The music world has been far too prolific over the past week or so to devote an entire 600 words to one artist or recording, so here’s some of the hippest stuff I’ve been hearing.
Grace Potter
I want to be Grace Potter when I grow up. Or, at the very least, marry her. That seems to be the consensus of 97.23 percent of the folks I’ve talked to about the Nocturnals’ opening set for the Avett Brothers at the Tuscaloosa Amphitheater last Thursday night.
Grace and company drove through their allotted hour with reckless, joyful abandon, which is very much the par for their course. These guys always seem so happy on stage. Grace dances around in tune-induced, scantily-clothed bliss, while drummer Matt Burr beats the tubs without withholding a single tooth from view. (The latter may follow from its prime vantage point on the former.)
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals released a new album, “The Lion the Beast the Beat,” in June 2012, but the performance was a solid mix as the old bookended the new.
They kicked off the set with “Nothing But the Water (II)” from the 2005 album of the same name, a fun jam with several individual member-featuring solos that lent themselves perfectly to the intros Grace rolled out in concurrence with the song.
Country-tinged ballads “Parachute Heart” and “Stars,” from the new record, gave Grace the opportunity to show off her beautiful, powerful vocal prowess. “The Lion the Beast the Beat,” the album’s title track, sounded even more heavy and driving live. But it was disappointing to hear the band’s live use of digital sustain on Grace’s voice at select points in the song – an effect a voice like hers just doesn’t require.
All was forgiven when the band closed the set with “Paris (Ooh La La)” and “Medicine,” two favorites from their eponymous 2010 album. As has become the band’s custom, the end of “Medicine” turned into a group-wide drum-clobbering section, a tremendously pleasing gimmick the band will grow tired of long before the fans will.
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones’ new single is good. That’s what I thought after I gave “Doom and Gloom” a listen Thursday morning, when the band released the track as the first single from upcoming compilation album “GRRR!,” scheduled for release on Nov. 12. Then, I listened to it again. And another time after that. The cliché stops there, because I had somewhere to be, but you better believe the tune was stuck in my head the rest of the day.
Now that I’m approximately 86 listens in, allow me to modify my original evaluation: the Rolling Stones’ new single is deceivingly good.
Keith Richards gets things chugging with a simple, solid, driving riff over Charlie Watts’ trademark uncluttered vector of a drum beat. On top of this groove, Mick Jagger’s sneers in his mama-in-the-driving-rain howl (“Hear a funky noise, it’s the tightening of the screeeeeeeews!”) about zombie combat, environmental destruction, socio-economic inequality and the war in Iraq.
This year marks the Stones’ 50-year anniversary, and Keeg and Jagger are approaching 70, but “Doom and Gloom” proves these cats can still rock like they could in the ‘70s – good news for the folks looking forward to the four November and December tour dates the band announced Monday.
Rodriguez
Of course, a 10-month hiatus is no time at all compared to the several decades this dude has spent off the map: Rodriguez, the subject of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival opening documentary “Searching for Sugar Man,” grew up in Detroit and cut two records in 1970 and 1971 before being completely forgotten.
Except in South Africa, where he became a Bob Dylan-caliber poet-laureate for the downtrodden and working class. Nobody thought to tell Rodriguez about his hero status; however, so he worked as a day laborer in Detroit until his daughter discovered his fame in the late 1990s, and he performed a string of concerts in the country.
His scratchy voice and poignant lyrics make the Dylan comparison an easy one, but Rodriguez is more than a novelty copycat act. His sound is pleasing: a synthesis of the disquiet you see in Dylan, the yearning you hear in Van Morrison and that weird, beautiful suggestion of physical space you feel in the Moody Blues. The phrasing and edge of Rodriguez’s words in “Hate Street Dialogue,” from 1970’s “Cold Fact,” always reminds me of Deep Purple’s Ian Anderson.
It’s hard not to root for a dude with a neat story and a strong sound.
