Reviews

FISTFUL OF BEARD – UNTIL WE KNOW BETTER

Mar 152013
 

Can I coin a new genre? I propose we create a new genre called “Heavy Americana Metal”. Tin Horn Prayer would fall under this moniker. Those Crosstown Rivals are there and so is the Alabama 3 piece that calls themselves Fistful of Beard.

If you like your Americana pretty and intricate and full of thoughtful lyrics that resemble prose more than songs (think Joe Pug) then Fistful of Beard is not for you. That said, if you’re a fan of PBR, Old Crow and guitars. If you’ve always loved Two Cow Garage concerts but felt their albums needed more “oomph” then Until We Know Better is here to fill your needs.

This album begs you to turn it up. It gets better with volume. It doesn’t wanna talk. It wants to fuck. It doesn’t wanna think. It wants to scream and throw rock fists like it’s Pauly D on the Jersey Shore. It doesn’t want coffee and can’t afford craft beer but it’ll be drunk by the nights end.

There is a good chance you won’t like this album. I understand. This type of music ain’t for everyone but it’s damn sure for me and for me, it’s Essential Listening.

Fistful of Beard – 5th Ave.
Fistful of Beard – Daddy’s Breath
Fistful of Beard – In The Casket

Fistful of Beard’s Official Site, Fistful of Beard on Facebook, Fistful of Beard on Spotify, Buy Until We Know Better

DORADO – ANGER, HUNGER, LOVE AND THE FEAR OF DEATH

Mar 142013
 

I snatched up Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born as soon as it was released and listened to it over and over.  But I didn’t understand what was up with all the noise.  That first month it seemed like noise was all over the record and it bummed me out.  I probably put the record away for a month or two and when I listened to it again the noise really wasn’t there and what I heard was a bunch of really cool songs.  Dorado’s Anger, Hunger, Love, and the Fear of Death works about the same way for me.

On the first few listens to Dorado’s debut record all I could hear was the noise but there are some really great songs here.  I don’t know why that happens but it does and so I’m really glad I gave this record more time.

When I loaded the album into Google Play it classified Anger, Hunger, Love, and the Fear of Death as wrong blues.  I think that description works as well as anything but let me reference some bands that if you’re a fan of then I suggest you picking up the whole record and experience it yourself.  Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, 16 Horsepower, Centro-Matic.  Please don’t read that list like Dorado’s ripping off all of those bands, that’s far from the case.  It’s just that Dorado has such a unique sound that I don’t have the vocabulary to adequately describe it.  And since the download price is reasonable then if you’re a fan of any of those bands you should just buy it.

Dorado – Die Trying
Dorado – Wall Brains
Dorado – Temple of the Guiding Light

Official Site, Dorado on Facebook, Buy Anger, Hunger, Love, and the Fear of Death

CAITLIN ROSE – THE STAND IN

Mar 132013
 

Caitlin Rose gathered a lot of love for her debut album Own Side Now. And rightfully so, I might add. It’s a beautiful album, where her mostly acoustic songs use her voice to stand out.

In The Stand In, that acoustic folky sound is replaced with a bit more electricity, a bit more instrumentation and a lot more intensity.

Her fantastic voice is still the focal point of the music, but this mixes folk, rock, alt. country and traditional country into something I choose to call “Caitlin Rose”. This albums just snags you by the balls (if you have them, if not what ever is most handy and available on your particular body) (<----editor's note: I think he's talking about boobs), fills your mind with hot guitars, well crafted melodies and plain out fantastic, well written lyrics.

Someone has listened to a bit of Tom Petty, which is obvious in the first song “No One To Call”, a song that promises an album that will fulfill your every need. Caitlin Rose then channels Patty Griffin, Linda Ronstad and Patsy Cline – and mixes it up with a very 70’s sound with guitars doubling up on you like there’s no tomorrow.

A lot of this reminds me of Andrew Combs Worried Man, where the energy and the will to find inspiration in what could be called a “retro-sound” is one of the main reasons for success. She even mixes in a bit of Pink Floyd in “Waitin”, and it just sounds natural and correct. She mixes genres, and finds inspiration from a well of sources and creates her own bit of magic with it. There are so many details to point to, you hear some Fleetwood Mac here, some Patsy Cline there, and then there’s a bit of Tom Petty and even a bit of New Orleans Jazz. And in “Silver Sings” I actually had to google to check if Jeff Lynne had brought ELO in to play on the song.

But all the while it’s done with style, she show off a vast knowledge of musical history, and just picks out the good bits to create something that works for her and her magic voice. Let’s hope she keeps doing her thing, and avoids getting slaughtered and eaten by The Nashville Machine.

Some of my favorites are “No One To Call”, the out-of-this-world wonderful “Only a Clown” which she wrote with Jayhawker Gary Louris, the beautiful crooner “Pink Champagne – where Spencer Cullum really kills it on the pedal steel – and naturally the lovely ballad “Golden Boy”. “Menagerie” has a catchy tune that will stick to your mind like dried cucumber on a window, and anyone who has ever drunk-texted an ex will be shamed by “Old Numbers”.

I just plain out love this album, and yes this IS Essential Listening.

Caitlin Rose – No One To Call
Caitlin Rose – Old Numbers
Caitlin Rose – Only A Clown

Check out her website, or hook up with her bandpage on Facebook.

BEN HARPER & CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE — GET UP!

Mar 082013
 

There are some of you that will see there is a review of Ben Harper’s newest realease on Nine Bullets and immediately move on to something else.  I accept that but I pity you.  You may know Ben Harper from his “hits” or from that stoner hippy in your dorm room all those years ago.  You may have been a fan in your younger years (that would be me) or you might just know that you don’t like him.  If you haven’t already stopped reading scroll down and start one of the songs at the end of this post before reading further.  It’s not going to be what you think.

Get Up! is a pure collaboration effort.  Ben Harper teams up with old school blues harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite and the results are Essential Listening.  If you’re not familiar with Musselwhite his history goes back to Muddy Waters and is worth a trip to Wikipedia.  Get Up! is a blues record, no more no less, and it’s within the confines of the blues that both men are able to thrive.  Blues has always been a part of Harper’s music but here it is the only focus and it’s possible that he’s made his most lasting album.

There are hauntingly quiet numbers here, a staple of most Harper releases, but what makes Get Up! most exciting is the upbeat, foot stomp on the floor, songs.  On these, like “I’m In I’m Out And I’m Gone” or “I Don’t Believe A Word You Say”, Musselwhite’s harmonica wrangles in Harper’s guitar so there’s never a diversion into a longwinded jam solo.  The joy between the two men is also evident through out Get Up! see “We Can’t End This Way”.

The blues isn’t for everyone all the time.  But everyone needs a little blues every now and then.  Get Up! is your new blues record.  Just trust me.

Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite – Blood Side Out
Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite – I Don’t Believe A Word You Say
Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite – We Can’t End This Way

Official Site, Ben Harper on Facebook, Buy Get Up!

BOW THAYER & PERFECT TRAINWRECK — EDEN

Mar 072013
  

"May your dreams have mercy on you" - Bow Thayer, "Parallel Lives"

My sister once told me she used to believe Pink Floyd wasn’t an actual group of actual people–nothing earthly could conjure what they did, they must actually be from space, or be space itself. Similarly, Bow Thayer started out as a myth to me, except he couldn’t be differentiated from the earth. My first encounter with Bow Thayer was at the end of high school while digging around Jan Høiberg’s The Band fansite, which was how I spent most of my time and found most of my music. Perfect Trainwreck was listed as a guest of Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble and I thought, That’s the best band name ever. The only other things I could find out about Bow was that Levon had also played on his new album, 2007′s Spend It All, and that he lived in Vermont. All my Soulseek searches for his music were fruitless.

I forgot about it until I got to college a few months later. In an inspired scheme, I bought iTunes gift cards for myself on parent-sponsored trips to Target, thinking they would be less suspicious that bill than one from the iTunes store. The first records I downloaded were Bow’s. To get away from my roommate, I burned them to a CD and sat in my car listening and chewing ice. In the Gainesville swamp-heat, the Vermont mountain music cooled me more than the ice. The Trainwreck’s music at the time was wild and spare and superlime, like Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece played on banjo. Listening to “Jewel” and “Equinox Waltz” and “You and Everybody Else,” I drew my version Bow Thayer–sometimes sitting in the valley of a green mountain, sometimes at the cloudy summit, always in a rocking chair with his eyes closed and a big beard. He became a medicine man, somebody who would never come to Florida, another reason to leave Florida. I don’t know why, but I used to think the only shot I’d ever have of meeting him was by chance in an airport.

Five years later, I’d just moved to Somerville Massachusetts, and Bow Thayer’s name appears on the marquee of the nightclub across the street from me. One street. I sat myself in a booth on the side of the stage and tried to reconcile the fact that after tonight, the myth would be gone. I would learn in what context his music was meant to be received. There’s no way it was meant for a teenager in Florida. The audience was middle-aged, either fans of Bow’s from his days in early 90′s Boston rock bands, or of The Trainwreck’s trippier run of recent albums. I feared he would turn out to be a jam-band. Then Bow started tuning an electric banjo. I didn’t know everything. He played stunning songs I’d never heard like “Suicide Kings,” and “Parallel Lives,” and he talked about a long-time-coming concept album he’d written on electric banjo. The image I’d cradled of Bow Thayer unavoidably crashed, but seeing him work out something so ambitious in front of my face was fucking awesome. There was also a lot of jamming.

The album he talked about was Eden. Since I first started listening, The Trainwreck’s sound has stretched from a deep rain puddle into a prog-roots reflecting pool. Still somehow rippling between Tom Petty’s rock and Happy & Artie Traum’s folk, Eden also reaches some of that Pink Floyd ether. It’s is not an album many musicians outside of Jim James would be willing to try. It’s what might’ve happened if Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Cosmic Cowboy” character had landed in New England instead of Texas. It’s what might’ve happened if The Basement Tapes were made after a huge Vonnegut binge.  It’s meteors and mud-clods, loam and stardust.

Bow Thayer & The Perfect Trainwreck – Inside Joke
Bow Thayer & The Perfect Trainwreck – The Beauty Of All Things

Buy Eden and stream all of Bow Thayer’s catalogue at his Bandcamp.

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