We’re back again to start the week with some things we’ve been listening to. David goes first this week, then Charles, and we’ve listed some reading recommendations at the end.
Pernice Brothers – “What We Had” (from Who Will You Believe, 2024)
Joe Pernice fans, rejoice! This new Pernice Brothers album is a treat straight through. I could as easily have singled out “Hey, Guitar,” with its Plimsouls-drive, Nick Lowe-hooks, and Bram Tchaikovsky-chords, or “I Don’t Need that Anymore,” a sweet-and-sour duet with Neko Case, and some other week maybe I will. But today I’m going with “What We Had” because it’s the one that made me tear up while singing along—not for the first time where Pernice is concerned: Rendering heartbreak hummable at barely mid-tempo is his superpower. Here he watches strangers, creating narratives for them that you suspect are just versions of his own sad story. That projection leads to introspection and then on to a simple but pitch perfectly painful guitar solo by Mike McKenzie. “It’s hard to watch good love go bad,” Pernice sings, and the hell of it is that’s all he can see. – DC
Clay Walker – “I Know She Hung the Moon” (single, 2024)
Clay Walker was a big deal for a minute back in the Hat Act nineties, scoring six country chart-toppers and another six Top Fives across a quartet of platinum albums—all at a time when the competition was named Garth, Alan, and Toby. “I Know She Hung the Moon,” in fact, is a cover of a song Keith wrote with frequent partner Scott Emerick. Keith’s version of the song, from the late singer’s 2008 Big Dog Daddy, is a mildly jaunty ode to a woman and builds, as Keith was wont to do, to a conclusion that finds him taking credit for the way his woman is always catching other dudes’ eyes. I think Walker’s new version, produced by Tony Brown, is way better. He’s slowed it to a ballad, for starters, which lets him discover depth in its lyric, and his voice, which has lowered and gained texture with age, conveys both his annoyance at the guy staring at her this time and his gratitude in being so lucky to have had and held her all these years. The low-key best record of Walker’s career. – DC
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis – “Emergence” (from The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, 2024)
The Messthetics are a proggy, punky trio that includes two former members of Fugazi. Lewis is an acclaimed free-jazz saxophonist. Together, if I may, they mitigate their indulgences and have never sounded better. At least to me—an admittedly middlebrow jazz fan who knows what he likes and what he likes is grooves driving hooky heads to which we return as frequently as possible. On their new album, I especially like “Emergence,” with its ska touched early section. Imagine if Saxa went jazz, backed by the rest of his English Beat bandmates, who were then beaten up for their instruments by Black Flag. – DC
Shelby Lynne – I Am Shelby Lynne (1999/2024)
[One of my favorite albums ever, I Am Shelby Lynne has been reissued for its 25th anniversary. I reviewed the album when it first came out, and except for wishing now that I’d been even more enthusiastic, I think it holds up well enough, so… I’ll share it here, lightly edited. Originally published in Westword, the Denver alternative weekly.]
After nearly a decade of losing at the big-time Nashville game, Shelby Lynne has a stunning new album, one promoted as her Declaration of Independence from the soulless, clone-crazy monster that is the contemporary country music industry. I Am Shelby Lynne is also a manifesto, of sorts, for the continued significance of regional distinctiveness. On the lazy “Where I’m From,” Lynne may be referring literally to her native Alabama, but she’s talking about the South. Today’s mainstream country music is made, largely if not mostly, by Southerners, but you wouldn’t necessarily know that by listening; most of it simply sounds like music designed for some indistinct suburb. It’s certainly not music particularly adept at conveying the unique quirks and perspectives of specific men and women in specific subdivisions.
Lynne’s latest is all about her perspective. Nearly every song here could’ve been inspired equally by a lying lover or by a lying label exec: “I got your message on the phone,” she cries early on; “…told me what we had was only business.” A substantial portion of the album’s power is in the way it matters that Shelby Lynne is a Southerner. Most obviously this comes off in the music, which is “country” in only the biggest tent, which is to say best, sense of the term. Lynne and producer Bill Bottrell take us on a country-soul road trip, waving along the way to Dusty in Memphis, Aretha in Muscle Shoals, Sammi Smith in Nashville, and each old sound gets blended and updated, reborn as part of Lynne’s living present. Furthermore, Lynne’s songs convey what I hear as a distinctly Southern comfort with the inevitability of pain and its inseparability from joy: “I’m looking up for the next thing that brings me down,” she sighs heavily at one point, and you can hear in her husky drawl she knows that both of those, the up and the down, will arrive again soon enough. Shelby Lynne finds moments of joy in singing her blues and, like each of us really, her blues are who she is. – DC
Mister Cee – “The House that Cee Built” (from Big Daddy Kane’s It’s a Big Daddy Thing, 1989)
The New York Times obit for Calvin Lebrun, AKA DJ Mister Cee, led with his role as an executive producer of the Notorious B.I.G.’s first album and as the host of his longtime Hot 97 NYC radio show. I first encountered his name a little earlier because he cut and scratched across the first albums of my favorite rapper back then, Big Daddy Kane. On 1988’s Long Live the Kane, Big Daddy hyped him on “Mister Cee’s Master Plan,” and on the following year’s It’s a Big Daddy Thing, Cee both returned the favor and hyped himself on a collage cut called “The House that Cee Built.” Cee builds an irresistible house-music beat from old Jackson Five and Fatback Band records, and weaves in samples from James Brown and Sister Sledge, Fat Albert and Mighty Mouse. It’s a crowd mover I’ve been spinning ‘round here for some 35 years, and it still sounds great this morning. R.I.P., Mister Cee. – DC
Pharrell Williams – “Just For Fun” (from Black Yacht Rock, Vol. 1: City of Limitless Access, 2024)
Williams dropped this album on his website, and it feels both like a surprise diversion and a welcome return. Its smooth-sailing textures befit the title, but what I hear most prominently here is the delightful weirdness of N.E.R.D., the Williams-and-Chad-Hugo side project that made a couple of striking albums in the early 2000s when the duo wasn’t busy ruling the radio with odd-future productions as the Neptunes. He’s back in that trick bag here. I love the jittery pop of “Richard Mille” or Beach Boys disco of “Going Back to VA,” but I’m most struck by “Just for Fun,” a rolling boil that mixes intoxicating drums and layered vocals with a paranoid (or maybe realistic) vision of bad bosses, surveillance, and unmet promises. Both climax and hangover, “Just for Fun” is a whirlwind of silky menace where the creeping dread somehow only adds to the pleasure. – CH
Katie Pruitt – “Worst Case Scenario” (from Mantras, 2024)
As someone who frets, I’ve long compiled my Worrier’s Greatest Hits. The newest addition is this stunner from Katie Pruitt’s remarkable new album Mantras. Pruitt testifies over a clomping rock beat, marching through anxiety’s turbulence and trying to find a clearer path. Perhaps Pruitt’s greatest achievement here – as on much of Mantras – is pairing direct, even therapeutic language with melodic flexibility and rhythmic drive, turning songs that could’ve weighed her down into compelling hybrids of pop clarity, country intimacy, and rock crunch. It’s a fitting juxtaposition for a song as much about the process as the hoped-for result. “Maybe I should try manifesting something good, and even if it doesn't pan out like I thought it would, I think it’d do me good,” she concludes, adding a second “I think it’d do me good” in case we don’t believe her. Or, more likely, in case she doesn’t believe herself. – CH
Pokey LaFarge – “Sister Andre” (from Rhumba Country, 2024)
I’ve never been sure about Illinois roots hodgepodger Pokey LaFarge, but I’ve grown to quite admire his stylistic curiosity. And sometimes he hits me dead in the center, as he does on the gorgeous soul of “Sister Andre.” Particularly invoking the Chi-Lites, Curtis Mayfield, and other Chicago R&B greats, “Sister Andre” is a ray of sunshine, with LaFarge (honoring predecessors but not mimicking them) singing of the title character’s assurances about the new love and new life that might be right outside the door. “Sister Andre” lies somewhere between the comfort of “Ooh Child” and the fulfillment of “Oh What a Night,” with a jingle-jangle snap that’s all its own. – CH
Old 97’s – “Magic” (from American Primitive, 2024)
I’m not sure that American Primitive is anything more than another Old 97’s album (which, hey, there are worse things), but “Magic” hits all the notes that made me care about them to begin with. The galloping guitars and drums, Rhett Miller’s power-pop pleading, the sweet-and-salty arrangement, the hook that won’t quit, endearingly smart-ass lyrics – all are familiar tricks for these “alt-country” survivors. But the new “Magic” proves that the old magic still works, maybe even better now. What might have seemed like sadboi desperation in Miller’s younger, poutier days now sounds like a call to keep old flames burning in this older and hopefully wiser context. But not to worry. There’s still plenty of spitfire spirit in these older 97’s, and they rock with as much vigor as ever. Miller tells us here that he still believes – we might as well too. – CH
Clarence “Frogman” Henry – “Ain’t Got No Home” (single, 1956)
New Orleans legend Clarence “Frogman” Henry died last week. In a career that found international fame for a while and hometown esteem forever, Henry recorded a bunch of great music. But his first and biggest hit still shines brightest of all. One of the great tracks of the early rock ‘n’ roll years, “Ain’t Got No Home” spotlights Henry’s playful showmanship, as he adopts a high-pitched “girl” voice (reportedly developed so he could sing both Shirley & Lee parts on stage), and the croak that gave him his gimmick name. It’s certainly, and enduringly, a party. But it’s also a laughing-to-keep-from-crying story of hard times, where the jubilant arrangement and funny voices can’t mask the pain in the Frogman’s heart. “Ain’t Got No Home” remains a thrilling reminder of New Orleans’ centrality to the music of that (or any) era, and Clarence Henry’s singular place within the tradition. – CH
Reading recommendations:
-Ann Powers on Cowboy Carter, for NPR.com
-Harmony Holiday on Cowboy Carter, for 4Columns
-Francesca Royster on Cowboy Carter, for Yes! Magazine
-Liz Tracy on the spiritual symbolism of Beyoncé’s Lemonade, for Orion
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