Tag: fanclubwallet

MUSIQUE BOUTIQUE: Ann Wilson, Nancy & Lee, fanclubwallet, Stoney & Meatloaf

Welcome to Audiofemme’s record review column, Musique Boutique, written by music journo vet Gillian G. Gaar. The last Monday of each month, Musique Boutique offers a cross-section of noteworthy reissues and new releases guaranteed to perk up your ears.

Ann Wilson has one of the most recognizable, and impressive, voices in rock, whether she’s fronting her own band Heart or going solo. Fierce Bliss (Silver Lining Music) is a solo outing, and sees her making one of her own dreams come true; recording for the album began at the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Alabama (where such artists as Elton John, Cher, Willie Nelson, and Millie Jackson have recorded).

There are some well-chosen covers; a beautiful version of Queen’s “Love of My Life” (sharing the vocal with Vince Gill), while tackling Eurythmics’ “Missionary Man” is an obvious pick for a voice as powerful as Wilson’s. And her own co-written numbers crackle with a spirited energy. “Greed” turns a critical eye on a culture where however much you consume it’s not enough; “A Moment in Heaven” takes on the entertainment industry (“Hollywood be thy name”), where the next big thing becomes yesterday’s news all too soon. The chunky rock riffs of the ’70s are still Wilson’s musical calling card, and she also loves a deep dive into the blues, as you can hear on the searing “Angel’s Blues.” Wilson is currently on US/Canadian tour through June 24, with a performance at FloydFest22 in Floyd, Virginia, set for July 30.

Nancy Sinatra’s career got a huge boost when she recorded Lee Hazlewood’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” (just check out the groovy promo film). But then things started to get really interesting. Reissue label Light in the Attic launched their Nancy Sinatra Archival Series in 2021 with the release of the compilation Nancy Sinatra: Start Walkin’ 1965-1976, followed by a reissue of her first album, Boots. Now comes the reissue of her first collaborative album with Hazlewood, Nancy & Lee.

It was a pairing Sinatra jokingly describes in the album’s liner notes as a “beauty and the beast” match up, with Hazlewood’s stentorian deep baritone and Sinatra’s cool been-there-done-that delivery. In the ethereal “Some Velvet Morning,” she embodies the spirit of the mythological doomed princess Phaedra, as Hazlewood mournfully sings of how she brought him to ruin. There’s a haunting rendition of “Elusive Dreams,” about a couple continually searching for those greener pastures and never finding them. It’s an album of sophisticated adult pop, and this reissue comes with two excellent bonus tracks, a jazzy cover of Mickey & Sylvia’s “Love Is Strange,” and an astonishing remake of the Kinks’ “Tired of Waiting for You.” Look for a reissue of the follow up, Nancy & Lee Again, coming later this year.

You Have Got to Be Kidding Me (AWAL) is the debut album by fanclubwallet, the music project from Ottawa-based Hannah Judge (who’s also an illustrator). It’s primarily a solo outing, with Judge writing most of the songs, and producer Michael Watson also doing some co-writing and playing drums; the two split up the other instruments (guitar, bass, synths) between them.

This is a break up album that evinces a strong sense of self-awareness. “That I Won’t Do” captures the confusion of contradictions (wanting to talk, not wanting to talk), nicely summed up in the lines “Maybe I can split myself in two/Maybe there’s a me that hasn’t met you.” “Toast” is a song about cocooning, holing up until you feel it’s safe to go outside again (which could possibly be never). “Solid Ground” is about getting back to stability, and the title track is a study in communication breakdown. Everything’s set to a crisp, clean indie rock beat, a sound that’s as bracing as fresh air on a brisk walk.

In 1970, Shaun “Stoney” Murphy and Michael Aday, aka Meatloaf (which he’d later split into two names, Meat Loaf), were in a Detroit production of the rock musical Hair, where their singing capabilities captured the attention of Motown Records. The two were signed by the label, and Meatloaf & Stoney was released in 1971. The album’s since been reissued in various configurations, with Real Gone Music/Second Disc Records now fleshing out the original 10-track album to two CD’s worth of songs on Everything Under the Sun: The Motown Recordings, featuring the original album and plenty of bonus tracks.

Both singers have commanding voices (Phillips received acclaim in Hair for her powerful rendition of “Easy to Be Hard”), and their playful jousting in the rousing “What You See Is What You Get” took them into the R&B Top 40. The songs are an eclectic mix of gospel-rock (“[I’d Love to Be] As Heavy as Jesus”), breezy pop (“The Way You Do the Things You Do”) and funky blues (“Game of Love”). The second disc has Murphy’s solo tracks, including her fine 1973 single “Let Me Come Down Easy,” the Bobbie Gentry-styled country rock “Mo Jo Hannah,” and an expressive cover of Janis Joplin’s “A Woman Left Lonely.” A fun record to rediscover.

fanclubwallet Finds the Bright Side on Debut EP Hurt is Boring

Photo Credit: Ian Filipovic

Like the airbag that “popped and knocked sense into me” in her debut EP’s opener “Car Crash in G Major,” Ottawa’s fanclubwallet comes out swinging on Hurt is Boring. The punchy blend of indie rock and bedroom pop, helmed by Hannah Judge, brims with bouncy, high octave keys, asserting joy in a way that contrasts some of its darker subject matter. Hitting you with disaster from the get-go—a violent, traumatizing car crash that serves as a metaphor for a doomed relationship—is way of commanding attention, and Judge’s breezy delivery is a Trojan horse; worms nest so casually in your ears that you find yourself humming about your skin falling off as you brew your morning tea.

Fleshed out while a Crohn’s disease flare-up left Judge bedridden for ten months, Hurt is Boring touches on every emotion across an omnipresent spectrum of existential ennui. Lucky to have podded up with her producer (and grade school best friend) Michael Watson, just a few modifications were made for an adapted recording process in her childhood home that’s as literal as bedroom pop can get, with Judge tracking vocals while lying down as Watson set up shop “at a very tiny overcrowded desk in the corner.” “I’m really grateful that [Watson] was so accommodating and willing to help me find ways of recording that worked for me,” Judge says. “There’s a photo of me somewhere lying in bed with an overhead mic and holding a keyboard. It looks a little silly, but it got the job done!”

Hurt is Boring follows a steady stream of singles dropped throughout 2020 after finding success with her cover of the Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place.” The pandemic, coupled with her boredom in recovery, gave her the time and mental space to hone in on her first cohesive project. She fittingly describes this past year as “pretty bonkers…for everyone,” and though disability might not have been what did us all in, the sentiment is familiar: we’re all, categorically, tired; with her upbeat musings and a soft charm, Judge wakes us—and herself—up.

“I love music with a consistent beat, stuff you can dance to or at least bop your head to,” she says. “Whenever I sit down to actually produce things, they end up being a lot happier than they originally sounded just on guitar.” Recounting a relationship’s disintegration in the most brutal way over a bright, almost Sheryl Crow-like instrumental shouldn’t make as much sense as it does, but it’s liberating. 

“I’m never really intentionally trying to write really depressing lyrics, just kind of talking about what I know,” she says. “C’mon Be Cool” came of “overanalyzing how I thought people might feel about me,” she continues. “‘C’mon be cool, I’m not gonna be rude to you’ is just me being like, ‘Okay, let’s all just take a breather… it’s been a rough year.” She renders that misery in small details like a bandaid left on just a little too long, but also offers a little kindness: “I don’t see what you see in making all this fuss.”

Judge scatters these sharp and severe elements throughout the EP, from flying shrapnel to a cold bathroom floor, echoing the lyricism of Hop Along’s Frances Quinlan and Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse, two songwriters she admires. Situating metaphors for bitterness and grief over easy pop beats normalizes them, breaks them down into something less cynical and more serene.

On maintaining mystery to her lyrics, she explains, “I don’t like to give too much away… I think life is really just built up of small moments that we think about over and over until they feel like big ones… It means what it means to me, and if it means something entirely different to you that’s cool too.”

“I would love to write a really happy song, but I’m just not quite sure how,” she confesses, but these tracks are happy, albeit in their own refreshing way. The abrupt fanclubwallet approach comes from Judge’s proclivity for “dwelling” (“I honestly never stop,” she admits), but by the time you reach the EP’s end, you realize that hints of optimism hide between the glittery synths and danceable beats of each track. It’s funny to think that “Hurt is Boring” was written about a year before the others, but makes for a rewarding end—it’s her admission that “Hey, it’s okay to feel like crap sometimes,” simply put. “Otherwise,” she reasons, “you won’t notice the good stuff.”

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