Here's a potpourri of stuff that came through my physical
and virtual mailboxes. I call them "Hits" and "Misses."
HITS
Boston-born Tracy
Bonham has been around since the mid-90s–long enough to garner a few Grammy
and MTV nominations and secure a middling hit with her 1996 single "Mother
Mother." She's sometimes called a "post-grunge rocker," probably
because she's wowed audiences with a stripped down cover of Jimi Hendrix's
"Fire." I certainly would not apply that description for her new CD Wax
& Gold. Most of its tunes
fall into a cross-genre seam contains pop sensibilities, the vocal stylings of
alt.country, and the melodic structure of folk. Speaking of the latter, listen
to "Love, Love, Love," which has the feel of a mid-60s folk song. Then
listen to Donovan's "Catch the Wind" and you'll find the melody of
Bonham's verses echo it. I have no idea if that was intentional and the rest of
the song is quite different, but my point is that there's decidedly a folk vibe
at play were. And a country vibe as well. There's quite a bit of twang in her
voice and when she climbs into the upper ranges—which she does to great effect
on "Black Tears"–in which she warbles on the edge of a yodel. There's
also plenty of country giddyup to the title track and Kevin Salem's jangly guitar.
One of the more intriguing songs is "Luck," another one of those
in-the-seam songs. It's a lullaby filtered through darkness courtesy of some
grungy bass from Mike DuClos, some down-and-dirty swing from Salem's electric
guitar, and Bonham's own hints-of-danger vocals. Those who've heard previous
Bonham releases will find Wax & Gold
stripped down by comparison. It suits.
Sam Gleaves is
both talented and a man with courage of heart and convictions. America has
changed a lot in the past few decades, but it's fair to say that there are
still a lot of places where being gay is harder than others. Gleaves' Ain't
We Brothers takes the LGBTQ agenda
into the heart of the Southern Appalachians. His music is rooted in old-time
and bluegrass music, so here's hoping that singing the region's language produces
the tolerance for which he pleas. When he sings a song such as "My Dixie
Darling," he's not singing about a calico-clad lass waiting on the front
porch. I'll admit that it's jarring to hear him sing an unbridled love song to
another man—not because I disapprove, but because I'm used to hearing country
and bluegrass singers croon nostrums about "traditional values,"
whatever the hell they are. Gleaves also wears his blue-collar roots on his
sleeve. "Working Shoes" is a backwoods paean to a poor miner, his
grandfather, with all of life's hardships worn into the leathery cracks. And what if that miner is gay, a
question he raises on the title track: First
things first, I'm a blue collar man/Scrapes on my knuckles and dust on my hands/Probably wouldn't have
known/ I've got a man waiting on me at home. Later on he sings, I was born here just the same as you/
Another time, another day/I'm sure the good Lord took his time/ Making each of
us just this way/I walked beside you step by step/ And it never crossed my
mind/That I would grow up one of the different kind. Then the plea:
"But ain't we brothers?" Most of the songs on the album are, in some form or other, about
different kinds of love: same-sex love, love of the South, love of humanity….
Can Sam Gleaves melt the hearts of self-styled good ole' boys? Why not? This
dude has serious talent: a nice mountain voice and wizardry on banjo, flattop
guitar, fiddle, autoharp, and dulcimer. Who cares if the calico lass is a
jeans-clad working man?
The
Texas-based country rock band Green
River Ordinance has been kicking around long enough to have a few hit singles
such as "Come On" (2009) and "On Your Own" (2010). Its most
recent album, Chasing Down the Wind,
is a good reason to check them out if you're not familiar. Josh Jenkins is a
classic country rock vocalist–he has the chops of an arena rock singer, but leavened
with Fort Worth twang and the ability to be smooth and gentle when needs arise.
"She's In the Air" is simply a really great love song and finds the
right seam between power, passion, and yearning. It's also different than the
band's usual (and winning) formula of beginning songs quietly then using Geoff
Ice's bass and Denton Hunter's drum to produce a thumping pulse to segue into
more robust arrangements. You'll probably also appreciate how GRO eschew enigma.
"It Ain't Love" is immediately decoded with the line "If it
can't break your heart;" just as "Ain't Afraid of Dying"
explains why: "Because I've truly lived." There's much to be said for
hooks that work and theirs do.
MISSES
I loved November, the
2013 release by Grace & Tony, but
am not a fan of their latest, Phantasmagoric. Tony White is an
admitted refugee of the punk rock scene, so I expect his projects to wander
into some dark places. Phantasmagoric, however,
is relentlessly macabre and lacks the sunny interludes of November. It is also odd–and not in a good way. Tony & Grace
indulge their love of creepy masters such as H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe,
and Stephen King, but they do so on an album that's a Southern Gothic version
of rock opera meets Sweeney Todd. In
fact, "Sweeney Todd" directly inspired the song "Invitation to
an Autopsy". While I'd much rather hear Grace sing than Helena Bonham
Carter, the material echoes too closely the histrionic style of stage
productions. Most of the rest of the album mines from spooky pits as well:
"Lullaby of Red Death" parallels the Ebola crisis, "Adam of Labour"
takes the point of view of Frankenstein's monster, and both "The Marsh
Prologue" and "A Lot Dies Today" draw upon Stephen King. You
know you're in for a bumpy ride when an instrumental titled "A Fever on
the Cthula Queen" is among the more upbeat selections—its mix of genteel
and macabre is as ambiguous as Lovecraft's imagined terrors. Monsters,
murderers, plagues, and suicides don't make for fuzzy feelings. I've no problem
with grim material, but the project feels like music written for a stage show
for which actors, costumes, scenery, and script have yet to be chosen. One must
also wonder about the choice of making what is, in essence, a concept album in
the age of single-song downloads.
When I was a teen, I was involved with a Christian youth
group. We sang religious songs, but we also had a songbook filled with current
and recent pop, folk, and rock tunes deemed angelic enough for our ears. It may
have been the last time in which I heard religious music that was remotely contemporary.
I will give some credit to Strahan;
his Feel the Night is only a few decades out of date. The New Zealand-based Strahan
calls himself a "modern psalmist" and his songs "folk
theology," but neither is entirely accurate. His music is heavy on
Meatloaf/Michael Bolton-like power ballads. That would make them "pop/rock
theology" in my book. And it's straight out of the 1980s.
Rob Weir
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