Joshua Powell & the Great Train Robbery - Alyosha

 

Joshua Powell possesses a drive of uncommon determination that transcends his relative youth and is likely abetted by it. That drive, which is transparent in his handling of all aspects (promotions, booking, etc.) of his band, Joshua Powell & the Great Train Robbery, and the exhaustive touring of more than 400 shows in more than 40 states between 2013’s Man Is Born for Trouble and the release of Alyosha (out October 16), is an unassailable reason Alyosha takes everything that has made Powell’s music promising from the outset and polishes his sound into a final product that refuses to settle for categorization as modest, mere folk rock with a scope limited between Indiana’s borders. It is obvious Powell wants his songs to reach a larger audience, and Alyosha makes a commanding case that its ruggedly persistent creator warrants such an audience.

On Alyosha, Powell takes his self-described brand of “psychedelic-tinged fearsome folk” and revels in the pursuit of a cohesive, often-ethereal sound that has more in common with shades of Bon Iver’s self-titled LP, Fleet Foxes’ Helplessness Blues, Carrie and Lowell, and even War on Drugs’ Lost in the Dream than a typical acoustic guitar-based coffeehouse folk record. Along with Powell, co-producer Jonathan Class (who once again recorded and produced the record at his own Varsity Recording Co. in Anderson, IN) deserves a great deal of credit for the polish and clear vitality of the finished product. From the rippling groove of “Gunfighter Ballad of the 21^st Century”, which hits my ears as almost a Neil Young and Crazy Horse-like tune relocated to a forest-strewn hall of mirrors and washed in scattered echoes while painting technicolor blotches on the glass, to the field recording of the hushed, lapping tide that soundtracks the nostalgic closer, “Left the Academy,”

Alyosha is a gorgeous-sounding record that wears its professional aspirations on its sleeve, especially for an independent outfit from the Hoosier state on a limited, crowd-sourced budget.

 

Some of Powell’s (and Alyosha’s) biggest strengths are in an ability to fashion a vivid, serene sound that is more than willing to take detours, shift tempos, and earn crescendos while staying rooted in his authentic, lyric-based songwriting and consistently pleasant and impressive vocal deliveries. He takes care in penning verses and melodies that don’t always reveal the often leagues-deep staying power on first listens (especially for audiences prone to corporate radio preferences or 30 second-taste-and-skip streaming), but his lyrical and musical choices always suit the song at hand, even when those choices step way beyond the shallow end of modest folk recording as they do on Alyosha. Powell has a knack for marrying prosaic lines with a literary bent and poetic deliveries – in the vocal melodies, instrumental arrangements and production. This marriage gives a song like “Indiana” it’s patient, powerful sweep, “Birth Control” it’s orchestral pop pulse that makes it feel not out of place alongside a handful of Broken Social Scene songs, and the War on Drugs-colored pursuit of E Street sweep that gives “Telekinesis” its rock ‘n’ roll radio high.

Perhaps Alyosha’s finest achievement, proving just how sublime and deliciously alive Powell’s music has become, is “Petrichor,” which almost sounds kindred to Beck’s “voice of God” vocal performance throughout the Grammy-winning Morning Phase, except layered with Sufjan-esque backing vocals while climbing towards the virgin peaks of imagined snow-capped vistas as the most recent Bon Iver and Volcano Choir LPs have done to widespread acclaim.

With adventurously-minded yet nuanced command of its mission, Alyosha is a record that should surprise current fans of Joshua Powell & the Great Train Robbery. For anyone else who is hearing Powell with fresh ears, the record should defy many assumptions of what to expect from a folk-based songwriter and musician from the Hoosier state who has been flying under the radar from town to town and is now primed to make his deserved blip.

Alyosha is out on October 16, 2015. Visit Joshua Powell & the GTR's website for details, or download the album on iTunes or Amazon.

Joshua Powell & the Great Train Robbery - "Gunfighter Ballad for the 21st Century"

Heavy Rotation: Eddie Lott - Blame It on My Wild Soul

I am a sucker for an earnest underdog. I also unapologetically harbor a sweet spot for the feeling of southwestern air - that open road beneath the endless Texan sky, those traversed miles littered with American dreams, worn barstools, empty bottles, front porch nights and whiskey-wetted harmonies.

These affinities are anything but mutually exclusive, which should go a long way to explain why a songwriter and musician like Eddie Lott and his songs of Blame It on My Wild Soul possess a gentle magnetism tuned into my own internal frequency.

 

Lott describes his songs as “country music for lost souls.” His preferred backdrop for listeners is a late night drive with no set destination and Blame It on My Wild Soul as the soundtrack to get lost to. Perhaps it won’t come as much of a surprise that this is also one of my ideals avenues for absorbing records in totality, and Lott’s songs of wanderlust and introspective grappling succeed in warm, rewarding fashion.

“I’m always alone in my mind. They say that men cannot survive these islands, but I will, or at least I will die trying.”

The definitive influence for nearly any upstart country-tinged songwriter from west of the Mississippi and south of the Rockies in the past forty years or so is, naturally, Townes, and Lott is no exception. Having been playing guitar for more than twenty years, Lott says it wasn’t until, years after giving up on music and founding a green DIY waste management business in North Texas, he wandered into a bar and heard a desperado cover of a Van Zandt tune that hit him squarely and fueled a fire to go all in on his songwriting, record an album and lay the foundation for a serious musical career.

In the years between deciding to leap the uncertain chasm and Blame It on My Wild Soul coming to fruition (released September 27), Lott won a Dallas songwriter competition, recorded a series of demos (that would eventually end up comprising BIOMWS) on an iPhone, enlisted the skills of Austin-based producer Bryan Ray (Lonely Child), and placed his hopes and bets on a Kickstarter campaign that successfully funded the production and completion of the 32-year-old Texan’s debut album.

I first came across Lott’s music when Ray forwarded me four of those iPhone demos in the months prior to the Kickstarter launch. Even then, without proper arrangements and knowing nothing of Lott’s backstory or his motivations, the yearning and passion of his vocals, the evocative precision of his lyrics and the beating heart of his songs spoke to me. The more I listened, the more I heard something of a kindred spirit who I couldn’t help but root for. It’s a communicative exchange through strangers, but the intangible magic of good songs like these is how, with artifice stripped away and a yearning artist’s personal expression on display and set to melodic and pedal steel-accented accompaniment, this music becomes more like a dialogue between compadres. It’s the sort of relationship Lott reminisces about and celebrates on “From One Soul to Another” (#FOTSA).

“I miss your soul next to mine / I was hoping that you would sing a song with me...Is it strange for me to say I miss you all the time? / From one soul to another / not like lovers, friends or brothers / more like porches, guitars and wine.”

These are Lott’s songs and it’s not difficult to hear a burning man throwing his all into taking his shot at his own American dream, but I always feel like an accomplice on the journey when I listen to the record. Perhaps, like many records that feel good to get lost to, its loveliest strength is its relatability for the listener. I’m a fan of Lott and his songs and, should my saying somehow lead you astray, I guess you can blame it on our wild souls.  

Buy/Listen: Blame It on My Wild Soul

Vonnegut Sessions: Celebrating Kurt's Ideal with Music

“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.” – Kurt Vonnegut

That quote from Indianapolis’ hometown literary titan and cultural conscience provides the foundation for the unveiling of a new music series at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library. The Vonnegut Sessions, an intimate series of performances conducted within the gallery of the KVML and consisting of music and readings of poetry, prose, short stories and more by national and local acts, recently debuted with concerts from Austin bluegrass band Wood & Wire and Portland-based musician and author Nick Jaina. For the uninitiated, the KVML, a delightful, boutique-style not-for-profit library/museum decked with singular Vonnegut artifacts, correspondences, timelines, typewriters, and eclectic Vonnegut-inspired portraits and modern art, is modestly tucked away (befitting of its subject) downtown in the red brick Emelie Building on North Senate and has established itself as a gem of the city.

Vonnegut Sessions organizers plan to host performances by a wide range of artists who possess a passion for the finer points of life Kurt cared about most: “free expression, common decency and music.” In conversation with KMVL’s Kate Newman (the library’s community relations associate, who also spoke on behalf of fellow colleague Matthew Altizer) and through an interview with Nick Jaina ahead of his May 3 performance, I sought to gather a fairly comprehensive portrait of what the Vonnegut Sessions hope to showcase in the months ahead, what attracts artists to the new and unique series, and how the performances may do justice to Vonnegut’s oft-quoted, humanistic worldview and his beloved literary output and legacy, which are the driving force behind the KVML’s mission.

To describe the impetus for embarking on a concert series at the Vonnegut Library, Newman explains, “Kurt Vonnegut liked music. And the funny thing about Vonnegut is that many people who pursue art-- many thoughtful, expressive people-- have a Vonnegut story. So far, all of the bands we have booked have at least one member who has something to say about Kurt Vonnegut.”

This is certainly true of Jaina, who performed inside the KVML alongside his friend Stelth Ulvang (multi-instrumentalist for The Lumineers) last year. “He always seemed like a really smart guy,” Jaina says. “Vonnegut was really intelligent, but he could find joys and could find ways of seeing suffering in people and making them happy as opposed to just pummeling readers with how intelligent he is, and I’ve always appreciated that.”

Jaina, a veteran songwriter and musician, is touring the country in support of his recently released first book, Get It While You Can (published in January by Perfect Day). His live performances blend spoken word deliveries of his own prose atop guitar and found sounds while intermittently incorporating songs between readings.

“Most of the shows on this tour are living room shows and houses and are semi-private, so it’s nice to play an open show where anyone can come. I think it will be a different cross-section of an audience,” Jaina explains, “That, and the connection to Vonnegut. I like that it is more of a literary crowd. I’ve played in bookstores and cafes, and I like being surrounded by books and how there is a different vibe to it.” He believes the intimacy of the Vonnegut Library suits his performance, and his depiction of an ideal audience seems to have a kindred link to what Vonnegut sought in an audience.  As Jaina says on his website,“It’s (Jaina’s music and writing) not just for intellectuals. It’s for lovers of life.”

Newman gives the impression there is almost an idealistic, optimistic measuring stick the KVML will be using during the sessions’ inaugural year to deem how successful these Vonnegut Sessions are as more and more are booked and performed.

“If we've brought in genres from all over the globe, through musicians from all over the country, with viewpoints that both align with Vonnegut's values and stimulate discussion, then I think we will have succeeded,” Newman says. “If we've helped to give local artists a platform and to introduce them to a new audience, then we will have succeeded. If every guest who attends a Vonnegut Session leaves ready to create some art of his or her own, then we will have REALLY succeeded!”

Read that mission again and take note, Indianapolis musicians and artists – especially those of you with an allegiance towards this city’s esteemed cultural laureate.

“We (the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library) are huge champions of Indianapolis, and we would be thrilled to contribute to its music scene. Local bands-- call us up!”

Newman cites a line from Vonnegut’s A Man Without a Country, his classic 2005 non-fiction collection of essays that still read as ten times more inspiring for creatives and blooming humanists than any self-help book sitting on a best-seller shelf, to summarize what the sessions hope to achieve for the artists and audiences alike:

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.”

With quotes like that one as guiding the direction of the series, Newman says, “My hope is that people leave a Vonnegut Sessions show brimming with energy to create their own art.”

As for the logistics of the Vonnegut Sessions, the shows are all ages with limited seating (the KVML encourages purchasing advance tickets without additional fees through its website or at the library). Portions of all ticket sales and all alcohol sales (provided by KVML supporters Sun King Brewing and Monarch Beverages) from the cash bar are designated as charitable donations to the Vonnegut Library’s Annual Fund, which helps keep the doors open at the not-for-profit museum and fuels the cycle of original artistic expression and special events on showcase. 

Three Kings: Genre-Defying Greatness as Relevant as Ever

“No input, no output.”

Joe Strummer said that. It’s a mantra that always held true for me as a writer and music journalist. Conversely, all input no output is equally true, and the supremely exhausting and inexhaustible content vehicle that is the internet ecosystem (an ecosystem that I feed in minimal capacities at varying frequencies, often based on my internal hunger for and regulation of aforementioned input, and feast upon regularly) sometimes suffocates my own desire to offer up opinions on anything or take the time to focus and churn out thoughtful output.

In any case, I haven’t offered up much in the way of output in recent months, especially compared to the amount of reviews, interviews, essays and the like I’ve written the past several years. Often, the only time I feel desire enough to put something out there these days is when I believe I have an opinion I haven’t read a hundred times on a dozen rival content-churning sites cranked out a dozen times a day, headlined and linked like baited hooks for people to read what they already know and have consumed in five ever-so-slightly differently-worded ways.

Perhaps all of this is neither here nor there. Maybe it’s an expositional means to say my some of my inputs of late have consisted of the usual news coverage of ISIS attacks, 2016 presidential bids, Donald Trump, the Clintons, the Bushes, Obama, American foreign policy, Snowden, and the excellent, Goodfellas-esque new Netflix series Narcos, which chronicles Pablo Escobar’s tyrannical empire in Colombia and the longstanding DEA campaign to capture and extradite him. All of those inputs compound with my steady diet of a dozen or so records, films and books a week. For whatever reason, this particular cocktail has me thinking about (in various indirect ways) Three Kings, the 1999 war-heist-action-satire-drama written and directed by David O. Russell. 

   

Three Kings, a non-franchise Warner Brothers mid-level studio film (the sort of film that is an endangered species at best in 2015), was one of those movies that garnered critical acclaim and awards consideration (National Board of Review Top 10 Film of 1999, Broadcast Film Critics Association nomination for Best Picture) and was met with a middling box office performance ($60 million domestic gross and $107 million worldwide gross on a $75 million budget *according to Box Office Mojo), but I rarely hear anybody mention the film.

Many other acclaimed films from 1999 come up in conversation more frequently, and several remain relevant, hold up beautifully and are pretty much perfect (American Beauty, Magnolia, Fight Club, Being John Malkovich**) while others feel almost cryogenically frozen and neutered thanks to their initial success and the parade of copycats that followed in their wake (The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense).

What makes Three Kings great to me is I loved it when I first saw it in theaters as a 17-year-old kid in 1999, it retained its unique power with each successive DVD viewing soon after, and it has only grown more relevant as time has passed in post 9/11, War-on-Terror-entrenched America. All of that hardly takes into account writer-director David O. Russell’s career is hotter than ever, and the quartet of actors at the center of the action and drama in Three Kings were all making varying degrees of changes in their career arcs at that very moment, and the film allowed each of them to branch out and impress in new ways, even if it now could almost, given the trajectory of their successes over the years, seem like a memory of a memory to those who haven’t seen or revisited the film.

One of the things that makes Three Kings special and particularly relevant is that is set on familiar turf to many of the films that followed in the next fifteen years, but it bears no resemblance to any of them. It exists as neither a forbearer nor an outlier. Though released in theaters less than two years before the 9/11 attacks and set less than a decade prior, the outlandishly strange and ominous mental, political, and physical climate Three Kings captures is an intricate work of pulpy war-noir that serves as a puzzle piece linking together myriad trends that had/have coalesced in American culture, the media, and military affairs since. Its Gulf War narrative is portentous of American involvement in the Middle East in the 21^st Century while planting its roots in the very recent past of the peculiar Gulf War proceedings of Bush era 1990 and 1991. Supremely villainous tyrant Saddam with cartoonish proportions in American culture (substitute Osama bin Laden of the mid-00s, Escobar, or even a Trump-ish persona consumed by megalomania, intimidation, media influence, unthinkable wealth, and varying levels of unchecked brutality) terrorizes the dissenting population while simultaneously presenting himself as a sacred idol and philanthropist. It’s in this context that a quartet of mismatched American soldiers of varying rank, race, education, and background inadvertently come upon a treasure map of Saddam’s millions in gold bullion and fashion themselves into a ragtag group of covert bandits in hotbed of political turmoil, surreal cultural divides, and constant threat of violent outbursts.  

It’s a one of a kind film (a textbook example of genre-defying, a class in which Russell has often excelled) that deftly moves with brazen attitude, wisecracking wit, unsettling violence, suspense, complex moral dilemmas, empathy, redemption and melancholy. The razor-sharp direction, the chemistry between the actors, and script all sing and sting, while what starts as an offbeat heist flick (a reimagining of the 1970 Clint Eastwood film Kelly’s Heroes) and segues into a potboiler of spitfire satire, idealistic noir and compelling human drama on foreign soil that has only become more unrelentingly war-ravaged and hopelessly volatile in the years since. Hence, the litany of (mostly independent to mid-level studio) films indebted to America’s involvement in the Middle East post 9/11, ranging from overlooked, contemplative gems (The Messenger, Fort Bliss), heart-pounding action flicks that were box office smashes (American Sniper, Lone Survivor), Best Picture-winning (and Avatar/James Cameron-slaying) masterworks of suspense (The Hurt Locker), a great film railroaded by political agenda (Zero Dark Thirty) white-knuckle actioners that didn’t become American Sniper-sized monoliths (The Kingdom), and mostly forgotten hot-button-issue indies chronicling the tolls on veterans at home and abroad (Stop-Loss, Jarhead, In the Valley of Elah), are all set on soil similar to Three Kings, but Russell’s film acts like its own subversive, yet heartfelt, beast. It’s a cinematic entertainment with historical context and a long arm of relevance, but it lives in the unsettled land between straightforward popcorn flick and history lesson.

 

Three Kings’ long, if largely unmentioned, shelf life owes much to the careers of its principals. David O. Russell is currently one of the hottest directors in Hollywood thanks to his recent ensemble flicks that have blended Academy Awards bait with box office appeal primarily thanks to the pairing of Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper and the success of Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. Yes, The Fighter (my favorite film of 2010) garnered a heap of major award nominations and wins and performed well at the box office, but the lightning in a bottle pairing of Lawrence and Cooper as leads tapped some sort of mainstream zeitgeist thanks to the major success of The Hunger Games trilogy, American Sniper, Guardians of the Galaxy, and the current standing of Lawrence as America’s sweetheart. Even with the impressive string of critical and commercial hits with Hustle, Playbook, The Fighter, and given that his breakout film was the delirious, excellent comedy Flirting with Disaster starring Ben Stiller, I’ll still argue Three Kings is both an outstanding work of American cinema and David O. Russell’s finest film. Additionally, Three Kings helped solidify George Clooney as a legitimate leading man and charismatic movie star (in tandem with 1998’s Out of Sight, directed by Steven Soderbergh) as opposed to merely America’s favorite TV doctor, turned Marky Mark into a serious actor (alongside his breakout role as Dirk Diggler in Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant Boogie Nights, even if that role could be misconstrued as a coming-of-age porn star version of Marky Mark himself), allowed Ice Cube to act in a role beyond the genre comedy of Friday, the genre dramas of Boyz ‘n the Hood and Higher Learning, and the B-movie (at best) action of Anaconda, and offered Spike Jonze (whose own masterpiece, Being John Malkovich, also hit theaters in 1999) his first significant role in front of the camera.

Amongst the wealth of great films released in 1999, Three Kings had a niche, but it rarely gets mentioned in conversation nowadays, either as one of great movies of the late ‘90s, as a newer classic that went under the radar for many, or as a film that deserves being revisited given its exponentially increased cultural relevance over the years – both as a captivating fictional document of American politics and military action and as somewhat of a launching pad for career reinventions of many of its principals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Eyes Wide Shut, but that vastly misunderstood/underrated Kubrick elegy is for another essay

"Incidental Dread"

Listlessly eyeing landscapes
Lovelessly pondering heartaches
Compassionately searching eyes
Intellectualizing how everything dies
Time, it flows and ebbs
Infinite patterns, numbered threads
Unspeakable beauty, diminishing grace
Gone adrift, about face
Still,
The spirit persists
The voiceless resist
This treacherous storm is imminent
Yet calm is outside and within it
Shelters preserve the faithful
Fear amplifies the hateful
Bloodied ties
Edited lies
Somebody dies
Nobody cries
This silence
Isn't the sound of hell breaking loose
It's something much more sinister
The plight of good men down
City after city, town after town
This dread is existential
And it's not coincidental
What if there's no easy answer?
What if we all give in to this cancer?
Would it even matter?
Is there anything any sadder?

Heavy Rotation: Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear

 

To say I am a little enamored with Josh Tillman’s new masterpiece of unadulterated romantic idealism armored in literate, silver-tongued, cynical ire against the pedestrian, mega-churched, oblivious masses just beyond the walls, like contagious, bloodthirsty wolves at the door, of FJ Misty and his new Honeybear bride would be an understatement on par with saying most Americans seem to kind of enjoy cholesterol-soaked 99-cent cheeseburgers, cable news pundits, and Facebook memes.

Over a seamless span of 11 grandly produced, no-holds-barred songs rooted in love and optimism in the face of end of days bleakness (“Fuck the world damn straight my lady / It may be just us who feel this way / But don’t ever doubt this, my steadfast conviction: My love, you’re the one I want to watch the ship go down with,” Misty declares right up front within minute one), Tillman takes stock of all the carnage (global market crashes, fundamentalism, retirement homes, sexual inadequacy, rampant pharmacopeia, white girls singing with faux-soul affectations) in ornately detailed precision, and steadfastly determines a chance meeting in a store parking lot with the woman he’d come to love swayed the balance of his entire existence and all the future generations he’s spinning in his head.

Or at least that’s the tapestry he’s telling.

 

Before we ever get near that point, Tillman lovingly sings of a first night of intimacy and falling in love (“First time you let me stay the night despite your own rules, you took off early to go cheat your way through film school. You left a note in your perfect script: ‘Stay as long as you want.’ And I haven’t left your bed since.”) punctuated with a swell of mariachi horns and swooning strings (“Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins)”), romantic disillusionment with an unknown woman who nearly died in his bathtub (“Strange Encounter”), a barn-burning, napalm-spewing takedown of narcissistic 21^st manhood and its unavoidable reckoning with trying to sell a partner of its newfound stability (“The Ideal Husband”), and a double-barreled, bare bones-and-piano-or-guitar pair of alternately heartbreaking and lyrically virtuosic ballads (“Bored in the U.S.A.”, “Holy Shit”) that feel like Misty is reinventing the wheel of what rock or pop or folk music can be and truly is light years ahead of most contemporaries in each facet.

However you care to classify Father John Misty at this point, he is unrivaled. Cue the maniacal, closing laugh track of “Bored in the U.S.A.” and listen intently.

 

It’s a satirical juggernaut and should come off as little more than a gimmick. So why does is sting so deeply? How can it be laugh out loud hilarious when it’s somber and painful? How does Misty burrow right down into the bones with that soulful howl after singing, “They gave me a useless education. A subprime loan. A Craftsman home. Keep my prescriptions filled. Now, I can’t get off. But I can kind of deal?” They’re all dazzling, deft maneuvers and are immaculately arranged, and they resonate because he’s taking the piss out of it all but he’s also deadly serious. That dichotomy is the skeleton key to I Love You, Honeybear’s magnetism. Tillman’s lyrical executions (pun certainly intended) buzzsaw down to the bone across the board with an intellectual ingenuity and acerbic wit that maybe hasn’t been exposed this readily and impressively in serious rock music since arguably (cue the inter-generational firing squad) Blonde on Blonde, aka still one of the greatest albums ever written and recorded. Obviously, I’m not naïve or prone to enough hyperbole to come right out and say Father John Misty has recorded possibly one of the TRULY GREAT albums after just a few weeks of listening to it, but I, for one, sure as hell won’t be surprised if I Love You, Honeybear stands the test of time and holds it own against some of those titans in the years to come.

I Love You, Honeybear is out now (released February 10) via Sub Pop Records.

 

 

*Bonus: My favorite barbed-wire takedowns and lyrical executions from I Love You, Honeybear:

“Love is just an institution based on human frailty. What’s your paradise got to do with Adam and Eve? Maybe love is just an economy based on resource scarcity, but what I fail to see is what that’s got to do with you and me.” (“Holy Shit”)

“She says, like, literally music is the air she breathes. And the malapropos make me wanna fucking scream. I wonder if she even knows what that word means. Well, it’s literally not that.” (“The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apt.”)

 “Oh I just love the kind of woman who can walk all over a man, I mean like a goddamn marching band.” (“The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apt.”)

 “Of all the things I hate about her one is her petty vogue ideals. Somebody’s been told one too many times they’re beyond their years by every halfwit of distinction she keeps around, and now every insufferable convo features her patiently explaining the cosmos, of which she is in the middle.” (The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apt.”)

“No one ever knows the real you and life is brief. So I’ve heard, but what’s that got to do with this black hole inside of me?” (“Holy Shit”)

“My baby does something way more impressive than the Georgia crawl. She blackens pages like a Russian Romantic and gets down more often than a blowup doll.” (“Nothing Good Ever Happens At the Goddamn Thirsty Crow”)

“How many people rise and think, ‘Oh good. The stranger’s body is still here. Our arrangement hasn’t changed?’ Now I’ve got a lifetime to consider all the ways I’ve grown more disappointing to you as my beauty warps and fades. I suspect you feel the same.” (“Bored in the U.S.A.”)

 “Why the long face, blondie? I’m already taken. Sorry. I may act like a lunatic, but if you think I’m fucking crazy, you’re mistaken.” (“Nothing Good Ever Happens At the Goddamn Thirsty Crow”)

“You’re bent over the altar and the neighbors are complaining. Bet the misanthropes next door are probably conceiving a Damien.” (“I Love You, Honeybear”)

“I know it’s hard to believe a good-hearted woman could have a body that’d make your daddy cry. Why the long face, jerkoff? Your chance has been taken. Good one. You may think like an animal, but if you try that cat and mouse shit, you’ll get bitten. Keep moving.” (“Nothing Good Ever Happens At the Goddamn Thirsty Crow”)

“By this afternoon, I’ll live in debt; by tomorrow, be replaced by children.” (“Bored in the U.S.A.”)

 “We sang ‘Silent Night’ in three parts, which was fun…’til she said she sounds just like Sarah Vaughn. I hate that soulful affectation white girls put on. Why don’t you move to the Delta? I obliged later on when you begged me to choke ya.” (“The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apt.”)

“Just one Cadillac will do to get us out to where we’re going. I’ve brought my mother’s depression, you’ve got your father’s scorn and a wayward aunt’s schizophrenia.” (“I Love You, Honeybear”)

“I came over at seven in the morning, seven in the morning, seven in the morning. Said something dumb like, ‘I’m tired of running.’ Let’s put a baby in the oven. Wouldn’t I make the ideal husband?” (“The Ideal Husband”)

“Honeybear, Honeybear, your mascara, blood, ash and cum on the Rorshach sheets were we make love” (“I Love You, Honeybear”)

“Everything is due and nothing will be spared, but I love you, Honeybear.” (“I Love You, Honeybear”)

“First time you let me stay the night despite your own rules, you took off early to go cheat your way through film school. You left a note in your perfect script: Stay as long as you want. And I haven’t left your bed since.” (“Chateau Lobby #4 (In C for Two Virgins)”)

“I want to take you in the kitchen. Lift up your wedding dress someone was probably murdered in. So bourgeoisie to keep waiting. Dating for 20 years just feels pretty civilian.” (“Chateau Lobby #4 (In C for Two Virgins)”)

Review: Ryan Bingham - Fear and Saturday Night

Ryan Bingham has long had a knack for crafting grittily potent narratives with southwestern atmosphere that alternately brood and rock. His fifth full-length release, Fear and Saturday Night, is arguably the most cohesive, gripping wrangling of his rowdy and restless tendencies since first rising to country-rock prominence with the Dead Horses at his side for his strong debut, Mescalito, and follow-up Roadhouse Sun. Where the quieter and ballad-driven Junky Star capitalized on the strength of his Academy Award-winning song, “The Weary Kind” (from Crazy Heart), and his 2012 solo debut, Tomorrowland, was more scattershot, sprawling, and built around anthems, Fear and Saturday Night finds Bingham sounding even more comfortable and confident in his tastes and craftsmanship than he has in a few albums.

He’s still traipsing through the same well-worn cactus-and-bluebonnet terrain that has infused all of his work (and most of the music of his outlaw-country and border-poet heroes), but there’s a hard-won vitality seeping out the edges of nearly song on Fear and Saturday Night that solidifies Bingham as a necessary underdog in a genre that’s never really a hot commodity these days but never truly goes out of style, either. Tunes like the opening track “Nobody Knows My Trouble,” “My Diamond Is Too Rough,” and the title track exquisitely capture a stubborn, outlaw spirit driven by romanticism and at odds with the economic hardships and oppressive modern America outside the confines of a man, his woman, and whatever family he has left. That same spirit also ignites the sparks on the more combustible, up-tempo songs, most notably on the carefree Tex-Mex lovers’ joyride through class and red state/blue state divisions on “Adventures of You and Me” and the galvanizing sweep of “Island in the Sky” and its buoyant chorus. Other tunes like “Top Shelf Drug” and “Radio” tackle genre tropes that have been written and sung hundreds, if not thousands, of times before, but Bingham’s soulful humanity and the muscularity and nuanced playing of his new backing band (Daniel Sproul (Rose Hill Drive) on lead guitar, bassist Shawn Davis (Beck, Juanes), and drummer Nate Barnes (Rose Hill Drive)) give the songs sturdy legs. Even if they are new entries into the rock and roll standards of comparing sex to a drug high or lamenting the music on the radio (although here, Bingham sings from more of a High Fidelity approach of listening to sad songs that hurt too much to hear rather than merely opining about the soullessness of the modern radio charts), they earn their right to fight for a loyal audience.

Fear and Saturday Night is the product of an award-winning, still-young songwriter and musician who retreated to Western solitude and the great wide open to comb through a personal history of frequent transience, love, and the deaths of his parents. What results is a red-blooded album of genuine emotion laced with just the right combination of flannel-shirted, shit-kicking roadhouse rock and tear-streaked and liquored-up anguish that surfaces to tighten its hold after the neon light flicks off and all the outcasts stumble back out into the streets to face the world at large.   

Fear and Saturday Night is out now (released January 20, 2014) on Bingham’s own Axster Bingham Records label distributed by Thirty Tigers/RED.
Listen to "Broken Heart Tattoos" via Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy

Review: Murder By Death - Big Dark Love

 

Over a span of almost 15 years, Murder by Death has amassed a rabid, cult-like following of fans by adhering to an unrivaled genre-defying sound and brandishing a workmanlike attitude in an ever-changing industry. With their new album, Big Dark Love, the band (Adam Turla, Sarah Balliet, Matt Armstrong, Dagan Thogerson, David Fountain), newly housed in Louisville, KY after more than a decade rooted in Bloomington, IN, dazzles from start to finish through ten variations of non-traditional (hey, this is Murder by Death) love songs on the strength of vocalist/chief lyricist Adam Turla’s gritty narrative voice and MBD’s seemingly inexhaustible knack for fashioning captivating arrangements that high-wire waltz between menace and elegance. It’s a balancing act that few bands ever get right, but Murder by Death have carved an impressive career out of this very dance, and they’ve thrown some psych, synth, and string rumblings into the mix to boot.

Perhaps, MBD’s greatest strength has always been their ability to marry Turla’s chilling lyrical imagery with an ornately portentous atmosphere that feels present and alive. The musical outcome almost seems akin to having the talent to intertwine evocative poetry and prose and then surrounding all the words with a production design and cinematography that could rival a bastard child of Kubrick and Hitchcock. A shining example here is the title track, which opens with the protagonist, alone, bored and stricken with the bends, spitting out a window, chuckling when it hits someone, and then pleading with a lover to allow him inside when he darkens the door. “LET ME IN!” Turla bellows again and again, the band swelling to a torrential chorus, “LET ME IN! Me and my big dark love.” By this point, it’s obvious these aren’t your typical radio love songs, but they’re fascinating meditations on the spectrum of love in the Murder by Death realm in many of the same ways Nick Cave has enjoyed a 30-year-plus career pitting non-traditional gothic love songs against murder ballads. As with most of Murder by Death’s unassailable discography, Cave helped pave the crooked path, and MBD is carrying the crackling torch through new terrain and to younger audiences, putting their own spin on what resonates like vivid American folklore.

The lovely first single, “Strange Eyes,” touches on the feeling of giving into someone with an unsettling power over you, as potentially dangerous as it may be in the long run. “Dream in Red” is an eerie, open-ended musing upon how to react when one believes he sees his lover hauling a body down by a river. The gorgeous ballad “Send Me Home” is a soulful plea for a new beginning during hard times, even if that new beginning is a loving burial in a nondescript pine box. The banjo-and-cello-powered “Last Thing” grapples with the dramatic weight of actively loving someone while in the depressing grip of an unrepentant winter. Turla sings, “It feels like the snow will bury us. I don’t wanna be cold. I just don’t wanna be another chore, some wounded bird to care for, an unrewarded job for you. That’s the last thing I wanna do.” That’s love in a nutshell, even if it’s sometimes tough to swallow. As is the overprotective parental love of “Natural Pearl,” a swift, stomping, steel-driven number begging the child “not to leave our little world.” Closing track “Hunted” rouses up serious Morricone spirits over a sprawling soundscape as Turla sings, “We don’t know what it’s like to be hunted. We don’t know what it’s like to be wanted too much.” It’s fitting then that “Hunted” bookends Big Dark Love, while the progressively momentous “I Shot an Arrow” opens the album in off-kilter, grand and altogether jaw-dropping fashion. Complete with a startlingly heavy rhythm up front, deftly shifting time signatures, Balliet’s sweeping cello, keys, horns and Turla’s shouts of “get me out of here,” the song escalates, swoons, and then re-escalates all the way until the whole composition boils into combustible, deafening chaos fronted by the screamed mantra “I shot an arrow!” before the reprieve of a piano coda gives way into a post-apocalyptic static.

Certain critics may contend Murder by Death are resting on the laurels of a formula they’ve used for six preceding full-length albums and several EPs. They would be missing the heart of the matter. Murder by Death have long forged a sound that is unmistakably theirs, and the musicianship and themes they wield leaves them with hardly any contemporaries to rival the land they have staked. As the band proves on Big Dark Love, there’s no need to contaminate a formula when you’ve pretty much perfected it.   

Big Dark Love is out February 3, 2015 via Bloodshot Records.