TRAiPSiNG THRU the AiSLES: add these to your basket
October 28, 2024
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
Despite what you might've heard, and despite the fact that longstanding San Franciscan Chuck Prophet collaborates with Qiensave, a cumbia act from Salinas, Wake the Dead isn't a cumbia album. Prophet's interest in cumbia was fostered during the pandemic, and over the long ordeal of a cancer treatment. Prophet has spoken of his concern for cultural appropriation in interviews, but was reassured by Black Pumas' Adrian Quesada that his only focus should be making good music as opposed to making correct music. Wake the Dead includes Latin influences, but it sounds like a Chuck Prophet record. Fact is, a quick visit to Qiensave's website will be enough to confirm that Wake the Dead is a stylistic experiment for both acts. Working with co-producers Matt Winegar and Brad Jones, Prophet's arrangements are characteristically lean and direct, with most Latin influences appearing in rhythms and percussion. With its melodic organ and accordion, "Sugar Into Water" sounds like a border-inflected Doug Sahm cut: We can take a song / And turn it into gold. That accordion is joined by psychedelic guitar on the album's title track, with the singer's confident guarantee: Gonna wake the dead / Get them on their feet. Much of Wake the Dead seems understandably concerned with issues of mortality and the tenuous nature of time. "Same Old Crime" rocks like a Los Lobos number, blending Latin and reggae rhythms: I went to see the father / I gave him a talking to / I made a wish one time / I crossed myself and you came true. Framed by a tight electric guitar line, the percussive "First Came the Thunder" reads like a nursery rhyme: First came the thunder / Then came the rain / Then there was sunshine / Now it all feels the same. On Wake the Dead, Chuck Prophet and his band are still just a pack of friends playing great music in the garage, not unlike when Prophet and Dan Stuart were collaborating in Green On Read so many years ago. "One Lie For Me, One For You" adds an early rock doo-wop influence to its swaying melody, with a bridge constructed of bells and strings, and the memorable "Red Sky Night" even explores touches of California jazz and light sha-la-la's on the chorus. On the closer, Chuck Prophet demonstrates a profoundly simple understanding achieved by facing such adversity: It's a good day to shame the devil / Good day to let it all ride / It's a good day to be alive. We would add: It's a good day to listen to Chuck Prophet!
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As Bailey Bigger entered the scene, over the space of EPs, singles, and finally on Coyote Red, her 2022 debut full-length, the Charleston songwriter was presented as an acoustic country-folk artist with a gentle way with a vocal. Produced again by Memphis resident Mark Edgar Stuart, Bigger's second LP allows for a somewhat more expansive musical embrace. Resurrection Fern offers two runs through the title track, one a hushed piano folk and the second (Marsh Girl Version) adding full band instrumentation. The song, exploring baptism, death, resurrection, conjures a wholly different spirit from one rendition to the next: The whisper of the delta tells me secrets she has on me / And I'd kill to know the answer to just one of the questions that I seek. Like Haley Heynderickx, Bigger recognizes herself in the rhythms of the natural world, expressing her thoughts in a sensual, earthy poetry. Bigger's new collection reflects the year that the songwriter spent living in the rural outskirts of the Arkansas delta and the coastal marshes of South Carolina. That swampiness is felt on songs like "White Dog". Carried by a walking bassline and vibes, hijacked by a blunt electric guitar, the writer suggests a women in nature/nature in women connection: Let me drink from the river / Let me shape shift in her. Adding banjo and a plaintive musical saw, Biggers calls "Witches and Warlocks" her folk fever dream, recalling Neko Case's primal strength: The cigarettes on your breath / Are like memories to my mind, of another place, another time / Somewhere I wish we could stay. Biggers and Stuart take a minimalist approach to Resurrection Fern, building primarily acoustic, largely spacious arrangements. "Prayer Gossip" features a classic folk setting, including fingerpicked acoustic, fiddle, and Richard Ford's pedal steel. The midtempo "Nancy Jo" adds a sturdy bass to its acoustic strum, portraying a story of women's sacrifice: It's the generational cost of the love we give that leads us to dream, she sings. "Anything But Gold" plays over a bed of nature sounds, fingerpicked guitar and a lightly brushed piano. It speaks strongest to the image of Bailey Bigger ambling through knee-deep vegetation, the moist earth beneath both supporting her and encouraging her feet to sink deeply: I touch the land and it touched me ... But when I parted to go out to the city / I kissed the ground that always knew / The wooded edges lit up with her howling / And I wondered if she'd miss me too. With Resurrection Fern, Bailey Biggers has created a rich, mature travelogue through the wild spaces that exist both outside and within us.
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