The Westies: New York with a West Texas Feel

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THE WESTIES

West Side Stories

WestiesMusic.com

* * * *

Forget a grain, when you've been reviewing music for as long as I have, you learn to take PR come-ons and pullout quotes with an entire cave of salt. For once, though, someone calls like it is. The Westies are the brainchild of singer songwriter Michael McDermott, whose repertoire is aptly described as "songs of love, betrayal, murder, hope, and redemption." His partnership with backup singer Heather Horton forms the core of The Westies. Toss in some talented sessions players and West Side Stories is a dark, brooding, and raw slice of real life. Well what else would one expect from a songwriter who names his ensemble after a Hell's Kitchen gang from the '60s/70s who came pretty close to pulling some hard time of his own. Mix in a dose of the Irish shanachie tradition and filter it through American outlaw country music and you're on the right track. The only curve ball is the album title; West Side Stories has songs set in the Big Apple, but more from its bad core side, and it detours to places such as Texas, Mississippi, Michigan, and Wyoming–the latter being the location for the song "Devil," where the song's anti-hero meets Old Nick "with his jailhouse tattoo and gold teeth grin" in a cheap bar and leaves with his soul bargained away.

McDermott's emotive and strong voice sounds as if its filtered through hard living, anguish, and emotions that gestated in the gut, not in some mythical Valentine-shaped organ. His pas de deux duet with Horton on "Say It" is a love song, but not the hearts and coronets variety. Theirs is a dance of passion, but with doubt firmly in place. And when McDermott reveals "These Dreams About Trains," his somnolent flights freely mix pleasant dreams and nightmares. That is to say, his trains carry people rushing home to loved ones, those fleeing shattered hopes, and even a casket or two. And forget those hokey country bar songs; McDermott's "Bar" is a place where "I hit the bottle so hard… it hit me back." Smart stuff. Call it the West Side of New York by way of hardscrabble West Texas.

Rob Weir

Ross Munro: Twisting the Bagpipes Tradition

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ROSS MUNRO

Twisted Tradition

Greentrax 384

Twisted Tradition might seem like an odd tack to take for a Scottish piper of Ross Monro's pedigree. After all, he apprenticed at the knee of John D. Burgess, MBE (1934-2005), who was renowned for his mastery of the demanding piobaireachd tradition generally associated with formal competition piping. Like his mentor, Munro also joined the British Army and submitted to the rigors of pipe band music, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards in Munro's case. If any one person deserves credit for leading Munro down the less-regimented (pun intended) path it's Edinburgh's Iain McKinna, who included Munro and the Royal Guards on the award-winning Spirit of the Glen trilogy that melded military and classical music. Munro retired from the army in 2013, and found himself in McKinna's Offbeat Studio for his first solo endeavor.

Offbeat indeed! A lot of this album is more in the spirit of the mosh pit than competition piping. "The Gravel Path" opens with pulsing electronic sounds evocative of a didgeridoo before Munro kicks up stones with a bold report of notes that turn the path into a racecourse. Whether by accident or desire for wordplay, the next track also suggests Australia, at least in title: "Roo Joey." Like many of the tracks, it features drum loops and midi arrangements. Purists might scoff at such studio tricks, but let's face it–the Highland pipes only produce nine notes and even if you're a skilled master such as Munro and can stretch the range with grace notes and key shifts, it's a challenge to make a solo pipe album sound contemporary. You'll also hear some actual guitar, bass, and drums (McKinna, Ed Lowden), touches of brass, and vocal fill (Kirsty Anderson), but mostly it's Munro, his pipes and his midi. When he wants to sound contemplative, as on "The Dark Island," he overlays some whistle, but this album is about confounding expectations. For instance, Munro takes a serene tune such as "Lexie," lures us into a mellow space, and then breaks into a spirited version of "Jenny Dang the Weaver."  And he definitely has the dance hall crowd in mind with the club tempo of "Funky Paddy" and the boogey-down heartbeat pulses of "High Road to Itchiness." I have no idea what the trad crowd will make of "Cuimhneachan," which is how I imagine hypnotic music for robots to sound. No matter what one thinks of this project–and I like it a lot–Munro is a man of his word. Beware: Ross Munro has doffed his army kit and he's in a tradition-twisting mood!

Rob Weir

aave, Meh! Chris Whitten, Yes! Honeybird, Nope!

It's summer clean out time. Here's the word on three recent releases.

aave

There's Nothing

Villain Place/Rock Ridge Music

* *

The four-piece band aave hails from Nashville, but you're excused if you thought it was from San Francisco, circa 1967. This quartet consciously locates itself in a  psychedelic/ambient mode and, if you close your eyes, you could summon forth images of garland-adorned hippie chicks in tie-dye dresses, heads-tilted, eyelids half closed, and twirling against a light show backdrop. While that's sort of cool, musically it means that aave is more about mood than melody. It often draws comparisons to bands like Pink Floyd and Flaming Lips—largely because it combines the dreaminess (bleak and optimistic) of the first with the occasional thrash of the latter. I'd also call aave a post-punk band for the way in which songs often flirt the edge of cacophony. Add Hollies-like bubbly lead vocals and chirpy harmonies, and aave emerges as the ultimate mash-up band. Alas, this is less interesting than you might expect. The eight tracks I heard lack the signature hooks of acid rock classics, the attitude of punk, or the catchy melodies of The Hollies. In other words, meh!

CHARLIE WHITTEN

Assortment

(Digital downloads)

* * *

Charlie Whitten is also based in Nashville, and he too admires late-60s psychedelia. Luckily for us, he also likes Simon and Garfunkel, folk-rock, grunge, and fin-de-siècle radio hits. Although he is sometimes compared to Don McLean, Nick Drake and Neil Young are more apt comparisons. Especially the latter, if you can conjure Young in his youth with his rough edges smoothed out. Whitten, in fact, positively channels Neil in a cover of "Only Love Can Break Your Heart." One the things I admired about Whitten's folk-rock sound was his balance between trippiness and control.  "Dreaming" and "Home" have a Drake-like drift to them, but they don't meander. In like fashion, "Wedding Song" is sweet, but not treaclely, and "Too Far Gone" is funky and cool without being remote. Only "Lost I Heard" fails to connect, a song that simply feels and sounds undone. Whether any of this is good enough to break through in Nashville is up in the air, but Whitten's music is certainly worth a listen.

  

HONEYBIRD

Out Comes Woman

(Digital download)

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I suppose Honeybird (aka/ Monique Mizrahi) has her charms, but they eluded me on Out Comes a Woman, the sort of album I imagine Gil Scott-Heron would have made with a gender change and a talent transplant. Honeybird tries too hard to be hip and sassy, efforts that lead to literary disasters such as "Good Job," where she rhymes "rejection" with "erection" (mostly for shock value) and "tease job" with "on your knees, John." There are also musical train wrecks such as "You Think I'm Single" that are so muddled they are little more than random noise masquerading as art. This album feels homemade, but not in homey way. Honeybird styles her instrumental approach as "charango punk" and bass, but some of the bass tracks are so out of balance that what pours out of the amp obliterates sounds in its path. When she mixes spoken word with song, she her musings and snippets of poetry frequently lack enough articulation to connect. For the record, I don't know this Brooklyn-based artist. For all I know she's funny, kind, and smart, but Outlaw Woman felt pointless and self-indulgent. At several junctures I felt like I was in a Dos Equis ad gone terribly wrong and wanted to cry out, "Please lose the 'tude! You're not that interesting."

Here she is performing "Ex-Spearmint."

  

Shaun the Sheep Movie: Recycling Works!

SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE (2015)

Directed by Mark Burton and Richard Starzak

Studio Canal, 85 minutes, PG

* * * *

Nick Park and Aardman Studios set the gold standard for claymation, that anally retentive form of animation in which pliable models are minutely manipulated for each film frame. Park is the guiding spirit behind this project, though his role is that of executive producer rather than director. Those who have followed his output already know that Shaun the Sheep was a character introduced in the delightful 1995 Wallace and Gromit film A Close Shave. Shaun proved so endearing that, in 2007, he got his own series in Britain (130 episodes and counting). This, however, is Shaun's first time as lead sheep in a wild and wooly big screen adventure.

Any skeptical or cynical charge one might level against the film is true. If you know Park's work and values, you'll find them recycled on the screen. He has long been an animal rights' activist—though contrary to popular belief, Park is not a vegetarian—and all Park movies place well-meaning critters in jeopardy from menacing humans looking to cage or devour them. Shaun and his associates have to fend off a power-mad Animal Containment Officer in this film. Akin to other Park features, the story of Shaun is a thin contrivance there solely to link a series of sketches and capers. The story for Shaun is essentially a rework of Chicken Run (2000), which was a takeoff of The Great Escape. You'll see other Park trademarks: goofy inventions, makeshift fantasy contraptions, hair's width escapes, and frenetic chases. If one is honest, nearly all of the major characters are recycled: The Farmer is a mumbling hayseed-meets-grunge boy version of Wallace, Bitzer is a less-adorable Gromit, the Flock variants of Chicken Run fowl, and the Naughty Pigs an ongoing gag. To which I reply, so what? Chuck Jones repeated characters and ideas for Looney Tunes, and Aardman productions are essentially cartoons in a different format. We watch both because they are wildly clever, are for adults as much as for children (maybe more so), and because they make us feel happy all over.

The story, such as it is, unspools in response to the universal theme of boredom. Shaun and all the barnyard animals love The Farmer who, in turn, sees them as part of his extended family. Shaun, however, can't help but notice that each day is pretty much the same—right down to the on-time arrival of the bus from the city. One day, though, a  bus-side advertisement for a "A Day Off" prompts Shaun to consider that a 24-hour break in routine is just what a clever sheep such as he needs. He lulls The Farmer to sleep in a van and diverts Bitzer's attention, but his plan goes terribly awry when the van is dislodged and hurtles downhill toward The City. A sudden stop and The Farmer gets a knock on the head that leaves him with amnesia. Mayhem ensues when Shaun, the Flock, Bitzer, and an ugly stray they meet set out to find The Farmer and restore order from the chaos Shaun has unleashed.

As noted, Aardman films are not about structured narrative; they are inventive imaginings of what sort of adventures can be told by manipulating small figures. In this film, the challenge is even greater as no one speaks per se—even the humans are reduced to mumbles and dramatic gesticulations. The sheep, of course, baa, but with differing inflections. Put some music to it and you can even come up with an ovine approximation of the Blues Brothers! Shaun the Sheep references all manner of other forms and tropes: pantomime, prison films, mad inventors and, yes, The Great Escape (though this time the goal is to break in rather than out). The fun happens when the Aardman crew makes us look at ourselves through the button-eyes of their creations. Characters such as a snotty head waiter, golfers, and a vain Celebrity serve as butts for takedowns of bourgeois values and hipster airs, and The City itself becomes a metaphor for the inauthentic. I'll say no more except to remind you to look hard into each sequence for all the jokes put there for alert adults. And be sure to stay through the credits, if for no other reason to hear Tim Wheeler, Mark Thomas, and Rizzie Kicks warble the hysterical (and catchy) Shaun the Sheep song.

The whole film is a silly bit of fluff, but it's such a lark you won't care. I can't remember the last time I was in a cinema in which six- and sixty-year-olds were both laughing. Oh wait—it was Chicken Run. Note to Nick Park: Keep on recycling. 

Rob Weir

Doh! Huh? Ummm... Monday Thoughts

Even when I try to ignore it, the news manages to outrage, irk, or perplex me. So here are a few observations of recent coverage that falls into the categories of Doh! Huh? and Hmmm…

 

Doh! (as in, 'Well, yeah.')

·      The release of the long awaited report on the failed bid for a Boston Olympics contained the non-shocking news that boosters underreported the realistic costs of the games by at least three billion dollars. Well, who could have predicted that? Only the living.

·      President Obama recently approved drilling for oil in the Arctic. Yet liberals still think he's one of them. That would be cute were it not so tragic.

·      The Boston Globe reported reactions of "shock" and "surprise" to the in-house coup that toppled Ben Cherington as Red Sox general manager. Did anyone really think he'd be back?

·      A big doh! to anyone who thought that Garry Trudeau had lost his edge. His recent takedown of the new Texas history guidelines is an incisive as any satire he's ever done. Moreover, it's gutsier than anything you'll hear from the lamestream media.

·      You can safely ignore 95% of what happens on the primary campaign trail. There are really only four or five serious candidates out there (Clinton, Sanders, Bush, Christie, maybe Walker) and the rest of the reportage is tales told by idiots that signifies nothing--just a con game played by lazy reporters who have created a faux horse race whose 'progress' they can write about because they're too lazy to do investigative reporting.

·      It's back… dress code battles. School boards and other self-styled guardians of public morality have returned to their censorious ways. One 15-year-old girl was recently sent home because some prudes deemed her exposed collarbones too provocative. Good grief! Baby Boomers fought and won those battles years ago by calling the ACLU and taking these clowns to court. Message to Millennials: You're not entitled; each generation has to reinforce the rights won earlier or they slip away like buttered eels. 

Huh? (As in 'Beats me')

·      Does anyone have the slightest idea what Jim Webb is doing on the campaign trail? Is he actually "running" for anything? Is he angling for a Secretary of Defense posting in a future Democratic administration? Who would pick him? He has virtues, but did anyone ever use his name and "team" in the same sentence?

·      Can you imagine signing a treaty with Operation Rescue? The Tea Party? ISIS? Of course not, because theocracies are not rational bodies. Enter Obama's Iran treaty folly. There is no Iranian government; it's a mere front for the mullahs whose logic system is based on what they see as Allah's will. You don't make deals with people who don't believe in deals. Chuck Schumer often infuriates, but he's right to oppose a treaty that the mullahs have no intention of honoring. Is the Democratic Party trying to drive Jews to the GOP? 

·      Why do people: (a) complain there are no choices in politics, and (b) shy away from candidates like Bernie Sanders (or even Rand Paul) who really are different? Isn't the very logic of 'they can't win' the very reason they don't? Eugene Debs once quipped, "I'd rather vote for what I want and not get it than vote for what I don't want and get it." Yep.

·      Some Democrats want Joe Biden to run for president to derail Hillary Clinton. Huh? He's the Spiro Agnew of Democrats. And before you tell me there's a difference because Agnew was corrupt, be careful: Biden's Delaware is the Cayman Islands for insurance companies.

·      Speaking of needing choices, anyone in education who supports the GOP is sleeping with the enemy, pure and simple. Message to Chris Christie: Until you give up your $175k governor's chair and spend a year in a public classroom at $50k, maybe you should stop talking out of your big fat ass.

Ummm… (As in: Why isn't this happening….')

·      Sick of endless political campaigns? Good grief, it's still six months to the New Hampshire primary. The fix is simple: follow Canada's lead and restrict the campaign season. Canada's longest election cycle in history lasted just 78 days.

·      Is 'young Democrat' an oxymoron? Shouldn't the party start thinking about 2020 as much as 2016? By then, Hillary would be 73, Biden 78, Nancy Pelosi 80,Gerry Brown 82, and Liz Warren 71.

·      Why is there a statute of limitations for art theft? Let's eliminate it and simultaneously ratchet penalties for buying stolen works. I could envision Interpol nabbing an art thief and delivering an ultimatum: finger the buyer or we throw away the key. Now imagine a Japanese businessman or an American celebrity being thrown in the clinker for 40 years for receiving stolen goods.

·      Does a corporate name on a ballpark make you want to support that company? Can't we go back to things like Tiger Stadium? At least name venues after sports figures. A T & T Park doesn't thrill me, but Willie Mays Park does. I' be happy to see a game at Tony Gwynn Field, but I'm sorry—if I go to Petco Field I expect to see a dog show.

·      Why the hell are there sports teams in Oakland? Do they not know the way to San Jose? Going to the Oakland Coliseum—sorry O.co Coliseum--reminds me of seeing a childhood game I saw at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. I couldn't even tell it was a ballpark until I went in because, like Oakland, the neighborhood looked more like a place where mobsters dump bodies than a sports venue.

Hurry to the Clark for Van Gogh Exhibit

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VAN GOGH IN NATURE

(Also Whistler's Mother)

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Gallery

Williamstown, MA

Through September 13 (9/27 for Whistler)

Early homage to Millet

As clichéd as it may sound to postmodern ears, Vincent Van Gogh is my favorite artist. I would, however, be the first to admit that any museum launching an exhibition of his work could be accused of risk-aversion—perhaps even pandering to middlebrow taste. Put simply, Van Gogh (and most other impressionists) has been overdone. In that spirit, let me state that if you've been avoiding a trip to Berkshires to catch "Van Gogh in Nature" because you're convinced it's just a nostalgia trip down Starry Night Lane, you're mistaken. One of the great joys of the Clark Art Museum show is that its 40 oils and 10 drawings are, for the most part, not famous works.

The red anchor

They are, as the title implies, works that explore Van Gogh's relationship to nature. Being that it's Van Gogh, that relationship was complicated. He simultaneously felt more peace amidst nature than anywhere else, yet was so overwhelmed by it that bald mountains, fecund fields, and majestic cypress trees made him feel unworthy and were another nail in the self-built depression coffin that led to his suicide at age 37. But what a glorious 37 years they were. The Clark exhibit shows Van Gogh's evolution as a painter who first drew inspiration from Daubigny and Millet—check out Van Gogh's homage to Millet's The Sower­—to one whose unique style only fully emerged in nature. It began with drawings and oils of a marsh executed in 1881, then we see his palette come alive with color when he

moved from the somber Dutch countryside to France—first to Paris, but with full vibrancy in the countryside (Arles, the asylum grounds of Saint-Rémy, and Auvers-sur-Oise). That vibrancy extends to subtle things, such as the way Van Gogh often used a splash of red to anchor his work and forced the viewer's eye to roam where he wished.

Early spring or late snow?

It wasn't the only psychological game he played. We see an orchard awash in white, but it's an April scene and the only reason we have to see blossoms rather than a late snow is our knowledge of the Provence climate. We view farmhouses in Auvers, but we only know that the winding blue course disappearing around a tree is a country lane rather than a stream because there's a solitary figure trudging down it. For those who want to psychoanalyze even more, as a youth Van Gogh painted variations of Millet's The Sower, but as he entered his mid-30s, sickle-wielding reapers more often appear. Ahh, that line between genius and madness. From May 1889 to May 1890, Van Gogh was in an asylum, but it was also his most fertile period—one in which he created a new work nearly every other day. He left Saint-Rémy to be near his brother in Auvers and created a stunning oil unlike others, Landscape at Auvers in the Rain in July of 1890, and was dead before the month ended. [See image below]

Auvers in the Rain

The only drawback to this triumphant show lies, once again, with the Clark's unfortunate rebuild. The exhibit is in the basement special exhibit gallery of the new wing and is dimly lighted. The harsh track lighting neither shows Van Gogh's radiant tones to full advantage, nor relieves the sense of being in a bunker. Though one could construct a useful metaphor about the gloaming just beyond the rays of light, I doubt that this what was intended when the show was hung.

Also on exhibit at the Clark's airy Stone Hill Center is James McNeill Whistler's iconic 1871 painting Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, better known to posterity as Whistler's Mother. There is also a small collection of Whistler etchings and prints, but the painting is the big attraction. The pocket-sized show also tells the tale of how the painting, which yielded mixed to scathing reviews when first executed, became famous (after 1932, nearly 30 years after Whistler's death). There are also a few choice parodies of the work. The biggest attraction of all is that as remote as Williamstown, Massachusetts might be, it's cheaper to get there than to fly to Paris to see Whistler's famed work in its permanent home, the Musée d'Orsay. I'll grant you that a trip to Paris has side virtues, but you won't need a passport if you get to the Berkshires before September 27. Rob Weir

The blue path. Note red roof.

Spool of Blue Thread is Classic Anne Tyler

A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD (2015)

Anne Tyler

Knopf, 368 pages, # 978-11018744271

* * *

After 50 years and 20 novels, you know what you'll get from Anne Tyler: Baltimore, family dynamics, realism, humor, poignancy, and big events chained to smaller ones. It's a testament to how well Tyler has honed her craft that we keep coming back instead of turning away.

Here's another reason why Tyler remains so readable: her families are plebian in the good sense of that word. Hers are not the sort of books that try our patience because we're sick of privileged brats whining about their luxury problems. Tyler's families are filled with infuriating people but because they feel like kin, we open the front door. To a great extent, her latest novel is about the many that come back versus the few that choose other paths. This time her family is the semi-functional Whitshanks, who are dead ordinary even though several of them think they are special. A Spool of Blue Thread tells a four-generation story spanning seven decades, but it's not told sequentially, and one of the major characters is the family home on Bouton Road. 

The Whitshank saga begins with Junior, a Depression-era handyman who begins a dalliance with the coquettish Linnie, unaware of the myriad reasons why he should have looked the other way. It's a toss-up who is more obsessed and obstinate, but the two eventually marry and sire two children, son Redfield and daughter Merrick. Along the way Junior builds his own construction business and one of his projects is the Bouton Road house, originally built for one of Baltimore's solid middle-class citizens. Junior, however, lusts after his own creation. To many, it's simply a well-built non-nonsense kind of house, but Junior knows how he fitted every frame, groove, and truss and is happy to play the role of informal Mr. Fixit for every problem that arises just so he can spend time within its walls. When circumstances make the home available for purchase, Junior jumps at the chance, though his wife feels the neighborhood is above their station and is probably right.

The bulk of the book, though, is spent with the next generation. Red is a chip off the old carpenter's block—both in skill and stubbornness, but he does one thing very well when he marries Abby, a social worker and founder of lost souls. They eventually have four children of their own plus a lad nicknamed Stem, whom they take in when his father—one of Red's employees—dies. Tyler plays off the truism that those who fix the problems of others can seldom do so within their own families. Their third child, Denny grows up—or more accurately fails to do so—to be an infuriating disappointment to just about everyone whose path he crosses. Maybe he's mildly autistic, or maybe he's just a loser who need his butt kicked until it meets his shoulders, but one of the things everyone except Abby and Denny himself know—including his nieces and nephews—is that you can't rely on Denny. He disappears for years at a time, only to resurface with a new partner (and eventually a daughter), a new set of problems, and tales of all the careers he begun and abandoned.   

Abby is the emotional tongue and groove of Whitshank generations two through four, but when dementia begins to claim her and Red's health begin to fade, the children have to come up with a plan. Denny reappears as the anti-Prodigal Son to be their caretaker—an absurdity complicated by the fact that Stem has already moved in with his children and his wife, Nora, who is a serious—as in very serious–Baptist. If you think this is the most dysfunctional thing about the Whitshanks, you're not even in the ballpark. Flashback narratives unspool various family dramas in ways that make the Whitshanks seem like Ozzie and Harriet at one moment and the Adams Family the next.

Spool of Blue Threads is a page-turner that seems much shorter than 368 pages. I wouldn't call it a profound book, but it's clever in places, including its title—whose secret isn't revealed until near the end—and in its references to color. Of that I will say only that blue is generally associated with loyalty, wisdom, and tranquility; in the book it generally presages something quite different. So let's just call this one what it is: a very good Anne Tyler book. And sometimes that's enough.

Rob Weir