The Musical Box

john fogerty: blue ridge rangers rides again

When Creedence Clearwater Revival split acrimoniously in 1972, group chieftain John Fogerty retreated into the recesses of country roots music and emerged a year later with The Blue Ridge Rangers and a self-titled album. It wasn’t a new band, of course. Fogerty played all the instruments and over-dubbed the vocals with the same degree of bayou frenzy that made Creedence’s music so distinctive.

At this, critics and fans scratched their heads and, very gradually, Fogerty veered into a solo career. The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again is a sequel only in terms of intent. But like its 36 year old predecessor, its homespun charm is so immediately infectious you can almost overlook the newer album’s grammatically stymied title.

Instead of pure country and gospel, Fogerty now reaches across vintage pop and Americana lines, covering everyone from Buck Owens to Jumpin’ Gene Simmons (no, not the Kiss tongue waggler, but the rockabilly pop singer whose 1964 hit Haunted House is cheerfully redone here). Instead of a one man band setting, Fogerty enlists such pros as Americana song stylist Buddy Miller, pedal/lap steel guitarist Greg Leisz and longtime drummer Kenny Aronoff. Instead of overdubbing his vocals into a single chorus, Fogerty farms out harmonies to a pack of high profile pals, including Bruce Springsteen on a jolly album finale cover of the Everly Brothers’ hit When Will I Be Loved and Eagles Don Henley and Timothy B. Schmidt on Rick Nelson’s breezy 1972 declaration of pop independence Garden Party. (Fogerty oversaw Nelson’s posthumous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.)

Mostly, Rides Again is an altogether gentler ride than before. On the ‘72 album, Fogerty’s multi-tracked gospel takes of Workin’ on a Building and Somewhere Listening (For My Name) were pretty hair raising adventures. And needless to say, anyone that missed the original Blue Ridge Rangers album seriously needs to check it out. It’s not required listening for appreciating Rides Again. It’s just a great slice of singularly produced spiritualism.

Today, at age 64, Fogerty’s voice for such revivalism has settled somewhat. The country command in his singing is still keen although that massive, swampy Creedence accent is summoned here only on a remake his own Change in the Weather from 1986. This version is smoother in vocal temperament, but the song’s storyline of a fear-addled world and its unblinking eye toward judgment day reflects greater topicality today.

Just as the original Blue Ridge Rangers had its lighter moments (like a jubilation-filled, Creedence-style reworking of Hank Williams’ Jambalaya), Rides Again heads to the porch for a summery acoustic take on the 1971 Delaney and Bonnie hit Never Ending Song of Love. Even the well worn John Prine classic Paradise and its demon images of coal company shovels in Muhlenberg County sounds relaxed with renewed emphasis on bluegrass acoustics. The environmental message, though, still chimes loudly.

One of the album’s great curiosities, though, is the murder ballad Moody River popularized by Pat Boone in 1961. Fogerty maintains a similarly spry tempo with chirpy mandolin and guitar melodies that fly in the face of the song’s frightful lyrics. It is one of the most stunning treats on an album that purposely avoids forward motion. Rides Again instead favors an unapologetic but altogether gentler glance backward at the roots inspirations behind one of our most tireless rock ‘n’ roll warriors.

richard thompson: walking on a wire

On the stunning and lovingly performed High Wide & Handsome, Americana songster Loudon Wainwright III places his own splendid compositions on hold and devotes two full discs to the music of Charlie Poole, a renegade banjo stylist who squeezed a lifetime of old time and pre-bluegrass country music into a hard-living, five year bender cut short by the Great Depression and his death in 1931.

Had Poole hailed from England instead of North Carolina, his life story would have been ideal material for Richard Thompson, the masterful British songsmith and guitarist who has continually fashioned fascinating tunes out of the plights of his often ramshackle characters, from the urchins of Dickensian London to the stiff-upper-lip classes that roam those pavements today.

That Thompson and Wainwright are long time pals and will be touring together this fall (alas, there will be no dates in this region) under the preposterously apt billing of Loud and Rich underscores the links and wonderful contrasts between their two new retrospective collections.

Thompson’s Walking on a Wire might seem like a lesson in redundancy to some. It is the guitarist’s third boxed set anthology. Its biggest flaw: no unreleased material to entice hardcore fans. Its biggest plus: the most comprehensive assembly of Thompson’s music to date. It covers songs from every album he has issued since his beginnings with Fairport Convention in the late ‘60s. It’s all prime stuff, too. The artistic, emotive and visceral command of the collection’s 71 tunes never once wanes.

For those taken by the dark underlings that wander through Thompson’s songs, we have Genesis Hall (with Fairport), Withered and Died (with ex-wife Linda Thompson) and a pair of acoustic 1994 heartbreakers, Beeswing and King of Bohemia. Need a blast of Thompson’s riveting guitarwork? Then crank up the ‘70s adventures Night Comes In and The Calvary Cross or a volcanic concert version of 1999’s Hard on Me. And for unsentimental love songs that are nothing short of epic, there are classics old (Dimming of the Day, A Heart Needs a Home) and recent (She Sang Angels to Rest).

loudon wainwright iii: high wide & lonesome - the charlie poole project

Wainwright’s retrospective, of course, covers a career entirely removed from his own. But as is the case with his original material (and, for that matter, Thompson’s), Poole’s music values the whimsical as well as the stoically dramatic with a strong instrumental undercurrent propelling both.

A case in point: The solo banjo version of High Wide & Handsome’s title tune. “Let’s live it up,” Wainwright gleefully sings. “Might as well, we’re all dying.” As such sardonic twists have long been earmarks of Wainwright’s tunes, Poole’s songs become a natural fit. Similarly, the album’s light, loving instrumental cast is assisted by the brilliant New York cellist Erik Friedlander (especially during one of Poole’s final recorded compositions, 1930’s Where the Whippoorwill is Whispering Goodnight) and pianist Paul Asaro (the heart-stopping The Letter That Never Came).

A master Brit guitarist and songwriter rightfully celebrating his own music; an American contemporary honoring a renegade inspiration - taken as a whole, these wonderful collections emphasize the artistic rewards of being Loud and Rich.

Are Christian McBride and John Patitucci today’s defining pioneers of bass in jazz music? Well, consider their widely versed command of the instrument’s acoustic and electric personas, their knack for composing and bandleading and, finally, the many major jazz elders both have clocked stage time with. Two sharper bass contemporaries would be tough indeed to track down.

christian mcbride: kind of brown

McBride’s dossier is, as the hipsters might say, sick. He just wrapped up a high profile tour with Chick Corea and John McLaughlin, toured as part of a remarkable Pat Metheny trio prior to that and gigged alongside Sonny Rollins at Carnegie Hall in 2007.

All of that raises expectations for Kind of Brown, the debut recording of McBride’s new “straight ahead” jazz ensemble Inside Straight. But the bassist delivers on all counts here with compositions, playing and production reflecting an immensely natural sense of cool.

Credit much of that to his players - specifically one time Wynton Marsalis protégé Eric Reed, whose muscular, modal piano playing on the swinging Rainbow Wheel recalls a young McCoy Tyner. Hearing McBride working off of Reed’s beefy playing with a spicy, economical solo is an equal delight.

The keeper of Kind of Brown’s near constant cool, though, is vibraphonist Steve Wilson. The lyrical bounce behind Uncle James may be set in motion by McBride and Reed, but Wilson establishes the sleek atmosphere. Later, the boppish groove of Stick & Move works off of saxophone and a choice McBride solo. But it all begins with an animated scramble that places Wilson as the chief mood, melody and mischief maker.

McBride may keep Kind of Brown’s loveliest solo moment, an exquisite bowed bass feature on the album-ending Where Are You?, for himself. But the record is fueled by a solid ensemble spirit. That the primary groove is simmered in expert cool is a big plus.

john patitucci: remembrance

Patitucci came to prominence playing fusion music alongside Corea in the late 80s but has since moved on to all kinds of hard bop platoons, the most visible being the Wayne Shorter Quartet. Unlike McBride’s new album, however, Patitucci’s Remembrance explores electric as well as acoustic bass directions.

The differences don’t end there. Remembrance is a primarily a trio record that matches Patitucci with two giants - drummer Brian Blade (a mate from the Shorter group) and the great New York saxophonist Joe Lovano. The resulting music also strays structurally from McBride’s regal cool. It’s understandably leaner, too, as shown by the free passages at the heart of Monk/Trane and Safari. The former tune establishes Patitucci as the player in charge with a lengthy acoustic solo that sets up the kinds of whispery, conversational dialogues that Lovano has long been a master of.

Remembrance travels considerably from there. Messaien’s Gumbo strolls down south for a slight yet spry electric bass groove and a playful tenor sax topping while Mali stays electric but deepens the percussive outline. The bassist’s wife, Sachi Patitucci, joins Scenes from an Opera on cello but doesn’t puncture Remembrance’s trio spaciousness.

Finally, there is the album-closing title tune, a multi-tracked requiem for sax great Michael Brecker played on a pair of 6-string electric basses. It works, too, mostly because the piece is as light and soulfully clear as the rest of the luminous Remembrance.

woodstock - 40 years on: back to yasgur

Sometimes even the most famous and devout “peace and music” gathering calls for a bit of slapping around.

Among the tid bits resurrected on the mammoth new 6-CD boxed set Woodstock - 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur’s Farm is the famed meeting of The Who’s Pete Townshend and activist Abbie Hoffman. While The Who was tuning between songs from its just released Tommy album, Hoffman grabbed the microphone to utter a quick protest rant regarding the jailing of militant activist John Sinclair on a drug charge. Townshend let Hoffman shoot off his mouth for 20 seconds before physically shoving him offstage. The guitarist returned to the mic, politely said to the crowd “I can dig it” and ripped back into one of festival’s most galvanizing performances.

Such a moment affirms that the times weren’t a-changin’ with quite the level of unity everyone had envisioned. But in the end, with the idealism of the ‘60s drawing to a close, Woodstock was about music. And if some drug addled hippie was going to invade Townshend’s performance space (Hoffman later admitted he was on LSD during The Who’s set), then there was going to be a reckoning. Or, at least, a shove and a slap.

What 40 Years On seems designed to convey isn’t so much an enforcement of social or activist standings of the era, but a more complete sampling of the music that brought nearly 500,000 people together at Max Yasgur’s farm in upstate New York. Sure the social tension is underscored time and again within the music. But  those moments - The Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers, Country Joe McDonald’s I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Wooden Ships - have been repeatedly documented in past Woodstock collections that date back to the early ‘70s.

The joy of 40 Years On comes from hearing how the times were integrated more fully into the music, be it through the white hot two minute blast of merry apocalyptic fire within Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising, the fanciful nine minutes of acoustic British folk making up the Incredible String Band’s When You Find Out Who You Are, the 19 minutes the Grateful Dead takes to explore the more leisurely psychedelic Dark Star or the full, unedited 28 minute Woodstock Boogie marathon by Canned Heat. 40 Years On marks the first official release for all of these performances.

The boxed set also seeks to implement a little corrective history. The most noticeable switch is changing out the version of Arlo Guthrie’s drug smuggling anthem Coming into Los Angeles from the original 1970 Woodstock album and film (which wasn’t actually from the concert) for a more ragged but honest take (which was). On the other hand, Neil Young’s Sea of Madness, included on the initial Woodstock album but long rumored to not have been actually played at the festival (the recorded performance, some say, came from a tour several months later) is still here. That mystery goes unaddressed.

Glaring omissions, of course, are British prog blues rockers Ten Years After (prominently featured in the film and initial album) and The Band (which appeared on a boxed set that marked Woodstock’s 25^th anniversary in 1994).

It seems, then, that even with six discs, Woodstock still can’t be contained. But 40 Years On expands considerably the recorded snapshot of a mid August weekend when a half-million youths thrilled to the music of a very fleeting moment.

the woodstock experience

At the crossroads of consumer fascination with all things retro in rock ‘n’ roll and serious archival investigation of a landmark pop music event come five albums timed to next week’s 40^th anniversary of the original Woodstock Music and Art Fair.

All titled The Woodstock Experience, each set uncovers the full performance each act delivered at the festival. There is a redundancy in such an exercise, of course. But given how only portions of these sets have been featured on assorted Woodstock video and audio collections over the past four decades, it’s something of a revelation to have everything all in one place. And for the artists who have had only spoon-sized samples of their Woodstock shows available over the years - specifically, Sly and the Family Stone and Johnny Winter - there are massive treasures to behold on these recordings.

First, the downside. All of these multi-disc releases (available separately and as a boxed set) also include a reissue of the studio album that was current for these artists in August 1969. That makes for a bit of lavish primer for novice fans while die-hards clamoring for the live material won’t be thrilled at having to fork out for another copy of a career-defining studio record they know by heart.

Offering these performances as single disc live albums (or, in the Airplane’s set, a double disc package to accommodate the concert length) would have been a more consumer and fan friendly way to go.

santana: the woodstock experience

On the same note, nearly all of Santana’s Woodstock set - a performance that introduced the band to the world on the strength of Soul Sacrifice alone - was included on a bonus disc with the 2004 reissue of the band’s self-titled debut album. The latter is also featured as the studio half of its Woodstock Experience collection. See the repetition here?

janis joplin: the woodstock experience

The Joplin and Airplane sets fare somewhat better. Joplin’s Woodstock disc (which is paired with I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama) sports unreleased R&B workouts of Raise Your Hand, I Can’t Turn You Loose and the ultra cool Nick Gravenites soul sonnet As Good As You’ve Been to This World.

jefferson airplane: the woodstock experience

The Airplane’s set (packaged with Volunteers) is solid but familiar with unissued takes of The Other Side of This Life and The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil, songs that have been featured on other live albums by the band from this era. Still, guitarist Jorma Kaukonen’s greasy boogie excursion during of Come Back Baby is a riot.

johnny winter: the woodstock experience

Winter’s Woodstock disc (packaged with his self-titled 1969 debut record) is where the fun really begins. Up to now, his entire festival presence has consisted of Mean Town Blues on a pair of Woodstock collections issued in 1994. Now we have nearly an hour of extras that feature the much meaner 15 minute slow blues burner You’ve Done Lost Your Good Thing Now and three extended tunes with brother Edgar Winter that give a cooler, more expansive sound to older sibling Johnny’s Texas blues-rock bravado.

sly and the family stone: the woodstock experience

Finally, there is Sly. In many ways, Sly and the Family Stone were Woodstock’s show stealers. Represented previously by the celebratory Dance to the Music and I Want to Take You Higher, we now have 38 minutes of bonus Sly (packaged with 1969’s Stand!) that boils over during the monstrous psychedelic funk of M’Lady and Love City, boundlessly cheerful variations of Sing a Simple Song and You Can Make It If You Try and an exhausted but still exhilarating reading of the title tune to Stand!

Sure, these packages could have been streamlined. But this Woodstock excavation unearths some righteous surprises nonetheless. In short, there is a lot to dig from this dig.

Though labeled as a jazz artist - largely for convenience sake, one assumes - the music of guitarist Bill Frisell is often cinematically stylistic. Borrowing liberally from antique country and folk as well as jazz, Frisell regularly fashions sounds that balance Americana with ambience. His spacious playing also matches the wiry, emotive and, at times, very animated tone of compositions (and well chosen covers) that employ backdrops of steel guitar, fiddle and acoustic bass. The effect is like sifting through old photographs with black and white imagery of ages past that convey all manner of figurative color upon each viewing.

bill frisell: disfarmer

Two new Frisell albums do exactly that all over again. One, the newly issued Disfarmer, makes literal use of such photographic association. The music employs one of the most iconoclastic artists of the post war era, Mike Disfarmer, as its key inspiration. Disfarmer was a photographer who shot mostly family and individual portraits of working class inhabitants in a small Arkansas town during the late ‘40s and ’50s. Largely unknown outside of a rural homeland during his life - and given Disfarmer’s less than neighborly disposition, he wasn’t exactly a town ambassador even then - the unadorned human detail of his work has been viewed as “outsider art” in recent years.

When Frisell debuted his Disfarmer Project performance piece in Columbus two years ago, his trio (which included steel guitarist Greg Leisz and violinist Jenny Scheinman) played the music that winds up on this extraordinary new recording against projections of Disfarmer’s portraits. With the rotating images acting almost as ghosts, the performance seemed less a concert and more like a séance.

Disfarmer’s photographs are displayed with the album art. But Frisell’s wondrous music, augmented for the recording by bassist Viktor Krauss, more than stands on its own. It weaves its way from the warmth and familiarity of Hank Williams’ I Can’t Help It (if I’m Still in Love with You) to the feedback and music box chatter on the group composed Shutter Dream to the collapsed Ozark-inspired fiddle wheeze of Exposed (Disfarmer, incidentally, was also a fiddler).

There is also a fascinating, three-part reinvention of Arkansas Traveler (titled simply Arkansas) that, in typical Frisell fashion, begins with the melody in fragments. The beauty comes in hearing them circulate, gather and disperse again like a pile of leaves during a late summer gust. Like all of Disfarmer, it’s an absolutely beguiling listen.

bill frisell: all hat (soundtrack)

The second album, released in May, is a soundtrack to Canadian filmmaker Leonard Farlinger’s All Hat. As with Disfarmer, Frisell utilizes the same instrumental lineup (but with percussion and harmonica added in), the same producer (Lee Townsend) and the same practice of telling musical stories in short vignette form (Disfarmer sports 26 brief compositions; All Hat offers 31).

Oddly enough, All Hat is something of a rocking affair at times, as when the ensemble rises to meet the merry grooves set in motion by drummer Scott Amendola during Sting. Then we have instances where Frisell layers on guitar with stormy density, as on the jagged Interlude 2. But mostly, All Hat has its head in the open, inviting but mysterious American landscapes that make Frisell the most startling and original Americana-inclined guitarist since Ry Cooder.

neil young: neil young (1968)

When the long promised first volume of Neil Young’s Archives surfaced in June after a wait of nearly two decades, the sense of letdown was unavoidable. What was teased as a treasure trove of unreleased material was an eight-CD package, much of which (including two full concert discs) was already commercially available. With a price tag of nearly $100 (DVD and Blu-Ray editions were even costlier), Archives wasn’t much of a find.

neil young and crazy horse: everybody knows this is nowhere (1969)

Now we have a real curiosity - Young’s first four albums, exquisitely remastered without any additional new material for about $11 a piece. Sure, Young die-hards have owned this music on CD for years. But the clarity of these new mixes may signal it’s time for an upgrade. It’s special enough, in fact, to warrant a serious overall re-examination the 1968 solo debut album Neil Young. More on that in a minute. But for anyone only modestly familiar with Young’s early music - and these four recordings outline the folk and electric elements that defined his career - these re-issues scream to be heard.

neil young: after the gold rush (1970)

Young isn’t the guitar rock power broker here that he was when he let his band Crazy Horse run free later in the ‘70s. But there are still enough slow, deliberate and brooding rockers on these recordings to serve as cunning evil twins to his more fanciful hippie folk meditations. 1969’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, for instance, introduced the Danny Whitten-era Crazy Horse as well the jam staples Down By the River and Cowgirl in the Sand. But its leadoff tune, Cinnamon Girl, remains the most efficiently emotive three minute rocker Young has recorded.

neil young: harvest (1972)

Likewise, When You Dance and Southern Man (from 1970’s After the Gold Rush) along with Words and Alabama (from 1972’s commercial breakthrough Harvest) were galvanizing but ragged blasts of electric fire on albums noted largely for their calm acoustic appeal. On these new reissues, the raw, unrelenting drive of those tunes reveals a new crispness within the albums’ dark, country-inspired contours.

The overwhelming surprise here is Neil Young, an album often slammed by critics for its less-than-surefooted lyrical guise and ornate production. But the guitars and strings on this solo debut - and there are lots of both - simply glow. The modestly fuzzed out guitar on the opening instrumental The Emperor of Wyoming is the first clue of the album’s renewed vibrancy. Then a sweep of orchestral strings runs smack into an electric guitar torrent on The Loner and I’ve Been Waiting for You, two tunes of almost frightening isolationism. The show-stealer, though, is The Old Laughing Lady, where the record’s new mix of strings, electric piano and soul-inspired backing vocals are given a ghostly new presence. This is one of Young’s great underdog tunes from one of his most overlooked albums.

As with Archives, these albums only take us as far as 1972. The following year gave us Time Fades Away, Young’s bleakest, most unrefined recording. It has never been issued in any official form on CD. For now, the rediscovery of the Neil Young album is cause for celebration. But let’s see if this excavation of Young’s early music is now willing to dig up his most dangerous work.

son volt: american central dust

From the moment Jay Farrar stepped back from the wreckage of the genre-defining alt-country troupe Uncle Tupelo to form the more streamlined Son Volt in 1995, a sound was set. If Bill Monroe provided a high lonesome moan to Americana music, Farrar gave it a low lonesome mumble - a voice that encapsulated literary and social references along with stream of consciousness narratives as restless as the electric grinds supplied by his bandmates. Only the abstract interludes of a 2003 solo album, Terroir Blues, seemed to dramatically shift his musical course.

And for the most part, fans and critics seemed to love the whole resolute nature of Son Volt. Then Farrar got a bug, slapped some horns onto a 2007 Son Volt tune called The Picture and everyone acted as though the sky was falling. Jeez, can’t a guy break from the norm without everyone thinking he’s been bought out by Disney?

Obviously not with Farrar. His newest Son Volt work, American Central Dust, is a return to the band’s murky, neo-country roots. A retreat? Perhaps. Here’s the thing though. The music may seem almost shamelessly familiar - from the playfully askew wordplay in Dust of Daylight (”there are ways to buy trouble, but a bail bondsman finds friends in jail”) to the percussive stutter, lap steel atmospherics and layers of twang and tremolo that pepper Farrar’s tale of “cavalier progress” in Down to the Wire. But it’s still a glorious listen. Homemade, earthy, live, unfashionably emotive - American Central Dust is all that and more.

As with Son Volt’s two previous Sony albums (American Central Dust moves the band to Rounder), the new recording is cleaner sonically and more cohesive lyrically than its ‘90s records. That robs the band of a little of its mystery. After all, in his day, Farrar was as champion of an electric mumbler as Michael Stipe was on the IRS albums of R.E.M.

But clarity suits American Central Dust. Farrar frames most of the tunes in acoustics - specifically a mingling of guitar and piano. The heavy electric lifting is left to two new recruits: guitarist Chris Masterson (from country rocker Jack Ingram’s band) and Mark Spencer (one time Blood Orange and a veteran of many Farrar solo projects).

There is also no problem is letting listeners in on the stories, as well. Though still impenetrable at times, there is imagery here that links a troubled past (more specifically, a Southern past) to a present that is unexpectedly hopeful.

Sultana, for instance, outlines an epic maritime disaster from 1865. The story is told in sobering but plain speaking terms, from the boiler explosion aboard the overloaded ship that triggered the catastrophe to the deaths lost to the “cold Mississippi” as a result. Musically, the song is as stark as its storyline with only violin (courtesy of the album’s lone guest, Eleanor Whitmore), piano and an echo of acoustic lap steel guitar on deck.

Equally evocative and as eloquently desperate is Exiles, which outlines escape from a broken world where “hustlers and wolves walk freely through the door.” Spirits are never dashed, though (”the best religion is faith in man”) as the tune’s studied midtempo sway of acoustics and searing pedal steel guitar add to the majesty.

Aside from the folkish elements, there are no massive stylistic leaps here. But the thematic and musical landscapes are nonetheless arresting. Their shapes and souls remain human and exact long after the dust of American Central Dust settles.

levon helm: electric dirt

The triumph behind Levon Helm’s wonderful 2007 Dirt Farmer album wasn’t the fact that it helped put a Grammy in the hands of the former drummer, mandolinist and co-vocalist for The Band. The prize it gave to everyone was the return of Helm’s singing voice - a rural, potent vocal instrument of Southern design that had been largely silenced in preceding years during a battle with throat cancer. But Helm prevailed. First he assembled a band made up of performers that assisted with the fabled Midnight Ramble concerts staged at his Woodstock, New York recording studios. Then he returned to active recording duty with an album that championed the folk and country roots aspects of The Band’s mighty Americana journey. The Grammy was simply a bonus.

That was less than two years ago. Now we have Electric Dirt, an album we might be led to believe is more of a rock ‘n roll outing. And in some ways, it is. But it conveys rock inspirations the way Dirt Farmer leaned on pre-bluegrass country muses. Electric Dirt’s feel is loose, soulful and ceaselessly earnest, as in the way The Grateful Dead’s mischievous Tennessee Jed is reborn with a huge percussive strut reminiscent of vintage Little Feat. But above it all is that reconstituted voice - a proud, exuberant singing implement that reflects a smidgen of age (at 69, Helm is entitled) even though the sheer gusto and vigor of his vocal work is positively ageless.

That’s especially true of Helm’s take on Randy Newman’s Kingfish. When Newman sang the Huey Long-inspired tune on his classic 1974 album Gold Old Boys, the music couldn’t help but sound sardonic. In Helm’s hands, Kingfish becomes more playful with singing that reaches for the heavens just as profoundly as when he made those boundless vocal leaps with The Band on Ophelia nearly 35 years ago.

Helm has some able help on Electric Dirt, too - namely, the very complimentary production of Larry Campbell, stirring harmonies from Ollabelle’s Amy Helm (the singer’s daughter) and Teresa Williams (Campbell’s wife) and, most of all, horn arrangements full of Louisiana soul by Allen Toussaint. In addition to being one of New Orleans’ most celebrated musical elders, Toussaint scored horn charts for The Band on its extraordinary 1972 concert album Rock of Ages.

Roots generations happily collide from there. Helm takes on a pair of mandolin charged Muddy Waters gems, Stuff You Gotta Watch (which he previously covered on the underrated 1993 Band reunion album Jericho) and You Can’t Lose What You Never Had. Father-and-daughter Helm later turn Ollabelle’s Heaven’s Pearls into a suitably sanctified family hymn with Ollabelle bassist Byron Isaacs adding both to the tune’s plaintive cast and the entire album’s rootsy drive.

If there was a pick of this righteous crop, though, the honor would go to I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free, the popular spiritual first cut in 1967 by Nina Simone (it has been revisited more recently by such varied artists as Solomon Burke and Derek Trucks). With another Toussaint horn arrangement backing him up, Helm sings of emancipation and jubilation in equal terms. But one can’t help but think the song possesses a more personal resolve for Helm, as well. “I sing because I know I would see you,” he shouts with reverence in the last verse. Given how this voice couldn’t sing at all until a few years ago, the restorative energy of this music is all the more remarkable just as the dirt under its muddy, rootsy boots is all the more electric.

wilco (the album)

You could have fun all summer long just with the titles to Wilco’s seventh studio album, especially seeing how the leadoff track of Wilco (the album) is Wilco (the song). Both are about as whimsical as Jeff Tweedy and company are likely to get on a recording. Luckily, the music inside is just as inviting and summery.

It could be argued that Wilco (the album) is the band’s first record that doesn’t take a defining step forward. As usual, it wraps itself around Tweedy’s alternately sleepy, wide-eyed and demonstrative singing. Just as predictably, the music still revels in allowing an attractive pop melody to melt and morph before our ears. And when the music even begins to suggest static frustration, Tweedy marches out his two prime aces in the hole: guitarist Nels Cline and drummer (and University of Kentucky graduate) Glenn Kotche.

Cut in three sessions - the first and third being held in the band’s Chicago digs while the second took place at Neil Finn’s studio in Auckland, New Zealand (following collaborations with the Crowded House chieftain’s 7 Worlds Collide project) - Wilco (the album) bears a temperament similar to 2007’s Sky Blue Sky with melodies that are light and lyrics that suggest the same but usually veer off into darkness.

Deeper Down, for instance, dances between vintage Brit pop and psychedelia. Chiming guitars mimic harpsichords as assorted, distorted ambience rumbles in the background. It’s kind of like hearing Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd in a Merseybeat mood. It’s a fun, summery listen, for sure. But, as always, there is restlessness in Tweedy’s hushed singing, especially in the way the lyrics parallel plumbing the depths of one’s psyche to the way a prizefighter is stalked for a knockout punch.

You Never Know, though, is something of a pop smorgasbord. Where do we start with on this one? The China Grove-style piano pounding? The George Harrison-like guitar flourishes? How about the lyrical devices Tweedy employs both as a scolding in the first verse (”C’mon children, you’re acting like children”) and as a lunatic sing-a-long chorus of “I don’t care anymore” that ups the danger element in this solid, summer pop.

Lyrically, the skies darken on Country Disappeared and especially during the romantic detachment of One Wing. The former is played essentially straight with echoes of vintage, mid-tempo pop-soul. But One Wing brings Cline and Kotche to the forefront with punctuated rhythms that jump start and cruise under Tweedy’s vocal despondency. Cline’s arsenal of squalls, twang and string tricks are artfully let loose from there.

Finally - well, actually, firstly, since its kicks off Wilco (the album) - we have Wilco (the song), which sounds like the coltish offspring of David Bowie’s Heroes with a hearty guitar hum and grand vocal hooks. And let’s not forget the chorus: “Wilco will love ‘ya, baby.” Eat your heart out, Telly Savalas.

There are also sonic textures throughout Wilco (the album) suggesting the layered, late ‘60s turns Brian Wilson fashioned for the Beach Boys that underscore the record’s prime selling point: that Wilco (the album) is, at heart, a masterful summer listen.

Now if Wilco (the album) would only incite Wilco (the band) to play Wilco (the song) on Wilco (the tour). Maybe that might even bring Tweedy, Cline, Kotche and the gang back to Lexington (the city). That would sure make me (the critic) one happy fellow.