Watermelon Slim & Super Chikan - Okiesippi Blues

Simple

Authentic. This is an album of mainly self-penned blues numbers played simply but perfectly. Watermelon Slim and Super Chikan, respectively Bill Homans and James Johnson, join their crisp blues talents - again respectively slide and harp, and finger pickin’, as well as distinctive vocals - for storytelling and blues playing that feels as natural as breathing. The one wonderful anachronism is the George Harrison merge Within You Without You/Dinde performed with xylophone and chants: delightfully far-out in this otherwise grass-roots blues context. Indeed, this is followed by closer Moonshine, by Johnson, which reverts back to the conversational partnership, two blues brothers sharing vocals in an easy chit-chat style but with consummate guitars and harp playing.

The Temperance Movement - Cavern, Exeter, 9th July, 2013

The Rock Band The Eagles Always Wanted To Be

There’s a scene in the recent Eagles documentary where a key point in the band’s rise to stardom is plotted as the moment producer Glyn Jones heard them singing a cappella harmony and decided that this was the sound to define them as a band. Up to that point he hadn’t been overly keen on their rock aspirations, and the fact they never became an ostensibly rock band is apparently a fact Glenn Frey and Don Henley rue to this day.

At tonight’s outstanding The Temperance Movement gig at the Cavern , Exeter, there was a moment where the band went ‘off mic’ to sing their song Chinese Lanterns and the five part [with one guitar] a cappella harmony was as exquisite as anything the Eagles can do, and yet this occurred within the context of the band’s absolutely stonking rock-core performance. Indeed, the band happily cited influences such as Little Feet, The Allman Brothers and The Rolling Stones – and my goodness they have the credentials and talent to write and perform songs bearing those influences with panache – and yet I also heard the harmonies of the Eagles and America to name but two obvious echoes.

I had wondered before hearing them live if there would be a guitar focus too. Their excellent EP Pride obviously features the fine work of Luke Potashnick and Paul Sayer, but not the kind of soloing you might get played live. I’m still buzzing with the delight to observe that the band’s individual and dual guitar work is stunning. There was plenty of slide as well as sharp playing from both, but on the slow number Smouldering, Luke and Paul played an extended and deeply layered guitar duet that reminded of the very best of the past when such breaks were expected as well as lauded from the great rock bands of the 60s/70s.

Fronted by Glaswegian ‘spokesperson’ [his jest], but more importantly exceptional vocalist Phil Campbell, The Temperance Movement played a stunning set in, as Paul rightly described it, the ‘classic’ small but atmospheric Cavern venue where such a performance resonates because of that size but also the history and vibe inherent in such an environment. Campbell’s singing is itself ‘classic’ when heard on record/cd, but he can certainly deliver and sustain this live, moving effortlessly and emotively between ballads and rock stormers. Nick Fyffe’s bass and Damon Wilson’s drumming are integral parts of the consummate tightness of the band as a whole, and as already stated, all members can and do contribute beautiful vocal harmonising. For any regular readers of this blog who know I love ‘pretty’ music as well as hard-core guitar rock, you’ll understand my genuine reverie at the combination of this and more with this band.

They certainly deserve their own much bigger stardom and success in the near future. With their first album due out in September, and the continued support of Planet Rock, one would hope this will happen. I certainly feel the retro-rock tag is inappropriate for The Temperance Movement who displayed for me in this gig more breadth and sense of self than that label can embrace. But I also know how my listening habits – and, let’s be honest, my age – also define a certain audience for the band which won’t provide the platform they need for a genuinely expansive appeal. Perhaps that doesn’t matter. As I said, the band seems content with and enthused by the influences that shape their sound, accepting the lineage and its roots.

And if I could exploit that sense of being rooted, to a degree, in the past, I’d urge them to bring out a live album as soon as possible! Having invoked The Allman Brothers Band who brought out At Filmore East three years into their career, perhaps TTM could resurrect this once quite common tradition from rock’s heyday. I’d certainly love to have a recording of tonight’s gig or similar as it was one of the best I have attended in a long time of enjoying live music.

You can buy various versions of The Temperance Movement’s EP Pride here. Recommended.

John Martyn – The Island Years

No Temptation Required

There’s a good opening article in the current edition of Uncut describing this box set to be released in September. The real excitement about this collection is clearly the addition of previously unheard/unreleased tracks as well as a DVD of rare television performances. As advertised, the box set includes five complete discs of previously unreleased or first time on CD recordings and the equivalent of a further three discs of rare, live and unreleased studio material spread across the 17 discs. Well, that’s enough for me and I have pre-ordered, not that I required tempting. John Martyn always has and always will be the greatest artist in my aural hall of fame.

If you are tempted to pre-order, here is the link.

Jason Isbell - Elephant

I wrote recently about what a great album Jason Isbell’s Southeastern is and mentioned the poignant song Elephant. I’ve obviously been listening to the album again and again, and this song too quite a bit: here it is in all its painful, powerful storytelling, but you do have to listen to hear what a truly beautiful lament this is and how it is a narrative about love, death and survival that will endure.

She said Andy you’re better than your past

winked at me and drained her glass

cross-legged on the barstool, like nobody sits anymore.

She said Andy you’re taking me home

but I knew she planned to sleep alone

I’d carry her to bed and sweep up the hair from the floor.

If I had fucked her before she got sick

I’d never hear the end of it

she don’t have the spirit for that now.

We drink these drinks and laugh out loud

bitch about the weekend crowd

and try to ignore the elephant somehow

somehow.

She said Andy you crack me up

Seagrams in a coffee sup

sharecropper eyes and her hair almost gone.

When she was drunk she made cancer jokes

she made up her own doctor’s notes

surrounded by her family I saw she was dying alone.

I’d sing her classic country songs

and she’d get high and sing along

she don’t have the voice to sing with now.

We’d burn these joints in effigy

cry about what we used to be

and try to ignore the elephant somehow

somehow.

I buried her a thousand times

giving up my place in line

but I don’t give a damn about that now.

There’s one thing that’s real clear to me

no one dies with dignity

we just try to ignore the elephant somehow

we just try to ignore the elephant somehow

we just try to ignore the elephant somehow

somehow

somehow.

Watermelon Slim & The Workers - Bull Goose Rooster

Stonking Beauty

At times stonking, at others quite beautiful. At the former end, penultimate track Foreign Policy Blues is a stomper, with great slide and thumping drums/bass. This is followed by closing track Words Are Coming To An End which is a gentle acoustic number. Pretty enough, but for ‘beautiful’ I am thinking of the a cappella songs like Hall Johnson’s gospel gem Take My Mother Home, given such an emotive rendition here, and Stan Roger’s Northwest Passage where the gravel and gravitas in Bill Homan’s verbal lilt gives this folk tale such a sense of history, though it is relatively contemporary having been released originally in 1981.

The album opens with harmonica on fire in Tomorrow Night, followed by Slim’s slide on Bull Goose Rooster and the vocal reminding of Beefheart, then it’s a wonderful piano blues Over The Horizon and the Slim/Homan vocal more in Wait’s late-nite barroom mode, and then fourth is a gutsy version of Woody Guthrie’s Vigilante Man, more cool slide on offer. Homan harmonica returns wonderfully on a chugging James Moore I’m A King Bee version as track six. I could go through each and every excellent number, but I’m going to stop now and just listen, it’s that much fun.

Mark Mulcahy - Dear Mark J. Mulcahy, I Love You

Thriving

Singer-songwriter as genre and entity are alive and well in 2013, having recently posted about such excellence on Jason Isbell, and now on Mark Mulcahy with his latest, the first since 2005, which is absolutely delightful throughout. There is more pop and catch compared with Isbell's, but that's just a difference. Mulcahy's lyrics are often clever and playful, and the songs exude an innate felicity for melody to match the consistent creativity. Joyous.

Deap Vally - Sistrionix

Deep Enough

The fuzzed/fog horn opening with C’mon everybody listen up of first track End of the World posits this duo’s oestrogenised Black Keys credentials, though I’ll probably get in trouble for that gender identification, though you’d be naive to think this female duo don’t play to this obvious strength.

Second Baby I Can Hell is more metal in its riff, and I like the verbing [see what I did there...] of Satan’s lair, just because they can. They don’t care. At least that’s the drift of the simple, pulsing sound. I’ll mention third Walk of Shame, but it isn’t really much different, though there is an echoed chorus on the main line. Fourth Gonna Make My Own Money plays its screeched lead as simply as possible, and the screeched vocal continues to tear it up. I think it’s good enough, but I’d want to see it live, having caught their one appearance on a recent Live....With Jools Holland [and the tiniest bit of their Glastonbury gig]. This is raw and raucous and meant to be flung at you like sweat splayed in your face standing there at the front of the stage, not through computer speakers - as loud as I have cranked them up.