Tony McNaboe: The Cost of Living

Sam

Regardless of the cost

Tony McNaboe testifies on sophomore release

If you were concerned that the return of Rustic Overtones would mean the ends of their various side projects, it’s clear now that was a fruitless worry. The ancillary releases have intensified as the Overtones continue to hone their second post-break album. The new year already brought us a Plains album featuring Dave Noyes (a limited edition, but still), and this summer [of 2009] will see releases from a new Dave Gutter project (a duo release with Evan Casas), Spencer Albee (not that he’s an Overtone anymore), and now Tony McNaboe, who’s crafted another soulful solo album, both self-produced and -recorded (though Jonathan Wyman did the mixing).

As is the rage, nowadays, there are guest spots by the likes of Gypsy Tailwind’s Dan Connor and fellow Overtones Nigel Hall and John Roods, but this is very much NcNaboe’s album. It is more overtly spiritual than 2003’s Destination, more personal, raw and dispirited, and it’s no tossed-off, let’s-see-what-happens affair. He both moves himself forward artistically, drawing on hip-hop and chanted singer-songwritery fare a la Citizen Cope, and creates songs with substance.

In fact, The Cost of Living [the record is in very few places online, even Bull Moose is out, but it does exist at Down in the Valley, which is like the Minneapolis Bull Moose, I think] reads like a trek through a deep winter and a man who’s just coming out the other side, touched up by a bit of frostbite. In 2003, Ray LaMontagne was opening for him. Nowadays, McNaboe’s got his band back together with another album on the way. What happened in the middle? “Tired eyes, ain’t slept in two days … I swear I’m killing myself a little bit every day”; “Lately if you see me/ I apologize … I failed my family and friends”; “There’s beauty in this somewhere/ and I just got to find it.”

Whether he’s playing a role in individual narratives, or testifying about his own faith, McNaboe doesn’t blow smoke up anyone’s dress on the new record. There isn’t, however, any sign of self-pity or resignation. On the six-minute title track—housing the potentially maudlin line, “he can’t feel a thing from his neck to his feet/ but he can still feel a heartbeat”—he takes pains to finish the chorus with vocal move up, so that the cost of living doesn’t seem like a burden, but rather a jewel to be coveted, as though what you get back is always worth what you pay.

If anything, McNaboe doesn’t go as far with his music as he does with his message. At times, there’s full-on incongruity. For “Doomed,” a slow piano ballad indicates a love song, and the first verse indicates he’s, like, doomed to love this girl forever, but then he’s failing his family and friends (“that’s what people do”) and that faithful, grateful guy is gone and I’m depressed but snapping my fingers and singing along.

In the finishing “A Prayer, Pts 1 + 2,” he’s thanking Jesus, confessing all, asking to be taught to stand up and walk again, savoring every word of every verse like a gobstopper, but the synths that drive the melody feel really cold. It’s such an organic message delivered in such a digital way. There are times when you can just see the ProTools screen in front of you and McNaboe painting in the bass line (“I Know You Hate Goodbyes”).

So, maybe it’s just taste, but I find myself gravitating toward “Miracle,” where his voice is most naked, the piano is pretty-sad, and when the effects enter it’s like the sun coming through a window and lighting up all the dust in the air, an accent instead of a means.

“We know tomorrow’s on the way, and it’s a brand new day,” but seeing is believing, and there’s a difference between being told something and actually hearing it.

[Photo thanks to WCYY. I believe it’s an Alive at 5 gig from the week this album was released.]

Labseven: North Winds

Sam

Mad scientists

Labseven finally put it all together with North Winds

Successful hip hop is all about braggadocio. There really is no equivalent in the genre to an indie weenie who can turn his back to the crowd, plink his guitar, and sing woe-is-me faux falsetto vocals about his relationship with his cat while retaining a prayer of success.

Cat Power cried on the Skinny stage and got more popular, but even the most underground of hip-hoppers (say, the mostly-missing-on-the-local-scene Nomar Slevik) don’t really do a whole lot of self-deprecating on the mic [Editor’s note: This originally ran in November 2006, before the game-changer that was “I’m Awesome”]. More than content, the delivery of a good rap depends entirely on an utter and total self-confidence, whether it be smooth self-assuredness or the most aggressive of rat-a-tat-tat bravado. The only reason Sole’s crazy-ass stream of consciousness, like Jack Kerouac on methamphetamine, works is because you know for a fact that he not only couldn’t care less what you think of him, but doesn’t even register the possibility that you might have an opinion that matters.

With North Winds, local hip-hop collective (er, band) Labseven might be the first Portland-centric group to completely deliver with that crucial ego component. While the album isn’t necessarily an announcement of the next great thing in hip hop, it is totally enjoyable because you believe every minute of it, from the self-pimping claims that certain vocalists “flow like a bottle of merlot” while others are “comin’ ice-cold like Canada” and “for the women got stamina” to goose-bumpling cuts by frequent guest DJ shAde (who, in a spot of trivia, sublet an apartment from me in 1995 before getting me into hip hop by leaving me his wax while he traveled to the Asian sub-continent for a stretch).

On a disc that runs that gamut of what I consider to be the Golden Age of hip hop — the mid-’90s run of the likes of A Tribe Called Quest, the Brand New Heavies, the Fugees, Gang Starr, the Wu-Tang Clan — Labseven consistently and fluidly move from one MC to another, one style to another, thanks to the vocal talents of JJ King and Hectic, the Reinstatah and Mello the Verbal Wonder. And don’t forget Autonomous, who lends his own rhymes while handling most of the arranging and mixing on the disc as producer and retains a consistently enjoyable commitment to melody and old-school Motown soul staples like Al Green, Smokey Robinson, and Sam Cooke.

The opening anomaly that is the self-titled production effort from Analog Death Squad starts off like Gang Starr’s “Skills” from their 2004 comeback album, then harkens back to the Heavies’ 1993 collaboration album with a synth line that should recall Jamalski’s “promp, promp.” Similarly, there’s a contemporary underground Atmosphere vibe triggered by talk of “the biggest Bunsen burners,” but plenty of ’90s throwback to the Jurassic 5 when we’re told we want more. Labseven don’t succumb to today’s MTV, eschewing chingy nonsense and denigrating women, but neither do they get overly word-smithy or forget the power of the chorus like hop hop’s true underground often do.

Much of the credit for this must go to Autonomous, but producer Doc Brown’s “Last Call” is a standout even if it’s just one of two contributions here. He leads with a great contrast between a super-low spaced-out bass and what sounds like the last two keys on the right of the piano, then John Legend-style vocals are paired with the female backing of Linze, doing with those lead vocals exactly what that piano is doing with the bass. Now that’s good production – like on Beverly Hills 90210 where there would always be a parallel story line to draw attention to the dynamic action that was driving the plot, except a tad more subtle.

It’s about conflict, people. That’s what makes good writing, be they stories or songs. The only disappointment here is that Linze’s solo is all-too-brief.

Other disappointments album-wide include a trite marijuana paean, a la Method Man (and just about everyone else); two very strange mid-song transitions where it seems like someone changed the channel in “Dark Roads” and “To the Lab”; and “Falling Skies,” replete with Spanish guitar, and “Rising or Drowning,” where the opening spends too much time in half-time, which just don’t acknowledge the listener’s point of view.

None of these are album-killing, however, and there are enough stand-out moments to satisfy just about anybody looking to have some fun without feeling intellectually insulted. The Hammond sample that begins and ends “Movin’ On” is rich like chocolate cake. The three-part harmony on “Dark Roads” is wide open, including the bass and soprano parts so there’s this huge gap from the tenor on either end. “Life You Live” manages to call Ghostface Killah to mind while making some political commentary and embracing a darkly melodic piano line from local goth gal Aepril Schaile (credited as “Apriel Shale”).

Though there have been solo albums on the local front from the likes of Sontiago, Bread, and A-Frame that equal this disc in quality, Labseven here set the standard for a local collective.

Well, maybe until I review Dirt Co.’s disc next week. We’ll see.