Lady Gaga
Born This Way
(Interscope)
Rating:

Over the weekend, a group of Americans sat rapt waiting on what they predicted would be the Second Coming. As Doomsday ticked to an end, however, Earth still spun the same and life carried on as usual, serving as climax to an event that was all but climactic. There was something going on during those final moments, though—Lady Gaga, pop music’s resident rebel, was performing onSaturday Night Live, her legs spread wide as she “gave birth” to some goldish liquid during a particularly symbolic rendition of “Born This Way.”

Lady Gaga’s record of the same title is hitting stores this week. Over the last few months, the record has been hyped by Gaga and critics alike as a “second coming” of pop music, and Gaga herself has been portrayed as something of a musical messiah for those damned to the outer fringes of society by those resting comfortably in the middle. Gaga’s SNL performance affirmed this role — in a world of Scotty McCreerys, the fact that Lady Gaga is as popular as she is brings hope to those still looking for a little innovation in what they hear on the radio.

Unfortunately, Born This Way doesn’t quite live up to its hype. Lead single “Born This Way,” which sounds way too much like Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” resigns itself to elementary lyrics like “Don’t hide yourself in regret/Just love yourself and you’re set.” The track needs more of its refrain (“Don’t be a drag/Just be a queen”), the tongue-in-cheek wordplay of which better lends itself to the persona Gaga has developed. Gaga’s latest single, “Edge of Glory,” is anything but edgy—it’s a soaring pop number reminiscent of an Eighties movie, but turns itself into a caricature of the genre when it devolves into lyrical aphorisms and a schmaltzy sax solo from Clarence Clemons. It’s almost as though Gaga is so consumed by singing about the identities of others that she forgets her own, giving way to lyrical and musical clichés that aren’t indicative of one of the most innovative pop artists of this generation.

Identity issues aside, Born This Way is still a good pop record, and a pretty damn good one at that. Piano-heavy “Yoü And I” foregoes the cheese in favor of soulful vocals and an honest love story, and as a result it’s the best track on the record. “Government Hooker” trades hooks for barbs, layering grimy synth stabs underneath Gaga’s call-and-response vocals to excellent effect. Other standouts include symbolism-heavy “Judas” and “Bloody Mary,” which showcase some of Gaga’s better songwriting.

Born This Way isn’t the landmark record it could or should be. It’s a solid pop effort and a decent dance record, though one that, stylistically, barely surpasses the most recent effort of pop veteran Britney Spears, Femme Fatale. Gaga only truly justifies the antics and the outfits when she ditches the shmaltz in favor of some grime, and her messages of non-conformity and social freedom ring truer in tunes with a bit of grit, as well. Like Doomsday, Born This Way feels anticlimactic, but this is one second coming that deserves a second chance. What’s most frustrating about this record is not a lack of potential, but an obvious display of it—potential that, hopefully, is a sign of great things to come down the road.

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Times New Viking
Dancer Equired
(Merge)
Rating:

Ohio lo-fi outfit Times New Viking is known for pushing the sonic envelope. 2009’s Born Again Revisited was recorded on VHS tape, and it’s that fuzzy, grainy, analog sound that initially attracted lo-fi die-hards to the band’s repertoire. Their latest release Dancer Equired, hitting shelves via Merge Records, takes a step back from the garage and into the studio, resulting in a collection of songs that maintains the band’s stripped-down sensibilities while putting more (needed) emphasis on melody and songwriting.

The songs are short but they pack a punch. “Downtown Eastern Bloc” throws some surprising pop in the mix, while “Fuck Her Tears” chugs along like fans of the band’s earlier records would expect. On some tracks, like “Ever Falling in Love” and “No Room to Live,” the band even dares to get a little pretty. The vocal harmonies are loose and guitars and drums plod along with careless ease, but, while each element might seem haphazard on its own, the band comes together for a musical unity their older records– while good in their own right– lacked. These tracks are where you really get a sense of what Times New Viking is about– partially because you can actually discern the lyrics, but also because the record’s softer moments put greater emphasis on those where the band really wants to get in your face. This wider range makes everything feel more authentic than the band’s earlier efforts, and that’s saying something.

Ultimately, this record shows what can go really right when artists push the boundaries. Times New Viking purists fear not, though, the grit’s still there and the edges are still rough; they’ve just dusted off the surface so you can see a bit more of the shine that’s been there all along.

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Nashville artist K.S. Rhoads performing at Cannery Ballroom

Downtown Nashville on a beautiful day

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Henry Wolfe
Linda Vista
(Undermountain Music)
Rating:

Henry Wolfe’s latest record Linda Vista plays like the soundtrack to a cocktail party after a sunny California day. The son of actress Meryl Streep and artist Don Gummer, Los Angeles musician Wolfe comes by his old Hollywood charm naturally, though he foregoes the glitz and glamour of his parents in favor of a more timeless, classic sound. The album, recorded live rather than track by track, is classy and tasteful, with simple arrangements and understated vocals comprising its majority. Opening track “Used to Be” saunters along with the jazzy swagger of an unadorned guitar and occasional brass, with Wolfe’s tale of a love gone wrong pushing and pulling right along with the beat of the snare. Most tracks, like “Open the Door,” “The Third Act,” and “Van Nuys” stay on the softer, prettier side, which suits Wolfe’s gentle voice and delivery. The title track, an upbeat instrumental number, allows the band to show off its musical chops a little more and is placed well within the context of the rest of the album. The record could use a little more sonic variation to move it along, but overall it’s a nice collection of songs that would be just as suited for a Hollywood jazz club of decades past as it is for driving down today’s crowded highways after a long day at the office.

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Matt Duke
One Day Die
Ryko
Rating:

At first glance, Matt Duke looks really young. But looks aren’t everything, and the songs on his latest Ryko release One Day Die tell a completely different story. The record gets at what the title suggests—that we’re mortal, that one day we will die, and how all the days that come in between can be a struggle but we get through them anyway. The 25-year-old south Jersey native possesses a sense of poetic lyricism and an understanding of human nature that indicate anything but the musings of a twenty-something, and the record could ride on his words alone.

Sonically, the album is as unpredictable as Duke professes life to be and, for the most part, that spontaneity works. Opening track “M.L.T.” starts slow and builds into an angular rocker about growing up and going home and that weird time of life where everything just starts to feel different. At his best, Duke echoes singer-songwriters like Jeff Buckley (“Shangri-La,” “Lay”), and he especially benefits from the unexpected arrangements present in many of the record’s tracks (“Kangaroo Court,” “Seriously, Indulge Me”), leaving a couple songs (like “The Hour”) to suffer from coffee shop syndrome and pale in comparison to their more intricately composed counterparts. Overall, though, it’s a promising second record from a talented songwriter that begs multiple listens.

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Right by Her Roots: Americana Women and Their Songs
By Jewly Hight
(Baylor University Press)
Rating:

If anyone should write an account of some of Americana’s greatest female heroes, it’s Jewly Hight, a Nashville-based writer who’s become something of an authority on the genre over the last few years. In Right By Her Roots, Hight shows off the expertise she’s come to be known for, but what really becomes quickly apparent just a few pages in is that she loves listening to this music just as much as those she writes about love making it. Spanning the musical and personal histories of artists like Lucinda Williams, Julie Miller, Mary Gauthier and Abigail Washburn, among others, Hight foregoes the simple summaries that run rampant in similar books and really does dig down to the roots of what makes these women tick – from sharing their personal anecdotes to giving in-depth lyrical analyses. What makes the book, though, is Hight’s willingness to go even a step further, exploring where these women find their spirituality and how it gives their music meaning. “People’s images of God can profoundly shape how they experience the world,” Hight writes, and she finds that regardless of what or who that God is, it deeply impacts the music of each of these women. This isn’t just a book for Americana fans – it’s a book for songwriters, music lovers, appreciators of good writing and anyone who’s ever felt even the slightest bit compelled to create something bigger than themselves, to reach down to their roots and give the world everything they’ve got.

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Alex Ebert
Alexander
Community Music
Rating:

Some people might be surprised to learn that frontman for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros—you know, the guy with the wild hair and matching dance moves—isn’t actually named Edward Sharpe. He’s Alex Ebert, and his first solo record, Alexander, wants to make sure you know just that. The record won’t be foreign territory for fans of the indie-folk collective, but does draw on a broader range of influences than did the band’s Up From Below, including tracks that echo the sensibilities of music’s two most famous Bobs – Dylan (“In the Twilight,” “Bad Bad Love”) and Marley (“Awake My Body”).

Taking a worldlier approach than with the Zeros, Ebert’s solo material is reminiscent of a more accessible Devendra Banhart, especially on “Old Friend,” with its simple, Eastern-inspired instrumentation and chant-like background harmonies. Other standout tracks include whimsical opener “Let’s Win!” and slow crooner “Glimpses.” On Alexander, Ebert proves he’s just as capable on his own as he is sharing a stage with nine other musicians.

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Ron Sexsmith
Long Player Late Bloomer
Ronboy Rhymes
Rating:

The term “old soul” gets thrown around pretty loosely, but if there’s one modern songwriter who really fits the bill it’s Ron Sexsmith. As a songwriter, Sexsmith has always had a way with writing about “big” topics—love and heartbreak, doubt and redemption, meaning and the struggle to find it– with a sense of humble simplicity that recalls the authenticity of ‘60s and ‘70s songwriters like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. His latest record Long Player Late Bloomer—which is his twelfth, for those counting—is a timeless study in hopeful melancholy that amounts to his best work yet, and fans of his earlier work know that’s saying something.

The record comes after a two-decade solo career that’s received much critical and artistic acclaim (Sexsmith counts Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello as fans) but little commercial success and, lyrically, sounds as though this disconnect is beginning to really weigh heavy on him. Opening track “Get In Line” begins with the lines “heavy clouds are hanging around/and the sun refuses to shine,” and plays like a casual kiss-off to all the wrongs Sexsmith has endured over the years, both personally and professionally. Tracks like “Heavenly” and “Love Shines,” though, show that Sexsmith’s trademark optimism hasn’t diminished entirely, and likely won’t. Instrumentation on the record is tight, well-produced and walks the fine line between understated and interesting that does so well to complement both Sexsmith’s voice and the stories behind his words. Long Player, Late Bloomer is a record certainly worthy of being played for a long, long time to come.

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Everyone knows that point in a relationship when things are about to go sour—maybe it’s a heated argument, or maybe it’s a subtle passing comment that, to untrained ears, would sound like nothing. It’s when things go bad, and in a lot of cases, there’s never really any avoiding it, hard as you might try to steer things in the other direction.

The music of Robert Gay, though, doesn’t have one of these sour points, doesn’t have an expiration date. Echoing a wide range of classic artists from Paul Simon to Bob Dylan to even the Jackson 5, the Nashville singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist is able to craft his own brand of music that is at once timely and timeless—seamlessly striding a fine line any musician would tell you is not easy to walk.

On his debut solo album When This Goes Bad, Gay sings of love found and inevitably lost, of the pains of going separate ways and the inexplicable urge to keep trying after all seems hopeless yet again. The self-produced record takes a stripped-down musical approach that is as honest to the ear as the lyrics are the eye. Tracks like “The Sight of You (With Someone Else)” and “Better with You than Without” especially exemplify this aesthetic, and each track shows off the record’s live feel— most songs feature a band made up of Gay’s close friends, who recorded all at once with only a handful of takes.

A standout track is “Wait for the Sun,” the chorus for which Gay says he awoke singing one November morning. He recorded what he had and finished the mysterious song over the process of a few months, letting the song sit as he wondered about its meaning. It wasn’t until a childhood best friend’s passing in October that Gay suddenly understood what he had been singing nearly a year before. It’s a song about loss, but it’s also a song about hope in the face of loss, a theme that’s echoed elsewhere on the record. The deeply personal nature of the lyrics is another common theme, with tracks like “Fishing” drawing on Gay’s own need to find an outlet through music.

Fans of the Nashville music scene will also appreciate Gay’s commitment to his community, as the record features Nashville musicians as well as recording and mixing credits from area engineers. This should come as no surprise, though, as Gay, the son of two Nashville music producers, grew up and grew as an artist in the heart of Music City, studying violin, trumpet, singing and guitar from an early age. Gay also helped organize “How Can We Help,” a concert benefiting victims of the May 2010 Nashville floods. He hasn’t been shy in other aspects of Nashville music, either, recording projects for various artists and friends and serving as frontman for cult-favorite ska band the Nova Ray from 2006 through 2008.

When This Goes Bad is that record you could listen to whether you’re lamenting a lost love or daydreaming about the next one—as with anything authentic, it has staying power, and it’s not going to go bad any time soon.

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Punch Brothers at Mercy Lounge, Nashville, TN 2.15.11

How many shows have you seen where a sold-out room goes crazy over a movement from a Bach concerto? And how many of those shows followed that piece with a Mclusky cover? Not too many, huh? That’s exactly what happened, though, when the Punch Brothers played at Mercy Lounge Tuesday, and that only scratches the surface of the night of music that followed.

Punch Brothers is the musical brainchild of former Nickel Creek vocalist and mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile. Named for a lesser-known Mark Twain short story, the band is known for combining elements of acoustic and bluegrass music with classical, rock and experimental sensibilities, resulting in a sound that truly defies labels.

Their latest record, Antifogmatic, is the band’s best yet (it was #15 in American Songwriter’s Top 50 Records of 2010), and Thile and company kicked off the evening with the record’s first two tracks, “You Are,” opening with Chris Eldrige on guitar, and “Don’t Need Know,” the latter of which featured violinist Gabe Witcher doing a pretty damn good job taking over on lead vocals. Both were enough to get the crowd riled up, to which Thile responded, “But it’s only been two songs!”

Quality defies quantity in the case of the Punch Brothers, however, as most songs only needed one or two notes to get cheers of recognition. Thile described another Antifogmatic tune, “Next to the Trash,” as a real “relationship number,” featuring lyrics like, “She puts my body away/next to the trash, under the sink/along with all the cleaning supplies and the things that we buy and decide we don’t need.” “Alex” and crowd-pleaser “Rye Whiskey” rounded out the evening of new stuff, until the quintet opted to play a “new” new song, a slow, pretty number called “The Full and Empty Hours,” which they anticipate to record for a new album this summer.

The band pulled from past albums as well, jamming on “Watch’at Breakdown” from 2006’s How to Grow a Woman from the Ground (from the days they were still considered Thile’s solo project) and “Punch Bowl” from 2008’s Punch. A highlight of the evening also came from Punch, when the guys played the first movement from Thile’s 45 minute string quintet “The Blind Leaving the Blind,” which banjo player Noam Pikelny noted was one of the ten most requested songs at Nashville’s Wildhorse Saloon in 2010. No kidding. Despite a radio-worthy speaking voice, Pikleny’s real talent lies in his banjo licks, which provide a rhythmic backbone for many of the band’s songs.

Almost as impressive as their original compositions are the covers, which included the Strokes’ “Heart in a Cage” (that “other rival bluegrass band from New York,” as Thile put it), Josh Ritter’s “Another New World,” the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer,” Gillian Welch’s “Wayside/Back in Time,” which featured a standout solo from bassist Paul Kowert, a portion of a Bach concerto (I can’t remember which one, and I’m going to blame that on the whiskey, Carrie Underwood/Cuervo-style) and Mclusky’s “Icarus Smicarus.” That last one is a personal favorite because, really, who the hell does Mclusky covers on a mandolin, and does them well?

The Punch Brothers are all about the music, labels and genres and flashy sets be damned, and as such, they’re one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen, and probably always will be.

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