Paste Magazine June/July 2010 : Page 73
PAUL WELLER MARY GAUTHIER SIA DEER TICK SAMANTHA CRAIN N E W M U S I C PAUL WELLER Wake Up the Nation YEP ROC RELEASE DATE: JUNE 1 A wake-up call from the godfather “Get your face outta Facebook and turn off the phone,” Paul Weller commands on his 10th solo album,Wake Up the Nation. From any other artist entering his third decade in rock ’n’ roll, such an imperative would likely sound more than a touch curmudgeonly. But coming from The Jam’s head rabble-rouser and The Style Council’s main sophisticate, the line becomes a battle cry, and Weller is prepared to lead by example. As he enters his 50s, Weller has softened neither his music nor his ambitions, and Nation proves to be his most invigorated and wide-ranging album in years. The songs brim with surly ideas, from the bombastic sound-track rock of “Aim High” and the shape-shifting suite “Trees” to the mod hip-shake of “Grasp & Still Connect.” It’s boisterous and often too busy, but never boring. All punks should age this well. STEPHEN M. DEUSNER 8.0 MARY GAUTHIER The Foundling RAZOR & TIE RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW Lost and found Mary Gauthier is a natural-born yarn-spinner, and her latest album— an autobiographical account of childhood abandonment and failed past luminaries. Too-brief forays into disco (“You’ve Changed”) and pop rock (“Bring Night” and “Stop Trying”) would have benefited from collaborators other than Strokes guitarist Nick Valensi and The Bird and the Bee's Greg Kurstin; “Clap Your Hands” is a tamer version of any given Rapture track, and “Hurting Me Now” sounds like a Lily Allen B-side. Sia's ostensible rebirth falls apart once We Are Born detours to bleak balladry with “I'm In Here,” a pale imitation of her big claim to fame. CHRISTINA LEE 5.0 DEER TICK The Black Dirt Sessions PARTISAN RECORDS RELEASE DATE: JUNE 8 Intimations of mortality reconciliation—is quintes-sential Gauthier: tender and pained, yet ultimately harmonious. The subject matter is gloomy, but warm acoustic melodies and her grainy twang of-fer an inescapable charm. The title track plays like a mournful French cabaret; meanwhile, on “Mama Here, Mama Gone,” lonely piano notes reinforce Gauthier's tale of being "orphaned in limbo" by her mother at "St. Vincent's Infants Home." On “March 11, 1962,” 48-year old Gauthier plays out her side of a telephone conversation with her long-estranged birth mother: "You say that you love me, but I'm a secret you can't tell." On The Foundling, the songwriter’s pain is the listener’s prize. DAN HYMAN 7.5 SIA We Are Born MONKEY PUZZLE/JIVE RELEASE DATE: JUNE 22 Barely breathing Sia must be eager to distance herself from “Breathe Me,” the wounded piano medita-tion made famous by Six Feet Under. Though a far cry from her mid-tempo Muzak of 2008, fifth studio LP We Are Born is as mild-tempered as most '90s Top 40 pop, lacking the sexual innuendo and oomph of her label Jive Records' After two albums of wily, adolescent country, Rhode Island’s Deer Tick hits adulthood—and all the heartbreak and fear of mortality that comes with it—hard on these ragged, shadowy bal-lads. John McCauley III’s fiberglass croak couldn’t sound further from Neil Young’s whimper, but The Black Dirt Sessions is this band's After the Goldrush, stuffed with devastating songs laid bare by weathered, redemption-seeking renegades. In the brood-ing “Twenty Miles,” Mc-Cauley howls, “If you’ve lost your way, I’m seeing you through” with my-time-here-is-limited angst; crawling piano dirge “Goodbye, Dear Friend” is hauntingly intimate (“You carry on … in the unmade bed you slept in, where I laid you down to rest one last time”). Only swamp-rocker “Mange” quickens the pace. Dirt is pensive, painful stuff, tougher than leather and rawer than a bleeding steak— but that's life, right? JUSTIN JACOBS 8.2 SAMANTHA CRAIN You (Understood) RAMSEUR RECORDS RELEASE DATE: JUNE 8 Unbalanced memories On her sophomore full-length release, Oklahoma-based singer/songwriter Samantha Crain takes an 11-song glance over her young shoulder, each track the result of an interaction with a particular person, time and place. Not sur-prisingly, You (Understood) isn’t exactly cohesive, scurrying from the wistful bounce of “Blueprints” to fuzzed-out guitars on broken-heart anthem “Two-Sidedness,” but Crain more than compensates with sheer earnest-ness. Like a prairie-bred, meat-and-potatoes Joanna Newsom, Crain’s vocals are quivering, emotive and visceral. They shine when layered over the sparse beauty of “We Are the Same,” but fall a bit short when fighting through the guitar licks and wonky time signatures of “Tooth-picks.” You (Understood) is a musical scrapbook of memories—the snapshots are just a little out-of-focus. LIZ STINSON 7.3 JUNE | JULY 2010 73 !Paul Weller photo by Dean Chalkley
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