Salon.com > John Milward

Sharps & flats

Wed, 26 May 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Ron Sexsmith is a Canadian singer-songwriter celebrated for his winsome melodies, melancholy lyrics and a vulnerable vocal vibrato that recalls the royally depressed (and terribly gifted) 1960s songwriter Tim Hardin. It's a noisy world in which to be a sensitive guy, which is why it was a good idea for Sexsmith and producers Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake (Suzanne Vega, Los Lobos) to beef up the production of the singer's third album, "Whereabouts." Where the intimate arrangements on its predecessor, "Other Songs" (1997), fairly clung to the contours of Sexsmith's acoustic guitar, instruments of a wider palette fill the more ambitious charts of "Whereabouts."

"Riverbed" would have drowned in lyrical clichis without such elaboration. But just as patience begins to wear thin at the second verse, a clarinet offers a flavorful accompaniment, followed at the chorus by the addition of strings and a sweetly plunking banjo. In this gently unfolding manner, a simple folk tune becomes a memorable pop song. Sexsmith also has a gift for melodic phrasing. On "Beautiful View," the ear candy isn't the layers of strings, but the way his rhythmic enunciation breathes life into an otherwise pedestrian pledge: "There's nothing I would rather do than sit and talk with you."

John Mellencamp

Wed, 28 Oct 1998 20:00:00 +0000

By the time somebody has made 15 albums, they've likely reached a level of proficiency that guarantees a smooth musical ride. So it is with "John Mellencamp," the Midwestern rocker's Columbia Records debut, which follows nearly two decades with Mercury. The sound is a plush mix of guitars and fiddles tethered to a colorful rhythm section and Mellencamp's raspy lead vocal. It's a sound reminiscent of Mellencamp's two best albums, "Scarecrow" and "The Lonesome Jubilee." But in this case, it's a sound in search of something to say.

Mellencamp's roots lay in the Stones-ish swagger of the bar-band rock of his early days as John Cougar. In this regard, Mellencamp's most valuable player was drummer Kenny Aronoff, who put the thump into tunes like "Crumblin' Down" and "Lonely Ol' Night." Aronoff's now gone, but that doesn't explain why nearly all of Mellencamp's new songs embrace similar mid-tempo grooves. A more plausible explanation, perhaps, is that these compositions owe more to the strum of the songwriter's guitar than the sizzle of his band.

Del Amitri

Wed, 07 Oct 1998 19:00:00 +0000

One of the perennial puzzles of pop music is the commercial difficulty encountered by generations of songwriters and bands inspired by the melodic devotion and stylistic breadth of the Beatles. Over the years, a handful of groups like the Raspberries, Cheap Trick, Oasis and (to a degree) Crowded House have bucked the long odds that foiled such critical favorites as Big Star, XTC, the Shoes, Marshall Crenshaw, the Dwight Twilley Band, the Posies, Matthew Sweet and Tommy Keene, among many others -- including Crowded House leader Neil Finn, whose recent solo debut, "Try Whistling This," sank like a stone.

Del Amitri have fared better than many in this pop-rock genre, as the Scottish band has managed to produce and tour behind four albums since 1989. Still, the new best-of collection dubbed "Hatful of Rain" can't help but prompt the question "What hits?" (In fact, Del Amitri had one bona fide top 10 hit with the brisk pop-rock of 1995's "Roll to Me.") Perhaps Del Amitri's biggest problem was timing -- a decade dominated by rap and grunge was not made for a band that specializes in melodic songs sung in a personable style by Justin Currie and featuring a folk-rock mix of electric and acoustic instruments.

The Latin invasion

Thu, 16 Jul 1998 09:11:00 +0000

Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club made its United States debut at Carnegie Hall last week, and the stage fairly ached under all the stories. Consider that singer Ibrahim Ferrer, who's been singing for more than 50 years, had been shining shoes on the streets of Havana when he was recruited to help record the collection of traditional Cuban songs that became "Buena Vista Social Club." And that retired pianist Rub*n Gonz}lez, 78, had to chase away the effects of arthritis as his fingers rediscovered their old paths around the keyboard. At Carnegie Hall, a playful Gonz}lez couldn't stop blowing kisses to the adoring audience.

And then there was Compay Segundo, an active musician and prolific songwriter since the 1920s and a living incarnation of the folkish style of music known as "son." Segundo, who is 91, helped to shape the sound of son by inventing a seven-stringed instrument called the "armnico," which doubled the guitar's "D" string to produce a cross between the Spanish guitar and the Cuban tres. At Carnegie Hall, he spun out the kind of sweetly lyrical solos that can come only from caressing steel and wood for the better part of a century.

Dig His Mood

Fri, 03 Jul 1998 11:40:00 +0000

Nick Lowe celebrated his 30th year in rock 'n' roll last February. But if you assumed this music veteran -- whose resume includes everything from playing in a British pub-rock band to producing Elvis Costello -- marked the occasion by taking in a big rock show, you're wrong.

"I've gotten to that age where I find it very difficult to go to shows," says Lowe, who is 49. "I try to go see my pals when they come to town, but going to those generally big places and standing in an unruly crowd and being jostled -- I just don't like it anymore. And it's too loud. Whatever the volume, it's always too loud. It's also too bright, with lights going on and explosions. It's just horrible."

Lowe's only slightly tongue-in-cheek assessment of the concert experience is familiar to those in their "midrock" years -- which is to say, among music fans old enough to have bought Beatles' albums when they were first released on vinyl. And it goes partway toward explaining Lowe's transformation from a composer of bright but lightweight pop tunes to a much more serious and substantial songwriter. Lowe's most recent albums, 1994's "The Impossible Bird" and the new "Dig My Mood," are subtle, low-key affairs filled with songs that live where country meets blues and jazz meets rock 'n' roll.

Sharps & Flats

Wed, 03 Jun 1998 19:00:00 +0000

Largo" is a song cycle designed to evoke the American influences that inspired Antonin Dvorak's symphony "From the New World," and while that sounds awfully precious on paper, the result is a pleasing collection of folk-rock performances that fit into the rootsy Americana format. The project is the brainchild of producers Rick Chertoff and Rob Hyman, with valuable assists from engineer William Wittman and Eric Brazilian, Hyman's old partner in the Hooters. All were involved in the production of such stylishly slick albums as Cyndi Lauper's "She's So Unusual" and Joan Osborne's "Relish."

"Largo" is the second movement of "From the New World," and the theme is interpreted both by the Chieftains, who give it a lovely lilt, and by Garth Hudson of the Band, who has great fun pulling it apart. The new songs work better as episodic vignettes than as parts of an ongoing narrative, with standout tunes performed by Osborne ("An Uncommon Love"), Lauper ("White Man's Melody"), Taj Mahal ("Freedom Ride" and "Needed Time") and Willie Nile ("Medallion"). But the real star of the show is David Forman, who helped write many of the tunes, and who sings lead on five of them, including a terrific duet with Levon Helm on "Gimme a Stone," a song that sounds like a forgotten gem by The Band. Forman attracted critical attention in 1976 for a sweetly soulful LP on Arista. Twenty-two years later, it's nice to see him taking a second bow.

Jimmy Page and Robert Plant

Wed, 06 May 1998 19:00:00 +0000

Clarksdale is the Mississippi Delta town where Robert Johnson is said to have made his deal with the devil. Led Zeppelin spawned its own satanic rumors during a career in which guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant essentially plundered the blues tradition to become rock gods; in the process, Zep influenced every heavy-metal band of the 1970s, not to mention such latter-day alternative groups as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Jane's Addiction. Celebrate the guitar distortion of Sonic Youth if you must, but Led Zeppelin did far more to define the sound of rock guitar.

"Walking into Clarksdale," the first entirely new album from the Page-Plant collaboration since 1979, hearkens back to Zeppelin's dense style of rock-folk. But it's not the songs as much as the sound (artfully rendered by hipster engineer Steve Albini) that catches the ear. For example, "When the World Was Young" is a fairly ordinary tune, but the way that Page's reverberating guitar builds to its climax is poetry in distortion. All told, the album doesn't rattle as much as hum -- for truly primal thunder, check out Led Zeppelin's recently released "BBC Sessions" -- and neither Page nor Plant has the same talent for arrangement as their old Zeppelin mate, John Paul Jones. Still, some drippy lyrics notwithstanding, the pair succeeds in demonstrating that grown-up guitar rock needn't be a contradiction in terms.

Bonnie Raitt

Thu, 23 Apr 1998 19:00:00 +0000

What strikes you first about the new Bonnie Raitt album is the unmistakable sound of a band rocking out in real time, and that's why "Fundamental" is reminding everybody of the singer's 1971 self-titled debut. "We recorded live on four tracks because we wanted a more spontaneous and natural feeling in the music," Raitt wrote in the liner notes to that album, "a feeling often sacrificed when the musicians know they can overdub their part on a separate track until it's perfect. It also reflects the difference between music made among friends living together in the country and the kind squeezed out trying to beat city traffic and studio clocks."

"Fundamental" returns to that aesthetic strategy, and it's a blast of fresh air after the accomplished but increasingly hermetic records Raitt had been making with producer Don Was. When 1989's "Nick of Time" won Raitt a mass audience after years of being a critical do-gooder favorite and commercial disappointment, it was a victory shared by everybody happy to see a worthy talent finally coming out on top. The follow-up records she made with Was, "Luck of the Draw" and "Longing in Their Hearts," ensured Raitt a successful career playing to summer sheds full of baby boomers (think James Taylor playing bottleneck blues), but they also started to feel bound by the polite, well-groomed sound defined by "Nick of Time."

The Mavericks

Tue, 14 Apr 1998 19:00:00 +0000

It's not too tough to stand out in the conformist culture of country music, but the Mavericks tread a radically conservative line that offers a new twist to the word "rebellious." The group's singer and songwriter, Raul Malo, is no Nashville firebrand in the mode of Steve Earle, and the band has too many traditionalist chops to be poster boys of the No Depression crowd. But in a town where singers typically cut albums with studio musicians and go out on the road with players hired to replicate their records, the Mavericks are a bona fide band. That's why the group has attracted a coterie of older fans who've been raised on rock -- they sound less like a country band than an accomplished rock combo with a terrific singer. (How old fashioned!)

Commercial country acts rarely play in Manhattan, but the Mavericks have performed in New York concert halls and, most memorably, in headlining dates at one of the city's most active rock clubs, Tramps. On April Fool's Day, they returned to Tramps with a four-piece horn section to play tunes from their new album, "Trampoline." The collection, their fourth, includes forays into Southern soul ("Tell Me Why"), pop balladry ("To Be With You"), Graceland gospel ("Save a Prayer") and British Invasion pop rock ("I Don't Even Know Your Name"), with other songs instrumentally seasoned with everything from mariachi horn charts to a cheesy electric sitar. Indeed, the only thing the album lacks is a song that the Nashville establishment could call country.

Sharps and Flats: Robbie Robertson

Wed, 18 Mar 1998 20:00:00 +0000

Robbie Robertson is the Canadian son of a mother of Mohawk descent. As a child of the Toronto suburbs, he tuned into all sorts of American music during summertime visits to the reservation where his mother grew up. He became famous as the guitar player and principal songwriter of the Band, whose first two records ("Music From Big Pink" and "The Band") essentially defined a roots-rock fusion that's now called Americana. Twenty-two years after taking a last bow with the Band at a farewell concert dubbed "The Last Waltz," the man who wrote "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is tuning into his Native American roots on his fourth solo album, "Contact From the Underworld of Redboy."

Robertson's ethnic move is grounded in more emotional reality than Paul Simon getting in touch with his nonexistent Latin side on "Songs from 'The Capeman,'" but both men are pop culture sophisticates, and neither fits the typical profile of a roots boy. Indeed, the most significant artistic influence in Robertson's post-Band career is not even a musician, but Martin Scorsese, who directed "The Last Waltz," and for whom the guitarist has written film scores and produced compilation soundtracks. It's no accident, then, that Robertson comes across as the director of his album, collaborating with hit-savvy producers like Howie B. and Marius de Vries to cast throat singers, peyote healers, an imprisoned activist, computer programmers and Robertson's own lead guitar in an ornate soundscape that evokes a John Ford movie without the cowboys.

Sharps and Flats: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

Tue, 17 Feb 1998 20:00:00 +0000

Pundits will forever argue about the validity of white people singing the blues, but there's no doubt that two white band leaders of the mid-'60s, Paul Butterfield and John Mayall, played vital roles in introducing the styles and repertoire of urban blues to the rock audience. Mayall's Bluesbreakers were an English band that became famous for showcasing the nascent guitar talents of Eric Clapton, Peter Green, who went on to form the original Fleetwood Mac, and Mick Taylor, who later played with the Rolling Stones. The Butterfield Blues Band was born in Chicago and cultivated its own guitar hero, Mike Bloomfield, who also breathed fire on Bob Dylan's electrical breakthrough, "Highway 61 Revisited." Both Butterfield and Mayall sang and played harmonica, with Butterfield the stronger on both counts.

The Butterfield Blues Band was the first electric band signed to folk-oriented Elektra Records, and the band's self-titled 1965 debut suggested a Chicago blues band jacked up on speed. Indeed, the two-CD anthology begins with earlier tracks that are more plainly derivative of the masters whose work they'd studied. From the start, however, Butterfield was a harmonica virtuoso, and while clearly inspired by the beefy tones of Little Walter, he played with the kind of controlled passion that gives a musician a unique voice.

Live From Uncle Sam's Backyard

Tue, 07 Oct 1997 19:00:00 +0000

Paul Geremia drives a 1971 Chevy Nova with 250,000 miles on the broken odometer. On a recent Friday, Geremia piloted the Nova from his home in Rhode Island to play at the Rosendale Cafe, a tiny coffeehouse-restaurant in the foothills of New York's Catskill Mountains. The crowd numbered around 40, and everybody was encouraged to put five bucks in the hat. Although most were happy to oblige, you don't get rich being one of the best finger-style blues guitarists in the world.
Geremia's show was not unlike the one captured on "Live From Uncle Sam's Backyard," the recently released recording of his 1991 concert. If your idea of a solo singer-guitarist is an earnest guitar-strumming folkie or a rocker trading in his Les Paul for a plugged-in Ovation on MTV's "Unplugged," your ears will be opened by the musical intricacy of Geremia's performance. His playing exemplifies the musical wisdom of the late Rev. Gary Davis, who taught his students to think of the guitar as if it were a piano, with the thumb of their picking hand plucking the bass notes like a pianist's left hand, and the other fingers playing the melodies of the right hand. When Paul Geremia plays guitar, he's sitting at one grand piano.
Geremia has immersed himself in various styles of country blues since the mid-'60s, when he was inspired by performances and personal contact with the seminal bluesmen rediscovered by amateur gumshoes during the decade's blues revival. Geremia was particularly drawn to the driving, Piedmont style that joined thumping bass lines to swinging ragtime melodies, but he's equally adept at the deeply emotional Delta blues. "Live From Uncle Sam's Backyard" places tunes by Willie McTell, Blind Boy Fuller, Robert Johnson and Skip James alongside Geremia originals that subtly draw upon the styles of these and other master bluesmen.
Plenty of acoustic blues players draw upon the repertoire of legends like Johnson and McTell, but Geremia goes far beyond simply recreating the sound of these performers; instead, he's developed a style that is every bit as idiosyncratic as that of the musicians he's studied. You hear Geremia's stamp in the way his guitar doesn't just accompany his Randy Newman-ish voice, but adds dramatic counterpoint through the use of rhythmic flourishes and stunning single-line runs. As if this weren't difficult enough, he's also quick to blow a zippy harmonica solo over his complex finger picking. Geremia has recorded eight albums over the years, and while he's never been less than accomplished, this live album and his previous two releases on Red House ("Gamblin' Woman Blues" and "Self Portrait in Blues") capture the kind of casual artistry that can only come from decades of practice, and miles of hard traveling.
In a music world drunk on pop-star dreams, it's tempting to romanticize Paul Geremia as a bluesy Segovia in a beat-up Chevy. But Geremia doesn't go for self-pity, and knows that a small club is Carnegie Hall compared to the medicine shows and street corners where Blind Willie McTell used to play. After his performance in Rosendale, Geremia sold a few compact discs and packed up his equipment. A musician friend in the audience offered him a couch for the night. And the next morning, he'd head for his next gig in a car that had forgotten how to count the miles.