One Track Mind: Paul McCartney, "See Your Sunshine" (2007)

NICK DERISO: Embroiled in a very public and nasty divorce, McCartney embraces everything that made him matter in the first place on his ardent and thrilling new album -- and never more so than on this terrific throwback.

"Memory Almost Full," to be issued on June 5 and available now for advance order on amazon.com, works as retrospective more than the expected bitter introspection. That's fully realized on "See Your Sunshine," a canny Wings redo that ends up as the record's most anachronistic but somehow most appealing tune.

Background vocals, bright and cyclic, so strongly recall Denny Laine and late wife Linda as to transport you completely back into 1976. ("Silly Love Songs," after all, went to No. 1 during the final week of May that year.) This is the kind of pure pop that McCartney parlayed into a soundtrack for the decade immediately following the Beatles' own ugly split.

And just as welcome.

That the CD title, "Memory Almost Full" is an anagram for "my soulmate LLM," Linda Louise McCartney's initials, wasn't lost on reporters. Asked the question, Paul reportedly said: "Some things are best left a mystery."

He's not one of them.

McCartney is supposed to sound like this song. That he meets that standard, so fully inhabits the cliche, during a period of crushing adversity is part of his charm. It always has been.

"See Your Sunshine" is not necessarily representative of McCartney's new release, which insists (under a grinding, industrial riff, on "Vintage Clothes") that we shouldn't "live in the past; don't hold on to something that's changing fast."

Comfy nostalgia also doesn't fit with his recent departure from Capitol Records (where McCartney had recorded since the early 1960s with some band or another), his subsequent signing with Starbucks' new label Hear Music for his 21st solo CD -- or agreeing to release "Memory Almost Full" for the first time digitally on the Web.

Still, it's good to know that even as McCartney tries to embrace this brash new world, he hasn't forgotten what came before.

In a letter released in advance of the album, McCartney said the title came to him after the message "Memory Almost Full" popped up on his cell phone. "In modern life," he wrote, "our brains can get a bit overloaded."

"See Your Sunshine," in particular, is a CTRL-ALT-DELETE on all that.

"One Track Mind" is a more-or-less weekly drool over a single song selected on a whim and a short thesis on why you should be drooling over it, too.

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, "Just Got Lucky" (1973)

NICK DERISO: The story goes: Someone asked Fats Waller what jazz is. His reply? "If you don't know, don't mess with it."

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown messed with it on "Just Got Lucky," and with fine results. In fact, it seemed his string-bending solos found themselves most at home in the straight-ahead surroundings that made up the last third of this largely lost set of recordings.

Made in France, long before Brown moved to Slidell, Louisiana (where he would live until passing just after Katrina), "Just Got Lucky" was later issued stateside by Evidence. It began with a set of old-school blues sessions that recalled Gate's 1950s records -- as opposed to those final Alligator Records releases, when Brown dove headlong in the local joys of zydeco.

In fact, the first three cuts were familar from Gate's early classic recordings on the Peacock label. He received able backing, too, from Kansas City's legendary swing-blues pianist Jay McShann.

Later, a soulful multi-piece horn section (led by hard-blowing tenorman Hal "Cornbread" Singer and trombonist Al Grey, the old Brown sideman) added a Louis Jordan-feeling one-two punch to cuts like "Here Am I."

On the final few tunes, actually recorded in 1977, things really began to swing. Brown finished on a jazzy flourish, with pianist Lloyd Glenn tickling the ivories and Milt "The Judge" Hinton doing some delicious walking bass lines.

From the opening cut, "Just Got Lucky" was frisky and elbows-out. But the record found its true voice over those last cuts -- songs for those who like their blues a little brassy, and their jazz a little greasy.

By the way, on "Someday," Brown took a moment to rosin up his bow, and you got a taste of where Gate would eventually go on his last few albums for Alligator.

You might not have guessed, though, just how celebrated Brown would become at his second instrument: On these 1970s sides, his fiddle playing -- and it was never a "violin" with Gate, let me tell you -- was still a touch too mannered.

Sleeper picks: The dBs

NICK DERISO: News that jangle-pop favorites the dBs (featuring on-again, off-again New Orleans resident Peter Holsapple) have gotten together to put down some new tracks brought me back to 1991's "Mavericks," a thoughtful record that would have sounded perfectly at home on an early 1980s college-rock station.

Holsapple and Chris Stamey -- who along with drummer Will Rigby and bassist Gene Holder make up the newly reconstituted dBs -- hadn't recorded since the group broke up around that time, though the duo played informally together over the next decade. Stamey left in 1983, and Holsapple followed a few years later, but they remain close. (Holsapple has famously described them as the "Everly Brothers, without being related.")

The title, "Mavericks," provides a lingering chuckle. It was a bit of irony from guys trying to play acoustic guitars during the then-new grunge movement of the day.

The truth is, Holsapple and Stamey instantly fell back into pleasant old playing habits, with ringing riffs and daylight-drenched hooks. We find Holsapple, who has toured as a sideman with Hootie and the Blowfish, exhibiting a reliably sharp eye. Stamey -- Holsapple's McCartney, I guess -- was still bright and poppy. Contemplative touches were again added by sometime sideperson Jane Scarpantoni's cello.

They were a bit older, played a bit quieter, and were certainly more pensive, but in the end, this record was like a screen door slamming back home -- at once familiar and comforting.

Of course, it didn't sell much. The dBs never quite achieved the acclaim of musical soulmates R.E.M., though they were also at the forefront of the early-1980s guitar-band sound from the American Southeast. (Holsapple later toured and recorded with them, as well.) Through it all, though, the dBs were just off the radar -- from 1984's "Like This" album to the early MTV video fave "Amplifier" to a semi-major label release "The Sound of Music" in 1987.

Many of the dBs' albums are difficult to find, making "Maverick" one of the few widely available opportunities to hear this distinctive band, if only in part.

Later, Holsapple continued to toil in relative obscurity within the dynamic of the Continential Drifters, a defunct New Orleans-based college-rock/power-pop supergroup that included Mark Walton of the Dream Syndicate, Vicki Peterson of the Bangles and Susan Cowsill of the Cowsills.

Maybe this upcoming album will provide a long-awaited platform for revival -- if not for the dBs' left-for-dead career then maybe for its standing in the pop pantheon.

As with "Mavericks," these new dBs sessions reportedly included a cover tune from the Byrds, a touchstone reference point, as well as "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" from the Motown catalog and Canned Heat's "On the Road Again." There were also said to be new Holsapple-Stamey originals, seven in all.

Jean-Luc Ponty, The Acatama Experience (2007)

by Pico

It's time for a Jean-Luc Ponty one-fer!

Back in January we covered two of JLP's albums from the early eighties at once, to examine a turning point in this French violinist's approach to jazz-rock. This time around, there's a brand new release to examine and twenty-five years later, Ponty is still effectively leveraging much of the same ideas he came up with then, and at other points of his career.

For the artist himself, The Acatama Experience is the culmination of composing and recording on and off over a thirteen month period while touring with his band around the globe. Ponty wanted to make an album that was themed on his travels, playing on the vibes he picked up along the way. The idea here was to come into the studio each time with a fresh mind and with tracks that are distinguishable from each other.

For the long time listener of Jean Luc Ponty, Acatama is the product of a band that has been playing together for at least six years and a culmination of Ponty's entire fusion career. 2001's Life Enigma marked a welcome return to the studio after an eight year drought, but his crack band was utilized sparingly.

Ponty chose to play or program most of the instruments and bring in band members to help in varying degrees as he saw fit; Individual Choice seemed to be the template he was working from.

In contrast, JLP includes his band much more for The Acatama Experience, and that's a good thing, because some of his best records have resulted from using a road-tested rhythm section. It's the the same touring band he employed sporadically for Life Enigma: William Lecomte on keyboards, Guy Nsangué Akwa on electric bass, Thierry Arpino on Drums and Taffa Cissé on percussion.

Another old trick that Jean Luc pulls out of his bag is bringing in guest guitarists for spot duty, and true to his ol' form, only the finest will do. In the past, Ponty has hired luminaries like George Benson and Genesis tour member Daryl Stuermer. This time, he brings in guys who played with him back in the heyday seventies: Belgian/English fusion heavy Philip Catherine and that electric guitar virtuoso's virtuoso known as Allan Holdsworth.

The overall approach of tour band + star sessionists and just the overall sound of this record makes it more akin to 1989's consistently good Storytelling.

As if to be starting a globe trotting journey in his home country, the first song of the collection is a modernized version of Bud Powell's sunny bop classic, "Parisian Thoroughfare," complete with a mildly hip-hop beat. Here, Catherine adds a very jazzy solo, befitting the song's jazzy roots. It's a rare cover by Ponty but fits well into the overall album. Philip also helps out the buoyant, melodic "Still In Love", where he turns in a pretty, understated solo.

"Point Of No Return"---no relation to the Kansas song---is the lone appearance of Holdsworth on Acatama. With Ponty's staccatoed minor chord progressions and Holdsy's weeping lines, which, to my ears, always sounded more like a violin than a sax, anyway, "Point Of No Return" is the whole album's high point. As with his appearances on Enigmatic Ocean and Individual Choice, I could have stood for the entire album to make use of Holdsworth's axe, but then it would be hard to keep him from taking the spotlight from the leader (hey guys, how about a co-led collaborative CD sometime?).

Other tracks give the listener the full palette of Ponty's varied but always interesting compositional styles. The frenetic fiddling of "Celtic Steps" sound so much like "Jig" from Mystical Adventures, it's a virtual certainty that this was no accident. It's just as delightful sounding, nevertheless. "On My Way To Bombay" rides a sometimes-echoplexed electric violin over a 7/8 beat. The funkiest song is saved for end; "To And Fro", with a nice, syncopated groove provided by Akwa (Ponty's best ever bassist) and Arpino.

There are still a couple of exceptions to the full band format, but those serve as nice diversions this time. "Desert Crossing" is, surprisingly, the first time Ponty has ever recorded a track that features just him on acoustic violin; no MIDI electric five-stringer with synclavier effects this time. The unplugged, unaccompanied Ponty shows he's still one of the world's top violinists, no matter the setting.

On the brief title track (named after the Acatama Desert in Northern Chile) Ponty does pull out that synthesized violin with effects, but it actually does sound like a soundtrack to a desert scene.

Awaiting a new Jean Luc Ponty release is not the annual event anymore like was a quarter of a century ago, but with The Acatama Experience, Ponty has made good use of the six year layover. And, today, on the release date, the master fusion violinist from Avranches, France gives his fans from downtown Paris to Bombay to Santiago another strong set of tracks that proves that this 64 year old musician hasn't lost his touch in the least.


Purchase: Jean-Luc Ponty - The Acatama Experience

John 'So Blue' Weston, "So Doggone Blue" (1993)

NICK DERISO: Harp player Rice Miller -- better known as Sonny Boy Williamson II -- used to sludge across Weston's yard on the way to parties and dances, a leather belt festooned with harmonicas strapped across his chest.

Robert Johnson's stepson, Robert Jr. Lockwood, was the first guitar player that Weston ever knew.

So, he's got his Delta lineage straight. And on this, his first recording (done for Fat Possum, and now out-of-print, I believe), Weston found an insistent sound more than worthy of those forebears.

Worth head-wagging over, too, is Troy Lee Broussard -- a Louisiana native from Lake Providence whose guitar is sharp and arching, almost all high end. It's the perfect accompaniment to Weston, with his so-blue harmonica moans and off-the-charts vocals.

Start with the tight instrumental "Squeeze Play" by Broussard, the only tune here not written by Weston. It defies your typical assumptions about wordless interludes -- that is, that they are typically filler.

This affable composition, marked by a riffy guitar and foot-stomping rhythm structure, is a perfect platform for Weston. He gooses the song, then lets it back off, setting a template for the album's varied, tone-perfect vibe.

"Younger Days" is another standout, a hip paean to what-used-to-be, fondly remembered but not really wished for. "Too Jealous," meanwhile, is so over-the-top, it's just flat-out funny.

Even this late in the album, Broussard's guitar is an insistent voice, the chassis of a brilliant, low-riding blues recording.

Weston comes closer to meeting Broussard toe-to-toe when the harp is away from his mouth. His singing is rangy, and informed. Partly, that's due to age. This debut came out as Weston turned 65.

Mostly, however, it's because of Weston's own desirous vocal style, something by turns big-time Chicago blues jam but also quiet and lonesome, a little like -- no kidding -- Merle Haggard.