Archive Review: Morrissey’s You Are the Quarry (2004)

As frontman for the highly influential British band the Smiths, Steven Patrick Morrissey created the blueprint for much of what was to follow in Britpop, from early ‘90s chart-toppers like Oasis and Pulp to new millennium art-rockers like Radiohead and Coldplay. Morrissey’s self-absorbed lyrics, his ambiguous sexuality and romantic yearning, his alienation and radical politics captured England’s imagination, albeit briefly, over the course of four mid-‘80s albums. The Smiths, courtesy of Morrissey’s writing partner Johnny Marr, brought the guitar back to rock ‘n’ roll, the band’s combination of punk-inspired DIY aesthetic and British Invasion-inspired tunecraft earning the band a fair degree of commercial success in its homeland and a passionate cult audience stateside.

When the Smiths crashed and burned after Marr left the band in 1987, Morrissey jumped into a solo career without missing a beat. The following year he released his debut, Viva Hate, to significant commercial and critical acclaim, scoring hit singles with the songs “Suedehead” and “Everyday Is Like Sunday.” By the time of 1992’s Your Arsenal, the British music press had turned its back on its one-time wonder boy, openly calling Morrissey a has-been while questioning his well-earned musical accomplishments. By this time, however, the American audience had embraced the artist, driving the album to number 21 on the Billboard Top 200 chart. Morrissey’s 1994 follow-up, Vauxhall and I, climbed even higher, peaking at number 18, cementing Morrissey’s legacy as an artist. By the time of 1997’s underrated Maladjusted, the music industry had undergone a significant change in direction, with vacuous boy bands and flaxen-haired pop tarts making a mockery of Morrissey’s musical prose.   

Morrissey’s You Are the Quarry

You Are the Quarry is Morrissey’s first album in seven years, not so much a comeback as it is a reminder of the timeless quality of the artist’s muse. Morrissey’s off-putting sense of entitlement, heartworn romanticism, angst and political outrage is much in evidence throughout the album’s lyrics, the singer’s trembling vocals as engaging and mournful as they were 20 years ago. During his lengthy exile in Los Angeles, Morrissey’s status as a rock legend has outgrown his detractor’s best efforts, his band and solo work cited as crucial by artists as diverse as rocker Ryan Adams and rappers Outkast. Morrissey seems to have used his time away from the spotlight to resharpen his songwriting craft, the artist’s poison pen poised to tackle a number of relevant subjects.

“America Is Not the World” chides the artist’s adopted home for its excesses and bullying nature, Morrissey declaring his love for the country while pointing out why much of the rest of the world dislikes the U.S.A. One of many politically charged songs on You Are the Quarry, Morrissey is also quick to criticize the land of his birth in “Irish Blood, English Heart.” A wry commentary on English history, Morrissey’s vocals build from a whisper to a scream, exclaiming “I’ve been dreaming of a time/when the English are sick to death/of Labour and Tories/and spit upon the name Oliver Cromwell/and denounce this royal line that still salute him/and will salute him forever.” It’s a strong anti-monarchist statement, fitting perfectly with Morrissey’s left-leaning, humanistic viewpoint.

Trademark Melancholy

Morrissey doesn’t neglect his trademark melancholy with You Are the Quarry, a brace of strong songs tackling loss of faith (“I Have Forgiven Jesus”), unrequited love (“Come Back To Camden”) and the loss of privacy (“How Can Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel?”). Throughout the album, Morrissey bares his soul even more than usual, throwing out lines that reflect his concerns about the past (“I’m not sorry for the things I’ve done”) and his place in history (“The future is passing you by”). Along the way, he lets slip that his bravado is a mask to hide behind (“Jesus – do you hate me? Why did you stick me in self-deprecating bones and skin?”). Morrissey assaults American Idol-styled “lock-jawed pop-stars” who are “so scared to show intelligence” because “it might smear their lovely career.”

Morrissey saves his most savage invective for the music industry itself, “You Know I Couldn’t Last” providing him with the last laugh and offering an experienced glimpse of the price of fame. “The teenagers who love you/they will wake up/yawn and kill you” sings Morrissey, “the critics who can’t break you/unwittingly, they make you.” Decrying the “squalor of the mind” often created by success, Morrissey sings of the pressures of expectation, “there’s a cash-register ringing/and it weighs so heavy on my back.” In life, as in song, Morrissey has turned his back on the industry, the artist’s independent streak manifesting itself in his lyrics and business decisions alike. Dealing with the industry on his own terms, Morrissey got Sanctuary Records to activate the long-dormant Attack imprint in releasing You Are the Quarry.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Throughout a career that has now spawned two decades, Morrissey has consistently defied expectations even while seldom adventuring beyond his (admittedly) narrow stylistic tendencies. Morrissey’s strength as an artist has always been in the confessional nature of his lyrics, his persistent dedication to craft and his connection with his audience. Although his exaggerated public persona is often attacked by critics, there is no doubting the artist’s sincerity and accomplishments. You Are the Quarry is an excellent addition to Morrissey’s oeuvre, a solid rock ‘n’ roll album that illustrates why Morrissey is held in such high esteem in the first place. (Attack Records/Sanctuary, released May 14th, 2004)

Archive Review: Various Artists - Radio Dick, Volume One (2003)

Named after the notorious pirate DJ, Pal-Tone calls its Radio Dick compilation “The 3-sided LP Series.” Each CD will feature four songs each from three distinctly different bands (thus the “3 sides”); volume numero uno offering up cuts by the American Plague, Windfall, and Vangard. The American Plague hail from Knoxville, Tennessee and sound a lot like stadium rockers trapped in punk rock bodies. “Alabama Tough Love” rips a riff right out of the Johnny Ramone playbook, pumps it up a bit with steroidal amplitude and rocks the hell out of it. The band’s other three songs shake the earth in a similar fashion, all muscular power chords and soaring vocals, kind of like a cross between Pearl Jam and Loverboy.

Windfall has a female lead vocalist, which lets you know right off the bat that you’re going to experience a different aesthetic from the Plague’s throwback crotchrock. Singer Jennifer Catucci has pretty good pipes, but fairly pedestrian material to work with, shimmering guitars and rhythmic crescendos supporting her operatic vocal gymnastics. “Kindle Eyes Nude” is the best of the batch, a hard-driving tune with clashing instrumentation, wiry leads and odd timing that works to great effect behind Catucci’s larger-than-life vocals. Of the trio of young ‘uns here, Windfall sounds the most like the big time. 

Vangard rounds out Radio Dick, Volume 1, kicking out the jams with rapid-fire, generic pop-punkola that could easily find a home on Drive Thru or Vagrant. Not that any of Vangard’s material is offensively dreck – it’s all pleasant enough I suppose, kind of like cherry cough syrup, with the sweetness covering the bad aftertaste (and the shudder of revulsion that follows). All in all, a mighty mediocre comp with little to distinguish these three bands from the universe full of rock ‘n’ roll hopefuls. (Pal-Tone Records, released 2003)

Review originally published by Jersey Beat music zine... 

Interview: Peter Holsapple of the dB's (1984)

Masters of a unique American pop/rock sound that garnered tem a great deal of critical acclaim for their two import albums, the dB’s are virtual unknowns outside of a few college radio markets across the country. “We received a lot of college radio airplay with those two albums,” says Peter Holsapple, the band’s songwriter and vocalist. “Songs like ‘Black and White’ and ‘Happen’stance’ were staples. When you have an import LP, though, and you’re taking it around to people, you don’t have the promotional ability that an American label, even a small independent, does.” This identity crisis should end, though, with the release of the band’s first American album, Like This.

Like This is a collection of various musical influences, produced by former Waitresses member Chris Butler. Listing influences as wonderfully diverse as REM, Jason and the Scorchers, Marshall Crenshaw, and the Gun Club, Holsapple says of the album “it’s an optimistic record for optimistic times.” With all eleven of the album’s songs penned by Holsapple, Like This represents a departure from the old dB’s style. Former member Chris Stamey, who left the band to pursue a solo career, wrote half of the band’s past material. Says Holsapple, “our focus has changed somewhat. We’ve tried to make it a diverse and yet as interesting as possible.” With six years of both on-the-road and in-the-studio experience already under their belts, of Like This Holsapple says “we got our sophomore jinx out of the way years ago, so this is our first third LP and our second first LP!”

The band acquired their recording contract after a two-year hiatus. “We had to take a break and look at where we were going, what we were achieving,” says Holsapple. During this break, Holsapple toured as an opening act for R.E.M., performing an amazing acoustic set. Because of these performances’s optimistic and upbeat nature, Holsapple dubbed this his ‘No Nebraska’ tour, an obvious reference to Bruce Springsteen’s somber recording of that name.

The dB’s will tour all summer and into the fall, not only to build a base for their audience (“I want people to say ‘Yeah, I want that album when it comes out!’” says Holsapple), but also to reacquaint themselves with the rigors of life on the road after such a long lay-off. “The power that this band puts out on stage is incredible,” says Holsapple, “it’s the hottest, cookingest little outfit I’ve heard in a long time.”

Interview originally published by Nashville Intelligence Report #24, October 1984

Also on That Devil Music: The dB’s Like This CD review 

Archive Review: Seasick Steve’s Hubcap Music (2013)

Bluesman “Seasick” Steve Wold is an interesting character by any measure. Leaving his California home as a teenager, Wold traveled across country by train, living the hobo life while looking for work. Throughout the 1950s and early ‘60s, he drifted across the Southeast and Southwest U.S. working as a farm hand, a cowboy, and a carnie before he picked up the guitar and began playing his own unique style of country-blues. He ended up in Europe, where he made a living as a street busker playing for tips before he drifted into studio engineering and production where, most notably, he worked on the band Modest Mouse’s first couple of independent albums.

As Seasick Steve, Wold wouldn’t release his first album until 2004’s Cheap, which he recorded with the Norwegian duo the Level Devils. The critically-acclaimed Dog House Music, his solo debut, came out in 2006, and it was a New Year’s Eve appearance on fellow musician Jools Holland’s BBC television show that made Seasick Steve an overnight sensation in the U.K. Several albums and major festival appearances would follow throughout the late ‘00s, as would various awards and accolades. Seasick Steve made his debut for Jack White’s Third Man Records with 2011’s You Can’t Teach An Old Dog New Tricks, his fourth album in a row to go Gold or Platinum for U.K. sales. 

Seasick Steve’s Hubcap Music

Steve’s Hubcap Music, recorded with his longtime drummer Dan Magnusson, is named for one of the singer’s homemade guitars, his unusual instruments an appropriate match to his unique style of blues. The sound of an old tractor firing up introduces the jaunty “Down On the Farm,” a song not that far, stylistically, from Watermelon Slim’s similarly raw-boned roots-rock. With former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones holding down a fat bottom end and Magnusson delivering a big percussive beat, Seasick Steve cranks out some scorching licks on his hubcap guitar while he sings the praises of life, well, “down on the farm” with a John Deere tractor, the smell of hay, shovels and other farming implements, including a chainsaw. In the hands of any other artist this might seem trite, but Steve and the band deliver a playful, down-home boogie-blues with plenty of chainsaw riffs that wouldn’t seem out of place on a Canned Heat album.

Seasick Steve’s “Self Sufficient Man” slows the tempo down a bit, rolling as it does into a languid rhythmic grind with plenty of Mississippi mud rubbed into the grooves. Steve delivers some stellar guitarplay in between the mesmerizing riffs, his two-man band following closely in the creation of a heady swamp-water stew, the entire performance sounding like electrified, amplified Delta blues gone to a dark place. By contrast, “Keep On Keepin’ On” has more of a North Mississippi Hill Country vibe, Steve and the crew delivering a rockin’, R.L. Burnside burning down the juke-joint styled performance, Jones’ showing his skills as a multi-instrumentalist with some fine banjo pickin’.

Freedom Road

Seasick Steve 

Mr. Jack White III joins in for the down ‘n’ dirty “The Way I Do,” the guitarist adding some serpentine fretwork behind Steve’s haunting vocals on a menacing Mississippi blues jam worthy of the late, great Junior Kimbrough. Although sporting minimalist lyrics, Steve punches the words home with dead-certain finality, Magnusson’s cannon-fire drumbeats loudly punctuating each word. White’s guitar lines are unpredictable, imaginative, and entirely in keeping with the odd direction of the song. “Purple Shadows” is a gentler listening experience, a soft-edged slow-tempo Americana ballad that features underrated Nashville singer Elizabeth Cook. Steve’s gruff, twangy Merle Haggard-styled vocals contrast nicely with Cook’s sweeter feminine tones, the song a tale of love gone wrong, or maybe just unrequited, the two voices intertwined to emphasize the lyrical heartbreak.

The cacophony that opens “Freedom Road” is just a taste of the song’s raw, reckless performance with Steve strangling his hubcap git for every last damn note, the Jones/Magnusson rhythmic shuffle luring the listener into complacency as Steve’s lyrics evoke memories of Robert Johnson’s hellhounds, his sonorous vocals drawling out each word before the song launches into a raucous freight-train boogie worthy of Savoy Brown. North Mississippi Allstars frontman Luther Dickinson layers on bucketloads of slinky guitar on the trance-blues romp “Home,” but it’s the full band treatment offered “Coast Is Clear” that really mixes things up. After ten tracks of delightfully greasy roots ‘n’ blues, the album-ending “Coast Is Clear” is a swerve, an inspired mix of Stax-styled Memphis soul with gospel overtones and a Southern rock heart. It’s an elegant performance, spiced with Jones’ stately Hammond organ riffs and Steve’s considered vocals, the song representing a new musical direction for the expat bluesman if Seasick Steve should ever want to travel further down this stylistic road.       

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

If you’ve yet to discover the immense charms of Seasick Steve, Hubcap Music is a great place to start. The album’s carefully-crafted mix of country-blues, roots-rock, and Southern soul is delivered with the fervor a true believer, the instrumentation is truly inspired, and the guest performances are understated yet significant. Hubcap Music is delightfully entertaining, with many musical layers and textures, Seasick Steve definitely an underrated talent worthy of your consideration. The Rev says “check it out!” (Third Man Records, released October 15, 2013)

Archive Review: Nick Moss’s Here I Am (2011)

Over the course of a half-dozen or so studio and live albums with his excellent band the Flip Tops, singer and guitarist Nick Moss proved himself to be somewhat of a Chicago blues traditionalist. While the “Windy City” native would embellish the classic Chicago sound with a little houserockin’ energy from time to time, he was just as likely to go backwards in time, towards the “one step from the Delta” era of Tampa Red or Big Bill Broonzy, as he did with the acoustic disc of 2007’s acclaimed Play It ‘Til Tomorrow album. 

Drawing comparisons to another Chicago blues institution, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, it seemed as if Moss and the Flip Tops could do no wrong…and neither could they break out of the creative miasma that traditional blues can drag an artist into. Moss flipped the switch with his 2010 release Privileged. While still working with Flip Tops band members like multi-instrumentalist Gerry Hundt and drummer Bob Carter, Privileged was a solo album very much in a blues-rock vein, Moss sealing the deal with a high-octane cover of Cream’s “Politician.”    

Nick Moss’s Here I Am

Two years after unveiling his muscular new sound on the Blues Music Award nominated Privileged, Moss returns with a crackerjack new band and the steroids-enhanced, livewire blues-rock dinosaur stomp that is Here I Am. Building upon what now seem to be the tentative first steps of Privileged, Moss and his blues bruisers use a traditional Chicago blues framework to construct an imposing leviathan of riff-happy, percussion-heavy performances that masterfully weld familiar 1960s-era blues sounds to 1970s-and-‘80s-influenced, guitar-driven, amps-on-eleven blues-rock in the creation of a new 21st century blues paradigm.

Take, for instance, the album-opening “Why You So Mean?,” an unbridled seven-minute jam that smacks you upside the head from jump street with Moss’s fierce guitarplay, Travis Reed’s rollicking keyboards, and Patrick Seals’ unforgiving percussion. Grabbing the power and emotion of early Muddy Waters and matching it with the energy of 1970s-era Hound Dog Taylor, Moss unfolds a classic blues tune of romance and betrayal. As the locomotive rhythms and “Stumpy” Hutchkins’ throbbing bass line hold down the bottom end, Moss waxes pyrotechnic with an explosive six-string performance that storms out of your speakers like a bombing run, his anguished vocals providing an emotional urgency that is enhanced by the no-quarter-asked (and none given) nature of his screaming fretwork.

Blood Runs

If “Why You So Mean?” hasn’t left you on the floor gasping for breath, “Blood Runs” just might finish the job. A musclebound rocker with Southern soul roots, the song takes a little mojo from guitarist John Cipollina’s mesmerizing “Pride of Man” for its chorus, matching it with insightful and topical working class blues lyrics, Moss’s tortured vocals, Reed’s tinkling keys, and cool, gospel-styled backing harmonies. Moss’s solo is taut and menacing, like a barb-wire tattoo around your throat, while his intelligent lyrics pose a pretty damning question. The title track is a larger-than life musical throwback to Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin, with a soupcon of Z.Z. Top thrown in to provide a little Texas twang (especially in Moss’s fluid vocals). The lyrics are defiant, and perhaps more than a little biographical, delivered with strength and certainty.

Not all of Here I Am is monster-riffed, moshpit blues-rock Sturm und Drang, nosirree…Moss’s “It’ll Turn Around,” for instance, is a slow-paced and deliberate mix of blues and Southern rock with a positive message and elegant guitarplay, while “Caught By Surprise” bolts a funky rhythmic track to an R&B styled soul-blues heartbreaker with nuanced guitars, subdued but effective vocals, and syncopated drumbeats. The red-hot “Katie Ann (Slight Return)” takes its cue from Jimi Hendrix’s bluesier side, throws a little of droning North Mississippi Hill Country vibe into the gumbo pot, and seasons the mix with a little Delta mud, stirring up an engaging and mesmerizing performance that rocks hard, but cruises dangerously below the radar with jet-fighter riffs and bombastic percussion. The instrumental “Sunday Get Together” is a low-key but effective jam with wave upon wave of bluesy guitar, sparse drums, and keyboard flourishes atop a traditional foundation.          

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Unlike a lot of acclaimed fretburners that began their career playing blues-rock, Nick Moss is coming in through the side door after spending a couple decades as a sideman and bandleader working in pretty much a straight blues vein. Unburdened by the clichés and expectations of the blues-rock style that often serve as an obstacle to musicians, Moss has taken to the form like a duck to water, but on his own terms and with fresh ideas as to the execution of the music.

Here I Am is a stunning, electrifying, and entertaining collection that places Moss at the forefront of today’s blues-rock scene. Exploring, and often exploding the boundaries of the style, Moss has staked his claim as an innovator, creating new possibilities not only for blues-rock guitar but for the music altogether. While I personally believe that Moss is one album away from creating a bona fide blues-rock masterpiece that will endure the test of time, with Here I Am he has delivered a near-classic collection, while all of the pieces – from the songwriting to his eclectic and exciting fretwork – are falling into place like dominoes…can’t wait to hear what he does next! (Blue Bella Records, released November 22, 2011)

Archive Review: Big Bill Morganfield’s Blues With A Mood (2013)

Big Bill Morganfield is getting a lot of ink these days – and deservedly so – to go along with multiple Blues Music Award nominations for his 2012 debut Son of the Seventh Son. But Muddy Waters’ other blues-singing son has been quietly building a legacy of his own for better than a decade and a half. Since the 1999 release of Big Bill Morganfield’s Rising Son album (which won him a BMA for “Best New Blues Artist”), the singer, songwriter, and guitarist has become a popular live performer and perennial festival attraction.

Big Bill Morganfield’s Blues With A Mood

For his fifth album, Morganfield goes indie all the way, Blues With A Mood released on the artist’s own Black Shuck Records imprint. Recorded in Nashville with producer Colin Linden and an all-star cast that includes guitar greats Eddie Taylor Jr. and Bob Margolin, as well as keyboardist Augie Meyers (Sir Douglas Quintet, Texas Tornadoes) and harp player Richard “Doc” Malone, Morganfield scatters a few well-chosen covers across Blues With A Mood, surrounding them with solid original tunes written in an undeniably retro style.

Morganfield’s stated intent for Blues With A Mood was to deliver a moody set of performances that would evoke memories of old-school John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters and I’d say that he’s accomplished his goal. Only the original “Money’s Getting’ Cheaper” evinces any sort of contemporary lyrical influence – then again, poverty has always been a part of the blues landscape – socially-conscious lyrics accompanied by a raging vocal performance, Jim Horn’s icy blasts of sax, and Meyers’ fleet-fingered honky-tonk piano. “No Butter For My Grits” is a humorous but starkly realistic talking blues with a Chicago blues swagger and a swamp-rock vibe that showcases the hypnotic guitar interplay between Taylor and Linden.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Altogether, Blues With A Mood is a throwback to the Chicago blues and R&B of the 1950s and early 1960s when giants roamed the streets of the West Side. Morganfield has this stuff hard-wired to his DNA, and Blues With A Mood isn’t so much an attempt to recreate those golden days as it is an inspired tribute to the era’s long-lasting influence, lovingly delivered with no little style and energy. (Black Shuck Records, released 2013)

Review originally published by Blues Music magazine...

Book Review: Richard Langston’s The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need A Rubber Soul (2026)

In the antediluvian age of the 1970s, long before the Internet became radicalized and the Worldwide Web was merely a hastily scribbled note on some young British computer scientist’s “To Do” list, teenaged rockers across the “fruited plain” were somewhat limited in our knowledge of the music we loved. You couldn’t look up a band “online” and while publications like Creem, Circus, Rolling Stone, and Crawdaddy provided a glimpse behind the veil into the mysteries of rock ‘n’ roll, for those of us who were stuck stateside (or didn’t have access to the New Musical Express), it could take us months…or even years to hear about our “favorite” new band. Word of mouth was the currency of the decade, and we developed friendships with like-minded punters who got their groove on to the Stones, Bowie, Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Mott the Hoople, and Alice Cooper. 

Records were lent, swapped, and sometimes stolen and we each gradually built up a personal playlist (and absorbed knowledge) of the music we liked. When punk hit the U.K. it took a couple of years to bubble up across most of the U.S. but when records by the Clash, Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks, and others eventually became available, we repeated the cycle of knowledge of our early teens. The 1980s expanded our knowledge even further with MTV, an abundance of diverse music zines, and the growth of something known as “college radio.” By the end of the century, file trading and the web removed any barriers to learning about and listen to just about any band. All of which is to say “mea culpa” and apologies for my ignorance of the existence of a thriving late ‘70s/early ‘80s rock scene in New Zealand, much less of such a groundbreaking and entertaining band as the Clean, until the early 2000s.

Richard Langston’s The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need A Rubber Soul

New Zealand journalist Richard Langston is well-versed in the birth and evolution of his homeland’s rock music scene as he was involved with it at the time as a fan and zine publisher in the ‘80s. His recently-published tome, The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need A Rubber Soul, provides a wonderful and comprehensive oral history of the Clean, from the band’s humble D.I.Y. beginnings until the modern day. It’s a deceptively quick read, and not just because there are a lot of photos and such, but because Langston gets out of his subject’s way and just lets the commentary flow. Save for a few sentences here or a paragraph there to stitch the narrative together, Langston’s brilliance is in getting people talking and then just faithfully recording their memories. The result is a fast-paced story of a rock ‘n’ roll band that doesn’t depend on tawdry debauchery or tall tales to faithfully capture the band’s story.

Formed by brothers David and Hamish Kilgour in 1978 in Dunedin, New Zealand’s second largest-city, the Clean formulated a sound based on ‘60s-era pop, garage, and psychedelic rock blended with then current U.K. punk. The Clean ran through a handful of members, including good friend of the band Peter Gutteridge, before settling on a three-piece lineup that featured David on guitar and vocals, Hamish on drums, and Robert Scott on bass. All three musicians also wrote songs, albeit some more prolifically than others, and they began playing to sparse crowds in Dunedin and Auckland before releasing their debut single, “Tally Ho!” b/w “Platypus” in 1981 on New Zealand’s fledgling Flying Nun Records label. The record was a hit and was quickly followed by a 12” EP titled Boodle Boodle Boodle. Other seven-inchers and EPs followed, the band’s commercial success boosting Flying Nun’s shoestring operations.

The Clean’s Break-Up & Reunion

After a few years of living in a van while touring Dunedin, Auckland, Christchurch and locations in between these major New Zealand metropolises, the Clean essentially broke up, its members going onto various other musical projects, most notably Scott’s outfit the Bats. But the band’s incendiary live performances and scattering of vinyl was enough to help kickstart the New Zealand rock scene during the ‘80s, eventually taking it worldwide as bands like the Bats, Tall Dwarfs, and the Verlaines found audiences in the U.S. and in Europe. The Clean reunited in 1988 for a show in London opening for the Bats, and began playing and writing together again, resulting in their first full-length album, 1990’s Vehicle.  

Tours of the United States, Great Britain, and across Europe followed, as would uniformly-excellent records like 1994’s Modern Rock,1996’s Unknown Country, and 2001’s Getaway. Building a stateside audience that included indie rock fans like Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo and Matt Swanson of Lambchop, the band wrote a successful second chapter to an already influential career. Finding a stateside home with Merge Records (home to the almighty Superchunk!), the label released the exceptionally-comprehensive, two-disc, 46-song Anthology in 2003, introducing stateside fans to the band’s out-of-print early material. Merge also released the band’s final studio album, Mister Pop, in 2009 and they’ve also worked extensively with David Kilgour, releasing several of his solo albums and those with his band the Heavy Eights during the new millennium.  

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

This is just a condensed version of the Clean’s story – you’ll have to pick up the book to get the fascinating details – but should it whet your thirst to find out more about this great, underrated band (or the New Zealand rock scene itself), you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of Langstons’ The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need A Rubber Soul. As a journalist, Langston covers all the bases, speaking with the band members, various friends and family of the band, other New Zealand musicians like Martin Phillipps of the Chills and Alec Bathgate and Chris Knox of Tall Dwarfs, as well as music biz supporters like Geoff Travis of Rough Trade Records and my ol’ “buddy” Gerard Cosloy of Homestead and Matador Records. Langston fills in any empty corners with previously-published interviews, show and album reviews, as well as personal correspondence between the band members, friends and family.

A word, also, about the look of the book…it’s freakin’ gorgeous! The Clean had several photographer friends who documented the band over the years, and the band held onto memorabilia like artwork, posters, and such for decades. As a result, In the Dreamlife is profusely and beautifully illustrated with more cool graphics than a lot of books about better-known artists. Much like the Clean’s music, the book’s layout displays a certain intuitive genius, utilizing various type fonts and sizes to separate the underlying oral history with Langston’s commentary and other text. At its core, however, In the Dreamlife is a story of a rock band that dared to dream, and to do so on its own terms. The Clean were, at heart, a punk band but with a creatively unique sound that forever colored outside the lines and limitations of any genre or expectations. They inspired a generation of indie rockers to follow, and that’s a fine legacy, indeed… (Feral House, published April 7th, 2026)   

Buy the book direct from the publisher: Richard Langston’s The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need A Rubber Soul 

Archive Review: Tab Benoit’s Legacy: The Best of Tab Benoit (2012)

Louisiana native Tab Benoit has become such a large part of the Baton Rouge/New Orleans blues community that his music and career is virtually indistinguishable from the region he’s identified with. While the talented songwriter and guitarist has often incorporated elements of swamp-rock, country, and Cajun music into his original vision of the blues, he has also become an outspoken and effective advocate for wetlands conversation and the victims of Hurricane Katrina, his social activism as heartfelt as his music.   

After spending much of the early 1990s on the Texas-based Justice Records label, Benoit signed with the venerable Telarc Records as the decade was closing. He released his Telarc debut, the acclaimed Homesick For the Road album, in 1999 and from that point on, Benoit has released an album almost every year, ten in all. Along the way he has built a loyal worldwide audience one dynamic performance at a time. Not for nothing has the singer, songwriter, and guitarist been twice named The Blues Foundation’s “B.B. King Entertainer of the Year,” most recently in 2012. With a fat catalog of great blues and roots music under his belt, it only makes sense that Telarc should honor the prolific and popular bluesman with the Legacy compilation, which collects 14 of Benoit’s best tracks on a single disc for the hardcore and fair-weather fan alike. 

Tab Benoit’s Legacy: The Best of Tab Benoit

The songs on Legacy aren’t presented in chronological order, so we start out with “Shelter Me,” a forceful swamp-blues dirge from 2007’s Power of the Pontchartrain album. Backed by Louisiana’s LeRoux, Benoit delivers a scorching performance that mixes a down-n-dirty soundtrack with soulful vocals to great effect; the result is so earthy that you’d swear you were knee-deep in cypress and swamp water while listening. Jump back to 2004 and “Night Train,” from Fever For the Bayou, with Benoit leading a three-piece band that puts the muscle back into the power-trio concept. The song itself is a rolling, roaring locomotive with Darryl White’s powerhouse drums fueling the rhythms while Benoit lays down some greasy guitar licks and gruff, hurried vocals. Benoit’s spirited solo less than two minutes into this high-octane rocker shows him to be a vastly underrated blues guitarist.

Legacy features around a 50-50 mix of Benoit’s lively originals versus obscure and well-worn covers, but the odds are good that you’ve seldom heard Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put A Spell On You” tossed around like a ragdoll, as it was on Benoit’s 1999 debut album. Capably assisted by fellow Louisiana music legend Kenny Neal, Benoit infuses the song with a bluesy malevolence missing from many cover versions, playing down the rock ‘n’ roll elements in favor of a slow-burning fuse approach. With Bruce Katz’s eerie organ riffs chiming away in the background, and Neal’s solid rhythm guitar as a backdrop, Benoit lets his freak flag fly with a series of short, shocking solos guaranteed to singe your eardrums.   

The Blues Is Here To Stay

    
Stephen Still’s classic Buffalo Springfield hit “For What It’s Worth” may seem an unlikely cover, but Benoit blues it up nicely, slowing down the pace and discarding the country-rock vibe in favor of a twangy blues-rock sound that relies heavily on Louisiana LeRoux’s enormous instrumental textures, on top of which Benoit lays down some smoky vocals and sizzling fretwork. Benoit was joined for his 2002 album Whiskey Store by fellow axe-mangler Jimmy Thackery, formerly of the Nighthawks and a successful solo artist in his own right. The two guitar virtuosos are backed by Steve Ray Vaughan’s Double Trouble cohorts for the positively SRV-styled “Nice and Warm,” a Benoit original that rocks and rolls with jazzy intensity and a blues-rock heart. The chemistry between the two guitarists is natural and carefree, which would later lead to a live album featuring the two talents.

Benoit is joined by one of New Orleans’ favorite sons, Cyril Neville, for “The Blues Is Here To Stay.” Co-written by Neville with Norman Ceasar and the great Taj Mahal, the song is a sort of inspired history of modern blues music, Benoit and Neville swapping verses, both singers bringing a lot of joy to the lyrics as the guitarist adds his Delta-inspired, New Orleans-forged fretwork to play in the margins. Benoit displays a different side of his talents with a soulful cover of Otis Redding’s classic “These Arms of Mine,” from 2002’s Wetlands. Slowing down a bit to a grueling, heartbreaking pace, Benoit doesn’t mimic the Stax Records legend as much as pay tribute with a powerful, emotional vocal performance that is bolstered by his elegant guitarwork. Working with fellow bluesman Anders Osborne, Benoit and crew stomp and stammer all over the title track to his 2011 album Medicine, the performance resulting in a blistering, swampadelic houserocker.        

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

As somebody much wiser than myself once said, “too much of a good thing is never enough,” and in my mind you just can’t get too much Benoit in your listening diet. My only bellyache about Legacy is that while the album’s tracklist pulls from all ten of Benoit’s Telarc albums, six albums are only represented by a single song. An artist of Benoit’s stature in the blues community could have easily carried a two-disc “best of” set and offered up a couple songs apiece from all ten platters. That minor cavil aside, Legacy is both a wonderful introduction to this talented and revered bluesman for the newcomer, and a welcome reminder of Tab Benoit’s talents for the long-time fan. (Telarc Records, released April 3, 2012)

Archive Review: Jason Ringenberg’s Empire Builders (2004)

When “Little” Steven Van Zandt toured Europe during the early ‘80s with his Disciples of Soul band, he saw the sad results of Reagan administration foreign policy. Speaking with the people he met in the towns that he played, Van Zandt became politicized, a philosophical transformation that resulted in a brace of overtly political albums. The culmination of Little Steven’s left-leaning political evolution was the Sun City project, a direct artistic assault on South Afrikan apartheid.

Americana music pioneer Jason Ringenberg comes from quite a different background than the Jersey-born-and-bred Van Zandt. The son of an Illinois hog farmer, Ringenberg is more of an “aw shucks” populist than a tree-hugging leftist, and neither his previous solo work or his tenure as frontman for Jason & the Scorchers reveal little of his politics. While touring Europe and Australia in support of his All Over Creation solo disc, Jason found himself questioned and criticized over American policy and the actions of the current administration. It proved to be embarrassing and frustrating and it opened the artist’s eyes to a radically different perspective than that shown by Fox News.  

Jason Ringenberg’s Empire Builders

The result of Jason Ringenberg’s politicization is Empire Builders, his third solo rock album and strongest effort to date. The songs written for Empire Builders try to make sense of America’s place in a post-911 world and collectively evince a more critical view of the country. There is no flaming rhetoric or paint-by-numbers polemics on Empire Builders, nor is there any flag-waving jingoism. What you will find, however, is a cautious and considered artistic response to current events. The album opens with “American Question,” Jason thoughtfully asking “can we export dignity, respecting those who disagree” over Jim Roll’s taut recurring riff, the song a minimalist response to an American foreign policy of “bomb-em-and-Big-Mac-em.”

Several other songs on Empire Builders also touch on 21st century manifest destiny. “New-Fashioned Imperialist,” a jaunty satire of CEO stereotypes, is sung over the oompa riffing of Dave Jacques’ tuba while “American Reprieve” is a continuation of the opening cut, delivered as the kind of jazzy tone poem that you might expect from an artist like Ed Hammel, not good old Jason. “Rebel Flag In Germany” laughingly criticizes the “Confederate” mindset that is so prevalent in the south, including his adopted home of Tennessee. Jason’s embarrassment over seeing a rebel flag on a barn in Germany is equaled only by his shame at the fact that the flag – a symbol of racism and slavery no matter what the southern heritage Neanderthals claim – still flies on flagpoles and pick-up trucks across the south. 

Ringenberg balances out his social commentary with humanistic tales such as “Tuskegee Pride,” Jason’s love of history resulting in the masterfully crafted story of a World War II African-American pilot. The song remembers the racism that these brave soldiers and their families endured even while fighting for freedom for their children and grandchildren. It is a reminder that we still have a long way to go with the issue of race in this country. “Half the Man” is a loving tribute to his father while a rocking remembrance of guitarist Link Wray pays homage to the criminally overlooked rocker (with a little help from Los Straitjackets axeman Eddie Angel). All the songs on Empire Builders are presented in the twangy folk/rock/country hybrid that has become Jason’s signature sound. Former Webb Wilder sideman and longtime Jason foil George Bradfute lends his considerable six-string skills to most of the songs and Fats Kaplin fills out the sound with some tasty pedal steel guitar.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

After twenty-something years on the old rock ‘n’ roll highway, Jason continues to grow and mature as a performer and a songwriter. Ringenberg doesn’t claim to have all the answers on Empire Builders, but he does ask some mighty damn good questions… (Courageous Chicken/Yep Roc Records, released 2004)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ zine...