Gloriana, A THOUSAND MILES LEFT BEHIND, Emblem/Warner Music Nashville
The Farm Inc.,THE FARM INC.,All In/Elektra Nashville
At this point, the pop-oriented segment of contemporary Nashville has to be considered more than a splinter wing. When Taylor Swift first arrived, it was a lightly tolerated anomaly; as she thrived, it became a rallying point for the country music world as a whole, a symbol of its power. Now other sorts of acts — not just young women with an ear for pop-punk mixed in with their balladry — are seeing pop crossover as part of their mandate.
Most prominently, that’s included the trio Lady Antebellum, which has resurrected 1970s soft-rock harmony through a country lens and created the most viable and affecting pop-country hybrid since Swift. Its songs tackle romantic ache from both sides, male and female, and are delivered with time-tested tricks borrowed from multiple genres: country, of course, but also rock, R&B and pop.
Lady Antebellum — two boys, one girl — is the gold standard for this sound, which is slowly becoming one of young Nashville’s de facto modes. Running a distant but respectable second is Little Big Town — two boys, two girls — a group that knocks the smoothness out of the Lady Antebellum idea and replaces it with a performed fealty to earthy roots. Lady Antebellum wants to sing about seduction and loss; the locale is secondary. For Little Big Town, the rural framework comes first.
A pair of younger country bands — both with two boys, one girl — is stomping firmly in these bands’ bootsteps. Gloriana, now on its second album, A Thousand Miles Left Behind, has the smell of Lady Antebellum all over it, and the Farm Inc. — just the Farm to its fans — has just released a self-titled debut album that suggests more flexibility in the Little Big Town template than there appeared to be. (See also: Edens Edge — two girls, one boy — which released an elegant and sometimes cheeky self-titled debut album in June.)
When Gloriana released its debut album three years ago, it appeared as if it was looking for a piggyback ride on Nashville’s youth movement; after all, at least one of its members, Cheyenne Kimball, was young and blonde.
But Kimball left the group last year, and its second incarnation — brothers Mike and Tom Gossin, and Rachel Reinert — is markedly more grown. Most of the songs on this album are Lady Antebellum manque, from the tightly clenched harmonies to the notionally frisky subject matter.
But Gloriana isn’t hot enough to be naughty, and isn’t naughty enough to be hot. Only (Kissed You) Good Night throbs with a pulse, with Tom Gossin hissing, “I should have kissed you/I should have pushed you up against the wall,” though by the time Reinert returns the sentiment, it’s been bleached free of sexual tension. More typical are Wanna Take You Home and Sunset Lovin, which never get sweaty, despite plenty of attempts at friction.
Gloriana is better when avoiding attempts at intimacy. Reinert is impressive on Go On ... Miss Me, in which she taunts the boy she used to idolize: “Back when I was 17, you were my high school dream/And boy, boy, I was stupid.” And the closer Where My Heart Belongs is a shocking improvement on much of the album. More or less a solo performance by Reinert, it doesn’t aim for the cool lust of Lady Antebellum, but Little Big Town’s earnest embrace of small town life, and it’s seductive in its own way.
Maybe Reinert, who sounds more convincing here than anywhere else on the album, would look upon the Farm — Nick Hoffman, Damien Horne and Krista Marie — and its deeply sexless songs with some envy.
Its debut album begins with Farm Party, a rousing, stomping jubilee that has a flicker of Big & Rich’s open-minded ambitiousness about country music’s big tent: “Don’t matter if you’re red or yellow, black or white/It’s gonna be on-on-on.” Horne is black — still a rarity among country music performers — and this group has an appealing air of social progressivism to it. (But maybe not that progressive: There is no photo of the band on the album cover.)
From there, the group spins off into several directions, showing flexibility and, occasionally, real strength. The Train I’m On opens with a resonant blues guitar, and Walkin has echoes of Jason Mraz’s easy-living lite rock, with some goofy scatting near the end. On the single Home Sweet Home, the harmonies between Horne — who has a smooth, light tone — and Marie, who’s wrestling with real power, are refreshing. For a group with such lighthearted and sometimes loose ideas about country music, it’s a surprise that the album’s showstopper is its most dour song. But Be Grateful, which falls in to a grand country tradition of celebrating the downtrodden, is just that.
Though male-female harmony is this group’s cushion, Marie is nowhere around to soften the blow of Hoffman’s striking opening verse:
The other day I caught myself complaining
How my boss has got me working overtime
Then the stranger who was sitting there beside me
Said `I spend all day in the unemployment line.
Are there open shifts?
Are they hiring on?
I’ll work any hours even all night long
If you could put a good word in for me.’
— JON CARAMANICA, NY Times News Service
Christian Scott,CHRISTIAN ATUNDE ADJUAH, Concord
The declarative mode comes easily to Christian Scott, a fiendishly gifted young trumpeter born and raised in New Orleans, and now residing in New York. Christian aTunde Adjuah, his fifth album on Concord, announces a new name and look for Scott, drawing from his Mardi Gras Indian heritage and beyond, to his roots in West Africa. Musically, the album, on two discs, presents a proprietary sound and an abundance of contemporary-minded tunes. The entire package seems designed to register as a statement, though you might have trouble figuring out just what it is, other than a conspicuous celebration of self.
Scott has been a force on his instrument since his early teens, and at 29 he’s still growing as a narrative improviser. He can manage breathy tension as well as clarion confrontation; on this album he clears acres of space for both. And he grounds his output in the context of an impressive young band, with the guitarist Matt Stevens, the pianist Lawrence Fields, the bassist Kris Funn and the drummer Jamire Williams. Following Scott’s lead, the ensemble oozes style, employing chord progressions suggestive of atmospheric indie-rock and layering devices adapted from hip-hop.
That much has been true at least since Scott released his second Concord album, Anthem, five years ago. But he and the band have refined their methods. On a tune like Spy Boy/Flag Boy, their balance of elements — driving rhythm, minor-chord intrigue, stirring melody — feels fully realized. Of Fire (Les Filles de la Nouvelle Orleans), which has guest turns by the saxophonist Louis Fouche and the trombonist Corey King, convincingly echoes the most recent sonic strategies of Radiohead. And a trio of ballads dedicated to his twin brother (Kiel), his mother (Cara) and his fiancee (I Do) achieve poignancy without tipping too far toward sentimentality.
But the album’s unity of mood becomes a haze over the course of its nearly two-hour running time. That’s a problem, especially given the burden of individuality bestowed by song titles that allude to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law (When Marissa Stands Her Ground); US-bred Islamic extremism (Jihad Joe); a case of mass sexual assault in Sudan (Fatima Aisha Rokero 400); and a breakthrough in HIV treatment (The Berlin Patient (CCR5)).
And on an album so ostentatious about its social convictions, Scott seems to have grappled most with insular matters. Pyrrich Victory of aTunde Adjuah refers to the skepticism he has encountered (or sensed) since adopting an African name; it follows a track titled Who They Wish I Was, which refers to the jazz traditionalists who would have him sound more like Miles Davis or Wynton Marsalis. If that makes him seem like a touchy solipsist, comfort yourself with the thought that Scott doesn’t actually budge from his moorings, not an inch.
— NATE CHINEN, NY Times News Service
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