The Week That Was, 3-6-2020
Getting back in the saddle for a week of terrific new records by Brandy Clark, Stephen Malkmus, Caroline Rose, Mandy Moore, Luke Haines & Peter Buck and Swamp Dogg.
After a month off, I'm getting back into the saddle. In subsequent newsletters, I will discuss my month away from music and catch up with what I missed, but since this week is filled with a bunch of terrific records, I thought I'd resume my newsletter with this exception new release Friday.
New Albums, 3-6-2020
Brandy Clark—Your Life Is A Record
Your Life Is A Record, the third album from Brandy Clark, feels familiar upon its first play, as if it's a record that you once loved but haven't heard in years. That's a compliment, a testament to Clark's impeccable writing and the warmth of Jay Joyce's production, which uses such country-soul classics as Dusty In Memphis as a template but winds up somewhat closer to the soft-focus country of the early 1980s. Either way, Your Life Is A Record seems like an artifact from a different era, an album that favors craft over fashion, and that's why it's so good. Clark is working within a milieu that emphasizes her skill at sculpting precise, deeply felt song but Joyce gives these finely-etched tunes a rich—but not ostentatious—rendering, while nudging the songwriter to deliver her best, most soulful singing to date.
Stephen Malkmus—Traditional Techniques
Traditional Techniques is the album Stephen Malkmus has hinted at for years, or maybe the album I've spent decades hoping he'd make: an eccentric psych-folk record that perhaps could've been released on Harvest Records at the dawn of the 1970s, before everything got too heavy. Malkmus isn't opposed to heavy jams--that instinct fuels much of the best music he's made with the Jicks--but he deliberately keeps things quiet, which isn't necessarily the same thing as placid. Working with Chris Funk (he previously helmed Sparkle Hard for the Jicks) and Matt Sweeney, Malkmus digs deep into hypnotizing drones. The songs ramble and meander, accentuating such accouterments as Sweeney's spidery guitar but there's also a surprising emotional undercurrent flowing through the album. The combination of hushed dynamics and winding interplay lends a sense of emotional immediacy, a feeling Malkmus generally has evaded over the years and one that is quite welcome after all this time.
Caroline Rose—Superstar
Listening to the audacious Superstar, it's difficult to discern Caroline Rose's Americana roots but they are there. They lie within the bones of the songs themselves, how they're tight, clever pop pastiches that intentionally blur the line separating satire and sincerity. This free-floating ambiguity is the alluring thing about Superstar: underneath its glassy, glossy surface--a sound that lands precisely between mainstream and indie-pop--there's a genuine unease with and attraction to the fashionable banalities of modern fame.
Mandy Moore—Silver Landings
Mandy Moore stepped away from music for a decade, grappling with a toxic marriage to Ryan Adams as she worked steadily as an actress. Her divorce from Adams happened in 2016, the same year she landed a role on NBC's This Is Us, a part that gave Moore her biggest success since Y2K. All of this is prelude to Silver Landings, a record that finds Moore reuniting with Mike Viola, the same producer who helmed Amanda Leigh in 2009. Amanda Leigh carried trace elements of AAA aspirations but Silver Landings floats exquisitely out of time, blending the sound of early '80s soft rock with modern sensibilities. A close listen to the lyrics finds no shortage of apparent soul-baring but Silver Landings isn't a stark confessional. It's a pop album, one filled with soft edges and gentle surfaces—a sound that suits Moore's quiet charisma. There isn't a moment on Silver Landings where she pushes too hard but it's the album that seems to fully capture her personality, balancing her love of classic pop with a tender heart.
Luke Haines & Peter Buck—Beat Poetry For Survivalists
It's a pairing that's unexpected yet makes sense. Luke Haines is an auteurist crank who gradually retreated to his own island and Peter Buck has spent the years after R.E.M. collaborating with the kinds of rockers who called '80s college rock as a kind of spiritual home. Unlike Buck's riotous solo LPs, Beat Poetry For Survivalists isn't a time machine to 1985. Haines spends the entirety of the record reckoning with the wreckage of the modern world, making callbacks to the past not out of a sense of fuzzy nostalgia but cantankerous cynicism; his disdain is palpable and pungent. Buck is an ideal foil for Haines, giving him plenty of gnarly noise but also bruised sensitivity. It's
Swamp Dogg—Sorry You Couldn't Make It
Left turns are commonplace in Swamp Dogg's career, still the shift from the electronic-drenched 2018's Love, Loss, And Auto-Tune to the country-soul of Sorry You Couldn't Make It can cause whiplash. Sorry You Couldn't Make It isn't a departure so much as it is a return. Swamp Dogg got his first hit when Johnny Paycheck took "She's All I Got" to the top of the charts in 1971, a connection made plain by a new version of the tune on Sorry. The rest of the record is filled with tunes that make worthy companions, ranging from the funky protest "Family Pain" to the churchy slow-burner "I'd Rather Be Your Used To Be," but the songs that grab the attention are two duets with John Prine. The two mavericks may make for odd partners but they have an easy, amiable chemistry that's pretty hard to resist.