kinney, they had gotten hyped to death by a critic pool that seemed to enjoy bands for obscurity's sake.

Well, on a lark this past week, in a frenzy to pick up more albums from 2001, I picked up Stephen Malkmus' solo record, entitled, appropriately enough, Stephen Malkmus.

No question about it: it's still Stephen Malkmus. A song where Yul Brynner talks about his role in Westworld, another talking about Agememmnon and Trojan times. But the album has what most Pavement albums lacked: a groove.

It's most on display in "The Hook," Malkmus' hilarious pirate song. There are readers who might think, uh, a pirate song? And then there are those of us who think there is no such thing as too many pirate songs.

This one's a goodie, too: as the guitars play a groove that could have been peeled off of an old King Floyd record, Malkmus explains his kidnapping at the age of 19 by Turkish pirates. "By 25, I was respected as an equal; my art was the knife," he continues. It's a great tune, in part because of the obvious affection that Malkmus has for the ridiculous tale: "If I spare your life, it's because the tide is leaving." All boys love pirate stories (as long as they don't take the form of films where the pirate is played by Geena Davis), and this one's irresistable.

The other great song on the record is "Jennifer and the Ess-Dog," about the short-lived and ill-fated romance between an 18 year old and a 31 year old in a 60s cover band. Malkmus sings of their bonding over listening to Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms, of the Ess-Dog's Volvo with ancient plates. Though the love between the two doesn't last, things don't end tragically but instead predictably: Jennifer pledges Kappa at Boulder, and the Ess-Dog gives up the guitar and gets a job waiting tables.

I don't know about you, but I knew a few 17 or 18 year old girls who got into stupid relationships with 29 year old men, girls who didn't give the 17 or 18 year old men who secretly loved them the time of day. We weren't mature, and the Ess Dogs of the world were mysterious and worldly.

I knew a few girls like that, and Malkmus probably did, too. Songs about Trojan curfews may show off Malkmus' sardonic wit or a hyper-referential intelligence, but in "Jennifer and the Ess-Dog," I think I caught Malkmus showing off his heart.

Sure, he immediately hid it with a smirk. But it was too late.


posted by Anon. 11:51 PM

2.11.2002

 
Undercover
Medley of Beatle Tunes

While it used to be the case that a soundtrack's success was completely dependent on that of the film it accompanied, that seems to be less and less of the case these days: a soundtrack can be a huge seller, even months after the movie folded.

A recent soundtrack that's been getting its share of attention is the soundtrack for I Am Sam, the Sean Penn/Michelle Pfieffer retarded man/child custody drama. (On a sidenote, I saw the movie, and it's better than you would expect, though not better than one would hope.)

Since the Penn character is a retarded and autistic man whose autism reveals itself in knowledge of Beatle lore and lyrics, and since it would have been damn hard to get the rights for all those Beatle tunes, the filmmakers, apparently with Yoko's blessing, made a soundtrack of Beatle covers.

It's an A-list group of musicians, too. The usual arena rock blandness is there: Sheryl Crow, The Black Crowes, etc. Eddie Vedder does a moving version of "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"; after "Last Kiss"'s huge success, and Pearl Jam's covering such inspired fare as Little Steven's "I Am a Patriot" live in concert, it's a wonder Vedder doesn't just release a cover album... he actually seems to enjoy himself when he does covers, even a heartbreaker of a song like this one.

I also greatly like the Aimee Mann/Michael Penn cover of "Two of Us," a gigantic leap of improvement over their anemic and soulless cover last year of "Reason to Believe," on the album of covers of songs from Springsteen's Nebraska. (Please note, it's the "Two of Us" from Let It Be, and not the old Bill Withers song which Will Smith covered a few years ago, adding a verse about an X-Men CD-ROM.)

In general, though, I think Beatles covers are a dangerous business. Why?

Because they are so ingrained into the public memory, that unless one does something truly innovative in their re-interpretation, the singer might as well just be singing "Happy Birthday."

We all know so many of the songs well, that unless the artist does something different with the song, it just sounds like Your Favorite Musicians Sing to Beatles Karaoke.

One of the reasons that the cover of "Two of Us" works, I think, is that it's a Beatles song no one ever plays on the radio, off an album which, let's be honest, is rarely named by someone as their favorite Beatle record.

"Strawberry Fields Forever" or "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" shouldn't be covered by anyone, anywhere, anytime. They're too much a part of their time, and even the Beatle versions sound fairly dated, like a T-shirt from a concert at the Fillmore.

The most famous Beatle cover, Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help from My Friends," and my choice as perhaps the greatest Beatle cover -- perhaps surpassing the original -- Wilson Pickett's "Hey Jude," stand apart because in both cases, the musicians were able to deliver something to their covers that weren't in the originals. Cocker turned Ringo's romp into a heart-wrenching admonition of gratitude for people standing by him. Pickett just turned Paul McCartney's song of consolation and support into a song of impassioned concern. If you haven't heard the Wicked Pickett's version, complete with one of the great screams on record, you're denying yourself. (Pickett also, let's remember, could even turn the Archie's "Sugar Sugar" into something sublime.)

On his Train A' Comin' record, the first album he recorded after getting clean and getting out of jail, Steve Earle covered "I'm Looking Through You." It's an acoustic version -- on the same album as Steve doing a lovely version of the Melodians' old reggae classic, "Rivers of Babylon" -- and it has an urgency to it not on the Beatles version. Perhaps because Earle learned who his real friends were during that crisis in his life. Perhaps because Earle realized that other people were looking through him before he got help.

I've also been listening a lot to two recent covers of "Getting Better," which was always my favorite song on Pepper. Gomez's version, which first appeared in a Philips ad campaign a few years ago, was released on their B-sides set a year or two ago; the second is a version by defunct Brit band the Wedding Present, burned for me by my friend Rico on a self-made WP mix. I like both versions quite a bit. Not just because I always loved the song, with its twisted dichotomy of a joyful chorus and that creepy lyric about beating his woman.

But because both Gomez and the Wedding Present treated the original Beatle version as a starting point. Instead of honoring the song with a museum-style reverence -- doing a Beatles impersonation -- both bands then jumped off, and made a Beatles classic lodged in our public memory something that was uniquely theirs, at once an homage and something altogether new.

posted by Anon. 4:27 PM

2.10.2002

 
Friend of Mine
Remembering Dave Van Ronk

Dave Van Ronk died today, colon cancer at the age of 65.

I'm amazed he made it to 65; he had that giant lion's body, and like most pro football players, you figured that his size and hard living would have cut him down young. But then, with his ample size, I'm also surprised that it was colon cancer that took him.

Like with many musicians who, unlike actors or other celebrities, we generally know less for a visual than for an aural impression (especially when dealing with the musicians of the pre-MTV era), the image I have of Van Ronk is a static, frozen one, from an album cover.

The fact is, the cover of Inside Dave Van Ronk is a favorite one of mine.

It's simple, really, a photo of Van Ronk standing in a doorway on a street in broad daylight, smoking a cigarette, his belly kind of hanging out over his belt, wearing a sportscoat, and his big beard. Looking like he doesn't have much to do, and doesn't mind that status quo.

But on the other side of the doorway, also peaking out, is a kitten.

I always liked that image quite a bit.

I also liked Van Ronk's weathered voice and fingerpicking, particularly on his version of "He was a Friend of Mine," which the Byrds would later rewrite (molest) into being about John F. Kennedy, or his version of "Cocaine Blues," the same made popular by the Rev. Gary Davis and Jackson Browne. And in covering "Stackerlee" -- a song that has been covered or interpreted by everyone from Lloyd Price to Professor Longhair to Nick Cave -- he even gave what in other people's hands could be a scary, sad song a warmth.

Mourning Van Ronk is not mourning the art that could have been -- like most of the members of that Greenwich Village scene of the '60s, the Tom Rushes and Tom Paxtons of the world, it had been years, to my knowledge, since Van Ronk had created new, vital music.

He did tour, though, and I now regret that I didn't see him when he played McCabe's here in Santa Monica, a wonderfully intimate space. I couldn't get any one to go with me.

But we can miss Van Ronk for his music, which for me holds up much better than the Richard Farina or Tim Buckley records, probably holds up with Tom Rush as the best of the non-Dylan Greenwich scene.

And we can miss him for his little part in a little bit of history. For during his first months in from Minnesota, Bob Dylan slept on a couch in Van Ronk's apartment.


posted by Anon. 8:53 PM

 
A Firecracker Waiting to Blow
2001 in Review: Ryan Adams' Gold and Whiskeytown's Pneumonia

The distinction that Ryan Adams may have been responsible for both the best song heard on radio (well, public radio and AAA format stations, at any rate) and best album of 2001 gets a Roger Maris asterisk tacked on to it when one notes that the single does not appear on the album in question, and that, in fact, the album was one that was recorded three years ago.

"New York, New York" is an undeniably tasty little three and a half minute slice of love pop, a great single even before September 11. After September 11, "I still love you New York, New York," carried new meanings, but it's a testament to the song that it can still stand apart from 9/11, and that it doesn't feel like exploitation of the tragedy, the way Paul McCartney's crassly simplistic "Freedom" feels.

It is a song that, to the point, uses the City as a metaphor for a woman; no new concept, there. But as it goes back and forth between a Manhattan travelogue of the course of a short-lived romance, from the apartments of Alphabet City to a Christmas service on the Upper West Side -- all pushed forward by those acoustic guitars that are anything but a Manhattanite sound -- it in the end is a snapshot of a guy realizing that not only does he still love the woman, but part of him is always going to love her. The relationship might be finite, but there'll always be some part of him that's still in it, just like there'll always be part of the relationship (and part of her) that's still in him. And no, it won't just be nostalgia.

That realization may be a little trite, but it's also universal, and a crucial stage in leaving adolescence behind for adulthood. Which, since he became a critic's choice poster boy when he was still a teenager (following in the steps of Winwood and Chilton), Adams is uniquely qualified to write about.

The only flaw in the song is its ending on a sax solo that sounds like it was pulled out of the end of "Dancing in the Dark," without Bruce's great Bruce Chanel "hey baby" impersonation.

The rest of Adams' Gold record veers from the straight-ahead, boilerplate singer-songwriter ("Firecracker") to the navel-gazing poesy ("Sylvia Plath") to complete self-indulgence ("Nobody Girl," clocking in at 9:39; I can listen to a song of that length if it's "Desolation Row" or "Idiot Wind," but this ain't that... and it's certainly not a good jam). The record was originally going to be a double-disc, and the first pressings of Gold featured a bonus CD of five or six tracks. Considering that when I listen to the final version, there are only 3 or 4 tracks that I would like to hear again -- which is about how many times, come to think of it, Adams name-drops Hollywood celebrities in the liner notes (including famed Alt-Country klepto and prescription drug user Winona Ryder) -- maybe the trimming was a good call.

I always thought it was sad that Prince made the mistake of believing his own press, believing everything he touched turned to Gold, and thus releasing too many songs that should have stayed in locked trunks; Adams would be better to reign it in a little bit more. And also to return to the more acoustic display he showed off in 2000's lovely smaller-label Heartbreaker disc. I'm all for artists mapping out new territory, but instead of showing of musical evolution and growth, Gold instead suggests that all this time, instead of wanting to be Steve Earle or Gram Parsons, Adams really wanted to be... Paul Westerberg, circa Suicaine Gratification. Not good.

Whiskeytown, Adams' old and defunct band, had never stood out for me as one of the brighter spots of the Y'Allternative movement. They were more genuine, at least, than the smarmy Old '97s -- whose members never sounded like they actually *dug* country music. But the records were kinda dull, with a few stand-out songs ("16 Days," "Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight") to make you think, hmm, maybe this kid will eventually be something. It's interesting to note that for a while, the best things I ever thought Whiskeytown had recorded were both cuts on tribute discs: "I Hope It Rains At My Funeral" on the Tom T. Hall Project, and "A Song for You" on the Gram Parsons tribute.

That is, until Lost Highway released Pneumonia this past year, Whiskeytown's much delayed swansong. Here, much like Wilco's landmark Being There so expertly accomplished, Adams and co. did not just place the country influences in a glass museum case, with the sterility of Gillian Welch records and the O Brother soundtrack.

Instead, in songs like "I Don't Wanna Know Why," "Don't Be Sad," and "Crazy About You," Adams welds the influences of Emmylou and Gram with the loose ramble of the Faces (complete with that always beloved Hammond organ), the urgency of Springsteen, and the melodic sense of Paul Westerberg -- but this the Westerberg from the era of Pleased to Meet Me. It works. Sometimes it works beautifully, as in "Jacksonville Skyline," a coming of age song, standing out as probably the best thing Adams has yet recorded anywhere.

Pneumonia is an album that doesn't just examine its influences, but embraces them.

In doing that, it joins a worthy tradition. Perhaps the greatest masterpiece of alt-country is, after all, an album recorded by a band that hailed a long way from Nashville. When was the last time you listened to Exile on Main Street, anyway?
posted by Anon. 5:18 PM

 
Seeing the Forrest for the Trees
2001 in Review: The Bicycle Thief's You Come and Go Like a Pop Song.

One of the better surprises I stumbled upon this past year was the Bicycle Thief's You Come and Go Like a Pop Song. I literally stumbled onto the band -- I was sifting through the used racks at Aron's Records, when all of a sudden the band started playing an acoustic set in the record shop. Bob Forrest had been the lead singer of old '80s LA band Thelonious Monster, a band that drank a lot with the Chili Peppers, but sounded more like the Replacements. Forrest then dropped off the planet, working for UPS, kicking heroin and other bad habits, raising a son, working as a dishwasher at a restaurant, going through a few different existential crises.

This is the sound of a man coming back to do a record after a time when it was unclear whether he even ever wanted to do music again. Forrest had originally recorded the album for a smaller label, and then re-recorded most of the recod -- with a few new additions -- for Artemis, Danny Goldberg's label that's also become a big singer songwriter stable, with Jay Farrar, Steve Earle, et al.

Despite the band name's homage to De Sicca, the album is every bit an album of Los Angeles in 2001 as Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon and Tom Petty records were of LA in 1977. Forrest explores his life travails throughout his songs, with a lot of humor. Not that this is an upbeat album; even in "Max, Jill Called," one of the best tracks on a record, he begins with, "I woke up this morning feeling pretty good; and pretty good is really good for me." The lyrics and melodies on this and the other stand-out track, "It's Rainin' (4 am)" are impossible to resist; "It's Rainin'" describes coming up at the end of an awful night and finding solace in an old Irma Thomas song on the radio ... possibly the best song about rock and roll as a source not just of support and salvation, but survival, since Billy Bragg's "Levi Stubbs' Tears."

The album isn't perfect by any means; there are some turgid rockers that feel a bit dated, like late 80s Soul Asylum. But Forrest's unbelievably candid lyrics and spot-on melodies made this one of my favorites of the last year.

posted by Anon. 4:27 PM