RECENT LISTENING #35
Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, Andre 3000, Chicaloyoh, The Glovenathans, John Krausbauer + David Maranha, The Justice League of America, Lemuel Marc, These Wonderful Evils
RYAN DAVIS & THE ROADHOUSE BAND Dancing on the Edge 45RPM 2LP (SOPHOMORE LOUNGE) After blowing out his own musical/experimental cobwebs throughout these Weird 2020s as a member of Equipment Pointed Ankh, the RRR Band, and his solo project Roadhouse, Ryan Davis has now, in late 2023, honed his considerable musical instincts into reinventing his primary pre-2020s singer/songwriter project State Champion as Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band with a new 45RPM 2LP called Dancing on the Edge. It seems blatant journalistic cliche to say this is Davis’s “most fully realized singer/songwriter album to date,” but it happens to be true and we might just be able to shout “Bingo!”: new band/project name that references his experimental pedigree, check . . . artwork/design that incorporates his exhibition-catalog-ready and playfully psychotronic pen-and-ink line art, check . . . of course the ‘sprawling’ double LP move (even if it’s a 45RPM 2LP, it’s still 51 minutes long, which would still require two slabs of 12” vinyl, which means you could do sides A through C cut with music and side D cut with a line-art etching that Davis-as-visual-artist would s urely also knock out of the park), check . . . and is it just one more Bingo square or like twenty when each song has multiple killer hooks apiece? It starts right out of the gate with the album-opening punchline “You got a new tattoo / of an old tattoo,” and then there’s the single-word femme-voiced backup vocal of “Constantine” that rings through the prechorus of that same opening song (“Free From the Guillotine”), and then how that same “Constantine” prechorus builds into a classically triumphant “I’m breakin’ free” chorus move, and then the way the line “do you think you could learn to re-love me?” doubles as the song-title line/chorus hook on track two “Learn 2 Re-Luv,” and also how that song gently swerves into and right back out of a single-use quasi-Calypso hook with the line “daylight will find/daylight will find/the door,” which full confession, I find to be a very Bob Weir move, not that Davis would ever claim it to be. I wouldn’t put that pressure on anyone! Hell, even the instrumentation and overall arrangements on this album can be hooks unto themselves, like how gently soulful Hammond B3 plays throughout the aforementioned “Learn 2 Re-Luv,” or each time a synth or electronic pad creates a slightly thicker bed for the Roadhouse Band to lay it out on. I mean, that’s just within the first two or three songs; I’ll let you find the rest of the hooks for yourself. Like I already wrote over on Instagram, these are “subtle progressive country soul songs [that] started really kicking in on the third listen and now I’m singing them in my sleep.”
ANDRE 3000 New Blue Sun (EPIC) Thesis of the thinkpiece: this album is great and I’ve listened to it three times already here on the Saturday morning after its Friday 11/17/2023 release date. (Sorry, I’m slow to publish record reviews.) Keep in mind, I do tend to love music, so I am making this proclamation without very little irony or post-digital malaise whatsoever, but then again, as far as work Andre “3000” Benjamin has done in the 17 years since the last Outkast album, is New Blue Sun holistically better than his single three-word chorus-hook cameo on Solange’s masterful “Junie” (2016)? Or his absurd feature/intro verse on Erykah Badu’s “Hello” (2015), which is practically 17 years worth of lyrics all by itself? Could those 90 seconds of rap music be just as subjectively mind-blowing, and make me feel just as good, as an entire expert 88-minute album of heavy ambient post-Hassell woodwinds compositions? The answer is a resounding yes, and can you believe that this morning I can listen to “Junie” then “Hello” and then New Blue Sun back to back to back? And postscript, I do not use the word “heavy” lightly for this album, even though it may present as a light LP, evoking as it does sunlight, and lightness of being, and music made by flutes. There are sections within some/all tracks that get quite heavy (obvious examples being the overall darkening-cloud minor key of “Ghandi, Dalai Lama, Your Lord & Savior J.C./Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, And John Wayne Gacy,” the title of which I just realized is a rap couplet, and naturally the 17-minute closer “Dreams Once Buried Beneath The Dungeon Floor Slowly Sprout Into Undying Gardens,” the title of which I just realized is a short biographical description of Andre’s atypical musical career), and more importantly the album is very heavy when taken in its totality, with an uncompromised nature over an 87-minute running time, and 6 of the 8 tracks being over 10 minutes long.
CHICALOYOH Folie Sacree LP (SHELTER PRESS) This was released in 2013 and I can’t even remember who recommended it or why it’s on my radar (aka my FULL ALBUMS ON DECK promotional-purposes-only stolen-music playlist) but it’s definitely kicking my ass today. Chicaloyoh is a solo (?) project by a French woman named Alice Dourlen, and it’s like she replaced Big Jim Himself in the Doors and got them to only do repeated slow-burn variations on “The End,” but with all new lyrics and tweaked melodies and an overall subdued creepy/chilling presentation.
GLOVENATHANS Nights on Broadway CD (SMILING MIND SESSIONS) I’ll be the first to say that this 2022 CD release by the Glovenathans is too long (72 minutes, 22 tracks), but it does document a novel approach to a 21st Century neo-neo-no-wave electric guitar duo concept. Both use echo, clean tones, sparseness, and what sometimes sounds like careful composition (though I think it’s probably composition-minded improvisation), to avoid post-punk loud/rock/noise/improv cliches. And yet, this is very much electric guitar music. They’re not trying to hide that. Listen to the first couple tracks on the ole Bandcamp and see if you agree. Track two “A New Southern County” is particularly nice. But again, there are too many tracks on here, and I lose interest about halfway through. Could’ve been pruned into a tighter presentation, instead of keeping all the lags and placeholders between the good stuff, but there is definitely good stuff. The Glovenathans are a Brooklyn NY duo of Andy Sterling and one J. Gordon Faylor. I already know of Sterling because he was a member of Totally Dad (“avant-americana skronk-rock with a very free structure”). I do keep track of these things!
JOHN KRAUSBAUER + DAVID MARANHA “Bringing it Back” b/w “Round and Round and Round” 7” (PUBLIC EYESORE) Hey nice, couple dudes throwing down some hardcore Theater of Eternal Music worship in 2020 via amplified violin and electric organ, and then pressing up a seven-inch of it, 33RPM with 5 minutes of righteous flat-circle drone-jamming per side. What is this, 1996 and you’re reading Muckraker magazine? Yes, but it’s 2023 and you’re reading Blastitude and the 7” isn’t $3 ppd, it’s $10 post-unpaid! (Not their fault, and that is in fact a fair price, especially here in the pre-apocalyptic mid-2020s.)
THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA Strange Mono Unsung Gems “My Uncle Geno’s Band” CS (STRANGE MONO) Proof that even previously unknown and genuinely post-punk archival Eastern-seaboard bar-band rock from 1979-1983 can be mediocre too. They are a fairly rockin’ bar band, but not too honed onto any one timeless singular-personality thing, jumping around from power pop to corny reggae hybrids to sentimental folk-pop and then back to the bars. The credits don’t explain too much, but it sounds to my ears like a single live radio performance, judging from the opening clip of a live DJ on “WNEW-FM New York” back-announcing some tracks that help nail down the new-wave roots-rock aesthetic we’re visiting (a playlist of Hank Ballard, Creedence, solo Sylvain Sylvain, Rockpile, and Dave Edmunds) and then pre-announcing the Justice League of America.
LEMUEL MARC Your Biggest Hater Vol. 12 CS (HALF A MILLION) Surprising unknown contemporary deep dive that moves fearlessly thither and yon into negative-space blank-room solo improvised music, taking the form of ragged spoken word fanfare/interludes, Ra-worthy space-loneliness trumpet, abstract haunted piano, weird electronics (or at least odd and crude mic-echo experiments), and at least a couple tracks featuring a really out-there vocalist who I think is named Yifei Zhou. RIYL the aforementioned Sun Ra at his most abstract and/or the furthest out Sea Ensemble vibes, but also with a back-alley ruggedness you might associate with any number of other ESP-Disk small-combo recordings like the New York Art Quintet on down. In fact, this might be the most original-run time-machine ESP-Disk-ready release I’ve heard from the entire 21st Century!
THESE WONDERFUL EVILS Parade Room LP (SPARROWS & WIRES) I’ve always held on to this 2009 Chicago singer/songwriter/one-man/bedroom-riff psych/rock LP so I can give it a relisten every 2-5 years . . . which means I’ve listened to it at least three times! As for tonight, the five songs on side A still aren’t really sticking, just a little meandering and middling, seeming a bit like warmups for the single 18-minute track on side B, “The Light Pours Out of D.C.,” which is a whole other story; a hugely locked-in piece of work that never strays from its focus on what are really just three simple and clear elements: a heavy driving/stationary/cyclical guitar riff, a brooding/menacing synth undercurrent, and vibey murmured double-tracked vocals.