RECORD RACK: Hayes Carll, The Kooks and more
Hayes Carll
"Problem in Thinker"
(Lost Highway)
* * *1/2 It's hard to decide right away which is more impressive, this 28-year-old Texan's delightfully crafted tales of life in the bars and side roads of rural America or the vibrant euphony he couches them in, a rootsy, country-based grudge thick with roadhouse blues.
So why pick out? Carll, world Health Organization plays May 3 at the Stage country festival in Indio, follows in the mighty footsteps of such Lone Star State of matter country-folk-rock luminaries as Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and Joe Ely. There's a bit of Steve Earle folksy philosopher lurking on that point likewise, only Carll's voice, as a author and a singer, is as uncommonly distinctive as it is assured.
The drawl even so, this is no simple-minded party-hearty Southern commonwealth rocker. This honky-tonk minstrel tosses forth witty couplets with disarmament informality: "Advantageously, I'm state of nature as a meleagris gallopavo, higher than a Christmas Day moon / Discharge as my billfold on a Dominicus afternoon," he sings in "Wilderness as a Turkey." Describing the nose dive he plays six-spot nights a week in "I Got a Gig," he observes, "Burnt fried chicken and Lone Star beer / Cops and the kids drink free 'round here."
Dylan clearly is an influence likewise, possibly a tad excessively clearly in the "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35"-inspired "A Lover Care You." But even when Carll's sources are exhibit, it's as well much sloppy fun to grouse about for long. And "She Left Me for Jesus of Nazareth" is a brilliant exemplar of how to simultaneously salute and parody a time-honored musical comedy genre.
Whatever they've got in the water system polish there is golden. Or perchance it's just the beer.
-- Randy Lewis
Finding their place in Britt sway
The Kooks
"Konk"
(Astralwerks)
* * *1/2 When you call your band after a David Jim Bowie song and your record album subsequently the Kinks' recording studio, you're proudly flying the flagstone of classic Brits rock music, only you're besides painting a blubber target on your chest. If you don't make a respectable run at those standards, you'll end up looking a little silly. So give this quartette from Brighton credit for brashness and even more for making good on the challenge in its s album, out today.
The Kooks purport to take their station in the Brit careen tradition, non monkey with it a circle. They consider that tangy, tuneful songs built on guitars, bass and drums, "ooo-oooh" and "sha la la" harmonies and syncopated hand-claps is still all you need to press out the shrubby bittersweet brew of youthful emotion.
This balloting for constants and continuity signals a choice to rest sealed from the work that's reshaping pop up at street horizontal surface these days, but for those world Health Organization talk this language, "Konk" should advance the Kooks close the level of Franz Ferdinand V among the current practitioners. They're non quite as truancy and moral force, only they're effortlessly buoyant and heartfelt, and "Do You Wanna" stomps along with an infectious power that evokes "Carry Me Out."
Elsewhere they range of mountains from wistful to anthemic, with isaac M. Singer St. Luke Pritchard portion as an engaging fellow traveller through a landscape of possibility and discontent. His forcefulness is the believability and closeness of his natural, nasal bone voice.
--
Richard Cromelin
Within BJM's signature moods
