S
ignature Sounds and Six Shooter are two great labels either side of the Canadian border. The former based around
Northampton MA and the later a little over 400 miles North West in Toronto. They can both claim some of the most
adventurous and just plain great music on the US roots scene.
Take the Signatures most recent release by the Sacred
Shakers, which grew out of drummer Jason Beek’s country
gospel brunch concerts. Each week vocals would be shared
three ways by Beek, Daniel Fram and Eilen Jewell, with
upright bassist Johnny Sciascia, fiddler Daniel Kellar and
rotating guests completing the line up. Regardless of your
religious persuasion something undeniably wonderful is
happening here. From the rockabilly opener I’m Gonna Do My
Best, through the dark and moody howl of John The Revelator
and the bluesy hip-shake of Titanic. Proof indeed that the
Devil didn’t get all of the best tunes.
Most of the Shakers also appear on Eilen Jewell’s wonderful
Letters From Sinners And Strangers, released last year and
already covered in issue 9. But listening to it afresh on the
back of the above has only cemented its stature as a truly great
record. Eilen has been in and out of the UK drawing favourable
comparisons with Gillian Welch. But with songs like Rich Man’s
World, questioning her worth in it, How Long inspired by the
words of Martin Luther King and the jaunty High Shelf Booze,
complete with clarinet she is certainly a one off.
It will be great if Mark Erelli makes it over to support his latest
CD Delivered due out here in October. It’s also intriguing to
here him expand his range beyond the trade mark, intimate,
finger-picked, acoustic gems. Shadowland is an out and out
rocker, Unravelled Dylanesque, while Delivered and Abraham
have the spooked quality of Daniel Lanois at his best Once is
like prime Paul Simon.
With Crooked Still going strong despite line up changes
(another CD reviewed in our last issue), their quest to fuse
20’s Appalachia with 21st century style undimmed, there are
at least 4 reasons to follow the course of Signature sounds
releases through the year and into next.
Not that they have the monopoly on great roots music as Six
Shooter, who in continental terms are almost neighbours,
clearly demonstrate with Luke Doucet’s And The White
Falcon’s Blood Too Rich. It’s superbly crafted and the band are
presumably named after Jason’s guitar of choice, which does
the obligatory twang through to CSNY like country-rockers, of
which Cleveland and First Day (Y especially) are outstanding
examples that the senior gentlemen could probably do with
referring to. Even the slightly offbeam choice of Love Cats does
the business. Fans of classic Americana from Green On Red
through to Ryan Adams could have a new poster boy here.
Elliott Brood (as in a brood of Elliotts) are an altogether odder
proposition. As veiled in myth and mystery as their new CD is
dense and dressed in dark robes of inkblot Rothko, this is a
really intriguing prospect and one for the long winter nights. (I
haven’t quite got the hang of what their singing about yet, but I
intend to find out). It comes on like the Violent Femmes passed
through the Smashing Pumpkins blender on an ever changing
backdrop of driving acoustic guitars, banjos, thumping drums
and passionate vocal delivery. There are plenty of tunes to drag
you into their foggy notions and at 47 minutes it’s a one sitting
record. Apparently the drummer uses a plastic suitcase as a
bass drum. Hmmmm!
We also reviewed Justin Rutledge’s Man Descending in the last
issue and rather Like Eilen above, feel duty bound to mention it
again as a steady grower that getting under the skin. Check out
Alberta Breeze on his myspace for haunting beauty, or Penny
For The Band, which offers the pearl “This life is like a setlist
scrawled across a nation,” simply gorgeous stuff.
Sid Cowens
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