Profile - James Cotton

Published in the February issue of Rhythms.

100% Cotton

James Cotton is more real than everything else.

By Samuel J. Fell

Listening to most radio today can be an an exercise in banality, a sonic wasteland man, a neon signpost proclaiming this to be a time of musical recession where people are sonically poor and so have to recycle the same tired shit in order to survive. The ‘80s have already been reused twice in the less-than-a-decade I’ve been writing about music and it’s enough to make you vomit out the window of the car, driving down the highway with this puerile rubbish leaking from the speakers, streaks down the door, flecks on the side mirror.

Haven’t you heard anything prior to 1984? Don’t you listen to anything that came before disco? No, what? Why? What came before synthesisers and Jet? Dammit man, open your ears and your mind, don’t you ever get into rock ‘n’ roll, the real kind, the original kind? Don’t you listen to the blues, first thing in the morning and last thing before going to bed?

You know who Muddy Waters was and Robert Johnson and Sonny & Terry and Bukka White and all those old guys. Bah, what the hell? We’re making new music now, we have no time for that. Man, you need re-education, George Orwell would have a field day. Don’t you know about Sun Records? James Cotton man… a behemoth of a harmonica player, he’s one of the last surviving Sun recording artists, he’s still going, he released a new record last year at 78 years of age. He’s the real deal, don’t you listen to him? He’s even touring Australia this year for the first time, this is history, you can get a front row seat. Fuck it. Man.

Everything that happened in the ‘80s, stems from gospel music, jazz and blues. Everything that happened in the ‘90s, stems from gospel music, jazz and blues. The 2000s too, and the decade we’re in now. Own up to the fact that James Cotton is a giant amongst men, a true believer, one who has no other option in life other than to play the blues and it’s so pure, it should be bottled – not so much his music itself, but his belief in his music, the way his mind works. Put that in a bottle and sell it for $5.99 and all you young upstarts will get high on what was and what informs what’s happening now, even if you are inverting it and making no effort to energise it, let alone recognise where it was born.

“I have the blues before sunrise.” Cotton said that to me recently and he guffawed as he said it. He said that’s what gets him out of bed every morning, having played this music for nigh on seventy years. “[The blues] connected me to the outside world, got me off the plantation, and connected me to people all over the world.” He said that to me sometime early last year. That’s what the blues means to him, that’s the feeling. That’s where real music comes from.

“A young boy, he got started / Playin’ in the cotton fields / People shouted mercy / The blues cannot be killed.” This is from the title track of Cotton’s 2013 record, Cotton Mouth Man, and it’s a track that pumps with the energy of music made because the authors have no choice but to make it. It burns through their veins and so it burns on the record, sizzles through wires and speakers before exploding out and into your head. Makes everything else seem limp by comparison.

“If I don’t feel the music, I can’t play the music.” I can’t remember where I read that, but Cotton said it. He was recording at Sun before Elvis, Johnny, Jerry Lee, Carl and Roy. “The blues is a feeling.” He rasped that when we last spoke, he’d been battling throat cancer. And he’s still wailing like a possessed banshee from the depths of hades itself. “You’ve gotta feel it to play it. I feel it very deep, from my heart.”

Man, this is where it all comes from today, and the reason it’s still happening is because it was so real, so raw, so primal, so incredibly personal. You’d do well to recognise that, take it on board. You need to draw from the past, but you don’t need to recycle with lethargic impunity. You need to acknowledge and learn and respect. You need to go and see James Cotton and your life will change and music will sound different and things will have a sheen to them. Things will be real.

Cotton Mouth Man is available through Alligator Records / Only Blues Music. James Cotton plays Bluesfest, April 19 & 20.

http://jamescottonsuperharp.com

Record Review - The Growlers

Published in the Shortlist section of the Sydney Morning Herald, Friday Feb 14.

The Growlers

Gilded Pleasures

Smack Face Records

For a band that’s only been around for six or so years, Californians The Growlers have packed a lot in. Four full-length records, a slew of EPs, singles and split EPs have tumbled from the band’s collective mind, frontman Brooks Nielsen being quoted as saying, “If we had it our way, we would be doing a full-length album every couple of months.”

Overload? Perhaps, but if most recent release, the Gilded Pleasures EP, is anything to go by, then in amongst the quantity is a good dose of quality. Beginning with the shimmering, surf-guitar inspired Dogheart II, this release (which at nine tracks qualifies for LP, as opposed to EP, status) stretches out, a fine, long summer’s afternoon drunk of an album that sways and shuffles along with little thought for anything other than a fine tune.

Change In Your Veins gets down low, a nice guitar workout towards the end; Ego Of Man is equal parts Johnny Cash and spaghetti western twang; while Nobody Owns You brings proceedings to a close with melodic aplomb.

3.5/5

Samuel J. Fell

Record Review - Three Kings

Published in the Shortlist section of the Sydney Morning Herald, Friday January 31.

Three Kings

THREE KINGS

Independent

4/5

When three of Melbourne’s top exponents of the blues come together to form a side project, it’s a fair bet the results will be something worth talking about. So it is with Three Kings – Ian Collard (Collard, Greens & Gravy), Benny Peters (Benny & The Fly By Niters) and Jason Liusoon (Chris Wilson) teaming up to, as Collard puts it, “[just] get together to play the music that we love.”

The fruits of their labours have been laid bare then, with their eponymous debut, a real barnstormer of an album, drawing inspiration from the likes of Jerry McCain and Kid Thomas, a DIY affair that shows the blues for how it’s meant to be – raw, real, right on.

And it’s a party album – comprising a few covers, a couple of Collard and Peters tunes as well as a three-way co-write (the harp-driven burner Royal Flush), the pace barely lets up. Collard and Peters share vocals, the former adding harmonica and guitar, the latter just guitar, while Liusoon holds it all together with some solid tub thumping – blues album of the past year, no doubt.

Samuel J. Fell

Record Review - Resin Dogs

Published in the Shortlist section of the Sydney Morning Herald, Friday January 24.

Resin Dogs

The Beats From Downunder EP

Hydrofunk Records / MGM

3.5/5

Over the course of a career spanning almost two decades, Brisbane hip hop/funk collective Resin Dogs have packed a lot in. Four LPs, numerous EPs and singles, tours the world over, they’re a part of the furniture as far as Oz hip hop is concerned, their use of live drums, bass and guitar, in addition to samples, setting them on a pedestal of their own.

Their newest EP carries on the tradition. It centers around three core tracks – Still The Beats, featuring the MC skills of Dialectrix, a funk-infused, fast-paced number that harks back to how The Dogs did it a decade ago. Ride follows on, a long, lethargic stretch with vocals from Kel On Earth, her sultry voice giving it a soul kick. For My People features longtime collaborator Hau, and carries an eastern European horn element, which works surprisingly well.

Still The Beats also gets the remix treatment from both DJ Slynk and Omegaman, as well as featuring as an instrumental, as does Ride. A solid return.

Samuel J. Fell

Record Review - The Windy Hills

Published in the January 2014 issue of Rhythms Magazine.

The Windy Hills

Fall Of Planet Esoteria

Warner Music

It’s been a long time coming, but the new cut from north coast natives The Windy Hills isn’t about speed. It isn’t about style over substance either, or fitting into a ‘sound’ so as to be noticed by as many as possible. Fall Of Planet Esoteria is its own entity, a painstakingly crafted album as opposed to merely a collection of 10 songs, each track, whatever its sonic signature, contributing to an overall picture which is pure Windys – focused, pointed, shimmering in its own unique way.

For this album does shimmer. Inspired in large part by both early surf guitar albums, as well as the warm, layered Laurel Canyon sounds of the ‘70s, it’s heavy on the reverb, stabs of wavering guitar prominent throughout, the rhythm section creating a base as reliable as the ebb and flow of the mighty ocean, from which this record draws indirect inspiration.

Led by filmmaker and musician Andrew Kidman (guitar/vocals), The Windys (Marty ‘Jose’ Jones, guitar; Jay Kruegner, drums; Paul Brewer, bass; and newest member DB Porter on keys) paint a sonic picture. At times, it is perhaps a little hard to see what that picture is, as they wander off into Floyd-inspired noodles (a bit too much shimmer), but even these, once you’ve listened a number of times (remember, it’s not about speed), reveal themselves as integral parts of a larger mural, that of longing, lament and most of all, freedom.

To my mind, the album highlight is fourth track, ‘Cars’. With a breathy vocal refrain, it lulls you almost to sleep before Brewer’s bass kicks back in and the guitars wake up, they’re razor sharp at first, before settling down into a Sabbath-inspired chug and grind. Opener, ‘Song Of Many’ fades in and out slowly (it’s a slow, gracefully lumbering beast); live staple ‘Blinded’ gets a quieter treatment than you may have seen on stage; ‘Muscle Memory’ is a Queens Of The Stone Age-esque number that bundles along at a brisk pace, a basic stoner riff from which the band then elaborate.

Fall Of Plant Esoteria is an extension from its predecessor, Friend From Another Star in that it goes deeper and emerges with even more – there’s a lot happening, which can sometimes dampen the effect, but overall, it just fits – it’s a record which stands as the band’s best work to date, without a doubt.

Samuel J. Fell