The Wheel's Still In Spin

Short Story Review: Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers – Songs in the Night

Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers – Songs in the Night | CD MP3

Download “Songs in the Night” (mp3)
Download “Get the Fever Out” (mp3)

Thanks for calling me back. I’m sorry about that message. It probably sounded more melodramatic than it should have. I’ve just been a little down.

Yeah, I mean, I’m doing all right. Hang on for a minute, though. Let me turn this music down so I can hear you better. I just started playing an album by Samantha Crain. Have you heard her? Really? You should give her a listen. She has a distinctive voice, writes some narrative songs, and utilizes unusual phrasings. She stays true to the melody of the songs, but she doesn’t chop up the words to fit the phrasing. Instead, she sometimes merges words into similar beats, keeping the melody intact, and still allowing all of her precious words to remain.

Short Story Review: The Heartless Bastards – The Mountain

The Heartless Bastards – The Mountain
Original Release Date: 3 February 2009 ( Fat Possum)

Download “The Mountain” (mp3)

Karen pulls on to I-4, heading northeast in the Jetta packed with as many of her belongings as she could load into the car. She is never going back for the remaining things she left behind. What’s in her car is everything she now owns. The backseat is packed to the roof so she can't see Altamonte Springs in the rearview mirror as she drives away. Behind her the town’s water tower sits next to the highway. Beyond that is Orlando, Disney World, Epcot, and Sea World. Greg is somewhere back there, somewhere in all that mess that Karen can only see from the side mirrors that reminder that what she’s leaving is still closer than it appears.

Coconut Records (Jason Schwartzman) – Davy

Original Release Date: 20 January 2009 (Young Baby Records)

Download “Microphone” (mp3)

When his plane landed in the afternoon, it touched down during a rare heavy rainstorm. Three hours and four Jack and Cokes later and the rain has not stopped. Jeff finally decides to unpack. The clothes: the cotton shirts, pressed slacks, boxers and socks. The hardware: the portable printer, travel size DVD player, and laptop. There is no need to even open the accessory bag of miniature toiletries since it was replenished before leaving the hotel room. He just pulls it out of the main bag and slides it into its place beneath the sink. Everything has its place. That makes both packing and unpacking neat and orderly. It’s easy to leave, easy to come home.

Nearly immediately upon entering the apartment, the iPhone was in the SoundDock, shuffling through the library. Done with his unpacking and definitely drunk, a song by Jason Schwartzman, who releases his music under the guise of Coconut Records, plays. An acoustic guitar is singly strummed for the introduction of “Wandering Around” from the album Davy. Perhaps it’s the incessant travel, perhaps it’s the alcohol – or a combination of it all – but the opening line offers Jeff some muddled solace. “All my days are blending into one lonely night.”

As the song ventures through its refrain of “I’ve been wandering around,” his caprices take hold. He finds himself walking barefoot through the Los Angeles rainstorm. He quickly drenches himself searching out puddles to stomp in like an overexcited kid let loose. His iPhone is in its case and in his pocket. Jeff is listening to the Davy album straight through. As he wanders through the downpour and listens to that album, he screens a black-and-white mental motion picture.

Otis Gibbs – Grandpa Walked a Picketline

Original Release Date: 20 January 2009 (Wanamaker Recording Company/Thirty Tigers

Download “Caroline” (mp3)

It can be a tough decision to make. When he’s lying on the hard floor of a quaking boxcar on a cold night, Joe’s got to decide if he wants to wear his coat to keep hisself warm or bundle it up like a pillow to cushion his head. Unless it’s too bitterly cold, though, goes to softening his head from bouncing with the rails.

As he tried to fall asleep, he was reminded of an album he got to hear on the way to Salt Lake City. He hitched a ride down I-84, through Boise and Twin Falls. The driver kept playing an album by Otis Gibbs, Grandpa Walked a Picketline. Gibbs is a folksinger with the kind of strong but haggard voice that sounds older than the singer really is.

The Velvet Underground – Loaded

Original release date: September 1970 (Cotillion Records)

Th-th-thanks

I never raised my hand in class because, in public, I stutter when I try to talk. Answering a simple three digit math problem would turn into a recitation of a phone number. “Sev-sev-seven, seven, four, fo-fo-seven, fo-forty, eight.” Privately I have a good sense of humor about it. I just don’t want to talk in public. Someday I’ll get over it. But today it’s embarrassing.

When I’d go into the record store, though, it was different. Especially if Hank was working. Henry, that’s what his nametag said, would talk about and know everything about every album or every band. Hendrix originally wanted Stephen Still to be the bass player for The Experience. Bob Dylan’s real name was Robert Allen Zimmerman. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band took over 700 hours in the studio to record, while Kurt Cobain’s vocals on In Utero were recorded in 6 hours. I’d go in there to talk to him even when I knew I didn’t want to but anything.

That’s where I spent most of the summer. I was at the record store. I figured out Hank’s hours and showed up only during those times. I remember the first time I bought from his recommendation. It seems like it was just yesterday. Well, it was really at the end of last school year.

“This one’s great. ‘Sweet Jane,’ ‘Rock & Roll,’ and ‘Head Held High.’ But my favorite is ‘Cool It Down.’” The he quoted a price and I paid him. “Don't be a stranger.”

“Oak-oh-oh-oak, okay. Th-th-thanks.”

Noah and the Whale – Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down

Original Release Date: 16 September 2008 (Cherrytree Records)

Download “5 Years Time” (mp3)
Download “2 Bodies 1 Heart” (mp3)

As I walked to the first class of my second semester, International Sign Language 101, I had my ear buds in place. I was lost in my own world. In the five minutes it took to walk across campus, I began listening to the newest obsession on my iPod – Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down by Noah and the Whale.

The album opens with the wavering tone of a harmonium and the fade in of a distant sounding, face paced acoustic guitar riff. After a few finger snaps in beat, the atmospheric introductory music cuts away and Charlie Fink’s voice and guitar are front and center. “2 Atoms in a Molecule” begins with Fink retelling a dream of love. He imagines he and his lover “were inseparably entwined/ Like a piece of rope made out of two pieces of vine.” The full band kicks in and the singer awakes from his dream. He is alone. He laments about the pangs of love. And he asks, “If love is just a game, then how come it’s no fun?/ If love is juts a game, how come I’ve never won?”

I listened to these lyrical lines of lamentation about love and entered the classroom. I removed each ear bud and took a seat near the back of the room, where I usually sat on the first day of class. About two minutes before class began, in walked this woman with shoulder-length, coiled, raven hair. But this beautiful stranger was not the average unknown acquaintance. My crush for her began during my third week on campus.

I had noticed her in the dining hall. A couple times a week, we both ate a few meals at the same time. The first time I saw her, she appeared as an unattainable, attractive woman. From afar, I fantasized about her, but never had the courage to actually speak to her.

Hayes Carll – Trouble in Mind

Original release date: 8 April 2008 (Lost Highway)

You can call Trouble in Mind an alt country album, or Americana, or folk rock. But whatever genre the album gets classified in, it was 2008’s best country release by a long shot. The strength of this set of songs is three-fold.

Carll’s songwriting is unmatched – the Americana Music Association named “She Left Me for Jesus” as Song of the Year for a reason.

The production is spotless. There are instances when the music slides away and an acoustic guitar or slide or rimshot fills the moment with perfectly precision.

Finally, the diversity of this album is not a common quality of modern country albums. “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart” has the alt country rock sound of a Jason & The Scorchers tune. “I Got a Gig” has a swampy, Creedence feel to it. “A Lover Like You” opens with a ragtime piano riff and could be mistaken for a mid-‘60s Dylan track. And Carll covers Tom Waits on “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up.”

The album moves through its themes like a night of hard drinking. It starts out on the high of a good buzz with strength and confidence. As the liquor keeps going down, some thoughts of depression and nostalgia may kick in, but you still feel confident and able. In the end, you’re still longing for love and still have your sense of humor.

Download “She Left Me for Jesus” (mp3)

A Colorful Night of Drinking

He gently closed the bedroom door and diligently worked his way into the kitchen with the slow tempo precision that the hangover allowed. Not knowing why he was awake so early, he still knew what he had to do. After drinking a glass of water, he preheated the oven to 400°. He then pressed play on the kitchen boombox as the oven warmed.

Scott needed music right now – something to take his throbbing mind of its trouncing. He set the volume a little lower than normal; partly because he couldn’t handle it being too loud, but also so as to not wake up Lisa. What came through those speakers, Hayes Carll’s Trouble in Mind, could perfectly explain the evening he had and why he was making breakfast.

Lemuria – Get Better

Original release date: 26 February 2008 (Asian Man Records)

Download “Pants” (mp3)
Download “Dog” and “Dogs” (mp3)

Love and Loss

I guess I never expected to stumble onto that baseball glove, but finding it instantly brought me to a standstill in the back of his closet. It had that distinctive scent of toughened leather. Old and worn, the mitt was stiff from decades of neglect. There was still a long forgotten ball in the web.

It triggered one of those happy memories that I needed. On those warmer nights, when he got home from work, we used to play catch in the backyard. This was just during the couple of years that I played little league. I was never good, at least not during games. My throws were always too short or off their target. I don’t think I actually ever caught a ball out in left field where they usually put me. And I only had two hits, both in the same game during my second and final season. But in the backyard, though, he made me the star. Every popup he threw landed in my glove; my diving catches looked graceful; my return throws thwacked into his mitt.

This moment of reverence quickly turned into an overwhelming feeling of preoccupation. It seemed things were not going my way lately. First, there was the most recent of my uneventful break-ups. Then, my dad. Here I was going through his closet, going through everything. I needed a drink. A drink and some music.

I knew where my dad kept the liquor. I poured some Jameson over ice cubes into a tumbler and put Get Better by Lemuria onto the stereo. The first track, “Pants,” opens with a slicing guitar riff. The opening lyrics of this album are addressed to a lover, but also speak to musicphiles like myself. “You never missed a word I tried to fit/ Inside a chorus, inside a verse, all my intros and the bridge.”

Thao With The Get Down Stay Down - We Brave Bee Stings And All

Original release date: 29 January 2008 (Kill Rock Stars)

Download “Beat (Health, Life And Fire)” (mp3)
Download “Bag Of Hammers” (mp3)

      Pick up your phone, fucking pick up your fucking phone. It isn’t panic. It isn’t shock. I can’t say I didn’t see this coming. I can’t say I somehow willed it upon myself. It doesn’t matter how much advance notice you get; when you’re forced to swallow shit, it won’t go down easy. Just answer your fucking phone.
      “Hello.”
      “I’m getting fired today.”
      She could hear the direct urgency in my voice. Still, she had to ask, “What? How are you so sure?”
      “Trust me. I don’t have much time to talk right now. I have a meeting with Drew and Rick scheduled just before the end of the day.”
      “And you’re sure that’s what it’s about?”
      “I called Susan and asked her if she knew why I suddenly had a meeting my editor and the CEO. Drew’s always harping on me, but why am I having a meeting with Rick too? She paused and then said she wasn’t supposed to talk to me. She said it wasn’t because of my writing. She couldn’t believe it was happening to me.”
      “OK. What do you need right now?”
      “I don’t know. I’m going to Louie’s for lunch. I’m taking a long lunch today. Can you leave work early? I can’t fucking believe this!”

      At Louie’s, I first heard Thao Nguyen’s We Brave Bee Stings And All. Honestly, at the time, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it, but only because the day I was having. He had it playing when I got there. At least that’s what he said. Where my mind was, I don’t remember any music playing. Luckily, he gave me a copy of it before I left. When I think through the events of that day, the actions interplay with the songs.

Rocky Votolato - Makers

The content of this review was originally posted on the online music and popular culture magazine I See Sound on 16 Feb 2006.

Release Date: 24 Jan 2006 (Barsuk Records)

Download “Portland Is Leaving” (mp3)
Download “Tinfoil Hats” (mp3)

Alex, Kevin, and Josh were best friends in high school. Now, 14 years later, Alex was getting married. Kevin and Josh were back home together for the first time in years, and, in the interim, they’d both been through a lot of changes. While Alex stayed in touch with both of them, Kevin and Josh hadn’t talked to each other in quite a while.

When they were in high school, the three of them would often walk along the train tracks that cut across their small, midwestern town. Now, the night before Alex tied the knot, Kevin and Josh found themselves with a loss for things to do or to talk about. They’d been hanging out together for the past few days. There was Alex’s bachelor party. They’d been out almost every night they’d been back to their childhood hometown. However, when you’re back home in rural Indiana, you can only go out to the same few bars so many times before you get bored. So they started walking along those tracks again.

They’d forgotten a lot about the town in which they grew up. Kevin, on the other hand, had been living in Phoenix for about 2 years. He avoided settling down. He moved every couple of years. He regretted how most of his relationships floundered to an end. Josh was living in Boston because he had joint custody of his son with his ex-wife. He couldn’t move from that Massachusetts harbor town without giving up something he held as the most cherished part of his life. Walking on the gravel beside the railroad ties, they started talking about how the town had grown and changed.

“Did you ever think there’d be a Wal-Mart here?” and “Did you think that Hanson’s Hardware store would-a closed and a Lowe’s would’ve opened?” were types of questions that got the conversation started. Then the dialogue shifted to their memories of younger days.

Reliving some of the mishaps and adventures of being teenagers, Kevin, who’d been doing most of the talking, said, “This reminds me of a line from a song called ‘White Daisy Passion.’”

“That’s on Makers the new Rocky Votolato disc,” asked Josh, a little surprised.