Archives : all posts by Jordan

The Soul Stirrers - "Until Then"

The Soul Stirrers stir the soul, sure, despite the dubious premise on which their music rests: that life on earth is but a meantime, an insignificant, if sometimes inhospitable, expanse on a road to blissful eternity. They do this with their voices - floating untethered from their mouths - and with their faith, which is neatly demonstrated by their modest wants: just that god give them the strength and courage to wait "until then," until they ascend off of this "sinful earth." If god does exist, these men must have his ear; and if not, well, they certainly have ours, thank god.

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Richie Havens - "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"

The Band approaches "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" - a song about the sadness of the South in the final throes and aftermath of the Civil War - as if they themselves were the vanquished. Levon Helm plays drums and sings in character, as defeated and phlegmatic as he can manage without falling behind the tempo, which he constantly threatens to do. Richie Havens, on the other hand, slows the song down and drives through it with his powerful strumming. There's no wistfulness in Havens's telling of the South's defeat, but nor is there irony in his sympathetic portrayal of the song's Confederate protagonist. We might assume that Havens, a black Yankee, was pleased with the outcome of the Civil War, but in his steady hands and generous voice, "Dixie" is ungloating. More than that, it's an appreciation of the land and heat that still make up so much of his country.

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My Morning Jacket - "If All Else Fails"

In many respects, My Morning Jacket have improved since their first album, 1999's The Tennessee Fire. The production on that album is muddled and scratchy, whereas their latest recording, this year's Evil Urges, is as perspicuous and loud as a bachelor is an unmarried man. On their first record, missed notes and wobbly tempos litter the songs, though neither fault is anywhere to be found on the band's latest. But as MMJ have honed their skills, progressed unrelentingly toward the realization of their vision - let's call it indie-arena-Southern-rock - casualties have been left in the wake. One such loss is that of tenderness, which can be heard so clearly - despite the dubious production - on this song from the band's debut. Listen, for instance, to the ritardando into the chorus, and then to the delicate step up as Jim James sings the song's title, his voice breaking up amid the ghostly reverberations of his bandmates' vocal backing.

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Jerry Butler - "I'm A-Telling You"

Jerry Butler's not a-telling you anything you don't already know. The song's main refrain - "I'm a-tellin' you (whaaa)/I'm a-tellin' you" - sounds like a tautology, and the actual lyrics aren't much more informative. Butler presents a series of mundane gripes about the oppressiveness of capitalism, the work-a-day lifestyle, family responsibilities, etc., but manages to elevate these concerns from the prosaic to the epic. This is achieved in two ways: through Butler's theatrical, proto-soul vocals, which call to mind a deeper-voiced, less deep Sam Cooke; and, most of all, through guitar playing so sensitive, so unassumingly complementary, that you hardly notice it's there until someone asks you why you can't stop crying, why you won't answer the phone, why you haven't been to work in weeks, and you listen a little closer, discovering the answer: a skittering arpeggio on a quiet, warm guitar.

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Henry Spaulding - "Cairo Blues"

There are at least eight Cairos in the United States. There's one in Georgia and one in Illinois, one in Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota and New York. There's a Cairo in West Virginia and there's even one in Ohio, that nearly palindromically named place. Little is known about Henry Spaulding, an American blues musician active in the 1920s, so which of these Cairos is the subject of his song, and therefore which to avoid, is impossible to say (though from the exotic picture he paints of the town, it might as well be in Egypt). "Women of Cairo," Spaulding will have us believe, "treat you kind and strange." The kindness is but a ruse, it turns out, and the strangeness is something far worse than merely strange. They "kick you and knife you, beat you and cut you, too," he sings, before adding the temporal location of these offenses (and the only reason anyone might construe these belligerent women as kind): "when you're through." Still, Spaulding has a masochistic streak, and though he sings throughout of leaving, we're not sure whether he's leaving from or to Cairo, whether he's departing from or reuniting with his kind and strange Cairo baby.

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Marvin Pontiac - "No Kids"

Amid the opacity and obfuscation, the grown-up eccentricity, the adult artsiness, non-rhyming verses, and then, when you least expect it, rhyming ones, a chorus that's not a chorus, and back-up singers who don't belong, there is a sad and stuttering guitar riff - perspicuous and lovely - and a bass line like scotch settling warmly in your chest. There is also a single moment of lyrical clarity, which, while revealing nothing directly about the otherwise obscure words, tidily captures the narrator's ambiguous feelings about childlessness: "I have no kids/to bother me when I'm sleeping/to sing goodnight to."

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Hayden - "In Field and Town"

What's the difference between Hayden and Haydn other than an 'e' and two centuries? Both men are men (as all men are), both composers, both keyboardists. The sound of synthesizers, like the momentum of life, can sometimes seem backwards when in fact it is forwards. Mopey indie rock can be soul music, too.

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