Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale

NOVEMBER 2012 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM REVIEWS HOLE BNobody’sUDDY MILLER Daughter AND JIM LAUDERDALE [Universal] Buddy and Jim [New West] The first album released under the Hole moniker since 1998’s Celebrity Skin is really frontwoman Courtney Love’sThe two brightest stars in Americana have found success with solo albums second solo album—co-founder,and written gems for giants like George Strait and the Dixie Chicks. They’ve songwriter and lead guitarist Eric Erlandson isn’t involved,also scored with collaborative efforts: Miller has played with Emmylou Harris nor is any other previous Hole member. So it’s Love andand three Robert Plant’s Band of Joy, while Lauderdale has recorded with Ralph ringers on 11 new songs—10 of which Love wroteStanley with and toured with Elvis Costello. This team-up album has been a long time collaborators like Billy Corgan,coming. Linda Comprising Perry and newbona fide classics and originals that sound like they could guitarist Micko Larkin. (Perry gets full credit on one tune, “Letter to God.”) be, Buddy and Jim is a freewheeling record, and the underlying grit makes it Much of the riveting intensity of the group’s 1990s heyday appears to havefeel left like along the with best her living former room Daniel Jackson jam session ever. Miller and Lauderdale draw from bandmates, but there are fl ashes here of the snarling Too often, though, the slower songs trip her up. While once fury Love deployed to suchsuch devastating close-singing effect back ’50s in the country day. they duos were as showcases Johnnie for and harrowing Jack, representeddisplays of naked here emotion, She spits out her vocals withwith vengeful a playful disdain cover on “Skinny of “South Little inLove New sounds Orleans,” more dispassionate complete thesewith days.Cajun The fiddle. production Bitch,” overdriven guitars roiling atop an elastic bassline that doesn’t help—the songs have an airless, sanded-down feel that speeds up as the song “Itraces Hurts toward Me” a climatic is an pile-upunflinching at the lookdoesn’t at fi t heartbreak,with her visceral persona.while toe-tapper Courtney Love’s “Looking tumultuous end. She shifts tempos and attitude on the more contemplative history suggests that she has a compelling story to tell, and “Pacifi c Coast Highway,”for taking a Heartache stock as layers Like of acoustic You” andfeatures perhaps one she of does. Lauderdale’s It’s just not the charmingly one she’s telling off-kilter on Nobody’s electric guitars chug along behind her. Daughter. –Eric R. Danton lyrics: “You rocked me on down to the feet of my pajamas.” –Juli Thanki COURT YARD HOUNDS A side project of new offering suggested that its creator was a few strides closer to Dixie Chicks’ Martie crafting something truly monumental in both musical and social terms. Court Yard Hounds Maguire and Emily This cold and private set isn’t it, although that’s probably due more to [Columbia] Robison, Court Yard personal circumstances than anything related to talent. Wainwright Hounds delivers wrote All Days Are Nights while his mother, Kate McGarrigle, was much-anticipated dying of cancer, and there is a quiet, complex sadness even in its insight—both musical and personal—into the sisters who have less autobiographical material. There’s nothing here except piano for so long ceded center stage to Chicks singer Natalie Maines. and vocal, and Wainwright doesn’t project his words in the way Though steeped in familiar instrumentation, the album offers little we’ve come to expect from him. Instead of serenading the person of the barn-burning brashness that made the Chicks famous (save in the farthest corner of a packed theater, he’s singing to himself in perhaps the gutsy “Ain’t No Son”). Instead, its delicate folk-pop an otherwise empty room. –David Styburski prettiness perfectly suits Robison’s more-than-capable voice and the jumble of emotions, sunny and melancholy, that emerge in a song Ozomatli’s music has been called a collision cycle inspired by her 2008 divorce. Maguire’s weeping fi ddle and OZOMATLI of styles, a cultural mash-up, and a 20-car seamless harmonies are welcome as always, and her one turn on pileup of genres. It’s also some of the most lead‘Comprising vocals (“Gracefully”) bona is so warmly fide affecting classics that listeners may and originals joyfully energetic music you’ll ever hear. On wish she stepped to the mic more often. Court Yard Hounds ably its fi fth album, the L.A.-based band stirs its demonstrates that, whether with their fellow Dixie Chick or without, blend of salsa, ska, samba, funk, and hip-hop thatthese ladies’ sound talent runs like deep. they–Katie Dodd could be, Buddy and Jim in ways few groups could conceive. Imagine Fire Away tossing the English Beat, Herb Alpert and the is a freewheeling record,For a dozen and years, the the underlying[Mercer Street/Downtown] Tijuana Brass, Caetano Veloso, and Sly and RUFUS arrangements on Rufus the Family Stone into a magical blender and Wainwright’s albums got you get some sense of Ozomatli’s eclectic approach. High points grit makesWAINWRIGHT it feel like busierthe and best his sometimes living on room their latest, jam Fire Away , include “Are You Ready?,” a horn-and- All Days Are Nights: Songs naughty, occasionally percussion-driven blast of salsa-fl avored ska; “Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah,” for Lulu angry declarations of gay an exultant Latin pop anthem fi tted with shrieking sax; and “Gay Vatos [Decca] sessionpride ever.’got louder. Each in Love,” a rockabilly-tinged tune with a soaring chorus. Even when 70 MAY 2010 NOVEMBER 2012 M MUSIC & MUSICIANS MAGAZINE M3_v10.indd 70 5/14/10 3:37 AM.

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