Bill Mallonee has long been one of my most favorite song-writers. I was first exposed to him through his band Vigilantes of Love. I remember reading about them in an issue of No Depression magazine, which at the time was my preferred music reading rag because I was deep into the alt-country scene. Me and my buddy Clay would go to Tower Records every month or so and I would pick up the latest copy. The record they were writing about in this case was Audible Sigh and it said all the things I wanted to hear in a record.
When looking at the metadata associated with Bill and with VoL you'll probably see things like Contemporary Christian and Christian and Religious. To me that is a stretch. Those genres are the compilation discs you see advertised late at night on Fox News where you see people in the crowd swaying their arms and singing along to incredibly bland and lyrics. I have no problem with an artist exploring his faith, to each his own, right? Bill Mallonee does explore his faith deeply but not in an insulting or overt or pushy way. He's a man who has faith and is struggling with it, struggling with the day to day challenges of life, and using his faith to get through it. The songs are often questioning, looking at the hardships of life and how we get through them in our own ways. It's exhilarating song-writing.
I had a chance to meet Bill very briefly at a show he did with VoL at Iota in Arlington VA. It's a small club, very intimate. I remember the crowd was not that big, but he and his band put on a great show. He was a great presence on stage; he looked a bit nerdy but he commanded the stage with tics and hand waves and tilts of his head. After the show he and the band were selling their merchandise in the lobby. Usually I am very shy in these scenarios but I bucked up and bought a VoL tee-shirt, which I still proudly wear. What I remember most is the genuineness with which Bill thanked me for coming out and taking a tee shirt home. I always try to buy something at a show, especially for bands that are out there working hard doing their thing maybe struggling from show to show.
Bill records under his own name now. He's been doing a long-running series of download-only recordings he calls Works Progress Administration. I urge you to check them out and if you can download one or two. They feature his and his wife on all instruments. I have downloaded several of them. Right now I have "Heaven In Your Heart"/WPA 18 playing. That's the last one I got and two more have come out since then. Right now "(I'm Always) The Last To Know" is playing. It's typically great. Here's a taste of the lyrics:
There's a place out here where the sky gets clear and tired world holds it's breath the light finds a curve undisturbed and that whisper...it's either God or death
His music is a challenge against the difficulties of life. And there is always grains of hope in the trials. Sometimes that's all we need. And sometimes's that all the music needs.
Here's Bill doing the title track form the record that first caught my ear:
One of the many cool things about buying vinyl exclusively is finding little 7" singles. Artists use these to release special things (like when I wrote about Record Store Day) or just a way to release odds and ends or just getting something cool out there. Here's some 7" singles I've gotten in the past few months.
Birth of the Pipesnakes by The FED - Truth be told I know these guys and I had the true honor of playing a gig with The FED last night. Happily they were selling copies of their vinyl and I was more than happy to snatch up a copy. They are a great local DC band that do a kind of swamp-boogie-thing. I describe them as Kings of Leon before Kings of Leon started to suck. Their live show definitely makes you move. My favorite track off of this is the first cut on side A, "'83," just a great piece of dirty rock n roll. The rest of it is plenty great to.
"Criminal Fingers"/"The Bear and the Maiden Fair" by The Hold Steady - This was a 2013 Record Store Day buy (actually I cheated and bought it on eBay). The A side is a mellow track called "Criminal Fingers" but it's the B side that is the real jewel: their imagining of "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" from Game of Thrones. The National did something similar with "The Rains of Castamere," keeping to the morose and sad spirit of that track. The Hold Steady do their thing here, bringing their classic exuberance and energy to a fun song. I am going to try to talk my band into covering this!
"Southern Comfort"/"Stars" by Æges. A great progressive metal band from California, leaning more toward the prog side but with plenty of heaviness. They are made up of guys from Pelican, Undertow and Rise (amongst other bands). They do the de-tuned guitar thing but have a great sense of melody and happily the singer sings and doesn't grunt or snarl. The first side is a cut off their great record The Bridge. The back side is a great unreleased tune called "Stars." It has great dynamics with heavy sections broken with mellower spots connected by a great pop sensibility when it kicks into it's groove.
"Deny The Absolute"/"The Truce" by Pelican - Speaking of Pelican, they are another great progressive leaning metal band. Where Æges has vocals, Pelican keeps it to instrumentals. These are two new tracks off their forthcoming record. Like I keep preaching, I love melody, and these guys have a sure grasp of it. The A-side is a great stomper; you can bang your head but not so much that you break your neck. The B-side is a great acoustic-based number, a really nice touch from a normally heavy sounding band. They are playing DC9 in November...I already have my tickets! I bought both this and the Æges record from The Mylene Sheath. Check them out for a lot of interesting proggy metal acts.
Iron Road by The Old 97s - Last and certainly not least is one of my most favorite alt-country acts The Old 97s. This is another Record Store Day get (though they appear to have released it in greater quantities now). Their are two 7" here featuring 4 tracks from 1996. The first disc is a treat because it has the original outlaw himself, Waylon Jennings, taking the lead vocal on "Iron Road" and "The Other Shoe." Waylon's classic voice fits the Old 97s like a glove. Just a perfect slice of outlaw country. The other disc has demo versions of "Visiting Hours" and "Fireflies."
I've been amiss in my musings as of late! My sincerest apologies for that! Despite the absence I can assure you the records continue to spin on the turntable. I have found myself in a harder-rock kind of mindset lately so while the mood has been light the rock has been heavy.
I think it was a tweet that turned me onto a band called True Widow. They are a three-piece from Texas, two guys and a gal. I guess they get lumped into metal but they are more a hard-rock or stoner-rock kind of band. Stoner not in a Black Crowes way but stoner like when Black Sabbath tried to get deep. Sleep is the ultimate stoner-metal outfit but True Widow aren't that heavy. I checked their latest record, Circumambulation, out on Spotify after hearing about it and was just blown away. They make just the kind of heavy sound I dig: it's hard but it grooves, it breathes, it has room. It isn't fast at all, it has space and it powers along with a dynamite sense of melody. Music like this is often described as plodding. But True Widow don't plod; they stride like a giant. They remind me of The Sword but without the silliness and at half-speed. The vocals are strong alternating between boy and girl singing, and sometimes coming together very nicely. The song titles are interesting...tracks like "S:H:S," "I:M:O," and "HW:R" are mixed in with more typical heavy sounding tracks like "Creeper" and "Numb Hand." It's not top 40...if you're looking for something radio friendly this ain't it. But if you like heavy music with a great sense of melody, strong melodic vocals, and great playing, you will like this record. They are coming to town in a few weeks and I plan to be there.
Here's the aforementioned "HW:R." Great track!
Palms are a supergroup of sorts. Not like Blind Faith or even Black Country Communion, but among the art metal set they are pretty high up there. Three-quarters the guys from Isis and one-quarter Chino Moreno from Deftones. The latter I have never really gotten into, but Isis is one of my more favorite of the progressive metal bands. Palms' self-titled debut record is mellower than either of those outfits' work. Art metal...kind of I guess...it's very atmospheric. Take opener "Future Warrior:" during the verses the drums are precise, the bass lines skip around the neck, the guitar weaves in and out and the vocals lay in over the top, then the chorus kicks in and the band locks in tight. This song is pretty emblematic of the record. Moreno does some of the best singing I have heard him do. What I like best about it is the mood it generates. Like True Widow's record it's a great headphone album. Chilling in the dark connecting with the music. Music is all about connection; good music at least. Something you can latch onto. It's lovely, if something classified as metal can use that descriptor. I think it can. Metal doesn't need to always be "Reign In Blood" (though that doesn't hurt!) and huge riffs. Metal can also be stirring, relaxing, something to soothe after the long day. A record that you can unwind to. Palms accomplish that perfectly.
One knock on it, it's a double record, two of the sides having only 1 song, granted they are both nearly 10 minutes long. With vinyl making a resurgence I'd like to see bands start to reign themselves in and get the material to fit a single record. That can be tough because the music is the music and how it comes out is what it is. But I am lazy and don't want to get up to flip and change records every 10 minutes. Rough life, right? Buy the CD and quit complaining! HA!
Here's "Future Warrior:"
Then there is Savannah's Black Tusk. Where as True Widow has an elegant kind of stoner metal and Palms soars like a dream, Black Tusk's latest EP Tend No Wounds hits like a hammer. They are more like fellow Georgians Mastodon than Kylesa (though this record is produced by that band's Phillip Cope). I like good sludge metal; music that's heavy like mud in the bottom register. This EP is heavy and it rocks with the tuned down guitars and has the requisite scary album cover. But then again they use a string section for the great "The Weak and the Wise." I like a metal band that's not afraid to do something like that; it's a nice touch. Vocally it has the usual shouting business but that's fine; even the growly parts which I usually don't like are done singing and not grunting; the singing overall is great and suits the music well. The first time I played the vinyl I played it at 33rpm instead of 45rpm. It took me two minutes to realize it was the wrong speed, though. HA!
Here's "Enemy Of Reason."
All this writing about metal bands lately. I have to admit that's where my taste has been taking me lately. I plan on tuning down one of my guitars and cranking up the distortion to see the heavy kind of tone I can get. Maybe an EP of sludge metal, sounding absolutely nothing like what we do now, is on the way. It's good to keep ones horizons wide! I promise that the next post will be something mellower.
