Pages tagged “issue 9”

Despite critical praise, country radio never fully warmed to Moorer’s gracefully gritty sound, which channels Memphis and Muscle Shoals as much as it does Nashville. Now, after releasing four major-label projects, the 31-year-old exited Music Row last year in search of a top-notch indie. Before the ink dried on her contract with Sugar Hill, she was back in the studio tracking The Duel with husband and collaborator Butch Primm, who for the past decade has served as a less-visible David Rawlings to her Gillian Welch. The record is a bit more rough-hewn (and at times, noisier) than her last few releases, kicking off nicely with the slow-burning “I Ain’t Giving Up on You,” before picking up steam with the chugging “All Aboard.”

Her craft sits equally comfortable whether on barstool (“One on the House”) or pew (the stellar, solo-piano title track), each lyric full of rawness and immediacy. These 11 selections prove her voice is as big as anyone’s out there. What distinguishes Moorer from other Southern sirens is the discipline her singing exudes. She knows when to whisper and when to wail, giving her songs room to breathe. And be heard as they’re meant to be heard.

“There are no great songs, just great melodies.”

I heard this quote a few months back and, while Google’s algorithm refuses to help me with attribution, I can’t shrug off its inherent logic. There is a reason why “Hey Jude” sounds spectacular, whether performed by unwitting shower soloist, 4th-grade recorder ensemble or San Francisco philharmonic. Recording gimmicks may provide a song with eyeliner; instrumental virtuosity, a pleasing attire. But melody remains the convulsive life-giving heart. You lose that, a tune withers facedown. Ron Sexsmith understands this point better than most every singer/songwriter working today.

Retriever marks Sexsmith’s fourth collaboration with Martin Terefe, the London-based Swedish producer who originally invited him into the studio to perform a duet (“Always”) with Shea Seger on her 2001 debut, May Street Project. When it came time for Sexsmith to return to the studio and record his next LP, he and Terefe went back to work, creating what would eventually become 2002’s unsurprisingly stellar (and aptly titled) Cobblestone Runway, a departure record that eschewed the more organic approach of his earlier efforts. In a very real sense, Terefe officiated the marriage of Sexsmith’s soulfully quavering vocal delivery and retro-pop sensibilities to an arresting spectrum of predominantly unexplored nuances—theatrical strings, crunchy beats, whooshing synthetic textures and tasteful electronic punctuation. A calculated risk which succeeded famously. And has once more.

The sonic trajectory assumed on Runway holds steady. Retriever’s palette feels heartened and refined, its artistic vision further distilled. On the ebullient, downright celestial-sounding “Not About To Lose,” Terefe dresses up the affair in big fat string passages, glittering piano (compliments of Ed Harcourt) and a bass line so decadent it practically begs to be dunked in a glass of cold milk. Production has always been about accommodating the needs of a given song. And the very next track, “Tomorrow In Her Eyes,” a subdued romantic declaration, eases into motion as Sexsmith sings gently along with piano. It’s unembellished at the outset, with nothing interrupting save the occasional (and inadvertent) creak of artist shifting on piano stool. From a writing standpoint Sexsmith is predictably ruthless, leaving your heart in bleeding shambles with his trademark bittersweet optimism. Listening to songs like “Dandelion Wine” is to be forever licking strawberry jam from a sharpened knife edge: “Now when I sing to you / It’s with a heavy heart / I took a love that was true / And tore it all apart / How can I let go of all those times / With this memory of her hand in mine.” Presumably referring to the dissolution of his 15-year marriage, the regret communicated is palpable, unsettling. Of course, while you’re busy struggling to fake composure, he hits you with a joyful ode to happiness entitled, well, “Happiness.”

Sexsmith is one of the finest songwriters we have. And Retriever is golden.

Slaid Cleaves’ 2000 album Broke Down was a revelation, a gritty, melancholy batch of rootsy story-songs about the erosion of relationships and the cost of dreams deferred. Wishbones, his first album in three years, proves a slightly more upbeat but ultimately less satisfying affair. Cleaves is an appealing singer, Jackson Browne with twang and gruffness, and he’s a fine song craftsman as well, wedding his mandolin- and dobro-driven melodies to literate, witty tales of loveable losers. But the litany of hard-luck stories gets a little monotonous after a while. Cleaves sings of gamblers, drunken brawlers, hobos riding the rails, prize fighters, jockeys and illegal immigrants—a colorful lot, to be sure. But one wonders if he hasn’t been reading too much Hemingway and Steinbeck and not enough about the lives of today’s ordinary people. Still, the story songs are his forte, and he stumbles when he moves into more autobiographical territory such as “Road Too Long,” a cliché-ridden lament about the life of the traveling musician. The title track is a fine alt.country anthem, reminiscent of early Steve Earle, and “New Year’s Day” is a rousing folk finale, full of joy and the celebration of life. In between lie a bunch of songs about losers—colorful, colloquial, and just a little too fanciful. My wish for Slaid Cleaves is that he’ll rediscover people instead of “characters.” Maybe next time.

In today’s fickle indie-rock universe where a band is considered passé by the time it graces its first magazine cover, Modest Mouse stands out as something of an anomaly. Proving itself one of the rare college radio bands that can weather signing with a major, a TV commercial, a three-and-a-half-year hiatus, a side-project and the departure of a founding member (drummer Jeremiah Green)—Isaac Brock and his Mouseketeers have remained surprisingly true to their uneasy blend of intensely fractured guitar rock, troubled yelping and impending existential collapse. Their fanbase has largely stayed loyal as well, waiting hungrily for EP and b-side crumbs to fall from the table, all the while nervously watching the band teeter on the brink of loud mouthing its way toward alienating label bosses, and hanging on every word of innuendo hinting at this album’s imminent arrival.

As both the follow-up to Modest Mouse’s arguable classic, 2000’s The Moon and Antarctica, and the recipient of near-immobilizing hype, the band’s fourth full-length is in the unenviable position of having to vindicate its drawn-out gestation period. Surprisingly though, Good News for People Who Love Bad News manages to justify the suffocating hype around it, branching off from the atmospheric doom dramas of the last Modest Mouse album into more grounded textural and conceptual territory. Having enlisted ace producer Dennis Herring (Camper Van Beethoven, Throwing Muses)—and with Brock no longer multi-tracking his vocals into a wall of anxiety—the band’s music has seldom been expressed in such bold and tangible strokes. The result is an album that’s immediate—from the minute The Dirty Dozen Brass Band strikes up the opening cacophony until the exhausted and convincingly forewarning “The Good Times Are Killing Me” brings the record to its logical conclusion.

True masters of contrast, Brock and company split the album into three vaguely realized parts, easing out of the gate amidst a series of pristine, jangly, multi-layered guitar-pop; bounding into a grittier guitar-heavy middle; and stumbling off in a rustically bucolic haze. The delicately paired strings and guitar shimmer of the stoically withdrawn “World At Large” and falsetto back-up vocals of the Prince-ish “The Ocean Breathes Salty” are matched by the shout-along throwdown of “Bury Me with It” and the infectious groove stomp of “Dancehall.” As always, Brock stands front-and-center, delivering his songs with strangely possessed conviction one minute, a baleful sense of resignation the next. His phrasing, still unevenly metered and self-consciously directive, guides the listener with unexpectedly sharp wit and deft wordplay through songs that shouldn’t work (his Tom Waits saloon-dirge homage “The Devils Work Day”) along with ones that obviously do (the burned-out fiddle- and-piano balladry of “Blame It on the Tetons.”

More than anything, Good News is the sound of Isaac Brock finally coming to grips with the reality that he, almost by the sheer force of his personality and audacious will, can superimpose the Modest Mouse logo over just about any musical concept he desires. Owing as much of their exceptional character to his preternaturally balanced arrangements as they do to his perplexingly defiant-yet-uneasy gait, Brock’s narratives are enriched by an ever-increasing sense of maturity and authority. It’s as if his struggles have left him bloodied but wiser for it. Good News is a surprisingly gripping and convincingly triumphant return for a band that by all accounts should’ve long ago succumbed to permanent hiatus.

Let me say right at the start, I was not prepared for this record. Until I listened to 10,000 Years, I’d considered The Honeydogs that other twangy pop band from Minneapolis. Smart and likable, to be sure, but not in The Jayhawks’ class. Quite simply, nothing the Adam Levy-led band had done previously suggested they were capable of concocting a work anywhere near this musically or thematically ambitious. If you thought Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was pushing the envelope for onetime alt.country bands, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet, cowboy.

For years, Levy has juggled two careers; his fulltime “day job” as a social worker put him in direct contact with disenfranchised individuals ranging from troubled urban teens to Somali refugees, and those experiences have found their way into his writing. While The Honeydogs’ last album, Here’s Luck (recorded in 1998 but not released until three years later), introduced a budding social consciousness to the material, here it takes center stage on almost certainly the most overtly political pop record since Jackson Browne’s 1986 LP, Lives in the Balance. But while Browne’s was a straightforward diatribe aimed at the Reagan administration, Levy presents his concerns in the form of a futuristic fable. Employing a Tommy-like narrative—beginning with the birth of a genetically perfect test tube baby and concluding with the discovery that the sex-determining 23rd chromosome is “evil’s home”—Levy examines, in heatedly impressionistic detail, the profound moral issues of our time.

In all its wrenching detail, 10,000 Years is a contemporary epic poem that embodies the tenor (and terror) of these troubled times as it moves from poverty and violence in America’s cities to religious and cultural warfare on a global scale, forming in its totality a frightening pre-apocalyptic vision underlain with just a glimmer of hope. Pop records aren’t supposed to testify like this, but 10,000 Years is still quite distinctly a pop record.

Levy is shrewd enough to know that contemporary listeners aren’t used to finding heavy issues embedded in catchy pop tunes (like when you don’t realize the Hershey’s kiss you’re biting into has an almond at its center). Nor does he expect them to follow along as if he were giving a lecture, so he sprinkles the songs with lines that rise out of the dense verbiage like flares, not only coinciding with the melodic hooks but also crystallizing the record’s thematic payload—lines like “Anyplace but here / Anytime but now / Anything but this” (“Test Tube Kid”), “My greens turn to brown in my salad days” (“Damascus Way”), “They’re melting their toys down for the war effort” and “Please wake me up when it’s over” (both from “10,000 Years”). Caution: You may actually find yourself singing along with this unremittingly somber stuff.

Considering its unsettling nature, the album would be difficult to choke down if it weren’t as musically seductive as it is conceptually radical. Rather than presenting this edgy material with matching corrosiveness, as Jeff Tweedy did on Foxtrot, Levy, working with gifted producer John “Strawberry” Fields and a revolving cast of skilled musicians—including Jellyfish auteur Andy Sturmer, Michael Penn, ex-Rembrandt Phil Solem and the other four band members—has nestled his disturbing subject matter within unabashedly melodic, strikingly ornate and largely accessible musical settings.

Scattered amid the elegant pop arrangements, expect to find some idiomatic curveballs. “Were the Heavens Standing Blindly?,” which presents harrowing images of the Holocaust, is cast as a jaunty Brecht-Weill-derived cabaret number; “Hygiene” is a refracted dervish dance; and the closing “23rd Chromosome” is presented as a languid bossa nova, with all attendant irony. For the most part, though, the songs draw their inspiration from the standard icons: Brian Wilson, Badfinger and Jellyfish (“The Rake’s Progress”), Steely Dan (“Panhandler’s Serenade”), Randy Newman (“Ms. Anne Thrope”— wink, wink), Tom Waits (“Before the Fall”) and, above all, The Beatles.

“Last War Lullaby,” the album’s extraordinary eight-and-a-half-minute centerpiece, interpolates both “Tomorrow Never Knows” and the climax of Abbey Road during the course of its several movements as it soldiers toward the desperately impassioned payoff, “Shackle the mad so the sane can flourish / We can nourish a sick world” — which, when you think about it, isn’t so far removed from “The love you take / Is equal to the love you make.”

Levy, Fields and supporting cast have not only captured the zeitgeist with stunning accuracy, they’ve made a brave, important, utterly unprecedented album, about which I can state with utter confidence: John Lennon would approve.

Even if you’ve never viewed Japanese films, you’ve certainly felt their influence. George Lucas, an avid fan of Akira Kurosawa, visited Japan in the 1970s and borrowed liberally from Japanese filmmakers for his forthcoming Star Wars saga. The plot—even the promotional posters—for Episode IV made heavy use of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress. The cantina scene was lifted from Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, and the character Gonji provided the inspiration for Yoda. Even the term “Jedi” owes it origins to Japanese cinema, stemming from jidaigeki, the Japanese term for the period dramas that have long been one of the country’s most popular film genres.

Many others have also referenced Japanese film. Preston Sturges remade Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai with The Magnificent Seven. The Coen Brothers incorporated much of Yojimbo in Miller’s Crossing. And Yasujiro Ozu influenced such auteurs as Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch. Japanese animation, or anime, began to exert a considerable influence on Western cinema and pop culture in the 1980s as it expanded to feature-length films for older audiences. More recently, Quentin Tarantino paid homage to the amoral orgies of violence common in some Japanese films, where the beauty and elegance of the brutality is what’s to be admired.

This issue, we take a look at Japanese cinema in our first installment of the World Cinema series. Here you’ll find a quick primer on Japanese film, Robert Davis’ reflection on Ozu and Tokyo Story, Tim Sheridan’s analysis of the outlaw loner in Japanese film, and some reviews of recent DVD releases from Japanese directors.

At the turn of the 20th Century, the first Japanese films merely adapted puppet and kabuki theater. An in-person narrator, or benshi, told a story to accompany a silent film, and filmgoers valued the skill and innovation of the narrator as much as (if not more than) the skill of those in front of and behind the camera. While this made for a unique art form in and of itself, it also made it hard to repeat consistently and to export. Reviewers criticized the poor use of the new visual medium and the lack of quality storytelling embedded in these silent films, as the story was left to the benshi.

In the 1920s, modernism began to exert its influence on Japanese cinema, especially in the form of German Expressionism. Where characters in earlier films were detached from the lives of filmgoers, these films depicted the daily lives of ordinary, middle-class people. Soviet film and leftist ideologies also impacted most genres, from period and contemporary dramas to the popular melodramas and literary adaptations. Filmmakers also began to experiment with their form and developed skillful and innovative techniques.

As World War II approached, the state began exerting its power. The Emperor conscripted filmmakers for pro-war, pro-Fascist propaganda. Ozu was one of the few directors to avoid this draft, focusing instead on completely non-political themes. Following the war, Allied occupation forces prohibited nationalistic films but otherwise gave filmmakers a new freedom.

Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) represented a decisive break in Japanese filmmaking. With its presentation of multiple, conflicting views of an event, it allowed for multiple interpretations and demanded active viewing from the audience. Also at that time, the Nikkatsu company established the new genres of youth and action films. Modern, Occidental themes and approaches were increasingly integrated with Japanese culture and aesthetics.

With the New Wave in the ’50s, filmmakers such as Nagisa Oshima and Hiroshi Teshigahara successfully combined creativity of form with strong social criticism. As television began to compete with film, mainstream film companies turned to series of monster and ghost films to attract audiences. Godzilla made his first appearance in 1954. Sex and violence became common themes. Yakusa (or gangster) films became one of the most popular genres of the ’60s and ’70s.

In the late ’70s, then-amateur filmmakers such as Kazuki Omori and Sogo Ishii honed their skill with 8- and 16-mm cameras and went on to produce memorable works. Most of the noteworthy films of the ’80s were characterized by realism, concern with daily life à la Ozu and a return to old forms, with a noticeable absence of violence. Many studios also began transforming manga (Japanese comics) into feature-length animation for mass consumption.

Over the last decade, cinema attendance has been extremely low, leading some to speculate that Japanese theatrical releases could disappear altogether, a tragedy that would reduce the country’s rich film heritage to remembrance on the small-screen.

For more on Japanese cinema, check out these links

• Yakuza Frenzy: The Outlaw Loner In Japanese Cinema by Tim Sheridan

• Yasujiro Ozu by Robert Davis

• Ikiru - Directed by Akira Kurosawa DVD review by Tim Sheridan

• Daft Punk & Leiji Matsumoto - Interstella 5555 DVD Review by Randall Smith

We all will die. We all know it. But it’s the moment of complete mortal awareness that is perhaps mankind’s greatest fear: the instant when we can count the finite sum of our days on Earth. It’s the Big Subject for writers and artists, requiring a deft hand to avoid bromide philosophizing and saccharine sentiment. Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957) created a universally resonating statement by beautifully portraying one man’s struggle with his numbered days. Five years earlier Akira Kurosawa offered his own masterful rumination on mortality with Ikiru.

In the film, we meet the aging civil servant Kaji Watanabe, who passes his days in numb routine, the value of his life drained by the bureaucracy he serves. When he learns he has stomach cancer, at first he’s consumed by despair, but then is determined to make his remaining time matter.

As in his storytelling tour de force Rashomon, Kurosawa uses an unconventional approach to narrative in Ikiru. The first half of the film concerns Watanabe’s struggle and ultimate acceptance of his death sentence. A second section explores the aftermath of his death, as a group of mourners considers the achievements of Watanabe’s final days in a series of multiple-perspective flashbacks. But rather than reveling in form over substance, the structure enhances the impact of the story, starting with the personal experience and expanding to the communal.

Considering Kurosawa was only 42 at the time he made Ikiru, the dimension and resonance of the film is remarkable. The DVD also includes a pair of biographical documentaries. While the print is not pristine (with contrast problems throughout), the film’s visual beauty still shines through, and its power to affect is undiminished.

Parisian house duo Daft Punk might be strange, and constantly wearing electronic facial billboards is probably giving them tumors. But their most recent album, Discovery, is ebullient and affirming. The songs also serve as the nonstop aural backdrop to a sci-fi animated movie composed of 14 contiguous videos—Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, a trippy collaboration between the faceless Frenchmen and one of the greats of Japanese animation, Leiji Matsumoto.

The film opens with the abduction of a musical group from its home world by a Svengali producer who imports musicians from other planets, brainwashing and ruthlessly exploiting them in order to win fame and awards. Kind of like what happened to Menudo. It’s not all doom, though, as a hero-cum-fanboy from the home world arrives in his spaceship-cum-Steve-Vai-guitar to set things right. He’s the perfect Matsumoto man: the sci-fi guy of principles, heart and action. His earthly counterpart is an unnamed Producer Charming of sorts, and the two heroes’ complementary efforts help save the musicians they love, and thus the music itself.

Perhaps it’s the utopian glimmer these characters provide that lends Interstella 5555 the feel of a science fiction fairytale. For while the film burlesques the music industry for its axiomatic greed, it also affirms music as a liberating gift belonging to all people. And at its core, Interstella 5555 is simply great fun to experience. Even at its campiest and most allegorical it’s infectiously vibrant and vital.

Serial killers in the movies surely outnumber serial killers in real life. But our films gaze at these characters with a unique fascination, like they hold the secret truths of the universe, like they embody our shortcomings as a people, full of sadness and rage, cast out of our midst for failing to meet the rigid requirements of our society.

American movies seem just as fascinated by the working class insularity of America’s middle and Southern states, and it’s not unusual for a film to meld the two fascinations, audience transfixed before attractive young actors who don the accents, the clothing, and the killin’/lovin’/runnin’ ways of the Southern outlaw—whether it’s Brad Pitt in Kalifornia, Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers or Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek in Badlands. Despite the high-minded implication of movies about serial killers—that we need to understand the deviant among us to better understand ourselves—these stories are usually more like freak shows than social commentary. Fritz Lang’s classic M set the bar in 1931 by examining the workings of a society and the ironies of a culture that wants to rid itself of a cancer it may have created, but M is the rare exception.

To its credit, Monster, the feature-film debut of writer/director Patty Jenkins, aspires to that ideal. It’s based on the true story of Aileen Wuornos, but it’s no freak show. It truly wants us to empathize with its main character and not rush to judgment against her, and it undermines a basic assumption of the genre—that killing is a male tendency left unchecked—since the killer here is a woman, played by an unrecognizable Charlize Theron. Aileen’s violent tendencies seem more like the survival instinct of a cornered animal than an innate thirst for blood.

The film has a clever structure. It establishes a connection with the character before she becomes a killer, and even when she starts pulling the trigger, her evolution is gradual enough that the emotional ties with the audience aren’t severed immediately. She kills first in self-defense and later out of vengeance, eventually killing innocent people as substitutes for the men who’ve hurt her throughout her life. As a result, the killings are increasingly painful to watch, because at some point we have to detach ourselves from Aileen after we’ve built up a desire to see her overcome her obstacles. Her transition into a serial killer is as smooth as the one the real woman may have gone through in rationalizing her actions.

But it’s a narrow line for the film to walk. While Monster doesn’t justify Aileen’s murders, it does seem to know why she committed them. The first problem with the explanations, however, is that they’re too simple, compressed neatly into the film’s first few minutes, a breathtaking synopsis of Aileen’s formative years. And the second is that they’re selectively applied; the filmmakers show a great deal more sympathy for the killer at the story’s center than for her girlfriend’s aunt. The killer was created by abuse and circumstance, but the aunt apparently sprang from the womb as a repressed racist.

The film also makes minor villains out of the people who eventually lead to Aileen’s capture. It concludes with a damning telephone call, replayed for a jury, and Jenkins presents the call in an elegant montage that revolves around Theron’s pained face. But as emotional as the scene is, it upsets the balance by leaning so hard on Aileen’s girlfriend Selby, played by Christina Ricci, for helping the police. Selby, it seems, should have been more like Aileen’s saintly friend Tom who tries to help her evade capture, but it’s a strange form of saintliness that allows a killer to keep killing out of sheer pity.

Much will be made of Theron’s performance. Her beauty is masked completely, not only by makeup but by raw physical presence—a gait, a stance—that looks like the product of a hard life on the streets. As impressive as this transformation is, it’s likely to spawn more discussions about acting than about the topic at hand. With breathless desperation, Theron looks like a woman fighting for air as she spirals downward, but the movie would be stronger if the other characters didn’t fall so clearly into two camps—either for or against her. Selby’s character is ambiguous and underdeveloped, but by the end we know just which camp she belongs to, which reveals the film is, ultimately, less interested in studying its protagonist than winning support for her by showing her persecution. | robert davis

Danish director Lone Scherfig burst onto the world stage with her winning Dogme feature Italian for Beginners. The same element of whimsy and charm has carried over to her follow-up. A hilarious film about suicide (no, it’s not impossible), the English-language Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself stars Jamie Sives as the titular character, a man who manages to keep ruining his own suicide attempts. But when Wilbur’s understanding brother falls in love with a single mom, Wilbur suddenly finds reason to live, even if he can’t quite kick his habit of trying to die.

The acting in Wilbur is great across the board, and Scherfig’s obvious compassion for her characters is wonderfully reminiscent of her debut. Even the storyline, the weakest link, is still affecting and engrossing. However, the film’s casual attitude toward adultery is disconcerting and out of place, and the romantic relationships feel over-determined, as if the need to hook everyone up takes precedence over telling a compelling story. Wilbur feels like a sophomore effort—it’s not as marvelous as the first but still shows enough promise to look to the future.

It’s been said that true comedy begins with a funeral and end with a wedding. Given that, most of Patty Griffin’s recording career has been a series of comedies. Hating her Nile Rodgers-produced debut, Griffin’s label effectively buried it with a refusal to release it. Then came a wedding of sorts, the critically lauded Living With Ghosts, followed by the feisty, career-defining Flaming Red, full of punk and pathos. A sort-of honeymoon for Griffin, Red created palpable anticipation for her follow-up. Unfortunately, Silver Bell also ended up interred in a musical mausoleum, this time by Interscope, the company that acquired Griffin in a corporate reshuffle. It’s not as uncommon as you might think: Sheryl Crow, Ryan Adams, Liz Phair and Abra Moore are just a few of the artists that, for a variety of reasons, have had projects shelved.

But the idea of a Patty Griffin record languishing in corporate limbo is particularly frustrating, given her singular vocal and writing talents. Her voice, delicate and sylph-like, then suddenly a gospel holler filling the corners of one’s soul, demands great material—it seems an offense against nature to trouble those pipes with pedestrian tunesmithy. Fortunately Griffin has one of the most adroit pens in American songcraft. She’s the kind of performer on whom critics pour superlatives, like leis at a Hawaiian airport; the sort of talent that gives other artists moments of awe and self-doubt.

So when Dave Matthews’ fledgling ATO label came calling, Griffin’s followers felt relieved. By all accounts ATO is hands-off, a musician’s label, and it’s hard to argue with the results. 1000 Kisses, her first ATO record, was a stunning acoustic affair along the lines of Living With Ghosts. The CD introduced now-classic Griffin-penned songs such as “Rain” and “Long Ride Home” and reaffirmed her remarkable ability to wrap themes of loss and heartache with the characteristic warmth that makes her writing both personal and universal.

The Galadriel of Americana herself, Emmylou Harris, remarks, “Patty Griffin says the thing we’re all saying about love and death and longing, but she says it in a completely new way. She opens up whole new wounds—in the best possible way. It’s that hurt where you have to go to that place you want to be hurt.”

And Harris is absolutely right. On Impossible Dream, Griffin’s latest release, the tracks that twinge most also have the greatest pull—the wistful ache of “The Rowing Song”; the desolate “Mother of God”; the abandoned hymn of “Kite.” Asked about Harris’ kind words, Griffin immediately picks up the thread but typically directs attention away from herself.

“I think I understand what she’s talking about. For me there are certain artists that can go to a place for you. Lucinda Williams is one and, actually, Trent Reznor is another. Pretty Hate Machine was one of those records that brought some things forward. I was so grateful to him for doing that because I felt like I needed to express that. He gives you access to certain darker places.”

Not to disparage either of the artists mentioned—the potency of Lucinda Williams’ records being indisputable, and Reznor’s evocative power recently reconfirmed in Johnny Cash’s devastating cover of “Hurt”—but Griffin’s writing possesses a quality that makes her special. Dar Williams, herself a considerable talent, agrees:

“Some people have a gift that is really otherworldly. Something touches you when you hear their music that isn’t just the lyrics and melody. Patty chooses words really beautifully, and her melodies are really interesting; at the same time, I think she has a gift that’s found her. There’s an extra layer that’s ethereal.”

Bouldin Creek Cafe, where Griffin and I convene around coffee and tape recorder, is casually bohemian in a way only an Austin coffeehouse could be, rambling and full of boho bric-a-brac. Griffin’s teased hair is indeed flaming red, and on this cold, drizzly day, she’s wearing a multicolored scarf and thin-rimmed glasses, sipping java and looking rather bookish. She has a reputation for being shy and soft-spoken; sure enough, when introductions are made, she is slightly hesitant and a little close, like a dental patient trying to assess just how uncomfortable this procedure is going to be.

But as we settle into the conversation, she makes herself heard over the din of brisk coffee sales, quickly revealing what should be obvious from her songs—she’s thoughtful, engaging, and an acute observer of the human condition. I asked her what she thought Harris meant when she said we want to be hurt.

“I think there’s so much about the way we live that’s meant to anesthetize us from feeling scary things. Eventually you’re completely anesthetized, so it’s a relief to feel anything. When you’ve been shut down, the initial shock is a painful one, like a muscle you haven’t used for a while.”

Impossible Dream may stretch those unused muscles more than anything Griffin has released so far. With her current situation at ATO, she seems to be at a better place, industry-wise, than she’s been since Flaming Red. But that hasn’t attenuated the doleful spirit always hovering behind her writing. “Some of the saddest stuff I’ve ever put together is on this record, I know that. I didn’t intend for it to be harsh. Sometimes I worry that it’s too difficult and sad. But it’s a relief for me to sing it.” For all the gratification performing affords her, Patty occasionally wonders how much better off she is now than when she was serving pizzas in the early ’90s, while getting started on the Boston folk circuit.

“There’s so much that is expected of you by the industry that makes me really tired and drained. I get up onstage, and I feel like I have to go through the motions just to get myself going. A lot of times I feel like I’ve never stopped waiting on tables, I’ve never stopped walking up to the customer, puttin’ on a perky face for them so I can get a tip. And I’m not really sure that’s ever going to change completely. I think to expect it to get perfect is probably a bad idea.”

If Griffin ever subscribed to the Romantic mythos of the suffering artist finding salvation in her work, it’s not something she buys into anymore. “Singing and writing together was the first time I had the experience of discovering something in myself I didn’t know I had. I thought, wow, there’s so much power here. I thought it was that simple—you just keep pulling more of this power out and then you’ll know everything. But it doesn’t work that way. It’s like the magician—stuff keeps coming out of the hat.”

Griffin has returned to this theme—finding dignity in apparent futility—periodically throughout her career. And until now, her songs generally opened up a window or carved out an escape route. “Chief,” from 1000 Kisses compares the singer’s life to that of a battle-scarred veteran whose entire existence is one long, pointless march. But the song’s bridge digresses into a dreamy soliloquy, Griffin reaching out for her better angels, attempting to make them incarnate: “I wish you could see me / When I’m flying in my dreams / The way I look when I fly / The way I laugh / The way I fly.”

By contrast, Impossible Dream mostly leaves its characters to their own devices, to forge their own dignity or find relief in giving up the quest. This surrender can be heard in her voice; she doesn’t attack notes with the old aggressiveness. The album feels tired, but also wise and somehow stately—a chronicle of Patty Griffin during one of the most questioning periods of her life.

“More than anything I’ve done, Impossible Dream feels like me, right here, waving my arms—‘Hello, I’m here, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing or what I’m talkin’ about—can you listen?’ [laughs] The older I get, the more confused I get, the more I know that I don’t know anything, and it’s interesting to try to put that in your work. Living With Ghosts required a certain amount of cockiness, honestly, to scream some of those songs at people. It’s not that I’ve lost my confidence, I just don’t really know that I have the right thing to say to be in people’s face.”

But Impossible Dream hardly lacks intensity or emotional weight; the songs unfold slowly, with the detail and complexity of a good short story. Two of the later tracks, “Florida” and “Mother of God,” form a sort of couplet, each song taking the perspective of characters with an implicit (though not immediately apparent) connection. “I think ‘Florida’ is the daughter. ‘Florida’ is about giving up all hope. There’s some freedom in that, to let go of hoping for anything. And on ‘Mother of God,’ well, a lot of emphasis is put on women finding fulfillment in relationships. They go through their whole life never having developed a private world because their fulfillment was to be in caring about somebody, and somebody reciprocating. You wait for it to come back, and you might keep waiting. In ‘Florida’ I think she finally figures out she’s gotta make that happen herself. She says, I’m going to get some sleep now; I’m not going to wait anymore.”

After all this talk of resignation and unfulfillment, the question arises whether the introspective Patty of Impossible Dream still feels like blistering paint off walls to Flaming Red. “Yeah, yeah, I mean I love doing that, it feels really good to do that. But I think when I wrote those things, I felt like I needed to tell you this, and now I feel like, oh, it’s really fun. I guess I’m just getting old [laughs].

“I would love to do another rock record, yeah. Somebody who was talking to me about signing for 1000 Kisses wanted the assurance that I would never try to rock out again. I said, ‘What is this, an age-appropriate thing? Is this a female age-appropriate thing?’ It felt really awful to hear him say that. I didn’t end up signing with him, I wanted to leave that open. I always fantasize about getting an all-girl rock band together in town just for the fun of it. But I haven’t had time to pull that together.”

Griffin has always been a musical omnivore, finding inspiration in everything from blues to industrial and punk. “I love The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Clash. Those were in my brother’s record collection. I actually did pay attention to that stuff when it first came out. I went through a big Replacements thing, after they broke up. I was into a whole other world of music in the ’80s—blues and R&B. Then I dated somebody who was a total punk-rock guy, and I got really into that. I still listen to my Johnny Thunder records, when I’m cleaning my house—it’s kind of my ritual to listen to this live record of his.”

A more recent influence, gospel, shows up on two tracks of Impossible Dream—the opener, “Love Throws a Line,” and the fourth track, “Standing.” The grit, soul and hope of gospel resonates with her on many levels; it’s something Griffin feels her music needs more of.

“I discovered The Staples Singers a few years ago, especially the ’50s Staples records. I’d put them on in my house, and no matter how down or confused I was about something, the music made me happy. And when you listen to the lyrical content of that stuff, it’s pretty heartbreaking, but it still makes you happy. There’s something joyful and beautiful about it. I feel like I need to get more groove into my work, groove for the sake of presenting things that have more light in them. And gospel is the perfect formation of that.”

Beyond just being a source of inspiration, Griffin has tremendous admiration and gratitude toward black culture. “I’ve pulled a lot of soul out of African-American music. At the same time I’m subject to the stereotypes that are fed to us day after day about African-Americans, on TV and in the news. I feel like the light is so bright from that place. African-American music is worldwide, it has made it all the way around the globe a hundred times over, because there’s something about that culture that is so powerful.

“There’s so many ways we do that same thing, we turn away from the light of things, the light of others. And I like my comfort zones just like anyone else. But they get pretty suffocating and unlivable. ‘Standing’ is—I think you always have to be standing, really looking at the mysteries. You gotta face your life. If you put off something that’s dark, it’s gonna keep giving you trouble and causing suffering. The line ‘I turned away from your suffering far too many times’ was admittance, like, ‘OK, I know I’m doing that.’”

This empathy is another characteristic theme that emerges when encountering Patty Griffin and her music. Her writing evinces longing, loss and occasionally even despair, but it’s always tempered with a sensitivity to injustice and suffering. This is nowhere more true than on Impossible Dream’s second track “As Cold as It Gets,” which seems to tap the indignation and righteous anger of Dylan’s “Masters of War.” She says she was inspired to write the song after watching a documentary about the Holocaust.

“I almost called that song ‘Nazi Hunter.’ It was a revelation to me that the first thing a lot of Jews that were in the concentration camps did when they ran into the Americans —they asked for guns. They didn’t ask for food, they were lacking shoes, and the first thing they wanted to do was kill the people that were harming them. I hadn’t really thought of it that way before. I thought that you get out of that and you’re relieved and you move on and everything is uphill from there. I think that kind of agony creates more agony.”

But much of the dark, wandering melancholy in her work is undeniably personal. Her oeuvre includes numerous songs about release, whether letting go of a loved one—“Long Ride Home,” “You Are Not Alone”—or forgiving and moving on in the face of hurt—“Let Him Fly,” “Nobody’s Crying.” Asked if these benedictions had something in common, Griffin offers an unexpected and candid response.

“I think there definitely is a person in my life that comes up over and over again. I pull him into the picture and my experience with him. I’m still working that one out. I’ll probably work that one out my whole life.”

Whether from high-mindedness or simple loss of nerve, I resist the urge to follow-up with the obvious: Does she mean her ex-husband, from whom she was divorced in 1994? In any case, the answer would be as irrelevant to an appreciation of her songs as Dylan’s divorce ultimately was to the visceral power of Blood On the Tracks. Like any good poet, Griffin begins with her own experience but refuses to stop at the self-indulgence of simple confessionalism. One heartache opens up to the whole human comedy—the personal mixed up in the universal.

Later Griffin invokes another Dylan record, Time Out of Mind, released three years after her marriage ended. “You know what I love? There’s a line from a Dylan song, ‘Cold Irons Bound’: ‘after all this time you’re still the one,’” she begins to sing, adopting a nasally Dylan accent, “‘Ohh, honey after all this time you’re still the one.’ [laughs] When I heard that line I went, oh my God, I’m gonna be 60, and it’s gonna be the same thing. You have to give up this expectation that you’re going to completely clear the hump—it doesn’t ever get cleared. Bob Dylan is a great example of someone who has sacrificed so much to be able to write these songs. He’s had a weird f---in’ life you know? [laughs] And man, what a concept, to work that hard and feel like you got maybe an inch.”

We begin wrapping up, switch the recorder off, and I ask if there’s anything she wanted to talk about that we missed. Absolutely, she wants to make sure we mention Craig Ross, the producer of Impossible Dream, who also produced half of Silver Bell. I switch the recorder back on, andshe leans into the mic as if to make sure the whole world can hear her.

“I just wanted to sing the praises of Craig Ross. The stuff that he produced for Silver Bell is so infectious and beautifully done, it always broke my heart that people never got to hear that. He had a record out on MCA records, bless his heart, which was the worst place for a white man to be, especially in the ’90s. It was called Dead Spy Report. It’s no longer in print, but it’s brilliant.

“He’s got an incredible work ethic that sets the bar. He works really, really hard. So you stay in there and try to listen and try to pay attention, because I have a short attention span. [laughs] He’s introduced me to the weirdest, craziest, music and showed me how beautiful it is. He’s opened my mind up to many different sorts of music, without any elitism or cool-ism. He’s pretty amazing.”

How appropriate that Patty finishes by talking up someone else’s virtues. It’s the same outward-looking stance she takes in her songs, inviting listeners to do the same. But Dar Williams explains it better:

“That’s something that I respect about Patty, where looking into human pain is not an occasion to try to change it; it’s an occasion to become a more sensitive person. Patty’s not rallying for change, she’s witnessing—witnessing to a depth of sadness in the human condition that we can all empathize with. She allows for a more deeply human way of seeing things.”

Broken Wings is an Israeli family drama that’s heavy on both—family and drama. This highly accessible film from director Nir Bergman is about a single mother and her four children whose father was killed in a freak accident nine months earlier. When the film begins, the family is still deep in mourning. The mother sleepwalks through her day, the oldest son has quit high school, the youngest son likes to videotape himself jumping from high places, the youngest daughter is physically and emotionally needy, and the oldest daughter (the audience’s point of empathy) tries to keep the family together.

Broken Wings is the kind of art-house film your mother would enjoy. There’s much (too much) tragedy here, the ending is pat, and the ugly beast of sentimentality raises its head too often. But the acting is magnificent, and the screenplay perfectly captures both the difficulties and joys of a one-parent household. This is a film that will resonate with a large audience, all laughing and crying on cue.

Chuck D is a legend in his own right. As leader and co-founder of Public Enemy, he pioneered an intelligent, thoughtful brand of hip-hop that pulled no punches. But last year—when famed Memphis record label Stax held a star-studded concert commemorating the opening of its Museum of American Soul Music—Chuck got to share the stage with some of his childhood heroes. In front of a hyped Orpheum Theatre crowd, he joined Otis Redding’s former backing band, the Bar-Kays, rapping on their classic, “Soul Finger.” It was a fitting tribute to Stax by an artist whose music, while often groundbreaking, has always been conscious of its roots. Chuck’s performance, and many others from the night, are now available on the DVD, Soul Comes Home. Somewhere between Denver, Colo. and Laramie, Wyo.—as he barrels down the highway under a vast expanse of Western sky—Chuck D takes some time to share his thoughts with Paste via cell phone.

PASTE: What was it like for you to perform with The Bar-Kays and share the bill with soul artists like Isaac Hayes, Al Green and Mavis Staples?

CHUCK: It was an unbelievable thrill to rap on “Soul Finger.” This is a record I remember from when I was 6, 7 years-old. And I remember kids on the record, and—especially back then—when kids heard kids on a record, like on “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” or “Soul Finger” you automatically took to it. Sitting in the studio and working on it with Larry Dodson and James Alexander—who was in both sets of Bar-Kays—was just a thrill. And to be accepted by David Porter and Isaac Hayes, when they pulled me aside and called me a ‘soul man,’ I mean, what can get better than that?

P: How did you become involved with the Stax concert?

C: I’m a musicologist of sorts and a student. I’m always looking deeper and deeper into the realms of black music and music theory. I’m big into the works of the great labels. I did a project based on Chess [Records] music … after reading Spinning Blues Into Gold by Nadine Cohodas and I’m a big fan of Rob Bowman, who writes the liner notes for Stax and wrote the book Soulsville. So me and him developed a rapport. From that connection one thing led to another.

P: Can you characterize the impact Soul and R&B like the ’60s and ’70s Stax material had on hip hop?

C: Hip-hop has a way that people dig in and find beats and find grooves. The thing that’s disturbing is—as producers and DJs understand the importance of the meanings of these labels, grooves and beats—the public gets further and further ignorant of the fact. There has to be a connection between the two. The public should know that when you hear Wu-Tang [Clan’s] “C.R.E.A.M.” that it was a Stax record. “Whatta Man” by Salt-N-Pepa, that was a Stax record. Both of them written by Isaac Hayes. I’ve always made a commitment to try to connect the dots and bring the past together to be recognized.

P: What do you think the integration in the studio at Stax said to segregated 1960s America?

C: People who were musicians to their heart came together to see what they could do. And also, living in that distribution, that melting pot of Memphis—though it was segregated, people were so tightly wound in Memphis at the time that it was no surprise music could bring people together in ways it probably didn’t back when Elvis decided to do black music. So you still had that continuum there, but they just reversed it the other way. Black and white involvement in music wasn’t totally rare in Memphis. [Al Green’s producer] Willie Mitchell took over the ownership of Hi Records from Joe Coughi, who owned Popular Tunes, the record store. And they worked together for years. So you had this black-and-white interaction in business at the top level as well. Al Bell moved in and took over the ownership of Stax with Jim Stewart. So a lot of things were done for the first time, music-business-wise, in Memphis.

P: What’s your opinion on the state of hip-hop today?

C: I think the corporate control of mainstream “narrowcast” [programming] has to be eliminated in order for it to be a healthy art form. But even Jay-z said, ‘the record business is in trouble, but the music business is not’… What do you think?

P: It’s difficult to find good hip-hop with quality lyrics in the mainstream…

C: So why would a group like Dave Matthews Band be revered for music and lyrics and somebody like, say, Black Eyed Peas—when they try to do experimental things—don’t get the same type of recognition? Do you think that’s racially biased?’

P: I think there’s some racial bias. There’s a lot of groups out there that should be getting more attention. I don’t know how you feel about Outkast—not that they aren’t getting attention—but the last record was really experimental and I hope it opens people up to different kinds of music…

C: Outkast is my favorite group, I just think right now they’re experiencing—and this happens—bandwagon-ism, where people like them and they don’t really know why. But I’ve always been an Outkast fan because they always took different approaches and didn’t care what people thought. But I heard “I Like The Way You Move” and I’m saying ‘okay, Outkast did this but it sounds like Earth Wind & Fire.’ If Earth, Wind & Fire actually delivered a record like this to radio, you think it would get played? And it’s the same record. It’s the way of America, I guess.

P: In this election year, what do you think are the most important issues we face as a nation?

C: America should recognize the rest of the world instead of thinking—arrogantly—it’s above it. It needs to concentrate on foreign policy that fits into the rest of the world, one that’s a lot healthier than it is now.

P: How important is music to social change?

C: You can’t have music be one-dimensional. It’s got to be able to grow and take on all different aspects of life. Social change is something people shouldn’t be afraid to touch upon. If there’s an element out there that wants to socially change up their environment with their records, then people need to be open to that and artists need to understand they shouldn’t twist their point-of-view just for the sake of staying with a record company.

Long before Tom Cruise and Uma Thurman picked up swords to make the samurai more palatable for Western audiences, the figure of the lone warrior was a staple of Japanese cinema. In such classic films as Akira Kurosawa’s Sanjuro and The Hidden Fortress, the popular Zatoichi series, and Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai trilogy, this outsider worked by a strict code of ethics that lifted him above the petty dealings of a typically corrupt, moronic society. These films were informed by the sense of honor and wisdom vital to the hero figure in Japanese culture, although the character of their protagonists was often less than sterling (consider Toshiro Mifune’s grizzled, dirty and ornery portrayals). This anti-hero role morphed with the development of the yakuza (or gangster) genre in the late ’50s, with the rogue gangster standing in for the samurai. The form proved hugely popular, and studios pumped out countless films that devolved into rubber-stamp self-parody. But a handful of directors saw an opportunity to use the form to explore their own take on the Japanese outsider: nihilistic, self-absorbed, homicidal and often unable to feel love or compassion. A recent spate of classic yakuza films on DVD offers a chance to consider how these directors used their films to take the genre to a higher level, blazing a new trail in filmmaking that continues to inspire directors and cineastes alike.

Director Seijun Suzuki, perhaps the greatest master of the form, made the full arc from profiling the yakuza hero to the yakuza sociopath. One of his first efforts, the visually powerful Underworld Beauty (1958), was a more formalized homage to American noir gangster films, with its stylized black-and-white photography and its plotline of the ex-con sprung from jail ready to settle old scores. By the time Suzuki made Tattooed Life (1965), he’d established a singular vision, with eccentric flashes and the iconoclastic mixing of the yakuza and samurai genres. Set in the ’20s, the film follows a hitman, Tetsu, and his younger, law-abiding brother, Kenji. The pair flee to Manchuria after Kenji kills a bodyguard to save Tetsu’s life. While they try to rebuild their lives, eventually they must face the music when the past catches up to them in a masterfully shot action climax. Suzuki’s influence can easily be seen in the work of Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch. But upon delivering the brilliantly bizarre Branded To Kill (1968), with its rice-fetishist killer-hero and disjointed narrative, his studio fired him for creating films they considered unmarketable. He didn’t make another film for over a decade.

A kindred spirit in his playful tinkering with form and narrative, Kinji Fukasaku made a series of films that worked within certain conventions in a seeming effort to explode them. Verging on parody, Blackmail Is My Life (1968) plays like a thinly veiled attack on the self-conscious narcissism of swinging ’60s youth. Shun (played with smug satisfaction by Hiroki Matsukata) is the ringleader of a gang of carefree extortionists—a kind of blackmailing Mod Squad who revel in their own fabulousness until they bite off more than they can chew by messing with a powerful gang boss. With frenetic cutting, loony camera angles and calculated use of freeze frame, Fukasaku establishes an amusing affection for his characters. We never like these high-spirited thugs, but they’re endlessly entertaining. Shun himself is a kind of strawman samurai, convinced of his own honor, when in fact he has none. Painted in bold strokes, the film wisely never takes itself too seriously and is all the better for it.

But perhaps the most affecting of these films is Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower (1964). Using the favored hit-man-just-sprung-from-jail scenario as its starting point, the film goes on to truly surprise the viewer with an existential tale of doomed love and the lure of Thanatos. Muraki is the nihilistic hit man who has only ever felt truly alive when killing someone. He meets a thrill-seeking socialite, Saeko, and is soon infatuated by her kindred spirit. As they move to a seemingly unavoidable destiny, Shinoda uses games of chance, cheap thrills and underworld politics as dark microcosms of human nature.

The most notable aspect that emerges when considering these films together is their shared aesthetic of jaded pessimism. Where samurai films find virtue in their heroes (all the more because of their feet of clay), Suzuki, Fukasaku and Shinoda explore the darker aspects of humanity. It may not be a pretty picture, but it’s an endlessly compelling one.

Filmography

Seijun Suzuki: Underworld Beauty, Tattooed Life • (Home Vision Entertainment); Branded To Kill • (Criterion Collection)

Mashiro Shinoda: Pale Flower • (Home Vision)

Kinji Fukasaku: Blackmail is My Life • (Home Vision)

Bob Dylan used to prattle about three chords and the truth, back when it seemed possible to go that route and get your music heard. But that was a few short decades before the music industry he helped support became a shambolic demon interested only in consuming itself—along with the lives and careers of everyone inside its rotting belly—before giving up its last in a long series of greedy moans and collapsing into its own entropic excess and the dust of history. It’s not that Dylan’s premise was wrong, and it’s not that it isn’t still happening; it just gets harder to hear under the wing-tip shoes of the accountants and lawyers who, with increasing panic and terror, run what once were record companies.

But rock ’n’ roll is still out there, it’s just off the death machine’s radar. ¡Americano!, the fourth album by Roger Clyne and The Peacemakers is proof that the crazy, reckless, restless, swaggering soul of American rock is still burning a hole in the night sky. ¡Americano! is drenched in the imagery of its terrain, the Arizona desert, but like fellow dust dwellers Chuck Prophet and Dan Stuart of the legendary Green on Red, Clyne’s songs reach far outside their frame of reference, peopled as they are with archetypal Yankee saints with hollowed-out eyes—outlaws, working men, gamblers and wanderers; in other words, heroic spirits who never stop looking inside for the truth or to the horizon for that transcendent moment when everything changes. Guitars blaze, quake and quiver, drums slip, thud and thunder with killer melodies and hooks and the occasional reggae or mariachi rhythm laced through the middle to keep it all honest and interesting. Like Steve Earle, Clyne writes and sings with the determination of a man who has one final statement to make before he disappears, his message delivered into the red sunset of an American mythical identity that’s become a confounded shadow of its former self—not only on the world stage, but in its own backyard. Like John Mellencamp, there’s a righteous sneer in Clyne’s voice and his poetry that understands contradictions and flaunts them. And like Bruce Springsteen he’s interested in conveying his experience of living for the sake of connection. Unlike the current singer/songwriter pantheon who get the job done by channeling country and folk music, The Peacemakers use roots rock played with a raucous edginess (often in overdrive), and a reliance on pop hooks to maneuver the topography. ¡Americano! isn’t some current incarnation of tired, dead Americana as played by faceless country-rock bands trying to get coverage in No Depression; it’s dangerous, razor-wire rock ’n’ roll that kids won’t dismiss and adults might remember if they haven’t had all that glorious wildness beaten out of them by ordinariness and the simulacra of what’s called “everyday life” here in the land of Homeland Security. Issued in February, ¡Americano! is an auspicious beginning for the rock ’n’ roll year.

No newcomer, Clyne knows all about the clanking monstrosity called the music biz. He was coughed out of its bowels in one of those death-rattle lurches a few years ago. He and drummer P.H. Naffa were once members of The Refreshments, an Arizona-based modern pop-and-rock band that issued a trio of albums, two of them recorded for the majors. Their middle slab, Fizzy, Fuzzy, Big & Buzzy, scored a pair of hit singles—the rollicking, catchy “Banditos” and “Down Together.” Clyne is also responsible for the infectious snake attack that is the theme song for the animated TV series King of the Hill.

“Yeah, I’m glad I’m out,” says Clyne from his home in Arizona. “It was the dream: young man in a bar band plays South By Southwest and gets signed and enters what appears to be Shangri La. The dream seemed complete when we got to call all the shots on our major debut’s production and picking a single. I mean, who gets to do that now—other than The Flaming Lips?

“We toured, got airplay, sold records and played on Conan O’Brien’s show. But the dream was an illusion,” he explains with a sardonic edge to his voice. “Once our label was swallowed in consolidation, one thing led to another and the label withdrew its support and our second record flopped. We were given a 90-day option in order to get back on track, and we ultimately refused it and it all fell apart. Am I ever glad.”

He and Naffa opted for a trial by fire. “First we started a country-and-western lounge act just to play Holiday Inns or whatever here in the West,” he explains. “We needed to do that to rekindle the fire of joy for playing together. We evolved into the first version of The Peacemakers in 1999 for the release of Honky Tonk Union, our first album. We’ve continued trying to shape it, and further it, and keep it honest through changes in members and management. My goal is the music and to keep an honest business model that allows us to keep doing it. I have no aspirations for anything else.”

After several personnel changes, and three more recordings, The Peacemakers have shapeshifted into their current incarnation featuring songwriter Clyne on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Naffa holding drum chair, long-time collaborator and bassist Danny White and new guitar slinger Steve Larson who adds the same kind of edge that Warner Hodges gave to Jason and the Scorchers. He’s a force of nature who’s always pushing the limit. The Peacemakers have gained a massive regional following, all of it on their own terms—making and distributing records on their EmmaJava label, selling merchandise, disseminating band news and commenting on art, the environment, anything they care about actually, through a brilliantly designed website.

Clyne says, “I am not interested in trying to appear to be 24. I am not gonna dye my hair, and I am not gonna write for radio or current trends. What we do, we do for keeps. We write about the big stuff, life and death and love and family and dreams that get trashed and reborn. If that sounds cliché, fine, but what I hear on the radio lacks not only spirit, it lacks soul for the most part. The people who run the music biz have no interest in those things if they ever did. In mass culture, creativity is dead or encouraged to become a television commercial. Here on the fringes the music expresses something about the way we live every day.”

Paul Simon once wrote, “the words of the prophets were written on the subway walls and tenement halls.” His only error was speaking in the past tense. Clyne and The Peacemakers are new prophets offering instruction and reflections on thoughts many members of our society seem to share in these dark times. In “Your Name on a Grain of Rice,” as guitars ring through the middle and a skittering backbeat underlies his words, Clyne embodies all the contradictions in his lyrics “I see the sun settin’ over America / I’m tryin’ to leave my darker side behind / Feelin’ my way down a blue desert highway / Wish my rear view mirror could tell me a lie … I am a father, a son and a restless spirit / I can see the light but I can never get near it … I see the fighter planes tearing across the desert sky / Do I curse them or cheer them on / I still can’t decide, but the silence they leave behind / Sounds like what I feel inside…”

“The way I see it, there is no room for cynicism, there’s too much work to do,” he explains, his voice rising slightly over the crackling wire. “I try to reject it because for me, and I know for my band members, art and life are inseparable. I write from the point of view of all the people who reside in me, and from all of those who have confided in me and are trying to find a way. As long as people are trying to find a way, then there is no room for a cynical response no matter how hard the road is. As we play out and tour, we have begun to understand that The Peacemakers do not have fans, but we have developed an audience because the people who come to see us empathize not only with what we have to say, but they trust the experience of their own lives and want to keep faith in them, we feed back what they give to us. This I find inspiring.”

Asked what this means for The Peacemakers who seem to exist in the seams between rock ’n’ roll’s tough rootsy past, its desperate present and uncertain future, Clyne replies, “I hope I am fortunate enough to be doing this until I am an old man. For me music is ‘re-humanizing,’ and we make records and play shows because that’s what those things do for us, they add humanity to our lives. Why would I want to stop doing this, trying to get better at doing my part, at re-humanizing my world and the world my kids have to live in? It’s not like there is a deep answer here, it’s just one song at a time, keeping a focused view of the land, the music and its people, instead of trying to find the answers in a strip mall.”