Here it is. Our obligatory year-end review. The following is an unranked list of albums that caught, and kept, our attention in 2015 . . .
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Many moons ago, Ryan Sambol fronted the fantastic Austin band The Strange Boys. They disbanded in 2012 after 3 albums. Sambol begat the The Strange Boys at a young age, and the group was praised for its prodigious ability to synthesize all forms of roots, rock, and R&B. So much so, talk about the band became a vortex of genre names and touchstones--garage rock, Dylan, country, Doug Sahm, Nuggets... Apt comparisons, but what made The Strange Boys a great band was their loose, masterful evocation of all those vibes at once--they were . . .
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If you have a window near, go ahead and look outside. Chances are, there are some Christmas lights up somewhere within view. In the coming weeks, you’ll probably frantically brave mall crowds and horrific parking lot jams for last-minute gifts, wondering why it is that you avoid the mall for an entire year only to finally cave when it’s impossibly chaotic, deafeningly loud and smells something like garland draped across a junior-high locker room. Nearly 50 percent of you have already seen It’s A Wonderful Life this month, and roughly 92 percent . . .
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Philly’s Spacin’ are set to coast into 2016 with their long delinquent second album - Total Freedom. Recorded deep in the depths of the Chillinger Community Center, the fuzzed out choogle they hang their no shirt, no shoes, no problem mantra on is transmitted blaringly loud on the opening cut “Over Uneasy . . .
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"Most of my albums are a simple collection of songs that have nothing to do with each other except that they were written around the same time and, perhaps, have some recurring themes,” songwriter Cass McCombs told Relix in 2013. His new collection, A Folk Set Apart: Rarities, B-Sides & Space Junk, ETC., is the result of taking away the shared time frame, a collection of songs written between 2003 and 2014, with little regard for genre -- the comp encompasses Velvets-style drones, experimental cowboy poetry, mellow folk pop, and protest ballads — and disparate themes. If McCombs’ albums are normally scattered, A Folk Set Apart is even more so. “All my records are kind of like collections, but this one being the most obvious,” McCombs tells Aquarium Drunkard via the phone. But like his best work, it hangs together in a curiously coherent way, tied together not formally, but emotionally.
“I don’t know if it has flow, but it’s a weird journey and you can see the mutation of the music, of my voice even, and the people I play with…it’s definitely not commercial music,” McCombs says.
Over the last 15 years he’s worked with a number of collaborators, including guitarist Chris Cohen, drummer Joe Russo of Furthur, Mike Gordon of Phish, Tim Dewit of Gang Gang Dance, all of whom shade and color his songs and appear on the new collection. “I love playing with people who know their craft, who have a voice, something to say,” McCombs says. “You give them full reign to do whatever the fuck they want to do, they embrace that and do something with that.”
The collection is a testament to McCombs’ trust in his colleagues, but also his omnivorous musical tastes. He reels from garage punk on “I Cannot Lie” to gentle roots pop on “Three Men Sitting on a Hollow Log,” from ass shaking riff rock like “An Other” to the “hillbilly bop” of “Catacombs Cow Cow Boogie,” a “mutation of Duane Eddy, Link Wray, the Ventures -- that kind of [music was a] transition from hillbilly to rockabilly to surf and something even more randy,” McCombs says. Many of the songs featured were released on split singles with artists like the Meat Puppets, Michael Hurley, and White Magic, sharing McCombs’ love of their music and their singular approaches.
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In December of 1978, Tom Waits recorded an episode of Austin City Limits. The now-mainstay music program was in its relative infancy - only its fourth season - and had built a solid fanbase of Americana music enthusiasts. As the ACL website notes:
"...the show came in through the back door, so to speak. Terry Lickona, who became producer in Season 4, was trying to book singer Leon Redbone. Redbone and Waits shared a manager, who promptly requested . . .
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There’s loneliness and companionship, joy and despair, truth-seeking and blithe celebration, all during what’s marketed to be the most wonderful time of the year. Your interpretation of the season begets your holiday spirit, whatever version it may be — bah humbug and good tidings. It’s little surprise then that Charlie Brown’s soundtrack, as well as our own, is something just as introspective and shifting. Something like jazz . . .
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Holiday esoterica from the far corners of vintage twang, fuzz, scuzz, r&b, blues, country, garage, lounge and beyond. Trim your tree with Red Simpson and Mae West, then top it off with The Sonics, Hank Snow and Champion Jack Dupree. It’s a heady brew. Go ahead, deck them halls.
Jack Scott — There’s Trouble Brewing [A-Side Version]
The Sonics — I Don’t Believe In Christmas
Mae West — Put The Loot In The Boot, Santa
Roosevelt Sykes — Let Me Hang . . .
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Leon Payne came stumbling into the world blind from birth in Alba, Texas and went on to write two of the greatest country music songs of all time (although which two I’ll leave up to you).
Early on he hooked up with the infamous Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys and cut his first solo recordings a year later in 1939. Payne then comes down with ramble fever and decides to hit the road, spending much of the next decade roaming around and calling himself the Texas Blind . . .
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“I gave you my last dime. . . but it looked like a ten dollar bill to me.” Those opening lines to “How Can You Say It” get at the essence of Taylor’s unique style of soul music: impassioned, all-in emotional journeys on the axis of love and pain. Love Is A Hurtin’ Thing collects Gloria Ann Taylor’s output on Selector Sound, a label she owned with her brother Leonard and her producer/husband Walter . . .
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The one-man band that is Steven R. Smith is definitely tough to keep up with -- just take a look at his Bandcamp page, which is stuffed with more than 30 releases under a wide array of monikers. But he's a musician who's very much worth getting to know -- and his latest effort, Salt (under the Ulaan Khol banner), is a great place to hop on board. Layering Crazy Horse-level distortion, droning feedback, and psychedelic . . .
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Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday — Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST.
SIRIUS 413: Jean Michel Bernard — Générique Stephane ++ Oliver — Off On A Trek ++ Linda Perhacs — Paper Mountain Man ++ David Wiffen — Never Make A Dollar That Way ++ David Crosby — I’d Swear There Was Somebody There ++ Neil Young — The Old Laughing Lady ++ Ellen McIlwaine — Can’t Find My Way Home ++ Dungen - Franks Kaktus . . .
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Hummin' indeed. Walkin' with The Q. Via Gula Matari, 1970 . . .
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We recently took a look at Bembeya Jazz National’s “Petit Sekou,” a sultry and Latin-inspired slice of late 70’s West African psychedelic rock. Slightly sinister in groove, it finds the group in a free spirited moment of unadulterated cool. But the group’s origins lie largely in the politics of their West African home.
In the aftermath of the Guinean Independence in 1958 and through the cultural policy of "authenticité", which encouraged cultural pride, numerous bands were created throughout . . .
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“It’s exciting and kind of spooky!” Neko Case writes in the liner notes of Truckdriver, Gladiator, Mule the new eight-album boxset collecting her entire discography, from her 1997 debut The Virginian to 2013’s The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, summing up her reflections on 18 years of riveting, fierce, and beautiful music. Case is a singular artist, possessing a powerful, blustery voice and a black coffee sense of humor, and over two decades she’s crafted murder ballads and torch songs, heartbreakers and head bruisers, building complex worlds where forces of nature collide with confused characters. She sings her lyrics collage style, slipping between settings and times, and her arrangements often morph around her voice, shifting from twangy noir to charging pop.
Case’s work is often difficult to categorize, and stronger because of it. She’s a true original, connected to the wellspring of American roots music but always able to rocket that voice of hers into the stratosphere. Listen to “Star Witness” or “Night Still Comes,” for those moments where she belts it out full force; Neko Case makes exciting and spooky music.
Aquarium Drunkard spoke with Case via telephone from New York, where she ate a quick breakfast of oatmeal while discussing women with guitars, the punkness of gospel, and the violent nature of her lyrics.
Aquarium Drunkard: This boxset is really beautiful. 18 years of songs – do I have that right? Maybe a little more?
Neko Case: I wanted my own Roman column, essentially, but they don’t make those anymore, so I put out a boxset.
AD:Was it weird looking at your work in this sort of compact way, putting it all into one thing? Was that a strange feeling?
NC: It makes you look at time differently. Basically, I was shocked at how much time had gone by, but how brief it all feels. I’m not even really partway through my career yet, so some people have said, “Why are you putting out a boxset if you’re not near death or something?” I’m like, “Why not? I want to go to my own funeral.”
I just have so much so much stuff that I’ve collected over the years. [Through] working with my friend [artist] Kathleen Judge, who I work with a lot on stuff, and my friend Randy Iwata from Mint Records, I just realized how much stuff I have. I was planning on making a book that spanned my entire career, [featuring] photos and ephemera and writing, and I realized that there was no fucking way I could get even a little of it into an 80-page book. [Laughs] I realized I had to write a whole other book [to go along with the photo book], so I’m working on that now. Ideas make other ideas, which is a great thing and also a kind of unfortunate thing if you don’t like working. If it was just me who made all this stuff I wouldn’t be able to stand dealing with it. [I’d get] so fucking sick of myself. But there’s a lot of people I’ve worked with, so I’m looking forward to celebrating their efforts and telling demeaning, hilarious stories about them, and how they pooped their pants at the Shoney’s in Natchez. There’s no drug addicts or serial adulterers in my band. We have to just get the dirt that we got, so there’s an occasional pants pooping or maybe spilling salsa in the van, because rock & roll is some wild shit.
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