New Music 2018 - Part 8 - Ruby Boots - Don't Talk About It

At the weekend I was delighted to discover the impending release of the second LP by Ruby Boots, the performance name of Australian-raised singer-songwriter Bex Chilcott.  It is the follow-up to her 2015 album 'Solitude'. With out further ado this is it.
I can't fault the label with which she has now joined forces.

Don't Talk About It - Ruby Boots (Bloodshot Records, 9 February 2018).

Ruby Boots - Don't Talk About It:

• It's So Cruel
• Believe in Heaven
• Don't Talk About It
• Easy Way Out
• Break My Heart Twice
• I'll Make It Through
• Somebody Else
• I Am a Woman
• Infatuation
• Don't Give a Damn

The lead single is the title track:

She has moved to the US now, Nashville and that is hardly surprising. This album was recorded there for the most part. Her backing band is 'The Texas Gentleman'. There is absolutely no shame in that.

New Music 2017 - Part 6 - Scott H. Biram - The Bad Testament

Thus far my series of 'New Music 2017' posts has taken a predominantly acoustic path. This is where it takes a turn towards electric squalls...  well almost certainly it does, for this album has not yet been released. It could turn out to be an album of lullabies and  gentle ballads but neither artist nor label history make that seem anything other than extremely improbable!
The title of the LP tends to reinforce that idea too...

'The Bad Testament' - Scott H. Biram (Bloodshot Records, 24 February 2017).

It seems that the often-solo Texas bluesman will be taking us down the rutted dirt roads, rusting rails and haunted backwaters once again. Should you be wondering what I thought about his 2014 LP 'Nothin' But Blood' than that is here and it was my first introduction to the world of his music.

This is the track list:

Scott H. Biram - The Bad Testament

• Set Me Free
• Still Around
• Red Wine
• TrainWrecker
• Long Old Time
• Swift Driftin'
• Righteous Ways
• Crippled & Crazy
• Feel So Wrong
• True Religion

If you buy CD or d/l versions then you get the three tracks from his 'Lost on the River EP' too. I have a certain feeling that I will head for this option.

Here is a taster from the new record:

New Music 2016 - Part 37 - Lydia Loveless - Real

OK. Here I go again - there's no rest for the wicked!
Or, for that matter, the followers of those independent record labels that really matter so much once again. Here is the latest from just one such, and the welcome return of a very significant artist with her third (or fourth, maybe) LP.

Lydia Loveless - Real (Bloodshot Records, BS239, 19 August 2016).

Lydia Loveless - Real:

• Same to You
• Longer
• More Than Ever
• Heaven
• Out On Love
• Midwestern Guys
• Bilbao
• European
• Clumps
• Real

'Longer' is the first track from the album to be revealed:

Somewhere Else (2014) was a fine album, indeed it still is. There is, however, no reason to suppose that it was the high-water mark of Lydia Loveless' career or ambition. She has kept the same core musicians again and also producer Joe Viers. The album was recorded in Columbus, OH.

It may even be too 'real' for some folks' taste. She has never been shy of unlovely images, or raising awkward subjects, and it looks like they are here aplenty; that's just how it rolls. 

New Music 2016 - Part 11 - Freakwater - Scheherazade

When an LP takes its title from a Persian queen-consort, she was also the storyteller for One Thousand and One Nights, one might conclude that things are not going to be exactly straightforward. You are right but I'll try to keep this post concise.

It is also an example of two points I feel that I often make:
The first is that trying to fit music into little 'genre-boxes' is at best a waste of time that is far better spent finding and listening to music. At worst it is misguided and distracts from the investigation of "new" music by others simply because they may perceive it to be beyond their habitual comfort-zone.
Tied in to this is the second; there is so much music available to find that keeping an open mind and setting out on a voyage simply to find whatever may be out there seems a pretty good option to me. The few useful navigation aids en route are those things the judgement of which one has learned to respect. That could be applied to a festival of which the line-up is as yet unknown when one books a ticket or, as in this case, a record label - Bloodshot Records.  This post also adheres to one of the few founding principles of this blog and it is that I don't waste my energy on writing about things that I don't like.

Scheherazade is the first new Freakwater record in over a decade.
It was released in North America 5 February 2016 and will be so in Europe 12 February 2016 on LP, CD and d/l.

The LP cover screams 1970s to me - the interlocked and curvy typeface, the colors and optical-illusory carpet of the motel room both - but that is not what it sounds like.
Not. At. All. The vocals are handled, as they always have been for this is Freakwater album #8, by Janet Bean and Caroline Irwin who both hail from Louisville, Kentucky.

This is the track list:

Freakwater - Scheherazade

• What the People Want
• The Asp and the Albatross
• Bolshevik and Bollweevil
• Down Will Come Baby
• Falls of Sleep
• Take Me With You
• Velveteen Matador
• Skinny Knee Bone
• Number One With a Bullet
• Memory Vendor
• Missionfield
• Ghost Song

I reckon that you best go figure what else, if anything, it reminds you of. I haven't decided that myself but I like the whatever-that-it-is and I that's quite good enough for me, at least for now.

Nothin' But Blood - Scott H Biram

I have been listening to so much music lately and in part connected to the festivals that I am attending this summer. This album however, although in some ways connected to my previous post,  really needs a post of its own.
It also nicely illustrates two points: the first is that I can't possibly keep up with all new music that I might wish to in real time and therefore that once again it is wise to keep note of independent labels that one trusts.

In this case the artist Scott H. Biram is not new and this (2014) is his fifth LP release with Bloodshot Records. It is loud, direct and dirty, often to the point of profanity, heartfelt blues-country-rock. The original songs are are every bit incisive; as much are the wisely interpreted covers including Willie Dixon's 'Back Door Man'. Originally written for Howlin' Wolf (1961) it later appeared on his own LP 'I Am The Blues' (1970). It has needless to say been covered, in whole or in part, many other times in the meanwhile. I'm thinking Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush in particular here, but I have yet to find it in my vinyl collection. It is in there, somewhere.

This is the opening track to the LP and 'Slow and Easy' is a pretty gentle introduction as its title might suggest. I can do no better than this summary:
Rock 'n' Roll ain't pretty and neither is Scott H Biram. Below the link to 'Slow & Easy' is the full track listing.

• Slow & Easy 
• Gotta Get to Heaven
• Alcohol Blues 
• Never Comin' Home
• Only 
• Jack of Diamonds
• Nam Weed
• Backdoor Man
• Church Point Girls 
• I'm Troubled
• Around the Bend

This is one album that I just had to have on vinyl. What you might not guess is that he is a one-man-band. In that sense I think that he would be absolutely perfect for the tiny Saloon Stage at Truck Festival 2015! But then, since I'm going to Truck, it is just my selfish streak.

So, my second point about all of this is...
Well... I'll just keep y'all waitin' for that.

New Music 2014 - Part 8

While my recent posts about live music have a very obvious UK (indeed English) folk bias, and the next live act that I'm going to see is Spiers and Boden, that is not the case with the ongoing posts on new music which, even if the artists are UK based, draws heavily on US traditions and that is certainly true of both the artists featured in this post.
Both are 2014 releases by US-based independent record labels and both are by female artists. These are not country, alt-or-otherwise, but neither are they country rock either. They are not an incomprehensible change but, ultimately, they are what they are. I like them, which matters more than anything, and that is why they are here.

Angel Olsen - Burn Your Fire For No Witness - Jagjaguwar Records, 2014.

   

Slightly more challenging is this next, released by Bloodshot Records and an album perhaps inadequately described as 'country punk'. It is a demanding listen, no doubt about that, but it is well worth any effort that this involves.

Somewhere Else - Lydia Loveless - Bloodshot Records, 2014.
   

If you are left stranded, wondering what that might sound like...

  LYDIA LOVELESS - Learn to Say No from Kitchen Sessions on Vimeo.

New Music - Part 16 - Americana Both Sides of the Atlantic

This is about two albums that I have come to my attention in the last couple of days. One has been released only recently and the other is due in six weeks or so: both incorporate several trends in the way new music, and the music industry in general, is changing shape in an almost organic way.
I'm actually going to start with the one that has not yet been released for, without it, I would very likely not have discovered the one that has.

This is the début album from the Brighton/London based singer-songwriter. Crowd-funded, it is self-released on June 30, 2013. This is not to say for a minute that it is going to be some parochial take on Americana.
It was recorded in East Nashville under the guidance of Chris Donohue (Emmylou Harris and, more recently, The Civil Wars) with many well known roots musicians playing parts. Neither is it an album of covers and standards for, with one exception she has written or co-written all but one of the songs in this collection. For a more extensive biography see here.
  

The second album is this - the history behind it is even more complicated than at first it might seem.

This is their latest studio album and a 2013 release by, as were the forgoing ones, Chicago-based independent label Bloodshot Records. At the heart of the band are two natives of Detroit, MI who some while back decided to reverse the migration that led to the explosion of blues and rock, and relocate to Tennessee: Kurt Marschke (lyric, guitar vocals)  and JD Mack (drums), not brothers as it might seem, and the line-up had already been prone to evolution as is so often the case. The fact is that then it did include brothers from London: Spencer Cullum (guitar, lap-steel and pedal steel) and Jeff Cullum (bass). Then the dynamic changed again.
These two albums serve to define, to an extent, just where things are now and how much has changed; much of it for the better I believe.