 | | | | |  | | Groove Is in Her Heart
Lucinda Williams has got the blues again on her new album. But this time it’s a different shade. By Mikael Wood
Lucinda Williams knows the blues. For nearly three decades, this 54-year-old native of Lake Charles, Louisiana, has served as one of modern country music’s most incisive chroniclers of heartbreak. But though she’s made her mark with a raspy brand of bar-band folk rock — see 1998’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road for the most potent example — Williams says she’s found a new blues in the electronic groove music of hipster dance acts such as Thievery Corporation, Kruder & Dorfmeister, and the Gotan Project. West, Williams’s latest album, isn’t a techno record. But it does find the veteran singer-songwriter delving into a murky — and intoxicating — world of textures and beats.
How’d you get into the electronic music you’ve been digging lately? It’s not necessarily what we’d expect from a rootsy type like you. I don’t know — I’ve just been in the mood for that kind of stuff lately. I love the rhythms in Brazilian music. I love Sade. And when I heard Thievery Corporation, it just made sense to me. It was like a natural progression from the soul and funk and Delta blues I grew up listening to. It’s kind of the same thing as what the White Stripes do and as some of the stuff that Moby’s done — taking an older sound and adding beats to it.
It reminds you of stuff you heard when you were young. It’s like the blues of now. As far as groove music, for years I listened to almost nothing but John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters and ZZ Top and James Brown and Wilson Pickett. There wasn’t anything else like that to listen to. This stuff is like a new version of that music.
West seems less about songwriting and more about performance than many of your previous records. It’s really stripped down and raw, and some of the tunes don’t have a lot of parts. I wanted to use songwriting as a basic structure but then put all this other stuff around it. That’s why I think Hal Willner was the right choice to produce this record; that’s what he’s been doing with the other projects that he’s been working on. He brought in [jazz guitarist] Bill Frisell. He knew who to bring in to get that kind of sound.
Did the two of you talk about what you were after? A little bit. Mostly it was instinctive. We just kind of went song by song and tried different things. We let everybody do their thing. That’s pretty much always the way I’ve done records, but the thing that was different this time was that I had an actual producer producing the songs as opposed to my just going in and laying them down. I’ve never worked with a real producer before. Everybody I’ve worked with before has done some producing, but they’ve all been musicians-slash-producers: Gurf Morlix and Steve Earle and Charlie Sexton and Bo Ramsey.
Were you comfortable letting someone else share in the decision-making process? Yeah, because I like the fact that Hal wanted to go in and experiment and kind of tinker around. That’s usually what I’ve been accused of doing that drives everybody else crazy. Finally, I had somebody who was into that too.
It sounds like the kind of album you can make only after you’ve made a bunch of other ones. There’s something very confident about it. I know exactly what you mean. I think I really grew into this album. If there was anything that I said before Hal and I went in, it was that I wanted to make a mature yet hip album — a little bit more sophisticated, a little bit more produced. The record of his that really kind of made sense to me in terms of that was Marianne Faithfull’s Strange Weather. I listened to that and just went, “Okay, he’ll get it.”
Do you think West might appeal to listeners who aren’t really aware of your old stuff or even of country music in general? I hope so. I don’t really ever think about that much, but it’s funny: I got a lot of criticism for Essence (2001) and for World without Tears (2003) because I was trying to do some different stuff. And people really had a hard time accepting it after Car Wheels. I think it took a couple of albums to get to the place I am at now, where people are finally just accepting what I’m trying to do instead of comparing it with everything before.
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| | | | |  Roy Orbison
In Dreams
(Orbison/Legacy)
If ever an artist’s image matched the tenor of his real life, it was Roy Orbison’s. The raven-haired, Ray-Ban-wearing singer projected an aura of impossible sadness and pain in his songs, and the truth of his life was not far removed from his art. Orbison first rose to fame in the early ’60s with a string of operatic anthems built around his fluttering falsetto, but that success was tempered by tragedy: first, the death of his wife, Claudette, in a motorcycle accident, and then, a couple of years later, the loss of his two young sons in a house fire while he was on the road. This 90-minute DVD traces Orbison’s life from the Texas oil fields of his youth to his early rockabilly forays for Sun Records to his eventual stardom and down through a slow but inevitable career decline. The final act of Orbison’s life was a tale of redemption: He found love with his new wife, Barbara, and earned much-overdue recognition in the ’80s, sparked by the use of his music in David Lynch’s 1986 cult hit, Blue Velvet. Feted by followers like Bruce Springsteen and worshipped by his peers (including George Harrison and Bob Dylan, whom he joined in the Traveling Wilburys), Orbison was just 52 when he died in 1988. In Dreams features interviews with the key figures in his story and unearths a wealth of performance footage. While it doesn’t dig too far into Orbison’s psyche and suffers from a bit of sloppy editing, it still provides a compelling take on the Big O’s life and times. — Bob Bozorgmehr
 Lucinda Williams
West
(Lost Highway Records)
As is her wont, Lucinda Williams has taken her own sweet time — about four years — to follow up her last studio effort, 2003’s World without Tears. On West, just her eighth album since 1979, Williams makes a subtle stylistic shift. Coproduced by Williams and Hal Willner (Elvis Costello, Lou Reed) and featuring a cast of tasteful backing players — including Jayhawks leader Gary Louris, avant-rock guitarist Bill Frisell, legendary session drummer Jim Keltner, and Bob Dylan bandleader and bassist Tony Garnier — the record has a lighter, breezier quality in both the writing and the singing than anything Williams has previously committed to tape. Highlights include the haunting rumination “Fancy Funeral,” the Latin-flecked “Rescue,” and the gently chugging opener “Are You Alright?” For some, her intentionally simple lyrics and drawled-to-the-point-of-caricature singing can be grating at times, but the light touch of the band and the production here redeem almost any creative miscues — well, except for a misguided attempt at hip-hop rhyming on the interminable nine-minute “Wrap My Head around That.” It’s nonetheless a fine testament to her maturing creative vision. — B.B.
 Charlie Louvin
Charlie Louvin
(Tompkins Square)
Over the years, the impact of hillbilly harmony duo the Louvin Brothers on country and rock music has been deeply felt. A quick look at the range of artists who’ve covered the group’s songs — from Merle Haggard to the Byrds to the Raconteurs — proves as much. So it’s no surprise that the first new album in a decade from the surviving Louvin, 79-year-old Charlie, has brought out a host of heavyweights eager to pay homage, a diverse cast of contributors like Elvis Costello, George Jones, Jeff Tweedy, Will Oldham, Tom T. Hall, Tift Merritt, Marty Stuart, and Bobby Bare, as well as members of Bright Eyes, Lambchop, Clem Snide, and Superchunk. Fortunately, the Louvin disc keeps the focus on the artist rather than on his guests. Louvin’s warm, weathered voice and soulful delivery are front and center as he revisits a dozen of his own catalog classics and favorite covers. When he does duet, the interplay between the singer and his admirers is a genuine pleasure. Louvin and George Jones make enjoyable work of “Must You Throw Dirt in My Face” and the Jimmie Rodgers hobo lament “Waiting for a Train.” Elsewhere, Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy — who covered the Louvins’ cold-war gospel treasure “Great Atomic Power” while a member of Uncle Tupelo — takes considerable care with the song while sitting at the feet of the master. Solidly entertaining from start to finish, this is the all-too-rare case of a late-career comeback that actually delivers on its promise. — B.B.
 Don’t Look Back: ’65 Tour Deluxe Edition
(Docurama)
Don’t Look Back, documentarian D.A. Pennebaker’s cinema-verité-style film that captures Bob Dylan’s 1965 solo U.K. tour, is, by now, the stuff of familiar legend. Over the past 40-plus years, Pennebaker’s famed black-and-white images have spawned countless imitations and homages; they have also birthed a thriving industry of handheld-shot, up-close-and-personal music documentaries. This new collector’s edition of the film is a treat for both hard-core Dylan-istas and casual fans alike. Packaged as a two-disc set, it includes a fresh digital transfer of the film, the original 1968 bound companion guide to the movie, and even a flip book of the iconic “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video. But the most significant bonus is a new hour-long documentary by Pennebaker, which features scores of unseen tour footage and is called Bob Dylan ’65 Revisited. In it, the director recounts the inner workings and behind-the-scenes machinations of Dylan’s last acoustic tour, explaining how Dylan’s pioneering efforts unintentionally legitimized the union of rock music and movies. Now that Don’t Look Back has been given the lavish treatment it deserves, all that’s left is for Dylan himself to allow an official release of the little-seen Pennebaker-filmed follow-up about his 1966 electric tour, Eat the Document. — B.B.
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| | | | | Morning Glory
The best show doesn’t always win the a.m. race. By Ken Parish Perkins
Those of us who watch morning television do so religiously and painlessly for the simple fact that you can spend an hour or two with Today or The Early Show or Good Morning America and never actually watch it, as though it’s radio or that houseguest you hear and see but have the luxury of ignoring. Stories whiz by like horses in full gallop; the pert hosts, weather forecaster, and news reader chuckle, chat, and giggle; and all the while, you’re dressing or eating or eating while dressing. The priority isn’t to get information as much as it is to merely get on with your day with some background noise.
While the lives of others are being reported on each morning on your tube, yours is happening at that moment in time, which often provides a kind of intriguing blend of reality and wish fulfillment. That’s why morning television shows have the most loyal audiences of any daytime programming, although loyalty here is used loosely. You tune in and out as you please, you’re under no pressure, and, most of all, there’s really no compelling reason to hear a different set of pert hosts, weather forecasters, and news readers chuckling, chatting, and giggling. So you stay put.
Once a show’s in a solid ratings lead, as NBC’s Today has enjoyed for a decade now, it’s difficult for the needle to move. What it takes is a big-time screwup, though at this moment, I can’t even fathom what that would be. Today has survived losing Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel and appears to have weathered the Katie Couric defection to the “serious” stuff on CBS Evening News.
CBS’s The Early Show fell long ago and might never get up, but for a while, ABC’s Good Morning America appeared within striking distance of Today. Shortly before Couric left, GMA had closed the viewership gap, with fewer than half a million separating them. With hippie mother hen Meredith Vieira now settling in with her passive-aggressive cohost Matt Lauer, Today has since regained its morale and reclaimed its momentum, even though their lead hovers within the 700,000-viewer ballpark, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Today has been on top so long that having to fend off GMA is something of an indignity, which is interesting, considering that GMA is actually the better show. It has been for a while, but never more so than lately, since the exclusion of Charles Gibson, who sitting or standing or talking beside cohosts Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts often looked like one of those goofy-looking cardboard cutouts. With Gibson off saving us all on ABC’s World News Tonight, Sawyer and Roberts (the former sportscaster from ESPN) have become television’s most delicious tandem since Alice and Ralph Kramden.
Entertainment and information don’t drive morning television; comfort and reassurance do. A host’s tone has to be firm and precise, soothing and chummy. He or she must demonstrate a lovely gentleness and a genuine curiosity about darn near everything, from wildfires engulfing Malibu homes to Britney Spears’s divorce — it is, to say the least, the toughest job in television news. It’s the one place you have to be yourself and expect millions of people to like you.
The Sawyer-Roberts pairing is the most watchable element in the morning since Couric and Gumbel, and for opposite reasons. Gumbel and Couric were great together as an old married couple who, besides not liking or trusting each other much, made up for the other’s faults. Couric’s overbearing perkiness covered for Gumbel’s alienating iciness; Gumbel’s depth, interviewing skills, and poise made Couric seem less like a light, fluttering feather.
Sawyer and Roberts don’t yin and yang nearly as much. They remind me of a couple of girlfriends sitting on your couch telling you about Al Qaeda hot spots and makeup addictions.
Sawyer has that lulling and protective voice. No one delivers this sort of fuzzy journalism with keener tenacity and warmth, and there’s a reason Sawyer and Gibson were picked in 1999 to sit in, temporarily, while ABC went host-hunting. Wonder how that search is going.
Roberts is the x-factor here, the low draft choice that turned out to be a bargain pick. She is smart, witty, funny, genuine — it didn’t take long for producers to see that the woman hired as news reader embodied the traits of the perfect morning-show host.
Watching Sawyer and Roberts together is far more of a treat than watching them apart, especially when they’re just talking about their lives and their stories or when they’re doing the Florida Gator Chomp, or doing it wrong, as Sawyer did, prompting Roberts to quip while shaking her head, “Don’t cross over.”
That Sawyer and Roberts represent a two-woman team in a profession where teams are supposed to be like married folk — older guy, younger woman — hasn’t been dissected much, which means few people have even noticed it.
And that’s the glory of morning television. You can notice it when you need to.
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| | | | | Rocking Revelations
They say that life imitates art, and in the case of some aging rockers, unintentionally prophetic movies have provided insight into their future musical activities. We’re not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing, but here are some uncanny examples of celluloid precognition. Fledgling rockers take heed: Your future may lie in a movie that’s out right now!
By Bryan Reesman
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA
In a scene in Office Space, corporate drone Michael Bolton has to endure being compared to the reformed rock singer of the same name, especially during a bruising evaluation where an efficiency expert (John C. McGinley) waxes eloquent about the real Bolton’s pop vocal prowess, particularly on his “stunning” and “very emotional” opera album. Flash forward to January 30, 2007: Michael Bolton’s opera DVD My Secret Passion arrives. No joke.
METAL TRIBUTE
In the 2001 movie Rock Star — based partially on the life of Tim “Ripper” Owens, who ascended from Judas Priest tribute singer to Rob Halford’s replacement in 1996 — a young singer played by Mark Wahlberg becomes the front man for his favorite band after his vocal idol quits. But once he’s entrenched in the group’s world, he does not get to write his own parts and has to sing a rap-metal tune. Move forward several months: Judas Priest releases Demolition, which has no Owens songwriting credits and which closes with a rap-metal-style song. However, unlike Wahlberg’s character, who returns to doing coffeehouse performances, Owens still tours the world today with Iced Earth and Beyond Fear.
JAZZ ODYSSEY
In the legendary This Is Spinal Tap, the dim-witted British rockers unveil their new jazz approach at a gig where they are lower than a puppet show on the marquee. Funnily enough, some headbangers have gone on to explore their own real-life jazz adventures. Completely crazed Raven drummer Rob “Wacko” Hunter, known for having worn a hockey goalie’s gear to protect himself when he smashed into his drums during the ’80s, has since become Branford Marsalis’s sound engineer, both for recording and gigs. Also, Testament thrash guitarist Alex Skolnick recently has played and toured with the Alex Skolnick Trio, which has recorded jazzy instrumental covers of classic hard-rock and metal tunes by the likes of Deep Purple, Scorpions, and Black Sabbath.
LIVE OR MEMOREX?
In Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, the goofy, time-traveling SoCal dudes compete in a battle of the bands (with bands that were hijacked by their evil robotic doubles). While no one has yet had to face that peril in real life, some well-known bands have splintered into different versions and inspired recent lawsuits between various members over the right to use their name on tour, including the Doors, Ratt, and Saxon. On a parallel line of thought, Kiss manager Doc McGhee admitted in 2005 that the famous band might eventually tour without any original members. McKiss, anyone?
FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY
Hey, funny we mention Kiss and robots, because in the 1978 TV movie Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, the famous rockers take on evil robotic doubles created by a former theme-park designer who wants to upstage their concert at California’s Magic Mountain. Thirty-five years later, fellow makeup kings Twisted Sister find themselves playing a Six Flags park in New Jersey during their reunion tour and performing on the West Coast in support of then future California “Governator” Arnold Schwarzenegger. And plenty of metal bands can now give older headbangers/parents relief from kiddie attractions at the House of Blues at Disney World.
Hollywoodland
(Universal)
Although the death of former Superman star George Reeves in 1959 by gunshot was ruled a suicide, some people speculate that it was another person who pulled the trigger and ended his life. Combining real-life events with a fictitious story line in which a detective named Louis Simo (Adrien Brody) searches to find out what really happened to Reeves (Ben Affleck), Hollywoodland juxtaposes the frustrated lives of a small-screen star and a small-time PI. It is a tale of big-studio politics, the constrictions of fame, and the illusion of stardom, which were much less frequently front-page news in the days of old Hollywood than in our tell-all era. The filmmakers wanted to avoid making a standard biopic, but the story of Reeves — an aspiring movie star known only for his immortal TV role and who was the kept man of the wife (Diane Lane) of an MGM studio head (Bob Hoskins) — makes for compelling material. Simo is hot on the trail of evidence of homicide (which provokes threats to his life), and his saga is one of a failing detective struggling to cope with his ethical missteps, his divorce, and the waning attention of his young son. But you’ll probably wish you had seen less of him and more of Reeves. There’s a certain cleverness in casting Affleck as Reeves, especially considering that he has coped with similar trappings of typecasting, albeit it without the financial hardships his alter ego faced. In the end, you’ll want to dig further into the life of Reeves on your own, especially as the bonus features do not probe into his life and we see little of his childhood on-screen. Despite its flaws, the well-acted Hollywoodland at least draws you into and humanizes the life of a former Man of Steel who was not so invincible in the end but who remains some fans’ favorite Superman. — B.R.
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