Calexico – Memphis Flyer

Nothing was going to stop the near sellout crowd in Tom Lee Park from having a good time on the second day of the 2018 Beale Street Music Festival.

Chris McCoy

Sunset over Tom Lee Park.

The day started early for Memphis music fans, with Chinese Connection Dub Embassy and Tav Falco & Panther Burns starting ten minutes apart on two of the festival’s three main stages. CCDE greeted the crowds trickling into the park with a strong beat, and they responded with an ecstatic sing along to their song “Heavy Meditation”.

Chris McCoy

Chinese Connection Dub Embassy on the FedEx stage.

We then hoofed it the quarter mile or so to the Bud Light stage where Memphis punk legend Tav Falco was holding court. The current touring incarnation of the immortal Panther Burns is a much tighter and more conventional band than the musical terrorists who set the standard for Midtown punk in early 1980s, but compared to the other acts on offer they were still bracingly raw. Sitting in on keys was Memphis Flyer music editor Alex Greene.

Chris McCoy

Tav Falco and Panther Burns tear it up on the Bud Light stage.

Falco was spry, loose, and utterly confident as he switched freely from shockabilly wildman to tango sophisticate. When he left the stage, the entranced crowd called for an encore, much to the visible consternation of the stage manager who called time as Falco returned for his victory lap. But the beleguared staffer did not know who he was dealing with. He could only look on helplessly as Panther Burns held the stage with a blistering rendition of “New World Order Blues”. Falco spit fire, poetically condemning Trump and the current state of America as the crowd egged him on. It was only the second act of the day, but already I had added to my list of all time great Beale Street Music Festival performances.

If the stage manager was worried about Panther Burns putting the show behind schedule, it turned out to be a moot issue, as Mother Nature had the last word. It had been drizzling on and off all morning, but as Calexico was about halfway through their set, more serious weather set in.

Laura Jean Hocking

Storm clouds loom over Tom Lee Park.

We sought shelter in the Beer Garden tent as the rain intensified. Then, a great gust of wind whipped through the park, accompanied by a torrential deluge and, for about five minutes, nickel-sized hail.

Chris McCoy

4:14 PM: Hail on the ground in Tom Lee Park.

It was a scary few moments as the hail poked holes in the tent where we were sheltered along with several hundred of our fellow festival goers. But just as quickly as the unexpected cell materialized, it dissipated.

Chris McCoy

4:39 PM: Blue skies over the Hernando de Soto Bridge.

Pro Tip: Always wear rain boots to the Beale Street Music Festival, even if it’s sunny and dry while you’re getting ready that morning. There were quite a few regretful women in sandals and heels getting stuck in the mire for the rest of the evening. But no one who saw Al Kapone and his posse perform as the FedEx stage resumed music was in the least bit regretful. Kapone’s set was somewhere between a Memphis music lesson and a pep rally. The climax came when he transitioned from “Hard Out Here For A Pimp” to the other Hustle and Flow hit “Whoop That Trick”, which has become something of a rallying cry for the Grizzlies. There were about ten thousand people in front of the stage, and every one of them were pumping their fists in the air.

Laura Jean Hocking

Commercial Appeal photographer Yoshi James capturing the local wildlife.

By late afternoon, the weather radar was clear, and people were streaming into the park in the tens of thousands. As All Time Low took the stage, singer Alex Gaskarth said “Wow, our stuff still works after getting hailed on!”

Chris McCoy

Artist Lauren Lazaru takes a break from working on the mural she and Curtis Glover created live on the festival grounds.

We retired to the Blues Tent to hear Eddy “The Chef” Clearwater and his crack band wail as the sun went down.

Laura Jean Hocking

Sunset at the Blues Tent.

Chris McCoy

Fans gather for Ludacris.

By the time David Byrne began his transformative set by sitting at a table and singing a song to a human brain like a postmodern Hamlet, the area in front of the Bud Light stage was packed. Byrne alternated songs from his new album American Utopia with deep cuts from his decades-long career. His twelve-piece band, playing all wireless instruments and featuring a percussion section instead of a single trap drummer, ranged freely across the blank stage, flawlessly executing both intricate choreography and layered experimental funk. New songs like “We Dance Like This” and “Everybody’s Coming To My House” took flight when liberated from the studio, and he breathed life into reconfigured classics like “I Zimbra”, “The Great Curve”, and “This Must Be The Place”.

Chris McCoy

David Byrne

At age 65, Byrne delivered the most radical and visionary performance of the entire festival by completely disregarding the conventions of the rock and pop show and incorporating new elements from Broadway, modern dance, and even marching bands. I hope some of the young performers were watching him burn down the house he helped build.

Laura Jean Hocking

Rather Ripped

Sonic Youth

(DGC)

Aging art stars jam and groove with their most tuneful album in ages.

Sonic Youth is the world’s greatest jam band. Or is that the world’s greatest jazz band? Can’t possibly be the world’s greatest groove band, right? As an avowed song fan, I’m strictly a dabbler when it comes to these categories, but I play Sonic Youth the same way I play Orchestra Baobob and Guitar Paradise of East Africa or James Carter and Sonny Rollins: as background music I can’t let stay in the background.

There’s an odd bell-curve-like trajectory to the band’s going-on-25-years-now career — from free-formish noise to mainstreamish alt-rock to noise again. But since I find their more recent meanderings so much more compelling than their kill-yr-idols era provocations, I’m tempted to say that selling out was the best thing that ever happened to this band. Or was it just aging? Or maybe parenthood?

Regardless, the new Rather Ripped is the band’s best since 1998’s epic A Thousand Leaves launched a ruminative period and maybe their most outright tuneful album since 1992’s Dirty went commercial. Or maybe their most tuneful record, period.

Returning to a foursome after a three-album courtship with avant-noise fifth wheel Jim O’Rourke, Rather Ripped signifies a change from the very outset, when guitarists Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore lock in a blast of clean, crisp, layered riffage on the opening “Reena.” This isn’t the kind of head-spinning, nearly psychedelic guitar “radiance” they made their legend with at their Daydream Nation peak. It’s more gentle — prettier. But at the same time, it retains the texture of the band’s earlier work. It’s weirder and more complicated than it sounds on the surface. This is probably why late-period Sonic Youth albums such as A Thousand Leaves and Sonic Nurse and now this one retain their freshness through repeated listens.

Of course, Sonic Youth is a song band — sort of. The words here come at you in verse-chorus or verse-refrain structures that seem like pop songs, but the words defy meaning. They’re suggestions made whole by sound. “Do you belie-ieve in rapture, babe?” Moore sings with a shaky amateur sweetness, and the guitars answer back in the affirmative. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

Remember That I Love You

Kimya Dawson

(K)

I think I might hate the (overheated) new Bruce Springsteen album and can’t abide any of the hipster folkie stuff currently using up its 15 minutes in the trend cycle. When it comes to folk music, I tend to value humor, warmth, modesty, and lack of affectation, which means underdogs like Todd Snider and especially Kimya Dawson. This latest batch of mostly acoustic, unabashedly personal, sing-songy ditties isn’t much different, much better, or much worse than all the other under-the-radar albums Dawson has circulated since the break-up of her inspired duo Moldy Peaches (search out 2004’s Hidden Vagenda). If Dawson’s music sounds childlike, it’s not because she romanticizes her own childhood but because she’s used to entertaining kids (her parents owned a day care) and wants to communicate as directly as possible. She loves Scrabble, her mom, staying up late playing video games, her friends, and — if you’re willing to listen for a while — you too. (“My Mom,” “Loose Lips,” “I Like Giants,” “12/26”) — CH

Grade: B+

Garden Ruin

Calexico

(Quarterstick)

Calexico remain musically multilingual on their latest album, filling a dozen songs with a predictably wide range of styles: mariachi, meringue, country, folk, and jazz. But the emphasis on Garden Ruin appears to be American rock. The band’s expansive sound, which reached a career peak on 2002’s excellent Feast of Wire, here serves Joey Burns’ songwriting, an arrangement of priorities that proves mostly rewarding and a little bit frustrating. On “Cruel,” “Bisbee Blue,” and “Letter to Bowie Knife,” he crafts elegantly concise lyrical lines and melodies that propel the music forward. As Garden Ruin progresses, the structures deviate from the traditional and the typical, incorporating dramatic vocals in both French and Spanish. Occasionally, the songs keen toward the fatally understated (“Smash”) or the jarringly overwrought (closer “All Systems Red”), but on the whole, the album is well tended, even if it does creep toward ruin. (“Cruel,” “Letter to Bowie Knife,” “Roka”) — Stephen Deusner

Grade: B