I’ve been listening to so much old stuff lately—mostly Sandy Denny and the Delgados*, though not at the same time—that it’s refreshing to have spent the last couple of weeks mostly focused on new records, at least enough so to come up with a brief pimp list. We’ve hit that pre-Christmas point in the year when not much interesting new stuff is coming out, and I’m using that as an opportunity to catch up on records I bought earlier in the year and haven’t listened to enough yet. But here are three recent acquisitions that are floating my boat in a big way.
1. Bettye Lavette, “I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise.” First of all, a rule of thumb: if you come across a vintage soul comp and the artist’s name is Bettye with an “e” at the end, it will be good. That’s because (unless there are more soul singers out there named Bettye in whom there has recently been a revival of interest) it will be by either Bettye Lavette or Bettye Swann, two very different but equally compelling soul singers who got their start in the 1960s. Swann retired in the 1970s; Lavette is still going strong. There was a superb Bettye Swann retrospective released last year by the wonderful people at Honest Jon’s Records, and I hope someone will do an equally definitive comp of Bettye Lavette’s career one of these days. In the meantime, though, Lavette has released a fine new record of covers of songs by female artists ranging from Joan Armatrading to Rosanne Cash to Fiona Apple. It’s not a perfect record, but the high points are extremely high. Her version of Aimee Mann’s “How Am I Different?” is utterly magnificent.
2. The Clientele, “Strange Geometry” (and others). I’m all fired up about this band at the moment, though “fired up” is an incongruous phrase to use in connection with a band whose sound is not exactly fiery. The Clientele (terrible name) are not a new band; they’ve been around since the late 1990s, I guess. But I only found out about them this year, and it took me a few months to get around to grabbing their records from eMusic. I finally did the other night, and I spent all day yesterday listening to them. I’m not sure when I developed a passion for swirly, dreamy, lush, atmospheric pop, but it’s a relatively recent development, so I’m still excited when I find another band that scratches that itch, and the Clientele do so very effectively. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. So far, I’ve mostly just been letting the sheer sonic beauty of the songs wash over me, though occasionally a sad yet witty lyric will catch my ear. (Sad but not mopey, I should add; generally, I’m not so much for the mope.) It’s possible that I’ll end up preferring their previous album, “The Violet Hour,” to this new one, but it’s too early to say. In any case, an adjustment will definitely have to be made to my top ten list.
3. Gary Allan, “Tough All Over.” There’s a defense-of-mainstream-country post that’s been forming in my head recently, but I’m going to have to wait until the bad taste left by last night’s thoroughly ghastly CMAs has dissipated before writing it down. For now, I’ll just note that I like lots of mainstream country, though not a lot of the stuff that gets played on country radio and honored at the CMAs. (God, that show was just wretched last night. I haven’t watched the CMAs in a couple of years, and now I remember why; this year’s version was possibly the worst I’ve ever seen. Billy Joel and Shania Twain, Elton John and Dolly Parton: together again, and with any luck, never again. I’m still shuddering. But I digress.)
Anyway, Gary Allan is one of my very favorite mainstream country artists. He’s got this voice that…well, I’d borrow my friend Deborah’s description of its effect on her, but I think I need to ask permission first, so I’ll just borrow a phrase from Sam instead and say that his voice makes me want to undress. It grabs me on a visceral level that I can’t even describe adequately. He still hasn’t quite made the record I want him to make, but that’s okay. His previous record, “See If I Care,” came close, and so did 1999′s wonderful “Smoke Rings in the Dark.” And so does this new one, which, like all of his records, features a dud or two but is nonetheless a very impressive achievement. I hate to use stupid rock-crit clichés like calling a record “brave,” but this one really is quite brave: Gary’s wife, the mother of their six children, killed herself last year, and he addresses the aftermath of that horror head-on on several songs on this record—including songs that he wrote, like “Putting My Misery on Display,” “Puttin’ Memories Away,” and the devastatingly good “I Just Got Back from Hell,” but also on other songwriters’ songs, like “Promise Broken” and “Ring.” It all combines to make a very affecting and powerful record that also sounds great and can be appreciated and enjoyed without any knowledge of the backstory. And that voice…yow.
Oh, and one more, because it occurs to me that I haven’t really said much about it, even though it’s my undisputed #1 record of the year:
4. Son Volt, “Okemah and the Melody of Riot.” Because it’s fierce and passionate and exciting, and it rocks, and I get more out of it every time I listen to it. Seeing the band live really made me appreciate some of the songs that hadn’t fully grabbed me, like “Who” and “Atmosphere,” and the songs that I loved right off the bat, like “Jet Pilot” and “Bandages and Scars” and “Medicine” and “Ipecac,” still never fail to excite me. I loved “Terroir Blues” and Jay’s magnificent, underrated soundtrack for “The Slaughter Rule,” and I’ll be perfectly happy if he does more acoustic stuff in the future—but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t absolutely thrilling to hear him rock out again. No new record I’ve heard this year comes close to this one.
*I’ve been mourning the Delgados particularly acutely lately, and I may have a little homage to them coming up, not sure yet. I just hate the fact that I will have to spend the rest of my life without the prospect of a new Delgados record to look forward to.