Category: Reviews

John Fahey – The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death

The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death

John Fahey – The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death Riverboat RB-1 (1965)

By the time he recorded The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death, John Fahey was beginning to experiment.  He was drawing in influence not just from country, blues and folk, but also Euro-classical and Indian classical traditions.  What holds this album back from being great is that he’s going in too many different directions.  He doesn’t quit fit everything together as seamlessly as he would later on The Yellow Princess or in as sweeping and epic a way as on America, and for that matter the experiments are a bit more tepid than on the likes of Guitar Vol. 4 (The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party and Other Excursions), which is admittedly a bit uneven.  Fahey admirers will nonetheless dig this, and it still holds the potential to open a few eyes and ears for the unconverted too.  If you have the option, though, head for The Yellow Princess and America first to hear the ideas here more fully realized.

Alejandro Escovedo – Por Vida

Por Vida

Alejandro Escovedo – Por Vida MMTM1001 (2004)

One complaint frequently leveled at Alejandro is that his albums are rarely as good as his live shows.  Even his really good albums sometimes sound overproduced.  Well, this one goes a long way towards filling any gaps in that respect (I think it ended up being the long-awaited fan-oriented live disc the release of which was pushed back about two years).  The last two tracks are throwaways (even if I was present at the Turf Club when one of them was recorded, the sing-along “Sad & Dreamy (The Big 10),” so technically I appear on this album!), but overall this album really finds all the passion and eccentricity of Alejandro’s live shows intact.  He’s one of those mature songwriters, like Townes Van Zandt, Lou Reed, and a few others, that come along only rarely and can convey a whole bunch of emotions and experiences in a genuine and convincing manner, full of nuance and gravity.  As reviewer BradL says, “He’s particularly good on the foibles of masculinity and, of course, hard love is one of his specialities.”  I really like this set.  It’s got some heavy rockers, some ballads, some covers — no Alejandro live show is complete without a few choice covers.  The band is with him all the way through.  Although this might not be the place to start, unless you’ve just witnessed one of Alejandro’s live shows, I find this one of the most enjoyable discs in the man’s catalog.

Alejandro Escovedo – A Man Under the Influence

A Man Under the Influence

Alejandro Escovedo – A Man Under the Influence Bloodshot BS 064 (2001)

A Man Under the Influence is a portrait of the world Alejandro Escovedo knows. It’s about Mexican-American immigrants, love, music, and their effects on a man — brilliant in its simple honesty. This is a mellow but broad pop album with lush backing and sweet melodies. A Man Under the Influence is someone wandering the desert dragging his stories with him, and growing along the way.

Often, the sound here is slick and refined. Escovedo’s earlier work tended to have a gravelly wallop to it. He still has a sharp warmth to his songwriting but the attack is softer. Their still is a bite, but he can now convey the same themes to a much wider audience. A Man Under the Influence is about as good as anything Escovedo has done, save perhaps Thirteen Years (it also proved to be just about his last pop album before turning towards other things, from string quartets and harder rock). He doesn’t have to reach to hold on to touching tales of eccentrics and epics of friends and families.

There isn’t just a few great songs on this album; from beginning to end just about every song is a tiny masterpiece. “Rosalie” aches while Rosalie and Joe write letters to each other every day for seven long years, only getting to see each other once each year. “Rhapsody” perseveres in an imperfect world. “Across the River” is perhaps the most grippingly beautiful song. “Castanets” is a full-blown rocker complete with a girl in Arizona who ain’t got no rhythm. “Follow You Down” reflects on Townes Van Zandt’s profound impact had on Alejandro. Even “Velvet Guitar” adds a personal touch to the work. “About This Love” completes the package, tying up all loose ends.

Alejandro wonderfully orchestrates his band. The interplay of strings and his guitar weave exquisite textures into the songs. If there is any fault to the album, the pedal steel guitar is lain down a bit too thick at times. Such a minor fault is hardly a drawback.

Escovedo’s melodies are strangely endearing. While he’s not pushing heavy hooks, the songs stay with you. His words match his music, driving them deep into your memory. This is a durable album of remarkable beauty. Alejandro is a true master, and A Man Under the Influence is one to earn him the fans and glorious praise he so deserves.

Alejandro Escovedo – The Boxing Mirror

The Boxing Mirror

Alejandro Escovedo – The Boxing Mirror Back Porch 09463-57192-2-2 (2006)

Uggh.  What a disappointment.  Alejandro sounds disinterested, tired, and he is doing little more here than coasting on songs that simply approximate things he’s done before — better.  That is such a shame, because I had always thought producer John Cale was the perfect person to help realize a great Alejandro album.  THIS certainly isn’t that at all.  Maybe it was the young John Cale that Escovedo really needed.  Aside from the closer, “Take Your Place (Larry Goetz mix),” The Boxing Mirror is just utterly boring.  Maybe more than that even, it’s embarrassing.

Faust – So Far

So Far

Faust – So Far Polydor 2310 196 (1972)

Faust’s second album is quite different from their debut.  The first had only three songs, each long, abstract soundscapes with much processing by engineer Kurt Graupner.  Now there were definite “songs”.  If this makes it sound like So Far is more conventional, that is perhaps misleading.  Every song seems to adopt completely different styles, often multiple different styles.  The opener “It’s a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl” is driving primitive rock.  The drums are rudimentary and there is a sax solo that is non-virtuoso.  Then the second track is a delicate Euro-classical guitar piece.  The abrupt transition between opposites is what to expect throughout the remainder of the album.

What makes the album so unique is that everything is treated equally.  That is to say that when “On the Way to Abamae” incorporates Euro-classical music, “I’ve Got Mr Car and My TV” is anarchic hippie sarcasm (compare God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It), then “Me Lack Space…” delves into free jazz and then “…In the Spirit” features comical vaudeville style jazz, they are all treated as equally valid.  There is no sort of weighting of one over another.  That is pretty radical.  As recounted in his obituary, producer Uwe Nettelbeck took left-wing stances (like writing about the Red Army Faction/Baader-Meinhof Gang) to “force the other side to show its true colors; they won’t react in a liberal way as they would like, but in an authoritarian way as they must when things get serious”.  Faust’s music is kind of confrontational in the same way.  Either you love the open-arms radicalism, or you probably find it grating — probably because it chafes against privileging one things over others that has pretty direct analogs in the “real world” outside of music.  This, certainly, won’t be the sort of music that just drifts by in the background.  So Far is Faust at their best.

Grimes – Art Angels

Art Angels

Grimes – Art Angels 4AD EAD3535A (2015)

Yes!  After the successful left-field electronic album Visions, Grimes (b. Claire Boucher) returned three years later with an album that managed to retain all the strangeness from before plus add catchy pop hooks, synthesizing those incongruous elements just about perfectly.  These songs have everything, and more.  They have deep layers, multiple structural shifts within given songs, and stylistic variation across all of the songs.  The best part about Grimes’ wide musical interests is the way she is entirely unapologetic in jumping from one thing that intrigues her to another, as if there are no limits and nothing that can stop her.  So she goes from a squeaky J-pop voice to growling death metal scream, then back.  And yet, another great thing about Art Angels is the dark and sinister undertone to most of the songs, despite the cheery melodic hooks.  “California” has the lines: “When you get bored of me / I’ll be back on the shelf.”  The dominant economics of contemporary times preaches a market fundamentalism that admits to no compassion, no safe place, no loyalty; the market picks a winner, who gets all the spoils, then just as quickly there is a new winner and the old one is forgotten.  So maybe “California” is a relationship song, but might it be closer to metaphor?  Then take a look at “Kill V. Maim,” a sarcastic feminist drubbing of machismo, violence and war.  “Flesh Without Blood” is just completely devastating.  There is a loose, rubbery, almost surf guitar riff floating around, fuzzed bass and insistent drums with handclap breaks.  The lyrics are about artistic integrity and lost love seen in hindsight as never having “really” been love at all — both these things are worked into the same song.  The tenor of it all is a search for a transcendental state of unconditional love (a very christian concept worth having around).  “Artangels,” “SCREAM” and “Venus Fly” are some other great songs here.  But everything on the album is pretty good.  There are no dull moments.

Alice Coltrane – Universal Consciousness

Universal Consciousness

Alice Coltrane – Universal Consciousness Impulse! AS-9210 (1971)

Although not as immediately likable as Journey in Satshidananda, released the same year, Universal Consciousness is nonetheless built on a more radical concept.  Both albums blend Indian music with jazz, but Universal Consciousness (as perhaps the album title implies) reaches for a transcendental synthesis or non-duality, but fought for on a specific intersection of American Jazz, and Indian and European classical musics.  So it is difficult to precisely point to any substantial parts of this as “jazz” in any traditional sense, or as Indian music in any traditional sense, juxtaposed with each other.  This is instead a new synthesis or hybrid that incorporates all those things.  Coltrane plays harp and organ.  These are deployed in unconventional ways, both as glissando-based walls of sound and ethereal, almost disembodied notes that do not seem to be played by human hands.  What is most striking about the album, though, is the use of strings.  Coltrane wrote the string arrangements herself, with transcriptions by Ornette Coleman.  The dissonant string harmonies vividly evoke much the same feeling as some of Coleman’s orchestral jazz works like Skies of America.

This one is a puzzling and intriguing album in the best possible way.  But newcomers should start elsewhere perhaps.

Bert Jansch – It Don’t Bother Me

It Don't Bother Me

Bert Jansch – It Don’t Bother Me Transatlantic TRA 132 (1965)

People tend to like this much less than the Jansch albums that bookend it (Bert Jansch and Jack Orion).  While it certainly scales back the displays of virtuoso fingerpicking from his eponymous debut, the casually evoked moods here seem of the times in a way that neither the album immediately before nor after this did.  It is more earthly and transparent.  And it leans toward wistful and somber reflections on the new possibilities of 1960s counterculture.  This is close to John Fahey of the era, but with vocals that add a new dimension.  I for one think this is another great one — up there with Jansch’s very best.

Bert Jansch – Rosemary Lane

Rosemary Lane

Bert Jansch – Rosemary Lane Transatlantic TRA 235 (1971)

A mellower side of Bert Jansch.  This one feels a lot more classically “English” than his great early records.  As usual, the guitar playing is tremendous.  There’s no doubt after just the opener “Tell Me What Is True Love?” where Nick Drake got much of his inspiration for the following year’s Pink Moon.