Frontperson

FRONTPERSON

FRONTRUNNER

OSCAR STREET RECORDS

FRONTPERSON are Kathryn Calder of the New Pornographers and Mark Andrew Hamilton, who has released six albums as Woodpigeon.

The nine songs on their debut are by turns lovely, haunting, fragile, and very sensible, with great singing and lyrics that read like short stories in verse. While most are about relationships, Hamilton’s same-sex, Calder’s "Long Night" marks the passage of time not just through years, but with every Sunday racing by to Monday, and in "Shorter Days" the winter. The music by and large is chamber folk/pop that reminds me of the band Winterpills in its hushed sadness and ultimate beauty.

If you’re a fan of either band, or of the other musicians who play on the album, you'll love this.Melissa McWilliams plays drums and drum machine, Jen Sévertson of Peach Pyramid plays bass, Clea Foofat of Raleigh and Dojo Workhorse plays cello, Foon Yap plays violin, and Marek Tyler of nêhiyawak plays percussion. This album is good for quiet, contemplative times, snow days and nights, late nights, and just as something different.

https://frontperson.bandcamp.com

Andrea Weiss

Jill ,Sobule

Jill Sobule

Nostalgia Kills

Pinko Records

This is Jill’s first album in nine years. Her absence due to many things, including the death of her mom and a breakup, is now over with one of the best albums I’ve heard all year.

Overly spare, with rough instrumentation, there is also the bittersweet lightness of letting go. Anyone who’s ever seen Jill live, and her shows are not to be missed, knows what a wonderful guitar player she is, and the other musicians, whether playing horns, drums, or keyboards, match her.

John Doe has a wonderful cameo on “Tonight Is Breaking,” a song that reprises later as a fan duet with Nicholas Ford, who sings very well. The album was crowd funded, and one donation level perk was singing on the album. Both versions are wry and heartbreaking. Tonight is breaking because we’ll be gone tomorrow. Other people are honored on “The Donor Song,” which is self-explanatory.

Lyrically there seems to be a loose theme; isn’t life, and love, messy, even as there’s a wry, dry joy to it? There are songs about breakups, the closet, loose ends, how great someone almost was, and looking back with no regrets, despite wishing it could’ve been different and better.

The two covers put fine points on all of this, the Five Stairsteps' “Ooh Child” and Warren Zevon’s “Don’t Let Us Get Sick,” originally on a tribute album to him. Both are superb, and sweet. And finally, Jill’s singing is terrific.

Jill "Kissed A Girl" better and with more oomph than someone named Katy Perry did, and as with that song, the oomph is here, making this an album, just like her shows, not to be missed, and one that shouldn’t slip through the cracks.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/278907212898513/?multi_permalinks=313946582727909%2C313620309427203&notif_id=1537248003988733&notif_t=group_activity

Andrea Weiss

Go To School

The Lemon Twigs

Go To School

4AD

This is a great album with a great anti-bullying message. It's as theatrical as Tommy, with a vastly different plot, in which a childless couple take in Shane, a chimp, and raise him as a human boy. Shane goes to school, and like all misfits, gets bullied, found, fucked, and forgotten by the queen of the school. He snaps and commits an act of violence, setting his school on fire. A hundred people die. He goes on the run, into the woods, getting away clean by blending in with the other primates.

Brian and Michael D’Addario, who are the Lemon Twigs, clearly side with Shane, and you will too, even if you’ll recoil from the violence, knowing enough never to be that way.

If you’re a bullied kid, get help any way you can. Don’t be like Shane, or your life is over, and maybe the lives of others. Just be yourself, as clichédas that is, and be true to you, and you will come out on top eventually.

The music is why I compare this album to Tommy. It's a mix of Broadway show tunes, 70s AOR, and Big Star. Todd Rundgren sat in for an authentic 70s sound, with Jody Stephens of Big Star on drums for one track. It belongs on the stage or even TV or film just as much as any classic musical or Glee. Tommy is psych-rock that eventually wound up as a film and musical, and achieved it’s full effect there, as the plot was incoherent in spots on the album. This is true of Go To School, as well.

Does Shane’s mom cheat on his dad, and does his dad cheat on his family with Daisy, Shane’s once and future girlfriend? A song or two showing how badly Shane is bullied would have helped clarify things, too.

But all in all this is, as I say, a great album, and one that should not be missed. It really is for real.

Andrea Weiss

The best concerts so far this year. All at World Cafe Live unless otherwise noted:

1 Phobee Bridgers/Soccer Mommy.

2 Peace Train

3 Posies/Terrra Lightfoot/E Joseph and the Sparrows

4 Waxahatchee/Hurry For The Riff Raff - Union Transfer

5 Rayland Baxter/Okey Dokey

Andrea Weiss

The Lemon Twigs

Small Victories single

4AD

This delightfully authentically 70s prog/pop- sounding single, produced by Todd Rundgren, speaks for itself lyrically, as it’s about just that, the small victories of everyday life. It’ll be on their upcoming album Go To School, a concept album about a chimp named Shane, raised as a human boy, which is a very interesting concept. The album comes out August 24. The single is out now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6LodGUpmxY

Andrea Weiss

Rayland Baxter

World Café Live, July 14, 2018

Philadelphia, PA

He’s been around since 2012, but I’d never heard him until now, with the deeply quirky single "Casanova." College loan debt is likened to overbearing women who you’ve never met, yet who call you every day telling you to behave. For real. And that was enough to convince me to buy his new album, Wide Awake, and go see him live.

The album is great, a mix of folkish songs and adult rock. Some are political, like "Strange American Dream," about the US now, and "79 Shiny Revolvers, about gun control, but the relationship songs are sad in a "why did you go away" vein, and also a "don’t know where I stand" one. I like his gentle touch, and his guitar playing.

Live he shredded on guitar, was a lot rowdier than on the album, and the band kept things moving smoothly. When they took a break, the older, folk-like songs on solo acoustic guitar sounded right at home. I loved it.

When they played "Casanova" everyone sang, including his friends in the very good opening act, Okey Dokey, on the refrain, making an already strange song even quirkier.

https://www.facebook.com/RaylandBaxterMusic/

Andrea Weiss

Peace Train

World Café Live, July 13, 2018

Philadelphia, PA

This has nothing to do with Cat Stevens. This is an interracial, female duo from South Africa, Sharon Katz and Nonhlanhla Wanda. They make Afro-pop, but with an indie rock edge, somewhat dream pop with guitars instead of keyboards. Katz is an excellent guitar player, Wanda a great singer. They are official musical ambassadors, internationally acclaimed, and Grammy nominated, who burst onto the world stage with a 150-voice choir, a 10-piece band, and a tour with Ladysmith Black Mambazo in South Africa in 1993, right when apartheid was crumbling.

When I saw them live they were on the verge of going to the US/Mexico border to lead a march from the US side into Mexico, to meet up with a choir there to protest the forced separations. There is more here about it. http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/sd-et-artscal-sharon-20180715-story.html

They turned the Café into party central. People got up and danced in the aisles, walked up to the front and danced, and these were retirees. But who cares about age with this much fun to be had? They played songs from their wonderful new album Side By Side, and their edge came from the fact that they were musical freedom fighters, helping to end apartheid at home, and in the US.

I loved every bit of it, even as I was exhausted by all the high energy by the end. This is a duo and band to delight in, to protest with, and not to miss if they come to your town.

https://www.facebook.com/SKPTrain/

Andrea Weiss