The Holiday Season Is Box Set Season

I
Six discs of Orange Juice?!?  Bring it on.  OJ had a concept, a sound, that shouldn't have worked: awkward, white Scottish guys trying to play funky, dance-y, r'n'b-flavored pop/love songs in a DIY/post-punk milieu, fronted by a singer with a voice that, on first listen, seems completely, almost laughably wrong for this kind of music.  The first time you hear them, you have to readjust your ears and your expectations.  And then, if you're lucky, at some point it clicks and you get it.  Off-kilter white "funk", a guy that can't sing doing a sensitive, vulnerable thing - these are elements that became somewhat common in the '80s underground/indie scene (and have been revived and recycled ever since), but even if you're familiar with the context, there's still something jarring and, ultimately, fresh about the way Orange Juice deployed/combined them to create their sound.  The Housemartins were on to something similar, but they had a better, if still unconventional, singer in Paul Heaton and their aesthetic seems a bit easier to parse (Northern soul, gospel, Marxism, delivered with a bright tempo and mood).  Orange Juice's influences, the components of their sound, don't come through so cleanly, perhaps (especially on their early Postcard material, documented on The Glasgow School) because of a simple lack of competence, a classic case of ambition outpacing ability to spectacular effect.

I don't know how long the link will be active, but the Guardian has a bunch of streaming preview tracks here.

II
Also on my Christmas list is this super-deluxe-looking Syl Johnson box from The Numero Group.  I only know a handful of Johnson's records, mostly his top shelf (and sometimes uncannily Al Green-like) Hi Records work and the phenomenal "Is It Because I'm Black", so I'm very much looking forward to digging into this treasure trove.  I'm also hoping to catch the man live at Southpaw in December, having missed him last time he was in town.  Syl Johnson is right up there with O.V. Wright in the category of Undeniable Soul Masters who deserve to be more widely known.

III
Speaking of treasure troves and six-disc boxes, I recently got the Paul Motian Black Saint/Soul Note set, which consists of six complete albums Motian made for the Italian label(s).  Black Saint and Soul Note played a crucial role in picking up the slack left by American labels in documenting the most creative jazz that was happening from the late '70s into the '90s.  The box includes One Time Out, an early (but not the first) Motian-Lovano-Frisell trio album, which contains some of that group's wildest excursions and one of Bill Frisell's freakiest guitar tones on record.  There are also piano-drums duos with Paul Bley and Enrico Pieranunzi.  The Pieranunzi (Flux and Change - attention Crap Jazz Covers, if you haven't seen this one, you need to check it out), a live record arranged into a series of suites or medleys combining improvised sections with standards, gave me a fuller appreciation of the Italian pianist's range.  I'd previously thought of him as a fairly conventional, if brilliantly fluid, classically-inflected player in the Bill Evans line, but this album demonstrates his imagination and his ability to move between free playing and changes while keeping up a dynamic, exciting interaction with Motian.  It's a fun listen and shows why this duo has continued to collaborate over the years (this looks like it could be a worthy sequel).

Three of the discs document the predecessor to Motian's long-running trio, the Paul Motian Quintet, with bassist Ed Schuller and saxophonist Jim Pepper along with Lovano and Frisell.  I hadn't heard anything from this group before buying this box (although I had heard the earlier version of the Quintet with Billy Drewes instead of Pepper), but can now say definitively that these albums are prime Motian.  If you're a fan and you don't have The Story of Maryam, Jack of Clubs, and Misterioso, you've got a serious gap in your collection and some good listening ahead of you.  These albums include many Motian compositions that he would record again later, but the versions here are almost uniformly excellent, if not necessarily definitive.  Motian the composer was fully formed by this point (the mid-'80s); these discs are full of characteristically beautiful and mysterious tunes like "Cathedral Song", "Trieste", "Byablue" (a gorgeous solo performance by Frisell), and the Motian tune par excellence, "Abacus".  While some of his compositions, like "Circle Dance", can resemble bright, major-key folk songs, many of them achieve beauty while defying listener's expectations on a note-by-note level.  The melodies don't progress or resolve in ways that we're accustomed to hearing; they strenuously avoid cliche.  The next note is always a surprise, and so the tunes remain fresh and elusive.  Monk's compositions (some of which appear in this box) often feature aggressively or humorously "off", "wrong", or discordant notes.  Motian's compositions thrive on the unexpected note, the one that doesn't so much sound "wrong" as surprising or counterintuitive.
 
(Strangely enough, this is not my first post that mentions both Syl Johnson and Paul Motian)

Shambolic (#1 in a Series)

This is the first entry in a new series on albums (and maybe other things) that I like despite (or because of) their shambolic nature. To qualify as "shambolic" in my definition, there has to be a touch of half-assedness or a sense that things are about to fall apart. Mere looseness or raggedness isn't enough.

I'm starting with two very divisive entries in the catalogs of beloved artists. Each of these has been called a trainwreck and a masterpiece, with strong opinions mounted on either side of the argument. Of course, they're a little of both.

Harry Nilsson's Pussy Cats

Like many albums that could fit into this category, Pussy Cats is wildly hit-or-miss. Its best moments ("Don't Forget Me", "Many Rivers To Cross", "Save The Last Dance For Me") approach greatness. At its worst, though, it's merely goofy ("Rock Around the Clock" with Ringo and Keith Moon adding up to less than the sum of their parts) or a bit pointless ("Subterranean Homesick Blues"). At times, though, as on "Mucho Mungo/Mt. Elga", the goofiness becomes almost transcendent.

Famous as the album where Nilsson shredded his vocal chords rather than stop the session and risk missing his chance at having John Lennon as a producer, you can hear the early, high, clear Nilsson voice being quite literally sacrificed in the raw-throated fadeout to "Many Rivers". "Don't Forget Me", recently covered in a multi-piano arrangment by Neko Case (I haven't heard the whole album cover by the Walkmen), is Nilsson at his songwriting peak, blending bitter, black humor and genuine heartbreak as no one else could. As with "Snow" on the reissue of Nilsson Sings Newman, the best thing on the album might be a bonus track, the solo, vocal-and-electric piano demo of "Save The Last Dance For Me". I don't think it's ever been sung better, not by the Drifters or Buck Owens.


Alex Chilton's Like Flies on Sherbert

Recorded at Sam Phillips Studios (the successor to the original Sun Studio, built with the money Phillips made by selling Elvis to RCA) with certified legend Jim Dickinson, it's difficult to determine how much of the chaos of this album was by design and how much was a natural outgrowth of Chilton's post-Big Star state of mind.

The WTFing starts with the first track, a totally cracked rant by way-underground Memphis sub-legend Ross Johnson. Chilton doesn't sing until track two, and from there on it's a mix of originals and unexpected and obscure covers (including a composition by Cordell Jackson, who appeared as the Rockin' Granny in a memorable Bud commercial) played in a deliberately unrehearsed, looser-than-loose style. Somehow, though, magic happens. The whole thing feels a little dangerous, even sleazy, which is to say it's rock'n'roll.

As with Pussy Cats, the cover is a classic - a William Eggleston photo of baby dolls on the hood of a Cadillac (that hood is the only thing connected with this album that could be called "polished") that perfectly compliments and completes the mood of perverse beauty.

Further reading:
Here's a great reminiscence from Will Rigby of the dB's about his adventures in Memphis, which included popping in to the Sherbert sessions with Chris Bell.