Local Music Blog: Ya Gotta Love a World Party!

I’ve always been leery of cover albums. Unless you’re Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra, the prospect of making even a semi-standard song your own is always fraught with peril. First, it always comes off like you’re trying to expend the least amount of effort possible to come up with an album (see Rod Stewart) release an album and, second, for it to really work, you have to bring something new to the piece while still honoring its original intent.

But what really intrigued me about the Counting Crows latest effort, Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did on Our Summer Vacation), was the deep track nature of the covers. Instead of cherry picking hits, Crows frontman Adam Duritz chose to perform his equivalent of a iTunes celebrity playlist.

Meet on the Ledge by Fairport Convention, Ooh La La by The Faces, Graham Parson’s Return of the Grievous Angel, The Ballad of El Goodo by Big Star, and one of my personal favorites, Pure Prairie League’s Amie, are just a few of the 15 tracks on the album (17 on the iTunes version).

Their absurd previous attempts to move into the ranks of iconic bands like U2 notwithstanding, I’ve always liked the Crows. It doesn’t get much better than Rain King! But while I can certainly understand the urge to pay homage to the songs you love and I love the album title (a play on the Softboys’ Underwater Moonlight), there’s nothing new here.

Their renditions of Ooh La La and You Ain’t Going Nowhere (Dylan) are well worthwhile, but they’re not enough to carry an entire album. Perhaps they’ll return refreshed from their summer vacation just in time for a seventh studio album of brand new songs.

Pick up Underwater Sunshine only if you’re a Counting Crows fan.

Speak of seventh albums, one of my favorite artists (and not just because of his great last name), Newbury Park, California native M. Ward, also released his seventh effort, A Wasteland Companion, last week.

It’s always been hard to pin Mr. Ward and his music down. He’s played with the likes of Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes, he’s the “Him” in She and Him with actress/singer Zooey Deschanel, and he’s a charter member of the supergroup known as Monsters of Folk.

And all those various and eclectic tendencies come through on A Wasteland Companion. We got your folk ballads, blues rock tunes, retro 60s pop ditties, a duet with Deschanel, an almost classical piece complete with violin solo, and even a Louis Armstrong cover – I Get Ideas.

It’s like being on a roller coaster that can go in any three dimensional direction any nanosecond in time. And therein lies the problem with this one, by the time it’s over you feel like you’re suffering from musical whiplash.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard to dislike anything the multi-talented M. Ward does, but focusing on one or two musical themes per album might just be sage advice. Despite it’s sawed off shotgun sensibilities, I still recommend A Wasteland Companion.

You know how you’ll be listening to the car radio, a song comes on you almost never hear, and you immediately start thinking to yourself, “What the heck ever happened to him/her/them?

World Party is that group for me.

They, or should I say “he” – World Party’s sole member is former Waterboys’ keyboardist Karl Wallinger – burst on the 1986 scenes with Private Revolution which produced the top 40 hit, Ship of Fools. Then they/he blithely avoided the sophomore jinx with the excellent Goodbye Jumbo which propelled Message in the Box to number 8 on the then modern rock (now alternative) chart.

Wallinger’s next two efforts didn’t fair nearly as well and, after a three year break from World Party, he released Dumbing Up in 2000 which didn’t do much better. Then Wallinger seemed to fall of the face of the Earth.

Until I heard about Arkeology, even I hadn’t realized that he’d suffered from a debilitating 2001 aneurysm that left him unable to speak. After a five year rehabilitation, World Party finally started to making music again.

Arkeology, a five disc retrospective of his entire World Party carerr, includes those more recent efforts as well as previously unreleased versions of his work including covers, and live tracks.

The wonderfully unique packaging consists of a spiral bound date planner covering a little more than a year. Each dual page consists of liner notes for each of the 70 tracks on the left side, and a week of the year on the right.

I pretty much listened to the whole shebang straight through! It was just like rediscovering an old friend in an out-of-the-way coffee shop and perfectly picking up the conversation right you left off 20 years ago. If our lives really do have a soundtrack, then, for me, the 90s would mean Robert Plant solo albums, Thomas Dolby’s I Love You Goodbye, Belly, and World Party.

I’d forgotten what a great artist Mr. Wallinger is and am thrilled to have stumbled upon his stuff again. When you consider the low, low price, this one certainly gets the rare and much heralded must have rating. Welcome back Karl!

That’s it for April 10, 2012! Next week we’ll take a closer look at what Loudon Wainwright, III, Neon Trees and Train have come up with . Until then, in my new quest to relive the 90’s, you’ll probably find me listening to Mr. Plant’s 29 Palms.