Folk – Page 4 – Rock Salted

Ryan Adams – Ten Songs From Live at Carnegie Hall

Ryan Adams – Ten Songs From Live at Carnegie Hall Blue Note Records B002263402 (2015)

Ryan Adams comes across as a pretentious twat. His music can overplay the histrionics. In just about every marketing photo he has carefully tousled hair, probably a tattered jacket, and perhaps even a cigarette dangling from his lips. And yet, in spite of all that, he can write good songs. The ever-present burning emotional content is usually framed as existential crises of an individual navigating complex and difficult to the point of oppressive social relations. This album, a selection of tracks from a larger, limited edition boxed set, is just Adams solo and acoustic. There is guitar and piano, some harmonica. The effect is a bit like when the urban folk movement of the 1960s sent its brightest starts to the Carnegie Hall stage. While his vocals still retain the histrionics, and the between-song banter is chock full of pretentious twattery, the minimalist accompaniment limits how bombastic the performances can be. The results are probably closest to his solo debut (and still best solo album) Heartbreaker. He may be the singer/songwriter you hate to love, but the best of his talents are pushed to the forefront here. Surely one of his very best solo records.

John Fahey – Womblife

John Fahey – Womblife Table of the Elements TOE-CD-37 (1997)

John Fahey’s 1990s renaissance was not unlike Scott Walker‘s in leading down a very stark and abrasive path. Womblife is intriguing even if not essential like his early classics. His guitar style was starting to resemble Loren MazzaCane Connors in many ways.

SoKo – I Thought I Was an Alien

SoKo – I Thought I Was an Alien Because Music BEC 5161067 (2012)

A respectable collection of twee chamber folk music. Though at times this threatens to overplay the sheer preciousness, particularly with the vocals that sound almost like Björk but without the same lurking shrewdness, because the best moments are when this breaks out of the almost timid yet clever self-reflection with bursts of almost incongruous gregariousness. Shows much promise.

Bob Dylan – The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait

Bob Dylan – The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) Columbia 88883 73488 2 (2013)

Drawing primarily from the years that produced Self Portrait, Dylan, and New Morning, but also touching briefly on The Basement Tapes, Nashville Skyline, and the new material from Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. II, this tenth edition of the “Bootleg Series” focuses on a crucial turning point in Bob Dylan’s career, when for the first time he was drawing criticism and seemed to be making missteps. But set that all aside. The first disc of this collection is mostly rather excellent, and stands all on its own. From this evidence, Dylan had not run out of ideas. He had plenty. He was also capable of touching, heartfelt performances. But somebody, Dylan, his managers, the label…one of them, or bunches of them, seem to have conspired to present Dylan in the worst possible light back at the time of the original releases. This collection give everyone a second bite of the apple, so-to-speak. It finds Dylan doing something akin to the folk that he made in the early/mid 1960s. But by the dawn of the 1970s, commercial interests were looking west toward the burgeoning singer-songwriter movement that utilized more ornate studio embellishments than the kind of spare, acoustic folk Dylan was still frequently recording. This gives the impression that it was (stupidly, in hindsight) decided that Dylan needed to do something else. So he did. Dylan’s albums from the era ended up flawed, even dreadful at times. The songs on the first disc here are demo versions, unreleased outtakes, alternate versions, and a few versions that appear to be the released versions stripped of some or all original overdubs (akin, somewhat, to Willie Nelson‘s Naked Willie). The latter discs add more of the same, plus some live recordings. The deluxe edition includes a full disc of “The Complete, Historic ‘Isle of Wight’ Concert, 1969.” In truth the extra material is of marginal interest. The best material is on disc one; a single disc edition would actually be the one to get, if it existed. But all those details aside, this collection is great because it shows how even (or maybe especially) a huge star like Dylan faced pressure to do something “different” even when it was clear that doing more of the same is what would have worked best. The evidence is right here, and with hindsight thankfully the best of his efforts of the era are now available for all to hear.

Françoise Hardy – La question

Françoise Hardy – La question Sonopresse HY 30.902 (1971)

Françoise Hardy was one of the more literate pop/folk artists of her time in the 1960s and 70s. La question, her best-known album, is very nearly a collaboration with Tuca (Valeniza Zagni da Silva), a Brazilian musician who wrote or co-wrote most of the songs, plays guitar and contributed to arrangements. There are small South American accents on the guitar playing, even as the album is thoroughly French. But Hardy still makes her mark with perfectly hushed, contemplative vocals. The song lyrics are practically adolescent poetry, mostly about romance and existential crises — though “Le martien” is a tale about aliens reminiscent of Neil Young‘s “After the Gold Rush.” This is music about trying to find a hold on something when it seems like everything is about to wash away. The words to describe it: melancholy, wistful, wounded, lonely, searching, moody, bookish, romantic. Although impeccably recorded with a tasteful chamber pop setting, this is also a strikingly spare recording, with Hardy’s voice and acoustic guitar the only constants. The title song, co-written by Hardy and Tuca, ends with the line “Tu es ma question sans réponse, mon cri muet et mon silence.” (“You’re my question without an answer, my mute cry and my silence.”). With the Sixties over, May 1968 already fading from memory, La question is sort of like a counterpart to what Scott Walker had done in prior years: a sophisticated twisting of popular song in an introverted fashion. But unlike Walker, Hardy performs almost exclusively for private, intimate listening.

Michael Denning – Noise Uprising

Michael Denning – Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution (Verso 2015)

Professor Michael Denning has offered a unique history of the early days of electrical music recordings with Noise Uprising. The earliest sound recordings were analog, recorded straight to a disc through a sound horn, but electrical recordings introduced a microphone to capture sounds before inscribing them on a disc (later came magnetic tape and then digital media). The microphone greatly enhanced sonic fidelity, at roughly the same time that phonographs for playback dropped dramatically in price. These, among other factors, led to a brief surge in the recording of “vernacular” music from 1925 to 1930, at which point the Great Depression decimated the global market for sound recordings. It was a time when recordings went from being novelties and marketing gimmicks to promote other sales to being valued cultural artifacts in their own right.

Denning is well versed in recordings from around the world, and readers may learn about some genres from other parts of the world for the first time, whether Cuban son, Egyptian taarab or Indonesian kroncong. To supplement the book, he has also created a “Noise Uprising” playlist through a free online streaming music service (login information provided in the book), featuring some of the song selections discussed in the book. For many readers, nothing short of listening to the recordings being discussed will capture the full effect of the music.

There are detailed passages exploring the nature of “noise” and its relation to the music that developed in conjunction with the rise of electrical recordings in the late 1920s. Denning examines the role of rhythm, including the rise of “rhythm sections”, and the unique role that recordings took in overturning the dominance of published sheet music. He provides a rather excellent summary of how early recordings were seen as supporting the sale of sheet music, with most recordings sold by furniture stores to create a market for phonographs (which were treated as furniture), whereas the electrical era actually supplanted the primacy of printed music and enhanced the role of the performers (and the esteem granted to their abilities to improvise), before radio hardware manufacturers bought up record labels as they began failing amidst the Great Depression.

The boldest claim Denning makes is that a musical revolution took place through unique contributions of global port cities. This claim (inspired by the compilation album series The Secret Museum of Mankind: Ethnic Music Classics), while intriguing, is not conclusively supported. There are anecdotes, but not much to refute counter-theories or any attempt to systematically test the validity of the hypothesis. Still, whether or not you agree with that theory, the rest of the book is still a fascinating account that doesn’t depend entirely on that hypothesis. For instance, Denning draws on an impressive amount of prior research to catalog the sales volume and import/export characteristics of the music industry just before the Great Depression — elaborating where and how music was recorded, where the records were pressed, and where they were shipped for sale. He also brings a leftist (Marxist) perspective to the analysis, and a more astute awareness of economics than that of most music writers. For instance, at numerous points the book discusses the tensions and usage of vernacular music by countries of the Third World project. Towards the end, Denning even makes some sharp observations about how tensions with copyright regimes in the Neoliberal era have pursued an “enclosure of the commons” program that was resisted by the Third World nations until their capitulation in the late 1970s (after the Third World’s New International Economic Order proposal was defeated) at which point Western capitalists began to apply the “World Music” label to market this sort of music as a commodity — whereas about a half century earlier the same sorts of recordings were marketed as “folk” music.

Even readers lacking any specific interest in musical recordings of the late 1920s may find much of interest here. Denning’s extensive discussion of the role of recordings in placing timbre, and the role of contrasting timbres on recordings, in the foreground of musical practice make interesting fodder for a discussion of the practices of later musicians like iconoclastic jazzman Ornette Coleman with his extreme sensitivity to timbres, or Denning’s perspectives on “exotica” as being linked to the early formations of anti-colonial struggles might inform interpretations of the way eccentric jazz bandleader Sun Ra led a musical commune for decades that incorporated elements of exotica. For that matter, as Denning discusses the way the collapse of the record industry around 1930 was like a failed revolution, the idea that revolutions reappear across time and space might help explain the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll recordings a little more than two decades later. And, of course, this is a valuable pre-history to help contextualize the rise of hip-hop decades later — another revolution from below that relied on re-purposing of existing musical materials.

Although scores of writers from around the globe are cited, from musicologists and amateur critics to anti-colonialist theorist Frantz Fanon, Denning uses Theodor Adorno as a reference point for much of his analysis. Denning doesn’t just repeat Adorno’s theories — Denning offers ample critiques, mostly from a Gramscian perspective. In some ways, this limits the analysis, stopping well short of post-Marxist analysis from the likes of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and tethering it to a predominantly economic class-based framing. When he discusses the way harmony was a mechanism for vested interests of society to exert influence in the musical realm, the book screams out for something more like Bourdieu’s sociological analysis or a similar one of institutional economics.

All things considered, this is a book that offers a fascinating and significantly new theory of musical development during the early days of sound recordings. Much room is left for additional observation to test the hypothesis about the role of port cities in musical evolution, but everything else here comes together well. Denning’s way of explicitly politicizing the development of music just before the Great Depression is what allows its revolutionary content to emerge. To suggest that there was no political aspect in this musical practice is simply to actively perpetuate an existing political order; and as historian Howard Zinn said, you can’t be neutral on a moving train. More to the point of Denning’s thesis is something John Berger wrote in his essay “The Primitive and the Professional,” New Society 1976 (reprinted in About Looking):

“the ‘clumsiness’ of primitive art is the precondition of its eloquence. What it is saying could never be said with any ready-made skills. For what it is saying was never meant, according to the cultural class system, to be said.”

This old Berger quote is about as concise a summary of Denning’s “noise uprising” thesis as possible.

The Incredible String Band – Wee Tam & The Big Huge

The Incredible String Band – Wee Tam & The Big Huge Elektra EKS 74036/37 (1968)

The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter is their best, but Wee Tam & The Big Huge may well be my favorite — it’s the one I reach for most often. Robin Williamson emerges as a strong songwriter. As before, there is still a lot of worldly post-modern folk eclecticism at work. Maybe a bit fewer improvisational surprises. But even a streamlined “Log Cabin Home in the Sky” is a pure delight. Looking back upon ISB’s two albums from 1968 it would be hard to argue they weren’t the pinnacle of psychedelic folk.

Shawn Phillips – Collaboration

Shawn Phillips – Collaboration A&M SP 4324 (1971)

A bit too hippie-dippy at times, there is an over-abundance of gimmicks in the vocals, and the lyrics often fall flat or provoke half a cringe, but there is a lot to admire in the musical innovations here. Phillips takes folk and throws it together with prog rock, with touches of jazz and classical. This album is titled Collaboration and the jacket describes it as a collaboration by Shawn Phillips with Paul Buckmaster and Peter Robinson. Buckmaster does some amazing things. The song “Us We Are” includes orchestration, but it is so subtle and organic that the string and horn orchestrations are already well underway before they are noticeable! Songs like “Moonshine” have some nice keyboards from Robinson too, with a dexterity and morose ease that works very well. The side one closer “Armed” brings all the instrumentalists’ talents together best. So, while Collaboration has its appeal, it is perhaps a step down from Second Contribution, which is much more consistent even if somewhat less daring or innovative. It might have been better with an additional collaborator to handle lyrics and vocals.

Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Kate & Anna McGarrigle

Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Kate & Anna McGarrigle Warner Bros. K56218 (1975)

Owing more to British folk-rock traditions of the previous decade than to, say, the Greenwich Village urban folk scene of the prior 15 years, the debut album from Canadian sisters Kate & Anna McGarrigle is a great example of what folk music can offer. No doubt the sound of the recording owes to having the legendary Joe Boyd as co-producer. This quirky music ranges from Irish-flavored folk (“Foolish You”), to Californian singer-songwriter soft rock (“(Talk to Me of) Mendocino”), to Appalachian country music (“Swimming Song”), to light soul (“Kiss and Say Goodbye”), to vaudevillian quasi-bel canto pop (“Blues in D”). The song “Heart Like a Wheel” was recorded as the title track to an album by Linda Ronstadt, and the McGarrigle sisters do a version here. This is an album that seems feminine. The sort of machismo and derring-do that infects such a disproportionate amount of music is, seemingly, absent. Instead, there is a lovely, welcoming warmth. The music is literate without imposing a self-professed intelligence on the listener, friendly without descending to limpid new age “positive thinking” mantra, self-critical without wallowing in morose navel-gazing. In spite of the varied stylistic touches, the album remains centered in its own space. Other styles float in like house guests adding to a conversation. Because of this approach Kate & Anna McGarrigle is an album that may come on a bit slowly. But it hangs on with its lovely wit and grace to be one of the finer folk-rock offerings of the tail end of the singer-songwriter boom.

Karen Dalton – In My Own Time

Karen Dalton – In My Own Time Just Sunshine PAS 6008 (1971)

Harvey Brooks brought Dalton to the studio with a very professional studio band and recorded her singing a selection of contemporary songs. Brooks’ band plays in the warm style of a lot of folk-rock and East Coast singer-songwriter stuff of the day. But the thing is, the whole band sounds thrilled to be performing with the unknown Dalton. Rather than just her usual, limited repertoire of acoustic rural folk — though a version of her signature “Katie Cruel” is here, along with the traditional folk tune “Same Old Man,” the performances reminiscent of her posthumously-released demo and live recordings — she’s mostly performing something akin to a “top of the pops” panoply of soul, rock and blues.

At the risk of sounding like a new-age cliché, Karen Dalton’s voice and her music more generally are life-affirming. Her voice is inimitable, with its constant cracking and slightly swallowed warble her phrasing is staccato and unusually shifting even as she sings as smoothly as she can. In a way, she is someone with a voice that in every manner seems antithetical to everything that commercial music is about. And yet, it is as endearing and irrevocable as any in music. People compare her to Billie Holiday, with good reason! There is something irrepressible in her style. The opener, “Something on Your Mind,” is one of the highlights, on an album without any obvious weak points. She sings, against a relentless, almost severe bass guitar strum, tangly, vexatious electric guitar, some cautious steel guitar and the timidly melancholy histrionics of a bowed violin, “You can’t make it without ever even try___in’ / something’s on your mind isn’t it?,” and her voice cracks irretrievably amid the word “trying”. This is as perfect a moment in music as the fragile human condition can offer. Full of failure, epic simplicity, confused and earnest hope, and, still, a yearning for connection and understanding. The song takes in the simple pleasures that come while looking to grasp what is on this someone else’s mind, an unstated, enigmatic something outside oneself. If the album ended there, it would already be something.

Up second is a soul song, “When a Man Loves a Woman.” There is steel guitar mixed with conventional R&B horns, and a vocal accent developed well outside city limits. Karen’s voice is clipped and cracking again. She’s singing a song completely outside her range, or so it seems, because she winds up making a rather daring argument for forgetting the idea of “range” entirely, and accepting every attempt to communicate on one’s own terms. The next song, “In My Own Dream,” has a walking groove on bass with a thundering piano, and a more sleepy, hushed vocal from Dalton, punctuated by quickened vibrato embellishments. Another punchy soul number, “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You),” with a disorganized “gang” vocal chorus from the band, interrupts what otherwise was almost becoming a gloomier patch in the album, before the second side take on a more country-inflected repose, once again broken up by an R&B number (“One Night of Love”). If the second side of the record is more sedate than the first, “Are You Leaving for the Country?” is an excellent closer. Dalton was part of New York City’s Greenwich Village folk scene for a while in the early 1960s, but left for a more subsistence existence, living outside Boulder, Colorado in a mountain shack for a time. So this idea of a connection to something outside urban life, with its brisk pace and endless fads, held a strong influence on her life, which did not depend on the city. And yet, the format of In My Own Time pairs Dalton with the trappings of contemporary pop music, from bustling music centers. She is engaged with something different, a musical backdrop that is commonplace yet originating from someplace outside her own cultural background.

This is an album that is like an old friend visiting, someone who has no reason to put on appearances. Karen Dalton sings with no ambitions of any kind of fame. This is a bit like politics.

“The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

“To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.

“To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” ― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The solution in Adams’ novel is to make somebody rule the universe without them consciously choosing to do so. Dalton may not be unaware of what she was doing in the recording studio, but she was coaxed there to a degree. As a result her attitude is shorn of the hangups that hold back many singers concerned with being famous, or simply within to forcefully impose themselves on listeners.

Without a doubt, In My Own Time is an album listeners will likely either love or hate. For those who bother to love it, chances are it will remain a special experience bringing out warm, familiar feelings with each repeated listen.