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.
Our first encounter here is “Our Way”, the debut album from LoveSeat, a married duo, JJ and Bill ‘Poss’ Passalacqua from Illinois. It’s a relatively modest affair spotted with dashes of humour with the pair taking turns at vocals on a set of songs which, for the most part, are delivered in an acoustic country setting. They’re at their best on the closing duet ‘Till The Water Goes Down’, a jaunty number about being stranded by a flood, leaving the pair with little to do apart from conceiving a baby, while the opening number ‘The Old Me’ reminds one of My Darling Clementine’s marital tales. However, the humour is too forced on the old-timey ‘The Ugliest House In Town’ while their version of Kirsty MacColl’s ‘In These Shoes’ just sounds out of place.
A bit of an oddity, “Always Will Be” is an album of Willie Nelson songs recorded by Oscar-nominated actress Amy Irving (“Carrie”, “The Fury”). The pair met while filming “Honeysuckle Rose” back in 1979 and have remained friends, with Nelson helping Irving out on her debut album “Born In A Trunk”. Here, he plays guitar on her version of ‘Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground’ while Steve Earle is heard singing on ‘I Wish I Didn’t Love You So‘ (one would say crooning, but Earle can’t croon as evidenced here). It’s definitely not a country album, however, as many of the songs are orchestrated with horn charts galore while the guitar charge, which is ‘If You Want Me To Love You I Will’ is described by Irving as “punk rock.” As we said, a bit of an oddity.
When AUK last encountered Chris Page, we described him as “bleak yet uplifting indie/folk”, and that pretty much captures the mood of “Split Seconds On Earth”, his latest release. Recorded in his home studio in Ottawa, the album is a collection of wounded songs with Page sounding simultaneously hurt, lost and vulnerable. On ‘Vacuum Void Of Fun‘, spare electric guitars spiral over a spindly acoustic backing, giving the song a slightly spectral and a slightly psychedelic vibe, while ‘Listen For the Lonely’ has a touch of Sparklehorse to it. Overall, it’s a great album, and it even has some good old cosmic Americana touches as on ‘My Turn At The Wheel’. Highly recommended.
Another act AUK has previously praised is Jesse Adelman, whose previous album “Strangers” was accorded a 9/10 rating. He’s back with “Friends”, mainly self-recorded, with Adelman manning all the instruments bar drums on one song. While it might pale in comparison to the earlier disc, there’s still plenty here to entertain. The opener ‘Evelyn‘ reminds one of Wilco (perhaps because Adelman is a dead ringer for Jeff Tweedy vocally here), while the laid-back vibe of ‘A Letter’ draws the listener in with its gorgeous guitar interplay. We don’t score these short reviews, but Adelman certainly deserves a listen.
James Cook gives us “Texican Velvet”, an album that reeks of the borderlands down south, with Cook singing in Spanish on the opening title song. There’s a hint of the late Kinky Freidman on a couple of the numbers, such as ‘Empty Wagons’ and ‘Coffee And Weed’, although the latter also has a glimpse of Guy Clark within it. There’s a fine sense of grit on the closing bluesy number ‘Hounding Me’.
Lance Cowan’s debut album was mentioned in a Short Cuts piece last year. A veteran music publicist in Nashville who has taken to writing and recording, Cowan’s debut was, we said, “a tad too laid-back,” and on “Against The Grain,” Cowan has definitely aimed for the middle of the road. Ballads such as ‘More Or Less’ and ‘Love Anyway‘ are delivered laden with strings, and when there is a spark, as on ‘Ragged Edge Of Nothing‘, it fails to catch fire.
So far, all of these short cuts have hailed from the new world, but we can sneak in some old-fashioned Englishness in the shape of Milton Hide, an East Sussex band whose album “Bungaroosh” (a term apparently for a method of building a wall whereby a wide variety of materials is bound together by lime mortar) roams around folk and jug band sounds on a set of songs tied to their local history. It’s all earnest and worthy, and several of the songs do ring out, such as on the agit folk-rock of ‘Judge, Jury And Executioner‘, a song for any tabloid readers, while ‘Small Boats’ is a generous reading of the plight of those crossing the channel. On a similar topic, ‘Quicksand Calling’ is a chilling song dedicated to the immigrant cockle pickers drowned in Morecambe Bay several years ago. While they’re unlikely to break out from their local nook, Milton Hide write some solid songs with their heart in the right place.
We close the proceedings with a bang and an echo, an echo of the gestation of what was to become Americana music. “Back At Home” is a modern boot of the International Submarine Band’s 1968 album “Safe At Home”, here realised by the rather clumsily named American Cosmic Revival Volume 1. The International Submarine Band was, of course, the first blossoming of Gram Parsons and our revivalists here, led by Christian Parker and including Patrick Cleary along with Earl Poole Ball and JayDee Maness (who both played on the original album), deliver a well-crafted tribute which is great fun. Parker has gone down this trail before when he and the same team delivered “Sweethearts”, a clone of The Byrds’ “Sweetheart Of The Rodeo”, and, just as on that album, he buffs the songs and delivers them with a wholehearted sense of earnestness. Although they rearrange the track list, they stick close to the original arrangements, with Maness’s pedal steel doing sterling work on the medley of ‘Folsom Prison/That’s Alright‘ while ‘Do You Know How It Feels To Be Lonesome’ is quite grand. Basically a tribute act; nevertheless, it’s a fine listen.
