sonic-youth

The new recording is The Eternal - the band's first in a few years, and it sounds like anything but a rock band's fourteenth album in a twenty-seven year career. The punk ethos is still in evidence, along with the No Wave and New York art rock influence, but this bold and original music roars out of the speakers as alive and vibrant as anything you're likely to hear from a major label today (the band records for Matador). Dissonant guitar chords open the first song, Sacred Trickster, and they set the tone for this record of great guitar noise. It gets even better on "Anti-Orgasm," with walls of guitar roar thrumming above the hyper-martial drumming, then fading into a long, meditative drift. The songs are built on riffs and guitar patterns more than chord progressions or melodies, and sound simultaneously primitive and sophisticated, like much contemporary serious music. Songs like What We know will sound familiar to any alternative rock listener, but when things get weird and the music suggests police sirens and movie dinosaurs, it conjures orchestras of feeling with guitars and drums. To use the word "noise" can suggest arty self-indulgence, but this is rock music. It's smart and self-conscious rock music, but it kicks and it sounds good loud. Sonic-Youth have resisted formula and complacency to make aggressive, but very listenable music. This product is art.

Keef Harltey - Halfbreed

Drummer Keef Hartley's name pops up frequently in discussions of British blues from the 60s, but he remains a somewhat obscure figure to American listeners. The Keef Harltey Band's first album, Halfbreed, is a fine introduction to the hard rhythm and blues sound that critics praised after the band's appearance at Woodstock. It's primarily a hard blues-rock record with lots of lead guitar and passionate vocals from Miller Anderson, but features the horn arrangements and keyboards that were extending the guitar/bass/drums sounds standard at that time. Some describe the music as jazz-influenced, probably because of the extended solos that stretch some tracks to the 10 minute mark. The sound would really be more familiar to fans of John Mayall (with whom Hartley played) or even later Paul Butterfield than to jazz listeners, though. It's a strong rock record that embodies Hartley's influences and should appeal to fans of British blues as well as connoissuers of loose, 60s rock bands. Very cool stuff.

Chicano Rock!

Jon Wilman's music documentary Chicano Rock! The Sound of East Los Angeles is now out on dvd and available at the library. The 2008 production is a fun, information-dense one hour look at the evolution of a sound in the country's largest Mexican American community. Here, Wilman shows us, Mexican traditional music, rock 'n roll, rythmn & blues (and virtually every other popular music style from the 1940s on) was filtered through the experiences and sensibilities of Mexican Americans in, especially, East Los Angeles. There, musicans, fans, record companies and dance halls worked to evolve a diverse sound that extended from the father of Chicano music, Lala Guerrero, through Ritchie Valens, Thee Midniters, and Cannibal and the Headhunters, through El Chicano, Tierra and even Los Lobos. This fascinating story is told by authors and music professors, even actors like Edward James Olmos, but just as often by the people who were there, the musicians themselves. There are great historic photos and film clips along with some fine music, and they all work to tell the story of this special time and place, and the enduring tradition founded there. "Chicano Rock! The Sounds of East Los Angeles, tells the story of a proud and innovative Mexican-American community," reads the cover, "but it is also a soundtrack for a new America in the making."

The Urecht Sessions

Doug MacLeod is a familiar figure to a lot of Southern Californians. He's brought his traditional blues sound to several local venues and he was the host of a local blues radio show. Lately he's been spending time in the Netherlands, specifically the city of Utrecht, which lends its name to his new recording, The Utrecht Sessions. Although he remains a somewhat obscure figure, this new recording received a rave review in Downbeat magazine and may help expose his singular sound to a wider audience. MacLeod's blues, especially on this recording, are the acoustic blues of the Mississippi delta. His National guitar, his bottleneck slide, and his honest, expressive vocals reveal his connection to Son House, Robert Johnson and other delta greats. MacLeod takes this music out of the museum, though, and into the 21st century. This album contains all original material, and his personal take on the blues keeps it sounding alive and real.

Other new stuff: We've got two fun new compilations this week. First is Classic Country Jukebox, featuring George Jones, Johnny Cash, Bill Monroe, Kitty Wells, Hank Williams and more. Just classic traditional country hits and you won't need quarters. Next is Sh-Boom : Doo Wop Classics. If you follow this music, you'll have all of these popular hits, but if you just need one album with Sh-Boom, Earth Angel, Blue Moon, Come Go With Me, Blue Velvet and Sea of Love, this would be it. Contains the stone classic Tears On My Pillow, by Little Anthony and the Imperials.

A Hardcore classic

What's the lifespan of most punk and hardcore albums? Some endure, of course, but a lot never survive their season. The Shape Of Punk To Come by Swedish hardcore band Refused is becoming something of a classic, still listened to, still as fresh and aggressive as it was ten years ago. Refused had an edge that evoked Thrash Metal but used the sound to express its socially conscious, leftist, vegan world view. The brutal guitars, punk drumming, stop-and-start rythms, and the screaming vocals will resonate with punk and hardcore fans, but are worth a listen by anyone who likes some noise and aggression in their music.

Brilliant Corners

I heard a child's glockenspiel the other day and the simple, ringing notes brought on a powerful association. On the song "Pannonica" from Thelonious Monk's Brilliant Corners, the musician plays a celesta (or celeste), a small keyboard instrument in which hammers strike metal plates instead of strings. The simple, chiming sound of the instrument is ideal for the beautiful tune, and a striking contrast to the relative complexity of Monk's music, arranged here for piano, bass, drums, saxophone and trumpet, and performed by Monk, Sonny Rollins, Clark Terry, Max Roach, Paul Chambers and Ernest Henry. Brilliant Corners is full of such moments, where the musician's striking compositions twist and turn through tempos and sympathetic soloing to evoke the bold originality of Monk's vision. At the center, as always, is Monk's piano. Playing around the tempo, adding dissonant notes to complex chord structures, he was a true original. The boldness of his sound keeps the music sounding fresh fifty years later, and his influence so changed the sound of jazz that these recordings, which sounded so challenging at the time, sound almost mainstream now. If you've never heard this recording, or just need to hear "Pannonica" again to be reminded of Monk's lyricism, check out the library's copy of Brilliant Corners.
To learn more:
Straight, No Chaser: The Life and Genius Of Thelonious Monk by Leslie Gourse
Thelonious Monk: His Life and Music by Thomas Fitterling
Monk by Laurent De Wilde

Michael Nesmith

The history of Country Rock (as distinct from Southern Rock) typically follows the story from beginnings like the Buffalo Springfield (whose Kind Woman is often said to be the first rock song to feature a country-style pedal steel guitar) through the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers and Gram Parsons before becoming a more mainstream commercial movement in the hands of groups like the Eagles and their progeny. An often overlooked contributor to this movement was Michael Nesmith who, as early as 1970, was recording original country music with a rock sensibility. With his First National Band and, later, the Second National Band, he recorded four albums between 1970 and 1972. Selections from those recordings (and others) appear on the CD The Older Stuff: The Best Of The Early Years. This disc includes originals like Different Drum (a 1968 single for Linda Ronstadt), and Some Of Shelly's Blues along with interesting covers like I Looked Away (by Eric Clapton and Bobby Whitlock) and I Fall to Pieces. For a more thorough look at this period, the library also has a cd with two complete solo recordings, (And The Hits Just Keep On Comin' and Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch Stash). There is some overlap of material with the aforementioned disc but these are two of Nesmith's best solo albums. Like a lot of Country Rock, this music displays a somewhat subversive take on Country's conventions and would never be confused with the music coming out of Nashville at the time. Even with a slight countercultural smirk, though, this is beautiful country music and the best of Nesmith's songs, such as the gorgeous Joanne, continue to sound wonderful. Well worth a listen.