Ramblings on Music, Texas, Etc.

Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter live on KEXP

Currently in the midst of their west coast tour with The Sadies, Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter perform four songs from Marble Son on Seattle's KEXP...

Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter - 'Marble Son' (out NOW!)

 
Okay, seriously, I'll shut up about Marble Son (eventually).  But, as you can probably tell, I haven't been swept away by a record in a long while.  The European edition has been in rotation since around late April, and I'm just constantly finding new layers to appreciate about the album.  To my ears, it sounds like almost nothing else out there at the moment, and it's a thrill to hear a band really come into its own.  I still love all of The Sweet Hereafter's previous three albums, and Marble Son is just another insane leap of creativity.

If you pre-ordered the album from the band, you most likely have it in your hands already.  If not, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Check out the rave review in the new issue of Tone Audio magazine (PDF, pg. 40), which, by the way, is a really fantastic publication I just recently discovered.  The Zinio edition of the magazine is really well-designed for iPad or your computer.  Interestingly, they seem to have a special interest in many of the Southern Lord bands, with whom Sykes & Co. have been occasionally affiliated.

Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter - 'Marble Son' (Aug. 2)

Well, I suppose I've blogged about little else these past few months (what little blogging I've done).  But - at least until the new Joe Henry album lands in October - Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter's new album Marble Son stands quite tall as my favorite album so far in 2011.  Having sprung for the European release, I've had the chance to live inside this record for a few months, and, like all of Sykes' albums, it has done nothing but burrow deep beneath my skin upon repeated listenings.

If this blog has or ever had a mission, it was to enlighten my few readers to a few artists deserving of more attention.  As time has passed, fewer of those artists really need my help -- do I really need to sell you on the new Wilco album or the latest release from Emmylou Harris?  But Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter remain one of those bands that, remarkably, remain pretty squarely under the radar.  Despite - or because of - their stunning evolution over the course of four records, the band appears to me to have little following outside of the Pacific Northwest (their home base).  Marble Son will be their first fully independent release, and it will be interesting to see if they can parlay a strong showing in Europe to some well-deserved stateside attention.

Granted, Marble Son will be a tough sell.  Seriously, the opening track ("Hushed By Devotion") is over eight minutes long.  Whatever following Sykes & Co. have likely springs from a well of goodwill leftover from their brief existence as an "alt-country" band.  This record is not alt-country, not really anything like it, despite some pedal steel here and there.  It certainly invokes a particular 60's-psychedelia sensibility but is by no means slavishly retro or nostalgiac.  The record certainly has its share of guitar freakouts, but I don't really see how it appeals to the broader jam-band crowd.  Marble Son is a tough beast to wrap your wings around, but it rewards the patient listener, whatever your particular tastes.

So... I have hounded you and will continue to hound you about the new album from Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter entitled Marble Son (and due in the U.S. on Aug. 2).  According to the band's latest Facebook post, initial pre-orders will arrive sometime next week, but pre-orders will continue through this weekend.  The rather lovely 180-gram gatefold LP package will ship with a copy of the CD so you aural junkies can get your fix in every preferred format.

I'll leave you with this interview with Sykes from the 2009 No Depression Festival in Seattle, in which she discusses where the band was just prior to recording Marble Son.  Good stuff and does little to lessen my love for this band...

Jesse Sykes interview at No Depression Festival from KEXP RADIO on Vimeo.

(P.S. When I played this record for my good friend Jason a month ago, he said, "I definitely feel like I'm following Alice down the rabbit hole."  I think that's an endorsement, btw.)

New album from Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter

UPDATE 6/3/2011:  Sykes & Co. have set an August 2 release date for the U.S. release of Marble Son.  You can pre-order the vinyl or CD from the band's website -- all pre-orders will be autographed!  Check out the beautiful vinyl package design by Purpose & Co. (this is a touch cooler than the European vinyl, though very similar).

I'm not sure that I'm more excited about any release in 2011 than the new record from Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter.  Marble Son will be released in Europe on March 29, with a likely release in the US later this summer.

You can direct order the LP or CD directly from their European label, Fargo.  The LP also includes a CD copy of the album and came out to less than $30 USD with shipping.  Rest assured, there's no way I'm waiting til summer to own this album.

And the kicker -- you can stream the record in its entirety right now, which is doing nothing to dispel my enthusiasm...

UPDATE:  The stream appears to no longer be working... hmmmm.  Anyway, it would appear that the CD for the new album is NOW available for shipping from Fargo's store.  The LP is still due on March 29.

UPDATE II:  Stream working again (see below)...  FYI, you can stream four songs from the album on Sykes' website as well - click the 'Listen' button on the left side of the screen.

Sam Phillips' 'Cameras In the Sky' available now

 

The final installment of Sam Phillips' multi-EP digital subscription project, The Long Play, culminates witht the release of her first full-length album since 2008's Don't Do Anything.

You can join The Long Play by clicking here.  Do so quickly, as all of the downloadable material - which includes quite a bit of music not otherwise available - will remain up for only a few more months before The Long Play winds down ($52 for the entire package).

Many congratulations to Sam Phillips for creating such a unique and gratifying experience for her fans.  I'm sorry it's coming to an end, but I'm thrilled to have the long-awaited album as a capper.

Best music week of the year?

You can pretty much take your pick of Big Fall Releases tomorrow - though, admittedly, most of them will fly under the radars of the general listening public.

For my part, I expect three of tomorrow's releases to land on my Top 10 list this year (and thanks to NPR, I've heard all of them):

• Robert Plant - Band Of Joy:  Let's see, what's the best way to land in my Top 10?  Hire Buddy Miller to produce and play guitar?  Nab Patty Griffin as your backup singer?  Take the whole enterprise out on the road and blow my feeble mind?  How 'bout all of the above?  I'll admit this record doesn't always rise to the insanely high expectations I had after seeing the band in July, but it's still a fantastic record.  Some will call it a lesser sequel to Raising Sand, but it stands pretty well on its own merits.  However, any failure to capture this band live on disc - complete with the radically reworked Zeppelin tunes - will be chalked up to a missed opportunity.
• Mavis Staples - You Are Not Alone:  I'll admit that I would've love to hear Joe Henry produce this one.  Wilco's Jeff Tweedy fills those shoes, with no real track record to indicate what he'd do.  It is to his great credit that he filled the studio with Mavis' white-hot road band.  The song selections are generally pretty fantastic.  Some will complain that, at times, this record does not capture Staples at her soul-shoutin' best.  But it does capture her still at the height of her powers unafraid to sometimes put that shoutin' aside in favor on contemplative interpretations.  Nuanced and beautiful, this one is a keeper.
• Justin Townes Earle - Harlem River Blues:  There hasn't been much dissent in critical circles that this album represents the fulfillment of the promise Earle showed on his previous two records.  Diverse, focused and showing even greater depth than his terrific Midnight At The Movies, JT Earle is obviously poised for great things.  And oh yeah - that has to be one of the best album covers of the year.  (UPDATE: GET HARLEM RIVER BLUES FOR $2.99 FROM AMAZON'S DIGITAL STORE -- TODAY ONLY!)

Hopefully, there will be plenty more to say about these records over the coming weeks as they dig a groove in my brain through repeated listenings.

And hey, what about this album due next week?

Back to the blog

Well, I can no longer belabor my exile from the blogosphere. In case you were wondering where I disappeared to, my June was mostly consumed by a move to a new home (still in Houston, though John C. will rightly dispute my claim to that based on my new zip code). There was a good three weeks or so where I was mostly checked out from a musical standpoint. Some odd shifts have occurred in my listening habits as of late, brought on by my now-standard summertime obsession over guitars. A few of you might be appalled to find out what I’ve been obsessing over lately, and we’ll get to that in short order. So in the interest of getting back to some regular blogging, let’s get a few bullet points out of the way…

• Grace Potter & The Nocturnals’ self-titled new album is still my fave of the year so far. In fact, some of the credit/blame for my recent classic rock obsession should be laid at their feet for conjuring such a 1970’s vibe. It’s been a bit disheartening to see that the record hasn’t really caught fire, despite the standard recent appearances on Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel (they did manage not to slip from the #184 slot on Billboard’s Top 200 Album chart last week). There’s really no reason this album shouldn’t be some kind of hit, but it certainly exemplifies how ineffective the major-label bag of tricks is these days. Here’s hoping there are still plenty of fans out there to be won over by GPN’s best record yet. Will a second music video make any difference (even one with French strippers)? Probably not.
• Alejandro Escovedo’s new record Street Songs Of Love is probably my second favorite of the year and similarly evokes a certain golden era of rock and roll. If you thought Real Animal was an unapologetic rock album, you ain’t heard nothing to you hear this thing blast from your speakers.
• The Black Crowes are celebrating their 20th Anniversary in high style with the release of Croweology, a double CD collection of acoustic versions of songs mostly from their first four albums. It’s indulgent and overly long, and also a real treat for longtime fans. It’s kind of interesting how smoothly they’ve locked into this Band-like vibe between this and their last album Before The Frost… Certainly not for the casual listener but obviously a must-have for fans. And make special note that their upcoming tour will be the band’s last for some time while the Crowes take an indefinite hiatus after enjoying a creative resurgence over the past few years.
• Sheryl Crow’s new album 100 Miles From Memphis was co-produced by guitar great Doyle Bramhall II, and it does indeed often capture the soulful spirit of the city in the title. It’s my favorite Crow record in a long while, and maybe sometime I’ll bore you with a post about how I’m slavishly devoted to the idea that Sheryl Crow is capable of another great record. This one is better in small doses – none of the tracks are anything less than solid, but they tend to mine the same territory repeatedly. Still, it’s a mildly adventurous album by Crow’s standards, and it’s to her great credit that she’s still giving it her best effort.
• Okay, I admit I’ve been really diving headlong into guitar-hero music lately, and it’s probably not an exaggeration to claim that I’ve listened to almost nothing but Clapton, Hendrix and Stevie Ray for almost a solid three week stretch. I finally picked up Hendrix’s recent Valleys Of Neptune, which is a fantastic album of unreleased stuff featuring several alternate versions of well-known tracks. Even better is the just-released Sony Legacy Edition of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Couldn’t Stand The Weather, which features a few unreleased tracks and an entire show recorded in Montreal. I’d also like to note that Craig Hopkins has created a fantastic tribute book to SRV. He has had 3000 copies self-published, and it will be published by Hal Leonard/BackBeat Books in two parts starting in the fall of this year (pre-order from Amazon here). But the full volume is probably worth grabbing now as a collector’s item. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the new guitar is a Fender Eric Clapton Signature Stratocaster.
• I caught Robert Plant & The Band of Joy out at The Woodlands about two weeks ago. Since the new record is not yet out (due Sept. 14), I was sort of expecting a lot of laid-back material in the vein of Raising Sand. I was also expecting an open revolt of Zep-heads. On both fronts, I was pleasantly surprised. Plant was in awesome form, and I guess it goes without saying that his band – which features Buddy Miller, Patty Griffin and Darrell Scott – was unreal. Plant was generous with the spotlight, and the crowd was deliriously enthralled. Oh, and Bettye LaVette opened the show and I’m pretty sure conjured a violent thunderstorm with her set-closing rendition of The Who’s “Love Reign Over Me”. Incredible.
• I’ve actually been listening The Allman Brothers. Dear God help us all.
• The Derek Trucks Band will be taking a break while Trucks works on music with his wife, Susan Tedeschi (!). The band’s parting shot is a double live album Roadsongs recorded in Chicago last year. It’s fantastic – everything I admire about Trucks’ band amped up to 11.
• Lest you think I’ve lost all touch with my roots, next weekend I’ll be heading to North Adams, MA, for the Solid Sound Festival, aka the Wilco Super-Dork Fest. My good friend Babalugats and I also have designs on visiting the Martin Guitar Factory in Nazareth, PA (which is close to ‘Lugats’ home in PA). He really wants me to try to weasel a “press credential” or something, but I think it’s safe to assume that every attendee at Solid Sound will be a music blogger.

'Grace Potter & The Nocturnals': The Ramblings Review

Grace Potter & The Nocturnals don’t seem like a band prone to second-guessing, but one might wonder when the opening track of their self-titled new record is a re-recording of a B-side from their previous album ("Paris (Ooh La La)"). But it’s easy to chalk that decision up to an abundance of confidence, especially when the rest of the record practically overflows with a newfound certainty about what their band is all about. Long associated with the jam-band circuit and often tagged unfairly as a blues-rock outfit, GPTN leave no doubt as to their intentions to be nothing more and nothing less than the Next Great American Rock and Roll Band.

To be sure, they’ve got all of the clichés down pat: a sexy, hip-shaking frontwoman; band members who look like they wandered off the set of Almost Famous; Flying V’s and Hammond B-3’s. If GPTN hit all the buttons of 1970’s rock and roll, they don’t let those influences weigh down this album. It is a thoroughly modern, often pop-inflected, take on classic rock and soul. And rather than try to bottle the magic of their live performances, the band is happy to let the record be its own beast. Slick, exuberant, and refreshingly devoid of self-consciousness, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals stands apart from its impressive predecessors.

There are things on this record that simply should not work. “Goodbye Kiss,” with its reggae-influenced riff, springs to mind, but I’ll be damned if that hook doesn’t bury itself in my brain. The coda of “Tiny Light” might seem a bit tacked on, except for the fact that it unloads at just the right point in the record’s sequence. Producer Mark Batson, who co-wrote about half the songs, certainly should get some credit for focusing the band’s talents and giving them just the proper coat of studio varnish.  As always, the Nocturnals for their part provide a rock-solid musical backdrop (new bassist Catherine Popper proves a particularly valuable addition, and guitarist Scott Tournet continues to evolve into a notable guitar hero).

When it comes to Potter herself, you could rattle off a list of obvious and apt comparisons - Janis Joplin, Stevie Nicks, Ann Wilson, Tina Turner – and what would be painfully obvious is how short the supply is of commanding frontwomen who both embrace and defy their femininity. Grace Potter has taken some shit in certain corners for wearing mini-dresses and high heels, but she’s nobody’s pop-tart. There’s no denying that GPTN have played the major-label game, but they’ve managed to balance the need for shameless promotion with the necessity of retaining their credibility.

I suppose I cut freewheelin’ albums like this a lot of slack, particularly at the onset of summer. My enthusiasm could be construed as backlash against my own fondness for gentle, navel-gazing singer-songwriters. Grace Potter may yet make that full album with T-Bone Burnett, or she may find in the next decade that shaking tambourines onstage night after night is a tough haul. But for now, not yet 30 years of age, Potter has plenty of rocking yet to do and this record should afford her and The Nocturnals the opportunity to do it for quite a while longer.

NEW (AWESOME) GRACE POTTER & THE NOCTURNALS ALBUM OUT NOW!

Well, several stabs at a proper review have false-started, but I wanted to get the word out about the new self-titled record from Grace Potter & The Nocturnals. 

The short version?  Their best yet, and right now my favorite album of 2010 (coming hot on the heels of another contender, Tift Merritt's See You On The Moon).  I wrung my hands a bit about this release, knowing that sessions with T-Bone Burnett were scrapped and the whole thing re-recorded.  But all that sweat and effort were worth it because this is the most eclectic, rocking thing I've heard in ages.  GPTN have long been a consistently engaging live act, but most fans would agree they've never quite bottled the magic in the studio.  This album remedies that and certainly ought to be a breakthrough for the band.

If that weren't enough to convince you, the record can be picked up for a song at a number of outlets:

• Amazon ($6.99)
• Amazon MP3 ($5.99)
• iTunes ($7.99, includes bonus track)
• Best Buy ($6.99, includes exclusive DVD of live tracks and interviews)

And check this out - the Nocturnals recorded a show at the Fillmore in SF back in December showcasing the new tunes (and a few older ones).  The video and audio versions are both availabe from iTunes, at a price of $9.99 each.

Consider this my opening salvo in the Grace Potter Hype Machine War.

UPDATE:  I completely missed this Relix interview with Potter back in April, which sheds a ton of light on the T-Bone sessions (and hints that the five tracks recorded are likely to see the light of day at some point).

UPDATE II:  And, of course, you can listen to the album over at GPTN's official site.

UPDATE III:  I should have directed you to Kenny's excellent GPTN site, ThisIsSomewhere.com.  It was actually the site that pointed me to that Relix interview.

It's been SEVEN years...

... since the last Gillian Welch studio album, Soul Journey.  At this rate, David Rawlings Machine will release another record before Welch does under her own name.