Margo Price needs some bell bottoms and tie-die, yo.
This is Buffalo Clover, "Seek Me Out" off their new album Low Down Time. I've previously mentioned that I was getting a Tom Waits Americana vibe off their earlier work. But they've gone upmarket and upscale here, as well as to a different point in time. I'm getting more of a Stephen Stills / Flying Burrito Brothers 70's vibe out of this outing, i.e., more of a country rock album with late 60's / early 70's pop influences. The songs sound so familiar that at first I tried to look them up on various lyrics sites to see who the Clover were covering. Except none of the lyrics to these songs matched anything. They're apparently originals.
Need to spend more time going back and listening to late 60's / early 70's stuff to think about what this particular song sounds like... hey, look, back in that time I was mostly listening to classical music 'cause, like, it seemed heresy to ruin good music with, like, words. What can I say, I was a strange kid :). So if you can drop me some hints as to WTF this particular song sounds like...
- Badtux the Ancient Penguin
This song moves me.
ReplyDeleteLike roller skates.
Or a taxi.
Cheers!
JzB
You haven't forgotten who Emmylou Harris is, have you?
ReplyDeleteBukko, this might sound like something Emmylou sang backup on for Gram Parsons, but certainly sounds nothing like any of her solo work, which is far more traditional country. Jazz's "Taxi" reference is a prime example of why I keep saying it has a 70's feel to it, but I just can't put my finger on it and it drives me batty. The whole album is like that, none of the other songs sound exactly like this one, but each and every one sounds like something I could have heard KEEL 710 AM during the early 70's, while driving around town in a '65 Olds '88 with a 425 V8 with a 4-barrel carb, 5mpg but hey, who gave a shit when gasoline was 35 cents a gallon? We was *stylin'*, man! You could fit a whole goddamn band in that limo, *plus* all their instruments in the trunk, drumset included!
ReplyDeleteAnd somehow I got off topic. WTF, what can I say. The problem is that I wasn't listening too closely to AM pop radio back then, it just wasn't something that particularly interested me. So the question of who the Clover are channeling is like that little pebble that gets between your feet and your flip-flops at the beach and refuses to shake out, I think I'm going to have to go back and start programming some 70's stuff on this blog until I figure this one out (the musical equivalent of stopping and taking off your sandal).
- Badtux the Baffled Penguin
Correction, it was a '65 Olds *98*, with the 425 Ultra High Compression Engine w/4 barrel carb and 3 speed slushbox. Pieced together from pieces of a couple of different cars (it would have been a "salvage title" here in California). Biggest issue with piecing together the car that way was the electricals, they gave us fits, because the wiring harness was pieced together too and wires were always coming loose or shorting out or something and that damned car had more wires... looked like a bowl of spaghetti behind the dash, yo.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, all that beautiful go-power was stopped (for some definition of the word) by four drum brakes. It had a power brake booster (which was *extremely* sensitive) so you at least didn't have to manually heave the brake pads against the insides of the drums to stop the 5,000 pounds of Detroit heavy iron, but the brakes would fade to uselessness almost immediately, long before you brought all that mass from 70mph down to 0mph, with the result that stopping distances were somewhere between "oh shit!" and crash. (Thus why there was plenty of these things in the junkyards to piece together :) ).
And crap, I am *so* off topic... WTF. It's my blog, I get to be off topic if I wannabe :).
- Badtux the Reminiscing Penguin
I think you are sending yourself on a forlorn quest. It is evocative of things, and the ones I linked were just things that occurred to me while listening. I got "brand new key" on the first listen and "taxi" next time around.
ReplyDeleteNeither one is right on. But together they're kinda close.
I'd be quite surprised if you do much better than that.
Cheers!
JzB