Metro Pulse/Platters/Ramblers

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This week: A couple of ramblers and some indie fellow travelers

Ramblin' Jack Elliott
The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack (Vanguard)

Ramblin' Jack Elliott is a category of one in the 20th century folk canon. The trailer to the new documentary film The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack boasts, "After Woody Guthrie and before Bob Dylan, there was Ramblin' Jack Elliott." But as the soundtrack album shows, Elliott's not really anything like the two icons who both befriended and overshadowed him.

Never a songwriter, the Brooklyn-born son of a Jewish doctor has always aspired only to inhabit the songs he sings. For two or three minutes at a time, he owns them; then he gives them away. According to legend, the first time he performed Dylan's "Don't Think Twice," its author called out from the audience, "I relinquish it to you, Jack." (The song shows up here in a 1998 rendition, which somehow turns its native bile to weary tenderness.)

Dylan is on the soundtrack, singing a wildly unlikely doo-wop parody with Elliott in 1961. It's hardly a classic, but it's funny and spirited. Duets with Johnny Cash from Cash's late '60s TV show are equally disarming. And a 1953 recording of Elliott and Guthrie, with Sonny Terry on harmonica, withstands the cumulative weight of its performers, which is saying something.

Still, Ramblin' Jack is most affecting on his own. Goofing around with "Talkin' Sailor Blues" or groping his way through the folk standard "Cuckoo," he sings with warmth and certainty, chasing his fierce six-string strumming and never quite catching up to it. You can hear his voice erode over the decades, but scraped bare it's still a fine and supple instrument. Elliott's itinerant minstrelsy and American romanticism were archaic even at the start of his career. But he never sounds like anything so mundane as an archivist. The songs are always alive for him.

—Jesse Fox Mayshark

Robert Pollard
Doug Gillard
Speak Kindly Of Your Volunteer Fire Department (Luna Music)

Indie pop demigod Robert Pollard (the man who is Guided By Voices) brings us yet another slab of rockin' and literate songwriting genius on this, his umpteenth release in the last decade or so. And for this outing, Pollard has GBV main man, guitarist Doug Gillard, in tow. So, to anyone who is halfway familiar with Pollard's work, Speak Kindly Of Your Volunteer Fire Department is exactly what you'd expect: cut up, juxtaposed lyrics that still make sense, American rock 'n' roll filtered through British Invasion sounds (The Who, The Kinks)—all delivered, with love, in a lo-fi package.

Speak Kindly hearkens back to the earlier days of GBV, when the lo-fi sound was an economic necessity. Though the songs may not be honed to the high gloss sheen of GBV's last outing, Do The Collapse, they nonetheless possess the same inspiration. The songs are more like well rendered sketches, as opposed to the full color renditions presented in Collapse. With this release, Pollard has racked up another triumph that will surely be lauded by his legion of dedicated fans.

Let's just hope old Bob decides to lay off the sauce for a while so he can continue making such good records. Anybody who has witnessed a GBV concert knows he can put 'em away at an alarming, liver-destroying rate. If he keeps it up much longer, he'll wind up being another dead legend. And that would be a pathetic end to a long, consistent run of artful, real rock 'n' roll.

—John Sewell

764-HERO
Weekends of Sound (Up Records)

Call it the follow-up to grunge if you must, but, really, isn't the Pacific Northwest's current pop scene more of an echo of the great Chapel Hill indie pop explosion of the early '90s, which was a spin-off of Boston's alternapop happening, which followed up Minneapolis' legendary scruffy pop scene, which... In other words, it is all-too easy to compare Band A to their next-door neighbors, given the incestuously shared resources and influences; is anyone really surprised that Quasi resembles 764-HERO resembles Built to Spill (technically from Boise, Idaho, yes, but... ) resembles Modest Mouse?

And, while 764-HERO's latest, Weekends of Sound, offers touchstone reflections of their mates, it also stands strong on its own.

In fact, John Atkins and Polly Johnson-Dickinson come out swinging on their third full-length, with the double sonic attack of "Terrified of Flight" and "Without Fire," two of the best songs the band has ever concocted. Stalkers these, unrelentlessly slithering and charming their way into memory with irresistibly simple pop beats thickened by subtly complex rhythmic changes; there is a lazy Built to Spill dreaminess here, yes, an echo of Sam Coomes' (Quasi) bittersweet vocal meanderings, and an air of sinister Modest Mouse-style guitar. But the overall result leads one to believe this is a band that has finally tightened, and toughened up, rather than just presenting 764-HERO as a natural touring partner for their peers.

Here's where things get sticky, though; much of the rest of the record is... weak in comparison, an expected link to their past rather than part of some initial shove forward. "Left Hanging" contains interesting elements of shady emo-droning; closer "Blue Light" trembles with nervous promise then falters into a withering chorus. Weekends of Sound feels like a transitional record; if you liked the 764-HERO of yore, chances are you'll like this year's model just as much—but with the added incentive of hints of greater things to come.

—Shelly Ridenour