Tony Lucca - Come Around Again (Lucca Music, 2008)
purchase this album (CD Baby)

Like a lot of white suburban teens, I spent a good portion of the early ’90s in a state of wild-eyed musical confusion, huddling in the corner with my Van Halen and Billy Joel CDs while scary, pissed-off dudes like Kurt Cobain and Ice Cube yelled at me over a chorus of screeching Corgans. Those were dark, troubled times — years when I’m fairly certain I must have wondered on at least one occasion why more acts couldn’t sound like Toad the Wet Sprocket.

That was a long time ago, and I have long since ceased to pray for a plague of sensitive dudes with guitars to descend like Gap-attired locusts upon the airwaves. Apparently, however, prayers take a few years to reach the Big Guy, because since the late ’90s, we’ve witnessed an incredible proliferation of singer/songwriters, the likes of which haven’t been seen since James Taylor had a mustache. Even for someone who was raised on this stuff, and who has a higher-than-average level of appreciation for good old-fashioned songcraft, it’s gotten out of hand — I’m running out of different ways to say an album is competently written and tastefully performed, but not all that different from Dude With Guitar X, Y, or Z.

Which brings us to Tony Lucca, and what is apparently his sixth album, the recently released Come Around Again.

Lucca was a member of the next-gen Mickey Mouse Club known simply as MMC, where he performed alongside Britney and Justin, but his music is rooted in rock and Wonder Bread soul, not sugar-frosted R&B; if you can make your way past the album cover, which makes it look like Chad from the IT department had a few too many Spider Monkey Margaritas at the office holiday party, you’ll find that Lucca’s a rather talented guitarist and vocalist. His songs, meanwhile, are a bit of a mixed bag. (more…)

Creedence Clearwater Revival - 40th Anniversary Reissues (Fantasy, 2008)
(six separate CDs — see below for purchase links)

Okay, first things first — I realize the image above is for the Creedence box that was released a few years ago, which has nothing to do with the new 40th anniversary reissues. But what was I going to do, build one giant image out of all six album covers? That’s just too much work, even for you, my dear friends — and it would look ugly besides.

Anyway, looks aren’t important here; what really matters is how thoroughly Creedence kicks ass, and how these six reissues act as a sort of Voltron of classic rock, coming together to form a yellow-eyed, beer-toting S.O.B. with the meanest fake bayou howl you’ve ever heard and the lead guitar to match. (Of course, if CCR’s catalog is Voltron, then that means Pendulum is Voltron’s ass, but hey, even a yellow-eyed S.O.B. needs to sit on something every once in awhile.)

It’s been an awfully long time coming, but decades of animosity between lead Revivalist John Fogerty and his former (now current) label have finally come to an end. Now that Fogerty doesn’t have to contend with legendary rock & roll anus Saul Zaentz — and now that Fantasy is owned by the deep pockets at the Concord Music Group — the Creedence catalog are being polished off and restored to their rightful place in the label’s crown. CCR seems like it’s been around forever, and many of its songs have been played so many times that they’re taken for granted, but try to wipe your slate clean, take a step back, and goddamn — would you look at that catalog? Six albums, released in under five years, and just filled to the brim with stone cold classics. (more…)

Nina Simone - To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story (Legacy, 2008)
purchase this album (Amazon)

Nina Simone made her concert debut in the early ’40s, as a 10-year-old girl named Eunice Kathleen Waymon. It was a less racially enlightened time all over the country, but little Eunice lived in North Carolina, which meant that as the concert hall filled up with white folks, her parents were forced to move to the back. And what did our young heroine do? Motherfucker, she up and refused to play until they were given their seats back, and that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the spirit that moved — that moves — the music of Nina Simone.

Simone had the sort of recording career that usually befalls outspoken, hard-to-pigeonhole artists, which means she played at the commercial fringes most of the time, and passed through the rosters of a rather long list of labels (Mercury, RCA, CTI, and Elektra, just to list the bigger names). The artist and her music have been frequently misunderstood, although that has as much to do with Nina herself — how many artists can go from “My Baby Just Cares for Me” to “Mississippi Goddam” in a single lifetime and count on their audience to follow along? — as it does with fickle pop tastes. Because it’s so varied, and because the copyrights are so scattered, she’s never had a truly definitive compilation, but thanks to Sony’s Legacy imprint, that all changes here.

(I feel like this must be the dozenth time I’ve sung Legacy’s praises this year, but I swear to God, you guys, I’m not on their payroll; I’m just giving credit where it’s due. Sony’s reissue arm has come a long way since its days of embarrassing, half-assed product, and 2008 has been a banner year for the label.) (more…)

Work or play. Family or friends. Protein or carbohydrates. Life is about seeking balance. Lindsey Buckingham has been seeking balance too. In his case, the challenge is to balance his intriguing, but sometimes erratic experimental music impulses, and his undisputed mastery of the pop song form. This battle informed his flawed Fleetwood Mac masterpiece Tusk, an album Buckingham has described as “in some ways my first solo album.” Since then, he has produced two more studio albums with Fleetwood Mac, and five solo albums. Gift of Screws (Reprise) is in some ways his best album since Tusk.

The balance has been attained by blending more meditative tracks, like “Bel Air Rain” and “Time Precious Time,” with more readily accessible pop songs such as “Did You Miss Me.” “Love Runs Deeper” was co-written by Buckingham’s wife Kristen. It is one of the best tracks of the year, and brings to mind one of my favorite Fleetwood Mac songs, Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way,” with which “Love Runs Deeper” shares a musical spirit, according to Buckingham. Like the earlier song, it has “a steaming guitar solo and choruses that open up into a kind of lift, a sense of joy for sure,” he says.

To bring it all into focus, there are tracks on which Buckingham manages to combine the two. A good example is the album’s opener, “Great Day,” on which his son Will receives a writing credit. “There’s acoustic picking in that song, lead guitar playing, a non-traditional approach to the rhythm section, harmonies, counterpoint,” Buckingham says. “It’s all kind of convoluted together in this strange mix.” I’m sure all that’s true, but check out that fingerpicking. I’m sure I’ll get some argument here, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a guitar player with more skill in that area. Buckingham’s acoustic guitar playing is absolutely dazzling. Then check out the smoking electric guitar solo that ends the song. I don’t know of too many guitar players who can bring it like that on acoustic and electric. (more…)

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)
purchase this album (CD Baby)

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)
purchase this album (Amazon)

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)
purchase this album (Amazon)

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…)