CD Review: "Election Special" by Ry Cooder




The cover of Ry Cooder's new CD



Hats off to Ry Cooder! Hang out the bunting and pin up the rosettes! Election Special is another excellent album of topical songs about the current American political scene. And it’s only been a year since the release of the similarly-themed Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down in August 2011. Following the success of that project, Cooder continued to write very pointed political songs. He says that he wanted to reach listeners during the US presidential-election year of 2012. And, indeed, the album did arrive in a timely fashion – one week before the Republican Party convened for its convention in Tampa, Florida.

Election Special was released on August 17 by both PerroVerde Records and Nonesuch Records. It was recorded at Drive-By Studios in north Hollywood (actually, the living room of engineer Martin Pradler) and Wireland Studios in Chatsworth, California. As with the previous album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, this new one was produced by Ry Cooder, and features himself on guitars, bass and mandolin. His son Joachim plays drums. It was mixed and mastered by engineer Martin Pradler.

All of the songs are written by Ry Cooder (except for the final track, “Take Your hands Off It” – co-written by his son Joachim). As with the music on the previous album, Election Special features simple instrumentation and sparse arrangements. Although the recordings are done in the spirit of one-take performances, there had to be considerable over-dubbing, since Cooder is often playing several instruments on a track, as well as doing the singing.

These are often highly-charged, political songs, which pull no punches. But the lyrics are not simplistic or preachy. They’re funny and satirical – bitter and yet undercut with a fragile sense of optimism. As Cooder reminds us in the press release that his record company put out, he twice refers in this album to a surprisingly apprehensive Pete Seeger quote: “I have no hope; I could be wrong.”



Guitar-extraordinaire Ry Cooder on acoustic



As I mentioned in my review of Pick Up Some Dust and Sit Down, Ry Cooder has really come into his own as a talented songwriter in recent years. Formerly known primarily as an interpreter and presenter of other people’s songs, it is astonishing to note that in the last seven years he has put out five albums of his own songs. He composes songs with the approach of a short-story writer. In an interview with Bud Scoppa in Uncut magazine he described the process like this:

“I have to find little storylines. I have to find something I can play and sing, in some style, or some instrumental point of view – a country tune, or a blues tune – updating these things that I grew up listening to, these Depression-era songs and what-not.

"It seemed the more I did it, the better I got at it, like anything. It’s an acting job. You put yourself into the spirit of the thing, the character of the thing.”

It’s an artistic approach. Instead of the simple-minded propaganda of a “protest song”, he’s using irony, role-playing, and empathy to present deep, contentious issues. As he put it to The Guardian newspaper in London (August 10),  

“With a four-minute song, you can use allegory and other means to suggest a different point of view.”

 There’s no doubt, here, where Cooder’s political sympathies lie: two songs deal, approvingly, with the Occupy movement; one song skewers Mitt Romney; a jaunty country song savages an amoral, racist delegate to Tampa; Cooder channels Barack Obama in a slow blues lamenting the non-stop obstructionism of the Republicans in Congress; and the uber right-wing, libertarian Koch brothers are demonised in a pointed version of the Crossroads-deal-with-the-Devil. Some tasty blues and country music employed to deliver some candid and forthright commentary on America’s sick political culture - where did things go so wrong?



Romney: "how he treated his dog tells you a lot about him"



The album kicks off with “Mutt Romney Blues” an upbeat country blues sing that revisits (it came up constantly in 2008, during Romney’s previous run for the White House) the notorious incident when – during a family holiday trip in 1983 – Romney had his dog Seamus locked inside a dog carrier crate and strapped to the roof of the car during a twelve-hour, 650 mile-trip to Canada. Twelve hours. During his ordeal, the dog defecated liquid down the windows of the car. Romney stopped at a gas station to wash the dog, the carrier, and the car. Then he put Seamus back in the carrier and strapped him back on the roof. Cooder says that he was inspired to write this song from a quote by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who opined “how he treated his dog tells you a lot about him.” In a clever move, Cooder writes the song from the dog's point-of-view. The point is made, without being moralistic:

  

Ol’ massa boss cut me down, I won’t spread the story ‘round;

All the plans and schemes you got in mind; they’d think I was lyin’;

And the mean things you tryin’ to do, I won’t blow the whistle on you;

Take me down from this roof, please massa boss, woof, woof, woof!

 

At the crossroads - a deal with the Devil?

The next piece, “Brother is Gone”, is truly brilliant. This country-blues starts with a haunting mandolin riff, which – after a few listens to the track – you will find yourself humming hours later. Singing in a melancholic, laid-back tone, Cooder assumes the persona of Charles Koch, one of the well-known (some might say notorious) Koch brothers. He and his brother David control Koch Industries – the second-largest, privately-owned American company. They use their vast wealth to fund neo-conservative and libertarian causes and advocacy-groups in the United States. The lyric plays with the Crossroads Blues legend make famous by Robert Johnson; it presents the Koch brothers making a deal with Satan. But this ain’t set in the Mississippi Delta; this happens in Wichita, Kansas – headquarters of Koch Industries. In a Nonesuch Records press-release, Cooder says “the only logical explanantion for the Brothers I could come up with is that they made their deal at the Crossroads with Satan.”

You will be exalted in the evil works of men,

High power rollin’ over land and sea;

But some dark night I’ll be comin’ round again;

And take one of you back down to hell with me …



Even more astonishing is the slow, twelve-bar blues piece, “Cold Cold Feeling” – perhaps the stand-out track on this CD. Reminiscent of his brilliant, John Lee Hooker-inspired blues on the previous album (“John Lee Hooker for President”), “Cold Cold Feeling” puts him inside the psyche of President Barack Obama. It’s an audacious move – “If you never been President, people, then you don’t know how it feels”, he sings, not in a vainglorious fashion designed to vaunt himself over us, but to elicit our sympathy: “these stray dog Republicans always snappin’ at my heels”. Cooder cleverly characterises the political position Obama is trapped in – stymied on all sides by a recalcitrant and belligerently obstructionistic Republican opposition. Some nice, understated, slide guitar sets the mood – portraying “the most powerful man on Earth” in a defensive and wearisome mood.

But that downer-mood is suddenly lifted by the next track, “Going to Tampa” – a bouncy, country tune depicting a Republican red-neck on his way to the party’s convention in Florida. The humour is obvious and broad here: “I’ll give all my money, if Sarah Palin calls me honey, and shakes the peaches on my tree.” But, despite the wise-cracking jokes, some of the details are disturbing – a suggestion to revive the Willie Horton strategy, and to bring back Jim Crow-tactics - pushing the racist-agenda of "States’ rights". And our Republican delegate seems interested in one main thing – as he puts it to his staying-at-home wife, “I can’t take you with me little darlin’, I’m goin’ down to get my ashes hauled.” [translation: I’m going there primarily to get laid.]



I drank the Kool-Aid



And then comes the ominous rocker “Kool-Aid”. It starts with drums and a moody guitar sound – which I just can’t figure out how he gets. It’s a dark piece. It’s about a down-and-out, lower-class man who feels betrayed by a reactionary system that exploited him, and then left him abandoned:

You said the poor were closing in and I had to leave;

War on them was a righteous thing and I believed –

With my gun I took a stand against black, brown, yellow and tan;

Kool-Aid, I drank your Kool-Aid.

 

Ry Cooder photographed by his son Joachim

 

When you think about it, you notice that nearly all the songs here are presented as first-person narratives – and that these first-person narratives are all very different. Cooder is able to get inside the mood and mentality of the character he’s chanelling.  And that strategy promotes sympathy and understanding, rather than ridicule and hate. Only on a couple of tracks does Cooder use in-your-face declamation. The gloves are dropped and he lets it all hang out. The final song here, “Take Your Hands Off It”, is of this type. He closes out the album swinging, condemning those who try to restrict the people’s rights – rights enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He defends voting rights, union rights, reproductive rights, human rights:

You don’t speak for God, you know he don’t belong to you;

You ain’t talking to him, you know he don’t belong to you.

This is a wonderful album. Writing about political topics like this – especially in the context of a particular place and time – can often result in mere propaganda. But Ry Cooder shows how to use the songwriter’s craft to create topical material that is urgent and heartfelt, but also subtle and intelligent. And the music, of course, is assured and masterly. He varies the styles and mixes up the moods – dressing up the ideas with basic and compelling sounds. Nearly every song here is a gem. This is the kind of CD I can listen to over and over again without getting bored. Ry Cooder for President!

 



CD Review: Ry Cooder's "Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down"

In my review of Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball back in March, I mentioned that during our family’s March break holiday down in Florida I took a couple of CDs along to listen to in our rented car. The other CD was Ry Cooder’s latest, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down. It’s been out for a while – released back in August, 2011 - so I’ve been listening to it for quite a time; and, unlike Springsteen’s effort, this one sounds more impressive every time you hear it. 

Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, Ry Cooder’s fourteenth studio album, is the latest in a long line of excellent recordings dating back to the early ‘70s. And this is one of his very best. Cooder emerged first in the 60s as an accomplished guitarist - he worked as a session musician with the likes of Van Morrison, Randy Newman and The Rolling Stones. He taught Keith Richards a thing or two about guitar-playing, and you can hear the influence on “Honky Tonk Women”. Cooder also plays on Let It Bleed. His own recordings revealed an interest in American roots music; over the years, he has shown a continuing interest in traditional folk, blues, rock, gospel, soul and Tex-Mex. And, of course, he introduced us to traditional Cuban music on the marvellous Buena Vista Social Club (1997).  The first of a series of a collaborations he's done in what they now call "world music".

For the bulk of his career, Ry Cooder has worked like a musicologist – using his solo albums as a platform to introduce unfamiliar genres and figures to a primarily rock-listening audience - expanding the horizons and tastes of a constituency that can often be narrow-minded and surprisingly conservative. He did this not in a proselytizing way, but by exposing his fans to the musical delights of interesting songs and intriguing music.

Ry Cooder beside his '53 Chevy lowrider

In more recent years, Cooder has come into his own as a successful song-writer. On his earlier albums he might offer an occasional song or two of his own; but, starting with Chavez Ravine in 2005, he has put his own songwriting at the heart of his artistic vision. This continued with the other albums of his “California trilogy” – My Name is Buddy and I, Flathead.


Some themes from that trilogy recur in the new album, but Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down is a more wide-ranging look at the temper of the times in contemporary America. Cooder doesn’t like what he sees. His response is a collection of scathing songs about the corrupt politics and the troubling social conditions he sees around him. In this sense, the album is similar to Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball. But Cooder’s work is more radical than Springsteen’s. It doesn’t have the didactic and anthemic pretentions of The Boss; it gives the themes a human face. Cooder prefers “to show, rather than tell”. His songs don’t preach; themes are contextualised in the specific situations of individual lives.


Cooder’s songs here zero in on a corrupt political and economic order – how Wall Street bankers are aided and abetted by the political elite; how desperate Mexican immigrants risk their lives getting into the country illegally, and are then exploited as cheap farm-labourers; how fundamentalist Republicans use a twisted sense of religion to pursue immoral ends; and how poor Americans join the army to escape dead-end lives and are put in harm’s way by a criminal administration.

The back cover

The title of the album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down makes reference to the depression-era careers of Woody Guthrie and friends. Guthrie put out an album called Dust Bowl Ballads (1940), full of social-activist songs about the poor and down-trodden. His song “Pretty Boy Floyd”, for example, is about an outlaw – a bank-robber eventually gunned-down by the police. Guthrie makes him a tragic figure – suggesting his criminality is partly explained by the hardships of the time. He may have been an outlaw, Guthrie sings, who robbed banks at gun-point, but he didn’t steal people’s houses with the flourish of a fountain-pen:

“… as through your life you travel, yes, as through your life you roam;

You won't never see an outlaw drive a family from their home.”

This is the world Cooder evokes with the second song on the album, “El Corrido de Jesse James”. He puts the lyric in the mouth of another outlaw, the notorious Jesse James - who declares that he may have been branded a bandit, but he “never turned a family from their home”. Who is the real outlaw, anyway, Cooder seems to ask. And do we need the likes of Jesse James to exact vigilante justice?

“I’ll cut you down to size my banking brothers,

Put that bonus money back where it belongs.”

The first song that Ry Cooder recorded for this album was “Christmas Time This Year”. It is a scathing anti-war lyric focused on the fate of those poor grunts sent over unwittingly to Iraq to face the horrors of modern warfare. The sarcasm in the lyric is emphasised by the music – a jaunty polka featuring Flaco Jimenez (a long-standing collaborator of Cooder’s) on accordion. He provides a few Christmas-themed flourishes as Cooder sings a song of both pathos and suppressed rage:

“Now Johnny ain’t got no legs and Billy ain’t got no face;

Do they know it’s Christmas time this year?

Tommy looks about the same, but his mind is gone,

Does he know it’s Christmas time this year?”

The themes of these songs are presented with lyrics that are forthright and compelling. And the music is equally effective. The arrangements are sparse and simple - open and spacious - none of the over-produced washes of the Springsteen disc. Cooder often overdubs himself on three or four instruments. His son Joachim plays drums on most tracks. There are tasteful background vocals – a trio of voices – on several tracks. And, unlike the ineffective brass parts on a few of Springsteen’s tracks, Cooder puts some gorgeous horns on a couple of the tracks – the Mariachi choruses on “El Corrido de Jesse James” sounds particularly good.

Two of the best tracks feature just Cooder on guitar and vocals. “Baby Joined the Army” is really a companion piece to “Christmas Time This Year”. It’s a heart-rending song put in the mouth of a father (or husband – it’s ambiguous), whose daughter (or wife) has enlisted in the army to escape her everyday problems. The man had no say, he sings. The deed is done:

“… wasn’t nothing I could do but cry … so I cried.”

Cooder's guitar playing is a slow, hypnotic blues.

The other solo piece is a real tour de force. Cooder channels the great John Lee Hooker in a song called “John Lee Hooker for President”. Not only is his impersonation brilliant, but the song is very funny. Cooder uses Hooker’s persona to make some pointed comments on American politics. On campaign financing, for example, he sings:

“I don’t need yo money, cause I finance my own campaign.

I ain’t for sale; I keep a fat bankroll in my pocket, baby, big as a hay bale.”

There are lots of musical styles here – each done with impeccable taste. Every song’s a gem. Cooder is not the best of vocalists, but he has learned how to overcome his limitations, as many singer-songwriters do, who have been at it for so many years. What’s impressive here is his ability to adopt very different personas in order to deliver a particular lyric. The hard-rock track “I Want My Crown”, for example, has a truly malevolent voice – singing with glee about usurping power and casting down the working man. In “Dreamer”, he sings in the voice of Julio Ruelas, the brother of Fernando Ruelas, the president of Duke’s So Cal, a lowrider car club. The Ruelas brothers worked on a high-profile project with Cooder, turning a 1953 Chevy truck into a lowrider ice-cream truck. The song is a wistful ballad, featuring more distinctive accompaniment from accordion-playing Flaco Jimenez.

Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down is an excellent album. If you’re a Ry Cooder fan, this is essential. If you’re not that familiar, check it out. I think it’s a real work of art – great music and compelling song-writing. Not to mention some typically tasty guitar work from a master musician.


[Thanks to Michael H.]