Shopping List: The New and the Recommended
Steve Kuhn Trio, Live at Birdland (Blue Note); Randy Crawford and Joe Sample, Feeling Good (PRA)
Pianist Steve Kuhn introduced this jazz power trio, with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Al Foster, at the Village Vanguard in 1984. More than two decades later, they reconvened at Manhattan's Birdland, resulting in this ceaselessly inventive album of originals and standards. "Jitterbug Waltz" alone traverses an iPod's worth of pop and classical references in its eleven minutes. Soulful jazz singer Randy Crawford and longtime Crusaders keyboardist Joe Sample, meanwhile, took three decades to reunite on Feeling Good. Their eclectic bag contains everything from "But Beautiful" and Billie Holiday's "Tell Me More" to Peter Gabriel's "Lovetown" and Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talking."
Charlie Louvin (Tompkins Square); Southern Culture on the Skids, Countrypolitan (Yep Roc)
"You've already put big ol' tears in my eyes, must you throw dirt in my face?" begins the latest valedictorian effort by seventy-nine-year-old country singer Charlie Louvin. Charlie's voice sounds weathered, rocky, and welcoming (hence a guest list that includes Elvis Costello, George Jones, and Jeff Tweedy), but songs like "The Christian Life," "Great Atomic Power," and "When I Stop Dreaming" sound almost as remarkable now as when Charlie first recorded them with his late, wild brother Ira in the forties and fifties. Southern Culture on the Skids' Countrypolitan is a rollicking country-rock party blend of car-radio hits like "Wolverton Mountain" and "Oh Lonesome Me" with fuzz-driven countrified versions of T-Rex's "Life's a Gas" and the Who's "Happy Jack."
Butch Hancock, War and Peace (Two Roads); Joe Ely, Happy Songs From Rattlesnake Gulch (Rock 'Em)
These two members of Lubbock, Texas's legendary Flatlanders are seldom-seeners whose new records deliver long-awaited goods. Butch Hancock's old-school protest album of anti-war and pro-democracy screeds is his first release in nine years. Yes, he still sounds a little like 1970s-or-so Bob Dylan, and even evokes themes (the endless rattle of shields and stupidity) and moods (lazy and dark summer evenings) similar to Dylan's last few releases. War and Peace, though, is far more stark, direct, and rooted in the Baptist revival meetings ("Sister lift your veil and understand," he sings in "Brother Won't You Shake My Hand") and the country cavalcades that would ramble through his hometown. On his first album in four years, Joe Ely celebrates and romanticizes Southwestern culture through the eyes of a maturing country-rock star with plenty yet to prove. Beginning with Ely's version of Hancock's "Firewater" about halfway into the album, Rattlesnake Gulch takes on an almost biblical aspect as Ely sings of unbearable Texas summers ("July Blues"), desperate critters ("Up a Tree"), and the eternal vagaries of wealth ("So You Wanna Be Rich?").
High Llamas, Can Cladders (Drag City/Caroline)
Highest Llama Sean O'Hagan applies enduring lessons of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach, and the best of vintage Brazilian bossa nova in this gorgeous and deftly arranged quasi-seasonal song cycle ("The Old Spring Town," "Winter Day," "Summer Seen"). And who else would record a shimmering ode to a virtually unknown jazz harpist ("Dorothy Asher")? Precisely.