Author: Syd Fablo

Elvis – Today

Today

Elvis – Today RCA Victor APL1-1039 (1975)

Today brought Elvis back into the recording studio for the first time in well over a year, since the sessions for Good Times (the follow-up Promised Land was compiled from outtakes of those sessions).  It finds Elvis in something of an identity crisis.  He dabbles in a little of this and a little of that, but never settles into any particular style.  There is a little bit of countrypolitan flavor in everything, but the individual songs range from boogie rock (“T-R-O-U-B-L-E”), to soul/R&B (“Shake a Hand”), to easy listening (“And I Love You So”), to straight contemporary country (“Fairytale”).  The problem is that little really clicks.  Elvis is stuck in the realm of the mediocre, which is territory he hadn’t really found himself in since the days of recording movie soundtracks almost a decade earlier.  Yet the mid-tempo country stomper “Susan When She Tried,” the ballad “Pieces of My Life” and the R&B torch song “Shake a Hand” are okay.  Biographer Peter Guralnick noted that these sessions weren’t as fun as ones a few years earlier, and that this was a time when Elvis’ entourage was shifting around and he seemed to not know who to trust as his personal relationships became exceptionally shallow.  Elvis perhaps could have stood to just pick a style and go with it, like a more extensive trip into boogie rock territory, doing a Little Feat cover (“Oh Atlanta” or “Two Trains,” for instance) or even just bringing Little Feat into the studio with him.  But really, it wouldn’t matter which direction he took.  Picking one would have given him a chance to focus and improve on a single sound.  Yet committing to anything on a deeper level was probably the biggest overall problem facing Elvis in 1975.  As it stands, Today is a middling effort with hardly any songs that stand out.

Townes Van Zandt – Flyin’ Shoes

Flyin' Shoes

Townes Van Zandt – Flyin’ Shoes Tomato TOM 7017 (1978)

After a flurry of activity in the late 1960s and early 70s, Townes Van Zandt’s recording output slowed considerably.  For the next fifteen years, he released just two albums.  One was the concert recording Live at The Old Quarter, Houston, Texas, arguably his very best, and the other was the studio effort Flyin’ Shoes.  This contains a few great songs, “Loretta,” “No Place to Fall,” and, to a lesser extent, “Flyin’ Shoes.”  The rest of the material is noticeably weaker, and the production by Chips Moman, once associated with the Southern Soul movement but later associated with Elvis and pop-country crossover, is all wrong.  Moman overproduces Flyin’ Shoes.  Townes’ early albums suffered if anything from low-budgets and underproduction — a sort of indifference where it sounds like first takes were used when extra takes might have yielded improvements.  It is the opposite problem here.  There is polish, but that goes hand in hand with an overemphasis on presenting a more eclectic and varied sound across the album.  Most of those efforts don’t fit the songs or Townes’ vocals.  Where indifference on the earlier recordings oddly fit the folk-inflected, hippie country music Townes was making, slicker and tinnier production with effects like a vocal chorus and synthetic sounding electric bass just obscure the music.  The other reality, though, is that the counter-cultural movement that Van Zandt tapped into a decade earlier had faded and he struggles to find a footing outside that paradigm.  [Note: at least one CD reissue makes some rather unfortunate changes to the track sequencing, placing all the best material toward the end.]

Sun-Ra – Holiday for Soul Dance

Holiday for Soul Dance

Sun-Ra and His Astro Infinity Arkestra – Holiday for Soul Dance El Saturn ESR 508 (1970)

A set recorded in 1960 mostly consisting of standards plus one song (“Dorothy’s Dance”) written by Phil Cohran.  This is traditional jazz, something along the lines of Bad and Beautiful, Some Blues But Not the Kind Thats Blue and Standards.  “Early Autumn” has vocals by Ricky Murray that recall the mannered, almost swallowed vocals of Kenny Hagood on Miles Davis‘s “Darn That Dream” with the Birth of the Cool band.  Yet, these are not throwaways from the vault, but rather pleasant readings suitable for playing in company that would bolt for the door with most outer-space Ra stuff.  In fact, this might be the all-around best of Ra’s standards albums — though Some Blues But Not the Kind Thats Blue with its great John Gilmore solos is a very close runner-up.

Scott Walker – Stretch

Stretch

Scott Walker – Stretch CBS 65725 (1973)

Scott Walker’s mid-1970s period was marked by a shift from adventurous re-imaginings of traditional pop to rather unchallenging exercises in country pop music (Glen Campbell is probably the closest comparison).  Stretch is an example of the latter, though the country elements are only just beginning to show.  Now, Scott’s voice was arguably in the best form it has ever been.  The problem is that stylistically he is playing by someone else’s rules, and his studio band often drifts into bland, clichéd territory.  Side two holds some particular interest, with the last clutch of songs managing to make an impression with Randy Newman‘s “Someone Who Cared” and “I’ll Be Home” and Jimmy Webb‘s “Where Does Brown Begin.”  The most effective moments come from songs a little more spare and intimate than Scott’s early solo efforts.  Not a bad album at all but still a little disappointing compared to what he has achieved elsewhere.  Yet Scott’s voice is so effective that this remains rather endearing.

Why? – Oaklandazulasylum

Oaklandazulasylum

Why? – Oaklandazulasylum Anticon abR0029 (2003)

If you thought, based on his collaborative works with Anticon labelmates, that he was a hip-hop artist, then Why?’s indie rock debut may be a surprise. To be entirely accurate, oaklandazulasylum never settles into one style. Why? invites all sorts of influences into the mix. The songs dart from one structure to another. The music is always refreshingly goofy. But too often oaklandazulasylum sounds more like tinkering than anything significant.  Perhaps the album is most successful when hip-hop influences are prominent.  And that takes Why? back to square one.

Andrew W.K. – 55 Cadillac

55 Cadillac

Andrew W.K. – 55 Cadillac Ecstatic Peace! E#8b (2009)

Finding precedent in John Cale‘s The Academy in Peril, Andrew W.K.’s 55 Cadillac is a (mostly) solo piano outing.  It’s anchored in pop classical, with touches of modern classical and third-stream jazz.  He’s not a pianist with the powers of Cecil Taylor, by any stretch.  He does use some of the same devices Cale used decades ago, inserting sound effects and brief little interludes.  This is a lot better than it deserves to be, and it’s actually about time that somebody took experimental 20th century music and tried to pull it together and make it more accessible.  This isn’t a complete success, at least it’s not something to rush out and find, but after my wife listened to I Get Wet multiple times in a row and at first wanted to turn this off, she could tolerate it after it got going, which never happens with Cecil Taylor or anything of that sort.