Album reviews: Drive-By Truckers, Van Morrison, Bon Iver, Pixies, Regina Spektor and more

Drive-By Truckers, American Band

★★★★★

Download: Ramon Casiano; Guns Of Umpqua; Kinky Hypocrites; What It Means; Once They Banned Imagine; Baggage

The title affirms Drive-By Truckers’ status as one of the emblematic American bands of their era, whose Southern heritage lends an easy authority to their diverse assemblages elements of rock, soul, blues and country influences. And with American Band, they’ve reached another level, as signalled by the omission, for the first time, of a Wes Freed cartoon cover in favour of a sombre grey photo of the Stars and Stripes at half-mast.

This is their state of the union album, its songs peopled not by the usual cast of fictional barflies and lowlifes but by victims of altogether more realistic circumstances, starting with “Ramon Casiano”, a 15-year-old Mexican boy who in 1931 was murdered by one Harlon Carter. Carter never faced justice: instead, he became Commander of the US Border Patrol, and subsequently headed the National Rifle Association, which he transformed from a huntsmans’ club into a powerful right-wing political lobby to help Ronald Reagan become President.

“He had the makings of a leader of a certain kind of men/Who need to feel the world’s against them, out to get them if it can,” runs one couplet, precisely skewering a prevailing contemporary American mood that overshadows many of the songs here, from the Confederate apologists of “Surrender Under Protest” (“No sooner was it over, than the memory made it nobler”) to the trigger-happy police condemned in “What It Means” (“If you say it wasn’t racial when they shot him in his tracks, well I guess that means that you ain’t black”) and “Once They Banned Imagine”, a scathing assessment of how the threat of terrorism was parlayed into a crackdown on liberty.

The half-mast flag flies not just for them, but also for soldiers squandered in futile foreign adventurism, and for victims of the pandemic of high-school shootings – here brilliantly evoked, in “Guns Of Umpqua”, by the image of a student desperately barricading a door against a shooter whilst reliving the memory of a recent idyllic rural jaunt: heaven and hell, in one mind in an Oregon classroom. Elsewhere, “Kinky Hypocrites” is a dig at corrupt televangelists, delivered in a rollicking blast of Stones-style raunch-rock, and “Baggage” a tender tribute to Robin Williams that acknowledges the widespread affliction of depression: “Only inches separate you from the darkness in me”.

While the subject matter demands some of the arrangements are more gentle and sensitive than usual, the new balance of rockers and reflections actually works to American Band’s advantage. Thoughtful, engaging and utterly contemporary, it’s one of the albums of the year.

Van Morrison, Keep Me Singing

★★★☆☆

Download: Let It Rhyme; In Tiburon; Going Down To Bangor

Right from the opening “Let It Rhyme”, with its acquiescent tone conveyed by a gentle collusion of organ, pedal steel and harmonica, Keep Me Singing presents an unusually relaxed Van Morrison. There’s something of the warmth and fulfilment of Tupelo Honey about the album generally, while Morrison’s languid reflections on the twists and turns of fate in “Memory Lane” and “Out In The Cold Again” recall the thoughtful mood of “Wild Children”. Even the now standard gripe about misrepresentation, “The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword”, is delivered in unexpectedly amenable manner; while the toughest track musically is “Going Down To Bangor”, a gritty blues in the vein of “Goin’ Down Slow”. Elsewhere, “In Tiburon” is a wistful paean to San Francisco’s bohemian past, with namechecks for sundry beat poets, Lenny Bruce and Chet Baker, the latter sweetly evoked through a muted trumpet solo.

Bon Iver, 22, A Million

★★★★☆

Download: 29# Strafford APTS; 8 (circle); 21 M♢♢N WATER

There’s an intensely private quality about 22, A Million that makes it initially hard to penetrate. Everything about it – from the track titles with their weird symbols, to the glitchy pulses and sketchy saxes, to Justin Vernon’s vocals, autotuned or hiding in falsetto register – seems designed to confound interest in personal matters. “22 (OVER S∞∞N)” opens with the line “It might be over soon”, a phrase freighted with unbearable pressure, and the album continues accordingly, with largely impervious lyrics throwing off troubling lines – “I’ve been caught in fire”, “Toying with your blood, I remember something.” But as the album progresses, it becomes more accommodating. A gentle piano ballad stained with strings, “29# Strafford APTS” is the most affecting piece here, while multi-layered harmonies bring strange grandeur to “8 (circle)”: it’s like the baring of a soul as triumphal conquest.

Yello, Toy

★★★★☆

Download: Limbo; Pacific AM; 30,000 Days; Dark Side

Compared to the brutal utilitarian EDM of American dancefloors, there’s a sleek, stylish, timeless quality about Yello’s brand of electropop. Bookended by “Frau Tomium”, a bleep-tastic tribute to electronic pioneer Oskar Sala, Toy could have come from any time in Yello’s career, so resilient are their tropes. “Limbo” is exemplary, a light, punchy piece with Dieter Meier’s basso profundo murmur anchoring Boris Blank’s springy synthesised backdrop; while at the opposite extreme, Blank employs harp, synthetic woodwind and dramatic percussion for the atmospheric “Pacific AM”, a brilliantly evocative vista akin to gazing across an exotic jungle valley. Several guest singers augment Meier’s musings on mind and mortality, the best of which is “30,000 Days”, a classic Yello electro-noir Latin shuffle that finds him wondering, “I’m looking deep into my time – what have I done, and why?”. Good question.

Pixies, Head Carrier

★★★☆☆

Download this: Head Carrier; Classic Masher; Might As Well Be Gone

Head Carrier is an altogether more convincing affair than 2014’s comeback album Indie Cindy, the intervening months of roadwork having helped relocate the band’s classic mode. The title track is typical, with Joey Santiago’s lead guitar squirrelling inventively around Black Francis’s dark chording, whilst the lyric “You can’t be too zen/I’m going down the drain again” captures the dialectic of droll hipster bathos. New bassist Paz Lenchantin’s cute harmonies polish the pop sheen of “Classic Masher”, and Francis’s trademark hoarse scream brands “Baal’s Back”; elsewhere, his wry sense of humour adds a hubristic edge to the enervated “Might As Well Be Gone”: “You’re the chosen one/But I could do with a change”. Real life, rather than sci-fi surrealism, pokes its way into the sardonic dig at A&R, “Talent”, and the urgent, scuttling road song “Um Chagga Lagga”.

Usher, Hard II Love

★★★★☆

Download: Need U; Missin U; No Limit; Make U A Believer

Appearing a full two years after its first scheduled release date, Usher’s Hard II Love represents his attempt to regain his R&B crown from Canadian usurpers such as Drake and The Weeknd. Indeed, the protracted delay may be due to his fashioning a more contemporary sound, comparable with theirs. Whatever he’s done, it’s worked a treat: tracks like “No Limit” and “Need U”, with their miasmic, swirling synths and pulsing vibrato effects, epitomise modern boudoir-soul, as Usher slips effortlessly between warm caresses and pleading falsetto. The battalions of backroom studio staff ensure a range of musical interest, from the Steely Dan chords and textures of “Missin U” to the surging synth buzz of “Crash”; and if there’s any doubting Usher’s commitment to romance, in “Make U A Believer” he even promises to switch off his cellphone – surely the greatest of modern sacrifices?

Regina Spektor, Remember Us To Life

★★★☆☆

Download: Bleeding Heart; Older And Taller; Black And White; Obsolete

Though often compared to Tori Amos, on Remember Us To Life Regina Spektor exhibits stronger affinities with Randy Newman, thanks to a turn of phrase often leaning towards the ironic, and a deceptive worldview that, like the sardonic string arrangements and ominous piano settings, gives most of these songs a slightly sour sting in the tail. Which is just right for an album themed around the bitter lessons of maturity, whose protagonists are either offering advice to young square-peg loners, as in “Bleeding Heart”, or permanently scarred by memories. In “Black And White”, she acknowledges how “you will always start to cry” when looking at certain old photographs, while the dispiriting renewed acquaintanceship of “Older And Taller” prompts the cynical observation “‘Enjoy your youth’ sounds like a threat”, salvaging self-respect by adding, “but I will, anyway”. Good advice, however late it’s learnt.