Archives for December 2016

Certain Songs #745: The Jayhawks – “Big Star”

December 31, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Sound of Lies
Year: 1997

Mark Olson left The Jayhawks after Tomorrow The Green Grass to go work with his wife, Victoria Williams, and — like Peter Holsapple after Chris Stamey left the dBs — Gary Louris decided to carry on with the band under the established brand name.

Working with long-time bassist, Marc Perlman, the songs that Louris came up with for The Sound of Lies are somewhat different than the Americana that dominated their previous records: the guitars are louder, for one thing, and songs like “Sixteen Down” and “Poor Little Fish” have experimental textures to boot.

Certain Songs #744: The Jayhawks – “Real Light”

December 30, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Tomorrow The Green Grass
Year: 1995

After their debut, The Jayhawks made pretty good album for Twin/Tone called The Blue Earth, and then in the wake of the No Depression mini-boom, got signed to Rick Ruben’s American label and put out the two records that are acknowledged as their masterpieces, 1992’s Hollywood Town Hall, and 1995’s Tomorrow The Green Grass.

Both albums are highly recommended, as Gary Louris — who started co-writing a lot of the songs — and Mark Olson used the bigger budget to toughen up their songs without crossing the line into over-production.

Certain Songs #743: The Jayhawks – “Six Pack on the Dashboard”

December 29, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Jayhawks
Year: 1986

Though it took me until the early downloading days of the late ’90s to actually find it, the self-titled album by the Jayhawks (also known as The Bunkhouse Album as that’s the label it came out on) is yet another proto-Americana artifact from the mid-1980s.

More explicitly country than any of their future works, The Jayhawks gets much of its depth nearly any time that Mark Olson — who was their main songwriter at this point — and Gary Louris sing together.

Certain Songs #742: Jason Isbell – “24 Frames”

December 28, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Something More Than Free
Year: 2015

It took awhile for Jason Isbell to reach his full potential as a solo artist.

After blowing minds by writing one of the greatest songs ever about fatherly advice, “Outfit,” as his debut tune of his stint in Drive-by Truckers and and following that with killers like “The Day John Henry Died,” and “Goddamn Lonely Love“, his first few solo albums didn’t really live up to his enormous potential.

Certain Songs #741: Jason Falkner – “In Your Eyes (alt. version)”

December 27, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Eloquence (unreleased)
Year: 2002

This just might be peak Certain Songs right here.

Definitely on the short list of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Indie Pop division, “In Your Eyes (alt. version)” is the alternative version of a song from an unreleased album that I got from Tim (I think) when he and Kirk & I used to pass around a USB drive with the latest music we’d acquired.

Certain Songs #740: The Waitresses – “Christmas Wrapping”

December 25, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: I Could Rule The World If I Could Only Get The Parts EP
Year: 1981

While “Christmas Wrapping” originally appeared on a ZE records Christmas compilation, I first encountered it in the heady days just after KFSR officially went on the air in 1982. “Christmas Wrapping” was simply part of a Waitresses stopgap EP where — as far as I was concerned — the real hook was their theme song to Square Pegs.

After all, at the time Square Pegs was pretty much the first time anything even remote “our” alt-rock / new wave / whatever sensibility had made it to network TV without being an automatic source of derision. And while if you squinted with enough cynicism, you could see all of the compromises necessary to get it on CBS in the first place, it still felt fresh and funny enough.

Certain Songs #739: The Pogues – “Fairytale of New York”

December 24, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: If I Should Fall From Grace With God
Year: 1987

I’m sure that when I bought If I Should Fall From Grace With God I knew that “Fairytale of New York” had been a huge hit single in the U.K., though that’s not the reason I bought the album. I bought it because it was the new Pogues album, and “Fairytale of New York” was just one of several songs I loved on it.

And one thing’s for sure: I really didn’t think of “Fairytale of New York” as a Christmas song, but rather just another of Shane MacGowan’s tales of scumbags and maggots which just happened to be set on Christmas Eve. In the drunk tank.

Certain Songs #738: Jason & The Scorchers – “Golden Days”

December 23, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Halcyon Times
Year: 2010

And so it went, as it so often does, that Jason & The Scorchers made a couple of albums that didn’t quite have the same magic as their initial records, Fervor and Lost & Found, and then spent the 90’s & 00’s breaking up and reforming, releasing best-ofs, live records, solo joints, rarities albums and even the occasional studio album.

And while all of these projects — or at least the ones that crossed my path — had worthwhile music, it wasn’t until a quarter-century after I walked around the condo singing “last time arrrround” and “telling white liiiiees” in an annoying off-key twang that Jason & The Scorchers made another album I loved from start to finish.

Certain Songs #737: Jason & The Scorchers – “White Lies”

December 22, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Lost & Found
Year: 1985

Like their contemporaries Rank & File, Lone Justice and The Beat Farmers, Jason & The Scorchers were alt-country back when it was called “cowpunk,” finding shelter in the environs of college radio and alternative stations for their supercharged version of country music.

In the case of the early Jason & The Scorchers albums, “supercharged” barely even covers it, as the combination of Jason Ringenberg’s twangy sneer and Warner Hodges punk-metal guitar pyrotechnics produced songs that were equal parts catchy and combustable.

Certain Songs #736: Japandroids – “Near to the Wild Heart of Life”

December 21, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Near to The Wild Heart of Life
Year: 2017

I’ve only heard “Near to The Wild Heart of Life,” — the title track to an album that won’t even be released until next month — maybe a dozen times, but I’m pretty fucking confident that it belongs in the pantheon. Sometimes you just know, you know?

In the interviews that Brian King and David Prowse have given in the run up for this record, they’ve talked about how they’re expanding the palette of their music — bigger production, acoustic guitars, synths, etc — and the drum roll that opens “Near to The Wild Heart of Life” formally introduces that notion, rumbling up from muddy lo-fi into widescreen technicolor and coming into a full stop just before the guitars fully explode.