Calexico Hot Rail 2000

In more recent years Calexico records have been built on songs mostly, incorporating their southwestern and Spanish influences into a style all their own. Their early work was more experimental, and may be too much noodling around for some listeners. Hot Rail, their fourth LP, is clearly in that early experimental mode, but it also includes plenty to enjoy of their developing style.

The record opens with a bang on the instrumental El Picador. In service to their love of all things Ennio Morricone, it features fine guitar and trumpets, and sounds like a theme from a Spanish movie. Ballad of Cable Hogue folllows, with twangy guitar, shuffle beat, guest female vocals, and a strong melody. The short spacey interlude of Ritual Road Map gives way to the airy Fade. Slowly developing from the whispered vocals of the atmospheric start to the loud drums/guitar/cornet cacophony ending, it deserves the almost eight minutes it fills. Untitled III is a spacey, ambient drum and accordion piece. Sonic Wind has more breathy vocals, vibes and drums that builds to a nice shuffle beat. Muleta ends side one with Spanish melancholy imbued with fine lead guitar courtesy of Nick Luca as well as tasty violin and trumpets.

The drum and bass groove of Mid-Town opens side two, and evolves into a drum roll with spare guitar overlay. Service And Repair has Joey Burns singing a strong melody, and features quest pedal steel guitar. Untiltled II is another spacey interlude, this time with little to redeem it. Drenched features more nice Luca guitar work and too quiet vocals, but you can hear their future work forming. The percussion and noise interlude of 16 Track Scratch follows, and then it is on to Tres Avisos, a solid southwestern melancholy instrumental ala Morricone again, with violin and trumpets bringing the big Spanish vibe. The title track comes last, and it is more spacey guitar and loops.

The best songs feature additional musicians assisting John Convertino and Joey Burns to realize their vision. The four songs with trumpets and violin, as well as Nick Luca's lead guitar are the most developed and interesting. The songs where Convertino and Burns run the show are (mostly) interesting dalliances, but the band will make better records when they write more songs and avoid the experimentation. Later records have Burns developing more confidence in his voice, and both of them developing as songwriters. The pivot of their career, when they became the great band they are today (while still a bit experimental), is 2003's Feast Of Wire. Anything from 2003 and after is worth a recommendation. One thing you can get from any or all Calexico records, including this one, is that John Convertino is a brilliant, world class drummer.

Mitsuko Uchida in recital: Beethoven Sonatas Nos. 30, 31, 32 February 26, 2023

I am hardly an expert on classical music, but I like it, and it challenges my musical acumen and tastes beyond my usual pop, rock and jazz interests. My wife and I subscribed to Cleveland Orchestra performances for some 10-12 years, seeing between four and six concerts per year, although we stopped attending regularly a few years ago. 

During the time we went frequently, we became enamored with Misuko Uchida, who performed and conducted from the piano a series of Mozart Piano Concertos. Twice. The second time around they were recorded live for release on Decca CD. I discussed one of those performances previously.

Yesterday we saw Ms. Uchida perform Beethoven's last three piano sonatas in solo recital at the orchestra's home in Severance Hall, a beautiful place worth seeing even without music. Beethoven has a heavier hand than Mozart certainly, and these late period pieces are challenging both technically for the artist and for the listener. Strong, powerful music, expressive and emotive. Mitsuko Uchida thrilled us.

While Sonatas 30 and 31 challenge and expand the form, 32 is a very real derivation. Parts of the structure had a jazz-like quality, and it almost felt at times like Ms. Uchida was playing one of Kieth Jarrett's solo improvisations. Someone with more understanding of classical music forms could explain it better. It was a little strange to these ears, but in a good way. I guess I liked the first two sonatas more, but the entire evening was riveting.

Johnny Rivers Anthology 1964-1977 1991

While I'm here in the sixties, why not take a look at another classic sixties artist. Johnny Rivers had a bunch of big hits: seven in the top ten in the sixties and another two in the seventies, and many others that rode a somewhat higher chart position. Like many artists that didn't write most of their own material (although he did write his biggest #1 hit, Poor Side Of Town), Rivers was seen as a lesser artist by the late sixties/seventies hippie set. But the guy had a great, slightly nasal voice, and with producer Lou Adler, could find great songs to cover. He was a sharp rhythm guitarist that played some fine lead riffs when necessary (Secret Agent Man comes to mind), and he produced no less than 30 original studio and live LPs.

His sixties and early seventies records featured the cream of the crop of LA studio giants Hal Blaine, Larry Knechtel, Joe Osborn, and Marty Paitch, with Adler producing, and his records were well received critically even if they didn't always sell that well. He continued to record occasionally in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, and he never stopped playing live until 2021 when the covid threat finally got him off the road. 

The hits were great. Poor Side Of Town started a string of ballads featuring covers of Motown classics The Tracks Of My Tears and Baby I Need You're Lovin'. Before those he mostly rocked out in his Louisiana rockabilly style with Memphis, Mountain Of Love, Seventh Son, and Secret Agent Man. In the seventies he broke the top ten with Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu and his last big hit, the 1977 mellow styling of Swayin' to the Music (Slow Dancin'). This two-CD anthology that Rhino produced in 1991 probably has a few more songs than you need, as it is filled out with album tracks and non-hit singles, but it holds up really well, and it seems like every single CD or LP best-of leaves off something really great. Some of those singles that didn't make the top ten are as good as the ones that did.

I was surprised when I read that he continued to perform live until fairly recently. There's some hot recent performances on YouTube.

The Best of The Box Tops... Soul Deep 1996

The Box Tops were the band that got Alex Chilton started in a pop career that had surprising longevity through his work as a solo artist and the band Big Star. The band released four LPs from 1967-1969, all produced by songwriter-producer Dan Penn or Chips Moman, both regulars at Moman's American Sound Studios, which produced many hits for pop, country and soul groups in the sixties, and where Moman produced Elvis Presley's From Elvis In Memphis, arguably Presley's best record.

Of course the hits The Letter (#1) and Cry Like A Baby (#2) are here, but their other charting songs as well as the album tracks included here make this more than you'd probably expect from a sixties pop group with two hits. She Shot a Hole in My Soul is a stone classic, as is I Met Her In Church. Neon Rainbow, a pop gem, and Sweet Cream Ladies, Forward March are both fun. They do a solid cover of I Shall Be Released (!), and there are a few early Chilton writing efforts that are good. And then there's Soul Deep, which got to #13 on the charts and deserved better.

While mostly a footnote these days, The Box Tops were a fine vehicle for Chilton's strong singing, and this compilation is a good way to appreciate their best work.

King Crimson 1969-2021

King Crimson isn't just one band. Over the course of their 50 years, they have been at least five different bands, some more successful than others. The only constant for the band has been Robert Fripp, with his guitar and mellotron, but several versions of the band have had reasonably long runs. 

The first iteration of the band produced their remarkable debut, In The Court of The Crimson King 1969, and even if Fripp doesn't like the term, prog rock took a big step forward. Over the next few releases, the band underwent multiple personnel changes, and In the Wake of Poseidon 1970, Lizard 1970, and Islands 1971 increased the use of jazz motifs while still mostly sounding like King Crimson, just not as good as the debut. The heavy songs were mixed with gentle ballads, and the sound was bolstered by the sax and flute of Mel Collins and drummer Ian Wallace. All three records have received mixed reviews, and all three have their fans.

The next edition of King Crimson is often cited as the strongest period for the band. An all new band joins Fripp, with the thunderous bass and mellifluous voice of John Wetton, the exceptional drumming of Bill Bruford, and David Cross on violin replacing Mel Collins' sax and flute as the color on top of Fripp's guitar. This augmented trio produced three outstanding if challenging records in Lark's Tongues In Aspic 1973, Starless and Bible Black 1974, and Red 1974. Influential records that paved the way for metal, thrash, hard punk, and other big loud rock forms, all three are excellent. I discussed the three in some detail here. Then Robert Fripp disbanded King Crimson. A good live record of this band recorded in 1974, USA was released in 1975. Later, when Fripp was releasing live documents from the band's career, other live releases documenting this frighteningly good band, including The Great Deceiver 1992 and The Night Watch 1997 were released.

And so it was, until 1980 when Fripp formed a new band called Discipline, with Bill Bruford, Tony Levin, and singer/guitarist/songwriter Adrian Belew. After playing together for a bit, Fripp decided that it was "King Crimson music", and the band became King Crimson. Or so the story goes. This band made three records, and they rarely "sound like King Crimson" if you ask me. My guess is that Fripp knew they would sell more records as King Crimson no matter what they sounded like. They do sometimes sound like a new version of King Crimson, but not very often. Belew brings with him African and other "world" rhythms, as well as a pop sensibility that was generally welcome in his work with Bowie and Talking Heads, but clearly at odds with a King Crimson sound. Like much eighties work, too many synthesizers don't help, including Bruford's new penchant for electronic drums. Discipline 1981 (the best of the three), Beat 1982 (the worst thing called a King Crimson record), and Three of a Perfect Pair 1984 all hold their good performances (there's no lack of talent), and all of them seem out of place if you've been listening to other King Crimson from before or after this version. Given the plethora of live recordings of the band released over the years, it is no surprise that only one of them, Absent Lovers 1998, is from this band's tenure. Then Robert Fripp disbanded King Crimson, again.

Until 1993/94, when Fripp decided (at Belew's urging) to reform King Crimson. After several others were asked to join, Fripp established the new King Crimson with Belew, Bruford, Levin, plus bassist Trey Gunn and drummer Pat Mastelatto. Often referred to as the "double trio", this phase of King Crimson, while still somewhat more pop oriented than the seventies bands, returned to the heavier, dense sound of their seventies work, and generally sounded more like King Crimson. The album Thrak 1995 was preceded by the EP Vroom 1994, and included rerecorded versions of most of the Vroom material. Belew still brings his quirky pop to the show, but Thrack is a more aggressive work than the eighties records, and restores much of the classic sound of the band, albeit updated with new electronics in the nineties. This unit was also represented on solid live records B'Boom 1995 and Vroom Vroom 2001 as well as a collection of improvisations from the 1995 tour titled Thrakattak 1996, mostly of interest to the obsessed.

Bruford and Levin left the band in 1999, and the remaining four made two more records, The Construkction of Light 2000 and The Power to Believe 2003. The band sounds more in line with the seventies band than the eighties band, and of course that is generally a good thing. Critics were generally mixed in their opinions, but reliable voices made positive reviews of both records, and both have plenty of hard-hitting instrumentals to offset Belew's sometimes lesser lyrical efforts. The band was represented on several live recordings, including Heavy Construkction 2000 and Elektrik 2003. After a period of inactivity from 2003-2007, a 40th anniversary tour (with Fripp, Levin, Belew, Mastelotto and new second drummer Gavin Harrison) was staged in 2008. Then Robert Fripp disbanded King Crimson, again.

Until 2014, when Fripp established a new line-up including new singer/guitarist Jakko Jakszyk, Mel Collins on sax and flute (last seen in the band in 1972), Tony Levin, and drummers Pat Mastelotto, Gavin Harrison, and Bill Rieflin (later replaced by Jeremy Stacey in 2016). This seven-piece toured fairly regularly from 2014-2021, and released no less than seven live recordings. The band played material from the band's entire career, including the mostly previously neglected 1970-1971 repertoire. Songs were rearranged for this formidable outfit, and the live recordings document a band clearly capable of anything. I have not heard them all, but Live In Toronto 2016, and the last one, Music is our Friend: Live in Washington and Albany, 2021 are both remarkable. 

King Crimson will always be thought of as Robert Fripp's band, but many other outstanding artists contributed, and Bill Bruford, Tony Levin, John Wetton, and Pat Mastelotto deserve special mention. Never a band for the feint of heart, if you can handle the occasional pummeling, there is some powerful and unique music to be had in King Crimson.

Best of 2022

 

Bonnie is on a heck of a late-career roll. This one and the two before it are all excellent.

 

Richard X Heyman has been doing his New York power pop for thirty years and fourteen albums. This new one ranks among his best.

 

Cleary is as much fun as New Orleans can be. A talented pianist, songwriter, and singer. Dyna-mite indeed.

 

Sloan has made more great ones than good ones. This is the great kind.

Wet Leg make pop that's got hooks, catchy choruses, and some pretty funny lyrics, too.

I once again looked over the end-of-the-year lists. Most of what is popular these days I haven't heard. Wet Leg and Bonnie Raitt made quite a few of those lists, so I might not be totally out of it.

Sloan Steady 2022

Sloan have made exactly two kinds of records. Good ones and great ones. This is one of the great ones.

What makes the difference? Mostly it is the songs themselves. On a great record with many great songs, an occasional merely good song sounds just fine. On a good record with only a few great songs, the merely good songs start to rule the day. And there you have it. In the case of Sloan, it is perhaps arguable that some of their good records suffered slightly from recording or production differences that their great records did not have to work through. But it's mostly the songs.

Sloan have all the essential elements associated with great bands. As I've mentioned numerous times before, great bands need a great drummer (Andrew Scott more than qualifies), a good singer (Sloan has four), and a good songwriter or two (again, Sloan has four). They have recorded thirteen original studio records, and none of them are less than good. But the great ones still stand out as records you can listen to from start to finish without even a whiff of disappointment.

There's a bunch of reviews online already that you can use to help you dissect this new record. But all you need to know is that if classic rock and power pop are your bag, Sloan firing on all cylinders is the obvious answer. Great songs, great harmonies, solid lyrics, melodies and hooks abound.

So which ones are great and which ones are "merely" good? The good ones are Smeared 1992 (a solid debut but still clinging to a post punk sound that gets tempered as they mature), Pretty Together 2001, Action Pact 2003, Parallel Play 2008, The Double Cross 2011, and Commonwealth 2014 (which suffers more from the concept than the execution). Most of their 2000s records just don't have the consistency of their 90s output, but there's room for plenty of opinions if you happen to be partial to one of these.

The great ones are Twice Removed 1994, One Chord To Another 1996, Navy Blues 1998, Between The Bridges 1999, Never Hear The End Of It 2006 (an amazing thirty songs in 76 minutes), 12 2018, and Steady 2022.

Any band that can rack up seven classics in thirty years is an impressive band. That the same four guys have been there the whole time is pretty amazing.