Jeff McCord on the month’s new releases
Miranda Lambert
Sony BMG Nashville
So she’s only 23. Lindale’s MIRANDA LAMBERT may not be ready to impart any life lessons, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t already a damn good storyteller. Here’s how CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND (Sony BMG Nashville), the follow-up to her hit debut, opens: “I’m goin’ home, gonna load my shotgun/Wait by the door and light a cigarette/He wants a fight well now he’s got one/He ain’t seen me crazy yet.” The girl does make an impression. Despite the awful, compressed sound favored by Nashville producers these days (what’s the point of making a record that already sounds as if it’s coming over AM radio?), Lambert’s warm voice is displayed underneath, wrapping around her standout songs: “More Like Her” is a near-perfect tale of country heartbreak, “Famous in a Small Town” manages to be both wry and wise, and the title track is exactly the comedic stalker soap you think it is. Lambert’s writing skirts clichés and overt sentimentality and puts up a tough-girl persona. Full of heart, smarts, edgy humor, and—for mainstream Nashville—almost unimaginable spunk, Lambert is giving contemporary country just the ass-kicking it needs.
Beaver Nelson
Freedom
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The backstory attached to Austin singer-songwriter BEAVER NELSON used to be his fruitless early-nineties run through the major-label wringer. But now that he’s released albums more or less consistently since 1998, the question is this: Why isn’t the world beating a path to Nelson’s door to record his songs? As evidenced by his latest effort, EXCITING OPPORTUNITY (Freedom), Nelson’s recordings are modest, craggy-voiced roots-rock affairs that don’t aspire to MTV stardom; it’s his songwriting that takes the leading role. If you want to venture into crowd-pleasing, Texas-name-dropping territory, look elsewhere: These are works of depth and consequence, of life’s mistakes and—as the ironic title suggests—lessons learned. Nelson’s work is ambitious, and though not everything succeeds, the wins far outnumber the losses. “Do Not Appear Surprised” and “Overnight Sensation” are both memorable love letters, one urgent, the other grateful. And there’s an unnamed longing running throughout. “Perfect String” grasps for sense from life, while “If You Name a Thing It Dies” knows the maturity it takes to let go: “If you take it in/And make it yours/It’s not what it was anymore.”
YPPAH
Ninja Tune
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Artists like Dallas’s MC 900 Ft. Jesus (all the rage in the early nineties) and current acts like Austin’s D:Fuse have always dotted the state, yet Texas has barely had a foot in the door of the electronic music scene. While superbly envisioned and created, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AT ALL TIMES (Ninja Tune), the debut from Houston’s YPPAH (a.k.a. Joe Corrales), is unlikely to change this. It’s not his fault—there’s a geographic anonymity to electronica, and while Yppah (pronounced “Yippah”) incorporates hip-hop influences, his entrancing work sounds no more like Houston than, say, Prefuse 73’s sounds like Georgia. Yppah spent his early years as a bassist and guitarist before entering the deejay world (where he mashed up such artists as OutKast and Ted Nugent); now he’s broadening his scope. Blending a multitude of organic sounds (samples, fat bass, guitar arrangements) over low-fi and minimal beats, he keeps the twitches and blips that derail so much of this music to a minimum. Instead, the album flows from one gorgeous, layered orchestration to another. The lack of lyrics inevitably lends a sameness to the tracks, but Yppah’s subtleties continually draw you back in.
Jonathan Meiburg
Jonathan Meiburg
The Austin ornithologist and rocker has enchanted audiences with the lush, intense music of his band Shearwater. Thanks to the group’s recent signing with the independent label Matador, its 2006 album, Palo Santo, is getting the reissue treatment (with previously unreleased tracks).
How did the band end up on Matador? I wish I had a good story. I e-mailed [label co-owner and current Austin resident] Gerard [Cosloy], and to my complete astonishment he wrote me back in, like, fifteen minutes and said, “Send me a record.”
You rerecorded some songs. We remade half the record. We weren’t satisfied with our own performances on the other version. It seems like something you’re not supposed to do, like going back to high school.
You and bandmate Will Sheff are both in another group, Okkervil River. While you used to share songwriting duties in Shearwater, it has become primarily your band. For Palo Santo, I had all these songs, and we thought, “You know, these all just go together. Let’s just do these.” And since then, the bands have diverged even more. It’s been very natural.
Yet you still perform and tour with both bands. How do you manage? With great difficulty.
Palo Santo: Jonathan Meiburg, published by Matador.
