3rd Rail has been around for about 10 years and, according to their MySpace page, were named “Best Unsigned Band in California” at the California Music Awards. Having been in the music business for over a decade has advantages and disadvantages; for 3rd Rail, the obvious disadvantage is not having a record deal and the support of a major label to get their music heard by a larger audience, and the advantage — while not paying dividends in a monetary sense — is having reached a level of accomplishment in terms of musicianship. In 3rd Rail’s style of music (a mix of metal and hard rock), it’s tempting for bands to be louder, harder, and faster. However, while 3rd Rail is certainly loud and has a hard edge, they play as a band but don’t overplay their instruments in order to dazzle listeners with fast and furious chops. Don’t get me wrong, though — these guys certainly have the chops, and you’ll quickly discover how good they are on their new CD, Between Eleven.

Mark Mrdeza’s vocals often alternate between a metal scream and actual singing throughout the album, but it’s the rhythm section of Jorge DeBasso (bass) and Breen Reichick (drums) that adds an impressively thick and heavy underbelly to their songs. DeBasso and Reichick certainly pepper the tunes with tasty doses of spice where needed, and guitarists Mullin and Ed May add both crunchy and atmospheric textures that elevate the band’s sound in powerful ways. 3rd Rail’s style is reminiscent of Deftones on “And I You,” but the standout track on the album (for me, at least) is “Roses & Champagne” — which has some nicely layered vocals that adds an effective growl to Mrdeza’s more melodic voice.

What impresses me most about 3rd Rail is their maturity and a level of playing that creates the right amount of space to really hear the songs. For a band with this kind of talent, it’s just astonishing that they don’t have a record deal … yet. My sense is their “unsigned” status will quickly change as more and more people get to know this Bay Area powerhouse. Samples of their music are available on their MySpace page, and of course right here, but you can download Between Eleven at the iTunes store.

“And I You,” 3rd Rail (download)
“Roses & Champagne,” 3rd Rail (download)

Or, the Whale - Light Poles and Pines (self-released, 2007)
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I give all the credit in the world to this band’s publicist. Instead of holding them at gunpoint and forcing them to choose a less horrible name than Or, the Whale, she’s still working Light Poles and Pines roughly a year after it was released. That’s dedication, people. I love to mock publicists, partly because I hired one once, and she appeared to believe I was paying her mainly to call her boyfriend, but if you’ve got something that needs publicizin’, you may wish to inquire as to the availability of Pigeon O’Brien.

Now, about this band.

When a group of musicians takes its name from Melville and poses for sepia-tinted publicity photos, then uses phrases like “Carter family chemistry” and “whiskey-soaked” in its press materials, they create a certain set of expectations; for instance, I unwrapped Light Poles and Pines expecting to hear a nicely Band-esque set of songs from a bearded throng of foot-stomping, redneck alcoholics, and, well…long story short: This is not that kind of album.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t quickly point out that these songs do boast a strong backwoods flavor; the band does, after all, include a full-time pedal steel player, and Light Poles and Pines is heavy with banjo, accordion, and lightly twangy vocals. Personally, though, I take my roots rock with a few cups of grease and several tablespoons of grit, and Or, the Whale’s sound lacks either ingredient. This isn’t to say the band is guilty of excess polish or production, but they fall squarely on the light and pretty end of the Americana spectrum; even off-kilter ballads like “Crack a Smile” (download) tend to soothe where they should swing, and float when I wish they’d settle down and rock a little. I don’t know if this is by design or just a byproduct of the band’s San Francisco roots, but Light Poles and Pines never approaches the “barn dance” its press kit promises — Or, the Whale has more in common with AC-leavened alt-country outfits like the late, lamented Mysteries of Life than, say, the Felice Brothers.

This really isn’t a bad thing; in fact, I’ve been listening to this CD almost exclusively for the past couple of days, and I’m not sick of it yet. But I can’t stop wishing the band had unleashed some of its apparently formidable live energy here. Here’s hoping that, next time out, Or, the Whale discards the layer of gauze that surrounds this album and breaks out the corn whiskey. I’ll be at the front of the line, ready to raise a dirty mason jar or three.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence that Todd Rundgren’s last two albums have been released in election years. But Todd is Godd, after all, so I have to assume there’s some sort of divine plan. Liars came out in 2004 as the world was learning that the United States had invaded Iraq the previous year under false pretenses. Arena (Hi Fi Recordings) arrives on September 30, and even though Rundgren has said that the title comes from his new batch of songs being guitar-fronted stadium-rock numbers, it’s clear that his thoughts haven’t strayed far from the political arena. (”Mercenary,” for instance, which sounds like a collaboration between Nine Inch Nails and Boston, takes on the war in Iraq: “I will lay a foe to waste / For a grudge I’ve never had … / I will bring a nation down / For a cause I’ll never have.”) In the liner notes for Liars, Rundgren wrote, “At first [these songs] may seem to be about other things, but that is just a reflection of how much dishonesty we have accepted in our daily lives.” Though both albums often mask his political opinions with themes like seeking out the truth in our everyday lives and owning up to our responsibilities as human beings, it’s a thin veil that covers them.

Arena hits harder than Liars, though I prefer Liars in the long run, and I do mean long — its message was diluted by its 74-minute running time, a problem that’s alleviated to a degree by Arena’s 56-minute span. But Rundgren fans’ yes-or-no vote on Arena may ultimately depend on which of the artist’s personas they prefer most: If you like Todd the sensitive soft rocker or Todd the blue-eyed soul man, you’ll only find a little bit of the former on “Courage” (which would’ve fit comfortably on 1976’s Faithful) and some of the latter on the chorus of “Weakness.” But if Todd the guitar hero or Todd the benevolent ruler of Utopia are more to your liking, then Arena might be the one political statement you appreciate the most this fall. Liars was meditative and reflective, but Arena is a thunderous call to arms.

Well, metaphorically anyway. There’s some irony in Rundgren writing a song like “Gun” — “The Constitution says that I’m so blessed / That I can clean my piece on the Supreme Court steps … / There’s many like it, yeah but this one’s mine / A good replacement for a lack of spine” — since he acts as an army of one on his new album, playing every instrument and singing every vocal track. He’s been doing this since the early ’70s, of course, but digital technology and personal computers presumably make it easier for studio rats like Rundgren to achieve their goals. Thematically it makes sense for Arena to be a truly solo project — Rundgren is saying that you have to change yourself before you can change the world and galvanize the masses — but Arena would make more of a sonic impact if he had recorded it with a full band. Of course, when he does his best impression of AC/DC’s entire lineup on “Strike,” it hardly matters.

On 1973’s A Wizard, a True Star, Rundgren asked that the powers that be, earthbound or otherwise, give him “Just One Victory.” Thirty-five years later, as the U.S. nears the end of another president’s term of office that’s been overshadowed by corruption and lies, he’s no longer interested in waiting for gifts to fall from the sky. Now, with songs like “Manup” (”What you will not defend / Somebody else will end up takin’”) and “Afraid” (”Why suffer for nothing? / Suffer for something”), he’s ready to take action.

Today
Panic

Arena is available at Amazon.com.

Jason Reeves - The Magnificent Adventures of Heartache (And Other Frightening Tales)
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Think The Magnificent Adventures of Heartache (and Other Frightening Tales) is a long title? Try listening to the album. Wow.

I realize this isn’t the way things are done in the digital age, when labels were, until recently, trying to squeeze $19 out of anyone who wanted to buy a high-profile full-length album, and the increased storage of the CD has convinced artists that they need to stuff every available minute of each release with music, whether or not it’s any good — but really, there isn’t anything wrong with a 10-song album that ends somewhere between the 35 and 45-minute mark. An album is supposed to be a listening experience, a journey that takes you from start to finish without ever letting you go — and unless you’re either wildly eclectic or putting together a compilation of your greatest hits, 16 tracks is just too many.

Jason Reeves, for the record, is not particularly eclectic, and this album does not consist of his greatest hits.

What Reeves is, actually, is a member of the Jason Mraz/Matt Nathanson school of singing, where every note sounds like it might be the prelude to a crying fit. Unlike Mraz, Reeves doesn’t waste time adding a layer of irony to his songs, or trying to spice things up with a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor — and unlike Nathanson, Reeves seems to have no desire to rock. What that leaves the listener with, at least as far as this album’s concerned, is a very sensitive dude with a pretty voice who knows his way around a melody and isn’t afraid to tell you how he feels. Sort of a Stephen Bishop for the 21st century, if you will. (more…)

Christmas Eve, 1970. I was at the Fillmore East to see Laura Nyro. A month earlier, Nyro had released her fourth album, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, and it had taken up more or less permanent residence on my turntable, alongside all of her previous albums. There I was, about to see the artist whose music spoke to me more profoundly on a personal level than any other, and by my side was the woman for whom I’d been nurturing a deep crush for several years. In other words, it couldn’t have been a more perfect evening. Did I mention that it was Christmas Eve in New York City? If you’ve been there, you know the silent magic that the holy night brings to the great city.

All was right in my world, but that was certainly not true of the world as a whole. Nixon was in the White House; Vietnam was raging on. Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King were recently dead. A few lines from the album’s most powerful statement, “Christmas In My Soul,” pretty much summed up the condition of the world in those days:

“Black Panther brothers bound in jail
Chicago Seven and the justice scale
Homeless Indian on Manhattan Isle
All God’s sons have gone to trial
And all God’s love is out of style
On Christmas.”

(more…)

Amie Miriello, I Came Around (BellaSonic/Jive/Zomba)
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The current boomlet of female singer-songwriters hasn’t yet spawned a Lilith Fair revival, but you can just feel one coming when a label like Jive throws its weight behind a folk-pop ingénue like Amie Miriello.

Actually, Jive has been behind her for awhile; she and her songwriting/performing partner, guitarist Jay Dmuchowski, threw together the band Dirtie Blonde after signing with the label in 2005, and scored a minor hit with the poppy but personality-free “Walk Over Me.” Since then Miriello has jettisoned the band and allowed Jive to use her as a guinea pig in the launch of its BellaSonic subsidiary, which seems intent on marketing her in a Colbie Caillat/Sara Bareilles mode.

And why not? Miriello exhibits plenty of promise on her solo debut, I Came Around, even if the album’s charms are a bit scattershot. The songwriting is relentlessly catchy (Miriello has at least a hand in every tune, assisted by Dmuchowski and numerous others), and its folk and blues influences occasionally manage to bubble up out of the major-label production gloss. The acoustic musicianship is impressive, too – and apparently is very impressive during her live gigs, which feature more of a laid-back, low-fi vibe than she displays here.

The only trouble is, I’m pretty sure Miriello is schizophrenic – or at least her voice is. (Come on, folks – I had to say something to avoid the standard clichés, like “she wears her influences on her sleeve” or “she hasn’t found her voice yet.”) Miriello has a strong, bluesy voice in there somewhere, but on songs like “Pictures” and “Brand New” she meanders from one affectation into another in what finally sounds like a desperate attempt to connect by reminding listeners of someone else. A little Alanis here, a little Tori there, a touch of Joni on “Who You Really Are” and the lovely piano ballad “Snow” – it doesn’t end there, but you get the idea.

That’s the bad news. The good news is, Miriello doesn’t need to do all that, because her songs sell themselves without all the distracting vocal acrobatics. The title track (and first single), for example, matches a regret-tinged lyric with propulsive guitars, sounding like an early track from the wonderful Sarah Harmer. (more…)

Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun
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“Genius is the ability to make something very complex seem very simple.”

There goes my lead. Brian Wilson speaks to The Guardian, and all of a sudden my starting point is gone. I was going to begin my review of That Lucky Old Sun by saying that it isn’t a work of genius, but rather a very accomplished songwriter, producer, and arranger. I based that statement on the fact that the album is a group of well-written pop songs, beautifully arranged and produced in a fairly straightforward manner.

The problem is, by Wilson’s definition, That Lucky Old Sun is genius. I am reminded once again that only the greats manage to make it look easy.

This album is easily Wilson’s best solo work apart from Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE, and is certainly more accessible than that historic album. Most importantly, That Lucky Old Sun continues Brian’s unlikely but determined comeback as he continues to battle the lingering effects of drug abuse and mental illness. His singing, and speaking (more about that later), are more assured and self-confident than they have been since the glory days of the Beach Boys, and he has surrounded himself with a band that loves his music, and has the talent to prove it. I’ve seen numerous Brian Wilson shows over the last few years, and I have never failed to be impressed by the band’s ability to turn the respect that they have for the composer into musical bliss for the audience.

That Lucky Old Sun also marks Wilson’s return to the scene of some of his greatest triumphs, as well as some of his most profound tragedies, Capitol Records. It was recorded at Capitol’s Hollywood studios, where he first recorded in 1962.

The album itself is a series of songs, co-written with multi-instrumentalist and band member Scott Bennett, created in tribute to Wilson’s hometown of Los Angeles. The songs are linked together by four short narratives, written by longtime Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks and spoken by Wilson. According to Wilson, he found himself singing the 1949 classic song “That Lucky Old Sun” last summer. He went out and purchased the Louis Armstrong version, and that became the seed for the work that had its world premiere at Royal Festival Hall in London last September. (more…)

The Gabe Dixon Band - The Gabe Dixon Band (Fantasy)
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I was never any good at math, but I know enough to understand the basic laws of rock-critic algebra, which clearly state that the quality of an album rises or falls in inverse proportion to the number of times a publicist has to beg writers to cover it. This is why I was surprised to discover, after receiving approximately three dozen e-mails and one unsolicited copy of The Gabe Dixon Band, that it does not suck.

It would be impossible to accurately convey my surprise at this discovery. To continue the math theme, it would be akin to learning that the square root of x cubed over y is orange. (An answer which, sadly, would have improved my high school test scores dramatically.) This calls into question the established order of the universe, as well as many of my assumptions about what leads publicists to repeatedly e-mail me about artists I clearly have no intention of covering. Maybe they, you know, really like the music or something.

Anyway, here’s the Gabe Dixon Band, which has apparently been a fixture on the granola-and-hacky sack circuit for some time, and is using its new deal with the recently revived Fantasy imprint as an excuse to harsh everyone’s mellow by applying a shiny coat of pop gloss to its formerly jam-friendly sound. (I believe this is known as “pulling an O.A.R.”) This rarely works to anyone’s advantage (just ask the members of O.A.R.), but damn if The Gabe Dixon Band doesn’t live up to most of the hype in all those e-mails I deleted. (more…)

Two Dog Garage - Pinboy
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Two Dog Garage is Alex Kimmell, a Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter who’s spent his career to date doing the usual 21st-century singer/songwriter stuff, i.e. hearing his songs in movies and on television rather than the radio. Two Dog Garage, his “band” project, is a labor of love — in his introductory e-mail, Kimmell had me at “I recorded this in my closet while my wife and kid were asleep” — and although I’m sure not even Kimmell is enough of a wishful thinker to envision vast commercial horizons for Pinboy, he should take a small amount of consolation in knowing that, in a better world, this album would spin off at least one medium-sized hit.

The songs themselves don’t break any new ground, even in the rather exhaustively defined context of the genre, but they’re catchy and extremely well-written; fans of mid-’90s alt-pop by acts such as Counting Crows and Gin Blossoms should find a lot to love in these nine songs. Kimmell also did a tremendous job of engineering and producing the album, particularly considering its homebrewed origins; the line between his live and programmed drums isn’t as jagged as you’d expect, and everything has a warm, nicely rounded feel.

Kimmell doesn’t, ahem, bowl a strike with every song, but he comes close often enough to justify a purchase for anyone with a weakness for melody and a fondness for lyrics about real-life concerns. My favorite track is the aching, mandolin-laced “Everything Happens to Me” (download), but there really isn’t a bad song in the bunch. Stop by the Two Dog Garage MySpace page to hear more.

Every summer, the city of San Francisco has a free concert series featuring noteworthy bands, and some that are yet-to-be-noted — at least in the United States, anyway.   Case in point, Bajafondo — the South American “electrotango” band whose members come from Argentina and Uruguay.  I had no idea what “electrotango” would sound like, but I was game, so off I went to see them perform live at a free concert. To my surprise, the place was packed with fans, and it was instantly understandable why: their music has a wonderfully cosmopolitan vibe that fuses a number of styles.  For those who are fans of Shakira, you might find some of Bajafondo’s electrotango sounding a bit like Shakira’s 2002 single, “Objection (Tango).”  Other times, the band has a kind of Russian sound with songs like “Hoy” that bring to mind Zvuki Mu.

However, Bajofondo is not a evanescent bit of exotica that screams “flavor of the week.” Their sound has certainly captured the heart (and ears) of artists like Elvis Costello and Nelly Furtado — each of whom contributes vocals on the album, Mar Dulce. Interestingly, the rather relaxed vocals of Furtado on “Baldosas Mojadas” makes her trademark nasally voice almost disappear–leaving the listener with a greater appreciation of her singing abilities.

Other guest vocalist, like Mala Rodriguez from Spain, add a nice flavor to “El Andén.” But really, the band shines on their instrumentals like “Pa’ Bailar” (the first single off the album) and “Grand Guignol” which has a kind of cinematic quality to it.

For a band that only has two albums under their belt, it’s clear that Bajofondo is comprised of some wonderfully talented and accomplished musicians who, as luck would have it, have a chemistry that keeps a signature sound fairly consistent throughout their genre-hopping fusion of styles.

“Baldosas Mojadas” (Download)
“El Andén” (Download)