Maybe it’s because they recorded tough R&B, raunchy blues, and wildcat rockabilly in a city where straight-line honky-tonkers ruled the Nashville nest. Or maybe it’s because its staggering roster of talent never cracked the pop charts. Whatever the reason, Excello Records and its parent company Nashboro have somehow slid through…
There was something in his eyes, Augustus Pablo’s inevitably reefer-blurred eyes, that was alternately haunting and sad, chilling and beautiful. In the numerous photos of the dub innovator that grace the slew of albums released during his life (which ended May 17 at the age of 46 after a bout…
Juan-Carlos Formell Songs from a Little Blue House (Wicklow) This isn’t your father’s son. It isn’t Juan-Carlos Formell’s father’s son, either. On Songs from a Little Blue House, Juan-Carlos takes the kind of wide departure from the traditional Cuban son, charanga, and “feeling” genres that daddy Juan Formell probably never…
Faust Ravvivando (Klangbad) For aficionados of the genre known as Krautrock, Faust is a big deal. A style that flourished in the early ’70s, Krautrock was an attempt by (mostly) German artists to fuse two major streams of twentieth-century music: the extremely advanced classical sound of Stockhausen and the extremely…
In the summer of 1953, a shy Memphis teenager steals up enough courage to go into a local recording studio, pays eight dollars and twenty-five cents, and, accompanied only by his rudimentary guitar playing, cuts two ballads: the pop standard “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin,” a silken…
Andre Williams & the Sadies Red Dirt (Bloodshot) Considering that he’s spent the past 40 years recording everything from bizarro doo-wop and horny R&B to sleazy funk and punked-up blues, it’s hardly surprising that Motor City madman Andre Williams decided to make a country album. And it’s a great one…
Kelly Willis What I Deserve (Rykodisc) After failing to find much of an audience for her four fine releases from the Nineties — beginning with 1990’s Well-Traveled Love on MCA and concluding with the 1996 A&M EP Fading Fast — honky-tonk chanteuse Kelly Willis was about ready to call the…
Lester Bowie Brass Fantasy The Odyssey of Funk & Popular Music (Atlantic) William Hooker The Distance Between Us (Knitting Factory) Delightfully audacious in both concept and execution, the new albums by revered jazz avant-gardists Lester Bowie and William Hooker are just the kind of screwball longplayers that are anathema for…
They’ve been in self-parody mode for so long it’s safe to write them off these days, but give credit to the Cramps for this: They’ve steered numerous punk kids and hipsters toward some of the greatest lost classics in the pantheon of trashy rock, bizarro rockabilly, and fuzzy garage stomps…
The Beta Band The Three E.P.s (Astralwerks) It struck me as odd to discover that Britain’s hottest new “techno” act, the Beta Band (in the States they’re on Astralwerks, a label shared by the Chemical Brothers, Air, and many other hip Euro-techno acts), actually sounds more like an older British…
Given the subgenre’s infatuation with honky-tonk fatalism and singer/songwriter angst, it’s no wonder the roots rockers who populate the landscape of altcountry are such a sad, mopey, inward-thinking bunch. Few of the ironically dubbed “No Depression” crew, however, have expanded the vocabulary of depressive expoundings with the lyrical flair and…
Original Soundtrack Louie Bluie (Arhoolie) With more and more prewar black and white string-band music hitting the reissue bins, from 1997’s Anthology of American Folk Music to the Yazoo label’s marvelous series of mountain-music collections, it’s fitting that Louie Bluie has finally been restored to the racks. Originally issued in…
Golden Smog Weird Tales (Rykodisc) Lost in the shuffle of last year’s best-album lists was this stellar October effort. It’s fitting that Weird Tales came out just before Halloween, not just because of the spooky title, but because Golden Smog is something of a Frankenstein’s monster, cobbled from pieces of…
Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs Pharaohization! The Best of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs (Rhino) “One, two … one, two, tres, quatro!” It’s one of the greatest, if not the greatest, count-off in rock- and-roll history, an intro so nutty that following it with equally nutty music would…
The Pine Valley Cosmonauts The Pine Valley Cosmonauts Salute the Majesty of Bob Wills (Bloodshot) Sure, the tribute album is a dead dog. But as long as record labels large and small are gonna keep trying to revive the damn thing, here’s hoping they come off as well as this…
Derek Trucks Band Out of the Madness (House of Blues Records) In the mid-Eighties, a handsome Texan named Charlie Sexton pioneered an unlikely musical trend: the teen-aged blues guitar hero. Renowned throughout the Longhorn State for his uncanny grasp of classic rock and R&B guitar techniques, Sexton signed with a…
Marilyn Manson Mechanical Animals (Interscope) Some South Florida clubgoers will remember the days when Marilyn Manson was still known as Brian Warner, the lanky, insecure kid from Fort Lauderdale. Local music fans saw the meek suburbanite create a monster when he booked his act, Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids,…
For a while back in the mid-Sixties, it seemed like every city in the United States had one: a group of four or five guys so enamored of the reworkings of American rock and R&B by the British Invasion’s front line that they had to take a stab at it…
Riley “B.B.” King presides so dominantly over the past and present of modern blues that his influence, innovations, and massive talents are easily taken for granted, and at worst overlooked. The most visible and commercially successful blues artist of all time, King has practically always been within earshot and eyesight,…
Tommy Shaw 7 Deadly Zens (CMC International) Night Ranger Seven (CMC International) Former Styx guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw may have been rockin’ the Paradise while Night Ranger was still dreaming of a bar tab and enough gas money to reach their next gig, but the two bands’ careers have become increasingly…
On her great but not-quite-brilliant 1993 debut Exile in Guyville, Liz Phair sang in “Fuck and Run” of the longing for “the kind of guy who makes love ’cause he’s in it.” A year later, on the good but not-quite-great Whip-Smart, she yearned to “Go West,” hoping to find something…
The Jesus and Mary Chain Munki (Sub Pop) After the listless, largely acoustic misfire Stoned and Dethroned, the Jesus and Mary Chain returns four years later with Munki, a near-perfect mix of Jim and William Reid’s long-standing love of gooey pop melodies, boho-chic cynicism, and shrieking, overdriven guitars. Their first…
