Music – Page 96 – Rock Salted

Mac DeMarco – Salad Days

Mac DeMarco – Salad Days Captured Tracks CT-193 (2014)

Call it hypnagogic pop, cultural anthropology, or the musical corollary of “Hansen’s law of third-generation return,” there are plenty of musicians operating in the early new century trying to reconfigure the music of the past that was never associated with people their social status before. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti spring immediately to mind, but in their own ways, acts like Thundercat and Kishi Bashi have the same sorts of attitudes, even if they utilize arrestingly different styles and techniques. Mac DeMarco represents sort of the singer-songwriter contingent. Salad Days has wit and character. But it also overuses a few gimmicks, like an effect that makes the guitar sound like it is wobbling or maybe even like the strings are rhythmically bending, and many of the songs fail to make their mark. If you hear one of these songs you’ve practically heard them all–but if you have to choose, pick the title track. DeMarco has talent and promise. He’ll just need to work at broadening his range a bit.

OutKast – Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik

OutKast – Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik LaFace 73008-26010-2 (1994)

The TV channel VH1 aired a documentary “ATL: The Untold Story of Atlanta’s Rise in the Rap Game.” At one point there is a clip of OutKast’s André 3000 responding to an unruly, angry crowd at a 1995 hip-hop magazine’s award show booing OutKast, after “East Coast” and “West Coast” rappers had been feuding throughout the entire event, by saying, “The South got something to say!” (Here, remember that at that very award show OutKast also asked for open-mindedness, listening to what any original MC had to say…). The tone of the documentary was that Atlanta hip-hop musicians felt neglected as media focus was exclusively on New York City and Los Angeles. But the problem with putting André 3000’s declaration in this context is that it makes it hardly more than an arbitrary statement of chauvinism. Did the Midwest, the Southwest or the Northwest not have something to say too? This reveals an important insight into the dead-end aspirations embedded in a lot of hip hop in the 1990s. The goal wasn’t some kind of fundamental equality. It wasn’t like this was a noble fight so that everybody, no matter their origins, could have a chance. Instead it was just a narrow battle to put Atlanta, alone, at, or maybe even above, the level of New York City or Los Angeles. It was about a distinct “Atlanta” identity having some kind of precedence over other identities. This represents the narrowest possible expansion. It is sort of a defense of the status quo, with just one specific fiefdom added to the inner circle of nobility in the largely patriarchal estates of the hip-hop realm

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik starts strong, but runs out its welcome a bit as it goes on. The rapping is, really, nothing too special. The lyrics are all about players/playas, which is to say they are about the bravura of young men angling to achieve “alpha male” status. They render that mindset well. By adopting a slightly ironic distance from some of it (“Ain’t No Thang”), though, OutKast allow themselves to perpetuate the sorts of misogynistic, materialistic claptrap that they occasionally poke fun of, yet always seem to be preoccupied with (“Player’s Ball (Original)”). It could just be a youthful mistake. As much as this album is suppose to announce the arrival of a unique southern style of hip-hop, it mostly recalls New York boom-bap and early 1990s East Coast gangsta rap. Yes, the tempos are a little slower, the bass is a little heavier and more insistent, and the overall vibe is a little more laid-back. Also, the music has more melodicism in the raps than most hip-hop at the time. It remains just a slight variation on the basic template of hip-hop from elsewhere. While Outkast tried to rise above the confines of mainstream hip-hop, their earliest music couldn’t. It tripped up by being just the same old gangsta hip-hop with a less aggressive posture. They didn’t really have a new objective. All they had was another horse in the same old race. Maybe they wanted this music to be more than that, but they don’t always get there. They bring it on a few tunes, but there is plenty of ho-hum filler too. After a while the album gives way to what sounds more like third-tier R&B than hip-hop as such. At that point it becomes quite tiresome.

The big stars here are the producers, Organized Noize. The rappers, Big Boi and André 3000, seem like they are along for the ride. They are up for it, but they don’t really seem like they are driving the procession. That would come a few years later. They were still kids. Much of what they started here was more compellingly delivered on Aquemini (1998), and then they went in really new directions with Stankonia (2000). But, really, it seems like OutKast wouldn’t have become what they did without first setting off in the direction they took here, then exhausting the need to push a “player” identity and instead making music that spoke to everyone on a new level.

Nina Simone – Silk & Soul

Nina Simone – Silk & Soul RCA Victor LSP 3837 (1967)

Nina Simone was an icon. She was dubbed the “high priestess of soul” by her fans, but they did so long before she actually started performing “soul” music. It was only in the late 1960s, a full decade into her professional career, that she made a foray into the genre. Frankly, this was one of her least convincing styles. She often came across as a huge stiff. She used formalistic vibrato (“Consummation”) in place of guttural drive, and pre-soul R&B shouting (“It Be’s That Way Sometime”) when a more supple delivery seemed advisable. In some ways, it is the mark of arrogance. She’s a philistine when it comes to soul music, but her hubris pushes her onward into territory that is slightly outside her natural stylistic range.

“Soul” was an afro-american musical form that often used “masking”, a technique that concealed social or political messages behind music that seemed on the surface to be (only) about romance, or whatever. The psychological issues of inferiority looming behind the technique are the sort of things Frantz Fanon wrote about in Black Skin, White Masks [Peau noire, masques blanc] (1952). When Nina Simone started making “soul” music, she frequently did it without masking. She sang soul songs that were directly about social and political issues–like her 1969 hit single “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” The problem this presented is that it really isn’t possible to directly address any subject that really matters. There is a need to engender meaning from oblique angles. At least, this is what everyone in the structuralist or post-structuralist camp from Roland Barthes to Slavoj Žižek would say, in one form or another. So while the militant social activist Simone did address the problem Fanon identified, she kind of missed another issue. Even without the “white mask” problem, there is still no way to directly express something real without inscribing it on something else, another mask. Her mid-1960s recordings that had a more traditional pop or Broadway sound gave her a mask on which she inscribed something else. It is that something else that is often missing here. We get Nina Simone singing soul, but not Nina Simone singing soul as a unique way to tell us something else. She stops short.

On “Love O’ Love” we have just her on piano, a setting closer to her earlier work, which works, and it is the best thing here. In other places, “It Be’s That Way Sometime,” “Cherish,” “Some Say,” she’s out of sync with the backing band or the horns simply sound like dinner theater pop more than “authentic” soul or her vocals seem too flat and lacking texture that the greasy rock backing calls for.

Silk & Soul sounds more like a clinical, scientific experiment than the real deal. Simone was clearly trying to stay relevant by catering to what she (or handlers) thought audiences wanted, rather than making the sort of music that compelled her and trying to bring audiences to that, whatever it was. While not terrible, this is among Simone’s most forgettable albums of the 60s.

Paul Robeson – On My Journey

Paul Robeson – On My Journey: Paul Robeson’s Independent Recordings Smithsonian Folkways SFW CD 40178 (2007)

These were recordings made in the 1950s when Robeson was blacklisted during the cold war McCarthy witch hunt era. He started his own label Othello Records and offered recordings on a subscription basis by way of the newspaper Freedom that he contributed to during that time. His longtime arranger, accompanist and collaborator Lawrence Brown had largely stopped working with Robeson following a 1949 concert in Peekskill, NY in which an angry mob of idiots attacked the stage (to which Robeson responded in later concerts by surrounding himself on stage with unionists as bodyguards/bouncers, like his own Red Guards). Instead, pianist Alan Booth is present on most of these recordings. Booth was a competent pianist, but he didn’t have the deep connection that Brown had with Robeson. To complicate matters, any musicians that worked with Robeson during this time risked having their union card revoked (so much for unions supporting the working man), and even studios that gave Robeson recording time faced FBI harassment. Under those circumstances, the mere existence of these recordings is impressive. Yet, overall, they aren’t quite as good as Robeson’s earlier Columbia recordings. There are still very fine performances here, like the stunning and resolute “Bear the Burden in the Heat of the Day” and “On Mah Journey Now, Mount Zion.” There are fairly extensive and interesting liner notes with this release though, and a few tracks were previously unreleased.

Little Feat – Hotcakes & Outtakes

Little Feat – Hotcakes & Outtakes Rhino RS 79912 (2000)

Disc one is a great summary of the reasons Little Feat was a fantastic band in their day. Disc two charts their decline and transformation into a third- or fourth-tier jazz fusion outfit. Disc three–barely listenable–tracks much of their post-Lowell George reunion. Disc four is a collection of outtakes and rarities, including live takes and some Lowell George and The Factory cuts. Disc one deserves five stars, even if I would love to see maybe a few more songs from the debut LP represented. Disc two gets boring quickly. Disc three, *sigh*, is a complete waste of space. The group was churning out pretty formulaic “New Orleans” style boogie rock at that point, they rarely had a decent singer (though Shaun Murphy helped in that department), and most of all they didn’t have any good material to work with. The thing about Little Feat was that Lowell George was that band. As his influence in the band declined before his early death, the music declined in parallel. Without him, the band was just uninspired. There is an interesting quote in the liner notes though. One of the band members talks about the reunion and ponders: how can they make it not seem like money-grubbing? Answer: you don’t. If it is truly only about the music, get together and play in your garage.

This set includes too much useless junk to recommend outright. Feat fanatics may like the rarities and outtakes disc. Ideally, though, stand-alone versions of just discs one and four would really be the ticket for newcomers and the fanatics.

The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium

The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium Gold Standard Laboratories GSL75 (2003)

In the tradition of proggy music for lonely, sexually frustrated young men, from Frank Zappa to Rush, that only King Crimson ever seemed to transcend, you have The Mars Volta. Some good stuff here and there, but this also tries too hard and shifts around too much for its own good.

Johnny Cash – Unchained

Johnny Cash – Unchained American 9 43097-2 (1996)

Rather than do another solo acoustic album after smashing success with that approach, Johnny Cash teams up with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as his backing band to deliver something a lot more energetic and loud. Other guests include Flea, Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood. If American Recordings needed to strip everything away to prove that Cash’s voice was still a force to be reckoned with, then this follow-up is granted the space to demonstrate that it was Nashville keeping Cash down and out for so many years. It’s like this: Cash was always an outsider to the country music establishment. But along the way, he started courting it. Those were bleak years. When paired with a rock band, incorporating a few rock songs, and working with a rock producer, Cash can still cook. Nashville just seems so irrelevant. This album demonstrates versatility, and refuses to let some kind of formula settle in. It’s probably the most energetic record he made since Carryin’ On almost thirty years earlier. The dirty secret though is that this album is much like The Mystery of Life from five years earlier or Rockabilly Blues from more than 15 years earlier just with better production and better songs. Another interesting comparison would be to Elvis Country (I’m 10,000 Years Old) from Elvis‘ comeback, with 25 years’ difference in perspective on what constituted a “contemporary” sound. It was fortunate Cash made this record when he did, because health problems would not permit it just a few years later. Key tracks: “Spiritual,” “I’ve Been Everywhere,” “Mean-Eyed Cat,” “Memories Are Made of This,” and “Rowboat.”

Johnny Cash – American Recordings

Johnny Cash – American Recordings American 491797 2 (1994)

Johnny Cash made one of the biggest comebacks in memory with American Recordings (perhaps only Louis Armstrong‘s surprise 1964 hit “Hello, Dolly!” comes close). Cash had struggled for the preceding two decades to maintain an interest in recording as well as to find a producer that could do justice to his older voice. It wasn’t that Cash’s many previous albums were all bad, but they were uneven and often misguided. They usually tried to take him and fit him into current trends, however awkwardly (think Leonard Cohen‘s unfortunate meeting with producer Phil Spector on Death of a Ladies’ Man). That was a mistake because it tended to devalue what made Cash so great — that rich baritone voice and his disarming earnestness — by insisting that he could only succeed by transforming himself into something else. Unlikely enough, though, by the late 1980s Cash was quietly changing all that. He made a few albums that, while still rather mediocre, had a stately feel that was quite natural for his new coarser and more gravelly voice, which subtly (or unsubtly – “Beans for Breakfast”) had more vibrato than years before. But he was still dragging along a backing band that should have been put out to pasture long ago. And the production values on so many of his albums had still lurched between various fads, from countrypolitan to urban cowboy, that haven’t aged well.

Rick Rubin, who rose to fame in the world of hip-hop and later extended his reach to rock and metal, sought out Cash and made him the key signing for his newly-formulated record label American Recordings (formerly Def American). What Rubin did wasn’t all that surprising. The popular television specials “MTV Unplugged” had been presenting a variety of rock/pop musicians in low-key acoustic settings with great success. And other established artists like John Cale (Fragments of a Rainy Season) and Bob Dylan (Good as I Been to You) had found renewed success (at least critically) with solo acoustic recordings in recent years. Also, Willie Nelson had recently released the collection of stripped down recordings of old tunes (The IRS Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories?) to help pay off well-publicized tax debts. Rubin applied that popular trend to Cash, and it was a perfect fit. All the dross that cluttered Cash’s albums for so long was immediately stripped away. Rather than trying to sound like what was popular at the time, he could just sound timeless. It’s only his voice and an acoustic guitar. Everything comes through on record very clear and natural. Cash gets to be Cash without anything to stand in the way. It helps too that Cash gets to re-record songs he’s done before (like the hauntingly grisly “Delia’s Gone”) with a smattering of other cover songs that seem tailor-made for him. By keying into the darker side of Cash’s music, this album also appealed to rock audiences that maybe had heard the name Johnny Cash but never bothered with his music before. While still ignored by much of the country music establishment — which incidentally had not done much of value for decades — this album succeeded in launching Cash into the booming music market of the 1990s, the last time (as of this writing) there was any effort by mainstream media to push music of any substantive quality. Of course, a big reason that Cash was able to find so much commercial success in this comeback was the marketing effort put forward on his behalf for the first time in a long time. It was all black & white photography, bold lettering of the name CASH, and a confident, lived-in and knowing ambiance, with a hint of rural underclass danger. Rubin does deserve credit for looking to Cash when no one else would, and for matching him up with a recording style and marketing package that suited him. Plenty of songs from these sessions that didn’t make it onto the album ended up on the very good box set Unearthed.

Richard & Linda Thompson – I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight

Richard & Linda Thompson – I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight Island ILPS-9266 (1974)

I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is a landmark of British folk-rock, and a real treasure from the 1970s. After leaving Fairport Convention and attempting a solo career with limited success, guitarist Richard Thompson met and married vocalist Linda Peters and the two began working together professionally. The duo’s debut album is a wonderful extension of various currents in British folk music of the prior decade. That Richard was a singular talent on guitar was already established. But Linda’s voice filled out the duo’s sound in a way that becomes quite apparent on listening to Richard’s solo work before and since by way of comparison. Someone once described legendary gospel and soul singer Mavis Staples as possessing a voice that was powerful yet uniquely de-sexualized — something that is unfortunately rarely accepted among female singers. Linda also has something of that same quality in her voice. With a warm and home-y tone, she had excellent command of vibrato and subtle rhythmic phrasing. Richard’s fretwork is excellent as always, with mesmerizing solos littered all across the album. But it’s the rich instrumental backdrop and superb songwriting here that make this album so endearing. Unlike so much folk music that relies exclusively on acoustic instruments in drab and unstimulating arrangements, the Thompsons are backed with a rhythm section and an assortment of colorful sounds and textures, from unsettling double-tracked vocals and punchy horns on the title track and a warm electric keyboard on “Down Where the Drunkards Roll,” to a somber concertina on “Withered and Died” and sonorous guitar reverb on “The Calvary Cross.”

All the aforementioned factors would make for a very good album. It is the songs, though, that put this into another category entirely. Many are portraits of lifestyles, if you will, often on the fringes of society. “Down Where the Drunkards Roll,” for instance, evokes an old-fashioned vision of a community of outcasts like the criminals around docks and ports that Jean Genet immortalized in his autobiographical novel Journal du voleur [The Thief’s Journal]. Tales of loss and loneliness in “Withered and Died” and “Has He Got a Friend for Me” strike tender, sympathetic chords. “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight” is the most rousing tune here, recounting the pent-up desire for adventure and unbridled energy lurking in the hearts of nearly everyone caught in the cycle of the working week. Similar sentiments are echoed in “We Sing Hallelujah” and “When I Get to the Border.” “The Little Beggar Girl” is quintessentially British folk music, revealing hints of the sort of rhythms and connivances that once inhabited Chaucer‘s medieval book The Canterbury Tales. A much bleaker vision of those notions is found in “The End of the Rainbow.” Concluding the album, “The Great Valerio” tells of adulation for and ambiguous emotional impulses to emulate a circus tightrope walker — a metaphor Richard would return to in his later solo career (“Walking on a Wire”).

It’s somewhat unfair that this is frequently described as a dark and depressing album. Aside from “The End of the Rainbow” and “Withered and Died,” this music doesn’t adopt a particularly pessimistic outlook on life. Instead it reflects an almost existential search for meaning, and on close inspection reveals a sense of camaraderie in facing rather universal toils for love and acceptance, told in each song through the microcosms of unique character studies. The emotional range of the album may not be apparent immediately, but it’s there awaiting discovery.

The Thompsons made other great music, but I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is undoubtedly their best, one for the ages.

Isaac Hayes – The Best of Isaac Hayes

Isaac Hayes – The Best of Isaac Hayes Enterprise ENS-7510 (1974)

There were things happening in the late 1960s and early 1970s that could have never happened before. There were new possibilities in the United States brought on by changing social and economic forces. And there was music right there in the heart of it all. Isaac Hayes represented a surging confidence in black america. In a way, he also represented some of the excesses that tend to go hand in hand with newfound autonomy. Though his voice is instantly recognizable, he wasn’t a great singer in the conventional sense like an Al Green, Candi Staton or even James Carr. His records were also made without the expansive compositional skills of a Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder or Donny Hathaway. Where Hayes made his mark was in bold, smoldering atmospherics, more like Bobby Womack or mid-seventies James Brown. His best songs tend to be ones that turn conventional love songs around, with subject matter that’s a bit more mature than in typical pop songs but with DIY roughness in the music that’s more youthful than the lyrics. “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” (a short edited version is included here) is more spoken monologue than “song” — a daring move. It is a brooding piece that works because of its sparse sense of drama. “Walk on By” is another of Hayes’ best, though it’s in edited form here. “Theme from Shaft” is of course Isaac Hayes’ signature tune. It’s a one-of-a-kind showpiece for a boastful, hyper-macho male ego tentatively confronting the problems of freedom rather than the ones of oppression. So the line “no one understands him but his woman” is both a little chauvinistic and a little existential, treading a line no one really walked before. Like it or not, there is not another damn song like it anywhere. The cover of “Never Can Say Goodbye” from Black Moses is a throwaway. It misses the mark in being too tepid in the vocals and too extravagant in the accompaniment. It’s probably representative of a lot of other stuff he recorded, because his good material didn’t run all that deep. This particular collection is a bit shoddy because it features edited material, though that might hold the attention of casual listeners better considering how very long the album versions were. But in the end, this album does still capture everything that made Isaac Hayes popular.