Rain Parade. Emergency Third Rail Power Trip Deluxe Edition. Label 51 Recordings.

Posted on by

Although the Paisley Underground was a somewhat nebulous concept, there’s little doubt these days that The Rain Parade’s debut album, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip was the quintessential album of this short lived phenomenon. Released in 1983, the album was an astounding update of the psychedelic sounds of bands such as The Byrds along with several acts who had appeared on the seminal 60s collection, Nuggets.

Helmed by Matt Piucci and brothers, Dave and Steven Roback, the band leaned heavily into their psychedelic forebears, swimming very much against the tide after punk had all but cancelled out the sixties and challenging the shiny new wave pop which was then commanding the charts.

Originally only available as a limited Record Store day release, this deluxe reissue contains the original album remastered (and sounding fresh as a daisy) along with a second disc of demos and live recordings selected by Piucci and Steven Roback. There’s a definite adrenaline rush that hits you as the original album spirals out with the opening song, Talking In My Sleep, replete with chiming guitars, bulbous bass and Eastern scales which immediately induce a 60s’ lysergic daydream, a dream amplified when the following song This Can’t Be Today weighs in with more than a nod to the English variant of psychedelic music. There’s Alex Chilton like desperation on Carolyn’s Song and Look At Merri still sounds as if it were recorded by The Velvet Underground had they hailed from the west coast.

It goes without saying really that, if you haven’t got this album then it’s a must buy, simply for its sacred grooves and the groove which emanates from it. The carrot here is the extra disc which adds 13 songs to the package, a mix of demos and live tracks, six of them ultimately appearing on the album. It opens with a version of What She’s Done To Your Mind, released, as a single which is much less ethereal than the album version and which clings to the sound of The Byrds circa Younger Than Yesterday.  The demos are, as expected, tentative and pretty much unadorned but an exciting insight into their journey while 4 track versions of This Can’t Be Today, I Look Around and Look Both Ways are a step towards the final versions to be heard on the completed album but with a raw energy in them. Six songs, (including Saturday’s Asylum, First Of September and Paper Girl), recorded live, might be lacking in hi fidelity but, cranked up loud, allow that the band were a power on stage. Speedway is a turbo charged instrumental with nods to garage band surf music while they stumble quite wonderfully through their version of Syd Barrett’s No Good Trying.

Overall, this expanded version of an already classic album is well worth a listen and it’s great that it’s no longer confined to those who choose to queue up for a rarity. It’s available as a double vinyl album and a two disc CD set

Rain Parade website

Russ Tolman. Goodbye El Dorado.

Posted on by

1009660237Blabber’n’Smoke noted, with some relish, the re-emergence of Russ Tolman back in 2017 when we reviewed his retrospective compilation, Compass & Map which also contained a smattering of new songs. Now, one of those songs, Los Angeles, heads up Tolman’s first solo album in many years and it’s a good indicator of what’s to come as its sweet Mexican influenced melody evokes a sun kissed climate while the words concern someone lost in the endless labyrinth of the city of angels. Goodbye El Dorado is an album soaked in the romance of LA while acknowledging the seedier side of life there. It’s a well worn trope going back to writers such as Raymond Chandler and Ross McDonald and movies such as Chinatown and Robert Altman’s the Long Goodbye while much of the more scandalous goings on were chronicled in Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon books.

Having said that, Tolman never gets too seedy nor melodramatic but he knows that LA is a magnet for folk who believe in the dream and who are inevitably let down while the living there is not always easy with daily traffic jams and the threat of flash fires to contend with. He writes as a person who has inhaled the city for many years but with a fine sense of detachment, most of the songs here were written by him while he was living in Japan, so this “love letter to Los Angeles” is tempered with distance and insight.

Tolman recorded Goodbye El Dorado when he returned to LA from Japan, picking his ace group of players from past friends. Robert Lloyd, Dave Provost, Kirk Swan and Kevin Jarvis are the primary players while Tom Heyman and Slim Zwerling provide pedal steel and horns respectively. Also on board are Cindy Wasserman and Dan Janisch on backing vocals. It’s an LA dream band really and it shows throughout the album as the players weave intricate patterns into the music, a prime example being on Take It Easy Take It Slow. It’s a song which is not too far removed from the peaceful easy feeling style of the Eagles but here it’s  given a rich tapestry of sound lifting it well beyond anything our stadium filling pals ever did.

Interviewed about the album Tolman has said, “I wanted it to be a warm, fuzzy companion as albums have been for me since I was a kid. Something to be listened to repeatedly, which is something that does not happen much in these days of streaming.” It’s certainly warm as the songs waft from the speakers. The opening Los Angeles is a different recording from that on Compass & Map, here given a Mexican lilt with Lloyd’s accordion prominent and Tolman returns to this Mexicana on the title song with added horns which take the listener to a comfortable cantina as Tolman bids farewell to the city on behalf of those whose dreams didn’t quite work out. As the horns blossom, Heyman’s pedal steel weaves in between Lloyd’s accordion creating a wonderful sound. Tolman’s deadpan vocals, disturbingly similar to his buddy Steve Wynn’s on occasion, carry a fine sense of ennui here and throughout the album. California Winter is another excellent ensemble piece with an element of tango in it while the horns recall the work of Calexico but the outro here is just superb with horns, muted twangy guitars, piano and organ all interwoven.

Do You Like The Way is a slight return to the snarly roots rock of his early solo albums while Yuba City comes across as a slightly tipsy trip into a cosmic honky tonk where the piano has definitely been drinking. Pacific Rain is definitely cosmic cowboy music as Tolman heads up the coast on the old hippie trail from California to Oregon on a song which is surely tongue in cheek as he arrives in a town where they claim it’s always 1973. On a more serious note there’s Kid, a song about a waif in waiting who is the product of broken marriage, while Almost Heaven can be seen as an ecological warning, an elegy of sorts for California and performed in a style reminiscent of those iconic LA writers, Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon, although Tolman adds a sinisterly comic fairground motif.

Talking of classic LA music, Tolman closes the album with a splendid jingle jangled slice of sunny side up California music on Time Flies. Calling on Gene Clark and The Dream Syndicate, here he takes flight indeed, closing the album on a very high note.

Russ Tolman embarks on a European tour this week including his first shows in the UK since the 1990’s. A rare opportunity to see one of the original progenitors of the famed Paisley Underground.

Website

Tour dates:

09 May  Colegio de Abogados, Bilbao, Spain

10 May  Nebula, Pamplona, Spain

14 May  Grüneløkka Bryggerhus, Oslo, Norway

15 May  Bastard Bar, Tromsø, Norway

17 May  Folk å Rock, Malmö, Sweden

18 May  Boldts Bar, Haderslev, Denmark

19 May  Twang, Stockholm, Sweden

23 May  Music Star, Norderstedt, Germany

24 May  Kantine, Nuremberg, Germany

30 May  Red Rooster 2019

01 June Putney Country In The Afternoon 2019Half Moon, Putney, Putney, UK

04 June The Greystones, Sheffield, UK

05 June Night People, Manchester, UK

06 June Fat Lil’s, Witney, UK

07 June Sebright Arms, Bethnal Green, UK

Cheap Wine. Dreams.

Posted on by

cheapwinecover-225x225Blabber’n’Smoke reviewed an excellent live album from the Italian band, Cheap Wine, back in 2016, and, impressed by it, we delved onto their catalogue discovering several albums steeped in a serious American music jag. Steve Wynn and The Dream Syndicate loomed large in their sound along with E Street urban menace and even some of The Doors’ doomed romance. Now along comes Dreams, their latest studio missive, and it’s clear that they’re continuing to pursue their particular take on the American Dream. However they are no mere copyists, their take on what is by now, a traditional sound (some of their influences go back 40 years- if this were the seventies they’d be sourcing 1930s music) is elevated by the grace and fluency of their playing and, importantly the quality of band leader, Marco Diamantini’s, writing along with his vocals.

Dreams is actually the third of a trilogy of sorts. Previous albums, Based On Lies and Beggar Town reflected the turmoil of the economic crisis with the former quite relevant in these days of “fake news.” Dreams is, at times, an Arcadian vision of the future with Diamantini’s songs obliquely optimistic, dreams being, he says, “The magic wand that free us from the limit of the physical body.” As such he sings of reveries such as walking naked down a road on Naked while Cradling My Mind is a somnambulistic affair as Diamantini describes an idyllic car journey as the band gently press the accelerator.

Much of the album is in a similar vein to Cradling My Mind. The Wise Man’s Finger opens with Doors’ like electric piano and wah wah guitar effects before it unwinds over five hypnotic minutes. I Wish I Were The Rainbow’s arpeggio of rippling guitars and swoonful organ create a mood over which Diamamtini calmly declaims his opaque words. Reflection is a shimmering slice of bucolic acoustic guitars and gentle cello which harks back to English folk psychedelia while the title song, buoyed on another gentle tide of acoustic guitars and sympathetic keyboards has Diamantini speaking in a winning whisper of hope eternal, “Never be afraid of falling down or being wrong ’cause your mistakes will be your guide.” It’s a song which could easily fall into a schmaltzy sentimentalism a la Desiderata but instead it’s delivered with sincerity while the lengthy outro, graced with a fine guitar solo, has a grandiose sweep without sounding pompous. It’s tempting to say that this song would have sounded wonderful coming from the voice of Leonard Cohen. I do believe he would have liked a verse like this, “And remember, the greatest works of art were made for you. Dive into this great adventure and grow, baby, grow. And, most of all, always follow your dreams.”

There are a couple of spikier moments. The opening Full Of Glow is a barbed Paisley Underground rocker and Naked stumbles into view with a Crazy Horse like chunk of rhythm. The band even return to the band that gave them their name on the Farfisa organ fuelled grunge of For The Brave which does sound as if it was buried in an early Green On Red release. Quite wonderful.

website

 

 

Russ Tolman. Compass & Map.

Posted on by

tolman-cd-450x450Mention the so-called “Paisley Underground” and folk will wax wonderfully on The Dream Syndicate, The Rain Parade, The Long Ryders, Green On Red and The Bangles. Whether or not this was an actual movement or just some bands lumped together geographically (LA for the most part) is still moot and several of the main actors actively disavow the term these days. Anyway one of the bands lumped in here was True West, a name rarely heard these days, who released two albums and who at one point seemed poised to break into the big time. Despite touring with REM, noted by Prince, front page on the music weeklies and lined up for an Old Grey Whistle Test TV slot while on a UK tour (nixed due to work visa issues) unfortunately that didn’t happen and they disbanded in the mid eighties.

Key to True West’s sound was guitarist and songwriter Russ Tolman who quit the band in 1985 to pursue a solo career which kicked off strongly with several impressive albums released between 1986 and 2000 before everything kind of petered out. There were a couple of single releases while Tolman beavered away in producing and occasional live dates including a short lived True West reunion. Now, 30 years after going it alone, Tolman has geared up again with an avowed intention to get back to recording and touring and his opening salvo is this handsome retrospective plucked from his back catalogue, 20 songs in all. It’s a welcome reminder for those who have followed him and an excellent introduction for anyone new to him as it follows his trajectory from grungy desert rock to synthesized LA country music.

Handsomely packaged with informative liner notes by Pat Thomas and Tolman himself the album avoids a strict chronological delivery of the songs but broadly speaking it opens with earlier and snarlier cuts before settling down somewhat into the late nineties before ending with latter day songs (although it closes with a 1994 number). This allows one to follow Tolman’s progress including his vocal delivery (he states in the liner notes that when recording the first album, “I was deathly afraid of singing – I’d never done it before).  Despite his misgivings, his voice is always intriguing, on the early songs perhaps betraying a tendency to delve into a punkish sneer (no bad thing) before settling into a fine approximation of Lou Reed and Lloyd Cole, a cool laidback narrative voice. Song writing wise however he springs fully formed from the womb and the compilation is a strong argument that he be considered in the same vein as contemporaries such as Steve Wynn, Chuck Prophet and Howe Gelb.

From his first album, Totem Poles & Glory Holes, Looking For An Angel is a punk like thrash of guitars with Tolman sneering away and the song not a million miles away from early Dream syndicate or Giant Sand. Down In Earthquake Town, represented here by two songs is richer in its textures with Planes, Trains And Automobiles a sublime mixture of exotic percussion and Spanish guitar as Tolman offers a flyblown tale of lost love with a wonderful twang in his semi-spoken delivery. By the time of Goodbye Joe (1990) Tolman is really at the top of his form with Marla Jane as exhilarating as Chuck Prophet’s recent offerings, a thunderous riff topped with some delicious guitar curls it stomps along with a fury. The opening lines to Blame It On The Girl (Ah fuck it, just throw it away…) lead into a spectacularly dynamic slice of rock’n’roll that beggar’s belief, the hip vocals and squalling guitars the equal of any Tom Petty song.

As he sashays into the nineties Tolman settles down somewhat and the brace of songs here find him fronting a melodic jangled rock as he becomes more comfortable with his voice. Something About A Rowboat and Sleepin’ All Alone do recall Lloyd Cole’s Commotions particularly with the vocal delivery but then again there’s the snarling That’s My Story And I’m Sticking To It which returns to the Paisley Underground days with organ jabs and tortured guitar  reminiscent of Green On Red. 1998’s City Lights album offers the delightful Monterey with its sweet delivery disguising the acerbic lyrics and the laid-back country rock of Salinas which again belies Tolman’s fine digs at the picture perfect scene one might expect. More up to date there’s one song from New Quadraphonic Highway, a visionary album that had Tolman experimenting with synthesizers  to create his notion of cosmic cowboy music as he amalgamated them with pedal steel (played by Tom Heyman). Most recently, there’s Los Angeles, a digital only single from 2013 which, after several years of inactivity, was the first blooming of his rebirth and which sweeps along with a multilayered guitar, organ and keyboards swirl and another song which should ring bells for anyone into any of the acts we’ve already mentioned.

The album closes with a 1994 song, Dry Your Pretty Eyes, a song that somewhat apes The Velvet Underground but is a fine encapsulation of Tolman’s talent as he has evolved into an excellent singer and an acute songwriter. As Pat Thomas, the author of the album’s liner notes remarked on the Paisley Underground, it was a “marriage of classic rock and punk” and on Dry Your Pretty Eyes Tolman proves that he can do that in spades.

Summing up, if you have any interest at all in Steve Wynn, Chuck Prophet et al then you have a duty to listen to this. Hopefully there’s more to come.

Website