{"id":16743,"date":"2019-08-17T05:30:28","date_gmt":"2019-08-17T09:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16743"},"modified":"2019-07-25T10:50:19","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T14:50:19","slug":"album-review-phil-alvin-un-sung-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/08\/17\/album-review-phil-alvin-un-sung-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Phil Alvin \u2013 Un \u201cSung Stories\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-16744\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/phil_alvin_uss.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/phil_alvin_uss.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/phil_alvin_uss-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/phil_alvin_uss-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>With the departure of Dave Alvin in 1986, it looked the Blasters were finished. So it was no surprise that guitarist Phil Alvin took the opportunity to record and release his first solo album, <i>Un \u201cSung Stories\u201d<\/i>. But Alvin\u2019s solo debut found him traveling far from the straight-ahead rockabilly sounds of the Blasters.<\/p>\n<p>On three of the album\u2019s ten cuts, the singer-guitarist is backed by Sun Ra and His Solar Arkestra; those recordings represent Sun Ra\u2019s final recordings with his longtime band. (The Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Lee Allen are featured on one track, the New Orleans-flavored \u201cSomeone Stole Gabriel\u2019s Horn.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>The Arkestra plays it relatively straight when backing Alvin; \u201cThe Old Man of the Mountain\u201d presages the jazz revival sound that Jimbo Mathus would explore a full decade later with the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Sun Ra himself is most evident playing piano on the jazz age classic \u201cBrother Can You Spare a Dime.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Half of the album\u2019s cuts \u2013 interspersed with the Sun Ra tracks \u2013 are astoundingly stark in arrangement. \u201cDeath in the Morning\u201d is a gospel-flavored number with vocal chorus, spare guitar and occasional snare drum. \u201cDaddy Rollin\u2019 Stone\u201d comes closest to the sound of the Blasters, but even it is a model of seething restraint. \u201cCollins Cave\u201d features Appalachian fiddle, Alvin\u2019s emotive vocal and little else.<\/p>\n<p>Alvin reactivated the Blasters later in \u201886 without his brother, and the band continues to present day. Against that backdrop, this album seems lost in time. A kind of potted history lesson in album form, <i>Un \u201cSung Stories\u201d<\/i> is deliberately eclectic, and on its original release likely confused fans who appreciated the Blasters\u2019 highly charged musical attack. But as a window into the music that informed Alvin\u2019s sensibility \u2013 and with the understanding that comes with hindsight \u2013 it makes perfect sense.<\/p>\n<p>In 1986, the CD format was on the rise, but Slash, Alvin\u2019s label at the time, chose to release the album on LP and cassette only. Wounded Bird issued a CD version (now out of print) in 2012, but a new reissue of <i>Un \u201cSung Stories\u201d<\/i> marks its CD debut in the U.K.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the departure of Dave Alvin in 1986, it looked the Blasters were finished. So it was no surprise that guitarist Phil Alvin took the opportunity to record and release [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16744,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,42,64,65,66],"tags":[3315],"class_list":["post-16743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gospel","category-jazz","category-reissue","category-review","category-rockabilly","tag-phil-alvin","cat-35-id","cat-42-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-66-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16745,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16743\/revisions\/16745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}