BEST ALBUMS OF 2009

Album of the Year!


Anybody who tries to tell you that choosing a best of list is purely objective is a person who has access to various controlled substances. I won’t pretend that this list is scientific or that I carefully dissected each release and measured the musicianship in any sort of scientific fashion. These ten are, simply, the ones that knocked mu socks off. I don’t think you’d be disappointed by any of them, but if you want to quibble with my choices, that’s why there’s a reply option on this site!

Please note that the artists whose names are underlined have longer reviews on this blog. Clicking will take you to them.

1. String Sisters, Live. This album brings together six of the finest female fiddlers on the planet and they bow magic whose roots lie in American, Irish, Norwegian, Scottish, and Swedish soil. It is an unparalleled mix of passion, energy, and skill—my reasons for choosing it as Album of the Year.

2. Richard Shindell, Not Far Now. You’d get little debate from me if you insisted that this one was better than my number one choice. Shindell is a master storyteller, especially when it comes to capturing pathos, irony, and small tragedies. It’s dark poetry, but it’s glorious.

3. Fiona J. Mackenzie, A Good Suit of Clothes. If you think that an album about Scots emigrants sung entirely in Gaelic would be a snorer, you’ve not heard the magnificent voice of Fiona Mackenzie. She dwells in high ranges that lesser singers struggle to ascend and emotes in ways that reveal the full gamut of the immigrant experience.

4. Donna Hébert, In Full Bloom. Few things in life are as much fun as Quebecois music and Donna Hébert fiddles with pure joie de vivre. Find out why this music is some times called “crooked tunes.”

5. Sa Dingding, Alive. Technically a 2008 release, but what the heck? i didn't hear it until 2009 and it's too good to get lost in technicalities. This pop singer brings Chinese and Tibetan music into the age of electronica and the dance hall. She’s been called the Chinese Bjork for her moxie.

6. Wild Carrot, Live: Crowd Around the Mic. Bluegrass music that’s so fresh that it blows away all the stale air that’s been lurking for too long. Pam Temple’s vocals are a revelation, the music is swingy, and the arrangements novel.

7. Antje Duvekot, The Near Demise of the High Wire Dancer. This album is intimate, moody, honest, and fragile. Duvekot’s poetic writing, gentle and slightly nasal vocals, and Richard Shindell’s firm production make this a winner. (This was also reviewed--see acoustic archives.)

8. Warsaw Village Band, Infinity. Polish music like you’ve never heard it before. This driving mash-up of industrial rock, blues, world music, and psychedelia is Poland’s answer to Sweden’s Garmarna.

9. Cedar Hill Refugees, Pale Imperfect Diamond. Jack Clift and John Carter Cash wondered what they’d get if they combined bluegrass and Uzbek music. Now we know and we can thank them for a musical education! (See acoustic archives.)

10. Johnsmith, Gravity and Grace. Midwestern goodness and reflections on life from a guy who has kicked around a bit and lived to tell the tale. It might be schmaltzy it weren’t so damned true.

10. Sarah Bettens, Never Say Goodbye. This veteran of Europe’s punk scene turned to acoustic music in this pop/folk/jazz album. It suits her so well that maybe she should say goodbye to her old musical personae.

Note to Richie Lawrence: Just Play

RICHIE LAWRENCE
Melancholy Waltz
Big Book Records 17
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Keyboard wizard Richie Lawrence has been a career sessions and side man who has shared stages with some of the giants: Bonnie Raitt, The Ramones, Willie Dixon…. He’s even been on stages on which polka king Jimmy Sturr and LSD guru Timothy Leary appeared. But being on the same stage with mega talent doesn’t mean it rubs off any more than standing in line with elves makes you Santa Claus. In Lawrence’s case, his brushes with fame have inured him to his own limitations.

Lawrence certainly knows his way around the ivories. Both “Le Milieu” and “The Melancholy Waltz (1990-2009)” contain resonant dark tones that are true to the album’s title. There are also two pieces that are stunners: the cascading-riff-laden “The Late Richard Lawrence” and the clever “Bee’s Blues (Für Elise).” The latter composition is Lawrence’s bluesy take on Beethoven, and it comes off as if the latter had snippets of “St. James’s Infirmary” stuck in his head.

If only Lawrence had stayed at the piano bench and away from the mic! He sings on six of the album’s dozen tracks and that’s precisely six too many. As a vocalist Lawrence not only lacks range, he lacks basic tunefulness. How a man with such a fine ear for instrumentation can be so utterly tin-eared when it comes to his own voice is a mystery. Several of the songs are downright painful to hear. One hopes that for his next release Lawrence will let his playing be all the spotlight he needs.--LV

Time to Say Goodbye to Democrats

A few weeks ago I did something I hadn’t done since 1971—there was an election and I stayed home. Prior to this I had a perfect attendance suffrage record. It didn’t matter whether we were electing a president or deciding whether to allocate town funds to dump gravel on a dirt road, I was there to cast my vote. So why did I sit out the Massachusetts statewide election to choose candidates to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate?

I suppose part of it was that the candidates induced in me roughly the same amount of excitement I feel when I buy a box of cereal. Martha Coakley will head the Democratic ticket. Ho hum. She’ll easily defeat Republican Scott Brown because: (a) this is Massachusetts, and (b) Scott who? But it wasn’t boredom that kept me from the polls; it was my utter disgust with the Democratic Party. Is it too early to declare the Obama administration a failure? I don’t think so. Break out the t-shirts with Obama’s picture and the slogan “I Voted for Change and All I Got Was This Stupid Pandering Democratic.”

Sound harsh? My view of Obama isn’t nearly as low as that I feel for those who blithely follow him as if he’s the messiah. Where the %#$@*& is the outrage? Obama has been, in many ways, worse than George Bush. Think that’s an exaggeration? Bush’s final defense budget was $513 billion; Obama’s will be at least $534 billion (and perhaps a $100 billion more). George Bush touted the Defense of Marriage Act –signed into law by that faux liberal Bill Clinton, by the way–and Obama’s Justice Department is spending tax payer dollars to defend it from legal challenges. Bush set up the Homeland Security Administration; Obama invented the concept of “sovereign immunity” to declare thousands of Intel and CIA documents off limits from public scrutiny. Many of those documents relate to torture the likes of which occurred at Abu Ghraib and for which Bush was excoriated. Candidate Obama said he’d put Americans back to work and had a plan to do so; President Obama told a December 9, 2009 Brookings Institute gathering, “There is only so much government can do.” Candidate Obama said he’d pull troops out of Iraq within 18 months; President Obama says it will be longer and that we need to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Candidate Obama pledged to reverse global warming; President Obama’s administration contributed a parsimonious $85 million for a $350 million international initiative to develop green technology. At Copenhagen he pledged that the U.S. would cut greenhouse emissions by 17% by 2020; the Europeans pledged a 30% cut!

This isn’t the half of it. Health care reform is in such shambles that the best we can hope for is that nothing gets passed. And how about all those new laws to protect labor organizers, limit CEO salaries, limit access to assault weapons, and pump money into education? And can you even imagine how liberals would have reacted had George Bush gone to Oslo to accept a Nobel Peace Prize and used the occasion to defend war?

Many of my liberal friends who so desperately want to believe in Obama cast the blame on Congress. I see their point. If you’re a progressive thinker and you don’t live in Vermont, chances are good that you’re un- or underrepresented in the U.S. Senate. I never expected much from Republicrats like Harvey Reid (NV), Claire McCaskill (MO), Mark Pryor (AR), Ben Nelson (NB), or Arlen Specter (PA). And I have nothing but pity for my neighbors in Connecticut who must endure Chris “Love-those-Banks” Dodd and Joe “Allow-me-to-kiss-the-insurance-industry’s-Tush” Lieberman. The ones who really get me, though, are the poseurs like John Kerry and Dianne Feinstein and their say-anything-to-be-a-player morals. And don’t get me started on the deplorable Nancy Pelosi in the House.

This said, how do we explain the fact that Obama isn’t battling for what he says he wants? Ronald Reagan rammed his agenda through a Democratic Congress, and George Bush never had the “super majority” supposedly needed to pass important initiatives. Lyndon Johnson was willing to bust heads and butts to get the Civil Rights Act passed. Wake up people! The Democrats are frauds. Okay, so most of them aren’t Neanderthals like Jim DeMint (SC), James Inhofe (OK), John Cornyn (TX), or Mitch McConnell (KY). But let’s not kid ourselves.
Change isn’t happening because Democrats reside in the same corporate pockets as Republicans, something Ralph Nader has been trying to tell us for years.

Voting for Democrats is like continuing to go on dates with an attractive escort who repeatedly dumps you and sleeps with someone else. I’m done with the Dems. I’ve changed my voter registration to independent and I plan to vote for Greens and true progressives. If that means Republicans win elections, so be it. I’ll hardly notice the difference and my conscience will be clean.--LV

NORTHEAST RAIL CORRIDOR SHORTCHANGED

There’s an old Appalachian saying that goes, “You gotta’ dance with them what brung you.” Add this to the list of things that President Obama doesn’t seem to get.

Who elected him in 2008? Of this there can be little doubt—the Northeast, the Far West, and the Mountain States. So explain to me why the eight-billion-dollar high-speed rail stimulus plan pretty much leaves out the Northeast, one of the few areas in the country where people still actually ride trains.

A glance at the above map from the Federal Railroad Administration shows the snub in dramatic fashion. The Boston-to-New York corridor, the nation’s busiest, is not slated for an upgrade. There are but two lines for California, one in the Northwest, and the middle of the nation is as blank a prairie in a blizzard. We will, however, see stimulus money spent to run high-speed rail through red states such as Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina. You know--the places where anti-government sentiment runs deep and where politicians will howl about wasting taxpayer dollars. Places where Obama has as much chance of winning votes as a polecat running for Miss Congeniality.

This is a real head scratcher. Show me the compelling need for an Oklahoma City to Houston network. And why on earth would Obama waste political capital in the Deep South instead of shoring of his support timbers in New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania? How about an Albany to Harrisburg line? Columbus to Washington? Denver to Chicago? Every day seems to bring more news that Obama is, as his pre-election critics charged, too green and inexperienced to be a strong leader. He naively plays nonpartisan games that have the net effect of appeasing those who will hate him no matter what he does whilst abandoning those who want desperately to love him. Arthur Miller said it best, “Without alienation, there can be no politics.” Elected officials such as Michael Bennet, (CO), Robert Casey (PA), John Kerry (MA), and Charles Schumer (NY) need to remind the president of this. Obama either starts dancing with those what brung him, or he’ll be dateless in 2012.

WILD CARROT TENDS FRESH BLUEGRASS GARDEN

WILD CARROT & THE ROOTS BAND
Live: Crowd Around the Mic
Chocolate Dog Music M001
* * * *

A lot of people will wince at this statement, but the musical truth is that bluegrass music has been mired in predictability for quite some time. Other than hybrid pioneers such as Béla Bleck and the Alisons (Brown and Krauss), there’s been too much same old/same old: affected nasal twangs (even if you grew up in Kansas rather than Kentucky), a bit of chipmunk-like harmony, and then cue the mandolin and banjo breakouts. The great irony is that bluegrass music is in the process of being rescued by acts from north of the Mason-Dixon Line: Railroad Earth, Dan Tyminski, Crooked Still…. To this list add Wild Carrot.

Okay, so their Cincinnati base is just over the Mason-Dixon Line, but Wild Carrot (Pam Temple and Spencer Funk) have joined forces with the Roots Band (Brandt Smith and Brenda Wolfersberger) to create something far more fresh and hip than the stale winds blowing from the hollows. There is, first and foremost, the mighty vocal wallop of Pam Temple. When you’ve got a set of pipes as glorious as hers, it would be silly to dress them up in rented garb and she does not. Her Midwestern warmth comes through in every syllable and she’s not afraid to air things out instead of trying to sound like a mountain waif. There is next the fact that Wild Carrot draws from many musical wells, not a set of pre-programmed expectations. “Bits & Pieces” infuses some Latin backswing that Temple picked up from her time in the Peace Corps; “Macpherson’s Lament” fuses a bluegrass arrangement to a Scottish tune,” “I’ve Heard That Song Before” is a reworked Sammy Cahn jazz classic, and “Blackbird” covers the eponymous Beatles’ song.

This twenty-four-track live album covers lots of bases. Wild Carrot’s take on “Pan American Boogie” is like the Andrews Sisters go country, “Hello Hopeville” is a sweet cover of a Michelle Shocked song, “Adieu False Heart” is a Temple/Wolfersberger tour de fource, and “Shut de Do” is a touch of folk gospel. There are moments of whimsy—as in their cover of Guy Clark’s “Homegrown Tomatoes”—and inspirational anthems such as “What Have You Done to Lift Somebody Up.” There are also superb original compositions from the mutli-talented Temple that range in themes from explorations of folk customs (“Blue Bottle Tree”) to a country love song inspired by locusts (“Golden Wings”). And, yes, for traditionalists there are also a few mando and banjo solos, though I personally preferred Brandt Smith’s dobro to these.

This is an album that is simultaneously lovely, clever, and swingy. Above all, it’s not predictable and is easily the most exciting bluegrass album I’ve heard since the last Crooked Still release.—LV

Here the band singing “Waters of Truth.”

Meep! Danvers Principal Courts Court Hearing

Does Beaker have more common sense than the principal at Danvers High?

The challenges facing high school administrators are daunting: teen pregnancy, drug use, rising levels of violence, sinking test scores…. So what does Thomas Murray, the principal at Danvers (MA) High School see as such a problem that he’s on a one-man crusade to stamp out? Why the use of the word “meep,” of course. What could be more pressing?

Yes, you read it correctly. Principal Murray has informed parents that he will potentially suspend any student who uses the word “meep” and, according to the Boston Globe, even forwarded to police emails using the word. It must be really bad, yes? Possibly some code word that awakens a terrorist sleeper cell. Well…not really. Insofar as anyone can tell—and who can since it’s a nonsense syllable?—meep made its way into the American lexicon via the Muppet character named Beaker. It’s the sound he makes before something silly happens. Look up the word online and you’ll find that it’s usually either a synonym for either “ouch” or “oops”—words presumably still okay to use under the Murray Regime. Mostly meep is infinitely malleable and means whatever you want it to mean, which is Murray’s real gripe against it.

When Murray complains that students often use it in a disrespectful way, it’s easy enough to imagine that a group of savvy teens use it to get under Murray’s demonstrably thin skin. How the hell does a guy like this get to be a principal in the first place? Since 1998 Massachusetts has required that all teachers pass an examination before they can be licensed. It may be time to institute one for administrators as well. It would seem a rock bottom criterion that before one becomes a high school principal he should have to demonstrate more common sense than a concrete block. And perhaps some familiarity with the First Amendment.

The Great Danvers Meep Mockery reminds me of my own brush with a high school generalissimo. Back in 1970 I was booted from a high school gym class for wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a peace symbol logo. (There was no official gym uniform.) Being the young firebrand I was, I contacted the ACLU, which promptly informed the football coach/gym instructor that peace was not an obscenity and was, hence, protected free speech. The coach was a tyrant, but he was no fool; he backed down and wisely ignored it when other students donned the once-forbidden shirt.

This is precisely what Murray should do. He’s setting himself up for a nasty confrontation, to say nothing of making a meeping ass of himself. What would you do if your kid got suspended for saying “meep?” I know what I’d do and I’ll bet I’d find any number of attorneys who’d salivate at the thought of taking such a case. But before it comes to that, Danvers parents ought to rally and push for Murray’s removal. The teenage years are anxious ones and Danvers kids deserve a wiser pilot to guide them through the shoals of modern life.

Pat LaMountain Shows It's Never Too Late

PAT LaMOUNTAIN
A Few Miles Later
Garden Gate Recordings 1006
* * *

Two things to consider upfront: First, if you know Pat LaMountain’s music solely through her country/folk collaborations with husband Tex, this album will surprise you as it’s cut from different cloth entirely. Second, if the music sounds vaguely retro, it is; A Few Miles Later is stitched together from songs written in the 1980s that were supposed to be recorded in the early 1990s until that thing called life intervened. This release feels, for lack of a better word, trippy—the sort of acid folk that Grace Slick used to dust off in more contemplative moments. LaMountain matches her light voice to ambient instrumentation in evocative ways. On “Summer Rain” her vocals drift in the air and she deftly uses high-end catches as if the drizzle briefly became a downpour. In like fashion, “Boys in the Summer” has a gauzy feel. By way of contrast, “Oh Papa” is honky tonk blues the likes of which Patsy Cline would have tackled, “Good Thing” is infused with pop hooks, and “Bricks” feels like it was plucked from the Depression era.

LaMountain is on the road promoting this album’s release. Can you hold album release parties twenty years after the fact? Why not? This release has an old feel, but it doesn’t come off as dated. To my ear A Few Miles Later arrived just in time.--LV