Absence can be a tricky gambit in music, one taken in the past week by Portishead, Tom Petty’s first significant band and Steve Winwood. All three released impressive albums on April 29 with different attitudes toward past lives: Winwood is reconciling ‘70s and ‘80s personae; Mudcrutch reflects Petty’s take on a 1971-72 milieu; and Portishead discards its own history to create a take on the Nico-Dagmar Krause aesthetic with abundant industrial textures.
Portishead’s “Third,” the Brit trio’s first album in more than 10 years, is not only the most daring of the three, it may well be the most adventurous major label release of the year. Thematically dramatic and dark, with the enthralling Beth Gibbons singing about self-doubt and romance with an overriding sense of vulnerability, Portishead leaves its past in the dust. “Third” is a reinvention of a band, a second phase that occurred organically and was not forced to happen as the first phase lost artistic or commercial currency.
That dilemma reached up and bit Winwood after his 1982-1990 reinvention as a purveyor of contemporary British blue-eyed soul and, whether planned or not, made his albums few and far between: “Nine Lives” is only his third album in 17 years, but the first to honestly connect Spencer Davis Group and Traffic with the more polished solo artist.
Winwood returned to his spot behind the keyboard after the release of 1997’s “Junction Seven.” Six years later, when String Cheese Incident’s label released his “About Time” album, which Sony later picked up, Winwood was positioned as a patriarch of the jam band scene. His handful of recent shows with Eric Clapton reconnected with the initial incarnation of the jam band universe, Blind Faith, again raising hope that Winwood connect the dots between past and present.
“Nine Lives” could use a little more organ and a couple of sax solos veer too close to smooth jazz, but otherwise the collection is full of smart, potent and forcefully delivered tracks. The presence of Clapton as a soloist suggests that relationship has the ability to still bear fruit and as white-boy funk goes, Winwood remains a master. Released by Columbia, it is a far better sounding record and more focused effort than “About Time,” the result of time and money.
Those two attributes are in evidence on the debut album of “Mudcrutch,” recorded in 10 days about 32 years after the band broke up. Mudcrutch features Heartbreakers Petty on bass, Mike Campbell on guitar and Benmont Tench on keyboards along with Tom Leadon on guitar and Randall Marsh on drums. They recorded a single for Asylum after moving to L.A. from Gainesville, Fla., that went nowhere; the band never got to release its version of “Don’t Do Me Like That.”
Beyond a reunion, Mudcrutch gave Petty a chance to experiment with doing things the old-fashioned way – write tunes in a hurry, record songs in a single take and do everything live. The procedure yielded a nine-minute Allmans-esque jam, Crystal River, about a half-dozen twists on the Flying Burrito Brothers including the bluegrass-inspired flatpicking on “June Apple” and a pop tune, “Oh Maria,” that could be part of the Heartbreakers’ arsenal.
Live, Mudcrutch and Portishead re-produced their records. Mudcrutch, at the Troubadour, was a tight country-rock band with a few fun covers (Dylan, the Killer), while Portishead was impressive in each individual performance but has yet to figure out a way to smoothly segue from their past to their present. Winwood will be opening shows this summer for Petty & the Heartbreakers; it may well be the season’s most interesting rock timeline on display.
Of the three albums, Portishead is the likely top-seller with predictions hovering around 50,000. Mudcrutch should do about half of that.
Since the last post, I have attended four concerts and seen 28 acts leaving me with 72 concerts and 184 acts to go on the path to 100/300.
On the stereo:
Car: Daniella Cotton “Rock N Soul”; Esperanza Spalding; Cinematic Orchestra “Live at the Royal Albert Hall”; Duffy “Rockferry”; Scarlett Johansson “Anywhere I Lay My Head”; Hayes Carll “Trouble in Mind”
Home: Jacob Young “Sideways”; Raconteurs “Consolers of the Lonely”; David Grisman Quintet “DGQ-20” (disc 2); Steve Miller Band box set (disc 2); Billy Bragg “Mr. Love & Justice”
The last time Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers toured — summer of 2006 — he had a three-pronged promotional attack: Support the new album, “Highway Companion”; celebrate 30 years of the Heartbreakers; and put enough material in the show to make it worthwhile for Stevie Nicks to tag along. 
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