Joseph's Picks Of The Week 6/1/12 - Paul & Linda McCartney and Heavy Blanket

Ram, the second post-Beatle LP from Paul McCartney has just been reissued through Hear Music. There are numerous ways for the uninitiated to acquaint oneself with its contents, but the best is likely the two-disc Special Edition. It presents the contents of this hard-fought classic alongside a second album of appropriate bonus material.

Paul McCartney was the member of the Fab Four that so many used to relish knocking around. Whether it was in spirited bar chats or animated discussions at parties, when the tide turned to The Beatles somebody could always be counted on for a hearty jibe at Macca’s expense. And in my above use of “so many” I’m generally referring to males and by “somebody” I’m specifically speaking of those who indisputably considered John Lennon to be the Best Beatle.

While for those truly devoted fans of the band there could simply never be a Worst, for many Paul was the Square Beatle, a designation not borne out by the facts, for he was as interested in the avant-garde as any member. Hell, in ’68 he co-produced “I’m the Urban Spaceman” by The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band for Pete’s sake, an act that places him rather high up on the meter of cool.

However, others derided him as the Corporate Beatle. And yeah, it’s true that Paul never lost track of the business aspect of the whole affair, but his behavior in this regard hasn’t really played out as particularly odious in comparison to other rock star types of not even half his stature or talent.

But both Paul’s image and the assessment of his post-Beatle solo career has rebounded in recent years. Much of this might have to do with the constantly regenerating fanbase of the Four consistently growing older and perhaps letting go of the rebelliousness that inspired easy identification with Lennon or Harrison. It also might be related to the race for Coolest Living Beatle being down to him and Ringo “No More Mail, Thanks” Starr.

But seriously. In my estimation Paul’s general critical resurgence is a welcome phenomenon, if only because his first two solo records have finally gotten something approximate to the proper level of respect. And yes, for years I bought the baloney regarding the collective underwhelming nature of McCartney and Ram, too.

This was in part due to older acquaintances, even those quite favorable to McCartney’s work in The Beatles, being generally disapproving of his solo stuff, considering those early albums as grievous miscalculations of ambition (or lack thereof) and Wings (which of course wasn’t really Paul “solo”, being a band in its own right) as a severe pendulum swing into the other direction, offering safer though often more grandly scaled distillations of Paul’s talent.

But the kibosh was Landau and Christgau’s critical double whammy on Ram, which was enough to make me weary for years. And yet, as I kept stumbling onto really great albums that either Jon or Bob (or both) disdained, and as the general curiosity inherent to music fans started getting the better of me, I decided to take the plunge.

I sensibly started with McCartney, and was knocked plumb out by its stripped down feel; it’s been described as demo-like, and that’s accurate. In contrast to the over-slick efforts that were clogging the bins at my point of discovery, it was a real breath of fresh air. And unlike its rep, the level of the songwriting was excellent, and made clear that McCartney’s aims were indeed ambitious, though simply at odds with what the critical zeitgeist (it wasn’t add odds with the record buying public however; both McCartney and its follow-up sold an asston). But the high quality of Paul’s solo debut simply couldn’t prepare me for the exquisitely ramshackle affair that is Ram.

While I already knew and highly enjoyed “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”, I was a fresh-faced newcomer to the wonky blues of “3 Legs” or the rollicking smack-talk of “Smile Away”. In “Monkberry Moon Delight” I found a deliciously snide and considerably twisted stomp, and “Ram On”, with its distorted electric piano tones and strummed ukulele, is nothing less than a prototype for the 21st Century indie-pop sound.

The interplay between Paul and Linda on “Eat at Home” feels a little like a laid-back country-rock precursor to the Buck/Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac, its scale smaller, oozing with the nonchalance of a couple that’s discovered they have nothing to prove, so they’re just going to do what gets them off. It seems this was enough to drive many observers to vitriolic ends. That “Eat at Home” is apparently a tribute to the undying grandeur of Buddy Holly only adds to its panache.

And unlike some who find her co-credit to be a display of hubris or economic maneuvering, I continue to find Linda’s vocal contribution to Ram one of its most endearing traits. There’s a mixture of earnestness and palpable pleasure that’s sweetly accented by an appealing lack of polish in her delivery, and this blend really adds to “3 Legs”, “Monkberry Moon Delight” (I gas every time on how she sings “cats and kittens”) and the extended “Long Haired Lady”, another Ram cut that solidly presages the modern indie sound. And while we’re on matters of the up to date, the smooth folk-pop of “Heart of the Country” sounds downright contemporary. Bon Iver, anyone?

Over time I’ve detected a mild thread of similarity across the grooves of Ram to the songwriting of Brian Wilson. Not only can I hear it in the album’s terrific closer “Back Seat of My Car”, but I also perceive its presence on “Dear Boy” and even a little bit in “Smile Away”, mainly due to that song’s backing vocals. And this directly relates to one of McCartney’s most positive attributes, specifically the lack of anxiety in his influence. He’s always been pretty open about where his inspiration derives, maybe attempting to add a little modesty to the mantle of pop messiah that was thrust upon all three of the Beatles’ principal songwriters.

Unlike some hit songs, tunes which stick out on otherwise superb albums like an unfortunate mustard stain inflicted upon a finely-designed and well-worn shirt during a swank holiday picnic, “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” fits snuggly into Ram’s qualitative gist. In fact, it’s one of the album’s more important tracks in that it provides quite a template for some of the expansive tweeness that’s occurred over the following four decades.

It’s also a very weird song; to wit, the assumedly Linda-derived tongue-flutter in the cut’s first section. And while listening recently, it suddenly became tangible that “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”, again at least in its first section, isn’t that far removed from some of the more pop-inflected moments of Animal Collective. Yeah, contemporaneousness is surely in abundance on Ram.

By this late date it’s not likely too many people are continuing to harbor a lingering prejudicial grudge against McCartney’s pre-Wings solo work. Like this expanded issue of Ram, McCartney was released in a deluxe bells-and-whistle intensive set not quite a year ago, and if that effort had either stumbled commercially or been subject to a persistent persnickety critical evaluation, Sir Paul might’ve hesitated over putting this one in the racks in so quick a fashion.

And in my estimation, the two-disc edition of Ram edges out the same configuration of McCartney by a little more than a nose. Sure, both “Another Day” and “Oh Woman, Oh Why” were already added to the ’93 CD issue, but their inclusion on the vinyl of this impeccably crafted set is still quite jake. “Little Woman Love”, the b-side to Wings’ “Mary Had a Little Lamb” also turns up, and is sorta the odd track out.

For unlike the latter live versions that make up the bulk of McCartney’s extra material, Ram includes a bevy of previously unissued studio tracks, all of which date from the sessions for the LP (a big plus in my book), which makes hearing them an absolute cinch for anybody that’s stumbled onto the greatness of Ram.

And the verdict on the general worthiness of these extra tracks is a resounding positive. Quite interestingly, the unreleased songs don’t sound like completed tunes that didn’t make the cut for reasons of inferior quality, instead feeling like pieces that were worked on and then set aside unfinished, never to be picked up again. For a few examples, “Great Cock and Seagull Race” and “Sunshine Sometime” are both instrumentals, and the lengthy rocker “Rode All Night” would’ve likely undergone some editing in a non-bonus cut version.

Of course, McCartney maniacs might already be familiar with these tracks through unauthorized channels. But here they are in a Paul-instigated expansion of Ram, another installment in one of the most meticulously assembled and least mercenary of contemporary single artist reissue programs.

Like McCartney, Paul’s second solo stab has endured the tide of time to distinguish itself as one of the more interesting and most personal works of the ‘70s, easily ranking in the top three Beatle solo albums alongside All Things Must Pass and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Hearing Ram in its original form is essential. This well conceived expansion of its contents does nothing to interfere with its disheveled majesty.

J Mascis plugs in and freaks out on Heavy Blanket. A blissfully heavy slab of instrumental scorch, it’s an expansive yet tidy expression of one aspect of his musical personality. It’ll likely appeal to only a portion of Dinosaur Jr.’s fanbase, but it’s no less interesting for that.

In case you didn’t already know, J Mascis is quite the adept guitarist. In fact, along with Thurston Moore, he served the role of guitar hero to a late-‘80s u-ground rock scene that was still close enough to its punk roots to consciously disdain the concept of string heroics as antithetical to what made the period’s hip crux of bands bubbling under the radar such a supreme kick.

That is, if Moore was Jimi Hendrix then Mascis was Jimmy Page and most of the wigs getting flipped by their abilities, if presented with such an analogy, would’ve likely sneered in disgust and berated the person making such an uncouth comparison as a total, um, dinosaur.

Yes, some folks comprehended the significance of the moniker Dinosaur (the Jr. being added after some real dinosaurs from the San Fran psyche scene demanded they change it), but for most listeners back then the name was simply a name, and indeed most of those same listeners didn’t know or particularly care that Dinosaur Jr. soaked up influence from such relics as Crazy Horse, Sabbath and the general blunt sludginess of power-trio rock.

Now, the above analogies are extremely loose ones meant to represent importance rather than specific stylistic similarities, for as one listen to Hendrix and Moore proves, the two are highly dissimilar. And Mascis for that matter doesn’t aurally reflect Page, or Clapton, or Jeff Beck. He does recall Neil Young in his roughest period with Crazy Horse mixed with the sort of head down, back to the audience heaviness that spread like a rogue STD in a free-love commune from ’69 to roughly ’73 or so.

But give that description to someone who’s never actually heard any of J Mascis’ stuff, then play them a few choice cuts from either incarnation of Dinosaur’s original lineup, and the difference between what they imagined and what they actually heard will likely be quite large. This helps make a great case for the crème of the ‘80s u-ground guitarists (a group that also includes Black Flag’s Greg Ginn, Minutemen’s D. Boon, Big Black’s Steve Albini and Mission of Burma’s Roger Miller) as standing up tall in terms of individuality next to the late-‘60s team of string warriors.

In the case of Sonic Youth, this individualistic streak is unsurprising, for that band is maybe the apex of rock music made by actual record collectors. But in the case of Mascis, I’ve been consistently struck by how successfully he’s avoided falling into a retrograde zone. His obvious inspirations are unchanged, and yet while his most impressive, groundbreaking work is behind him, he’s retained his vigor in both performance and recording, surviving a bout of post-grunge ‘90s celebrity with no noticeable side effects.

A big reason for Mascis’ sustained distinctness from his influences and the continued creative spark in his work boils right down to punk rock. I know that upon my first hearing of Dinosaur, specifically the “Repulsion” 7-inch, I made no immediate connection to Crazy Horse and Sabbath. A helping hint was provided in the liner notes to Homestead Records’ The Wailing Ultimate, a compilation LP that also included “Repulsion”, and where the band was described as “ex-hardcores that like to jam”.

That liner blurb on ol’ Dino also served as my introduction to Deep Wound, the suburban Massachusetts hardcore band that’s taken on legendary status as the first group of Lou Barlow and J Mascis. Over time Dinosaur’s HC pedigree became general knowledge: their cover of “Chunks” by Boston fly-by-nights Last Rights, J’s professed love in interviews of the UK band Discharge, and the bootlegging and eventual legit issue of the Deep Wound discography, a big beautiful throttling blur of a thing, as the nooks and crannies of hardcore gained retrospective value and respect.

And it became apparent that while what Dinosaur’s music was no longer appropriately categorized as punk it was also impossible to remove vital elements of the music that shaped them from their aesthetic, and it was why so many crabby observers refused to accept that You’re Living All Over Me was a natural extension of elements derived from Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and Paranoid.   

Hell, by the ‘90s there was a certifiable ton of bands that had strapped on the mantle of able musicianship while retaining a connection to punk’s leveling globular impetus. One such example of this would be the obscure but very worthwhile instrumental compilation Guitarrorists, released in 1991 on Terry Tolkin’s short-lived but quite interesting No. 6 label. It lined up twenty-six tracks from as many contributors, one of which belonged to none other than J Mascis.

If deep down always connected to his roots, J’s use of Dinosaur as essentially a solo vehicle that had a fleeting pop-chart flirt caused many to knee-jerkily disassociate him with the movement from which he was creatively spawned. This was a big mistake, for the 21st Century found Mascis easing into his status as a not very talkative sleepy-lidded elder statesman of indie-rock, fronting a smaller scaled band The Fog as well as working in groups such as The Witch and Sweet Apple. But reconvening with his original Dino partners was the icing on the cake, knocking out two expectations-exceeding albums and some even stronger tours.

Heavy Blanket is J’s latest effort, and it’s rather resistant to broad description and analysis. The self-titled LP finds Mascis shredding in the studio across six instrumental tracks, all of them basically templates for extended soloing. The press bio concocts an entertaining if obviously bogue story about J stumbling upon some high school band mates and, based upon an old demo tape they made, rerecording those tunes to unexpectedly high quality results. Um, yeah. In reality, the music is likely to be all Mascis via overdubbing; he was the drummer in Deep Wound, as well as Gobblehoof and Upsidedown Cross.

The fun fictiveness is understandable. A bio that stuck to the bare facts would be a short, uninspiring read. But interestingly, the creative untruths connect the music on Heavy Blanket, a sound that many would consider antithetical to the oft rudimentary nature of punk, to 1984, a point when Mascis’ was still running roughshod over the Massachusetts’ HC circuit in Deep Wound. Indeed, the bio directly references that band.

These fabrications unknowingly reinforce what becomes clear after time spent with Heavy Blanket, namely that if on the surface indulgent of Mascis’ boldest desires of heaviosity circa the early ‘70s, it is also indicative of the guy’s continued relevance as an exponent of contemporarily substantive din. And the whole racket may not be overtly punk in form, but it holds an abundance of what some describe as “punk in spirit”.

This is a cool development. Much as I liked the largely acoustic and tangibly laid-back atmosphere of last year’s Sub Pop outing Several Shades of Why, I also couldn’t help having mixed feelings over my impression that the man was mellowing considerably with age. Heavy Blanket makes clear that he holds no inhibitions about plugging in and throwing down. And as a display of such, it’ll obviously appeal to a fraction of Dinosaur Jr.’s legion of fans, a huge portion of which require the melodiousness that’s become a trademark of said band, not to mention lyrics and the instantly recognizable sound of J’s voice.

But the fraction that will welcome Heavy Blanket’s existence should be blown away but good. Throw in Savage Pencil cover artwork and the whole package feels a little bit like a project issued by the Twisted Village label around ’92 or so. It doesn’t stand as tall as the Fog stuff or the intense beauty of Mascis’ most unheralded work, ‘05’s J Mascis + Friends Sing + Chant for Amma, but it’s not far behind. Long may he wail.



Joseph's Picks Of The Week 5/25/12 - Best Coast and Sugarman 3

With The Only Place, Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino joins up with Fiona Apple/Kanye West producer Jon Brion for the purposes of broadening her sound. But pop polish does her work no favors; the result is a record far inferior to the modest pleasantries of her debut Crazy for You.

As an unabashed fan of the sound of lo-fi and its contemporary descendant bedroom-pop, I can’t help but be afflicted by a nagging sense of disappointment over its practitioners consistently bailing on the small of scale and the unsmooth of texture, heading instead for the obvious comforts and potential acceptance of bolder sonic normalcy.

Outside of the garage rock realm, where a defiant persistence in unkempt non-streamlining is often considered a virtue, it seems that musicians who chose to explore the glories of four-track fuzz and tape deck hiss are expected sooner rather than later to step into the chilly confines of a spacious studio and “go pro”.

These days of course (with the appropriate software) a person can go pro in the dank confines of their very own expertly decorated basement. And that’s really the point. Lo-fi, no-fi, bedroom-pop, shitgaze etc; none of it sounds that way by accident or due to a lack of resources.

And while some folks thought otherwise, this was also the case back in the dawn of the ‘90s when the term lo-fi really started gaining traction. Pavement, Sebadoh and Guided by Voices all arrived at their individual if conspiratorial early sounds through savvy calculation. And by 1996 all three had made the necessary adjustments to go pro.

2010’s Crazy for You, the debut long-player from Best Coast was a solid nugget of bedroom-pop. While far from perfect, it soundly delivered on the promise of their assorted early singles and presented Bethany Cosentino as a name to watch. But when it was announced that Best Coast’s follow-up LP was to be produced by Jon Brion, I couldn’t help but feel that familiar twinge of disappointment; here goes another defection out of the bedroom and into the zone of relative refinement.

To be fair, the increase in fidelity between Crazy for You and 2009’s double seven-inch Make You Mine was palpable, but it seemed like Cosentino had found a sweet spot and would hopefully stay there a while. No dice. But just because I suffered that twitch of disappointment over her choice of producer and decision to go large didn’t mean it was a foregone conclusion that I would be disappointed.

For in a non-lo-fi context, I was also a bit bummed way back when after learning that for her third record PJ Harvey had chosen Flood as a producer. If I didn’t think that matchup was a good fit, proof to the contrary was very much in the pudding of To Bring You My Love. Sadly, I can’t say the same for The Only Place. And the fault lies not with Brion, who served his role to the fullest and delivered what’s essentially a mainstream indie-pop record. It’s just not a very good one, and the problem ultimately lies in Cosentino’s songs.

But first let’s backtrack. Crazy for You, if a strong record, was far from a masterpiece. That’s not a putdown. Debut masterworks have a tendency to represent artists that burn bright but brief. The listener gets everything (or close to it) in one big wallop, and then it’s all over but the inevitable letdown. Crazy for You on the other hand felt like a natural starting point, a record that presented the real possibility of growth.

Sure, Cosentino basically sounded like Neko Case if she cared less (much less) for being an alt-country chanteuse and more (much more) for smoking grade A skunk on a canopy bed whist writing songs that referenced a ‘60s pop sound, and all without feeling indebted to any specific predecessor.

But certain tendencies were apparent; for one, the general insubstantiality of her lyrics placed her less as a disciple of B. Wilson and more in the tradition of ‘60s-exponants The Ramones. And the production of Crazy for You was very much a part of its success.  

And in the divide between her tunes and the record’s production is where The Only Place’s weakness resides. A songwriting style that was well-served by echo, distance, and touches of fuzz is now shown to be seriously wanting. If Cosentino sounds more like Case than ever, the quality of her writing is nowhere close to that league, and if it seems like I’m damning her as being reliant on a bedroom-pop production gimmick to achieve a moderate level of success, that’s wrong.

For so much pop music is intrinsically tied to production for communicating its essence, from The Beach Boys’ Smile to Michael Jackson’s Thriller to Daniel Johnston’s Yip/Jump Music. And rockists will sneer, but again The Ramones; Craig Leon’s knob-work on that first album is absolutely crucial to why it’s such an important document. A move to the glossier and instead of incendiary “Beat on the Brat” would’ve just sounded silly.

Yes, the previous paragraph is concerned with brilliant records and Crazy for You is in comparison just a nice debut LP. But the concept is the same. It’s why the undeniably limited lyrical approach of that album’s “Our Deal” succeeds and the similar tactic of The Only Place’s “My Life” doesn’t. The former feels like someone crafting a swell if not particularly amazing little ditty, and the latter registers like someone under a spotlight attempting to stretch out an underdeveloped idea.

And stylistically Cosentino’s songwriting tends toward the middle of the road, leaving her better moments here (“Last Year”, “Dreaming My Life Away”) to wither amidst a batch of inferior material. To his credit, Brion really pulls out all the stops on the closer “Up All Night”, easily The Only Place’s most surprising moment. It’s a song strong enough in its root form that its lush expansion sounds truly complimentary.

But the majority of the album resonates like Cosentino fronting a sprightly if far from remarkable indie combo, and that’s not what Crazy for You sounded like at all. If it were possible to hear The Only Place’s songs through the sonic framework of its far superior forerunner, I’d surely be tempted to do so. And I don’t think Cosentino is anywhere near creatively spent, I just perceive her as having (hopefully temporarily) lost the plot of what made her music so interesting.

When Pavement, Sebadoh and Guided by Voices all went hi-fi (so to speak), all three proved up to the task. True, they were all bands, and in contrast Best Coast is Cosentino’s show (with help from multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno). But they also had great songs on their side, and again the lack of such is The Only Place’s unfortunate undoing. Its content might very likely improve by crackling out of a fuzzy transistor radio, but going to the trouble of testing that theory seems like a lot of unnecessary work when Crazy for You already achieves that synthesis.

In trying to graduate to a bogus manifestation of the “big leagues”, Cosentino has only managed in amplifying her music’s limitations. But she’s still an artist to watch, and The Only Place might eventually be considered her sophomore slump, especially if she manages further development as a songwriter. Her easiest road would be to just relax, pack it up and get back to the bedroom.

After a decade’s absence The Sugarman 3 return with What the World Needs Now and the long break betrays no signs of rust. The groups’ best record since 2000’s Soul Donkey, it shows off their impressive skill and superb judgment, but strays not one inch outside their comfort zone.

While the musical term “funk” really became common nomenclature in the late-‘60s/early-‘70s, where it was used to describe a particularly tough (and new) strain of R&B/soul, it’s employment as an adjective from within the jazz realm spanned back a bit farther than that.

If the lingo can in fact be located at the mythological point of jazz music’s very conception via the legend of Buddy Bolden and the tune “Funky Butt” (aka “Buddy Bolden’s Blues”), the word funky as a musical adjective really dates to the 1950s where it was occasionally used to describe the especially earthy strains of often organ-led combos, though it wasn’t bound to any defined area of specificity; the great saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, playing pseudonymously due to contractual reasons on trumpeter Louis Smith’s 1958 Blue Note LP Here Comes Louis Smith was credited under the moniker “Buckshot Le Fonque”. Additionally, clarinetist Perry Robinson’s killer 1962 Savoy LP of inside-outside explorations was titled Funk Dumpling.

The organ based groups to which the term funky was so frequently attached came to be more commonly known as soul-jazz, and some of the classics of the sub-genre are Baby Face Willette’s Face To Face, Brother Jack McDuff’s The Honeydripper, Big John Patton’s Along Came John and Jimmy Smith’s Back at the Chicken Shack and The Sermon! By the second half of the ‘60s the style had become quite boldly commercial, blending with concurrent strains of R&B and even the infectious Afro-Latin blend known as boogaloo.

The title of the 1998 debut LP by The Sugarman 3, Sugar’s Boogaloo, made readily clear just what type of experience was to be had from inspecting its contents. Indeed, an aura of unadulterated funk would be one of the first qualities noted in cataloging the nature of its grooves. To expand, Neil Sugarman’s group, a core trio often augmented with other instrumentalists, specialized in a celebration of the period when certain soul-jazz practitioners attempted to throw overboard the very notion of jazz as a self-conscious “art-music”, instead embracing its potential as a vessel of crowd-pleasing, body-moving party action.

Not only did that inaugural effort contain as a general declaration of principles a cover of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”, but it also saw them contouring their approach to such chestnuts as Dale Hawkins’ “Suzy Q” and Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman”. If the group’s second and third LPs, 2000’s Soul Donkey and 2002’s Pure Cane Sugar found them slowly moving closer to a less jazz-derived groove science ala Booker T or The Meters, they still threw in enough nods to the soul-jazz tradition to keep one remindful of that aspect of their background, e.g. a burning cover of Lou “Alligator Boogaloo” Donaldson’s “Turtle Walk” on Soul Donkey and showcases on both LPs for some assertive flute playing from multi-instrumentalist Sugarman.

Their new record is What the World Needs Now, and its title’s tip-off to the inclusion of a Burt Bacharach cover indicated the possibility that The Sugarman 3 were turning the tide back toward a more pronounced expression of their soul-jazz roots. And to an extent this possibility is realized. That titular instrumental reconfiguring (essentially a funkifying) of Bacharach’s pop warhorse is exactly the type of move many a late-‘60s soul-jazzer indulged without the slightest regret and much to the chagrin of jazz aficionados by the score. In fact, the fruits of that era’s funky-jazz scene lacked much in the way of critical standing until the ‘90’s acid-jazz movement located inspiration in its precedent and promoted a fair amount of reevaluation.

If the phenomenon of jazz musicians tackling Bacharach, The Beatles, Dylan etc is a complex one, it’s now all water under the bridge. Some observers stubbornly persist in ruing the fact that stately improvisers would soil themselves with contemporary pop covers instead of simply continuing on the undying (and by the late-‘60s, rather tired) course of interpreting standards (i.e. the contempo-pop of yesteryear) for the umpteenth time. However, most well-adjusted listeners in the present day acknowledge the tendency as just one more wrinkle in jazz music’s labyrinthine development.

And as such, it continues to be just one wrinkle in The Sugarman 3’s sound. What the World Needs Now features additional covers that reemphasize the group’s allegiance to the aforementioned MGs/Meters R&B axis, the unbeatable “But It’s Alright” by J.J. Jackson and the less typical Nuggets cornerstone “Dirty Water” via The Standells. Both tracks percolate with a relaxed assurance indicative of the group’s instrumental prowess; that is, the unfussy blend of chops and good taste in execution that’s helped make the Daptone enterprise (which Sugarman co-founded with Gabriel Roth) a go-to concern for discerning mavens of R&B classique.

This isn’t to say that What the World Needs Now doesn’t hold in its grooves a few surprises. For instance, the use of piano on “Witches Boogaloo” very much recalls “The In Crowd” by Ramsey Lewis, which along with Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” and Les McCann and Eddie Harris’ “Compared to What” forms a massive trifecta of ‘60s non-crap jazz crossovers.

But other moments on the LP toe the funky line in the manner more in keeping with their last two albums. “Your Friendly Neighborhood Sugarman” hits a spot quite reminiscent of prime Junior Walker. And if “Got to Get Back to My Baby” registers like a scaled down version of fellow Daptone artists Budos Band, that’s basically due to the tune having sprung from the pen of that group’s bassist Daniel Foder.

I’m also pleased that the amount of vocals has been dialed back from that of Pure Cane Sugar. While I enjoy Lee Fields very much, for some reason his take on “Shot Down” by garage monsters The Sonics just didn’t resonate with me. And his was my favorite vocal from the previous LP. The Sugarman 3 are foremost an instrumental unit; they work best with only occasional accents of the human voice.

With all this considered, The group’s intense and finely tuned amalgamation of influences can’t help but leave a lingering aftertaste, specifically that the outfit is an exemplary style synthesis lacking a sense of personality tangibly their own beyond their status as ultra-cool kings of the throwback, of course. And there’s really not a thing wrong with that.   

However, it does separate them rather substantially from their influences, musicians that were largely operating in territory without a net. This goes both for the Booker T side of the group’s sound as well as the Jimmy Smith portion. And it also differentiates them from the most laudable examples of the jazz/pop dialogue both then (Dylan’s “My Back Pages” from The Keith Jarrett Trio’s Somewhere Before from 1968) or now (The Vijay Iyer Trio’s take on Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” from this year’s Accelerando).

So The Sugarman 3 is undeniably great at what they do, but ultimately what they do doesn’t fall outside of an already very well defined context. They are exceptionally worthy distillers of a tradition, not estimable groundbreakers like Jarrett (or Morgan or McCann, for that matter) or valuable extenders like Iyer.

In the end, what makes the music of Neil Sugarman’s group so worthwhile is the collective level of sincerity necessary to pull off the whole endeavor. When listening to What the World Needs Now it becomes blatantly obvious just how much the whole band loves what they are doing, so much in fact that I’m sure they would continue to do it whether anyone else was listening or not.



Joseph's Picks Of The Week 5/18/12 - Cornershop and OFF!

With Urban Turban, Cornershop continue with their welcome and unexpectedly prolific return to the record racks. Collecting the fruitful results of a batch of collaborative singles, this album should easily satisfy old fans, while its playfulness, intelligence and range will help recruit new ones.

From a distance, Cornershop’s career trajectory doesn’t seem all that unusual, being one of many early-‘90s indie bands to jump onto a larger stage (in this case through the Luaka Bop label) and deliver a hit song that basically defines their existence for most casual listeners. After a hiatus and a label switch they released a follow up before disappearing again, only to pop back into public consciousness with renewed purpose via their own label Ample Play.

But up close it’s rather impressive just how smoothly Cornershop picked back up right where they left off, and after some consideration the reason seems to stem from the very nature of Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayers sound. Unlike many acts that had brief affairs with the ‘90’s pop charts, there is really nothing in the group’s music that defines them as a product of that decade. Indeed, in my estimation if “Brimful of Asha” had been released last week instead of a decade and a half back, it would register as freshly up-to-date with nary a trace of the throwback.

This is mainly because Beatles’ derived pop sense and Velvet’s descended strum are two timeless ingredients in a recipe of unlikely chart success, but that’s hardly the only reason Cornershop avoid any sense of the anachronistic. For When I Was Born For the 7th Time, the very fine LP from which “Brimful of Asha” hails, still happily resounds as a creative success that resists any categorical assimilation into a default “’90s” sensibility.

Instead, the album struck a righteous blow for multiculturalism by integrating the group’s Indian roots with funk, indie-pop, hip-hop, a streak of accessible experimentation and even a bit of femme voiced country ache that was slyly reminiscent of later-period Mekons. Throw in Dan the Automator, Allen Ginsberg and a concluding Beatles cover as reclamation (“Norwegian Wood”, natch) and the results add up to a worthy and again still quite contemporary sum.

It’s perhaps for these same reasons that Cornershop’s return, while noted and welcome, has garnered little if any retro-minded fanfare. This is just as well, since 2009’s Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast found them recommencing without any unneeded “comeback” bluster by releasing an LP that if obviously the product of Cornershop still felt unique from anything that preceded it in their discography.

Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast is a very good record, detectably and appealingly glammy for much of its duration, but Cornershop and the Double ‘O’ Groove Of is where they really turned up the qualitative heat, producing what just might be their finest overall achievement to date. Much of the reason comes down to the exquisite union with Punjabi singer Bubbley Kaur; Singh and Ayers are foremost grand agents of collaboration, and Cornershop at this point is less accurately described as a band (though that’s by no means an incorrect nomenclature) and more so as a continually evolving project that succeeds through focus and an uncanny sense of what works in their infectious hybridization of genre.

Urban Turban continues the practice of collab, though it immediately carries it into a heretofore unexamined area for the group. “What Did the Hippie Have in His Bag?” finds them deviating from their established practice of working with either well known musicians (Noel Gallagher, anyone?) or cultivating relationships with less bandied about names (Paula Frazer of Tarnation, Kaur) in the service of forging a successful sonic framework. It instead features the contribution of schoolchildren from Castle Hill Primary in Lancashire, and the sweet give and take between Singh and the kids helps “…Hippie…” feel a bit like a cross between “Brimful of Asha” and The Langley Schools Music Project. Except it’s more laid back than “…Asha” and far less structured than Langley in its celebration of the life-affirming and non-cynical purity of youth. And of hippies with bags, for that matter.

From there Urban Turban details Cornershop’s interaction with a variety of vocalists, all of them previously unheard by these ears, and the quality of the whole set is uniformly high. By this point Singh and Ayers are extremely adept at understanding not only the nature of their cross-pollination but also in locating the right outside contributors with which to realize their ideas.

While perhaps not immediately apparent in their sound, Cornershop are the inverse of what often results from the occasional pop tendency toward the “exotic”. Simply put, this is due to their being steeped in the traditions they employ: it’s one reason why When I Was Born For the 7th Time still holds up so well, particularly in contrast to the bogus “chill-out” music of Enigma, a project that feels even more trite now than when first released.

And Urban Turban’s best moments present a further deepening of Singh’s and Ayers’ pop ingenuity. If they’ve always successfully avoided the shallowness of pastiche, they also seem to have found a way to increase the frequency of their output without putting any strain on the level of quality.

Again, this record is collected from singles released through the wittily dubbed Singhles Club, and it lacks the natural flow of conception of Double ‘O’ Groove, mainly because it details work with a variety of vocalists conceived at different times. However, it’s hard to consider this a flaw, with the sequencing of Cornershop’s diverse method across the LP presenting an attractive set of possibilities for potential further development.

For instance, I’d love to hear the results of a full album with SoKo, the French singer featured on one of Urban Turban’s standout tracks “Something Makes You Feel Like”. In comparison to Bubbley Kaur, who burst out of the box with an able-voiced oomph that stood (at the very least) on equal footing with the sounds that surrounded her (and all without falling victim to any diva moves), SoKo comes on with a very attractive conversational hesitancy in her vocals, almost as if the music is coaxing the words out of her, and it’s this aura that could very possibly be expanded into a refreshing longer work.

And Cornershop continue to dodge the bullet of becoming too slick or formulaic. “Milkin’ It”, featuring the unusual MC skills of In Light of Aquarius, is basically an unvarnished excuse to name check a succession of classic masters of microphone technique (Spoonie Gee! Schoolly D!) and as such provides a fine counterpoint to the smoother techno-funk of “Non-Stop Radio” or the uncut dance-club cuisine of “Solid Gold”.

One somewhat bumming side-effect of Urban Turban’s design is the lack of Tjinder Singh’s vocals. His is simply one of the warmest and most immediately recognizable voices in the current pop field, and to only hear him on “What Did the Hippie Have in His Bag?” (and the song’s late album reprise) is undeniably a bit of a letdown, but ultimately it’s a disappointment of omission and not an error of any grave import. As the record’s value adds up, it becomes rather easy to accept not getting enough of Singh’s singing.

If Urban Turban’s origins as standalone singles lacks the vigorous aural unity of Cornershop and the Double ‘O’ Groove Of and When I was Born For the 7th Time, it still shines as another exceptional collection of tunes from a consistently rewarding group of pop scientists. And it’s an album certain to only improve with increased familiarity.



The first full-length LP from hardcore punk survival unit OFF! delivers more of the brief, scorching sound initiated on their four highly-regarded EPs. It’s a dandy listen, and it places Keith Morris and cohorts at an interesting place. Just where will they go from here?  

When it first came to my attention that Keith Morris was going to be fronting a new band, my immediate impression was a mixture of sincere happiness for the guy and a complete disinterest in actually hearing the music. We’ll get to the happy part a few paragraphs down, but the apathetic aspect has been hashed out by quite a few others already; it has to do with both the age of Morris and his band members and the actual contemporary relevance of the whole hardcore punk shebang.

Methinks that hardcore is a perfectly fine genre to tackle in the here and now, but it is a form best served up by a band of fresh-faced upstarts like Trash Talk rather than promulgated by a bunch of certified oldsters. Unlike blues, jazz and country & western, punk rock and hardcore in particular doesn’t ripen with age; it’s very much a young person’s game. Of course, plenty of old punks are still making high quality music. It’s just that very few are still working from within the confines of the style that originally spawned them.

And it’s not just the factor of youth. There is almost always a very finite window of opportunity from which to produce truly topflight junk before the situation just starts to break down. The number of bands that produced more than one great punk LP is infinitesimal compared to the sheer wealth of fleeting names that could only manage to squeak out one exceptional seven-inch or a single classic song before the wheels fell off the endeavor.

When someone tells me about a bunch of punk vets whose sound is “just like the old days”, my reaction is consistently that of utter dubiousness, understanding the general tendency of folks to misapprehend good intentions for actual sonic success and to elevate form over content in a desire to reconnect with past glories.

In the case of OFF! I was hearing it from people I thought would know better, and this did rouse my curiosity a bit.  Still, I continued to avoid the band for a long while after learning of their existence, mainly due to my familiarity with the slowly diminishing quality of Morris’ past work; by the release of Wonderful in 1985 the Circle Jerks’ were essentially over and done with.

The four essential LPs of the Los Angeles HC-punk experience are in order of release (GI) by The Germs (released ‘79), Group Sex by Circle Jerks (released ’80), the self-titled debut from the Adolescents (released early 1981) and Damaged by Black Flag (released late 1981). Sure, there are some other high quality long-players in the Los Angeles hardcore canon along with scores of seven-inches, comps and individual songs that help to really flesh out the city’s post-Dangerhouse Records scene, but these four albums easily encapsulate the growth of the straight-ahead HC-punk sound before the genre quickly started stagnating and became plagued with also-rans, violence and noxious posers. In brief, these four LPs set the standard.

Indeed I was extremely happy to know Morris had a band and was kicking up some fervor and that his personal circumstances were looking up, for an acquaintance that had moved to the west coast had filled me in on just how awful he felt after ordering a pizza and finding one of his favorite musicians ringing his doorbell to deliver it. Simply put, hearing that news stung me, too. And on top of that the guy was diagnosed with diabetes back in 2000.

Now, past glories are no guarantee against the hard realities of life, but this was an unshakable drag of a situation, for Morris is one of true greats of Cali hardcore punk not only through his direct involvement with the Circle Jerks but also by serving as Black Flag’s first vocalist, appearing on the genre redefining and still blistering Nervous Breakdown seven-inch.

Instead of enthusing at length on the quality of Group Sex, I’ll just reference the words of the Angry Samoans’ Metal Mike Saunders when he called it a classic of “folk appropriation”; Morris and company grabbed from whatever was necessary and came up with a ragged and concise masterpiece. And it was the LP equivalent to a bolt of lightning, i.e. the kind of record that’s essentially impossible to follow up. But try they did, naturally and admirably, with two very interesting if problematic LPs, Wild in the Streets and Golden Shower of Hits. Then the situation started going to the dogs circa Wonderful. It was really quite predictable.

Well, against my better judgment I eventually caught up with the First Four EPs. And against the odds its contents were rather major. How’d that happen? For starters, Morris and ex-Burning Brides’ guitarist Dimitri Coats bailed on a reportedly subpar Circle Jerks’ incarnation and recruited drummer Mario Rubalcaba (Rocket from the Crypt/Hot Snakes) and Steven Shane McDonald (Red Kross) to serve as the rhythm section. This shaped them up as a sort of punk rock supergroup, meaning they were flirting with disaster of massive proportions. But in avoiding the worst of all outcomes they actually achieved an extremely impressive result.

For comparison purposes OFF! mostly resemble the primal throttle of early Black Flag (that’s pre-Rollins, don’tcha know), an obvious similarity reflected in the humor of the band’s name. The First Four EPs delivered a wallop that was very similar to the aural punch thrown by one of the first three sides of the Flag’s Everything Went Black or the entirety of The First Four Years. Like these examples, OFF!’s whole essence was “short”: short-tempered, short in song-length, short in overall running time. It was a resounding and unqualified success. The only question was how long would this good creative fortune last?

This follow-up, packaged as an LP, is slightly shorter in running time than the First Four EPs, and as such holds some surface resemblance to the maniacal brevity of Group Sex. The music however retains its love affair with the mauling, grim density and velocity of early Flag, with a few slight and unfussy nods toward growth. For one example, Coats’ guitar has become more dynamic, though it’s as different from Greg Ginn string-bending work as it is similar.

Unfettered hardcore is essentially a music of exhaustion; how long can I deal with this six-band show; how long can I play drums this way without losing the feeling in my arms; how long can this amazing band avoid descending into suckdom? Minor Threat, the pick of many (including myself) as the greatest hardcore band ever, only released three 7-inch records and one 12-inch EP (plus two compilation tracks) in their entire existence; the band’s whole discography fits onto one compact disc with time to spare.

If post-hardcore was a widespread phenomenon, it had a hard time catching on in Cali and in particular Los Angeles, likely because that’s where much of HC’s sound, concept and image was formulated, and it’s also where many bands had something resembling commercial success (and the requisite “fame” that came attached). Kids in DC, Chicago, Boston, Texas, Detroit and other points on the North American map were initially reacting to cues from England and yes indeed Los Angeles and later to each other; popularity was largely elusive outside of their own peer group and notoriety was essentially posthumous. When HC started running out of gas it was easy for bands in the Midwest or DC to integrate elements of post-punk, noise or metal into the equation with differing levels of success.

In Los Angeles, three SST bands were the exception to the hardcore redundancy; Black Flag’s big grapple with a metal/hard-rock sound (what Joe Carducci dubbed “New Redneck”), Minutemen’s power-trio brilliance, and the far less heralded punk-psyche-art of Saccharine Trust. In comparison to these bold moves, OFF! is still taking baby steps.

But it’s early yet. This self-titled affair is their first LP after all. But it essentially puts them on a precipice; are big things going to happen, or is this the beginning of the seemingly inevitable downward spiral? It bears mentioning that Morris has never successfully navigated a move away from the punk norm. It would be a total gas if at this late date he accomplished just that.