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.
The first offering this month is the third album from Scotland’s Kirsten Adamson, an artist who has steadily built up a core of support via her live gigs and two well-received previous efforts. Adamson, the daughter of the late Big Country frontman Stuart Adamson, lends her distinctive voice (with echoes of Kate Bush) to a solid collection of songs produced by Joe Harvey-Whyte on her latest album, “Dreamviewer”, and his pedal steel graces several of the songs. Harvey-Whyte has a light touch, as most of the songs here glide quite wonderfully, with numbers such as ‘Heart Is Burning Blue’ (with Harvey-Whyte’s pedal steel glowing) and ‘In the Next Life’ (with its vibrant guitar solo) quite delightful. The slow burn, which is ‘River Somewhere’, finds Adamson’s delicate voice poised against her band’s glowering and dramatic bedrock. An album to savour.
From Scotland, we scoot across the Atlantic, landing in Washington State for Garrett Hendricks, who, on “Northwest & Southbound“, delivers a solid set of songs which are imbued with a sense of the Northwest landscape. Ranging from folky sounds such as on ‘Son Of The River’ and the fine storytelling on ‘Adrift In The American Dream’ to the swampy rock of ‘Goat Leather Boots’ and ‘Smoke And Oak’, Hendricks covers all the bases, but ultimately, he doesn’t have a killer blow.
More successful is Levi Foster, who hails from Virginia. His album, “We Made Fire”, is rooted in classic country sounds, with weeping pedal steel and heartbreaking duets, as on the pleading opener ‘Emerald Eyes’. If you dig the likes of Joshua Hedley or Ags Connolly, two writers who fully appreciate the talent which fuelled the classic Nashville sound, then you’ll dig this album. It’s earthy, no Nashville strings or things, just solid songs sung with some gusto. ‘She’s In Richmond‘ is quite tremendous, a muscular slice of country music with sonic guitar solos, and Foster reminds one of the late John Stewart on a couple of the songs. There are a couple of songs which fail to reach out, but overall it’s a swell album, produced by Ken Coomer of Wilco and Uncle Tupelo.
Also delving into traditional country sounds is Austin Stambaugh, a rising up-comer who recently charmed audiences on his first UK tour. He’s a born storyteller and sings with a delightful high and lonesome voice, reminiscent of Jimmy Dale Gilmore at times. His latest album, “Sings The Songs Of Ernest Tubb”, was inspired by Stambaugh’s friendship with Lynn Owsley, pedal steel guitarist and one of the last surviving members of Tubb’s band. Stambaugh lays out this friendship on the introductory opening number here before launching into a delicious recreation of some of Tubbs’s songs. Owsley’s pedal steel is the weeping heart of the album on this unashamed dive into the deep soul of country music. Have a listen to ‘Dear Judge’ and try not to wipe away a tear or two (or at least just enjoy the sheer sentimentality on show here). The same goes for songs such as ‘Soldier’s Last Letter’ and ‘I’ve Lost You (So Why Should I Care)’ while Stambaugh delivers ‘Thanks A Lot’ with some outlaw country verve replete with some excellent twangy guitar and curdling pedal steel. It’s a delightful album.
Jack Schneider also harks to the past, but a more recent version of it. An acclaimed guitarist who is a member of Vince Gill’s touring band, Schneider is in thrall to the ’70s legion of singer-songwriters. His favourite album is “An Evening With John Denver,” and he salutes it by playing the very guitar that Denver’s guitarist Steve Weisberg played on that album. Also on his radar are James Taylor and Carole King, whose ‘Crying In The Rain’ he covers here. The album, “Streets Of September”, is pretty much what you’d imagine from his influences, a very mellow listen indeed. That said, Schneider is warm and engaging throughout while the backing musicians are on top form. There’s a fine, wearied patina to ‘How In The World’ and ‘Bright Eyes’ (written by another hero of Schneider’s, Dick Siegel) wafts brilliantly while ‘Renée’, another gorgeously low-key rhapsody, features some fine fiddle from Andrea Zonn, who Schneider first saw perform as a member of James Taylor’s band many years ago.
From Norway, The Shallow Riverbanks unleash “Broken Ballads”, a dark slice of americana gothic which has echoes of 16 Horsepower and The Walkabouts. The album opens with some promise on ‘The Louisiana Swamp’ while ‘Memento Mori’ finds them in a swampy Tennessee mood. However, they never actually create any sense of menace or mayhem, with the album coming across overall as an all too polite attempt to invoke a sense of peril.
We hive back to the UK for the folky tones of Elizabeth & Jameson, comprised of Hannah Elizabeth on vocals and violin and Griff Jameson on guitar and vocals. “Way Out West” starts out promisingly with a collage of found sounds overlaid on a guitar and violin backing, but thereafter, it’s basically the pair of them offering up a set of songs which fail to summon much enthusiasm. The pair can strive to whip up some support as on ‘Taffy On The Mississippi’ (which seems to purport to be a live recording, replete with audience cheerings), but overall, there’s little spark here. In addition, we can’t link a song as it doesn’t seem that the pair have shared the album so far.
What to say about the final disc in this round-up? Peter Stampfel’s “Song Shards: Soul Jingles, Stoic Jingles, Vintage Jingles, Prayers and Rounds” is, like much of the effervescent octogenarian’s output, decidedly peculiar. Stampfel is one of the last living survivors of the early sixties’ freakier moments; his band, The Holy Modal Rounders, is much revered. As the “dean” of rock critics, Robert Christgau once proclaimed, “Next to Bob Dylan, Stampfel is the closest thing to a genius that [the folk scene] produced.” Over 46 tracks, Stampfel features ancient Stoic aphorisms, as well as his own aphorisms (which he calls “song shards“), along with a selection of 1940s advertising jingles remembered from his youth in Milwaukee. Recorded with family and friends, this is prime Stampfel, the songs (all very short) glisten with an impish wisdom as he delivers words of wisdom he has discovered via his studies and his attempts to escape addictions in the first aphorisms section. The latter half, composed of Stampfel’s recollections of adverts remembered from his youth (most of them coming in under one minute), is both intriguing and hilarious and an example of Stampfel’s long-time ability to be serious and outlandish at the same time. Your reviewer, a long-time fan, loved this album along with the 14,000-word liner notes, which are available online. It’s unlikely that mention here will lead droves to investigate Stampfel, but those in the know are already aware that he is a treasure. If you want to dip a toe in the water, here’s ‘God May Be Indifferent‘.
