Dave Rawlings Machine: A Friend of A Friend, Part 1

To: Scott and Brian

From: Monty

Scott’s thoughts regarding the Lucero disk provide me with a segue of sorts into my review of Dave Rawlings Machine’s Friend Of A Friend. Perhaps ironically so, ‘cuz I’m kind of expecting Scott won’t exactly love it, but anyway....

I’m thinking specifically about Scott’s comments regarding the comparisons we were making between Lucero and, for example, Springsteen. Extending that line of thought further, where do you draw the line between traditional and derivative? Is there a line?

This interests me because I’m a huge fan of bluegrass, folk, and old-time country music. These genres come with built-in strictures, structures, and traditions, and conform very deliberately and necessarily to them. Reviewing this debut disk from Dave Rawlings on the heels of the Lucero disk makes me realize that for whatever reason, I’m completely accepting of Rawlings taking his cues from Ralph and Carter Stanley, but I’m mildly perturbed that Lucero sounds so much like Bruce.

Having not much more than a passing knowledge that Brian has some level of interest in what’s called ‘Americana’ music these days, and not knowing anything at all about Scott’s take on it, I’m eager to learn what kind of thoughts you guys might have about this record. For me it’s about an 8 out of 10, if we weren’t too cool to be rating on a numbered scale.

I discovered Rawlings, as did most people, in his role as Gillian Welch’s musical partner. It didn’t take me long to figure out that no matter how much I love her songwriting (which is pretty much), it was really Rawlings that put their music on a different level from their peers. Like most of his fans, I’ve been waiting for a solo effort for a very long time, and for the most part it delivers.

It feels like a bunch of people got together and had a great time playing music. It’s kind of sloppy; a little rough around the edges. I could do without “The Monkey and the Engineer,” but otherwise I think the songs are strong. And it would be hard for me to think of a sound I like more than just Dave and Gillian singing and playing alone together as they do on “Method Acting / Cortez The Killer.”

And there’s my complaint. There’s not nearly enough of that on this record. In a lot of ways, Dave Rawlings is my favorite contemporary guitar player. He’s not the fanciest, the fastest, or the flashiest, but for my money he’s absolutely the best at playing the right thing at the right time. Every note serves the song, and he’s easily the most tasteful player I can think of today. On a debut solo record, I want to hear more of that than he offers up here. I like this record a lot, but I don’t love it like I wanted to.

--Monty

Lucero: 1372 Overton Park, part 3

To: Brian and Monty
From: Scott

I think that the fact we need to compare his to contemporary acts at all and not to the Bruce Springsteen / John Cougar Mellencamp common man's rock and roll it apes is unfortunate. I have no affinity for the common man. I hear in this what people who don't like the Hold Steady hear in them: just a quotation of the old with nothing new to add to it. Bittersweet nostalgia and a hoist of the beer can to the days of yore. Glory days!

Lucero is to the Hold Steady as the Might Bosstones are to Fishbone.

Lucero: 1372 Overton Park, part 2

To: Brian and Scott
From: Monty

I listened to this first in my car, thinking that perhaps that wasn’t giving it a fair shake. But then about two songs into it I realized that’s the perfect environment for this record. Back in high school, this is precisely the kind of thing my friends and I would have been blasting from our 8-tracks (yes, high school was that long ago for me) as we drove around town on the weekends and in the summer. It has everything rock and roll meant to us: women, cars, booze, late night hangouts.... What’s not to like, right?

Well.....yeah. As I was mentioning to Brian a couple weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to have arrived at that age at a time when lots of iconic artists and groups were still together, and more-or-less still at the top of their game. During my formative listening years, Bowie was recording albums like Diamond Dogs and “Heroes”; Pink Floyd was giving us Wish You Were Here and Animals; Led Zep put our Physical Graffiti; the Stones were still creating relevant music; and the Beatles, though no longer together, were still in heavy radio rotation. Hell, even Alice Cooper had some interesting records at the time. But also emanating from those 8-track decks back then was a bunch of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bachman Turner Overdrive, R.E.O. Speedwagon, and a host of other stuff I loved then and couldn’t care less about now. I’m afraid I have to group Lucero in with the latter group rather than the former.

Notice, though, that I’m intentionally not calling this a bad record. It goes without saying that there are gobs of great bands that won’t ever get lumped in with Zeppelin and Bowie. The fact is Overton Park is a perfect example of what I was talking about in my Fiery Furnaces review: Without really liking it very much myself, I can completely understand how other people might enjoy it, as Brian clearly does. Catchy melodies, sing-alongable choruses, musical and lyrical hooks -- I’ll admit to bobbing my head and tapping a foot with it here and there on multiple listens. It just speaks a little too heavily to a place and time in life that I’ve left behind. If I liked it a little more I’d find it nostalgic. (I still have all the Eagles’ albums on my iPod, fergodsakes.) But instead, I’m just finding it kind of pleasantly innocuous.

--Monty

Lucero: 1372 Overton Park, part 1

Got Live If You Got It

To: Monty and Scott
From: Brian

Fellas, let me open the discussion of Lucero's 1372 Overton Park with a disclaimer of sorts: I was converted by this band through not one but two experiences of its live show before I heard a note of recorded music. Six guys (plus, the second time, two horn players) on a stage, putting on a show that was generous, good-natured and rocking on all cylinders. They came off like Replacements who had embraced both country leanings and moderation. The guys in the band all clearly cared about this music and their audience, and you could feel it as much as hear it.

I'll admit that there are scores of bands who can't quite convert that kind of presence to record--hell, not even the Replacements could do it half the time--and my ears are probably somewhat misled by the Live Lucero when listening to the Recorded Lucero. I mean, just check out how they deal with a little kid named Henry storming the stage in Madison Square Park:


So, in general: Damn, I still really like how 1372 Overton Park comes across. This is music that manages to sound stripped of artifice without having to resort to shoddy production or cheap sound. And while it leans a little toward country, I wouldn't lump Lucero in with Old '97s (a band whose songs I once watched Scott endure during a local record-shopping trip--Scott, you made it through like a soldier) or Uncle Tupelo, though there are stylistic similarities. In this case, I think that being from and in Memphis made certain country tropes available as the straightest line between a young white guy and what he had to say. It's more like The Hold Steady grabbing Thin Lizzy riffs and E Street piano rolls because that's the music that makes them feel the way they want the audience to feel--even if the audience would rather hear Born To Lose than Born to Run.

Without going into my thoughts on some of the individual songs, I'll get big picture: assuming that neither of you have seen Lucero's live show, how does this record work for you? Monty, I'll broadly guess that this works for you on a fundamental stylistic level, but I'm not sure what you'll think of the songs and the sound; Scott, I have a feeling that the surface of Overton Park pushed you back, but I'm wondering if you found a connection to some of the lyrics and attitude that power the sound. Do tell.

Can't feel a thing,
Brian

The Fiery Furnaces: I'm Going Away, part 3

Charting the Oceans

From: Brian
To: Scott & Monty

Oh, Scott Scott Scott...posting a chart like that is like chumming the waters for music-geek sharks. I'm trying, off the top of my head, to think of any 5 or 6 bands I really dig whose careers follow any of those arcs and I'm coming up dry once I get to Television and Liz Phair.

The real problem with applying this kind of charted thinking to bands like the Fiery Furnaces is, I think, that any artist displaying evidence of evolution will inevitably have fans who glom on and/or drop off at each major breakthrough point. Hell, I know people who insist that Dinosaur was useless once they added the "Jr." to their name (which was, what, album #2?). And while I think there's a great case to made for Archers of Loaf being the perfect Dropoff Chart Band, there are days when I'd say that All the Nation's Airports is a better record than Icky Mettle. (Oh, and you got me scouring the Web for more Music Charts, some of which are linked here; and dig this!)

But Scott, you got me riled up with the graph gambit and it's taken my focus from the matter at hand, I'm Going Away. I think I split the experiential difference between the two of you with this band: I saw them open up for Mike Watt a bunch of years back and thought they were cool (I still have the CD-R of demos they were handing out at the gig). Ever since, I've more or less (generally less) kept tabs on the band without ever really taking the plunge. Every time I'd sit myself down with samples from Widow City or Blueberry Boat, I'd never quite get past keeping them on the Maybe list.

I'm not sure that I'm Going Away is doing much to change that. My experience of this record was similar to yours, Monty, in that I kind of sat back with the music and waited for the lyrics/text to start emerging. What happened was that each of the 4 or 5 times I listened, the hook in "Drive to Dallas" and "Charmaine Champagne" jumped out at me...and that was it (maybe my alliteration affinity got the best of me?). The music, as has always happened with this band, reminded me in spots of Pere Ubu (good), Frank Zappa (very good) and Steely Dan (very bad), all with a singer who sounded a bit sweeter and a lot more bored; if Eleanor could hook up with Stephin Merritt for a project, it could be the ennui suite of all time.

All of which is to say...this is an album whose complexity and craft made it easy to pay attention to, but I never felt like I was hearing it any better from spin to spin. Scott, can you say in a little more detail what's powering this record for you? And if you could present the answer in a GraphJam, that would be ideal.

Plotting along the axis,
Brian

The Fiery Furnaces: I'm Going Away, part 2

From: Monty

To: Scott and Brian

Wow. Interesting how vastly different people’s perceptions and perspetives can be. I only wish I had heard Chrissie Hynde, or something resembling a hook.

Although I have been hearing bits and pieces of The Fiery Furnaces since (I believe) their inception, I'm pretty sure this is the first time I’ve subjected myself to a full album. And probably the last time. I was hoping to hear something that would help me understand their apparent popularity, but alas, no.

From what I’ve heard and what little I’ve read about them, it seems clear that their fans celebrate them as adventuresome, eclectic, and/or experimental. To me, it just sounds like people messing around. There were two or three places on the record where I heard an instrumental passage that sounded like it might go somewhere, maybe lead into an almost retro jazz kind of flourish, but nothing ever materialized. There are definitely some interesting sonic ideas, but for me they don’t add up to anything.

On the other hand, the music is enormously preferable to the vocals. As I’ve said to Brian before, when I’m listening to a new recording for the first time I like to try to ignore the lyrics as much as I can. I want to hear the vocals as another melodic element without letting the “text,” if you will, get in the way. I couldn’t do it here, as the vocals are so front-and-center. I could live with that if the words were interesting or if Friedberger’s voice were at all appealing. But the lyrics are, to paraphrase Capote, typing, not writing, and her voice sounds like a cross between MTV-era Michael Jackson (not good) and Antony from The Johnsons (even worse).

Though it’s not at all unusual for me to hear music that I don’t care for, it is a very rare thing for me to hear something and be unable to understand why someone else might like it. But sometimes it happens.

The Fiery Furnaces- I'm Going Away

From: Scott
To: Monty and Brian

A mid-to-late career effort by a brother/sister duo that has been around since aught two. This recording, their seventh lp dispenses with both the preciousness of their Grandma-centric Rehearsing My Choir and their frustrating, choppy art/prog rock elements and the unnecessary jarring style changes therein. Singer Eleanor Friedbergerhas developed a Chrissie Hynde-like thrust to her delivery that propels the songs through the gentler moments as well as the more energetic. The songs have quality hooks, which was always present on earlier releases, seemingly to the band's dismay, for all the work they did to bury them.
So here we are at the seventh album, and despite all prevailing wisdom, I am finally fully on board.

 As this chart demonstrates, the earlier stuff is always better, purer, closer to the source. How lame is it to hop in in the middle, after the edges have been worn away by time. I don't think the 20 year old me preferred the later work of any band. The concept of getting better with age was abhorrent and unnatural; it went against nature. I knew bands wore out their welcome by the fourth album. Some bands might have a juvenile first effort then pull it together by the for the sophomore release, but these bands flamed out after the third as reliably as the rest. A few shooting stars might light up the world with one great release and then collapse into  a black hole. Following any band's career after the roaring third was sheer indulgence.

At 40+ years I find myself more and more dismissing the early rumblings and joining in when the fruit is ripe on the musical career, wallowing in the mellow tones and sanded edges of a band polished to a deep mahogany finish.

-Scott
The Fiery Furnaces- Drive To Dallas