teabowl

Stars

Simply Red. East/West Records 1991, Audio CD, $5.00

British soul pop at its finest. Mick Hucknall came from a reggae and soul perspective, but was really always a crooner first. This is an incredibly strong collection of songs, and it’s still puzzling to me why this never took off more in North America. I loved this when I was 21; it’s still a very, very strong album whose loose, 70s soul stylings and Beatles-esque harmonies have held up well. And it was a record that took the world by storm - at least the UK, Europe, Australia, South Africa… in England, it was the album of the year in 1991 and spent something like 20 weeks at the top of the charts. This incarnation of Simply Red featured Gota on drums - a very talented Japanese jazz/fusion/house drummer and producer who would later released a number of interesting instrumental discs. In a way, this fit well into the developing nexus of sound that was springing up in England around this time… pop musicians were being influenced by the nascent dance scene, and this CD is somewhat of a precursor to Emergency on Planet Earth and The Return of the Space Cowboy by Jamiroquai which came out a few years later - and also had virtually no success at all in North America.

Carried to Dust

Calexico. Quarterstick 2008, Audio CD, $9.98

And while I’m busy clearing the backlog of “CDs I must mention on my blog,” here’s a definite contender for 2008 Record of the Year. Calexico is an Arizona-based outfit that makes an interesting blend of indie pop and Mariachi/Rock en Espanol, full of deep rumbling basses, accordions and nimble, brushed drums. For me, this music evokes the desert somehow. (I can say this with slightly more legitimacy than someone who’s just seen too many spaghetti westerns because I actually grew up in a desert country. But that’s not strictly relevant.) I can imagine driving on a night-time desert highway and be carried by these sounds. They have a certain intimacy that makes you want to focus entirely on the music. Another observation - for me at least - is how similar parts of Carried to Dust are to some of Chris Isaak’s post-surf rock, music that should be talked about much more than it is (sadly).

There’s been much to love in Calexico’s music for many years. I’m especially fond of the Mexican influences - Calexico’s embrance of another culture’s music is a much-needed widening of indie’s prevailing young-white-man aesthetic (these days, the young men don’t even seem particularly angry). At times, Calexico sound delightfully like a less rocky Los Lobos. Is this as ‘authentic’ as Los Lobos, who have an impeccable East LA pedigree? When you listen to Calexico’s incredibly funky electronica/ranchero “Inspiración,” does it matter?

There’s a theme in Calexico of embracing other cultures and actively adding to the ‘Americana’ song book. Joey Burns, one half of Calexico, has recently produced L’Entredeux by Marianne Dissard, a French singer-songwriter based in Tucson. Unlike anything I’ve heard come out of Quebec (which, you’d think, would produce all kinds of North-American-cool pop music sung in French, but doesn’t, presumably because it’s trying to be Frencher than anyone in France), this is an excellent blend of French chanson with Americana, conveying the sort of low-key sophistication that makes it perfect for a dinner party with smart people who’d like some continental flavour but don’t want to risk the new album by Carla Bruni.

I think Calexico is one excellent way for indie to stop gazing at its own shoes and start to take notice of what else there is in the world. Joey Burns and John Convertino discovered that the world is right on their doorstep. 66 miles due South, to be exact.

On an irrelevant but related side note, Ready Made magazine’s October/November 2008 has a whole page about how Calexico made its own drum brushes out of bamboo. Unfortunately, the piece doesn’t seem to be online. The magazine’s not worth buying, but the article is worth checking out as an example of truly superb spin doctoring. Getting your act’s do-it-yourself project mentioned in a do-it-yourselfer magazine to coincide with your record release is completely awesome.

Oh (Ohio)

Lambchop. Merge Records 2008, Audio CD, $11.76

Despite the recording industry’s continuing contraction (not unlike the financial system’s), the world is full of beautiful music that’s worth hearing. One result of the long tail economy has been that there’s so much more music being released independently but not necessarily distributed or marketed. It’s a lot of work reading all the relevant magazines and sites to get ideas and stay on top of things. All of this as a preamble to establish some sort of reasonable way for me to say that I hadn’t ever heard Lambchop before today. I had read about them and they were on my must-check-them-out radar for a while. Now, though, there’s a new album, and New Release Tuesday put it in front of me so that I couldn’t ignore it any longer. In a handy listening post, no less.

This is spectacularly beautiful music. It’s immediately engaging and fits right into the Americana-country-folk-jazz gumbo I’ve been listening to lately. It’s a sort of downtempo alt-country (but alt-country not in a twangy way - more in a “what if Elvis had lived and regressed back to his glam country roots” kind of way), sung by singer-songwriter Kurt Wagner in a dispassionate, minimalist, low voice while an eleven-piece band plays some of the biggest quiet music you can imagine.

Some of it sounds a little like a loungy, countrified, downtempo, ever-so-slightly electronic version of Marvin Gaye’s late period slow burners. Then, there are pieces that somehow marry Neil Diamond and REM (if that makes any sense). Despite being very different vocalists, Kurt Wagner also has something of Bryan Ferry’s theatricality.

This is a very ‘technicolor’ record - incredibly big and very focused and economical at the same time. The quality of the recorded sound is beautiful throughout: a ramarkably sparse ‘widescreen’ experience where power comes from practicing restraint. This is quite a different band from, say, the Arcade Fire - there, more musicians means more sound, more space of the spectrum taken up by noise. Here, it’s the opposite: it’s a fun guessing game to see if you can spot what instrument/musician might have produced the barely audible murmur in the background.

Another good game would be to come up with theories as to why Kurt Wagner needs eleven musicians at all. Not that I’m complaining. I would highly recommend this, and I’ll be exploring more Lambchop.

Lifeline

Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals. Virgin Records Us 2007, Audio CD, $9.24

Ben Harper plays a stylish blend of rock, reggae and old-style r’n'b, like a subtler, less flashy version of Lenny Kravitz. These are well-crafted, well-rehearsed songs, recorded in just seven days in a studio in Paris, directly to 16-track without using any digital tools. The CD sounds open, airy and spacious. It’s sort of like Ben Harper’s ‘unplugged’ album. I’ve been a Ben Harper follower for a long time; in fact, it’s a little hard for me to pick just one Ben Harper record for the desert island batch. So I’ll pick this one because I’m enjoying it right now. There’s a certain honesty in Ben Harper’s music - a lack of irony, a deep understanding of, and reflection on, the history of popular music. I think this is becoming a bit of a theme for me: high quality music, a bit ‘retro,’ that avoids irony… anyway, this is a great record that you should listen to if you can.

Daily Lama

De-Phazz. Universal Int’l 2002, Audio CD, $13.02

De-Phazz is a revolving cast of singers and performers around German jazz/electronica producer Pit Baumgartner. For more than 10 years, De-Phazz has released an interesting and unique blend of jazz, German cabaret music, electronica, hip hop, reggae/dancehall and r’n'b. Baumgartner changes his lineup between albums, and there are very few singers who stay for more than a record or two. The music is sung mostly in English, but there are songs in German and French, too. Everything has a delightfully old-school, continental European touch: a 40s-style cabaret tune here, a 50s Brazilian-inflected German Schlager there. But there’s also some seriously funky, and not-German-at-all soul here: a track like ‘True North’ shows off Baumgartner’s production chops - chops that could grace any contemporary ‘big’ r’n'b artist’s album. The path he chooses, though, is quirkier than that. And it’s a very likable quirkiness, one I find myself returning to time and again. The sound is cultured and aware of the world’s musics in a way that British or American electronica isn’t. And that makes this first-grade pop music that doesn’t become dated.

The Trouble With Humans

Chip Taylor. Megaforce 2006, Audio CD, $10.94

Staying with the theme of how country music could be, here’s a favourite record by Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez. Taylor is a singer-songwriter who emerged as a writer of hit songs in the 60s (’Angel of the Morning’ and ‘Wild Thing,’ for example). Although he was born and grew up in New York, he had a strong predilection for country music from an early age, and that’s where he has now returned. Taylor met Carrie Rodriguez, an Oberlin and Berklee College of Music trained singer/songwriter/fiddler, during an in-store performance she gave at the South by Southwest Music Festival in 2001. The two now perform as a duo. Four albums and an EP into their journey together, their music is a low-key, intelligent kind of country/folk - not entirely dissimilar to, say, the Texas singer/songwriter Townes van Zandt. Anchored by Taylor’s strong rhythm guitar and harmonica and Rodriguez’ fiddle, the songs feature insightful lyrics and a kind of “old time country” feel. They also couldn’t be further removed from the Carrie Underwoods and Jessica Simpsons that seem to pass for country music today. Taylor and Rodriguez have perfectly matching voices - hers a strong cowgirl soprano with a Texas drawl, his a refined baritone with occasional carelessly slurred syllables and frequent moments where he speaks more than he sings. The lyrics are precise and emotionally spot-on throughout - this is material that’s carefully thought out, written to be performed by these two performers, meant to showcase their unique abilities. The Trouble With Humans is a beautiful record about grown-up relationships whose words often manage to encapsulate a core truth in the simplest way possible, yet in a way that we’ve never heard before. ‘Curves and Things’ and the title track should be prescribed material in English class, they’re so good.

Wrecking Ball

Emmylou Harris. Asylum Records 1995, Audio CD, $7.75

A towering achievement and also an immensely likeable record. Emmylou Harris, after spending the first half of the 90s playing and recording solid if traditionally-oriented country albums, in 1995 teams up with Daniel Lanois and engineer Malcolm Burn to make a surprisingly experimental, electronica-influenced, slow-burning gem of a modern country record that sounds nothing - absolutely nothing - like country music sounds in 1995 (or since, for that matter). She forges a completely unique path here, presenting material in a way that boldly proposes an alternate universe: one where country music does not sound like 80s mainstream rock (or bluegrass nostalgia). Instead of commercial sheen, the music here has grit, tape hiss, low and odd keyboard pads, loops and samples… and yet, there’s Emmylou Harris’ voice, invoking a true country idiom with every line she sings. There’s much pain and sadness on this record, all of it worth hearing any number of times. A true artist statement, even though she only co-wrote one of the songs (”Waltz Across Texas Tonight,” with Rodney Crowell), Wrecking Ball is a must-have, even if you don’t like country as a rule. (As someone who was always a performer and never a writer, this album also marks the beginning of Emmylou Harris’ journey into songwriting, culminating in later records that have a similar sound but songs mostly penned by her, which are also worth listening to.)

Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Composer). Nonesuch 1996, Audio CD, $10.94

This is a beautiful performance of Mozart’s 20th and 18th piano concertos, one of those records that changed my perception of how Mozart concertos could be played. I had grown up listening to Barenboim and Gulda playing these works (my mom’s record collection), and this is entirely in a different league. Well, ‘different league’ makes it sounds as if it somehow invalidates the other, older versions. That’s not really it. But the playing and recording quality are delightfully superior in this modern version. Goode, an American pianist, plays these concertos energetically, and with a very Viennese ‘lightness’ that seems wholly appropriate to the material. The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the famous ‘conductor-less’ group from New York, seems an ideal pairing for this material. I love their complete Mozart Wind Concertos, and this seems to confirm their knack for Mozart concertos. I believe this disc could get anyone excited about Mozart’s piano works. Maybe that’s a bit of wishful thinking, but do give it a try :)

The Lady Sings

Billie Holiday. Proper Box UK 2001, Audio CD, $17.43

Billie Holiday changed how we hear women sing. In recorded music, she essentially redefined vocal pop music by introducing a more personal and immediate singing style. She also changed how we think about phrasing, basing hers on instrumental music rather than the rhythms and cadences of pronunciation. But quite apart from all that, Billie Holiday is just an absolute joy to listen to - one of those timeless artists whose music can be enjoyed in any situation, surroundings and at any time of day. Everybody should have some Billie Holiday in their CD collection. Hers is an instantly recognizable and likable sound, so deeply embedded in the fabric of popular music that pop itself is no longer imaginable without Billie Holiday. All subsequent jazz singers, and most subsequent blues and r&b vocalists, owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude. This four-disc box set is dirt cheap and contains all the seminal early records from the 1930s and 40s - the decades when she was at the peak of her vocal power and invention. Everything has been restored impeccably from the best copies available. (Subsequent recordings sound better because recording technology had improved considerably, but Billie’s voice began to reflect her drug and alcohol consumption, and her performances were no longer as elastic or accomplished.)

The Bride Stripped Bare

Bryan Ferry. Virgin Records Us 2000, Audio CD, $7.54

Bryan Ferry is a classic crooner in the same sense that Frank Sinatra was - he can sing anything and imbue it with his own style, interpreting it meaningfully and casting it in a new light. Starting in the 70s, Ferry established a long tradition of occasionally releasing solo albums that featured cover versions. The Bride Stripped Bare is, in my opinion, the best example of this: filled with ‘The Same Old Blues,’ ‘Carrickfergus’ and ‘Take Me to the River,’ it can’t fail. The arrangements are tasteful and accomplished, and Ferry’s own compositions (almost) keep up with the covers. His version of ‘That’s How Strong My Love Is’ has to be heard to be believed - it’s completely over the top to the point of being camp, and emotionally touching and sincere at the same time… quite an accomplishment. Most people would think of this as a ‘minor’ record at best, a footnote made by someone who was famous for something else; I think it deserves to be loved for being fearless and really showcasing Bryan Ferry’s unique and sensuous voice.