New music

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This article was published 20/02/2020 (2370 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

POP / ROCK

Drive-By Truckers
The Unraveling (ATO)

If American Band, the 2016 pre-election album by Drive-By Truckers, was an angry warning of what America might become, then The Unraveling is a reckoning — an assessment of what’s happened since and an anguished plea to put an end to the bleeding and desolation, both literal and figurative.

Truckers’ singer-songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley have made a career of exploring and deconstructing the myths of their region and country, but they’ve never been so soul-searching and despairing as on this record

Working within their traditional southern-rock framework, with Hood and Cooley’s keening guitars revving over a rock-steady beat from Matt Patton and Brad Morgan, coloured and leavened by the vamping key and synth textures of Jay Gonzalez, the Drive-Bys kick off their 12th studio album with Rosemary With a Bible and a Gun, a Hood song about a woman on the run, heading north from Memphis.

What’s she fleeing? Well, there’s plenty to choose from.

Armageddon’s Back in Town hints at the dire possibilities of the Trump World Order, Cooley interjects with Slow Ride Argument, an introspective allegory about struggling to keep one’s cool (and a nod to the Foghat classic), and then Hood blows up the album with four songs aimed squarely at those who have created the U.S.A.’s chaotic socio-political circus. Thoughts and Prayers angrily addresses the horror of mass shootings, 21st Century recounts the lack of hope in hundreds of small towns, Heroin Again decries opiate chic and Babies in Cages attacks Trump’s immigration policies.

Cooley goes one further with Grievance Merchants, which explores the social conditions that create mass killers, incels and white supremacists, and the band ends The Unraveling with the slow, beseeching blues rock of Awaiting Resurrection, which wonders whether salvation will ever be possible.

It’s all powerful stuff.

★★★★ out of five

STREAM THESE: Thoughts and Prayers; Babies in Cages; Grievance Merchants

—  John Kendle

 

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POP / ROCK

Huey Lewis and the News
Weather (BMG)

Weather is the first album of original songs from Huey Lewis and the News in nearly two decades and it may also be their last.

Lewis has been suffering for decades from an inner-ear disorder that causes afflictions like hearing loss and vertigo, but the condition got much worse just days after the band finished mixing the songs on Weather with legendary studio wizard Bob Clearmountain.

Lewis suddenly lost the ability to hear amplified music before a January 2018 concert in Dallas and it’s been a struggle ever since, putting at risk any more recording sessions and live dates.

Even if it’s just seven songs totalling barely 26 minutes, Weather sounds complete nevertheless, with the band’s trademark sounds and usually festive moods present and accounted for.

First single Her Love is Killin’ Me feels like a dusted-off classic from their 1980s heyday, and it’s nearly that old, having been written back when guitarist Chris Hayes was still in the San Francisco-formed band. While We’re Young, in light of what is now known, opens the album like a premonition — “Life is short/Let’s take advantage of every opportunity.”

Pretty Girls Everywhere upholds the band’s custom of covers from the 1950s and ‘60s which goes all the way back to its second album, Picture This. The group has even recorded two full albums of covers, including its previous studio release, Soulsville, a 2010 collection of Stax deep cuts. Here, Eugene Church’s timeless tune includes some rolicking backing vocals and piano.

Acoustic guitar and lap steel bathe One of the Boys in country sounds, as it was originally written by Lewis for Willie Nelson. It ends the album on another poignant note: “Playing with my friends/Till the music ends.”

All in all, Weather is a short but sweet addition to the Huey Lewis and the News catalogue, with its best songs worthy of inclusion in its next “Greatest Hits” package.

★★★1/2 stars 

STREAM THESE: Her Love is Killin’ Me; One of the Boys

— Pablo Gorondi, The Associated Press

 

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COUNTRY

Tami Neilson
Chickaboom! (Outside Music)

While it’s easy enough to find relocated Canadian musicians sprinkled around the globe doing good works (including former Winnipeggers Marcel Soulodre in France and Ben “Son of Dave” Darvill in the United Kingdom), you’s be hard-pressed to find an artist as decorated outside her native land as Tami Neilson.

The Canuck-born singer-songwriter has been based in Auckland, New Zealand, since 2007 and over the course of her career there has won a stack of awards for her genuine rockabilly/country-soul style and performances. Chickaboom! is a walloping set of tracks that showcases Neilson’s terrific pipes, as well as her ability to deliver a song with a combination of brassiness and subtlety that sets her apart from the majority of country singers.

From the opening track — the swampy twangfest Call Your Mama — Neilson sets the stage for the cool assortment that is to follow. Ten Tonne Truck is homage of sorts to the snapping Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two beat from ages ago, while the work-song grind of 16 Miles of Chain evokes images of lost love and dangerous liaisons.

Neilson can carry a ballad as well as anyone, too. You Were Mine is a slow-melting, ‘60s big-beat sound that connects the deep-hued hurt linking Patsy Cline, Tina Turner and Etta James with passionate and fiery wails. Neilson’s brother Jay, who plays bass and rhythm guitar, also adds his vocal talents to the barn-burning rockabilly killer Tell Me That You Love Me and the simply splendid Everly Brothers-esque Any Fool With a Heart.

On Sister Mavis, Neilson reveals her actual inspirations lie just a little outside of country music as she name-checks the tremendous triad of artists that is Mavis Staples, Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. It’s all over in under half an hour, but this little jaunt into Neilson’s booming world of song is worth the trip. 

★★★★

STREAM THESE: Hey Bus Driver!, Any Fool With a Heart

— Jeff Monk 

 

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JAZZ

Christian McBride
The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons (Mack Avenue)

February is Black History Month, a fact that’s impossible to ignore for those who follow jazz. The seminal place of African-Americans in the jazz world is unquestionable, as is the jazz world’s involvement in the civil rights movement. This album is a powerful exploration of the voices of four icons in that movement, delivered in the context of an 18-piece jazz band and chorus led by Philadelphia-born bassist Christian McBride.

Voiceovers present the words of four icons — Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King — with jazz riffs linking the tracks. The final track features the words of Barack Obama on the night he was elected U.S. president in 2008.

In the opening Overture, each of the voices is heard. Then the four icons are reflected with sequential introductions from Parks to Malcolm X and so on. Each introduction leads into an instrumental track reflecting the persona of that icon. There are many standout musicians in the orchestra, with saxophonist Ron Blake, pianist Geoffey Keezer and drummer Terreon Gully offering strong leadership. Soloist Alicia Olatuja drives the track on Malcolm X.

The music is a perfect container for the words. The large ensemble offers the appropriate mode for the topic; a big sound with serious depth. The ensemble writing is solid, with choral or solo portions that make the listener sit up and take notice.

This is undoubtedly an album that has a strong message, but one that is delivered with just the right mix of moods. Examples are the wild Rumble in the Jungle, or the beautiful voice of poet Sonia Sanchez portraying Rosa Parks. The words of all four icons, plus Obama, leave the listener truly moved. This is an important album, not just for February.

★★★★1/2

— Keith Black