Lowlands. Love ETC. Harbour Song Records

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Over the past few years Blabber’n’Smoke has grown to expect great things from Lowlands. An Italian based band they’ve steadily built up a fine reputation with 2012’s Beyond an excellent Springsteen type album while main man Edward Abbiati delivered a tremendous collaboration with Chris Cacavas earlier this year on Me And The Devil. Love etc. finds Abbiati and the band in a more reflective mood as they ponder on those old perennials, love and loss, a mood influenced by Abbiati’s personal circumstances but, as has happened elsewhere, leading to a peak in the artistic process.

It seems that following on from some emotional knocks Abbiati wrote the title song, an attempt to dump the ballast and resurface and then built the album around this resurrecting songs he had written previously that fit into the theme of loss, bereavement and abandonment. Initially the album was acoustic but a live show with a horn section led to several of the songs being recorded in a single session with the band augmented by the horns. The end result is an album that recalls the loose limbed approach of The Basement Tapes as the band spin woozily throughout the songs with spiralling steel guitars, wheezy harmonica and parped trumpet and trombone fleshing out the sound. While some of the music portrays a sombre mood as on the cello clad You And I and the stripped down Can’t Face The Distance the majority of the album is like an exorcism of bad times as the songs sway and swing with abandonment and the horns are used to flesh out regret or joy.

The opening song, How Many, sets the scene perfectly as the band, curled lap steel and all are enveloped by the horn section who evoke an old fashioned and faded grandeur. This is intensified in the following title song as the horns sound like the Salvation Army and Abbiati swings like a New York troubadour in the seventies with wisps of Tom Waits and even Billy Joel sneaking in. I Wanna Be continues in this vein with Abbiati singing “I walk the streets at night/Try to find me a little light/I learn me a Dylan tune/Then I howl it to the moon.” As he sings this a clarinet homes in recalling Gershwin’s NY threnody creating a bit of a chill. You, Me, The Sky & The Sun uses the horns to create a devil may care attitude, a woozy stagger that is revisited on Happy Anniversary. The happy go lucky country jaunt of Wave Me Goodbye and the joyous trot that is My Baby lift the mood of the album suggesting that despite the clouds there’s some sunshine in Abbiati’s mind.

Overall Love etc. isn’t a gloomy album. There are moments that soar and tear at the emotions but at times there’s a tremendous ramshackle buoyancy about it, no more so than on the excellent Doing Time which sashays along with a winning swagger. There’s even a hint of the late sixties Dylan honey voice on Still I Wonder while the tender Goodbye, Goodnight , with only guitar, voice and accordion serves as an excellent sign off. Almost a lullaby in style it says goodbye to the past with some affection. Above all, it’s a warm, enveloping comfort blanket of an album, one to be savoured. And in case the above is somewhat long winded Chris Cacavas pretty much sums it up on Lowland’s website where he says “This album is fucking good. The best Lowlands yet?”

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The Rulers Of The Root. Porky Dreams

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The Rulers Of the Root are a four man band with deep roots in music and sound. Two of the band have a fine pedigree in the local music scene stretching back to the eighties and three of them work as sound engineers offering others the benefit of their ears and expertise. Fate, work and family tossed them together on the same shore some years ago and it transpired that one of them was an aspiring wordsmith while another was itching to get back to the front line. And so it was that The Rulers Of The Root came about as singer and lyricist Patrick Gillies shared his jottings with workmate, John Palmer. Palmer, a guitarist of note, saw some promise in Gillies’ offbeat thoughts and together they set about setting them to music. Another co-worker, Chris Quinn was recruited for his sonic expertise and drumming skills while Palmer reached out to an old bass playing pal resulting in the laid back Mick Murphy squaring the circle as it were.

All of this was a few years ago and it’s only now that the band unveil their debut album, Porky Dreams. Three years in gestation, nurtured and formed in their womb like HQ, Porky Dreams more than delivers on the promise that those fortunate enough to have seen the band live in their rare forays out have glimpsed. It’s not as raucous as their live set, the clowning and costumes are absent but at the root of it all Porky Dreams is a fine, absurdist document, couched in a weird west of Scotland vision of Americana. At times it’s almost as if that cartoon character, Lobey Dosser, had sprung to life and played at Govan’s version of the Opry especially on the Hazlewood drawl of Millport Cowboy and the parched slide guitar infused Neilston Blues.
There’s a wider canvas however throughout the album as the band canter through a variety of styles with Gillies’ rough hewn vocals and lyrics that draw from writers such as Conrad and Joyce as much as they do from the likes of Captain Beefheart, Ian Dury and Tom Waits drawing it all together. Whether he’s delivering a devastating portrait of a sailor’s life on Rose Of Jericho or launching into the Beefheart like flood of words, each one savoured for its sound as well as its meaning on Cat Fur, he commands attention. On paper “Rough skag a dull dick/ Saints bones, their tongues flick/ back street, a finger poke/ I’m not Rococco, I’m only Baroque” might make sense to some, on record it’s just brilliant.

While there are numerous references to local locales (the sailor in Rose Of Jericho drinks in the Scotia Bar before ambling down to the Broomielaw) the band steer clear of any kailyard romanticism and like a seaman they visit various ports with Tom Waits’ like bucket blues on Colon Man, Tropicana on Sinaloa, jazz noir on the Rupert baiting Murdoch Browns, Blockheads’ funk and thrust on I’m Spartacus, Dr. John voodoo on La Rue and dank and dark wailings on Elephant In The Room, a song Palmer says was influenced by Kevin Ayers’ cavernous Song From The Bottom Of A Well. It all coalesces in the title song which belts along with Palmer’s murderous slide guitar and a killer beat as Gillies prowls and growls. Like the Captain and the Gun Club thrown into a blender and cut to pieces it swings with a vengeance.

The band launch Porky Dreams at Glasgow’s Glad Cafe on Saturday 22nd Novenber.

Rulers Of The Root Facebook

Video can’t be shared here but click on it to see the hoodoo voodoo who do crew.

The Rulers Of The Root – Maillot Jaune from Clyde Jones on Vimeo.

Dan Michaelson And The Coastguards. Distance. The state51 Conspiracy

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Shamefully this album has been glowering at me for three months, patiently waiting its turn in the queue. Shameful as when I refreshed my memory of the last Dan Michaelson album I heard it truly was one of the better albums of 2013 and the follow up, Distance, has a fair claim to be in the best of lists for this year. It’s similar to its predecessor (Blindspot) but there’s a slight shift in the music, in the main a muted low key Americana sound which just about tops the slurried wash of Blindspot. This reinforces the similarities to Bill Callahan that were evident on the last album but the band that this brings most to mind are Lambchop as the songs slowly unroll with brushed percussion and weeping pedal steel.

The singular point, evident from the start is Michaelson’s extraordinary voice. It permeates the room with its gravity, almost as if he’s next to your ear. Deep but fragile, ready to break down as it dredges emotions from the depths. And it’s the depths of despair that form the lyrics as Michaelson for the most part stands bereft and forsaken as the songs weep. Aside from Burning Hearts which breaks into a trot (although lyrically it’s still pretty dismal) the pace is slow allowing Michaelson plenty of space to wallow magnificently. There’s an elegant gloom to the album from the muted horns on the opening song Evergreen to the glacial piano that leads on the closing song Somewhere before the song glides into an instrumental section that evokes a wintry feel. One for the Christmas stocking surely.

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Front Country. Sake Of The Sound.

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It’s interesting to see and hear bluegrass evolving. Back when the Grand Old Opry ruled it was a mortal sin to have drums included and when the longhairs (in the shape of The Byrds) invaded all hell broke loose. By the seventies The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and The Grateful Dead were flying high with that lonesome sound while players like David Grisman and Peter Rowan were updating the genre. Bluegrass has been at times newgrass and elements of jazz and jam bands have been thrown into the mix but at it’s core it’s always been a bulwark or touchstone for those who see Nashville going through its periodical makeovers be it The Nashville Sound, the big hat arena rock style or the current bro movement. Despite the early straightjacket imposed by the Opry Bluegrass has proved flexible enough to adapt and adopt new styles and while there are numerous excellent examples of straight ahead old time bluegrass bands composed of youngsters there’s a sense that there’s a new wave of, and pardon the use of, “progressive” players working in the idiom with bands like Fish & Bird and Run Boy Run recent examples.

The above is really just a long winded way of introducing California’s Bay Area band, Front Country, who do use the terms progressive and chambergrass to describe their music. There’s no doubt that as a band they are extremely skilled and there are moments on their debut album, Sake Of The Sound, that are pure bluegrass in the true sense with Glacier Song being the best example. However there are moments when the instruments veer off almost like jazz or rock solos while a song such as Colorado uses the stringed instruments to create a powerful throbbing undercurrent before breaking out into traditional form on the middle eight. On the opening song, Gospel Train, they manage to conjure up a powerful spiritual blues that harks to both the delta and the electric violin stylings of Sugarcane Harris when he was with Zappa.

A six-piece band, Front Country are fronted by the immensely talented Melody Walker who along with guitarist Jacob Groopman (who’s also in the band) released the magnificent We Made It Home album last year. Walker and Groopman provide the vocals as well as guitars while Adam Roszkiewicz on mandolin, Jordan Klein, banjo and vocals, Leif Karlstrom, violin and Zach Sharpe, bass fill the line up. With original songs and some choice covers including a gutsy rendition of Utah Phillips’ Rock Salt & Nails the album might not be to the taste of traditionalists but a listen to the title song which manages to combine the pop sensibility of Fleetwood Mac while retaining a woody, organic feel should convince anyone looking for a sense of adventure in string band land.

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Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue. Last To Leave.

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Isn’t the internet wonderful? A few months ago I happened on a video that stood out for two reasons. First was the one take approach to it as the camera panned and dollied around the band playing, nice. Second however was the band itself. A Patsy Cline like singer with an intriguing look sang wonderfully over a magnificent blowsy Spanish inflected twang laden backing. The band was Gal Holiday And The Honky Tonk Revue and the song was To Make Amends. It stuck with me so Blabber’n’Smoke eventually acquired a copy of their latest album, Last To Leave, and lo and behold, To Make Amends is but one of the gems contained therein.

New Orleans residents, Gal Holiday And the Honky Tonk Revue are fronted by Vanessa Niemann, a wonderful singer, fired by the likes of Cline, Wanda Jackson and Loretta Lynn. She’s a formidable looking lady, the album cover has her imperiously sitting, defiant, outside an old trailer van, bags packed. Her lizard green dress and cowboy boots, tattoos and flame red hair all flagging up danger, this woman is not to be messed with. The image is carried on to the music, she sings with a sultry confidence, a country torch singer with attitude. Meanwhile the band curl and swing hitting plain old honky tonk, sweet bluegrass stylings and killer outlaw country.

From the start Niemann asserts her authority as a hefty grunt from her opens the first song, The Long Black Ribbon, a wide screen cowboy clatter with sterling pedal steel and telecaster twang. She’s A Killer is a film noire piece set to Western swing with double bass plucking bravely and the guitars just hoovering it up as they duel and quarrel. It’s similar to the rockabilly stylings of Imelda Mae but to the nth degree. Last To Leave is a fairly straightforward country styled lament but again the performance is well above par and they continue at this level throughout the album. Broke Down And Broke is gritty trucking fare while Rainy Nights, Sunny Days is suffused with early sixties Nashville smoothness, slightly jazzy with an excellent guitar solo that shares joy and tears, you need to hear this but it really is magnificent. Teach Me How To Two Step ups the sassiness quotient as Niemann swaggers over some more excellent guitars (it has to be said here that Chris Adkins and Tony Martinez on guitar and pedal steel shine throughout the album) and on the one cover here, Pat Benatar’s Love Is A Battlefield, they rein in the temptation to offer an amped up country rock version and instead treat the song to a brisk Bakersfield jaunt which again has some superb picking.

Last To Leave is an audaciously great listen from start to finish and while New Orleans folk can catch the band on a regular basis it would be great if someone could entice the band to cross the water. In the meantime we have the disc and that video.

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The Dreaming Spires. Darkest Before The Dawn EP. Clubhouse Records.

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Oxford’s The Dreaming Spires are based around brothers, Robin and Joe Bennett who together have a quite a history toiling at the Americana coalface. Their previous band Goldrush had a good pop at making it big and for a period they were in an early incarnation of Danny & The Champions Of The World while in their spare time they were prime movers in setting up Truck Festival. Darkest Before The Dawn is a three song curtain raiser for their second album due early next year. As with their debut album, Brothers in Brooklyn which related some of their adventures in the States, there’s an autobiographical element to the EP with the three songs relating to a friend of the band’s, a guy called Danny who co-wrote several songs previously with Robin Bennett. According to Bennett Danny fell on hard times and the EP is an elliptic account of their relationship and the travails of touring in America.

The EP opens with the seven minute jangled jewel that is Hype Bands (Parts I & II), a song that starts off like Big Star backed by The Memphis Horns as Bennett packs in personal experiences and name checks or alludes to classic American music icons, songs and singers. The addition of the horns and the groove that the band lock into are reminiscent of Danny & The Champs’ recent forays while the road trip element recalls some of The Wynntown Marshals’ album, The Long Haul. It’s a brave, slightly convoluted, adventure with wide-eyed wonder at being in the land of musical heroes dulled by the actual enervating experience of being part of the biz. Musically however it’s a great rollercoaster of a song which definitely benefits from repeated listens as it caroms from jangled country rock to The Band like funky horn grooviness.

The mysterious Danny (actually, with some deft Googling you can easily check out his identity and rest assured he has heard the songs and approves) was the brothers’ road manager on their first trip. House on Elsinore finds them back in LA with Danny in a dark place and the band adopt the identity of one of the classic bands who epitomise the duality of LA. There’s a mighty Byrds thunk from the off with thick 12 string jangle recalling their baroque fondness of Bach. It’s a glorious song that has some of Crosby’s medieval trappings woven throughout.

Darkest Before The Dawn ends the EP on a minor key as The Spires return to Big Star territory with a song that recalls Alex Chilton at his best. Wounded and vulnerable but eventually optimistic as the song is wafted upwards by a heavenly chorus and soaring guitars, a song to make Nick Kent cry.

We mentioned above toiling at the coalface of Americana and in the press release for the EP Robin Bennett expresses a fear that UK bands playing American influenced music has at time seemed laughable before going on to explain that The Kinks, The Beatles and The Stones were all doing this before UK Americana happened. On the evidence here it’s apparent that this is no joke. The EP is a powerful chunk of music, influenced of course by some classic American bands but in the end whether they come from Oxford, England or Oxford Mississippi is irrelevant when the result is as delicious as this. It whets the appetite for the new album and you can read more about that in an interview with Robin Bennett here. The fact that Tony Poole of the criminally underrated 70’s UK Americana rockers, Starry Eyed & Laughing is involved is proof indeed that Americana is a state of mind, not place.

Darkest Before The Dawn is released on November 24 on Clubhouse Records

Dick LeMasters. One Bird, Two Stones

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If you’ve been overdosing on Texas country music recently then Dick LeMasters is the guy to remind you that there’s a lot more going on in the Lone Star State. Texas has a very fine blues history stretching all the way back to Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lightnin’ Hopkins up to The Fabulous Thunderbirds and Stevie Ray Vaughan while the late Doug Sahm and blues boogie champs, ZZ Top were the main flag bearers for the musical soul of Texas.

LeMasters is no spring chicken. He grew up in Texas with his teen years in the seventies, the glory days of the World Armadillo Headquarters when Austin was supplanting San Francisco as “head city” and every long hair was into country rock. He scuffed around with music taking second place to earning a living and it wasn’t ’till he was in his 40’s that he got serious with his band Longneck Road who earned a fine reputation locally. However it’s been a long road to his solo debut, One Bird, Two Stones, which hits stores this week and has been eagerly anticipated by the European Americana contingent with some rave reviews coming in.

One Bird, Two Stones is a solid album that would snuggle nicely beside the likes of Ray Wyllie Hubbard with a raw boned electric edge to many of the songs while there is a definite ZZ boogie apparent especially on the opening song, Big Ol’ Buick, with its Gibbon’s guitar licks and Power In The Snake which has a wicked fuzz lead. While LeMasters’ might not win any awards for originality there’s no doubt that the songs sizzle and burn for the most part while there are moments when he kicks over the embers and lets the fire burn down. River Blues is a slow burning blues with slashing guitar licks while Need Your Lovin’ Baby actually recalls the minor chord style of David Crosby and the blissed out atmosphere of If I Could Only Remember Your Name, a great little number.

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Jeni & Billy ‘s Big Picnic Band. Picnic in The Sky.

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Funny how things come back to haunt you. Well, not haunt exactly but Jeni & Billy got in touch with Blabber’n’Smoke a few months ago asking if we wanted a copy of their new album, Picnic In The Sky. Back in 2010, we listened to their album, Longing For Heaven describing it as the sparse folk sound of the mountains and backwoods folk, god fearing, hardworking, scraping a living but finding joy in family and friends and giving it a big thumbs up. And so it was that Picnic In The Sky winged its way here. It’s fair to say that all we said about Longing For Heaven could be said about Picnic In The Sky with one caveat. The duo’s sparse sound is supplanted by some accompanying musicians, a situation that was not planned per se but came about as a result of some serendipitous goings on including a waitress taking a food order and then disappearing for some time.

The result is an album of Jeni & Billy with Craig Eastman, David Jackson, Denny Weston Jnr. and Dillon O’Brian filling in on fiddle, slide guitar, lap steel, mandolin, bass, accordion, drums, keyboards, claps, feet, shovel, rake and baking pan (!). It’s still raw country music, still what you might expect to hear on a porch, just this time you might need a bigger porch. The expanded instrumentation does allow for a degree of sophistication with The Days Of The Blue Tattoo, a song about a white woman captured by Yavapai Native Americans, brimming with lush guitars, bar room piano, accordion and fiddle and sounding for all the world like an Emmylou Harris song from the late seventies. However it’s testament to their homespun qualities that the band songs retain an earthiness that harks back to the early recordings of The Carter Family with the two best examples being Are You Meant For Me and The Mill Hurries On, the latter being the song that features the shovel and rake percussion on a wonderfully woozy and sepia stained waltz. There are numerous delights here with the opening song, The Robin & The Banjo an excellent example of raw Appalachian music complete with flatfoot dance steps while Picnic In The Sky flies along borne on lilting slide guitar as it paints a picture of bygone days. And for anyone hankering for the simplicity of their earlier recordings there’s The Old Hotel, a plaintive and raw monochrome capture of a desperate lover, armed with a gun and a fifty dollar bill, returning to that hotel looking for the will and the way to end it all. Great stuff indeed.

Jeni Hankins assures me that she and Billy Kemp will be in Scotland next year. In the meantime this is as fine a slice of delicate, bruised and uplifting roots music you’ll hear in a while.

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The Stray Birds. Best Medicine. Yep Roc Records.

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Blabber’n’Smoke has been privileged to have seen The stray Birds twice this year. First time at Celtic Connections when they were promoting their excellent EP, The Echo Sessions. Next up was a Fallen Angels Club promotion at the CCA in September. In the intervening months, the engaging trio from Pennsylvania were picked up by US label, Yep Roc Records who have released Best Medicine, the band’s second album. This is great news, for the band of course but also for those who faithfully follow the stream of very fine roots musicians, incessantly touring, playing to small (but dedicated) crowds and who buy the CDS, vinyl, T-Shirts and god knows what else at the merch table after the gig. If a label like Yep Roc (home to Dave Alvin, Chuck Prophet, Paul Weller and Robyn Hitchcock) are interested then the future may be just a little bit brighter.

Anyway, down to business. The Stray Birds (Maya de Vitry -guitar, banjo, fiddle, Oliver Craven – guitar, fiddle and Charles Muench – double bass, banjo) have much in common with numerous other string bands doing the circuit, they can all sing with lead vocals shared out while their harmonies are spot on. They swap instruments with abandon, can swing or weep depending on the song and, grouped around a single mic, they can transport the listener to the Appalachians even if you’re sitting at home or hunched up in a folding seat in a dark and hot auditorium. There are two things that perhaps set them apart from the throng. de Vitry’s singing is the number one weapon here as she has a superb voice, fairly unique, no Lucinda Williams’ sultriness or sassy cowgirl grins. She seems steeped in the loam of the land, resonant and rich, a full throated voice that resounds through the ages, she should have been singing with The Band back in the days. In addition to this Craven is no slouch himself in the vocal department while Muench adds a fine earthiness with his contributions. Weapon number two is the songwriting. A song like Adelaide is very much in the tradition but the performance is well above par while Feathers And Bone (with Craven’s slightly hoarse voice leading) is a standard waiting to be picked up by others as it transports the listener to another land. The title song is far removed from traditional fare as the band sing the praises of a record store they visited. A hymn to music (and vinyl in particular) it swells with rippling guitar and an almost Gospel approach to the grooved deity.

There’s not a dud song here as the band recall the Wounded Creek Native American massacre on Black Hills, a song that towers when played live, Simple Man, a Guthrie styled tribute to land workers and Might Rain, the closing song and one which stylistically resembles the opening title song as de Vitry sings again of loss and the band sound as old as the hills with stuttering banjo and plaintive fiddle. Live, the band can whip up a storm but on the album the jollity, if we can call it that , is provided by a rousing Western Swing take on the old standard, Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor and a fine knockabout hillbilly swagger on Who’s Gonna Shoe. Make Yep Roc (and the band) happy and grab a copy, you won’t be disappointed.

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Billy Childs. Map To The Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro. Sony Masterworks

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Time for a little sophistication here at Blabber’n’Smoke. Late night sophistication in fact in the form of this exquisite tribute to the late Laura Nyro from jazz musician, Billy Childs. Childs has rearranged a slew of Nyro songs and invited guest vocalists to breathe new life into them. The guests include Renée Fleming, Rickie Lee Jones, Alison Krauss and Dianne Reeves while Jerry Douglas turns up on Dobro and Wayne Shorter adds sax, the whole produced by Larry Klein, no stranger to enigmatic female singer songwriters.

The orchestration is superb with the strings in perfect harmony with the jazz instrumentation and while several of the songs are not immediately recognisable from the originals the spirit of Nyro can be felt throughout. Rickie Lee Jones’ interpretation of Been On A Train is the current favourite here but all of the songs bear repeated listening. Definitely recommended for lovers of Laura Nyro while fans of modern jazz will find it interesting.

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