THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Thursday, August 22, 2019 |A
LIFE & ARTS
MUSIC REVIEW| MARK RICHARDSON
Sounds of the Past Sans Nostalgia
Jay Som leans toward 1990s alt-rock influences, but her straightforward music and direct songwriting are entirely her own
tion—which often includes Mr. Jennings on
keyboards and the adept Chris Masterson of
the Mastersons duo on guitar, in addition to
the Hanseroths—regularly evokes the
sounds of Ms. Tucker’s hits from her previ-
ous career stages, with contemporary
touches that ensure this is not simply a
retro enterprise. Unsurprisingly, at age 60,
Ms. Tucker’s voice is notably more lived in
than it was when she was 14 or 35, but it’s
entirely durable and ready enough for the
music at hand.
The opening ballads, “Mustang Ridge” and
“The Wheels of Laredo,” instantly demon-
strate that clear, engaging storytelling ability
while playing off her Texas roots with local
details, old and newer, in tales about getting
gone and wishing to get back, respectively.
(After all, it is country music.) And there’s
“Seminole Wind Calling,” which, like some of
the ballads sung by her hero Jimmie Rod-
gers, admits to habitual drifting, if with a
sentimental, unacted-upon pull toward home.
For Outlaw country, practically punk di-
rectness, there is “I Don’t Owe You Any-
thing,” sung with an appropriate amount of
contempt for the husband and father of her
children who’s left for “a younger wife than
our own son and a cat that you can’t stand.”
For rearview, measured adult sentiment,
there’s “Rich,” looking back at the father who
had been a central figure in her life and ca-
reer. For pulsing rhythm, there’s “Hard
Luck,” in which she gets to sing, quite con-
vincingly, “Hard luck, keep trucking; Lord
knows I’m a hard luck girl.” And for a dem-
onstration of her gift for getting at the inher-
ent drama in a lyric with just the right lilt or
emphasis applied where most needed, there’s
her take on the Miranda Lambert hit “The
House That Built Me,” one of two songs on
the set from other sources, which can stand
as a how-to course for aspiring singers.
Likely to receive the most attention is the
album closer, “Bring My Flowers Now,” writ-
ten by Ms. Tucker along with Brandi Carlile
and the Hanseroths, and sung solo, with Ms.
Carlile on understated piano. Ms. Tucker
looks back at her life and work, and having
concluded that there’s been more good than
bad there, she commands us “Bring me
flowers now, while I’m living; I won’t need
your love when I’m gone.”
This rich and rewarding album is tangible
evidence of why we should follow her in-
structions.Mr. Mazor reviews country and roots music
for the Journal.set for release Friday by Fantasy Records
that both reaffirms the range of her abilities
and, in its content, reclaims her many sides.
She was coaxed into returning to the studio
by singer-songwriter Shooter Jennings,
whom she’s known since he was Waylon
Jennings and Jessi Colter’s baby boy, and by
a lineup of new songs, in the tradition of herprevious music, written specifically for her
and this project by Americana star Brandi
Carlile and Ms. Carlile’s regular backup duo,
the Hanseroth twins, Phil and Tim.
Mr. Jennings and Ms. Carlile produced
the album together, with a knowingness
about Ms. Tucker’s essence as a performer
that’s paid off abundantly. The instrumenta-DANNY CLINCHTanya Tucker's
new album is
‘While I’m Livin’’BY THIS POINT—decades since she aston-
ished country and pop audiences with such
startling and memorable hits as “Delta
Dawn,” “What’s Your Mama’s Name” and,
controversially, “Would You Lay With Me (In
a Field of Stone)” at 13 or 14 years of age—
there are several competing images of
Tanya Tucker found clinging in memory, and
in most any portrait of her life and career.
There is that precocious child balladeer.
Then the cheerfully outrageous adult hit-
maker of such danceable, rock-leaning Out-
law country numbers as “Texas (When I
Die)” and “Pecos Promenade,” accompanied
by years of headlines about hell-raising, sub-
stance abuse and the turbulent personal rela-
tionships that went with them. And finally—
and it did seem to be truly finally—there was
the mature singer of such smooth, touching
1980s and ’90s songs of experience as “Love
Me Like You Used To,” “Strong Enough to
Bend” and “Two Sparrows in a Hurricane.”
Having placed over 50 singles in country’s
Top 10, and many on the pop charts as well,
Ms. Tucker increasingly retreated into private
life: raising three children, becoming a cham-
pion cutting horse rider and an advocate for
the humane treatment of horses, and occa-
sionally performing the old hits live. Since
her last album of new material in 2002 she’s
released only one album, 2009’s “My Turn”—
a set of classic country song interpreta-
tions—and virtually no new material. She’d
demonstrated, like Johnny Cash, the ability
to keep complex narratives clear and riveting;
like George Jones, the ability to find and lock
in on a song’s emotional core; and, like Con-
nie Smith, jazz-singer-like vocal clarity and
rhythm sense. Yet that low profile of more
recent years has left stronger memories of
her outsize personality, the Tanya of the su-
permarket tabloids, than of the extraordi-
narily gifted singer she has been all along.
And now she’s back, with “While I’m
Livin’,” an important album of new material
BYBARRYMAZOR
MUSIC REVIEW
A Multifaceted,
Multidecade
Country Star
THIS YEARhas seen strong de-
buts by young singer-songwriters
who began by making music in
their bedrooms. Indie artists like
Billie Eilish, Clairo (aka Claire
Cottrill) and Cuco (the moniker of
Omar Banos) found an audience on
SoundCloud and YouTube and built
online fanbases with songs about
the everyday anxiety and joy of
being a teenager. For performers
of their generation, genre is fluid
and songs borrow freely from past
or present. A fuzzy ballad might
have drum machine patterns trace-
able to current trends in hip-hop,
while the next track walks a line
between indie pop and R&B.
Melina Duterte, the Los Ange-
les-based musician who records as
Jay Som, comes from a similar
background of DIY craftsman-
ship—her first album, 2016’s “Turn
Into,” comprised home-recorded
demos—but her musical style
leans toward alternative rock, par-
ticularly of the sort that came to
prominence in the 1990s.
There’s something intriguing
about this development since Ms.
Duterte was born in 1994, when
post-Nirvana rock was at its peak
of relevance. But her third album,
“Anak Ko,” which is out this Friday
on indie label mainstay Polyvinyl,
doesn’t sound nostalgic. Rather,
the fundamental simplicity of a
guitar, bass and drums suits her
direct style of songwriting.
Not that “Anak Ko” is grunge—
like her contemporary Sophie Alli-
son, who fronts the project Soccer
Mommy, Ms. Duterte draws from
thoughtful and more muted artists
such as the Breeders, Blonde Red-
head and Liz Phair. This is music
where the carefully rendered tone
of the guitar does a certain
amount of the emotional work,
and memorable riffs and chord
progressions are essential. Though
Ms. Duterte plays many of the in-
struments herself, the album has
the sound of hearing a band in a
club, with little in the way of stu-
dio trickery.
The opening track, “If You Want
It,” begins with a simple and
catchy guitar line, laying the
groundwork for a record where
minimalism rules. Some of Ms. Du-
terte’s earlier work reveled in the
distorted wash of psychedelia, but
“Anak Ko” is comparatively earth-
bound. Here, she seems content to
let the songs do the talking, and
her words are up to the task, doc-
umenting moments of revelation,
in which we come to know some-
thing new about ourselves or
someone else, and after which
nothing will be the same. And Ms.
Duterte’s phrasing walks a nice
line between poetic and conversa-
tional. “I see you clearly,” she
sings on the opener, in a flash
where she realizes she was duped
by the object of her affection. Af-
ter that admission, instruments
fold in one by one and the piece
becomes dense and jittery, an out-
growth of her shift in perception.
“Nighttime Drive,” a song about
both a literal car trip and one
taken by our dreaming selves,
shows how Ms. Duterte can sustain
a realistic narrative and a surreal-
istic dreamscape simultaneously.
“I’m sinking in my bed,” she
opens. “We’re leaving town tomor-row.” With a loose lilt powered by
acoustic guitar, piano and a string
section, the song evokes the twin-
kling dream-pop atmosphere of a
band like Beach House, and the
lyrics hover in a space between ac-
tion and reflection, cutting lulling
imagery with language of bracing
specificity: “Been watching hours
pass / Inside cars with no glass /
Constructing shallow dreams of /
Shoplifting at the Whole Foods.”
Quieter tracks like “Devotion”
and “Tenderness” feature bits of
Fender Rhodes keyboard and
whispered vocals, hinting at the
R&B that Ms. Duterte has claimed
as an influence, but “Anak Ko” is
firmly a rock record. Here andThese passages of sonic trans-
formation are deployed sparingly,
for maximum effect, and the al-
bum always winds its way back to
the basics: a few instruments, a
harmonic structure, a catchy mel-
ody. The closing “Get Well,” fea-
turing gorgeous pedal steel by
Nicholas Merz, scans like a letter
to a friend in trouble and alludes
to the damage of alcoholism. It’s a
haunting grace note to end a sub-
tle and rewarding record, one
where Ms. Duterte mixes catharsis
with focused contemplation.Mr. Richardson is the Journal’s
rock and pop music critic. Follow
him on Twitter @MarkRichardson.there, the songs even flirt with the
quiet verses building to an explo-
sive climax, mirroring the struc-
ture that dominated rock radio
two decades ago.
“Peace Out,” one of the album’s
best numbers, fits this template
perfectly, as simmering tension
(“Pulling teeth to make it work”)
explodes into anger in its final
third. Equally arresting is the title
track (“Anak Ko” is Filipino for
“My Child,” and Ms. Duterte is Fil-
ipino-American), which begins as
a spare ballad with a drum ma-
chine and grows into roaring
noise as Ms. Duterte’s voice is fil-
tered to mimic a distant radio
transmission.Melina Duterte, the Los Angeles-based musician who records as Jay Som, performing in Madison, Wis., in April; her new album is ‘Anak Ko.’DANIEL DESLOVER/ZUMA PRESS