ALLISON MOORER IS GETTING SOMEWHERE

By Tom Semioli  

This feature appeared in Amplifier Magazine, June 2006

"I tend to be short, sweet, and to the point. There's no sense in being long and drawn out about things. If you can say something in two sentences, why use six? Besides, I don't think I'm talented enough to hold someone's attention for much more that that."

The last bit of Allison Moorer's declaration is somewhat debatable. However her sixth and latest release, aptly titled Getting Somewhere (release date 6/13/06 on Sugar Hill Records) harkens back to the golden age of vinyl wherein artists had ten songs and thirty minutes to make their case and step aside. Moorer’s new album clocks in at 31:01. "That's exactly how I designed it," the 33-year old singer -songwriter-guitarist boasts with confidence aplenty. "I trusted my instincts on how I put this record together." Breaking news: for the first time in her career Alison Moorer has written all the songs on an album.

Recorded in just ten days and produced by her new husband, Americana icon Steve Earle, Moorer rocks rougher and harder than she ever has, kicking off her half hour of ragged glory with the down 'n' dirty "Work To Do," which wouldn't sound out of place on side three of Exile On Main Street.  Though Earle renders guitar on two tracks and Moog on another cut, the majority of this effort is primarily Allison and her razor sharp posse. "Steve chose the band. Luckily we got all the players we wanted. Bassist Brad Jones sounds like Paul McCartney on this record and as for drummer Brady Blade; well, you can't get any better than that."

Opting for first takes in many instances, Moorer plows through her tales of personal struggle and revelation with a decidedly jagged edge. "I was in the booth singing and playing at the same time so that's why you hear the 'good' bleed on the vocals from my guitar." Her phrasing and timbre on the rambling "You'll Never Know," the mournful "Hallelujah" and the plodding "New Year's Day" are all eerily similar to her celebrity sister Shelby Lynne, whom Moore maintains a close relationship with. "My sister and I try to write letters to each other once a week. I love her and think she's fantastic. We can get on the phone and talk about nothing and laugh for hours."  The track "Where Are You" was written for Lynne, and features a regal string arrangement by long-time collaborator / band member Chris Carmichael along with Moorer's sultry double-tracked harmonies.

Moorer and Earle, who split their time between Manhattan's chic West Village and Nashville, thrived in the studio. "Sure there were some rough spots," she laughs, "but we're still married! Moorer elaborates "the way I describe music is foreign to some people. I'll say something like 'make that guitar more red,' and I get a look like I've gone crazy. But that would happen with anybody because creating music is a very hard thing to do. It's tough to get your brain on the same page as another person."

"If It's Just For Today" is Moorer's song to her husband, noting "I aspire to live and love this way every day - as if it's my last one. I suck at it most of the time, but like I said - I aspire." Old (and young) Beatle fans take note of Jim Hoke's multi-layered horns and the band's four-to-the-bar backbeat which sounds like a working demo to "Got To Get You Into My Life."

"I like records that hang together as records" states Moorer regarding the personal themes which underpin Getting Somewhere. "The one thing artists like myself have going for them is that it's still really, really difficult to make a good living in this business.  So it keeps you honest to a certain extent. Yeah, there are worse jobs than going out on the road every night and making music -but it's still tough work." And though the long-player may be on the endangered species list to some, Moorer will hear none of that. "Real artists will not allow it! I like a body of music that takes me somewhere and has a beginning, middle and end - just like a great book. I love short stories, but I want to read the novel sometimes."

JACKSON ANALOGUE: BORN TO BOOGIE

By Tom Semioli  

This feature appeared in Amplifier Magazine, November 2007

“Trust me, the inside of a one-hundred fifty year old Victorian water tower is neither comfy nor distracting” proclaims Jackson Analogue brain-trust Jim Holmes. “It had a sixty ton steel roof with no windows…it was always dark and cold.”

No kidding! The structure Holmes speaks of served as a makeshift recording studio for JA’s gut-bucket blues drenched debut effort, ironically titled And Then, Nothing. The intention was avoid outside interferences, however the ghost of her majesty Queen Victoria prevailed. “We didn’t get a look at the old bird herself, but I have to tell you…we all heard strange things….footsteps up the staircase, knocks on the door. None of us will ever go there alone to this day!”

This Isle-of-Wight quintet, comprised of Holmes, brother Rob on guitar, bassist Matt Winsor, drummer Craig Watson, and a Hammond organist who only answers to the name “Beast” (“If you spend thirty seconds with him, it would make sense. The man is a bearded keyboard smashing monster!”) forge a sound as American as mom’s apple pie and great-grandpa’s musty old ‘78s.

“I grew up listening to the blues” reveals Holmes. “Artists like Robert Johnson, Skip James, Charley Patton and David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards. But I also loved Creedence  Clearwater and grunge as well… Pearl Jam, Soundgarden…”

The album title stems from the band’s two year battle to free themselves of their Island/Universal recording contract. Though details will remain secret for now, Holmes is noticeably upbeat. “By the time we finished the record we’d felt like we’d been through a fucking war! And Then, Nothing refers to that end point of coming out from the other side of the storm as ‘and then nothing went wrong, everything was fine.’ It’s always taken negatively but we don’t correct people,” Holmes adds with a sly wink “they can assume what they like, that’s half the fun of a good title.”

Co-producer and engineer Head (PJ Harvey, Massive Attack) was a major factor in capturing JA’s maniacal energy for posterity.  Coming into picture towards the end of the sessions for the purpose of recording vocals, Head wound up mixing the entire record. “As soon as that red ‘record’ button lights up, people do the weirdest things,” exclaims Holmes. “Sometimes you can struggle to re-create a vibe, especially if you do it over and over again. Head is a genius and the coolest person we’ve ever met. His confidence rubbed off on us and in a few days we felt invincible.”

As for Jackson Analogue’s immediate future, they’ve already commenced work on their sophomore effort, tentatively titled Snakes and Wolves. Bolstering their self-assuredness, the band recently opened for  The Who on a recent UK trek. “It was every bit as amazing as you could imagine. To hear a stadium cheer is a sound I’ll never forget…better than sex!” Holmes pauses after his last thought. “Well, better than sex with me!”

Jackson Analogue’s And Then, Nothing is out on Groove Attack December 2007

MANIC STREET PREACHERS SEND AWAY THE TIGERS

By Tom Semioli

This feature appeared in Rock Feedback.Com, July 2007

"I can't even begin to imagine what a Richey James lyric would be like now" confesses a rather startled singer/guitarist James Dean Bradfield. "I think he would alienate everybody in the world! I do miss that element sometimes."

Twenty-one years into a career that has seen incredible highs (platinum album sales, stadium filling concert tours), controversy aplenty (provocative haberdashery, unashamedly leftist politics, stinging oratory in the UK rock press and radio) along with inconceivable lows (the self-mutilation and mysterious disappearance of founding guitarist/lyricist Richey James in 1995) Wales' mighty Manic Street Preachers are back to what they consider to be the "basics" on their eighth studio release Send Away The Tigers.

"Nick (Wire, bassist /lyricist) and Richey believed in a lot of the rhetoric they came up with" recalls Bradfield with a wisp of sentimentality. "I didn't buy into some of it. For example, they wanted to be the Sex Pistols - make one great album - burn brightly, then fade away. I always had my eye on 'plan B, which was longevity over legacy. After all, I was playing in a band I loved and I wanted to keep playing with the guys."

With drummer Sean Moore, the self -proclaimed "generation terrorists" now sound comfortable in their own skin, though by no means complacent. Writing sessions for Send Away The Tigers commenced in late 2005. With Dave Eringa once again behind the boards, recording sessions stretched from March to November 2006 in Cardiff and Ireland before the tapes were sent to Chris Lord-Alge to mix in all its sonic glory in California. Named after a common phrase used by comedian Tony Hancock whenever he started drinking, Tigers emerges as a complete statement as opposed to a collection of songs. This redeeming characteristic is not lost on Bradfield, who sees the long-player format as an endangered species.

"There can be something very symbolic about an album" notes Bradfield. "It can sum up a time and a place and a mood. It's a scary thought to realize that the album, which is the benchmark by which you judge a band, will soon disappear. It's like losing a novel and being left with only short stories. Whenever I've connected with people, the one way I managed to define a person was by their favorite album. That's why we have certain acts which we call 'one hit wonder' because they're just defined by one song. An album is integral to a band's identity, if they want an identity."

Tigers succeeds at recapturing the Manics' initial spark, according to Bradfield, thanks to his and Wire’s recent solo albums (The Great Western and I Killed The Zeitgeist respectively) which were nothing less than cathartic. "It's like a bit of self-help therapy," he laughs, "which is really kind of strange because I don't like getting into psycho-babble at all. But those records we made apart from the band did 'de-clutter' our minds. And it helped us become more focused on the past and allowed us to re-frame our future." The band had also re-examined the youthful idealism of their earlier masterstroke Generation Terrorists plus their two biggest inspirations, the Sex Pistols and The Clash.

Fittingly, another idol crops up on a hidden track: John Lennon. During the recording of his solo album Wire submerged himself in Lennon's fiery, self-confessional Plastic Ono Band (Apple, 1970). Rendering a forceful remake of one of the fallen ex-Beatle's most notorious social commentaries –“Working Class Hero” was a natural extension of the Manics' own history. "When we grew up in the 1980s we lived in a period of great turmoil in terms of domestic politics. Our domestic situation was black and white. There was Labour and Conservative. And in our eyes, back in the working class values of Wales, we saw this woman named Margaret Thatcher systematically destroying everything we stood for."

And of interpreting Lennon's initial vitriol for a new generation, Bradfield illuminates, "well, in a bittersweet ironic way we grew up in a glorious period where you defined yourself by what you were angry at. Now it's much more of an international stage in politics. That's harder to write about, say the war in Iraq or democracy verses democracy."

Yet Bradfield feels that the Manics can succeed where even their heroes have failed. "The two greatest albums from the Clash are the first one and London Calling. But when they wrote Sandinista! which I love incidentally, they tried to detail internationalist politics and they missed the target. It's much easier to write about what's going on your own doorstep than to write about things on the international stage."

On a more tempered note, we're warned not to miss Bradfield's duet with The Cardigans' sultry Nina Persson (pictured with the band above) on the album's first single “Your Love Alone” which Wire describes as "Keith Moon drums... Pete Townshend power chords... and sonically similar to Hole's ‘Celebrity Skin!"