Sound ‘Round: Elizabeth Cook / Sunny Sweeney

Perfect girls of country

Elizabeth Cook – Aftermath (Thirty Tigers)

After making one of the finest damn albums of the previous decade, her life devolved into the sort of honkytonk tragedy that’s her forte. She divorced her no-good hubby and dealt with a series of deaths in the family — including mama, daddy, kid brother and her former in-laws. She also did a rehab stint after the drugs that took her heroin-addict sister nearly took her, too. 10 years and a lifetime’s worth of trauma later, this return from the brink is as musically moody as it is lyrically unflinching. The world-beating sass that once rivaled ‘Randa is subdued here, but her gift for writing one worthy couplet after another is sharper. She struggles to practice Daddy’s death-bed advice, and Mama’s voice haunts her as she finds refuge in men who offer cheap sex and expensive drugs. Then there’s the sadly shimmering “Perfect Girls of Pop,” which belies the music biz’s penchant for snuffing out young songbirds who sing “like they’ve never been hurt before.” The only one allowed to have any fun is the titular thick Georgia woman with a “basket of peaches underneath her clothes” who is “as rich as the groceries on the stove.” That’s just before the finale about Mary, who watches helplessly as her son Jesus Christ is executed by the state. As much as these songs are about her struggles, she also knows sympathy is for others. GRADE: A

Sunny Sweeney – Recorded Live at the Machine Shop Studio (Aunt Daddy)

Back when mingling in close proximity with strangers and loud music was still allowed, I had a chance to see her play a sold-out gig at a local honkytonk (shoutout to Duke’s!). For 90 minutes and change, she exhibited the blue-collar humor and Texas-sized tenderness that makes her so enjoyable and necessary — running through her own robust songbook and covering Waylon and Cash along the way. COVID having killed the tour revenue that is her lifeblood, she braved a pandemic to record this set in an effort to recoup at least some of the lost cash. Two new numbers include “Poet’s Prayer,” a tribute to fellow road-weary songwriters who eke out a living one mile at a time, and “Tie Me Up,” wherein the stranger she brings home is given the boot the moment he cums. And it’s that cocktail of sincerity and sass that runs from start to finish — even the Don Williams and Stevie Nicks covers fit the mold. She’s squarely in the Nashville tradition, but is more infatuated with a worthy song than the conventions of mainstream country. It’s why she only has one Top 10 single and will likely never repeat that modest success. But doing things her way has paid higher dividends. None higher than “Grow Old with Me,” an affirmation of lifelong love so gentle only a narcissist could remain unmoved. GRADE: A-

Sound ‘Round: Ariana Grande / Britney Spears

Giving some divas their due

Ariana Grande – Positions (Republic)

I assume Ariana Grande and I would not be friends. Her constant display of vanity is beyond tiresome, and that goes double for the way she infantilizes herself. I question her taste in men (best of luck to the groom-to-be) as much as I question her song selection, and I haven’t even mentioned her permanent spray-tan that flirts with blackface and all of the historical baggage that comes with it. thank u, next was the sort of big-ticket wonder that made my list of grievances temporarily melt away. I am here to sadly report, however, she has not turned a corner. This follow-up is held back by a retread of the sort of material wherein her persona is a poor substitute for melody — it’s why The Weeknd cameo makes perfect sense. With the hooks once again taking a backseat, her arena-made voice is left to whisper in tune and recite lyrics that leave my libido unmoved. I wish “34+35” was as sexy as the sum of the equation, although how sexy is math, really? “Positions,” is more like it, though, because it’s as playful as its subject matter and is predicated on the sort of come-ons that make horny teens sweat. Ditto “six thirty,” and “pov,” which further confirm she’s at her best when she’s not being petty toward some ex unworthy of her studio time. GRADE: B+

Britney Spears – Greatest Hits: My Prerogative (Jive, 2004)

Marketing her greatest hits around a cover of Bobby Brown’s ode to self-destruction was a mistake at least and a bad omen at worst. It’s turned even more tragi-comic after her very public mental breakdown followed by the bevy of lawsuits that have consumed her adulthood and stunted her career. Any empathetic person is right to feel for Britney, plucked from a broken home in Kentwood, Louisiana and whisked away to Hollywood to profit an industry that sexualized and brutalized her while she was still a virgin. She’s arguably the most famous pop star of her generation (only ex-bf Justin Timberlake rivals her claim). But her discography feels lacking for someone who occupies such a hefty space within the culture. By my count, this 17-track collection breaks down as follows: three iconic bangers that will outlive us all, four keepers whose utility is higher than expected, two well-meaning if dated bops, and seven that register as various levels of filler — including the aptly titled “Outrageous” written by the odious R. Kelly(!). That only 10 songs stick the landing seems like a low passage rate given her mega-star status, but it’s just about right for a singles artist who reached her commercial peak when she was not yet a woman. The music biz can be an isolating and suffocating monster for even the most modestly successful artists. I wouldn’t wish the crushing and invasive pitfalls of superstardom on anyone. That Britney endured most of it as a child while still doing the best she could is a small miracle. GRADE: A-

Sound ‘Round: Hanging Tree Guitars / Thelonious Monk

American originals exude musical brilliance

Various Artists – Hanging Tree Guitars (Music Maker Relief Foundation)

Freeman Vines is a black man whose family has lived on the same rural patch of eastern Carolina clay for generations. He’s a luthier who has spent his life painstakingly crafting guitars by hand in order to capture a sound he claims to have heard in a dream. “It takes all of the glory out of what you’re doing when you’re using a lot of modern tools,” he said in a mini doc. His life’s work is the subject of a photobook, museum exhibit, and this 12-song comp featuring songs performed on his instruments — including one husk of walnut that came from a literal lynching tree. Heavy shit, no doubt. But it’s that sort of tragic depravity that makes the resilient humanity displayed here so beautiful, vital and necessary. All of these tracks save the gospel-swinging “Get Ready” were recorded within the last 30 years, but they all feel as weathered and calloused as a sharecropper’s hands. Credit the music’s jarring simplicity, which largely features nothing more than a voice and a guitar. What begins with Rufus McKenzie’s lineage from slavery to the blues slithers and moans its way through Adolphus Bells’s “Black Man’s Dream” dedicated to MLK (“America, if you don’t change your way of doin’ / You are going straight to hell.”), and onto G.B. Burt’s ethereal, haunted falsetto. But the song I can’t quit is the finale, a rendition of “Amazing Grace” that’s so rugged and unclean you’ll swear you’d just heard it for the first time again. From start to finish, the collective noise is so joyful it makes this evangelical atheist shout hosanna. GRADE: A

Thelonious Monk – Palo Alto (Impulse)

Thelonious Monk was arguably the most recognizable figure in jazz during 1964. His mug graced the cover of Time with the accompanying article proclaiming “…there is hardly a jazz musician playing who is not in some way indebted to him.” Four years, a bungled record deal with Columbia, and life-threatening medical scares later, the scene had largely left Monk behind and in dire financial straits. In the middle of a three-week residency at San Francisco’s Jazz Workshop, he was paid $500 to play for an integrated audience at Palo Alto High School. A janitor recorded the gig in exchange for tuning Monk’s piano. The tapes were given to Danny Sher, the 16-year-old student who booked the show, where they went unheard for five decades. What the music lacks in pure fidelity is made up with a cocktail of finesse and technical mastery. Though 1968 was a tumultuous year for Monk personally, rigorous touring kept his playing sharp and his band tight. It’s not hyperbolic to say no one played jazz piano like Monk. Plenty smart so as to appease academic hipsters, but romantic enough to communicate to the masses, his music swings from dense and maddening to somber and articulate within a few bars. The bulk of the set features takes on Monk standards — “Ruby, My Dear,” “Well, You Needn’t” and “Blue Monk.” But this performance isn’t a nostalgia trip from a has-been. It’s a hall of fame quartet near the height of its powers recorded just before Monk’s slow and permanent withdrawal from the world. Though it falls short of revelatory, this recording is nonetheless a testament to a mercurial figure’s unquestionable commitment to his craft. GRADE: A- 

Sound ‘Round: Marvin Gaye / The Beatles

Correcting Rolling Stone’s Revisionist History

Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On? (Tamla, 1971)

What constitutes the Greatest Album of All Time is an equation I seldom contemplate. Sure, it makes for fun debate and worthy discussion, but such a distinction could mean anything to anyone, and turning such a subjective question into an exact science is useless. However, there is a short list of records that merit automatic discussion — take your pick of any Beatles album from 1965 onward, Stevie Wonder’s output from the mid ‘70s, etc. But as much as Rolling Stone’s revisionist history would have you think otherwise, don’t buy the hype concerning Marvin Gaye’s bad poetry disguised as a political treatise. Stating the obvious first: “What’s Going On,” “Mercy Mercy Me,” and “Inner City Blues,” are classics that deserve their historical high regard. But what’s left is an overabundance of lyrical platitudes and musical mush as hollow as Live-Laugh-Love décor. Right, Gaye’s political turn marked a new moment for the agency and creative freedom of every black musician who followed, and the ills that marred 1971 are the same 50 years later — perpetual warfare, killer cops, pollution, etc. I suppose that’s why Rolling Stone’s voters went along with the magazine’s editorial agenda of political over-correctness to declare this the greatest album yet made. Look, I’m all for peace, love and understanding. But Gaye’s cry to “Save the Children” and solemn reminder that “God is Love,” makes me want to wretch. And damn near every time he finds a worthy groove, he buries it beneath the sort of overbearing string section that gives Celine Dion an orgasm. Soon after this record, he rediscovered his erection. Thank Christ, the world is better for it. GRADE: B+

The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Parlophone, 1967)

This monument of pop has been deemed “overrated” by so many self-proclaimed intellectuals and clueless dilettantes it’s now become underrated — a bizarre descriptor for a collective work of genius. Nitpickers are right about the particulars. The band-within-a-band concept is flimsy on its face, and, grandiose finale aside, nothing here possesses the sort of gravitas befitting a cultural benchmark. But I couldn’t give a shit less, frankly. Not with popcraft this robust, ebullient and unbeatable. This is Sir Paul’s brainchild, and some say his folly. To that I say they’d be wise to reevaluate Magical Mystery Tour on damn near the bulk of his solo work. In 1967, McCa was at his most poptimist and principled. Taking mic duties on more than half of the songs, he exudes the sort of peace-and-love temperament only the most jaded of cynics would call corny — Paul allows the title character of “She’s Leaving Home” to exercise her agency, and the ragtime charm of “When I’m Sixty-Four” turns warmer and lusher the older I get. Elsewhere, Ringo plays the friendly bloke history will remember him as, and George Harrison writes a psychedelic anthem to top them all. But it’s John Lennon, as always, who is the real MVP. The harpsichord progression that opens “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” sends Beethoven’s ghost into a fit of jealous rage, and “A Day in the Life” is a beautiful, nightmarish trip about death. He also gets the better of Paul on “Getting Better,” following the eternal optimism of the title with the terse, all-too-knowable, “It’ can’t get no worse.” GRADE: A+