Column - 2016 Album Wrap-Up

Published in the November / December issue of Rhythms magazine.

Goin’ Down Slow

Nov/Dec 2016

Once again, we find ourselves at the tail-end of another year. The older one gets, it seems, the faster time seems to fly – indeed, another 12 months done and dusted, another year older. A year wiser? The jury’s still out on that one.

One thing of which I am certain however, is that this year has been a good one for music. A slew of fantastic records have passed over my desk these 12 months just gone, and so I’ve been inundated with the finest sounds from all around, perhaps one reason the year has run by so quickly.

Given this year I actually kept a list (tacked to the pinboard above my desk), tracking releases I thought were top-notch, here then are my favourites from 2016, in no particular order.

Black Stone Cherry’s Kentucky caught my ear first up, hard and heavy southern rock. My first contact with this band, and I’m reliably informed their earlier material is even better – I’ll get on to that. Freakwater, whose twisted take on Americana hit me via Scheherazade, were a revelation. These guys have been about since the late ‘80s, and time has not dulled their power.

Americana was quite a theme for me this year, with records from the Weeping Willows (Before Darkness Comes A-Callin’); Halfway (The Golden Halfway Record); and Tracy McNeil & The GoodLife (Thieves) getting solid airplay in my office. The Willows is straight up Americana, two part harmonies, stripped and simple, a great album. Halfway’s effort, their fifth, leant more towards trad country, a definite smart rock injection. Tracy McNeil went from strength to strength, her third record imbued with a distinct West Coast vibe, Laurel Canyon and that sort of thing.

Fanny Lumsden (Small Town Big Shot, which has just been nominated for an ARIA); Amarillo (Eyes Still Fixed); and Sean McMahon (Shiner) all produced excellent albums too, all with hints of Americana, but all adding something else to this burgeoning sub-genre. McMahon’s is a contender for guitar album of the year, while exemplary songwriting defines Amarillo’s release, with Lumsden combining both a country and pop nous to really nail her debut.

Sweet Jean’s second effort, Monday To Friday, was a pearler, containing perhaps the song of the year in ‘Main Street’, Alice Keath’s vocals undeniable. In researching for my story on the 25^th anniversary of Fat Possum Records, I came across Seratones and their debut, Get Gone. A real mish-mash of rootsy sounds, set to a throbbing beat, solid.

I was also sent the debut cut, S.I.X, by Ballarat artist Matt Malone. This one came from left field and left me stunned – A “unique fusion of the traditional and avant-garde” is how it was described, which was on the money. ‘Dissonant, cracked, haunted’ is how I then described it in the subsequent review, a fantastic record that was far from perfect, which is exactly what made it virtually so.

The last couple of records (or perhaps they should be described as rekkids), are in a similar vein in that they both stem from virtually the same place – some dusty honky tonk somewhere in Texas. One literally does – Dale Watson’s Live At The Big T Roadhouse is a recording of him and his Lonestars playing Big T’s in St. Hedwig, Texas. Not only do they chug through a huge set, but Watson also calls the Chicken Shit Bingo, as well as making up jingles for Lone Star beer – it’s pure honky tonk gold.

The other is the new cut from Wayne ‘The Train’ Hancock, Slingin’ Rhythm. This is a lesson in western swing, taught by the master himself. It bucks and writhes, swings and swoons, his band are killer and he’s the real deal.

So, particularly with these last two albums, stock up on cold brew (none of that craft business…), turn ‘em up and finish the year on a high – that’s exactly what I’ll be doing.

Samuel J. Fell

(@SamuelJFell)

Samuel J. Fell’s debut book, Stars & Hype – First Time Notes On The American Deep South is now available via www.samueljfell.blogspot.com

Profile - Kinky Friedman

Published in The Music (Brisbane / Sydney), October 12th / 19th

KINKY SHIT

Horse sex, David Hasselhoff and Canadian motherfuckers are just a few of the topics KINKY FRIEDMAN is likely to bring up, as SAMUEL J. FELL finds out

“I’m going deaf, but I enjoy going deaf,” says Kinky Friedman, seconds into this interview, “because you can make up more interesting things that people are saying, than what they’re really saying.”

He rounds that comment off with a laugh – it’s vintage Friedman, the long-time satirist and songwriter, political aspirant, general raconteur. As you’d expect, it doesn’t stop there. “Although I’m 71, I read at a 73-year-old level,” he deadpans at one point. A few minutes later, talking about his recent successful tour through Germany, “I’m kinda the new David Hasselhoff.”

I mention that still touring at 71-years-old is no mean feat. “I got that from Willie Nelson, Willie’s my shrink,” he responds. “Willie says that if you fail at something long enough, you become a legend. Of course, the other advice he gave me, when I was running for Governor (of Texas, in 2006), was if you’re gonna have sex with an animal, always make it a horse. Because that way, if things don’t work out, at least you know you’ve got a ride home.”

Friedman wasn’t elected Governor, although whether or not that was because of Nelson’s advice remains to be seen. Regardless, the man in the hat with the big cigar will grace our shores once more this month, promoting the release of his latest record, The Loneliest Man I Ever Met. Not unusual until you consider it’s his first record in some thirty-two years, thanks again in part, to Willie Nelson.

“Willie advised me to keep writing, because I’d stopped writing about forty years ago, at least songs,” he explains. “They just seemed to be going up in the ether and disappearing. I wanted to wait until the record companies were dinosaurs, which they just about are, and until the charts and the radio stations became meaningless… when the audience becomes the show. For better or worse, that’s kinda what we have today, so I’m writing songs that are different than what you’re hearing on the radio.”

The Loneliest Man I Ever Met is a gem, a clutch of songs delivered in Friedman’s trademark dry style, albeit a little more subdued than previous releases, a little more subtle perhaps. Nelson makes an appearance, as do Mickey Raphael and Little Jewford, from Friedman’s Texas Jewboys, the band he fronted through the 1970s. He covers a number of tracks from the likes of Tom Waits, Nelson again, Warren Zevon. He’s back in the saddle.

Talk, of course, turns away from the record and towards touring, where he’s now attracting a much younger audience, something he really enjoys. “They look at America in a different way than Americans do,” he muses on the younger crowds in places like Europe. “They seem to really relate to, say, Hunter Thompson maybe, Gram Parsons, Shel Silverstein, people like Tom Waits, Kinky, Iggy Pop – they go outside the mainstream, they’re not interested in that motherfucker from Canada… what’s his name? Justin Bieber. And it’s pretty cool, it’s a smart audience and very savvy. And that’s true pretty much all over Europe, and I think in Australia too.”

Profile - Amarillo

Published in the EG section of The Age, October 7.

Amarillo find reward in new project of their own 

The term ‘side-project’ can be a dirty one in music. With connotations of said project not being as important as an artist’s main gig, it can often slip under the radar, nothing more than a blip, soon to be relegated to the oft-used dustbin of musical history.

Despite these implications though, there are projects that stem from others that do stand tall in their own right. Defined by strong writing and playing, they’re bands that truly become their own entity – Melbourne quartet Amarillo fit firmly into this camp.

The brainchild of Raised By Eagles co-founder and guitarist Nick O’Mara, along with singer-songwriter Jac Tonks, Amarillo are the real deal – a vehicle for this pair, along with bassist Trent McKenzie and drummer Alex Rogowski, to showcase songs written outside their respective main gigs, the band has blossomed over the past couple of years.

“When Jac and I met, she had a whole lot of demos, and I’m always writing songs,” explains O’Mara on the origins of the group. “It really came about from helping each other finish songs, sitting around playing songs together, then deciding we should play them for the public.”

“Some songs are suited to certain projects,” he goes on. “Jac likes a lot of bands that I really love that aren’t touchstones or influences for other bands I’m in, like Raised By Eagles, so Amarillo is a really fun outlet for those kind of bands, those English bands like XTC, The SUNDAYS, stuff like that.”

These influences, along with a healthy does of Americana, define the band’s debut long-player, Eyes Still Fixed, which follows on from their 2014 eponymous EP. The album, a lot of which was written on the road in the Northern Territory, is warm and lush, the songs, as you would expect, the true focus.

“We wanted to try and capture the distance and broadness of the environment in [the Territory], we wanted that atmosphere,” O’Mara explains of the album’s nine tracks. “We didn’t do it so consciously, but we wanted the feeling of where we’d written the song, to still be in it when we recorded it.”

Produced by O’Mara’s cousin, Shane O’Mara, Eyes Still Fixed carries a lot of weight. Yes, the band’s members are known for work elsewhere, but it’s in this incarnation that they’re shining just as brightly – with this album, Amarillo have proven they’re something all their own.

Samuel J. Fell

The Age - http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/amarillo-find-reward-in-new-project-of-their-own-20160928-grq8d4.html

Record Review - Beth Hart

Published in the November issue of Rolling Stone (Aust.), October 2016

Beth Hart

Fire On The Floor

Provogue / Mascot

Beth Hart finds her musical space with eighth solo release

Beth Hart’s new release, her eighth solo album, is on a new level. There seems to be an assuredness to her delivery here, to her lyrics, she seems to have found a spot in which to reside, and it’s a spot she inhabits well.

Beginning with the sultry, jazz-stained ‘Jazzman’, Fire On The Floor covers a lot of rootsy ground – soul (‘Let’s Get Together’, the title track, ‘Good Day To Cry’), blues and blues/rock (‘Coca Cola’, ‘Fat Man’), jazz and touches of gospel. With a crack band behind her, it’s Hart’s voice which takes centre stage, as one would expect. Solid, soaring, assured. This is a new Beth Hart, the conviction with which she now sings heralding the start of something special.

3.5/5 

Samuel J. Fell

Key Tracks: Jazzman, Let’s Get Together, Fire On The Floor

Record Review - Jordie Lane

Published in the November issue of Rolling Stone (Aust.), October 2016

Jordie Lane & The Sleepers

Glassellland

Blood Thinner Records / MGM

Jordie Lane picks up where he left off with first studio album in five years

It’s been a while between drinks for Jordie Lane, but as his new studio effort attests, he’s not lost anything in the interim. GLASSELLLAND is Lane in vintage form, his strong and warm voice framing a set of songs astounding in their intricate telling of everyday tales in such a way as to make them relatable to most anyone.

Teaming up with now long-time collaborator Clare Reynolds, the pair play all instruments on this one, Lane’s trademark Americana/folk still very much the focus but now with a pop nous (think Beatles, circa Rubber Soul) that adds a new dimension to a sound already brimming with diversity and sonic flavour. This album is strong and assured, yet another stellar release.

4/5 

Samuel J. Fell

Key Tracks: ‘Black Diamond’, ‘America Won’t You Make My Dreams Come True’, ‘Dreamin’ The Life’