Jim Allen will be celebrating old and new music at special Brooklyn show on July 12 (photo by Therese Ragghianti)
JIM ALLEN ALBUM RELEASE AND 30TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
Young Ethel’s
506 Fifth Ave., Park Slope
Sunday, July 12, 3:00
youngethels.com
jimallen.bandcamp.com
On his new record, Maybe Things Will Be Alright, singer-songwriter and music journalist extraordinaire Jim Allen delves into darkness, with such words as fear, scared, frightened, panic, and sorrow jumping out across a dozen wide-ranging tracks. But as he declares in the opening title tune, “Maybe I won’t crack up / Maybe I won’t break down / Maybe the worst is passed / and all of our dreams won’t drown / Maybe hope has got a way to hang on through the night / Who knows, maybe things will be alright.” With its bright, jangly guitar hook and lovely harmonies from dB’s cofounder Peter Holsapple, the song offers an optimistic mantra amid the world’s despair.
At last month’s twenty-fifth anniversary gala for This Week in New York, Allen reminded me that in April 2001, I was at the Ear Inn on Spring St. with him and drummer supreme Steve Goulding, mulling over my future after I had been laid off from the entertainment database company where we all were working. I described to them a plan to write about my experiences in New York City, and thus, twi-ny was born.
I’ll be returning the favor of party attendance on July 12 when you can find me at Young Ethel’s in Park Slope for an exciting doubleheader as Allen celebrates the release of Maybe Things Will Be Alright along with the thirtieth anniversary of his debut record, 1996’s Weeper’s Stomp. He’ll be playing both albums in their entirety, joined by Paul Foglino (5 Chinese Brothers), Matt Applebaum (Allen’s the Ramblin’ Kind), and Goulding (Mekons, the Rumour) on the former and guest singer Katie Curley and Applebaum on the latter. Foglino will open the afternoon with a solo set.
On the new album, anchored by the masterful Goulding, Allen explores multiple styles, from power pop, folk rock, and blues to alt country, prog rock, and even a murder ballad, resulting in a record that beautifully transcends genres. A rollicking piano, propulsive drumming, and a searing six-string solo drive “Panic Button” (“I’ve been under a doctor’s orders / Not to turn off my bedroom light”). “Let My People Go to Sleep” is a jaunty delight (“Karloff as the creature / Shock horror double feature / Only the monster in the mirror scares me / He’s locked in there forever / Unless I pull this lever / You wouldn’t want to be the one who dares me”). “In a Cave,” hoisted by a British Invasion–style organ and backing vocals by Bongos cofounder Richard Barone, needs to be the theme song for the next BritBox secret-agent series.
“Downpour Blue” (“One two downpour blue / Three feet deep in the morning dew / Four five I’m still alive / Six feet under is a dead man’s jive / There are seven ways to heaven through a poor man’s doorway”) recalls the swampy grit of the first song on Allen’s debut, “Inchworm Blues.” “Underground” begins with a nod to Supertramp. Nick Cave would be proud of the sizzling “They Get Up” (“Hard Hat Hank slips out from underneath a girder / Doing such a dizzy dance you might forget that he’d been murdered / The Lady of the Dunes lumbers madly through the sand / With a hammer in her skull and a dagger in her hand / They’d gone rotten and forgotten in their fatal plight / But they get up and walk around at night”). The twinkling “Where I Am,” with flourishes of Steve Earle as a medieval troubadour, boasts contributions by United States of America lead vocalist Dorothy Moskowitz and Lothar & the Hand People keyboardist Paul Conly. Also on the record are C. P. Roth, Rembert Block, Lizzie Edwards, Erica Smith, and Byron Isaacs.
The album concludes with the infectious “It’s Hard,” in which Allen assures us, “And it’s hard, yeah, it’s hard / I might be slightly past what you’d consider my prime / And the incline won’t diminish / Before the story’s finished / In fact it’s a perpetual climb.” The song hearkens back to the jazzy noir “Bottom Rung” from Weeper’s Stomp, in which Allen sings, “You know it really doesn’t matter / whose foot is on the ladder / when you’re living on the bottom rung.”
The story is far from finished for the Bronx born-and-raised Allen, who is perhaps just hitting his prime. In addition to making music, he writes liner notes for many reissues, posts regularly for “Rock and Roll Globe,” and pens the Bandcamp column “Prog Is a State of Mind.”
Perhaps it’s time for Allen to reconsider the title of his new album and lose that “maybe.”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]