A Very Rosie Christmas by Rosie Thomas (holiday music)

Though one is not supposed to judge a product by its cover, I have to admit that the photo on the front of A Very Rosie Christmas led me to believe that I was in for amateur night by the yule log. But the quirky appearance belies the heartfelt (and polished!) interpretations inside.

The eponymous Rosie Thomas offers a surprisingly faithful rendition of "Christmastime Is Here" (from A Charlie Brown Christmas), which is followed hard upon by the joyous pop confection — complete with horn and string sections — "Why Can't It Be Christmastime All Year?" (at this writing, currently available as a free download on Amazon). This is one of those songs that so captures the mood and tone of the season that it will become a favorite of all who hear it.

Like most Christmas albums, other covers follow, both of traditional favorites ("Winter Wonderland," "Let It Snow," "O Come O Come Emmanuel") and nontraditional selections and original offerings. She knocks the dust off the old chestnuts (her "Silent Night" is a creative reimagining), but it is through the other covers and new songs that the personality of A Very Rosie Christmas flows.

Thomas showcases her smooth vocals (reminiscent of Dar Williams) on Joni Mitchell's "River." "Snow Day" is an original instrumental that calls to mind the feeling of flying — or the closest thing to it on land: sledding — as well as snowball fights and other school's-out fun.

Also here is a straitlaced rendition of "Christmas Don't Be Late" (more famously known as "The Chipmunk Song"), which fares unevenly. Some powerful new verses have been added to the lyrics, but the nearly seven-minute length spotlights the original's musical weaknesses.

Another spotlight is the skit "Sheila's Christmas Miracle," where Thomas's alter ego Sheila Saputo meets a convenience-store manager who offers her a Christmas wish. Saputo is an engagingly quirky character, and Brian Shoop is kind and genuine as "Mr. Krinkle," as Sheila calls him. Lastly, Rosie sends us off with a Christmas wish, a perfect closer to A Very Rosie Christmas, an album that contains a great mix of holiday music and a great deal of Christmas spirit.

Fancy Blue by Tywanna Jo Baskette

This review originally appeared in somewhat different form on The Green Man Review. Copyright 2003. Reprinted with permission.

Tywanna Jo Baskette's debut album begins with a breath and ends with a giggle. In between are nineteen improvisational songs about many diverse subjects. From her parents' deaths from lung cancer in "1985/1998" to "I Love Goat Cheese" — where she makes the word "udders" into something beautiful — to how "everything goes pop pop pop" ("Pop Pop"), Baskette travels with her "little girl" voice across her emotional landscape. And she had me enthralled the whole time. Her songwriting is also childlike — seemingly coming from nowhere with unconventional rhythms and changes, sometimes rhyming, always evocative.

Fancy Blue is so unlike modern popular music that, at first, it doesn't know where to go in my head. The closest comparison I can make is to the experimental pop of the Microphones. Their songs don't always jibe on the first listen, but when you let go of preconceptions, they burrow their way into your soul.

Tywanna Jo Baskette's "pass-alongs" are just like that. She is not musically trained and can't play an instrument, but she's been writing off-the-cuff songs since she was twelve. She'd sing them, then they were gone. It wasn't until a friend began following her around with a microcassette recorder that any of them survived at all.

These are songs she has written for herself, not for me or you, or to have a hit record. They're completely genuine. It will be difficult for some people to really understand what she is doing, and those people are likely to jump to criticism. But those who are able to, think of her songs as you would a song a child extemporaneously created — about pots and pans, or Rover, or whatever — except that her lyrics contain evidence of a close familiarity with death.

There are moments of joy and trauma on Fancy Blue, like how "Pinky" (co-written with Bobby Bare, Jr., and one of the few cuts with drums) turns from the shocking event of a beau seeing her in her pink underwear before their first date, into "someday my prince will come and he will call me Pinky." Free-association reigns supreme, calling into being lyrics that are connected by tangents. Memories, experiences, strange events, commercial jingles, all of these are worked into Baskette's "lullabies for adults."

This level of truth has been replaced so much by artifice that it is refreshing to see it surface again. She will likely get lost in the shuffle of singer-songwriter albums and that is unfortunate because Fancy Blue is a record that hits all the right notes, just not the ones you expect.

An Interview with Leo Moran of the Saw Doctors (March 14, 2004)

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I am reprinting this interview that originally appeared in somewhat different form on The Green Man Review. Copyright 2004. Reprinted with permission.

Working at The Green Man Review has made me aware of many different types of music I had previously missed, and my favorite of all the bands to which I have been introduced through reviewing is the Saw Doctors. Ever since I heard Play It Again, Sham!, it has never left the couple dozen or so discs that are in my constant rotation. This band from Tuam, Ireland, have managed to take their influences from their home country and from American rock and make their songs universal, while writing solely of their own experiences.

"We've never had a problem about the songs being too local," said Leo Moran in a recent phone conversation conducted during the annual spring leg of their American tour. "People often ask that question. We just hopefully write things about our own lives, and people can draw parallels and see themselves in some of the songs." And they have a sense of humor, which always helps.

When the new CD/DVD release, Live in Galway, became available, I jumped at the chance to hear/watch them, especially since until that point I wasn't familiar with their more popular songs like "N17" and "I Useta Lover" — two of Ireland's biggest selling singles ever (and I call myself a fan!). The American leg of the tour began with a CD launch party in Manhattan on March 10th.

The expression, "If it's March, it must be the Saw Doctors" doesn't seem entirely out of place, as — according to a separate interview included on the Live in Galway DVD — the band has been asked back repeatedly to play the States during the month of the year most closely associated with Irish culture.

I answered the phone on the afternoon before their Chicago concert to greetings from tour manager Niall Barrett. While confirming my credentials, he requested I not keep Leo on the phone too long, as he had a sound check to make soon. I assured him that this would not be a problem. After a moment's conversation, he went to fetch Moran, who co-fronts the band along with Davy Carton.

This early in the tour, Leo expressed fatigue due to the hectic schedule. "It's a bit exhausting at the moment because we just arrived in J.F.K. on Tuesday and then Wednesday we had the CD/DVD launch in Manhattan. Then we got on the boat and Thursday night we did Detroit and upstate New York, and then we drove across to Cleveland. We were a bit tired because the stamina and the time zone change hadn't completely clicked in, but I think it's fairly clicking in now today."

What a schedule! Maybe I should have been concerned that they wouldn't make it a few more days until I could see them in Boston. But I wasn't, and they did arrive (in the middle of a typically rough New England snowstorm) and still put on a great show.

I started with the obvious questions about the new releases: Why release a live album now?

"It just happened now. People have been asking us to do a live album and DVD for a long time, and we were always kind of putting it off. We'd recorded a lot of shows over the years and done well, but not nearly good enough. Maybe we're not ready to release a live album, and maybe we should never release a live album because it wouldn't really capture what people want to bring home from the show.

"Then, a man who made a documentary for us in 1991 called Steven Lock — the documentary was called Sing a Powerful Song — he decided he wanted to make a follow-up TV documentary, that we would go down to Clare Island on the boat and play around at home and at the pub and rehearsing and all that good stuff. We were just thinking when we were out there that we should go out there more often. It was great to have the excuse to go out there, and we'll have to find another excuse to go out in the future.

"Part of what he wanted was to film two shows at Galway in July. So, they filmed with six cameras, and a lighting man called Tom Kenny who was a friend of ours — he normally did the Who and Eric Clapton and MTV stuff and all that — worked under the table. We couldn't really pay him to do the kind of show we were doing. We just had to hope that it turned out well and that it got recorded.

"We did two nights. The first night, we thought was very good and we were very happy with it, and we went away thinking that if it doesn't work out the second night, at least we have enough to get away with. Luckily enough, then we did the second night, and it was actually better, and we ended up using all the second night. We were very lucky, really, and I think an element in that was that the pressure was off. We didn't have to worry any more about it.

"So we ended up having two shows completely recorded, audially and visually. That became the DVD, with 70 minutes of the concert and the hour of the documentary, and automatically we had a live CD album. It all kind of fell into place, and there was a natural enough rhythm about it, and you don't argue with that, really."

Both Moran and Carton sing and play guitar, with Carton singing lead on most of the songs and Moran tackling the majority of the lead guitar duties. Both are founding members of the Saw Doctors and met after Davy Carton's previous band, Blaze X, split up. I asked Leo about their history.

"This band was absolutely fantastic," Leo remembered. "It was like an Irish version of the Ramones." He was a huge fan of the band and regretted their breakup. "I knew that there were all these songs hanging around that Davy had, and that Paul Cunniffe (who, unfortunately, passed away in 2001) had written, and that nobody was maybe ever going to hear them. I just thought it would've been a shame.... So, I started going up to Davy's house on weekends and we eventually tried to put a little band together.... The songs, thankfully, were songs that people did want to hear, and the ones that we wrote subsequently were ones that people wanted to hear as well."

The band that was to become the Saw Doctors almost seems to have been fated. Another founding member (the band's percussionist, Padraig Stevens) was Blaze X's manager. "He had been writing songs, and we started writing songs together, and it just started to work. It was one of those things," Leo continued. "I had been in bands before that were good bands, and it always felt like we were pushing hard at making something happen. But when the format of the Saw Doctors got on stage, it was easy." He referred to the combination of talents as "magic" and concluded, "If it happens once in your life, you're lucky."

When I mentioned that the easygoing atmosphere really comes across in the music, he agreed, "It's the songs that do the work, really."

What got him into performing originally? "I got such pleasure out of listening to other people's songs and records and going to shows. I suppose you just think that what they're doing — what they're sharing about themselves — is such a positive thing ... that it'd be great if you could do the same yourself. And it's a bit of a dream come true, really."

A dream come true? So is he happy with the level of success the band has achieved? "When we started writing songs and started putting the Saw Doctors band together, we could never have imagined that we'd have 37 U.S. tours under our belt in twelve years' time or whatever. It's hard to believe.... It's an amazing success, really, for anybody whose hobby becomes their livelihood."

Since most of the songs are credited to both Carton and Moran, I wondered if he and Davy usually wrote together, or if they had a Lennon/McCartney kind of arrangement. Leo laughed and said, "You're putting us up there a little high," but his further description made the songwriting process sound like fun. "I might write a few lines and Davy'll come up with a tune, then he might write a whole song himself or I might have most of a song.... There's all kinds of different combinations. There's no 'usual'. We don't try too hard."

The band's last two albums have recycled earlier material for the sake of their constantly growing audience who may not have had the opportunity to acquire their older recordings, many of which are not available in the U.S., so I asked Leo if he knew when fans might see some new material from the Saw Doctors. Plans are apparently already in the works: "We have to start recording in May and June and get an album ... out before the end of the year. It always goes longer than you hope, but we do know that much."

I'll definitely be looking forward to that new album. But even if it doesn't come out as scheduled [update: The Cure finally came out in 2006], with the level of care that the Saw Doctors put into re-releasing old material, I'm not too concerned. And hey, there's always that new Shambles CD to pick up.

The Hopeful and the Unafraid by Jason Anderson

Jason Anderson is one of the most interesting singer-songwriters working today. He is both prolific (see his song-a-day project) and endlessly creative. His forte is arena rock straight from the E Street school, but he's not afraid to delve into other genres as it suits his muse.

The driving goal of The Hopeful and the Unafraid was to recapture the live sound of the concerts Jason Anderson has been performing practically nonstop over the last few years. It was recorded in Chicago at Soma Studio over a day and a half in January 2006 (except for "Wanting and Regret," a 2004 recording from the Massachusetts sessions that eventually produced On the Street) — and it does have a rawer sound than his previous two albums from K Records.

Anderson is a master of the slow build leading up to an emotional blowout, and this is shown to great effect on "El Paso" (which, at nearly eight minutes, sounds like the live version of a studio track — quite an accomplishment since it is the studio version) and the next track, "July 4, 2004" (which musically channels Paul Westerberg).

When Anderson sings "I love this part," it reminds me that I love that part, too: when he repeats a refrain and gets so caught up in his own effort (as he also does in "Hold On" from New England) you would think he was listening to a favorite tune by someone else. It's a snapshot of a moment and adds to the immediacy Anderson is trying to achieve.

The Hopeful and the Unafraid also contains two definite power-pop masterpieces that get the blood pumping. "This Will Never Be Our Town" has an infectious hook and effectively carries over the pedal steel from "Wanting and Regret." And "The Hopeful and the Unafraid" has lyrics that could be self-reflective: "We couldn't get it out of our heads till the morning / That song that we just kept on singing." I was singing right along with him by the end — and it wouldn't leave my head the next day, either.

By the time the banjo came out on "Ohio" — with an opening that begs to be sung along with — I was ready to follow Anderson in whatever musical direction he wanted to go. "Watch Your Step" merely cements that. Anderson has a fascinating ability to write songs that remind me of other songs I like, instantly making a song I've never heard before sound like a familiar old favorite that I can't wait to hear again. And he has certainly found his perfect vocal counterpart in backup singer Juliet. She enhances the lyrical melody without ever taking away from his lead.

Though The Hopeful and the Unafraid is only available as an LP, a free CD of the album comes with every purchase (along with information about a different free mp3 album), so you really get three albums for the price of one. While this may not musically be Anderson's best album, it is probably his most instantly accessible, and should definitely be a first purchase for anyone who has seen him live.

The Glow Pt. 2 by the Microphones (2008 deluxe remastered reissue)

I can't believe it has been seven years since The Glow Pt. 2 was first released (and six years since I first heard it). Now, listening to the 2008 reissue with 20 additional tracks (subtitled "Other Songs and Destroyed Versions") — available on 2 CDs or 3 LPs — the most amazing thing about revisiting it is not that it still stands up, but that it still seems very ahead of its time, even today. (The extra tunes are interesting in context — especially the "destroyed" versions that comprise 14 of the 20 additional tracks — but are not vital to the casual listener.)

The Glow Pt. 2 has long been described as Phil Elverum's masterpiece, and I have to still agree. Its songs flow together wonderfully whether you listen to them individually or in mind of the improvised concept (tied together sonically by the tugboat sounds played underneath throughout — they're very clear during the quiet spots).

And listening with headphones enhances the experience. In fact, I would have to say that the sonic depth is so amazing that headphones are vital to experiencing the full majesty of The Glow Pt. 2. And Elvrum's sweet, high voice adds to the effect. On no other album have I felt as if the music entered through my ears and swam around for a while, not quite able to escape.

This is all because Elvrum (later Elverum) was not afraid of experimentation. Each song has its own distinctive sound. The dual acoustic-guitar sound at the front of "The Moon" has to be heard to be believed. (For the origin of that sound, listen to "The Pull" from It Was Hot, We Stayed in the Water.) And his creativity is always surprising. What seems at first like noise, after a few listens unfolds itself like a blooming bud to reveal all its layers. Only after repeated listens do you come to appreciate the imagination — one would almost say "genius" — involved in the making of The Glow Pt. 2.

But even such a personal record cannot be done alone — not and remain faithful to its analog roots. Several of Elvrum's friends helped out. Most noticeable are the angelic voices of Khaela Maricich (of The Blow) and Mirah on a few tracks. I became a Mirah-phile through my research on this album. In fact, over the past six years, I have become rather well versed in the K catalog — from Little Wings to Tender Forever, from Beat Happening to Old Time Relijun — and it all started with this album.

For a while, Elvrum seemed to embrace his soundscaping abilities, agreeing to produce albums for his friends (Mirah's C'mon Miracle and Jason Anderson's New England come first to mind), but after the release of the more ambitious (but less accessible) Mount Eerie, things took a different turn. He changed the name of his band to the name of that album, and the music became more stripped down and even indie-er than ever before once he opened his own label, P.W. Elverum and Sun. (For example, one of the first Mount Eerie releases, Eleven Old Songs from Mount Eerie, merely contained Elverum's vocals accompanied by an old Casio keyboard.) The last we heard from "the Microphones" was a live album that managed to consist of all new material (Live in Japan February 19th, 21st, and 22nd, 2003) and a 7" single containing a couple of daily-life-oriented protest songs ("Don't Smoke" and "Get Off the Internet").

But, though Elverum is currently serving a different muse than the one who led him to create The Glow Pt. 2 (and I don't fault him for that — you've got to follow your bliss, and he does it to the hilt), it's nevertheless great to be able to go back in time, so to speak, and recapture the days when a guy with a vision, immense creativity, and some friends combined to make the first great album of the 21st century.

Tout Seul dans la Forêt en Plein Jour, Avez-Vous Peur? by Woelv

Woelv is multi-instrumentalist Geneviève Castrée. Québécoise by birth, she now lives in the Northwestern United States. Tout Seul dans la Forêt en Plein Jour, Avez-Vous Peur? [All Alone in the Forest in Broad Daylight, Are You Scared?] is her attempt to understand the American mindset, partially by going deep inside herself (as in "Sang Jeune [Young Blood]"), and partially by putting herself in the mind of characters she has no connection with (such as "L'homme qui vient de marcher sur une mine [The man who stepped on a mine]").

Since the entirety of Tout Seul is sung in French — a language I do not speak even passingly, though I occasionally recognize a few words that have similar counterparts in Spanish, another language I know only slightly better — it is even difficult to grasp on the most basic level without help. Luckily, the liner notes have been translated into English.

But I listen to music mostly at work, where reading liner notes would be inconvenient at best. So, I decided to make the leap and take Tout Seul at face value, treating Castree's voice as just another instrument. (Therefore, be warned that any song titles here in English are merely my attempts at translation.)

Castrée (who sometimes appears on others' records under Geneviève Elverum) is the wife of Phil Elverum of the Microphones, Mount Eerie, and D+. He is one of my favorite artists, and his presence is deeply felt throughout Tout Seul. His voice appears on "(réconciliation)" and "Deux Corps [Two Bodies]" and his typically heavy drumming features on "Drapeau Blanc [White Flag]" and "La Petite Cane dans la Nappe de Pétrole." Others are less specific, such as the guitar on "(réconciliation)" sounds like the one he used on "The Moon" (from The Glow, Pt. 2).

Castrée's voice carries similarities to Mirah and The Blow's Khaela Maricich with an occasional belt of Bjork and a bit more soft palate. The most effective track on Tout Seul was "La Mort et le Chien Obèse [Death and the Overweight Dog]," which punctuates a rolling bassline and multi-tracked vocals with Castree's howling — left and right, far and near — until it dominates the soundscape.

On the downside, Tout Seul is only 36 minutes long (including the 12-minute title track, two-thirds of which seems to be a slowed-down recording of an airplane taking off). Each track seems to reside in its own emotional space — which can be a little jarring when three songs of around one minute's duration appear one after the other — but the spare instrumentation (is that a cello on "Sons Mon Manteau"?) is the thread that binds it all together. Repeated listens reveal further depth, but all in all, this kind of subjective musical journey is difficult to critique, as it is by its very nature so intensely personal.

Children's Music That Adults Can Stand

With two young children, I spend a lot of time in the car listening to XM Kids, channel 116. (There is another children's station called Radio Disney, but they seem to basically play edited pop songs.) A lot of what is broadcast is the usual silliness, but occasionally my ear perks up to a song that seems to have a little more going for it than the rest.

As a sort of public service for other parents looking for music that is appropriate for kids but isn't the same old treacle, below are some album recommendations (often based on hearing only one song) of some children's music that I found myself humming later on in the day, and even admiring.

• Asylum Street Spankers: "You Only Love Me for My Lunch Box" (from the CD Mommy Says No! — children's music on eclectic instruments, with a lyrical wink to the adults).
• Barenaked Ladies (aka "BNL"): "Crazy ABCs" (from the CD Snack Time — the alphabet song for the Extraordinarily Literate crowd).
• Michael Bublé: "Spider-Man Theme" (available as an MP3 download).
• Steve Goodie: "Harry's Wand" (from the CD Pottered Meat — music from Fountains of Wayne's "Stacy's Mom" with lyrics summarizing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban).
• Jessica Harper: "Stay Three" (from the CD Hey, Picasso* — a great all-around CD; here's my full review).
• Peter Himmelman: "Feet" (from the CD My Green Kite — the beat is seat-swayingly good, and it's educational, too!).
• Jack Johnson and Friends: "Upside Down" (from the CD Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies for the Film Curious George* — another great all-around CD with appearances from Ben Harper and Matt Costa, and a cover of a White Stripes song).
• Mr. Saxophone: "Welcome to the Jungle Gym" (from the CD Songs from the Treehouse — music from Guns N Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" combined with funny lyrics about the playground).
• Justin Roberts: "Pop Fly" (from the CD Pop Fly — an infectious chorus, and it really captures what it's like in the outfield).
• Secret Agent 23 Skidoo: "Luck" (from the CD Easy — brilliant musicianship, thoughtful and intelligent lyrics, and a banjo on a rap song!).
• The Sippy Cups: "Dear Prudence" (from the CD Give Peas a Chance — with covers from the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Ramones, and others, how can you go wrong?).
  

Albums with a * are highly recommended because — so far, at least — they stand up to repeated listens.