Tag: album

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Second Time Around

The Final Solutions are celebrating the release of their second full-length album, which marks the latest chapter in the surprising story of what is, at this writing, Memphis’ best punk-rock band.

Named after the classic Pere Ubu song, the Solutions are an amalgam of local talent that avoids taking itself too seriously yet has emerged as an amazing live act with four singles and (now) two albums, both on Goner, under its belt. The cast is as follows: vocalist Zac Ives (co-owner of Goner Records), bassist Tommy Trouble (a high school honors English teacher by day), guitarist Justice Naczycz (leader of local hard-boogie enthusiasts Secret Service), and drummer Jay Reatard (you name it, but recently blowing minds with his solo album, Blood Visions).

For the sake of chronology, let us briefly travel back to the mid-’90s, when Ives, Trouble, and Naczycz were friends at Rhodes College. Those who paid close attention to show flyers or haunted Barrister’s during this period may remember a short-lived garage band by the name of the Jack Monkeys. “Tom was in a pop-punk band called Squirrels. They sounded like the Descendents or All, and Justice and I were in the Jack Monkeys with a drummer named Pete Nasty, who hadn’t played drums outside of the music room at Rhodes. We were really bad,” Ives says.

Reatard and Ives met at an Oblivians show when the former was in his mid-teens, and Ives began to give the future Reatard rides to shows. “During one of my last years at Rhodes, we put together a band for the talent show in the cafeteria and did Oblivians covers. That was one of the first times that Jay played drums,” Ives recalls.

Following graduation, Ives took a job in Washington, D.C. He returned to Memphis in 2000 to work for Archer Malmo and to eventually join Eric Friedl in the running of Goner Records. By this time, Trouble was teaching, Naczycz was following an acoustic singer-songwriter muse, and Reatard had retired the first version of his teen punk/garage band the Reatards to focus on the Lost Sounds.

“I started circulating compilation tapes of old Scandinavian punk rock,” Ives explains. “I’ve always been into the Television Personalities, especially the song ‘Part Time Punks,’ which I obsessed over for a while.”

Ives speaks loosely of the late-’70s/early-’80s “DIY” movement spearheaded by the likes of early Simple Minds, the Desperate Bicycles, the Homosexuals, and the aforementioned Television Personalities. The aesthetic was cheap, handmade packaging, marginal playing ability, and a turn away from the careerist direction that higher-profile punk rock had taken.

The four Memphians soon came together with Ohio transplant Quinn Powers on guitar (he was with the band for just over a year) and started making a mess of local club stages. “Our shortest show was probably one song, but we don’t really like to do that,” Ives says. “We want to put on a good show for everyone.”

Band activity ebbed and flowed over the next five or so years, resulting in a respectable discography and a much-talked-about live show.

Whereas the first Final Solutions LP was a mishmash of material, recorded at different stages in different places and pulled together to fill out an album, the new Songs by Solutions was a conscious effort. “We were writing for an album on this one,” Ives says. Recorded entirely by Reatard, Songs shows a band growing, even if they’re growing in a weird way to allow for the primary concerns of each member. “Reatard’s gotten extremely good at recording and knows exactly how he wants everything to come out,” Ives explains.

Everything came out nicely, albeit in very short, buzzsaw bursts of catchy aggro-pop. “Mental Shark Bite” and “Tammy” start things off in now-standard Solutions style, with repeated, almost spoken hooks, anthemic howls, smashed drums, and jagged or furiously strummed guitar. The minimal “I’m a Lightning Bug” sounds like pop music from an alternate universe that never experienced pop music, and the astonishingly long “Little Man in My Mind” clocks in at a whopping four-and-a-half minutes, which is like the Final Solutions doing Rush’s “2112.” (Not really, but you get the point.)

“Our songs are written in practice. One of us will bring in something, and everyone else will just work on top of that,” Ives says. “Tommy is responsible for most of the songs on Songs by Solutions. He’d just bring in a riff, and Justice would lay some guitar on top. Things would go from there.”

When asked about how pop and catchiness play into it all, Ives explains, “I have to have a hook. I can’t stand it when a singer is yelling at me.” Songs by Solutions is undoubtedly hummable in its frantic fury.

Fans of incendiary, unpredictable performances and bands who deliver without taking themselves too seriously are encouraged to witness just how far the Final Solutions have come.

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Music Record Reviews

Porter Wagoner: another successful country comeback.

Porter Wagoner got old early and he stayed that way, thank goodness.

At 30, the craggy-faced, painfully thin hillbilly looked and sounded like a man twice his age. His trembling, overly emotive baritone brought authenticity to a morose catalog of hard-luck ballads about asylum doors, barroom floors, and every kind of gut-wrenching, tear-shedding heartache a man could ever know. With hits like “Sorrow on the Rocks” and “Cold Hard Facts of Life,” he repeatedly chronicled the short, treacherous journey from innocent disbelief to resigned disaffection. Even the glass-raising, break-out-the-bottle revelry of “Misery Loves Company” was framed as the hollow ritual of a man who has finally become comfortable with his numbness.

Although he’s now 79 and sporting grayer hair and deeper wrinkles, Wagoner looks pretty much the same as he always has, and it’s no overstatement to say that he sounds as good or better than ever. The only thing standing between Wagonmaster, his newest CD on the increasingly vital Anti- label, and total Wagonerian perfection, is the absence of a duet with his original singing partner, the fabulous, and largely forgotten, Norma Jean.

Although Wagoner covers a Johnny Cash song here, nobody should pick up Wagonmaster expecting cool, Cash-style covers of popular modern-rock songs. By the mid-1960s, Wagoner was already too old and set in his ways to learn new tricks. At a time when artists such as Ray Price, Merle Haggard, and Buck Owens were harmonizing with the rock-and-roll revolution and infusing traditional country music with urban grit and bluesy sophistication, Wagoner was running as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

He crucified himself on a cross of gospel-inspired melodies, mid-tempo waltzes, and impossible sorrow, and for these unforgivable transgressions against modernity and the march of progress he was rewarded with 81 hit singles and a long-running television show.

Forever out of step with the times, he wore a gravity-defying pompadour 20 years after they’d gone out of style. He refused to abandon the spectacular rhinestone-encrusted Nudie suits that Willie, Waylon, and the rest of country’s Outlaws turned into a symbol of everything that was ridiculous and wrong with Nashville pop. Wagoner’s brand of honky-tonk was excessively maudlin and precariously balanced between heartfelt emotion and outlandish camp. And in purely visual terms, that line was fully breached every time the gangly singer stepped in front of a camera to sing “Someone I Used To Know” alongside his cartoonishly voluptuous, joyously trashy, and much younger duet partner, Dolly Parton.

Wagoner’s ear for a soap-worthy storyline is still impeccable. His husky take on Cash’s “Committed to Parkview” may be Wagonmaster‘s guiltiest (and gothiest) pleasure, though it’s certainly no more deranged than “Be a Little Quieter,” which finds a sleepless narrator politely telling his noisy memories to “keep it down.” From the nostalgic rush of “11-Cent Cotton” to the impressionistic prose of “My Many Hurried Southern Trips,” each of Wagonmaster‘s 17 tracks is stuffed with imagery as spare and searing as a Raymond Carver short story.

In recent years, the California-based Anti- label has become a refuge for fussy master craftsmen such as Tom Waits and a safe haven for seasoned artists such as Merle Haggard who want to make music the way they know how without some wet-behind-the-ears industry honcho telling them how to hip up. Marty Stuart, Wagonmaster‘s inestimably talented producer, has assembled a top-notch group of musicians who have wisely done nothing to bring Wagoner’s sound into the 21st century. It’s hard to imagine that that particular mission could have been accomplished at any other label.

Every fan of golden-age honky-tonk should hope and pray that George Jones got an advanced copy of his old friend’s latest joint and that the old Possum knows how to take a not-so-subtle hint. It wouldn’t hurt Ray Price to take a listen either. — Chris Davis

Grade: A

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Music Music Features

Healthy Metal

Old-school heavy metal is brand-new again: Just listen to the double bass drums, screaming guitars, pulsing bass, and guttural vocals on “Jackball,” one of the six tracks that comprise Shards, Rabid Villain‘s new EP. The band’s churning sound is a far cry from the overly muscular nü-metal style that’s gained popularity in recent years — think ’70s-era Ozzy Osbourne, Slayer, and Metallica instead of, say, Saliva or Egypt Central.

Rabid Villain actually began as a trio in 2000. The group cut a debut album, The Villainous Group, soon after, although its members ultimately decided to put the project on ice a few years later.

“We’re all big Pantera and Black Sabbath fans, and we like newer bands like Lamb of God and Mastodon,” says bassist Blake Rhea, who replaced Grayson Grant after sessions for the Shards EP had already begun.

Eagle-eyed scenesters might recognize Rhea from the funk-infused Gamble Brothers Band, know guitarist Elliott Ives‘ work with Lord T. & Eloise, or spot drummer Jeff Burch, who frequently pounds the skins on Beale Street. The trio first coalesced nearly a decade ago with Midtown collective CYC; last year, they joined forces with vocalist Burl Caine to form a new and improved Rabid Villain. (Check out MySpace.com/RabidVillainMemphis.)

To anyone who might think the band is the basis for a Spinal Tap-type outing, Rhea argues that “to play this kind of music, you have to be serious. It’s hard to play this fast and with this much endurance,” he says. “We take it very seriously. We’ve all liked metal for a long time. We’ve just never gone full-force into it.

“The people who know me, who are friends with me, know I like metal. They’re not surprised [by the group]. We’ve all been gigging in Memphis forever, but the metal scene is new to us. We’re learning it as we go, finding out where to play and who to play with. We’ve done shows at Murphy’s, and, last month, we did a gig at the Memphis Drum Shop. We’ve been checking out the metal bands who play at the Buccaneer and the Rally Point, and this Friday, we’re playing a showcase at the New Daisy.”

The Memphis Metal Showcase, which is sponsored by the Memphis Musician’s Advisory Council, an offshoot of the Memphis & Shelby County Music Commission, also features local groups Evil Army, Cremains, Detriment, Serapis, and Legion of Divine Punishment.

“Our goal this summer is to provide a certain educational component and performance opportunity for local musicians,” says harmonica master Billy Gibson, who, with House of Blues producer Ralph Sutton, organized the metal show. They have plans for future events showcasing the local gospel and DJ scenes.

Gibson explains, “We’re offering a free live sound seminar with Will Floyd, the house engineer at the New Daisy, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., then the show starts at 7:30 p.m. 93X is making it the official opening concert for their Locals Only summer music series.”

Talking metal with the harmonica player, renowned on the international blues scene, is initially unsettling, but his enthusiasm for the genre comes through loud and clear.

“I’m a huge Rob Evil fan. His band Evil Army has so much energy,” Gibson says. “I caught a show they did with Cremains at the Bucc. They’re so young, and they come at it with such fire. This time next year, they could be on the road with Mastodon. They just need to get in front of the right kind of people.

“There’s a really kicking metal scene that’s coming together in Memphis,” Gibson adds. “Rabid Villain are way schooled on it. They have that Stax-type groove, which comes out even when they play metal. It gives them an edge, but I really think that any of the bands playing Friday night could have presence [nationally].”

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Music Record Reviews

Timbaland Presents: Shock Value-Timbaland

The most important music-maker of the past decade might be a hip-hop/R&B producer, Timbaland, who has gifted us with Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody?” and Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On.” And yet none of the five albums Timbaland’s released under his own name are must-owns. Timbaland may be the James Brown of his era, but he’ll need his own Star Time-style box set to make a definitive case. Timbaland’s musical genius needs the force of personality and vocal/conceptual content that a compelling frontperson can bring, which is why he’s made his strongest records with Missy Elliott, Justin Timberlake, Aaliyah, and Bubba Sparxxx. Elliott and Timberlake make appearances on this guest-star-laden long-player but on tracks that would be filler on their own best albums. (“Give It to Me,” “Throw It on Me”) — Chris Herrington

Grade: B

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Music Record Reviews

Emotionalism-The Avett Brothers

The Avett Brothers must have done some-thing really wrong. The North Carolina trio’s fifth studio album, Emotionalism, is full of lyrics about shame, paranoia, regret, and self-loathing. It would be unbearably grim if the brothers-plus-one didn’t express it all with their typical good humor and graceful bluegrass-based arrangements. The opening “Die Die Die” makes a sing-along chorus out of its title, making merry with its intimations of mortality, while “Shame” marries dark thoughts to a lilting melody delivered in the Brothers’ typically intuitive harmonies. As always, their sound is hard to pin down, combining country instrumentation, jazz chops, punk vitality, and jam-band looseness into a distinctive whole that’s nothing to be ashamed of at all. (“Shame,” “Will You Return?”)

— Stephen Deusner

Grade: B+

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Music Record Reviews

The Redneck Woman settles down and settles in.

The Curse of the Sophomore Album hit Gretchen Wilson hard. Her debut, Here for the Party, was everything the critics said it was and more. “Redneck Woman” was the big-time sing-along anthem, but there were rich ballads and zesty rockers behind it. Here for the Party also called attention to the Musik Mafia, the Nashville songwriting clique that included Wilson and Big & Rich, the duo that was about to blow up with its anti-Music Row approach that, among other things, paired country with hip-hop.

 But then Wilson released All Jacked Up and everything that seemed so fresh on the first record now came across as stale and forced. “One Bud Wiser” was a novelty song begging for a better punchline. “California Girls” lamented the artificial Paris Hilton and praised Dolly Parton, who’s never been shy about enhancing her, uh, assets. The rest was only better in that it was eminently forgettable. Country fans turned away in droves, and Wilson’s title as the Queen of Country Music was short-lived. 

 Now comes One of the Boys, and the low-key promotional push that’s accompanied its release seems right. This is an album that doesn’t worry about topping “Redneck Woman” and instead just digs up some interesting, well-written songs (many of those co-written by Wilson herself) and delivers them with a quiet and determined professionalism.

 Perhaps the surprise is how traditional the album sounds, with lots of mid-tempo songs driven by pedal steel, fiddle, and banjo. “There’s a Place in the Whiskey” is the sole rocker, but it leaves a sweet vapor trail. “If You Want a Mother” finds laughs by sizing up a poor slob who needs to go back to his mama. “Painkiller,” an aching ballad that can stand among Wilson’s best, is about getting over an ex with a one night stand that will “taste bitter” but bring relief.

 Three albums in, Wilson has become — surprise — a rather conventional country artist. One of the Boys has several excellent songs and some obvious filler (“Good Ole Boy”). But if you’re a fan of straightforward country music, this album should give you reason to celebrate. — Werner Trieschmann

Grade: B+

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Music Record Reviews

Wilco gets personal; Dino Jr comes back strong.

In the first verse of the first song on Wilco’s sixth studio album, Jeff Tweedy lays it all out: “Maybe you still love me/Maybe you don’t/Either you will or you won’t.” It’s generally agreed upon that the “you” he is addressing on “Either Way” and elsewhere on Sky Blue Sky is either his wife and family or his fans, but what’s perhaps more noteworthy is how closely that sentiment resembles one of the main tenets of A.A.: Let go and let God. Sky Blue Sky is Tweedy’s first collection of songs since he underwent rehab for painkillers, and the experience hangs over every aspect of the proceedings, placing Tweedy squarely at the center of each song.

As a result, Sky Blue Sky often feels more like a solo album than a band effort, despite Tweedy’s repeated statement that this is the best Wilco lineup yet. For the first time since maybe A.M. in 1995, the emphasis is on lyrical content rather than sonic innovation, producing Tweedy’s most direct and obviously personal songs to date. They’re also some of his best, eschewing the poetical obscurities of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot while showcasing his aggrieved passivity (on display in the 2002 documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart) as well as his uncertainties over family and music. “Oh, I didn’t die,” he sings plaintively on the title track. “I should be satisfied.”

If the songwriting is solid, however, the music, which approximates the no-frills Americana of the band’s early albums via the indulgences of their recent work, is confused, aimless, awkward, even annoying. The lineup so fondly touted by Tweedy has been wedged awkwardly into these songs, stranding ace drummer Glenn Kotche and multi-instrumentalist Pat Samsone with little to do but giving free rein to Tweedy and Nels Cline’s guitars. Every track gets a shrill and fumbly guitar solo, whether it needs one or not. “Impossible Germany” and “Side with the Seeds” both start strong, showcasing some of the album’s best melodies and, on the latter, Tweedy’s most soulful performance, but soon enough, both tracks veer off abruptly into noodly and aimless jams that actively detract from the songs’ impact. This is the rule, not the exception: Sky Blue Sky sounds unfocused and fragmented, lacking discipline, restraint, and transitions. It would have made a much better solo album. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: C+

(Nonesuch)

Does any release inspire lower expectations than a reunion album? Already 2007 has seen get-back-togethers that range from the forgettable (America) to the excruciating (the Stooges), with upcoming releases from Smashing Pumpkins, the Meat Puppets, and, um, Buffalo Tom falling between those two poles. So it’s a surprise that Dinosaur Jr’s reunion album, Beyond — the first in nearly 20 years to feature the original lineup of J Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Murph — not only exceeds meager expectations but stands up well against the trio’s original output.

Mascis, Barlow, and Murph recorded three albums together before clashing personalities drove bassist Barlow and then drummer Murph from the band. But during their four years together, they elaborated on hardcore’s loud-and-fast ethos with open-ended song structures, sprawling jams, and arty guitar effects that Mascis dubbed “ear-bleeding country.” Retrospectively vaunted as an also-ran Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr never gained a large enough audience for their music to be intrinsically linked to hardcore or any other scene, so their aesthetic still sounds as sturdy and fresh in 2007 as it did in 1987.

On Beyond, Mascis, Barlow, and Murph re-create their sound casually, slipping into their old, spiky dynamic as they pick up right where Bug left off. They bring convincing heavy-metal thunder to “It’s Me,” a lovely country shuffle to “We’re Not Alone,” and hardcore ferocity to “Pick Me Up.” Mascis’ eternally wounded vocals still contrast with the aggressiveness and abrasiveness of the music, and his guitar jazzily convolutes the riffs against Barlow and Murph’s agile rhythm section. The dynamics may not have changed, but they have grown deeper, thanks to lyrics that seem to address two decades of regret and uncertainty. “Will I crumble? Will I fly?” Mascis asks. Beyond is definitely the latter. — SD

Grade: A-

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Music Music Features

Blues: Awards and Losses

On Sunday, May 6th, the blues world lost two giants: 86-year-old Alabama-born barrelhouse-piano legend Big Joe Duskin, who recorded his 2004 comeback album, Big Joe Jumps Again, with the assistance of Memphian William Lee Ellis for Yellow Dog Records, and 70-year-old Macon, Mississippi, native Carey Bell, who gained fame as the greatest harmonica player to hit Chicago’s post-war electric blues scene.

The following weekend, St. Louis bluesman Big George Brock (he’s a transplant from Grenada, Mississippi) celebrated his 75th birthday by cutting a live album at Clarksdale’s Ground Zero Blues Club, living proof that there’s no such thing as retirement for most purveyors of authentic blues.

That sentiment hit home at the 28th annual Blues Music Awards, held at the Cook Convention Center on May 10th. Even relative newcomer Bill “Watermelon Slim” Homans, who was unfortunately shut out on a record six nominations, is eligible for his AARP card, while stalwart BMA winners such as Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year Etta James, Soul Blues Male Artist of the Year Bobby Rush, Contemporary Blues Album of the Year winner Guitar Shorty, and Acoustic Artist of the Year David “Honeyboy” Edwards (truly an elder statesman of the genre, at 91) proved, once again, that age is just a state of mind.

Also showing no sign of slowing down: 71-year-old Sun rockabilly veteran Jerry Lee Lewis, who garnered the coveted Comeback Album of the Year award for Last Man Standing, and octogenarians such as pianist Pinetop Perkins, drummer Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, and guitarist Hubert Sumlin, who swept the instrumentalist categories.

Memphis native Charlie Musselwhite, who, at 63, could be considered a veritable youngster, picked up a handful of BMAs for his latest album, Delta Hardware, before heading out for a slew of shows near his adopted home in the Pacific Northwest. He’ll return to the region on June 1st, when he plays the Ford Center for the Arts on the Ole Miss campus with The Blind Boys of Alabama before heading to Paris, London, and Moscow later this summer.

Other winners at the BMAs, which were broadcast via XM satellite radio, included the late Robert “Junior” Lockwood, Traditional Blues Male Artist of the Year; Rory Block‘s The Lady and Mr. Johnson, Acoustic Album of the Year; Irma Thomas, Soul Blues Female Artist of the Year; Janiva Magness, Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year; Tab Benoit, Contemporary Blues Male Artist of the Year; Lil Ed & the Blues Imperials, Band of the Year; and 21-year-old Daniel “Slick” Ballinger, whose inaugural album, Mississippi Soul, won the Best New Artist Debut category.

Senegal-born Guelel Kumba might seem like an unlikely candidate for keeping the blues alive, but the Oxford, Mississippi, transplant is doing just that with his group Afrissippi. The band, which also features drummer Kinney Kimbrough, bassist Justin Showah, and guitarists Eric Deaton and Max Williams, serves up a rousing blend of traditional Senegalese story-songs and the North Mississippi hill-country blues sound, as heard on Fulani Journey, which was released last year. This Friday night, May 18th, Afrissippi are rolling up I-55 to play the terrace at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. The outdoor concert, which costs $15 for nonmembers, offers a final opportunity to view Power Dressing: Men’s Fashion and Prestige in Africa, which closes this weekend, and a chance to glimpse the museum’s next exhibit, Soul Food: African American Cooking and Creativity. For more information, go to www.BrooksMuseum.org.

The more traditional side of the North Mississippi blues scene will be spotlighted later next month, when guitarist Kenny Brown hosts his second North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic in Potts Camp, which is approximately 55 miles southeast of Memphis.

Last year, more than 1,000 people trekked to Brown’s 1,100-acre farm for the event, which both celebrates and expands upon the foundation laid by gone-but-not-forgotten iconoclasts such as R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Othar Turner, and Mississippi Joe Callicott.

Already scheduled to appear at the 2007 festival, slated for June 29th and 30th: second- and third-generation hill-country musicians including The Burnside Exploration, Duwayne Burnside & the Mississippi Mafia, David Kimbrough, Sharde Thomas & the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band, and the North Mississippi Allstars, collectively the heirs apparent to the region’s famed musical legacy.

A two-day ticket costs $30; go to www.NMSHillCountryPicnic.com for complete details.

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Music Record Reviews

Local Record Reviews

Break This Record

Deering & Down


(Diamond D)

Although an awful lot of familiar names in Memphis music — including Lucero bassist John C. Stubblefield and sideman supreme Rick Steff on keys — make key contributions to Break This Record, the second album (and first local release) from Deering & Down, the album is primarily a testament to that ostensible duo. Singer Lahna Deering’s scratchy, soulful voice is the band’s charismatic calling card. It evokes Janis Joplin without the blues power, or Christine McVie dressed in Stevie Nicks’ lace gowns, or a post-sex-change Rod Stewart. And inventive guitarist Rev. Neil Down matches her, hammering and twanging and darting around Deering’s vocals like a true duet partner.

Because Deering’s guitar exploits lend the music such a charge, giving the songs a sonic element that can actually equal Deering’s ear-catching vocals, Break This Record is at its best on the rave-ups: classic-rock numbers that shuffle like the Stones instead of stomping around like a mundane bar band, though with an idiosyncratic feel that flaunts comparison. (“Finally Found the One,” “Whatcha Thinkin’ Of,” “Oh So Good”) — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

Sounds of Fire and Light

Rind Stars


(Electric Room)

This debut from five-piece local rock band Rind Stars is straightforward alt-rock with echoes of alt-country and late-’60s British Invasion. If this versatile band has a sonic signature, it might be harmony (or sometimes just shared) vocals, which suggest power-pop or even country, but the effect is layered over fairly hard, sometimes skronky guitars. This dynamic is perhaps most noticeable on “Estupid Country Song,” where a catchy, harmony-driven chorus comes rising out of a heavy, swirling guitar bridge. They dabble in a bit of Southern rock with “The Tick,” which boasts boogie rhythms and a clanking cowbell, but the vocals remain more indie-pop. “I Don’t Wanna Die First” roots around in what seems to be a moody love song, then ends with a blast. Lyrically, the band is all over the place in a good way, with songs that take on tangible topics from indirect vantage points. In all, Sounds of Fire and Light introduces a very solid rock band that evokes lots of comparisons without ever sounding like imitators. (“The Tick,” “No Way,” “I Don’t Wanna Die First”) — CH

Grade: B+

Obsessed

David Brookings


(Byar Records)

Recorded at Sun Studio, where he works as a tour guide, Obsessed is David Brookings’ fourth album, his third since moving to Memphis. The style is melodic rock-and-roll and power-pop with a sincere, optimistic outlook and a light, sweet vocal touch. Brookings’ rollicking, rockabilly-fied cover of the Beatles’ “I’ll Cry Instead,” with Amy LaVere and Paul Taylor backing him up, was the highlight of the third installment of local label Inside Sounds’ third “Memphis Meets the Beatles” compilation last fall, and Brookings’ commitment to the rock-and-roll verities is on display immediately on Obsesssed: The opening “I’m Not Afraid” ends with a “sha-na-na” vocal outro that segues into a “1-2-3-4” countoff that opens “Get Behind Me.”

Conceptually, Obsessed seems to be a record about being a struggling, committed musician, with the title track an autobiographical tale of first getting hooked on the music (“It’s gonna be hard when you’re playing one-man gigs/You gotta be strong or you’re never gonna make it big”). Other songs that hit on this topic are “Tough Crowd” (the kind that sit stone-faced through your originals and then ask for “Brown-Eyed Girl”) and “The Festival” (“They wouldn’t let me be in the festival/There’s not enough spots to go around”). (“I’m Not Afraid,” “Get Behind Me”) — CH

Grade: B

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Music Music Features

The Second Time Around

There’s a great scene in the film Come Early Morning, Arkansas-bred actress Joey Lauren Adams’ writing/directing debut, where Ashley Judd, playing contractor Lucy Fowler, walks into her favorite beer dive and finds the jukebox being replaced.

People don’t want to hear old music anymore, the bartender explains to Lucy. “They want to hear that new country.” Lucy looks like she’s been slapped. “Oh God, no they don’t,” she gasps.

Released last year, Come Early Morning was either late to recognize a mid-decade artistic boom in mainstream country music or just refused to acknowledge it. The headliners of the new new country were plenty impressive: honky-tonk good-time girl Gretchen Wilson, recovering frat-partier Kenny Chesney, newly retro Lee Ann Womack, and sui generis Big & Rich.

But, to these ears, the most compelling of the bunch may have been a couple of Class of ’05 Texas debutants: Miranda Lambert and Bobby Pinson.

Lambert, a one-time third-place finisher on cable American Idol knock-off Nashville Star, was a breakout star with the album Kerosene and its title single, which ripped off Steve Earle’s “I Feel Alright” and ripped it apart on its way up the country charts.

Pinson, already an established Nashville songwriter, debuted on major-label RCA with Man Like Me and got a few spins on CMT for the video of his single “Don’t Ask Me How I Know.” But stardom didn’t seem to be in the books for Pinson. With his scratchy, idiosyncratic voice, classic-rock crunch, and personal songwriting, Pinson was at least slightly reminiscent of early Earle, and it seemed like a good bet here that, like Earle (and Dwight Yoakam and Rodney Crowell), he’d eventually get weeded out of the Nashville machine and build his career on the industry’s fringes.

Both Lambert and Pinson released sophomore albums this month. Lambert’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is primed to build on the commercial momentum of Kerosene. Pinson, however, fell back to earth faster than expected. He remains a successful supplier of songs to other mainstream-country artists, but Pinson’s own second album, Songs For Somebody, is not bankrolled by RCA. It’s released on something called Cash Daddy Records.

As country music was resurgent a few years ago, much was made of the emerging acknowledgement of hip-hop on the country charts, but the biggest manifestation of this may not have been the spoken-word rhymes dropped on Big & Rich or Cowboy Troy records. Rather, it was an eruption of chest-thumping, hip-hop-style ‘hood-repping in the forced celebration of such small-town-pride anthems as

Wilson’s “Redneck Woman,” Jason Aldean’s “Hicktown,” and Shannon Brown’s “Cornfed.”

In this environment, Pinson’s greatest song, “Nothin’ Happens in This Town,” was something of a contrarian triumph. Against the genre’s constant romanticization of small-town life — church-going, Little League-playing, traditional-values-embracing idyll on one hand; a young, hip, happening never-ending party on the other — Pinson posited a corrective, writing about how absolutely crummy small-town life can be from the perspective of someone who remembers the experience intimately but has been away long enough to gain some perspective.

“Nothin’ Happens in This Town” wasn’t a hit. As far as I know, it wasn’t even a single. But it sounds like one of the decade’s great country songs, and the album that houses it rivals Big & Rich’s Horse of a Different Color as the decade’s finest, most challenging country album.

On Man Like Me, more than anyone else on either side of country’s mainstream/alternative divide, Pinson respects the touchstones of country music — small-town life, simple Christian faith, high school sweethearts, family heritage — while investigating them fiercely: On “Man Like Me,” he remembers the relief of a girlfriend’s negative pregnancy test; on “I Thought That’s Who I Was,” he hears a memory-provoking ditty on the radio and thinks, “God, I still hate that song.” And no one else in music right now redeems red-state religiosity so convincingly. I’d love to see him debate Christopher Hitchens.

You might expect that being “free” of major-label expectations would be good for Pinson’s music, but, on Songs For Somebody, that isn’t quite how it works. For starters, there was no compromise whatsoever to Man Like Me‘s startling songwriting. Rather, Pinson’s doomed bid for “new country” stardom gave those songs musical muscle. Without the full Nashville machine at his back, Songs For Somebody doesn’t sound quite as crisp, but the songs are still there, mostly.

There’s no sure-shot here the equal of “Nothin’ Happens in This Town,” but “Back in My Drinkin’ Days” and “If I Met God Tonight” are more of the kind of treacle-free religious testaments no one else in Nashville seems capable of writing. What comes through here is that Pinson’s songs don’t just radiate empathy but an awareness of how his own oh-so-human actions impact others. The more you listen, the more you realize how rare this is in any sphere of pop songs, and it gives Pinson’s religious musing a strong foundation.

If Pinson’s follow-up record finds him with plenty left to say, but a little deficient musically, Lambert has the opposite problem on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The album sounds like a million bucks, but a couple of years of touring and appearance-making haven’t done Lambert’s songwriting any favors. On Lambert’s debut, she had a writing credit on all but one song. On this follow-up, the cover quotient is up to three, with some of Lambert’s originals sounding worked over, like songwriting exercises where the best songs on Kerosene (“Me and Charlie Talking,” “What About Georgia,” “New Strings”) tumbled out more naturally.

Lambert is still a spitfire. (Local filmmaker Craig Brewer has cited Lambert as one of the models for the title character of his next film, Maggie Lynn.) And “Gunpowder and Lead” and lead single “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” are rousing, war-of-the-sexes outlaw-country rave-ups in the spirit of “Kerosene” but without the pleasing and unexpected class animus that drove that song.

One hopes Lambert can relocate her voice on future albums. The lived-in “Famous in a Small Town” (“Let’s go down to the quick stop/Wear your yellow shades and I’ll put on my tight jeans”) suggests she’s still got it.