Various Artists
Baby, How Can It Be? Songs of Love, Lust and Contempt from the 1920s and 1930s
Rating: 4.6/5.0
Label: Dust-to-Digital
It's easy to see the earliest 20th century roots of that most popular of song topics - love - throughout Baby, How Can It Be? Songs of Love, Lust and Contempt from the 1920s and 1930s, though no deep knowledge of music history is needed to enjoy this archival concept album. Consisting of 66 tracks taken from the collection of musician/collector John Heneghan, this set should be immediately accessible for contemporary listeners, even for those who find songs this old exceedingly quaint. Think of it as a 69 Love Songs from another era; like Magnetic Fields' album, Baby explores love from nearly every conceivable angle and says more about the subject than most works of high culture ever have.
Baby appropriately opens with the Bo Carter song that gives this set its name, a wistful, head-in-the-clouds number with simple lines such as, "I'll never believe/ That you belong to me." It sets the template for most of the first disc; in this way, the disc has its fair share of female muses - there's Angeline, Lulu, Little Indian Napanee, Hapa Haole Hula Girl and the more nebulous sweetest girl in town - and even if these women occasionally struggle with fidelity and often bring nothing but misery and sometimes even death to their lovesick admirers or themselves, the first disc is generally the most carefree of the set. There are exceptions - "Dock" Walsh bemoans that he "never knew was misery was" until he met a woman - but mostly these are songs of new love before the bloom is off and domestic warfare begins. "I'm walking on air/ I've left all my blue days behind," Ted Lewis pseudo-sings on "I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby," a representative slice of the type of love-struck whimsy of this first disc.
The tone changes on the second and third discs, entitled "Lust" and "Contempt," respectively. "Lust" showcases the raunchier side of these old songs, especially in "Pussy" by Harry Roy and His Bat Club Boys, perhaps still the standard bearer for double entendre with lines like, "There's one pet I like to pet/ And every evening we get set/ I stroke it every chance I get/ It's my girl's pussy." Elsewhere there are infidelities, sordid affairs, a drunken Irish threesome and generally every type of sexual debauchery one can think of. The final disc is heavy with the lovesick blues and various woeful laments; almost everything goes to shit and the titles say it all: "I'm Gonna Kill Myself," "Left All Alone Again Blues" and "Pretty Mama Blues." A mean streak runs through these songs; all varieties of barbed, if antiquated, insults and general meanness can be found. The object of derision in Bill Carlisle's "I'm Wearin' the Britches Now" is dismissed as a"lousy sow," Robert Hill mocks someone who's "gonna look like a monkey" in old age and Fiddlin' John Carson and His Virginia Reelers cloak a catchy singalong about daily boozing and gambling with some particularly distasteful marital advice: "It's a shame to whup your wife on Sunday/ When you've got Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday...." Taken together, these two discs are remarkably cynical and darkly humorous and, maybe because of that, enjoyable as hell.
The scope of Baby ventures far beyond the typical old-timely folk usually favored by such compilations to also include early jazz, blues, bluegrass, brass bands, yodels, dignified urban tunes and ridiculously rural ones, as well as some truly unclassifiable stuff like "I Ain't a Bit Drunk." Much of it is pretty obscure - the Mississippi Sheiks' "The World Is Going Wrong" and Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Corinna Blues" are probably the most "obvious" inclusions - a trait that's sure to appeal to a certain segment of listeners. Its packaging plays up the comedic and caustic tones of these songs; the gatefold shows a happy couple "Before Marriage" sharing an umbrella, and an "After Marriage" photo of them back to back, under separate umbrellas, the man smoking a cigarette and the woman dejectedly staring downward. The lack of simple biographical details and recording information is perplexing, especially for a label that is typically is spot-on in this area. A minor complaint to be sure, and while there are literally thousands of great love songs from the 1920s and 1930s out there, Baby, How Can It Be? is an excellent overview and comes wholeheartedly recommended for both novices and experts alike.
Showing posts with label folk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label folk. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Careful: Oh, Light
Careful
Oh, Light
Rating: 3.5/5.0
Label: Sounds Super Recordings
Some albums are meant to be listened to alone, as if the quietness of solitude heightens their emotional impact. For me, albums like The Trinity Sessions, The Ghost of Tom Joad or I See a Darkness have always been best enjoyed on a set of headphones or playing at a low volume apart from the crowd. It feels inappropriate - and cheap - to listen to albums like these in front of other people, to say nothing of the fact that doing so would depress the shit out of everyone. Nothing can clear a crowded room of all levity quite like "Mining for Gold," "Sinaloa Cowboys" or "A Minor Place."
Oh, Light, writer/poet/musician Eric Lindley's newest effort under the Careful moniker, carries a similar vibe. It isn't consistently strong enough to be compared to these aforementioned albums, but it is reminiscent of them in terms of tone and, occasionally, style. The album is fairly sparse, its instrumentation usually consisting of guitar and perhaps too-frequent brushes of electronic glitches and other noises, with Lindley's vocals straining and sometimes breaking just barely above a whisper. The album moves deliberately and requires a certain amount of patience and attention from the listener, especially in the languid pacing and vocal phrasing of songs like "I Shot An Apple Off Her Head," "Carnival" and "I Loved a Girl but She Loved Me." Other tracks uniquely blend the acoustic with the experimental, most strikingly on the prolonged tension of "Turns Out" and in the static interference of "New Life." These little accents are enough to distinguish Lindley from the current crop of indie artists working from a similar aesthetic, even if his electronic tendencies are laid on a too thickly in "Every Epiphany," "We Give Up" and "Oi, Etc."
Oh, Light's imagery and lyrics tend to be somewhat oblique and non-linear. There is a heavy emphasis on physiology, as references to fists, eyes, splintered knuckles, breath, hair, body organs sold for money and fingers touching ribs form a sketchy but consistent narrative. Though Lindley is by no means unintelligible, it's sometimes difficult to fully understand what he's saying, an effect that actually adds some mystery to these songs and forces the listener to zero in on a precise phrase like, "There is a lever I can crank/ To pull my skin back tighter/ There is a powerful machine to fill the holes/ Inside my bones and teeth" or something more prosaic like "let's build a monument to memory."
The album is brief, barely cracking 30 minutes, but this brevity works; anything longer might have felt too oppressive or willfully obtuse. There is of course no shortage of solo artists making intimate, home-recorded albums along the lines of Oh, Light, but there is a quality in Lindley's vocals and unobtrusive instrumentals that many of other musicians lack. As clichéd as it sounds, Oh, Light is an album of fragility and beauty that invites reflection and contemplation, foregoing big riffs and bigger vocals for something far more refined, restrained and moving.
(Some copies of the album include demo versions of Oh, Light songs "Carnival," "Scrappy," "Fox and His Friends" and "We Give Up," as well as a few tracks that don't appear on the record. Most of these are even more skeletal than their album counterparts and are well worth seeking out).
Oh, Light
Rating: 3.5/5.0
Label: Sounds Super Recordings
Some albums are meant to be listened to alone, as if the quietness of solitude heightens their emotional impact. For me, albums like The Trinity Sessions, The Ghost of Tom Joad or I See a Darkness have always been best enjoyed on a set of headphones or playing at a low volume apart from the crowd. It feels inappropriate - and cheap - to listen to albums like these in front of other people, to say nothing of the fact that doing so would depress the shit out of everyone. Nothing can clear a crowded room of all levity quite like "Mining for Gold," "Sinaloa Cowboys" or "A Minor Place."
Oh, Light, writer/poet/musician Eric Lindley's newest effort under the Careful moniker, carries a similar vibe. It isn't consistently strong enough to be compared to these aforementioned albums, but it is reminiscent of them in terms of tone and, occasionally, style. The album is fairly sparse, its instrumentation usually consisting of guitar and perhaps too-frequent brushes of electronic glitches and other noises, with Lindley's vocals straining and sometimes breaking just barely above a whisper. The album moves deliberately and requires a certain amount of patience and attention from the listener, especially in the languid pacing and vocal phrasing of songs like "I Shot An Apple Off Her Head," "Carnival" and "I Loved a Girl but She Loved Me." Other tracks uniquely blend the acoustic with the experimental, most strikingly on the prolonged tension of "Turns Out" and in the static interference of "New Life." These little accents are enough to distinguish Lindley from the current crop of indie artists working from a similar aesthetic, even if his electronic tendencies are laid on a too thickly in "Every Epiphany," "We Give Up" and "Oi, Etc."
Oh, Light's imagery and lyrics tend to be somewhat oblique and non-linear. There is a heavy emphasis on physiology, as references to fists, eyes, splintered knuckles, breath, hair, body organs sold for money and fingers touching ribs form a sketchy but consistent narrative. Though Lindley is by no means unintelligible, it's sometimes difficult to fully understand what he's saying, an effect that actually adds some mystery to these songs and forces the listener to zero in on a precise phrase like, "There is a lever I can crank/ To pull my skin back tighter/ There is a powerful machine to fill the holes/ Inside my bones and teeth" or something more prosaic like "let's build a monument to memory."
The album is brief, barely cracking 30 minutes, but this brevity works; anything longer might have felt too oppressive or willfully obtuse. There is of course no shortage of solo artists making intimate, home-recorded albums along the lines of Oh, Light, but there is a quality in Lindley's vocals and unobtrusive instrumentals that many of other musicians lack. As clichéd as it sounds, Oh, Light is an album of fragility and beauty that invites reflection and contemplation, foregoing big riffs and bigger vocals for something far more refined, restrained and moving.
(Some copies of the album include demo versions of Oh, Light songs "Carnival," "Scrappy," "Fox and His Friends" and "We Give Up," as well as a few tracks that don't appear on the record. Most of these are even more skeletal than their album counterparts and are well worth seeking out).
Friday, July 09, 2010
Alasdair Roberts & Friends: Too Long In This Condition
Alasdair Roberts & Friends
Too Long In This Condition
Rating: 2.5/5.0
Label: Drag City
If ever there was a voice ready-made for singing folk ballads, it's Alasdair Roberts.' Roberts sings in a distinctly Scottish brogue; his voice sounds like it could well be from another musical era, one where a rose and a brier grow from young William and Barbara Allen's gravestones, criminals are hung from gibbets and the hair of a drowned girl is used for the strings of a fiddle that magically tells how her sister killed her. No Earthly Man (2005), a collection of traditional British and death ballads, was a natural fit for the musician, evoking those mystical and mysterious bygone days, even if the manner in which its songs were arranged squarely marked him as a contemporary folk singer.
All of which should make Too Long In This Condition - another collection of quaint old songs, plus one written by the musician's father - a brilliant release. Roberts is clearly comfortable with performing traditional music, as several of the songs included here have been part of his live shows in recent years, but familiarity and earnestness can have their drawbacks, and despite a mix of revered standards like "Barbara Allen" and "The Golden Vanity," as well as a few delightfully obscure inclusions like "Long Lankin," Too Long too often feels boring, mostly humorless and overly reverential. The versions of "Little Sir Hugh" and "The Lover's Ghost" in particular have all the characteristics of rotting museum pieces kept under glass; both songs are fairly cumbersome and plodding, lacking any real sense of vitality. Other songs are performed so goddamn seriously that they evoke images of coffeehouse folksingers the world over, with "What Put the Blood on Your Right Shoulder?" and "The Burning of Auchindoun" absolutely reeking of stone-faced and coldly sober sincerity. Roberts and his backing band treat these songs like sacred hymns, but this approach only presents a frustratingly reductionist view of these tunes.
The album does have its merits, though any real flashes of brilliance are rare. Too Long begins magnificently, as its first four songs - "The Daemon Lover," "Young Emily," "Long Lankin" and "The Two Sisters" - manage to sound ingrained in the past but also relevant for this decade. The album ends nicely as well: though the story that unravels in "Barbara Allen" can be construed as too melodramatic by modern listeners - who dies of a broken heart these days? - Roberts' version masterfully captures that song's ambiguity toward both William and the title character, both of whom are impetuous, tragic and maybe just a little bit stupid. The album also includes detailed liner notes about each song's provenance, as well as a bibliography/historiography of sorts, a handy guide for anyone interested in tracking down other versions of the songs included here.
It's no easy feat covering such songs that contain their own unique symbolism and mythology, as well as a propensity for fair maidens, bonnie lasses and the phrase "but for the love of thee." Roberts gives it his best effort on Too Long In This Condition but the results are scattershot and inconsistent. It's a nice enough release, but for someone as well-versed in these strange little tales as Roberts, expectations run high. More often than not those expectations aren't met, regardless of however well-suited the musician is for this content.
Too Long In This Condition
Rating: 2.5/5.0
Label: Drag City
If ever there was a voice ready-made for singing folk ballads, it's Alasdair Roberts.' Roberts sings in a distinctly Scottish brogue; his voice sounds like it could well be from another musical era, one where a rose and a brier grow from young William and Barbara Allen's gravestones, criminals are hung from gibbets and the hair of a drowned girl is used for the strings of a fiddle that magically tells how her sister killed her. No Earthly Man (2005), a collection of traditional British and death ballads, was a natural fit for the musician, evoking those mystical and mysterious bygone days, even if the manner in which its songs were arranged squarely marked him as a contemporary folk singer.
All of which should make Too Long In This Condition - another collection of quaint old songs, plus one written by the musician's father - a brilliant release. Roberts is clearly comfortable with performing traditional music, as several of the songs included here have been part of his live shows in recent years, but familiarity and earnestness can have their drawbacks, and despite a mix of revered standards like "Barbara Allen" and "The Golden Vanity," as well as a few delightfully obscure inclusions like "Long Lankin," Too Long too often feels boring, mostly humorless and overly reverential. The versions of "Little Sir Hugh" and "The Lover's Ghost" in particular have all the characteristics of rotting museum pieces kept under glass; both songs are fairly cumbersome and plodding, lacking any real sense of vitality. Other songs are performed so goddamn seriously that they evoke images of coffeehouse folksingers the world over, with "What Put the Blood on Your Right Shoulder?" and "The Burning of Auchindoun" absolutely reeking of stone-faced and coldly sober sincerity. Roberts and his backing band treat these songs like sacred hymns, but this approach only presents a frustratingly reductionist view of these tunes.
The album does have its merits, though any real flashes of brilliance are rare. Too Long begins magnificently, as its first four songs - "The Daemon Lover," "Young Emily," "Long Lankin" and "The Two Sisters" - manage to sound ingrained in the past but also relevant for this decade. The album ends nicely as well: though the story that unravels in "Barbara Allen" can be construed as too melodramatic by modern listeners - who dies of a broken heart these days? - Roberts' version masterfully captures that song's ambiguity toward both William and the title character, both of whom are impetuous, tragic and maybe just a little bit stupid. The album also includes detailed liner notes about each song's provenance, as well as a bibliography/historiography of sorts, a handy guide for anyone interested in tracking down other versions of the songs included here.
It's no easy feat covering such songs that contain their own unique symbolism and mythology, as well as a propensity for fair maidens, bonnie lasses and the phrase "but for the love of thee." Roberts gives it his best effort on Too Long In This Condition but the results are scattershot and inconsistent. It's a nice enough release, but for someone as well-versed in these strange little tales as Roberts, expectations run high. More often than not those expectations aren't met, regardless of however well-suited the musician is for this content.
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