You know what I like - listening to a good folksy singer/songwriter on a Sunday. This week, after a bit of a post-holiday hiatus, I've selected 3 modern singer/songwriters for introduction and 1 pre-modern singer/songwriter who have had my attention for the past month or so. Take them in on a Sunday or whenever. The artists include Angel Olsen, Damien Jurado, Sun Kil Moon and Jonathan Richmond. All of these artist are clearly in the family of brooding genius. None of them are exactly like you and I. Now I've taken a bit of liberty calling Damien Jurado and Sun Kil Moon "modern". But as reincarnated version of guys that have been around since the early 90s I find them new. And unless you are super hip, you've probably (like me) not heard much about them before this year.
Angel Olsen - Burn Your Fire for No Witness
If there were Olsen triplets, Angel Olsen would be the somewhat neglected, extremely artistic and wonderfully individualistic Olsen middle child. The one with the brains and the looks and all the seriousness. As it is, she is unrelated apparently. Olsen is from Chicago - home to several great modern acoustic artists. I gather being stuck inside with -60 wind chill outside can result in a lot of studio skill.
On the recently released "Burn Your Fire for No Witness", Olsen exhibits several influences - Roy Orbison meets Siouxsie meets Neko Case meets Leonard Cohen. Ok, so she's definitely more Orbison/Cohen than Banshee. She's old world. My favourite songs include "Hi Five" and "High and Wild". But it's really all good. Simple lyrics, old world instrumentation but with the modern alt/indie edge. This is a lyrically emotional album, if anything, and admittedly the emotion is typically a bit, to a lot, on the dour side. Not a great deal of comedy although her dark lyrics are really quirky. There's explosive and tossed around body parts - tears blowing out of her eyes on "White Fire", bodies turned inside out on "Iota" and even shadows being thrown around in "Windows". There's also a persistent and wonderful theme of loneliness when not being truly alone expressed on several tracks. "Unfucktheworld" (great name) gives us the foretold lonely lyric "I am the only one now, you may not be around . . .", "High Five" has "Are you lonely too? Hi Five! So am I!" and a favourite moment of mine with the line "I'm stuck with you". And there's the image of dancing alone in your own era in "Dance Slow Decades" - arguably the most interesting musical track. To understand my references to Cohen - try "White Fire" or "Enemies". I adore the final track, "Windows" where Angel asks us to "open a window sometime" and consider "what's so wrong with the light?" Such an emergent lyric and track. Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel in Angel's world.
Angel Olsen - Hi Five Video: Hi Five
Damien Jurado - Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son
Thanks to whomever or whatever higher being created Damien Jurado. Such an amazing artist. This album just burns right in, right in step with an opening track that just steals you to a different, more fantastic time. Psychedelic at its core, but in such a way that its nearly impossible to compare to the old artists. I can't get him totally on influences. Yes, there's a Neil Young influence to his vocals. But the instrumentation is just not Neil at all. There's very little that's direct here. There's also very little, extremely little, that's not immensely enjoyable to listen to, artistically intense, and vocally brilliant. In the old world terms, if you like Yes, CSN, Young, Santana . . . you are going to love Jurado. No crap, don't even bother thinking twice before buying.
Jurado's most recent album "Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son" is a fantastic follow up to 2012's "Maraqopa". This is his third collaboration with Richard Swift (recording engineer responsible for mixing some great psychedelic - e.g Foxygen, Stereolab, the Shins). On "Brothers" Jurado is much edgier, using tons of modern keyboard bits - really space age stuff - reminiscent at times of Bowie or Pink Floyd. There's a bit of that Bowie futurism here that's quite fascinating. Again, mixed with the Spanish rhythms. Jurado is from Seattle Washington and has actually been recording since the 90s. I have to admit, I'm a bit embarrassed that I did not know him before this year.
Maybe my favourite track here is "Metallic Cloud". Such a great futuristic vibe and while I'm not sure I fully understand the lyrics at all (actually I'm sure I don't), I would put this track right by Space Oddity on my spaced out futuristic tracks. Another song to which I have no idea what's being discussed or even conceptualised.
"Jericho Road" sounds like a track that should have been sung by the Spiders from Mars. I love the swirling background noises here - everything from choir bells to swirling space copters.
The Santana influences can clearly be heard on tracks like "Silver Timothy" and "Silver Donna". For CSN fans, check out "Suns in Our Mind" and "Plains to Crash". I haven't actually figured out how you crash a plain yet.
When done with this record, please go back and listen to the absolutely stunning "Maraqopa" album. And please know that, according to its title track, "all are welcome in!" I'd be surprised if anyone who likes music would not find something to grab hold of here once inside.
Damien is playing in Shoreditch in early March. Can't wait to see him live.
Damien Jurado - Silver Timothy video: Silver Timothy
Sun Kil Moon - Benji
Could 2014 have started out any better musically? I really don't see how. Earlier in the month of January, I'm thinking we're headed into a real modernish continuation of the hip hop influenced modern rocker, only to be struck by 3 newish old school folk American rock artists who are redefining American rock again in just the space where many of us raised on so called "classic rock" have been dying to go back. Welcome then the third and maybe best release of them all - Sun Kil Moon's "Benji"
Sun Kil Moon aka Mark Kozelek comes from San Francisco California. The former lead man for the band Red House Painters has released a few albums more recently un Sun Kil Moon which have received nearly universal praise. His latest album to me is by far his best work to date, a truly American story book much like Sufjan Stevens work. Classically inspired, but lyrically amazingly honest. Freaking great stories and thoughts told carefully and without artistic pause or prevention whatsoever.
Harsh honesty may not suit everyone. Here there's the added uncomfortable combination of honesty and death on a personal level. Several tracks here concern family - in"Carissa", Moon is "paying respects to his second cousin" who died in her 30s in a freak household accident. On "I Can't Live without My Mother's Love", Moon speaks to the soul of many of us - that we are hurt and beat by the world outside and could not survive without our mother's love. In that case, Moon is very personal in speaking to his need for his mother to continue to live beyond 75 - "when the day comes for her to let go, I'll die off like a lemon tree in the snow." I know the feeling having lost my mom several years ago. So accurate really even if uncomfortable to discuss. "I Love My Dad" is a song where Moon recounts memories with his Dad - everything from listening to Edgar Winter to his dad's advice not to listen to gossip and to "learn to pick your punches." Much of it good, but as Moon says, his Dad was not a perfect man.
"Pray for Newtown" is a significant song for our times. In it, Moon goes through several recent modern horror stories - everything from the Norway killer, the Batman killer to Newtown. He describes his thoughts and experience which must in many ways be all of our experience including the way we all take the news personally - "I felt it in my bones" - even if we aren't related to the people who were killed. " Best of all is the call for us to "take a moment of pause for the kids who died in Newtown" and further to realize that these children are heroes - that they died to make us think of how to do things right. What have we done though. Moon repeatedly implores of us to remember these kids, but have we done that? There's a reason he keeps asking us to do this.
Then there's the elegant coolness of "Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes" another song about death made familiar by the news. Here the victim is the opposite of the Newtown kids which is stark in and of itself. Really cool song and not really something I had heard before. The song is ADHD in action, news reports, memories of current and past events mixed in with his own situation in just a confusing and somewhat troubled mess. It's as if the artist just cracked open everything going through his mind on a scattered day - but with the premise that these stories of killers, death cults (James Jones), drug overdoses (James Gandolfini) and everything leave marks in our psyche and are just plainly too many. You could here him reference Ramirez pentagram tattoo - obviously an image carved on all of our brains if you grew up in that era. There's a very cool musical raw blues vibe here. Just a likeable track all the way around. I know its not right, but the track makes me think - did we really want Richard Ramirez to simply die of natural causes? I'm not sure about that but his existence as a scar in my psyche as well. He is the representation of my nightmares quite often.
Not all is death. There's "Dogs" a very funny song about his love life and the games people play in relationships and just the general weirdness of it all. "Ben's My Friend" is a humorous take on being middle aged and out of touch with being cool.
To call these songs unique is probably a bit of an understatement. They are so detailed and lush.
Sorry, but no vids yet
Sun Kil Moon - Richard Ramirez Died of Natural Causes - Richard Ramirez
Jonathan Richman - Vampire Girl - Essential Recordings
Well its time to move from the modern and take a step back. I've been infatuated lately with the songs of the highly eccentric Natick, Massachusettes native Johnathan Richman. So I picked up "Vampire Girl: Essential Recordings" and have not been disappointed at all. This is just a great collection of great songs by what now sounds like a very modern day musician - no longer as eccentric when heard nearly 20 years or more after written
Songs like "Vampire Girl" (1995), "I Was Dancing at a Lesbian Bar" (1992) and "Let Her Go into the Darkness" are just so freaking classically funny. That poor little vampire girl, "Is she in heaven? Is she in hell? Is she a sex industry professional?" Lol. And who wouldn't rather be dancing at the hip shaking lesbian bar rather than the uptight bar Richman first visits - "at the first bar things were stop and stare, at this bar things were laissez-faire." And yes, you must take the sheets to the laundromat after your girlfriend cheats on you and you "let her go into the darkness" with her new boyfriend. "Laundromat! Laundromat! Laundromat!" Just sooooo cool!
There's old Modern Lovers stuff too like the odd fairy tale of "Harpo Plays his Harp", the comic gold of the California Desert Party ("backpacks and petroglyphs and kit fox and pack rats) and everyone's experience of "Dancing Late at Night" ("I can smell that falafel stand . . . dancing' dancin' late at night") Every lyric is rich enough to remind us of how silly modern life really is.
And there's of course Jonathan's country phase with the track "Since She Started to Ride"(1990) and "You're Crazy for Taking the Bus". Some of these tracks remind me of lyrics my friend Todd Eckert used to pen as a joke. There's - "She'd live out in the pasture, if she only had a tail, no I don't see her much she see started with horses." And there's the ethos of the bus rider - "They don't want my name, and I don't want their baggage claim." Freaking great.
In "I East with Gusto, Damn you Bet" Richman goes straight up bohemian poet - as he apparently eats with so much gusto that people die and stuff. Reminds me of the old comedy of Steve Martin.
The compilation is rounded out by Richman's ode to Boston "Twilight in Boston". Really a nice song in many ways reminiscent of Lou Reed's tunes on New York - run at the pace of "Coney Island Baby." Still wondering how crummy it would be if Win Butler did one of these tunes on growing up in Houston ("around the corner from River Oaks" - lol).
Jonathan Richman - I Was Dancng at a Lesbian Bar (Live - Connan Obrien): Lesbian Bar
Jonathan Richman - Let Her Go Into the Darkness (Live): Laundromat!
That's it for now. Hope you enjoy!
