Vic Chesnutt

Rest In Peace Vic Chesnutt (1964-2009)

The Felice Brothers Yonder Is The Clock

Wow, these guys were tied with The Hold Steady's Stay Positive for Tim Van Huss's Album of the year 2008 with their superb eponymously-titled album (see my July 2009 post on 2008 albums) . Their formula did not change on Yonder Is The Clock. This fourth full length album is another great slice of Americana, with its melancholic Old West nostalgia. Again, they interpret that sound so rooted in the upstate New York Hudson River Valley/Catskill Mountain school of roots folk made popular by Dylan, The Band, and Levon Helm. They have everything from the decedents of Eastern European folk music to dust bowl fiddle music and often in the same song. Most attractively though with so much of what I like about great folk music is that ability to transform you to a dusty old path (while riding on an 'ole paint') on the plains or an old saloon in California or something that you would not normally experience except in maybe movies. And maybe some early 20th Century dime store novels. Let's call it sepia-tone rock.

I think it also speaks to how literate a group like The Felice Brothers are. I am reading back my opening part of the review and thinking it sounds like I am talking more about a great book I just read rather, than an record. So for the singer/songwriter types out there this just really does it for me. I had the album very early in the 2009 year and just now getting around to reviewing it.
It's hard to find words for great literate groups like this who encompass their sound around fiddles, accordions, acoustic guitars, tubas, wash boards and the like (Dylan and The Band's Basement Tapes for example). I pick my favorite song that was really kind of a single, if a band like The Felice Brothers actually record with singles in mind, called Run Chicken Run as the song that represents the feel of this excellent roots folk rock album.

If it's from Austin...Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses

You go to Nashville to write songs, but you go to Austin to play'em. -Tim Van Huss

At the beginning of 2009 on Austin City Limits I got my first taste of Ryan Bingham. I liked him immediately for one of the tunes he played called Hard Times from his debut album mescalito, released in 2008 . He plays a combination of country-influenced blues, roots rock, folk rock, country & western and all the various manifestations of the Great Americana Movement so dominant in Texas and especially Austin. A former professional rodeo "star" he abandoned it to pursue a career in music. In his late 20's when mescalito was released he sounded like he had been at this craft for 50 years. With a voice like sand paper filtered through whiskey and hand-rolled cigarettes, this up-and-comer can phrase as well as Bob Dylan or Willie Nelson. The debut album stayed pretty much in that Texas roadhouse Americana Vein.

Enter 2009 with a band and a new album on Lost Highway records. Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses' Roadhouse Sun bursts on the scene this year with a rock & roll album, very similar to how label mate Lucinda Williams did it with her masterpiece Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. Both had been knocking around with blues, country and western, and folk for their early careers and both turn out to take the best of what always makes rock and roll great, by blurring the lines of all and just plain rawking out, with a fine, fine gumbo. There's even a nice paean to The Byrds and The Beatles on the track called Dylan's Hard Rain. He writes the beautiful heartbreak ballad Snake Eyes and follows it with a nice fuzzy guitar feedback tune called Endless Ways that could easily fit on Uncle Tupelo's Still Feel Gone or Neil Young's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.

The album is nicely produced, the tracks are all strong and although not yet at the masterpiece level, I will expect that due to his young age, he has plenty of time to write an album of those I am comparing him to. With this crack band that already sounds like its hitting its stride we should see some great things for Texas and the rest of us in the years to come.

Dinosaur jr. Farm

Dinosuar jr. is primarily the realm of J Mascis. As a hard rock guitar band with plenty of popular hooks to grant accessibility, Dinosuar jr. remains in indie rock land. That's okay by me. The 2009 release of Farm marks the new traditionalist sound that defines their music, yet manages to stay fresh every album (almost every album; there are a couple of in-betweens after the brilliant Where You Been such as Without A Sound that put horribleness on a new level).

Scronk and Roll is alive and well on Farm. J follows U2's formula. Although production value increases throughout the years, they continue to make great albums without changing the angle too much. When Where You Been first came out, CD's and the digital production markets were starting to go big time. Bands like Dinosaur jr. recorded these in a way that begged that you play it loud because it didn't sound good at lower volume. After the years have gone by, you can record an album like Farm and it sounds loud and good at a low volume. Farm pretty much continues where the excellent Beyond left off. Both albums are a lot less about fuzzy guitars and more about hard lead guitars, epic drum beatings, and crunch. I like J as a singer but he's put away his longing angst for more adult singing. The band is truly on the foreground here. Maybe for the first time Dinosaur jr. sounds like a band and not a J Mascis side project. No where is this more evident than the fact that Lou Barlow contributes two great tunes. There's also bonus disc featuring a cover of The Zombies' Whenever You're Ready.

Took me a while to getting around to reviewing this album. Have had it almost all year and listened to it many times, but subsequent listens keep this album on my barometer of good tuneage for 2009.

John Fogerty The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again

Unlike the James Gang album by the same title, John Fogerty, who really is The Blue Ridge Rangers, released its sophmore effort 36 years after its debut. However, nice job. This prog country effort starts with two bluegrass rave-ups. An album of covers of classic country soul Paradise and Never Ending Song of Love start this terrific album out with a fun bluegrass bang. We next hit the stride with traditional country with just beautiful fiddle and steel guitar on Buck Ownens's I Don't Care.

You can't not love the great cover of Ray Price's classic I'll Be There done with such fun reverence, again with a bluegrass style and beat. The album is primarily acoustic (some steel and electric guitar) is superior in every way to the debut. I suspect because of superior recording these days.

What is most striking, I have determined, is the absolute conclusion of why Creedence Clearwater Revival is so much of a country and country rock band. Pure Americana, as no more evidenced by the great Moody River. It could have easily fit in on any one of the seven CCR albums.

We even have a great interpretation of the sappy, The Judd's Heaven Is Just A Sin Away. Fogerty's expression of country music as filtered through one of the cooler left wing musicians who has been making statements about anti-establishment country music for 40 years. And this is way before the present crop of alt-country, rural, urban hipsters, ever understood the great songwriting contained in country & western and Americana style music of the Modern Era.

The singing guests of singer/songwriter fame include the likes of Don Henley on Garden Party and Bruce Springsteen dueting on the great Everly Brothers tune When Will I be Loved. Plus the review would be incomplete without mentioning the guitar slinging of Americana Artist of the Year Buddy Miles.

This is a superb country rock album. Buy it.

Built To Spill There Is No Enemy

As with every BTS album I have ever bought, upon first listen, I say "meh, it's not that great" and then about 5 listens later I am obsessed with the album and can't quit playing it. Such as the case with There Is No Enemy. I have not given the full five listens yet, but I am already just loving the new album from this indie prog rock band from Boise, ID. Oddly enough, this album has turned out to be one of the most accessible if not the MOST accessible BTS album I've bought. The songs are shorter on this album. I think all are 6 minutes or less. And I will admit there is a little pop lilt going on here to. There's also a real live melancholy here that kind of 'ghosts' around on the other albums. BTS can sometimes be maudlin in an oddly sarcastic way. I think that is front man Doug Martsch's M.O. anyway. It feels quite a bit like You In Reverse.

There Is No Enemy feels like it could easily be at home with adult alternative or indie record listeners. On the song Life's A Dream it sounds like maybe they've been listening to Pet Sounds Beach Boys before breaking into a sort of protracted Pink Floyd guitar riff. The opening song Aisle 13 is classic BTS opening song. Always a nice ambient rocker to get your attention without rattling your teeth.

I always am amazed at how literate Doug Martsch is anyway. And not just literate for writing sake, but the music is literate too. I guess I always go back to saying this is modern prog rock. Something I have always liked probably for that reason. As always the guitar playing is muscular and wiry. Whether it's the poetry of the words or the complex musicianship BTS is such a fine sounding band that never sounds old. They keep getting better.