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51 Phantom, The North Mississippi Allstars (Tone-Cool)

With their 2000 debut, “Shake Hands With Shorty,“ local favorite sons the North Mississippi Allstars became the linchpin of Memphis’ musical “rebirth.” In such real-life terms as album sales, live following, and press attention in their own time, the Allstars became — at least until Saliva busted out a year later to surpass them — the biggest Memphis-bred rock-and-roll band since the Box Tops. And, unlike Saliva or the even more successful Three 6 Mafia, they’ve been wholeheartedly embraced by the city, their blues-based sound tied in to Memphis’ musical heritage.

But there’s a big world outside of adoring Memphis, and as a follow-up to “Shake Hands With Shorty,” 51 Phantom presents the band with at least two hurdles — the necessity to prove themselves as songwriters after a debut that was composed entirely of covers and the desire to solidify a fan base outside of the loyal, college-oriented jam aficionados that typically pack their concerts. 51 Phantom is a likely success on both counts.

Produced by patriarch Jim Dickinson rather than the band itself (as was the case with “Shorty”), 51 Phantom is a leaner, more rock-oriented record with some harder, heavier riffs and tighter compositions — only two songs pass the five-minute mark. The lead/title track encapsulates the band’s strengths: Chris Chew’s locomotive bass drives the song, Cody Dickinson’s forceful drumming gives it power, and Luther Dickinson spikes it with quick, strong slide-guitar runs. The song moves forward with purpose, with no wasted space, and Luther makes up for his pedestrian vocal skills through the sheer verve of his delivery, clearly having a blast by adding a warbling, ghostly “wooooo” to the end of some verses.

The song also answers the songwriting question straightaway. “Late in the evening about this time of night/51 Phantom gets to feeling right/Memphis to New Orleans, the 51 I ride/White lightning flashing ‘cross the Mississippi sky,” Luther sings, showing a way with lyrical blues tropes that catches up to his mastery of musical ones.

In fact, 51 Phantom includes only two covers. One is Junior Kimbrough’s “Lord Have Mercy,” which sounds like an outtake from “Shake Hands With Shorty” in that it duplicates the relative strengths and weaknesses of that record. The band’s soulful but never overly reverent way around the riffs and rhythms of hill-country blues has never been more evident, but near “Lord Have Mercy”‘s three-minute mark (this is one of the over-five-minute songs), Luther takes off on one of those high-pitched, Allmanesque guitar excursions that split Allstars fans right down the middle. In concert, this stuff sends some in the audience into overdrive; it sends me back to the bar.

The other cover, surprisingly, is the Staples Singers’ civil-rights-era “Freedom Highway,” revealing a gospel bent — perhaps enhanced by the band’s recent work on the instrumental gospel record The Word, not to mention Chew’s own church-music background — which also comes through on originals such as “Ship” and “Up Over Yonder,” the former featuring some nice call-and-response vocal interplay between Luther and Chew.

All in all, 51 Phantom is strong continuation of what the band started on “Shake Hands With Shorty,“ even if it ends with a thud. I can see how the almost metal-ly, chant-driven “Mud” might be redeemed as a concert staple, but on record it’s a failed experiment. It does, however, make nice use of Cody’s electric washboard. — Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

The North Mississippi Allstars will be at Young Avenue Deli on Friday, November 23rd, and Saturday, November 24th, with Burnside Exploration. 51 Phantom is set to release on Tuesday, December 4th.

Lend You a Hand

The Tight Bros From Way Back When

(Kill Rock Stars)

Remove your tongues from your cheeks and raise your fists in the air to testify to the beauty of well mid-’80s AC/DC. Not the first niche I would choose for a feverish updating in the new century, but what do I know? I do know that AC/DC’s Flick of the Switch (1983) is an overlooked, hitless masterwork, and the Tight Bros know how to use that record as a springboard into the current punk/indie lexicon. Perfectly, I might add.

The Tight Bros emerged in 1998, jumping from the ashes of leftfield hardcore weirdos Burn the Prophet NLSL and a Melvins’ facsimile known as Karp. They quickly established themselves as a bullshit-, in-joke-, and pretense-free pure rock band that shined in a live setting but sporadically translated well to record. Luckily, Lend You a Hand, their third full-length, breaks that trend. Its positive, light-speed, good-time boogie walks a perfect balance between a “brothers and sisters” MC5 schtick (and sound) and a street-punk-injected version of the aforementioned AC/DC record. That comparison comes to fruition at the sound of Jared Warren’s vocals, which are a dead-on approximation of Brian Johnson (not Bon Scott, as some will claim). Yes, time could have stopped in 1983, as Lend You a Hand blares from the blown speakers of a Chevrolet Citation en route to an abandoned racetrack open-air festival. — Andrew Earles

Grade: B+

Listening Log

1st Born Second — Bilal (Interscope): D’Angelo for Dummies, with too much atmosphere and not enough song. But he does have a decent falsetto and a sense of humor, which come together on the following Inspirational Verse: “You got me wishing I didn’t have home training sometiiimes.” (“Fast Lane,” “All That I Am,” “Sometimes”)

Grade: B

Beats, Rhymes, & Battles Vol. 1 — DJ Red Alert (Loud): “For those of us who fear that one day someone will say that hip hop started out with Jay-Z, Puffy, or Ja Rule,” DJ Red Alert comes to the rescue with a history lesson on five of the music’s classic battles: the “Roxanne” songs, MC Shan vs. KRS-ONE, Kool Moe Dee vs. LL Cool J, Doug E. Fresh vs. Salt-n-Pepa, and Antoinette vs. MC Lyte. First- and second-generation hip-hop heads will have a blast; young ‘uns will learn something. (“Roxanne’s Revenge” — Roxanne Shante, “The Show” — Doug E. Fresh & Slick Rick, “10% Dis” — MC Lyte)

Grade: B+

The Id — Macy Gray (Epic): As crazy as Wesley Willis but more self-conscious about it. And the vocal comparison is a push. (“Sweet Baby,” “Don’t Come Around,” “Freak Like Me”)

Grade: B

Right Between the Promises — Freedy Johnston (Elektra): Previously one of his generation’s finest songwriters, this time he covers ’70s bubblegummers Edison Lighthouse for his radio bid — and this time he needs it. (“Waste Your Time,” “That’s Alright With Me”)

Grade: B-

All This Sounds Gas — Preston School Of Industry (Matador): Actually ex-Pavement guitarist Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg stepping out on his own, with a lot more guitar sound at his disposal than lyrical sense or vocal personality. Not as good a solo move as his Pavement partner Steve Malkmus made earlier this year but at least as good as Keith Richards or Jimmy Page ever managed. (“Falling Away,” “Encyclopedic Knowledge Of,” “Doping For Gold”)

Grade: B

Free City — St. Lunatics (Universal): Nelly and crew with the posse record of the year, redeeming a dubious genre through producer Jay E’s St. Lou-bred shimmy-shimmy-cocoa-pop and sheer affability. (“Summer in the City,” “Midwest Swing,” “Dis Iz Da Life”)

Grade: A-

Made in Medina — Rachid Taha (Mondo Melodia): Actually made in Paris, London, and New Orleans, this is the Algeria-born/Paris-raised Taha bringing rock and techno energy to the Algerian pop form rai. The liner notes’ lyric translations help English speakers find their way, but the polyglot groove and rough-edged vocals suffice as pure body music. (“Barra Barra,” “Foqt Foqt,” “Garab”)

Grade: A-

Tomb Raider Soundtrack — Various Artists (Elektra): What should have been another obscenely useless bit of cross-promotional marketing product miraculously manages to be a fine alt-rock-meets-electronica-meets-hip-hop mix tape, a utopian glimpse at a bit of pop futurism that actually seemed like the future five long years ago. Doesn’t redeem the movie, though. (“Elevation [Tomb Raider Mix]” — U2, “Get Ur Freak On” — Missy Elliott featuring Nelly Furtado, “Speedballin'” — OutKast, “Where’s Your Head At” — Basement Jaxx)

Grade: A-

— CH

Party Music, The Coup (75 Ark)

The Coup may not be a name that is immediately familiar, but chances are you read about this Oakland-based hip-hop duo — producer/MC Boots Riley and DJ Pam the Funktress — in the days following September 11th, which just so happened to be the day the cover art for Party Music was going to press. The original cover, pulled immediately but widely circulated, pictured Pam holding two drumsticks like conductors’ batons while Riley knelt in the foreground, pushing a guitar pedal like a detonator, as the twin towers of the World Trade Center exploded behind them. The cover was meant to be metaphor, a twist on the inscription Woody Guthrie had on his guitar — “This machine kills fascists.” The Coup’s intended message? “Our music kills capitalism.”

The cover was changed to a slightly wittier “Molotov cocktail” image (though neither can match the cover of the group’s great 1998 breakthrough, Steal This Album, which pictured Riley and Pam locked up behind a bar code). The only significant admitted Marxists in all of American pop music, the Coup have a penchant for overstepping their music with wrongheaded statements (unless, that is, you really believe that “every cop is a corrupt one” or that those with the money and power are all “Lazy Muthafucka”s). But during an era when most pop music is apolitically conservative, the Coup’s leftist agitpop has no rival. Most mainstream rappers are screaming for Bill Gates and Donald Trump to let them in the club; the Coup are releasing a single called “5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO.”

On Party Music, Riley and Pam create a bed of warm, ambitious West Coast funk over which Riley flows with a languid drawl and sharp wit that splits the difference between classic Ice Cube and Dre from the similarly adventurous OutKast. Riley may not be a great pure rapper, but if this music is about the love of language and the delight of delivery, few can match him for his conversational, unpretentious way with a memorable lyric. The world has been waiting for a “Ghetto Manifesto” that begins this way: “I write my lyrics on parking tickets and summons to the court/I scribbled this on an application for county support/I practice this like a sport/Met Donald Trump and he froze up/Standin’ on his Bentley yellin’, ‘Pimps down, Hos up!'” The song is the Coup’s political sloganeering at its wittiest and most musical, “a slum serenade on razor blades and grenades/By the nannies and the maids who be polishin’ the suede.”

But this band isn’t nearly as strident (or as macho) as Rage Against the Machine or Public Enemy, whose The Battle of Los Angeles and It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, respectively, are Party Music‘s only real competition as the best purely political album of the post-punk era. Like Public Enemy’s Chuck D. before him, Riley is guilty of plenty of blustery bullshit. But unlike Chuck D., he doesn’t need to rely on a sidekick to cut his crap with comic relief. Riley has plenty of good humor on his own, which helps the agitpop go down easy, but also offers reassurances of his own generosity and compassion.

Indeed, beyond “Ghetto Manifesto,” Party Music‘s best moments are softer and more reflective. “Heven Tonite” is the rare hip-hop song to take churches to task for concentrating on the next world without turning tithes toward political change in this one. Marked by a circular acoustic guitar riff and sung chorus, Riley concludes with his most specific description of what “the revolution” might entail and then instructs retailers to file the deeply political song under “love ballad.”

Even better is the hip-hop “Night Moves” of “Nowalaters,” an inspirationally understanding and perceptive open letter to a high school girlfriend that is richly evocative of growing up in the ’80s, with its chorus references to high-top fades, Jesse Johnson’s “Crazay” (a great, forgotten Video Soul staple), and the playground-favorite candies of the title.

Best of all is the gentle but strong “Wear Clean Draws,” a song directed at Riley’s young daughter (“The revolution takes time and space/But you as a woman gotta know yo’ place — that’s in the front, baby”), which deserves to be every bit as big a smash as OutKast’s musically similar “Ms. Jackson” but won’t because it says too much and says it too plainly. I know this, though — there hasn’t been a pop-music moment all year that makes me as happy as the advice Riley hands out at the beginning of this record: “You’re my daughter/My love/More than kin to me/This is for you and the woman that you finna be/Tell that boy he’s wrong/Girls are strong/Next time at show-and-tell play him our song/Tell your teacher I said princesses are evil/How they got they money was/They killed people.”

In short, an Album of the Year candidate, warts and all.

— Chris Herrington

Grade: A

National Antiseptic

James Mathus &

His Knockdown Society

(Mammoth)

James “Jimbo” Mathus calls three locales home — the farm in North Carolina where he lives today and the Corinth and Clarksdale, Mississippi, towns of his youth. His life journey reads like an updated musical version of Huck Finn — first picking up a guitar when he was 6 years old, playing bluegrass with his family band, then starting Corinth’s first punk-rock band, Johnny Vomit and the Dry Heaves, with high school classmate and Tearjerkers leader Jack Yarber.

After graduation, Mathus went to work as a deckhand on the Mississippi River then wandered his way up to North Carolina, eventually forming the jump-blues- and hot-jazz-inspired Squirrel Nut Zippers with his wife Katharine Whalen and friends. The Zippers turned the music world on its ear in 1997, selling more than a million copies of their second album, Hot.

That year, Mathus returned to Mississippi to record Songs For Rosetta, a Charley Patton tribute, under the guise of the Knockdown Society, a loose-knit group that provided a bluesy alter ego for Jimbo. His fascination with the Delta bluesman was genuine — Patton’s daughter, Rosetta, babysat Jimbo when he was a boy. Mathus planned the record as a one-off project, a benefit for Rosetta Patton Brown, who never received royalties from her father’s music.

But after that trip to Clarksdale, he couldn’t get the North Mississippi blues out of his system. A tour with Luther and Cody Dickinson followed, then Mathus eventually re-formed a stripped-down version of the Knockdown Society. Today’s configuration of the group, a trio, could give the Dickinsons’ North Mississippi Allstars a run for their money — if, of course, both bands weren’t such good friends.

Earlier this year, the Knockdown Society holed up at the Dickinsons’ Zebra Ranch studio to cut their second album, National Antiseptic. The record, a hodgepodge of originals, covers, and far-flung interpretations of American standards, plays like a running commentary on Mathus’ life as Huck: From the joyous opener “Call Your Dawgs Off,” replete with Muscle Shoals-sounding horn riffs and Stonesy “whoo hoo” back-up vocals from Yarber, to the raunchy “Chicken Town” and pensive “Back to the Bottoms,” featuring Luther Dickinson on mandolin, Mathus plays hard, drinks hard, lives hard — and revels in it.

An ominous take on Lonnie Pitchford’s “Drinkin’ Antiseptic” rolls and tumbles like a barge on the Mississippi. Full-time Society members Stu Cole (bass) and Nate Stalfa (drums) take the frenzied journey with Mathus, who reminisces about the time he picked up a hitchhiker down in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The man lived on the Choctaw Reservation, where “They didn’t have no whiskey/They didn’t have no wine/They were drinkin’ antiseptic/Most all the time.” Though his heart aches for the Indians, Mathus joins the party without hesitation.

But, as evidenced on the gospel-derived “Rock of Ages” and heartrending “Nightingale,” Mathus has a soft side as well. He’s an itinerant musician but a family man too. Thirty-four years of influences — from the Delta and hill-country Mississippi blues to the sounds of his newfound North Carolina home — contribute to the 15 songs that make up National Antiseptic. From “Spare Change” to “Innit for the Money,” the album pays homage to the life experiences that make Mathus the man he is today.

On the album’s fifth track, “Stranger,” Mathus reveals his truest self: “No house, no home/Always will I roam/I am just a stranger in this world all alone.” Like Huck Finn at the end of his river adventure, Mathus won’t stand to be “sivilized” — in Huck’s words, “I can’t stand it. I been there before,” so he lights out for the Territory, ahead of the rest. Mark Twain — and Jimbo Mathus — wouldn’t have it any other way. — Andria Lisle

Grade: A

Jimbo Mathus will be at the Lounge on Thursday, November 15th, with the Tearjerkers.