Verbena
Alt Country / Alt Country
It may be so, as the great one claimed, that Sun Ra came from Saturn. But
only by way of Birmingham. And though we're reasonably sure no interstellar
travel was required, Fitzgerald's search for his Zelda led him ultimately
through Birmingham. The town was known for much of the last century as the
most segregated in America, home to both the nation's largest chapter of the
KKK and perhaps the 60's most notorious law enforcement villain, sheriff
Bull Connor. It has seen landmark bombings punctuate each of our most bitter
civic debates, at the 16th Street Baptist Church ('66) and thirty-odd years
later at the New Woman's Clinic. And for decades astride, Red Mountain, on
the city's south side, a 55 ft - 60 ton iron statue called Vulcan used a
gleaming torch to tally overnight traffic fatalities.
Long before any of that, for reasons still unclear, some cockeyed seer
tagged it "The Magic City".
To the south, about halfway between Birmingham and Montgomery, just a few
miles east of the interstate, lies Verbena, pop. 3702. Named for a flowering
purple herb, Verbena, AL provided 1860's sanctuary for thousands fleeing the
deadly yellow fever epidemic that gripped the nearby towns, just about 100
years before Sun Ra supposed a more celestial liberation via "Magic City"
blues.
Rock'n'roll Verbena (vrrr-bee'-na/pop.3) got its first whiff of escape
courtesy the good people at Merge Records, an EP combining two self-released
7-inches leading to the 1997 full-length debut, Souls For Sale. Predictable
regimen of touring followed, and so the attention of some big record labels.
Into The Pink, produced by Dave Grohl, marked their Capitol records bow in
'99.
What's made plain through the records and the seven year's transit, is that
there is, of course, no exit: the South has dug a proud scar across the band
and its mongrel punk blues. La Musica Negra, as produced by Rob Schnapf
(Beck, Guided By Voices, Elliot Smith), takes its fury mostly from the
ancient Bible-country conflict betwixt the pious and the prurient. Where
immortal hellhounds trailed and devoured the forefathers of the blues (and
its hillbilly seed, rock'n' roll), Scott Bondy's 21st Century update surely
doesn't see those dogs go hungry.
"Me & Yr Sister", "Devil in Miss Jones", and "All the Saints" crawl up from
a haunted Delta tradition, where familiar demons--distilled, sexual and
chemical--seldom stop to rest. "Killing Floor (Get Down On It)", and "I,
Pistol" mock the Bush II brute American burlesque, as "Way Out West" (much
like "The Desert" on Souls), "Camellia" and "Dirty Goodbyes" take different
paths to refuge.
La Musica Negra is the band's first without a contribution from Anne Marie
Griffin, as remaining founders Bondy (guitar, vocals) and Les Nuby (drums)
team here with Nick Daviston (bass) on all 13 tracks. The son of a working
jazz musician and lifelong resident of Birmingham, Daviston has been heard
to wonder lately whether this might be his ticket out.
Maybe so. And maybe someone plays piano in a joint somewhere on Saturn.
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