A nice email last week from Michael Taylor, alerting me to the existence of his band, Hiss Golden Messenger, and their new live album, “Root Work”: “Touchstones, as I see them, would be Traffic's ‘Low Spark Of High-Heeled Boys’, possibly some live Dead, some vintage-era Tubby/Jammy,” writes Michael, enticingly. As it happens, I was already aware of Hiss Golden Messenger. Rick Tomlinson from Voice Of The Seven Thunders forwarded me last year’s “Country Hai East Cotton” which I enjoyed very much and then subsequently, shamefully, neglected to blog about. Taylor, it transpires, used to figure in The Court & Spark and has moved in the past year or two from San Francisco to North Carolina, where he works as a folklorist. If there’s one contemporary band that I’d pair up Hiss Golden Messenger with, it’d be another crew of ex-San Franciscans, Brightblack Morning Light. Taylor is, perhaps, more of an orthodox songwriter than Nabob and Rabob, and there’s a baroque craftsmanship to a bunch of his songs that reminds me of the Laurel Canyon sound (and to a recent update of the same, PG Six’s lovely “Slightly Sorry”). But on “Root Work”, he stretches them out to incorporate more heft and groove than on “Country Hai East Cotton”. The really terrific “Resurrection Blues”, for instance, is a hot and sticky progression, propped up by deep horn charts, that gradually loosen up and shoot off at tangents as the song goes on, and the lead guitarist (Taylor? I don’t know) steps up for a high, clanging solo. Pretty hooked on this one. The whole set’s good, though, from the opening field recordings of birdsong, into the New Weird American reggae of “John Has Gone To The Light” (one of my colleagues suggests an affinity here with Chris Squire’s “Fish Out Of Water”, which I don’t know), through strong and soulful songs like “Isobel” and the countryish skank of “O Nathaniel”: I’m sure there’s an obvious analogue for the latter, but I can’t locate it this morning for the life of me. And equally, Michael Taylor’s voice really reminds me of something, which again I can’t place. Apologies for the vagueness, but please have a listen to Hiss Golden Messenger’s Myspace, and see if you can help. Thanks!

Much to love from the Woodsist label these past few months, and this debut from White Fence is especially great. White Fence is a guy called Tim Presley, who also seems to have some kind of role in Austin’s Strange Boys; coming, I should plug again, to Club Uncut on June 24. “White Fence” sounds much more of a bedroom project – it’s incredibly lo-fi and distorted in places. Nevertheless, Presley is pretty much a rock classicist in his songwriting, and once you’ve adjusted to the waywardness and fuzz, these are terrific songs: spindly and psychedelic, one-man garage rocking, lysergic balladry, damaged jangle and so on. In fact, it’s a measure of Presley’s gifts that the comparisons which often spring to mind when I play “White Fence” are not predicated on the sonics – there’s little temptation to namedrop early Sebadoh or even his contemporaries like Woods, Ganglians and so on – but to the ‘60s pantheon. Straight off, the opening “Mr Adams” rings like The Byrds, albeit an unsteady Byrds in constant danger of collapsing in on themselves, before a breakbeat unexpectedly drives the song off on a pacey tangent. And so it goes on: a dazed stumble through a canonical record collection. By track four, “I’ll Follow You”, he’s cranked up an insistent, creaky organ and is having a fine crack at Nuggetsy psych (imagine Ariel Pink fixating on ? & The Mysterians rather than ‘80s FM radio, maybe). By track five, “Sara Snow”, he’s channelling Syd Barrett, perhaps Skip Spence, with something in the neighbourhood of aplomb. “The Gallery” is akin to listening to The Hollies on a totally warped old seven. The whole thing works brilliantly, though. It might not be the most innovative musical plot to betray love of The Kinks (“Hard Finish On Mirror Mile”) or, hey, The Beatles (“Be Right Too”), but Presley does so with the dual advantages of neat songs and genuinely arresting sound design. A couple of times (“Baxter Corner” and the 54 seconds of “Box Disease/Today Bond”), he moves through the gears to try out DIY punk, and comes out sounding like something from one of the “Messthetics” comps. Mostly, though, White Fence remain happily in a sort of dreamlike, misremembered ‘60s. “Destroy Everything” is playing again now, and it’s wonderful. You can find it on the White Fence Myspace, with a bunch of these other songs. Let me know what you think.

Something slightly uncomfortable about wondering how much music remains unreleased in the Jack Rose archives, following his passing at the end of last year. It’s scant consolation for his loved ones, I’m sure, that the rest of us are keen on getting unheard music from him for a while longer. That said, I suspect whatever comes out bearing Rose’s name is likely to further enhance his reputation; his touch and good judgment always seemed so constant that it’s hard to envisage anything sub-par being dredged up. And if this “Ragged And Right” EP is anything to go by, we might discover that his creative reach stretched even further than most of us envisaged. “Ragged And Right”, Rose’s last recording, is a hook-up with D Charles Speer & The Helix, a loose-looking bunch fronted by Dave Shuford of the No Neck Blues Band, and also featuring the pianist Hans Chew, who figured on other Rose sessions, plus Marc Orleans from Sunburned Hand Of The Man. That lineup might suggest Rose edging towards scorched improv territory, closer to his Pelt work than later solo releases. In fact, though, The Helix turn out to be a raggle-taggle crew of highly skilled players who can knock out rowdy, folksy boogies as effectively as they can turn their hands to free music. Consequently, the nearest analogue in Rose’s catalogue is the 2008 album with the Black Twig Pickers, with this one a radiant electrified session. The elevated joy in the act of playing shines through every note, even on a hardbitten country ballad like “Prison Song”, with Shuford (I assume) using his best outlaw baritone, and some amazingly ornate playoffs between Rose, Orleans (I think) on steel and the really outstanding Chew. Next up, there’s a Jack Rose/Glenn Jones-authored beauty called “Linden Avenue Stomp”, a rolling and keening marvel which, like the Black Twig Pickers’ stuff, feels like such an open-hearted and full-blooded, enormously unprissy embrace of roots music. It’s here they really take flight, though the experimental imperative is disciplined, channelled, reminiscent in some ways of the Grateful Dead and maybe the New Riders Of The Purple Sage. “The Longer You Wait” is a Merle Haggard song attacked with similar gusto, and finally there’s a take on “In The Pines” which begins with some a capella goofing and proceeds to gleefully disregard all the spectral gloom which contemporary musicians (Kurt Cobain, Mark Lanegan, Bill Callahan) have brought to the song. It sounds like a riotous, visionary, uplifting hoedown, one where you can almost smell the good times in the recording room; a wonderful way to memorialise a great musician. As, I suspect, is this: “Honest Strings: A Tribute To The Life And Work Of Jack Rose", a tremendous-looking digital comp that costs $15, runs for six and a half hours and features, deep breath, D Charles Speer, MV & EE, Rick Tomlinson, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Pelt, No Neck Blues Band, Black Twig Pickers, Hans Chew, Six Organs Of Admittance, Hush Arbors, Spectre Folk, Elisa Ambrogio and an epically impressive cast of artists. I’m going to grab a copy and give it a go.

I must admit that my knowledge of Graham Nash’s solo career was virtually non-existent until the release of that box set and reissue of “Songs For Beginners” a couple of years back. I can’t pretend that I’ve subsequently investigated much further, in spite of the allure of the coat of questions and the answer hat, and your helpful suggestions on the “Song For Beginners” blog. The arrival of “Be Yourself”, however, has reminded me that I need to put some good intentions into action. “Be Yourself” is a tribute album to “Songs For Beginners”, with the 11 songs covered by various indie-folk illluminati including Robin Pecknold, Will Oldham, Alela Diane and so on. It’s not, I have to say, one of those compilations that make you rethink the nature and substance of the original. For the most part, the contributions amount to little more than mildly indiefied versions – Sleepy Sun, the one actual rock band in the lineup, stay psychedelically restrained for a purposeful chug through “Chicago”. Without checking the Nash takes, Brendan Benson’s “Better Days” and Vetiver’s “Used To Be A King” sound more or less uncannily faithful. Essentially, then, we’re left with a nice comp that primarily acts as a reminder of the gentle songwriterly marvels of “Songs For Beginners”. These are songs that are so strong that reasonably respectful artists have their work cut out spoiling them (though Port O’Brien and Papercuts’ weedy joint assault on “Military Madness”. Only Will Oldham, perhaps predictably, manages something relatively subversive, if performing “Simple Man” as “Hombre Sencillo”, in Spanish, could be considered subversive. It does, though, provide a fresh spin. Other highlights would probably be Robin Pecknold’s characteristically lovely, spectral take on “Be Yourself” (in much the same vein as that Judee Sill cover he used to dust down on Fleet Foxes tours); and Joanna Newsom comrades the Moore Brothers, who do their unsteady Everlys thing to “Man In The Mirror”. But out of this generally engaging set, I think there’s one real keeper, Alela Diane’s “There’s Only One”. Nothing radical here again, as the acoustic guitar, nimble lap steel and soft harmonies provide the soundbed. But it’s her voice that’s so striking, radiating a confidence and calm strength that seems to increase every time she enters a studio. While most of the contributors have a certain fragility to their tone, as if in deference to Nash’s own reediness, Diane provides a different, earth-rooted gravity, which really stands out. Intriguing, I think, after her spot on the Blitzen Trapper record, to hear where she heads next.

In the two or three years since Ariel Pink put out an album, it seems that a lot of undergroundish American music has fallen under the thrall of his curious discography. From hypnagogic pop to chillwave, and all faintly daft genres in between, Pink’s music has become a kind of touchstone for bands who specialise in distressed, strung-out lo-fi renderings of the mainstream music of their youth or beyond (focusing on the ‘80s, as a rule). If Animal Collective (Pink’s former label bosses at Paw Tracks) have taken at least part of that aesthetic towards the mainstream, it’s fitting that Pink himself should return to make the album which both epitomises the whole sound at the same time as upgrading it. “Before Today” is recorded with a great deal more fidelity and clarity than the likes of “The Doldrums” and “Worn Copy”, which tended to bury earworm pop music under vast amounts of distortion and FX, the cumulative effect of the albums being both exciting and a little nauseating. By now, you may well have heard “Round And Round”, which we discussed at some length here a while back, a slick and anthemic song that becomes an even greater pleasure with every play, in spite of gradually accumulating more and more unappetising reference points (Deacon Blue’s “Fergus Sings The Blues”, Imagination’s “Just An Illusion”, Foreigner’s “I Wanna Know What Love Is” being some we’ve mentioned in the office). Offputting, perhaps, but “Round And Round” is compelling nevertheless because, well, it’s one of the most uncomplicatedly enjoyable pop songs I’ve heard this year, and also because it has a subtext of complication, too; a liminally eerie quality to the recording, a trippy filtering, which really comes into play when you hear it through headphones. In the context of the varied pleasures of “Before Today”, too, “Round And Round” starts to sound just as odd as much of those early Ariel Pink albums. “Can’t Hear My Eyes” might have something of Christopher Cross to its yacht-rock vibes, plus an unfeasibly MOR saxophone solo. But it follows “Butt-House Blondies”, a magisterial psychedelic meander that’s intermittently punctuated by squalls of Sunset Strip metal guitars, and the fried acid power-pop of “Little Wig”, which really showcases the elaborate structuring and arrangements of Pink’s Haunted Graffiti bandmates. And on the other side of “Can’t Hear My Eyes”, there’s a glorious underwater groove instrumental, “Reminiscences” (I’m reminded perhaps unaccountably of James Ferraro and The Skaters here); a plaintive and unnerving power ballad about gender confusion, “Menopause Man”; and, finally, “Revolution’s A Lie”, a zippy Cure homage that exposes, perhaps, at least some of Pink’s eccentricities as part of an enduring gothic sensibility. It’s a very particular, sun-damaged LA gothic, a sort of phantasmagoric take on Californian culture that inspires a song title like “Beverly Kills”. Pink’s gift, though, is to warp his inspirations in a pretty original way: it’s hard to say what makes the cop show glossy soul of “Beverly Kills” quite so damaged-sounding – there’s more to it than the way Pink and his bandmates somehow summon up the strength for monkey noises and a Tarzan call near the death. But, again, one of the things that make “Before Today” such a tremendous album is the way the weirdness can be focused on or zoned out. Track Three works neatly as a sweet synth and jangle reconfiguration of the Beach Boys, which its goth title – “L’Estat (Acc. To The Widow’s Maid)” – and mostly incomprehensible lyrics cannot entirely undermine. And “Bright Lit Blue Skies” is a gushing, confident and thoroughly lovely take on a garage song by The Rockin’ Ramrods that I must confess I’ve never come across before. Ancient prejudices be damned, or at least transcended: this is a great album all round.