Alex Bleeker & the Freaks. Alex Bleeker & the Freaks.

Somebody reshuffled Real Estate’s cards, and instead of turning over Woods or Beach Fossils, they cut deep into the middle of the deck and came up with Neil Young. This side project from bassist Alex Bleeker features most of the Real Estate crew, along with Julian Lynch on guitar, and sounds for all the world like an unsung Laurel Canyon band coming down with the last good buzz of the 70’s. Wistful and meandering with undercurrents of real power, it rolls down the highway like a Studebaker into the evening’s twilight. Cozy and easy going with tidal rhythms spiked by Lynch’s loose and ragged soloing, it’s classic rock for the “let’s rock the beach” set.

Freaks

Exuma. Exuma.

I’m an obsessive music collector, driven by the fear that somewhere out there my favorite band exists, and I haven’t heard them yet. Exuma may be that band. I stumbled across them on some random internet music blog and was absolutely floored by their power. It was like hearing your earliest, great musical discovery again for the first time.

Now, this is unquestionably a weird album. It could be the soundtrack to some grainy, underexposed “documentary” of dubious voodoo rituals that nobody quite understands. And yet it doesn’t sound at all unfamiliar. It’s a sing-along, dance-along album of strange and beautiful afro-calypso-soul-folk-voodoo-blues that will chill you to the bone and light a bonfire in your soul. It sounds like Ritchie Havens singing Paul Simon songs arranged by Dr. John over the underworld’s PA system. Oh, and they’re all zombies, and every spirit of the in-between is there to sing and chant and mourn and praise and keen right along side you in a fever dream of exhilaration and joy.

It’ll get under you r skin and stay there.

Exuma

Yung Wu. Shore Leave.

Another of the Feelies' alternate incarnations, this one features Glenn, Bill, Stan, and Brenda along with recent Feelies addition, Dave Weckerman. John Baumgartner, from The Trypes and Speed the Plough, is also along for the ride.

Actually, this was Dave's side project. He takes lead on vocals and wrote the songs, but with Stan Demeski's characteristic rolling toms, Brenda's rich bass leads, and those wonderfully humming, intertwining guitars, there's no mistaking the band. Recorded in between The Good Earth and Only Life, it's a rootsier affair packed with all the shimmering, strumming, sea-faring folk-rock you've come to expect from a Feelies' side project. They cover both Neil Young and Brian Eno, and the album as a whole sounds a bit like what might happen if the latter produced the former. I guess they got out all their pent-up nerves on Crazy Rhythms.

I've yet to be disappointed by anything Feelies related, and this is definitely one of their more charming and beautiful affairs.

Shore Leave

Speed the Plough. Speed the Plough.

Speed the Plough were one of several bands that radiated out of the Feelies on-again-off-again period. Begun as The Trypes—featuring Glenn Mercer, Bill Million and Stan Demeski—they recorded a single, understated EP before disentangling once again, with Brenda Sauter defecting to join the reformed Feelies. The Trypes became Speed the Plough, with Bill Million contributing guitar and production duties. Multi-instrumentalist John Baumgartner, rock critic Jim DeRogatis, woodwind and percussionist Toni Paruta remained, along with Marc Francia, Frank O’Toole and Pete Pedulla rounding out the group and adding several more guitars and drums.

The result retains the influence of the Feelies’ rustic, atmospheric work on The Good Earth and adds cerulean horns and accordion drones, shifting the setting from the golden hour to the deep blue twilight just before inky darkness absorbs the day. It’s a drifting, pastoral version of the Feelies’ tightly-wound, prim psychedlia, and achieves a rich, bucolic beauty of the sort I think R.E.M. would have liked to make—but instead opted for repeatedly having themselves photographed standing around in fields of grain. In fact, this is exactly the album I would want to hear if I could spend the day drifting waist-deep in a grassy field, or rocking to sleep in a hearty wooden dinghy floating on silver ribbons of water through a sea of cattails.


Speed

Joseph Spence. The Complete Folkways Recordings.

Joseph Spence played the guitar and sang. Sort of. He rarely seemed to know the words to the traditional gospel and folk standards that made up his repertoire, so he growled and grunted with an infectious, gravelly dirt road of a voice. His vocals bob like a fisherman’s floater, dipping and popping in the surf; sometimes leading the guitar, sometimes just harmonizing with it. He sings like a man constantly swept up in joy—his lyrics more laughter than words.

He was the master of one of the most idiosyncratic and inventive guitar styles ever put to tape. Tuning his guitar to his own eccentric standards and picking out counterpoints and rhythmic shifts that wowed and baffled professional musicians, he earned comparisons to improvisational masters like Thelonious Monk. No one has ever been able to replicate or equal him, and whatever it was he was doing, he did it with immense heart.

The effect is delightful and ebullient. It’s simply insane how good he is. You can’t feel bad while listening to him.

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Joseph Spence on myspace