(Ramble Records)
Australian import, limited edition black vinyl.
For the better part of the 21st Century, Joe D. Nelson (aka Jody Nelson) has been writing songs about how strange it is to be anything at all. He trades in a perverse Americana articulated via a novelist’s eye for detail, a poet’s love of the liminal, playful surrealism, and sci-fi morality.
His characters are of this place yet are utterly mystified by their trappings. Some of them are amphibious. Others are lost to circumstance. There are cowboys confused by horses.
A man in a “tap water suit”. Some are walking tarot cards. There is a lot of fruit -- some of it anthropomorphised; some of it portentous. Sometimes things get scary. Often things are sweet.
Regardless, each song is delivered as if Nelson’s reporting to a higher intelligence that has left him long since marooned… But he seems to be taking it all in stride.
Nelson cut his songwriting teeth via his former outfit, Through The Sparks -- a Birmingham, Alabama garage band consisting of formidable multi-instrumentalists and studio rats whose instrumental ambitions could easily match his fevered lyrical visions. With his solo debut, Iced Cherries (Ramble Records / Cresno Beach Recordings), Nelson helms every intricacy with wide eyes and a full heart -- inverting his past techniques by abandoning electric guitars and ProTools in favor of deft fingerpicking on an acoustic guitar and recording live to analog tape.
Iced Cherries is unlike anything else he’s ever released yet it crystalizes Nelson’s well-honed gifts. As for influences, one might hear shades of Bruce Cockburn, whom he recently covered on the latest volume of Imaginational Anthem on the Tompkins Square label.
More often than not, Iced Cherries sounds like an unholy alliance of Fred Neil, Joe Pass, Thomas Pynchon, and David Berman. Nelson’s writing has never been stronger and his approach to his instrument is equally as lyrical.
And if this all sounds complicated and dense… Well, it is. This is an album not only deserving of a lyric sheet, but annotations. That said, part of Nelson’s genius is making it sound so effortless.
Iced Cherries is never bogged down by its athleticism or layered concepts. It sounds as natural as a lazy summer’s day by the water -- delivered with an easy charm that belies any archness.
On a surface level, each of these songs could win over audiences in a grocery store parking lot or a school fundraiser. It’s only with closer inspection that one could grok Nelson’s wild JOE D. NELSON ICED CHERRIES storytelling.
At its core, Iced Cherries is a deconstruction of singer-songwriter tropes. He wrote a song in every key -- and each of those songs slyly slaughters a sacred cow musically or lyrically.
Sometimes both. Even the album cover is a wink. But these are folk songs in that all folk songs are of their time -- and these are very weird times.
Recorded at Dial Back Sound (Water Valley, MS), Sun Drop Sound (Muscle Shoals), and Communicating Vessels (Birmingham, AL), Nelson performed all of Iced Cherries in sequence at each session -- later selecting the best performances for the album.
Every nuance -- audible winces, fluctuations in time, reverberated yelps -- was committed to tape. While not a COVID album, per se, Nelson spent a healthy chunk of quarantine developing his picking technique and experimenting with alternate tunings.
Already an accomplished and respected guitarist -- not only for his work in Through The Sparks but for his contributions as a session player and sideman (Wooden Wand, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Man or Astroman?) -- Nelson developed an even greater, more intimate bond with his instrument. “Guitar songs are like little self-perpetuating machines.” At times the physical strain of conjuring his new chord shapes would jolt his memory -- reminding him what line he should sing next.
Listen close and you’ll hear an occasional strain in his voice -- like a freak-folk Glenn Gould. All that hard work pays off, though: Iced Cherries ultimately leaves you in endorphin-inducing bliss.
Australian import, limited edition black vinyl.
For the better part of the 21st Century, Joe D. Nelson (aka Jody Nelson) has been writing songs about how strange it is to be anything at all. He trades in a perverse Americana articulated via a novelist’s eye for detail, a poet’s love of the liminal, playful surrealism, and sci-fi morality.
His characters are of this place yet are utterly mystified by their trappings. Some of them are amphibious. Others are lost to circumstance. There are cowboys confused by horses.
A man in a “tap water suit”. Some are walking tarot cards. There is a lot of fruit -- some of it anthropomorphised; some of it portentous. Sometimes things get scary. Often things are sweet.
Regardless, each song is delivered as if Nelson’s reporting to a higher intelligence that has left him long since marooned… But he seems to be taking it all in stride.
Nelson cut his songwriting teeth via his former outfit, Through The Sparks -- a Birmingham, Alabama garage band consisting of formidable multi-instrumentalists and studio rats whose instrumental ambitions could easily match his fevered lyrical visions. With his solo debut, Iced Cherries (Ramble Records / Cresno Beach Recordings), Nelson helms every intricacy with wide eyes and a full heart -- inverting his past techniques by abandoning electric guitars and ProTools in favor of deft fingerpicking on an acoustic guitar and recording live to analog tape.
Iced Cherries is unlike anything else he’s ever released yet it crystalizes Nelson’s well-honed gifts. As for influences, one might hear shades of Bruce Cockburn, whom he recently covered on the latest volume of Imaginational Anthem on the Tompkins Square label.
More often than not, Iced Cherries sounds like an unholy alliance of Fred Neil, Joe Pass, Thomas Pynchon, and David Berman. Nelson’s writing has never been stronger and his approach to his instrument is equally as lyrical.
And if this all sounds complicated and dense… Well, it is. This is an album not only deserving of a lyric sheet, but annotations. That said, part of Nelson’s genius is making it sound so effortless.
Iced Cherries is never bogged down by its athleticism or layered concepts. It sounds as natural as a lazy summer’s day by the water -- delivered with an easy charm that belies any archness.
On a surface level, each of these songs could win over audiences in a grocery store parking lot or a school fundraiser. It’s only with closer inspection that one could grok Nelson’s wild JOE D. NELSON ICED CHERRIES storytelling.
At its core, Iced Cherries is a deconstruction of singer-songwriter tropes. He wrote a song in every key -- and each of those songs slyly slaughters a sacred cow musically or lyrically.
Sometimes both. Even the album cover is a wink. But these are folk songs in that all folk songs are of their time -- and these are very weird times.
Recorded at Dial Back Sound (Water Valley, MS), Sun Drop Sound (Muscle Shoals), and Communicating Vessels (Birmingham, AL), Nelson performed all of Iced Cherries in sequence at each session -- later selecting the best performances for the album.
Every nuance -- audible winces, fluctuations in time, reverberated yelps -- was committed to tape. While not a COVID album, per se, Nelson spent a healthy chunk of quarantine developing his picking technique and experimenting with alternate tunings.
Already an accomplished and respected guitarist -- not only for his work in Through The Sparks but for his contributions as a session player and sideman (Wooden Wand, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Man or Astroman?) -- Nelson developed an even greater, more intimate bond with his instrument. “Guitar songs are like little self-perpetuating machines.” At times the physical strain of conjuring his new chord shapes would jolt his memory -- reminding him what line he should sing next.
Listen close and you’ll hear an occasional strain in his voice -- like a freak-folk Glenn Gould. All that hard work pays off, though: Iced Cherries ultimately leaves you in endorphin-inducing bliss.