CD Review: Listen Above’S Self-Titled Latest
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CD Review: Listen Above’s Self-Titled Latest Almost from its inception into mainstream America with Elvis wiggling his hips on “The Milton Berle Show,” rock music has had an awkward and sometimes downright tumultuous relationship with Christianity. In its earliest years, Baptist preachers across the nation chastened their primarily Caucasian congregations that the very rhythms of this nascent genre would drive their youngsters to a life of debauchery, crime and non-stop fornication! Increasingly with the passage of time, those fire and brimstone predictions began to seem quaint and outdated, as each unfolding generation of rockers pushed their respective envelopes a few steps further. Soon, the once mutually exclusive kinship between religion and rock gave way to a blurring of the lines, with songs like Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit In The Sky” and The Byrd’s “Jesus Is Just Alright With Me” (later popularized by The Doobie Brothers), mixing heavily distorted guitar licks with praising to the Lord. That said, striking the precise balance between spiritual content and secular sensibilities would always be the key between having a hit single like George Harrison’s timeless classic “My Sweet Lord,” or being resigned to the dustbin of history like the overtly religious, saccharine ‘light metal’ ’80s band Stryper. And striking that exact balance is the latest CD project from Mount Hope High School music teacher / local-music wunderkind, singer-songwriter David “Dj” Lauria and his assembled group of students, friends and family known collectively as Listen Above. Lauria refers to them as a worship group, as they are all members of the youth orchestra at Barrington’s Saint Luke’s Church. And under his tutelage, the eponymous seven-track album contains a variety of radio-ready tracks that contain a message of love and adoration to the Lord without ever crossing that line into “preachy-ness.” As Lauria explains, “I wanted to make an album that was Christian without being CHRISTIAN. Remember how, after the first couple records, people would call U2 a Christian band? … These tracks are a little more religious (a few, anyway), but there’s no God or Jesus anywhere. The final track could just as easily be about Skynet…” With David Lauria playing all guitars as well as producing, engineering and writing the material on Listen Above, the congregation is instrumentally rounded out by drummer Luke Imbusch, saxophonist Riley Saeger and percussionist Frank Carroll, as well as a cavalcade of vocalists in Caroline Coleman, Yesi Rego, Haley Ryan, Kathryn Santello, Emily Turtle and Lauria’s own children Jacob and Madelyn. The disc opens with a straightforward rocker “Save Us With Your Grace,” a near-perfect pop gem that combines elements of alt-country with George Harrison-esque slide guitar, all the while hammering home the power of prayer: “Age-old song, chiming out. Silence shouts your name. Each of us, just a breath pleading with one voice.“ Album highlight “Your Love Prevails” can best be described as Lauria puts it, Linda Ronstadt fronting Deep Purple. And there’s lots of truth to that, with the track’s deliberate heavy backbeat and Machine Head-era Ritchie Blackmore guitar tone, all enveloped in Coleman’s angelic voice: “When sharp the day has blinded us, Your Love Prevails. Where injured faith has guided us, Your Love Prevails. We join hands to declare, someday we’ll meet You where Your Love Prevails.” Listen Above culminates with David Lauria himself stepping up to the mic with “Written In The Sky,” a song that in a past life could have been an AC/DC encore favorite. But this time around the content is far more profound then Hells Bells. “Every vow ever broken is written in the sky. Every pardon, every deal, every gift, every steal.” As the band’s website states upon entry, Listen Above is the sound of generations coming together to make music with a positive message. If every school, mosque, synagogue and church had a David Lauria expounding the joy of rock ‘n’ roll alongside that ‘radical message’ of God’s love, just imagine how good the world would sound. CD Review: Jimmy Adler’s Grease Alley By day, Pittsburgh’s James Addlespurger is a mild-mannered educator at a high school for the creative and performing arts. Armed with chalk and curriculum, he molds impressionable young minds into fine, creative citizens, poised to take on the world. One could argue that his day job is literally doing God’s work. However, when the clock strikes nighttime, Pittsburgh’s mild-mannered James Addespurger trades in his chalk for a telecaster and transforms into East Coast bluesman Jimmy Adler. The work he does in the midnight hour strictly belongs to the deep dark blues. And throughout the 13 original tracks on his latest CD release, Grease Alley, Adler proves he’s schooled in far more than one musical discipline when it comes to high-quality swinging rhythm and blues. The sad truth is that there is a gulf-sized distance between the numerous mediocre bands that fancy themselves blues performers and those chosen few that are true purveyors of this great American musical art-form. Jimmy Adler clearly finds himself in the latter category, with this homage to the idiom serving as documented proof. From the opening track “Say It Like Magic Sam,” Adler and company school the listener in what a shuffle groove is all about. With an oooh-so-sneaky and laid-back rhythm section courtesy of drummer June Core (formerly with Charlie Musselwhite), as well as bassist and producer of Grease Alley Norwegian-born Kid Anderson, Jimmy Adler lays out his mission statement with ample T-Bone Walker-inspired guitar licks, and a vocal styling second only to James Montgomery in cool. From Texas-swing we immediately head East, with a New Orleans romp on the CD’s title track “Grease Alley.” A few moments into the song finds the listener smack dab in the middle of a Mardi Gras parade, marching earnestly to that Bo Diddley rhythm that so defines that Louisiana bayou style. And with some creative lyrics courtesy of Adler, you’re treated not only to the sights and sounds, but also the tastes and smells of that famed alley: “Now there’s a shack just across the track, they fry everything in fat – It starts to ooze all over your shoes, the alley’s where it’s at – fish and chicken and all that pickin’ as spicy as you please — To keep my motor on the go I’m gonna need a little grease.” Other standout tracks include “Drank Too Much” where Jimmy Adler channels the guitar styling of Elmore James (not to mention the songwriting of Amos Milburn) like few I’ve heard before. “Went out to the club, thought I’d have maybe just one sip. Ran into an old friend of mine, I didn’t know when to quit — I drank too much, one’s too many and too many’s not enough.” Although Adler is well-known for his songwriting and guitar prowess, in 2009 he gained a certainly unwanted national spotlight when he was physically attacked by a teenager in broad daylight in downtown Pittsburgh. Because the incident was surreptitiously videotaped and later made its way on to the internet, it became known as one of the first documented cases of the so-called ‘Knockout Game,’ a loathsome practice where unwitting pedestrians are assaulted merely as YouTube fodder. Adler made appearances on “Nightline,” “The Today Show” and CNN to discuss the ordeal. In all candor, including the anecdote here might seem out of place at first blush had he had not made such a highly potent blues album in Grease Alley. It takes a certain type of person to convincingly pull off the genre. One needs a whole lotta grit and integrity to sing in the kind of voice Jimmy Adler does without coming off as a wannabe, or worse, a fraud. But rest assured that when it comes to playing the blues, Adler has long since paid his dues, and is most emphatically the real deal. CD Review: Televisionaries — Self-Titled Compared to many of my fellow music writers who toil daily in the literary trenches, I’m still a relative newbie, having only been at this just shy of a decade. In that time, I’ve received hundreds of compact discs, many of which today enjoy new life re-purposed as beer coasters. But this week, in an optimistic sign of things to come, I was mailed my first long player vinyl disc, spinning at precisely thirty-three and one thirds rotations per minute. Yup, I just got me a genuine LP album from The Televisionaries, a Rochester, New York, post-punk / surf-a-billy trio who unfortunately share their name with another New York-based band who specialize in covering 1970s TV show themes. But no matter, The Televisionaries that I heard are no cover band. Made up of Taylor Guerin on bass, Austin Lake on drums and Trevor Lake taking the lead on guitar and vocals, this three piece demonstrate a knowledge of the surf-rock idiom that rarely translates so convincingly to a youth-based indie fanbase. But The Televisionaries inject a healthy dose of punk sensibility to get the kiddies stage diving throughout their set. The bulk of The Televisionaries self-titled album is made up of instrumentals. While there is no doubt that the band have boned up on all things surf and can recreate not only the notes but also the tone (by far the more elusive feat), there is only so far that can carry an album side.