ROUTES & BRANCHES
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
August 16, 2020
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
Sometimes it just happens. Sometimes an album advance lands in my inbox that triggers something in me. Even prior to hearing a record I have a sense that it may be special. There are times that I'm wrong, when an eagerly anticipated advance proves underwhelming. Other times: Bingo. Welcome to Bingo. Welcome to Jerry Joseph's The Beautiful Madness.
Jerry Joseph is not a promising young upstart with a great career on his horizon. He's as much a fixture of the Portland scene as there is, having released almost yearly projects since the late 80's under his own name, Stockholm Syndrome, the Jackmormons and other monikers. And while his music has attracted diehard fans across the globe, there are folks for whom Beautiful Madness will serve as an introduction to the man's essential work. Again, Welcome to Jerry Joseph. Take your time. There's a lot to digest.
Jerry Joseph has done the rock band. He's been punk and he's done reggae and acoustic. But it's safe to say he's always wielded his music with a sharp edge facing the listener. Even his quieter music can be unsettling, and even his most confrontational stuff is smart. In a wider, wilder world, he'd be mentioned alongside musical polymaths like Alejandro Escovedo. Instead, he's largely avoided widespread popular attention, pursuing his muse into some less traveled corners.
With The Beautiful Madness, he's brought his idiosyncratic talents closer to the light by connecting with Drive-by Truckers (though not entirely for the first time), with his old friend and booster Patterson Hood serving as producer. Writes Hood: I considered Jerry one of the absolute best songwriters of our generation, and wanted to make an album that, above all, backed up that argument. Prior to the onset of the plague, there were even plans in the works for a tour with the outfit credited on Joseph's record as the Stiff Boys.
Turns out this is a match that teases out the best of all parties. Hood and the Truckers have shown their mettle as a backing band on projects with Bettye LaVette, Booker T Jones and others, making all the right musical choices and always in service to the artist behind the mic. One of the year's best songs, "Days of Heaven" recalls Tunnel of Love-era Springsteen with its big-heartedness and loose backing chorus. Brad Morgan's percussion and Jay Gonzales' wurlitzer propel the tune forward, catching the listener up in its infectious spirit: You ask me what I'll say, to tell you something true / A gospel set in rhyme / Cause in these heaven days, it's only about you.
Joseph has noted that he had been inspired to focus these songs on the middle part of a relationship, those years between the novelty and attraction of the courtship and the bitter end of a dissolution. That big-heartedness lies behind pieces like "Bone Towers" or "Full Body Echo". The latter features a spirited singalong chorus and a perfect full-band vibe, while "Bone Towers" features one of Mike Cooley's guitar contributions. Here it comes, he sings with a self-deprecating sneer, Another mile marker / All this self-reflecting can't be good for the soul. Nevertheless, at 59 years old, in the wake of an often harrowing and eventful youth, much of The Beautiful Madness does seem to find Joseph taking stock of his lot. On "Black Star Line", a piano and violin ballad that erupts into a flight of beautifully crunchy guitar, the passing of David Bowie prompts vulnerable reflection: Grown man, celebrity tears / Hard still, gods die / Star man, waving in the sky.
While he's not necessarily a storytelling songwriter, "Hyrum Black" could be classified as the story of a Mormon outlaw as related by his sweetheart. "Dead Confederate" is a strikingly relevant tale, delivered from the point of view of a monument being dismantled. With some stirring slide guitar from former Trucker Jason Isbell, it's a crafty exhibition of writing, a Southern-facing sympathy for the devil: Standing, I been standing best part of 80 years / With my Jim Crow benediction, ropes and hoods and local cheer. Writes Patterson Hood in his liner notes: Sometimes he can hit you with a sledgehammer, but usually it's a slowburn, building with each line of vivid and raw lyrics as the truth of his stories are revealed.
The collection revolves around the primal seven-minute song-poem, "Sugar Smacks", a piece that also distills many of the diverse elements that make up Jerry Joseph. Like much of The Beautiful Madness, it was written prior to the pandemic, but like much of the CD it paints a damning picture of the present state of our nation. The state of our collective soul. It's a blunt-force, brutally honest snowplow of a song that barrels forward on a low, guttural pulse and Joseph's ecstatic proclamations: I keep checking that there's one in the chamber / Cause the real world leaves me throwing up and wishing it was done. "Sugar Smacks" presents the artist as the vox clamantis in deserto, the prophetic voice crying in the wilderness, half-crazed and half-lucid as he surveys the scorched earth upon which he sits. The cartels are so happy about legal California weed that for ten fucking minutes they stopped the slaughter and rape of Juarez companeros / Then they quit laughing and went back to stuffing bodies into 50 barrel drums. Like any prophet worth his weight, Joseph throws himself on the pyre, recalling an episode of domestic abuse, and bringing to question the viability of his own soul: I'd sing to my wife and children / So maybe they could understand just how much I love them / And that I'm so sorry I have failed them / And left a world of nasty racist monsters ... There's not a song in recent memory that strikes such an angry, desperate chord, that so sharply channels the punk spirit and that leaves the listener speechless.
Jerry Joseph is a fascinating figure, an artist whose interviews are smart and profane and honest and funny. He is a socially-minded world traveler whose listeners will follow him into areas of the globe largely neglected by even more adventurous acts. Joseph has directed an admirable amount of time to his NOMAD Music Foundation, a nonprofit that brings instruments to young people in conflict zones (teaching empowerment through music, art, fellowship and cultural awareness). A journey back through his prolific musical output would reward a listener with some terrific songs. But there is a consistency and a motive behind The Beautiful Madness that will catapult the collection to the forefront in any future conversation about Joseph's oeuvre. It's a record that arrives at just the right time, backed by just the right band to assure that he will reach a whole new cadre of listeners. Moreover, after more than three decades of nose-to-the-grindstone labor, Jerry Joseph has created an album that deserves to be added to any year-end best-of conversation.
- Gillian Welch, "Chinatown" Boots No 2: Lost Songs Vol 1 (Acony, 20)
- Holy Motors, "Country Church" Horse (Wharf Cat, Oct 16) D
^ Jerry Joseph, "Dead Confederate" Beautiful Madness (Soundly, Aug 21)
- Ben Harper & Rhiannon Giddens, "Black Eyed Dog" single (Anti, 20) D
- Band of Heathens, "South by Somewhere" Stranger (BoH, Sep 25)
- Ashley Ray, "Lawrence, Kansas" Pauline (Soundly, 20)
- Texas Gentlemen, "Last Call" Floor It!!! (New West, 20)
- Nude Party, "Cure Is You" Midnight Manor (New Wes, Oct 2)
- Hayes Carll, "Down the Road Tonight" Alone Together Sessions (Dualtone, Sep 4) D
- Bella White, "All I Gave To You" Just Like Leaving (Bella White, Sep 25)
- Old 97s, "Bottle Rocket Baby" Twelfth (ATO, Aug 21)
- Parker McCollum, "Young Man's Blues" single (MCA Nashville, 20) D
- Elvis Perkins, "See Through" Creation Myths (Petaluma, Oct 2)
- Ruston Kelly, "Under the Sun" Shape & Destroy (Rounder, Aug 28)
- Shovels & Rope, "C'mon Utah (Acoustic Version)" By Blood (Deluxe Edition) (Dualtone, Aug 28)
- Kathleen Edwards, "Glenfern" Total Freedom (Dualtone, 20)
- Arlo McKinley, "Suicidal Saturday Night" Die Midwestern (Oh Boy, 20)
- First Aid Kit, "On the Road Again" single (Jagadamba, 20) D
- Will Johnson, "Bloody Boxer" El Capitan (Keeled Scales, 20) D
- John Murry, "Super Trouper" John Murry is Dead EP (Submarine Cat, Sep 11)
- Justin Wells, "Walls Fall Down" United State (Singular, Aug 28)
- Milk Carton Kids, "Michigan (live)" Live From Lincoln Theatre (Anti, 20) D
- Delta Spirit, "Home Again" What Is There (New West, Sep 11)
- Shannon LaBrie, "Raining Hallellujah" Building (Moraine, Sep 25)
- Great Peacock, "High Wind" Forever Worse Better (Soundly, Oct 9)
- Jerry Joseph & Jackmormons, "Your Glass Eye" Conscious Contact (Terminus, 02)
- Caamp, "Fall Fall Fall" single (Mom + Pop, 20) D
- Zephaniah Ohora, "We Planned To Have It All" Listening To the Music (Last Roundup, Aug 28)
- Lori McKenna, "This Town Is a Woman" The Balladeer (CN, 20)
- Arthur Russell, "I Never Get Lonesome" Iowa Dream (Audika, 19)
One of the valuable services we provide here is A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster. It's a reverently updated account of what's been released and what's on the musical horizon for the current year ... and beyond! Not a ton of new stuff this week, though we were pleasantly surprised by a record of covers Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster made available on his Bandcamp page. Motion Pictures Vol 1 offers his take on pieces originally done by Willy Vlautin, David Berman, Bowie and more. You might also want to check out Live in Petaluma, which JPKS placed on Bandcamp in May. Elvis Costello spent some time in a Helsinki studio pre-pandemic, the outcome of which, called Hey Clockface, will land on shelves wherever music matters on October 30 via Concord. Hayes Carll has passed his quarantine time revisiting songs from throughout his career. He is joined by Darrell Scott who produces and performs on Alone Together Sessions, expecting a September 4 release date on Dualtone. Finally, I'm cautiously curious about Horse, the sophomore LP from Estonian band Holy Motors. Expect that one October 16 courtesy of Wharf Cat. Now for your weekly ROUTES-cast:
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