Best of What’s New

Another Friday calls for another installment of Best of What’s New. This week, I’m mostly featuring new music by long established artists like Robert Plant, Alanis Morissette and The Jayhawks. There’s also Americana singer-songwriter Ryan Gustafson, who isn’t a newcomer either, though not exactly a household name yet. Rounding out this post are LadyCouch, an exciting, still relatively young soul-oriented band from Nashville. Let’s get to it.

Robert Plant/Charlie Patton Highway (Turn it Up, Pt. 1)

Charlie Patton Highway (Turn it Up, Pt. 1) is a previously unreleased tune from Robert Plant’s upcoming career-spanning solo anthology Digging Deep: Subterranea, which is scheduled for October 2nd. Credited to drummer Marco Giovino, producer Buddy Miller and Plant, the song came out on July 31. It will also be included on Band of Joy Volume 2, Plant’s 12th solo album and the first since Carry Fire from October 2017, which is “soon to be released,” according to his merchandise website. “I spent time in the hill country of north Mississippi around Como, dropping back to Clarksdale, the incredible center of black music talent over the years,” Plant told Rolling Stone about the track. “I weaved my car through the Delta back roads, listening to the remarkable protestations of Mississippi AM radio. I was looking at my world and my times from this unfamiliar place and found myself exposed to a nightmare world of half-truths.” Looks like Robert Plant fans have lots of music they can look forward to.

Alanis Morissette/Her

Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer and actress Alanis Morissette is best known for 1995 album Jagged Little Pill, which included various hits like Ironic and Hand in My Pocket. Since then, she has released six additional albums, including her most recent one Such Pretty Forks in the Road, her ninth and first in eight years, which appeared on July 31. Like all other tracks on the album, Her was co-written by Morissette and Michael Farrell. “I’ve had so many mentors who were women, who have really represented the maternal,” Morissette explained to Apple Music. “Especially postpartum, there’s this whole thought of like, ‘Who’s going to mother the mother?’…For me, this song is really about reaching out for mom, the reaching out for the maternal, for the empathic, the skin-on-skin tenderness.”

The Jayhawks/This Forgotten Town

The Jayhawks are an American alternative country and country rock band that was initially founded in Minneapolis in 1985. The original line-up included Mark Olson (acoustic guitar, vocals), Gary Louris (electric guitar, vocals), Marc Perlman (bass) and Norm Rogers (drums). Their eponymous debut album appeared the following year. The Jayhawks released six additional records before they went on hiatus in 2004. Five years later, they reunited and have since come out with four additional albums. In addition to original co-founders Louris and Perlman, the band’s other current members are Tim O’Reagan (drums, vocals), Karen Grotberg (keyboards, backing vocals) and John Jackson (acoustic guitar, violin, mandolin). This Forgotten Town, co-written by Louris, Perlman and O’Reagan, is from their new album XOXO released on July 10. I dig the warm sound, and there’s some great harmony singing as well.

The Dead Tongues/Déjá Vu

Déjá Vu is a track from Transmigration Blues, the new album released on June 26 by The Dead Tongues, a project of singer-songwriter, musician and producer Ryan Gustafson, according to his Facebook page. “I gave this album everything I had, over and over again,” Gustafson notes in a June 26 post. “Songwriting is a mirror, a safe space, a place to explore my limits of thought and emotion, a way to communicate when other avenues seem unaccessible or hidden to me, its where I learn to fail, fall apart and persist, its where I go inward ultimately to recycle it outward again, it’s where I’m alive and where i consider silence…To live is to change and this is the time to truly be present and alive.” Given all of Gustafson’s efforts to make the record, I find it remarkable there’s no further information about him on his Facebook page. And this isn’t his first time at the rodeo. Searching Discogs revealed Transmigration Blues is Gustafson’s fourth album appearing under The Dead Tongues alias. The oldest listed entry is the self-released Desert from 2013. I can hear a Neil Young vibe in Déjá Vu but can’t deny the fact I could be biased, given this also happens to be the title of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s iconic studio album from March 1970.

LadyCouch/Heartache

LadyCouch are a Nashville-based band around Keshia Bailey and Allen Thompson. According to their website, the band was born out of Keshia Bailey and Allen Thompson’s love for one another and their love for honest, soulful music.  Although their friendship stretches back years, it wasn’t until the winter of 2017 they decided to share a stage…The pair seem to come from two different worlds, musically, with Keshia hailing from the straight-ahead throwback Soul group Magnolia Sons, and Allen from the psychedelic folk of the Allen Thompson Band. But their similar Appalachian upbringings and their genuine appreciation for Soul, Rock, Funk, Country and Folk allow them to build bridges across genres to create a sound all its own. In addition to Bailey and Thompson, the band’s other core members include guitarists Grayson Downs, Clint Maine and Mike Ford Jr., as well as Jimmy Matt Rowland (keyboards), Ray Dunham (drums) and Gordon Persha (bass). Heartache appears to be their second single that came out on July 17. Boy, do I love their warm and soulful sound!

Sources: Wikipedia; Robert Plant official store website; Rolling Stone; Apple Music; Discogs; YouTube

My Playlist: Music Artists Who Do It All

The singer-songwriter category is very broad, depending on how you define it, spanning different music genres, including folk, rock, country and pop. According to Wikipedia, singer-songwriters are artists who write, compose and perform their own music, oftentimes solo with just a guitar or piano. AllMusic adds that although early rock & roll artists like Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly wrote and sang their own songs, the term singer-songwriter “refers to the legions of performers that followed Bob Dylan in the late 60s and early 70s.” You could make the same observation about blues pioneers like Lead Belly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Based on the above definition, artists who write and perform songs as part of a band are not singer-songwriters. Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger would be popular examples in this context. While I’ve seen Elton John being mentioned as a singer-songwriter, to me he’s not, at least not in the strict sense. While he has written the music to his songs and performed them, he has relied on Bernie Taupin for the lyrics. By comparison, the other big pop piano man of our time, Billy Joel, has written the music and lyrics for pretty much all of his songs, so he fits the category.

With the singer-songwriter definition being out of the way, let’s get to some of my favorite artists in that category. I’d like to tackle this chronologically, starting with the 60s and Bob Dylan. The Times They Are A-Changin’ is the title track from his third studio album, which appeared in January 1964. According to Songfacts, the tune “became an anthem for frustrated youth,” expressing anti-establishment sentiments and reflecting the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Songfacts also quotes Dylan from the liner notes of his Biograph box set compilation album from November 1985: “I wanted to write a big song, some kind of theme song, with short, concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. This is definitely a song with a purpose. I knew exactly what I wanted to say and who I wanted to say it to.” Sadly, the song has taken on new relevance in present-day America, especially over the past couple of years.

Next up: Donovan and Sunshine Superman, one of my longtime favorite ’60s tunes. The song is the title track of Donovan’s third album released in August 1966 in the U.S. It did not come out in the U.K. due a contractual dispute between British label Pye Records and U.S. label Epic Records. This also impacted the release of Donovan’s fourth album Mellow Yellow, which like Sunshine Superman appeared in the U.S. only. After the labels had worked out their issue, Pye Records released a compilation from both records in the U.K. in June 1967 under the title of Sunshine Superman.

Jumping to the ’70s, here’s Fire And Rain by James Taylor. Apart from his cover of the Carole King tune You’ve Got A Friend, the opener of his second album Sweet Baby James from February 1970 is my favorite Taylor song. It became his first big hit in the U.S., peaking at no. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Songfacts quotes Taylor from a 1972 interview with Rolling Stone, during which he explained how the song came about: “The first verse is about my reactions to the death of a friend [Susie Schnerr, “Suzanne”]. The second verse is about my arrival in this country [the U.S.] with a monkey on my back, and there Jesus is an expression of my desperation in trying to get through the time when my body was aching and the time was at hand when I had to do it. And the third verse of that song refers to my recuperation in Austin Riggs [from drug addiction] which lasted about five months.” Wow, certainly a lot of stuff packed in one song!

In November 1970, Cat Stevens (nowadays known as Yusuf/Cat Stevens) released Tea For The Tillerman, his fourth studio album. One of my favorite tunes from that record is Father And Son. According to Songfacts, while Stevens made up the story about a son wanting to join the Russian Revolution and his dad pleading with him to stay home to work on the farm, the lyrics were inspired by Stevens’ lonely childhood and differences of opinion between him and his father about his chosen path to become a professional musician.

I already mentioned Carole King, one of my favorite singer-songwriters of all time – in fact, make that one of my all-time favorite music artists! Sometimes one forgets that before becoming a recording artist and performer, King had a close to 10-year career writing songs for other artists, together her then-husband Gerry Goffin. More than two-dozen of these tunes entered the charts, and various became hits. Examples include Chains (The Cookies, later covered by The Beatles on their debut record), The Loco-Motion (Little Eva), One Fine Day (The Chiffons) and Pleasant Valley Sunday (The Monkees). King composed the music for these tunes, while Goffin wrote the lyrics. Then, in February 1971, Carole King released her second solo album Tapestry. Instead of obvious choices like I Feel The Earth Move, It’s Too Late or You’ve Got A Friend, I’d like to highlight Way Over Yonder. Among others, this gem features James Taylor on acoustic guitar and Curtis Amy who plays the amazing tenor saxophone solo. To me, this is as close to perfection as music can get – emotional, beautiful and timeless!

Joni Mitchell is one of those artists I really should know much better than I currently do. In June 1971, her fourth album Blue appeared, which according to Wikipedia is widely regarded by music critics as one of the greatest records of all time. Here’s This Flight Tonight. If you don’t know Mitchell’s original, yet the melody and the lyrics somehow sound familiar, you’ve probably heard the cover by Scottish hard rock band Nazareth. I certainly have, since they scored a no. 1 hit with it in Germany in 1973. The song also charted in the U.K. (no. 11), U.S. (no. 177) and Canada (no. 27).

More frequent visitors of the blog won’t be surprised about my next choice: Neil Young. Wait a moment, some might think, based on what I wrote in my clever introduction, should he be in the list? After all, he has been affiliated with bands like Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and he continues to perform frequently with Crazy Horse. Well, in addition to these bands, Young has done plenty of solo work, plus Crazy Horse is his backing band. At the core, there’s no doubt to me that Young nicely fits the singer-songwriter definition. Here’s The Needle And The Damage Done, one of Young’s finest songs first recorded for Harvest, his fourth studio album from February 1972. The tune was inspired by the death of Young’s friend and former Crazy Horse bandmate Danny Whitten from heroin addiction. With the U.S. battling a horrific opioid addiction crisis, eerily, the song’s lyrics remain as relevant today as they were more than 45 years ago.

While with the explosion of the singer-songwriter category in the late ’60s and 70s I could go on featuring artists from that time period, I also would like to least touch on more recent decades. In the ’80s, Suzanne Vega emerged as one of the most popular artists in the category. At the time, I frequently listened to her second album Solitude Standing from April 1987 – yes, it’s the one with Tom’s Diner. While that song represents cinematic-type storytelling at its best and perfectly describes the New York morning rush, I’ve become a bit tired of the tune due to over-exposure. Interestingly though, it wasn’t much of a chart success at the time, unlike Luka, the track I’m featuring here, which became Vega’s biggest hit. The song’s upbeat melody is in marked contrast to the lyrics addressing the horrible subject of child abuse.

When it comes to ’90s singer-songwriters, one name that comes to mind is Alanis Morissette. In June 1995, the Canadian artist released her third studio album Jagged Little Pill, which became her first record that appeared worldwide and catapulted her to international stardom. The album became a chart topper in 13 countries, including Canada, the U.K. and the U.S., and is one of the highest-selling records of all time, exceeding more than 33 million copies worldwide. It won five Grammy Awards including Album of the Year. Here’s the record’s second single Hand In My Pocket, a nice rock tune Morissette co-wrote with Glen Ballard who also produced the album.

The last artist I’d like to highlight in this post is English singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse. During her career, which was tragically cut short in July 2011 when she died from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27, Winehouse only released two albums. Her acclaimed second record Back To Black from October 2007 won Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2007 Grammy Awards. With close to 3.6 million units sold in the U.K. alone, Back To Black became the U.K.’s second best-selling album of the 21st century; worldwide sales exceeded 12 million. Here’s the opener Rehab, which also was released separately as the album’s lead single. The lyrics describe Winehouse’s refusal to attend rehab for alcoholism following her management team’s suggestion. The tune has a nice soul vibe and like many of her other songs has a retro feel.

Sources: Wikipedia, AllMusic, Songfacts, YouTube