This column is of old men: Eric Bachmann, Lenny Kravitz, Low, Paul Simon, Paul McCartney.
Eric
Bachmann – No Recover (Merge)
For the last two
decades, Eric Bachmann has quietly been amassing one of the greatest songbooks
in modern American music—with the emphasis on “quietly,” because barely anyone
knows who he is, whether he’s performing as Crooked Fingers or, more recently,
under his own name. That, despite the fact that “Mercy,” a song from his 2016 self-titled album, is an essential balm in crazy times that should be on the
playlists of everyone who gets panic attacks when they read the news.
Earlier this year
Bachmann’s friend—and occasional employer—Neko Case covered his 2005 duet
“Sleep All Summer” on her new album, Hell-On (St. Vincent also did a version
with The National in 2009), which hopefully sent some people back to find out
who her duet partner is.
No Recover is not
going to be the album that suddenly changes Bachmann’s profile: it’s a gentle,
lilting listen based on his finger-picked acoustic guitar playing and
atmospheric backing vocals. The title song closes with the refrain, “Ain’t it
good to feel the sun on your skin,” which repeats like lapping waves on a shore
at sunset—an image that also happens to be on the cover of the album. But the
title phrase, “No Recover,” which alternates with the aforementioned refrain,
illustrates the dichotomy at the heart of so much of Bachmann’s work: life is
full of trauma that will scar you for life, and yet the precious moments of
beauty are what make life worth living.
Nothing here is as
heart-wrenching, however, as the closing track, on which Bachmann, who recently
became a first-time father, sings, “When your
dreams fall through / I'll be there for you … And when I’m dead and gone / as
you carry on / when your dreams come true / you’ll know what to do." (Sept.
28)
Stream:
“Jaded Lover, Shady Drifter,” “Murmuration Song,” "No Recover"
Lenny
Kravitz – Raise Vibration (Roxie/Sony)
This
summer, Lenny Kravitz released two of his funkiest singles in many a moon:
“Low” and “It’s Enough,” both of which rode slinky grooves and echoed the best
Michael Jackson and Curtis Mayfield singles—not to mention Kravitz’s own
classic “It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over.” If that’s the kind of vibe he was going
to explore on his new album, then maybe it was time to start paying attention
again.
And
it was. Raise Vibration is everything Kravitz does best: a pastiche of
classic funk, soul, rock and pop. This time out he doesn’t seem to have his aim
as centred on the pop charts—it’s inexplicable why he wouldn’t release the
surefire hit “5 More Days Til Summer” as a single earlier this year. Instead, Raise Vibration sounds like Kravitz just doing whatever the heck he wants, including
a sample of a powwow group at the end of the title track. There’s even a
psychedelic funk-folk ballad about Johnny Cash comforting him after the death
of Kravitz’s mother—which, as one can imagine, doesn’t really work lyrically, to
say the least, even after you find out it’s based on a true story. But the
music is still lovely, and if that’s the worst track here, then Kravitz is
doing just fine.
The
world around him, however, is not doing fine at all: hence the litany of
injustices in “It’s Enough,” and the chorus of “Who Really Are the Monsters?”: “The
war won’t stop as long as we keep dropping bombs.” (Sept. 28)
Stream:
“It’s Enough,” “Raise Vibration,” “Who Really Are the Monsters?”
Low – Double Negative (Sub Pop)
There
was once a time, in this band’s 25-year career, when their albums were
interchangeable, where a listener knew exactly what they were getting when they
put on a Low album: dead-slow tempos, eerie harmonies between husband and wife
Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, delicate guitar and gently brushed drums. Then
came 2005’s The Great Destroyer, which roared and exploded with squalls of
feedback and even had uptempo pop songs, as well as two songs later covered by
Robert Plant. Since then, however, Low have pulled back and redefined
themselves continually with electronics and confounding expectations however
they could.
So it
shouldn’t be entirely surprising that Double Negative is like nothing else in
the Low catalogue, full of granular electronic distortion that sounds like old
Kraftwerk or Laurie Anderson records through a transistor radio tuned to a
station of static. Those harmonies are still there, and at times even sound
like an opiated Bee Gees (“Fly”). The overall effect is, incongruously, simultaneously
soothing and downright disturbing. It is both a balm and a bomb—either a
hissing wick trapped in an eternal state of tension, or the sound of the
remnants after an explosion.
Whatever
it is, it sounds the way 2018 feels. (Sept. 14)
Stream: “Always Up,” “Always
Trying to Work It Out,” “Dancing and Fire”
Paul
McCartney – Egypt Station (Capitol)
Paul
McCartney wants to be heard. He’s not going quietly. He’s working every media
angle: carpool karaoke with James Corden, telling scandalous stories to GQ,
sitting down for a lengthy chat with podcaster Marc Maron. All anyone wants to
talk about, of course, is the Beatles.
But
wait! There’s a new McCartney record. And it’s good. As are many (though not
all) of his solo records, not that many people have noticed since the early
’80s. McCartney has never wanted to rest on his laurels, and he’s certainly not
doing so here. And unlike most people his age—he’s 76—he doesn’t sound like
he’s trying *too* hard to fit in to current trends—although he does sound like
he’s writing some of these songs for stadiums to sing (see: “People Want
Peace”). The living legend is a naturally curious person, so much of this
record sounds as au courant as any record by Katy Perry (“Fuh You”) or Gorillaz
(“Back in Brazil”) or Jack White (“Come On to Me”), while plenty of tracks
could have come from any McCartney record of the last 40 years (“I Don’t Know,”
“Happy With You”). For fans of his Band on the Run-era, suite-length
weirdness, tracks like “Caesar Rock” and “Despite Repeated Warnings” scratch an
essential itch.
It’s
always been true that McCartney’s biggest competitor is his own back catalogue.
Surely we don’t have to wait for the man to disappear completely before
appreciating the breadth of his solo career, and not just through decades of
hindsight. (Sept. 14)
Stream: “Happy With You,” “Who Cares,” “Hunt You Down
Naked”
Paul
Simon – In the Blue Light (Legacy/Sony)
Last
year, Paul Simon finally sat down with a biographer for an eponymous book
subtitled The Life. Paul Simon recently played the final show of
his final tour. Now, Paul Simon has released what he tells us will be his final
album.
“I’m
finished writing music,” he told NPR. After completing 2016’s underappreciated Stranger to Stranger album (his best record in 25 years, to this critic’s
ears), he says, “I literally felt like a switch clicked and said, ‘I’m
finished.’’
That’s
why In the Blue Light finds Simon recasting earlier songs—though not the ones
you might be hoping to hear. These are deep cuts, many from albums that never
got much play (like 2000’s You’re the One). There’s nothing from Graceland here. In
fact, there’s only one track here that has ever made a greatest-hits comp—and
“Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War” was never what
anyone considered to be a hit.
In
the Blue Light is not a collection of songs about mortality or finality of any
kind; these tracks seem to be selected simply because Simon wanted to shine a
little more light on them. In some cases, he wanted to explore different
musical terrain than the original, like 1990’s “Can’t Run But,” originally
driven by Brazilian percussion, now recast for the string section yMusic, in an
arrangement by The National’s Bryce Dessner. Simon has always employed jazz
players, but here he gets some real heavyweights: drummer Jack DeJohnette,
guitarist Bill Frisell, and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis; the latter leads a
rollicking and raw New Orleans take on the 2000 song “Pigs, Sheep and Wolves,”
while pianist Sullivan Fortner transforms 1975’s “Some Folks’ Lives Roll
Easy.”
The only other artist
of Simon’s generation to recast their own songbook in this way is Joni
Mitchell, who similarly unearthed overlooked tracks, largely from later in her
career, for reinterpretation on 2002’s Travelogue. For both artists, it’s a
way of looking backwards and forward at the same time. At the time, Mitchell
declared Travelogue her final album. Five years later, inspired by an
adaptation of her work by the Alberta Ballet, she wrote 10 new songs. If anyone
from the Alberta Ballet is reading this, you might want to give Paul Simon a
call in a few years and see what he says. Never say never again. (Sept. 7)
Stream: "Can't Run But," "Some Folks'
Lives Run Easy," "Pigs, Sheep and Wolves"
