American Originals
Jonathan Richman, Reese Van Riper, Shwank, and JC's Junestar Mr. Blackman
JONATHAN RICHMAN - Only Frozen Sky Anyway (Blue Arrow Records)
Whatever wag actually said “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” must have been thinking of Jonathan Richman. On his 18th album, at age 72, reunited with his Modern Lovers bandmate Jerry Harrison on keyboards and his longtime percussionist Tommy Larkin, Richman takes us on a journey through his consciousness, with free-flowing songs that barely follow a melody and sound as if they’re being improvised (they’re not.) The man who took us to the “Astral Plane” early in his career sings about human souls migrating to another dimension, angels, and, of course, love; he loves his guitar, he loves the “Dog Star,” he loves “That Older Girl” he remembers from childhood (and frames the song in the doo wop of his youth.) He sings in Spanish and Italian (and some English dialect of his own unique invention) while playing gorgeous finger-picked Flamenco-style guitar. To inspire us, Richman tells the tale of “David & Goliath,” and because he wants us all to dance, a deconstructed cover of the Bee Gees’ “Night Fever.” The album ends with two spiritual meditations (“The Wavelet,” “I Am The Sky”) which take us right back to that Astral Plane, where I hope Jonathan Richman keeps being weird forever.
REESE VAN RIPER - “The American Dream” EP (Mint 400)
The name of the band as well as its lead singer, Reese Van Riper brings what Greil Marcus famously called “the weird old America” into the 21st Century on “The American Dream,” appropriately released on the 4th of July. Van Riper’s “Jersey swamp rock,” which I once described as “a mesmerizing gumbo drawn from Delta blues, the Louisiana bayou, American garage rock, and Appalachian folk songs,” metastasizes into a full-bore frontal assault on American hubris on the title track, a screaming, blaring, rock’n’roll indictment of the nightmare our American dream has become. On an Independence Day when many of us struggled to find pride in a country that’s recently brought nothing but shame, the raw fury and disgust of “The American Dream” offers a much-needed catharsis: “Cheese Burger Cheese Burger Crack Cocaine / Now plant a bullet in a CEO’s brain / Fat Boy Fat Boy Krispy Kreme/ I’m gonna be your American Dream.”
“Alcohol And Women” flexes the band’s country chops, a richly arranged stew of guitars, drums, and piano that mines the self-inflicted misery that country music traditionally finds at the bottom of a bottle. The raw, ragged, raging “I Am Forever” wallowing in toxic male bombast, while “Black And Blue” couches deep regret and pain in sterling Americana, Van Riper flexing his singing voice here instead of raw-throated yowl. Wood Guthrie comes to mind on “Preparing Us For The End,” a powerful folk song about how consumerism and shortsightedness will lead us to Armageddon. “The American Dream” EP succeeds not only musically - harnessing all of Reese Van Riper’s strength’s without seeming gimmicky or contrived - but as a wake-up call to a somnambulent nation sleepwalking to the edge of darkness.
SHWANK - Battle of the Shwanks - LIVE! (Self-released)
When last heard from, these guys were about to graduate from Stevens Tech in Hoboken. This was apparently recorded at a Battle of the Bands on campus prior to that - three songs, about 5 minutes each, taped on an old Walkman or something (although the lo-fi production complements the band’s, um, freewheeling approach.) “Shwank Gaze - Live” presumably represents Shwank’s take on shoegaze, although it’s really more soft jazz with woodwinds, heavily distorted guitars, and mumbled vocals, all New Age-y and meditative. “Shwank Tok - Live!”, in contrast, is Shwank in pure gonzo mode, with a rollicking gypsy-jazz melody with goofy ups and downs and screamed/shouted vocals, which may or may not be in English (can’t really tell.) (Imagine Gogol Bordello writing the soundtrack to a Looney Tunes cartoon.) Finally, the band spazzes out on “Nu Shwank - Live!” a multi-part “Jazz Odyssey” (Cf. Spinal Tap) that alternates between wiggy, screamed vocals, a guitar frenzy, and a quiet jam-band part with a noodling sax, until exploding into a noisy freakout again. Cool stuff.
JUNE & THE PUSHAS - “Before & After” EP (Bandcamp)
Jersey City’s June & The Pushas call this EP “a futuristic vision of fusion and soul,” and finds singer/guitarist Ralph Ugo (aka Junestar Mr. Blackman) and his longtime partner Randy Hayes teaming with drummer Sean Patton, percussionist Stephen Miller, and bassist Mark Hartmen, with Tory Daines (of Fair Panic and Those Mockingbirds) on violin and Joe Warner on keyboards. The band’s really stretching out here; opener “Always” runs over six and a half minutes, and the 5-song EP runs nearly 30 minutes. While the ensemble creates a world of different textures, sonic landscapes where you feel you’re sightseeing inside someone’s mind, tonally the EP remains dark and somber throughout, with Ugo’s vocals conjuring feelings of anguish, sadness, and loss. “Amazing” is the exception, with a livelier tempo and more of a jazz feel, Ugo’s vocal here expressing the awe he feels in the presence of his lover.
Buckle in for this one, it’s a dark and bumpy ride, although I’m told there’s a country album coming next
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