![]() ![]() Tennessee - Lucero (MADJACK, 2002): Arguably the Memphis band of the decade, Lucero's strength is partly in the consistent quality of their seven (!) albums in the decade. ![]() The result is a record bursting with music and humor and humanity.ĩ. What makes Jungle Jim special is the easy intimacy Dickinson coaxes out of a "family band" that includes his sons, Paul Taylor, LaVere, Jim Spake, and others. Jungle Jim and the Voodoo Tiger - James Luther Dickinson (Memphis International, 2006): The formal audacity of the late Dickinson's vision of "roots music" and his penchant for unearthing obscure songwriting gems is no great surprise. LaVere doesn't have a showy American Idol voice, but arrived here as a sharp, rich interpretive singer.Ĩ. Anchors & Anvils - Amy LaVere (Archer Records, 2007): This second album from the versatile LaVere draws great songs from sources generally close to LaVere (including three from the artist herself) and puts them across with a gritty but elegant musicality. ![]() And when Bryant croons, "The sky above is speaking some inane thing to me," girls-who-wear-glasses everywhere swoon in unison.ħ. Any listener not immediately turned off will be grinning madly by the middle of track two. Cloud-Wow Music - Shelby Bryant (Smells Like Records, 2001): Shelby Bryant's exquisitely personal, gently psychedelic, and utterly transfixing Casio pop was unlike anything in Memphis music before or since. And Start With the Soul - "classic" rock in every sense of the term - is where he took that premise to the bank.Ħ. Hart had previously asserted that with country blues as a foundation, the whole of American music could be his territory. Start With the Soul - Alvin Youngblood Hart (Hannibal, 2000): Memphis' finest modern "blues" artist is so much more. Branan became an instant sensation on the Memphis scene with this precocious, perceptive, word-drunk debut.ĥ. In fact, over the past decade, no one in Memphis has written sharper songs - period. The Hell You Say - Cory Branan (MADJACK, 2001): No one over the past decade wrote sharper songs about Memphis life. Matador Singles '08 - Jay Reatard (Matador, 2008): The one-time enfant terrible of local rock emerged as one of the most prolific musicmakers anywhere at the end of the decade and this collection of singles - one melodic, personal punk/pop gem after another - for venerable New York indie label Matador probably captures his sound and energy best.Ĥ. ![]() For those who worship at the altar of the rotating, three-minute epiphany, Time Bomb High School is a Sunday kind of love indeed.ģ. Time Bomb High School is concocted out of record-shop dust, built on a love of an era's worth of musical culture, one in which echoes of great records past rattle in the crevices. Time Bomb High School - The Reigning Sound (In the Red, 2002): This onetime Memphis band, led by Greg Cartwright, was a consistent force throughout the decade and found themselves at the forefront of a garage-rock "revival" with this second album. And its highlights soar: the odd, unnerving "Left Your Door Unlocked," where the lovestruck protagonist takes a nap on his muse's bed while she's out with another guy the early rock-and-roll-via-Lou Reed spoken-word vocals on "Stop" the whistling wistfulness of "When You Comin' Home?" and the honky-tonk-meets-Dylan heartstopper "Bottle and Hotel."Ģ. Too Much Love is an accessible but unnervingly intimate collection of songs tracking one delicate but troubled romance. Bobo (Goner, 2005): At the time a sideman in the Midtown band Viva L'American Death Ray Music, Bobo shocked the Memphis scene with this solo debut, first self-released in rare copies in personally handcrafted packages before local label Goner gave it a proper release. ![]()
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