A Peek At Robbie's Playlist

By Robbie on September 23, 2008

Hi Folks, 

I'm going to be mostly out of the limelight for the next couple months ("a little like the last 45 years" -- I heard that, fucker!!), working on some writing and recording and playing a handful of private gigs rather than contributing overtly to the public weal. I'll keep this page updated, though, with some news, commentaries, and trifles. For today: What I'm Listening To Lately. 

A Piece of What You Need, by Teddy Thompson.

Never heard this guy's music until my friend Steve Mogg turned me on to this, and now I find there are a couple songs so perfect in every way I want to hear them every day. For those not in the know, it's terrific power pop, structurally simpler than the Beatles and most of their progeny, but, at its best, shoulder to shoulder with Paul McCartney (e.g. "Don't Know What I Was Thinking") in terms of melodic arc, beauty, and indefinable rightness. The timbre of Teddy's voice, as well as the slightly fatigued restraint with which he coaxes it up and out, is somewhere in the neighborhood of Jackson Browne and Ron Sexsmith, and when you learn that he is the son of Richard and Linda Thompson, the Why-Of-Course bulb flashes on: he exhibits Mom's pitch command and husky emotionality and Dad's composed outrage, self-laceration, and vocal tic of venting a short angry burst on a significant syllable here and there. The production on this record, by Marius DeVries, is some of the best I've ever heard on a lush pop record, and having already dropped the Paul-bomb, I'll go ahead and compare Mr. DeVries to Quincy Jones and Mutt Lange, meaning that the sound designs are very sophisticated, technologically ahead-of-the-curve, and sometimes dense, but always clean and ecstatic in their final effect. 

I, Flathead, by Ry Cooder.

I've been away from this guy's records since the Mambo Sinuendo collaboration with Manuel Galban four or five years back, and I was surprised to hear this one as it unfolded. It's such an ambitious and different recording for Ry -- and it works. Often, when instrumental craftsmen turn to the building of elaborate lyrical castles, we are entitled to expect a disgraceful collapse; but here there are witty couplets like "I'm recording again and you know why/I need money and that's no lie," crazy and crazily detailed stories like "My Dwarf Is Getting Tired" and "Spayed Kooley" (about a dog, and a wordplay for the amusement of what living audience, anyway?), and an all-out inventiveness that makes you wonder how old this guy really is and where he got the time. He is singing better than ever -- almost unrecognizably better in places -- with ease, accuracy, and soulfulness. And you know, without my saying anything about it, that you want to hear what Jim Keltner does on a no-frills country song! Come on. 

Demos, by Jenny Scheinman.

Got these from a friend, and here we go again with the instrumentalists trying out the lyric-writing thing and aceing it, which, if that's going to be the deal from here on, I'm going back to office-temp work. I take it these are some pieces Jenny is working on for her next record, and I'm sure the eventual listeners will be put in mind of Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch -- these debts among others seem to me to be in plain sight on the surface. There is a song, a kind of hypothetical sung by a woman to her lover, that I think will be a big success and covered by some lesser talents with bigger names. It casts something true and widely-experienced about love into a fresh and subtly chilling formulation (such as, in their own ways, "You Win Again" and "Heart Like A Wheel"). For now you will need Jenny's last two releases, one of which is instrumental and the other vocal. 

Sino, among other records, by Cafe Tacuba.

There are some too-obvious points of comparison between this group and Los Lobos, and they also remind me a little of indie-prog acts like Spock's Beard. But molecularly these guys are one-of-a-kind (i.e., true artists). My housepainters were very happy to hear Sino blasting from my living room last week. After that they gave me a little more respect, and probably did a better job with the second coat, though it still wasn't all that good. 

Ben Kweller (self-titled).

More pop, and like the above-lauded Teddy Thompson record, this one has tunes that don't engage me, but the ones that do ("I Gotta Move" above all) make me feel like a whole different being, a more virtuous and less wrinkly one. 

Fallout Boy, All American Rejects, Green Day, Mika.

Just because my 11-year-old listens to this stuff constantly, I do also. 

Gallowsbird's Bark, by Fiery Furnaces.

I love all the various and whacked-out things these two (brother and sister) come up with, and am enjoying getting to all of it slowly and out of order of release. 

Rattlin' Bones, by Shane Nicholson and Kasey Chambers.

Boy, what Kasey has done before this has been good, but it still didn't prepare me for this, which, in the field of modern folk-country male-female duet singing (that seems like a lot of modifiers, but trust me, it's a big pool and a solid style), is up there with any high mark you can think of: Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, Buddy and Julie Miller, Delia Bell and Bill Grant, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Shania Twain and Billy Currington...joke! When I talk about good singing, again, I'm referring to a combination of perfect ease and deadly aim, plus an attractive color, or in the duet case, blend of two colors. Like Ira and Charlie Louvin, the two sounds heard individually might not strike you as particularly compatible, but in tandem the DNA clicks and a third and greater thing is born. These two, I infer, are married or lovers; they sure sing like they are, or ought to be. This record, which was produced in Australia by Nash Chambers and played with restrained simplicity and taste by folks I've never heard of (though they may be well-known down there for all I know) is a nice reminder that you don't need to call up a team of Downbeat Players-of-the-Year to form a solid and sympathetic instrumental group. You can look to the guys right down the street, and they might give you something just as good, or at least give some old tricks a fresh delivery. 

Fast Paced World, by the Duhks.

To my taste this is a mile or two above their first release. It is certainly quite a different sound, percussive and emotionally aggressive and loud-mastered where its predecessor was plucky and pretty -- about as different (maybe this isn't a coincidental comparison) as Nickel Creek's third record from its first. It also has a female lead singer that I don't think was part of the group the first time out, and she reminds me a little of Natalie Maines, that kind of power and glory -- really strong. 

Homebrew, by Paul Lansky.

This guy puts sounds from life -- a shopping mall, a storybook reader, dinner-table clinking and banging -- into his Macintosh and makes symphonic pieces of them, that tend to sound bizarre and familiar at once. You could fill many late-night bull sessions with chest-heaving talk about the relation of music to nature and modern life based on this music (and gosh would I like to, later), but it would be meaningless if these pieces didn't give uncerebral pleasure as music, which they abundantly do. 

OK, that's it for me. Not too much country music there, no comedians, and hey, no black people, what's that about? Sorry, I can't explain exactly why these discs are in my player, I can only jabber at great length about them. You surely wouldn't like all of them. But maybe the jabber gives you a plausible hint as to what they sound like, and you could "check" one or two of these "out," as the kids, so steeped in public-library lingo, like to say... 

Till nest time, Robbie