JAKE XERXES FUSSELL’S WHAT IN THE NATURAL WORLD IS OUT TODAY ON PARADISE OF BACHELORS
STREAM THE WHOLE NEW ALBUM NOW http://smarturl.it/PoB031 FUSSELL TO SUPPORT JOAN SHELLEY ON SUMMER TOUR
[What In The Natural World album art; painting by Roger Brown]
“Achingly beautiful…a record that yields a procession of hidden treasures. Fussell has an uncanny ability to illuminate the present by propping up a window against the past. Whatever the raw material’s vintage, the protagonist’s pursuit of abstract notion – freedom, empowerment, danger, fulfillment – is every inch as pertinent today.” –Uncut (9/10)
“It’s difficult to imagine another contemporary interpreter delivering a tale of desperation and sadness with such tenderness, warmth, and grace. Jake Xerxes Fussell is a national treasure.” –Aquarium Drunkard
“Fussell freely adapts early American roots music, teasing out new melodic subtleties and overseeing small-band arrangements that bring crystalline folk-rock glow to decades-old songs.” –Chicago Reader
“Jake Xerxes Fussell, the otherworldly guitar player, has an innate ability to infuse traditional folk songs and older works with a revived sense of purpose, a freshly calibrated compass.” –FLOOD Jake Xerxes Fussell’s second full-length album, What in the Natural World, is out today via Paradise of Bachelors and now available to stream and download in full.
Alongside the release of the album, Oxford American has featured the Durham, North Carolina singer and guitarist with a special emphasis on the fifth track, “Bells of Rhymney.” This arcane coal miner’s lament shares its text, by Welsh poet Idris Davies, with the song popularized by Pete Seeger and the Byrds, complete with personified, protesting bells, but here Jake supplies his own gospel-tinged musical setting.
“I lived in Mississippi for about ten years and several years before I left I was playing music a lot with this guy Reverend John Wilkins (who is a Memphis-based Gospel musician). His father is Robert Wilkins, who recorded back in the twenties as a blues singer and later as a gospel musician. So I had to really familiarize myself with that sort of ‘guitar evangelism.’ The approach that I’m using in ‘Bells of Rhymney’ is straight out of that idiom.”
—Jake Xerxes Fussell as told to Oxford American
Fussell will head out on a spring UK and EU tour co-headlining with Daniel Bachman, followed by a summer US tour in support of Joan Shelley (full list of dates below). He will celebrate the album release with a full-band performance (featuring fellow PoB artist Nathan Bowles and Casey Toll of Mt. Moriah) at the Nightlight in Chapel Hill today, March 31, supported by Asheville guitarist Sarah Louise and Carolina Soul DJs. Stream/Download Jake Xerxes Fussell’s What In The Natural World – http://smarturl.it/PoB031
Jake Xerxes Fussell US Tour Dates:
March 31 – Chapel Hill, NC @ Nightlight (full band Record Release show) w/ Sarah Louise April 8 – Oxford, MS @ End of All Music (in-store) w/ Nathan Bowles April 8 – Oxford, MS @ Proud Larry’s w/ Nathan Bowles May 31 – Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop* June 1 – Milwaukee, WI @ Collectivo* June 2 – Minneapolis, MN @ Bryant Lake Bowl* June 3 – Chicago, IL @ Old Town* June 4 – Cedar Rapids, IA @ CSPH Hall* June 6 – Des Moines, IA @ Vaudeville Mews* June 7 – Kansas City, MO @ Knuckleheads* June 8 – St. Louis, MO @ KDHX Stage* June 9 – Paducah @ Maiden Alley Cinema* June 10 – Louisville, KY @ Headliners* June 11 – Nashville, TN @ The Basement* June 13 – Decatur, GA @ Eddie’s Attic* June 14 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle* June 15 – Vienna, VA @ Jammin’ Java* June 16 – Freehold, NJ @ Concerts in the Studio* June 17 – Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall* June 18 – Northampton, MA @ Parlor Room* June 20 – Philadelphia, PA @ Boot & Saddle*
My best pal and I used to crank Frank Zappa’s Joe’s Garage a lot in college. It has a lot of rockers, humor, and weird stuff you love from Zappa’s work, but I never realized until I picked up my own copy that it’s a concept album about music being outlawed and Zappa’s masterful skewering of the record industry, commercial radio, religion, government censorship, and sexual repression.
The first song on the record, “Central Scrutinizer,” introduces one of the main characters and narrators of the album / play. Zappa plays the Scrutinizer and the character introduces nearly every track. The Scrutinizer’s job is to enforce laws that don’t exist yet, especially those related to “a horrible force called music.” The album is a presentation by the Scrutinizer to warn us against pursuing a career in such a dangerous thing.
The title track tells the story of Joe and his garage band’s meteoric rise to success and plummet into irrelevancy. It’s a groovy cut that salutes 50’s doo-wop, surf rock, and hard rock. Joe runs afoul of the law for dabbling in grooves, so the Scrutinizer sends him off to church to get his mind right. However, he runs into a lot of fun “Catholic Girls” there and is soon getting a blowjob at the CYO. It’s a gut-buster of a song that also has killer bass guitar throughout it and two switches to lounge-style jams that Zappa’s band pulls off with super slick ease.
Joe’s girlfriend, Mary, becomes a “Crew Slut,” in which Zappa sings about the groupie “way of life.” She joins the crew of another rock group and leaves Joe behind. There’s some fine harmonica playing on this track. The disco sound of “Fembot in a Wet T-shirt” shows that Zappa and his crew could (and did) play anything they damn well wanted. Mary gets back “On the Bus” after winning $50 in the wet T-shirt contest, and we’re treated to a great instrumental guitar solo taken from earlier live recordings in a process called xenochrony. Joe hears about Mary’s infidelity and finds solace in a new girl, Lucille, who gives him a venereal disease, which leads us to “Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?” – a song only Zappa could get away with putting on an album back then, let alone load the song with rock guitars and drums big enough for a concert hall. The following track, “Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up,” is a slow reggae jam as frequent Zappa collaborator Ike Willis sings Joe’s cries for love.
Joe joins the First Church of Appliantology (Yes, Zappa was satirizing Scientology years ahead of everyone else.) in an attempt to shed his earthly desires, only to learn he’s a “latent appliance fetishist.” Joe then heads to a fetish club on “Stick It Out,” where he hooks up with a “Sy Borg” and bursts out in German, and English, “Fuck me, you ugly son of a bitch!” Not only is this a song that will have you laughing throughout it, but it’s also one of the hottest rockers on the whole record. The band has a blast on it and everyone fires on all cylinders. Joe goes too hard on Sy Borg in the next track (while the band plays over eight minutes of weird lounge jazz) and is soon apprehended by the Central Scrutinizer’s thugs.
In prison, Joe is told about “Dong Work for Yuda,” which is perhaps the funkiest song about prison sex you’ve ever heard, and “Keep It Greasy” is a far funkier rocker about the same subject than Tool ever made. The rhythm section is on fire for the whole track.
“Outside Now” has Joe dreaming of playing guitar again to at least mentally escape from prison. The guitar work on it is suitably strange and sorrowful. “He Used to Cut the Grass” is a story of Joe’s woes once he gets out of prison and discovers all the other musicians are gone and the world is a squeaky clean plastic world of consumer goods so he has to retreat once more into his mind. The guitar solo on this is almost ethereal and a perfect reflection of Joe’s melting mind.
“Packard Goose” is, on its surface, a song about Joe’s descent into madness but is also a diatribe against music critics like yours truly. It’s a wild, almost freestyle jazz tune with stunning guitar shredding throughout it. Speaking of amazing guitar work, that’s all of the instrumental “Watermelon in Easter Hay.” It is easily among Zappa’s greatest solos and, according to Zappa himself, the best song on the record. Zappa’s son, Dweezil, has been quoted as saying it’s the best solo his father ever played.
The closer is “Little Green Rosetta,” a song the Central Scrutinizer believes is the best type of music. He (Zappa) freely admits “this is a stupid song,” but it’s a goofy yet fine piece of craftsmanship from him and features nearly everyone who worked in or hung out at Zappa’s home studio back in 1979.
It’s a fun, wild, amazing masterpiece. There was a stage show of it in Los Angeles in 2008, but where’s the Broadway version? We’ve had shows about gay puppets, anthropomorphic cats, goofy Mormons, and even adaptations of Monty Python films, why can’t we have Joe’s Garage: The Musical?
Chicago funk-punks So Pretty (Ashley Holman – guitar, vocals, Stefan Lindgren – drums, vocals, Rachel Manter – guitar, bass, vocals, ukulele, James Seminara – bass, guitar, vocals) seemed to have walked out of a John Waters movie. They’re brash, a bit trashy, self-deprecating, and snarky. Their second album, Suck It Up, is like a refreshing gulp of fruit punch that you realized is spiked with gin about thirty seconds later.
I first heard the band, and Suck It Up‘s opener, “Comfort Service,” when I saw them play in Chicago earlier this year. Manter delivers a fiery rant from the perspective of a 1%’er chewing out hotel staff. I can’t help but wonder if she works or used to work in a hotel and wrote it as a middle finger to dickweed tenants. Basil Fawlty would love this tune.
Manter’s vocals and the band’s hard hitting on “Think Again” show they could start a metal project if they wanted. Holman takes over vocals on “Blueberry Blues,” in which she screams that she wants “to be punk rock royalty.” She’s well on her way, judging by the vocal and guitar shredding she unleashes on the track.
You can’t help but think of the Violent Femmes (thanks to the ukulele and funky beat) during “Nice Guys,” an ode to guys who treat women well and women who prefer to date douchebags. The following track, “Whisper Corner,” is like a left hook to the liver after the gentle feint of “Nice Guys.” It has Seminara and Lindgren unleashing a sonic assault in under two minutes.
“Chub Rub” is probably about what you think it is, and it’s a fun, trashy punk number. They get funky on “Limbo,” with Seminara singing about the rut of modern living (“I felt a little bit better when I felt a bit strange.”).
“Manhandler” has Holman returning to lead vocals and she and Manter crank the distortion on their guitars. It’s like a Bikini Kill track, and Holman’s ass-chewing of the song’s subject is great. Whereas that track reminds me of Bikini Kill, “No Hamburger” reminds me of Sleater-Kinney with its nice double vocals from Holman and Manter.
The album ends with the gloriously weird “Don’t Give Up the Ship” as Seminara sounds like a drunk trying to explain the world’s problems to everyone stopped at the red light. The whole band goes bonkers by the end of it, ending the album in a frenzy of punk chaos.
This is a fun record. Fun punk, and especially good fun punk, is hard to find nowadays. It’s nice to hear So Pretty keeping punk not only alive, but fun.
Sitar master Anoushka Shankarand her and put on an excellent ninety-minute performance of classical Indian music at Indiana-Purdue-Fort Wayne’s Rhinehart Recital Hall. It was a nearly full house and Ms. Shankar and her band played three ragas for us.
Her band consisted of gentlemen playing bass and treble tanpurs (drone instruments), tabla (hand drums), flute, shehnai (a sort of trumpet), and mridangam (hand percussion). Her tabla player, Ojas Adhiya, had only played three times with her on this tour so far, but he played like he’d been touring for years. He and mridangam player Pirashanna Thevarajah had a great “duel” during the last raga in which they matched beats and fed off each other’s rhythms.
In the meantime, Anoushka Shankar was shredding her sitar. I saw her play, along with her favorite, the late, great Ravi Shankar, at Notre Dame University years ago (who was still killing it in his late 80’s). She wowed the crowd there, and she stunned the crowd in Fort Wayne. “I’m speechless,” said a man behind us at the end of the show. He’d never heard classical Indian music before.
I think a lot of people hadn’t. It was a lovely, almost intoxicating performance and a stunning bargain at only ten bucks a ticket. Don’t miss her if she comes near your town.
