Iconophobic
Salim Ghazi Saeedi
It's been awhile since I heard from Salim. We fell out of touch like internet friends and associates will do. But falling out of touch with Salim is different than falling out of touch with a musician who lives in L.A. or Paris. Salim lives in Tehran. I was introduced to his music and his budding insight four years ago when he contacted me on MySpace. At that time, I thought he was a brave soul to play such raw, progressive rock music in a country known for its rigid moral laws. He was a young man who had come by some tapes of Nirvana and other western music, fallen in love with it, and along with a couple other guys, created his own rock expression. As we exchanged emails, I came to understand that the American view of Iran is not representative all Iranians' reality. Salim is an intelligent, thoughtful, middle of the road guy just digging some good rock music. What made him so endearing to me was his love of the story of Babel. He wrote to me that after the destruction of Babel, there was only one common word left among the people: Abrahadabra. Music.
So we don't live in similar cultures, but we share music. In fact, all peoples of the world share understanding through music.
Now, fast forward to today. Salim has released fourth body of work. Instead of a collaborative effort that includes his band, Arashk, on album number 4, it's all Salim. He's taken it into the studio to create and release a one-man piece of art. And let me tell you! It is ART. It is a musical dialogue from the front lines of one of the most enigmatic countries in the world as told through the creative spirit of a young Iranian man trapped in oppression he can't freely overcome. It is the psychological fear, rage and pain of a manufactured culture that has crushed the beauty of one of the loveliest, most significant cultures in the history of the world. Salim brings it to the rest of the world with “Iconophobic.”I love the title of the album because my visuals of Iran are that of posters and paintings of clerics and leaders and anti-American murals. But the title also stirs my own distaste for iconography. ...bumper stickers that push skewed politics, religious statues of the tortured Jesus that are meant to make me feel like shit, flags, flags, flags, billboards of impossibly beautiful and perfectly manufactured men and women pushing the consumer public to buy whatever it takes to be perfect. So like music, the human race holds iconography in common. We let it lead us and crush us. I think this is what Salim's body of work means to me. It is a concept album in the highest order. It mixes classical, rock, jazz and Persian music to create a mish mash of pain, longing and anger. You have to turn it on and listen to the whole thing to really get it.
The music swirls with the suggestions of cartoons, circuses and total multi-media sensory overload. This is a stream of conscious story without words. An agitated desire for truth played against the sounds of combat and world culture. It's as if Salim tuned into some world satellite and channel surfed the entire planet in search of an escape from the smoke and mirrors of religious and political control. The audiophile will call this “experimental” rock, but there is something much more profound at work here because the artist doesn't have the open freedom to explore his rich psyche out in the open. There are no words to taunt the establishment, but a seasoned listener will hear the message loud and clear, sit back and smile at Salim's triumph.
Only serious audiophiles need to go here. “Iconophobic” will inspire the listener the way Kurt Cobain inspired Salim. Without information freely given, the visceral heart of the creator will serendipitously change you.
Stave Magazine: CD Reviews
Tips and Compliments
Matt Harlan
I LOVE this album. I love it like I loved John Gorka's early works. Those perfect slices of small time American life. We eventually coined the term, “Americana” and applied it to this brand of country/folk/rock music. As the years have taken their toll on the sound, Americana has just become another cataloging system at some large CD store. But Matt Harlan delivers a genuine example of Americana with “Tips and Compliments.” He possesses a highly developed songwriting skill, and his vocal quality is somewhere between Gorka and James McMurtry (who is also a favorite of mine).
The songwriting is so well crafted and visual that I get lost in the atmosphere of the story within the song. The production quality is about as perfect as this brand of music can muster. Harlan's vocals are way out front, clear and dry without compression or effects. Next are the textures of guitar where the acoustic is the primary accompaniment. So this artist is head and shoulders above the pack. I'm really wishing he'd left Marshall, Texas with a Texas Music Award under his arm. He really should have because he's up there with Steve Brooks and Danny Santos and Robert Frith, but only one great one can take it home. We can honor Harlan by buying ourselves a copy of “Tips and Compliments.” It's a body of work for smart people.
I was especially drawn to track 3, “Something New” because it resonates with my own small town experience. Like the primary subject of the song, I was one of the brave one who was willing to try something new and leave the comfort of the rural experience. Harlan writes and sings, “What's the use in living if you can't some close to dying?” It's a brutal truth in the small town setting. He sings of older kids who never leave, grow up and befriend the next generation of young kids in order to feel alive and relevant. It's so pointed and true, and therefore a small town anthem for me. However, the whole album is this personal, and more than likely, there's a cut that resonates with any honest listener.
Harlan should transcend the Texas Music label simply because he's too smart and classy not too. I'm not talking a slick kind of class, but a musical class that is a whole package of good songwriting, good music, good singing, and great production without any tricks or treats that hide inadequacies. So if you're serious about singer/songwriters, you must get to know this artist. You will not be disappointed.
The Moorer Sisters - a positive comparison of tragedy in song
Crows - Allsison Moorer
Tears, Lies, and Alibis - Shelby LynneThe Moorer sisters' story is out there and available for anyone to read. Too often it precedes any press about either one of them. Certainly, all artists are a culmination of their past experiences, and Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer express it differently in their music and the perceived ways they move through the world.
Moorer's music is more transparent about the tragic murder suicide she and sister Shelby suffered through as teenagers. In Moorer's music, there is a deep attachment to her mother, who was shot by her estranged father before he turned the gun on himself. Moorer is the younger of the two sisters. She was fourteen at the time. Lynne is the eternal tough girl, hard-ass and mythical party animal. She was 17 when the tragedy happened. Make your conclusions and theories from there. However the past shapes their music, it is ours to cherish because both are at the top of the singer/songwriter game. Similar in some voice quality, both able to rip our emotions open wide and raw, and both strong, capable instrumentalists, as well. We also have to remember that life happens after the teenage years, and those experiences also shape the music of the sisters. The public just isn't as interested in the last twenty years; even though Lynne has had quite a public run with her famous maverick spirit. It's a spirit that consistently produces some of the most listenable and inspiring albums out there. For me, Moorer's a little more mainstream at times, but only in hints. If the music sounds produced to compete with the Nashville machine, then the lyrics flip that city on it's ass. Both Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer released albums in 2010.
Allison Moorer
Moorer's “Crows” is a swelling, emotional trip through grief and loss. The effect the death of her mother has had on her psyche is a strong subject matter. But let's pretend we don't know about her childhood and simply take the recording as a body of work released by a top game singer/songwriter. In that context, the total sense of depression that is usually indescribable is perfectly expressed; especially with the track, “Should I Be Concerned.” It's a song that represents the broken record plea that we all experience in our lives – Those things we say over and over and over because we don't believe anyone is listening. In song, no one can avoid the pain. Moorer really nails the sense of sadness and lack of hope here. She cushions the center of her recording with dreamy reminiscence of her mother, then the record turns and becomes a little more hopeful. I have to say that I love the way Moorer makes me feel bad. I have an attachment to the dark side in art, so she is always a pleaser for me. I don't know why Allison Moorer is more emotionally open in her music than her sister, but she is. Maybe it's her soft, feminine persona. Maybe it's the theatrical tones that are present in this production. I feel like these songs might show up in a Sondheim musical.
To be fair, Shelby Lynne can crack me wide open - tears and misery in spades. But she seems to rely on that steely, wary appearance and what it implies as she makes her music. She also presents as a musical perfectionist. There's no question that she's all business when it comes to her recordings. She's been through more than her fair share of labels, and finally, she's done what she probably should have done twenty years ago, started her own label and gone totally independent. From that perspective, she's the better fit for an article in Stave. So when I listen to “Tears, Lies, and Alibis,” I'm especially pleased by the stripped, open, and quintessentially independent feel of the record. There's a subtly playful energy about this release. “The dark side of me seems to like how I feel when it's pouring,” she sings chirpily in the opening cut, “Rains Came.” Lynne is certainly someone who appears old beyond her years. Not in her looks, but her eyes. They're wise in a wary kind of way, so she is perfectly qualified to laugh at misery. If you ever watch video or see her live, you won't see her eyes playing along with the subject of song. She'll be looking around in an almost calculating manner. This sad song stuff is old hat, and maybe the performance is a search for more material. How do people respond? An artist at work; creating while performing. Take it back to the workbench and produce one more amazing album. Chuckle a little, then strip it down bare - no lovely long notes - and make a song feel like an empty room right after the final goodbye from a love affair. That's “Like a Fool.” So Lynne takes on relationships from a more mature, worn out place. “Make up can't conceal my eyes” she tells us. So just like anybody else, she'll give little cracks into who she is under the bad girl image. And that's why the press stays so fascinated with her. Ultimately, you might think she's the more broken of the sisters.
Shelby LynneBut who knows?
They are just biological wonders who spring from a gene pool of great songwriting ability wrapped in two of the most listenable voices in contemporary music.
I hope Moorer soon follows her big sister into the total independent arm of music so that she, too, becomes an open powerhouse that has no use for the machine.
Steve Brooks
Chasing Grace
www.stevebrooks.net
Austin songwriter, Steve Brooks, gave some seriously good advice in the June feature of Stave by instructing songwriters, “don’t be afraid to murder your little darlings.” When you say something like that, you have to be really sure of your own song craft. To be concise, Brooks is a master lyricist. He wraps words around tunes that feel familiar and are, therefore, accessible. He also gives his production over to a solid producer, Chris Gage. That means high talent in the supporting roles of Brooks’ latest release, “Chasing Grace.”
Brooks’ vocal style falls into that category of great artists who present lasting word craft with a plaintive voice, much like a Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, or Willie Nelson or Bob Dylan. And much like Nelson and Dylan, Brooks voice has seasoned and gotten better over time. It’s kind of like the perfect songwriters’ voice; which is the voice born to sing songs about real people.
Brooks writes and sings about love, spirituality, and ordinary people who experience profound lives. Track 3, “Iowa Wind” is a great example of Brooks’ sly ability to demonstrate how the things we perceive as ordinary are really extraordinary. An educated man is humbled by the force of nature in the story of the song. However, “Paradise” is a prime example of Brooks’ mastery of lyrics. Whenever a reviewer repeats lines of a song to impart on the reader what she means, I think it flops, so I’m going to tell you that you need to buy this CD and listen to this song. You will cry. The fulcrum of the song is the line, “Paradise will never be the same,” but I cannot write it in prose as it is written in song by Brooks. A theme is established, and something close to a short story emerges. (I will not put this song on the Stave Player because I want to make you support excellence. Buy the CD). The song stays with the listener for a long, long time.
And so this compilation of songs goes. Ordinary themes, settings and ideas take on monumental themes via perfectly placed words riding on catchy tunes. I can’t really say this body of work is dark because it’s not. It’s just so intimate that it brings up that burning in the throat that begs one to cry because it’s something mindful, compassionate people do. So maybe that’s the short version. “Chasing Grace” is a record of compassion.
Charlie Hager and the Captain Legendary Band
Smoking Barrel
http://www.thecaptainlegendaryband.com
It’s summertime. Put the top down if you’re so well healed, but Texans! Roll down the windows on the F150, open up all eight, and turn up the tunes. The tunes should be Charlie Hager and the Captain Legendary Band’s latest disc, “Smoking Barrel.” It is powerhouse, Southern rockin’ guitars screaming over that country/rocking rhythm that makes Texas rock really ROCK.
Because everybody’s screaming “Freebird!” and “Sweet Home Alabama!” there’s a perception that Southern Rock is pretty easy to play. Maybe so. If you want it to be. But this outfit can play the hell out of the music. I’ve seen them shake up a club, and now I’ve got a copy of “Smoking Barrel” and they prove they can do it in the studio, too. What makes this different for me is that there’s a tinge of morality floating under the music. Typically a Texas rock outfit is all about the party. And this is definitely a party to listen to, but there’s simply a maturity in the songwriting that suits an older and wiser fan base. I think veterans would really dig this, as would enlisted men who’ve seen the ugly stuff that grew them up quick. And demanding intellectuals like me won’t feel traitorous for throwing over our Americana and folk for a fast ride through the Texas countryside while blasting Hager’s well honed craft across the cow pastures.
The disc kicks off with “Brothers,” which is the story of brothers who willingly go off to fight for the Confederacy only to discover what a terrible mistake it is to freely go off to war. However, before things get too heavy, they follow up with the chewy, rockin’ frolick, “Northeast Texas Women.” This song pays homage to every corner of the state of Texas and the legendary beauty of Texas women. This is definitely a disc for stoking up Texas pride, but the songs pay homage to the South, and that’s what’s getting these guys across the border, and I think it will help build them a regional (if not national) following beyond the Lone Star State. “Smoking Barrel” is definitely a great calling card if Captain Legendary is looking to conquer the country.
