Richard Shindell’s song collection Not Far Now has songs of craft, imagination, and thought, and while it is a thing of beauty, it comes to us as one more in a long line of singer-songwriter works, and thus one is compelled to understand how and why it is to be valued as special. What’s new, unique?
Tag: music
Sexy Similarities: Van Hunt, Use in Case of Emergency
So much of popular musical art is concerned with expressing behavior and flaunting speech rather than the examination of impulse and thought; and if Van Hunt’s thematic focus is too narrow that is not an anomaly: love is his subject and it is, very typically, a contemporary entertainer’s subject as much as the traditional subject of a serious poet. Are Van Hunt’s declarations and observations supported, in his songs, by the particularities of daily or public life as evidence? (I do not think so.)
Sounds and Spaces: Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest
Listening to “Fine for Now,” a song that may be about time, conformity, and insecurity, I am inclined to describe the singer’s voice as mellow and expressive, but what does it express? The voice, while unique, does not seem particularly personal: the emotions and ideas suggested could belong to anyone. The jazz-influenced percussion, with each beat (or group of beats) seeming to exist on its own (or their own), rather than the linear, pounding beat prevalent in much of rock music, adds to the sense of flexibility, of a lack of confinement to a particular perspective.
Restorations: Oumou Sangare, Seya
The compositions “Iyo Djeli” and “Mogo Kele” and “Koroko” conclude the collection, and the small tumbling beats in “Mogo Kele” suggest the movements of daily life as much as music and “Koroko” seems both celebratory and deeply authoritative, as if offering advice and correction.
Sensuality and Trouble: Marshall Crenshaw, Jaggedland
The fragile, shifting aspects of existence have found an eloquent chronicler in Crenshaw, although his voice may be too pretty for the crashing rhythms that surround it in “Someone Told Me.” “I sadly wondered, could we ever be on common ground?” he wonders after being told something disturbing, noting “so many worlds colliding” (“Someone Told Me”).
Killing Him Didn’t Make the Love Go Away: Amy LaVere, Anchors & Anvils and Died of Love
What are the acts that begin, nurture, sabotage, and end a life? Paul Taylor’s “Pointless Drinking” is a drinking song that critiques drinking, drawing focus to the contradictions and disappointments that could cause weeping but are here merely sobering, the kind of song selection that suggests significant intelligence in a singer, in Amy LaVere.
One More Listen: U2, No Line on the Horizon
The lyrics of “Breathe” blend reflections and observations, personal details and social events, and there is something surprisingly, pleasingly, Asian in some of the music. “Spent the night trying to make a deadline, squeezing complicated lives into a simple headline,” Bono sings in the song “Cedars of Lebanon,” an admission which seems less an ideal than a compromise to me, and part of the song’s Dylanesque rambling.
Woman as Center: Jill Sobule, California Years
It is impressive how much of the world Sobule gets into her songs, how easily she creates or documents characters. “Spiderman” could be the rantings of a mad man, but it is more likely the ruminations of one more person in California trying to make a little money off Hollywood by impersonating a movie figure. California Years ends with “The Donor Song,” a song made up of the names of people who contributed funds allowing Jill Sobule to create the album California Years.
American Masters, Southern Artists: Allen Toussaint’s The Bright Mississippi, Buckwheat Zydeco’s Lay Your Burden Down, and Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys’ Best
The pianist, songwriter, and singer Allen Toussaint’s collection of song standards The Bright Mississippi is elegant, haunting, pleasing. Is that what is expected of music made by a musician in Louisiana? If anyone wants to know what music in Louisiana is like, they can listen to Allen Toussaint’s The Bright Mississippi, Buckwheat Zydeco’s Lay Your Burden Down, and Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys’ Best of Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys. This is American music by American masters.
Beautiful Sadness, Bright Rhythms: Death Cab for Cutie, The Open Door
Gibbard has noted that liking interesting things doesn’t make a person interesting—well, that may be true, but it certainly gives you something interesting to think about, as with The Open Door, making us glad that the band values its own artistry as much as it does, and has had the talent, luck, and commitment to fulfill its own goals.