Blurbing For The Weekend 9/13/24

Back at the end of May, I announced “If my schedule suddenly lost its enviable slack, keeping up on new music would be the first pastime to go.” A quarter of a year later, I either brace for that seeming inevitability, or remember it hasn’t happened yet. Long stretches of barely listening to new albums are followed by bursts of enthusiastic discovery. Inspired by the end of both health woes and a heatwave, here are a few of the recent ones. Whether they’ll get more consideration at year's end, or a brief tip of the hat, is not yet clear.

I’ve known about Swamp Dogg since the the promotion of his ‘90s best-of and a chapter on him in Richie Unterberger’s Unknown Legends of Rock’n’Roll. But the semi-obscure, screwball soul singer rarely if ever showed his face in the racks of any stores I frequented, and never rose too high in my queue of stuff to stream. Somewhere down the line I filed him away as “interesting lyrically, ordinary musically." And while he got a kick out of recording experiments with heavy autotune during the last decade, I still don’t get a kick out of hearing that.

Following releases on Joyful Noise and Don Giovanni, this year’s Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St came out on Oh Boy Records, a truly inspired and inspiring choice that affirmed the label’s desire to survive founder John Prine. I gave it a dutiful listen, and was immediately sold. Compared to my personal R&B singer-songwriter faves, Dogg is less nutty than Joe Tex, but less classy than Jerry Butler, crooning blunt sex jokes and pleas for peace that Prine might have covered but would have been too shy to write. The banjofied arrangements that inspired the title are professional without being austere or unduly deferent. Margo Price and Vernon Reid’s cameos are too distracting for my taste, but the Jenny Lewis collaboration “Count the Days” (a Top 20 R&B hit Dogg co-wrote for Charlie & Inez Foxx) is a highlight. It’s nice to hear a guest singer who serves the song rather than milks it.

2022’s A Beautiful Time was the first Willie Nelson album since Stardust to grab me on first listen, though I haven’t heard even 10% of what came in the decades between. I’m good about keeping up with Nelson now, though, politely checking out his bluegrass album and Harlan Howard tribute last year. An album of alt-rock and Neil Young covers named Last Leaf On The Tree is already scheduled for November, which might be why The Border, released in May, lacks the usual intimation of finality this nonagenarian gives releases that could easily be his last. There are no covers outside the usual coterie of established Songwriting Hall Of Famers here, with the most melodramatic arrangement given to an original number. The Border is a half-hour of solid material right in his wheelhouse, each “side” topped by a Rodney Crowell number. It’s the kind of unassuming thing you’d expect from a bright-eyed fifty-something who can afford to just clock in with style. God bless.

When I wrote about Dylan Hicks & Small Screen’s Airport Sparrows in my 2022 year-end piece, I said I’d like to see them drop a Physical Graffiti next time, really exploring their mix of jazz improvisation and singer-songwriter lyricism. And it's half-happened! The group's new release, Modern Flora, is 38 minutes compared to Sparrows' hour-plus, but features five songs rather than twelve - two over ten minutes! Though transparently daring from a conventional perspective, it also has me embarrassed about my ignorance regarding the history of artsong. Is there a better comparison to “The Unicellular Spore” than They Might Be Giants at an unthinkable level of romantic confidence and musical swing? That moment in the climactic “All Thumbs” where the horns copy the end of Hicks’ verse, four notes echoing and dispersing, until a guitar brings them back for a truly chaotic interlude? What's the precedent for this kind of arrangement? Did Arto Lindsay ever get this un-berserk? Would a veteran of The Knitting Factory say “been there, done that”? Did Al Jarreau ever get freakier and more poetic than I’d assume? Is Hicks and company working a truly unique synthesis of musical aesthetics that makes Paul Simon look like a relative scaredypants? What would Donald Fagen say? 

I’m going to try and decrease the number of question marks on my assessment by the end of the year, but if your ears perk up at the above references, I sincerely suggest giving Hicks a listen. The man deserves more takes!

I’m not sure why the new Helado Negro album, Phasor, took longer to reach me than 2021’s Far In. Maybe because it’s a touch more synthetic? Something about the timbres took me back to aughts indie wallpaper like the Notwist, Cut Copy and later Stereolab. With psychedelia this soft, especially when I don’t speak the language, that can be all it takes to alienate. All the same, I haven’t been able to leave Phasor be. Another artful follow-up I’m wrestling with rather than writing off: The Smile, Wall Of Eyes.

Would you be surprised to learn I get narcissistic about small differences? I've usually found Elizabeth Nelson, both as a music critic and as a bandleader with The Paranoid Style, a touch too reverent towards a literary rock past I think I have more interesting perspective on (or so I tell myself as I bite my pillow and wonder if I’ll ever get asked to write for money again). But The Paranoid Style’s latest album, The Interrogator, kicks out the jams harder and more humorously than I expected, happily bringing to mind The Mekons Rock’n’Roll, still the pinnacle of aging leftie meta-rock. This album might get me past my bias against people who take Graham Parker seriously.

Full disclosure: Dylan Hicks cost himself a sale by surprising me with a promo CD of Modern Flora (though it's not impossible I'll spring for the vinyl some Bandcamp Friday). If you'd like to send me a streaming link of something to hear, anthonyisright at gmail dot com would be the place to do it (compliments and queries are welcome as well). As the wishy-washiness of this post implies, however, I offer no promises I'll give it much time or attention. I mean, are you making singer-songwriter albums heavy on improvisation with a six-piece jazz band? But I’ll be flattered you bothered.