TRAiPSiNG THRU the AiSLES: SEPTEMBER 19, 2021

 

ROUTES & BRANCHES

featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music

September 19, 2021

Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

This year has brought some alterations to R&B. We've separated our reviews from our ROUTES-cast playlists, for instance. My hope in making these changes is that there will be more content, and it won't be dependent upon whether I have time to devote to a full-fledged longform review. 

This week has been typical of how things have gone this year. I've been working on a review, but in the meantime several other quality albums have hit my inbox, stuff that I'd love to spotlight if time permitted. Which it doesn't, really. By the time we publish one longform review, a handful of other releases have passed 'neath the bridge. This model serves nobody - Not artists, not listeners and certainly not me. 

I'm committed to original writing. Too many blogs are resorting to simply sharing endless songs and copy-paste pieces with little or no unique content. At R&B HQ we define ourselves through that individual perspective, our skewed musical vision. That won't change. It all stems from my belief that there is no such thing as objectivity when reviewing music. It's all filtered through a lens of our experience, our passions and perspectives. 

Which brings us to today's Episode. Starting today, instead of efforting one longform piece, we'll be presenting Traipsing Thru the Aisles: Add These To Your Basket (with gratitude owed Samantha Crain for the title, and to Logan Foley for the little avatar guy). 'Neath this marquee we'll be featuring shorter, original pieces in praise of the stuff we feel most merits your attention. 

So welcome to the newest iteration of our humble online home. Welcome to:

TRAiPSiNG THRU the AiSLES: add these to your basket

Moviola - Broken Rainbows (Anyway, Sep 3)  Your music collection is probably missing some Moviola. Unless you've been paying close attention to R&B over the years, or you live near Columbus, Ohio you might not have had the pleasure of meeting this band that's released ten records and many more singles in the past 25 years. Their music has evolved since their early 90s debut EP, growing less lo-fi and more roots adjacent, but the five friends who founded Moviola as students at The Ohio State still make refreshingly shambling, DIY music that reaches far too few ears. 

Broken Rainbows lands about 18 months after last year's underappreciated Scrape and Cuss, a full-length that reconvened the band after a 13-year hiatus. Throughout it all, the men of Moviola have shared songwriting, singing and instrumental duties from one song to the next, even as the trademark elements of the band's sound have remained. "Expat" sets social commentary to handclaps and a sticky guitar line, while "Stripes and Stars" adds musical saw and oompah brass for a tipsy singalong. 

Moviola are laid-back without being lazy, spiking their lyrics with smart passages you won't want to overlook - From "Parched": The stove it's packed and parched / Like a sun-dried Chevrolet. The title track lands like a mid-period Stones rocker. Psychedelic blues butt up against deep-pocketed Dead-like ramblers. Consider Moviola's Broken Rainbows a friendly invitation into some of the band's immensely likeable earlier catalog. 

Heartless Bastards - A Beautiful Life  (Sweet Unknown, Sep 10)  The story of Heartless Bastards follows the outfit from their blues-rocking 2004 debut through 2012's breakthrough Arrow and up to frontwoman Erika Wennerstrom's revelatory 2018 solo collection. As its candy-colored cover might suggest, Wennerstrom's return to her group takes their sound into brighter, unexplored territory. 

A Beautiful Life is essentially another solo project from Wennerstrom, joined by musicians like Andrew Bird, David Pulkingham and Bo Koster. A truly captivating artist, she delivers her songs in a throaty voice that takes its stand with the mature Patti Smith or Hurray for the Riff Raff's Alynda Lee Segarra. On songs like "Went Around the World" or the perfect pop of "You Never Know", Wennerstrom expands that vocal in new and more confident directions to great effect. 

That confidence exhibits itself in a decision to pare her message back to its essentials, setting aside the detritus and distraction of daily existence. Atop the orchestral pop of "When I Was Younger", Wennerstrom explains, I changed my view to a different hue / And now I can see clearly again. Much of the collection recalls the 1960s sonically or thematically, such as the Middle Eastern-flavored psychedelia of "The River" or the plucked strings on the Dusty Springfield-like "You Never Know". 

The lyrical simplicity of A Beautiful Life carries statements and encouragements that allude to certain of our contemporary ills without naming them. The rousing drum and slicing guitar of "Revolution" asks, Have you forgotten when / There was a time filled with hope instead of fear. There is also a distinctly personal message in those lyrics, mantras Wennerstrom applies to her own situation, surrounded by birdsounds and fluttering strings on "Doesn't Matter Now". 

Even as Erika Wennerstrom reclaims her Heartless Bastards moniker, A Beautiful Life embraces the future rather than working to capture the group's original blues-rock vibe. As on the record jacket, even surrounded by members of Okkervil River and My Morning Jacket, Wennerstrom stands alone. 

Ross Adams - Escaping Southern Heat  (Adams, Sep 10)  The backstory for this North Carolina artist's new project posits Adams striking up a friendship with Jason Isbell's bassist Jimbo Hart. The acquaintance would eventually lead to a three-day recording session in Muscle Shoals, with the full 400 Unit serving as Adams' backing band. The resulting tracks announce the arrival of as strong a singer-songwriter album as we've heard this year.

Fact is, Isbell's 400 Unit can raise the stakes behind just about any songwriter, as capable of generating a Southern rock ruckus as they are of exercising greater restraint when laying an atmospheric fog beneath a lyric. But "Wilted Roses" attests to Adams' rare talent as a lyricist, just as "Teach Me How To Mourn" finds him escaping common traps when addressing issues of a wounded warrior's rocky return to everyday life: These charges of light shoot sharp through my brain / These grains of sand tucked into my veins. There are no lazy lyrical choices on Southern Heat. 

Many of these new songs take on a heartland rock vibe, with Adams and his band firing on all cylinders. "Ease Me Into Dying" is prime-cut Southern rock, while the title track epitomizes the live studio sound that pervades the record. Adams sings, Shots rang out in that Tennessee Night / And the whole damn South fell apart. Much of that southern heat includes the legacy of racism that clings to the region like humidity. The writer navigates this original sin most admirably in "Tobacco Country": We may have got a bad rap or two / But there's good people down here / One who believes in equal rights and freedoms / And for that old Southern reputation to disappear. 

A loose and live spirit pervades Ross Adams' sessions, lending barroom piano or fiddle here and there or that clouded drone the underlays "4th Street Up". Tosha Hill contributes an especially effective backing vocal on a handful of tracks. It speaks most strongly of his gifts that Adams can surround himself with these stars on Escaping Southern Heat and still emerge as the brightest light of the bunch. 

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As you might expect, a lot has been packed into A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster since we last visited, stuff that rounds out the close of the year and even a couple things to look forward to in 2022. Tennessee Jet's next release will be a stripped-down affair. Visit South Dakota on October 8. Lilly Hiatt will follow-up last year's excellent Walking Proof with Lately. Expect that new collection On October 15 via New West. Last year, Jason Isbell promised to thank the state of Georgia for its help in putting Joe Biden into the White House. Georgia Blue features covers from artists associated with the state, including REM, Otis Redding, Cat Power and more (Southeastern, Oct 15). Charles Wesley Godwin's 2019 debut earned a coveted space among our year-end favorites. On November 5, he will present How the Mighty Fall. You'll want to visit Spotify to find Aoife O'Donovan's terrific album-length cover of Springsteen's Nebraska. You'll also want to mark your 2022 calendar for the January 21 release of her next original record, Age of Apathy (Yep Roc).