Kassi Valazza. Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing. Loose Music

Raised in Arizona, currently residing in Portland, Kassi Valazza gravitates to the sunnier side of the west coast of the USA on her album, Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing. She not only gravitates, she time travels also as the album is liberally sprinkled with touches of psychedelia and freak folk (before it was even a thing). Her touchstones seem to be lesser known psych acts such as Pearls Before Swine along with the shimmering haze of Tim Buckley and while it might be tempting to compare her to someone like Linda Perhacs, Valazza is much more grounded and much less ethereal.

While Valazza has a glorious, seemingly effortless vocal delivery, her words coming across as quite honeyed, much of the album’s success lies in her choice of backing band. Portland’s TK & The Holy Know-Nothings (hence the somewhat punning album title) who play superbly throughout. There’s a chemistry between them, heard best on the album’s highlight, Watching Planes Go By, and it’s quite astonishing to read that Valazza essentially presented the songs to the band in the studio with no rehearsals beforehand, the band having to make it up as they went along.

The album opens with one of the more conventional songs here. Room In The City is a wearied country tinged waltz which opens with Valazza on the road but pining for her home comforts and a warm embrace. It drifts along quite wonderfully, her words wafted gently over some great harmonica playing. There’s a Neil Young Harvest touch to the music here and it’s a perfect album opener. This extremely pleasant (and almost narcotic) cosmic country sound reappears on Song For A Season and on Long Way From Home (I’ll Ride You Down), the latter finding Valazza quite dispassionate as she dissects a failing relationship while the band limp alongside her quite wonderfully. The Know-Nothings go on to stamp their personality on the guitar laden Smile, lifting Valazza’s tale here of regrets into yet another cosmic orbit.

Amidst these already glorious songs, there are a brace of numbers which just simply astonish. Rapture is a perfect balance between the singer and the band with their limpid playing just perfect in its delicacy. Canyon Lines, a delicate portrait of a woman in an existential crisis, worms its way into your head with its spectral organ and skeletal guitar lines. Chief of all is the astonishing Watching Planes Go By. It’s rare these days for a song to stop you in your tracks but when this reviewer first heard this song on a local radio station we were instantly transfixed. Here Valazza weaves a tale of enforced boredom which leads to flights of fancy while the band go full blown into lysergic acid folk rock – Country Joe and The Fish battling it out with The Grateful Dead if you wish. In any case, it’s quite mind blowing.

On an album which just about achieves perfection, closing it with a cover song might have been a letdown. But here Valazza comes up trumps again with her delivery of Michael Hurley’s Wildgeeses, allowing her and the band to pay tribute to their living legend neighbour. It wraps up an album which is poised to be one of the best we’ve heard this year.

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Carter Sampson. Gold. Horton Records

The self proclaimed Queen of Oklahoma, Carter Sampson, more than lives up to the title on her latest album Gold. Five years on from the acclaimed Lucky (via an enforced Covid break) Gold was recorded by Sampson and her producer Kyle Reid at Sampson’s home with her saying of the process, “I’ve never been so comfortable in a recording situation. After all, I was in my own home and, heck, I didn’t even have to put real pants on.” Pants or not, the pair have delivered a solid 24 carat nugget which might just be the best red dirt country album you’ll hear this year.

The opening title track finds Sampson singing of her mother over a gutsy pedal steel romp with equally gutsy lyrics, paying tribute to the qualities she inherited from her mom. Sampson notes that the song was written “after breaking down and having a good cry to my mom” and then attempting to reassure mom that she was actually quite resilient. That certainly comes through in the song’s strong delivery. There’s more of Sampson’s inner thoughts on display on Can’t Stop Me Now, written as a springboard to launch her back into touring and playing live after being cooped up for so long. As she says, “I’m ready to put the Covid break into the rear mirror and get back to doing what I love.”

Catch her live and you’ll likely hear songs of the calibre of Drunk Text, a marvellous beer stained bar room ballad with weeping pedal steel or the dramatic maelstrom which is Black Blizzard, written about the infamous dirt storms which blitzed Oklahoma in the 1930s. It’s unlikely that Sampson would be able to replicate live the full blown keyboard and synth backing which adds to the song’s drama on the record but, having seen her live, we’re sure she could whip it up to a fine frenzy with just her and her guitar. Similarly, the sinewy southern blues of Fingers To The Bone, here adorned with Dobro and soulful organ wouldn’t be a challenge to a singer who can rivet attention on a solo delivery of Rattlesnake Kate (from Lucky).

With further delights to be heard such as the Daniel Lanois like lambent delivery of Home and the cornpoke country delivery of Yippie Yi Yo, a song which finds Sampson in cowgirl feminist territory with a Randy Newman like sense of satire, Gold finds Sampson on top form and truly worthy of that Oklahoma crown.

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Dropkick. The Wireless Revolution. Sound Asleep/Rock Indiana

Edinburgh’s janglemeisters Dropkick return to the recording fray after a Covid enforced break and they do so with their customary excellence. The Wireless Revolution finds the band trimmed down to a trio (Andrew Taylor, Alan Shields and Ian Grier) which allows the songs to be somewhat leaner than the more expansive outings on their last album The Scenic Route. It’s a concise collection of perfectly formed songs, all delivered within a radio friendly three minute time zone and, if there was any justice in the world, these bejangled jewels would be wafting from the nation’s airwaves and whipping up a storm, just in time really as the better weather calls for a slice of sunny side up pop /rock music.

The album opens on a high note with the yearning chimes of Don’t Give Yourself Away with Taylor channelling his inner Gene Clark on a song which ends, appropriately enough, with a Byrds’ like guitar outro. This fine blend of melancholia and harmonic uplift is revisited on Unwind, a winsome reflection on undoing past mistakes and on The Rolling Tide which is a highpoint of the album with its wispy delivery, as fragile as a dandelion clock buffeted by a gentle breeze, quite wonderful. Clouds, the penultimate song here is another highlight as the trio deliver a gossamer like confection with limpid guitars and multilayered harmonies.

Flexing their muscles a bit, the trio bite into power pop on Telephone and on No Difference, the latter standing out as Al Shields replaces Taylor on lead vocals adding a touch more grit to the song. Shields (a fine performer in his own right) also gets the opportunity to sing on his first song written for Dropkick on The Other Side. It shows that he’s well embedded in the Dropkick world of Byrds’ influenced jangled pop songs having taken on board that fine juxtaposition of uplifting melancholia.

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