Archie Fisher's Mature, Bittersweet "Silent Song"

ARCHIE FISHER

A Silent Song

Red House 235

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On October 23, Scotland's Archie Fisher will celebrate his 76^th birthday. My goodness, where does the time go? Fisher has long been a lion of the Scottish folk scene. He hails from a musical Glasgow family, has been performing since 1960, and Fisher compositions such as "The FinalTrawl," "Witch of the West-Mer-Land," and "Dark-Eyed Molly" are such a part of the folk repertoire that many people think they are public domain songs. Fisher is also part of a generation of guitar players that includes John Renbourn, Bert Jansch, and Martin Carthy whose strong cadences mixed with light lyricism practically reinvented how acoustic melodies were played and sung. Fisher even hosted radio programs and folk clubs that revived flagging interest in Scottish music. The only thing he's not done a lot of is recording; Silent Song is just his 7^th solo venture. It's also just his 3^rd since 1976 and the first since 2008.(My personal favorite Archie Fisher song is "The Cullins of Home" from an earlier album.)

The album is aptly named. We can hear a little shake to his voice, though his buttery baritone hasn't soured. T'is a wise man who knows his limits, though, and Fisher doesn't even try to impress with vocal pyrotechnics; as the title suggests, this is a quiet and personal album—the kind one might play on a wintry day curled by the fire with cocoa in hand. In that spirit, Fisher opens with "Waltz Into Winter," which is simultaneously bright and fragile--akin to the delicacy of an early December icicle. The album's dozen songs are a collection of traditional tunes, covers, and originals, but each track has a timeless and personal feel. Personal favorites include his cover of John Jacob Niles' "Lass from the Low Country" in which Fisher's deep tones are echoed by Luna Skye's sonorous cello; his rendition of the classic Scottish poem "Bonnie Annie Laurie," which he learned from his father; and his take on Ian Davison's "A River Like You." (If you know anything about the Scots, a love song to a river is as natural as peat on the fire.) Perhaps best of all is Fisher's own "Lord of the May," with that staccato vocal/guitar mix mentioned earlier. I can foresee this one becoming the next Fisher composition to be mislabeled as a  "traditional" song. Ditto his "You Took the Day," a bittersweet address to those who've departed, complete with the unsettling thought, "I won't be far behind." It's hard not to get a bit choked up when he follows that one and rounds off the album with "The Parting Glass." Appropriately, nearly everyone thinks that's an ancient Irish song, but it was penned by American poet Judy Goodenough (1942-90). Fisher used to sing this one when he toured with Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy. Was that really 40 years ago?

Archie Fisher will appear with Garnet Rogers at the West Whately Chapel as the season finale of Watermelon Wednesdays. This one, though, will be on a Monday: October 5. Call ahead, though, as it's officially sold out.

Rob Weir

Red Rising: Pastiche or Pilfering?

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RED RISING  (2014)

By Pierce Brown

Del Rey, 416 pages, 978-0345539809

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Pierce Brown's gripping dystopian sci-fi novel raises important questions about the lies leaders tell. It also raises less substantive ones such as: Is there a line between homage and rip-off? There are echoes of Harry Potter, Ender's Game, and Lord of the Flies in Red Rising. It's also a secularized version of Roman mythology, but it borrows so much from The Hunger Games that the phrase "intellectual plagiarism" lurks in the back of the mind even as one greedily devours the pages.  

Red Rising is set in the future. Its protagonist, 16-year-old Darrow, is a "Helldiver" on Mars, a miner who works in a bulky pressurized suit in underground chambers populated by poisonous pit vipers and explosive gas pockets. He already has a young, rail-thin wife, Eo, because life on Mars is short, brutish, and nasty. Not only do atmospheric conditions take a toll on the body, but food and other comforts are (allegedly) in short supply on a planet that's stratified by skin pigmentation. (Think the districts in The Hunger Games.) Darrow and Eo are Reds, a low stratum in a society ruled by taller, smarter, more muscular Golds. The Golds, whom we quickly surmise are analogous to an elite version of a fascist-style military junta, maintain strict discipline—right down to doling out rewards, controlling food supplies, and imposing the death penalty for certain songs—but they also draw upon species loyalty. As the tale goes, earth's atmosphere was ruined, hence mankind had to colonize other planets. The materials Helldivers such as Darrow are mining will help humankind terraform other worlds and construct sustainable atmospheres so that future humans can live outside of their bio-domes. The untold truth is that the secret for doing both was discovered centuries earlier and the well-fed Golds are living in luxurious cities on the Martian surface. Eo shows this to Darrow by taking him into a forbidden chamber and then publicly singing a forbidden song so that she will be martyred and Darrow will fulfill what she sees as his revolutionary destiny. In true Hero's Journey fashion, Darrow very reluctantly takes up the challenge.

First, though, he must undergo a transformation—Red must become Gold—and that's far more complex than a furtive dye job. Darrow is given over to Dancer, a Gold collaborator, who helps him prepare for this role, and to a series of "Carvers," who literally remake his body into that of a demigod. But can Darrow pass socially and intellectually? That's not easy either, as he must undergo rigorous leadership training at a sort of Holgwart's in the sky academy with other ambitious Golds. Moreover, the ruling elite—headed by ArchGovernor Nero au Augustus—also have a trial-by-combat final test to see who will fulfill what role in Gold society and they are willing to accept quite a bit of 'melt' in the form of crippling injury and death to assure that only the fittest survive. If you're imagining an obvious Hunger Games parallel at this point, you are correct—right down to each candidate having a Proctor/sponsor—individuals named after Roman gods in this case. Although there are official teams—Mars in Darrow's case—leadership must be won, not assumed, which means intra- as well inter-rivalries. As in The Hunger Games unofficial alliances form, betrayals abound, loyalties are always ambiguous, and the results are often rigged. Although Brown throws in a few novel twists—including Darrow's growing attraction for a woman from a rival team named Mustang, his guilt over Eo's death, and his rivalry/friendship with a teammate named Cassius—this truly is The Hunger Games with different window treatments. It's analogous right down to being book one of a planned trilogy, so we know that Darrow has to survive no matter what perils he faces.

In addition to being derivative, there are some rather obvious logic errors throughout the book, including the fact that Darrow kept his unusual name and appended it to a made up family history. Why don't snakes need oxygen? More perplexing: How is it that a ruling elite smart enough to keep miners in the dark for 700 years doesn't wonder about a Gold from an unknown family who just happens to have the first name of a Red who went missing right after his wife was executed?

I plowed through the book because Brown is an engaging writer and he threw in enough small details to intrigue me, like how different colors on the planet swore. I also have to admit that having just finished several denser novels preconditioned me for some cheap thrills and escapism. Whether you will enjoy Red Rising depends upon where you come down on the pastiche-versus-pilfering question. I give Brown high marks for writing, but low scores for creativity. I've also had my fix, so I rather doubt I'll read the sequels.

Rob Weir

 

At the Water's Edge an Unglorious Mess

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AT THE WATER'S EDGE (2015)

Sara Gruen

Spiegel & Grau, 368 pages, 978-038523233

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Here's a novel that has it all: rich people, the Scottish Highlands, the Loch Ness monster, ghosts, a bearded Scotsman, hair's breath escapes from death, sex, violence… It's only missing one thing: an ounce of plausibility. Okay, two things; it's not very well written either. Sara Gruen's latest novel is wildly popular, but then again so are Nora Roberts romances and Thomas Kincaid paintings and for the same reason: if you push all the correct sentimentality buttons, lots of people will consume your work as if it were made of chocolate-covered fried dough.

Like millions, I readily devoured Gruen's Water for Elephants, which I found too charming to muse over its literary merits. At the Water's Edge is a different matter altogether. It's what you'd get if you put Wide Sargasso Sea, Mrs. Dalloway, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Great Gatsby, My Man Godfrey, and a few bodice rippers in a blender, set it to crush, and reassembled the parts haphazardly.

The book is set in the waning days of World War Two, a small conflict that apparently escaped notice from members of Philadelphia's upper crust. It centers on a young married couple, Ellis and Madeline, though Ellis much prefers the company of his friend Hank. Although in the pink of health, neither man is in uniform because Ellis is allegedly color-blind and Hank has flat feet. Because they are also the offspring off the idle rich, they are content to dance and drink the war away. Madeline is Ellis' prize/rebellion from when all three were in prep school. She's beautiful in face, but rail thin, despised by her snooty in-laws, and generally treated as if she were suffering from neurasthenia. Already there are problems in Gruen's narrative. The setting feels more 1924 than 1944, and the three central characters come off more like besotted Jazz Age escapees from a rough draft of a Fitzgerald novel. Despite the fact they are supposed to be Americans, Ellis and Hank seem more like upper-class British twits—the sort who wouldn't know how to crack a hard-boiled egg and would leave it to the servants to do.

It goes downhill from here. After a falling out with his rich parents, who cut his allowance and belittle Madeline, Ellis hastily arranges a wartime sail to Scotland. Why? So he can redeem himself by—wait for it—finding the Loch Ness monster! (There is, of course, a brush with near-death on the way.) In Gruen's increasingly ludicrous plot, Ellis' father is none other than the man who took the infamous 1934 "Surgeon's Photograph" of Nessie that was proven to be a fraud. If only Ellis can find Nessie and restore his old man's reputation, maybe all will be forgiven and he'll get to live happily with Madeline. Or not—because this book is filled with so many ham-handed homoerotic hints that we suspect it's really Hank he'd rather bed.

The Scottish sojourn involves checking into the only hotel in Drumnadrochit, the village nearest the waters where Nessie is most often seen. It is run by the brooding Angus, who is having nothing of being ordered about by a group of lazy, loudmouthed Yanks without uniforms or ration books. Ellis and Hank are horrible, inconsiderate louts in every way imaginable–so bad that Madeline begins to see her marriage as a literal trap–one in which Ellis might be plotting to have her declared insane so he can tuck her away in an asylum and lay his profligate hands on her fortune.

Oh, please! Do you have the stomach for more? What's been left out? People aren't who they appear to be on the surface. There are more near-death experiences, but providential rescues by heroes and (perhaps) by ghosts and monsters. Oh yeah. I left out drug addiction, poaching, violence against women, suicide, dead children, steamy sex, and leaden prose. And let's not forget Gruen's descriptions of World War Two, though you could get these by reading Wikipedia. The only redeeming quality lies with depictions of the bleakness of British home front life during the war.

Do not fall prey to this book's hype. It's not akin to Water for Elephants. In fact, it reads like the sort of book that an author is pressured to write to capitalize on the success of a previous best seller. I will reserve judgment about Gruen's literary talents for now, but of At the Water's Edge it must be said that though it's Scottish, it's still crap.

Rob Weir

Simrit, Yael Meyer, Family Folk Revival, Jennell, and Ingird Michaelson

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Time to clean the decks again, so here are a few short reviews to alert readers about new releases.

Simrit Kaur is a Greek-born, South Carolina-raised Sikh, a phrase that probably just set off a few "New Age" alarms. Get over it. Simrit performs sacred chant music, but her musical influences include: Greek legend Nana Mouskouri and ancient Byzantine music, Jeff Buckley, Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, and The Grateful Dead. Plus Loreena McKennitt, which makes a lot of sense because Simrit's dreamy cadences, like McKennitt's or Enya's, often tumble out of frothy mixes. You'll hear bells and angelic harmonies behind her, but also percussion and peddle steel. Songs like "Kal Akaal" are at once deeply meditative, but the bass notes are heavy and vaguely ominous and the feel is evocative of quieter Renaissance folk rock offerings—think Pentangle. "Pure" uses electric guitar for the effect a sitar might induce in an Indian raga, but Simrit's voice has all the power and ornamentation of a pop singer. About that voice—it's one for the ages. Her songs are so gorgeous you might find your pacified mind disconnects from your sashaying body. (By the way, all Sikh women use the surname Kaur in the same way that all males use Singh.)

Speaking of intriguing voices, Yael Meyer is worth adding to singers-you-should-check-out bucket list. In her own way, she's as meditative as Simrit, but she does it more in a folk/pop vein. She's a Chilean-born, Los Angeles-based artist in the indie pop/folk range whose latest release Warrior Heart (Kli Records, 2014) generated some buzz. The title track is a nice mix of lush pop and energetic polyrhythm that creates a solid aural base for Meyer's voice. Hers is delicate palette, but she uses her 'small' voice in confident and interesting ways that make it sound bigger than it is. A personal favorite is "Everything Will Be Alright," an upbeat song with a slightly quirky backbeat and clipped end-of-line syllables on the chorus that punctuate the arrangement and add silent contrast to her light vocals. Meyer won't blow you away with power but—like the TV and movie soundtrack works to her credit—her voice is that background lilt that makes you take notice when you least expect it.

There's a band from Magnolia, Texas that calls itself Family Folk Revival. That's based largely on the fact that three members of the quintet come from the Lankford family, but aside from a few forays into (mostly) acoustic music ("Marfa," "Trash") there's not much on their new record Water Walker (Rock Ridge Music) that evokes a coffeehouse scene. FFF calls itself a "psychedelic rock and roll band" and that doesn't quite cut it either, though lead vocalist Mason Lankford evokes Jim Morrison on songs such as "Dream" and "I Found God." A better descriptor would be to call these guys moody garage country. Thick thwacking bass lines frame the breakdown song "I Drew a Line," and "Darlin'" feels like bluegrass from the place where the mountain stream drains into a swamp. A lot of FFF songs have dark edges and arrangements—the echo chamber used in "Everyone Loves Everyone," the spooky feel to "American Standard," and the grungy guitar and bass of "If It Don't Kill You (It ain't Love)." But yeah, these guys are country. You don't get much more country than a line like line: Now I'm drunk again tonight/Like I was the night before that/And the night before that/And the night before that. But you know what? Slap any label you want on them because they're just damned good. If I were their manager, though, I'd make them get a new moniker. (Try an Internet search on Family Folk Revival and leave yourself extra time!)

Does the music industry ask women to go by one name because it sees them as interchangeable widgets? Here's hoping that a young singer from Wyoming billed simply as Jennell doesn't let Nashville turn her into a replacement part. Her music evokes the indie pop/club music side of things (especially Sweden's Robyn) and her new EP Home is filled with bubbly hooks and energy. You can hear her youth in songwriting way too heavy on ooo-ooo-ooo and woo-ooo-oo filler, but this young woman knows how to use her voice. She can reach up for diva stuff, but she builds to it and has an infectious catch that she uses to good effect. She's strongest, though, when the arrangements ratchet down. "Feels Like Home" and "Pave My Own Way" are winners because she controls the vibe, whereas the other three songs, though they have their virtues, feel more like the mix is controlling her. Lots of promise, though—if she can avoid widget syndrome. [No videos available.]

I can't tell you the number of young women I run into who'd like to be Ingrid Michaelson when they grow up. Small wonder. If you think pop music has to be banal, check out her back catalog. Her sampler A Summer Night Out illustrates why she's an underground goddess. First of all, she owns the arrangements, not vice versa. "Time Machine" is gutsy and bluesy, with Michaelson's voice matching the grit of the brassy horns. In like fashion, she uses heavy bass as the dark counterpoint to her bright voice on "The Way I Am," a song that hold another key to her success: her willingness to take chances—by bringing a cool jazz ambience to pop in this case. On "Warpath" she absolutely abuses what we think about pop by squeezing it into some hand jive and layering it with swamp rock. I could go on, but you really need to hear her—if for no other reason, you'll understand why tweens, teens, and twenty-somethings swoon when her name is dropped. (She's the coolest thing in glasses this side of Tina Fey, by the way.)

Rob Weir

Izzy Young's Greenwich Village: When Art Triumphed over Commerce

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IZZY YOUNG TALKING FOLKLORE CENTER (1989/2015)

Directed by Jim Downing

MVD Visual 52150

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If the name Izzy Young rings no bells, t'is time to educate yourself. A superb re-release from DVD Visual will help you do so. In 1957, Young—fueled by the energy of the Folk Music Revival movement—sold his life insurance policy and opened a storefront on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village called The Folklore Center. He gave it that all-purpose name because he wanted it to be more than a hootenanny venue, though it was certainly that. In 1961, Young produced the first concert for a kid calling himself Bob Dylan.  Dylan even wrote a 'talking blues' song in Young's honor titled "Talking Folklife Center." The Folklife Center was a drop-in magnet for those identifying themselves as bohemian, countercultural, or unorthodox—a place to hear poetry, discuss politics, watch dance performances, catch a concert, learn about progressive causes, or find publications not sold at your local newsstand. The same year Young welcomed Dylan to the Folklore Center, he led an important free-speech battle in New York aimed at overturning a stupid ordinance that banned singing folk music in Washington Square on Sunday. You could (and should) call that event a precursor of the countercultural Sixties. Young also DJed a progressive music show on WBAI, bankrolled a few publications, wrote a column titled "Frets and Frails" for Sing Out! Magazine from 1959 to 1969, helped bring The Fugs to prominence, and welcomed hundreds of artists to the Center. In many respects, Young embodied the idealism and anti-materialism of the late 50s and 1960s. As he put it, "I couldn't have had a better time, or earned less money."

 Alas, the dream didn't last. Young closed The Folklife Center in 1973, moved to Sweden, and opened a Stockholm version of his vision, where (at age 87) he still presides. This film was originally aired on Swedish TV in 1989, and recounts Young's visit to his former Greenwich Village haunts. Although it centers on Young, one cannot help but muse upon the death of pure art, the decline of idealism, and the triumph of soulless commercialism. That is to say, it's sad for reasons other than the fact that many of those who appear in the film are now dead: poet Allen Ginsberg (1997), musician/anarchist Tuli Kupferberg (2010), former New York Mayor Ed Koch (2013), folksinger Pete Seeger (2014)…. In the film, the Village Young knew is already on its way to becoming a high-rent district for the moneyed classes. The Center site was empty, high rents having driven out several tenants since Young left 15 years earlier. Young noted he was able to open it back in 1957 in part because he paid $75/month rent for his apartment in a neighborhood now occupied by the nouveau riche.

We also see Young back at the mic at WBAI, where old friends such has Heather Woods, Danny Kalb, and Marc Silber polish off a few standards. We also see him with Allen Ginsberg, who does a fine version of "Father Death Blues" before discussing how "workaholism" is a neurosis; with Kupferberg, an unreconstructed anarchist who justified stealing from the rich; and with Ed Koch, who rather presciently opined that "bohemianism is a state of mind" and that artists that missed out on buying cheap property in the Village ought to think about Brooklyn and the Bronx. Koch may have missed the mark on the Bronx, but he was spot on concerning Brooklyn. Brooklyn was also where Young spent much of his youth, and we see him there making bagels with his brother, Oscar, a union baker; and singing Yiddish folk songs with his mother. Later we see him in Peekskill with Pete Seeger—talking about folk songs, of course.

Director Jim Downing was onto something back in 1989. He gives us subtle glimpses of the downside of gentrification: fast food franchises in spots once occupied by family businesses, sleek limos clogging streets once given over to youth culture, and street characters whose seediness results from poverty rather lifestyle choices. Above all, he shows ubiquitous symbols of commerce—the bucks that replaced the vibes. Even Art D'Lugoff's famed Village Gate closed five years after this film was made; a CVS now stands there and can anyone argue that society is richer for that? Downing did with his camera what those being pushed out did in words; both are lamentations on how artifice supplanted art. As Ed Sanders (The Fugs) put it in his poem "The Five Feet": You've got to have five feet to skitter down the road/One foot in the grave/One foot in the glitter/One foot in the gutter/One foot in the glory/One foot near the Grail. This small film shows us a remarkable man—Izzy Young—but it shows what is lost when you take away everything except the glitter and the gutter. I generally don't get nostalgic about the Sixties, but this film (and a steady diet of hollow commercialism) induced waves of it.      Rob Weir

PS—This film can be viewed as a $3.99 rental on YouTube if you can't find it elsewhere.  

  

Safekeeping: Memorable Characters, So-So Plot

SAFEKEEPING (2015)

Jessamyn Hope

Fog Tree Books, 371 pages, #978-1941493069

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Subtitle Jessamyn Hope's debut novel "Where's Dagmar?" Or maybe, "Whither Israel?" Hope's sprawling novel centers, in part, on the fate of a precious heirloom broach with such a long history that it's no longer clear whether it should be in someone's personal possession, or on display as a symbol of Jewish heritage.

The novel's central tension lies in the fact that it does lie in personal hands–those of Adam, a 26-year-old drug addict living in New York City, whose ownership of it is tainted. Though he is a very secular Jew, Adam seeks redemption on many levels; hence he flees New York for Israel with only the broach and the clothes on his back.  His only plan is to cleanse himself by giving the broach to a woman named Dagmar. Why? Because the broach once belonged to his (now deceased) grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, who briefly lived on Kibbutz Sadot Hadar after Israel was founded.  Adam learned that she, not his grandmother, had been the love of his life.

As a birth Jew, Adam is entitled to enter Israel, and as a family member of a former kibbutznik, he provisionally enters Sadot Haddar. Staying there will require finding himself before he sets off to find Dagmar—cold turkey detox, establishing some work habits, and abstaining from alcohol for starters. But the hardest part might be negotiating kibbutz politics and personalities. The year is 1994, and the old socialist ideals of Sadot Hadar are under attack by those who wish to abandon radical equality and bring the place into late 20^th century economic reality. Want some tension? Opposing all efforts to modernize is aged but fiery Ziva, an ardent Zionist, communist, and cofounder of Sadot Hadar; her son is on the other side. Moreover, Adam may not be the most screwed up camper on the premises. There is, for instance, the flirtatious Ulya, a young Belarusian lass who dreams of leaving the dreary kibbutz to live glamorously in New York. Never mind that her image is from a very old issue of Life Magazine. There's also Ofir, a teenaged Israeli soldier whose head is filled with music, not military strategy; and Claudette, a French-Canadian Catholic with such severe OCD that she can barely function. And why is Farid, a Palestinian man, always lurking about after hours?

The strength of Hope's novel lies with her memorable characters. As a storyteller, though, Hope occasionally stumbles. The broach is a classic Chekhov's gun, so we must get its back-story in flashback sequences and let's just say that The Red Violin it's not. The story arc is likewise too predictable, a problem made more acute by the fact that the narrative is driven by mysteries that don't require Sherlock Holmes to reveal. More to the point, it's a problem if readers unspool them many pages before they are officially revealed. Ironically, the non-Jewish Claudette is the only character whose actions surprise us.   

We are supposed to overlay Adam's story, that of the broach, and the fate of Sodot Hadar and then extrapolate that generational clashes over values are analogous to Israel's own growing pains. Sodot Hadar translates as "fields of splendor," and we are invited to muse over the question of how much can change (for people, communities, and nations) before essential character disintegrates into incoherence. Interesting premise—but, in my view, not one fully realized. But maybe that's because I'm like Claudette: a non-Jewish observer. I suspect, though, that it's because Ms. Hope has some growing of her own to do.

Rob Weir       

Violette, Cocetta Abbate, Gino Sitson, Bill Gable: ALL THAT JAZZ

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You’d never know that jazz is America’s least popular musical genre based on the number of recent releases that have crossed my desk. Here are four:

The most intriguing of the lot is from a young singer named Violette. To say her background is eclectic is an understatement. She was born in Paris and eventually studied at the Parisian Academy, though she spent most of her youth on Ars-en-Ré, a small island about 5 miles offshore in the Poitou region of France. Then she came to Boston’s Berklee College of Music, and now lives in Brooklyn. Her self-produced CD Falling Strong is a bilingual effort produced by Brian Bacchus, who also produces Nora Jones. Like Jones, Violette isn’t terribly concerned about genres. She’s in the chanteuse tradition of jazz, but her inspirations include everyone from Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel to Ella Fitzgerald and Michael Jackson. Among her dozen original compositions are ones that blur pop/jazz borders (“All My Life,” “I Heart New York”), those with Fitzgerald-like heavy staccato (“Falling Strong”), small combo numbers (“Coming to You”), and those with Brel-like fragility (“Annabelle”). It’s also an album of two distinct moods. When Violette sings in English she’s competent and confident, but when she switches to French, the emotions pop through with more drama. You can hear this in the swingy “Moi Pour Moi,” the catchy “Envol,” and the bouncy “Musique d’Amérique.” The English pieces are bon, but the French are trés bon.

I’ll call Concetta Abbate a jazz artist simply because she plays in jazz venues, but there really isn’t any clean category for her Falling in Time (Waterbug). She’s a classically trained violinist, but she calls this14-track selection “pocket-sized songs,” which is both intriguing and enigmatic—like her music. There’s nothing on this album longer than 4 minutes and several are two or shorter. In addition to her violin, Abbate also performs on harp, charrango, homemade box percussion, and glockenspiel. Guests add viola, cello, guitar, piano, bass, percussion, and trumpet. Her songs are frequently poetic and sometimes downright weird. I can’t promise you’ll love everything on this CD, but you’re unlikely to be bored!

Abbate gives us a Latin flair, but Gino Sitson is a voice of Africa (Cameroon). More precisely, Africa is among his voices. His VoiStrings (Buda Records 4707155) is aptly named and Sitson’s is a four-octave voice that can be as smooth as burnished wood or as taut as a violin string tuned to its breaking point. The band behind him is generally centered on piano, though double bass, percussion, cello, and viola help construct polyphonous arrangements that serve whatever Sitson pulls from his bulging bag of vocaltricks: scat, falsetto, wails, wounded cries…. Some of the tracks border on experimental, others pulse with African soul, and along the way we hear influences from gospel, the blues, and maybe some Papa Wemba and Bobby McFerrin.

Members of the rock band Steely Dan love the songs of jazzman Bill Gable and his album No Straight Lines (Autograph 502) explains why. As the title suggests, this is an album of departures and curves. It’s laid-back, but you name it and Gable weaves it into a song for his trademark counter-tenor voice: flamenco, pop, world jazz, Caribbean influences….  His lyrics don’t mince either: “Everybody sees/what they want to see/Every sinner finds his god/At the end of the day/no one comes to show us the way/No one gives a nod or a hand/judgment isn’t rendered/Bodies lie in state/overwhelmed by fate.”

Rob Weir