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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2008 > February > 28 > Entry
CD reviews: Aimee Bobruk, Bob Schneider, Caroline Herring
Aimee Bobruk - ‘The Safety Match Journal’
(self-released)
This album has a few of the danger signs of wispy singer-songwriter music. The spelling of the first name. The word “journal” in the title. The “Chicks with Picks” song sessions this Huntsville native has hosted since moving to Austin a couple years ago. The album cover shows Bobruk with the body of a bird.
But “The Safety Match Journal,” so texturized with unique musical ideas, finds Bobruk and producer Darwin Smith veering from Lilithian expectations. With “Fools For Love” bringing “vo-de-oh-doe” to modern times, “Dulcinea” dripping in dreamy lust, and shards of guitar scratching the melody of “First Move,” the album gets a little close to the edge of too-weird.
But the stunning, ready-for-radio “Losing the Magic,” the most singer-songwriterly song on the album, ties all the loose ends together.
With the slow-strumming “Precious Jesus” and LP closer “Shores of Gold” other highlights, Bobruk’s at her best when she’s like everyone else, only more open and with an atmospheric voice made for both cello and feedback.
Join this 26-year-old to celebrate the release of an album that sounds like it took several months to produce, Tuesday at the Cactus Cafe. You just might find the magic. — Michael Corcoran
(Photo from myspace.com/aimeebobruk.)
Bob Schneider - ‘When the Sun Breaks Down on the Moon’
(Shokorama)
Bob Schneider’s latest, “When the Sun Breaks Down on the Moon,” might not be the best place for a potential Schneider fan to start, but for the longtime fan, it’s a great departure from his everyday sound.
“Moon” is a laid-back, 12-song collection that has Schneider moving further away from big-band party-rocker and closer to daring, solo experimentalist.
In fact, Schneider made the record at his Austin home and played every instrument, including the ukulele, banjo, trumpet, trombone, bass, guitar, piano, drums, keyboards, mandolin, steel drums, melodic and harmonica.
He also charged himself with the engineering, mixing and mastering, which as it turns out is one of the album’s few shortfalls because of some odd volume changes and less-than-perfectly sharp sounds.
Aside from the easy-to-get-over production flaws, the album is charming in its minimalism and can’t be compared to Schneider’s popular, big studio-powered releases “Lonelyland” or “I’m Good Now.”
As for the songs, the album’s title track is brief but powerful — “I feel about as useful as a blind man’s bike/down at the bottom of the lake in me/God has made a big mistake you see.”
The album’s first quarter is dark and gloomy, but it moves quickly into happier, catchy pieces such as “The Way We Roll” and “The Stick Up,” where Schneider eerily sings cheerfully about a violent robbery.
The depressing, inspiring sadness returns with “Blue Mountain,” a downtrodden-but-moving song where Schneider sounds as if he might burst into tears at any moment.
Then the good times are back on “Confessor,” a funky jam featuring Schneider engaged in a toe-tapping a cappella with himself.
Sadly missing from “Moon” is Schneider’s trademark horn line, which on other albums has added that extra “oomph” and catchy harmony that gets stuck in your head.
Even so, this album is a welcome detour from Schneider’s usual sound and it’s exciting to peek in while he experiments with new sounds.
Recommended: “Blue Mountain,” “Confessor” — Ryan Poulos
Caroline Herring - ‘Lantana’
(Signature Sounds)
The sour certainty of a lover’s infidelity often slips a murder ballad’s trigger. Caroline Herring chooses to measure unconditional love’s disintegration instead. “I confessed that, for love’s sake, I drowned my children in John D. Long Lake,” the Atlanta-based songwriter sings on “Paper Gown.” “They’re with Jesus, looking down at me in this paper gown.” True story: That’s Susan Smith deteriorating underneath the weight of a malevolent Carolina moon.
Herring flawlessly reports the grisly material. Presented with corresponding degrees of damnation and empathy, her watertight assessment of the 1994 American tragedy would be a crowning achievement for most artists. On “Lantana” — an embarrassment of riches drawing the straightest line between tradition and transition this side of Adrienne Young — it only rates halfway up the chart.
More treasured moments — coming-of-age bookends “Heartbreak Tonight” and “Fair and Tender Ladies,” say, or the closing “Song for Fay” — celebrate women and strength in vulnerability. Every attempt pierces its mark. In fact, few folk albums since Young’s 2005 hallmark “The Art of Virtue” have proved a more thorough success. Herring’s endearing maternal memorandum “Lover Girl” — “Even now we’re dancing, longing for a place to know,” she sings — alone suggests its undying resilience.
Now, grab hold of a sturdy beam before spinning “Midnight on the Water.” Talk about the hollow aftermath of faded love. Echoing like a cannon in a cockpit, Herring distills the traditional fiddle tune into arguably the purest representation of heartache since “Goodnight Irene.”
“The scenes were there as in a mirror made by the moon upon the water and our love was never stronger,” she gently warbles. “The picture was broken by the waves we left behind at midnight on the water, once upon a time.” Even decades of scratching, of course, won’t remove the deepest stains of regret.
Recommended: “Paper Gown,” “Midnight on the Water,” “Song for Fay” — Brian T. Atkinson
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