Bettye LaVette - The Scene of the Crime

I've written previously about the inspiring trends of music in the 21st century. My reviews of albums by Rodrigo y Gabriela and Vampire Weekend have touched on the global-is-local quality of music being made today that's free of previous geographic constraints. My review of She & Him's latest touched on the loving re-construction of earlier generation's sounds. My review today hits on a similarly inspiring trend to that of re-creating genres of the past; the resurrection of forgotten stars.

The mainstream music industry has been doing this for a while now, probably since Elvis' big "comeback." We saw Johnny Cash's career resurrected by Rick Rubin's American series, and Santana unexpectedly crashed both the Billboard charts and the Grammys a decade back under Clive Davis' management. While those were major label projects, smaller labels have been doing their fair share of reclamations, also. Chief among them is ANTI- Records.

The ANTI- label has been attracting some major talent. In addition to a growing roster of contemporary acts like Neko Case, Jason Lytle and Islands, ANTI- has also signed a spate of music veterans that go back decades, regardless of their genres. Tom Waits, Merle Haggard, Marianne Faithfull, Solomon Burke, Os Mutantes, Booker T. and Mavis Staples all call ANTI- their current home. What these artists share in common is a lifetime of acclaimed music without regard to mainstream popularity. They bring a veterans' grizzled wisdom to their contemporary work that often puts up-and-comers to shame. It's a quality that Bettye LaVette's The Scene of the Crime has in spades.

LaVette's recording career has been long and filled with many more downs than ups. I'll leave it to her own biography to fill in those interested in her personal trials and travails, because what I want to focus on here is this album. Assisted by the Drive-By Truckers, one of the best southern rock bands out there today, she assembles a terrific collection of covers [with the pointed exception of the rip-roarin' original "Before the Money Came (The Battle of Bettye LaVette)", which is biographical self-aggrandizing of the best kind.] She effortlessly bounces back and forth between bluesy rockers (letting the Truckers run wild) like the opening track and then quietly soulful ballads. Her voice, aged by both years and pain, is tough. It evokes heartbreak, anger, pride and eventually ecstasy over the course of the album.

LaVette's profile has been raised significantly in the last decade. From the incredibly unlikely resurrection of her unheard full-length album Child of the Seventies after 30 years to her recent appearances at the Kennedy Center Honors (singing the crap out of the Who's "Love, Reign O'er Me") and the Inauguration of President Barack Obama, LaVette is now poised as a soul veteran with a life's worth of lessons to teach today's younger musicians. It's a good thing, too, because the soul revival has been another exciting genre revival among the many going on right now. It's a good time to be listening to music, and for LaVette, it's high time we listened to hers.

The Frames - The Cost

Like many, I was first introduced to the Frames' lead singer Glen Hansard through the wonderful movie musical Once. Hansard starred in and co-wrote new songs for the movie with co-star Markéta Irglová. The film also featured old songs of his from his work with the Frames, and ever since I saw the movie the Frames have been on my list for future exploration.

Released as Once began its long road to cultural breakthrough, The Cost features two re-recorded songs from the movie: the Oscar-winner for Best Song, "Falling Slowly," and the film's climactic number, "When Your Mind's Made Up." Both songs are recast from their film versions, re-arranged for the full-band treatment by the Frames. While "Mind" just adds an appropriate layer of electric guitar picking, "Slowly" gets electric guitar, violins, drums and what sounds like a choir. The special thing about the Frames, however, is that simply listing that potentially overwhelming arsenal of additional instruments betrays the simplicity and subtlety with which this band adorns the original arrangement. The Frames, like the best Irish pop/rock bands, are a band that plays music that openly yearns from the heart yet never goes over the top. Simple, delicate moments á la Van Morrison and Damien Rice build to the expansive release of the most anthemic U2 songs. The Cost is a quietly epic album. The opening of this album's "Falling Slowly," is a perfect example of this dynamic: Hansard moans over roaring guitars as the song opens, yet as soon as the intro ends everything cuts out except for his voice singing the first verse and a bass drum barely keeping time. The Frames earn their moments of majesty by setting them amongst a field of delicate beauty.

The songs from Once, however, only represent 20% of this album. There's plenty more to be had here, and it mostly lives up to the promise of those two songs while branching in different directions. "People Get Ready" (not a cover of the Impressions' classic), is a beautifully slow-building anthem, taking its time to travel from a voice-and-guitar duet through the addition of a tumbling drum backbeat towards an inspirational chorus with Hansard's voice arcing through its upper range as the band combusts beneath him. Sort of a U2-Sigur Rós hybrid in structure, but perfectly unique and beautiful.

"Rise" is a quiet little number that suddenly unfolds into a sea shanty with a churning fiddle solo. "Sad Songs" is a straightforward pop/rock song, with an R.E.M.-style guitar jangle that turns into a sweeping slide guitar straight out of the best country and folk balladry, before strings arrive on the bridge to take us home. The title track brings the heavy guitars to a downbeat bluesy dirge, sounding like Neil Young's band Crazy Horse, especially when violinist Colm Mac Con Iomaire unleashes a solo reminiscent of one of Young's guitar freakouts. That it's the hardest-rocking song on the album might actually make it one of the weaker ones, but this is an album that excels when the volume leaps up out of a softer bed of sound.

As the album goes on, the rhythms of the Frames settle into familiar patterns. "True" trades a slow guitar lick for piano in another slow-burning ballad, followed by another upbeat number in "The Side You Never Get to See." The Cost has a very defined mood and feel and it sticks to it while individual tracks explore different expressions of it. It also just so happens to be a mood and feel that I dig; pensive and expansive, quietly epic. The second half peters out a little bit, but it's still a worthy adventure to explore that big Irish soundscape with the Frames. Those looking for more of what Once offered will find it here, where Hansard takes his guitar and voice and is joined by a game band taking off with him as his music takes wing.

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Prior to listening to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (which, admittedly, is very fun to type), I only knew Spoon by two songs, which I liked: "The Way We Get By" was used in a film I love, Stranger Than Fiction, and this album's "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb" was hyped as one of the better songs of 2007 by a lot of critics. This album, too, was hyped in 2007 but I never got around to it until now. I dove in to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga after discovering that another of its' songs, "The Underdog", has appeared in two more of my personal pop culture loves (How I Met Your Mother and I Love You, Man.) Since TV shows and movies have become a better source for good music than radio in the last decade, and people doing work I love like this band, the time came to make the plunge, and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga seemed the natural first step.

It turns out the two songs I'd heard coming in spoiled the party a little bit. "Cherry Bomb" and "Underdog" are the clear highlights here. The other songs on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga barely raise above "filler" at their best, though to their credit few of them are ever bad either. The problem seems to be anonymity; few of the remaining songs carve out an identity for themselves. Instead, they lie flat but charmingly over a relatively consistent sonic landscape that sounds like John Mellencamp's steely acoustic guitar wandered over to Elvis Costello's rhythm section and threw in Wilco's piano and dissonant production for good measure.

I didn't have a hard time picking out other influences on the tracks that are more idiosyncratic, either. "Eddie's Ragga" is a nice bit of alterna-ska, and would have made a good outtake from The Clash's London Calling. "The Ghost of You Lingers" is the other sonically unique number here, with piano taking lead in a bizarre, LCD Soundsystem-covering-"Maniac"-from-Flashdance sort of way with vocal overdubbing and odd sonic pulses folding it into a claustrophobic paranoia. When I first listened to it, I panned it. On second listen, I give it more credit; it's at least more daring than the rest of the album.

If Spoon is a great band, this isn't their strongest album, but I see the potential. That lies pretty exclusively in the two songs I knew coming in. Both songs are the sort of tuneful, pop-tinged indie rock songs that gives the genre hope. Most indie rockers forget the importance of melody, instead relying on wit and a good riff. "Cherry Bomb" and "Underdog" give singer Britt Daniel the best two vocal lines on the album to sing with his charmingly limited pipes. He's got a raspy voice without much power, so he'd either be best suited for a punk band (which he isn't in, at least here) or a melodic rock band lifting his voice with good tunes. "Cherry Bomb" and "Underdog" are united by their great melodies. Fortunately, Spoon also had the good taste to bring in a horn section for both songs, accentuating the positive and lifting them higher into the pop stratosphere. These are two excellent songs, standing as twin towers over which the rest of the album is hung limply.

I don't have much else to add about Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, except to emphasize that I don't think it's a bad album. I don't think it's a great album, but these "filler" songs strewn across the few highlights aren't bad. They are solid, well-executed songs that aren't very memorable. Even great albums have anonymous songs. It's just that, on a greater album, there'd be less of them. Here they are the standard and the exceptions are the better songs. That doesn't make it a bad album, just an average one.