newcritics

Earlier this month I wrote about my favorite album of the year, Stay Positive by The Hold Steady. Today a flyover look at the best of the rest.

Vampire Weekend.  Before the government’s decisions to let the Lehman Brothers fail turned a snowballing financial crisis into an avalanche and turned a tough year into a grim one, it seemed like the album of the year would be the self titled debut record from Vampire Weekend. This band of recent Columbia University grads about whom I wrote in April, brought to market a fresh, up-beat sound relying heavy on the timbres and rhythms lifted from juju and soukous and other breeds of guitar-driven afropop. But after the midyear economic collapse, the band’s afropreppy party music and almost Fitzgeraldesque focus on the lifestyles of the detached and privledged suddenly sounded a bit slight and frivoulous. The sound of the children of the new guilded age standing on the precipice without a clue in the world.

Brad Paisley - Play.  Brad Paisley is my favorite musician under 40–a world-class pyrotechnical Tele twanger, a fine writer of Harlan Howard style country novelties and a strong singer–his records are always entertaining, but his new one Play is a joy. Play comprises mostly instrumental original songs with Paisley’s exceptional road band (which has been together for almost 15 years and features Randall Currie a virtuoso pedal steel player who holds his own with Paisley) but layered w/ dozens of screaming guitar tracks. The record is heavy on uptempo country rockers of a sort familiar to Paisley fans–although with a lot more guitar and some more rockish tones (like a couple of wah solos) than Paisley allowed himself on one of his mainstream country albums.  But there are surprises–a laid back jazzy piece, a surf guitar tune, a modern rock number. There are also some vocal tracks and allstar team ups that work fabulously too–Start a Band (a twin lead guitar novelty recorded with Keith Urban) is the kind of number that has made Paisley famous; Let the Good Times Roll with B.B. King is en fuego; Come On In finds Paisley fleshing out an original demo left behind but the late great Buck Ownes; and Cluster Pluck, which unites half a dozen great Tele twangers including James Burton, Brent Mason, and Albert Lee, is a blast. More fun than a barrel of monkeys.

Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis - Two Men With the Blues. At 75 Willie Nelson is not only a living legend but also a living connection to the sounds and styles of prewar Hill Country Texas, most especially Western Swing–that bastard dance hall sound that mixed jazz, fiddle jigs, polka, blues, boogie into the most American of music styles in part because it is the most catholic. Two Men With the Blues finds Nelson and harmonica player joining Wynton Marsalis and his Jazz at Lincoln Center rhythm section for a live set of old time classics many of which are associated with Nelson’s boyhood idol, Western Swing master Bob Wills.  On paper it’s a perfect pairing–Nelson’s living connection to the past with Marsalis’ obsessive retro devotion to it–and in practice is plays out even better than it might thanks to some of the best musicianship you’ll hear this year.  Also, please note Nick Joe Patowski’s wonderful Willie Nelson bio was a great read.

Jenny Scheinman - Jenny Scheinman & Crossing the Field. Scheinman is a wonder, a first call violinist in the world of jazz, Scheinman has worked for Bill Frissell, Lucinda Williams, and Norah Jones among others. This year she released to albums. The first, Crossing the Field is brilliant, cinematic orchestrated instrumental jazz featuring Scheinman’s top tier frequent collaboraters Frisell and pianist Jason Moran–it’s grand scale, ambitious, imaginary soundtrack  music that rewards repeated listenting. The second, a self titled record of vocal Americana (covers and originals) performed in a stripped down setting, is surprising–who knew Scheinman could sing or write little ditties?–and if it’s not as good as Crossing the Field, taken together with that record it offers a vision of American music as deep as any you’ll find among musicians working today. Jenny Scheinman is awesome.

Sun Ra - Secrets of the Sun. The reissue of Ra’s brilliant, pivotal, and rare Saturn album recorded in 1962, early in his New York period, is long overdue (the master tapes, like the tapes of most early Ra Saturns, are long gone leaving potential reissuers hunting for pristine vinyl from which to transfer a master). I don’t love the job Atavistic has done with its Sun Ra reissues–the original packaging and art is more or less discarded, the liner notes are slim, the bonus tracks are incongruous, and the mastering from vinyl is good but not great. But I’m one of the few people I know with an original vinyl copy of Secrets of the Sun so kudos to Atavistic for making available this great record which kicks off with the most important and interesting track, the original recording of Ra’s classic composition Friendly Galaxy–the first and most user friendly of many Ra polyrhythmic, harmonically obtuse compositions played over  circular, rolling ostinatos.

The Clash - Live at Shea Stadium; Mavis Staples - Live Hope at the Hideout.  One archival live record, one recent one, both fantastic. The Clash set is a big surprise, recorded in October of 1982 when the band was the middle act on a three band bill (David Johansen opened, The Who–on their first farewell tour–headlined), Live at Shea catches the Clash both at the height of its commercial success and also on the verge of breaking up. With original drummer Terry Chimes replacing the more subtle, more musical Topper Headon, the Clash in 1982 was a stripped down, straight ahead rock band (I saw the group three times that year including the second night at Shea tho’ the late summer gig at Red Rocks in Colorado was the best of those shows). Playing as an opening act the band had more or less an hour to work with (this disk offers the group’s complete set from the first night of the Shea run) and they nailed a tight punchy set that flat out rocks. I’ll always favor the sprawling, ambitious Clash that cut Sandinsta  and This is Radio Clash and which played some of the greatest rock shows I’ve ever seen during its legendary stand at Bond’s in Times Square just a year before this set was recorded. But the power of this set is undeniable–a great rock band, stripping it down to the best numbers and just going out any killing.  A great, listenable live album. Meanwhile, speaking of killing, on the heels of her Ry Cooder-produced collection of rocked out freedom songs from last year, Mavis Staples took a rock trio plus background singers into a small club in her native Chicago to record this kick ass set. The setlist holds no surprises, just Staples gospel classics like Why Am I Treated So Bad,  Freedom Highway and Will the Circle Be Unbroken (plus a little taste of I’ll Take You There) but plenty of passion and fire from Mavis and guitarist Rick Holmstrom. Smoking, I wish I had seen this band.

The Airborne Toxic Event; Delta Spirit - Ode to Sunshine.  It was a great year for indie rock debuts, not only did Vampire Weekend dazzle but so to did these two SoCal bands. The Airborne Toxic Event, formed by writer Mikel Jollett after he discovered he had a chronic disease, is the more obvious and radio-friendly of the two, despite its off putting name (taken from a Don Delillo novel)–sounding a little like The Killers and tending a toward lyrics that can sound emotionally overwrought. ATE can sound a little glam for my tastes (I’m a roots guy, not a glam guy). But at its best, like on the FM hit Sometime Around Midnight the group offers indelible vignettes that seduce despite the sheen. By contrast low-fi, makeshift, recorded in a cabin, Ode to Sunshine is a far less polished and far more old school in its approach but in a way more satisfying. It’s hooky (Trashcan is an earworm), and in places Beatlesy, and while the Airborne Toxic Event sounds like a concept fully formed, Delta Spirit sounds like a group with lots of growth to come.

The Whigs - Mission Control. Another indie college band (University of Georgia), this one on its second album. The Whigs offer a deceptive mix of virtues. On the one hand this is a stripped down rock group with a sound centered on loud guitars and pounding drums, on the other hand it’s an ambitious band unafraid of building songs around textures and timbres drawn from unexpected places. Right Hand On My Heart is one of the simple loud guitar/pounding drums songs, and after the songs on Stay Positive is probably the new rock song I played most often this year.

Honorable mention to a coupla of album tracks.

Rodney Crowell - Sex and Gasoline. Country rock singer songwriter Rodney Crowell got a Grammy nomination for his album this year. I liked it but didn’t love it, but I DID love the title track. This mean old world really does run on sex and gasoline.

George Clinton - Mathematics of Love. The Funkateer’s latest album, mostly of lite R&B covers, is, well, awful. I hate to say it but it’s true. Yet stuck in the middle of this mess is a duet with R&B singer Kim Burrell on Mathematics of Love, an original ballad that has been a mainstay of P.Funk shows for years but is getting its first recording here. Exceptional.

Bob Dylan - Mississippi.  In general I’d say that Tell-Tale Signs, the 8th installment of Dylan’s archival “Bootleg Series”  is the edition where the series jumped the shark–an incoherent jumble of outtakes from recent albums as well as from Oh Mercy (from the 1980s), plus live tracks, and recent  non-anthologized soundtrack cuts. It’s just a mess and while there is some excellent stuff here–like the duet with Ralph Stanley and the live version of Ring Them Bells from the 1993 Supper Club shows–there’s also average stuff that can be fairly characterized as curios for hardcore completists only. The hard copy version also seems to be crappily made (disk two failed to track in most of my CD players). Fans would have been much better with, say, two separate releases: a Supper Club set and an expanded version of Oh Mercy with some of this other stuff just remaining in the discard pile. But the two versions of Mississippi recorded for Time Out of Mind wound up in heavy rotation around here this fall. And Dylan’s tour closing gig in Washington Heights this November was one of the best Dylan shows I’ve ever seen with the old man belting out, not croaking his way through The Times They Are A-Changing; as well as blasting through both a rocked out Tex-Mex version of Desolation Row and a great uptempo version of Things Have Changed. The boy still has it even if the Bootleg Series doesn’t. Unless the next Bootleg Series is the complete original basement tapes, it might be time to retire the darn thing.

I enjoyed a bunch of other records this year. Rambling Boy, jazz bassist Charlie Haden’s nostalgic return to the old time family radio hour western vocal music he performed with his parents as a child was sweet . Sonny Rollins’ collection of recent live performances (Road Shows Vol. 1) was smoldering (if a little disappointing–abstracted from the ebb and flow of the concerts from which the performances were pulled the collection of material is somehow less than the sum of its parts). James Carter’s Present Tense offered more of the great playing Carter always displays but also some some dentist office bossa nova I found unlistenable (Brazilian music, like South Park is one of those things I just don’t get). But mostly 2008 struck me as very much a down year for jazz as the record industry contraction has completely eliminated all but the smallest, most home grown labels from the field.