MUSIC
Firesight     Jessie Baylin
 
 On her sophomore album, contemporary singer/songwriter Jessie Baylin finds herself on the Verve Forecast label, home to Ledisi, Liz Wright, Dion, Brazilian Girls, Zucchero, Kate Walsh, and Steve Winwood, to name a few. Firesight is also Baylin's first album to be released as a physical object; her debut, You, was produced by Jesse Harris and released exclusively through iTunes. Harris is still in the picture here -- he co-wrote four of the album's 11 cuts, and plays guitar on them -- but it's Roger Moutenot in the producer's chair this time out. Moutenot's résumé is wildly varied. In addition to producing six albums for Yo La Tengo and The Hot Rock for Sleater-Kinney, and the New Amsterdams, he's been an engineer at least as long as he's been a producer. Some of his clients include Elvis Costello, John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Paula Cole, Patti Scialfa, Freedy Johnston, Gillian Welch, Josh Rouse, and Heather Eatman. Moutenot has taken these strictly modern urban pop songs and made them almost extraordinary. Baylin is 24 as of this writing, and while very talented, she writes with the angst and wiry, unfocused passion of an artist who has many heroes but hasn't found her own voice -- yet. Moutenot knows how that sounds and how to record it. The proof is in the very first track, "See How I Run." He took those feelings and the accompanying identity crisis -- portrayed by very clever turns of phrase in a country-ish tune -- and framed them into a reverb-laden but sparkling midtempo ballad (co-written with Harris, who provided the gorgeous melody). It's got a lot of the loose backbone that Lucinda Williams displays in her melodies, but it's more urban than that. It's followed by another Harris collab in "Leave Your Mark." One of three songs recut from You, it's adorned in enormous cellos, shuffling trancelike snare drums, mandolins, acoustic guitars, and banjos, underscoring and surrounding exceptionally unhinged lyrics. It feels like the Laurel Canyon sound of the 1970s brought home to the 21st century. Baylin and her small band wrote a strictly "modern rock" tune in "Not a Day More" (a song that was made for a movie soundtrack if there ever were one), and Moutenot gets the right rhythmic pulse down cold. He wraps her voice in just enough smoke and mystery to get her lyrics across, and transforms the guitars to sound like extensions of Mick Ronson playing with David Bowie. But there's more than this -- the piano ballad "Lonely Heaven," written with Greg Wells (with Will Kimbrough guesting on guitar), brings her limited vocal range to bear in a vulnerable, tender, but streetwise ballad. You can hear traces of Carole King but also Marianne Faithfull in her delivery, with its reedy low-end warble. Ultimately, Firesight will appeal to those who bought Rachael Yamagata's Happenstance or even Norah Jones' more rootsy material with Charlie Hunter. The songs are well-crafted, carefully arranged, and beautifully recorded. The appeal lies as much in Jessie Baylin's delivery as it does in her songwriting and Roger Moutenot's recording. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide 
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I, Flathead     Ry Cooder
 
 Ry Cooder has always been a musical storyteller, from his self-titled debut album (which featured both well-known and under-recognized folk, blues, swing, and jug tunes) to Boomer's Story, his last two offerings for Nonesuch (Chavez Ravine and My Name Is Buddy), and his many film scores (including those for The Long Riders, Paris, Texas, Last Man Standing, Geronimo, and The End of Violence, just to mention a few). When his contributions as a musicologist, producer, and collaborator -- such as his contributions to the various Buena Vista Social Club recordings (including the film score) and his work with V.M. Bhatt, Pops Staples, Ersi Arvizu, and guitarist Manuel Galbán of Los Zafiros -- are included, he becomes a genuine mythmaker. I, Flathead contributes to the weight of Cooder's legend in many ways. First, there's the title, an obvious nod to the late Isaac Asimov's -I, Robot; then there's the legend -- the entire story is told in a 100-page, hardbound novella that accompanies the Deluxe Edition -- about beatnik, country music nut, and salt-flats racer Kash Buk, his band the Klowns, the strange and wonderful extraterrestrial visitor called Shakey, and the Passenger who pursues him. It's even subtitled "The Songs of Kash Buk and the Klowns." Finally, there's the music; it's a set of 14 original tunes that employ everything from country rockabilly to blues; strange, shimmering exotica; and Latin-influenced rock, swing, and mariachi music.

Musically, there isn't anything here you haven't heard from Cooder before, but it's shaken and stirred differently and owes a nod or two to Tom Waits' deadpan storytelling manner. This album doesn't have the futuristic Latin groove of Chavez Ravine or the traveling dust-bowl balladic country and folk that was on My Name Is Buddy, but it is simultaneously as welcoming and off-putting as both those earlier records. The songs can be enjoyed with or without the novella, as they were meant to stand apart. The story in it is directly related, but there is a story the recording tells on its own. The sound of the record is frighteningly crystalline for roots-oriented music -- the dirty-assed bottleneck slide guitar-fueled "Ridin' with the Blues," with drummer Jim Keltner and guitarist Rene Camacho, feels too clean despite its tempo and loose vibe. "Pink-O Boogie" follows with the same band -- with added percussion from Joachim Cooder -- but the groove is nastier and dirtier, and feels like it could have come from the Get Rhythm album in 1987. Near the end, Jesús Guzmán arranges some crazy string work to take it out. The rootsy rocker "Waitin' for Some Girl," where Cooder plays everything but drums (courtesy of Martin Pradler) sounds like a lost John Hiatt tune from Ry's Slide Area period (it's also better than anything that Hiatt has come up with himself in ages). Old pal Flaco Jiménez lends his accordion to "Filipino Dancehall Girl," a beautiful norteño tune that is kissed by cha-cha in Joachim's rhythms. "Spayed Kooley" is, as one might expect, a humorous Western swing jam, but played by a basic rock trio. And then there's the beautifully articulated swing ballad "My Dwarf Is Getting Tired," one of the more beautifully warm broken love songs Cooder has ever written -- and the string touches by Guzmán make it a shuffling lounge fave. Ultimately, "quirky" doesn't begin to describe I, Flathead, but it doesn't have to: this disc is simultaneously both vintage and futuristic Cooder doing what he does best, offering listeners ghost traces of the past as they materialize on the dusty desert horizon like a mirage. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

 
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Real Animal     Alejandro Escovedo
 
 It may be simplistic to describe Alejandro Escovedo's 2006 album The Boxing Mirror as a record inspired by the artist's brush with death, but given the record's back story -- it was recorded as Escovedo was recovering from a near-fatal bout with Hepatitis C -- it's hard not to imagine its brave and often dazzling creative ambition was fueled by Escovedo's knowledge that these could be his last words as a musician. Two years later, a healthier and stronger Escovedo returned to the studio to record his ninth studio album, Real Animal, and by comparison this is a leaner, more tightly focused session; in fact, this is the strongest rock album Escovedo has made since his 1997 album with Buick MacKane, The Pawn Shop Years. It's easy to tag Real Animal as a less ambitious and artful collection than The Boxing Mirror, but viewed on its own merits this ranks with the best and most powerful music of Escovedo's career. Like The Boxing Mirror, which was produced by John Cale, Real Animal was recorded with a producer who worked with some of Escovedo's primal influences, Tony Visconti, and his recordings with David Bowie and T. Rex doubtless helped him connect with Escovedo the smart but swaggering rocker in a way Cale did not; this set of songs is every bit as intelligent and emotionally resonant as Escovedo's best work, but it moves with a taut energy and insistent force that informs even the quieter, acoustic oriented numbers, such as the bluesy "People (We're Only Gonna Live So Long)," and the plaintive "Hollywood Hills." While Escovedo wrote the tunes on Real Animal with Chuck Prophet, the songs bear his stylistic hallmarks and melodic sensibilities throughout, and these stories are dotted with places and events from Escovedo's past -- discovering music as a kid ("Golden Bear"), his days as a San Francisco punk rocker ("Nun's Song"), flirting with the New York bohemian scene ("Chelsea Hotel '78"), and barnstorming with a rock & roll band ("Chip 'N' Tony"). Even when the cues to Escovedo's past aren't obvious, there's too much heart, soul, and blood in this music to not to have come directly from his heart, and he's seemingly incapable of singing from any other place, giving this music an emotional power that reaches down to the soul. If The Boxing Mirror was a work influenced by the shadow of mortality, Real Animal is an album about life -- both as survival and as the faces and moments that fill our days on this Earth. How many artists could make two masterpieces in a row that are so different? And how much do you want to bet that Escovedo still has one or two more records this good in him? ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide 
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Boulder     Ferron
 
 Ferron writes of love with the relentless introspection of Leonard Cohen, and, as with classic Bob Dylan, her songs' tough, questioning attitude sometimes gives way to the unexpected --Rolling Stone Magazine

With a recording career spanning thirty-four years, the legendary Canadian folk singer Ferron is back with a beautiful release. Boulder, produced by Bitch (Righteous Babe, Kill Rocks Stars), is a collection of songs that illuminates what we know and love about Ferron. Boulder is intimate and sparsely arranged, and calls on inspired performances by mentees Ani DiFranco, Samantha Parton (Be Good Tanyas), The Indigo Girls, and Jd Samson (Le Tigre). Boulder was produced by Bitch, mixed by Tucker Martine (Decemberists, Death Cab for Cutie, Bill Frisell) and mastered by Jon Cohrs (Laurie Anderson, Pink Martini, Quasi).

 
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Bulletproof     Reckless Kelly
 
 Reckless Kelly is back on the rock n' roll stage with "Bulletproof", their most ambitious and venomous album to date. Rollicking guitars and a relentlessly aggressive rhythm section pound out political statements alongside epic road anthems and ragged love songs. As always, Reckless Kelly brings its indomitable Texas spirit to the new album, resulting in what promises to be the band's most immediate offering of their career. Recorded at Willie Nelson's legendary Pedernales Studios in Lake Travis, Texas, "Bulletproof" is a call to arms, an opening salvo in Reckless Kelly's campaign to spread the nearly religious dedication of its Texas followers to fans all across the U.S. of A. 
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