Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: A

AMADOU AND MARIAM: Folila (Nonesuch)

Some critics have their panties in a wad over the fact that Bertrand Cantat, one of the featured co-stars on this Malian duo’s latest motherlode of infectious global blues, has done time for killing his girlfriend lonesome-death-of-Hattie-Carroll style.  On one level, the umbrage makes sense.  But on another--the one that matters most (or at least more)--it’s beside the point, which would seem to be the sheer joy that Amadou and Mariam, even at fifty-seven and fifty-four respectively, still take in making music that you don’t have to speak the languages they sing in to love.  Thankfully, it’s a point that the other cameo makers (Theophilus London, Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears, Santigold, members of TV on the Radio, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs) obviously got.  

ASIA 

XXX 

(Frontiers)

Critics won’t admit it, but in perfecting the art of playing down to the masses for fun and profit, these prog-rock veterans (average age: sixty-two) have made some catchy music.  They’ve also made albums like this one--reasonable facsimiles of what made them famous, recycled and reshuffled so that even their biggest fans will be hard pressed to tell you which ’80s Asia songs the new ones sound like.  Alas, they’ll be equally hard pressed to tell the new songs apart.  Some will blame the similarity of the tempos, others the similarity of the melodies, still others the similarity of the song lengths.  No one, however, will have a stronger case than those who blame the clichés, without which John Wetton would apparently have nothing at all to sing.

lIllinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: B

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: B

THE BEACH BOYS 

That’s Why God Made the Radio 

(Capitol)

From a collective that hasn’t seriously tried since 1985, this album is hardly a washout.  But it could’ve been stronger.  Joe Thomas, who oversaw some of Brian Wilson’s lamer ’90s music, has co-written almost everything, and, well, Van Dyke Parks he ain’t.  “Spring vacation, good vibration, / summer weather, we’re back together,” “We’ll find the place in the sun / where everyone can have fun, fun, fun”--heck, Thomas might not even be Eugene Landy.  There are, however, pleasant surprises:  Mike Love’s “Daybreak over the Ocean,” Brian’s reality-TV commentary “The Private Life of Bill and Sue,” and the concluding three-song suite, in which Brian finally admits “Summer’s Gone.”  Of course, the harmonies are pleasant too, especially with sideman Jeffrey Foskett keepin’ the high notes alive.  But they’re no surprise.

THE BIG PINK 

Future This 

(4AD)

Don’t let the band’s name fool you.  This spacey, studio-belabored, mid-tempo pop couldn’t have less to do with Robbie Robertson or The Basement Tapes if it had been arranged by Lawrence Welk.  And don’t let the album title fool you either.  The “future”?  This?  British combos have been working variations on these aural templates since Margaret Thatcher.  Milo Cordell has implied that he and his partner Robbie Furze enlisted the producer Paul Epworth (Adele, Foster the People) in part because they like the Now That’s What I Call Music! series as much as anything officially hip.  But a producer seldom makes or breaks an album.  Words and hooks--better ones than the Big Pink is currently coming up with--help too.  Suggested title for the followup: Past That.

THE BLACK KEYS

El Camino 

(Nonesuch)

The best way to play devil’s advocate with Black Keys fans used to be to ask them whether Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney would’ve discovered the nobly savage possibilities of the electric, two-man band format if Local H and the White Stripes hadn’t discovered them first.  If fans answered that one convincingly in the affirmative, the next step was to ask them whether Auerbach and Carney would’ve discovered the liberations of basslessness if it hadn’t been for Alien Sex Fiend, Jucifer, and the Jelly Roll Kings.

But thanks to El Camino there’s now a better question, namely, whether Auerbach spent the previous six albums preferring riffs to melodies because he knew that 1) melodies would require him to sing, 2) when he’d sing he’d tend to sound like Bono, and 3) when he and Carney would play melodies as opposed to riffs they’d tend to sound like either Bono’s band or the Clash.   

If the answer is “yes,” then kudos to Auerbach for finally surrendering to his inner U.K. rocker (perhaps at the behest of this album’s producer, Danger Mouse) and going with a flow that was probably the only way for the Black Keys to escape the rut into which they’d pounded themselves.  “Lonely Boy” is a better followup to “Vertigo” than U2 has managed so far, and “Dead and Gone” is a better followup to “London Calling” than the Clash will ever manage again.

Unlike Bono, Joe Strummer, and Mick Jones, however, Auerbach has yet to get the hang of writing lyrics worth anyone’s attention.  “Hey my my she’s gonna take ya / Way down down she’s bound to break ya” (“Money Maker”), “Like being cooled by the rain / in the eye of the storm” (“Stop Stop”), and the many other similar El Camino lyrics are functional enough (i.e., they scan), but they won’t stick in the head, get scrawled on restroom walls, or start fights.  They will, in short, age badly.

What might age better is “Little Black Submarines.”  In fact, as a melodic and stylistic fraternal twin of “Stairway to Heaven” (right down to its meditative acoustic first half and frenzied electric second half) it has done much of its aging already.  And even if as a Led Zeppelin re-write it’s therefore as anachronistic and derivative as many another Black Keys song, at least it’s anachronistic and derivative in a new way.

JONATHAN BOULET 

We Keep the Beat Found the Sound See the Need Start the Heart 

(Modular)

Using fourteen credited singers to make most of this album’s substantial vocal noise renders this Aussie rocker vulnerable to comparisons with the Polyphonic Spree.  Pounding most of this album’s songs home with a percussion ensemble that may as well be the Royal Drummers Of Burundi renders him vulnerable to comparisons with Adam and the Ants.  Sounding like a Polyphonic Spree/Adam and the Ants hybrid renders him capable of passing his lyrics off as one more aurally impressionistic brick in his wall of sound.  Good thing too.  Were his music ever to go into heavy rotation, a refrain such as “This crap tastes good ’cause they play it, / now you’re sayin’ what they’re sayin’” (“Dread Is This Place”) might strike those singing along to it on the radio as awkward.

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: C-F

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: C-F

JIMMY CLIFF

Sacred Fire EP 

(Collective Sounds)

If Jimmy Cliff were as great as his Rock and Roll Hall of Famer status suggests and not an overrated reggae journeyman, these five songs might seem like a condescending sop to fans willing to lap up anything bearing his name.  As matters stand, however, Sacred Fire comprises his most consistent twenty minutes since 1980’s underrated I Am the Living.  Too bad a third of it’s given over to a version of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”: Other than making the protagonist’s blue eyes brown, its main accomplishment is interrupting the flow established by the Clash cover (“Guns of Brixton”), the Rancid cover (“Ruby Soho”), and a Cliff original (“Ship Is Sailing”) that makes having many rivers to cross seem like not that big a deal after all.

ARIZONA DRANES 

He Is My Story: The Sanctified Soul of Arizona Dranes 

(Tompkins Square)

How obscure was the piano-pounding gospel shouter Arizona Dranes?  So obscure that Michael Corcoran, the author of the Dranes biography that accompanies this compilation of her music, has only come up with forty-two pages on her despite years of investigating.  Granted, the story is interesting, if only because it traces rock-and-roll to black Pentecostals and therefore implies fascinating truths about America.  But decades of Dranes’ life itself remain elusive.  As for the lovingly speed-corrected remastering of the 78s that Dranes recorded, it sounds about the same as what Document Records captured on Dranes‘ Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order in 1994--as much naked Holy Ghost enthusiasm as the Chicago recording studios of the late 1920s could handle without going up in flames.

DUB PISTOLS 

Worshipping the Dollar 

(Sunday Best)

Considering that in “West End Story” the featured rapper Akala says global poverty goes unnoticed because “we’re too busy blingin’,” you get the impression Dub Pistols are against the monetary idolatry referred to in this album’s title.  On the other hand, the hedonistic, cocaine-fueled fantasy narrated in “Mucky Weekend” by its featured rapper, Rodney P, could only come true with lots of surplus cash.  So call this bi-racial London-based ensemble ambivalent about the filthiness of lucre in general but rock-solid sure about its cleanliness when used to finance reggae-rooted beats as deep and crisp as the many that proliferate throughout this relentlessly catchy recording.  Really, “Bang Bang” (featuring Kitten and the Hip) is what Madonna was aiming for on MDNA’s “Gang Bang” and almost hitting.

THE EXPLORERS CLUB 

Grand Hotel 

(Rock Ridge)

Don’t hate the explorers in this club because they’re dutiful--to picking up where ’60s AM radio left off, to imagining what Brian Wilson might’ve accomplished if he hadn’t turned his brain to mush, to making music the likes of which hasn’t been heard in nearly fifty years simply because they want more of it.  If on 2008’s Freedom Wind they were practically Beach Boys clones, this time, by adding and combining other influences, they sound determined to prove they’re no mere novelty act.  Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (the title cut), the Turtles (“Any Little Way”), Climax and the Association (“It’s No Use”)--actually, Climax was a ’70s band.  Hmmm.  These guys had better be careful or they’ll be channeling Three Dog Night before they know it.

LEE FIELDS 

Faithful Man 

(Truth & Soul)

It’s understandable that those mourning the departures of Solomon Burke and Howard Tate might find solace in Lee Fields, a dogged journeyman with an equally dogged, if relatively small, core of fans who’ve long considered him the heir apparent to the old-school-soul throne.  The problem is he’s more like Percy Sledge--same upper-range intensity, same sense of strain while going to emotional extremes--but without anything as riveting as “Take Time to Know Her” or “When a Man Loves a Woman.”  What’s almost riveting is his cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Midnight Mile.”  It begins with the pitter-patter of the percussion riff from Ann Peebles’ “I Can’t Stand the Rain.”  It ends without Fields ever once having given Mick Jagger reason to look over his shoulder.

Illinois Entertainer 2012: Green Day

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: Green Day

GREEN DAY

¡Uno! 

(Reprise)

“I'm not growing up,” sang Billie Joe Armstrong at the outset of Dookie eighteen years ago.  “I'm just burning out.”  As his recent much-publicized rehab stint suggests, he wasn’t kidding about the latter.  And judging from his lyrics on iUno!, the first installment of Green Day’s gradually unfolding triptych of new releases, he remains committed at forty to the former as well. 

Grownups, after all, don’t worry about “taking down all [their] enemies” or refer to them as a “fucking useless ... bunch of shit-talking drama queens” (“Loss of Control”) even if a fucking useless bunch of shit-talking drama queens is, in fact, what those enemies are.  Neither do grownups insult former lovers by exclaiming “Thought you were falling in love, / but now you're sucking on a doorknob / that I slammed in your face”:  Grownups know it’s doors and not doorknobs that one slams.

Of course, if the more than fifty million units that Green Day has sold worldwide mean anything, it’s that lots of people don’t mind the inarticulate expression of an American idiot as long as he and his bandmates remain adept at setting them to skeletal, tightly wound hooks that play like recycled Kinks or Ramones.  And, from start to finish, iUno! plays just that way.    

“Sweet 16” plays even better.  Three minutes of wistfully romantic bubblegum sunshine, it could very well become a high-school-reunion anthem for generations who pooh-pooh “Jack and Diane” as their parents’ music.  

And therein lies this album’s rub.  Try as he may to hold on to sixteen as long as he can, Armstrong can’t help hearing time’s footsteps or pining, if only subconsciously, for a conservatism at odds with the profanity he sometimes overuses in a desperately unbecoming attempt to sound hip.

In “Nuclear Family” he likens the “breaking down” of that most fundamental social unit to a “Chinese drama and conspiracy,” neither of which, apparently, he considers a good thing.  And he doesn’t sound any happier in “Kill the DJ” about walking through Central Park only to find that it has turned into “Sodom and Gomorrah.”  

“I don't want a suicide, I don't want this to end,” he sings on “Lady Cobra,” a leaked track from iUno!’s soon-to-be-released follow-up, iDos!  “I just want to be your friend.”  Maybe life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone after all.   

GREEN DAY 

¡Dos! & ¡Tré! 

(Reprise)

By now it’s obvious that Green Day should’ve culled the best cuts from its ¡Uno! ¡Dos! ¡Tré! trilogy and made one killer longplayer.  But they didn’t, so listeners will have to do it themselves.  The obvious winners from iUno! were “Sweet 16” and “Nuclear Family.”  As for iDos!, it mostly finds Billie Joe, Mike, and Tré, diligent wind-up toy that they are, ramming their heads into the pop-punk wall, oblivious to the fact that it’s their heads and not the wall that’s sustaining the damage.  Or maybe they’re not oblivious.  “I'm too mental to go crazy,” goes “Lazy Bones,” the best song on this triptych linchpin and the closest these guys will probably ever come to a common man’s fanfare.  “I'm too drunk to be pure, / and my mind is playing tricks on me, / And I can't sleep tonight.”  Oblivious or not, however, the brain damage is real.  How else to explain Armstrong’s describing iDos! as “garage rock”?  Green Day might be panning for Nuggets, but at least half of what it ends up with on iDos! is pyrite.  (Oh, and it’s the one that should’ve been called ¡Tré!, as Tré Cool’s drumming makes it go to the extent that it can actually be said to.)  So what of ¡Tré!?  In the grand tradition of saving the best for last, it may as well have served as the template of the whole shebang.  Yes, it’s that good.  The stand-out cut is “Drama Queen,” perhaps the only time Green Day has waxed slow and acoustic and lived to tell the tale.  In it Armstrong, the real-life father of two boys, nails the mixed emotions of every father whose teenaged daughter’s uniquely feminine problems put her just beyond the reach of anything he can do to help. 

Illinois Entertainer 2012: H-M

Illinois Entertainer Reviews: H-M

RICHARD HAWLEY 

Standing at the Sky’s Edge 

(Mute)

You can’t fault Hawley, a forty-five-year-old rocker with a baritone voice, for sounding like Iggy Pop from time to time.  In fact, if only because he has rewritten the lyrics of the Stooges’ “1969” and called the resulting song “Down in the Woods,” Hawley himself seems to invite the comparison.  No sooner does he invite it, however, than he comes up with “Seek It,” a softly sung, medium-tempo number with which Michael Hutchence himself might have someday been pleased to follow up “Beautiful Girl.”  The songs that avoid easy comparisons do so by marinating in psychedelic drones emanating from the sounds of guitars feeding back.  As for the title cut, it suggests that maybe Hawley and not Ian Astbury should be fronting the Doors these days.    

WANDA JACKSON 

Unfinished Business 

(Sugarhill)

Wanda Jackson is seventy-five, making her, along with Bob Dylan, Ian Hunter, Leonard Cohen, and three of the Beach Boys, the latest septuagenarian to release an album of new material this year.  And while you can’t say she outdoes Dylan or Cohen, she sounds livelier than Brian Wilson, Mike Love, and Al Jardine and wrestles Hunter to a draw.  What she sounds most like is Maria Muldaur, a similarly still-vital rootsy interpreter with whom Jackson shares a passion not only for Jesus (hence this album’s inclusion of Townes Van Zandt’s overtly gospel “Two Hands”) but also the blues (Sonny Thompson’s “Tore Down”), country (excellent originals by Greg Garing and producer Justin Townes Earle), and vintage rock’n’roll (“It’s All Over Now”).  All right, Rolling Stones, the ball’s in your court.

KINDNESS 

World, You Need a Change of Mind 

(Polydor)

Fans of Adam Bainbridge’s dreamily futuristic R&B disagree about whether it’s rooted in the '70s or the '80s, probably because it’s rooted in both.  In “Gee Up,” for instance, Bainbridge urges listeners to “get up” and “get down” to a disco vamp worthy of Studio 54.  But it’s the cassingle era that permeates “Anyone Can Fall in Love” (which pays homage to DeBarge), “House” (ditto Spandau Ballet), and his gently iconoclastic electronification of the Replacements’ “Swingin’ Party.”  Meanwhile, don’t rule out the '60s--in “Bombastic” Bainbridge includes John Lennon and Brian Wilson in a list of musicians for whom he “can’t wait any longer” but from whom he also doesn’t “want any more.”  Whether because they’ve already given him enough or because they’ve given him too much remains unclear.

THE MACCABEES 

Given to the Wild 

(Cooperative)

For this album’s first six songs and a few thereafter, The Maccabees do all that they can to sift the U2 out of Coldplay until all that’s left is a nimbus-like shimmer.  Sonically impressive, the demands of the sound also require the lead singer Orlando Butler to go all castrato and enunciate like just another instrument.  Not until Track Seven, “Pelican,” rolls around do less dreamy elements like stuttery guitars, crisp drums, and intelligible lyrics come into play.  And catchy though it is, the song also exposes Butler as the worst kind of not-too-deep thinker--one who thinks he’s deep.  “One thing's for sure,” he sings, “we're all getting older.... / Before you know it, pushing up the daisies.”  Translation: Life’s a bitch, then you die.  We know.

KYLIE MINOGUE

The Abbey Road Sessions 

(Parlophone)

Forget comparisons to Madonna or Olivia Newton-John.  Minogue’s merely scoring five top-forty hits in the U.S. while being one of the biggest pop stars everywhere else for the last quarter century makes her, if anything besides herself, the female Cliff Richard.  That comparison means, among other things, that Minogue has a voice worth hearing these in de-electronicized orchestral versions of her greatest hits.  Her voice isn’t as smooth or elastic as Richards’, but, because she’s a woman, it doesn’t have to be. The fairer sex has means of conveying vulnerability--breathiness (“Slow”), poutiness (“I Should Be So Lucky”)--of which even the most sensitive male singer can only dream.  The obligatory refurbishing of “The Loco-Motion” (#3 U.S., 1987) is the only track that feels de rigueur.

Illinois Entertainer 2012: P

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: R

LEE RANALDO 

Between the Times and the Tides 

(Matador)

That the guitars are still sonic and the vocals still youthful is practically all that’s noteworthy about this ninth solo album from Thurston Moore’s and Kim Gordon’s erstwhile bandmate.  “Xtina As I Knew Her” borrows its melody from Neil Young’s “Like an Inca” and “Lost (Plane T Nice”) its riff from New Order’s “Age of Consent” as surely as “Tomorrow Never Comes” borrows its overall vibe from The Beatles‘ “Tomorrow Never Comes,” and the two acoustic songs drag.  But it’s the lyrics, especially coming from a published poet, that disappoint the most.  Whether recycling clichés or forcing rhymes, Ranaldo has nothing to say and no special way to say it--unless inadvertently shilling for Skittles in “Off the Wall” by citing a rainbow “shattered into pieces” on the floor counts.

THE RAVEONETTES 

Observator 

(Vice)

If last year’s seventy-eight-minute, twenty-seven-track Rarities/B-Sides was too much of a good Raveonettes thing, this tirty-one-minute, nine-track album is too little.  No sooner does Observator establish what the Everly Brothers would’ve sounded like if one of them had been a sister and both of them were trapped in a David Lynch film than it ends.  Fortunately, it establishes something else too: namely, that as long as co-producer Richard Gottehrer is on hand to help Sune Rose Wagner transform the musical ideas he comes up with when he goes on drug-and-boozed-fueled benders into flattering soundscapes for Sharin Foo’s singing, Wagner should be drugged, drunk, and depressed more often.  As for Foo, especially on “The Enemy,” she’s a lover, not a fighter.

HALEY REINHART 

Listen Up! 

(Interscope/19)

Listen Up! isn’t bad as album titles ending with exclamation points go.  But Now That’s What I Call Music! would’ve fit this album too.  Not that Reinhart sounds like all things to all people.  Her un-Auto-Tuned voice is her own no matter which pop-R&B style she’s inhabiting.  But she delivers in abundance and enthusiasm what it has become fashionable for female singers to sound as if they’re delivering only under duress: a nuanced grasp of the dramatic trajectory of the songs she’s singing.  Getting from the flirtatious bounce of “Oh My!” to the soulful heartbreak of “Undone” is impressive.  Getting from the proto-disco of “Now That You’re Here” to the blue-eyed gospel of “Walking on Heaven” is practically miraculous.  And, man, can she sing.

Illinois Entertainer 2012: S

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: S

SAY ANYTHING 

Anarchy, My Dear 

(Equal Vision)

Max Bemis has referred to himself an “ADD-infected, clumsy, and right-brain- centric dolt of a man,” and on Anarchy, My Dear he proves it.  Or, rather, careening within post-punk parameters of his own devising, he proves it again, having already given abundant evidence--both in and outside the nuthouse--that he contains self-contradictory multitudes.  This time he has “Randy Newman in [his] head” (“Night’s Song”), a welcome addition that sharpens his humor ( “Don’t want to hear about how the latest Rihanna single / is a post-modern masterpiece”), his misanthropy (an entire song wishing Stephen Hawking dead), and his pop sense (“So Good” and “Overbiter” could qualify for Now That’s What I Call Music).  All this beause of Randy Newman?  Heck, wait ’til Bemis discovers Angry Samoans.

HARRY SHEARER 

Can’t Take a Hint 

(Courgette)

The first requirement of satirical songs is not that they work as satire but that they work as songs.  If in addition they’re funny and-or insightful, all the better.  The ten acts referred to as “featured” on this album’s cover (most notably Fountains of Wayne, Dr. John, and Judith Owen) guarantee sufficient musicality.  Whether any of the cuts, however, would’ve provided, say, The Book of Mormon with serious Grammy or Tony Awards competition is dubious, mainly because of the obviousness and safety of Shearer’s targets.  Sexually predatory priests (“Deaf Boys”), Madonna (“Like a Charity”), Sarah Palin (“Bridge to Nowhere”), Joe the Plumber (“Joe the Plumber”)--will it come as a surprise to anyone that Shearer is against them all?  What is surprising: the lameness of his Ian Dury impersonation.

SKRILLEX 

Bangarang 

(Big Beat/Atlantic)

Bangarang is not only this EP’s title but also what this EP’s music sounds like.  In fact, “bangarang” would make a better name for the entire hyper-electronic genre of which Skrillex is currently the best-selling example than “dubstep.”  Listeners needing more explanation might imagine minimalism, hip-hop, Keith Emerson’s synthesizers, machine guns, and jackhammers force fed into a garbage disposal then trash compacted until even such lyrics as poke out--“Bass makes that bitch come” (“Kyoto”), “Come on, baby, light my fire” (the Doors-featuring “Breakn' a Sweat”)--function more as aural shards than sentient expression.  The pummeling can get dull, like a wind-up toy ramming repeatedly into a wall.  It can also get impressive, as if Skrillex just might break on through to the other side.

CHRIS SMITHER 

Hundred Dollar Valentine 

(Homunculus)

It must be nice to have Chris Smither’s chief aesthetic problem, which is that he’s so consistent and consistently good at what he does his albums have begun to sound nearly identical.  What he does, for those who don’t yet know, is set existential conundrums to brisk, acoustic folk-blues and sing them in a warm, husky baritone soaked in stoicism with his tapping foot for a heartbeat.  What’s new this time is that he has finally eschewed covers, thus quashing doubts about whether a verse like “They say the good die young, but it ain’t for certain. / I’ve been good all day, I ain’t hurtin’. / And anyway I’m too old to die young” is his own.  And if you like that one, there are plenty more where it came from.

ESPERANZA SPALDING

Radio Music Society 

(Heads Up International)

After her “Best New Artist” Grammy in the wake of Chamber Music Society, Spalding could’ve played things safe and merely reprised that album’s jazzy, non-verbal charms.  Instead, she has created an elastic jazz-pop tour de force, assembling a cast of dozens (four drummers alone, Jack DeJohnette included) and replacing the vocalise with lyrics.  Some of them, such as those in “Black Gold” advising African-Americans to boost their self-esteem by pondering ancient Egypt, are embarrassingly naive.  And “Vague Suspicions” and “Endangered Species” barely make sense.  But “How can we call our home, the land of the free / Until we've unbound the praying hands / Of each innocent woman and man” (“Land of the Free”)?, especially as Spalding sings it, ain’t bad for an Afrocentric “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Illinois Entertainer 2013: U-W

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: U-W

UFO

Seven Deadly 

(SPV)

One of the highest compliments anyone can pay a hard-rock album these days is to say it would sound good in an episode of Supernatural, and with “Burn Your House Down,” this twenty-first studio LP by Phil Mogg and Co. passes that test.  It’s truly amazing how far falsetto background vocalists going “Ooo, ooo” over minor chords and a mid-tempo beat can go toward diminishing one’s fear of the reaper--the other mid-tempo cuts might as well be Bob Seger B-sides by comparison.  Fortunately, loud and-or fast rules.  “Fight Night” makes watching boxing on Tijuana TV sound like a joyride on the highway to hell.  And “Wonderland,” powered by Vinnie Moore’s precision riffs, will have headbangers old enough to know better risking air-band whiplash.

JAH WOBBLE  & KEITH LEVENE 

Yin & Yang 

(Cherry Red)

PiL’s Metal Box is one of the greatest sounding albums ever, and Wobble (on bass) and Levene (on guitar) were at its core, throbbing and scraping away as if there were no other way out of the punk cul-de-sac that John Lydon yowled about atop them.  There  wasn’t.  And now, thirty-three years later, Wobble and Levene have picked up where they left off.  Lydon’s not aboard, but, when verbal bile must be spewed, Wobble does a close-enough-for-antichrist impersonation--especially on “Jags & Staffs,” the spoken bits of which recall PiL’s “Religion I.”  As for the duo’s re-forging of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’s weakest link (“Within You Without You”) into a throb-scrape template, it could’ve kept Lester Bangs brooding deep into the night.

Illinois Entertainer 2012: Christmas

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2012: Christmas

LADY ANTEBELLUM 

On This Winter’s Night 

(Capitol) 

The quality of Lady Antebellum’s early singles was so high that it was possible to entertain fantasies of the trio’s becoming the Fleetwood Mac of twenty-first-century country-pop.  Alas, no longer.  Fleetwood Mac would never have made a Christmas album, but if it had, the album would’ve been a lot less bland than what Hillary Scott and Charles Kelley accomplish by carrying these (mostly) well-known tunes in holly-bedecked buckets while unimaginative, yuletide-lite arrangements play in the background.  Why, competing against this year’s crop of new Christmas releases alone, they’re outperformed by Rod Stewart (“Blue Christmas”), Tracey Thorn (“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”), and the Polyphonic Spree (“Let It Snow,” “Silent Night,” “Silver Bells”).  And they never stood a chance with “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”

SCOTTY McCREERY 

Christmas with Scotty McCreery 

(Mercury Nashville/19/Interscope)

Spending Christmas with Scotty McCreery wouldn’t be so bad.  A small-town boy at heart, he’d probably take you on a tour of his North Carolina environs then invite you to dinner with his family (who’d no doubt be playing his renditions of “Jingle Bells,” “Holly Jolly Christmas,” and “Winter Wonderland” on the Bose).  Then maybe you’d go with everyone to church.  You could even pew up next to Scotty during the singing of “O Holy Night” and “The First Noel” and verify whether his baritone twang as captured on his recordings is Auto-tune free.  Finally, later on by the fire, after the eggnog had kicked in--but only then--he’d sing “Santa Claus Is Back in Town” and his grandma would roll her eyes.  But she’d be smiling.

ROD STEWART 

Merry Christmas, Baby 

(Verve)

It would be easy to dismiss Stewart’s Christmas project as his having discovered that it would allow him, at sixty-seven, to mine the Great American Songbook--a source that has enabled him to sell nearly eight-million albums--one more time.  And a cynical ploy it may be.  The strategic duets (Cee Lo Green, Michael Bublé, Trombone Shorty, Dave Koz, the long-deceased Ella Fitzgerald) certainly suggest as much.  But, although Merry Christmas, Baby’s secular chestnuts outnumber their sacred counterparts approximately three to one, Stewart sings each of the latter as if deep down he senses the significance of the Incarnation.  He certainly puts as much loving care into “This, this is Christ the King” as he put into “People get ready for the train to Jordan” twenty-seven years ago.

Wendell Kimbrough: The Complete Q&A

"The rest of the world, from the Beatles on, have just been trying to sound like poor folks from Mississippi."


In March 2012, I had the pleasure of interviewing, via e-mail, the Washington, D.C.-area singer-songwriter Wendell Kimbrough for WORLD magazine: http://www.worldmag.com/articles/19375.  The occasion was the release of his excellent second album, Things That Can't Be Taught.  Alas, he had a lot more to say than I could include in the article.  I told him that I thought his comments deserved to be available on the 'net and asked his permission to publish them here.  He acquiesced.  Hence the following barely edited transcript of my questions and his replies....

When were you born?  I.e., how old are you? 

I was born in 1983 in Ozark, AL.  My family moved to Mt. Olive, Mississippi when I was six, so I consider that "where I grew up," but we lived in southern Alabama when I was born.  I'm twenty-eight years old.  Birthday in August. 

Your PR info mentions that as a toddler you were once “performed” “Jesus Loves Me” by humming it before the entire congregation of the Presbyterian Church of Clio, Alabama.  What other musical precociousness did you demonstrate?

My first grade classroom at Mt. Olive Attendance Center (strange name for a school) was located across the breezeway from the marching-band practice room.  We could hear the drums all day, and I (along with several classmates) took to drumming along on our desks.  I loved it!  And it became an obsession for me, where I would beat on things and hear beats in my head all the time.  I don't know how my mom put up with me, because I would literally walk through the house keeping a beat on the hallway walls and doors as I passed through.  Strangely, I still hear beats in my head as an adult.  I even have dental-jaw problems because since I was a kid, I "grind" my teeth to the rhythms in my head.  But the beats-rhythms are so deeply ingrained in my subconscious that stopping is not really an option because I don't even realize I'm doing it.  So if I get TMJ [Temporomandibular joint disorder], so be it.  

       Around fourth grade, we got our first PC, and my dad purchased a program called "The Miracle" that taught piano lessons with a midi keyboard.  I took to it really quickly, and my parents realized they needed to find me a real "live" piano teacher.  I was lucky to get a great teacher, Mrs. Rosemary Mooney, who realized I had a good ear (I could pick up songs without the sheet music) and helped me develop it more fully.  She let me play a song I composed at one of my first recitals as well as a song from a movie that I had learned by ear.  

       I taught myself guitar when I was thirteen and started a Christian acoustic rock band a couple of years later.  

By the way, where along the Protestant conservative-liberal continuum did (does?) the Presbyterian Church of Clio, Alabama, fall?  

It's a PCA [Presbyterian Church in America] church, so pretty conservative.  I grew up in PCA churches with my dad as the pastor.  

To what extent did growing up under that church’s influence leave its mark on you?

It was pretty central in my childhood and is still a huge part of who I am on many levels.  I'll give two examples.  One: Hymns, specifically the Trinity Hymnal, is probably the single biggest influence on my sensibilities about music.  I now lead music at an Anglican church here in DC, and my entire philosophy and practice of leading congregational music is shaped by the wisdom of Protestant hymnody.  I blog about church music over at http://churchmusicblog.wordpress.com and do occasional instructional videos on how to adapt traditional "piano" hymns to the guitar.  Two: I'm still pretty reformed, and I love the church.  I moved to DC to do the music for an Anglican church plant.  

So, obviously, you’re still a believer.

Yes, I'm a believer.  I'm not in the PCA anymore, but I'm part of an Anglican church that is under Rwanda.  And as I mentioned, I lead the music at the church.  It's called Church of the Advent.  And Christianity is still central to my life.  I wouldn't be working in music professionally if I had not come to believe that God cares about goodness, truth, and beauty.     

Is your music-leading gig your main source of income?   

Last year I made about half of my income from working at the church.  The other half came from my singer/songwriter music "business"-- playing shows/gigs and selling CDs.  This year, I'm forgoing CD income because I'm giving away for free my new album.  I'm doing that in the hopes that it allows me to greatly expand my fan-base.  So I'm a full-time musician, working half-time at church and half-time self-employed.  Tax time is so much fun. 
   

What made you move from the PCA to the Rwandan brand of Anglicanism?  

I wasn't specifically drawn to Anglicanism, but I do love it now.  I just happened into it in God's providence.  After college, I spent a year at the  Trinity Forum Academy--which is another, big part of my story, but I won't go into it here.  After my year at the TFA, I began searching for an urban church where I could participate in music leadership.  I thought I would end up in the PCA, but a friend put me in touch with an Anglican church plant in DC, and they offered me a job.  

       So I never had a "breaking" with the PCA.  I'm really grateful for that tradition.  I just found another gospel-centered church in another tradition that was a good, healthy place for me to be, to serve, and to use and develop my gifts.  

       Of course, now, after being here for almost five years, I definitely consider myself Anglican and love the church calendar, the Book of Common Prayer, and many of the traditions of Anglicanism.

Did your parents ever restrict your access to music or films in any significant way?  Or did they, recognizing your natural gifts, allow you to explore the highways and byways of your interests as long as you were home by dinner? 

My parents limited the amount of television we could watch as young kids, for which I'm deeply grateful.  They also shielded us from things that were inappropriate for kids.  At the same time, my parents modeled "loving the good" by keeping high-quality music (both Christian and non-Christian), film, and television as part of our life.  As a result, my tastes were shaped by the tastes of my parents.  By the time I was a teenager, they let me make my own decisions about what music, film, and TV to take in, and I had a pretty good idea by that time of what was worthwhile and what wasn't.  But they largely let me make my own decisions, with some trial and error. 

Talk about your approach to songwriting.  

I spend a lot of time on songwriting, but it comes in seasons.  I'm set up at home in such a way that I can capture an idea when it first comes to me (record a quick demo and jot down lyrics), but then I have to make time to return to the idea and mold it into a full song.  For example, right now, I haven't dedicated time to songwriting in almost a year.  So I have this huge backlog of ideas--short mp3 recordings, lyrics scribbled--filling up a notebook and on my computer.  Some of them I think are really exciting, but it remans for me to sit down and give them enough shape to be presentable songs.  I hope to do some of that this spring before touring again.  Of the things I do as an independent musician, songwriting is my favorite.  So I wish I could do more of it and less marketing-booking-promoting.  But I'm figuring it out as I go.  

       In terms of process, some people always start with music or always start with lyrics.  I can go either way, but music usually comes first.  I have more musical ideas than lyrical ideas, and the lyrics take a lot more work to get right.  I'm a perfectionist with lyrics: I don't want to ever stand up in public and have to sing a line that I know was just a "throw-away" or space filler.  So I work hard to make each line hold its own.  

       A couple of examples.  One: The song "Home" from my last album began as an instrumental piano piece that I wrote sometime around high school graduation.  I loved it and played it whenever I had access to a piano, but it didn't get lyrics and thus "meaning" until I was twenty-seven, almost ten years later when I began dating my now wife.  Then it became a kind of anthem to the people who have loved and cared for me as I've wandered around with a head full of "knowledge" but not able to figure my own life out.  Two: "The Death of Death" began as a piano jam with a friend playing a hip-hop beat pad.  A few weeks later I had a disturbing experience with some of the homeless guys I knew through volunteering at church, and I found myself playing the piano piece as a sort of "soundtrack" to my emotional world at the time.  Lyrics soon followed.  

How can you tell that a song is "done"?
I know a song is done when I feel overwhelmingly excited about it.  Or at least, that's when it's time to put it out in public.  Sometimes I'll revise a bit after performing it a few times, but typically I don't put it out in public until I'm pretty confident that it's mostly done.   

Your PR also says that “[a]long the way, [you] absorbed the sounds that make Things That Can't Be Taught come alive—from early twentieth century jazz, channeled through greats like Louis Armstrong and contemporary composer Randy Newman, to folk heroes of the 1970s, James Taylor and John Prine.  T-Bone Burnett once wrote that “[w]e are all branches on a tree.”  What do you think you add to the musical tradition mentioned above? 

This is a tough question.  Certainly one worth asking, but a tough one for me to answer.  I think that's because I haven't analyzed my own music very much, at least not on a meta level.  I guess I tend to think "with my head down," focusing on what I'm doing right now or what comes next.  Said differently, I'm pressing on as diligently as I can, trying to improve my craft, write the best songs I can, and get my music out there, hoping that if I work hard enough at it, one day I'll be considered a noteworthy leaf or branch on the same tree as the guys I love.  And then hopefully other people can tell me what I've added or contributed.  

       For what it's worth, though, I asked my wife, and she agrees with your suggestion.  She says she sees me as having "a very inclusive art" that "looks outward" while I "mine (my) own heart for stories."  And again, having not thought much about it myself, I can say that I push away from the side of the singer-songwriter tradition that strikes me as self-referential to the point of being self-indulgent.  When I hear carelessly or intentionally esoteric lyrics from other artists, they piss me off.  I heard a Christian philosopher/thinker (I believe it was Greg Wolfe) say once something to the effect that the "particular" and the "universal" are two sides of the same coin.  If the "particular" voice is telling the truth, then others will see themselves in it.  Since then, in my songs, I try to tell the truth about my own life in such a way that something universally true about the human experience emerges.  

       I don't know if that makes me unique or if it means I'm adding anything to the tradition.  But that's at least what I see myself doing.  Hopefully, someday someone will think I've contributed something good to the tradition.  

More from your PR: “From the first chords of “When I Work Alone”—like the gentle swell of an orchestra tuning up—to the choir shouting “hallelujah!” and shaking the walls of some great cathedral in “The Death of Death,” you can tell that Kimbrough is doing what he loves.”  What might you be doing if you weren’t doing what you love?

Mold remediation?  Ha!  I had a nasty experience with mold in the basement of a house I rented, and the presence of so many scoundrels and manipulators in the mold remediation industry made me angry.  It took months, and I was sick, depressed, and at the end of my rope when I finally met someone who was honest and trustworthy.  I realized that God builds his Kingdom through the goodness and truth telling of hard working people.  I asked the guy if I could work for him part time if I couldn't make enough money in the music.  I kind of hope that I won't have to do that.  But I grew up in a blue-collar town, and I have such respect for hard-working people (and some experience with it), enough to know that I could do it and live a good life.  Heck, I might be a better musician, too.  

       Being a pastor has always been on my radar, too.  And I still might end up in seminary when I'm thirty-six and begin pastoring in my forties.  But I wanted to pursue music first, because it was where I felt God's pleasure the most.  (Chariots of Fire was a big influence on me in general, my dad's favorite movie).

You’ve said that “Things That Canʼt Be Taught leads the listener through a soundscape reminiscent of an early Tom Waits record, rooted in the pre-rock-era jazz, folk, and soul music of the American South.”  Why do you think that the “music of the American South” is important?  What do we risk losing by neglecting the “pre-rock era”?

Well, let me say a few obvious things first.  The South is where all the good American music came from.  That's a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit of one.  Blues, jazz, Gospel, and rock--basically all of the important musical forms in American culture--have their roots in the South or Southern musicians.  The rest of the world, from the Beatles on, have just been trying to sound like poor folks from Mississippi.  

       I think this is because beauty in music and art almost always come as the fruit of suffering.  It's a flower growing out of a grave or honey from a lion's rotting carcass.  It's damned frustrating, and I wish it wasn't this way so I could live an easy life.  But the best of beauty only comes when we suffer.  (There's a parallel between the aesthetic and ethical world here, too: the kindest, wisest, most glorious humans I've known were people who suffered a lot).

       The South has suffered, particularly the African American community, brought over as slaves, still racked by generationally entrenched poverty.  (I've often thought there was a kindred spirit between Mississippi and Russia--both places of immense suffering, and both producing some of the best writers and musicians the world has known.)  And out of that hot, humid, awful, ugly place where human sin has done so much damage, some of the best music in the world has emerged.  It's like God's gift to the suffering--beautiful, powerful music.  

       I think the danger in neglecting the pre-rock era, (or maybe it'd be better to call it the "pre-mass-media" era) is forgetting that there's no end-around suffering that produces the same kind of heart-wrenching, gut-grabbing beautiful music.  I mean, listen to top-forty radio today: It's riddled with the anthems of people who don't know what suffering is; made by kids who were raised in privilege and the worst thing that ever happened to them was a girl dumped them.  It rings empty.  It's not even fair to malign their music, because they're doing the best they can.  And to some degree, I'd put myself in that camp, as well.  My whole generation spends way too much energy avoiding pain.  Our privilege is the greatest enemy of our music.  

       I could go on this topic for a long time.  But I might already be sounding a little crazy.  To try to wrap it all up in a summary statement, maybe I'd say: The best music comes through suffering; the South has suffered.  We need its songs to help us learn how to do something beautiful with our pain.  

Why did it take you two years to follow your debut, Find Your Way Home, with Things That Canʼt Be Taught?

Well, speaking of suffering; it's funny how all this connects.  I wouldn't say I've lived a very difficult life, but I did encounter some hardships along the road to making this album.  The reason it took two years was that I had to raise the money, spend it down, get lost and discouraged, and then get back up and try again.  I almost gave up on the album half-way through because I was low on money and working alone too much, beginning to hate my music.  

       The short version of the story goes like this: I hired a close friend to be my producer, but mid-way into the project, his life fell apart, and he walked away.  So I lost money, lost a friend-ally, and a producer.  This left me working alone for long hours, losing perspective, and nearing the point where giving up was appealing.  This coincided with me getting sick, losing my voice, and realizing that I had lost my voice a lot in the last year and had actually been sick for most of the year.  I thought, "How foolish of me to think I could have a career in music when I can't even keep my voice healthy."  
       About that time, I discovered the aforementioned mold in my basement (which made me more sick), and I had to move out and live in a friend's basement.  

       I remember sending out a distress e-mail to some friends, speaking out for the first time about how discouraged I was.  That e-mail was kind of a turning point--I asked for prayers.  People started praying, and not long after, a friend suggested I cut gluten from my diet.  I did and started improving quickly.  Some other friends reminded me about Kickstarter and encouraged me to do a campaign.  I did, asking for five thousand dollars, and my friends and fans fully funded me in forty-eight hours.  (You can view the campaign here: http://tinyurl.com/3l9xlvp).  

       That was a dramatic turnaround.  The love and enthusiasm I received from people supporting my project put new wind in my sails.  With the new funding, I was able to go work in a studio nearby with a local engineer.  That got me out of my house, out of my own head, and in about three months the project was complete.  It felt like I'd been clawing my way out of a grave and finally broke through to daylight.  

As well, and my voice got healthy again.  I was able to go on tour in the fall of 2011 and play twenty-four shows; didn't lose my voice the whole time!  

How did you decide to title your latest album Things That Can’t Be Taught?  Do you harbor any opinions about teaching, leaning, or education?

I've always been someone who did really well in the classroom.  I loved college, liked to learn and know things and give good, nuanced answers to questions.  But in my first few years of adulthood, I realized that I didn't have as many answers as I thought I did.  I found myself relearning, through experience and often through mistakes, many things that I thought I already knew.  It's been a humbling few years.  So the album title reflects that: lots of lessons learned the hard way, things that I could not learn in a book or from someone else's experience; I had to learn them myself.  Getting truth into the heart is harder than getting it into the head.  

In “Two Ways to Be Worthless,” you sing, “Tell me I’m an asshole....”  Some of your more conservative fans might object.  Any advice to help them over the hump?  

 I think most listeners who understand the song will understand the strong language, so let me just give an explanation of the song.  

       "Two Ways to Be Worthless" is essentially a letter (or epistle) to my friends, exhorting them to meet me with "tough love" in the event that I should need it.  Although the song is humorous and light-hearted in feel, the content is actually among the most serious of any of my songs.  It imagines a scenario in which I have ignored my marital vows and abandoned my wife and family.  (I don't have kids yet, but the song assumes that is a possible future.)  In other words, the song presents a sort of worst-case-scenario for my life.  

       If that scenario were to come true and I was in a self-destructive downward spiral, doing great harm to the people around me, I would not want my friends to come to me and say gently, "Hey Wendell, we think you might want to reconsider a few things."  I would want them to get in my face and get my attention.  If ever there is a time to use strong language, that would be the time--for the sake of snapping me out of my self-pity, waking me to the damage I am doing, and calling me to repentance. Vulgar language is rarely appropriate.  But when someone is in egregious sin, I think strong language is justified.  

       It's a little bit like Jesus calling the Pharisees "you brood of vipers!" when they claimed he was from the devil in Matthew 12.  Strong language was merited because the offense was great.  So while it may seem out of place to have strong language in a bouncy folk/jazz song, I just ask listeners to consider the story the song is telling.  In the scenario the song describes, I believe the language to be appropriate.