Speaking of Oxford American, BTW, their next issue will be the music issue. Pick a good newsstand or bookstore, and keep an eye out. The OxAm music issue is the best single issue of any magazine for music geeks all year long.
You Are Free
Cat Power (aka Chan Marshall)
(Matador Records)
As a latecomer to the Chan Marshall wake (it's like a party, ya'll, but everybody's drunk and sad), I am kicking myself for not knowing better than to have picked up this native Southerner's last four longplayers sooner. Hailing from Atlanta, via Memphis (it has been reported but not confirmed) and other points Southern, Marshall (as her nom de plume Cat Power) can make you smile wryly and cry on her new CD "You Are Free", a collection of fourteen songs for acoustic & electric guitar, acoustic piano and drums (on a few). Her songwriting on this new LP is sure to lift the spirits of fans of Joni Mitchell, PJ Harvey, Nick Cave and Delta blues masters like John Lee Hooker (whose "Crawlin' Black Spider" she adapts here as "Keep On Runnin'"). It's a bleak and harrowing--yet strangely redemptive path--Chan has apparently walked in the past five year's since she last released a platter of original songs, judging by the stories told.
The album opens with "I Don't Blame You" a lilting, solo acoustic piano number that details a lover's (and fellow musician's) struggles with his craft, the creative process and, presumably, a host of other demons. Here Marshall sounds her most Mitchell-like (think "The Last Time I Saw Richard" from Blue) in her tired, Southern drawl. On this and most of the CDs slower numbers, her pain gives angelic wings to the sometimes morbid topics, like a Flannery O'Connor heroine. "Free" adds perfectly augmented organ to a staccato guitar rhythm, pushing the refrain "don't fall in love with the autograph/just be in love when you sing that song/all night long" into Patti Smith territory. Marshall covers artist Michael Hurley's "Werewolf", crouching in the moonlit shadows, watching her werewolf cry and letting her lupine voice roll out almost like a howl. Australian David Campbell (of the sadcore, violin-driven band Dirty Three) adds a subdued cello to complement in a setting reminiscent of Sting's "Moon Over Bourbon Street" (sans saxophone). Chilling stuff.
Eddie Vedder and Dave Grohl also both add atmosphere to this album on several tracks, though they know better than to overshadow the playing and singing of a young woman with this much talent. Marshall is a musicians' musician and, like many in that category, doesn't play to the tastes of critics or the whims of the audience (her erratic stage behavior -- like that of, say, the Jesus and Mary Chain -- is well-documented) but rather, turns inward to deal with the silenced voices of her childhood on songs like "Names": "Her name was Cheryl/black hair like electric space/ she would pretty paint my face/she was a very good friend/ her father would come to her in the night/ she was a very good friend/she was twelve years old." The piano's notes stumble forward in lost memory, sounding like it was recorded inside a highway waterpipe and on other songs--like "Babydoll"--the dissonant, plaintive pluck of her six-string puts the listener in exactly the uncomfortable place that Marshall wants you to be when hearing these grim tales of drug and child abuse.
However, the lost love(s) Marshall has been chasing in the past five years occupy most of the album's fourteen songs, and she is at her most Southern on songs like "Fool" where the title is used more as a term of endearment than an insult. Drums kick in on the current single (available on selected websites as an mp3) He War with Marshall's amped-up power chords and our favorite Foo Fighter slapping the skins in a martial beat that wouldn't have sounded out of place on an Othar Turner fife-and-drum song (see the opening scene of "Gangs of New York"). Marshall declares, "I never meant to be the needle that broke your back," and immediately has us wrapped up in her angst, shuffling to the story she lays down of love gone bad. "You Are Free" is a powerful record that has a sisterly acquaintance with past masters like Harvey's "Rid of Me" (and even more so, its accompanying EP "Four Track Demos") and will likely end up on the "best of 2003..." lists of many critics (it's on mine). But more importantly, as great blues artists do, "You Are Free" cathartically explores the pain of romantic and familial relationships while revealing the beauty in this pain.
He played at the excellent Jazz Standard last June. The setting was perfect; the Standard is one of the few clubs in the city where they seem to care if the food is any good, and the food they serve is of the ribshack-gone-uptown variety. Ulmer played, of course, scorching guitar, and as Vernon Reid apparently insisted, had a voice well suited to the music.
The set ended on a cranky note as Ulmer stopped in mid-bar due to sound engineering problems. There's a hellhound on my mixboard.
Laissez le bon temp rouler, yo.
5. Lee Dorsey - Ya Ya
His first hit, and the first of a string of funky good time singles. Funny thing about Lee Dorsey, he can take a lyric like "Ride your pony" and make it seem so clean and innocent you'd sing it to your grandma (but, of course, it ain't).
4. Wild Tchoupitoulas - Brother John
From the uptown rulers themselves - the Wild Tchoupitoulas record was the first time all of the Neville Brothers recorded together. A good time party song about a dead guy. But then, they're from the place where you can have more fun at a funeral than anywhere in the world.
3. The Dixie Cups - Iko Iko
This is really a traditional tune, but the Dixie Cups version is the one that introduced it to most of the rest of the world. This is the New Orleans Louie Louie, covered by everyone. It' got a great beat and you can dance to it.
2. The Subdudes - Big Chief
The Subdudes are bar rockers from the crescent city. (They now tour, down a member, as the 'Dudes.) They have kazoos (and tubas, and accordions) and they're not afraid to use 'em. And deservedly, they have dedicated fans.
1. Louis Armstrong - When the Saints Go Marching In
This is the classic, done by the man who's synonymous with New Orleans, and jazz itself for that matter. Make a joyful noise, kids.
