Americana
Daniel Baksi
In his 1985 essay “Not-Knowing”, the American writer Donald Barthelme describes a fictional situation in which an unknown “someone” is writing a story.“From the world of conventional signs,” Barthelme writes, laying out for the reader this story being written, “he takes an azalea bush, plants it in a pleasant park. He takes a gold pocket watch from the world of conventional signs and places it under the azalea bush. He takes from the same rich source a handsome thief and a chastity belt, places the thief in the chastity belt and lays him tenderly under the azalea, not neglecting to wind the Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Oh boy, there’s nothing like slipping on an old pair of jeans and cowboy boots. That’s the comfy feeling you get from the opening notes of Pokey’s new road trip in the company of some great musical ghosts. Hank Williams, Fats Domino, Carl Perkins – perhaps even the whole damn Million Dollar Quartet, with Buddy and the Everlys dropping by. Pokey hugs them all close, with the best of results. A trip through Middle Americana.LaFarge had just embarked on a tour when Covid hit and he found himself stuck in Austin, Texas. What to do but make music! In the Blossom of Their Shade is Pokey’s lockdown Read more ...
Nick Hasted
There’s a modesty to the Felice Brothers, an absenting of ego, even as they seek glimmers of transcendence in the vast American night. These working-class Americana veterans are enriched by their native upstate New York, with its economic scars and natural beauty, fitting between the region’s folk mythologisers The Band and more cosmic Mercury Rev. Their music also exist in a vivid landscape, at once ruefully realistic at their nation’s ills, and aching for grace.From Dreams to Dust is bracketed by panoramic visions. Balmy sax curls through the motorik boogie of “Jazz On the Autobahn”, which Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Already Dead’s opening cut is titled “Youth on a Spit”. As it unfolds, Willy Mason declares “I feel no pain I’ve already bled / You can’t kill me I’m already dead.” After setting a pessimistic tone the next track is the “You’d Like to be Free”, a disquisition on a life where feelings of specialness haven’t been reciprocated by passively waiting for something to come along. “You blame the things you didn’t get…you never let yourself enjoy the thing you are,” sings Mason in his familiar disconsolate voice.The bleak outlook continues through “Gilded Lie”, where all the crooks have the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Harry Grafton (b. 1978) is the preferred title of Henry Fitzroy, 12th Duke of Grafton, custodian of Euston Hall in Suffolk and the man behind the Red Rooster Festival. The latter, during its six pre-COVID years of existence, built a reputation for presenting fresh, fiery and exciting American roots music. All being well, it returns this August. Grafton started in the music business in the early years of this century in Nashville, Tennessee, where he also had a radio show. His Stateside sojourn culminated in a job on the Rolling Stones global A Bigger Bang Tour. Upon the death of his father in Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Rory Graham’s first words as he comes on stage are: “Well this is a bit weird, isn't it? It's been a while.” After a run of cancelled gigs, the band haven’t performed live for a year and a half – which feels, says Rory, “a bit like missing a testicle.”Anatomy aside, we all get it. While I knew how much I had missed live music, the depth of intense emotional response to this band's sound and lyrics; the overwhelming energy connection between artist and audience and the transformative healing power of music is another level at this gig.There is a chemistry in the Jazz Cafe that I have never Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Fern (a luminous Frances McDormand) used to work in HR. Now, aged 62, she’s harvesting sugarbeets, hauling rocks, cleaning toilets in a trailer park and doing shifts in an Amazon warehouse. And she’s living out of her camper van, a shabby, lovingly restored RV she calls Vanguard. “I’m not homeless, I’m houseless,” she says, driving through vast Western landscapes under spectacular skies.Chloé Zhao’s hypnotically beautiful, multi-award-winning third feature builds on the same docu-fiction MO as her extraordinary The Rider (2017) and Songs My Brother Taught Me (2015) where she used non- Read more ...
joe.muggs
Lambchop leader Kurt Wagner has suggested that the title of this album is semi literal: that he wanted to write “something akin” to classic, Great American Songbook show tunes, rather than his usual country-tinged style. If so, it’s for a rather gloomy sort of a show. At the beginning, it does suggest you’re going to get some high drama: the rather Leonard Cohen-ish “A Chef’s Kiss” would certainly fit in a middle of a musical in the “how did I get here, where will I go?” bit where the protagonist is alone in the spotlight on a blank stage. But where you might expect such a number to pick up Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Things got out of hand at theartsdesk on Vinyl this month and these reviews run to 10,000 words. That's around a fifth of The Great Gatsby. It's because there's so much good music that deserves the words, from jazz to metal to pure electronic strangeness. That said, this is the last time theartsdesk on Vinyl will reach this kind of ludicrous length. So enjoy it. Dig deep. There's something for everyone. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHThe Fratellis Half Drunk Under a Full Moon (Cooking Vinyl)Look, I’m the first one to gleefully, mercilessly dance on the grave of so-called landfill indie (the wave Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Now we are at the beginning of lockdown’s end and the gradual loosening of the pandemic’s grip on pretty well every aspect of our lives, what is perhaps one of the warmest and most uplifting of albums recorded under Covid conditions comes in the shape of Rhiannon Giddens and her partner, Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi’s fine new album They’re Calling Me Home.The title track opens the set, and it feels like it’s sung in prospect of returning to life after lockdown, albeit under the shadow of the toll of death the pandemic has wrought. Alice Gerrard’s song is a classic leave- Read more ...
joe.muggs
Ted Barnes is an outsider by design. Not in the sense of being wilfully awkward or outré – the music on his first solo album in almost 13 years years is gentle, harmonically rich, extremely accessible – but in that he has sidestepped standard career paths, and seems to be all the better for it. As guitarist for Beth Orton for a decade and member of the band Clayhill, he certainly had more than a glimpse of what music industry life entailed, hard touring included, but he chose to get off the treadmill and focus on composing for films, music libraries and acrobatics shows. And his music is Read more ...
Robert Beale
There’s an atmosphere of tender restraint through most of the programme created by Ruby Hughes and Manchester Collective for Lakeside Arts at the University of Nottingham. It was streamed live yesterday afternoon, and, as is the way with most performances just now, was in an empty hall, with its slightly strange "empty" acoustic affecting the spoken word as the artists introduced their music.Talking to an audience is very much the style of Manchester Collective, though, and artistic director Rakhi Singh does it with natural ease even when she can’t see who she’s talking to. She and the other Read more ...