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César Rosas, Soul Disguise (1999)
Was it Bono who said "All I've got is three chords and the truth"? Or was it Woody Guthrie? Dylan? Whoever said it, the idea that simplicity and conviction make for the most authentic music has always been integral to the best rock and roll. Occasionally, the enthusiasm for the "truth" offered has come at the expense of the three chords (The Sex Pistols, etc.). However, there has been a more enduring approach to the less-is-more aesthetic, one with it's roots in the blues. It holds an almost mystical reverence for tradition, nuance, and emotional commitment, and emerges in acts like The Band, Neil Young, and Ry Cooder. For them, the three chords are the truth. Lyrics count, but the tasteful and well-placed lick is the sine qua non. At the vanguard of this school of thought in the last 20 years has been California's Los Lobos. Best known, unfortunately, for their cover of Richey Valens' "La Bamba", their music combined an eclectic sampling of America's rich musical heritage with gritty rock attitude. This approach allowed them to revisit traditional styles without sounding self-conscious or cliched.
On his solo debut, Soul Disguise, Los Lobos' guitarist and singer Ceasar Rosas scarcely veers from this formula. His personality almost dissapears behind his ferocious belief in the music, as he systematically pays homage to blues, tejano, New Orleans second line, and plain old rock and roll. That styles this tried and true could sound so fresh is a testimony to Rosas' understanding of the depth and subltlety that is possible when the music is pared down to bare essentials.
What is on Rosas's mind is, oddly enough, trouble, women, and trouble with women. The opening track, "Little Heaven" is a jangly ode to heartbreak and being played for a fool that has the best line on the album: " Was it heaven? Can't tell; a little heaven - big hell". On "You've got to lose" Rosas waxes philosphical about his predicament. By itself, "You've got to lose - you can't win all the time" is a platitude. Backed by Rosas' sinewy jabs of blues wisdom, they're words to live by.
Tejano accordion virtuoso Flaco Jimenez makes a guest appearance on "Angelito", which accomplishes what Los Lobos always strived to do: redeem roots music from sinking into banality. But Rosas doesn't limit his sympathies to his own Latin culture. On "Struck" and "Shack and Shambles", he treats second line and Meters-style funk, respectively, with the care and affection you would expect from a native of New Orleans.
The weakest song is "A Better Way", a ballad on which Rosas tries to encourage a despondent friend. It lacks focus, and the terse aphorisms he managed to bring to life on previous tracks fall flat. Fortunately, Rosas returns to form on the title track. Up to this point, he has kept his formidable guitar chops at bay, and now it's time to release the hounds. Besides his extensive research in traditional music, Rosas shows that he has not neglected his Hendrix, lighting up "Soul Disguise" with three incendiary solos.
"Racing the Moon" is an infectious jaunt through Chuck Berry territory that taunts you not to do the duck walk (let's be careful out there). "E. Los Ballad" wraps up the album as a melancholy 6/8 shuffle that has hints of Van Morrison and features Rosas' best and worst vocal performance on the album. You'll just have to hear it to know what I mean.
Soul Disguise is a joyride through forty-plus years of popular music; a master's thesis reflecting Rosas' staggering range of expression in some of America's richest music. As sampling keyboards and slushy washes of overdriven guitar have become metaphors for the distorted, second-hand nature of the slacker nation's relationship to tradition and culture, Cesar Rosas argues that the edgiest rock and roll must have a sense of it's own history; and in case anyone is interested, this is where it came from - this is how it's done.
- ds
Jubilant Sykes, Jubilant! (1998)
Hear a clip in Real Audio or a wav .
A near-perfect combination of spirituals and jazz with classical sensibilities. Sykes has a magnificent, award-winning voice -- his big-name classical music associations include the Met Opera, Lorin Maazel, Andrew Litton, and John Williams -- but what sets him apart from the flock of young baritone singers vying for recognition in the shadow of the Mighty Tenors is his gentle, confident soulfulness. His debut recording from a few years ago, which included a joyful and heart-rending trip through both sets of Copland's Old American Songs, promised much.
And this effort delivers: the reputation of classical crossover (the greedy trend in classical labels that has produced so much embarrassing artlessness) simply doesn't apply here. Renowned jazz trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard lends his thoughtful arrangements and good ensemble leadership to classic spirituals like Fix Me Jesus, Were You There? and Deep River. The result, with Sykes' infallible performing instincts, is often magical, never lacking in precision, never lacking in fried chicken, never lacking in spiritual insight.
You might have thought that there was nothing more to say with Let Us Break Bread Together; and you might blanch when you see the stolid title Blessed Assurance. Fear not: go get this CD and remind yourself that uncompromising musicianship is still with us, and is still the road by which passionate, emotionally engaged Christians may confront the weary world with a startling and soothing Gospel.
- bb
Arvo Part, Kanon Pokajanen (1998)
One of the more easily accessible trends in modern music has been minimalism, the simple, repetitive music that can be shallow (as in the worst of Phillip Glass) or quite deep (as in the best). Interestingly, it has recently captured the imagination of a number of deeply Christian composers -- Henryk Gorecki, of Symphony of Sorrowful Songs fame, and John Tavener, of Princess Diana's Funeral fame, among them -- who have heard within it the echoes of an earlier, monastic era. And they've created some soaringly, heartbreakingly beautiful music. It's caught on so well that they even have a name: the Holy Minimalists.
The Estonian composer Arvo Part is arguably the most experienced technician of the bunch, able to pull incredible sounds out of human voices with only one or two notes at a time. His Kanon Pokajanen, a setting of the repentance canon of the Russian Orthodox Church, was commissioned by the Cologne Cathedral for its 750th anniversary. And what a match -- the music immediately commands you to be still and meditate within its tall echoes, using sound the way the Cathedral uses space. And toward the same end: listening, we begin to feel our proper size.
The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir does a first-rate job, and the recording is practically flawless, capturing the spaciousness of the church while remaining crystal clear. The sopranos reach and reach, floating like doves in the nave. And by the final prayer, the stately back-and-forth rhythm of Russian Orthodox ceremony has done its work on you. Put it on and you'll be soothed; pay attention and you'll be shattered. Gramophon Magazine recently gave this CD their Editors' Choice Award, calling it a "profound marriage of word, music, and spirit." This is a real live masterpiece, folks.
- bb
Wes Cunningham, Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking
(1999)
Wes Cunningham is so talented, he doesn't know what to do with himself. Literally. His debut,Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking, asks the question: should a thoughtful singer/songwriter with supressed punk tendencies and a sunday school background rock like there's no tommorow, titilate his listeners with a sardonic wink and a nudge, be sincere and meaningful, play the sassy white boy to the hilt, or just give up and be as campy as all get out? Apparently the answer is - all of the above. Twelve ways is the work of a writer uncomfortable in his own skin; his overtures at self depreciation come with hip-cocked attitude - aw shucks and shuck and jive in the same three minute pop tunes. Cunningham seems unsure how seriously to take his ablity as a songwriter or vocalist, so he spends the better part of the album goofing around with post-punk frivolities and vocal histrionics reminiscent of Joe Strummer of The Clash. But none of this can hide the fact that he is, indeed, a singer and a writer, and quite good at both.
The opening track has Cunningham at his most Strummer-esque and most annoying. "Say my name" is clever and hammy and almost endearing with it's mush-mouthed rant to a former girlfriend. Unlike Lisa Loeb or Duncan Sheik, Cunningham understands the pointlessness of making grandiose anthems from the vissicitudes of twentysomething dating life - he makes one anyway, but gives it the slurred, pathetic delivery it deserves. The question is, then, is "Say my Name" the voice of Cunningham or a Randy Newman-style character that he's writing in? Either way the song exhausts itself and you on the first listen, and it's time to move on and hope for better things.
On "Bad Way" Cunningham gets in touch with his falleness. It's a Beckish slam of himself that basically says "I'm a duplicitious jerk", and will surely have you convinced that this is so by the end of the song. Next.
"So it goes" is the first sign of life on the album. This hooky funk shuffle chronicles the doomed affair of a confused and comical pair, each unable to leave the other, not from affection but from self-interested fear of lonliness. Cunningham's detached and ironic voice is perfectly dripping with condesencion, yet manages to elicit some sympathy for this unsympathetic duo. There are some memorable lines ("When you're low, you never know how much you know"), and if you don't find yourself bobbing your head or some other extremity to Cunningham's impossibly catchy syncopation, check your pulse.
The next pair of songs continue Twelve Ways ' motif of skewering a pompous or pitiful character in order to find some splinter of a redemptive element. Unfortunately some pompous or pitiful characters are just, well, pompous or pitiful, as is the case with the subject of "America the Beautiful" and "Magazines". A supermodel, of all people, is our candidate for empathy, presented as the strutting bombshell in the first song and as aging and lonely in the second. It's a nice try, but Cunningham fails to find anything more than strained sentiment.
"God's Way" does a much better job of what "Bad Way" attempted ('God's' vs. a 'Bad' way - hmmm...), putting perspective on the conflicting motives and selfish intentions of one's own heart. Followed up by the atomspheric and affecting "Playing with Fire", one can almost see Cunningham's vision coalescing into a compelling whole. It's at this point in the album that he stops trying too hard, and briefly reveals himself as a writer capable of finding stunning moments of insight and bringing the listener along with him.
"Car Wreck" is the improbable final track, a campy Herb Alpert-flavored pastiche of I'm-not-exactly-sure-what, with found TV-sound background noise, cheesy guitar riffs and the funniest lyric on the album - "dear heart, we're both holy rollers; dear one, we're both cherry colas". In the end, Cunningham retreats behind his knowing smirk, but for all that, it's an entertaining tune and an appropriate wrap-up for a confused but perversely fascinating album. Like Beck, Cunningham gets his eclecticism second-hand, from multitudinous media sources, and molds it into a metaphor for the fragmentation in his soul. Unlike Beck, he gets mired in the morass and fails to pull the fragments into something larger than himself. Even still, Twelve Ways has it's moments, and if you're willing to wade through it, there are songs to be found.
- ds
Wilco, Summer Teeth (1999)
Somewhere between the fluorescent halo of the modern city and the somnambulant haze of the suburban wasteland floats Wilco, inchoate and dreamlike, struggling to find some concrete element in themselves. Wilco's new album, Summer Teeth, rocks with lazy abandon and quiet desperation as Jeff Tweedy and Co. continue the legacy left by the defunct Uncle Tupelo to its two splinter bands, Son Volt and Wilco.
Tweedy has always been a melancholy soul, unassuming and unironic. Not one to wear his angst on his sleeve, he nevertheless captures more of the flat-souled generation's predicament in one laconic syllable than all the Eddy Vedders of the world at their vein-popping best.
As Wilco's third offering kicks off, it's apparent that the country in Uncle Tupelo's country-punk is getting left further behind with each album. For that matter, so is the punk. Summer Teeth sounds like Brian Eno and George Martin co-producing The Band. For this outing, Wilco use the studio like an instrument, drawing on orchestral instruments like bells and timpani, mellotron and farfisa, as well as Eno-esque synthesizer excursions, to create a wall of sound where no one instrument demands too much attention. Every member of Wilco defers to the other, and even the occasional solo is austere and sparing. All of this creates a languorous mood where boundaries blur without disseminating, like the transient plane that Tweedy's imagination inhabits.
For a critic like Britain's Simon Reynolds, such watery visions are a healthy response to the hyperreality created by the media overload and labyrinthine discourse of postmodernity. A nirvana-like, blissed-out fixation on the surface is his ideal, typified by bands like Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Spiritualized, and the entire rave culture. Influenced by thinkers like Baudrillare and Lyotard, Reynolds writes, "For My Bloody Valentine, bliss comes with the loss of agency and autonomy, (with all its incumbent anxieties of self-administration). Whether it's succumbing to the uncontrol of desire...or sliding into the oblivion of sleep, what they look for is the moment when power slips out of their hands." --Blissed Out. Such crypto-Eastern ideas are typical of Reynolds, who brilliantly articulated what he sees as the only real role rock could play in an age where notions of narrative and a knowable self are, to him, simply not viable.
But that was Reynolds writing over ten years ago, before Curt Cobain both shockingly and predictably joined rock's repertoire theatre of self-destruction; before the repository of Reynolds' ideals, the indie-rock community would calcify into orthodoxy; and before Daniel Lanois would emerge as the most artistically compelling figure in rock, reworking Eno's absent-minded ambience into ideas of (hang on) narrative and melody. Reynolds' formidable erudition and insight notwithstanding, rock makes a paltry basis for a metaphysic. What he pretended to discover was nothing more than psychedelia redux; the same boutique pantheism formerly espoused by Jim Morrison, Maharishi-era Beatles, Pete Townsend and The Grateful Dead.
Which brings us back to Wilco's Summer Teeth (ostensibly the subject of this review). What Wilco are up to has nothing to do with a passive acceptance of the fragmentation of culture or moving towards a daydream drift. Wilco are already drifting, stretching to reach the ground, like a queasy flying dream you wish would end. Tweedy writes as one reaching for points of contact achingly close, yet just out of reach. His decentered self is inherited, not contrived--a result of, not a response to--the numbing wash of images and ideas that define our age.
What Wilco understand is that if the Self is lost, it is lost in relation to something outside it, and that if it is to be recovered, it will be recovered on the same terms. "The way things go/ You get so low/ Struggle to find your skin/" - "I Can't Stand It." Finding one's skin, one's boundaries, is a recurring theme of Summer Teeth. Tweedy intuits that those boundaries are best understood not through navel-gazing, but by reflecting on those around you. In "A Shot in the Arm," Tweedy watches his lover go through the stages of depression and immediately turns the question of "why" on himself. "You've changed/Oh, you've changed/Maybe all I need is a shot in the arm/Something in my veins/Bloodier than blood." ("Bloodier than blood"--a bracing image that brings irresistibly to mind Hollywood's commodification of "blood"; the essence of life that no longer has any stronger set of associations than with the voyeuristic fixation on death as spectacle.) The blood inside Tweedy's skin, what constitutes his self, is found inadequate--not because of a crisis in him, but because of a crisis in the one he loves. He is paradoxically connected to, and alienated from, those around him. The lines of the self are blurred, but always in reference to other selves.
It is not simply his inability to make contact with others that constitutes his crisis of identity, but also the converse--it's his lack of identity in the Cosmos that constitutes his inability to make contact with others. "You know it's all beginning/To feel like it's ending/No love's as random/As God's love/I can't stand it."-- "I Can't Stand It." God's love, that which defines and grants worth to human beings, is unstable and capricious. Later in the song, these arbitrary affections are passed down to the singer. "You know it's all beginning/To feel like pretending/No love's as random/As my love/I can't stand it." It is now his ability to grant worth to others that is on shifting sand. This somber theme (in tension with its bouncy Beatles-sounding arrangement) opens the album and sets the tone, but it is an unlikely benediction of hope that brings it home. "Some trees will bend/And some will fall/But then again/So will us all/Let's turn our prayers/To outrageous dares/And mark our page/In a future age/High above/The sea of cars/And barking dogs/In fenced in yards."--"In a Future Age." I think I would do best to leave that without comment.
It is narrative that locates the Self; it is the progression of time and continuum of fact sequences that makes sense of our experiences and allows us to manage our lives. But ultimately, it is the relation to the Other that makes sense of the narrative. It is the acknowledgment that our actions do not take place in a vacuum; that our stories are in constant dynamic with other stories, other selves; and that the locating all of these stories together in this age is not a trivial proposition. It is an "outrageous dare."
- ds
David Wilcox, Underneath (1999)
It's easy to see why David Wilcox has become so popular with thoughtful evangelicals who want more from their pop than the standard CCM can offer. His masterful writing tends to vacillate between sounding like the confessional diary entries of a man on a spiritual sojourn and the gentle didacticism of a pastor or counselor's admonishment. Wilcox's coaxing and disarming demeanor can be very comforting, if you,re willing to submit to his perspective.
It's much the same on Wilcox's latest, Underneath, although it brings out a severity in him fans may be less accustomed to. He speaks here with the anxious frustration of a chiding prophet who is trying to keep his acerbic rejoinders to a minimum. The otherwise contemplative title track begins with a cynical critique of cynicism decrying the callousness of society. "Never Enough" ponders the bottomless pit of man's appetite, and "Hometown" tells the story of a compromise made by a married couple that makes them miserable for the rest of their lives. "Guilty Either Way" describes the waning sympathy of a man caught between the obligation to rescue a self-destructive friend and knowing that friend needs to live (or not) his own life. "Leaving You" is a startling account of the endgame of a broken relationship, full of resentment and resign, Wilcox seems barely able to keep the bitterness at bay. This puts a disturbing spin on "All My Life", a song full of the optimism of new love. The album concludes with the undiluted vitriol of "Sex and Music", a scathing assessment not only of the music business, but also of the motives of anyone who surrenders to it's beguiling siren song. The song employs bold imagery that could give James Taylor's live version of "Steamroller Blues" a run for it's money in the "Song most likely to be erased from the church camp dining hall copy" category. Wilcox's world-weariness on Underneath is disquieting, like discovering the secret life of a mentor -- you're not sure what you should do with this information.
But it is Wilcox's spiritual sensitivity that grounds him, and that is no less true here than on previous albums. The title track that began with a rant against the shallowness around him does so in view of the depth of life he feels so acutely and in the chorus he is quick to include himself among the culpable.
Yeah, but what is it really that's keeping me
from living a life that's true?
When the worries speak louder than wisdom
It drowns out all the answers I knew
so I'm tossed on the wave of that surface
Still the mystery's dark and deep
with a much more frightening stillness
-UNDERNEATH
"Down Here" is compelling vision of community where pretense is left at the door and one is better able to get close to the meaning of things. "Home Within Your Heart" demonstrates both the limits and necessity of companionship and puts a poignant perspective on the tension Wilcox is working out in these songs. "Spirit Wind" affirms that there is more to us than matter, that in the face of our mortality, which we may feel more sharply when confronted with times like those chronicled on Underneath, it is faith that provides the fixed reference point.
Musically Underneath presents Wilcox as you,ve come to expect him, with lyrical and expressive fingerstyle guitar playing and resonant vocals evocative of Nick Drake. Producer Steve Buckingham (Dolly Parton [ ! ], Ricky Van Shelton) brings a Nashville sensibility to the proceedings, letting the songs and Wilcox's guitar carry the album. Buckingham's aesthetic is a less-is-more approach that keeps it interesting but not distracting.
Underneath continues Wilcox's foray into the deeper things, this time with some sharp reminders that even the wise become perplexed in this life, and that often it is our finitude that causes us to cling to something higher.
