The first song on Airtight’s Revenge is “Cake and Eat It Too,” which seems to be about the unpredictable nature of circumstances, and, for me, the mood it creates with a heavy beat and nearly industrial texture is an urban, moody, slumming sound. Its lyrics—“I walk this thin line of this double life” and “I want to make love until it rains and sleep all day” and “I’m so mixed-up baby”—indicate drama, but the language is not distinctive enough, nor the music seductive enough, for me to have the sense that this is a story I must hear.
Category: Music reviews
Creole Moon, Live from Blue Moon Saloon, by Cedric Watson and Bijou Creole
The singer-songwriter Cedric Watson claims the region with his rhythms and song titles—including “Le Sud de la Louisiane,” “J’suis Parti au Texas,” “Lafayette La La,” and “J’suis gone a la Blue Moon.” The song that shares the band’s name, “Bijou Creole,” is rather spare—with accordion, fiddle, and a simple voice chant—but “Le Sud de la Louisiane” has a dense, low groove and blues twang, and the singer’s voice is very personable, conversational in its rising and falling but genuinely expressive, hearty.
Old Time Music, New: The Village, featuring Rickie Lee Jones, Lucinda Williams, Amos Lee, Shelby Lynne, the Cowboy Junkies, and Rocco DeLuca
(“The rise of folk music and the birth of rock and roll were a direct reaction to the saccharine pop of the 1950s—the soundtrack for a vacuous and repressive decade,” asserts Suze Rotolo in the liner notes of The Village, before citing as beacons the singer-songwriters Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and folk music archivists Harry Smith and John Lomax.) It is never too late to salute something good, and I doubt it can be done too much: it is always news for someone; and it is gratifying to hear the songs of The Village, featuring Rickie Lee Jones, The Duhks, Lucinda Williams, Sixpence None the Richer, John Oates, Los Lobos, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bruce Hornsby, Amos Lee, Shelby Lynne, the Cowboy Junkies, Rachael Yamagata, and Rocco DeLuca.
American, Classical, Experimental, I Would Not Be Controlled: the album Jeremy Denk Plays Ives
What emerges is not for everyone, but for the one person—or the few individuals—who will see or hear. It is beauty that does not deny force or thought. (The pretty sounds of the flute of Helen O’Connor are heard with the piano; but, meaning no disrespect, beauty and prettiness—as I have been reminded—are not always the same.) I think that the composition ends with the sense of release, of something let go. The only reason to listen to this music is the music itself; a great reason.
The Abundance of Your House: Spoon’s Transference
Spoon has become one of the most engaging and significant bands of its era; and Spoon’s Transference, a very good album, is one informed by loneliness—and makes loneliness less damning, more understandable, the beginning of a true relationship.
Modern Mythologies: Galactic’s Ya-Ka-May
Daily life as a celebration is the atmosphere the musicians wanted to capture; and they have done that in Ya-Ka-May—National Public Radio’s music critic Ken Tucker called Ya-Ka-May an extremely thoughtful party album. It is the spirit of New Orleans, the spirit that keeps its residents joyful despite difficulties, loyal in the face of other options, and full of memory as they walk the streets of faraway towns.
Natural Correspondences in Art: Silver Pony by Cassandra Wilson
Standards challenge the singer to match or surpass those who have come before (and Streisand’s version of “Lover Come Back to Me,” both frantic and erotic, is in my head), but Cassandra Wilson reflects on the lyrics as she sings—registering relish and regret—and improvises a bit of wordless wildness toward the end of “Lover Come to Back to Me,” making it hers. It is a good beginning for her album Silver Pony, which collects live and studio performances of old and new songs, some of which she has helped to write.
The Storyteller, Live at Dizzy’s Club, by Randy Weston and his African Rhythms Sextet
The work of jazz musician Randy Weston has great authority, and in it light notes are balanced—or haunted—by dark chords; and there is jostling energy and yearning horns and a shuffling beat within stark arrangements: there is majesty, depth, and pleasure.
Privileged Intimacies: The Conformist by Doveman, featuring Thomas Bartlett
Boys can be as cruel when nonchalant as they are when intense. “Of your body now I’ve had my fill,” Bartlett declares in “Angel’s Share,” a song that admits that paradise is accidental and does not last. “If the story’s broken, well it’s easy to mend. If you don’t love her, you can always pretend,” claims Bartlett, in a song (“The Burgundy Stain”) that acknowledges that evidence of the truth will linger despite denials. Some girls move as swiftly, as selfishly, as certain boys.
Dreams, Pleasures, Rhythms: Melt White by Brass Bed
Sometimes the simple things take courage: it can take courage to cry or to smile, especially if others are pretending to have no feelings at all. It also takes a certain strength to identify an ideal and remain committed to it, especially if it is an old ideal in a time of changing values, when decadent indulgences reign. I thought of that after listening to Brass Bed, and finding myself remembering the Beatles and the Beach Boys and the dreamy popular music that followed those two groups in different forms through the decades.