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This Week: Cooling’s musical tragedy, Leftover’s collage, and Tortoise’s studio wizardry

Joyce Cooling

This Girl’s Got to Play (Narada)

Jazz’s male gender bias cannot be gainsaid. Outside the vocalist realm, women comprise a conspicuously tiny minority, nearly undetectable in the guitarist population. Not for some notable examples, however, most tragically in the fluidity of line and irrepressible imagination of Emily Remler, whose promise as a vanguard guitarist waned with her premature death at 33 in 1990.

Unfortunately, no particular promise is evident in the recording under review. Too many forces ensure that guitarist Joyce Cooling’s fifth release remains relegated to background music. The relentless synthesizer washes, hushed vocals, pseudo-section work, and obsequiously accommodating rhythms deftly combine to evade any frisson between predictability and surprise so essential to capturing sustained interest in the listener.

As such, This Girl’s Got to Play is a tragedy of its own. Cooling clearly has chops, quick when permitted to deliver the clever line, a catchy riff, the doubled octave phrase, but fully developed conceptions beyond a chorus or a re-statement of an already baldly apparent melody are studiously eschewed. The tune “Green Impala” attains a kind of Steely Dan-like funky significance, and “Talk” might work well on soft rock radio. Fact is, Cooling’s voice and lyrics are actually well served by the stifling mix, burying them thankfully deep in soft syntheticism.

There are undoubtedly other merits here to which a blind eye should perhaps not be turned, illustrated by the diligent liner note credit awarded makeup, hair and stylist duties. However, the music and listener would be better served had production placed greater focus on the guitar talents of the featured artist.

—Jonathan B. Frey

Leftover Salmon

Leftover Salmon (Compendia Records)

The Boulder, Colo.-based polyethnic Cajun slamgrass group is back with their first album of new material in nearly five years. Leftover Salmon’s recent self-titled release explores the group’s folk and bluegrass roots, while demonstrating how comfortable they can be in the redundant category of a jam band. The disc is loaded with high-energy mandolin and banjo pickin’, smooth organ solos, and warm guitar riffs; socially aware and nostalgic lyrics come together in this acoustic and electric blend of old and new. Songs like “Woody Guthrie” and “Last Days of Autumn” show off the group’s modern folk mentality. The disc reflects the influence of producer Bill Payne of Little Feat on songs like “Just Keep Walkin’,” which has a distinct Southern rock sound. Extended solos tease listeners with a hint of the musical exploration the band can achieve in a live setting. Although the album has its lulls, Leftover Salmon’s latest release presents a collage of different styles, solid musicianship and good grooves, which makes for a solid album.

—Nick Corrigan

Tortoise

It’s All Around You (Thrill Jockey)

After a while, it becomes a burden being regarded as a boundary-breaking, relentlessly innovative band—especially when an entire musical sub-genre is coined to describe your sound. Unwilling standard-bearers of the post-rock niche, Chicago’s Tortoise is the dubious champion of what may have become an unfortunate tag.

With It’s All Around You, the band rises to the occasion and yet again produces an innovative, engaging recording that continually reveals new layers after repeated listens.

For the uninitiated, Tortoise’s sound is a mélange of prog, jazz, minimalism and I.D.M., infused with a bit of hip-hop, every kind of instrument you could imagine, and then remixed to the Nth degree.

The band’s latest sonic approach is pretty much the same as always, which means a collage/visual art approach is taken to studio work where original tracks are tweaked, layered, morphed, merged and refined to a point that early renditions probably bear little comparison to the final results. Though the band appears as a live ensemble and most of the sounds on All Around You were originally played live, the end product is a different beast indeed.

For Tortoise, the studio is used more as an instrument rather than a tool to record songs with pre-set verse-chorus structure. Many groups have followed this approach in Tortoise’s wake with few accomplishing anything nearly as compelling. I bet these guys eat dub for breakfast.

—John Sewell

July 1, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 27 © 2004 Metro Pulse