CD Review: Sing SOS – Songs Of The Spectrum

Benefit albums often are more earnest than truly enjoyable. You typically buy to support the cause rather than wanting to listen to the songs. It’s rare for a benefit album to actually engage you musical, but Sing SOS – Songs of the Spectrum is one of those rare albums.

As the title suggests, this disc concerns autism spectrum disorders, and these disorders are said to affect around 1 in every 100 children. The project’s organizers know something about this disorder too. John O’Neill is a a New York Times writer who wrote about his autistic son as part of a Pulitzer Prize-nominated series.

The disc attracted a strong lineup of performers. The biggest names here are folks like Jackson Browne, Jonatha Brooke and Marshall Crenshaw, along with other musicians such as Dar Williams, Ollabelle, Ari Heist and Don Dixon & Marti Jones. There are obviously a number of fine songwriters involved; however, one of the unique (and rather risky, considering the assembled talented) aspects here is that the artists just sing the songs, not compose them. All the songs basically were written by the trio of O’Neill and Jon Fried and Deena Shoshkes, from the long-running New Jersey indie rock band the Cucumbers. So besides being a benefit disc, this is also something of a concept album.

However, this approach worked out wonderfully. The trio has penned a lyrically cohesive yet musical diverse set of songs that explore living with autism as well as living with someone who has autism. They are able to write from an insider’s perspective while also making it lyrically interesting. On the opening number, “One Went Missing,” engagingly performed by the band Ollabelle, they talk about a parent’s anxiety about having to be vigilant about watching an autism child “every waking hour, every waking minute.” In “Diagnosis,” Richard Julian sings the powerful image of “falling down a well” to convey someone living with autism.

One song that struck me in particular was “Afraid (My Brother’s Cries)” which Fried co-wrote with Chris O’Neill (John’s non-autistic son). It is a relatively simple tune about a brother’s fears for his afflicted brother, but lines like “I’m afraid that there won’t be anyone to catch him when he falls” pack a strong emotional punch. In fact, the entire disc resonates powerfully.

While the lyrics all deal with this serious topic, the arrangements vary enough to avoid making the songs feel like lectures. “If It Were His Legs” is done by Christina Courtin as a piano-based ditty. Dar Williams makes “House On Fire” into an urgent folk-rockers and Dixon & Jones injects “He’s Coming Back” with a fun funkiness.
The final song here, “It’s Time,” puts across an impassioned plea to the government bureaucrats to get “these kids some help,” and it’s performed with suitable outrage by Dan Bern & Mike Viola. The album actually closes with a short but touching spoken word piece written and done by James O’Neill. He gives his perspective about living with autism and concludes with the hopeful line: “the rainbow needs to be spread.”

Sing SOS is not just a terrific benefit album, it’s a pretty terrific album overall.
For more information, visit www.singsos.org

If I Were Going Out – I’d Be Going Out To See Todd Snider on October 8

I don’t get out as much as I used to, or want to, so I often wind up “attending” show vicariously. One show that you attend for me is Todd Snider’s appearance at the Grammy Museum as part of their The Drop series. The Drop is a very cool on-going program the Museum has where it hosts an act that is releasing (“dropping”) a new album. I saw a Drop session with Marshall Crenshaw and was a very worthwhile experience.
Todd Snider might make for an even more engaging guest than Crenshaw. The Nashville-based singer/songwriter is one of the best around at telling a story that’s laced with wit and arsenic. For several years, Snider was on John Prine's label and if the master songsmith Prine wants a singer-songwriter for his label that's a high compliment. While Snider's last disc, Peace Queer, was a decidedly politically charged effort, his new album, The Excitement Plan (on Yep Roc), promises to be his trademark collection of darkly humored tunes.
Snider’s best-known numbers probably are “Alright Guy” and the satiric “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues,” from his 1994 debut. However, over the past 15 years he has crafted a slew of memorable tunes, like “Thin Wild Mercury” (that deals with Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan), “D.B. Cooper” and “Play A Train Song,” to name a few.
But Snider is really in his element on a stage, where he can tell colorful tales about his just-as-colorful tunes. It’s this quality that makes The Drop’s Q&A-plus-performance set-up such an appealing scenario to catch Snider.
However, if you can make it down to the Grammy Museum on Oct. 8, Snider is scheduled to return to L.A. on December 12 for a show at the El Rey.

Todd Snider appears at the Grammy Museum (800 W. Olympic Blvd., LA, www.grammymuseum.org) at 8 p.m. on Oct. 8. Tickets are $10.

Dropping In At The Drop

I dropped in to the The Drop last night. The Drop is a new, and quite interesting, program at the Grammy Museum. It’s sorta like a musician’s version of Inside the Actors’ Studio or Spectacle minus Costello. Each session has a museum official talking to a musician who has a new album coming out. In the previous week, Nanci Griffith, Rhett Miller and Mandy Moore all dropped in for an evening of talk and music.
Tonight it was Marshall Crenshaw, with the host being the museum’s executive director Robert Santelli, who also happened to have gotten to know Crenshaw “back in the day” when he was a journalist and Crenshaw was the talk of the New York rock scene. Tonight’s conversation, however, focused on his new disc, Jaggedland (429 Records).
A sly conversationalist, Crenshaw did drop fascinating tidbits about his creative process. Like how hearing Rosemary Clooney’s rendition of “Mood Indigo” served as an inspiration for the song “Sunday Blues.” Or how, when collaborating with songwriter Kelly Ryan on “Passing Through,” he eliminated her references to urban life and told her to write about what she saw outside her window in Ireland. He had some cool anecdotes about growing up outside of Detroit, watching Buddy Holly on Ed Sullivan and praising the mostly forgotten ‘50s rock n roller Jack Scott.
Besides the tunes mentioned above, Crenshaw also played other songs from his new disc, which served to whet my appetite for hearing the real thing. After an audience Q&A session, Santelli requested Crenshaw close with the evening with an oldie – “Someday, Someway.” Crenshaw earlier had alluded to early career snafus and how there are some songs that he doesn’t play anymore because hold bitter memories. Happily, the sublime “Someday, Someway” isn’t one of them.