Tulip Frenzy

The eyes of the nation await dramatic events later in the month.  We’re not talking about the Nevada caucuses, the South Carolina primary.  We’re talking about the real Super Tuesday, January 22nd, when Black Mountain, Cat Power, and the Fleshtones all release albums.  I don’t know how to handicap Super Tuesday other than to say that in the case of the Fleshtones, I pray they haven’t succumbed to that “change” bug that seems to have infected Obamawannabes: Tulip Frenzy likes its Fleshtones just the way God made ’em.

 

• But while I’m really looking forward to the other two releases, it’s Black Mountain that intrigues me most.  While we await “Into the Future,” I’ve been playing everything by Black Mountain and its two sister-groups, The Pink Mountaintops and Blood Meridian.  Happily, Blood Meridian released a limited edition new album at the end of 2007.  After contorting myself to find it — searching Ebay, pulling on threads — it’s just showed up in the iTunes store.
• “Liquidate Paris” is nowhere near as good as their last one, “Kick Up The Dust,” which took away the coveted “Tulip Frenzy Album of the Year” (c) honors in 2006.  It has the same parched, Calexico-esque countrywestern sound as the last one — you know what I mean: percussion that sounds like a marimba but is really a rattlesnake tail shake, and that’s not slide guitar, that’s a ricochet from the shoot-out at the Ok Corral — but Matthew Camirand, Joshua Wells, and the rest of the gang seem like they recorded it while midway through a Pony Express mission, which in this case may have just been Blood Mountain’s latest.  It lacks the relaxed, melodic, poignancy of “Kick Up The Dust,”which was recorded during an extended woodshed on Vancouver Island or some bucolic North’o’theborder locale.  Still, go download “Everything She Said,” “Burning River of Guilt,” “She Calls Me,” and “She Wears Black and I Wear White.”  Those songs are great.
• For more on The Black Mountain/Blood Meridian collective see Tulip Frenzy v. 1.0.