James McMurtry – We Can’t Make It Here
In a couple of weeks, the Oxford American will publish its 16th annual Southern Music issue. This year, the focus will be on the musical heritage of Texas — from Waylon Jennings to Ornette Coleman via Willie Nelson, Buddy Holly and the magazine’s cover stars, Guy and Susanna Clark. Among those featured on the accompanying 25-song CD is James McMurtry, the Texan-Virginian hybrid who has been recording since the late 80s and, after a six year gap, will release a new album, Complicated Game, early next year. This track hails from 2005’s Childish Things, his most politically hard-knuckled record, which scored album of the year at the Americana awards in 2006. Named best song of the 2000s by legendary music critic Robert Christgau, We Can’t Make It Here takes aim at the villains of modern America – George W Bush and the Iraq war and Walmart – and though the cast may have changed over the last decade, its remarkable how little the landscape has shifted. What I particularly love about it is McMurtry’s voice, running like a dry riverbed through the music’s rich southern rock landscape: “Will work for food, will die for oil/Will kill for power and to us the spoils,” he sings. “The billionaires get to pay less tax/The working poor get to fall through the cracks.”
Natalie Prass – Why Don’t You Believe In Me
Over in Richmond, Virginia, Spacebomb describe themselves as “a house band, a unified crew of arrangers and musicians, artists, scribes, vibe-gardeners and businessmen” as much as a record label. The result is records that sound crafted by a community, that have depth and weight, such as last year’s stunning debut album Big Inner by the label’s founder, Matthew E White. Early next year they’ll bring us Natalie Prass. Cleveland-born, Virginia-reared, and educated at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, Prass dropped out and moved to Nashville. While we’ve heard snippets already, this track is my favourite to be released so far. Recalling the sludgy soul of early 70s Fame and Stax, it shows the range of Prass’s voice as it moves out from the shadows to catch the light, and back to shade again. A gorgeous thing.
Bedhead – Exhume
Over the course of around five years in the 90s, Bedhead, a five-piece from Wichita Falls, Texas, released three albums and a clutch of EPs and singles. They slip somewhere between the cracks of slowcore and post-rock, but what they excel at is finely composed, structured and arranged songs. Now collected in a deluxe reissue set by Numero, Bedhead’s long-overlooked records sound remarkably contemporary. This song appears on their third album, the Steve Albini-produced Transaction de Novo, beginning carefully, delicately, then gathering itself over the course of four minutes. A slow lead-in to a very beautiful record.
Houndmouth – For No One
I loved Houndmouth’s debut, and this track, released in the lead-up to their second record, sounds like they’ve garnered a lot of confidence since then. It’s their vocals I love most, and the way they seem so married to the aimless desperation of their lyrics. It’s a quality I’ve always admired in Ian Felice of the Felice Brothers too: a voice that sounds lost and unshaven, as if it’s just woken up shaking after a three-day bender on cheap whiskey. And yet there’s defiance there too, a gust of hope in its chorus, rising up between its ashen and dishevelled verses.
Washington Phillips – What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?
Since Texan musicians have been the thread through this week’s playlist, here’s a contribution from Freestone County, in the east of the state. It’s not a new track, but one that I love, and that seems to particularly suit this rainy sweep of autumn. A few years ago, Mississippi Records released Washington Phillips, a gospel performer who recorded just 18 songs between 1927 and 1929 – only 16 of which survive. Debate has surrounded the instrument he plays as he sings – is it a celestaphone? A dolceola? A phonoharp? Or something homemade and particular to Phillips? Whatever it may be, it sounds magical.
