Dave Noyes

Clara Junken: Out to See

Sam

A turbulent See

Don’t take Clara Junken lying down

That Marion Grace record, Lying Down Looking Up from 2010, was pretty good, really. A smart roots-rock that was well put together and catchy in places. Not much ever came of it, though. No more than a handful of shows, certainly, and no follow-up from the four-piece.

Now, though, here returns Clara Junken, integral backing vocalist and guitarist in support of Marion Grace frontman Ralph Graceffa, stepping out on her own with a solo record four years later. With her, too, is Aaron Cloutier, drummer and percussionist and co-producer of the new Out to See, a full-length Junken releases this week.

She’s picked up a lot of friends over the last few years. Even long-time vet Flash Allen, who’s been around just about every local block, to play the Hammond organ. He’s pretty vital. His organ is table-setting for “Flyte Point,” the best track here. In the open and finish, there are shades of Carole King and Joni Mitchell, an easy and swaying Sunday afternoon of a song, with a touch of R&B and a wonderful vocal performance.

Like much of this record, though, things aren’t always what they initially seem. About two minutes in, things get all kinds of Four Way Street, with classic ‘60s electric guitar and flashes of psychedelia. Ultimately, it’s fatalistic: “There ain’t no more/ Sink or swim … There’s no one left to ask.”

It’s just a taste of the fairly prog song construction you’ll often find here. Though the arrangements feel like your standard folk and singer-songwriter fare, there’s always another songwriting change-up around the corner, a tempo switch or genre clash. “Brown Eyed Man” is only three minutes or so, but there’s a real contrast between the opening husky vocals over a halting and gravelly electric guitar and the shuffling roots rocker it finishes as, with reminders of Megan Jo Wilson and Ray LaMontagne. “Show Me Your Smile” is this quiet kind of Supertramp (“Give a Little Bit”) — “You’ve been a runaway for so long/ Don’t know how to make you strong” — that changes up completely at the half-way point, with an organ drone that introduces something like a metal band playing Blind Faith’s instruments.

Truthfully, at times it seems almost arbitrary where the song’s going next. There are many of the familiar signs of verse-chorus-verse songwriting, though, so it can be particularly disorienting.

“Middle of May” opens with an a capella lilt, setting you up for something off the Ghost of Paul Revere’s next record. Maybe she dips into a Hessian-style dramatic lilt for a few verses: “And the world keeps turning, turning ‘round the sun/ and I knew then like I know now/ I could be the only one, to let you down.” Expectations are set.

But it goes major after the guitar build, with a riff like “Eye of the Tiger” (just without the crest), apologizes with an “I’m so, so sorry,” and then ramps into a wicka-wicka blaxpoitation jam with horns. Listen for Dave Noyes. He arranged the section and played trombone. There’s at least one signature Rustic Overtones horn line in there.

Finally, we’re back to the beginning, with a scene-setting: “It iced over in the middle of May/ When I left you, standing there.”

Points for the creativity, but it can be hard to find something to hold onto. “Selfish Soul” is maybe the most traditional construction, but the phrases in the chorus change each go-round and the contrast with the verse is a halting pull-back, like Wilco’s “Shake It Off.” Or being the tail-end of a whiplash.

Still, you may keep coming back for Junken’s vocals. She has big range, from a low-end like Kathleen Edwards, capable with bluesy numbers like “You Are the Sun,” to the arcing high note on “misery” in the interestingly constructed title track, which plays on gospel tropes. She can play the guitar, too, with plenty of nice Delta blues fingerstyle on “Sun” and a warm acoustic sound on “See.”

Ultimately, it’s not a big singalong piece, but it’s not too far outside the WCLZ fare for which this town has shown some particular penchant. In front of a full band, especially, Junken ought to be a good way to enjoy the evening.

 Photo Credit: Dylan Verner

Rustic Overtones: New Way Out

Sam

Days of the New

The orchestral stylings of Rustic Overtones 2.0

When drummer Tony McNaboe delivered the burned copy of Rustic Overtones’ New Way Out, he tucked it inside the packaging of the re-released and re-mastered Long Division, the band’s first proper album, complete with horn section and keyboardist Spencer Albee. It’s fitting, as New Way Out is the first proper album by Overtones 2.0, post Albee and seemingly with a brand-new string section, present on each of the album’s 13 tracks.

It would seem that 2008’s Light at the End was just that, the end of an era, despite it having been released to trumpet the band’s reunion. There is no doubt that New Way Out is again appropriately named, a record that, for all its Dave Gutter-penned lyrics and Tony McNaboe-pounded skins and Jon Roods-plucked bass, is far from that core of primal energy that launched that band and drove it to its many heights (and then became Paranoid Social Club, though we’ll get to that in a bit).

In its place is a textured and dense amalgam of the collected band’s many tastes and endeavors – the funky soul of Zoidis’ Soulive; the gentle orchestral waves of Dave Noyes’ Seekonk; Jason Ward’s concert band roots; Gutter’s sedate solo work with Evan Casas – as captured in a practice space cum recording studio presided over largely by Roods. Finally endowed with a freedom to start from scratch, unencumbered by manager, producer, or label, and armed with some 15 years of experience as professional musicians, they have crafted what is clearly their most important artistic work, though it may be at the expense of some of the fire and brimstone that once drove their fans’ frenzy.

The band’s hits – “Simple Song,” “Check,” “Combustible,” “Iron Boots,” “Rock Like War,” “C’Mon,” even “Hardest Way Possible,” to an extent – have largely featured a Gutter at his most urgent and strident. I can barely picture him live without seeing his eyes smashed shut, his spine ruler straight and muscles taut, his fist punching the air.

That pose makes but few appearances on New Way Out. For me, the band have always lived and died with Gutter; now I and many others are experiencing him in a new sublimated role. Rustic haven’t quite become the Borg, but they are as much of a cohesive unit as you’ve ever heard them.

This may be because there are so many of them it can be hard for any one person to stand out. The liner notes list no fewer than 29 musicians that lend talent to the record (and you thought Spencer’s School Spirit Mafia was big…). And for that matter, the band members wear tons of hats. Roods alone gets credit for “upright + electric bass, keys, percussion, vibraphone, bells, guitar, vox, vacuum, wd-40, broom, delay.” I’m not even sure if a couple of those are jokes. The songs are so layered there could be virtually anything in there.

Rustic are fully invested and unapologetic, though. The opening track is the title track, coming to life with rising orchestral surge as from a Broadway musical and moving to a languid chorus: “I found a new way out/ If you don’t want to make a change, you should shut your mouth.”

With that statement made, however, they move into a “Drive My Car” Beatles take called “Everybody Needs to Be Somebody’s Friend,” where the horns again bleet, Gutter takes a more swaggering approach, and “whoo-hoo-hoo” backing vocals punctuate the verse. Here’s where you might notice Albee’s absence, though. He may have added harmony in the chorus, and probably would have pushed to popify the chorus as well, instead of ending it moving downward to make it more bluesy. As it is, the finish is dark and brooding, meditative before washing away into static.

“Nuts and Bolts” doesn’t get any sunnier, with a goth intro full of cello transposed with a fluttering flute, accompanied by a narrative of a woman who’s been caught in a car accident, and now has “sutures in her skin/ Like tracks for tiny little trains.” Nor does “Like the Blues,” a sprawling and lugubrious ballad that features a somewhat rare extended guitar solo from Gutter, crunchy and gritty against the purity of the backing strings. At just under seven minutes, it’s been trimmed significantly from the 10-minute-plus version they previewed for me in the practice space one temperate summer evening. “Can’t Shake You” has a bit of Wilco-style rock mid-song, and some soulful female backing vocals, but generally lounges out to five minutes of ballad.

Even the more upbeat tunes don’t exactly rock out. “All Together” is an us-against-the-world anthem, cool as hell as Gutter and Nigel Hall trade riffs in the verse to create a feel like Gnarls Barkley doing “Crazy” with the full orchestra at the 2007 Grammys. “Downside of Looking up” you may have heard on the radio, its trumpet trills and rising strings giving way to a bass-riffed bridge filled with ghostly chanting.

“The Same Does Not Apply” shows off reverbed Gutter strut and some “Start Me Up” guitar bits, but, seriously, is that the upbeat song?

With just about every tune here, the string sections, written about by Noyes and Zoidis, are downright lovely, but is that why anyone listens to Rustic Overtones? The string section? Maybe they will now. The band will have to hope their fans have grown with them and no longer thrive solely on those itchy ska parts, Gutter’s primal screams, the explosive choruses that send a crowd into a frenzy.

Because, if they did [in 2009, anyway], they’d probably just go see Paranoid Social Club: Gutter, Roods, and McNaboe playing some of the funnest rock music you’ll ever come across in a beer-soaked club.

When songs off New Way Out get finished, crowds will applaud genuinely, they’ll be awed and amazed, they’ll turn and hug their significant others and mouth, “can you believe that?” Which is great. It’s just that when “Check” gets finished people are bathed in sweat, hopping on the balls of their feet and screaming at the top of their lungs. The chorus of “Combustible” is one of my top-10 all-time favorite live-show moments. Every time I see it.

And there’s nothing that says the live set can’t have elements of both. I just have to admit I wish this new album had elements of both. I’m awed. I’m amazed. But I’m not bathed in sweat. Then again, I can get the swine flu for that.