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 The
Major Lift
By
Erik Hage
In
an era of iTunes, it seems almost foolhardy to release an
“album” in the classic rock sense of the word, unless you’ve
got angle—i.e. prereleasing it for a pay-what-you-want download
(Radiohead) or offering it as an exclusive at a retailer (Eagles/Wal-Mart).
But to make an old-fashioned, sprawling, ambitious album full
of messy nuances and glorious unevenness (think the Beatles’
White Album and the Stones’ Exile on Main Street) is
just bad business nowadays.
The Black Crowes’ Warpaint is messy—and more
convincing than most of their previous work. The highs are
high and the imperfections many, but that’s what happens when
you’re out on the edge of the pale, not settling for boilerplate.
 I’ve
long been conflicted about the Crowes. I’ve seen them at times
as a mediocre, histrionic, Stones-aping band for mediocre
tastes. Yet some kind of undertow has kept me from fully dismissing
them. They hit my radar recently when I realized that Crowes
lead singer Chris Robinson had produced former Jayhawk Gary
Louris’ new solo album, a richly subtle and layered set of
Americana. (This didn’t shore up with my impression of a starlet-marrying,
pot-smoking ectomorph with little to offer the musical universe.)
In my constant effort to not end up a marooned music snob,
I gave Warpaint (recorded in Woodstock, by the way)
a chance.
I like it. I like its great moments as well as its imperfections,
because it’s all propelled by a sense of seasoned artistry.
Here, the “pretty” rubs up against the hypnotic and darker.
There are also tracks that seem more directly descended from
Americana tradition than previous efforts. “Goodbye Daughters
of the Revolution” is classic Crowes, a heady roots-rock scrum
with charms poking through the cracks: burning slide leads;
melodic hooks; buried vocal harmonies. The mandolin-flecked
“Locust Street” and bright, drone-based “Whoa Mule” offer
a sense of acoustic spareness and levity, but then there is
a series of dark, guitar heavy songs with force behind them
and some proggy edges: the ominous, caveman guitar dirge “Walk
Believer Walk”; the doom-rock stomp of “Evergreen”; the distorted
revival-tent blues of “God’s Got It.” (The addition of North
Mississippi All Stars guitarist Luther Dickinson really fleshes
things out.)
The Crowes have always been good at the booty-shaking guitar
choogle and classicist gestures, but here they prove themselves
true artists in the least precious sense of the word. And
just maybe a band for the ages.
 The
Crowes don’t crumble under the weight of ambition, but Erykah
Badu’s self-importantly titled New Ameryka, Part One:
Fourth World War feels the pull of hubris. The thematic
scope is daunting: Badu tosses verses at Katrina, black-on-black
violence, the Nation of Islam, mysticism and politics. But
the “name producer” years of hip-hop and R&B have ushered
in an age where, paradoxically, both futuristic oddness and
classic soul appropriation are mistaken for brilliance. Badu’s
odd, plinky and stiff “The Healer” is a prime example of former,
while on the single “Honey,” she revives pat ’70s funk-soul.
Elsewhere, listening to the both forward- and backward-thinking
gestures and spacey production touches, one can’t help but
gauge the impact: I foresee a host music critics (dis)proving
their R&B cred by falling all over themselves in puddles
of aphorisms.
Speaking of the past, there are two deluxe-edition reissues
from the ’70s out there that warrant your attention. The first,
Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Street Survivors, is an interesting
album to listen to 21 years later, particularly after the
success of “alternative” groups such as Drive-By Truckers
and My Morning Jacket, who took some of Skynyrd’s lessons
and applied them to a more hip idiom. The old masters stand
above the rest though: Few followers can summon the soulful
redneck funk of “What’s Your Name” or the ominous pagan gospel
of “That Smell.” This was the last album of the original group,
released days before the mythic plane crash, and the sound
really pops. But the additional tracks—particularly a seven-minute-plus
“That Smell”—aren’t revelatory. Nevertheless, sink into this
album to remember Skynyrd not as a bunch of doomed rednecks,
but as some of the most soulful white boys to ever grace the
Muscle Shoals.
 Elvis
Costello is also offering up a reissue from the
’70s with This Year’s Model, which remains in my mind,
the most vitriolic yet tuneful album ever written about man-woman
relations. The LP already has been reissued with many of the
same extra cuts, but this version also contains a bruising
1978 Washington, D.C., concert, which makes it worth a second
look, especially a crashing version of “Radio, Radio,” Costello’s
guns-ablaze indictment of the medium. (Who knew that radio
would get even more hopeless?) A lacerating “Blame It on Cain”
and a “Watching the Detectives” with a guitar like glass shards
makes me wonder why the big E didn’t just put out a great
live album instead of tethering it to this classic LP (which,
admittedly, everyone with ears should own).
Chuck
Berry is probably due for a Chess reissue, though. (The
Chess Box came out in ’88.) And the fact that Berry has
resorted to a sort of ignoble performing life in his twilight
years shouldn’t cast a pall over some of the rawest, most
vital rock & roll out there. I would like to rewrite rock
& roll history, with Berry in the role of Elvis Presley
and Link Wray in the role of Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix.
I would cast Willie Dixon, who wrote some of these songs (and
played bass and produced on many Chess efforts), as Phil Spector.
In that world, Madonna would have never had a shot at the,
ahem, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Johnny B. Goode:
His Complete ’50s Chess Recordings is a strong argument
for my history, and this is a completist mix of demos, instrumentals,
live tracks and proper songs. Without “Roll Over Beethoven,”
“Maybellene,” and “Johnny B. Goode” you wouldn’t have the
Beatles or the Rolling Stones. And I know you wouldn’t want
that.
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