Seven New Sounds for Spring
Paul McCartney, Tom Waits, Drivin N Cryin, Jack White, and more load up the Mixtape this April.
Nothing long and drawn out this week, just some new sounds I’ve been digging so far this year. You can click on most of these album covers, and they’ll take you to where you can stream/buy/download to your heart’s content. I’m sure they’ll all thank you for your support. Even Paul.
Hard Working Americans - “Work for Peace”
“The only thing wrong with peace,” Todd Snider sneers in this posthumous single from the Hard Working Americans, “you can’t make no money from it.” A condensed yet timely take on a timeless Gil Scott-Heron piece from 1994, “Work for Peace” may feel like screaming into the void at this point, but it’s better than doing nothing. After all, you “gotta work for peace. Peace ain’t coming this way.”
Drivin N Cryin - Crushing Flowers
When the chorus hits on the opening track, “Mirror Mirror,” it encapsulates everything that makes Drivin' N Cryin’ one of the great rock bands of the last 40 years: a startling and satisfying mix of catchy pop sensibility underpinned by hard rock energy and a folk singer’s attention to detail and storytelling prowess. From there, it only gets stronger. Produced once again by Sadler Vaden and featuring appearances by Peter Buck (who adds guitar to “Mirror Mirror” and the fantastic title track, which sounds exactly like the mashup of DnC and R.E.M. you’d expect and hope for) and including maybe Todd Snider’s last recording (he jumps in on the last verse of “Iggy Monkey”), Crushing Flowers is DnC’s strongest album in years… perhaps ever. Yeah, I said it.
Terry Anderson and the Olympic Ass-Kickin’ Team - Yeah Wooooo
The world may be falling apart all around us, but Terry Anderson and the Olympic Ass-Kickin’ Team are always good for some damn levity. From their newly available 3-song EP, YEAH WOOOOO, Anderson, silly and witty as ever, leads the OAKTeam through the baddest GAP Band song the Wilson Brothers never recorded. After all, who wouldn’t want to be the great Raymond Calhoun?
Peter Holsapple - The Face of 68
One of the best rock albums I’ve heard in a while, last year’s The Face of 68 finds Peter Holsapple leaning into the riffs and the wit. Most of these tracks bristle with the joy of just rocking out. The arrangements are masterful, the songwriting sharp, at times simultaneously angry and poignant (“Larger than Life”), other times off-kilter (“My Idea #49”). Although it’s as ‘eavy as the Who in places, The Face of 68 never betrays Holsapple’s power pop sensibilities (the joyful closer, “She and Me”). Then there’s “That Kind of Guy,” which is just a tad too relatable. And just in time for Record Store Day….
Jack White - “Derecho Demonico”
Jack White premiered his new two-sided single on SNL earlier this month, and while “G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs” lumbers along as White imagines a new dawn for Adam and Eve, it’s Derecho Demonico” that brings the powerful ‘70s-style riff-rock, with a groove and tone that would make Leslie West sweat.
Paul McCartney - “Days We Left Behind”
Have your eyes welled up today? If not, here’s their chance…
Massive Attack / Tom Waits - “Boots on the Ground”
And we’re back to where we started. Where Todd Snider’s seemingly final plea is for us to work for peace, the bleak shadows surrounding the chain-gang sonics of this collab between Massive Attack and Tom Waits threaten to swallow any last hope we have of finding peace of any kind. “Who the hell are these federal pricks?” Waits growls as he excoriates them for “hiding in the Senate like a bloated ass tick.” They’re all “air-conditioned fuckstick loafers sittin’ in a room full of army posters.” Coming on the heels of our Secretary of War and his cronies cosplaying while treating war as a video game, “Boots on the Ground” reflects the anger and frustration most of us feel as we watch our nation slide deeper and deeper into an idiocracy.
Happy 250th, America.
Best post of 26. You said it all and let the music do the talking. Todd RIP didn't know you but your legacy is alive and well. Thru Massive Waits! Maybe peace does have a chance.