Tinariwen feature

For a band of nomads – a literal band of nomads – to make a musical impact on Western ears is an unusual achievement. Maybe such a group constitutes a curious aside on your favorite world music show, or garner a tiny blog mention as the preferred obscure listening habit of your favorite indie musician, but to be signed to the same label as Tom Waits and Nick Cave? To embark on a tour that takes them to rock clubs across the U.S.? That’s not just unusual, that’s nearly unprecedented.

But that’s exactly what’s happened with Tinariwen, a group born in the sands of Northern Africa that has exploded beyond the typical constraints of world music festivals and into a legitimate underground rock & roll phenomenon. One could argue that this newfound attention is due to the fact that Tinariwen’s compelling back story – they’re a loose collective of Malian musicians who were forced into Libyan refugee camps while their country was at war in the late ’70s – has helped them garner this newfound attention, but a story only goes so far.

The group’s raw, blues-flecked and dirty guitar sounds instantly resonate with Western audiences raised on rock. The guitarists’ circular, trance-like melodies are as insistent as they are inviting, as foreign as they are familiar. When threaded through the Tuareg rhythms and vocals that define the music of these Saharan nomads, the combination is deeply affecting and resonant, and not a little bit punk rock. Unlike other world musicians who have evolved over time to accommodate the ears of those in Europe and America, Tinariwen has remained true to their original sound, if not their ad-hoc roots.

“We always do what we want. In the ’80s, we were not a professional band, we were a collective of musicians who used to perform together for some traditional events,” explains lead guitarist Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, who helped found the group while a refugee in Libya. “There was no planning, no touring. We were recording tapes in some radios and people shared our music with tapes. [But] from the beginning of 2000, we became more professional; we hired a manager, an agent and so on. The music didn’t really change, though. We just needed to adapt it for a record.”

That newfound professionalism yielded results quickly, and in 2001, Tinariwen headlined the Festival in the Desert in Mali, which began that year as a celebration of traditional Tuareg culture, but would quickly grow into a massive annual event thanks to their popularity. (The 2003 edition featured Robert Plant and was documented in the excellentFestival in the Desert film.) This popularity soon spread to European audiences and, over the years, the group has gone on to play festivals like Coachella, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Glastonbury and others. For a group playing semi-traditional music in a language that few Westerners speak, this is a major feat, but it’s also been frustrating for Alhabib and the rest of Tinariwen, since so much of their music is message-based, touching on both broad issues of freedom and more overtly political themes.

“We try to offer translation in the CD’s booklet [and on] our website for people interested,” Alhabib says. “But I think that first, this is our special camel groove and this trance feeling that people love; they can enter in the meanings later.”

Those meanings, though, are still deeply important to Tinariwen, especially in these days of the Arab Spring.

“We are really happy about what [has] happened in the Arabic countries these days,” Alhabib says. “Libya is a more complex situation as [deceased Libyan dictator Moammar] Gadhafi had some relationship with Eastern governments and West African politics. A lot of people died also, and a lot of our people needed to leave Libya and have no lands to leave.” But, he adds, “Freedom is always what we were looking for as nomadic people.”

First appeared Nov. 3, 2011 in Orlando Weekly.

The Clowns (Fellini) Blu-ray review

The tiresome “ohmygod, clowns are so creepy” trope is about as worn-out as the holes in the big, floppy shoes one associates with these face-painted goofballs, but watching The Clowns, one begins to understand that the meme is rooted in truth. Yes, this is a G-rated, made-for-TV look at clowns, but it’s also one written and directed by Federico Fellini, which means you’re gonna get, to quote the box, a “sex-crazed hobo, a midget nun [and] a mutilated Mussolini disciple.” The 1970 film is making its Blu-ray debut and, as with all Fellini works, the crisp resolution adds hugely to the experience, bringing spectacular contrast and color saturation to the director’s fever-dream set pieces. Of particular note here is the inclusion of a beautiful (if small) 50-page booklet filled with Fellini’s production notes and sketches. (available now)

Special Features: Fellini short, visual essay, booklet

Originally appeared October 20, 2011 in Orlando Weekly.

Wanda Jackson concert preview

Think of the coolest rock & roll icon. No matter what visage just popped up in your mind, Wanda Jackson is cooler. Not only is she an original rock & roller who made her name on bills with Elvis Presley (who was one of her biggest champions), and not only was she an original female badass, delivering her growling, proto- feminist take on rockabilly into a genre dominated by men, but Wanda Jackson still does all of those things to this day, more than a half-century after debuting. Although for a while her badassery was masked in sparkly gowns and twangy delivery (a la Loretta Lynn), Jackson has rekindled her “Mean Mean Man” vibe, thanks to a recent collaboration with Jack White.

First appeared Oct. 13, 2011 in Orlando Weekly.

Gaby Moreno feature

Odds are pretty good that you’ve heard a song by Gaby Moreno before. The L.A.-based singer-songwriter’s work received early attention from Nic Harcourt, NPR and the New York Times, and in 2006 she won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. But that’s not why you’ve heard her.

You’ve heard her because she wrote the theme song to NBC’s Parks and Recreation. That song – 30 seconds of jaunty, life-affirming, earworm perfection – sounds nothing like any of Moreno’s other songs, which, for one thing, have words.

“I’m not even singing in it,” laughs Moreno about theParks and Rec theme song. “I don’t think people know who I am because of it. The credits at the end roll by so quickly that nobody probably even sees my name. I think if people know who I am, they know me for my music, and then they find out that I wrote that … and they’re surprised.”

Moreno is probably surprised herself. Although she’d had some experience with her music appearing on television previously – two songs from her first album, “Greenhorne Man” and “Little Sorrow,” found their way onto shows likeKourtney & Khloe Take Miami and Ghost Whisperer – those were actually songs that reflected her musical style. ForParks and Rec, that was not the case at all.

“I got an email that went out to a bunch of different people that this show was looking for a theme song. I had a description of the show … so I got my guitar and came up with a little ditty, but it was too folky. So I brought it over to my friend Vincent Jones, and we made it sound like an orchestral arrangement. We figured it was a total long shot, but then we got the call. The show was, I think, two weeks away from premiering. It was pretty surreal.”

Having moved to L.A. from Guatemala City when she was 20 (“I had my eyes set on doing something more international, and I was singing in English, so the obvious choice was to head to L.A.,” she says), Moreno has managed to be both self-sufficient and blessed with good fortune.

Her first album was praised by Harcourt and played on his influential “Morning Becomes Eclectic” radio show, and her performances, which range from intimate acoustic-on-a-stool shows to full-band rock concerts, have earned her plaudits from national media outlets.

However, instead of taking the traditional path from the coffeehouse to a record label, Moreno has released both of her albums on her own. While this meant that her debut, 2008’s Still the Unknown, was a stripped-down affair, it also meant that she was able to explore and expand her sound on her latest disc, this year’s Illustrated Songs.

“The first record, I did it basically in a living room,” Moreno says. “I didn’t have a lot of money and was basically just getting together with friends to jam. It’s very organic and very raw. But for the second record, I was able to go into a studio and make a bigger production out of it. I could have horns, I could have strings … I just wanted the recording to be bigger.”

First appeared October 6, 2011 in Orlando Weekly.

Jens Lekman: An Argument with Myself CD review

 

(7 out of 10)

It’s understandable that lots of folks like to draw parallels between the music of Jens Lekman and, say, Morrissey or Belle & Sebastian. Why? Because there are a whole lot of similarities there, to be sure. But more than either of those two indie mainstays, the artist that Lekman most reminds this writer of is Steely Dan. This is not because Lekman’s voice is reminiscent of Donald Fagen’s, or that his arrangements evoke fern-bar coke binges in the same way that Steely Dan’s does. No, it’s because, more than anything else, Jens Lekman’s music is uncannily precise. His lyrics (florid, yet specific) and his music (expansive, yet tightly-wound) combine to make songs that unspool themselves in a way that’s rooted in a precision that makes it clinically effective, while being somewhat emotionally detached—much like the entirety of Aja.

That’s not to say Lekman doesn’t know how to have fun; in fact, this EP’s opening track comes off like a seriously goofy flight of lyrical fancy. But while the title track has a from-the-hip vibe—”fuck you, no you fuck you”—Lekman’s dense construction of words and sounds begs for closer inspection; he’s telling a story and he really wants you to pay attention. And, for the most part, An Argument With Myself is definitely worthy of a closer look. Although it only clocks in at 17 minutes, this five-song EP is a pleasantly jumbled affair that shows Lekman’s lyrical facility continues to improve, while his stylistic palette continues to broaden; he has moved well beyond the simple, twee clone-work of his earliest releases. Little filigrees of baroque pop decorate stiff, self-conscious funk (“New Directions”), while gently warm acoustic numbers like “Waiting for Kirsten” are rendered into slow-burning, handclap-ready tunes.

First appeared Sept. 20, 2011 in Paste.

R.E.M. – Life’s Rich Pageant 25th Anniversary Edition CD review

(7 out of 10)

For many people, Life’s Rich Pageant is the last “real” R.E.M. record.

Although it shines a giant and unmistakable signal toward the direct and poppy approach the band would undertake on their next few albums, Pageant still retains the mumbles of Murmur, the jangles ofReckoning, and the rustic tones of Fables of the Reconstruction. But it bundles all those things in a cheerful and expansive sound—courtesy of producer Don Gehman, best known for his work with John Mellencamp—and, at the time, it seemed less like a definitive change in direction than just another example of R.E.M. trying a sound on for size.

Yet, this was the record that saw the band metastasize from the biggest band on the college-rock scene into a band that was on their way to becoming one of the biggest rock bands on the planet. This reissue offers an appropriately beefy remastering job, one that highlights the sinewy strength of tracks like “Hyena” and “Begin the Begin,” but doesn’t quite do justice to the more gentle textures of “Swan Swan H,” a song that shouldn’t give you goosebumps 25 years later, but does. The bonus tracks here, like those on last year’s reissue of Fables of the Reconstruction, are all demo versions, including quite a few (unremarkable) songs that didn’t make the album.

First appeared July 13, 2011 in Paste.

Leslie (Charleston, SC band) feature

Swamp boogie

South Carolina rockers Leslie look beyond the South

You’ve heard it before: A bunch of longhaired boys from the low country of South Carolina take off into the swamps to write some rock & roll songs. But this is 2011, and the members of Leslie aren’t from Beaufort or McClellanville, but from that shining, historic jewel of genteel propriety: Charleston, a city that’s home to far more shenanigan-seeking frat-boys and trust-funders than it is to shit-kicking good ol’ boys. It’s the sort of place where Jack Johnson and pink oxford shirts reign supreme, and it’s one of the last places in the South where classic-rock cowbells 
and non-ironic lyrics about “laying my burden down” would seem to be welcomed with anything beyond polite dismissal.

“I think we sometimes definitely find it hard to fit into the local scene,” says Leslie guitarist-vocalist Sadler Vaden. “I know that we are respected in the Charleston scene for what we do. We try to help everyone out as much as possible. It’s not a huge ‘rock’ town, in that there aren’t a ton of rock & roll bands around, but that doesn’t take away from how much talent is there. But we try to not just base everything we do on our popularity in Charleston. It’s where we live and we’ll always love it, but we have our sights set on the rest of the country and, hopefully, internationally.”

The fact that Leslie has its sights set beyond the Holy City is a testament to the trio’s effectiveness on stage; this isn’t a band content to merely work the boards in local taverns for friendly applause and free beer. To the contrary, Leslie is a band that works hard to push their take on accessible classic rock & roll in front of new audiences as often as possible. Here in Orlando, for example, the band has quickly evolved from an unknown opener playing to bartenders, soundboard operators and the occasional music critic to a headliner capable of getting stoic hipsters and inveterate rock fans shaking their asses side by side.

That level of effort and growth is apparent on the trio’s latest album, Lord, Have Mercy. Taking the somewhat unusual step of heading out to a “solar-powered swamp house in the Echaw Swamp” just outside of the Francis Marion National Forest, Leslie went for a semi-literal twist on the concept of woodshedding.

“That was more of us getting together and hanging out,” Vaden says. “No pressure … write some words down, play some guitar. It helped us really focus and kind of get away from the life of being home. It was very peaceful.”

Despite that environment, the musical mindset that Leslie emerged with from the swamp was anything but quiet. After committing the songs to two-inch tape at Ardent Studios in Memphis, the band emerged with an album that channels the strength of its live set, but with a more polished and expansive approach. And even though the band has just wrapped their debut album, their eyes are already on their next recordings. And, of course, getting out on the road.

“We’ve already started writing for our next record and we’re very excited,” Vaden says. “Lord, Have Mercy has a certain sound and direction, and I feel that it was something that we needed to get off our chest. The newer stuff is a little more grungy.

“We just love everything about rock music and we want to be able to entertain our audience to the fullest [on] every album and every night.”

First appeared June 30, 2011 in Orlando Weekly.