Sure, on the opening track, “Pretty Boy,” there’s a bit of an 80’s progression through major chords sound, but overall, Luke Wesley’s Because We Never Talk About It sounds like Bruce Hornsby with John Wesley Harding’s humor. Wesley jams out on the piano with a jazz-influenced rock reminiscent of Hornsby’s overall work (sans “The Way It Is”). It’s accessible rock ‘n’ roll filled with jammed out piano lines and Hornsby’s inviting kind of voice. On the chorus of “Suburbia,” you can imagine Wesley banging on that Rhodes like Jamie Cullum’s intensity. Then on “Here is Your Ballad” (which is anything but a ballad) and “Sorry I’m Not Hotter,” there’s the humor-as-defense-mechanism so well-played by Harding. Wesley is supported by a great band especially the urgent drums of Dave Burnett.
Category: Jazz-influenced Rock
Nick Driver delivers some great Jason Mraz-style singer/songwriter stuff on his album, Warm is Your Color, including the opening track, “Logged In.” He keeps up the Mraz comparison for “Send a Message” with its rap-sing, scat singing, along with some bluesy licks. That rap-sing attitude with a bit of neo-swing shows up again on “Sidelines.”
Aside from some misfires (“Let’s Stay Together” and “Worshipped by the Energy”), the album shows Driver to have a strong future as a singer/songwriter.
Aside from the Mraz comparison, I also hear what’s called Speedwood by the group Lost & Found. What they mean are some hard acoustic guitar lines—kind of a punk energy to folk music. Driver displays this on “Young Beautiful,” with the guitar accentuated by congas. I also hear Roger Clyne’s Mexican-border American Rock on “Without Love Poster,” which is very similar to Clyne’s “Leaky Little Boat.”
It’s Lyle Lovett And His Large Band without the large band. As Richard Julian’s Girls Need Attention opens, it’s as if Lovett is playing a solo, coffeehouse show. Julian’s voice has that tender way of working its way into your psyche—warm, wistful, distant, and observant. Julian is also similar to Lovett in the way he strikes up a jazz-influenced country folk rock.
As the album builds, more and more instrumentation is added—never quite a large band sound, but more than a solo show. Nels Cline’s electric guitars adds a bluesy spark to the stomp ballad of “Words.” Clarinet, banjo, and tuba swing “Georgie” like a play on Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia on My Mind.” The bass and drums on “Stained Glass” contribute to its stagger.
“Girls Need Attention” is a call to action for all men. Rather than wasting away our days and nights drunk on whatever we use to forget our obligations and care for the women in our lives, Julian rings the wake up call.
By the way, Julian’s past album, Sunday Morning in Saturday’s Shoes, sneaks up on the listener, its singer-songwriter stance preparing to put melodies in your head. Meanwhile, the title seems to be a great metaphor for what it means for us to come to church on Sunday. We’ve got out Saturday nights, our sins of the week with us, as we stagger bleary-eyed into the sanctuary. Which is exactly how Jesus calls us to come—with all of our faults, acknowledging our need for him, receiving forgiveness for our Saturday night sins, and sent by His Spirit to live for Him.
It was a folk show dance party at Turner Ballroom in Milwaukee as the minister of peace, harmony, joy, and love presided over the whole affair, raising up his acoustic guitar as he kicked his legs playing that anti-folk.
Gathering the fairly good-sized Tuesday night crowd to himself, Langhorne Slim opened the service with the redemptive themes of “Be Set Free” and “Rebel Side of Heaven,” forming a couplet for the intersections of love, hope, dreams, and perhaps God. Langhorne Slim compels the listener to step into his quirky, Freewheelin’ speed folk world, because the music comes from a restless soul resonating within each person singing along at the edge of the stage.
Watching Langhorne dance, march, kick, fall (hit his head), and spin while playing guitar, he moves around on stage as if he wasn’t playing guitar. This was equally matched by the drums of Malachi Delorenzo, son of Violent Femmes drummer Victor. Dubbed by Langhorne as “Milwaukee’s fourteenth favorite son,” Lorenzo completely smashed up the sound throughout the set and into the triple encore stompdowns.
Meanwhile, unlike any other show called Dylanesque, the crowd stood, bounced, punched the air, and kicked up their own feet, caught up in the spirit of Langhorne air, and his rhymes of truth and grace.
April Smith and the Great Picture Show
Like the radio of the 50′s and 60′s, April Smith and the Great Picture Show play a whole variety of sounds. Most of it is within the bounds of the apparently timeless rock ‘n’ roll, but it rings with so much borrowed clothing from the dusty wardrobe. You can namecheck today, but it’s draped with yesteryear.
She’s KT Tunstall with plenty of good ol’ swing. They’ve got Grace Potter smashes with plenty of 50’s rock. She can sing a bit like a showtune, playfully lean into a vaudevillian kick, and then land onto a bluesy bluegrass stomp, before throwing in a bridge of “Whole Lotta Love” on a final Potter smash.
I have a motion light in my backyard for security, but it would have to strobe, rotate, change colors, and burn with incredible heat and intensity if it was the Motion Turns It On brand.
Motion Turns It On, the band, manufacture displays of flashing, rotating, intensely burning jazz prog rock. On their latest, Kaleidoscopic Equinox, tracks like “Exchanging Souvenirs” rage on like a tidal wave flood hitting downtown only to drain away to leave everything clean and refreshed in some cosmic sort of renewal instead of destruction.
MTIO rides into this realm like the prog rock jazz of the Benevento Russo Duo, landing with more song structure. They’ve got comparable aural flashes to White Denim. Elsewhere, MTIO utilizes a sound like UK dance/electronica, such as Rob Smith.
“Teraform” could be called “Variations on an Electronic Alarm” the way it begins with a shrill alarm, shifting to instruments making similar sounds, and then jamming on the results. “Occiptalized” starts off with odd punches but becomes one of MTIO’s most grooving, funky tracks.
The Music Spectrum Notebook Series digs into my handwritten notes and reviews on older releases still getting my attention.
It’s called Wartime Favorties, and the album cover features what seems like Rosie the Riveter doing lingerie/boudoir photos. It’s a masculine, mechanized, and stylized look (with a nuclear mushroom cloud in the background), even while it is also feminine, seductive, and softly curved.
Judging the album by its cover does tell you a thing or two about Ruby Rendrag’s music. Like Joan Jett, it’s a combination of masculine punk and feminine sexuality—although many of Rendrag’s songs lilt along more like folk than punk. Rendrag has a pop cleanness to the melodies with Suki Kuehn’s cello adding a whole other dimension, augmenting the songs with strings much like Alejandro Escovedo who gets so much rocking out of a fiddle and cello.
Rendrag’s voice is most reminiscent of the indie Kelly Snyder (see below) whose fragile voice and piano combine in a fiercely strong stance against the world that threatens to take her by storm. Rendrag has that same fragile voice that can also escalate to a storm warning.
“Anything You Are” rocks up the folk song, but makes it immediately apparent that there’s a place for the band to enter into this mix. Rendrag’s vocals are double-tracked, and when played live, she would do well to have another female singer to create that same effect. The song then lands into Kuehn’s cello-led hard rock riff.
“Long Way Up” has a nice blues sparkle to a pop rock jam. The highly unmeditative “Meditation” is the kind of meditation I appreciate. “I’m Gonna Go Crazy” has jazzy bounce with great upright bass from Allen Maxwell. “W-26” has a country folk walk. “High and Dry,” the Radiohead tune, comes from an Indigo Girls-like place.
Jenn Franklin’s Errors and Admissions
Like Rendrag, Jenn Franklin is reminiscent of Kelly Snyder. Franklin’s 2006 Errors and Admissions is a 6-track CD with a few good songs and a few mediocre ones—which is probably why I didn’t initially review it. However, after listening to Rendrag and remembering Synder, I couldn’t help but also recalling “What Took You So Long,” Franklin’s lead track which blazes with that fragile intensity of Snyder. Her songs also recall Michelle Branch and Charlotte Martin’s pop moments. In fact, “Impasse 900” makes it clear that Franklin might be a Martin disciple. The songs often employ production elements to raise up her voice to an ethereal space, much like Chasing Furies did.
Reprint: Music Spectrum Review of 2005’s Oxygen from Kelly Snyder
Coming from a fragile place, Kelly Synder’s sings at the piano as if she’s either in a NYC apartment drowning out the city noises (“Nothing’s Ever Right” speaks of “clammy sidewalks” on a rainy day) or in a lake home overlooking the water (“Fall” includes the line “Lookin’ across the bay”). Her Oxygen album (Mother West) finds comparisons to the piano-led tunes of Rufus Wainwright, Charlotte Martin, and Rachel Yamagata. “Rescue Me” hits at Wainwright-like series of concluding chords early in the tune, and periodically throughout, as if the song will be over before it starts which matches the hopeful-turning lyric. A light dance beat is the backdrop for “I Don’t Know,” which has a R&B chorus where Snyder can show a little scat in her vocals. Additional production adds creepy whistling bottle rockets on which increases the ache in the tune. Like vamping over a George Winston piano line, Snyder adds her soulful melody to “So Bad” which deeps down deep into longing.
The Music Spectrum Notebook Series digs into my handwritten notes and reviews on older releases still getting my attention.
Despite the misfires, there are four tracks on Andy Ditzler’s Songs for Yes and No that demand attention. With the piano of Carole King’s Really Rosie and deadpan vocals, Ditzler does storytelling comedy developed musically. These songs are from a multimedia theater production originally performed in 2002.
“Economics” has the storytelling of Peter Mulvey with a bit of a David Wilcox voice as he speaks. It’s a novelty pop commentary about the record industry which makes me want to give plenty of attention to the independent Ditzler.
“Another Customer” covers the frustration of being on hold and getting lost in customer no-service voice mail hell. It’s a topic explored by many comedians, but Ditzler does so very well so that I imagine using the song in a devotion about serving others. “What Language is That” is an excellent song with stop-and-go jazz bumps that tell the story about language. There’s also some free association like a dream narrative which makes it appropriate to hear a similarity to Roger Waters’ The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. Finally, “To Know You Better,” with its reference to thinking before voting, sounds like the School House rock song of a blogger.
Even though Christmas has already passed, one of our favorite traditions is to buy a Christmas album or two after Christmas, put them away unwrapped with all of the Christmas decorations, and then find new music ready to go next year. A few last Christmas album reviews this week may help you put away the right albums for Christmas 2009.
Of the expansive body of work from Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, the jazzy, banjo-led combo that breaks the traditional jazz mold, I especially enjoyed 2000’s Outbound with its subway cover invoking the feel of the music’s ability to speed you along a rocking track. With this in mind, I was thrilled to see that Fleck had released a Christmas album this year, Jingle All the Way.
The textures and rhythms ebb and flow on this set of traditional favorites, making the simplest and most unremarkable holiday tunes sparkle with energy, vibrancy, and innovation. Each day/gift of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” comes with its own style, but rather than sounding like a band stretching to be clever, Fleck & the Flecktones meld those styles together into a seamless flow, each style letting each day/gift emerge in musical picture form while retaining a cohesive song. This ain’t no relaxing one-horse open sleigh for “Sleigh Ride” here; this is a large horse team racing through the icy hills, bounding in cartoon-like style around each bend, and running to the finish line like Stephen Foster’s “Camptown Races.”
It’s no surprise that jazz artist Vince Guaraldi’s Peanuts songs, “Christmas Time is Here” and “Linus and Lucy,” would receive another good jazz turn here. They rise up from the original flow of Guaraldi’s piano to the mountain feel of Fleck’s banjo, giving the Peanuts gang a different background but still that same peace and joy their Christmas television specials always bring.
Unfortunately, while Jingle All the Way could liven up your Christmas party atmosphere, you may want to set it the album up to skip a couple of tracks. As much as I applaud innovation, “Jingle Bells” appears twice both with the help of the Tuvan throat singing of the Alash Ensemble. These two versions make “Jingle Bells” ring with a world music flair for certain, but amid the rest of the album—and to many ears at our Christmas parties in the West—the Tuvan throat singing is a bit too much of a shock. It breaks up the feel of the rest of the album. Perhaps this is exasperated by the choice of “Jingle Bells” which can easily take on a campy feel no matter who is singing it.
However, the hymn “What Child is This” is coupled with the Tuvan “Dyngyldai” for optimal effect. The haunt and wonder of both songs comes together in a rousing vamp to evoke the starry skies over Bethlehem, the fear that must have gripped the hearts of the shepherds, the amazement of Mary and Joseph at this thing that had happened, and the bells on the necks of the camels of the Wise Men traveling from afar. Here’s where the Alash Ensemble’s contribution is truly honored.
I’m drinking a Chai Tea Latte at Cairbou Coffee enjoying having black, low-top Converse in common with Paul Doucette (Matchbox 20) who is wearing a pair in the pictures for his album, milk the bee, with his band, The Break & Repair Method. Doucette’s singing in my ears, the tea is calming my inner chai, and my leg is bouncing to the piano-driven rock.
And then, more than sharing black, low-top Converse, more than sharing a driving beat, Doucette shows up to share a frame of mind: don’t enjoy how well things are going because the other shoe’s bound to fall.
On a bouncing, lilting piano like Charlotte Martin meeting Chris Martin (Coldplay), Doucette sings:
Don’t get caught now
With your head in the clouds
Singing ‘everything’s turning out great’
Because if you decide that you feel good inside
Things are surely to change
And you know I can’t have it that way (“Forget About the Brightside”)
It’s irrational. It’s a mind trick (or really much worse, a mind f*@!). It’s the kind of thinking that I’m trying to undo in my own brain. It’s like the song “Morbid Girl” by my friend Emily Dunbar. She sings about trying to prevent a disaster by thinking of the disaster in complete detail (pre-order her CD).
Yet, more than encouraging the thought, Doucette’s song illuminates it, lifts it up on that beat, and makes me turn a knowing eye to the thought, raise an eyebrow, and smile wryly at the sheer silliness of it all. If I really thought that happiness would bring down an immediate event of sadness, I would never wear those black, low-top Converse—because they make me feel quite happy. And I would never tap my Converse to the Break and Repair Method’s tunes, because what would be the point?
So “Forget About the Brightside” exposes the silly thought and makes me all the more confident in bright, sunny days to come.
The Break and the Repair Method’s piano leader Paul Doucette brings to mind piano-led Britrock (Keane, Coldplay, Athlete) , but there’s also a jazz-influenced rock sway like Elvis Costello. But on song like the rockabilly-kissed “I’m at a Low,” the rhythm bounce of the throwback 60’s rock is most reminiscent of White Rabbits.
With winter coming on strong, it’s time to think of that eleven-day, incredible run of music in the sun on the Milwaukee shore of Lake Michigan: Summerfest. If Summerfest hasn’t already chosen a slogan for 2009 or designed their commercial campaign, Andrew Ripp should be their pick.
Ripp’s album, Fifty Miles to Chicago, is appropriate enough for Summerfest in its title encouraging you to make the short drive from Chicago to what is billed as the “World’s Largest Music Festival.”
Yet, more than that, Ripp starts off the album with “Get Your Smile On,” an intoxicating, Jason Mraz-like, shuffle groove jam, jazzed out, souled out, hand-wagging attitude son making a perfect play
on the Summerfest smile logo (which is inspired by the name of festival founder Don Smiley).
I can see the commercials now: pictures flashing of Summerfest crowds, rocking out to 11 days of music, while Ripp’s “Get Your Smile On” provides the marketing soundtrack. That groove jam exemplifies what you experience on the Summerfest grounds—music around every corner, plenty to soak in all day every day, swaying-rocking-grooving-shouting-singing with the crowd.
And after such a marketing campaign, it will, of course, only make sense that Andrew Ripp would be artist-in-residence for Summerfest 2009, a position they’ll create for him. He’ll play on various stages with full band or acoustic solo sets.
As an album, Ripp falls a little bit into the same trap I see for Jason Mraz. The grooved up, jamming, up tempo tracks are great, but especially with Fifty Miles to Chicago starting off with “Get Your Smile On,” it sets up a false expectation. Ripp is an incredibly soulful singer/songwriter, laid back ballads soaring on a Motown-dipped folk pop. Songs like “Tim’s Song” and “It’s All Good” surely grow out of Ripp’s solo, coffeehouse-type days. “The Privileged Life” lurches on a New Orleans piano as it swaggers around a jazz standard stage.
Yet, I’m pushing through the album hoping to get my smile on again. I’m enjoying what Ripp can do with a laid back groove, but I find myself asking, “When are you picking it up again, throwing it all to the wind, and getting us jamming again?”
Track 10. “But You Saved My Life.” Soul on an acoustic guitar. Soul rock on electric guitar syncopated struts. Jam Band acoustic guitar solos and Motown organ thrown in. Here’s what I wanted Ripp to be between tracks 1 and 10.
That said, I still imagine Ripp being right for Summerfest artist-in-residence. On acoustic sets, he’ll lead soulful swaying crowds from his smoky, jazzy stage. When playing with his band on the big stages, he’ll crank it up, bring it up, push it up, and rock it up until everyone truly has their smile on. Just what Summerfest is all about.
