Warren Zevon
The Love Songs
Label: Artemis
If you like: Love as a many-splintered thing
Song to download: "Don’t Let Us Get Sick" (unreleased live version)
The Love Songs, a compilation of love songs by the late Warren Zevon, initially seems dubious. After all, the popular notion of Zevon was that of a macho, sardonic man who viewed love as a social disease - easy to catch, hard to shake, with lingering side effects.
But Zevon was never one to flex toward popular notion. Zevon’s roving idea of a love song had less to do with chronicling blue birds and romance than the fickle dissolution of desire into yearning, regret and pain. Zevon wore his heart on bloody sleeve, with a hard exterior that never quite cloaked its tender interior. He refused to flinch, and his smart, insightful discourses on love as something personally unobtainable, if not unreasonably squandered, give these songs intellectual and emotional heft.
Few songwriters have the mettle and gruff grace to reveal themselves as battered, vulnerable rogues. Zevon does so exquisitely on "Accidentally Like A Martyr," "Reconsider Me" and "Hostage-O."
Not that he ever taps sap. His retaliatory side is exposed on "I’ll Slow You Down," when a whining Zevon wittily turns noble intention into a defensive dissection of his partner’s personality flaws.
Zevon was not a typical songwriter, and these aren’t typical love songs. There is no soft-focus in play, no doe-eyed fantasy. This is love, the good and the bad, the imagined and the pined for, and for this reason, this collection illuminates the full, wholly individual depth of an often-overlooked facet of Zevon’s work.
You may have heard these songs before, but you haven’t heard them like this. It makes a difference.
- Ed Bumgardner
relish staff writer
Susan Tedeschi
Hope and Desire
Label: Verve
If you like: Bonnie Raitt
Song to download: "Sweet Forgiveness"
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Fans of Susan Tedeschi will note that her latest album, Hope and Desire, produced by Joe Henry, lacks her bluesy songwriting and guitar playing, usually a key part of her musical makeup.
It’s not a permanent shift, but a winning diversion, as Tedeschi - like Bonnie Raitt, to whom comparison is inevitable - stretches beyond preconception. Hope and Desire is Tedeschi’s unhurried and welcome journey into R&B, propelled by a voice that is smartly nuanced, huskily emotional - and always exquisite in its deep, soulful conviction.
Emotion hangs thick and sweet as perfume in church as Tedeschi and a savvy band led by guitarists Doyle Bramhall II and Derek Trucks possess songs by The Rolling Stones ("You Got The Silver"), Bob Dylan ("Lord Protect My Child") and Iris DeMent (a wondrous recasting of "Sweet Forgiveness"). Tedeschi delivers a triumphant, transcendent vocal performance not unlike Aretha Franklin’s early interpretive work for Atlantic Records, and, in the process, opens a fresh avenue of creativity.
At its best, Hope and Desire is the stuff of goose bumps.
- Ed Bumgardner
relish staff writer
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Label: www.clapyourhandssayyeah.com
If you like: A slightly less academic Talking Heads
Song to download: "Over and Over Again (Lost And Found)"
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The buzz surrounding Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the debut album from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, a quintet from Brooklyn, N.Y., has grown to a roar, remarkable for an oddly named band without a record label.
But Clap Your Hands Say Yeah reveals a smart and talented pop band that deftly balances artistic overtures with a pop form that captures the giddy infectiousness of 1980s pop style. Singer Alec Ounsworth boasts an uncanny vocal resemblance to David Byrne, circa Talking Heads. "Let The Cool Goddess Rust Away," "Over And Over Again (Lost And Found)" and "Upon This Tidal Wave Of Young Blood" sound like lost gems from the Heads’ vaults, which occasionally detracts from the unhinged originality of the band’s arrangements.
It’s a good start for a good band, a place where performances of undeniable appeal mix well with egghead observations that beg for clarity, but somehow don’t really need it.
- Ed Bumgardner
relish staff writer
Kindred the Family Soul
In This Life Together
Label: Hidden Beach Records
If you like: Jill Scott
Song to download: "As Of Yet"
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Love - the strong, enduring kind that doesn’t buckle under pressure - infuses In This Life Together, the second release from Aja Graydon and Fatin Dantzler, the married couple at the center of the group Kindred the Family Soul.
For Kindred, love grows amid the daily challenges of life, whether they be raising a family, struggling to pay the bills or just keeping the spark of romance alive.
As on its first disc, Surrender to Love, Kindred uses song to create intimacy. It could be those quiet moments away from the kids, times in which mother and father can be wife and husband for a little while, as on "Sneak A Freak." Or it could be about dealing with a painful past, as on "Let It All Go."
At the core is love, and on this album, the foundation is good music. During a month in which we celebrate hearts being stung by Cupid’s arrow, Kindred reminds us that love, if it is strong enough, can build a life and ease the bumps that come along the way.
Like the love between Graydon and Dantzler, the soul on this album endures.
- Michael Hewlett
relish staff writer
Remy Ma
There’s Something About Remy: Based on a True Story
Label: Universal Records
If you like: Trina, Lil’ Kim
Song to download: "What’s Going On" featuring Keyshia Cole
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Rap, like rock ’n’ roll, is a man’s world. You can count the number of successful female rap artists on one hand.
Remy Ma tries to change that on her new CD, There’s Something About Remy: Based on a True Story.
A protege of the late rapper Big Pun, Remy Ma was one of the main reasons that many people flocked to Fat Joe’s club hit, "Lean Back."
She comes on strong on her solo debut, delivering tough rhymes over rough beats. The flow is tight, and she proceeds to lyrically smack up her competition, regardless of gender. Still, something is missing. The rhymes don’t quite have the oomph that grabs your ears and forces you to listen, and the music is so-so.
She comes off too often as a Lil’ Kim wannabe, with shocking sexual boasts and pseudo-macho posturing. Songs such as "Crazy" and "Still" reveal a more vulnerable side, such as dealing with the pressures of being a mother too soon.
It’s that vulnerability that you end up wishing that you could hear more of on this album.
- Michael Hewlett
relish staff writer
Eames Era
Double Dutch
Label: C Student Records
If you like: Bouncy, happy pogo-pop
Song to download: "Go To Sleep"
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Eames Era from Baton Rouge, La., got a key career boost when a song by the band was included on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, a hit ABC television show.
The band’s full-length debut, Double Dutch, may not vault the band into the mainstream, but it does offer fans of sunshine pop a happy place to hide. The band’s appeal lurks in its juxtaposition of starburst melodies and jangle-fuzz guitars against the sing-song, oh-my-god delivery and crystal-clear voice of singer Ashlin Phillips, a big girl in little girl costume.
The songs bounce and bop along, filled with cheer, as Phillips offers smart, literate observations of life, love and misadventures in boyland.
The lack of a shiny major-label production works, nicely amplifying the band’s real-world aura. Topics flirt with seriousness, and the songs, dramatic and rough-and-tumble enough to occasionally challenge pop convention, certainly warrant attention. Still, the primary purpose of Double Dutch is to spread a good-time vibe, all the time - and there’s nothing wrong with that.
(Eames Era will perform at 10:30 p.m. Friday at Rubber Soul.)
- Ed Bumgardner
relish staff writer
