When Paul Simon released his album In the Blue Light in 2018, it had all the earmarks of a final work. It also came the same year that Simon said he would stop touring, with a show in Corona Park in Flushing Meadows, Queens, in New York, on September 22, 2018 to be his last. He subsequently played in San Francisco at Golden Gate Park at the Outside Lands festival on August 11, 2019, an environmental fundraiser that took place over three days and mostly featured newer artists and that on the 10th also featured Simon’s wife’s band Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians.

This new album, a very short, seven-song, mostly acoustic offering, also feels like it’s the last from Simon. The album’s lyrics reflect the feelings of someone looking back on their life, but who also feels like they have a lot more life to live. The album is also very much a prayer or meditation on spiritual salvation.

The mostly acoustic songs have faint echoes of Simon’s more folky works with Art Garfunkel in the 1960s and on his first solo albums in the early ’70s. But this is not a nostalgia show. The sounds and musical explorations here are fresh and new, albeit somber. Also of interest is the song “The Lord,” which appears as three separate songs and becomes a repeating musical and mostly lyrical motif.

Simon’s wife Edie Brickell duets with him on “The Sacred Harp” and “Wait.” And while the album has a very sparse acoustic feel, Simon plays five different guitars, a varied list of percussion, and three different keyboards. Jamey Haddad contributes various instruments, Voces8 also contribute on vocals, and five other artists comprise an orchestral quintet. The subtlety with which all of these instruments and voices are integrated is tasteful and refreshing.

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The spark plug that fires The Garment District’s engine is multi-instrumentalist Jennifer Baron, though on new album Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of the World, she gets a big assist from her cousin Lucy Blehar, who handles lead vocals across seven of the set’s nine tracks. There have been other notable contributors to prior recordings, including Jowe Head of Swell Maps and Kevin C. Smith of The Artificial Sea. Baron’s latest is a catchy yet ambitious and expansive affair that’s out September 22 on orange vinyl and digital through Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records.

Jennifer Baron was a founding member of The Ladybug Transistor, a Brooklyn-based outfit that was one of the 200 or so outfits affiliated with the Elephant 6 Collective, but are perhaps more commonly known as part of Merge Records’ ’90s boom period. I remain quite fond of that group, and Baron was part of my personal favorite in their discography, the near-perfect Albemarle Sound, released in ’99.

Gathering this knowledge of Baron’s background prior to hearing The Garment District spurred musings over Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of the World possibly extending The Ladybug Transistor’s blend of baroque pop, psych pop, and sunshine pop. The verdict is only somewhat, as there are enough similarities to make The Garment District’s latest a complementary listen rather than a break from Baron’s past.

Flowers Telegraphed’s opener “Left on Coast,” and particularly its minute-long jangle-psych prelude, does strengthen ties to Baron’s prior band, but in short order the track kicks into high pop-rock gear, though the momentum is still tangibly psych-infused via ’60s garage organ licks and string ripping that’s reminiscent of Rob Schnieder (I’m thinking specifically of The Marbles).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | In connection with the release of the new Divine Horsemen album Bitter End of a Sweet Night (In The Red, October 27), The Philosophical Research Society welcomes punk rock icon, singer/songwriter, filmmaker, poet, and genre cinema expert Chris D. (aka Chris Desjardins) to PRS for an in-depth conversation onstage with PRS Executive Director and longtime friend Dennis Bartok on Thursday October 5, at 7pm.

Chris’ seminal L.A. Punk band The Flesh Eaters emerged from the same scene as fellow groups The Blasters, X, The Germs, and Los Lobos. Over the course of a 45-year and counting career the band released such classic albums as A Minute to Pray A Second to Die, No Questions Asked, Miss Muerte, and their ferocious 2019 LP I Used To Be Pretty featuring their “superstar” lineup including John Doe and D.J. Bonebrake (X), Dave Alvin (The Blasters), and Steve Berlin (Los Lobos). Formed in 1983 with then-wife and ongoing collaborator Julie Christensen, Chris’ band Divine Horsemen has released a number of stellar albums including Time Stands Still, Devil’s River, Middle of the Night, and their stunning new LP Bitter End of a Sweet Night.

In addition to his work with The Flesh Eaters, Divine Horsemen, and Stone by Stone, Chris wrote for (and served as a contributing editor to) Slash magazine between 1977–1980. He also was an A&R rep and in-house producer at Slash Records/Ruby Records from 1980-1984. He has produced/co-produced seminal albums by The Gun Club, The Dream Syndicate, The Misfits, Green on Red, The Lazy Cowgirls, Phoenix Thunderstone, and the crazy one-off Jeffrey Lee Pierce project, “Soulsuckers on Parade” (featuring Dave Alvin on guitar), as well as his own bands, The Flesh Eaters and Divine Horsemen. He has also produced songs by Top Jimmy, John Doe, and Julie Christensen.

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Celebrating Paul Williams on his 82nd birthday. —Ed.

It is the fate of some singer/songwriters to be the worst interpreters of their own work. Burt Bacharach springs to mind. Ditto Hoyt “Joy to the World” Axton and Jimmy “MacArthur Park” Webb. Kris Kristofferson falls into this category—unlike Webb and Axton he’s instantly recognizable for his rugged good looks and ragged voice, but few prefer his versions of “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and “Help Me Through the Night” to those of Janis Joplin and Johnny Cash.

The premiere example of the phenomenon, however, is Paul Williams. Williams may have written immortal songs like the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “I Won’t Last a Day Without You,” and “Rainy Days and Mondays” (amongst others) as well as hits by Three Dog Night, Barbra Streisand, Anne Murray, and Helen Reddy, but his own versions have never made a dent in the public consciousness. Even his take on “Rainbow Connection” is overshadowed by the one sung by Kermit the Frog.

Fairly or not, Williams’ failure to make a name for himself singing his own songs has much to do with the fact that he’s one of the most unprepossessing singers to ever take the stage. One is tempted to use the word gnome, but while he’s short (five feet, two inches) he isn’t ugly—just odd looking. If anything, he’s cuddly. You want to pick him up and squeeze him. It hardly matters he can sing and has great material—he simply doesn’t belong beneath stage lights. Williams is the Anti-Kris. He can sing but looks a lot like a Hobbit–Kristofferson looks like a rock star but can hardly hold a tune.

William’s presence in the public eye was limited largely to his many TV appearances—a joke appearance on The Tonight Show here, parts on The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Hollywood Squares and The Muppet Show there. For most he wasn’t a pop songwriter of genius—he was the Muppets guy.

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Post-punk side projects don’t get much better than Second Layer, a dark and edgy electronics and guitar excursion featuring Adrian Borland and Graham Bailey from the critically lauded outfit The Sound. Earlier this year, the 1972 label collected Second Layer’s early material onto the Courts or Wars LP, and that set’s been promptly followed with a reissue of the duo’s sole full-length World of Rubber. Originally released in 1981, the album’s nine tracks walk an exquisite tightrope of anxiety and alienation.

One of the lingering headscratchers of the post-punk era is how The Sound’s commercial success fell significantly short of their critical standing. Formed by Borland and Bailey out of the dissolution of the punk outfit The Outsiders, The Sound’s debut full-length Jeopardy impressively and deservedly received five-star reviews in all three of the major UK music weeklies (The New Musical Express, Melody Maker, and Sounds), but this esteem didn’t spark sales commensurate to the (often lesser) bands to which The Sound are frequently compared.

The Sound’s early stuff is aptly assessed as full-bodied and tense post-punk, but it wasn’t overly abrasive or particularly difficult in structure. Borland and Bailey’s near simultaneous forming of another band could be viewed as a possible channeling of their more caustic experimental tendencies away from The Sound proper, though they also kept a handle on quality songs in Second Layer’s scheme.

Indeed, one of World of Rubber’s strongest aspects is songwriting that’s often a cut above the norm for these sorts of post-punky (and thoroughly UK) sojourns, experiences that are reliably longer on atmosphere than legit tunes. We’re talking bleak and tense with structural angularity and intermittent explosiveness. And to be clear, atmosphere is perfectly fine, but songs are a definite plus, especially when the writing is more than mere approximations of Joy Division, Gang of Four, PIL, Wire, or the Pop Group.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | 2023 sees the 50th anniversary of what is widely regarded as Thin Lizzy’s breakthrough album Vagabonds Of The Western World featuring their first UK top ten single “Whiskey In The Jar” and “The Rocker” which would go on to be one of the band’s signature tunes, so much so that it was the last song they ever performed at their final show in 1983.

To celebrate the album’s golden anniversary, deluxe CD and LP sets featuring rarities, radio sessions, unreleased music, rare photos, extensive sleevenotes by Mark Blake, and memorabilia will be released on 17th November. The reissue suite also includes the album remixed in Dolby Atmos, a first for any Thin Lizzy record.

Vagabonds Of The Western World was Thin Lizzy’s third studio album and was initially released on the 21st of September 1973. It was the first to feature artwork by Jim Fitzpatrick, the creator of the famous red and black portrait of Che Guevara, who would go on to work with the band on classic albums such as Nightlife, Jailbreak, Johnny The Fox, Black Rose, and Chinatown.

The album was the band’s last roll of the dice, as they had been working for two years with limited success. After the band moved to London from Dublin, they played every gig they could to keep themselves afloat. While messing around in their rehearsal studio, Phil Lynott started busking the old Irish folk song “Whiskey In The Jar,” which dates back to the 1700s. Their then manager remarked upon it and insisted that the band recorded, against their gut instincts. The single was released in November 1972 and rose to number 6 on the UK singles chart. However, the song didn’t sit well with the band, and despite its success, they left it off their forthcoming album.

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Like the Henry Cow that calved ‘em, the Art Bears are a shut up and take your medicine proposition. I don’t think you’re supposed to enjoy their hifalutin’ take on progressive rock—no, you’re supposed to listen to it because it’s good for you. Their music is high in avant garde fiber and listening to it is like downing cod liver oil—unpleasant, but elevating. A steady regimen of the Art Bears is guaranteed to make you a smarter, more well-rounded music listener. It’s sophisticated stuff for sophisticated people. Me, I don’t want to be sophisticated. I’m like the guy on the cover of Foghat’s Fool for the City. I enjoy going fishing in the sewer for the music I love.

But I suspect the monocle-wearing people of taste who love the Art Bears couldn’t even be bothered to sneer at Foghat, which is okay—they obviously have more class than I do. And the smart set have reason to love the Art Bears—gadfly guitarist/keyboardist Fred Frith is a musician’s dream, and percussionist, “composer” (songwriter is a title beneath him), and “musical theorist” (it says so right on Wikipedia!) Chris Cutter ain’t chicken feed either.

If avant-rock chamber music is your thing, there’s no gainsaying the fact that England’s Art Bears have the goods. And their music is educational too—their third and final LP, 1978’s The World as It Is Today, is less rock album than textbook on the evils of capitalism, and for all I know it’s an assigned reading at the London School of Economics. And I say “textbook” because lyrics are beneath the Art Bears—words guy Cutter insists upon the term “texts.” In short, I shouldn’t be writing a review of the Art Bears—I should be writing a doctoral thesis.

The Art Bears fall into the dreaded category of bands I respect but can’t stomach, which is to say they fall into the lowest of all categories. I’d much sooner listen to a band I don’t respect and can’t stomach, because at least it affords me the pleasure of laughing at them. Having a good chuckle at Emerson, Lake & Palmer makes me a happier person. The Art Bears don’t afford me that pleasure, and frankly, I find it difficult to forgive them for it. I was recently reading an article on experimental music trends that highlighted Infinity Merge, a technique that layers and loops fragmented compositions into a seemingly endless, evolving piece. It struck me that if any band could have benefited from this approach, it would be the Art Bears—maybe, just maybe, stretching their chaotic theatrics into an infinite loop would give me something to latch onto. Other than the fact that avant-cabaret vocalist Dagmar Krause occasionally chitters away like a German Yoko Ono, the Art Bears are a chuckle-free proposition.

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