Jeff McCord on the month’s new releases
Sarah Jarosz
Song Up in Her Head
Sugar Hill
How did you celebrate your high school graduation? Wimberley’s Sarah Jarosz marked the occasion with a debut album, Song Up in Her Head (Sugar Hill). The eighteen-year-old overachiever has been well-known regionally for years, appearing at numerous festivals and even with the Austin Symphony. Yet unlike a lot of child prodigies (she started playing mandolin at age ten), she’s no mere technical instrumentalist: She’s also a strong singer. Her soulful voice provides the glue for her longish, melancholy compositions, and she’s brimming with big ideas—almost too many, in fact. Overlong and a bit unfocused, Song Up in Her Head, which was recorded in Nashville around her class schedule, is nonetheless surprisingly accomplished. It’s easy to see why bluegrass stars like Jerry Douglas, Abigail Washburn, and Tim O’Brien are converts. Free-flowing, meditative songs like “Tell Me True,” “Long Journey,” “I Can’t Love You Now,” and “Left Home” (written by someone who has yet to do so) betray an informed confidence and aged spirit. And her cover of the Decemberists’ “Shankill Butchers” is inspired both in concept and execution.
Ocote Soul Sounds and Adrian Quesada
Coconut Rock
ESL
As pseudo-realist dub/funk/Afrobeat/hip-hop/Latin ensembles go, it’s tough to beat Ocote Soul Sounds and Adrian Quesada. Okay, so they’re unique—but as a spin-off of two genre-bending bands, you’d expect nothing less. Ocote Soul Sounds is a pseudonym for Martín Perna, the founder and saxophonist of NYC’s Antibalas, the dozen-member group that fueled an Afrobeat revival, while Quesada is a founding member and guitarist for Austin’s ten-piece Grupo Fantasma, whose modernized cumbia-funk-salsa counts Prince among its admirers. Coconut Rock (ESL) is the pair’s third collaboration, and this time they’ve added an array of guest vocalists to their psychedelic trance stew, among them Brazilian star Tita Lima and Antibalas’s Marcos Garcia. Perna and Quesada each play multiple instruments (it takes a seven-piece band to re-create their music live) and keep the grooves hypnotic, with chanting, reverb-drenched horns, percussion, and guitars. It’s a creative mix anchored by a persistent funky undercurrent. Freed from the restrictions of their large-group democracies, Perna and Quesada are clearly having a blast. So will you.
Charlie Robison
Beautiful Day
Dualtone
From his public sparring with the Nashville establishment to his marriage to (and subsequent divorce from) Dixie Chick Emily Erwin, Charlie Robison has often attracted more attention for his personal life than his music. Which is a shame, because the Bandera-raised singer is a sharp, natural talent with an affable grace. Beautiful Day (Dualtone) is his first album in five years, and in some respects, it offers few surprises. The album boasts a big melodic and muscular pop-country sound that sidesteps the audience pandering so typical of the genre; there’s also the requisite cover by a Nashville outsider (Bobby Bare Jr.’s “Nothin’ Better to Do”). But then there’s something different: Robison’s writing gets personal. He touches on his divorce in songs like the title track, “Yellow Blues,” and “She’s So Fine” without reveling in self-pity. Still, “Middle of the Night” and “Feelin’ Good” seem like afterthoughts, and ending with Springsteen’s masterful “Racing in the Street” may not have been the best move. Though nicely done, it underscores an emotional core that Robison himself might have reached if he’d cut a little deeper.
Rhett Miller
Rhett Miller
Photograph by Jason Janik
The Austin-born, Dallas-raised lead singer for the Old 97’s has led a fruitful double life as a solo artist with the albums Mythologies (1989), The Instigator (2002), and The Believer (2006). He has just released his fourth album, Rhett Miller (Shout! Factory).
You actually began as a solo artist, making your first album in high school. Your future Old 97’s collaborator Murry Hammond produced it. How did you get from there to the Old 97’s? The 97’s formed in ’93. It was a different iteration of Murry and me. We had a few other bands and got frustrated about battling this testosterone-driven rock world. We said, “Let’s form a band that doesn’t run the risk of getting successful. A coffeehouse, countryish, folk music band.” Of course, ironically, that’s the band that became successful.
Have the Old 97’s been together continuously since then? Not so long ago, there were rumors of a breakup. There was a time around The Instigator when people were talking as if we were, but we were very clear about it. We had been on the road for five years nonstop, so when I did my solo record, everybody got a break, and eighteen months later we were back in the studio.
You’ve said that one reason you make your solo records is that these tunes are rejected by the band. A lot of bands don’t operate so democratically. Wouldn’t it be simpler as the primary songwriter to call the shots? Oh, man, it’s a fine line. How do you keep a band together for that long? To do it, everybody has to feel appreciated. We made decisions early on that would recognize the contributions of, say, Philip [Peeples], the drummer. Philip’s a smart guy who gave up a great job when we started the band. Should he get screwed out of all his publishing money? No. We share the publishing.
It’s the reason we’ve lasted this long.
How are you doing these days? Listening to the new CD, there’s some dark material. I’ve always had a dark side. Usually there’s a catchy, fun thing that glosses over the subtext. But this time I let it be at the forefront. I’m good. It’s life, right? Nobody’s got it that easy.
Do you do a lot of third-person writing? I do. I find it liberating. Nobody wants to hear me write songs about them by name. I don’t want to write songs specifically about my life.
A lot of well-known songwriters write in the third person, but few of their fans interpret it that way. Yeah, and it’s funny too, because as much as I expect people to appreciate the remove between the writer and what he’s written, I listen to songs by friends, and I’ll be like, “Oh, my God, I’ve got to call so-and-so. It sounds like he’s going through a tough time.” People need songs about tough times, because if anything is universal, it’s that. The human condition is not happiness. It’s angst. I don’t want to have to live it for real every day in order to write about it. It’s hard enough to escape it without choosing to wallow in it.
Do you feel more pressure when you make your own records? Do you enjoy the control? Yes and yes. After we go through the process of making an Old 97’s record and touring it, I’m ready to go into the studio and be the boss. I revel in the pressure. Once I go through making a solo record and the lonely process of touring it, I really miss the guys. I miss sitting back and letting the beast do its business.
You’ve come up with a great compromise: You’re going to open Old 97’s shows with your solo act. I’m so grateful that the 97’s are in this place. When I made The Instigator, there were a lot of growing pains. There were times when I wondered if the 97’s were going to make it. But now not only do they let me play a few songs by myself on regular shows, they are going to let me do opening sets. It’s nice to show the fans that not only do we have as strong a bond as ever but that the band supports me in the extracurricular as well.
