CD Reviews

Rick Berlin | Paper Airplane

Hi-N-Dry

By JON GARELICK | October 12, 2010

3.0 Stars

In another world, far, far away, Rick Berlin will get million-dollar production from Lee Townsend, Larry Klein, or T Bone Burnett. Stephin Merritt will reject him as an opener on his tour because he feels threatened; all the same, Berlin will take his place among the pantheon of American singer-songwriters, along with Merritt, Randy Newman, and Tom Waits. In the meantime, this former glam-rocker and current unofficial mayor of Jamaica Plain gets to fashion his indelible story songs and character portraits with a coterie of estimable sympathetic locals who here include guitarists Kevin Barry and Duke Levine and Dennis Brennan on harp and back-up vocals. The songs are the usual mix of barflies, fame-starved wanna-bes, and motley lonelyhearts club in a variety of styles: oom-pah barroom rant ("PBR"), Stonesy shuffle with slide guitar ("Bermuda Triangle"), fast ska ("Hard 2 Be Liked"), and any number of signature Berlin piano ballads. What's refreshing about the songwriting, aside from the musical variety, is the way Berlin inhabits his characters based on snatches of conversation he's picked up on Centre Street or at Doyle's. "If I Wasn't Such a Bum" is a disgruntled cousin of the guy watching "Sean Penn on Charlie Rose" — but who's the girl (narrating first person) who tears her dress in "Bermuda Triangle"? Whatever. For Berlin, these literate, funny, touching songs are autobiography by other means.

Dar Williams | Many Great Companions
The companions of the title are Dar Williams's songs, which the singer-songwriter revisits here two different ways.
The Woodrow Wilsons | The Devil Jonah
The Woodrow Wilsons are a haushold name — to anyone familiar with Jamaica Plain's Whitehaus Collective, that is.
Blackshaw's good vibrations
Blackshaw's low-key career has evolved as organically as one of his songs: at 28, the Londoner has amassed a body of instrumental guitar music that defies tidy categorization. What he does isn't really folk, jazz, or new age — and it's far too accessible to be mistaken for avant-garde.
Person and persona
Folksie newcomer John Shade says that his songs are focused on identity and anonymity, but there’s also what sounds like an unraveling personal economy lurking beneath: characters steal purses, check classifieds, go it alone with “no safety net,” and generally feel like bums.
Review: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Few filmmakers have suffered from the life-imitates-art phenomenon as has Terry Gilliam.
Supporting the arts
They haven't paid you in how long?
Clinic | Bubblegum
The name Clinic has always suited the music of these wired-up, post-punk Brits.
Against Me! survive the major labels ... barely
Against Me! played the best rock show I've ever seen. This was almost seven years ago at Jackson Mann K-8 School in Allston, for a capacity crowd of about 300 people. Or maybe closer to 600. Or maybe fewer. I didn't take a head count.
As he is
For all the defiant, anguished fists we shake in the general direction of New York and Los Angeles whenever a musician becomes way more famous after they leave Boston, perhaps this city's gypsy-attracting disposition has advantages.
Junior Boys | It's All True
With its disco-bass pulse, jet-engine synths, and seductive half-time chorus, "Itchy Fingers" kicks things off by demonstrating the Boys' finesse for tricked-out, ass-shaking programmed grooves.
Assaf Kehati Quartet | Flowers and Other Stories
The Boston-based Israeli guitarist Assaf Kehati and his quartet know how to straddle the great divide.
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Topics: CD Reviews , Jamaica Plain, Music Reviews, Tom Waits, More

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