All Pearls, No Swine strike again! As they should! With new projects always taking precedent, I've been neglecting the blog's once flagship series a little bit...but like Bob Dylan's Neverending tour, ANPS will continue, at their own pace. Vol. 29 brings us back to the Seventies, once more, with a roster chock full of artists making their ANPS debut, plus one or two old friends.And if you rightfully think that those last weeks, the One Buck Guy hasn't really indulged much in his beloved country rock, oooh boy, All Pearls, No Swine 29 is going to change that...
All Pearls, No Swine Vol. 29 has indeed a ton of my beloved country rock/Americana, in different flavors and varieties. First there's J.J. Light and his short trip to "Gallup, New Mexico", which turs a little psychedelic towards the end. Then The Oxpetals come "Down From The Mountain" and bring some tasty harmonies and organ playing with them. Poker Flatts go to a "Lake Of Fire", Comox And Friends hang out with (or are?) "Beautiful Losers", whileJoyous Noise add more than a bit of r'n'b and soul, if not outright funk, to "Funky Lady". APNS alumni Mark Jones brings the harrowing "Lion Trap", a bleak look at people going nowhere in a dead end job in a dead end ton that's bleak as hell and precedes the No Depression sound by fifteen years. Country Ward, not in APNS action since Vol. 6, bring an old-chool country weeper with the sentimental "Just Another Country Dream" while Chicago-era band Aliotta Haynes - named after their members, the Aliotta brothers Mitch and Ted, and guitar player Skip Haynes - crank up the harmony-singing to eleven for ultra-lovely "Brother Sparrow". After Ted quit the band right after their debut album, they would add Joh Jeremiah on keyboards and continue as Alliotta, Haynes & Jeremiah.
Aslan have more of a folk sound which they bring to "Sonshine", as do City Freez with the lovely "City Talkin'", while Les Dudek's grovy "Cruisin' Groove" reminds you quite a bit of Little Feat's funkier numbers. Though a big influence on little brother Sweet Baby James, Alex Taylor never really made it as a recording artist, and is arguably only on third place in the Taylor brother hierarchy, after James and Livingston. Still, he was from time to time cranking out good stuff, slightly more rough-hewn than the softer voices of his two brothers, though still plenty smooth.
You wouldn't expect a band from Fresno to be called Folly's Pool, and you definitely wouldn't think that they would mix their harmony-laden California folk-rock with a more than heavy sprinkle of U.K.-styled prog rock. Yet that's what they did, creating their version of folk-prog, as on the song that gave the band its name (or vice versa?).
The ladies bring a bit of a different flavor to things. Mary Asquith's take on "Cocaine" has shades of Janis Joplin, while being distinctively British, befitting of Manchester's 'queen of blues and folk', whereas Dory Previn's brutal tale of "Mary C. Broown and The Hollywood Sign" uses music hall for its impressively bleak tale of Hollywood horrors. And then Bill Madison rides out All Pearls, No Swine 29's grooves with a tour on the prairies for "Buffalo Skinners", closing the circle and ending up where we started, with a piece of psychedelic Americana.
Even though All Pearls, No Swine Vol. 29 is admittedly quite heavy on country rock/Americana numbers, the variety on display here should please the discerning APNS afficionado.
APNS 29
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