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July 28, 2005

bill fay :: tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow

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Every once in a while, a reissue comes along which convinces even the most experienced crate-digger that the treasures of the 60s and 70s have long to go before they're exhausted (imagine: soon people will be adding the 80s to this list). Even better is when unreleased music is given its first breath of life after nearly 30 years in suspended animation.

Such is the music of Bill Fay, an odd duck of British extraction who released two albums proper in the early 70s - which I haven't heard, have just been reisused, and will be covered here. For now, my introduction to Mr. Fay was the collection of demos and home recordings, From the Bottom of an Old Grandfather Clock, released last year to very muted fanfare. They revealed an artist with a stunning melodic sensibility playing songs of deceptive simplicity that seemed, well, just a bit out there. Lullabies not to be trusted. The vibe was helped along by the hoary demo quality; I thought in many ways we were listening to the piano version of Guided by Voices, three decades before their time (also see the demo recordings of Peter Laughner for a parallel world of unhinged songcraft).

I was still in thrall to that collection when I discovered that a heretofore unreleased 3rd proper album had come out under the radar earlier this year. Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is credited to the Bill Fay Group: a quartet (including Fay) of no-boundaries instrumentalists who give this music a shambolic sense of art damage. There's a tiny bit of Canterbury prog in this stuff, an acid haze. These are pop songs, but they don't give themselves over easily, and they're knocked off balance by the band every time they seem headed for a safe track.

In fact, this disc reminds me of another 3rd album come lately: Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers. Cross that suicidal gem with the more optimistic melodicism of George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, and you have yourself a deal.

There's one other comparison in Bill Fay's music: the latest works of Wilco. Pulling apart pop songs at the seams, letting them breathe and then running them through with cacophony; I have no question that Jeff Tweedy has heard Bill Fay (through Jim O'Rourke's encyclopedic archive, if nothing else), and I detect some of his inspiration, especially on A Ghost is Born. In fact, there's no question. I mentioned Peter Laughner above, who Tweedy quotes on "Misunderstood" (Being There, so the circle is closed.

One last thing: magically, for some reason, the reissuers of this studio album have unearthed and included a new set of demo-quality recordings and injected them right into the middle of the studio album, entirely unannounced on the outer jacket's tracklist. It's a brilliant move of sequencing, and gives this disc a double-album feel, where sides 2 & 3 contain the experiments bookended by sides 1 & 4, the majestic open and close.

Some listeners may object to Bill Fay's fairly coarse experimentation with synthesizers on this later career release, but that's not important. It only adds to the wholly unique feel of this astonishing find.

For further info, I direct you to Marcello Carlin's brilliant analysis on his blog from back in April. And I leave you with one of the studio recordings and two of the short, unannounced demos.

Planet Earth Daytime (mp3)
After the Revolution (demo) (mp3)
Jericho Road (demo) (mp3)

Posted by borrowed_tunes at 09:57 PM | Comments (564) | TrackBack

July 27, 2005

jaga jazzist :: what we must

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Back to my Norwegian fixation, this time with a group that has a slightly higher profile than the Rune Grammofon label stuff that I've covered in the past. Jaga Jazzist is a 10-member collective that shares members/contributors with Borrowed Tunes faves Shining, In the Country, and Susanna and the Magical Orchestra. On What We Must, the ensemble lays down a kind of epic post-rock that's more harmonically complex than most of the Tortoise et al. crowd - and skirts awfully close to goofy fusion at times. But it all works for me, standing on the strength of a brilliant set of compositions.

This stuff is to jazz what movie soundtracks are to classical music - easy to pooh-pooh on a purist basis, but hard to deny on an emotional level and not necessarily any less sophisticated. If you love the idea of a large ensemble letting it rip without regard to formalist concerns or any kind of sentimental restraint, What We Must may be for you. If you can't tolerate a jazz horn over a rock beat, you may run screaming. For my part, it has slowly become one of my favorite records this year - a new top 20 entry when I get around to an update.

This disc comes with a 4-song bonus containing revealing demos from the early sessions that led to the polished product. It helps you to understand that this is a functioning creative unit, not a studio creation.

All I Know Is Tonight (mp3)
Swedenborgske Rom (mp3)

Posted by borrowed_tunes at 11:34 PM | Comments (1245)

July 25, 2005

son volt :: okemah and the melody of riot

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Let's get the comparison out of the way right off the bat: this disc is no Trace, not really even close. The press has been quick to call it the best Son Volt disc since that well-worn masterpiece; it is, but that's less of a compliment to the disc itself and more of a dig at the music Jay Farrar has made in the interim.

But what record could be as good as Trace? A trip down the tracklist yields memories of perfect sounds for summer highways - may the wind take your troubles away - and the hope that Okemah and the Melody of Riot contains just one or two tunes worth this season's drives.

And that's about it. While Okemah has the consistency that its predecessors lacked, it's even-keeled almost to a fault. It crackles with warm guitars, driven along by new guitarist Brad Rice's perfectly spun solos. There are no bad songs - but neither are there many great ones. "6 String Belief" - posted on this blog several weeks ago - is perhaps the only one you'll be putting in mixes years from now, but there's plenty of mileage in "Bandages and Scars", "Atmosphere", "Endless War", and "Jet Pilot".

In the final analysis, it's a welcome return and a very good straight-ahead guitar rock record in a year without many of them (the Hold Steady being a big exception). You might find it hits the spot on the way to the lake or the beach or the back porch.

Endless War (mp3)
Atmosphere (mp3)

Posted by borrowed_tunes at 09:24 PM | Comments (202)

July 19, 2005

new releases 07.19

Yeah, yeah, I told you to check back a couple times a week as the blog goes on summer schedule and I ain't done a thing since then. A not-so-bizarre confluence of not-very-interesting events has kept me off the circuit. I promise some record reviews and mp3s soon. There's a good backlog to cover.

And there isn't much in the way of new releases this week either. The dog days of the release schedule have hit. A new one from Frank Black and an Emmylou best-of to coincide with her tour supporting Elvis Costello. For the next 2 weeks, absolutely nothing at all that I know about right now.

Frank Black :: Honeycomb
Emmylou Harris :: Heartaches and Highways (compilation)

Posted by borrowed_tunes at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2005

new releases 7.12

Borrowed Tunes will only have occasional new posts through the summer - check in a couple times a week or so

There's a small mixed bag of stuff this week, with the highlight being the new Son Volt - a reader has already e-mailed to say it is even better than expected. The Knitters (John Doe, Exene, and Bonebrake doing country) drop a reunion disc. I'm also excited about the Prefuse + The Books EP. A good match.

Son Volt :: Okemah and the Melody of Riot
The Knitters :: The Modern Sounds of the Knitters
Prefuse 73 + The Books :: Prefuse 73 Reads The Books (EP)
Royksopp :: The Understanding
Daniel Lanois :: Belladonna
The Oxford Collapse :: A Good Ground
The Volebeats :: Like Her
The Del McCoury Band :: The Company We Keep
Wolf Parade :: Wolf Parade (EP)
Arcade Fire :: Arcade Fire (EP) (reissue)
The Decemberists :: The Tain (EP) (reissue)
Alex Chilton :: Like Flies on Sherbet/Feudalist Tarts (reissue)
The Bevis Frond :: London Stone (reissue)

Posted by borrowed_tunes at 08:06 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

July 08, 2005

ry cooder :: chávez ravine

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From one place to another, from one concept album to another. We leave Illinois, travel back in history, and arrive during the 50s in the LA immigrant neighborhood of Chávez Ravine, in the years prior to its demolition to make way for Dodger Stadium.

I'd never heard the story of Chávez Ravine before, and it's a sad one. I'll spare you the details; to put it simply, the poor residents of the ravine were fucked over by a city government which promised them low-income housing in exchange for the demolition of their homes and then used the land to attract the Dodgers from Brooklyn. As was the way in the 50s, McCarthyist accusations of communist ties were used to neutralize anyone who made trouble. Old-timers refer to their former homes as "third base", "home plate", etc.

If you know Ry Cooder's Buena Vista Social Club work, you know his absolute, authentic command of Latino roots music. I think the phrase "lovingly crafted" is overused, but it couldn't apply to a record more than Chávez Ravine. I don't have the vocabulary to describe all of the nuanced styles he uses to tell the story, but there is certainly quite a range employed with complete conviction and masterful ensemble musicianship. He mixes originals with tunes from the days of the Ravine itself.

While you admire his passion for the subject - he went door to door among former Ravine residents gathering stories and ideas - he may have poured too much into the project. Some of the songs feel like transitional pieces in a musical - part of the stage play, but not forceful enough to make an impact on the soundtrack. There are 15 tracks here, most of them long, and there could be a bit more focus. It's not entirely without humor and wackiness, though: an occasional character is a "space vato" who arrives in a UFO to observe this curious neighborhood and warn the residents of the impending doom.

The record also wears a sheen of NPR propriety, an absence of jagged edges. You get the sense that the old Mexican bands would have let it a bit more loose. It's one you may find, in the words of the Guardian, easier to admire than to simply enjoy.

By the way, my favorite Ry Cooder work is still his turn as a sideman for John Hiatt on the eternally classic Bring the Family.

Poor Man's Shangri-La (mp3)
3rd Base, Dodger Stadium (mp3)

Posted by borrowed_tunes at 08:04 AM | Comments (58) | TrackBack

July 06, 2005

sufjan stevens :: illinois

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Illinois marks an important point in Sufjan Stevens' career: it's a 3rd brilliant record in a row, but it's both slightly too big for its britches and dangerously similar to its predecessors. If he is to complete his series based on the 50 states - no chance, given 2 done in 3 years - he'll need to stretch himself stylistically to hold our attention.

At this point, that's almost silly to say: Stevens is a ridiculously talented artist, and this record is full of bold ideas, complex arrangements, and awe-inspiring breadth of instrumentation, considering he plays nearly everything. This isn't a survey of the Illinois timeline; he wants to show us what the state means to him, and the combination of public and personal, concrete and mystical, facts and dreams has all of the characteristics of a great historical novel.

There's a Whitmanesque spiritual (and, frankly, Christian) exuberance to it all, which is only appropriate for a project of this nature. With song titles like "To The Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament", he's letting it all hang out. You never new "Decatur" could be rhymed so many ways, and that they'd all work.

But, over the course of an exhausting 22 tracks (many of them short instrumentals), you realize that this disc sounds an awful lot like Greetings from Michigan (and no, the two states aren't as simliar as you'd think). It's a beautiful sound - one part contemplative Americana, one part ambient repetition, one part Belle and Sebastian chamber pop, one part odd-time-signature British Isles folk-prog-rock . . . but you can map these songs to their Michigan counterparts, by and large - including one pair of 5/4 rollicks per album.

The verdict? Taken on its own, for sheer ambition, scope, and accomplishmen, this is Stevens' best album, and you should start here if you've never heard him. But I hope it marks the culmination and close of a phase, and that new states bring new sounds.

Note: this album has largely been pulled from shelves what with the image of Superman on its cover irking certain DC Comics officials. HOWEVER, retailers who have copies in their posession are apparently allowed to sell out their stock, and the album is available from iTunes. Re-release date with is unclear. Look at the eBay vultures go!

Casimir Pulaski Day (mp3)
Decatur (mp3)

Posted by borrowed_tunes at 09:11 PM | Comments (13)

July 05, 2005

new releases 07.05

Borrowed Tunes is back from holiday.

There's good news and bad news in the new release bin this week. Good news: Missy Elliot's new disc is supposed to be fantastic. Bad news: the Sufjan Stevens disc - which I bought in advance from the label & can tell you is excellent - has been indefinitely delayed due to an unapproved image of Superman on its cover. Otherwise, there's not much going on.

Sufjan Stevens :: Illinois (latest news indicates it has been pulled from shelves)
Missy Elliott :: The Cookbook
R Kelly :: TP3 Reloaded

Next week is slow as well, but the new Son Volt drops along with a Prefuse 73 + The Books collaborative EP.

Posted by borrowed_tunes at 09:52 PM | Comments (0)