Jeff McCord on the month’s new releases
Dana Falconberry
2:59
Dana Falconberry came to Austin from Michigan by way of Hendrix College, in Conway, Arkansas, but you’d be hard-pressed to detect any geographic traces in her music. Like other new singers with an old-world charm (Jolie Holland, Jenny Owen Youngs), Falconberry makes music that seems to spring from an unnamed place and time. Oh Skies of Grey (2:59) has a vague gothicism, a thirties-pop feel, a deep blues vibe, and even a trio of female voices conjuring the sound of the Roche (or Andrews) sisters. Plus, Falconberry mixes in a contemporary sensibility; the production is eccentric and ranges from delicate acoustics to brittle, distorted power chords. All this has the potential to add up to a mess, but Falconberry seals the deal. From the furious swing of “Love Will Never Leave You Alone” and the sad blues of “Satin Dress” to the easy shuffle of “Do You,” she charms her way through the witty and varied material with her thin but beguiling voice. As with other records that require some patience at the outset, her album ultimately yields big rewards.
Roy Hargrove
Emarcy
Waco-born trumpeter Roy Hargrove began recording as a bandleader back in 1990, though as a sideman his forceful yet crystalline tones had caught jazz fans’ ears even earlier. When he signed with Verve Records, in 1993, he became a bit of a dabbler: He did an all-star tenor saxophone project here, a Charlie Parker tribute there, sessions with strings, some soul/funk with the RH Factor band, even a Grammy-winning venture into Cuban music. Though eminently listenable, these were all characterized by a certain restraint. In his role as a chameleon, Hargrove never found the ease he’d had blowing it out in a club. Nothing Serious, in 2006, put him back in a straight jazz setting, but Earfood (Emarcy) goes one step further, landing him in the studio with his working quintet and capturing a fiery, sonically powerful, spontaneous feel. A few of his originals seem to meander, and the set is too ballad-heavy, but as Hargrove and band step forward on “I’m Not So Sure,” “Mr. Clean,” and a live version of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home to Me,” they lose all semblance of understatement, settle in, and show us how it’s done.
Okkervil River
Jagjaguwar
Cut Will Sheff and he bleeds words: big, lofty, expository words—and more than enough of them in the case of the 2007 recording sessions with his Austin band Okkervil River, which resulted in an extra album of songs. The Stand Ins (Jagjaguwar) is billed as a sequel to 2007’s The Stage Names, and in some respects this is accurate: The releases share a similar sound—full, thrilling, emotionally bare—and even the artwork builds on itself. Yet while the material for Stage Names had an uncharacteristic lightness of being, Stand Ins is made of darker stuff; there’s nothing here quite as funny as “Plus Ones” or as exuberant as “Unless It’s Kicks.” Sheff, sounding like a wounded animal, turns a kiss-off in “Singer Songwriter” into a painful, stinging betrayal, while in “Pop Lie” he blasts the disingenuous allure of . . . someone? Something? He’s not telling. And only Sheff could transform a simple tale of keeping a band together—“Lost Coastlines,” an apt duet with recently departed bandmate (and Shearwater front man) Jonathan Meiburg—into an epic send-off to sea. “We have lost our way,” they confess, “but no one will say it outright.”
Hayes Carll
The 32-year-old singer-songwriter grew up in the Woodlands. His third album, Trouble in Mind (Lost Highway), was released to rave reviews in April, and he has been working nonstop ever since. He just filmed a video of his hit “She Left Me for Jesus.”
You started out playing covers in Crystal Beach and your own songs at Galveston’s Old Quarter cafe.
I was learning a lot from two different schools, the first being Crystal Beach: This is how you entertain a crowd for four hours, how you keep from getting beaten up, how you learn the honky-tonk trade. Playing in Galveston, I thought, “Maybe I have an aptitude for this.” I met other songwriters and [learned] how to entertain people who are actually listening.
The new album is doing well.
And the crowds are getting better. I’m definitely feeling a difference in my life.
“She Left Me for Jesus” is a song in the Randy Newman mold—its joke might be lost on those not paying attention.
There are people who are upset by it. For a while I was kind of hung up on it, but then I realized, look, this is funny, it’s not blasphemous. It’s making fun of the guy who is a borderline racist, intolerant redneck. If people don’t get that, then I’m not going to lose sleep over it.
