Short Attention Span Record Reviews, Aug 23

THE ARMED – Perfect Saviors
(Ex- ?) Hardcore provocateurs go full-on arena rock, probably mocking arena rock at the same time, and it rules. (8)

ANDREW BIRD – Outside Problems
A companion album to last year’s “Inside Problems”, this one’s mainly instrumental, improvised, and quite joyful. Nobody sounds quite like Bird and his music is impossible to describe, but if you’re not familiar with his music try it, you’re in for a treat. (8)

BRAD – In The Moment That You’re Born
Side project of Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard brings on the grunge nostalgia with a solid album that sounds extremely Seattle. (8)

THE CLIENTELE – I'm Not There Anymore
I never really got into this whole soft indie pop British thing (Felt, Belle & Sebastian…) and I’ve always been a Who guy not a Kinks guy, so The Clientele shouldn’t really be my cup of tea, especially now that they throw a bit of latter-day Radiohead electronica weirdness into the mix. But this is good! (8)

CUT WORMS – Cut Worms
Young New Yorker sounds like he’s raiding his grandad’s record collection in wondrous amazement and discovering “Please Please Me”, Frankie Valli, and the Beach Boys for the first time. (7)

RHIANNON GIDDENS – You’re The One
Americana star and folk polyglot delivers her most diverse album yet, further incorporating gospel, R&B, jazz, and Cajun into her palette. (8)

HISS GOLDEN  MESSENGER – Jump For Joy
One of his more uptempo efforts, this is a very good and very American soft rock album with a sound somewhere between Don Henley and Little Feat. (8)

MUTOID MAN – Mutants
Cave In/Converge/High On Fire side-project/supergroup has tons of fun in the studio just being dumb metalheads. (8)

OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW – Jubilee
Bluegrass can be really fun. (8)

OXBOW – Love’s Holiday
A bipolar album wildly oscillating between Jesus Lizard noise and melodic art rock tunes, some of which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Nick Cave album. (8)

MOLLY TUTTLE & THE GOLDEN HIGHWAY - City Of Gold
Bluegrass star releases another excellent album with top-notch songwriting and astounding virtuosity from a band that can’t hide behind distortion and volume – get a load of this!!! (8)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, July 23

ANOHNI AND THE JOHNSONS – My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross
Antony or Anohni, I still find her voice an acquired taste that doesn’t really work for me. (7)

JULIE BYRNE – The Greater Wings
Like Phoebe Bridgers without all the high-profile guest slots on other people’s albums. (8)

DIVIDE AND DISSOLVE – Systemic
Australia-based (mainly) instrumental doom metal duo featuring one member who’s black/Cherokee and one who’s Maori, and the cultural background informs their work to some extent – but mostly you’ll get crushing sludge/doom in the SunnO))) vein. (7)

MILITARIE GUN – Life Under The Gun
Back in the 90’s bands like Quicksand and Jawbox split the distance between hardcore and alternative rock, and Militarie Gun seem determined to revisit that era and mindset. (8)

PJ HARVEY – I Inside The Old Year Dying
While Polly Harvey’s stubborn insistence on sounding as unlike PJ Harvey as possible is an admirable demonstration of her uncompromising creative spirit, the most PJ Harvey moments of the album (e.g. “Seem An I”) are actually the best. Not one of her masterpieces, still better than 99% of what gets released out there. (8)

SETH LAKEMAN – The Somerset Sessions
British folk-rock star on a great album recorded over 10 days in late 2020, including some unreleased compositions plus alternate versions of 4 songs from 2021’s “Make Your Mark”. (8)

LUKAS NELSON & PROMISE OF THE REAL – Sticks And Stones
Willie’s son & Co. on a decent set of mostly good-time country rock tunes about drinking, fornicating, and drinking before fornicating. (7)

MARC RIBOT’S CERAMIC DOG – Connection
Former Lounge Lizard and all-around genius guitarist (with Tom Waits, John Zorn, Robert Plant, Elvis Costello and about a thousand others) and his band create an explosive amalgam of no wave, free jazz, hard rock, Cuban music and everything in between. (8)

SLEEP TOKEN – Take Me Back To Eden
I should’ve known better than to finally give in to the hype and listen to this, because it’s as bad as I feared it was going to be – like a djent version of fucking Imagine Dragons or something. Death to false metal. (5)

LUCINDA WILLIAMS – Stories From A Rock’N’Roll Heart
With the best bar band in the universe behind her (including members of Tom Petty’s and Stevie Ray Vaughn’s bands) and guests like Tommy Stinson, Patti Scialfa, and The Boss himself, Williams and her pure rock ‘n’ roll heart make a very strong comeback. (8)

VARIOUS ARTISTS – Young Limbs Rise Again: The Story Of The Batcave Nightclub, 1982-85
Finally got my hands on this fantastic box set – 5 CDs that act as a soundtrack history of the historic London goth club. Everyone’s on it, plus an 80-page book. (10)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, June 23 Vol. II

BENEFITS – Nails
A noise-punk/trip-hop hybrid that ends up sounding like Sleaford Mods on steroids. (7)

CREEP SHOW – Yawning Abyss
Electro-pop supergroup of sorts, mainly known as side-project for John Grant and Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder, sounds like the more annoying aspects of Yello. (6)

DJANGO DJANGO – Off Planet
This double album, or rather quadruple EP, doesn’t sound much like the art rock Django Django we know, I can only describe it as prog disco and it’s probably 6-7 songs too long.  (7)

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS – The Complete Dirty South
The band’s fifth studio album from 2004 was meant to be a double one but was trimmed down back then. So here is the Director’s Cut, with three extra tracks and slightly different sequencing. Patterson Hood usually writes most of the material but on this one songwriting credits are more or less evenly distributed between Hood, Cooley, and Isbell, the latter providing a glimpse into his future greatness. A southern rock masterpiece just got even better. (9)

CORY HANSON – Western Cum
2021’s “Pale Horse Rider” was like Radiohead doing a Gram Parsons tribute and it was so good it made the Geek’s List, the regrettably titled “Western Cum” is a very different deal with Hanson rocking out in almost-metal fashion, but it’s just as great! (8)

BETTYE LAVETTE – LaVette!
Legendary septuagenarian gravelly-voiced soul singer backed by a killer band dedicates a whole album to songs by Randall Bramblett, a guy better known as a session musician but apparently a great songwriter too. None of these funky jams have been hits before, and I can’t understand why. (8)

DONNY McCASLIN – I Want More
You know this tenor saxophonist as Bowie’s right-hand man on the latter’s swansong “Blackstar”, and on this solo album he’s pushing the boundaries of jazz towards electronica with a band that’s tighter than Kim Kardashian’s yoga pants. (8)

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE – In Times New Roman…
Josh Homme had a tougher time than most of us these past few years, and this is reflected in the darkest and heaviest QOTSA album since 2007’s “Era Vulgaris”. (8)

ROYAL THUNDER – Rebuilding The Mountain
Back from the dead with a strong grungy hard rock album. Mlny Parsonz often gets compared to Janis Joplin, but really, she sounds more like Gerard Way’s sister. (8)

AMANDA SHIRES & BOBBIE NELSON – Loving You
Bobbie was not just Willie Nelson’s sister, but a great pianist in her own right. On this posthumous release, recorded when she was already 90, she collaborates with Shires who provides her fragile, sensitive vocals and the occasional fiddle to interpretations of a bunch of classics (“Always On My Mind”, “Summertime”, “Dream A Little Dream”, that sort of thing). A delightful little record and a proper send-off. (8)

SIGUR ROS – Atta
Drummerless this time but with a full orchestra on board, they successfully bridge the gap between post rock and classical music. (8)

SWANS – The Beggar
Can something be simultaneously spacey and claustrophobic? Apparently so, this Swans album does that, taking their choking experimental drones and expanding, expanding, expanding them to infinity and beyond. (8)

VINTAGE TROUBLE – Heavy Hymnal
Catchy soul/blues/rock from this LA-based band. Go see them live this summer if you can, they’re a blast. (8)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, June 23

THE LOUDER STUFF

RAY ALDER – II
Slightly mellower than 2019’s “What The Water Wants” but not straying far from that template, i.e. essentially what used to be called AOR but with slightly proggy overtones. I do miss Fates Warning very much though, and I hope Jim has another FW album inside him. (7)

AVENGED SEVENFOLD - Life Is But A Dream
I’ve deliberately avoided these guys since 2001, and I honestly don’t think I’ve heard a single note from them prior to “Life Is But A Dream” so I have no clue what a “normal” A7X album is supposed to sound like. All I know is that this one is interesting but tries a bit too hard to sound like Muse doing Faith No More cosplay. (7)

BUGGIN – Concrete Cowboys
If you want great punk singalongs played tight and with no macho bullshit posturing, these young Chicagoans just released a fantastic and really fun record. (8)

EXTREME – Six
Nuno’s got a day job nowadays playing with Rihanna but his hard rock shredding muscles are still in great shape – “Rise”, for example, has the best guitar solo I’ve heard in 30 years. Songwriting’s not too shabby either. (8)

FOO FIGHTERS – But Here We Are
Grieving the death of Taylor Hawkins, Grohl himself fills in on drums and this is actually a very good album, probably even their best – they’re still likeable and immensely popular, but now they’ll also get critical respect even if they don’t need it or care for it. (9)

GOZU – Remedy
Most people will compare this album to Kyuss or Clutch, but that’s because they’ve never heard of Goatsnake. (8)


THE OTHER STUFF

LAURA CANTRELL – Just Like A Rose: The Anniversary Sessions
Alt-country/Americana singer displays solid songwriting skills, but any such album released on the same day as Jason Isbell’s “Weathervanes” doesn’t stand much of a chance of getting heard. (7)

COWBOY JUNKIES – Such Ferocious Beauty
A very personal piece of work with lyrics revolving around the dementia of the father of three band members, sonically staying close to the unique Cowboy Junkies template – these guys were “Americana” before the term existed as a music genre signifier. (7)

BEN FOLDS – What Matters Most
Ben Folds Five (a trio, actually) were pretty hip among, well, hipsters in the second half of the 90’s, and the guy is back with a piano/strings/irony-heavy chamber pop record that will delight those of us who are still around. (8)

JASON ISBELL & THE 400 UNIT – Weathervanes
In a recent interview Isbell said something along the lines of, in order to stay sane, he will just aim at writing good songs rather than consciously try to make a better record than “Southeastern”, but you know what? I think he just made a better record than “Southeastern”. BTW is that weathervane on the cover actually pointing southestern? (9)

UTE LEMPER – Time Traveller
Better known as a top-notch interpreter of the Weill/Brecht songbook and for 2000’s marvellous “Punishing Kiss” which featured songs by The Divine Comedy, Nick Cave, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits etc., Lemper nevertheless occasionally decides to release albums based on her own compositions and this is one of those cases, but she never strays too far from a safe, predictable pop-jazz framework. (6)

JANELLE MONAE – The Age Of Pleasure
I tried to watch the video for “Lipstick Lover” but couldn’t because it made my glasses fog up. In any case this is a very hedonistic album with Monae officially entering her T&A era. (8)

KEVIN MORBY – More Photographs (A Continuum)
Last year’s “This Is A Photograph” made the Geek’s List at #3, but apparently Morby wasn’t done with it – “More Photographs” is basically the same photograph subject from different angles, with three songs from the former album re-imagined plus six new songs revisiting the same lyrical themes. (8)

SQUID – O Monolith
On their debut album they sounded like part of the whole Black Country New Road/Dry Cleaning/Black Midi talk-sing London thing, albeit with a krautrock twist. On this second one, some of the keyboards plus the pastorally proggier elements make me think they spent the COVID lockdown listening to Cardiacs and Soft Machine. (8)

THIS IS THE KIT – Careful of Your Keepers
A pleasant little indie-folk record. (7)

JESS WILLIAMSON – Time Ain’t Accidental
Alt-country/Americana singer displays solid songwriting skills, but any such album released on the same day as Jason Isbell’s “Weathervanes” doesn’t stand much of a chance of getting heard. (7)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, May 23 Vol. II

CLARK – Sus Dog
A glitchy EDM album that’s more Radiohead than David Guetta, and not only because Thom Yorke is on it. (7)

BRANDY CLARK – Brandy Clark
Fourth solo album by country songwriter to the stars, includes a couple of real gems like “Ain’t Enough Rocks”. (8)

ELEGANT WEAPONS – Horns For A Halo
Superb metal supergroup put together by Richie Faulkner (Judas Priest) and featuring Scott Travis, Rex Brown, and Ronnie Romero tips the hat to 80’s non-Priest classic hard rock/metal – songs like “Do Or Die” might as well be retitled to “Do Or Dio”. (8)

ROBERT ELLIS – Yesterday’s News
This is so weird, back in 2016 this guy had again released an album on the same day as Paul Simon with the two albums blending seamlessly when played back-to-back, and the same thing happens now – “Yesterday’s News” is like a younger Paul Simon rooted more in country than in folk, and it’s sparsely orchestrated like “Seven Psalms”. (7)

GHOST – Phantomime
The between-albums EP is becoming a tradition for Tobias and this one is just cover songs, featuring a provocative mix of tracks originally by Television, Genesis, Stranglers, Iron Maiden, and Tina Turner (good timing). Great, as expected. (8)

ARLO PARKS – My Soft Machine
More textured than her wonderful bedroom pop debut a couple of years ago, adding a few “rock” bits into the mix (the grungy climax of “Devotion”, Phoebe Bridgers guesting on “Pegasus”), and again quite poetic, this sophomore effort will establish her as one of the most interesting voices of her generation. (8)

PAUL SIMON – Seven Psalms
A suite consisting of seven beautiful, chilling, sparsely orchestrated songs evoking spiritual imagery. A worthy addition to the catalog on one of the world’s greatest songwriters. (8)

COLIN STETSON – When We Were That What Wept For The Sea
If you thought you had a general idea of what one saxophone can do, well, think again. Another haunting, beautiful, scary masterpiece from Stetson and his amazing circular breathing technique. (8)

SBT – Joan Of All
Laura Marling does Lou Reed, or vice versa. And it’s a grower, you really start getting it on the 4th or 5th listen. (8)

MARTY STUART AND HIS FABULOUS SUPERLATIVES – Altitude
Wow. A revelation. Who would’ve thought that a 65-year-old country veteran who used to be in Johnny Cash’s band would come up with such a fantastic Byrds-influenced country rock album in 2023? (8)

TINARIWEN – Amatssou
By now they’re like Iron Maiden – they’ve been around since the late 70’s, they’re the biggest act in their genre (the Tuareg peoples’ assouf, known in the West as “desert blues”), they've released quite a few masterpieces, they're now dependable but predictable. (7)

Short Attention Span Record Reviews, May 23

THE LOUDER STUFF

BLOOD CEREMONY – The Old Ways Remain
In retrospect it looks ridiculous that these guys were once grouped together with Ghost under the same “occult rock” umbrella, since they’re very different animals: Despite influences Ghost are very much a “today” band, whereas Blood Ceremony are firmly rooted in 1970 with a folk-rock streak that keeps getting stronger with each album and reaching its peak on this one. (8)

DANAVA – Nothing But Nothing
I remember being very impressed by an album from these guys maybe 15 years ago, then I lost track of them. But out of nowhere comes this gem, landing somewhere between early Riot and DiAnno-era Maiden and kicking all sorts of ass. (8)

DROPKICK MURPHYS – Okemah Rising
A sequel to last year’s “This Machine Kills Fascists”, recorded at the same time and without co-vocalist Al Barr due for family reasons: The Murphys mainly use unreleased Woody Guthrie lyrics and build rowdy acoustic songs around them, and they also do a new acoustic version of their biggest hit “I’m Shipping Up To Boston”, a Guthrie original. Another track features the Violent Femmes. Fun! (8)

ENFORCED – War Remains
Thrashy death metal from this bunch that does a great job of raiding Slayer’s cabinet of leftover riffs. It’ll make you headbang until your brain comes out of your ears. (7)

GRAVE PLEASURES – Plagueboys
A bit of Killing Joke, a bit of Joy Division, a bit of Sisters, a bit of Bunnymen. Nothing original here but if you miss (or missed) the post-punk/new wave 80’s you’ll have a great time. (8)

DAVE LOMBARDO – Rites Of Percussion
Slayer etc. legend releases his first pure drum/percussion album demonstrating his virtuosity in a myriad different genres and managing not to be as boring as a 35-minute-long drum solo. (7)


THE OTHER STUFF

RODNEY CROWELL – The Chicago Sessions
Another excellent album from this somewhat underrated Americana/country stalwart, produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and featuring a couple of deep dives into the 70’s – “You’re Supposed To Be Feeling Good”, a Crowell composition recorded by Emmylou Harris back in 1977, and a great cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “No Place To Fall”. (8)

OLIVIA JEAN – Raving Ghost
Just because she’s Jack White’s wife doesn’t mean you should discount “Raving Ghost” – it’s a fantastic garage/rockabilly/surf/power-pop record with a backing band featuring members of Jellyfish, My Morning Jacket etc. and, actually, it’s the closest you’re gonna get to White Stripes riffage in 2023. Oh, and her cover of Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” is a scream! (8)

RICKIE LEE JONES – Pieces of Treasure
She’s always been more jazz than pop or anything else, but this is the first time she dedicates an album to the Great American Songbook, reuniting with the guy who produced her first two albums in 1979-1981. You know these songs from Sinatra, Chet Baker, Nat King Cole, Ella and Louis, Sarah Vaughan and others and those are some very scary comparisons, but Jones is so good she gets away with it. (8)

THE LEMON TWIGS – Everything Harmony
They’ve been on the Geek’s radar for a while now, and their previous album almost made The List, but this time they fucking nail it – 1967 Beach Boys, 1972 Big Star, and 1993 Jellyfish seamlessly merge into something totally 2024. (8)

PARKER MILLSAP – Wilderness Within You
Another slight move away from his trademark bluesy Americana towards a more experimental sound with elements of pop, electronica, even krautrock thrown into the mix, it works more often than not. (7)

CIAN NUGENT – She Brings Me Back To The Land Of The Living
Irish guitar hero (think Steve Gunn/Ryley Walker, not Steve Vai/Yngwie Malmsteen) releases breezy, summery country-tinged album. Right on time. (8)

OTIS TAYLOR – Banjo
Taylor plays the blues like no other – his music is repetitive, trance-like almost, and his lyrics are political but often touched by the surreal or the cryptic. It’s not for everyone but I love it. (8)

Nina Nastasia, L' Archipel, Paris, 28/4

Free afternoon in Paris, by myself, after a couple of days' hard work. What to do? Let's check the concert listings.

Hey! Nina Nastasia's in town for an acoustic set, she released a fantastic and devastating album last year, "Riderless Horse", which was probably my 6th favorite album for 2022. The venue, L'Archipel, is 3-4 kilometers from my hotel, it's a nice evening for a walk, despite what you see on the news there's no trouble on the streets of Paris, let's take a stroll and check it out, maybe they've got tickets available.

Yes, they do. L' Archipel is a combination art cinema/folk club with rows of movie theater-type seats and a capacity of approximately 150. Nice, clean, civilized. Smallish stage, decent lights. I'm actually one of the first people in, I take a look at the merch (a couple of old Nastasia albums on CD, her latest one on vinyl, a book, a few T-shirts only small sizes, and an album by someone called Bobbie - apparently there's a support act on the bill), I get a whisky from the bar and grab a seat on the second row.

Interesting crowd. The front row is occupied by a bunch of ageing rockers, rock journo/industry lifer types with ponytails and sideburns, probably from Rock & Folk or Les Inrockuptibles or something. They dress better than their Greek counterparts. The rows behind me gradually fill up mostly with civilians, you know, normal people: Young couples and small groups of people mainly in their 30's. I get the weird row, of course: A woman comes and sits to my right and promptly proceeds to take a big fat 800-page book from her handbag and just sits there reading, while to my left sit four ladies, I shouldn't call them "older" as they're probably around my age, but with their clothes and jewelry and hairdos they look VERY out of place, like they were planning to go to a luxury hotel at Champs-Elysées for afternoon tea and got lost. But they seem to be enjoying themselves, so who am I to judge?

Bobbie, the support act, hits the stage. Pretty blonde girl in a mini skirt and go-go boots and playing an acoustic guitar, she's straight out of central casting for a movie about a Parisian folk club in the 60's. Her songs are simple, innocent, a bit naive, and they'd probably work better as pop songs with a full band behind her than with just a guitar. But she does have a very good voice, and the audience gives her a warm and polite applause - with the exception of the four out-of-place ladies next to me who are much more enthusiastic and take tons of pictures which they immediately share from their phones, thus solving the mystery of what the fuck they're doing here: Obviously Bobbie's mum and aunties or mum's friends.

After a brief interval, Nina Nastasia takes the stage. She looks well, something I'm happy about given the circumstances that led to the creation of her last album. She is a commanding presence on stage too - she starts a capella with a folk song about suicide, and I swear you could hear a pin drop in the back of the room, nobody in the crowd dares make a sound or be disruptive before erupting into applause as the song fades, setting the pattern for the rest of the evening. She then picks up her guitar and proceeds to play essentially "Riderless Horse" in full, plain, bare, warts and all. Her banter between songs is light and pleasant and occasionally funny even, which is a blessing given the darkness of the material sung, but when she sings she transforms into a force of nature, an ancient sorceress commanding the elements, and she gives you goosebumps even if you don't know the backstory. Even Bobbie's mum looks shaken.

Her encore consists mainly of acoustic versions of older material and is well received, even though it lacks a bit of the emotional punch of her main set. But overall the show is a triumph, Paris loves Nastasia and she gives love back. She hangs out at the bar after the show chatting to the industry types and audience members, I go across and say thanks, then head out back to my hotel. Certainly a night in Paris to remember.