PnM:MiX dozen bestofs > 2020's blues songs so far

Sass Jordan, G. Love & Special Sauce, Marcus King, The Wood Brothers, Son Little, Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado, Tinsley Ellis, Christopher Paul Stelling, The Third Mind, Sonny Landreth, Robert Cray, Ryan Perry

"Am I Wrong"

PnM.MiX dozen bestofs 2020's blues songs so far

A British-born, Canadian pop/rock singer who also appeared as a judge on the TV talent competition Canadian Idol. Sass Jordan joined her first band, the News, after she learned to play bass at the age of 17. Four years later, she left the band and, by 1985, had begun a solo career.
Sass Jordan - Rebel Moon Blues / Am I Wrong
...More crucially, it’s also a watershed that charts a new course in Jordan’s musical voyage while tracing her love of the blues back to its source. The album features eight songs, freshly interpreted and given the Sass Jordan treatment with her band the Champagne Hookers: guitarists Chris Caddell and Jimmy Reid, bassist Derrick Brady and drummer Cassius Pereira, augmented by blues harp master Steve Marriner and keyboardist Jesse O’Brien.

Philadelphia singer-songwriter and crew seamlessly bled old-school blues and jazz into modern-alterna-hip-hop.
G. Love & Special Sauce - The Juice / Fix Your Face
Now that they're over a quarter-century into their career, it's time to come to terms with a simple fact: G. Love & Special Sauce are no longer youthful upstarts, they're veterans. Fittingly, their 2020 album The Juice is the kind of record that could only be made by musicians who've been around the block a time or two. It's not that The Juice is the work of untrammeled virtuosos -- it is most decidedly a vibe record -- but rather that it's an album that's casually confident that also happens to have an offhand sense of community...

Ace guitarist who won a following with blues and jam band fans before honing his talents as a vocalist on his first solo album.
Marcus King - El Dorado / The Well
There's nothing at all wrong with being a guitar hero, but sometimes a musician wants to show folks they can do more than spin off dazzling solos. The Marcus King Band has won a loyal following among guitar mavens, blues heads, and jam band enthusiasts for their agile blend of boogie rock and blues that gives King plenty of opportunity to express himself on guitar. But for his first solo effort, King has opted to try something different. 2020's El Dorado was produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, and he's helped King craft a change-of-pace effort that should appeal to folks unaware of his work with his band...

A roots music trio featuring brothers Chris (upright bass, vocals) and Oliver Wood (guitars, vocals) along with multi-instrumentalist Jano Rix, the Wood Brothers bring a distinctive flair to their union of folk, blues, gospel, and jazz.
The Wood Brothers - Kingdom in My Mind / Little Blues
...The band didn't enter the studio with the intent of recording a new album, but they were taken with the results of their recording, so brothers Chris and Oliver Wood shaped the improvisations into songs. Starting with a collection of funky rustic recordings wound up being a boon to the Wood Brothers, letting Kingdom in My Mind establish a vibe that's cozy, homespun, and just slightly slick. Chalk the polish up to how the group are veterans with a good sense of space and feel, a knack that they're pushing on Kingdom in My Mind over tasteful songcraft...

Blending elements of acoustic blues, vintage soul, and conscious hip-hop into a mixture that's expressive yet deeply personal, Son Little is the alias of Aaron Livingston, a singer, instrumentalist, and songwriter who divides his time between his own music and collaborations with others.
Son Little - Aloha / That's The Way
In the press materials for Son Little's third album, 2020's Aloha, Little (known to his mom and the tax people as Aaron Livingston) says he had written a big batch of songs for his next project and recorded elaborate demos working out the arrangements. Then the hard drive in his recording setup went wonky on him, and suddenly all that hard work vanished and Little had to rewrite the album from the ground up in a few weeks. The moral to this story is that Son Little apparently responds well to pressure: despite the drama leading up to the album's recording, he sounds as confident, assured, and intelligent on Aloha as he did on 2015's Son Little and 2017's New Magic...

Thorbjørn Risager is a hard-swinging Danish blues musician and songwriter whose singing voice sounds cobbled from one-part Ray Charles, one-part Bob Seger, and one-part Joe Cocker.
The Black Tornado is the supporting band of Thorbjørn Risager, a Danish blues musician who first came onto the scene early in the 2000s. A fan of Southern soul and Chicago blues, he fused the two sounds, something that was evident his 2004 debut,
Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado - Come on In / Last Train
Since 2003, Danish guitarist, singer, and songwriter Thorbjørn Risager has been delivering his own mutant brand of blues. His Black Tornado band is comprised of two guitars, bass, drums, a pair of saxophones, trumpet, and keyboards. Come on In is their fourth album for Germany's Ruf label and 12th overall. Risager's rich, resonant, gravelly baritone singing voice is equal parts Ray Charles, Billy Gibbons, J.J. Cale, and Leon Redbone. Black Tornado are like no other band. They are capable of simmering, brooding, noir-ish jazz, swampy rock, sultry R&B, uptown funk, and house-rocking blues derived from the entwined lineages of Chicago, Texas, and the Delta...

A fiery guitarist and talented songwriter who plays a unique blend of Memphis R&B, southwest blues, and urban funk. A hard-rocking, high-voltage blues guitarist most often compared to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Tinsley Ellis is hardly one of the legions of imitators that comparison might imply. Schooled in a variety of Southern musical styles as evidenced by his.
Tinsley Ellis - Ice Cream in Hell / Hole in My Heart
...In 2018 he returned home to Alligator Records after delivering four albums on his own Heartfixer label. The chart-topping set was met with Blues Music Association nominations for album of the year and artist of the year. Ice Cream in Hell was recorded in Nashville and co-produced by Ellis and longtime co-producer/keyboardist Kevin McKendree...  "Hole in My Heart" is a 21st century update of the sound that B.B. King explored with Bobby "Blue" Bland. Ellis' fingerpicked fills enunciate the emotion expressed in the lyrics, while McKendree's piano runs add depth and dimension.

Singer, songwriter, and virtuosic fingerpicker who crafts timeless-sounding acoustic confections that draw from all corners of American roots music.
Christopher Paul Stelling - Best Of Luck / Hear Me Calling
The fifth studio album from songwriter and skilled fingerpicker Christopher Paul Stelling, Best of Luck reflects a few changes in approach for the musician. Following years of near constant touring, Stelling stayed put for (effectively) the first time since his 2012 debut, putting down roots in Asheville, North Carolina and taking up a residency at the Stetson Kennedy estate in Florida while he worked on writing the album. It's his first with an outside producer, none other than Ben Harper, who expressed interest in working with Stelling after they toured together. Harper has stressed Stelling's soulful vocals as an underrated part of his charismatic style, one that fuses folk, blues, and more with his intricate playing and impassioned lyrics...

Experimental improvisational project founded by Dave Alvin featuring members of Counting Crows, Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven, and more.
The Third Mind - The Third Mind / East West
As a musician who has passionately advocated for American roots music since the Blasters released their first album in 1980, Dave Alvin is widely regarded as a traditionalist, which is not as accurate as it would seem at first glance. Alvin grew up on free jazz, psychedelia, and hard rock along with the blues, rockabilly, country, and jump jazz sounds that inform his best-known work, and his project the Third Mind is a step outside his usual boundaries that lets him explore ideas he hasn't approached in the past...  and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band's "East/West," the communication between the players is smart and exciting. (Whether you actually need three different versions of "East/West," the shortest of which is 14 minutes, is an open question, but each one here is honestly engaging.) Alvin's roots in the blues certainly play a big role in The Third Mind, but so does hard rock, psychedelia, jazz, and improvisational music, and this context -- essentially a jam band without audibly hippie-like tendencies -- shows that his willingness to take a risk pays off handsomely.

An award-winning, in-demand blues guitar prodigy, singer, and songwriter with an inimitable slide technique. Southwest Louisiana-based guitarist, songwriter, and singer Sonny Landreth is an award-winning musician's musician.
Sonny Landreth - Blacktop Run / Beyond Bolders
Louisiana guitar slinger Sonny Landreth returns to the studio with his quartet two years after 2017's Grammy-nominated Recorded Live in Lafayette. Blacktop Run is more than just a new studio outing, however... He is a studio empath and extends artists full faith and credit. Landreth possesses a distinct sound to be sure, direct, resonant, and simple, but he's restless when it comes to experimenting with styles. He juxtaposes, combines, and balances them with alarming regularity and reckless abandon...Landreth's band includes keyboardist Steve Conn, drummer Brian Brignac, and bassist David Ranson. The guitarist wrote eight of these ten tunes; Conn penned the other two, which include the stellar instrumental "Beyond Borders," a jam that melds hard Southern swamp rock, electric slide blues, and Latin cumbia...

The guitarist who brought blues back to the charts in the '80s via songs that defined blues themes but added modern and personal twists.
Robert Cray - That's What I Heard / Hot
Robert Cray was hailed as the man who saved the blues from commercial extinction when his album Strong Persuader became a breakout hit in 1986, and blues fans are still the bedrock of his following. But anyone who has been paying attention can tell you that vintage soul and R&B have always had more to do with his best music than standard-issue 12-bar blues... Something else that doesn't change is how comfortable Cray sounds with this material, and how well his unfussy but passionate vocal style, narrative lyrical stance, and exciting but never overdone guitar features blend with the soul grooves generated by Cray's band and the guests brought in for the occasion... "Hot" is an uptempo workout that pulls out the stops...

Towering over his guitar, Ryan’s soulful music thrills his audience with electrifying head-popping, toe-tapping, and neck-jerking chops. But, to truly know Ryan Perry, a walk-down-memory lane is enough to see why, only in his twenties, still not afraid to rip up stinging and soulful guitar licks with his gruff and gritty vocals. 
Ryan Perry - High Risk, Low Reward / Evil is Going On
 Some people, with no effort, are preternaturally cool. Many bluesmen share this trait, making it unsurprising that it belongs to Ryan Perry. On the other hand, his voice is surprising. It has the unique quality of sounding young and old at the same time; whether he’s in his 20s or 40’s is difficult to ascertain from timbre alone. The writing also belies the age of the writer. High Risk, Low Reward is a mix of original blues, blues-rock twists and rave-ups, and thoughtful introspective musings... With buzzy lead fills and a rhythm guitar overdriven to the point of constant crackling, he sings with a voice so filled with gravel that Howlin’ Wolf would be proud of these numbers, not to mention the cover of his own “Evil Is Going On.”

073 ALTER.NATION.MiX weekly favtraX 16-02-2020

ALTER.NATION #73

The Heliocentrics, The Men, The Third Mind, Le Butcherettes,  Shadow Show, Post Animal, Bambara, Puss N Boots, Habibi, Nathaniel Rateliff, Katie Gately, Rejoicer, Oded Tzur

weekly favtraX 

1 6 - 0 2 - 2 0 2 0

"Burning Wooden Ship"

Eclectic U.K.-based ensemble blending influences such as hip-hop, jazz, soundtracks, Ethiopian funk, outré electronics, and more.
The Heliocentrics - Infinity of Now / Burning Wooden Ship
...The Infinity of Now is the Heliocentrics debut offering for Madlib's Madlib Invazion label. Vocalist Barbora Patkova returns to the fold as a full member. She appears on most of the album, including the set's first mind-melting single, "Burning Wooden Ship." Paced by Catto's funky breakbeat shuffle, reverb, analogue synth blips, Dan Smith's open-tuned modal guitars, and a Krautrock bassline, these traits commingle in a droning melody, before the instruments clash amid a dubwise mix, as Patkova effortlessly croons through the middle... The anxious and slippery "Don't Bleed, You're in the Middle of the Forest" stacks layers of vocal overdubs on top of a sinister groove, creating an ominous atmosphere as Gender Bender sings of a metaphorical hunt taking unexpected turns...

Ambitious Brooklyn rockers influenced by post-punk, psych, country, surf, and more. The Men began as an abrasive punk group before vastly expanding their sound to incorporate influences from country-rock to soul, in addition to more accessible song structures.
The Men - Mercy / Wading in Dirty Water
Mercy is the Men's third consecutive album with the same lineup, but as ever, the Brooklyn-based group never stays in the same place stylistically. The release continues in the eclectic mode of 2018's Drift, rather than the back-to-basics noise-punk of 2016's Devil Music. All seven songs are vastly different, making Mercy sound like it could be a compilation of tracks from separate albums released throughout a band's long career, but mostly dating from the '70s and '80s... "Wading in Dirty Water" sounds like a ten-minute excerpt of a jam session which never begins or ends, fading in with glistening keyboards and a steadily trotting rhythm, then following its brief verses with a bounty of acid guitar soloing...

Experimental improvisational project founded by Dave Alvin featuring members of Counting Crows, Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven, and more. Dave Alvin, a respected member of the roots rock and Americana community, showed off a different side of his creative imagination with the Third Mind, a studio-based project whose music was a spontaneous mix of rock, blues, psychedelia, jazz, and improvisational music.
The Third Mind - The Third Mind / East West (Paul Butterfield Blues Band cover)
As a musician who has passionately advocated for American roots music since the Blasters released their first album in 1980, Dave Alvin is widely regarded as a traditionalist, which is not as accurate as it would seem at first glance. Alvin grew up on free jazz, psychedelia, and hard rock along with the blues, rockabilly, country, and jump jazz sounds that inform his best-known work, and his project the Third Mind is a step outside his usual boundaries that lets him explore ideas he hasn't approached in the past. Alvin was inspired by reading a book on Miles Davis that outlined his methods for composing and recording several of his major fusion albums of the '70s: Miles would call out a key, set a tempo, and he and his band would improvise at length. After the fact, he and his producer would edit the long jams into a more practical shape. Alvin assembled a set of versatile players to try something similar -- David Immerglück on guitar and keyboards, Victor Krummenacher on bass, Michael Jerome on drums, and Jesse Sykes on guitar and vocals -- though for most of the Third Mind's debut album, they gave themselves a safety net that Miles didn't... and when the group dig deeper into Alice Coltrane's "Journey in Satchidananda" and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band's "East/West," the communication between the players is smart and exciting. (Whether you actually need three different versions of "East/West," the shortest of which is 14 minutes, is an open question, but each one here is honestly engaging.) Alvin's roots in the blues certainly play a big role in The Third Mind, but so does hard rock, psychedelia, jazz, and improvisational music, and this context -- essentially a jam band without audibly hippie-like tendencies -- shows that his willingness to take a risk pays off handsomely.

Founded in Mexico City, Le Butcherettes are an explosive, sophisticated, Los Angeles punk & roll trio led by songwriter/vocalist/guitarist Teri Gender Bender.
Le Butcherettes - Don't Bleed / Don't Bleed, You're in the Middle of the Forest
With their fourth album, 2019's monstrous bi/Mental, genre-warping punk band Le Butcherettes went through the emotional wringer investigating mental illness, inter-generational trauma, and family strife. Led by the explosive presence of vocalist/guitarist/band founder Teri Gender Bender, the group wavered stylistically on that album between shadowy electronic/rock hybrids and all-out arena rock ragers. The seven-song EP Don't Bleed pushes Le Butcherettes' restless muse even further, getting into new sonic territory on almost every track while connecting the material with loose themes of womanhood, shame, and revenge...

Detroit trio Shadow Show was formed by longtime friends and bandmates, bringing a Beatles-like melodic sensibility to energetic garage pop songs. The group cultivated an air of mystery and danger with the mod-tinged rock songs
Shadow Show - Silhouettes / Glass Eye
After a few seconds of mysterious noise that sounds like distant waves crashing, Silhouettes, the debut album from Detroit trio Shadow Show, begins with a bassline a few notes removed from "Taxman" and a kaleidoscopic explosion of tremolo guitars and mod pop vocal harmonies. It's a strong start to an album that channels several different generations of both British pop and Detroit rock without ever directly mimicking any specific influences... The slide guitar riffing of "Glass Eye" offers a far more psychedelic reading of Detroit's ongoing fixation with the blues. Shadow Show's songs call on familiar elements -- layered vocal harmonies, the occasional driving punky bassline, melodies laced with garage rock attitude -- but song structures take unexpected turns. Rarely moving from verse to chorus and back, Shadow Show instead maps out strange navigations for their songs...The distant perspectives and strange sonic shifts of Silhouettes keep both the band and listeners actively engaged, leaving the album with the feeling that you've just wandered all night through some weird dream.

Chicago indie rockers who offer an ambitious mix of hooky hard, soft, prog, and psychedelic rock.
Post Animal - Forward Motion Godyssey / Post Animal
When Chicago's Post Animal made their full-length debut in 2018, it was with an eclectic set of hard-rockin' riffs, tight prog-inspired runs, wistful indie pop refrains... That debut, When I Think of You in a Castle, was produced by the band, and they keep things in-house for the follow-up, Forward Motion Godyssey. It was produced by bassist and founding member Dalton Allison with help from Castle co-mixer Adam Thein...  If there's anything surprising about the remaining five-piece's second outing, it's that instead of homing in on a sound, they return with more of their oddball, freewheeling mix of styles ranging from classic metal, prog, and psych-rock to a seemingly contrarian indie soft rock... All told, Forward Motion Godyssey isn't quite as much fun as Post Animal's debut, but they still deliver that characteristic warmth as well as uncommonly sharp hooks, fills, and theatrics of a nature that should delight air guitarists and drummers everywhere.

Bambara are a Brooklyn-based band who play harsh, punishing post-punk with a distinct Western Gothic bent. Their songs combine walloping drums and dark, twangy guitar riffs with unsettling noise loops and howled, ranting vocals that examine the seedy side of life.

Bambara - Stray / Stay Cruel
Bambara's second release on Wharf Cat Records isn't a radical departure from the first, 2018's Shadow on Everything, but it is most certainly a refinement. Active for over a decade, the Brooklyn-based trio's sound has evolved from shadowy noise rock to a much more focused, direct sort of gothic post-punk, foregrounding Reid Bateh's bitter, brutal lyrics about seedy characters who constantly seem to be one wrong move away from a horrible, unforgiving tragedy. Stray is the band's longest album to date, at 43 minutes, but it actually feels more concise...

Jazzy N.Y.C.-based Americana super-trio featuring Norah Jones, Sasha Dobson, and Catherine Popper. A longtime busman's holiday for Norah Jones, Sasha Dobson, and Catherine Popper, Puss N Boots play a repertoire anchored in American country, folk, and jazz, primarily from the mid-century but also reaching back earlier and later.
Puss N Boots - Sister / Sister
Puss N Boots—the charming trio featuring Norah Jones, Sasha Dobson, and Catherine Popper—are slated to release their second full-length album. Sister is a collection of originals written by the band members collectively and individually, mixed with loving covers of songs...

Brooklyn quartet plays dreamy-eyed garage rock with lyrics about late-night wandering and occasional Middle Eastern touches.
Habibi - Anywhere But Here / Come My Habibi
Brooklyn's Habibi brought an explosive and celebratory fun to their self-titled 2014 debut. That brief collection was overflowing with bubblegum melodies, upbeat pop, and the kind of giddy excitement that bands only revel in during their earliest stages. Six years later, sophomore album Anywhere But Here retains some of that excitement, but sees the band expanding into moodier expression, more complex songwriting, and an expanded instrumentation that includes occasional Middle Eastern touches.--

This singer/songwriter is known for poignant, intimate songs and a bracing tenor voice capable of folk and R&B.
Nathaniel Rateliff - And It's Still Alright / What a Drag
...Two raucous albums, thousands of road miles, and one divorce later, he's back to solo work on the ruminative 2020 set, And It's Still Alright. Already reeling from the disintegration of his relationship, the sudden death of Swift caused Rateliff to take a few steps back from the chaos of the previous few years and reexamine his whereabouts. Both a poignant tribute to his friend and former collaborator and a weary meditation on love and death, And It's Still Alright cuts a curious balance between tender introspection and a playful sense of confidence he's carried over from the Night Sweats era...

Pillar of Tel Aviv's beat scene, founder of the eclectic Raw Tapes label, and producer of hazy, psychedelic instrumental hip-hop.
Rejoicer - Spiritual Sleaze / Song for the Spirit Flights
Yuvi Havkin's second Stones Throw full-length maintains the dreamy feel of his previous releases, but it seems far more focused, even as the producer's scope has clearly expanded. He titled it Spiritual Sleaze as the album is highly informed by his yoga and meditation practices, yet it's "dirty and bouncy" compared to his past work. While there's nothing ribald about the release, the grooves are considerably firmer this time around, and it doesn't always feel like the tracks could just slip away or dissolve at any moment. While Rejoicer's music always resists categorization, encompassing jazz, funk, ambient, and psychedelia, Spiritual Sleaze feels closer to R&B than hip-hop, particularly due to the presence of guest vocalists on several tracks. KerenDun's gentle flow complements the bubbly thump of "Song for the Spirit Flights"...

American experimental electronic musician who creates dense, chaotic compositions primarily using her own voice.
Katie Gately - Loom / Waltz
Loom wasn't the album Katie Gately planned to make -- it was the album she had to make. When her mother was diagnosed with a quick-moving and terminal form of cancer, Gately returned to Brooklyn to care for her, setting aside another album's worth of music to pour her grief and anger into the tracks that became her second full-length. Instead of writing songs that tell listeners about her loss, Gately uses all of her brilliance as a sound designer to engulf them in the experience. She knows exactly how to manipulate sounds -- earthquakes, rattling pill bottles, her own voice -- to embody grief's physicality as well as its emotional impact. In the process, she generates a visceral reaction that resonates on an almost cellular level. On "Waltz," Gately pays homage to "Take This Waltz" by Leonard Cohen (her mother's favorite artist) by distorting its one-two-three beat into a heavy, sickening lurch...

The Heliocentrics, The Men, The Third Mind, Le Butcherettes,  Shadow Show, Post Animal, Bambara, Puss N Boots, Habibi, Nathaniel Rateliff, Rejoicer, Katie Gately