American Songwriter » Michael Sandlin

Ray Davies: See My Friends

Michael Sandlin — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:24:33 +0000

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Ray Davies: See My Friends Decca Records Rating: 2.5 stars] In the wake of a kooky Kinks-themed collaboration with fellow North Londoners in the Crouch End Festival Chorus, everyone’s favorite Muswell Hillbilly and songwriter’s songwriter Ray Davies puts the durability of his seemingly indestructible compositions on the line again: this time with a totally unnecessary but somehow appropriate collection of duets with an absurdly varied, multi-generational clique of hand-picked guest collaborators on See My Friends. Of course, these sorts of dubious late-career moves by rock’s elder statesmen often seem like a safe luxury cruise into the warm tropical waters of retirement, with the artist basking in the glow of prior achievements far away from the demands of creativity. But after toiling some 46 years in the music biz and penning some of history’s most literate pop songs, if anyone has earned the right to a little self-indulgence and pointless musical slacking, it’s Ray Davies. See My Friends sees king Kink summoning to his musical court a number of worshipful celebrity guests (some worthy, some not worthy) to rework some choice Kinks classics: Bruce Springsteen does his best laid-off steelworker vocal on “Better Things,” Metallica chips in with a hilarious Van Halen-inspired “You Really Got Me,” Jackson Browne shines some Laurel Canyon light onto the quintessential London anthem “Waterloo Sunset,” and Bon Jovi pop-metalize the fragile beauty of “Celluloid Heroes.” But Davies arguably coaxes the best performances out of the alterna-crowd here: “Dead End Street” manages to be both poignant and barroom-ready with the help of Glaswegian singer Amy MacDonald’s flirty verses, Lucinda Williams puts an old-school No Depression twang to “Long Way From Home,” and the late Alex Chilton brings his welcome Memphis drawl to “Till the End of the Day.” Yet sometime-former Pixie honcho Black Francis and Spoon’s Britt Daniel express more obvious clued-in empathy with Davies’ sentiments than anyone else, as they manage personalized but deferential takes on “This Is Where I Belong,” and “See My Friends,” respectively. Even on the album’s most ill-advised rehashes, namely Mumford and Sons’s hokey coffee-house rendering of the otherwise heartbreaking “Days,” See My Friends proves, if nothing else, that there’s simply no force on Earth malevolent enough to destroy a good Ray Davies ditty.

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Rodney Crowell, Chinaberry Sidewalks

Michael Sandlin — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 12:00:05 +0000

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Rodney Crowell Chinaberry Sidewalks: A Memoir (KNOPF) [Rating: 3.5 stars] Legendary singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell’s hardscrabble beginnings in 1950s rough-and-tumble Houston will sound familiar to anyone conversant with life in that Gulf Coast flood plain: In this memoir he recalls an upbringing shaped by humidity, guns, religion, hurricanes, mosquitoes, cockroaches, and country music. When Crowell was a mere two-year-old, his semi-professional musician father took him to see Hank Williams. By age 11, he was drumming in his father’s honky-tonk band. Crowell’s depiction of his father’s drunken outbursts at home is unflinching, as are his observances of his mother’s battle with epilepsy. And despite an occasional tendency toward wordiness and overstretched similes (his father “made spontaneous human combustion seem as cool and refreshing as ice fishing in Minnesota”), Crowell brings the same flair for language and imagery to Chinaberry Sidewalks found in his classic countrypolitan songs.

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Gang Of Four: Content

Michael Sandlin — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 05:35:16 +0000

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Gang of Four Content Yep Roc [Rating: 2.5 stars] Gang of Four are one of those rare bands that have the albatross of a near-perfect debut album around their necks—that being the seismic post-punk politico-funk of 1979’s Entertainment! But these days there’s the added burden of outdoing younger bands they’ve influenced over the years: REM and Red Hot Chili Peppers for starters, not to mention all those over-hyped Gang of Four copycats on the early to mid-2000s Brooklyn scene. Bands like the Rapture, !!!, The Liars, Les Savy Fav, to name a few, may have loosely appropriated the Four’s engine-like rhythmic churn, but they never had the same sophisticated politics nor the persistently odd angles of the peerless Andy Gill’s half-rhythm-half-lead guitar architectonics. As far as this legendary foursome’s new offering, Content, is concerned, well, at least they’re not simply cruising on the laurels of their formidable back catalog, and to be fair, Content is no worse than other recent comeback albums by fellow post-punkers Mission of Burma, The Buzzcocks, and Wire. But comparisons to Gang of Four’s glory years are inevitable, and sadly most of these new songs lack the same propulsive groove of old—almost every composition here gets bogged down in mid-tempo purgatory and never gathers any sustained momentum. Only a few cuts, namely “Never Pay for the Farm” and “Who Am I,” even hint at the same combustible combination of hot-button social comment and relentlessly danceable energy as “At Home He’s A Tourist” or “I Found that Essence Rare.” Where they once used words like weapons, their lyrics now seem more personal and introverted, rarely launching incendiary-bomb political statements or the sort of fiery intellectual critique of consumer culture they’re known for. Although it’s great to have these Leeds lads back as a creative entity and not just a touring band, let’s hope the next record sounds more like Gang of Four and less like a band influenced by them.

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DVD Review: Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)?

Michael Sandlin — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:00:30 +0000

Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)? Lorber Films [Rating: 3.5 Stars] Harry Nilsson’s wordy, whimsical chamber pop was an apt stylistic bridge between the psychedelic era of the 1960s and the folksier singer-songwriter sounds crackling from AM radio in the early to mid-1970s. Whether or not one warms to Nilsson’s eccentric genius really isn’t the point: judging by the distinguished company this archetypal musician’s musician kept, the guy must’ve done something right. Offbeat ditties like “Good Old Desk” and “Coconut” gained him the respect (and eventually the friendship) of The Beatles, Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb, and countless other entertainment-industry somebodies. In Who Is Harry Nilsson, director John Scheinfeld’s approach to Nilsson’s unwieldy legacy is competently textbook at best. Scheinfeld’s all-star assemblage of showbiz-luminary interviewees (from Robin Williams to Terry Gilliam to Brian Wilson) and their gushingly sycophantic praise of Nilsson make for predictable softball hagiography; and for some reason, the wildest, most entertaining stories about Nilsson’s post-success drug-and-alcohol-fueled adventures are mostly buried among the DVD bonus features (see the bizarre “human fly” segment, for starters). However, Scheinfeld does ably cover Nilsson’s varied recording history, and hammers home his determinedly renegade approach to navigating (and, over time, gleefully trashing) his own career. Still, much about Nilsson’s professional life adheres to the cliched meteoric rise-and-fall arc, and his particular method of self sabotage is clearly problematic for the filmmaker: Scheinfeld seems to side with interviewees like the bland Richard Perry, former Barbara Streisand producer and the man behind Nilsson’s 1971 smash Nilsson Schmilsson. Perry’s pleas for a similarly styled follow-up fell on deaf (and drunk) ears. Instead, Nilsson released the whiskey-soaked eructation Son Of Schmilsson, an album full of ramshackle barroom rock and roll and other oddball musical curiosities: it was the sonic equivalent of a middle finger to the soft-rock sounds that had brought him popular success. It’s a decision that can be seen as either heroically rebellious or silly and irresponsible; this film obviously chooses the latter perspective. Beyond this, Nilsson is portrayed as equal parts family man, musical enigma, and dedicated party animal until his death in 1994. Despite the film’s shortcomings, it still offers vital documentation of an unfairly unsung artist whose formidable talents – for both songwriting and self destruction – have rarely been matched since.

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Paul McCartney & Wings: Band on the Run

Michael Sandlin — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 17:23:26 +0000

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Paul McCartney and Wings Band on the Run MPL/Hear/Concord [Rating: 4.5 stars] Whether this recent re-mastering of Paul McCartney and Wings’ Band on the Run CD (along with bonus tracks, DVD, and “enhanced packaging”) is simply a meretricious attempt to return Sir Paul’s bank balance to its pre-Heather Mills glory is anybody’s guess. What really matters, though, is that it isn’t Red Rose Speedway or London Town that’s being re-released: Band on the Run’s opening one-two punch, the mega-hit singles “Band on the Run” and “Jet,” are easily the best songs Macca ever penned with Wings (with “Let Me Roll It,” claiming honorable mention), which at the time consisted of his shutterbug-turned-keyboardist wife Linda McCartney (who gets partial writing credits on most of these songs) and former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine. Originally released in glam-heavy 1973, Band on the Run finds McCartney more assured as a solo songwriter, while still dabbling with whimsical song cycles, odd reprises, and random mix-n-match structures as he did on 1971’s Ram and 1973’s Red Rose: although his grafting together of seemingly unrelated sections here feels a bit like pastiche compared to, say, the slick segues that hold an otherwise disjointed album like Abbey Road together. Still, Band on the Run’s clever arrangements and careful instrumentation sound as fresh as ever, while those ever-unsubtle McCartney choruses always occur with the same gut-warming inevitability. Naturally the bonus tracks and extra DVD visuals don’t yield much in the way of long-lost treasures. You get the demo-quality versions of the official CD tracks, then a separate DVD full of curious but crude rehearsal film footage. There’s also random documentary evidence of the Band on the Run cover-photo sessions, not to mention some early pre-MTV promotional videos featuring the sort of hokey-jokey showboating that would unfortunately characterize McCartney’s music-supporting visuals for years to come. That said, this fine-tuned semi-classic should hold die-hard Wings fans for a while, at least until Back to the Egg gets its inevitable redux.

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Greil Marcus: Bob Dylan

Michael Sandlin — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 13:33:43 +0000

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Bob Dylan By Greil Marcus (Public Affairs) [Rating: 3.5 stars] Since the mid-1960s, critic Greil Marcus’s busy free-associative mind has manufactured the sort of voluptuous overstatement that defined the Village Voice’s style in the 1990s and even influenced the post-millennial Pitchfork review. This collection includes every Dylan-centric piece that Marcus penned from 1968 to the present. Marcus’s early reviews in San Francisco-era Rolling Stone and Creem suggest the archetypal baby-boomer Bobophile: shouldering Dylan with the responsibility not only for the revolutionary promise of the 1960s but also for its failure – brought on by Dylan’s more personal (and less activist) lyrical statements of the 1970s. Eventually, Marcus takes a more forgiving stance: In the ‘90s, he seems merely grateful that Dylan is still functional. Thankfully Marcus’s occasional lighting flashes of nerdy brilliance tend to cancel out his more nebulous attempts at producing meaning. Marcus doesn’t simply tell you what he thinks about Dylan; he tells you what you think about Dylan.

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Richard Thompson: Dream Attic

Michael Sandlin — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 15:12:19 +0000

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Richard Thompson Dream Attic Shout Factory! [Rating: 3 stars] While recording an album’s worth of new songs live in the studio with minimal overdubs is challenging enough, veteran songwriter and Strat strangler Richard Thompson’s latest CD, Dream Attic, forgoes the recording-studio safety net altogether: he recorded 13 new songs not only live, but in front of a live audience. For most, this would amount to career suicide, but Thompson’s songs have always taken on a greater dynamism on stage. (Anyone who doubts this can have a quick listen to some of the stratospheric extended soloing on 1976’s Guitar, Vocal. ) Although certainly Shoot Out the Lights-style emotional intensity isn’t exactly easy to conjure up in any musical situation, Thompson’s lead playing does have its moments here. His Chet Atkins-on-steroids finger-style picking is at its raucous best on the souped-up British Isles folk rocker “Demons in her Dancing Shoes,” and on the country/gospel singalong song of temptation and salvation “Haul Me Up” he gets an almost bagpipe-like drone underpinning his fast and furious single-note solos. And of course this really wouldn’t be a Richard Thompson album without a hooky condemnation of late capitalism, which is represented by the droll “Money Shuffle.” And “Here Comes Geordie” is a surprising swipe at none other than Sting and his well-known extra-musical pretensions. In typical Thompson fashion, the instrumentation throughout manages to be spare without sounding too thin, with fiddle and guitar often intertwining or trading choruses over boilerplate bass and drums. Of course, this risky take on a live album concept may not have been possible had Thompson’s relationship with major labels not soured almost a decade ago. And if Dream Attic is any indication, recording studios may soon be as irrelevant to Richard Thompson’s career as big record companies are.

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Rosanne Cash: Composed: A Memoir

Michael Sandlin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:38:43 +0000

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Rosanne Cash Composed: A Memoir Viking [Rating: 3.5 Stars] Like her father’s soulful Cash: The Autobiography, Rosanne Cash’s new memoir, Composed, sidesteps the sensationalist backstage dish that dominates so much pop autobiography. Rosanne focuses more on her personal development from being simply Johnny Cash’s privileged daughter, to an iconic countrypolitan star in her own right. Raised in Southern California, Rosanne spends her young-adult years juggling identities: literature student, actress, A&R assistant. Drifting around Europe in the late 1970s, she finally settles into life as a singer-songwriter on a small German label before signing to Columbia in the early ‘80s. Although Cash takes a frustratingly tight-lipped approach to her romantic life—most notably in (not) dealing with her famous failed marriage to Rodney Crowell – she’s more forthcoming about the creative process behind her 14 albums and numerous hit singles. And despite its occasional non-linear, navel-gazing tendencies, Composed remains a compelling testament to the power of individuality in finding one’s own vocation and voice.

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Peter Case: Wig!

Michael Sandlin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:55:28 +0000

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Peter Case Wig! Yep Roc [Rating: 3.5 Stars] “It’s a free country/ but it sure ain’t cheap...” growls former Nerves/ Plimsouls frontman Peter Case on “House Jump Party,” just one of many bar-fight-starting bluze-rockers on his latest solo effort, Wig! The above-quoted wisdom seems especially hard-won, since the album was recorded in the wake of Case’s insurance-less open-heart surgery that slapped him with a blues-inducing six-figure doctor bill. Of course, a former 1980s L.A. New Waver trying to age gracefully by taking up hillbilly music or embracing the sounds of the Mississippi Delta isn’t exactly a novel phenomenon; but these days Case has probably earned the right to dress and sound like John Lee Hooker. Case’s filigree-free gutbucket approach works just fine on Wig!, with the songs’ arrangements stripped down to barest bare essentials: snaky guitar leads, chitlin’-circuit harmonica, and simple piano parts occasionally surface over the filthy cheap-tone electric guitars and skeleton-crew rockabilly rhythm section. Everything sounds like it was recorded by Alan Lomax in a Louisiana prison cell—and presumably this was the intended effect. The swampy tremolo-laden throb of “Dig What You’re Putting Down,” conjures up early CCR, and “Colors of Night” is a chooglin’ one-chord stomp where opposing guitar leads fight it out in a nasty cross-channel scrap throughout. And of course there’s the obligatory automobile-worship song, “New Old Blue Car,” which travels pretty much the same dirt-covered back roads as the previously mentioned tracks. Case’s voice isn’t always up to the task of mimicking the juke-joint blues shouters of yore, but musically he’s hit upon a comfortable 1980s-nostalgia-free format for himself at this stage in his career. Even though Case certainly depends on the distant past for inspiration here, Wig! makes his own storied Plimsouls past seem about a million miles away.

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