Jeff McCord on the month’s new releases
Jon Dee Graham
Freedom
An interview with Jon Dee Graham
After being in Austin’s spotlight last year, when his son was diagnosed with a rare degenerative hip disease (as with Escovedo, the city’s music community rolled out in support), Graham has just released his fifth album, FULL (Freedom).
Where do things stand with your son? How has it affected your music? The last X-rays showed some new bone growth, but lately he has been having a lot of pain. Watching the grace and courage of a six-year-old dealing with his disease is humbling. I’ve learned a lot about acceptance and perseverance and just plain going on. Has it affected my music? Hell, yes. It has informed it with a sense of urgency, a sense of precariousness, and a sense of abiding faith.
Was it hard for you to get back to your work? [Charles] Bukowski had a great line about writing, how if you’re gonna write, you will write, in spite of the screaming kids or the garbage in the hall or the past-due notices piling up. These songs came very forcefully, in a big herd. Sometimes you have to lure the songs in, like leaving a bowl of milk on the back steps to get them to come in close enough to catch. But not these.
Alejandro Escovedo
Back Porch
It all came to a halt one Arizona night in 2002. ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO had led an impressive, if messy, rock and roll life, with a résumé that included Rank and File, the True Believers, and a respected solo career. Yet years of ignoring a hepatitis C diagnosis finally caught up to him: Collapsing during a performance, the critically ill singer faced a fight for his life. Austin had always considered Escovedo its best-kept secret, but the ensuing avalanche of support proved otherwise. Now Escovedo is onstage and back in the studio, with the Velvet Underground’s John Cale in the producer’s chair. THE BOXING MIRROR (Back Porch) is a triumph, easily Escovedo’s edgiest work since his True Believers days. Cale’s imprints are everywhere. There’s a claustrophobic compression to the sound; like the best of Cale’s solo work, the musicians constantly press at the seams. Former True Believer Jon Dee Graham grinds it up another notch with his exuberant guitar work. The songs? You’ve heard a couple before (“Sacramento and Polk,” “Break This Time,” both imaginatively redone). “The Ladder” is vintage Escovedo romanticism, but others, like “Dearhead on the Wall”—sawtooth chamber rock set to his wife’s poetry—are real surprises. “Gonna learn how to give/Not to simply get by,” Escovedo sings in “Died a Little Today,” and it’s a theme that keeps recurring. As the album’s title implies, there’s an internal fight going on between the immutable past and the all-too-flexible present, a realization that second chances are rare. Escovedo knows he beat the odds. “You say I’ve lost my way,” he sings in the opener, “but it’s all a dream since Arizona.”
Roy Hargrove
Verve
One album just wasn’t enough. NOTHING SERIOUS (Verve), the first of two simultaneous releases from trumpeter Roy Hargrove, is his finest straight-up jazz outing in years. Shedding the strained concepts of his recent recordings (strings, Cuban music), Hargrove and his no-star quintet lay down occasionally ferocious hard bop. He contributes only three originals, yet his playing brims with confidence and vigor, reminding us why we were so excited about this Dallasite in the first place. Indulging Hargrove’s funky alter ego, DISTRACTIONS (Verve) is the second neosoul session from his group The RH Factor. Taking a page from the P-Funk playbook, the album is overloaded with musicians (including Texan David “Fathead” Newman) churning out old-school grooves. There’s a nice retro late-night vibe, but it plays out in a style much too surgically neat to tear the roof off the sucka.
Jolie Holland
Anti
Those who fancy JOLIE HOLLAND a bit of an odd ducklet’s just say she doesn’t exactly ooze onstage charisma—won’t change their minds with her third album, SPRINGTIME CAN KILL YOU (Anti). The Houston-born vocalist warbles in a slurry vibrato that can tend to grate. Or enchant. There’s something about the strangeness of her music—acoustic, liquid, historically hard to place—that captivates. The arrangements could stand some instrumental flourishes: The string section falls flat, and with Holland singing 95 percent of the time, there are no places for the material to breathe. Still, when her songs work, so does everything else. Flirting with jazz inflections and fleeting imagery, she slides on occasion (“Crazy Dreams,” “Moonshiner,” “You’re Not Satisfied”) into a surprising and soulful place.
