Dave’s Picks: Naked

Right there for all the world to see. No artifice, no filter. These empresses have no clothes.

KELLY HOGAN is a lady-in-waiting for the spotlight. She’s been spending most of her time lately singing backup with and playing Ed McMahon to Neko Case (the red-haired chanteuse who’s herself deserving of a wider audience.) She’s recorded a couple of solo albums that are most worthy (especially “Beneath the Country Underdog”), but they date back more than 10 years. She took her time getting ready for the new one, “I LIKE TO KEEP MYSELF IN PAIN,” and it is a gem.

The prep work is itself a story. Having played with lots of alt. country and indie artists over her career, she called on a few of them for the gift of a song. M. Ward, Andrew Bird, Vic Chesnutt, Stephen Merritt, Robyn Hitchcock and Robbie Fulks, among others, responded with relish.

Her assembled studio band is brilliant: Booker T. Jones (organ), James Gadson (session drummer ace—Ray Charles, Paul McCartney, Bill Withers, Herbie Hancock, ad infinitum), Gabriel Roth (Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings bassist) and Scott Ligon (long-time Hogan collaborator and new NRBQ guitarist). Their nimble ability to impart just enough swing and soul to what are essentially pop and torch songs gives the listener a new thrill. It sneaks up on you rather than hitting you frontally.

But whither our theme? Hogan’s voice, coupled with the warm and immediate production, that’s where. She sings simply, yet tailors each performance to every song’s needs. A slight twang appears from time to time, betraying her Atlanta roots. At other times she belts, coos, croaks or emotes, but always with subtlety, never bombast.

The album is impeccably paced. It plays well at a single listen, the way old albums did. Tempos change within songs, keeping complacency at bay. Top-notch songwriters deliver mature themes and sometimes off-kilter metaphors in thought-provoking fresh phrases. This is indeed the whole package; a sweet success.

I would be hard-pressed to name a more perfect album put out this year.

FIONA APPLE is a curious creature. Seven years of recorded silence have been broken with the release of “THE IDLER WHEEL IS WISER THAN THE DRIVER OF THE SCREW, AND WHIPPING CORDS WILL SERVE YOU MORE.”

Apple is an artiste. She may be a bit touched in the head, but her insanity-lite never repulses. She strips her sound down here to barebones piano and the mad-scientist percussion of Charlie Drayton, all so that her mesmerizing voice and shocking spellbinding lyrics stand out in plain relief. And, man – what voice, what words.

“These ideas of mine/percolate the mind/trickle down my spine/swarm the belly/swelling to a blaze—there’s where the pain comes in, like a second skeleton.”

So begins the album in “Every Single Night.” Her vocal acrobatics (quivers, growls, strains) are eccentric to the point that they provoke instant reaction. If you fight off the initial flight impulse, reward comes in spending time with an open and transparent soul whose vulnerabilities and flaws fascinate.

To be human is indeed to be misshapen by experience, and then to seek redemption in the effort to cope and attain some measure of grace.

Apple creates her own world with the simplest of tools. In this world are aesthetic strains of punk, jazz, cabaret, blues and rock.

That she may be difficult to warm up to is the challenge. Reward is the payoff.

Difficulty is the watchword for NENEH CHERRY AND THE THING on their collaboration, “THE CHERRY THING” (I could have gone for the fruit theme here in hindsight). Ms. Cherry is the daughter of avant-jazz great Don Cherry, and she is surrounded by an entire family of artists. Sweden is her home, as it is for The Thing, a free jazz outfit. Saying “free jazz’’ in polite company is verboten, akin to playing a death metal record at a church picnic. But their wilder impulses are harnessed in favor of some structure, for the most part.

Selections here include covers of songs by Suicide, the Stooges, MF Doom, Ornette Coleman and of course Don Cherry himself. There are some tender moments (“Dream, Baby, Dream”), but there’s a whole lot of squalling and skronk from the baritone sax of Mats Gustaffson. The shtick starts to wear thin after the first couple of songs, unfortunately. The pattern of close ensemble work (featuring the booming woody double bass of Ingebrigt Haker Flaten and Cherry’s sultry siren call) is shoved aside by the ferocious wail of Gustaffson.

Shame, really, as this album could have delivered on its promise of picking up the dropped baton of the late and lamented Morphine (Cure for Pain being a must-have).

Spiritual questing was perfected by Don Cherry’s bandleader, John Coltrane, and the yearning was emotionally engaging but exhausting in large doses. Same here with The Cherry Thing.

Listening to the whole album may bring fatigue or worse.I can’t end on a down note. Not when it’s summer and the living is not supposed to be that hard. So, if you’re looking for just fun for it’s own sake, check out JAPANDROIDS’ “CELEBRATION ROCK,” wherein the two Canadian near-amateurs bash away with gleeful abandon – a soundtrack for sweaty nights of infinite promise and magic portents.

Also, DENT MAY’S “DO THINGS” finds the Oxford, Miss., native losing the ukulele in favor of waves of harmonies, upfront synths and disco (!) beats. It works, especially in these days of surface pleasures. Like skinny-dipping.

– Dave Norman is a local attorney who has written or participated in various critiquing endeavors in the past (movies, restaurants) but who believes now has found his real niche as a music critic. In his opinion.  

Kelly Hogan’s latest album, “I Like to Keep Myself in Pain,” is one of the year’s best, according to Gumbo Entertainment Guide music critic Dave Norman.

COURTESY | KELLYHOGAN.COM

“I Like to Keep Myself in Pain”

“The Idler Wheel is Wiser than The Driver of The Screw, And Whipping Cords Will Serve You More”

“The Cherry Thing”

“Celebration Rock”

“Do Things”