Wilkinson Blades

blades single“Watch the World Go By”/“Out of the Way”
Shiftone Records

 We first heard from Steve Wilkinson and his new musical entity the Wilkinson Blades about nine months ago with the release of their debut album 4AM, which scored for them the Number Six slot in my Top 9 of 2012 list. And while that venture was more or less a solo album with benefits, many of the same side players who contributed to tracks on that album are now fully integrated members of the real band. Having played dozens of gigs together over the past year, no one in the band sounds like a guest.

Wilkinson and team have decided to plot a somewhat unorthodox course in releasing their music. Steve has chosen to issue the band’s music incrementally—in a series of singles, in lieu of saving them up for a yearly posit. These songs may or may not appear on an album at some future date. But it’s Steve’s intention to release songs as they are written and recorded, while they are still fresh, rather than to sit on them until enough material has accrued to record a whole album. This is a similar tack to that we observed earlier this month with Y La Bamba and their new EP Oh February. Strike while the creative iron is hot and all that.

Wilkinson Blades (Photo by Daria Mamarella Landar)
Wilkinson Blades (Photo by Daria Mamarella Landar)

In the Wilkinson Blades we have windswept Americana at it’s finest. I spent much of last year’s review comparing Steve’s voice to early Neil Diamond. Before he was the crooner of Longfellow Serenades turning on his Heartlight, Neil Diamond was a Solitary Man, the classic anguished outsider. You hear that brooding loner in Steve Wilkinson’s voice. Weary desolation. Hardworn resolve.

But the two sides of this single reflect a less singular, more proletariat point of view—stylistically closer perhaps to the work of John Cougar Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen. Part of this is attributable to the band: lead guitarist Grant Cumpston and Rich Landar on keys, bassist John Huckfeldt, and drummer Jon Beyer. They form a cohesive sound, supportive without being flashy. Stripped down, but not sparse. There are comfortable touches of down home country here—an essence rarely heard in the actual country music genre anymore. But you hear it in the classic Mellencamp/Springsteen songs. It’s the sound of the people. The sound of the heartland.

Since we’re dealing with a single here—two songs—it’s not possible to draw a true discernment of the band’s “sound,” per se, or the direction in which they ultimately may be headed. They’re a western band. Not in a country music context, but in the directional sense. Out here, in the wide, open spaces.

Wilkinson Blades
Wilkinson Blades

“Watch the World Go By” falls into an easy groove, nudged forward by Landar’s thick electric piano and Cumpston’s chiming guitar. Over that, Steve intones a raspy baritone, mulling a strategy for the forward progression of his life, and the obstacles that lie in his path to that advancement.

In the verse he ponders his private dilemma. “I can count on one hand the ways/All of the sins we wage/If I hold on to everything/It’ll get me down.” In the chorus he weighs his options. “I think I know what I need/I can feel everything.” He can either participate in the emotional turmoil in his life. “Or I can sit back and smile/And watch the world go by.” Or he can go with the flow and simply observe it all as it transpires before him.

But ultimately he sees that all around him is but illusion and façade. “Well I head up to the lake/Where people are just as fake/As a fur coat at a zoo party.” Rich adds vocal harmonies in the verses that are Van Zandt to Steve’s Boss, while Grant contributes a scrabbled solo—with a bit of chortling country twang on the edges. There is a certain distant melodic resemblance between the verses of this song and the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” (“Teenage Wasteland”), and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” too for that matter, but it’s ineffable at best. Genetic memory, perhaps.

Blades
Blades

The “flip side” (a 20th century, analog, vinyl term), “Out of the Way,” hits a little harder, calling to mind the gritty, cranky outpourings of Soul Asylum or our very own Dharma Bums, with a hint of a Springsteenian sense of sonic sweep and grandeur. Rich’s chiming piano is comparable to that of Roy Bittan, with churning guitars and Huck’s hard charging bass leading the spirited sprint.

The second is something of a resolution to the first song. Wherein his initial considerations concluded in a wait and see attitude with “Watch the World Go By,” here exclaiming in a Stipe-like anthemic croon, Steve decides,  “I’m moving out of the way.” This song and REM’s “Driver 8” bear similarities: this being the major-key version, perhaps.

Signed to the Austin-based Shiftone label, the Wilkinson Blades played South By Southwest last year and will hopefully be there again this year as well. Austin seems like just the right place for these guys (not that we don’t want them to stay here!) and their silver-buckle, worn boot-leather sound. They aren’t re-inventing the wheel, but they have come up with a vehicle that rolls real smooth.blades 2 photo blades

 

 

Y La Bamba

OhFebruaryCoverOh February
Tender Loving Empire

Recent recipients of the Number One slot among my highly coveted “Top 9 of 2012” awards with Court the Storm, Y La Bamba have returned eleven months later with the breathtaking Oh February. The six songs found here serve as a window into the world of artists in the midst of tremendous musical growth. The members of YLB are maturing as individuals, as musicians, and together they are ripening—very satisfyingly—as a precise musical entity of great power and portent.

They spent most of 2012 touring and re-touring the nation, while their parent label Tender Loving Empire tendered a loving new distribution deal with ADA, the premier independent music distributor (Sub Pop, Saddle Creek, the Secretly Canadian label group, Dualtone, Matador, Bar/None, etc) in the country. Finally Y La Bamba, among a wonderful lineup of outstanding TLE acts, will see the sort of national representation that they had not been receiving for the past couple of years from NAIL Distribution in Portland.

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Michael Kitson

As Y La Bamba prepared for a tour as openers for the hot, hot Lumineers (who record for the Nashville-based Dualtone label), ADA requested fresh product to help to promote their new act in tandem with the Grammy nominees—thus this hastily fashioned EP. YLB drummer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, Michael Kitson provides insight: “Our original plan was to record a full length album in the first half of 2013 with Steve Berlin again [Berlin of Los Lobos produced Court the Storm], but this changes our plan. We’re going to try to take some time off this spring before Festival season to write and rehearse a bunch more so we can indeed record with Berlin again by the end of 2013.”

So at the beginning of December with time of the essence the band joined Chris Funk (Decemberists, Black Prairie) at Search Party studios in the old La Luna building for a sudden burst of recording grandeur. After a few subsequent sessions with Victor Nash (Point Juncture, Wa.) in his studio, the project was quickly completed. By the end of the month the record was mixed, mastered and ready for public consumption. The result is a spontaneous masterpiece. And while Funk receives credit as co-producer, Nash and especially engineer Graeme Gibson deserve acknowledgements for their contributions, as well. Gibson’s wizardry adds new sonic dimensions to several tracks.

As was noted in the Court the Storm review last year, Y La Bamba never move in a straight line, and this instance is certainly no different—although once the zig has been zagged the crew stay on course for the entire voyage. Probably the most noticeable aspect of this new album is that lead vocalist Luz Elena Mendoza sings all six songs in English. YLB’s previous albums, Lupon and Court the Storm fairly dripped with Mexican culture, as Luz mined the rich ore of her heritage. Here, the presentation is more straightforwardly mainstream, in a quirky, idiosyncratic way familiar only to this band.

ylb 2  L Avid
Luz and Y La Bamba (Photo by L Avid)

And the context has changed slightly. Whereas previously the group seemed to be more or less Luz with (a very talented) supporting cast, Y La Bamba are now a fully integrated, well-oiled musical machine. The members are entirely aware that their lead singer may be one of the great vocalists living on the face of the planet, but now she is merely at the center of the action instead of being out in front of it. And the half-dozen songs here reflect a deeper spirit of collaboration and experimentation than all previous efforts.

Leading off the album, the title track would seem to be the link between what has come before and what lay ahead in the musical course these mates have charted. “Oh February” is a new song. It’s so new that the band only first played it for an audience in Annapolis at the very end of January. It’s so new that it’s two songs on this album, although the final track, “Mad As We Are,” while maintaining the lineage, departs from the components of the original to such an extent that they are pretty much two different songs.

Scott Magee (Photo by I Shoot Reno)
Scott Magee (Photo by I Shoot Reno)

“Oh February” begins at the point where Court the Storm—most specifically where “Squawk” and “Viuda Encabronada”—left off. Over deceptively simple nylon-string guitar accompaniment, Luz implores “Say what you want to say/Say what you mean.” Familiar divine vocal harmonies soon enter after the first turn, flowering in sprung abundance. The arrangement nearly dies, as if Luz is halting the proceedings altogether, before suddenly reeling forward, riding Afro tribal rhythms generated by Kitson and fellow multi-instrumentalist Scott Magee. According to Kitson, “Scott and I wrote the percussion part on the spot in the studio, which was actually pretty tricky due to varying meters and phrase lengths that tend to happen when Luz writes.”

Luz, Ben, Mike, Ringo and George
Luz, Ben, Mike, Ringo and George

Ben Meyercord’s elastic bassline tethers “A Poet’s Tune” to earth, as accordionist Eric Schrepel rings in with chiming bells and Kitson provides keyboard water tones that drip melodically. Magee’s insistent ¾-time drums are neatly counterbalanced by Edward (formerly Paul) Cameron’s gritty, grainy electric guitar intonations. Over the rivering waltz, Luz sounds as angelic as Josephine Foster (without the peculiarities). She and Cameron hover cloudlike above the rippling rapids below, as far off Meyercord and Kitson echo “Calling the rain, fall from our eyes.” A new direction for Y La Bamba, to be sure. And a delightful one.

ylb 4
Y La Bamba

“A Death on the Road” is nothing short of epic. A tour de force. We begin with a romantic, Old West feel, familiar to the Y La Bamba oeuvre—Luz’s voice evocatively filled with passion and intensity. Whining accordion and a cantering beat propel the tune into ghostly terrain. Wraithlike harmonies soar in the distance. The rhythm gathers momentum as electric guitar and organ begin to fleet and flitter in whirpool circles. Abruptly the impetus dissolves, with Luz chanting enchantingly, while Kitson’s piano maps the path. Slowly, celestial voices gather over a thunderous beat, Magee’s keyboard wuthering wearily to a close.

Eric Schrepel
Eric Schrepel

Assembling all the elements that make them such a unique band, “Clarji” is a stirring pastiche, comprised of a heartrending vocal duet between Luz and Edward accompanied by Magee on delicate ukelele and Kitson’s mellow-toned, bell-like keyboard figures. Schrepel’s moaning accordion coupled with flamenco style handclaps and foot-stomping percussion carry the tune, like a leaf blown by the wind. The song bursts briefly to life, carried by a haunting vocal theme that sounds almost like a cello. Brilliant.

Radiohead’s “There, There” comes to mind when listening to the second half of “River in Drought.” Magee’s rolling Phil Selway-inspired toms are intersected by jagged electric guitar—reminiscent of the quicksand static of Thom Yorke’s similar aural mosaic. As always, thick, lush support vocals surround Luz in luminescence, her gorgeous voice lulling in siren song.

Edward Cameron (Photo by Buzzbands)
Edward Cameron (Photo by Buzzbands)

How exactly “Mad As We Are,” fits with “Oh February” is a mystery to me, as they are two completely different songs, but it is entitled as something of a reprise. It’s an uncomplicated arrangement. Pastoral. Cameron on this occasion is responsible for simple supplementary tom and brushed snare percussion, against straightforward electric guitar. Perhaps the song is seen as a reprise, because it is February gray in context. But this too is a very new song, never performed in public and as to how it will blossom in the future remains to be heard.

YLaBambaPic
YLB

Though this EP is only a little over twenty minutes long, it is still very satisfying as a piece of musical literature. Complete. It seems longer in duration—in a good way. In fact some of the songs are all too brief. But it is safe to assume that a few of them will be fleshed out and laid down again at a future date. But what is here is pure gold.

Those expecting any sort of holding pattern from Y La Bamba will be pleasantly surprised to find that they are sadly mistaken. The band has continued to grow with every gig they play. And they have played a lot of gigs in the past two years. Currently they are concluding that little East Coast mini-tour with the Lumineers. The Lumineers are this year’s indie darlings, with a Grammy nomination and performances on late night TV, as well as Saturday Night Live. This time next year, it is not at all unreasonable to expect that Y La Bamba will be in precisely that same position. This is rapturously poignant, original music at its finest. Heartfelt. Sublime. Magical.

Y La Bamba (Photo by Sarah Law)
Y La Bamba (Photo by Sarah Law)

 

Preview Oh February here.