Nightswimming #5: 07/11/24-07/18/24

Three certified Back Porch Records and More!

Highly Recommend! (best of the week)

Charm - Clairo (Clairo Records LLC)

Claire “Clairo” Cottrill has established herself as the Chief Alchemist when it comes to distilling and bottling the sound of a dim lamp-lit bedroom on a rainy morning. Clairo may not have been the first, but she has become a pioneer in the Bedroom Indie umbrella (I hesitate to choose between Bedroom Pop and Bedroom Folk). In a departure, however, from her Bedroom Pop/Folk peers, Clairo leans heavily on practical instruments and live-in-the-studio performances, as opposed to synthy drumpads and loops. On 2021’s Sling, she is credited with 11 distinct instruments, and producer Jack Antonoff is credited with 18. Antonoff also conducted a small strings and woodwinds ensemble. Before that, on 2019’s Immunity, it was superproducer Rostam Batmanglij sharing 21 instrument credits with the singer.

Charm spreads the instrumental love around with New York City soul/funk/jazz group The El Michels Affair backing up Clairo through the entire album. As a result, Charm goes down a deep soul path that borders on jazz and even yacht rock at times, while digging in on the folky cabin-in-the-woods sound of Sling.

Clairo’s signature breathy mezzo-soprano voice, double- and quadruple-tracked like an Elliot Smith record, acts as the sonic hitching post at which the instruments are tethered, some with longer leads than others. The El Michaels Affair sews such a rich rhythmic quilt that Clairo’s revolving door of novelty keys—classic piano, a Mellotron, a Wurlitzer—are elevated to a great height.

The first 2 tracks deliver the signature Clairo sound within the context of an upbeat soul record, but then the group branches out beyond that to experiment with styles and sounds. “Second Nature” with its backing vocal “dum-dum”s, the singer giggling in the intro, and the lilting woodwinds in the outro feels like a lost track from Paul McCartney’s RAM. In fact, a lot of Charm evokes that early solo McCartney/Wings sound—bouncy little ditties with a farmhouse cottage quality. In other places, Charm brings a head-on Yacht Rock sound. Thank You and Terrapin, back-to-back in the middle of the album, sound like something that Ambrosia or early Hall & Oates would have gotten heavy radio play with. Tracks like Echo and Pier 4 evoke a Laurel Canyon sort of sound with Mama Cass Elliot vocals and The Doors-style psychedelic organ. The sound of the record is distinct and clear, but the band puts on costumes on each track.

It really can’t be overstated how much the diverse and tight instrumentation brings to this record. This is an instant Back Porch Classic, and another perfect addition to a so-far extremely impressive discography for Claire Cottrill.

Highlights: Second Nature, Terrapin, Echo

Passage du Desir - Johnny Blue Skies (High Top Mountain/Thirty Tigers)

The plan for Sturgill Simpson was “5 Albums and Out”. 2021’s The Ballad of Dood & Juanita marked Numero Cinco for the man—that is, of course if you don’t count the Cuttin’ Grass twins, which are compilations of his catalog re-recorded with a bluegrass band. And so Passage du Desir is not a Sturgill Simpson album. It’s the debut from Johnny Blue Skies. Simpson is just the latest of many musicians to employ an alter ego, ranging from the iconic (David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust) to the bizarre (David Johansen’s Buster Poindexter) to the sad (Garth Brooks’s Chris Gaines).

But Simpson isn’t just having fun and playing dress-up. He really cut town, dropped his name, and moved to Paris, where the locals on the Beaumarchais adore him as Johnny Blue Skies. I won’t just recap the GQ interview that Simpson did with Colin Groundwater, but you should read the entire thing. It’s a fascinating look at starting over, pursuing freedom, and running to something rather than running from something. And you can hear all of that in the lyrics and the sound.

Located in the Strasbourg-St. Denis neighborhood of Paris, the Passage du Desir is an enclosed private alleyway tunnel nestled between a barber shop and a Tandoori kebab restaurant. It is For Residents Only. The wooden doors of the façade, featured on the album’s cover, are busted up and the paint is fading. The Passage itself is an apt metaphor for the album. It evokes the old while providing safe egress to the new.

Passage du Desir is equal parts Jimmy Buffett and Gram Parsons, with an added layer of “coastal country” or “Gulf Western”—that Kenny Chesney/Darius Rucker/Zac Brown boozy country sound that only artists from the Eastern Seaboard can seem to nail. There’s something that unites all country music written near oceans. Maybe it’s the pedal steel guitar, maybe it’s the bongos, maybe it’s the faint ghost of marimba, but it all evokes the image of waves crashing up against an old eroded stone war tower. Real pirate music. Tales of the Great Rum Runners type shit.

From the Wurlitzer-driven orchestra swells of “Jupiter’s Faerie”, a heart-wrenching track about a long lost friend who took their own life, to the drunken sing-a-long Flip-Flop Escapism of Scooter Blues, Passage du Desir is a veritable feast of country-adjacent genres, though none stray terribly far from the Sturgill Simpson of days past. In its efficient 8 tracks and 41 minutes, the album even plays like an old LP—4 tracks per “side” with the final track on each being longer and looser. The only miss is the Springsteen pastiche “Right Kind of Dream”, and that’s only because it’s too dissimilar sonically that it feels misplaced, though I would happily welcome a Sturgill Springsteen album.

Lyrically, Simpson’s albums have always felt like a captain’s log from a neck-breaking journey through time and space, and he continues the entries with Johnny Blue Skies. The themes of breaking through some sort of membrane and acting out of freedom are even more real knowing the context of Simpson chasing liberation in France.

“Pull the wax out of my ears, tie me to the mast headlong / My heart's free of fear, so let me hear that siren song”. Sturgill Simpson is no stranger to Back Porch Records, and he’s passed the torch to Johnny Blue Skies.

Highlights: Jupiter’s Faerie, Who I Am, One for the Road

Live Vol. 1 - Billy Strings (Billy Strings Records/Reprise)

Since the first time I saw Billy Strings live, June 16^th 2022, I have been waiting for a perfect example of his live performances to share with friends. Like all jambands (or Musicians Who Jam, as I think Billy would reject the jamband tag) not every moment of every show is spectacular. Further, not every recording is that high quality, even if you’ve got the files directly from the soundboard. Sure, you can find almost every Grateful Dead or Phish show on Relisten or Internet Archive, but a good handful of them are going to be recorded by a stoned wook with a handheld tape recorder. And god bless those stoned wooks for the work they’ve done! But it isn’t always the best way to excite an outsider.

Billy Strings Live Vol. 1 is a fantastic representation of time and place. Recorded across 6 U.S. cities and one in France from late 2023-early 2024, Vol. 1 showcases what Billy Strings and his quartet do best—exceed all expectations in a way that genuinely makes you question anything you’ve seen before. I promise that whatever you thought bluegrass was or could be, you just have no idea. And neither did I.

I say without pause or qualification, Billy Strings is the single best live act in America right now. Since 2022 I have seen Billy and his quartet—Jarrod Walker on mandolin, Alex Hargreaves on fiddle, Royal Masat on standup bass, and Billy Failing on banjo, all 4 on backing vocals—5 times. Each time after the first, I went in knowing that I would have a spiritual experience, and each time I was still shocked. These boys play not only some of the tightest 100-year-old bluegrass standards, but Billy’s songwriting prowess in his originals is on full display as those tunes are often used as jam vehicles.

The album opens appropriately with Billy’s most famous song, Dust in a Baggie, a tune about getting arrested for methamphetamine as a teenager. If you’re unfamiliar with Billy’s story, it is truly amazing and a testament to his strength, as well as the healing power of music. He and his parents were all addicted to methamphetamine and opiates by the time he was a pre-teen, but his father was an accomplished bluegrass musician and Billy cites that influence and that of other musicians for pulling him out of the darkness.

The album balances between traditional bluegrass standards (or Billy originals that sound traditional) like Reuben’s Train and Hellbender, and longer blown-out spacey rock songs like Highway Hypnosis and Turmoil & Tinfoil.

Live Vol. 1 is an outstanding introduction to bluegrass, and a great current document of Billy Strings and his sound. If you listen to absolutely nothing else that I ever recommend on this newsletter, please listen to Away From The Mire. And please join me at a Missouri show, or invite me to your city to go along :)

Worth a Listen! (good to very good)

Lost in a Dream - Cassandra Lewis (A Low Country Sound/Elektra)

Every sonic choice on this record, from the clean, quiet guitars to the drums played exclusively with brushes, is made in service to Cassandra Lewis’s voice. And once you hear her voice, you understand exactly why.

Lost in a Dream, produced by the brilliant Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton’s Traveller, Strugill Simpson’s MetaModern Sounds, John Prine’s Tree of Forgiveness…the list is enormous), is a straight-ahead Americana/soul country record. The instrumentals are warm and familiar. The themes are evergreen. But Cassandra Lewis’s voice is the hero, the centerpiece, the engine, and the whole point. Every new chorus knocks you on your ass, and every new bridge gives you chills. Somewhere between Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Adele, sprinkled with Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, Cassandra Lewis has one of the most powerful and effecting voices I’ve ever heard.

I’m sorry to continue beating this drum, but this is the 4th straight Back Porch Record in this week’s issue.

Highlights: Too Much, I Surrender, More Like Mama

Unwell - Be Safe (Count Your Lucky Stars Records)

Unwell is exactly what you want in a post-rock/emo record: big guitars, a disaffected vocalist delivering heavy lyrics, and 9 tracks at a square 30 minutes. There’s a familiarity in the way Be Safe sounds. I would say it’s because I grew up and live in the Midwest, but they’re from Maryland. It must be that there’s some uniting force in all shoegazey sadcore of a certain kind. It’s an album for staring out the window while your plans get rained out. It’s an album for driving down the highway late at night to slip a love letter under your crush’s windshield wiper.

As I’m writing this, I’m learning that this album came out in January and not last Friday. My research is imperfect and, frankly, it’s my blog and I’ll do what I want. So fuck it, I’m including this one because I like it.

Highlights: Replaceable Man, Dark Cloud

Evolve - Phish (Phish)

I’ve spent the last ~18 months trying to “get” Phish. Grateful Dead was natural for me, as they had a lot of ties to the classic rock and blues world that I grew up on. But Phish never synthesized for me—and the two really aren’t that similar at all, beyond their penchant for jammy live shows.

I’ve finally got about a dozen or more Phish tunes that I really enjoy from their plentiful live shows on streaming services. I’ve had the great displeasure in this 18 months to interact with many Phish Phans online. Each and every one of them tells me that True Phans do not give a shit about the studio albums. They just see them as sometimes-fuel but mostly-obstacles to the enjoyment of the live shows. In other words, washed up 53 year olds who went to UGA and “tripped so hard at Conventry” don’t care about anything outside of their favorite Chalk Dust Torture jams.

Well, dammit! I do care about Phish’s studio albums! Because it’s where a lot of those great live songs came from! And I think Evolve is really fun. It has hits and misses, goofy shit and deadly serious guitar playing, ups and downs—JUST LIKE *GASP* a FUCKING live Phish show!!! (Sorry, the people online have really gotten to me).

Fun stuff that I’m excited to see some of on July 30th and 31st at Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis, Missouri. Trey, if you’re reading this please play Reba or Bathtub Gin.

Highlights: Evolve, Life Saving Gun, Valdese

Hot Singles in Your Area!

Here are some great singles that dropped in the last week.

• The Fences of Stonehenge - Wild Pink (a big 90’s alt-rock, Springsteen-y upbeat thang with some wild organ sounds, album out October 4th)

• In The Night - Childish Gambino feat. Jorja Smith (a second decent Gambino single has hit the blog, album out July 19th)

• Summer All Over Again - Chastity (upbeat pop-punky grungey thang with classic pop-punk vocals, album out September 13th)

• Epic Season Finale - Combat (indie rock with a heavy edge, I think the singer is like 20 years old? Album out August 16th, looking forward to this one)

• Chicago - Japandroids (lead single from their farewell album, October 18th. Japandroids completely missed me but every white man I know was beating down my door when this dropped. Including it because y’all scare me.)

Music Moment of the Week

Charli XCX saying she wants to “make a Lou Reed record”, which is something I need in a medical sense. The entire piece from Billboard’s Kristin Robinson is outstanding, but this was a highlight for me.