TRAiPSiNG THRU the AiSLES: add these to your basket
September 23, 2024
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
Jesse Malin channels pure rock music. Critic David Fricke has praised the New York fixture's great rock & roll songbook. Spanning nine LPs, Malin's solo stuff attests to his mastery, though he has yet to achieve a popular notoriety. In May of 2023, news spread that Jesse Malin had suffered a spinal cord stroke, and was paralyzed below the waist. Silver Patron Saints gathers friends and fellow artists for a tribute and a benefit (for his Sweet Relief fund) , serving as one of the year's most impressive compilations. Acts like Springsteen and Billie Joe Armstrong raise the profile of the record, though others such as Counting Crows and Hold Steady show up with biting, scrappy takes as well. The twenty-seven cuts reach from his early punk days to his more recent solo work, with other high points being delivered from J Masic and Dinosaur Jr, who cover "Brooklyn" from Malin's 2003 Fine Art Of Self-Destruction, and Gogol Bordello's spirited run through "You Know It's Dark When the Atheists Start To Pray" from 2015's Outsiders. Lucinda Williams and Elvis Costello collaborate on "Room 13", and Alejandro Escovedo's "Meet Me At the End Of the World Again" features beats and pulses akin to his own recent solo stuff. Fellow rock evangelist Adam Weiner attacks "When You're Young" from 2019's Sunset, and Daniel Donato joins photographer Danny Clinch for a countrified "Almost Grown". The three-disc collection will likely stand as the year's most notable tribute album, though one would hope it might inspire listeners to return to Jesse Malin's originals as well. As he explores the bounds of his recovery, Malin has been impressive in his energy and determination, scheduling a return to the stage with many of these artists as guests on December 1 and 2 at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre (and in London next May).
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Adam Remnant and drummer Leo DeLuca formed the band Southeast Engine in Athens, OH, joined for a time by notables like Adam Torres and William Matheny. Once their work was done, Remnant set about crafting a solo career, releasing the EP When I Was a Boy in 2016, followed by 2018's impressive full-length Sourwood. In January, Remnant returned with three welcome songs and a promissory note that a full project would follow. Now delivered, BIG DOORS is a modestly beautiful collection, inspired by more experimental records from the early aughts such as Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Jim O'Rourke's Eureka. It's a project that's rooted in the certainty of suburbia, troubled by unrealized promises and unmet expecations, bringing previously sure things into question. While Remnant and his band, The Signs, raise these essential existential questions, they do it without tympani or fanfare, with little more than Jesse Remnant's bass, co-producer Jon Helm's drums, Mery Steel's keys, and some horns. Adam Remnant's lyrics tell small stories of setting out for a drive, searching for lost keys, or doing your best to live with another person. But behind each of these stories, on the other side of each of these doors might lie much bigger things. Or maybe not. The language is both vernacular and prophetic. On "Coming Down": Coming down from the mountain / Trying to make out what I've scribbled on my hand. Keys anchor most tunes, with simple drums and trumpet or sax. The title cut sweeps between a large, expansive chorus and more modest verses, with lyrics referencing fate, patience, opportunity: For each seed my hard work has sewn / Only a small fraction has grown / Into something worth harvesting / Fate is a fairweather friend / No matter what the good book deems fair / Don't judge me on what fruit I bear. Brief but pretty instrumentals intersperse with proper songs, with Remnant's acknowledged touchstones of Laurel Canyon, Motown, and Muscle Shoals providing bearings. Remnant's voice is a perfectly flawed instrument, creaking and bowing like worn wood on "When You Get Back Home": I once believed you were all that I need / Now I know that won't do / I still love you but need to / Learn to be alone. "Keys To the Kingdom" is a slowly swelling, ten-minute closer, a testimony of doubt that marches forward to piano, drum, and trumpet, building to a beautiful resolution: The difference between doubt and faith / The difference between myth and truth / The difference between evidence and proof. Adam Remnant has mentioned a pending EP, already in the works. No hurry, BIG DOORS is a deceptively humble, exquisitely constructed musical and philosophical statement, a lovely puzzle that will keep some of us busy for awhile.
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