CD Odyssey Disc 423: Steve Earle

After an action packed weekend that featured two parties, ninety minutes of Ultimate and 45 holes of disc golf, I’ve just awakened from a nap refreshed, and ready to take on the world – or at least this next music review.

Disc 423 is…Exit 0

Artist: Steve Earle

Year of Release: 1987

What’s up with the Cover?  It’s a road sign, alerting you to the fact that just ahead is the turn that will take you to Steve Earle and the Dukes’ second album.  I’ve always liked this cover, and have lived in hope to one day see this sign off of some highway and take that off-ramp to awesome.  I guess metaphorically, I took it already when I bought the record.

How I Came To Know It: My folks own this album, and although I love it they almost never play it.  It was an early purchase once I was out on my own, unless this is their copy that I’ve merely liberated years ago when I went away to university.

How It Stacks Up:  I have fourteen studio albums of original material by Steve Earle, and since I’ve already reviewed eight of them, you know competition is fierce.  “Exit 0” is one of his best, and I’ll put it 2^nd or 3^rd, in a statistical tie with “Guitar Town.”

Rating:  5 stars.  Yeah, that just happened.

In 1986, Steve Earle exploded on the alt-country music scene with “Guitar Town” and in 1988 he crossed over into mainstream music with the monster-selling “Copperhead Road.”  Sandwiched between these two massive commercial successes was “Exit 0” an understated and oft-forgotten album likely better than both of those.

How an album as moving, melodic and emotive as “Exit 0” could be forgotten is a mystery that has always left me scratching my head.  It could be the production it ended up with on compact disc.  In the late eighties, a lot of albums were still recorded for vinyl, and then directly transferred to digital without any remastering to better translate them to that format.

This often leaves albums like “Exit 0”, which are recorded at a very low volume and that need to be turned up overly loud just to get proper sound separation.  (In the early oughts, record companies would compensate for this earlier error by over-amplifying everything for a few years).  Fortunately, the songwriting on this record is so strong that it easily overcomes this production deficiency, and loses none of its emotional impact.

This is Steve Earle at his ‘lonely highway’ best, painting the portraits of ordinary men living rich and sometimes tragic internal lives.  These are men who are never satisfied, but like a Dylan Thomas poem, still manage to sing in their chains.

The opening guitar chords of the album’s first song “Nowhere Road” are reminiscent of the previous year’s “Guitar Town” but apparently minus the latter’s optimism.  The opening lyric tells you that for his sophomore effort, Earle will have more than a few words about the empty spaces between what we expect of life, and what’s delivered:

“There’s a road, in Oklahoma

Straighter than a preacher

Longer than a memory

And it goes forever onward

Been a good teacher

For a lot of country boys like me.”

This lonely road could just as easily be the album that follows, as Earle paints the stark and the beautiful together as artfully as a John Ford movie shot in Death Valley.

My favourite song on the record is “No. 29” a song that showcases the empty glory of Friday night high school football in America.  It captures the tragic core of that experience better in three and a half minutes than B.G. Bissinger’s novel “Friday Night Lights” can manage in three hundred and fifty pages.  The slow, sad pacing of “No. 29”, tells of a star running back who is injured in a high school game, and now only has memories to cling to.  The football imagery is great, but Earle doesn’t miss a moment to remind the listener what this song is really about for most of the town’s residents:

“I was born and raised here, this town’s my town

Everybody knows my name

But ever since the glass plant closed down

Things ‘round here ain’t never been the same.”

Our hero’s focus now lies in taking the ‘new’ “No. 29” out for a steak sometimes, and feeling the scar ache in his leg, which reminds him of his past glory.  Springsteen’s “Glory Days” might make you nostalgic for your youth, but “No. 29” is a reminder that not everyone gets out of it in one piece.

Other songs show that there are darker directions down the Nowhere Road, such as in “Angry Young Man” where a man stands before a gas station – gun in hand – and apology like an unfulfilled promise the song’s refrain reflects in his mind:

“Mama I hope that you understand

This ain’t no place for an angry young man.”

With such awful depths, it is a good thing that “Exit 0” manages to show the lighter side of blue collar frustration, with songs like “The Week of Living Dangerously,” which recounts a man’s decision to ‘take a left when he’d usually take a right’ on his way home from work, and ends up a week later with his wife bailing him out of a Mexican jail.

Even in this song and elsewhere the ‘I’m in love with my car’ moments on “Sweet Little ‘66” this record have an undercurrent of sadness, with a lot of wheels spinning in the muddy ditches of back country towns, and not gaining much traction.

Yet throughout the experience, Earle imparts a square-jawed determination in his music that tells you that win, lose or draw, if you stand tall and rail back at whatever life slings at you, sometimes that’s enough.

This determination is reflected in the final track, “It’s All Up To You” which provides the perfect book end to the “Nowhere Road” the record starts you down.  To a slow country drum beat, and a low, loose and haunting guitar riff, Earle reminds us:

“No matter which way the wind blows

It’s always cold when you’re alone

Ain’t no candle in the window

You’ve got to find your own way home

The rain ain’t gonna hurt you

It’s come to wash away your blues

It’s all up to you.”

This record is quiet, but it sneaks up on you with this message.  You can feel trapped in your circumstance, but in the end, it is how you react to your situation that measures your worth in this world.  The Nowhere Road may be straight and stark, but where it goes is all up to you.  Coming from a town where I never felt totally at home, and finding myself in a city where I totally do, I can relate to the sentiment.  If I didn’t appreciate every moment of the journey to this point, or if I miss any of the points to come then I wasn’t listening closely enough to what Earle has to tell us on this record.

The album is a masterfully paced thirty eight minutes, twenty one seconds of music that has a quiet beauty, that is well worth turning up and paying attention to.

Best tracks:  All tracks – there’s nary a week track on this record.

CD Odyssey Disc 422: Neil Young

Just back from a good workout, and with a belly full of pizza, I’ve returned to amaze and entertain you, dear readers, with more random music reviews.

Disc 422 is…Tonight’s the Night

Artist: Neil Young

Year of Release: 1975

What’s up with the Cover?  For the second review in a row, we get another black and white shot of the artist.  This time it is Neil Young, looking well and truly out of it, but still totally in control of the microphone in front of his unkempt face.  That’s Neil, alright.

How I Came To Know It: This is just me being a Neil Young fan, and drilling through his back catalogue.  I bought this album fairly recently – certainly in the last decade or so.

How It Stacks Up:  I have fifteen Neil Young albums, and I like all of them to varying degrees but this one couldn’t quite keep up.  I’d say it is 13^th or 14^th on the list.

Rating:  3 stars, which tells you how consistently good Neil Young albums are.

Ever wonder what happened to all those hippies from 1967’s summer of love?  Sure, most of them probably went off and got jobs, but what about those few who were still drifting around Haight-Ashbury and other haunts?  By 1975, they’d be in their mid to late twenties.  Likely a little more disillusioned, and maybe a little more disposed to a harder and sadder edged folk music.  I’d like to think they were listening to this album.

“Tonight’s the Night” has Neil showing a bit more of a rock edge to his folksy, thoughtful music.  He works in blues riffs, and the electric guitar is dirty, and with a hint of deliberate distortion.  This album’s sound heralds the coming many years later of hard-edged rock albums like “Freedom” and “Sleeps with Angels.”

Unfortunately, Neil is still finding his feet with this sound back in 1975, and it shows.  The music hits a lot of deliberately discordant notes, but instead of sounding innovative, it just knocks you out of your enjoyment of the song.  The big exception to this is “Come on Baby Let’s Go Downtown” which is the perfect blend of hippy protest music with straight ahead southern guitar rock.  This song had me thinking about another Neil Young song that was a minor hit twenty years later, “Downtown” with a similar sound and vibe.  It would be hard to imagine the later track without his early work on “Tonight’s the Night.”

Other songs are softer and much more in the hippy folksy tradition of Neil’s earlier albums.  In particular, “Mellow My Mind” and “Roll another Number (for the Road)” – songs which deliver exactly the vibe their titles suggest they will.  I love the opening lines of “Roll another Number”:

"It's too dark

 To put the keys

 In my ignition,

 And the mornin' sun is yet

 To climb my hood ornament."

While not quite as brilliant as Gordon Lightfoot’s opening to “Early Morning Rain”, these lines paint a pretty fine picture of the end of an all-night bender.  Instead of finding himself at the end of a runway, Neil wakes up in his car which is probably a step up.  It could go tragically from here, but Neil keeps the mood light, praising the ‘open hearted people’ he’s been meeting along the way.  If it weren’t for the hood ornament reference, I’d have guessed he was driving an old VW bus.

Much as there are bright spots on this album (and I’ve just mentioned a few) overall, the record doesn’t grab me the way it should.  It feels a little unfinished, and the production values may be deliberately rough around the edges, but they’re too rough and they mostly serve to distract.

The guitar work is pretty in many places, and brilliant in a few, and Neil’s high and yearning vocals always transport me, but the odd chord choices in places seem deliberately in quest of the new sound that he won’t master for another few years yet.

Recently I was out with friends listening to music, and someone put on a Neil Young song that sounded familiar, but that I couldn’t place.  When I asked what it was, they said it was from “Tonight’s the Night” and it surprised me, since I own this album.  But the truth is I don’t put it on much, and that’s because it is just a bit uneven, and in places Neil loses me in his own musical meanderings.

This record has all the makings of greatness, but it can’t seem to find its focus.  That was probably OK for hippies in 1975, but for me in 2012, I wish it were just one notch better.  Yes, it is good, but Neil is so much better than good.

Best tracks:  Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown, Roll another Number (for the Road), Tonight’s the Night Pt. 2.

CD Odyssey Disc 421: Elvis Costello

A good bathroom book should be episodic in nature for obvious reasons, and my current selection is no exception. “This is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles since Punk and Disco” by Garry Mulholland is a musical trip down memory lane from 1976 – 2001. Mulholland is writing about singles, not albums, and I find myself disagreeing with his choices as often as I’m with him, but he’s given me a lot of good ideas on how to write a better review. Thanks, Garry!

I’m currently only up to 1981, and my next album is by an artist that Mulholland has already featured regularly.

Disc 421 is…The Very Best of Elvis Costello and the Attractions

Artist: Elvis Costello

Year of Release: 1994 but music from 1977-1986

What’s up with the Cover?  A black and white head shot of Elvis Costello.  It is inoffensive enough, but hardly imaginative.

How I Came To Know It: This is one of Sheila’s discs.  I had heard of Elvis Costello before I met her, but she is the first person to properly introduce me to some of his music, and this compilation was my first real exposure.

How It Stacks Up:  Frequent readers will know this, but for those just arriving on my scene, ‘best of’ albums don’t stack up.  They’re not real albums; they’re compilations, and so they don’t rate being formally rated.

Rating:  N/A.  As above, you can’t rate a ‘best of’ as an album.  It just doesn’t make sense.  I guess I could judge it against other compilations, but that’s not how I roll.  I roll randomly.

When I rolled this album randomly I proudly announced, “I’m planning to praise the music, but savage Costello himself.”  At the time it seemed like a good bit of fun, given how much of a critical darling Costello is, both in his own mind and without.

My plan was blunted a bit by the fact that I already gave Costello the gears back when I reviewed the Juliet Letters at Disc 114 where he desperately deserved it.  It is a lot harder to savage the guy for his earlier work from 1977-1986, particularly the first six of those years, which produced some pretty amazing tracks.

Costello has a lot of musical influences, and in various tracks you’ll hear punk, reggae, ska and country (in fact, “Good Year for the Roses” is from an entire album of old school country covers).  Whatever style he is drawing inspiration from, Costello blends it with his own unique up-tempo syncopation pop and mostly makes it work.

As readers will know, I am not a fan of the ‘best of’ record, but this one is tastefully handled.  At twenty-two tracks it could easily be too long, but Costello tends to write very short little pop songs, and each one is different enough that you don’t start to feel overburdened until around “Shipbuilding” at Track 18, and to be fair that’s only because the last few songs are a lot weaker, coming after Costello’s golden age.

I was also appreciative that the record is put together chronologically allowing a relative neophyte like me to have a sampling through Costello’s evolving sound.  Since he is an artist that changes a lot over the years, this was really helpful to me in keeping my ear tuned to his sound, even if it were a fairly quick journey.

It also helped me really appreciate why he was such a critical darling early in his career.  Costello delivers exceptional emotional range.  “Alison” is a classic song for the lovelorn wishing for a love that will never flower, and at the other end “Good Year for the Roses” is an almost equal expression of the wheels coming off a relationship sputtering to a tragic end.

At the same time as he’s delivering thoughtful love songs, Costello equally masters political commentary with “(What’s So Funny ‘bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” and “Clubland,” the latter of which captures the vacuous world of clubbing, featuring youth who feel the future is so bleak that all they have left is to drink, drug and dance their way into oblivion.  As the song so succinctly ends:

“Some things come in common these days

Your hands and work aren't steady.”

All these songs could be released today and be huge hits, but I can only assume they were before their time, because a quick look at the ever-infallible Wikipedia shows that his best chart position for this period (even in his home U.K.) was #2 with the fairly forgettable “Oliver’s Army” and he mostly struggled to crack top forty.  In the U.S. and Canada it was even worse.  No wonder he was driven to write the scathing “Radio Radio” with lyrics like:

“You either shut up or get cut up, they don't wanna hear about it

It's only inches on the reel-to-reel

And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools

Tryin' to anaesthetise the way that you feel.”

I also hate the radio, so lines like this really appeal to me, and it is a fine little pop song to boot.  Don’t feel bad, Elvis – not getting radio play usually means you’re doing something right.

I am not overwhelmed emotionally by Elvis Costello, but this record was – as advertised – a good sampling of his best work, and on this listen I found a deeper appreciation for his skill as a songwriter.  His delivery doesn’t always agree with me, but is suits the sound he’s trying to create, so I’ll even give him a pass on that.  “The Juliet Letters” left a very bad taste in my mouth, and it was nice to hear a different, better side of Elvis Costello.  I doubt I’ll be running out to buy his studio albums, but I will be pulling this ‘best of’ off the shelf a little more often in future.

Best tracks:  Alison, (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea, Pump It Up, Radio Radio, (What’s So Funny ‘bout) Peace Love and Understanding, Clubland, Watch Your Step, A Good Year for the Roses, Beyond Belief, Everyday I Write the Book.

CD Odyssey Disc 420: Holly Cole Trio

Back from another great game of Ultimate and lunch at my favourite Victoria diner, Floyd’s, and ready to write a blog entry.

Disc 420 is…Don’t Smoke in Bed

Artist: Holly Cole Trio

Year of Release: 1993

What’s up with the Cover?  Holly Cole is apparently ‘relaxing’ by sitting awkwardly in a photography studio.  This cover is alright, but it always bugs me that I can’t tell what kind of shoes Holly is wearing, or even if she is wearing shoes.  If she is, I suspect they are some variant on those clunky early nineties monstrosities women wore back then.  So not jazz.

How I Came To Know It: I think I saw a video for “I Can See Clearly Now” and fell in love with Cole’s voice, and went out and bought it shortly thereafter.  It’s not a great video, but the song shines through.

How It Stacks Up:  Holly Cole has ten or so studio albums, and a bunch of compilations and live albums besides, but like a lot of Canadians, this is the only one I have.

Rating:  4 stars

My first day listening to this album I was walking to work in a torrential downpour.  The first track is “I Can See Clearly Now” and when Cole’s voice, cool and easy, sang “the rain is gone” it made me feel like it actually was.  I even did a little twirl of my brolly, getting a little wet in the process, and hardly noticing.

The song is perfectly timed throughout.  David Piltch’s stand-up bass gets us started, filling in for a drum beat, and grounding the song throughout.  Cole starts off quiet and confident, almost cheerful, and by the end of the song her voice is a crescendo of positive energy.  Aaron Davis’ work on the piano is perfectly timed.  Holding silent through the first verse, by the second he begins politely introducing himself into the song’s empty spaces, first a little ahead of the beat, then a little behind, matching Cole’s vocals and showing another facet of the optimism that pervades this song.

The Holly Cole trio’s remake of this Johnny Nash classic is so good that it has ruined the original for me.  If by the end of this song you are not even a little bit more cheerful than when it started, you may want to see a doctor.

And thus “Don’t Smoke in Bed” gets off to a start it can’t ever equal, but my how it tries, as the trio deliver one jazz standard after another with simple, sweet arrangements that show their love for these songs, and the quiet confidence that you don’t need to overdo something to be noticed.

I’ve been trying to understand the difficult and dense musical form that is jazz most of my adult life, dating back to my early university days down at Herman’s Jazz Club.  I have never fully got it, but along the way I’ve come to love jazz trio (as opposed to a quartet or larger ensemble).  Holly Cole exemplifies why the trio is so good; simplicity.  You can only do so much noodling with three instruments – you need to trust each other’s contributions, and rely on restrained arrangements.

And within the empty spaces left in these arrangements, the Holly Cole trio are able to fully develop each note, whether it is Cole’s vocal acrobatics (and let me assure you, this girl has the pipes to fill that space) or just so you can appreciate the laid back vibe of Piltch’s bass, that could be lost in a less thoughtful approach to these songs.

Emotionally, the album ranges all over.  There is the bittersweet “Tennessee Waltz,” slow and sad, Davis’ piano holding the emotional core of the song, and allowing Cole’s voice to push right up to the edge of maudlin, without going over.  The two instruments support each other like dancers, each leaning out at opposing angles, but creating a tenuous balance that would collapse if one of them were to lean even a little bit farther.

Then there are playful songs like “So and So” and “Ev’rything I’ve Got” which show the lighter side of failed relationships, Cole jumping along to the up-tempo rhumba bass beat of “Ev’rything…” as she sasses her way through lyrics like:

"I have eyes for you to give you dirty looks

I have words that do not come from children's books

There's a trick with a knife I'm learning to do

And ev'rything I've got belongs to you"

These are fun, but apart from the five star stylings of “I Can See Clearly Now” I think this album is at its best when it is at its sweetest.

In “Everyday Will Be Like a Holiday” the trio gets an assist from saxophonist Joe Henderson, who mixes a triumphant note into the sweet, sweet joy of knowing your true love is about to be home from a trip.  Eighties producers take note; this is the correct way to work saxophone into a song.  It’s a big and brash member of the horn family, and you need to be aware that any excess noodling will be that much more pronounced.  But with piano playing a little riff behind it, and Cole’s voice delivering irrepressible joy at the prospect of a loving reunion, it fits perfectly.

And then there’s “Cry (If You Want To)” a song from a woman to her man letting him know that behind closed doors, he can show a little weakness, and let it out.  Cole’s vocal on this song may be her best on the album, if only because of the restraint she uses.  Here is a woman giving her man permission to shed a few tears, and not be diminished in her eyes.  My favourite line:

"No I won't make fun of you I won't tell anyone

 I won't analyze what you do or you should have done

 I won't advise you to go and have fun

 You can cry if you want to."

In lesser hands “Cry (If You Want To)” would feel like it was pandering or sickly sweet, but instead you just feel like someone is giving you a hug when you need one.

This album is ultimately a collection of old standards, and it doesn’t break new ground in the world of jazz.  That said I get sick of the desperate urge for jazz to feel like it always has to be breaking new ground.  More often than not, it just comes out a hot and excessively complicated mess.    “Don’t Smoke in Bed” treats these great songs with the tender care they deserve, and gives them room to grow.

Best tracks:  I Can See Clearly Now, So and So, The Tennessee Waltz, Everyday Will Be Like a Holiday, Cry (If You Want To).

CD Odyssey Disc 419: Capercaillie

It has been a busy day of work, errands, and volunteer activities, all on very little sleep.  In all the recent excitement on these fronts I’ve missed four workouts in the past two weeks as well, and that’s not sitting well with me either.

That said I’m finally sitting where I want to be – in the writer’s chair.  It may not be the next chapter of my novel, but it is writing for pleasure about a topic I love, music.  And today’s sub-genre of that love will be folk music.

Disc 419 is…Choice Language

Artist: Capercaillie

Year of Release: 2003

What’s up with the Cover?  A child’s hand grasps some kind of tall grass that I can’t identify, with some random words floating up in the bottom of the shot.  This cover is attractive enough, but nothing to write home about.

How I Came To Know It: I’ve been a fan of Capercaillie since the late eighties, when I first discovered them.  “Choice Language” is just me drilling through their collection, although when this album came out I somehow missed it, and so didn’t buy it until about five years later.  I think the band has only had two albums in the past ten years or so, so their output has slowed quite a bit, although I haven’t done any post-modern research about their lives that allows me to comment on why.  I only know I miss them.

How It Stacks Up:  I have nine Capercaillie albums, which is most of them.  “Choice Language” is not my favourite, but it holds its own.  I’ll say it is around 7^th or 8^th best, but competition is stiff.

Rating:  3 stars, but close to 4

Even though “Choice Language” isn’t an album I put on a lot, it is another strong entry, in the discography of the band I consider to embody the best of pure Celtic folk music, Capercaillie.

As with all of their albums, “Choice Language” gets its core from Karen Matheson’s exceptional vocals, pure as a highland stream, and Charlie McKerron’s fiddle, as complex and brazen as a high end Scotch.

Matheson’s voice shows no signs of flagging with age, and on songs like “Little Do They Know” and “Who Will Raise Their Voice?” she is able to lift lyrics that in lesser hands might have sounded clunky and trite.

Instead, these potentially schlocky songs are two of my favourites.  Still, neither one matches the beauty of the even more traditional “I Will Set My Ship in Order,” a classic ballad of ill-fated love.  The song tells the story of a sailor who comes to the casement window of his love, and says that if her father and mother will allow it, he would marry her right then and there, but he needs her answer right away.

In a lot of these Gaelic songs (and there are a lot of these) the man pines away for the girl he cannot have, with various tragic consequences.  Sometimes someone gets shot or stabbed, or the lovers run away together and something equally awful results.  This one took a surprising turn when the man, denied at the window leaves immediately.  His love changes her mind almost immediately, but before she can even get to the door to let him in, he’s already gone.

I couldn’t help but think this guy gave up pretty easily, although the whole ‘inconstant sailor’ is also a pretty common folk song thing as well, I suppose.  Seeing him gone, the maid decides to push the bounds of over-reaction, even for folk music:

"Come back, come back, my ain dear Johnny

Come back, come back and marry me"

"How can I come back and marry you, love?

Our ship is sailing on the sea"

"The fish may fly, and the seas run dry

The rocks may melt doon wi' the sun

And the working man may forget his labor

Before that my love returns again

"She's turned herself right roun' about

She's flung herself intae the sea

Farewell for aye, my ain dear Johnny

Ye'll ne'er hae tae come back to me"

I guess it just goes to show that in Celtic folk music if someone loves someone else, they better get it sorted out quickly, because one way or another tragedy is going to strike pretty damned quickly otherwise.

Impressively, Matheson’s vocals are so pure that they make you think this sort of youthful exuberance/idiocy is actually not only reasonable, but inescapable.  But it isn’t just the vocals; she’s aided in her task by the understated plucking of Manus Lunny on guitar, McKerron’s genius on fiddle and some whistle instrument of indeterminate nature (hey, I’m an amateur) by Michael McGoldrick.

“I Will Set My Ship in Order” is timeless folk music that will not just sound fresh in twenty years, but in two hundred years as well.

Equally beautiful is the Gaelic song, “Nuair A Chì Thu Caileag Bhòidheach” or translated, “Whenever You See a Pretty Girl,” which is a sparsely arranged and touching song that (when translated) would be good advice for the couple in “I Will Set My Ship in Order”:

“Ach innse mi mar ghaol na h-òige (But I shall tell you of the love of the young)

Mura bheil mo chòmhradh meallt (Unless I'm mistaken)

Théid e seachad mar na sgòthan (It passes like the clouds)

'S mar na neòil tha os ar cionn (And the stars above)”

You see, window jumpers, there are other options out there.

Sadly, not all the tracks on “Choice Language” achieve the same high standard of these two.  They are generally good, but there are some production decisions I can do without, particularly the sort of smooth jazz aesthetic that is present in the background of some songs.  This kind of over-relaxed noodling occasionally takes away from Capercaillie’s efforts to create a more atmospheric Pink Floyd feel, and pushes the music painfully close to easy listening.  This is particularly painful in “Homer’s Reel” which has some amazing fiddle playing that is ill paired with jazzy piano that is entirely out of place on the record, or at least it should be.

It doesn’t happen often on “Choice Language”, which is generally excellent throughout, but it does happen enough to push the album down to three stars where it could’ve easily been four, given everything else it has going for it.

Best tracks:  Little Do They Know, The Sound of Sleat/The Fear/Dans Plinn, Nuair A Chì Thu Caileag Bhòidheach (Whenever You See a Pretty Girl), I Will Set My Ship in Order.

CD Odyssey Disc 418: Lyle Lovett

As promised, my next review comes under the ‘new album exemption,’ not because I like it more than all my other recent purchases, but because Sheila and I just saw the tour last Wednesday, and this gives me an opportunity to write about that while it’s fresh in my mind.

Disc 418 is…Release Me

Artist: Lyle Lovett

Year of Release: 2012

What’s up with the Cover?  Lyle Lovett looks surprisingly calm for a man standing on a country road, tied up with a lasso.  Interestingly, the thank you section of the liner notes includes “thanks to Dell Hendricks for loaning us his rope.”

How I Came To Know It: I’ve known Lyle since way back in the early nineties, and I’ve been buying his records ever since.  I didn’t realize he had a new album out in 2012, but when I saw he was touring, I figured it was in support of a new record and went and found it.

How It Stacks Up:  I have eleven Lyle Lovett albums, which I think is all of them.  “Release Me” is probably 8^th on the list, bumping 2009’s “Natural Forces” (reviewed way back at Disc 51) down a spot.

Rating:  3 stars

Like Janelle Monae back at Disc413, this review is two-in-one, covering both the studio album and then the concert I saw in support of it.

The album 

Lyle Lovett is a gifted and creative song writer, but in the last few years he has been putting out records with more cover material than original.

This would be more disappointing than it is, if it weren’t for the fact that Lyle has such a great ear for choosing songs, and how gifted he is at putting his own twist on the material.

“Release Me” has Lyle’s signature sound, which is a bit hard to categorize.  I think if he were a cocktail he’d be two parts country, two parts blues and one part jazz, but the measures jump around a little bit from track to track.

What comes across strong on the record is Lyle’s active interest in the history of all these styles of music.  He is a traditionalist, and when he plays an old standard like Eddie Miller’s “Release Me,” his respect for the crooners of old country is clear.  I’ve never liked that song very much, but Lyle brought me over a little bit with his earnest delivery.

His love for the blues is also evident, with songs like “Isn’t That So,” and the self-effacing “White Boy Lost in the Blues.”  Of the two, “Isn’t That So” has vestiges of the ‘large band’ with an active horn section and some funky guitar, even though this album is generally a lot smaller and more acoustic.  The best bluesy line in the song is:

“Now did you know what he was doing

When he divided high and low

You got to bury that seed in the dirt my friend

If you want that thing to grow.”

It is a good reminder that it isn’t the blues if you don’t rub some dirt on it.

Lovett often does covers of Townes Van Zandt classics, and on “Release Me” he goes for the up-tempo blues song, “White Freightliner Blues.”  This is not one of my favourite Van Zandt songs, and while Lovett peppers it with some fine solo work by the studio musicians, it didn’t really grab me.

Also, Lyle’s need to have silly lyrics continues with the song “Brown Eyed Handsome Man.”  Having listened to this song at least a half dozen times now, I am still not sure what it is about – variably crime, baseball and at one point a weird reference to the Venus de Milo:

“And the Venus de Milo was a beautiful lass

She had the world in the palm of her hands

She lost both her arms in a wrestling match

Over a brown-eyed handsome man.”

What the hell?  I had thought ACDC had cornered the market on silly Venus de Milo references with “she had the face of an angel smiling with sin/the body of Venus with arms,” but Lyle looks like he wants a shot at the title.  It is too bad, too, because “Brown-eyed Handsome Man” has a quality melody, but the lyrics really pull me out of the experience.

The best songs on “Release Me” are Lyle at his quietest and most introspective and these songs more than make up for a few minor missteps here and there.

“Dress of Laces” tells a tragic love story, of a young girl, born out of a passing relationship between a fisherman and a waitress at the local harbor bar, growing up sad and angry at her absentee father.  It is a beautiful little song, made all the better by Lyle’s haunting delivery as the story of two generations of emotionally wounded women works its way to its tragic conclusion.

The best song on the record, though, is “Understand You” a gorgeous track written by Eric Taylor, and arranged with just Lyle’s plaintive voice and a single acoustic guitar.  As his voice rises through the chorus of “can’t you tell, I’m tellin’ you that I want to…understand you” he delivers a pitch perfect blend of beer-soaked country sympathy and romantic urban confessional.

Lyrically I love this song, and there are so many great and glorious lines, from the opening salvo:

“What a pretty mystery you

You suddenly turned out to be

I've never held you gently

But I want to”

To his more earnest and forthright efforts later in the song

“Well, I'm sofa sitting, compromising

Thoughts on what I'm realizing

Ask me what I'm thinking

“It's hard to say cause the way I'm reeling

It could be most anything

To do with you”

Lyle takes a song that is ostensibly about trying to score with a girl, and turns it into a tale of high romance.

“Release Me” is not Lyle’s greatest work, but there are flashes of greatness on the record.  I would say of his later work, it is his best effort in the last decade or so.  Late in his career he is still maintaining a high standard both in terms of honouring those that have come before him, and delivering something fresh at the same time.

The Concert – July 11, 2012 – The Royal Theatre, Victoria BC

Our tickets to Lyle Lovett were close to $100 each, which is a pretty steep price, but I paid it since I’d never seen him and his reputation as a live performer was excellent.  It turns out that reputation is well earned.

From a technical perspective, the sound was excellent.  At the Royal Theatre you have to be careful to not over-amplify the sound, and when Sheila and I saw two banks of big speakers up at the corners of the stage we were nervous that we’d be treated to a bunch of distortion, with sound bouncing off the walls.

Those fears were unfounded, as the sound was perfectly mixed.  Better still, Lyle even commented about the amazing acoustics, noting how perfectly he could hear every note, as he meticulously retuned his guitar between songs to ensure it was perfect.

The set list was what I want from an established artist, that being about half new material and half old standards.  I would’ve liked him to play some more obscure songs from early albums, like Leonard Cohen or Steve Earle sometimes do, but that is a minor quibble.

He did about eight or nine songs off the new album, and having just bought it earlier that day, it really helped me appreciate where he was going with this record.

I thought he rushed a bit through “L.A. County” but really nailed “Record Lady,” after telling a short story about how playing old songs is sometimes awkward, and the caution, “so I’m going to play it now but just so you know, it’s probably stupid.”  It was anything but stupid, and made better by Arnold McCuller’s amazing background vocals.

Speaking of the band, Lyle is the most gracious and generous front man you’ll meet in the music business.  His band mates were all exceptional at their instruments.  Luke Bulla is one of the finest American-style fiddle players I’ve ever heard, and when I looked him up it was no surprise to learn he is a champion competition player many times over.

Keith Sewell is equally amazing on both lead acoustic guitar and mandolin, and when Lyle gave him an opportunity to take centre stage and do one of his own songs, it was fantastic, reminding me of a more relaxed Jimmy Rankin.

Lovett not only provided all three of these band members a chance to do their own original work, after each performed he would do a little banter with them, where he made sure everyone in the audience knew their name, and where they could buy their album.

Lyle has the gift of the gab, with a dry sense of humour and a great sense of timing.  At the same time, he doesn’t overdo the stage talk, and keeps the focus on the music.

In fact, when he isn’t telling a joke, he is mostly talking about the history of his musical education, the careers and background of the songs he is covering that aren’t his own, and his own growth as a singer and songwriter.

After one such bit of banter, Lyle played Buddy Holly’s “Well…All right” which was the highlight of the concert for me, and has practically ensured that I’ll be buying some Buddy Holly soon.

Throughout it all, Lyle’s voice sounded as strong as when he first hit the scene in the mid-eighties.  Who knows how long that will last, so I strongly encourage you to get out and see him while he is still in his prime.  It will be a well spent $100.

Best tracks:  (from the album) – Isn’t That So, Understand You, Dress of Laces.

CD Odyssey Disc 417: Emmylou Harris

My blog was delayed by a day, since last night Sheila and I went to see Lyle Lovett and his Acoustic Band perform at the Royal Theatre.  It was a great show, but I’ll be writing about that in my next entry on my rule #5 exemption (I just bought his new album).

The end result was I’ve gotten a solid four listens in for this next album, and greatly enjoyed each and every one of them.

Disc 417 is…Pieces of the Sky

Artist: Emmylou Harris

Year of Release: 1975

What’s up with the Cover?  Emmylou Harris, one of the most enchantingly beautiful women in the world, shows that great hair existed in the days before product.

How I Came To Know It: I’ve known Emmylou Harris all my life, growing up with country music, but the only one I owned for a while was “Wrecking Ball,” her famous breakaway album with producer Daniel Lanois.

However you don’t have to have any Emmylou Harris albums to hear her; she sings back-up vocals nearly everywhere you turn.  Neil Young, Steve Earle, Guy Clark, Bob Dylan, Lyle Lovett – hell, Emmylou has helped out so many other artists there are four separate Wikipedia pages just listing her collaborations.

As I kept hearing her voice over and over again, I knew I had to get more of her stuff, and that led to me to buying a bunch of her earlier work, “Pieces of the Sky” being one of the first.

How It Stacks Up:  I have nine Emmylou Harris albums, but they are really divided in style.  I’ve got five albums from 1975 – 1980 and another four spanning 1995 – 2008.  The sound is so different that it is hard to compare.  “Pieces of the Sky” is probably 2^nd in terms of the first five, but if I had to rank it against all the albums, I would probably say 3^rd or 4^th best depending on my mood.

Rating:  4 stars

It was one hell of an impressive way to start a career.  “Pieces of the Sky” isn’t technically Emmylou’s first ever record (that was 1969’s “Gliding Bird”), but it was her first major release, and album that established her style, and started a legacy still going strong to this day.

Every time I listen to an Emmylou record, I’m amazed when I read the liner notes and find that she didn’t write all the songs.  She just takes over a song so completely you find it hard to believe it wasn’t hers all along.  She’s like a female Johnny Cash that way.

Even on songs that I knew very well by their original artists, like “Coat of Many Colors” by Dolly Parton and “Bottle Let Me Down” by Merle Haggard, I had a hard time remembering they weren’t covers.  In the case of “Coat of Many Colors” Harris’ version is superior.  Her quavering voice perfectly captures the timid but steadfast loyalty a young girl has to her faith and her mother’s love, as she endures the taunts of other school children for wearing a coat of many colors, sewn from scraps of leftover cloth.  To the other children, the coat represents poverty.  To the little girl, the coat puts her in the company of biblical giant Joseph.

Dolly’s version is upbeat, like most of what Dolly does, and it is excellent as well, but I like the way Emmylou’s high vibrato brings home how bravery has to find its centre in doubt and uncertainty, or it isn’t bravery at all.

Less so,”Bottle Let Me Down,” where Emmylou sings it more like a parlour song.  It is still brilliant, but minus the core of depression that Merle Haggard captures.  That said, I’d probably like it the best if I’d heard it first, it is so close to equal to the original.

That isn’t to say Emmylou can’t deliver a parlour song.  She is tender when she wants to be, but she also presents the image of a strong woman, secure in her sexuality and determined to have a good time and sing about it.  I’m not sure she has ever equaled “Feelin’ Single – Seein’ Double” off of her next record, “Elite Hotel” but two tracks on “Pieces of the Sky” come close.

Her cover of the Shel Silverstein classic, “Queen of the Silver Dollar” is every bit the equal of Dr. Hook’s version from around the same time.  The song is about a woman who frequents taverns, but is as royal as any princess.  Unlike Dr. Hook, which pities the protagonist in places, Emmylou’s song is a celebration that you can be a bit rough around the edges and still hold your head up high.  What’s more, she has the advantage (and chutzpah) of turning the final chorus to the first person, singing:

“Yes, I’m the Queen of the Silver Dollar

I rule this smoky kingdom

 My scepter is a wine glass

And a barstool is my throne.

Now the jesters flock around me

Tryin’ to win my favours

To see which one will take the

Queen of the Silver Dollar Home.”

Hearing that, I couldn’t help but think the little girl with the coat of many colors was all grown up.

The second great party song is Rodney Crowell’s “Bluebird Wine” a song about tying one on, minus the depressing backstory behind “Bottle Let Me Down.”  “Bluebird Wine” is a song about throwing a party, starting early and going late and loud.  Emmylou sings it like she’s been there, and makes you feel like you’re out there with her and her friends, sitting on the porch on a summer evening, laughing it up and enjoying life.

Yet for all her party girl, beer-out-of-the-bottle bravado, Emmylou is even more powerful when she decides to go for raw emotion.

Her voice is perfectly suited, so strong, yet so seemingly fragile I don’t think I’ve ever listened to one of her albums where at least once the hairs on the back of my neck didn’t stand up.  On “Pieces of the Sky” it happened twice.

The first time is on her classic, “Boulder to Birmingham,” the one song on this record she co-wrote, that had me wishing there were more.  From its opening lines:

“I don’t want to hear a love song

I got on this airplane just to fly”

You know you’re gonna be hearing a love song.  And when later she sings:

“I was in the wilderness and the canyon was on fire

And I stood on the mountain in the night and I watched it burn.

I watched it burn.”

You are burning on the inside.  Desire for that voice coming out of your speakers, a voice that you know will haunt you, desire to know a love so deeply it would move a person to volunteer to put their safety in the bosom of Abraham (if you wonder what’s so special about that, ask his son, Isaac).  A love so compelling that when she says she’d walk from Boulder to Birmingham, you not only believe her, but you’d walk with her.  As love songs go, this one is as perfect as they get.  It’s a prayer and it’s a cry for mercy, when love’s fires are so out of hand you’ve got no choice but to stand there and watch them burn.  Love’s a dangerous thing, folks, and Emmylou’s voice is a dangerous medium to get the message as you’ll find.

For all of “Boulder to Birmingham’s” firestorms, it is the introspective, gentle Emmylou, whispering to your soul in “Before Believing” that hits harder.  From uttering of the first line, the single word, ‘winter,’ rising in tone as she slowly pronounces it, telling you things are going to get cold now.

Paired with one of the most elegant guitar riffs you’ll ever hear trill off of a country record, Emmylou’s confessional is a song full of truths so profound, you only speak them to the closest person in your life, and only at four in the morning, when the darkness is the only thing that can blanket you enough to brave the cold and speak.

Even after hearing “Before Believing” dozens of times, I’m still not sure what it is entirely about.  The repeating refrain hints at it:

“I told you everything I could about me

I told you everything I could.”

The line haunts you with the unknown things the singer couldn’t tell you.  Even in that dark and honest moment, there is some fragile and unseen centre that Emmylou’s voice hints at, while still leaving you guessing.

There is one verse in this song that gets me every time:

“How would you feel if the world was falling apart around you

Pieces of the sky were falling in your neighbour’s yard

But not on you

Wouldn’t you feel just a little bit funny

Think maybe there’s something you oughta do”

Every time I hear this song I feel the oppressive presence of the end of the world around the corner.  A plague, nuclear winter, the zombie apocalypse – pick your poison.  The aloneness of it all is pervasive, but Emmylou’s voice cuts through the cold and the dark, giving a gentle prod, and reminding you to pick yourself up and find the strength to check on the neighbor.

Almost twenty years later, with her song “Winter”, Tori Amos would write one of the greatest, most thoughtful songs ever about the struggle for human connection in the face of the frigid chasm that separates our individual consciousnesses.  But as great as “Winter” is, that season got its start in 1975, with a raven-haired beauty who had the voice of an angel, but was brave enough on her first big album to not let it type-cast her as one.

Sure, you could argue there are three better records, but hopefully you’ll be inspired to go get this one anyway.  It’s as good a place to start as any.

Best Tracks:  Bluebird Wine, Boulder to Birmingham, Before Believing, Queen of the Silver Dollar.

CD Odyssey Disc 416: Black Grape

The weekend that was so idyllic is now over too soon, and Monday has returned.  At least it is a Happy Monday – and everyone knows that a Happy Monday leads to a Black Grape – or at least it does as far as this next review is concerned.

Disc 416 is…Stupid Stupid Stupid

Artist: Black Grape

Year of Release: 1997

What’s up with the Cover?  A close up of a golliwog, which is a late 19^th century/early twentieth century doll that continues to evoke considerable racial controversy.  Fortunately, we’ve come a long way since then, and the golliwog is no longer considered an appropriate toy.  I expect its racially-charged history is exactly why Black Grape chose it for their cover.  My version of the CD is the original release, where the jewel case has two ‘googly eyes’ glued to it, which no doubt makes it more interesting to a collector, but also makes it hard to fit neatly on my CD shelf.

How I Came To Know It: My friend Nick is from Manchester, and has long known and loved the Manchester music scene and its many offshoots.  Black Grape is one of those offshoots, being two parts of the Happy Mondays (Shaun Ryder and Bez).

How It Stacks Up:  I have just this one Black Grape album, but if I compare it to my one Happy Mondays album (reviewed back at Disc 317), I’ll give it to the Happy Mondays by a hair, although both my friends who have them both tend to rank them the other way around.

Rating:  3 stars

It’s fitting that “Stupid Stupid Stupid” came out the same year as Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping”although terribly unfair that it received such comparatively little fanfare.

“Tubthumping” is an average dance album that tries to be clever and socially relevant and fails on both fronts.  “Stupid Stupid Stupid” is an example of how to do the clever dance album right, and step one is keep your subject matter to what makes sense to  drunk and drug-addled club goers.

Sure, “Stupid Stupid Stupid” makes a few forays into serious topics, poking such obvious targets as the disposable nature of modern culture in “Money Back Guaranteed” but even when they go such places, Black Grape approach the topic with more of a carnival atmosphere than anything resembling serious commentary.

The best example of this (and one of the album’s ‘high’ points, if you will) is “Get Higher” a song that lays down a funky beat and cuts in dialogue of George Bush and Ronald Reagan that has been rearranged out of order and context, so that their anti-drug message is reversed.  Are they poking fun at these politicians?  Most likely – but the emphasis seems to be on the fun of sending up a public figure, not the politics behind it.

The music is similar to the Happy Mondays, who I categorized as “Stoner Pop Phunck” when I reviewed them.  If anything, Black Grape is a couple steps closer to funk, and a couple away from pop (equal parts stoner, though).  They have the occasional rock guitar riff buried in the mix as well.  I liked the combination, and I admired the clever construction of the songs, which are not much more than a group of very basic riffs on different instruments, mixed together to make pretty complex sounds.  Remember, classical composers did basically the same thing.

“Squeaky” is probably the album at its best, with a half rock/half funk rock guitar that with a bit more reverb, wouldn’t be out of place on a Soundgarden album, except it is mixed up with a whole lot of weird sound effects, squawk boxes, and Indian rap (I think).

Subject wise, “Squeaky” won’t be in line for essay of the week with chorus lines including “I wanna get freaky with you.” It isn’t exactly lofty prose, but the song is so catchy you don’t really care that they aren’t saying anything more interesting.  In a nutshell, it’s dance music, and it’s good dance music without pretension to be something bigger than it is.

While there were a few stand outs, and the band’s talent is unmistakable, I didn’t often feel emotionally moved.  I had a good time, mind you – the music tended to put a swing in my step when I was walking to and from work, and it was a good groove to drive to as well.  I don’t know if it is music to just sit and listen to for an extended period, though.  The songs tend to not really go anywhere either narratively or musically, which made it hard to pay attention.

Also irksome, the song listings on the back of the CD case are arranged in a haphazard fashion making them hard to read, and impossible to tell what order they go in.  The band exacerbates the problem by naming tracks obscure things that don’t match up well with particular lyrics.  I’ll never figure out why artists want to make it difficult for the audience to follow along.  It’s not creative, it’s just self-absorbed.

I still had a good time, though, and I’ll keep putting this album on from time to time – likely as part of a shuffle with other artists, where I think it is better suited.  I just can’t bump these guys beyond a solid three on the CD Odyssey ratings scale.

Best tracks:  Get Higher, Squeaky, Dadi was a Badi

CD Odyssey Disc 415: Flaming Lips

It’s the middle of a great weekend, I got paid yesterday, the sun is shining, and today I played my first game of Ultimate in over a month.  Life is good.

Disc 415 is…Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Artist: The Flaming Lips

Year of Release: 2002

What’s up with the Cover?  An artistic depiction of diminutive Japanese martial artist Yoshimi, battling a pink robot.  This is not my kind of art, but I did call for a big art piece cover in my last review, so here it is.

How I Came To Know It: This was a gift for my birthday ten years ago from Jennifer and Cody.  They also got me Belle & Sebastian’s “The Boy with the Arab Strap,” which gets a lot more play, but both were appreciated.

How It Stacks Up:  I have just this one Flaming Lips album, and no plans to get another, so it doesn’t really stack up.

Rating:  3 stars

Don’t prejudge an album simply because the last time you listened to it your expectations weren’t met.  If you’re taking the time to give an album a full listen, then you owe it to yourself to listen with an open heart.  I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating, because the Odyssey keeps surprising me with my own opinion, and how it changes over time.

Which brings us to “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” (hereafter referred to as “Yoshimi”), a concept album from the Flaming Lips that simply did not float my boat when I first heard it ten years ago.  Since then it has sat on our CD shelves and only rarely been taken down – usually by Sheila who likes it a lot more than me.

When I first heard this record it sounded overwrought, overproduced and generally unremarkable.  Part of this reaction was my knowing in advance that it was a concept album, telling the tale of diminutive city worker/karate expert Yoshimi saving mankind from robots.  I love concept albums, and I hold them to a higher standard.  I didn’t think that “Yoshimi” met the test, and nothing fails so spectacularly as a poorly constructed concept album.

On this listen, I had a similar reaction.  The music is futuristic enough sounding, but the organs, synth and weird drum machine sounds aren’t terribly exciting, and mostly serve as filler.  The album has a lot of filler tracks that are basically a cross between dance music and lounge, and are inoffensive – even well-constructed – but ultimately forgettable.  I think a concept album’s songs each need to contribute to the story better than these ones did, at least for me.

However, when I revisited the album this time, my expectations had been reversed.  I expected it to be as bad a record as I remembered it (cognitive dissonance is a bitch, my friends).  Instead, this time I found myself genuinely enjoying some of the tracks as individual songs with surprisingly strong melodies I hadn’t heard on my first introduction to the record.

“Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt. 1” is a ridiculous title for a song (it enraged me the first time around as well) but it is also a beautiful little track, with genuine emotion, and even a little humour (we are told that our hero is ‘taking lots of vitamins’ to help prepare her for the battle with the robots.

I also grooved on the opening track, “Fight Test,” despite its excessively artificial ending of weird sounds.  When it sticks to its own tune, it delivers a mixture of high melodies and expressions of self-doubt that reminded me of a Cat Stevens song, gone electronica.  In fact, there are sections of the melody in “Fight Test” that is remarkably similar to Stevens’ song “Father and Son.”

And then, of course, there is the enduring classic from the record, “Do You Realize?” which is an anthem for life on earth.  While discussing this album last night, someone told me that she wanted this song played at her funeral, and listening to it I can appreciate how great a choice it would be for such an occasion:

“Do you realize – that happiness makes you cry?

Do you realize – that everyone you know, someday, will die?

Instead of saying all of your goodbyes

Let them know you realize that life goes fast

It’s hard to make the good things last

You realize the sun doesn’t go down

It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning ‘round.”

This song is anthemic and while it uses a lot of trite expressions, it uses them well, with soaring overdubbed vocals demanding that we take some time and look around.  As Ferris Bueller tells us, life moves pretty quickly, and you just might miss it if you don’t.

The music on “Yoshimi” is atmospheric and unearthly, and it has a lot of odd sounds going off that contribute to the unearthly quality.  There are places where it sounds like the Flaming Lips are trying to emulate Beck or Radiohead and mostly those efforts come up short.  When they stick to their own unique sound they do better, and deliver some surprisingly simple and perfect melodies under all that fuzzy production.  More surprisingly, the more I listened to these songs, the more I didn’t want to change the fuzzy production, quite contrary to my first reaction.

Does this record deserve the amount of fawning-over that it receives from music critics and devotees of the band alike?  Probably not – there is an awful lot of fawning involved.  Is it a solid album nonetheless?  It took me a while, but I do realize now that it is.  Consider me converted, at least partially.

Best tracks:  Flight Test, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1, Do You Realize?

CD Odyssey Disc 414: Bob Dylan

Back to true random rolling my albums, with my 9^th Bob Dylan review.  This one made for some pleasant walking to work the last couple of days.

Disc 414 is…Another Side of Bob Dylan

Artist:  Bob Dylan

Year of Release: 1964

What’s up with the Cover?  Ah, the sixties – that golden era of record album covers where they listed the songs on the front.  I don’t like it, but at one time it was the industry standard.  I am more of a seventies guy – I want a crazy piece of art on the cover, and you can put the songs on the back.  That said Bob looks good enough, with a fine head of hair.  He kind of looks like me here, only brilliant.

How I Came To Know It: This was just me drilling through Bob’s early records many years ago, unearthing gem after gem from this golden period of his career.

How It Stacks Up:  I have seventeen Bob Dylan albums, and competition is fierce among them.  I’ll put “Another Side of Bob Dylan” at 9^th, just edging out “Bringing It All Back Home” – the album that immediately follows it.

Rating: 4 stars

After releasing the morose “TheTimes They Are A-Changin’” earlier in 1964, Bob Dylan clearly needed to lighten up, and that’s exactly what he does on “Another Side,” mostly with good success.

Many of these songs stray from protest folk rock well across the line into comedy.  Dylan warms up his funny bone with the rambling and playful “I Shall Be Free – No. 10” where he daydreams about boxing Cassius Clay and punching him “out of his spleen.” Since this album was recorded in June of 1964, and Ali announced his name change after beating Sonny Liston in February of the same year, I wonder why Dylan didn’t call him ‘Ali.’  My best guess is ‘satire.’  He is playing the fool here, after all.

In fact, “I Shall Be Free – No. 10” is some fine and fun-loving satire throughout, as Dylan takes on the voice of a blowhard and unloads a torrent of impotent threats and odd observations.  It is deliberately provocative in places, but mostly rambling and playful.  At the same time, it is a bit too rambling, mixing brilliance with lazy rhymes, and while Dylan loves a lot consecutive rhymes, he isn’t usually this lazy with them.

Much better in the same genre is “Motorpsycho Nitemare,” a song about someone who needs a place to stay and gets a farmer to give him a place to lay his head, as long as he doesn’t touch his daughter and ‘in the morning milk the cows.’  With the daughter coming on to our protagonist, he realizes he is in trouble and needs to get out of there.  However:

“Well I couldn’t leave unless the old man chased me out.

‘Cause I’d already promised to milk his cows

I had to say something to strike him very weird

So I yelled “I like Fidel Castro and his beard!”

This predictably works, and the song ends with the character fleeing from the farm, sun coming up and the farmer chasing in the distance with a shotgun.

‘Motorpsycho Nitmare” remains one of my all-time favourite Dylan songs, and “I love Fidel Castro and his beard” one of my favourite non sequitur exclamations (I don’t – but damn it’s a funny expression).

Dylan isn’t all laughs on this record, however and he has some beautiful and tragic love songs.  These include “To Ramona” with its lilting and catchy melody, and just Dylan singing in earnest over a gently strummed guitar and restrained interventions on harmonica.  This is a song that reminds us that whatever you think of Dylan’s voice (I like it) the man writes beautiful songs that sound just as fresh 50 years after their release.  Not to mention that on top of the timeless tune, are lyrics to one of the greatest and gentlest break up songs ever, beginning:

“Ramona

 Come closer

 Shut softly your watery eyes

 The pangs of your sadness

 Shall pass as your senses will rise

 The flowers of the city

 Though breathlike

 Get deathlike at times

 And there’s no use in tryin’

 T’ deal with the dyin’

 Though I cannot explain that in lines.”

Um…I think you just did, Bob.  And the effort is matched later in the more famous, “It Ain’t Me Babe” which opens:

“Away from my window, leave at your own chosen speed.

I’m not the one you want, babe, I ‘m not the one you need.”

Another song that shows no matter how gently it happens, an ending relationship is almost always sure to hurt someone. 

Dylan also delivers one of his greatest social commentaries on “Chimes of Freedom” which is simultaneously uplifting and heart-wrenching.  Caught out in a storm, Dylan sees the lightning in the sky flashing like the harbingers of freedom for the oppressed, the marginalized and even the simply lonely. 

“Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed

 An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting

 Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones

 Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting

 Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail

 For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale

 An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail

 An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.”

Dylan artfully reminds us that the chimes of freedom don’t ring easily, and you have to always be listening if you’re going to hear them – even in the midst of a thunderstorm.  As an artist, he’s always been willing to pull their chords, and help us hear them, and he delivers his gift again on this powerful track.

“Another Side of Bob Dylan” is well titled, with its greater measure of humour and satire, but it is still a seriously good record.  There are rare places where his rhymes miss or he laughs while singing a lyric that calls for greater gravity, but overall this is a worthy entry in the musical lexicon of one of the great artists of our time.

Best tracks:  All I Really Want To Do, Chimes of Freedom, To Ramona, Motorpsycho Nitemare, My Back Pages, It Ain’t Me Babe.