My 2010 Illinois Entertainer Reviews, p. 14

Robert Plant
Band of Joy
(Rounder)

For the second album in a row, Robert Plant, who was once the favorite target of anti-rock evangelists everywhere owing to his band’s alleged sympathy for both the devil and pescatarian groupies, has put himself in the hands of a Christian producer. Last time it was T-Bone Burnett, who oversaw Plant’s 2007 album with Alison Krauss, Raising Sand. This time it’s Buddy Miller, who when he steps out of his role in Emmylou Harris’s band and records with his wife Julie, has been known to put his name on some very bare-knuckled roots- gospel indeed.

So maybe it was inevitable that, just as Raising Sand included the implicitly gospel “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us” and “Your Long Journey,” Band of Joy would include something along those lines. But who’d have thought those lines would’ve intersected at ninety-degree angles to form a crossroads where Plant would stand and deliver a spooky, deeply heartfelt, banjo-accompanied rendition of “Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down” suitable for the midnight hour? “I’m gonna pray ’til they tear your kingdom down,” he sings, and even played backwards it contains nothing more subliminally sinister than “Numb knee yum yuck is.”

Every bit as spooky is Plant‘s version of Low’s “Silver Rider.” And it’s almost every bit as gospel too if the Mormon faith of the song’s composer, Alan Sparhawk, counts (and if the Silver Rider is a Christ figure and not a Fantastic Four character). Amid evanescing clouds of numinous electric guitars, Plant and Patty Griffin (who is at least adequate as an Alison Krauss understudy) compress their yearning to be raptured into hushed whispers that will send shivers down the spine of anyone who has one. Even “Cindy I’ll Marry You Someday” has a line about getting religion.

But Band of Joy isn’t all eerie otherworldliness. A jaunty, rumbling take on the Los Lobos lullaby “Angel Dance” kicks the album off while simultaneously establishing the project’s spiritual tone (even if the dancing angel is the singer’s child and not a cherubim or seraphim on the head of a pin). And the transformation of Barbara Lynn’s “You Can’t Buy My Love” into a ramshackle hoedown will have tattooed chicks who reek of patchouli shaking what their mamas gave ’em.

For the most part, though, a subtly menacing somberness entirely appropriate to a Buddy Miller production predominates. The payoff is that it sounds entirely appropriate to Plant as well.

Buddy Miller: Cruel Moon (2000)

(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )

Buddy Miller
Cruel Moon
(Hightone)

For years, Miller has labored valiantly in the shadow of Emmylou Harris (in whose Spyboy band he plays lead guitar) and Julie Miller (his wife). Both women contribute harmony vocals (as do Steve Earle, Jim Lauderdale, and Joy Lynn White) to this, Miller’s third solo outing, but it’s Miller’s own twangy, Bakersfield-by-way-of-Appalachia singing and his application of it to styles usually associated with smoother-voiced singers that makes these songs live. His version of Paul Kennerly’s “Love Match” sounds like the Everly Brothers gone rockabilly, his “I’m Gonna Be Strong” like Gene Pitney’s with the lights down low, orchestra sent home and a few stiff drinks down the hatch. Rating: Four roots-rock reverberations out of five.

Buddy & Julie Miller (2001)

(As published in the Illinois Entertainer ... )

BUDDY & JULIE MILLER
Buddy & Julie Miller
(Hightone)

Buddy and Julie Miller are to mystical Christianity and American folk-rock what Richard and Linda Thompson used to be to Sufi Islam and British folk-rock--a living embodiment of much that’s desirable and most of what’s possible in the bringing together of opposites.

The similarities don’t end there. Like Richard, Buddy is an ace guitarist with deep roots in various folk idioms and an O.K. voice; like Linda, Julie has a voice that can move mountains, break hearts, and tear down walls. Unlike the Thompsons, however, who made their best albums together, the Millers’ best work is still to be found on their solo albums (and, in the case of Buddy, on Emmylou Harris’s), wherein they tend to write the stand-out tracks themselves. Here the stand-out tracks come courtesy of Bob Dylan (“Wallflower”), Utah Phillips (“Rock Salt and Nails”), and--surprise--Richard Thompson (“Keep Your Distance”).

Which isn’t to say that “Rachel” shouldn’t garner special attention, especially in light of recent national catastrophes. Written by Julie about a spiritually sensitive victim of the Columbine shootings, its sympathies, compassion, and insistence on finding meaning in even apparently senseless violence will no doubt resonate with anyone in search of big answers.

Illinois Entertainer Reviews 2009 (Part V)

I published twenty-nine reviews in the Illinois Entertainer in 2009. Below are five brief ones.

ROGER JOSEPH MANNING JR.: Catnip Dynamite (Oglio)--Even when overdubbed into Queen-like choirs, Manning’s voice is a little too thin, and that’s the only thing wrong with this tour de force of what can only be called ace influence synthesis. Both the Beach Boys and Paul McCartney--heck, maybe even 10cc and the Osmonds--in their primes would‘ve killed for a song as sweet and buoyant as “Love’s Never Been Half As Good,” and Alan Parsons could’ve no doubt found places for “Survival Machine” and “The Turnstile at Heaven’s Gate.” But the most glorious result of Manning’s misspent youth is “Down in Front.” Combining a hook worthy of T. Rex or Sweet with the clavichord riff from ELO’s “Turn to Stone,” it could almost make one believe that bubblegum music really is the naked truth.

BUDDY & JULIE MILLER: Written in Chalk (New West)--If anyone (or, in this case, any two) can make you believe they really want to be taken back to the time when they had two mules instead of a tractor, it’s Buddy and Julie Miller on this album’s “Ellis County”--solo, together, or on other people’s records, they write and sing as if they were channeling spirits distilled long ago and far away. As usual, the Buddy-sung songs tend toward backwoods country blues, the Julie-sung songs tend toward late-night heartbreak, and the ones they share tend toward salvation by way of hell. The difference this time is the cameo duet partners. Regina McCrary and Patty Griffin get two songs apiece, Robert Plant and Emmylou Harris each get one, and while they don’t add much, at least they don’t subtract much either.

BETH ORTON: Trailer Park (Legacy Edition) (Arista/Legacy)--Because it was ahead of its time and because it wasn’t as celebrated here as it was in England, Trailer Park (Disc One of this thirteenth-anniversary reissue) will still strike Americans as contemporary. Not, of course, that “contemporary“ is synonymous with “brilliant.” While the London fog one hears in Orton’s voice gives the ear more to work with than the Nova Scotia sunshine in Sarah MacLachlan’s, Orton’s overriding sentimentality is, in the end, just as unrewarding to the brain. Where this edition really comes to life is Disc Two. Comprising her 1997 Best Bit EP and eight other previously uncollected B-sides and covers of the period, its patchwork nature makes for pleasant surprises. Best bit: her use of Tony! Toni! Toné ’s “If I Had No Loot” riff in “Best Bit.”

PERE UBU: Long Live Père Ubu! (Hearthan)--Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Pere Ubu Fan? Sure, you know the band is named after a character in Alfred Jarry’s seminally absurd nineteenth-century play Ubu Roi. You’ve even been to this album’s website (hearpen.com), learned that the songs are based on a new adaptation of Jarry’s drama, found the libretto, read along, done outside research, and laughed repeatedly at the slowed-down, looped belching of drummer Steve Mehlman on “Less Said the Better.” Unfortunately, you’ve also come across this quote from Ubu leader David Thomas: “Brutal, lacking charm, and without redeeming values, this is an album for our times. It is, in fact, the only punk record that's been made in the last thirty years." What were the Ramones--chopped liver?

IGGY POP: Préliminaires (Astralwerks)--That Préliminaires is no ordinary Iggy Pop record should be obvious from its appearing on Astralwerks; that Préliminaires is no ordinary Astralwerks record should be obvious from its having been made by Iggy Pop. Except for the ambient-inclined “I Want to Go to the Beach,” “How Insensitive,” and “Spanish Coast,” the music works variations on everything from Leonard Cohen seduction (“Les Feuilles Mortes”), Tom Waits cabaret (“King of the Dogs”), and Howlin’ Wolf blues (“He’s Dead, She’s Alive”) to The Idiot-style punk (“Nice to Be Dead,” “She’s a Business”) minor-key synth-pop (“Party Time”), and spoken word (“A Machine for Loving”). The “theme” may elude those who haven’t read The Possibility of an Island, the Michel Houellebecq novel on which Préliminaires is based. The songs might make them want to read it.