album reviews

James Tutson

Still

JAMESTUTSON.COM

James Tutson did not get any chairs to turn with his blind audition performance on The Voice in March of this year. But those who have heard the Iowa City musician—live or on record—know that his sometimes sweet and sometimes raw vocal tone and thoughtfully creative lyrics have the ability to turn a music fan’s head.

Tutson and Tyler Carrington, a member of James Tutson and the Rollback, recorded a new EP titled Still in their individual homes during the pandemic. Carrington played drums and keys (including piano, organ and Wurlitzer) while Tutson handled all the other instruments, including guitar and bass. Given the circumstances of its recording, Still has impressively high production values, and Tutson’s voice shines through.

Tutson employs religious imagery and the musical textures and tropes from church music to create a secular EP with decidedly spiritual underpinnings. On the EP’s first track, “I’ll Be Around,” an organ adds a gospel feel to a song about steadfast love—the kind of love God might promise his followers, in this case presented as a man offering that love to someone dear to him.

The next track, “Holy,” is an extended religious metaphor in which the singer’s beloved is described as, among much else, “my chapel pew,” “my hymnal book” and “my testimony.” Read on the page, those metaphors might seem hokey, but in the context of the song—and sung with conviction by Tutson—they express love in a powerfully evocative way.

Tutson’s old school vocals on “I Still Believe” (another quasi-religious idea employed in service of a love song) call to mind Smokey Robinson, and his ringing guitar tone manages to both ground the song and give it an ethereal feel.

The EP’s fourth track, “Shine on Me,” offers up some interesting stop-and-go rhythms in the verses and a clever set of chorus lyrics built around the idea that the moon needs the sun in order to shine—“I need your shine on me” is the driving phrase. By this point in the recording, it is nearly impossible not to hear the lyric as religion-adjacent even as the Tutson continues to sing love songs.

For the final track, “Still Love,” Tutson slows things way down, bringing both the special timbre of his voice and his carefully crafted lyrics to the fore.

TUTSOn’S OLD SCHOOL VOCaLS On “I STILL BELIEVE” CaLL TO MInD SMOKEy rOBInSOn, anD HIS rInGInG GUITar TOnE ManaGES TO BOTH GrOUnD THE SOnG anD GIVE IT an ETHErEaL FEEL.

You follow these tricksters cuz it’s nice to be tricked. You drink their elixirs cuz it’s nice to feel fixed.

The song reminds us that “somethings don’t change,” and I would argue that one of those unchanging things is the high level of Tutson’s work as both a singer and a songwriter. He and Carrington have created something special with Still. —Rob Cline

Justin K Comer & the unblessed rest of us

(self-titled EP)

OXCARTNEWMUSIC.BANDCAMP.COM

When Gabi Vanek announced on Facebook that the catch-all Ox Cart project would be formalized into a new Iowa City experimental music label, the skies opened and angels sang.

Well, not technically. But I might have squeeeed. Ghost Actions, Vanek’s 2020 project with Will Yager and the label’s technical first release, was a lovely early pandemic piece, literalizing the doubt and frustration of that time.

The label’s newest release, a self-titled EP from Justin K Comer & the Unblessed Rest of Us (out on tape Jan. 15), shows just what this community has to offer. With the Rest—Vanek on electronics, Jake Jones on drums and Yager on bass—guitarist Comer (also on radio and Zoom G2.1U effects pedal) offers dense novellas of sound, all spontaneous compositions credited to the entire group. These tracks are proof positive that collaborative composition is conversation. The back and forth between the group members is organic and familiar, speaking to a deep level of trust as well as individual skill.

Opener “Pray For Us Sinners” deftly employs vocal samples, both clear and emphatic (as with a segment from a speech on uprisings against police violence) and modified and twisted, as the dial spins to less defensible topics. It runs the gamut of human expression, ceding the foreground to the drums for a while partway through, which echo and emulate the mix of signal to noise going on around them. Things feel dire toward the end.

Track two, which is untitled, enters with a bit more brightness, if not exactly hope. This is my favorite of the four; although it is even more meandering than the others, it also feels more purposeful, a quiet journey, a rhythmic traveling clacking and sometimes padding. It’s that moment at a party at 3 a.m., after an intense and heady conversation, when someone says, “Hey, let’s all go for a walk!” There’s subdued movement and soft side chatter and some inevitable playground swings that spark levity tinged with sadness: joy recollected from a distance.

“Catholic Independence” returns to clips of conversations on public safety and more, but it’s less tolerant of them. An almost traditional musical breakdown mid-track wants to cloud the fury with beauty, but the background buzz cannot be drowned. The drum riffs are familiar, frustrated, clipped and confrontational, before the track closes out on an ethereal ball of fuzz and tone and the repeated distinguishable snippet “activate independence.”

On “I Don’t Trust the Government,” the closing track, Jones’ drums are again front and center, telling the story with a frenetic urgency. Comer’s guitar is desperate to get a word in, joining like that one friend who sits back largely listening for hours then coughs up something profound. Everyone is in their element on this track, which dances between components and instruments with elegance, confidence and intent. The deep, droning close followed by echoing faint slams is an apt finale.

The titles feel appended after the fact, like names given to abstract paintings: both inspired by the content and part of it. Together, they frame and clarify the Joycean storytelling throughout. The fun of listening to this album is eclipsed only by the tease of how engaging it would be to see this group perform in person. There is so much more here than can be captured on an EP. —Genevieve Trainor