Our latest Short Cuts, a monthly feature where AUK casts a brief eye and ear on several albums we’ve received recently, which just didn’t make the cut for a full review. Like most major music websites, we can’t mention every album or EP we get sent, but we reckon the picks below deserve a nod. Click on the links to hear a song.
Hadnot Creek is essentially Charlottesville, VA, singer-songwriter, Robert Sawrey, who, with a revolving cast of supporting members, has released four albums prior to his latest offering “Leaving”. All well and good, but it’s surprising to discover that Sawrey is aged 75 and only began recording as he entered retirement. Having said that, there’s no indication here of advanced age as Sawrey delivers a fine set of slightly skewed alt-country songs. They’re wiry and dust-blown with stories to match. ‘Latter Day Dude’ recalls some of the tales told on James McMutry’s latest release, while ‘I’m An Old Submariner’ rattles along quite wonderfully with some swell bar room piano as Sawrey delivers a fine rusty portrait of hard scrabble life and neighbours with guns. Much of the delight here is in the lyrics (given that Sawrey is also a published poet and short story writer), and the best here is the jail time lament ‘Mama I’m So Sorry‘.
Rah Rah Rabbit’s “Chasin’ Rabbits, Catchin’ Squirrels” opens with a bang on the first two songs, ‘This Winter’, with its twangy guitar and squirrely fiddle and ‘Checkered & Blue’, a corny (in the best sense) celebration of a favourite shirt. Rockabilly via cow punk, the songs certainly kick-start the album and while this L.A. band don’t manage to maintain this level of energy there’s still some gas in the tank on the heavy vibes of ‘Windy Feet‘, a grand rocker with loads of organ and grungy pedal steel while ‘Liquor Store Chicken’ is a finger licking slice of southern soul country. For a debut album, it’s quite assured and lead singer and songwriter “Rabbit” (AKA Laura Ann Lacy) is quite brilliant throughout, especially on her sweet country lament ‘A Man I Once Knew’.
There’s a fair bit of convolution involved in trying to pin down who exactly is Gary Owens JR., whose album, “Super Hits Vol. 3″, is a grand reclamation of classic country and honky tonk songs. Some digging leads us to an act called Graves, but even then, that’s a bit of a rabbit hole, which was resolved when your intrepid reviewer came across the name of Greg Olin via a search of our very own AUK archives. Anyhow, Olin has previously recorded as Gary Owens, and on this outing, he seems to posit his alter ego as worthy of a third greatest hits album and, on the strength of the songs here, that might be a reality in his universe. Olin has a firm and extremely talented vision of what makes a memorable country song, whether it be the humdrum duties of a father on ‘Daddies Do Things‘, the Kristofferson-like jaunt of ‘Tomorrow’s Stew’ or the beer-dripping ‘How Can You Miss Me When I’m Home’. The album is chock-full of would-be country classics, and it closes with a very fine astrological tale which has echoes of John Prine in its version of the zodiac. A compelling close to an album which is highly recommended.
The title and opening song on “Last Cowboy On The Prairie” might lead one to conclude that Patton Magee, best known as the front man for The Nude Party is also in thrall to classic country sounds but as the album progresses he delves into Velvet Underground territory on ‘Country Brat’ and kicks up a mess of dust and dirt on the swampy ‘Floodwater Rising’. There’s some grand spaghetti western vibes on ‘Be On Time’ and ‘Ballad Of Rusty Iron’ is surely a tribute to Marty Robbins, but the centrepiece of the album is the six minute epic that is ‘Wild Coyote Keeps His Skin‘, a song laden with borderline menace which is given a full blown wide screen Cinerama delivery. At the end of the album Magee borrows from Neil Young as he delivers a short distorted blast of ‘Home On The Range’ (as Young did on the soundtrack to the Hunter S Thompson movie “Where The Buffalo Roam”) before he closes with a Gram Parsons like song, ‘Waiting For Jesus’ which delves into the past with its mention of old tricky dicky Richard Nixon. All in all, a great listen.
Odd Marshall is a Canadian who spent several years in the UK, and he pays tribute to London on one of the tracks on his debut album “Sand & Glue”, saying that “the song reflects the way a big city can beat you up. Ultimately, it’s a part of me and who I’ve become.” It’s a peppy little song with a power pop beat, and that’s just about the case for the remainder of the album, although Marshall is no one-trick pony. ‘Lucky Dragon‘, a song about falling in love in a Chinese Restaurant, zips along with some fine guitar riffing and ‘Tomorrow Never Comes’ is an inventive number with its slinky organ and guitar interplay. Ultimately, however, the album lacks the power punch required to raise it above the parapet.
Lee Hunter & The Gatherers roam the hinterlands of American folk music, and they do so in a calm and reverential manner. They’re a five-piece band helmed by Lee Hunter, who has championed this music since she got started as a member of Tammerlin in the 1990s and “The Ground Beneath My Feet” is her ninth release. They set their stall out immediately with their delivery of the traditional song ‘The Water Is Wide’, taken at a stately pace, and much of the album follows that same path, a solid piano-led base with tremulous fiddle and short acoustic guitar flourishes. The songs are a mixture of originals, contemporary covers and traditional songs. Of the latter, ‘Lover’s Ghost’ is given a fine “spooky” delivery and ‘Blind Beggar Of Bethnal Green’ is in the grand tradition of a folk tale with a moral, but their version of ‘Shenandoah’(with Jim Lauderdale sharing vocals) doesn’t really work for this listener. Away from tradition Hunter is no mean writer with ‘The Wind Knows The Secrets’ and ‘No One Knows’ well versed, ‘The Light’ is an insightful peek into the darkness of depression while a co-write with Peter Rowan (who appears on the song) on ‘Charleston 1862‘, a civil war tale, is given a powerful performance. In a minor masterstroke, Hunter closes the album with her excellent performance of Richard Thompson’s ‘Farewell, Farewell’. An album to seek out.
KP Hawthorn is a founding member of The HawtThorns and CALICO The Band, and “Til The Glitter End” is her first solo album. Essentially a collection of what are described as “reimagined recordings” (i.e. they’ve gone back into the studio to record the songs again) of CALICO The Band songs, along with a cover of an old Led Zep song, it’s glossy and polished, ready for the airwaves. Prime example is ‘Runaway Cowgirl’, essentially a sad tale but delivered without any sense of dirt, grit, or desperation. It opens with ‘Fool’s Gold‘ and Hawthorn goes on to act the outlaw on songs such as ‘High Road’ and ‘Lone Ranger’ with the lyrics hitting all the buttons – lost, alone, guilty and defiant – but the stance is belied by the savvy backings, lightweight Eagles for the most part. The album closes with Hawthorn’s take on Plant and Page’s ‘Going To California’, and, unsurprisingly, it’s the best track on the album.
In a similar vein is the debut album, “Endless Horizon”, from UK singer Florence Sommerville. There’s no denying that it’s a polished production, indeed, buffed to the nth degree, but on listening to the opening song, ‘(I’ll Be Your) Best Broken Heart’, one wonders how this can be considered country music (which is the audience Sommerville appears to be pitching at). You could make a case for the song being in the same bag as some of Fleetwood Mac’s radio hits (does FM radio stand for Fleetwood Mac radio?), so you could squeeze it into an americana-friendly sound, but essentially Sommerville is making pop music. Not a bad thing, we hasten to add, and she’s very good at it. The upbeat ‘Fearless’ is replete with fiddle and mandolin, while her voice is a definite plus, but songs such as the prowling slink of ‘Broken Pieces’ and the closing ‘Cut And Run’ are just too perfectly cut and dried for this reviewer. We much preferred the sweet slope of ‘Boots In The Rain’, a fine song which has some sweet pedal steel instead of the glossy pop elsewhere.
Finally, if you’re looking for good old-fashioned American rock’n’roots music, then Haystack Slim & The Broken Arrow might be a band to search out with their debut album “Whiskey Rainbow”. It’s a no-frills shot of bar band music, not too far removed from the mighty Blasters, with chugging rhythm’n’blues galore, and while they never hit the heights of the Alvin Brothers, the album is a fine listen. They charge into ‘Devil Crashed My Truck‘ with an evil grin plastered all over the guitars, and ‘Highway Hypnosis’ is a turbo-charged ride. They can shift gears, as in the two-part number ‘Old Gunfighter Part I’ and ‘Part II’, the first a gentle ballad, the second upping it up a notch, while the closing title song is a slow burned guitar fest.
Congratulations Cousin Rivert Sawrey!!