Music – Page 95 – Rock Salted

Erykah Badu – New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)

Erykah Badu – New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) Universal Motown B0010800-02 (2008)

I don’t listen to much R&B these days. And why should I? Most of it is that bad…you know, rank, superficial posturing on nothing more than ridiculous and unending “American/Pop Idol” melisma. I won’t even get into the Amy Winehouse types. It’s been years since anything close to as good as Voodoo, or even The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, has crossed my path. This New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) is something though. Erykah Badu has an unusual voice. Her lyrical subject matter is, on the one hand, nothing new, but, on the other hand, there is nothing in her songs that is anything less than supremely relevant. The music leans on hip hop and darker Seventies soul without sounding like it’s trying too hard to sound like either. If you want soul/R&B that makes an effort to be meaningful, then you’ve come to the right spot. She released a Part Two that felt considerably more limp and less engaged.

Willie Nelson – American Classic

Willie Nelson – American Classic Blue Note 67197 (2009)

These “standards” albums are so common, that you almost expect that mild-mannered jazz combos record piles of them just to leave “in the can,” waiting for celebrity vocalists to come along and drop in some singing on top. Willie Nelson has done plenty of these before (Stardust, Healing Hands of Time, etc.), this one merely in the format of the revived Blue Note Records pop jazz aesthetic. It’s stripped of any real charisma, ensuring that it’s a real snoozer. Yet, this one’s professional through-and-through. My mom would sure enjoy this, as she loves vapid, lowest common denominator, boring housewife sort of albums like this and Rod Stewart‘s It Had to Be You… The Great American Songbook. But I’m selling this short! It is also suited as background music for a genteel businessman’s cocktail lounge or a waiting room.

Willie Nelson – Countryman

Willie Nelson – Countryman Lost Highway B0004706-02 (2005)

Oh, Willie. Countryman is his reggae album “10 years in the making” (says the album sleeve — in reality it must be that no one wanted to release it). The one inspired choice is a cover of Johnny Cash‘s “I’m a Worried Man,” which Cash wrote about a man he encountered in Jamaica, sung here as a duet with Toots Hibbert of Toots & The Maytals. Otherwise, this tiresome genre exercise has nothing to offer. “Straight” country versions of reggae songs (like he does for “The Harder They Come” here) would have worked better than Willie singing against a reggae beat. Still waiting on Willie’s hip-hop album.

Willie Nelson & Asleep at the Wheel – Willie and the Wheel

Willie Nelson & Asleep at the Wheel – Willie and the Wheel Bismeaux Records BR 1287 (2009)

Willie Nelson has always loved western swing. Recent albums like You Don’t Know Me evidenced that fascination. Teamed with Asleep at the Wheel, Willie and the Wheel is as self-consciously retro as it could be. Every song reaches to reproduce the sound of a classic 1940s cut by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. This record is a ton of fun. Yet, it also can’t get past its obligations to maintaining its “retro” sound. So this glides by somewhat on the surface. Willie has offered quite a lot of music at that level in his later years. It’s almost a very good one, but lacks a little something hard to put a finger on.

Pescado Rabioso – Artaud

Pescado Rabioso – Artaud Talent SE-408 (1973)

A bit derivative of a lot of folk/rock of the day, like Richie Havens, Neil Young, Tim Buckley, Bread, America, Wishbone Ash, Roy Harper et al., but at its best Artaud offers a compelling distillation of lots of currents running through popular music at the time. There is a searching quality here. Argentina had struggled through power battles between military and civilian rulers. As a peripheral economy, they made fitful efforts to industrialize. Just the other side of the border in Chile, of course, 1973 saw the U.S.-sponsored coup against President Allende. Turbulent times. In them, Luis Alberto Spinetta and Pescado Rabioso (translation: Rabid Fish) attempted to forge an unique identity among the remnants and detritus of Western rock and folk. They don’t completely break the mold. They still do manage to forge something of their own. Some of the most memorable moments (“Las habladurías del mundo,” “Bajan”) have more burning electric guitar solos than much folk of the day. Spinetta’s guitar playing has hints of forward-looking modernity in its vaguely hippie rock foundations. The tone of the album is a little darker than what would have been popular in much English-language singer-songwriter music at the time. It also bears no resemblance to the bright and brash psychedelic and distinctily South American elements of Tropicália that evolved in nearby military-ruled Brazil in the previous few years. Little touches, like the slightly bluesy and jazzy flair of “Cementerio club” and “Superchería” and the acoustic intimacy of “Por,” keep things interesting. On the whole this is eclectic. It’s no surprise then that it’s also a little uneven (the nine-minute-plus “Cantata de puentes amarillos” drags at times). It’s a hell of a lot more satisfying than a lot of latter-day acts — almost forty years later — like Jack White that also take a highly derivative approach to songcraft, because when it hits this stuff seems honest and thoughtful rather than being just lazy approximations of what are thought to be successfully established formulas.

Nico – Chelsea Girl

Nico – Chelsea Girl Elektra V6-5032 (1967)

Nico’s Chelsea Girl is an overlooked classic. While certainly a product of the 60s folk movement, this album stands apart from the gritty yet welcoming humanity of the usual folk-rock. It instead cascades through personal trials of someone out of step with the multitudes. The album focuses on the wonder and feeling of experiencing a time without answers. What makes it so unique is the album’s ability to fit within a much larger scheme. Chelsea Girl plays its part magnificently.

A model in Europe, Nico (born Christa Päffgen) managed to get a part in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960). In the U.S., she studied at the Actor’s Studio as a classmate of Marilyn Monroe. Nico also fell in with the Andy Warhol Factory crowd. As a Warhol “superstar” she appeared in movies like The Chelsea Girls (1966) and **** (1967). Warhol was eager to promote Nico’s singing career by pushing her into a role with The Velvet Underground. Nico provided another sonic texture to the Velvets, who changed music forever with their new urban musical experiments. The interpersonal dissonance she created in the group only permitted a short stay. The Velvets were not a backing band and Nico wanted to be a solo star–like Bob Dylan.

Chelsea Girl is a fantastic debut album, through the combined efforts of many. Nico sings “I’ll Keep It with Mine,” which Bob Dylan wrote for her (but first recorded by Judy Collins). Lou Reed, John Cale, and Sterling Morrison from the Velvet Underground provided five songs between them and perform on a number of the tracks. Jackson Browne wrote three songs. Browne also plays guitar on the album, having played behind Nico at live shows (alternating with other guitarists like Tim Buckley, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Tim Hardin). Renowned producer Tom Wilson pulls the far-reaching aspirations of Chelsea Girl together. The soft strings and flute arranged by Larry Fallon add just enough sweet beauty to the songs. Wilson precisely matches every sound against Nico’s voice. While Chelsea Girl‘s orchestral chamber folk tracks certain currents in the New York folk music scene at the time, there is an apolitical melancholy to it that other vaguely similar examples lack.

A voice takes this album to new places. Virgin ears, however, may take a moment to adjust. Nico sings with an icy drone that seems to pull all parts of the chromatic scale into just one tone. She is not only guileless, but she seems positively incapable of guile in her voice. Her English isn’t clean, almost like a low Germanic rumble. The music is isolated. Often tragic, the album echoes a lasting wisdom in its bleak messages. The deepest beauty of the music is its cerebral, existential intrigue. Yet, the calm arrangements make the album still accessible. Chelsea Girl has the same peaceful acceptance of a tragic world found in John Coltrane’s last recordings from about the same time.

The title song flows with a cool but sweet melody, narrating a insider’s look into Warhol’s “Chelsea Girls.” “I’ll Keep It with Mine” has the atmospheric pop qualities you expect from a Dylan song, but seems even prettier after the title track. “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” falls together perfectly as a metaphor for the entire album. It would never work without Nico’s emotional detachment though. The deep, unsentimental searching in her voice has never been duplicated. Perhaps the most noted songs on the album are “The Fairest of the Seasons” and “These Days.” You actually have to appreciate the rarity of such pure statements. She may not have a dazzling range, to put it mildly, but Nico had a powerful ability to make moving music.

Chelsea Girl in a way expands on her very first recordings made with Brian Jones, Jimmy Page, and Andrew Loog Oldham. This album did have a heavy influence by producer Tom Wilson and the rumor is that neither Nico nor the Velvet Underground crowd liked the results. She certainly never made music even remotely similar again. Her next few albums established Nico as a goth queen whose music bore more from 20th-century classical than any kind of rock and roll. Only “It Was a Pleasure Then” hints at her later work, and even then only slightly.

While Nico never went beyond underground status as a singer, the present time would have been kinder to her. She did influence plenty of alt-folk like Tim Buckley and Nick Drake. Never truly understood on its own terms, but the success of latter-day alt-folk artists and the inclusion of some of her songs on The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack show the world eventually readied itself for the sound of Chelsea Girl. Personal problems and drug additions aside, a model like Nico could have gone far in the realm of music videos as well. She was closely involved with many of the greatest artists of the last century, and her legacy certainly belongs with them.

Bo Diddley – Bo Diddley’s Beach Party

Bo Diddley – Bo Diddley’s Beach Party Checker LP-2988 (1963)

Consider Bo Diddley’s Beach Party the first great live rock and roll record. It was recorded in July 1963 in Myrtle, Beach South Carolina. Recording technology was not really advanced enough to permit on-location live recordings of amplified rock bands to have anywhere near the fidelity of studio recordings of the day. So, this one is pretty lo-fi. But damn if Bo and his band — just Jerome Green and Norma-Jean Wofford — don’t rip the place up! Bo is a huge ball of energy. His screaming vocals on songs like “I’m All Right” are pretty fierce. Just listen to the guitar on a song like “Mr. Custer” too. You could almost slip it onto The Blow Up from more than 15 years later and it would still sound contemporary. It’s really the raw and cutting guitar that makes this one so special. Apart from some of the hits, which are frequently played at breakneck speed, Bo manages to tear through such unlikely material as “(On Top of) Old Smokey” as an instrumental and make it cook. It was a few years before live rock records came close to this one, and then mostly from West Coast acts able to tap into the latest technology. It’s records like this that make people fall in love with rock and roll.

Bo Diddley – Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger

Bo Diddley – Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger Checker LP 2977 (1960)

I will repeat a line someone wrote about Sly‘s A Whole New Thing that Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger is also one of the most exciting mediocre records ever. It was recorded in gloriously crude and primitive fashion in Bo’s home studio in Washington, DC. The effect is a little like having him playing in your living room, which is so small the backing singers have to be in the next room — that’s how quiet they sound on the opening “Gunslinger.” There are plenty of flubs, a lot of off-key singing and a pervasive do-it-yourself feel to this music (there is a superior version of “No More Lovin'” on Rare & Well Done complete with someone coming into the room during recording to announce “I’ve got your hamburgers.”). While hip-hop eventually turned to gangster and thug life topics, in its early days it was proudly focused on trivialities like sneakers and how parents didn’t understand. It was a transformation with parallels in rock ‘n roll. Gunslinger sounds very much like the early rock ‘n roll era with fun, frivolous topics carried on by pure energy…and Bo’s raucous guitar. You can put this album on for anybody, and they’ll get it. And they’ll probably smile too. Nobody can make a record like this anymore without resorting to parody. But that’s just because there never was and won’t ever be another like Bo Diddley.

Kishi Bashi – Lighght

Kishi Bashi – Lighght Joyful Noise (2014)

Pop music can still succeed. Kaoru Ishibashi has made an album here that melds the frenetic energy of Japanese J-Pop with an assortment of Western pop music formats from the last half a century, especially prog rock (Mike Oldfield, Kansas), symphonic psychedelic rock (early Harry Nilsson, The Moody Blues), indie rock (Animal Collective, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, fun., Mercury Rev), etc. There are a lot of synthesizers here. They create a symphonic palette on a humbler scale, and without much to be humble about. It’s something of a surprise that the songs aren’t about elves and fairies, because upbeat, hyperactive music like this is usually drawn to the realm of magical fantasy. But it isn’t. That push into another direction is what makes Lighght so nice. Its strength is its eclecticism, used in a way that is not an end unto itself. The lyrics have some missteps (“Mr. Steak, you’re Grade A”, *sigh*). Still, the lyrics are an afterthought to the soundscapes. The sensation given by many of the songs is that of an idea so intensely developed that it overflows a bit, unable to be contained by the usual structures of the styles it employs. So, that leads to the limitations. These songs are sometimes little more than little shots of pop pleasures, synthesizer extravaganzas with slowly building, anthemic vocals rounded out with baroque flourishes on violin and sped-up segments (often from the violin again) once upon a time reserved once upon a time for attempts to sound like chipmunks performing holiday songs. So enough about the limitations. A song like “Q&A” has an adept sense of shifting rhythm, built around a fairly steady 4/4 beat, the layers of synthesizer-generated horns, and slippery strings and soft punches of a moog keyboard capture attention away from the beat, so that what is steady has the appearance of something shifting and moving. This is what Ishibashi does so very well–the insistent drive of “Carry on Phenomenon” has that quality too. Whatever about the music seems superficial, it more than makes up for in its happy reconstruction of the geekiest sorts of grandiose pop music of the past. This sources of inspiration often came across as pretentious. But strung together this densely, Ishibashi puts a sizeable crack in the ponderous self-importance of those influences. All those influences have a place. There isn’t any sort of reductionist emphasis on any one of them though. The techniques of pop music that felt the need to be taken seriously are cleverly subverted this way, by taking away their primacy and centrality.

Talk Talk – Laughing Stock

Talk Talk – Laughing Stock Verve 847 717-2 (1991)

Though commercially ignored on release (and beginning descriptions of recordings this way usually means good things are in store), Laughing Stock is now recognized as being among the definitive albums of the 1990s. There are definitely different stages in Talk Talk’s oeuvre. Early on, they were an above-average pop group. By the time Spirit of Eden came about, they were making art music removed from the usual progressions.

Searching testaments in Mark Hollis’ vocals find new expressions of timeworn themes. Hollis anchors this disc, as studio musicians lend much to Laughing Stock. Multi-instrumentalist Tim Friese-Greene stirs the pot enough to have the album invigorating throughout.

Sounds are layered to the point that horns and pianos appear only for seconds at a time, and even then becoming only barely audible. The orchestral backing accentuates the ambient qualities while also resonating with the natural textures. In all these songs, Talk Talk derive a new way of recording pop music, one that takes painstaking effort to build layered, evolving tonal canvases that practically “waste” the sounds of the instruments by putting so much detail into music that ends up being comparatively spare. There is very little structure. You cannot point to some essential core of the album and say, “this is Laughing Stock.” It suggests more than just itself. It remains like an untranslated, intensely introspective piece of one great, total mystery. To forgive, to accept, to die, to love; these are the preoccupations Talk Talk take up. They go where the stakes are high indeed.

“Ascension Day” has rhythmic guitar washes enveloped in a near-hypnotic wall of sound. The foreboding flow of the lyrics (“Bet I’ll be damned/ Get’s harder to sense to sail/ Farewell fare well”) assumes a humble wonder that probes even the darkest possibilities. These painful first steps lead to richer realizations. “After the Flood” has the obscured vocals building a new, calmer state. It creates a fresh palette. Guiding are the gentle organ harmonies and sweetened drum licks punctuated with a long, distorted run from the harmonica. Talk Talk build rhythmic pulses into a living canvas. Wading through a vision of some kind of a den of sin, Hollis constantly seeks some general apocalypse from which he could be reborn. “Taphead” drives deep into the themes of rebirth and enlightenment. “New Grass” then continues the uplifting feeling with its softly slurred guitar lines.

Laughing Stock is so unique and developed that it reaffirms the human power to survive the wear of day-to-day life. Disconnects can be healed. Listen to Laughing Stock when everything is dark. Listen to it again in bright sunshine after waking. Laughing Stock is attuned to both the wandering emptiness of night and the building glory of the morning.