The famous last name: some have it, some dont. For every opportunity having a famous last name presents, it adds the potentially crushing burden of expectations that some can’t look past. The three albums below all share one thing in common: they are presented with a last name that has a level of notoriety and legend about it in the music industry.
Adam Cohen – We Go Home
We Go Home isn’t Adam Cohen’s first album. He’s been in the music business for several years, with an earlier effort that didn’t bear much fruit for all of the complex reasons that can happen in the industry these days. That aside, We Go Home is certainly doing a find job of showcasing the singer-songwriter’s talents on Canadian radio at the moement. The album’s upbeat title track is well on its way to regular airplay on CBC.
The good news is the rest of the album easily lives up to the standards set by that track. Cohen writes with a poet’s sensibility:
Don’t make it sad
or too pretty
no metaphors
don’t be so witty
He advises this in the opening lines of the very fine “Song of Me and You”, before proceeding to present eleven carefully crafted tracks that share the common theme of a conversation around a relationship.
Cohen demonstrates that he’s capable of a full range of emotional output: “What Kind of Woman” is a fun, upbeat listen while “Swear I Was There” closes out the album on a more serious note.
Cohen’s father crooned once, “I was born like this / I had no choice / I was born with the gift of a golden voice”, and if you’re a fan of the father you’ll instantly recognize the voice of the son. If you’d closed your eyes at the 100-person gig I caught a couple of weeks ago, you could have been in a Greenwich Village coffee shop in the 1960s. Cohen’s voice is, if anything, more musical than his father’s, with a fuller range. This makes it a pleasure to listen to throughout the whole album.
At the risk of jinxing it, We Go Home seems poised to launch Adam Cohen forward onto a path of his own — it’s a fine work that’s hit heavy rotation on my turntable in the past few weeks. Don’t miss the tour if it comes to town either. Though it’s billed as a solo act, Cohen is touring with a full band, and the show I saw had some fantastic moments in it that make it one of the best gigs I’ve seen this year.
We Go Home is available on iTunes and you can find other ways to buy it on Cohen’s web site. There’s a vinyl pressing that’s been available at shows.
The Devin Cuddy Band – Kitchen Knife
When last we visited Devin Cuddy he was just wrapping up a late night after party at Vancouver’s Railway Club with a set that demonstrated a musical range and knowledge that we could only hope most musicians had. That gig happened on the second day of 2014, and it’s stuck with me ever since.
Cuddy, for those who may not know, is the son of Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy. In Canada this qualifies as rock and roll royalty. Kitchen Knife is Cuddy’s second album with his eponymously named band, and to say it builds on the first and moves the band forward is a bit of an understatement.
Cuddy’s piano takes front and centre in the band and that’s a refreshing change from the guitar-led roots rock scene of late. The result is a sound that would be as perfectly at home filtering out of a New Orleans jazz club as the bar in your local club. The swinging tempo of the album’s self-titled opening track pulls the listener into a world with a seedy lyrical underbelly, and it’s one that I like.
Cuddy effortlessly blends swing, jazz, and blues into his own distinctive sound here: “Gospel” and “Ode to a Gypsy’s Blues” are particular standouts.
Kitchen Knife recalls the days and sound of the Band, with the feeling of a few accomplished players popping out a dozen or so songs in a casual, laid-back environment, and knocking your socks off. The album’s so well-executed, it’s hard to grasp the fact that this is only the band’s second outing. Cuddy’s name seems destined to for a bright future and — if I’m being honest — I think the band’s work outshines his father’s solo albums already. This is a band to watch.
Kitchen Knife is available on the iTunes store or you can order it directly from Cameron House Records
Tweedy – Sukierae
I’ve been fairly transparent about the fact that I’m a Wilco fan: it’s a reputation that preceedes me (suffice to say that the guy who delivered my new fridge commented on it to my mother when I wasn’t home). This made the announcement of Sukirae an interesting thing to contemplate in the days leading up to it. How would this fit into the Jeff Tweedy legacy alongside the Uncle Tupelo and Wilco songs that have come before? (There’s also a secondary question of what it means for the future of Wilco, but we’ll skip that for now.)
Unlike the albums above, Sukierae is a father-son collboration — the father serves as the lead singer and guitarist while his son, Spencer, sits in on percussion. The album’s liner notes give Tweey’s other son Samuel an Executive Producer credit and identify Jeff Tweedy as the exclusive songwriter for all songs.
The result is a solid double album of songs that fit nicely into the history of Jeff Tweedy’s output. The album’s first disc features a kick-the-door-down rock and roll aesthetic along with more emphasis on the type of sonic effects that Wilco fans love. “World Away” and “Diamond Light” are particular standouts on the first side and set the pace nicely.
“Now that you’re older / Now that you’re grown”, the father sings on “Pigeons”, one of the album’s outstanding, quieter moments that seems to see the songwriter reflecting, appropriately, on family. “New Moon”, on the second disc, is a standout song paced as a waltz. “Fake Fur Coat” may be the best song Tweedy has penned since “One Sunday Morning” — which wasn’t that long ago, to be fair. The song’s closing verse of “Behold the gift of the distant sun / The canyons full of loose bones / The nettles and the brambles and the jack bitch boss / Thundering down from his throne” is so poetically evocative, it makes the heart ache for the souther desert.
There’s much to like here. The album’s packaging features photos of both father and son prominently, and the album is clearly a project born out of love. Spencer’s drumming provides a solid, steady beat, though there’s a bit less of the astonishing flourishes that Glenn Kotche delivers on tracks like Wilco’s “Whole Love”.
Sukierae seems destined to take a well-deserved place in the Jeff Tweedy canon, but it’s legacy may actually be more related to the questions is raises: whether Tweedy becomes an ongoing concern or not, and whether Spencer takes a more active role in the band, as a songwriter in addition to drummer.
Sukierae is a must-have for any Wilco fan and stands as one of the best albums I’ve heard this year — that’s particularly hard for a double album, which requires even more careful song selection. A second effort from the family band would be a happy thing, but if this album turns out to a be a one-off — a creative breather from Wilco for the songwriter and a springboard for the son’s career — its legacy may be even greater. Tweedy’s past shows that he’s at his best when he takes unexpected turns and Sukierae continues that history; what comes next may be even better.
Sukirae is available everywhere, including the iTunes store. But you really want the limited edition coloured vinyl edition directly from the band’s web site (there’s a more traditional black pressing that’s a bit cheaper too.)
