April Program Titles Released This Week:
Steve Earle And The Dukes – GUY CD/LP (New West)
Steve Earle was 19 and had just hitchhiked from San Antonio to Nashville in 1974. Back then if you wanted to be where the best songwriters were, you had to be in there. Guy Clark had moved to Nashville and if you were from Texas, Guy Clark was king. A few years later, Steve would be playing bass guitar in Guy’s band and flying high on what would become an indelible friendship of like-minded musicians who bonded in a kinship of stories told through song. In the fall of 2018, Steve and The Dukes went into House Of Blues studio in Nashville and recorded his tribue to Guy Clark, GUY, in six days. “I wanted it to sound live…When you’ve got a catalog like Guy’s and you’re only doing sixteen tracks, you know each one is going to be strong.” Earle and his current, perhaps best-ever Dukes lineup take on Clark’s songs with a spirit of reverent glee and invention. The tunes are all over the place and so is the band, offering max energy on such disparate entries as the bluegrass rave-up “Sis Draper” and the talking blues memoir of “Texas 1947”. Earle’s raw vocal on the sweet, sad “That Old Time Feeling” is heartbreaking, sounding close enough to the grave as to be doing a duet with his late friend and mentor.
Free Throw – What’s Past Is Prologue CD/LP (Triple Crown)
After two studio albums and nearly seven years as a band, Free Throw is making a significant change to their identity. The group – who has sung openly of personal struggles related to substance abuse and body image – holds nothing back on What’s Past Is Prologue, their third full length record. Past releases may have provided small glimpses into Free Throw’s history as a band and personal lives outside of music, but What’s Past Is Prologue is the group at their most forthcoming. The album’s 12 tracks detail the continuing mental health struggles of lead singer Cory Castro and serve as a complete story of what happens when you decide that everything in your life needs to change. As Castro explains, the record is split into two parts. The first half of explores the weight of personal blame, with singles – including the gunning and practically unstoppable “Tail Whip, Struggle” and the limitless, swaying tenderness of “Stay Out Of The Basement” – setting the stage for an impactful finale. As the album nears its conclusion, “Today Is Especially Delicious” provides a tumultuous turning point, with the band tearing through Castro’s shouted confession: “Is this what I had planned for my life/I need a hand of some type to pull me up and break this cycle of drinking for breakfast.”
Garcia Peoples – Natural Facts CD/LP+MP3 (Beyond Beyond Is Beyond)
Consider Natural Facts by Garcia Peoples to be your heady, friendly reminder that it’s alright to let the sunshine in. The second album in less than a year from those lovable New Jersey moptops with the sweet twin guitars, Natural Facts provides a portal to the carefree place that both indie rock and jam bands forgot, and a handy alternative to whatever you may need an alternative from. Danny Arakaki and Tom Malach’s guitars remain at centerstage on machine gun shreds like the album-opening “Feel So Great” and the rolling grooves of “High Noon Violence” (which would fit right in with one of David Crosby’s early ‘70s studio supergroups). Natural Facts isn’t a throwback, as much as Garcia Peoples sometimes accidentally sound like a band one might stumble into at New York’s late Wetlands Preserve in the mid-‘90s. Rather, it’s a newly emerging conversation, songs and structures and solos and duos drawing from the latest and most right-on musicians to cross Garcia Peeps’ collective transom. The classic rock guitarists of yore might be obvious subsequent touchstones, but bend your ear and newer colors emerge, generated from hours and years of talk and music.
