Best of 2014

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There’s a lot or pros and cons when it comes to listing end of year best ofs or favourites. Two years ago Blabber’n’Smoke eventually plumbed for the pros outweighing the cons so this is the third time we’ve presented what, when it comes down to it, is an arbitrary choice of remembered listen. Albums that have stood the test of (a relatively short) time, the ones we’ve returned to or recommended to others in the pub. Above all it’s been fun to look back, read the reviews and see if they still stand. So with this in mind the following are the official Blabber’n’Smoke 2014 picks, in alphabetical order.

Blue Rose Code. Ballads Of Peckham Rye
Birds Of Chicago. Live From Space
Fire Mountain. All Dies Down
Bradford lee Folk and The Bluegrass Playboys. Somewhere Far Away
Cahalen Morrison & Eli West. I’ll Swing My Hammer With Both My Hands
Jim Keaveny. Out Of Time
Parker Millsap. Parker Millsap
Michael Rank & Stag. Deadstock
Sturgill Simpson. Metamodern Sounds In Country Music
John Southworth. Niagara

Random honourable mentions go to

Lucinda Williams Down Where the Spirit Meets The Bone,
The Johnny Cash Native American album reboot, Look Again To The Wind,
Danny and The Champions Of The World’s Live Champs!
Dan Michealson & The Coastguards Distance
Cale Tyson’s EP, High On Lonesome,
Luke Tuchsherer’s debut You Get So Alone at Times It makes Sense,
Petunia’s Inside Of You,
Ags Connolly How about Now,
Chris Cacavas & Edward Abbiati. Me And The Devil along with Abbiati’s band Lowlands who delivered the excellent Love Etc.,
Zoe Muth. World Of Strangers,
Hank Wangford & The Lost Cowboys. Save Me The Waltz .
Grant Peeples and the Peeples Rebublic. Punishing The Myth.
Simone Felice. Strangers.
Bronwynne Brent. Stardust.
Sylvie Simmons. Sylvie (allowing an honorary mention here for Howe Gelb who produced).
The War On Drugs. Lost In The Dream.
Lynne Hanson. River Of Sand.
Gal Holiday & The Honky Tonk Revue. Last To Leave.
And finally John Murry’s EP, Califorlonia which is brilliant and hopefully just an appetiser for his follow up to the majestic Graceless Age.

Digging through the archives it’s been noticeable that there’s been a fine contribution this year from Scottish acts who dip into or draw from an Americana well to a greater or lesser extent. While Blue Rose Code’s Ballads Of Peckam Rye features above the following are all stellar contributions to the local scene.

Dropkick. Homeward
Dumb Instrument. The Silent Beard (with the Scottish song of the year, Suffering from Scottishness).
John Hinshelwood. Lowering The Tone.
The David Latto Band. Here Today, Ghost Tomorrow EP
Norrie McCulloch. Old Lovers Junkyard
The New Madrids. Through the Heart of Town.
Red Pine Timber Company. Different Lonesome
The Rulers Of The Root. Porky Dreams
Ten Gallon Bratz. Tales From The Long Shadows

Although his album, Little Glass Box came out in 2012, Fraser Anderson is a major find of the year while another local lad, Daniel Meade unleashes his Nashville recorded Keep Right Away in January. Hopefully folk will have long enough memories to recall this when it comes to compiling the 2015 lists. In the meantime it can be first on the New Year shopping list.

Grant Peeples and the Peeples Rebublic. Punishing The Myth.

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Grant Peeples is a muscular, shaved head, scary looking guy, the kind you’d avoid in a bar in case he’s looking for a fight. His music too is muscular and it’s looking for a fight, in this case with the hucksters and moral majority who run his nation. Always on the side of the downtrodden and oppressed, Peeples, over the course of his four albums is a powerful voice telling us what the networks and syndicates won’t.
Punishing The Myth, his third album to be produced by Gurf Morlix kicks against the pricks and punctures the balloon of hypocrisy that populates the American Dream. Peeples sings about outsiders including a lesbian aunt and a revolutionary while he takes a pop at himself and his ilk on the opening song You’re A Slave To Your Imagination where he writes
“You call it art but you’re just jerking off, all you want to do is make a name for yourself, sucking up to owners and promoters, could it be any good if it’s something you sell?”
before going on to say “Yea its true every song is just a compromise, but every now and then I find a word’ll ring true, I hang my hat on a hook I know’ll get um, then I scribble down some crap and I call it a tune.” The irony here is that it’s a rollicking good tune with Sarah Mac trading vocals with Peeples over a wicked bluesy groove with organ and cornet in the driving seat over finely picked electric guitar and that’s true of all of the songs here. Peeples songs are first and foremost eminently listenable and on the face of it Punishing The Myth is an excellent album of country, folk and blues that will please fans of Willie Nelson, Guy Clark, J.J. Cale and Mr. Morlix himself.

Who Woulda Thunk It, the one cover on the album (written by Greg Brown) is another cracking bluesy number with Knopfleresque guitar snaking throughout while the lyrics connect with the overall sense of the album that Americans are sleepwalking to doom, relying on Mastercard and Visa instead of being self reliant. This belief is hammered home by Peeples on the spoken word High Octane Generation where he thunders against the pampered state of present day car owners who rely on the bleeps and alarms on their space age dashboards but who are unable to check their oil. This could have become a Luddite rant but Peeples changes gear to celebrate the automobile as an allegory of the “passions, and ideals that mapped out our interior destinations across the crooked fields of time” before lamenting that owning a car that can park itself appears to be nothing to be ashamed of these days.

Peeples hammers oligarchs and Wall Street in The New American Dream while The Morning After The Coup appears to share The Who’s sentiment of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” I Can’t Imagine Him Carrying a Carbine subverts a father’s greeting to his new born son as he fears he’ll not be fit to defend the revolution and guns feature in She Was a Wildflower as the narrator remembers “watching her swing from the barrel of an M1 rifle.” There’s a militant feel to many of the songs, Peebles says of himself “I’m a vegetarian that watches NASCAR, a tree-hugger that keeps a gun under the seat,” but his recollection of his lesbian aunt “Aunt Lou” has a tender edge to it while acknowledging her bravery.

Peeples ends the album with an excellent live recording, “It’s Too Late to Live In Austin,” that firmly places him in the Texas story telling tradition as he tells of a night in “this myth-ridden city” with vocal support again from Sarah Mac. The highlight of the album however is the dark country duet, The Hanging where he’s joined by Eliza Gilkyson who sings wonderfully on what is a powerful portrait of an execution and in its chorus damns the death penalty. A powerful song on a powerful album.

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Grant Peeples. Prior Convictions.

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Peeples’ follow-up to the sinewy folk tales on his last release, Okra and Ecclesiastes, serves to cement his position as a worthy carrier of the torch previously held by the likes of Guy Clark and John Prine. Singing everyday tales of everyday folk Peeples can come across as a bit of a musical chameleon here with various songs reminiscent of those who came before but his writing and delivery is spot on and ensures that he is no mere copycat. Sounding grizzled and wise he delivers songs that rock and songs that are more akin to talking blues with lyrics that are evocative and provocative. Throughout all of this he is ably assisted by his producer and accompanist, the great Gurf Morlix who plays some fine guitar and bass along with banjo, pedal steel and keyboards.
Opening with a cover of Dylan’s Things Have Changed, a slow bluesy groove with some sublime guitar by Morlix, it features a fine vocal appearance from Ruthie Foster. A late (2000) Dylan song Peeples dresses it up in the gospel style of Dylan’s born again period which is in keeping with the biblical references he often uses and it’s one of the best Dylan covers we’ve heard in a long time. Had the remainder of the album continued in this style then we wouldn’t feel short changed. However Peeples changes tack with the second song Patriot Act which places him firmly in the earthy Texas outlaw tradition. Dedicated to Dave Hickey, an author and art critic who recorded some songs in the early seventies and whose volume of short stories provides the album’s title this song is like a time machine for anyone who knows early Guy Clark.

The remainder of the album is delivered in pretty much the same style with gritty vocals and pedal steel guitar predominant although each song has its individual style. It’s a testament to Peeples’ character that he even manages to deliver a cover of eighties new wave band Shriekback’s Gunning For The Buddha as if it was written in a Texan barrelhouse. The gentle paced Market Town is a tremendous portrait of a slave auction with the ugly scenes described delivered with a terrible beauty in the handsome tune and delicate playing. The accordion playing of Joel Guzmen adds a fine filigree here and later on he adds atmosphere to Last Night I Dreamed in Spanish, a song about Peeples’ sojourn in Nicaragua which Willie Nelson would have been proud to have written had he the chance. The wonderful Road To Damascus with some fine banjo and nasty guitar licks from Morlix stomps along as Peeples dissects St. Paul and unveils him as an opportunistic carpetbagger. Sad Naked Woman is a voyeuristic soul search which recalls Terry Allen’s Lubbock On Everything.

The provocative Nigger Lover demonstrates the power of language with Peeples at pains to point out that he ensured Ruthie Foster would approve of its presence here. Ironically scored out on the album cover the N word rings loud on what appears to be an autobiographical account of the travails visited on the young Peeples and how nowadays bigots might temper their words but still harbour the same prejudices. It’s delivered in a world wearied voice with a spare accompaniment and is very much a twin to the recent song by Chip Taylor, Fuck All The Perfect People. This theme of outward respectability covering all sorts of hypocrisy is nailed in the final and solo acoustic song Last Honest Man which references Diogenes’ mocking search for honesty by shinng a lamp in daylight to highlight the futility of it all.

In summary then we have an album that is an excellent example of country folk tales delivered in the style of the extraordinary collection of talents that gathered in Texas in the early seventies. Added to this is the unique and intriguing philosophical viewpoint of Peebles which rails against modern mores and harks back to a simpler time. Even simpler, this is brilliant.

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Patriot Act

March Musings

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Going by the number of CDs sent to Blabber’n’Smoke there are countless country troubadours, singer songwriters and nitty gritty dirt bands out there releasing music by the boatload. The majority of these are folk who are not well known, who might have a local audience, have spent their savings on their vision. Self released or on local labels it’s encouraging that despite the oft trumpeted “death of the CD” a horde of well intentioned and usually quite talented musicians plug on. Although there is the occasional clunker the majority of these have something to say and they say it in style. With the advent of the blog musicians who might not have got a mention in newsprint have an outlet and can use the reviews to further promote their disc. All this is a prelude to this latest roundup, a bunch of folk who won’t feature in the major press outlets but who all have something to recommend them.


First up is Pete Sinjin with his debut Better Angels Radio. Sinjin is from New York and has produced a belter of an album that could be loosely categorised as country/folk rock. With lashings of guitar, pedal steel, mandolin and fiddle married to a solid rock rhythm section Sinjin delivers driving Californian type anthems, souped up Springsteen type rockers and jangley power pop. While the opening Driving California and the pell mell tumult of Romance of The Punkers are full bodied rockers in a Tom Petty vein Sinjin excels on the evocative Funeral Train, a memory of waiting for the carriage carrying Bobby Kennedy’s body back to Washington to pass through his town and the closing Shuhuykill Red, an impressionistic tale of a couple hanging about on a bridge, no Terry and Julie here but a song set against a wasteland of lost opportunities.

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From a fresh young thing to a grizzled veteran, Grant Peeples tried his luck in Nashville in the seventies but eventually ended up living on an island off of Nicaragua with his music on the back burner. A series of events led him back to the states and into the arms of Gurf Morlix who produced this album, Okra and Ecclesiastes. Peeples drinks from the well of Ray Wylie Hubbard and Guy Clark. His songs are spare muscular tales delivered with a world weary aplomb. While there are jaunty moments such as Last Great Buffalo Hunt (reminiscent of J.J. Cale in a Cajun style), spooky acoustic blues on Powerlines and on Lethal Injection Blues a chilling record of the last moments of a death row prisoner Peeples is at his best on the opening song My people Come From the Dirt. A powerful description of the lifestyle of a disenfranchised underclass. This is a powerful song, Peeples sings
“My people come from the dirt, full choke and steel guitar
Cigarettes and whiskey, and a dog chained in their yard
My people come from the dirt, white bread and kerosene
Catfish and flatbeds, sweat stains and retreads, okra and Ecclesiastes.”
The title refers to okra, a staple food of the rural poor and the book of Ecclesiastes which Peeples reads as meaning “all the strife, struggle and actions lf Man are vain, futile, empty, meaningless, temporary, transitory, hopelessly fleeting.” Glum indeed but the song itself is a searing indictment of the lot of the poor in the land of plenty.

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Gurf Morlix pops up again in the producers seat for Betty Soo’s Heat Sin Water Skin. He is all over this album, providing guitar and vocals and adding it to a fine line of south western roots music. Soo is a second generation Korean based in Austin and this is her fourth release. As one might anticipate from any project connected to Morlix this is a great sounding set with Soo delivering some sweet country sounds on Whisper My Name, sultry rock on Who Knows and a driving soulful sound on Still Small Voice. Throughout there is some fine sinewy guitar work from Morlix who manages to give this album the honest , sweet yet gritty feel that he attempted to give Lucinda Williams on the Car Wheels album. Soo has a fine clear voice that can be tender or ballsy as required and her writing is well up to par with all of the songs bar one written by her. The album was released two years ago in the states but is only now getting a UK push. Well recommended.

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