2007 Album Reviews: K-L

(As published in the Times of Acadiana unless otherwise noted...)

Casey Kasem Presents The Long Distance Dedications (Top Sail Productions/WEA)—“Dear Casey, my name is Asra, and since last November I have been the chairperson for a grassroots committee to see that Barack Obama receives the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 2008. At first my motives were selfless. I believed that the time had come for our country to live up to its noblest ideals and elect an anti-war, Muslim-reared, half-Kenyan-American who believes that the threat posed by global warming is greater than the threat posed by illegal immigration or by so-called Islamofascist terrorism (and who, unlike our current president, can speak in complete sentences). No sooner had I made a New Year’s resolution to build an eight-foot wall of separation between my heart and my head, however, than I found myself succumbing to Senator Obama’s charm: the freshness of his face, the seductiveness of his progressivism. The fact that he is already married only made him more John F. Kennedy-like (not to mention Bill Clinton-like) in my eyes. So imagine my heartbreak when I recently discovered that my dream man is a murderer: that’s right, he smokes—and not something harmless like marijuana either, but cigarettes, the second-hand fumes of which are not only making Al Gore sweat but also killing more potential Democratic voters than Hurricane Katrina and abortion combined. Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s no one I’d rather comfort through the ravages of chemotherapy than (*sigh*) Barack Obama. But somehow I don’t think I could do so without feeling a lot like Eva Braun. So, while I wish I could ask you to play him (in case he’s listening) “Against All Odds,” “Right Here Waiting,” or “You Are So Beautiful,” would you please play him “Springtime for Hitler” from The Producers instead?” Rating: Two formerly nicotine-stained fingers out of five.

The Kingston Trio: Nick, Bob & John: The Final Concert (Collector’s Choice)--The date: June 17, 1967; the club: the legendary Hungry i; the set list: one only a Peter, Paul & Mary fan could love--except he won’t. If the suffocating moral earnestness peddled by PP&M and their ilk sounds staler all the time, the fun that Nick Reynolds, Bob Shane, and John Stewart were having as they bade the world goodbye sounds as fresh as prime Smothers Brothers. Of course, knowing that it’s one’s last hurrah and having an audience packed with longtime friends and associates can go a long way toward loosening one (or in this case three) up. Whatever the reason, these versions of “Greenback Dollar,” “Tom Dooley,” and “Wimoweh” come off like rousing pub sing-alongs, with the Dylan, Donovan, Woody Guthrie, Gordon Lightfoot, and Eric Andersen covers not far behind (and the Johnny Cash-like “Reverend Mr. Black” way ahead). Even “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” belongs. Best of all is the ’tween-song patter, which takes up twenty-three minutes (out of seventy-two) yet, because it’s hilarious, actually feels too short. My favorite joke: “We took Scott McKenzie’s advice and came to San Francisco with flowers in our hair. We were attacked by locusts down near San Jose.” The liner notes explain the chicken-suit references. Rating: Four-and-a-half mighty winds out of five.

Diana Krall: From This Moment On (Verve)--No duller than Rod Stewart or Carly Simon, and better these chestnuts (Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Sammy Cahn, Rogers & Hart, the Gershwins, et. al) than Krall’s own compositions. Rating: Three-and-a-half more American songbooks out of five.

Alison Krauss: A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection (Rounder)--Like Rosanne Cash, her only serious competition, Alison Krauss has never made a weak album. Unlike Cash or anyone else, Krauss has resisted the temptation to fulfill the compilation clause of her recording contract by merely tacking a handful of unreleased songs onto a body of work that her fans already own. Of the soundtracks, tributes, other people’s albums, and one TV show represented on this collection, only her contribution to O Brother, Where Art Thou? is likely to be widely redundant, and five of the best songs are previously unreleased. Krauss is generous in other ways too, showcasing little-known but deserving talent (two of the sharpest new ones are by Julie Lee) and long-forgotten has-beens (two better-than-you’d-think duets with John Waite). One cavil: She could’ve replaced the hokey “Sawing on the Strings,” the overt bluegrassiness of which stands awkwardly out given the album’s otherwise meditatively modern gestalt, with her excellent performance of Ricky Nelson’s “Anyone Else but You” as recorded with the Flying Burrito Brothers in 1999. Rating: Four daughters of the golden west out of five.

John Legend: Once Again (G.O.O.D. Music/Sony Urban/Columbia)—He hasn’t lived up to his chosen surname yet, but the music, call it soul with a bluesman’s attention to detail in the lyrics, benefits as much from the fact that nobody else is doing anything quite like it these days as it does from the fact that nobody else is doing it quite as buoyantly. Or as dramatically: taken together, “P.D.A.” and “Again“ illustrate both the seductiveness of sexual sin and its bitter aftermath, skillfully leaving out what’s better left to the imagination anyway. And, if his feel for things cosmic is naïve by contrast (“O God of love, peace, and mercy, / why so much suffering?” he sings, as if unacquainted with Job and-or Milton), something in his tone suggests he’s not beyond hoping there’s really an answer. Rating: Three-and-a-half half-full glasses out of five.

Benjamin Loeb: Scott Joplin: Piano Rags 2 (Naxos)--Ragtime experts don’t approve of Loeb’s every interpretative detail, but they do approve of many of them, and there’s no questioning Loeb’s confident establishment of an overall tone, which doesn’t so much preserve the sepia associated with these century-old pieces as burnish it until it gives off the melancholy glow just beneath their surface. It helps too that these compositions represent some of Joplin’s lesser-known work. Not only is there no “Maple Leaf Rag“ or “The Entertainer” to turn one’s mind off, but there‘s “Eugenia” followed by “The Creole Collision March” followed by “Reflection Rag” to turn one’s mind on. Rating: Four syncopated musings out of five.

Helen Jane Long: Porcelain (Warner Classics & Jazz)--Ignore the record-company name. Neither classical nor jazz, these melancholy New Age piano ditties (with occasional cello, violin, and viola) beat George Winston (not that hard to do) but not Fresh Aire Interludes by Jackson Berkey. So ignore the music too. Rating: Two ceramics out of five.

Nick Lowe: At My Age (Yep Roc)--The fourth installment in Lowe’s fifteen-years-and-counting flight from the power-popping pub-rock of his youth isn’t all that different from installments one, two, or three. The increased presence of trumpet, flugelhorn, sax, clarinet, trombone, and organ gives the late-night jazz-club jukebox melodies a more retro feel than usual, but the intricately wrought romantic wisdom of Lowe’s lyrics, both those he wrote and those he found, is strictly modern in its psychological maturity. The tension resulting from that combination finds a perfect tonic in Lowe’s magnificent singing. He once called himself the “Jesus of Cool”; now he’s more like a “Saloon Sinatra”--cool but aware that in doing it his way he risks breaking his woman’s heart. Rating: Four parties of one out of five.

2006 Album Reviews: K-L

(As published in the Times of Acadiana unless otherwise noted...)

Mary Karlzen: The Wanderlust Diaries (Dualtone)—Within the first seven-and-a-half minutes, Karlzen goes from gentle, foggy-morning beauty to full-bodied rock to gorgeous Replacements cover, thus mapping out the musical and emotional parameters of an album that’s never dull and frequently arresting. It’s also consistently smart, so much so that when she sings the refrain that goes “Do you think I’m stupid or something?” there’s no temptation to answer in the affirmative. Even the song to her child and the song to her mother avoid bathos, sketching intimate portraits so plainspokenly that one almost wishes she’d gone for a filial hat trick and made “Rock and Roll Lullaby” and not Tom Waits’ “Heart of Saturday Night” the disc’s second-best cover. Rating: Four mother and child reunions out of five.

KC and the Sunshine Band: KC and the Sunshine Band (Collector’s Choice)—Compilations aside, this 1975 album is the most consistently exhilarating disc from the greatest disco hit machine ever. Donna Summer, the Bee Gees—no one matched these Floridians when they were in the zone. Everyone knows “Get Down Tonight,” “That’s the Way (I Like It),” and “Boogie Shoes,” but almost no one knows “Ain’t Nothin’ Wrong” (imagine Archie Bell slowed down and sweetened up) or “I’m So Crazy (’Bout You)” (bubblegum at its brightest, bounciest, and most vibrant). It’s just as well this reissue adds no bonus tracks; in music this efficient they’d just be an encumbrance. Rating: Four glitter balls out of five.

KC and the Sunshine Band: Part 3 (Collector’s Choice)—Compilations aside, the great disco hit machine’s second-most consistently exhilarating release.

Killing Joke: Hosannas From The Basements Of Hell (Cooking Vinyl)--Doom and gloom don’t mean a thing if they ain’t got that boom, so congratulations to drummer Ben Calvert for providing heavy-duty “punch lines” to what would otherwise be an all-too-grim twenty-sixth-anniversary excursion from this relentlessly apocalyptic punk-metal band. Titles like “Implosion,” “Judas Goat,” and “The Lightbringer” (English for “Lucifer”) pretty much say it all, and it’s a good thing, as Jaz Coleman’s Lemmy-on-steroids vocals leave something to be desired in the enunciation department. Still, those needing clarity can always squint at the lyrics, whereupon they’ll encounter such cheery insights as “We come into this life in blood and tears we leave this life in blood and tears” and “Orwellian Machiavellian Hegelian dialectic world management has come and it’s to be expected.” Justifying Coleman’s liner admonition to “play at welding volume” are longtime guitarist Geordie Walker and sometimes bassist Paul Raven, who remain in meltdown mode from beginning to end.*

Andy Kim: How’d We Ever Get This Way?/Rainbow Ride (Collector’s Choice)—Kim is no lost master, but he did know the ins and outs of ’60s bubblegum well enough to plaster the top forty with it a few times. The co-writer of, and an uncredited performer on, the Archies’ “Sugar Sugar,” Kim made three LPs of immaculately conceived sugar pop under his own name that, had it been promoted with comic-book characters, might’ve conquered the world. Or maybe not—man doth not live by bubblegum alone. This disc compiles his first two albums, stranding his equally catchy third with his lachrymose, singer-songwriterly fourth on another two-on-one CD. So till a single-disc best-of comes out, this one’s the one to get. Rating: Three-and-a-half aural cavities out of five.

Lacuna Coil: Karmacode (Century)—Ambient, goth, progressive-metal bands shouldn’t cover Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence”; it makes their own songs sound gloomier and more melodramatic than they already do.

Lisa Loeb: The Very Best of Lisa Loeb (Geffen)—Lord, she took romantic disappointment hard. She made some pretty (sometimes too pretty) songs out of that disappointment too--songs certainly worth the attention of any guy inclined to make passes at girls who wear glasses. Rating: Three-and-a-half wishing hearts out of five.

Andy Fairweather Low: Sweet Soulful Music (Proper American)—Forget the name of his current record label; if anything, Andy Fairweather Low is a proper Englishman. Although best known for his work as a sideman for Eric Clapton, the Who, and currently Roger Waters, Low made four solo albums for A&M between 1974 and 1980, proving himself an ace purveyor of philosophically acute, jaunty folk and pub-rock in the process. Sweet Soulful Music finds him picking up where he left off, singing one catchy, mainly acoustic ditty after another in a voice that’s equal parts Clapton and Paul McCartney. The lyrics, which use stoic good humor to plumb the mystery of life in a universe that’s just unfathomable enough to need plumbing, will prove catchy too, at least to anyone wise enough to know that “life, it ain’t no competition” and that sometimes one needs the help of “Jehovah” to “get over.” Rating: Four amen corners out of five.
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*As published in Illinois Entertainer