you gotta see this
They say all politics are personal, and rarely is that more true than with Gang of Four. Political Rhetoric Week continues with two songs that burrow out the creeping dissatisfaction the lingers in seemingly normal homes, the place where hierarchies are learned and dreams too often find their death throes. Unhappy people do not make for a happy society, and the Gang reminds us of that.
new artists to notice
At first glance, you probably wouldn’t guess that Adam Strange is a brilliant, buckwildin’ hip-hop ace or an up & coming modern painter. There’s something roughhewn and earthy about him that does hint at his history in organic farming and high-minded horticulture but put a mic in his hand and give him something sumptuous to ride over and he’s goddamn lethal – noodle loose, clever as hell and funny as all get out. While the least prolific of GFE’s three frontline MCs (a fact noted in a charmingly self-deprecating way in his music), when Strange puts out a fresh joint it’s perfectly rolled and ready to blaze.
Case in point, his second solo album, New Americana (The Cause and Effect of Pop Culture Vol. II), begins with a patriotic ohm and then dives into the contemporary malaise draggin’ folks down around America. It could be a bummer trip but Strange, helped throughout by his Granola Funk cohorts, has an off-handed gift for slipping past defenses to shine a light into places right under nose that we may have missed. His modus operandi is subtle and exceedingly funny, a rap-tastic counterpart to primo stand-ups like Dave Attell and Louis C.K., tickling fancies and snatchin’ up panties with his weed addled adventures while showing that being a stoner doesn’t necessarily mean one is indolent or slow witted. As usual with the GFE crew, the music is organic, flowing and filled with a musicality and head-nodding charm quite beyond the vast majority of contemporary hip-hop artists. Adam’s love of his chosen genre, amped up by his collaborator’s similar gusto, shines through every track on New Americana, which jumps ahead of the pack as one of 2011’s first great albums.
Let’s just hope the fates put this self-avowed road dog back on the live circuit in a bigger way this year, so he and the rest of GFE can remind the rest of y’all what I’ve known for years: This crew’s only real competition in the hip-hop realm is The Roots, and frankly GFE and Strange are generally a lot more fun.
Fun with dynamics!
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you gotta see this
We looked out our window recently and it seems the world is on fire, especially in the Middle East. As a species, we’re not keen on tyranny and constriction of our freedoms, but politics and power tend to squeeze hard on these sore points. For the next few days we’ll share some of the Impound’s favorite socially and politically charged tunes in what we’re calling Political Rhetoric Week. We begin with a classic from Gil Scott-Heron.
2010 was a VERY good year for rock ‘n’ roll. As much as I love a somewhat ludicrous range of music (not many see the charms of both MDC and Barry Manilow), it’s always good ol’ rock that tickles my aging heart the mostest. And my ticker has been palpatatin’ like a sprinter on Columbian blue flake in 2010. Artists are increasingly making the music in their souls instead of playing to any outside sensibility. Changes in how music reaches people and how it’s digested have sparked a quiet revolution where the producers are able to directly connect with consumers in ways hitherto unimaginable. The long defended middle man mentality of the record industry is falling away, and while many people remain lazy in their listening, happily gobbling up whatever the powers that be tell them to – things like Gaga and Bieber don’t happen organically – there’s a growing constituency that’s seeking out what they genuinely dig, the music that informs and illuminates their lives. If you’re hanging around the Impound then you’re one of these folks, and we commend you for making an effort!
This list represents the best albums I came across in the hundreds of new releases I checked out in 2010. One of the key criteria used for this list was how the music hung together as an album, an entity unique and inextricably intertwined in ways beyond a random assortment of tracks, which the mainstream largely thinks passes for an album in the 21st century. Despite the fragmentation of music in recent years, there are still artists dedicated to creating works that add up to more than the sum of their parts, works that dream big, ask essential questions and even offer a few answers. Each of these albums grapples with the world in a unique way, offering shading and perspective beyond what we might achieve on our own. They embiggen our lives, offer new keys for unlocking life’s complexities and even inspire a measure of joy in some cases. In every instance, these albums made my world – and not a few others’ – richer and more interesting – a gift each time the proverbial needle hit the groove.
Dirty Impound’s 20 Best Albums of 2010
If pop music were measured by the yardstick of Man of the World then commercial radio might be worth paying attention to. ALO write classic songs and deliver them in a very easy to like manner. And it doesn’t hurt that the whole thing is so nicely captured (ALO co-produced with old pal Jack Johnson with studio whiz kid Dave Simon-Baker engineering the sessions); this record is just a pleasure to listen to. They are a perfect example of what I call “If The Beatles Really Won” music. Resounding craftsmanship underlies every track here, along with a refreshing sense of sincerity, realism and hope. When this Bay Area band says “I Love Music” they mean it and make us feel it, too.
Revolutions that dance succeed. SF’s Antioquia possess a distinct socio-political bent but shimmy about like kids on Pixie sticks and Kool-Aid as they prod and peel away at entrenched infrastructures. Echoes of Fela, Pere Ubu and Talking Heads ping around in their sound, but none so much to overshadow the original voice rising in this young band. Where headlines scream of bloodshed and despair, Antioquia shouts back something brighter, a blaze born of humanity’s innate vitality and drive towards freedom, connection and purpose.
30 years on, Bad Religion has maintained their hot, angry core but surrounded it with a sophistication and tight musicianship worthy of The Clash – arguably the benchmark for any punk group with evolutionary aspirations. The three guitar frontline of Brett Gurewitz, Greg Hetson and Brian Baker is lethal and almost impossibly uncluttered, simply the pointy teeth of this beast. Greg Graffin remains the brainiest, best lead singer punk has produced in the past 30 years, and the rhythm section of bassist Jay Bentley and drummer Brooks Wackerman (brother of Chad) are indestructible and ever-potent. There’s still plenty to be pissed off about and Bad Religion still expresses that better than almost anyone, but now they also churn out non-mushy relationship songs and offer an honest glimmer of positivity.
One of the greatest driving records in recent memory – a smoothly unfolding, mightily melodic, warm soundtrack for eating miles and chasing horizons. While the Horses’ first two albums held numerous fine moments, Infinite Arms is their most together outing to date, dialing back the emotional tenor and pushing their songwriting into fresh dynamics. Moving to the country seems to suit Ben Bridwell and his finally solidified band, their music taking on greater landscape and environmental vibration whilst they ply a very vinyl-minded kind of rock.
Full of salt in wounds and scarecrows, Delta Spirit’s sophomore record revealed an emotional maturity and musical sophistication only hinted at on their 2008 debut, Ode To Sunshine. With My Morning Jacket’s Bo Koster playing keys and co-producing with Everest’s secret weapon, Elijah Thomson, History is a densely structured journey through heavy thoughts and feelings that somehow manages to be uplifting despite its clear-eyed honesty. An achingly beautiful work.
The fifth long-player from Philly’s finest classic-oriented rock band proved their darkest and most artfully mature outing to date. While the tunes remained catchy as the common cold – true heirs to Lennon and McCartney – the lyrics plumbed the sticky recesses of the human psyche, fearlessly acknowledging that sometimes we want someone to give us a black eye just so we feel something. Yet, so skilled are Dr. Dog that one can’t help but sing along; the real meaning seeping into us subversively, there to haunt us in the quiet hours.
After 2008’s sprawling double album Brighter Than Creation’s Dark it was heartening for the Truckers to drop a single dead solid rock slab in our laps. In many ways, this was business as usual, but when you do meat ‘n’ taters rock as well as these Southerners you don’t need to tinker with much. Their gift for characters and cinematically charged scenes rivals Steely Dan, and their gutbucket sophistication equals Ronnie Van Zandt-era Skynyrd. One won’t soon forget – or stop singing along to – tunes like “This Fucking Job,” “Birthday Boy” or really anything else here.
Love, either its flowering or death, will always be subject matter number one for songwriters. However, few will come up with as totally fab a song cycle as Escovedo. Once again working extensively with fellow uber-pros Chuck Prophet and Tony Visconti, Escovedo makes the tried and true topic skip on new, muscular legs, savoring love’s virtues and lamenting its lack in many lives. Folks talk a lot about heart but Street Songs of Love takes a metaphorical rib-spreader and pulls it out so we might all marvel at its mighty thump.
Despite releasing one of the best debuts in the past 10 years, 2008’s Ghost Notes, Los Angeles-based Everest showed a lot more colors and range on their sophomore joint, fulfilling the abundant promise of their live shows with a studio set that’s rangy, raucous and compulsively listenable. Years of opening for admirers MMJ, Wilco and Neil Young have emboldened Everest, giving them a loft and reach beyond their many short-armed peers. Beautifully arranged and played and saturated with feeling, good and bad, On Approach hums with life, guitars ringing under broad skies as one of the finest lead singers today, Russell Pollard, probes into the meat of us. And this just feels like the next step in the maturation of one of today’s classics-in-the-making.
Nick Cave and Bad Seeds Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos make an unruly, manly racket in their Grinderman incarnation, a wholly different creature to the brainy, Biblically haunted corridors of their day jobs. Wielding a guitar like a rusty axe, Cave careens through the vicissitudes of aging and particularly the impact of years on one’s phallic potential and sexual appeal. A punk-blues atmosphere pervades some pieces but the second Grinderman offering has greater nuances, though most are prickly and nervous making even in the quietest moments. Cave once again proves one of the great lyricist of our time, giving us lingering verses like, “My baby calls me the Loch Ness Monster/ Two great big humps and then I’m gone/ But actually I am the Abominable Snowman/ I guess that I’ve loved you for too long.” Harrowing, pecker wrecking good times.
Spirituality is a tricky business in this millennium, where zealotry duels with indifference, each imperfect approaches to making the unknowable bearable. Something in us craves understanding and perhaps a child’s desire that the universe is at least a bit kind and ordered. Putting this kind of complexity into songs – particularly stripped bare, mostly acoustic settings – is no easy task, yet Hiss Golden Messenger manages it on an album with the raw immediacy of Johnny Cash’s most harrowing American Recordings and the bare skin of early gospel and field recordings given a scholar’s gloss and contemporary lilt.
In the greatest reinvention of 2010, Shooter all but abandoned everything he’d done prior to embrace a boundary-free, rock ‘n’ roll infused new approach that yielded arguably the bravest, most interesting song cycle of the past year, an album every bit the equal to anything Radiohead or My Morning Jacket has mustered. Long viewed as “Waylon’s kid,” Shooter reveals himself as one of the most astute observers of the human condition today on Black Ribbons, an Orwellian concept album with Stephen King along as narrator. What’s cool is how well the songs work without the thematic underpinning AND how much they grow in context. The overall sound is tough and dappled with analog keyboards, choice reverb, lyrics that will haunt you, and no small amount of inky black humor. Shooter and Hierophant have all the ingredients to become one seriously amazing band based on this first stunning salvo.
While not as instantly potent or accessible as their debut, Don’t Be A Stranger, this quintessential grower may be the stronger overall album experience. Allowed to simmer, Tidelands weds The Moondoggies’ forceful arrangements and Crosby, Stills & Nash-esque harmonies to interlocking philosophical concepts and a chugging rock energy that propel one ever-forward, each piece as essential as the ones bumping its edges, the whole thing rich in a way that’ll take years to explore.
Simply put, The New Up is one of the best things going in modern rock. The energy of now crackles in their super appealing tunes on Gold, which functions as a gliding, grinding score to today’s hustle ‘n’ bustle – a muddle where emotions often get confused, forced underground out of fear and doubt. This San Francisco bunch excels at divining where these sorts of buried feelings lie, bringing them to the surface with the pop and roar of a welcome geyser. ES Pitcher continues to evolve into one of the strongest women in rock, a voice full of girlish seduction and womanly smarts, and the boys around her ooze cool and curiosity in ways impossible to ignore. And they’ve got most of their modern rock cohorts skunked musicianship wise, too. Total package this one and by all indications, only getting started.
Considerable fire clearly resides in the bellies of Tom and his Heartbreakers based on the hopping, growling evidence of Mojo, easily the band’s finest hour since perhaps 1987’s Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough). Captured in the band’s rehearsal space with minimal overdubs, Mojo gets one of the greatest live bands ever to bring their massive stage energy into a more focused, condensed setting. The results are scorchers like First Flash of Freedom, I Should Have Known It and the smoldering The Trip To Pirate’s Cove. At 60, Petty is as vital and exciting as he was in his 70s heyday, a model for other songwriters and bandleaders well worth mimicking.
With their third full-length Powder Mill cemented their place in the Southern Rock pantheon, joining recent inductees like the North Mississippi Allstars and the Drive-By Truckers. However, Powder Mill is more gloriously Southern, reveling in the mythology and daily culture of the region and using it as a sharp lens on a country in the throes of wild change and conflict, a place where the factories are shutting down and whole towns are left to wallow and self-medicate as the world moves on without them. Money, Marbles and Chalk mines the humanity in our shared struggles, puts a face on those we may have missed, perhaps especially those living right next to us. This corker is rockin’ and righteous and good for a laugh or three, country as a motherfucker and armed with riffs that leave a bruise.
Well worth the two year wait, How I Got Over confirmed The Roots as the premiere live band in hip-hop (their only real competition is under-sung Asheville greats GFE) and the torchbearers for what Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson, Sly & The Family Stone, Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway started long ago. Unlike most of the boasting, money obsessed, ass-chasing twaddle that passes for hip-hop lately, How I Got Over is culturally relevant in a substantive way and musically savvy and advanced in ways Diddy, et al. will never be. Nothing here goes for flash, instead building each tune by layers, each touch carefully chosen and executed, down to working way outside genre norms with folks like Joanna Newsome and Monsters of Folk. The final product is sublime and stirring, a triumph in a career already filled with them.
Though often sequestered in the blues category by lazy listeners and critics, Otis Taylor has spent the past 15 years steadily growing into one of the most original, fascinating musicians on earth. His work takes the African roots of the blues and weaves them into all manner of American music – snippets of country twang bumping against Dixieland and rock – and pushing further over time into classical forms, flamenco and more. He’s taken the banjo back from the white man and he’s waded into modal jazz with Jason Moran. That said, Clovis People, Vol. 3 (there is no volumes 1 & 2, by the way) is perhaps his bluesiest collection in years, revisiting some earlier numbers and carving something raw and new out of them. But these are Otis’ blues, so each is flecked with the misbehaved, lovely pedal steel of Chuck Campbell and the bright, penetrating cornet of Ron Miles. Underneath it all, the feeling soaked bass work and captivating harmonies of daughter Cassie Taylor float, sparring fantastically with Gary Moore’s electric guitar and intuitive timekeeper Larry Thompson. Often spare on details, these songs live up to Otis’ notion that “The more words you put into a song, the less freedom the listener has to decide what it means.”
Gasping for air and struggling to rise above the mounting waves, These United States’ fourth release directly engaged with that toughest of nuts to crack – mortality. Try as we might – atheist and believer alike – there’s no sidestepping Death, but the moves we make with him matter, and TUS discovers some pretty nifty steps for the living on What Lasts. Musically, it’s continued growth, combining the best elements of Crimes and Everything Touches Everything for hooky, rootsy rock that also abides beautifully. For as tumultuous as the subject can be, What Lasts is ultimately rejuvenating, a skipping reminder to the living to get out there and live.
Weller’s fifties are turning out to be one of the most creative, switched-on periods in his lengthy, largely fruitful career. Backed with a new sonically curious, musically fearless band, he knocked out his second new classic in a row with Wake Up The Nation. More focused yet even more diverse than 2008’s 22 Dreams rambles into mini-epics about reincarnation (Trees), agit-rock (title tune) and more. Weller seems game to explore whatever comes into his head, a one-man White Album with nearly the mojo of the Fab Four in his well-dressed frame. Wake Up The Nation is a call to arms without a specific agenda, happy to shake us from the modern malaise but unwilling to be programmatic. How truly punk of you, sir!
you gotta see this
Jam Cruise is full of magic moments but a lot of them this year were generated by a pair of unassuming singer-songwriters who threw down on deck at all hours and reminded everyone that encountered them that music can inform and delight us in ways beyond the ability of words to describe. Nathan Moore and his guest Bryan Elijah Smith proved a happy catalyst all week at sea, touching cruisers and musicians alike. There’s a big ol’ review of Jam Cruise 9 by Dennis over here where you can read more about the whole experience, including the Moore/Smith lead hootenanies, but we’ll just share a taste of the boys on deck and a couple other clips that show what they’re made of. Some glowing words on the latest releases by both gents hitting Impound soon…
[amtap amazon:asin=B0040MGPGC] By 1975, Iggy Pop was – for lack of a better term – a hot mess. Following the dissolution of Stooges in the wake of the tepid reception their now-landmark 1973 LP Raw Power received upon its initial release, the legendary Detroit punk icon fell into a deep, heroin-induced depression, the severity of which prompted him to check himself into a psychiatric ward to straighten out and clean up. But while The Stooges were no more, Iggy still maintained a functional working relationship with the band’s guitar hero James Williamson, and, with Pop on a weekend pass from the loony bin, the two managed to score some time in Jimmy Webb’s home studio to lay down some demos in hopes of securing a new record deal. Sadly, however, no label was interested. That is, of course, until 1977 after Iggy made one of the greatest comebacks in rock history with his pair of David Bowie-produced solo classics The Idiot and Lust For Life, when Bomp Records gave Williamson an advance to release the demos as the album known as Kill City.
It’s a dark, revealing work that, as heard on songs like Sell Your Love and I Got Nothin’, sonically and lyrically reflects Pop’s sense of hopelessness and desperation at the time. For years, the album wallowed in a series of muddy, poor quality reproductions that mired the fire of Pop and Williamson’s incendiary performances, which saw them temper the feral electricity displayed on Raw Power with accents of piano, acoustic guitar, saxophone and congas. But with this excellent new remix of the LP, culled from the original multi-tracks by Williamson and engineer Ed Cherney, Kill City (reissued October 19 on Alive Records) is at long last finally restored to its intended glory, complete with a clarity and crispness that brings the album up to par with the might of the rest of the Iggy/Stooges canon. The Legacy edition of Raw Power and the recent Rhino Handmade-released Funhouse-era concert set Live at Ungano’s might have gotten more attention in the press, but the long overdue revamp of this unheralded classic is arguably the most important Iggy-related reissue to come out in the last year.
A bit of gonad ticklin’, gutbucket rock
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