Albums Of The Year So Far (pt.4): Featuring Cory Branan, Springsteen, GravelRoad, Howlin Rain and more…

Can stand the Rain: Rowley rates the Howlin ones

We asked various members of the Classic Rock team to come up with their Top Five Albums Of The Year So Far. We’ve already had selections from Sleazegrinder, Geoff Barton and Henry Yates. Now it’s Scott Rowley’s turn to list his five (well, er… four, actually) faves.

This is, I swear, a real conversation from the CR office:

“Albums? I don’t listen to albums any more! I’m down wiff da kidz!”

“Me too. And I don’t read novels any more either. I just read the beginning and the end. And the dirty bits.”

“You ever read any of them books without pictures?”

“No way. Why would I do that? I’m looking for a fully immersive multi-media experience – why would I close myself off from that?”

Beyond the piss-taking, one thing’s for sure – it’s changing times. The album is dead on its feet. Of the albums on my list, there are probably only two that I genuinely play from start to finish.

1. Cory Branan – Mutt

On my way to Download this year I got stuck in a traffic jam and ended up taking three hours to drive 15 miles. All I had in the car was a copy of Mutt and Howlin Rain’s The Russian Winds.

I got to know them both pretty well. I already liked Mutt – the song Survivor’s Blues, a rollicking Replacements-style rocker had stuck in my head; I’d arranged for Badman to appear on the CR website; I’d been threatened with a ban from Facebook for posting a picture of the album sleeve… but sitting in the car I had time to read the lyrics, and soak it all up: the Mellencamp/Summer Of ’69 pastiche/tribute of Yesterday (“I was cranking up the Mellencamp/You were dancing barefoot on a picnic table and/Dammit girl truly goddammit girl truly goddammit girl truly goddam”), The Snowman‘s drunken jazz, Darken My Door‘s pretty country, the better-than-Tom-Petty’s-done-for-years Hold Me Down.

If you like rock’s writers, tunesmiths and craftsmen – Westerberg, Ryan Adams, Mellencamp, Petty, Waits, Springsteen – then you have a new favourite artist. And if anyone writes better lyrics than the Raymond-Carver-rewrites-Born-To-Run Survivor’s Blues this year, I’ll be astonished. (“She struggled to read his knuckle tattoos/Beneath the ring and the scar/But the left said LOVE and the right said TRUE/She said, Please say you got a car…”)

Classic Rock

Albums Of The Year So Far (pt.1): Featuring Brian Jonestown Massacre, Mighty High, Mid-day Veil, First Aid Kit and more…

Kevin Overdose and (background) Jesse D'Stills of Mighty High: one of Sleazegrinder's top choices

We asked various members of the Classic Rock team to come up with their Top Five Albums Of The Year So Far. First up it’s the sultan of sleaze, aka Sleazegrinder, with a quintet of surprisingly un-sleazy choices…

5. Brian Jonestown Massacre – Aufheben (A Records)

Frisco trip-rockers BJM, as I call ‘em when my typewtriting fingers hurt, were major contenders in the 90s psychedelic wars. As documented in the engaging and frequently hair-raising documentary Dig!, their chief nemeses were the Dandy Warhols (who, coincidentally, also have a spiffy new record out!).

While Jonestown had/has a druggy death-guru upfront (Anton Newcombe) and the willingness to take ‘experimental’ to Amon Duul-ish heights of foolishness, the Dandies had a hit song (Bohemian Like Me), nicer faces, and they didn’t prematurely end their shows in a flurry of fists nearly as often. And really, once the Flaming Lips found that hamster ball, it was all over anyway. So, Anton and co gave up the fame game and went underground. Deep underground. Like, Berlin.

That’s where they’re based now, and anything goes over there. Just ask Bowie. There have been sporadic releases in the past decade, but this is the first one in awhile that Anton seems willing to push, and it’s well worth the (erm) dig.

Essentially, it’s a series of ragas, buzzy and hypnotic, suggesting disco snakecharmers and the sweat and blood of metaphysical 70s westerns like El Topo and I Will Walk Like A Crazy Horse. Plus there’s lots of bird calls. I haven’t had anything heavier than an aspirin for decades, but this is one loopy, woozy, sofa-sinking horsepill of a record. Way groovy.

Classic Rock