A Gorgeous New Album from the Wailin’ Jennys’ Ruth Moody

Banjo player/songwriter Ruth Moody - one-third of perennially popular all-female Americana roots trio the Wailin’ Jennys - has just released a new album, These Wilder Things, her second as a bandleader. It’s excellent for so many reasons. First is David Travers-Smith’s purist but lush production: many of the songs follow a familiar trajectory from a skeletal intro and then bring in the instruments one by one until there’s a fullscale bluegrass orchestra motoring along. As one would expect from a member of the Wailin’ Jennys, the songwriting is strong – Tift Merritt comes to mind – and the playing is tremendous.

The opening cut, Trouble & Woe, a stark gospel-flavored minor-key banjo tune, is basically the Wailin’ Jennys since the whole band’s on it. As it picks up steam, the bandleader’s brother Richard Moody’s viola and Adrian Dolan’s fiddle join with Sam Howard’s bass, the viola firing off a nonchalantly searing solo as it winds out. One And Only, a gently swaying country song, blends delicious layers of slow-burning electric guitar from Adam Dobres, rising and falling around a tersely biting slide guitar solo.

Where so many others have failed, Moody pretty much succeeds at reinventing the old Springsteen radio hit Dancing in the Dark as sprightly seductive retro acoustic swing a la Lake Street Dive. The title track takes the volume down with Moody’s pensively airy vocals over hypnotic gospel-tinged piano: “We can’t be tamed, these wilder things,” she insists quietly. She keeps things hushed and ethereal with the brooding, restless Trees for Skies, while Mark Knopfler gives a clinic in terse multitracking on the even more brooding Pockets: “We took the roads most would avoid,” Moody asserts, unintimidated by anything that might imply.

The spare piano waltz Make a Change evocatively builds an evocative calm-before-the-storm ambience, pedal steel lingering in the background. One Light Shining blends Dolan’s mandolin with guest Jerry Douglas’ dobro, followed by the delicate, Celtic-flavored Life Is Long and then the quietly elegant, similarly low-key Nothing Without Love, a big anthem stripped to just the essentials. Moody will be on tour this summer; watch this space for possible NYC dates.

Jeffrey Foucault Brings His Dark Lyrical Americana to the Rockwood

On one hand, Jeffrey Foucault is the type of songwriter you see on Mountain Stage. He pretty much lives on the road, playing respectably midsize venues, something he’s been doing for the better part of ten years. But his moody, mostly slow-to-midtempo songs are a lot smarter and more interesting than most of what’s passing up and down the Americana highway. As befalls most songwriters who take their lyrics seriously these days, his twangy rock is heavily infused with country and blues, in the same vein as Steve Earle or James McMurtry. But where McMurtry will wind a yarn, Foucault spins off one image after another; where Earle heads for the country, Foucault goes off into growling Neil Young territory. He’s playing the big room at the Rockwood on March 5 at 7 PM on an intriguing doublebill with another lyrically-inclined Americana guy, Peter Mulvey.

Foucault’s most recent album Horse Latitudes doesn’t sound anything like the Doors, nor does it have artwork by Turner. Recorded in a whirlwind three-day session, it has some absolutely brilliant playing from an all-star cast: the ubiquitous Eric Heywood on pedal steel and lead guitar, Morphine’s Billy Conway on drums, Jennifer Condos on bass, and Van Dyke Parks, of all people, on keyboards.

The title track opens on a slowly swaying, dusky note  anchored by fingerpicked guitar and Conway’s meticulously ominous, boomy rhythm, with a simmering Heywood pedal steel crescendo on the way out. Foucault drawls a litany of doomed, surreal imagery:

Singing into the belly of a whale
Leviathan’s ribs, a drowning jail
The desert at the bottom of the sea
The devil with his finger on the scale

Pretty Girl in A Small Town makes it clear that Foucault spent some time listening to Nirvana at some point: “You used to walk to get away, there was nowhere you could stay,” begins this chronicle of frustration and isolation, themes that recur throughout his work. Starlight and Static sways moodily as Foucault eulogizes a nameless rocker he felt a kinship to: “They all thought they knew you, and I wanted no one to know me too.” He follows the bleakly skeletal acoustic vignette Heart to the Husk with the brooding nocturne Last Night I Dreamed of Television, with more Turner imagery over  marvelously stygian drumming.

Goners Most evokes Richard Buckner at his most minimalist as Foucault memorializes a teenage romance that never had a prayer. Everybody’s Famous contrasts Parks’ surrealist organ with Heywood’s casual savagery: with its enigmatic, Leonard Cohen-esque anger, it’s the best song on the album :

Everybody knows it, they saw your billboard in the rain
They heard your mama crying and you forgot your own real name
And she voted for your heartbreak and she smiled at your shame
Everybody’s famous
Everyone’s the same

Idaho paints a wintry tableau as Heywood’s steel sizzles and burns; then, on Passerines, Foucault juxtaposes considerably more ominous imagery over a slow, minor-key Tonight’s the Night groove. The album ends with the gently fingerpicked two-guitar reminiscence Tea and Tobacco and the unexpectedly upbeat, honkytonk-flavored road song Real Love. Foucault’s popularity is a welcome reminder that there’s still a sizeable audience for low-key, lyrically-driven rock that requires close listening. It also raises the question of how many other Jeffrey Foucaults there might be out there, battling their demons in song and pondering where the hell they’ll get the money to go out there on the road so they never have to come back.

A Chilling, Cinematic Classic from Ward White

Ward White’s new album, Bob, is a suspense film waiting to happen. White has made a career out of slashingly literary janglerock and chamber pop for over a decade: to call this surreallistically menacing concept album his best yet would be a disservice to brilliant earlier releases like 2007′s Maybe but Probably Not and his 2009 collaboration with keyboard maven Joe McGinty, McGinty and White Sing Selections from the McGinty and White Songbook. This new one is his most literary yet, a nonlinear narrative that may be about drug trafficking, white-collar crime, several murders and the apocalypse, a combination of all or some of the above. It is an engrossing story that is impossible to turn away from, best appreciated not as individual songs but as an integral suite.

Musically, it’s White at the top of his game as a satirist. While many of the songs are attractive, Bacharach-esque bossa-pop spiced with Jeff Hermanson’s tasteful trumpet, others veer closer to parody, toying with vaguely bluesy 70s radio pop and 80s power balladry. White’s a great guitarist and adds a handful of long-winded solos that hint at raw cheese everywhere. Yet he teases the listener, only crossing that line when it’s time to go straight for bigtime laughs, as in a ridiculously funny, cruel vocoder interlude midway through that’s straight out of Midnight Starr circa 1983.

Likewise, White’s storyline is a nonstop barrage of calamities including but not limited to a plane crash, a disastrous pandemic, possible starvation, cannibalism, a dirty deal gone drastically awry and a potential murder-suicide, its doomed arc interrupted by what seem to be flashbacks. There are at least two voices here, possibly more, possibly different sides of a single personality. There’s a bossy corporate type whose clueless sense of entitlement White absolutely nails – one moment he’s telling somebody to stay the hell away from his woodpile, the next he’s cajoling that same person to put down the gun. There’s also a guy whose druggie wife is divorcing him but seems to be planning a far quicker and more conclusive final break. The Bob in the title is addressed several times – he may be the only survivor here – and is referenced throughout, bitterly, but never speaks for himself. The author whose work this most closely evokes is Russell Banks.

White gets the story rolling with a bang: “I’ve suffered too much to give in to gravity, I hit the ground; I saw my chance to escape so I did… Bob, you’re an expert, survive on my blood as long as you can and I’ll see you in hell,” instructs the bossy type over sarcastically attractive. anthemic 6/8 rock, White reaching falsetto altitude, part Jeff Buckley, part Broadwayesque sneer. Even as the end seems to be closing in, this is as close to human as the character gets. White ups the Broadway factor with some impressively nimble vocal acrobatics on the first of what seem to be the flashbacks, the trumpet in tandem with McGinty’s keys wry and deadpan behind the marriage-gone-to-hell tableau.

Not all the music here is satirical. While none of the songs follow a standard verse/chorus format, often shifting from gentle pop to hard-edged rock to ornate chamber pop like jump cuts, White occasionally drops the veil and goes straight for menace. That’s how the third track begins, as does the final interlude, its desperate protagonist encouraging an unnamed conspirator to join him at his little hideout cabin: they can just disappear and leave a note on the front door for Bob, he suggests.

White’s laserlike sense for the mot juste is in full effect, as usual: “You won’t feel the impact, so savor the fall,” the wronged husband tells his soon-to-be-ex. “Fences make good neighbors, and there’s no fence that I can’t crawl through,” the character guarding his precious woodpile tells the man with the gun. The tension is relentless, “Waiting in the cupboard, waiting by the bedside, waiting on the street where I walk, waiting in the headlines, waiting in the subtext, waiting in the things that I can’t talk about,” wails the bossy type.

As the story reaches fever pitch, memories of Hollywood shenanigans sit side by side with the conspirators holed up and running low on pretty much everything. There is at least one death, possibly a murder, possibly more. As the narrative peaks, hallucinations set in and eventually oscillate out sarcastically, possibly an allusions to the plane crash – or whatever it may be, metaphorical or not – that opens the album. Years from now, assuming that pause and rewind still exist, listeners will be pausing and rewinding this over and over to figure out who dies, who survives here and what the hell White is talking about the rest of the time. In the meantime, you have the opportunity to do the same with a genuine one-of-a-kind classic. Look for an album release show sometime later in the winter or early spring.

Molly Ruth: A Force of Nature at Sunday Salon 12

Molly Ruth sings with a wounded, raw but crystalline wail that will peel your skin. Sunday night at Zirzamin after the salon that this blog puts on every week, the charismatic songwriter left the crowd stunned and silent with her assaultive and wickedly catchy blend of oldtime acoustic blues, country and punk rock. Easy as it is to mix sex and religion for shock value, Molly Ruth does it as entertainingly as Tammy Faye Starlite. But Molly Ruth looks way back to guys like Blind Blake and before, sometimes mixing her metaphors, sometimes letting loose with a murderous exasperation. She barely said a word between songs, but she didn’t need to: her songs speak for themselves. Playing solo, she nonchalantly shifted between subtly fingerpicked blues, nimble ragtime, and a little straight-up country. The opening number, My Revelation’s Taking a Long Time to Come set the tone immediately. As funny as it was – “It may be little and weak, or it may break me into a million pieces,” she deadpanned – the not-so-hidden subtext that mingled with the mix of gospel and juicy innuendo was raw rage, the personal as political. Like a young Bob Dylan, she blends oldtime blues vernacular with a stream-of-consciousness surrealism. But she doesn’t rip off Dylan, lyrically or vocally, and she varied her vocals depending on the content of the song. She took that idea to its logical extreme on the night’s funniest number, where she played two characters, one more and more desperate for some kind of validation, the other sadistically playing oblivious and numb.

Maybe unintentionally, a bit of a Lucinda Williams vibe crept into the fullblown jealous insanity of the long, crescendoing punk-blues anthem A Million Fucking Whores (click the link above for a killer video from the Mercury Lounge last year). Ironically, the song that Molly Ruth belted the most intensely was a seemingly sincere, righteous (yeah, right) cover of Stand By Your Man. A casually biting fingerstyle blues sent her off searching for an alter ego who might have dropped everything and gone off to Africa “to escape expensive rent.” Loaded imagery – desolate extraterrestrial vistas, people cowering from some unnamed calamity or evil force, blood and guts and fire and brimstone – ran amok, but the plaintive, piercing way she delivered those scenes, they didn’t come across as over-the top. But they did pack a wallop. The narrator in the last song didn’t want to be cremated: she pleaded to be dismembered instead. And God, whatever he or it may be, was to be feared 24/7 -  for all the right reasons. Molly Ruth has been writing up a storm lately but hasn’t played a lot of shows (maybe that explains why) – she’ll be at Brooklyn Rod & Gun Club sometime in April.

Every Sunday at 5 PM, New York Music Daily presents the Sunday Salon at Zirzamin, where some of New York’s edgiest songwriters and musicians trade songs and cross-pollinate in the old Zinc Bar space at Houston and LaGuardia. There’s never a cover charge; the club has cheap beer, good Tex-Mex food, and the public is welcome to attend. Participation is by invitation only: you never know who might show up. The featured set at 7 PM this Sunday, Feb 3 is by brilliant guitarist and wry, purist Americana songwriter Homeboy Steve Antonakos.

Fred Gillen Jr. Makes Yet Another Good Record

It’s hard to believe that Fred Gillen Jr. has been making albums for almost 20 years now. His latest, Silence of the Night is one of his best, and arguably his most tuneful, a mix of acerbically lyrical, Americana-flavored janglerock and grittier electric songs that stand up alongside Steve Earle’s louder stuff. In a style of music that’s all too often drenched in obviousness and cliche, Gillen doesn’t go there: he has a bloodhound’s nose for a catchy hook, he tells a good story and he’s never sung better than he does here. There isn’t a hint of fakeness, or affectation in his casual, intimate vocals, or for that matter in his songwriting either. Although there isn’t as much of an overtly political stance to these songs as in his past work – during the Bush regime, Gillen was one of the most insightfully enraged voices of reason around – his songs still have a penetrating social consciousness. As someone who long ago adopted Woody Guthrie’s “this guitar kills fascists” for his six-string, Gillen keeps a close eye on the world outside and its most telling details. All seventeen tracks on the album are streaming at his Bandcamp site.

The opening cut, Morphine Angel offers a somber elegy for an addict, “blinded by your own sun’s dying light” – it wouldn’t be out of place in the BoDeans catalog. Later on, he revisits that theme – it’s a familiar one in his repertoire – with a more broad appraisal of the price of addiction in a dead-end town. The album’s surprisingly bouncy title cut looks at love as “a dockside shanty, lit by Christmas lights, painted like a carnival against the endless silence of the night.” Gillen follows that with Vanity and its casual country-rock sway, a vivid cautionary tale (and good advice) for these Orwellian times.

Find a Rodeo, a country ballad, laments the loss of good songs on the radio, among other things. One of the album’s strongest tracks, the Springsteen-ish Halloween Day at the VA leaves a chilling trail of images, a litany of damage and lost hope, among them the Afghan war vet who returns home too messed up to restart his old Kiss cover band. The growling, bluesy, metaphorically-charged Black Butterflies goes back to roaring Americana rock, something akin to Will Scott relocated to the Hudson Valley.

Shotgun contrasts a catchy janglerock tune with a brooding lyric that examines the consequences of getting married too soon, followed by the powerful Walking That Line, an abortion chronicle that makes a worthy sequel to Graham Parker’s You Can’t Be Too Strong. Only Sky ponders how possible it is to make a genuine escape, followed by the nonchalant come-on ballad Lean on Me.

A couple of tracks veer toward the sentimental, but they’re not throwaways. This Old Car, complete with fuzzy dice and air freshener, makes an apt flipside to Everclear’s Thousand Dollar Car. Sappy as the lyrics are, This Town Is Our Song has an irresistibly tasty acoustic guitar hook. There’s also Dinosaur Bones, a creepy, apocalyptic voice-and-drums number as well as a tantalizingly brief, bristling twangrock instrumental and an attempt to end the album on a lighthearted note. It’s another solid chapter in the career of a songwriter who’s not unknown – his recent collaborations with Pete Seeger have received well-deserved praise – but whose work would enrich the lives of a wider audience than it probably has. Fans of John Prine, Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt and the rest of the Americana songwriting pantheon ought to get to know him.

The 50 Best Albums of 2012

About five years ago, people were saying that the album was a thing of the past. How wrong that turned out to be! This year’s crop of albums was so absurdly good that it felt criminal to whittle it down to a hundred, let alone fifty. And the only way of getting it down to that number was to cut out all the “world music,” including reggae and Afrobeat and most of the gypsy sounds, because there was so much of that and it was all so good.

Bookmark this page and return often. Virtually all of these albums are streaming (click the links) or are available as free downloads: consider this your place to discover some amazing sounds that were too smart for the Bushwick and Wicker Park blogs, and too dangerous for corporate radio and tv.

1.  Ulrich Ziegler – their debut album
Dating back to the 90s,  guitarist Stephen Ulrich has been New York’s most distinguished noir composer. When he wasn’t writing film and tv music, he was leading the ferociously creepy instrumental trio Big Lazy. When that band broke up (the drummer left to join Gogol Bordello), Ulrich eventually teamed up with Itamar Ziegler from Pink Noise, and then released this haunting, reverb-drenched, surf/skronk/jazz/soundscape masterpiece. Stream it

2.  Chicha Libre – Canibalismo
Chicha Libre’s 2008 debut album Sonido Amazonico landed in the top ten and this one is arguably even better, a trippy, wickedly dub-influenced mix of Peruvian surf rock, slinky Andean and latin grooves, and surrealistic psychedelic rock. There is no more fun, or more danceable, band in New York than Chicha Libre. Band info and audio/video

3.  Raya Brass Band – Dancing on Roses, Dancing on Cinders
This fiery Brooklyn crew distinguish themselves from the hundreds of other excellent Balkan brass units by virtue of their long, scorching jams: nobody does that better. Stream it

4.  Botanica – What Do You Believe In
This era’s pre-eminent art-rock band’s most brooding, haunted album, a rich blend of gypsy-tinged melody, raw, roaring guitar, edgy piano and spooky organ. Stream it

5.  The Universal Thump – their full-length debut
The final and concluding installment of the most massive, richly orchestrated album on this list, a lushly symphonic double-cd mix of chamber pop, art-rock, psychedelia and quirky, theatrical indie pop. Stream it

6.  Rachelle Garniez – Sad Dead Alive Happy
The iconic, eclectic accordionist/chanteuse – who has sort of become the Dorothy Parker of underground rock – took a deep dive into soul and gospel sounds, with richly soaring results. Stream it

7.  The Japonize Elephants – Melodie Fantastique
One of the original gypsy bands, this enormous, theatrical circus rock crew took their game to the next level with this one. Stream it

8.  Lianne Smith – Two Sides of a River
An iconic presence in the New York Americana and rock scene since the late 90s, Smith’s debut album was legendary before it was finally released – and it’s as eclectic, psychedelic, haunting and funny as anything else on this list. And her amazing voice is better than ever. Stream it 

9.  Bobtown – Trouble I Wrought
Nobody writes more cleverly creepy acoustic Nashville gothic and bluegrass than Bobtown. With four first-rate songwriters, their sound is as diverse as it is dark. Stream it

10.  Jan Bell – Dream of the Miner’s Child
One of the great voices in Americana music, Bell made this into a concept album that linked British folk with the American country and bluegrass sounds that grew out of it  with a vivid sense of history and a tantalizing mix of classics and originals that sound like Appalachian standards. Stream it/free downloads

11. M Shanghai String Band – Two Thousand Pennies
The mighty eleven-piece Brooklyn acoustic Americana crew’s most lush, haunting, diverse and ultimately best album, ranging from gypsy and chamber pop to brooding Appalachian ballads and the rousing singalong songs they’re best known for. Stream it

12.. Love Camp 7 – Love Camp VII
An expertly wry, tuneful, catchy janglerock concept album looking at recent history through the prism of the Beatles, with a jaundiced eye and expertly labyrinthine polyrhythms. Given up for dead after the tragic loss of brilliant drummer Dave Campbell, the band has recently regrouped and is as playful and fun as ever. Stream it

13. Hannah vs. the Many – All Our Heroes Drank Here
Ferociously literate, white knuckle intense female-fronted punk and powerpop, with some noir cabaret and Jarvis Cocker-style art-rock thrown in for good measure. Stream it

14. The Larch– Days to the West
The follow-up to their 2010 masterpiece Larix Americana finds the Brooklyn retro new wavers sounding more psychedelic and more savagely lyrical than ever. Stream it

15. Lorraine Leckie and Anthony Haden-Guest – Rudely Interrupted
A blackly amusing, gorgeously orchestrated chamber-pop collaboration between the caustic social critic and the Canadian gothic rock siren.  Band info and a/v

16. Black Fortress of Opium – Stratospherical
Lush, roaring, darkly psychedelic Middle Eastern-tinged art-rock from this powerful, female-fronted Boston band. Stream it

17. Matt Keating – Wrong Way Home
The respected Americana rocker’s best single-disc album, a brooding, offhandedly menacing blend of classic soul, country and elegant chamber pop. Stream it

18. Alec K. Redfearn and the Eyesores  – Sister Death
Not to have this album in the #1 spot is pretty absurd: the Rhode Island band’s swirling, psychedelic, gypsy-tinged art-rock masterpiece is the most downright macabre collection on this list. Stream it

19.. The Sometime Boys – Ice & Blood
The second album from cabaret siren Sarah Mucho and art-rocker Kurt Leege’s sharply lyrical acoustic Americana project finds them funkier, more lush and more intense than ever. Stream it

20. Animation – Transparent Heart
As historically important as it is richly arrranged, saxophonist Bob Belden’s collection of cinematic instrumental themes traces the decline of New York over the past couple of decades, centered around 9/11 and the fascism that ensued. Band info and a/v

21. Tift Merritt – Traveling Alone
Marc Ribot’s guitar is amazing beyond belief, and Merrritt’s pensive Americana songs and nuanced vocals are as vivid as always.  Band info and a/v

22. Out of Order – Hey Pussycat
The loudest album on this list is by this assaultive all-female Long Island noiserock/punk trio, raw but richly produced by John Sharples. Stream it

23. Changing Modes – In Flight
With three keyboards and edgy lead guitar, these women and guys play biting, lyrical art-rock and new wave-influenced sounds. Stream it

24. Chris Erikson & the Wayward Puritans – Lost Track of the Time
Erikson has been one of the great guitarists in Americana for years, in other peoples’ bands. This is his long-overdue debut as a leader, a careening, gorgeously twangy mix of Americana, paisley underground psychedelia and riff-rock. Stream it

25. Marissa Nadler – The Sister
The Nashville gothic/noir cabaret chanteuse/songwriter’s most haunting and atmospheric album since her debut, a darkly nebulous, allusive gem. Stream it/free downloads

26. Spanking Charlene – Where Are the Freaks
Female-fronted Americana punk band with  powerful, intense lead vocals, hooks that run the gamut from the Stooges to X and a potently snide, sarcastic, spot-on worldview. Stream it

27. Frankenpine – In That Black Sky
Creepy original bluegrass, Appalachian ballads and elegantly dark acoustic sounds from this diverse Brooklyn band. Stream it/free dowloads

28. Choban Elektrik – their debut album
A side project by members of Zappa cover band Project/Object, they take classic Balkan and gypsy themes and make trippy psychedelic rock out of them. Stream it

29. Slavic Soul Party – New York Underground Tapes
The wildly popular Brooklyn Balkan brass band at the top of their funky, surprisingly eclectic, intensely danceable game. Stream it

30. Saint Maybe – Things As They Are
A throwback to the paisley underground bands of the 80s like True West and the Dream Syndicate, this project by a Patti Smith guitarist and Bob Dylan’s drummer mixes surreal, apocalyptic imagery and raw, surreal, psychedelic Americana rock. Stream it 

31. Mike Rimbaud – Can’t Judge a Song By Its Cover
The New York underground rocker – who also put out an excellent album of originals last year, and constantly releases video singles – puts his indelibly New York spin on politically charged classics by Phil Ochs, Dylan, the Stones and others. Stream it

32. When the Broken Bow – We, the Dangerous Weapons
A surreal, fearlessly political, apocalyptic concept album by this Oregon band  that runs the gamut from soul-pop to careening art-rock to goth and gypsy sounds. Stream it

33. Tim Foljahn – Songs for an Age of Extinction
Grimly lyrical, pensively psychedelic noir chamber pop and Americana-influenced songwriting. Stream it

34. Demolition String Band – Gracious Days
The well-loved New York Americana/bluegrass/rock twanglers’ best electric album, an intoxicating blend of guitars, mandolins, banjo and Elena Skye’s velvet vocals. Stream it

35. The Brixton Riot – Palace Amusements
Sort of the missing link between the Jam and Guided by Voices, this New Jersey band blast their way through a series of hard-hitting, swirling, lyrically biting three-minute songs. Stream it

36. L’il Mo & the  Monicats – Whole Lotta Lovin
Americana chanteuse Monica Passin’s most intimate and eclectic album to date, with soaring harmonies from fellow Americana siren Drina Seay. Song samples

37. Leigh Marble – Where the Knives Meet Between the Rows
Brooding, bitterly lyrical songwriting with a mix of hypnotically psychedelic and Americana-flavored tunes from the Portland, Oregon bandleader. Stream it

38. Eilen Jewell – Queen of the Minor Key
Truth in advertising – Jewel excels at noir Americana, ghoulabilly, garage rock and oldschool psychedelic sounds. Band info and a/v

39. Mucca Pazza – Safety Fifth
A characteristically high-voltage mix of short but sonically titanic gypsy punk and gypsy rock songs from the brass-heavy Chicago dance orchestra. Stream it

40. Chicago Stone Lightning Band – their debut album
With a raw, guitar-fueled edge, their twin-Gibson assault covers classic 60s style Chicago blues, riff-driven stoner rock, original soul and funk. Stream it

41. Emily Jane White – Ode to Sentience
Intense, broodingly lyrical, intricately orchestrated Nashville gothic and art-rock sounds. Band info and a/v 

42. My Education – A Drink for All My Friends
The Austin postrock/instrumental band have never sounded more lush or guitarishly intense on this mix of desert rock and cinematic themes. Stream it

43. Tom Shaner – Ghost Songs, Waltzes and Rock n Roll
That such a great album would be this low on the list attests to how amazing this past year was for music. The former Industrial Tepee frontman has never written more richly or lyrically than he does on this southwestern gothic gem. Band info and video

44. Jon DeRosa – A Wolf in Preacher’s Clothes
The Brooklyn crooner comes across as sort of a cross between Jarvis Cocker and Leonard Cohen, with a mix of lush chamber pop, Americana and 80s-influenced gothic art-rock. Band info and a/v

45. The Sweetback Sisters – Lookin’ for a Fight
This amazing two-frontwoman honkytonk band not in the top ten? How can that be possible? Take a look at the rest of the list. Stream it

46. Band of Outsiders – Sound Beach Quartet
The 80s psychedelic punk legends are still going strong, with a richly jangly, snaky new ep that evokes Television as well as the Jesus & Mary Chain, both groups whose careers they’ve now eclipsed. Stream it 

47. Mighty High – Legalize Tre Bags
The funniest album of the year blends roaring Motorhead-style biker rock with woozy stoner riffage and some of the best weed jokes ever put on vinyl. Stream it

48. The Weal and Woe – The One to Blame
Gorgeously harmony-driven oldschool honkytonk and 1950s style proto-rockabilly sounds from this wonderfully retro Brooklyn band. Stream it

49. Guided by Voices – The Bears for Lunch
Agelessly energetic, prolific indie surrealist Robert Pollard hasn’t lost a thing: this is the third and best release in the band’s incredibly productive 2012, not including Pollard’s own solo releases. Band info and a/v

50. Ian Hunter – When I’m President
Last but hardly least on this list, another ageless rocker from an even earlier era put out an album that could be the great lost Stones classic from 30 years ago. Band info/free downloads 

Richard Buckner’s Most Mysterious Album

Richard Buckner plays the Mercury Lounge tonight, Dec 12 at around 9:30. His most recent album, Our Blood features Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley on drums on several tracks along with distantly resonant pedal steel from Buddy Cage of the New Riders of the Purple Sage. It’s not known if either will be on the bill tonight but whatever the case, Buckner has never written or sung better than he did on this album, which came out midsummer 2011. Vocally, in recent years he’s gone deeper into his lower register, his hooks have never been more resonant and his lyrics are creepier than ever. This one’s an audio film noir with country/folk and indie touches. What happenedin the storyline here is never clear, and whether the unspecified crime in question is real or simply metaphorical is up to the listener to figure out. Buckner has always one of the more interesting, literarily-inclined songwriters out there, and here his narrator addresses each of these songs to the perpetrator, to whom he may or may not be related, by marriage or otherwise.

Buckner is good at suites – his 2000 album The Hill took Edgar Lee Masters’ caustic Spoon River Anthology and set it to growling electric rock. This album veers between catchy janglerock that Buckner frequently takes into atmospheric, Stereolab-ish territory through an endless supply of vintage keyboard patches, with touches of the meandering, folk-flavored acoustic sounds of his early years.

The narrative doesn’t follow a clear trajectory, deepening the mystery. The first track, Traitor, makes its way from insistently jangly to broodingly carnivalesque, with a long, hypnotic outro, one of a couple clear references to The Hill here. As it turns out, someone is coming “to laugh, to make you finally live it down,” whatever that may be. Track two, Escape implicates the narrator in this – at least as far as encouraging the perp to get the hell out while there’s still time. As usual, there are multiple levels of meaning here: with its noirish Rhodes ambience, the song is equally resonant as a cautionary tale for anyone wanting to leave it all behind.

Over some hauntingly ominous changes, Thief alludes to a relationship gone wrong; Buckner adding a spaghetti western feel with elegantly minimalist baritone guitar. Collusion sets the album’s most harrowingly surreal lyric over nebulous, sustained sheets of ebow guitar and keening synth: “You hear them sing the distant songs with familiar rings, luring you out until you could remember the chance you took.”

After Ponder, a lusciously Lynchian instrumental, Witness veers between the indie ambiguity of the Clean and Matt Keating-esque Americana. “How could we have been surprised by things that only we knew, waiting though you couldn’t stay, keeping little ones away,” Buckner muses.

“I guess I’m the one they warned you about,” he tells his accomplice on the most folk-flavored track, Confession: maybe the narrator is the traitor here! Hindsight goes back to insistently rhythmic indie rock spiced with echoey Rhodes, drenched in regret:

Did you hear it in the wind?
 I couldn’t make it down
Cloudy in the light…
Folded in a letter that I found
Remembered just in time
Forgetting to forgive
Never turning back around

The album ends on an enigmatically chilling note with Gang, organ pulsing ominously beneath the torrent of images: someone might be about to be executed, metaphorically at least. Adding to the intrigue is Buckner’s casual delivery, although he doesn’t let his lyrics trail off like he used to, a trait that could be maddening. The only maddening thing about this album is that it isn’t better known (full disclosure: this came over the transom here just as this blog was first born, when all the rock stuff was being transferred over from NYMD’s sister blog and in the process got lost in the shuffle. Therefore, this attempt to make things right.).

Jerome O’Brien At the Top of His Game at Zirzamin

Jerome O’Brien has been one of New York’s most consistently interesting literate rock songwriters for several years. His mod-punk/vintage R&B-influenced band the Dog Show had a good run for the better part of a decade – back in the day, you could catch them at Tonic, or the C-Note, or Maxwell’s. One of the band’s main attractions was that you never knew who was going to be in it from one gig to another: good songwriters always have their choice of backing musicians, and O’Brien had a deep, rotating cast of players to choose from. But there was attrition, and changes in the New York rock landscape that were not favorable for a band playing just under the radar: the Dog Show played their last gig together under that name in 2007. Since then, O’Brien has been largely absent from the concert stage, but as a songwriter, he’s been anything but idle. A couple of days ago, he played an acoustic gig at Zirzamin, solo on twelve-string guitar, unveiling a lot of intriguing new material as well as reinventing several favorites from the Dog Show era.

As a lyricist, O’Brien’s stock in trade is simple phrases packed with wry, sardonic, loaded imagery. Your Home Will Come to You was a good example:

You were an angel at brunch
Conversation so brilliant
Now it’s a quarter to eight and you’re a little less resilient
Don’t want to keep you from nothing
I can see there’s somewhere you gotta be
Don’t want to tell you nothing you don’t know
Don’t want to show you something you can see

He began it by nicking the intro from Love Will Tear Us Apart, a characteristic touch. A more recent number, a steady, tense country murder ballad, referenced the Buzzcocks. The cynical Every Baby Boy, pondering how we all start out with clean slate and get damaged fast, got a halfspeed sway instead of the Dog Show’s tight mod pulse. “Do you burn your heart like a piece of meat?/Well folks like us don’t care about the heat,” O’Brien intoned casually.

He reinvented the metaphorically-charged Sin-Soaked Dish as a waltz, with a charming neo-Britfolk guitar intro: this particular dish has a “smile like a knife.” Hold Me Down opened with a laid-back riff evoking the old R&B hit On Broadway. Dating from the early Bush/Cheney era, the song set an apprehensive scene: “If you decide to head out west, my friend, you’re on your own..don’t know if I should be walking around with this face under the dangerous lights.” Likewise, Nicotene and Bluz opened with an understatedly caustic view of the smoking section outside a popular bar, pondering a future that’s a lot less than certain. After a nifty little ragtime-flavored instrumental, the most intriguing song of the afternoon might have been a brand-new one, a surreal Pete Townshend-esque epic montage of images from the subway. “The candidates keep running like there’s nowhere else to go…the commodore of looking cool just can’t find a date, and the personal trainer has just decided she’s the potentate.” It was hard to keep up with them. He closed with a couple of older numbers, This One Thing – another rapidfire litany of sarcastic imagery set to a plushly catchy post-Velvets groove – and Halcyon Days, a joyously latin soul-flavored view of life on the Lower East Side just at the moment before the hammer of gentrification lowered its deathblow on the neighborhood. O’Brien has been playing Zirzamin the second Monday of every month at around 7 PM; watch this space for another.

Brooding Nocturnal Ambience from Sam Llanas

As the co-founder and frontman of legendary heartland rockers the BoDeans, Sam Llanas built a deep catalog of singalong Americana rock anthems along with many darker, more pensive songs. Like any good songwriter, Llanas can evoke pretty much any emotion he wants. Yet even on his most upbeat upbeat hits with the band – She’s a Runaway, Still the Night, Feed the Fire, etc. – there was usually some undercurrent of unease. That came to the forefront in Absinthe, Llanas’ 1999 side project which released a single, riveting concept album, A Good Day to Die, a haunting series of songs inspired by the suicide of his older brother. Llanas waited til late last year before releasing his first album under his own name, the aptly titled 4 AM: he’s playing songs from it tonight, Sept 11 at 10 at Zirzamin, tomorrow the 12th at 8 PM at the small room at the Rockwood and then Monday the 17th at 8 at Iridium.

“I poured a small bourbon and water, and toasted the Clash,” Llanas sang on Cold Winter’s Day, one of the BoDeans most evocative nocturnes. That same atmosphere pervades the solo record, right down to the inside cd booklet shot of Llanas reclining in murky half-light, glass in hand, revisiting the ghosts of the past. Where he really nails the atmosphere is less with the spare, mostly acoustic insrumentation than with the vocals: instead of going down into his raw, emotionally charged baritone, he goes way up to the top of his register for a breathy, sometimes raspy, soulful timbre. Who knew he had that kind of range! While he’s still writing in an Americana rock vein, this is his soul record: there are hints of 70s artists like William Bell in his casually imploring, emotionally-charged vocals. Llanas plays acoustic guitar, backed tersely and tastefully by band of mostly fellow Milwaukeeans including guitarist Terry Vittone, bassist Matt Turner, Bukka Allen of the BoDeans on accordion, percussionist Ryan Schiedermayer and the one-man string section of Gary Tanin.

Oh, Celia sets the tone, a laid-back yet insistent come-on fueled by Allen’s lilting accordion. Shyne, a backbeat-driven breathy noir 60s pop nocturne, sounds like R. Dean Taylor but with digital production: “I want to dance with the devil’s daughter under the city lights,” Llanas croons, completely deadpan. The title track lingers wistfully but purposefully for just a little over two minutes, lowlit by accordion and gently ringing lead guitar.

The coyly titled Nobody Luvs Me has Tex-Mex tinges while the bittersweet, brooding Fare Thee Well works a western swing vein, underscored by Llannas’ powerful, low-register harmonies. By contrast, Janey is the most stark, minimalist song here: “It’s been a hell of a wonderful fight,” Llanas remarks, out on a late-night walk, trying to cool off. He follows it with the album’s most vivid cut, The Only One, contemplating a crushingly solitary 4 AM “hour of truth” against Vittone’s biting but judicious lead lines.

The song that harks most closely to the BoDeans’ anthemic style is the cynical Cherry O - ”I never meant to hurt you as bad as I did,” whispers the vengeful cheater as the catchy chorus subsides. That’s the one song here that really screams out for a loud rock version. Llanas goes back to an understatedly noir, Orbison-inspired vein for Oh How I Loved You, then follows with the suspensefully quiet, symbolically-charged The Way Home. There’s also a cover of Jules Shear’s All Through the Night. This album doesn’t hit you over the head, but it’s exactly what it’s supposed to be: a good late-night listen.

Happy Labor Day Weekend

Today’s free download is from Ray Brown. Not the jazz hall of famer - you know, the guy who married Ella Fitzgerald – but from a veteran Connecticut songwriter who says that lo-fi New York torch song duo Rayvon Browne took their name from him.

The song is Saddest Man in the World, the best track on his album Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy. It’s got a Jimmy Webb chamber-pop feel: it would have made a great B-side to Glenn Campbell’s Galveston. If there’s any question in your mind as to whether the phrase “theatre of douchebaggery” can be used poetically or not, download this song - or, hell, the whole record – and find out for yourself.