NEW MULTITUDES

Jay Farrar, Jim James, Anders Parker, and Will Johnson celebrate Woody Guthrie’s centennial

By Matt Ashare

New Multitudes, New Multitudes (Rounder)

It’s hard to imagine that Son Volt singer/guitarist Jay Farrar and My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James (a/k/a Yim Yames) weren’t at least thinking about the current state of affairs in this country when they were invited, along with Anders Parker (Varnaline) and Will Johnson (Centro-matic), to cull through the vast archive of unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics by his daughter Nora. The idea was for the four alt-country fellow travelers to join forces on an album that would bring those lyrics to musical life to mark the centennial celebration of Woody’s birth year.

         That year has come. And the album, New Multitudes, has arrived with fairly minimal hype at a time when Occupy Wall Street is still going strong, during a week that began with seemingly tone-deaf Republican presidential hopeful making news with a rather bone-headed remark at the Daytona 500. In case you haven’t heard, when asked if he followed auto racing, Mitt Romney responded, “Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners.” Maybe he was just kidding. But given the size of his bank account, not to mention his Super PAC, it’s not all that funny.

         So whether or not Farrar, James, Parker, and Johnson, who are touring under the moniker New Multitudes, meant to drop a populist smartbomb in the midst of a our on-going recession and one of the nastiest political climates in recent memory, they’ve succeeded. Because, while the real Woody Guthrie was a complicated artist who wrote all kinds of songs, the mythical Woody Guthrie lives on as the activist Dust Bowl Troubadour who penned “This Land Is Our Land,” scrawled “This machine kills fascists” on his guitar, and, in contemporary parlance, trumpeted the cause of the 99%.

         Farrar and his crew aren’t the first songwriters to be given access to the Guthrie archives. Jeff Tweedy, Farrar’s former bandmate in Uncle Tupelo, and his band Wilco, joined forces with British punk-folkster Billy Bragg on two albums that set unpublished Guthrie lyrics to music, 1998’s Mermaid Avenue and 2000’s Mermaid Avenue Vol. II. And Guthrie’s been a major influence on socially conscious artist since Bob Dylan first coopted the Dust Bowl Troubadour mantle back in his freewheeling folk days. Clash rabble-rouser Joe Strummer originally dubbed himself Woody Mellor in Guthrie’s honor. And Bruce Springsteen, an avowed Guthrie acolyte, has been known to pull out “This Land Is Your Land” from time to time, most memorably on his album Live 1975-1985.

         But New Multitudes, through no fault of their own, have arrived at a time when simply invoking the legacy of Woody Guthrie carries a moral weight that would be difficult to quantify. To their credit, though, they don’t get mired in anything too heavy handedly dogmatic or overtly preachy. Farrar kicks off the album with the meditative “Hoping Machine,” a slow building rocker he delivers with characteristic world-weariness as he winds his way through lyrics like “Word is the music and the people are the song” until his fellow singers join in on the open-ended punch line “Out of order,” a sentiment that could apply to just about anything in the broken-down world the song inhabits.

         Elsewhere, Parker, who played with Farrar in the band Gob Iron, takes the lead on the acoustic “Fly High,” a straightforwardly folky, poetic rumination on a troubled romance sung from the window seat of cross-country flight. And, Johnson is at the helm for the album’s hardest hitting number, the unmistakably Springsteen-styled “V.D. City,” a place populated by skid row denizens where “nobody knows you by name,” harmonicas blare, and overdriven guitars tangle a friendly fight to an anthemic finish.

It’s James who tackles what might be the album’s most outwardly partisan tune, the spare, fragile, and bluesy “My Revolutionary Mind,” a forlorn love ballad or sorts that culminates around a gently sung, if somewhat bemusing chorus: “I need a progressive woman/I need an awfully liberal woman/I need a socially conscious woman/To ease my revolutionary mind.” And Farrar manages with relative ease to invest the disc’s simple title track with a solemnity of a secular prayer. Against a backdrop of strummed acoustic guitars, he intones “Gonna win my battle for peace,” “Gonna build my world over,” “Gonna build my world with love,” turning what sound like scribbled thoughts into a coherent and powerful statement of purpose.

That said, the real strength of New Multitudes is the balance Farrar, James, Parker, and Johnson bring to the project, both in terms of the music they’ve set Guthrie’s words to, and the glimpses we’re given into Guthrie’s world. There are deep thoughts, dark images, and serious moments here. But there are also bright spots like R.E.M.-ish jangle of “Old L.A.,” an ode to an oft maligned city sung by Parker in a manner that brings to mind Michael Stipe. And just having the opportunity to hear Farrar and James spar on guitar should be enough to bring a smile to the face of contemporary Americana fans.

It’s hard to know exactly what Farrar, James, Parker, and Johnson went digging for when Guthrie’s notebooks were open to them. But they appear to have found it.      

NEW MULTITUDES

Jay Farrar, Jim James, Anders Parker, and Will Johnson celebrate Woody Guthrie’s centennial

By: MATT ASHARE |
Published: February 29, 2012 http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2012/feb/29/jay-farrar-jim-james-anders-parker-will-johnson-ce-ar-1728985/

New Multitudes, New Multitudes (Rounder)

ALT-COUNTRY ALL-STARS

It’s hard to imagine that Son Volt singer/guitarist Jay Farrar and My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James (a/k/a Yim Yames) weren’t at least thinking about the current state of affairs in this country when they were invited, along with Anders Parker (Varnaline) and Will Johnson (Centro-matic), to cull through the vast archive of unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics by his daughter Nora. The idea was for the four alt-country fellow travelers to join forces on an album that would bring those lyrics to musical life to mark the centennial celebration of Woody’s birth year.

         That year has come. And the album, New Multitudes, has arrived with fairly minimal hype at a time when Occupy Wall Street is still going strong, during a week that began with seemingly tone-deaf Republican presidential hopeful making news with a rather bone-headed remark at the Daytona 500. In case you haven’t heard, when asked if he followed auto racing, Mitt Romney responded, “Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners.” Maybe he was just kidding. But given the size of his bank account, not to mention his Super PAC, it’s not all that funny.

         So whether or not Farrar, James, Parker, and Johnson, who are touring under the moniker New Multitudes, meant to drop a populist smartbomb in the midst of a our on-going recession and one of the nastiest political climates in recent memory, they’ve succeeded. Because, while the real Woody Guthrie was a complicated artist who wrote all kinds of songs, the mythical Woody Guthrie lives on as the activist Dust Bowl Troubadour who penned “This Land Is Our Land,” scrawled “This machine kills fascists” on his guitar, and, in contemporary parlance, trumpeted the cause of the 99%.

         Farrar and his crew aren’t the first songwriters to be given access to the Guthrie archives. Jeff Tweedy, Farrar’s former bandmate in Uncle Tupelo, and his band Wilco, joined forces with British punk-folkster Billy Bragg on two albums that set unpublished Guthrie lyrics to music, 1998’s Mermaid Avenue and 2000’s Mermaid Avenue Vol. II. And Guthrie’s been a major influence on socially conscious artist since Bob Dylan first coopted the Dust Bowl Troubadour mantle back in his freewheeling folk days. Clash rabble-rouser Joe Strummer originally dubbed himself Woody Mellor in Guthrie’s honor. And Bruce Springsteen, an avowed Guthrie acolyte, has been known to pull out “This Land Is Your Land” from time to time, most memorably on his album Live 1975-1985.

         But New Multitudes, through no fault of their own, have arrived at a time when simply invoking the legacy of Woody Guthrie carries a moral weight that would be difficult to quantify. To their credit, though, they don’t get mired in anything too heavy handedly dogmatic or overtly preachy. Farrar kicks off the album with the meditative “Hoping Machine,” a slow building rocker he delivers with characteristic world-weariness as he winds his way through lyrics like “Word is the music and the people are the song” until his fellow singers join in on the open-ended punch line “Out of order,” a sentiment that could apply to just about anything in the broken-down world the song inhabits.

         Elsewhere, Parker, who played with Farrar in the band Gob Iron, takes the lead on the acoustic “Fly High,” a straightforwardly folky, poetic rumination on a troubled romance sung from the window seat of cross-country flight. And, Johnson is at the helm for the album’s hardest hitting number, the unmistakably Springsteen-styled “V.D. City,” a place populated by skid row denizens where “nobody knows you by name,” harmonicas blare, and overdriven guitars tangle a friendly fight to an anthemic finish.

It’s James who tackles what might be the album’s most outwardly partisan tune, the spare, fragile, and bluesy “My Revolutionary Mind,” a forlorn love ballad or sorts that culminates around a gently sung, if somewhat bemusing chorus: “I need a progressive woman/I need an awfully liberal woman/I need a socially conscious woman/To ease my revolutionary mind.” And Farrar manages with relative ease to invest the disc’s simple title track with a solemnity of a secular prayer. Against a backdrop of strummed acoustic guitars, he intones “Gonna win my battle for peace,” “Gonna build my world over,” “Gonna build my world with love,” turning what sound like scribbled thoughts into a coherent and powerful statement of purpose.

That said, the real strength of New Multitudes is the balance Farrar, James, Parker, and Johnson bring to the project, both in terms of the music they’ve set Guthrie’s words to, and the glimpses we’re given into Guthrie’s world. There are deep thoughts, dark images, and serious moments here. But there are also bright spots like R.E.M.-ish jangle of “Old L.A.,” an ode to an oft maligned city sung by Parker in a manner that brings to mind Michael Stipe. And just having the opportunity to hear Farrar and James spar on guitar should be enough to bring a smile to the face of contemporary Americana fans.

It’s hard to know exactly what Farrar, James, Parker, and Johnson went digging for when Guthrie’s notebooks were open to them. But they appear to have found it.      

THE GRAMMYS

Adele, Bon Iver, and Jay-Z Get Their Night at the Grammys

by Matt Ashare The Burg, February 8

Can Justin Vernon as Bon Iver be this year's Arcade Fire?

Once upon a time, there may have actually been a certain logic to the Grammys. Back when the record business was fairly well centralized, radio was the dominant medium for song consumption, and a defined notion of what constituted the pop mainstream existed, it presented an opportunity for the organization that runs the awards — the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) — to put its best face, or faces, forward. And, as with the Oscars, there was a measure of predictability when it came to who got the big nominations. But those days are long past. And nothing in recent memory illustrated that more vividly than the closing moments of last year's 53rd annual Grammy Awards show, when an unconventional indie-rock band from Toronto, the Arcade Fire, beat out multi-platinum rapper Eminem, pop princess Katy Perry, and a pair of Ladies — Antebellum and Gaga — for Album of the Year, on a night when tween sensation Justin Bieber was mercifully upset by jazz artist Esperanza Spalding in the Best New Artist category.

         So, yes, in spite of expected multiple wins by marquee stars (Eminem, Jay-Z, John Legend, and the above mentioned Ladies), as well as a few respectful nods in the direction of legacy artists (Paul McCartney and Neil Young), it was something of a watershed moment for an institution that hasn't always had a particularly good reputation for keeping up with the times. After all, the Grammys were famously slow on the uptake with hip-hop. And NARAS has endured some rather shameful moments in the past couple decades: a depleted Jethro Tull beating out Metallica for Best Hard Rock/Metal honors in 1989; Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" losing to professor Eric Clapton's MTV unplugged recording of "Layla" for Best Rock Song in ‘92; and Steely Dan's Two Against Nature prevailing over Radiohead's OK Computer and Eminem's admittedly controversial The Marshall Mathers LP in 2000.

         All of which has made handicapping the 54th Grammys, which air this Sunday night on CBS, something of a crap shoot. Will the Arcade Fire win of 2011 truly mark the start of a trend? Or will NARAS voters, cowed by angry Bieberheads, take a more measured, conservative approach when they cast their ballots? On the surface, at least, the list of nominees suggests it could go either way.

         Not surprisingly, rap superstar Kanye West goes into the night as an odds-on favorite with seven nominations. Then again, Eminem had a full ten last year, and only walked away with two. It should also be noted, with appropriate bemusement, that Kanye's in the paradoxical position of being up against himself for Best Rap Album, with his My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy sparring with his Jay-Z collab Watch the Throne for Rap Album of the Year. (Unless I've got the math wrong, that means the most he can win is six.) Of course, Kanye's got a bit of a checkered past when it comes to awards shows (see: Taylor Swift), and, for all of his obvious talent and industry power, he is not quite the kind of role model NARAS tends to prefer. So don't be surprised if, like Eminem, he only comes away with a pair of victories.

         If there is anything close to a sure bet this year, it's gotta be British soulstress Adele, a critic's darling with a clean record, six nominations, and the right profile to be a Grammy poster girl. Her 21 may very well leave Lady Gaga high and dry in the Album of the Year category for the second year running. But thanks to some major changes in some major categories, Adele's going to face stiff competition not just from Lady Gaga, but also from seasoned songwriter-turned-pop star Bruno Mars in a category like Best Pop Solo Performance because this year NARAS has done away with separate slates for male and female artists. And Mars, along with the alt-rocking Foo Fighters, also has six nominations.

         But the most intriguing prospect for the kind shock and awe the Arcade Fire brought to last year's show comes by way of another indie upstart, the artist known as Bon Iver (a/k/a Justin Vernon). Vernon is in the running for four Grammys — Best Song, Best Record, Best New Artist, and Best Alternative Album. It's a long shot, but if Adele and Mars split the pop vote for Best Song, Bon Iver's "Holocene" could come out on top. And since Vernon wrote "Holocene" himself, the same could happen in the Best Record category. He's got the curvaceous Nicki Minaj to contend with if he's to take Best New Artist. And he's up against Radiohead's King of Limbs for Best Alternative Album, although Radiohead have got other opportunities (Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song).

         Which leads me to some of the more perplexing aspects of this year's Grammy nominations — yes, more perplexing than the distinction between Best Record and Best Album. What makes Radiohead more "alternative" than Wilco, whose The Whole Love is stuck in Best Rock Album with Jeff Beck's Rock 'n' Roll Party Honoring Les Paul (seriously?), as well as discs by Foo Fighters and the Red Hot Chili Peppers? If Beck's disc wins that one, it may amount to another Jethro Tull oops. It's also unfortunate that the Black Keys, who released the best album of their career last year, have to compete with a collaboration between the legendary Tony Bennett and the late Amy Winehouse in Best Pop Duo/Performance. I mean, really, do the Black Keys as a pop duo? And, while I had been hoping that the Decemberists might enjoy a much deserved Arcade Fire moment this year, that's just not the way it's looking to pan out. They got some props — Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song for "Down By the Water." And maybe they'll best Coldplay, Foo Fighters, and Radiohead in one of the two. But, as Sunday approaches, I beginning to think NARAS could do worse than asking the Arcade Fire back for a reprise of last year's closing credits.

KATHLEEN EDWARDS

BEYOND AMERICANA
Kathleen Edwards expands her vistas with Bon Iver

By Matt Ashare

Kathleen Edwards, Voyageur (Zoe/Rounder)

AFFAIRS OF THE SMART: Edwards deals deftly with romantic crises

“Out of the cameras and out of the lights/I’m a chameleon, I hide behind the songs I write,” sings Canadian songstress Kathleen Edwards with stoic resignation midway through “Chameleon/Comedian,” the slowly surging second track on her new Voyageur. In the context of a song that artfully navigates the give-and-take of an imperfectly perfect relationship on an album — her fourth since 2003’s Faller — that fearlessly confronts the mixed emotions, the highs and lows, and the naked vicissitudes of falling in and out of love, it’s a telling rhyme, particularly since she recorded it with musical and production support from her current beau, Bon Iver mastermind Justin Vernon. Buoyed by a lush rush of strummed acoustic guitars, bathed in the kind of soft-focus reverb that are a Bon Iver calling card, she makes a sweet concession to her lover’s “darker side”: she’ll “smile,” she promises in the chorus, but “not for a funny joke.” Because, at least for this brief respite, she’s willing to concede, “I don’t need a punch line every time. . .”

         When Edwards first emerged in the early 2000s, she was hailed as Americana’s next great hopeful, a Lucinda Williams in waiting, crafting empathetic characters with an economy of words and a natural gift for finding that sweet spot between spare, confessional folk and rocky country roots. Working with Canadian producer Colin Cripps (Sarah McLachlan, Bryan Adams, Blue Rodeo), to whom she was married to until last year, Edwards quietly delivered on that promise, growing into the role of the kind of critic’s darling who might also be asked to, say, do a few dates opening for the likes of Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. But, with Voyageur, she’s taken a major leap forward (or, perhaps, it’s more akin to an intensely appealing left-hand turn), joining the ranks of the Wilcos of the world in redefining what constitutes Americana. Indeed, if Jeff Tweedy has led his band in the direction of avant experimentalism, then Edwards appears to be using a similar strategy to bring airy dream-pop ambience to her down-to-earth character studies and countrified constructions.

         It’s a shift that manifests itself subtly on Voyageur. The opening track, “Empty Threat,” begins with a very Bon Iver touch — an indeterminate drone coupled with what might be a backwards-running loop of murmuring voices. But Edwards’ bright acoustic guitar strumming quickly emerges from the sonic mist as an easygoing backbeat kicks in and lines like, “This cold heart’s getting warmer/Maybe come September I’ll feel brand new” cast a hopeful light on the singer’s plans to get on with her life. “I’m moving to America/Moving to America/Moving to America,” Edwards intones with veiled anticipation of better things to come, before taking the wind out of her own sails with the admission that “It’s an empty threat.” Piano and a trio of electric guitars emerge in the mix to paint melancholy colors around poetic promises and poignant imagery (“In a city I once said never/I’m learning to say never never never ever/Cuz now I’m its favorite flower/I’m blooming through the concrete cracks of this condo tower”). By the end of the track, Edwards has made her move from one kind of country to another, yet it feels nothing if not entirely natural.

         So, this is the point at which Vernon visionary’s role in elevating Edwards above the pack of perfectly solid singer-songwriters is meant to be celebrated. And there’s ample evidence of his handiwork on Voyageur, from the bleating synths that pulse behind Edwards as she reaches for the sky and cries, “Change this feeling under my feet/Change the sheets and then change me,” to the fragile vibraphone that underpins the mixed emotions of the gently turbulent “A Soft Place Land,” to the Omnichord touches that blend into the twangy backdrop of the desperately bittersweet blues rocker “Mint.”

         But there’s an equally strong, if not stronger, case to be made here for Edwards bringing out the best in Vernon, whose penchant for studio wizardry as Bon Iver has, in spite of four major Grammy nominations this year, often led him into the more-is-more deep end. There’s no question he’s proven himself to be a master sonic sculptor, but there are times, even on his most recent Bon Iver disc, Bon Iver, Bon Iver, when you have to wonder if there’s really a song being served beneath all those layers of vocals and instrumentation. In Edwards, he seems to have found a muse whose songcraft provides solid grounding in clearly defined hooks and melodies for his pillowy wall-of-sound approach.

         One thing’s for sure: there’s some serious synergy happening on Voyageur. And given the subjects Edwards elicits so strikingly in the songs here — from the failing romance of the plaintive “House Full of Empty Rooms,” to the snapshots of a broken marriage in the simply sad “Pink Champagne,” to the guarded rush of romance rediscovered in the rocking “Sidecars” — there are bound to be plenty of questions about the autobiographical nature of the album. Indeed, you get the sense that Edwards anticipated that, and you can find her answer in “For the Record,” the seven-minute track that closes out the disc. With tense electric guitar chords hanging on a modest, deliberate beat, organ tones filling in the gaps between verses, and Norah Jones lending harmonies, Edward conjures an hypnotic hymn from just a couple of loaded lines: “Hang me up on your cross/For the record I only wanted to sing songs/Hang me out to die in the sun/For the record I only wanted to sing songs.” She is, after all, a chameleon. . .

http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2012/jan/25/kathleen-edwards-vividly-reimagines-americana-litt-ar-1638765/ 

           

WILCO

Wilco travel beyond genre on The Whole Love

The Burg staff

By Matt Ashare

If Vegas had laid down odds on which founding member of the semi-legendary late-’80s/early’90s band Uncle Tupelo was more likely to go on to greatness when they broke up in 1994, most of the good money would have been on Jay Farrar, not Jeff Tweedy. Sure both sang and had songwriting credits on their four studio albums. But, Farrar always appeared to be the band's alpha dog — the one with the voice, the vision, and, well, the tools to take the alt-country stylings of Uncle Tupelo to the next level, wherever that might be. Tweedy, who'd started out playing bass in the original trio before moving over to guitar as Uncle Tupelo took on new members, possessed a certain boyish charm and playful charisma, but for most of the band's seven-year career, he clearly seemed to be playing second fiddle to the more stolid Farrar.

       As the leader of Son Volt and as a solo artist, Farrar has indeed continued to carry the alt-country torch. And he's acquitted himself quite well, retaining a loyal cult following among Americana enthusiasts. But Tweedy's exceeded all expectations by embracing an expansive musical sensibility that goes well beyond rote roots with his band Wilco, whose highly anticipated eighth studio album, The Whole Love (dBpm), hit stores this week.

       If there was a turning point for Wilco, it was the 2002 release of Yankee Foxtrot Hotel (Nonesuch). Tweedy and multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett, who left the band after the Yankee Foxtrot Hotel sessions in ’01 and passed away in May of 2009, had already begun to broaden Wilco's sonic palette by exploring the possibilities of digital production on the 1999 disc Summerteeth (Reprise). At the same time, the band earned critical kudos for Mermaid Avenue (Elektra), a collaboration with British folkster Billy Bragg that set previously unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics to rootsy riffs and went on to earn a Grammy nomination in the Best Contemporary Folk category. But with the production help of Chicago avant-guitarist Jim O'Rourke, Wilco went out on an experimental limb that married Tweedy's earnest introspection with something akin to the paranoid android alienation of Radiohead on on Yankee Foxtrot Hotel, a disc that found a sweet spot between impressionistic soundscapes and solid songwriting

        Wilco haven't exactly been running in place since 2002. In fact they've kinda been all over the map, reprising airy experimentalism on 2004's A Ghost Is Born (Nonesuch), revisiting rootsy guitar rock on 2007's Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch), and settling into something of a ’70s-style groove on 2009's somewhat tongue-in-cheek Wilco (The Album) (Nonesuch). But, The Whole Love is a whole different beast. Easily the Tweedy's most ambitious in scope, it's also at times his breeziest in the sense he and the current incarnation of Wilco – longtime bassist John Stirratt and more recent recruits Nels Cline (guitar), Glenn Kotche (drums), multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, and keyboardist Mikael Jogensen — sound comfortable and confident enough to try just about anything in the name of fun.

       That's not to suggest that The Whole Love doesn't have poignant, reflective, and even rather serious moments. In fact, the disc ends a particularly somber note, with Tweedy nearly whispering words to a departed father over a quietly skiffling beat, loungey piano, and softly strummed acoustic guitar for the full twelve minutes of "One Sunday Morning." "I said it's your god I don't believe in," he intones in Dylanesque fashion, "No your bible can't be true/Knocked down by the long lie/He cried 'I fear what waits for you.'" But the heaviness of lines like that are offset by the peaceful, easy groove the band stay locked into for the long ride home.

       In contrast, the disc's opener, "Art of Almost," is a skewed, seven-plus minute electro-acoustic opus that begins, Radiohead-style, with a glitchy beat that leads into a swell of strings before giving way to Tweedy's strained delivery of stream of consciousness lyrics, a subsonic bassline, periodic interruptions from a distorted synth, and Cline's avant guitarisms. Elsewhere, Tweedy and co. take an infectious romp through the upbeat, organ-laced ’60s pop of "I Might." They slow things down for a Lennon-style, reverb-laden balled ("Sunloathe") that gives Cline the opportunity to channel another Beatle, George Harrison, in a sweetly played solo. An they deploy some tasteful twang to accentuate the countryfied feel of the romantic "Open Mind.” And that’s really just scratching the surface of an album that simply defies categorization.

       It’s admittedly a lot to take in, especially in one sitting. But it’s well worth the effort.