Tony Peyser's "Blue State Jukebox"

March 16, 2006

Mike Younger's Every Stone You Throw

Tony Peyser's "Blue State Jukebox" Review -- March, 2006 Edition

I used to read a lot of mystery stories and always appreciated it when the editor of an anthology would say why he picked a certain story. I want to explain why I selected this month's album because the back story is far more circuitous than usual.

A little over five years ago, I found an album in some Melrose Avenue bargain bins and flipped out. On Somethin' In The Air, Mike Younger sounded like a 1960s wounded, wandering folk troubadour who might have opened for Phil Ochs in Greenwich Village. (It was produced by Rodney Crowell, who knows a thing or three about singing and songwriting.) As the harmonica rang out in the haunting "In Restless Dreams," the inevitable Dylan comparison fit like a pair of favorite old shoes. Younger appeared on two memorable anthology CDs back then: one for Starbucks, the other for the Sundance Film Festival. And then I didn't hear a peep about him until late last year when I read about an upcoming new release.

I was dying to get a copy of Every Stone You Throw, called his L.A. publicist -- and they wouldn't give me one. This rejection came after weeks of jerking me around, which made me scramble to find other CDs for this column and nearly caused me to miss a deadline. With any other artist, I would have just moved on to one of the other sixty or so CDs piled up on my desk.

But a) I'm a big Younger fan and b) I was pissed off.

I e-mailed his publicists and said, "I Googled your p.r. firm and got 834 hits. I Googled BuzzFlash and got 1,900,000. I was terrible in long division and flunked Algebra but I can do the math here. Can you please explain why you don't want to have your client's album seen by that many people"?

I never heard back.

But after I pleaded my case to his manager, I finally was able to get a copy of Younger's new album. My wife (who saw steam coming out of my ears repeatedly over all this) asked, "Was it worth it"?

Every Stone You Throw isn't as good as Somethin' In The Air. It's better.

There are 12 tracks and the fourth one, "Together," is a song everybody needs to hear five minutes ago. It's a platter of Southern soul with gospel gravy. I can easily see it being covered by Aretha, Al Green or Willie Nelson. "Together" is "Imagine" in cowboy boots.

Like John Lennon, Younger finds himself envisioning a more compassionate planet: "Come away, boys and girls/Just to dream about a different world/And together we will find a better way/Where each and every person matters/In fancy clothes and dressed in tatters" -- It's old hippie-ish without reeking of patchouli oil. The piano playing is reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen's sideman Roy Bittan and the sax solo reminded me of The E-Street Band's Clarence Clemons.

Younger, who often sang for his supper and squatted for a while in New York's Lower East Side, sings about the down and out from an especially sympathetic perspective. And while a song like "Together" would raise the roof in any church I can think of, the song is preacher-friendly but not preachy. (Unless, of course, you're a Republican. If a Bushie hears certain lyrics --- "Tired world, sick with greed/Got 6 billion hungry mouths to feed" --- they'll contact Homeland Security and report Younger for this kind of commie touchy-feely welfare talk.)

I sometimes get vexed when musicians devise something really magical that clocks in at two and a half minutes. Yeah, I can keep hitting the replay button but didn't they realize this was so good it deserved to be longer? No such problem here as "Together" is two seconds shy of five minutes.

Having covered peace with "Together," Young takes a whack at war with "Everyday War." The song is weary and mournful but also quietly defiant. In this early verse, he charts the brash military trash talk before opposing forces collide: "The hawks are on the warpath always talking proud and strong/The enemy he's sure to fall, he can't hold out for long/Seems it really doesn't matter what's right or wrong/It's just something that got lost along the way." Younger's disillusion is ratcheted up in the chorus when he bitterly sings, "It's an everyday war, kicking down your door/ Tell me again what's the reason/Tell me again what it's for." There's a guitar solo a little later which carefully evokes his anguish. The notes resonate like bitter invectives, as opposed to so many guitar solos which are usually just displays of cliched posturing.

Younger closes the tightly wound track with these searing lines: "When the streets are full of people whose voices go unheard/Dismissed and disregarded, made out to be absurd/While the leaders of the nation offer up their empty words/And bring the fire home to us all." The percussive drums at the top and end of the song have a very old military sound to them that harkens way back in our history, further underscoring how this craziness has been going for way too long.

Having addressed peace and war, Younger also takes a stab at love on "Banished." It's told from the angle of someone whose girl has dropped him like an anvil. The song feels like his final, apologetic letter to her. But when he gets to the bridge, he summons up his courage and can't resist one last chance to win her back: "And if it's true then baby please let's don't pretend/Just let me know I blew my chance/But if you ever turn to look my way again/I would dance, I would dance." The music suddenly gets so euphoric that you really hope this romantic sad sack does get another shot at love. It's a bouncy, joyous song that splits the difference between early Rod Stewart and just starting out Springsteen.

Younger (I should have said earlier) was born and raised in Nova Scotia and has traveled all over America's dirt roads and back alleys. His second effort has more rock and roll than his folky first CD but he never sacrifices content for volume. And on what one hopes is long career, he's just getting warmed up with Every Stone You Throw.

(After I wrote this review, I wondered if I went too far out on a limb comparing a track of Younger's to one by the aforementioned John Lennon. As I mulled this over, I checked my e-mail and found out that in January, the Oberlin Conservatory Of Music announced its Grand Prize Winner in the WRA Song Competition for peace. This competition was new to me but I gather it's international in scope and includes singer-songwriters of any genre. I'm especially happy and proud to report that Mike Younger's "Together" won the whole shebang.)

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Tony Peyser writes political poems every day for BuzzFlash and draws editorial cartoons twice weekly. His new music column, The Blue State Jukebox, is now a monthly feature for BuzzFlash. Mr. Peyser (who loves referring to himself in the third person) is shamelessly using BuzzFlash as a springboard to help him land his dream job: becoming the new Washington Bureau Chief for Talon News.