Pumping on Your Stereo, 9-14-2023

Olivia Rodrigo, Fleetwood Mac Rumours Live, Steve Miller Band Joker at 50, Low Cut Connie, Tyler Childers and more

Olivia Rodrigo—Guts (2023)

Olivia Rodrigo snarls "I know my age and I act like it" on "all-american bitch," the song that opens Guts, her second full-length album. Her age at the time of release is 20, an ideal age to find the kind of gnarled punk-pop she sings on "all-american bitch" and elsewhere on Guts to be cathartic--a belief that's essentially self-fulfilling, lending her rock potency that gives her hooks punch. Born too late to experience the '90s alt-rock boom firsthand, she instead treats the aural textures and distortion as a shared language to convey anger, sadness or even a withering joke. Born just in time to find crawling tone poems meaningful, Rodrigo tends to veer toward the monochromatic on her ballads; there, her emphasis is on lyrics, although the lovely candences of "lacy" shows she can craft an elegant melody. Like so many pop albums, the fast ones provide a gateway to the slow ones, letting them reveal their quieter secrets, yet even after those softer numbers come into focus what's marvelous about Guts is that the pop tunes aren't merely hooky in melody but execution: her deadpan delivery on "bad idea right?" wrings every bit of humor out of the song. That's all down to Rodrigo's charisma which is how it should be on terrific pop/rock album, which Guts certainly is: it makes the familiar seem fresh through melodic inventiveness and sheer force of personality. 

Low Cut Connie—Art Dealers (2023)

Once scrappy rock & roll outsiders, Low Cut Connie—specifically Adam Weiner, the singer/songwriter who has been the band's constant over the years—are now survivors, a character trait highlighted by Weiner's response to the pandemic. Keeping the party alive virtually, Weiner hosted a series of concerts and interviews from his Philadelphia home, a tactic that kept the restless entertainer engaged while also helping to illustrate how he viewed his own band as part of a lineage that stretches all the way back to rock & roll's big bang in the 1950s. Art Dealers, the first studio album from Low Cut Connie's since 2020's Private Lives, belongs within that continuum but unlike such early records as Hi Honey, there isn't a sense of abandon to the rockers: there's a melancholy tinge that comes to the surface on "The Party's Over," a spare elegy to that's now gone. Weiner might be singing about the New York of the 1970s and 1980s, a place where the city teemed with seedy, creative types that closed the chasm between the underground and the mainstream, or he could be mourning a recent loss of innocence. Ending the album on that particular wistful note pulls the rest of Art Dealers into focus, underscoring how Weiner is celebrating and advocating for people who happily and purposefully live their lives on the margins. His clear-eyed but affectionate empathy gives Art Dealers considerable emotional resonance.  

My review for Allmusic. 

Fleetwood Mac—Rumours Live (2023, original recording 1977)

A document of a concert Fleetwood Mac gave at Inglewood's Great Western Forum on August 29, 1977, Rumours Live captures the band part way through their supporting tour for their '77 blockbuster. Well on their way to becoming superstars, Fleetwood Mac still have some rough edges, particularly in how the Peter Green chestnut "Oh Well" is shoehorned into the proceedings, yet the group often sounds exhilarating: they sound as if they've just realized the power of what they've created but they're still not quite sure how to harness that sound. For a group that became a well-oiled machine, such slight scuffed edges are quite welcome to hear. 

Tyler Childers—Rustin' in the Rain (2023)

Even shorter than the 40-minute Guts, Rustin' in the Rain plays like a record that's been kicking around since the early 1970s. Maybe that's due to Tyler Childers' arranging the album around the notion of pitching songs to Elvis Presley, maybe that's due to the presence of Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through the Night," which was seemingly on every other country LP during those years, but Rustin' the Rain is as lean and efficient as any other high-octane half-hour of progressive country from the last half century. The difference is, Childers never seems to pander to antiquated notions of outlaw: he's drawing upon sounds he likes not for fashion but because they're how he can tell the stories he wants to spin. 

My review for Allmusic

Steve Miller Band—J50: The Evolution of the Joker (2023, original recordings 1972-1973)

Give Steve Miller credit for this: J50: The Evolution of the Joker isn't a conventional deluxe edition. He doesn't tack a bunch of bonus tracks onto the end of a remastered version of the record you know and love, he leads the listener on a sonic journey of how he became the Joker, narrating the tale as it pairs early versions, live takes and alternates with the finished album tracks that remained staples on classic rock radio. It's an inventive spin on deluxe edition that does heighten the appreciation for the cool, slick surfaces of the final product—although it should be noted that the complete album as released in 1973 is not included in this set—but it's hard to shake the feeling that you're listening to an extended Westwood One Radio special. 

The Rolling Stones—"Angry" (2023)

It helps to hear "Angry" without the video where Sydney Sweeney is car dancing on Sunset as if it was the glory days of Bridges to Babylon: the visuals feel older than the song itself. "Angry" isn't prime Stones--it's not even as evocative as "Living in a Ghost Town," the spectral tune they released at the start of the pandemic--but it's likable enough, driven more by Mick Jagger's eagerness than the flurry of open-chord riffs from Keith and Ronnie. 

Ashley McBryde—The Devil I Know (2023)

A slick, crowd-pleasing effort that makes me miss the odd contours of last year's Ashley McBryde Presents Lindeville.

My Allmusic review

Brothers Osborne—Brothers Osborne (2023)

The iconoclastic country duo devises an alternate reality where disco plays as big a role in modern country as outlaw swagger. It's a lot of fun.

My Allmusic review

A Song for Leon: A Tribute to Leon Russell (2023)

It does what a tribute album needs to do: it's good enough to make the unconverted seek out the originals. I'm particularly fond of the Margo Price, Durand Jones & the Indications, and Hiss Golden Messenger tracks, happy that Nathaniel Rateliff didn't flatten "Tight Rope." 

My Allmusic review

50 Greatest Videos of All Time

This week's VMAs provide an opportunity to look back at the greatest videos of all time, which I did for the AV Club. As with any list, I'm second guessing some of my the choices but not my pick for number one.