Music: New Releases, August 2011 Volume 1

JESSE SYKES & THE SWEET HEREAFTER – MARBLE SON

I recently took a couple of my nephews shopping for vintage vinyl at some used record stores in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, and from the sound of it, Sykes and guitarist Phil Wandscher were right behind us. The alt-country of previous outings has been largely replaced with a mesmerizing psychedelia suggesting the influences of Quicksilver Messenger Service, It’s A Beautiful Day or the early Steve Miller Band, mixed with the heavy blues drone of Earth (with whom Sykes and Wandscher toured last year).

The opener, “Hushed By Devotion,” is a startling raveup, washes of guitar sound rising and falling for eight ferocious minutes. Wandscher’s fretwork recalls the Grateful Dead in his ability to spin long, intense guitar lines, but with an edge and bite that owes a lot to Carlos Santana or Sam Andrew, sounds he continues to explore on “Your Own Kind” and “Pleasuring the Divine.”

A mesmerizing psychedelia suggesting the influences of Quicksilver Messenger Service, It’s A Beautiful Day or the early Steve Miller Band.

Given that, it’s impressive that Sykes’ vocals never seem to be taking a back seat; her doom-laden songwriting making them inescapable. Her voice is ethereal and ominous on the cosmic haze of “Come To Mary,” the swelling “Wooden Roses,” and the acoustic murmur of “Be It Me, or Be It None,” while “Ceiling’s High” sounds almost like a forgotten minor hit from the Summer of Love. The songs themselves give up their secrets grudgingly, if at all, and the listening experience is as challenging as it is satisfying.

FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE – SKY FULL OF HOLES

Here’s the problem: power-pop bands are supposed to deploy their catchy melodies, expert harmonic sense, and hand-clapping enthusiasm in service of teenage romance or its over-the-hill equivalent. The observational narrative is supposed to be the province of rootsy guys like Dave Alvin or Patterson Hood, while the aural raised eyebrow and wry, witty turn of phrase is more associated with practiced ironists like Richard Thompson or They Might Be Giants. Confounding those expectations is something of a specialty for writers Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger, among the best, and most underrated, songwriters in contemporary American rock and roll.

They opened up a bar called Living Hell

Right from the start, it didn’t go too well.

“They opened up a bar called Living Hell / Right from the start, it didn’t go too well,” sings Collingwood in his tale of investors’ woe, ”Richie And Ruben”; much love as I have for bands like Smithereens or Teenage Fanclub, I don’t believe either has ever grabbed the ear with an opening line that sharp. As the album continues, the various characters find themselves passing out drunk (“Radio Bar”), soaking up the seaside sun (“A Dip in the Ocean”), putting the moves on a stranger on a train (”Acela”), or simply “…staring at the sun with no pants on” (“Someone’s Gonna Break Your Heart”), all set to a rich assortment of memorable tunes. And while it’s never been just  fun and games on previous FOW albums, here, the anxious friendship of “Hate to See You Like This,” the sympathetic picture of middle-aged fatherhood on “Action Hero,” and the quiet fury that closes the album on ”Cemetery Guns” represent a growing maturity. Pure Pop For Smart People.

RICHARD BUCKNER – OUR BLOOD

For a guy that was awfully busy in the 90’s and early 00’s, it’s strange to realize that it’s been nearly six years since Buckner’s last outing; stranger still (but welcome) is the way he’s grafted his alt-country roots onto a more electronically contemporary sound. The fact that the musicians range from pedal steel specialist Buddy Cage to Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley suggests something of the range on display. It’s not that the guy was too busy or lazy (no George R.R. Martin comparisons, please), but events like suffering through a falling-out with his record label, a broken tape machine, a stolen laptop, and a failed film score seem somehow a propos for this poet of the inevitability of failure.

Buckner is a poet of the inevitability of failure.

“Someone should have told you,” he sings on “Confession”, “I guess I’m the one they warned you about.”  Along with “Thief,” “Confession” is among the best examples of Buckner finding a way for the bleak sound of electronics to underscore his dark worldview. Our Blood is vintage Buckner: simultaneously bemoaning and savoring the dark side of romance. “Let’s waste the night, pay the price and get out of here,” he sings on “Escape.” “It’s not enough, backing up just to disappear / Without a fight, they’ll never know we’ve won.” Equally powerful, though wordless, is the quietly desolate “Ponder.” The balance of the album sums itself up in all one-word titles: “Traitor,” “Collusion,” “Hindsight.” Tough and uncompromising, sparing no one (himself least of all), Buckner is, more than ever, a complete original.

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS – UGLY BUILDINGS, WHORES & POLITICIANS (GREATEST HITS 1998-2009)

Given the difficulty of extracting “hits” from a catalog of nearly a dozen albums that never produced one, and the fact that this band has featured two (and at times three) of the finest songwriters in American music today, this was bound to wind up an equal balance of excellence and compromise. The fan base seems to be blaming the band’s supposedly acrimonious split with New West for the inadequacy of the selection, but in reality, the selection here is only unsatisfying in comparison to the embarrassment of riches found on the albums from which it’s excerpted.

Still, though, album context matters with this band (if Patterson Hood had his way, we’d all be listening to nothing but vinyl LP’s), which here makes for some odd transitions (particularly with the three excerpts from the 2-disk Southern Rock Opera). On the other hand, left to stand apart from its original context, a song like “Outfit” (possibly my favorite song of the 2000’s) can sneak up on you and grab you like the first time you heard it: its tale of a working-class father watching as his son sets off to chase his dream of rock and roll stardom perfectly nails so many emotions: hope, regret, fear, resignation, pride, and love, punctuated by Jason Isbell’s aching wail of a guitar solo.

The selection here is only unsatisfying in comparison to the embarrassment of riches found on the albums from which it’s excerpted

Generally, though, the focus here is on the band’s hard-charging double/triple layered guitar attack on classics like “Sink Hole,” “Never Gonna Change,” and  “Lookout Mountain.” Unfortunately, there’s less emphasis on the powerfully novelistic character studies that are so much of DBT’s strength; if New West hadn’t been determined to include something from every one of the band’s albums for the label, we could have had “Decoration Day,” “Putting People On The Moon,” or “Cottonseed” in place of lesser (though excellent) fare like “3 Dimes Down” or “Gravity’s Gone.” And, seriously… no “Goddamn Lonely Love”? I know Isbell’s not in the band anymore, but… seriously?

The absence of rarities or previously unreleased songs means that this isn’t a must-own for fans. And for anyone who hasn’t discovered DBT yet, I’d actually suggest starting with one of their complete integral albums, either Decoration Day or The Dirty South for choice, or this year’s typically excellent Go-Go Boots. But you’d hardly go wrong if you were to snag this album as your first taste of DBT. Like the man says, “Let There Be Rock.”