I, Daniel Blake Indicts Heartlessness

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I, DANIEL BLAKE (2016)

Directed by Ken Loach

eOne Films, 100 minutes, not-rated

* * * * *

I, Daniel Blake is one of the saddest films I’ve seen in some time and that’s saying something as its director, Ken Loach, has never been known for making uplifting films. Loach is an unabashed champion of the British underclass and the sort of director who is unafraid to call out phonies and power abusers.

His target this time is privatization of the British safety net. I, Daniel Blake plays like a blue-collar version of Bleak House or The Trial. Its titular character is, simply, a decent human being. Everyone likes Dan (Dave Johns): his mates from the shop where he worked, people he meets on the street, even his Afro-British neighbor who Dan yells at to take his garbage to the bin instead of leaving along the flat complex balcony. And would they not like him? Dan is a standup guy, the sort who doesn’t have to be asked to help out a person who needs assistance. That includes Katie Morgan, a down-on-her-luck single mom of two children: the sullen, mildly feral Dylan and mixed race Daisy. To make matters worse, British social services relocated Katie (Hayley Squires) from London to Newcastle because the latter has housing for welfare cases such as she. Never mind that Katie knows no one in Newcastle and her mother is in London. 

Dan has problems too. He had a heart attack and can’t work—at least that’s what his cardiologist says. The privatized employment office says otherwise; according to their work capability assessment he is eligible to work because, of course, some tick-the-boxes form knows way better than a heart surgeon. The upshot is that Dan can’t work and he can’t get benefits unless he looks for work that he can’t accept even if he secures it. He can, of course, appeal, but that involves filling out an online form and scheduling a hearing—except he’s a carpenter who has never touched a computer and he has no income. His is the ultimate Dickensian nightmare merged with a Kafkaesque labyrinthine absurdity.

Dan does all he can to maintain his dignity and composure and then some. He is a veritable lifeline for Katie and her kids and the conduit through which Dylan leaves his shell. Katie’s struggles alone will break your heart, but if you think you can’t keep a good man down, maybe you’re naïve. The system Dan encounters isn’t just complicated, it’s so heartless and cruel that even Ann (Kate Rutter), the welfare agent who tries to help him, gets into trouble for not following protocol. I do not exaggerate when I say that Dan’s treatment is the sort that would lead an American to lock, load, and shoot everyone in sight. Dan’s response, as befits a good man, is somewhat less aggressive.

Loach’s film is a searing indictment of the callous profit-makers and mindless pencil-pushers who don’t give a damn about decent people or poor mothers who burst into tears and cram unheated beans into their mouths at food banks. It is also an indictment against all those who watch and merely tut-tut the injustices before their eyes or actively enforce rules they know to be immoral. The sort thst doesn’t think they are to blame if their actions cause antisocial responses. Okay, this is a film script, not a documentary, but if a tenth of what we see on the screen is accurate, Great Britain should hang its collective head in shame. Except, of course, this film could have been made in the United States as well. In fact it was. Moonlighting or Florida Project anyone?

I know I’m soap boxing but dammit, it just shouldn’t be this way. What does a man like Daniel Blake have to do to reclaim his humanity? He shouldn’t have to do anything; decency should be its own ticket to personhood. This film will leave you shattered, but shame on you if you think it too depressing to watch. I’m glad we still have directors like Ken Loach with the courage to speak for those whose tongues are silenced by sanctimonious monsters.

Rob Weir

Sing, Unburied, Sing a Powerhouse

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SING, UNBURIED, SING (2017)

By Jesmyn Ward

Scribner, 304 pages

★★★★★

Sing, Unburied, Sing hits you like a punch you should have seen coming but didn’t. When I first began reading it I was underwhelmed and wondered why it had won the National Book Award. Then, Bam!!!  It slammed me between the eyes.

It is set in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, somewhere near the Gulf of Mexico. When we meet “Pop” and his 13-year-old grandson Jojo, they are about to butcher a hog for the latter’s birthday—Jojo steeling himself and trying to remain stoic amidst the blood and viscera. As we meet the rest of the family living in a shotgun cabin, we are lured into a timeless rural mindset. There is Jojo’s 3-year-old sister, Kayla; their mother, Leonie; and Pop’s wife, “Mam,” lying in a back room and wasting away from cancer. The feel is that of a Toni Morrison or Alice Walker novel set in the Reconstruction South. Then small references begin to unsettle us—first of mechanical devices, then of motorized vehicles, which forced us to think maybe it’s the 1920s. Then come mentions of Hurricane Katrina and Deepwater Horizon and it hits you that this is now, not the sleepy past. Bam!!!

Sing, Unburied, Sing has been compared to Morrison’s Beloved and with good reason: it’s really a ghost story. When Jojo tells us early on, “I like to think I know what death is…” we’re being set up. One of our ghosts is history itself, but not the dead hand of the past moldering in the ground, rather one (in Karl Marx’s words) that “weighs like a nightmare in the brains of the living.” As we work our way through the many racial injustices in this poor, our minds conjure other ghosts: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner…. We think also of ghosts who departed early dues to the hidden injuries of class.

Ward doesn’t allow us to make this just a novel about race. Jojo and Kayla are biracial, their white father Michael doing time in northern Mississippi’s infamous Parchman Farm*. Stroylines intersect as Pop once did time there himself—back when Parchman was as close to hell as a living black man could get. It was slavery cloaked in legal garb and when Pop was there, so too was a 12-year-old black child named Richie, sent up to do hard adult time for the crime of being so hungry he stole some meat. Pop came home, but Richie didn’t, a story Pop spins out for Jojo in pieces. Richie is another of our ghosts, a wandering spirit seeking to come “home,” wherever that might be. Still another is Leonie’s brother Given, murdered by a jealous white boy he thought was his friend simply because he was a better athlete and woodsman. Death is everywhere in this book: people, goats, hogs, deer, oil-choked dolphins….

The question is whether the dead stay dead or, if like history, they weigh like nightmares—perhaps concrete ones. Mam is a “seer,” as is Kayla and (maybe) Leonie. The book’s structure is deceptively simple; Michael is being released from Parchman and Leonie, Jojo, and Kayla set off to fetch him, along with Leonie’s white friend Misty, with whom Leonie shares a love of booze and drugs. As you can imagine, this is not going to be a routine journey. Think detours into crystal meth, serious medical issues, confrontations with racist cops, and a family reunion that’s not exactly like something out of “Father Knows Best.” And let’s not forget the ghosts. Can we sing them home?

This book has it all: Christianity mixed with voudon, descriptions so vivid we can smell the mud, and repeated patterns of resistance, fear, resignation, and moving on. (A repeated Jojo line: “It don’t matter.”) Do you like metaphors that spring to life? Pop’s given name is River. Read the Langston Hughes poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” Think of shades of meaning embedded in the words “sing” and “home.” Be literal and muse upon Parchman (parched + man). Muse upon Mam’s cancer and think globally. Think upon Black Lives Matter and dare to ask if that’s true, then or now. Let that weigh on your brain. 

What a powerful book. Bam!!!

Rob Weir

*Music fans might recognize Parchman Farms as the subject of several blues songs. It’s also where Alan Lomax famously collected blues classics in the 1940s. [check)

Try These for a Pan-Celtic St. Patrick's Day

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A lot people ignore Celtic music until St. Patrick’s Day rolls around. That’s a shame because it is way more creative than anything you’ll hear on Top 40 radio and has been for decades. It’s my favorite genre of music.

St. Patrick’s Day is part of the problem in that many people only think of Irish music when the word Celtic is uttered and associate it with stereotypical drinking songs and canned diddly diddly instrumentation that’s high on cheap theatrics but is seldom played outside of tourist hotels. It bears mention that almost no one in Ireland can stomach the idea of green beer, paper shamrocks, and plastic leprechauns. So let's use St. Patrick's Day to Celtic all Celtic music.

The term “Celtic music”—and pronounce Celtic with a hard K unless you mean a Boston basketball team—is a misnomer. Ditto any sort of national music such as Irish or Scottish music. The late Tommy Makem of the Clancy Brothers hailed from County Armagh in Northern Ireland and once told me he never heard the phrase “Irish” music as a lad; the tunes and songs he heard in his village of Keady were completely different from those played twenty miles away.

Celtic actually refers to many peoples, only some of whom lived anywhere near Ireland. In tribal Europe, pretty much anyone who wasn’t Germanic or Slavic was a Celt. Many Celts also found their way to Asia and Asia Minor. Today, though, we use Celtic to reference areas with a sizable concentration of Celtic bloodlines and cultural saturation: Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, Galicia in Spain, Asturias in Portugal, the Isle of Man, and Canada’s Cape Breton Island. Each has great music, but I will share ideas from the places in bold.

                                    Instruments:

There really isn't any such thing as a "Celtic" instrument per se, aside from three that are actually very universal and were probably the world's oldest instruments: bagpipes, flutes, and stringed zithers, including the harp. There are many varieties of bagpipes—the subject of a future post. Celtic bands generally have a preference for fiddles and accordions—they set great dance tempos—but you name it and they use it: cittern, bouzouki, piano, cello, hand drums, acoustic and electric guitars, tin whistles—even brass and woodwinds.

                                      Bands:

If you’re tempted to cite The Chieftains, Clancy Brothers, or Irish Rovers as the forerunners of modern Celtic music, dont; it was Ireland’s Bothy Band, the first to appreciate that there’s no such thing as “traditional music.” It is the nature of folk music to change and no well-traveled tune or song should ever be called the original version" unless accompanied by the phrase “earliest known.”

The Bothies turned Celtic music upside down in the early 1970s by bringing modern influences into older tunes and songs, including using amplification so that harps and fiddles could hold their own with louder instruments. They practically invented the “Big Set” featuring textured melodies, stitched tunes, and big swells. They still hold up simply because few have ever done it better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6YJAFbJPrA 

        

Lunasa is the more recent band I think comes closest to The Bothy Band’s instrumental vibe, with more groove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG4lNbXTBAs

Altan is surely the most beloved of current bands and the best exemplar of Donegal music, whose tunes often feature two fiddles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG4lNbXTBAs 

A review of Altan's new record The Widening Gyre is forthcoming on this site.

I tend to prefer Scottish bands, and my favorite of all time was Ossian,* which has a delicate side seldom matched and wove sounds and tunes together like fine tailor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4jzFowWZIA

For pure bring-the-noise excitement, try The Tannahill Weavers, a band that preserves tradition and isn’t just a rock band whose members have accents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FANYQIFdtE

Silly Wizard* had it all: the whimsical duels of the brothers Cunningham, the dulcet vocals of Andy M. Stewart, solid fiddling, and terrific stage presence. It was always a tossup which was more fun: the musicianship or the jokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIdz87JsTgY

Kornog was responsible for bringing Breton music into the limelight and if you’ve never heard Breton dance music, you’re in for a treat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j1kHJnJZ9A

Breton music also features instruments you don’t hear a lot, like the strident bombarde and the hurdy-gurdy. Ad Vielle Que Pourra is half Breton, half Quebecois, and 100% exciting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYw8xL7ICrw

The Rankin Family is the standard to which all other Canadian Celtic bands aspire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBD_faUIThQ

For a Spanish Celtic flair, try Milladoro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ5NtUSQX4E

A preview of bagpipe variety: Susana Seivane from Galicia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioTUmP9qYVI

If you want to hear an amazing international Celtic offering, Skydance is The Bothy Band gone global: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rePzNVFf_Ac

                                Fiddles:

This instrument has come to define modern Celtic music. There are scores of great fiddlers, but in my mind four stick out.

Scotland’s Alaisair Fraser is one of the best violinists in the world—of any genre. He can paralyze you with a single note. That's him with Skyedance above. Try this one as well. It explains my love for Scotland and Alaisdair's music : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2d-4dy-lCY

Ireland’s Martin Hayes is in that same league. Check out his focus. His is boiling frog music that starts slow, simmers, and comes to a rolling boil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5hg3iuoJoM

Chicagoan Liz Carroll is unmatched as an Irish-American performer who puts her unique stamp on each piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITdV3rRL8oQ

I imagine that Cape Breton’s chief import is fiddle strings. Normally it would be hard to pick just one Cape Breton fiddler—except everyone pretty much agrees Natalie MacMaster is the queen bee. You try fiddling and step dancing at the same time; I’ll swing by and sign your cast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59VGEME-iAE

                           Singers:

If you like great voices, Celtic music provides in spades. Here are some to try:

Ireland has given us amazing voices, including:

Mary Black used to head De Dannan and went onto to global fame as an interpreter of Irish song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P17wWpr2usk

Dolores Keane, also once led De Dannan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc3KRw6nN20 

Mairéad Ní Mhonaigh who fronts Altan. For the Irish-impaired an approximate pronunciation is Mar' ray' ed'  Nuh-wee'-nee. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1734yzunow

Maura O'Connell who went on to prove there's no genre she can't slay. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRzmmFLmBrU

My favorite Scottish singers include:

Andy Stewart of Silly Wizard and his sweet tenor voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=appBtXoxfb8

Dougie MacLean who has written some truly amazing songs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP8A9rtg0iI

Karen Matheson of Capercaillie might well be my favorite singer since Sandy Denny died. Notice how Scots Gaelic differs from Irish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZe9N1vNGh0

Karine Polwart If not Karen, Karine is my favorite! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6zAg9IIgKo 

RobWeir

**Both Ossian and Silly Wizard and Ossian have been cursed by bad luck. Both George Martin and gentle soul Tony Cuffe of Ossian have died, as have Andy Stewart and Johnny Cunningham of Silly Wizard. I knew all four and miss them terribly. Johnny C was maybe the funniest human being I've ever known. 

Battle of the Sexes Too Camp?

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BATTLE OF THE SEXES (2017)

Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

Fox Searchlight, 121 minutes, PG-13 (sexual situations, blurry nudity)

★★★ ½

As I have noted before, comedy-dramas tend to dilute both genres to the point where they’re either not funny enough, or they are too silly for us to take seriously things we’re supposed to. However, if ever a real-life event was both ridiculous and poignant at the same time, it came in 1973, with the $100,000 winner-take-all tennis match between 29-year-old Billie Jean King and 55-year-old Bobby Riggs.

King (b. 1943) is important to women’s tennis in more ways than merely winning 39 Grand Slam titles; she was the first tennis player to embrace second- wave feminism and insist that women be treated equally to male stars. In 1970, King confronted U.S. Lawn Tennis Association president Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman in the film) over the 12:1 pay differential between men and women. She was told to take it or leave it. She left it. King was a founder of the Women’s Tennis Association and a leading light of the Virginia Slims tournament.

In the movie, we meet King (Emma Stone) in the aftermath. Although World Tennis Magazine founder Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman) helped organize the Virginia Slims circuit, it was a shoestring operation in which competitors roomed and traveled together. Moreover, King, Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee), Rosie Casals (Natalie Morales), and a handful of others were recognized as superb female stars, but only the men were viewed as true athletes. Battle of the Sexes takes us to several breakthrough moments.

Meet Bobby Riggs (1918-88), a former tennis #1 in his own right, but that was in 1939 (as an amateur) and in 1946 and 1947. By 1973, he was basically a hustler running strange exhibitions such as playing matches while sitting in chairs between returns, dressing in bizarre outfits, or while leading dogs on leashes.

His marriage to the wealthy Priscilla Wheelan (Elisabeth Shue) was on the rocks and all attempts to give up gambling failed for the simple reasons that Bobby loved to gamble and he was good at it. He sensed that he could literally cash in on the women’s movement by showing that the top women’s players couldn’t hold their own even against a long-retired male such as himself. Billie Jean King knew Bobby and his antics, and refused to take part in his freak show—until he annihilated Margaret Court, who was then the top-ranked woman. Then it was soooo on.

As Casey Stengel once said, “You could look it up;” King ran Riggs ragged and defeated him in straight sets, an event that many credit as a breakthrough for female athletes. Less heralded was that King, who was married to Larry (Austin Stowell), a very devoted man, was also ambivalent about her attraction to women and the affair she was having with beautician Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough).

For younger readers, if the idea of women needing to prove their worthiness strikes you as incomprehensible, allow me to remind you that, yes, they did back then. And it was much, much harder for gays and lesbians. Only a handful—like King’s uniform designer Teddy Tinley (Alan Cumming)—lived openly gay lives and they did so at great peril. Virginia Slims organizers worried that a “scandal” such as the King-Barnett romance could sabotage all their efforts.

Lesbianism is handled tenderly in the film. It is, however, one of the few places where the direction doesn’t veer toward being over the top. King was/is a key figure in women’s rights and tennis, but the game depicted on the screen is more robust and powerful than it was at the time. King pointed the way to the muscularity that would come, but at 5’5” was not the sort who could physically dominate many opponents.

Of course, most sports films exaggerate the action. I didn’t think, though, that it was possible to make Riggs’ antics appear more outrageous than they were. The events you see actually occurred, but the tone is ramped to garish arena rock-meets-World Wrestling Federation levels. In my view, it is another confirmation that mixing comedy and drama risks losing magnitude and perspective. What do we recall when the movie is done: the folly or the triumph? The performances are superb, especially Stone, Riseborough, the spitfire Morales, and the sensitive Stowell. I was less enamored with Carrel, who seemed more like he was in a Saturday Night Live sketch. But we must still ask if we are witnessing history at the crossroads or history as camp.

Forty-four years later, Riggs’ hype-fueled style is the norm in the sports entertainment world. But is it actually true that the 1973 Battle of the Sexes was a breakthrough moment for women’s sports and sexual freedom? (Roe v. Wade was also upheld in 1973.) I’m tempted to say both changed in 1975, when an open lesbian fled communist Czechoslovakia and was granted asylum in the USA: Martina Navratilova. She became arguably the greatest female tennis player in history—and on her own terms. If King versus Riggs was the Battle of the Sexes, Navratilova in her prime versus Serena Williams in hers would have been the Battle of the Ages.

Rob Weir

  

Oscars 2018: Hope, Hype, and Hysteria

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As promised in January, here is my list of the best films of 2017. with links to my reviews. Just in time for Oscar night on March 4. My list is better than Hollywood's.

1. Silence—the film Marty Scorsese has been trying to make his whole life

2. Florida Project—what it’s like to be poor in a sea of commercial vacuity

3. Shape of Water—magical realism meets the Creature from the Black Lagoon

4. Faces Places—more humanity in a single sequence of this film than all of the UN

5. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri—not for the moral certainty crowd

6. A Ghost Story—weird, provocative, and asks big questions

7. Loving Vincent—if film could paint like Van Gogh

8. Maudie—Sally Hawkins scores twice in ‘17

9. Certain Women—overlooked because these women are real

10. A Quiet Passion—no other film surprised me as much

Holy Shit! This is so meaningless.

Before commenting on the Oscars, two obligatory rants:

 First, my top film, Silence, was technically a 2016 film, as were Certain Women and A Quiet Passion. That’s because Hollywood dates a film from when it opened in either a sports bar in New York or a poolside cabana in California, not when it opens in a place called the United States.

Second, the Oscars do not honor cinema’s best; they exist to perpetuate the myth that Hollywood is the center of filmmaking. It’s really only a center of check-totin’ coke snortin’ capitalist cowboys who think they are important, but let’s please not confuse that with quality.

I shall comment only on the so-called “Big” awards because most people have never seen (and never will) the nominated live action shorts or documentaries. I’ve yet to see any of the films in the Best Foreign Language category. See Rant # 1 above. I will say that I hope Faces Places wins for Best Documentary Feature because it should be in the Best Picture category. And why the hell isn't Dolores nominated?

Best Picture:

Should Win: The Shape of Water. It’s by far the most innovative thing on the list.

Shouldn’t Be Here: Everything else on the list except Three Billboards and Phantom Thread. The rest is either way overhyped (Darkest Hour, Lady Bird) or just dead ordinary.

Stiffed:  Florida Project. Guess it doesn’t fit into the Hollywood Dream Machine.

Best Actor:

Should Win: This is the weakest crop I’ve ever seen, but I’ll go with Daniel Day-Lewis as he’s by far the greatest actor on the list.

Shouldn’t Be Here: Pretty much everyone else on the list, but let me say that I simply don’t understand why Gary Oldman has drawn raves for playing Winston Churchill. He was outdone on TV by John Lithgow.

Stiffed: Damned if I understand why people who occupy more screen time than those with top billing are called Supporting Actors. I’d give a shout to Christopher Plummer who in a single month rescued All the Money in the World when Kevin Spacey was excised from the movie.

Best Actress:

Should Win: Frances McDormand. Simply astonishing—just what we’d expect from an actress with chops instead of glamour.

Shouldn’t Be Here:  Margot Robbie for a joke of a movie. Meryl Streep, who only got a nod to pad her most-nominated record. I love Saoirse Ronan and she will win an Oscar someday, but it should be for a role meatier than the one for which she’s nominated this year.

Stiffed: Cynthia Nixon for bringing humanity to Emily Dickinson. Who knew Nixon was this good? Or are you going to try to pull the 2016 film dodge on me? Okay, you want 2017, how about fiesty Brooklynn Prince for The Florida Project or the radiant Gal Gadot for Wonder Woman?

Supporting Actor:

Should Win: This is the strongest category by a mile. I think Willem Dafoe will win to make up for stiffing Florida Project, but either Sam Rockwell or Woody Harrelson is worthy and, as I said, Christopher Plummer should have been in the Best Actor category.

Shouldn’t Be Here: Richard Jenkins is a terrific actor, but his role in Shape of Water isn't special.

Stiffed: Gil Birmingham in Wind River. If Hollywood wants more diversity, how about celebrating this fine performance from a Native American?

Supporting Actress:

Should Win: Terrible film, but Allison Janney was the only thing that kept me from bolting I, Tonya.

Shouldn’t Be Here: Octavia Spencer is a terrific actress, but her role in Shape of Water was your basic sidekick shtick. Mary J. Blige isn’t an actress, so not her either.

Stiffed: Yeah, yeah, Certain Women is a 2016 film. It wasn’t actually, but that’s what they say. Lily Gladstone gave a heartbreaking performance that quietly cut to the essence of what loneliness really means.

Best Director:

Should Win: Guillermo del Toro for Shape of Water.

Shouldn’t Be Here: The only other name that belongs at all is Paul Thomas Anderson. Sorry but Greta Gerwig gets no love for directing a coming of age film for her debut. Few liked Dunkirk and Jonathan Peele got a nomination for a movie few have seen so Hollywood can say it nominated a black director.

Stiffed: Sean Baker for The Florida Project.Taylor Sheridan for Wind River.

The Rest:

The Cinematography nominations are mostly for big-budget and f/x laden films. Meh! The best job I saw was from Ben Richardson in Wind River. Predictably, he wasn’t nominated. If you want to nominate someone for remarkable technological work, how about Tristan Oliver for Loving Vincent? Ooops—he wasn’t nominated either.

Oscar’s most consistent category is for Original Song. Every year they manage to pick five songs that make viewers wish there was an app that allows you to fast forward real time. I’m sort of grateful that the songs are so uniformly awful—for one night I’m okay with being hearing impaired.

Shall we pretend that we care about adapted screenplay, original screenplay, sound mixing and editing, film editing, and production design. Let’s just call the whole thing off. Makeup and hair and costume design exist to remind us that Hollywood’s beautiful people can be made either more so or less so, so let’s give these a miss too. Original score goes to Hans Zimmer or John Williams. Whose turn is it this year? The Visual Effects category exists to give awards to big budget summer blockbusters that people flock to see, but which Hollywood would be embarrassed to put in other categories. The masses who saw these films will not be watching the Oscars.  

D L Rossi: February 2018 Album of the Month

D L Rossi, Crooked Love, Vol. 1

There's no such thing as too far down if you're a songwriter. I feel bad about what happened to D L Rossi, but I have to say that seldom has pain sounded so good as Crooked Love Volume 1. The songs come out of the dissolution of his marriage and the fact that Volume 2 is in the works tells you that he didn't choose what happened and he's not over it. There's no anger here—just honest and raw emotion.

It's hardly news that heartache and music go together like cold and winter, but this hurts-so-bad EP stands out because of Rossi's honeyed vocals, his careful song crafting, and the stellar band that backs him. (Rossi's pretty darn good as a solo act as well. ) He's originally from Detroit and now lives in Nashville, but there's more Tom Petty in his grooves than cookie cutter industry processing. The other good news is that the sheer joyfulness of Rossi's music indicates he has crossed the healing border is emerging out the other side.  Or, as he puts it, "Figuring it Out/The best I can." The shimmery and watery tones in that one come off as hopeful and alembic.

Rossi constructs earworm tunes, but of the kind you're glad to have rattling about in your belfry. You could dance to "Like a Heart Needs Beats" and the melody line is positively infectious, even when he sings lines such as: When the fire burned out/Cool came down/Searching through the darkness/Looking for a way out. And who can argue with sentiments like: Passion should could from way down deep/You should need it like a heart needs beats. This arrangement and several others go big, but they never overwhelm the vocals. It's not easy to steer a tune that's simultaneously sweet and muscular, but Rossi pulls it off. Add to this his uncanny ability to write lines that just grab you. The album title comes from "Round and Round," which opens with a plaintive recap: Four walls and I'm brokenhearted/ All we had from the start/You are who you are/You're stubborn as hell/And you're all that I want. Eventually the composition builds to the confessional: But I wouldn't change a thing/About our crooked love. Check out the short but blistering electric guitar riff that follows, then a dial back. Rossi expresses his psychic journey musically: calm, storm, calm, storm… balance. The same blend of desire and sunny days ahead comes across in "Everyone." And, later, the truly honest reminder that some days are harder than others: You wake up a ghost and start a haunting. Is the ghost lost love, or Rossi? Yes is the only possible answer.

This album has all the elements I look for in great songs: authentic emotion, hooky melodies, robust instrumentation, catch-your-attention lyrics, strong accented beats, and a vocalist singing like he means it.

Rob Weir 


Here's a solo acoustic performance. 

Gilmore, Way to Egress, Riverside, Ranky Tanky, and Others

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It happens a few times a year: so much music pours into my review bin that a few things slide, not because they’re unworthy, but because I got sidetracked. Here’s my 2018 midwinter cleanout of artists you should check out.

Thea Gilmore, Run

Thea Gilmore is a treasure. Last year she dropped a new LP titled The Counterweight and NoiseTrade heralded it by offering Run, a five-track Gilmore sampler. Gilmore, though well known in the UK, where she has recorded 17 albums and a passel of singles, isn't as familiar to North Americans. She's the real deal, folks. (Among other things, the Sandy Denny estate contracted her to write melodies for ten unfinished Denny originals.) Gilmore mixes dark and light, but mostly favors the shadows and the tones of her voice are colored with faintly Gothic hues. Check out "I've Got to Run," with its syncopated strum and edgy vocals. In Britain, Gilmore is known as both a rocker and a folk artist; the five tracks on Run highlight the second persona. Try "Think of Me," as well. Don't be fooled by its quiet ambience; the theme of this one is "I will be moving on." Gilmore has a fantastic voice—sultriness mixed with hints of danger. That mix is palpable on "Something to Sing About," so much so I'm not sure I believe her when she goes sweet on "Several Angels."

This Way to the Egress, Onward Up a Frightening Creek

And now for something completely different. Listen to the song "Voodoo" from This Way to the Egress. The accordion, blarting tuba, Dr. John-like growling vocals, the edginess, the mysteriousness…  You'll assume that these folks are either from New Orleans or are missing from the set of Sweeney Todd. Now try "Ode to Bukowki's Women," which sounds as if it might be the theme song for a cable TV after-midnight horror series. Then watch them live as they perform "Mark of the Beast" and maybe you'll think of some really offbeat kids channeling a little Gogol Bardello. Except Bardello doesn't flirt with social commentary like this band does on "See No Evil."  Now here's the real shocker: the rooftop concert footage is from Allentown, Pennsylvania—not exactly a hotbed of voodoo culture or New Orleans boogie music (or anything else, really). These folks are from the town next door, Bethlehem, PA. If you want to take a walk on the wild, weird, and oddly seductive side, This Way to the Egress is certainly not your play-to-formula group. I love this band!

The Riverside, Appalachia in the Morning

Don't be deceived by the title of The Riverside's latest; it's just the name of song and the band is actually from California, a state they honor is a pastoral mando-led song that evokes unhurried meanders through the countryside. The Riverside is the flip side to bluegrass bands that come at us with lacerating energy. Instead, this six-piece unit (four women, two men) takes a velvet glove approach and deliberately keeps things quiet and simple—as in "Dakota"—with an aim of making studio efforts parallel what you hear live. Listen to the above tracks and then the stage performance of "Starry Night," and I think you'll agree they achieve that admirable goal. Lead vocalist Jake Jeanson has a calming voice that melds beautifully into background harmonies. This is what a fresh, sun-dappled morning should sound like.

Ranky Tanky, Ranky Tanky

Fresh Air fans might have heard of this band; Terry Gross did an interview. This Charleston, South Carolina ensemble mines Gullah traditions; that is, the hybridized West African/Christian/communal culture that emerged along the ante and postbellum Southern seaboard. Musically it has a Stax-meets-gospel flair—the pedigree of folk, splashes of jazz, the muscularity of rock, and a lot of blues. Listen to the get-right-with-God "That's Alright," a song infused with trumpet, a thick bass groove, and big vocals from Qiana Parler. If that impresses you, listen to her go BIG on "Been in the Storm," where she trades chops with Kam Franklin. It's just the two of them, some backing percussion, and brace-those-walls power. Then try the quieter "Sink 'em Low," with mellow horn, and dialed back guitar, bass, percussion, and voice. Say amen!

Michelle LeBlanc, A Man Like You

Born in South Carolina into a family in which her dad is a musician, LeBlanc moved to New York and got involved in a bad relationship. A tarot card reading told her she should move to Nashville and follows her father’s path. Okay, I can hear your eyes collectively rolling from that last phrase. For all I know, she may be a tad flaky, but her new EP indicates promise. I really liked “Loving a Hurricane,” a solid piece of Americana wrapped in country pop wax paper. She has a nice voice and has lots of energy. The downside is that its easy to confuse her with a cover singer of the same name. I did so because this LeBlanc has songs with titles that suggest covers from the other, including one of John Hiatt's "Lovin’ a Hurricane.” Similarly, our LeBlanc’s “Highway” is an original, but it’s also the title of an Ingrid Michaelson composition that the other LeBlanc covered in a video! How does one compensate for such confusion? My recommendation is more originality in titles,  more bottom to the voice, and the development of a signature sound that leaves no doubt.  It's a crowded scene out there and LeBlanc needs to make waves distinctively her own.

Rob Williams, An Hour Before Daylight

If you gave a Virginia-born songwriter a Ph.D. (educational leadership), a rough-to-smooth voice, and a band, he’d probably sound a bit like Rob Williams (not to be confused with the English pop singer). He is sometimes compared to Jason Isbell or Josh Ritter, which is to say his is an Americana blend of roots rock and (slightly) twangy folk. He came by the first from listening to older sibs play 60s rock (Beatles, Rolling Stones) and later discovering REM and John Prine, to give him a down home folk twist on his rock and roll. “Icarus Dreamt” is a reminder that high hopes are important, even when they have consequences. For something with alittle pain, there’s the barstool confessional/warning of “Broken.” Williams also likes history and gives a little surf rock echo to “Lucy, You’re Lovely,” homage to an ancestor. And speaking of Lucy, he does a nice cover of the Lucinda Williams (no relation) “Blue.” Tonally, I’d prefer a bit fewer mid-range vocals, but this is Williams’ third album and I suspect he knows what he's after.

Peace Worshipers, Peace Worshipers

This three sarod collaboration with violinist Elmira Darvarova, a Metropolitan Opera Orchestra mainstay, is the brainchild of 74-year-old Amjad Ali Khan, one of the world's masters of the sarod, a non-fretted, lute-like instrument of 17-25 strings that's a staple in Hindustani music. You'll often see it played in conjunction with the better-known sitar because the sarod usually has just 4-5 melody strings and the rest vibrate sympathetically to give it more reverb than the sitar. This is contemplative music suitable for yoga or quiet reflection, not zumba   or pillar-to-post tasking. Try a shorter composition such as "Romantic Ecstasy" and work your way up to longer pieces like "Gentle Sunset."

  

 Rob Weir