RSSExpert Witness: August 2018
August 3, 2018
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Chicago Farmer: Quarter Past Tonight (chicagofarmer.com) I'd never heard of transplanted son of the soil Cody Dieckhoff and you probably haven't either. But this tenth-anniversary double-live, 24 songs and eight spoken bits that include a tribute to his heroically supportive wife entitled "Benefits," documents the Chicago-based singer-songwriter's sold-out weekend at the world-famous, 3000-capacity Apollo Theater--in Peoria, Illinois. Dieckhoff isn't as sharp as his hero John Prine--one disc at a time will do. But he's funny, he's kind, and he's preparing an instructional video about "how do you get that drawl that you do--it's kind of a mix between a small-town big-city kind of a northernly southernly easterly westerly stuck-in-the-middle type of a drawl." And if you grant that his DIY life touring the Midwest in his heroically supportive van is very nearly as hard as the lives of the fans he says put in 40 or 50 less colorful hours every week, he never stops thinking about class, which is why he brushes off an admirer who tells him that if he'd "leave out the politics" he'd move twice as many records (raising his nightly sales to 12, the merch guy in him calculates). Dieckhoff assumes most of his fans are Democrats but welcomes Republicans, and why shouldn't he--not even a Republican could leave a Chicago Farmer show meaner than when he or she walked in. And ask yourself this: how many musicians have the consciousness to employ the square, tired-ass, polarizing terms "Democrat" and "Republican" at all? Only some kind of northernly southernly easterly westerly stuck-in-the-middle visionary. A MINUS
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AD the Voice: Maxi-Single (Statik Entertainment) AD is Schenectady-born, Rhinebeck-based, African-American attorney Antonio Delgado, Democratic candidate for Congress in New York's 19th district, where the mealy-mouthed Republican incumbent has gone after him for this hip-hop EP he recorded in 2007. And how about that? Not only doesn't it deploy "phrases derogatory to women" or--wha?--"glorif[y] pornography and drug use." It's also really good. Suavely articulated over simple, dramatic beats, every word is thought through and all five songs work as songs. The special standouts are "U Scared," where "There's a war going on" evokes America's ongoing race and class combat while dissing both black-on-black violence and "pop like a pimple" rap, and "Draped in Flags," the best-informed Iraq War song this side of Becky Warren's "Get Calm, Stay Low." A DCCC poll has Delgado's jobs-and-healthcare campaign seven points ahead in a predominantly white district where John Hall of Orleans served two House terms a decade ago. So get on it, my peeps in New Paltz with its SUNY hipsters and Oneonta with its SUNY pop music program, in Hunter no longer just a ski town and Hudson now an exurban hub. This 2016 iteration of the EP is filled out with "clean" versions you can do without, although the a cappella "U Scared" is a keeper. So you could just download the songs. But I say you buy the physical and then do some phonebanking if not door-knocking for Antonio Delgado. When he wins, you'll have a collector's item on your hands. A MINUS
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American Aquarium: Things Change (New West) Diligence rewarded: 10 years on the road, six DIY full-lengths, and 30-plus band members later, Reidsville, North Carolina's BJ Barham cold-turkeys the Jameson, ties the knot with Rachael, welcomes baby Josephine, and gets label financing on an album fit to introduce him to the nation at large. Beginning with the stricken anthem "The World Is on Fire," he fashions songs for non-urbanites appalled by America's twin epidemics of cruelty and cowardice--for lifelong patriots negotiating the ground "between hypocrite and hallelujah" in what's become "the home of the afraid." Even when his good heart goes soft, his songs retain their smarts, and city folk have plenty to learn from them. B PLUS
August 10, 2018
Link: Amanda Shires / Lori McKenna / Sarah Shook & the Disarmers / Ashley Monroe
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Amanda Shires: To the Sunset (Silver Knife) Although premier violinist and respected singer-songwriter Shires comes by most of her current swell of fame as Jason Isbell's wife, bedrock, and babymama, you wouldn't guess it from the advances she's made in these 10 coolly autonomous, acutely turned, observantly experienced songs. Her soprano incisive over arrangements longer on echo and electronics than you'd expect from tradmaster Dave Cobb, she deals more candidly with attraction ("Parking Lot Pirouette"), lust ("Leave It Alone"), personal rivalry ("Break Out the Champagne"), and even suicide ("Wasn't I Paying Attention?") than supportive domestic partners are expected to, and hardly plays her violin at all. That's how you end up with an album that takes some getting used to not just because it's unexpected but because it's halfway to sui generis. A MINUS
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Lori McKenna: The Tree (CN/Thirty Tigers) No one tills the themes of marriage, family, and the passage of time as fruitfully as McKenna. But although both the opening "A Mother Never Rests" and "The Tree" itself are so well-put it would be simple-minded to slot them as cliches, their roots in truism run so deep that their considerable portion of actual truth will probably escape nonbelievers. The sole masterstroke is "The Fixer," where a handyman fears all his ginger ale on the nightstand and keys to locks long departed will never ease his wife the fighter's . . . pain? fear? anger? depression? We don't know, and maybe he doesn't either. So be glad "You Won't Even Know I'm Gone" and "You Can't Break a Woman" on marriage and "People Get Old" and "Young and Angry Again" on the passage of time are close enough to masterstrokes themselves. B PLUS
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers: Years (Bloodshot) If only she could light up the melancholy of "Good as Gold" with the dawning consciousness of "What It Takes," she might be able to figure out how to duck men's meanness without drinking herself into the ditch ("Parting Words," "Lesson") **
Ashley Monroe: Sparrow (Warner Bros.) The hardest thing about turning a sparrow into a nightingale isn't embellishing the simple melodies, it's maintaining your grip on the chippers attitude ("Daddy I Told You," "Mother's Daughter," "Hands on You") *
August 17, 2018
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Methodist Hospital: Giants (self-released) Living proof that young white males can still make rock new, fun, meaningful, etc.--in this case Chicagoans Dan Caffrey on concept-lyrics-vocals-bass and Maxwell J. Shults on guitar-drums-bass-"sound design." Nine tracks, 33 minutes, free if you want at Bandcamp but I say give them some money. Concept: giant cartoon monsters overrun either the world or the small Tampa-metro city of New Port Richey, where Pennsylvania-born Caffrey came of age. Subconcepts: the evolution of both cartooning and disaster flicks in millennial youth culture plus the evolution of music "from pop punk to '90s alternative, sludge metal, ambient, and back." The omnipresent guitars betray no showoff macho, I've been brain-humming "'Hey, New Port Richey'" for days, and while the concept is goofy and generational and a tad hyperaesthetic, it also acknowledges an apocalypse that may literally impend. The key idea is attributed to a buddy of Caffrey who has since died: "Once you get to be a certain size, it doesn't matter if you're good or bad / You're so big, you cause destruction wherever you go / Whether you want to or not / You can't help it." A MINUS
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Rolling Blackouts C.F.: Hope Downs (Sub Pop) What's most distinct about the best jangle-pop band to surface in years is also what's weakest--the way the jangle-pop commonplaces "sparkling," "effervescent," and "boisterous" that adorn their raves don't actually apply. "Addictive," yes, which is why admirers rave and why I'm giving them their due. Lyrically, the mood is basically melancholy, which in songs like the mournful "Bellarine," the reminiscent "Cappuccino City," the pro-immigrant "Mainland," and my favorite, the love-out-of-reach "Talking Straight" are dark notes I'm inclined to suspect their stauncher fans don't feel, because that would dull their jangle-fix. FYI, the Hope Downs of the title is an iron reserve in Western Australia, but those words do have other resonances, don't they? Sub Pop connects them to "the feeling of 'standing at the edge of the void of the big unknown, and finding something to hold onto.'" The persistence of jangle-pop, for instance. B PLUS
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: Sparkle Hard (Matador) On his best album in years, his two most fetching melodies power his most representational lyrics ever ("Bike Lane," "Refute") ***
Low Cut Connie: "Dirty Pictures" (Part 2) (Contender) America's road band apply their well-traveled chops to Alex Chilton and desegregation but hit closer to home bewailing the perfidy of the biz and the limitations of youth's spiritual advancement ("Master Tapes," "All These Kids Are Way Too High") **
Young Fathers: Cocoa Sugar (Ninja Tune) Alt-rock success anxiety disorder generates its first Afro-Scottish variant ("Wow," "Tremolo") **
Okkervil River: In the Rainbow Rain (ATO) Will Sheff's voice and temperament sweeten as his career finds its own level ("Famous Tracheotomies," "Don't Move Back to LA") *
Eyelids: or (Jealous Butcher/Schizophrenic) Veteran indie sidemen concoct a Fountains of Wayne whose hooks they take too seriously ("Slow It Goes," "Falling Eyes") *
August 31, 2018
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Hinds: I Don't Run (Mom + Pop) Think of Hinds as the anti-Beach House. Where Victoria Legrand's cool continental tease gets more detached and high-handed as her brand matoors, the Madrid foursome want to be liked. So they play the girl group, deploying chops that recall the early Breeders to power a goofy insouciance that beefs up the spirit of the Chiffons and the Cookies. All into their twenties by now, they make no pretence to innocence, because by now they're not just club kids--they're club kids who've seen the world no matter how unpolished their English. But they're also good-hearted going on kind, and although they'd rather hitch up with someone who doesn't get night sweats or bang another baby when they're not looking, they remain in the love hunt as a matter of principle. A MINUS
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Bali Baby: Baylor Swift (Twin) The sex-positive young Dirty South battle rapper makes sure you know this is her pop move with a title search engines consider a typo. By pop she means vulnerable, sometimes playful, sometimes even loony-toony, with emo-ish lyrics in the manner of the simultaneously pained and drawled "You got me feeling so lost/Sitting out here solo/Keep checking my phone." Both her musical execution and her marketing strategy favor a beguilingly silly charm. The hookfest begins with the aptly entitled "Introduction": squelchy three-note synth hook over and over under lyrics that begin "Ha, ha, ha/Mwah!/I said 'Hi, it's nice to meetcha.'" A MINUS
Kali Uchis: Isolation (Virgin EMI) "Everything is just wonderful here in my dreams, here in my dreams" ("Just a Stranger," "Killer") ***
Primo!: Amici (Polyester) Modest band posits small solutions for young women pursuing busy lives ("You've Got a Million," "Bronte Blues") *
Noisey, August 2018
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