|
 He
Writes the Songs
By
David Greenberger
Kris
Kristofferson
Please
Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends: The Publishing Demos 1968-72
There
is no shortage of releases that detail aspects of an artist’s
career that only hardcore fans would care about: outtakes,
rarities, rough sketches, etc. What sets apart this 16-track
collection of Kris Kristofferson’s recordings is simply how
good it is on its own terms. One needn’t be a completist or
even a longtime follower for this set to resonate. Painstakingly
researched and assembled by Michael Simmons, who has devoted
his Light in the Attic label to just such endeavors, this
set may well be his crowning achievement. Taken in total,
the music and the 60-page booklet are a form of portraiture.
Simmons sequenced the audio, the notes, and the assorted photographs
and ephemera to convey Kristofferson’s efforts and bearing
as a young songwriter. None of these recordings ever was intended
for release, and the title is up front with that fact. The
songs were recorded solo or with small ensembles to be pitched
to established recording artists, and the straightforward
manner of the performances are all in service to the strengths
of each song. No one was trying to polish them, which actually
works perfectly with Kristofferson’s dusty and gently barbed
writing.
The set opens with his most well-known number, “Me and Bobby
McGee,” and its stark presentation makes it easy to appreciate
just how deft a wordsmith this onetime Rhodes Scholar can
be. There are treasures aplenty, from the fragile beauty of
“Come Sundown” to the deceptively simple roadhouse foot-tapper
“Slow Down.” Like a poet or novelist, Kristofferson is acutely
aware of how an opening line is the front door and needs to
be well-considered so it matches the rest of the building,
as well as invite a wide array of citizenry to enter. As the
best artists do, Kristofferson has expanded the reach of the
media in which he’s worked.
 The
Black Keys
Brothers
Rolling Stone recently labeled Jack White “The Decade’s
Dirty Bluesman,” but Rolling Stone knows fuck-all about
music. The Black Keys are the decade’s real dirty bluesmen.
Brothers, the Tarantino-esque new album from the Ohio
duo, is flush with sinister ’70s activities, bop, blues, soul,
broken hearts, drug references, revenge . . . and tracks that
just make you shake it. Where Attack & Release,
the Keys’ 2008 album with producer Danger Mouse, felt overproduced
and lacked the squealing feedback and string-scraping filth
of previous efforts, Brothers sustains the band’s edge
while giving them new toys to play with—toys they put to amazing
use. Guitarist- vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick
Carney both lent their hands in the studio, and the band’s
soul quotient is in overdrive, the dirty blues licks in full
swing.
Attention-grabbing opener “Everlasting Light” bops along as
Auerbach hits high notes in what could be mistaken for an
old-time spiritual. The track shows off a new direction for
the band—like the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack
mashed up with a modern groove. But on “Next Girl” they show
off what brought them. The song sweeps up in radio static,
strings and the faint moan of some ancient bluesman before
exploding in a Sabbathy swagger, like a Delta blues “War Pigs.”
The album’s first single, “Tighten Up,” features a propulsive
swing combined with squealing lead guitar and pulsing organ.
It really blows the place to pieces when the bass line rumbles
to a funky halt and a Clash-style riff takes over, snapping
the track from funky to incensed. “Howling for You” returns
to the band’s flirtation with bop, combining Screamin’ Jay
Hawkins and T. Rex for something simultaneously eerie and
playful, with Danger Mouse-assisted synth lines that just
bring the track home.
Brothers
works as an album—it sets a unique tone and explores new territory
in a way that makes sense for the band. While past Keys records
have delivered tracks that likely will never leave my playlist,
Brothers is an album that I expect to keep in heavy
rotation for years to come, and the soundtrack to a movie
I would like to see.
—David
King
Daughters
Daughters
Rhode Island’s Daughters are a lot like the Elvis Scramble
at the Iron Gate Café on State Street in Albany. (Follow me,
this plug for a cool local eatery actually works.) The smart
Northeasterners in Daughters deliver a hearty, Southern-fried,
egg-beater-assisted take on math metal and grindcore so infused
with rock and punk and general rock & roll spirit that
even those regularly turned off by metal will find themselves
shaking their groove thing. That is by no means to say that
there is much accessible about the band’s overpowering noise
and lead singer Alexis Marshall’s Elvis-meets-Les-Claypool
bleat. Daughters’ tweaky guitar work and pulverizing drumming
combine into a sound you might imagine would emanate from
a Transformer having a seizure. And yet there is a sense of
glee and mastery that make the couple-of-minute-long songs
undeniably catchy. The band have admitted that they were looking
to be a bit more mainstream on this self-titled release, but
even their greatest attempt at accessibility (“The Hit”) sounds
like a stoner narrating the opening salvo of a nuclear war
while watching a July 4th fireworks display. Daughters may
have made the metal album of the year—if the noise they make
can actually be classified as metal.
—David
King
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